A door groaning with food

In every film about living in France there is always a scene where a large group of people are sitting outside, usually under speading trees in a rustic courtyard. They are sitting at a long table which is covered with baskets of bread, platters of cheeses and sausage and every other corner of the massive tabe is filled with bottles and glasses as if  some hyperactive Tommy Cooper had been practising his magic.

And yesterday magic it was - something from a Breugel - something that has not changed for millennia. Our picnic was just north of us up on the Larzac plateau - if you think Luberon but with really great views, this is an enchanted place.

After living in France for nearly 20 years I still remember the first time we were invited to a picnic - not an improvised affair with a couple of sandwiches and sitting on a rug getting covered with ants and wasps - in France it is  nothing less than a full five course meal starting with aperatifs and ending with coffee.

The difference from a formal dinner party is the singing, inpromptu dancing and the fact that we are sitting on wooden benches and eating off of the doors of the house which have been lifted off their hinges and put onto trestles in a long line across an unmown field.

The highlight of the afternoon yesterday was a walk down the hill from the farm to  see the baby goats - all ninety of them. Cute is not the word for a flock of two month old angora goats (well goats which give angora wool I don’t know if they are called angora goats) - I doubt I can eat a meshui ever again.