Thursday 8th
Still nothing concerning the job application. I think that I have been overlooked. Tant pis, that's life although I know that I would have made a really good head of department!
So, today I am off to Marseillan plage for a couple of days. Enough time to get the fridge cold as there will be electricity and to spend some time on the beach swimming and sunning myself. Then I shall be off doing a little tourism in the area between here and Barcelona.
I need music in the camper, so will have to see about having a new radio and aerial fitted so that I can receive well and play some of my stuff.
As you can see from the posts below, I have changed the size of the photos so can now upload them easily. As far as I can see I have not lost clarity but I am no expert. I heard the 'cigales' for the first time yesterday and here is a very bad short film just for you! Well it seems that you are not going to get the vidoe as the video link in blogger will not open for me and I am having problems uploading to Youtube! Technology!
If at first you don't succeed:
If at first you don't succeed:
Wednesday 7th
Shit, shit, shit! Amina had invited me for a tagine tonight and I had completely forgotten. Miguel rang around 5pm to remind me, but 300 kms away from Lyon it was just not possible for me to go to have a tagine! I really feel bad as this is not the first time that I have completely forgotten a date. I really should not drink: no that is not possible or I should write things down. I would have waited around in the region, I would have gone to their place today and swam in the pool. I really must not do this sort of thing again.
All that said, I am so happy to be down here with the smell of the sea, or the étangs! I have spent the day at les Aresquiers have a look here 'La plages des Aresquiers'
I got up and went to the France Passion place which was OK to buy some Muscat but the welcome, well lets say I have had better! Oh that is just so cliché! Let’s say that she was a bitch! So I decided not to stay there and that my places just here there and everywhere are so much better! I had decided that today was going to be a beach and bike day so I went to Vic la Gariodle or whatever, and parked up and took the bike to the beach. The beach was just great even better than Marseillan plage but the big down is that without a bike you have to walk for about an hour to get to the ‘gay’ part of the beach. Not that I want to have sex or the like, but I do like to be amongst my brothers!!
Around 2pm, 12 with the sun, I came back to the camper and went to find a McDonalds. My idea was not to eat but to use the net; I did both! And I can still feel the meal. They must put something in the food that doesn’t go well with me. At the time of eating it goes very well, it is just later.
I am reading a book called ‘Stonewall, The riots that sparked the Gay Revolution’. It is fascinating. Of course it takes the US perspective, but I would like to know a little about the Gay revolution in France and in Britain. It was only a few days ago that I went into Thierry and Jean Pierre for that saying that they don’t mind accepting everything that has come from the Gay Revolution but that like so many others they do nothing to help – not even come out! Not that I have done that much, but I have come out to family, friends and work! I could do more. It is only by doing things and being bolshy that anything comes about. We don’t need to get killed anymore, like some of our elders who have helped us. We just need to be there, to be out and to say YES, I EXIST and I am no different to you. The book is really interesting as it talks about homosexuality and society in 1940s to 60s America and how this lead to GAY LIBERATION!
There is a poem which says so much about a time when, like now even, there are few role models. It’s about young kids who have run away from home because they are not accepted and have to prostitute themselves to live.
I sell my love for dollars,
If you can spare the time,
A hug is but a nickel
A kiss is but a dime.
I’ll go to bed for twenty,
All night for just ten more,
Now don’t get the idea
That I am just a whore.
For if I didnet sell my love,
Where else would it go?
I have no one to give it to;
No one who’d care to know.
So open up your wallet
And show me what yo’ve got.
And whether I should love you
A lttle or a lot.
This was a poem published in V, a San Fransisco publication of the late 60s and was called: The Hustler.
William called! Great to hear from him. Next year sailing in the Med?
Camped: Just near the entrance to Les bois des Aresquiers
Tuesday 6th
I took it slowly this morning, waking up, reading, having breakfast and going to a McDonalds to find an internet connection. There was one at the McDonald’s in Annonay but I didn’t have much battery so couldn’t really stay on long but enough time to have a look at my emails and to put something on my blog. I then went down into the valley to another McDonald’s where I ate something and spent a little more time on the net. On leaving I had made a decision: I would not hang around Lyon in case of an interview, I would leave and come down here to the south. In fact I am in a place called Vic la Gardiole In fact, I had made up my mind to try out some of the ‘France Passion’ places. I went first to Beausemblant but it was in the hills and was not what I had expected. I had expected a field and there was a sort of just parking area with tar! That was the thing that made me come south. In France I never take the motorways with the camper, it is just so expensive but the national roads are just slow and today, packed with traffic. I should have arrived here at 18h25, I got here 3 hours later! The journey was not without some events; a driver of a lorry who seemed to be going to sleep but in the end was reading something going at 100 kph!! I also stopped off at a ‘France Passion’ place at Bagnols sur Cèze to be greeted by 2 dogs neither very big but both very vicious! I was getting out of the camper and the smallest growled, showed its teeth and went for me. A lovely welcome, I must say! Needless, there were no campers there. I turned around a left the place hoping to crush the vicious creature, but without an success!
There are just so many roundabouts now in France! From almost none 30 years go to at least 100 from north of Valence to here, with at least 50 of them in Nîmes!! Oh yes, and I tried the net again at the McDonald’s in Roumoulins, ??? and they DO NOT HAVE THE WIFI and I bought a coffee! However, the McDonald’s in Nice as you enter from the north does! Thank you. What will tomorrow have install for me?
By the by, Looking at the map I have found the name of the mountains which run just to the north west of this region –Montagne de la Gardiole. Added to which, what I see from here thinking it is the sea in fact, is not it is the a number of étangs’ ‘swamps’ is the translation but they are not really swamps, they are not lagoons either as there is no enterance to the sea, no that is not true there is an entranct to the sea at Carnon Plage, so they are technically lagoons. The Canal du Rhone Runes through them. The train runs along them too and I remember reading once that it was during a train ride to Narbonne that Charles Trenet wrote ‘La Mer’. It was his inspiration.
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