Alien invasion

We often see people doing parachute jumps at the airfield in Lézignan when we are driving into town, but I did a double take at this one. "That's an odd-looking plane ... whoah!" 16 jellyfish-like blobs popped out of it in quick succession as if it were laying eggs.

We decided to stop at the airfield en route to the market, to see what was going on. Lots of other people had the same idea (extra 1). The plane circled at least four times, dropping 16 paras on each circuit. So it must be even bigger than it looked. Blip sorted! 

We assumed (correctly) that it was a training exercise, but it turned out to be bigger than we envisaged too. Driving home from the market we encountered a couple of armoured vehicles, one with a gun turret, and bunches of gun-toting soldiers hiding under trees and behind street furniture. A couple of unfortunate squaddies were trudging along the main road in blazing heat carrying what looked like large gun parts. At home we learned that it was a département-wide, 3-day exercise simulating a ground-based attack.

We were very disinclined to cook, so we bought some couscous from the north African lady at the market for lunch. The market was not busy, and most people were trudging round looking exhausted by the heat. Another day indoors. 

Then, in the early evening, out of the blue Bossy Lady called and said she was emailing a plan and would phone back immediately to discuss it. Which she did. It is certainly original and startling enough that we didn't quite know what to say. She had plenty to say though -- we finally managed to get her off the phone so that we could study it in peace. In isolation it looks good, but we think it's not right for the plot. Plus she's made it about 20% bigger than we want, leaving practically no garden.

Finally, today marks day 365 with no cat. I'm not going to go into detail about our recent efforts to adopt one, but our experience with two different shelters has not gone well. Plan B activated.