big trouble in little Les Pilles

Had a VERY quiet day after being up most of the night watching the results come in from the various local council areas in Scotland. I would drift off to sleep, wake up to see the no vote winning, drift off again and wake up to see 49% yes - 51% no. That was too much excitement to allow me to go back to sleep, so I stayed up to see the final result and the noes had it.

I know many, many Scottish people and lots of my friends over there were really disappointed in the result. I have to stay I'm happy to stay part of the union. I guess I feel more proud to be British than I realised. I like our mixture of cultures, strength in numbers, the tradition of it, and the fact that I do think we are better to stick together. Yes, Scotland deserves to have more powers to do certain things as it sees fit - I just hope Westminster now sticks to its promises.

At around 3pm this afternoon, various Police cars pulled up in our street. Our neighbours, Laurent and Sandrine, were chatting to us at our kitchen window when they drove in. There was even a sniffer dog van. We all wondered why there were so many in a tiny village like Les Pilles. We were to find out at around midnight.

A little earlier in the evening I asked one of the gendarmes what was going on...he told me they were doing some traffic control operation and then he let slip that, in actual fact, they were waiting on someone in particular! Exciting stuff.

I had just taken Coquine out the back for her nightly pee when Pierre shouted down that the action had started outside. I have to stay we were total nosey neighbours, staring out the bathroom window at what was happening down in the street below. The Police had a sign to block traffic going into the tunnel and used it when they'd got word the car they were waiting on was heading towards Les Pilles. They put the sign out and signalled to the car to drive through the village instead of through the tunnel. Once the car pulled into the village, they had a Police car blocking the road and the criminals were, therefore, stuck. Right out the front of our house!

There were two young guys, both in their twenties I would say. They were ordered to get out of their car, separated, and searched. They were asked questions about drugs and whether they had any in their car...this is after the Police had found small amounts in both guys' shoes. They were told that it's always better to tell the truth than to find out later they'd been lying. We could hear the guy nearest to us saying that there was nothing that he knew of in the car. Then the sniffer dog was brought out. Seeing the dog do its work was pretty amazing and, yes, more bags of white powder were found in the car.

There must've been about 15 police men and women to catch these two fellas. They looked so young and pretty wracked by drug use :( One of them was so thin and almost yellow looking. There was also what looked like a scary dog in their car which was taken away by one of the gendarmes so the sniffer dog could do its job...it looked so happy to be taken for a walk and was wagging its tail as the gendarme walked it along the road out of the village. It must've wondered what was going on and why its owner was suddenly handcuffed to some random man.

After all the craziness, I felt a bit weird about having watched the whole scene...

Obviously I would've preferred a shot of tonight's action but given that I felt guilty even looking on, taking a photo would've been a step too far. Here's my supper instead.