Derby action

Not much Derby action in Epsom this morning. On the Ewell Village clockwise, nothing until I reached the Rifleman, where there were three ladies all togged up. Then through the town a scattering of ladies and gents. No police that I saw. Some action in Wetherspoons and rather less in the Marquis. Not like the old days when serious punters started in the Marquis at 0800 sharp.

Cars starting to back up West Hill at 1115, with the queue making it as far as the Meadway junction at the top of the hill, when the lights were right. But no rollers, just the one Jaguar saloon (large size) and one possible Maserati. No helicopters that I saw.

On the up side, another good word - bougnat - from Maigret in the story at reference 1. With a bougnat being a sort of neighbourhood shop, a convenience store, from the days when flats in Paris were heated with small coal fired stoves, which sold coal by the bucket and (alcoholic) beverages while you waited. Perhaps a word of the people, the people who used such shops, now to be found in Larousse, but not in the more snooty Littré.

Also further evidence of anachronism, with this story dating from 1938, with Maigret newly retired, while the regular Maigret stories kept on coming for another thirty years or so.

PS: they didn't still do coal when we moved to Epsom, but there was a hardware store in Pound Lane that did pink paraffin for our fine Aladdin stoves. Now, also, moved on. With thanks to ebay for the image: yours for £100 or so - rather more, I imagine, than we paid new.

Reference 1: Mademoiselle Berthe et son amant - Simenon - 1938.