What the papers say . . . not a lot actually

We had la grande famine des journaux at the Café de Fa today: No bloomin' newspapers. Of course, it was no great surprise that Le Weekend Grauniad had failed to appear; it usually does fail every few weeks or so.

I do love the dear old Gradniau at the weekend, especially the seriously good (and seriously serious) Arts Review, so close to my heart and vicariously hedonistic soul.

However I do occasionally wonder whether it's obligatory to have a degree in amnesia to be Gnauriad circulation manager. It was always the one paper that you could rely on not to appear in Aberystwyth 30 years ago when I first started reading it as a student très prétentieux. Evidently nothing changes much.

However, let us not be too hard on the Guadrian, because all the other English papers failed to appear today as well, causing our never exactly charmant newsagent to receive a dose of his own curmudgeonliness from customers whose gruntles were never so dissed. (I'm always intrigued by negative words, whose positives don't exist, though I'll admit that to be gruntled would sound too much like being a happy pig).

I suppose that I could read it for free online, but it's not quite the same thing as the touch of hot sticky flesh on grubby old newsprint and with the newspaper industry fighting for its life, I do think it would help actually to be allowed to fork out my weekly €3.80. I can't take the computer to bed either . . .

Anyway Dave the barman and I were still reeling from the loss of our regular Sunday dose of corrupt and illicit pleasure when Marie, l'adorable chef du café, discovered that her Indépendent had also been knocked off by geriatric guerilla warfare.

This is not the Indie, of course, but our rather more parochial rag locale with indispensable coverage of such international events as underwater sanglier* strangling in Espéraza (dist. from Fa: 1km).

In the frame for snaffling l'Indépendent, including the Sunday-only colour supplement (to make matters worse), is champion village eccentric Josette, age approx 89, and fairly off the planet even by Fa's highly competitive standards of dotty-old-dearness.

Considering that Josette's normal rate of progress can be measured in hours per kilometre, it must have been a pretty smart move to nab the paper without anyone noticing, and indeed she denied all knowledge when Marie nipped round to her place to nab it back again.

However the profound animal cunning of the extremely old and extremely rural should not be underestimated. This is, of course, not actually theft, but in fact part of a very subtle and mysterious game.

And many things about Josette are mysterious; such as how does someone who is only about four feet tall manage to consume four croissants and a loaf of bread every day without fail. I mean no-one has noticed Fa's enormous swift population crashlanding due to rampant obesity.

Then there's the bread ritual itself: Every single day, Josette examines her bread (sold at the café) and declares it "trop cuit!"(overdone). Marie solemnly takes it back, hides it under the counter, waits 30 seconds, and hands out exactly the same loaf again. This time it is declared much better and Josette shuffles off happily. Confused? We are.

Dave and I have a theory that chez Josette, the whole place is stacked to the rafters with boxes of four croissants plus one loaf of bread and snaffled copies of l'Indépendent. It's all a bit like that surreal Spanish film where a guy gets kidnapped by a crane lorry while accidently locked in a phone box and eventually finds himself in a warehouse with umpteen other guys all locked in phone boxes . . .

Entirely deprived of happening newsprint, Dave, myself and girlfriend Claire fell back on the noble art of conversation. It has to be said that Dave does excel as intentional Mr Malaprop: Hoist on his own leotard is the best one I've heard for a while.

*sanglier = large black wild pig, frequently delicious for the un-veggied.