Le Marché du Jeudi

The Thursday market sets up in the square by eight o'clock. If you arrive at nine, the good mushrooms are already gone.

I learned this the hard way on my first Saturday. By the time I'd crossed the square with my coffee, the chanterelles were sold out and Monsieur Girard — who drives in from his farm outside Confolens — was packing up his remaining cèpes into a crate. He shook his head slowly when I asked if there were more.

"Faut venir tôt," he said. You have to come early.

The market fills the lower half of the main square. There are maybe fifteen stalls on a good week: vegetables, fruit, cheese from the Charente dairy farms, a butcher with a fold-out table, a woman who sells honey and confiture de châtaignes, and a couple of general traders with bolts of fabric and inexplicable quantities of kitchen tools.

The social density is remarkable for the size of the town. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and the market operates as much as a weekly meeting point as a place to buy food. Conversations run long. Transactions are unhurried. I try to listen carefully to the French around me and catch maybe a third of it — the accent here is softer than Parisian French, flatter, with a slight drawl on the vowels.

I bought potatoes, a wedge of tomme de Savoie (someone had brought it from further south), and a bunch of sunflowers because they were there. The flower vendor seemed pleased.

"Vous revenez samedi prochain?"

Yes, I'll be back next Saturday.