My parents have been sure I would spend the whole weekend unaware of my location - fortunately for all, the Satnav knew, and I can pass the information on. We are close to a town named Labastide d'Arminac - an hour and a half from the mountains, an hour and a half from the sea, an hour and a half from God (in proximity to Lourdes, which is apparently not as much fun as I think it is). Mind you, the Sat Nav has also recommended we "make illegal U-turn" multiple times, so it could have been lying.

My mother would go gooey over this house: all farmhousey, with nooks and crannies, and secret staircases behind tapestries. There is a large patio, covered by sails, with a huge dining table large enough for all fifteen people - sixteen now. I am especially warming towards people who refer to their relatives by "mother" or "brother" in a slightly stilted, cinematic way. Windows open onto miles of dying sunflowers. The house also contains the most gorgeous grand piano. My other fellow pianist and I are going to be trading songs tomorrow, although I suspect it's a pretext to murder me: we are playing a game rather like largescale wink-murder for the duration of the holiday. The randomly-assigned murderer has to "kill" three people a day; everyone is already very paranoid, and travelling around in fours. Having watched how the chap concerned plays poker, it could well be that sort of a bluff. We have already discussed faking a crying baby over the baby monitor to lure people away from the table and towards a sticky end. Friend 4 and I have a sort of a victim's advantage, as we don't tend to be too far apart - any murderer is going to have to get us both at once - but a disaster if either of us is the murderer, as we'll be able to work out in no time if anything suspicious happens. I am already considering turning this whole situation into a novel...I am pretty safe (in either role) so long as I remain an unknown quantity.

I'm always amazed by quite how much French I do remember - I'm following signs, leaflets and conversations quite adequately. Yesterday, we went to a market - I got myself a cheap, small but adorable tin toy bird. I have annihilated Friend 4's brother (Brother 4?) twice at poker, and thus proved to myself he is not the murderer. It's his poker set...

Looks like we'll be through Blake's 7 in no time, so we've started diluting it with Sapphire and Steel. I'd rather not have my nervous breakdown here, thank you very much, and the latter is just proving I go from zero to 60 in under a minute where shady, nasty guys in suits are concerned. It is very good telly indeed - atmospherically shot. The first episode concerns a big ole creepy house...

There's so much sky here, especially after two days of six o'clock starts and seven hour car journeys. I have had one epic stargazing session in which two shooting stars and a satellite were totally trumped by owls and bats. I can hardly recognise constellations, you can see such a lot down here.

Hope you are all well,

me