Pt 14. So what about Paris?

Several weeks later...

I started the day with a shower, then went downstairs and ate Croissants and drank coffee. Outside the sky was the familiar colour of fish, but it was nonetheless warm although a little humid. I rolled myself a golden Virginia, then found a comfortable chair in the conservatory where I sat for an hour reading about Hemmingway’s good café in the place St. Michel.

What on earth had happened in Paris all those weeks ago, I thought. I’d spent two of the most memorable weeks of my life there, but hadn’t penned a single word about it, why was that? It was the same when I came back from France the first time, after I’d gone there to recover the First World War remains of my great grandfather. That had been a grand adventure too, but it had taken me weeks to process it and finally put pen to paper and tell the story, When I eventually did, I wrote twenty-eight pages and over sixteen thousand words about it. Telling the Paris tale I figured, was going to be something like that.

What a marvellous jaunt it had been though, five weeks and nearly five-thousand miles from Edinburgh, through Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy, then back into France with two weeks in Paris. Every day of the trip I’d managed to write about where I’d been, and what I’d seen and the people I’d met along the way. Even in Paris itself I’d still maintained my discipline, and although I was always playing catch-up, I still wrote regularly from the extensive field-notes I’d taken in my moleskins. In Paris, I’d started the day with Vodka and Pamplemousse while Lyndal pored over books and maps seeking out places to visit and experiences to have. I’d travelled on the world famous Metro and had seen in full living colour the picture postcards of Parisian landmarks. The Louvre, Sacre-coure, Eifel tower, La Madeleine, the Champs Elysee, Arc de Triomph, and Notre Dame. We’d sat by the seine sipping vin rouge and eating frommage whilst the boats that plied the beautiful river lapped water against our feet, and the sun that warmed the Parisian lifestyle slipped slowly away beneath a veil of softest pink. For two weeks I had lived a life I’d never known before, with someone I’ve known all my life, it was a beautiful combination of personal familiarity in a strange and distant land.

Outside, the fish coloured sky turned into a vertical, tumbling sea, and a heavy rain beat against the windows. It reminded me of the night we went to see a show at the Lido on the Champs Elysee, and how it had rained when we came out. Lyndal had opened an umbrella and linked her arm through mine, and we had ambled slowly through the rain, taking in the sights and sounds of Paris by night; it all seemed so long ago. I rolled another cigarette, and stepped outside to feel the rain on my face. I hoped it would help me recapture the magic and romance I’d felt that night all over again. It was a dreamers folly, the moment had already been.

The facts, the facts and only the facts part of me wants to write it up exactly how it was, a blow-by-blow account of what I did and when I did it. But the real fact is that the whole experience was a blurred romance of me and Lyndal in Paris living some kind of surreal dream that had first been imagined a thousand years ago when we first met; but maybe that’s the creative writer in me. He wants to write the facts, but also wants to mix it up with the fiction of what might or might not have been. The romantic fool of course just wants to write a love story.

The rain has stopped for the moment, but the sky is leaden and sulky. I feel like I should be sitting by an open fire now, drinking red wine and listening to Brahms. Suddenly the rain is back again, and with it, a voice calls out in my head. ‘Bonjour Monsieur”. It’s a character I created years ago named Laurent. He lives in a Brittany cottage in France, and works as an obscure kind of creative expressionist. He sleeps only three to four hours a night, and takes long, long walks through the sun, through the wind, and through the rain with his black Labrador named Cassoul. He drinks red wine and plays the guitar, and has but one single love in his life. He has never yet let on exactly who she is, or what has become of their lives. We said a quick hello, but then he had to take Cassoul for a walk by the water. He said we’d meet again soon.

Patches of blue now, but mostly it’s dark overhead. Laurent and Cassoul have gone, and now it’s just me again, and my reasoning for not having written the tale of my two weeks in Paris.

