Category Archives: football

Sunday 25th February 2018 – WHAT ODDS …

… would you have had on a team 3-1 down, with two of four minutes of added time played, coming back to snatch a draw?

Yes, an exciting football match in the Welsh Premier League this evening with Aberystwyth Town playing Carmarthen. And Aberystwyth running away with the game until a dramatic substitution late in the game threw on a reserve centre-forward who is clearly made of granite.

And Carmarthen could even have snatched a winner too – they wrestled possession away from Aberystwyth from the restart after their third goal and raced upfield, and only a dramatic save from Chris Mullock at point-blank range saved Aberystwyth from one of the most dramatic collapses that I have ever seen.

st pair us st pairaise es saussey football manche normandy franceAs for the football that I saw this afternoon, that was dramatic too, but for different reasons.

With it being a cup weekend, there should have been no local football but several clubs took the opportunity to catch up on some of their postponed matches.

US St Pairaise and ES Saussey in the Departmental Third Division were two of those. So in the nice sunny but windy weather I headed out to St Pair.

Saussey won the match 2-0 which was a rather harsh scoreline. St Pair had their fair share of the play but found a couple of centre-backs who looked far too good for this level – even in the warm-up you could see that nothing would get past them – and when it did they found a keeper in excellent form.

But the difference was really that although Saussey didn’t have many chances, they took the ones that they had. One was a poor clearance headed back over the defence to a forward running on, who rounded the St Pair keeper really well to score, and the second was one of those goalmouth melees with another poor clearance played back into the melting pot.

However that wasn’t the most exciting part of the match. This was really a grusge match between two teams who clearly hated each other, and the referee had his work cut out to keep order. How the teams finished with 11 on each side is beyond me. The Saussey player who scored the first goal – he had loads of skill for this level and St Pair gave him some rough treatment, to which he responded quite often in a manner that had he done so on the public highway he would have been given 30 days without the option. On a couple of occasions his team-mates, and once even the referee, had to drag him away from some unpleasantness and eventually he was substituted for 15 minutes to calm down.

And he wasn’t the only one whose behaviour left something to be desired so no-one should think that I’m singling him out. Several of the other players ought to have a close look at their own behaviour on the pitch too.

Still it all adds to the atmosphere I suppose.

Talking of unpleasantness, I shall be very unpleasant if I lay my hands of the person who sent me a text message at about 06:00 this morning. On Sunday, my day of rest too!

But badger that for a game of soldier, I went back to sleep until 09:30. And quite right too.

And this morning I’m not ashamed to say that I did nothing whatever. After all, it IS Sunday.

After lunch it was the football, and then back here it was more football of course as I mentioned at the start.

Tea, rather late because of the football, was pizza of course and I have to say that it was the best that I have ever made. Just for a change, the base came clear of the greaseproof paper without any problems at all. And the rest was excellent too.

A late tea meant a late walk. And the temperature has dropped again considerably. And now I’m going to bed.

But we’ll finish where we started – with the football on the internet. And I’m really glad that I bought this television because it makes such a difference watching it on the big screen.

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Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

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Friday 16th February 2018 – MY NEIGHBOURS …

… are getting on my wick.

I dunno what they are doing in their room but involves noise – noise that goes on until 04:00 in the morning.

It’s not as if it’s a very loud noise but the walls are paper-thin here and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a very light sleeper.

And so with my noisy neighbours next door, I had no qualms whatever about my very noisy alarm going off at 06:20 this morning. Or the noisy repeat at 06:30.

But despite everything I was off on my travels during the night.In a shed where a group of young kids had barricaded themselves in to protect themselves against some kind of monster. But they had left their pony outside in its stable in the field and someone was wondering if they should protect that too. But another kid piped up that if you spread out your forces too thinly to try to protect everything you end up protecting nothing. So they didn’t. And the monster’s attack on this shed was very half-hearted and the pony was unscathed.
A little later, these kids were looking for their black kitten that had escaped. The search involved wading up to their knees in some very muddy water much to the amusement of some nearby workmen, and this became even more amusing when one of the kids had made it into the water and the kitten was spotted running across the top of a brick wall nearby.

After breakfast and the usual pause to let the medication do its stuff (yes, I obtained another prescription when I was at the hospital) I went off to the railway station.

intercity train railway station leuven belgium february février 2018There was an Intercity to Brussels that was running late, and it pulled into the station just as I arrived so I leapt on board and settled down in a comfortable corner with my book.

And as a result of the late arrival of the train, I for one arrived in Brussels at the Gare Central before time, which is always very nice.

The metro was quite painless too – took me all the way to Merode in minutes.

Consequently I was early at my health insurance people, even though we had another distraction.

bad parking avenue tervuren brussels belgium february février 2018Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a thing about “parking”, and there are no finer examples of bad parking to be had than in Brussels.

Here we have a delivery van stopped to unload a couple of parcels and so he’s blocking the street as he double-parks.

But hed he not been so lazy, he could have advanced not even 10 metres and parked his van for two minutes in front of the dark blue Peugeot.

But obviously walking that extra 10 metres is far too difficult for the poor dear.

So back to the plot.

I presented myself at the reception.
“You’ll have to wait – it’s not 09:30 yet”
“But …”
“You’ll have to wait”.
And so I waited
At 09:29 “it’ll be open in a minute. Can you show me your badge?”
“I don’t have a badge – I’m a foreign visitor”
“Then you’ll need to go to reception to fill in a form”.
“I know. That’s what I was trying to do when you stopped me”

Eventually I was allowed in and, to be frank, I needn’t have bothered. When I’ve been there before, they’ve been most kind and considerate in that office.

But not today. I dunno what’s the matter with them but they just seemed to be more keen to see the back of me. I didn’t accomplish half of the things that I intended to do.

parc de la cinquantenaire brussels belgium february février 2018But instead, I went for awalk across the park and down to the Rond-Point Schuman. It was a beautiful morning.

The park is the Parc de la Cinquantenaire – the 50th Anniversary Park, and was established by King Leopold II in 1880 (although the huge arch wasn’t built until 1905) on the site of a military parade ground for the nearby barracks, to host an exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence.

Several subsequent exhibitions were held here until the new site out by the Atomium was developed.

parrots parc de la cinquantenaire brussels belgium february février 2018Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned parrots in Belgium before.

There was an aviary in the city that was bombed during the war and all of the exotic birds escaped. Surprisingly, many of them survived the cold winters and went on to establish breeding colonies in the wild.

There are considerable flocks of these exotic birds all over the city these days, and here are two of the aforementioned sitting in a tree in the park. It’s hard to believe that this is a city in north-west Europe with a continental climate.

At the bank I picked up two of my cards (for some reason the third hadn’t been prepared and I’ll have to go back) and even more surprisingly, they work. That’s all of my financial issues resolved right now – for the time being. I can actually access my money now.

Back down on the metro to the Gare Centrale and Malou turned up on time.She’d been out on the Belgian coast for a holiday and was returning to Luxembourg. We’d agreed to meet up for coffee seeing as it’s been years since we last met.

We put the world to rights for a couple of hours and then we both went our separate ways. She on to Luxembourg and me back to Leuven.

There were still a few things that I had wanted to do here in Brussels like visit the railway museum, and this was what I had planned for this afternoon. But having had a bad night, I came home instead.

