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.