Claire spent the winter of '84 studying in London. At the end of the semester, I joined her and we rented a cottage in Cardigan Bay for two weeks. The beach was glorious -- rough, ragged wind and ocean hewn sands that change with the tides.

While some small towns might check their clocks against the peal of bells from a church tower, we wondered if the residents of the bay set theirs by the daily sonic boom generated by the British Airways Concorde heading to New York.

The Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace is still pulling their Concorde exhibition together and I was disappointed that we couldn't lounge inside like jet-setters. In comparison to the enormous 757 that brought us to France, these small jets looked like elegant mosquitoes.