A Perfect Circle by Susie Kelly

Author:Susie Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: France
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2005-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Every ten years the dam is drained so that its integrity can be inspected. When this was done in May 2000, the surviving original villagers returned to the remains of their drowned homes and celebrated Mass in their drowned church.

The hay-making season was in full swing in Bourg-Saint-Maurice where two men, a young woman and a very small child were gathering up cut hay with old-fashioned wooden rakes, followed by an ancient tractor towing a baling machine, and on a hairpin bend a very elderly lady was, single-handedly, forking a massive pile of hay lying in the road into a first-floor loft. I felt we should leap out of Tinkerbelle, snatch the fork from her, sit her down and stack the hay. But we didn’t, instead sitting patiently for the little time it took her to unhurriedly clear a passageway round the side of her hay mountain. We followed the valley of Chapieux up to the Cormet de Roselend, one of the loveliest places we’d seen since we started our journey through the Alps. It sits at nearly 2,000 metres on a broad plateau of mountain meadowland, and on that particular day was glowing in bright sunshine. Two women, an older woman with a stick and a younger woman, very slim and tall, with long legs in short shorts and hiking boots, were marshalling a herd of maybe two hundred copper-coloured cattle in and out of a mobile milking parlour towed by a tractor.

♦

Except for Tally’ finding his way into a field full of cattle and being chased by them, our overnight stay in Beaufort was unremarkable. When we left next morning, on a mild overcast day, parascenders were floating down over hills that were alive with the sound of motorbikes. From the start of the alpine leg of our safari we’d met numerous herds of bikers roaring along the hair-raising roads at breakneck speed. As they whooshed past we could feel their exhilaration, but they wouldn’t have noticed the wild flowers so tightly packed into the ground that there was no room for grass, nor how the wooden chalets sagged under the weight of geraniums dangling from their balconies.

Haute-Savoie was blanketed by a sky in various shades of grey when we reached the Chamonix valley, and with impeccable timing and a despairing squeal, Tinkerbelle announced that her brakes were worn out. What a heroine! She’d safely carried us over hundreds of kilometres of dangerous roads before finally succumbing.

Our very special friend Peter was waiting for us in Chamonix with his girlfriend Marianne. Dobbie and Tally sped off to investigate the house, and Dobbie returned in a few moments proudly waving a pair of lady’s knickers. We spent the evening dining on a whole bass and crème brtilee with strawberries, then slept in a comfy bed, had a bath and proper breakfast, and washed our clothes in a washing machine. Sheer luxury. Thank you, Pete and Marianne, for that very enjoyable and welcome interlude.

After the dogs had enjoyed a long

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