Shoulder Feels Stronger (2/2)

These past two days we’ve been ratcheting up the intensity of the work at both Sallettes and the Château, nailing boards and hauling back-crushing bags of chalk and concrete. We've learned that when using a hammer, precision really isn't all that important as long as everyone's hands are out of the way; you just swing from the shoulder as hard as you can with massive blows that make you feel like some Norse giant. After Niels unsuccessfully pursued two of the kids who’ve been trespassing in the Château, Elias and I have been assigned to block up the passage that we think they’ve been using with several old doors nailed together. It’s going well, except we have to put up with Mathieu’s remarks about how they did something similar last year. SHADDAP, moron, THIS is how we’re doing it THIS year!

Yesterday Niels and I left ahead of the others to pick up pasta sauce in the Old City. We stopped at the train station to reserve my ticket to Paris (night train, cheapest there was) and decided to wait for the new kid who was supposed to arrive in a few minutes. The train was delayed, so we waited. And it started deluging rain. We called Thérèse to tell her what we were doing. She insisted that we not walk home in the rain, even though it would only have been fifteen minutes and she’s the one who’s always insisting we’re not babies. She sent a taxi for us. We waited another forty minutes for the taxi, by which time the rain had stopped. And in the calling Thérèse to try to get her to recall the taxi, I ran out of phone credits. Damn Bouygue capitalists. Is it any wonder that I secretly dream of toppling civilization à la Fight Club and doing away with things like phone credits and phones and phone companies and capitalism? Does that seem callous of me? Perhaps even a little... barbaric?