On GMT

On GMT

The clocks changed last week,
An hour lost and time compressed
The days now short.

So, under cover of dark at five
Winter comes bold and battering to our doors.
No sun to scare her
The pale air chilled like old bones

And in the deep layers of unused drawers
We retrieve our last year's clothes,
Musty, scented with Spring's last traces.

Another season passed.
The cold creeps near.

:o(

Entrevaux

What do the people do here all winter?

It's a beautiful little town, guarding the Var as it rushes between the upended sheets of rock, but in late October there are few tourists and most of the cafes, shops and restaurants are shut. Even in the evenings, the one bar in the old town centre was shutting its doors by 9:30.

The population, according to the tourist office, is less than 800, although at the time of WW1 it was 1400 or more. Many of the tall handsome buildings are crumbling, and most of the streets are now too narrow for modern traffic. Moonface and I stayed in the only hotel open, in the new part of town across the river, which is at least accessible by road. Fortunately the hotel served demi-pension, or otherwise we would have gone hungry in the evenings. The dining room felt hollow on the night on which we were the only guests, but we know that they catered for many more during the days, when we were out walking.

I guess that in the past this was an important staging post and depot; certainly the Romans had a fort here and the medieval walls are mostly intact - but what is it now?

:o]

What is History?

Entrevaux is a tiny town in the Var, about 60km along the railway from Nice. It's much closer as the crow flies, but they have to cross some pretty high mountains. The town has a citadel, a castle high above the town built upon a ridge of rock, which has been a military stronghold for centuries if not millennia. It was only decommissioned as a French army base in the 1920's, and was decaying gently until recently when it has been refurbished in parts to make it safe and more attractive for tourists. But there are many seemingly un-noticed memorabilia in the corners. Can you read the graffito upon the plaster, which is now crumbling away?

Dated 1939, after France had surrendered to the Germans at the beginning of the second World War, it reads (in my translation) : "This beat [castle] is for the French. For the Boche, never. " I find this human artifact more relevant, more touching, than any number of massive depersonalised ruins.


:-]

Old

Today, I became old.
In a single transaction in a railway station in the south of France, my status changed.

Buying tickets for Moonface and I to take the meter-gauge train from Nice to Entrevaux up the Var valley, I noticed that the age at which discounts apply for seniors is only 55. And I'm that age.

So I asked for one standard and one cheaper ticket, and received them. Mine was 25% cheaper, and instantly I entered a different age group and became a "Senior". Perhaps I'll become more mature now.

;0)

Starwars Poetry

John Levett.

SDI

Ten miles above the tits at St. Tropez
A satellite’s remote, panoptic eye
Is tracking us and quietly waiting for
The gesture that could culminate in war;
You scratch your nose, I finish my ice-cream
And screw the silver paper in the sand.
Your milky skin is tanning like a dream.
That ultra-violet shadow is my hand.
The camera rolls on, its frozen lens
Picks out the agriculture of the Fens
Then swaps the filters for the infra-red
Cupolas of beleaguered Leningrad.

You shift and turn, your shoulder-blade could be
The smooth lid on some high-tech armoury
And fear stirs in the craters that begin
To open on my weakly bearded chin.
White clouds wind like a turban round the peaks
That top the Himalayas, and the sun.
Its compost of alchemical techniques,
Transmutes the globe and lets us focus on
Calcutta pullulating with its poor,
The psychopaths that bleed El Salvador,
The human tides of Tokyo and then
The terrifying silence of Phnom Penh.

The earth speeds up, its shrunken polar caps
Like parachutes tumescently collapse,
The tilting coasts of snow give way to ice
Then bergs of light on Asian belts of rice.
At eight you plan to have the hotel fix
Your hair and come to meet me in the town,
Its chill and its salinity that pricks
And tightens up a skin that’s nicely brown:
Those stars we hope to drink beneath tonight
Are pledged to North America, their light
An Ice Age brilliance turning even now
The obsolescent hardware of The Plough.

SDI = Satellite Defense Initiative, I think. Reagan's porkbarrel for the arms companies.

I found this poem quoted on the Singletrack site, of all places. They must be a cultured lot, these cyclists.

;0/

Quantocks

Last weekend, the last of September, we spent a night in the van on the Quantocks prior to a long walk. It's been a year and a half since we went there for our first ever night in the van which convinced us that we could have some good times using it.

This weekends' was a peculiar walk, as the hills themselves were clear, sunny and bright, but the lowlands to both north and south were occluded by a low mist which sent occasional questing tendrils up onto the higher slopes of the moors, and which obscured the lower woodlands. As our walk took us from the high hills down to the sea by Cleeve, we found that in spite of setting off and returning in bright light, much of the walk was actually foggy.

The coast by the Severn Estuary has low shaly cliffs. With the current controversy over the use of Alaska's tar-shales and the effect which their use for oil extraction would have upon the environment, I was amazed to see the remains of a plant which had been built down by the shore in 1906, for the extraction of oil from these local shale beds. The works were not economical, so closed down soon after opening and have been gently decaying ever since.

We returned to Bristol on Saturday evening, intending to go to the Louie to see a couple of bands in which friends played, but for some reason we were both so tired - exhausted - that we both fell into bed by 9:30 in the evening. Strange. Nevertheless, it meant that both Moonface and I had busy and full Sundays in the sun. I took the singlespeed out into Leigh Woods and tired myself out whilst Moonface and Tommo punished the allotment and garden.

:0)