Gone!

No sooner had I pressed the 'post' button yesterday morning than the tree surgeons arrived. Despite frequent flurries of snow they were soon at work , shimying up trees, their power saws buzzing away like so many angry hornets. For the village the arrival of a fleet of large orange trucks and 'out of towners' was the most exciting thing to happen in many a year . A constant stream of neighbours, passers by, builders lads, gendarmes, pompiers and the generally curious walked into the garden to find out what was going on and offer unsolicited and unheeded advice. The mayor was there from early on, resplendent in a rather fetching blue felt pork pie hat, directing traffic and interposing himself as the chief 'coordinateur'. The poor man managed to hurt his right hand when setting up the Christmas creche and now , unable to shake hands, thrusts an elbow towards you in greeting. I found myself briefly touching the profered elbow much as a medieval leper might touch the robe of a passing monarch. Oh, the social pitfalls that await the unsuspecting foreigner.

The snow squalls got more frequent as the afternoon wore on. Undaunted by the low cloud and 'white outs' the men working at the top of the trees would engage in a lively chorus of 'Jingle Bells' whenever they lost sight of the ground. Hard working and humorous. As dusk fell the last of the wood had been loaded onto the back of the trucks and the offending pines, together with their loathsome cargo of processionary caterpillars, driven off to the incinerator. The mayor led the way into the house for a reviving aperitif. Wilf was told , in French, that he was indeed a very lucky boy.