Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Please take a moment to download and read my file Fully Funded Public Transit .

My walk around Chambourcy – the old part of town.

My end-of-day stroll down the hill to the bus stop near the FNAC store. The FNAC is at the top of the photo. I have circled the mall with its massive supermarket.

The day dawned with the threat of showers, but in truth it was mainly cloudy with blue patches, and mild. I've had worse days.

I have plans to travel Thursday and Friday and thought about placing a wake-up call, then realized that this hotel room does not have a telephone. I can't remember the last time I booked a hotel room without a phone. How will I wake up in time for a 6:20? RER train? I'll probably have to learn how to set an alarm on this new smart phone.

Three more days before Amsterdam, and by 4 a.m. I am awake and wide awake with thoughts about that trip. Sigh! I rise and start my day. I balance my accounts (by emptying my wallet onto the bed and counting the banknotes, filing the receipts). This morning I will withdraw another €100 from the bank machine.

I set off with my list of errands, first stop the ATM around the corner, but someone has taped a notice over the machine saying that it is out of service. Evil man that I am, I consider writing up a batch of these notices and sticking them over every machine in town before I depart, but Les Citoyens de Poissy have been far too kind to me to entertain that thought for more than two seconds.

Next stop the laundry to drop off four shirts and beg that they be ready by tonight, but the laundry is still closed at 7:50, so next stop La Presse and next stop au cafe Cep where I try a "noisette" which turns out to be a regular espresso with a dash of milk. Not enough liquid to satisfy me, so I follow it with a chaser of a double and a croissant. I have picked up two more phrases for exit "Allez! Au Revoir! Merci" and "Bonjour! Merci! Au Revoir!".

In reading the paper I realize that PDG cannot possibly mean "Plan de Guerre". So I was wrong a week or so ago. An article about drones-with-camera scares me. I am not even up to kiddy-speed with the camera in this phone-cum-computer, and now I will probably be expected to work out how to operate a camera from a drone. Technology looms over my shoulder.

So then back to the laundry - still not open. Horrible thought: perhaps they were open yesterday (Monday) and are closed today (Tuesday) in which case I'll not only have to wear this shirt for a third day (my other four shirts are scrunched and crumpled in the bottom of my bag), but I may be too late home Thursday and Friday to collect them! Or I'll have to retreat to the other place, arrive late and beg again for urgency.

Nothing for it but to step off to the market to buy a gram of Saffron (don't ask!) and on my way out of there I see that the laundry is open. No problem! Pick up at 17:45 tonight - they close at six, and at long last I feel my life is getting back on track.

Around the corner to the dry-cleaners, and I realize that I've left the ticket at home. Surely the nice lady will remember me, and my anxiety last Friday at not being able to pick up my pants on Saturday, Sunday or Monday. Tuesday, she said, For sure. First thing in the morning.

So I enter and explain, but Nice Lady (a) can't find her half of the ticket and (b) says she is sure she said for Thursday. Nothing for it but to slog back to the hotel and perform what might be best described as nettoyage de chambre, twice, turning over every piece of paper, going through every file, folder, bag, box, twice looking for a little purple stub. If I can't find the ticket I'll have to tell her to donate the pants to Goodwill when they do turn up.

On the second pass through my wallet I find that I have carefully saved the little purple ticket in between two Seniors tickets for the TTC. What a CLEVER little man I am. The little purple ticket has "Mardi" written on it, but not in my handwriting.

Back to the dry-cleaners to collect the pants, and bless her, Nice Lady has already found my trousers. I think my French was good enough to get everyone to agree that I am an idiot, and we parted on the best of terms. I think.

Back to the hotel, hang the pants, re-organize my bag, and I set off for the 11:30 #8 from Gare Sud. Same driver as yesterday. Hooray. I think he recognizes me. Within about twenty minutes we are rolling into and through Chambourcy.

I am impressed with the high percentage of passengers (about 95%) who leave by the back door, which makes for smooth flow and hence less delay in boarding. In Toronto we would call it "less bunching of surface vehicles”)

I know where to get off to begin my stroll at the corner of Rue de Gramont and Avenue des Écuyers. The town is so quiet. Life and work goes on, but the sound is muted by the trees and hedges.

The village library is OPEN, so I walk in and ask the librarian if it is OK if I take a few photos. Especially I would like to assure what looks like The Book Club that I will not be taking photos of people. This is found to be OK, so I walk around and take photos of the brightly-painted rooms, which seem designed to be attractive to younger readers.

