Car boot sales and flea markets: a sense of place

 You can tell a lot about a culture from what gets sold in junk shops and at car boots (garage sales if you're from the US) and flea markets. Here's a sense of France, or to be very particular, a little slice of France in between the huge wheat fields of the Beauce, and the valley of the Seine, about an hour from Paris by not very fast train.

• Firemen's helmets. The Sapeurs Pompiers are something special. A lot of them are volunteers. There are old-fashioned helmets with a feather crest like a Roman centurion's moulded into the metal, and new shiny astronaut-like bubble helmets. You see a lot of these. (Army and police stuff? not so much.) Often, the same table holds a collection of model fire engines, too.
• Enamel coffee pots. Yes, this is vintage France. The little wooden-bodied cubical coffee grinders with a metal funnel and handle on top are also typically French. What I didn't know till I looked what that they used to be a major product for Peugeot - as did woodworking tools; Peugeot was a general foundry and at some point I suppose they decided they might as well make cars, too.
• Occasionally you see a collection of teapots. But they are either Berber fake-silver teapots (and Moroccan tea is a whole different thing) or they are collector's teapots. What you almost never see is the plain brown pottery teapot beloved of generations of Brits. Sorry, no PG Tips here.
• Le Creuset casseroles. I have a lovely collection of these now; casseroles, dishes, frying pans, ramekins... in the classic orange colour, in grey, yellow, red, and my favourite, lime green. But there are other brands, too - and often not enamelled but just big cast iron cauldrons. Never mind cooking the Christmas goose, I've seen one you could probably get a whole pig into. See this, and understand how French cooking ticks.
• Souvenirs from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - once part of the French colonies. Less often, lovely cloths from French-speaking West Africa. I've pretty much furnished one entire room with Tunisian blue and white carpets bought at car boots.
• Souvenirs from elsewhere in France - bright Quimper pottery, Eiffel towers (usually in ridiculous quantities: do people collect them?), dolls in French regional costumes. A car boot can be a miniature tour of the country if you want it to be.
• Glass jars. Why? Because there is a massive tradition of making your own conserves - not just jams, but chestnuts in syrup, potted meats, all kinds of stuff. (And I know there still is, because the supermarkets suddenly start selling preserving jars and industrial amounts of sugar the moment the jam-making season begins.)
• Agricultural equipment, because this is farming country; and riding kit, because this is horse country. Old pitchforks made entirely of wood, scythes, sickles, cast iron tractor seats, horsecollars, riding boots, and occasionally, a saddle so shiny and smelling of leather that it can only have been used once or twice (I wonder why).
• Old flutes, oboes, clarinets, and musical instrument making tools. And this is in our tiny little area between La Couture-Boussey and Ivry la Bataille and Ezy-sur-Eure, just a few kilometers. Why? Because there were musical instrument makers everywhere back in the nineteenth century. Today, Marigaux still makes oboes here, and there are businesses making accessories like reeds and the felt for key pads.
• The buvette usually sells a choice of chipo-frites or merguez-frites (regular or spicy sausage with chips). The barbecue is a solid iron affair, hand-made by some local with a bit of welding experience and some agricultural scrap. There's almost always a choice of wine, kir, and beer, as well as various canned drinks; Lipton's Ice Tea is still more popular than Coke around here. And someone has always cooked a tarte tatin, upside-down apple tart, at a euro a slice. 
• I mustn't forget; the set of corkscrew and wine thermometer, and the little metal wine-tasting cups. Even though we're on the borders of cider country here, wine is part of the nation. Liberty, equality, oenology.

But my favourite find is nineteenth century historical or satirical plates. The first one I found was de Lesseps drawing his plan of the Suez canal. Then I found the French lion-tamer who went to the Great Exhibition in London. Then the Exposition Universelle in Paris - which had pretty much the same idea as the London exhibition, a chance to show off the entire world and promote French commerce and industry.

Then I found 'Le Club des Femmes', a little piece of (anti-) feminist history. A chap wearing an apron sweeps the dust off his doorstep and promises to get dinner ready while his wife strides off to the Womens' Club saying 'Back later, be good'. And a plate celebrating Montgolfier's balloon. And an extravagant plate, part of  a set showing you how to do different dances - this one is the polka, and they're really enjoying themselves!

I don't think I've ever paid more than a euro for a plate. The ones I don't buy are the puzzle plates. There are loads of them; the turn-it-upside-down-and-it's-something-else plates, the rebus plates (like a tablecloth, water, and a lion spelling Nappe-Eau-Lion or Napoleon), the Ouere's-Ouallie plates (well, their nineteenth-century equivalent).  I don't quite get the humour and to be honest, most of the French people I've asked don't either.

