J is for jam

It used to be that travel for me was all about trying new food. Or not entirely about that, but it was a big part of it. Whether exploring supermarkets or trying dishes I’d heard of, eating out, it was all part of the experience.

Heading to a country which is famed for its bread, its cheese…is great. Until you have intolerances for gluten and dairy in the family. At which point pretty much every snack van and standard ‘must try’ food is off-limits.

But we did have some nice jam. So that was good.

Sometimes the found item is the unexpectedly good thing when you are not expecting much. Don’t get me wrong, going to France, we weren’t worrying about food being disappointing. It’s just that it’s difficult when not everyone can have the specials.

But back to the jam. It was a mainstay for all of us, actually. Lots of activities, lots of travel and jumping between metros and RERs and lots of people. So when you get in at the end of a long day, kick off your shoes and breathe, a good snack is worth its weight.

Cherries. A good balance of set to jelly element, as well as the skin to add some bulk, some mouth feel. It worked on toast, on rice cake, stirred into yoghurt, all the important stuff.

Jam is a bit of a mainstay in any case. Good jam, on holiday, is both sustaining and also a treat. It lifts up the everyday element of the ingredient, makes it special.

We did find some almost-specials, it turned out. Some gluten-free versions of pain de campagne (country bread), even gluten-free madeleines. But the jam might be the more likely contender for my Proustian moment.

Some day I may publish some ersatz memoir ‘Jams I have known’, tracking my appreciation of jams sampled in different places. Gooseberry is Poland. Rhubarb is Scottish Borders/Northumbria. And now, cherry is for France.

A is for ambiance

This is what we came for, really. Not the big attraction for the younger traveller. (Ssh. Don’t tell.)

More a bit of wandering, watching, and soaking it up. The things that parents struggle for and, sometimes, the child permits.

Paris, I mean. You would hope so. I thought about A is for atmosphere, and decided on ambiance instead. Why not? This level of people watching feels a bit more rarified –
I’ll stretch for the less-everyday word.

The gift here is the discovery together: not just for us parents who daydream about the possibility of dawdling, but all of us, together. The mixture, not just of what we expect for atmosphere (though that too), but also what we find along the way.

The bridges where both sides are covered in padlocks. Padlocks with initials, with dates.
One even specially crafted, it seemed, to celebrate thirty years of marriage, destined for that bridge, that tiny space in the bristling metal jungle.

The pavement artist, genuinely preparing paper, taping it down, bothering to smile at my young companion who wanted to see what would appear.

The twentysomethings picnicking by the Eiffel Tower, Evian bottle and yards of baguette to hand. Shoes discarded beside them. Their world completely their own, unbothered by the figures with clipboards going from group to group on the grass, begging for money.

The familiar straw seats of Parisian cafes – there, set on a pavement below the tower, guarded round with plexiglass, little more than a box with tables and chairs inside. Yet still, the woven straw of French cafe chairs. (That was the closest we got to a pavement cafe moment. The pommes frites did make up for it though.)

The sudden fanning out of the skyline, below the Sacre Coeur. The first glimpse of that skyline – and mine of our junior traveller, in glimpsing it. The moving away from the crowds to hunt for the view that includes the Eiffel Tower. And more: the larger-than-life sticking plaster, somehow part of a wall in the buildings below us.

The moving up the Metro escalator, the catching of the breath to emerge and see central Paris really there, in front of you.

Where does observation stop and ambiance begin? I think it may be in how what we see touches our hearts. How it seems crafted for us, minted in the minute.

We had this before. Long ago, it seems, in the days of being a couple travelling. Sitting in a cafe, watching sparrows tumbling over each other in a flowerbed. Listening to the sea, and the regularity of the swell.

Somehow, these moments have lodged themselves inside me. They were tiny moments, there for the noticing, rather than the act of observing.

I can observe people, write about it even, and remember what I’ve written. But ambiance?
It is the shafts of sunlight still inside me, the way the scene steals back round me as I recall it.

If a found item is a work of art, as I started off this series thinking about, these moments seem the best example, really. I don’t choose to find them, or work hard to notice them.
I don’t even have to perform gymnastics to line up their opening letter.

