Lost in translation

After returning from an airport run yesterday, we had a surprise visit from Vincent Coste of Domaine Costeplane. Françoise and Vincent are such nice people and, time permitting, have always allowed our guests to visit their cave and see winemaking in progress. They are in the process of preparing a new brochure and want a French to English translation, so the rest of the afternoon and part of this morning was spent translating. It was an interesting exercise because quite often you knew exactly what was said in the French but had to avoid a direct translation because of the clumsy English that it would produce. (A bit like wot you write - Ed.) With a bit of imagination and some artistic licence, we managed to produce some readable English that stayed loyal to the spirit of the French. We had to scratch our heads a few times, particularly when trying to translate a technical term like argilo-calcaire marbre but Vincent seemed very pleased with the end result and we had a bit of fun. As an aside, their delicious, medal winning 2004 rosé was our pink of choice last year and their Plan de Savoulous is one of our favourite reds.

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It's Max's second birthday today so Jan gave him extra cuddles and treats. Both being males, Max and I celebrated with male type greetings so that he didn't get embarrassed and I didn't get branded a paedophile. You've gotta be careful nowadays!

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I popped in to see William this afternoon because I'd heard that he wasn't well, that he'd put his car in a ditch and had to get someone to pull him out. I thought that I'd tease him about French drunk drivers but it turns out it was nothing worse than getting stuck in deep mud next to some roadworks. I'll get him one day!