This has been an expensive week.

While I was away a recall notice arrived for my car. Some manufacturing defect or other had affected the front suspension of a number of Stilos of my car's generation and I should bring it in for a bit of free re-engineering. Being here I did.

But as forecast by Connor the garage suggested that some non-free work was needed. The car is of an age where the camshaft should be replaced they said. Has that been done? Check your records I said, its maintenance has been in your hands since new. It had not been done and dire warnings followed about the consequences of not doing it. Spend hundreds now to save thousands later is the mantra.

Warranty? Sorry, that's a serviceable item and its replacement at the manufacturer's recommended intervals is thus not covered. If you do replace it and it breaks then it's covered but if you don't it's not. We'll investigate that gearbox oil leak while we're at it.

Oh dear, we'll have to take the gearbox out and reseal it. You could run it for a few more months before doing the work but, well, you know....

Warranty? That's wear and tear, nobody covers wear and tear.

I saved myself twenty quid by refusing their offer to replace the missing hub cap. I'll blow that on lunch out with friends today.

I love my bus pass even more.

It was Hazel Irvine who presented the Open highlights on Sunday night though Allis crept in from time to time as footage of earlier commentaries was aired. It was a good round-up and I lost nothing by not staying at Carnoustie till the bitter end.

She must have been given the round-up as compensation for having, throughout the competition, to interview the players as they came off ( apart from when Gary Lineker was called upon to display the Spanish that he learnt when he played for Barcelona). He was pretty good and I believe he speaks Japanese as well.

Anyway Hazel is an enthusiastic and lively journalist but she drew the short straw there. How many ways are there of asking players how they feel about being well up the leader board or nowhere near the leader board? She found an extraordinary number and you have to hand it to the players as well for the number of variations on "I'm feeling just dandy" and "I'm totally hacked off".

On Sunday I suffered through going out without waterproof trousers but today it was a sun hat I should have had with me, at least for a couple of hours until the absence of rainwear made itself felt.

I sat in the sun for a couple of hours watching what was billed as the Dunedin Dancers 19th International Folk Dance Festival, or rather one of the six shows they are doing in venues ranging from Falkland Palace to Stirling Castle. This was in Holyrood on a stretch of grass more or less in front of the Scottish Parliament. There were groups from Austria, Lithuania and the Czech Republic as well as from Scotland.

It was pretty entertaining though I can't say that knee-slapping and yodelling is my thing. I preferred the energetic but elegant dancing of the Lithuanians and the comedy routines of the Czechs.

You can see what it looked like by clicking the picture below.

Folkdancing

Well that's the Open over. I was out of the door before 7 this morning in light rain that got heavier the nearer I got to Carnoustie. I had been wise enough to wear my hill-walking boots and my Goretex anorak but I hadn't thought to put on rainproof trousers. That proved to be a cardinal error. The rain that poured from the sky ran down my anorak and onto my trousers and soaked in. When I sat down in any of the grandstands I suffered the double whammy of thighs lashed by rain and moisture attack from below.

Add to that the fact that I'd had to bin my multi-coloured golf umbrella shortly after arrival when a couple of spokes snapped off and ripped through it in the wind. Just as well really. I was able to keep my hands relatively warm in my pockets rather than allowing them to freeze holding an umbrella. I simply never thought of gloves.

By lunchtime I was beginning to think of going home and watching the rest on the tele. The prospect of being exposed yet again to Peter Allis's dire commentary held me back long enough for an Arbroath smokie ingested under lightening skies to revive my spirits and I stuck it out till it was obvious that a four hole play-off, and possibly more, would be necessary. Sharing the last train with 50 thousand others didn't appeal so I snuck off.

I'll see the play-off in the highlights later tonight. With luck that will be commented by Gary Linecker and not the awful Allis.

The golf by the was thoroughly enjoyable and the course is even more beautiful than when I first saw it. If it weren't £115 a round I'd be a regular.

I've been a bit of a couch potato this week watching the final day of the Scottish Open on TV last Sunday and for the last three days the British Open. I'm off to see it in the flesh tomorrow and it looks like I'll have to wrap up warm and take a brolly.

I've also been keeping an eye on the French golf scene because two kids from the Dryades have been playing in the National Youth Championship this week. They got there by virtue of their performances in lower level tournaments. One more of our youngsters got as far as the regional competition but didn't do quite well enough to qualify for the national championship.

