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.

I was in Aigurande on Saturday morning having a new silencer fitted to my car.  It was an important day for the town for other reasons as well.  This was the day of their big brocante and vide grenier, or car boot sale to us, when numerous streets were given over the buying and selling of junk.  Unfortunately it was a washout as you can see from the picture.  For most of the time most of the goods were covered by plastic sheeting.  Only the beer stand and the chip stall were doing any business and not much at that.

I can understand why you would want to get rid of junk but who wants to buy a box of corks or a couple of chamber pots, and believe me those were bits of high class junk I thought were worthy of a picture. But brocantes are amazingly popular.  There's a booklet you can buy that lists them all.  It's a nice yellow colour reminding me of the Scotland's Gardens scheme booklet that list all the garden open days throughout the year.

Back home the rain eased off a bit in the afternoon so perhaps it did so there as well and let the chineurs begin to chiner.  You see there are even special words for junk browsers and junk browsing.

I'm just back from shopping at Carrefour.  One of the things I've always disliked there is that you have to weigh your own fruit and veg and stick a price ticket on them.  I still dislike it but I must admit I'm impressed by the technology they've put in place this year.

The weighing machine works out what you've put on the scales.  I suppose there must be a wee camera in there focused on the weighing platform.  You place your whatever it is, more often than not in a plastic bag, on the platform.  On the screen appear pictures of one or more items that it thinks you are weighing.  You touch the right one and it prints out a price ticket.

If it doesn't come up with the right item, which in my experience is very rare, you can scroll through pictures of fruit and veg to find it or if all else fails there's an alphabetic search.

I don't suppose these machines are cheap.  Maybe that's why their loyalty card gives you next to nothing.  Often it's a chit entitling you to a miniscule reduction on something provided you spend X amount of dosh on a given day.  Today my card gave me a reduction of 5 cents on one of the 37 items in my trolley and added 5 cents to my loyalty account, which is now groaning under the weight of a grand total of 76 cents.

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.