Accurate

The weather forecast told us it would rain from 2 o'clock onwards. When I went out to St Laurent in the morning, it was gloriously sunny, barely a cloud in the sky. Scoffing at the weather forecast and bumping into T in the car park (as she was literally having her car bumped into by a reversing van, luckily no damage), we agreed to go bee eater hunting at 2.

It was still gloriously sunny when we ate lunch, but immediately afterwards menacing clouds appeared from nowhere. We persisted anyway, and as we drove down the extremely bumpy and overgrown track, there was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. But as we approached the river on foot, we could hear the bee eaters' very distinctive calls. 

S went on ahead to clear the way, and disappeared into the thick tree cover on the river bank just as the first drops started to fall. Immediately a flock of about 20 bee eaters burst out of the trees and flew over our heads, disappearing into the distance. We battled through the undergrowth anyway, and we did get brief glimpses of a couple between the obscuring branches. But the rain started to be more persistent ... "I think we'd better go back," said S. T thought this was a bit wimpish, but this is what the weather was like when we got back to tarmacked roads. Definitely more rain than forecast. And it will have to do for my blip instead of a bee eater.

Still, also as predicted by the forecast, it cleared up by 5 pm and it was bright and sunny when I drove to the free yoga class. This was a bit demoralising; up till now Eric has kept it quite straightforward but today he did a whole series of positions I just couldn't do. Lizard pose for example, I've never even seen this one before. No way I was getting my elbows on the mat.

Busy day: I dashed back from yoga and we drove to Lézignan to see the film Tambien La Lluvia (Even the Rain) courtesy of the cine club. We saw it when it came out in 2010 and were really impressed with it. It was even better than I remembered, and I'd completely forgotten how it ended, so the tension was there till the last minute. It's a complex story based around a popular revolt in Bolivia about water privatisation, and the involuntary involvement of a Spanish film crew making a film about Spanish colonialism in the 15th century, using locals as extras. It makes a complex but brilliantly constructed film in which all the threads interact and illuminate each other. Director Icíar Bollaín is very versatile -- she's done Basque terrorism in Maixabel ,and I realised that she also made the very silly comedy Rosa's Wedding. Her next film is about sexual harassment at work in 1990s Spain.