The 1st
of November is a bank holiday here, for Toussaint, All Saints’ Day. As it fell
on a Tuesday, the company made the 31st a ‘bridge’ day so Wilf had a
long weekend and settled for a lazy day with lunch out at one of the places we’d
been on the diner progressif in
September, a rather imposing place in the town centre with friendly service,
good food and wine. I decided it as a good time to try snails. They were fried in tempura batter and like a meaty shellfish and something I'd eat again.
During the dinner
we’d been told that it’s a good time to go and visit St Roch cemetery, as there
would be a lot of flowers on the graves. St Roch has several graves of notable
locals, many artists and sculptors, many ornate tombs. It’s only about fifteen
minutes’ away and we made the most of the crisp, dried leaves which had
suddenly fallen over the previous few days.
One of the
first things we noticed when we reached the cemetery was a stone plaque on an ossuary,
housing the bones of people guillotined during the Revolution. It was
interesting to
It’s a huge
cemetery. We went to find out what a Columbarium
is: a garden of rest. Some people really like to plan ahead. |
| Half the Commonwealth graves, with Russian ones just visible behind them |
The sun was starting to get low and we turned back. We came to war graves, first Russian, then Commonwealth, about a thousand of the latter.
There were, as hoped, plenty of flowers and more leaves to kick on the way home. It prompted so many questions: Who were the “Forget-me-nots” and “Cornflowers”, was the guillotine portable or permanent, why does the river Rhonelle flow over the old river bed of the Escaut? We’ll find the answers when the weather’s not so cold.
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