Last week's highlight was undoubtedly the arrival of my sofas. Something comfortable to sit on after twelve weeks of hard wooden folding chairs. I'm celebrating by having some friends round for dinner on my birthday. Let's hope they don't spill their wine.

With the approach of Christmas social events pile up and I had three outings for food and drink including one with Arkle, a local amateur drama group, where they announced their programme for 2007. The only one that seemed to offer a possible role for me is in the Fringe and I'm not likely to be here to rehearse in time for a Fringe show. However I have been cast in a one-act play that will be the Grads' entry for the SCDA one-act competition in February. I'm playing a Philip Marlowe type private eye. I see it as challenge that will hopefully be helped by some cunning make-up and costume.

The golf course does not beckon in this weather and I've been missing the exercise it offers. I'm not a fan of chlorine laden pools and don't much like swimming anyway so this afternoon I thought I'd try the ice-rink. When I was a kid I loved skating and it came in useful once to get my own back on a lad who bullied me a bit. But during the last 50 years I can only remember skating on a handful of occasions and the last was about twenty years ago so I was very pleased to find that I could get round the ice. I even managed a reasonable turn of speed but essential manoeuvres like avoiding other skaters were more difficult. Skating backwards proved tricky and a nice sideways slide to a halt remained a dream. I can do it on skis why not on skates. One other difference from skiing - ice is a lot harder than snow to fall on. Ouch.

I met up for dinner with some of my former FI/Xansa colleagues about ten days ago. The torch on my mobile phone came in handy to supplement the faintly flickering candles but once the menu had been read we were able let our tired old eyes relax. The food and the company, not to mention the wine were very agreeable. Try The Outsider yourself sometime.

A production of Scrooge starring Ian Aldred who played in Caucasian Chalk Circle provided a very enjoyable musical evening to open the run up to Christmas and the following night I went to a Grads improvisation show. Teams of three or four actors are given a small number of parameters by the audience and have to build a sketch with them. Nine times out of ten they produce amazingly inventive and entertaining results. The first time I saw anything similar was in Paris and I was very sceptical when the friend who was in that group assured me that it was not rehearsed. Now I know that while not rehearsed they do have something of a structure to work in and they practice a lot but that knowledge has not dimmed my admiration. I prefer a nice solid script to work with myself.

The weekend finished for me with a double bill of black and white classics at Filmhouse. Riffifi is a great crime movie with an absorbing dialogue free safe-cracking scene. Morality triumphs since even the best of the baddies dies in the end. Dialogue is the star of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, confusingly called Murder My Sweet in the opening credits. Unfortunately I missed rather a lot of it because I dozed through much of the film. I couldn’t even summarise the plot. Still what I did see and hear was cracking stuff. It’ll be on the tele some wet Sunday I expect.

Had the Dicksonfield Owners and Residents Association AGM been longer I might easily have dozed off but it was very short. There was hardly anybody there and not much business. It’s a pity that something of a festive nature had not been organised. I know that social interaction is not the object of the organisation but maybe socialising would create some community spirit which in turn would help achieve the objectives. I should get off my butt and do something about it I suppose.

On Tuesday I went down to Manchester. It rained cats and dogs almost all the time I was there but I had a good time. The highlight was probably the Royal Exchange'sproduction of Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s an absolute joy of a space and the company always make terrificly good use of it. Proscenium theatre seems so distant and unexciting in comparison. Caucasian Chalk Circle is a good example. Claire extended the use of Adam House’s stage and auditorium as far as I’ve ever seen done but it still wasn’t a patch on theatre in the round for impact.

In addition to visiting Alan the plan was for Karl, in town for a conference, and I to meet up with Pam and Ron, who live in Harrogate, in Leeds for a meal. I made the final arrangements with Karl by email, copying the emails to Ron. Karl and I met, walked briskly to the station and got on the earlier of the trains that I had told Ron to expect us on. I rang his mobile from the train with no joy. They weren’t in Leeds when we arrived and there was still no mobile response. It turned out they were still at home having not read their email for some time. A shame but Karl and I had a good Italian meal and then re-crossed the Pennines.

That was a train ticket I could have done without but at least I got some value from it. Another ticket has proved entirely worthless. I bought tickets for Connor and I to go to the Lakes at Christmas but he is now down south and will travel from there. Virgin refused a refund so I thought I’d try selling them on e-Bay. Blow me but they’ve zapped my listing. Apparently Section 129 of the Railway Act of 1993 makes it a criminal offence for me to sell a ticket. Doesn’t seem fair does it? I’ll just have to wrap them up and give them to Connor for his Christmas.

While in Manchester I spent a wet afternoon in the Museum of Science and Industry looking at lots of fascinating stuff including a demo of various machines involved in the cotton business. I came away with a pocketful of samples of material produced at different stages of the journey from plant to cloth. The evidence of the great wealth generated from the cotton industry is all around in the shape of buildings, not least the Royal Exchange where Cyrano was played, but what a hell on earth for the workers.

I visited the Whitworth Gallery to see an exhibition of wallpaper through the centuries. They claim to have one of the largest collections of wallpaper in the country if not the world but judging by the quantity on display they must be big fish in a small pond. However I liked the wallpaper a lot more than Douglas Gordon’s installations on show at the National Gallery in Edinburgh that I gawped bewildered at in the hour I had to spare before I left for Manchester. That Turner prize has a lot to be ashamed about.

When a show is over life can seem a bit dull for a while so it was good to shoot off to Poland so soon. It was also I'm sure a welcome relaxation for those who, unlike me, had been doing fulltime jobs at the same time as the play.

We arrived in Katowice in the dead of night and taxied into town passing through some rather dark and ominous tumbledown streets to get to our hotel. The area didn't seem nearly as threatening the following morning when I went out for a stroll before breakfast though it did have a touch of that bleakness that I associate with eastern Europe under communism.

I came upon a funeral and was most impressed by the undertaker's men's outfits. As they took the coffin into the church a trumpeter played a suitably mournful tune. It was a pity he wasn't also dressed for the role.
We took the train to Krakow later in the morning and found a perfectly lovely city. There are lots of pictures and information about the city here so I shan't strain my limited literary powers to describe it.

We had a very pleasant little flat a few minutes walk from the main square in the sort of building that is typical throughout continental cities but just doesn't exist here. I suppose it goes back to the basic Roman villa where the accommodation is built around a central courtyard.


Krakow is crowded with attractive bars and cafes where we enjoyed delicious meals and snacks. Here's a typical offering from one of the city's oldest establishments in the cloth hall which takes up a large part of the centre of the main square.

In between eating cakes and washing down delicious meals with malty Polish beer (which I hope is available from my local Polish deli) we naturally did some sightseeing. The castle and cathedral were well worth visiting. The only disappointment being that the fire-breathing dragon who lives in a den deep in the bowels of the hill on which the castle stands hibernates. To see him in action you need to get there between May and October. There was a very interesting theatre museum and a fair bit of theatre going on. If our Polish had been up to it we could have chosen between "No Sex Please, We're British" and "Endgame". It wasn't so we made do with the museum and another museum where the work, including stage designs, of a Polish polymath was on show. He painted, wrote plays, made furniture, designed this that and the other. A talented chap called Stanislav Wyspiański. There are lots of other museums if you can stand the pace.

