The Centre of the Universe

Once I'm finished with my dawn shifts (which start tonight and will become a little harder with the Summer Time change, meaning I will leave the office to go to bed in plain daylight) we should be on our way back to Duilhac.

We'll be taking the usual transport, the train, but trying a new route (which we believe will become the definitive route): St.Pancras via Paris Nord (which instead of changing at Lille will involve swapping station rather than platforms, but shouldn't be too bad) and finally Perpignan... ...or should I say the centre of the universe?



Looking at the above video, or even the inside of the station, it takes some imagination to believe it (although at 31st, in the list of biggest French cities, I think Perpignan is just the right size)

But imagination is something that abounded in the source of the pronouncement - Salvador Dali.

Dali declared the city's railway station the centre of the Universe, saying that he always got his best ideas sitting in the waiting room. In fact, today, above the station sits a monument in Dali's honour, and across the surface of one of the platforms is painted, in big letters, "Perpignan, centre du monde".

This is it:



I've also just learnt from wikipedia that apparently Dali followed his pronouncement some years later "by declaring that the Iberian Peninsula rotated precisely at Perpignan station 132 million years ago".

So, it looks like, at least I, have come full circle...!

Anyway, we're pretty excited with this trip. How excited exactly we're not quite sure as we'll be seeing for the first time the result of the works that have been going on in our absence.

Mr Portal has duly installed the new front doors and Harry has finished repointing the walls, bringing out the old stone on the facade and giving the house a whole new coat of paint. Hopefully not yellow, which is the word we wanted nothing to do with, but the word, Alexander says, he heard Harry mention more often...

Surely (hopefully?...) he was just pulling our leg...!

And on the way back to London we also trying something else: getting the night train from Perpignan to Paris, where we should arrive early Sunday morning, giving us a full day of treats in the capital, if not of the universe at least of Europe!