Malaucene, France

This is from one of several village cafes in this town in the Vaucluse. It is Saturday evening (before dinnertime for French people) and it is busy. In fact, even the bar is standing-room only, though it is cold so there are lots of empty tables outside that in summer would be filled with tourists, a lot of them here for the biking. We are at the foot of the Mont Ventoux, which is a monument of the Tour de France and well-known for that, even as far away as California. Tonight the six or so tables are filled with people playing cards, grey-haired many of them: perhaps this is a Saturday-night ritual. There are two TV sets with soccer games on them, and they too have a crowd watching. There’s a little girl kneading yellow play-do; maybe it’s the barman’s daughter or granddaugher—no, she just went to ask some of the card players how much longer she is going to have to wait before they can all go home, or maybe she likes being here under TV set #2. I like it here. I wish I didn’t have to answer emails and could just people-watch. Someone just brought in a pizza from the pizza truck that has set up for the evening in the parking lot outside the small supermarket, a parking lot which is also the market place a couple mornings a week.

There. I’m just rattling on. It’s very distracting with all that’s happening. Someone has just given the little girl a piece of pizza.