To Europe and Beyond #8: Boulogne, France, Part II - Boulogne, France

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As I drove into the outskirts of Boulogne the sun made a welcome foray into the sky through gladly parting clouds, and I just knew that things were going to get better from here on in.

The soft morning rays lit up my craggy face and the gentlest of breezes was nuzzling my neck through the open car window, so it was with the lightest of hearts that I aimed my car towards a little car park and exited the vehicle feeling pretty good about being alive.

My how my moods swing.

One moment I was lost in a whirling storm of factory-derived doom and gloom and now, now suddenly I felt on top of the world.

Isn't it queer how a little bit of sunshine can do that to an individual.

However, once more I digress, so back to Boulogne.

Now the travels could really begin, this was what it was all about.

Here I was, I was here.

It was time to see the sights, sniff the odours and drink deeply at the fountain of freedom. I was young again, younger than I had been in a long time, younger than I can ever remember feeling.

Hope sprang eternal and there it would stay for at least the next few months and, perhaps, for the rest of my earthly life.

The first thing I realised however, as I cast my eyes around the first town that I would truly visit, was that Boulogne was not as big as I had expected it to be.

Boulogne, when you are sat at home with your face and thoughts buried in a sheaf of maps, is one of those moniker names that makes you thing of all things essentially French. It is one of those place names that can't help but trip off the tongue in a French accent and thus I had expected it to be a sprawling, rural tribute to true Gallic glory, but that was certainly not what I had found.

Could it be that my preconceptions had been wrong all these long years?

Surely not, but time, my friend, would surely tell.

This is not to say that it wasn't worth a visit for it truly was a little gem but it was, quite simply, another French port nonetheless.

I'd just come from another port (and what a monumentally twisted experience that had been) so I felt pretty much 'ported' out, but hell, here I was, so I might as well give it a shot. One thing was for certain though, I'd definitely not be chewing on any more fucking crepes though.

I was a little peckish however (its funny how an essentially inactive pastime like driving works up an appetite, isn't it) so I headed off in search of sustenance and so it came to pass that I came upon a nice little square by the name of 'place Dalton'. I seated myself at a simple table and proceeded to consume a couple of croissants and two pots of coffee, so glorious in their subtle bitterness that they could well have been brewed up by the Archangel Gabriel himself or, at the very least, one of his libation-adept little Cherubs.

I bought a French newspaper and sat, the sun as my peaceful friend, reading every ninth or tenth word (hey, my French was a little rusty but it was coming back to me) but eventually the pull of the Ville Haute and it's intriguing ramparts, towering above me, was just too much to resist.

The walk up to it was only slightly taxing but indubitably worthwhile as the weather was so conducive to a slight stroll, and what my effort heralded upon total ascension was certainly rewarding.

That morning, spent in the calming company of the murmuring sea and my no-less-calming inner thoughts is a memory which will live with me forever. For in truth, the epiphany that crept slowly into the farthest reaches of my soul as I wandered around the Notre Dame Basilique was to be the starting point for the construction of the life that I now and shall forever live.

Something changed in me that beloved day, pessimism became optimism, unmoving fate became malleable personal destiny, creeping dread became sweeping joy, fear became love and life became what it should be; a boundless and spirited gift which I was determined not to waste.

Work, misery, worry, preconception, drudgery and minutiae, all of these nagging, snarling, shadowy beasts could truly go and fuck themselves as best they knew how.

For some peculiar reason, I had been given a second chance at life. I had been handed, by whoever up there had decided to give a fool like me another roll of the dice, a handful of golden coins, and I would spend each and every one of them as wisely as humanly possible.

No more would I ever use the words 'what if' or 'maybe', I just knew that from now on I would replace them with a happily sighing 'OK' or a determined 'I will' – and hang the bloody consequences.

This second chance at fashioning for myself something approaching a normal life would not be wasted. I had come so close to ending it all a number of times (and I mean that in the darkest possible way), even to the point of having to be resuscitated after a very determined bid to join the ranks of the dead but now, now I could at last see the clouds parting to reveal, inside my mind, a criss-crossing myriad of rainbows where each arc would lead me to another city and another pot of gold containing a host of soul-lifting sights.

I somehow knew, standing at the foot of a statue depicting the Blessed Virgin, that there was some bourbon-swigging angel up there keeping a special eye upon me, be it a happily drunken Fairy Godmother, a bleary-eyed celestial sentinel or, for all I knew, the magic mushroom-chewing King of the fucking Munchkins himself. Well whatever the hell they were and whatever their spiritual orientation, I knew that they had my number and would not let me fall, not just yet. Either that or they put a shitload of acid in the croissants in Boulogne.

Yet, once more I found myself digressing so I got back to the task at-hand and climbed back down to sea level to spend a very pleasant early afternoon visiting Boulogne's spectacular aquarium (and fuck me if I didn't realise that there were so many sea-based creatures on planet Earth) before I realised that I'd just about done everything of importance that Boulogne had to offer.

So it was with this realisation that I once more consulted my sheaf of maps and made the decision to head off to Lille.

The day was wearing a little long, and I felt the need to be in a big city by nightfall. Besides, I had further business in the little places of Normandy and Northern France, so I was not ready for the bright lights of the capital just yet. That cultural explosion could wait for a few days, until I had sampled a little of the small-town pleasantries and the spiritual frustration that the Champagne region and the scene of the D-Day landings had to offer.

I had heard conflicting reports on the merits and flaws of what is Northern France's largest city, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

I'd read damning articles and excerpts on its high levels of poverty and crime and the inherent problems with its fiercely regional identity, whilst I had also read numerous little paragraphs on some of its finer architectural sights and cultural heritage but, in line with my earlier musing on the danger and nature of preconception, I decided to go there nonetheless and make up my own damn mind.

I would be a slave to the book, the magazine, the program or the news report no longer. I would offer myself to the sights of Lille and see what floated to the top.


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