The crane erector arrived first thing and spent most of the day oiling pulleys and cables and fixing the wiring. A repair had been carried out by the previous owner which resulted in a fault in the overload cut-out system so that instead of being able to bring the load back in, it went further out - which could have resulted in the crane toppling over! It's now up - and it's very high (17m to be precise). BB has come up with an idea for recouping the huge cost of having it transported here, towed down by M. Bouger and then erected - "le bungee" - offering bungee jumping!  Mmmm. I wonder if our house insurance covers that?

The MOT man arrives on 3 September and then, all being well, work will commence.

On the way up to the Sunday Club this morning we passed two of Mini-B's three tractors lying abandoned (i.e. broken down) in separate fields, mid hay-making. The cut hay that hasn't been rolled up is lying rotting on the ground after the rain and the rolled-up bales look like burst mattresses.

M. Norbert the lumberjack was there today. His son has just come out of a coma after a serious head trauma. He was winching some wood with Norbert when the steel cable (capable of holding 20 tonnes) which had been passed around a tree stump to use as a pulley, slipped and - like a bow string - smacked him on the back of the head.  Luckily he was bending down at the time otherwise the cable would have taken his head off. He's now in a rehabilitation unit and appears to be making a full recovery.

I never realised the countryside was such a dangerous place. If people aren't chopping their limbs off with circular saws or chain saws, they're meeting untimely deaths. Last year a guy we knew was killed in an avalanche here, another was killed when he drove his quad bike into a telegraph pole and the husband of Poire's new wife was killed in a hunting accident. A year before that, Mini-B's uncle was electrocuted when he climbed an aluminium ladder in a thunder storm to replace the chimney cap which had blown off and the brother of the previous owner of our mill died after eating a tin of sardines - granted, they were 25 years past their sell-by date.

Nobody seems to die peacefully in their sleep. Which is a bit worrying given the enormity of our building project.

Nainbo was on at me again to take Rosalea and has suggested that I try a goat as a mate, so I am going to borrow one of Mini-B's to see how I get on. I may even try my hand at making goats' cheese.

To give you an idea of the constraints - the road is eight feet wide with a steep embankment on one side and a slope down to the river on the other; the crane is just under eight feet wide and 32 feet long and the platform is at a 90 degree angle to the road.

The crane's front wheel had sunk about a foot into the gravel platform but without even revving the engine, M. Bouger pulled it out and then, in a show of tractor gymnastics worthy of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, pushed it back into place. The tractor wheels just seemed to have lives of their own. When M. Bouger asked if he could leave the machine here over-night (BB said he could leave it here for as long as he liked - with the keys), he reversed it up the embankment at a 45 degree angle while the ten of us stood there gawping.

So, the good news is that the crane is finally in place. The bad news is that, to his list of toys of three motorbikes (including one 30-year old Laverda 500 which has never been ridden because it won't start), one mountain bike (brand-new and ridden twice), one pair of snow shoes (brand-new and never used), six pairs of skis (a new pair each season), one rusty old crane (never used) and one Ural sidecar (on order but will no doubt be ridden twice), BB wants to add a tractor. I've said we can discuss tractors when the house is finished - which at this rate will probably be in ten years time!

BB noticed a crack in the tow hitch of the crane and Poire did a quick repair job with an arc welder, but as the tractor pushed the crane down the slope and tried to manoeuvre it into position on the platform, the hitch snapped in two. If it had happened a moment earlier, as the crane was descending, it would have rolled down and crashed straight into our house, knocking me off my look-out perch at the top bedroom window.

It's now sitting half-on the platform, jutting out into the middle of the road, with just enough room for a small car to squeeze past in the ditch. Two Council members - Fester (the mayor's co-pilot) and our neighbour, M. Toupie - have just been down to see what's going on and Fester suggested that we try to push the (ten tonne!) crane back off the road ourselves.  BB just gave him one of his withering looks and rolled his eyes.

Mini-B passed at lunch-time to see how things were progressing and I noticed an odd squelching sound when he removed his wellies and saw that his socks were soaking wet. He'd just been to visit the Belgians who are doing up a house here and they'd given him beer that was so strong he'd poured it into his boots when they weren't looking to avoid drinking it!

