If you are heading south for the New Year to escape our sub zero temperatures why not take a young gannet with you.

That's the appeal I heard this morning from the North Berwick Seabird Centre. Apparently a chick was deserted when the 150,000 or so gannets that breed on the Bass Rock left for warmer climes in October.

He was rescued from the rock a few weeks ago as you can see in the video but according to this report he now needs a lift at least as far as Gibraltar to have a chance of growing up so if there's room in your executive jet give the Centre a ring.

I thought my electronic Christmas card was pretty neat but swelled with pride on learning from my webhost on Christmas Eve that my bandwidth allowance for the month had been exceeded and the site would be off-line until 1st January.

Goodness me! The original recipients must have been so impressed that they had to share the pleasure with all their contacts, who in turn......until bingo - hits of google like proportions forced my site off the road.

An apologetic email arrived on Boxing Day. Turns out to have been a flaw in the bandwidth usage checking program. It's easily done. I once caused lots of grief by coding > instead of >= or maybe the other way around. In any event the supply of certain plastic oddments to Woolworths was thrown into disarray, but I don't believe that to have contributed materially to their demise.

Edinburgh readers will recognise this as a bus tracker. They have been sprouting up beside our bus stops over the last couple of years and tell you how long it will be until the next bus arrives.

They are a lot more useful than a printed timetable displayed in an awkward corner of an unlit bus shelter. But bus trackers have not reached all parts of the city.

I was out at the Western General the other day getting a yellow fever jag and arrived at the stop for my return journey. No tracker, so I peered at the timetable. According to that I had arrived one minute before the single solitary bus that passes that stop was due.

After eight minutes shivering in the wind and rain, the shelter was against vertical weather only - my bald head would have been protected from sunstroke , I gave up and set off on foot. You've guessed the rest; I had not gone 50 yards when the 42 swept past.

Now that was annoying but less so than the recurrence of lift lunatic activity. Here is yesterday's
find. What is to be done?

And much less annoying than having a mouse run up your leg inside your jeans as you sit peacefully at the table. But it won't do it again. I just hope that's a warning to any of its little friends who may be lurking around. Photographs of the corpse are available on request.

Christmas cards are starting to arrive. I really want to abandon physical cards entirely in favour of wholly electronic greetings but I may have to send one or two. I shan't be able to send one to whoever forgot to sign their card so I hope they also read my blog and get pleasure from these, which I offer to all my readers with best wishes for the festive season and its aftermath.

Iain Heggie's "A Wholly Healthy Glasgow" was a Fringe (or maybe even EIF) hit that I saw and thoroughly enjoyed sometime in the 80s. I hadn't seen anything else of his since - a fact I regret especially since his biog tells me that he has adapted Marivaux, a big fav of mine - until last night.

"The Tobacco Merchant's Lawyer" is also a Glasgow based piece but very different. It's a fairly gentle, even whimsical story set in the 18th century whose running gag is its protagonist's astonishment at a medium's forecasts of what's to be in the Glasgow of the future - horseless carriages, a receptacle box containing a five inch high town crier in every drawing-room (the same town crier what's more), water closets even for the poor, and so forth. It was a script that raised laughter in other ways as well.

A friend I met in the bar decried the fact that much of the humour sprang from local references and maintained that even if the references had been to his home town of Dundee he would have held the same opinion. I suppose it may seem a slightly cheap way of getting an audience on side, although one might question to what extent an Edinburgh audience would be sympathetic to weegie allusions or vice versa but I for one enjoyed that aspect, as well as the humour that he drew from more universal themes - father/daughter, modern/old-fashioned, wealthy old man/poor young suitor, tricky businessman/naive investor.

Now this was a one man show ably and impressively performed but what impressed me even more was the fact that in addition to actor and director the programme credits no less than fourteen people as having a hand in the production and another eleven individuals or institutions are thanked for their help.

Would that that ratio might be replicated for my show.

Tattie Shaws is an excellent vegetable shop up the road that I try to patronise rather than weakly add pre-packed veggies to my Tesco basket.

In there this morning for a head of garlic. Isn't it an annoying habit of supermarkets to sell them in packs of three - what non-Transylvanian one person household can get through three heads before they go rotten? I spotted this delicacy and thought I'd better try it. Tattie, or is it Shaw?, assured me that I'd love it and he was right. It's a stotter.

Made I assume by the guy whose flavoured porridge stall you see around from time to time. It may look like solidified porridge but it's not. It's made from the oats and he does a range of flavours. They contain butter but I'm pleased to report that it's unsalted, another improvement on Tesco.

I did a little bit of catching up with Little Dorrit via the BBC's wonderful Iplayer before watching this week's episode last night. So many sites that offer video streaming would do well to find out how the BBC do it.

Anyway that aside I am so much enjoying LD. Of course to start with the material is first class. Dickens' imagination and character drawing are superb. He can give us caricatures of villains as evil as evil can be and of goody goodies too sweet to be true, but more rounded portraits too. I'm particularly intrigued by Fanny Dorrit at the moment as she shows a sensitivity and vulnerability at odds with what we gleaned of her character earlier.

That in part is tribute to her acting. Not only the girl who plays Fanny but every single player is magnificent. The adaptation (not that I've read the book so my appreciation is of the TV drama that Davies has created), the direction, the camera work, the costumes - the whole shebang is a triumph.

I'd love to see Walter Scott's novels get the same treatment.

I was tempted out to the golf course by yesterday's bright sunshine and flashed my old codger's card in the expectation of 18 holes for next to nothing. Alas I should have been like Cinderella and kept my eye on the clock. At midnight on Fridays my magic card turns to dust and for 48 hours I have to pay the full whack.

I went for it just the same because it was a lovely day and after 9 holes had scored 46 which, had it not been for one duff shot would have been 44. So I went into the back 9 full of confidence that I had an excellent chance of reaching and perhaps breaching my hitherto barrier of 92.

Now Craigentinny is not a long course nor a particularly tricky course but it had enough up its sleeve yesterday to thwart me, indeed to annihilate me, a lost ball on the 17th just turning the knife in the wound.

Cinders got her Prince in the end. Will I eventually score?

As well as having all those handy buses (minus the 13) I'm surrounded by shops and practically have to walk through Tesco to get anywhere.

Last week Scot Mid revamped their store that lies some 300 paces further from my door and passing it last night on my way back from earning an easy 30 quid giving my input to an ad focus group I popped in.

It's just another supermarket of course so hardly exciting, but they have rejigged the layout and seem to have conjured up enough space to display a greater range of foods than before, including an uncountable number of butter substitutes and what's more to the point three brands of unsalted butter.

I've recently had words with Tesco over their piles of salted butter and nary an unsalted pack but they have failed to heed me. Scot Mid used to be as bad but now that they have turned over a new leaf I may abandon Tesco in their favour.

Can I remember the old Co-op number to get the divi as well?

