Category Archives: Nerina Hall

Tuesday October 8th 2013 – HAPPY SILVER WEDDING ANNIVERSARY.

Yes, it’s my silver wedding anniversary today – 25 years of marriage. And the fact that I haven’t seen my wife since 1994 doesn’t change a thing – it’s still the silver wedding anniversary and so happy anniversary to me, and to you too. And this of course does remind me – not so long ago someone, who really wasn’t au fait with the situation really did ask me if I talked to Nerina while I was making love. My reply was that it all depended upon whether or not I could reach the telephone.

So how did I celebrate it, you may well ask. Not like Alan Shearer who, all those years ago, celebrated winning the Cup Final by going home and creosoting the shed, I woke up at 02:00 exactly after crashing out last night. 02:00 in Greece is exactly the same time as 00:00 in the UK and that must be the purest of pure coincidences.

Being unable to go back to sleep, I did some work on the computer, worked on one of the Rock Music programmes that I do for Radio Anglais, and then emptied all of my bags and suitcases and weeded out the tubbish. And found, to my dismay, that while I had brought back my winter coat as well as my winter fleece, having resolved to leave one of them behind in Montreal, I’ve also somehow managed to leave behind all of my clothes. All I have is what I’m wearing plus the clothes that I was wearing up until I had my shower at Crown Point the other evening. That called for a clothes-washing session under the shower at 05:00, which wouldn’t have been so bad had I remembered to bring back the washing soap.

I’ve also managed to forget to bring back all of the SD cards for the computer, which is annoying to say the least. I can’t even think where they might be because I did sort through the boxes before I put them away in my storage unit, and they didn’t come to light there. So I dunno.

Trixi had us all outside to watch the sunrise over Aegina and then we started the yoga. Trixi teaches Dru Yoga, not that I know anything about it, but I was surprised that some of the relaxation and de-stressing techniques that I have been using for years are mirrored in Yoga (which is probably why they work) and so I wasn’t actually far behind the rest of the group.

That took us up to 09:00 and breakfast, and then following a relaxation, we had our singing sessions from 11:30 until 13:00. I don’t care what anyone else says – I still sing like a vache espagnole and I always will, but it’s why I’m here and it’s why I’ve paid for this course so I ought to have my money’s worth.

While everyone else was at lunch I went for a walk around the little town to look at the scenery and the buildings. I found a bakery and bought a small loaf, and also a tomato from over the road in the greengrocer’s. Sitting on the beach and eating the bread and tomato was a good way to enjoy the sun.

Back at our lodgings everyone else was in the water swimming but I’m having to forego that pleasure. The sea bed at the shore shore is full of sea urchins this time of year and with not having any footwear for the water, it would be extremely painful to step on an urchin.

Another Yoga session was from 17:30 until 19:00, followed by dinner. And I’m being looked after really well by the chef (also called Eric). Trixi and I and one or two others sat up until all hours in the evening chatting about old times. After all, I first met Trixi … errrr … 48 years ago when she had this gorgeous long hair way down past her waist and until a chance meeting last November, I hadn’t seen her since 1972.

+39

-5

Sunday 2nd May 2010 – As you may well have noticed by now …

… I spend an awful lot of my time on these pages bemoaning the “great clear-up” of French hedgerows and fields in the 1990s that saw thousands and thousands of interesting old French cars depart for the smelter – a national tragedy.

If I were still with Nerina, she would be quite pleased because our summer holidays in the 1980s consisted of us going to France and me abandoning her in a country lane while I leapt over a hedgerow armed with my old Cosina to snap something interesting that I had found.

So today was just like old times as I travelled along a road down which I have travelled hundreds of times before, did a quick double-take over something that I have never noticed before, did a u-turn through the traffic and disappeared over a hedge into a field, armed this time with my Pentax.

I’ve no idea what it is as I couldn’t get close enough but the long bonnet, wings and running boards puts it at the late 1950s at the latest. It’s restored a little bit of my faith in rural France anyway – I don’t know how I could have missed this vehicle considering all the times that I’ve driven down here.

Strangely enough, I was on my way back from an agricultural machinery surplus sale at St Gervais d’Auvergne. I’d been to see if there was anything worthwhile for me to buy for here but it was a waste of time. Just probably 20 items for sale, most of which was heavy stuff. There was a tractor for sale – a huge thing – made in 2006 and the price they wanted for it was €46000. God alone knows how much it must have cost when new. Who says farmers are poor and impoverished?

