The Wind that Shakes the Barley

July 30, 2024August 23, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

What a vast gulf there is between love and loved! It is measureless. Still, most people have crossed it in their lives, some of them more than once.

Henry Rider Haggard, The People of Mist

Summer rumbles along. August yawns before me, and once I’m settled into my new home at the end of the week it will be a quieter month than this very to-and-fro, up-and-down July. I’ve managed to book in some driving lessons starting next week, despite the ongoing national shortage of instructors, so I should count my blessings. I’ve also been very lucky to have traveled so far. I mean, honestly: four weeks ago today I was wandering around New Orleans. Three weeks ago I was on an island. Two weeks ago I was sitting atop Montmartre in Paris, eating frites and watching the sunset.

I really have moved around a lot this summer. I should be grateful. That’s what I tell myself.

The summer holidays are a rough time to handle heartache. There’s never a good time, but the holidays really are the worst. For dealing with affairs of the heart, the best things to have around you are friends and family who will listen, advise and support you, if not a job that will keep you too busy to dwell overmuch. All of these are close at hand when you live and work in a boarding school (or any school, for that matter, though the boarding scene does amplify most things).

Come the holidays, however, and you can find yourself cut off. Marooned. It’s like floating in a wide, wide sea, in a boat that has lost its motor, looking and hoping for the afterglow of the stars you’ve been chasing, even though you know both the looking and the hoping will hurt your eyes.

I love a good quest. It gives one’s life meaning, purpose. Something to come home and tell stories about. Seeking out my long-lost family in Spain – that was a quest. Walking the Camino for my grandfather José – that was another. Even the ten-metre colossus of a drawing I created at university was a quest after a fashion. In short, any endeavour that you put your heart and soul into is a quest. So perhaps you might forgive me for trying to catch a shooting star this summer, knowing full well that they are so precious precisely because they are fleeting.

It’s just because it’s in those fleeting moments that we truly feel alive that we hunger for them so.

The hardest relationships to walk away from are the ones where you both still care about each other. Where, by whatever divine prank, the whole world stood between you, telling you to listen to reason and face the enormity of the Ocean, even as you railed against it. Bloody Hinge! Bloody Atlantic! Bloody bleeding heart!

One of you must be the brave one and make the bitterest of choices. Somebody needs to be the one to say “good bye”. Good-bye is a powerful word, and one I try to avoid – it is so much more final than “farewell”. And even when it is the right word to say, it’s never easy to cut yourself off entirely from the person with whom you have come to share a corner of your heart. But one of you must do this, and that will always leave the other with questions. What more could I have done? Did I let the flame die out from a lack of attention, or did I snuff it out from too much? Had I the winged sandals of Hermes or the might of Moses to part the sea between us, would it have been enough?

Questions come easily in the silence of the summer holidays. So I’ve been going out in the evenings for long walks to clear my head and focus on the beauty of the world around me, as the year turns.

The harvest season has begun, and the wind among the gentle fields of barley can hardly be heard over the distant roar of the combine harvesters up on the golden hills. Hay is in the air and, every now and then, the faint smell of mushrooms. Autumn is waiting in the wings. Change is coming.

One thing I’ve noticed this year is that there are so many owls up here in Lincolnshire. More than I’ve ever seen in the south, that’s for sure. Owls are an omen of bad luck in many parts of the world, but here in Europe we chose to see in them wisdom. Perhaps that’s on account of their enormous eyes, or their ability to turn their head in seemingly all directions.

Last night I saw a barn owl quartering the fields after sundown, a ghostly silhouette against the evening sky as it flapped noiselessly overhead – or rather, noiseless in its wings, for it was shrieking as it went.

Barn owls. Flamingoes. Rollers. Swans. It’s a strange quirk that the most beautiful creatures make the most alarming sounds. There is nothing alarming about the wind in the barley tonight. It rustles softer than any sigh.

Nature is a powerful healer, and so is writing. I will make good use of both in the weeks to come, until life and work begins again. A new world is waiting! I have waited long enough. BB x

Marooned

July 28, 2024July 28, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

13.25. High summer. Somewhere in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

English summer skies are blinding. There’s an intensity to the white clouds that blanket this island in summer that demands a permanent squint, or a pair of good sunglasses. America – and even Europe – seem a long, long way away from here.

Six days ago I was sitting on a low wall among the ruins of an old boathouse on the largest of the Chausey Islands, a collection of low-lying islands in the bay of Saint-Malo. I’d never heard of them until the day before, when I saw that a local ferry company was offering day trips out that way, but I do love an adventure, especially one that goes well off the beaten track. Due to its remote location, there were only two boats a day from Saint-Malo: one to the island, and one from. Which is how I ended up spending seven hours on an island measuring just 1.5km across.

The Chausey Islands are a magical place. Quiet. Peaceful. Cut-off. It’s not so far from the coast that you feel lost – neighbouring Granville over in Normandy is a little nearer than Calais is to Dover, and in good sunlight you can see as far as the spires of Saint-Malo on the Breton coast – but far enough to feel like you’ve put some distance between yourself and the world. Even on a cloudy day, you can see the ghostly pyramid of Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the sea to the south like Atlantis. Or should that be Ys?

