The old lady passes some time with a magazine and a Perrier water in the shade of a café umbrella as she waits for the clock to come around to a point where she has to do something, be somewhere, meet someone.

She checks her watch, a mans watch, and asks me what time I have on my watch. I show her. Give or take a tick or two they match up. It’s a quarter-to-eleven.

She thanks me saying she thought her watch was slow but clearly not. We share a laugh and I move on up the road to another pottery studio which seem to be everywhere here in the French town of Vallauris.

It’s starting to get hot.

heat haze
we visit every shop
for the air-con

Paul Conneally