A few weeks ago, I went back to London for the Student Radio Awards. I remember having a conversation about what a thoroughly British time we had. We drank, we chanted, and ran somewhat amok, then had a big greasy breakfast the next day.

I took two trains to London, divided by a couple of hours in Paris, where I strolled (/walked fairly fast as I really didn’t want to miss my train but still wanted to see a bit of the city) along the Seine, towards Notre Dame. I briefly popped my head in, for my sins, before taking the metro, then the Eurostar and reaching London at around half past four.

Happily my meagre 20 hours in the capital were efficiently used. I met many others from LSR at the station, so the adventure and excitement could begin at once. We traveled first to our hostel in Greenwich, then, all dressed up, took a taxi to the O2. Greeted by free champagne, we then tackled a three-course meal, [and wine] before the awards themselves could begin.

The awards follow a steady pattern. Radio personality after radio personality takes to the stage, to varying degrees of acclaim from the audience, depending on their level of fame. Every station mentioned is cheered by their contingent, as the shortlists, which everyone knows already, are announced. The Bronze and Silver winners are stated with little pomp, before the real prize – ‘Gold!’ is announced. The lucky/talented winners take to the stage delighted, and improvise a speech of sorts, whilst even the silver ‘winners’ are disappointed that they are not to get their moment under the spotlight.

LSR had 9 nominations, the (equal) most. But until the last prize was announced we had only one gold (well done Michael Blades and Dan Hudson). Were we not to own the night after all? The last prize is the most important – Best Station. Everyone can share in its glow of victory. And it requires the most work. And it is the grand finale of the evening. Bronze was announced. We did not win Bronze. Silver was announced. We have not even won silver. Have we missed out completely? Was this great journey of mine across France and the Channel and the south of England to end in anti-climax?

We won Gold.

This means we are the best student radio station in the whole of Britain. This was big news. We celebrated in the only way any young person these days knows how, by buying and then drinking drinks. We also chanted, football-fan-style. The letters LSR were crafted or bludgeoned any which way into familiar chants .

We even befriended Radio 1’s David Garrido, first welcoming him into our dancing circle, later surrounding him as he left, shouting ‘Garrido Garrido Give Us a Job,’ betraying our status as children of the credit crunch, the first generation to attempt to graduate in its gloomy midst, having already been the first lot to be burdened with a lifetime of debt from top-up fees, having already been told since school things will be just fine, that if we work hard enough we will be rewarded, not with happiness but with a bloody nice job. Or at least a well-paid job. Then, the plan was/is, things will be fine. But will they be fine?

On a night like this night we neither worry nor care. In our blanket of success everything is soft and wonderful. We have an airhorn, which we sound liberally. Attention! Attention! We crave it, for tonight we are winners. We congratulate each other on being the best station, not just in the eyes of the judges, but because ‘all the other stations are geeks,’ and ‘we have the best looking girls’ and ‘WE ARE THE DEFINITELY THE LOUDEST.’ We maraud around with incredible arrogance, like Bullingdon were it based on meritocracy rather than accident of birth, and the only merit required were radio victory.We hug then dance, then hug again, parroting our congratulations with exuberant sincerity.

Outside, as the more sensible book taxis, we are still the loudest, even faced with almost noone to direct our thundering pride at.

The next day everyone is still jolly, despite little sleep. We are still propped up by the excitement. We make our way to Kings Cross on the DLR, and in our exhilaration we mock the boring businessmen entombed in their glass edifices. We find a perfect café, and eat fried food. Then it is time for me to leave again.

On the train back, as I sleepily gazed out across anonymous French countryside, it seemed an awful long journey for one night, and all my friends heading north to Leeds suddenly seemed very far away. But it doesn’t matter. We won.

The mother looked rather exasperated from trying to stop the girl from blocking all the faceless train-riders and the little girl was getting more and more upset, for whatever reason children get upset on trains. Surely, thought everyone, a sadly predictable series of events would come to pass. The mother would get even more exasperated as the child began to cry, and passers by would look away uncomfortably, slightly annoyed at the loud noise. Despite no one being impolite by saying anything, their body language would give them away and the mother would maybe feel a twinge of self-conscious embarrassment to add to her already negative emotions. And the little girl would keep on crying.

We came to a station, and the people who had been getting off all finished getting off; they were replaced by the people getting on starting to get on. In they hurtled, and perhaps it was their general presence causing claustrophobia, or something else, but for whatever reason, the child did finally start to cry as people passed by her.

No sooner had she started though, than a kindly-faced old woman, a bit hunched over, but climbing the stairs as quickly as anyone else, put her hand on the little girl’s cheek for an instant, without breaking stride. As soon as she did this, the child sat down, and stopped crying, instead just silently staring up, wide-eyed, at the old women, whilst more and more people drifted past. The old woman didn’t look back, or even react.

