Amongst the Christmas cards that have fallen on my hall carpet this week was a billet doux from the NHS that may have been 17 years en route. For it says that having passed my 50th birthday I have become entitled to have my bowel screened for cancer.

This free offer will lapse when I am 74 so let's hope that when I've popped the clever little sampling kit in the post it covers the road and the miles to Dundee rather more quickly than it got here.

No sign of irritable bowel syndrome from this happy chappie who was brightening up Princes Street yesterday.

Season's Greetings

I was most impressed this afternoon by a lady who, making instant judgements as one does, I would have stigmatised as probably belonging to the littering classes.

But not only did she walk 25 yards down the road in sleet and rain to put her paper cup into a wheelie bin but she picked up other people's discarded junk and disposed of that too.

I was so impressed that I almost forgave her for smoking in a bus shelter.

You may not have noticed that Johnny Hallyday is unwell although it has been in the papers a little. Googling "Johnny Hallyday health" produces 88,100 hits in English in the past week but the equivalent French search produces 726,000 references.

Not only that but the English reports are very restrained in dealing with the doctor whose alleged errors in a recent slipped disc operation on the star in Paris have led to his hospitalisation this week in Los Angeles. The French press on the other hand list numerous events in the doctor's chequered past from insurance fraud to judicial condemnations for medical malpractice.

Johnny's fans were not so restrained either. Two of them beat the doctor up a couple of nights ago.

I don't believe that in the UK he would still be practising medicine, so if that's the much vaunted French health system I don't want it thanks. And you have to ask yourself why a rock star with millions at his disposal would place himself in the hands of someone with such a record.

A couple of snaps from this afternoon. I would not want to be in either the crane basket or the wheel. Would Sir Walter?

What did I say about low energy light bulbs?

Farming Today is often informative and entertaining.

The information I gleaned from them this morning is that a single malt whisky has now emerged in Norfolk from its qualifying three years in oak casks.

The distiller surely hopes that Norfolk whisky will replace the morning cuppa by describing its taste and qualities as more characteristic of a "breakfast whisky" than an "end of the day whisky".

Perhaps NHS Lothian has had an early sample. This might explain why a letter confirming an appointment at the dental hospital was swiftly followed by another bearing the same date, the same reference number and the same signature threatening to pull all my teeth out for not having made an appointment.

When I'm up early these dark morning I have to switch on so many energy saving bulbs to get a decent level of illumination that I can't be saving any energy at all.

Despite, or maybe because of having all the time in the world this morning I missed the bus I was aiming to catch. But I caught a more interesting one.

Halfway along Princes St the 25 I was on stopped and a little old lady stepped aboard. I missed the first few lines of dialogue and then heard a stentorian voice declare "X25! If you're no the X25 what the hell are ye stoppin here fur?" The driver's more muted tones explained that the plain 25 was also enjoined to stop here.

This did not satify the old lady so the driver got out of his cab, stepped onto the pavement and pointing to the bus-stop indicated politely that both the 25 and the X25 were listed. He then got back into the bus and said "I will accept your apology". More than once he said it but no apology was forthcoming. The old lady screamed and shouted again to the driver's "I will not take this."

She then stormed off fuming quietly to herself. Before pulling away from the stop the driver addressed the passengers roughly in these terms - "If you think I am being hard just take a look at that bus-stop. It's for the 25. It's always the same. Every time she gets on a bus she starts shouting at someone. I will not take it."

I found it quite amusing but I suppose if you are abused day after day it must get a bit much and clearly that was the case for our driver because when he stopped in Shandwick Place he spent some time bending the ear of a controller about it via his radio.

Round about this time every year a pile of Yellow Pages directories appears in the stair. Almost no-one picks one up, although I always take one. They lie there for a few weeks until some busybody like me decides that their hour has come and consigns them to the re-cycling bin.

Putting the new one in its place I noticed that it was somewhat thinner than last years. Indeed it is 220 pages thinner. Now one might surmise that this is an effect of the recession, that 220 pages worth of businesses have gone to the wall in the Edinburgh area over the last twelve months.

But although Zinc & Zinc Alloy Products, Consultant Actuaries and Quad Bikes & All Terrain Vehicles have bitten the dust the explanation seems to lie in a decrease in the size and weight of the font used. Entries which were difficult to read last year are now verging on the impossible for those with less than 20/20 vision.

I think Yellow Pages are shooting themselves in the foot with this move. It is already much more convenient to do a quick Google rather than plough through their directory. If in addition you can't actually read the damn thing it must surely go bust.

My theory that the best before date is not synonymous with the toxic after date was put to the test this evening when I uncorked a bottle of best before May 2008 soda to add to my pre-dinner Campari.

Some hours later all is well.

So if best before does not equal toxic after does theatre equal fun and games. Check out Allotment.

Princes Street has been clear of tramworks since early on Sunday morning. I had determined to be there at 5 am, the time scheduled for the re-opening, but fortunately didn't make it because the re-opening was delayed a couple of hours by leaves on the line or heavy rain or another reason selected from the list of the usually suspected excuses.

But it looks great and if I had not been closeted at home working on a script this afternoon I would have taken advantage of the lovely bright frosty weather to bring you a sharply focussed, beautifully composed photograph of the street stripped of her protective wire fences.

I am slightly perturbed by the over-sized lamp-posts that you would be able to see on my pics if I had taken them. I assume these are part of the tram power supply. They look as though they will be as aesthetically unacceptable as the line of pylons that it is planned should stretch from Beauly to Denny.

But can we turn back the tide? No chance. The next campaign must be to waken the Council up to the sensible suggestion that the tramline be replaced or augmented by an underground railway system stretching to the outermost bounds of Fife.

They've done it - taken away the conker as well as the advert. How am I going to stop foaming?

Maybe I can track it down. It would look lovely in the garden at Barbansais.

I've been mildly following the case of The Hand of Frog in the French media. Opinions are split but a great many, including politicians, admit to being ashamed of qualifying for the World Cup in this manner. Raymond Domenech, the manager, comes in for a lot of stick; what football manager doesn't? But this time as well as being castigated for poor management he's accused of teaching his players that a win at any cost is what counts.

I've heard players (not just in France) say that of course they would do something similar but in the expectation of being sanctioned by the referee. So it's his fault for not spotting the infringement. Other commentators lay the blame on football's move from sport to big money business.

I commend them all to take a lesson or two from professional golf. That's a big money business if ever there was but the players don't rely on being spotted by a referee for an infringement of the rules. They don't deliberately break the rules in the first place of course but a golfer who accidentally moves his ball in a situation in which a penalty would be imposed acts as his own referee and reports the fact, even if it makes a difference of a million dollars or so.

I thought Health and Safety had been up to their mollycoddling tricks when I noticed that a barrier had been erected around the giant conker that I had caught sight of recently from my passing bus.

So today I got off to investigate, foaming at the mouth at the stupidity of what I presumed to be over-protection of the public.
It turns out that it's an advertisement. So now I'm foaming at the mouth at the desecration of the newly public space in St Andrew's Square by the forces of Mammon who are already well represented in the surrounding buildings.

I will only cease to foam if they take the advertising fence away and leave the lovely conker.

