Friday morning means a visit to Eygalieres, one of my neighboring villages. It is market day and I like to food shop for the weekend, take my guests for a browse and meet a friend who lives nearby for coffee. As we pulled in to park, an older woman walked out of the field nearby and moved towards us. She looked pleased with herself, self-satisfied almost...in a good way.... Her face was half smiling, all knowing and full of expression.
The woman beckoned us over. In her hand was a plastic bag - she couldn't wait to show us what was inside. She was so excited and happy to share her good fortune with us. I don't know what I expected to find inside the bag but it wasn't the dozen or so squirming snails that I came face to face with. She was ecstatic and so thrilled that she had found what she considered a culinary delicacy...I on the other hand, lost any semblance of maturity and had to fight back the urge to say, 'how awful' rather than the more polite, 'how marvellous'. The Australian in me doesn't like snails...they will never be a la carte escargots, however much salt and garlic goes into the pot....they will always be a garden pest. Call me silly and unsophisticated but those slippery, slimy little morsels cannot tempt this girl's palate however much I love France and all things French.
What I kept thinking about after this encounter was not that the bag of snails were not to my liking but that the woman was so enchanted with her hunting and gathering. Her apparent joy in such an ordinary task was to be envied and I felt profoundly chastened that the simple pleasures in life can often escape us in our overly sophisticated world.
A bag of snails....A funny way to be reminded of the good things in life, xv.
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