A visit to the Post Office

Anyone who ever went to the Post Office in Cormatin when it was a “real” Post Office will shudder at the thought of ever going there again, but nowadays Frédérique runs the show and she is wonderful. She smiles, she is helpful, she is efficient and to be honest she is more than any citizen of Cormatin could have ever dreamed of when that dreadful Post Office lady tyrannized our village.

All that said, we went to the Post Office the other day to buy some stamps, straightforward enough, but not so this time. Frédérique, taking serious advantage of her niceness, wouldn't let us leave until we had bought some tickets for the raffle to help fund the school kids’ day out (or something like that, I didn’t really pay attention) and the prize was... I can’t remember, it seemed like a good cause and well it was for the kids, so we coughed up. Two tickets please.

A few weeks later and I was in the garden on a Friday morning, desperately trying to get the overgrown grass out of the area that had been flooded, hot sweaty and not in a good mood when Cees rushed out shouting “We’ve won!” I assumed he had just received one of those endless emails we get from Nigeria or Ivory Coast, but no, we had won the school kids’ day out raffle. Wow! I never win anything. What have we won? He didn’t know, but we had to collect it the next day at the Post Office. Rather naively I assumed maybe that the local paper were coming to see us presented with our prize, which was why our collection day had to be agreed in advance. Maybe it was a dozen bottles of crément or a holiday in Greece! So off we went Saturday morning, dressed in our best bib and tucker.

The prize

We had either missed the crowds or we were too early, because when we arrived we were the only people in the Post Office. Frédérique came out from behind the security screen to present us with our winnings. Kiss, kiss, congratulations and she handed over the booty. No photo for the paper, no presentation from the mayor, no crowds of well-wishers, just us.

So it was not quite as exciting as we had imagined, but even so, we received two very nice bottles of nectar from Parfums du Terroire in Taizé (cassis and recurrent), a bag of fruit jellies also from Parfums du Terroire, a goats’ cheese (we assume from Bernadette in La Bergerie) and a sweet little candle made by the kids themselves. Not a bad haul for a book of stamps.

It seems that the proceeds have more than met the target and it looks like the kids will enjoy their day out - we certainly enjoyed eating our winnings.



For information on holiday accommodation near some delicious goats’ cheese farms and fruit juice makers click here.