I'm not sure if Friday 13th has really been unlucky for me. After all I came across the beard trimmer that I was sure I must have left in France. There it was wrapped in a facecloth and tucked neatly into a little corner of the bookcase in the hall. Why there for God's sake?

Maybe Thursday 5th is the new Friday 13th because that's when I bought a replacement.

Where today was definitely not unlucky was at the Traverse lunchtime show - The Moira Monologues written and performed by Alan Bisset. It was sheer dead brilliant. In the first story he played two dogs, two women and a man - effortlessly, convincingly and hilariously. And unbelievably the show got better and better.

The public face of the National Library of Scotland has changed out of all recognition since I used to occasionally broach its forbidding portals as a student. I expect the staff were just as nice people in those days as they are today, but the atmosphere of serious and silent scholarship that was, with its overtones of exclusion, has since been lightened. They have welcomed the general public with open arms to their exhibitions and talks for some years now and they have a super website but they have topped it all with the installation of a bright and cheerful visitor reception point cum cafe cum shop. There is even a pavement section to their cafe.

Perhaps the reading room maintains a more dour tradition but I am unlikely ever to find myself poring over a dusty volume therein in place of watching the world go by on George IVth Bridge while sipping a coffee.

Last night the Scottish Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Anne Glover was at the NLS delivering an entertaining and stimulating talk about what had inspired her to become a scientist in the first place and had kept her at it. From stories of prodding earthworms as a toddler, seeing The Fantastic Voyage at ten (I remember the trailer though I never saw the film) and watching a school mate have his trousers whipped off his hurdies when they burst into flames as a result of his having pocketed some sodium in a science class, to being captivated by bio-luminescence during a midnight swim, her enthusiasm for science was catching.

I left the talk thinking that if I were 50 years younger and a girl there would be no stopping me.

It was gratifying to see a Kirkcaldy man doing well on University Challenge last night. One of the subjects he knew all about was Machiavelli. Perhaps he should offer some advice to that other Langtonian who is struggling down south.

If you ever have occasion to be looking for Glasgow University Concert Hall be aware that's it's a wee bit tricky.

I went over a few days ago to attend a lunchtime concert and when I got to the university I dutifully followed the signs that led me round a few corners, up a stair, round a few more corners, through their pretty cloisters (you've probably seen them on the telly cos it's a great academic location) and through an opening where a grand staircase carpeted in royal blue led upwards.

On the landing to the right was the entrance to the Hunterian museum (I'm not sure if that's Hunter author of The anatomy of the human gravid uterus or his wee brother, but one day I'll find out). Opposite was an imposing set of double doors that I breeched. Within stood a trio of chaps and chapesses of whom I enquired whether this was the Concert Hall. They replied to a (wo)man that indeed twere so but that it was in use for a function. They expressed astonishment at my belief that there was a concert scheduled for ten past one. Was there another concert hall I asked. They shook their heads in acknowledgement of their lack of knowledge and suggested I try reception.

Well the man at the gatehouse knew nothing and in the way of janitors everywhere was short on customer service skills so I found my own way to the music department where after some battering on doors I roused the staff. They were helpfulness personified and after some discussion realised that the hall that I had been informed was the Concert Hall by the chap(ess) trio was not. It was they believed a hall called the Bute Hall which sits atop the Concert Hall.

So I scurried back and found that if you duck behind the imposing, blue-carpeted staircase there is a hidden hall: a very gracious hall: a concert hall: in fact THE Concert Hall.

And the concert? Well it was splendid. Bill Clinton loved Sax Ecosse and so did I.

My Amazon tale is now on Caramel's website in both English and French. You can also read the accounts written by other crew members of earlier stages in the rally or just look at their pictures if your French is a bit shaky.

Your French is probably not as shaky as the newsreader's English who in reporting yesterday the death of a soldier in Afghanistan announced that he was from the Royal Logistical Corps and pronounced the last word as corpse. A bit ghoulish I thought.

At quite a few of the golf events I go to the starter hands you a little gift of some sort as you prepare to play; a ball, some tees, a pitch repairer or suchlike bearing the sponsor's logo. I was a bit surprised though to see a pressie on the table in front of me as I took my place at the Ministry of Justice's consultation exercise.

It looked like a whiteboard marker that you could clip on to your shirt pocket. It was logo free but should perhaps have had NHS stamped on it, being a handy alcohol free hand sanitizer allegedly effective against H1N1. I suppose with 100 or so people milling around the conference centre at the Pollock Halls, any one of whom could have been consorting with pigs, it was a wise protection. I'd have felt happier if I'd had it on Wednesday when my neighbour in the Spanish class declared that he had just risen from his bed of swine flu.

The other nifty gadget we were issued with, but not for keeps, was an electronic voting tablet to hang round our necks. The crowd were split into tables of about ten for discussion which a young person armed with a laptop tried valiantly to keep pace with. These sessions were skilfully led and were generally preceded by a video to set the scene. At various times slides of multi-choice polling questions appeared for light relief. We all then pushed our favoured tablet button and the poll result rolled onto the screen. The man in charge invariably thought the result interesting. It's a shame he couldn't have found a few different ways of saying so. Why don't they send us all one of these gadgets instead of a polling card and we could get a general election over with in five minutes.

With the rain pelting down outside this afternoon I turned to television instead of doing something outdoors and virile. I watched the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Despite having been a cheering bystander at the East African Safari Rally, having been to Ingliston on occasion and having regularly attended the Beveridge Park road races as a first-aider in my youth I'm not really a motor racing fan. There's a lot of hanging about hoping you won't go deaf, catching sight every so often of you're not sure who flashing past and not having a clue who's winning.

Television changes all that. You see the race overall. You are in the cockpit. You are backstage in the pit lane. You meet the rich and famous as they mill around on the grid before the start. Someone tells you what's going on. I really enjoyed it and the tussle for second place in the last couple of laps was nearly as exciting for the viewer as it was for the drivers.

I don't know what it takes to be a good racing driver but from one thing I saw you don't have to be too bright. When they pull into the pits and the team swarm around the car changing wheels and filling it up in seconds there is always a man who holds out a large lollipop in front of the car. He takes it away when everything is done. I saw one that read BRAKE - NO THROTTLE when the car pulled up and was turned over as the operation neared its end to read 1ST GEAR - THROTTLE. He must have been the guy who drove off in an earlier race with the fuel pipe still attached.

But what about the circuit! Magnificent. Built from scratch in 22 months. Get that project team over here and we could have the trams for Christmas.

A parliament spokesman said: "Following a minor incident last week, Lothian and Borders Police erected barriers to ensure people [are] kept at a safe distance from the ponds. The parliament already has planned improvements to the pond edges in place and will discuss if any additional action needs to be taken."

That appeared in The Scotsman on March 2nd 2006.

The discussion of additional action has clearly been thorough since it has taken until October 2009 for the Parliament's Facilities Manager to be able to say in response to my recent complaint: "I am pleased to advise you that after a public procurement exercise (to ensure value for money) a contractor has been appointed to undertake additional perimeter security works. As part of these works there will no longer be a need to have these barriers in the ponds."

Security! Health and Safety's big brother. My heart sank as I visualised a screen of concrete blocks modelled on the WWII anti tank landing precautions that we still see on some of our beaches or possibly Gauntanamo type double fences topped with razor wire. Our very own green zone.