Via the Vegan shop in Leuven where I picked up some more vegan cheese. I came back here, made myself a cheese and tomato butty or two, and then … errr … relaxed for a while. I’d had a bad night.

18:00 saw me head off to the railway station for my train at 18:36. And because it was departing before 19:00 I had to pay full price and not a weekend saver ticket.

And the train was 20 minutes late coming in and – would you believe – 23 minutes later still in leaving (just missing the 45 minutes-late threshold for compensation) Which meant that I could have bought a weekend saver anyway.

We arrived in Lier 45 minutes late which meant that I had to scramble over the road for my big bag of chips for tea, and then scramble off in a hurry down the road to Het Lisp.

het lisp stadion lier belgium february février 2018No prizes for guessing why I had come to Lier, of course.

There’s one game in the Belgian Second Division on a Friday night every week, and this week it’s the turn of Lierse SK against KSV Roeselare.

Lier is easily accessible from Leuven even late at night (or early in the morning) so it’s always a good choice of ground to visit.

cheerleaders het lisp stadion lier belgium february février 2018With KSV Roeselare being the visitors, I was hoping that we might have the Battle of the Cheerleaders.

Both teams have cheerleaders, which is always very good for the morale, but I do have to say that the young ones of Roeselare can knock spots off the home team. Much better organised and much better choreographed.

But no such luck. It was just the Lierse SK cheerleaders here tonight. It’s better than nothing of course.

het lisp stadion lier belgium february février 2018Cheerleaders we might have, but fans we didn’t seem to.

I’ve been to Lier and the Het Lisp Stadion on several occasions to see the football, but I don’t think that I’ve seen the ground as empty as this.

It’s not quite the “announcing the fan changes to the teams” that you have at Tubize, but it was disappointing all the same. And there wasn’t much in the way of atmosphere to compensate. It was all very subdued.

het lisp stadion lier belgium february février 2018The supporters weren’t the only thing that was subdued either. The Lierse SK team played like they were half asleep. They had little enthusiasm, little attacking spirit and, so it seemed, little interest.

Strangely enough, Roeselare didn’t seem to be in all that much of an attackign mood either, content to move the ball around ahead of the defence.

It wasn’t until about the 25th minute when they first tried the ball over the top. And a player running in shot, the keeper could only parry it, and a Roeselare attacker followed up.

Roeselare still kept on pouring forward, and much to everyone’s surprise Lierse SK scored against the run of play.

Well into the second hald, the first time they tried one over the top and won a corner. From the corner we had a carbon copy of Roeselare’s goal.

The match still went on at a pedestrian pace from Lierse SK’s point of view and with about 10 minutes to go, Roeselare were awarded a penatly – which was saved.

This had the effect of switching on the current to the Lierse SK side and they started to attack. The final 10 or so minutes of the game were quite exciting.

In stoppage time, Lierse won a series of corners and had two (dubious) appeals for a penalty turned down. And so as you might expect, Roeselare roared upfield and scored the winner with almost the final kick of the game.

I was back on the station just in time to catch the earlier direct train to Leuven, which cheered me up no end. So I was back here before midnight.

But my neighbours are partying again. I think that it’s going to be another long night.

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Saturday 10th February 2018 – IT’S CARNAVAL!!!

And I’ve been out for most of the day.

I have dozens of photos and a good few videos but they aren’t edited yet, so you’ll have to come back over the course of the next few days to catch up with what I was up to.

But during the night I was off on my travels again and found myself, as some people were saying, in Coventry. People in a bar where I was were pointing out the cathedral down in the square at the bottom of the hill, but this was nothing at all like Coventry – the hill was unimaginably steep and it immediately suggested “Oldham” to me – I’m not sure why because in reality it was nothing whatever like Oldham either. Far too “posh”. But as for me, I continued on my way and found a rambling brick complex of buildings, now having the air of being totally deserted and boarded up. I went over for a closer look and found that the decaying noticeboard outside showed evidence of having once had writing in Welsh written upon it. Apparently it was a former school (although what a Welsh-speaking school was doing in Oldham wasn’t clear) and as it happens, there was nothing “former” about it because there were two classes still taking place, despite how derelict and abandoned the place looked. It turned out that one of the classes didn’t have a teacher and seeing as it was the Welsh-speaking class, I volunteered (not like me at all is is, volunteering and teaching?). It all seemed to be going okay until one of the fathers came to see me. He was concerned that his daughter was not doing as well as he thought she should, and that it was all my fault (not hers of course) and wanted me to inflate her marks. “And if I didn’t …”. For the next test she didn’t do so well either so he came back, insisting that I up her marks to 81%. That I refused to do so he whipped out a gun, waved it around under my nose and told me that I would. I gave a weary sigh. I told him that I was old and tired and couldn’t care less, and if he wanted to shoot me then to go ahead because I really was beyond the point of arguing with anyone.

All of this awoke me bolt-upright at 05:21, but no chance of leaving the stinking pit at that time. I curled back under the bedclothes until the alarm went off at the much-more-reasonable time of 06:40.

After breakfast I had an hour or so on the database but for some unknown reason it locked up and that was that. I’m not doing very well with this at all.

But all of a sudden, the memory stick in the hi-fi came to an end. That was the cue for some major amendments.

For the last few weeks the hi-fi has been perched precariously on the bookcase behind me, with wires and cable causing all kinds of problems. So today I moved the old computer hi-fi gear off the shelves where I keep the records and installed it there.

To make that work I had to drill four holes in the back of the unit, and feed all of the cables through for the mains power, the aerial lead and the two speakers – and lengthened the speaker wires with the cable that I bought last week.

Feeding the mains cable through the back meant cutting off the moulded plug – but I’d bought a replacement so that wasn’t an issue.

With the extra lengths of cable I now have the stereo speakers far enough apart to have real stereo sound and that is definitely progress. I’m very happy with my set-up now.

And remember the memory sticks that I bought yesterday? I made up another one (there’s four just now) and made a note of the albums that are on each memory stick so that I don’t double them up.

After lunch I went down to the carnaval to see the childrens’ procession. And I’ll tell you much more about that in due course when I’ve organised all of the photos that I took. I will say that I was impressed.

However, I did feel out of place in civvies. Exactly the opposite to the time when I was in Jerusalem and due to a misunderstanding, I was the only one at the Wailing Wall who was carrying a harpoon.

There was someone there carrying a girl sitting on his shoulders.
“What are you supposed to be?” I asked him
“I’m a snail” he replied
“And what about the girl on your shoulders?”
“She’s Michelle”.

And there was a character there dressed all in brown with little green bits stuck to him
“What about you?” I asked
“I’m a character from ‘Star Trek'”
“Which one?”
“Captain’s log”.

It quietened down later in the afternoon but by now the rain was coming down heavier (it goes without saying of course that it was raining all day) so rather than hang around, I came home for a coffee.

Later on I braved the cold and rain to go up to the Stade Louis Dior for the football. US Granville were playing the reserves of Lorient – a professional team.

And they looked it too – much fitter, quicker, sharper. And I particularly liked the way that they sped about the field to close down the Granville players whenever they had the ball. It’s long been my complaint, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that teams give their opponents far too much time and space on the ball.

