The power of machines

The man from the quarry kindly drove his lorry up and down the drive, tipping out the gravel as he went, and saving me hours of hard labour. Still quite a lot of shovelling and raking, even so, but it's done now and looking very smart. The car is happier too.

The children always enjoy playing with new technology. This tandem requires a rare level of co-operation.

The electric cello visited us for a couple of days along with its owner John. It sounds like four rubber bands without the headphones, but superb with them on.

Give me strength

It looks perfectly harmless, doesn't it. This is the thing that our front gates bolt into. However, over the years, the drive has eroded around it and it now stands five inches proud of ground level. That's too high for the new car, which is a low-slung model with slimline tyres and an exhaust pipe that hangs just above the ground. So everyone has to get out of the car before going up the final short slope into the drive.

Well, we're all fed up with that. So I have been to visit the Carrières de La Montagne Noire and ordered some gravel to be delivered on Monday. Only a small lorry-load, but it will still weigh 11 tons, so I am bracing myself for an awful lot of shovelling and raking before we have the perfect drive (and a happy car).

Nature study

The wildlife has been putting on a good show for us today. At lunchtime we watched a pair of nesting jays hopping in and out of a split oak tree near the house. Then a splendid pair of green woodpeckers. All of this capped by the hoopoe, a spectacular bird with a swept-back crest on its head. Our bird book says "Migrateur transsaharien, c'est avec plaisir que l'on redécouvre la Huppe au début de chaque printemps". So, welcome back from Africa.

Yesterday we found a confused baby red squirrel in the dining room. It scampered off to safety when we opened the kitchen door.

Randonnée

A couple more wayside crosses, snapped on my long walk with Herne this morning. It took longer than we had planned because part of the route, although marked on the map, was officially closed. We took it anyway and climbed over fallen trees and crossed bridges with missing planks.

Our walk started and ended near the Chapeau de Napoléon, one of the massive granite boulders strewn around the Sidobre.

Spring is definitely here

Easter Sunday out in the garden, clearing and planting. Thunder this afternoon but the rain didn't last. Back outside after supper for an easter egg hunt.

Crucifixus

I try to listen to one of the Bach Passions each Good Friday. Two years ago I heard a magnificent St Matthew Passion live in Cadogan Hall in London, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. I didn't manage it yesterday, because I was teaching a lute student who had done me the honour of driving two hours to get here, but this afternoon I sat down to listen to Gardiner's recording of the St John Passion.

The St John Passion has a lute in it for all of two minutes (the arioso Betrachte meine Seel'). The lute writing is puzzling because it has quite a few chromatic bass notes in it, which don't work on a normal baroque lute. I posted a message to the internet lute list about it, and got a couple of helpful replies from people who have found ingenious ways of retuning their bass strings for the purpose. And they usually play continuo for various other numbers, so the conductor can get more than two minutes use out of them.

France is officially a secular state but there are still plenty of religious symbols on display in town squares and at road junctions. There's a fine crucifix in the centre of our village, La Caulié. And just outside our back gate, on the adjoining farm, there' s a large granite cross, now surrounded by tractors and bags of fertiliser.

That hat

Remember Michael Murray's hat from a few weeks ago? Here's the original model, as worn by a big chief in Hawaii in the early 19th century, which I caught sight of in the Musée du Quai Branly at the weekend.

Tourism

After my weekend at the Journées du Luth (very enjoyable) I stayed on in Paris for some sightseeing on Monday. Here's a classic scene of the Tuileries gardens with, of course, the Eiffel Tower in the background. As usual, click to enlarge.

Before that, I'd been to the Louvre, which is enormous. It needs to be, to accommodate the huge number of visitors. Especially around the Mona Lisa, which has a whole wall to itself and its own queuing system. For 5 euros you can hire a special Da Vinci Code audioguide to get the best out of the museum.

Far fewer visitors in the North European sculpture department, where I came across this wonderful carving of Mary Magdalene by a German sculptor in 1510. She is quite well covered at the front too.

The flight back on Monday evening was delayed by an hour. Our pilot admitted that the plane had been struck by lightning on its inward flight from Madrid, and he had called for engineers to inspect it. The storm reached us at home on Tuesday afternoon: torrential rain, hail, thunder, lightning and overflowing gutters.

The children have gone ice-skating this afternoon.