Is it reasonable to suppose that one of Josette's hens squeezed its business end into this hole in the wall above the woodpile and laid an egg?

I’ve seen a couple of vehicles with British registrations pass my door recently so when I answered a knock this afternoon to a pleasant looking man and woman I was all smiles when the lady enquired in an obviously English accent “Etes-vous anglais?”

I assumed they must be one of the two sets of British people who have bought properties in Barbansais in the last twelve months or so. As is my wont I made a good-humoured admission to being British but not English. (Will they never learn those Sassenachs?)

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when I learnt that they were English Jehovah’s Witnesses who, having retired to the neighbouring hamlet of Bazanges, are intent on spreading their faith about a bit.

To be fair they were very pleasant. We chatted for a while and they made a half-hearted effort or two to get me worried about the end of the world. I brushed those off. They didn’t insist on supplying me with copies of the Watchtower before they moved on, presumably in pursuit of the owners of the British registered vehicles aforementioned, so I really have no cause to complain.

All the same the sooner this house is sold the easier I will rest in my bed.

Saturday was a day for celebrating anniversaries. Ewan was 42 and somewhere in the jungles of Brazil. Mick Jagger was 65 and no doubt someplace equally exotic, or certainly expensive.

The Association Sportive du Golf des Dryades was 20 and had a party.

Here are some of the early birds gathering for an aperitif beside the putting green. You’ll note that it’s an aerial view. It was taken from the room I’d decided it would be sensible to take for the night in view of the promised dancing and drinking till dawn.

There was a fine dinner of six courses whose plat de résistance was “Canette aux deux cuissons”. You may wonder at what a twice cooked duckling tastes like but that is too literal a translation. It means a slice or two of breast and a wee thigh.

Some of the company awaiting their nosh.

After dinner there was a cabaret on a stage that I had until then not known the hotel possessed. The entertainment was provided by a chap called François Constantin with a couple of fellow musicians. He’s a percussionist (and singer) of no mean repute and enjoys (or suffers) the distinction of being the son of Jean Constantin who wrote lyrics for Edith Piaf and the music for Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups.

You’ll be thinking he must be at a low point in his career to be banging his bongos in an obscure golf club in the middle of nowhere. But you’d be wrong. He was giving us freely of his time and talent because he’s the second cousin and good chum of our president Bernard, seen below announcing the show.
After that there was indeed dancing and drinking but I can’t swear it went on till dawn because I retired around two to get some beauty sleep before Sunday’s competition.

As all good Bible scholars know "there is a time and a season for all things".

Here and now it is big beetle season. I come across them lumbering over the floor or quite frequently lying on their backs waving their many legs piteously in a dance of death.

I spotted one in action yesterday climbing up the outside wall and snapped it. I happened to have a wineglass handy and put it in shot to give you an idea of the creature's size.

I sat back in my chair and watched it climb. Some stretches it attacked vertically, elsewhere it traversed to find a better route. It coped with over-hangs and jagged outcrops until, when about 5 metres up it opened its carapace and flew whirringly and noisily down to the grass 20 metres away.

Two questions arose in my mind. If it can fly why did it bother climbing up? If it wanted to get to that spot in the grass why didn't it just walk? It's got enough legs after all.

I think the answers may be that it hasn't the power to take off from the ground so it's really a glider rather than a flyer and secondly that walking can be dangerous, especially in my garden where there are snakes about. (They haven't all been exterminated by the mower).

In pursuit of my scheme to replace the Grads webmaster with my own good self I have been learning the rudiments of a programming language called PHP.

It’s over 40 years now since I spent part of a university vacation being introduced to computer programming at Tube Investments in Aldridge, a suburb of Walsall, (I was as surprised as you to discover that Walsall has suburbs).

Those were the days when undergraduates were courted by British industry with expenses paid this, that and the other!

Working in SPS on the IBM 1401 I met for the first time GOTO (known as Branch in that language), an instruction that over the ensuing years I met time and time again in its various guises, and grew to appreciate highly, perhaps even to love. There is no swamp in the programming world that you can’t leap out of with a snappy GOTO to a well chosen label.

From KDF9 Usercode and Fortran in the 60s through COBOL, Plan and PL/1 in the 70’s to Excel Macros in the 90’s, occasionally brushing up against IBM Assembler and other now extinct languages I have seen the wonderful work done by GOTO.

But all that time the computer scientists and programming theorists have been scheming to do away with it in pursuit of the philosopher’s stone of the perfectly provable program. What do they offer in its place but CASE constructs, FOR loops, DO WHILE and DO UNTIL, and that most tortuous of techniques the nested IF.

In life as in binary; when you play Monopoly and land on a square that says “Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.” You are left in no doubt. The situation is clear and unambiguous.

Or gyrating round the dance floor with a partner whose presence makes the juices rise causing you to shout in her ear above the DJ’s decibels “Do you fancy coming back to my place for a S***?” To be met with the response “Go to F***” settles the matter there and then.

Should instead the answer run along the lines of “If I decide you’re the sort of chap I fancy then if your wallet’s as big as your ego and if your pad’s not far away or else if it’s in a smart part of town then if my chum’s got a lumber or has a headache then if you can swear you’re disease free I might, or else I might not” you are likely to have felt the enthusiasm drain away and not be sure where you stand. And in addition you’ve wasted time that could have been spent trying your chat up line elsewhere.

That’s PHP; no GOTO, no labels, no escape. Getting it to work is very iffy.

Refreshments arriving in time to stave off heat exhaustion after a morning spent scrambling round the Val de L'Indre course.

This was the third of four competitions I played in this week and definitely the most successful. It was a team event run by the Senior Golfers of the Four Leagues and Jean and I came 7th equal (net Stableford - puzzled non golfers may ignore this note) out of 62 two man teams playing five strokes better than the handicap of 13 we were given.

The following day was a greensome format instead of a scramble (same advice to puzzled non golfers) and we were storming towards a similar result until the 10th when for reasons unknown the wheels came off. We shanked into the woods, missed 30 cm putts and failed to make it to the podium.

There is always a draw after the prizes have been given out and until now those players already rewarded for their prowess on the course were ineligible. However where there is a generous sponsor involved the chap who wins 3 golf balls or a bottle of wine in the competition may feel a little disgruntled if he is barred from a lucky dip that offers a weekend for two in a smart hotel.