This is a view of part of the complex of buildings on Wawel hill. The picture is mostly cathedral but there's a bit of castle.
Our chum Wyspiański had big ideas about enhancing the hill with the addition of a hippodrome and a Greek theatre to create what he saw as a Krakovian Acropolis but didn't get any further than we did with Edinburgh's Parthenon.

Of course the museum that everyone who goes to Krakow has to see is Auschwitz, though I have to say I didn't think of it as a museum before I went. We were accosted at the station by a young man called Daniel who persuaded us to let him take us by car. He took us straight there, waited while we went round, took us on to Birkenau, waited again and then ran us back to Krakow. That was a lot easier and more comfortable than the train/bus route and in to the bargain he was friendly and informative. It reminded me strongly of how my tame taxi driver in Cairo would run me miles out of town to a golf course and just wait around till I was ready to go home.

In Auschwitz there are various displays in the buildings, piles of forlorn artificial limbs, stacks of suitcases and so on purloined from the prisoners and retained long after their owners were disposed of. The mechanics of everyday life and death in the camp are spelt out. Individual countries explain how their citizens were affected. The French for example have a very fine display detailing how Jews were rounded up and shipped off. One room is full of family photographs, mostly of children all of whom were systematically put to death.

Going around Auschwitz is clearly not an especially jolly experience but I found Birkenau much more chilling. The fact that it was previously an entirely respectable military barracks lends Auschwitz an air of normality which is missing from Birkenau where the buildings are more like battery farm sheds and were constructed specifically to house people destined for extermination. With all its displays and explanations Auschwitz is very much a museum whereas Birkenau is left almost unlabelled to speak for itself and you feel could have been abandoned by its masters only yesterday.
You can see in this photo how desolate the place appears. It's a view probably familiar to you from films and documentaries of where people spilled out of cattle trucks after an airless, foodless, waterless journey of several days to be herded into huts or straight to the gas chambers. The strange thing was that when I stood there I found it easier to imagine how proud the Nazi overlords must have felt of their work than to imagine the despair of the damned.

The hope in keeping these places intact is that they will act as a reminder of how awful man can be and prevent future massacres. To date with the Balkans, Ruanda, Darfur and countless other genocidal conflicts we can't say the policy has been too successful. I heard on the radio this morning an apposite quotation from Brecht. In speaking of Hitler he said "The bitch who bore him is still in heat." Alas.

The last week has been dominated by The Caucasian Chalk Circle despite the fact that it has occupied only a few hours of each day.

The second dress went pretty well as did all the performances. There were a few hiccups here and there, some of them to be laid at my door but on the whole the show felt good every night and the audiences while small were very appreciative.

Obviously I didn't see much of it but I was able to watch and listen to a very beautifully presented and performed scene towards the end of act 1 as I waited to stumble down the aisle to spend the interval on stage. If much of the rest looked and sounded as good then Claire has done an excellent job.

For the interval to start just as a new character appears on stage clearly offers scope for confusion in the minds of the audience. It also caused a little consternation in the more traditionally minded front of house staff. I don't know which of these situations Claire enjoyed more.

One cast member's parents decided that my interval activities, which included darning and doing an imaginary crossword and falling asleep fell into that ultra modern category - performance art. Didn't I just love that.

So show over. Director is catching up on her diary of the production. When she's finished I must read it all at one sitting.

I've spent the last two days at the cinema watching Italian films. Tonight was three hours of La Dolce Vita in black and white. You got your money's worth forty six years ago. Made today it would doubtless feature lots of sniffing but these people managed to be hedonistic and vacuous on no more than fags and booze.

I'm off to Poland this evening for a few days so hope to have lots of interesting things to report on my return. I don't want to have to fall back on the story of my hunt for extra curtain rings.

Readers will see that the previous post gave rise
to a comment which, inter alia, takes me to task for the infrequency of my postings. That’s fair and I again promise to do better but I can’t help thinking that it is the finger of irony that points out that I have not yet shared with you the story of the warped table.

The table whose arrival I have already reported was fine until after a few days the central portion of the top started to curl at the edges. After a few more days it rocked when you put your elbows on it; bad manners I know but a tabletop should be able to cope. After a week lots of daylight was clearly visible between the top and the frame, as you can see in this picture.

I went off to Habitat to complain. They were as good as gold and promised me a new one without hesitation. I admit I was relieved because I had not relished an argument over what degree of warping might qualify as acceptable in their eyes.

Lo and behold after a few more days the table started to uncurl. By Saturday last it had reached a state I felt was ok so I popped into Habitat on my way to the Lyceum and cancelled the replacement. I suppose it was just coming to terms with its new environment.

I was on my way to the Lyceum to join a Grads group going to see Schiller’s Marie Stuart. I was disappointed. I liked the austere setting but the cast failed to move me. Years ago in Kitwe I was in a production of the play that I hope communicated more emotional intensity than this one did. Of course it may have been the Heisenberg principle at work so that I cooled it down while it stayed on the boil for others.

Though I can’t remember too clearly I think we had an on-stage execution which was surely more fun to watch than the genteel procession down a stair to offstage oblivion that the Lyceum gave us. And doesn’t history tell us that she went to her death in a blood red robe? I’m sure our Mary slipped off an outer garment to reveal a red robe as she mounted the scaffold. The Lyceum gave us a trace of red peeping out under a white dress.

Here’s what one site has to say on the subject. Points for historical accuracy to Kitwe I’d say.

Much more engaging was the production of Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey that I saw at the Citizens in Glasgow the previous week. The final scene that leaves the tenement room and its inhabitants looking like a shipwreck to which humanity barely clings was brilliant.

I’ve also seen some art recently, and been to Red Road, the film that won plaudits at Cannes and lots of Scottish Baftas. It was good but must surely have had little competition to win so many.

Hallowe’en is long past now but I revived my fifty year old skills in tumshie lantern carving and dressed up to go to Claire’s party where we were treated to delicious but foreign fare in the way of pumpkin soup.

Back home there is still nothing soft to sit on but my shelves are up. The few books I didn’t give to Christian Aid last winter are in place and all my CDs are sitting comfortably waiting for me to invest in a player. Yes I’ve given that away as well. It was rather old and getting a bit noisy and what’s almost as important was too bulky for my slimline shelving.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is almost upon us. The technical rehearsal last night was lots of fun. That’s the first chance lights and sound have to practice their art and the actors get to blunder around the stage. It may seem a bit shambolic to the outsider – “Do you see that sky getting red over there?” It says “Yes” in the script but I hate to lie. By some miracle though it will all be sorted out by opening night. We have the luxury of two dress rehearsals, mitigated somewhat by the fact that not all the cast can do both.

