Come Sunday morning, and I won’t get out of bed before 7 for anything other than a vide grenier (the elegant French equivalent of a car-boot sale, which translates as 'empty the attic'). It is May Day, when Provençals bring luck in to their homes with a bunch of lily of valley (‘muguets’), but more importantly, it is the first vide grenier of the season.
So today is the first of many Sundays when my brocanting partner and I abandon our kids to bleary-eyed husbands and a short sharp coffee sets our noses twitching for a bargain.
But this is not browsing for chic brac-a-brac in upmarket Isle sur Sorgue, so favoured by interior decorators and travel magazines (and a tempting 15 minutes away), this is real people emptying out years of hoarding: bathsoap gift boxes, tragically ugly china, toasters and all-in-one ski suits so ancient they’re actually back in fashion, in a retro sort of way.
From the back of cars, on wobbly trestle tables, or simply laid out on the grass, families display their wares, and egged on by mums selling off bundles of baby clothes, sulky teenagers offer boxes of toys they’ve long grown out of, probably to fund something altogether less innocent.
As always, when I arrive home from these dawn raids, Husband is waiting bemused – waiting to see what discarded object I am hailing as an objet d’art. Today I have outdone myself: six iron coat hooks, two bizarre art-deco-ish wall lamps with bits missing, a wire mannequin, an iron last, and catch of the day: a tiny brass ashtray with Christian Dior stamped on the underside. It’s news to me that Monsieur Dior made ashtrays and I don’t even smoke, but at €2 quite frankly who cares?
Vide grenier at Maubec
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