Dimanche

By Bill Pearse on October 4, 2025 • ( 2 )

Time distends when we’re in France. We get up late, stay up late, eat late and we don’t make plans. No one is open for lunch on a Saturday so we order eight pizzas and Laurent gets out the fresh dried sausages he keeps hanging on a hook by the oven. They are having their roof torn off this weekend and the workers arrive at 0830. When we pull up to their house you can tell which one is theirs from the scaffolding. I’m proud of the fact I know the French word for this (échafaudage) and repeat it many times.

We are up until half past midnight then at 0730 I hear Laurent (he’s a big guy) huffing and puffing up the stairs, carrying things down from the top floor. They need to remove everything before the workers rip off the roof. It’s a shit show like anyone’s basement or attic. There are all kinds of things you shouldn’t be breathing in, water damage, probably mildew and mold, a secret room Laurent shows me with this phone flashlight: all this before coffee.

When the workers arrive we all sit in the crowded kitchen first eating croissants and drinking coffee. No one uses cream; one of the guys dips his croissant in his coffee. This goes on for a good half hour. Then the sounds of men tearing a roof off the house when you are inside. Mom, Lily and I hide on the ground floor with the doors closed and their large Pyrenees mountain dog Rocket. The dog keeps almost knocking over last night’s champagne glasses with his tail. Nanou comes through every 15 minutes to ask if we want her to cook something while she is hauling crap off the third floor. It is like a French farcical comedy the way she keeps popping her head through the door and everything is collapsing. We feel dumb for being there but this was the weekend we’d planned to come and they don’t seem bothered by us.

When it’s time for lunch Nanou sets a table for 10 and the workers sit together on one side as Nanou tears the top off each box of pizza and we try to fit them all on the table. Each one is different; some have little black olives, one has a fried egg, another ham and pistachios. There are many little cans of Coke put out and a couple bottles of wine, then coffee and sweets afterwards, a random baguette. Nanou offers yogurts too. This goes on for maybe two hours. We practice English and French on both sides and agree the one worker looks like the Hawaiian actor Jason Momoa.

All day it rains, a kind of mean, blowing rain, but then it stops after lunch and the sky clears and we walk into town as the guys finish the roof. After walking on cobblestones again and shopping for two hours we’re pretty well spent and decide for dinner, it’s pizza.

Can a person die from too much cheese? We get more of that out, and take turns DJing with our phones, and then Eberhard calls and we put him on speakerphone. He says he’s had too much to drink, maybe a short coffee one afternoon this week. I thought we would leave early afternoon today (it’s Sunday, Dimanche) but Laurent said something about making a gratin and pesto and tomato salad.