Category Archives: Intermarche

Saturday 3rd January 2015 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING.

Make a note of today – the 3rd January. And today I have had no heating on at all in my attic.

This means of course that i’ve not had a hot meal today but it’s more important to try to run this place on an energy-efficient basis and with the temperature late at night being 15°C inside my attic then heating would really be superfluous.

What has contributed to this state of affairs is that at about 15:00 I had the gas ring up here going for about 15 minutes boiling a kettle so that I could have a really good wash, and that bumped the temperature up to 16.5°C at one stage. This just goes to show that all of the insulation that I have stuffed into the attic when I fitted it out has not been wasted at all. We have insulation in the ceiling, in the walls and under the floor as you know. Money spent on insulation is never ever wasted.

During the night I was working in an office somewhere and it was so hot in there that I removed my shirt and jumper. When it was time to go home and I put my shirt and jumper back on I nearly boiled away in the heat. I went off back home on the old Honda Melody that is around here – my urban transport mode when I lived in Brussels all those years ago and which is still here. The Melody hadn’t been used for so long that when I went to fill up with petrol the upper part of the filler cap came off in my hand leaving the lower part firmly wedged in and blocking the filler hole.

After breakfast I carried on with my relaxation and after lunch I had a good wash (see the above) and then went to Intermarché …
1) to do the shopping
é) to do the laundry which has been backing up here for I don’t know how long. Yes, it’s a godsend, this launderette here in Pionsat.

Back here, I’ve done nothing at all this evening except to sit in the comparative warmth of my attic. But I’m under no illusions – I’ll probably have to have a fire on here when I wake up tomorrow.

Friday 19th December 2014 – NOW, HERE’S A THING!

Yes, two projects completed in a week, and two goals achieved. That’s something of a record for me, isn’t it?

At knocking-off time at 18:00 this evening, I was just fastening down the last piece of boarding for the floor of the landing. Bang on cue, in fact.

it’s only the first layer, of course. There will be another layer on top of this, a layer that will run through into the bedroom through the doorway that you can see to the left. But to do that, I need to go round to Cecile’s to rescue the floorboarding that we stocked there when we were trying to make some room here.

It wasn’t particularly easy to do this part of the flooring, what with the stud wall being built on top of the old floorboarding. To remove thet, it’s necessary to drill a line of holes along the base of the stud wall, rather like perforations, chisel down as much a spossible, and then using a huge crowbar, prise up the flooring and hope that it breaks off along the perforations. Finally, chisel off the rough edges to make sure that it’s something like a neat line.

But I’m glad it’s done anyway. It’s not often that I reach my targets.

Mind you, I managed it despite a few interruptions. Sophie the boulangere was late coming round with the bread and that interrupted my work, waiting for her. To pass the time, I took all of the food out of Caliburn and stored it away. And then, somewhat later, we had an avalanche in the European Cardboard Box Mountain, and I had to refill one or two of the boxes and restack the Mountain. One or two of the items that fell out of one of the boxes were things that would have come in handy over the past few days – but that’s what usually happens, isn’t it?

After knocking off work, I went round to the Intermarche for the weekly shopping. And this turned out to be rather expensive, due to the fact that I bought a few other bits and pieces to nibble on for Christmas

i was on my travels during the night too. I was running ly taxi business again, and it seemed tht some of the things that I needed – the books about tourist sites all over the world that I had been making up, had “disappeared”. I spent ages climbing over the roof of some old Ford and Bedford Lorries during the pouring rain and the soaking cardboard boxes and old mattresses, but they were nowhere to be found. Being fed up of all of this, I ordered all of my staff to assemble on the Common at the back of the allotments. My intention was to give every last one of them the statutory notice to leave my employment.

I walked up there and on the way, I fell in with a girl with whom I went to school from age 5 to age 18. Strangely enough, this is a girl about whom I haven’t given even one moment of thought, whether at school or subsequently, so I don’t have a clue how it was that she put in an appearance.

