The summer this year is really unstable – one day it is raining and cold, then it is sort of warm but windy, next day it is over 30°… and the blue sky gets covered by those fluffy, spectacular clouds; they seem so full of water and so tired to carry it that they virtually lay down to rest on the buildings. And then the thunder storm comes to relieve the clouds, it rains again and the whole circle repeats…. It is like life, life sometimes really resembles a circle…
This is Deauville, a seaside resort in Normandy, a chic sort of place on the Atlantic Coast
This is Deauville, a seaside resort in Normandy, a chic sort of place on the Atlantic Coast
a gallery in Honfleur
A XVI century church in Blagny le Chateau
Between these pictures of Normandy and my childhood in Ukraine 50 years have passed…. It’s not easy to remember everything but fortunately the human memory is a fantastic tool, it keeps the past stocked, maybe part of it, but still it is there… Unfortunately this magnificent tool has no filter to suppress the bad memories and keep only the good ones; though as the French say “c’est la vie”, and that’s what makes this very “vie” interesting…
I will skip in my tale my first year of school, I don’t remember much, not even my first teacher. Everyone is supposed to remember that, aren’t they? Well I don’t. I was left alone with some far relatives in a small town in Donbass, the mining area, where my mother planned to move. I guess I was too scared and disoriented to remember “the big day”, the traditional 1st of September when all children start the school year in the Soviet Union wearing their festive uniforms and carrying big bouquets of flowers for their teachers; the tradition was for the girls to wear big white bows decorating their heads and looking like flowers themselves. Like everyone else I was certainly wearing a brown uniform with a white apron and I guess I had white ribbon bows decorating my neatly plaited hair but unlike everyone else I had no parents and grand parents holding my hand and smiling proudly and encouragingly to me.
Anyway I stayed at that school only a few months; my mother got a new job, brought my sister along and took me to live with her in a neighbouring town. It was a typical soviet provincial working town with some pale yellow two-storied apartment buildings built after the war, with some private houses, paved streets in a bad shape, the majority of streets unpaved and dusty. And there was one main, and only, square with the school (my new school), and the Palace of Culture with the cinema hall and all kind of cultural associations for children and adults.
I wish I had some photos as I don’t remember many details of the town, I just remember that it looked boring. It was surrounded by the coal gob piles that broke the monotony of the flat horizon of this area that was flat like a big omelette. The air was full of dust and sometimes very smelly as the town had a few chemical factories. The majority of the population was working at those factories and mines. It was easy to identify those who worked at the mines and went deep down into the mining drifts to work in the long galleries getting coal; the coal dust penetrated the skin around their eyes and the men had no choice but to wear this permanent make up. I thought it looked funny, the men who were walking in the streets as if they had put on a lot of kohl to make themselves attractive.
Between these pictures of Normandy and my childhood in Ukraine 50 years have passed…. It’s not easy to remember everything but fortunately the human memory is a fantastic tool, it keeps the past stocked, maybe part of it, but still it is there… Unfortunately this magnificent tool has no filter to suppress the bad memories and keep only the good ones; though as the French say “c’est la vie”, and that’s what makes this very “vie” interesting…
I will skip in my tale my first year of school, I don’t remember much, not even my first teacher. Everyone is supposed to remember that, aren’t they? Well I don’t. I was left alone with some far relatives in a small town in Donbass, the mining area, where my mother planned to move. I guess I was too scared and disoriented to remember “the big day”, the traditional 1st of September when all children start the school year in the Soviet Union wearing their festive uniforms and carrying big bouquets of flowers for their teachers; the tradition was for the girls to wear big white bows decorating their heads and looking like flowers themselves. Like everyone else I was certainly wearing a brown uniform with a white apron and I guess I had white ribbon bows decorating my neatly plaited hair but unlike everyone else I had no parents and grand parents holding my hand and smiling proudly and encouragingly to me.
Anyway I stayed at that school only a few months; my mother got a new job, brought my sister along and took me to live with her in a neighbouring town. It was a typical soviet provincial working town with some pale yellow two-storied apartment buildings built after the war, with some private houses, paved streets in a bad shape, the majority of streets unpaved and dusty. And there was one main, and only, square with the school (my new school), and the Palace of Culture with the cinema hall and all kind of cultural associations for children and adults.
I wish I had some photos as I don’t remember many details of the town, I just remember that it looked boring. It was surrounded by the coal gob piles that broke the monotony of the flat horizon of this area that was flat like a big omelette. The air was full of dust and sometimes very smelly as the town had a few chemical factories. The majority of the population was working at those factories and mines. It was easy to identify those who worked at the mines and went deep down into the mining drifts to work in the long galleries getting coal; the coal dust penetrated the skin around their eyes and the men had no choice but to wear this permanent make up. I thought it looked funny, the men who were walking in the streets as if they had put on a lot of kohl to make themselves attractive.
