Monday, April 9, 2007

♫ And the grass is as high as... ♫♫

... the eartips of a slightly worried cat doing his morning rounds.
But wielding the enormous mower is George's job as luckily, I'm far too fragile. In fact, he's wielding it right now, and I've poked about a bit this morning in our quite colourful kitchen garden, ie the small bit outside the kitchen. So, we're okay for another six months, then.

The past few weeks have been splendid - things are growing but not rampantly, bees are buzzing but not fearsomely.

We're actually a little wary of bees since the Bee-Trauma. Soon after we moved here, these little bumbly creatures discovered not only the joys of our attic, but also the thrill of squeezing through crevices in the ceiling and frightening the hell out of us. Bees are wonderful, but not when bombarding us Hitchcock-like all over the house. Well, except for the grubby space under the stairs where we keep the emergency bucket, but that space ain't big enough for the both of us.

During our first months in France, domestic problems (specially anything to do with plumbing) were made worse by not knowing who to call. So with the bees we did what we always did then and panicked round to our very nice neighbours. They went to fetch the Pompiers, who deal with everything from raging infernos to tetchy cats stuck down a hole.

As for the bees, the Chief Pompier took one look at our frenzied hordes and said he'd come back later. Apparently bees are not so angry in the evening.

Meanwhile, however, George had an unfortunate accident involving his left eye, the metal rod of a chair-back, shards of glass and lots of blood. So that day we met not only the Pompiers but also the SAMU - you phone them when you're having a medical emergency and they are GREAT.

Calm and friendly, they patched George's eye and lowered my hysteria level enough to let me chase the ambulance to the nearest hospital - ranting away to myself, gnawing fingers to the knuckle, thrashing about trying to find the hazards button, but Driving. When we finally got there, George was as calm as they were, so they thrust me into another room (softly cushioned) and locked me in.

Anyway, they removed the shards, stitched him up, and let us out. And lo! When we got home, the bees had gone. Our neighbours told us that shortly after our departure they had surged out of the attic in a huge droning swarm, and shot off up the road.

Maybe they weren't having as much fun without bombardees, or maybe they couldn't stand all that gore in the washbasin.

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