But Lorient spent most of the match trying to pass the ball into the net. They had probably 65% of the possession but were comparatively ineffective up front. They just weren’t direct enough and hardly made a single killer pass. And when they did beat the keeper, a Granville defender was behind him to clear off the line.

Their big blond n°9 was quite ineffective and didn’t contribute much at all, but one thing that he did do was to continually harass the defence and the keeper whenever they were playing the ball around at the back. And he harried them on several occasions into hasty, wayward clearances and a couple of occasions into losing possession in dangerous places, situations that would have undone Granville with a more attack-minded team.

Granville were quite subdued today – the efforts of playing three matches in 7 days is probably too much, and so a 0-0 draw was about right. But it was a good match for all of that.

ON the way back I went round the funfair to see what was happening and take some photos, so that’s another pile to organise.

But again I didn’t hang about. I was frozen to the marrow and soaked to the skin. How I’m going to regret this.

A tin of ratatouille with pasta was fine for tea and now I’m off to bed. It’s Sunday – a lie in, and with 148% of my daily activity accomplished, I need it too.

I’ll be dead to the world in a minute, and I hope that I can have a really good, long sleep.

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Sunday 4th February 2018 – 07:30 …

… is no time to leave the bed on a Sunday

09:15 is however much more like it, so I’m glad that I turned over and went back to sleep when I awoke earlier.

It also gave me a chance to go back on my travels too. I’d started off living in a room in some woman’s house – some woman whom I know in real life but I can’t think now of who she is. And we were joined by a young girl who had fled her own home and was looking for refuge. This girl was, like most teenagers, not very reliable. She needed an early start every morning so this woman arranged to wake up quite early ready to have her breakfast ready. One particular morning I needed to see this girl so I made a special effort to be up and about early. However when I arrived downstairs in the kitchen, the woman there showed me a note to the effect that the girl was saying that she wasn’t in the house and furthermore, she wouldn’t be back. We both felt rather disappointed that she hadn’t said anything about leaving, especially after the effort that it required to be up and about early.
A little later I was out on my horse on the Plains of North America and came across this sad, tired homestead. In there on her own was some woman in a red dress. For some reason she attracted my attention despite being a very scrawny unkempt woman (but then, on the frontier of North America in those days there wasn’t exactly a very good choice of woman). However at that moment her husband came back, and I had to pretend to be the local doctor giving the woman a medical examination in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
Later still, there was some television comedy series thing being broadcast. Not that it was of any interest to me but the people with whom I was associated found it very interesting and amusing. The series was then transferred to the theatre where it was merged with some other comedy series. My friends were keen to see it so in the end I succumbed and off we went. But I had a look at the poster outside the theatre where the cast was listed, and it seemed that the stars of the two series weren’t in fact going to be appearing in the play. So that was rather a waste of time.

With it being Sunday, I took it easy this morning. Plodding along with my database of photos. And it really is doing my head in without any doubt at all. Even the simplest task is either beyond the capacity of the program or else it’s beyond my capacity to make it work.

Who could ever have imagined that it would have taken an hour to add in an extra column and make the column fit into the order in which I want it to appear – and that’s in addition to all of the problems that I encountered yesterday?

As I’ve probably said before – back in the early 1990s we had a lightweight Office program called “Works for Windows” and that was our introduction to integrated office suites – and we could make the parts of that program do anything that we wanted – in a matter of seconds – never mind all of this nonsense that I seem to be encountering.

The lunchtime soup was delicious with the added herbs and spices that I added yesterday. It warmed me up nicely. And then I hit the streets.

comcom granville terre et mer manche normandy franceOn my way to the Sports Centre I passed by the building that is the headquarters of the Granville Terre et Mer” Comcom – the Community of Communes.

With many of the French communes being quite small – there’s even one with just one inhabitant – several might group together in a “Comcom” to organise a common water supply or a common refuse collection service or engage a public gardener to be shared between them – all of that kind of thing.

And this beautiful building is the headquarters for the “Comcom” that covers the smaller communes around here.

cite des sports football us granville fc st lo manche normandy franceIt was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Sports Centre, and it would really have been a nice afternoon to be out, except for the bitter, howling wind.

It was really agony to stand here this afternoon, and it didn’t help by the building being closed and so there was no coffee on offer.

I can’t understand the lack of buvette here. It seems to be open whenever I bring a flask, and closed whenever I don’t, as if it knows that I am coming.

cite des sports football us granville fc st lo manche normandy franceUS Granville’s second XI were in action again this afternoon, against FC ST Lo Manche, the league leaders in blue.

The team that is second in the table obliged US Granville by losing, in the only other match to be played in the whole of Normandy, last night. So if can avoid losing today, they will go into second place.

The wind made this match a complete lottery and neither side seemed to be able to play with it and it was rather a scrappy match.

But US Granville did take the lead after half an hour when a cross into the area was headed out indecisively by a defender, right to a US Granville midfielder on the edge of the area. He had all the time in the world to pick his spot and fire into the bottom corner.

At the start of the second half, we had the only time that one of the teams attempted to use the wind to its advantage, and that, I suspect, was more by accident that design.

A high corner taken into the wind that caused a panic-stricken scamble on the St Lo goal-line, and eventually the ball was forced home by a US Granville attacker.

So Granville ran out 2-0 winners, the first team to beat FC St Lo Manche this season and are now in second place in the table. But I still think that their attack is far too lightweight for this level of football.

st pair sur mer granville manche normandy franceJust for a change, I came home a different way, walking down to the coast road.

There’s a good view across to St Pair sur Mer from just here so I stopped to take a photograph, almost being run down by a local policeman in the process.

And then I walked back along the coast road into Granville. I’d never been this way on foot before and it made a nice change to see some different scenery.

7It’s carnaval here next weekend, and all of the fairground lorries are coming into town. There were quite a few streaming past the Sports Centre while I was watching the match.

showman's goods lorry three trailers granville manche normandy franceI was convinced that I saw an artic go past pulling no fewer than THREE trailers, and I was right because I tracked it down in the car park opposite the port.

Generally speaking, a “showman’s goods” licence allows a vehicle to pull a trailer containing his act, another containing his living accommodation and maybe yet another pulling the power unit such as a generator. Nowadays with most sites having mains electricity you don’t ever see the generator, and I suspect that this driver may well have been interpreting the rules in an unduly generous fashion.

Unless, of course, the rules for “showman’s goods” in France are different from in the UK, which is always a possibility. But anyway, it certainly puts my North American roadtrains into perspective.

fairground lorries caravans port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThey are apparently also setting up a fairground on the harbour and as I climbed up the hill towards home I could see all of the lorries and caravans set out on the end of the harbour.

I’ve yet to experience a really good mainland European “Carnaval” and I’m told that the Granville carnaval is one of the best that you can find.

And so I’m quite looking forward to being here when it all happens. Especially when the day after it ends, I have to head for Belgium.

Tea was, of course, vegan pizza. And I didn’t go far for my walk as the wind was astonishing. But no matter – what with the rest of my exertions I’ve done 111% of my daily activities today.

I reckon that I deserve a good sleep.

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Sunday 28th January 2018 – I WAS SOMEWHAT …

… premature yesterday with my comments about my new smartphone. We’re back with this “inability to message” again.

I know that I am receiving SMS messages because I set a special tone for them. But where they are going, I have no idea, because they aren’t coming up on the screen.

