Edinburgh's latest festival is magic and Connor and I are off to see a show tonight but some other magic is not working for me at the moment.

That's the magic of the paint mixing machine. In the bad old days you had a choice of a couple of shades of whatever basic colour you wanted but now there is an infinite range. I pity the poor soul who has to dream up names for the infinitesimally different shades of yellow or whatever. You can't just say light yellow, dark yellow, very dark yellow. Names like sunburst or morning glow or forest daffodil have to be invented.

Anyway I got some colour shade cards from shop A, decided on a couple of colours and went back to get little sample pots to see how they would look in situ. The mixing machine was out of order. A day later it is in order but not quite, since my particular colours cannot be guaranteed to come out of the machine in their proper glory.

So I went to shop B. Since they stock an entirely different range I knew I would have to start with the colour cards again. I found the paint aisles taped off and a little notice expressing regret and advancing health and safety concerns as the reason. Their cards and the mixing machine were tantalizingly in sight but an assistant insisted that access was impossible.

Enquiring as to what particular health hazard I was being saved from I learnt that were I to venture into one of the aisles I might be peppered with paint pots and end up with a shirt of many colours since the racks on which they stand have been deemed to be unstable.

Months will apparently go by till it is sorted out since the decision has been taken to refit the whole store for fear this instability is infectious.

So I shall have to trudge off to shop C and hope that their magic mixer has not been hexed.

Take a look at this image which appears without comment in a recent Plaything post.It is not a manifestation of iphone mania but a bushel under which a theatrical light is hiding. Our director, who is not normally publicity shy, is surely appealing in this instance to only her most dedicated readers; those who can be relied upon to magnify the picture and scan the text thoroughly in search of hidden treasure.

That treasure is the news that her production of The Tempest on board the Mary of Guise barge moored in the Water of Leith is a 2010 Fringe Festival hot ticket.

So get yours now.

It was a long and weary drive from Dover on Monday but for a change I went up the M11 and the A1 and then cut across country on the A68. The A68 drive is through lovely scenery and is very exhilarating with its ups and downs but can be a bit frustrating if you get stuck behind a lorry or a Sunday driver.

The evening was the sort of evening that has been hard to find in the Creuse this month, warm and sunny. So I did what I hadn't done in France; sat out in the garden with a glass of wine and watched the sun go down. Admittedly my Edinburgh garden is a little less than 2000 square metres and is perched on top of the flat below's window bay without a forest view but I'm very pleased with the progress of my plantings. Here's a sample.
I didn't actually sit but if I bought a little collapsible camping stool I'm sure I could squeeze it in and feel very continental.

Since then it's been tennis and tempest. Not that I've been playing in a storm. I've been glued to the telly for Wimbledon and torn myself away for a couple of rehearsals of The Tempest. So the good weather is wasted on me really.

Usually when I'm within 50 miles or so of Paris I tune my car radio into TSF to get a jazz fix but today I stuck with France Musique.

They've been having something of a British focus this week. Many of their broadcasts have even come from London. This has been in celebration of De Gaulle's call to arms after the fall of France broadcast by the BBC on 18th June 1940.

This afternoon they were playing music by Vaughan Williams including his opera Sir John In Love which I don't believe I've ever heard before. It was very tuneful and most of the time very jolly so I stuck with it.

Apparently he based a lot of the music in the opera on English folk melodies, ten in all. The only one I can truthfully claim to have recognised was Greensleeves and that because it was played pretty straight. The least variation or disguise of a tune and I'm lost.

I wonder how I'd have fared listening to the 24 hour broadcast of covers of Yesterday if I hadn't known what was going on?

So far, this June has been the wettest and most dismal of the ten that I have spent in France. It seems to have rained without intermission. If the weather during the last third of the month is as poor then I shall be heartily glad not to be here.

Of course all things are relative and I have not been swept to my death in a flash flood as many people have been in the south so it’s not been all bad.

The big question is whether or not there will be an interlude of dryness between now and Sunday lunchtime to allow me to cut the grass before I go. I’ve just been on-line to look at the forecast for this area but Météo France tell me that in view of the prevailing weather conditions their site is currently saturated and will I please try later.

I assume the saturation is from information seekers like me but I wouldn’t put it past that pesky rain having permeated the French bits of the world wide web.

