Les Cochons

Well I can honestly attest to the fact that there isn't much going on in small town France outside of Lyon. It is perhaps why on Thursday The S Monster and I decided to go out exploring in the car.

Baby S sat all snuggled and strapped in while I drove south heading towards the town of Vienne, a place I knew was full of charm, shops and people. There isn't much in between eastern Lyon and the town of Vienne but sleepy farm villages and large industrial stores selling shutters, tile and strangely enough all manner of tubes. In other words we didn't make any stops along the way, we just drove and sang Motown songs out loud while passing the occasional truck or Fiat.

I was on a little mission because I'd remembered an antique store on this same drive with Seb several months earlier, and in all reality I was scanning the countryside looking for it. It had looked humongous and I remembered my heart skipping a few beats and giving Seb that "oh couldn't we...please" look, to which he'd responded by staring straight ahead at the horizon and pretending like he was in deep concentration. If only ignoring the wife's voice were an Olympic sport, what medals would adorn our walls.

I finally found the shop, much smaller than I had imagined and closed. I peeked in the windows. It looked intriguing but overpriced judging by what was on sale in the windows. I would have enjoyed a browse though. We carried on a little disappointed, only to be rewarded not much further around the bend where there appeared a huge warehouse of a troc. A trocante or troc in French is a store which sells used furniture, sometimes old, most times certainly not. Interspersed with this furniture is all manner of junk, and dirty dusty junk at that! In other words the treasure booty runs the gamut from 1978 tv sets with actual knobs to warped skis someone already broke their shins on, to intriguing copper kettles and crystal glassware. I am always interested in the latter. I have learned to overlook the former like a golden retriever trained in the finest school of search and find.

In the final phase of my hour of snooping in all of this junk, a grumpy baby S and I headed to the singing cashier with a couple of treasures, mostly pottery, and that is when I spied this little pig looking like it needed a good home. She had a decided air about her and she seemed old, reminiscent of the things from the 1930's that my grandmother always had displayed in her knickknack cupboard when I was a little girl. The glass knickknack cupboard I was sometimes allowed to open with a tiny gold key. Besides pushing my delicate memory buttons, it was a pig and who I dare ask does not love pigs?

When my purchases were tallied the singing cashier informed me that she had no change and would I mind if she gave me my 1,40 euros in petite centimes. Small European centimes are the size of m&m's and are very annoying, especially when your change purse gets full of them. I glanced to the side of me, scanning for another treasure when I spied the companion pig to my pig. How could I have overlooked him?

He looks like he came from the Ohio State Fair, circa 1975, and was won by my brother by throwing a baseball at some wobbly clowns. In fact I'm pretty sure he would have stolen it as a joke when the carney's back was turned.

Alas I think he was desperate to remain with his piggy wife. I've put them on the shelf together and filled their little backs with toothpicks. They make a very handsome pair and doesn't he looked pleased as pie that he wasn't left behind?