Sketches and moonlight

It's not quite true that the locals close shutters and stay indoors for the winter. Saturday was Theatre: an evening of sketches in the Hall at the Foyer Rural, which is a kind of community centre and home of the town council's social and cultural committees and offices. The theatre group was excellent, with most of the adults at professional level, and two of the teens are heading that way. I understood almost all of it with the exception of one of the comic songs sung by the commère (that's not a typo, it was a she) during scene changes, which appeared to be in Charentais.

The evening started late, at 9pm, and was so entertaining that I was amazed to find that it was past midnight when it ended. It was a very cold night, with frost and the moon by which you could see the houses and road as if the streetlights were on. I spent a little time on the way home just looking at the hamlet and fields by moonlight. That's how I noticed a light in the window of the little house: it must have been on for over a week. Even with the bright moonlight I didn't fancy sliding over the icy lane and opening the frozen old door to look for the off switch (I've never turned on the light because I'd only go in there in the daytime), so took a look round the dangerous jumble of electrical wiring and boards in the barn, to see if I could find a way to cut the power to the little house. No luck. There must be a feed somewhere, but that spaghetti wiring and the collection of random, sometimes live, junction boards is no place for an electrically-challenged wimp. Next day, when the sun had thawed the land, I went over to the little house and turned off the lights, and picked up a bagful of logs and wood offcuts.