Real life | 21 July 2016

Market day in Bergerac and the streets are paved with chicken bones. As a spaniel, I am bound to say this is as near to paradise as one can get. From the doorway of every shop there wafts the aroma of happiness. I pull to go inside each doorway as we pass. She pulls me back out.

But at the open-air market there is endless opportunity. While she looks at one wicker basket after another, I lick the ground for whatever may be there, which is always something utterly delicious. Tiny morsels of goat’s cheese, bits of salami, globs of duck pâté, and the gizzards — oh the gizzards! The very essence of utopia. I wonder if anyone has thought of this as an advertising campaign. Duck guts — the taste of paradise! I might write to the duck companies.

At a café, I sit with him while she goes into a clothes shop and tries on linen dresses, all the same, and wearing each one she comes to the door and calls, ‘Do you like this?’ and he and I look at her and smile and she goes back inside. And he turns to me and says, ‘Women.’ Then we sit in peace listening to the old man playing his saxophone and the waiter brings more coffee and truffles. Everyone stops to pat me.

Two little dogs pass by wearing sun vizors. She comes out of the shop and asks the humans where they bought them, and they tell her where to go, so evidently I am getting a hat. Eh alors, when in France…

The French are very civilised. It is wonderful to be welcomed to every café, to sit with humans as an equal. At each table, there are members of my kind, sat by their people, taking in the sights, enjoying tidbits passed down from the table.