I was provided with handcuffs last night for one scene but they’re flimsy plastic gadgets which don’t look convincing and which I’m bound to break so I bought a length of chain this afternoon to add weight to the performance. It will be handy for the director to beat us with if we fall short of her artistic vision.

It's been several weeks now since I posted anything. It's laziness I'm afraid and illustrates why I've never successfully kept a diary in the past for any significant length of time.

Must do better, just for my own satisfaction. Like the box of Kitwe Little Theatre memorabilia that I stuck in the loft the other day I'll gain enormous pleasure from browsing through it at some distant future date.

Yes this flat has a loft. That was one of it's strong points in my eyes and I've laid down some flooring and put a dozen boxes of not wanted on voyage material up there already. Most of the boxes are fresh from spending seven years in the loft at Mountcastle. That's despite the enormous clear out I had last winter when I sold the house. I have plans for some of the stuff, like digitizing my slides for example but I fear some may spend many more years in oblivion before finally being put to good use in fuelling my funeral pyre.

Another strong point about this flat is access to the rest of the city. Buses run up and down Leith Walk heading for all parts at satisfactorily frequent intervals. How different from anxiously keeping an eye out for the number 5, missing one and cursing the service interval. Now I generally get where I'm going earlier than I need to. Lethargy as well as laziness is another of my sins. I could have been in a convenient location like this twenty years ago.

I've spent a lot of time looking at furniture and yesterday the first new piece arrived. It's a table so henceforth no eating on my knees or bending down to an old coffee table or picnicking on the carpet. The carpet is still there. I've deferred change in that department for the moment but all three of my oriental rugs have been deployed so the floors look a bit different. Seating is on order. Part of a shelving arrangement arrived yesterday. Because the seller's computer system can't cope with a slash in a house number field it went to the wrong flat but I recovered the two boxes when the occupier came home in the evening. The third box missed its bus somewhere around Watford but is now in Edinburgh winging its way towards me, or perhaps towards my neighbour again. I hope that by Christmas I'll have everything organised.

I've been out and about a bit enjoying some of Edinburgh's cultural offerings and a few of its pubs. I've bumped into at least three old acquaintances in the street and am looking forward to catching up with more. I'm making new acquaintances at the Italian class with which I start the week on a Monday morning. Of course rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle is taking up a lot of my time. I'm enjoying it but rehearsals would be even more fun and the quality of the work being done would certainly be greater if we could rely on all the actors turning up. It's going to be one of those shows where the first time the entire cast put in an appearance is on opening night or, if we are really lucky, at the dress rehearsal. See the director's blog for more.

The weather when we set out from Barbansais was foul and the rain persisted all day. The traffic around Paris was awful. One boy racer dodging in and out of lanes spun his vehicle in front of us on the wet road but by a miracle nobody, least of all us, collided with him. We weren't so lucky just 20 kilometres from journey's end at Zeebrugge when I ploughed into two cars at traffic lights thanks to brakes which it has to be admitted were not in peak condition.

The drivers were philosophical about it and the Belgian police were positively charming and we still caught the ferry so it was not all bad.

The car has now gone off for inspection and I suspect the insurers will decide that the economic answer is to scrap it rather than repair it.

The first week back has been pretty good. I've started redecorating the flat with Connor's help. Curtains have been thrown out and the carpets are scheduled to follow. With fresh paint on the walls in addition the lingering smell of tobacco from the previous occupants will soon be gone.

I've started rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle. The production has suffered various cast losses so it's a bit fraught and I didn't do the director any favours by being out of sorts one evening for reasons having nothing to do with the show but I hope to make amends.

Connor is meeting considerable obstacles in what you would think is the simple matter of opening a bank account thanks to the UK's anti money laundering regulations. The fact that he has no money to launder doesn't seem to count.

We went to the RSNO's first concert of the season last night. It was a splendid rendition of Mahler's Resurrection symphony. Very large forces were marshalled with the chorus filling the organ gallery to overflowing. Lovely music but as Connor pointed out no tunes to hum as you head for the Filmhouse bar afterwards.

I've been a bit busy over the last ten days fitting in "final" games of golf and dinners and drinks with various friends who were kind enough to want to entertain me before I left for the winter. I also had a fleeting visit from Karl and Lissie who were so charmed by the area last year that they came back for a week's hiking around and about the valley of the Creuse. I picked them up in Anzème at the end of a hard day's walking, took them home, fed and watered them and dropped them off the following day near La Celle Dunoise.

At the weekend I was in Paris visiting Sylviane who is an old friend from my Institut Francais d'Ecosse days. She was performing in an evening (it was actually a whole day but I only went for the evening) of short plays. Hers was A Bourgeois Wedding by Brecht and was the best prepared of those that I saw. I thought the others could have done with a bit more rehearsal. Many of the actors in them were a bit shaky on the lines and gave me a far more amateur impression than I had expected. It was after all a professional theatre although most of the actors were amateurs.

Connor joined me in Paris. Sightseeing there was not altogether up his street but he did enjoy the food. He's been charmed by the Creuse however.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for final water draining and suchlike then it's off to Zeebrugge for the ferry.

Edinburgh on Saturday and winter life begins. I'm sure it will be as enjoyable as summer has been. Vive la différence!

This is Germanicus's triumphal arch at Saintes. It may be that he mastered the course there rather better than I did or on the other hand maybe he triumphed by raping and pillaging since that was considered more fun than golf at the time.

To get there I chose a route that took me through much of the area that we explored when we were looking for a house. There are some lovely spots but on the whole I think we are better off here. During the few days I was there I managed to visit the coast and dabble my tootsies in the Gironde estuary. The weather at the beach was gorgeous and since the season is essentially over it was not overcrowded.

On the way back I took in Cognac and Angouleme. I was very struck with the wynds and alleyways of the latter. A very pleasant place to wander around.

Until the other day I had been congratulating myself (undeservedly since the happy circumstance surely was not my doing) on there having been no wasps (I really mean ZERO) in the house or garden all summer long. Last year we had to get the fire brigade in to clear a nest from the roof and the year before the wasps commandeered an old mole hole in the garden and we had to have the nest dug up by an intrepid wasp catcher. In parentheses I should say, with apologies to Kenneth Grahame, that mole is public enemy number 1 and what we desperately need is an intrepid molecatcher.

Now I have seen two wasps in as many days. Perhaps this is the result of the recent resurgence of fine weather. July was a scorcher but August rather cooler and damper than seemed proper until its final days. Not cold though I did put on a pair of trousers one morning instead of shorts. By early afternoon I was regretting that decision but by then I was on the golf course and not in a position to change matters.

Although this morning is rather overcast my neighbour assures me that September's weather is forecast to be fine so the last three weeks of my villégiature, as the French have it, should be pleasant.

One creature other than the mole that we are not short of is the spider. It's an ongoing struggle to clear the house of webs. I grew quite fond of this one. He's on the large side compared to most. I suppose a two to three inch legspan. He spent the summer quietly in my bedroom lazing the days away behind the wardrobe and settling down at night by my bedside presumably to feed on passing insects or to digest those trapped in his web during the day. Ultimately though in a frenzy of housekeeping he has gone. I'm sure the winter would have killed him off anyway.

