It's Me, Sara Louise

Here’s a little story about a not so fun time had by yours truly, because it’s not always all sunshine and lollipops here in The LPV you know.

Picture this… I was in the car with The Husband and Gatz, headed down to Toulon, a tad cranky about not moving (yeah, it was that trip) but slightly perked up with the new handbag, shirt and jeans I had scored at Zara (I hadn’t told you about the shirt and jeans, had I? That’s because I’m sneaky) when The Husband’s phone rang. It was Papa.

The Husband turned to me and said that Papa was roasting a pig on Monday (yet another holiday here, Lundi de Pentecôte) and did I want to go. Once again I found myself completely astounded by The Husband’s total lack of understanding of what moving entails.

Me: Let me get this straight, Papa is roasting a pig on Monday and you want to go?

The Husband: Oui

Me: You know we’re moving right?

The Husband: OK, we won’t go. This was said with a full on pout followed by, le huff and puff.

Me: Fine, we’ll go, but I’m not going to be able to stay long because we’re MOVING.

(I caved for two reasons; 1. I hate a pouting husband, it’s like having a very large two year old stomping about and 2. even though a pig on a spit would be involved, it was still only lunch at Papa’s so I figured no big deal)

But it turned out that Papa wasn’t the one actually doing the pig roasting and it wasn’t even at Papa’s house. I only found out this vital piece of information when Gatz arrived on Monday to accompany us (he is with us all the time, like A L L  T H E  T I M E) and I mentioned that I had to run out to buy a bottle of wine to bring, Gatz asked why, and I said because it was polite, and then he said that we weren’t going to Papa’s house.

Hold up. What?

It was the butcher who was having the pig roast, out in a field somewhere, and he wasn’t roasting one pig, he was roasting four pigs for like, a hundred people.

I turned to The Husband who gave me the, ‘oh did I forget to mention all that‘ look.

We arrived at the field and sure enough, there were the pigs and the hundred people drinking rosé and beer (not the pigs, the people). But I decided to embrace the experience, grabbed a rosé and turned my frown upside down until… I saw one man going off to go number one, but instead of going off far, or hiding behind a tree or something, he just walked about twenty feet away from everybody, turned his back to us and whizzed, right there, then other guys followed suit. Gross. Do you think any of these guys happen to carry antibacterial gel around in their pockets? I doubt it.

After a couple of hours of apéro, a few large bowls of salad were put out on a table. I grabbed my plate and got in line, but the butcher had forgot to bring spoons for the salad so he dropped a plastic cup in each one.

As I looked at the fingers of the lady in front of me get all up in the salad as she tried to spoon it out with the cup, I thought about all the men that were peeing, and not washing there hands. No thank you. I left the line and the pee pee salad to everyone else.

I was starving, and ready for the pig. Thankfully Papa’s BFF, The Portuguese, shouted that the first one would be ready in a few minutes as he and Brother-in-Law pulled it off of the spit and carried it over to a table.

Now here’s a question… why would The Portuguese be in charge of carving the pig instead of the actual butcher who would be some what of an expert at carving things? Who knows but that poor pig was hacked to pieces in the most disgusting way.

I walked up to the table to find The Portuguese standing behind the hacked carcass, smiling, totally chuffed with himself, and I looked down to see the head of the pig sitting up straight up, staring at the sky, blood spilling all over the place, and flies, everywhere. Like E V E R Y W H E R E. The whole thing looked like one big, scary, health code violation, so I turned around and left.

See that photo above, that was by far the best part of the day; spoon feeding my buddy La Petite, even if she was completely disinterested with my awesome airplane technique.

bisou

P.S. If you would like to see a photo of the pigs, check out my Facebook page.