We've now got a movie-maker in the family. Ewan has produced this charming little video starring some of my frequent summer visitors.

A package came through my letterbox a few days ago and by virtue of its timing has been declared a Christmas present and a most unusual one at that.

In the summer of 2006 Chus and Eduardo, Spanish friends of mine, came to France with a group of their friends for a fortnight's holiday in the Creuse. I spent a fair bit of time with them and recorded some highlights in my blog.

But Antonio went a lot further. He has produced 74 A4 pages of text and sketches celebrating those two weeks and that's what Chus has sent me. I may offer you extracts from time to time. For starters here are the drawing that decorates the cover and the paeon to the Creuse that opens the story.

UN PARAÍSO PERSONAL

Del explendor de un bosque,
de unas estacas hiladas,
de un mar de moras
y otro de hierba fresca.
Del explendor de un horizonte azul,
apenas despejado ante las nubes,
de las sinuosidades,
de las curvas del camino,
de aquel recodo de 180 grados
donde no pusieron la cruz
ni las señales amarillas.
Sí, todo da igual.
Pasamos nosotros
entre las piedras grandes,
comidas de musgo verde.

LA CREUSE

Alan came up from Manchester to help celebrate my birthday and stayed on for a couple of days. We visited various exhibitions together while he was here. The show of Joan Eardley's work at the RSA is wonderful. I love her paintings of Glasgow children. From the quick colourful chalk on sandpaper portraits of the faces of individuals to the much more elaborate groups in collages that incorporate elements of their environment you can feel their personalities bursting out.

It's fascinating too to look at the photographs of these kids in the east end of Glasgow that she used to help her portraiture. No wonder the city council wanted to raze those tenements to the ground and build decent homes for the post-war generation.

For something rather different we went down to the Botanic Gardens. In truth we went there to enjoy the gardens but there were a couple of exhibitions on in Inverleith House, the former home of the National Gallery's modern collection. They stick to a modern remit and currently are showing imitation girders mounted at decapitating height in a number of rooms. In the absence of attendants protecting the work (draw your own conclusions) I sneaked a picture.

The show in the basement was much more fun. It consisted of a small display case of odds and ends, a couple of posters and an excellent sequence of music videos inspired by and celebrating the works of a few contemporary artists including Peter Blake and Louise Bourgeois.

A songsheet was available so you could sing along with the video. In one mad moment Alan danced along as well. That may have been in the absence of other punters. We stayed a while but most punters did not dally. A man entered the room as we left it but still managed to catch the same lift as us back to the ground floor.

The Botanics have been familiar to me since we used to take the kids there in the sixties and I still think the best view of Edinburgh is from the lawn in front of Inverleith House. I've snapped it a number of times and did so again on Sunday. Playing with the picture in Photoshop I somewhat serendipitously produced the background image for the title of this blog. I'm rather pleased with it.

All that culture vulturing is hungry work and I'm glad to report that the cafes in the Portrait Gallery and in the Botanic Gardens provided us with excellent sustenance.

My birthday celebrations have always felt short-changed, falling as they do on the winter solstice. This year, the 65th in the series, their share of daylight was indeed short but they were particularly sweet after dark.

My very good friend Claire insisted that she should book a table for the small dinner party that I had planned. Clearly a giveaway that something was afoot since she has to fit things like that into interstices in the working day while I have the leisure to spend hours finding things to do to fill the self same hours.

Part of her plan was revealed when I set about arranging another dinner for a group of old school friends. They it turned out were destined to be surprise guests at the first dinner. Not that they spilled the beans - rather my sons decided that there was a danger of too many dinners spoiling the party.

So when I got to the advertised pre-dinner drinks at the Traverse it was no surprise to see the old school friends but a larger group of Edinburgh based friends had also been called up for service and that was unexpected.

The meal was good, the company was excellent and the surprise though not complete was sufficiently exciting to make this a birthday to remember.

Come out from under that hair Claire and take a bow.

This is one of my favourite walks: the Radical Road in Holyrood Park. It gains its name from association with the disturbances of 1820 that were as close to a revolution as we ever got before Walter Scott wheeled in George IV in his kilt and pink tights two years later effectively turning the spirit of insurrection into cheers for the tartan flavoured monarchy.

I followed it for the first time in ages the other day to get a breath of fresh air. The views were superb, even in the dull conditions that prevailed. Here we are looking over the south side of the city with the Pentlands vaguely visible through the mist and cloud in the top half of the picture. I carried on along the tarmac road that goes up the hill and cut down above Duddingston Loch to the Sheep's Heid for a refreshment.Astute readers will have noticed that the advertised title of the pub has no apostrophe s but it's always added in speech, just as we talk of St. Andrew Square as if it belonged to him.

I had coffee with some friends the other day and collected a box of odds and ends belonging to me that has been cluttering up their house for the last several years. I had rather forgotten it but on being reminded remembered that it held such treasures as a PC keyboard with Arabic characters that I bought in Egypt when I was convinced that nothing much stood between me and mastery of the Arabic language. How wrong I was. It's beautiful, intriguing, fascinating; but I shall always be its slave rather than its master.

One treasure that I had never seen before was a set of six CDs being the second half of a twelve volume set of the songs of Robert Burns that I subscribed to a decade or so ago. The second half pitched up while I was abroad. I've been listening to them with great pleasure over the past couple of days. It was a splendid initiative of Linn records.

I decided at the beginning of the 21st century that physical Christmas cards were old hat and that henceforth I should send only ecards. I've not lived up 100% to this forward thinking decision but I try and have just finished creating this year's card. For those of my readers not in my email address book here it is:

The layout of Edinburgh's New Town incorporated communal gardens for the recreation of the proprietors of the buildings surrounding them. In many of these buildings private persons have long been replaced by office slaves and a good case can be made for making the gardens a more widely available recreational resource.

I was delighted to find that the hard-pressed council tax payer ably assisted by his alter ego the hard-pressed income tax payer has seen fit to apply a few millions to do just that to the gardens in St Andrew Square. The work proceeds apace and will include the obligatory refreshment outlet and what is called a reflective pool, though the capital's youngsters might have preferred a skate-park.

The work has been extended upwards of the gardens to tidy up the 4.2 metre high statue of Henry Dundas that sits atop the column. I understand that the stonework of the statue has suffered a bit from exposure, especially between its legs. We know what damage 179 years of an Edinburgh wind could do to a brass monkey so I shudder to think what condition poor old Henry is in.

The day I didn't have my camera two workers were jauntily perched on the lower levels of this scaffolding. I gazed in some admiration and wondered amongst other things how they got there. The answer is via the staircase in the column.

His mission may have been to crush the rebellious Scots, as I have lately learnt our national anthem enjoins us to do, or to populate the East India Company with his compatriots but pending catching a view when the covers come off the statue here's what the lifesize Henry looked like and for the truly historically minded or those who can't sleep here's a long and detailed article about him.

The latest news is that one of the office buildings in the square is to be converted into expensive flats. The owners, like Henry, will just have to put up with the democratisation of their garden.

Never go out without a camera. I can't bring you a picture of the two newspaper billboards that caught my eye side by side earlier today.
The Scotsman proclaimed "On the trail of eagle killers" while The Record reported "6 Week-old Alexis beaten to death"
Such different news values.

