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.