And how!

Yes, the pompiers – the fire brigade from St Gervais d’Auvergne came to call upon Cécile this evening. And at Cécile’s request too.

As I told you the other day, she’s put her house up for sale, but a group of squatters has other ideas.

A swarm of bees arrived and seem to have taken up residence in Cécile’s chimney.

She needs to encourage her visitors, not have them stung to death by bees.

No local apiarist was available and so she did the next-best thing, which was to call out the fire brigade.

It’s amamzing, the things that you learn. I didn’t realise that this is a free service in the Auvergne, although one is expected to make a contribution to the Fireman’s Ball.

Apparently they hold a Fireman’s Ball every December in St Gervais d’Auvergne, and the fireman is becoming rather fed up of it.

Anyway, by about 22:00 the fire brigade had gone and Cécile and I carried on working.

This morning I was up as usual and after breakfast I didn’t hang about.

First job was to empty out Caliburn – I don’t know where all of the rubbish inside him comes from.

having done that I drove round to Cécile’s to pick up my stuff and to help her organise herself, although what good I might be at that I really don’t know.

While I was there, I ended up working on the Berlingo. This is Bill’s old car but Cécile has bought it as her Micra is creaking a little around the edges.

The Berlingo failed its controle technique on a couple of silly things, like a frayed seat belt where the Hound of the Baskervilles had had a go at it, so I was sorting all of that out.

Nan came round too to say goodbye to Cécile so we had a really good chat.

Nothing like a convivial evening among friends.