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?