But reassurance came later: "Careful consideration has been given to the design to take account of the iconic status of the Parliament buildings."

That's all right then. When will it be done? - "..and be completed around mid March 2010." That's four years since the tourist stepped into the pond.

But didn't Gordon say last week that there are only 50 days left in which to save the planet? Best not give the job to MSPs then.

Doubtless I am not the only person who associates Marks & Spencer with floral print frocks and sensible underwear so I was not a little surprised to find myself buying an internet radio from their on-line store a few days ago. I'd have been even more surprised to have found myself buying a floral print frock but that's by the way.

When I was a wee boy one of my greatest pleasures was to lie in bed fiddling with the radio trying to make out what was struggling out of the little box from faraway places through a cloud of crackles and whistles. Actually the boxes were quite big in those days but again that's by the way.

I've never lost my taste either for radio or for things foreign so the opportunity that broadband gives to sit down in Scotland and hear with perfect clarity Radio Moscow's propaganda broadcasts to Latin America is for me one of the twenty-first century's greatest boons.

That, coupled with the demise of Jazz FM as a digital broadcaster here, commercial radio's complete absence of jazz and the pathetically minute proportion of their output that the BBC's five or six music stations devote to the genre has made the computer an essential listening tool. One of the best jazz programmes that comes from the BBC comes from Radio Scotland, not one of their music stations, but once more that's by the way.

But the computer, even when it's called a laptop, is not ideal; with its tiny speakers, its keyboard and its mouse - especially when you are lying in bed. So the internet radio, or computer in disguise, has long been on my wish list and now I've got one that ticks all my boxes. It has DAB and FM as well as the internet. It can play music that's stored on my computer. I can connect it to my hi-fi or I can have on my bedside table.

That's where it is now. I went to sleep last night listening to TSF, a jazz station that I used to listen to via steam radio in Paris. The machine has a sleep button of course. That's an essential for me. It also has an alarm but I can live without that.

And this morning I got my news from Europe 1. I'm leaving Moscow for a special treat, although I believe their propaganda effort is a pale shadow of its former self.

You can see how it would be quite easy to misplace an electricity cable in this lot.

The spindoctor has moved on to better things so my complaint will have to get to TIE by the front door. I'm thinking of complaining to Glasgow School of Art as well. Having paid £5.75 for a tour of the building (and that's a concession price) I wasn't allowed to take any photos of the inside. No doubt this was to encourage me to spend twenty or thirty quid on a fancy book full of plans and pics but I didn't even buy a postcard. Lovers of CRM shouldn't miss it though.

Fortunately there is no restriction on taking pictures of other architectural splendours and here's one of Edinburgh's newest.

Indeed it was the trams. Here's most of the council's reply:

"These Bustracker signs were removed and reinstated by the public utility diversion Contractors working on the tram project. Re-connecting the signs to a suitable power connection has proven to be a problem. Unfortunately I have no direct control over the project but I am aware that the next phase of tram works are (sic) due to begin on Leith Walk in the new year, so there could be further disruption and bus stops may be moved again.

I have asked again for all outstanding Bustracker works to be completed as soon as possible, however, I suspect that at least some Bustracker signs will be out of action until completion of the next phase of tram works."

I love the statement about the connection to a power source proving difficult. Does that mean that in moving the electricity cables they've lost them? I'm having lunch tomorrow with the father of a tram spindoctor so shall get him to pass on my complaint.

In the meantime as the council man went on to say, I can get real-time bus info here and if ever I have a wap-enabled phone I'm sure to make use of their mobile facility till the arrival of the trams makes it all unnecessary.

But hey, nobody's perfect. I turned up for an appointment this afternoon exactly 168 hours late.

Pursuing my public-spirited inclinations I have in the last few days complained to Lothian Buses about the continuing absence after more than a year of this gadget from my stop and to the Scottish Parliament about the continuing presence of these ghastly railings after a period of what seems like several years.
The railings were put up because some careless sod fell into the decorative pool but that was yonks ago and whatever you think of the building these crowd control railings do not add to the aesthetics of the site and it is surely time that some nifty, beautiful and inspired architectural solution was found. Is there a new Miralles around?

The Parliament has acknowledged my complaint and promised a full and frank reply within 20 working days.

Lothian Buses have gone one better and given me their full and frank reply already. It seems, surprise, surprise that it's all to do with the trams. But something I didn't know is that it is the City Council that's in charge of bus trackers not LRT. The bus man suggest that the council have decided to leave reinstatement of the Shrubhill bustrackers till the rails are laid. I don't know why Shrubhill should suffer when other affected trackers are back in working order but we shall see what the Council have to say for the busman has forwarded the correspondence to them.

When the Lahore Pipe Band were refused visas to come to Glasgow to compete in the World Pipe Band Championship earlier this year I was flabbergasted by the absurdity of it.

No doubt a suicide bomber could have stuffed his bagpipes with explosives and blown the assembled pibroch lovers sky high as he hit the top notes of "Gordon's Lament for Lives Lost in Afghanistan". But they could have been obliged to perform behind concrete blocks or some more subtle technique employed to keep us safe. After all if you've seen "Tunes of Glory" you'll know that there are ways of making sure that things are as they should be even when concealed under the kilt.

So I seized upon the chance to help future foreign pipers and the like by signing this petition. Am I becoming public-spirited or just bolshie in my old age?

After lunching together yesterday Siobhan and I came across a crowd in Hanover Street. The street was closed to traffic and there were several cops on motorcycles hanging about. It was not at first obvious what was going on but almost immediately a car flying a royal standard pulled up so there was clearly a benefit claimant in the offing (what else can one call the beneficiaries of the civil list?).

A royal protection chappie came out of a building and stationed himself by the car and was followed by Princess Anne who waved cheerily at her mum's subjects, got in the car and was whisked off. Interestingly the building she came out of is occupied in part by Kelly Office Services so maybe she was looking for a real job.

Siobhan declared herself neither shaken nor stirred by this incident but Anne's continuing loyalty to Scottish rugby despite its indifferent results rather endears her to me in spite of my anti-monarchist tendencies; mind you given some of the presidents one has seen around I'm inclined to be anti-republican as well. So I was disappointed that I had once again broken my rule of never leaving the house without a camera and thus didn't get a snap. I'll have to change my phone for one that's got a camera built in.

A further and more bitter disappointment awaited me. I'd popped my saxophone into a repair shop when I got to Edinburgh to get the crook screw fixed and collected it shortly after not taking a picture of the princess. The guy told me that he had replaced a couple of leaking pads as well as fixing the screw. That's not quite double dutch to me. It means a couple of holes are not being fully closed when they should be so some sounds are not quite right.

Anyway whether as a consequence of this or because it had been two weeks to the day since I'd last blown the thing I was horrified at what came out (or didn't) when I tried to play it yesterday.

A fearsome regression I fear. When will I get away from square one?

Multitasking as we know is a female attribute so it is not surprising that disaster struck when I was revising a script in the lounge and grilling my tea in the kitchen. I just wish it had been the script that suffered rather than the meal. Charred Cheddar is not a nice taste even when washed down with Australian plonk, but I had spent an hour or so on the sophisticated blend of potato, onion, bacon, egg and cheese so I wasn't going to throw it away.