It's taken me a while to find a review in English of "I Do" (Prête-moi ta main) that echoed my enjoyment of the film.

The French reviewers were pleased that it matched what they think is the gold standard of romantic comedy - the British standard. Perhaps that's why they've held onto it for 12 months before letting us have a look.

But TimeOut found it "heavily contrived, undemanding" and deplored "the complacency of the film's subtextual sexual politics". (Whatever that means.) They did admit that it's "often funny" but that seems a criticism in the context of their review.

The Sydney Morning Herald (I never miss an issue) said "Old-fashioned doesn't really describe it: it's the kind of war-of-the-sexes premise that was popular in the '90s, and I mean the 1590s, when Shakespeare was starting to sharpen his quill." Shakespeare old fashioned? Tell that to the RSC.

Film 4 says " Of course I Do is total fluff and nonsense". But like me and unlike TimeOut they think it is bloody good fluff and nonsense and they suggest you see it now before "the inevitable US remake"; unless, they say, Charlotte Gainsbourg crosses the pond to reprise her role.

I'll leave the last word to Miss Marmite in Hamburg and other users of IMDb most of whom, but by no means all, liked it.

Recently the graffiti around here has displayed a degree of sophistication some levels above the "F. the Pope" standard.

One that caught my eye disfiguring a billboard, or enhancing it according to your lights, read "Be bad. Buy nothing new this Xmas."

Strong on combating spoil the planet wastefulness but short on current economic orthodoxy (do we want to return to being hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers?) let alone friendly feelings towards our nearest and dearest.

Today they are painting out a slogan on Tesco's wall. At the moment you can still make it out underneath the fresh paint. It says something like "we've had enough of this red white and blue". I thought at first it was an anti-unionist cry but realised later that those are Tesco's colours so it was probably aimed at them.

I don't suppose Mr Tesco will lose much sleep and it won't be long before another slogan hits the wall. Let's hope it's amusing.

Hot on the heels of Litter Lunatic came Telephone Tosser.

Ring ring
Hello.
Who's that? (foreign accent)
It's Connor.
Oh yea, James tell me about you. You like bit of fun.
Sorry, you must have the wrong number.
No, no. He tell me you like play with your wife while other people watch. (or maybe it was the other way round)
You've got the wrong number.
Hang up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hey Connor, why you cut me off?
You have got the wrong number.
Tell me name your wife I tell you if is wrong number.
I don't have a wife.
Can I come play with you?
No, and if you call me again I'll get the police to you.
What the police do with this?
Hang up
Ring 1471
The caller withheld their number (surprise, surprise)
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello.
Employs recommended nuisance caller procedure by remaining silent then hanging up
Ring ring
Brian picks up
Hello. (different voice but still a species of johnny foreigner)
Same tactic employed, no further calls.

I hope my mobile never rings while I'm in the lift.

From what was found in the lift yesterday it appears that our Litter Lunatic is truly a nutcase. Even I hesitate to put a picture of a blood-stained towel and a condom draped artistically on the lift floor into public view so you will just have to imagine it.

It's a new one on the factor, used as he is to the odd goings on in common stairs, but pro tem I'm keeping a watch and he's considering how to approach the matter.

Connor suggested it might be a disgruntled ex hassling their former partner. But if so I and many others in the stair, not to mention visiting clergymen, are suffering collateral damage.

The Litter Lunatic has been at work again. I came home tonight from seeing a play (The Persian Revolution) to find this in the lift.

To add to the effrontery it contained some liquid so after I had removed it here's what was left on the floor.

It's hard to know what to do but I think I will have to engage the factor and the residents' association in reviewing possibilities.

The impossibility I personally favour can't be described on a family blog but would be familiar to Persian revolutionaries.

That our civil liberties are being unduly curtailed was the proposition put forward by Helena Kennedy in a debate in the form of a mock trial at the Royal Society of Edinburgh last night. The audience jury agreed with her in the proportion of two to one despite a well argued defence of Labour's record and intentions by Tony's old flatmate Charlie Falconer.

The debate was lively, at times fierce, but even though the topic is on the serious side all the speakers managed a wee joke from time to time.

One of the concerns put forward by David Blunkett whom I heard speak on Sunday fits quite nicely into the curtailment of liberties scenario. He said what we all know; that fewer and fewer people are voting.

He went on to say that those who will continue to vote are the older members of society, that they vote in their own interests (who doesn't?) and are likely to bring into power more authoritarian governments. He meant non-labour governments of course but labour or tory the fear is that the politicians will bow to the greybeards' desire to bring back flogging and send yobs to the saltmines.

So be warned.

Wild Honey opened on Wednesday to a pretty good house and was well received by the audience. The press was there in the shape of Thom Dibdin from The Evening News and he was slightly less enthusiastic but two stars after all are better than none. The News print alongside their review the opinions of three punters (not included on-line) and all of them praised the show.

I ended up having a late night.

The second night was typically a bit less sharp and we had an entertaining few minutes early on when we skipped a page or two and then fought our way back to fill in the blanks. Two down two to go.

Filling in time in the dressing room with a newspaper I came across an article about face morphing software developed at the psychology department of St Andrews university. Here's what it turned me into when I chose to be Afro-Caribbean.
Try it yourself here.

I had an "X wants you to be their friend" email from Facebook the other day. It wasn't a name that meant much to me straightaway but I have since realised who it is. I think she must have let Facebook run through her email contacts and fire off invitations to all and sundry. I just haven't been deleted from the list during the last five years; some people never tidy things up.

It was a pleasant reminder of life in Paris though so I have been gracious enough to accept. But does she really know who I am?

I don't think you could call the film I saw this afternoon pleasant but it was French and I enjoyed it thoroughly - a cracking thriller called The Serpent. There were only five of us in the house, all supping our free coffee supplied as part of the Cameo's Silver Screen offering. They can't make money that way but I suppose the cinema is open anyway. When you add their Wednesday Specials and their Cheap Mondays you arrive at help the aged in cinemascope and surround sound. It's pure dead brilliant.

Because of the Wild Honey schedule, today was my last chance to see Brian Friel's Living Quarters at the Lyceum and I took it. I'm never sure that it's a good idea to go to a matinee. Almost invariably there is a sweetie paper rustler somewhere and today she sat next to me. That old wifie was almost as distracting as the young lady who flashed her fashionably skimpy underwear periodically as she leant forward to get a better view.

However I managed to keep enough of my attention on the stage to be able to state categorically that it is an excellent production: super set, very good acting and magisterial direction. It's also apparently the play's UK premiere although it was written 30 years ago. I remember reading it in Kitwe with a view to putting it on there. I don't remember why we didn't

The play is structured in such a way that there is a narrator character who interacts with the others, bringing them periodically out of a fictional space that excludes him into one that includes him. He also addresses explanations to the audience and like a Greek Chorus foretells, or at least hints at, the tragedy to come. Well that may have whipped up the ancient Greeks but it didn't work for me. I admired it but resented having my emotional involvement in the drama interrupted. The Guardian's critic suggests that may be why the play has been neglected here for so long.

I shall have to get to the Citz to see if Desire Under The Elms suits me better. It is after all the same myth - as explained fully in this somewhat dry article.

