Mark Knopfler is ... lost in translation

Day 3 of Barrel Making
Today I continued to toast with big Fred. It was nice to know what I was doing right off the bat and I am also starting to be able to try to talk with some of the guys. The conversations don’t really go anywhere, but it is funny what subjects they ask me about. For example: Mark Knopfler…..yes they asked me to tell them about Mark. Now I don’t dislike his music, in fact I like it alot, yet I don’t know much about his personal life and what he does with his spare time.

After the toasting was complete, a guy named Simon took me around and wanted me to make a wine barrel with him the whole way through. Simon is about 5’7’’ and has dark brown long hair. He wears shorts with many rips and tears in them with and has the 3-day beard going on. He is a very mellow person, so he was a good teacher, because he would just laugh and talk in French when I made a mistake.

I know that I told you the steps to barrel making in the previous post, but I failed to see many steps that are obvious but take a great deal of time and skill. Simon was making a barrel alongside me so I could see how it was done. He did not know much English and he really wanted to talk to me so we had a few conversation where I would just move my head and agree and he did the same when I talked to him. After work he invited me to go somewhere with him for his vacation, however I had to refuse because I think that it was somewhere in Spain. All the coopers are very young which Nico, one of the owners, tells me is a good thing because they are all very good now and he thinks they have great promise for the future. I am leaving for Scotland this weekend, so until then, -- Drew