After some twenty years Connor has left the USA. He's been mulling the idea over for a while but it seems that from decision to action took about 48 hours. He gave away or abandoned 99.9% of his belongings, drove Ewan's car down to Houston and got on the plane.

Nobody looked beyond page 1 of his passport or asked after that pretty little green form they staple to it when you enter.

By a truly amazing coincidence he chose to arrive at Gatwick on the very morning that his mum was catching a flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh. They met there, she flew north and he got a lift home from André (who has not been able to go to Edinburgh after all).

I'm expecting Connor out here shortly and we'll travel back to UK together in late September.

I took another step further into the digital age this week. I was listening to a programme being presented by Arièle Butaux, someone I think of as the Sean Rafferty of France Musique. Like him she has a lovely voice, gathers an eclectic mixture of music and musicians and chats with them in a relaxed and lively style.

I particularly enjoyed one piece and had a look for the CD on the web. I found it easily enough at around 18 euros plus postage but I also found it downloadable at 99 cents a track or 9.99 for the complete album.

Given our dial-up connection here downloading the album was a non-starter so I picked one track (the one I had heard on the radio). According to the licence rules I can make 7 CD copies and 5 MP3 player copies for my 99 cents.

It took about an hour to get the 4 minutes 33 seconds of music but I have it and I've transferred it to CD. Admittedly the CD won't play on David's machine but I have hopes that a younger machine might cope.

With broadband I can't see a better way of buying a CD. Who needs sleeve notes?

The album by the way is Bach to Beirut by Trio Rhéa. Here's an extract.

My Spanish friends left for home on Saturday having thoroughly enjoyed the Creuse. They took with them a large collection of long stout sticks gathered on various walks. The area is awash with walks; through woods, along river valleys, up and down slopes of various degrees of steepness. They did several from a guide that I have and I went along on a couple.

The sticks were not, as you might have thought, an obsession of Diego junior’s but were gathered by Chus to support her tomato plants at home since sticks are as rare as hens’ teeth in the plains around Valladolid.

One place we started a walk from was the village of Masgot where the houses and walls are decorated with little granite sculptures like these. The man who did them is long gone but the village does a thriving trade in stone-carving holidays on the back of his little hobby.

I had the opportunity to learn a little more about Diego junior’s little hobbies one day. He regaled me with a description of his various collections. He’s got fossils and beetles and feathers and other oddments from the natural world all catalogued and stored at home. One particular joy is his collection of the bones of small mammals. Well, you might say, kids collect all sorts of weird items. True, but it gets weirder.

He collects these by unravelling the balls of hair and bone that form in the stomachs of tawny owls when they have had a good nosh of mice and shrews and suchlike. The undigested matter is balled up and vomited forth for Diego to get his hands on. The balls are soaked and painstakingly taken apart with tweezers and a pointed instrument and the bones cleaned up. It seems that the hairy gunge that held them prisoner is not very collectable.

One last and tangible souvenir of their visit is this portrait. Notwithstanding the fact that one of the party, Antonio, is an artist the portrait is the work of the little collector.

The roof repair man turned up on one of the days I was away. A day or so later it rained heavily and no water came through. Relief all round.

So now it’s back to golf and gardening, or to be more accurate golf and grass cutting with the occasional episode of trimming the more exuberant growths that threaten to take the place over.

Here’s the latest in this year’s short line of golf prizes – a magnificent champagne bucket. Now that I own one I can’t understand how I have managed for so long without. I see it coming into its own at those intimate little supper parties after the opera where my etchings are on view to selected lady guests. Such sophistication must surely overcome all reserve.

Saturday was transhumance day from old gîte to new via lunch at Barbansais. We lost only one vehicle en route but thanks to cellular technology the loss was not permanent. My friends are now 50 miles nearer home but still in that bastion of bucolic beauty, the Creuse.

An interesting contrast between the two gîtes: the first one was part of the farm or smallholding where the owner’s parents spent their lives. The lounge had been the cowshed and the place was chock a block with family mementoes and the sort of ancient objects that figure in “antiquarian markets” throughout Europe. It still seemed like a home.

The second was also a former farm building in a group that we might call a steading, but restored for the tourist trade. A very good quality restoration, comfortable and well equipped and done what’s more by a man who thirty years ago studied English in Edinburgh. Despite such a glowing provenance it lacked the character of the other.

Using only a screwdriver and the combined brainpower of two medical researchers the shutter was painstakingly reset on its roller mechanism and the deposit saved. Let’s hope that the grandchildren who arrived with the gîte owner aren’t afflicted with the same passion for button pushing as Diego junior.

I excused myself from a visit to the medieval fair at Crozant. It promised to be good fun but the siren sound of titanium against whatever golf balls are made of nowadays was too powerful. Is it still willow against leather on the village greens of Olde Englande I wonder? Or have the cricketer’s tools taken on new colours to match his kit?

I did go with my chums down to the Massif Central. We went first to Vulcania. For Edinburgh readers that’s similar to Dynamic Earth but a touch bigger as you may guess from the plan. You really need a whole day to see all the multi-media installations, watch the various films and enjoy the exhibits. You need a further day or two to digest all the information. But life is short so after an hour or two we pressed on to see some real-life volcanoes, That’s what the area is made of. Unfortunately they are not all spouting smoke and flames so it’s a bit tame in that respect. The countryside is lovely though and we joined another million or two holidaymakers set on reaching the summit of the Puy de Dôme.

Here’s Eduardo contemplating the ascent.
A number of the party decided that the coffee stop by the car park was far enough up the mountain, others came part way. Eduardo, Lele (with her back to you in the photo) and I climbed on until I was overtaken with the need to sprawl in the sunshine and admire the countryside leaving them to conquer the peak.

Today has been a day of little miracles.

Miracle number one was a beautiful birdie at the fifth involving a magnificent nine iron shot over the top of a twenty metre high oak tree landing one metre from the pin.

Miracle number two was a classic birdie at the sixteenth where a 170 metre tee shot over the water to the edge of the green at flag level was followed by a five metre putt straight into the hole.

Miracle number three was finding another gîte available for my Spanish chums to spend a second week in the Creuse. It’s 50 kilometres nearer Spain as well which will help when they set out for home.

This angelic looking little Spanish chap enjoying his gazpacho is Diego junior. He’s a bright, lively eleven year old who is currently reading Lord of the Rings in English. He has a bit of an excuse for such precocity having spent part of his short life in the USA but it’s not an easy read.

He also enjoys more active pursuits like making bows and arrows and playing with the large electrically operated shutter that covers securely the big window opening out onto the terrace of the gîte.

I blame the owners really. It reminds me of Ludovica’s bottom (see The Caucasian Chalk Circle Methuen Student Edition page 71 et seq.). If you put that sort of temptation in front of a red-blooded eleven year old something’s bound to happen isn’t it? In industry they call it destructive testing.