I dashed out as soon as the show ended and distributed Wild Honey flyers to the audience as they emerged. I did the same thing this evening but chose the audience leaving a production of The Crucible on the grounds that as it was an amateur production the audience might be a better target for us. However the Lyceum audience seemed much more interested. God knows if it will bring anyone in. How to attract an audience is the great unsolved theatrical mystery.

It could have been an ABC Minors session circa 1950. There was the same incessant chatter drowning out the ads, the same clapping and cheering as the hero appeared on screen, the same whoops of appreciation during action sequences. Only the slightly raunchy comments revealed that these were adult cinemagoers, almost exclusively female who were letting their fantasies fly free at a late night screening of Dirty Dancing.

I should have had a big girl along to look after me but I didn’t know.

The next time I go swimming I'll wear a hat; not in the pool you understand but to keep my head warm on the walk home.

Leith Victoria just down the road is one of the numerous pools built here over a hundred years ago. I don't know whether the idea was leisure or cleanliness but given that most of them were originally referred to as public baths you'd have to suspect the latter. However it's all leisure nowadays and this one is in the throes of redevelopment. The pool has already been refurbished; there's a gym and a sauna and they are building an extension to accommodate aerobics and the like. They even have a creche where little non-swimmers can be dumped at certain times.

At the time the pool was built Leith was a separate entity from Edinburgh but was absorbed in 1920 much to the disgust of many of the citizenry, and to this day Leithers regard themselves as a race apart. As usual Wikipedia is a good source of information (I used it to check on the date of the merger) and it even led me to the explanation for the street sign I noticed recently declaring Leith to be twinned with Rio de Janiero.

I haven't noticed Rio's samba dancers around but Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly were magnificent in the 1949 film version of Bernstein's On The Town showing this week and the Indian A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Kings had some splendid dance routines which you can get a taste of here.

Capping both of those though was Matthew Bourne's The Car Man. It's a steamy tale of lust and murder set in a car repair shop somewhere in the endless plains of the mid-west danced to Bizet's music for Carmen by a brilliant cast who throw themselves around and bend their bodies into seemingly impossible but beautiful shapes.

If I do catch a cold through my hatless walk home I should, on the evidence of Michael Moore's Sicko, thank my lucky stars that it was in Leith Scotland and not Leith North Dakota. For the film paints a pretty black picture of healthcare in the USA. Of course Moore is a polemicist who gives no quarter so there is no attempt at balance. All the same when you see it (and I insist you do because it is an excellent and superbly crafted movie) you will come out giving three rousing cheers for the NHS despite its inadequacies. I don't think Rudi Giuliano can have seen it.

You could be forgiven for thinking that these artistically arranged objects were an installation in a gallery, labelled provocatively "A Good Night Out".

But no; this is the sight that met my eyes when I summoned the lift to take me to the top floor at twenty to four this afternoon. I hadn't been in the lift for twenty-four hours so I suppose they could have been there since last night but it couldn't have been that much of a good night out because the condom was empty.

Thank God for small mercies.

It was a beautiful day yesterday so I wandered about the gardens for a while then popped into the National Gallery for a coffee and a peep at some very imaginative work done by SQA Art and Design students. I suppose that's what we called Higher Art in my day but I don't remember seeing such creativity at KHS. Maybe at the time I couldn't see past Tam Gourdie's italic handwriting obsession.

There is a William Blake exhibition on as well and I found that I was just too late to get a seat to hear the very imaginative Alasdair Gray talking about him and reading some of Blake's verse to boot. The spoilsport health and safety bogey forbade me to sit in the aisle so I left muttering incantations involving up, yours and Jimmy.

Later in the day I meandered into a pub and had a very satisfying glass of IPA; what a splendid contrast to the insipid and gassy French lager that has been my post golf tipple all summer. You have to give them full marks for vino but a great big zero for beer.

Spanish beer is no better than French and on the evidence below you'd have to give the golf resort owning Spaniards a pretty low score for their language skills as well.

The group now running Les Dryades hope to make a bob or two by building houses around the course and have produced a flashy brochure extolling the project. However its title isn't quite right in either French or English and the inside is often worse.

Now Grupo Balboa is not a very big organisation so maybe you can understand their skimping on translation costs; not forgive of course but understand.

On the other hand FIAT could surely have spared a copper to have my car's handbook given the once over by a native English speaker. It is riddled with nonsense such as "These dusts are harmless and is not the beginning of a fire; then the unfold cushion surface and the car interiors can be covered by a dusty remains;"

I expect that when it is sung in Italian it sounds wonderful.

I've been in Edinburgh for a whole week and the word "litter" has barely passed my lips. I may have whispered it gently into the ears of an intimate few but that's all.

Here though is a manifestation of Dirty Scotland that has me scratching my head in despair and disbelief. Rubbish disposal is well organised at the flats where I live. Here's how it works. In the privacy of your own home you collect your domestic waste and when you have a bagful you go to one of the bin-stores, put your bag in the bin and once a week the bin is emptied and cleaned.

So what is this cretin's game?Was the bin full? No. Was he a dwarf who couldn't reach up to the lid? Unlikely. Was leaving the gate open a final fingers up to the responsible residents? Undoubtedly.

Unfortunately none of my windows overlook this bin-store otherwise I should mount a 24 hour watch with my litter lout laser at the ready.

I was sure I'd bump into Ming in the crowd of senior citz taking advantage of the £1.50 lunchtime shows at the Cameo yesterday now that he has more time on his hands. But no. By not taking my advice to enjoy the fruits of his age he missed a treat.

I saw Two days In Paris; written, directed, produced and starred in by Julie Delpy. She seems to be quite famous but her name meant nothing to me, although skimming through her credits I guess I may have caught sight of her on screen before. Whoever she is she did a great job of making me laugh.

That laughter was stilled later in the day when I saw Scotland go down ignominiously before the Georgian teenagers in Tblisi. They must have been on Irn Bru when they beat France twice and they'll need a double dose to get past Italy into Euro 2008.

I expect they'll try to intimidate Italy with the skirl and drones of the pipes but that won't be enough. At critical moments I'd throw in Brass Jaw. The noise a saxophone quartet can make in full cry would make any goalkeeper stick his hands over his ears leaving the way clear for a lightning strike.

Less than a week but I'm picking up the threads of the British way of life again. I'm still occasionally saying pardon instead of sorry when I get in someone's way and I've twice found myself on the wrong side of the road but I have not been disloyal to the Queen.

Alan was here for the weekend and together with Siobhan we took in a Picasso exhibition and the film "When Did You Last See Your Father". In the film Colin Firth discovers on his father's death-bed that he wasn't such a bad old stick after all. I think the DVD will make an excellent Christmas gift, two in fact.

I had to leave Alan to his own devices on Sunday while I attended my first rehearsal for Wild Honey. In the absence of the director, delayed in Portugal with a bad leg, it could have been a shambles but it passed off remarkably well. I thought that perhaps it was a little early for talk of the actors gliding through the piece as though it were a Mozart symphony, but still.

Last night the director's leg had not yet reached home but under the self-deprecating leadership of Iain Kerr we blocked Act 2 and standing in for a number of absent actors I had fun exercising my range of funny voices.

