Drive Through Brocante

On 14 July / la Fête Nationale / Bastille Day we happened to be driving through the village of Ardentes in Indre. They were using the national holiday to hold a street brocante.

Usually when an event like this is staged in the street there is a diversion set up so that cars do not drive through the middle, but not here in Ardentes. We crawled through town, narrowly avoiding fragile items that were set out in front of stalls, creeping along behind groups of pedestrians strung out across the road and having to perform some creative positioning whenever we encountered vehicles coming the other way.

Utter mayhem and madness - whatever possessed the town authorities to dispense with the diversion?

At one stage, when we were clearly going to be at a standstill for several minutes, I lent out the window and bought 3 melons from the nearest stall. I suspect I was not the first customer the stallholder had served in this way.

The locally grown melons' perfume saturated the interior of the car on a hot day and we ate them with friends over the weekend, perfectly ripe and delicious.

Susan