I looked around, expecting to see a heap of impressed/grateful people, but no one else had noticed. I looked at the woman, who was now sitting down, but her face had reverted back to train-rider neutral. I looked back down the stairs. The girl’s mother didn’t seem to have noticed either. The little girl had turned around, but she was sitting down. She was still quiet when I got off the train some minutes later.

“With insomnia, nothing is real.

Everything is far away.

Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.”

I used to be very good at sleeping but recently during the week I have been sleeping only sporadically. I used to power nap with nonchalance, and lie in til it got dark whenever I needed to. In the past few days though I have awoken in the middle of the night, still knackered, but wide awake, feeling thoughts rushing through my head, to no end, until I have had enough of staring blindly at the ceiling and I read or listen to music then eventually, for a few insufficient hours, the night takes me once more.

But is there any point writing about it? I can just type in “insomnia quotes” or “insomnia lyrics” into google, to find little pre-packaged bits of commentary to validate how I’m feeling. You can do that for anything, gluing yourself to whatever mood you’re in, as if these thoughts were in some way noble, important, vital. Today people can follow any whim, justifying it with, and taking solace in, copies of other people’s thoughts. All the while with a nagging hangover from youth, remembering being told  “you are all special” and free do whatever they want.  People consume and regurgitate culture over and over, whilst they day-dream, or if they are lucky night-dream, about fame or adulation or appreciation for their own wonderful talent they won in the great gene lottery.

In my quest for rationalisation and justification of my thoughts, google threw up The Streets’ title track off their fourth album, “Everything Is Borrowed,” which I hadn’t heard in a long while. Whilst it resonated with me a little, I mainly found myself frustrated by it.

“This is my hour, I’m never going to bed.

The sky is still black, but begs to be red.

I just put my book down, but it begs to be read

I’m not nod, I’m not napper, never rest my head.”

It is almost good, the right sort of ideas are there, some of them approaching admirable, some almost insightful. But instead it fails, and is shit. Rhyming red with read is suspect at best, to start with. Any positive facets are horribly diluted by the sub-cheesy backing track, all strings and nostalgic nonsense, vomit-inducing Lilly Allen-lite parts, any interesting ideas lost in his half-baked lyrics, as Skinner simply states the obvious with clunking turns of phrase that are all the worse because you know he can do so much better.

All this brutally highlights his now stupid voice, horribly stranded between the wonderful first album’s crisp style and that of actual singing. It sounds woefully empty. I find it difficult to move beyond that first album where he talks his stark stream of consciousness, almost rapping, almost chanting, and you can imagine him head down, walking through the dark city streets, the lights and noise and sights rushing over him, all these thoughts spewing out of him naturally. This is juxtaposed perfectly with the minimalist beats and basic samples, all of it making epic empty space, aping the grey city.

Skinner’s later work is a far cry from this, now one can only imagine him struggling to slowly cobble together something sing-along to satiate festival crowds, and neglecting the perfect poetry of Original Pirate Material, where there was barely a word out of place. Instead a few ‘nice’ string parts will fool the masses into thinking this is of any worth. Of course it may be impossible to recreate that first album – Skinner is no longer a man from the streets, he is an international pop star. And we still have that first album. I turn off Everything Is Borrowed, and listen to The Same Old Thing, similar ideas, six years earlier, and whilst not the even close to best part of the album, infinitely better.

“Apparently, there’s a whole world out there somewhere”

Perhaps I should just consume more positive culture, shut down the bits of my mind that produce such rambling thoughts, lose myself in the relentless charge of time. But out here in quiet France there is not so much to do, not so much ‘real life’ to lose myself in, or at least not that which I am used to, me, the city-dweller, the pub-drinker, the gig-goer, the eternally connected. I ebb between welcoming this peace and being frustrated by lack of things to do. Not that, thinking about it more objectively, there really is a great lack of things to do. I have plenty of books, a whole language to learn, a town to explore, French people to talk French to, and much more besides. And of course the Internet, with its collection of almost all human thought, all human achievement and all human knowledge. And time, always lots of time. Should have plenty of time to do all these things.

“Contrary to our expectations when we set off like snails four years ago, we feel much more creative now we are back. We had imagined that in our other-worldly Italian life, with no obligations and plenty of time on our side, we would enjoy the most creative time of our lives. We thought we would get down to personal improvement projects planned for years, our evenings filled with learning to gilt broken picture frames, reading Dante in the original, playing the piano. Instead we found nothing so unmotivating as silence and hours. Rather, humans are at their most creative when they have the least time to be. There is a reason, aside from laziness or disorganisation, that we work better and with more exhilaration the more draconian the deadline.”

There is also plenty of natural greatness to admire. This area is blessed with great sunsets, and my room looks out upon them.