The format of the national championship is two strokeplay rounds and then a knockout matchplay tournament amongst the top 32 or 16 players for each age group. Antoine didn't make it past the qualifying in the 13 and 14 year old boys competition but Celia was third in the qualifying and made it to the semi-final of the 11 and 12 year old girls which is a brilliant performance.

Traditionally French presidents have pardoned a selection of criminals as part of the 14th of July Bastille day celebrations and the system has to some extent relied on this to ease the chronic overcrowding that exists in French jails as it does in English ones, but Sarko is made of sterner stuff. While the country braces itself for protests within the jails one prisoner made his own arrangements and helipcoptered his way out - for the second time would you believe.

On Saturday night though, we were celebrating, albeit belatedly, Siobhan's birthday rather than French democracy. We had an excellent meal at The Apartment. My dos de cabillaud was delicious and the yoghourt topped with ameretto and pistachio crumble that I had for pudding can only be described as mouth-watering - well up to French standards although at an exchange rate of one to one. Mysteriously Ross and I both ended up with tomato sauce like stains on our trouser legs although none of our party had anything to eat that could have caused that. Did the waitress overhear our opinion that she was a bit uppity and take revenge?

After the meal we lingered in the Caledonian Hotel bar waiting for someone else to pitch up before we went clubbing. They had a whisky menu listing dozens if not hundreds of 35ml doses of the hard stuff at various prices. Here's what 35ml of whisky looks like.

Would you pay £250 for it? That was the top price. I wonder how many they sell?

The clubbing was a bit disappointing. I had been a little shy of going, having only recently learnt to handle expressions like "mosh pit" without feeling silly but decided that I owed it to myself to experience the new. Well what I experienced was very much what I experienced at the Kirkcaldy YWCA in the late fifties (Heartbreak Hotel, Rock Around the Clock) and Edinburgh University Students Union in the sixties (These Boots are Made for Walking). I'm not sure that there was any music more up to date than that.

There was a floor show. The costumes were fine and the girls were pretty but at Kitwe Little Theatre their routine would have earned the traditional "don't call us, we'll call you". There was gambling of sorts with monopoly money that I never managed to get hold of - a measly little roulette table and a blackjack table squeezed into the corner of a marquee. I ran a better table myself in Nairobi in the seventies.

I'm sure my mistake was that I didn't realise that being called Vegas this clubnight was a tribute to the past rather than a harbinger of the future.

But it passed a pleasant and relaxed few hours and to underline the known fact that Edinburgh is a small city I bumped into some friends at 2.30 am on my way home.

I had a good run up from Barbansais to UK on Monday and spent a very pleasant couple of days in Brighton. As always I was well received and it was a bonus to see Sarah, last seen when she came to my production of The Sisterhood in Edinburgh in 99. She's not a lot more respectful of elderly friends than she was thirty years ago but I probably wouldn't like her so much if she were.

The Zambia charity golf match went well and Albert and André, respectively Sarah's husband and stepson were in a winning team. They kindly shared their hard won Jacob's Creek in the garden that evening.

I was up before 7 on Thursday and after nine and a half hours of tedious motoring made it to Edinburgh.

Notwithstanding its infamy as the headquarters of France's collaborationist government during WWII Vichy is a town well worth a visit. It was a fashionable spa during the Belle Epoque and the splendid parks and buildings of that era are beautiful. You can also still wallow in mud and sip sulphurous water if that's what lights your candle.

My recent visit was to meet up with my fellow golfers from the four leagues at the Sporting Club de Vichy whose English welcome page could do with a touch of teacher's red pencil. The effort of writing that page in English seems to have exhausted the webmaster since the rest of the site is in French. Perhaps that's just as well.

Thanks to their own or their partners' illnesses my clubmates intending to go cried off but I rendezvoused with Ernest, a genial and sociable Swiss, for a practice round the day before the competition and we wandered around the town a bit in the evening and enjoyed a good dinner at "L'Escargot qui tète" meaning "The Snail that suckles". Well for all I know they do.

Amazingly Ernest and the waitress found that they had a mutual passion in hunting. I say amazingly but that's probably because my statistical frame of reference for waitresses who hunt is UK biased and based on occasional accidental exposures to episodes of The Archers that included references to hunting.

