… about my weather prediction today. In fact it started off grey, wet and miserable and simply got worse and worse.

And in something that must be a new world record, I was in Montlucon, a quick round of all of the shops and back home by 12:30, would you believe?

What has contributed to that a great deal is that theres a new Leclerc hypermarket opened just a little way down the road from Brico Depot.

It’s huge, clean and tidy, the parking is really easy, the aisles are nice and wide and, in common with most Leclerc hypermarkets, there are plenty of checkouts and they are always well-personned so there are none of these enormous queues that you find in the Auchan and the Carrefour.

For these reasons alone, the new Leclerc will get my vote for shopping for the forseeable future.

I didn’t in fact leave my notebook at Brico Depot. It was in my pocket all the time.

Nevertheless I went and redid my shopping there this morning and with no pressure from any outside influence I bought everything that I’m likely to need to finish off this bathroom properly.

I’ll restart in there on Monday and put my back into it.

I came back a different way that usual and I’m rather glad that I did.

Despite everything that I’ve recently been saying about old cars on islands, you do still occasionally find them on the mainland too.

And here just down the road from LeClerc at Domérat I stumbled across probably the most exciting car that I’ve seen for quite some considerable time – Peugeot 230 pickups excepted of course.

And isn’t this a real beauty?

She’s a 1962 Opêl Rekord 1700 P2, in almost-mint condition, one owner from new and with just 67000 kms on the clock.

It’s for sale at just €7500 and I could easily be tempted by this, although Opel did make a pick-up version and a convertible, one of which would be even an more exciting find,

Even nicer though would be the Soviet Union’s copycat GAZ M21 III but I wouldn’t have a clue where even to start to look for one of those.

This afternoon I did a little (yes, just a little) tidying up here and then, despite the miserable weather, it was time to go out.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at the weekend round about the Fête de St Jacques it’s the custom here in Virlet to go for a walk to beat the bounds of the commune and have a little party afterwards.

Despite the miserable weather, a hard-core of about a dozen or so of us set out, up tp our knees in soaking wet grass and sliding about on the mud.

It made me feel quite at home.

It did brighten up slightly as we made our way around, and it became much easier to walk once we were on the metalled road.

Neverthless, it was still far too wet for our traditional feu de joie, but someone did bring a DVD, a copy of the Fernandel film En Avant La Musique – a tyical whimsical film of village life in Italy during the war, and we sat around and watched that instead.

All in all we had a good time. I wonder what tomorrow will bring me.

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