The librarian explains that village libraries are staffed by volunteers, like herself, unlike libraries in major cities, such as Paris and Toronto. Too, this explains the abbreviated hours of opening, and why it is that most places I go to I find the library closed.

The ladies book club breaks up but I insinuate myself into the fringes and explain that I haven't has breakfast, and am offered a cookie. I select the largest home-made cookie and my enjoyment level rises.

By 12:30 I am walking the streets thinking about lunch. Two workmen in overalls walk by me discussing "where it is", so I follow them into a small cafe and order from the menu a pickled herring salad and a Tagliatella(?) Carbona - or shredded ham and pasta. Both very good.

After lunch I walk the town taking a great many photos. I recollect that in 2nd year high school I took a year of French. Miss Hancock was our teacher. She was young, pretty, and we were sexed-up teenage boys. I wonder how she survived, in the sense of background in real French. It must have been nearly impossible to find a real French person in Perth in 1960 of whom you could ask complex questions. And how could you pick up a genuine accent? There would be little to teach apart from textbook grammar, which is of course of no interest whatsoever to teenage boys.

I catch the 15:42 bus from FNAC and return to my room to find that my carefully-ordered coin collection has been snaffled by the room maid as an assumed tip. Rats! I was going to tip her anyway, but now I must recommence my coin collection.

My budding coin collection. Gone. All Gone! I can start another one and build it up before I go. The €2 coins are in the top row, then come €1, 0.50, 0.20, 0.10, 0.05, 0.02 and 0.01. I have Spanish, French, German and, I think Polish or something that has spread wings.

After drawing out €100 in cash I can't resist a look up one of my favorite streets in Poissy - Rue du General Charles de Gaulle, then it's off for the paper and a coffee.

Some friends I made in the covered market in Poissy.

I hope I don't have to master a drone. I'm having enough problems already with my smart phone without having to attach it to a drone.

Part of my #8 route mystery. No sign of the #8 route on the pillar outside the shelter when I looked here yesterday.

But today I look inside the shelter and there is #8!

The Information officer explained it to me, and if I understand him, the pillar displays information about special routes - hence the "s" and "p" appendices, whereas the shelter shows what are considered regular routes.

I have found that the transit systems here are always logical, so in this case I have failed to grasp the logic. I sincerely believe it all makes sense, and I only picked up on this because my study of the timetables has helped me to anticipate time-saving shortcuts in the use of the bus system.

I went back an tried a sample of the saffron product. A cordial (or "liquor") was steeped overnight, then diluted. My closest approximation is mango juice with a slight metallic kick to it.

I was intrigued too by the appearance of TTC which to my mind stands for Toronto Transit Commission.

While I am waiting for my #8 bus I take a photo of the westbound platform. Trains whirl through every few minutes.

Here's a close-up of a sign I love. I must have whizzed through here on my way back from Maule and Mantes La Jolie two years ago.

I have learned how to take a selfie with this camera, using the back-face lens.

I have learned how to take a photo of the lady to my left who, if she thought about it, would think I was taking a photo across the yard, away from her.

I have learned how to take a photo of the lady to my right who, if she thought about it, would think I was taking a photo across the yard, away from her.

I find this to be a sad aspect of cell phones. In the past we would have sat and talked with each other; now we are isolated by conversations about who did what to whom and what to pick up for dinner on the way home tonight.

I have gotten myself of the bus, and it has trundled away behind me. On the opposite corner of the intersection I spot another bus shelter. We didn't use that stop yesterday, either, so there must be at least one other bus route through Chambourcy!

That's my bus trundling away from me towards the town centre; that's the bus stop where I left the bus. It seems at times that the smaller old towns have either a bus-shelter almost as elaborate as the first house I bought, or else just a pole with a plate on it.

This pole-with-a-plate is guarded by yet another of the lovely baskets of flowers. What is it now, thirteen days here and I have yet to see anyone watering a basket of flowers? And for all that we've had some drizzle, we haven't had a Toronto Summer Thunderstorm. How do the plants stay alive. A horrible thought assails me - what if they are all (shudder) plastic? I quickly move on ...

... only to be re-assailed by the same thought a few yards further down, this time set against a local residence. In case you are wondering about the shutters, people do open them and close them. I walked back to the hotel along Jean-Claude Mary to see a hand (human) come out, pull the outside shutters close, and then I could see the glass windows inside being closed.

