On the Marché - France - page 111

On the Marché
Our town, while being surrounded on all sides by more famous towns and chateaux, is
renowned locally as having the best market in the area. In the UK it would be called a farmer's
market so that prices could be upped accordingly, but here it's just a market. Farmers, or at
least artisans and producteurs , faithfully turn up every Thursday morning and take over the
not-inconsiderable town square while people are bussed in from miles around for their weekly
shop and social.
And it is very much a social. As we headed into town in search of hens the sun shone brightly
and seemed more permanent than it had for months, less watery and with no chill in the air.
Instead there was a comfortable warmth and spring, which had clearly been hitting its own
snooze button and just rolling over for the last few weeks, was now up, yawning, stretching
and scratching its bits maybe, but it was up nonetheless and the local community was waking
up with it. The hardy souls who had braved the market throughout the winter were still there
but greeting each other anew, as if it were for the first time in months; their numbers were
swollen by the holiday-home weekenders from Paris and the first wave of Loire tourists. The
shops, which had stoically remained in business throughout the lean, almost deserted months,
at last had customers again - although one or two had fallen by the wayside simply unable to
remain viable with so little custom. The old man who ran the alimentation had finally given up
the ghost as had the boucherie , though there were rumours that a new one would open soon.
I love the individuality of the small town French high street. There are few big chains dom-
inating and there seems to be a desire to protect the tradition of high street shopping. I had
recently bought a Kindle and I was still having problems with the whole e-reader thing. I'd
been backed into buying one by the increasing vigilance of Ryanair and their refusal to allow a
gram over their paltry 10 kilograms and that the bag must conform to a certain size and shape.
Really, they should take over WeightWatchers. I like proper books and proper book shops and
feel guilty about owning a Kindle because it's another, possibly last, nail in the coffin of the
UK high street where I had always bought my books.
The traditional UK high street has taken a battering. There are very few butchers left, vir-
tually no ironmongers, Greggs counts barely as food let alone as a bakery and Waterstones,
the last bookshop, is hanging on by its fingernails. It's depressing. The British high street has
been left with estate agents, Wetherspoon's pubs, clothes shops all selling the same designs