Then there is the uncanny business of the truffle that somehow gains weight between leaving the ground and arriving on the scales. It could be that it has been gift wrapped in an extra coating of earth. On the other hand, it could be that a heavier substance altogether has found its way inside the truffle itself—invisible until, in mid-slice, your

Unlike pigs, dogs do not instinctively root for truffles; they have to be trained, and Ramon favoured the saucisson method. You take a slice and rub it with a truffle, or dip it in truffle juice, so that the dog begins to associate the smell of truffles with a taste of heaven. Little by little, or by leaps and bounds if the dog is both intelligent

We had first seen the poster a week before, taped to the window of a tabac. There was to be a Grande Course de Chèvres through the streets of Bonnieux, starting from the Café César.

We arrived at the olive oil mill in Maussane two months early. The new crop of olives wouldn’t be gathered until January, and that was the time to buy oil at its most fresh. Luckily, said the manager of the mill, last year’s crop had been plentiful and there was still some oil left. If we would like to have a look around, he would pack a dozen

was only a few minutes past noon, but the Provençal has a clock in his stomach, and lunch is his sole concession to punctuality. On mange à midi, and not a moment later.

The Coustellet market is small compared to the weekly markets in Cavaillon and Apt and Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, and not yet fashionable. Customers carry baskets instead of cameras, and only in July and August are you likely to see the occasional haughty woman down from Paris with her Dior track suit and small, nervous dog. For the rest of the season,

BERNARD the pisciniste had brought us a present, and he was assembling it with great enthusiasm. It was a floating armchair for the pool, complete with a drinks compartment. It had come all the way from Miami, Florida, which in Bernard’s opinion was the capital of the world for pool accessories.

the high rate of burglaries in the Vaucluse, he said, was partly due to the large number of holiday homes. When houses are left empty for ten months a year, well …

As I drove back home in the evening against the trailer tide, I wondered what it was about the Côte d’Azur that continued to attract such hordes every summer. From Marseilles to Monte Carlo, the roads were a nightmare and the seashore was covered with a living carpet of bodies broiling in the sun, flank to oily flank for mile after mile. Selfishly,