Saturday was again sunny and mild, and we started the day in a very different way. Often we would go up to the Saturday Market, but this time we did it with Irene, who had convinced us to join in on a camera class that she had attended a few times. Today, they would be taking photos at the market, with the joint themes of Colour and People. We could just wander around taking photos and, if we wanted to, we could get advice from the professional photographer Olivier who accompanied us. Most people had proper SLR Digital cameras, and asked Olivier lots of technical questions about settings, exposures etc, but Rita and I just had our iPhones, so we concentrated on composition and just getting some interesting shots. I was pretty happy with some of the shots I got (for different reasons) and here is a selection of the best from well over 100 shots I took during the morning.

After joining John and irene for a drink at the Compostelle, we went around to Kaz and Iain’s house to check on the progress they had made in the past few weeks. We got there just as Iain was laying the last tile in the kitchen.

They certainly have made enormous progress, especially upstairs where the main bedroom and ensuite are essentially finished. We left some interesting evidence of our inspection.

In the afternoon, Rita went swimming at St Nicolas de la Grave, while I used the new bench saw to cut gangplank pieces from the composite plastic planks I had bought. I was very glad to have the bench saw when it came to cutting the pieces for the non-slip cross-straps. There was no way I could have cut these pieces by hand or with a hand-held circular saw. As I was sitting with a cool beer afterwards on the rear deck, I noticed that the Piper barge behind (Tesserae) had a waterproof cover on the wheelhouse. I was especially interested in the roof covering, so I took a few pictures, for future reference, of the rear, the side and the front of the wheelhouse cover..

In the evening, Rita and Valerie and others went up to the Parvis to watch the Saturday Night concert, which this week was a Brassy Girls concert (well, a group of five girls playing brass instruments!).

While we were watching and listening, we were joined by a guy we had met at the camera class this morning. He wasn’t in the class, but was a Compostelle walker who happened to be passing through Moissac, and was visually interesting enough for many of the camera class to take his photo. Even though it was only 1030h in the morning when we met him, it was clear that he had had a few to drink already. He had asked me for some change that morning, but I had declined to feed his habit. But Irene is a bit of a softie and gave him a couple of euro, which must have been just enough to get another drink, because he immediately disappeared into the Compostelle Bar. From then on, we were his new best friends, which is why he joined us tonight. Clearly, he had been asking for change all day!

Since I had heard enough of the music, and didn’t really want to hear any more from our “bestie”, I decided to call it an early night, and left Rita and her friends to their own resources for the rest of the evening.