The evening after the Pompidou Centre, the ever-wonderful Soledad from L’Atalante picked me up from my hotel and we went on the Metro to Scylla, the only bookshop in Paris that specialises exclusively in fantasy and science fiction, for a signing session. Many thanks to Xavier, Scylla’s owner, for putting on the event. I signed books and chatted with the very cool people who came along, including Mélanie, a translator, who helped me a lot, Anne-Elise, a fellow fan of anime and bishounen, and Nicky, who dubbed me a ‘perverted geek girl’, a title I shall wear with pride, and who, we eventually figured out, was possessed by Cthulhu:

Signing at Scylla:

It was this long, I tell you…:

Thanks to Mélanie for the photos above.

Afterwards we went out to a French restaurant, where I had perfect scallops in a buttery, strongly flavoured sauce (maybe a tad too strongly flavoured, for my taste, with something as delicate as scallops, but still incredibly nice) - thanks again to Xavier for shouting me. To my amusement, even the French people didn’t know what everything on the menu was.
I had a great time indeed, and hope I’ll have the opportunity to catch up with these guys again.

On the subject of food, Adri (the desk guy) insisted that I can use the hotel kitchenette’s fridge and microwave. I’ve bought a packet of cappuccino sachets, slashing my drinks budget by about 90%.

Joe and Adri:

The dark matter known as Joe:

Busy day today. This morning I took myself down to the Centre Pompidou to see some modern art. The permanent collection was closed for renovations, but my main aim was to see the Vija Celmins exhibition. Her exactingly executed drawings of the last 30-odd years present the surfaces of oceans, deserts, the moon and Mars, stars and galaxies, and most recently, spiderwebs, always copied from photographs. Celmins has said her images ‘dispel romantic notions of nature’s sublime and instead embody a feeling of quietude and remove’. However, I found that many of her drawings stirred rather than dispelled romantic feelings in me. While the photograph, rather than the views themselves, may strictly speaking be the subject matter, I was caught up in her empty ocean waves and glowing galaxies. Whether I respond to a piece of art, my view of art in general is that whatever from it takes, it is the work of the mind of the universe. As far as we know, we’re the only conscious matter amongst all those galaxies, and so, when we look at those galaxies, we don’t look only through the eyes of insignificant ambulatory dust. We look through the only conscious eyes we know the universe has; we wonder with the only conscious minds we know the universe possesses. So when I look at Celmins’ images of the vast ocean and the incalculably vaster star clusters, I can’t help but respectfully disobey the intruction to feel distanced. If these pictures brush me with a sense of the spirit hovering over the face of the waters, l say let them go ahead and do it, because life doesn’t provide such feelings every day.

I’ve always appreciated art that takes the loneliness of distance for a theme, be it physical distance or the psychological distances between people, or both. (Edward Hopper and Russell Drysdale are two of my favourite painters, for instance.) But it isn’t a morbid love of the spectacle for their own sake that attracts me to these artists. Rather, it’s the way a lonely image calls - and the sense that the call must be very strong, like a foghorn or the beam of a lighthouse, because it has had to cross such a distance, yet it has somehow got through. There’s no grandeur in loneliness itself. The grandeur is in the distance to be crossed in order to close the gap of distance, and in the act of crossing it. Because of the distances they evoke - and not only imagistic distances of space, but distances of time that come into play with the realisation of the many monotonous hours it must take to make them - Celmins’ images evoke this grandeur for me.

At the moment, I’m somewhat certain that the plastic arts can’t both evoke the distance of separation and close it in one individual piece (though I’d welcome disagreement on this). There are works that can do one or the other, but not both. Music can, however, and dance, and writing, because these arts occur over time, enabling the distance to be evoked at one point and then conquered at another. There’s a haiku by Issa that has been one of my favourite poems since the first time I read it:

No need to cry out -
wherever you wild geese fly
it’s the same floating world.

I’ve never been able to articulate why I love this particular haiku so much. Now I think I might have found the answer. In my reading of it, it both creates a scenario of immense lonely distance, and reveals the distance to be only an illusion, effectively in one and the same moment. In the real world, for anyone except a mystic, the lonely distances may always be real; but within the reality of the haiku we’re allowed a perspective that knows the yearning to be over.

