Across the pond

Cap Frehel. The rest of the house has gone to the market, leaving me to recover from a few days away from the keyboard, mostly travelling the rain. We now in Brittany and I am typing in the garden, where the grass is water-logged. The sun has just broken through the cloud and I can take off my jacket without feeling chilled. At last this is beginning to feel like a holiday. And just now I am feeling tranquil. Sitting in the garden with only a cabbage white butterfly for company.

It won’t last. Up above, there are several dark clouds promising more rain soon. But since all my holidays as a boy were spent in North Wales an hour or two of sunshine a day is sufficient to raise my spirits.

My journey began in Friday when I went from Dorset to Cardiff Bay for the second WordCampUK. That journey took nearly five hours. The schools had just broken up and thousands down in the south-west were heading north on the M5. It was dinner time when I arrived at the cottage of my niece on the outskirts of the city. Just in time to catch the last of the evening sun for a drink on the patio by the stream at the bottom of the garden. But only just in time. The rains came again and we had to run indoors.

The conference was being held in the Future Inn, one of those chains like Hilton, whose hotels look exactly the same be they in Birmingham or Bangkok. The main room provided for WordCampUK was L-shaped, fine for the top-down communications of the dominant culture. But not for WordPress folk, who are following the imperatives of that school of computing nurtured by MIT in the US and Tim Berners Lee in the UK. Using computers as a tool for democracy, through which the people can make their needs and wants and opinions known to the political leaders and the big company bosses, and to other people everywhere.

I found a place at the bottom of the short L which was fine for hearing and seeing the speakers. But not suitable for the introductions session led by Simon Dickson, in which we introduced ourselves to each other. Amazingly the more than one hundred participants compressed that into half an hour. But I could not see more than thirty of them, and they could not see me.

But we could hear each other. And so despite the venue the WordPress spirit triumphed. I hope to report in a later blog.

But I had to leave mid-day on Sunday to get back to Dorset, pick up the next generation of my family in time to catch the Monday morning ferry from Poole to St Malo. It stops in Guernsey and so many people got off and on there that we were half an hour late to join our French friends waiting at the ferry terminal. We followed them in convoy in the drizzle. Winding our way up to the hills and down to the many estuaries on the way. And up the eastern side of Cap Frehel to their converted barn in La Plevenon.

Just in time for a late dinner.

Tuesday brought more rain, so I stayed in bed half the day, while the rest of the house braved the storms and found enough mussels on the beach to provide dinner for all.

The barn has most mod cons. But no WiFi, So this will not get posted until I find an internet café.