People have been living in these islands for centuries. The Vikings of old used to stop here regularly en route to their raids along the mainland, and you can still see the holes they bored into some of the rocks to anchor their longboats. The narrow channel between Grand Île and the other islands still carries a Viking name: the Chausey Sound, the southernmost “sound” in Europe. There were once a few farms here, and even a school until the last century. Now it plays home to French holidaymakers, who pass their jealously-guarded homes down through the generations, so I’m told.

I have a habit of winding up in places like this. Others travel to meet people, have a great time, see the world. I always seem to end up by myself, searching for myself, marooned with my thoughts. It’s not that I don’t set out in search of those things too – I just find my way to these spots quite naturally.

I found the spot I was searching for to the west of the island, on a low islet overlooking the ebbing tide beneath a crown of standing stones. But for the hulking black-backed gulls, a couple of oystercatchers and the odd lizard, I had the bay to myself.

I let my mind wander. I thought about a great many people, and wondered what they were doing at that moment in time. Were they happy? Were they wandering like me? Had they ever found just such a place and turned their thoughts to friends and lovers past? I think so. I think it’s in our nature to do just that in the far-flung corners of the world. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a sucker for a good Western: nothing sends you on a greater inward journey than the wilderness.

I had questions, but the answers didn’t come to me as readily as they did on the Camino last year, so I waited out the hours on a beach, reading Breton fairytales and burning under the sun. When the boat did come, it was to carry me back to Saint-Malo across a choppy sea that left half the passengers on the deck soaked to their skin, though the sun was shining bright.

I didn’t see as many seabirds as I hoped, but I did clock a guillemot taking its fledgling on what might well have been its first swim as the sun came out. I also came away with a number of close encounters with the lizards that call the island home – all of them a lot less skittish than their cousins on the mainland. I used to love looking for lizards in the countryside when I was a kid, so after the nostalgia of rockpool rediscovery, it was refreshing to turn another leaf of the history books.

Until the next adventure, folks. BB x

Winds, Waves and Words

July 20, 2024November 3, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s 18.00 over here in Saint-Malo and the heavens have opened. An Atlantic wind is battering against the windows and the heavyset black-backed gull that chased off Hector has given up on attacking the ashtray on the windowsill and taken his leave. I might head into town for dinner later, but for now, I’m quite content curled up on the sofa of my AirBnB with a book, a hot chocolate and the time to write. So I thought I’d start today’s post with a little history.

Saint-Malo has a long and complicated past. Originally a 6th century refuge for Welsh monks, including the venerable Maclou of Aleth who gave the town its name, the rocky outpost became a haven for Bretons fleeing the advancing “North-men” or Normans some two hundred years later. In the 17th century, its strategic location made it a natural hub for state-licensed piracy or “privateering”, which elevated its fortunes considerably and paved the way for a generation of wealthy explorers: Jacques Cartier, a native malouin, is credited with giving Canada its name (via the Iroquois kanata) and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, another son of Saint-Malo, established the first European settlement in the Falkland Islands, which – at least in Spanish – still bear their original Breton name: las Islas Malvinas, from the French Îles Malouines.

The city fell to the Germans during the Second World War as part of their Atlantikwall stratagem, and the skeletons of their fortifications still dot the Breton coastline: in Saint-Malo, the levelled ruins of German pillboxes rub shoulders with 17th century Vauban forts. Surprisingly, much of what you see today was carefully reconstructed, as around 80% of the city was destroyed by the Allies in their dogged attempt to drive the Germans from the old pirate stronghold.

*Allied bombers over Saint-Malo in August 1944. The fortified isle of Grand-Bé is at the centre of the blast*

Most of the German fortifications have long since been torn down, but you can still see the concrete bases of many structures on the cliffs beneath the city wall and on the surrounding islets of Grand-Bé. They make very comfortable places to sit and watch the sunset.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the town’s rich history is one of the biggest reasons I’m here. But the other is its wildness: there are plenty of sandy beaches in the south, but I don’t get any real kick out of sea-swimming unless there are rocky areas to explore. The southeast coast of England with its famous white cliffs is quite a sight to behold, but it doesn’t quite have the jagged beauty that the west has in abundance, and Brittany has it to spare.

I spent many of the happiest days of my childhood scouring the rock pools of Folkestone for tiny critters: gobies, blennies, butterfish, velvet swimming crabs and even, just the once, a pipefish. Brittany is only the other side of the Channel, so much of the shoreline is familiar. I can’t help keeping an eye out for anemones when I’m out on the rocks, especially the snakelocks variety – I always thought they were especially interesting.

Across the bay from Saint-Malo stands the islet of Grand-Bé, which can be reached on foot at low tide via a barnacle-encrusted causeway. A similar road stretches on to the Vauban fort on Petit-Bé, though a small section of that road remains under a foot of water even at low tide and must be forded with shoes in hand.

Grand-Bé offers a glimpse of what Saint-Malo must once have been: a windswept escarpment just off the mainland, inhabited only by lizards, gulls, a small colony of shags and a company of oystercatchers that can be heard all across the bay. Two of these noisy seabirds were standing in attendance upon Chateaubriand’s tomb, as though to keep him company. From this spot, on a clear day, you can hear the twittering of goldfinches, the cries of gulls, the occasional grunt from one of the shags and the endless piping of oystercatchers on the rocks below or in the sky above – and, of course, the ringing of the bells of Saint Vincent’s cathedral across the bay.

