Public sector austerity

One thing I have noticed now and then in dealings with officialdom and utilities is a certain reserve.  We returned yesterday lunch time from a shopping trip to Lézigzag to find the street filled with folding tables, and wondered what the devil we were in for.

Such a quiet little street...

Two young people were putting out all sorts of jumble: plastic flexible tubing, bicycle inner tubes, remnants of fabric, etc.  I couldn't get them to explain what it was about, other than that it was for a company.  In due course a crowd of people arrived, fortified, I suspect, by a Good Lunch somewhere, so I pressed on with the interrogation.  Turned out it was a team building event for the staff of a subsidiary of EDF, the much-loved, majority state-owned electricity company.  They had been split into teams (named after leading fashion houses), briefed to come up with the most imaginative fancy dress on given themes, using the stuff provided.  I must admit to stepping in with the toolbox when people looked like severing arteries with blunt scissors, or lacked pliers for this or that task.  The day culminated in a sort of fashion parade in the Halle.  All very entertaining!  For us, the winner was the grey-bearded beauty queen, but we didn't hang around for the prizegiving.  The street was somewhat bordélique when we got back, but the various animators soon got it all cleared up (not without a modicum of help from wacky baccy, I noticed), and the organisers had the tables packed away in no time.  As Annie would say, you'd never know we'd 'ad a do.

bonne récolte

Today, it feels a bit like the day after a good birthday party.  Still, we've been for a gentle stroll up past the Abbey and through the vineyards and olive groves, admiring the early autumn flowers, and spotting the occasional lizard and butterfly.  A propos fauna, we heard some odd bird calls while we were hanging out the washing this morning: turned out to be two herons engaged, doubtless, in such dialogue as is herons' wont.  I'd never heard one before.

As we strolled, we found neighbour Hervé and, I think, sons harvesting olives.  Evidently the crop is particularly good this year, so Hervé was wearing a smile from ear to there.  He and Béatrice came to Lagrasse a few decades ago when the théophanes set up a community here.  The sect seems to have disappeared, but B&H have re-established the village as a hub of  olive-growing, and are good, friendly neighbours. 

Some of the vineyards have been harvested, but there's a lot still to do.  I'd hoped to have a photograph of the monks at their viticultural devotions, but that'll have to wait for another day.  Or year.