Imaginary Farmhosue

The marché de puce (flea market) is every Wednesday and Saturday at Plainpalais, http://www.smpg.ch/FR/Histoire/French_Frame.htm but I hadn’t been there in years. Why I woke with an urge to go is beyond me, but then again why not?

Do look at the web site with its photos because the feel is very much the same and with the gray day even the sepia seems realistic.

As I walked among the furniture and dishes I mentally bought for my imaginary farm house that I have furnished and decorated then refurnished and decorated over the years.

The house itself is real. Robbert and I found it in one of our wanderings in the Pontalier region of France just over the Swiss/France border from where we lived. It backed up to a rock cliff and had a stream running by.

It was easy to imagine tables and chairs on the tiled side garden with fresh tomato salad from my own garden flavoured with olive oil and my hand-picked basil that grew with abundance next to my string beans.

In my imagination I bought the old wooden bread trough that probably had been at some bakers and a cupboard for the upstairs bedroom that would hold some of the antique linen. There was even a person selling old fashioned nightgowns that would have to be worn in my imaginary home.

Clear glass and hand painted with flowers cups, low and long, would be wonderful for fresh cold berry soup also to be served outside. The berries would come from the patch next to the house where my two Japanese chins would play. This time they would be a girl and boy named Tristan and Isolde.

There as no danger the two-foot copper plate with JFK in the middle would hang in the hallway (I saw the plate in a box in front of one stall with each item for sale more ghastly than the one before), between the two Queen Anne style chairs with maroon fabric that I did buy mentally.

There were fewer vendors than normal, for the Cirque du Soleil was stationed in the middle of the field. I half wondered what the performers sleeping in their trailers with their satellite dishes on the roof felt with the hubbub around them. Their curtains were drawn so there was no way to see in.

The sky darkened, and I headed for the tram. I love my imaginary farm house and it in no way reflects a dislike of anything in my current life. One of its main advantages is that it never needs cleaning, the plumber would always show up on time IF it were to need a plumber, which would never happen, the beds make themselves automatically and nothing is ever out of place while it has the warmth of a lived in home. Just like my imaginary Japanese chins never shed.

If I were to become extremely wealthy, which is not likely, I just might try and turn my imaginary farm house into a real one, but then again, I might not. I am so content with what I do have, that I doubt if much would change. Besides, the fun of an imaginary place is it is just that.