Can you picture it? A frenetic week of preparation, gardening duties, picking more black currant (3 kilos' worth off one bush alone!), jam-stocking, liqueur-making, helping out at the village library. Then the weekend, bustling with activity and friends, all the beds mussed with use, the air glowing with sunlight and conviviality. Late starry nights, wine bottles piling up beside the overfull recycling crate, cherries picked and baked, figs trimmed, broiled in a sweet gooseberry sauce and served with a dollop of frothy cream. And suddenly, by the saltwater pool, my daughter approaching wide-eyed with an outsized wasp clambering through the fine hairs on her slim brown arm.
What would you have done? I stood up to rescue her (having recently developed quite an allergy to wasps myself) and watched my (only) camera make a gentle, sure arc from my lap into the depths of the pool. (A long ohhh nooo sounding in my head). The wasp swiftly eradicated--no mercy for insects this time--there was the swift dive into the water and the gentle swaddling of my waterlogged camera, followed by the emergency protocol, hair dryer to the rescue. All this to no avail. Camera: Dead On Arrival. Dried streaks of salty water, like frozen ghosts, trapped in the depths of the Leica lens.
Can I continue to blog without a camera? Is the visual so instrinsic that I should simply hang up a scribbled sign "due to technological issues, closed until further notice"?
Sorry about your camera! A blog without pictures is just not the same but you also write very well. I just talked to my sister in France and she is as busy as you are, between the jams, liquors, friends and family visiting... Did you read David Lebovitz's blog today? It is a good one. How I wish I was in France right now.
ReplyDeleteHello Nadege,
ReplyDeleteI'm so extremely bummed about my camera, and still angry with my carelessness.
Yes, I was laughing at David's post and all the comments about "Les Jars", as I am a bit compulsive about hanging on to empty jars as well.
Perhaps it is time you made your way over the Atlantic to visit your family...(and remember to bring some burritos--and jicama--for those of us who miss them!!) You could help me pick cherries, as no one seems to want to help me in this heat!