I can walk or cycle out to the countryside, amongst only the sky and trees. I cycle along the “chemin du train,” a greenway snaking out  of Pontarlier through the hills. The sky seeming massive now the horizon isn’t cluttered with buildings. This area is high up, so there is a nip in the air, but it is crisp and refreshing. As the day draws to a close mist begins to gather over the fields  by the river Doubs.

I feel that perhaps I have escaped from the hubbub of society. Except I haven’t quite. Pontarlier is not bustling, but it is by no means a village, and this path out of town is popular. Other cyclists and runners and walkers drift by. When I stop and sit on a bench above a river, with my breath condensing and adding to the mist, I can hear the roar of traffic, out of sight but not so far away. It is almost relaxing, this endless drone, a little like the white noise of the sea. Perhaps reminding me that whatever I do, I cannot escape the things that have shaped me, I cannot really “break out” {whatever that means} of this soft-blanketed society. Maybe I don’t want to, maybe I just want the feeling of escape without its harsh reality, maybe I, like everyone, else need this cocoon of familiarity, this choice our cars and our freedoms give us, this safety of our sheltered lives. Maybe at this juncture though, I just wanted the silence of nature.

To me, Pontarlier seems to be fairly rural. Perhaps this is inaccurate. Whilst compared to the vast conurbation of London it is far smaller, it is substantially bigger than the tiny villages that dot the landscape around it, and is a hub of sorts, people commute here or come here to shop. The centre of town has quite rustic feel, with some narrow cobbled streets nicely actualising my mind’s image of a classic French town. But Pontarlier has grown far beyond this, to high(ish)rise blocks of flats, and a sprawling industrial park on the edge of town. I made my way there the other day as the sun was going down.

Yes, that is a car, marooned on top of a tower, for reasons unknown.

It is very empty out here, particularly when wandering round on the weekend.

The sky is without clouds, and these massive warehouses and chain stores seem empty too, missing people, as most are closed today, but also missing something less tangible. They seem so impersonal and so ugly. They seem so uniform, clearly put up cheaply and in a hurry, so cynical and shameless in their purpose. Smaller businesses, like many of the shops and cafés in the centre, seem to have a more human purpose – to provide a livelihood for the proprietors, to be a part of the community. Whatever they sell, they at least seem to spring from the endeavour of a real, living, breathing human.

By contrast, these metal monstrosities, just dumped by anonymous corporations on the edge of town, feel soulless, even when they are busy. Consumer-zombies stumble round the brightly lit interior, dazedly grabbing ‘deals,’ products sold for the benefit of The Company, sourced from a million miles away by god knows who.

I’d like to hope though that whilst people will always remain, one day this impersonal way of doing things shall one day fade, industry is always changing. I am reminded of this as I reach the end of the industrial park, and head back towards the populated city. There are some factories, whose heydays have perhaps passed; there are vehicles full of people; there is an old train line now abandoned.

Being unable to sleep comes and goes.  Usually after a couple of nights, I catch up, and I lie dreaming all night.  I suppose sleep is just a ride into the next day, and there’s plenty to wake up for; I’m enjoying teaching, in general. The kids are fun to work with, and strong at English, in general, so it’s all, y’know, terribly fulfilling.

But rest can be good too.

]]> http://whatwasityouwanted.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/60/feed/ 0 kieranabroad http://whatwasityouwanted.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/france-week-2/ http://whatwasityouwanted.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/france-week-2/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:51:56 +0000 kieranabroad http://whatwasityouwanted.wordpress.com/?p=50 ]]> I wrote this then realised it was rather long and rambling, so, for the time-poor, here’s a handy short summary:

Weather less good than before, eager to stop “observing” lessons and start teaching. Went to Besancon, Saw a film, rode bike, went to Dijon.

Here’s the Real Thing:

The weather in my first week in Pontarlier was beautiful – every day a cloudless blue sky, the whole town bathed in gorgeous golden sunshine, giving even the most mundane of buildings a sort of quaint rustic charm. Every day ended with an impressive sunset, the red from the sun seeping from the horizon right round to the hills on the opposite side of town. As I watched these daily showcases of nature’s talent from my room’s balcony, it was almost as if I was on a summer holiday.

But if last week was summer then this week has been autumn, which shouldn’t come as a surprise what wit hit being October. The weather has turned, the glory of last week replaced by grey skies and showers, gloomy damp days that don’t go anywhere and fizzle out unspectacularly, as if the darkness of the previous night had never really gone away.

Even amidst last week’s rays the teachers and students spoke forebodingly of the long winter ahead, and that there wasn’t much to do here, but the other assistants and myself didn’t feel that way. This week I can see what they mean. With everything being so new, and so many things to sort out, last week was busy. We rushed round filling in paperwork, discovering new shops, spending the weekend being shown the area, trying absinthe, exploring caves. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Well, apart from the paperwork.