As I left Paris and Lyndal behind and rode out through La Defence on my way towards Normandy and the eventual ferry back to the UK, I had the music from ‘Dirty Dancing’ going through my head. ”I’ve had the time of my life”. Paris was going to be a hard act to follow.

In Normandy, I visited the D-day landing beaches of Gold, Juno and Omaha, as well as the American war cemetery there. I visited the Pegasus bridge at Bentounville that the British airborne forces had captured just hours before the landings occurred. I had a coffee at the first house liberated in France, -the Pegasus café beside the bridge- and I broke a tooth on an incredibly hard baguette there too. I camped at Toufreville where the airborne forces of the invasion had landed, and stood in silent tribute at a crossroads where a handful of British and Canadian soldiers had held off a larger force of German troops rushing towards the invaded beaches. I tied in vain to buy a croque madame, that wonderful toasted Ham, cheese and egg dish that Lyndal had introduced me to in Paris, but it was wasn’t to be; there were simply too many English there, and the gorgeousness of Paris was sadly too far away.

I got the ferry from Cherbourg in France to Poole in England, and hated every minute of it, it felt like I was leaving home. I stayed with friends in Somerset for a day and a night, and then rode my bike back up to Simons place in Gorebridge where the trip had all began. Once there I fell into a deep, dark nothingness of not knowing what to do with myself. Love Simon and his family deeply though I do, I felt really out of sorts being there after five weeks on the road surmounted by two weeks in Paris with Lyndal. I tried to write but nothing would come out as I wanted it to. Maybe I didn’t really know what to write though is closer to the truth. I contacted a film director friend who empathised with my downer and said he’d experienced exactly the same thing. He reassured me that it would eventually pass. Days turned to weeks and still the words wouldn’t come. I summoned Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogel, and even invoked Homer and the Odyssey. I joined the local Library where I took out Ewan McGregor’s book of the Long Way Round trip he’d done with Charlie Boreman, I read Ernest Hemmingway’s The old man and the sea, and For whom the bell tolls; but still there was nothing. I went for rides on my bike and sat by small rivers with my notebooks and camera and thoughts whirling through my head. Nothing, not a damn thing, the Trout weren’t even rising! I thought about smoking pot for while, and how it might loosen up my brain, but that just made my thumbs go weird and gibberish fall out of my mouth. I drank way too much coffee and sat up to all hours mulling things over and writing things down, then crossing them out again. I did Sudoku and crosswords, read the papers, and watched the news. I sat inside when the sun came out, and went outside when it rained.

As the weeks turned into more weeks, I started reading travel articles in the newspapers and began penning out different parts of my Paris experience with the idea of putting together an article of my own. I’ve written travel for the papers before, but they’d been a sham. Half the places I wrote about I’d never even seen, let alone walked around experiencing the ‘…Ambient intrinsic beauty of”; but Paris was different, I’d been there, I’d seen it, and I’d done it.

Several thousand words later, I had an article that was miles too long, and too full of poetic license and heartfelt romance. Sure Paris was a romantic place to be, but this was meant to be a travel article, full of interesting information and little known quirky facts. Above all else it was meant to make people want to go there and experience it for themselves. My article made me want to lie half-drunk in a warm bath with a razor poised above my wrist.

I decided to go fishing; a short break was what I needed. I packed up my bike and took off for the Scottish borders country; it felt good to back on the road again. I headed for the Meggett, a waterway high in the southern uplands reached by a very steep, winding, single-track road that had me sphincter twittering by the time I reached the top and looked back down on the land I’d just ridden. The vista below me was nothing short of magnificent. With the huge expanse of loch something or other squeezed in between the great towering sentinels of heather-loaded hills, it looked for all the world like I’d stepped back into the time of Rob Roy and his gutsy tartan kinsmen. I rode on towards Meggett water where I found a small, sheltered spot of land on which to camp for the night and set a nice fire going. Then I put my fishing gear together and stepped down to the water’s edge.