I wonder if the old Romantic was as bewitched by the wild birds of his native Brittany as his writing implies? He certainly had a real flair when it came to writing about nature. Perhaps that’s why he chose this spot.

I spent some time last night watching the sunset over Grand-Bé. I had left my Camino bracelet in the apartment, but I had brought a few other tokens with me. I often take a number of “lucky” objects on my travels: little souvenirs and keepsakes to remind me of home when I’m on the road.

Well, not home exactly. With no fewer than ten moves under my belt at the age of thirty (and just under half of them international) I’m still not entirely sure where home is. But they remind me of friendships and memories that mean a lot to me, and that helps with the loneliness that is a natural side-effect of traveling alone.

In my satchel, ever at my side, I carry my journal, my fifth and longest-serving since I took up the art twelve years ago. It’s coming apart at the seams and bound inexpertly by sellotape – hardly surprising for a little book that has come with me to work every day for the last five years, as well as on every adventure I’ve been on in that time. Concealed within is my lucky dollar, a ticket to the Prado in Madrid, a tawny owl feather, the plectrum that one of my Rutherford boys used to win House Music two years in a row and a perfumed letter.

There is one more keepsake that has been sharing the road with me this summer. It even came with me to America, traversing the Bayou, the Mississippi and the bright lights of Nashville. It’s a card from one of my students, one of many I received in my last week at Worth. The lengths this particular student went to so as to ensure I got the card, as well as the maturity of its message from one so young, are just two of the reasons this one in particular has come with me. I am many things, and a great many less, but I would be a writer – and so that is why I have always believed that the greatest gift I can ever receive is in the form of words. No physical object can ever surpass the depth of feeling that comes from such expression.

I have a bad habit of making people cry when I write them farewell letters (an equally bad habit I’ve adopted for leaving students), but I very nearly met my match with this one. The student in question signed off with a favourite quote of theirs from Lin-Manuel Miranda: “sometimes words fail me”. There’s any number of reasons they could have chosen that one for me – I might well have said the line verbatim in reaction to the behaviour of that class at least once – but it’s a powerful message for a would-be writer.

Words do fail me, and often. There have been moments this year where I have been genuinely speechless, from shock or awe or wonder. It is comforting to know that such a consummate wordsmith shares that affliction.

Tomorrow, I have decided upon a rather spontaneous adventure. I have already bought my ticket. All I can do now is hope that the weather holds. Then – we shall see what we shall see. BB x

Bagpipes on the Beach

July 19, 2024July 19, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The sun is going down on my second night in Saint-Malo, an enchanting walled port city on the north coast of Brittany. Hector, the herring gull that seems to come with the AirBnB where I am staying, has gone up to the roof to roost. Swifts are still screaming outside and the moon, two days away from its full phase, is already creeping up behind the district of Saint-Servan across the harbour to the southeast.

I’m not entirely sure why I settled on Saint-Malo. My first intention was to make for Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the Basque coast, following a tip-off from a French student at Worth. One way or another, I ended up being drawn to the northwest, and Saint-Malo seemed the natural choice as a base of operations: easily accessible by train, ferry links to Portsmouth, a good combination of sandy and rocky beaches and a former pirate town to boot. It’s also not far from Normandy, and I did so love Normandy the last time I was here. After all, that’s what this whole trip is about, isn’t it? Finding something about France that will spark my interest?

I think I first heard of Saint-Malo in the famous French sea shanty Santiano by Hugues Aufray. My dear friend Andrew slipped that track my way a few years ago, so I owe him for this discovery. It really is a very special place.

When I arrived yesterday, a local folk band, the Green Lads, were playing a merry medley of familiar folk songs. A few hours later I ran into another trio of buskers, Celtic Whirl, entertaining tourists with a run of similarly Celtic songs, including the theme to Last of the Mohicans. One of the players even whipped out a set of Breton bagpipes, known here as binioù braz (a 19th century Scottish redesign of the local Breton variety). I stuck around for about half an hour in both spots and couldn’t help tipping generously and tapping my feet. It’s strange that neither of the two groups have a French name – they’re both clearly French – but maybe it appeals more readily to the tourist trade (who – he adds with poorly concealed contempt – don’t seem to make much of an effort to speak any French).

Galicia. Brittany. Cornwall. There’s obviously something that draws me to these Celtic corners of the world. Maybe it’s the fact that my instrument is the violin (despite all the noise I make about playing the bass guitar), and that I found a sanctuary in jigs, reels and hornpipes when all the studies, scales and exam pieces got too stultifying for my teenage mind. Perhaps there’s more to it than that, though what it is, I really cannot guess. But I do believe that if I had not taken up the post at Worth seven years ago and instead gone on to a teaching post in Galicia, as was the plan, I might well have stayed there. I think it was the discovery of Galician folk band Luar na Lubre which forced my hand. Galicia is notorious in the British Council auxiliar programme for its charm: few apply for the place, but those who end up there have nothing but gushing praise for the quality of life when they get there.

It just strikes me as odd that, for all my obsessive investigations into the Jewish and Islamic influences on Western Europe, it’s the Celtic corners that I keep coming back to. I wonder why that is? My mother was always very keen to point me in the direction of my Spanish heritage, but I think I’ve been doomed since the moment I heard the first five notes of The Corrs’ Erin Shore.

