96 Degrees

... in the shade. And it truly was (35C). The house is still cool, largely thanks to the triffid, so I didn't really notice till I went out to Olonzac for my book group meeting. It was baking hot out there, with not a breath of wind. I spent a quick ten minutes looking for a blip, and this shaded garden looked very inviting.

The book group was interesting. There were only six of us, including an elderly German lady who was there for the first time. She'd read a book called Fräulein France by Romain Sardou (son of the more famous Michel). The novel is set in a brothel in Paris in 1940, and the cover is terrible, like some piece of soft porn. But she told us to ignore that. The really interesting thing was that she said she'd picked it up because her future husband was in Paris in 1940 ... obviously in the German army. She described how in Germany the summer of 1940 was a time of euphoria, a belief that it wouldn't take long to subdue Britain and then the war would be over and everything would be perfect. There didn't happen to be any French people present, but it's still pretty disconcerting when you live in France to see 1940 as anything but an unmitigated disaster.

We all listened spellbound; the book had obviously moved her deeply, and she also described how she'd cried watching the D-Day commemorations just a few days ago, when a French and a German veteran hugged each other. And then how she'd helped the mayor of the village where she lives here track down his 92-year old father ... he was the son of a German soldier and a local girl who fled in shame after his birth, leaving him to be brought up by others . So the book is now on my wishlist.

While in Olonzac I bought a massive piece of steak at the butcher's, and we're just back from a lovely barbecue in the garden -- at 9 pm it was still 28C. Go on, have a listen -- this was one of my favourite albums in the 1970s, though I confess I didn't really register at the time that the song was about a lynching.