And then I’m not able to message out. The “Messenger” program that I downloaded simply won’t send them, and when I try with the default message program, I have an error message “no SIM card is allocated to SMS messages”. And in settings, it shows one SIM card in my phone – the “second SIM card” is greyed out because of course it’s empty, and the “change SIM” option is likewise greyed out.

So it looks like a visit to the service provider yet again tomorrow.

GRRRRR!

And I was right about the night last night – well, almost. It wasn’t 05:00 when I awoke but 05:25 instead. But leave my stinking pit at that time of the morning? Not on your nellus secundus. 09:35, that’s much more like it on a Sunday.

And I’d been on my travels too. Sitting in a sloping field close to a stone wall reading a book, and a group of children led by some old woman came past and started to chat to me. And a surprisingly intellectual chat it was too for a bunch of kids of that age.
Later, I was back home again and our eight cats (yes, eight) were feeding. And feeding with Tuppence (and anyone who remembers Tuppence will see just how impossible that might have been) was a big black-and-white cat, which certainly wasn’t one of mine. And so I asked my partner what it was doing here, and just received an enigmatic smile.

After breakfast, I vegetated around for a while (well, it IS Sunday), chatting to TOTGA who came on the air.

And once lunch was out of the way I set off on foot in the light drizzle.

rugby cité des sports granville manche normandy franceAll the way out to the Sports Centre on the edge of town.

It was another agonising climb up the hill, and then the long walk along the plateau to the Sports Centre. Three pitches there are here, and one was set up for rugby, with the rugby team warming up prior to a match.

Not that it interests me at all – I have no time for games played by men with odd-shaped balls.

football us granville uc bricquebec cité des sports granville manche normandy franceUS GRanville’s second XI was playing, and the match had been transferred to the artificial surface here so at least we had some live football this weekend.

US Granville, who were third in the table and in white, were playing UC Bricquebec who were propping up the rest of the clubs in the table. And for the first half of the match, that’s exactly how it went.

Granville’s wingers, one of whom (the n°7) was called Alexis apparently, were tearing the defenders to shreds down the flanks and the score after 45 minutes of 4-0 was not an exaggeration either. I don’t recall Granville’s keeper having anything serious to do

But at half-time UC Bricuebec made three substitutions which, while not improving the team to the slightest degree, seemed to unsettle US GRanville and they looked as if they had lost their composure.

It took ages for them to get back up to steam before they scored a fifth, and then, unbelievably, they missed a penalty. And that seemed to knock the fight out of them. And even more astonishingly the trainer took off the n°7 after an hour, and with that, US Granville’s attack melted away.

UC Briquebec looked much more like it after that and gave the US Granville defence a few dodgy moments – even scoring from a penalty.

But the scoreline of 5-1 is good enough, although it could have been so much more.

rainstorm jullouville granville manche normandy franceThe light drizzle seemed to ease off on the way home, but I noticed that away in the distance over Jullouville they were having a pasting again. This weather really is miserable.

I came back and had a coffee and a little play on the guitar. I’d been listening to Aqualung – one of the finest rock albums ever made, and I had worked out in my head the bass line to the title track.

So I tracked down a copy on the laptop and played along to it for a while. Brought back many happy memories, that did.

And if I keep going like this, I shall have to start looking for a band.

Vegan pizza again for tea (and I forgot the olives) and then another walk. I’m at 114% of my daily activity which is good news of course.

And now bed-time. We’ll see if this alarm on the new phone works as well as the last one.

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Sunday 14th January 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall telling me … "on many occasions" – ed … that I ought to get out more.

And so with this in mind I went out this afternoon in the beautiful sunlight to St Pair.

football us st pairaise as gavray st pair manche normandy franceUS St Pair were playing AS Gavray so I headed to the stadium in the rue du Croissant.

And I found a really nice stadium, well-maintained with a grandstand and even a social club and pie hut – but of course it goes without saying that both of those were closed.

And furthermore, the match wasn’t played there anyway.

football us st pairaise as gavray st pair manche normandy franceOne of the players pointed me in the direction of the second pitch here, which was nothing like as comfortable as the first. And there was a pie hut here too, which was likewise closed.

As for the match itself, for the first 20 minutes or so it was all St Pair and they could have had several chances to take the lead had their finishing been any better.

But gradually Gavray hauled themselves back into the match and started to look dangerous. As a result the St Pair trainer made an early substitution, which had the desired effect as with almost his first touch of the ball, he lobbed the goalkeeper beautifully to open the scoring.

In the second half Gavray came out of the blocks quicker and soon equalised. And after that, the match swung back and fro. Unbelievably, in the middle of their best spel, Gavray conceded a second goal from a breakaway with a swerving shot that totally deceived the keeper and instead of parrying it to the floor, he parried it into his own net.

If that wasn’t bad enough, what happened next was appalling.

St Pair broke upfield again and in the penalty area, a Gavray defender madea brilliant tackle to take the ball away from the attacker. Unbelievably, the referee pointed for a penalty. He was the only one in the ground who thought that it was a penalty – even the St Pair trainer with whom I had been chatting, was astonished. He was as convinced as I was that it was a fair tackle.

So 3-1 down out of nothing.

Gavray were well-inspired by this and soon scored a second goal, a really good header from an excellent cross. And they had the ball in the net a third time, but the goal was disallowed for offside.

But while they were pushing forward for the equaliser they were caught on the break again ans St Pair scored a fourth with an overhead kick that, quite frankly, could have gone absolutely anywhere. I think that the scorer was more surprised than anyone else.

But there ere a few really good moments of skill from several players on the pitch – but they eren’t consistent with it. They would do something really impressive at one moment, and then make a hash of something simple.

However, this was the first match that I have seen where teams played the ball early (but still not early enough for my liking) and also here the teams were very quick on cosing down the opposing attackers. It’s a feature of the modern game that defenders seem to give attackers too much space and too much time on the ball, and it doesn’t suit me at all.

FInal word must go to the referee, who, apparently, seemed to be refereeing a totally different match than the one that everyone else as watching.

And so much for my lie-in. When I awoke it was still dark and I didn’t dare look at the time.

When I finally plucked up the courage, quite a while later, it was just 07:46. No chance of my leaving the bed at that time – I had a little relax and finally crawled out at 08:45. Still not what I wanted though.

Nevertheless, I’d been on my travels during the night. Living in some spurious accommodation on the edge of Nantwich at the Welsh Row end. And having to visit the centre of the town, I set off quite jauntily and confidently. My route took me past the Swine Market and up the High Street into the Square. Of course the Square was nothing like what it really is – just a huge open grassy plain on a couple of different levels with some impressive brick-built buildings across on the other side. I only had my phone camera with me at the time so I couldn’t do much with it so I went over to the buildings for a closer look. The basements told the true story though. The buildings had been thrown together any old how, with rising damp so evident that it was actually dripping back into the basement. Some old couple had followed me down into the basement and there was something not quite right about them. It made me uneasy, especially when the old guy started to brandish around like a weapon a large piece of heavy metal rod. I was trying to take these photos and yet every one that I took seemed to have him brandishing his metal rod around in a very menacing manner.

After breakfast I didn’t do much – after all, it IS Sunday. I finished off the soup for lunch and then went to the football.