At this juncture it would appear I am setting myself up to announce a massive contrast. Instead this week and the last has been more like the weather – a little less exciting, a bit more routine, but not so bad really. Most of my days revolve around going into school and sitting in the staffroom trying to catch an English teacher, so that I can ask to observe a lesson of theirs. I usually exchange pleasantries with the other teachers, though they are often busy with marking and so I’m never sure whether to interrupt it to ask them how they are and talk about the weather and joke “I feel more at home with this weather. LOL!” and then gradually run out of things to say, as their gaze begins to shift downwards to their paperwork

As well as this, there are so many and such a rotating line-up of them sitting at the half a dozen or so tables in the room that I have begun to forget who I’ve met and who I’ve not. Almost without exception the teachers have been friendly and chatty, but there’s not massive amounts to say – we haven’t got a whole heap of things in common, and I am the same age as many of their children. In a way myself and the other assistants are stranded a little bit, between the teachers and the students. In one lesson this week I sat in on the students were post-baccalaureate ones, some as old as twenty. It felt bizarre to be on the side of the teachers but just one year older than those I will soon be giving lessons to.

Observing a lesson would seemingly indicate that I would be a silent witness in the corner, making notes and absorbing the magic of teaching, perhaps nodding slightly, ever-more knowledgably. Instead the lessons see me causing a bit of rumpus, disturbing the usual flow of things. I have “presented myself” in every lesson, telling the students I am from London and studying French and that I have no pets. Frequently the whole lesson is devoted to questioning me, as if I were a celebrity or a government spokesperson. The questions are more befitting to the former: “Have you ever met Cristiano Ronaldo?” “What’s your favourite nightclub?” “What football team do you support?” Incredibly, nobody has ever heard of Leyton Orient, though I did make a whole class agree to make them their favourite English team “because we really need it”. In general, the standard of English is very high indeed. Occasionally, when a student asks for the French equivalent of an English word I have used, the gaps in my French vocabulary show themselves, and I have to subtly ask the teacher, or remind them that I’m there to help them with their English and then explain it in English, as if I knew it all along. Although playing the role of the dictionary can be slightly tricky, producing succinct and concise definitions on the spot can be problematic, and the longer I ramble on the more confused the kids get.

Because of all this I feel in a bit of a funny position, I don’t actually officially start teaching for another week, so at the moment I am a bit superfluous, the appendix to the school body that functions perfectly well without me. Usually I will find an English teacher fairly quickly – there are 11 of them so it’s hard to go too long without seeing one, but sometimes I will be in the staffroom for a while, waiting.

Whilst I don’t really pick up much about teaching English when I do observe things, I don’t want to seem lazy at this early juncture. It seems to be working, as one English teacher, whilst not having any lessons for me to observe/take over, did remark to another how keen I was, after I’d asked her. I am not even sure how many lessons I am supposed to observe each day or week, no one knows, and there’s no timetable or record of what I actually go to, so I could probably go in less. It’s only about a 2-minute walk across the school grounds though, so its no great hardship. But the bad weather makes staying in a tempting prospect, though it’s not even that bad, just compared to last week.

The weather will get a lot wetter and colder, but at least soon I will know when I actually have to go in and be able to plan lessons and feel a bit more useful. Plus I will know that each journey is of merit and won’t be wasted.

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This coming Friday we are going to Besancon, the capital of this academie, for some sort of training.

Last Monday, we went to Besancon, the capital of this academie, for some sort of training.

We had to get there at 9am and the day was supposed to go on until 5, which seemed an awful lot of time to fill. As it was those organising it struggled to fill the time – we didn’t’ actually start until 10, and it finished at about 4.15, apart from for the German assistants, who seemed to fill their time more efficiently and finished at the advertised 5 o’clock.

As almost every German seems to have brought their car and are therefore their town’s official Driver Of The Assistants, so every other nationality had to hang round waiting they could depart. “Are you waiting for your German?” “Is this where we wait for the Germans?” were the questions on everyone’s lips.

A couple of people stayed to chat who had no German, and were instead facing an arduous train or bus journey, were commiserated by the rest of the group. “Maybe sometimes we can lend you our German?” “That’s not fair, you should demand your town’s requisite German from the relevant authorities”

One poor soul even had a German without a car. “Maybe you can ask for a replacement?”

The day was useful for informing and helping us with all the paperwork we have to do to inform the French authorities that we are here. Amidst this though, for some reason, they kept trying to flog us insurance, despite most people insisting they already had some.