And then of course all the stuff you'd get anywhere. The kids' clothes that kids have grown out of. Last year's fashions. The old cutlery and the old toys and the jigsaw with one piece missing. But it's the items I've mentioned that tell me yes, I'm in France. 

I wonder what German flea markets are like? or Spanish? do they have them in Japan? ... maybe some time I'll get the chance to find out.

#MeToo - sexism and tourism

 Two little vignettes from my journal of Egypt.

An English couple in one of the temples, I think it was Karnak. The man gave his partner his mobile phone and went to stand in front of a colonnade view.

"Take the picture then."

"I don't know how your phone works."

"It's very simple. The yellow button."

"I can't see a yellow button."

"On the screen."

"I can't see it."

Angrily, he walked over, grabbed the phone, showed her, shoved it back in her hand, went back to pose in front of the colonnade.

She frowned and squinted, trying to see the screen in the bright sun. The phone clicked.

He came to look.

"Well that's bloody useless, isn't it? You should have used the zoom. Look, you can hardly see me at all. Use the bloody zoom."

Back he went. I wondered if the next photograph would satisfy. It didn't.

"Look, you've got one more try. Then we've got to get back on the bus."

"But I haven't even..."

Her words were already directed at his back. She clicked. He came back, grabbed the phone, started off towards the entrance.

I thought: for God's sake, let him go. Just let the bugger go. You're better off without him.

But she followed, and I could see the droop of her shoulders. Just how many years of this had she had to take?

***

"That one is the Red Chapel," she said, looking at the plan in the guidebook. "That is the white chapel of Senwosret, and ... yes, that one is Hatshepsut's."

"Ah," he said. "It's pretty."

"And then, if we go here," she pushed a fingertip along a line in the book, "we can see the Rameses temple, the one we missed earlier, it has Osiride statues and a barque shrine."

"OK," he said, "we have time for it all?"

"Yes, it's hardly two, we have all afternoon."

I was amazed.

A man and a woman, and the woman is reading the guidebook.

And the man is listening!

I have travelled in India, Africa, Europe, the US, South America, the Middle East. I have travelled off the beaten track and I have seen the big sights. And here was something I had never, ever, seen before.

(They were French, by the way. Vive l'égalité.)

***

In a week that's seen domestic violence and sexual harrassment hit the headlines in France, and a woman murdered in the UK, I couldn't help my thoughts turning to these two little episodes. I'd like to think they are the way of the past and the way of the new generation. I'd like to hope so.

But it's a fairly slender hope. 

I'll never forget that poor woman's slumped shoulders as she followed her partner towards the exit.

Lockdown travel: the Photo Game

 This is a game I play with myself sometimes when I'm travelling, if I'm tired, if I'm stuck waiting for a bus or a train or a plane, if I'm eating out, particularly in street cafes. It's a great game for lockdown. Or just to give yourself a challenge.

Rule One : Your backside is glued to your chair. 

Rule Two: You must keep taking interesting photos. (Choose a camera with a good zoom lens or function.)

Rule Three: There is no rule three.

I can do it today as I sit at my computer. If I were going to take photos now:

• the sun falling across a little statue of Shiva I have on the windowsill
• the fish on my Vietnamese blue and white mug
• a bookshelf where all the books are leaning at twenty degrees
• the thin fanning of pages of a book I left half-open on my desk
• the texture of the plaster on the wall
• some very odd patterns made by reflections and the shadow of the blinds
• the furry texture of the top of my paintbrushes in their mug
• a whole landscape of dust on top of a writing box (really must get round to dusting)
• two horses going up the street outside
• the cat looking in at the window
• his tail disappearing
• a scatter of pencil shavings where I knocked my pencil sharpener over

Sometimes these photos are brilliant. Sometimes you look at them later and think "Why on earth did I take that?"

But the point is not the photos. It's the looking.

Oh actually, that's rule three. You have to see the photograph before you pick the camera up. You look with your eyes, not with the lens.

In fact, if you don't have a camera, you can still play the game.

Happy looking!

A place to sit

 I travel hard. I've walked up to 40 km in a day. I don't really do lunch. I quite often get up with the dawn.

But sometimes you just want a place to sit. And sometimes, those places come back to your mind as little places of peace and contentment.