This led on to a recurring dream that I have every now and again, one that is so real and vivid that I often wonder whether or not it ever did take place, but subsequently to my selling my business in 1989, and after the purchasers died, I ended up with a couple of Mzrk III cortinas and I started running the taxi business on the side again, everything totally unlicensed. I abandoned that after a few months, but a short while later, restarted yet again. Of course I know that this never happened, but it’s such a real dream, I’ve had it so often and it’s left such an impression on me that I do have to convince myself.

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Monday 8th December 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Just in Gerzat for Radio Arverne though.

I was round at Liz’s at midday, having stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat in order to buy some stuff for our little party. For lunch, there was the rest of yesterday’s nut roast which of course is even better on the following day when the spices have had more time to soak in. Then we set off for Gerzat.

We first recorded the four traditional programmes. That means that we are now up to mid-February and we don’t have to go back there until the end of January. After that, we did our hour-long Christmas Special, and I shan’t tell you much about it – you’ll have to hear it for yourselves. All that I will say is that we didn’t use half of the material that I had prepared.

After the radio we went to the Carrefour at Menetrol for a coffee and then we did some shopping. Amongst the other things that I bought, I bought a big basket full of assorted nuts – that’s me getting all organised for Christmas isn’t it? Can’t do without my nuts.

I fuelled up too – diesel at Menetrol is €1:14 per litre and it’s been ages since I’ve seen it at that price – probably 7 or 8 years. Hard to thing that I’ve been paying €1:34 and more earlier this year.

On the wat back we encountered – not a wild boar this time, but heavy snow. it was chucking it down all around Les Ancizes but it miraculously stopped by the time I reached Terry and Liz’s. And I didn’t hang around there for I wasn’t sure if the snow would catch me up. I came home instead and made a pizza. I had no intention of going out again.

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Thursday 4th December 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that I was in bed before 23:00?

It wasn’t last night, to be sure, but it wasn’t long after 23:00. Certainly at 23:00 I was downstairs taking the stats, the last thing that I do before going to bed.

However I was awake at about 06:00, despite having an exciting night where I was in Montreal. I’d been to see someone about mounting a wind turbine on my land in New Brunswick but he told me that it was a waste of time. In fact he had had the same idea as me and bought some land on the Canada side of the Mars Hill wind farm in the USA, but has decided to sell it on as the projected extension of the farm wasn’t ever going to happen. We then had a long drive around Montreal with me taking the wrong turnings all the time, and him jumping out of the car each time that I did so, and waiting for me on the corner when I realised my error and turned back.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep and was tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

After breakfast, I went round to Liz and Terry’s. Liz was at work but Terry had a medical appointment at Riom and needed someone to go with him.

That was a pleasant morning, not the least of reasons being that I met a couple of people there who go to watch the football at Pionsat. I have’t seen then for w while, and it turned out that the guy has been quite ill. He’s had an operation in the hospital and was going back for a check-up.

On our way home, we had a major surprise. Just outside Les Ancizes we noticed something big and black moving at quite a substantial rate of knots across the field in the distance. As it drew closer (and what a good artist it was) we realised that it was a sanglier – a wild boar – and one of the biggest that I had ever seen. He roared across the field and right across the road in front of us – a really impressive sight. Magnificent beasts, these wild boar. No wonder I love living right out here.

I stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat to do my shopping. These shopping trips are getting earlier and earlier in the week but there’s no point going out shopping when I don’t need to.

And isn’t this attitude a change?

Back here I don’t know what happened but at one moment I was sitting eating my lunch (it was 15:00) and the next thing I remember, it was 18:06. I had crashed out completely and I’ve no idea why, especially after my early night last night.

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Saturday 22nd November 2014 – IT WAS ANOTHER LOVELY DAY …

… today. This weather is totally crazy.

Mind you, I missed quite a lot of it. I actually managed to have a good lie-in and it was after 10:30 this morning when I crawled out of bed. And quite right too. I’ve not had a decent lie-in for quite a while.

After a leisurely breakfast, I attacked the radio programmes and now that’s all finished and ready for tomorrow’s rehearsal. And the weather was still holding out too, and that made up my mind for me. I’ve not done any washing since I came back from Canada and there was a huge mound of it lying about. I therefore made some butties and went down to Pionsat where I stuck the lot (the washing, not the butties) into the large 18kg washing machine. And while that was doing, I ate my butties.