Back here afterwards, I made myself a hot chocolate and tried to keep warm.

I’ve had a vegan pizza for tea and been for another walk. And my thirst is back. That’s usually a warning sign.

But I’ll be off to bed in a minute. It’s going to be a tiring morning tomorrow.

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Saturday 13th January 2018 – ISN’T IT NICE …

NEW TELEVISION place d'armes granville manche normandy france… to be able to watch the football on the big screen?

Unfortunately the laptop with the broken screen didn’t work – it’s quite an old laptop of course and the software in it won’t run the video plug-in for the browser.

But the laptop that I’ve been using as a media centre up until recently did the business, that’s for sure, and I was able to watch the first half of Cefn Druids v Llandudno in perfect comfort.

Unfortunately it wasn’t such a perfectly comfortable night? I was awake in the middle of the night and took a while to go back to sleep again. But I was dead to the world when the alarm went off and it was a struggle to leave the bed. How I’m looking forward to a nice lie-in tomorrow!

After breakfast I had a shower, a good clean-up and change of clothes, and then off to the shops, where I spent another pile of money.

LIDL had some hand towels of the type that I bought the other day so a pack of three disappeared into Caliburn, as did a battery charger. All of mine are back at the farm and in any case are over 30 years old. A little hi-tech modern one will do much better when I might need it.

At Mr Bricolage I bought a knob for my saucepan lid – the one on which I broke the handle the other day, and NOZ came up with the usual stuff.

Centrakor provided a new washing-up bolw of the correct size (so my wok and my pizza platter will fit into it), a few other bits and pieces and a box with a tight-fitting lid – just the thing in which to keep my socks and undies.

At LeClerc I went to look at the HDMI cables because the one-metre cable that I have isn’t really long enough for what I need. And with -metre ones on offer at just €9:99, that’s long enough for just about everything.

LeClerc was also having a sale on suitcases. And a small cabin-sized one on wheels at just €15:99 – just the thing for my trips to Leuven – also ended up in the back of Caliburn.

And I’m glad that I had bought that TV last weel, because there wasn’t a cheap one anywhere to be seen in the shop.

After fuelling up, I came back home, made myself some soup and then … errr … had a little rest for half an hour. And then cracked on with organising the shopping and sorting out another pile of papers. There’s actually some room in the drawers here now, and isn’t that astonishing?

At the end of the football I had to leave.

football us cerencaise us mouettes de donville cerences manche normandy franceCaliburn and I went off to Cérences where we were the other week.

It’s the nearest Saturday night match and the home side were playing the Mouettes of Donville.

The first half was all one-way traffic towards the Donville goal. But the Donville keeper put in a performance that neither he nor I will ever forget, including a magnificent “Banks” reverse save. It was the performance of a lifetime and I don’t think that I’ve seen better.

At the start of the second half Donville made two substitutions and the two players that came on, playing down the left, changed the balance of the game and we had a much more even contest.

However it didn’t last. The new left winger had clearly unsettled the defenders and after about 25 minutes he was on the receiving end of a bad challenge and limped off the field. We then went back to the one-sided match that we had in the first half.

The Donville keeper was finally beaten with just 10 minutes to go – a long-range shot that dipped and curled out of his reach and in underneath the angle of the post and crossbar – but he still made a couple more top-class saves to make the result look a lot closer than it deserved.

But there was a lot of naughty stuff going on in this game about which the referee didn’t seem at all concerned. One Cérences player made two tackles in as many minutes, either of which merited a red card in my opinion but nothing was given. And so a minute or two later a Donville player exacted his own retribution by giving him a kick that would have felled an ox. No card for that either.

And that’s just a couple of examples. There were many more.

So, frozen to the marrow, I drove back here and now I’m going to bed.

A nice lie-in, I hope. I deserve it.

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Sunday 7th January 2018 – HEROES!

us granville girondins bordeaux stade louis dior manche normandy franceThe players and officials of US Granville do a lap of honour around the pitch after their match against the Girondins of Bordeaux.

And quite rightly so, because they have just pulled off the Shock of the Century in French football. A part-time team playing Regional football in CFA2 North-West – the equivalent I suppose of the Conference North in the UK, have just knocked Premier League Bordeaux out of the French FA Cup.

And they made it look easy too.

Getting to the ground was quite something because the street was cordoned off and I had to drive miles to meet Terry. But we made it in plenty of time. And I was interviewed on France 3 too! My fame is spreading!

us granville girondins bordeaux stade louis dior manche normandy franceAnd it’s just as well that we got there early because the Stade Louis Dior was packed.

We ended up standing on the bank on the training ground looking aross at the pitch because it was the only really decent vantage point.

And we were treated to an event that I for one won’t ever forget.

I’d had another less-than-impressive night and despite it being Sunday I was wide-awake at 07:30.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels during the night, and a welcome return to our nocturnal rambles of Nerina and Zero. Formerly regular visitors but have been conspicuous by their absence for a while. Nerina and I were trying to book ourselves into a hotel in West London and having an inordinate amount of difficulty doing so, and I was close to losing my cool. Nerina suggested that we went for a walk to cool down, so we went outside and found ourselves aongst a large numger of Orthodox Jews who were diriving horses and carts laden with goods and produce pretty much as they might have done in the late 19th Century. We ended up walking along the towpath of a canal and Zero went skipping off with her head in the clouds. I was pointing out these tourist signs of historic object and the like and trying to interest her in them but like most kids of that age she was more interested in flowers and butterflies and the like.

I waited until 08:00 to leave the bed and by 09:00 I had breakfasted. And then – SHOCK! HORROR! I went working on a Sunday. I brought up the television and assembled it, and then had to do some rearranging of my living room to find a place to install it. That even involved some more vacuuming!

Configuring it was another thing – not helped by the fact that there were no batteries in the remote control and I had no fully-charged ones lying around. I’m short of good AAA batteries so I need to buy some more.

It took me ages to try to find the “DVD” switch on the remote control and in the end gave up. But I installed the DVD player anyway (and the remote control for that has stopped working) and much to my surprise the TV recognised automatically the signal from the DVD and started to play the disc.

So I sat and watched a film. And it really is nice to watch a DVD on a decent screen after all these years. 80cms is pretty big in my apartment.

And then the football.

Quite frankly, the Girondins of Bordeaux were abysmal. They had a midfielder by the name of Jérémy Toulalan. In his career he’s had 36 caps for France, transfer fees of almost €20,000,000 and when he was in Spain he was on a salary of €4.2 million. And yet if ever there was a player so disinterested in a match I have yet to see it, even in District football. In my own personal opinion he should have been ashamed of himself because it’s players like him who ought to be pulling his team up when they are down, not chickening out of the game.

If there ever was a gulf between the two teams, you would have said that it was Granville who were the Premier League team. They took the match by the throat and went on the rampage from the kick-off. And Bordeaux had no answer.

Had Granville’s finishing been any better they would have been 3-0 up after half an hour. They missed a penalty after 10 minutes and had two other shots at point-blank range either saved or blazed over the bar. And that’s not counting the shot that the keeper completely misjudged and had to hastily scramble over the bar to save a load of omelette sur le visage.

The Girondins of Bordeaux scored with their first attack after 37 minutes, but that was their best effort. US Granville’s keeper didn’t have too much to do.

