Strange pattern...

It's really odd how often we arrive here on a bright still day and sit out on the roof terrace enjoying fresh air, views and vin rosé, only for the weather to change next day. For the last couple of days we've had a vicious north-west wind (known here as the Cers, the local name for the Tramontane). Our wood pile is diminishing fast, since we spend a lot of time huddled round the stove.

But the air is clear (apart from our wood smoke), and the vines are turning, making the landscape a beautiful patchwork of reds and yellows. We took a ride along to Narbonne yesterday in search of a power cable for my laptop (I'd wrongly thought there was one down here). We came home with a not inexpensive 'universal' transformer, the universality of which, unfortunately doesn't extend to such niche and obscure computer suppliers as Hewlett Packard... So back to Narbonne today, I fear. Why does the world need more than one flavour of power supply for mobile phones and laptop PCs? Come to that, why does the world need more than one pattern of inkjet printer cartridge? And don't start me on the minor controls on motor cars. (At least horn buttons seem to be migrating back to where they belong, in the middle of the steering wheel.)

[Later] Well, we swapped the non-universal transformer and a handful of notes for jeans and shirts today in Narbonne, then ambled down the coast and back over the hills. Some fabulous long views of snowy Pyrenees, and terrific autumn colours in the vineyards. I don't think I've ever seen as many pied wagtails as we did today on the way home across the Corbières. At one point we must have put up at least three dozen of them.

I still don't like the car, which, thanks to sloppy seats and excessive roll, makes the winding roads in the Corbières feel like a fairground ride. The car is small, yet I find it very difficult to place accurately on the road. Maybe it's too long since I used left-hand drive, though that oughtn't to make me so uncomfortable with this one. The engine is willing enough, but the brakes are on/off, and if you can feel anything through the steering wheel, you're hallucinating.