The lizards have taken over...

Now, like most normal civilized middle class Brits, I have always liked a bit of France. I love all the usual cliches about the place, have some good friends there who I can impress by still speaking, arguing and schmoozing in the language pretty well and these days in many circles you can get by generally well by saying that Sarkozy is une tete de merde. I can also effect a pretty good Gallic shrug too. The result of too many good holidays as a kid, campsite work following an old fashioned A' level which has served me very well to this day.

On a good day I can wave to my Gallic pals from the beach here and am close enough to breath in the fresh fragrance of a delicious Pastis and Gaulloise combo. For me France is a place where smoking seems to be right. I did enjoy the odd toke in my times there which never transferred elsewhere. It was something you did in France.

Now having been living so close it seems strange that I hadn't been for a number of years not since accompanying a relative over for a new hip which by way of detours are much cheaper than the private queue jumping option in the UK and you get wine with your meals too...

Is this  the real face of Carla Bruni?

I recently went over for a long weekend to Le Touquet  to celebrate the handing in of my notice - what a hppay day that was - the disingenuous platitudes from the head and northern Nazi. Anyway, it was the first proper visit in a few years but something terribly sideways and askew. Almost as if some parallel France had been created by skin-donning lizard imposters. Many would argue that the high heel wearing, short-arse posturing of the unlamented grumpy late president was that of some kind of lizard creature who, for  a moment hypnotised part of the nation into something it wasn't. On the outside it still looks as fine as ever, the women as wonderful, the shops and food great but... but... but....where were the smokers? Where were the long lunchers? Had the fat bloke drinking his red at 10.00 and pulling on his filterless coffin nails been abducted?  Why wasn't driving any more thrilling than a trip to the shops in Milton Keynes? And, who were these Health and Safety fools in the ubiquitous High Vis jackets that seemed to have spread like eczema across the landscape during my gap decade in Asia? What had happened to the impatient raging French drivers who were now stopping at zebra crossings or amber lights? I was in shock but the True Horror finally kicked me in the throat, the foul truth was driven home like a metallic shard through the eye -  the lizard people  really had donned skins and taken over. I knew this finally when I saw a finely turned out femme d'une certaine age  gracefully bag the garlic fragranced shit squelchily spawned by her equally well turned out dograt.

In all the many commentaries I have been reading about France in recent weeks why am I the only person to have noticed this takeover? Doubtless the journo lizards are involved in the conspiracy.

For me some soul had gone missing. Perhaps things have moved on, adapted, improved on those things I remember fondly. To misquote that  well-known educationalist  Dr McCoy:  It is France Jim, but not as we know it.

The late- Monsieur Sarkozy