Have you heard of Glen Baxter? I don’t believe I had until I came across an appeal for 100 ukulele players in the window of a music shop in Poitiers.They were required, and probably still are, in connection with Baxter’s historico-gastronomic tour of Poitou-Charente which starts today and continues until 12^th September. He is described in the pamphlet I picked up as a living legend of British nonsense.

Having looked at his website I cannot disagree.

We all know that black pudding is made from blood. But I often think when I eat a Scottish black pudding that the pig who provided the blood must have died of a heart attack, given the amount of fatty matter that is included.

Now that may be more natural for a pig than to be slaughtered but from my selfish viewpoint I prefer the sort of black pudding that I ate in Poitiers the other day. It could have contained nothing put pure healthy blood that had been harvested as it gushed from a neatly sliced throat. Accompanied by a delicious portion of mashed potato and half an oven baked apple it was a lunch to die for. And my thanks to the pig who did.

I was in Poitiers on a rest day between rounds of golf at a very pretty golf course in Vienne, where incidentally I can heartily recommend the golfers’ lunch. Fifteen euros will get you three tasty courses, a glass of wine and a coffee. The second time I lunched there my main course was wild Scottish salmon. How come I can’t get that in Edinburgh for 15 euros by itself never mind as one course out of three? Should you wish to brighten up your mashed potato by the way try mixing in some purée of split peas.

As I write this I am hearing of the death of Egon Ronay. His life is over but his work is not yet finished.

After the golf yesterday I set off with my prize of a bottle of red to the little village of La Celle Dunoise to attend a birthday barbecue. It was a lovely setting in a garden leading down to the river from a rather splendid 1920's residence. Unfortunately it rained intermittently and rather more on than off.

I stayed relatively dry myself not only because I had a drive of around 30 kilometres ahead of me to get home but in an attempt to balance my intake at the two social events that I had attended in my own village earlier in the week.

These were crowned late on Thursday evening by a substantial tumbler of Laphroaig served with a remark about how being Scottish I must like whisky and so on. Now as it happens I do like whisky and Laphroaig is one of my favourites so it would have been churlish to refuse.

But it would have been wise.

After a second round score of 73 Celia was still first equal but I'm sad to say she put in a disastrous 82 today and has ended up in 4th place. Not too bad for your first excursion overseas I suppose but disappointing both for her and for her supporters at Les Dryades. She's back to France tomorrow for another competition this weekend so let's hope that goes a little better.

I've at long last heard what part I am going to play in the Grads production of The Tempest in the Fringe. I shall impersonate Alonso, King of Naples. He is one of those who were instrumental in the usurping of Prospero. He seems a bit of a wet fish so I shall be acting against type (given how I see myself anyway).

Here's the venue - the good ship Mary of Guise - handily placed for drinkers opposite The Shore pub and restaurant with a number 22 bus stop only yards away. Come in your millions.

Keeping my flat warm this weekend have been the golf ace from Les Dryades, Celia Mansour, and her dad.

Celia, who attends a special school for France's elite young golfers, is playing this week at Gullane in her first overseas golf competition, the US Kids Golf European Championship, with her dad on the bag.

Naturally I'm keeping my eye on the results and am delighted to see that in the 14 year old girls competition after the first round Celia with a score of 75 is first equal out of 17 competitors.

I only wish that my golf skills had gone even infinitesimally in the same direction as Celia's since I first played with her about 5 years ago.

I played in my first competition on Sunday and although I didn’t do as well as I have been doing in informal games it wasn’t a total disaster.

Over the post game refreshments the conversation turned to Erse.

The initial capital will have alerted you to the fact that we are not talking bottoms here but language. It seems that in French crossword puzzles erse generally means Scottish Gaelic. (There is also a French word erse whose meaning need not detain us here.)

I maintained that this was nonsense and that Erse is Irish Gaelic. Later investigation via the OED, Chambers, Collins, Marian-Webster, Britannia and Columbia revealed that the origins of the word go back to Old English “Irisc” and/or Old Norse “Irskr” meaning Irish.

Point proved you might think but not quite. Various quotations show that Erse was applied to Scottish Gaelic in the past, often on the basis of its supposed derivation from the Irish(or its true one for all I know). But the authorities are pretty unanimous that currently its use is restricted to Irish Gaelic.