Tempus fugit and all that. Already it's Friday. Monday's nine hour drive from Dover started off in miserable conditions but once north of London the weather cleared and I sailed along, periodically passing through stretches of cone filled motorway where occasionally work was going on. More often the reason for the cones escaped me.

The flat was in great nick thanks to Connor's ministrations. The only reason that he will not be nominated for the Nobel domestic service prize is a singular failure to iron the shirts that I left in August.

Since then I've been picking up the traces; drawing up lists of things to do, a bit of culture here and there, a Grads meeting - and, I renewed my acquaintance with television last night. I was so pleased to see a Kirkcaldy man do well on University Challenge.

I've found time to finish the book I was reading, a John Le Carré spy novel in which I didn't expect to find a joke that would made me laugh out loud. Let me share it with you.

"This morning, still drunk, he had called Strelski to warn him of a new form of AIDS that was afflicting Miami. It was called Hearing Aids , Pat said, and came from listening to too many assholes from Washington."

My fiddling about with the washing machine has uncovered innate engineering skills. It did not leak when I did two large batches of washing yesterday morning.

There has been something of a focus on clothing events this week. The clothes that I dutifully washed were mainly those soiled during my golf outing which I had of course brought back with me. Alas I didn't bring back all the clothes that I had taken.

I blame the French health service for that.

You see our original lodging plan for this outing was to stay with Ernest, a Swiss golfing chum who lives in that area. At his invitation I hasten to add. But at the last minute he and his wife were both given dates for hospital procedures that made having four Dryades stay with them even more of an imposition than it already was.

So we had to go to a hotel and by then all the cheaper places were full and we ended up in a relatively swanky one. Swanky to the extent that we each had a sitting room as well as a bedroom. Now normally I just live out of my travel bag but here I thought I would act the gent and spread my gear over the various wardrobes and cupboards in my suite. Unfortunately I failed to check them all when packing up. Goodbye a rather nice sweater, a pair of shorts and assorted bits and pieces. Thank God none of the bits and pieces had frayed elastic and that the socks had no holes.

Now being a hotelier's son and grandson I've made a few beds in my time and normally would place a guest's folded pyjamas under the pillow or on top of the made up bed. In winter when I went round with hot water bottles I would turn down the top sheet and place the pyjamas on the exposed pillow. But that's not how they do things in this swanky spot. Here's how I found my pyjamas when I came back to the hotel.I'm now in a much less swanky Premiere Classe but they treat your pyjamas with respect and you get free wifi. Apart from using it to write this post I've done a bit of surfing and came across this petition. I almost never sign petitions but the New Vic as it was then is where I first saw South Pacific. I signed and urge my readers to do likewise.

I'm off to the spa town of La Roche Posay for three days this week. I'm not taking the waters but playing in the last SG4L competition of the year. As well as the game there will be an AGM and a dinner which is usually quite jolly.

As a result and because I'm leaving a day earlier than planned, to have dinner and stay overnight with friends en route, I've been busy these last few days redding up the place for winter. I've transplanted some window box and pot plants that I think have a chance of surviving and done my final grass cut. We've decided that since investing in keeping the grass tidy over last winter brought no dividends in the form of a purchaser we'll let it grow. I know I'll regret that decision when I'm faced with the initial backbreaking task of getting it into order in the Spring. Somehow I'll have to get David down here before me.

Cleaning up inside caused me to wonder how much spiders need to eat. We get flies and other insects coming into the house but unless one fly feeds a hundred spiders for a week I don't see how the vast population that lives with me survive. Mind you I did read somewhere that a mouse needs only one crumb of bread a week (I find that hard to believe but...) so a spider probably only needs to lick a fly to gain nourishment equivalent to our three square meals a day.

Sod's law was at work yesterday when I used the washing machine. When I went to check on it I found the bathroom floor that I had scrubbed earlier in the day was inches deep in dirty water. Nothing like the devastation in Manila but even that wee drop demonstrated just what a mess water can cause. The leak came from a weak point in the seal around the door. I've fiddled with it and reset a plastic band that looks as though it plays a critical role but I'm not too excited at the thought of trying it out with the large amount of washing that I'll have to do on my return from La Roche Posay. There is a launderette in Gueret but there's a lot of dead time involved in using that. I may just have to take my dirty washing to Edinburgh.

The grapes have done very well this year especially the green ones at the front of the house. Even so they are not the lusciously sweet dessert delicacies that one would wish them to be. Eating them involves a lot of lip puckering and spitting out of skins.

However I found that after a bit of crushing and sieving and the addition of a soupcon of sugar they produce a delicious juice. I daresay that if I had a big barrel I could pluck the lot and dance up and down on them in traditional manner.

But I haven't so most of them will wither on the vine.

I'm glad to report that the weather has improved somewhat in the last couple of days. Yesterday it was even sunny and warm enough for us to have lunch outdoors after our game of golf.

As well as slowly surfing the net (this connection demands patience) and reading while the weather was bad, I spent a bit more time than usual with my saxophone. I've come to the end of "A New Tune a Day for Alto Saxophone Book 1" disobeying the instruction repeated on many pages that the exercises in lesson n must be perfect before moving on to lesson n+1. I don't think I can claim perfection in anything although I'm pleased at my progress in many respects.

There is a CD on which most of the tunes in the book are recorded; on one track with the saxophone and on the next track without it for you to play along. I found that really hard and quickly gave it up but I'm now tackling it again and as well as the playalong I'm having a go at what is even more difficult, playing on top of the recorded saxophone. Anything faster than the death march causes me quickly to lag behind the recording. My brain tries to remember what notes have flashed past me while processing what I'm currently hearing and relating it all to the sheet music in front of me. It's not long before my fingers are flailing wildly, hitting notes at random or just bashing the air.

A small snag has also arisen in that I've broken something. If you visualise a sax you'll see a curved section at the top that leads from the body to the mouthpiece. This is called the crook. It slides into the neck of the instrument and is secured by a small screw. The screw has snapped. This is not a terminal problem since the crook still fits into the neck and I can play but the crook and the body tend to slip away from one another so the flailing becomes even wilder.

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness arrived in the Creuse this week. Keats would no doubt have been delighted. He might however have been disappointed as I was that it was accompanied by the season of continuous drizzle.

Idling some time away at my laptop while the drizzle drizzled I came across this very sensible injunction - You WEREN'T in a sex movie with Sherrie, so why open the link? You can safely click on that one though to read the story.

In the same way I can never understand how anyone falls for those long mails spinning some absurd tale that promise you millions. Below is one I got the other day that modestly asks for only $106. I love the way it leaves the tempter to the very end. Can you believe that enough people are stupid enough to send $106 to provide the spammer with a living wage or is the object really identity theft? In any event whoever responds deserves what they get in my opinion.

Dear friend,

How are you today ?.I'm writing to inform you that I have Paid the fee for your Draft Cheque. Yesterday, I went to the bank to confirm if the Cheque has expired or getting near to expire and Mr.Allen Thomas the Director of HSBC BANK told me that before the cheque will get to your hand that it will expire. So I told him to cash the $1.950,000.00, to cash payment to avoid losing this funds under expiration as I will be out of the country for a 3 Months Course and I will not come back till end of December 2009. What you have to do now is to contact the DHL Express Courier as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your package to you immediatey.For your information, I have paid for the yellow tag fee and delivery Charge.

