‘I don’t think that woman realises that she’s had a near-death experience,’ whispered Sean my indefatigable travelling companion to me as we stomped out of the ‘Salon de Thé’ late one evening.
It had been a long hot day on our holidays in ‘la belle France’. A day in which, for me at any rate, this was just the final straw in our struggles with French eating habits.
Our first obstacle arose at lunchtime. We’d selected what we thought sounded like just the spot for lunch – a town with a harbour along the Canal du Midi. And, most importantly we’d be hitting it just at the right time for lunch.
As anyone knows, the French seem to be obsessed with routine when it comes to meal times. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all served between certain times, and outside of that you can forget about eating.
On arrival we could see that this town was in the middle of a festival. Market stalls and a stage were being erected in the town square ready for a concert that evening. So far, so good. What we didn’t realise, until we began to search for food, was that the town was about to celebrate the ‘Festival of Cassoulet’.
Cassoulet is a delicious bean and meat stew, ideal for those cold winter nights when you need something hearty and warming. It’s not, to my mind, the kind of thing you want at lunch time when it’s 35 degrees in the shade!
Every restaurant in the town had only one thing on the menu – cassoulet. After about 45 minutes of wandering we eventually managed to buy a sandwich and a cold drink which we consumed in an exhausted heap on the side of the road.
Undaunted we pressed on, promising ourselves a mid-afternoon pit-stop for some patisserie and a nice cup of coffee. We were beginning to think we were jinxed when the next town was also mid-festival. This time it was a ‘Festival of Prunes’!
But back to the Salon du Thé (or tea-shop to you and me). We’d had a lovely evening meal (no cassoulet or prunes on the menu!) and I’d hoped to end it with a nice cup of tea. But yet again my hopes were dashed when instead of the black tea I’d ordered, outcomes a pot of Earl Grey. Again, lovely if that’s want you fancy, but to my palate I might as well be drinking a bottle of perfume.
But I was not too alarmed because earlier in the evening I had spotted the aforementioned tea-shop and I had it in reserve for just such an eventuality. Full of hope and bright anticipation I approached the young woman at the counter and in my best broken French asked for a pot of tea.
Despite the many people seated around the Salon, and without batting an eyelid, she told me that she was ‘fermé’. I have enough French to know that this was a disaster. If I don’t get a cup of tea before I go to bed, I have the most unmerciful headache the next day.
I must have looked quite deranged as I held my head in my hands, shook my head and mumbled ‘closed, closed, I don’t believe it’. At this point I think any Irish barista might have asked if I was alright and offered me at least a take-away tea.
But not this lady. This lady was not for turning. She was ‘fermé’, and that was that.
Back on to the street with us, me in a caffeine-starved daze and Sean frantically looking around for an alternative. Thank goodness we didn’t have far to go till we found another establishment where amongst the long list of tea strewn with rose petals, tea flavoured with orange, rose hips, raspberries and every other kind of flipping bark and berry known to man there lurked an ordinary, common-or-garden, normal, not flavoured with anything except tea, tea.
In fairness it was a great holiday and I had some fantastic food along the way, but for the sake of my blood pressure I may just have to re-think the whole tea drinking thing next time!
Embracing turbulence 