Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Worse ...

... some pitiful excuse for a human being restores your faith in the sheer depravity of humanity by dumping a litter of six-week old puppies on the side of the road, on the way from old Henri Bataille's mausoleum up to the autoroute, to die in the heat. Nice one, that guy.

Luckily for the pups old Nev had headed off on his daily jog oop't Alaric (yes, in 35° heat, go figure) and spotted some of them, and as I was going blamelessly about my own business - heading up to the bar for some vitamins at midday - he burst all a-quiver out of his front door to tell me all about it ... so little Suzy took us off to the spot and we spent a good (but sadly, extremely sweaty) while thrashing about in the undergrowth without finding anything.

Then Margo took our three off for their walk at 14h and came across old Alain, who has a remise up that way, he had found one and had planned on dropping it off at the mairie, and she offered to take it home instead and organise things with the SPA and such. So after giving the poor little sod some water, off to the vet's he went for a quick check-up ...

And about the time when the thermometer's heading up his bum who should walk in but Mme Lignères, wife of the local doctor vigneron (Chateau la Baronne, worth checking out), to announce that her husband had found five puppies at the spot when returning from the vines, and brought them back to the cave after ringing ahead to make sure there'd be food and water awaiting them: at which point the vet grabbed ours and held it out to her, saying "Do they look like this? Want a sixth?".

Sadly(?) the answer was a firm "No", although I gather all his siblings have found homes: as has our one, because we now has four dogs, the youngest being called Moses because of being found under the rushes. After a couple of years of relative peace, we're starting to get used to cleaning up random piddle again. Also, not much sleep for me: the vet diagnosed him with an intestinal parasite infestation and said to keep him inside at night - so the other dogs don't go and have a nice midnight snack of diarrhoea - for the next week, and to avoid much wailing and gnashing of teeth he's caged in the dining room, and I sleep on the sofa close by ...

Doesn't stop the little bugger from waking up at 6am, mind you.

Let it be admitted that I've not watched TV for maybe a couple of years now, neither on the honest-to-go idiot box nor via streaming or Youtube: just somehow got out of the habit of doing so, I suppose. Still, I look through the odd review just so that I know what I'm missing/can avoid appearing a complete idiot on social occasions - and let it be said that, having rather enjoyed the book, on a number of occasions (as well as rescuing it from Emma) - "Good Omens" does rather tempt me.

But that is neither here nor there: the thing is that as I was looking through a (p)review in Ars of "Black Mirror" I couldn't help but notice what I can only hope was a typo that went unspotted by the proof-readers: "Ashley O., who isn't nearly as upbeat as her pubic image would suggest" ...

May/June turned out to be busy months for us, socially: had Dijaan staying for a while, then Vic and George - old friends of Margo's - came to stay overnight on their way back to Germany. It was a memorable enough evening - or at least it would be, if I could actually remember that much of it, because to be quite honest all that sticks in my excuse for a memory is that I actually cooked a relatively decent meal for once, that there were three empty bottles on the table the next moaning, and that we hit the whisky sometime around midnight ...

I've said it before, I know, but I shall say it again: I is definitely getting too old to do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Then Janet and Kevin turned up in their hi-tech camper-van (Kevin is actually rather proud of the swing-out gas barbecue he's built on at the back) for a few days on their way down to see the Spanish cuzzies, and Malyon arrived to a) get some of her favourite food and b) use us as a convenient base to head off to a wedding in Aberdeen and then Space Camp in the Auvergne.

Also, her friends Greg and Yumi turned up, from Lyon and Toulouse respectively, and stayed the night: more cooking, and many thanks to Greg for the excellent bottle of whisky ... you can see where this is heading, can't you?

Let it be admitted it was all very pleasant, but when the last lot had left we sort of looked at one another and sighed in relief. As the old saying has it - "family, friends and fish: chuck them all out after three days".

Fortunately July is, to the best of my admittedly sketchy knowledge and ability, untainted by visitors - with the sole exception of the Pope, who supposedly turns up at Carcassonne on the 23rd and then leaves again at some coyly unspecified date (which I can only assume to be after that, although I'm never too sure with him and he might well decide to leave before he arrives, just to piss me off).

Then we've a wedding at Montbrun on the 27th, and on the 28th, heads permitting, we shall confide all the dogs to Angela and Martin's tender ministrations for a couple of days and head off to Pesselière to catch the tail-end of a large party and, incidentally, pick up Howard and bring him down to these benighted parts for a few days.

Margo just bought herself a new laptop, on the entirely reasonable grounds that her old one predates the Flood, and I do not think that my poor delicate ears have ever been treated to such invective and vituperation as thay have today, when she decided to set it up.

I will admit that only a few days ago I was heaping abuse upon the sadly far-off heads of the "developers" of Wrike (this being, should it interest you, a web-based project management platform whose user interface can be - to my taste at least - somewhat problematic) and some of the words I used, as I got more and more frustrated with the bloody thing, were - I will agree - bordering on the obscene: nonetheless they were as light-hearted banter compared to what I heard coming from Margo's lips.

First of all, of course, you must decide whether or not to log on using a Microsoft account: in my experience this does actually work provided that you always have internet access which for us is not always the case: so "set it up to log on using a local account" I cheerily said, and went back to considering my glass of rosé.

Sadly that was interrupted, because the bloody setup procedure forces you to set up an account, even if you don't use it: once you get onto that screen you can't go back, you can't go forward, and you definitely can't get out of the game unless you do so.

Then there were even more fulminations, because you must supply a phone number or an email address, your date of birth, any identifying marks ... and then it gets worse, because the damn thing tries to persuade you to sign up for OneDrive and Office (secure in the knowledge that most people will forget to cancel the subscription before it becomes paying) and then ... and then ...

I'm well out of it.

On a cheerier subject, and just whilst I think of it, we have been goofling relentlessly and looking at photos and everything, and it would appear that our little Moses is what passes around here for a more or less pure breed griffon bleu de Gascogne. Which is good to know, at least he has his lettre de noblesse ... if I can trust various doggy blogs, the breed is "extremely affectionate and loyal" but also, somewhat more disturbingly, "adventurous and highly excitable".

Also, "requires exercise", which is typical enough for a hunting dog ... whatever, we're used to that, keeps us active too.