So Roland, the SG4L president, has come up with a smart solution. Prizewinners take part in the draw and if drawn can choose either to keep what they have already won or swop it for the draw prize.

The very first time this system came into use was for the scramble and we had an invidious decision to make. Turn in our boxes of 15 balls in favour of a bottle of champagne each or stick.

Not without hesitation we stuck.

I've been doing a bit more translation work for the RIDS this week, a press release and newsletter.

I'll tell you about it later but it's only polite to wait till it's published even given the undoubtedly small number of nautical journalists who are regular readers of this blog.

In view of my crappy connection I delivered the stuff to Patrick on CD this morning and on the way back came through Bonnat where the supermarket carpark was full of people enjoying a festival of local produce. Naturally I stopped to enjoy it with them.

As usual I had broken my rule about never going out without a camera so I can't offer a snap of the beast roasting on a spit, nor of the trailer parked alongside containing a rather sad looking Charolais who was surely not going to be slaughtered on the spot to replace the roaster when it had been consumed. I had several chunks washed down with some nice plonk. That's not exactly local produce but compromise is often necessary. At least it's sold locally.

I had some tasty Creuse chicken as well. Their stand featured a series of photographs of the production process, serious looking employees handling birds at various phases of their life after death. There were in fact two series of photographs depicting two different ways of preparing the bird for consumption. Both started with a snap of "anaesthetising" the bird which in itself would make weaker stomachs than mine think vegetarian.

Less controversially we also had cheese and several breads.

Entertainment was provided by the Entente Musicale of Bonnat Bussière-Dunoise. This brass band played at a standard I thought just a cut above my local band, L'Espérance de Roches. The players were all decked out in loud Hawaiian shirts and the alto saxophonist had an instrument with a shiny green body that I think would just suit me.

I managed to avoid the Tour yesterday but it took me longer than anticipated so I was half an hour late for lunch. The others had waited a wee while but had got through their first course.

As a matter of interest, for my twelve euros I had: a starter of cold meats and various vegetables; stuffed breast of veal with gratin potatoes; a delicious homemade millefeuille bursting with crème anglaise; coffee and as much red wine as I felt could safely be drunk before the two mile drive to the golf course, not forgetting lots of crusty bread to soak up the various sauces.

After the golf I went to the pictures. On the way I followed part of the Tour route and took some photographs of the decorations that people put together to celebrate the event. All wasted on the riders, who batter along with heads down offering as little resistance to the air as possible.

A few weeks ago listening to the BBC in the middle of night, as I often do, I heard an item about the Edinburgh Film Festival. A critic was giving his opinion about how the new date for the festival might affect its positioning in the hierarchy of film festivals and what personality it might henceforth adopt. Might it for instance strut its stuff as the Sundance of Europe? Would it attract anything other than a locally based audience? All that sort of thing.

Towards the end of the interview he was asked if he had seen anything special. The only film he talked about was The Lemon Trees. I made a mental note and lo and behold it pitched up this week in the Cinéma Moderne in Aigurande.

Readers with good memories will recall I went to that cinema one wet Sunday afternoon last year and was refused admittance because in the absence of any audience prior to my slightly late arrival the chap had just locked up.

This time the 8.30 show, for which I arrived at 8, attracted an audience of six. It seems that none of the hundreds who had flocked to Aigurande earlier in the day to marvel at the spectacle of the departure of the sixth stage of the 2008 Tour de France had lingered on much beyond teatime.

They could have seen an interesting film. I wouldn’t say it was unmissable but it’s a fascinating look at the Arab – Israeli situation. The story tells of a Palestinian widow whose lemon orchard which she inherited from her father and to which she is emotionally attached (not to speak of her economic dependence on it) abuts the residence of the new Israeli minister of defence. He or at least his security advisors want it chopped down in case of “terrorist” infiltration. She takes him to law.

I won’t spoil it by saying any more. Catch it if you can.

The Tour de France is coming my way today. The cyclists themselves flash past like a dose of salts but they are preceded by what they call the caravan, an endless chain of publicity vehicles that clogs up the road for an hour before the first rider appears. After the riders come various support vehicles to prolong the affair.

I have a pre-golf lunch appointment but my normal route will be blocked. According to the signs that have been up for weeks it’s closed from 10.00 to 15.00. That seems a bit excessive. To follow the obvious alternative back roads means crossing the race route at Chatelus and I’ll only be able to do that if I do it before the caravan gets there.

That would mean arriving an hour early for lunch so I’ve been scouring the map to look for a western outflanking route. I can see a series of winding tracks around Aigurande that should do the job – provided they exist on the ground and that I don’t get lost.

Fingers crossed.

Don’t tell wee Gordie but I threw two chops in the bin this morning. For one reason or another – most of them related to golf – I’ve been eating out a lot this past week and the chops had been languishing in the fridge to the point of being no longer fit for consumption.

But I bought a replacement today, just one this time, and I promise not to waste it.

While shopping I noticed that millionaire’s shortbread is available locally. It’s being sold under the slightly less snappy title of “Délices au Caramel – Sablés Ecossais au caramel et au chocolat au lait”. Half a pound or so of little squares in a nice cellophane wrapper tastefully emblazoned with a tartan stripe will set you back €3.70. I don’t know how that compares to the going rate in Scotland.

The disappointing thing was that the confection does not bear the legend “Made in Bonnie Scotland”. Indeed it doesn’t say where it was made but was supplied by a company in Rennes with a name I’ve forgotten.

It was something like Euroscoff, which might I suppose be a wholly owned subsidiary of Tunnocks or Lees or Baxters or some other bastion of Scottish culinary richesse, or not.

I spent yesterday afternoon helping out at an introduction to golf event in La Châtre. It was similar to the event I helped at last year in Chateauroux except this time there were no other sports involved, we had only primary school kids and IT DIDN'T RAIN.

Kevin, the pro, was in charge and the main task of the helpers was to ensure that the little monsters followed all the procedures designed to prevent them from massacring one another with either clubs or balls. But we also tried to help them with the fundamentals of hitting the ball towards the target, an inflated bouncy castle like structure.

Both those tasks required from time to time the laying on of hands. So what you may say. But as I understand the current situation in the UK I would have had to have my criminal antecedents checked out before I got into the park never mind put my arms round a tiny tot to guide it through a golf swing.