I put the lot into the drier for 20 minutes afterwards, and while that lot was drying I went and took Calibutn for a really good wash and (just for a change) bought another pile of grapes. They are really nice and I’m sure that they do me good.

Tonight we had the footy of course and Pionsat need to put their train back on the rails as they’ll drop off the bottom on the table. However, tonight’s opponents, Blanzat, look like a tough proposition.

Much to my surprise, Pionsat fielded one of the strongest sides that they’ve been able to field this season. Cedric was back from injury and playing in defence again, with Julien and Jerome up front.

Even more surprisingly, Blanzat offered nothing whatever up front. I can’t think of a weaker attack than the one that was out there today. Their goal was direct from a free kick, but in reply, Pionsat scored two. A real screamer on the volley from Michael from about 25 yards out, right into the top corner. The second one was one of these ping-pong efforts from close range – three Pionsat players had a go at getting the ball into the net before it finally crossed the line.

So a valuable win for Pionsat, one that keeps them in touch with the pack down in the basement. But it was marred by a fight on the pitch after the final whistle – one that looked like it meant business too. Two players were involved, both of them from Blanzat. It’s rare to see two players from the same team having a go at each other like this. And I’ve no idea what had caused it either.

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Friday 21st November 2014 – AFTER MY EXERTIONS …

… yesterday, I planned to have a lie-in this morning. Consequently I switched off all of the alarms and dug myself in for a long siege. And if I ever lay my hands on that telesales operator who rang me up at 09:15, she will need new dentures and a pair of crutches. I was not in the least amused.

I had a leisurely breakfast, boiling the water up here for my coffee again, And then I didn’t do too much until Sophie the boulangère came with my bread, and we had an interesting chat for a while.

After lunch, I was trying hard to make up my mind to go out and work when the farmer came down with his cattle. It’s very late in the season for him to put his cattle out, but nevertheless he was here all the same. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago I lit a garden fire in the lane and the pile of ash was still there. Consequently I had to spend a quick half an hour shovelling the ashes away so that his cattle could pass by.

It always happens like this.

After that I started to unload the new batteries. While they aren’t as big as the other ones that I have been moving around just recently, they are still huge and heavy. And there’s something of a problem with them. The terminalsare not across one end of the battery, but down one of the long sides. This means that they won’t go into the battery cupboard as I had intended, and the only way that I can put them in is groups of three – so either 3, 6 or 9 and here I am with 8. Mind you, they are 110-amphour batteries, not 100-amphour ones.

6 of the batteries are now fitted in place and connected together. That was when I ran out of time and also out of strength – moving those six was bad enough. On Monday I’ll make a start on the control board for the wiring in the barn.

I went to Intermarche when I knocked off work, and finished off my shopping. 25 minutes it takes from here to Pionsat to do my shopping and then to go back home. And the prices aren’t so bad when you consider the saving in fuel and time. I bouhgt myself another kilo of grapes, and I’ve just sat here and ate them. I love grapes, especially at this time of year when they are very ripe and very sweet. I might even go back to Pionsat tomorrow and buy some more.

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Friday 31st October 2014 – THE TIDYING UP …

… didn’t happen today. I’ve been doing much more interesting things instead.

I actually started on some more tidying up but it didn’t last long as Terry and Rob put in an appearance at the door. It seems that they had finished a contract a day earlier and so with a free day they had come to concrete the rest of the hardstanding where we had run out of ready-mix in the summer. This was to be Rob’s payment for me having gone to pick up his car from Rouen in August.

And so I dropped everything and went to give them a hand. And it was just as well that I did as we had a whole succession of equipment failure. Although we are having a dramatic late summer here, there wasn’t enough power to run Terry’s big cement mixer (my small one needs some attention at the moment) and so Terry had brought his big generator. After about an hour, that gave up the ghost. I couldn’t start my ancient generator (it’s not been run since 2000) and we couldn’t get to the huge diesel one that I have hidden away in the back of the Luton Transit.

