La Rentrée

Spring is supposed to be the season for starting out. But in many ways it's in the fall that projects get started, or renewed.

The big beginning is the school year. Here it comes again. Summer fun is OVER. Now that I'm not in school, the "rentrée" as they call it here, is an even bigger pain in the butt than it used to be. So I'm starting things. The class I teach in the fall is being completely overhauled. The papers I was having the 2nd year Master students analyze were just terribly outdated. No way could they go a fourth year. Old news! New news has been searched for, and found, and packaged for them. I learned a lot myself, since I'm terrible about keeping up with the literature unless there's some deadline approaching, like a class to teach or a grant to write. I'm about half finished with the class plans.

It's also the season for new knitting projects. Over the summer I'm just not sitting down to knit in the evenings, and in the spring I'm tired of having knitted all winter. So fall means new starts, and unfinished projects come back to.

Plus the new tv season of course. But only because I'm knitting - I like something to listen to, and half-watch, while working with my hands. A new thing in tv is a group of friends has decided to gather at my house weekly to watch 24. I have it on dvd, and as soon as one friend finishes season 4 and another watches season 2, we'll start in on the new-to-me season 5. Plus pizza and beverages, 'natch! See, another start.

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No need to look at the calender. I know it's true: summer is over. Yesterday I was back at work after a week off, and for the first time since late April it was not yet dawn when I had to get up in the morning. A definite sign of back to the grind. Plus, it's cold out! Put away the sandals. Time to get out the sweater collection, then the coats and scarves.

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Monday SchoolBus

Today's Poetry Bus is driven by Karen. And in this back-to-school season - yes! - School is the ticket.

It was the place where

Teacher towered
She didn't like how you made your letters
though you understood them perfectly
so you learned to pretend you were copying
not writing something from your head.

Kids running around on the blacktop
grabbing the swings first, always
faster, stronger, noisier than you.
Kids swarming in a mass you stayed out of.

Teenagers in their cliques
You could be better than them at science and art,
and holding your breath underwater, better than most
but never at talking talking talking reading the secret code of hairstyles.

Hurrying from section to lecture hall
ten minutes between subjects, barely enough to get there
suddenly you don't know all the answers.
The books. Yes, the books had to be read, be underlined and highlighted.

Seminars weekly. Endless lab hours. Papers to write, slides to prepare.
swimming in the deep end.
one professor, just one. A committee. A roomful of faces peering.
A book to write, a copyright, a last diploma, end of the line.

But wait.
Come back to the lecture hall.
Come back and face the other way. You cannot get out.
You thought you were done, but school never ends. It just takes a break.
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Poitiers, part 2

As promised, second half of the Poitiers travelogue started yesterday:

The bed is wonderfully soft and well furnished with pillows. Hard to drag myself out of it in the morning in search of coffee, pastry, and a portable lunch. I score the latter first: two peaches and a box of whole grain chocolate chip breakfast things. I like those. I might finish them on tomorrow's train. Then at last a bakery not closed for vacation, though by the quality of their pain au chocolat I wish they had been. Coffee, of course, may be had most anywhere.
On to the hike! I choose to take the GR toward the south, since it seems to get out of town quicker in that direction. I'm treated to a long, pleasant walk down a riverside parkway, modest homes across the road. A bus runs by regularly, a point that might become important by the time I return.
Then away from town, and to the countryside.
Er, almost.
What I get is a walk along paved roads through a gigantic construction site. No idea what they're building; they're just laying sewer pipes or whatever. Acres torn up, nothing recognisable emerging yet. Big enough for a whole neighborhood, though.
Finally, finally, out of suburbia and into the peaceful green. Not wild green, though they've figured out to leave riverbanks alone now: the growth prevents erosion of the banks, keeps the water cool for fish to breed, provides habitat for birds and small animals, and people like it. Just a few meters from the bank, this strip of non-development ends and the fields, pastures and orchards begin. In France you're never far from somebody's home. If you're on a hiking path, you're probably crossing somebody's extended yard.

Saint Benoit is a wonderful village, working hard on keeping its 11th century charm working for the 21st. Its church (to Saint André) is a jewel of medieval architecture. Inside, there are vestiges of the original floor-to-ceiling paintings here and there on the walls, and where they've sketched in new artwork to replace what has been lost to time. In one of the windows - just one - a perfect statue of Christ on his throne smiles down on the last two rows of pews. Why just the last two? Were such carvings planned all around, but only this one was made? There is no explanation given. It's unusual, this Christ cut into the wall where its beveled for the window.
There's a lot of hiking possible from St Benoit. Three local trails and the two GRs, plus countless dirt roads and tracks. The blue loop seems the most interesting; 9 km along the river plus a viewpoint and a walk across the viaduc (an old railroad bridge high above the ground, crossing the river, the new railway, and a bit of the town, now maintained for pedestrians).

It is a great hike, but for one thing. I am always either on top of the bluff overlooking the river Clain, or in the dense woods along its bank.

