The whole village is hoping the rain stays away for this evening’s Feu de St Jean, an old custom that some of us have decided to revive. 

Everyone in the village has been invited, including some members who haven’t spoken to one another for years. We have collected the wood for the big bonfire, gained the mayoral permission to close off the little street and ban parking from the village square and put out the tables and chairs for the expected throng. Everyone has been asked to bring a dish of food and a bottle. 

Although it bears the name of saint, the event goes back to pre-Christian days: a midsummer night festival when after the food and wine and the fire dies down, husbands and wives, neighbours and children all leap hand in hand over the ashes of the bonfire to put behind us all the last year’s rows and arguments and start anew.

I’d start with a fresh vegetable soup made with stock from chicken bones, and then serve a glass of golden Monbazillac wine with a slice of foie gras. The main course would be a duck roasted with honey and mustard and served with pommes sarladaises (made with truffles and parsley and cooked in duck fat), with a bottle of a Pecharmant red wine from Chateau de Tiregand, 2009, followed by salad from my garden, a slice of my friend Stephane’sTomme d’Audrix cheese and fresh strawberries with cream from Stephane. (In fact, that’s what I’m cooking for tonight.)

Publication day for 6th Bruno novel (The Resistance Man) in the UK, and my publishers call to say they are doing a hardback reprint already. 

I got the news while in Ely cathedral, near Cambridge, which has to be the most gloriously stunning church I have ever seen. Started in the 11th century and expanded in the 13th and 14th centuries, it has the most magnificent vaulting and painted ceilings. 

And since it was the anniversary of D-Day, and this became the church of the WW2 bomber crews in the nearby airfields, the organ was playing 'The Dam-Busters March' and 'Land of Hope and Glory.' I had tears in my eyes, even before I heard of the reprint.