Time for a picture

Here's our house. We moved here almost a year ago after selling up in London. We're about three miles outside Castres, a town of about 45,000 people, in a quiet setting surrounded by woods and fields. It has been the hottest July in France for at least 50 years so it's been good to have the pool.

Sitting on the terrace this evening, we saw an owl flying overhead. And a bat.

Gleaming

We have lots of visitors arriving from England this summer, so today we cleaned the patio table and chairs in anticipation using our smart yellow Kärcher jet spray cleaner thingy. I've always wanted to have a jet spray cleaner thingy, and after M. Sarkozy's sales pitch last autumn it just had to be a Kärcher. How satisfying to see all the blackness being swept away and the gleaming white emerging from underneath (though I'm sure that's not what M. Sarkozy was thinking of).

The canicule is over but it's still hot. I am reading Ian McEwan's Atonement at the moment which is also set in a summer heatwave. Too stifling. Maybe next I should read Tintin in the Antarctic for a bit of balance.

The momentous beginning

Went to two concerts this week in the wonderful Cordes sur Ciel festival. Cordes is a fortified medieval town at the top of a hill, which floats spectacularly above the surrounding countryside. The festival offers top-notch chamber music by young French musicians in the 14th century church. It's organised by violin-maker Christian Urbita and his cellist wife Sue.

I have been forced by the children to create my own robot at Robot Rage. Tomorrow will be Tarn Master's first outing and I know he is going to be slaughtered by Koboi, Mr Pizza, and Daggerduck.

Thank you, Guardian Online, for pointing me towards Theodore Gray's Sodium Party. This is what happens when you dunk large chunks of sodium in a lake.