La Fête départementale des sports de nature took place at Chateauroux over the Whitsun weekend. The départment being Indre where I play golf rather than Creuse where I live.

Although I take “de nature” to mean outdoor, of the 39 activities listed in the programme one or two seemed intrinsically indoor to me – basketball and judo for instance. Nothing to stop you doing them outdoors I suppose except the weather. And the weather was not kind on any of the three days.

The organisation was impressive. On arrival I reported to reception where I was issued with a natty sleeveless navy blue fleece embroidered with the event’s logo and a badge to wear round my neck. Next step was to collect my individual insulated picnic hamper. This little container held a tasty baguette, a slice of pizza, a brownie, an apple, a banana, an energy bar, a bottle of water and a coke. It’s eminently useful, in fact designed to be attached to your bicycle handlebars and has a transparent sleeve on top to slip your map into. This is the pre GPS model of course.

The setting was super. It was in a large park and the various sports were strung out around a central lake which was the venue for all the watery stuff.

Mind you on the Sunday you could have kayaked your way around the whole park such was the rainfall. That didn’t put off the youngsters who came to whack golf balls into the wild grey yonder. We had about ten mats laid out for people to play from and a sort of bouncy castle as a target. My job was to give basic instruction and supervise the punters. I was thoroughly drenched by the end of the day despite my umbrella.

Golf balls and clubs can be dangerous and in spite of our efforts at maintaining tight control one poor lad got a club full in the face. I believe what happened was that when he ran out of balls he bent down to pinch one from the guy next to him just as he swung his club backwards. He was hurt bad if the noise he made on the way to the ambulance was anything to go by.

The weather on Monday was better in as much as there was less rain but it was cold. Again the punters were not put off and right up to 5.30 when we closed there was an endless stream. By the end we were one of the few activities still running so people kept coming.

It was quite fun despite the weather. All the kids were very enthusiastic and some of them obviously sporty. Others might be better to concentrate on reading.

There were a few adults and one I was given charge of turned out to be a member of the départmental Olympic committee. He was probably not a man whose vote counts for much in allocating the Olympic games to anywhere but my teaching him golf seemed a bit of a cheek. However I suppose I am better qualified to do that than I was to teach the Old Tyme Music Hall chorus to sing and I got through that undetected. Next challenge brain surgery, though I believe that’s already been done.

My golf trip to Tours last week was a bit disappointing. It started off well. It was a lovely day as I drove up to Vierzon and then followed the valley of the Cher through pleasant countryside and picturesque little towns to Joué-lès-Tours, a rather undistinguished suburb of Tours where after a mildly frustrating search I found my hotel. My problem is that I can't hold more than the first two instructions that a direction giver imparts, sometimes not even that. So by the third junction I no longer know whether it's "keep right on" or "turn right". It often proves to have been "left" in fact.

I found the golf course in the adjacent and prettier town of Ballan-Miré very easily however. At least I found it easily on Thursday. On Friday I was spiralling round the town centre for ages.
It was late in the afternoon, very hot and I'd had a long drive so I decided against a reconnaissance round. I just strolled about and admired the magnificent course, had a drink and a chat in the splendid clubhouse and went back to Joué for a meal.

First disappointment; in Joué there are: a pizzaria, a couple of takeaway pizza joints and a snack bar that closes quite early but only one restaurant. I settled for a snack. I ate in the restaurant on the Friday night and by nine o'clock they had served exactly four people and two more arrived as I left. It's a wonder there is even one restaurant if that's a typical Friday night. My bill arrived accompanied not by a couple of mints or delicately wrapped sweets but by this lollipop. Somewhat incongruous in an establishment all done up in the traditional red and gold of fin de siècle splendour and sporting fine cutlery set on table-covers of crisp white linen.

Friday dawned warm and sunny. My tee time was not till one o'clock so I explored a lakeside park not far away, immaculately kept as all French public spaces seem to be, and then went on to the course for an early lunch on the château terrace and some gentle preparation.

We were on the fourth hole when the storm broke. As much thunder and lightning as you could ask for and buckets of rain. Play was suspended. We sheltered unsuccessfully emerging half-soaked when the storm's fury was spent. Play resumed after an hour. We were on the seventh hole when torrential rain poured from above and borne by wild winds smashed in from the side. Lightning was further away but we couldn't continue playing. We were near the practice area at the time so sought shelter under a tin roofed structure there. When the wind and rain eventually eased off, having heard no signal, we restarted but hadn't got far when someone came out of the clubhouse gesticulating and shouting that it was all over. The rain on a cold tin roof had clearly masked the klaxon.

