no no no, like a motor car, roofers

Rules and the unruly -

Following Barrett Bonden's investigation into Proust's encounter with a car in A La recherche du temps perdu, I encounter this morning another reference to a car, brief but I think charming - a perfectly tuned simile. It occurs in Swann's Way when Marcel is required to visit his invalid, aunt Leonie: "I could hear her snoring gently. I was about to slip away when the noise of my entry must have broken into her sleep, and made it "change gear" (changé la vitesse), as they say of motor cars, for the music of her snores stopped for a second and began on a lower note."

The sight of roofers removing slates from the dodgy roof of a neighbouring house, and replacing the felt and battens, before refixing the slates, leads me to reflect that roofing is a noble profession, which supplies a basic human need. It must be fun, too, for the initiated, up there among the chimney pots.