A week of heroes

My present number one hero is Didier Angibaud, the vidangeur, more familiarly known in English as the pig slurry man. This is the man who came at short notice to empty the leaking swimming pool and transfer the chlorinated water into the golf course reservoir which was desperately low.

The swimming pool was steadily leaking into the fields which, at nearly two euros the cubic metre, was unacceptable as an option for any length of time. Nor was the water doing any good to the fields. The grass grew high and rank. The sheep refused to, and were not allowed to, graze it. The pear tree may have benefitted but that is doubtful. Anyway, the water percolated into the septic tank inspection chamber and chased out a lot of flies. Not desirable around holiday homes. And we had probably lost 50 cubic metres already before deciding enough was enough.

Fortunately, having taken the executive decision to close the gîte pool we were able to offer our holiday makers the use of our own larger, heated pool with wave machine. Even more fortunately the temperatures have been so high we have not had to heat this pool but it has swarmed with a variety of small children.

Didier owns a couple of heavy tonnage tanker lorries more usually employed in emptying septic tanks and pig slurry tanks. The contents he can 'resell' as fertilizer, assuming the recipient fields are not too far away. When he comes to clear our four septic tanks the 'boues' are usually emptied into some discreet place in the woods. He was pleased by the neat solution of emptying the pool water into the Black Pond in the woods, mostly because he could do this from the roadside.

It took him about seven trips to empty the pool. Mathematical persons present reckoned he put 75 cubic metres into the Black Pond. Of course the water pouring down the side of the pond did soften the bank. As we were watching, a cherry sapling loosened its hold on the earth and slowly sank, upright, towards the bottom of the pond.  It is still standing there and will doubtless flourish. With any luck the chlorinated water will have killed off the pond weed but will not affect the insect pond life. Insects can go elsewhere – weeds are stuck.

Number two hero is the Wonderful Arnold who had been watering the greens using the horse tubs, filling each by hand, hauling them from green to green with the tractor, then watering each green by hand. This had to be done to keep the greens alive until the irrigation system could be cobbled back into use which also required more water in the reservoirs. And various, expensive, complicated taps and valves until the pump can be properly put back into working order this winter. The pump and I are not friends.

And my third hero is our pool man, M. J-F Bonnin who comes every fortnight during the summer season. He came one morning early, disrupting his schedule, with temperatures just about touching 30 C, to put the winter cover on the pool to secure it, just in case some adventurous children got into the pool garden, despite all my devices, and decided to walk across the pool. Nephew Freddie tried that once, on a simple pool cover. He did not get very far. Obviously M. Bonnin is looking forward to replacing the torn liner and doing all the associated works – but he is being very prosaic about it, not gloating at all.

So far, 2012 has seriously been an annee de poisse, an unlucky year – and we are still in August. If it does not rain soon, the natives will get restless: no rain in the last ten days of August, no champignons in the early days of September.  And this morning, August 20^th, one of JP's ancestors (a Wedderburn) decided to fall off the wall, doing considerable damage to his plaster and gilt frame but non to the decanters on the table below. Presumably he was a wine buff.