Swish, swish, crack, snap, plop; the end of the rod snapped off and slid down the line and disappeared into the water; not a good start to a fishing trip. I packed the shattered remains away, then sat by the fire for the rest of the evening contemplating my Paris dilemma. I’ve always been a writer though I thought, even before I knew I could write I was a writer. So why is it that now that I do know I can write, I can’t write anything? Maybe it’s just a phase I thought, one of those blank spots you get now and then. Maybe if I just ignore it, it’ll go away. I closed my eyes.

I went for a walk by the water. A man and his dog were walking there too, I saw them coming closer towards me as I shuffled along like a petulant child with my hands in my pockets, kicking at stones here and there. He was about fifty-five with dark, greying hair and a youthful tanned face and sparkling green eyes, his dog was young and spritely too, but had an age-old wisdom in its face, like most Labrador’s do. The man addressed me directly. “Bonsoir monsieur, why do you look so troubled. Do you not see where you are?”

“Yes I see where I am alright” I replied. ‘But I can’t see where I was before, and that’s what I need to be seeing right now”.

“Then you are in the wrong place”. He said. “Be where you are now, see what you see now, and live what you live now. The past and the future, they do not exist, there is only the Now. The place will present in a different now where the vision you seek will come, until then, drink wine and be happy”.

I opened my eyes again. The sun had gone down, and the fire was dimming slowly. I piled on some wood and opened a bottle of Red. ‘Thank you Laurent’ I said aloud.

Over the next few days, the wind blew and the rain fell down across the borders. I went to Selkirk where I tried to buy a replacement rod. I walked into a hardware cum general store where I hoped to make my purchase. ‘No’ I was told, they didn’t sell fishing rods here. Then the sales assistant told me about the pet shop up the road. “Do they sell fishing rods?” I asked her. “I don’t know” she replied, “but they do sell fish”.

I ended up going into Galashiels about five miles away where I bought a complete new outfit of Rod, reel, Fly line, leader and flies for the non too expensive amount of forty-five pounds. “So where can I fish around here then “? I asked.

“Och son, do ye no ken the Tweed is the best sport river in Scotland”? Alistair, the shop owner said, “and there’s plenty of good Troots around the noo, and quite a few Salmon too, you cannae go wrong”.

Don’t I need a permit to fish the Tweed though?” I asked.

“Oh aye, you’ll need a permit son; but if you go to this wee spot just oot of town…”

So he drew me a map of where I needed to go, and told me I could camp there and no one would know I existed.

Quarter of an hour later I rode the bike through a tiny gate off a quiet road, down a narrow secluded lane, and parked it beneath a tall umbrella-shaped tree, just metres from the mighty river Tweed. I couldn’t wait to get started. I opened my package of sparkling new gear, and put it all together toot-suite, then headed through the bracken to the waters-side and cast my flies onto the racing torrent of water. It wasn’t too long before I’d caught the first of what would eventually amount to a dozen or so wild brown trout. Feeling suitably happy with myself, I headed back towards the bike to make a coffee and get the tent set up for the night. As I walked back through the tall, tall grass, climbed the fallen trees, and dodged the scratchy bracken, the ground disappeared beneath me, and I fell five feet into a dried up river channel, landing heavily on my camera that rested at my side. Crunch, Craaak…aaargh! Two cracked ribs at least. I lay on the ground unable to move as spasms of pain coursed through me. I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think. All I could manage was ‘aaaargh…fuck!’ After several futile attempts at climbing out of the hole I’d put myself in, I eventually scrambled out into the light, and hobbled gingerly back to where I’d parked the bike. As I sat cross-legged by a small diddy-kai fire, poking twigs in to boil enough water for a cup of tea, I heard the metallic latch of the gate click open, then the unmistakeable creak of the gate swinging wide.

