Wednesday in Tarare

Tarare is like a forgotten, hidden world.  Look it up on the internet.  There’s next to nothing about it – even the Wikipedia article is only a few lines.  There used to be factories there to do with the fabric industry, that much I do know, but exactly what each factory was for, I have no idea. 

When we first came here, about ten years ago, it was a dismal February morning.  We parked outside an abandoned factory whose broken windows and grey walls echoed the grey day.  The rain was coming down like a waterfall from a mud coloured sky.  The whole town felt sad and unloved. 

We went with Ricky and Regine to see the house they had just bought – an empty house, which needed a considerable amount of work to make it habitable, but the walls, floors and roof were sound, and the potential immense.  Nonetheless, I wondered if they were doing the right thing.

Ricky and Regine's House Now

Well, they were indeed doing the right thing!  Not only is their house transformed, but the whole town is, these days, vibrant and full of life. 

This year our visit has coincided with the end of the five yearly Fete des Mousselines.  Brightly coloured fabric hangs from balconies in swathes.  Bunches of fabric flowers adorn doorways and walls.  To walk through the centre of the town is to walk under a multicoloured fabric sky.  In the main square the fabric spins out from a central column like a giant maypole.  It’s fabulous.

Its not just a party to celebrate the fabric either, it’s a real community building exercise.  Each quarter of the town gets together and builds a float, which then parades through the town.  In doing so people meet others from their area and spend time together.  Old ladies who used to work with the cloth feel the texture of it between their fingers again, and share their memories.  

It seems to me that in being a bit overlooked, Tarare comes out as a winner.  People know each other and are safe.  Last night, walking back to our hotel, we passed down the main street.  A woman in her first floor window was having a conversation with another woman on her balcony, the other side of the road.  It feels like a good place to be.

Tuesday in the Beaujolais

Its half past twelve, and we are on the third day of our trip to France.  We’ve come down to Tarare, by way of Epernay and Colombey les deux Eglises, the temperature rising all the way. 

Here, in the picture perfect and prosperous Beaujolais hilltop village of Oingt, (pronounced something like the noise I imagine a stuck pig would make), it is now at least 37 degrees.  Apart from a few fellow tourists, sweating quietly, there isn’t a soul to be seen. Life is going on indoors.  Thick wooden front doors are firmly shut.  Shutters are closed, or almost closed, allowing the breeze to blow through, but no sunlight to enter.  It’s a hidden world. 

The view from here is magnificent.  There’s a little church in the middle distance, surrounded by vineyards.  The further hills are almost like a mirage as the heat brings up a haze.  There is so much land in France – so much more than in England.  I remember being told once that in England unless you were in a National Park, wherever you looked, no matter how remote, there would always be a house or a barn somewhere within sight.  Not so in France.  I suppose that’s how they can manage to put up so many wind turbines and build the track for the TGV without civil unrest – there is more than enough space for everyone and everything.

We took refuge from the heat in a Cave that mercifully had air conditioning (for the wine, rather than the punters, probably.  Wine is supremely important here).   A very knowledgeable and friendly young woman helped us taste our way through several reds and a couple of whites, and we left poorer financially, but considerably richer in terms of wine...

Later, under a lowering sky, we visited Theize, whose sandstone buildings are the colour of Coleman’s mustard.  There’s a fabulous chateau there which is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen.  I may have to buy my first ever lottery ticket so that I can spend my winnings on doing it up…

Revisiting the Past: Venice

In 1967 I was a stroppy, love-struck teenager.  That year I went on a school cruise around the Mediterranean.  My boyfriend was good looking.  Far too good looking for me. Before the ship left I asked a friend to keep an eye on him.  And she did.  So much so that when I got back, she was his girlfriend and I was history.   Ah well. 

Most of the cruise was wasted on me – I was far too busy being the tragic heroine torn from the arms of her one true love.  We visited Tunisia (hot, dusty and leery men), a Greek Island (no idea which one), Ephesus (ruins) and Venice (canals).  The long days and nights on board were spent reading and re-reading the gorgeous boy’s one letter to me.  Looking back, I’m surprised he knew how to write – gorgeous, yes, but not bright.

