Paella

... simmering at the market in Lézignan today. This isn't the shot I intended to take, but I had the little camera with the biiiig lens, so this is what I ended up with after deleting all the really bad ones. The market was heaving with people even though it wasn't that nice a day. I couldn't resist my weekly fix of apricots and cherries even though the freezer is filling up and I've made about two years' supply of jam. I didn't buy any paella though; instead I bought a roast chicken with potatoes and onions cooked in the juices, from the Chinese man -- yum!

This evening I went to see the Dardenne brothers' film Deux jours, une nuit, with Marion Cotillard playing against type as a depressed Belgian factory worker about to lose her job. The premise is the rather far-fetched one that her colleagues have been asked to vote on whether they'd like a bonus of 1000 euros each, or for her to keep her job. So she spends a weekend visiting them all trying to convince them to reject the bonus. Once you accept that, the film is engaging if not mind-blowing, a kind of Ken Loach/Robert Guedigian style of social realism. And Cotillard is of course excellent -- the seesaw of her emotions is what keeps you interested since the plot is a bit repetitive and predictable.

Oh, and S phoned to say he'd made it through some snow-laden passes to his next stop, accompanied by a cheerful Spanish guy who had inadequate maps, no compass, no GPS, no crampons, and no ice axe ... but a lot of mountain experience and legs like a mountain goat's :)