Something I missed from my initial digging in the diary mine.
31st March 1989
To Boulogne with David W. Good day. Much fog in Channel; sea dead calm.
That’s all there is, plus a ticket showing we travelled by P&O European Ferries from Dover. No photographs. A forgotten event discovered by accident. Can I reconstruct it?
I’m sure of one thing: we travelled alone, N and J staying at home. We must have made a dark, early start to get down to Dover for a morning ferry. David will have driven, he always did on our trips – he enjoyed driving and I was happy to sit back and navigate. I think we travelled as foot passengers, leaving the car in Dover. We had no particular aim in mind. We just wanted to be in France and absorb the sense of difference in the cafes, the patisseries, and boulangeries, in the grand Notre Dame, the ramparts and the wealth of quirky, unfamiliar details. We surely sought evidence for our belief in the beauty and elegance of French women. David enjoyed practicing his French. I have a strong recollection of having lunch at the same restaurant I visited in 1984. Maybe we brought back a little wine and some spirits. We sailed into the dark and arrived home late.
That’s it, as much as I can claim to remember or infer. Sadly, David is no longer here to confirm or refute it and add his memories. I could take these barest of bones and cover them with the flesh of imagined stories and anecdotes, with nobody to gainsay them. No. Let others create fictions, romances or otherwise, of two forty-something Englishmen on a day trip to France.
Braving a reply because I can still do my 8 and 9 times tables and so prove I’m “real”!
Unfortunately I can add nothing having no memory at all of that specific trip . I can concur that N and J didn’t go but that’s it.. You don’t mention Dil so it doesn’t seem like one of your several “Last of the Summer Wine”excursions to various war grave sites. Perhaps it was just the two of you though I’m surprised Dave would have gone on a day trip jolly without an objective and that he would leave his car in Dover (or would it have been Folkstone to Boulogne then?) Might you have gone to look at WWI graves in the Boulogne cemetery and the one near by ? It seems it was the Friday after Easter Sunday. Strange that neither of you took photos..perhaps that was pre digital days when you were both much more careful with film…and not keen to bring back evidence of those elegant beautiful women……Happy musing…
Hi Julie,
Definitely not a ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ trip with Dil and we didn’t visit cemeteries near Boulogne. We definitely went from Dover and didn’t have a car with us over there. Maybe we just wanted a day out that was bit different from bird watching from somewhere in East Anglia. It really is a mystery.
Since I wrote that piece on my blog I’ve come across another jaunt: February 1990, a visit to Maison St Antoine, Marcussis, Dave meeting the people from the school there to start setting up the exchange arrangement. There’s much more detail about that in my diary, but again no photographs. A hectic trip that ended in a very rough Channel crossing back to Dover. More to follow in due course.
Brian