Friday, September 16, 2005

Caberet, cows, couples and chalets

A three-person cabaret performed in the Espace de Liberté last night, a brick terrace surrounded by trees outside the salle des fêtes and the library. In the beginning the air was still warm and the light breeze rustling through the pines felt good. Later it was chillier. One of the two men did passable impressions of different French singers, recognizable more by body language than voice, the woman singer was a great stylist and the third musician played a great keyboard. The audience at this time of year is more locals, and they enjoyed when the performers started the Sardane and combined it with Macarena.

The cow herders are trying to round up all cows so they bring the same number down from the mountains that they went up in the spring. Unlike in Switzerland, the cows are not decorated with flower crowns.

The Swedish couple who are renovating Antoinette’s old house came for an apero. He loves working with his hands and has gutted the inside of this old Catalan house. Antoinette died last year and was somewhere in her nineties. She wore her hair in a black chignon and was always dressed in black. Each day she visited her husband at the cemetery. Her daughters claimed that she was nicer to him in death than she was in life. I wonder what she would think of the changes. The couple are looking forward to moving here full time.

I keep checking sites for property to buy in Geneva. It is a toss up between the practical Geneva and the beauty of the mountains in Ste. Cergue. This is assuming that my age does not disqualify me.

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