It's been several weeks now since I posted anything. It's laziness I'm afraid and illustrates why I've never successfully kept a diary in the past for any significant length of time.

Must do better, just for my own satisfaction. Like the box of Kitwe Little Theatre memorabilia that I stuck in the loft the other day I'll gain enormous pleasure from browsing through it at some distant future date.

Yes this flat has a loft. That was one of it's strong points in my eyes and I've laid down some flooring and put a dozen boxes of not wanted on voyage material up there already. Most of the boxes are fresh from spending seven years in the loft at Mountcastle. That's despite the enormous clear out I had last winter when I sold the house. I have plans for some of the stuff, like digitizing my slides for example but I fear some may spend many more years in oblivion before finally being put to good use in fuelling my funeral pyre.

Another strong point about this flat is access to the rest of the city. Buses run up and down Leith Walk heading for all parts at satisfactorily frequent intervals. How different from anxiously keeping an eye out for the number 5, missing one and cursing the service interval. Now I generally get where I'm going earlier than I need to. Lethargy as well as laziness is another of my sins. I could have been in a convenient location like this twenty years ago.

I've spent a lot of time looking at furniture and yesterday the first new piece arrived. It's a table so henceforth no eating on my knees or bending down to an old coffee table or picnicking on the carpet. The carpet is still there. I've deferred change in that department for the moment but all three of my oriental rugs have been deployed so the floors look a bit different. Seating is on order. Part of a shelving arrangement arrived yesterday. Because the seller's computer system can't cope with a slash in a house number field it went to the wrong flat but I recovered the two boxes when the occupier came home in the evening. The third box missed its bus somewhere around Watford but is now in Edinburgh winging its way towards me, or perhaps towards my neighbour again. I hope that by Christmas I'll have everything organised.

I've been out and about a bit enjoying some of Edinburgh's cultural offerings and a few of its pubs. I've bumped into at least three old acquaintances in the street and am looking forward to catching up with more. I'm making new acquaintances at the Italian class with which I start the week on a Monday morning. Of course rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle is taking up a lot of my time. I'm enjoying it but rehearsals would be even more fun and the quality of the work being done would certainly be greater if we could rely on all the actors turning up. It's going to be one of those shows where the first time the entire cast put in an appearance is on opening night or, if we are really lucky, at the dress rehearsal. See the director's blog for more.

The weather when we set out from Barbansais was foul and the rain persisted all day. The traffic around Paris was awful. One boy racer dodging in and out of lanes spun his vehicle in front of us on the wet road but by a miracle nobody, least of all us, collided with him. We weren't so lucky just 20 kilometres from journey's end at Zeebrugge when I ploughed into two cars at traffic lights thanks to brakes which it has to be admitted were not in peak condition.

The drivers were philosophical about it and the Belgian police were positively charming and we still caught the ferry so it was not all bad.

The car has now gone off for inspection and I suspect the insurers will decide that the economic answer is to scrap it rather than repair it.

The first week back has been pretty good. I've started redecorating the flat with Connor's help. Curtains have been thrown out and the carpets are scheduled to follow. With fresh paint on the walls in addition the lingering smell of tobacco from the previous occupants will soon be gone.

I've started rehearsing Caucasian Chalk Circle. The production has suffered various cast losses so it's a bit fraught and I didn't do the director any favours by being out of sorts one evening for reasons having nothing to do with the show but I hope to make amends.

Connor is meeting considerable obstacles in what you would think is the simple matter of opening a bank account thanks to the UK's anti money laundering regulations. The fact that he has no money to launder doesn't seem to count.

We went to the RSNO's first concert of the season last night. It was a splendid rendition of Mahler's Resurrection symphony. Very large forces were marshalled with the chorus filling the organ gallery to overflowing. Lovely music but as Connor pointed out no tunes to hum as you head for the Filmhouse bar afterwards.

I've been a bit busy over the last ten days fitting in "final" games of golf and dinners and drinks with various friends who were kind enough to want to entertain me before I left for the winter. I also had a fleeting visit from Karl and Lissie who were so charmed by the area last year that they came back for a week's hiking around and about the valley of the Creuse. I picked them up in Anzème at the end of a hard day's walking, took them home, fed and watered them and dropped them off the following day near La Celle Dunoise.

At the weekend I was in Paris visiting Sylviane who is an old friend from my Institut Francais d'Ecosse days. She was performing in an evening (it was actually a whole day but I only went for the evening) of short plays. Hers was A Bourgeois Wedding by Brecht and was the best prepared of those that I saw. I thought the others could have done with a bit more rehearsal. Many of the actors in them were a bit shaky on the lines and gave me a far more amateur impression than I had expected. It was after all a professional theatre although most of the actors were amateurs.

