'Serge' by Peggy Pehl at La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand

"What a night. The beautiful tranquility when all that’s leftover from the visit are the champagne corks rolling across the table. Everything quiet and just a hangover ringing in the ears. And after a very intoxicating night, one wakes up and everything is still exactly the same outside as it was the morning before. As if nothing had changed.

The magpie’s nest in the apple tree is also still there, just as empty as it was yesterday. They moved away, such a pity. Although they robbed me before, a few of my most beautiful pearl earrings – well, they’ve got good taste. Sometimes, I try to listen for them, to pick them out from the chorus of birds, which is mostly blackbirds, finches, sometimes a jay, but no magpies…

Except for the magpies, everything is there.

Yeah, over there is the tractor; actually, sometimes I get a little bit scared when I look over there and maybe I don’t see it right away. I park it somewhere else sometimes because of a mud hole or something, at least in those moments it scares me because I think it’s gone, and with it not only my workhorse is gone but also what’s attached to it. Like memories of the inauguration, for example. We opened one of my best bottles of champagne and let it bubble right over the engine cover. Dom Perignon Brut Vintage 2008.

It was great. We sat outside afterwards, on what must have been one of the longest days of the year… it looked like something out of a commercial, as we finished off my champagne supply in the sunset and the saucisson perspired on the wooden platter. Someone asked if I wouldn’t get bored, if provincial life didn’t bother me. No, I said, no. If there was a glamorous club night here from time to time, I wouldn’t complain. They’d give a look. Thought I was joking.

I’m not joking, I’m serious. And they probably took me seriously because some of them kept coming back when I called: champagne party, Saturday at my place. Motto: Madonna. Didn’t think that good provincial folk could get such great party outfits together. “Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me… I think they’re okay… if they don’t give me proper credit I just walk away-ay… and I am a material girl.”