It's always a relief to see the solution to something which has puzzled one.

The current UK vehicle registration number allocation system uses two digits to define the point in time in which the vehicle was first registered, thus 01 means the first registration period of 2001 and 51 the second.  I've often (well occasionally) wondered how they would cope with 2011, whose first period would clearly be 11 but whose second could not be 51 without confusion with the second period of 2001.

I need not have worried.  Indeed if I had only googled UK vehicle registration number system when first the problem entered my mind I would have found that the 61 I saw on a car the other day was a consequence of  the basic principle behind the system, which is to add 50 to the year digits for the second period.

Thus I would have been able to sleep soundly long ago, except that I'm now wondering what will happen in 2051.  Alas I may never know.

I find myself out of sorts, and out of tune with majority critical opinion, having missed out on two hours of September sunshine watching a childish waste of celluloid.  The Guard is a comedy thriller from which tension is totally absent and where although present the laughs are few and far between.

It has a naive style all of its own which we might christen unmagical irrealism and which I hope for the sake of this cinemagoer is not contagious.

PS I know they don't use celluloid nowadays but that's no excuse.

We are told that if the discovery of neutrinos travelling faster than light stands up our understanding of the time space continuum goes for a burton and time travel into the future or the past will become the new reality.

In the fast moving world of telecoms they are already there.  I got a text from Vodaphone this morning telling me that I had three days left in which to use some bonus they had given me as a reward for having topped up my phone.

Fifteen minutes later by the old Einsteinien  method of reckoning a second text arrived telling me that the bonus had now expired.

Where Vodaphone lead Skype cannot be far behind.  They've just sent me an email saying that a credit I have with them will expire in 30 days, so I suppose I had better get my skates on and make a call before lunch.

What can you say - 13 points to 12 - grr!  And I didn't even have the compensation of spotting Ewan in the crowd.  He was clearly not dressed outrageously enough to attract the camera's eye.

I stood at the bus stop the other day beside a group of young men who were trying to impress one another with their tales of valour, an activity from which I confess older men are not immune.  I was struck by one little fragment that went something like "we wiz the best o pals efter that, hud a couple o drinks........., efter a stabbed im like".

I was glad they got tired of waiting and hailed a cab.

Before I visited Figeac I didn't know that the great Champollion who deciphered the Rosetta stone came from there.  But he did.  They have named a square and a museum in his honour.  Cairo has been less generous in naming only a street after him.

He's also celebrated on various postcards.  I don't know whether the one I bought is telling us anything else about him or if it's just an illustration of how much care went into male grooming in ancient Egypt.  

His great linguistic skills are not shared by all his modern fellow townsmen for when I asked for a postage stamp the shopkeeper offered me one for Belgium.

As a postscript to Vézac I learnt this morning that had I stayed for the prize-giving I would have had something to go with the champagne because my name came out of the hat in the lucky dip of scorecards that always follows the golfing awards.

In between playing golf in the pouring rain on Wednesday and under a boiling sun on Friday I had my one and only day of real tourism this summer.

Humble lodgings

 
I left our humble lodgings in the Château de Salles overlooking the golf course and set off along a now and then picturesque route to Figeac. 

Artisan at work

Narrow lane

It's a lovely little town with a medieval centre of narrow lanes where artisans have plied their trade for centuries.
 

I’m not the first Scotsman to have been charmed by the place although unlike Mr Nicolson I moved on after lunch.

Early Scotsman in figeac

Imposing medieval edifice

 I made a fleeting visit to this imposing medieval edifice a few miles from Figeac.  The fact that I once met the owner’s daughter on a train journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow didn’t seem altogether a good excuse for penetrating beyond the private property notice at the gate.  That’s a shame because I’m sure we could have had a cosy chat over a glass or two about the pleasures and problems of having a second home in France. 

Rodez cathedral

But perhaps not, so I set off on an only occasionally now and then picturesque route to Rodez.  The town has a cathedral which you can see from miles around but otherwise is possibly not worth the detour.  The cathedral is not tumbling backwards by the way.  I don’t know how they get them straight on the postcards.

Big hole of Bouzou

The road back to Vezac was much better value touristically and I stopped off at various spots including one called something like “the big hole of Bouzou”.  I don’t think I’d fancy living on either the edge or beside the fetid stream at the bottom but it was very impressive.

Vezac view

Returning to Vézac I got stuck into a special festive Alligot dinner.  The main course consisted of sausage (remarkably unfatty) in an onion sauce served with cheese rich mashed potatoes.  It was delicious but none of my French friends could explain the connection between the Alligot of the dinner and the Alligoté of the lovely bottles of Bourgogne that I buy now and then.

Golf course view

And the golf?  Well I didn’t distinguish myself and certainly won nothing to go with my champagne but thanks to the arcane juggling that is the handicap system I stayed still.  This means that over the season I have trimmed one neat digit from my handicap, in contrast to the previous five seasons in each of which I have added a digit. 