I'm very fond of boasting about how well bussed I am in this part of town so you can imagine my distress when I went out to catch a 13 the other day on discovering that it no longer runs past my door.

Now it's not a bus I use often, being one of those that run at long intervals and never on a Sunday, but meandering as it does through the New Town I had it marked as perhaps being of future use when Ewan eventually finds his nest. And it's a blow to art lovers from Lochend to Leith Walk since they now have no direct connection to the Gallery of Modern Art.

On this occasion that's where I was headed - to see the Charles Avery exhibition. If you like Giles cartoons you'll enjoy Avery's drawings. Many of them feature a bent old creature who reminded me strongly of the Giles Granny figure, even though this one sports a triangular coolie style hat. Fans of Tolkien and that sort of made-up universe will enjoy the fantasy texts accompanying the work. And according to the chap who introduced the exhibition (who did not dwell on, nor even mention, the Giles connection) this is art world beating stuff so rush to see it.

My distress at the semi demise of the 13 was nothing as to my distress on finding a beanie hat on the floor of the lift when I came home. Connor had assured me that there had been no lift lunatic incidents during my absence. Has he struck again or is this simply the case of a lift user warmed by coming in from the cold removing his hat and failing to stuff it into his pocket?

A more sinister explanation occurs to me. If lift lunatic incidents have only broken out afresh since I got back could it be some modern Jeckyll and Hyde phenomenon? Does this inoffensive pensioner turn into the lift lunatic at certain conjunctures of the planets, or perhaps when he's had one too many?

I saw a brilliant show at the Traverse last night. Described as a dark comedy it was certainly funny and the audience, many of whom it turned out were friends or relatives of the performers, thoroughly enjoyed the humour. In contrast it seems to the previous night's audience, who it was decided in the post-show discussion must all have been Edinbuggers.

I suspect that equally oppressive and destructive family environments exist here but that the eastern response to seeing it displayed is to feel uncomfortable rather than to laugh. This comedy you see concerns a west of Scotland Catholic family headed by a drunken, posturing bully of a father whose sins are visited on his children. Founded on his own experience it took Paul Higgins five years to write and you have to hope that it was a thoroughly cathartic process for no-one would want to carry baggage like that around with them in later life.

In response to a question he said that while he could watch the play relatively dispassionately and indeed laugh at the humour, none of his immediate family had seen it and that he thought they would find it hard.

The father is a brilliantly drawn character, a drunken bully as I said but with a cutting and sardonic wit and deep down a loathing of what he has become. Gary Lewis brings him vigorously to life in a superb performance. It was evident from what he said after the show that his portrayal was grounded in a very sensitive understanding.

"Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us" runs at the Traverse till Saturday and I'll be surprised if it doesn't get another outing very soon.

I don't imagine that Noel Coward would have been any happier with the film version of Easy Virtue than we were though many other members of the audience laughed a lot. Unfortunately the director hadn't put any effort into the coruscating bitterness with which Coward counterpoints his bons mots.

My own virtue came under strain on Sunday night when I found myself realising just after leaving Tesco that I was carrying 12 bottles of wine but had been charged for only 6. I had to go back and own up. At two quid a bottle for a quite delicious Australian plonk on extra special offer they were a bargain that didn't merit being sullied by theft. Even though the theft would have been unintentional. Had it been a branch that I don't use daily maybe I'd have been tempted.

Even without the excitement of the wine it was a notable weekend. Ewan was around sussing out the New Town's possibilities for his projected relocation to Scotland later in the year and Fiona was here preparing the way for attacking the fringe with her prizewinning production of The Island.

An additional excitement hit my inbox this morning. A sailing friend offered me a berth on his yacht for a leg of the Rallye des isles du soleil. I'll join Caramel at Santarem on the Amazon in April, sail downriver to the mouth at Afua and then on to Cayenne and Trinidad. I said yes before I had a chance to confuse myself with the pros and cons.

Yes the internet could come to my rescue. Exactly the diary I want is available directly from Collins' site. However I found a diary of the size I want for 79 pence so if I can just discipline myself to carry a pencil around with me I can do the business and save a fiver.

Apart from searching for diaries I've been processing photos of my holiday in India in 1984. I've put the whole lot, turkeys included, on Picasa and a choice few accompanied by such travel diary notes as I made before running out of steam onto my personal website.

An old friend has kindly sent me scans of an NKAS programme to fill a gap in my corpus. This is a show Ewan was in. I thought it was one in which Connor also took part, playing in the orchestra, but it isn't. However Alan (the friend) has a programme for that show too and has promised to scan it for me. That would fill the final NKAS gap but it took 18 months for the first one to reach me so I'm not holding my breath.

I'm just back from Portugal where the sky really was as blue as appears in this photo of the castle in Lisbon. It was that way for the whole week.

Our rented flat was very well positioned for getting around the city, being near a metro station. It's disadvantages were its eccentric room layout, its collapsing bed, its limited supply of food preparation tools (one blunt bread-knife) and by the time we left its broken teapot. Oh, and one of the keys.

We saw the principal sights, ate the principal dishes, drank the principal beverages and escaped the attentions of the principal felons, said to be pickpockets.

So it's back to the frustrations of ordinary life. What has happened to the supply of small, cheap diaries with a pencil in the spine? Have Collins and Letts, those giants of Scottish diary production, decided that small is ugly and that pencils in the spine are potential deadly weapons?

A visit to six shops uncovered nothing. Will the internet come to my rescue?

I found myself impersonating a youth the other night.

As I queued up to buy a ticket for an RSNO concert a chap offered to sell me one that was spare because his chum was not going to be able to make it. I assumed that he was selling it at half price in an attempt to minimize his losses. Later I discovered that I had in fact purchased at full price an "under 26" concession ticket.

The fact that I passed the ushers' scrutiny I find most encouraging.

I caught the Grads production of Twelfth Night on Friday and was glad to have done so. It was pretty good although it won't efface from my memory the version in the style of a 40s musical that I saw the students of the American University in Cairo do some years ago. I absolutely adored that one. At the other extreme the most stupid version I can remember seeing was an Italian one in which amongst other nonsensicals the director found an incestuous relationship between Viola and Sebastian.

Gordon didn't go down such a silly path but was quite inventive, if not with the characters then at least as far as the presentation was concerned. I suspect that for some effects he peeped over the shoulders of giants as it were. But where would any of us be without giants. I've certainly found them helpful more than once.

For those of you who missed it click here.

If Shakespearean comedy is not your bag but you like a good laugh check out Burn After Reading. It's a hoot and in contrast to the intellectual who reviewed it for Newsnight I found the plot perfectly easy to follow.

I think even Hugo Chaves would enjoy the Venezuelan joke.

