There it Goes

Like the rest of south western Europe we spent the past week unsuccessfully looking for eclipse glasses. This meant that yesterday evening we had to resort to holding binoculars up to the sun and looking at the resultant projected image.

19:38

19:51

19:54

20:05

20:13

20:20

And then just when it started to get light again, it started getting dark.

Some of these photos aren't as sharp as I'd like. It's a function of trying to hold the binoculars perfectly still at arm's length, with the correct combination of focus and distance from the target piece of paper.

The precision science team in action.

The next total solar eclipse is in Sydney the day before my birthday in 2028. We might have to start saving.

Revisiting Saint Benoit du Sault

 Once again we ended a lovely day trip into the Anglin Valley in the very attractive small town of Saint Benoit du Sault. We'd been here once before, on a wet day exactly twelve months before. This time it was stinking hot. It's very picturesque, well worth visiting and wandering around its medieval sandstone streets. 

Medieval gateway into the old town centre.

Belfry.

A medieval street.

Further reading: Simon's post on Saint Benoit du Sault from last year https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2025/07/saint-benoit-du-sault.html

A New Pump for the Pompiers

 As you can imagine our local fire fighters have been working very hard lately, and in Preuilly they are all volunteers. This summer is the first time in 20 years of living here that the wild fires have reached Australian levels. The other day I surfaced in the public swimming pool to observe them making a fountain of water on the other side of the river. I was too late to get a photo of the metres high jet, but here is a photo of them packing up. I was told they were testing a new pump. 

Breakfast

This was my breakfast this morning (06:30) which can only mean three things:

1 I'm going out early to ride my bike

2 I'm no good at portion control

3 My body is telling me I need more protein

I'm not sure that the distance I'm going to ride justifies a breakfast this large, but them's the breaks. Anyway... Coffee, then I'm off!

The New Normal

You may have noticed from the news that it has been hot and there have been fires in France. None of this is fake news. 

Thankfully it has now cooled down, and maximum temperatures have returned to only 3°C above average, rather than the 11°C above average of a week ago. It has even been cooling down overnight, allowing us to open some windows. This morning it it 20°C inside the house, a relief, as yesterday the temperature had built to over 25°C indoors.

Thankfully also the fires have subsided. The fire near Bordeaux is under control having burnt out 42,000 hectares, and now there are only 582 pompiers (firefighters) on the mopping up exercise. A week ago the France wide situation looked like this:

 ...and the situation near Bordeaux was this:

▪️ Resources deployed:

3,300 firefighters;

24 aircraft;

1,500 military personnel supporting operations;

1,400 members of the internal security forces, including the deployment of 10 Centaure vehicles from the gendarmerie to prevent burglaries in evacuated areas.

 ▪️ Casualty figures:230 firefighters have been injured since the start of this crisis. No new serious injuries have been reported this evening.

▪️ Preliminary property damage assessment: 240 homes are still listed as destroyed. This figure may change as field assessments continue.

(From  https://feuxdeforet.fr/en/gironde-33/saumos-22-07-2026-4367/)

When the fire was at it's worse the clouds over Preuilly-sur-Claise were a dirty red colour, and the air absolutely stank. So much so that we had to keep all the windows firmly closed. This meant we didn't lose heat overnight.

Anyway. We shouldn't complain. The pessimist in me says that this is the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. We should make the most of it.

Back to Basics

This is my Profile Silhouette fretless bass. It's a very accurate copy of an early (1960) Fender Precision Bass, made in Japan. Basically, what happened is that Fender had new owners, the quality control on their very expensive instruments slipped, and Japanese musical instrument manufacturers realised there was a gap in the market for good quality, inexpensive instruments.

The Profile Silhouette range of instruments were a special order for an Australian distributor, made just before a series of lawsuits kicked in. There is some discussion online about who made the the Profile instruments, but I'm under the impression that two years later Fender ordered a load of them and labelled them as "Fender Squier Vintage Reissue". The swamp that is AI suggests a company called Fujigen of Matsumoto City were the actual manufacturers. It's made of solid wood, with a maple neck, and lighter than the tree planks that Fender were doing at that time.

I'm not posting it to boast, but because I realised today that I have owned it for 40 years. I bought it new from Better Music in Canberra in 1986, and for many years it was my goto bass. It has seen me through thousands of gigs: jazz, pop, folk, rock, pit orchestras, and metal. The only thing that's been changed is the pickguard - it arrived with a plain white, which I swapped for black/white/black.

I'm stunned to think that when I bought it there was no such thing as a 40 year old Fender bass guitar - they were first made in 1951, and by the time I bought my copy an early Fender bass cost more than a normal house. Mine isn't worth that much, it's priceless to me.