Connor joined me in Paris. Sightseeing there was not altogether up his street but he did enjoy the food. He's been charmed by the Creuse however.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for final water draining and suchlike then it's off to Zeebrugge for the ferry.

Edinburgh on Saturday and winter life begins. I'm sure it will be as enjoyable as summer has been. Vive la différence!

This is Germanicus's triumphal arch at Saintes. It may be that he mastered the course there rather better than I did or on the other hand maybe he triumphed by raping and pillaging since that was considered more fun than golf at the time.

To get there I chose a route that took me through much of the area that we explored when we were looking for a house. There are some lovely spots but on the whole I think we are better off here. During the few days I was there I managed to visit the coast and dabble my tootsies in the Gironde estuary. The weather at the beach was gorgeous and since the season is essentially over it was not overcrowded.

On the way back I took in Cognac and Angouleme. I was very struck with the wynds and alleyways of the latter. A very pleasant place to wander around.

Until the other day I had been congratulating myself (undeservedly since the happy circumstance surely was not my doing) on there having been no wasps (I really mean ZERO) in the house or garden all summer long. Last year we had to get the fire brigade in to clear a nest from the roof and the year before the wasps commandeered an old mole hole in the garden and we had to have the nest dug up by an intrepid wasp catcher. In parentheses I should say, with apologies to Kenneth Grahame, that mole is public enemy number 1 and what we desperately need is an intrepid molecatcher.

Now I have seen two wasps in as many days. Perhaps this is the result of the recent resurgence of fine weather. July was a scorcher but August rather cooler and damper than seemed proper until its final days. Not cold though I did put on a pair of trousers one morning instead of shorts. By early afternoon I was regretting that decision but by then I was on the golf course and not in a position to change matters.

Although this morning is rather overcast my neighbour assures me that September's weather is forecast to be fine so the last three weeks of my villégiature, as the French have it, should be pleasant.

One creature other than the mole that we are not short of is the spider. It's an ongoing struggle to clear the house of webs. I grew quite fond of this one. He's on the large side compared to most. I suppose a two to three inch legspan. He spent the summer quietly in my bedroom lazing the days away behind the wardrobe and settling down at night by my bedside presumably to feed on passing insects or to digest those trapped in his web during the day. Ultimately though in a frenzy of housekeeping he has gone. I'm sure the winter would have killed him off anyway.

After some twenty years Connor has left the USA. He's been mulling the idea over for a while but it seems that from decision to action took about 48 hours. He gave away or abandoned 99.9% of his belongings, drove Ewan's car down to Houston and got on the plane.

Nobody looked beyond page 1 of his passport or asked after that pretty little green form they staple to it when you enter.

By a truly amazing coincidence he chose to arrive at Gatwick on the very morning that his mum was catching a flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh. They met there, she flew north and he got a lift home from André (who has not been able to go to Edinburgh after all).

I'm expecting Connor out here shortly and we'll travel back to UK together in late September.

I took another step further into the digital age this week. I was listening to a programme being presented by Arièle Butaux, someone I think of as the Sean Rafferty of France Musique. Like him she has a lovely voice, gathers an eclectic mixture of music and musicians and chats with them in a relaxed and lively style.

I particularly enjoyed one piece and had a look for the CD on the web. I found it easily enough at around 18 euros plus postage but I also found it downloadable at 99 cents a track or 9.99 for the complete album.

Given our dial-up connection here downloading the album was a non-starter so I picked one track (the one I had heard on the radio). According to the licence rules I can make 7 CD copies and 5 MP3 player copies for my 99 cents.

It took about an hour to get the 4 minutes 33 seconds of music but I have it and I've transferred it to CD. Admittedly the CD won't play on David's machine but I have hopes that a younger machine might cope.

With broadband I can't see a better way of buying a CD. Who needs sleeve notes?

The album by the way is Bach to Beirut by Trio Rhéa. Here's an extract.

My Spanish friends left for home on Saturday having thoroughly enjoyed the Creuse. They took with them a large collection of long stout sticks gathered on various walks. The area is awash with walks; through woods, along river valleys, up and down slopes of various degrees of steepness. They did several from a guide that I have and I went along on a couple.

The sticks were not, as you might have thought, an obsession of Diego junior’s but were gathered by Chus to support her tomato plants at home since sticks are as rare as hens’ teeth in the plains around Valladolid.

