Monday evening

It's one of those magical evenings. The sun set about half an hour ago, and there's not a cloud in the sky and the colours blend from copper over in the west through progressively lighter then darker blues over to the east. A few lights are twinkiling down in the valley but the first stars are not yet visible. There are almost no sounds to be heard - perhaps a distant donkey, and the occasional voice wafting up from the Piganiols' farm down the hill. No birds singing, no dogs barking, not even a cicada. The air is just cooling down and the first bats are appearing.

Yesterday was a day off - overcast and cool. I went out to lunch with Peter Graham and Charles Barr - a delicious and well-sized duck, followed by Charles' blackberry fool and perhaps rather more wine than was entirely good for me.

Today I took the trailer to Rodez and collected half a ton of paving stones - 30cm square limestone flags. They'll be going onto the patio outside the bedroom, hopefully in the next few days. As the picture shows I split the load between the trailer and the back of the car.



The 120 tiles look suspiciously like quite a small load (it felt heavy enough loading them on at Rodez and then off at Lessal), but each tile weighs a little more than 5kg. I weighed a selection first before deciding to take the trailer.

The triangular gap between the lower and upper paved area has been niggling me for months. If our Moroccan builders had managed to get the end of the paving for the pool at right angles to the wall of the barn it wouldn't be there, but as the main paved area needs to be square there's a long thin fillet of bare concrete that has been asking for the treatment.

And today it got it. Here's before and after:




And the sun came out to show the difference. It's odd how the new tiles look as if they are set crookedly compared to the ones on the left: in fact they are all straight lines. Maybe it'll look better when the grouting is done (maybe that'll be tomorrow if I can find the grout).

By the time I was done it was nearly seven, and as I went for a shower my mobile beeped (this was very unusual in that the phone was switched on and I noticed the message). It was Janey reminding me to look at the Positano webcam where she and Mikey would be waving, slowly, as the webcam refreshes only every five seconds. And after a bit of an exchange of texts I could make out two small white specks (six pixels?) which were them - and it's a lovely evening there too.

Now at ten it's getting dark and the cicadas are chirruping away - so many of them it's a constant blended tone - and the stars are coming out too.