At the same time as the agricultural machinery sale, there was also a vintage vehicle exhibition. That was really the main reason why I’d come out this morning.

However, it wasn’t all that impressive. There were all of about 10 vehicles on display, most of which I have seen at other shows in the neighbourhood. This is a Renault lorry of the early 1950s and I think that it might be a Type R2161, the famous 2.5T

I bumped into Liz and Terry too – they were fuelling up at the petrol station across the road. That was the highlight of the visit to St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Back at the footy, Pionsat’s 3rd XI were playing Effiat. Effiat are propping up the division and so this was a match that Pionsat couldn’t afford to lose. The game was arranged for two weeks hence but Effiat asked if it could be moved forward, to which Pionsat agreed. Of course this weekend is a blank weekend in the calendar (it’s a bank holiday) and so no other matches are being played. And cynics might think that in this desperate struggle at the foot of the table Effiat have decided to play today so that they can reinforce their team with players from their 1st and 2nd XI.

Indeed, the team that took the field bore no resemblance at all to the team that Pionsat beat back in December. The players were younger, fitter and keener.

But once again, Pionsat not only had a full team out (including one player from the 2nd XI who needed some match practice), they could afford the luxury of Eric, Jerome and Marc on the bench – 3 stalwarts of the team.

Another regular from the team couldn’t get a game and Thomas of the 1st XI and one or two others had turned up “just in case” the 3rd XI was short-handed, but they weren’t needed.

And they weren’t needed indeed.

Pionsat matched them ball-for-ball and with the luxury of 3 keen players on the bench giving the tired legs of the defence a rest every so often Pionsat prevailed by 2 goals to 0. And quite right too – they really did play well.

The season is over for them now and they ended up finishing 6th out of 10 – a far cry from where they were at the end of November anchored at the bottom of the table. They’ve struggled along in fits and starts but kept on going when things were against them. And a couple of unlikely results have helped them, as well as a good goal difference. Strange as it is to say it, losing 6-1 to Manzat was something of a triumph as 2 weeks ago Manzat beat another team at the foot of the table by a whopping 19-0.

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Sunday 21st March 2010 – One thing that has been missing from these pages …

… has been “old cars”. I don’t mean the Merc and the Cortina and the old Transit, that have graced these pages just recently – I mean the real stuff.

If Nerina were here right now she would tell you of our holidays in Europe during which I spent most of my time scavenging around in hedgerows for the real old stuff, like this … errrr… Studebaker Champion from about 1950.

This (or rather the first model for this one is a type two) was the car that saved Studebaker from bankruptcy. A big straight-six sidevalve engine that was phenomenally economical for its day and during the petrol rationing in the USA during World War II this car sold like hot cakes.

So what is it doing here in St Pardoux? Especially as it is sporting California licence plates.

Talking of sporting, I was in St Pardoux on my way to somewhere near Maringues to watch Pionsat’s 3rd XI play ES Thuret. Pionsat had 10 players and Thuret were complete but Pionsat still gave them a good run for their money and the game finished, surprisingly, 0-0. It’s the only game so far that I didn’t take any action photos, for the simple reason that there was no action.

Well, there was – in the second half a Pionsat defender whalloped the ball into touch (they’ve been clearly reading my notes) and a girl – and a girly girl at that – who happened to be walking around the ground – she caught it fully and completely in a fashion that any goalkeeper would have been proud of. And the cheers from the crowd were encouraging.

And not to be out-done, a high clearance into touch fell just nicely for me and I headed it back on the volley into play and into the arms of Xavier who was running up to take the throw-in. Again, this was greeted by enormous cheers from the crowd.

But this has got me thinking. This was a basement clash between two of the worst clubs in the entire Puy-de-Dome league. The standard was appalling and I’ve had enough of this so I spoke to Jerome, the organiser of the team, and he’s agreed that I can come and join in the training on Wednesday evenings. And I spoke to Terry when I got home, and he’s coming along to the training too. We probably won’t get to play at all, but at least it’ll get us both up to a decent level of fitness.

You would think that we were both old enough to know better.

