An excerpt from "King of the Valley" (Big Ed Texts) Laurent Bourdelas bed at The Gateway at 11am Sunday, March 13 (Limoges)
The Library Station
In Memory of Father Guy Daudet
My mother sometimes cooked potatoes with water and carrots mixed it with cream. When my father was home, between two trains, he liked to eat herring. It was strange. With bread and butter, perhaps. When he left he told me he was going to turn a radish - then I imagined walking in a forest of radishes bigger than him at last: the green tails, because of the earth exceeded a bulge red and white. We lived down the street Chinchauvaud: there was the house of the witch who was at the corner, the tailor, the little bar where the workers of Perrier-Dardanne came to lunch, after which they were playing football. The street was all dented and down, it was necessary to prevent iron chips that strewed. Above, it was through there that went to school at the Mint, at Saint Anthony or Saint-Paul Saint-Louis. There was a priest at Solex, Dutertre father who was driving very badly two horses and an old father who were Daudet did not do it. Before the Centre des Augustins there were men lying screaming when they had drunk too much. On the radio, we listened to Martin Circus and I could never climb as they had to Pif Gadget. I was playing alone in my room and I knew that one day I will go to the moon in a kind of flying saucer. On the arms, they had tattoos made with decals of Malabar.
With us, there was a kitchen table and chairs formica and orange wallpaper, because c 'was fashionable. And then lamp with bubbles rising and descending, I do remember the television programs: at first it was a black and white post, there was the trail to the stars, Raymond Marcillac Sunday afternoon with Mireille Mathieu et Thierry Le Luron. And then there was Joe Dassin, Sacha Distel and Henri Salvador, who sang dressed all in white. Ah yes! There was Jacquou Crisp, The Accursed Kings Bread and Black. My grandmother Rose had witnessed the shooting and sympathized with Jacques Virlogeux, one of the actors. She had told me in mending socks, in a blouse with flowers. When my father came down the train, he departed on his bike. Or, it was assumed in all three horses and one picnicking anywhere in the country. And it was pictures with her Retinette Kodack. Its flash never went at Christmas and when he projected the slides, the aircraft crashed. My father did not want to hear about the installation of telephone at home.
A 10 August, my birthday, my grandmother woke me and my parents don ' were not there. She said "They arrive, you'll be able to get off ..." on the Formica table, there was a small spaniel Brittany, who peed on seeing me. After, we went on vacation in Banyuls, with my grandmother, my parents and dog. You might see steam engines on a viaduct, it was eating grapes in the vineyards and my father was repairing the car had broken down. And then there was this old gentleman who spoke in Catalan, but I do not understand anything he was very nice.
In the classroom, there was our drawings on the wall, weights and measures on a cabinet, maps of France, a table with a Gallic village. In his room, one teacher had assembled a model of the station Benedictines in matches. You could go and see if it was not even his student. When I had to go to the table to recite my lesson, he first had to go vomit in the toilets which were in the yard once, I had to stop the recitation to leave precipitately. Because the school, even though we love it, it can hurt: it stands. In the courtyard, were organized pitched battles where we played ball prisoner. The girls, they were in another school: Grand Winch - it means the general press, it's written on the plate - it was far but we saw them in categories: they looked silly and laughing sometimes, they pulled their hair. When I told Sylvia that I was in love with her, her father came to see mine at home, it seems it was his boss at work. Finally, I do not know. The problem with the girls we love is that they still have parents.
My waist was like a yoyo: little too thin, with protruding shoulder blades, too big in my dawn communion on the photos it looks like a weird angel bibendum. My father took things in hand: first, he tacked a poster of Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx in my room. Perhaps my question: with the father I had, I was obliged to take an interest in cycling! Merckx, the "cannibal" counted to his credit not less than 525 victories, including five Tours de France and five towers of Italy. And if it is, it was not even doped! I was more kind of Poulidor ... So my dad signed me up for an athletic club, a horrible thing he had to run in circles around a stage on a red run, jump and hurdles, high jump , length, weight throw and javelin - a bit like the Romans in Asterix, but I was more kind of Obelix. In my first cross, I came last. So it was my last cross. After I raised the iron on wooden benches and I played table tennis. While there, really, I became an athlete and I might have run to bike to the collar of the Basque Country. Already, the girls looked at me differently. In fact, I do not know exactly how. They had long hair, pullovers and soft, like an English major who sang with a guitar on TV.
From time to time in the street, there was a retired railway that passed early in the morning with his fishing rod, his net and everything else to catch the train that ran along the Vienne. He returned in the evening, all perky, with his cooking and his childlike smile.
