EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALNovember 9, 1998
Cameyrac et St. Sulpice
The au lait is liquid gold.
The yogurt brasse au fraises is a cloud on my tongue.
The boiled water bath is a magic kiss from head to toe.
Joni Mitchell says, "didn’t it feel good? Like we love our freedom".
We picked up our phone last night and didn’t put it down until
well after 1am. We spoke to our parents and grandparents, my brothers, and London -
setting up the IBM Worldnet account. Hopefully we have overcome our publishing obstacles.
Our house is like a cave. When Rich closes the shutters in the evening,
he closes any semblance of sunrise and the world. In the morning we sleep until our eyes
open. Then we lie awake and wonder what it’s like out there beyond the
shut-out-the-world-shutters. I cradle my au lait until I’m breathing in the
coffee grinds at the bottom of the bowl. Then I fill the yellow stockpot, light the stove
and run the bath.
There’s something about yellow metal camping-type cookware. When I
was in my third year at Queen’s I had a yellow metal camp kettle. My apartment was a
meat locker. By the time the tub was filled the porcelain had sucked all the warmth from
the water. I would fill the kettle and pour the boiling water like tea into the steaming
tub. Rich would pour a kettle of hot water over my hair. We would sit in that tub four a
long, long time, rising occasionally to retrieve the kettle from the stove.
This yellow stockpot is made of the same material as my camp kettle.
We’re living in the lap of luxury now, because the stockpot holds five or six
kettlefulls of boiling water—that’s about eight fewer trips to the stove.
We take Alfi a few kilometres down the highway to the Kiss and Ride.
Well, that’s what they call it in Ontario. I think it’s good marketing for the
public transit system. We park and take the bus into Bordeaux. You buy a small ticket from
the driver for 7.50 francs and insert it into a punching machine. It stamps your ticket
with the time of your ride. The bus is bustling. Shoppers, students, stroller-attached
mothers and a few prominently mustached women.
La Musee des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux includes many
landscapes and cityscapes of Bordeaux and the surrounding area by Matisse, Cassatt and
Kokoshka as well as many works by local contemporaries. A café on La Rue de la Port
Dijeaux features a snooty waiter who charges us 40F for two espressos with whipped
cream. In France this is called a cappuccino. We stroll through Vieux Bordeaux and
visit the Quinconces District, including L’Eglise Notre Dame (1684,
Baroque) the Grand Theatre (1773, Classical), Place de la Bourse (1698) and the Monument
aux Girondes (1894). This is a huge bronze statuary and fountains designed and built
to honour the deputes who fell under the guillotine in 1792, and also to celebrate
the Republican spirit.
The streets of Bordeaux are an homage to l’excrement du petit
chien. Kristina and Fergal had a name for the same phenomenon in Belfast. I will
translate it to La Ruelle du Merde. Walking through the street is a minefield. The
country is one of the most dog-friendly in the world, and yet the French have not yet
grasped the concept of the Pooper Scooper. Hence, the curbs are laced with shoe-scraped
brown icing and the sidewalks dotted with generous piles and miniature cocktail weenies
executed by sweatered poodles and ribboned Yorkshire terriers.
We can’t resist the stadium-sized supermall on the highway.
It’s enroute from Bordeaux to Cameyrac. After filling up with petrol we cross the
threshold to France’s answer to Costco. The store is too large to understand.
Allison Krauss fills our salon with velvet. Our evening is whiled away
with writing and singing.
