The way I see it.
I'm a quilter and I travel the world sharing my love of quilting with friends and students. I find myself in some interesting places and situations - but I wouldn't have it any other way!!!!
I wrote this diary 14 years ago, and this is the first time I've shared it. However, it's an integral part of the journey that I'm now about to share with you. Since writing this, my life has changed dramatically. I spend ten months of the year travelling, teaching and sharing other cultures around the world. I've become a staunch advocate of the history and honesty of textiles and their makers. Little did I know that when I began this journey, I would be at the stage where I could share this my Opus Magnus. My textile version of the Bayeux Tapestry. I have as many books as I can find written on the Tapestry, I've studied it for the past 15 years, and when I was unable to work on my project due to travel, my study books travelled with me both physically and in my ipad.
My Journal, October 2005: - One of my dreams has come true.
"It has taken me three days to be able to write this. I've had the time, but somehow the feelings were not conducive to writing. I'm not normally an emotional person but I found it hard to put pen to paper, I was in an intense bubble of emotion.
As I write this, I'm on the Ferry from France travelling back to England after an amazing three days.
When I got off the Ferry last Monday, it was a warm sunny day I ignored my GPS and followed the signs to Bayeux which I believed was about 30 kilometres from the Ferry Port. It was just like driving in a picture postcard. The sun was low on the fields, and everything was golden; the sunflowers were abundant, and the narrow roads wound through green fields and small villages. Sheep, cows and horses studded the fields. The houses were beautiful. Rustic, ancient by our standards and welcoming with garlands of flowerboxes. Sometimes the shutters were blue, at other times they were white but always framing lace curtains. The roads were unnervingly narrow and considering that I had to drive a right-handed car on the right side of the road, which is the wrong side for us, I think I did pretty well.
However, I did get lost, and after going round and round for an hour or so, I put on the GPS which directed me to an ugly freeway fringed with the buildings of the industrial community. Cars whizzed past me at an alarming speed, Trucks bore down with a frightening lack of distance and I locked my jaw so tightly that I ground my teeth. I'm a middle aged woman with 13 children and a husband at home and yet here I am in France in a tiny little British car driving on the wrong side of the road. What am I thinking of? But the passion of seeing the Bayeux Tapestry was so strong that I drove through the fear.
Finally, I arrived in Bayeux, but I couldn't find the hotel. After going down a one-way street in the wrong direction and having the locals wave and gesticulate wildly, I parked the car in a side street, causing a little dispute with an angry English Tourist, I decided I was safer to walk.
After an hour or so and a little detective work, I finally found the lodgings my manager had booked and was shown to my room. Well; it was not quite what I'm used to, I must say, but it was clean, very sparse but comfortable and quiet. A bit like a medieval cell really.
I shrugged my shoulders in sheer frustration, and I walked off to find my embarrassingly small car. It took me another hour and I was so tired and stressed, but finally I was able to lay my head on the pillow in my little room. I felt like I was in a nunnery.
I had one heck of a headache, and the need for coffee was strong. There is no food allowed in the room, so I had to go to a Brassier and have a meal. I don't speak French, but I managed to order a traditional meal, and the coffee just slid down the throat taking the headache with it.
I slept like a log. No noise, the computer playing classical music quietly, and no TV. (I couldn’t stomach Days of our lives in French.) However I was frustrated that I couldn’t get on to the Internet, that’s like cutting off my right arm. What will the next day bring?"
Credits:
Photographed and written by Pam Holland