A French melon-powered power plant

Do you like melons? Tasty aren't they?

Sweet when ripe, and refreshing.

North American "cantaloupes" (from Wikipedia, USDA photo by Scott Bauer. Image Number K7355-11.)

You've got to be careful about storing them though because apparently their pungent pong can permeate other food and you've probably also noticed how their remains can stink out a kitchen when left in the bin.

Something to do with the amount of methane melons produce when they decompose - just like all fruit really.

The company Boyer S.A Philibon in the southwestern département of Tarn et Garonne knows all about that.

It's one of France's biggest producers and packers of melons and its processing station is in the town of Moissac.

But Boyer S.A also has a huge waste problem in the shape of rotten melons - 1,800 tonnes of them annually.

So earlier this year it called in the experts, turning to the Belgian-based company GreenWatt, a specialist in building, designing and maintaining biogas plants and the fruits (ouch) of the two companies collaboration will be unveiled on Friday.

That's when France's first biogas plant or anaerobic digester will open.

And it'll apparently be able to produce enough hot water for the whole of the Boyer S.A site as well as the equivalent of electricity for 150 homes which it'll sell back to the country's largest utility company Électricité de France.

Not bad going for a load of mouldy fruit, and very green to boot.

So forget nuclear, coal, hydro-electric, thermal, wind and solar power.

The future is melon - well at least as far as Boyer S.A is concerned.

French motorist "forgets" wife in the middle of the night

You've certainly heard of people abandoning animals on the side of the road - but rarely (surely) about a driver forgetting his partner.

It's apparently a true story worthy of the silly summer season and one which the national radio station RTL says is that of "an airhead at the wheel of a car".



A man somehow "left" his wife on the side of the road without realising she was missing.

It happened, according to Agence France Presse, in the wee (how appropriate - as will become clear in a moment) hours of Wednesday morning.

The couple were driving along a B road in the southwestern département of Tarn et Garonne and stopped just short of the village of Saint-Loup.

It's a pretty part of the country at this time of year with rolling hills and fields of sunflowers in full bloom and dotted with vineyards - not that the couple would have been able to see much as it was three o'clock.

Both apparently needed to pee and while the wife walked a little distance away from the car to do what was necessary, the husband was able to...well, let's just say it was easier for him.

Not surprisingly he was the first back and this is where the tale takes on those ridiculous proportions.

He "hit the road", driving off, seemingly not realising that he had left his wife behind!

For her part, she found herself barefoot and in the middle of nowhere without a mobile 'phone.

After walking some distance she knocked on the door of the first house she came upon, reports AFP, and only then was she able to call her errant husband, who returned to collect her - two-and-a-half hours later.

What's the betting he got something of an earful?

More details of the name, age and background of the "happy couple" when they become available, but it's somehow difficult to imagine the husband wanting any further information being made public.