The latest Direct Delta catalogue has come. These arrive in the post box, roughly once a month, announcing that the Direct Delta lorry will be pulling into a car park near us soon to sell us all kinds of things we never knew we didn’t want. They make for fascinating reading.

The catalogue has changed. In the early days it predominantly advertised tools, like these handy looking ones.

And of course, this being France, there was always a page of mole mangling devices. That hasn’t changed.

Something very French too is the page dedicated to selling equipment needed for jam and preserve making. That’s very popular here.

Since it’s summer, pools are on offer. I love the picture of this one full of midgets! I think some photo doctoring has been going on.

And also since it’s summer, it’s time to think about your winter wood as I’ve pointed out in several of my blogs. Direct Delta are in agreement with me and have this lot for sale.

But Direct Delta is branching in new directions. It’s realised there are women out there too. And of course, all women are obsessed with keeping fit, so it’s got all kinds of fitness equipment on offer. They may be shooting wide of the mark in Creuse where the population is elderly and on the sturdy side. And I don’t think this page of stuff will pull in many Creusois either!

We are actually going to buy something from the lorry this time round, a chapiteau (canvas gazebo) for the back garden. So I have carefully filled in the coupon on the back page. I didn’t do this the last time I wanted an item, thinking it would be OK just to tell them the reference number, but no, the system (i.e. the salesperson) couldn’t cope without the coupon and they wouldn’t sell it to me. Since I can’t even remember what it was now, then our lives evidently weren’t too disrupted.

And Rors can turn the rest of the catalogue into a paper briquette for burning in winter. So all in all, the Direct Delta catalogue is a very useful item – entertaining and warming.