I renewed my acquaintance this evening with Belhaven Best. What a delight after five months slaking my thirst after golf with Kronenburg 1664 and similar bilgewater. There is a chap in the Creuse, an Englishman, who brews what I'm told is a decent drop although I have never got around to tasting it. I shall check it out and if satisfied insist as a condition of renewing my membership that Les Dryades stocks it.

Nursing the first pint of Belhaven I made the acquaintance of Bobo Stenson and his trio, or at least of his music. He plays piano in that jazz marriage made in heaven of piano, double bass and drums. What's more he plays my favourite kind of jazz. I expect it has a name although I don't know what it is. It's the antithesis of trad although it doesn't lack rhythm or melody. Maybe it's the absence of stomping that makes the difference. The sound is crystal clear and clean. I expect you have to say it's modern despite one of their numbers being by Purcell.

Despite loving modern jazz I'm a sucker for costume dramas about the wonderful days of yore when honest yeomen doffed their caps, and butlers and pantrymaids ministered to the needs of the gentry. So visually I adored Brideshead Revisited with its beautiful twenties/thirties costumes and sets and stunning glimpses of gracious living in town and country. But I wasn't so engaged by the presentation of the characters and the story. I'd recently read the book so I was aware of the fact that a few liberties were being taken to condense the whole thing into movie length. No big deal perhaps for a straightforward narrative but Waugh's tale is quite dense and time is needed to allow us to accompany Charles in his journey of discovery through friendship, love, life and religion.

I'll just have to get hold of the highly praised 1981 TV version which I've never seen and which covered the same ground about five times as slowly.

The tooth I had trouble with during the summer was pulled out with much effort last Monday. I was impressed that it came out at all because there had seemed to me so little left to get a grip on. Even more impressed in that my dentist is a little slip of a lady.

The absence of sticking out tooth caused her to spend a lot of time screwing down into the depths of my jaw with the dental equivalent of a bradawl to give access for her pliers. The remains came out a little bit at a time after much twisting and rocking and tugging for each section. As a bonus she took out a little fragment of a previously extracted tooth that an earlier dentist had overlooked but that my tongue has constantly sought for several years.

Thanks to the miracle of anaesthesia I felt more or less nothing but she told me to take painkillers even before the numbness had worn off so I thought I was in for it. In fact it wasn't too bad but it gave me an excuse to sit around for a couple of days in my pyjamas nursing my jaw and occasionally rinsing out the bleeding gap with a salt solution.

During which time I got hooked on the snooker tournament and barely left the telly all week. I did manage to drag myself away on Saturday night to hear Carlos Arrendondo sing the songs of Victor Jara and Violetta Parra as part of Edinburgh's Hispanic Festival, grandly named but only a handful of events over a weekend. Carlos ran a very enjoyable Latin American culture course that I did years ago. He's intensely passionate about Latin America music in general and his Chilean roots in particular and did justice to the songs although I really prefer listening to him singing his own material.

I don't prefer it so much, even as a bit of a Chilephile myself, that I was willing to miss the snooker final on Sunday night in favour of hearing him again though. It's always exciting to see someone who's well behind in a sporting contest get back into contention and Ryan Day fought from 7 - 2 down to nearly drawing level in the 16th frame but John Higgins won it and took the next frame to clinch the match. Great for him to win in front of his home crowd but being more often a plucky loser myself I felt for the Welshman.

Now that's over I've no excuse. Must get on with something.

It looks like that thanks to Gordon I'll soon own 60% of my own money in RBS. That's cool.

Tuesday was a lovely day so I put on my golfing shorts and met some friends for lunch in the open air at one of our favourite trucker stops. In the afternoon on the golf course the temperature topped 25 degrees which is not bad for October.
No-one is lunching on the terrace in this picture taken the following much dreicher day as I drove north and homewards . The weather brightened up shortly afterwards and I enjoyed delightful autumn colours and mild conditions until after eight hours of otherwise tedious driving I got to Dunkirk.

I crossed early yesterday morning by Norfolk Line, who incidentally I see are taking over the Rosyth - Zeebrugge service in the Spring. Good for them. The drive from Dover to Edinburgh was a bit less bedevilled by traffic jams and road repairs than it has been in the past but it still took more than nine hours and I was glad to collapse with a cup of tea before unloading the car.

Waiting for one of Connor's excellent home made Chinese dishes I relaxed with a G&T having been made aware of alcohol by a couple of giant billboards as I came along Seafield. Alcohol awareness week actually ends tomorrow but I think I can be relied upon to keep the faith thereafter.

These French country people have their sayings, one of which is: "it's at the end of the fair that you count the cowpats."

So this being the end of the fair as far as my competitive golf is concerned for the year here's a wee picture of the state of the cowpats.
Thanks to the French Golf Federation's records I can go back on my scores to day one, but this graph starts at the high point of my career, three years ago, when my handicap hit 22.4.

(For the benefit of non-golfers let me explain that the objective is to minimize rather than maximize the number of cowpats so a rising line on a graph is unwelcome.)

Of course I am bound to do much better next year, which thought reminds me of another local saying: "don't count the eggs while they are still up the chicken's ...". Well let's just say "before they are laid."

The old man across the road was 90 last week. Although he's as bent as a bow and uses a stick he's constantly active. He goes up and down from dawn to dusk between his house and his garden, where he digs and plants and labours quite against his doctor's orders. He also takes an hour-long walk out of the village every morning. And as a major plus he's still got all his marbles.

We gave him a card and a bottle of champagne and I expressed the hope that we would see him celebrate his 100th birthday in due course. He hummed and hawed and shuffled uncomfortably just as my aunt used to do. She would declare that she didn't want to be 100 but when pressed couldn't or wouldn't set a time limit.

Let me put in down in black and white; I do want to be 100 and I want to be it as soon as possible while I'm still able to read the Queen's telegram.

Why should a damaged bottom tooth cause an agonising pain in the cheekbone?

I don't know.

Is there a more agonising pain in existence?

I don't want to know.

This interesting looking building, whose contents are also interesting, is the museum at the Gallo-Roman site of Argentomagus. The site itself is somewhat underwhelming compared to the likes of Pompei or Ostia. With respect to visible remains it's more like the Antonine Wall but with a bit of imagination you can see the Legion of the Ninth disappearing into the mists of the Creuse valley.

It was one of the spots covered during Alan's visit when I tried to go where I had not been before. Having cracked the business of checking museum hours before setting out we also visited Argenton's Museum of Shirtmaking and Masculine Elegance where as you can well imagine we felt thoroughly at home.

Gueret's museum was the final stop on Alan's culture packed visit. Despite its proximity it was the first time I had been inside. It's a museum very much in the old style and the natural history section in particular with its displays of stuffed animals in "typical" poses reminded me strongly of Kirkcaldy museum in the fifties.

From their plaster models of reptiles and amphibia I learnt that the creatures that had concerned me in the grass earlier in the year were not venemous vipers but harmless slowworms. The trick to identification is apparently to observe their eyebrows. If present then it's a slowworm. If absent it's a snake. Or is it the other way around?

