What’s this all about then? And the life-changing brilliance of French bakers.

I hope all is well and that summer is being good to you.

First this week, I wanted to show you something that we’ve made to promote my book.

I am proud of this book and overwhelmed by the generous feedback. I am self-publishing and haven’t sent out review copies, but here are some things that people have written.

(I am not showing off -heaven forbid- but I have had over 50 messages from readers, and I do want to sell the book, so….).

‘Just finished Real Wild Heaven. Fantastic. Loved it and huge congratulations.’ Peter M.

‘That paragraph really is exquisitely well written and as someone who teaches memoir at Arvon -or has done so- I know how hard it is to write in a way that evokes emotion without sentimentality. Bravo.’ Rachel K.

‘Your love of the place, for nature, and the people and animals in it, in all their complexity, is felt through the pages and through the writing, and it is inspiring’. Julia S.

‘It has some incredibly important and profound messages in there…it can’t have been easy to write those bits.’ India P.

We are in France, in southern Burgundy, just where the Charollais gives way to Maconnais wine country; simple, bucolic, almost unchanging. We have spent every summer here for 28 years.

The French bakery is as much a part of French life as blockaded roads, wine at lunchtime and a disregard for rules governing where you can smoke. No, scratch that, there is nothing more French than the daily baguette.

In a shifting, super-fast-moving world that often values progress and chaos more than stability, the French bakery offers us all a reassuring constancy.

From remote hamlets to the bustling streets of the Marais, you’re never more than a croissant’s throw from a proper boulangerie. And there is the key phrase ‘a proper boulangerie.’ The key thing in France is that you are not allowed to fake a bakery like, for example, the British supermarkets do.

Although the price of bread hasn’t been imposed by the government since the late 1970s, the industry is still monitored by consumer associations and so traditional baguettes can only be baked on the premises they’re sold at and, what’s more, can only be made using the four key ingredients (wheat flour, salt, yeast, water). They cannot be frozen and they can’t contain preservatives. The result is that they have to be eaten within 24 hours, ergo they must be made within that timeframe, ergo, as the French love bread the network of bakeries persists.

So, the daily baguette then is not just bread; it is community, conversation, small business, human connection, love, passion, meaning.

It is everything. And it can teach us a great deal.

Love from the sun-baked fields of Burgundy.

Charlie X