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.