For a couple of floors in a hotel lift this morning I was in the company of a young American lady.  She enquired about my health - as ye do.  I replied that it was excellent - as ye do.  She then said "You smell great."

Fresh from the shower though I was I suspect that it was not my manly odour but the fragrance left by a previous passenger that had excited her nostrils.

But you never know.

It's not every prison that has an 18 hole golf course in its grounds but I've just spent three days in one.  Mind you it took them 137 years from when the reformatory was built to create the course, but way back in 1848 the inmates were kept fit by labour in the fields.  Now the young people serving time there are in fact employed by the hotel/holiday centre that the reformatory has become.

This touching little memorial to the bad boys and girls who were locked up there is at the end of an imposing entrance alley of trees behind which stand the wardens' houses where we had rooms.

The text reads " To the memory of the children imprisoned in St. Hilaire and deprived of their childhood, and to those who fought for the establishment of proper legal protection for young people."

The reform agenda centred on teaching agricultural trades and the place is awash with barns and farm buidings, most in a state of dilapidation.  I was particularly struck by the pig sheds but I forgot to take a picture.

Instead here are a few that I did take.

The entrance alley

Wardens' accommodation

Inmates' quarters

The modern welcome sign

My saxophone practice has suffered this week.  I dropped the mouthpiece at the weekend and the tiled floor took a chip out of it.  It's only a small chip but the result is that the reed is off the rails and much of the air that should be going down the tube is going down the tubes.

But I'm off tomorrow for three days golfing near the Loire (let's hope the rain stops) and am then away again for a few days so should have a new mouthpiece in place by the time I'm free to resume serenading the neighbours.

Fortunately the rain did not continue into Thursday and spoil the Fête Nationale.  We celebrated with a team competition in Chapman format (I shan't bother to explain that, suffice to say that it combines the talents of two players).


My partner and I scooped the prestigious third prize. Thanks I like to think to a prodigious 7 iron shot of mine.  Because of the lack of rain over recent months many of the ponds on our course are waterless seas of mud.  My partner put his drive straight into one of them where it nestled comfortably on the muddy surface leaving me the task of recovery.  As I sank slowly into the mud I whacked the ball 120 metres out of the pond, over a few trees and onto the green where we sank it for par.

That was not my only contribution , who could forget my delightful birdie chip, again with my trusty 7 iron, but truth be told my partner was the mainstay of the team.  Tomorrow I'm on my own.

I was injudicious enough to comment in an email yesterday on the warm dry summer we were having here.  In the evening it started to rain and it hasn't stopped since.

With a hint of pink as the paint manufacturers describe some of their off whites is about the extent to which I was tickled in the town hall on Saturday night.

The first play featured the devil suffering from depression because there was so little evil in the world.  She (for it was an all female troupe) summoned three minions who each proposed a course of action.  In the end the devil decided to saddle the world with thinkers.  Since the author is by trade a philosopher I guess this was his little joke, no doubt received with appreciative chortles in intellectual circles.  This audience appreciated it as well but more noisily. 

 

The piece undoubtedly had potential but the production was a bit stolid.  The three minions were dressed identically which I suppose is reasonable but they each stood stock still and delivered their radically different suggestions in the same somewhat wooden way. That was boring.  The devil laughed falsely a lot of the time which was also boring.

The second play, called Inventions for Two Voices, was a string of little playlets or long sketches that had nothing in common except – you’ve guessed it.

The potential was better realised here but not consistently.  One of them, interestingly presented in shadow play behind a white sheet, would have been much better had it not been for the fact that one character was a prisoner on all fours chained like a dog, with the result that no-one behind the front row saw more of her than the occasional bobbing up head as she thrust forward against her restraints.

Two hairdressers manipulating their clients’ heads as they discussed the suicide attempt(s) of mutual friends was a good laugh and I caught the punch line explaining that the result of their wrapping themselves in stripped cable and sticking the ends in a socket was only to blow the fuses.

