How to confuse two engineers with vertigo

You will probably remember the crime of the century when Fifi stole one of my goats cheeses a couple of weeks ago. Well, we have been struggling with the aftermath ever since. We felt that reporting her to the police would do no good, so we had to take measures to prevent a recurrence of this dastardly deed.

Cees mounted an eye on the top of the cage and with trepidation we both climbed step ladders and hung the cage from the roof covering the staircase to our front door. I put the remaining goats cheese in the cage and away we went. To make up for the lost cheese I put some old grated emmental in the cage as well.

Last week, I then climbed a step ladder - with trepidation - to get the blasted stuff out again and started making my fromage fort. A word of advice, do not dry old grated emmental in a cheese cage. It goes mouldy (as one would expect and as it should) and then it has such a strong flavour that the resulting fromage fort is inedible. Back to square one.

I was not too impressed about having to climb a ladder to put cheese in the cage and take it out again, so my visit to the cheese farm was delayed until a suitable solution could be found. Pulleys - that’s what we need.

Off to Briconuates in Cluny to get some pulleys. It will be easier if we get double ones, less work to raise and lower the cage – I’m an engineer I know these things. We then threaded up the pulleys and proceeded to mount ladders, with wobbly knees, to attach the pulleys to the roof. I won’t draw the pulley design we used, but suffice to say both of us had forgotten our basic mechanics and whilst the concoction looked very professional, it umm, err, well, how do I put this. It didn’t work.

I sat down this morning and engaged my brain for attempt two. Sadly we didn’t have enough rope for attempt two, so on to attempt three - use the double pulleys as single pulleys. Unfortunately, the pulleys then wobble all over the place, so on to attempt four.

Attempt four works!!!

Blast, it’s now too late to buy cheese so we will have to wait until La Trufière, in Lys, reopens at four o’clock. Hopefully I will be able to give a success story about the fromage fort in a couple of weeks.

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