Nature took revenge on me for that mistake a couple of days ago when a wasp stung me on the thumb as I bent down to pick up the toaster. My thumb is red, swollen and uncomfortable and to make things worse I still haven't worked out what the wasp could have been looking for in the toaster.

Les Dryades is hosting a regional competition this weekend and yesterday I was one of several members giving a hand with the running of the event.

In my case this meant semi hiding behind a bush (so as not to distract the players) on a hole where it can be troublesome to find balls at the point at which they are likely to land.

The only fun is to jump out from behind the bush and give one of these cunning signals, especially the "ball out of bounds" one.

But none of the 75 players put a ball out of bounds on that hole yesterday though many normal players do. My fellow commissaire spent dull moments ferreting around in the bushes and came away with 10 balls.

The other compensation is normally a free lunch but the club is apparently too strapped for cash at the moment. I had to make do with a coffee and a pain au chocolat on arrival and a glass of wine with my lunch.

But at least I'm not doing it today in the rain. Yesterday we had sunshine.

The French can do tacky seaside just as well as anyone else. Witness the décor of my B&B room at the weekend. I lost count of how many items bore a nautical or seaside motif but we are talking somewhere between 15 and 20.

The little circle that looks like a lifebuoy is in fact a window. You can look through it into the toilet and see what I reckon was the most tacky item (not counting any temporary occupant).

Here it is. Toilet paper manufacturers have clearly missed a trick by not being able to provide a suitably naff paper so the interior decorator has had to make do with a little floral pattern. On the other hand maybe it's an oblique reference to the Mary Rose.

All the rain this summer has allowed my
various flowers and plants to flourish. These white begonias have done particularly well. I'm also pleased with the green creeper in the picture. It started the season as a surviving smidgeon from last year deep in the interior of the pot.

My Edinburgh garden has done just as well as you can see from the picture kindly sent to me by Claire.

I hope the rain stays off for the next few days because I'm off to the seaside to play golf. Yo ho ho and a bottle of nice red wine.

To supplement the efforts of the estate agent I have converted the Barbansais site into a "House for Sale" site. I hope to link it to various sites that list French properties.

I think it looks very smart but remain to be convinced that it will attract any punters

We have at long last put the French house in the hands of an estate agent. He seems quite optimistic about selling it promptly despite the legion of other properties around here that have stood empty and unwanted for years.

When he was writing down the particulars he said that this little room, of which we are very proud, was so small that it would be illegal to call it a bedroom. I do hope that it is nonetheless legal to sleep in it otherwise we have criminalised several visitors.

I made use of a brief encounter with a TV set yesterday to watch some Olympic action. I was pleased to see that although not technically represented Scotland did well in the women´s 100 metres where Fraser, Simpson and Stewart took gold, silver and bronze in Jamaican colours and a Ms Ferguson-Mackensie featured further behind.

England or Team GB to give it its proper title took 6th place thanks to Jeanette Kwakye.

I have not taken up hunting. This is a golf trophy. It was not awarded for prowess at the game but is mine by virtue of my luck in the prize draw held after the competition I played in yesterday.

I’ve had a run of ill luck in raffles and the like since I won a bottle of whisky circa 1960. This prize confirms that the run continues.

My neighbour has been incensed this summer by the chopping down of woodland that has taken place around the village. I can't say I'm keen on it myself.

This is no harvesting of managed forest but more the wholesale destruction of natural woods leaving the land looking wasted.
It seems that if you own a tract of woodland you can do what you like with it and my neighbour maintains that greedy landowners are cashing in on a shortage of timber.
Could this be the Creuse's contribution to the rape of natural resources throughout the world brought about by the rise and rise of the Chinese economy?

If there is a silver lining to this cloud it is that on approaching from the bourg you now get quite a nice view of the village.

Is it reasonable to suppose that one of Josette's hens squeezed its business end into this hole in the wall above the woodpile and laid an egg?

I’ve seen a couple of vehicles with British registrations pass my door recently so when I answered a knock this afternoon to a pleasant looking man and woman I was all smiles when the lady enquired in an obviously English accent “Etes-vous anglais?”

I assumed they must be one of the two sets of British people who have bought properties in Barbansais in the last twelve months or so. As is my wont I made a good-humoured admission to being British but not English. (Will they never learn those Sassenachs?)

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when I learnt that they were English Jehovah’s Witnesses who, having retired to the neighbouring hamlet of Bazanges, are intent on spreading their faith about a bit.

To be fair they were very pleasant. We chatted for a while and they made a half-hearted effort or two to get me worried about the end of the world. I brushed those off. They didn’t insist on supplying me with copies of the Watchtower before they moved on, presumably in pursuit of the owners of the British registered vehicles aforementioned, so I really have no cause to complain.

All the same the sooner this house is sold the easier I will rest in my bed.

Saturday was a day for celebrating anniversaries. Ewan was 42 and somewhere in the jungles of Brazil. Mick Jagger was 65 and no doubt someplace equally exotic, or certainly expensive.

The Association Sportive du Golf des Dryades was 20 and had a party.

Here are some of the early birds gathering for an aperitif beside the putting green. You’ll note that it’s an aerial view. It was taken from the room I’d decided it would be sensible to take for the night in view of the promised dancing and drinking till dawn.

There was a fine dinner of six courses whose plat de résistance was “Canette aux deux cuissons”. You may wonder at what a twice cooked duckling tastes like but that is too literal a translation. It means a slice or two of breast and a wee thigh.

Some of the company awaiting their nosh.

After dinner there was a cabaret on a stage that I had until then not known the hotel possessed. The entertainment was provided by a chap called François Constantin with a couple of fellow musicians. He’s a percussionist (and singer) of no mean repute and enjoys (or suffers) the distinction of being the son of Jean Constantin who wrote lyrics for Edith Piaf and the music for Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups.

You’ll be thinking he must be at a low point in his career to be banging his bongos in an obscure golf club in the middle of nowhere. But you’d be wrong. He was giving us freely of his time and talent because he’s the second cousin and good chum of our president Bernard, seen below announcing the show.
After that there was indeed dancing and drinking but I can’t swear it went on till dawn because I retired around two to get some beauty sleep before Sunday’s competition.

As all good Bible scholars know "there is a time and a season for all things".

Here and now it is big beetle season. I come across them lumbering over the floor or quite frequently lying on their backs waving their many legs piteously in a dance of death.

I spotted one in action yesterday climbing up the outside wall and snapped it. I happened to have a wineglass handy and put it in shot to give you an idea of the creature's size.

I sat back in my chair and watched it climb. Some stretches it attacked vertically, elsewhere it traversed to find a better route. It coped with over-hangs and jagged outcrops until, when about 5 metres up it opened its carapace and flew whirringly and noisily down to the grass 20 metres away.

