Happy birthday to me

A big birthday with a zero on the end, officially three score years and ten really ancient. As we try to avoid restaurants on this day, the plan was to go to the market in Narbonne, buy lovely food, have a cheeky apero at one of the bars, and then go home for lunch cooked by S. But the angry Spanish farmers on the other side of the Pyrenees put paid to this plan. The autoroute was closed south of Narbonne -- we are north, but Fabrezan was jammed with lorries again, and I could see the distant traffic jam as we approached the autoroute. "It's Wednesday -- why don't we just go to the market in Lézignan instead?"

We stopped at the wine merchant for some nice wine, including a bottle of Chablis, and then visited the fishmonger for sea bass. Lézignan is looking pretty desperate -- the council has felled nearly all the plane trees on the main street despite strong local opposition, and it is now a mess of heavy machinery and holes in the road while they turn it into a bland esplanade with no shade. With diggers roaring outside, the fishmonger was doing a fraction of his normal trade, and there were few customers at the market. Nevertheless, it took us half an hour to get there as we met several people we know en route, including F, whom we haven't seen for years even though she lives only a few kilometres away. 

We stopped for coffee in the sunshine and were about to head home when S said "Oh -- what about dessert?", forcing a detour to the patisserie. Then home for lunch. Aperos, Mussels in sauce poulette, baked sea bass with potatoes, cheese and biscuits, and this heart-shaped cake.

I've enjoyed a lazy day -- I received many flat, oblong parcels. Always good news; I have a pile of new books to read now. My sister N has been sorting out her loft, and she also sent me a selection of letters I wrote to her in the late 1970s/early 1980s (she's definitely more of a hoarder than I am, helped by not moving house very often). Yes, we all wrote letters in those days, pages long. They are eerily fascinating -- lots of stuff I'd forgotten, so it was like reading about a different person, and certainly a different era. Over a period of about three years I wrote from five different addresses.