Never do I get so much as a glimpse of the blond cliffs separating up from down, that magnificent panorama I saw from the train arriving.
Nearing Poitiers again, I follow a sign indicating an Insect Garden. It's there to direct cars, but it doesn't say how far this garden might be. I can't find it on my map, either, so after a footsore km I give it up. Back at the riverside promenade I do take the bus, which I notice makes a loop all the way around the city center. A nifty way of seeing it, with my tenderized feet protesting against the asphalt.

Halfway around, I get off anyway to walk along the riverfront again and to the Jardin des Plantes. The river views are nice, with the trailing willows and each waterside home its punt or canoe. The Garden, however, is a disappointment, all boring plantations, keep off the grass signs, and roaring lawnmowers. Blech.

Back to the hotel by 5 for a well-deserved rest. Probably 23-25 km today: not all that far, but so much of it on concrete or asphalt or cobblestones. Hard on the dogs, all that, and I didn't wear my clunky boots. Wednesday morning I take another stroll around town. It's interesting how few shops are unique. All up and down the pedestrian district, there's not one in ten that we don't have in Clermont as well. Even most of the bakeries are chains.

There's a mural I like, painted, almost tagged, on the side of a religious school (but not part of it), featuring in part a distorted basketball player. To the left is the motto "Sell Tony Parker!" In French that's a pun, because "vendre" (sell) is so close to "viva". Sell him indeed. The fascination with this egocentric jock (he fancies himself a philosopher now) has got to fade soon. Once he retires from basketball, will anybody pay attention to his philosophy?

It's interesting too how much weight my backpack has taken on, these two nights. I've changed the umbrella for a pocket paperback but surely that weighs less, not more. It seems my backpack has been secretly pigging out at the Poitevin while I was out hiking, or something. It weighs me down, so I park myself at the train station, waiting for it to be lunchtime, and after that traintime. Natalie must be ravenous. I bet Bandersnatch ate up all the catfood already.

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They've got some pretty big slugs here in France. The black ones are common in the woods around my house, but I've rarely seen the spotted kind. There it is! Special for the Shootout. If you'd like to continue with me on my little trip to Poitiers, read on!

Poitiers
Part 1
Oh!
That sense of queasyness as the train to Paris slid silently away from the quay and north to the capitol. Almost lost my balance and I'm not doing anything but sitting here writing.
So starts another bacation. This end of summer I found myself pretty much caught up, room for a breather before the term starts and my calender becomes full of appointments. I have a week, but decide to take just three days away, and the rest around home, hiking and picking blackberries and digging in the garden.
8:33.45
What the sign says as we pull out of the station, right on time.
It's raining for this first day, though only slightly, and it stops by the time we make Vichy. When I descend from the train at St Germain des Fossés, the town is damp and half-closed.
I was here once before, years ago, on a weekend excursion, just going to see. I was hoping St Germain would be a little more lively this time around (it not being a Sunday in February), but with vacation season on it's even more shut than before.
I would like two things here, a cup of coffee, and a sandwich to eat on the next train. With nearly two hours layover, I have plenty of time to find them, and to take a stroll around. Just one of the bakeries is open - they can't all be closed at once - for a classic ham & cheese on a baguette. For my coffee I'd aimed to go back to the bar-café at the top of the hill, the last one on the right before you get to the church, where I was so warmly greeted by the french & english owners for lunch on my previous visit.
Alas!
The sign is off the door and the windows are papered over. Closed for some time now, from the look of the yellowed and crumbling paper. I wonder what became of Fréderique and her husband. Back to Manchester?
St Germain and the thousands of towns like it are not the place to go to make a fortune. Nobody here does much better than eke out a modest living, just enough to keep the car running and the lights on. So I have my coffee in a little bar farther down the street. A place that looks like they'd like to close up and move home again, but this is home. It's not the same place I had coffee last time, which I saw on passing was still open but just as dingy and 70's orange & brown as before. Depressing place, that one. Not that this is much better. Not that any place I've found so far has been much better, except for the lamented Fréderique's, and that was mostly in the atmosphere of hope and good cheer emitted by my hosts. This one is marginally better than the 70's one. The yellow paint around the windows is peeling and the chairs and tables could use changing, but it's better. The coffee is alright. Unfortunately, the law against smoking indoors doesn't seem to have penetrated this far into small-town France.
Often, I go indoors to escape the smoke, as most people flock to the sidewalk tables because they can light up there. Here I flee the indoor air.

Back at the station, some interesting photos. Pigeons walking around on top of the translucent roof, an elderly passenger worried about finding car number 3, a station cat scampering hurriedly into the weeds, then lying down there defiantly. The quay fills up with passengers waiting for my train, yet another way of getting to Moulins. It's odd there isn't more business built up around the station. St Germain is a transfer point for a lot of people, coming and going to Paris, Lyon, Clermont, Tours, Bordeaux, from any number of towns in central France. Yet there's not a tobacconist or newsagent or bar or in fact anything up here at the station. There was a bar and restaurant, sadly closed now, taunting us with its signage. People with just half an hour don't make the trek to town, close as it is. People with luggage don't with any amount of time.