Most of the rest of the floor was given over to an exhibition of the moving image. The majority of the art films and installations weren’t my cup of tea, but I did like Claude Leveque’s Valstar Barbie, which somehow reminded me of the half-conscious sexuality of my young girlhood, when I was quite able to suspend disbelief of the fact that I was a child with a pot belly and skinned knees and believed faithfully in the transformative power of anything pink, shiny and glitttering. The poverty of the large space, empty except for the giant shoe, the three rather meagre rings of pink lights, and some billowing strips of pink-lit fabric on the walls, called to mind the makeshift efforts of the dress-up box, a bit of Mum’s jewellery, a plastic mask from a showbag and a bit of old tinsel.

Turning a corner further down the hall, I was more than a little surprised to see, amongst all the grainy video projections, two photographs of steam engines by O. Winston Link. I couldn’t tell whether they were part of the nearby installation or there on their own behalf.

Here’s ‘Washing J-Class 605′ with a reflection of a window in the glass:

‘A world without steam engines would be almost as bad as a world without women, Beethoven, autumn foliage, or peppermint-stick ice cream,’ Link wrote in 1957. He died in 2001.
O. Winston Link’s photos at allposters.com

Other photos -

The Centre Pompidou:

Cosmic warrior Rambo VIII:

My duel with Rambo VIII:

A scultpure outside the centre:

Fountains outside:

View from the escalator:

Today I wandered down to the Place des Vosges, where Cardinal Richelieu lived (at no. 21) and Victor Hugo (at no.6). In Richelieu’s time, when the central area was a lawn, it was a favourite place for duels, which spectators would watch from the windows. It’s now a park with art galleries, antique shops and fashion boutiques in the arcades. In the window of Vivendi Gallery was a sculpture of a bull made of smooth river rocks bound with wire, and rough bronze. I loved the physical power and degree of character in this piece. There were also two horses made in the same manner, both of them great pieces, but it was the bull, with a blunt stone for his head, that filled me with the happiness of discovery. The name of the sculptor, a Chilean, is Palolo Valdes. (Go to ’sculptures’ on the gallery’s site and click ‘Palolo’ to see his work.) A funny thing: years ago I started a story (that went nowhere) about an artist who made pieces very much like this. He was working on a state-sanctioned architecture project, but at night he made animals out of stones and wire. They were illegal because of their nonconformity to standards of beauty. He gave a few of them to a little girl. Then I couldn’t see what happened next, and didn’t know what I wanted to happen. Anyway, it was cool to see their cousins in the real world. As I said to the gallery owner, and he agreed, despite the roughness of their formation, these sculpted beasts have extraordinary lifelikeness and individual personality. They’re like masterful sketches given weight in solid stone and bronze. The plastic arts are timeless; they hold something in a moment. Palolo Valdes’ bulls seem to be straining to burst out of art’s moment into real time - butting at the walls of reality, clamouring to snort and charge and paw the ground and eat grass and have sex with cows.
An article in Spanish about Valdes, with more pictures.

Another place I liked at the Place des Vosges was a shop selling perfumes and scented products from the Basque country in the Pyrannees region of France and Spain. Many of the scents were luscious, but none were quite right for me. A characteristic of them all was purity of aroma - so that the “Jardin de Buddha” absolutely smelled like a garden, for instance. However, there was something a bit not quite right, to my taste, about the gingerbread perfume and the caramel room spray. I don’t really want me or my house to smell like confectionery. And I could have done without the sales assistant’s overbearing manner. But still, amazing perfumery.

West along Rue Francs Bourgeois, I found myself deep in clothing boutique and atelier territory. However, I wasn’t in the mood even for idly trying things on. Instead, I enjoyed poking my nose in the antique shops that cropped up occasionally. If not dirt cheap, a lot of items didn’t seem ridiculously expensive, either. I ended up buying two small 1930s vaseline glass shot glasses with a pretty design of grapes and leaves. I like to have a small liqueur nightcap, and it depresses me to drink it out of a boring glass. I’d been under the impression that uranium glass glows in the dark, but having looked it up again, I see that it only glows under UV light. I’ll have to carry one of my glasses around in case I run into some UV light to test it with.