Yes. That must be it. I blame the Corrs. They’re definitely responsible. I used to listen to Forgiven not Forgotten obsessively on the way to and from school when I was younger, and the fact that they got a shout-out from my favourite childhood author, Michael Morpurgo, probably didn’t help. They have weathered every new wave, every genre, and the aforementioned album remains stubbornly in the top spot of my all-time favourites. I still have the cassette and its case. I think I always will.

I enjoyed a delicious dinner of moules marinières before watching the sunset over Grand-Bé, the larger of the two islets. The French Romantic Chateaubriand is buried there, and when the tide is out tomorrow I will go in search of him, and see why he chose that spot for his forever resting place. As a fellow Romantic, I can’t say I blame him for choosing this town. Saint-Malo is as shining as the shimmering stardust on its shores, when the tide pulls it back out to sea. BB x

Equestrian

July 18, 2024July 18, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Wandering the streets of Paris, it’s easy to understand why the city was surrendered to the Germans without a fight in the summer of 1940. I have been lucky enough to see a number of beautiful cities all around the world, but there is something truly exceptional about the French capital – calm, curated, unspoiled. As the official line went in that dreadful summer, as Britain stood alone on the edge of a darkening Europe, “no valuable strategic result justified the sacrifice of Paris”. The West is full of cities scarred by the ravages of war, and while it may have earned them an unfair reputation for cowardice in popular culture, you really have to admire the gall of the French for putting their beloved city above their freedom, the first and foremost of their three sacred values. It gleams to this day.

A personal mission took me to Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris. My Metro pass was only for Zones 1-3, which was one stop shy of the Château itself, but I was very grateful for the break. The half-hour walk to the famous 18th century palace takes you through the tranquil suburbs of verdant Viroflay, and with the mottled darkness of the Meudon Forest rising up and over the hill behind you, Paris seems a lot more than half an hour away.

I came here in search of a shot glass, of all things, but I found something far more arresting: an exhibition of equestrian paintings of immeasurable beauty. So I’ll take you on a little tour of the inside of my head as I stood there in awe.

The first one to catch my eye was an enormous tableau by the 19th century artist Evariste-Vital Luminais, known as the painter of the Gauls. Titled La fuite de Gradlon, it tells the story of the escape of King Gradlon from the legendary city of Ys, the Breton counterpart to Atlantis. The tale tells that Ys was destroyed when the king’s wayward daughter, Dahut, opened the dikes that protected the city from the sea, ostensibly to allow her lover in to see her. Fleeing the destruction across the sinking floodplain, Gradlon’s friend and advisor, Saint Gwénnolé, implored him to cast off the demon he brought out of Ys, or risk losing his own life in the endeavour. Dahut was thrown into the merciless sea, and Gradlon and Gwénnolé escaped with their lives. I guess that makes it the oldest account of the “begone thot” meme.

I have always been captivated by stories of Atlantis. Dig deep enough and you’ll find stories of sunken cities all over Europe: Tartessos, Akra, Saeftinghe and Rungholt. Tolkien’s Numenor might even be considered a fanciful addition to that list. I should give this Ys legend a closer look.

No prizes for guessing the subject of this one: it’s the naked ride of Lady Godiva by the English pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier. Most depictions of this legend have her riding side-saddle, an enduring medieval custom that preserved a woman’s modesty by keeping her knees together while reducing the risk of an accidental tear of the hymen (the age-old proof of virginity). Collier has her riding astride, all the stronger for her position, focusing on her dauntless courage in the face of her husband’s oppression.

It isn’t easy to remember one’s sexual awakening, or when and where it began. I’ve seen various authors ascribe theirs to a range of sources, from the older siblings of friends and schoolteachers to National Geographic magazines and Uma Thurman’s role in Pulp Fiction. I didn’t exactly gobble up popular culture in the Nineties and Noughties with the same fervour as my classmates, so I think mine started with an illustration of Lady Godiva in a children’s book of folktales and legends – if not with the Little Mermaid (setting in motion a lifelong fascination with red hair that has proved impossible to shake).

You couldn’t have an equestrian exhibition without at least one painting of the famous Valkyries of Norse legend, shield-maidens and psychopomps that herd the souls of the slain to Valhalla, the Hall of the Dead. It’s a dark and moody piece, but I would have given a great deal to see Peter Arbo’s more famous painting, Åsgårdsreien, which depicts Odin’s “Wild Hunt”, a spectral apparition said to appear on stormy nights as a herald of woe and disaster for the beholder. I’ve had a thing for that folktale since I found its equivalent in Cataluña, centred on the doomed Compte Arnau who rides again at night with skin afire, pursued by his hungry hounds. There’s even a country song by Stan Jones about the famous “Ghost Riders in the Sky” that Johnny Cash went on to cover, which has the Valkyries of old trade in their helmets for stetsons.

I do love it when a myth goes global.

One painting in particular caught my eye (and not just because the leading lady has red hair!): Crepúsculo by the Spanish painter Ulpiano Checa y Sanz. Even without the aid of the title, you know straight away what you’re looking at by the colours alone: the halcyon flash of twilight, as the last rays of the setting sun scatter across the darkening world in a brilliant array of colours. Am I glad that the painting that really took my breath away was crafted by a Spaniard? You bet. The landscape below reminds of the opening crawl of the Charlton Heston El Cid film, and in its strange and featureless way, it is so very Spanish. Foreign painters of Spanish scenes often play up to the Romantic stereotype of dusky maidens with hooded eyes lounging on street corners with flowers in their hair, so it’s nice to see a native sharing my weakness for a change.

