In other news, our hamlet had an "assembly generale" of all twenty inhabitants (half of whom only own gites and don't actually live here!) to discuss the state of the bread oven. The what? I hear you ask. Well, the villagers used to share a bread oven - it's situated in what would be the Village Square if only we were big enough to call ourselves a village and if only the bulge in the single track road could be considered remotely "square".

It's a little stone built thing with a tiled roof and a chimney, wood fired. Every village used to have one, and our neighbouring village, a couple of kilometres along the road, keeps its oven in working order and has a village party every year where they bake bread and pizzas and quiches and tarts and drink a lot of plonk.

Anyway, ours is a few hundred years old, and it's falling down, and a recently retired schoolteacher who has too much time on her hands and owns a gite here, has decided to make it her "project" to restore it to its former glory. Naturally this takes effort and cash and so the assembly generale was called where everyone had to come up with fundraising ideas. So they decided to have a barbecue and dance, and a couple of musicians who live here have offered to give a concert for free, (they play "Techno" music.... which should entertain the octogenarians who populate the neighbouring villages).

Anyway, eventually all eyes turned to Le Chef and I with an "ask not what your hamlet can do for you, but what can you do for your hamlet" sort of look. So Le Chef had the brilliant idea of holding a raffle.... Hmmm - he had fun explaining the concept of a raffle in French. Anyway, he convinced the owners of the gites to donate a week's off-season holiday as prizes and then he turned to me and said... and my wife will do a website!

What?

Yes, a website for the hamlet where we could invite people from all over The World to contribute to our cause! People could pay online to buy raffle tickets.... etc etc... and win the chance of a week in paradise here.

Well, this idea was a huge success. All the gite owners, and the wee couple who do B&B suddenly saw the potential for their places to be on view to The World!!! The musicians wanted a mention, and an advert for their CDs. The artist wants all his paintings up on their own pages. And the everyone's digging in their attics to find photographs of Puymule through the ages, which The World is - I'm sure - just dying to see. The web pages will have to be doubled up in French and English versions and so I will not be at a loss about how to spend the winter evenings!

And to think I used to be a writer...