Sometimes I choose to go to a place which I hope will repay the expectation. Sometimes I find it much closer to home.

Something tells me that there are far more of these moments than I realise.

O is for observation

I had forgotten the potential for people watching that travel abroad provides. How, I’m not quite sure. But there we were, abroad.
And there they were: people.

People. Just doing their thing. Families, mostly, that I watched. Pushchairs and backpacks, carrier bags of increasing sizes advertising the park we were visiting that day.

And yet. Options for people watching that I didn’t expect. Observing the conversations going on between other groups. A Dutch family asking about a Kuwaiti lady’s collection of commemorative badges.

A granny in a wheelchair, parked for what seemed like ages, while the rest of the family swooped and tumbled inside an indoor roller coaster. When the kids reemerged, they ran past granny. Dad appeared, walked on. Mum took granny’s chair and set off, but didn’t really speak to her.

All the ways to wear a headscarf, to observe appropriate long sleeved tops and trousers.
And yet. The Minnie Mouse headband, the big red shoes. The sense of a little girl being let out for the day – just one who was old enough to have a little girl of her own at her side.

The figures on the fast train home, asleep, or reading to pass another commuter journey. The jumble of languages inside the carriage. It was all there, little shards of lives, though in my own tiredness I found it hard to see more than one sliver at a time.

I was out of practice. I needed another go. I got it, with two days in town, ambling by the river one day, travelling along it the next.

The little girl on the boat-bus, bored with the journey, twirling and twirling between brother and granny and grandpa. When she leans in to kiss them, to demand hugs and attention, her brown summer back appears. Even in October, she retains that reminder of warmer months.

The flocks of girls with placename bags. One spells out Paris on each stripe. Another has Montenegro on hers. I am sure there are more now, I cannot remember.

The two boys with their peanut-shaped skateboards, bottoms wiggling furiously to propel themselves along. Keeping to their own territory, by a pool with a fountain, while older ones on more conventional skateboards racked up the miles at a higher level, beside a terrace cafe outside a gallery.

The succession of expensively uniformed staff from an exclusive hotel, all lined up at the back entrance, having a communal fag break.

The street is quiet as we pass, and I try not to stare too intently at the gold and the liveried jackets. I try to imagine the conversations indoors, the pleasantries that are expected in their work.

Observation is a found item in its own right. Done well, it can be a window into someone else’s life and circumstances. But what happens when we know little about the people we see?

Do we expand from what is before us to say: this is what this city, this country is about?
Do we wonder about the stories behind the faces, the reasons that brought them to this place at that time? Do they even wonder about our stories as we pass by? Do they observe us, in turn?

Observation offers lives that are separate from ours, yet ones where we glimpse the same humanity. The moments of grace, of humour. The point of unexpected difference – or similarity.

I am reminding myself that observation is something I can choose to find – as well as something that, in off-duty moments, may sometimes choose to find me.

G is for gravity

Never was I so happy to have gravity reintroduce itself to me, as after a recent encounter with a particularly neck-battering roller coaster. I think I am still having flashbacks.

The thing is, I’m actually quite sad about this. I used to love roller coasters. My dad and I had a thing about going on scary rides together, by which we meant roller coasters (rather than ghost trains). I even wrote a bit about that earlier this month.

I am out of touch with roller coasters, it seems. The ones of my youth were all outdoors.
It made a difference. You could suss out the ride in advance (usually in anticipation, as far as I was concerned).

You could see the drop ahead of you, and occasionally you couldn’t see the drop behind you as you pulled up a steep banked area, while suddenly knowing that you were due to fly backwards the way you had come.

Roller coasters have narrative. That I kind of knew before. It was usually in the name – things like The Cobra, one I remember riding maybe fifteen years ago. The name gave way to the shape of the ride. That was expected.

What I didn’t expect was the way the narrative has to wrap itself round the queueing area, along the ride, and out through the gift shop on the other side. But then, these are rides relating to films, and some of the queues take a while, and why not give the punters something to look at?

Quite nice of the makers, you would think. Queueing under cover too – a helpful touch. I’ve never been to a fun fair on a pouring day, but I can see that even a bit of light drizzle could helpfully be avoided if necessary.