Finally, a painting I really didn’t expect to see, but one that must have been at Versailles for some time, as it was not in the equestrian exhibition but in the palace’s Galérie des Batailles. As patriotic paintings go, it’s got to be up there with La Liberté guidant le peuple by Delacroix (though perhaps not as widely known). This is Charles de Steuben’s Bataille de Poitiers en octobre 732, and it tells the story of the decisive battle between the Frankish forces under Charles Martel, “the Hammer”, and the invading Umayyad army Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. I must have seen this painting a thousand times for it is tied up with the history of Spain, and of Europe itself: had the Umayyads not been stopped so decisively, they might well have gone on to conquer the rest of Europe. It’s one of those real watershed moments that comes around but rarely in history, and I was amazed to see the real thing – which is, like the armies it portrays, vast.

Not a good time to be a horse, or a European for that matter, but what a find!

Well, that’s quite enough painting perambulations for one post. I’ve just arrived in the pirate city of Saint-Malo where the sun is shining and the water is crystal clear. I think I’ll go for a dip while the weather holds! BB x

Up and Down

July 17, 2024July 18, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

When I’m on the road, I have a real complex about fitting in. It must be a side-effect of being a linguist, but I cannot stand the idea that I might stand out as a foreigner, if I can help it. Usually it’s simply a question of dressing appropriately, but it also makes me think very hard about my accent when I speak. This has had some brilliantly cringeworthy outcomes, such as getting into a blazing row with a taxi driver in a French that has never been as fluent since, and defaulting to a makeshift (albeit stateless) American accent while riding the Amtrak train two weeks ago… The worst has to be that two-hour drive in a Luton van with a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman in my university days, where I was so self-conscious about my southern accent that I feigned a northern accent so as not to come across too posh… My housemate, a Wensley lass herself, took an exceptionally dim view of the whole affair. In her own words, my accent had only made it as far as Sheffield.

Fortunately, I’m in France, not Sheffield, and with just over a week to go until the Olympic Games begin, the city is so full of tourists that it’s probably easier to blend in as one of them than to ape any Parisian. So I caved and bought myself an Olympic T-shirt, since it’s unlikely to come back here in my lifetime.

I only have the one full day in Paris, so I decided to make the most of it and go supertouriste for the day. With Nôtre-Dame still under heavy repairs after the fire of 2019, and the Louvre fully-booked up for days, that left the Eiffel Tower, l’Arche de la Triomphe and the Château de Versailles. I didn’t really set out with a specific itinerary in mind this morning – I rarely do when I’m traveling solo – and the decision to join the queue for tickets up the Eiffel Tower was very much a spur-of-the-moment one. After all, the website said that all the summit tickets were sold out, and while the views from the second floor are good, who’d make the climb and not go all the way up?

Turns out the website doesn’t know jack. The queue was about half an hour long, but when I did get there the ticket seller simply raised an eyebrow when I inquired about the availability of summit tickets and said “bien sûr”. So if you’ve considered seeing the tower on your trip to Paris and you haven’t made any reservations, fret not – they always keep some to sell on the day.

Preparations are well underway for the Olympic Games here in Paris. The Olympic torch has completed its relay of the various départements, including far-flung Outremer, and is now circling the city in an ever-shrinking spiral. All around the city, cyclists are coming and going with pink signs in their panniers, pointing visitors in the direction of this or that event. Stadiums and stands have sprung into being like enormous steel mushrooms, and the avenue that stretches from Trocadero to the École Militaire now hosts a giant show ground, which looks like a building site from the ground but a lot more like a Roman circus from above.

It’s also impressive just how big the Bois de Boulogne is. Hyde Park may be a green lung for the heavy London air, but it pales in comparison to the dark forest that has clung on in Paris’ northern district, as though threatening to break the encirclement and rejoin its sister Meudon in the west, given the opportunity.

The summit of the Eiffel Tower really is quite something. Photos don’t really do it justice. There’s any number of skyscrapers that have now beaten its giddying record, but none so old, so charming, so immediately recognisable. It’s quite something to perch high above the City of Light, pigeon-like, and join the ranks of historical characters who have stood in the same spot: kings, shahs and statesmen, warmongers, tribal chiefs and Buffalo Bill. You’re more likely to be elbowed out of the way by an errant child angling for a better view or jostle for space with a Brazilian family taking every possible angle of each other than you are to meet any of the former, of course, but who knows? With the Olympics converging on the city, now’s as good a time as any to go stargazing up the Eiffel Tower.

I’ve been a bit reckless with the traveling this summer. I’d like to argue that this latest venture is purely tactical, with French being a very valuable commodity where I’m going, but it’s also methodical: it’s a very good way of keeping busy in the yawning maw of the summer holidays, which can go on and then some if you don’t find some way to keep busy. At the moment, one wedding after another plasters my social media feed as old friends tie the knot. It should make me smile, but on one level it always reminds me just how cut off my career has left me. That’s just one of many reasons I’m moving to a new job and a new part of the country this summer. It’s high time I hit the reset button and started from scratch.