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Saturday 13th February 2010 – I must have been tired last night.

Crashing out for a couple of hours and then going to bed early and then sleeping through the cacophony that is my series of alarm clocks and not waking up until 10:24. At least I’m feeling better though today. I think it must be all of these bad nights of sleep catching up on me.

This morning that strange gold thing put in a brief appearance up in the sky so I quickly climbed up onto the roof and brushed off the solar panels. I caught a few amp-hours of sun before the heavens clouded over again. But I also dug Caliburn out of his snowdrift and went for a spin up the lane to see if I could get out. Good job I have my new snow tyres because I did manage to make the public highway with a little bit of luck and perseverence. A wise decision to get these tyres, I’ll tell you.

So with a little tidying up I came up here and carried on reading my book. It’s called The 91 before Lindberghand it details all of the successful Transatlantic air crossings before “The Flying Fool”. It’s a fascinating book, especially for me, because as you know I have quite an interest in historic aviation and on one occasion while poking around on an old industrial estate on Long Island I came across a replica of the “Spirit of St Louis” and I had the extreme pleasure of being able to sit at the controls.

Furthermore the book recounts the early airship developments for Transatlantic flight that took place at Atlantic City in New Jersey – another place that I have visited – and then goes on to talk about the legendary near-miss between an airship and a four-masted schooner at Barnegat Lighthouse, yet another one of my haunts.

After that, seeing as there was a gap in the snowfall I went into St Eloy to do some shopping and pick up some gas. I was going to say “nip” into St Eloy but in third gear at 25mph all the way then “nip” it was not. It was an awkward drive but I managed okay and I’m now stocked well up for whatever else this weather can throw at us.

In other news, it’s the 25th anniversary round about now of an event that could have got Nerina and yours truly five years inside without the option. We’d seen a house that we liked and so we put Gainsborough Road on sale and priced it for a quick conclusion. Unfortunately the owners of our dream house wouldn’t reduce the price by very much and the only offers we were getting for Gainsborough Road would have left us with a shortfall.

Now you might think that a mortgage or a bank loan would be the answer but we were both self-employed running my taxi business. And with taxi businesses being what they call “cash businesses” the cash had a tendency to … errr … evaporate long before it made its way into the accounts so the accounts only bore what might be described as “a passing resemblance” to the true state of affairs of our business. We could easily afford the kind of loan that we needed but the accounts didn’t seem to bear it out.

So what we did was that we scratched around for work – any kind of work at any price and it didn’t matter at all if we were never ever going to be paid to do it as long as it looked good on paper – and heaved it into the accounts of the taxi business. It vastly inflated our “recorded” turnover and made everything look so impressive. So much so that the Bank loved our figures and started to heave huge wads of cash at us.

Luckily – and I mean luckily – the chain collapsed. The house we were interested in was taken off the market and so we took mine off and handed the cash back. And why “luckily”? For the simple reason that going to dubious, if not spurious means to inflate your company’s turnover for the purpose of getting an additional loan from a bank or a building society almost inevitably guarantees you a one-way ticket to Shrewsbury nick (or in Nerina’s case, Styal) because sooner or later your little fraud and deception will be uncovered.

Running my taxi business for eight years taught me an awful lot and many of the things that I learnt I would have been better off not knowing. But then again what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I had a few incredibly lucky escapes. When I realised all of the risks that I had been running it completely spoiled my appetite for nefarious activities and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It’s not something that I would advise anyone else to do. If you need to go to these lengths to support your lifestyle then you need to change your lifestyle to one that you can support and if you can’t do that on your own then you need to find professional help.

-6

Friday 22nd January 2010 – all the charging circuits shut down today.

What happens is that the solar (or wind) charge during the day gradually increases the charge in the battery from the overnight figure (about 12.4-12.5 volts is a good figure) up to about 14.1 volts if it’s a good day.

Once it’s at that figure it maintains the charge for a short while to give the batteries a chance to warm up inside and to shake loose any oxides that have accumulated, and then it goes into PWM mode, which is where it distributes the charge equally over all of the batteries and balances the incoming charge against the outgoing load.

When it’s happy with all of that it goes into FLOAT mode where the circuits close down until the charge in the battery drops to about 13.4 volts, and then it all starts up again and we repeat the cycle.

