aubergines

Tha aubergine seller in the little farmer's market at the foot of the Mont Ventoux thinks that markets here are 'condamnés'; that a new generation are growing up wanting everything now baby now from supermarkets and that the humble cheese seller is finished. When I was in the idyllic English village of Garsington, I was told that the only place to shop (for rocket grown in Portugal it turned out) was an immense Tesco in a concrete nightmare of an industrial 'park' to which I had to drive. I googled and googled and, in the last of my seven weeks (too late for all the exquisite picnics I had to make for the extended opera intervals) found two fantastic farm shops.

Meanwhile, my friends' kids seem to care deeply about organic, local and slow food....

Sometimes I feel confused. Mostly I feel hopeful, but perhaps that's because I am living in a bubble of little farmers markets selling cute aubergines and white truffles.