What's a bolly?

The day before yesterday was blazing hot – 32 degrees C. Too hot to work by 11.30am, so we lazed about and dragged ourselves through the day.  Yesterday we woke to a grey overcast sky  and got to work right away after breakfast on hauling away all the overgrown shrubbery we had cut back from the drive over the last two days. The drive is now a good third wider, and dh is getting more confidence in driving the tractor. 

The temperature was reasonable  ~ 23 degrees indoors, so probably a bit more outside, especially when the sun shines. But there is hazy cloud cover, which gives some protection to delicate skins like ours! I'm happy to say that the channels I dug have drained some of the big puddles that are a result of the spring, which means less mud for Tim to splatter about. I enjoyed myself splodging about in wellies, wieldsing trowel and spade ~ perhaps I should have been a water engineer instead of a librarian.

I stayed up until 10.20pm last night finishing off the Jack Reacher novel. Persuader, first published in 2003 in the UK. This must be about the fourth Reacher novel I’ve read and I’ve only just noticed that they are written in the first person.

I looked at the first page again and it is only when I got to the last line that  that the personal pronoun “I” appears. Everything Reacher sees and thinks is described, and described in detail, but it is definitely first person narrative.

It gives me an interesting slant for the action sequences for Matho. I’m thinking I’ve maybe glossed over the action and ought to give more detail. Not that I can write reams about Glocks and Uzis as Child does ~ talk about info dumps! But there must be some detail about sixteenth century weapons I can latch onto. And it is about time I got down to doing some writing - Ive been here a week today.

The  picture is of the bolly, or half of it. Most old French houses in the region have one and they are a boon, because  the family can sit out there and enjoy the warm  weather without frying to a crisp in the sun. A bolly is all about shade, built out of green oak  and extends the size of the house. It's like an outside room. I took the picture on the first night here, and the bolly wasn't exactly the tidiest place, but today it is much neater! We sit there for our evening meal, and enjoy the view across the fields.The view you see in the pic leads to the drive.

Sunny days

It's 9am and 25 degrees already so I have the shutters
closed against the sun in the hope of keeping the
house cool.
I edited two more chapters on a hard copy while sunbathing yeserday afternoon, and I need to need to transcribe the changes very carefully to the Word document today. Then its back to reading the next chapters.
Amazingly, though this is perhaps the third if not the fourth full edit, I'm still making lots of improvements. The more experienced author will probably shake their heads at my naivety, but I am truly surprised at the amount of changes I still want to make.
They're not plot changes. More like tangled sentences to straighten, small repetitions to remove, and what SarahDuncan calls pzazz (on 12th July entry) to add in. I quite like adding pzazz. I already had some, but could do with a lot more.
As for France - all goes restfully well. An early morning walk brought me face to face with the yellow giant opposite - taller than me by a good eight inches, and just waking up to the rays of the sun. Walking to the old church of St Maurice, our quiet progress woke both alsation dogs that live in the chateau next to the church.
We've seen them on previous holidays - though seen is the wrong word - occasional glimpses through the hedge would be more appropriate -they "escort" you, barking constantly, along the road, and only a chicken-wire fence half-hidden in among the hedge keeps them in their manicured grounds. Their owners would be woken early, no doubt about it.

And just so that people don't scratch their heads over the word bolly, here's a picture of our particular bolly. You see them all over this area in varying sizes and states of repair, but always to the same design. They're made of green oak which turns silvery with age and our particular bolly has steps down the side nearest the camera leading to a lower, paved patio area where the tiny lizards love to sun bathe.