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Return to Rennes

Paul Williams

Wednesday, 16th July 2008

Rennes, France

Paol Le Menn (a fine Breton name) was our great chum among the lay staff. Of all the oldies he was always on our side and found our antics hilarious. Unmarried, he qualified for one of the highly prized rooms along the polished corridor and was for ever subduing our raucous behaviour lest we disturb his neighbours’ priestly meditations. He taught Latin and Greek with distinction, but had no real interests apart from music (he played a portable organ very quietly in his room with one eye on the thin partition wall), and hi-fi equipment. His room was a mass of cables and speaker wires linking the various systems. We were merciless, making childish puns about his ‘instruments of reproduction’ and his beloved set of boules with which he played pétanque every day with style and considerable aggression. We hated it if any of the corbeaux joined us because that meant an end to any ribaldry. I shrink now to think how puerile all this was, but it was a wonderful opportunity to get to grips with French. I learned French rugby songs and sang them lustily late at night in the Café de la Paix, a local bar which I was relieved to discover was still the same place.

Knowing he had Alzheimer’s, I was prepared to find Le Menn changed. I telephoned him from the car park and as soon as he leaned out of his sixth-floor window I recognised him: the alert eyes, the long austere face and a shock of now grey hair combed back from his forehead. All his mannerisms were unchanged: the imperceptible bow, the ready smile, the constant movement of his fingers with those immaculately clean, polished fingernails. He looked me straight in the eye and the twinkle was still there. I mentioned our games of boules and he replied, ‘So we played pétanque?...That’s all ancient history.’ He played some Breton ditties on the organ and memories of late evenings in his room returned as he touched the keys. ‘I am very pleased to see you again.’ And yet he didn’t really know who I was.

Musing on ancient history, I continued on my way south. The rest of my walk revealed some surprising differences in the France I remembered from my youth. Bizarrely, I rarely ate well, being served a lot of micro-waved fast food in village restaurants, and I found the bread virtually inedible. But, perhaps most oddly, in the 500 miles from St Malo to Condom I did not pass a single person walking their dog.

A Vagabond in France is published by Minister Publishing; www.avagabondinfrance.com.