The best baguette in Le Lavandou comes from the Intermarché supermarket and costs just 50 centimes, plus a few frayed nerves as you encounter idiots driving the wrong way round the one way part of the car park.
It's so good that it doesn't even taste any different if riddled with what the Concise Oxford Dictionary calls small social hymenopterous insects celebrated for their industry.
Well, that's not entirely true, since it would instantly taste an awful lot worse if you actually knew what had happened in the bread basket while your back was turned (which ought to be enough to persuade Intermarché 's lawyers that I am not suggesting the baguette was sold to me complete with the bonus filling).
But forced inside for once by the lateness of our meal, and seated in a room without powerful lighting, we didn't notice a thing until some of the creatures were spotted marching purposefully over the table cloth. They were black ants. When I idly peered into the white of the baguette, I came face to face with a few of the red variety.
My daughters have always been fascinated by ants. As children, they would be pre-occupied for hours, watching them go about their work.
Even as adults they have tended to take their side in any conflict between insects and humans.
When I had a previous infestation and resorted to spray, Christelle exclaimed: "Don't you realise that you've just wiped out whole generations of the poor things?"
She was with us at the table and, for once, felt a little less kindly disposed towards the poor things. "Christelle is in mild trauma after unknowingly eating a baguette filled with ants," she wrote on her Facebook "wall" (ask a young acquaintance if that means nothing to you).
Within 24 hours or so, she was back to something approaching normal, complaining that I had gazed admiringly at the progress of a small army of black ants moving crumbs and leaves across the patio before obliterating them with supposedly killer white powder. For my own part, I'm not so sure they don't just enjoy a snort and move on to the next task.
Certainly, the little white plastic ant traps you place on surfaces appear to have no impact whatever unless you catch the pests one by one and shove them into the little holes. Even then you have to be careful and stop them walking straight out again.
I do not know if French ants are hardier than their Anglo-Saxon cousins. It's not, I could almost add if I were in the mood for daft puns again, fourmi to say. But needless to say, any advice from seasoned ant experts that doesn't include the instruction "live and let live" would be most welcome.
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