The sun peeked out for a few minutes and warmed the back of my neck, this photo reminds me. It's the first warmth from the sun I've felt in three days, and quite welcome.

The first of many little lanes and alleys that beckon me. The little twists make them look so inviting.

Here is a photo of one of the planes that circled over Chambourcy before going in to land at CDG to (a) Disgorge hundreds of nasty, loud-mouthed boring and ignorant tourists and (b) take away nice people like me who are trying to integrate and ingratiate themselves into French sub-urban life. I say "sub-urban" because I could not describe myself as "Urbane".

But I don't mind at all if you say I'm urbane.

‘Twas ever thus. A harmless speedometer is ignored by the locals. I bet if they glued a Kodak Instamatic on top of the radar there's be a slowdown. Or maybe not.

Here is the plaza outside the police station. There's a good pun in there linking "plaza" with "polizia", except we're not in Italy. In the foreground a few bricks are loose in a rosette. I climbed the steps and went to take a look at the view from the upper deck.

There's not much of a view from the upper deck. A roof kept getting in the way no matter where I stood. Finally I tricked it into letting me get a peek across the valley. The two apartment buildings stand on a ridge. Behind the building on the left, another ridge slopes downhill from left to right. beyond that ridge, another ridge slopes down from right to left. I think we are looking at the Seine meandering is way to the coast (try to imagine the river whipping back and forth around those spurs of land)

I descend the stairs and think to heap calumny on the building whose roof interrupts my view. Oh frabjous day! It's the local library!

And look! It is OPEN! Shall I go inside? Stupid Question!

I took a shot of the hours. Monday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.. Tuesday 10-12:30 and 4 to 6, and so on. These village libraries are staffed by wonderful volunteers, hence the shortened hours.

If I have understood this, it's €31.00 per year, or about $1 per week. That seems a bit steep for me, but then, were I to read a book a day it would be costing me only fourteen cents per book.

Cafes Littéraires possibly translates into Reading Clubs, or Book Clubs.

A reading competition for 2016-17 is underway. Hooray!

And there is a meet-the-author series. All of this is a good effort for a village library run by volunteers. How much work would I volunteer to keep Toronto Public Library running?

While the nice lady went off to check with the group of ladies, I took a blurry shot of the ramp into the room.

At the top of the ramp we are greeted by the librarian (off asking the ladies right now) and the Returns desk.

The furniture is in my favorite colour. This is a children's group reading area.

I look back; the entrance ramp is to the left; I have hidden the group of ladies behind these shelves so that they can't be seen. The ladies, I mean.

And here we have the print/copy section. I couldn't work out whether these facilities are available to members. Nor could I see or imagine that free WiFi is available.

Around the library were what I think the volunteer told me were priceless originals of library life, the painting made many years ago. The sign says "Please do not touch".

On this frame are a set of three fragile and I assume original paintings.

Into the adult sections.

Here is a small collection of books in English. A benchmark test (for me) is to count the Grisham novels and the Nevil Shute novels. I felt glad that the only Grisham novel was "Skipping Christmas". I am not at all sure that I'd want Chambourcians(?) to get a view of North American life based on his portrayals of sleazy lawyers. On the other hand, perhaps the library has the complete set of Grishams (I do!) and all but "Skipping Christmas" are out on loan. I am not surprised to find no Shute’s; he has dropped out of favour in Canada, too.

I walk out of the library; the spire of the parish church beckons me towards the square, but be warned, this is a zoom shot.

I see roofs nestled amongst greenery.

Here is a close-up of some of the greenery. Another little alley, this one private.

Getting warmer! It is my lunchtime. This is a most peculiar ovalabout, it is two shallow bollards that force drivers to describe an ellipse.

That's a supermarket to the right. We will come back to that later, in a manner of speaking.

I have missed out on market day. Darn!

I pass then look back at the strange island. The library is up the hill and to the right.

This appears to be multi-hued cedar growing across the top of a gate. YOU work out how it does that!

Did I mention that blue is all the rage? Check out the recycling bin in the foreground.

Another alley. I could spend two full days here just sticking my nose into other people's business, but right now I want to stick my nose into a cafe-owner's business.

This is Main Street, or "Grande Rue" as it is named here. Buses come along here.

I have never seen or heard of a Sente before. Babelfish translates "sente" as "sente", which is not very helpful.

Yes, another alleyway.

