First question–before I even sit down in my doctor’s office to discuss my annual comprehensive test results:
“What did you do with that turnip?”
Shows where my priorities lie!
Flashback: We’d bumped into each other at the vegetable stall in Lautrec a few days earlier.
I’d not seen Michel there before. Usually he’s on the road doing his rounds at that hour, making house calls.
He had bought a single medium size turnip–the beautiful purple and cream variety.
It was the singularity of the purchase that intrigued.
And turnips were on my mind.
The day after the Lautrec meeting, a stall-holder in Castres market had tucked two black turnips into the brown paper bag holding my other purchases from him.
“Cadeau!” he’d said [Gift!]–a generous gesture, as I hadn’t spent more than five euros.
Ungenerously, I could speculate that this variety is be more difficult to sell on its looks.
Nonetheless, an encouragement to return the following week to his excellent stall.
Michel, the GP–bucked by the way our rendezvous had kicked off–and delighted by the diversion from yet another routine examination, launches into a detailed account of what he did with his beautiful cousin of my navet noire [black turnip].
The test results are shoved firmly onto the back burner–while he regales me with how he made his ravishing “poisson au sauce de navet” [fish with turnip sauce]. (!!!)
A pause, while we both metaphorically digest this delicacy.
We then both get up– as a gesture to getting on with the real purpose of the visit–and edge towards the examination couch.
The turnips will not lie down though.
Happy for further delay, I ask Michel about what to do with my navet noire.
The upshot being not too different from what to do with his purple-cheeked cousin.
As he finally gets to listen to the interior workings of my chest through his stethoscope, I mention that to describe someone as a turnip in England is not polite.
“Oui, it has other less-than-complimentary meanings in French too,” he says.
Then he chuckles as he indicates the weighing machine.
“Natalie [his wife] will be amused when she hears about our meeting–be sure to tell Meredith, too!”
We resume our seats at his desk and he writes out my quarterly prescription; leafing through my results, he gives me the thumbs up.
Just before I leave he says:
“You bought a cabbage last Friday. I love cabbage. What did you do with it?”