Two questions arose in my mind. If it can fly why did it bother climbing up? If it wanted to get to that spot in the grass why didn't it just walk? It's got enough legs after all.

I think the answers may be that it hasn't the power to take off from the ground so it's really a glider rather than a flyer and secondly that walking can be dangerous, especially in my garden where there are snakes about. (They haven't all been exterminated by the mower).

In pursuit of my scheme to replace the Grads webmaster with my own good self I have been learning the rudiments of a programming language called PHP.

It’s over 40 years now since I spent part of a university vacation being introduced to computer programming at Tube Investments in Aldridge, a suburb of Walsall, (I was as surprised as you to discover that Walsall has suburbs).

Those were the days when undergraduates were courted by British industry with expenses paid this, that and the other!

Working in SPS on the IBM 1401 I met for the first time GOTO (known as Branch in that language), an instruction that over the ensuing years I met time and time again in its various guises, and grew to appreciate highly, perhaps even to love. There is no swamp in the programming world that you can’t leap out of with a snappy GOTO to a well chosen label.

From KDF9 Usercode and Fortran in the 60s through COBOL, Plan and PL/1 in the 70’s to Excel Macros in the 90’s, occasionally brushing up against IBM Assembler and other now extinct languages I have seen the wonderful work done by GOTO.

But all that time the computer scientists and programming theorists have been scheming to do away with it in pursuit of the philosopher’s stone of the perfectly provable program. What do they offer in its place but CASE constructs, FOR loops, DO WHILE and DO UNTIL, and that most tortuous of techniques the nested IF.

In life as in binary; when you play Monopoly and land on a square that says “Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.” You are left in no doubt. The situation is clear and unambiguous.

Or gyrating round the dance floor with a partner whose presence makes the juices rise causing you to shout in her ear above the DJ’s decibels “Do you fancy coming back to my place for a S***?” To be met with the response “Go to F***” settles the matter there and then.

Should instead the answer run along the lines of “If I decide you’re the sort of chap I fancy then if your wallet’s as big as your ego and if your pad’s not far away or else if it’s in a smart part of town then if my chum’s got a lumber or has a headache then if you can swear you’re disease free I might, or else I might not” you are likely to have felt the enthusiasm drain away and not be sure where you stand. And in addition you’ve wasted time that could have been spent trying your chat up line elsewhere.

That’s PHP; no GOTO, no labels, no escape. Getting it to work is very iffy.

Refreshments arriving in time to stave off heat exhaustion after a morning spent scrambling round the Val de L'Indre course.

This was the third of four competitions I played in this week and definitely the most successful. It was a team event run by the Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues and Jean and I came 7th equal (net Stableford - puzzled non golfers may ignore this note) out of 62 two man teams playing five strokes better than the handicap of 13 we were given.

The following day was a greensome format instead of a scramble (same advice to puzzled non golfers) and we were storming towards a similar result until the 10th when for reasons unknown the wheels came off. We shanked into the woods, missed 30 cm putts and failed to make it to the podium.

There is always a draw after the prizes have been given out and until now those players already rewarded for their prowess on the course were ineligible. However where there is a generous sponsor involved the chap who wins 3 golf balls or a bottle of wine in the competition may feel a little disgruntled if he is barred from a lucky dip that offers a weekend for two in a smart hotel.

So Roland, the SG4L president, has come up with a smart solution. Prizewinners take part in the draw and if drawn can choose either to keep what they have already won or swop it for the draw prize.

The very first time this system came into use was for the scramble and we had an invidious decision to make. Turn in our boxes of 15 balls in favour of a bottle of champagne each or stick.

Not without hesitation we stuck.

I've been doing a bit more translation work for the RIDS this week, a press release and newsletter.

I'll tell you about it later but it's only polite to wait till it's published even given the undoubtedly small number of nautical journalists who are regular readers of this blog.

In view of my crappy connection I delivered the stuff to Patrick on CD this morning and on the way back came through Bonnat where the supermarket carpark was full of people enjoying a festival of local produce. Naturally I stopped to enjoy it with them.

As usual I had broken my rule about never going out without a camera so I can't offer a snap of the beast roasting on a spit, nor of the trailer parked alongside containing a rather sad looking Charolais who was surely not going to be slaughtered on the spot to replace the roaster when it had been consumed. I had several chunks washed down with some nice plonk. That's not exactly local produce but compromise is often necessary. At least it's sold locally.

I had some tasty Creuse chicken as well. Their stand featured a series of photographs of the production process, serious looking employees handling birds at various phases of their life after death. There were in fact two series of photographs depicting two different ways of preparing the bird for consumption. Both started with a snap of "anaesthetising" the bird which in itself would make weaker stomachs than mine think vegetarian.

Less controversially we also had cheese and several breads.

Entertainment was provided by the Entente Musicale of Bonnat Bussière-Dunoise. This brass band played at a standard I thought just a cut above my local band, L'Espérance de Roches. The players were all decked out in loud Hawaiian shirts and the alto saxophonist had an instrument with a shiny green body that I think would just suit me.

I managed to avoid the Tour yesterday but it took me longer than anticipated so I was half an hour late for lunch. The others had waited a wee while but had got through their first course.

As a matter of interest, for my twelve euros I had: a starter of cold meats and various vegetables; stuffed breast of veal with gratin potatoes; a delicious homemade millefeuille bursting with crème anglaise; coffee and as much red wine as I felt could safely be drunk before the two mile drive to the golf course, not forgetting lots of crusty bread to soak up the various sauces.

After the golf I went to the pictures. On the way I followed part of the Tour route and took some photographs of the decorations that people put together to celebrate the event. All wasted on the riders, who batter along with heads down offering as little resistance to the air as possible.

A few weeks ago listening to the BBC in the middle of night, as I often do, I heard an item about the Edinburgh Film Festival. A critic was giving his opinion about how the new date for the festival might affect its positioning in the hierarchy of film festivals and what personality it might henceforth adopt. Might it for instance strut its stuff as the Sundance of Europe? Would it attract anything other than a locally based audience? All that sort of thing.

Towards the end of the interview he was asked if he had seen anything special. The only film he talked about was The Lemon Trees. I made a mental note and lo and behold it pitched up this week in the Cinéma Moderne in Aigurande.

Readers with good memories will recall I went to that cinema one wet Sunday afternoon last year and was refused admittance because in the absence of any audience prior to my slightly late arrival the chap had just locked up.

This time the 8.30 show, for which I arrived at 8, attracted an audience of six. It seems that none of the hundreds who had flocked to Aigurande earlier in the day to marvel at the spectacle of the departure of the sixth stage of the 2008 Tour de France had lingered on much beyond teatime.

They could have seen an interesting film. I wouldn’t say it was unmissable but it’s a fascinating look at the Arab – Israeli situation. The story tells of a Palestinian widow whose lemon orchard which she inherited from her father and to which she is emotionally attached (not to speak of her economic dependence on it) abuts the residence of the new Israeli minister of defence. He or at least his security advisors want it chopped down in case of “terrorist” infiltration. She takes him to law.

