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.