Life hangs by a slender thread...

A sober mood this morning. It's just a couple of days since half jokingly I'd blogged about a friend dicing with death - luckily escaping relatively unscathed from the mangled remains of my Peugeot that he'd borrowed, after a close encounter with a wild boar. The boar didn't make it, and the car is in intensive care and unlikely to pull through.

Then twenty four hours later, at almost exactly the same spot, a friend of a friend swerved to dodge another boar, but plunged over the bridge into the river below.

It was a horrible sight. Chancing on the wreck, hidden in the ravine under the bridge for the best part of a day, Richard looked as if he'd struggled to get out of the vehicle, on its roof in the water, but couldn't get the door open. A police helicopter had searched for him all day to no avail - trees hid the car from view.

Richard was a highly popular guy in the village of Malaucène here in the Vaucluse; some way past middle age, but always full of life. Ironically he was a dedicated hunter, and spent as much time as he could in the Ventoux foothills, chasing the elusive sanglier during daylight hours. His bad luck that the one crossing his path that night had always managed to escape the hunters' guns.

Another reminder that life hangs by a slender thread, while we waste so much time planning for, and worrying about tomorrow...

A fragile plume of wood smoke hangs in the still, chill winter air above the scene of the accident, early this morning.