So it's all (minus one) left to do.

My trophy winning form soon deserted me and my handicap even crept up by 0.2 last week.  After the first nine holes yesterday in my last Dryades competition of the season it seemed that a repeat performance was on the cards, but I rallied on the back nine and turned in a respectable score that at least staved off a further deterioration.

And I came home with two bottles of champagne and admired a lovely new moon so the day was not entirely wasted.


                  I hope the SG4L competition at Vézac this week brings me something nice to go with the champagne.

To encourage someone to believe that crime pays may not be in itself a crime but it is certainly reprehensible and I fear that to my shame I am guilty of it.

I sat in the garden yesterday while the potential purchasers visited the premises.  At one point from the far end of the garden mummy sent her oldest little treasure over to me.  He held out a shiny object and asked if it was mine.

“Ah” said I. “It’s a foreign coin.  It’s Brazilian and I visited Brazil a couple of years ago, so it could well be mine.  Where did you find it?”

“Under our car.”

“Strange” thought I.  “How did it get there?” I continued to think. “The last time I saw one of those I’m sure it was in the top drawer of my desk.” 

But would I be forgiven for at the very least embarrassing, and probably causing to flee, these people who were in the market for a holiday home by crying out “Your son is a liar and a thief”?

“No” I said to myself.  “Think of Sally and David and keep schtoom.” And to his delight I said “Would you like to keep it?”

He raced off happily, no doubt reassured about his career choice.

The gas ran out while I was cooking last night.

We used to keep a spare bottle in the barn but haven’t bothered since we put the house up for sale and are thus doomed to occasional inconvenience.  It’s very occasional since a bottle lasts about two years of summer occupancy.

In this instance I was very little inconvenienced because I was able to complete my vegetable curry and rice in the microwave but the question arises as to whether or not to re-stock given that I have a week to go during which I expect to eat out definitely on four days and probably on a fifth and given that an English family looking for a holiday home spent well over an hour viewing the house yesterday afternoon.

I set out to give the grass a what I hoped would be a final cut on Thursday and I was inconvenienced there as well because the starter cord snapped on first pull.  This was not really a surprise since it has been frayed and bedraggled for a while but it was not handy.

My random collection of spanners didn’t look sufficient to even take the outer engine cover off so repairing it myself didn’t look to be feasible and I couldn’t see Mr. Brico doing the job in time for me to get a cut in before departure so I did the job with the strimmer.

It wasn’t quite as back-breaking as it is when the grass has had the entire season of mellow unoccupancy to get to knee height but it was still a pain and the result looks much like a self- administered haircut but it’s one more closing down task ticked off the list.

This morning I’ve been washing floors.

There was some heavy booted scrabbling going on the other afternoon in the noman's land bounded by the cellar roof space, main bedroom and kitchen wall.

I responded by making wild hunter noises and beating the wall with a broom until the intruder was silenced.  This morning I reckon I saw the culprit in the shape of a red squirrel gambolling happily in the back garden.  He hasn't come back indoors again so far but as the local saying has it - you don't count the cowpats till the end of the fair - so I remain vigilant.

Poisoned chalices come in many forms.  They are not always recognizable as such.  Here is one in the form of a golf trophy which has been consigned to my care for a year as a result of my fine round yesterday in an annual invitational competition at Les Dryades.

The poison comes from the fact that the winner has not only to organise the following year's competition but host the twenty odd competitors afterwards.

Last night we had a very pleasant drinks and snacks evening in a lovely garden setting at last year's winner's fine home.

Barbansais's field like lawns can't compare, my catering facilities are limited and I'm short of about fifteen garden chairs.  Maybe I'll be saved by a sale.

The even more annoying thing about this win is that if it had been one of our normal FFG competitions I'd have knocked a couple of digits off my handicap.

Amongst the cheap DVDs that I’ve bought recently was a movie featuring Javier Bardem and Victoria Abril.  They are the reason I bought it but I suppose even good actors can’t redeem utter rubbish.
  

I was saved from watching the entire film by the fact that the DVD itself was rubbish and froze after an hour to the accompaniment of an endless whirling and whining.

But thank God it did because not only were my cinematic sensitivities saved but when I turned on the radio I caught the most wonderful double piano concert by these two guys:

It was recorded at Marciac a few weeks ago.  Next year I must give up golf for a week and go listen to the music.   

Yesterday was dry and warm, a perfect day to cut the grass.  I wish I had done it.  Continuous rain overnight which lingers even now and is forecast to hang about for a few days means that by the time it dries out sufficiently to cut it will have grown another three inches.

I added three bottles of wine to my small collection of golf prizes yesterday and knocked half a point off my handicap.  I'm now back to where I was at the beginning of the 2010 season.

