If I hadn't have been looking where I was going, my bare foot could've been the target of its dissatisfaction with being squished. It was quite interesting watching the thing expire, actually - it span around a lot and tried stinging things before eventually passing on to the hornets' nest in the sky - not the one in the chesnut tree on the other side of the road.

I left it on the kitchen table for Philip - as a little gift - but found myself looking at it quite closely when I came down at 9am. They are huge and quite beautifully detailed, but have a slight evil menacing look about them. Even dead it looked as if it posed a threat - so I was very careful when it went into the bin just in case it was sleeping and waiting to launch an assault on its adversary from four hours earlier.

Interesting to see it had died with its stinger out. Amazing engineering, really.

I flopped around for most of the day, not feeling particularly bright. In the evening I drove to Angoulême to meet Jon from his train. We headed up into teh town proper and found somewhere to sit around and drink whilst we waited for Liam who followed in Pip's car.

After a meal - which Nicola couldn't make because she was on a late train - I drove down to the station to find Nicola in fits of tears and requiring lots of cuddles, eventually imparting she'd been sexually assaulted at Bordeaux railway station whilst waiting for the train to Angoulême. Probably not the best welcome to France, but we wandered back up to where we were eating, had the restaurant call the local policemen. They arrived (clearly a no crime night as about seven policemen arrived in three cars) then did the statement stuff, Nicola aided by Philip's French.

In spite of the awfulness of the incident, she kept smiling and we couldn't help chuckle when we realised that probably the most bizarre thing the local police had seen for a while was an assult victim arriving at the station (we had a police escort through town which meant we could legitimately jump reds) sitting in the back of an open-top Jag with Farrah Fawcett sunglasses on. What amused us slightly more was that Philip was recommended to close the roof as they "got a lot of crime here." Parked right outside the front of the police station. Uhuh.

Anyhoooo - got home, looked at the stars, felt very tired, gave my dinner to the toilet bowl (I think I might've developed a shell-fish allergy as I had a snail and mussels starter), went to bed.