Fete de la Glace

After the usual internet session sorting out emails and website stuff for the winter season in Chamonix we tackled the list for the day.

It is great when you have, not just a list of jobs, but a list for a particular day. And today we managed to scrub all the items off the list and have time to chill out before heading down to the village for the repas.

In no particular order:

  • We made a shoot from old poplar planks so that we can slide concrete and mortar down to the bottom of the wall, once we start building. Once put together it was covered with DPC (thick plastic sheet) to hopefully allow the goo to slide.
  • Sanded, hoovered, mopped and then applied another coat of varnish to an area of the top floor.
  • Finished a key board in the shape of a butterfly and attached it to a beam. (Then hung any keys we could find on it.)
  • Oh, and then there is the sand. How could I forget the sand?
    I think that “shifting sand” will be a bit of a theme over the coming 10 days or so. We shifted a couple of ton of sand over the bridge and up to the barn, round the back and down to the mixing area above where the wall shall be built.

 

Butterfly keyboard

Butterfly keyboard

Then came the evening entertainment. One of the good things about joining in with the locals for a meal and fete is that it makes us feel young. Fete de la Glace is an old tradition of cutting and collecting blocks of ice from above Salau and transporting them down to St Girons. Since someone invented refrigeration this practice is no longer viable (to say nothing of the internal combustion engine), and is merely celebrated with a communal meal and the inevitable old man in a waistcoat and clogs playing an accordion.

The meal was good – melon & porto, duck a l’orange, cheese and clafloutis. We did get an invite for an apero the following day with Didier and Vero in the village plus a lunch invite at the Maison de la Chase when the “fish counting” is going on later in the month.

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