But until then, I have the joys of the open road. Perhaps it’s my way of justifying my existence in these long, empty stretches we call holidays. I might have missed the boat festival in Brest by a matter of days, but I’m really quite excited to explore Britanny. After all – it’s supposedly the location of the indomitable Gaulish village of Astérix and Obélix. Between those two comic rascals and St-Malo’s long history of piracy, I should be in for a treat! BB x

Looking for Love in Paris

July 17, 2024July 17, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I started learning French when I was around five or six years old. A lady used to come to my primary school and ran a French class as an after-school club. I remember it so distinctly because the teacher always brought those strawberry-favoured biscuits that I used to devour. I think they’re called Lulu « barquettes », but ever since one of my school-friends described them as “vagina biscuits”, the unfortunate moniker has kind of stuck.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been studying French for twenty-five years of the thirty I’ve been alive. Perhaps that’s why I burned out at university.

I’m on the road again, and this time it’s Paris. I’m very much aware that it’s been years since I had to speak French outside of a classroom setting, so I have come out here to put that right. I also have another quest in hand: I have to kindle the fires of a slow-burning romance with France and the French. Unlike Spanish, which had me at hola, I have never been as besotted by my third language.

There are good reasons for this: I have strong family ties to Spain, the landscape and wildlife were just that much more exotic in my early days as a kid naturalist, and I never had the chance to lose interest due to starting over with the same textbook three times at three different schools like I had to with Encore Tricolore (two more encores than I cared for). It was easy to fall for Spain: she was the new girl on the block and she lit the path to finding my long-lost grandfather once again. But there was a time, and not all that long ago, when I was genuinely considering splitting my year abroad between France and Spain. I know I was at my most intrigued in my sixth form years, thanks primarily to an iron-willed teacher (who scared the living daylights out of us all) and an immensely encouraging language assistant, who never failed to find an angle for me to explore in her lessons. So it’s not like I’m starting from scratch. The attraction has always been there, albeit buried deep.

And that’s what I’m here to do. I had a thing for France once. It might have fizzled out over the years, but I know it’s still there. I just have to find the spark. And where better to start than Paris – the city of light?

I haven’t been to Paris since I was eleven, and the last time I was here I climbed up the winding steps of Montmartre to the domed towers of Sacré-Cœur, so I figured that would be as good a place as any to start. The gendarmerie were out in force: the Paris Olympics are now only days away, and security in the city seems to be tightening up and fast. That didn’t stop the locals from having a good time, blasting music from the steps of the church, waving off the Indian lovelock vendors and generally having a good time.

Paris really is a beautiful city, even for the solo traveller, though I feel it’s absolutely a destination best enjoyed with a partner. I got much the same impression in Venice a couple years ago. Everywhere you look there’s a couple sharing a kiss, taking a selfie, holding hands at a café. It makes a welcome change from the awkward coolness of the British. We could learn a lot from these masters of the art.

Let’s play this like a dating profile. Let’s get serious. Monogamy is out of the question since I’m not about to be unfaithful to Spanish, so I’m hoping French is willing to share. Distance doesn’t bother me – Paris is only half an hour away by plane – and twenty-five and over would count for every one of those years I have spent grinding French. I am open to a short-term relationship with this language, but a long-term would be preferable (especially as I may well need French as my sledgehammer to get into the Spanish education system someday). Words of affirmation are 100% my love language, so I’m hoping I can find a warm spark within the infamous chilly disposition of the Parisians. And while my music tastes aren’t likely to be all that compatible, I was a major Stromae fan in my university days, and I’ve always had a thing for Afro-French artists, like Baloji. Between that and the unsurpassable bandes dessinées of my childhood (Astérix, Tintin et al.), we might just about have enough in common to have a go at it. So – how about a café date, to mettre la machine en marche?

I should find a café and make it my own while I’m here. That’s a plan for breakfast tomorrow, I think. You can’t really get an eye for Paris unless you spend some time in a café, after all. A bientôt, mes amis. BB x

Underdog

July 15, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s been quite a ride, following the tail end of the UEFA Euro Championship this year. I’m no football aficionado by any stretch of the imagination – I probably sound like Roger Nouveau’s soccer fan from The Fast Show when I’m ever foolish enough to air an opinion about the Beautiful Game – but I do make a point of checking in once the quarterfinals are underway. Apart from anything else, in a European context, the politics behind the scenes can become very interesting.

This year’s final was a contentious one for me, having both English and Spanish heritage, but I confess myself a Spanish supporter from the off. Never mind their superior performance, I had a lot riding on a Spanish victory and the impact it would have on what is currently a very divided nation, particularly when the Spanish team’s leading lights Yamal and Williams – both the children of immigrants – became a rallying flag for both sides of the political divide.

England played tenaciously last night, but Spain were far and away the stronger side. What saddens me the most is that the match ended in more or less the same disappointing fashion as the last Euros. And I’m not talking about Southgate or the players, who I thought did a phenomenal job.

I’m talking about the reception. About us, as a nation, and how we respond to failure.

Let me take you back to 2021, when Italy dashed England’s hopes of “football coming home”. The nation held its breath during the penalties, before breaking out in disgusting eruptions of prejudice and wounded pride when Rashford, Sancho and Saka all failed to score. I very nearly missed my train home for a mob of red-faced England supporters, beer in hand, chanting all the various Italian dishes that “you can shove […] up your arse”. It wasn’t all that long ago that English football clubs were banned from European competitions for six years after a riot at the Heysel Stadium disaster left thirty-nine dead and around six hundred injured. The Liverpool fans – the worst offenders – were banned for longer still.

