I hitchhiked to Paris a couple of times when I were a lad. Nowadays I go there using slightly faster and more luxurious means. I like Paris. I like the pavement cafe culture. I remember Paris in forty nine, the Champs Elysees and old St Michel Beaujolais wine.
THG and I had a great weekend there in the early days of our relationship. Stayed in Hotel Avenir, a small two star dive near Montmartre, down the hill. We took with us fifty quid’s worth of spending money, twenty of which was spent in the first bar we went to! We was poor in them days. Perhaps lacking in worldly wisdom. We got by.
Been to Paris quite a lot over the years. Fifteen of us went there for the rugby world cup, last time it was in France, before 2023 that is. We camped in the Bois De Boulogne. Probably the best rugby tour I’ve been on. Tom, at fifteen, came along with three other lads the same age. A great baptism into touring culture.
Then we went there to watch my siblings, Ann and Sue, finish the London to Paris bike ride. Rather them than me. I couldn’t see myself sitting on the saddle of a bike for four days let alone doing all that pedalling. On one day they cycled one hundred kilometres into a 30 kmh headwind. Brutal.
We took dad with us on the trip and it was the time we discovered he really was not that mobile anymore. Dad and I spent a wonderful afternoon sat at a table outside a cafe in Montmartre having lunch and working our way through a couple of bottles of vin blanc. It’s what dads and sons do. It was easier for us to just sit there than to walk around seeing the sights.
After that dad and I did a dad and lad trip around Wales in my Jag. Visited all his old haunts. Great week if v tiring as by then his lack of mobility was a known issue. Met my uni pal Dave the Rave for a few sherberts in The Ship in Dolgellau, I recall. Anne joined us at the end of the trip in the Black Boy in Caernarfon. Dre. Dad used to work in Caernarfon. Going back a bit now.
The moral of this tale is that dads are important. Spend as much time as you can with them. Mums too obvs.
Dunno what made me think about Paris. We are off there for the Olympics this year. Figured we might as well. Do stuff. That bus is a’coming.
It has been my custom and practice to spend time with individual offspring. Just me and he or she. The last of the cycle is coming up next week. When there are just the two of you you can do things that don’t make sense when the whole family (of six) is there.
I recall Hannah and I going to the opera in Barcelona to hear a world famous tenor. Rolando Villazon though I might be wrong. Time plays tricks on the memory. Gran Teatre del Liceu. The tickets were around £250 each. This wouldn’t have happened if there were six of us.
It was a very hot evening and an old lady kept fluttering her fan to cool off. Unfortunately this caused a repetitive clicking sound which was really distracting and detracted from the music. It took a lot of diplomatic persuasion by a number of us at the interval to get her to stop. It was still one of those world class nights.
I have some fave restaurants in Barcelona. Los Caracoles, Xalet de Montjuc and the really cool Betty Ford bar. If you go to Los Caracoles ask for a table next to the kitchen. It’s a great atmosphere. Must take THG there someday. To Barcelona that is. She hasn’t been.
Did you know Suzie? Helluvagal. Dim llaeth heddiw os gwelwch yn dda.
T-5. Everything under control.
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Just cleaned the cobwebs from around the cctv camera in the front. Was annoying the hell out of me with false positive movement detections when it was just a bit of spider web swaying in the wind. Made finding out what time the milkman came a lot harder as I had to trawl through the whole night’s footage. Will be a lot easier now 🙂
I have downed tools for the evening. Been quite a busy day yanow. My new book arrived and I’ve already read half of it: “Christmas Evans – no ordinary preacher”. Had forgotten I’d ordered it so it was a nice surprise when it came.
I am very interested in the history of religious dissent in West Wales so this was a bit more background reading and especially relevant as old CE used to preach at the Baptist chapel founded by my 4xG grandfather. They would have known each other. JP Davies, another relative of mine, was also quite famous on the circuit a generation after CE. JP’s dad was the rector of Llandysul or similar and wrote him out his will when he realised he had left the established church.
So tonight neither THG nor I have anything lined up. She will undoubtedly spend the evening creating things. She is a very talented craftswoman, if such a thing is a term. I plan on listening to music and writing. Some of this afternoon was spent packing my big yellow duffel bag. It is mostly done. Eighty percent perhaps.
This needs doing well in advance as I will be away for sixteen days. That means sixteen sets of underwear plus spares, shirts etc. We won’t have much of an opportunity to do laundry and I’m blowed if I’m going to give it to a hotel to do. Reality is we won’t be stopping anywhere long enough to do that anyway. It’s mostly shorts and t shirts anyway with a token nod for the British weather en route to the airport.
This trip is going to have periods of downtime and thus opportunities to record my thoughts. And experiences, which I am expecting to be spectacular. Not quite like being a Victorian traveller who might stay in one place for weeks just to take in the view as it took so long to get there.
I like the idea of owning a big yellow duffel bag. It doesn’t have wheels which is a bit of a disadvantage but I’ll just have to use airport carts. Big yellow duffel bags are cool. I bought it because I’ve lost my big black North Face duffel bag. Now I have no idea how anyone goes about losing a duffel bag. I can only think I must have left it somewhere but it would have to have been empty otherwise I’d have noticed that some clothes had gone missing. I dunno.
Anyway I am very happy with my big yellow duffel bag. Reminds me of Joni Mitchell. Big Yellow Taxi. Not because it has anything to do with either, it’s just cool. Not black or blue or grey. It’s yellow and it’s cool.
It will stand out on the airport luggage carousel. Would be quite annoying if everyone else realised how cool it is to have a big yellow duffel bag and went and bought one. It’s not gonna happen obvs but it would be annoying if they did. I’d need to rethink my luggage strategy.
Actually I didn’t buy the big yellow duffel bag to stand out. I just liked it. These days I just do things I like doing. Life is too short to fill it with badness, tedium, greyness. Don’t be grey.
In some respects I wish I’d adopted that stance decades ago. From the get go really. Sometimes these things just reveal themselves over time, with experience. Don’t fly coach fly first class. Life is too short to fly at the back of the plane and doing so undoubtedly shortens it further.
Another thing I learnt some time ago is to trust your gut feel, your instinct. That’s what I instil in my kids. Bet on yourself. I have always written poetry from time to time. I used to keep quiet about it and then decided sod it, I don’t care what people think. So I entered a competition at the Poetry Society only to find that there were seventy thousand entries. I didn’t win. I read the winning poem and realised that it was an establishment pick.
That was the moment I decided that the only way to do it was to publish it yourself which is where philosopherontap came in. It didn’t matter to me what people thought about my poetry. I did it for myself. Ok actually it is nice of people say they like your stuff but ultimately it doesn’t matter. From time to time I buy someone else’s poetry book to support them but really I don’t read the poetry. It is a very personal thing that people do for themselves.
One thing that amazed me when I started to talk about my poetry was how many people wrote poetry themselves but kept quiet about it. People from all walks of life. I once invited a lot of folks to our house for a poetry evening.There was no shortage of takers. Some just brought their fave poems along but we had a great evening reading and listening to poetry. I must do it again.