Several people have complained to the mairie recently about - get this - the noise of the cowbells worn by Mini-B's cattle. Can you believe it! We're in the French Alps for crying out loud. It's like going on a beach holiday and complaining about the noise of the sea. Turns out that these moaning minnies are citadins (city folk from Paris and Lyon) who have maisons secondaires here. No wonder the locals don't like people with second homes.

You hear stories in the news occasionally about cowbell rustlers. The old ones are worth a lot of money and sell for up to €2000 in some of the posh interior design shops in Méribel and Courchevel.

They were originally used by herdsmen to identify the herd to which freely roaming animals belonged, but Mini-B's cows wear them (very old ones!) more as a kind of GPS system to establish their whereabouts when they escape from his poorly fenced-in fields. He's probably got a new tractor's worth there.

The "proper" farmer, M. Bouger, arrives early tomorrow morning to bring the crane down. I must set my alarm.

(Talking of donkeys - Justine and Zoé are doing fine but now it seems three's a crowd and Nainbo is suggesting that I take the other one, Rosalea. I saw this coming.)

We picked our potatoes today (about 250 kg), and the beetroots which I've pickled. I've also left 40 green walnuts from our tree to marinade in some of Roquin's gnole (the pure alcohol he makes with the grape stalks, pips and skin left over after he's made his wine). After 40 days you add white wine and sugar to make vin de noix. I've not tried this before but I've done it with orange peel to make vin d'orange and it's very tasty.

A farmer from a neighbouring village passed today and says he can move the crane down here. He's a proper farmer with proper working equipment. He's going to call back with a date - so fingers crossed.

The crane platform is now finished but we can't find anyone to tow the crane down here. The driver of the concrete lorry declined so Mini-B agreed to try last week.

BB spent a whole morning threading bits of old fencing wire through very tight tunnels and pulleys on Mini-B's tractor so that he could pull the new handbrake cable through (which he suspected had previously been someone's washing line, judging by its thinness) so there would be at least one working brake.

But he needn't have bothered because the crane had bedded down in the mud after a couple of days of rain and wasn't going anywhere - not with Mini-B's tractor at any rate. A contact of Mini-B's with a bigger tractor managed to pull it out but his isn't powerful enough to tow it down the steep slope to the mill. It is now sitting in the front drive of another neighbour since BB said it would only be for three days. If we can't find someone to bring it down soon it could be sitting there for three months - which is stretching 'love thy neighbour' a tad! The crane erector was due to arrive on Wednesday but we've had to cancel him - and who knows when we'll manage to get him back.

What is BB doing at this critical planning stage - when he should be scouring the land trying to find a tow? He's off sunning himself in Provence - lying beside a pool as I write! He's down there doing a sidecar course (the latest toy on his wish list) and when he asked me to go with him I said there was no way I was going to be his sidecar Bob. He can stick a sack of cement in the sidecar for balast!

The hike was due to start at 08.00 from the salle des fêtes but when I went two years ago there was a lot of faffing around before we set off so we decided to get there for 08.30 - by which time everyone had already left.

Nainbo appeared at his gate opposite with Mini-B's uncle Rouquin, and beckoned us in for a coup de blanc, after which BB and I set off with Rouquin to try and catch up with the others. Rouquin is 65 and knows the mountains round here like the back of his hand because he's spent his whole life working and hunting in them. He pointed out the ruined chalet where his mother brought him and his sisters to hide in 1944 when the Germans arrived in the village and burned down many of the houses. Before the forest was planted it was just meadows where Rouquin would spend summers cutting hay (and carrying it on his back down to the village) and looking after the goats and cows. Along the way we gathered wild chanterelle mushrooms and fraises des bois (tiny wild strawberries).

Due to the forecast of rain, it was decided that the lunch would be back in the village in the salle des fêtes - which meant that when we reached the col we had to walk straight back down again. Two years ago we all sat outside at tressle tables covered with white tablecloths with stunning views of Mont Blanc in the distance - so it wasn't quite the same.