And the teachers who ambled along with the three classes that arrived one after the other didn't look to me as though they had done much in the way of risk assessment.

What's wrong with this country? Don't they know there are dangers out there!

France has just had its Fête du Cinéma. This is an annual celebration aimed at encouraging people to go to the movies.

The deal is that you buy one ticket at standard price and then can see all the other films on offer over the three days of the event for €2 a throw.

Not a bad deal and even in Guéret’s little multi-screen there was a choice of 16 films. There were a few that I thought I’d like so I went down prepared to see two or possibly three back to back. I arrived a little early, having decided that I’d do a couple of errands before the first film.

Since I’d parked near the cinema I went to buy my ticket(s) there and then to save possibly standing in a queue later and to enable me to slip in just before the film started. This was around 16.30 and the first programme I wanted to see was billed for 17.00, meaning that’s when the projectors start running but the film doesn’t start till about 17.30.

The cinema was open (afternoon shows were running). The box office was staffed by someone doing not very much more than sitting. But she refused to sell me a ticket despite seeming to have all the means to do so within easy reach. Not before 17.00 she declared, with an air of disbelief that I should have thought any other arrangement might be possible.

I found this mildly annoying but not unusual, since in France it seems to me things are often organised to suit the convenience of the service provider rather than the purchaser.

I went off to do my errands. My annoyance built. It was a lovely day. Why shut myself in a cinema when I could sit in the garden with a book in my hand, a glass of refreshing liquid on the table and music playing gently in the background?

So I went home and enjoyed just that.

The time for quiet diplomacy has passed.

I am not referring to Zimbabwe but to the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group, or more particularly their website.

When I resumed activity with the Grads a couple of years ago I looked at their site and found it insipid, devoid of interesting content and seldom bang up to date. Look at it today and plus ça change.

Last winter there was some discussion of what improvements might be made to the site. To his credit much of this discussion was initiated by the webmaster. A number of ideas were put forward and I volunteered to take the thing over (him being a busy man and all that) or at the least to lend a hand.

Since then polite reminders from time to time have failed to produce progress despite the webmaster’s declaration that he lacked neither time nor inclination to maintain the site nor has he made it possible for me (or anyone else) to take on maintenance and development.

Again plus ça change, and I had reconciled myself to taking the matter up again on my return to Edinburgh in October. But the straw which has broken this camel’s back, incensed it into a spitting fury and really given it the hump is the discovery a few days ago of this text on the opening page.

“There are currently no plays on our list at the moment. Please try again later.”

Text put there by a man who was at the same time holding auditions for a production of Twelfth Night which he is directing in October. A webmaster who has so little interest in his website or belief that it can do anything for him that he can’t even be bothered to use it to recruit for or publicise his own show. C’est du jamais vu!

You may wonder that someone who can use “currently” and “at the moment” in the same sentence in this way should be entrusted with a Shakespearean text but that’s a different can of worms.

Anyway in the course of a few hours on Friday morning I set up the beginnings of a replacement website and have asked the committee to take steps to at the very least establish a link to it from the existing site.

Our website is our shop window. The display should entice people in, either as bums on seats or as participants in our activities. If you see an empty shop window do you bother coming back in the hopes of seeing a display later when there are other shops in the same street selling the same product and whose windows are bung full of goodies?

I rest my case.

During the many wet weeks that followed my arrival at Barbansais I felt no inclination to fill up my window boxes and plant pots and even when the good weather appeared to have arrived I hesitated but now I’ve done it.

Guéret has a twice weekly market and on the Saturday that Andrew was here we went down. There was a splendid array of plants and flowers in addition to the food and clothes stalls. I did a bit of food shopping because I like markets, but you need to reconcile yourself to spending a lot of time in queues. When I got to the front of one queue, having had my eye on some tasty mushrooms the stallholder told me they were all pre-sold. Curses be upon him. I didn’t have the stamina for yet another queue so we did without.

That’s all beside the point. Burdened with foodstuffs I hovered around the window box plants. Andrew offered to carry whatever I chose back to the car but I decided to leave it, suffering still from wet weather disinclination.

This week though I decided I must go for it and dashed down to town to discover that Thursday’s manifestation of the market ain’t got no plant and flower section.

Blow me. It’s the mushroom debacle again. I went instead to the garden centre where 99.9% of summer bedding plants have gone. This is what I’m left with. Let’s hope they grow although the spindly stuff at either end looks as though it’s at death’s door already.

The plant pots look at little more hopeful and their contents are said to be perennials so will be planted out in the rockery at the end of the summer.

I have been alerted to the fact that Brian Taylor, the BBC's Scottish political editor has a blog that he calls "Blether with Brian".

That at first sight might be deemed to confuse the legions of internautes who have become addicted to "Brian's Blethers" and thus be an infringement of my right to be recognised as the author of this work.

But a more detailed analysis tells us that "Blether with Brian" is subtly different from "Brian's Blethers" in that the one invites a dialogue whereas the other just pontificates, so I have decided not to put my lawyer on the case.

Indeed in a spirit of comradeship I have added a link to his blog in my blogroll. I expect no payment for this, but a reciprocal gesture would be appreciated.

Stuart Mudie is a chap whose ownership of the domain name blethers.com I have always envied. He blogged there and I have been an occasional visitor because we have some interests in common. So I thought that I'd add blethers.com to my links as well just to show Brian Taylor that there is even more competition out there in the blethersphere, but he's moved.

I've added him to the links just the same under his own name. Have a look. He's an interesting chap. Read Brian Taylor as well. Without him Scottish politics would be even more unintelligible than it is.

It was wrist-slitting time as I stumbled home through the slough of despond after Sunday's golf.

But I redeemed myself yesterday, thanks especially to two superb shots with my £13.99 three wood that brought me to within three metres of the pin on the long par 5 18th, illustrating the old adage from dingy days that it's the man who wiggles the stick that makes the difference.

I missed the birdie putt but the par was enough to tie our France versus the Rest of the World match.

I was so pleased with my game that I paid for the drinks.

CORRECTION - My dinghy days were not at all dingy.