Although the rest of the day was useful for meeting other assistants and sharing tales of remote French towns, as well as for the free food provided, it seemed a bit long-winded (an hour and a half for lunch seemed rather excessive.) We were given several boring speeches about the many good reasons for becoming assistants, as if we didn’t already know and needed persuading, and spent much of the day in a classroom “discussing” how we could be better assistants, which took forever and wasn’t much help.

No one knows why we have been summoned there again.

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Every Tuesday in Pontarlier there’s “Cineclub,” where they show slightly lesser known or older films every week. It feels like a bit of an event; everyone in the town seems to be discussing it in the day or two leading up to it, as if it were a premiere. They showed Waltz with Bashir this week, which was preceded by zero adverts, and one long passionate speech by an old white haired gentleman on the merits of the film.

I hadn’t seen the film before, and was a bit worried I wouldn’t be able to follow the French subtitles (it’s in Hebrew, I believe,) but I managed to understand it all fine. I can see why it has won so many awards. It is incredibly powerful and harrowing, particularly the finale, and at the end of the film, the whole audience remained in their seats for a few minutes, mesmerized and overcome by what they’d just seen.

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On Saturday we went to Dijon, about 2 hours away by car. I knew it was famous for its mustard but I did not know that it was a very pretty city, with many old wooden buildings and picturesque alleyways. We bought a lot of mustard, and sat in a white stoned square drinking cappuccinos, a speaking French. I felt very European.

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The big news in the house is that the married Nicaraguan girl is pregnant. Therefore she’ll be leaving in December. It is very strange to know someone of my age (well, 2 years older, but she’s a peer) who is pregnant. But I guess this is the future, married friends having kids. I’m not as young as I used to be.

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We were supposed to be getting the Internet in our flat, but this service has so far proved elusive. It was supposed to begin being magically pumped into our flat on Wednesday evening, so we waited in much anticipation, only to discover that it was mysteriously not working. The next day a visit to the orange store revealed that there was a strike on, so it wouldn’t arrive for another week. Though we don’t know how much to trust this, so it could be years.

Since my arrival in France there has been a postal strike, a strike by the kitchen staff at the school, and a strike by orange staff. These are only three that have affected me; there have probably been loads more. It seems the stereotype of the French loving to rebel is very accurate. Haven’t seen anyone in a striped jumper riding a bike, wearing a beret, with onions round their neck and a baguette under their arm though. Not yet at least.

So I’m back in McDonalds, sipping my coffee slowly again.

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I mentioned before that things are more routine now. This morning I slept in, and woke to find it was a little brighter than it has been, albeit fairly cold. Then I cycled around the town, as I’ve started to do since we fixed the bikes last years assistants left. I zoomed past boulangeries and boucheries down quiet french side streets I am beginning to get to know. On my way I passed a couple of teachers from the school, so I stopped and said hi. I reached the end of town, the buildings replaced by green fields. I cycled back, over the river Doubs, where kayakers play. I had a tasty lunch of French bread and strong French cheese.

It’s a nice routine.

Little by little though, various locations have revealed themselves to be communicatory havens – oases in a www dot desert. One is a cafe, only sporadically open, and now a wi-fied McDonald’s has revealed itself. It feels a bit illicit spending too much time in a fast-food joint, but I hope to rely on the employees not really giving a shit, as it’s only McDonalds and not some sort of family firm. But still I’ve been sipping my coffee slowly, just in case. It’s now empty but I’m keeping it well away from the edge of the table,so its emptiness cannot be detected,  as one particular employee has been circling ominously and the restaurant is filling up.

But anyhow, my first week.
I had a bit of a palaver getting here, as a delay to my Eurostar meant I missed my connecting train. I was a tad concerned – would I have to fork out multiple Euros for a new ticket? All these times I’ve been late, and clutched at various excuses to detract the blame that lay only with myself, and now the one time it really felt very important to be on time, (I had arranged to be met at the train station at 5, which is within school hours so easy for the teachers) I was late. And this time it definitely wasn’t my fault.

But anyhow the lady at Gare Du Lyon was very kind and just gave me a new ticket free of charge, so after hanging round the station for 3 hours, I was on my way again. I had to change at Fresne, a tiny town not far from Pontarlier. I considered having a look round the town in the 50 minutes I had, but a quick peek out of the station yielded little of interest. Indeed, little of anything. What struck me most was the silence at the platform, not a sound around, except for the rustle of my paper, amplified by the calm.

The sunset as I approached Pontarlier was magnificent. Red in the centre, deep deep red, then becoming orange, teasing its way into deep blue, no clouds in sight.
The silence of the empty carriage, couple with the fact I was going even farther away than the already remote-feeling Fresne meant I felt like I was reaching the end of the world.

Alone on the train, there was strange tapping sound as we approached Pontarlier. Apart from that no soundtrack, no people talking, just my own reflection on the window staring back at me, gradually increasing in visibility as the light outside diminished. Even the announcements of the driver were very faint.

