Pique-nique

To Amélie les Bains today to catch up with S. We had an average quality and outrageously expensive lunch in town, and then the heat rapidly drove us to the hotel I'd booked. We have a studio with a small kitchen, so late in the afternoon we went into town to buy ingredients for a picnic to eat on the terrace. The nice man in the wine shop popped across the road to a bar in order to pack ice cubes around the bottle of white wine for us.

Amélie is a pretty dull place. People only come here for la cure, paid for by social security. There's nothing else to do, so once they've had their treatments they spend the rest of the day eating and drinking. Very healthy. Oddly, in the bar where S and I had arranged to meet at lunchtime, at the next table were a couple who'd been members of my choir six or seven years ago.