Back online

Back after a gap caused by a trip to Wales to see the family, and also occasioned by high temperatures which have certainly reduced cerebral capacity (or the willingness to use it).

In the meantime, we have been dealing with the usual hassles: the facade repairs, after having been approved by the town hall, and after umpteen changes, each one more expensive than the last, dictated by the Architecte de France, has now been put on hold, because the owner of the lower half of the house has sold his share, without telling us, to a group of smoothie estate agents. We will have to wait and see, but it is unlikely the works can now be done this autumn.

On the administrative front, we met with the best and worst of the French system. The best was getting ourselves registered to vote - a charming lady at the town hall helped us with the forms and the whole process took about five minutes and a minimum of repetitive strain with the biro. The worst was getting papers for a friend to visit us, where we had to show everything we had on our incomes, our tax liabilities, even the square footage of each room in the house. Naturally, the offices for the different pieces needed were in different parts of town. The resultant certificate looks like a medieval papal bull. Let's hope it is more effective!

We have also been trying to get a place at a nearer underground car park, which has just changed management. The booking forms, though very elegant, were completely incomprehensible (a common situation in France), so we went to the car park in person and asked the duty manager to show us how to fill it in. He was helplessly, comically drunk, like in a pier end music-hall routine, a perhaps fortunate condition which methylically hid the fact that he was barely literate. Who knows what he put on our forms. If we get a place, it will be a miracle.

What has rendered all this distinctly bearable is the unrelenting blue sky, sunshine and warm sea. We swim twice a day, and so far haven't been restung by jellyfish. I have taken to wearing goggles to swim underwater with the myriad of strange, brightly coloured fishes. I wonder how many of them are edible? They certainly have posed the same question about me, for from time to time you can feel a little nibble, like a tickle, as the fish try to see what humans are made of.