… I didn’t need much from the shops last weekend and ended up spending a small fortune, I ended up spending next to nothing today, which is always good news for my bank account.

Noz came up with something for which I’ve been searching for years – a small biscuit tray for the oven. It’s still bigger than what I wanted but it’s small enough to let the heat circulate around the oven without blocking off the top from the bottom, which is always good news.

That’s all that I bought from there. From LeClerc I just bought the basic stuff for a mere €17:00. There wasn’t anything on offer or anything in the clearance bins or anything special that I needed.

At Intersport though a very nice young girl showed me the stuff that the physiotherapist says that I need and although it was expensive, the total that I spent today was still less than whatever I spent last weekend.

It was a good day at the shops today.

Much better than the night though.

Apart from the fact that I spent much of the night tossing and turning again, that stabbing pain in my foot came back. In the heel this time, not the sole of the foot. This kept me awake for quite some time and it wasn’t very nice.

Consequently it was a very weary and bleary me who staggered out of bed when the alarm went off but I still managed to summon up the effort to head out to the shops, despite the devastating wind that was blowing around outside.

And in news that will make everyone sit bolt upright, I actually just used one crutch and my wheelie shopping trolley today to do the shopping, and it all went off very well.

However, I’m still not too confident about it although there are signs of hope. I’ll keep on practising because if I can do it convincingly and confidently, then travelling with a suitcase comes right back on the agenda.

What with these improvements, I’m interested to see how I get on at the hospital and what they might be able to do for me to make life easier.

Back here I made some coffee and with the air fryer I made some cheese on toast with tomato. It was quite a nice brunch and I’ll have to do more of this. As you can gather, I’m becoming quite involved in this air fryer lark now

Once I’d finished eating I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was cat-sitting someone’s cats. That person was actually there at the start. While we were organising ourselves 2 people knocked at the door. I went to see them and dealt with them. That seemed to be it but 2 other people knocked on the door – 2 people with whom I worked in the past. They came into the apartment and began to talk to whoever it was whose apartment it was while I continued getting these cats ready. One was a small kitten which was stuck behind a sofa and a door across a room. It couldn’t climb over the sofa to come back into the room. I had to help it. I noticed that while I was trying to sort it out there were 4 dummies lying around on the floor. I thought that the cats would be okay if they become lonely.

And then I was at an animal refuge last night having taken jars of sweet wrappings in as some kind of donation. There was one jar of sweet wrappers that was absolutely full to the brim. It was just not possible to fit anything else in there. I produced Tuppence, my old black cat, who was going to help me sort through it. If there was anything nice, she’d eat it. The people at the refuge took one look at her and began to ask me about her. I said that she’d been mine for years. We’re an old couple together. They said “yes but you really need to take her to the vet”. I replied “I’m afraid to take her to the vet because of what the vet might tell me. I don’t really want to lose her”. They said that I’d lose her anyway if she died so it’s much better that she’s looked at in comfort. There was a question about an old Alsatian dog there too but I’m not sure where that fitted into this.

A group of us were having a meeting at my house in Virlet although it was a different house. I’d been to my University exam which was on the fate of Sir John Franklin. I did absolutely dreadfully. I couldn’t even remember the name of his ship etc. All the basics had just evaporated out of my head. I ran out of time trying to think as well. Back at the house we’d been talking. I’d done some work on it since the last time they were there. My friend agreed to come and see it. We crawled through the hatchway into the front area of the house so I could show him the work that I’d done. It looked to me as if someone else had been doing stuff there to such an extent that I was confused as to where I was. It certainly looked as if someone else had been having a go at doing some work. I didn’t say anything. I just let them see it and peer through the broken floors etc. My friend pointed out a huge bulge in the wall. He asked “what’s going on there?”. I replied “nothing as far as I know”. I thought to myself that that bulge wasn’t there last time I was here. I wonder what’s going on. I noticed that someone had tied a blue cargo strap around it to stop it going any worse. I certainly hadn’t done that. I’d no idea what was happening there.

Even more interestingly I was in the middle of another dream when the alarm went off. It awoke me. When I looked it was actually 05:30 and it wasn’t the alarm at all that had gone off. I must have dreamt that. Whatever it was that I was dreaming at the time completely evaporated out of my head. I can’t remember anything at all about it.

Just recently I seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about cats during the night. I grew up with cats and when I had a more settled lifestyle I had a few of my own. One poor girl who I thought was wonderful, I showed her the door because she wanted me to choose between her and Tuppence.

Luckily Nerina liked cats as much as I did and so did Roxanne who acquired a couple of kittens for our little family much to her mother’s annoyance.

Maybe if I do eventually move onto the ground floor where there are windows to the outside and if my travelling days are over, any objection that I might have had to looking after another cat would no longer exist

Rather regrettably, I crashed out this afternoon, and that’s no surprise given how my night went. I’d dictated the notes for the two radio programmes that I wanted to do and was in the middle of editing the first one when I crashed out. I was gone for a good while too.

However I awoke just in time for the football – a bottom-of-the-table match between Pontypool United and Aberystwyth Town. Whoever would win would put some daylight between themselves and the loser in the battle to avoid relegation.

Pontypool played the better football in the first half and went into the break deservedly 1-0 up. Only some heroics from Aberystwyth keeper Matthew Turner had kept Aberystwyth within touching distance.

During the second half Aberystwyth slowly came back into the game and piled on the pressure, but still had to rely on Turner a couple of times and a couple of desperate goal-line clearance to prevent certain goals from Pontypool breakaways.

But deep into stoppage time, Aberystwyth won a corner. Turner went upfield in a brave attempt to put pressure on the Pontypool defence and I don’t think that there was anyone more surprised than him WHEN THE BALL FELL AT HIS FEET.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last weekend I had a play around with the soundfile of a song and cut in a few extra bits and pieces. And after I finished it, I suddenly thought of a way that would have made everything so much easier.

So having listened to STEVE MARRIOTT yesterday and all of the memories that it brought back, I decided that the song wasn’t long enough so I had a play around with that. And now the song has extended from just over 3 minutes to just over 4 minutes and you can’t hear the joins.

That’s something that I must try to do more often, I suppose. It certainly makes things much different and much more interesting. With the truncated attention span that people have these days anything over 3 minutes is turned down flat by most record producers.

Ohhh! For the good old days of Southern Rock bands like Widespread Panic, Blackberry Smoke and the Marshall Tucker Band and lead guitar solos that could last for several weeks.

Anyway, I shall go to bed and dream about cats and lead guitar solos. And a nice lie-in until tomorrow with nothing planned to do all day. High time I had a Day of Rest.

However something will probably come along to disturb me. It usually does.