Paintings, training and other nonsense

Following an invitation from one of the artists, we took Gill and the children to an exhibition by several local artists in nearby Sérignac. Unfortunately there was very little that caught the eye by way of painting, but the village is very picturesque (excuse the pun), the buffet was interesting and the wine from Mas de Plan was excellent. (It's plain to see where your interests lie! - Ed.) The rest of the evening turned into a blur of aperos back at our house, and then an excellent impromptu barbecue back at the Lloyd's. Getting up this morning was difficult, and not made any easier because I had gone to sleep leaving my lenses in (oops, another senior moment) and for the first hour or two all I could see was a haze, as my eyes adjusted to the lack of overnight oxygen.

***

We took Max to training for the first time in weeks and it was genuinely good to see so many good looking bitches. Owners aside, all the dogs were interesting as well. Max was, unusually, a little difficult to control until we realised that some of the female dogs were en chaleur and he was very interested in smelling their bits. At least we now know that Max is straight, unlike Harry who is happy to hump anything.

***

Having just upgraded to the latest version of Zone Alarm Pro (my computer firewall) I have started to get some very irritating but humorous messages. Like this one:

Zone Alarm Security Alert

Dangerous Behaviour

Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary is trying to
monitor your mouse movements and key strokes.

Some of the more recent protection software is getting cumbersome, too clever by half and, I suspect, using a lot of resources and hence slowing systems down. Hey ho.