I won’t spoil it by saying any more. Catch it if you can.

The Tour de France is coming my way today. The cyclists themselves flash past like a dose of salts but they are preceded by what they call the caravan, an endless chain of publicity vehicles that clogs up the road for an hour before the first rider appears. After the riders come various support vehicles to prolong the affair.

I have a pre-golf lunch appointment but my normal route will be blocked. According to the signs that have been up for weeks it’s closed from 10.00 to 15.00. That seems a bit excessive. To follow the obvious alternative back roads means crossing the race route at Chatelus and I’ll only be able to do that if I do it before the caravan gets there.

That would mean arriving an hour early for lunch so I’ve been scouring the map to look for a western outflanking route. I can see a series of winding tracks around Aigurande that should do the job – provided they exist on the ground and that I don’t get lost.

Fingers crossed.

Don’t tell wee Gordie but I threw two chops in the bin this morning. For one reason or another – most of them related to golf – I’ve been eating out a lot this past week and the chops had been languishing in the fridge to the point of being no longer fit for consumption.

But I bought a replacement today, just one this time, and I promise not to waste it.

While shopping I noticed that millionaire’s shortbread is available locally. It’s being sold under the slightly less snappy title of “Délices au Caramel – Sablés Ecossais au caramel et au chocolat au lait”. Half a pound or so of little squares in a nice cellophane wrapper tastefully emblazoned with a tartan stripe will set you back €3.70. I don’t know how that compares to the going rate in Scotland.

The disappointing thing was that the confection does not bear the legend “Made in Bonnie Scotland”. Indeed it doesn’t say where it was made but was supplied by a company in Rennes with a name I’ve forgotten.

It was something like Euroscoff, which might I suppose be a wholly owned subsidiary of Tunnocks or Lees or Baxters or some other bastion of Scottish culinary richesse, or not.

I spent yesterday afternoon helping out at an introduction to golf event in La Châtre. It was similar to the event I helped at last year in Chateauroux except this time there were no other sports involved, we had only primary school kids and IT DIDN'T RAIN.

Kevin, the pro, was in charge and the main task of the helpers was to ensure that the little monsters followed all the procedures designed to prevent them from massacring one another with either clubs or balls. But we also tried to help them with the fundamentals of hitting the ball towards the target, an inflated bouncy castle like structure.

Both those tasks required from time to time the laying on of hands. So what you may say. But as I understand the current situation in the UK I would have had to have my criminal antecedents checked out before I got into the park never mind put my arms round a tiny tot to guide it through a golf swing.

And the teachers who ambled along with the three classes that arrived one after the other didn't look to me as though they had done much in the way of risk assessment.

What's wrong with this country? Don't they know there are dangers out there!

France has just had its Fête du Cinéma. This is an annual celebration aimed at encouraging people to go to the movies.

The deal is that you buy one ticket at standard price and then can see all the other films on offer over the three days of the event for €2 a throw.

Not a bad deal and even in Guéret’s little multi-screen there was a choice of 16 films. There were a few that I thought I’d like so I went down prepared to see two or possibly three back to back. I arrived a little early, having decided that I’d do a couple of errands before the first film.

Since I’d parked near the cinema I went to buy my ticket(s) there and then to save possibly standing in a queue later and to enable me to slip in just before the film started. This was around 16.30 and the first programme I wanted to see was billed for 17.00, meaning that’s when the projectors start running but the film doesn’t start till about 17.30.

The cinema was open (afternoon shows were running). The box office was staffed by someone doing not very much more than sitting. But she refused to sell me a ticket despite seeming to have all the means to do so within easy reach. Not before 17.00 she declared, with an air of disbelief that I should have thought any other arrangement might be possible.

I found this mildly annoying but not unusual, since in France it seems to me things are often organised to suit the convenience of the service provider rather than the purchaser.

I went off to do my errands. My annoyance built. It was a lovely day. Why shut myself in a cinema when I could sit in the garden with a book in my hand, a glass of refreshing liquid on the table and music playing gently in the background?

So I went home and enjoyed just that.

The time for quiet diplomacy has passed.

I am not referring to Zimbabwe but to the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group, or more particularly their website.

When I resumed activity with the Grads a couple of years ago I looked at their site and found it insipid, devoid of interesting content and seldom bang up to date. Look at it today and plus ça change.

Last winter there was some discussion of what improvements might be made to the site. To his credit much of this discussion was initiated by the webmaster. A number of ideas were put forward and I volunteered to take the thing over (him being a busy man and all that) or at the least to lend a hand.

Since then polite reminders from time to time have failed to produce progress despite the webmaster’s declaration that he lacked neither time nor inclination to maintain the site nor has he made it possible for me (or anyone else) to take on maintenance and development.

Again plus ça change, and I had reconciled myself to taking the matter up again on my return to Edinburgh in October. But the straw which has broken this camel’s back, incensed it into a spitting fury and really given it the hump is the discovery a few days ago of this text on the opening page.

“There are currently no plays on our list at the moment. Please try again later.”

Text put there by a man who was at the same time holding auditions for a production of Twelfth Night which he is directing in October. A webmaster who has so little interest in his website or belief that it can do anything for him that he can’t even be bothered to use it to recruit for or publicise his own show. C’est du jamais vu!

You may wonder that someone who can use “currently” and “at the moment” in the same sentence in this way should be entrusted with a Shakespearean text but that’s a different can of worms.

Anyway in the course of a few hours on Friday morning I set up the beginnings of a replacement website and have asked the committee to take steps to at the very least establish a link to it from the existing site.

Our website is our shop window. The display should entice people in, either as bums on seats or as participants in our activities. If you see an empty shop window do you bother coming back in the hopes of seeing a display later when there are other shops in the same street selling the same product and whose windows are bung full of goodies?

I rest my case.

During the many wet weeks that followed my arrival at Barbansais I felt no inclination to fill up my window boxes and plant pots and even when the good weather appeared to have arrived I hesitated but now I’ve done it.

Guéret has a twice weekly market and on the Saturday that Andrew was here we went down. There was a splendid array of plants and flowers in addition to the food and clothes stalls. I did a bit of food shopping because I like markets, but you need to reconcile yourself to spending a lot of time in queues. When I got to the front of one queue, having had my eye on some tasty mushrooms the stallholder told me they were all pre-sold. Curses be upon him. I didn’t have the stamina for yet another queue so we did without.

That’s all beside the point. Burdened with foodstuffs I hovered around the window box plants. Andrew offered to carry whatever I chose back to the car but I decided to leave it, suffering still from wet weather disinclination.

This week though I decided I must go for it and dashed down to town to discover that Thursday’s manifestation of the market ain’t got no plant and flower section.

