a day of rest?

Well, Sunday anyway.

We went to Le Trioulou, just down the hill (and up again) where it's there fete Sunday: lots of boot sale people and professional antique dealers. In fact a surprising number as the commune is very small, less than 150 people, but a good hundred or so stalls. But not a lot worth buying! I found myself some books - French translations of Philip Pullman, Larry Niven, and Frank Herbert, and an old Edgar Wallace (in English), first published in 1918, though this is an undated reprint from about ten years later. I couldn't resist the dustjacket:



And the publisher's blurb was pretty good too, if perhaps lacking in confidence about the literary qualities of detective fiction in general:



It's that "deeply interesting" bit I'm waiting for: Wallace has interrupted his close contemporary, Proust (in the middle of volume two, poor old Swann having such a hard time with that girl Odette, she is really no better than she should be). In a book written in the momentous year 1918, it's curious how Wallace fails to mention the first world war at all.

Another surprise at Le Trioulou was to find our joiner (or on this evidence, cabinet-maker) with his home-made "orgue de barbarie", playing punched card tunes for very little by way of cash returns:



Then, lunch served by the commune's volunteers, surprisingly good, with table service, a lot better than standing in a queue for half an hour, particularly as the wine was already on the tables (the water was too, to be fair) when we sat down.

Finally back to the barn to grout the hearth. And it looks OK, maybe better than that, so hopefully a picture tomorrow after a final clean-up.