After tense negotiations that had been inching forward for several weeks, our roofing contractor here Jean-Pierre Ruggeri turned up last Thursday to deliver thousands of wafer-thin roof tiles, wooden battens, and huge rolls of insulation stuff. The next day was a public holiday. Then it was the weekend.

On Monday, M. Ruggeri pitched up at 11 am and dumped scaffolding all over the grass. At noon, he left for lunch. At 3 pm he returned to put up the scaffolding. At 6 pm he called it a day. At 7 pm we switched the telly on, and discovered we had no satellite reception. This wasn’t surprising given that Jean-Pierre had mounted his main scaffolding walkway directly across our dish.

This morning, Ruggeri pitched up at 11.20 am with one of these crane-cum-platform things with which council workers fix street-lighting. He moved it up, down, sideways – and then switched it off prior to his departure for lunch. He did not reappear after lunch, but he did take down the offending walkway before leaving.

Tomorrow, the forecast is for rain. The next day looks iffy. Friday is to be sunny – but it’s a public holiday. Somehow, we seem to be a week into the project, and already three weeks behind schedule. This is all uniquely French.

It is also, of course, a cliched view of the French – so here’s the other side. Last Saturday we went to supper at the gradually emerging house occupied by English Wendy and French Denis. Also invited were entirely French Christine and Claude.

Wendy and Denis have built their place from scratch, although both have other jobs as (variously) occupational therapists, sheep rearers, wine experts, culinary fans, carpenters and parents. Claude builds swimming pools, and Christine (after a long and distinguished career as Mum) gives French classes to Rosbif expats.

It would be hard to enjoy a supper this much in England. The serving of food was both relaxed and yet correct. The language in use drifted naturally from French to English and back again via Franglais. Cultural differences were discussed and giggled about, but mainly human commonalities were agreed upon.

The first of these was that all bankers were stupid, all politicians crooked, and all laissez-faire economists mad. It is indeed a sign of the growing consensus outside the Friedmanite, political and financial class that one could have added middle Americans to this supper and evoked exactly the same level of agreement. I can’t remember any other time in my life when that was true.

Claude brought a bottle of 1997 Cotes du Rhone. It was, he insisted, the first fully mature product from a former Burgundian grower who had brought his expertise to bear on the Rhone valley at the end of the 1980s. I found it right on the sell-by date – there was an element of fortified taste to it – but it was most definitely a seriously great 75 centilitres of plonk. It said 12.5% on the label, but I sensed that ABV had gone up a bit during the ageing process.

The Ward guest-gift was a plant from our garden.

Spinach tart was followed by a lamb casserole of stupendous tastiness. Even Jan was enjoying it, until I asked if the dead animal was home-reared. Christine and Claude smiled approvingly when Wendy said “Mais oui”, but my wife stopped in mid-chew.

“And what was it’s name?” I asked.

“Sweety-Pie” Wendy replied. Jan stuck to the veg after that.

The conversation was quickly switched to one of the most bizarre tales I’ve heard in a long time. It was unusual for all kinds of reasons – legal, farcical and tragic – but basically the tale was one of strange misadventure.

It seems that one of Christine’s English friends had returned to her car in one of the larger bastide towns here, and – seeing a man walking between her car and the one behind – waited until his image in the mirror disappeared before starting her car and reversing prior to leaving her parking space.

Unfortunately, said man had in the interim died: hence his disappearance from the mirror. So when the English lady reversed, she was quickly made aware of the fact that she’d run over an unadvertised bump.

A post-mortem revealed that the unfortunate gentleman had died of a heart attack, and was dead before the wheels rolled over him. This thus raised the knotty legal issue as to whether it is illegal to drive over a corpse.

The woman-driver has been charged with driving without due care and attention, but her lawyer has quite rightly pointed out that due care and attention cannot in any realistic sense extend to avoiding flying corpses.

The case continues, as they say.