I got home to the news of Ming Campbell's resignation. I said at the time of his election that he was too old and it seems that for once my political judgement was right. My advice to Ming is to enjoy his freedom of Scotland bus pass, his winter fuel allowance, his concession tickets to theatres and cinemas and the other sundry goodies on offer to oldies. Leave running the country (or in the Lib Dem's case not) to those who still have hair to pull out at the frustration of it all. How old is Gordon?

It's different in the theatre of course. Oldies still achieve. Witness Fiona's winning production at the Woking Drama Festival. Best out of 26 entries is pretty good. Will she similarly sweep aside the opposition at the English, or even British finals?

I spent Wednesday morning putting the finishing touches to the house hibernation: covering beds in plastic; draining the water system; spreading poison everywhere a rodent is likely to stroll; and set off for the channel around lunchtime.

An uneventful journey followed by a tolerable dinner, a bit of a drool over Soir 3's Marie Drucker and half a night's rest saw me bright and early by the quayside for the ferry to Dover. My car was checked for hidden immigrants on the French side but I was spared examination on arrival in England thanks to the unlucky Latvian ahead of me who must have looked like better pickings to the defenders of our frontiers.

There followed a day of stressful close combat. British motorway traffic when not at a standstill likes either to play at Formula 1 or to dawdle in the overtaking lanes. Yesterday there was more than enough standstill, much of it incomprehensible, so a journey estimated at nine hours took close to twelve.

But here I am safe and sound and everything looks set for a splendid winter season.

It has felt like being back in the hotel business these last three weeks. I’ve had four parties of visitors, nine people in all. Everyone has now gone and I believe enjoyed their visit to the Creuse. They certainly had much better weather than they would have had at the height of summer.

My uninvited guests appear also to have gone and I trust that they did not enjoy their visit at all. Indeed I hope they are dead. I could never be a Bhuddist.

On Saturday we went to what was billed as a local agricultural show. However these country people are early risers so by the time we arrived there was no sign of any beasts, the farmers’ market had been reduced to one stall selling honey and the prize-giving was in full swing.

There were still some second-hand agricultural machines whose function was a mystery to us townies on sale, and we could have come away with a souvenir barrel for €10, but it wasn’t quite the swinging affair one had hoped for.













Except for L’Espérance de Roches who played a couple of swinging sets of old favourites, including “Roll Out The Barrel” would you believe, while we swigged a refreshment. They looked good in their new uniforms, except for that delinquent in jeans, but I’m not sure that Andy and Esther, who both play wind instruments, were totally convinced by their playing.

My playing, in the garden later, was much worse but then it was the first time I’d blown into a saxophone and the fact that I made a noise at all was a surprise. I even more or less played a scale so I’m clearly a natural.

Sunday was another beautiful day. We followed my first time visitors’ tour of the northern Creuse, taking in various beauty spots. We had a very pleasant lunch in the garden of the hotel at Bourg d’Hem from where there is a lovely view and strolled by the river here and there. We arrived at Crozant just too late to get into the fortress grounds. That was a little bit of a shame.

On Thursday I had an outing with four of my chums from Les Dryades. We went to a little nine hole course called Chammet on the plateau des Millevaches. It’s a little more than an hour south of Guéret. Set in beautiful wooded surroundings overlooking a lake it is, in fine weather, an idyllic spot.

The weather was exceptionally fine. We played nine holes in the morning, lunched in a nearby village and played another nine in the afternoon before ending up at Pierre’s in Guéret for dinner and a few glasses of vino in the evening.

I know it is reprehensible not to spend every waking minute working on how to save the planet and/or rescue damsels in distress but I find myself more and more focussed on self gratification.

Today at least I was able to bring a little pleasure into other people’s lives as well as my own. Patrick, a Belgian golfing friend who has a holiday home in the area, invited me to an end of season drinks and nibbles do this evening. I initially excused myself on the grounds that I was expecting visitors but he insisted that I bring them with me. So when Andy and Esther arrived this afternoon I whisked them off to his place. There were about twenty people, all of them very worth meeting - from Carmen the former La Scala ballerina to my particular friends Jean and Monique. I think my visitors enjoyed themselves.

Patrick and his wife Catherine are round the world yachtsmen whose voyage website is an absolute delight. For someone like me who has done a little bit of sailing but who quite frankly would feel distinctly uncomfortable out of sight of land in 50 feet of fibreglass it provides an exciting but safely vicarious experience. Read, or just enjoy the pictures of Caramel’s journeys.

I got back today from a very pleasant outing to Royan on the Atlantic coast. It was one of the Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues fixtures. I picked up Jean on Thursday morning and we arrived at the golf club in time for a spot of lunch before our reconnaissance round. We played our competition round on Friday.

The weather was delightful, the course was beautiful and the company was excellent. What more can you ask for? Well you can ask for a comfy hotel with sea view. Tick. You can ask for good food. Noix St Jacques with cepes in a chestnut sauce for lunch on Friday – tick. You can ask for success on the course – half a tick. I didn’t improve my handicap but I played well enough to prevent a further deterioration. I was 12th out of 55 which is a lot better than the 36th out of 43 that I achieved in the last SG4L competition at Aurillac in June.

We didn’t stay for the prize-giving because it’s a good four hour drive back to Jean’s where we intended to watch France play Argentina in the opening match of the rugby world cup and where I was to spend the night. In a totally unexpected turn-up for the books Argentina won. French supporters are understandably gutted but they deserved to lose and I, who have a soft spot for Argentina, was quite pleased.

It would have qualified as one of the most enjoyable periods of my summer had it not been for the fact that an hour after leaving home someone reversed into my motor car as I drove behind them at a crowded junction. Their car suffered a barely visible scratch on the bumper while mine was very severely scrunched all along one side. The lateral airbag also burst into action to protect the non-existent passengers and I’m now pestered by a light and a beep telling me it’s stuffed. Notwithstanding the fact that on this occasion I was entirely blameless I was (and am) really pissed off. I’d only just washed the car for God’s sake – not a frequent occurrence.

Back home I checked my emails and found that I have been cast in the Grads November production. It’s called Wild Honey and is Michael Frayn’s version of a Checkov play commonly known as Platonov. I play Porfiry Semyonovich Glagolyev. I’ve written that out in full because I need all the practice I can get in remembering it. He appears to be an old duffer who fancies his chances with a young bit of stuff. Well I’ll do my best but it’s always so hard to act against type.

I also got an email inviting me to be Gordon Ritchie’s friend on Facebook. I accepted of course since I thought we had been friends for the last twenty years or so. I guess this is a sort of formalisation like a civil partnership. Well not too like a civil partnership I hope.

It’s only a couple of weeks since I was asked to be Sabin Müller’s friend on Hi5. I checked that one out carefully because I’d never heard of Hi5 and suspected some scam. However it turned out to be genuine. It also seemed to be a bit accidental since as she explained to me she uses Hi5 to keep contact with the various youngsters associated with the projects she’s involved in. I seem to have been caught up in an email contact list swoop. But the upside was that I got an update on how she’s doing in the challenging field of youth social work. I always think of Switzerland as a haven of peace and tranquillity, but not so. They have at least as many social problems as anywhere else. Sabin has recently been working on reducing mobile phone violence. What’s that I thought? See for yourself by downloading a video at http://www.zentrale.ch

If your German is as weak as mine you could try Microsoft’s automated web page translation (right click menu). It gives an understandable English rendering of text on the page. Not as bad as that “one time sex thing” stuff but I suppose German’s a lot closer to English than Chinese is. It doesn’t help with the text in the graphics or with the video but you’ll get the idea.

