Loic Fever !

News of the seemingly miraculous recovery of our accident prone gardener would have appeared to have travelled far and fast and the village is heaving with sightseers and thrill seekers from as far afield as Roscoff and St Malo. The village square, in the shadow of the church, is filled, on a daily basis, with an ever growing number of people paying to stroke Loic’s highly waxed and well oiled artificial hand, lost by the Pompiers on final journey home. Of course the swineherd who accidently discovered it when falling drunk into the fosse by the wayside is now claiming it was a divine providence that led him to it and earning himself a nice living retelling his tale for 10 centimes a time. The shrine itself has altered beyond all recognition, no longer an upturned apple box, it now boasts a rather fine granite structure decked with an ornate alter cloth embroidered with, what one supposes to be, images of Loic intertwined with gardening tools and various salad crops. Poor St Fiancre is hardly getting a look in!

The local artisans have been impressively swift to produce a variety of Loic linked ephemera for the tourists and pilgrims to purchase at exorbitant prices and there would appear to be no end to their ingenuity. The potter has sculpted row upon row of small terracotta figures of Loic spread-eagled and legless under a diminutive statue of St Fiancre, and a range of commemorative cider bowls with a primitive painting of Loic waving his artificial limb and bearing the Motto “ Make mine a large one” in Breton. The carpenter is selling wooden Plaques carved with Loics image and apparently made from the very handcart upon which the Pompiers had transported Loic’s crumpled body Chez Nous after the latest of his terrible accidents. One can only surmise that the handcart was in reality much bigger than I remember as some of the plaques are quite large and there are rather a lot of them.

The village Bar is selling a special drink called “Loic’s reviver” which is, or so I am given to believe, a volatile mixture of Absinthe, cider and crème de menthe served in a stumpy glazed clay pot which looks remarkably like those in which Yannick sells his yoghurt . The recipe is naturally a secret but is said to include Absinthe for the fireworks, cider to honour the Pompiers who were drinking it when they discovered Loic and crème de menthe to symbolize the green salad that Loic was wearing when he recovered his spirits. It comes with a lettuce leaf wrapped around a pickled cucumber and harpooned on a wooden skewer which is quite an original touch. Jacques assures me that it actually quite pleasant but he thinks it may well be quite lethal in large quantities.

Our village being unaccustomed and ill equipped to deal with such a sudden influx of travellers the many visitors noticeabley outnumbered the scanty accommodation offered by the one small Inn. Enterprising farmer’s wives have set up auberges in their longeres and barns and are happily making a lucrative living providing overnight lodgings for all and sundry. I understand the going rate is 2 francs per person a night with sheets extra.

All in all, the entire commune seems to be thriving as a result of Loics little mishap, which since we are having such a wet summer will be a blessing in itself, the potatoes rotting in sodden earth and the hay ruined and too damp to harvest.

The only person who finds no joy in this new prosperity would appear to be Nicolai Fartoocozy who, as the chairman of the committee for the commune health and sanitation with special responsibility for fosse septiques, finds himself rather overworked arranging for the emergency empting of communal fosses which are not surprisingly overflowing with all the extra use they are getting.

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As you can see from the accompanying photograph even old Jerome and his wife are doing very well selling hand carved and painted effigies of Loic and the Pompiers as ”pignoles” . How effective they will be remains to be seen as of course Loic is rather lacking in the limb department and by tradition the pignoles limbs revolve at speed in the wind to frighten away birds. If you look closely you will see that Jerome seems to have got over this handicap by depicting Loic with a very large spade like attachment in place of his missing hand and has given him to legs, a fact that seems not to have deterred his customers at all.