La Couleuvre, et le Docteur Pouce

"C'est une couleuvre, c'est inoffensif, tu sais...ça n'a pas de venin"

Marcel is by the jardin potager sharpening his croissant. He squints against the early morning April sunshine. He speaks slowly and works the stone against the blade with an easy, practised movement.

The grass-snake is more than a metre long, and, not yet warmed by the morning sun, it it slides lazily over our boots.

"Autrefois, il y avait des gens qui mangeaient ça. Le vieux Pompard, par exemple. On appelait ça l'anguille des broussailles".

Hedgerow eels indeed.

The real deal eels are a delicacy in the Marais Poitevin wetlands south of here, where they are cooked over smoky embers, and washed down with the crisp but unfortunately-named Vin de Pissotte.

I ask Marcel how he received his petit-nom sobriquet of "Docteur Pouce". I knew the answer, of course. He'd told me dozens of times over the years. As he nears eighty, I love to see the glint in his eye as he tells me of his talent.

Farmers used to come from far and wide to benefit from the healing properties of Marcel's thumb, and a very few still do. It is well-known locally that on one occasion, following an excursion to Brussels on the "La Thatcher à la mer" demo circa 1983, an agriculteur from Bournezeau turned up while Marcel and a dozen neighbours were grape picking. Le patient and Le Docteur retired behind the grape press, to emerge two minutes later both smiling. Marcel was fifty francs richer, and the relieved farmer's hémorroïdes [can't you spell it in English? Ed] were now back in a more comfortable location.

Our green and yellow grass-snake becomes a little too curious, and entwines itself in the strawberry netting. We spend a few minutes extricating the creature, my companion's legendary dexterity clearly extending to his fingers.

Tu prendras un verre, Alan?

He asks, and we retire to the cave to drink, as is customary here, alternately from the same Arcoroc glass. Marcel jokes that on that day the Bournezeau bloke turned up for thumb therapy, nobody wanted the glass after Le Docteur...

Lexique: Croissant; C'est bon au petit-déjeuner, et c'est aussi un outil pour couper l'herbe.
Jardin potager; On y cultive des légumes (carottes, tomates, pommes de terre...)
La Thatcher; Premier Ministre du Royaume Uni 1979 à 1991. Les agriculteurs en France ne l'aimaient pas beaucoup.
Cave; On y stocke le vin. Ce n'est pas une grotte.