A few days away in Brittany gives a little perspective on our own trials and tribulations back home.  

“La Bretagne,” is rather like Cornwall or Wales – only marginally warmer and with less rain. 

The views are spectacular, particularly along “La Cote de la Granite Rose” - the pink granite coast.  The craggy rock formations provide endless fascination for landlubbers and a nightmare for visiting sailors, with rapidly drying creeks and endless rocks lying just beneath the waves; some of the biggest tides in the world – well over thirty feet – provide challenging races to battle against.

We are here most years, at least twice, and it is interesting to note their retail and hospitality businesses are challenged like ours.  But the French, ever practical with their “someone must pay” attitude to charging, haven’t held back.  A set “formule” lunch has jumped from around 12 euros last year to 21 this. But the restaurants are rammed.  The wheels of commerce still turn.

In one crucial area the French consumer is clearly better off than his Brit counterpart. When the pitiful Putin invaded Ukraine, President Macron was quick to ensure that electricity price rises were capped at just four per cent, made possible thanks to past investment in nuclear energy, much of it thoughtfully sited at Cap de la Hague on the northern tip of France. This ensures that if, God forbid, there was a nuclear accident, with the prevailing south-westerly wind, southern Britain would get the benefit of any fall out. Something to look forward to.

Until Putin’s war, petrol was always around 10 pence a litre cheaper than the UK but today it’s at least 10 pence more. Diesel, in sharp contrast to the UK, remains significantly cheaper than petrol. There are no signs of food banks although prices have shot up in the supermarkets. Lobster, I know not exactly peasant food these days, had remained for several years at around 20 euros a kilo. Now it cannot be had for less than 40. And so for the rest of the food chain.

As in the UK, independent shops are struggling. Our local plumber/electrician who has enjoyed a usurious monopoly of repair work around us assured me, when I bumped into him in a local bar, that his contracting business would continue despite having to close the family washing-machine-to-light-bulb retail business of some fifty years, leaving his empty premises looking like another missing eye in the increasingly defenestrated village high street. Thirty years ago there were three bakers, now there is just one - thankfully the best one, but he has to compete with a ring of supermarkets within a five mile radius. His superior “tarte aux pommes” sells for 15 euros against a mere 4 in the supermarkets.

Against all this the locals are still welcoming. I wish I could say the same about the Brittany Ferries official in Portsmouth who almost kiboshed us travelling on this trip. The French vet who had issued our dog’s passport had apparently made a mistake in not transferring our British vet’s entries in full. Despite the fact that we had travelled with Brittany Ferries twice previously with the self-same passport, the French duty manager delighted in waving in my face the comprehensively filled in British vet’s record card, complete with vaccine stickers. “After Brexit, zis is just a piss of cart board.  It is worthless!”  Unnecessarily rude, I thought, along with a few other unprintable thoughts.  Having made his point, he allowed us to travel, “At your own risk!” In St Malo they were sweetness and light.

These are tough times so you would think people, even officials, would be a little more accommodating. We have more to go through yet, I fear, so to channel the words of the great Sergeant Esterhaus, of Hill Street Blues, “Let’s be careful out there,” Let’s remember to look after each other.