Reward for good behaviour
SHOPPING FOR GLORY and KEEPING SHTUM
This is The Peel, a weekly excerpt from the AVM travel journal. Free carry ons for all! Let’s fly.
We’re wrapping up AVM Travel Szn here, and what a time it’s been. But before I zoom out and summarise w. myriad pics, tips and tricks on the swing-high, leap low that is travel solo, allow me a couple close-ups.
Human hands reaching across culture, through language, to live on forever as late-season postcards.
WHEN I SAY VILLEFRANCHE, you say Sur-Mer. When I say Chapelle, you say Saint-Pierre. That felt good didn’t it? It may not be night 1 in Cardiff with The Brothers Manc and an audience of addicts getting their first Oasis live hit in FOURTEEN_YEARS, but a little call and response still goes a long way.
Although we carry what we carry and cannot always put it down, below are examples of the rich reward of going about your business on other people’s terms. Specifically, entering into spaces with a cap-in-hand, wide-eyed quiet. One which allows simple passage to the core of what’s really going on.
THE SNAP
As with most swatches of healthy coastline, the resortification of souffofFrance is well into its half century. As a high-end beach centrist (if paid for, I’d take it, but not without a not without reference to my understanding of gentification), my reasons for descending to the golden coastline had to be specific, focused, worthwhile. In travel terms: 18 hours and 1 site.
If one were a resident of cynical city, one might reduce the act of sightseeing to the pursuit of the perfect pic. Not just these days neither, but ever since the film camera became purchaseable to anyone with the cash and hands to use it. Just ask the 265439000 photo albums behind my Grandmother’s sofa.
Nevertheless, the immediacy of the phone-captured shot has rubbed away the romance of it, and changed the look of the extras in the background of those photos. Squinty, glinty, twisted into strange angles, clutching metal rectangles. I’ve an angel kink myself, and must come clean at this junction that I’m snapping the f* out of vestries, gravestones and the windowsills of the auspicious and elderly.
La Chapelle Saint Pierre sits just back from the shore, peachily proud on an upward sloping street. To one side, fishing boats, pleasure boats, water. On the other, The Welcome Hotel, a proper institution, known for housing artists (in the bar as much as the rooms), and none more closely associated than Jean Cocteau.
To this particular artist, Cocteau’s oeuvre is irresistible. On the fringes of surrealism, his deep love of Greek mythology kept his style somewhat classic, so that to look at a sketch, painting, or book cover is to be welcomed into understanding. His films were a little more abstract, but it was the 60s honey, what do you expect!
In the very early hours of a mid-may morning, I awoke in the room of another hotel down strip. Thanks to the good people at Dailymotion, I was able to draw in the day with Cocteau’s 1960 Testament of Orpheus, and a cup of Nescafé 3-in-1. To be honest, it was my birthday, and I’d forked out for a nice hotel. Although my inclination to celebrate the day dwindles, my tendency to wake up at the time of my birth (5:45am) has not. Did I hope that I might be able to ring down for a French press and grapefruit à la suprème before the cock crowed 6? Reader, I’ll admit that I did. Was I content to make do with a cuppa Nes and a carton of complementary boxed water (boxes of water? Pigs in flight) due to a staff shortage which made room service unavailable? Reader, I was.
It’s cool to be noticed, even cooler to blend in. Inside the chapel, a single step down lands me parallel to a desk, a rack of postcards, and a face framed by spider-leg glasses and a frown. I hand over the exact change for entry, through a slot in a plastic sheet between us. A delightful, if a little defensive relic, much like her early-covid era sneeze guard; she is neatly dressed and wafting base notes of judgement with floral perfume. For my money (4 euros), she has every right to be smug, protective, haughty, for she guards a rare jewel.
The space, though simple in shape and design, is covered nave to nook in tattooage drawings, typical of Cocteau’s simple, mythic style. Fishermen and angels, centurions and mermaids. Painted directly onto the stone, they are flat and simple clear as the day they were drawn. The only features not flush to the stone are a pair of candlesticks on the altar, and two protective, mosaiced eyes above the door. I am in heaven, and brought to a hush.
Cameras slashed by red crosses pepper the space. My instinct is to sketch some of my favourite scenes. She nods approvingly as I circle the chapel, notebook and pen in hand. A breathless person opens the door, points to her phone, and on hearing the response of no, followed by four euros, steps back out. As I settle in front of the sea scene on the back wall, a conversation starts behind me. The elder couple making their way to leave have some feedback. The childlike, secular drawings don’t belong in so sacred a place, the entry price is too high, and why no photos. Spider is ready with a retort, the exchange builds in sounds and notes, due to his anger, and my state of considerable awe.