Anyhow, I arrived, eventually, met by Christine who very kindly had brought some food for me as the shops were closed.

I am living with three 23-year-old girls. A German, A Nicaraguan, and an American. If I don’t come out of this year a lot more sensible, then I think I cannot be saved from my disorganised ways.

The week was by no means rushed or stressful, but I was kept busy enough.

Set up a bank account, sorted out getting the internet, filled in various forms, claimed keys and lunch cards and photocopying folders and all sorts. Sat in on some English lessons to get the feel of the school. These were amusing as the children asked us many questions, including if I wanted to buy a ticket for some concert happening in town. It was rather cheeky as she’d actually won them, so was out for a sneaky profit.

Pontarlier is fairly picturesque, and near even more beautiful surroundings. Pontarlier is famous for its Absinthe, and on Saturday a reporter from the London Lite (check it out on Friday) came to check out the absinthe festival going on this weekend. An English teacher was showing her round and invited me and another assistante along. It turned out well as, in a shockingly corrupt move to ensure favourable coverage/a really nice gesture of friendship we were all given bottles of the stuff to take home from one of the distilleries we visited. We tried lots of different kinds of the drink in many different locations around the town, including one right at the foot of a beautiful castle. Afterwards we walked up a hill, where you could see the Alps, and into Switzerland, and also visited an old fortress. It seemed to be officially closed to the public but this didn’t bother the teacher who was showing us round. We hopped over a fence, and explored the dark labyrinth like rooms. Strange witchcraft-like graffiti adorned the walls, and turning dark corners into mysterious rooms, it felt like the beginning of a horror movie, but we emerged unscathed.

Sunday we picnicked with more teachers, visiting caves just 20 minutes or so drive away from Pontarlier. Again the scenery was spectacular, and the friendliness of the teachers even more so. We were kept amused by an English teacher’s 3-year-old son, who loved the attention lavished upon him.

Now my time in McDonalds is almost up. There’s probably more to write, but my battery is low. I don’t start teaching for a week or so, instead I will sit in on more lessons, until I at last get my promised timetable.

I passed the days in a very relaxed mood. One day me , Pascal and the other Frenchman indulged in a spot of Petanque, a quintessentially French game, where you basically throw little balls at a smaller ball. It’s funner than it sounds, and the novelty of playing it on what must surely be Ecuador’s only Petanque pitch made it very good fun.

I passed the days either trying to surf, or sitting on the beach reading and writing:
The beach is beautiful with the tide out, the retreating sea level has left a shimmering mirror stretching from here in Canoa as far as the eye can see, to San Vincente, 17km away. Distant figures dance in the sea haze up ahead, their almost-silhouetted reflections dance too. The sun up above, peering through clouds, makes part of the ocean’s surface shimmer like gold, whilst the rest of the horizon curves round, blue in places, becoming whitey-grey in others, the clouds melting imperceptibly into pale sky.

Empty beaches hold so much mystery, the sea with its never-ending in and out motion, sometimes daring to reach me, other times just ebbing gently as if it were too timid, as if it had tamed itself with its perpetual calm sound, the unmistakable white noise of a thousand waves at once, looking like a thousand feathers marching out of the sea only to vanish upon reaching shore.

Cliffs to the north, a barely visible headland to the far south, behind me more cliffs dotted with hotels, full of tourists. So many people are around here somewhere but the beach is so peaceful still. Only  footprints in the sand reveal their former presence.

Later after the tide has retreated further the sand is mysteriously dotted with dozens of fish carcasses. Were they swept in with the waves, or dropped by careless fishermen, or…? So many unanswered questions. The birds who were circling ominously over the sea in previous days, are now gone, just one remains, hanging in the air as if held up by invisible string fastened to the sky, wings outstretched, looking down upon a little girl, on her own, tottering along the beach, tiny feet barely making footprints. Occasionally a quad bike will pass, zooming past the marks on the ground where earlier a family played baseball.

The sun is buried more deeply behind cloud now, yet still pokes through, its strength diminished somewhat, looking like a perfectly round peephole through the clouds into another summer’s day. The beach is teak, grey in places, horses now ride by over it, clip-clopping even on the sand, for it is damp and compact.

More birds have arrived, and now more horses, these new ones skulk around, riderless, like a teenage gang. No sign though of the gang of dogs I saw previously, who roamed round barking at their much better-groomed domesticated counterparts, the pets of tourists, who were not up for a scrap and cowered meekly behind their owner as the feral bullies tried to provoke them into response. But perhaps they will return soon, to be beside this influx of other animals gradually replacing the human crowd that was here earlier.

I get up from the sand, and stroll back to “Casa Blanca”, my home for a few days just yards from the sea.

