Le Déjeuner

athletic ladies in Lycra are very thin on the ground...the field is thus left to men whose

obvious affinity with beer is in inverse proportion to their sense and sensibilities in the fashion

department. Aerodynamic shape is not easily acquired.

In any case, the options for cycling are myriad in Provence, with Mont Ventoux

dominating the skyline wherever one looks as reminder of its Tour de France history.

The sun moves towards its place at midday and soon the shops will be closing for their

two-hour lunch break. The timing is not exact, it may start at 1230 or 1300 such are the

vagaries of the French shopkeeper and artisan. The unwary traveller or arriviste from Paris

and London will need to learn quickly that Provençal time, as it is in many other regions, runs

to different clocks. To the Anglo Saxon, used to the application of the Protestant work ethic

and the efficiency of tyrannical hours and minutes of quartz driven timepieces, this is

ineffable.

In 1936 John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay in which he argued that capitalism had

already produced enough wealth and material resources that we could all look forward to

working for only 15 hours per week. He was right. The world is awash with wealth and assets

to ensure every person on the planet could eat decently and have a roof over their head.

Working 40 hours over week? Why? But the Provençal had got there first in respect of lunch

at least. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, while the French eat. Wage

slaves in London grab a sandwich, dropping their crumbs, saliva and assorted bacteria into

their keyboards. They barely look up to see the sun as the screen screams at them to keep

working. Two hours for lunch? How could that possibly be?

Plats du jour. Salades the size of Wales on your plate. Tartare de boeuf, Entrecôte,

Magret de Canard, Dos de Cabillaud or pâtes de bolognaise, millanaise or carbonara.

Gambas and langoustine and a pichet of vin rouge or rosé served with a small basket of

bread to soak up the juices. You need two hours to think about your choice, to choose the

wine, to take in the ambience and to chat up the waitress if you are a chap of a certain age

and need the ego stroking. Projects get completed, vines harvested, deals get done, even with a

two-hour lunch. It is too late for the cold dour Northern European to adopt this habit. They

don’t have the climate or the inclination. They have a pension pot to build and blind ambition

leading them down blind alleys, all the while life passes them by until it is too late to recognise

that life happens today, at lunch time. Even a Mistral wind would not dampen the ardour for

a two-hour wine infused mélange in a bistro. No one at age 70 on their death bed would or

should confess to wasting time over lunch. God will not be mocked. Pray if you like for

forgiveness but if you have spent a lifetime stuffing hurried wet wilted sandwiches into your

mouth while stroking the keys then you deserve the 7 circles of hell and a testicle roasting

from one of Beelzebub’s cack-handed apprentices.

Lunch should be sacred, indeed a sacrament. Jesus did not bang on about bread and

wine for nothing. He was trying to tell us something important. Heal the sick if you must,

raise the dead, and perambulate across your nearest stretch of water, but have lunch. Lazarus

was already dead, so two hours waiting for Jesus to finish his ‘Porc et Palourdes au Cidre

Accompagnes De Flageolets’ and a cheeky pichet of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, would not be

much of a hardship. Jesus was adept at turning water into wine and loved a huge dinner for

5000. There is huge clue as to priorities there. Jesus would love Provence. Well if he is the son

of God, he already knows about it. The only surprise was that his incarnation was in the

desert among those whose culinary skills amounted to a tagine of beans and a goat. He really

should have been born in Bédoin not Bethlehem. The French penchant for wine and whoring

would not have seen him crucified but sainted. I think God missed a trick sending Jesus to

dine with desert peasants whose idea of high cuisine is a jelly filled, blobby sheep’s eye which

winks at you having just had its throat cut. Was God asleep that day?

Perhaps he had missed lunch.

