The beach at Dieppe is very wide and consists of countless fist-sized pebbles. Though barren at the time of this picture, when the sun comes out and the wind dies down, the French come out in force. Though it took a bit to get comfortable on the rocky shore, once situated the smooth stones actually feel quite comfortable and, with an ear pressed to the ground, transmit a wonderful grating sound over very long distance.

For some inexplicable reason, the French keyboard is... excuse my French, the most fucked up thing I have had the misfortune of typing upon. Ok. First, to type numbers, you have to hold down the shift key. If you don't, you have immediate access to a wide variety of cryptic characters that, as far as I know, are not used in any language, not even French. That, and many kinda useful keys, like @, require the "Alt Gr" key to access (not on normal keyboards). The left and right paranthesis (SHIFT+9 and SHIFT+0 on real keyboards) as well as the left and right brackets, are nowhere near each other. M, Z, Q -- basically, a bunch of letters, some of which are really valuable, are scattered at random. To borrow the words of Douglas Adams, it's "almost, but not entirely unlike" a normal keyboard. As I was explaining to John in my initial fury, typing my name is like executing a series of complex Street Fighter moves.