Upon leaving Canoa, I manage my first ever hitch-hike. I wait for the last bus out of town (which is at 5.30pm), only to see it pass completely full and unable to pick up any more passengers. At a slight loss, I decide to wait, hoping to be able to hail a passing taxi. A few pass but they too are full.

As I start to become despondent, a cement mixer trundles along and stops just in front of. “San Vincente?” the driver asks. “Yes!” (or rather “Si”) I happily exclaim. He picks up another couple of girls who were standing nearby too ( I don’t know if perhaps his eye was caught by them rather than me, but I am happy to gatecrash). This is (surprisingly) the first time I have ridden in a cement mixer, and luckily there is enough space in the front cab so I don’t have to ride with the cement. In fact the cabin looks suspiciously like the front of the bus, with a drivers seat, the first row of passenger seats and an aisle between. Perhaps the owner had originally bought a bus but then decided the cement business was more lucrative and just chopped off the back.

It is at moments like this that I wish my Spanish enabled me to conduct any sort of conversation. The others start to talk to me, but it is very quickly clear that I understand very little, and am able to respond to even less, so they soon desist. I instead pass my time peering out of the window as the sun sets over Canoa, and I am reminded what a beautiful place it is. Eventually we arrive in San Vincente where I expect to have to pay a little bit but no, the driver refuses and points me in the direction of boats across the bay to Bahia, where I am to get my bus back to Quito. I guess in Canoa, with the couchsurfing and the free ride, just in case I had forgotten, I was reminded how nice people can be.

Since Canoa I have travelled up through Ecuador, stopping at the market town of Otavalo and am now in Bogota, after a 20 hour bus journey. Tomorrow morning I will take a plane to New York, and after about 28 hours there, another flight home, to get back to London on Thursday morning.

First things first, my illness. Being ill abroad is annoying, because, well firstly  being ill anywhere is annoying, and secondly there’s so many things that you could be doing, so many plans that you must shelve in order to recuperate lying in a strange room with no access to medicines or home comforts. Additionally being ill abroad when you are by yourself is even more annoying as there is noone to show you much sympathy or run simple errands. So being ill in Banos, I just slept on and off for about a day and a half, occasionally staggering out to buy things I thought might make me better.

The hostel was not the most sociable place anyway, so I suppose socially I wasn’t missing out on much. It was bizarrely incredibly full of Germans, the German Lonely Planet must have raved about the place. In reality it was alright, though there was little communal space, so it was hard to meet people apart from those in my own dorm. My dorm consisted of a couple who very much kept themselves to themselves and an Israeli guy who had both average-at-best English, and also terrible hearing, a conversational perfect storm combination leading to almost-comic, farcically stilted “chats.” I thought I heard him saying his hearing was bad because he got shot, but perhaps he meant something else.

So therefore in Banos I felt the solitude of the solo traveller a bit more, but, post-illness I had a decent time. I took a bike ride down a valley, which was full of Waterfalls. My guidebook is peculiarly keen to dub everything in Ecuador “The Avenue of the ….” and the route I took, aptly enough was the Avenue Of The Waterfalls. And very nice it was too, all downhill so easy enough, with great views.

I was a bit worried about cycling along the Ecuadorean roads, which are full of drivers that terrify you even when you are on a big sturdy bus, but happily much of the route was off little side paths that considerately took you away from the scary main road, so you could enjoy the scenery in tranquility.

And again, as is generally the case in Ecuador, the scenery was breathtaking. At times you can almost grow complacent, thinking such sacrilegious thoughts “well I’ve seen enough nice vistas maybe I won’t bother,” but then when you do, it is certainly worthwhile. I went in the late afternoon and as the path snaked round the valley following the river below, the low sun cast a brilliant light over the whole area. I eventually reached a small town with a particularly spectacular waterfall. You could climb up a waist-high tunnel until you were pretty much underneath it, and the sheer power of the water tumbling down into the tumultuous tempest below was awe-inspiring.

Happily you don’t have to cycle back uphill. I’d heard that you just hailed a passing bus and your bike went on top, but I was somewhat sceptical. Why had such a tradition sprung up just here, just on this route? Was it really that easy? I feared having to explain, using my absent Spanish, that “I would like it if somehow my bike could go on top of the bus, yes, on top, and could somehow be secured, though I have nothing to secure it with, and also I probably won’t be able to lift it up there, as, well, I’m not as tall as a bus, so if you could arrange that too that’d be grand, and what do you mean why don’t I just cycle back?”

Happily though, a man jumped off the bus, shimmied up a ladder, grabbed my bike, and waved me on. I never did discovered the mystery of how it stayed up there, but it was still there when I got off, and the same man shimmied up and brought it back down. I looked up, half-expecting to see some sort of bike rack, but if there was one then it certainly had some invisible characteristics.

