Fifteen seconds of fame, maybe...

We went to the joutes along at Sète yesterday, since it's a lot of fun, and Margaret and John hadn't been there before. Yesterday's jousting was the championship of the lourds, and as the name implies there were some pretty big splashes when they hit the water. Parking was a swine of a job, though, and the town's mediocre restaurants were struggling to cope with demand. For the uninitiated, the joute consists of teams of blokes rowing big heavy ten-oar boats at each other along the canal, with jousters armed with shields and lances standing on a raised platform at the blunt end, each trying to project his opponent into the water. Of course, what the crowd wants to see is both of them going in, and the cheer that goes up when this happens is something to be experienced.

I love it. It's the second time we've been, and this ancient spectacle (18th century, I was told), about the origins of which I'd love to know more, is great fun. We don't have it in the UK - the water's too cold! Such was more or less the text of my national TV interview on the subject. Don't know if it was screened: afraid to say we haven't got French TV here in France...

Somewhat more mundane pursuits today: we went in search of double-walled planters with water reservoirs, like wot M&J had when they lived in Guérande (Loire Atlantique). The lady at Les Jardins de Jean knew the product, but said they were out of business now. Thence to the routine food shopping, and to Brico d'Oc to get some bits and pieces. The brackets fastening our clothes rail to the shelf in the wardrobe fell to bits yesterday morning. Surprisingly enough, I found the self-same brackets in the shop, so for once I had a DIY job for which I had the right spare parts, the right tools and pre-drilled pilot holes. And I could see why the old brackets had failed, so stand a chance of having a longer lasting solution. We also got some fly screen netting to hang over the small window in the living room. Handy to have an engineer on the premises - he had the project planned and implemented in short order, and we have designs on the bigger window for tomorrow. Or maybe Thursday. Or maybe next time we're down...