One place we started a walk from was the village of Masgot where the houses and walls are decorated with little granite sculptures like these. The man who did them is long gone but the village does a thriving trade in stone-carving holidays on the back of his little hobby.

I had the opportunity to learn a little more about Diego junior’s little hobbies one day. He regaled me with a description of his various collections. He’s got fossils and beetles and feathers and other oddments from the natural world all catalogued and stored at home. One particular joy is his collection of the bones of small mammals. Well, you might say, kids collect all sorts of weird items. True, but it gets weirder.

He collects these by unravelling the balls of hair and bone that form in the stomachs of tawny owls when they have had a good nosh of mice and shrews and suchlike. The undigested matter is balled up and vomited forth for Diego to get his hands on. The balls are soaked and painstakingly taken apart with tweezers and a pointed instrument and the bones cleaned up. It seems that the hairy gunge that held them prisoner is not very collectable.

One last and tangible souvenir of their visit is this portrait. Notwithstanding the fact that one of the party, Antonio, is an artist the portrait is the work of the little collector.

The roof repair man turned up on one of the days I was away. A day or so later it rained heavily and no water came through. Relief all round.

So now it’s back to golf and gardening, or to be more accurate golf and grass cutting with the occasional episode of trimming the more exuberant growths that threaten to take the place over.

Here’s the latest in this year’s short line of golf prizes – a magnificent champagne bucket. Now that I own one I can’t understand how I have managed for so long without. I see it coming into its own at those intimate little supper parties after the opera where my etchings are on view to selected lady guests. Such sophistication must surely overcome all reserve.

Saturday was transhumance day from old gîte to new via lunch at Barbansais. We lost only one vehicle en route but thanks to cellular technology the loss was not permanent. My friends are now 50 miles nearer home but still in that bastion of bucolic beauty, the Creuse.

An interesting contrast between the two gîtes: the first one was part of the farm or smallholding where the owner’s parents spent their lives. The lounge had been the cowshed and the place was chock a block with family mementoes and the sort of ancient objects that figure in “antiquarian markets” throughout Europe. It still seemed like a home.

The second was also a former farm building in a group that we might call a steading, but restored for the tourist trade. A very good quality restoration, comfortable and well equipped and done what’s more by a man who thirty years ago studied English in Edinburgh. Despite such a glowing provenance it lacked the character of the other.

Using only a screwdriver and the combined brainpower of two medical researchers the shutter was painstakingly reset on its roller mechanism and the deposit saved. Let’s hope that the grandchildren who arrived with the gîte owner aren’t afflicted with the same passion for button pushing as Diego junior.

I excused myself from a visit to the medieval fair at Crozant. It promised to be good fun but the siren sound of titanium against whatever golf balls are made of nowadays was too powerful. Is it still willow against leather on the village greens of Olde Englande I wonder? Or have the cricketer’s tools taken on new colours to match his kit?

I did go with my chums down to the Massif Central. We went first to Vulcania. For Edinburgh readers that’s similar to Dynamic Earth but a touch bigger as you may guess from the plan. You really need a whole day to see all the multi-media installations, watch the various films and enjoy the exhibits. You need a further day or two to digest all the information. But life is short so after an hour or two we pressed on to see some real-life volcanoes, That’s what the area is made of. Unfortunately they are not all spouting smoke and flames so it’s a bit tame in that respect. The countryside is lovely though and we joined another million or two holidaymakers set on reaching the summit of the Puy de Dôme.

Here’s Eduardo contemplating the ascent.
A number of the party decided that the coffee stop by the car park was far enough up the mountain, others came part way. Eduardo, Lele (with her back to you in the photo) and I climbed on until I was overtaken with the need to sprawl in the sunshine and admire the countryside leaving them to conquer the peak.

Today has been a day of little miracles.

Miracle number one was a beautiful birdie at the fifth involving a magnificent nine iron shot over the top of a twenty metre high oak tree landing one metre from the pin.

Miracle number two was a classic birdie at the sixteenth where a 170 metre tee shot over the water to the edge of the green at flag level was followed by a five metre putt straight into the hole.

Miracle number three was finding another gîte available for my Spanish chums to spend a second week in the Creuse. It’s 50 kilometres nearer Spain as well which will help when they set out for home.

This angelic looking little Spanish chap enjoying his gazpacho is Diego junior. He’s a bright, lively eleven year old who is currently reading Lord of the Rings in English. He has a bit of an excuse for such precocity having spent part of his short life in the USA but it’s not an easy read.

He also enjoys more active pursuits like making bows and arrows and playing with the large electrically operated shutter that covers securely the big window opening out onto the terrace of the gîte.

