When author Jamie Ivey spent a year researching his third book about Provencal markets, he discovered that life behind the picturesque stalls was not as rosy as it seemed....
Early one Sunday morning in July the first whisper of the day’s heat stirs through the narrow streets of L’Isle sur La Sorgue. The backs of vans clatter open, olives are decanted from vast plastic vats into pretty wicker baskets, table legs snap open and parasols are fanned out like peacock’s tails. A trader stabs open a fresh cardboard box full of jars of tapenade and sun dried tomato paste. He wipes each individually with a cloth and mounts them on his stall in a rainbow of Provencal colours. Still the vans keep on coming - honey vendors, lavender sellers, fruit and vegetable men - the space evaporates as the blistering sun levers the weak moon below the horizon.
Hazard lights wink like chains of Christmas illuminations and the smouldering cigarettes of the traders trail expectation and relief into the sky with every prolonged drag. The season of plenty has arrived. For the last year the merchants have been scrambling, fighting, back biting and betraying each other for just this moment. Those of them who have made the cut, can feast on the plenty of the tourist season.
Nobody with a pitch even glances across the square to where the Police Municipal, are leading the dispirited hopefuls away. It’s best not to think about their fate. L’Isle sur La Sorgue market is full and will be until the end of August. Visitors will walk through the plane-tree-dappled shade, and graze from stall to stall, picking up some meltingly soft cheese here and some slices of hand carved ham there, oblivious to the lengthy battle which has been waged between the merchants to earn the right to a pitch.
The year for any aspiring market trader begins at the end of September. Once the tourists have fled back to their packed lives in Paris, London and New York, the established traders dismantle the summer show leaving space for new comers to try and establish themselves.
The atmosphere is relaxed and convivial. The remaining merchants breathe a sigh of relief and count the euros from the season’s exertions. People happily create space for each other, guard each others stalls and sip early morning beers, as the remaining tourists window shop around the stalls wearing the congratulatory smiles of those wise enough to visit out of season. But time is already ticking in the race to secure a space in the markets for the following summer.
Visit the Mairie of any Provencal village and enquire about the possibility of a place in the weekly market and the response is always the same. The market is full and has been for years. What’s more the waiting list for a space is over a decade long.
Out of season this is clearly not true, every market in every village has space and on a weekly basis the Police Municipal decide who to award it to. Although they would never admit it every Police Municipal or Placier keeps a hierarchy of traders in his or her head.
At the top are the local traders who’ve been frequenting the market for years but still never found themselves onto the official list at the Mairie. With a nod to the Placier these traders set up where they want. Secondly there are new traders whose faces are known - they are related to a family member, or they’ve grown up in the village or a nearby one. Before they petition the Placier they’re knowledgeable enough to wait around until those above them in the hierarchy have set up.
Finally there are outsiders like me. An English author, writing a book about selling wine in the markets. Beguiled by the lack of competition in the winter I initially thought that finding a pitch in the summer would be easy. It took the two freezing months of November and December to establish relationships with each of the Placiers on my weekly circuit. I became an expert in body language - from eye contact, to shaking hands, to sharing a joke, I observed how the location of my pitch improved with each new gesture from the Placiers.
During the winter a small group of traders stood with me and endured the howling mistral and the fierce hail and snow storms. When the fountains were frozen over and our breath was visible in each other’s headlights as we unloaded in the dark we persevered, because we knew that to make any money we needed to secure a place for the summer season. And to stand any chance of doing so we had to be ever present.
As the days lengthened and the first stirrings of the summer crept into the air - a hint of sticky pine and wild thyme - the atmosphere in the markets changed. Anxiety crept into the traders’ demeanours as week by week the free space was eroded by new arrivals with extensive stalls. These returnees were from generations of market traders whose right to a space was officially recorded at the Mairie. The interlopers such as myself and my winter companions had no choice but to squash together and hope for the best. We turned up earlier and earlier in the forlorn hope of trying to guarantee a spot, but instead we were forced to watch as the Placiers allocated pitches to people we’d never seen before.
Throughout the whole of Provence the whisper among the dispossessed traders was always the same - blame France’s envelope culture. I feigned wide eyed ignorance as they explained that whether it was building a house on land which had been designated un-constructible or ensuring the career progress of a relative in the civil service - the way to achieve things was to pass an envelope under the table. As summer approached disputes broke out between rival merchants as permanent pitches were awarded for the season. People swamped the Placiers in gesticulating huddles reminding me of ill-disciplined footballers seeking to bully decisions from the referees. Someone was always disappointed and the explanation was always the same - bribery. The favoured trader was buying his way to the top. But was it true or was it just sour grapes?
In the past Placiers have lost their jobs when it’s been proved they’ve been taking money to guarantee people better spots, but the markets these days seem to be a cleaner place and the best evidence of that was my stall. There I was an English man with no regional connections and the inability even to stylishly tip a doorman let alone pass an envelope under a table. I’d worked hard all winter but the Placiers had every opportunity to be xenophobic and award a summer place to their countrymen. Instead they found me a spot in each of my local villages and were scrupulously correct in their dealings with me - even turning down my offers of a Christmas bottle of wine, for fear that it might appear incorrect.
My real problems started once I‘d been awarded a place. Friendly traders warned me that the markets were a jungle and that I must never confess how much money I was making. If anyone asks just say “ca va” but with my space confirmed other less fortunate traders circled jealously. I learnt to turn up earlier than anyone else to ensure my place wasn’t pinched by an opportunist. The traders either side of me in some of the markets appeared convinced that the larger their stall was the more money they would make and they developed ingenious ways of extending their pitches, positioning themselves at more favourable angles and hanging out extendable arms which obscured my stall from any but the most investigative tourist.
In one market serpentine tongues persuaded me I would be much better swapping my pitch with another
trader’s, and anxious to fit in I agreed ending up in a dead-end for a couple of weeks until the Placier re-instated me. In another market despite a winter of service the local vignerons protested that I was effecting their trade and I was drummed from the village.
Once the scramble for space had finished and the tourist horde finally descended relationships between the traders improved. Every market was a show and every trader had a role to play to ensure its success. Just one shabbily presented stall shattered the idyll that the visitors carried around in their head. Luring the tourists in the heat of the day from their hotels and villas into the temporarily tented village was a team effort. And every week we were successful in creating a critical mass of bustling people, a magical environment in which money somehow ceased to matter and shoppers left with a smile on their face, a camera full of beautiful photos and no money in their pockets.
Then as the heat faded from the sun and the cars vanished from the roads we all began to count our profits. Friends made during the course of the summer’s trading disappeared for a much earned rest and new faces squeezed into the recently vacated spaces in the markets. As the leaves on the vines turned a rich auburn the uneducated observer could be forgiven for believing that a slow paced idyll was being lived out in the market squares. In fact the first skirmishes in next year’s pitch wars had already begun.
Box: Provencal Market Slang
Oursins dans les poches - An expression used to describe shoppers who look but don’t purchase. An oursin is a sea urchin - a prickly ball of anger that resembles a World War Two maritime mine. Bad customers are said to carry a pocket full of them around so that every time they reach for some money, they prick their fingers and leave their change safely tucked away.
Gibier d’é té - Gibier is the word used to describe the local game - hare, wild boar, guinea fowl. When the hunting season finishes the locals turn their attention to a different form of prey - the gibier d’é té or the tourists.
Badar - A provencal verb and activity, it describes the practice of coming out for a walk in a market with absolutely no intention of buying anything. The worse kind of badars are those who move from stall to stall indulging market traders in long conversations about their products, tasting food, sipping wine and generally enjoying themselves without spending any money.
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