The mazout man

The rather elegant M. Lafitte has been delivering our heating oil for as long as we've lived here. It's a kerfuffle as he's not a great driver and you have to walk through the chickens dragging the long, heavy pipe to get to the oil-tank. However things have improved enormously since he hired the fabulous Claude who swings this little tanker up and down our drive like a good 'un.
The petrol at M. Lafitte's garage is considerably more expensive than the supermarket's but he has a tyre pressure checker he's happy to let you use (as long as you ask politely and put it back neatly) and he and Claude are happy magicians when it comes to our orange tractor.
One of the sights I used to delight in was turning up to replace our gas cylinders and to be greeted by Mesdames Lafitte, wife and mother, each sporting a beehive hairdo, high enough to give Marj Simpson a run for her hairspray. They would totter over to the enormously heavy cylinders and I would decline their rather frail help (the mother was 94 this year) and sweatily lug it myself. "Oh, mais vous etes costeau, madame," they would gasp.
Sadly, Mme Lafitte senior died just before Christmas so our lives are now that much poorer.