So I’m counting that a draw and suggesting to my French buddies that their crossword compilers need a boot up the e**e to bring them up to date.

My postman was born and spent his early years in Chile and this winter took three months leave of absence to visit his former home and travel in Chile, Peru and Ecuador including Easter Island and the Galapagos.

Thanks to the miracle of digital photography he was able to record this trip in some detail. He promised to share the joys of the journey with me and last night together with some neighbours we gathered in my kitchen for this treat.

Now we all know that the pleasure of viewing other peoples’ holiday snaps has its ups and downs so to cater for the downs I had laid in some nibbles and a few refreshments. The downs were immediately apparent when he turned up with four DVDs and announced that he had 4000 photographs. My heart lightened somewhat when he said we could skip quickly over many of them and lightened a lot more when it proved impossible to read his DVDs on my machine.

I was all for making polite expressions of regret, refilling my glass and tucking into the nibbles but in view of his obvious disappointment (he has been waiting since February for a means to show the neighbours his pics) I felt impelled to ask if he still had the flash memory cards. Indeed he did so dashed off home and returned with camera and cards.

Then came the tedious job of transferring them to my PC. After some false starts we had 5 gigabytes of pictures loaded with 3 to go. We were now an hour and a half into the proceedings and hadn’t seen a single photo except for when they lumbered past during the transfer.

So we started to view. Now some of the pictures were really interesting and a number were lovely and with a slideshow of say 25% of the total Jean might have stayed the course. But he is in his 90s after all. He was the first to go – no I tell a lie – that was Alain who was glad of the excuse of the non-readable DVDs, downed his pastis at that point and fled. Josette followed Jean an hour or so later and I was left showing the postie out some five hours after his arrival with his cheery promise to return to show the remaining 3 gig at a future date ringing in my ears.

Since the old lady across the road died some years ago her house has stood empty despite the fact that her son Alain has declared from time to time his intention to do the place up and move in. To be fair to him he has kept the plot in reasonable trim and has occasionally shown signs of activity, such as stripping out the byre a couple of years ago.

But now serious work is underway. The house has been reroofed since I saw it last in October and Alain or one of his many chums is here most days beavering away.

This has proved to be to my advantage. I got my strimmer on the go a couple of days after my arrival and had done the driveway and the strip alongside the road and had started on the jungle that was the garden when Alain wandered over and opined that I was never going to manage. I retorted that I’d done it often enough before and that tedious and back-breaking work though it was I’d have it done in a very long jiffy. No way, he said. If it doesn’t rain this afternoon I’ll do it. He has of course an industrial scale mower and he was as good as his word.

So all I’ve had to do is rake up the cut grass, and believe me that was tiring work that took a few hours, and trim the edges and corners that he couldn’t get at.

Shall I drop the news casually that I’m away in July and August in the hope that he’ll volunteer to keep the grass tidy?

I fell foul of the French obsession with lunch within minutes of landing on Monday.

My usual travel pattern was disrupted not by ash but because I went to see Fiona's excellent production of The Hired Man in Woking on Saturday and stayed over. So I found myself driving off the boat around 1 pm local time and thought I'd just nip into the Carrefour that's on my route just a few miles from the ferry terminal and buy some essentials for my tea and Tuesday's breakfast.

But I forgot. All good Frenchies are lunching at that time. Fortunately the petrol pump is automated otherwise I'd have had to twiddle my thumbs for an hour. So the only harm done was that I had to pay motorway prices for my victuals.

I'm so glad the return of the volcanic ash spared Newcastle yesterday and allowed me home to spend the night following the election. What fun it was and continues to be - and such great graphics.

I thought Gordon Brown was about to propose a government of national unity a few minutes ago in his Downing Street statement. What a marvellous prospect that would be. The uneasy relationship between Gordon and Tony would pale in comparison with Gordon and David. But for the moment he's holding out enticing titbits to the Libdems in the hope of putting David Cameron in difficulty in his talks with Nick Clegg and getting his own claws on Nick.

We'll see what the three little piggies get up to over the weekend.

