September 21-22: VARIATIONS ON LIFE CYCLE MONTPELLIER: TRAM, TALK, RECOVER, PERFORM, PHOTOGRAPH CABBAGE TREE, NO PAUSES, NO FULLSTOPS

Montpellier has an elegant, wonderful, 4-line tram system. I do not take photos of it. Simply to be riding within the calm of its pale bright green spacious interiors is a thing of beauty

Montpellier has an exquisite, intimate old town. Old means, dating back to medieval times. The city has one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1160, and one of the oldest medical schools. As a history scholar who studied the middle ages and the 12th century in particular, I am getting a big kick out of being here. I take a few photos, but only in one street, the street of the arm of iron...

Beneath this strong arm holding the heavy lantern is a marvellous bookshop run by welcoming, generous-hearted people. This is it, from the outside, Le Bookshop https://lebookshop.jimdo.com/ at 8 rue du Bras de Fer...

This scene is typical of the old city. Similar to the tram system, which rings it, simply to be walking within the old city's calm pedestrian squares and alleys is a thing of beauty. I can highly recommend sitting in one of those little pedestrian alleys or squares at a tiny little restaurant sipping wine. More specifically I recommend the very tiny Le Petit Bistrot https://www.facebook.com/le.petit.bistrot.montpellier The guy who runs it is mega sweet poetry in motion. His establishment is an excellent location for excellent conversations

Here are Salomé and Manon, hard at work inside Le Bookshop, acting for me playing the photographer. They are such good actors that the shooting ratio is extremely low

Though as greeting poets who will read downstairs and want to take photographs is part of their job, they are not only acting at working here, they are in fact working. The shop has an extremely wide range of books and plenty of shelf space for them, and also hosts all kinds of events. From the cellar to the rafters, Salomé and Manon work on many different levels

It looks like a poet is about to start reading here. Several of her single poem A3 fold out books - a copyleft design adapted from Aotearoa-New Zealand poet David Merritt's ones - are on the table, and Manon has kindly set a pot of verbena tea on another table for her. Le Bookshop has a cafe inside it, it's very convenient. A copy of the poet's collection Looking for Lago di Lecco, is on a shelf, somewhere. You are welcome to sit in here, read that book, read other books, sip hot drinks, become very meditative and still inside, to become, in fact, a part of the stone walls. Which means you are now from the 1500s, so quite old, meditative, and still inside already

Medicinal verbena tea helps warm you and excite your poeticising atoms, especially if you have had the inadvertent misfortune to eat leek sprouts the evening before, causing discombobulation, lack of sleep, and ongoing heartburn. I highly recommend everyone avoids eating leek sprouts. Note to organic supermarket back in Marseilles, leek sprouts are not a thing that should be included in the food chain. Back in Montpellier, as Freddie Mercury sang, "The show must go on!"

Evidence of poet, snapped by Manon

The next day, at the lovely home of my lovely host, Annie, I go out into her lovely garden one last time. I feed the voracious and not so lovely Montpellier mosquitoes one last time, and photograph another New Zealand native which apparently also loves the warm climate here. I hadn't expected to find cabbage trees/Cordyline australis in Montpellier, or on the Cote d'Azur, but having been quite fashionable in local garden centres 15 or so years ago, the place is riddled with these giant, spiky lilies. Aotearoan natives are taking over the world