We are infamous for the rowdy behaviour of our fans, even beyond Europe: it is telling that the Japanese creators behind Pokémon Sword and Shield (set in a fictionalised version of England) decided to make Team Yell, the box villains of the game, a bunch of noisy, troublemaking hooligans (co-incidentally headquartered in what can only be a fictionalised version of Liverpool).

Things have cooled off a little since then, but our scrappy mentality still remains.

For several days leading up to the final, articles in papers and online were chock-full of references to England’s last cup victory in 1966. Others carried images of Southgate’s hangdog expression, patiently awaiting an end to England’s “58 years of pain” like a state-sponsored Greyfriars Bobby. If it weren’t for the assassination attempt on US Presidential candidate Donald Trump, there would have been room for little else in the media on this side of the Atlantic.

Simply put, we love to play the underdog. As a nation we take some kind of gloomy satisfaction in being the scrappy candidate, the ever-hopeful outsider long starved but nevertheless confident of victory. Perhaps it feeds into our psyche as a little island nation on the edge of a great continent.

A casual glance at the Spanish media in the run-up to Sunday’s game says a lot. I had to dig quite deep into my El País subscription to find an article on the upcoming game (in all fairness, it was competing for airtime with Alcaraz’s equally impressive showing at Wimbledon). That’s not to say that the Spanish cared less for the outcome – quite the opposite, in fact, as my social media feed was awash with ecstatic scenes from Spain mere seconds after the whistle blew – but as a nation they simply don’t make as much of a drama out of the whole affair as we do.

Poor Southgate came in for an immediate hounding after the game. How did he reflect on another heartbreak? Why did he bring Kane off? Is it one disappointment too many? Quite rightly, he fielded the questions as best he could and asked for time for his players who were “hurting” – as anyone would be with such a crushing weight of expectation bearing down on them. Southgate himself remarked that Spain were the better side, and yet the aftermath commentary over on BBC Sport reeled off a cutting self-critique from pundits and armchair experts alike.

We have a morbid obsession with our own failings. Unlike our American cousins, whose hope for the future is always burning bright, we revel in our own mediocrity and the gritty reality it entails. Just compare the US Office to the UK version and you’ll see what I mean.

English pundits and commentators have a nasty habit of discussing their players’ failings during match commentary in a way that is almost uniquely British. Watch a Spanish football game (or any Latin American game for that matter) and there’s no trace of that. I suppose we grow up on a steady diet of cynicism over here: a lot of our finest humour revolves around scathing remarks and cutting witticisms, and that naturally finds its way onto the pitch. Some of our infamous football chants are pretty witty, others are downright abominable and the best are a combination of the two. It’s hard for somebody who is such an acolyte of the waspish humour of the British Isles to properly critique this approach when I find the alternative really rather stale, but one can’t help but listen to the human touch of the Americas and wish we had a sunnier disposition every now and then.

I went off on a proper tangent there – I guess that’s even more proof that journalism was never really on the cards for a career. I guess the point I want to end on is that we could stand to focus less on our own failings and celebrate instead the success of our rivals, who are, after all, living in the same world and sharing the same love for a sport which really does bring the world together. The behaviour of our footballers has come such a long way since the debauchery of the 90s, but some of the fans still have much to learn.

England will make it someday – I know it will. Until then I’m very much of the opinion that if football should ever come home, it will do so like a vampire – once it’s invited! BB x

Help! I Left My Heart in Nashville

July 11, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Imagine a city where every third man and woman is dressed in roper boots and ten-gallon hats. Bars with gaudy neon signs line the Main Street, bearing the names of stars of the Country music scene. Live music sails out of the windows of every floor. Every. Floor. A city where, despite its infamous popularity with bachelor and bachelorette parties, the folks still turn a welcoming smile on you and ask how you’re doin’. A city where, as the sun goes down, the streets seem to glitter with the reflected light off the rhinestone-studded outfits worn by revellers in the street.

This is Nashville. And it’s quite unexpectedly captured my heart.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that a self-described country boy with a habit of eschewing cities should find himself very much at home in the Music City where Country music is king. I am so glad I came here. And to think I didn’t even know much about the place beyond the occasional mention in the odd James Brown and Tina Turner number…! Thank you, Mackenzie, for opening my eyes to this wonder.

But hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s more to Nashville than just the frenetic delights of Broadway. First, let me take you on a detour to the strangest hotel I’ve ever seen: the Opryland Resort.

It might look like an enormous walk-in aviary, but it’s actually a vast hotel and spa complex. It’s free to explore, even if you’re not staying, but what a place…! It’s hard to know what is the most bizarre thing of all: the waterfall, the boat tours along the artificial river, the nods to American architecture (up to and including a distinctive New Orleans home) or the fact that all of this can be found within a gigantic glass-roofed building that looks like a recycled film set for Jurassic Park III.

Well, I did want to see the America that most casual tourists don’t get to see, and I’m not disappointed! Maybe I’ll be mad enough to spend the night here someday.

