Samizdata

The easy part is taking all the photos. The slightly harder part is knowing which are worth foisting on other people, not least because foisting is more complicated than taking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these Brittany holiday snaps which I took a couple of months ago and have now picked out as worth exhibiting here.

My usual Brittany airport destination has been Brest, quite close to where the friends whom I regularly visit live, in Quimper. But, probably because of the new and very obviously architect-designed buildings, all plate glass and shiny metal at peculiar angles, that have been constructed at Brest airport, Ryanair no longer sends its 737s from Stansted to Brest. It either costs them too much or it takes them too long to turn their planes around, or some combination of the two. Ryanair prefers its airports to be not very glorified sheds.

So instead I arrived in Brittany at Dinard, near the coastal town of St Malo. And when my friend came by car from the other end of Brittany to collect me, it made sense for us to have a wander around St Malo, which has a particularly fine smaller and older version of itself, right next to the sea, with a wall around it that you can walk on top of.

On the evening of my arrival I observed this:

What could it be? A wreck perhaps? Odd.

A week later, in the course of my return home, we visited St Malo again, and once again took a stroll around the old town walls. The tide, having been in when I arrived, was out, and all was revealed:

It’s a swimming pool, refreshed and replenished every time the tide comes in. Which makes a lot of sense. When the tide goes out in that particular part of coastal France, it goes out a long way, and wherever the sea is, my guess is that the currents in it can play evil tricks, what with the tides having such a long way to travel, and through such complicated places. How much nicer to wait for the tide to be out, and to take a swim in a nice safe pool, as this person obligingly proved for me.

Now here are a couple snaps of images done by other people, both timeless and universal in their different ways. First, an advertisement, on a bus shelter:

I don’t think I need comment on that, other than to say that I haven’t seen this particular advert in England. Which proves … I don’t know what.

Second, another universal set of circumstances:

Not very well photoed by me, for which apologies, through a shiny shop window. Had I been a cleverer photoshopper, I might have been able to straighten that out, but you surely get the picture, and clicking on it makes it that bit clearer, as with all of these snaps.

A sheep in the middle is saying “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me”, to get to the precipice quicker.

Again, I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions about what particular contemporary circumstance is being portrayed. Euro purchasers perhaps? You decide.

Finally, a surfer, photoed through rain:

This was taken at something called the Baie des Trépassés, which does not mean the Bay of the Very Out of Date. Trépassés means people who have trespassed as in “crossed over”, in other words people who are dead. The very same complicated coastal currents which caused anyone drowned at sea anywhere near it to wash up at the Baie des Trépassés (hence the name) now cause the waves in the Baie des Trépassés to be bigger than in any nearby places, hence the surfers. Of the many intriguing places I have visited in Brittany, this was the weirdest. The vile weather when I saw this place only added to the weirdness.