Saturday, November 29, 2008

bear hug

BB is helping Poire put the roof on his new garage and in return, Poire will help BB with the mill roof when the time comes. Snow is forecast for tonight and all next week, so I doubt much masonry work will be getting done here anyway.

With all his tractors broken down, Mini-B is also calling upon friends to help him deliver bales of hay to the snow-covered fields where his cows are - or where they should be, because for most of this week they've been wandering about all over the road again. Roquin has just dropped off some cauliflowers and reckons Mini-B will be failli (bankrupt) by next year if he carries on like this.

Roquin also told me that there used to be brown bears in the mountains here until 1913, which I never knew. (They disappeared from the French Alps altogether in 1937.) His grandfather used to tell him the story of his two friends who shot one high up in the mountains and while one guy ran down to the village to fetch a sledge (a four-hour round trip), the other guy hugged the dead animal to keep warm - and got fleas. Pah! Serves him right!

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