Burning the pine.

Our neighbour Michel was 50 earlier in the year and his son, Lucas, celebrated his 18th birthday earlier in the year. As is local custom two "mais" or "pins" were erected in honour of these occasions and on Friday the 21st of August we were invited for aperitifs in order to "water" the pine trees and then watch them taken down and burnt. This evening was only a prelude to the next day when many more people had been invited to celebrate these events in the village hall - more of that later.
We walked down to Michel's at about 8pm and there were quite a few people already there, about 20 or so I should think. This time we managed to do the polite thing and saluted everyone with kisses or handshakes.! There were quite a few people there that we hadn't met before including some Spanish cousins as, apparently, Michel is of Spanish origin. Otherwise it was the usual culprits! Bernard and Chantal, Pascal, Sophie and Phillippe, Dominique and Christine, Michel's other son Rafael and his girlfriend, Olivier and various children. We accepted a drink and sat around and chatted for a while before we got to the business of the evening. Dominique wielded the chain-saw and cut down the pine and then cut it into smaller pieces for burning. It was just falling dusk when they set fire to it and it burned very well, thankfully no sparks setting light to anything else - at least we had two firemen in attendance, Phillippe and Pascal. Mme Gourdon(Monique) came over to watch the fire and I walked over to have a chat with her. As always the chat turned into quite a long monologue from her but I was only too happy to listen to her. Then back to the table and more drinks and nibbles were served. Aftera couple of Martinis I thought I should go onto something a little weaker so I changed over to Tonic water whereas Nigel was given another, and maybe another as well, pastis with no option of refusing it! I had a chat with the son of Dominique and Christine, a charming young man who is at university and speaks good English, he is very keen to visit London. Nigel and Olivier were chatting away in a mixture of French and English, both of them finding this much easier after a couple or three pastis! We made our way home at about 11pm as we know that it will be a long day tomorrow!!