…when they have laws against painting stuff….
….when that washing machine noise you think you’re hearing is heaps of folding stuff being recycled.
Dude #1 has bought an old structure (probably belonged to the larger structure on the left…) just below the village.
Thought it might be a GOOD IDEA to line his new driveway with Italian Cypress trees.
100+ of them.
Over 4m tall.
Around €500 a shot.
Not including all the Jacques et Michels, le Digger ou le Crane all of whom spent a good 2 days on the job.
Plus the palm trees, natch.
20 of those…
Dude #2 snaffled a place bang slap in the middle of the village.
Built on a cliff.
His backyard is now a swimming pool.
And what used to be a wall now has a big hole in it for yer inside-outside flow, as they say in the real estate ads.
Not much privacy, though.
Not as if you could plant some Italian Cypress to shield yourself from the throngs searching every nook and cranny for Peter Mayle…
Certainly seems very popular, this Don Desang chappy.
Concerts all OVER the place and pretty much every day, although I wouldn’t be too interested in fronting up in the late afternoon for a singalong…
Funny lot, these French…
….when the cafes and streets are deserted, because all the Yanks and Brits are drifting around elsewhere on a pilgrimage to track down Peter Mayle, advertising guy who bailed out and wrote “A year in Provence” which kicked off the mass tourism surge in the 90s.
You hear them at a distance, plaintively wailing “Peter! Peter! Peter Mayle! Where are you?!”
They’re quite disappointed to learn that he sodded off elsewhere (Long Island, actually) to escape people walking into his living room with a book to be autographed. (I kid you not…)
And get rather tearful – hysterical, even – when you let slip that he fell off the perch last year…
Désolé about that.
As they say around here…
…… when the rusty French (that was actually *really* good 55 years ago) let’s you translate stuff like this in a flash – “The wine in front of you” -, but you have *no* idea (if you ever knew…) that you’re facing down a third person indefinite stressed pronoun…..
(That would be “soi” – the Gallic equivalent of “one”.
Sort of.
And a pretty good deal to get a decent glass of wine and a platter with cold cuts and cheese for €10
Nice to get a “kia ora”, too….
…when you can bike over le pont Julien, a 3BC Roman bridge over which passed the Via Dolomitia, connecting Italy with its Gallic provinces.
Although you don’t have to be in the Luberon to negotiate ancient structures (open to all vehicular traffic until 2005…)
But in Italy, it’d be il Ponte Julius.
Totally different….
..when your swimming pool has 10 loungers, 8 of which have been towelled/badetuched* by the sodding Krauts-in-residence (Ms jb excluded)