I came across three deer on the road back from Gueret at lunchtime today. It looked like a hind with two youngsters. They were trying to get away from a car that was coming from the opposite direction so when I came around the corner they panicked even more than they were already panicking and ran back and forth across the road imitating the famous headless chickens. In my experience, gained as a chicken-keeper's neighbour, still having their heads on is no barrier to aimless dashing about. But that's another story.

Both cars stopped to give the deer a chance to get organised. Their problem was that high hedges border that stretch of the road making their normal tactic of rushing off into the fields a bit difficult.

At length, shattering my cosy notion that mother animals put their young first, the hind took a run at it and cleared the hedge leaving the wee ones to ferret about for a gap at ditch level.

Maybe it was their dad.

Will it displace Christmas?

If you are thinking of brushing up your Chinese in time for the Beijing olympics here's an item from the Language Log that will help you to say "A Time Sex Thing" even if that's not really what you meant.

Coping with being indoors during inclement weather means for me reading, listening to the radio and pottering about with software. Since I'm temporary custodian of some DVD's that constitute Connor's birthday gift to Ewan I've had a few hours entertainment from them as well.

The romantic/sexual adventures of the DVD boys (can't name them for fear that Ewan reads this before the gift is handed over) made me laugh, but perhaps not as much as the similar rich vein of relationship gold mined by Nick Hornby in High Fidelity. I really was helpless with laughter at some points. I could not have got onto my feet to run off had the house suddenly burst into flames. His work may seem far from Billy Connolly but in terms of its accurate and affectionate observation of people's frailties it reminded me of Connolly at his best.

One book I'm still reading that examines people's frailties in a wholly different context is The Middle Sea (A History of the Mediterranean) by John Julius Norwich. It may sound heavy but the text flows smoothly and deftly over the massacres of the Crusades, the venalities of the Popes, the plots of Kings and Queens and the almost always bloody rise and fall of empires. And I've only got up to the fifteenth century. Don't ask me any questions about it though. While it's an entertaining read it's a struggle to retain what I've learnt for longer than it takes to make a cup of tea between chapters.

Playing with the software I already have is never enough, although I'm quite pleased with these Majorcan triplets, so I've been downloading bits and pieces. With the pitifully slow connection that we have here that can take time. The last file I downloaded took four and a half hours. Best not to be in a hurry. More often than not I find that I can do without whatever joys the software offered and I get rid of it. However that can be easier said than done. They don't always want to go, or at least not entirely. I'm currently labouring to find out how to remove a harmless but annoying trace left by one piece of translation software. Keeps me happy while it's raining at any rate.

I found myself in the sports pages of the regional press this week. I'd like to tell you that it was as a result of some sporting triumph but that would strain your credulity as well as being bullshit. I took part in the regional heat of a national pitch and putt competition that was covered by La Nouvelle Republique. For some unaccountable reason the picture they chose to illustrate the event show me prominently in the foreground. Unusually you can't link to an individual story on the paper's website so here's a rather fuzzy picture I've pinched from them. (Well they didn't ask my permission to flash my photo round the world.) I've also copied the story itself which they do allow. If you should want to read it you can download from here the newspaper page it appears on. It's preceded by a football story so don't think you've got the wrong page. There are a few typos in it, notably wherever the reporter says "part" he means "par".

You may be surprised at the age of the winner.

Oh my God, prescient or what? It was glittering. Check the opening sentence of the news report.

Yesterday's rain drove me off the golf course after only four holes and home to an early bath and the exciting discovery that Claire's Fringe production had earned a FOUR STAR review on its opening night.

Further glory was bestowed on it by a commendation at a glittering awards ceremony in the Gilded Balloon last night. (I wasn't there to see but it was bound to be glittering because that's the way we theatricals like it).

What will today's rain bring?

Yesterday’s rain sent me to the cinema. Unfortunately I didn’t join the throng of adults and children queuing to see Pixar’s latest animation “Ratatouille” but, swayed by his reputation, went instead to Chabrol’s “La fille coupée en deux”.

I read the crits afterwards. Would it have made any difference if I’d read them first? That depends on who I would have believed. Many were impressed, Le Monde amongst them. Not so Libération which said “his latest film doesn’t add anything new to the body of his work. Even worse, it often lapses into caricature, gives off an air of déjà-vu, and dare one say it, is slightly dated and tacky.”

The most succinct crit that I read and every word of which I endorse came from a Le Monde reader who said “Badly acted, without interest, boring……avoid it.”

My failure to reach a podium place continued yesterday but I was happy that it did.

Yesterday's Terruzzi-Puthod competition prizes were very fine trophies which I'm sure cost Enrico and Carmen, the sponsors, a few bob. Anyone winning one would have a delightful and permanent souvenir of their achievement - provided they had an appropriate display space.

That's something I'm very short of so on those grounds alone it was a relief not to win something that would have to join my various copper plaques in the roof.

Now there is almost always a draw after the prize-giving. All the cards go in but anyone who has won a proper prize is barred from getting a second one. My card was the first drawn and I went home with a litre bottle of Campari.

I love Campari and it was tastefully wrapped as well. A case of the last shall be first, no?

There are no bishops in the French upper house, least of all bishops whose frocks are in the gift of a Presbyterian; but even such a robustly secular nation whose legal separation of church and state in 1905 was the culmination of centuries of wrangling, enjoys a Christian public holiday or three.

Witness yesterday's Feast of the Assumption. Civil servants left their desks, postmen put away their sacks, doctors closed their consulting rooms, dentists ignored cries of pain, car salesmen turned off the ignition, teachers would have put down their chalk but they were already at leisure; all in memory of a doubtful historical episode in which Mary went to Heaven.

For retirees public holidays tend to be a minor nuisance. Shops are closed just when you need them and the buses run less frequently. But we put up with them, knowing that they will soon be over and we can get on with the serious business of life without work.

Two days hard work in the garden deserved a reward I thought.

I had been dreading tackling that grass again but it turned out to be just within the competence of the lawnmower, albeit with occasional breakdowns and the need to do the whole job twice at different cut settings to get to the “domesticated field” state that is as close to a lawn as it will ever be under my tutelage.

At least I didn’t have to do a preliminary sweep with the brushcutter. I needed it only for particularly heavy patches and where mower access was difficult. “Brushcutter” by the way seems to me a closer translation for débroussailleuse and one that has a much more satisfactorily macho ring to it than “strimmer”.

Yesterday I weeded the rockery and cut back bits of undergrowth (and overgrowth) so at 17.20 having set up my deckchair and poured myself a glass of ice-cold white wine I was more than a little annoyed when it started to rain.

Looks like summer is as far off as ever.

Apropos the suggestion that I hie me to Kabul here’s something Simon Jenkins had to say in the Guardian the other day:

“A reputed 10,000 NGO staff have turned Kabul into Klondike during the goldrush, building office blocks, driving up rents, cruising about in armoured jeeps and spending stupefying sums of other people's money, essentially on themselves.”