Unfortunately despite the best efforts of the actress in another piece to allow wildly enthusiastic applause to die down before she delivered her exit line I missed it.  The applause showed that the audience favoured what we might call a very broad style of acting.  The style fitted the sketch though.  It involved a flippers, snorkel and facemask wearing couple, the male half identified by the actress wearing a pair of Speedos and adopting a manly posture, who have agreed to dive simultaneously into the water on a given signal.  They never do of course and wobble precariously as in a silent movie while they find a new excuse for not diving each time.  They stagger about on their flippers and come to blows etc etc.  All good clean fun.  But I’ll have to buy the script to get that punchline. 

At last a point shaved off my handicap and a bottle of champagne gained to boot.  Not only champagne but a jar of foie gras and several of gelatinous fluids containing various bits of duck anatomy.  These will make delightful tit bits for those enjoying my Red Army choir DVD at Christmas.

These trophies were won at Aubazine, a lovely little spot in Corrèze where I've played a few times in the past.  We had excellent weather and lots of jollity including, for half a dozen of those spending the night on site, a post dinner hack around their nine hole pitch and puttish course where I put down a marker for the following day's competition by scoring nothing but pars till light stopped play.

Play stopped before the light vanished at Trent Bridge on Wednesday.  I had the Radio 4 ball by ball commentary on throughout although I only sat and listened attentively in bursts.  But as England swept vigorously to victory in the evening I found myself unwilling to leave the game to attend one of the infrequent entertainments going on in Châtelus that I'd had in my diary for a couple of weeks.  I musn't be distracted tonight though but make the 21.00 double bill curtain up.  I don't know either of the plays being performed and hope to be tickled pink.
 

The American professor who blogged about seagulls and refuse sacks in Edinburgh's New Town has had a European adventure.

My regular email from the Cameo tells me that not only am I missing Senna for the second time but I won't see Life in a Day either.  I've got a little bit of personal interest in that one since the cameraman on A Lifetime uploaded some footage of its filming as part of his day.  I'd love to see whether any of that has survived the distillation of the 4500 hours submitted down to the 95 minutes being screened.  Though I won't be surprised if it's been bumped in favour of the animal slaughter the Cameo warns us that the film contains.

The director of Similar Lily, one of the student films I worked on a month or two back, had some distillation done for him when someone stole the camera with the last day's footage in it.  Despite what must have seemed at the time to be an artistic bodyblow the remaining footage has been edited into a coherent and entertaining short film that you can watch here provided you have or are willing to open a Facebook account.

A treat for anyone visiting me around Christmas was plucked from the Lions Club golf competition scorecards at Sully-sur-Loire on Saturday.

Prizes for those displaying prowess on the course included computer printers, golf paraphernalia of all sorts, cases of wine and other costly goods but still left a handy 30, 000 euros or so (not all from that one day) for the children’s cancer charity the Lions were supporting.

For the less successful with club and ball  there is always the leftovers draw and the innocent hand doing the dipping pulled me out a sleeve of three golf balls (always useful) and Jeane Manson and the Choir of the Red Army’s 2006 Christmas DVD.  There’s a medley of carols and Ave Maria and a French version of A White Christmas amongst other goodies that will have my friends vying for an invitation to my flat over the festive season.

Though further encouragement to come over is hardly needed, let me tell you that not only did Jeane Manson (an American resident in France since the seventies) represent Luxembourg in the 1979 Eurovision song contest but was Playboy’s playmate of the month in August 1974.

Perhaps inspired by a need to avoid such excitements I turned in a score of 36 Stableford points at home on Sunday to qualify as a proper prizewinner and, this being a competition enjoying Spanish sponsorship, was rewarded with a bottle of Ribera del Duero and a pound of Manchego cheese.

Mentioning the Forsyte Saga TV series in my last post piqued my curiosity about how it's various stars went on in life and art. I found this excellent website. Although it's not actually up to date having been put together ten years ago it gives a good idea of the impact of the series as does the Guardian's obituary of Nyree Dawn Porter that it points you to (the Times obit isn't there).

I missed the notice of her death when it happened since it didn't cause much of a stir in Egypt. I must sometime have a look at the 2002 remake by Granada. That didn't make much of a stir wherever I was then either.

