Calming down.

It's a beautiful sunny morning and Madame Bay has flung all the windows open and stripped all the beds to air the linen. From the road the house looks like a refugee encampment with duvet covers and sheets floating from every opening. The sound of the hoover, Radio Nostalgie , and the jaunty overlay of Madame Bays voice echoes round the countryside. Who knew 'My boy Lollipop' or ' Mab boh lollipoop' had been such a hit in France?

Madame Bay arrived bright and early carrying a piece of paper in her hand. She is due to come on Tuesday mornings but hey what difference does a day make ? A breathless " Oh M'Ongoose Oh" - a bad sign and a sure fire indicator of a sleepless night. MB quickly settled herself beside me at the breakfast table and started to get her worries off her chest. Believe me, when Madame Bay gets her worries off her chest the words come tumbling out with the quick fire rapidity of a Kentucky tobacco auctioneer on speed. It soon, very soon, transpired that Monsieur Bay has booked the two of them on the retired gendarmes club holiday outing . This year it is going to Croatia for two weeks in mid-July. The brochure she was carrying showed a perfectly fine 1960's style hotel standing on a rocky headland overlooking the sea - not the height of luxury but air conditioned and with a bank of shiney elevators. In other words everything a group of partying seventy something policemen and their wives would need . Madame Bay has however become convinced that Croatia is a dangerous place. Although I was lucky to pick up one word in three of her high speed monologue it seems that she has belatedly heard of the fighting that occured there twenty years ago and conflated this with the war in Afghanistan. 'The font' smiled and left me alone to explain that there was no danger whatsoever. A calmed Madame Bay can now look forward to her trip.

A wet Sunday afternoon so off to the cafe in the local market town. Wilf nestled under the table with his bowl of water, invisible bar his nose and paws. While I had a beer the 'the font' went off to the town hall to listen to a worthy lecture on 'the mathematics of rainbow refraction'. We declined the option of attending . As we sat there under the arcades a procession of ancient Citroens came along and parked right in front of us. Some Citroen owners club on their monthly outing. Heaven. Wilf wanted to investigate the tyres on a rather lovely white 1967 convertible but I told him that it was sacriligeous so he turned his attention to the grey Peugeot behind.