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.