Heard 'em through the grapevine, sultry snores of Fa

Ah! A timeless scene that is forever rural France. A 2CV van lurks beneath the spreading limes and vines; geriatric masonry crumbles gently to itself, and not a soul stirs of a Sunday afternoon in sleepy Fa.

This is not entirely surprising as the summer heat finally hit us this last week with all the refinement and elegance of a well-aimed sledge hammer.

Summer has been a remarkably long time coming this year and even now it tends to sulk; sultry and stormy as a stroppy teenager.

It's odd really, we don't usually get this super (not) overcast and slimy heat, so redolent of a moderately crap August in Ongle-terry. What has happened to our lovely blue skies, we ask ourselves.

It has not been a weekend for action; it's the most we can do to struggle over to the Cafédefa, sink a few beers or cokes or coffees, read the paper, and swap a few lines of languid gossip, before wandering gently back home to collapse under the ventilator fans, like extras pegged out to die in a Sam Peckinpah gore-fest.

At least the bloody Guardian turned up for a change. Lately I've taken to reading Le Monde as my official weekend Grauniad stunt double. It's very good for my French and saves me the need to prod the newsagent with pointed sticks and other instruments of violence and destruction.

I don't suppose he understands any better than I do, how or why the less-than-mercurial conduit of information from Farringdon Road suffers such acute periodic bouts of constipation, especially here in deepest Languedoc.

But probably it's a small matter in the general scheme of things. Les grandes vacances sont enfin arrivées: The schools are out. Days to sleep and nights to party (in between thunderstorms and unaccustomed bouts of belting rain).

Unfamiliar faces arrive in our village, French, English and any number of other nationalities; 'Tis the grockel season, moi deare . . . Very pleasant but all a bit strange: We'll get over it.