I also came across a L’Artisan Parfumeur shop. L’Artisan makes two of my favourite perfumes, Passage d’Enfer and Timbuktu. I went around inhaling until my head swam and tried two that I hadn’t tried before: Fou d’Absinthe and Dzongkha. I liked the artemisia smell of the absinthe one, but didn’t feel it worked as a perfume on me - too green and herbal, perhaps. Dzongkha, on the other hand, was very tempting. It’s by Bertrand Duchaufour, who also created Timbuktu. Here’s a review of it. The reviewer writes, “It realistically conjures up a series of atmospheres and places inviting the mind to travel to distant places of memory and imagination.” That’s how I feel about Timbuktu, as well. I just might buy a bottle of Dzongkha; but I want to check out the Serge Lutens boutique first. (But oh…I’ve just discovered… you can buy perfume on Ebay! A new bottle of Bulgari Black, my eternal favourite, for $18.99? Lord, I feel old and dumb for never having thought of Ebay. Well, I’ll try out the perfumes in the boutique, then see what I can scavenge online.)
Speaking of buying bottles, I wanted a little of something to baptise my shot glasses with, and found it in a wine and gourmet food shop on the corner of my street. It’s called Douce, and it’s a mixture of pear brandy and cognac. What I like about it is the way a clean taste of pear fruit lingers on in your mouth long after you’ve drunk the last drop. I might buy a bottle of the fig version to take home. But it only comes in a large size. Oh, dear.

Btw, the problem with IE should be fixed. Looks like the only link that was working under IE was the ‘register’ one. Now all the links should work, and it shouldn’t be necessary to register in order to post comments.

Heroically saving money, I wrestled my luggage onto the metro at Gare Montparnasse rather than take a taxi. I’m staying at the Hotel de Nevers on Rue de Malte, near Place de la Republique. I was greeted on arrival by a large black cat, Joe, who has the mien of a bouncer, but melts when you scratch behind his ears. The human staff are pleasant, especially the (Lebanese?) desk guy. There’s free internet in the room, though the only working power point is in the bathroom. The desk guy found me an extension cable and reminded me not to leave it plugged in while I was taking a shower, just in case.

It’s less cold here than on the coast. I went for a wander in the evening, sans parka and gloves, checking out the area. It’s grungy-trendy, busy, full of restaurants, with cuisine ranging from traditional French to African and Tibetan. Prices are actually a bit lower than in St Malo, and takeaways sell dishes by the 100g, so you can buy just as much as you need. The quality of the takeaway food is very good - no glutinous horrors or gristly lumps. I wandered down Rue Oberkampf, notable for its quirky and bohemian clothing shops (ok, not everything here is wearable - a dress like a giant blue felt cone, anyone?), and some Parisian ghost whispered to me that I should turn right. Just around the corner I found the Cirque d’Hiver, the Winter Circus, all white, red, gold and blue, like a magic pavilion.
Elizabeth Bishop’s poem…

My room faces a hammock shop, a nice reminder of the town of corsairs. I really loved St Malo. It was small enough that you could have a sense of knowing the whole place, and therefore you could love it. But when we say we love a city, what do we really mean? If I say I love Melbourne, I mean that I love a few parts of it that are special to me because of their beauty or eccentricity, or because of childhood associations, and that on summer evenings I can love the trashy and lonely Edward Hopper vistas of the outer suburbs. To love something, I have to feel I can get my arms around it. So I doubt I’m going to love Paris in that sense, since I certainly won’t be able to get my arms around it. But I know I’m going to love being here, wandering around and discovering whatever I can discover in two weeks.
A final note on St Malo and its corsairs - I found the website of the artist who did the rum bar sign, Alexandre Barbera Ivanoff.

Basil Poledouris is dead. He passed away a week ago, on November 8th, but I’ve been out of touch with news. At Utopiales an interviewer asked me if I had any writing habits. One is to listen to instrumental music on constant repeat to get me in the right mood. While writing the fight scenes in The Etched City, I listened almost constantly to Poledouris’s soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian. One of my favourite films, and favourite film scores. The interviewer told me he listened to Conan as well, as did other writers he knew, when they wanted something dramatic to get their blood going. I think I’ll put it on now.

Well, that was interesting. Having noticed that the cheap but nice-looking pashmina shawl I’ve been using as a scarf could do with a wash, I blithely laved it in the sink as I’ve been doing with everything else. Though I only used lukewarm water, a torrent of indigo dye spilled out. In a word, bugger. It’s now an hour later, and I think I’ve gotten away with it – wrung-out shawl draped over large paper bag over inside-out flannel shirt over chair in front of heater, all lakes and rivers of blue dye mopped up. But I didn’t have time to wash it properly, so it still smells like a goat. And my fingertips are blue-black – if it doesn’t come out when I wash my hair I’ll have to wear gloves today or people will think I’ve got gangrene. At least the blue dye doesn’t seem to have made a mess of the other colours. This is the second garment I’ve done this to in a month, the other being a pair of Thai cotton pants that I liked very much – it was blue dye then, too, and it did run, all over the fetching pattern of red and yellow flames on the front. My new blue jumper bears a logo telling me that it can be washed in water. Wait and see, I say.