A great disappointment because it's a lovely course and I would dearly like to have had my full round. I shall have to go again sometime. There was a minor recompense in that all the prizes were put into a draw and I carried off a bottle of very nice Chinon. I know it's very nice because I've already drunk it.

So on Saturday I went into Tours.

Not an unpleasant town by any means but not as immediately impressive as say Orleans. Here's a picture of the cathedral peeping through some trees. Inside the cathedral I found that the altar sheltered a rock. Now I could find no explanation but this must be, if not the entire stone, then surely a fragment of the one that was rolled away on the third day. Why else would you keep a great big rock in your church?

Why would you keep a fountain in your town? Well in the case of Tours it's to commerorate the work of the back-room boys of the American Expeditionary Force that came to Europe in 1917. Usually memorials are to the fighting men but this one celebrates the achievements of those who built a thousand miles of railway and innumerable bridges, who procured weapons and clothing, who delivered food and equipment to the two million men at the front. Tours was the headquarters of this Service of Supply.

I had a very nice lunch before I left, in particular a pudding that was described as raspberry crumble but not as I know it. The raspberry ran through the crumble like a ruby lode and the crumble itself was of a smoothness and delicacy akin to molten demerara. Yummy.

The storm didn't break last night so I got another cut done.

Now I can set off for Tours this morning light in heart.

I'd be even lighter in heart if the internet service we have here hadn't taken 20 minutes to get from the point at which I'd logged on to the ISP to the point at which I was able to start typing this post. It almost makes me believe that BT broadband is worth the money.

By dint of being very unFrench and working through the lunch-hour I got the rest of the garden beaten into submission before 3pm. Although I was cutting in straight lines I ended up with a final triangle of thick matted growth such as I haven’t come across in a long time. Yesterday’s tactic of skimming through with the front wheels in the air didn’t get me far and the alternative of driving straight at it on all fours and withdrawing just before the engine stalls wasn’t much better. I ended up trimming round the edges with only half the blade engaged until finally it was à poil.

I’d like to trim another inch or so off the whole garden this evening since otherwise it will be Monday or at best Sunday evening before I have another chance but the sky is blackening to the west and the atmosphere is close. Sure signs of an approaching summer thunderstorm. Maybe it will burst while still some distance away.

No doubt for a peasant hardened by working fifty years man and boy on the land, raking up 2000 square metres of grass cuttings counts as light duties. For a pen-pusher like me it’s tedious, back-breaking toil relieved by long moments of leaning on the rake thinking “*!!??*@#”.

Having mown the jungle down and got the cuttings cleared the grass was still too long, wet and tangled to operate the lawnmower normally so I found myself pushing it along with its front wheels in the air and the blade whirling wildly to snip off the tops, gradually lowering the angle of attack on repeated traverses of the same section until it was possible for the machine to chug along under its own steam with all four wheels on the ground. That mind you at the highest possible cut setting.

The only plus point of yesterday’s labour was that it gave me 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. On balance though I think I’d rather be interrupted.

Not that this job is finished. I’ve only got beyond the jungle clearance stage for half the garden and I’ve delayed my golf outing departure till tomorrow so that I can make headway on that half and re-cut the “almost lawn” a couple of notches lower. All that for fear of what four days untrammelled growth might bring.

Jungle with a hidden metre rule

Twixt jungle and field

Overgrown field – you can now see the metre rule

Finally by 8pm almost lawn.

On Sunday my car’s electronic information system told me that a brake light had gone so yesterday I verified that this was indeed true. I don’t have a great deal of faith in these systems ever since I failed to convince a Zambian policeman that my brake light could not be out of order since the Honda’s electronic warning system reported all OK.

Perhaps as a reaction to last year’s brakes problem and its aftermath I find myself anxious to sort out any failure without delay. So I consulted the handbook. It looked feasible DIY if I had a spanner of the correct size and type. Of course none of the spanners in the barn fitted the bill so I decided that I’d just have to pay for 15 minutes of a mechanic’s time.

That’s when I discovered that there is no longer a Fiat garage in Gueret. Part of the rationale for buying this particular car was the proximity of an agent. I’d have been better off sticking to Rover. They may be dead but their vehicles can still be fixed here.

However there is a man who reckons that he knows his way around a Fiat so I went to him. No problem, fix it in a jiffy – but hadn’t I noticed that the left front direction indicator was not working. Well no. It’s difficult to spot that from the driving seat and the all knowing electronics seem to have missed it. Shame that you need to dismantle half the car to get at that bulb. And disconnect the electronics. They told me it was Saturday 1^st January 2000 when I got the car back. He only charged me an hour’s labour but I’m sure it took an hour and a half.

I love my bus pass.

I got the strimmer back a few days ago. It was, as I suspected, the spark plug. Even I could have changed that - given the tools. Aye there's the rub. You can't do everything with a Swiss Army knife, and in any event I've lost mine.

