… from doing some work on Sunday even if I don’t feel much like it.

This morning, with having had a head start, I’d finished the radio programme by 12:05. And had I not had to remove 14 seconds-worth of speech to make it fit my one-hour window, I’d have finished 20 minutes earlier too. And that includes stopping for 15 minutes for my mid-morning cake and hot chocolate.

What helped matters was that I was up and about this morning before the 3rd alarm and that’s not something that happens every day these days.

There’s plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from last night too. I’d been out in Canada down the Labrador coast and I’d bought a postcard, but I’d forgotten to post it while I’d been out there but as I was going back very soon I thought that I’d post it while I was back out there then. I went up to one of the Clerical Assistants in the office where I worked, a very young girl and I was going to ask her if she had any stamps that the Canadian authorities would accept for a postcard that was posted in Canada. I asked her a question and started off in one of these statements that could be taken in quite a few ways. She said “you aren’t going to start this again, are you?”. I’d asked her quite a long time ago whether she’d be interested in coming out with me on occasion but she turned me down. I said “look, you made it very clear the last time we spoke exactly what the position was and I accepted much to my extreme disappointment but much as I would like it, this question has nothing to do with any of that” making it clear that I was still extremely interested but I wasn’t going to push it because I knew that that was what she wasn’t wanting. Somehow our conversation stuck on that particular point instead of asking about this stamp and it wasn’t until right at the very end that I was able to ask her about this stamp and I never actually got an answer about that, spending so much time talking about other things or, rather, about one other thing, namely the question of me taking her out which of course wasn’t the point of the discussion at all. I was thinking that we might have moved on from there but there wasn’t time to mention the name before I had to go pretty quickly

There was also someone who died – an upper-class kind of man, a young man. And his mother had suddenly received a packet through the post of some highly erotic literature kept in the form of a diary. A letter that accompanied it said basically that there was plenty more stuff where this came from and she could have it at so much per week. So she called in Hercule Poirot and I was assisting him. We went to speak to this lady and she showed us this literature. This was odd so we went to the British Library and started to hunt around in the books there. We were using the old encyclopaedias to trace events and so on. It was quite strange because the authors of the books had their names carved in marble on this marble tablet that was going all around the walls like the War memorial at Tyne Cot perhaps. You could see where new editions had been carved in at the appropriate place subsequent to this tablet being prepared and we ended up looking at a place called Donovan in Central Australia and another report about trees that had suddenly lost all their foliage somewhere in Leicestershire. We had to try to research those particular places and events.

After the medication, I attacked the radio programme. – I must have travelled quite a way – but I’ve not had the time to deal with it as yet.

When I finished the radio programme I had a little relax that took me all the way up to lunchtime.

After lunch I started another sourdough loaf off. I’d fed the sourdough starter yesterday and it had fermented quite nicely, and today I reached almost the end of the loaf. Not enough bread to make my lunch tomorrow so I need a load that will go into the oven first thing in the morning.

That all took me up to the right time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

Outside, the weather was somewhat better than just recently although it was cold. I even had my gloves on this afternoon. I’m not sure what the roofers working on the roof would be wearing in this but I wouldn’t like to be up there on that roof in the weather that we have been having of late.

But it seems that the area on which they are working has now been extended to the left by a couple of yards. It might be that they are going to be doing thee whole roof but if so they need to be getting something of a move-on because winter will be here any minute now and that won’t be the kind of weather that anyone would want to be up on a roof.

Having taken note of what was going on on the roof, I set off for my walk around the headland.

First though I had a look out to sea to see if there was anything going on out there. No boats at all today but one or two people walking up and down the beach and there was also a seagull having a nice swim. At least, I thought that it was a seagull. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a very keen birdwatcher, but not the kind of birds that have wings and feathers.

Nothing else of any interest so I walked on across the lawn and the car park to the end of the headland.

Once more, there was some really good sunshine coming through the clouds and reflecting off the water in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

The Brittany coast was well-hidden in the haze over there too so we couldn’t see anything of Cancale. The weather wasn’t that quite nice.

With no dogs around making a nuisance of themselves today, I headed off down the footpath at the top of the cliffs overlooking the port. There was nothing at all new in the chantier navale and nothing going on in the port either so without any further ado I headed on home. I had plenty of things to do.

First thing that I had to do is my Welsh homework. That was what I’d planned to do over the weekend but I never ended up doing it. But having arranged things around and having ended up with an hour or so free now, I had to do it.

And I’d have done even better had I not crashed out for a short while.

After the hour on the guitars I made tea. Stuffed pepper with rice followed by apple pie and soya coconut dessert with chocolate sauce.

Later on, after a quick chat with my friend in the UK, I went out for my evening runs.

And here’s some excitement going on in the medieval town because one of the roads, the Rue St Jean, is blocked off today. The road up to the Square du Parvis Notre Dame was marked as a 2-way road and so was the Rue St Jean as far as the Rue du Nord.

But anyone going that way will be in for something of a surprise. The diversion ends up just 10 metres down the Rue du Nord where there’s a barrier stopping the general circulation. It’s pass-holders only.

So vehicles following the signed diversion around here will need to reverse, turn round and then go back the way that they came.

My run went along the Rue du Nord and then I took the path along the foot of the walls. Other places had dried up considerably over the course of the day so I was hoping that it would dry down there. The verdict was that it’s been worse down there, but it’s also been better.

It takes me two legs of about 250-300 metres each to arrive at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch.

It’s been a few days since I’ve walked around the footpath to there. Where I’ve taken some of the photographs over the last few days has been from up there on top of the Escalier du Moulin A Vent in the Place de l’Isthme. You can see the difference in height between here and there.

There was nothing going on anywhere else so I ran across the Square Maurice Marland and headed for home.

Intrigued as to what was going on in the Rue St Jean that was causing the diversion, but there was no evidence to suggest anything at all.

While I was on my way out I noticed a pile of lights out to sea. I counted at least 7 fishing boats heading for home.

And so after inspecting the Rue St Jean I headed off on a little diversion to the walls overlooking the harbour to see them come in.

They were all there or thereabouts and the fish processing plant was working at full-tilt. Fork-lift trucks were everywhere. Having admired them for a few minutes, I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I’ll have to catch up with the dictaphone and then prepare for my Welsh. And then being free for the rest of the week, I can hopefully push on with some of the arrears.

There’s plenty of them to deal with.