The only money you will send to the DHLCourier to deliver your Consignment Package direct to your postal Address in your country is US$106 One Hundred & Six United States Dollars only being Security Keeping Fee for the DHL Service so far. I would have paid that but they said no because they don't know when you will contact them and in case of dumourrage on your Package with them.

Please write a letter of application to the given address below:

Company Name: DHL EXPRESS COURIER
Manager.Nelson kessier Febian
Email: infodhlservicebj@inMail24.com

Contact Tel: +229-93-80-66-48

Finally, make sure that you reconfirm your Postal address,nearest local and international airport, Direct telephone number contact address and picture or id to avoid wrong delivery, they will issue you a delivery code#, to enable you track your consignment box and know when it will get to your address.

Let me repeat again, try to contact them as soon as you receive this mail to avoid any further delay and remember to pay them their Security Keeping fee of $106.00 for their immediate action to deliver urgently. Note this. The DHLCourier don't know the contents of the Box Package. I registered it as a BOX of Africa cloths. They did not know the contents was money. this is to avoid them delaying with the BOX. Don't let them know that box contains money ok.

Thanks and More Blesssing.

Regards,
Ms Anita Hall

United Nations

Financial office

The hunting season started yesterday south of the Loire. For some reason those north of the river have to wait another week.

Anyway I passed a few chaps in camouflage loitering about on the fringes of the woods with their rifles and their dogs as I made my way to the golf course. I mused idly whether any of them might be interested in stalking my unwelcome visitors but I dare say they prefer being out in the fresh air pitting their wits and their overwhelmingly superior resources against bigger game.

They (my unwelcome visitors that is) have consumed a fair amount of poison these last few days but it doesn't seem to have done more so far than give them a bad case of the runs.

I didn't catch sight of any interesting wildlife on my golfing excursion last week but I fear that I have now come across some traces of uninteresting wildlife at home. I thought I might be in for a nuisance free summer but some spoor appeared a few days ago in the cellar, their usual haunt.

I put down some poisoned grain and checking this morning I see that the bait has encouraged at least two species to come around for a nibble. The small droppings must be mice but the large lumps are surely from a stoat sized beast. It will take a daily bowl of enticing blue cereal for a week or two to discourage him from making our home his winter quarters.

When I passed through Edinburgh airport last month it was 50 years almost to the day since I had flown from there on my very first trip to Europe. It was a big deal at the time to the extent that my friend Graham came across from Kirkcaldy with my dad and me to enjoy the excitement of waving me off from the BEA office in George Street.

A lot has changed since then. BEA, which was almost the only user of the airport, has gone but has been replaced by more airlines than you can throw a stick at. The airport itself has grown like topsy. Air travel has become a banal everyday experience. And of course there is security; in 1959 no-one gave a monkey's who had packed your luggage. I'm not sure if my mum actually packed for me but she would certainly have kept an eye on it and ensured that I had a nice sharp pair of nail scissors and at least a pint of refreshing lemonade in my hand baggage.

I experienced a lot of culture shock on that trip, most of it delightful and all of it enlightening. I had never for instance seen lunch as more than a brief refuelling interlude between morning and afternoon. So I was amazed to find myself sitting in a garden on the shores of Lake Geneva in the sunshine enjoying a lunch that lasted all of a languid afternoon. Every so often I would sip my wine and stretch my arm upwards to pluck another ripe apricot from one of the trees shading our table.

The pleasure I took in that activity, or more accurately inactivity, has never faded and I spent just such an afternoon yesterday. After golf we had lunch with some Dutch friends. Their lovely garden was washed in warm sunshine as we chatted our way through a leisurely four hour lunch on their shady verandah. It was delightful. All that was missing was an overhead apricot.

After six consecutive days of golf on various courses, two of which required the athleticism of a mountain goat, I'm having a day off.

A postscript to the wild pig meeting. My neighbour Josette, a lady in her 70s, who was born and bred here, who has spent much of her later adult life here and who has spent lots of time walking the woods round about has never seen a wild pig. So how lucky I was.

I'm off to the wilds of the Auvergne and the Millevaches plateau this morning for a few days. The object of the expedition is of course golf but coming across interesting wildlife is not out of the question.

Funnily enough I came across another wild piglet just a couple of days later in Edinburgh at a National Galleries of Scotland exhibition.

This was a surprise visit and the surprise was satisfyingly complete. Fortunately no-one dropped dead at the unexpectedness of my putting in an appearance.

I went primarily to see Fiona’s production of The Island and Claire’s production of Antigone, both of which were very good, but I took in several other shows as well and enjoyed pottering about the town. It also gave me an opportunity to see Ewan's flat. It's rather splendid.

The fact that you can stumble over the most remarkable stuff is what makes the Fringe such fun for me although the cost of writing off the inevitable turkeys has increased a lot since I was there last. Casting around for a nearby show to get me out of the rain for an hour I came across The Penelopiad. This was a dramatisation of Margaret Atwood’s reworking of part of the Odysseus/Ulysses myth that she did for Canongate a few years ago. The central character is Penelope who tells us a little about her birth and early life and then of her miserable time in Ithaca waiting for Odysseus.

The production was superb. There was no programme and no-one at the venue could tell me anything about the young company who performed it but I’ve tracked them down on the web and recommend you keep my eyes open for them next year.

The high induced by the show lasted long enough to cause me to invest €2 in a second-hand copy of The Odyssey as I passed through Paris yesterday. Will it last long enough to cause me to read it though?

I have unfortunately returned with a stuffed up nose and a sore throat. But in the absence of a high temperature I don’t think it has anything to do with the swine, real and imaginary, that I have been exposed to over the past week.

I went out somewhat before nightfall to get to Gargillesse for a social outing. We had a very pleasant dinner in the garden and then went to a concert that was part of the local harp festival. A harp and violin duo played various tuneful pieces by Debussy, Ravel and suchlike. They threw in a new piece and its composer joined them to take a bow. Everyone applauded politely but I'm not convinced that anyone liked it.

On my way home a family of wild pigs crossed the road just in front of me. They trotted quickly through the darkness, one adult and what looked like a dozen youngsters. The last little piggie dithered a bit imitating a rabbit for a minute or two and then got its act together and streaked after its siblings.

It was a lovely moment.

The only sensible thing to do in this heat is to sit immobile in the shade wearing as few clothes as is decent waiting for nightfall.

A cool beverage and a book may be added to complete Omar Khayyam's recipe.

I’ve been up to my wellie tops in garden maintenance this morning. The spreading chestnut has been scratching my head when I cut the grass so some boughs had to go. There were various other trees and bushes that needed a bit of a chop so I waded in with secateurs and saws.

I tidied up the vine at the front quite successfully. It had wrapped itself around a plant in one of the upstairs window boxes and pulled the box forward so it was teetering on the edge. It was threatening to pull the phone line down as well.

But when pruning the vine at the back to prevent it from raising the roof tiles I severed what turned out to be a critical support and 90% of it came tumbling down. Now that’s no great tragedy because I don’t rely on the vine for either fruit or wine but it is nice to sit in the garden sipping chilled white surrounded by luscious black grapes. At least they look luscious but as we know all that glisters is not gold, and that counts for luscious looks too.

