It's always a relief to see the solution to something which has puzzled one.

The current UK vehicle registration number allocation system uses two digits to define the point in time in which the vehicle was first registered, thus 01 means the first registration period of 2001 and 51 the second.  I've often (well occasionally) wondered how they would cope with 2011, whose first period would clearly be 11 but whose second could not be 51 without confusion with the second period of 2001.

I need not have worried.  Indeed if I had only googled UK vehicle registration number system when first the problem entered my mind I would have found that the 61 I saw on a car the other day was a consequence of  the basic principle behind the system, which is to add 50 to the year digits for the second period.

Thus I would have been able to sleep soundly long ago, except that I'm now wondering what will happen in 2051.  Alas I may never know.

I find myself out of sorts, and out of tune with majority critical opinion, having missed out on two hours of September sunshine watching a childish waste of celluloid.  The Guard is a comedy thriller from which tension is totally absent and where although present the laughs are few and far between.

It has a naive style all of its own which we might christen unmagical irrealism and which I hope for the sake of this cinemagoer is not contagious.

PS I know they don't use celluloid nowadays but that's no excuse.

We are told that if the discovery of neutrinos travelling faster than light stands up our understanding of the time space continuum goes for a burton and time travel into the future or the past will become the new reality.

In the fast moving world of telecoms they are already there.  I got a text from Vodaphone this morning telling me that I had three days left in which to use some bonus they had given me as a reward for having topped up my phone.

Fifteen minutes later by the old Einsteinien  method of reckoning a second text arrived telling me that the bonus had now expired.

Where Vodaphone lead Skype cannot be far behind.  They've just sent me an email saying that a credit I have with them will expire in 30 days, so I suppose I had better get my skates on and make a call before lunch.

What can you say - 13 points to 12 - grr!  And I didn't even have the compensation of spotting Ewan in the crowd.  He was clearly not dressed outrageously enough to attract the camera's eye.

I stood at the bus stop the other day beside a group of young men who were trying to impress one another with their tales of valour, an activity from which I confess older men are not immune.  I was struck by one little fragment that went something like "we wiz the best o pals efter that, hud a couple o drinks........., efter a stabbed im like".

I was glad they got tired of waiting and hailed a cab.

Before I visited Figeac I didn't know that the great Champollion who deciphered the Rosetta stone came from there.  But he did.  They have named a square and a museum in his honour.  Cairo has been less generous in naming only a street after him.

He's also celebrated on various postcards.  I don't know whether the one I bought is telling us anything else about him or if it's just an illustration of how much care went into male grooming in ancient Egypt.  

His great linguistic skills are not shared by all his modern fellow townsmen for when I asked for a postage stamp the shopkeeper offered me one for Belgium.

As a postscript to Vézac I learnt this morning that had I stayed for the prize-giving I would have had something to go with the champagne because my name came out of the hat in the lucky dip of scorecards that always follows the golfing awards.

In between playing golf in the pouring rain on Wednesday and under a boiling sun on Friday I had my one and only day of real tourism this summer.

Humble lodgings

 
I left our humble lodgings in the Château de Salles overlooking the golf course and set off along a now and then picturesque route to Figeac. 

Artisan at work

Narrow lane

It's a lovely little town with a medieval centre of narrow lanes where artisans have plied their trade for centuries.
 

I’m not the first Scotsman to have been charmed by the place although unlike Mr Nicolson I moved on after lunch.

Early Scotsman in figeac

Imposing medieval edifice

 I made a fleeting visit to this imposing medieval edifice a few miles from Figeac.  The fact that I once met the owner’s daughter on a train journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow didn’t seem altogether a good excuse for penetrating beyond the private property notice at the gate.  That’s a shame because I’m sure we could have had a cosy chat over a glass or two about the pleasures and problems of having a second home in France. 

Rodez cathedral

But perhaps not, so I set off on an only occasionally now and then picturesque route to Rodez.  The town has a cathedral which you can see from miles around but otherwise is possibly not worth the detour.  The cathedral is not tumbling backwards by the way.  I don’t know how they get them straight on the postcards.

Big hole of Bouzou

The road back to Vezac was much better value touristically and I stopped off at various spots including one called something like “the big hole of Bouzou”.  I don’t think I’d fancy living on either the edge or beside the fetid stream at the bottom but it was very impressive.

Vezac view

Returning to Vézac I got stuck into a special festive Alligot dinner.  The main course consisted of sausage (remarkably unfatty) in an onion sauce served with cheese rich mashed potatoes.  It was delicious but none of my French friends could explain the connection between the Alligot of the dinner and the Alligoté of the lovely bottles of Bourgogne that I buy now and then.

Golf course view

And the golf?  Well I didn’t distinguish myself and certainly won nothing to go with my champagne but thanks to the arcane juggling that is the handicap system I stayed still.  This means that over the season I have trimmed one neat digit from my handicap, in contrast to the previous five seasons in each of which I have added a digit. 

So it's all (minus one) left to do.

My trophy winning form soon deserted me and my handicap even crept up by 0.2 last week.  After the first nine holes yesterday in my last Dryades competition of the season it seemed that a repeat performance was on the cards, but I rallied on the back nine and turned in a respectable score that at least staved off a further deterioration.

And I came home with two bottles of champagne and admired a lovely new moon so the day was not entirely wasted.


                  I hope the SG4L competition at Vézac this week brings me something nice to go with the champagne.

To encourage someone to believe that crime pays may not be in itself a crime but it is certainly reprehensible and I fear that to my shame I am guilty of it.

I sat in the garden yesterday while the potential purchasers visited the premises.  At one point from the far end of the garden mummy sent her oldest little treasure over to me.  He held out a shiny object and asked if it was mine.

“Ah” said I. “It’s a foreign coin.  It’s Brazilian and I visited Brazil a couple of years ago, so it could well be mine.  Where did you find it?”

“Under our car.”

“Strange” thought I.  “How did it get there?” I continued to think. “The last time I saw one of those I’m sure it was in the top drawer of my desk.” 

But would I be forgiven for at the very least embarrassing, and probably causing to flee, these people who were in the market for a holiday home by crying out “Your son is a liar and a thief”?

“No” I said to myself.  “Think of Sally and David and keep schtoom.” And to his delight I said “Would you like to keep it?”

He raced off happily, no doubt reassured about his career choice.

The gas ran out while I was cooking last night.

We used to keep a spare bottle in the barn but haven’t bothered since we put the house up for sale and are thus doomed to occasional inconvenience.  It’s very occasional since a bottle lasts about two years of summer occupancy.

In this instance I was very little inconvenienced because I was able to complete my vegetable curry and rice in the microwave but the question arises as to whether or not to re-stock given that I have a week to go during which I expect to eat out definitely on four days and probably on a fifth and given that an English family looking for a holiday home spent well over an hour viewing the house yesterday afternoon.

I set out to give the grass a what I hoped would be a final cut on Thursday and I was inconvenienced there as well because the starter cord snapped on first pull.  This was not really a surprise since it has been frayed and bedraggled for a while but it was not handy.

My random collection of spanners didn’t look sufficient to even take the outer engine cover off so repairing it myself didn’t look to be feasible and I couldn’t see Mr. Brico doing the job in time for me to get a cut in before departure so I did the job with the strimmer.

It wasn’t quite as back-breaking as it is when the grass has had the entire season of mellow unoccupancy to get to knee height but it was still a pain and the result looks much like a self- administered haircut but it’s one more closing down task ticked off the list.

This morning I’ve been washing floors.