59 fountains

Traveling distorts time and memory.

The constant influx of the new keeps one alert, impressionable and in the moment.
 I have a not very detailed, but allegedly indestructible
 map and the sun to guide me in roughly the right direction, i.e. south east. I  generally ignore the planned route and give in to the urge to search out the glimpsed church or bridge. In these few days I have seen so many rivers and churches that apses and side aisles flow and gurgle together in an architectural whirlpool. This traveling dementia is quite pleasurable because I have photos which might make sense of it later. Photos which the nice young man in the Apple Genius Bar will enable me to upload onto my blog, perhaps.

Fountains, however, still retain their individual character. Maybe because there is less to take into account.

 The medieval fortress town of Clisson, enjoying a weekend of medieval costumed faire and themed piped music was a lucky find for me.  The buxom wenches were laced up and belted, selling cakes and mead, barrel chested men perched falcons on their arm and shaggy headed babies in loose tunics and disposable nappies played in the dust. But it was not so lucky for the 18 Clissonaise who were brutally massacred and thrown down the well on the 8th of February 1794. Had they not been exhumed nearly 200 years later, again in a February, blithely throwing a coin onto their bones and making a wish might have been another one of those insensitive things we do out of ignorance.

It must be the natural housewife in me which attracts me to the lavoir. But I think it is more my natural inclination to play in water. What could be better than playing, chatting and getting the clothes clean as an incidental, in the summer time. Cracking the ice would be less fun. In Perigny the lavoir had schools of tiny black fish struggling against the current. When I touched the water a thunderclap shook the earth and hot drops of rain, large enough to fill a teaspoon, fell and steamed mingled with dust on the roads.