Le marché de Morlaix

I probably should just have pulled an all-nighter in Paris drinking cognac and smoking Gitanes as it was hard pulling myself out of bed after a few hours' sleep to catch an early train to Brittany to meet Berry and Helen. The early morning walk to Montparnasse station was cool and tranquil but I mistimed the boarding of the train and lingered with coffee that I had to jettison to run along the platform when the conductor's early aggressive whistling panicked the crowd. I got caught in a group of scouts whose mothers were rabidly throwing leurs fils and ses sacs onto the train regardless of any obstacle (such as humans like me).

Les Mulligans met me in Morlaix, a medieval town with an impressive viaduct that I came to five years ago when a group of us joined their honeymoon at Berry's parents' pretty farmhouse. After sampling local Breton butter cakes in Morlaix market I've been hankering for more ever since. We had a coffee under the changeable Breton weather, saw some neighbours who invited us to pick some haricots verts from their garden, and milled around the market buying strong cheese, Roscoff onions and smoked mackerel.

An afternoon of cheese and bread in the sun, pebble throwing on the beach and drinking hot chocolate in a bohemian cafe/bookshop (a category of establishments that the French have planted around rural Brittany). The simple joys of life abound here.

Although it's holiday and relaxation time, there's no time to rest on any political laurels. We often talk about the British education system as Helen has a very tough job as a deputy headteacher at a primary school in Cambridge that suffers from difficult social problems.

In 2014 the curriculum was overthrown by that bastion of understanding and humility, Michael Gove. If primary age kids cannot shoehorn an 'exclamatory sentence beginning with how or what and including a verb' into their writing, they don't pass.

Examples would include:
'Lo, how soothing it was to hear the larks cooing during morning prayer!'

'What a beautiful day we have had!'

'Papa, what a misguided component of the curriculum are exclamatory sentences!'

Kids who don't go to Eton, struggle to locate a simple slice of toast before school or whose parents are locked in any number of awful personal situations, never ever speak like this.