The grass is not always greener

My little triangular patch of grass at one side of my parking area is seeing a fair bit of action these days.
Farmers with vast wheat fields may get a crop circle or two, I have to make do with a black ring.
You go to bed with a few daisies on your grass and wake up to find out that someone has given you a black mark overnight.

I am pretty sure that Bee-boy had something to do with it. I passed the open back doors of his van on Friday morning on my way to my French lesson. Inside his van sere some poles with strips of white sheet suspended between them. The sheets had words on them which I could not read, but as Bee-boy and his dad were standing at the back of the van, I continued on my way.
As I suspected the bee keepers have been protesting. This morning’s Depeche newspaper had a story about a demonstration by bee-keepers outside the local Ministry of Agriculture and included the following photo.

photo from La Depeche

Bee-boy may well be one of the protesters in the photo as he was wearing the one-piece white overalls when I had seen him.
Bees in 2,500 hives had been killed off last year in the Ariege. That is half of the bee population here. The problem has been traced to the chemicals used to spray buildings where cows are kept, to prevent cattle getting / spreading cattle catarrh. There was also a major problem with sheep health here last year. Pathological tests on dead bees have found that all the bee hives within a certain radius of farms using the spray had died.
So what do you do? Let the cows and sheep die and save the bees?
Well since we need the bees to pollinate just about every plant, I would have to side with the bees.
I think that Bee-boys parents may finally have left the studio after living there with him for just over a month. But I have been wrong before. Would you like to live in one small room with your parents for even one night?
Madame has had an accident in her car and it is now with “the experts” at the Renault garage. Although I tried to find out what happened, she kept giving me the location of the accident.
She is not without transport though, as Bee-boy has loaned her his very old Peugeot estate car to use. Imagine a very battered greyish vehicle, full of rubbish, with tatty, faux fur front seat covers.
I note that it is now sporting white cotton covers complete with Japanese calligraphy and pictures.
Perhaps now, women throughout the world will admit that they cannot compete with the average French woman when it comes to style. I don’t know how she will overcome the smashed front indicator light and housing though.