It's my birthday...

...so the good camera's developed a fault which means it has to go back for repair in England. That means we're down to using the camera that failed in Guana but was revived by bashing it. So sorry about the quality for a while.

I love this time of year here. It's full speed ahead on the grape harvest (le vendange) so the misty early mornings are full of tiny tractors whizzing about ferrying grapes to various places. The grapes are either picked by hand if they're smart wines or by huge machines which straddle the vines and tease off the grapes with mechanical fingers.

Justin, my brother, and our friends have been doing their bit helping mates pick their grapes. The chemists are selling industrial quantities of special ointment for agonised backs. The best bit of grape-picking seems to be the luscious lunch many of the kinder domaines put on for their pickers. I'm almost tempted.

However, as it's my birthday I get to choose supper. As usual I've gone for gazillions of local shellfish. So this morning we went off to Meze to buy oysters, palourdes, mussels, bulots, violets, crabs, prawns and extra oyster shuckers as Justin, his wife and my niece and nephew are coming for a messy supper. Yummmmmm.

Here's Nicola from La Maison Verte looking suitably peasant-like whilst grape-picking.

and Christa from Domaine Bourdic