Monthly Archives: May 2007

Turf & Numero Neuf

Picquigny Civilized Saturday mornings at the Bar Terminus, betwixt Picquigny train station and the main street (where village quiet is vaguely distracted by a modern – albeit closed – Homeopathy shop). High on the hill, a Chateau; all around the … Continue reading

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Tom Today

I went from Abbevile about one of the clocke the same day, and came about eight of the clocke in the evening to a country village in Picardy called Picquigny, fourteene miles there hence distant. Most of the country betwixt … Continue reading

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Kitty, Esra and Chantal: a pit-stop

Abbeville Kitty, Esra and Chantal grew up in Dreumel, a Dutch village; they were close for a long time, but with college they grew apart, coming together again at the funeral of Kitty’s father, ten years later. Nothing had changed, … Continue reading

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On blogging

To Abbeville The sacrifice of blogging is poise; the pleasure of books is their craft. It is hard to read the many books and extracts I carry on my tiny memory stick without feeling a surge of jealousy as I … Continue reading

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War: virtual, almost and back to Boujis

Almost every town in Western Europe has them now, well-thought-out shops in neat streets whose uniformity is striking. These stores come with compelling logos and fittings, and windows designed by the great-grandsons and daughters of Lorelei the Siren of the … Continue reading

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Tom’s Montreuil and a Question

The Citadel Ramparts this morning, after Bill Brandt “Montrell is a strong walled towne, situate on a hill, having a very strong fortification on the toppe thereof, invironed with a strong wall. There are two gates at the entrance to … Continue reading

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Very Easy Riders

In 1969 towards the end of her marriage to the French film director, Roger Vadim, Jana Fonda went with her father, Henry, to a screening of a new film her brother had just produced and co-written. “My father didn’t know … Continue reading

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Not so miserable at all – sur mer…almost

At eleven this morning Montreuil resembles one of those perfect and utterly empty villages that The Avengers stumble across in black and white – sometime around 1965. In those old television shows everything was happening around the corner and underground, … Continue reading

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Mystery Two: a love story via Wodehouse

But who is Valentin? I’m in Montreuil-sur-mer looking for the hotel with the courtyard painting of Laurence Sterne, the eighteenth century English writer – one of the Godfathers of the modern novel. He came here in 1765. I ask the … Continue reading

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So Fashionable

Thursday has long been the new Friday in England; but today in northern France it is the new Sunday. Anne-Marie at Boulogne Tourism explains why the streets have that empty early on in a George Romeo movie feeling. “It is … Continue reading

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