Jardin du Luxembourg

Before we came to live in France, Rob and I spent an Easter weekend in Paris. We saw lots of sights, the weather was warm and sunny and there weren’t too many tourists. We sat out and ate at the Franklin D Roosevelt restaurant neat to the metro station of the same name (if I remember rightly) it was really as romantic as everyone says. My favourite place was le Jardin du Luxembourg; a famous Parisian park. This is what it was like in 1907.

The sparrow charmer

This man was charming the birds out of the sky in the Tuileries, a Paris park, as early as 1868. I don’t know the date of this card, sometime at the beginning of the 20th century. Later in his life he started to go blind. When I wanted to find out more about him I discovered that he was a popular figure and captured the imagination and admiration of many passers by.

He reminded me of the lady who owned the house I rented when I first left home. She was well into her 80s and always busy. One afternoon I went into the garden we shared to hang out some washing and she was on her hands and knees trying to weed the vegetable patch. She was having a difficult time because she was surrounded by birds, sparrows; thrushes, blackbirds, they all got in her way as they tried to pick up the insects and grubs she disturbed by working. She had to keep brushing them away, but they just kept coming back. She too was a very special person.

Charruyer Park

This is the park in La Rochelle, it hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve been looking through some postcards of the park and there often appear to be the same pair of swans. Today we have black swans too. The park was left to the town by Madame Charruyer about 150 years ago. The ‘lungs’ of La Rochelle, it stretches for a length of 2 kilometres through the middle of town.

Vintage postcards

In recent years my husband, Rob has been collecting vintage postcards, mainly of the town where we live, La Rochelle, which has lots of history and interesting buildings. Gradually he started to get duplicate cards and because of this he had the idea of selling cards on eBay. The next stage was a visit to the auction rooms in town one day when they were holding a postcard, coin and stamp auction. Pretty soon we had a collection of beautiful cards from all over France.

For me the fascinating part is reading what was written on the back. All human life is there. The saddest cards are the ones sent by soldiers fighting during the First World War. My mother-in-law contributed a very special card fom Paris which had been sent back to England in 1917. Her mother-in-law had kept it carefully over the years. Her fiance had sent it to her when he was on leave. He was killed the following year.

The card above is one of my favourites. The park in La Rochelle is still the same today.