I was pleased and impressed when Fiona told me that her production of The Island had won the Woking Drama Association one act festival. It was judged the best of around thirty entries, not by the same perceptive Paul Fowler who saved us the bother of going to Inverness, but by another no doubt equally perceptive chap called Mike Kaiser. However I have discovered that the adjudicator for the 2003 edition of the same festival, when Fiona was runner-up and best director with Ritual For Dolls , was Paul Fowler. The play to which he awarded first place on that occasion was 4.48 Psychosis.

I was puzzled though when she said that as a result she might be invited to take the show to the British Finals in the Isle of Man in July. The only British Finals I knew of were those that we were aiming to get to; in July certainly, but in Swansea and attendance not by post hoc invitation but by pre-ordained eliminatory steps.

Since that invitation did in fact come through I have lightened a couple of heavy showers by trawling through the intertubes trying to square the circle. And I have done so.

The British Finals she is going to are organised by the NDFA (National Drama Festivals Association.)

The one we are not going to is organised under the auspices of the All England Theatre Festival, the Scottish Community Drama Association, the Drama Association of Wales and the Association of Ulster Drama Festivals. The four bodies take it in turn to organise the finals.

Both very exciting and fun events to take part in. Perhaps the NDFA one has the edge since it includes full length plays as well as one-acts.

My pedantic side feels that it also has the edge nomenclaturewise. Surely the finals of a competition whose entries are restricted to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should have an equally restricted title. What about stealing an idea from the world of sport to become The Home Nations Finals. Whereas an event whose entries may come from those countries plus the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and sundry tax havens in the Channel covers all of the British Isles and is thus truly British.

Must get wee Gordie's view on that.

Andrew went home yesterday having seen a fair bit of the Creuse and a little bit of Indre but not in terribly good weather alas.

We went to a few places new to me including Crocq, a fine medieval village that sports these towers amongst other attractions. From the top I couldn’t quite make out some of the places marked on their panorama – London, Milan and Barcelona for instance – despite having been lent binoculars (without a vast deposit), but my vision is not 20/20.

The lady who took my money, lent me the binoculars and opened up the little museum (small but crammed with material) told me that the “q” in Crocq is silent. Her demonstration led me to believe that the preceding “c” is also silent, but then my hearing is not much closer to 20/20 than my vision.

Nothing wrong with my hindsight however which tells me that I should have checked up on the Chateauroux Musée de la Résistance listed in my 2001 edition of the Indre yellow pages before setting off to visit it. It seems that some time in the interim resistance has crumbled. This would not have been a death blow to the excursion had it not been that the three other museums still extant in the town are closed on Mondays and that happened to be the day of our visit. In Aubusson on the other hand the museum closes on Tuesdays. Guess which day we went there.

Quite apart from the museums’ days off it was apparent just how compressed the tourist season is here. The vast majority of what you might term attractions are tight shut from November to Easter, very partially open either side of July and August and only in those two months truly visitable most days, though closed at lunchtime.

Lunchtime was the most consistently reliable aspect of the week and demonstrated France’s major culinary accomplishment - the provision of decent weekday lunches at a reasonable price.

They also do a nice line in pinning the tail on the donkey. Have you ever seen a smarter set-up than this? I took the picture at a fête in Chatelus-Malvaleix, just up the road.

Last seen in September 2007

Not the missing bodyparts but the stepping stones and the handrail. Swept away by the raging waters of the Petite Creuse at Fresselines.

What do you think you could accomplish in two years and two months?

You could get pretty far through a university degree. You could get married, beget a couple of kids and get divorced. Once upon a time you could have acquitted your responsibilities for national service and have had two months to recover.

Scottish Gas have managed to complete the process of taking over the supply of gas and electricity to my flat.

I was quite cheered on Sunday when someone said that we could expect better weather on Monday. An anticyclone was on its way. It was more of an anticlimax. The morning was chilly and cloudy. It got a bit brighter and milder as the day went on and by mid afternoon I decided that the grass might be cuttable.

About three swathes into the job I looked down to find a snake at my feet. I usually wear Connor’s boarding school wellies when cutting grass (from now on that’s always) so didn’t feel I was in any immediate danger. The beast also seemed a bit sluggish. Either I’d caught it a glancing blow with the mower’s rotating blade or rolled a wheel over or it was resting after having filled its tummy.

There are a small number of snakes native to these parts and the only one that can do you much harm is a member of the viper family. I didn’t know what this one was and I find that post mortem snake identification is less stressful (not for the snake I admit) so I went off to get a spade. When I got back it had either been joined by another or an additional foot of its body had been brought into view and was wiggling about. I despatched it or them and carried on cutting.

I came across another one in a different part of the garden but it had the good sense to slither off into the undergrowth before I could get at it.

I rushed ahead under darkening skies and five minutes after finishing the brief visit of the anticyclone, if that’s what it was, was over. Lightening flashed, thunder rolled and rain descended for an hour or so, let up till bedtime then got going again.

Today dawned sunny and warm, the best day for weeks so far. It could qualify for anticyclonic status if it stays for a few days. I hope it does because I have a visitor arriving tomorrow. A week’s holiday in the Creuse in the rain isn’t my idea of fun and I doubt it will be his.

I checked on the snake this morning. Here is the business end lying on its back. I can’t tell whether it’s a viper or not but better safe than sorry.

Here are some red, red roses newly sprung in June. I'm sure Burns would have relished the fact that they are entwined with vine leaves.

I’ve already failed in my declared intention of recording all this year’s golf outings by virtue of having forgotten to take my camera to St Agathe. I went with John on Thursday and we played our reconnaissance round in appalling weather. We both slipped and fell on the precipitous 18^th fairway and turned up at our hotel soaking wet and covered in mud.

Since most people who stay there have gone to Néris-les-Bains for the spa they are probably used to customers who look as though they have just emerged from a mudbath. The “curistes” as they are known come in all shapes and sizes and presumably hope to go home in a different shape and size but judging by how they tucked into their dinners I think it is a forlorn hope.

The town has been known for its baths since the days of the Romans but was most heavily patronised, and that by the rich and famous, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. There are: several monumental hotels; an impressive railway station; a grandiose theatre; the spa of course which does not lack presence; but precious little else.

At breakfast two curistes were engaged in lively conversation from opposite ends of the room. I was perforce privy to their intimate exchanges concerning the various disorders which it was hoped a session in the spa would alleviate, as well as their reminiscences of the bad old days in the building trade (it seems they had similar careers) when they would spend the day running up five flights of ladders with bags of sand or cement on their backs breathing in noxious dust to the detriment of their long term health but without its interfering in the short term with their ability to sow wild oats on a Saturday night and take part in 50 kilometre cycle races on Sundays.