With our things stashed away in a much less outlandish (but nonetheless phenomenal) establishment, Mackenzie took me out onto Broadway for a bit of shopping ahead of a night bar-hopping and soaking in as much live music as a single night can offer. I’ll admit I was almost tempted to shell out on a pair of boots and/or a hat, but in the end I settled for a Country-style shirt. After all, it’s likely to get a little more mileage than the hat!

Kitted out in my new Nashville wear, we grabbed a couple of drinks at Luke’s 32 Bridge, where we met up with the rest of Mackenzie’s friends. One of the local bands was kicking up a storm on the roof with a couple songs I recognised. I’ve done my homework with this genre, which I confess is relatively new to me!

I caught myself singing along to Country Girl (Shake It For Me), Chicken Fried and Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy), all of which seem to be crowd favourites (and all of which have now found their way into my golden jukebox playlist on Spotify). More impressively still, they wound up their set for the evening with an almighty medley that included the one and only Play That Funky Music, the song I used to close gigs with back in my schooldays. And what a mashup…! Yes, I was taking notes! I might be on holiday, but I’d be a fool not to jot some ideas down for house music when it comes around.

We didn’t get any free drinks for the birthday hat, though birthday wishes were flying in from all directions from well-wishers on the street, which was sweet. The drinks we did get, though, were fantastic. It would be madness to come to Tennessee and leave without sampling the famous Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky, which I had in the form of a Fireball. Yum!

To quote Luke Bryan: I don’t want this night to end. But it did, like all good things do, and in the best possible way: with a little bit of chicken fried to share. I haven’t tried nearly enough of this Southern speciality, so I guess I’ll have to come back and remedy that someday.

Nashville is something else. If you’re even partially interested in good music, grab your boots and make a pilgrimage here as soon as you can. It’s got to be the most fun I’ve ever had in the city and that’s a fact.

Say, that tower looks like the Eiffel Tower. I wonder if that’s intentional. If that’s not a reminder from the universe that I need to spend some time in France this summer before teaching A Level French for the first time (God help me) then I don’t know what is!

See you again sometime, Nashville. I think I left a bit of my heart with you. BB x

Shooting Star

July 10, 2024July 10, 2024 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Her father was a man “led by a star” as the natives say, and would follow it over the edge of the world and be no nearer.

Henry Rider Haggard, The Ghost Kings

We travel for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes you set out to see a place because you have a particular place in mind: maybe you heard about it somewhere, or saw it in a magazine, and need to see it with your own eyes. Sometimes it stems from a deep-seated desire to get away from home: “anywhere but here”. And sometimes, when the time is right, the driving force is beyond your control. It starts like a tide coming in, the waves rushing about your feet, warm and wonderful. Before you know it, the waters are racing back the way they came in a cascade of glittering sand and silt, pulling you into their wake, as though you’re standing upon the wake of a shooting star.

That is the force that has carried me here to Alabama. Something like it, anyway. It’s not exactly on the tourist trail. I’ve certainly not seen the Heart of Dixie appear in my social media feed over the years, whereas I dare say I’ve seen enough selfies in New York, Chicago and California to make like I’ve been there myself by now. But I do like to leave the beaten trail when I can. So here I am.

Independence Day found me on a boat in the Tennessee River, a mighty tributary of the mightier Mississippi, with a merry band of Americans celebrating their country’s national holiday the right way: beers in hand, country music blasting from the speakers, the immense American sky overhead, and the Stars and Stripes billowing out behind. I could hardly have asked for a more authentic way to celebrate the Fourth of July if I tried.

We spent almost all day out on the river, which may well account for the angry sunburn that has now morphed into one of the darkest tans I’ve had in years. Or maybe the burn came from standing in the wake of that shooting star, I can’t say. Either way, I had a lot of fun diving into the Tennessee River.

Some sights are so beautiful that you daren’t get too close, afraid that even the lightest touch might drive you mad, but I couldn’t leave America without some kind of contact with one of the two-hundred and fifty daughters of that legendary river that drains the entire continent of North America. Incidentally, it’s almost certainly the first time I’ve ever swum in a river. What a way to break a habit!

My host, the wonderful Mackenzie, had one all-American experience after another to throw my way. After watching the Fourth of July fireworks in a parking lot in downtown Huntsville, she took me to a diner for a proper American-style brunch of sweet tea with biscuits and gravy – consider me converted! – followed by a visit to Target, America’s legendary superstore, where I was amazed by the low cost of clothing. And to top it all off, we went to a baseball game at the local stadium between the Birmingham Barons and the local team, the Huntsville Trash Pandas.

Baseball – at least to this outsider – seems to be more of an event than a game. Nine innings across nearly three hours of play, broken up by a stream of events intended to involve the audience. Along with the opening national anthem, I clocked a kids’ race against the mascot, a couple of singalongs with a hype man and the sparkly cheerleaders, a cabezudo-style “space race” in support of a local enterprise and even a dance-off… all to keep your attention throughout the marathon experience.

With all that going on and more, I was very distracted, so I can’t say I’m any the more familiar with how baseball works, but it was such an incredible experience!

The fireworks after the game were even more spectacular than those that were set off the night before, which really is something – though deserved, perhaps, given that it was the home team that took home the win. The spectacle lasted a full twenty minutes, which is about as long as it took to leave the car park after the game. Everyone left in a mad scramble via the two exits to the car park, creating a logjam that went on for ages. One stereotype is true: America is a country that has yet to learn how to queue properly.