I feel rather guilty for nearly having painted the room blue, as, when I leave, Natalie presents me with a box of Breton biscuits. The box is a nice solid tin with a picture of St Malo on the lid, which will make a good lunchbox for picnics. I rather love decorated biscuit tins (memories of cat tins and flower tins in grandmothers’ and great aunts’ cupboards, full of goodies not usually permitted at home), but this is the first one I’ve ever actually owned.

On Monday I went to see the old town of Dinan. Most of the towns I’ve seen in Brittany so far have been built mainly of stone, but the old centre of Dinan is full of half timbered buildings like these:

Dinan except that is very pretty and obviously thrives on tourism. Creperies were as much in evidence as in St Malo, but Dinan had a lot more small arty-crafty shops and galleries. It also had a couple of beautiful, big, dark old churches that were cold and smelled more like underground caves than buildings, and a park with a panoramic view over the valley of the river Rance.

A street:

Pub sign (I’m still trying to find the translation for this):

A window display:

An old vine:

Rance valley view:

While food seems pricey, clothes here are all right. You can certainly find very expensive things, but you can also buy quite good clothes for surprisingly little. I picked up a couple of sweaters (wool/silk, only 10% acrylic) for E20.00 each. They wouldn’t have been any cheaper in Bangkok, and probably would have cost more. bIt’s also nice to see shops full of non-frumpy clothes for grownup women. That may be the secret of the famous French ‘elegance’. Actually, I haven’t seen a lot of really elegantly dressed people (everyone’s rugged up in parkas and winter woollies), but I haven’t seen many badly dressed ones, either – and when you look in the shops, you can see why. Most of the clothes are wearable, in classic colours that suit most folks. They’re not all for 16 year olds to wear to rave parties and throw away next week, and there’s a blessed scarcity of pink (the bane of Bangkok shopping). Individuality seems to appear more in actual garment design and tailoring than in colours and decals. In other words, it seems as if it’s simply more difficult to dress like an eyesore here.

Nothing much is open here on a Sunday, including internet cafes. But the one in Sillon’s open in the afternoon, so down I go to check mail and make posts. As I type I become aware of a quite pungent, almost animal smell. Surely, I think, it can’t be the man next to me. Surely it can’t be me?! The mystery is solved after about half an hour, when a sleek canine head appears from under the desk, followed by a paw that rests briefly on my thigh, before the whole dog emerges. This dog is followed by another, smaller, that trots after it. Dogs seem to be welcome almost everywhere in St Malo (a couple of women were carrying small dogs at Utopiales, too). However, for a city so well supplied with fish, St Malo seems to have very few cats. In fact, I’ve only seen one – sitting in a field on the outskirts of town.

Quite a few houses here in Corsair Town have lace curtains with various patterns of ships. Am yet to see any with a skull and crossbones motif. In the harbour by the town is a scaled down replica of the Renard, the last ship of Robert Surcouf, which does bear a discreet pair of cutlasses crossed over an anchor on its sails.

Le Renard:

As I was photographing it, a French couple came by and told me about the ship and Surcouf, including the story that when he was taken prisoner by the English, the English officer said to him, “You French fight for money, but we English fight for honour.” Surcouf replied: “Each fights for what he lacks.”

People here certainly don’t lack for kindness, that’s for sure. Everyone I’ve met, from staff in shops to fellow passengers on trains, has been kind, very ready to help a befuddled tourist, and fully tolerant of my barely existent French.

Walking home at night, I take the pavement along the harbour wall on the ocean side. Unexpectedly (but perhaps it’s normal) there’s no wind, making the night not so cold. The tide’s far, far out, the nearest waves distant grey lines between the pure black sea and the darkly shimmering sand. It would be unthinkable to run down there over that wet cold sand and wade into that black water, but of course not physically impossible – only uncomfortable, and perhaps foolish. Because it’s unthinkable, I wonder about what night happen if I did it. Would I get to some other side of life, where the unthinkable, from then on, would always be less unthinkable, the impossible more likely? Would I have to go further, out of my depth, risking hypothermia and drowning? But even then, the promise of another world would retreat like the tide.

