A tour

Loic, the heavily bifocaled gardener, shows up wearing a brightly coloured mask. The matron of his home has finally bowed to his repeated requests to be allowed out of quarantine. He spends ten minutes telling me what he's been doing since we last met. The local fire brigade came and gave him a tour in their new engine. A local farmer also came and took Loic and some of his friends at the home a trip through the country in a  horse drawn trailer.  I fill up the little lawn tractor with petrol and let Loic scoot around the orchard for ten minutes.His joy/excitement/delight are palpable so I let him do ten more minutes. He says he'll be back next Friday morning. Sophie is annoyed that there's been no leaf blowing.

Loic keeps his distance. The matron has told him that if he gets too close to people he'll get a very very bad cold. ' I don't like being sick' he tells me. The matrons way of explaining things is very wise - not too alarming but strident enough to register.

As we're coming back from our morning walk to the waterfall The Old Farmer shows up in the silver metallic Mercedes. He's been staying with his lady friend for the last seven weeks and has come to check that his roof hasn't leaked in the recent downpours. We give him a bottle of Italian wine to take home. After seven weeks of being couped up with him his lady friend probably needs it.

So starts a Saturday morning in deepest, deepest France profonde. Today Sophie is practising, what Angus calls,  making noises. Sophie probably thinks of it as singing.... or yodelling. She can do this all morning.

Unusual to have this American song on the radio : https://youtu.be/pAIzPbjpYUk