This is probably the most important day in the calendar out here in the Combrailles. The weather is, as you know, unpredictable and it can play havoc with your gardening as it has done this year with my plants. I’ve no leeks, no peppers, no chilis and so on.

But this area is the home of many people with a close affinity with the soil and so gardening, especially vegetable gardening, is quite a pastime.

And so at the Garden fair what happens is that everyone brings along their surplus plants and those of us who have been devastated by the late snows and frosts can buy them to replace those that we lost.

And so I duly bought a tray of 50 leeks, some peppers, some chilis, some mint and some decent-sized tomatoes. There was also a stall there manned (“personned” – ed) by a couple of kids full of insipid tomato plants and the like (the stall, not the kids) and they were quite intelligent and interesting (the kids, not the plants). We had quite a chat and some banter and I bought a handful of plants from them for no good reason at all except that I liked the kids. I reckon I get on much better with kids rather than adults. They don’t have any preconceptions and have the same kind of weird sense of humour that I have.

That wasn’t all of the entertainment either. We had some folk-dancing too – a little team of locals giving some kind of demonstration of their art and grabbing hold of passing locals and pulling them onto the stage.

And it’s good to see all of these younger people taking part too. There’s a huge amount of local culture that has been lost due to no-one following on in the footsteps of the older generation and that’s a tragedy.

But that was all in mid-afternoon.

It was Sunday today of course so that meant a lie-in for the morning. And after breakfast I had to write the script for the radio programmes for the month of June.

Yes, we start with the information for the week commencing 4th June and so I am bewildered as to why the person who gives us the stuff to broadcast (which I have to translate into English and work into a script) and who was b*ll*ck*d by me the other week for giving me stuff too late to include in the relevant programmes back then, has sent me all the information (“which we MUST broadcast”) about submitting your income tax returns – final date for submission being … errrr …. 31st May!

All I can say is that it’s no wonder that the French Civil Service is in total chaos.

After St Gervais d’Auvergne I went round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the programmes and for a chat, and then I came home early to plant my vegetables. After all, tomorrow is yet another Bank Holiday and so it’s a lie-in in the morning and in the afternoon I’m going for a guided walk around some old quarries.

Yes, I really ought to get out more often, don’t I?

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