Vaccum attic

Last week saw the local, Vide Grenier, which literally translates as: vaccum attic, pour down the narrow village streets of our humble French coterie.

Schmoozing and perusing is the name of the game at these wonderful gatherings. The locals come out and display their old plastic toys, moth-eaten wooly jumpers, a couple of broken chairs. Or they stumble gently from table to table having a good nose at each others abandoned family accessories. Many of the professional sellers arrive at dawn artistically arranging their boxes of rusty old door handles, dusty mangles and numerous vintage tools in the hope that some crazed sod will part with E50's for a pair of enamel coffee pots.

The Brits are always to be found at these affairs desperate for a cheap antique, as was I. However the hard core collectors had already torn around the stalls at 7am and taken off with anything worth buying by 7.15.

My purchases on the stalls were frugal, just this worm-eaten trug (minus the flowers) for E2. The crêpe man and the man on the buvette (beer and wine stall) took most of my E20 that sweet hazy afternoon.