If luscious looks sometimes disappoint so today has Skype. To make further inroads into my credit I sent off an SMS half an hour ago but it is still sitting there “pending”. God knows what it’s waiting for but I suspect that Skype wants to confiscate my credit come what may and this is part of a dastardly plot. I shall give it another half hour and then reluctantly turn to my phone.

I thought that the long awaited day of handicap improvement had arrived when I carded 46 for the front nine on Saturday. That's my second best score ever for those nine holes. But I couldn't keep up the pace and returned a miserable 56 for the back nine leaving me stuck just where I was before I started. Today looked even worse after nine holes although I rallied and scored 48 for the back nine.

If only these two halves could have been played in the same competition.

But I enjoyed both rounds despite my inability to play well consistently and despite the heat. When I got into my car at ten to six this afternoon to leave the golf club the thermometer registered the outside temperature at 40.5 degrees centigrade. Admittedly the car was standing in full sun but even when I got home and parked in the shade it was showing 33.5. Compare that with 13 degrees and raining reported for central Scotland the other day and you have the answer to the question often asked of me - why do you come here in the summer.

I don’t nearly often enough share French political or cultural developments with my readers but an item on the news this morning caught my attention. Actually two items caught my attention. One was the promotion of Andy Murray to number two in the world tennis rankings. Hats off to the young man.

The other was the news that the fashion for emphasising and exposing the breasts has run its course. Apparently the girls of the present generation are more modest than their mothers. Nor do they see burning their bras and their boobs as a mark of liberation. I don’t suppose one runs much risk of burning one’s boobs at 13 degrees so perhaps it will be a while till this fashion change reaches Scotland.

Now clearly if there is a change in fashion there has to be a change from A to B. B in this case according to the commentators (all of them supremely well qualified in one way or another to divine such shifts) is an emphasis on the buttocks and even a revelation thereof.

I shall keep a watchful eye.

I like to think that I'm up for new experiences but I've never been happy with flavoured crisps nor can I see any need to destroy muesli by making it crunchy or by adding chocolate chips.

Now it looks as though plain pastis is under assault. I didn't buy this bottle. I had it thrust upon me as a result of there being prizes even for poor players last weekend. It was very wise of the manufacturer to include in the package a rubber lemon that can be squeezed to control the stress caused by this mucking about with something that is perfect as it is.

Not far from here there is an area that for tourist purposes calls itself The Country of the Three Lakes. It’s on my where to take visitors list but otherwise it’s not someplace that I go. However I was drawn to the lakeside beach at Jouillat the other evening. It’s a pleasant spot with a few holiday cottages, supervised bathing facilities for the kiddies, mini-golf, tennis courts, a bit of restrained pedalo activity, and a little bar/restaurant.

The bar in past years promoted itself as a nightclub and would advertise wild sounding midnight discos. I’ve never thought that could appeal too much to the families who holiday there and couldn’t imagine that many Creuse clubbers made the cross-country drive. So I wasn’t surprised to see their advertising this year targeting a different audience with the entertainment starting at the much more respectable hour of 7pm.

I went along to hear some jazz. I bumped into a friend there and we had a couple of beers and listened to an accordion and guitar duo who were in fact billed as a trio. Unfortunately I didn’t have my saxophone with me to make up the deficit. But even though the thirteen lessons of A New Tune A Day for Alto Saxophone that I have worked through so far contain When The Saints Go Marching In in various keys I fear I may not be quite ready to jam.

This bright little chap is Reddy Kilowatt who appeared on the bills sent out by the East African Power and Lighting Company when I worked for them many moons ago.

Why is he appearing here? Well that's a mildly tortuous tale that I will do my best to keep brief.

I was looking into a company that had offered to pay the Grads for the privilege of placing adverts on their site when I came across a posting in an on-line discussion about the company by a certain Red E. Kilowatt. Now I know that Americans often have funny names but I wasn't fooled for a minute. This is clearly a pseudonym.

So I diverted my enquiries and discovered that Reddy is in fact an American invention, or at least has a long and glorious history in the American electricity industry. Indeed he has a website devoted to him where fans ensure his memory does not die.

There is no mention on that site of his African safari, nor of his venture into the east, since I am sure that China Power and Light in Hongkong also used him. In due course I may get around to rectifying those omissions but we are talking long term here.

Now Red's post also introduced me to a use of the term sockpuppet that was new to me although according to Wikipedia it's been around since 1993. I suppose I should say that I've always called a sock puppet a glove puppet even if it was made with a sock so the word was more or less new to me even in its original meaning but that's somewhat by the by and is probably a manifestation of the US-British linguistic divide.

The OED recognises a figurative use of the term as a person whose actions are controlled by another; a minion, citing a reference in 2000 and Merriam-Webster steps into cyberspace with their definition: a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.

But for the full-blown up to date horror of the term as applied to the actions of the company whose bona fides I was looking into we must turn to Wikipedia:

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that "sock-puppeting" is defined as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company."

The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym ...(like Red's)..... is the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.

This is not the objective of the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. They are not out to deceive, they just want to make you laugh. I'm sure they could extend their appeal to China, Africa and the US of A by adding a Reddy Kilowatt glove, sorry sock puppet to their cast.

I went over to Bonnat this morning to do some shopping and passed several beautiful fields of sunflowers. I just had to go back in the afternoon to take some pictures.
And I was extremely taken with this wild flower planting on a patch of wasteland at the entrance to the town.

I have nursed an ambition to play Creon ever since I first saw Antigone with the Ghanaian poet Joe de Graff in the role. So I was disappointed that when a production did come around that I might have auditioned for, it was scheduled for when I would be away. Mind you I’ve never looked as regal as Joe de Graff and time has marched on to the extent that I suspect directors would be more likely to see me as a candidate for Tiresias or Chorus, blethering on about fate and kingship rather than for the king himself.

In any event I spent time yesterday sending emails to people publicising this production in which I am not. Here for non-recipients of my email is the flyer for the show.

The details may be a little indistinct because of the image size. Here they are:
Venue: Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace (Venue 40)
Dates and Time: 17 to 22 August at 8.15pm (1h 20m)
Prices: £8 (£6)
For more information visit www.egtg.co.uk or the show's site and you can buy tickets here.

Another show in which I am not but with which I have connections was also the subject of my email traffic yesterday. It's closely connected to Antigone because part of the action concerns two prisoners rehearsing scenes from that play. By Athol Fugard, the South African playwright, The Island was inspired by Robben Island the prison in which Nelson Mandela spent so many years and is illuminated by his experience and his humanity.

This production though uses white actors and shows how the play transcends its origins to speak out against dictatorships and political incarceration everywhere.

It comes to Edinburgh at the suggestion of Sir Derek Jacobi who presented the production with the Irving trophy for the Best One-act Production at the National Drama Festivals Association All Winners Festival in 2008.

Venue: The Space On The Mile @ The Radisson (Venue 39)
Dates and Time: 7 to 22 August at 8.15pm (1h 10m)
Prices: M T W £5 (£3.50) T F S £7.50 (£5)

For more information and for tickets visit The Space or you can buy tickets here.

I chose a book from Amazon UK the other day and when I went to check out you can imagine my surprise on finding that there were already three books in my basket. Three very good novels by Naguib Mafouz that I would unhesitatingly recommend but which I had not selected. According to the system they had been added on April 9th 2009.

