Performance Painting in Nimes south of France

---

Lovely warm morning today, I woke up at 7.30am and ran to have a shower, there are a lot less buses on Sundays just one every hour so I wanted to have a cup of coffee and say good night to my boyfriend before the 9 something bus.
I got on the bus with my big canvas and the tanned and handsome bus driver raised his eyebrows and asked what I was up to. I told him I was going to paint the Arena and try and make some money. He was very funny and had a twist to everything I said, I told him about some of the funny things that have happened on my travels in France or elsewhere, he asked a lot about America so I told him about New Orleans and that he’d love it there if he likes a good time. He made some remark about fishing, so I told I’d been fishing yesterday but hadn’t caught anything, we talked about fishing for awhile until I realized he wasn’t talking about fishing all and was talking about chasing women, I laughed so hard my belly hurt.
The bus driver told me where to get the bus home and not to be late otherwise I would get stuck in Nimes. I gave him a postcard of one of my paintings, and jumped out at the big but not huge Arena, it’s really cool looking. I walked around the Arena and found the place best place to paint it, I could see about ¼ of the Arena and lodes of tourists. It took me about 7hours to complete, I made about 15 Euros.
One Arabic boy drove past in his car, and said ho ah painter what you doing… I called back in English hoping he’d leave me alone, and he looked shocked and said oh your English, I’ll come talk to you. I said oh fuck! He bobbed up to me about 3 mins later and to my surprise he was really nice, all he wanted to talk about is places I’d traveled to, he wanted to travel and wondered what I thought about America and England… we talked for about 30 mins, I gave him one of my postcards and he bobbed off, 5 mins later he came back with a cold orange jus and 5 Euros and said it was lovely talking to you good luck with you travels, his name was Yesem. I Like the Nimois people very much.
As I walked back to the bus stop, I came across the garden built be Louis 14th, there were lodes of people of all ages playing boul together. All the way in the back of the garden I could see a tower pocking up above the trees, I asked someone what it was and they said it was the tower of Gens (I’ll get the right spelling tomorrow) and that you can see the whole town of Nimes for there, I’m going to go tomorrow and do a painting from there.
As I got on the bus every one ohhed ahhed at the painting and the bus driver said I’ve been driving past all day and I saw you painting it. I was really tired when I got back to the camping and went in the café to have a hot meal with some meat! It made me feel so much better. I talked to my boyfriend for a good long time; I was so tired I almost fell asleep in the café.

---