A warm fall Saturday afternoon at the beauty parlor in a town near us.  There was a happy buzz of gossip as the ladies got cut, colored and curled.  It was a rare personal moment for them away from housework, farm chores and family.  Their husbands had gone hunting and things were calm in town.  With hair dryers whirring away, the salon de coiffeur heated up and the proprietress opened the front door to let in some air.  There were some grateful smiles and the gossip resumed at a higher decibel.

They didn’t pay any attention to the clatter of footsteps on the tile floor.  Just somebody’s high heels, they thought. 

Until one of the customers looked up.  And screamed. 

In the middle of the floor stood a wild boar desperately trying to escape hunters who were chasing him down in a nearby cornfield. 

In a rush not seen since the Roman invasion of Gaul, carts overturned, water sprayed wildly, and shampoo and bleaching potions exploded onto the walls.  The women with their hair still wet and half-cut pushed past each other dashing madly for the back door. 

The old boar must have felt a minute of complicity and maybe satisfaction as the hunters’ wives got a taste of being hunted themselves. 

Then he turned and ran back into the countryside. 

You’ll know him if you see him:  he’s the boar with a bleached streak down his back and a self-satisfied smile on his face.

At the local cheese fair a few years ago, some English neighbors of ours stocked up and decided to throw a “wine and cheese” party for friends and neighbors. 

 The invitations had no sooner been issued than our phone started ringing.  “What’s a ‘wine and cheese’?” our French neighbors asked. 

“Since it’s cheese, I suppose we should eat beforehand,” said one neighbor.  “But 8 o’clock for cheese is awfully early if we’re going to have dinner first.”

Another agreed, pointing out that they started milking at 8 p.m.  

How to explain that party form that was once so popular in the anglo-saxon world?  It’s sort of like a cocktail party, we said.  That silenced our friends for a minute while they tried to process the information.  “You mean you eat your cheese before dinner instead of after?”  We felt like some sort of alien species.

We tried again.  “Look, it’s more like an excuse for a casual get-together of friends.  They will put out some different wines and cheeses to try for fun.  Then you can go home for dinner.” 

That only muddied the waters.  “But we already know which cheese we like.”

On the day of the party, it was raining, so we drove the half a kilometer to our friends’ rather than walking as we usually do.  Thank goodness we did because we were being watched.  As we got out of the car, a neighbor stopped behind us and ran to join us.  “I was waiting to leave until I saw your car.  I wanted to be sure to go at the right time and I figured you would know that.”   Three other cars pulled in right after.  “I called my neighbor to tell them you were leaving.”

Despite some initial awkwardness and reticence, everyone soon got into the swing of things and the cheese and wine began to vanish. 

We had warned our hosts that we had a scheduled phone call to the States that night and would have to leave on the early side.  So after a glass of wine and a bit of cheese, we excused ourselves and went home.

The next day, we called to thank our friends and congratulate them on introducing the neighborhood to ”wine and cheese.”

They said they were glad we could come even for a short while, “but,” they said, “it was very strange.  Right after you left, everybody else did, too.”

We chuckled to ourselves and tried to imagine the conversations at that Sunday’s lunches with Grandma.  Undoubtedly there was plenty of discussion about the strange habits of the anglo-saxons.