Now unusually I know exactly where I was then and can swear unimaginably dreadful oaths that I did not use a computer that day rendering one of their explanations void. I contacted them you see and got a bland email in return suggesting two possibilities.

One that I had been on the site and failed to close down allowing someone to sneak in and order the books, or two that a family member or friend was aware of my password and had used it. Neither of these explanations is at all credible and in any case surely if someone were that keen to get those books they'd have completed the transaction.

It also seems a far-fetched idea that someone would try to steal a few books in this way. If they did break into an account it would be much more likely that they were after a big ticket item or were trying to get hold of a credit card number with which to steal better things, like cash.

Now nothing was in fact purchased and Amazon point out that credit card numbers are not actually held on the site so I can see that accessing my account for that purpose wouldn't get you very far.

My more prosaic answer, which I offered to Amazon but which they ignored, was an IT processing malfunction. I've seen a few even more bizarre in my time.

But what about the paranormal? I was after all on The Amazon on the 9th of April.

Sunday dawned overcast and cool so I decided that it was not a day for lakeside fun and played golf. My game was poor to middling as usual with just enough good shots to make me think that it’s not yet time to retire defeated. I was particularly pleased to finish the tricky 18^th with an excellent greenside bunker escape and a deadeye dick putt. The pro happened to be watching and my exploit was greeted with a round of applause, but Kevin somehow manages to get a strong hint of sarcasm into his applause.

Before heading off to the golf course I checked my email and found a missive from Skype telling me that to prevent them from gobbling up my credit I must make use of their services pronto. I’m not sure why I ever established this credit because I never use it except to prevent it from being forfeited. Usually I send myself a one word SMS which is hardly much better than just letting them have the money.

But this time I spent 0.0552 pence on an SMS to a friend whose web silence had been troubling me. I need to send another 16,000 or so such texts to use up my credit so it’s a bit unfortunate that she’s broken that silence already.

Despite the fact that it takes me no longer to get to Guéret from here than it does to get to Filmhouse from Dicksonfield, lethargy and wine with dinner frequently combine to prevent me from enjoying such nocturnal delights as it offers.

I was tempted to go down on Saturday to experience some electro-pyjama music, a genre that the summer festival brochure tells me is between disco-funky and rock Play-mobil. Given that the electro-pyjama was the warm-up to a concert by Big Sophie you can gauge the extent of my temptation.

Last night however I kept the wine under lock and key and went to a great concert of Duke Ellington and Count Basie standards by this big band.

I thought they were brilliant. I kept my eyes on the alto sax players but I couldn’t uncover their secret. It was very well presented although one peculiarity was that the numbers were introduced (with a lot of interesting information) not by the conductor but by one of the trombonists. He's the left-most one in the picture and instead of just leaning forward to his own mike he clambered past his fellow trombonists each time to get to the lectern that you can see downstage on the right. Approximately 100% of the names of tunes, players and composers that he had to pronounce were of course American and his English pronunciation was often amusing and sometimes incomprehensible. The one I liked best was when he said Sara Vogan for Sarah Vaughan as though she were a German relative of Terry's.

In the picture below you can see the band being congratulated at the end by the Mayor of Guéret. He’s not the man with the pony-tail.

You can catch their singer Anne Ratsimba on Myspace. She’s worth listening to and watching her sing is no hardship either.

Further delights in this festival are a musical bar crawl tomorrow, neatly dignified as a barathon, from early evening to the wee sma hours with a lunchtime prologue, and a day of open air fun around the lake on Sunday.

I’m tempted even to lay Sunday’s golf aside but maybe it will rain.

Over the last fifty years or so my appreciation of cricket has moved slowly from disdain to delight and nowadays I am if not an avid then at least an enthusiastic albeit occasional listener to Radio 4’s ball by ball coverage. That treat is available to me even here in the depths of rural France thanks to long wave. I had listened to some of the test match commentary during Australia’s first innings and yesterday on returning from the golf course I was glued to my set as England wrestled a draw from the jaws of defeat. It was extraordinary how that draw carried all the impact of a glorious victory.

It was a lot more captivating than the play that closed the Chatelus festival later in the evening. I wouldn’t say it was bad. The three teenagers who performed The Socks by Pierre-Yves Millot put a lot of effort into it and produced some very good moments. At one point when we had been introduced only to the first two characters one of them used an imaginary fishing line to pull the third character out of the front row and on to the stage. It was very much a coup de theatre and played with convincing physicality by the lad on the imaginary hook. But by and large the cast were not in the play but on the stage – look at me, I’m acting! That’s the director’s fault since left to their own devices teenagers (and others) if not shy and retiring will almost inevitably perform thus. Also like many absurdist pieces the play had a problem trying to find a resolution to the situation it had set up making the evening (blessedly short) unsatisfying.

On Saturday there was a book fair. It was not made up of a set of second-hand book stalls (though there was one) but featured local authors and little publishing houses flogging their wares plus a paper-making demonstration by a guy who has recreated ancient wooden presses and employs antediluvian methods to produce echt-medieval paper sheets. Twee? Who? Lui?

I decided not to invest €16 in a re-telling of the 40 murders that have taken place in the Creuse since the year dot or €12 in a tale of growing up in a village that the author assured me would not be found on the map but was surprise, surprise not unlike one she knew well as a child. Instead I gave €1 to a good cause and got two tatty paperbacks in return. Mean? Who? Me?

Châtelus Malvaleix is not a very big place but this week it has mustered all its forces to mount an arts festival. There’s an exhibition of painting and sculpture, a couple of plays, some musical events, a book fair, an artisan market and bizarrely to my mind a country walk.

I’ve seen the first of the two plays and despite the warm appreciation of the public I was not too impressed. It was about people wandering around an art gallery commenting on the works on display – quite appropriate for the occasion - but for a cast of nine to impersonate convincingly several dozen gallery visitors and staff is not easy however many changes of costume they affect. It had its moments though and if it hadn’t been twenty minutes late in starting I might have regarded their efforts more charitably.

I know only one other work by Jean-Michel Ribes and it too involves people wandering around a gallery commenting on the exhibits. It’s definitely not the same play so he must surely be working out some hang-up from a misspent youth.

The jazz concert yesterday was more enjoyable. A piano and trumpet duo who played mostly standards pre-dating Miles Davis. The trumpeter sang as well but his voice was a bit thin and under-powered for my taste although he gave a very nice version of Besame Mucho. At the end we were asked to give a special round of applause for the Creuse’s one and only piano tuner without whom even those lacking perfect pitch might have been plagued by the odd bum note.

Below is a collage of some of the art works. I would not pay €100 or so for the mysterious fluffy things nor €750 for the pretty enough picture of horses but what do I know about art?


On the other hand I was very happy to pay €3 for a tray of sixteen peaches this afternoon despite knowing nothing about fruit growing.

The weather in Aubazine was splendid, the setting delightful, the accommodation and food good, the golf fun. But too many golfers are so obsessive about the bloody game that you could spit, or at least let your eyes glaze over and think about something else.

I looked up a relative who lives thereby and relaxed on his settee with a couple of beers in front of a transmission of Andy Murray's quarter-final match since Peter like most British residents has access to BBC TV. I think that may be bordering on the technically illegal because of all those complicated territorial rights issues and large payments for sporting events that bedevil the airwaves but it's so widespread that it's almost as though a right of way were being established.