To read the entire article go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2143787,00.html

Paddy Ashdown, whose name is taken in vain in the article replied thus: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2145699,00.html

I was sitting quietly nursing a pint in the garden of the Dog and Shepherd near Brighton on Monday evening when I took a call from BT. I don’t know how they got hold of my mobile number but I’m glad they did. For the call was to tell me that they have agreed to refund me the 106 pounds and change that they charged me for connecting Dicksonfield to the wide world of telephony in October last. In addition they promised to provide me with excellent service in future. Does that mean they have turned over a new leaf?

This is the second bit of financial good news in almost as many days, for the car problem that threatened to prevent me from getting to Inverary fell within the tight constraints of my warranty so I’ll be refunded for that.

The car was fixed in time for me to get to the wedding, not without having to stop en route to buy a shirt, having forgotten to pack the one I intended to wear for the ceremony.

The Highlands were lovely and it was a brilliant bash. For Claire, who has had sight of the photos I took, the highlight was April’s shoes. I reproduce that picture here for the rest of the world to wonder at and may get around to making my other snaps available.

Claire’s interest is a validation of part of something I heard a female stand-up comic say the other day. For her act she dresses as drably androgynous as she can because otherwise, she claims, no-one will listen to her barbed wit. Instead the men will ruminate on the beauty of her knockers and the women will drool over her shoes.

Yesterday morning I rose at 4.45 and got to Barbansais around 18.30. It was a nice change to drive down from Dieppe but I don’t think I’ll make a habit of it. Traffic on non motorway roads can be abominably slow.

The grass is perhaps not as bad as it was when I arrived in May but the rockery is worse. Maybe I should take Ian’s advice (given in slightly slurred syllables at his son's wedding on Saturday) and head for the lucrative pastures of Kabul and leave the Barbansais garden to fester. NO chance.

More car trouble.

When I collected it on Saturday morning I felt it didn't pull too well in first but I just drove it home. Took it out yesterday for the first time since and had the same sensation. Coming back around 6pm from losing a few balls on Braids No. 1 it shook a bit and a wee picture of a spanner sprang up on the display accompanied by loud beeping and the text "Engine Fault".

This morning I should be en route to Inverary for April's wedding. Instead, after a restless night, I was at the garage before 8 o'clock demanding satisfaction (politely of course) since this cannot surely be the coincidental incidence of a fault just after it has left their hands.

If they don't fix it today, and they were not exactly optimistic about squeezing the job in, I'll have to hire a car or persuade the garage to lend me one and drive to Inverary tomorrow morning. No doubt the B&B will still want their money so this wedding looks like turning out to cost me more than my own did.

My car problem pales into insignificance however in comparison to David and Sally's.

They were en route to Barbansais on Sunday speeding along a Spanish motorway when one of their tyres went. The car left the carriageway and shot across the other one, turned on its side, ripped through a crash barrier and ended right way up in an oleander grove.

They stepped out essentially unhurt. Even their luggage was unhurt. Police and breakdown crew who attended regaled them with tales of recent fatalities and congratulated them on their astounding good fortune. Thanks to their membership of the Spanish equivalent of the RAC they were able to get back to Malaga where they are now keeping clear of cars for a while.

Their plans to spend August in France have been abandoned and Barbansais's fate is on hold again.

This has been an expensive week.

While I was away a recall notice arrived for my car. Some manufacturing defect or other had affected the front suspension of a number of Stilos of my car's generation and I should bring it in for a bit of free re-engineering. Being here I did.

But as forecast by Connor the garage suggested that some non-free work was needed. The car is of an age where the camshaft should be replaced they said. Has that been done? Check your records I said, its maintenance has been in your hands since new. It had not been done and dire warnings followed about the consequences of not doing it. Spend hundreds now to save thousands later is the mantra.

Warranty? Sorry, that's a serviceable item and its replacement at the manufacturer's recommended intervals is thus not covered. If you do replace it and it breaks then it's covered but if you don't it's not. We'll investigate that gearbox oil leak while we're at it.

Oh dear, we'll have to take the gearbox out and reseal it. You could run it for a few more months before doing the work but, well, you know....

Warranty? That's wear and tear, nobody covers wear and tear.

I saved myself twenty quid by refusing their offer to replace the missing hub cap. I'll blow that on lunch out with friends today.

I love my bus pass even more.

It was Hazel Irvine who presented the Open highlights on Sunday night though Allis crept in from time to time as footage of earlier commentaries was aired. It was a good round-up and I lost nothing by not staying at Carnoustie till the bitter end.

She must have been given the round-up as compensation for having, throughout the competition, to interview the players as they came off ( apart from when Gary Lineker was called upon to display the Spanish that he learnt when he played for Barcelona). He was pretty good and I believe he speaks Japanese as well.

Anyway Hazel is an enthusiastic and lively journalist but she drew the short straw there. How many ways are there of asking players how they feel about being well up the leader board or nowhere near the leader board? She found an extraordinary number and you have to hand it to the players as well for the number of variations on "I'm feeling just dandy" and "I'm totally hacked off".

On Sunday I suffered through going out without waterproof trousers but today it was a sun hat I should have had with me, at least for a couple of hours until the absence of rainwear made itself felt.

I sat in the sun for a couple of hours watching what was billed as the Dunedin Dancers 19th International Folk Dance Festival, or rather one of the six shows they are doing in venues ranging from Falkland Palace to Stirling Castle. This was in Holyrood on a stretch of grass more or less in front of the Scottish Parliament. There were groups from Austria, Lithuania and the Czech Republic as well as from Scotland.

It was pretty entertaining though I can't say that knee-slapping and yodelling is my thing. I preferred the energetic but elegant dancing of the Lithuanians and the comedy routines of the Czechs.

You can see what it looked like by clicking the picture below.

Folkdancing

Well that's the Open over. I was out of the door before 7 this morning in light rain that got heavier the nearer I got to Carnoustie. I had been wise enough to wear my hill-walking boots and my Goretex anorak but I hadn't thought to put on rainproof trousers. That proved to be a cardinal error. The rain that poured from the sky ran down my anorak and onto my trousers and soaked in. When I sat down in any of the grandstands I suffered the double whammy of thighs lashed by rain and moisture attack from below.

Add to that the fact that I'd had to bin my multi-coloured golf umbrella shortly after arrival when a couple of spokes snapped off and ripped through it in the wind. Just as well really. I was able to keep my hands relatively warm in my pockets rather than allowing them to freeze holding an umbrella. I simply never thought of gloves.

By lunchtime I was beginning to think of going home and watching the rest on the tele. The prospect of being exposed yet again to Peter Allis's dire commentary held me back long enough for an Arbroath smokie ingested under lightening skies to revive my spirits and I stuck it out till it was obvious that a four hole play-off, and possibly more, would be necessary. Sharing the last train with 50 thousand others didn't appeal so I snuck off.

I'll see the play-off in the highlights later tonight. With luck that will be commented by Gary Linecker and not the awful Allis.

The golf by the was thoroughly enjoyable and the course is even more beautiful than when I first saw it. If it weren't £115 a round I'd be a regular.

I've been a bit of a couch potato this week watching the final day of the Scottish Open on TV last Sunday and for the last three days the British Open. I'm off to see it in the flesh tomorrow and it looks like I'll have to wrap up warm and take a brolly.

