Tuesday June 15th

Day 57

I’m writing this at the yellow oiled cloth table on the terrace. My lovely man at the other end is also writing. It’s still light at nearly 8 pm. And it’s raining, dripping from the tiled roof in rivulets and splashing off the broad leaves of the row of trees alongside the pool. I’m getting hungry for our fish supper. And thinking about the silk worms we saw today. In the Musee de la Soie in St Hippolyte du Fort.

The eggs of the silk moth look like tiny yellow mustard seeds in the cardboard tray. The skin of the silk worms, which are really caterpillars, grey and black striped, look as soft as their name. They are in a tangle moving heap, munching on mulberry leaves and scattering their pinhead droppings everywhere. Their cocoons, like fat oval beans, pale gold and pure white, light as cotton balls are caught up in bundles of twigs. These are the prize for the silk weavers - the beginning of our silk scarves and ski underwear.

I’m captivated by this story - by the sacrifice of the moths who die hours after they give up the shower of their eggs and the ingenuity of the people hundreds of years ago who discovered how to unravel the cocoons. And spin the thread into a gossamer fabric that we can wear today.

I’m remembering the silk worms my brother and I used to keep in a Bata shoe box, the lid pierced with holes, in the dark top cupboard of the nursery. We fed them with mulberry leaves and gave them cardboard shapes to weave their cocoons around. Sometimes we forgot them but they spun their gold anyway.