Lavender

When I was 13 my school set up a pen-friend swap with a school in Provence in France. My adopted family were farmers and when I first visited, aged 16, a crate of unsellable misshapen peaches and apricots sat permanently on the windowsill. I was able to eat as many as I liked, which was a lot. Mediterranean fruit was unusual and expensive in the UK then and the freshly picked fruit was exquisite. Some days I earned pocket money in the fruit sheds, extracting the misshapen fruit and sizing and sorting the rest.

One day I was taken out to the lavender fields. I was shown how the lavender grew in long clumpy rows and how the essence was extracted in a still towards the corner of the field. Under the shade of the still's metal roof, the three-dimensional smell of lavender tasted even more exquisite than apricots. I was asked if I wanted to drive the tractor carrying harvested lavender from the top of the field to the still. Of course I did. I was shown the accelerator and off I accelerated, leaving the farmworkers chatting. The field was big enough for me to work out what the steering wheel did but towards the still I realised I didn't know how to stop. I yelled.

At that time, it seemed, many rural French children rode mopeds from the age of about 11 and were introduced to cars around 13 so I think the farm workers assumed I knew what I was doing. When they realised that I didn't, one came charging across the field after me. He caught up, panting, and leapt onto the tractor. I therefore learnt about brake pedals by observation.

At the end of my stay my kind hosts took me to Marseille airport with a large bottle of distilled lavender essence and a carrier bag containing 36 delicate peaches for my family. Mine was a cheap student flight and since students travelling from Marseille were known to be partial to contraband, everyone was very thoroughly searched. The woman searching me asked me what was under the peaches. Of course she didn't believe me that the bag was peaches all the way down and all 36 got dumped on the search counter. They didn't really recover but back then liquids on planes were no problem and the lavender essence lasted years. I still associate the smell with being out of control on a tractor.