A big, round man appeared in full fly-fishing battle-dress. Chest waders, a Barbour jacket and fly-vest, and a tweed hat with various flies hooked into it. A large landing net hung from one of his shoulders, and pliers, tweezers, hook disgorgers, a magnifying glass, Swiss army knife and all manner of other accoutrements swung like little pendulums’ from a multitude of lanyards around his neck. “Are you fishing here?” he asked me scornfully as he rolled to a halt holding a twelve-foot rod.

“Well I umm… I think I’ve cracked a rib or two actually”. I looked at the patches on his vest. ‘Trout fishers Assoc.’ ‘Salmon fishers Assoc.’ Tweed River Assoc’. Bailiffs Assoc.’ Fisheries and Wildlife River Management Assoc.’ ‘Invasive weed control Fed.’ ‘Scottish Borders Rivers Warden’. This was a man I probably didn’t want to meet whilst fishing in Scotland without a permit.

“Cracked a rib you say…what”?

“Umm yes, what? I fell down a hole by the river and landed on my camera”.

“Landed on your camera you say, down a hole…what”? My name is James,” He said, thrusting a huge meaty hand into my face”. James Bonnington-Malesbury actually, but mostly I’m called Bonnie. You can call me James; I’m the secretary of the Tweed River association”. I stood to shake his hand, wincing with pain as I rose. “So are you fishing here”? He repeated.

“Well I thought I might, but I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to”

Do you have a permit”? I looked kind of sheepish at him. “Well you have to have a permit you know, we can’t have rabble turn up here just willy-nilly can we, what ever next, what”? He looked at my bike and the Aussie flag sticker proudly displayed. “Australia you say then is it; you’re an awfully long way from the Antipodes, Ben Kelly and so forth what”?

“What? Ben Kelly”?

“You know, Ben Kelly the bush-tucker man, Life wasn’t meant to be easy and all that twaddle what”?

“Oh right, Ned Kelly the bushranger, such is life”.

“That’s the one; he probably didn’t have a permit either. Hahaha…never mind, shot at dawn through the chest”.

“Hung actually”.

“What?”

And so it went on till my water boiled and I offered him a mug of tea and some insight into an Australian national hero. Bonnie was also president of the Invasive weed control federation, and sat on a panel that decided who could be a river Bailiff and who couldn’t. At the end of the day though I still didn’t have a permit to fish here, so after we’d discussed everything from Salmon spawning habits to the mating rituals of highland Otters, and he said ‘shall we wander down for a fish then what’? I was quite pleasantly surprised.

“I may set the rules” he told me, “But I’m hardly Dirty Henry am I, what?

“Who”?

“Dirty Henry, Carl Eastwood, you know, do you feel lucky punk…the enforcer what”?

“Oh right. Sphincter says what”.

“What”?

As we wandered down to the riverside, I asked if he’d mind me camping beside his beautiful river for just one night. ‘There’s no camping allowed by the Tweed’ he answered quite indignantly, then put a finger to the side of his nose and said. ‘but if you don’t say anything, neither will I…tally ho’.

And so it was that I spent the night camped by Scotland’s premier sport fishing river, catching Trout on one of it’s prime beats without a permit, but with the full permission of Bonnie, the secretary of the Tweed River Association,

The following morning the rain was pouring down, and as I sat there in the tent doing Sudoku and drinking tea, my will to keep going went downhill rapidly. As soon as the rain stopped, I packed up my bike and headed back to Gorebridge, bedraggled and in pain.

Back at Simon’s place I revisited the Paris travel article and realised it wasn’t really that bad after all. Sure, it still needed a lot of work, but at least I’d made some inroads into getting something on paper. As Laurent had intimated, there is a time and place for everything, and maybe here and now just wasn’t it. I thought that maybe when I got back down to Somerset and did the week’s work I’d promised to do, I’d be able to get back into the swing of it all again. A week turned into another week, then on Friday the 23^rd July I loaded up the bike and rode on down to Somerset, where I had a date with the former CEO of Pepsi cola.