Efforts are underway to shift that shutter out of its fully open and stuck state but a pound to a penny says getting the deposit back is not a racing certainty.

Anybody who knows Spain (Spaniards say) knows that things shut down for hours at lunchtime but maybe they (Spaniards on holiday say) don’t know that in rural France the same system prevails, only it happens two hours earlier. So on Monday we set off for Aubusson with warnings from me that if the supermarket petrol station at Gouzon didn’t have a card operated pump there might be nothing to do but have a forced one hour lunch stop 15 minutes after starting out.

It does have a card operated pump so no problem, except the pump refused Diego’s Visa card which he maintained he had used successfully throughout the wide, wide world without incident until arriving in France. (The day before a supermarket had obliged him to pay cash).

Eduardo’s card was received with the same disdain so we had to fill the two motors with my humble but FRENCH bank card. It’s irritating little things like that that make foreign travel such fun isn’t it? I’ve since remembered getting hot under the collar at not being able to recharge a Spanish mobile phone with my otherwise universally accepted HBOS Visa and must remember to point this out to Diego.

We arrived in Aubusson well after lunch-time (French lunch-time that is) and were peckish. We weren’t foolish enough to look for lunch but throughout the length of the high street only three sandwiches were available. For a party of seven without JC on hand this seemed insufficient. Some establishments were closed for the day. They often are on Mondays. Some were closed for their holidays. Well why not? Just because I run a café or a restaurant doesn’t mean I can’t take my holidays in August just like everyone else. Tourists? Here? Hungry? Tant pis.

Saved by a bakery where we sat down to quiches of various sorts, spicy sausage bridies, all washed down with beer and followed by ice-cream cones in exotic flavours and coffee served with smiles all round. It’s heart-warming little things like that that make foreign travel such fun isn’t it?

The tapestry museum would have been an anti climax after that, had I gone in, but I’ve seen it several times before. Others were not drawn to the product of the loom either. Here they are. The one flat on his back with the strain of being on holiday in France is Diego.

He perked up later and successfully used his card to buy provisions in a Champion supermarket and transformed those provisions into a champion dinner. I especially enjoyed something he did with cauliflower and vinegar. There must have been something else in it don’t you think?

My Spanish friends arrived about 11pm on Saturday bearing a gift of wine disproportionate to the efforts I’d made on their behalf. But it would have been rude to refuse, wouldn’t it? If I’m disciplined enough to spin it out some trickles of Ribera del Duero may make it to Edinburgh with me.

I’d been keeping dinner hot, and true to Spanish type they found the lateness of the hour no impediment to enjoying a good nosh. Not even the eleven year old. Made of weaker matter I had eaten my own several hours earlier.

I’d taken the precaution of collecting the key to the gîte earlier in the day so when we got there around 12.30 there was only the pitch black country night to contend with. Surpassing myself in terms of foresight I even had a torch handy which made putting the right key in the right hole a dawdle.

I got to bed about 2 and have seized on the late night as the obvious reason for a failure to repeat the previous Sunday’s handicap improving round. If golf were a game of nine holes I’d have done very well but alas you have keep up the same standard to the bitter end.

So Tommy is not a swinger and my roof repair man hasn't turned up yet. Life is full of little disappointments.

I had a couple of visitors for a night or two this week. Fiona, whose flat in Vence was the base for my Riviera holiday and her friend Pat.

Since Pat is an artist I took them to Fresselines and Crozant. Monet spent time in Fresselines and did various impressionist landscape paintings in the area. A number of artists followed both his style and his footsteps to form what is variously called the Creuse School or the Crozant School. There is still considerable artistic activity in the area, little galleries, exhibitions etc. Most of what we saw this week belonged to the Daub School as I do myself. But at least I refrain from exhibiting. Some were not bad though.

We went out for dinner to some forsaken spot in the bundu where Pat, whose treat it was, was amazed to find that a four course dinner for three with wine and coffee could be had for less than forty euros. It is amazing but welcome.

Tomorrow I'm expecting six and a half Spaniards. If ever the Creuse is full it's in August so it was very much to my surprise that I found a gîte capable of holding them. It's near Boussac which is not too far from me. I may have to cram them in here for a night or two when they leave it though.

At last I have reversed the steady rise in my handicap. I won this bottle into the bargain. Could this be the start of something big?

You will note that this, shall we say undistinguished, building, which is just across the road from us, has a rather fine roof. All due to the great storm of 97, or was it 98?
No matter, the point is that we have a roof that deserves to be similarly replaced by a generous storm insurance payout but while we wait for that deliverance we have to keep applying patches.

Two or three years ago a M. Fruchou redid some of the internal wooden structure, replaced the ridge tiles together with a number of other tiles (some are visible in the picture) and applied other bits of builder’s bluffery with the aim of improving the overall watertightness of the roof.

Last year we decided to put a double-skinned tube in the chimney. Up till then we had apparently been in danger of burning the place down and falling foul of French building law. I’m not sure which carries the greater penalty. It seemed a good idea to add a bit of waterproofing around the chimney at the same time. We called on M. Fruchou but I think he got the idea that we weren’t totally satisfied with the results of his earlier work (true but not critical). Despite declaring that he would come and size up the job he never made it. Fortuitously we came across an English builder, Dave. He did the job and assured us that despite not having put flashing round the chimney (he had a reason but I can’t recall it) we were shipshape and watertight for a good three years.

Just before I went off to the Riviera it rained a lot and I went up into the roof to see what was what.
Well the picture shows clearly what was not watertight at all. I called Dave immediately but he had left the country. I suspect a love affair gone wrong but didn’t dare ask his mum-in-law for details. M. Fruchou may not have left the country but seems to have abandoned his business. His mobile number is now someone else’s and his fixed line has been temporarily out of service every time I’ve dialled it.

We don’t count our chickens till they are hatched but the French around here are even more circumspect. They don’t count the eggs while they are still in the chicken’s arse. So I don’t want to declare success too soon but the man who put Velux windows in for us some years ago says he can fix it and what’s more that he’ll do it soon. Stay tuned to find out.

After a day of domesticity (cut the grass, do three loads of washing) I set off for Bourges. It’s only an hour and a half away but it’s the first time I’ve been.

Probably not the last because it’s very lovely. A gorgeous medieval centre with a magnificent cathedral and other buildings of note. Their most famous citizen is, or rather was in the 15th century, a chap called Jacques Coeur who made lots of boodle, much of which he lent to Charles VII. Naturally he fell out of favour and went to prison. But he left behind a jolly mansion and here’s a detail from the façade.

Of course I went to Bourges not in pursuit of historical knowledge but to play two days of golf under the auspices of the Seniors of the Four Leagues.

