A sad day

Our little community has suffered a devastating and tragic loss.

Yesterday morning Nicole came round very early in floods of tears to tell us that our neighbour and her father-in-law, Lucien, had been killed the previous afternoon in a road accident. He had been cycling to Questembert to collect his car from the garage when he was hit by a lorry.

Lucien was the first person to come round to welcome us when we moved here, bringing a basket of plums; he was my go-to person for any advice on gardening and he was a pillar of our village. We saw him in his garden nearly every day - even if we didn't have a chat he always looked out for us and waved.

The story behind what happened is just so sad. There is a great bunch of "Vieux gars" who we meet regularly at Claudette's Fete de la Village which took place last Sunday. One of these is Armandin who is 80 and lost his wife last winter; during the fete he was responsible for producing carafes of wine at regular intervals - "I'm not a sommelier, just a caviste" he said when I complemented him on his standard of service. Lucien was 76 and led the team of chefs on the barbeque at the fete; the day afterwards Lucien was going to drive Amandin to Beauvais, near Paris, to stay with his sister for a week. They got as far as Questembert (about 10km away) when Lucien's car developed a problem and they had to leave it at a garage and get a taxi back. Lucien was on his way to get the car to restart the trip when he was killed.

We will miss him enormously.