France Fri 13th

St.Etienne-de-la-Cite

 

Perigueux is a city of thirty thousand people and a goodly percentage of them always seem to be out and about in the town. The good thing about this is that the traffic through the centre is oftn slow, which gives me time to take a pic or two. I took this pic of the old church, which was built in 1246 on the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Mars, as we skimmed by, and thought there may be a wedding in progress. Or maybe not. There are always tourists...

We reached the mill about 4.30 on Tuesday and since then we've done a lot of weeding house painting and hacking at the rampant undergrowth - not your average holiday, but we, sad souls that we are, enjoy it. I'm sitting in front of the window above the old mill stream, and admiring the luxuriant laurels, hazelnut and pine trees that completely enclose the view. Three dragon-flies, each a different colour, flit from leaf to leaf in the sunshine and occasionally a small bird darts in and out again. We've already seen a squirrel running along the fence outside the bedroom window, and a tiny wren found me fascinating as we peered at each other through the bathroom window. Then there are the lizards, though they're not really in evidence yet. They only creep out when the sun's shining, and so far, although the temperature is hovering about 20 degrees C, the sun and cloud keep swapping places.

We've done a "big shop" ie enough to keep us going for a few days and so now we can relax. Bill is painting - not the house this time, but an oil painting, and I'm torn between reading and doing some writing. The trouble is that our hosts are avid readers and always leave oodles of new and intersting books to read. The big Sunday supplements are here, too, and some of those are worth perusing. The other thing is that we haven't quite sorted the e-mail problem Between BT and Yahoo, I've been in limbo and doing anything on the old laptop I brought with me is a pain.I'm also very conscious of the fact that it is Friday 13th July!  I could do it longhand, of course. Now wouldn't that be intersting?