I was at the Pechersky Lavra in Kyiv on a saint's day. It was busy; monks in dirty gabardine with ancient army surplus backpacks in from the country, women in bright floral patterned headscarves, VIPs in shiny suits and stiletto-wearing blondes, long queues to see some particular shrine, the odour in one of the churches of incense and candle wax and burning wicks and unwashed bodies. 

Glittering domes of gold. Chanting. Smoke trails rising from the candle racks. Golden icons shimmering in heat haze.

A huge cobbled ramp behind the main court leading down to the catacombs. Bearded patriarchs in their coffins, in velvet slippers and embroidered robes. A press of pilgrims in the tiny rock-cut chapels, kissing each glass case in turn.

After a while I was worn out. I wandered to a little church further south. It was closed. Outside was a cemetery with a rose garden. I sat; I can't remember whether there was a bench or whether I just sat on the wall. I just sat, and felt the breeze, and smelt the roses.

One time on the way to Santiago I found a rock that was shaped just right for the contours of my body, and on a cool December day, warmed by the sun. I lay on it and watched the sky, bright blue with white clouds, and felt myself almost falling into the sky at great velocity; and then I closed my eyes.

That day smelt of gorse and dry grass, and there were charms of goldfinches, but I remember the deep relaxation of that rock as if it cast a spell on me for the whole day.

There's a grove of huge cedars at Hemis Shupackchan in Ladakh - above the village, already some way out. In an arid, high-altitude desert where every field has to be built up over generations of fertilising - I'd passed women raking last year's composts out over the fields in the morning - there are no forests, and few trees, but here there were beautiful spreading trees and green turf under them. I spread myself out for half an hour in the warm shade. I've rarely felt so at peace.

And sometimes, in towns, you find your little place. In Orchha, for me, it was the tiny space next to the griddle of potato patty man. I watched pilgrims and tourists go by, and sometimes an ash-faced sadhu with long braided hair or a saffron robed sannyasi with the white and red marks of Vishnu on his forehead. Lunch was there most days, a 20-rupee potato patty, and it was one of my happy places.

Then there was Ram Babu's fruit stall. A little stool dragged out from underneath it, and I was ready to sit and wait for my juice. Sometimes goats came and tried to grab an orange or some greenery while his back was turned. Sometimes one of the local cows had to be dissuaded from sidling up to the stall and leaning on it. Once, Ram Babu treated someone for bad knee pain with his special iron knife - I hadn't realised he was the village magician. I met charming gents from Bhopal and Indore, other customers who came to Orccha every year. I learned to play karrom. That was my second happy place to sit.

And my third? I sat there only once, one bright morning, very early, when the old blind sadhu who lived in the Chaturbuj temple and the younger sadhu who looked after him were singing in the rising sun. The old man had a kind of tin can fiddle with one wire string which he played with a ring on his finger, and when they'd finished a bhajan they smoked their bong, offered me a toke, coughed plentifully, and started another bhajan; and as the sun rose, the stone warmed up, and we warmed ourselves, and the misty shapes of the town came into focus.

These memories come to me now, when because of covid I've not been more than forty kilometres from home for nearly a year. And they don't come as photographs, but as memories full of atmosphere, and smell, and coolness or warmth, and touch. 

That is why you travel. When you need your memories, they will come; and they're a form of sustenance.

"Don't go at the weekend"

 People will tell you not to go to places at the weekend. It's too crowded.

In some ways they're right. I like the Louvre on a rainy Thursday afternoon, for instance, or Venice early in the morning, half past six with the sun just rising out of the mists. I like Bermondsey Market when it's still nearly dark and the sizzling of bacon is only just beginning to make that meaty, salty aroma rise from the breakfast stand.

But visiting Jerash on a weekend was wonderful - apart from the fact that no one asked for my ticket going in. Jerash was full of Jordanian families enjoying themselves.

Little girls pelted across the great oval colonnaded entrance to the city playing football. Little boys tried to climb up every pile of rocks in sight. One climbed a pillar and jumped off, and then suddenly all his friends were doing it, flying, arms spread, for a brief moment before hitting the ground with the thump that pushed all the breath out of their lungs.

Men sat on tartan or tiger-striped picnic rugs smoking their shishas and looking over the ancient hippodrome towards Hadrian's gate. Young women posed for the camera in front of the Nyphaeum; a young man climbed as high as he could on the temple of Zeis, to the highest point of the city, and sat completely unafraid of the precipice below.

And through the whole city wandered flocks of goats and sheep with their herdsmen.

