Friday 13th July

I arrived back from the UK on Wednesday to glorious sunshine, altho’ Chris tells me there has been some heavy rain as well in my absence.    The grasshoppers seem to like the heat, however, and are invading us once again.  Even tho’ we are keeping all doors closed (luckily we now have netting on two of our upstairs windows) they still get in somehow.  I think we carry them in on our clothes or they just jump through the open gap at the right moment.  Farmer Coco cut the hay in the fields last week, so there is not much left for them to eat so hopefully they will soon die off.

My vegetables have grown well in the two weeks I have been gone, the covers doing their job well, although some quite large holes have appeared.  Today I bought a new cover to tide us over until the hoppers peter out.  I noticed at the garden centre that one can buy something to kill off everything, from lerots to ants, but not a single thing for grasshoppers.

Chris was busy in my absence with his reconditioned [tag-tec]Corgi cars[/tag-tec] and has now had lots of interest from punters on e-bay after putting one up for sale as a trial.  In fact, one customer has requested a special commission of a Colmans Mustard Mini.

Chris had a fright in the week.  When Farmer Coco cut the field, all animal and insect life ran for their lives including a snake which Chris just spotted slithering into the garage.  It hid behind my garden tools and he had a job getting it into a box before taking it across the road and depositing it a good deal away from our house.  Chris told me it was quite scary, especially as the snake, which we assume was an adder, was hissing at him and obviously none too pleased at being caught.  What a good thing he saw it go into the garage when he did or there might have been a nasty accident.

My trip back to the UK included [tag-tec]a visit to Nice[/tag-tec] with my girlfriends to celebrate a 50th birthday.  Most people thought I was mad coming back to England only to fly back to France but flying was much less expensive than it would have been to drive and also much quicker.  I was pleasantly surprised by Nice finding I liked it very much.  We did a bus tour one day which took us round all the historical places and taught us its history.  We also visited [tag-tec]Monaco[/tag-tec] and saw the palace, F1 course and the casino in Monte Carlo.  Another day we took the train to Cannes where we spent the day on the sandy beach as the one at Nice is all pebbles.  The water was surprisingly chilly, having not yet warmed up this year presumably due to the inclement weather.  But we had excellent weather and I was glad I had taken my parasol with me.  Evenings were spent in the lively old town where we sampled good food and wine before heading back to Hotel Splendid where we stayed for 4 nights.