Next step was to repair my cement mixer so we could use that. That worked for a while and then packed up again. It’s thrown the Woodruffe key out of the pulley on the crankshaft. In the end we found a bolt and squared it off on the angle grinder and then hammered it it. That seemed to hold and so we could progress – until the sun started to go down and the sunlight went off the solar panels.

It was then that I had a brainwave.

I have some heavy-duty plugs and sockets, the kind that fit on flying leads and I’ve been using them here and there around here, mostly to plug in the power board with the electric meter and the 600-watt inverter in various places around the barn. What I did was to wire up one of the sockets to the battery on the Kubota B1220 (that’ll be useful for the electric winch and all kinds of other things too) and plug the power board into the circuit. And much to everyone’s surprise, at 2500 rpm the Kubota produced enough power to run the inverter to power my small cement mixer, and it worked an absolute treat.

Here we are. The finished product. That’s the last of the cementing for this year, I reckon. And it’s a good job too.

Unfortunately we ran out of material yet again which means that it’s about an inch lower than it should be, but that can’t be helped and it doesn’t seem to be worth getting another small load just to skim the top. It’s not as if anything really heavy is going to be driving up and down on it.

I was thoroughly exhausted after all of that – completely unexpected but welcome nevertheless – concreting session. I struggled off to the Intermarche at Pionsat nevertheless and bumped into Nan on the car park, so we had a long chat. I treated myself to a sorbet at the Intermarché – I felt that I’d earned it – and then came back here to crash out. I was in bed by 22:30 and I’m not surprised. All of the alarms are disconnected and I’ll sleep for a week.

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Saturday 18th October 2014 – GUESS WHAT …

… I’ve been doing this morning!

You’re right.

It was a bright, breezy morning with not a cloud in the sky and so straight after breakfast I went into Pionsat with the cover off the bed-settee. An hour later I was back, with the cleanest bed settee cover that I have ever had. That 18kg machine at the Intermarché works a treat, especially at €8:00 a time including soap.

Of course, you have to wait on the car park while the machine is working and you would be amazed at the number of people who go into the Intermarche in just that time. It’s quite a little goldmine there, especially as the woman who owns it has really done her research, with the amount of British and Dutch produce that’s on sale there.

I even ended up talking to Marianne, whom I haven’t seen since February. She was there doing her shopping too.

This afternoon I started work on the radio programmes for the next month and then later on tonight went back to Pionsat to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI play Montfermy.

That was an exciting match too, with a couple of new players this season including a real goalkeeper who had a good game. Pionsat won 2-0 without really breaking sweat. Kevin scored the first following a good ball across the defence that beat the offside trap, and a short corner from Vincent to Matthieu caught the entire Montfermy team asleep and Matthieu had a simple volley into the net.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI are now top of the table for the moment, and well-worth it too because they really did look like it tonight, and about time too.

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Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

I went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

It was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

The photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

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Saturday 16th August 2014 – I’M ON ABOUT …

… this parking again, aren’t I? It must be that time of the year again.

I just can’t believe just how selfish some people are. The Intermarché at Commentry is a busy place and there’s always pressure on the parking here – and even more when someone such as this takes up two places in an old nail like that. It’s bad enough when someone in a brand new car does it – it’s even more sad when it’s something like this.

So yes, I was in Commentry doing the shopping this late afternoon. And it was a quiet time there, apart from the stuff that I bought in Bricomarché, such as more trunking and also the cement rendering for the outside of the house.

Prior to that, I spent the morning finishing off the backups that I had been doing and sorting out the stuff for taking with me in 10 days time. I need to sort all of this out as quickly as possible.

After lunch I went over to St Maurice to pay the deposit for the stuff that I had bought the other day, and as usual I forgot to take any photos, so you’ll have to wait for a good while to see what it is.

And then, to the baths at Neris for my weekly swim. There were about half a dozen of us in there and that’s hardly surprising seeing as it was not that warm and the sides of the pool were open. But it did fill up a little later, and there were quite a few kids having a whale (well, we are talking about water) of a time. One girl was just 5 years old but was really at home in the water, leaping into the 2-metre depths and then doggy-paddling to the side to start all over again. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a kid having so much fun, and I had a good chat with the girl’s grandma.