In the second half, Granville came out as they went in – storming down the field driven on by the n°2 and the n°8 who had the games of their lives. And as the match progressed you could sense that it was not impossible that they might do something here.

And as we drifted into the final 5 minutes with Granville camped in the Bordeaux half the most amazing thing happened. The Girondins began to lose their discipline. We had a rash of yellow cards and then, totally inexplicably, the Girondins right-back put in a dreadful challenge on the Granville winger right out on the touchline. There was no need for it – the winger was going nowhere and it really was a vicious tackle. Result – a RED CARD.

Girondins of Bordeaux down to 10 men.

4 minutes of injury time and with 3:50 played, the Granville n°2 put in a low cross into the area. It took a wicked deflection, right into the path of a Granville attacker who sidefooted it straight into the empty net. He was probably more surprised than anyone else in the Stade Louis Dior.

The crowd was in raptures.

There was just enough time for Bordeaux to kick off before the referee blew for time.

No replays in France – we play on. And Bordeaux for once started to play. They looked quick and keen but by now Granville’s tail was up and they kept them out quite comfortably.

And then a break downfield. No fewer than two Girondin defenders missed the ball and it fell right in front of the Granville centre-forward. Surely he must score with an open goal – but a Bordeaux defender wrestled him to the ground.

Bordeaux now down to 9 men – and the penalty? Well, Stanislaus wasn’t going to miss aanother one. Granville take the lead – and they deserved it.

We haven’t finished yet. Granville, with a two-man advantage, burst forward yet again and a midfielder hauls him back by the shirt. The referee goes over to speak to the midfielder about it, and we will never know what the reply was. But it must have been good because the referee reached into his pocket and pulled out a straight RED CARD.

Bordeaux down to 8 men.

The rest is history. You can’t come back with just 8 men on the pitch and Granville hung on for the most unlikely victory which they richly desrved and did a lap of honour around the pitch.

The manager of the Girondins of Bordeaux said after the match “it was just one long nightmare of a Sunday afternoon”. His side, losing its cool like that and having three players sent off against a bunch of regional part-timers was disgraceful. US Granville came out of the game with credit.

We walked back to the car park and I drove home. Frozen to the marrow and I’m still cold now even though the heating is going full-blast and I cooked a pizza in the oven.

I’ll probably be ill for a week now, but ask me if I care? I’ve had a memorable afternoon and there won’t be another one quite like this.

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Friday 15th December 2017 – WHAT AN EXCITING …

… football match that was!

OH Leuven were playing SK Lierse, the team at the top of the table. It was a freezing night but everyone who entered the ground was given a Santa hat and a free glass of glühwein (I declined mine) so we were all in the festive spirit.

OHL played the best that I had seen them play for quite some considerable time and were a deserved 2-0 up at half-time. Their left-winger, this guy Storm who they signed from KV Oostende, was tearing them to shreds down the left flank. He didn’t know what to do with the ball when he got to the bye-line but at least he was keeping the SK Lierse defence busy.

But the result was inevitable. He received one kick too many and after 75 minutes he hobbled from the field. A few minutes later OH Leuven were effectively down to 10 men. Casagolda, the centre-forward, had also been the vistil of a few heavy challenges and he received one too many. With no more substitutes, he had to hobble on but was clearly out of the game.

This took the presssure off the Lierse defence and they could push much further forward. They inevitably scored a goal late in the game but Leuven hung on to win.

Last night, I settled down to watch a Boris karloff “Mr Wong” film – and that had the desired effect. Out in 30 seconds. And off to Gresty Road outside the Alexandra Social Club where I was with a couple of people watching this young boy and young girl looking for a place where they could get up to no good. “It’s a shame about there being no tress to hide behind here in the Arctic” said one of the people – and only anyone who has ever stood on the windswept car park between the Social Club and Jail House on the corner will ever understand the connection.

After breakfast I headed up to the bus station for the bus to Everberg and the English shop. I wanted my mince pies and Christmas pudding.

The bus ws jam-packed with kids – I’ve no idea where they were going. Nor had I any real idea where I was going but once I saw somewhere tha I realised, I alighted and walked the rest of the way, only to find that there was a bus stop right outside.

I found what i wanted (no Dandelion and Burdock though – I’ll have to make do with fiery Ginger – but the woman in front of me spent over €170 on things like sliced bread, jams and so on-everything typically British. It rather defeats the point of living abroad if you do that.

On the way back I picked up some bread and tomatoes and made myself a butty with the cheese from yesterday, and that was followed by a little doze.

Later, I headed into town to look at the Christmas lights at this end of town and to visit the Christmas market now that I worked out where it was.

And also down to Hema. I want a very small saucepan for doing sauces and the like and they had one to match another saucepan that i bought from there. €11:00 reduced to €8:80 so I’m very happy with that.

Later on I was off to the football, and found another fritkot across the road from the nick. Their fritjes were excellent and I’ll go there again.

But forst i’m going to bed. I’ve had a very hectic day.

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Sunday 10th December 2017 – NOW THAT WAS …

… an exciting football match.

A quick review of the Manche District football website this morning revealed that USM Donville, bottom of the District League Division 3 without a single point, were at home this afternoon against ELS Carpiquet, next-to-bottom with just one point.

The match was to be played on Donville’s seaside pitch in a howling gale (yes, the wind is back), and so that sounded like something too good to miss.

So grabbing my thermos flask (because there’s no pie-hut there) I set off.

They were right about the howling gale, although no-one had mentioned the squally showers (luckily there’s a good raincoat in Caliburn).

And as for the game, it was better than I had expected it to be, even though thewind spoiled the action somewhat. Carpiquet were in fact the better side – more organised and more skilful on the ball, and I bet that, just like me, they were surprisd to find themselves 2-0 down at half-time.

One goal was from a breakaway upfield, and the second was a rather unfortunate wind-assisted goal. A high ball forward, the keeper came out with plenty of time to clear it, but the ball hung up in the wind and dropped shrt. With the keeper miles off hi line in no-man’s land (or “no person’s land” for those of you who remember the legendary Turdi de Hatred) an advancing Donville player was lucky enough to reach the ball first.

Carpiquet pulled one back later in the game, which was no susprise, but they couldn’t push on to find an equaliser. So Donville earned their first points this afternoon.

I’d had a good night last night. Off on my travels down some muddy track on an old industrial estate, where there were several ERF B10 lorries in various states of dismantlement. Not an unusual sight for someone brought up in South Cheshire, you might think. But this was in Canada. And later on, some girl was showing me her red Cortina 2000E – the inner sills, outer sills and floor shuts were rotted away and she wanted to repair them. Having repaired dozens of these (and dismantled hundreds) I started to explain it to her, but she seemed completely disinterested. That surprised me, because to do it properly is a rather complicated process.

No chance of my leaving the bed at 06:45 or whatever stupid time it was when I awoke. 0p:00 was much more like it. A late breakfast and a good relax – what more does anyone want on a Sunday?

After lunch I went off to the football, and when I arrived back here my little furry friend Gribuoille, the long-haired ginger cat, waw waiting on his windowsill. He had a good stroke.

Tea was a vegan pizza as usual, and then a walk in the dark around the headland, just for a change.

Tomorrow I have to do some shopping – I forgot the tomatoes at the weekend.