He had I think hoped to find another mutual passion when he opened conversation with "Je ne suis pas drageur mais je vous trouve très.........." but he confided to me later that Viagra does not agree with him (something to do with being diabetic) so the result of that hunt might have been a disappointment to his quarry had he run her to ground.

The competition was fun but not crowned with as much success as the following Sunday's in which my laurels were gained for being the least bad third division player to have taken part in both rounds of the AGF competition. The laurels in this case being a magnum of jolly good plonk from their Bordeaux vineyards.

From her American exile a fellow KHS alumnus (or is she an alumna) was reminiscing in an email about wee Gordie. He was mocked apparently, by big girls like her, for the fact that when he visited his chum Murray Elder he was forbidden to pass through the Olympia Arcade. Those familiar with the Kirkcaldy of yesteryear will know that both his physical and his moral welfare were being protected by this prohibition.

Now I didn't know Gordon from Adam in those days, though in that good old Scots phrase "A kent his faither". I had left school by the time he started but clearly his name has become familiar to me since. And I also recognised the name Murray Elder. I put that down to the fact that Baron Elder of Kirkcaldy's former name had come up over the years in the context of Scottish politics.

But then it dawned on me that this must be (and I have since verified it) the wee lad who in his first year at secondary school had a crush on Fiona, then in her last year, and would follow her about with yearning eyes. Did he not even present her with flowers?

I shall think of her as the Baroness in future.

Having just posted the tale about Usque conabor I went off to correct the Wikipedia entry on KHS in that respect to discover that someone had got there before me. So I'm not the only one anxious to protect the place's reputation.

“Oh wud some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oorsells as ithers see us!”

lamented Burns, and on Wednesday France Info became that power for the day.

They decamped to London to cover the changeover from Blair to Brown. Between 7 in the morning and 7 at night they had three two hour slots in which they reported the events of the day and looked at aspects of British society as diverse as; the changes in popular music over the Blair years, the City, immigration, binge drinking, and the structure and effectiveness of job centres.

There was lots of vox pop as well as the more familiar voices of those commentators who are trotted out regularly on French radio because they speak the language. I recognise Denis McShane’s voice for one, more readily when I hear him speaking French than English.

Looked at through French eyes then we appear to be an economic success with social problems. Not so different as being looked at through British eyes is it?

They broadcast Gordon’s touching wee reference to the old school motto but as it was overlaid with a French commentary I didn’t notice whether he said he’d strive to the “utmost” or to the “outmost”, discovering that controversy on various newsblogs later. But he said it in English, wi’ or wi’oot an archaic Scotticism, and I knew that our motto was in Latin although despite carrying it on my breast for six formative years I was damned if I could remember it.

So I hied me to the Kirkcaldy High School website and found “Usque conabor” which classical scholars amongst you will realise is a very satisfactory rendering of “I will try my ut/outmost”. Not being much of a classical scholar I realised it thanks to the internet. “Nisi google frustra” as they whisper in academe today.

But on the website is another slogan – “Working together to improve” and in the prospectus this appears to be offered as a translation of “Usque conabor”, a fact noted sneeringly on a number of newsblogs. I also found a website in a slightly sorry state of uptodateness as witness a page on which people are being welcomed back from their 2005 Christmas break and much more of the same.

Much concerned by such sloppiness in my alma mater I decided to take the school to task and was surprised to get an almost instant response, apologising for the state of the website with a promise to fix it in the hols and explaining that “Working together to improve” had been adopted as part of the process of fusing together KHS and Templehall on one site in 1993 and not as a replacement for “Usque conabor”.

I hastened to let The Herald, The Daily Telegraph and others know that KHS can tell a hawk from a handsaw but I wonder if Gordon can. Should he not have chosen that more collegiate slogan for his government of all the talents, or even the third slogan that KHS added to their armoury in 2005 when the current heid bummer arrived - “Only the best will do”?

Dropped in on some English friends this week to find that the two pet geese they had last year are now four. Not a case of natural reproduction but of what I regard as unnatural purchase.

The French with whom I had dinner that evening would certainly have thought so. Around here if you keep hens, ducks, geese, rabbits; really anything other than cats and dogs; they’re for the pot. There were eight of us, all acquainted through golf. It was a very convivial occasion. One guest delivered his party piece which he said was a poem in English. Well it could have been Chinese for all I understood of it, but I applauded along with everyone else before giving into temptation and taking the Mickey. No wonder he preferred Spanish at school.

