Arriving by Bus in the French Countryside

The bus left me in a place that looked like it wouldn’t need a bus stop. A place with no landmarks. Fields in front and fields behind. And the nearest crossroads was about two hundred yards away at least. Some careful calculation must have been made to make sure that the stop was in the best location, but I couldn’t work it out at all.

People had got on and gotten off at the various towns we had passed through: places with a restaurant and a post office maybe and, in a lot of cases, a pretty church in front of a pretty square, perhaps a fountain as a mark of distinction. There was no one to be seen on the streets a lot of the time. Shutters up over the windows. It was a bright day, so you could see all the more clearly how bare the streets were.

One town we came through did have some activity: a couple of people sitting outside a cafe drinking and speaking to each other. This was as lively as it got along the way. Otherwise it was fields and fields and fields.

At the stop where I had been told I’d need to get off: if I had been the only one getting off then I probably would have doubted myself to the point of staying on the bus. There have been times when I would lack confidence so much that I could stay put and ride out any amount of inconvenience, all the way to the end of the line, rather than face the fearful prospect of – gasp, horror – having to stand up and be seen and speak to someone.

In any case I did get off at that stop, along with three other people.

One went over to a bicycle that was chained to a pole there. He was youngish, wearing shoes that I wouldn’t fancy cycling in. More like slippers, but made from something like woven straw. Very odd looking. He was also wearing chic trousers that didn’t cover his ankles and a kind of military jacket.

Probably, he had found this jacket in a bin of clothes at a Parisian second hand shop. He had the whiff of the big city about him, though he was unchaining his bike in the middle of nowhere where he would wreck his straw shoes within two seconds if he stepped in any mud. He wheeled away. As he was speeding off with great purpose, I started to imagine he was on his way to a fine old house that had been converted into an artists’ commune. He certainly had the jacket to make him a lieutenant there.

The other two crossed the road to where a car was waiting. They got in, greeted the driver and he sped them away.

Then, with the bus gone too, I was left to look around and wonder which direction I had to go. I really should have more of an effort to speak to people on the bus.