… hours of my life that I won’t ever get back, I can tell you.

In fact, the lady whom I saw at the Tax Office couldn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. And after she had asked me half a dozen questions, she didn’t alter or amend my tax form in any way, neither did she ask me to do so. And I’ll be getting my “certificate of non-taxation” in due course, whenever that might be.

Despite what I said last night, it was nothing like an early night. An early morning more like – something round about 02:15 in fact, so engrossed was I in what I was doing.

Much to my surprise I managed to crawl out of my nice clean bedding round about 06:15, and I don’t remember much about any voyage except that I was on board a ship at one particular moment.

After breakfast I had a rustle around for a pile of papers and it turns out that I can’t find one particular document. I’ve probably overlooked bringing it with me from the Auvergne, so I had to go to the bank for a statement.

Just outside the building here there was a plant lorry dropping off a pile of equipment.

That looked interesting so I went over to them to find out what was going on.

Apparently there are some major engineering and building works taking place in the old walled town so they were dropping the stuff off here.

Heavy vehicles aren’t allowed within the walls.

And there The bank manager looked me out, and came over to shake my hand. I must be well in credit back there right now.

The Tax Office was pretty painless, as I mentioned, and I had a nice walk back here, calling for a baguette on the way.

When I was heading into town, I noticed that Thora had gone out on the morning tide.

That was the same tide that had presumably brought in Normandy Trader, which was now tied up at the quayside loading up with supplies.

But on the way back, I noticed that Normandy Trader had gone out too. That was a quick turn-round.

No wonder I’m finding it difficult to keep up with what is going on in the harbour these days – who’s coming and who’s going – with turn-rounds as quick as this.

You can’t say that people here in Granville are softened by the mild weather.

Hear, the street cafés in the rue Saint-Saveur encourage their patrons to sit outside in all kinds of weather, even in mid-winter.

But for those few who do feel the cold, blankets are provided to make sure that they stay outside.

First thing that I did on reaching the apartment was to make a coffee, and then I crashed out on the chair for a while, until lunchtime in fact.

This afternoon I attacked the files again. But not for long.

I went out in the sunshine for my walk around the walls. And the temperature has plummeted again. Baby, it’s cold outside.

But not too cold for some.

I don’t know whether these people were on the point of going in or coming out of the water, but I wasn’t going to hang around and wait to see.

I left them to it and cleared off.

On returning to the apartment I restarted work but had to go and lie down for a while on the bed. And I was well-away with the fairies until all of a sudden I had one of the worst attacks of cramp that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Despite whatever I tried (and I tried plenty) I couldn’t get it to ease off for quite a while and it still hurts now.

For tea, I found a potato and chick-pea curry from 30th October … errr … 2017. Tons of old stuff in the freezer that needs cleaning out and I’m aiming at one a week until I can keep something like a 6-month time limit.

The wind was rising again when I went out, and we had another endless stream of fishing boats coming into the harbour.

But we are approaching Christmas and the lights are going full-flow now. Right across the valley, the lamps are burning brightly all the way up the rue Couraye.

Won’t be long before we’re all curled up around the tree, although whosever tree I’ll be curling around, it won’t be my own.

That was all that there was about, except for two cars having a race along the road at the top.

But here around the corner there’s another example of our famous bad parking.

Why park in two places when you can take up three between you? As I have said before … “and you’ll say it again” – ed … I really don’t know what goes through the minds of some people.

But now the temperature has really dropped and it’s going to be cold tonight. We were told that the weather would change this week and it looks as if winter has arrived at last.

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