Je ne veux pas travailler.....

Back in the UK. Thirty seven days, seven countries, twenty five stops, almost four and a half thousand miles (the little jeep is now over 145,000 miles old and going strong, yeay!), fourteen gigs. Below is the final route that I covered: 

I performed music in: a basement club in Berlin, an artist's flat in Warsaw, a circus bar in Leipzig, a garden and a house in southern Germany, a gallery and a bee farm in Umbria, a canal-side bar in Milan, the yacht docks of Monaco, a camp-site in Cannes(briefly), an orchard in Provence, a medieval castle in the Gers, a  farmhouse in the Dordogne, a courtyard in the Dordogne, a garden in Palluau and finally, the public hall in Palluau, for the Mayor. 

The people I stayed with and met were truly amazing and gave me so much of their time, spirit and, most importantly, food! 

Thankyou to:

Renia, Micha, Michaela, Sandera at Intersoup, Ewa, Kathi and Wojtek, Matze and the Leipzig WG, Tonelli's Circus,  Hans, Ulla and all at Wallhalben, George, Marco, Ornella, Mickey, Patricia and all in Giove and Bomarzo, Lucia, Hayley and Sheju, Marco at Straripa, Cesare, Alberto and Vale, the man at the campsite in Cannes, Leo and family in Carnoux, Helen and Faz, The Bonds, Matt Weinreb, avmp32, Jane, Rose and Xander, Liz, Rodney, all at Palluau and everyone who came to a performance.

Special thanks to Susannah for planning help, co-driving, co-singing, co-swimming, co-eating, long talks,  insect bite cream, and so much more. 

This trip has been fuelled and aided by: 

Ice cream, alchohol of many kinds (several not legal), huge amounts of amazing food, satnav, mobile phones, wifi, German automated toilets, my aged laptop, my tiny red jeep (keys now on the shelf for ecological reasons), chemical advances in insect bite treatment, digital cameras, digital pianos and stage equipment (even if it failed at times), pop up tents, LED torches, self inflating ground mats...I have techno joy, as a traveller in the modern age, I embrace progress.

Here's a few things that I learned along the way

The generosity, kindness and openness of people you have never met before can blow you away.

If you say you are singing for your supper, the supper will be REALLY good.

If you want to do something, you can.

Some insects can bite you through your clothes.

ALWAYS tell the French that you are Irish, not English (ask me for details)

Use public transport or bike or walk or rideshare - there are too many cars

An eighty-one year old can be as young and energetic as a teenager

If you have a talent for something, you should do it, otherwise what's the point of being able to? This is from the inimitable and sparkling Rose.

Reading your horoscope in a different language is funny.

Tree frogs are really pretty good at jumping

It is possible, in life, to be confused and hopeful and nostalgicand optimistic and happy and introspective and determined and feckless all at once, without any of it being contradictory.

Always buy the strongest insect repellant

Listen to the stories you tell about yourself to new people. It might teach you a lot about yourself. 

Camping is great fun but not camping is bloody amazing

When you are a stranger, and just passing through, it's amazing how much people will tell you about the most intimate details of their lives (I haven't written any of the juicy stuff)

Some people say they like animals more than people. Now, I really like animals but I have discovered that I love, love, love, people, with a heart splitting joy (and I just don't care how this sounds - join my cult, why not). Interactions, emotions, stories, hospitality. Humans. You. Are. Great.

In my travels I met a disco dancing, hip-hop loving, orthodontic supplier, a bee farming, guitar playing artist, a ballet dancing financial philosopher, an accordion playing, wild-hog feeding, interesting herb smoking, hugely vivacious eighty one year old Frenchman, a mural painting, ex-arms dealer's pilot, a celebrity gardener, an ex bouncer, mechanic and pop-Larkin style barterer, a chemist on the brink of a life changing, life-saving discovery, a romantic Italian blues guitarist with a dry sense of humour,  I met heartbroken people and happy people and musical people and actors and artists and scientists and so many different sorts of people and they were all, without exception, brilliant. 