By some coincidence both had experience of working with Turks so they swapped opinions on their merits and demerits. One recounted how having left his wife to supervise a job while he got on with some paperwork a Turkish worker came into his office and declared that he would not suffer being told how he should be doing his job by a woman, even when she was right.

The weather of the day of the competition itself was much better. The rain only began to pour down after I had finished, and I played quite well just missing out on a prize.

Today by contrast I played miserably (I put it down to a wrist injury sustained at St Agathe) but thanks to the prize/player ratio came away with six of these.

You may think they are champagne flutes but they are described on the box as “technical tasting stemware cc. 150” so when I bring them back to Edinburgh that is what you will be offered.

The wooden dummy is flying an aeroplane designed by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 16th century.

Leonardo spent the last three years of his life living in Amboise in a manor house given to him by François 1st. The house and grounds are now a Leonardo Da Vinci theme park that I wandered around while Karl and Lissie were off fulfilling their cycling quota of the day.

The house is full of goodies. Old furniture and portraits, and beds that may have been slept in by famous passers through. The walls are amply blazoned with framed aphorisms from the mouth of the great man. Copies of these and numerous other souvenirs are available in the gift shop but I resisted temptation. It was not difficult.

In the basement are rooms full of models of the various things he designed, most of which I think failed to be built in his lifetime. In the grounds many of them have been built now, using we are assured the materials of his time.

Here for instance is his machine gun with his tank in the background and below is another aeroplane. Leonardo imagined men or animals inside the tank pushing it about but I imagine this one has an electric motor.

It all sounds a bit crass but in fact I found it very interesting and better value than the Chateau d’Amboise that I visited with K&L later in the day.

On my way home I spent the morning in Blois where there is another castle – see back view below – that I didn’t bother going into being all touristed out by this time.
Near the castle is a place called the house of magic (closed so I was spared the agony of a decision) in front of which stands this statue.
The subject is described as a conjuror, a watchmaker, an engineer, an inventor, a learned man, an ambassador and a man of letters. His name is Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and he is the man from whom Eric Weisz a.k.a. Houdini derived his name.

Of course the man’s right you’ll have said when you read my last post. Something that’s unique is a one-off. The Taj Mahal isn’t a little bit unique or very unique, it’s just unique – end of story.

True, you’ll have said; so true perhaps; how true even; or maybe very true. Wait a minute; isn’t truth one of those “it is” or “it isn’t” things? If something is true it isn’t a little bit true or very true, it’s just true.

So how come “very true” doesn’t bother me but “very unique” makes me foam at the mouth? Therein lies a linguistic mystery.

And here’s another linguistic mystery. What is “Mushroom fricassee of wood and its poached egg with velvety of boletus”?

It’s what I had for my starter at dinner last night. Fortunately the chef served up the original dish and not its English translation.

I got an email this morning from Patrick, the golfing friend who sails, telling me that the English version of the Rallye des Iles du Soleil website is now on-line. I turned to it with some small degree of excitement to see how my translation from the French version stood up to world-wide exposure.

I had a rapid scan through a number of pages but not all because I'm supposed to be off to the Loire today. There are a few spelling and transposition errors (some of which may well be my fault) but on the whole what I have seen is what I wrote and it looks and sounds not too bad.

A major exception and a severe disappointment however is the welcome page where they have chosen not to use my translation either for the site's slogan or for the text on the picture.

The French slogan is "Ce n'est pas une course, C'est une aventure humaine à la voile." A literal translation would be "It isn't a race, It's a human sailing adventure." That sounds daft to me and I'd wager that most English speakers would find the use of the word "human" there a bit strange. It surely raises in our minds the possibility of an "animal" sailing adventure or an "insect" sailing adventure but that contrast is not raised in the French speaker's mind by the expression "aventure humaine".

Perhaps they can't imagine insects having adventures. Haven't they read Kafka?

Anyway I thought long and hard and even consulted a language forum to come up with something that would give the idea behind the phrase and which would also sound like English. My answer was "It isn't a race, It's a real life adventure under sail."

But they've stuck to the literal translation with a "fabulous" thrown in out of the blue for good measure.

On the picture it says "LA GRANDE TRAVERSÉE DE L'AUTHENTIQUE
Embarquez pour un voyage à la voile unique, libre mais jamais seul !
A la découverte des peuples d'Afrique, du Brésil et de l'Amazonie."

The question that arises is - Is it the great crossing that is authentic or is it the authentic crossing that is great?

I believe the former and thus offered "THE AUTHENTIC GREAT CROSSING Embark on a unique adventure under sail, free but never alone! Discover the peoples of Africa, Brazil and the Amazon."

But what has appeared is "THE GREAT AUTHENTIC CROSSING! Embark for a very unique sailing trip, free but never alone! Meeting the people of Africa, Brazil and Amazonia."

Now you could quibble about their having preferred "Embark for" over "Embark on" or "Meeting" over "Discover" or "sailing trip" over "adventure under sail". Who cares I say.

BUT - degrees of uniqueness don't exist so "very unique" is a nonsense not a translation preference.

I suppose I feel a bit like the apocryphal Hollywood screenwriter whose work is overwritten by the next one. Fortunately I'm not credited with the translation.

It was a beautiful morning on Friday and the sun was high in the sky when I came in at lunchtime for a snack and a happy birthday call to Connor. By the time I was ready to get on with the grass again the sky had darkened and a prolonged downpour got going. It kept going so I turned to some indoor tasks.

By Saturday morning it had relented sufficiently for me to believe that a dry day’s golf was in prospect. That turned out to be a false hope but golf must go on.

This was a charity competition organised by a student body. To draw a large number of entrants they had provided a breakfast feast to be consumed before starting, an “eat and drink as much as you like” buffet lunch for later and a wealth of prizes.

The prize to participant ratio was so high that even my disastrous round was rewarded with three bottles of wine, two bags of sweets and a sleeve of 3 golf balls. In fact no-one went away empty handed.

Of course the food and prizes had been donated by various sponsors, not paid for out of the students’ pockets but they must have been disappointed by the very poor turnout after the considerable effort they had put into organising the event. Bernard, our president and a very smooth off the cuff speaker, recognised as much in his remarks and promised to add a cheque from club funds to the miserly amount that our 20 euro entry fees had added up to.

