Fil d'enfer

Today was a hard day, I worked all day. I worked with Pierre-Malaud (who I now call "Pima") and we had to insert the "fils de fer", or iron threading, all along the vineyards for support. This entailed a lot of iron handling which is really tough on your hands and a lot of walking to and fro to get the threading unloose. Poor Pima has aweful hands, all rough and dry from all this kind of work - I'm going to try and persuade him to put some hand-cream on. He's also really nice to work with, patient and understanding- but I feel so useless sometimes, I'm obviosuly not as skilled or "at ease" in this type of manual work. Had a lovely conversation with him while we had a break. He told me he studied Enginnering, and was in fact an enginner near Paris for a couple of years but realised he hated it and decided to turn his life around completely and start working in agriculture. He said the world of work is rotten by the notion of money and that he thinks it really sad to be doing something you don't really enjoy just to support yourself. So he's happy to be working here and learning about agriculture without being paid at all. It's kind of funny. To imagine him working as an engineer... you should see him _ he's got long curly hair and a very untidy beard, walks barefoot most of the time and weards tattered clothes. But he seems so happy doing this now.
Also; I drove today! I asked Pima if I could drive back from the vines and he did, and later thanked god to be alive. I dn't drive too badly, but the car is not diesel and has no "direction assistée"; so turning the wheel is tricky.
We had dinner early; tonight it consisted of boiled potatoes, with butter - and lots of bread. I find it pretty charming. There's always wine on the table though.
Good night