Apples and pears

We're not going to get many cherries this year. They were all bumped off by a mighty hailstorm in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago. Fearnley's friend Tom has kept some of the hailstones in his freezer. They were as big as ice cubes.

Lowri's parents came from England to visit last week, and we went with her dad to the nursery to buy some fruit trees. We stuffed the car with a Granny Smith, a Royal Gala, a Louise Bonne, a Beurré Hardy, and an Agen. Dig dig dig dig dig.

Hot air

The Figaro website reported yesterday that the US was blocking a common declaration by the G8 countries about climate change, ahead of the G8 summit meeting next month. Not much doubt who the villains are: "La lutte contre l’effet de serre se heurte toujours à l’opposition frontale de l’administration Bush."

Greenpeace, who launched the story by leaking a US negotiators' document, are even more scathing: "The Bush administration once again proves with this intervention that they both ignore the global scientific consensus and the rapidly rising concern in the US on climate change."

However, the Financial Times explains: "Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, would like the summit to agree limits on carbon emissions but the US says climate change should be tackled with technology-based solutions rather than mandatory emissions targets and accuses Berlin of ignoring its stance."

That's better. It acknowledges that the US is not simply a climate change denier (surreal images of stockings spring to mind), but does have a different approach to tackling what it agrees is a serious issue.

Helpfully, Greenpeace have published the leaked document. It's quite illuminating. The US position on climate change displays more of a scientist's caution than a politician's certainty (para 41). All quantitative targets have been struck out. As well as technology, there's an emphasis on economic structures, indicating more faith in market-based solutions.

As a bonus, the US language is clearer. We will...

• "support a clear and predictable policy framework to stimulate global development, commercialization, deployment and access to technologies" [original]

• "support policies to stimulate development, commercialization, and diffusion of new technologies" [US redraft]

But I think I know what really upset Greenpeace. It's paragraph 63a, where the US has added "and nuclear" onto a worthy list of clean fuels (winds, solar etc).

Reptiland

The weather is hotting up and the reptiles are out and about. The photographer didn't want to get too close to the intertwined snakes.

The peninsula

I've not had a lot of computer time recently (here's the reason - highly recommended), so my blog is lagging behind a bit. Anyway, this is a picture of the beautiful village where I played a concert last weekend. Ambialet lies on the river Tarn, some miles upstream from Albi.

Confusingly, there seem to be two rivers in the picture (click it to see a bigger version) but actually they are both the Tarn. Between them is a narrow rocky strip that the river can't get over, so it goes on a loop of two or three miles before coming back within fifty yards of where it started. Have a look at the aerial photo on Géoportail to get the full effect. So Ambialet and its 11th century church are almost on an island (indeed, it's called a presqu'île in French).

Pictures of Spain

Absolutely Fabius

We got home from Barcelona last night (the whole family, two Chuckerbutty concerts, pictures to follow) to find that it was all over and that Sarkozy had won. Want to know what the next five years will bring? Read it here.

There were lots of politicians and campaigners on the television with not much to say but nonetheless saying it at great length. Laurent Fabius, a former socialist prime minister, had an ingenious line: It's dangerous to have too much power concentrated in the hands of one person, so the voters must give the socialists a strong result in next month's parliamentary elections to ensure a proper democratic counterbalance to the president. I wonder if he would have proposed the same argument if Ségolène Royal had won. By the way, it was Fabius who, when Royal announced that she was running for president, asked "But who will take care of the children?"

La gloire

We all snuggled down on the sofa on Wednesday evening with our coca-cola and giant tubs of popcorn to watch this week's big feature, the grand presidential debate between Sarko and Ségo. Two and a half hours - what a slog. Curious, reading the many comments the next day, how people see what they want to see. A blistering performance by a powerful Royal, with Sarkozy cowering in the corner. Or a flailing rant by Royal, short on detail, with Sarkozy calm and in clear command. The two moderators, France's finest apparently, kept quiet apart from occasional clock-watching. Where was Paxman?

And where was the rest of the world, for that matter? In one of the rare moments when these would-be world leaders lifted their heads up from French domestic issues, Ségo advocated boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics (in China) to deal with the Darfur crisis (in Africa). Sarko ruled out ever allowing Turkey into the EU on the grounds that it isn't in Europe.

Strangely enough, the British Labour government seems to support the right-wing Sarkozy rather than the Parti Socialiste's Royal. So would I if I had a vote. We'll find out what happens on Sunday evening.