Camino Stage 1 - Day 8.1

 Day 8: Issoudun and the little old man.

A bright sunny morning, but a cool breeze. Fifteen and a  half kms later I am in the centre of Issoudun. 

On the way in I was getting very tired and dehydrated, so I   bought a cold drink. There was a bench outside; I sat down to have a bit of a rest. A few minutes later an old gent, pushing his walker/shopping trolley came by and asked if there was room for him. I said of course, and with some effort he sat down.

We fell into conversation, as you do. I wondered, because   we were outside a big, edge-of-town supermarket, if he was   waiting for a lift or a taxi. Not at all, he said, he walked   everywhere. It was what kept him going. 

He had been a flautist in the Opéra at Nancy for 40 years   (2nd and piccolo), and we talked opera for ages. Favourite composer? Poulenc "a musician's musician". Favourite soprano? (he loved sopranos). Régine Crespin. And among the younger generation Natalie Dessay.

He was also a horseman. He had hunted with all the great  hunts in France, and loved the sense, leaving from this or that chateau, that Louis XIV or Napoléon had hunted there.

Now he walked every day, to get out in nature and to keep going. He was 85. No regrets (except for the working conditions of musicians) but a sense of having had a wonderfully fulfilled life. Now he enjoyed the little things, and the way a happy memory would set off a chain of memories. His watchword in life? "Do someone some good every day, and good will come back to you".

All hidden in a stooped, slow, little old man. He did me some good.