So today was the first day since October (I think) that we all went into FLOAT mode, even with the fridge running throughout the day. Three good days of solar charge has done wonders for my system.

This morning I was woken up by Antoine ringing me. Mind you, it was almost 10:00. I’d slept through all of the alarms again. I’ll have to do something about that. Then Antoine phoned me again, Claude came round for a chat, Liz phoned me twice and Francois phoned me once. I’m still in demand as you can see. I’ve never been so popular.

Today I made a start on the garden. I’m resiting my vegetable plot as you know and so I need to clear a place to move the old Ford Transit, the Merc and the British Salt Cortina because it’s under where they are currently that the vegetable garden will be. Back in 2002 all of this was cleared out but all these years of neglect has seen bushes, shrubs, brambles and trees grow right around everything. First job was to cut down a tree that was about 15 feet high and about 2 inches in diameter. That’s grown since 2002!

I could get at the back of the old Transit then and so I took off the towbar. I’m going to let Terry have it to fit on his new van. His is a 2005 model and rear wheel drive so it should fit okay and the tow bar is doing no good at all to anyone, rusting down a field. Older readers of my blog will remember the old Transit. I was on my way to a ferry at Caen to go to the UK for my OU science lab work when I had a puncture. You know that I prefer steel-belted radial tyres to textile belted ones. I’d been travelling at high-speed for hours and so the tyres were quite hot, and the blow-out occurred with such force that it blew the tread and the belting off the tyre. The steel belting spun round like a flail and ripped out the side of the van and the nearside wheel-arch and floor. Mind you, the van was 16 years old and it had seen much better days but it was still a mess and not fit to be driven on the highway after that.

But it’s going to be a lot of work to do this garden. I’ll have to start making the borders for my raised beds.

In other news, the UK is getting weirder and weirder. Some woman has been given a suspended prison sentence for breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. And the Anti-Social Behaviour Order she has breached? Well, her moans and groans during lovemaking are too loud for her neighbours, and they played a tape of it in the courtroom. Personally, I cannot imagine anything so pathetic. I reckon that what it is is that the neighbours are just thoroughly jealous. I remember telling Nerina that it would be nice if she would moan while we were making love. And sure enough, half-way through the next performance she said “when are you going to paint this ceiling? It’s been like this for 5 years. And the walls need papering too …“

Mind you, I did once live next door to a couple whose lovemaking was exceptionally noisy. But never mind the ASBO – I always wanted to give them a round of applause when they finished. But you know how it is – you can’t clap with just one hand.

-8

Saturday 7th November 2009 – I almost did something today …

… that I haven’t done for over 10 years. That is – I went to the swimming baths for a swim. I’d done my monthly shop around Montlucon with plenty of time to spare and on the way back I stopped off at Neris-les-Bains where there is a public swimming baths. I’ve been there before during last winter to take my showers there but I really fancied a swim. And I always carry a holdall in the van with some washing stuff, some clean undies, a towel and a pair of trunks.

And of course, as you might expect, it was closed for the week for pool cleaning.

Neris is an old Roman spa town. It’s quite pretty and genteel – the kind of place that you would take your maiden aunt for afternoon tea. There’s a thermal baths there – something along the lines of Malvern – where you can go for a relaxing cure. It’s pretty good for the stress, so they say. So I wandered along to see if they could fix me up with a shower or something, seeing as I was here.

“Actually, we are closing today” said the receptionist.
“When are you reopening?”
“The 27th of March” she replied. You can see that it was my lucky day.
“Can I come without an appointment for a shower or a bath without signing up for a cure?”
“Certainly“
“So how much would that cost?”
And when she told me the price, I needed to sign up for a cure in order to recover from the shock. Prices start at €53:00. And here I am, complaining about €2:90 for a shower!

She gave me a leaflet with all of the details of the cures that are on offer. One of the things that they propose is a mudbath. Dunno why anyone would expect me to sign up for that – with all of the rain that we have had these last few days I have my own private mudbath just outside the front door. Admittedly it doesn’t have marble walls and floozies handing round the towels, but it doesn’t cost … gulp … €334 either.

