It Leaves Me The Same by E.A. Green

Author:E.A. Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silver Crow Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership

A woman travelling with a cow in Amiens March 1918

On leaving Rouen, I followed Allen’s route to Amiens in my hire car, which was luxury compared to his ride in the back of a cattle truck squashed in with his fellow troops. I now travelled through the Somme region and the countryside en route was much the same as between Boulogne and Rouen: flat wide open arable farmland devoid of animals, trees and hedgerows. It was Sunday so the streets were quiet and on entering the city, road workers seemed to be digging up half of the city’s road network. I had booked a hotel in the centre close to Amiens’ Gothic Notre Dame Cathedral. What hit me straight away was the change in atmosphere in the place. Amiens suffered greatly in the Great War from German attacks, and unlike Rouen, the buildings were mostly newly built apart from a massive gothic cathedral rising up above it. The mainly red brick modern architecture felt rather soulless and quiet after the bustle of Rouen.

After checking into my hotel, I wandered past the cathedral. Its spires are the highest of any cathedral in France and I was surprised to find its doors locked. Only handfuls of people wandered through the streets and the air felt chilled after the sunshine of Rouen. The hotel suggested getting lunch across the river where half a dozen restaurants lined the Somme River and I took the last remaining table outside a restaurant called L’Usine.

After ordering a French beer and lunch, I looked around to take in the view and noticed a wooden sculpture of a man in the middle of the still waters of the river. He appeared to be gazing up at the impressive cathedral. It’s only later I discovered by chance another wooden sculpture of a female companion high on a ledge on the end wall of a red brick house, to the left of the cathedral view from the riverbank; a clever piece of al fresco art that required a bit of work to make sense of it. Just along from my lunch table, a busking guitarist was ignored as he went through a repertoire of Pink Floyd, Bob Marley and Leonard Cohen. I discovered that the restaurant had forgotten my food order when I asked after forty minutes if it was going to take much longer, so they gave me a free beer and knocked up something quickly in the kitchen.

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