The street lamps give me a shadow down on the sand, a huge one, the biggest shadow I’ve ever had. A man is walking along the beach towards my shadow. In a little while he walks through it. What shadows am I walking through without knowing who or what casts them?

And once more, down at the harbour. The water’s black as ink, bright as glass. Stairs go down from the wall, turning blue under the water, vanishing slowly. I step over the rusted chain and sit at the top, looking down. Again, there’s the hypothetical temptation to go in, go under – even to drown, to die, to find out what’s on the other side. It’s an illogical impatience. You’ll find out one day (or not find out, if there’s only non-being), so why rush it?

But thoughts of drowning aside, there’s still the fantasy that if you did go in, with the right intention, something interesting might meet you before it’s too late – that your diagonal action might inspire, or even enable, the action of a diagonal being, to used J-F’s excellent term.

Well, bishops do move diagonally, heh. When I’m old, perhaps, and have less to lose…

L’Alchimiste, as I briefly mentioned, is decorated like a hybrid of magician’s study and beach bum’s hideaway. On one wall, bookcases stocked with old volumes; a piano; and something like a church pulpit projecting from a small gallery. On the other wall, straw hats, maps of Martinique, a drape with gold tassels, bottles glowing invitingly, like elixirs, in amber light. One of the specialties here is rum flavoured with real fruit in the bottle. I try a hot chocolate with fig and raisin rum. ‘Delicious’ only begins to describe it.

Thinking more with my feelings than my thoughts, I keep brushing against the idea that pirates and magicians have something fundamental in common beyond an interest in gold, esoteric or exoteric, and elixirs (add the option ‘exotic’). Memory supplies this verse from a book of rubaiyyat by an Iranian poet, Ghods Nakhai:

By our own Effort we acquire our Skill,

Our own Way follow then, for Good or Ill.

Then, both Worlds seizing from the Owner, we

Raise our own Paradises where we Will.

“Mount-Saint-Michael-at-the-Peril-of-the-Sea is an inverted ship. Its sails are absorbed by the sands and the waters. Its hull is the Marvel. Its spire, overturned toward the firmament, is its keel. It is a vast vegetation of walls, towers, columns, sculptures, a cosmic tree spreading its foliage inspired toward the mystery of origins.” – Liner notes for Kirjuhel’s Echo of Mont-Saint-Michel.

I thought I’d seen all that I ever could want to see of castles, churches, abbeys, temples, semi-ruins, and stone edifices in general. I’m glad I went to Mont St Michel. Fort, monastic retreat, prison, tourist attraction, whatever it was, whatever it is, it’s a magic mountain. All the elements are here, flowing around each other. Air, the water of the sea, the earths of sand and stone, the fire of the sun and the golden angel (a figurehead?) on the crowning abbey, known as the Marvel; and trees and moss, and shadows, and birds; there are winding cobbled paths, one hardly more than a crevice; green gardens on stone terraces; the abbey itself, whose windows are pale green, so that there’s a subaqueous greenness to the air inside; the cloister, a garden in the sky, with its arcade overlooking the sea; pillared crypts and halls below; unfinished corners, where stonework gives way to natural rock. Physically, there’s something of Gormenghast about it, but it’s hard to imagine Gormenghast’s troubled residents living here – though perhaps you could have when it was a prison, and didn’t have souvenir shops and expensive creperies at the bottom. I was very fortunate to have a day of perfect, clear blue sky, and went a little overboard with photos.

The Mount and the abbey:

Ramparts:

The shadow of the abbey on the sea:

More views down:

An archway:

A turret:

Approaching the abbey:

Inside the abbey (the light was much gentler, greener and more mysterious than this):

A window:

The cloister:

A much better picture

A couple of interiors:

The Licorne inn, dating back to 1610:

Don’t wash your feet here…:

St Malo is full of creperies, and I’d been told that I must try the crepes here. Crepes and pancakes aren’t normally my favourite dishes, but curiosity won out – and all I can say is, I don’t think I’ll ever want to eat what I formerly thought of as crepes again. On a few menus I’d seen ‘noix de St Jacques’. Wondering what these might be, I found a place with a menu translated into English. Scallops. Well, I love scallops. But on a buckwheat pancake? When it arrived, I had to eat my doubts. The pancake (a galette, to be precise) was thin, lacy, neither stodgy nor limp, but just nicely firm, cut in an attractive trapezoid shape, topped with five scallops arranged around a circle of finely chopped, flavoursome vegetables, covered in sauce. Four of the scallops were perfect; if I really wanted to quibble, one was a bit chewy. The vegetables and sauce were delicious.

