At the end of our road . . .

It's usually been a corner shop or a hill or a maize field or a busy intersection of road but this time it's a chateau that surveys the landscape of the Loire Valley. Every time I pass by its towering form I think about what it must have witnessed over the hundreds of years, currently mostly various wine/horse/night film festivals, less of the marauding, arrows and boiling oil of the distant past. And the future . . .? we'll be around a while to see - no intention of moving, again!

 

New departure, and celebratory road trip.

The lad has been living with us on and off for most of his life - pause of three years for art college, another couple of years for carpentry/leatherwork training, but basically he's been part of our lives from breakfast through to teatime, (tea/Dad's cake) to supper and through to 'goodnight' for most of twenty-seven years.  

So, it's time. He has a new life-chapter in Tours, living with his girlfriend, an uncertain future in some form of engineering, preferably with trains, or perhaps using one of the skills that he has already amassed. Uncertain but exciting. I know he'll be fine; he's not afraid to work in any job but is hopeful of finding something he would really like to do, that helps others in some way. It's not about making money for money's sake, and for that, amongst many other things, we are proud of him.

We haven't had time recently for a him and me road trip - see many previous older posts - but yesterday, work behind him, and me appreciative of a break from DIY, we set off in an easterly direction, following the meandering Loire.

Rules of road trip are stated somewhere a few posts back but basically, you get a bit lost, stop for snacks, go off on tangents and support the other person's wish to look at old abandoned train buildings or swim in a keep out stretch of water or wander along a tree-shadow lane going nowhere. Luckily we share a love of the insolite - slightly odd, a bit eerie sometimes, a tad melancholic, unsung by any guide books, etc. this trip had a bit of all of it, including an ancient coal mine and associated slag heaps.

Challones sur Loire seemed a fairly ordinary French town but with its beautiful waterside it was well worth a long amble around, and lunch of Fish and Chips - sadly the antitheses of my favourite chippy - the Fryer's Delight in Holborn: small fish, small chips, and scrap of salad rather than mushy peas. Tasty enough but not really enough for a still-growing lad. We made up for it later after buying absurdly lovely cakes in St Florent le Vieil and sitting in a bar with cups of tea. The other towns we passed through and explored were fairly unremarkable but St Florent is certainly worth a detour with its mix of faded grandeur, ancient, boarded up charcuteries/hair dressers et al; panoramic views of the Loire, and the truly magnificent abbey overseeing the town.

                                                          waiting for fish and chips

Abbey of St Florent

We walked along afore-mentioned tree-shadowy lanes, crossed stepping-stoned river tributaries, admired flower filled water meadows and then returned to the car to make the return journey - a good, road trip style one of heading vaguely westwards though little villages and sunflower fields until the 'cats ears' of Saumur Chateau and the nearby water towers were visible on the horizon - now our compass points of home.

Today, Ezra is off on a bike trip with Dad, an equally relationship-confirming trip out. Later we will help him pack, and will feel that weird mixture of melancholic sadness but joy that he is making his next move to somewhere he wants to be. He's only up the road in effect, in the next city, not off on a world tour/moving to Australia. And we'll see him often, those times to be as precious as yesterday's road trip.

Good luck, our lad. 

Mona Lisa revisited

 During a quest for old crockery to use at our Londonia book launch back in 2020, I discovered one of my top ten favourite charity shop finds - a Mona Lisa plate handprinted by someone who had obviously taken much time to emulate a favourite image, but, some elements were a little . . . odd, which of course made it so appealing. Said artist had also created a plate featuring the equally famous 'Arnolfini portrait' by Jan Van Eyck. Suppressing a whoop of delighted laughter I scooped them up, paid for them and the rest of the china and left to continue setting up the book launch.

After the event, I returned all the china and glasses etc to the Oxfam shop but kept the two plates, wrapping them with great care for my journey home. They then graced two kitchens and for a while a third and current kitchen until Madame Mona sadly met the tiled floor in many pieces after a nail gave way. We were both weirdly devastated, the plate being as unique as the great work itself. "No," I said, "There must be a way to save her!" Too many bits to piece back but I kept two pieces, found an old picture frame, added a load of grout when we were doing floor tiling and stuffed the bits into it. Mark shook his head at this weird grey mess and suggested the bin, but I could still imagine a future for the work of art.

More grout later, plus beads, ecclesiastical blue paint, bits of old postcards, gold paint ring/necklace etc and I think Leonardo would have been mildly impressed, or perhaps utterly horrified, or collapsed with laughter.