out for the weekend

Up early this morning and heading west, for Roger's 60th birthday and a visit to Jean.
And still getting on with odd bits of work in the barn, while waiting for the electrician.
On Thursday night we were woken by the sound of horses hooves in the night, and got out of bed to put up the string (thick binder twine) that serves as a gate and sometimes keeps out cattle. It turned out not to be Jean-Pierre's horses, but the Piganiol donkeys instead, who had got everywhere - on top of Jean-Louis P's silo, to his annoyance. I think the main problem is that the donkeys share a field with the cows, so if they start pushing through the electric fence, many litres of milk will follow.
Read an interesting find, Ernest Shepard's "Drawn from Memory", a perfect small book and an example to us all of how to write autobiography - it covers only the author's seventh year (1887). The illustrations are lovely. I'd long known what a crossing sweeper was, but Shepard shows what the swept crossing looked like (in summer). The pictures of the great Whiteley's fire prompted me to sign up in Wikipedia and correct their article. And I've started again on Proust. Last time I became becalmed about four volumes in. We'll see if this time I can manage the lot.