Warning, this picture i took has nothing to do with what comes next....

I can’t remember if I wrote about this before so stop me if you’ve heard it already.

In fact there are many things I can’t remember – like the “thing” “someone” was asking me about that I couldn’t find in yesterday’s post.

Luckily Minnie has an excellent memory and when I asked her today she reminded me that it was the woman that works in the local supermarket and she was asking me for my fidelity card.

I never had any fidelity cards before I came to live in France, for all I know the concept may have been invented recently by the French – though I suspect it was just that I was never in the same place long enough for any one to recognise me as a regular customer.

Only yesterday evening the girl working in the motorway garage asked me if I had one – I had just stopped to buy orange juice and water – and I am pretty sure I have never seen her before.

So how did she know that I was a regular occasional stopper for ice cream or chocolate after working late in the city?

Do the analyse the security tapes at the end of the week ? Or was it just national fidelity card day and I happened to stroll in?

I have never asked for a card, though probably that is what you should do, so it always feels a little, well special, when someone offers me one.

I never ask for one because they are pretty useless as far as I can tell. The local supermarket gave me one fairly soon after I moved here and I shop there at least once a week, often three or four times and I have maintained this rhythm for almost 17 years.

The other day, in a moment of idle curiosity, I asked the lady working there if the points that I was accumulating were lost at the end of the year or not.

“Mais, non.”

Wow, I thought I might even have enough to buy the supermarket.

"So how do you know what to do with them?"

She indicated a brochure that I had never noticed before, hanging from a chain near the entrance.

Excitedly I leafed through it, looking at all the goodies available.

I have enough points for a set of tea towels.

Now, what was it I was going to write about…..?