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Saturday 9th December 2017 – YOU MISSED …

… even more excitement this evening.

Walking past the roundabout at the top of the hill this evening and I heard a crash. A scooter went one way, its rider went another and his artificial leg (for he was a unijambiste) did a Tony B Liar and went a third way.

It seemed that some woman had failed to stop at the entry to the roundabout and consequently despatched the aforementioned into the bushes.

I helped him to his feet, someone else screwed his leg back on and we all got him and his bike to the side of the road. He was more shaken than stirred but once I was assured that he was OK, I left him to get on with things and I went on for the football.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep for a change ad I’d been on my travels too.

We started off in some kind of theatre where there was some entertainment going on, provided by a group of kids. However the star of the show, a little blonde-haired girl, was missing and this started a frantic hunt. This led us into a kind of pre-school nursery school, the type that was intended for the sons of noblemen rather than the likes of us, and if ever I commercialise the little game that the kids were playing that helped them learn the names of the Greek philosophers, I shall clean up.

After breakfast I had to wait for my medication to work and it took so long this morning that I forewent my shower. I’d miss the bread in LIDL if I hang around too long.

And this would have been the cheapest shop yet had it not been for one or two special purchases. I’m going away on Wednesday morning as you know so I don’t need much. Just a couple of things in LIDL and a couple more in LeClerc.

NOZ had a couple of little bits and pieces but nowhere had a container to keep my Christmas cake. Not a large cake tin, and not a large plastic container either. I forget how many shops I went into (and some of them twice too) without success. In the end, I bought a plastic storage bin and sealed the cake in with clingfilm. I’m hoping that Leuven might come up with something suitable next week.

But I did find a new suitcase. You may recall that in Oostende a while ago my small wheeled suitcase gave up the ghost and I replaced it with a temporary one. That was a cheap and nasty thing, and not suitable for long-term use, so I’ve bought a small solid wheeled one for my trips to Leuven.

I’d planned to stop off on the way back to phptograph the storm breaking on the sea wall at high tide in the daylight, and so as you might expect, the wind has dropped today and everything has calmed down.

After lunch I crashed out for an hour or so, and then walked off up town to the football, stopping for the scooter incident on the way.

US Granville were playing St Pryve St Hilaire FC this evening, in front of a small crowd of just 515 people.

Although Granville were a little more focused this week, they still didn’t look all that impressive. They had more of the play but St Pryve St Hilaire FC looked more dangerous on the break. In fact, the Granville centre-forward ploughed a very lonely furrow up front without very much help from his colleagues.

St Pryve St Hilaire FC scored from a breakaway, shrugging off a couple of lightweight, ineffective challenges, and the equaliser from Granville was a ball over the top of the defence with a midfielder running on.

Mind you, we could have had several more goals but both goalkeepers were in inspired form this evening making several excellent saves, including the Grancille keeper making a marvellous double-save at point-blank range.

As the rain started to fall, in the last 15 minutes; Granville came to life again just like last match, but couldn’t find the killer thrust to win the game.

On the way back, I called in at the railway station to pick up my tickets for Wednesday, and then went for a wander to take the photos of the Christmas lights in the town. And I would have been out much longer had the weather been kinder.

Tea was potatoes, beans and vegan sausages done in the microwave, Delcious it was too. Now I’m going to have an early night and a nice lie-in tomorrow.

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Saturday 2nd December 2017 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… the strangest game of football that I’ve seen for quite some considerable time.

US Granville were playing against AS Vitré in round 8 of the Coupe de France and, to be honest, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen them play so badly. For the first 75 minutes they were pretty much clueless – aimless balls out of defence and going nowhere.

But by this time, they were, quite unbelievably, 2-0 in front. One was an AS Vitré backpass that went horribly wrong, intercepted by the Granville n°7 whose initial shot was blocked but for whom the reboud fell nicely. The second goal was one of these quick breaks down the wing and a perfect cross into the centre – just like we had the other week.

And Granville could have had a third too – another hopeless backpass intercepted by the Granville n°9 but whose shot was cleared off the line.

However, after 75 minutes, someone found the US Granville team “on” switch, and the team roared into life. And it was during this period of ascendency that AS Vitré scored a consolation goal – a hesitant Granville defence failing to deal with a high ball into the penalty area.

There was the biggest crowd that I’ve seen there – 971 people, and Vitré had bought piles of flags and an orchestra with them.

Final word on the game must go to Jim Finks, one-time manager of the New Orleans Saints who once famously said “We’re not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”.

Despite having something of a late night, I’d had a really good sleep. I’d been on my travels too, working on the roof of a house being ably assisted by some girl. There was something of a party afterwards and I’d arranged to go with this girl – who I didn’t really like as much as that. But there was another girl who had been wistfully xwatching me working and who apparently would have come with me at the drop of a hat. But my life is full of missed opportunities like that.

After breakfast I had to wait for my medication to work, which took longer than usual today. And then I went to the shops. LIDL came up with nothing special, but there were quite a few bits and pieces of thinks in NOZ, including some packs of alcohol-free beer at €1:50 for 6 – just the thing for Christmas.

Leclerc finally had a ceramic frying pan in stock to match my wok. But still no small saucepan.

This afternoon, I carried on with my photos and then went out to the football. And I seem to have managed the walk a lot better today, especially as the wind has dropped. On the way back I took a diversion – the fitbit was showing 97% of my day’s target by the time I returned so I went around the block until I met the 100%.

tea was baked potato and beans, and now I’m going to have an early night. It’s Sunday tomorrow, and so there’s a lie-in.

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Saturday 25th November 2017 – YOU MISSED …

accident abandoned car park LIDL granville manche normandy france… all of the excitement this morning.

We arrived at LIDL to find this sight greeting us. No idea what had happened but someone has been hit in the rear and the car abandoned on the side of the LIDL car park. There’s a story here, right enough.

But something else I missed were the little hand-held whizzers with three attachments that they had on special offer. just before 10:00 when I arrived here, and they had all gone.

I was pretty disappointed by that.

It had been a good night last night too. I’d had a decent sleep yet again and even been on a mega-ramble too.

We started off last night in an airport in the UK (might even have been Manchester) ready to fly out to Canada. And whether we had actually flown, we found ouselves in a very neglected and overgrown field that was used by the kids as a rock concert venue. I had a caravan there. But instead of being there, we ended up in some kind of library or bookshop hiding out, because there were some weird goings-on reporte from there. And so after a few hours, three small kids appeared from out of the wall. We let them go about their business for a while and then took them up. They were telling us that there was a fourth sibling who was very ill but they didn’t have the right to fetch a local doctor. We insisted that their mother be sent for, and when she arrived she was a young girl with curly hair and glasses. One of the boys with us announced rather surprisingly that she was his wife and so he was the father of the kids, so he went off to find a doctor. We all adjourned back to my caravan where the field was even more overgrown with weeds and nettles up to head-high. And there were several (British) policemen milling around in there. Someone said that they would be wanting to speak to me later, and everyone disappeared out of what was a very overgrown entrance. I noticed that there was a wooden booth, rather like the old beichstuhl that I built years ago, that was blocking half the entrance. We’d moved it there a while ago and I was sure that the police would want us to move it back, but I knew that it wouldn’t survive another removal.

