Hot Sexy South of France Summer

Now, with increasingly edgy visitors!

Happy belated Solstice to those who celebrate! And don’t we ALL celebrate, with the exception of some dour souls — I see you! — who note that now the days are getting shorter?

Here in “Le Village préféré des Français 2024(™)”, we have another week of relative calm before les grandes vacances really get underway and our wee pearl of a village becomes a touristic hellscape worthy of its own first-person shooter videogame. Still, I love summer, and am delighted to report on some lovely summer firsts.

Regardez-vous. . .

First perfect peaches of the season

First morning swim on perfectly empty beach, followed by petit dejeuner

First evening swim at 9:30 pm, followed by rosé piscine

First heatwave, wherein we turn on our clime and are roundly berated by French friends who are taught from birth to view air-conditioning as the Devil’s Appliance.

First clocking of remarkably fit local dowager in string bikini who paddle boards from bay to bay for hours, perched on her astounding knees

First alarming glimpse of old guy who swims from bay to bay with the belabored stroke of an asthmatic felon escaping from a desert island prison

First midnight vacationing family meals at local seaside bistro wherein exhausted pre-schoolers fall asleep on the table, while their parents merrily ignore them

First appearance of hideous blue and white tour boat from neighboring village blaring scratchy reggae version of "The Sound of Silence" (possibly ironic)

First sighting of dozing teen who forgets to apply sunscreen to her comely butt cheeks and who won’t be able to sit down for the rest of her vacation

First off-color joke made about ‘goats on beach’ as over-confident trio of Scandi dudes drop trow directly in front of the snack bar and paddle board rental establishment, changing from their slacks into swim trunks, which requires a lot of bending over

First lively volley of fuck you/no fuck you!/ NO FUCK YOU!!!s thrown at local snack hut between proprietor who doesn't take bankcards and a South African knob who objected to the inconvenience

First band-aid sighting in the water

First tampon sighting on the beach

First death match between two enormous seagulls battling over a sandy slice of pepperoni beside an over-flowing garbage can of empty pizza boxes

First West Side Story-style rumble between two warring gangs from elsewhere (Perpignan? Brooklyn?) armed with rocks from the tide pools and paddles from the sailing school, hell bent on thrashing one another in their street clothes, while my friend Peta, reading a paperback under her beach umbrella in her elegant bikini, leaps to her feet, grabs one of them by the sleeve and shouts “calme-toi! which gets other beach-goers involved, also the owner and servers of the closest café, and the boys are chased off, but not before swiping a few cell phones

First whiff of le pipi as drunken reverler (this time of year every male is pretty much a drunken reveler) relieves himself on the corner of a building in full view of three ladies in straw hats doing watercolors