… I was watching the Sherlock Holmes film the Golden Pince-Nez and in it is the immortal line, something like “he’s still in bed. If the weather is really bad he stays in bed until midday”. And that really started my day quite badly because it was the easily the most beautiful day for quite some time and and for reasons that I really do not know, it was 12:22 when I woke up.

No – what happened there I have no idea at all.

Anyway, after breakfast, instead of living in the middle of all kinds of boxes and so on, I revised the media corner and made a pile of impromptu shelves out of old bits of wood and some wine boxes, and now all of the CDs, videos and DVDs are neatly piled up properly where I can see them and where I won’t trip over them. There’s still a long way to go before this place here looks presentable, what with everything I brought back from Brussels, but at least it’s a start. You can’t say I didn’t work at all this afternoon.

This evening, just by way of a change, I went out socialising, and that’s not something that happens every day. I was invited to a barbecue by Isolde – the girl for whom we did a furniture removal last year. She was entertaining and there were loads of people there, including a huge pile of kids which was nice.

I spent most of the time chatting to Karl, Lou, Jean and Elizabeth – after all, it’s really nice to see them.

But as dusk descended on Espinasse I started to feel homesick like I usually do – I don’t do crowds as you know – and so in the best traditions of the News of the Screws, I “made my excuses and left”.

And I’m glad that I left before it went dark because it gave me an opportunity to photograph the sunset and tonight it was absolutely beautiful. It’s not very often that I really catch it exactly at the right moment seeing that I can’t actually see it from my house.

Tomorrow, if I remember to wake up, I’ll do a load of washing if the weather is as nice as it was today. It really was a glorious day.

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