It was nice to go home laden with prizes but it was even nicer to go home with 99% dry feet thanks to the new golf shoes that I bought before leaving Edinburgh. They were twice as expensive as any I had bought before but a zillion times more waterproof, and comfy too.

A group of upwards of a dozen of us went to play yesterday at St. Agathe, a course near Montluçon, where Freya had negotiated an advantageous lunch and green fee deal.

Although the lunch was excellent one minor constituent of the starter was a piece of andouillete. That's a sausage made from the bits of the beast that only became palatable to the Russians towards the end of the siege of Leningrad but which the French adore. I managed half of it but stopped for fear of throwing up, to the astonishment and ultimate delight of one of my neighbours who finished it off with gusto.

I'd have been glad to return the favour when it came to the Rum Baba but sadly the opportunity did not present itself.

St. Agathe is a very hilly course with a nice variety of challenges, most of which I failed to meet but it was a good day.

When I got back I managed to put in a short session with the lawnmower before sitting down to the nourishing salad that is a key element of my return to slimness campaign.

Should you be anywhere near Selles-sur-Cher and feeling peckish I can thoroughly recommend their pizzeria.

We stopped there for a snack on the way back from playing golf at Cheverney. I travelled up on Thursday with Jean and John in the latter’s very smart BMW 4X4. We arrived in time to lunch with Ernest, a fellow senior golfer from a different club, and then played our reconnaissance round in preparation for Friday’s competition.

It was very hot but as we finished a cooling rainstorm blew up and was still raging when we arrived at our hotel. Notwithstanding the lightning that accompanied the evening meal the food and wine went down a treat. Its fortifying effect was however only apparent in Jean’s play the following day. He made the podium while the rest of us languished prizeless.

A view of the golf club
My playing partners eyeing up the 10th hole
Jean waxing lyrical at dinner

That's the fun bit of gardening over. I've razed my umpteen square metres of jungle grass to the ground with the trusty débroussailleuse.

To recover I'm off to a golf course near the Loire leaving the cut grass to dry out. Then starts the back-breaking job of raking it up.

If I thought I could get away with it I'd set a match to the lot.

Even at this year’s miserable exchange rate it is hard to make a case against the fixed price lunches available in this part of the country being an unbeatable bargain.

There are two establishments conveniently located near the golf club, one to the north and the other to the south. We struck northwards yesterday after the front nine and enjoyed: a starter of terrine, cold meats and salad; turkey escalope in mushroom sauce with fried potatoes; cheese ad libitum; a delicious pastry and as much wine from our carafe as it felt wise to drink - all for 11 euros.

It goes without saying that bread was also provided. French travellers come back from Italy stunned at being charged for the bread that accompanies their meals. Wasn’t it absence of bread that lit the revolutionary tinders in 1789?

Here’s a piece of information that may prove invaluable to you. It would certainly have been invaluable to me on Thursday night.

There is no junction 28 on the A16 motorway between Calais and Dunkirk.

Do not be fooled by the published Michelin map nor by the up to date (sic) internet one. Do not believe the instructions issued by Louvre hotels on how to get to their establishment at Armbouts-Cappel.

Trust me. Don’t drive up and down looking for 28 even if it is your lucky number. Use junction 57.

Our Labour Party representatives at Holyrood and Westminster have moved out of Brunswick Street, lurched to the right and settled on the main drag.

They've taken over what was the fireworks shop.

The window cries out for a few sparklers at the very least rather than the damp squib of a display that they have come up with.

Gordon has been listening. Well that’s what he promised to do isn’t it. He has been listening, and maybe reading my blog. He has explained, more in sorrow than in anger, that he was right all along.

I have got it all wrong. It seems that I have as usual been looking at events through the prism of self-interest.

When he told that nice Mr Blair that the euro was Bad for Britain, it wasn’t that the euro was bad as such. No, no; badness would come from having it in our pockets in place of the pound. His old friend Mr Wilson, he reminded me, had had wise words to say about the pound in your pocket being just as good a pound, if not even better, after devaluation as it had been before.

The euro, provided it's in the foreigners' pocket, is just dandy.

You see Eurojohnny is now getting so many more pounds for his money that he is shoving our competitors out of the way in order to snap up our cheap goods and services. Our businesses are bursting a gut to fulfil his orders. Our workers are enjoying lots of overtime pay. The Poles can’t get as many zlotys as they used to so they are leaving, freeing up employment opportunities for our keen-to-work unemployed. Our overseas call centres are being relocated back home to take advantage of the sinking pound. Mr and Mrs Eurojohnny and all their hundreds of little eurocents are flying in in droves to spend money in our world famous and historic tourist traps.

Everyone is making enough money to outweigh that 20% rate loss by a country mile.

Remember too that Eurojohnny has overtaken Uncle Sam as our main trading partner so the fact that his dying dollar won’t buy much from us isn’t as important as it once was. In fact it gives us the opportunity to snap up his cheap goods and services and fly over to spend our money in his quite world famous but not so historically ancient tourist traps.

So for every Briton who is not a non-working part-time resident of Euroland, and even I have to admit that that’s a lot of people, everything is fine according to Gordon's analysis.

Going off to Euroland shortly to escape the burning suns of Britain?

Be prepared for a nasty setback. You will have to spend 20% more than you did this time last year to get the same number of euros.

Now who was it who persuaded that nice Mr Blair that the euro was a nasty continental plot that would be very bad for Britain and that we must stick to our lovely strong pound and our lovely interest rates and our lovely house prices and our lovely economic giant friends across the Atlantic?

One more thing that disenchanted voters may want to cast up against Gordon Brown? Unless they are taking their holidays in Florida I suppose.

Here's my photo of the the tram works again with the 1904 version directly below for comparison. They fairly laid waste the street then but I suppose there wasn't much in the way of traffic to be accommodated.

Leaving aside the tower block I'm struck by how many of the earlier buildings remain to frame the shot.

The 1904 photo is reproduced with the permission of Edinburgh Public Libraries. The rest of the Leith series and many others are available at www.capitalcollections.org.uk

I thought I was finished with The Life of Brian but I discovered that when viewed with Internet Explorer 7 thumbnails were not expanding when left clicked. I traced the problem to some peculiarity of the host so I've moved it all again.