So when Andy and I went to Venice in March this year, it was as if I’d never been before.  And it was beautiful.  Truly beautiful.  We arrived at the tail end of Carnivale, of which I knew nothing.  All these people in spectacular costumes and masks gliding around and graciously posing for photographs.  Amazing.

We visited art galleries, strolled over bridges, ate pizza and pasta, waded through the floods at high tide (Andy bought plastic galoshes, I took off my shoes and paddled through), took water buses and photographs galore. 

I have no idea how I managed to ignore its allure the first time I was there – the only excuse I have is that I was 14, and didn’t know any better.

Snapshots of Venice at Twilight

The sky is turning red over Santa Maria della Salute.

Street vendors begin to pack stalls; trundle cheap wares

up tiny alleys; head home for pasta.

Beside the bell tower a couple in bridal costume, remnants

of Carnivale,  strike poses for photographers.

A girl with autumnal hair and distant eyes weaves

through crowds, not seeing the Bridge of Sighs,

familiar as wallpaper.

Two women stand close to a closed Museum door, fingers

tracing words, working out the meaning.

Tourist boats wait for dawdling hoards, hooting

impatience to be on, to be gone, hurry up!  A clutter

of Japanese girls suddenly runs, startled from chatter.

Outside the Danieli gondoliers cover boats, gather

together, hats tilted, sharing cigarettes and stories.

An old woman, bent in half, trudges a shopping trolley

over another interminable bridge, as a young man, naked

to the waist, throws open shutters, leans out into the twilight,

sated, glorious.

Just When You Thought it was Safe...

You thought it was all over.  So did I.  But talking about India to a fellow poet - Paul Tobin (read his blog - magpiebridge.blogspot.com) - I realised that not only do I miss India, but I also miss writing...
So, I'm diving back in, with more on India, and, in the future some writing on all sorts of things.  I hope you'll join me.

They say that India gets under your skin.  That it will lie low in your memory for a while, then slowly begin to tug at you, easing itself into your conscious mind until it becomes imperative that you return. I know of one man who has gone back twice a year, for eight years, and is currently planning his next trip.

Before we went, I fully expected to fall in love with India.  After all, my family had lived there for generations. Surely, I believed, I would find a connection with the country and the people, a reason why it had beguiled so many of my ancestors. 

I loved it – don’t get me wrong.  The people we met were, by and large, the gentlest, friendliest, kindest people I have ever come across.  The country in the North-East was spectacular.  But there was no connection.  I had expected to belong, and I didn’t.  I left, thinking I could draw a line under that part of my history.  It was done.

I was wrong.  Already I am beginning to yearn for India.  For the smiling people of Kurseong and the gentle people of Gangtok, shaking my hand, taking my photograph.  For the monasteries and prayer flags.  For the clarity of the air and the way the clouds swirled over the foothills of the Himalaya.  For the mountains themselves – at dawn, at dusk, revealing glimpses of impossible peaks through the cloud or clear and sharp and magnificent. 

I want to walk again in the places where my father and my father’s father walked.  To look down on the backs of eagles as they glide on the thermal currents.  I have to explore the plains, the vast river deltas, to picnic on the Rangpo and see Changu Lake covered in ice and snow. I want to follow the journeys my grandfather made as he went about his work in Sikkim.

I long to sit and look at the foothills, to breathe in the shape of them swathed in acres of tea gardens.  I could do nothing quite easily there, except look and sigh, then look and sigh some more. 

I find I am missing the crazy driving on impossible roads that make your teeth chatter for hours after your journey is over.  Incredibly I miss the streams full of litter – England is so clean - and even the sheer numbers of people in Kolkata, the dirt and the smells, are beginning to exert a strange, compulsive yearning.

I have, to all intents and purposes, gone back to who I used to be before I went to India, but deep within me something has changed.

India is calling me.  I will have to go.