I'm living with a black man.

I arrive home from work on Saturday and am confronted with this man who seems to have replaced The Frenchman. He looks a lot like him, but is caked in blackness that I am not familiar with. Norten seems a little frightened too. Once he is attacked with a garden hose The Frenchman returns and I discover he has been cleaning the guttering on the house (why he's managed to get this black I don't quite understand, but he seems to be revelling in it, so I make appreciative comments and collapse in a heap on the couch).

A little later in the evening we attend an opening. The hosts are immaculate in their attention to detail and we manage to catch up with a number of friends we have not really spent time with for a while. On to the next late-night social event and we find ourselves with buddies from our Croatia Cruise earlier in the year, some of whom are staying over at ours. More catching up on Sunday is in order and the day is again perfect.

Here we are spotting migrating whales...

A trip to the beach finds me chasing stingrays in the surf, as you will see below and then the late afternoon brings even more interesting people into our world, so we chat ceaselessly into the sunset. I'm just getting into this weekend thing, and it seems it's all over. But I've managed to connect with some fantastic people and life feels not entirely unreasonable.

Chasing a stingray