Being a delivery man can be a hazardous job. In the UK vicious snarling dogs snap the other side of letter boxes. In France its even worse - the dogs are allowed to run loose and their snarling fangs have embedded themselves in the thighs of many a UPS employee. I can count myself fortunate then that until this week two months of delivering Blue Sky Living magazine has passed without incident.
I say until this week. On Monday I was doing the rounds of Saint Remy and Eygalieres - a beautiful olive tree dotted landscape, with plenty of luxury villas and hotels nestling in the rocks of Les Alpilles. I’d been to all the locations before and I was not expecting any trouble.
Just before midday I arrived at Eygalieres. The town was en fete. I parked and loaded up my small trolley with hundreds of copies of the magazine and meandered my way through the narrow streets towards Valancogne & Partners the village’s estate agents.
At this point my head must have been in the clouds, probably working on the plot of my next book. For a man who had compiled a comprehensive list of summer events in the area for publication in the magazine I was being surprising stupid. I passed some metal barriers, smiling to myself at some plot twist I’d just invented. A small bar had been wheeled into the centre of the street and a group of young men were swigging back inordinate quantities of pastis - I later realised it was for courage.
There’s nothing like a shotgun and the clattering of hooves to draw a person from reverie. The moment the crack split the air I realised I was in trouble. I was standing in the middle of the street whereas most of the residents had retreated behind barriers. I had over five hundred magazines with me which if I wanted to save them would severely restrict the pace I could run and I knew exactly what was coming around the corner - bulls.
After the first horn grazed my thigh, I abandoned the magazines and leapt over the nearest safety barrier.
Comments