Chapter Two Paris The train gently glided into the Gare du Nord (The Station of the North) and my mind went back almost 50 years previously when I first visited this city as an undergraduate student in my early 20’s. Back then I had noticed the street cafes with their closely knit tables spilling out onto the footpaths. The narrow streets choking with myriad shops, cafes and restaurants, continually thronged with people passing through. The wide boulevards boasting their splendid ornate buildings reaching majestically up into the Paris sky. Their equally magnificent names which would forever be implanted in my memory, the Boulevard St. Germaine with its myriad array of bookshops, cafes and restaurants, the Boulevard St. Michel close by boasting an ornate fountain that gushed out of a gable wall spewing out endless water in constant cascades, its splendid façade standing proudly and defiantly as it had done so for years. The metro with its great labryrinth of tunnels...
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Chapter One Belfast to Paris The dull grey skies of Belfast momentarily gave way as a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds when I boarded the ferry to Cairnryan. Feelings of excitement mixed with nervous anticipation filled my senses. My journey had begun. I was determined that I wouldn’t fly at all. I had purchased an interrail pass covering me for 10 journeys over 2 months. I would travel overland by train and bus when necessary and by ferry when required. I was on this ferry just two years previously with Carmel by my side as we made our way to Ayr for a birthday party. Carmel and a friend had worked at a Butlins Holiday Camp there over 50 years previously. Her friend had met someone who worked there and had a fleeting romance with him. Unfortunately he was from “the wrong religion” and parental pressure would have proved too strong in those days so they drifted apart and like many similar types of liaisons at that time, they were thwarted by circums...
Journey of Healing Introduction I am classed as a widower. I was first labelled with that term when I went to register my late wife’s death. Somehow the shock of that term shook me to my core. I am now officially classified. Carmel left us after 41 years of marriage. 41 years of love and pain of happiness and turmoil of laughter and arguments. All the ingredients of a typical marriage. Yet she was my lover, my best friend, my confidant, my soul mate. I refuse to be defined at this stage in terms of a term like widowhood. That seems so final. We still are joined together in a special bond that surpasses grief and loss. She was and is someone who held a special bond in my heart even though she is physically gone. She is still there surrounding me, looking after me and our children and our grandchildren. Her passing was sudden and unexpected. The grief was thrust upon me its stabbing wound suddenly and surely piercing my heart with a pain that left me numb and traumatiz...
Busking in the Metro The metro always fascinated me. That great labryrinth of tunnels that transported the population of Paris here and there to their various destinations. Standing on the platform there would be a momentary silence where the tunnel would reveal its empty darkness. Then in the distance a rumbling sound could be heard which became louder and louder and suddenly like an angry serpent, the train would hurtle its way into the platform, its beaming lights shining ferociously, the sound of the wheels on the tracks and the rumbling of the carriages, followed by the screeching of the brakes as it slowly ground to a halt. The eerie noise of the claxon as the carriages are ready to open. With one flick of the handle the doors pull aside and out spewed the crowds onto the platform while those waiting to get on waiting patiently until the last person had alighted. There were any amount of metro stations that a busker could perform in. Yet they varied in their capacity to...
Paris During the 70’s when I was at college, my flatmate had introduced her to me and we realised almost from the beginning that we had something special in common, a love of singing together. Somehow there was a special magic as we weaved our music and songs that we had written separately, into a harmony that was reflected not only in our voices, but a common sound that the harmonies that our guitar playing provided, and in turn producing a musical foil to each other. Benedicte had grown up in a rural area just south of Paris and had come to Britain to improve her English by working as an au pair. Our relationship was one of friendship and mutual respect. Our music was the bond that would tie us together over the years that followed. That summer in 1975 was my first time in Paris. I had a couple of months off my university studies during the summer vacation and decided, on a whim, to try my hand at busking in the Paris metro. I took the boat train ...
Delos Legend has it that Apollo, the god of the sun was born here. The fact that the island is devoid of shade given its lack of high mountains and trees, therefore bathing its terrain in complete sunlight, gives some validity to that claim. Throughout ancient times Delos became a religious, cultural and commercial centre. Now only the ruined buildings and temples spread over the landscape are all that remain remain. The area is littered with fallen columns, sections of mosaics which once formed the houses of the rich. We visited a number of these ruined buildings. One of was known as the House of Dionysos which depicts a mosaic of the god Dionysos riding on a tiger. She was the god of wine and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysos was the main religious focus for its consumption. We also came upon the House of Cleopatra, no not her more illustrious Egyptian namesake, but a rich noblewoman and her hu...
Naxos I want to continue my recollections of our first journey exploring the Greek islands just over two years ago. The first island we visited was the island of Naxos. I stood on the upper deck of the ferry at the stern and watched the port of Piraeus slip slowly into the horizon curiously observing the ship’s engine churning up the waters like an angry storm. I was captivated by the frothy, churning water, its sight and sound left behind in the wake of the ship. People were sitting out on the decks, soaking in the morning sunshine, drinking coffee, reading books, some huddled together in earnest conversations. The clusters of islands stood like sentinels on either side of our ferry. Their looming presence displaying a unique detail of peaks and craggy mountain tops. Every so often we would spy islands that were fully inhabited, the tiny white buildings in the distance like little specks dotted precariously around the coastline. Each island loomed up briefly before dis...