THERE are a great many things in life that benefit from being compressed and condensed: orange juice for one.

I once saw an hour and a half-long performance of The Bible that was much better than reading the real thing.

Tennant's Extra stops tramps from having to visit the offie too often.

Okay, condensed milk was never a good idea, but it is often handy to squeeze things down a bit, and this was obviously what the great and good had in mind when they decided to remove August from the calendar as one of the months that is any use at all and declare it null and void.

They obviously thought that rather than have people drifting in and out of work to take holidays at odd times they would be best confined to one particular time slot. And that it would be better to have everybody in a good mood at the end of July and everybody in a bad mood at the beginning of September.

Tidy. Or it would be, if they all stayed at home and did jigsaws. Instead the silly season has begun, and everybody with half a brain and the capacity to hitch up a caravan or drive a huge white dormobile seems to have come down to our part of the country in order to dawdle along the roads and get on my nerves when I am frantically trying to get home from work.

You may be detecting a slight note of irritation. That could be in some way connected with my unerring stupidity in not stopping work for a month, and worse than that, being in the middle of building a huge stone two-storey extension in temperatures that are regularly hitting the mid-40s.

Heavy, dirty, dusty would be a fair summary of my life at the moment, and the light at the end of the tunnel is the thought of the pool waiting for me when I get home, which is unfortunately a 45-minute drive back from site. Hence my very slight impatience to get home, hindered by thoughtless people having a pleasant time during their holiday. Who do they think they are?

Not only that, whole villages are closed to traffic while the annual fête is being held. One local village is having live music featuring The Rubettes. Anybody of a certain age will know who I mean. They are still alive and apparently enjoyed considerable success in France, which doesn't quite explain why they are playing a village which only contains about 20 houses. I may be obliged to go along to see for myself.

One thing that did make me smile on the way home was a bit of pointless mischief, not something commonly seen in France. Passing through the village of "Le Verdier" somebody had childishly altered the V to an M. It is stupid and moronic vandalism, but it made me laugh and a little homesick for Dorset and the village of Duntish that was forever haunted by a mischievous sign alterer.

I will carry on my daily commute, and as the sun gradually desiccates me I will become a distilled and concentrated version of my former self: pure Trevor, 100 per cent sugar baby love.