Spanish and golf came together later in the week when Sally sought a second opinion on a translation. The one that amused me was where she rendered “en caso de duda tirar una bola provisional” as “in case of doubt throw a provisional ball”. I had to point out that golfers only throw their balls at moments of great distress when all doubt has gone.

Last night the Roches brass band did a tour of the villages to celebrate La Fête de la Musique (48 hours after the official date but so what). It’s a pity they look like a bunch of peasants on a low loader, even though that’s what they are, because they have quite a snappy maroon uniform. They look good in it and I don’t understand why they did this shindig in mufti. They and their entourage of following groupies (families I expect) far outnumbered the residents of Barbansais but we all turned out and Pierre the farmer supplied a couple of bottles for their refreshment after we’d been treated to sufficient oompah, oompah.

They call themselves l’Espérance de Roches. There must surely be a connection, linguistic or otherwise with the Band of Hope of yesteryear. I have meant to investigate this before, must get onto it.

A linguistic gem was my recent discovery that the French for hubcap is enjoliveur – something that prettifies. That’s just what Connor and I decided their purpose was when we were discussing my hubcap losses.

The week has ended on a low note. I have slipped back into the third division from whence I was promoted two years ago. A real ball-throwing moment.

It has continued to rain almost relentlessly since I last posted but we are not quite under water yet. This is not me in the Creuse but Ewan in the sea off the Maldives during his recent holiday there.

Tuesday afternoon turned out fine though and although I didn't quite break 100 I played my best round of the year so far.

Other than that the week has been domestic. I gave the barn a bit of a Spring clean and I got a plumber in to fix a persistent leak. That was not without its annoyances given that he didn't turn up for the first rendezvous. Had to go to a funeral apparently. Could be, but isn't that the adult version of "the cat ate my homework, miss".

A friend is going to do a bit of plastering for us and I did some preparatory work to fill in a rather large gap with plasterboard. As usual what looks like a rectangle turns out to be a complicated polygon so you spend ages shaving little bits off the plasterboard here and there to make it fit. The gap was so deep that I had to put in two layers of board so all in all I spent the best part of half a day at what at first sight would seem to be a half hour job.

I got another new tyre. That's not a new requirement but the final tidying up of the incident of 6th May. Why did it take so long? I refer you to "the cat ate my homework,miss".

In my capacity as Barbansais accountant Sally sent me some bank statements recently and I noticed that one of the local taxes (paid by DD in December) was substantially higher that it had been the year before. I had a vague memory of a plan to collect TV licence charges along with local taxes but we couldn't find the bill to verify this. So yesterday I set off in pursuit of the truth.

The truth was that we hadn't got the bill because they'd cocked up the change of address I gave them last year. It's an interesting debating point whether the fact that they hadn't changed the address on the other local tax bill counts as a cock-up or not.

Anyway it was indeed the case that we'd been charged for a TV licence so I've been in touch with the relevant authority. They were happy to accept my verbal assurance on the phone that we don't have a TV so the 2007 bill will omit it but I've had to write a letter to reclaim our 116 euros for 2006.

Maybe that will pay for the water that has leaked away.

Do you suppose it could be a pan-European gang stealing them to order? Two in two months can’t be mere chance. Fiat Stilo hub caps that is. At this rate my annual hub cap replacement bill will be twice my road tax. I shall have to borrow the “just in time” technique from industry and wait till I’m ready to sell the car before replacing any more.

My trip to Aurillac was lovely. I followed scenic routes in fine weather there and back and the town itself has a very attractive old centre. The golf course gave exceptionally fine views of the mountains of the Massif Central and was itself very pretty. My results were mediocre both on the course and in the prize draw but it beats spending the day at an office desk.

It’s a pity it clashed with the big screen showing of “Cold” at the Leith Festival but that’s life in the fast lane for you.

My grass lives in the fast lane and zoomed away during my absence. But after getting back from today’s regular Sunday golf competition (regular Sunday result) I razed it to the ground.

I’m playing competitive golf yet again tomorrow. This is the annual Château de Poinsouze campsite do where we all get invited to dinner afterwards. Should be a gas if last year is anything to go by.

Pressure’s off on Tuesday – 11 euro lunch followed by social golf.

Denied cinematic distraction in bad weather I often find myself web surfing. A recent exciting www discovery was that cinematic distraction of an above average degree of interest is available at Edinburgh Filmhouse on Thursday 14^th of June.