The municipal course on the southern fringe of the town is very pleasant. There’s a lovely lake nearby with a sailing club, a jogging track all around and an outdoor pool is not far off. You can imagine there are worse places to be bourgeois.
This was a team competition in greensome format and Jean and I represented Les Dryades. We played respectably close to our joint handicap without covering ourselves in either glory or the other stuff. It was extremely hot but we were provided with bottles of chilled water, cans of Fanta etc at regular intervals by a young man who whizzed around in a golf cart. He raised the noisiest round of applause at the prize-giving.

On the way home I got a full frontal of an advert which had bedevilled (to a tiny extent) my stay on the Riviera, thanks to my holiday companion’s professional fixation. I’m not wild about the ad but I love the product. Here’s a picture. I leave it to you to interpret the slogan and to provide a catchy English equivalent. My starter for ten is “Aniseedy – yes!” “Anisickly – no!” You must be able to do better.

This morning I made one of my periodic visits to The Scotsman site to see how the land lies north of Hadrian’s wall. There was much of interest.
I was sorry to learn that Mr MacSween of haggis fame has bashed his neeps and chappit his tatties for the last time at the uncomfortably close age of 66.

Can you believe, as Tommy Sheridan would have it, that ten members of the executive of the Scottish Socialist party have perjured themselves to portray him as a wild swinger? He’s always been a natty dresser hasn’t he, even on half pay? These things are rumoured to go hand in hand but I await the outcome of the court case to learn the truth.

Now what thrilled me was PAL. I am sympathetic to Bill Clinton, ambivalent about bull-fighting, mildly uneasy about global capitalism, saddened by Darfur, made tepid under the collar by the intransigence of the parties in the Middle East but as anyone who has followed this blog from its beginnings will know what really gets my goat is litter. Here I found an article about a public spirited lady who, aghast as I am at the litter strewn streets and open spaces of Edinburgh and who like me makes a practice of picking up litter, has, unlike me, got off her arse and started a campaign, People Against Litter, to enlist the common man and woman in the great fight. She has shamelessly borrowed slogans from Mao Tze Tung and the like and brought great clichés to bear but she is right. I commend her campaign to you and exhort you to sign up. Become a PAL today! You know it makes sense!

Got back last night from a super holiday at the coast. Claire took full advantage of my newly acquired digital camera so I've got lots of lovely pictures to share with my loyal readers. Here's a view of Nice as a taster while I decide how best to set things up.

And here's one I took in the garden when I got home. The animal was
much closer to me when I first saw him but by the time I had gone into the house and got my camera he had moved off a bit.

I drove down to the Riviera on Friday. It is a long and fairly tedious drive and the roads were busier than I had expected but it is a good place to be for a little holiday. I am staying in Vence but came down to Nice this morning on a reconnaissance trip. I am picking a friend up at the staion tomorrow morning and although I have been to Nice quite often I wanted to be sure I could find the station.

I am now relaxing on the Promenade des Anglais. Life can be tough.

A few weeks ago my postman in a state of some excitement asked me if I had seen the previous day's paper. It seemed his picture was on page 5. Naturally I hurried off to a wee shop in the search of a copy and indeed they had one left. I suspect they always do. I wanted to share the picture with you because he has featured a few times in this blog and now thanks to my new toy, a digital camera, I can do so.
I expected an individual portrait recording some heroic chess exploit or postal honour, but it was a crowd scene. Admittedly he stands out because it's a small crowd. They are demonstrating in defence of the public services but as the caption points out, that particular Saturday evening they had competition in the shape of the world cup and a French rugby final.
Discussing it later I had to correct his impression that workers in the UK eat in soup kitchens and that there is no minimum wage. He accepted that but it proved impossible to budge him from the view that it is somehow unnatural or immoral to sell stamps and bread in the same shop.
[Acknowledgements to La Montagne for the picture].

I played golf very badly on Sunday in a competition and by chance this morning found that Andy Murray's remarks after his defeat yesterday fitted the case with only a few minor changes. Here's what he said with my replacement words in red.

"It was 10 times worse than I played on Thursday. I just struggled, it's hard to explain. I didn't feel good all round. I tried to get myself going on the back nine but I came up with a bad short game......which is normally what I do best and, when you are missing so many shots, it's difficult to win."

At least in my case no crowd of supporters went home disappointed.

The big news this morning is that I have been asked to play in The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht in Edinburgh in November. I haven't been on the stage for a few years so I'm looking forward to it eagerly.

Happy days are here again thought I on Thursday after breaking 100 for the first time in months. This was my reconnaissance round at Le Petit Chêne. Unfortunately when pitted against my fellow seniors the following day I missed a few putts, put balls in the water and generally messed up. Still it’s a beautiful course and I had a lovely time.

I’d set off on Wednesday for a leisurely drive to Poitiers. Now that’s an important place as anyone who’s read a guide book or taken a cursory interest in the Plantagenets, or the Arab non-conquest of Europe will know. It’s also famous for Futurscope, a multi-media theme park that I’ve left for a future visit.

On Wednesday though the poitevins (as langtonian is to Kirkcaldy so poitevin is to Poitiers) were thronging the streets for the first day of the summer sales. All shops start their sale on the same day and finish on the same day. The dates vary a bit according to region, like the school holidays, but there is no margin for individual initiative. Unless that is you choose to go out of business or relocate in which case you are allowed to have your own little sale then.

Now instead of trying to entice customers into their shops the shopkeepers had taken their stock, lock stock and barrel into the street. Every shop had a manned stall of goodies on the pavement. So the already narrow alleyways of the medieval town were extra squeezed. Then there was the actual outdoor market. Commerce rules OK.

Being a medieval town it’s got a crop of historic buildings, some of which I entered, most of which I just gazed at and strolled on till tired feet called for rest. Being a warm sunny continental day I chose a shady café terrace for a rest.

Later I went on to Niort where I spent the night. I thought Niort was lovely. It’s smaller than Poitiers but has lots of the same attributes. There’s a superb looking keep (thanks to Henry II), pleasant riverside walks, a magnificent covered market etc. I wandered uphill through what your guide book would no doubt call a warren of winding alleys to a twin spired church.

One of the things that annoys me about churches is that they often have a magnificent façade with a large imposing door flanked by smaller if no less imposing doors all of which are kept tight shut and you have to squeeze through some tiny side door. Well the Eglise de Saint André has seen the light and it streams through a beautiful stained glass window, floods the body of the kirk and rushes out of the wide open western door to meet the visitor as he crests the hill.

For an atheist I visit a lot of churches and particularly enjoyed recently a first communion mass in the austere black stone cathedral of Clermont Ferrand. I’m indebted to the Rough Guide for the knowledge that the Michelin tyre empire centred there owes it’s genesis to our Mr Macintosh the raincoat man. Apparently a niece of his married a Clermont Ferrand entrepreneur ( a pre Michelin chap) and brought to the marriage, inter alia, some good ideas of what to do with rubber.

One of the fixtures of the golfing calendar at Les Dryades is a competition sponsored by the Chateau de Poinsouze, an upmarket caravan park popular with British and Dutch tourists. A number of happy campers come along with their clubs and join the regulars. The day culminates in an invitation to all participants to dinner at the chateau. For one reason or another I haven’t made it to the dinner in previous years. This year there was no reason why I shouldn’t go and since I happened to be playing with the son of the sponsor there was an extra incentive.