Mind you, I do recall the time that I sent Nerina to have a mudpack applied to her face. They reckoned it would improve her appearance.
“Has it worked?” she asked when she came back
“Absolutely” I replied, “but it’s all worn off now“
Mind you, she enjoyed herself while she was having a weekend at this spa. She phoned me up to say that with all the treatments she had had, she was feeling like a new woman.
“So am I” I replied

This evening I went down to Pionsat to watch the 3rd XI play Thuret, but the ground was totally in darkness. You can see that it was my lucky day today! From the top of the hill just round the corner from me I can see right across the valley and I noticed that the floodlights were on at Marcillat’s ground, about 12 km from here so I drove over there instead. Some of Pionsat’s players were there watching Marcillat play Montvicq and they told me that the match had been rearranged for last week and the team had actually won! And I missed it too!

Marcillat play in Allier’s 2nd Division. That’s the same level as Pionsat’s 2nd XI, but the quality of football was probably lower 3rd Division based on Puy-de-Dome standards. Pretty much agricultural stuff. Marcillat won 5-1 (Montvicq’s goal was a Marcillat “own goal”) without breaking sweat, and I don’t think that Montvicq would score if they were still playing now with Marcillat having been off the pitch for the last two hours.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to watch the 1st XI at Artonne – I’ve never been there for a match. And that reminds me. I was in Brico Depot today and one of the assistants came over and started chatting to me quite socially.
“Who on earth is this?” I asked myself.
Anyway, after a lengthy discussion he asked “are you coming to watch us tomorrow?” Ahh yes. Pionsat footballer. What with Pionsat FC pie hut attendants working at the Auchan and footballers working at Brico Depot, I can see that I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour everywhere that I go. That’ll be quite a change.

+10

-10

Friday 30th October 2009 – I forgot …

… to take a photo of yeasterday’s efforts so I took one first thing this morning.

You can see my paste table – two trestles and a couple of bits of OSB, but saying that it’s a paste table is somewhat of an exaggeration seeing as what I’m doing is actually pasting the walls instead. So you might as well say that it’s a cutting table.

But this fibreglass wallpaper is awful and I hate it. It’s making me itch, which is one thing, and it’s dreadful quality stuff. But at least it’s cheap and easy to hang when you are on your own

But I’m useless at wallpapering and I hate doing it. I remember the time when the long-suffering Nerina asked me to help her to wallpaper and paint the walls in Gainsborough Road back in 1991.
“I hate decorating” I said. “Whoever invented decorating wants f***ing!“
“That’s not what you said on our wedding night” she replied. “You said that whoever invented f***ing wants decorating!”

This is today’s photo and you can see that it’s taken in the evening as it’s dark outside, if you look through the door. The four LED lights give quite a pleasing effect to the room, don’t you think?

If you look closely you can see that all of the walls are now papered and ready for painting, which I may well do tomorrow seeing as there’s no footy this weekend.

And if you look closely you can’t see the scaffolding tower that has been up there since we had no roof on the premises back in July. With the now-redundant woodstove in position you can’t manoeuvre the scaffolding around the walls and in any case the step stool is a little higher and much easier to move around.

In the wooden boz is my bed-settee and I can’t wait to set it up. I’m looking forward to having my first night’s kip on it and that can be any day now.

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Tuesday 1st September 2009 – AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE …

… you can always tell how engrossed in a task I am by what time I knock off.

Knocking-off time is usually 18:00 or thereabouts, so no-one was more surprised than me to notice that I was still up here painting at 19:20 and it was only the light that started to disappear that made me sit up and notice.

Mind you, the attic is now painted and it looks quite nice as you can see. Very Tudor-esque – in fact it reminds me of the time Nerina was interested in buying a Morris Minor Traveller and took me along to see it. It needed quite a bit of work, including a new paint job.
“We can paint it white and do the woodwork black, and it will look like a Tudor cottage” I suggested
“The roof has a couple of dents in it” she said.
“Don’t worry about that. No-one will notice when I’ve thatched it”

In fact, if I put a floor down tomorrow, I could quite easily move into there tomorrow night. But I’m not going to – I’m going to do it properly.

If you look at the bottom corner – in centre-pic, you’ll notice that the paint looks pretty thin. In fact, the “plaster” in that corner was just running sand and every time I put a brush of paint up against it, a pile of sand fell off. After an hour or so of messing about, I came up with the solution (in more ways than one). I mixed up a couple of litres of water with a small amount of cement so that it was just grey water, and I painted it liberally over the sand until it had well soaked in.

