We have just come back from a lovely week in Santorini.

Coming home they were a few jobs to catch up on – la piscine évidemment.

I went to open the skimmers to put some new chlore in them.

Imagine my surpirise to find this:

They were full of aiguilles de pin.

Last year it was these little devils that blocked up the pool and stopped it working properly.

But I cannot believe this many of them have fallen into the pool in eight days – especially after a couple of the neighbouring pine trees were chopped down last year.

I’m going to have to keep an eye on these needles.

French President Emmanuel Macron came to the UK on a three-day state visit.

King Charles spoke of the need for the two countries to grow closer and Macron said that when France and the UK “come together around one table everything is possible”.

He also offered a toast:

Long live Franco-British friendship

It made me wonder – could that mean an easing of some of the post-Brexit bureaucratic slowdowns?

Might there finally be some movement on my application to change my visa status?

After eight-and-a-half months of no word at all, I will clutch at any straw.

Then again, President Macron also announced France was loaning the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK for the first time in 900 years.

So maybe I’ve got a little bit longer to wait.

As you may be experiencing, Europe is in the grip of an extreme heatwave – une canicule.

Une canicule is a period of high temperatures by day and night that lasts at least three days.

Well, it has been roasting for a number of weeks now and there seems to be no end in sight.

Eighty-four of 96 mainland regions are under an orange alert which has never happened before.

Having a swimming pool is essential at times like this. And two portable aircon units are keeping the temperature in the house just about bearable.

In fact next week we are heading off on holiday to Greece to get away from the heat – a nice balmy 30 degrees. Sounds like bliss.

Almost three years to the day I went back to do some birding in the Camargue – this time with fellow birding friend and former colleague Jim Todd.

Jim is a very good birder and thanks to his record keeping I know we saw 44 different species including five new ones for me:

• Greater short-toed lark/alouette calandrelle
• Zitting Cisticola/Cisticole des joncs
• Black kite/Milan noir
• Collared Pratincole/ Glaréole à collier
• Red crested pochard/ Nette Rousse

There were loads of others including our old friend the purple heron/héron pourpré, rollers/rollier, bee-eaters/guepiers and the famous flamant rose – flamingos.

And of course lots of storks/cignone blanche with big babies on huge nests.

Picture courtesy of Jim.

And of course, throughout the whole day we didn’t see another birder – anywhere.

But don’t worry, we’ll be back.

We took another day trip to Lyon and I ended up again in Place Bellecour and saw that le Roi Louis XIV was now back to his best.

The statue is by Lyonnais sculptor Lemot commissioned during the Bourbon Restoration after the fall of Napoleon. It was the biggest bronze casting of its time.

The original was melted down during the revolution and made into canons.

I love the detail on the horse’s neck and the king’s sandalled feet.

There is also some sort of art installation in the square. I don’t know if it’s permanent but it certainly brightens up the place

This cute little rabbit is près de notre portail most days.

It is always a joy to see it. It is fairly placid creature and is happy to pose for photos.

It’s that time of year when the fields of lavender around our house begin to look very attractive.

So I thought I’d try and capture it with a picture.

It also means that crowds of Chinese tourists will come to Provence to admire the lavender fields between now and August.

One of my fellow Aix entrepreneurs explained to me that the craze started thanks to a Chinese soap opera called Dream Links where the lavender fields of Provence were the backdrop for a love story between two characters.

And so a holiday destination was born.

I’ll look out for them in Venelles.

Another road sign on our road has met with a nasty end.

First there was this one which still hasn’t been replaced.

And now this:

Soon no-one is going to be able to find Venelles.

A lovely surprise today when my old boss at the BBC and now firm friend Steve Herrmann mentioned he might be passing by on his way home from Croatia.

He has spent the past four weeks driving his campervan from his home in Reading to Serbia via Switzerland, Croatia and Italy.

So he stopped off for his first cup of tea in four weeks and some French patisseries.

We had a great catch up discussing families, children, work and retirement.

Then he was on his way to a campsite near Valence.

It was lovely to see him. He should be back home by Saturday night.

After our successful yoga and apéro session, we wanted to track down more of the locally-produced wine and beer that we tasted.

The wine, from the Marrenon winery in La Tour d’Aigues was easy enough to track down.

Then we headed to Pertuis where the microbrewery called Quartier d’Éte was based.

On the way Cath looked it up on her phone. Closed til Monday.

Well, let’s go and have a look around Pertuis anyway, we thought.

And when we did we bumped into the second ever edition of Le Festival de la Bière.

There were loads of microbreweries present. Surely Quartier d’Éte would be there.

And they were.

So we had a chat with the stall holder – explained our yoga prof’s recommendation and then bought a selection of his beers and stouts.