Blob on the chair.
Blob with dinosaurs.
Holiday Blob.
Blob on the other chair.
Hello! Yes, yes, it's me. Long time no Shootout.
Cat prints in the snowy yard. I don't know why she thawed the snow sometimes and not others.
Ok, this one I did mess with.It’s ten years now I’ve had this pen.
A long time for a pen, for me. I bought it for a grand occasion: a permanent job, the one I still hold.
I love writing with fountain pens, love the glide of the way a good one writes. Love the way you can buy inks in a dozen colors, and how changing colors in the middle of a letter takes half a page or more to be just the new color. I change colors just for this effect, sometimes.
That was when I used to actually write letters and my journal by hand, before the days of blogging. I’m cheating even now. The pen is sitting next to my computer. My fingers are on the keyboard.
The pen spent a year or more (the time since I bought my netbook, light enough to travel with, and started leaving the journals blank at home) in a drawer, in the depths of a backpack. The ink would get dry and crusted in the nib between uses, and I’d have to wash it and wash it before it would work again. It was sad there in the drawer. A beautiful lapis blue pen, with gold ends. Heavy, serious. Delicious in the hand.Today it’s found a new use, which means it never travels at all any more. It lives in my office desk drawer now, and comes out to sign reports. 2185 last year. Somehow it should have something more fun to do.
Saturday morning's walk along the river took me past the Moulins de Paris plant, seen here from across the canal feeding the mill. The plant still makes a lot of noise, but none of it comes from the water-driven part over the river.
The canal now just ends here. A little water seeps over the edge, just at that iron passageway. Looking down, it's just a damp mess of debris.
A bright spot of street art under an underpass. Up close you can see this canal has flooded over the entire image, leaving bits of vegetation behind.
One of the main churches in the old part of town is a perfect candidate for my Sights Under Scaffolding album. Before cleaning (right) it looks quite dull and forbidding, but the results are quite nice.
Statues in front of it: lion with wings (common), angel with wings (normal), eagle with wings (obligatory), cow with wings (???).
From the other side. I never did find out what was up with the cow.
Then Sunday, not too early, is homeward. Fast train to Paris, 90 minutes. Just time for a bowl of onion soup and a beer before catching my second train. Home by 5, to three very happy cats.
Then I went on, and discovered that this is the back yard of an art school, the front of which looks like this:
Ah, so that explains that.
First thing seen, right out of the train station, this sculpture. It's all hearts!
A typical residential street from the early 20th century.
Birds swarming on the river.
One of the old industrial backyards along the waterfront.
The not-yet renovated boating center.
Mugging for treats.
Some fancy bird houses.
The market square, where all the vendors seem to be selling clothes that are black.
Stanislaus Plaza, a World Heritage site these days.
One of the old city gates. This is actually up one level - there's a road that goes right under that little door.
And a decoration on one of the important buildings, now the regional history museum.
ABC Wednesday has gotten all the way to Z again.
yep, that's the mysterious Urbanis subterraneous subspecies.
She doesn’t make noise, she sleeps peacefully at the foot of the bed, she doesn’t get into stuff.
.
On arriving, I thought ...No!!! I've been here already!! I know this road, this station, the long park, that hotel. I must have changed trains here once, with an hour to kill, because I really have been here before. But the hotel I must be confusing with some other town on the Allier where I spent the night before going on to Langeac, because the center of town is not a place I've been before.
Town, or country first? Country. Ending the day in town I'll be less anxious about making my train home. So I just set off. I don't have a map, and there is absolutely no place open to sell me one, not the least newsagents, so I take a good look at the posted map of town, see that the river is south, and head that way. Go straight until I get to a stream, turn left, and it should be straight ahead.
On the way, there are plenty of old, run-down things to see. This used to be an abattoire open for public use. Not many people slaughter their own animals anymore, so it's been closed for some time. There are signs the township has plans for the site, but it's hard to tell if work has been started and abandoned, or just never started.
A detail.
An old farm. There were some nice ones down the road, and some even more wrecked than this. Everything was sad in the grey silence. I liked the colorful barrels, and approaching, it seemed that people were living there, perhaps looking out at me from the cracks, thinking what the hell is this tourist doing, taking pictures of their life.
I never do find the river, only piddling streams and some ditches full of water. Seems I turned left a little too much, and went parallel to the river instead of towards it. The clouds were so thick there was no telling by the sun, but they thin out just when I get back to town. 
In the courtyard outside, there are clear signs of major rearrangments. There used to be a thick wall about 10 yards from the building, going around it, keeping it in. These graves used to be inside that protective perimeter.
Inside, about 10% of the original painting is still visible. The cathedrals I've been in where this decoration has been preserved are stunning. The church goes from a cold, stony, echoing, stern and forbidding place, to a place of awe where you just don't notice the temperature and the echos.
Outside again, the day had quite cleared up.
In the old center there's a lot of restoration work going on, and a lot that's finished. This half-timbered house declares to be the original structure from the middle ages. The ones next door may just have a fresh coat of plaster over an old structure, or may have been entirely redone. People who live in these town homes often have gardens 10 or 20 minutes walk away.
I still have an hour before my train, so I wander off in a new direction. The map shows bits of river over this way, too. This road parallels the train tracks, and the SNCF has all sorts of depots for a kilometer or two. One yard is full of stuff all very clearly numbered. I wonder if that means they're going to put something back together. I hope they have good instructions.
Past that, more farmland. More tree portraits.
Then a random, faded sign. For those who are lost: it's that way.
