Thursday, 18 June 2026

'I ain’t going to work on Maggie’s farm no more' by Margot Wilson

 

Because I’ve been accepted onto a course to do French Language in London. I don’t

know London and found it intimidating when I went for the interview but I know I want

to study French.

I have never seen a Cézanne oil painting in real life but my boyfriend gave me a

little book of his paintings: it fits into a pocket and I am in love with Cézanne’s blue,

his gentle card players and his cubic rocks. I want to go to Provence: about as far

away as you can get from this river flowing red with dye from dark Satanic mills.

And I will go to Paris and I will read Proust. I will learn about De Gaulle. With my

French friends, I will be dizzy with colour after visiting the Musée d’Art Moderne.

Guided by Elizabeth David, I will make tomato sauce.

I will hear a different melody and rejoice in the sound of the accordion. I shall be

entranced by Françoise Hardy. Perhaps I too will become chic.

It’s not that I didn’t like working on Maggie’s farm, it’s just it isn’t in the Auvergne or

Brittany. Maggie doesn’t wear a coiffe. I shall eat fresh fish, caught by a Breton

fisherman and yellow mushrooms picked in a forest. There will be the smell of

lavender.

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