Our neighbours have a house full of very expensive art and collections from all over the world. For example, they had an original "egg" chair, they have artefacts from Africa to Asia to Australia. But they also have the most amazing paintings, handed down through the generations.
Few (if any) in the village have been invited to their place. We have been lucky to have quickly found friendship. They are awesome people. We help each other out when needed. Joey and dad have been into their house, they can attest to their art collection (which is monitored under a security company). We were one day called by Philippe to ask if we could do a quick check because they had the alarm from security and their time delay was more than we could pop over. Anyway. That's the background, We have lovely (and rather wealthy) neighbours.
So, the other day when Andy was working outside Philippe, who was looking a tad hot and bothered said over the stone wall (there is a tiny road between our properties, it's not like we are looking over fences or anything and we both have a huge amount of privacy) that they had a problem with their fireplace.
They have two fireplaces. One in the kitchen and one in the I guess you'd call it a lounge, I'd call it a museum. It is this room we are talking about. They are so precious of this room that they do not have fires for fear of damage to their art, artefacts and original furnishings.
Therefore, because they do not have fires, it's a huge open chimney with bees and honey dripping down the internal walls, which they knew about and were OK with and proud of the bees (we all love bees they are the foundation of existence for humans).
The problem is suddenly the whole internal whatever the fuck caved in the other day. So. Our guess is many many years of birds nests and bat shit and beehive stuff and bat shit and bat shit (because the bats love Signeville and Philippe and Francoise as do everyone else around here it would seem love bats).
We are guessing it's decades of shit that finally fell through after living in the chimney for so long without them using or cleaning out the fireplace. Once it started it just must have kept on coming. They've been cleaning up for days now and taken bags of stuff to the dump. We hear the vacuum going most afternoons too (they usually snooze in the hot afternoons we think). They rarely argue but we sit outside in the afternoon out the front under the tree where we get a nice breeze and shade and we can here Francoise giving Philippe instructions for this and that.
So. If you have an open fireplace with an open chimney. If you live in a rural area with lots of bees and bats and birds, get the chimney cleaned once in a while by professionals even if you're not using it!!!
I had to write this down because it's this sort of thing I'll forget and it's this sort of thing that makes this place so cool.
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