I’m very glad I did. Al fresco dining bowled me over when I made my first trip to the continent way back. I was used to Sunday school picnics in local parks, sandy sandwiches on the shores of Fife and chewing damper (a peculiarly indigestible mixture of flour and water) around boy scout campfires in Highland glens. These undeniably outdoor eating experiences had not prepared me for filling the afternoon with a leisurely lunch, a proper lunch, at a table, a proper table, in a sunny garden on the shores of Lake Geneva where apricots could be plucked from the branches above one’s head. A lunch at which our hosts, prelates of some persuasion or other, made sure that the wine flowed freely even in this impressionable sixteen year old’s direction.

No prelates at the chateau but buckets of wine and a very fine meal in a beautiful courtyard setting. I count myself as a local so once the preliminary socialising was over I left the Brits to their own devices and sat down with the French. At my table was Philipe. He’s a baker and pattissier and supplied the yummy fruit tart pudding. From time to time his wife minds the shop on a Sunday morning while he and his daughters play golf. There was Lucien, the dentist, and his wife Claudine who teaches maths. One of the topics of conversation was that worldwide dinner party favourite – the difference between men and women. According to Claudine boys tend to geometry whereas girls favour analysis and this illustrates some fundamental difference or other. It was generally agreed that women have no trouble understanding men but not vice versa. Lucien told a long but quite amusing joke in support of that thesis. Fortunately I understood the punch line. Claude, an insurance man and the organiser of our competitions harangued me about adding some Scottish flavour to a future competition but when I tried to pin down what he wanted a few days later it seemed that his idea had disappeared with the last of the evening’s wine. There was Kévin, our hefty young golf pro who tells a story well and delights in recounting the wonders and oddities of his golfing experiences including a trip to Scotland. Then Jacques, a retired oil something or other and his wife Claudine. She took up golf because she was fed up being a golf widow and turned out to a slightly better player than him. She’s not currently playing because she’s undergoing chemotherapy. I don’t know what particular cancer she has. From her behaviour in social situations you wouldn’t dream there was a cloud in her sky. Jean, my particular golfing buddy was there. He’s a retired digital imaging fundi. He spent some time in Beith in his teens improving his English and has been a Scotophile ever since. He can manage a quite convincing “haw jimmy”. Hugues, the lad I had played with in the competition and his mum Claudine joined us intermittently. Could this be a record for the number of Claudines at one dinner table? She enjoined me to speak only English whenever I have occasion to play with Hugues, a request I will act on only when feeling particularly unselfish. I’m sure there were others because it was a big table but that damned wine seems to have dimmed my memory. Maybe Pierre and his fourth wife?

Roches, the commune within which I’m summering, boasts fewer than two hundred entries in the phone book. Amongst them incidentally are a Jean and a Christian whose Scottish surnames suggest that some of the soldiers stationed hereabouts during the Hundred Years War made non military conquests, and honest women of them to boot.
Despite its numbers it can muster a sizeable brass band (not all Rocheois, they recruit elsewhere) which struts its stuff on festive occasions. Amongst the most festive is the Pentecost Fair celebrated last weekend. It’s a three day extravaganza that according to one of my neighbours attracted hundreds from a’ the airts in her youth. Today no doubt a pale imitation but still a draw for the locals.
The “bourg” (tiny eponymous town that’s commune HQ) hangs out its bunting, plants decorations made of coloured tissue paper (trees, butterflies, bees and the like), flies the tricolour from the Mairie, scrubs out the Salle des Fêtes and the public toilets and has a ball. There is literally a ball, and a fireworks display and a race and a parade of decorated floats not to mention dodgems, several roundabouts, shooting galleries, a beer tent and a selection of second hand junk stalls.

This year there was a novelty. Amongst my postman’s many passions is chess. He set up a stall with half a dozen boards with the aim of playing all comers simultaneously. When I turned up after lunch he was reading disconsolately alone. It seems that the honest burghers of Roches having first been disabused of their assumption that he was selling chess sets had by and large declined to pit their skills against his. Naturally he counted on me and eventually persuaded a member of the Espérance to make a third thus formally creating a simultaneity. Espérance is what they call the band – surely a connection there with our Band of Hope of yesteryear – musical historians please advise.

As a sideline he was inviting signatures to an anti GM crops petition. I was unwise enough to say that I wasn’t altogether sure that I was against them. There followed a storm of facts and figures which reminded me of nothing so much as the anti nuclear diatribe he drilled into me when we met at a film show some weeks ago. But I held fast, politely, and didn’t sign. I even offered a couple of points in their favour; swept aside by his relentless stream but still.

Of course he beat us, but then I’ve been beaten by an eight year child so it was no real challenge. He beat me several other times in the course of the afternoon but that was the only simultaneous contest since the horn player was soon called to duty. At least I learnt the Spanish names of the pieces and I suppose a bit of speaking in tongues was appropriate for the season.

I regained my amour propre by bursting a couple of balloons with my deadeye shooting skills to carry triumphantly home a little soft toy. I’ve placed it beside the little soft toy that David won the last time we went shooting at Pentecost.

A friend complained that there were no pictures on this blog so I thought I would try to have at least part of one.

Since my swissophilia extends to a knowledge of their car registration system I was able to open a conversation by asking how things were in the Valais. Apparently all is well and not much has changed in the mountains above Sion since I slept in a barn there in the fifties. Strangely enough these people, or at least the older ones in the party, were here in the fifties, living and working in this village. The bulk of them lived in the house opposite, now being renovated (slowly) for eventual occupation by Alain who has a sawmill here and runs a carpentry workshop in Chatelus. They took various photos of themselves with the house in the background and set off to have a look around the village.

I discovered that one lady had lodged in our house. I was intrigued by the idea of finding out what the place was like fifty odd years ago so I invited her in. Had the positions been reversed I’d have jumped at it but she said maybe after the walk, and then after the walk the minibus slipped away unseen.

As you see I’ve not been keeping to my resolution of blog maintenance at all. I almost erupted into print one recent Tuesday in celebration of a very good golf score but it was so quickly followed by a disastrous performance in competition that I had to bite my keyboard to stop a logorrhoea of despair splashing out into cyberspace.

To vent my frustration I attacked the weeds around the fosse septique. Despite the reforming zeal of Brussels, mains drainage is yet to arrive in these parts. So we have a system of loosely buried tanks through which household waste waters seep to appear miraculously cleansed at some far end from whence they disappear to merge into the surrounding ecosystem.

I once did battle with a similar system in south-west Scotland. It filled up and refused to accept any more waste. When local forces were rallied to effect a rescue we discovered that the man who had laid the pipes decades before had only just passed on. Unaccountably he had failed to commit his design to paper. Much digging about with JCBs over a period of days was needed before normal service was resumed. Most of us managed the interruption in service discreetly enough and the youngest in the party, not then toilet trained, was entirely oblivious. But my mother-in-law had to be ferried periodically to a convenient local village. We learnt later that the Six Day War had been going on the while but somehow our six days have always been more memorable.

