I have had an interesting day, and I’m bursting to tell. But before I do, I have to talk about the last few days

The good: Le Petit Chaton; Blue skies over Lille!; Hellemmes market.

The bad: saying goodbye to Le Petit Chaton; no buses to Marchiennes on a Sunday.

The ugly: Romanie children begging. If you’re gonna do it, do it yourself, don’t put your kids up to it.

…

Hellemmes

Eglise en Hellemmes

It was a miracle – blue skies above Lille! This was Saturday. Having stuck to my room studying French and watching movies for the past week, I had to take advantage of it. My plan was simple: check out Hellemmes (the inner city suburb I live in), walk to Lille, check out the touristy things, come home, collapse. It pretty much worked out like that.

Hellemmes is a lovely place to live. It’s like a Walkerville (suburb I lived in in Adelaide when I worked for Wilderness). It has plenty of beautiful oldness and a good community village feel – even though its on one of the main streets in and out of Lille. I knew the eglise (church) was nearby because I can hear its bells on the hour. The belfroi (tower) is a mishmash of eras and bricks – you can quite clearly see on the tour the imprint of previous incarnations of the church. I think I was stunned by the blue skies – I haven’t seen them for a long time! I wandered through the parks, being chased by the massive duck population of Hellemmes and checking out the plant / funghi life:

Wet conditions = massive funghi

Hellemmes market

I did see dozens of senior citizens pull into the townhall carpark with granny-trolleys, but didn’t quite click what they were there for: Hellemmes has a street market every Saturday, apparently. I was seriously happy to hear this: now I’ll be getting my fruit and veg from these markets weekly, no more somewhat suspicious items from the local Lidl (the local equivalent of Rite Price).

Meanwhile, there are a couple mansions about Hellemmes – I’m assuming they’re the old homes of local nobility – theres a few around with parks (and hungry ducks) in them.

Hellemmes grand maison

Lille

I walked my way into Lille, discovering the local equivalent of Cheap as Chips (called Zeemans – and nowhere as good!). Lille really is a beautiful city, and it is such a pity it is grey most of the time.

The best thing I saw that morning was the Eglise Saint Maurice – pretty typical of a French church, yes, but I haven’t seen one in a while, so it was still nice:

Eglise Saint Maurice (from Lille Flandres)

Eglise Saint Maurice

Interieur, Eglise Saint Maurice

Because of the sun, the light through the stained glass windows was remarkable. I should’ve taken more photos: no doubt I won’t have many oppourtunities to see such beauty again soon (unless it snows).

Vieille Bourse

Seriously gorgeous city. This is the main square of Lille. I mean, how could you not love that old world charm? It’s heading your way as a postcard any day now!

Which brings me to other aspects of France that I somewhat love:

Flagons

Yes, they are flagons of wine. They’re about 4 euros each (thats around $7-8) and I think theres maybe 4-5 litres? It’s table wine, meaning cheap and seriously nasty, but beats goon any day. At least you could use it as a degreaser …

Lille is not all old town and cobblestones.

Theres quite a multicultural and disadvantaged edge to France – as evidenced by the riots in 2005 (which occurred the last time I was in France, by the way (!)) – and such there really is a lot of good street art. This mural was – I think – near Wazemmes, where I visited another market.

Wazemmes market: like Central Markets, but without the roof.

Now this is what I call a market. You can buy fruit and veg (of course), clothes, shoes (boots, boots, boots everywhere, after I went to the trouble of going to Roubaix to buy some new boots! Damn you), toiletries (Palmolive shampoo, imported from Germany or Italy, 1E60!), French books, an organic market, sewing notions and accessories, seafood (of course), meat (of course), and I even saw guys peddling pirated dvds, blank cds/dvds (which are quite expensive everywhere here), and hair clips. All very cheap, of course. I don’t think I’m going to bother going to any actual shops in Lille ever again.

So by this time it’s Sunday – I had planned to go to Marchiennes (a town 30 minutes drive away) for a sorcery festival (!) but sadly, there were no buses. My other option was to go to Paris for the Nuits Blanche event (where the city’s museums stay open all night) but the cost of the TGV to Paris (70E round trip, we’re talking about $120) was too high.

Sunday night I found out I would be working Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays only, so that left me with Monday to fill – again. After visiting my school to chase up some paperwork, I was back in Hellemmes, and took advantage of the lack of rain (but sadly, lots of grey skies still).

Hellemmes (again)

A police station. No, really.

