"Why do you go to Bognor Regis with all your friends? What's so exciting about that place?"
On Tuesday night, we met for coffee after work and sat back against the café's drooping leather sofa, unwinding together with plenty of laughter and contented sighing from our long day apart from one another. Idle chatter had us roaming from Seinfeld quotes to plans for the New Year to the happy memory of our last trip to the café where we saw a toddler falling silent with wonder when his mittens were taken off, leading to the amazing discovery that he had two hands - wow!
And then he mentioned, laughing before he could even finish his sentence, a French lodger he remembered from the days when his parents rented out the spare room. This French lad would disappear on weekends with all his French pals to party in Bognor Regis. Puzzled by this choice of party town, the family asked the boy what could possibly attract them to this quiet, picturesque, English seaside town full of retired people? And he answered, with a look of surprise as if he expected everyone to know why a group of French boys would flee Oxford on the weekends and hotfoot it to this little town...
"For ze Swedish girls."
Alors, c'est vrai - pour l'amour, vous devez aller à l'extrémité du monde...
