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The dandelion collector
Dense banks of thick-stemmed, bushy-headed dandelions are appearing – then quickly disappearing along the lane towards The Neighbours’ farmhouse. Their growth has been spurred on by this month’s heavy rain and short, but intense, bursts of sunshine. We had April’s weather in March, and we’ve got March’s weather in April; it’s been a topsy-turvy time.
Glamour
Under the restaurant’s heat-bleached striped awning, a woman in her late 60s is having lunch with the local fishermen. Her long grey hair is pushed back with sunglasses. The sleeves of her blue denim shirt are rolled up and she wears a big watch; big silver earrings.
An afternoon out
Three throaty, customised Peugeot 306s roar around the corner and into the market square. The rumbling, booming stereo systems herald their arrival long before the meticulous metallic bodywork and shiny chrome exhausts spin into the spaces normally reserved for the fruit and vegetable vans.
Jean-Florent’s Pineau des Charentes
We’re finishing dinner at The Neighbours’ farmhouse; roast lamb, melting, pink and succulent, from one of the pom-poms slaughtered earlier this year. A small shadow grows its way up the window panes in The Neighbours’ front door. It crunches up the gravel path, knocks briskly at the door.
Summer gold
We follow the dry-mud, crunchy stone and pebble-strewn paths, steering bicycle wheels around the potholes and away from the deep, grassy ditches that border the fields of sunflowers. The farmers are haymaking. From a distance their powerful tractors and bailers shrink to murmuring, shuddering matchboxes; miniature machines working their way up and down this vast, flat landscape, a summer counterpane stitched from barley, corn and long grass; golden, warm-hued, wind-rushed life rippling against the pale-blue evening sky.
Rain, again
Hard grey morning rain is beating down on the market town, bouncing off the awnings, running in streams down the roads and streets. A sad-eyed Jack Russell sits on a wooden chair, staring out from the ‘b’ in ‘boissons’ in the steamed-up cafe window.
The bread oven committee
I’m a member of the bread oven committee. I don’t know how it happened. One moment I was staring at the bread oven ceiling, counting the nails hammered into the beams, wondering at the size of old woodworm holes, and the next a show of 14 hands decided my fate. Or should I say fete?
French property for sale
The inheritors came on Wednesday evening, parking two cars and a horse van in the narrow lane that goes up to the woods. They made a bonfire in the old lady’s front garden, feeding it with furniture from her house, green and blue plastic flower pots, anything they didn’t want.
White gold
I ask for three lemons from the small basket that sits near the scales. The stall holder selects each one, sniffing their zesty, fine-pocked skins before wiping them with his apron and handing them to me as carefully as if they were eggs. I ask for 400 grammes of Paris mushrooms; small close-cupped, crop-tailed buttons, their creamy flesh tinged rosy-pink. He picks his way through them, his fingers delicate and nimble; then he puts each plump little head into a brown paper bag.
First taste of spring
She slowly follows the rows of the weekly market, stroking delicate skins and breathing in the April-breeze cooled flavours from the fruit and vegetable stalls. The columns of cauliflowers, shiny, polished aubergines and dark red peppers are punctuated by cardboard trays of new-season radishes. She lifts up small bunches with her tea-coloured hands, turning and twisting them in her fingers, inspecting their leaves for yellow marks and dark, papery patches.