After Piégut we took a sauntery drive down to Lac St Mathieu and had a couple of drinks (sans alcool, naturellement) before wandering down to the lake proper and sitting on the beach watching the boys playing. Our attentions were drawn - in particular - to a young lad of late teens or early twenties who wasn't really swimming so much as just enjoying the water. He was just splashing around in the water up to his waist, occasionally diving underneath to get wet and resurface, brushing his hair back completely unawares that whilst there were beads of water glistening all over his bronzed body, there were beads of dribble over both of our chins. It was a pleasant afternoon.

I went for a run and came to the conclusion I'm desperately unfit. My run was only a short one as it was about 27 degrees and I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. The run itself was only about a mile and a half and I probably only ran for half of that, preferring to stagger - wheezing (and listening to Steps) - for the rest of it. It was an achievement nonetheless. There is a triangle around L'Age and Milhaguet which I'll start doing once I've worked my way up to it.

Philip's chicken soup came to our soup bowls. Whilst he finished off the few little bits of that, I cooked up a vegetarian chilli thingie (simply because we'd forgotten to go to the supermarket and buy nice things) which went down a treat.

We sat and chatted more about random things and eventually wandered outside to sit under the stars with our coffee and talk about travelling and where we'd like to go. Still on my list are New Zealand (to be conquered in February) and Moscow. I'm sure there are other places too - the bottom of the Atlantic to see the Titanic - but we couldn't think of any more. Pyramids, probably. Wouldn't mind seeing those. Philip wants to go to Mars because it's "a completely different world." I proposed Cardiff as a cheaper alternative.

I think we were probably sitting outside for about half and hour - probably even more - just gazing up, surprised that we could still see the Milky Way despite the recent introduction of a streetlamp just around the corner. I really must get myself a sky map so I can wander out somewhere one evening and just gaze and identify. Alas no more shooting stars - we've passed through the Leonids now.

I tried getting to bed quite early but my departure from the computer to bed was hindered by a huge hornet as I got as far as the living room. I have an irrational fear of flying things that can hurt me - wasps, hornets, bees, Concorde - but don't mind flying things. Mum goes to jelly with moths or butterflies - even worse with bats - but they don't bother me at all. Things that sting (bees less so because they only usually do it under duress) leave me cold and if stung, slightly puffed up. I'm perfectly calm though as I was brought up in a country farmouse with apiaries - which supplied Harrods - so know that the worse thing one can do is flap around as that's when you'll get stung. The last time I was stung was when one climbed up my shorts without me noticing and I squished it by mistake. It had only got as far as my hamstring, thankfully.

So I stood looking at this hornet sitting on the chandelier looking at me, poised to launch an attack, for about a minute or two before it decided to go for a little slow fly around the living room. They're a bit like those Hercules beasties that used to buzz over Eyton looking as if they were about to fall out of the sky. It was going for lights and little moths, mainly, so I tried to get it to fly out towards the outside light through a deft combination of door opening and light switching, but I'm not sure whether it worked.

I remember hornets from Eyton as a child. Some decided they'd go into the roof space and for weeks we were plagued by these huge low-flying buzzy things which scared the shit out of the cats, Mum and myself. Dad remained completely blasé about the whole thing and simply did the nerve gas routine whenever they came near. My most lasting memory of the episode is the man coming in shorts and a teeshirt, wandering up in to the roof space with some stuff then triumphantly declaring them all dead about half an hour later. Shortly after that, I remember seeing a dead hornet queen in Hereford Museum which had an abdomen the size of a wine cork. The queens can get up to about two inches in size sometimes.