See the Napier University graduation movies on the big screen.

Let’s hear it for my top nominations: “Ladies Who Lunch”, “Tears of Milk” and “Staccato”.

Sunday’s golf competition was cancelled through lack of numbers so I could have gone to the flicks after all, but it was a nice day so I decided to potter in the garden. I weeded and hacked back vigorously, ran the mower through the grass again and finally sank into my deckchair aperitif in hand rejoicing that at last summer had come.

The competition was a Rotary sponsored event. They usually manage to get their troops out so I was surprised at the cancellation. The explanation I was given was that there was a clash with Mothers’ Day. I thought it was quite touching that so many preferred lunch with mum but a cynical friend suggested they were just making sure of their inheritance.

Pluvious Spring returned on Monday morning but I braved the afternoon’s mild drizzle to get my window boxes and doorside pots planted up.

They don’t look much as yet but I expect them to be riotous within weeks. Most of the plants therein should be able to be transplanted at the end of the summer to edge us further towards the target of a full rockery.

Whatever the weather I’ll give them a good doze of water tonight because I’m off in the morning to Aurillac to play at Le Golf de Haute Auvergne. Given that Auvergne is where almost all the best cheeses come from, the prizes will be worth fighting for and I play a mean hand in the prize draw.

Weatherwise May just ended has been the wettest and most miserable of the five that I have spent here. It didn't look like June was starting off any better so having discovered that at Aigurande, unlike Gueret, there is a cinema with weekday afternoon screenings I planned to shelter from the rain there yesterday.

Perversely the sun started shining about lunchtime but I decided to stick to my plan. When I rolled up to the cinema, admittedly ten minutes after the advertised starting time, the man was locking up.

He explained to me that the community had prevailed upon him to hold afternoon screenings for the benefit of old codgers who didn't like to go out at night but that during the week very few ever pitched up and that today no-one had. He'd obviously gone too far psychologically down the path of locking up to consider that here might be an opportunity to do his bit for the old codgers in the community because he offered me Saturday night at 20.45 or Sunday afternoon at 16.45 and turned the key.

Well 20.45 doesn't suit me because I usually have downed a modicum of wine with my dinner by then and in any case my lights point the wrong way. On Sunday at 16.45 I will be clapping politely as my fellow golfers step up to collect their prizes. So it looks like I won't see Jean de la Fontaine, Le Défi till it turns up at the Filmhouse, if I bother since no-one gave it more than two stars. I'll just read the fables.

One star weather returned in the evening.

La Fête départementale des sports de nature took place at Chateauroux over the Whitsun weekend. The départment being Indre where I play golf rather than Creuse where I live.

Although I take “de nature” to mean outdoor, of the 39 activities listed in the programme one or two seemed intrinsically indoor to me – basketball and judo for instance. Nothing to stop you doing them outdoors I suppose except the weather. And the weather was not kind on any of the three days.

The organisation was impressive. On arrival I reported to reception where I was issued with a natty sleeveless navy blue fleece embroidered with the event’s logo and a badge to wear round my neck. Next step was to collect my individual insulated picnic hamper. This little container held a tasty baguette, a slice of pizza, a brownie, an apple, a banana, an energy bar, a bottle of water and a coke. It’s eminently useful, in fact designed to be attached to your bicycle handlebars and has a transparent sleeve on top to slip your map into. This is the pre GPS model of course.

The setting was super. It was in a large park and the various sports were strung out around a central lake which was the venue for all the watery stuff.

Mind you on the Sunday you could have kayaked your way around the whole park such was the rainfall. That didn’t put off the youngsters who came to whack golf balls into the wild grey yonder. We had about ten mats laid out for people to play from and a sort of bouncy castle as a target. My job was to give basic instruction and supervise the punters. I was thoroughly drenched by the end of the day despite my umbrella.

Golf balls and clubs can be dangerous and in spite of our efforts at maintaining tight control one poor lad got a club full in the face. I believe what happened was that when he ran out of balls he bent down to pinch one from the guy next to him just as he swung his club backwards. He was hurt bad if the noise he made on the way to the ambulance was anything to go by.

The weather on Monday was better in as much as there was less rain but it was cold. Again the punters were not put off and right up to 5.30 when we closed there was an endless stream. By the end we were one of the few activities still running so people kept coming.

