Ex-cepe-tional

When I flew home from Warsaw, Sunday a week ago, it was shoved in my face that the last summer of my 30s was gone. It was bad enough that I'd just spent a weekend with hundreds of hormone-fuelled 21-year-olds, reminding me, despite their supportive giddiness, that I was no longer any match for their body chemistry. I returned, in the late autumn of my youth, to Paris in the late autumn of, um, summer. It may have been August, still, for a few fleeting moments, but I immediately encountered two sure signs summer was over. My flight touching down was exactly coincident with the annual French anti-climax called "the rentree". It means "the return." It is *the* day, each year, when the majority of French people, having taken much, if not all, of August off, clog the highways on their way back home from holiday. Having fought the traffic bravely, from the back seat of a taxi, I eventually made it back into the welcoming arms of my Flame-Haired lover, who possessed a small secret. She was busy with a welcome-home dinner surprise, an unexpected treat found at the markets: cepes. Cepes (boletus edulis) are mushrooms that shouldn't be in the markets, yet. The arrival of this meaty forest fungus is, in Paris, the surest sign that Autumn is in full flight, the damp and chill having brought it forth. This year, however, August was more than an antidote to a hot, dry July. And, having been cold and damp, the cepes got fooled. Pissy about the prematurely cold weather, I am nevertheless loathe to look a gift horse in the chompers. And so it was that, last night, for a casual Sunday dinner party, I baked cepes tartes sallees. No pictures of those, though. They were gone before the camera could be got. * * * A quick poll. Which would you rather hear about: the types of French bus-stop ads that most frequently feature naked women, or the reason it's necessary for us to lie to our cheesemonger? Leave your preference, if any, in comments. ..