Perfect Prefect

St Alain
Yesterday's weather: Beautiful

We had wonderful news this morning. Granddaughter Alice has just started in the top year of her junior school and has been made a PREFECT.

Well done, lovely Alice, and lots of love from the two of us in France.

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Anna Netrebko, wow. I can't say much more about her performance last night in the final Prom concert on the BBC. That young lady knows exactly how to work her audience and had every man in the Royal Albert Hall last night clamouring for the red roses she was handing out during her stunning rendition of Lehar's 'Meine Lippen sie küssen so heiss'. She has the most stunning voice we have heard from a soprano for years and it isn't surprising that she also models clothes and jewellery with her amazing looks. I know I said yesterday that I didn't know many of the works being performed last night, but as usual I knew the tunes but not the names! Yes, the word 'Philistine' is still hanging in the air unspoken but I know my classical music knowledge is lacking.

I must say that we felt that one thing let last night's concert down. The traditional 'Fantasia on British Sea Songs'. Could it be time for a change of programming? It felt terribly drab last night after the rest of the programme which was varied, jolly and so well performed. OK, keep in the Elgar (Land of Hope and Glory) and Jerusalem, but drop the Fantasia which, to my mind just doesn't work - especially when they are trying to hop around the country to different venues with satellite delays and just too much background noise to make it pleasant listening. (Am I turning into a Grumpy Old Woman? Good!)

Alan Titchmarsh said last night that the Last Night of the Proms signifies the end of summer. What a very sad sentence that is. When we lived in the UK we felt the same, but here in France today the sun is shining, there's not a cloud in the sky and we are having the best run of weather we have had all year! Maybe an Indian summer is going to visit.

There will be a lot of bleary eyes in the village today. I don't know about the orchestra, but the disco was thudding away until the very small hours of the morning. We are about 1 km away and could hear it very clearly. The vide grenier started at 8am so I am sure people were there from 6am onwards (we thought we could hear a lot of traffic). Tonights ball starts at 6pm so hopefully it will finish a little earlier and people will get to bed early ready for work tomorrow.