Near my supermarket, I had seen a sign saying ‘Commonwealth War Cemetery’, so with this spare afternoon, I wandered through, and sure enough, there were about two dozen Aussies buried here. Some are identified only as ‘Royal Air Force Pilot’ or similar. Some of the graves in there dated from around the late 1870’s – I didn’t really see any older.

Commonwealth War Graves, Hellemmes

Then, on my way home …

Le Petit Chaton

Which is a little boy kitten. On the way back from the cemetery, I followed a billboard which promised discount bargains (for a large K-mart like store) on the second left. I found the place, thought’great! If I need to buy cheap crap, I can do so one block from my house’ and started home – then I heard the most awful sound a sucker like me can hear: a cat in distress.

And not just any cat. A two-three week old kitten, huddled against a concrete wall, desperate for its mother.

I thought, it’s nothing to do with you, it’s clearly a stray or someone’s pet, it will be rescued, walk away. But when I got home I was far too upset, so against better judgement I went back, brought it home, cleaned the poo off its tail, gave it some milk and put it to sleep in my towel:

Le petit chaton se dorm.

The first thing I did was look up the word ‘kitten’ (c’est ‘chaton’) so I could figure out the French to explain why I had one wrapped in my towel, to my landlord or whoever. His crying stopped as soon as I gave him milk (head first in), and purring started. He was still unsteady on his feet and still had blue eyes, so clearly very young (or, as I prefered not to think, maybe too ill). He seemed relatively healthy, if skinny. I think someone’s cat nearby had kittens, and he went walking, or he’s the baby of a stray. He would grow up to be a lovely cat: as soon as I picked him up he cuddled into me, and fell asleep the moment I wrapped him up.

I was seriously tempted to keep him, secretly wrapped in my bedroom, until I trained him to live in the backyard and wait till that day I could take him home with me – but sense got hold, and I realised I couldn’t subject any cat to the 6 month hell of Australian quarantine, or to my absense by travelling. And I didn’t want to have to explain him to my landlord.

By chance, I had seen only days before this poster, in the window of a shop around the corner:

Poster from the Ligue Protectrice d

It advertises an open day at the local Ligue Protectrice des Animaux – LPA – which I (rightly) assumed, was the local RSPCA. I have been in the habit of reading posters wherever I saw them because a) that I can read in French makes me feel better about my shitty speaking and listening skills, and b) its the best way to know when local events are happening. I had seriously considered going to the open day only the previous day, as I like animals (but didn’t because I knew I’d want to take every one of them home – quite ironic and coincedental, given what occurred).

So, I decided that was the best place to take Chaton (who, in the tradition of ‘Dog’ from Footrot Flats and ‘Cat’ from Breakfast at Tiffanys, became quickly known as ‘Kitten’ in my mind).

Ligue Protectrice d

Luckily it was on a metro station I knew of (it’s the end of my line), and I found the directions on Google maps easily enough, and it was open when I went (by this time, almost 5pm). He slept in my backpack, wrapped in the purple towel, the whole way.

The lady at the accueil (office) listened to my ‘Pardon-moi, mon francais, ce n’est pas bon’ and ‘J’etais faire un promenade quand j’ai trouve un chaton …’ (which I’d practiced on the way), grabbed him by the scuff of the neck, said ‘Merci’ and that was it. Yes, I cried on the way home: not so much because I knew that in 8 days he’d probably be put down, but because I really wish I could’ve given him a home. If I had found him in Australia, I wouldn’t have hesitated, I would’ve taken him in. His only hope now is that he gets fat, and some French family think he’s adorable. Back home, apparently most kittens have a good chance, so hopefully its the same here.

Les Romanies

On a side note, the LPA was next to a communal parking spot for the nomadic Roma (gypsies) people. They live in caravans all over Europe, moving from place to place, sending their kids to beg people in train stations for money (Not very fond of that, got to say – little kids going ‘Madame? Madame?’ and holding out their hands). I hear that they’re fleeing Italy in droves, where they mostly come from, because the Italians are getting all racist on their arses (new laws requiring their DNA registration and so on.) I’ve seen them everywhere here – theres set parking areas, given by the government, and then again, theres not so set places: they park all alongside the highway sometimes. Besides the children begging – which, as I said, I really don’t like to see – they don’t seem to cause much trouble, and I find the fact that a nomadic people still exists in Western Europe, pretty much the same as they have for about a thousand years, absolutely fascinating.