Late tonight or tomorrow this house will be restored to its rightful owners. In a way I'm sad, but in a way I'm relieved, as Pomponette, the elder rabbit, has had two or three more funny turns with her hind legs. Eyes shut, battling with the legs which seem to stretch behind her and not want to function. This is exacerbated by the fighting the two of them do over food. Even if I carefully give them each a morsel of something, they're battling it out fiercely, chasing each other from one end of the cage to the other. Pomponette won tonight, even with her temporary disability, and on her side and convulsing, eyes half shut, leg stretched out, she was busily eating the apricot. So she couldn't be in much pain when it happens. But it's horrible to watch. She seems to have recovered now and they're sleeping peacefully like a couple of cats.

Earlier today Edouard, the Beatnik, came by and asked me to breakfast. So I sat outside at Estavennens in their crazy little garden overlooking hilly fields...there's always a couple of cats out in the middle of these fields. There must be something for them there. Breakfast was really thinly sliced dark, hard bread, and thickly sliced medium-coloured, a beautiful pat of butter with an Edelweiss stamped onto it, some hard and delicious goats' cheese from the Alps, and Vacherin and Gruyere. And almond butter so smooth it really was like butter, and that wonderful slightly tart pear syrup I adore. Tea was green at first, and in those lovely, very very thin bone china cups that are very shallow and a pale, pale green. And then Erika brought out «Monk's Tea» which she assured me was «Very dangerous» I asked her what she meant, and she just repeated it. I joked that maybe I would see the Assumption or a few saints with halos, and she shrugged. It was extremely perfumey. I asked what was in it. She said that she didn't know, and that it was from a friend they knew in the mountains. Hm. I asked to see the container. It was just a small paper bag with «Monk Tea» scrawled across it. Well I did become a bit expansive and a sort of funny feeling happened at the throat, not as if I would be sick, but kind of like it, but pleasant. She kept refilling the teacup and I said no.

Four male sheep with very very curly black hair were very close next door and I smelt this very strong farmyard smell through breakfast. They do look funny with their ears sticking out sideways. Male sheep don't get bells round their necks. Not sure why not.
Edouard played his guitar for a bit, and it was quite lovely. Folk meets Bach meets flamenco meets jazz. I suppose it's just everything he likes. He only plays his own music. He was frustrated because he has to change all his fingering, only having three useable digits on the left hand. He'd lost his index finger when scything some of the wild garden years ago, and his thumb is going to take months to recover from whatever he did to it. I can't find out definitively what exactly did happen.

Then he phoned a man who puts on a yearly festival at Gruyere, and plays the lute. But mostly, he makes lutes and guitars. We went over to meet him. He lives in a very new, modern house, a sort of salmon colour and like a box. His wife is a reflexologist. His workshop is extraodinary. Full of wonderful things. He does a lot of replicas, and there was an incredible guitar, INCREDIBLE, with filigree work, many little tiny bits of different woods all put together beautifully. The original belonged to a neice of the Sun King or something like that. Extraordinary work. Apparently if you want something made by him, you must wait three years for it. He showed us some wood, including one he called pink ivory. Very dense, very heavy, very, very expensive. And some really wonderful stuff from South Africa, from a sawmill there owned by a Swiss man who specialises in wood for oboes. Apparently a lot of it is discarded or rejected because of knots and flaws. So Philippe asked for a lot of little pieces of it and laid the floors of his house with it. Dark, hard wood, all put together beautifully, all little rectangles.

I asked if he designed the house himself and he said that he originally did make a design, but you have to go through an architect in Switzerland, and the architects are all disciples of Le Corbusier, and very firm about proportions and light streaming through every part. So they changed it. I must say that the light in the house was lovely. The architects also tell you what colour it must be. He said that after the thing was designed, he and his wife were seated in front of a computer and the architect said «You have a choice.» and proceeded to show them the salmon colour, and then a dark brown. That was the extent of the choice.

They were setting up a trampoline for their daughter. He said it was an ugly thing to have in a yard, but she got good grades at school and he'd promised. Naturally all the children in the neighbourhood were soon there, all on it together.

Edouard's enormous old Volvo wouldn't start, and after a while I got out of everyone's hair by taking the train back to Grandvillard. He said that the car would start eventually, and when I left he was using a broom handle to nudge various parts of the engine. «I can't understand it. It hasn't broken down in a month!»