… to Clermont Ferrand this evening I passed under the autoroute, went round the bend … “no surprise there” – ed … above Beauregard Vendon and noticed this absolutely magnificent rainbow dangling underneath the clouds.

You need to enlarge the photo to see it and it’s not really all that clear even then, but it wasn’t half impressive. I wish I had taken the Pentax, poorly though it is, with me.

A couple of miles further on at St Bonnet there was a Citroen U23 lorry from 1951 parked at a garage at the side of the road so I stopped and took some pics of that too. No old vehicles for months and months and then two good ones – the Studebaker of Sunday and now this one – in a couple of days.

This morning I was much more mobile – most of the aches seem to have worn off. But after breakfast I came up here for three hours and did some more stuff for the radio programme. I can now tell you all about registering with French Social Security.

After lunch I went into the garden and braved the wind and rain (we had ONLY 22mm of rain today and it’s p155ing down now). I didn’t install any more raised beds today but I’ve started doing the paths in between them. People keep asking me what I ontend to do with the rubble and old slate still in the first floor bedroom- well now you know. The rubble from the dividing wall is the base of the path and the slates are the top covering. They say that slates discourage slugs from crossing but I don’t care – it makes a good path and there’s plenty of it. Slug-repellant capacities will be a bonus.

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