… interesting afternoon, and no mistake.

I was planning on going to watch US Granville’s 2nd XI this afternoon but a flash up on the internet announced that it was postponed.

Never mind. Subsequent research indicated that La Brehalaise up the road in Bréhal were to play La Patriote St Jamaise. And so I duly made my butties and hit the streets.

At Brehal the ground was almost deserted except for a couple of guys hanging around. They were indeed players from La Bréhalaise and they told me that the match had been forfeited by La Patriote St Jamaise. So that was that.

But never mind. There was a 4th Division match at Gavray between AS GAvray and ES Tirepied and I had just enough time to get there before kick-off.

And, as an aside, I’ll be coming here again. There’s a small covered area for spectators and that will be very handy in inclement weather.

As for the game itself, ES Tirepied are rooted to the bottom of the table and AS Gavray ran out 7-4 winners. You might think that this showed some level of poor quality, but far from it. It was a very interesting match.

Being a 4th Division encounter, quality was very lacking as you might expect, but there were a great many thoughtful and intelligent passes and play during the game that had the quality been up to it, it would have been wonderful.

ES Tirepied were not at all as bad as the scoreline suggests. They matched AS Gavray blow for blow but the difference was that this was a match of two goalkeepers.

The US Gavray keeper made a couple of saves that any goalkeeper in a higher division would have been proud to make, whereas the keeper of ES Tirepeid was, and without wishing him any malice whatsoever, clearly a guardien de fortune, pressed into service, one assumes.

And he did his best, and you can’t ever fault anyone for that. Chapeau to him for taking it on and persevering.

Final word has to go to an “incident” in the 50th minute. Just as ES Trepied were pulling themselves back into the gale after being 4-0 down at half time (the slope here gives a decided advantage to whoever is attacking down it) the referee blew for a penalty against them. And even the AS Gavray supporters, with whom I was sitting, were totally mystified as to what the referee had seen. The ES Tirepied players were stunned into disbelief and I have a good deal of sympathy with them.

This morning, I had a lie-in until 09:30. And quite right too. It is Sunday, and anyway, I was exhausted after my voyage during the night.

I was on my travels with TOTGA last night – hardly a surprise I suppose as I was speaking to her just before I went to bed (wonderful things, these social networks). We’d been to a rock concert in Carlisle and we had to return home. But we both had vehicles so she needed to follow me as I knew the way. She was impressed with the Motorway system and asked me loads of questions about it, which I could answer her of course. The route out of the venue car park was jammed with traffic and we slowly inched our way out and found the motorway, but there was a complicated section where you joined the motorway, crossed all three lanes to the far side and then crossed back to exit, all in a space of a couple of hundred yards which was no picnic in heavy traffic, so I had to stop and explain it to her and make sure that she understood exactly what was required.
Later, we were both working in an office which was run by a former inept boss that I had very early in my career. The accounts that he had managed were in total chaos and so he had engaged someone to maintain them, someone whom he had been pursuing for two years, so it seems. I spoke to the guy who told me that he’d turned down the job previously but had been persuaded to accept it, and wished he hadn’t because he’d never seen anything like the disorder and disarray. And then he started to rant about the facilities. There was no reception room, no canteen, nowhere to take a rest (a subject very dear to my heart as I worked such long hours in that place) and a whole host of other shortcomings. “And a condom machine” I quipped, making TOTGA blush to the roots of her hair.

THis morning I didn’t do too much. It’s about time that I had a good relax. And then we had the football of course.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and rather overcooked. And I know why too. It’s the frozen mushrooms. For a change I put them in the oven to defrost while it was warming and I prepared the pizza, and you should have seen the water that cme off them. No wonder the pizza hasn’t been cooking thoroughly. I’ll have to do that again.

And a walk this evening. It was a gorgeous day for a change and tonight I have never seen Jersey so clearly – even the house lights, which is pretty astonishing seeing that it is just over 30 miles away from here.

Ordinarily that would be something that would bode well for the morning, but here the wind changes so rapidly that it could bring anything in overnight.

We shall have to see.