… get myself organised.

I know that I have been saying this for several weeks now, but I don’t seem to have made much of an effort to progress in the correct direction.

Listening to music again last night, it was well after 02:00 when I crawled off to bed and that’s no good at all.

What’s even worse (or better, depending upon your own point of view) is that I made a valiant, determined effort to beat the third alarm call out of bed.

And what’s more, I made it too … “will you make me one like it?” – ed … even though I felt like death.

So less than 4 hours sleep.

Not very much, you might think, but plenty of time to go off on my travels. Something was all closing down last night and people were having some kind of session where they were singing songs and reading poems about everything that they had been through. I did a little presentation but I hadn’t realised that it was closing so I hadn’t said anything about it so when I found out I wanted to go back and re-do it and do different stuff so but no-one was listening to me while I was saying all of this and no-one was really interested in listening to what I had to do or got to say or got to play on the subject.

It seems to me that during the last few days ago I’ve been making a habit of being ignored by other people. I really must change my deodorant.

Talking of deodorant … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a shower after breakfast. I weighed myself too and found that I had gained 100 grammes. Must do something about that, like go for a brisk walk.

First though, I put a couple of weeks’ worth of dirty clothes in the washing machine and set it do a lap around while I headed for a brisk walk.

Outside, we were in the middle of a hurricane. I had heard of an “adverse weather report” for the area for today but I wasn’t expecting this at all.

You can see what the waves are doing here – and that’s in the harbour too inside the outer wall. I don’t think that I’ve ever in the past seen it as rough as this out there

Not the kind of weather that I would want to be going out for a sail on the high seas.

I was tempted to go for a walk across the path across the top of the harbour gates to have a closer look but they were closed.

However by the time I got down to ground level they were just on the point of closing them. I should have waited for another 5 minutes.

And even in the shelter of the inner harbour you can see that the water is churned up somewhat

My trip this morning took me to the indoor market hall for some fruit, carrots and mushrooms. But there was nothing there that interested me too much so I didn’t buy anything.

Neither did the Super-U but the Carrefour came up trumps with some reasonable mushrooms – many of which will go on my pizza tomorrow night. And they had some more of the cheap baguettes too.

Back here I pushed on with this project that I have to do. And with a short break for lunch (the rest of the carrot soup and some of the baguette) I managed to finish it in time for the afternoon walk.

It’s not as good as I would like it, but improving it is beyond my capabilities. I’m having to do it in French and with having to think about what I need to say, it’s robbing all of the spontaneity and that’s probably the most vital ingredient of what I’m trying to do.

And as a result it took me a lot longer than it might have done and there’s so much editing that needed doing to edit out the pauses, the “umms” and the “ahhs”.

But be that as it may, I do have to say that the editing and the sound mixing is excellent and I’m really pleased from that point of view.

That was the cue to go out for my afternoon walk.

And there had been a change in the weather.

It was much worse.

So I struggled around the headland with the other brave souls out there – all of us wrapped up to brave the wintry weather. And that reminds me – all of my winter gear is in my blue jacket which even as we speak is somewhere between Calgary and Centreville in Canada. I shall have to make “other arrangements” this winter.

Back here I did a pile of website amendments to keep the momentum going, and attacked a few blog entries. I’ll do some more this evening too.

Tea was a slice of vegan pie (from last April and it was just as delicious) with potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy. Followed by rice pudding (seeing as I had the oven on).

And then a huge washing-up session, including the oven to clean off all of the milk that had overflowed from the aforementioned rice pudding.

The rain was falling when I went out for my evening walk. And the wind was so strong that it was falling horizontally.

For my run tonight I was about 50 yards short of my distance from the last time. I blame the strong wind but really it’s a disappointment. When I started back running in Brussels in 1994 I could push out the distance every night and I ought to be able to do something like that here.

It’s not as if I’m running 5 miles or 10 miles like I used to – here I’m measuring it in hundreds of metres and I should be able to do it, even though I am an old fogey long past my sell-by date.

Another thing is that for the past week or so I’ve been plagued by a fly that has been flying around my room, and I’ve been wondering how to dispose of it. I don’t need to worry about it now – although I do feel sorry for it. It should never have alighted on that sheet of paper on the floor when I was above it with a large book in my hand

So I’ll do some more work for a while and then go to bed. It’s Sunday so I can have a lie-in. I deserve it