It was quite fun despite the weather. All the kids were very enthusiastic and some of them obviously sporty. Others might be better to concentrate on reading.

There were a few adults and one I was given charge of turned out to be a member of the départmental Olympic committee. He was probably not a man whose vote counts for much in allocating the Olympic games to anywhere but my teaching him golf seemed a bit of a cheek. However I suppose I am better qualified to do that than I was to teach the Old Tyme Music Hall chorus to sing and I got through that undetected. Next challenge brain surgery, though I believe that’s already been done.

My golf trip to Tours last week was a bit disappointing. It started off well. It was a lovely day as I drove up to Vierzon and then followed the valley of the Cher through pleasant countryside and picturesque little towns to Joué-lès-Tours, a rather undistinguished suburb of Tours where after a mildly frustrating search I found my hotel. My problem is that I can't hold more than the first two instructions that a direction giver imparts, sometimes not even that. So by the third junction I no longer know whether it's "keep right on" or "turn right". It often proves to have been "left" in fact.

I found the golf course in the adjacent and prettier town of Ballan-Miré very easily however. At least I found it easily on Thursday. On Friday I was spiralling round the town centre for ages.
It was late in the afternoon, very hot and I'd had a long drive so I decided against a reconnaissance round. I just strolled about and admired the magnificent course, had a drink and a chat in the splendid clubhouse and went back to Joué for a meal.

First disappointment; in Joué there are: a pizzaria, a couple of takeaway pizza joints and a snack bar that closes quite early but only one restaurant. I settled for a snack. I ate in the restaurant on the Friday night and by nine o'clock they had served exactly four people and two more arrived as I left. It's a wonder there is even one restaurant if that's a typical Friday night. My bill arrived accompanied not by a couple of mints or delicately wrapped sweets but by this lollipop. Somewhat incongruous in an establishment all done up in the traditional red and gold of fin de siècle splendour and sporting fine cutlery set on table-covers of crisp white linen.

Friday dawned warm and sunny. My tee time was not till one o'clock so I explored a lakeside park not far away, immaculately kept as all French public spaces seem to be, and then went on to the course for an early lunch on the château terrace and some gentle preparation.

We were on the fourth hole when the storm broke. As much thunder and lightning as you could ask for and buckets of rain. Play was suspended. We sheltered unsuccessfully emerging half-soaked when the storm's fury was spent. Play resumed after an hour. We were on the seventh hole when torrential rain poured from above and borne by wild winds smashed in from the side. Lightning was further away but we couldn't continue playing. We were near the practice area at the time so sought shelter under a tin roofed structure there. When the wind and rain eventually eased off, having heard no signal, we restarted but hadn't got far when someone came out of the clubhouse gesticulating and shouting that it was all over. The rain on a cold tin roof had clearly masked the klaxon.

A great disappointment because it's a lovely course and I would dearly like to have had my full round. I shall have to go again sometime. There was a minor recompense in that all the prizes were put into a draw and I carried off a bottle of very nice Chinon. I know it's very nice because I've already drunk it.

So on Saturday I went into Tours.

Not an unpleasant town by any means but not as immediately impressive as say Orleans. Here's a picture of the cathedral peeping through some trees. Inside the cathedral I found that the altar sheltered a rock. Now I could find no explanation but this must be, if not the entire stone, then surely a fragment of the one that was rolled away on the third day. Why else would you keep a great big rock in your church?

Why would you keep a fountain in your town? Well in the case of Tours it's to commerorate the work of the back-room boys of the American Expeditionary Force that came to Europe in 1917. Usually memorials are to the fighting men but this one celebrates the achievements of those who built a thousand miles of railway and innumerable bridges, who procured weapons and clothing, who delivered food and equipment to the two million men at the front. Tours was the headquarters of this Service of Supply.

I had a very nice lunch before I left, in particular a pudding that was described as raspberry crumble but not as I know it. The raspberry ran through the crumble like a ruby lode and the crumble itself was of a smoothness and delicacy akin to molten demerara. Yummy.

The storm didn't break last night so I got another cut done.

Now I can set off for Tours this morning light in heart.

I'd be even lighter in heart if the internet service we have here hadn't taken 20 minutes to get from the point at which I'd logged on to the ISP to the point at which I was able to start typing this post. It almost makes me believe that BT broadband is worth the money.