Oh, that's good

The tomatoes are so good at the moment - I mean really really good - unbelievably good. Every meal this week has consisted of a fresh tomato salad alongside whatever else we have been eating - and so many varieties and colours and sizes and shapes, from red to yellow to green to purplish to striped and small and large and bell shapes and ribbed and knarled - and all mixed together with some good olive oil and salt and pepper and fresh basil - you actually don't need anything to go with them except maybe some crusty baguette.

Forgive me going on about the tomatoes - but apart from being absolutely delicious, they are nature's skin protection against the sun - and we have had a lot of sun this week and we have eaten a lot of tomatoes. It is one of life's lovely ironies that the sun makes tomatoes as good as they are and then the tomatoes protect one from the worst of the sun's radiation - neat eh?

Of course, the sun benefits all the fruit that is grown in this fertile valley - so the melons and peaches and apricots and strawberries, and other soft fruit, and the plums, that are just beginning to appear, and the figs, most of all the figs, are all just the most amazing mouthful of delicious sweetness that you could possibly imagine.

When I first came down to Carcassonne, three years ago, I had no concept of what figs were all about - I didn't get it at all. I had only ever tasted dried figs at Christmas and I had never tasted a fresh fig that had been plucked from a tree the day before and was oozing it's sweet juice from it's base, so much so that it was very very tricky to carry it home from the market without squashing it. What a revelation it was eating my first fresh fig - now, I can't get enough of them and I can't wait for the fig season to start and I mourn when it finally ends. Long live the fresh fig - with yoghurt and honey for breakfast and with foie gras anytime.

You may think that I am being a bit food obsessed - well, I am - after breakfast I think about lunch and after lunch I think about dinner and before I go to bed I think about breakfast and so it goes on. Surely, everyone adores food.

Well, maybe not to the same extent as I do. Our traveller guests, on an inter-railing tour of Europe, have spent most of their hours holed up here watching movies on the computer rather than experiencing the joy of the food market or the mysteries of the Cité or just sitting in the square having a coffee or a beer.

It seems that they would rather have just stayed here eating our food and drinking my beer than try to interact with the local population and immerse themselves in the local culture - which is what I thought these trips were about.

Christian is excluded from this criticism, not because he is my stepson, but because he has gone out of his way to help out at all times and because he felt embarrassed by his friends attitude and lack of appreciation. Bless!

It was a relief that they left today on the next leg of their journey - I told Christian that he was welcome to come straight back here if they all fell out! Anyway they are off to Milan via Nice and good luck to them.