On returning from France, I always look forward to a take-away Indian. I’m talking cuisine here – not foreign bodies. Friends of mine concur: they may have been visiting relatives in Greece and suffered a surfeit of stuffed vine leaves, or they may have bravely travelled to the extremes of Cornwall, but still they’re ready for the taste of home. It’s the same thing in reverse. On arrival here, like any other sane person, I’m always on the lookout for an understated artichoke. Not only are they a bit thin on the ground in old Blighty, I recall one horrendous year when they were impossible to locate in the land of the frog. You could drive past fields where they’d been left to flower because interior decorators would spend more euro on something to make a provencal living room rustic, but try to buy one to pop into a saucepan of boiling water…forget it. Edible artichokes have been globally warmed to the point of moodiness.

A globe artichoke is just what’s needed on a balmy evening when the main meal has been lunch: something to fill that nagging gap. I had lunch out today. It was salad a la maison, which means no-one’s got a clue what’s involved. On enquiring, I didn’t get past the grilled aubergines in the explanation. I asked for a small plate. Monsieur kindly informed me that this was possible but I’d have to forego the mozzarella (which I’m pretty sure hadn’t been previously mentioned). You’ll need the XL size he said, which instantly took me back to the last time I tried to purchase a frock on the market at Chateurenard. So be it, I said. Make it so. The salad was liberally sprinkled with small unrecognisable crunchy bits of something brown. They tasted strangely of onion. What are these small unrecognisable crunchy bits I asked him? Onion, he replied.

This evening, my hostess gave me a gift from the girls that live down the garden. I often think it’s one of life’s mysteries why hens always lay eggs in multiples of six. I’m going to make a frittata with them tomorrow. Meanwhile, the artichoke beckons.