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.