When I was wandering around the Isle of Re, I thought a lot about why I was doing this journey and writing, what I want to create out of it. I know that I wanted to come and tell stories and hear stories as I think they are an important part of who we are but I tried to pin down why. The following ramble is my unedited stream of consciousness from a beach in France. The thoughts are rather unformed but I wanted to set something down in writing, to show where my mind has been going in this journey, so that when I create something from it, the starting point will be there.......

.........I think it has to do with time and with language. Travel and places are important but we don't use space as a marker of life, time is our marker. I hope I'll always remember my journey this summer, but as part of my life it has a point in time rather than in space. The spaces I went to, I went to in a specific time. Rocks stay still(ish) but we move through time and time, in a different way than space, changes us. We change spaces, time changes us...

So - nostalgia is important, stories are nostalgia or certainly evolved partially from it. Things that occur, people and places and situations, become stories to hand down through time. To help us understand ourselves or others. Maybe to stop bad things happening? Like in Surinam, the older people left or died and no-one was around to tell the stories so now the president in power is the man that erased a  generation. 

Why is travel so important then, if time is the thing? Migration, holidays, holy days, pilgrimages, summer working of peasants long ago, the European tour of the gentry, backpackers. Going to new places makes parts of time stand out and enables us to stand back from the ongoing story of our life and to tell new stories about who we are. Making time special with existing relationships or meeting new people. New meetings are always an exchange of stories and often these stories can swing from pendulums of crossed knowledge .Every time you meet new people, the stories you tell, whether they are of travel or music or heartbreak or just that really amusing anecdote about the bucket and a broken rib, reinforce or redirect or shape who you feel yourself to be, just a little bit. And who you feel yourself to be is really, pretty much who you are - the language you use, the people you choose to share stories with, the way you organise your personal timeline...Maybe the Buddhists wouldn't see it like that, although they tell stories too. They say a lot about living in the now, but the language of this itself has a history, a timeline. Maybe in the enlightenment there are no stories, no language, no time lines, no history - but wouldn't that just be a bit weird? (god bless the buddhists).....

Photo courtesy of Matthew Weinreb

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Where does music come in? I think because music is glue. Ornella told me in Giove that I changed the atmosphere of a room (thankyou). I had the experience yesterday of music for me healing a rift. Music can give a film a heart. Music, from it's earliest incarnation, has carried stories. So in my rambling sillysophical way, I want to write something where I sing stories and tell a story of stories, a tale of who I am and where I am in time, and how thirty seven days of terror and love (thanks to Cesare for this phrase) influenced this. Doing it because I can and therefore I should (thankyou Rose). Doing it because sharing stories, handing them through time, is what makes people people. 

Palluau

The sleepy village/town of Palluau in the Vendee region of France. The central canton of this region is famous for sardines, beans and farming machines. Palluau, however, has a cave, containing a dark secret.

Last night I awoke in the middle of the night to hear a tiny voice, saying “Aide moi. Help me”. I had thought I was alone, so this was a tad worrying. As the voice continued, my worrying deepened, as the realisation dawned that this was in fact, my old friend, my liver. After a couple of days in Palluau it is both bilingual and crying out for help. Let me explain…

Liz and Rodney (left) hail from Norfolk and have lived in Palluau for about seven years. When I stayed with them they were friends, as I write this, they are set to become family - congratulations to S and L! 

So. I arrived in Palluau. I got out of the car. I got frogmarched (no pun intended, although we are in France) to Le Cave owned by their friend Michel, where various inhabitants of Palluau attended my arrival. A lot of  wine and thirteen bottles of champagne later, after two of the party (who are all grown up adults, by the way) had been late-night skinny dipping, I pleaded tiredness and was allowed to stop drinking and go home – for a few hours…

The next day was a surprise party for their friend Manuela (left). Twenty of us gathered in the garden of Yannick and Mauricette (below) for a feast of Cochon du Lait (suckling pig, sorry my vegetarian friends) accompanied by the white beans that are traditional to the area and are amusingly called ‘les musiciens’ (not for nothing is the Vendee is  known as 'the windy region'). 

