FRENCH ONION SELLERS

Tell you what I've noticed. You don't see any French onion sellers these days. Stereotypically, roaming the country-side in their stripy tops, wearing a beret and pushing bicycles regaled in chains of knotted onions. You don't see them any more. Was it another casualty of Brexit? Couldn't they cope with the extra paperwork. Having to take a bicycle festooned with knotted onions across the channel through customs, either on a ferry or using the Euro tunnel, outside the Schengen Zone. Because I know they couldn't come here on a short haul flight with all their onions as their blended content would exceed the liquid allowance. But I have a feeling they disappeared before Brexit. I'm sure it wasn't one of the issues we voted on. It wasn't on the side of a bus. There wasn't a mobile advertising board depicting a queue of French onion sellers with their regaled bicycles snaking back to the vanishing point with the slogan underneath saying "Send Them Back. We don't need your French onions. French Johnny Onion man." No, I think they were already gone at this point in our evolutionary process. It was a gradual tapering off that went unnoticed. I think its called repetition suppression . You see something on a regular basis and your brain ignores it, even though something might have happened to it. Bit like the Sycamore Gap tree. After it was chopped down I bet there were people walking along Hadrian's wall past the gap where it was day dreaming about winning the lottery or buying some eccles cakes or taking an interest in an ant on the ground carrying a leaf somewhere and their brain pencilled in an iconic Sycamore tree near bye. It's called repetition suppression. Then perhaps sometime later they were walking along the Hadrian's Wall wondering why the BBC keep recommisioning 'Mrs Brown's Boys' when Bingo! their inner brain tells their conscious self to become aware of a lack of a tree. I think that what it was with the French Onion men. Originally there were hoards of them crossing the channel in boats laden with onions and making there way to Wales. That was there prime market, apparently. Wales. It's not the easiest place to get to at the best of times, let alone pushing a bike full of onions. And this would be before the Severn crossings had been built. They'd have to push their bikes all the way up to Gloucester before they could get back down to Cardiff. And Wales, I mean don't they grow leeks in Wales? There's not that much difference between a leek and an onion. Apparently they were drawn to Wales because they came from Breton in northern France the French onion men and their language in Breton was similar to the Welsh language. They could communicate to sell their onions. They had a foot in the linguistic door so to speak. Rather having to barter with the likes of Cockneys, your Essex speakers or your West Country yokels they could be at ease dealing with people from a common heritage. Perhaps this is the reason for their demise. The demise of the Welsh language. They crossed the channel and pushed their onion laden bikes up to Gloucester and down again to Newport expecting when they got there to be greeted by a friendly Welsh speaker at the door and not someone staying in their second home or an Air B&B.