Thursday 5 November 2009

Un petit d'un petit



(You have to read the title quickly, with a cod-french accent.)

As you may or may not know, this 9th of November is the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall.

As you may or may not be interested to know, today is the second day of the ‘write a post linked to a coincidence’ challenge that I set myself yesterday.

No sooner had I set post to blog, so that all could see, than I started to realise how insanely difficult it was going to be – especially as on the 9th of November I want to be writing about the Berlin Wall.

Then I remembered that somewhere under the pile of flotsam and jetsam settling onto my desk there was a guide to what’s on in Toulouse - that I am sure, explained that this month a piece of the wall had been installed in the square in the centre of town.

So very early yesterday morning, as I was taking my son to the school bus I picked up my camera thinking that there might be time after work to nip in, get a picture and then at least Nov 9th would be sorted.

So at 6.30 am I set off through the rain and dark for Toulouse, an hour and sunrise distant.

I had to work in an office I had never been to before – something to do with the place where I work which is trying to expand activities on the other side of town and i had downloaded instructions from Google maps.

Because it was so early the normally artery hardening traffic jams on the ring road were still in a thousand unopened garages and driveways so I arrived with an hour to kill.

My head was full of the idea of finding the Berlin Wall in the centre of Toulouse later and my stomach was full of the idea of a coffee and croissant now but the area where this new office is, is devoid of café, shop or good Samaritan.

I decided to drive up to the end of the road, a dead end, park and read a few chapters from my new book whilst waiting for someone to open the front gates.

Guess what I found at the only place I could park?

Ok, not exactly the original but of all the things that could have been there, a broken bit of graffitied wall is a pretty big coincidence.

3 comments:

Vicki said...

Oh that's a coincidence Chris, because when I looked over the wall at the back of my house this morning I saw my neighbour Stanley. As you may know this 10th Nov is 138th anniversary of when Stanley met Livingstone in Ujiji, so fancy that!

Is this the kinda direction we should presume our next month will be heading? I'm sure we'll love it.

Anne Hodgson said...

sat on a wall and set off to lose his way on the other side of town. On the way he met good Sam Erit in a coffee shop.

popps said...

Anne, VERY good.
Vicki, i must admit i had let that one slip my mind! Say hello to Stanley for me.