Footloose in France

The book begins by the North Sea. It is a late summer's afternoon, and abright sun has dispersed the greyness of the day. Two Englishmen are enjoyinga swim off the Essex coast when all at once both have the feeling that theyare back at the French seaside. They find themselves starting to tell eachother of their youthful experiences of living in France. The adventures theynarrate follow one after another like waves rolling onto the shore. Clive,coming from London, had found himself spending a year deep in the Frenchcountryside within sight of the western Pyrenees; John, hailing from Devon,had ended up living for a while in the City of Light within sight of theFolies Bergere. Outsiders though they were, they momentarily became part ofFrench society, their adventures fuelled by the culinary delights of theiradopted land. They tell their tales with humour and relish as they recalltheir initiation into the French way of life of decades ago - and how itshaped their own.