It's hot.
Cities are emptied of their inhabitants and filled with tourists and passers-by.
The shops close for the holidays and the swimming pools open their lapping arms.
In the pastry shop it is starting to be difficult, especially in the laboratories without air conditioning. The pastry sweats butter: rolling out a cake - after a certain time - becomes a heroic undertaking.
The chocolate languishes lifelessly in a corner, the cream tears, the refrigerator motors chug continuously and heat the atmosphere even more.
Holding a course in the laboratory is impossible.
Customers who have not yet left are looking for ice cream, fresh fruit, drinks and granitas:
"No cream, because it might melt along the way."
"Cream in the heat, I don't trust it."
“Do you have anything FRESH?”
We need to fill the display cases because the eye wants its part, knowing that a good part of the product will remain there: it will have to be thrown away and remade the next day. Because that's how we work, always.
When the heat becomes too much and the game is no longer worth the candle, it closes.
Bye sweets, bye display cases, bye oven. The refrigerators turn off and remain there waiting for us with their doors wide open and the relieved expression of those who - finally - can take a breath.
The pastry chef tidies up, empties and cleans everything. He draws up the list of orders for the reopening and goes on holiday thinking about September: how it will go, what to do again, planning and designing, looking for inspiration and a bit of rest.
The shop closes, but the business never stops.
Hello summer, we're back.