The spammers who have been trying in vain over the years to entice me into enhancing my manhood have changed tack. Their spies have been out and realised that I am an ageing gentleman and may well be suffering from droopy manboobs. Hence their latest offering:

"BareLifts - The Invisible Solution For A Naturally Perky Look

BareLifts are completely strapless and will help lift your breasts while ensuring a naturally perky look in virtually ANY outfit. With BareLifts, you can lift your breast and realign your nipple to a higher position...."

I'm tempted.

What the world in general, and my little bit of the world in particular, does not need is another branch of Tesco. But I have learnt that some of their three billion profit is being spent on buying up the Co-op at the bottom of Easter Road.

Shame on them and more shame on the sell-out by Scot Mid. This is a blow to consumer choice and a wound in the side of the co-operative movement, imbued as it is with camaraderie and solidarity, not to mention its superior selection of wine.

To paraphrase a famous king whose name I have forgotten - "Who will rid me of this troublesome supermarket?"

Volcanic ash didn't keep me away from St Andrews this morning. The prospect of an hour and a half on a rainy beach did. So I have missed out on seeing what sounded like an interesting production of The Tempest.

But I may be affected by the ash all the same. My saxophone teacher is in Amsterdam and may still be there when it's time for my lesson on Tuesday. Siobhan's dinner chez moi will get cold if she's still in Portugal on Wednesday. And in the slightly longer term what about my flight to Barcelona in ten days time?

The great British public have decided that, last night at least and for the time being, the fairest of them all was the man with the manifesto packed with fair phrases.

So is the wind set fair for Downing Street for Mr Clegg? I doubt it but I suppose his party's vote may increase to give him some influence over whichever of the other two parties comes out on top. He'd be wise to hammer on about voting reform to give him some chance of forming a government in his own right next time around. Brown has promised reform but I doubt that he would give it any priority. There's always the excuse of having to save us from ruin first. I mean further ruin of course.

But Clegg had an easy job. Don't scratch your bum, look human, just allow Brown and Cameron to slag each other off and appear as the relaxed voice of reason. And since you have to be a bit of a political nerd to have seen him before he was for most people the new kid on the block. How many hopefuls have appeared who were gloriously exciting or at least not an immediate turn-off on day 1 but revealed a few defects in the longer term?

So I fear it will be with Nick and his uncle Vince, but let's give them a chance to bask for a bit before we turn and bite.

Now that the main parties' manifestos are out I've been trying to pick a winner.

An animated cartoon video in black and white slightly redeems the dullness of Labour's document. Its risible cover that looks like a Chinese communist propaganda poster (before the introduction of the one child policy clearly) at least spares us another thousand words. The HTML or downloadable pdf versions that are the only options for getting at the content are densely printed, only relieved now and then by coloured text and by coloured pages that separate the sections and bear logos in a style akin to lavatory signs.

It looks like they are appealing to the low-end computer user.

The Tories are definitely going for the high-end. Their document can be read on-screen in black and white text only but the downloadable pdf is packed with propaganda posters in an agit-prop style, with diagrams and with photographs, though the text is pretty dense and black. Some photos like those telling you that Glasgow and Brighton are great places for one reason or another don't seem terribly relevant but hey. You can even download a high definition version presumably so that you can print it with the photos in their full glory. But you don't have to print your own because they offer you a means of buying a printed version for a fiver. And they have large print for the poorly sighted, braille for the blind and easy-read for those with learning difficulties. If being on-line is your thing though there is a Flash version that's very well presented and you can listen to an audio version. When you have get on your bike or take the bus the audio version can go with you on your mp3 player. If you can't be bothered with the whole thing there are various little related videos.

No reason not to get the Tory message then.

The Libdems' manifesto offering gives you more or less the same options as the Tories; without braille but with a better Flash version and with a pick and mix video iphone app. Their webpage looks better and where they score heavily is on the presentation of the document itself. Labour's pages of dense text and the Tories' strident posters are banished in favour of well laid out pages with a good balance between text and pictures and well thought out, clear highlighting.

For me it's the winner.

But what about the content? I conducted a little experiment. Labour's document is entitled "A future fair for all" so I said to myself, as I often do, "mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all?" and searched the documents for instances of "fair", "fairer", "fairest" and "fairness".

Here the Libdems are streets ahead with 94 occurrences. Labour come second with 61 and the Tories a poor third with only 9. Draw your own conclusions.