No.087

Ever had a penpal? More specifically, a GCSE French state-enforced penpal? “Je m’appelle Gaz. Ma couleur préférée est marine”. Yawn / blah / et cetera… sound familiar? Well, imagine you got an airmail from a new, Brittany-based buddy. Imagine your ‘correspondant’ was cut from a more left-field cloth. Imagine he was a disciple of Surrealism founder André Breton, and the Beat Generation’s W. S. Burroughs. Imagine his avant-garde writings melted your young mind. Imagine many years later, on holiday, in Normandy, you spot the mug-shot of a dapper chap in Le Monde, sporting a surrealist take on a breton tee (courtesy of YMC), he’s charged with chucking warm ‘oui’ at a politican named Le Pen. Imagine NON more – this is your Anti-Le Pen beat-poet penpal.