Coming down

It has been unsettled weather and we've had rain, so I'm loath to take the digger out onto the garden as it will churn up the ground. But, to avoid getting bored I've begun work on the Pigsty. Half of the roof was original, with broken tiles and suspect joists, and the other half was replaced by the previous owners. We are told that he did this as he wanted to have a go at reroofing, although why you would do only half of the roof I don't know!

None of the tiles were fixed and so it was a simple job to lift off the tiles, although just before getting them all off, a piece of broken tile fell on my head. So the hard hat went on, albeit after the horse had bolted!It really only took about 3 or 4 hours to get everything off of one side. I'm intending to make good the top of the walls, ready for new timber to go on. Then I'll take off the other half of the roof so that I can put up a new timber for the ridge, prior to reassembling the joists. I think the biggest problem will be lifting the new beam up to the ridge, as I suspect that it will be quite heavy. I haven't told Sue about this yet!

I'm hoping that I can press on with getting the roof back on, because it looks even more like a ruin now! Over to Sue now.

"The Cock"

I had just crawled up from the veg patch where I had stone picked three beds when a car full of youngsters drew up and said " is this where the football is?" or at least I thought that's what they said. So I explained that only "oldies" lived here and started to direct them to the local football pitch. No they said the "cock"! "Whats that" I said, they began to explain but I couldn't grasp at all what the "cock" was so they gave a gallic shrug and gave up on this ol' girl. About ten minutes later there was a lot of voices outside (an unheard of event in Mas de Bouye) so I looked out and coming up the road were about ten teenagers (boys and girls) carrying a box. They greeted me very politely and asked if I would like to buy a "cock". Upon which they opened the box and displayed loaves of bread like brioche. They explained that you give what you like (that seems the system here, you dont buy raffle tickets) and the money goes to the football teams. They were lovely kids (even the smart arse who spoke quite good English) and talked to us for some time about the football teams, girls , boys and young childrens teams. I was astounded that a place the size of Lutton could field so many teams. So now we all know what "The Cock" is, no wonder the first lot gave up trying to explain!