10th August 2010 – The Stuffed Date

We must have looked a funny sight the next day. Near to the house there was a long polythene tunnel which served as a greenhouse where the tomatoes were grown. We trooped in there armed with watering cans every morning before the sun was too powerful. If the task was left any later, the

heat became intolerable. Alongside this tunnel, and stretching off into the distance, were rows of leeks. They were still young, and looked more like vulnerable spring onions planted at intervals along the strip of land. We were working at weeding this strip. We sat in a long line, each about ten metres from the next, heads bowed to the ground, too far from each other to talk yet too close not to acknowledge the others’ presence. The leeks were half-dead from lack of water, brittle as spun-sugar, and yet the weeds were thriving. As I pulled them out, I heard the satisfying sound of ripping roots. They lay in my hands, soft and newly lifeless and covered in fine hairs to which small clumps of damp soil clung. The mud around me was dry beyond belief, and felt more like crumble-topping between my fingers than anything else. And yet beneath the surface there clearly was still some water that hadn’t yet evaporated: a vestige of hope for the survival of the leeks through this heat wave. That was why it was so important that we culled the weeds, which sapped this moisture for their own inedible needs.

I was sitting there happily, dreaming of the café that I was going to set up when I had enough money. It was going to be called The Stuffed Date. It was going to be furnished with second-hand furniture, each piece with its own story to tell, and I was going to try to trace the stories back so that my customers could know what lives the tables and chairs had led. The walls would be plain, and on them would either be photographs that I had taken, or pictures that I had drawn, or perhaps both. The food was going to be vegetarian, inventive and wholesome; there was going to be a salad bar with about five different salads each day, a daily quiche, a choice of soups, and home-baked breads and cakes. I was going to cater for coeliacs and vegans without it even being an issue. I was going to support local farmers, sourcing seasonal produce from them. There was going to be a wide range of teas on offer, and a few good quality coffees. There was going to be a window box of herbs for pick-your-own infusions. There was going to be a cabinet of board games, magazines and books that customers could help themselves to. In the evenings I was going to host poetry nights, readings of plays, jamming sessions, book clubs and English language support sessions and foreign language speaking groups. 

Raphael came up behind me and surprised me out of my fantasy. He told me that it didn’t pay to be too much of a perfectionist. He told me that the weeds would grow back however hard I tried to eliminate them. I took his point. But I was sure that in a month, my patch would still have fewer weeds than his. I couldn’t accept that sometimes hard work was just futile.

It was harvest time, and Edouart and Abelard were hard at work in their respective fields, trying to harvest the majority of their wheat by the end of the week. The middle weekend of August was traditionally when they celebrated the end of the harvest with a méchoui. I didn´t have a clue what a méchoui was, but it was clear that the men were working to a deadline. They were always out in the combine harvester, driving up and down. They stayed out until long after the sun went down and forgot about mealtimes. Renelde even took to calling in to check that Edouart was remembering to eat, which he invariably wasn’t. Like his son, he had a one track mind. We were all offered a ride in the moissonneuse – combine harvester – and I really wanted to accept. But Abelard still scared me and it was he who was offering the ride, not Edouart, and the prospect of spending any more time alone in his presence was not one that I relished, so foolishly I declined the opportunity.