Blow me. It’s the mushroom debacle again. I went instead to the garden centre where 99.9% of summer bedding plants have gone. This is what I’m left with. Let’s hope they grow although the spindly stuff at either end looks as though it’s at death’s door already.

The plant pots look at little more hopeful and their contents are said to be perennials so will be planted out in the rockery at the end of the summer.

I have been alerted to the fact that Brian Taylor, the BBC's Scottish political editor has a blog that he calls "Blether with Brian".

That at first sight might be deemed to confuse the legions of internautes who have become addicted to "Brian's Blethers" and thus be an infringement of my right to be recognised as the author of this work.

But a more detailed analysis tells us that "Blether with Brian" is subtly different from "Brian's Blethers" in that the one invites a dialogue whereas the other just pontificates, so I have decided not to put my lawyer on the case.

Indeed in a spirit of comradeship I have added a link to his blog in my blogroll. I expect no payment for this, but a reciprocal gesture would be appreciated.

Stuart Mudie is a chap whose ownership of the domain name blethers.com I have always envied. He blogged there and I have been an occasional visitor because we have some interests in common. So I thought that I'd add blethers.com to my links as well just to show Brian Taylor that there is even more competition out there in the blethersphere, but he's moved.

I've added him to the links just the same under his own name. Have a look. He's an interesting chap. Read Brian Taylor as well. Without him Scottish politics would be even more unintelligible than it is.

It was wrist-slitting time as I stumbled home through the slough of despond after Sunday's golf.

But I redeemed myself yesterday, thanks especially to two superb shots with my £13.99 three wood that brought me to within three metres of the pin on the long par 5 18th, illustrating the old adage from dingy days that it's the man who wiggles the stick that makes the difference.

I missed the birdie putt but the par was enough to tie our France versus the Rest of the World match.

I was so pleased with my game that I paid for the drinks.

CORRECTION - My dinghy days were not at all dingy.

I was pleased and impressed when Fiona told me that her production of The Island had won the Woking Drama Association one act festival. It was judged the best of around thirty entries, not by the same perceptive Paul Fowler who saved us the bother of going to Inverness, but by another no doubt equally perceptive chap called Mike Kaiser. However I have discovered that the adjudicator for the 2003 edition of the same festival, when Fiona was runner-up and best director with Ritual For Dolls , was Paul Fowler. The play to which he awarded first place on that occasion was 4.48 Psychosis.

I was puzzled though when she said that as a result she might be invited to take the show to the British Finals in the Isle of Man in July. The only British Finals I knew of were those that we were aiming to get to; in July certainly, but in Swansea and attendance not by post hoc invitation but by pre-ordained eliminatory steps.

Since that invitation did in fact come through I have lightened a couple of heavy showers by trawling through the intertubes trying to square the circle. And I have done so.

The British Finals she is going to are organised by the NDFA (National Drama Festivals Association.)

The one we are not going to is organised under the auspices of the All England Theatre Festival, the Scottish Community Drama Association, the Drama Association of Wales and the Association of Ulster Drama Festivals. The four bodies take it in turn to organise the finals.

Both very exciting and fun events to take part in. Perhaps the NDFA one has the edge since it includes full length plays as well as one-acts.

My pedantic side feels that it also has the edge nomenclaturewise. Surely the finals of a competition whose entries are restricted to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should have an equally restricted title. What about stealing an idea from the world of sport to become The Home Nations Finals. Whereas an event whose entries may come from those countries plus the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and sundry tax havens in the Channel covers all of the British Isles and is thus truly British.

Must get wee Gordie's view on that.

Andrew went home yesterday having seen a fair bit of the Creuse and a little bit of Indre but not in terribly good weather alas.

We went to a few places new to me including Crocq, a fine medieval village that sports these towers amongst other attractions. From the top I couldn’t quite make out some of the places marked on their panorama – London, Milan and Barcelona for instance – despite having been lent binoculars (without a vast deposit), but my vision is not 20/20.

The lady who took my money, lent me the binoculars and opened up the little museum (small but crammed with material) told me that the “q” in Crocq is silent. Her demonstration led me to believe that the preceding “c” is also silent, but then my hearing is not much closer to 20/20 than my vision.

Nothing wrong with my hindsight however which tells me that I should have checked up on the Chateauroux Musée de la Résistance listed in my 2001 edition of the Indre yellow pages before setting off to visit it. It seems that some time in the interim resistance has crumbled. This would not have been a death blow to the excursion had it not been that the three other museums still extant in the town are closed on Mondays and that happened to be the day of our visit. In Aubusson on the other hand the museum closes on Tuesdays. Guess which day we went there.

Quite apart from the museums’ days off it was apparent just how compressed the tourist season is here. The vast majority of what you might term attractions are tight shut from November to Easter, very partially open either side of July and August and only in those two months truly visitable most days, though closed at lunchtime.

Lunchtime was the most consistently reliable aspect of the week and demonstrated France’s major culinary accomplishment - the provision of decent weekday lunches at a reasonable price.

They also do a nice line in pinning the tail on the donkey. Have you ever seen a smarter set-up than this? I took the picture at a fête in Chatelus-Malvaleix, just up the road.

Last seen in September 2007

Not the missing bodyparts but the stepping stones and the handrail. Swept away by the raging waters of the Petite Creuse at Fresselines.

What do you think you could accomplish in two years and two months?

You could get pretty far through a university degree. You could get married, beget a couple of kids and get divorced. Once upon a time you could have acquitted your responsibilities for national service and have had two months to recover.

Scottish Gas have managed to complete the process of taking over the supply of gas and electricity to my flat.

I was quite cheered on Sunday when someone said that we could expect better weather on Monday. An anticyclone was on its way. It was more of an anticlimax. The morning was chilly and cloudy. It got a bit brighter and milder as the day went on and by mid afternoon I decided that the grass might be cuttable.

About three swathes into the job I looked down to find a snake at my feet. I usually wear Connor’s boarding school wellies when cutting grass (from now on that’s always) so didn’t feel I was in any immediate danger. The beast also seemed a bit sluggish. Either I’d caught it a glancing blow with the mower’s rotating blade or rolled a wheel over or it was resting after having filled its tummy.

There are a small number of snakes native to these parts and the only one that can do you much harm is a member of the viper family. I didn’t know what this one was and I find that post mortem snake identification is less stressful (not for the snake I admit) so I went off to get a spade. When I got back it had either been joined by another or an additional foot of its body had been brought into view and was wiggling about. I despatched it or them and carried on cutting.

I came across another one in a different part of the garden but it had the good sense to slither off into the undergrowth before I could get at it.

I rushed ahead under darkening skies and five minutes after finishing the brief visit of the anticyclone, if that’s what it was, was over. Lightening flashed, thunder rolled and rain descended for an hour or so, let up till bedtime then got going again.

