Cody's release, 2008

I found a book, and I found a label from last year, and I released a book for a friend.

1944. WW2. Years of olive-drab and rationing. We think of the men and women of those times as old. Old ways. Old ideas. Letters and streetcars and iceboxes. Our parents, grandparents. Silverhaired gentlefolk from another age, listening to songs nobody plays on FM.

But they weren’t old. They were young. Younger than we children of another age. They were teenagers. Maybe the sergeants were twenty something. If you were over forty, you were a general.

You and hundreds of thousands, millions, of your comrades were doing something that was special. You weren’t just any teenager. You were saving the world. Saving the world for good.

There was only two ways home. Death, or victory over the beaches of France and on to Berlin. And death wasn’t going to happen to you, right? There was too much to see, too many pretty English and French and maybe German girls to kiss.

1944. WW2. Years of life and colour and excitement.

“When I got to the doorway, I looked out on a solid wall of tracer bullets.” How do you jump out of a perfectly good aircraft into fire and death?

“Everywhere, the frantic call for medics could be heard over the horrible din.” How do you carry a stretcher and a bag of medical supplies through a world of bullets, explosions, smoke, noise and pain?

Something special in you.

I walked along Omaha Beach. “Just a beach,” I told myself. A place to swim and run with the dog, throwing a ball into the waves.

But I didn’t believe it.

I walked through the lines of gravestones. They stretched down out of my sight, the blue of the English Channel beyond. My thoughts followed them.

Here is the spot. Here is the path leading up through the minefields of yesteryear, the path taken by the first man off the beach, leading a line of careful soldiers on the first steps of the path to glory.

I leave a book about American soldiers at this spot. Someone will find it, someone will wonder what I was thinking of.

I was thinking of the great debt that we children of a later day owe to those silvertops, the debt we can never repay to those teenagers whose first steps on France were the last of their lives.

We must never forget. Tell the stories, sing the songs.

I've been round in circles, snowed on, trodden in dog poo, but here I am.

"Merci beaufort et mesdames," je dit, avec un pain plein. "J'ai ne mal coin gare rue."

They listen to this rubbish and then they give me lunch or a rental car or a room for the night or an odd look, depending on what I need at the time.

Oh I have had such a day! I have had many wonderful days on this adventure, but this one takes the gateau.

To begin with, I thought hard about Omaha Beach, and posted up a short but heartfelt entry about the book I left there for this year's Cody's release. By sheer chance I was here in Normandy on the right day, with a reasonable book, a car and a free day. And a label left over from last year. It might say 2007, but it's got the right words.

In fact, two years ago I released a book at almost the same spot, and had it caught, so I'm hoping for this one.

Then there was reading SirRoy's journal entry about a game of scrabble with his girlfriend. I read this one and I was helpless with laughter for a good half minute. I called Kerri over to read the entry and my wretch of a wife found it not at all funny. For the rest of the day, she'd catch me chuckling broadly to myself and say, "It's that liger again, isn't it? You're weird."

Weird I might be, but I wasn't prepared for the sight outside when I loaded up the car. There was a layer of white on our grey Renault. It wasn't quite snow, but frozen precipitation of some sort. I was a bit worried about driving on snow and ice all the way, but I figured that I'd try anything once, and besides, it wasn't settled on the roads, just cold sheltered corners.

No breakfast, no coffee. Bloody French hotel rooms with no jugs. Didn't feel like paying 11 Euros for breakfast that we mostly wouldn't eat, so decided to eat on the road.

Got lost a bit heading out of Bayeux, and again going around Caen when I staid on the periphique a bit too long and missed the Paris exit. Stalled the car once - did a hill start on a slight incline, full of confidence, punch the air, "Go me!" and at the next traffic lights started in third gear and stalled out. Overconfident and bloody manual cars.

Honfleur, I said, giving great trust to Kerri's navigational abilities. I'll ask. "Where are we?" and the answer will take ten minutes to come back and be wildly improbable. Lucky I'm the chauffeur de taxi in this family, and we got there eventually without going by Le Havre or Rouen.

Pretty little place. We had a 6 Euro breakfast, dodging the rain in some yachtie bar, savouring the hot coffee. Quick walk around the ridiculously picturesque little harbour, visit the facilities and back on the road. Refreshing that the French invariably have the gents in full view of the outside world. I can wave to whoever might happen to stroll past the entrance.

The A13 is a great road, but every half hour or so there would be a peage and we'd have to fork out a bundle of Euros to keep driving. It was about as picturesque as any other motorway in the world, not much, but at least it headed us to Paris directement.

Oh yeah. Periodically it would start sleeting or snowing or hailing and the road would bounce all the little icies up. Never enough to be a danger, but I was glad of Renault's committment to solid interieur climate control.

About twenty minutes out we stopped at a services, where I topped up the tank and we found an autogrill. Ham hock for 9.50. Mmmm. "Et quelles legumes?" she asked. I looked at what was on offer, only legumes were some green beans. "Oui," I replied.

That riled her. "Ca?" pointing "or ca ou ca?"

I pointed at the rataouille. "Ca."

Seems that the French don't say "vegetobbles", they say "legumes", even if there's no legumes involved. Why can't they have a reasonable, rational, logical lamguage? Like English.

While slurping augerbean and coffee and succulent hockiness, I perused the map. Take the A14 off the A13 and we'd slide straight into Avis at Porte Maillot.

It actually worked out that way. Some long tunnels, we came up onto Avenue Charles de Gaulle, and there we were. Avis on our right.

But I wanted to go a little bit further, and there was the Arch de Triomphe ahead of us. Ever since I saw the maelstrom of peak hour traffic around the Arc, I wanted to get a chance to drive around it. Prefereably about three AM on a Tuesday morning.

So I kept on. A short unplanned detour via the Bande Periphique, but I got back on track, and there we were, sliding along in the traffic flow, no lanes marked, me following someone who looked like they knew what they were about. For a short while I followed some galah in a green Landie with UK plates, but he was more of a dill than I was.

And here we were, windows wound down, driving through Paris in the spring with the warm wind in our hair, on the verge of the grand circle.

Some copper in black uniform speaking into a walkie talkie, holding up the traffic. He relented eventually, and we dived in. Nervous, but exhilarated. By gods' own miracle nobody ran into us or vice versa as we tooled around the Arc. A crowd of people looking down the Champs Elysees. About a gazillion police. Oh no, the Olympic torch was heading towards us, and we were about to become the centre of a riot of protesters. So much for my quiet little turn around the Place CDG.

But we escaped in the nick of a moment, headed back the way we had come, around Place Maillot again, found a way to make a ubolt, was briefly on the wrong side of the road, and pulled up at one of the non-existent parking spots outside the Avis office.

Full of relief to hand the car over. A bit of road grime from the rain and snow and such, but nothing bent. Awesome!

Called a taxi, who had the world's worst luck in getting us to Notre Dame. Either the torch had just been by, or was about to arrive, and there were traffic jams, blocked roads, gendarmes, protesters, police boats, helicopters.

"Bravo, monsieur!" I gave him a tip when he finally found a way to our hotel beside the cathedral, stopping in one of those convenient non-existent parking spots that are legion in Paris.

We are actually staying in an attic room inside the hospital beside Notre Dame. Surprisingly roomy and cheap. Location can't be beat.

Topped off a terrific day by walking around the area. Took a look through the cathedral, down Boulevarde St Germain, around the Pantheon, escaped the sleet in a tiny Chinese resto, and collapsed into our bed in the mellow evening.

I'm here with my wife in Paris. I'm deliriously happy. Nothing else matters.