WHAT IS THIS A SIGN OF?

It started with the guitar strings, then moved on to the dish towels.

First, we broke a string on our new learner’s guitar.  So on the way home, we took a long detour through the later afternoon fog to the town next door to stop off at the music store – a local institution -  where the patient young musician had spent an encouraging hour helping us pick out the guitar.

Pulling up in front – the store was a shell of its former self.  No more music store in that town.

And then the dish towels. Our Canadian friend, she with the clean, attractive kitchen, was having a birthday. She’s got great style, our friend, but she’s not fussy, and she doesn’t like a lot of money being spent for her gift. Not in these times. But she had made an unrelated, off-hand remark the other day, “I need some new dish towels.”

We knew just the place - a store in the shopping center next door to the office – a kitchen store – beautiful linens.

 You guessed it – walking towards it, in the glow of holiday lights, that corner appeared unusually dark. Gone. Almost overnight, like thieves in the you-know-what.

 Our mind darted off into a dream…of the large boutique on the edge of the Wazemmes outdoor market – a two-story galaxy of household  French wonders – from heaps of plain white porcelain in every shape and size to six different kinds of corkscrews to forks for eating various delicacies to straws for sipping cocktails to rows upon rows of correct pots and pans to the sublimely fantastical upstairs, to the latest Gien dinnerware and Wedgewood  teapots. A local institution for sure.

But a dream bien sûr…it was boarded up and gone more than a year ago.

 We did find the towels. In one of those new boutiques that could have been in any city in the world, having popped up like a mushroom after the rain. The towels were flashy, and surprisingly cheap. As were the paper napkins, the wicker what-nots, and the pans with flash.