As the crowds died down I wandered towards the gate. The two men sharing a shisha were still there; we had a little chat. One little girl was left kicking a football, but her older brother grabbed it, and her, and off they went. It was a nice, low key, end to the day.

Or so I thought. But just outside the gate were the bright lights of a funfair; how could I resist? 

And to my great surprise, I heard my name being called. It was the younger of the two shisha smokers, and he wanted to show me his sister's new baby. I've never seen a prouder uncle, or a man more in love, even though there was, I'd guess, at least a 25 year difference in their ages. The whole family had their portraits taken, and then uncle was left, literally, holding the baby as sister and her husband decided to take a ride on one of the more sedate attractions. 

That's Jerash at the weekend. It was much more boring when I went back the next day.

A country in two icons

Sometimes you can sum up an entire country in an object. I've picked two that, for me, say an awful lot about France. These are:

• The Citroen Deux Chevaux, and 
• the Duralex 'Picardie' glass.

Duralex. A classic but modern design. It came out at a time when other countries' glassmakers were all trying to make pseudo-'crystal' glassware, that looked like it came from a Victorian brothel. This is uncompromising modernity. But the elegant curves prevent it feeling brutal or cold.

Economical. This is a glass everyone could afford to have in their kitchen. Let me refer to the principle of égalité: the equality of citizens in France isn't just about 'equal before the law', it goes further than that. It's about schools that ensure everyone has the same basic cultural references, about cheap restaurants offering good, solid French cuisine for a working man's (or woman's) lunch. Getting good design for a few francs - that's practical equality.

Tough. This is good industrial design too. Not always a given in France - French gardening tools always disappoint me (except their pruning saws and mushroom picking knives, which are fantastic) and most door handles these days are rubbish. But this is a tough, reliable, quality item. (I don't rely on it to bounce if I drop it on the floor... but I have dropped one, and it did bounce.)

...égalité again. When the British made a car for the masses, it was the Mini. A design classic, but look at the subtext; a car you have to get down into. A shrunken car. A car in which you drive along with your bum only a few inches above the tarmac, while Milord in his Bentley can look down at you from a great height. A car which, I'm afraid, is cramped and uncomfortable. "You get what you pay for," say the Brits, albeit the Mini does look very cute in The Italian Job (original version, which if you haven't seen, you should).

But the 2CV commands the road. It has space. Enough for two sheep in the back, someone told me once. You don't give way to the big black Traction Avant, you look it in the face. 

Liberté too. Why stay on the road when the 2CV's suspension lets you go down a green lane or a field track? I asked French friends whether the story about the 2CV being designed to carry a box of eggs on the back seat down a bumpy farm track without breaking any was true, and they all said 'yes'.

And the design. Again, striking, and again with some lovely curves. Robust. 

Most French people these days use drinking glasses from Ikea - though a couple of years ago one supermarket had a special offer of coloured Duralex glasses and they proved quite popular. And if they drive a Citroen, it will be a Berlingo or a C4 Spacetourer. 

But these icons are part of France at a deep level. And they illustrate something about the country and its values.

Remembering....

I got back from Jordan to France a week before the lockdown. That will be my last travel for a while.

For a while, we'll all be travelling only in our minds and in our memories.

And it's odd how the places I remember aren't always the ones that came with five stars in the guidebook, or that I thought at the time I'd remember.

I'm sitting at my desk, thinking of the Burana Tower, an hour or so on the bus from Bishkek in the Kyrgyz Republic. I'm thinking of the friendly taxi driver who took me there, and on the way back, stopped so that I could go into the fields and see the strawberry farmers, and eat handfuls of freshly picked strawberries.

I'm thinking of the broad and open plains of the Chuy valley, and the shivering poplars, and the oddity of a fighter plane parked on a roundabout.

I'm thinking of the Uzgen minaret, way south of Bishkek, and the view down to the valley, over a tumbled mass of slope scattered with the black-painting iron railings of graves. The little fairground next door, with the lady who reached over to take a little boy's arm and help him 'fish' the rubber duck out of the pond which entitled him to a prize, after many fruitless and frustrating endeavours - her gentle smile and his great wide grin.

I'm thinking of the lovely gentleman who sold me a book on melons and sang to me in the park in Bukhara. And a family building a house in a village near Wadi Rum, who filled my water bottle and poured me sweet tea and showed me the way to the canyon I wanted to find.

And I'm thinking, too, of my favourite salon de thé in Paris. Which, for the time being, is just as inaccessible and loaded with just as much nostalgia.