I've also been keeping an eye on the French golf scene because two kids from the Dryades have been playing in the National Youth Championship this week. They got there by virtue of their performances in lower level tournaments. One more of our youngsters got as far as the regional competition but didn't do quite well enough to qualify for the national championship.

The format of the national championship is two strokeplay rounds and then a knockout matchplay tournament amongst the top 32 or 16 players for each age group. Antoine didn't make it past the qualifying in the 13 and 14 year old boys competition but Celia was third in the qualifying and made it to the semi-final of the 11 and 12 year old girls which is a brilliant performance.

Traditionally French presidents have pardoned a selection of criminals as part of the 14th of July Bastille day celebrations and the system has to some extent relied on this to ease the chronic overcrowding that exists in French jails as it does in English ones, but Sarko is made of sterner stuff. While the country braces itself for protests within the jails one prisoner made his own arrangements and helipcoptered his way out - for the second time would you believe.

On Saturday night though, we were celebrating, albeit belatedly, Siobhan's birthday rather than French democracy. We had an excellent meal at The Apartment. My dos de cabillaud was delicious and the yoghourt topped with ameretto and pistachio crumble that I had for pudding can only be described as mouth-watering - well up to French standards although at an exchange rate of one to one. Mysteriously Ross and I both ended up with tomato sauce like stains on our trouser legs although none of our party had anything to eat that could have caused that. Did the waitress overhear our opinion that she was a bit uppity and take revenge?

After the meal we lingered in the Caledonian Hotel bar waiting for someone else to pitch up before we went clubbing. They had a whisky menu listing dozens if not hundreds of 35ml doses of the hard stuff at various prices. Here's what 35ml of whisky looks like.

Would you pay £250 for it? That was the top price. I wonder how many they sell?

The clubbing was a bit disappointing. I had been a little shy of going, having only recently learnt to handle expressions like "mosh pit" without feeling silly but decided that I owed it to myself to experience the new. Well what I experienced was very much what I experienced at the Kirkcaldy YWCA in the late fifties (Heartbreak Hotel, Rock Around the Clock) and Edinburgh University Students Union in the sixties (These Boots are Made for Walking). I'm not sure that there was any music more up to date than that.

There was a floor show. The costumes were fine and the girls were pretty but at Kitwe Little Theatre their routine would have earned the traditional "don't call us, we'll call you". There was gambling of sorts with monopoly money that I never managed to get hold of - a measly little roulette table and a blackjack table squeezed into the corner of a marquee. I ran a better table myself in Nairobi in the seventies.

I'm sure my mistake was that I didn't realise that being called Vegas this clubnight was a tribute to the past rather than a harbinger of the future.

But it passed a pleasant and relaxed few hours and to underline the known fact that Edinburgh is a small city I bumped into some friends at 2.30 am on my way home.

I had a good run up from Barbansais to UK on Monday and spent a very pleasant couple of days in Brighton. As always I was well received and it was a bonus to see Sarah, last seen when she came to my production of The Sisterhood in Edinburgh in 99. She's not a lot more respectful of elderly friends than she was thirty years ago but I probably wouldn't like her so much if she were.

The Zambia charity golf match went well and Albert and André, respectively Sarah's husband and stepson were in a winning team. They kindly shared their hard won Jacob's Creek in the garden that evening.

I was up before 7 on Thursday and after nine and a half hours of tedious motoring made it to Edinburgh.

Notwithstanding its infamy as the headquarters of France's collaborationist government during WWII Vichy is a town well worth a visit. It was a fashionable spa during the Belle Epoque and the splendid parks and buildings of that era are beautiful. You can also still wallow in mud and sip sulphurous water if that's what lights your candle.

My recent visit was to meet up with my fellow golfers from the four leagues at the Sporting Club de Vichy whose English welcome page could do with a touch of teacher's red pencil. The effort of writing that page in English seems to have exhausted the webmaster since the rest of the site is in French. Perhaps that's just as well.

Thanks to their own or their partners' illnesses my clubmates intending to go cried off but I rendezvoused with Ernest, a genial and sociable Swiss, for a practice round the day before the competition and we wandered around the town a bit in the evening and enjoyed a good dinner at "L'Escargot qui tète" meaning "The Snail that suckles". Well for all I know they do.

Amazingly Ernest and the waitress found that they had a mutual passion in hunting. I say amazingly but that's probably because my statistical frame of reference for waitresses who hunt is UK biased and based on occasional accidental exposures to episodes of The Archers that included references to hunting.

He had I think hoped to find another mutual passion when he opened conversation with "Je ne suis pas drageur mais je vous trouve très.........." but he confided to me later that Viagra does not agree with him (something to do with being diabetic) so the result of that hunt might have been a disappointment to his quarry had he run her to ground.

The competition was fun but not crowned with as much success as the following Sunday's in which my laurels were gained for being the least bad third division player to have taken part in both rounds of the AGF competition. The laurels in this case being a magnum of jolly good plonk from their Bordeaux vineyards.

From her American exile a fellow KHS alumnus (or is she an alumna) was reminiscing in an email about wee Gordie. He was mocked apparently, by big girls like her, for the fact that when he visited his chum Murray Elder he was forbidden to pass through the Olympia Arcade. Those familiar with the Kirkcaldy of yesteryear will know that both his physical and his moral welfare were being protected by this prohibition.

Now I didn't know Gordon from Adam in those days, though in that good old Scots phrase "A kent his faither". I had left school by the time he started but clearly his name has become familiar to me since. And I also recognised the name Murray Elder. I put that down to the fact that Baron Elder of Kirkcaldy's former name had come up over the years in the context of Scottish politics.

But then it dawned on me that this must be (and I have since verified it) the wee lad who in his first year at secondary school had a crush on Fiona, then in her last year, and would follow her about with yearning eyes. Did he not even present her with flowers?

I shall think of her as the Baroness in future.

Having just posted the tale about Usque conabor I went off to correct the Wikipedia entry on KHS in that respect to discover that someone had got there before me. So I'm not the only one anxious to protect the place's reputation.

“Oh wud some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oorsells as ithers see us!”

lamented Burns, and on Wednesday France Info became that power for the day.

They decamped to London to cover the changeover from Blair to Brown. Between 7 in the morning and 7 at night they had three two hour slots in which they reported the events of the day and looked at aspects of British society as diverse as; the changes in popular music over the Blair years, the City, immigration, binge drinking, and the structure and effectiveness of job centres.

There was lots of vox pop as well as the more familiar voices of those commentators who are trotted out regularly on French radio because they speak the language. I recognise Denis McShane’s voice for one, more readily when I hear him speaking French than English.

Looked at through French eyes then we appear to be an economic success with social problems. Not so different as being looked at through British eyes is it?

They broadcast Gordon’s touching wee reference to the old school motto but as it was overlaid with a French commentary I didn’t notice whether he said he’d strive to the “utmost” or to the “outmost”, discovering that controversy on various newsblogs later. But he said it in English, wi’ or wi’oot an archaic Scotticism, and I knew that our motto was in Latin although despite carrying it on my breast for six formative years I was damned if I could remember it.

