Steve quite unexpectedly saw an elephant walking backwards

MEMORIES elephant

In the ninties I lived in France in Brittany in a little coastal town called Le Pouldu. It’s the place where a lot of the French painters used to live.

I lived there for around seven years and was quite fluent in french.

With the passage of time I’ve lost it all now.

We had the house built having sold ours in the UK after I had had a heart attack.

The house was lovely overlooking the sea from our bedroom, absolutly idyillic, it was on the corner of a lane with the main road into the village.

It was always sunny. I had planted a hedge around the front garden which after a few years was begining to give some privacy. I was sat on a lounger in the back garden doing absolutley nothing, sipping a glass of red wine, so it must have been after 10 am.

I heard the sound of what was obviously a big wagon coming down the lane at the side of the house and a few seconds later this flat back artic wagon trundled slowly past, I sat and wondered what it was doing, then quite unexpectedly I saw an elephant walking backwards, well I thought it was walking,

I got up out of the lounger and firstly wodered how much wine I had actually had,

I went into the front garden to get a better view.

The wagon had stopped at the junction, and true enough there was an elephant, a great big elephant standing on this flat back artic facing backwards its head swaying from side to side and its trunk coming over my new hedge.

Then in the distance I heard a loudspeaker, and a few seconds later a clapped out van came up behind the elephant it had a huge speaker on its roof and was blaring music interupted by the voice which I understood a few words, one of which was tigres, and the elephants.

There was a circus in town

We had shows like this regularly it was a place other people came to have fun and holiday.

I walked down later with the kids where all the animals were on display and the circus staff were putting up the red and white big top.

I booked the tickets for one of the shows and we all went later.

you don’t see them these days, do you.