One, perhaps, black mark however, is that the menus themselves can be, dare I say it,

a bit… ‘samey’? There is always the plat du jour/formule which varies from place to place. It

varies between 12-18 euros and involves a combination of two of the entree/plat/dessert

choices. There is usually a list of Salades involving the usual suspects: Paysanne, Niçoise,

Caesar. Choose one of these as an entree but unless you are a glutton or have spent the

morning scaffolding, leave out the plat. The plats themselves will almost always feature tartare

de boeuf, an entrecôte, a magret du canard, and a fish. To relieve the monotony there are

always pizza/pasta restaurants. The latter are often a cut above the big standard global pizza

emporium.

However. You are in France.

In Aubignan, just 6 kms from Caromb, we stopped for lunch on the way back from

visiting the market in Carpentras. Aubignan is an old fortress village with an impressive

fortress gate built of solid creamy grey stone. Sadly, that is the only bit of the walls and

fortress left. Its main street is lined with plane trees affording welcome shade from the midday

sun. One restaurant turned us away as it was ‘complet’, a not uncommon experience if you

do not reserve a table. That left the ‘pizza restaurant’ across the street. The third choice was

to starve. Putting aside the waiting time for any food to actually arrive, about an hour and

fifteen minutes, the pizza itself was wafer thin and crispy exceptional. It was after all a pizza

restaurant but sometimes the name belies the delivery. Its clientele were a mixture of all of

life, bar the infatuated romantic couple - the sort that hold hands at table and stare into each

other’s eyes.

The next table was the venue for 4 white shirted men of commerce of some sort.

Deals might have been done, projects agreed or merely the football results were discussed. A

grey shaggy haired old man ambled in, shuffling towards a seat at table to merely drink coffee

and watch the world around him. A bulky middle-aged husband and wife team gamely fought

to control the mouthfuls of andouillette with every forkful and by the look of them this was

something they have been doing with gusto for quite some time. A tiny hairy rat sort of dog

sat dutifully by Madame’s leg hoping no doubt for titbits of sausage, should it fall to the floor.

Noticeable by their invisibility were the brightly clad cyclists who throng tables at nearby

Bédoin and Malaucène. Aubignan is not on the most popular cycling routes although there is

no reason why it should not be.

The minute hand of the clock tower in the centre of town edged towards two o’clock.

The restaurant slowly emptied of clients, its tables, now devoid of conversation and fork

rattling, sat forlornly. Nearby parked cars, and their now sated occupants, drove off leaving

empty spaces all the way up and down. Small businesses would soon re open. Dust resettled.

The leaves of the plane trees overhead gently rustled. At irregular intervals a truck or car

would slowly drive up the street to remind us that traffic does actually exist somewhere. The

hum of conversation died away. Lunch was over, but never mind, it will return again

tomorrow and there is dinner to look forward to.

The sun rises to its zenith, its heat will now be at its fiercest for a couple of hours. Old

houses will creak and expand, new houses will hum with the air conditioning. Little hairy

creatures will seek the shade wherever they can find it. Grasshoppers will sing, beetles will

scuttle, and butterflies will exalt. The country shuts down and expends as little energy as is

required. Siesta makes a good deal of sense if you can afford the time. If the Mistral winds

appear, they will make the cypress tree tops dance while the stump oak and olive stand in

stark resistance to its deliverances. In the heat of summer, the wind brings hot gusts rather

than cool breezes. The afternoon may see a drop in human activity, but nature will be as busy

as ever, taking sunlight and converting it into lavender, honey, olive oil and wine.

There is an autoroute far away wending its way down South, and it will be packed

with commerce and tourists. It will be hot. Its tar will become sticky and its car locked

children tempestuous and impatient. Tempers will be fraying and radiators overheating. Both

delivery times and bladders will apply pressure upon the occupants of the traffic. The heat

from engines and rising air will distort the vision. Prudent owners of camper vans and

caravans will have pulled over at service stations to eat lunch or to sleep. The noise of the

autoroute will not extend too far however and across the Rhône valley and into the Luberon

or the plateau of the Vaucluse. It will have disappeared as merely a figment of some tepid

and fetid imagination. It is symbolic of much of modern ‘civilisation’ - busy, hot, dangerous

and somewhat unnecessary - whose participants are unaware of the nightmare they have