betwixteurope

It was Godard, or Truffaut, both, who said: you can never
go wrong with an umbrella

I will be writing about Verne & Hugo, Montreuil & Amiens soon: social novels and the fantasticke take time.

Amiens

On July 7th, that is 7/7/7 – one of those Dan Brown numbers – the results of the new Seven Wonders of the World competition will be announced. The short list includes The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, the Mall of America, that Gherkin…actually it doesn’t, but one day…

It takes four visits to begin to grasp the enormity of achievement that is Amiens Cathedral. The thing is a beast: like some prehistoric creature that time forgot. People started building this in 1220. In thirteen years that makes it 800 years old. Even calming down and contemplating the finished article, around 1450, say – these things evolve – its creation is an act of pure awe. If memory is remembering then, now, but with all of our conceptions since, then the first question must be: how did they do this without computers?

Visiting Tom got the travelling vapors for the first time:

The Cathedral Church of this Citie is dedicated to our Lady, being the very Queene of al the Churches in France, and the fairest that I even saw till then. This Church was built by a certaine Bishop of this Citie, about foure hundred years since, whose monument is made in brasse at the west end of the Church, with certain Latin inscriptions about it; but such is the strangeness of the character, I could not understand it.

….The principallest relique that is kept in this Church is the forepart of St. John Baptists head, which is inclosed in a peece of gold that is beset with many precious stones. Againe, the same peece of gold is put into another rich Cabinet, made of crystal; out of the which it is taken whensoever it is shewed to any strangers or any other: it is never shewed but at sixe of the clocke in the morning, in a certain little high Chappell, consecrated to that purpose…

and rightly so: this is a wonder of someone’s world.

“They go in, they click, click, click, they buy my coffee.” Patrick sounds as if this is a bad thing: it is his coffee shop that we congregate afterwards, but there is hurt pride in his voice. Amiens Cathedral demands time. I give it hours.

When we visit churches what do we seek? On my first visit there is a service, a woman priest. The hymms have a curiously modern melody that sounds like a choral version of the songs in “Les Damoiselles de Rochfort.” Liturgical Legrand, I guess. And all around the pews we scurry: the stained glass is too far away, the paintings dark. There is an audio guide but few bother. We come together – this is a church – and we remain apart. All there is really is massiveness, light and shade. The form outweighs the function so heavily Le Corbuiser might scream.

The Victorian author-critic John Ruskin loved this place, helped him to form his over-arching aesthetic of the Gothic. He was one of those few that changed the way we see things; to this day people flock to lectures on his vision: of art, literature and architecture. Ruskin will return.

On Monday morning I have the place to myself, the only sound that staple of Mondays in every major city: construction work, the clang of girders, ladders; cranes spinning like El Greco ice skaters. Here it is work on the east wing. This is my chance to imagine Tom for the first time, gazing up and thinking – surely – this is impossible. For days know I’ve wondered what must have been going through his head as he “walked” on horseback. I think today’s sight must have shaken him: for any building of this size comes with a preternatural power, for good and bad. I’ve watched the light blaze through the stained and not-stained glass at four times of day; on each occasion the mood here is different, however many of us are inside consuming the experience. This is a building of a black and white God; of absolutes. Here we are dwarfed, perhaps as Chantall was in the dessert oasis. Except that here there is language, sculpture, paintings, architecture. And its collective imperative is: have wonder.

Believe.

I feel Tom must have known then that England wasn’t everything. But then he wouldn’t have been travelling if he’d thought that. However much he kept it under his hat.

I choose the Baroque café in Amiens, right by the Somme, because Tom Coryat was active in Europe in the “Baroque” era, the history book tells me. I must research this. Here all is riverside cafés, Cathedral views, and Pink Floyd. “Wish You Were Here.” It reminds me vividly of the center of Ljubljana.

Sunday night: all is quiet but the coach party-people.The centre an oasis.

The two most terrifying words in the English language are “clown” and “Toby.” Toby is a “Clown contemporain”. He played last night in Amiens. I watched Rugby League.