Some fabulous food and more drink fuelled the first entertainment of the day - a genuine Gallic bust up with lots of shouting, waved 

hands and elegant French women storming away from the table, only for everything to be solved by a bit of dancing to Johnny Hallyday (incidentally, my first ever letter from my French pen pal in school proclaimed Johnny Hallyday to be 'the best man of the world' and he certainly seemed to smooth things over in Palluau). I'm still not clear exactly what happened. Later, the uke and I gave a small performance before more drinking, more Johnny Hallyday and more dancing. 

More drinking and singing to follow but first....

Two Little Histories Of Palluau People

Manuela

Manuela (second left) has a wonderful French mother, Janine, a Catalan father and was born in Algeria. Her parents' life as young people was one of extreme struggle and poverty. Her mother told me that as a child she had two dresses, one for all of the week and one for Sunday. As a result of this, having met her husband, Emanuel, Manuela decided to adopt, not babies, but two small Columbian girls aged seven and eight. Leidy (second from right), the younger, now has her own family, Paulo and daughter Yona. When Leidy brought Paulo home, Manuela, already fluent in French, Arabic, Catalan, Spanish and Italian, decided to learn her son in law's native tongue, Portuguese, so that she could help him with his French. Great woman. Manuela's home also acts as an unofficial rescue home for cats and dogs. At the present count she has three dogs and seven cats, most of whom she rescued from accidents or abandonment. Monsieur Spock, named for his oversized ears (even for a cat) was definitely my favourite. 

Yannick and Mauricette

Parisienne Mauricette and Breton Yannick seem made for each other, yet they only met five years ago. Yannick lost his first wife to cancer and nursed Mauricette back to health after she, too, had been ill for some time and had undergone chemotherapy. They are just pretty cool people, massively young, the first on the dance floor or to start with the champagne, the first to start skinny dipping or to arrange things for the village. Mauricette, on her bicycle, travelled around Palluau organising my performance and flyposting invites. A little snippet of history about Yannick? He sailed for years for the oil companies, working on huge tankers and visiting destinations all over the world, but his favourite place is Cardiff as it called to the celt in him. Wonderful. 

Back to the Palluau party. After the birthday feast, we all awoke early the next morning and I set off to perform for an audience of Palluau-ites, including:

The Mayor

The Mayor's wife

The Deputy Mayor

The President of the twinning association

The President of the association for the embellishment of the commune. 

(did I mention Palluau has about 900 inhabitants?) 

I arrived at the venue to set up for the gig and to discuss the format of the performance. I was, very, very, much encouraged to have an interval in my performance. Why? So the audience could buy champagne of course! This was at three on a Sunday afternoon. 

During the interval, the deputy mayor asked Liz if I was 'known in England'. Liz's answer was a resounding 'bien sur' (!) thanks to which, I spent some time after the show signing autographs. Liz, feel free to become my manager any time. 

There was a presentation from the president of the twinning association and I was officially invited back next year by the Mayor, to perform in the 'Grand Salle'. A little scary this, as it holds about four hundred people. After this and some more champagne (all sold with profits going back to the commune association so it's practically for a good cause - drink more!) we headed on, staggering only a little.  

The next day, a lovely walk in the seaside town of St Giles Croix De Vie. This is the place where, having bought their house in Palluau, Liz and Rodney sat watching the waves and saying hello to their new life.

After this, of course, we headed back to the cave. Michel (below), who is charmingly and utterly as French as can be, is the cave owner - and is chiefly the man that waged a war on my liver for the last few days. He rarely seems drunk and looks very healthy, but I can only assume that if he were to cut his hand, he would bleed bubbles. After this second visit to the cave, Yannick and Mauricette had prepared Breton style moules frites and a very jolly evening was had by all. 