At another restaurant I tried fish soup with croutons (proper big ones, not the little dinky cubes that were the only croutons I’d ever had before), finely grated cheese and rouille. Also quite delicious.

At the first restaurant I saw people tucking into enormous bowls of mussels, using one mussel shell to pick the others out. I’m not a great fan of mussels, so I probably won’t be doing that, but I’ll have to try some more scallops before I leave.

Prices here are, well, pricey, or they seem so to me; however, at least you get good food for your money. Drinks are proving to be my bane. A café au lait, a hot chocolate or a pot of tea is anything from an acceptable E2.50 to a ‘did I really pay that?’ E3.90 in these parts – which, when it’s cold enough that I want three a day, adds up. When I get to Paris I’m going to weigh the cost of a small kettle and thermos against that of three daily hot drinks for two weeks, and see which is cheaper – I’m betting on the kettle and thermos. As for enjoying the wine every day like I did in Eastern Europe, forget it. I don’t know what a bottle costs in a shop, but restaurant markups seem at least as bad as Australia, i.e. bad enough.

Happily, the supermarkets and boulangeries are excellent. I’ve been able to buy enough provisions – excluding drinks – to last 2 or 3 days, for about E12.00; just bread, cheese, salad, chocolate, and, er, tinned coq au vin (I figured that was the only way I was ever going to try the stuff. It was ok, buy I don’t think I’d order it in a restaurant.) I bought some expensive cheese from a boutique fromager, but honestly, it wasn’t any nicer than the blue cheese for a quarter of the price at the supermarket.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the coffee in France, so far, has seemed rather bitter. I’ve been adding sugar, which I don’t normally do. I miss cuddly Melbourne cappuccinos.

There’s one internet café near my hotel for E3.00 an hour and another, half an hour away but much more comfortable, for E4.00. This has been my other major expense. I’m going to have to cut back. Wireless networks seem to be floating around but I can’t get a strong enough signal to connect. According to the guy at the second café, finding a wireless connection isn’t that easy in France, even in Paris – which doesn’t bode well for my chances of finding one to piggyback on when I get there. I didn’t mind not having my computer in Prague and Romania, but days are quite a bit shorter now, so that I want to stay indoors more in the evenings, and I miss not having Google, news and chat on hand. But when I get to Paris I’ll no doubt find more to do after sundown.

As for laundry costs, I haven’t found out as yet. Against hotel rules, I’ve been washing my clothes in the bathroom sink and drying them in my room. A penny saved is a penny earned, etc. And this way I know they won’t shrink, too.

Walking along Sillon beach – the north-facing beach on the other side of the old town. Aquamarine waves skidding in, turning eau-de-nil as they skim over the sand. The colours remind me of our sitting room back home (not our flat; the house I grew up in), which always gave me the sense that its bay window really wanted to look out over the sea, rather than at the block of flats across the road.
The houses here, even the fancy ones, have a flattened look – balconies and projecting windows are shallow, as if the wind blowing against them has pushed them in, like pug dogs’ faces. This morning’s wind tugs at my scarf, gently strangling me. I can imagine this beachfront in winter, dark with rain, shutters shut. There’s a warning sign for big waves – it looks as if they can blow up over the sea wall when the weather’s bad. To my landlubber’s eye the sea looks cold and rough enough today, but there are some people out there in a tiny boat, and a boy in a wetsuit on a bodyboard.

I find a supermarket in the next street and do some shopping there. There aren’t any bags. After getting a gentle chiding from a woman in the line, I plead my tourist status as an excuse for not having brought a shopping bag of my own. Luckily my camel bag from Istanbul (which one gentleman at Utopiales liked so much that he took a photo of it, though not of me, which I suppose is fair enough) is big enough to hold my purchases, and I make my way home against the wind, stopping periodically for paranoid checks that my grated carrots in lemon and mustard sauce aren’t leaking (they aren’t, and, as it turns out, I will have to break into their container with a sharp knife).
Trees under the ramparts:

Sillon beach with grey sky:

A corner of St Malo, with a crabapple (I think) tree:

Next time: Mont St Michel