High in fat, low in fat, dust.

The alarm clock worked! At seven-thirty there was a sudden blast of ‘wahhh wahhh wahhh wahhh’ etc. in my ear and I jumped out of bed like a thing possessed thinking my nightie was on fire. Well, at least I was up and that was the idea.

It was a very cold morning, and a heavy mist hung over the Dordogne like a frozen floating blanket. I met M&A in the square, and sitting upfront in a white van we headed off to collect dried vine roots for the restaurant fire. We drove through mist shrouded countryside and vineyards until we finally found the address in a little town called Saussignac. In a dark old outshed we hauled dusty old pieces of root into a pile and transferred them to the back of the van wrapped in an old quilt. The woman who owned the place offered us aperitifs which we knocked back while her Pekinese yapped around our ankles, its pink tongue permanently stuck out. Then we travelled back to André's mother's place for lunch prior to moving all the vine roots around to the back garden into storage cages. Lunch was a multi-course affair: soup, pork and pasta, salad, cheese, pain perdu (bit like sweet eggy-bread) and coffee and bottles of local red plonk – well, we had earned it.

Tonight, a Chinese restaurant across the bridge beckoned…MSG and flied lice. But no - a delicious meal with fantastic company! Infact, we stayed so long they served us little cups of saki (not sure if that's how you spell it?) with extraordinarily rude pictures at the bottom - goodness knows why I ended up with all of them in front of me. Every picture tells a story allegedly.