Boozy Brits are one of mainland Europe’s biggest problems, and I must admit to being an enthusiastic toper myself. But the temptation here at times is beyond belief. I was in our nearest Auchan hypermarket last week – it’s not a cheap place at the best of times – but like everyone else as the world sinks into recession, Auchan is having to produce a ‘basics’ range.

In among the Underclass stuff was a Corbières bog-standard Red at one euro eighty a bottle. Just so we’re clear about this, €1.80 is around £1.50, or $2.50. I blinked on seeing the special offer, and was about to walk away from it when I saw the Wine Department bloke filling other shelves. Grabbing a bottle, I approached him and asked, “Is this stuff drinkable?” He beamed at me before replying, “Buy as much as you can, m’sieur, it is wonderful value”.

I bought three bottles and tried one last night. The Auchan employee was as good as his word.

Boozing does of course lead inevitable to bladder-pressure….which is a somewhat contrived segue into this next bit, but it’ll have to do. The other day here, I decided it was time to empty the motorhome’s chemical toilet caskette, and so I duly took it to the one loo in my house working by bucket, and sloshed the lot down the big white telephone towards the pipework. I was on the point of then retiring to the outside tap to rinse out the caskette when the electrician collared me to ask a bewildering spectrum of questions about where switches, sockets and flanged return multiple safety sections should be located.

Reeling from that encounter, I was accosted by the plumber with some enquiries and opinions about bottom-feeding WCs, shower mixer-tap conversions, and the pros and cons of pop-up sink plugs. Then the plasterboard-wall bloke discussed left or right opening door options with me, arguing in favour of the 63mm rather than 73mm solution, while wondering aloud whether there really was any need for a toilet there in the first place.

After that, I was an hour late posting the first blog of the day, and acutely aware of the need to get on with mowing the lawn. Then I found a flat in the mower’s front tyre, and so had to ring the suppliers for assistance.

Back at the pc, I felt that funny familiar feeling in the bladder, and made for the motorhome bathroom. Standing there waiting for the flow (it’s an age thing) I was vaguely aware that something didn’t look right in the bog. Only then did I remember that two hours earlier I’d taken the caskette out, and not got round to bringing it back. But the flow was already under way, and impossible to stop (it’s an age thing).

A proper full-pressure mains hose comes in very useful in emergencies like these. The caskette is now back in place, and everywhere has been suitably disinfected.

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Since the injury to my right bicep (an RSI condition related to a truculent gear-stick on the motorhome) I have noticed that The Slog’s Kronenbourg consumption has halved. This is in turn not unrelated to the excruciating pain involved in unscrewing bottle tops, and thus very probably Pavlovian in nature.

It is, I fancy, another piece in the jigsaw of evidence proving that Sharia Law works. If you steal something in Iran, for example, your hands are amputated and the tendency is instantly cured. Equally, if you have been persuaded with only minimal use of force to become a Muslim woman and then later you ungratefully marry a Christian, well – you are quite obviously fodder for the executioner’s axe. Time and time again for nearly two millenniums, it has been proved beyond the merest shadow of a doubt that re-offending in such cases will be 0%.

My lawyers Tryle & Errah have, by the way, instructed me to expect a fatwah for that last paragraph, and I have to say I do find this a most generous offer on the part of the Mullahs. I prefer my fatwahs either lightly grilled or en croute avec sa sauce vitriolique, but I don’t want to labour the point.

It is one of the more astonishing things about pc feminists that they can get upset when one is rude about Islam’s brutal misogyny, and yet be able within ten seconds to yell at any Western bloke who so much as opens a door for a woman. Things demanded and enacted on a daily basis by the sharp end of Islam in Britain would attract a merciless legal penalty if the boot  were on the other foot in, say, Somalia, Malaysia, or Iran. I have said for many years that fundamentalist Islam is nothing more or less than an excuse for infantile and thuggish blokes to behave badly. But over time I have come to realise that dealing with it is just another opportunity for the right-on British Left to display a staggering level of idiocy.

But rampant feminism is still on the march among the avian life here. Last year, Mrs Sparrow Hawk bullied her hubby on a daily basis to get out there and bring home the rodents – rather than sit on the telegraph wire like some Geordie waster. To be fair, the male hawk did display all the layabout characteristics of Reg Smythe’s infamous cartoon character Andy Capp, but I marveled at the ability of his missus to make Peggy Mount look tolerant.

The day before yesterday, however, I was delighted to see that a pair of goldfinches have taken up residence in the tree beneath which I often work in the summer heat. They really are amazing looking birds:

Whoever named them ‘Goldfinch’ was, I suspect, trained as a US gold storage expert, wherein very little of the ingot clients get back is actually gold, as such. But the stark contrast of the red, white and black on the face (reminiscent for me of the 1950s socks sported by the Busby Babes) is instantly recognisable.

Indeed, like New York, these birds are so good they named them twice – Carduelis carduelis. Like robins, they look jolly friendly but are in fact very aggressive: and as is so often the case, while the blokes get to wear the nicer colours, the girlies get to wear the trousers.

Such is already obvious. The heavily pregnant Mrs Goldfinch is already barking orders at Mr G. He has no idea what it’s going to be like once the eggs hatch, poor bugger.

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Although this, the longest-running Slog feature, is called At the End of the Day, there are amazing things to be seen at the beginning of the day too. Or rather, there are here in South West France. I went to the recycling centre this morning at 7.00 am, and the light – as the angry slate-grey clouds retreated to reveal a brand-new sky-blue after a torrential downpour – was something else. On the advancing light blue canvas were splodges of orange-tinged cloudettes* that suggested the consistency of whipped cream topping peach sorbet.

By the time I got back to the house, all trace of the angry storm had gone, and long morning shadows stretched out towards the horizon over the green stubble that is the newly-planted crops. I’ve seen this post-monsoon tableau many times over the last forty years, but it never fails to make me gape, smile, and appreciate.

OK, I have had some misfortune over the last three years; but I’ve had nearly seven decades in a peaceful West, while having the good luck to discover this unique region of France by accident in the early 1970s…and grow to love it in the four decades since.

‘Fecund’ is the only word to describe the Lot as Spring gives way to Summer. It is fecund brilliant.

*Black girl group from early 1960s Mississippi who never quite made it. Not really.