While I am writing my reminiscences of good lunches at Dieppe, let me describe a lunch I ate in admirable company just outside Dieppe Cl0g Normail(i at an open-air breakfast place one sum- Martin-Eglise, mer on a hot day. At a long Porte Normande Normande the motor cars come to a halt in a little village street. A Norman gate has above it a thatched roof, and the long roof to this gate also shelters an array of white clothed tables. Beyond it is an orchard where wooden tables are set under the trees. From a barn, which has been converted into a kitchen and which has on its outer wall a copper washing-basin and a little cistern and a towel on a roller, issues a plump lady in a black dress. She is bare-armed and bare-headed. She is Madame, the proprietress. Says she, “ Certainly Monsieur can have Truite Meuniere and a Poulet en Cocotte and Haricots Verts Panaches and a Tourte a la Creme , and will the ladies choose their table ? ” for a lady and her two little daughters were of our party. We go through the orchard to the trout-stream which, with a pleasant gurgle, runs between grass-covered banks. The water is crystal clear, and moves the long green weed in it gently to and fro. The shadows above the pebbles are trout, cautious, well-fed fish, which are rarely to be caught at this point with a fly, but which by some means or another are regularly transferred from the stream to the tank in the barn. Hidden by trees, but its presence made clear by the clack-clack-clack of its wheel, is the mill driven by this stream. Across the water are meadows in which placid cows graze, and in the 74 ^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe shadow of a pollard willow an old peasant sleeps. The apple trees by this brook shelter the most favoured tables, and one of these we secure and sit on rush- bottomed chairs to look at our neighbours while the trout are being cooked. There are two big parties of good bourgeois, each with a silver-haired grand-mere in the place of honour, each with the men in shirt- sleeves, for the mid-day heat is tropical, each with its three or four, children. There is a pretty lady wear- ing a purple motor-veil and a white dress, and her cavalier, a Frenchman who plays for big stakes at the Casino ; there is a widow and her two daughters ; there are two Englishmen ; and a fat Frenchman in a broad-brimmed Panama hat and a nankeen coat, who mops his head continuously with a bandanna handker- chief. In the distance, near the Porte Normande, a violinist and a ’cello player in scarlet jackets and an Italian girl with a guitar make fine patches of vivid colour amidst the green. There are plenty of farm animals in the orchard. A white goat comes to the table and stands on its hind-legs to ask for bread, and a superannuated old sheep-dogwhich,one of the little girls asserts, has Chippendale legs, puts a cool nose against one’s hands as a hint that he is present and ready to be fed. A little flock of geese take to the water and swim up stream, keeping just level with our tree, their beady eyes on the alert for any crumbs which may be thrown them. Our tree is no ordinary tree. Withies have been interwoven in its branches and a creeper trained over them. I do not suppose this is good for the tree’s apple-bearing, but it certainly makes an ideal sunshade of it.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

While I am writing my reminiscences of good lunches at Dieppe, let me describe a lunch I ate in admirable company just outside Dieppe Clos Normand at an open-air breakfast place one sum- Martin-Eglise, mer on a hot day. At a long Porte Normande Normande the motor cars come to a halt in a little village street. A Norman gate has above it a thatched roof, and the long roof to this gate also shelters an array of white clothed tables. Beyond it is an orchard where wooden tables are set under the trees. From a barn, which has been converted into a kitchen and which has on its outer wall a copper washing-basin and a little cistern and a towel on a roller, issues a plump lady in a black dress. She is bare-armed and bare-headed. She is Madame, the proprietress. Says she, “ Certainly Monsieur can have Truite Meuniere and a Poulet en Cocotte and Haricots Verts Panaches and a Tourte a la Creme , and will the ladies choose their table ? ” for a lady and her two little daughters were of our party. We go through the orchard to the trout-stream which, with a pleasant gurgle, runs between grass-covered banks. The water is crystal clear, and moves the long green weed in it gently to and fro. The shadows above the pebbles are trout, cautious, well-fed fish, which are rarely to be caught at this point with a fly, but which by some means or another are regularly transferred from the stream to the tank in the barn. Hidden by trees, but its presence made clear by the clack-clack-clack of its wheel, is the mill driven by this stream. Across the water are meadows in which placid cows graze, and in the 74 ^he Gourmet's Guide to Europe shadow of a pollard willow an old peasant sleeps. The apple trees by this brook shelter the most favoured tables, and one of these we secure and sit on rushbottomed chairs to look at our neighbours while the trout are being cooked. There are two big parties of good bourgeois, each with a silver-haired grand-mere in the place of honour, each with the men in shirtsleeves, for the mid-day heat is tropical, each with its three or four, children. There is a pretty lady wearing a purple motor-veil and a white dress, and her cavalier, a Frenchman who plays for big stakes at the Casino ; there is a widow and her two daughters ; there are two Englishmen ; and a fat Frenchman in a broad-brimmed Panama hat and a nankeen coat, who mops his head continuously with a bandanna handkerchief. In the distance, near the Porte Normande, a violinist and a ’cello player in scarlet jackets and an Italian girl with a guitar make fine patches of vivid colour amidst the green. There are plenty of farm animals in the orchard. A white goat comes to the table and stands on its hind-legs to ask for bread, and a superannuated old sheep-dogwhich,one of the little girls asserts, has Chippendale legs, puts a cool nose against one’s hands as a hint that he is present and ready to be fed. A little flock of geese take to the water and swim up stream, keeping just level with our tree, their beady eyes on the alert for any crumbs which may be thrown them. Our tree is no ordinary tree. Withies have been interwoven in its branches and a creeper trained over them. I do not suppose this is good for the tree’s apple-bearing, but it certainly makes an ideal sunshade of it.

The gourmet's guide to Europe