International relations

Bloody hell it was cold this morning. Despite changing the start time for the tennis to 10.30 it was so cold, with a slight wind from the north, that I had to shoot back inside for a hat and gloves. Have ever tried to hold a tennis racket with a gloved hand? The grip size changes way too much for me and it's near impossible to hit the ball but there was no way that I was taking the gloves off. At least not until I had warmed up.

Anyway, William and I fought back from three down to win the first set 6-4 and I was serving at 5-4 in the second. I suspect that everyone was hoping to get back into the warm for a coffee. Well, blow me, but I double faulted to give them the game. William sidled up to me and whispered in my ear, "Eet is not a Chrisamass yate." They went on to take the second set in a tie-break.

(See Bob, you're not the only one who can bore people to death with sports minutiae)

No hiding place

Having worked in the consumer finance industry for over 45 years I gained a certain amount of experience of tracing people. The other day William gave me a wallet, which had been found by the side of the road, in the village, for an obviously Scottish person. There was no cash, surprise, surprise but several credit cards and more importantly a UK photo driving licence. My initial thought was that it had been lost by one of our recent wedding guests so I emailed James. The reply was negative. William, who knows most of what happens in the village, wasn't aware of anybody who fitted the description so what to do? Well the obvious thing was to check the home address on the licence. Using the online phone number finder from BT I got a reasonably close match and phoned and left a message. Within the hour Euan called back and said that his hire car had been stolen from the front of a relative's house in the nearby village of Combas last July. The cards had all been stopped and duplicates issued (bum and there I was thinking of a little holiday somewhere) so after a friendly chat we agreed that I should destroy the cards and I decided to put a trip to Thailand out of my mind.

Getting to know your computer

Mr Computer Repair Man returned Jan's machine last night. He had partitioned the hard drive, reinstalled Windows, and it appeared to be working properly again. What then followed was the 'fun' part. I started downloading updates, including SP2, which took several hours. Such fun, especially knowing that there will be lots more to do the next day. Having said that the Liverpool Champions League match was tedious so it helped fill the time until something interesting happened. Nothing interesting happened, so Jan got a lot of updates!

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My mood nosedived this morning because I thought that her machine had broken down again, but, with a little fiddling, I realised that the router just needed re-booting and so 'we' were off and running again.

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It's amazing what knowing your mayor can achieve for you. I know William quite well now and I like him a great deal. He has a very English sense of humour and we laugh a lot together. Anyway, I called him to ask if he knew an electrician (the last one hasn't returned a year after doing some work and I owe him money, so I wasn't going to rock the boat, as it were). He said yes, no problem, he would call one he knew and get him to call me. Within 30 minutes he (the new electrician) had called and by 15.30 he had visited the house and agreed to the work. Amazing. The next feat will be that he turns up and does the work, but I'll have to wait a little while for that one.

Wet and Dry

What a dramatic change in the weather this morning. At least I got the chance to survey the damage and make some repairs. The water in the garage was not reducing very quickly so it was just as well that we bought a wet and dry vac yesterday. These machines are great (it doesn't take much to keep you happy! - Ed.). The vac has a 29 litres capacity and by the time I'd finished I reckon that it had removed the best part of 80 litres of water. No wonder it wasn't evaporating very quickly. I bet you find it difficult to contain your excitement at seeing the picture of our new vac above.

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James, Pauline, William, Christine, Jan and I (strange but out of the five previous very English Christian names, one person is German and two are French) ate at Mas de Roux last night. And, whilst we are into statistics, five of us had the same fish and yours truly had a slab of meat. I should be able to read something into that? (Yeah, have you written your will? - Ed.)

Minnie the minx

I went on a mushroom hunt today when we took the dogs out for a walk. Despite the fact that I carried my all new, huntin, shootin and fishin knife, I couldn't find any. Bum. Ah well, I managed to get the dogs to sit still for a couple of seconds and took the photo above. William had me in fits last night with tales of the last time he went to find mushrooms. They drove for miles, arrived before it was light, like an hour before, so had to head for a bar (with two committed drinkers) and then found nothing. They then moved on and drove for another 20 minutes and found a little. Like me he said that you can buy them relatively cheaply (when you take the man hours and petrol into consideration) at the local market. But, and this is the big but, they don't taste as good. Hmmm?

Whilst she is very soft and gentle with us, Minnie is very aggressive when she plays with Max and despite being slightly smaller than him, it already looks like she will rule the roost in a years time. Typical female (he said bitterly)!

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We'd forgotten that I'd invited Christine round this morning to help her with her computer. We were both still in our pj's when she arrived. Anyway, her machine was in a right mess and when I checked the Windows Update site there were 61 patches to be downloaded. I started at 10.45 and didn't finish that bit until 15.00. Yuk. On top of that, the machine kept freezing and is very low on memory (256 Mb). I ordered some more from Crucial, which is my one stop shop for this type of thing. Recommended.