I managed to get through chopping the grass to bits on Friday and Saturday and laboured for a couple of hours at ridding the fosse septique area of weeds. We planted cotoneaster there the first year we spent here based on my experience in Mountcastle where cotoneaster spread like wildfire and smothered everything that lay in its path. At Barbansais it has grown, but much more slowly and I had to hack away the weeds to reveal it. The smotherer smothered.

The grass cuttings now have to be raked up. My peasant friends tell me to let them dry off first but the weather is such that I can't see that happening fast and more grass is busy pushing its way up. As it is I'm not convinced that the result so far has brought the grass into a state that the lawnmower will be able to tackle. I can see myself having to attack it again with the strimmer.

Better results on the website front. Google now gets me. Googling "Kitwe Little Theatre" gave 66 references. My website and my Great North Road entry were on the second page. If you google "Hamlet" you get over 21 million references. If you then search for "Kitwe" within those results you get 670 references and my site is number three. For top listing google "Hamlet" then "Kitwe Little Theatre" and I'm first of three.

Why would anyone do that though?

But my GNR listing has brought me several contacts. No-one has yet come up with photos to plug the gaps in my record, that being the object of the exercise, but it has been fun hearing from "my old Kitwe home where all the dogs are called futsaak and no-one knows why" as the song neatly puts it.

My seniors golf outings will be a little less bright for a while. My chum Jean has suffered a hernia, will be operated on soon and then have to leave his clubs in the garage for a couple of months. That brought this coming week's gang of three down to two but now John's wife is ill so it's just me. There are others going but just for the day whereas we were making a wee holiday of it.

I got stuck in to knocking spots off the grass on Saturday but after an hour or so my machine developed a cough. I thought it was just fuel running low but despite filling it up I couldn’t get the damn thing to start. Having no suitable tools to take out the spark plug, the sooting up of which I suspect to be culpable, I had to abandon the job and take it down to Gueret on Monday.

I had to go there anyway because I’d managed to shred a tyre on one of the stones lining the rock garden as I swung left to get a bead on the hanger. The little Rover didn’t need so much room. Of course I’ve ended up buying more than one after being advised that the gendarmerie would not be satisfied by the state of two further tyres should they chance to run their fingers over them. Funny that the MOT fairy passed them a few weeks earlier.

While waiting for the tyres I had a stroll around the town centre and noticed that the rather good bookshop has gone, to be replaced by what seems to be the only growth industry around here – an estate agent, bilingual French/English descriptions of course.

Pending repair of the débroussailleuse I’m doing some gentle weeding of the rock garden.

Tuesday saw a downpour but with others I trudged valiantly over the golf course and earned myself three balls for having completed the round unlike so many fainter hearts who had given up partway. Didn’t altogether make up for those I lost but psychologically very satisfying.

On Thursday the weather was much better and Jean and I had a splendid day at Val de l’Indre; a very pleasant lunch in the clubhouse and 18 holes over a course in excellent condition. We’re playing there again in a competition on Sunday so this was in part a preparation and reminder of what the course is like. Its main challenge consists in avoiding the woods that line most fairways on both sides. If you are lucky enough to find a ball that you’ve carelessly sliced or hooked into the woods your problems have only begun. Threading it out between the trees can be a multi-shot adventure.

The big news on the way home was that T.Blair has at last told us when he’s going. Both French and British radio stations since have been delivering more or less qualified encomia. I was heartened to hear Dennis McShane this morning stoutly defending British public services in his impeccable French. The French tend to have an overblown opinion of their public sector, especially the health system, but did you know for example that there is a three month waiting list to get your eyes tested here. Anyway thank God the man has put us out of our misery and now we can get on with criticising Gordon Brown.

It doesn’t take long for new leaders to feel the rough side of the public’s tongue and poor wee Nicolas Sarkozy has already been castigated for his post election break on board a millionaire chum’s yacht in the Med. Shades of Tony and Cliff or Jack and Kirsty. Talk about mountains and molehills.

My postman, whom last year’s readers may well remember, has not been slow in giving me his opinion on the new president. “Hungarian” was his first comment, delivered in a tone that rather called into question what I took to be his attachment to his fellow man. He now sports a very Leninesque goatee but denies being a man of the left and declares himself a simple worker. Coupled with the “Hungarian” comment that makes me wonder which party best represents his ideas - must enquire further.

In our conversations I am cast as the Anglo-Saxon ultra liberal so I find myself looking for arguments to defend company bosses being paid a thousand or more times as much as their workers (a practice I suppose I deplore but that leaves me relatively unmoved – more fools the shareholders that let them away with it) or to support Sarkozy’s fanciful (it seems to me) idea that allowing people to earn untaxed overtime (at time and a quarter) will release a sufficiently large wave of buying power to revitalise the economy.

