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.