When I went on holiday recently I bought three books for the price of two to take with me but I feel that I ended up with one book for the price of three.

The translated from the Italian cops and robbers novel was about as boringly predictable as it could be and only cussedness led me to complete it which I did at an early stage.

My second choice was The Forsyte Saga. It was satisfactorily thick and long lasting and enjoyable and sealed the bond of affection for the story and characters that the black and white 60s TV adaptation had engendered.

Thickness is an important criterion in holiday reading so despite my lukewarm appreciation of science fiction I took Dune whose 596 pages include a map, four appendices and a glossary. After all one must keep an open mind and this novel has won prizes and according to the blub is the finest and most prescient science fiction novel ever written.

Well God preserve me from its lesser competitors. I didn’t get round to it when I was on holiday and started it the other day. My favourite condemnatory word for works of art that don’t appeal is tosh. For Dune let me spell that TOSH. Now I don’t deny it’s imaginative and the author has gone to a lot of trouble to make up funny objects and funny words and to harness genuine or near genuine Arabic and other terms to delight our eyes and ears and it’s a lovely map. But what TOSH, and I’ve only read 10% of it. That’s when I decided my prejudice against science fiction was in fact sound literary judgment and gave up reading the book.

Let me give you a wee flavour or two. Here’s a definition from the glossary:” Poling the sand – the art of placing plastic and fibre poles in the open desert wastes of Arrakis and reading the patterns etched on the poles by sandstorms as a clue to weather prediction.” Now that, while akin to reading tea leaves at least makes some sort of sense. Unlike “ CHOAM – acronym for Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles.”

And here’s a bawdy song sung by the player of a nine string baliset (?) whose multipick (?) is going like the clappers: “ Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls/ Will do it for pearls,/ And the Arrakeen for water!/ But if you desire dames/Like consuming flames/ Try a Caladanin daughter! “ What could Rabbie Burns not have done with that raw material.

And this is where I hope one of my female friends can help me out. “A skinny girl the colour of bronze, her body tortured by the winds of puberty..” I don’t recall flatulence being a problem of male puberty. In fact there’s nothing a young boy likes better than a good fart.

I had a bellyful of young boys and girls this afternoon and it was nothing to do with puberty since these were about nine years old. The occasion was a kids golf competition for a couple of classes from the local primary who have been coming along to the course during the year and learning the rudiments. This competition was their end of the year treat. Several adults were called upon to provide some supervision.

In France you don’t have to be proved innocent of child abuse to do that sort of thing but by the end of the afternoon my thoughts were well past abuse and moving rapidly towards slaughter. I’ve done this and other child and golf activities before and enjoyed it but the six I had charge of today were the most ill-disciplined and obstreperous lot you could hope to meet. I earned my free pint I can tell you.

Life in the country can be crude and rude. The various village ducks and hens that forage around our property don't rush back to their coops when taken short but relieve themselves on our land. Their lavatory of choice in recent days has been the doorstep. Fortunately the dog who occasionally comes by to do business prefers grass to granite.

I expect zombies can be crude and rude and I'm sorry to be missing the chance to meet up with them on my other doorstep in the Brad Pitt blockbuster to be shot in Glasgow in August. For those who are free here's the call for extras.

Here's a humorous reflection on the effect of the recent Spanish protests that a friend sent me a few days ago. I've just been able to watch it courtesy of the bandwidth available in Gueret chez

You don't need much knowledge of the language to appreciate the plight of the little girl whose parents are too busy to talk to her.

The ball bashing I slogged away at over the winter has not so far brought the enormous improvement in my game that I had hoped for, but I am slightly encouraged. Two shots in particular in yesterday's round gave me heart though I don't think that either was the result of winter work.

I sank an extremely long putt, at least as long as any fish that ever got away and had a brilliant wedge shot out of a greenside bunker to within six inches of the hole. That was in the annual Chateau de Poinsouze competition where their merry campers, mostly Dutch, join us for golf and we go off to the campsite (where there actually is a chateau) for an excellent dinner afterwards. They serve some jolly nice wine with it but one of the penalties of country living is that you can't risk more than a glass for fear of repercussions on the road home.