Recently, in order to publicise my Kitwe Little Theatre material and hopefully plug its photographic gaps I signed up to The Great North Road. (That’s a sort of Central African Friends Reunited.) There was some administrative delay but it has now come through and has already borne fruit. I got an email today from Barry Woodrow who was a prominent NKAS member in the 70s. In those distant days Ewan was friendly with a girl called Lynne who according to Barry is very keen to re-establish contact. I await with great interest how that develops.

The internet connection I have here is dial-up and is pitifully slow compared to broadband. My major use of it is for email and my Hotmail inbox has been taking an age to display so I spent literally hours today deleting 1000 emails, guessing that the need to marshall all that jazz has not helped display delays. Fingers crossed it’s helped.

I came across a rodent corpse last night. Perhaps he’s the greedy chap who guzzled his way through my poison grain. There’s also what one might delicately call some animal spoor in the barn. I expect properly experienced country people could tell at once the culprit but all I can deduce is that it was bigger than a mouse but smaller than a dog. That narrows the field don’t you think. Maybe the polecat/weasel creature who spent one winter in our roof decided to try more extensive premises this year.

I met a couple of chums for lunch and a game of golf today. A very tasty three course lunch plus coffee and wine for 11 euros put me in an excellent mood and my first strike of a golf ball for months reflected the carefree rapture engendered by the meal. It was a stotter. The succeeding 100 or so strokes were a mixed bag but I was not too disappointed at my performance on this first outing of the season.

When I got home I switched on my mobile for the sheer pleasure of seeing that little signal line for it seems that Vodaphone and Bouygtel have got their act together and my mobile can now be used at Barbansais. Lo and behold there was a message for me to the effect that a seat had fallen to the SNP at 1.17am. Well I had just heard on the radio that the SNP have won one seat more than Labour overall so things have clearly moved on apace since the early hours. Is there dancing in the streets now that the shackles of thraldom to New labour have been cast off? Is Jack demanding a rerun because of all those spoilt ballot papers?

I shall have to go online as soon as this lightning has gone away to get up to date.

I had a good run down to Dover although the traffic was nose to tail all the way. The Stilo is certainly a lot more comfortable than my little Rover and the radio is very good at changing frequencies to keep the same station coming.

Women’s Hour featured an item from Zambia about domestic violence. A number of ladies of a more traditional bent expressed the view that being beaten by your husband was a sign of his love for you – his desire to ensure that shortcomings were brought to your notice so that you would learn how to be a better wife.

I don’t suppose many of my readers will see it that way and indeed it is not how modern Zambia operates. Men are now being prosecuted for domestic violence and a refuge has been established. I remember when living there that women often got their own back. A favourite retaliation was to pour boiling cooking oil over the offender. That rather put his gas on a peep but I guess it’s not the modern solution.

I stopped only once and had a coffee from a Coffee Nation machine. That’s the machine whose manufacture was used to lure Connor south.

I made such good time that I caught an earlier ferry than anticipated. Norfolk Lines have bought a new boat since I last sailed with them. There was lots of comfortable lounging about space and I opened a book in eager anticipation of a good read only to realise that I had already read it. No problem really since I’ve no idea how it develops or ends, such is my power of memory. That’s just as well since it’s a detective story. Siobhan lent it to me and I think she must have recommended it to me before and that I read it on one of the occasions that I was staying at Craigmillar Park.

I hit the road after breakfast yesterday and had a smooth ride down to Barbansais apart from the crawl around Paris where the traffic is even worse than our motorways.

The house is in great shape and the countryside around is looking lovely. I nipped down to Gueret for some essentials via my favourite rural route. It was altogether delightful. Why sell?

As I said the house is fine if dusty and awash with dead insects. There is very little sign of rodent activity. One of the tasty piles of lethal grain I left has been devoured but the rest look untouched. The garden though is a jungle. Josette said that they had a fair amount of rain in March and a very hot April so grass and weeds have simply bounced up in glee.

There’s a rock garden hiding in here and this is what awaits my mower round the back.

Anyway it will have to wait a few days. I’ve been organising things inside today and tomorrow it’s golf so the grass and weeds have a stay of execution.

I listened to Ségolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy in their head to head debate last night. It lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes. I can’t see the Scottish electorate’s attention span managing an equivalent event though I’m sure our politicians would be up for it. Nor do I imagine we have many citizens as committed as my neighbours Jean (late 80s) and Josette (late 70s) who are off to Paris on Saturday to vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

I’m looking forward to hearing all about the Scottish election tonight. I hope it’s an interesting result.