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| Carved angel on the rue des arenes, Arles |
I’m working on a long text mainly about places in the south of France where I have spent time, going back several decades. Looking through old notebooks & journals is a curious activity, in a sense re-living the past, and also reminding me of experiences I had quite forgotten, such as the conversations below with people at railway stations and on buses.
These journal notes are from summer 2007, when I spent two months at a Writers’ Residency near Vauvert, in La Petite Camargue, an area of marshlands separating land from sea.
While I was resident at Vauvert, I visited friends at Coudoux, taking the train first to Arles, then to Rognac, where I was met by my friends. That evening we took part in the summer festival (poetry and music), which took place outside, in a garden area full of huge trees, around an old mansion house.
I returned the next day, by train, though the last part of the journey was by bus (presumably an SNCF train replacement) to Vauvert.
A couple of days before I left, I went to Vauvert train station to find out the times of the trains to Arles.
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| canal at pont des tourradons near the Residency |
At the station, the man at the caisse is triumphant when I ask for timetables and he says the new ones haven’t arrived yet. When I ask him how then, I can find out the times of trains to Arles he repeats Arles? with an inflexion of incredulity, as if it was Aldebaran I’d said. But he looked it up for me on his computer and told me the train times, which I then wrote down.
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Almost two hours wait at Rognac train station because of a bomb alert. A handful of people were waiting on the platform. One of them, a young mother, loses her head at the SNCF official – her fury at the fact that he knew nothing, that no-one knew anything, was peppered with choice words such as con, putain etc.
One man responds mildly to her outburst (he wasn’t waiting for the train himself). But if there’s a bomb, it has to be found, yes?
Yes, replies another, but they could let the passengers know of this, before they sell them tickets. Or offer a refund.
But this was not happening. No-one knew anything. One woman is going to work, an older woman is going on holiday, being met by her sister, and the young mother, with three small children, erupts in anger.
Another woman I’ve spoken to says, what will this woman (me) think of the services in our country?
The sanguine older man, (not getting on the train) turns out to be the husband of the older woman who is going on holiday. It’s worldwide, he says, it happens everywhere, not just here. And it’s all about money. So now we go to the supermarkets because we’re told it's cheaper, but it isn’t. No, it’s all to do with money. It used to be religion, he goes on, that kept people together, gave them a purpose – he’s interrupted by an announcement – which repeats that the train is delayed and no-one can say how long the delay will last.
So I don’t get to hear a full account of the man’s philosophy, which seems to suggest that religion has been replaced with money. And that we are all being hoodwinked into bowing down to this new ‘religion’.
And when the train does finally arrive, it’s without any warning or announcement.
Fountain at VauvertMarsh country, coming home
The woman on the bus said that her train
from Lyon was delayed, it broke down.
My train was late as well I said,
we waited hours at Rognac station,
there was a bomb alert near Marseille.
Ah, she laughed – you had a bomb alert,
I had a breakdown.
She tells me she once went to Lourdes and -
after that her health improved.
She didn’t know, it might have been her husband helping her -
He died four years ago she said -
Perhaps it was the healing power of Lourdes itself -
But her doctor can’t believe
what’s happened to her.
I could hardly walk, she said
and here I am now, taking trains and buses
travelling round the country, and I’m nearly eighty.
At Lyon I met up with my cousins,
Lyon is a lovely city, but we had such storms, such rain,
it looks sad in the rain, you know,
it’s good to be back in the warmth
and sunshine of the south.
Have you seen the bulls? she asks.
Well, only in the fields, I say.
I love to see them running through the streets
and all the horses, and their riders
with their costumes, full of colour,
but I don’t like to see them kill the bulls, no
she said, I don’t like that.
Tonight, back home, the air smells of the sea, carried by a salty wind across the marshlands.
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| Evening sky view from my studio window |
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