The night of Kir = White wine and a town called Cassis

We take a train to Cassis and search for a hostel for three hours, having walked sweaty from the station. We ask a boy about our youth hostel; he leads us to the town square and confidently points out a block of light atop a dark and depressing concrete building.
"C'est la." He disappears down a narrow medieval alley, and we climb the rusting iron railings that form a skeleton staircase in the darkness and walk towards the bright light at the top. There's golden music coming from the doorway, it feels like we're hallucinating heaven...

Then we peer in and it's not a hostel at all; there are a load of old people sitting on school chairs in a circle, singing in harmony. Oh fuck. This is intensely strange... an old lady comes out to tell us that we have reached the Cultural Centre of Cassis. So this is not our youth hostel. We quaff cheap wine until the situation doesn't seem so bad. Everywhere is full, apart from a hotel offering one room for three people at 96 euros... three people take it, the rest of us agree to sleep on the beach.

At the beach we watch the gendarmerie (armed police) patrol the sand, bored and curious about the three guys and a girl perched on the steps, chattering in English and playing cards. Our night is peculiarly peopled: some pretty French women donate us a bottle of wine they don't want, a curious old guy asks us if we are cold while his wife urges him away, muttering "don't talk to those tramps," and the strange boy with a light strapped to his head slopes along the coast for hours in the dark, combing the beach for some long forgotten relic.

4AM: We migrate to the town square. Neils is asleep astride a low wall, Henry is insomniac and wide-eyed, Ipod tucked into his ears. Tom is asleep on the bench, curled up under a couple of towels. It never gets dark exactly, the streetlamps sweat out silver light all night as we sit and make small talk and slip into sleep for one brief hour...
Then morning comes and we have done it: we have slept rough. We slowly evolve from vagrants into civilised tourists, transformed by coffee and pain au chocolat, ready to face the day.

the morning after the night before

Eight students on the table in front of me. They have been at a Cambridge may ball, made it to the survivors' photo at 6am and are now having breakfast with smudged makeup and ballgowns crumpled from the all night vigil.
One, a girl- or is she a woman? - is wearing something between a ballgown and a gold-sequined mermaid outfit from a fancy dress box. She is playing at fashion, aiming for a cross between nobility and Amy Winehouse.
Her eye makeup is exquisite; golden pearls of shimmer punctuate her eyelids. Shadows sweep across her lids alluringly. Her earrings dangle regally; they are grown up earrings that one might wear to the opera, and are a counterpoint to the crass conversation:
"Callum said I chose my earrings to match the way his bollocks dangle."
Hysterical laughter fills the air like champagne bubbles. She moves slightly, smugly, but her bosom does not move. It is tucked tightly into a sequined bustier, pressed into two breast-clusters, two glittering galaxies. Her tinted black nails betray her adolescence, scratched to imperfection.

The students leave and their table is an anti-feast of crumbs and water jugs and elegantly crumpled napkins. Their table is a work of art- left abandoned, a creation in itself, betraying little about its creators. Funny how the remains of a meal are fairly indiscriminate - this table could have been occupied by a large family, businessmen or ladies who lunch. The remains of the last supper, or Queen Cleopatra's feast: and all that's left is this wooden table, these crumbs.
Only writing can repeople the table, tell a little of its back-story.

German Poetry lecture, may 08

Sifting through siderooms and pub club insanity pours into the precincts of my academic self, sharpens my intellectual instincts, as I release ideas into the tidal wave of meaningless drumbeats pouring from the soundbox, drowning out my thought box rocking my not-yet-washed student socks. This is the life, they say.

on paris

We chatted. We laughed. We bridged a temporal gap - le temps qui coule sous le pont Mirabeau - through talk and laughter, to reconnect in the present. We talked of love, life and literature, of history, hopes and heartache. We saw Picasso, ate dried apricots and sundried tomato-stained bread and bought expensive shampoo and skipped on dinner to make up for it. We made collages on the floor and she smoked on the balcony. we fell asleep and woke up to the Eiffel tower, to days filled with possibility but lacking direction. we left the flat at 1pm and stayed awake and out till 6am, used coffee and bars and theatres and Paris streets and staged our last day on these platforms…

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