Negative daytime temperatures and a further couple of centimetres of snow on Friday gave way to seasonal norms two days later - this morning, rain is falling and the thermometer is due to reach double figures. It stayed dry enough for a pair of promenades over the weekend. Saturday we caught the tram up to the Christmas market and walked home through town via a teeming department store, while yesterday we slipped and slid across melting snow in the park to the garden centre in search of a Christmas tree stand. The failure to find anything suitable gave a sum shopping total for the weekend - two picnic lunches, a calendar and a bulb of garlic. Only 19 days left…
Outside the cosy confines of home, the nation mourns the failure of its tennismen to lift the Davis Cup, while general indifference greeted the Wikileaks cables portrayal of Sarkozy as the most thin-skinned, erratic, hyperactive, authoritarian and pro-American French emperor with no clothes since the second world war. No point in getting excited about something we knew already.