Bus-driving can be a nightmare. There you are twisting left and right along a narrow winding street when you come across two men lowering a washing machine from a removals van.

Almost there!

One more alleyway and then ...

I looked at this charming exterior and started dreaming about opening a bed-and-breakfast. With a bit of luck no-one would come here and I would have the place to myself all day.

A decent-sized building for the small village this once was.

The parish church is to my right, we are looking across a large court to some steps which lead down to the town-hall square.

Flower beds, of course, and another view across the valley of the Seine.

I step back to frame a better shot of the Square.

I am SO glad I got my blood-work done before I came to the magic land of Boulangeries and sauces on meats.

I continue along Grand Rue. I didn't know it at the time I took this photo, but lunch was just sixty seconds away.

Plus time for allowing the bus to squeeze past me.

Let’s see if you can place an order from this menu. Use the guides from Wednesday, September 14, 2016 and Friday, September 16, 2016 if you need help.

I ordered lunch, and the waiter ordered my order to the chef as "hareng tag carb".

The walls of the little restaurant are covered in drinks-mirrors.

Part of the dining-room, the table off to the left is un-dressed.

After lunch I find the word I was searching for yesterday. "Ingénieur"

I am looking back; that's the discreet cafe on the right, the parish church in the distance.

Gosh! An alleyway!

This is a most attractive shade of blue.

I suspect that this is the equivalent of "English as a Second language", or ESL, and if it is, then Good For Chambourcy.

The trick to not getting run over is to stay inside the bollards, or at least, use a bollard as a safety-shelter. The cars whiz by, drivers seem to assume that you will abide by the rules and not make any unannounced deviations.

I am timing my dash to the slalom run ahead.

Yes, it is another alley. These houses must be dead-quiet places at night time.

A lovely old almost-chateau.

I follow the bus route down the hill, Rue Francis Perdron. This wall reminded me of the wall around the Vicarage at Goodshaw. How high that wall seemed then

Down and away this street stretches towards the new commercial centre.

Not in this zoom shot, the big stores (of yesterday) are off to the left.

But I will turn right along Rue Andre Derain, and here are two large public recyclables bins, this one for bottles, essentially.

Between the two lies a much smaller one for genuine garbage.

The second large one is for paper. These bins are available in downtown Toronto. The bin cavity descends deep into the ground, like a subterranean silo. A truck comes long and winches out the liner bag, drops in an empty one, then trundles off.

There's a lot of trundling goes on in Chambourcy, I know.

While the dump-tuck backs up, I squeeze of a measurement of the top soil, not much over two feet up here on the hill, and yet trees grow quite well here, until road works rips out their roots.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. At least quasi-ripe berries signal the end of the growing season

And these berries are full of promise.

The countdown signal for traffic lights is protected by two pieces of Lego.

If I had enough of these red bricks I could build myself a decent shelter in a few hours, I bet. All except the roof.

Then I came across this wee planter isolated in the street. It proudly boasts its claim to be a roundabout.

I suppose it could do serious damage to a car fender.

I walk around it carefully and continue down the street

Oh look! There's my cafe!

And what would a day be without a gingerbread house?

Greaves’s rules of walking #34 "When you see a bench, sit on it for a while"

And here is a shot of the sun trying to break through the clouds.

What look like cat-paws are chunks of stone embedded below the surface in the concrete or plaster facing of the wall. It is a brilliant effect of decoration.

It looks like another alley

But it leads to a private driveway. Would you like to live here?

This house amused me. It looked as if it had been wrongly assembled, much as was this sentence.

There are old stone walls and regular houses and larger apartment blocks.

The mystery of the second (at least) bus route solved - there is an "R4" to Saint Germaine En Laye.

The R4 runs from Chambourcy-College, and we were there yesterday.

Many of these places are private property, condominiums or apartments.

And right on time, an "R4" arrives. Clockwork!

This is a close-up from about a foot away. I have found a hedge with an unruly sprig!

It boasts a small array of ?mosses?, very much out of focus here, and an otherwise dead twig.

Planes continue to arrive, circle, then make a bee-line for CDG

I came across another colorful hedge in disarray, this time with orange berries.

Apartment buildings here are four storeys. Earlier laws in Paris restricted buildings to seven storeys, I think, and there seems little reason to assemble towers of 60 or 70 storeys.

Citroen! I feel at home.

