Desiring the French retreat

If you cast your mind back to my last blog post (yes I know it’s over two months ago but I’ve been busy! ish) I mentioned the upcoming film festival that I run. Well it happened and it went very well, thank you for asking.

As I sit here sneezing, coughing, generally feeling like death warmed up and hoping Lucifer will open up a hole in the ground and take me to a warmer place, I reminisce about the past few weeks starting with the Hellfire Short Film Festival. The event began around 5pm and I was more than a little worried due to the very sparse audience. I spoke to Zoé, you know, Zooloo Zoé from Zooloo Book Blog, outside the venue minutes before it started and she said something along the lines of “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine”. She was bloody right! By the end of the evening it was pretty much a full house and to top it all off a local film (“All In A Day’s Work” by Andy Coughlan, pictured) won the big prize, with five of the other six prizes going to the USA, France and Kosovo. Happy Days!

A week after the festival I took a trip to France with my friend Steve. We ferried across from Portsmouth to Ouistreham in Normandy through the night so the calm seas gently rocked us to sleep in the cabin. Seven hours later we disembarked the ferry in Ouistreham and immediately faced a group of Sudanese immigrants trying to get onto the ferry. Apart from that we had a great time. We visited Sword Beach, Le Grand Bunker, Pegasus Bridge, Merville Battery and most importantly we met the Band of Brothers cast in Carentan and got their autographs. We were in Normandy for the 74th anniversary of D-Day and got to stand on Sword Beach on the morning of the 6th June. Quite an emotional trip.

The hotel we stayed in was very basic but it had everything we needed (barring a kettle!!) I would recommend staying there, it’s called Hotel L’Ecailler and the La Marine cafe/bar beneath is amazing! Second-best Croque Madame sandwich ever! I can’t wait to go back.

At 23:00 the ferry departed Ouistreham, it arrived back in Portsmouth at 06:45. At 11:00 I was back in Folkestone and at 13:00 I was back at work until 19:00. By the end of that evening I had been awake for 39 hours as I couldn’t sleep on the ferry. I blame Steve’s snoring – or demon-like growling.

OK so that’s now two references to the fallen angel. I must confess I’ve been binge watching Lucifer after work each evening. I even stopped watching Nashville as I’m that hooked on Lucifer, the show, not the devil himself.

So what’s your biggest desire?