I blame the owners really. It reminds me of Ludovica’s bottom (see The Caucasian Chalk Circle Methuen Student Edition page 71 et seq.). If you put that sort of temptation in front of a red-blooded eleven year old something’s bound to happen isn’t it? In industry they call it destructive testing.

Efforts are underway to shift that shutter out of its fully open and stuck state but a pound to a penny says getting the deposit back is not a racing certainty.

Anybody who knows Spain (Spaniards say) knows that things shut down for hours at lunchtime but maybe they (Spaniards on holiday say) don’t know that in rural France the same system prevails, only it happens two hours earlier. So on Monday we set off for Aubusson with warnings from me that if the supermarket petrol station at Gouzon didn’t have a card operated pump there might be nothing to do but have a forced one hour lunch stop 15 minutes after starting out.

It does have a card operated pump so no problem, except the pump refused Diego’s Visa card which he maintained he had used successfully throughout the wide, wide world without incident until arriving in France. (The day before a supermarket had obliged him to pay cash).

Eduardo’s card was received with the same disdain so we had to fill the two motors with my humble but FRENCH bank card. It’s irritating little things like that that make foreign travel such fun isn’t it? I’ve since remembered getting hot under the collar at not being able to recharge a Spanish mobile phone with my otherwise universally accepted HBOS Visa and must remember to point this out to Diego.

We arrived in Aubusson well after lunch-time (French lunch-time that is) and were peckish. We weren’t foolish enough to look for lunch but throughout the length of the high street only three sandwiches were available. For a party of seven without JC on hand this seemed insufficient. Some establishments were closed for the day. They often are on Mondays. Some were closed for their holidays. Well why not? Just because I run a café or a restaurant doesn’t mean I can’t take my holidays in August just like everyone else. Tourists? Here? Hungry? Tant pis.

Saved by a bakery where we sat down to quiches of various sorts, spicy sausage bridies, all washed down with beer and followed by ice-cream cones in exotic flavours and coffee served with smiles all round. It’s heart-warming little things like that that make foreign travel such fun isn’t it?

The tapestry museum would have been an anti climax after that, had I gone in, but I’ve seen it several times before. Others were not drawn to the product of the loom either. Here they are. The one flat on his back with the strain of being on holiday in France is Diego.

He perked up later and successfully used his card to buy provisions in a Champion supermarket and transformed those provisions into a champion dinner. I especially enjoyed something he did with cauliflower and vinegar. There must have been something else in it don’t you think?

My Spanish friends arrived about 11pm on Saturday bearing a gift of wine disproportionate to the efforts I’d made on their behalf. But it would have been rude to refuse, wouldn’t it? If I’m disciplined enough to spin it out some trickles of Ribera del Duero may make it to Edinburgh with me.

I’d been keeping dinner hot, and true to Spanish type they found the lateness of the hour no impediment to enjoying a good nosh. Not even the eleven year old. Made of weaker matter I had eaten my own several hours earlier.

I’d taken the precaution of collecting the key to the gîte earlier in the day so when we got there around 12.30 there was only the pitch black country night to contend with. Surpassing myself in terms of foresight I even had a torch handy which made putting the right key in the right hole a dawdle.

I got to bed about 2 and have seized on the late night as the obvious reason for a failure to repeat the previous Sunday’s handicap improving round. If golf were a game of nine holes I’d have done very well but alas you have keep up the same standard to the bitter end.

So Tommy is not a swinger and my roof repair man hasn't turned up yet. Life is full of little disappointments.

I had a couple of visitors for a night or two this week. Fiona, whose flat in Vence was the base for my Riviera holiday and her friend Pat.

Since Pat is an artist I took them to Fresselines and Crozant. Monet spent time in Fresselines and did various impressionist landscape paintings in the area. A number of artists followed both his style and his footsteps to form what is variously called the Creuse School or the Crozant School. There is still considerable artistic activity in the area, little galleries, exhibitions etc. Most of what we saw this week belonged to the Daub School as I do myself. But at least I refrain from exhibiting. Some were not bad though.

We went out for dinner to some forsaken spot in the bundu where Pat, whose treat it was, was amazed to find that a four course dinner for three with wine and coffee could be had for less than forty euros. It is amazing but welcome.

Tomorrow I'm expecting six and a half Spaniards. If ever the Creuse is full it's in August so it was very much to my surprise that I found a gîte capable of holding them. It's near Boussac which is not too far from me. I may have to cram them in here for a night or two when they leave it though.

At last I have reversed the steady rise in my handicap. I won this bottle into the bargain. Could this be the start of something big?

