HOW I ALMOST BECAME THE THIRD CHAMPION MUSHROOM OMELETTE MAKER OF FRANCE

We were in the ironmonger's, for some reason, in Maurs, buying something important for the Mill - light bulbs, I think it was, or it may have been something to do with the apple press bought a year ago at great expense -when it occurred to us that we had nothing planned for Sunday - and Sunday was tomorrow. "Let's go and look in the tourist office," said B, who is the most practical person I know. So we did.

The Cantal Departement is off the beaten track at the best of times. You wonder why they bother having a tourist office at all, but they do and its Maurs outpost is quite a handsome affair of wood and glass that squats on the pavement of the Place d'Europe among the speckled trunks of plane trees. The week's events are pasted on an A board outside, a bewildering array of activities to cater for every taste.

Unfortunately, when we had eliminated those events that were too far, or too expensive, or which ended yesterday, or which involved boats or large animals, there wasn't much left. "So it's the mushroom fair then," I concluded, trying to sound enthusiastic. "The mushroom fair at Prunet."

Now as you probably know the word mushroom in France covers the whole gamut of edible fungi, some of which are greatly prized by folk who appreciate their food. There would be stalls and sideshows, said the tourist bumpf and the event would begin with the induction of new fellows into the sacred mushroom brotherhood and end with a championship, the winner of which would be declared French national amateur mushroom omelette making champion.

So after Sunday breakfast we set off under a grey sky and spots of drizzle to see if we could find Prunet which, according to the map, lay about forty minutes drive to the north east. By the time we had arrived the spots had turned to a respectable drizzle, but there was music - of a strange Celtic kind - playing from a loudspeaker on every lamp post, lots of bunting and men walking about strangely clad in cloaks of yellow-green and tudor style squashy hats. As they looked eminently knowledgeable about mushrooms we presumed them to be the mushroom brotherhood and watched our step lest they deigned to turn us into a can of Campbells soup.

Now in case you are thinking that Prunet must be a fair size to host a national omelette championship, you would be wrong. Prunet turned out to be just about a small a place as you could find that qualified for a name on the map - a sort of French, Little Puddletown on the Marsh. It had a church, with an enormous belfry, a few houses, one or two farms and that was it. The much trumpeted mushroom fair seemed on the same scale.

A few stalls sold cheese, sausage, wine, vegetables, bread - but unaccountably no mushrooms. Elswhere, an earnest young man was trying to show a film about mushrooms in a tent, while another earnest young man with an encyclopaedic display of 'mushrooms' on a table, bent the ear of the few passers-by to explain the botantical differences between a bracket fungus and an oyster mushroom and that was about it.

The young farmer selling his Salers cheese also possessed an earnest looking air as he told us that it took 450 litres of milk, from his own Auverngnat herd, to make one 25 kilo truckle the size of a mill wheel. He was selling the cheese for a song - a kilo for 12 euros - so we took a great hunk and two bundles of little dried sausage to go with it.

Of course, no fair is complete without a beer tent, which in this case wasn't a tent at all but one of those round wooden contraptions favoured for fairground sideshows. One lot of young men were inside this contraption and another lot were outside. The men inside were dry and the men outside were wet, for by this time the drizzle had matured into common or garden rain. Yet the men outside seemed not to mind because they were knocking back something provided by the men inside. It was called 'Bolée du Satan.'

We tried one very small plastic cup of this and I have to say it was very good. Indeed, I was reflecting how a few of these might make one impervious to all sorts of precipitations, when our attention was diverted by the antics of two bullocks yoked to a bullock cart in a way that made it appear that this was something of a first time experience both for the bullocks and whoever was in charge of the yoking.

For whenever the cart encountered an obstacle the bullocks kicked and skipped causing the cart to swerve violently. Fortunately, it was empty. If it ever had a cargo that would have fallen out long before. Maybe that was why there were no mushrooms at the fair.

Not far away hummed an old field bake-oven, an enormous wheeled affair that looked as though it might have done service in World War One. From this came a number of different breads, samples of which were set before us in little bowls.

Some contained fungi, though whether it was this or whether it was the mobile bake-oven, none tasted appetising. Slightly more appealing were the bun shaped loaves, sliced in half, the middle scooped out and filled it with mushroom soup. These were selling for 2 euros, which seemed a bargain. Surprisingly, they didn't leak.

Sadly, we found that we had brought sandwiches and therefore decided to eschew the loaves filled with mushroom soup. Besides I had the feeling that the soup and the Bolée du Satan might not mix too well. So we decided that it was time to retreat to the dry safety of the car.

On our way we passed the omelette making championship tent, sadly deserted in the rain, but complete with a yellow podium on which the numbers 1, 2 and 3 were marked out in black.

To tell the truth I was rather attracted to the idea of becoming a mushroom omelette making champion of France, even if amateur. To judge by the number of people in Prunet who had not succumbed to the embrace of the Bolée du Satan, I reckoned that I must have been in with a very good chance of making at least one of the podium slots. What would being the third champion amateur mushroom omelette maker of France counted for at Purple Coo I wondered?

"Oh do stop dreaming, Fennie" came a voice from in front. Ahh - it was ever thus.

Posted by Fennie Somerville