One of the penalties of having too much to do in my last week in Edinburgh was that I didn't manage to squeeze in seeing Senna. It looked super from the trailer and all the press reports I had read raved about it. My friends here didn't seem aware of it and I'm not surprised. It came out in France in late May but even had I been here I'd have had to travel to see it because it was only screened in four cinemas.

Could that conceivably have been a post mortem incidence of the old rivalry with Alain Prost?

It's very nice to be back in France -such lovely countryside and quiet, albeit pricey, motorways and reasonably priced wine (see below). And don't let's forget their weekday jazz slot on the equivalent of Radio 3 and related weekend bonanzas. Not to mention the musical treats at the Parc Floral. Those I haven't been able to enjoy since I left Paris but I like to know that they're there.

You think Edinburgh is a village but here it's the same. I stopped off at a supermarket in a town half an hour's drive away to buy something for my tea and bumped into a couple who play golf at Les Dryades.

The drive down from Dunkirk was relaxation in spades compared to yesterday's run to Dover. At some point my wipers failed and I had to choose between risking my life in the thunderstorms that pursued me almost all the way or missing my boat. I don't recommend crawling along the M25 trying desperately to keep your vehicle between the white lines that demarcate the slow lane while huge pantechnicons thunder along on your right hand side casting waves of glaur onto your windscreen. After that bungee jumping holds no fear.

My neighbour Alain had kindly cut my grass in expectation of my arrival but unfortunately he expected me last month so it's grown a bit since. I shall have to grovel.

The house is in good order but the spiders have been busy over the winter so I shall have to put my shoulder to the wheel tomorrow and hoover their works away, not to mention getting to grips with the grass. Fortunately I have fortified myself this evening with a wee steak and the best part of a bottle of Bourgogne. That was reassuringly expensive at five euros and something compared to the run of reds at two to three euros a throw.

My support for the SNP's minimum pricing for alcohol strategy is undimmed. The French are not the Scots and the Scots in France are not the Scots either.

I thought I'd get up to speed with local matters before setting off for my summer quarters and have learnt that the Creuse has had an abnormally sunny and dry Spring thus earning headlines of the type "Creuse farmers threatened by drought".

Just as the pound strengthened against the euro immediately after I transferred my Summer funds I foresee floods getting underway from Thursday next.

This fine painting, or at least a print of this fine painting, now hangs on my wall as a souvenir of Cuba.

The original hangs in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana where there is a magnificent collection of Cuban art from the conquest to the present day. It is the work of Mario Carreño whose pictures have sold for millions. My investment in his work was more modest. I spent substantially more on getting it framed, 13 times more in fact.

If your Spanish is up to it you can read about him here, or if not just enjoy the pictures of which there are a dozen or so. If you like them you can order copies in oils from this site where there is a bit of biog in broken English. They it seems will copy anything you like so a Titian in the toilet is within reach of us all.

No doubt like me you absorbed with your mother's milk stories of hospital patients being roused from slumber by officious night sisters in order for them to take their sleeping pills.

So you will appreciate my irritation as a resting partygoer at being shaken awake around five this morning to be told (by it has to be said an employee of our national health service) that it was time to go to bed. He promptly took over the spare room, where I imagine he is snoring his head off as I write, leaving his hostess and myself to continue dozing as best we could on the settee. An hour or so later she gathered enough will power to wriggle free from the sofa and shuffled off towards her own sleeping quarters.

My sleep now broken twice I left her applying a late but no doubt essential coating of cold cream and struck out up Easter road dreaming of breakfast. Tesco being unaccountably out of fresh croissants at 6.20 on a summer Saturday morning I am toasting some stale bread as I inhale the wholesome odour of fresh Cuban coffee.

Good morning and good night.

Can I stand the strain of watching Andy Murray play again? He's just won the scrappiest match, admittedly in straight sets but each set and indeed each game followed a crazy paving path that had me screaming at the TV in disbelief.