Wednesday. No loitering under the sheets. Wednesday is market day, and if I don't get there by 7am, Charly from the French Pan Tree will have cornered all the freshly-pulled baby carrots ...
So, up at 6.30, quick gulp of icy Cole's fizzy water, and on the road, with my sturdy Kitchen and Table shopping bag, and another eco-bag, full of friend Robert's 'empties', to return to the Felix the Mandarin-Juice man ...
I don't climb the hill, or cope with the final descent to the seaside, quite as stridingly as I did a year or two ago, and I'm particularly apprehensive today, as I'm not just shopping for one, as I usually am. Wendy, Pat and Rose arrive from New Zealand this weekend, so I'm stocking their fridge with their favourite farm-fresh goodies. Which that means, on the return journey, UP that 'descent', I'm going to be laden like a mule!
Well, I made it. Slowly, with the odd pause. Home by 8.30 (passing a tardy Charly on the way!) with my two bags of edible trophies ...!
Sorry, girls, no broccoli. When you are buying farm-fresh, you have to go with the seasons. No Chilean imports here, I'm afraid ... just eggs too big to fit in a normal eggbox, avocados to set my friend, Angela's eyes a-popping, stubby little carrots that LOOK like carrots and not horse-feed, green tomatoes (hurrah! Greek salad ahoy!), fat lemons, limes and a heap of Pat's favourite mandarins ...
Chuckle. Don't worry, I didn't forget carnivorous me! 'Meat corner' for me is here.
On the right, Warren, from Boorabee Dorper Stud, whose home-grown lamb is quite simply the best I've ever tasted in my life -- even when cooked by me. Yes, I come from New Zealand, and lived long in France, but for me, it's first-prize to Boorabee, all the way.
Next to him is Jed's Esperanza pork stall ... it looked so good that, last week, I bought some. It's marinating, awaiting the fry pan, for it will be my today's lunch!
Ah, Wednesdays!
All shopping done, and all forces spent, my wee Wednesday 'treat' is to sit down with a cup of the excellent coffee brewed by the ladies from CCC, listen to a little of the deliciously unamplified music (we had a harpist a fortnight ago!), and gaze at the sea, as the sun climbs into the sky -- and the locals begin to shed their woolies -- until it is time to climb that hill!
Well, it's done. Here I am, back in my office. Ready to start the day's work. There are twenty-two early C19th French poems to translate, three books and a musical to give my attention to, and I'm only up to letter B in my final checking of the Victorian Vocalists database before it settles down in the Harvard Library ... So, sorry, mate, I don't have time to give singing lessons today
Oh. Dinner tonight? No. I'm not cooking. I'm heading for the French Pan Tree. I'll bet Charly's cooking up yet another culinary treat ... even if I DID get the carrots.. !
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