My final days of my trip in Palluau were coloured by the magnificent hospitality that I encountered. As as I staggered into my car for my final journey north towards Calais, my car was laden (with the best picnic lunch you ever saw, plus champagne, wine and several bottles of extremely potent home brew), my liver half destroyed, but my heart felt very full and very light indeed. 

Catalogue des Animaux

Before I press on and record the last episode of my journey, here, inspired by my friends Anna and David, and by the Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Odyssey, is my very own Catalogue of Animals (In three different categories, in order of meeting).

Animals That I Said Hello To

Dali the cat in Rotterdam

The Ducks in Wrzesnia

The Bears in Warsaw

 The Slow worm in Wallhalben

 Dali, Matisse and the little scared one - all cats in Giove

Tobias the dog in Giove

The Bees

The Fish in Milan (I did say hello, though am not sure they heard me) 

In The Gers:

Dillon dog

Henri Cat

Biggles the Maine Coon cat

             The Tree Frog

             The Bat

             The Stag Beetle

             The Giant  Dragonfly

             In Vielle Font:

             Biggles the collie

             Pippa the small black dog

             The Small Lizards

             On Ile de Re:

             The Big Black Bee with blue wings

              In Palluau:

              Dolly the small dog 

              The other small dog (whose name I forgot)

                Rosie the bichon

 Fred the rabbit, 

Manuela's ten pets - 

The Dogs: Chalaire, Arco, Plumes. 

The Cats: Eden, Venus, Jupiter, Monsieur Spock, Maya, Penelope and one I forgot 

             

Animals That I rescued

Various flying things from swimming pools, including some wasps, a hornet and a giant tiger mosquito.

The Tree Frog

The Small Lizards

Animals That I (wittingly - either purposefully or accidentally) Killed

Some Mosquitos

A Wasp

A Hornet

Two Snails (very accidentally, sorry)

Special Mention Goes To: The things that bit me through my clothes and made my leg very sore and swollen for a week. Well done, good bitting. 

Rae on the Isle of Ré

At La Rochelle airport, I bade a fond farewell to SST, who rushed back to Blighty for the InterAct fundraiser. After a less than amusing episode (where I lost my credit card, my only source of funds, and found myself trapped in the carpark, so emptied out my entire car and found it jammed into a PA speaker), I headed across the causeway joining the mainland to Ile de Ré.

Named for the ferns that grow on the island, famed for salt, selfish and monks, huge amounts of this beautiful, tiny island are nature reserves. I camped by the Cote Sauvage and wandered to the sea, taking in the stillness and amazing wildlife. 

How wonderful to be so close to nature, to contemplate, to commune…Later that evening when I was ‘sauvaged’ by some very nasty creatures – through my clothes! – I began to feel a little more ambivalent towards nature.

In the town, I had a very French experience. The village near me is called St Clement des Baleines (St Clement of the whales, because lots of whales got washed up there) and it has one cafe. The first night I went there and in my best French with my smiliest smile, I ordered food and drink. The man who served me (and, it turned out, owns the place) looked at me with hatred and disdain.  A wee bit bemused, later I ordered coffee and this time got no response at all, merely a derisive nod. 

The next day, I returned there (only one cafe remember) but this time I changed tactic. I sat down and didn't look up until the man eventually sauntered towards me. With a shrug of my shoulders and a disdainful glance, I jerked a thumb towards the dish I wanted on the menu, turned back to my book and waited.  The same man (or his twin brother?) brought my food with a gleeful smile and a 'Bon Appetit', afterwards asked me if I enjoyed it and then wished me a good day. Brilliant. 

So what else did I do on Re? I climbed the 257 steps up to the top of the famous lighthouse, and then about 245 down (I did some jumping as no-one was around and I am five). I ate oysters and whisky flavour ice-cream (but not together). I paddled and swam, I thought about thinking and stories and writing….

Then I drove to Palluau.