Now this is unusual. What appear to be flower boxes either side of the shelter have almost no soil, and obviously, no plants or flowers.

The nearest hedge look pretty good, the next hedge not so good.

And here is why: About half of the second hedge is dead, and not, I think, from heat-stress.

But the hedges! No hedging about it. They are mostly perfect.

Now on this street, the wheelie-bins are set back in small indentations ...

... so that as you look down the street, the street is neat and tidy. How clever!

That is my finger, subtly pointing to another bus shelter. This shelter shelters passengers for the R4 to Saint Germaine en Laye. In the distance an intersection with a flower-bed bollard.

What did you expect. This bed has a neat little wall made of what I think is cut and dressed stone.

Driveways wander off the road and twist the house out of sight of passers-by - people like me, nosy-parkers.

OK. So we all look at the neat hedges, comme l'habitude, but who spotted the stop sign?

This is another private access road.

You are thinking "Oh No! Just another hedge!", right? I am thinking "How the heck do they get up there to trim the top?" This hedge is somewhere between sixteen and twenty feet high.

I come to another fork in my path ...

... and follow Chemin du Bassin

I've not been counting, but it seems as if 50% of places for vehicles are private alleys or access roads.

This road leads down to what appears to be the flood plain of the creek that runs between Poissy and Chambourcy.

I continue to slog upwards. I am convinced now that I am higher than the old town. The walk continues up hill for what seems like a full 30 minutes.

I stopped here and made a movie to show the length of this hedge.

A hedge in Chambourcy

And after all this time I find an unruly hedge that forces me off the footpath.

Another Sente. Now I want to know what a sente is.

Time to cut my losses. There is no sign mentioning anything about "Privé", so in and up I go.

I walk through a tiny park, but well away from cars ...

... then I am turfed into the parking lot of an apartment.

I admire the (to me) clever placement of the slow-down blocks. being alternate sides, they would rock the car from side to side.

My camera. These vermillion-scarlet roses showed up as almost black in the Gallery.

So I took several shots with different exposures.

Just in case.

A lovely big old tree

Another Sente. Also something about school, but I can already hear the voices of the children. I approach a lady who is approaching me. I am lost, but she is (rightly) suspicious of a man with a satchel bag who looks a little out of place. I ask for directions for the heart of town. It turned out that she, too, is puzzled. She was at this school when she was younger. Oh? I say in French, That would have been, what, five years ago? and am rewarded with a laugh and a smile.

The lady leads and points me towards some steps and tells me I will find a supermarket, turn left, and There You Are. Or at least, there you will be.

As is walk down this long flight of steps, a road descends the hill to join us. Man, I knew I'd climbed a way, but I had no idea it was this far. I have already walked down the path into the parking lot, down through the parking lot, down towards the school, and now steeply down these steps.

Rats! The road has beaten me to the foot of this hill.

But through the trees I spot the familiar little orange supermarket.

I walked down these steps!

At the foot of the steps, the Police Station Lookout, where I started, is off to my right.

And true to form, I miss a #8 bus by less than a minute. This is a good thing because ...

... Greaves rule of benches applies, so I sit down and study my timetable.

I think that I shall never tire of these streets, these signs, ...

I dart into the parish church for a moment of reflection and to take a sly shot of my now not so new shoes.

You think that the nave is carpeted, right?

The war memorial plaque is hidden behind a cardboard placard, nonetheless I manage to read the names. Associated with each name is the date of death.

This will go into my "Failures in Advertising" dossier

My timetable tells me I have 35 minutes until the next #8, I elect to walk all the way back to FNAC, can't be more than fifteen minutes, tops, because I can take a shortcut.

Four minutes later, I am near the complex that houses FNAC.

And alongside the big mall I walked yesterday.

I found this to be clever: The exit lanes are bright red; the entrance lanes are vivid green

As well, the raised and hedged median strip means that you can enter ONLY from this direction. No Left turns across oncoming traffic. Just keep going and navigate the roundabout, and return to make a right-hand turn.

On the bus on the way home I spot this little garage for a car. Such an add-on!

My stroll around Chambourcy. The bus dropped me off outside the lower right-hand corner of the photo. I walked towards the west, passing the parish church and the town hall, and took lunch before turning north, then east to walk across the lower slopes of town, way off the right-hand side of the photo before looping back, through town, and exiting on foot towards FNAC as indicated by the short arrow top-left.

A nice little hike with a terrific lunch inserted in there somewhere.