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.

It was a beautiful morning on Friday and the sun was high in the sky when I came in at lunchtime for a snack and a happy birthday call to Connor. By the time I was ready to get on with the grass again the sky had darkened and a prolonged downpour got going. It kept going so I turned to some indoor tasks.

By Saturday morning it had relented sufficiently for me to believe that a dry day’s golf was in prospect. That turned out to be a false hope but golf must go on.

This was a charity competition organised by a student body. To draw a large number of entrants they had provided a breakfast feast to be consumed before starting, an “eat and drink as much as you like” buffet lunch for later and a wealth of prizes.

The prize to participant ratio was so high that even my disastrous round was rewarded with three bottles of wine, two bags of sweets and a sleeve of 3 golf balls. In fact no-one went away empty handed.

Of course the food and prizes had been donated by various sponsors, not paid for out of the students’ pockets but they must have been disappointed by the very poor turnout after the considerable effort they had put into organising the event. Bernard, our president and a very smooth off the cuff speaker, recognised as much in his remarks and promised to add a cheque from club funds to the miserly amount that our 20 euro entry fees had added up to.

It was nice to go home laden with prizes but it was even nicer to go home with 99% dry feet thanks to the new golf shoes that I bought before leaving Edinburgh. They were twice as expensive as any I had bought before but a zillion times more waterproof, and comfy too.

A group of upwards of a dozen of us went to play yesterday at St. Agathe, a course near Montluçon, where Freya had negotiated an advantageous lunch and green fee deal.

Although the lunch was excellent one minor constituent of the starter was a piece of andouillete. That's a sausage made from the bits of the beast that only became palatable to the Russians towards the end of the siege of Leningrad but which the French adore. I managed half of it but stopped for fear of throwing up, to the astonishment and ultimate delight of one of my neighbours who finished it off with gusto.

I'd have been glad to return the favour when it came to the Rum Baba but sadly the opportunity did not present itself.

St. Agathe is a very hilly course with a nice variety of challenges, most of which I failed to meet but it was a good day.

When I got back I managed to put in a short session with the lawnmower before sitting down to the nourishing salad that is a key element of my return to slimness campaign.

Should you be anywhere near Selles-sur-Cher and feeling peckish I can thoroughly recommend their pizzeria.

We stopped there for a snack on the way back from playing golf at Cheverney. I travelled up on Thursday with Jean and John in the latter’s very smart BMW 4X4. We arrived in time to lunch with Ernest, a fellow senior golfer from a different club, and then played our reconnaissance round in preparation for Friday’s competition.

It was very hot but as we finished a cooling rainstorm blew up and was still raging when we arrived at our hotel. Notwithstanding the lightning that accompanied the evening meal the food and wine went down a treat. Its fortifying effect was however only apparent in Jean’s play the following day. He made the podium while the rest of us languished prizeless.

A view of the golf club
My playing partners eyeing up the 10th hole
Jean waxing lyrical at dinner

That's the fun bit of gardening over. I've razed my umpteen square metres of jungle grass to the ground with the trusty débroussailleuse.

To recover I'm off to a golf course near the Loire leaving the cut grass to dry out. Then starts the back-breaking job of raking it up.

If I thought I could get away with it I'd set a match to the lot.

Even at this year’s miserable exchange rate it is hard to make a case against the fixed price lunches available in this part of the country being an unbeatable bargain.

There are two establishments conveniently located near the golf club, one to the north and the other to the south. We struck northwards yesterday after the front nine and enjoyed: a starter of terrine, cold meats and salad; turkey escalope in mushroom sauce with fried potatoes; cheese ad libitum; a delicious pastry and as much wine from our carafe as it felt wise to drink - all for 11 euros.

It goes without saying that bread was also provided. French travellers come back from Italy stunned at being charged for the bread that accompanies their meals. Wasn’t it absence of bread that lit the revolutionary tinders in 1789?

Here’s a piece of information that may prove invaluable to you. It would certainly have been invaluable to me on Thursday night.

There is no junction 28 on the A16 motorway between Calais and Dunkirk.

Do not be fooled by the published Michelin map nor by the up to date (sic) internet one. Do not believe the instructions issued by Louvre hotels on how to get to their establishment at Armbouts-Cappel.

Trust me. Don’t drive up and down looking for 28 even if it is your lucky number. Use junction 57.

Our Labour Party representatives at Holyrood and Westminster have moved out of Brunswick Street, lurched to the right and settled on the main drag.

They've taken over what was the fireworks shop.

The window cries out for a few sparklers at the very least rather than the damp squib of a display that they have come up with.

Gordon has been listening. Well that’s what he promised to do isn’t it. He has been listening, and maybe reading my blog. He has explained, more in sorrow than in anger, that he was right all along.

I have got it all wrong. It seems that I have as usual been looking at events through the prism of self-interest.

When he told that nice Mr Blair that the euro was Bad for Britain, it wasn’t that the euro was bad as such. No, no; badness would come from having it in our pockets in place of the pound. His old friend Mr Wilson, he reminded me, had had wise words to say about the pound in your pocket being just as good a pound, if not even better, after devaluation as it had been before.

The euro, provided it's in the foreigners' pocket, is just dandy.

You see Eurojohnny is now getting so many more pounds for his money that he is shoving our competitors out of the way in order to snap up our cheap goods and services. Our businesses are bursting a gut to fulfil his orders. Our workers are enjoying lots of overtime pay. The Poles can’t get as many zlotys as they used to so they are leaving, freeing up employment opportunities for our keen-to-work unemployed. Our overseas call centres are being relocated back home to take advantage of the sinking pound. Mr and Mrs Eurojohnny and all their hundreds of little eurocents are flying in in droves to spend money in our world famous and historic tourist traps.

Everyone is making enough money to outweigh that 20% rate loss by a country mile.

Remember too that Eurojohnny has overtaken Uncle Sam as our main trading partner so the fact that his dying dollar won’t buy much from us isn’t as important as it once was. In fact it gives us the opportunity to snap up his cheap goods and services and fly over to spend our money in his quite world famous but not so historically ancient tourist traps.

So for every Briton who is not a non-working part-time resident of Euroland, and even I have to admit that that’s a lot of people, everything is fine according to Gordon's analysis.

Going off to Euroland shortly to escape the burning suns of Britain?

Be prepared for a nasty setback. You will have to spend 20% more than you did this time last year to get the same number of euros.

Now who was it who persuaded that nice Mr Blair that the euro was a nasty continental plot that would be very bad for Britain and that we must stick to our lovely strong pound and our lovely interest rates and our lovely house prices and our lovely economic giant friends across the Atlantic?

One more thing that disenchanted voters may want to cast up against Gordon Brown? Unless they are taking their holidays in Florida I suppose.

Here's my photo of the the tram works again with the 1904 version directly below for comparison. They fairly laid waste the street then but I suppose there wasn't much in the way of traffic to be accommodated.

Leaving aside the tower block I'm struck by how many of the earlier buildings remain to frame the shot.

The 1904 photo is reproduced with the permission of Edinburgh Public Libraries. The rest of the Leith series and many others are available at www.capitalcollections.org.uk