That function is OK on the new host but I'll have to run through the site to see if there is anything it objects to. I wonder how this one handles "porn".

Here's a photo I took in Leith Walk the other day to mirror a photograph taken from the same spot of tramlines being laid in 1904.

The old photo is here on www.capitalcollections.org.uk and is copyright. I've been a good little boy and asked for permission to copy it into this blog for comparison but that has not been forthcoming yet.

The modern photo is of preparations rather than the laying of the lines but when that gets going in 2010 or whenever I'll be out there snapping.

It's a great day for The Life of Brian. I've reached the millennium. There are a few inconsistencies with the presentation that I'd like to iron out but I shall resist the temptation to tinker and leave it alone till the autumn.

The summer focus has to be on golf.

I didn't panic but I filled my tank all the same so that I can get at least halfway to Dover, where there should still be supplies, if Scotland suffers a month long petrol shortage.

Wasn't it Alastair Darling who admitted that Northern Rock depositors were acting rationally when they rushed to withdraw their savings despite assurances from on high that all would be hunky-dory?

Going
Going
Gone

Sunset September 1998 somewhere in Syria

I've finished moving my website to its new home and have confirmed that my URLs now point to the new space.

I will get on with adding content as soon as I've got rid of the little translation job I'm doing for Patrick. He and his chums want to attract more English speaking sailors to a rally they organise so intend to create an English version of this website. I'm doing the words.

Will The Life of Brian get to the millennium before the Iles du Soleil sailors get to Afuã ?

I had some trouble with porn yesterday.

I was moving bits of my website to its new host. I found one page that simply wouldn't display after the move. I checked and re-checked that the appropriate files were there and that no links were misspelt etc etc. Eventually it dawned on me that it was probably the host's page filtering routine that had found something it didn't like. And indeed it proved to be the word "porn".

My old host didn't mind "porn" but wouldn't let you say "hotmail", although it tolerated "hot male".

What's porn doing on my website anyway? See for yourself here.

I've been reading a book recently about the dispute between Newton and Leibnitz as to which of them was the inventor of calculus. I shan't spoil the undoubted pleasure you would get from "The Calculus Wars" by Jason Bardi by so much as hinting at the answer but will share with you some of the incidental knowledge I gained.

While having fun in Paris Leibnitz reluctantly accepted an appointment as counsellor to the Duke of Hanover because he needed the money, and although he dragged his heels for a couple of years he eventually turned up in Hanover in 1676 and spent 40 years raking it in, working polymathically and enthusiastically on behalf of his boss and twice as hard in pursuit of his own intellectual interests.

One of the jobs he took on soon after his appointment was to write the history of his boss's family. His estimate was a couple of years work but in fact it was still incomplete when he died in 1716.

I often feel that my much slighter "Life of Brian" website is going the same way. I've now filled up all the free webspace I had and have been looking around for more. I've found what surely will be enough for me but of course I'm having to transfer all the data. That's not entirely straightforward even now that after a couple of days I've resolved various technical issues. But I have to change every single page in one way or another so it is not the work of an instant.

I'm taking the opportunity to get rid of the frame structure thus removing barriers to search engines, and to create links straight to every show and every year on the site directly from the first page.

Until I've copied it all to the new space The Life of Brian will be where it always has been but if you'd like a sneak preview click here . Be warned that some links are dead ends.

This is the view from the house I shared with other members of the 4.48 Psychosis company in Kelso at the weekend. It's also where our hopes of taking the show on to Inverness ended up.

But there is life after death. Most of the company are already embarked on another show and I'm reading plays in anticipation of 2009.

For a full debrief on the SCDA theatrical high jinks at Kelso see Plaything.

An irritating beeping noise early in the morning is bad enough but on the morning that the clocks have gone forward it's an hour worse.

That Sunday at 05.00 GMT my smoke alarm started to beep, but not to protect me from death by burning. There was no cloud of smoke. There was not so much as a wisp in evidence.

Once the brain had cranked into gear I decided that the backup battery (it's a mains connected gadget) was exhausted. I got up on a chair and struggled with the cover while generating a major crick in the neck. It was only an hour or so later once Connor had been roused that I remembered I had a step-ladder, well two actually.

No way could I see how to get it open to get at the battery and stop the infernal beep.

We discussed breaking it apart with a sledgehammer. I'll wait until I can inspect some like it to try to work out how to open it up. It doesn't seem to have the same mechanism as the ones I installed in Mountcastle. Fortunately I was out a lot that day.

On Monday I unsuccessfully looked for a similar alarm but mercy me it didn't beep until just before the electrical shops closed at 5pm. It beeped all night.

Tuesday morning it got too much for me and I started to dismantle the beast and at an early stage snipped some wires to give blissful silence. Once in pieces it was clear how it fitted together.

The next challenge was to find exactly the same model so that the base plate still attached to the mains didn't need to be removed. A combination of internet search and telephone enquiry led me to one in Abbeyhill and in a jiffy all was fixed.

I haven't blogged for a while because I've been learning Pirate. Why not have a go yourself.

It seems that I was so disconcerted on Wednesday that I failed to register Act 1 Scene 2. Reading the play in the bus I see that there (in scene 2 that is not in the bus) Viola gets filled in on the goings on in Illyria including the Orsino/Olivia situation. So the audience is not denied that vital information after all. Now I'm asking myself what scene 1 is there for. Cut it Gordon, cut it.

Nor are the former patrons of Ndebele denied their biltong. I learn from a notice in the window of their vacant premises that Findlays of Portobello have added biltong and boerworst to their 101 things a butcher can do with dead animals.

Ben has gone off to the Himalayas for a wee walk and is keeping a travel log. I added a link to my list a couple of weeks ago but forgot to point that out. It's worth a click, especially for the pictures.

A week without a post disappoints at least one of my regular readers so just for her here are the highlights of my last seven days.

On Saturday I attended a concert in St Mary's Cathedral (the pisky one) in celebration of Ronald Stevenson's 80th birthday. The composer was there but not too many chums had turned out, or was I just fooled by the vastness of the space. Anyway he'd surely have been pleased by Murray McLachlan's playing of his Passacaglia on DSCH.