Then I made a thicker mixture and painted that over. And then a third, thicker one. And then when it had dried, I painted over it with the acrylic paint. That seems to have done the job.

What helps when you are working is some decent music, and I had a lucky dip into the cassette box all day, picking cassettes at random. Lucky find from a long-forgotten past was Runrig’s Cutter and the Clan. A long time since I’ve heard that.

A fine folk-rock band, Runrig, and living proof, as the rest of the non-English-speaking world will already be able to tell you, that good rock music is good rock music even though you might not be able to understand the lyrics. “Alba”, the track that opens the album, is a good thumping rocker, even if the lyrics translated from the Gaelic into English read
“We hate all English-speaking b@$t@rd$ and when we catch one alive we will pull off his testicles and shove them up his @r$e”

Keyboard player with Runrig is Pete Wishart, Scottish MP and former keyboard player with Big Country. I met him at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg a few years ago before he joined Runrig.
“I’m a Big Country member” he told me.
“That’s right” I replied. “I remember”.

It’s rained more-or-less non-stop all day and we have had 9mm of rain. It looked for a while like this magnificent summer might have finally come to an end, but I’ve just been outside and it’s clear blue (yes, blue – there’s a bright moon outside) sky. So it might pick up again and summer might carry on. But you’ve no idea how satisfying it is to be working in the attic and hear the torrential rain and be grateful for the magnificent job that we did on this roof.

-2

Monday 31st August 2009 – WA-HEY!

I now have all the windows fitted in the attic.

What I spent today doing was installing the two windows that I bought on Saturday. But don’t worry – Auvergnat window-fitters can rest in peace as I shan’t be challenging them with my technical abilities.

The smaller of the two windows was a little too big for its hole and they didn’t have a smaller one, so yours truly got out the cheap electric plane that he had bought ages ago and never used, and put it to work.

That soon sorted out the vertical height adjustment. There was the opposite problem in the horizontal plane (not the one I’d been using to shorten the height) so I attached the window into place by using some small right-angled brackets (I bought a job lot of 100 for a quid ages ago and they are worth their weight in gold) screwed to the side of the frame and screwed to the face of the window opening.

And then I used a couple of pieces of wood as vertical shuttering and filled in the big gaps with a pile of cement. And an impressive job it turned out to be.

The big window was just about the right size horizontally (with judicious use of a sledgehammer and large chisel around the brickwork) and slightly too short in the vertical. So I screwed it to the lintel and fastened it into the sides with half a dozen of those “knock-through” screws and rawlplugs.

I then put some wood on the sill to use as a form of ad-hoc shuttering on the outside of the window and then filled it with cement underneath from the inside.

And that turned out to be a neat job too. It hardly required any facing on the outside.I then pointed it up out and in. And you can tell how much I was enjoying what I was doing by the fact that it was 18:45 when I noticed the time and called it a day.

Tomorrow I’ll be painting the rest of the walls with the white paint I bought on Saturday. I want to get all of the insulation in by Friday.

I came across a cassette by “Men At Work” … "you mean ‘persons exercising traditional labour practices’" – ed … a fine old Australian band better known for “A Land Down Under” but they did much better stuff than that.

Two Hearts is a more ballady-type of album and not a particular favourite of mine, although Nerina liked it. On the other hand, Cargo rocks along quite nicely and is probably the best of their albums.

The best track on Cargo, and the best that Men At Work ever recorded, is a song called “No Restrictions”. It begins with the lyrics “There are no restrictions on what I do or say”, so you can tell that it was written a very long time ago. I wonder what on earth they would sing today.

It totally appalls me to see how many freedoms that westerners had 10 years ago have all been eroded away to nothing by fascist governments labouring under the guise of “Socialists”.

And what is even more appalling is that it only seems to be me and a handful of others who care about it.

But of course, during the decline of the Roman Empire, those in power gave the masses “bread and circuses” to keep them occupied so that they didn’t notice. With the decline of the British Empire, those in power have given the masses 24-hour drinking and 500 channels on the TV to keep them quiet.

And instead of Rollerball to distract them, there’s always West Ham v Millwall.

-4

EPIC HALL

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