So I hied me to the Kirkcaldy High School website and found “Usque conabor” which classical scholars amongst you will realise is a very satisfactory rendering of “I will try my ut/outmost”. Not being much of a classical scholar I realised it thanks to the internet. “Nisi google frustra” as they whisper in academe today.

But on the website is another slogan – “Working together to improve” and in the prospectus this appears to be offered as a translation of “Usque conabor”, a fact noted sneeringly on a number of newsblogs. I also found a website in a slightly sorry state of uptodateness as witness a page on which people are being welcomed back from their 2005 Christmas break and much more of the same.

Much concerned by such sloppiness in my alma mater I decided to take the school to task and was surprised to get an almost instant response, apologising for the state of the website with a promise to fix it in the hols and explaining that “Working together to improve” had been adopted as part of the process of fusing together KHS and Templehall on one site in 1993 and not as a replacement for “Usque conabor”.

I hastened to let The Herald, The Daily Telegraph and others know that KHS can tell a hawk from a handsaw but I wonder if Gordon can. Should he not have chosen that more collegiate slogan for his government of all the talents, or even the third slogan that KHS added to their armoury in 2005 when the current heid bummer arrived - “Only the best will do”?

Dropped in on some English friends this week to find that the two pet geese they had last year are now four. Not a case of natural reproduction but of what I regard as unnatural purchase.

The French with whom I had dinner that evening would certainly have thought so. Around here if you keep hens, ducks, geese, rabbits; really anything other than cats and dogs; they’re for the pot. There were eight of us, all acquainted through golf. It was a very convivial occasion. One guest delivered his party piece which he said was a poem in English. Well it could have been Chinese for all I understood of it, but I applauded along with everyone else before giving into temptation and taking the Mickey. No wonder he preferred Spanish at school.

Spanish and golf came together later in the week when Sally sought a second opinion on a translation. The one that amused me was where she rendered “en caso de duda tirar una bola provisional” as “in case of doubt throw a provisional ball”. I had to point out that golfers only throw their balls at moments of great distress when all doubt has gone.

Last night the Roches brass band did a tour of the villages to celebrate La Fête de la Musique (48 hours after the official date but so what). It’s a pity they look like a bunch of peasants on a low loader, even though that’s what they are, because they have quite a snappy maroon uniform. They look good in it and I don’t understand why they did this shindig in mufti. They and their entourage of following groupies (families I expect) far outnumbered the residents of Barbansais but we all turned out and Pierre the farmer supplied a couple of bottles for their refreshment after we’d been treated to sufficient oompah, oompah.

They call themselves l’Espérance de Roches. There must surely be a connection, linguistic or otherwise with the Band of Hope of yesteryear. I have meant to investigate this before, must get onto it.

A linguistic gem was my recent discovery that the French for hubcap is enjoliveur – something that prettifies. That’s just what Connor and I decided their purpose was when we were discussing my hubcap losses.

The week has ended on a low note. I have slipped back into the third division from whence I was promoted two years ago. A real ball-throwing moment.

It has continued to rain almost relentlessly since I last posted but we are not quite under water yet. This is not me in the Creuse but Ewan in the sea off the Maldives during his recent holiday there.

Tuesday afternoon turned out fine though and although I didn't quite break 100 I played my best round of the year so far.

Other than that the week has been domestic. I gave the barn a bit of a Spring clean and I got a plumber in to fix a persistent leak. That was not without its annoyances given that he didn't turn up for the first rendezvous. Had to go to a funeral apparently. Could be, but isn't that the adult version of "the cat ate my homework, miss".

A friend is going to do a bit of plastering for us and I did some preparatory work to fill in a rather large gap with plasterboard. As usual what looks like a rectangle turns out to be a complicated polygon so you spend ages shaving little bits off the plasterboard here and there to make it fit. The gap was so deep that I had to put in two layers of board so all in all I spent the best part of half a day at what at first sight would seem to be a half hour job.

I got another new tyre. That's not a new requirement but the final tidying up of the incident of 6th May. Why did it take so long? I refer you to "the cat ate my homework,miss".

In my capacity as Barbansais accountant Sally sent me some bank statements recently and I noticed that one of the local taxes (paid by DD in December) was substantially higher that it had been the year before. I had a vague memory of a plan to collect TV licence charges along with local taxes but we couldn't find the bill to verify this. So yesterday I set off in pursuit of the truth.

The truth was that we hadn't got the bill because they'd cocked up the change of address I gave them last year. It's an interesting debating point whether the fact that they hadn't changed the address on the other local tax bill counts as a cock-up or not.

Anyway it was indeed the case that we'd been charged for a TV licence so I've been in touch with the relevant authority. They were happy to accept my verbal assurance on the phone that we don't have a TV so the 2007 bill will omit it but I've had to write a letter to reclaim our 116 euros for 2006.

Maybe that will pay for the water that has leaked away.

Do you suppose it could be a pan-European gang stealing them to order? Two in two months can’t be mere chance. Fiat Stilo hub caps that is. At this rate my annual hub cap replacement bill will be twice my road tax. I shall have to borrow the “just in time” technique from industry and wait till I’m ready to sell the car before replacing any more.

My trip to Aurillac was lovely. I followed scenic routes in fine weather there and back and the town itself has a very attractive old centre. The golf course gave exceptionally fine views of the mountains of the Massif Central and was itself very pretty. My results were mediocre both on the course and in the prize draw but it beats spending the day at an office desk.

It’s a pity it clashed with the big screen showing of “Cold” at the Leith Festival but that’s life in the fast lane for you.

My grass lives in the fast lane and zoomed away during my absence. But after getting back from today’s regular Sunday golf competition (regular Sunday result) I razed it to the ground.

I’m playing competitive golf yet again tomorrow. This is the annual Château de Poinsouze campsite do where we all get invited to dinner afterwards. Should be a gas if last year is anything to go by.

Pressure’s off on Tuesday – 11 euro lunch followed by social golf.

Denied cinematic distraction in bad weather I often find myself web surfing. A recent exciting www discovery was that cinematic distraction of an above average degree of interest is available at Edinburgh Filmhouse on Thursday 14^th of June.

See the Napier University graduation movies on the big screen.

Let’s hear it for my top nominations: “Ladies Who Lunch”, “Tears of Milk” and “Staccato”.

Sunday’s golf competition was cancelled through lack of numbers so I could have gone to the flicks after all, but it was a nice day so I decided to potter in the garden. I weeded and hacked back vigorously, ran the mower through the grass again and finally sank into my deckchair aperitif in hand rejoicing that at last summer had come.

The competition was a Rotary sponsored event. They usually manage to get their troops out so I was surprised at the cancellation. The explanation I was given was that there was a clash with Mothers’ Day. I thought it was quite touching that so many preferred lunch with mum but a cynical friend suggested they were just making sure of their inheritance.

Pluvious Spring returned on Monday morning but I braved the afternoon’s mild drizzle to get my window boxes and doorside pots planted up.

They don’t look much as yet but I expect them to be riotous within weeks. Most of the plants therein should be able to be transplanted at the end of the summer to edge us further towards the target of a full rockery.

Whatever the weather I’ll give them a good doze of water tonight because I’m off in the morning to Aurillac to play at Le Golf de Haute Auvergne. Given that Auvergne is where almost all the best cheeses come from, the prizes will be worth fighting for and I play a mean hand in the prize draw.