19:51pm, 27th May 2007

Out the other side of Paris. The city that can be relied upon to reset the brain.

Very close to the train. Sat in back of van.
Andy and Si are inside a service station, probably the four hundredth that we have been to, and I have spent the last twenty minutes being followed around by a Romany kid who is trying to sell me a ring. I don’t have any change. Or rather, the change I do have has got to be used on the toll at the end of this motorway, otherwise we can’t get out of France. I think.

This service station is on the Somme Bay. Apparently twenty nations fought to the death on the field behind it in the Great War. From the front it looks like a lay-by loo stop. From the back it is all rolling plains, ducks and history.

A whole hoard of people died at this here service station. Shot, exploded, gassed.
Now it sells petrol and t-shirts.

Strangely enough, this place is probably the most relevant part of the whole trip. None of us are thinking about anything in particular, though that might be quite a sweeping statement seeing as I neither Si nor Andy. We just are. Chilled. Waiting to hit the road for the final stretch out of France. Knowing that we have accomplished what we set out to do.

Passed through Courtenay today. Bunch of my family came from there. Then a load of them went on to fight on the Somme. Now I’m sat here in a big yellow van surrounded by film-projecting equipment and a crate of short films waiting for my friends to tire of the bench inside. There probably shouldn’t be a car-stop built here. There probably shouldn’t be anything built here, though that would of course defeat the point of the battle.

We should come back here and show a film the next time we drive past.

The Romany boy just tried one last time. He seems to live in a caravan in the field behind. Nice place to live.

Andy just got in the van, figure that we’re rolling soon.