… Happy New Year. Not just from me, but from someone else here in Granville too.

I’m grateful for all of the support and encouragement that everyone has given me over the last year. It’s the kind of thing that has kept me going.

As well as that, I’m also even more grateful to everyone who has given me hospitality over the year during my perambulations around the Northern Hemisphere. I may not have many friends, as I have said … “and on many occasions too” – ed … but those I have are the best friends in the world.

So back to the story.

Having complained about sleep issues for as long as I have, it’s much more exciting to report that today, I left my bed at all of … errr … 11:22. And breakfasting at 12:00 is much more like what I expect to see on a Bank Holiday.

I’d been on my travels during the night too. Into a veg shop in Germany to buy a couple of carrots. I’d pressed the key on the automatic machine and the carrots came down into the scales to be weighed, and then I had to go to the counter to pick them up and pay for them. However, I couldn’t remember the German word for “carrots”. In Flemish it’s wortelen and so I tried that, but the shop assistant didn’t understand me. I pointed to the carrots and she still didn’t understand.

After breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you might call it, I had a task to perform.

There was an upgrade proposed a while ago by my blog host but I put off doing the upgrade. However it was forced upon me and while I was in Leuven I performed the upgrade.

And it’s terrible.

The old interface was a simple text-based interface where I could (and did) add my own handwritten *.html coding which I saved in blocks in my text-ediiting program and which I used for every web site on which I worked.

But this upgrade wants everything done in blocks with the *.html coding incorporated into the site itself, and adding the search indices is next-to-impossible and is the most complicated procedure that I have ever seen – especially on a slow connection.

So while I’ve been trying to figure it out (or find another blog interface that does what I want) I’ve been recording my blog entries in my text editor.

Anyway, I’ve given up. It’s not working, and so I’ll have to go with what I’ve got. And that meant adding 6 days-worth of blog entries and editing the indices manually.

That’s what I’ve been doing today.

At last, I could open my Christmas present from Liz and Terry. And now that you can see it in all of its glory, you can see that it was well-worth waiting for.

And it really is delicious too.

This evening we had football. Welsh Premier League basement clash between Carmarthen and Llanelli. Carmarthen aren’t that good but they ran rings round Llanelli who looked determined to shoot themselves in the foot.

Some of Llanelli’s defending was suicidal. They just couldn’t get the ball out of their own defence and tried to play the ball around, losing possession on several occasions in desperate positions. Carmarthen won 2-0 – both goals coming from Llanelli mistakes.

On this showing, Llanelli look well-and-truly doomed and we’re only half-way through the season. And depending who comes up from tier two in the south next season, Carmarthen need to start to think about what they intend to do.

Tea was a vegan burger with a pile of veg and gravy. Totally delicious, as was the endive that I had as a treat.

Outside tonight for my walk, and there was no-one around at all. I didn’t see a soul.

That was quite a surprise because despite the cold, it was a really beautiful, clear, starry night.

There was some cloud pretty high up in the sky over St Malo, and the reflection of the streetlights was magnificent. The town of Cancale, over there across the bay, was nicely illuminated too.

Back to work tomorrow – I have such a lot to do. So I won’t be hanging around too long. An early night is beckoning and if I’m lucky I might just make it too.