You will note that this, shall we say undistinguished, building, which is just across the road from us, has a rather fine roof. All due to the great storm of 97, or was it 98?
No matter, the point is that we have a roof that deserves to be similarly replaced by a generous storm insurance payout but while we wait for that deliverance we have to keep applying patches.

Two or three years ago a M. Fruchou redid some of the internal wooden structure, replaced the ridge tiles together with a number of other tiles (some are visible in the picture) and applied other bits of builder’s bluffery with the aim of improving the overall watertightness of the roof.

Last year we decided to put a double-skinned tube in the chimney. Up till then we had apparently been in danger of burning the place down and falling foul of French building law. I’m not sure which carries the greater penalty. It seemed a good idea to add a bit of waterproofing around the chimney at the same time. We called on M. Fruchou but I think he got the idea that we weren’t totally satisfied with the results of his earlier work (true but not critical). Despite declaring that he would come and size up the job he never made it. Fortuitously we came across an English builder, Dave. He did the job and assured us that despite not having put flashing round the chimney (he had a reason but I can’t recall it) we were shipshape and watertight for a good three years.

Just before I went off to the Riviera it rained a lot and I went up into the roof to see what was what.
Well the picture shows clearly what was not watertight at all. I called Dave immediately but he had left the country. I suspect a love affair gone wrong but didn’t dare ask his mum-in-law for details. M. Fruchou may not have left the country but seems to have abandoned his business. His mobile number is now someone else’s and his fixed line has been temporarily out of service every time I’ve dialled it.

We don’t count our chickens till they are hatched but the French around here are even more circumspect. They don’t count the eggs while they are still in the chicken’s arse. So I don’t want to declare success too soon but the man who put Velux windows in for us some years ago says he can fix it and what’s more that he’ll do it soon. Stay tuned to find out.

After a day of domesticity (cut the grass, do three loads of washing) I set off for Bourges. It’s only an hour and a half away but it’s the first time I’ve been.

Probably not the last because it’s very lovely. A gorgeous medieval centre with a magnificent cathedral and other buildings of note. Their most famous citizen is, or rather was in the 15th century, a chap called Jacques Coeur who made lots of boodle, much of which he lent to Charles VII. Naturally he fell out of favour and went to prison. But he left behind a jolly mansion and here’s a detail from the façade.

Of course I went to Bourges not in pursuit of historical knowledge but to play two days of golf under the auspices of the Seniors of the Four Leagues.

The municipal course on the southern fringe of the town is very pleasant. There’s a lovely lake nearby with a sailing club, a jogging track all around and an outdoor pool is not far off. You can imagine there are worse places to be bourgeois.
This was a team competition in greensome format and Jean and I represented Les Dryades. We played respectably close to our joint handicap without covering ourselves in either glory or the other stuff. It was extremely hot but we were provided with bottles of chilled water, cans of Fanta etc at regular intervals by a young man who whizzed around in a golf cart. He raised the noisiest round of applause at the prize-giving.

On the way home I got a full frontal of an advert which had bedevilled (to a tiny extent) my stay on the Riviera, thanks to my holiday companion’s professional fixation. I’m not wild about the ad but I love the product. Here’s a picture. I leave it to you to interpret the slogan and to provide a catchy English equivalent. My starter for ten is “Aniseedy – yes!” “Anisickly – no!” You must be able to do better.

This morning I made one of my periodic visits to The Scotsman site to see how the land lies north of Hadrian’s wall. There was much of interest.
I was sorry to learn that Mr MacSween of haggis fame has bashed his neeps and chappit his tatties for the last time at the uncomfortably close age of 66.

Can you believe, as Tommy Sheridan would have it, that ten members of the executive of the Scottish Socialist party have perjured themselves to portray him as a wild swinger? He’s always been a natty dresser hasn’t he, even on half pay? These things are rumoured to go hand in hand but I await the outcome of the court case to learn the truth.

Now what thrilled me was PAL. I am sympathetic to Bill Clinton, ambivalent about bull-fighting, mildly uneasy about global capitalism, saddened by Darfur, made tepid under the collar by the intransigence of the parties in the Middle East but as anyone who has followed this blog from its beginnings will know what really gets my goat is litter. Here I found an article about a public spirited lady who, aghast as I am at the litter strewn streets and open spaces of Edinburgh and who like me makes a practice of picking up litter, has, unlike me, got off her arse and started a campaign, People Against Litter, to enlist the common man and woman in the great fight. She has shamelessly borrowed slogans from Mao Tze Tung and the like and brought great clichés to bear but she is right. I commend her campaign to you and exhort you to sign up. Become a PAL today! You know it makes sense!