Where are the Electric Snails now?

We had a Bronzer time on our trip to Normandy and the Somme. David was able to walk on Dog Sector of Omaha Beach and soak up some history. We also went to Pointe du Hoc and Arromanches and the American Cemetery which overlooks Omaha beach. This was my second trip to this cemetery but it was no less moving the second time and is a grim reminder of the cost of letting lunatics run countries.

Considering it is 65 years after the second world war it is astonishing that there are still so many lunatics at large - and that we have so far escaped being vaporized.

But I am sure it won’t be long before Hoo Flung Dung in North Korea or that nutter in Iran decide that it is time to go postal and give us a brief taste of nuclear fission before they and their spotty little band of assistant despots vanish from the face of the planet.

We are certainly not going to have to put up with this sort of childish rubbish from dictators when Sarah is President.

We stayed at Ouistreham in a delightful little hotel called the ‘Hotel de la Plage’ which was not at the beach but we made allowances for the slight exaggeration. Who knows - in 50 years it probably will be.

In the Somme we stayed in Albert - in the “Hotel de la Basilique’ which was indeed appropriately named and in the centre of the town facing the Cathedral.

The hotel had an astonishingly good restaurant - which is just as well because there did not seem to be many places to eat in Albert - so we ate there for three nights.

Melissa wanted to see if she could get us thrown out of The Corner Hotel but I dragged her back to the hotel. She was not terribly well the next day and spent a lot of time lying on the back seat of the car feigning death.

We went to Australian Memorial and to Ieper. We saw the most fabulous monument I have ever seen. It is the Vimy Ridge National Historic Site of Canada and is on scale I have not seen before in the Somme - and blitzes some of the gigantic Russian monuments I have encountered.

The only thing the Communists ever did for the people was to build railway stations for the live ones and monuments for the dead ones.

A memorable trip. Billy Benz covered 3,000 kilometers without missing a beat and David showed me how to use the car trip computer and a few other things.

We listened to lots of fabulous music of the type that would make Cate grit here ears - and played Kraftwerk and Rammstein when we got on to the German Autobahns.

Haven’t had so much fun since I played a guest spot with the Electric Snails in their debut at the South Steyne Surf Club in 1963.