6th August 2010 – First Class Cheese

It was Friday, and Hannah was going on a road-trip to see a friend of a friend who lived on a boat off the south coast. But before that was a day of work, preparing for Saturday’s market. That meant more green beans. I learned that the French phrase for that’s the final straw translated to that’s the end of the beans, and it seemed strangely apt, at least to my aching back! 

Hannah was craving an apple, so with time to kill before lunch we hopped into Marta’s cousin’s car, which was red and scratched and the passenger door was tied on with rope. Fearless Hannah elected to drive. I was quite sure that I didn’t have the guts to drive somebody else’s car on the wrong side of the road, however battered it already was. We failed to remember that all the shops shut for lunch and siesta around that area, and so our excursion was quite literally fruitless. We returned for a lunch of courgette, rice and tagine, plenty of wine, salad and bread and feta cheese, home-made by a friend. Sophie mentioned that she had ordered some Reblechon, and asked to be reminded to check the letterbox at the top of the long drive, but because of the wine we all forgot to do so. We ate gooseberries too, sugary bursts of sourness on our tongues. But gooseberries didn’t equate to apples, and Hannah was still unsatisfied, so Raphael, Hannah and I ended up once again in the car to Retournac, squeezing through impossibly narrow gaps between parked vans and stone walls. That time we managed to buy what they wanted, and on the way back to the car we bumped into Edouart and Else. Else was Edouart’s daughter, Abelard’s much younger sister. She was only eighteen, but seemed older. We took a diversion with them to a bar, which bizarrely seemed to be playing Irish music on repeat. Being already well wined, we sipped tea and chatted.

Upon our return the others had already finished their siestas and had ventured out into the fields to continue with the shallot harvest. My conscience chastised me for slacking, but the other two simply laughed, as though it were a triumph that they weren’t pulling their weight. I felt frustrated all over again.

Nevertheless, things were getting better. It had nothing to do with the fact that Hannah had set off happily on her quest for Marseille and the seaside that evening though. As with Kelsey before her – although admittedly not to such a great extent – I had been growing slowly fonder of her.