Energy restoring champagne.

The funeral as charming as these affairs can be. Brilliant sunshine helps. The whole village in attendance, even the German billionaire. Madame Bay ( wearing her grandmothers black lace shawl over a blue and white polka dot dress matched with knee length maroon boots ) and the ladies of the Beautiful Bye Ways Committee lead the singing. Considering they've been busy in the kitchen and have had no chance to rehearse they do a splendid job. Each of them happily  and lustily following their own celestial conductor.

Before the service, after the sermon and during the burial the depressive physiotherapist plays 'Where have all the flowers gone ?' on his accordion. He has been told the lady farmer was a keen gardener. Towards the end, to everyones amazement, the Very Old Farmer appears in a wheel chair, pushed down the aisle by the district nurse. He may be shoe less and sock less but he's donned a rather fancy purple dressing gown for the occasion. 

The sum of the whole strangely delightful. The courtesy, kindness and eccentricity of village life.

Bob and Sophie have been left alone while we go to the church. They are rewarded with a carrot. At seven a stream of visitors arrive at the front gate. They are offered champagne. The mayors wife, who has been busy serving vols aux vents poulet to the mourners, downs three energy restoring glasses in quick succession. We raise a toast to absent friends. Madame Bay quietly dabs her eyes with a handkerchief.

The PONs are not impressed. They give these human visitors a stern mark of zero out of ten. Not a single sausage between them. Even worse, despite repeated hints, they seem oblivious to the need to partake in a a game of  'throw the furry fox'.

And so ends another day in deepest France profonde. Events too unimportant for a diary but too important to go completely unrecorded.