Three competitions left to undo the losses of the four previous seasons.

It's coming up to the third anniversary of putting our French house on the market so we are celebrating by knocking fifteen grand off the price.

Now, provided you steer clear of agents and come directly to us, this lovely residence can be yours for a measly 100,000 euros.  That's around 90,000 pounds at current exchange rates.

Form an orderly queue.

It’s been a busy golfing week so far with four days on the trot.  I’m having a rest day before taking up the clubs again tomorrow.

I was a bit surprised to be asked for 18 euros instead of the usual 8 to take part in Sunday’s competition and the explanation when it came wasn’t universally popular.  The extra ten bucks were going to the French Golf Federation to help finance the 2018 Ryder Cup (which is being played in France) and there will be a small supplement on the annual dues each registered player pays the FFG over the next few years to the same end.

It’s the mega billionaire status of the guys who play in the Ryder Cup teams that caused a few grumbles I suppose but I have some sympathy with the FFG.  Putting the event together must cost a bob or two and although they will no doubt get good crowds the interest in golf here is not of the same order as it is in the States or in the UK and Ireland.

Even the players make a contribution if my belief that they don’t get paid to take part is correct.  Mind you they get showered with clothes and equipment and I daresay my annual income wouldn’t make much of a dent in either team’s fully expensed travel bill so the sacrifice is limited.  

Ten of us went for a golfing day out at La Jonchère yesterday.  It’s a course I really enjoy playing and it’s no further away from me than Les Dryades but being a member there I don’t go to La Jonchère very often.  Usually we have lunch in the nearby town of Gouzon but since January an English couple have been running a restaurant at the course so after nine holes we ate there in lazy sunshine and played a wine assisted back nine in the afternoon. 

Sporting activity didn’t end there because we went to Pierre’s in Gueret afterwards and played pétanque for a couple of hours and then wound up with a barbecue that went on till ten thirty or so and over which the peccadilloes of the French political establishment were scurrilously examined. 

I’m glad to report that I hit both my balls and my boules with a fair degree of success.

The reign of the rectal thermometer is over, in France at least, and you are not asked to sit up in your hospital bed and clutch a thermometer firmly in your armpit or under your tongue. Technology moves on.  Now they poke a little gadget into your ear and when it beeps they read off the temperature.  What double entendre could Carry On Doctor possibly get out of that I wonder?

I learnt of this advance thanks to being in hospital in Clermont Ferrand for a coronarographie.  I don’t actually know what that’s called in English but it’s where they put you to sleep and pump some nasty stuff through your heart so that they can see your coronary arteries as in seeing the safety pin your two year old swallowed on an x-ray.

I’ve often scoffed at the fact that if you are a registered player of any competitive sport in France you have to present a medical certificate once a year stating that there are no contra-indications to your taking part.  I once asked my doctor in Edinburgh to do it and she was very dismissive of the whole idea.

But now I’m scoffing my words and maybe she’ll have a re-think for at least it means there’s a chance something amiss will be noticed before you fall down dead in the street.  When I saw a doctor here on my arrival in June he told me that my heart was not producing a nice regular thump, thump, thump but was sticking in extra beats here and there.  Now anyone who has danced with me knows that my sense of rhythm is a bit dodgy.  I can put up with that even if it’s a bit hard on my partners but wasn’t keen to let my heart get its time signatures mixed up so I waltzed off to see a friend who happens to be a cardiologist.

He gave me an ECG and an echo sounding thing (I thought that was just for finding U-boats and fish), put me on some pills for a month and checked out how I performed in vigorous rides on an exercise bike during which my blood pressure leapt up off the scale.  I’m not given to exercise bikes in real life so you wouldn’t think it would matter but he felt we might be looking at the need for surgery.

So he rang the hospital and they said can he come in tomorrow and off I went in a taxi (normal practice) on the road and the miles to Clermont.

It turns out that all but one of my coronary arteries are ok and the one that is irregular (their terminology) doesn’t need the scalpel.  Sighs of relief all round but I am doomed to daily pills for some time to come, hopefully into a ripe and active old age like Yusef Lateef (91 next birthday).

As I went to bed at midnight on Monday night Yusef was walking on stage at the Marciac Jazz Festival to perform his set. Now there’s a role model for me.  And Happy Birthday to another old man, Fidel Castro 85 today.

   

 

This jolly map of hotspots shows the admirable work done by a consortium of local authorities to set up a network  of access points throughout this area to provide free wireless access for both residenst and visitors so none of us wandering around with our laptops, netbooks or smartphones should be out of touch with the wider world at any time.

Alas fine words as they say butter no parsnips.  I have tried this out a number of times in the four localities closest to my domicile.  In three of these I have been unable to detect the network.  In the fourth I have confirmed that it is there and even on one occasion seen a welcome screen, but able to connect I have not been.

So it's byte my lip and back to dial up.