You read, with envy, a newspaper article about a chap who, this February, was in Nice for the annual Festival of Flowers, when young women on cars or lorries drive through the streets, showering flowers on the by standers. In February. And now, in the last days of March, with a welcome but watery sun out for a while, you realise that all in Europe is not ice and sleet.
Take the temperature chart from last Saturday's Irish Times. Barcelona 16 degrees, Nice 15. It will be from experience, some where around that figure along the south west Mediterranean shore of France Catalan country. And you think of the Sunday crowds at, say Collioure. The full season may not have started, but hotels and cafes will have their complement of family gatherings grandfather and grandmother father and mother and the children down to the youngest. The latter, learning about life, learning about food, and learning about manners in public. And the children are not fed pap. No burgers. They get real food.
You forget if the Sunday market will be in full swing now. Probably so, though it depends on tourists in the summer to a great extent. Among the favourites with visitors are the honey stalls. In season they will have a rich variety to offer. And not Just a melange with different labels. You can see the texture and taste the flavour. Some from lowland, possibly earlier plants. Some from the first slopes of the Pyrenees, some from very high areas where chemical sprays are unknown. Many in very portable jars, from 125 gr to 250 grand more.
There are, in season, all fruits, including prunes like you haven't seen before olives, anchovies all sorts of meats and vegetables as well as clothing old lace a super store under a canopy of venerable plane trees. Oh yes, and herbs in quantity and not every family, you will say, can afford a cafe or hotel meal every Sunday. French spend their money in a different way to us. To people who are not on the lowest level of income, the Sunday meal is a built in part of the budget. Now how did we get on to all that?