Today dawned sunny and warm, the best day for weeks so far. It could qualify for anticyclonic status if it stays for a few days. I hope it does because I have a visitor arriving tomorrow. A week’s holiday in the Creuse in the rain isn’t my idea of fun and I doubt it will be his.

I checked on the snake this morning. Here is the business end lying on its back. I can’t tell whether it’s a viper or not but better safe than sorry.

Here are some red, red roses newly sprung in June. I'm sure Burns would have relished the fact that they are entwined with vine leaves.

I’ve already failed in my declared intention of recording all this year’s golf outings by virtue of having forgotten to take my camera to St Agathe. I went with John on Thursday and we played our reconnaissance round in appalling weather. We both slipped and fell on the precipitous 18^th fairway and turned up at our hotel soaking wet and covered in mud.

Since most people who stay there have gone to Néris-les-Bains for the spa they are probably used to customers who look as though they have just emerged from a mudbath. The “curistes” as they are known come in all shapes and sizes and presumably hope to go home in a different shape and size but judging by how they tucked into their dinners I think it is a forlorn hope.

The town has been known for its baths since the days of the Romans but was most heavily patronised, and that by the rich and famous, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. There are: several monumental hotels; an impressive railway station; a grandiose theatre; the spa of course which does not lack presence; but precious little else.

At breakfast two curistes were engaged in lively conversation from opposite ends of the room. I was perforce privy to their intimate exchanges concerning the various disorders which it was hoped a session in the spa would alleviate, as well as their reminiscences of the bad old days in the building trade (it seems they had similar careers) when they would spend the day running up five flights of ladders with bags of sand or cement on their backs breathing in noxious dust to the detriment of their long term health but without its interfering in the short term with their ability to sow wild oats on a Saturday night and take part in 50 kilometre cycle races on Sundays.

By some coincidence both had experience of working with Turks so they swapped opinions on their merits and demerits. One recounted how having left his wife to supervise a job while he got on with some paperwork a Turkish worker came into his office and declared that he would not suffer being told how he should be doing his job by a woman, even when she was right.

The weather of the day of the competition itself was much better. The rain only began to pour down after I had finished, and I played quite well just missing out on a prize.

Today by contrast I played miserably (I put it down to a wrist injury sustained at St Agathe) but thanks to the prize/player ratio came away with six of these.

You may think they are champagne flutes but they are described on the box as “technical tasting stemware cc. 150” so when I bring them back to Edinburgh that is what you will be offered.

The wooden dummy is flying an aeroplane designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 16th century.

Leonardo spent the last three years of his life living in Amboise in a manor house given to him by François 1st. The house and grounds are now a Leonardo Da Vinci theme park that I wandered around while Karl and Lissie were off fulfilling their cycling quota of the day.

The house is full of goodies. Old furniture and portraits, and beds that may have been slept in by famous passers through. The walls are amply blazoned with framed aphorisms from the mouth of the great man. Copies of these and numerous other souvenirs are available in the gift shop but I resisted temptation. It was not difficult.

In the basement are rooms full of models of the various things he designed, most of which I think failed to be built in his lifetime. In the grounds many of them have been built now, using we are assured the materials of his time.

Here for instance is his machine gun with his tank in the background and below is another aeroplane. Leonardo imagined men or animals inside the tank pushing it about but I imagine this one has an electric motor.

It all sounds a bit crass but in fact I found it very interesting and better value than the Chateau d’Amboise that I visited with K&L later in the day.

On my way home I spent the morning in Blois where there is another castle – see back view below – that I didn’t bother going into being all touristed out by this time.
Near the castle is a place called the house of magic (closed so I was spared the agony of a decision) in front of which stands this statue.
The subject is described as a conjuror, a watchmaker, an engineer, an inventor, a learned man, an ambassador and a man of letters. His name is Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and he is the man from whom Eric Weisz a.k.a. Houdini derived his name.

Of course the man’s right you’ll have said when you read my last post. Something that’s unique is a one-off. The Taj Mahal isn’t a little bit unique or very unique, it’s just unique – end of story.

True, you’ll have said; so true perhaps; how true even; or maybe very true. Wait a minute; isn’t truth one of those “it is” or “it isn’t” things? If something is true it isn’t a little bit true or very true, it’s just true.

So how come “very true” doesn’t bother me but “very unique” makes me foam at the mouth? Therein lies a linguistic mystery.

And here’s another linguistic mystery. What is “Mushroom fricassee of wood and its poached egg with velvety of boletus”?

It’s what I had for my starter at dinner last night. Fortunately the chef served up the original dish and not its English translation.

I got an email this morning from Patrick, the golfing friend who sails, telling me that the English version of the Rallye des Iles du Soleil website is now on-line. I turned to it with some small degree of excitement to see how my translation from the French version stood up to world-wide exposure.

I had a rapid scan through a number of pages but not all because I'm supposed to be off to the Loire today. There are a few spelling and transposition errors (some of which may well be my fault) but on the whole what I have seen is what I wrote and it looks and sounds not too bad.

A major exception and a severe disappointment however is the welcome page where they have chosen not to use my translation either for the site's slogan or for the text on the picture.

The French slogan is "Ce n'est pas une course, C'est une aventure humaine à la voile." A literal translation would be "It isn't a race, It's a human sailing adventure." That sounds daft to me and I'd wager that most English speakers would find the use of the word "human" there a bit strange. It surely raises in our minds the possibility of an "animal" sailing adventure or an "insect" sailing adventure but that contrast is not raised in the French speaker's mind by the expression "aventure humaine".

Perhaps they can't imagine insects having adventures. Haven't they read Kafka?

Anyway I thought long and hard and even consulted a language forum to come up with something that would give the idea behind the phrase and which would also sound like English. My answer was "It isn't a race, It's a real life adventure under sail."

But they've stuck to the literal translation with a "fabulous" thrown in out of the blue for good measure.

On the picture it says "LA GRANDE TRAVERSÉE DE L'AUTHENTIQUE
Embarquez pour un voyage à la voile unique, libre mais jamais seul !
A la découverte des peuples d'Afrique, du Brésil et de l'Amazonie."

The question that arises is - Is it the great crossing that is authentic or is it the authentic crossing that is great?

I believe the former and thus offered "THE AUTHENTIC GREAT CROSSING Embark on a unique adventure under sail, free but never alone! Discover the peoples of Africa, Brazil and the Amazon."

But what has appeared is "THE GREAT AUTHENTIC CROSSING! Embark for a very unique sailing trip, free but never alone! Meeting the people of Africa, Brazil and Amazonia."

Now you could quibble about their having preferred "Embark for" over "Embark on" or "Meeting" over "Discover" or "sailing trip" over "adventure under sail". Who cares I say.

BUT - degrees of uniqueness don't exist so "very unique" is a nonsense not a translation preference.

I suppose I feel a bit like the apocryphal Hollywood screenwriter whose work is overwritten by the next one. Fortunately I'm not credited with the translation.