Marianne's cat is averse to drinking from bowls.
Instead, whenever I go into the bathroom she follows and stares at me till I turn the tap on and let her lap from the trickle.
The heat's got to her today. She still miaows until the tap goes on, but then she simply watches the water as if contemplating a shower but reluctant to risk it after falling into the bath too often.
I like heatwaves, as I've said before, but my friend Tony and I reluctantly agreed that though it's high time we got together, neither of us had the energy today to go to the other's place. Tomorrow. Yup. When it's hotter...
What I don't like is going on here about My Condition, which is becoming tedious in the extreme. But since people are asking, suffice to say that behind one brief mention of my difficulty in extracting information from the specialist last week lay a three-episode horror story of turning up for appointments cancelled without notice and finally getting my grubby paws on the full report.
The scanty details I gave on Friday are almost all I have as a basis for more tests. It may now prove impossible to get these done until "la rentrée". My next appointment with Vincent de P. (the specialist) is not until September 5. Any hope I have of progress before then is following up leads from either bloghero Yang, once he's back in a couple of weeks, or his partner Marc D., whom I saw at length on Friday and is now fully briefed. Partly by the records Dr Yang left on the computer network (I was astounded to see how complete they were, including things I'd long forgotten).
All we know for sure, pending more probes, is what I haven't got, but the white blood cell count remains, inexplicably, very much higher than it should be, while I get brief spells of remission from the shits (not to put too fine a point on it). So far, a range of experiments with diet, plus extra salts for the dehydration, have led to little change.
The most irritating thing is the fatigue ... along with last week's lengthy spell of nausea. Dr Marc seems to have sorted that out at least, but for a while we're still going to have to concentrate on symptoms rather than the cause unknown.
Doing, right now, the kind of travelling we enjoyed last year and described in my previous photo-post on Madeira is out of the question.
That's a bit more than I wanted to say, but it's written now. So you know!
zzz
Am I bored? No way, though I'm careful not to let the "virtual world" take the place of friends and family, the Net -- and the innards of its machinery -- are fascinating places when others are absent.
Indeed, I've been out and about so much, in small but constructive ways, that I remain a little behind with my e-mail, not to speak of the 'blogroll' and other things.
I'm still reading, and following those African affairs that have even come to dominate headlines on the Beeb sometimes, presumably for lack of anything else. It's a summer trend I commend, these reminders that the continent exists; a switch to the state of things in Jo'burg, where northern hemisphere news usually comes pretty low on the list...
As to the 'roll', I've seen so much to entertain or even to prod my neurons hard that I may end up doing what others, like Tom at PlasticBag the other day, occasionally do. It's a serious blogger indeed who's so reluctant to let something slip that all we get is "the links, all the links and nothing but the links"!
I would draw attention (among a hundred other things I'd like to) to Tom's coup de gueule, arguing for a "Balkanisation of Blogdex":
"If it wasn't for the fact that many of these articles are concerned with the war in Iraq, you could be excused for thinking that nothing else was happening in the world at at all - even perhaps that there was no world outside the US."
That most justified moan leads on to some excellent thinking about "aggregrators", which are things my own mind has been turning around of late. Even if you don't yet know what news aggregators are, give it a read, because such reflections concern a far wider media world than the blogosphere.
zzz
I didn't trek far yesterday for the real coup de folie. It was just that I had to go back to the shop because I forgot the extra RAM!
Madness, of a sort, it was, but I always find sound excuses for such things, even if making sure it wasn't dangerously so had me triple-checking my financial reserves.
 So here's what she looks like: Marianne's very first Mac. Given the beauty and the power of the beast, she'll also be the lucky youngster's only Mac, I hope, for a good long time to come!
The girl, who returns to Paris next weekend, has been warned that entrusting her with this comes with a catch, if not several. The one least to her taste is called 'RTFM' ... and not just the "fabulous (non-existent) manual", but also the book she'll get. No, it won't be O'Reilly's 'Learning Unix for Mac OS X', which I've begun to struggle with myself, but she's of the age now to sort out her own messes (and indeed, usually, does).
Nor do I expect her to learn Greek. Big cat-speak will suffice. It simply happened to be a store in Greece which offered the best picture I could find.
So. While Marianne's as displeased -- but also, I hope, as unworried as I usually manage to be -- about My Condition as her crazy dad, saving holiday money you end up not spending does have an advantage or two.
zzz
The title to this entry got me thinking that French simply wouldn't be the same without "coups".
From a lighting strike (not a good idea as a headline here) to a coup d'état, they've got blows and punches for everything. These range from the coup de barre that hits someone after a heavy lunch to the coup de mer that my own tummy last week often felt it had got, though I've hitherto never been subject to seasickness in heavy swells ... which is, I suppose, a coup de veine (good luck).
Just about curious enough to check, I find that the Anglais-Français dictionary I consider the best, the Robert-Collins, has a whole small-print page of coups.
Which is perhaps the best place to leave them. It's time to catch up on the blogosphere.
11:28:00 PM link 
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The Santa Maria. Apart from a few trivial details like an engine, a bar and flush toilets, this vessel is supposedly an exact replica of the original. Indeed, she does take to the seas under full sail when the occasion warrants.
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