I also visited the thermal baths, for which Banos is famous, but they were pretty underwhelming. So on I went to Canoa, which is on the coast, via the capital Quito, where I stopped a few hours at the brand new shiny bus terminal. It is very impressive, almost airport-like, though in order to bring crashing back to earth any illusions I might have had of being back in Europe. there was  a massive power cut there.

I took a night bus to Canoa.

The War On Dogs
Baños now, after an overnight bus that was fine as overnight buses go. Slept a moderate amount, dozing,  half-contemplating entering the realm of the fully awake, when I was catapulted there by a voice informing me of our imminent arrival in Ambato, a city an hour away from Baños. Turns out I was the only one disembarking there, and I was deposited somewhat unceremoniously in the outside lane of a busy road, with a flyover looming above. I scampered to the side of the road (to call it a pavement would be exaggerating) whereupon two dogs lurched out of some place unknown, eager to defend their territory with vigour. Taken aback and by surprise, I retreated, foolishly stepping into the road without looking as the dogs continued their onwards onslaught of animal aggression. Happily for my future, no cars, trucks or suchlike were passing and instead I snapped out of my semi slumber, in time to make some ground, back again to the side of the road, staring down my canine enemies until their barking began to continue at ten rather than two paces away.

Dogs here are not very nice. In Quilotoa, we were surrounded by two of them, barking ferociously,  as we strolled through what was otherwise a sedate and tranquil cloud forest. They were obviously trying to drive us away, but when you are surrounded, any way you go tends to be towards them, so it was a bit bewildering. Where is your logic? I felt like saying, but I know neither enough Spanish nor DogSpeak, lamentably.

Countless other times dogs have taken us by surprise. It’s pretty much always the same. I’ll see one dog, coolly  staring at me for a moment or two, only to immediately jerk into ferocious barracking as another dog hurtles in from round a corner, having mysteriously sensed the presence of something new to bark at.  They’ll then both edge forwards, a look of pained anguish on their face as if they were engaged in the noblest of causes, and my decision to pass by their particular bit of land was completely incomprehensible and wicked, egging each other on somewhat, until I remember they are only small dogs and that old adage “they’re probably more afraid of you than you are of them,” at which point I recover my bearings and stop backing off, sometimes brandishing a nearby pebble or handily-placed stick, which throws them into a state of confusion and panic.  They usually briefly stop barking, and scuttle backwards until they feel they are at a safe enough distance to continue. Then they continue barking, with added vigour, to make up for the embarrassment  of retreat.

But I know, I’ve seen through their veneer, and I continue onwards, occasionally glancing back, not that I’m scared or anything, but just in case there’s one exception to the rule, just to check. It’s the same everywhere, in the mountains, by the sea, in the town and in the country, Ecuador is a land full of a massive amount of paranoid but ultimately cowardly canines.

Now I sit outside, the sole cafe inhabitant. I have enjoyed a splendid, if somewhat uneconomical breakfast. I’m sure I read somewhere that it’s fine to loiter in Ecudaroean establishments long after the end of a meal, but I’ve kept a token amount of my coffee in the mug just in case I’ve misremembered the etiquette. I am sure it’s of no major consequence, owing to my aforementioned exclusive customer status, and I’ve just noticed the slightly eccentric middle aged Danish owner wander off some place else.

Orient are playing back in England, I wonder what the score is.*

The hostel seems nice enough, though I may have rejected an Austrian. I was not sure exactly what he said, even after he repeated himself, but I think he may have invited me to share his self-prepared breakfast. But as I couldn’t actually figure it out, I decided it would be more impolite to go outside and just start eating his hard earned food had he not even mentioned anything of the sort, than to do what I actually did, which was to mumble non-comitally about “possibly yeah in a bit,” which hopefully was in some way applicable to whatever it was he actually  said.  Plus I had spotted this cafe on my way to the hostel and quite fancied eating its tasty looking (and later revealed to be tasty tasting too) breakfast.

Did he think I would come out to eat with him? Will he be mortally offended? will he wait there all day, hoping against hope that I might yet appear? Am I overthinking things?

*We won! 2-1. As someone in the Brudenell Social Club once stood up and exclaimed, to applause from the general public, “I love football!”

I have gotten quite into this writing lark over the past few days, time on my own has led to much scribbling as well as much reading. Baños is nice, another pretty Ecuadorian town nestled in between mountains. I arrived very tired after the night on the bus and the previous days exertions up a hill in a storm,  and here is very touristy, full of extreme sport type things to do.  All that activity seemed unappealling. Was I growing tired of travelling, I pondered, had I turned into an old grump? I think not, I was just weary from journeying. A lie down and a hearty meal later I feel less cynical and less fatigued. I will spend another day here, I think a cycle is in order tomorrow, then head to the coast, via Quito.

I will write more tomorrow, perhaps.