Starry

Brendan is here this week, doing some more work upstairs - the last of the really messy work, I hope. He's hacked and scraped huge quantities of low-grade cement and crumbling mud from between the stones of the upper living-room walls, and is now pointing them. It's a horrible job in the current temperature, especially as the cement mixer (for the chaux, not for cement) is out in the garage. Yesterday was cloudy and cold; last night was clear and extremely cold; today we haven't yet achieved zero Celsius, and the sun is brightly reflected from the white lawn.

We went to dinner at the house of my singing comrade: a small, select and merry group, with much interesting conversation ranging from books to rugby to linguistics to films, the occasional foray into current affairs and a satisfying rant against advertising. There was a guess-the-grape quiz, which even I enjoyed because it entailed discussion of farming practices and descriptions of the valleys and villages from which the wine came. I was happy with Y's home-made elderflower cordial (note to self: must make some next year).

M informed us, after collecting B from Jonzac station, that according to his car's thermometer display it was getting warmer. When we set off home at sometime after midnight, the grass was diamonded, but as he started the car, he remarked that the temperature had gone up... then: "Oh, that's a minus sign!" It was actually -6 degrees.

Very cold, but so clear. The sky was stunning, so bright with stars that it was hard to pick out constellations. Sadly, much too cold to take out the telescope!