Le Havre, and what I did there. (Part 2)

We woke at about 9 and set off for a little breakfast; a small bakery that Kate had showed me yesterday does the most enormous, the most delicious brioche rolls for less than a euro. Admittedly at first the chap got my order wrong; he was too busy staring at the vision of beauty beside me to actually listen. There are disadvantages to having attractive friends.

(Well, that's not quite right; there's a disadvantage to living in a society where being attractive also means being treated like a piece of art, or a piece of meat - something to be looked at and sized up.)

Tucking in and strolling back, we met up with the last member of our little trio and headed to the hotel to pick up Mary's parents and brother. We'd told him we'd be over at 11 last night, but we rocked up to find sleepy faces all round. We should have seen the flaw in our plan last night; at 2am it would have been tricky to tell their parents anything, since they were absolutely fast asleep.

In any case, they told us they'd be ready briefly and we retired to the bar downstairs for a coffee. Before long the Scales has descended (sorry) and we set out, heading towards the beach. The weather was a little less misty than yesterday, and I managed to snap a look out towards the cape.

That's a patch of sand. It should be noted that Mr and Mrs Scale kindly didn't point out that beach here has quite a different meaning to the one it has in the US; I suspect they were expecting slightly more in the way of sand and slightly less in the way of...well, rocks. 

This is them, by the way; the very sweet (and very slightly chilly!) Scale parents:

And no, I don't know where he got the beret and yes, I am exceedingly jealous. It's a lovely beret. 

Having looked out to sea for a little while, we struggled back up the rise of rocks and to a little stall the girls had nicknamed "Victory Fries." I struggled to understand why until I tasted them; truly they are kings among chips and would be crowned victorious in any contest of taste.

However, the elder members of our little fellowship were starting to struggle in the cold, and we made for a restaurant nearby. The restaurants by the sea in Le Havre are rather unique; they are essentially collapsible. Come tourist season a lorry drops them off, they are constructed overnight and in the morning you have a fully-functional restaurant, including kitchen, floor, chairs, tables and all the other wonders one thinks of when one thinks of restaurants. This included heat, a welcome relief as we sank into chairs. It fell to Mary, Kate and I to order, which we managed with a hodge-podge of orders spoken over each other with pauses to speak to our English speaking friends. I have to commend the poor waitress; understanding only one half of a conversation being held in front of you must be frustrating in the extreme but she smiled all the way through.

Conversation was varied and the food was excellent; I had a warm goat's cheese salad and divvied up the tomatoes and olives between father and daughter. I hate tomatoes. Mary and Mary's father are rather keen on them, and as I felt a certain kinship with the pater familias I favoured him a little more. I have suffered Mary's keen wit once or twice before; to have lived with it was, I felt, deserving of an extra tomato. Mary did not feel the same. The look she shot me through her lashes would have skewered a lesser man, but I rallied and skewered her straight back. 

Kate and Mary's mother had mussels. Kate had an ingenious way of excavating the little morsels from their shells; using an empty shell as tweezers she made short work of a shell that years of evolution had crafted. The rest of the Scales stayed away from seafood and plumped for pizza instead. All was sumptuous, and when the bill came Mary's mother surprised us first by offering to pay - a great kindness - and then by revealing that she spoke French as well. The tip she left was as generous as the lady herself, and the waitress stammered thanks as we left (a little slower, unwilling to leave the heat) and made for the ice cream stall.

I had sorbet, lemon and strawberry. An unfortunate intolerance to lactose meant I was already feeling unpleasantly unwell from lunch, and so decided not to exacerbate that particular problem. The others plumped for various different flavours, all of which sounded scrumptious (including salted caramel, which I'd have never thought of by myself). Ice cream in hand, we made our way back to the hotel in which the Scale family was staying and ordered hot chocolates and coffees to round off the day. 

The rest is unexciting; I caught a train back to Paris, another to La Défense, and a bus home. Sadly at every point I was confronted with "Manif pour tout" flags, a nasty little aberration which is attempting to block a law giving gay couples rights equal to those of straight couples. I'm not going to waste another byte on these people save to say that taking your kids to a protest is stupid. Kids have absolutely no opinion on the subject, and it just makes me feel that you're trying to indoctrinate them from the cradle and that's messed up.

Enough about them. They're unpleasant and I hate unpleasantness. Instead, marvel at this picture taken inside the church at Le Havre which is square, with a circular spire that inspires someone who's spent too much time with Assassin's Creed (me) to give serious thought to climbing it. Note also the helical staircase that clings to the inside of the tower and which gave me a shiver just to look at.

So that was my weekend over. Thank you for sticking with me all the way through.

100 posts and the concluding chapter

This is my 100th post! And it is also Mother's Day in the UK. Whether or not you're in the UK, send a message to your mother: call her, text her, email or Skype her. Remind her that you love her and appreciate her.

