… to have an early night last night. In bed at some respectable time but not able to go to sleep. And when I did I was awake again at 01:45.

But the body clock is working well again, for I was awake bolt-upright at 05:59, just seconds before the alarm went off.

With having done almost everything last night, it didn’t take me long to clean up and make sure that I had everything. And by 06:25 I was on my way.

There was a train at 06:52 for Brussels. One of the old dirty, filthy, graffiti-covered AM80 multiple units heading for Quievrain down on the French border.

The lack of care and attention that these are receiving – surprising for the SNCB – tells me that these trains are the next to go under the cutter’s torch, and fairly soon too, I reckon. They aren’t far off being 40 years old and haven’t in the main had an overhaul for nearly 25 years.

Our train was pretty crowded too but I managed to find a seat where I could settle down for the journey. And as we passed though the various stations in Brussels the train emptied rapidly.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour and bought my raisin buns for breakfast, and a packet of crisps and a bottle of water as emergency supplies.

And then a wait for the TGV.

It should have departed at 08:13 but when I went up to the platform it was ominously marked “12 minutes late”. And by the time we left, we were 25 minutes behind schedule.

That’s enough to give me the willies as I don’t have too much time to change stations in Paris and it’s quite a hike across the city.

It was packed to the gunwhales too – not a spare seat anywhere. hardly surprising that even when I booked my tickets I couldn’t have a corridor seat.

We didn’t make up any time either and it was 25 minutes late that we pulled into Paris Gare du Nord.

I’m not into running about these days but I pushed on as quickly as I could. I was lucky with the metro in that I didn’t have to wait too long, and there were no delays. I chose a position right by where the exit to the platform at Montparnasse would be, and so I could step off the train and straight out of the station.

With no delays on the way, and no other incidents, I could push on and arrived at Vaugirard with 10 minutes to spare.

The train was already loading so I composted my tickets and leapt aboard. There was someone sitting in my reserved seat ao I was obliged to heave him out so that I could sit down.

There was plenty that I needed to do on the way back, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. Instead, I had a good sleep and that made me feel a little better.

We pulled in to Granville bang on time, which makes a pleasant change. And I stepped off the train straight into a wicked, high wind.

There’s a train timed to go out at about 15 minutes after ours arrives and I had always thought that ours did a simple turn-around. But apparently not. There was another train parked in the platform next to ours and all of the passengers for the afternoon trip to Paris were piling aboard.

I’m not too sure about the logic of running another train on the return. If I had invested as much money in captial equipment as the SNCF had, I would want it out there working and generating passenger income as much as possible

I stopped at the boulangerie on the way home for a baguette. I didn’t want to fetch any bread out of the freezer.

It’s good to be back home, even if it was cold in here. But the heating soon dealt with that issue.

After a very late lunch I started to unpack but I can’t keep it up like I used to of course. I ended up crashing out on my chair at the desk in the office. And I was away for quite a while too.

With lunch being so late, I was in no mood for tea so I simply stirred a few papers around in here and then went for a walk. I was on 90% of my daily activity so I didn’t go far, which was hardly surprising because, if anything, the wind had increased.

All of the fishing boats were now coming up to the fishing quay by the processing plant. There was quite a line of them waiting to unload, rather like the queue at the self-scanners in a supermarket.

You can see how strongly the wind was blowing by looking at the waves in this photo. And remember that this is actually inside the tidal harbour. You can imagine what it must have been like outside the harbour, but this wasn’t the weather for going for a look.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t tired now so not having had my lie-in on Sunday I switched off the alarm and watched something on the internet.

It’s now 02:30 and I suppose that I’d better make an effort to go to bed. I’ll be still here in the morning if I don’t make an effort.