Misty mornings

Searching for the right word. What do we call the stores that sell books and magazines in airports and train stations, points de presse in French? Stationers? I Google it and come up with Newsagent (bravo!) and the following snippet: (…) Travel Retail is responsible for the operation of stores at railway stations, airports and hospitals. Yikes! I never thought of hospitals as transit areas before, but there you go… literally. I seem to spend a lot of time searching for the right word these days.

I once spotted a title in the window of a point de presse: “Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part”. (Official translation I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, personal colloquialism I wish there was somebody waiting for me somewhere). What a masterstroke I said to myself, the emotional pull of the title, especially in a train station or at an airport, was tremendous. I didn’t read the book straight away - I tend to resist such punches to the gut. It is a collection of short stories. In one of them, a couple meet on Boulevard St Germain and he spoils everything by glancing surreptitiously at his mobile phone to see if he has any messages as they leave the restaurant. The image hit the mark, and reminded me of a drink in a country pub, once. Maybe I’ll write about it sometime.

Meanwhile I still have the urge to start an anonymous blog to post the notes I jot down occasionally after a session of psychoanalysis. Coming to terms with repetition. The idea here is not of rubbing out and starting again (palimpsest) but of producing variations on a theme.

I stumbled on a photographer who likes Gascony morning mist, too.