They leave, but she continues. Some people don’t understand, she says. There’s no obligation to come in, they could go eat a burger at a tourist restaurant if they feel this way. I am drawn to her bitchiness, her disdain which generalises into a judgement of tourist consumption. It is barbed, direct, and Frencher than France. Although only a combination of sure, without doubt and I agree, my response seems to please her. Through the sneezeguard, she presents me with a gift. You may take a photo.
THE SHOP
Fear stalks the heart. For some, this means hovering on the edge of love, buffing a smooth exterior behind which many things might exist, but remain inaccessible. For others, this comes to bear in social situations of a platonic kind. We stay in safe circles, or out of groups entirely. I’ve been burned; in love, life, and in that moment when you walk into a shop for the first time to realise that the customer service experience is dialled up to the max and there simply is no way out.
Fear has no place in Travel Szn. And whilst it may abound, it does not serve. And it was just this sort of totalitarian attitude toward naturally occurring emotions that led me straight into one of the most compatible commercial conditions of hitherto life.
In Brighton, where I lived for many years, there’s a shop with too many employees. They may as well be in striped shirts and straw boaters, singing ditties about Dickies, and the versatility of Japanese denim. When the bell tinkles, they emerge from corners and coves like the heads of Cerberus, with the unnatural hush of extras on a film set for the first time. It’s a good shop, one of very few of its kind in a city now 2/3s angled toward Hen Parties and winning the bid for a new Ivy Restaurant Group spin-off. Ivy Europe, anyone? They’re good at their jobs, too, or I assume they are, given that the shop is still going, still forming the taste of Brightonians, and holding up one end of a dying boutique retail market.
Travessa de Cedofeita connects one part of central Porto with another. As suggested, it’s a well-traversed alley, upon which there are several places to stop. Little Faca gin distills there, Coupage 51 do up small-plates on tiny tables with nice wine, as well as a slammin locals bar selling croquette + pints for 3 euro. Coração Alecrim is not this kind of bar, or that kind of restaurant, but a second-hand and local-maker concept store, the treasure in the Travessa’s chest. It’s a by name and nature kind of joint, (coração alecrim - rosemary heart) full of woody, earthy gems, and planetary conscience.
I’d noticed it before, walked past many times, but put off by the sign promising ‘green vintage’, it would be guilt, ultimately, which got me through the door. If fear stalks the heart, guilt is the chaser.
It begins as all long-lasting, mutually beneficial entanglements should - not from mere looks, but with connection at the root. Little sounds escape as I go, so moved am I by what is there, by how it feels to be amongst it. If the building housing Coração Alecrim were a character, she’d be a 19th century amateur botanist, professional wealthy person and latter-day lesbian. She would provide much needed, soft-wooden panelled space to shy, plant-curious types who run away from their Governesses mid-needlepoint class. Think Vita Sackville-West without the wellies and whippets.
The encouraging, mischievous spirit of the place is at my back as I try on a jacket which I know won’t fit me, and a men’s overshirt in a fabric which frankly feels like hay. The very same presence guides me to the counter, empty-handed, in the hope of finding out more about the shop in front of it, from the person behind. Standing nearer by, treasures catch my eye. Rows of tiny ceramic charms, studded with the outline of wild flowers. Baskets woven from hand-dyed twine. Small collections of bags, books, and postcards, bunched and balanced on simple furniture that seems to grow from the floor.
A raw star of a person stands at the till, that which one sees when they squint at a clear night sky. With a silver bob of tight curls, big specs and ageless hands, which she uses to carefully wrap each purchase.
Our words overlap, she continues to say that she noticed me, over there, noticing. I have always loved things, I reply. Old things, especially, when they’re made to feel new. Lately, that interest has extended to the places which hold them too. Shops and shopkeepers, like you. She smiles, picks out washi tape and small dried jacaranda buds to finish. The details matter, they make a difference. It is always worth the time.
Bonus Features Be4 You Go
🐕 Nobody’s fault but mine…me, teaching myself piano again w. Nina’s help
🧿 A tour around J.C’s other holy, tattooed house, now only accessible via appointment. Soon to become a Soho House Sur Mer, no doubt :(
🐕 The best gig I saw whilst on the continent (sorry Mount Kimbie, Okay Kaya et al) was P reinventing drums at RCA’s Lynchian live space. He’s going to play us out…
Not the first one I’ve liked but the first time I’ve found the like button. Happy birthday! x