Suzanne

At the good cake shop on a somewhat soulless, very wet, pedestrian drag and I’m talking Izzard and getting confusing instructions from the cake ladies for la Maison de Jules Verne, the Around the World in Eighty Days man who lived here almost fifty years. An elderly French blonde woman tiny beneath a massive umbrella takes my arm, “I’ll drive you,” she says, “it’s too complicated to explain”.

We Izzard, and she asks where I’m from. “English? But my husband is American, I speak English.” We drive around the city in the rain, the traffic here is in “permanent crisis” Suzanne says. There are about six cars that I see, Straus plays on the hi-fi. Suzanne was a social worker before she retired, working with children in Amiens’ school system. “I liked it, but they have many problems these days.”

Suzanne Redmond’s family knew an American man during the Second World War. They kept in touch afterwards: their daughter eventually married the Redmond’s boy, Steve. She was born in Amiens; shows me the street, the hospital now a BestWestern hotel. The name Redmond is Irish, Suzanne says, but Steve is from Los Angeles. He was in the film business.
“In France?”
“No, no. Hollywood. He was a camera man.”
She asks where I am from.
“London.”
“We’re so closed here, I have never been to London and it is so close; my daughter, sure: she travels everywhere with her work. But not me.”
“But you saw Hollywood?”
“Oh yes, we lived in the hills in LA for quite a time.”
“And any films I would know?”
“You’ve heard of Clint Eastwood? He was a friend of Steve’s. We all went to Switzerland, where was it? You know, the Eiger.”
“Ah, that would be “The Eiger Sanction”.”
“Yes, that’s it. The Eiger Sanction.Steve had a small part in it as well. He was the first character to die.”

Jules Verne is not Suzanne’s favourite writer, “but, oh, what must have been in his head. Where do you go, next?”
“Eventually Venice.”
“Very beautiful, Venice. Especially for the Film Festival.” Where this years retrospective in on Spaghetti Westerns. “Of course,” says Suzanne.

If only I had Jules Verne’s imagination to make this up. “Enjoy your adventure,” Suzanne says, but I am enjoying it too much already.

Amiens, up early for Church

Les and Pamela have been visiting Australian war cemeteries in the Somme for a week. They’re from London. They like the café we’re sitting in because it isn’t fake, is logo-lite. “Not like those in the city centre, I didn’t like those at all,” Pamela, the Australian, says. “It’s going that way everywhere, isn’t it? Uniformity. Dijon was nice though, different.”

Les is a walker. He edits the South East Rambler magazine in England and it is taking up more and more of his time. He’s been walking since his teens when there was a weekly walk column in the now-defunct “Evening News”. “I used to take the walk every week, the author of the column encouraged me,” he says.

Les once walked from Dieppe to Paris, it took a fortnight. He has stayed in Montreuil, but doesn’t understand the bikers. “Walking gives you a chance to experience something, to feel closer,” he says. “Bikers…I don’t understand it. Passing time, I suppose.” And walking you can drink a little more, of course.

Head out for the Highway: looking for adventure

Pamela has worked on several newspapers in London, The (now-defunct) European…hmm…and The Guardian – which she remembers for the champagne on Thursdays (readers insert joke). She reads the Telegraph now. “20,000 people died at one battle, can you imagine that?” she says. “I don’t think we should be at war now.”
“Harry isn’t,” I say.

“Nobody listens any more,” Les says. “We had the biggest demonstration ever against war – nobody listened. I don’t agree with fox-hunting but they have a good lobby. What happens? Nothing, it was banned. Nobody listens.”

There is a sign in the centre of town informing visitors there are 48 CCTV cameras in operation.

I once interviewed the American academic, Benjamin Barber, a historian of American democracy and constitution. He’d become famous for one of those cross-over books, McWorld vs Jihad, that spoke to the times. He posited the problem of democracy thus: it begins locally, in small ways, just as it did in classical times. In this case: in the town hall or the local community. But these kinds of meeting were not meaningful any longer, government higher up was in charge and “not listening”: Barber held great hope for the internet’s power to shape democratic change, though he was very worried about its power to “infantilize” us as well, to pare down to black and white views.