This is a pretty astonishing piece - solo piano without a pause for one hour and twenty minutes that grips the listener throughout. Apart from needing the stamina required to play for that length of time various other demands are made of the pianist. Perhaps the most entertaining for the spectator is when the page-turner, seated on the pianist's left gets up, knocks the music stand down flat and runs round to his right while the pianist, continuing to play with his right hand leans into the body of the piano and thumps the strings vigorously in various rhythms with his left hand for a page or two.

Sunday saw our second rehearsal for the reprise of 4.48 Psychosis and the eagerly awaited first episode of Mad Men. As so often happens the hype belied the quality of the product, for me at any rate. Since I'm not often faced with a surfeit of entertainment at 10pm on a Sunday evening I may watch it again. On the other hand The Westminster Hour can be a thrilling bundle of fun. No hype for 4.48. In Kelso crowds will roll up for that on the basis of a solid track record.

On Monday I bolted down Connor's delicious paneer pot au feu and rushed off to a residents' association meeting due to take place in a local cafe as a result of our previous meeting arrangements having been judged of a lesser priority than toon cooncil business. But alack and alas some cock-up with keys kept the cafe closed and we repaired to the chairman's kitchen for a rapid romp through parking schemes, lift malfunctions, vandalism, repainting funds, defective locks - the usual exciting ephemera.

Scott's great skill as a chairman is always to draw the meeting to a close bang on 7.30 which left me enough time to get to the Queen's Hall by half way through the first movement of Beethoven's string trio opus something or other. I managed to slip in while the crowd cleared its collective throat between movements one and two. The trio was elegant and was elegantly played but I was happier in the second half. A piano was added to beef up the strings for a rattling good chunk of Dvorak. I pass over Kurtag's little miniatures that never seem to go anywhere.

More music on Tuesday - at lunchtime I went to one of the university's extremely good value concerts - is there better value than free? An engaging short piece by Janacek was followed by a stomping rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The orchestrated versions are all very well but the original for piano alone doesn't need any help at all. It's one of my desert island discs.

My language sensibilities were intrigued by the fact that it was billed as Pictures IN rather than Pictures AT which is how I've always known it so I googled them both. AT wins hands down for the Mussorgsky piece but there is an IN, to wit Pictures in an exhibition by Death Cab for Cutie which is a very different kettle of fish. Listen to it and groan. There is also an AT by Emerson Lake and Palmer that is a rock version of Mussorksky's music with lyrics added. It's horrid.

I popped into the City Art Centre afterwards and admired Ansell Adams photographs, many of which I've been exposed to through the medium of calendars winging their way to me from the USA during Connor's sojourn there. There is an exhibition of political cartoons on as well that had me laughing out loud. My very particular favourite that might even be worth the £295 asking price features East Fife football strip burkas. I shan't spoil your fun by explaining why. Just go and see it.

Another very different kettle of fish cropped up that evening when I went with a number of Grads to Edinburgh Music Theatre's production of A Chorus Line. For some in the audience this was a chance to re-experience a well loved show/film but it was my first time. I shan't rush to re-experience. As a story it failed to interest, engage, move or excite me on any level and the music was musak.

The company however did a great job. They did the best they could to make it look interesting - hard with all that standing around in a long line in front of black drapes - and I failed to see the logic in sometimes having the practice "mirrors" visible and sometimes not but they got a good variety of groupings and interesting lighting effects. There was a lot of red but I don't really think I was grumpy about it. (see Play Thing).

The characterisations were all well judged. The acting was confident and sincere. None of the accents faltered even slightly. The costumes were excellent (notwithstanding the gents' baggy trousers in the finale which some people didn't like but which I didn't notice because I was concentrating on the girls). I loved the dancing, especially the finale and not being a pitch perfectionist the singing passed my muster without a stain on its character.

Choose a more interesting show next time please.

On Wednesday the Grads held their monthly meeting with the carrot of a reading of Twelfth Night (the autumn production to be) to encourage people to put up with the boring business stuff. Claire shares with Scott the desire to shoot through the agenda and despite a barely controlled bout of corpsing brought on by notification of an SCDA opportunity for younger people had it done and dusted just after eight.

Those with previous engagements bade farewell and we started the read. Fifteen lines into Act 1 Scene 1 Gordon interrupted to say we'll cut there and go on to scene 2. I confess to having been disconcerted. Was that just for this reading or does he intend to play it that way? If he does then the audience will not be told that Orsino is in love with Olivia and that she has rejected his overtures, a central element of the plot. Ah well!

After the reading I went home to sup on Connor's second culinary concoction of the week which had not matured (those pesky spuds) in time for me to eat before going out.

I had decided a while ago to go to the Citizen's production of Waiting for Godot and on Thursday set off to see the matinee performance. This was scheduled to be a cheap day out since I can travel to Glasgow by bus for nothing and the Citz charge only £6 for their matinees.

The bus I intended to catch pulled out dead on time, if not early, when I was about 50 yards short of its stance. No hassle, another will be along in 15 minutes. But that one was 15 minutes late so I arrived in Glasgow with so little time to spare that I decided I'd have to get a taxi - cost £5.20. I got to the theatre with ten minutes to spare to learn that the matinee had been cancelled. Should I just go away? Seems a shame having got here so I bought a ticket for the evening performance. That's £9 even for a wee concessionary like me so I'm now 135% over budget and naturally if I'm here all day I'll have to have some lunch.

I had in fact a very pleasant lunch (now 386% over budget) and did a bit of tourism. For the first time in my life I went into the cathedral. It's an absolutely splendid building and at least it is still there unlike many of the historic relics featured in a little tourist trail leaflet that I followed. I gazed in awe at the former sites of past wonders. What destructive planning ideologue allowed Britain's first music-hall to be torn down without even a brass plaque to mark the spot let alone a decent photograph and a recording of Harry Lauder singing "Stop yer ticklin jock"?

Back to the Gorbals for a coffee (413% over budget) and a great show. Gerry Mulgrew played one of the tramps and the play was even funnier than I remembered. I guess Glasgow accents and personalities are just that bit funnier than we are over here in the east.

So that's six of the last seven days. Today I finished reading "Utopia & other places" by Richard Eyre. It's an enjoyable read with good stories of his time at The Lyceum and at the Nottingham Playhouse. The book contains many thoughtful and useful aperçus for the actor and director.

And of course I wrote this post.