Of the holidays, and I woke up with a headache.... this is probably explained by the behaviour of the neighbours in the entresol, who have behaved very badly indeed all week, but have now surpassed themselves. Yesterday they used their Playstation at high volume for about three hours in the afternoon, then blessedly went out. Before they went out, I could hear them talking about going to find girls to chat up! some hope! It is two youngish English guys, with very loud voices, and they clearly don't realise that every word they say reverberates around the courtyard and upwards....

Then this morning at 6am, I am woken up by their talking loudly, I couldn't believe it! I went to the window and said "shhhhh...." quite loudly myself, there was a sort of silence and I went back to sleep for a bit.

Looks like I am going to have to go and see them and explain a few things, like they need to close the windows if they are going to scream, do Playstation etc. The principle in France is that any noise that can be heard is too much - of course, no-one worries about the odd bang or crash or gentle music, or the occasional party, most people around here seem to have one party every six months or so, they put up a notice to warn and excuse themselves. But constant noise is really breaking the rules, and they could actually get into trouble for it, French people are pretty good at calling the police in such circumstances. And now that people are coming back from holidays, someone probably will.

As an aside, I didn't know even adults played with Playstations, I've never come across that before.

Apart from all of this, the weekend has been OK, I finished all my shopping yesterday more or less, and the apartment is in a more or less respectable state, compared with what it was before. I've done a bit of David's present, which it is my aim to get finished in September. Birthday is mid-October. It's not something I can do on the train, unfortunately, I have knitting for the train. I am not looking forward to resuming 2 1/2 to 3 hours of commuting each day, but we will see how it goes!