Pamela likes to photograph food and drink when she travels. If it is good, it gets a snap. She remembers a particularly good hot chocolate in Salford, Lancashire. “People think I’m crazy, but I love it.” She takes a picture of her coffee. One for the virtual scrapbook.

Les returns with his change. “I’ve paid,” he says.
“I always love the hear that,” Pamela says. She likes to “research things,” and gives me the e-mail for a hostel in Monmartre, and the address of a Quaker House café and restaurant near the British Library. “Where were we before Google?” she asks.
“We didn’t exist,” I say.

“I don’t usually like churches,” Les says, looking at Amiens cathedral in the rain. “But this one is something else.”

“John Keats was a walker,” Pamela says. “But he died young.”

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 periphery, war cemeteries filling with people. Here in the Terminus all is handshakes and kisses; non-stop banter – even with Eddie Izzard-in-France me.

There is sparkling wine to down, lotto tickets to buy. “I have no chance,” says Yvonne, “I choose my telephone numbers these days, that way if I win I can afford the bills.” She’s going to the Jules Verne clinic in Amiens next week. “It doesn’t exist,” says Francis the owner, bringing laughter. Perhaps it is at the Centre of the Earth.

Francis wears a “Walking Man” t-shirt. It as, as Robert Langdon might say, “significant.”
“Moi aussi,” I say, “I’m walking to Venice.”
“It’s just a t-shirt; tomorrow the garden,” Francis says, rubbing a beer belly.

It is a morning for chance: not just the lotto, but scratch-cards for Bingo and Sudoku – even Scrabble. I boggle at the chances of scratching off a triple word score with “x” and “z”. On the bar are several copies of “Paris Turf,” the daily racing guide. Men and women enter to drink, consider the form pen in hand, and then wander off to make their bets. Down the bar one middle-aged man scratches card after card.

Rien.

Later on Canal Plus is Manchester United versus Chelsea, the English FA Cup final: more gambling opportunities to come. “A match of revenge,” Francis says, calling out his teenage daughter Charlotte to show me the Amiens football club shirt she is modelling. “Third division,” he shrugs. I am reminded of Crystal Palace for a brief and wistful moment.

On the obligatory ignored television in the corner is a moment of civilisation clash – Samuel Huntingdon would be proud. Whilst games show contestants go through their moves The Clash sing “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Upstairs in Rock Heaven Joe Strummer lights a spliff with Jimi or Jim or John and whistles a bar of “Career Opportunities,” and all’s almost all right with the world.

Picquigny was an overnight stop for Tom Coryat. I’m sure he liked it here, the people are friendly, everyone shakes my hand and says hello. Yvonne notices this, “everybody does it,” she says, as if this is strange. “Are you German?”
“Anglais.”
“You look German, but not tall enough…or red.”

At The Treaty of Picquigny, drawn up in 1475 between England and France. The French King Louis XI paid our boy, Edward IV, 75,000 crowns and a yearly pension “thereafter” of 50,000 crowns to hold off his claims to the French throne and stay put in England. These days English Steady-Eddies use similar city bonuses to fly-drive and buy estates around here, no doubt.

But I don’t think they’d like the Bar Terminus, it is too full of community; it knows what it is – the heart-beat of the village. Madame “Lolo,” – Laurent, Francis’s wife (in Las Vegas t-shirt) checks the train time-table for me, shakes my hand. I explain the trip, Tom Coryat, walking (in the modernist manner – sometimes on trains). “Ah, you are crazy,” Francis says. “Now I understand.”

I shake everyone’s hand again. Francis gives me a house pen. “For the writer.” On the train to Amiens everyone in my compartment – everyone – is plugged into an I-Pod. Some even share.

Must be a student town, Amiens.