So then off to Commentry for the shops.

And the parking.

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Saturday 19th July 2014 – WHAT A NICE AFTERNOON.

Not particularly sunny, but lovely and hot, so just for a change I went swimming at Neris-les-Bains. Not too crowded but the water was lovely and warm even with the sides of the pool open and I spent a very pleasant hour or so in there. And that gave me an opportunity to give the cement burns on my legs (which are still troubling me) a really good soaking.

Last night it was still too hot to sleep and it was 04:00 again when I went to bed. But about 01:00 we had a sudden hurricane that sprang up out of nowhere and a huge stream of wind blew right through the house.

I was up and about again at 08:00 all the same and after breakfast had a few hours on the laptop as well as a little session with that computer program. I’m determined to crack it, even though I’ve been tempted to delete the newer version that I’ve uploaded and go back to the previous one.

I did my shopping at Commentry – first time for ages, and while neither LIDL nor Intermarche came up with anything special, I bought all that I needed from Bricomarche to complete the guttering on Monday.

Back home from the swimmng baths I crashed out for an hour or so.

Tonight now that I’m nice and clean, I’m going to change the bedding and have a really good sleep in a nice clean bed for just a change. Tomorrow is Sunday and it’s a day off.

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Thursday 10th July 2014 – WHAT THE …?

Yes, I’ve spent ages this afternoon looking for a black jump lead. I save all the old ones as they come in useful as a cheap source of heavy duty cable, and I can find no fewer than 5 red ones, but there’s not a black one anywhere to be seen. I just don’t understand this.

During the night I was in Calveley with my father and a few other people, visiting the farm that belonged to my father’s parents. All of the outbuildings were still there but the farmhouse was a prefabricated type of bungalow. It seems that the farmhouse had burnt down and my grandfather had erected a kind of mobile home to replace it, with no planning permission. The uproar that this had caused led to a variety of court cases against my grandfather, all of which he lost, and the farm had to be sold to pay the legal expenses and grandfather went bankrupt. My father was in tears when whoever it was told this story.

So when I woke up and after breakfast I carried on with the website for the customary couple of hours, and then as the driving rain was preventing any outside work, I started to tidy up the bedroom.

This led to a couple of discoveries, one of which was a halogen table light. After lunch (I had to go into Pionsat to buy some bread) I rewired it and fitted a LED bulb in it, and that’s now illuminating my new comfy chair.

I also found a multiple cigarette-lighter socket with USB socket and so I rewired that and fitted it on the control board downstairs.

While I was there, having been told that the bad weather is to contine, I emptied the 12-volt immersion heater and ripped the wiring out. When I made it, I had forgotten to insulate the terminals and that’s not been helping the circuit, and the cables are scorched as I suspected. This led to a couple of design modifications, and then the search for heavier cables, such as old jump leads.

At about 19:15 that up until tomorrow and knocked off work. Rosemary rang up for a chat for about an hour, and then I had tea.

I’ll continue the search for the cable tomorrow.

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Saturday 21st June 2014 – SOMETIMES I HAVE DAYS …

… when I stare at the computer for hours on end, wondering what on earth I am going to write. And on other days the stuff seems to pour out without me even touching the keyboard. Today was one of the latter.

Despite having a little lie-in this morning recovering from the after-effects of an attack of cramp, I was at the computer early enough. And by the time that I had finished early this evening, I’d done another programme for the rock show, including engineering the live concert and making up a sound string, and I’d written three texts for the current affairs programmes, on senior citizens, medical care abroad and on French legal aid, 28kbs of notes.

There’s nothing like cracking on with things when one is in the mood.

For shopping, I went to the Intermarché at Pionsat. Things are slightly dearer there but it saves me about €3:00 i diesel and it has everything that I really need, especially as I’ve been doing a few major shopping trips to Montlucon just recently.

I checked over the concrete too and it seemed to be drying rather quickly, so I connected up the pump and pumped the water out of the pit onto the concrete to moisten it.