To disguise the concrete outcrops of the waste system we planted cotoneasters a few years ago and envisaged them spreading rapidly and smothering everything around. In practice the soil there seems to be more suited to the nutritional needs of weeds. Last year Sally dressed the cotoneasters and other plants in plastic survival suits before drenching the area with a junior member of the Agent Orange family. The weeds fell over almost instantly and turned a satisfactory shade of brown but this seems to have been but a subterfuge. This Spring they, or their mutated cousins, are back in force and have had to be ripped out of the ground. I know they will regroup so am keeping watch.

This morning such excitement. Not much happens in this village and I seldom am aware of what little does happen since our house is at the entrance and I never have to pass through the village to get to anywhere I want to go. So when a Swiss registered minibus stopped at the door and a dozen or more people poured out chattering animatedly I abandoned my conversation with the postman about the Cambodian junk mail he had just delivered to concentrate on them.

Having started this blog I thought I might turn it into a little record of my summer in France. Not that it will rival A Year In Provence but it might keep me and my few readers amused. I’ve occasionally tried to keep holiday diaries, never managing to sustain the effort to the end of the trip. Reading them months or years later has been fun and made me regret that I hadn’t persevered.

But here I am already three weeks into my stay and nothing noted down. A quick review is called for. After six months of being barred and bolted you can never be sure what state the house will be in. All was well, unlike last year. No pipes burst as I turned the water on. The new fridge withstood the impact of the first stream of electrons in contrast to its predecessor and no dead rodents were to be seen. There was one little body, a bird that had somehow got in but failed to find a way out. That was quickly removed, furniture uncovered and shoved about a bit, bed linen found, wood stove fired up, a quick hoover and it’s gardening time. Four cuts so far but it is hard to keep the grass down when it’s being watered and warmed generously by mother nature. The moles have not left town and previous lashings of herbicide seem to have only encouraged the weeds in the lawn and everywhere else. It’s a case of pulling them up again and again. I’ve trimmed the vine to the bone and held back the ivy’s assault on our tiled roof.

After that the priority is to bow before French public health legislation and get a doctor to certify that there are no indications that would suggest that I am not fit to play golf. This law is almost universally mocked but you have to comply. It covers all competitive physical sports, even petanque but maybe not tiddlywinks or chess. I must ask the postman. He’s a chess fanatic. They tell me my blood pressure is a bit high but I’ll probably survive the summer so it’s off to Limoges for the first competition of the season. It’s organised by The Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues, a splendid club that offers us half a dozen outings between April and October throughout four regions; Limouson, Centre, Poitou-Charente and Auvergne. My chum Jean and I usually go the day before for an exploratory round, stay in a little hotel and share a bottle of red over dinner and then hack our way through the competition. Just as at my home club, Les Dryades, the competitions are well supplied with prizes so you don’t have to be a star to go home with something in your hand. There is also usually a draw for left over prizes and that’s how I came home from Limoges with a tee shirt and a little porcelain dish. You’re never far from porcelain in Limoges.

There was another SG4L competition last week near Orleans. Since I’d never been in Orleans, always having whizzed past by train or car en route to somewhere else I thought I’d go up a day early and be a tourist. It took me 50 years of whizzing past Berwick on Tweed before I visited it. I didn’t want that to become the norm.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was committed to giving a friend a lift back to this area and that I had volunteered to help out with a regional golf event at the weekend I’d still be there today. Because Orleans was in full Joan of Arc celebration mode. There were all sorts of processions and medieval tournaments and concerts and what not to celebrate the relief of the siege on 8th May 1429. There’s a heavy Scottish element to this year’s festival, not only because 8000 of the 30000 Scots who went to France to help chase out the English lost their lives fighting on Joan’s team but also to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the twinning of Orleans with Dundee. The Tayside police pipe band are there in force and some chaps called the Ardblair Highlanders are doing what seemed to be a mini Highland Games. There was a very good exhibition on about the Auld Alliance presided over by a French gentleman splendidly got up in a dress kilt and jacket.

There are a couple of spots near here called respectively Ecosse Lavoir and Ecosse Chateau. According to the postman (he’s a bit of a historian) they were so named for the Scots who were quartered there at some point in the Hundred Years War. The mirror image of Petty France in Edinburgh.

Orleans is also very proud of a certain Charles Péguy. He was a writer and political thinker of the Belle Epoque, a friend of Zola and such like world figures. Perhaps it’s because he died leading his men over the top in the 14-18 war that he failed to be detected by my radar. Anyway I dutifully went round the exhibition in the centre dedicated to studying his work and expressed my satisfaction when asked by the curator. I must ask the postman about him.

He was born and spent his childhood in Chile; the postman that is not Charles Péguy and he likes to practise his Spanish. He’s probably disappointed that David and Sally have decided to stay on in Málaga but he makes do with me. I bumped into him at a film the other week and he regaled me in Spanish with his views on nuclear power. He was just back from a big anti nuclear demo in Cherbourg. At least he didn’t expound while the film was showing. I met him once before at a concert of Georges Brassens songs. While we were listening to one song he’d be whispering the words of another one in my ear. You’ll have gathered he’s a Georges Brassens fan. When he learnt I was off to Orleans he told me he was off there soon himself to support an anti GM group who are to appear in court charged with cutting down GM crops. You’d have to go far to beat the lot of a rural postman in France.

The lot of the summer visitor is not too bad either. I was sitting in the lounge about 8.30 on Sunday’s peaceful morning looking through the French window over the garden, down the field at the damp and misty forest beyond when a deer bounded across the lawn past the window, paused at the hedge to sniff out danger and vanished. Rural idyll in spades.

Set off ten days ago for France which is where I spend my summers. I was taking the ferry from Rosyth to Zeebrugge which is a nice relaxing way to get to the continent. You miss out all that tedious driving on traffic filled roads.

You also avoid being exposed to the filth that is strewn everywhere. I've enjoyed the months I've spent in Scotland but one thing that gets my goat is the amount of litter than decorates our streets, parks and road verges.

Between Cramond Brig and the Forth I could have filled a dumper truck and the port of Rosyth was just foul. What an introduction to Scotland for visitors arriving that way (or anyway for that matter, the road from the airport is just as bad).

A big contrast over the 400 miles from Zeebrugge to my destination. Not litter free but maybe 0.1% of the litter between Edinburgh and Rosyth.

There that's my grumble over for the moment but don't think I won't get back to it from time to time.

Since getting here I've been playing golf and tidying up the garden, the former being much more to my taste.

I wanted to make a comment on a friend's blog and discovered that i had to create one of my own first of all. I'm not sure that I'll ever put any more than this in it, given that I've already got a couple of websites that I fail to keep up to date.

They are www.barbansais.com and www.brianneill.name