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.