Spring equinox - but still raining. Market. Bread and the snobbery that accompanies it.

Today is the spring equinox, one of the two days in the year when the day and the night are of equal length. From now until midsummer the days will keep on getting noticeably longer. Not that this will make it rain any less than it has been doing around here for what seems likes months and months. I was going to say it wouldn’t make any difference to the weather, but in fact when the sun breaks through the cloud cover you can feel the extra warmth that wasn’t there, for example, in the January sun. 

In fact, although I complain about the rain, over the last week or so we have had a fair few days when it has brightened up considerably after a very poor start. Maybe today will do the same. Certainly it began with rain. Phil had checked my bike for me, giving it the once-over to be sure the tyres were pumped up and the brakes working. He had moved it closer to the back door to help me on my way this morning. And then I had taken one look at the weather and decided not to cycle after all. 

So I walked to the market, and what a depleted market it was. The flower stalls were there to brighten up the day but Jenny Biscuit, the cheese and biscuit seller had not set up her stall (she finds it difficult to do so in wet weather) and neither had the chap who sells shoes and slippers and, incongruously, vitamin supplements. He likes to talk to me about his progress in learning Spanish, so maybe I will refer to him as Pepe Zapato from now on. I bought fish from the so far unnamed fishman and various fruit and veg from Michael Fruit’n’Veg and moved on to the Italian frutivendolo (greengrocery).

There I bought, among other things, a small white bread roll, continental style. Which brings me to “Oh!Those Vigo breakfasts!”, which is what my daughter says occasionally when she waxes nostalgic about the years when we lived on and off in Galicia and she and the children would come and visit us. Wherever we rented a flat (several different places) I would set about discovering which bakery sold the best bread and would go out, accompanied by various children when they were with us, and buy freshly baked bread for breakfast.

I like bread. Not in enormous amounts but a slice of good bread and an apple make a very good snack. This article goes on about different types and, in particular, different prices of bread, from 45 pence for a small sliced white loaf at the supermarket or even your local corner shop to £5 for a sourdough loaf from what the writer refers to as “bougie” bakeries. 

I was a little confused as “bougie” is the French for candle, whereas this was clearly making a reference to “bourgeois”. So I did a little research. Of course, as I expected, it’s a mispronunciation, or at least it began as a mispronunciation,  of “bourgeois”. And some people spell it, if they spell it all, as “boujee”. Here’s a bit of what I found: 

“When people use the word now, they are talking less about class struggle and more about middle-class people who are obsessed with looking wealthy and chic, rather than a group of people destroying society.” 

And then there’s this, about the difference between “bougie” and “boujee”:

“According to Urban Dictionary, bougie means people who are pretending to be rich or high class when they really aren't or don't realize they aren't. On the other hand, boujee means the actual high class and elite, the ones with swag.”

Who knew? Who really cares?

The status thing about bread is amusing. As a child I read “Heidi” - I was the kind of child who read all those classics, “Heidi”, “Black Beauty”, “Alice in Wonderland”, moving on to “Jane Eyre” and “Withering Heights”. I was quite intrigued by the fact that Heidi only tasted white bread when she went to be a companion to Klara, the poor little rich girl who was so unwell. White bread was a luxury, which intrigued me because in our house we had both white and brown bread but were encouraged to eat brown (wholemeal) as it was “better” for you. Heidi and her grandfather and her friend Peter’s grandmother ate “black bread”. It was a treat for the grandmother to eat white bread rolls, softer and sweeter, when Klara went to spend time in the mountains with Heidi and recovered her health. 

There you go. It’s a “bougie” thing.

As regards black bread, a German friend of mine used to bring back suitcases full of it from her visits to Hamburg and store it in her freezer here, eking it out until her next visit. We all have a measure of nostalgia for the things we ate as children. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!