It’s a shame that we were in such a rush to do the job, but it’s still looking quite impressive and when it has its stone wall all around it it will make a world of difference here.

Tomorrow I’m getting back into my old habits now that the pressure of work is off for now, so I’ll be having a lie-in and a leisurely morning. We’re recording on Monday so tomorrow evening I’ll be round at Liz and Terry’s, rehearsing.

And I might be off to Munich next weekend. Won’t that be exciting?

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Tuesday 10th June 2014 – I MIGHT HAVE GUESSED …

… and indeed, to such an extent, that I told Terry that it was bound to happen.

And I was right too!

It’s been a year or so since the farmer who rents the next-door field has been here to bring his cattle to graze in here. And so today, for the first time that we have deposited a pile of objects in the lane in front of his gate, guess what happens?

Yes – the aforementioned farmer brings his cattle. It’s absolutely typical.

So this morning I was up early and went to St Eloy to buy the breeze blocks, but I came back empty-handed. In Brico Depot they are €1:15 each and I was prepared to pay a little extra for the convenience, but when Cheze wanted over €800 for 300, then they can forget that. Terry and I will be off to Brico Depot tomorrow to buy a van-load.

So this is what we have been doing today. And while it’s a little short of the Empire Pool, it took about 6 hours of digging out with the digger, a pick and a shovel.

It’s not actually a swimming pool, but an inspection pit. All of my life I’ve been working on cars by lying on my back in the mud underneath cars on jacks, on axle stands or even propped up on bricks. But now that I’m settled here and can’t see myself moving on from here, I am going to treat myself to better working conditions.

I’ve always promised myself a pit, and I’m going to have one.

And this is it.

We had the power barrow here today as the floor is about finished in the Sankey trailer but i had to nip into Pionsat to buy some petrol. And while I was there I had to help a couple of young Dutch girls who were confounded by the petrol pump. Any excuse to practise my Flemish.

After Terry left, I had another shower and called it a day. Until the farmer came round.

But here’s a thing. And who says it never pays to complain?

You remember the Brico Depot incident the other day involving the trailer? Well, I left a polite but firm not telling them what I thought about my experience. And today, I had a phone call from the manager, something that I never expected. He gave me the usual platitudes, even telling me that he had rung round a few other branches to see if anyone else had a trailer left over.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that he’ll put my name on a trailer whenever the next batch is issued, and you can’t say fairer than that.

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Monday 2nd June 2014 – WE PRESSED ON …

… with the work today.

While I was waiting for Terry I moved as much as I could of the stone pile that was in the way. There’s certainly enough stones in there now to build a decent wall now. And when Terry arrived, we moved the big ones with the digger.

Once they were out of the way we smoothed off the surface and flattened it down, and then fitted the shuttering, because if you haven’t already guessed, Terry and I are going to be concreting the car park. I need a proper flat surface to work on.

We went off to the quarry after lunch to arrange the concrete delivery, but it won’t be here until Thursday morning so we came back and fitted the reinforcing grillage. That’s necessary with a 150mm thickness of concrete. Terry then went off nd I carried on ripping out the weeds from where the towing dolly is kept.

I had to nip into Pionsat and the Intermarche and I’ll tell you something – for a small-town supermarket in a small town like Pionsat, the place was packed. Three tills were open and there was queueing in all parts. A few people were doing a mega-shop there, a sure sign that the place is certainly having a great success and that it isn’t just people who might have forgotten something at the weekend

I was on my travels last night too. I was in the police force and I’d stopped a Moroccan because of an offence that he had committed with his trailer and i’d discovered that the trailer’s controle technique was out of date by a day. And so I’d gone and given everything else a full inspection and found loads of other faults too.

A few hours later I found him in a telephone box filling in a huge lengthy form about this controle technique issue. He’d been seeking legal advice and filling in this form was something that some solicitor had told him to do. He told me that he was quite confident that he would be let off a penalty and so I helped him fill in the form, all the while thinking to myself “just wait until he receives the summons in respect of everything else that I’d found”.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality