My day off from the monks

Lives it up in the local town of Sablé

How the French hate to hear that.

The real reason for visiting the bookshop is to chat up the owner’s beautiful blonde stepdaughter, aged 23, who speaks good English with a slight American accent. (She was educated in the US.) When French blondes are pretty, they are generally very pretty. She wants to be a Hollywood film star and I am sure she will be, with or without my help.

Sometimes, I get my hair cut for ¤13.50 (about £10). My hair is amazingly thick and lustrous while I am in France. It must be something in the food or the water.

Le tout Sablé gathers in one of the bars in the fashionable shopping street at 11 o’clock. I have chummed up with a rich widow (she carries a little dog, to my dismay), who is also a compulsive gambler. She is actually a habituée of the great casinos of Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo but can’t resist having a bit of a flutter here in Sablé. I have told her that she may as well piss her money into the nearby Sarthe but she takes no notice. Gambling is her substitute for a husband, I guess.

It’s time for lunch at L’amphora, one of the best Italian restaurants I have ever been in. I eat a simple spaghetti bolognese with a green salad, followed by ice cream. The owner (female) is in love with me, of course, and I am threatening to take her prettier waitress, Sara, back to England with me.

Now back along the river path to l’abbaye and the monks’ superb, if monotonous, Gregorian chanting. They should give themselves a day out now and again (they get one about every five years). I feel much better for one.