My name is Paul Allinaire but many years ago I was known for a while as ‘Francois’. As a young child at primary school in the 1970’s I participated in an international student transfer with a school in Brittany in the north west of France. I was only about 10 years old and it was the first time I had traveled without my parents. The trip which lasted a now unknown timeframe, perhaps a few weeks, became a great adventure full of seemingly strange events that have become baked into my memory in a vague and blurred way as if in a dream. Childhood memories such as these are always somewhat magical but also unreliable and incomplete. Whenever i recall them it feels as though I’m viewing a 1970’s Super 8 movie with dropouts and missing scenes, the timeline and exact details do not add up. Consequently I’m left with a combination of short vivid fragments and a washed out longer memory of time and place which appear to me as if colours and sounds. Essentially a feeling of nostalgia.Around this time of the trip I used to play Piano on weekly visits to my Grandparents home. Not properly, not reading music - I would play randomly without any understanding of music theory, notes or scales. I would just play chords and melodies of my own made through experimentation, trial and error. In 2021 during an inevitable covid lockdown I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and was playing a lot more music. My ‘normal’ musical taste and style has tended to more experimental in the last few years and my other Allinaire releases reflect this direction. But one day, while just quietly playing a piano like I did as a child the memories of my Brittany experience flooded back and the music came with it. I decided to collect these musical and compositional scraps and produce an album of personal nostalgia and fragmented memories. The following remembered history is a way to understand the inspiration for the tracks. Bewley, in the north of England, was my primary school. I sometimes imagine watching myself as a child standing in the assembly hall singing hymns. Our french teacher gave us new names and we wore them on a tag around our necks. I became Francois, my best friend John became ‘Jean’. It was a mystery to me why we needed to learn french but I was obliged to go with it. Somewhere alone the line we started swapping cassette tapes with a school in Brittany, we would speak French and English and describe ourselves and our life and they would do likewise. I recall it so well as it was the first time I heard my own voice on tape - and I couldn’t believe it sounded like somebody else rather than the voice in my head. At some point part of the class went on a student transfer trip to the school somewhere around Quimper in Brittany. I can’t remember who went or how many or exactly where we went but I certainly do remember the terrifying flight there one dark night over the English Channel. It was raining heavily and we had shocking turbulence. I was pretty sure I was going to die and it left me with a fear of flying ever since. Arriving in Brittany was a revelation. The light, smells, feel and ambiance of the town we were in was quite magical - this adds to the dream like quality of my memories. It felt a little like going back in time for some reason, or maybe that’s how I recall it now. Walking up the quaint streets going into shops and pointing at things asking ‘combien s'il vous plait’ (How much please?) and never really catching the response in a jumble of numbers. In school I was at a complete loss and only really excelled in the English class. My new french friends tried to help me but I was hopeless. Still the experience was magical. One day we went to Concarneau and to the docks where fishermen were hauling in the days catches. We were all offered a fresh oyster. I was horrified that people could eat a live creature and spat mine out in salty disgust. To be fair, at that time, practically any foreign food to me was like poison I was so conservative in my tastes as a child. Each morning we had coffee for breakfast which was served in a bowl - I simply couldn’t understand why. At night we were in a dorm and could watch French TV. A highlight was the 1966 sci-fi Movie ‘Fantastic Voyage’ it was dubbed in French so I didn’t understand most of it but it has an incredible soundtrack by Leonard Rosenman - an Atonal score highly unusual for the time. I don’t remember leaving France or coming back to England but in the aftermath a french teacher stayed at our school for a while. He was also an accomplished Swordsman and taught us Fencing. It seemed almost surreal to be sword fighting in a British primary school but there we were with our white tunics and fencing helmets and pointed swords each lunchtime lunging and parrying. The other memories of that time have mostly vanished - as if in a movie seen years ago and mostly forgotten.