Finally, my train. We see Moulins...
..Saincaize...
...Bourges...
...Vierzon...
...Saint Pierre des Corps
where I get off before it moves on to Tours.
Saint Peter of the Bodies?
Hmm, this could be an interesting place, this St Pierre's.
Only, it's raining again. Just a bit, but enough to dampen my enthousiasm for hiking to town. I have less than an hour, and it does seem to be a ways. Coffee at the St P of the Bodies' train station is execrable*. Don't have it.

The approach to Tours is long and slow and it looks like good, good hiking out there.
After checking in at my hotel, which seems quite nice though it is awfully hot up there on the top floor, I go out in the persistent dregs of the rain. Poitiers is a nice, smell city. Maybe the size of Clermont, it's hard to tell exactly.

The center, built up in a bend of the Clain river, has nots of nerrow streets that protect it from an excess of traffic (everybody knows the streets are miniscule and there's no point driving there). There are green spaces along the river, and just strolling around I come across signage for the GR655. That's one of the Grande Randonnée trails that make it possible to walk from one end of the country to the other. I could have walked here from Clermont if I only had an extra week and sufficient maps. I take a look at the GR655's itinerary on a map in a bookstore. With the GRs being always well indicated, I figure tomorrow I'll just follow it on down the river, lunch and the camera in my bag.

The architectural marvels of Poitiers are mostly ecclesiastical in nature. In fact, a lot of stuff seems to have happened here in the 11th and 12th centuries. Four old and fabulous churches in a row, and I didn't even see all of the older city. I only went inside the first one - that's how fast I get saturated - but it was beautiful. The walls were still painted, at least evrything beyond the altar. The saint's remains were in the crypt, and people were going down there to see her. What I liked best were the colorful carved angels watching over the altar.
Since my umbrella was dying - it announced this by losing its handle and then refusing to keep it in anything but an upright, in-use, position - I started to look for a new one. But I seemed to be in the wrong part of town for sort of cheap umbrella-selling shops I hoped to find. Anywhere tourists congregate, you're sure to find umbrellas for sale. Except in Poitiers.
The weather people say it isn't supposed to be wet tomorrow. But without my anti-rain charm, what chance does this have of being true?
A shower and a bit of rest, and it's down my street to a place I saw advertising stuffed rabbit thigh with rosemary and thyme and home-made pasta. I thought I had seen crème brulée on the menu too, but that must have been their rival across the street. Happily, they do have melted chocolate cake instead.
Sublime.
Every bit, from the melon&mint soup teaser, through the 3-salmon first course, the exquisite rabbit with its al dente fettucini, to the I can't possibly finish this rich chocolate dessert but somehow I do, was superb.
And that was just a nice, cozy little place down a quiet street. A couple of kids running around, not terribly expensive (though more than I usually spend), the owner friendly and happy to chat but not intrusive. Exactly the sort of place you hope to luck into when travelling. The Poitevin, a block past where rue Carnot changes names. The Poitevin: that's like naming a restaurant in San Diego the San Diegan. All to the very end, that is, when with my coffee they serve a surprise plate of sweets, and one is a citrus purée. A very nice mouthful, but completely in conflict with the coffee. The hotel isn't very well insulated, but thankfully the children down the hall go to sleep early. I leave the window open beyond teh drawn sheers and the sounds of the trains coming and going and freights just passing through continues throughout the night, just comfortably audible.

I should be able to upload the rest of the photos tomorrow, for the rest of the story. For more Shootout participants, click here!

*Is that a word in English? If it isn't, it should be. They use it a lot in French, derived, as you can guess, from excrement...

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The Poetry Bus gets up early.

This week's Poetry Bus came with several destinations chosen by Chicorreal. I'm a bit early, but tomorrow I'm on the road! One last bit of vacation adventure before the term starts. I picked First Thoughts on waking in the morning.

6:45

Stop it Natalie
Stop it.
You cannot scratch through the window
Stop it.
I hate you
It isn't time yet
Is it really time?
Ten minutes more
Stop it Natalie
Oh alright fine!
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That would be a weekday, working morning of course.
The next one makes a tour of the early morning thoughts all around the household.
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First thoughts

Lemme eat! Lemme eat!
Lemme out! Lemme out!
wha?
is it morning?
I'll get up later.
PetmePetmePetmePetme
Another beautiful day!
I can hardly wait for a new adventure
Getta moveon, Lazybones, the sun is up!
It is not
shaddup
we're sleepin here.
It is too up
well, it's almost up
It's light out. A little.
Lemme in! Lemme in!
Lemme eat! Lemme eat!
PetmePetmePetmePetme
Ah, there's the coffee.
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with many thanks to Bandersnatch, Natalie, Sienne, Maurice, and the Laboratory Rats.
To catch the Poetry Bus, click here.
To find out what happened when the dinosaurs tried to eat Bandersnatch, click here.