Public service announcement over. Let us return to Rouen.

So: when we last met, Mary and I had ascended the Gros Horloge and looked out over the glorious vista of Rouen. Having looked, all that remained was the descent. The descent past five floors, down hundreds of steps whose height changed without warning. The feeling of jolting terror that filled me when I put my foot down to where I thought the step would be (and instead found empty air) became my constant companion. A difference of even three centimeters is enough to cause the human brain to fold in on itself and collapse like a soufflé.

I didn't realise quite how tense the descent had made me until I reached the bottom. I had to walk like a robot because my legs had cramped up so completely that my knees refused to bend. Twenty minutes later I was still feeling a little wobbly as we paused to review our progress and our map. Following lunch, Mary had indulged her love of apples and crunched happily away as we watched the market close down around us. We stepped briefly into another cathedral, l'Eglise St-Maclou, in the hope of finding the crypts but the whole place seemed to be under renovation. We nosed around, but the day was drawing on and we retired from the building with an urge to sit and enjoy the peace.

We found a park and settled ourselves on a bench. To our left was a gloriously large house of the kind one only seems to find in France. Beside it was another towering spire and behind that the sun set. A long day and, to put it bluntly, we were pooped. After sitting for a while, watching children play football with their dad, listening to the music and sounds of students around us, we roused ourselves and looked for a bar.




Thankfully bars are both plentiful and easy to find in Rouen. We settled at a table outside in a little square and waited for the waiter to come past. I may have mentioned this before, but managers in the French hospitality industry have a near phobia of hiring more staff than they need, and as a result getting served in France is a matter of waiting and being absolutely ready to order when a waiter stops at your table. If you say "Um," he will be gone, and you will be thirsty for another thirty minutes, unhappily regarding the golden-coloured beer that others are drinking.

We snapped off orders fairly quickly and the waiter was overjoyed to meet an American and an English person who spoke a little French. He disappeared, he reappeared, two tall glasses of cold and delicious beer were presented to us. The evening drew on and we talked about this and that, nothing of any importance. We had another beer, looked at the time, and made our way towards the station after one or two false starts on my part. Having reached the station we embraced again, parted, and I collapsed into my seat. Opposite me was a young lady who looked unhappy and had arrayed about her exercises in English grammar.

I offered what little help I could and what followed was an impromptu lesson in English, because, as previously mentioned - I like teaching. As we got off I offered her my card on the assurance that she would call if she needed help; I doubt she needs an English tutor but - you never know. The only sure way to gain nothing is to do nothing.

So: Rouen is beautiful. If I have learnt anything from this trip, from this year, or from the events that transpired over this day it is that opportunities should be seized around the waist and passionately embraced.

Metaphorically speaking.

A final photo that I particularly like; the rest can be found at this link.

I'm on the road again

I have travelled back to the land of my fathers, where the place known as Hill Hill Hill can be found. Hill in Welsh is pen, and invaders who settled there called it Pen Hill, assuming pen to be the name of the hill. Before long, more invaders had arrived, and over time the hill in question had become Pendle. The same thing happened again, and Pendle Hill, or Hillhill Hill, can still be found in Lancashire.

I am back in these United Kingdoms until Monday and I'm really excited about the weekend ahead. Tonight my parents are making a lasagne, a treat without compare when you consider I have no access to oven facilities in my chic little studio apartment.

Before I left I finished all my work and actively sought out my supervisor to make sure she knew I was leaving - the last thing I need this weekend is a call about an urgent translation, especially as my phone is patchy at best here - and made some minor adjustments to the Student's Association's application for sponsorship to some local businesses.

We're off to a wedding tomorrow, and I've been requested to bring my camera - if I take any particularly good shots I'd love to share them here, but it means I shall have to avoid drinking myself under the table. Weddings strike me as an odd sort of affair, people being given away like presents and members of each party eying each other up in the hope of further strengthening ties between the two families - something that also apparently happens under the tables, so if I drink myself into a stupor at least I'll still have subjects.

I went into the local supermarket before I went home, as I've promised to bring my boss back some Marmite. At first she thought I said marmalade and turned her nose up; "Je n'aime pas des confitures," she said: I don't like jams. "Ah non", I said, "it's savoury, a British delicacy." So she agreed to try this spread, little suspecting that it is one of the foulest things we've ever invented. In any case, I went, I got in line, and after some light flirty banter with the cashier I made it home.

I like flirty banter, and I humbly suggest that more people do it in their day-to-day life.

I'm also going up to see an old school pal in Loughborough on Sunday, where I suspect I shall look entirely out of place amongst the über-fit and healthy students of the university. And then a swift journey back on Monday to London and then on to home and my oven-less studio apartment.

The scent of lasagne is calling me to the table, but before I leave, I ask:

Which character from the world of literature always smells like old, stinking tobacco?