But then more has changed than I expected. Roller coasters now seem to hide themselves inside more, too. That may be weather proofing, avoiding rusting of equipment. I think it may also be about surprising the traveller.

But what it came to mean was that the ‘scary’ rides were mostly indoors, in the dark. Some bits you got to see some light, but much of it was in the dark.

So yes. You couldn’t see the loop the loop coming. Nor the corkscrew. I did go forwards all the way through the ride, but that was all you could be sure of.

And on one of the rides, they advised me to take off my glasses. I sat through the whole ride, concerned about either dropping them from my hand OR crushing them if I got overly scared.

Thankfully neither possibility happened. But the item I didn’t want to find was the reappearance of dizziness that I’ve been trying to shake for the last couple of years, ever since an inner ear infection.

The signpost at the ride would no doubt tut at me. Hadn’t it warned me that going on the ride could be problematic? Yes and no. I was not pregnant, I did not have a heart condition, nor the various other elements that the sign pointed out.

I think the truth of the matter was too many rides in too short a time. You could argue that five roller coasters in two days is not that much, and not too long ago, I would have agreed with you.

This time, I found giddiness, and longed for gravity. Gravity of a kind that would just allow my feet to be on the ground, my neck to be at its usual angle, and my eyes to see where I was going.

Maybe I will give it time, and try again. But this time, I need to be outdoors. Full disclosure on roller coasters, I’ve decided is the way forward. (And round. And possibly upside down.)

N is for new (experiences)

I had forgotten about the new. Going back to a city I knew, even in a few small areas, I had forgotten to expect the new as well.

Staying in someone else’s flat for a week, I realised I had to learn the neighbourhood too – from scratch.

Now living in the same place for what is (for me) a record-breaking length of time, I forget about the new in where I live. I know where to buy my food. Where to find bus stops.
Which part of the road is better for crossing to get a clear view.

Tired with travel, with transfers and changing trains at rush hour, I opted out of new for the first night abroad. Much of the next morning too. I blamed lack of sleep, turned over, and put off the serious job of food shopping for a bit longer.

As a parent, you seem constantly pulled between same old same old and new new NEW! Everything is the same as the day before, and the day before that, while everything is also changing, because there are teeth to come out suddenly at supper time, and new thoughts to express on well-established comic book heroes.

But here, it is all new. Which way to turn out of the apartment. Which side of the road has the Metro entrance, and which has the exit. Do we go up the street, or down, to find the food shops the owner has promised?

Dan’s sense of direction takes over. We find the right street. We negotiate the shop that sells gluten-free items, and find what we want, fairly quickly. Then we have a choice of other supermarkets on the street to finish the shop.

Another, larger, shop to negotiate. Normally, this would be fine – but Junior Chef is with me, and uninterested in my foreign supermarket browsing past. ‘What about this one? Or this one? Or this one?’

Trying to avoid having each item in the shop passed to me in turn, I invoke the Shopping List, and take over some decisions. We go round some aisles several times, looking for different things. Slowly the trolley collects its load.

Halfway round the fruit and veg section, I give up. I have made enough decisions. I have run out of thinking space. It is all taken up with new, and price comparisons, and trying to picture cooking in the kitchen we are coming back to.

The next day, after I catch up on sleep, I brave it out alone. I do the extra shopping I should have done the day before. And I go back to the same supermarket, because by now I have learned the layout, and that will do me just fine.

It brought me to realise that newness can be a gift too, even if at the time it feels far removed. We become used to our environments, our shopping choices, our spheres of operation. It often feels easier to keep going.

Easier yes, but easier to keep doing the same. In Newville, I remind myself that it is enough to find what I need, for that day, enough to return and do it better another time.

Were I to stay for longer, I might try out the other supermarkets, shop around, compare prices. But for now, my goal is to do the tasks to settle in. That is enough for now.

It’s easy to find my way about in Busytown. I know it well now. Newville demands my attention, my preparedness to be flexible, to observe and then make choices.

Newness finds me – but I also have to keep choosing those new places too in order to encounter it.

Maybe I am finding flexibility rather than newness itself, but that too is a find worth keeping.