Page 331 - Demo

327of the house and also a commercial electric fly killing machine. The flies were one of the factors which helped us to decide to sell later.I also went and watched a couple of stages of the Tour de France when it passed quite closely by. There was a finish in Montlucon and so I went there to see it. I saw a breakaway win by a couple of seconds from the peloton. I had no idea that they could go so fast. The next day was a time trial through the forest. The cyclists were set off at a minute apartin reverse order at that stage. Consequently, there was little excitement to begin with but excitement mounted towards the end. Each rider is preceded by a police motor cyclist sounding its horn to get the spectators off the track. The lane they were going down was very narrow and the team car is right behind the competitor. It was amazing that no one got hit. In between each cyclist going past, the crowd moved onto the lane. Large amounts of wine were being consumed and near me someone played an accordion. People sang and danced then moved back for a moment before moving onto the lane again. It was all very good natured and fun. The audience got very animated whenever a competitor was thought to be French, but the main excitement was at the end when Jan Ulrick was followed by Lance Armstrong. Unfortunately, Armstrong was gaining on Ulrich which disappointed the crowd. Once they had gone past, I realised that they were all going to drive away. Having seen how much drinking was going on, I ran to my car to get away first, which I did. And went back to my roof.The night I finally got the last membrane over the roof and battened down; we had a huge thunderstorm. If it had come a couple of hours earlier, it would have ripped the membrane off and I would have had a lot of work to repeat. As it was Harry and I stood in the backdoor way and watched this fantastic storm. Putting the new tiles back on over this part of the roof took time as some had to be cut to go over the lucernes. I also had a bit of a problem that there was a heavy dew on the roof in