Post-investiture

Luckily, we happened to be coming to London anyway today, so could be part of the celebratory lunch party after our friend Sarah received her MBE at Buckingham Palace - well-earned by many years at the inter-faith coalface in South London and elsewhere.

Pope Francis' Strasbourg speech yesterday rang simultaneously a warning to and an endorsement of the EU - the latter being something Sarah's Islamic friend and I passionately agreed upon. Unfortunately she had moved round the table by the time I found myself in a radically different conversation on the same subject with my other neighbour, a UKIP sympathiser.

Having been brought up short by this, I was again by something in the Times, a paper I normally never see. Columnist Janice Turner - in her Notebook - writes about a friend with a home that makes Janice want to change her entire house. How does she achieve this? Why, by abandoning "dim eco-friendly bulbs". "Sod the planet," the friend says, and Janice follows suit. Haven't they heard of LED?

Aussat

Caroline has had four weeks here in Midi-Pyrénées while I have been walking the Jakobsweg. (We have been texting each other, apart from an Easter phone conversation.)

Aussat is a scattered hamlet, a few kms. West of the gersois town of Miélan, further South than she was in last year's rented house. The countryside appears noticeably poorer, but undeniably tranquil, unspoiled. Orchids abound, and a nightingale sings in the garden.

Jules and Dave Buckingham have been agreeable landlords, keeping themselves to themselves, but sharing a fish supper one night, Scrabble another. Apart from the first few days, she's been on her own with the dog, walking in the fields down to the lake and sitting weaving out in the garden. Now I've come for two nights to spoil the peace.