Eureka

Ste Carine
Yesterday's weather: bright and cool

We have been on a shopping mission for a couple of months now. Every time we went to a village or town we hadn't been to before we searched out a housewares shop.

We've been looking for a tea tray. We wanted one similar to a friends which is a lovely big deep tray made of wood. Whenever I asked in a shop I was shown a vast array of what they had available. Usually made of anything other than wood, not deep and not big.

I don't think it was my bad French. I would always agree that what they were showing me was very nice but it wasn't what I had asked for now, was it? The shop assistant would look slightly miffed but agree with me.

Sarlat is a town that we have avoided all summer, simply because we know it is such a huge tourist attraction and from March to October it is almost impossible to locate a parking space. And, of course it is in the frozen north in Dordogneshire. We thought that we would pay a visit today, the smaller of their two market days each week.

The poor stall holders were definitely feeling the pinch. We and about another 4 couples wandered amongst the two or three dozen stalls. 'Bonjour Monsieur, Madame!' called a rather good looking young man waving a slice of Cantal cheese at us 'Would you like to try my cheese?'. We refused apologetically and passed on. The next cheese stall was run by a Dutch lady, she ran down the list of all the cheeses on her stall to everyone passing by but we didn't see any takers.

Instead, we headed for the 'spice lady' and found one of the few spices we'd not been able to locate - lucky us, was this an omen for the day? Black mustard seeds will make a good addition to the next curry Jon cooks us. She also had raw cashews, stem ginger and Bombay mix. We added some spicy looking olives for good measure. Madame over measured the cashews.

'Oh, that's OK' I said, 'I'll take those'

'Mais, non, Madame' she replied. 'You asked for 200 grams and I won't give you too many. It's just that it is so cold today that my fingers won't work'.

I sympathised and said that it was the coldest year I'd known. She thought I had said the wrong thing and corrected me.

'Yes it is the coldest day'.

'No, I said the coldest year, the summer was awful' We parted company sympathising over the weather and the bad tourist season.

It seems that every other shop in Sarlat sells either foie gras and other duck products or locally produced liqueurs and wines, we spotted some that we'd not seen before and made a mental note to go back another day.

Finally we spotted a kitchenware shop and, lo and behold, there was just the tea tray we had been searching for. Then we had to go through the usual questions:

'Do you want anything else?'. 'No'

'Is it a gift, shall I gift wrap it?' 'No'

'How would you like to pay? Credit card? No, we don't take those but a cheque will be fine'

I love that you can buy almost anything and have it gift wrapped in a shop here for no extra charge. That could save me hours at Christmas.

Time for a cuppa now, I'll carry it on my new tray. Do you know what this tray could do with? One of those nice old fashioned tray runners like my grandmother used to have. I might just look out for one next time I'm out.