We curve around a stall selling some of the finest French brie, then left, past a boulangerie decked out with fairy lights. The shoulders I’m holding onto suddenly accelerate away from me. I run to catch up. Louis Armstrong is caught up with the laughter of the conga line as we speed through Borough Market.
Then the song ends, the line breaks apart, everybody claps. There’s a sense of liberation in the air.
It’s the 14th July – Bastille Day. Borough Market has dedicated a whole day to cheese and crepes and wine to mark La Fête Nationale. We arrive as the evening party kicks off. I eat a falafel wrap and drink Pimms (ooh la la), but also buy a delicious loaf of apricot and walnut bread from Oliver’s Bakery. Oliver – a Frenchman himself – tries to tempt me with a dark chocolate brownie, “for your breakfast tomorrow!”, he suggests, waving the heady slab of chocolate under my nose. Well, If the French can eat brownies for breakfast, there’s nothing stopping me. I stash the cake into my bag…the London version of the buttery croissant I guess, and what’s wrong with that?
And finally, as requested by Hattie:
To The Table 
You missed a trick by not linking a Bastille song or indeed, my favourite French songstress, Edith Piaf.
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i shall do that now.
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Love this Alice! Wish I could have stuck around long enough to go on Bastille Day; after all it is the motherland for me… 🙂
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Thanks! I wish you could have been there, my friend, I really really do. xxx
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aw me too ❤ when you visit me in Paris (which you MUST) we can spend all day and night feasting xxx
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Morning Alice,
What a lovely way to start my day listening to the famous song while looking at the photo of the sky line, I have a fascination for cloud patterns, and why not Brownies for breakfast indeed.
Auntie Pauline
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