Peter is not what you would call a close relative. He's my sister-in-law's sister's husband's brother. Now some languages probably have a snappier word for that just as Arabic for instance doesn't need to say my uncle on my mother's side and my uncle on my father's side since they've got separate words عمّ and خآل.

As far as I know I don't have any American relatives for whom even less snappy expressions would have to be used but in case I do, and for any unrelated American readers here's wishing you A Happy Fourth Of July.

There are only a few days left for you to get ready to head off to Kinross to follow Robert The Bruce’s heart into battle under the auspices of a branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

I am myself preparing to head for Aubazine next week to play golf under the auspices of what I like to think is a slightly less weird organisation, The Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues. But I suppose that like beauty weirdness is all in the eye of the beholder. Some might think for example that there was a touch of weirdness about doing a little quiet research into the custom of kissing hands, which is what I was doing when I came across the SCA.

Some people came to look at the house the other day. They spent all of ten minutes looking round, asked me no questions and not many more of the estate agent's man who was with them. So I don't think they were bowled over.

Perhaps a modern property like this friend's house in La Châtre where I had dinner last night would be more to their taste. I last saw it when it was a shell and it's fascinating to see the finished article. It's quite a contrast to the standard issue new-build bungalows that spring up around here, not to mention old stone shacks like ours or what is soon to be Ewan's Georgian flat.

Over a few rainy days last week I found myself reading Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh.

When I read the description on page 9 of penny loaves being distributed by the bereaved to the village on the day of a funeral I said wisely to my anthropologically knowledgeable self that yes I had come across this custom somewhere before. Then reading on page 16 of how George Pontifex had recast in modern idiom the advertising blurb for a religious book I wondered quite how that had the ring of familiarity. On reaching page 35 where Mr Allaby advises his five unmarried daughters that they should play at cards to decide which one of them should throw her cap at Theobald I had a strong suspicion that I must have read the book before.

For the life of me although I greeted each scene with warm familiarity as it appeared, I could not foretell what was going to happen, apart from having a vague presentiment that a prayer meeting would play a role. The prayer meeting duly took place on page 180 so there was no longer any room for doubt. I had read the book before.

This set me wondering what might be the minimum number of books that in the present state of my memory would provide me with an endlessly fresh reading experience if I were to read them repeatedly one after another. And further, at what point in time will my memory function be so reduced that one book will do?

There are tens of thousands of English speakers living in France so it’s not surprising that several publications exist to serve their needs. I picked up “Creuse News” the other day, never having seen it before.

It contained the usual mix of stories extolling the French way of life, stories complaining about the French way of life, articles on how to do x or y when living in France and lots of ads.

Most of the ads were unsurprising – builders, electricians, teachers of French, restaurants, installers of British TV, social events etc. But some did catch my eye: the Corner Shop providing all our favourite products (not yet run by an ethnic minority I noted); the English mobile hairdresser and nail technician; the traditional Scottish piper available for all special occasions; and to cap it all there was Bill aka Monsieur Fromage who takes coals to Newcastle in the form of British cheese to French markets.

“Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 258 variétés de fromage?” said General de Gaulle. He must now be turning in his grave at the thought of the British making the country even more difficult to govern. Yet more so at the thought of Churchill having the last laugh.

A blog I dip into from time to time is Language Log. It's maintained by and is largely for professional linguists, so it's often above my head but this post about rubbish, seagulls and Edinburgh New Town with its plethora of comments is a gem to be enjoyed by one and all.

The good ship Caramel on which I sailed the ocean blue and the river brown has her own website which features, inter alia, descriptions of her voyages. I have been press-ganged into writing up the leg of the 2008-2010 voyage that I travelled. Having sweated over a hot computer these last few days to produce an account it is now finished hurray!

It will be loaded onto the site for all the world to read but since there are a couple of earlier legs of the voyage that have not yet been uploaded this may not happen very soon.

So to satisfy the public demand that I tell myself undoubtedly exists I have put a copy here.

Faithful readers of this blog will find some familiar material because I have naturally enough recycled some of the stuff I posted en route. But there is more than that and a few of the several hundred photos I took that I hope you will find interesting.

Boucané(e) on a French menu means smoked. I've wondered idly for years about the origin of this term (what's wrong with fumé after all?). Now thanks to the Rallye des Isles du Soleil I know the answer.

In their June newsletter which I was translating yesterday there was a little item about an outfit called Les Fréres de la Côte. So I did some research into it. It's a version of Just William's gang for grown-ups (sic) which celebrates and reproduces the culture (somewhat romanticized) of the original brothers who were a bunch of pirates hiding out around the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was founded in Chile in the 50s on the birthday of the world's most illustrious prat and has spread around the world.

In this description I discovered that the chaps who weren't busy stealing treasure and making sailors walk the plank were called buccaneers, which I always thought was a synonym for pirate but seems not to have been so originally. In this guise they grew cabbages and hunted wild animals. They smoked the meat from these animals and turned an honest piece of eight by exporting it.

Now the French for buccaneer is boucanier so that's obviously something to do with boucané(e) but which came first? Well it turns out that they were called boucaniers because they used a native grilling device called in the local lingo a boucan in smoking their meat. Hence boucané(e) = smoked.

I suppose I could have found this out years ago by turning to an etymological dictionary or two but then I would not have extended my pitifully limited knowledge of pirates.

I may extend it further by reading Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates but then again I may not.


This is the Brotherhood of the Coast's flag. The resemblance to the Jolly Roger is not coincidental.

Well I didn't recover my title on Sunday but I had a good day in the sunshine and met up with a number of golfing friends and won a bottle of wine the following day at the Dryades competition, alas without improving my handicap but it's early days.
This morning the cows are back in the field next door. How long will they take to chomp through the knee high grass? Probably not as long as Claire would have taken to clear the cut grass by the gable end had she stayed on.

75% of the long grass by the gable end has been cut down by the roads department's Spring verge tidying up so that's another reduction in my work load.

The grass-cutters came yesterday and shaved the grass in what I fear must be the final one of the cuts that we contracted for at the end of last summer. From now on it's down to me. What a shame, the professional cut is so much smarter.

Claire visited for a few days this week en route home from a wedding in Figeac. Relaxation was her priority so we vegged out instead of doing the sights. After seeing her off at the station yesterday I went to the Dryades for my first full round. I whacked a couple of balls into the middle of nowhere and messed up big time on a couple of holes but on the whole it didn't go too badly. We'll see how this weekend's two competitions pan out. Will I recapture the Champion of Indre (Men - third series) title that I fluked a few years ago?

Anyway I am fully prepared, having obtained this morning from a local doctor the silly Certificate of Non Counter Indication to the Playing of Golf that the French public health system insists that one has before one can take part in a competition. He obviously thought it was pretty silly too since he didn't bother with any sort of examination but took my word for it that I was in good enough nick. He didn't even charge me for stamping the bit of paper which I thought was pretty decent of him.

I wasn't charged last night either thank God when I blew into a bag for the Gendarmerie. That's the first time in my life that I've been breathalysed but now I know that one 25cc lager shandy is a safe measure. I'm glad it wasn't the previous night when 25cc or more of white wine went down my throat at John's barbecue.