Friday 5th June

The temperature here has soared, on Wednesday it was just over thirty and today it rocketed to the mid 30s, at one point our car registered 38 degrees as it was parked outside Leclerc.  There was a time when I couldn’t stand the heat, I was almost ill with it on a Greek holiday once, but now I seem to handle it far better.  Walk slowly, wear a hat, cover up your shoulders and drink lots of fluids – well, that’s how I cope.  It is actually at night as the temperature refuses to really cool down and there isn’t so much as a whisper of breeze that I find it hardest.  I lay there sweating with not even a sheet covering me and I seem to be burning up.  Eventually of course I do sleep.

But I also love the evenings, eating outside in our little courtyard garden or sitting outside the Café de Paris until ten at night.  At six today (yesterday) we went for a swim at Lougratte.  It is a longish lake, or actually a man-made reservoir which has been converted into a swimming lake.  There is a sandy beach and a gentle slope into the water, a slide and pedaloes and a floating diving platform.  There is occasionally a lifeguard too but the French seem rather lackadaisical about health and safety; if you are stupid enough to stray out of your depth and haven’t bothered to learn to swim, more fool you.  The water was lovely, quite warm on the surface but cooler deeper down.  It was so wonderful to just float on my back with the sun on my face and just drift.  No waves or salt water or floating debris as in the British seaside and no hordes of screaming splashing kids and the stench of chlorine you get with indoor pools.  This is how swimming should be, no black painted or rope-divided lanes, no bumping into other swimmers and no noise, just absolute peace and quiet and the deep green water with hardly a ripple as you glide through it.  As we were sitting in the sun drying off we met another English couple who had retired out here and we recounted tales of East London and the joys of French food.

A perfect evening and one you wouldn’t dream of enjoying back home.