Les sapeurs-pompiers

Behind the house there's the old railroad bed, now a walking path and also a widening of this path where there used to be poubelles, the ubiquitous waste and recycling bins.  Already parked there for the weekend was a jolly green giant of what I call a "Lull", a construction tractor for lifting roofers and materials for the Glancy's new roof next door.  So it was amazing when the fire department arrived this morning--Sunday!-- and parked a rescue truck and captain's car alongside.


I looked around among the guys (and one woman) and eventually caught sight of Pascal Martina the

Pascal Martina

mechanic who has been keeping out Kangoo on the road for the last 5 years.   He's the chief of the fire and rescue team and was puffing on a gnarly little roll-your-own cigarette.  He said they were just training this morning, teaching or refreshing memories on the harnesses and other equipment that might be needed to pluck someone out of the water somewhere I guess.

The helmets are pretty amazing.  If I joined it would be to wear a helmet like this once in a while.  I find it a little odd that the rest of the uniform is so totally functional and non-glamorous.

This is how to hold your lips when pronouncing the "u" in super

I didn't see the pretty girl wearing her helmet

 I wondered if this style dated back to the WWI era so I browsed Wikipedia.  Didn't notice anything about the helmet but got to the bottom of the sapeur part of the title.  A pompie, that's obvious enough, someone pumping water to put out a fire.  But sapeur goes back to well before the trenches of WWI where they got really good at sapping on both sides, digging tunnels under trenches and laying explosives.  In the case of incendies, buildings on fire, in the Middle Ages they sometimes had to sap the houses around a bad house fire to prevent the whole neighborhood from going up in flames.

Happily they weren't in sapeur mode but seemed to be just practicing using harnesses and climbing equipment.  It took around a quarter hour to attach what appeared to be a hoisting rope about 16 feet along the bridge.  The sign on their truck read, "Assistance to victims" but nothing about being a "fast squad" as in Vermont.  (I used to get a kick out of the volunteers from Fairlee who had decals on their pickup trucks that actually read, "Fairlee Fast Squad")

It seems to me that Andy Siegler was right, that the French "do systems really well,"  The two teams were obviously well prepared and each had an older and wiser person in charge, Pascal on the downstream side.

One of the last times I had the Kangoo in his shop, Pascal got to talking about fire departments.  This Castlefranc department had recently come door to door with calendars and the contribution that they were too discrete to actually come right out and ask for.  I told Pascal he looked great on the calendar but should have been wearing a bikini with his shiny helmet.  He was very proud of their training.  He said that if there were an emergency at local chemical factory, they had strict instructions to dial the red phone at the prefecture in Cahors.  He said that when there is an accident on a divided highway in France, two crews are sent out:  one directs traffic around the accident and the other deals with the inevitable accident in the other directons that results from rubbernecking.  He said the deaths and injuries among the firefighters at 9-11 resulted from a macho cowboy mentality that never would have happened in France.

mean street

If anybody asks you, "Is it easy to forget?"
I'd say "It's easily done.  You just pick anyone and pretend like you never have met."

Bob Dylan Another Side of Bob Dylan  1964

Floiras

It's the construction site itself, not singing, that is
forbidden to the public.  The public is encouraged to sing.

Floiras lay dying below Belaye at the intersection of the D8 and the D45.  You could almost see blood draining from the wounds of this chateau:  these stone walls are nowhere nearly as solid as they may once the roofs start to go, the soft central core of the walls dissolves and complete collapse is just a matter of time.  

All groaned in passing this relic.  There were all kinds of rumors about why the owner would allow this to happen.  As usual, the privileged explanation was a family feud resulting from French inheritance laws.  There was a petition to do something;  the mayor acted and got the national historical architect involved.  There were rumors that when the mayor told the owner he might try to take the building by eminent domain as a danger to passing traffic, the owner defiantly declared he would have the parts in danger of blocking the road bulldozed.  Someone told me the owner believed himself to be the Bourbon heir to the French crown.

A La Dépêche article in 2007 identified the former owner as one Thierry de Bercegol du Moulin de Fitz.   Note not  one, not two but three particles of nobility.  We're dealing with some serious pretention here.  Somehow  M. Thierry (writing the whole name out would only copycat famous the Monty Python routine.) eventually sold to a British family according to the article.  It didn't sound good the report that this family's first move was to try to unearth anyone old enough to remember what furniture had been where in the chateau.  The place was teetering on the brink of destruction.

It isn't clear what happened to the British family but the place sat vacant and more moribund with each passing year.  Realtor after realtor posted for sale signs.   Then amazingly enough, a builder from up north stepped up to the plate.  He said he figured it would take 15 years to do the renovations.  The crew of historical construction specialists dug in first on roofing one of the typical Quercy towers.

So this much of the ice cream cone they built on the ground.  They did finish tiles on the upper part before liftoff but left the lower part to be completed on high.  Why?  Just to reduce weight?  This lower area would be the easiest to reach.  

I doubt that this crane was the one used to lift up the ice cream cone.  They must have brought in a larger one and then continued working from this smaller one.

This dude, who has definitely been around the block a few times, seemed to be working solo the day I was taking these pictures.  The construction is in numerous layers:   the framing, interior sheathing, intermediate, light sleepers (chevrons),  exterior sheathing, and finally special tiles.   The tiles are slightly curved but even so, up close-ish, the appearance is of a shaggy surface. 

The site has been in hibernation ever since they buttoned up the tower roof.  Are they waiting for better weather?  Has the new owner already run out of steam, 14 years too soon?  Stay tuned.

   

PS  "Floiras" is hard to pronounce correctly, like the family name "Langlois" that became notorious from a well-known commercial where hotel clerks from around the world slaughtered it.  "Flwahrahs"