Disappearance of the Washhouse Big Spoon: the toast round under threat

The communal utensil, reserved since 1983 for the official Tuesday jam tasting, evaporated overnight in Bourg-de-Granule.
Without it, it’s impossible to uphold the toast protocol that determines the order of the stalls and the placement of the extension cord at the market.

Carved from beech, its handle engraved “GCL 83” and a felt-tip warning “dip, don’t lick,” the Big Spoon was last seen yesterday at 6:47 p.m., when Honoré Brelot performed the ritual of three splashes on the washhouse board. A lingering smell of blackcurrant and two rusk crumbs were noted at the scene. Some suggest it may have been used, by mistake, to stir the hikers’ soup on the Bilberry Trail, after the horticultural club’s repotting demonstration, “chrysanthemum motif.”

Beyond the emotion, the issue is technical: without this utensil calibrated to 12 grams per dip, it’s impossible to award the tiny apricot ribbon that, each week, decides who sets up next to the market’s only outlet. And that outlet powers both Mrs. Causset’s toaster (test toasts) and the griddle that sears the goat-cheese croutons at the stand opposite. The disruption threatens the alignment of extension cords, the rotation of the communal bread knife, and the traditional “apricot–redcurrant–rhubarb” schedule of test bites.

“You don’t improvise a redcurrant stir with a pumpkin-soup ladle: it’s a matter of moral viscosity,” hammers Colette Pichon, president of the Friendly Draining Board Circle. “Without the spoon, the jam runs; and if the jam runs, the whole waiting line jams.”

A gentle search is being organized this evening between the washhouse’s Virginia creeper and the phone booth that no longer takes coins; headlamps and cotton gloves provided to preserve the sugary patina. As a fallback, the festival committee proposes the Serving Spoon from the “Drawer of Orphan Cutlery,” but the idea of a plastic spatula has triggered a wave of disapproving coughs. Any clue can be dropped into the empty pickle jar set on the little free library on Hazel Lane; announced reward: a bar of Marseille soap molded in the shape of a strawberry and a scratch-and-sniff “Reine Claude plum” stamp.