it’s not a great campsite. There’s a group of rather prosperous looking Travellers in large smart caravans, with home-schooled children and sweet little Jack Russells, in a group by the entrance. They’ve rigged hoses up, and were busy washing one of the vans down this morning. One of the young lads greeted me in French, then beamed when I started talking English to him. Most of the other inhabitants are French or Dutch, with a few Belgians who’ve slipped over the nearby border. It’s a typical Municipal of a certain generation, with hedged pitches and smartly designed toilet blocks in a 70’s style. However, Austerity shows: some broken urinals; light fittings are still the original fluorescents; cracked tiles; toilet roll holders missing for many a long year, along with the toilet roll. The electric pole had a socket with a broken cover; when I put my tester on, no live current. When I reported it to the pleasant young receptionist, she told me to take the top off and with it back on. Having already moved, I did so just for form; the top had been on at a jaunty angle, and I think had nudged the breaker. I’m confident dealing with live switches, but I worry for the less experienced. Oh, and there was no hot water in the shower: I was late up, so maybe the hot tank had been drained by 9am. Clean, but shabby.

My morning preparations were completed, after a chilly wetting down, by the search for my second hearing aid. the first was fine, where I left it last night. The second, less so. Reasoning it had been dislodged, I checked all the various nooks and crannies where it might have landed. Then checked the bedding to see whether it had become entangled. Then pulled the bed out; finally took the carpet out and gave it a good shake. I dusted inside the cupboard with the toilet in it; checked my various bags. Nope. Nada. Rien. Just at the point of thinking it had gone the way of other items that mysteriously vanish in the van, and I was going to have to pay up for a replacement, I happened to touch my ear. Then the other one. Like an aged uncle’s magic trick, there were two fully working hearing aids; both with new batteries yesterday. Praise be to the saint of lost objects. (According to one website, it’s saint qqqq. Apparently it’s Saint Anthony of Padua – thanks Tony.)

The journey from Liverdun was a pleasant amble through the wheat fields countryside of Lorraine, past Verdun where I stocked up with fuel and food. Roadsigns were a frequent reminder that, where the Somme was the defining battle of WWI for the British, the reason for it was to try to relieve pressure on the French forces’ siege at Verdun.A short while on and there’s a Austro-Hungarian/German war memorial at a lay-by; where I got chatting to a Geordie couple in a VW, on their way back from Austria and Switzerland. Later I passed a German war cemetery; and just to complete the set, there’s also a field full of French crosses at the Nécropole nationale de Bras-sur-Meuse. There’s even a sign to a large American cemetery too, marking their sacrifice as part of the Meuse Argonne battlefield. Checking this reference, I came across a Jewish Israelite monument, inscribed in Hebrew. It always gives me a shiver passing through these killing fields, and feel a sadness. The lessons still need to be learned.

Walking from the site into town is very easy; and I found both the Tourist information, and the Festival ticket office in quite short order. The nice ladies behind the desk were very helpful sorting me out; outside in the courtyard techies were unloading piles of cable to rig that venue. These are my people! I retired to a cafe to choose exactly which shows I wanted to commit to. Tourist information also sold me a pen (needed to mark the programme) and a couple of gifts for les petit enfants; then back to the ladies (and Jean-Luc their supervisor), we went through exactly what I could and couldn’t see – most of today’s shows were booked out already. I think they were just getting used to the online ticketing system: lots of peering, head-scratching, and teeth sucking. Some of my choices were ‘impossible – complet’ so they helped me work out alternatives. The festival programme layout also made that difficult. I came out quite a few Euros lighter, with a fistful of tickets. I also need to go back to the Tourist Office to reserve a place at an open air event. It was closed for a French lunch when I got there. So I found a place that does everything in miniature pots: baked camembert, with new potatoes in butter in another pot, with some strongly garlic croutons on the side. And a small local beer.

I spent the afternoon doing what can only be described as mooching: I was a Flaneur. There were other items on exhibit in the programme; so I took myself off to the International Institute of Puppetry, to inspect their Documentation Centre. This turned out to be a smallish room containing a library; with books indexed with a system that wasn’t the Dewey one I’m used to. Several very studious types, researching theses by the look of them. You can always tell when the books don’t have a lot of pictures: and like Alice said, what’s the use of a book without pictures or conversations? I managed to find a dictionary of theatre terms, as I’d always been a little unclear as to the role of the Régisseur in France. The description was very much the old school Stage Manager: probably more the Régisseur Général these days. After smiling nicely, and telling them what I used to do for a living, and that my College had a link with DAMU in Prague, where some of our students went on exchange and came back as puppeteers., I moved on.

My next port of call was to ESNAM, the Senior School for Art and Marionettes, where there was an exhibition of photos of puppets made by inmates of the local prison. I got lost; the exhibition was just past reception, but I followed a few corridors, and I was clearly well inside the college building. There were workshops with workstations ready for students; a decent looking woodworking shop with a couple of chop saws, and another for costume, with lines of sewing machines. Behind some half open doors, there was evidently some construction going on, looks like students with tutors; and it all felt very familiar. Back at reception, I apologised for getting lost, and had a good chat with the attendants: told them what I did for a living, yada yada yada …. Looking at the exhibition, I complemented them on the concept: it was new to me, but I was familiar with the idea of arts-led urban regeneration. That’s exactly what this project was, she said.

That got me thinking, about what made a successful urban regeneration project. Charleville, apart from being a heavily fortified border town, also had a history of heavy industry – metal casting; cannon and small arms manufacture, some cutlery too, which I found out from a visit to the excellent local museum. The gun factories, which had supplied both the American and French revolutionaries, shut down just before the Franco-Prussian war. Despite the elegance of the city centre – Charleville was developed as a model town in the days of the Sun King as an example of Enlightenment city planning – the town today looks like so many places in the UK; boarded up shops outside the central business zone; and somewhere where austerity has left its ugly toll. In that respect, the campsite is representative; somewhere where serious investment in infrastructure is needed. Can the arts do it? Folkestone and Margate are good examples that show what can be done, East London too, but there’s a need for a multi-agency approach, of public and private working together, with clear goals in mind. I might work up a piece for the other part of this website at some point.

Tomorrow I have my tickets, for three or four shows. I explained my French wasn’t that great, so I was looking for shows that were more visual. I do tend to state the bleedin obvious. (One of my favourite gags, at a checkout, is to say “I’m a foreigner” as if my French were perfect. It ain’t!) Anyway, “All of them are visual,” she said, “you will not have a problem.” Hmm.