… that just 6 weeks or so ago I was running a couple of kilometres every night without all that much effort.

These days I can barely stagger round the circuit and end up collapsing in a heap on my chair for a couple of hours.

And it all started so well too.

The alarms went off as usual and to my surprise, as well as that of everyone else, I was actually up and out of bed by the time the third alarm went off. And it’s been a good while since I’ve done that

Some stuff on the dictaphone too.

I was with, of all people, a certain former girlfriend last night. I wondered what the heck she was doing featuring in my nocturnal rambles because I haven’t spent a moment thinking about her for 45 years or so. We started off just being acquaintances and she was having to stay somewhere but no-one had come up with a place. I said “not to worry because if the worst comes to the worst I have a caravan in a yard just off the A13 where you can stay in East London. She asked about it and I said “it’s not particularly noisy”. Anyway so we drifted on through this evening and in the end her offer of accommodation hadn’t turned up so she came to my caravan. She got into bed but there was nowhere really for me to sleep so I slept on the other edge of the bed. After a while she said that she wanted a cuddle so I got right over to her side and gave her a cuddle. Of course things started to go on from there. Her mother put in an appearance at this point and said something like “I know what you two are doing” which of course we weren’t particularly doing but nevertheless. What it had to do with her mother I realy don’t know because the girl was a young adult. So it went on like that, running around in bed. But I had to get up to go to work – it was 09:15 but I suddenly realised that she wasn’t going into work today so we started discussing her working arrrangements and she was telling me about her working time for next week. Her boss had cocked things up as she had to go to a certai factory – coal mine – on Friday and it was closed on that day. I asked her if she had a key to the timekeeper’s lodge. She said “yes” so I said that it doesn’t really matter then because she can time herself in and out again . I had to get up and went outside. It was rzasonably warm for the time of year so I told everyone, her, her mother, my friend who was hanging around that they didn’t need their jackets on today.

There was something else on the dictaphone too and this I don’t understand. I dictated that we had this beautiful view of three horses – between the legs of one we saw the second and in between the legs of that we saw the third, all very surreal. And what that was all about, I don’t have the slightest idea.

One thing about restarting work after a long holiday is that the concentration isn’t there and it takes an age to do the simplest of tasks. It took me until all of 15:50 to choose the 10 tracks of music for the next radio show and to combine them in pairs.

And then I forgot to add in the opening announcement to the first pair.

There was a break for lunch of course – more of my nice fresh loaf – but I don’t know where the rest of the time went.

At about 15:50 I knocked off and went for my afternoon walk – or stagger, more like.

And while I was walking along the rue du Nord I noticed behind me that Joly France was on her travels again. Taking the afternoon ferry to the Ile de Chausey.

And of course, while I was taking the photo, I was photo-bombed yet again by a seagull. Of course there are so many more of those around at the moment with the babies taking to the air.

My walk carried on along the walls underneath the rue du Nord to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

The tide seemed to be on its way out and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it goes quite far out. But they have cleaned out the tidal swimming pool and that is proving to be quite popular with the tourists.

You can see that they are all enjoying it down there, under the surveillance of a lifeguard in the flourescent jacket.

carrying on around into the Square Maurice Marland, I noticed that all of the baby seagulls have flown the nest; which is no surprise of course.

So I pushed on along on my walk to where there was a good view overlooking the harbour. My attention was drawn to the lorry over there that was busy unloading a pile of building material onto the quayside.

There’s a dozen or so gas bottles too, and so this all looks to me as if there’s going to be some serious work being undertaken over there in early course.

Back here I started to write out the notes for the radio programme. And I did about three or four lines too before I crashed out. And that’s how I stayed until about 18:50.

About three hours all told that I was out like a light, and you’ve no idea just how much that dismayed me.

Tea was stuffed pepper and rice, followed by apple crumble with ice cream and soya coconut stuff.

And then I went out for my evening walk.

It wasn’t quite dark outside and you can see the coast of Jersey out there in the background. What caught my attention though was the light. It looks as if it’s on the coast but it isn’t as far as I can tell. It’s off the coast and is probably a fishing boat.

What surprised me about it was that the light wasn’t there at first. I was admiring the Jersey coast when it was suddenly switched on, right in front of my eyes.

That wasn’t the ony light that was out there either.

There was quite a collection of lights out to sea tonight. The most interesting was the red light on this speedboat that was coming across the Channel from the Ile de Chausey.

There were several yachts moored off the entrance to the harbour too. They were all displaying masthead lights and in the twilight it was looking quite impressive.

My walk continued around the headland to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier Navale

It’s pretty full in there tonight. All five berths are occupied by a variety of fishing boats and that’s good news as far as I’m concerned.

So having noted all of that, I continued on my trek around and back home, walking rather slowly rather than going at a run as I might have done a couple of months ago.

Back here I wrote up my notes and now I’m off to bed. Not quite as early as I would like and it’s going to be another busy day as well.

It’s hard to get back into the swing of things when i’m not feeling too well, but I’ll just have to do my best.