I miss the markets. On a normal Saturday I would either be taking the bus down the road to Joinville-le-Pont or trailing my wheely-basket over the bridge to Champignol, by the RER station. Both areas are a bit posher than Champigny, so higher quality produce, especially at Joinville.
On Sundays I can go to Champigny market, two minutes away on what is possibly the last Place Lénine left in France, or walk along the river bank to a glorious covered market in Varenne.
Champigny market is also open on Tuesdays and Fridays and Champignol on Wednesday.
Except they’re not due to lockdown.
I don’t actually go to a market every day in normal times but I’m a frequent visitor, even on days when I don’t buy very much. I love the bustle. The traders, most of them at least, being friendly, whether by nature or commercial calculation. The banter with the clients. The feast for the eyes of fruit, veg, fish, charcuterie …
In multiracial Champigny there’s a multicultural mix both in customers – Portuguese, Turks, Maghrebins, sub-Saharan Africans, me – and goods on offer – chorizo, pastel de nata, börek, pain de semoule, groundnuts, plantains and stuff I don’t recognise, without forgetting a splendid selection of offal.
Now we queue, two metres apart, across the Place Lénine where the market-traders should be declaiming and the shoppers shuffling, to be admitted to Monoprix one at a time.
Inside we douse our hands with cleanser and rush around the aisles as quickly as we can, silently cursing our fellow shoppers for coming too close.
Maybe I’m not very discriminating when it comes to vegetables, but I don’t find their offer too bad in that department, apart from the mysterious absence of mushrooms (I know, not technically a vegetable).
But the fruit is bland. And the meat! I bought a chicken and you could break its bones just by looking at them. It may have been organic but it hadn’t done much walking. That tells in the texture, spongy, and the taste – let’s just say you need to make full use of the spice cupboard.
And where do they hide the eggs? I know they exist because the man in front of me at the checkout had some. But I searched and searched and couldn’t find them.
We’re not starving, so I suppose this is a bit of a whinge. But I miss meat and fruit with flavour, a choice of radish, olives not in jars, and, above all, good cheese. It’s there on the shelves – Comté, Brie, brebis, chèvre … but I’m not sure I could tell the difference on a blind tasting. On the markets I have a choice of jovial cheesemongers ready to serve a generous selection of those 258 varieties de Gaulle famously remarked on.
Worrying news from South Korea, where they’ve done a famously good job of fighting the virus thanks to methodical testing.
Some 51 patients who tested positive, shortly after testing negative and declared cured. The same thing is reported to have happened in China and Japan.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 13,197, about a third of them in care homes. The number of people in intensive care has gone down for the second day running, by 62 to 7,004, but the number of hospital admissions continues to rise, by 500 to 31,267. There are 90,676 recorded cases, an underestimate as everyone admits.
