To reward myself for having been brave, I bought a chocolatine from the nice boulangerie for breakfast which I munched with a huge bol of steamy hot coffee. It was about midday by this time so I should've been having lunch - so I postponed that until about 4pm.

It occured to me in the afternoon that I was going to have to heat the cottage through the winter. Yes, there is gas central heating but that costs money and it seems slightly daft to use it when there are literally months of logs outside waiting to be burned. Unfortunately, they're also waiting to be turned into logs so I got the saw, found the little X-shaped chopping thingie and set-to making logs. My sawing technique certainly leaves something to be desired, but I successfully massacred one huge branch thing which made about 10 logs or so. Only another 20 to go!

I lit the fire the wandered over the road to collect chesnuts - after all, the good thing about fires is chesnuts. I kept an eye on the chimney from a distance to make sure the fire hadn't gone out and that there weren't flames lapping out of the top/windows/door. The problem with this fir stuff that surrounds the cottage is it spits a bit so I'm going to have to get a guard of some sort.

I fixed the weather station. Temporarily. I put the new modem in it and telephoned from my mobile. It answered the phone successfully so all was well. About four hours later when Philip called, nada. We have no idea why. Daft.

Brian and I cooked a tomato sauce thing for ourselves, Xavier and Sam in the evening, along with some Chinese chicken which was rather yummy indeed. The sauce was a great success so we've added it to our collection of things. I drank lots because I'm slightly miffed about these stitches and the fact I have a scar over my lip. Brian assures me it'll disappear if we rub lots of vitamin E onto it (finding a reliable and consistent source could be a problem) but it's really fucking miserable. Oh well.

Panthère Rose for its last evening for a while. It's closing for three weeks of refurbishment so it was a bit of a special evening this evening; Miss Camping. Essentially, therefore, an excuse for lots of cute boys to dress up in plastic wigs and fake tits and prance around looking ridiculous. Brian and I kept our distance, apart from trying to set fire to one contestant's rafia skirt. Unfortunately, we discovered it had been treated and we didn't have any lighter fuel to hand, so we had to give up. Ours was the last laugh, though, as everyone kept on treading on it as (s)he walked past and by the end of the evening, the entirety of the grass skirt was all over the floor (it had been malting) leaving only a little band with a few sad looking bristles hanging off it.