After breakfast and a shower I hit the streets and went to LIDL as aforementioned. And my little back street route seems to be fine – did the business yet again.

From LIDL I went off to NOZ. And here I spent some cash. For a start, they had some of the seat cushions that I like for the kitchen chairs. And at €2:50 each too. They didn’t have four the same colour but they did have four different shades of dark brown so I bought one of each shade.

Another thing that I did, to put me in the Christmas spirit, was to buy a chain of different coloured LED lights for Christmas. And a few other bits and pieces, bottles of drink and that kind of thing. And some caramel-flavoured soya milk which is delicious too and I wish that I had bought some more.

At LeClerc it was just the usual stuff with nothing particularly exciting, although I was dismayed to be stuck in a queue behind a woman and a cashier who preferred to spend all of the time talking to each other than dealing with the customers in the queue behind them.

granville manche normandy franceAfter lunch I went for my usual walk around the headland. But I didn’t get very far because we were having some unusual weather.

I’ve never seen Jersey as clear as it was this afternoon. Almost everything was visible with the naked eye today,especially when just for a moment, the sun shone down through the clouds and illuminated the island.

Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough with the camera at that moment, but there will be other moments.

rainstorm cancale franceBut as far as the weird weather went, I was quick enough to take a photograph of the rainstorm that was raging ovet there across the other side of the bay near Cancale.

Luckily, there was a northerly wind blowing and that was pushing the rainstorm south down the bay so it wouldn’t be coming across here and soking me.

But it really was impressive

cancale franceAs the rainstorm moved south, the sun came out over there for just a brief minute.

And just for a change I had the camera ready, complete with the zoom lens and so I could take a quick snap of the little bay upon which Cancale is situated.

It’s 18 miles across the Bay as the crow flies, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s a darn sight farther than that when you go there by road. It took me well over an hour last April to drive there.

baie de mont st michel franceI followed the storm down the bay, and I snapped this photo of a village away in the distance down at the foot of the bay.

I’ve no idea which village it might be but it’s in the area of Hirel and St Benoit des Ondes.

And having done all that, I carried on with my walk and back to the flat for my afternoon coffee and, unfortunately, another little doze. I just can’t shake this off.

foorball cerences as cerensaise us gavray manche normandy franceAnd later on this evening, I braved the cold and damp and went out. No football in the vicinity but there was a local derby under floodlights at Cerences where AS Cerencaise were taking on hated local rivals US Gavray.

I’d taken a flask with me and so as you might expect, there was a pie hut here and furthermore, it was open too.

3rd Division of District football, and that’s how it started off. And how the second half started too. But apart from that it was a very good exciting game. Cerences won 2-1 in a match that could have gone either way. I shall have to come here again.

Back here I took an age to warm up, but in the meantime I made myself some baked potatoes and beans. And still freezing cold, I went to bed. may as well have an early night.

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Saturday 18th November 2017 – I WAS WELL …

… away last night.

Although it took a while for me to go off to sleep, once I’d gone I was well-and-truly gone and I remember nothing until the alarm went off.

That’s not quite true though. I’d been on my travels last night too. I started off in a businessand the local workhouse was parcelling off the orphan children into apprenticeships (I’ll have to stop reading these Old Bailey cases from the 1750s). I was allocated a young girl and I wasn’t sure of how I could best employ her to make the most of her apprenticeship.
From here I was with someone – who might even have been Nerina, and we were n an aeroplane. But the pilot, for some reason, lost control and the aeroplane crashed, right on the main road that rus from Brussels out to the Airport. Everyone survived the crash and managed to escape, but even though there was aviation fiel all over the place I had to go back into the aeroplane to rescue Strawberry Moose.

After the usual breakfast and a little relax, I went and had a good shower, a shave and a change of clothes too. And my little halogen heater works quite nicely in the bathroom too. And deciding to make the fullest opportunity of a nice clean me, I changed the bedding too and I’ll have a nice comfortable bed to sleep in tonight. And just as well too, because it’s Sunday and a lie-in.

Once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) Caliburn and I went to the shops.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just recently I’ve been walking up to LIDL and back, and so I decided to drive up the way that I came back on foot the other day. And much to my surprise, I was there in half the time without any queues and hold-ups at all. I’ll have to try this way again.

I didn’t spend anything special in there, but I made up for that later.

I called in at GIFI on the way out. It’s winter and with no pie huts at the football matches I’m freezing to death. And so I bought myself a thermos flask so that I could have some coffee to warm me up. And I bought a few other things too – but nothing exciting.

At the biocoop I bought some more vegan sausages and some sunflower seeds for the muesli, And next stop was NOZ. A few bits and pieces there too, including some sea salt. Not necessarily for the salt, but for the jars. They were those nice hexagonal ones that I like.

In the Auchan I didn’t spend anything special yet for some reason that I don’t understand my bill there came to almost €25:00 I’m not sure what I spent it on.

pisse dru beaujolais nouveau auchan granville manche normandy franceBut I did have a laugh as I was leaving. the Beaujolais Nouveau is now arriving in the supermarkets. The story behind the race to the market is that one year the crop was so awful that it didn’t last more than a couple of weeks so there was a rush to gt it to market and sell it before it spoiled on the shelves.

Here at Auchan my favourite beaujolais Nouveau was on offer and I consider its name to be extremely apt.

I couldn’t have called it anything better myself.

By the time I returned home it was 13:30, and by the time I’d unpacked, it was lunchtime.

After lunch I crashed out for a while – I’m clearly not doing very well these days, and then at 16:00 I hit the streets again – but on foot this time.

It took me ages to climb the hill up ast the railway station and I had to stop a couple of times to get my breath. Nevetheless, it was a mere 16:35 wwhenI arrived at the Stade Louis Dior.

stade louis dior us granville agneaux fc manche normandy franceGranville’s 2nd XI, in blac, were taking on Agneaux FC, two places above them in Regional Lzague 2.

This was one of the most exciting matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

Granville took the lead after just 3 minutes. A ball upfield, the keeper shouting “leave it” and he ran out of his goal to kick it … right into the back of one of his own players

The ball bounced clear, right onto the path of an attacking Granville forward and with the keeper stranded, the attacker had the simplest of chances.

And then the match went in pells. We would have 10 minutes of Granville pressure followed by 10 minutes of Agneaux pressure, and then it would swing round again. Three good (if lucky) saves by the Granville keeper, Granville thumped the Agneaux woodwork twice, but the score didn’t increase.

We did have a minor interruption when there was a major car acident in the street outside.

The two clubs have changed position in the table after this result and that’s good news.

cite des sports us granville co sourdeval manche normandy franceAt the final whistle, a brisk walk took me round the corner and down the street to the Sports Centre, where US Granville’s 3rd XI was taling on CO Sourdeval. Granville are third bottom and Co Sourdeval are second from top, so I wasn’t expecting much.

The final result was 3-2 to Sourdeval and the only mystery about this match was how Sourdeval scored only three. Because Granville were pretty poor, clueless and totally disorganised.

Granville’s two goals were a free kick that confused everyone at the back post and a solo run from the halfway line by the centre-forward. But apart from that, they didn’t offer bery much.

I walked back here via the fritkot for a bag of chips, and then went straight to bed. I think that today has taken an awful lot out of me. At least my new flask played dividends.

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