Time and place

While wandering around Collioure (absurdly pretty and touristy French coastal town) yesterday, I stopped at a certain point and looked across the bay at the buildings opposite. Something about the view prodded me emotionally; then I recalled it was exactly the spot where I'd taken a photo of our son about five years ago and then written a blog about the future - what he might be doing in say, five years time, where might he be? art college? music school? And there I was standing on the exact same bit of concrete, lad, not in picture, but at art college in Bordeaux. Funny thing, life, as Mark and I (husband) say to each other fairly often.



View without lad

I felt quite wobbly all the rest of the afternoon and resisted the temptation to call up said son - not true - I did once - and reminisce soppily, and at length, over that particular stage of his and our lives, and what he might be doing in another five years time, etc.
Maybe it was the anonymous crowds surrounding me, or just some residual bit of menopausal hormone stuff but I felt more emotional about the empty nest thing than I had done for months.
Back home now it seems a little foolish, but maybe us parents are allowed to feel sad from time to time . . . maybe it's even good for humans to experience a bit of melancholia, to allow in the memories and dwell on them a little.
It's all good. He visits often, is happy to be here and then he's happy over there in his art and guitar-filled shoe-box - just as it should be.

We are amused

                                             

So, they did have a sense of humour, the Victorians . . .

Building no 62

Is it a signal box? is it an air-traffic control post for very low-flying, micro planes? is it a end-of-the-world 'prepper's' holdout?
I was in a village last weekend for a 'Vide Dressing' a sort of car boot sale for clothes but indoors - in this case a rather imposing 1960s municipal building with rather wonderful Twinning Association ceramic tiles on its walls. Sadly for me, the sale had finished by the time I got there so a village exploration it was instead - which was actually far more interesting than searching through boxes of discarded French fashion in the hopes of finding whatever it was I was looking for - walking boots I think . . . not very likely.
So, this building . . . down a back road on its own; no runway, rail tracks or KTFO signs although there was a large and impossible-to-scale gate. I peered and hoped that some passing bod would tell me what the place was for but as it was lunchtime in a Southern French village that would be impossible. Mm, mysterious.