Beautiful start to the day, becoming fluffy and then humid and then grey. Rain in the evening.
Woke-up at 9.30 with what seemed like being an uncomfortable hangover, but I quickly got rid of it with some emergency Resolve and all was fine pretty quickly. That will teach me to drink a whole bottle of Le Professeur’s home-made red wine. I thought it was a bit acidic but in retrospect I think my taste-buds were trying to be kind to my neighbour’s wine efforts. I don’t know what I’ll say to him if he asks me what I thought of it. “un peut sec pour mon gout” I think is the politest way of putting it. But I’m keeping the bottle ‘cos it says Chateau Le Chassaing and that’s pretty cool.
Sat in the sun reading last Sunday’s Observer which is probably pretty much the same as any other Sunday’s Observer. Well it was Saturday and I’ve decided to keep my weekend’s lazy like a real weekend.
After the colour supplement I rode the 4km into Beaulieu on my bike. It took 15 minutes which is not much more that the van, but then 3km of that is downhill. Went and bought some more internet which gave me a chance to email everyone with my change of address details at last, and pay my mobile phone bill. After that I noticed it was beer o’clock and so I sat in the sun watching the world go by for 40 minutes at the local bar.
A lot of world was going by but that may just be because I’m not used to the noise and hustle and bustle of a busy town. So I rode back to the house and that took over an hour! So that’s why none of the neighbours ride into town. The hill climbs about 1500 metres in that 3km, so it’s impossible to ride. But walking is fairly pleasant when you’ve got the time and the heat isn’t too intense like today.
At home I decided to treat myself to some proper home cooking, and did something with the apsparagus tips that I bought yesterday. I’ve never cooked asparagus before, and I didn’t realise how quickly they cook. But I managed to put together a quite reasonable meal effort what with potatoes and yesterdays leftovers of leek/mushroom/tomato/onion sauce. Mmmmmmm. I was so proud I took a photo of it.
Today’s animal news: The rats are still scratching around but their activity is definitely less. They are not taking all the poison I’ve spread around the house, but some of it is going so they should at the very least be feeling the rat equivalent of 2 or 3 bottles of Le Professeur’s vin rouge. I did spot a mouse yesterday having a nibble at some poison under the sink and I felt a bit sorry for it ‘cos he was quite cute and he didn’t know that the poison wasn’t for him. This evening there was a huge toad outside in the yard. It was bigger than my fist and quite slow moving. I think there must be some sort of frog and toad festival going on in the valley because they are croaking away in the distance, so presumably this toad was on his way there.
Well, time for bed I think. Tomorrow I think I might go to Collonge because there is medieval festival there and it’s a pretty village.
