… one of the strangest football matches that I’ve seen in years. And I’m still shaking my head about it even now.

Following US Granville’s dismal performance last week, the coach made a few changes to the team to play US St Malo this evening at the Stade Louis Dior, and rightly so. But the players that he replaced were players who I thought played well last week and left on the field some of the players, including the guy who gave Olympique de Marseille their third goal the other week and who gave away the ball that led to one of the Vannes OC goals last week.

In the first half St Malo had pretty much the best of the play and so you will be just as surprised as I was to learn that US Granville were 3-0 up. I don’t know what the trainer had put in the pre-match cuppa but I would like a drink of it.

But really, the goals were
1) a free kick
2) an own goal
3) a penalty.
Nothing really there to get excited about.

As I went for my half-time coffee, I remember thinking that there was still plenty of time for US Granville to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

And when US St Malo went down to 10 men, you would be forgiven to fetching the bottle of champagne, but I know my players and I had faith.

Just look where the St Malo goalkeeper is standing. Almost on the halfway line.

At this point St Malo are taking a corner. The ball is played into the centre and the Granville keeper catches it. Now you and I would go for the long kick downfield over the keeper’s head and who knows? There might be a goal in it. Chris Mullock scored one like that for Aberystwyth Town a season or two ago and even if it didn’t, it would keep the keeper back on his goal line and stop him playing centre-half.

But no. Our keeper rolls the ball out to a defender to play the ball upfield.

And the inevitable happens. He loses possession, the attackers are through one-on-one with the keeper abd they make no mistake.

The tragedy is that just 30 seconds earlier we had had exactly the same situation and a goal was only narrowly averted. It taught them nothing.

Even worse – a few minutes later US Granville messing around in defence instead of clearing the ball, and they lose possession. Consequently US St Malo pull back a second goal.

Luckily US Granville cling on until the final whistle to win the match with a desperate rearguard defence against 10 men in a match that they should have won at a canter.

This morning was another struggle to leave the bed. I missed an alarm once more so it was 07:10 when I finally left the bed. Nothing on the dictaphone from the night so after the medication I cut up a digital track.

That was more difficult than it ought to be because whoever had assembled it had left the marks where he had joined it up – and they were in the wrong places. So I had to rejoin it correctly before I could cut it.

After breakfast I had a shower and then went to town.

First stop was NOZ where I bought a cheap whiteboard at €0:79. I alreay have a whiteboard but a spare is useful for a variety of reasons and as well as that, it included a marker and the price of a marker on its own is more than that.

LeClerc was much more expensive but then again I had to buy coffee and the rest of the muesli stuff, and also they had some frozen vegan burgers and things like that and seeing as there is at the moment some room in my freezer for once I stocked up.

For a change I went to GIFI too to see if they had any pastry cutters. But no such luck, so I came home instead.

The rest of the day was spent working on the radio project and that’s all done and dusted and recorded and I’ve started on the notes for the final one. They are about two-thirds done now.

That could have been finished today but for the fact that I was having another bad day. I was crashed out on the chair a couple of times, really deeply too. I’m getting a little bit worried by this right now because I’ve been here in the past and I thought that I had managed to go beyond that.

There was the walk to the Stade Louis Dior of course and the walk back, which was extended to take me over the 100% mark. And I managed a run too, which pleased me greatly.

Saturday night so tea was out of a tin, followed by a banana with the rest of the raspberry sorbet. No walk afterwards because of course I’m over my limit so I can relax.

So now it’s bedtime. No alarm so it’s a nice long sleep – I hope. But you just watch someone come along and spoil it.