… debacle this afternoon was. Almost anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and I ended up being one extremely tired, unhappy bunny.

You are probably thinking that I seem to dwell on the depressing side of life, but that seems to be all that’s happening right now. The solution to this would have been, in the past, to changer les idées as they say around here, but how do I do that when I can’t go anywhere or do anything?

Last night was another one of those nights where I seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and what should have been an early night ended up being much later than intended. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything right now and it’s driving me berserk.

When I finally made it into bed though, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until … errr … 05:50. It took me a few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing just how few I seem to have these days, and then, in a magnificent fit of enthusiasm, I dictated the radio notes for the eleventh track of the radio programme that I was organising yesterday.

Having done that, I wandered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and make myself look pretty in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And in the kitchen, as well as the medication, I cut the bread that I’d baked yesterday and put half of it into the freezer.

After the medicine I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to discover that there was actually something on there from the previous night when I was convinced that I hadn’t been anywhere at all.

First task therefore was to transcribe those notes and add them in to that day’s entry. If you’re interested, you’ll have to go back and have a look.

Having done that, I could turn my attention to last night’s notes. There was a girl I knew who had been staying as some kind of paying guest at a house somewhere in the countryside. She’d taken with her some of her urban habits to which they were not particularly accustomed. On one occasion she had to go to try to find a job somewhere. She went for an interview of which she seemed to take control, and when she returned, she told the owner of the house all about it. She told me later that she was horrified that she’d been behaving like that because it was not the kind of behaviour to which he was accustomed, although of course she and I had a joke about it and a laugh. After staying there, she came back to live in temporary accommodation in the town again where she could pick up with her usual habits and way of life, and not be out there on a limb in such an extraordinary position.

This reminds me of a girl whom I used to know in Brussels. She was a free-lance worker for one of these NGOs and her work was interesting, but irregular. On one occasion she had no money to pay her mortgage so I agreed that she could come to stay with me for twelve months and let out her place to a tenant on a short let in order to catch up with her arrears of mortgage.

She would have been the type to have taken control of an interview, and she was also the type who seemed to do nothing but complain about how far out of town my apartment was. I did offer to push it closer to the city centre for her but the humour went right over her head. After she left, she didn’t speak to me after that and I’m still waiting for her to make some kind of “gesture” towards the accommodation. Not that I was expecting any but a gesture would have been nice.

The nurse turned up and organised my legs, with more of the banal talk that gets on my nerves. Luckily it’s Isabelle the Nurse for a week starting tomorrow, which will cheer me up.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re now on a whistle-stop tour of various castles as we dash towards the end, not hanging around long in any of them. Our author seems to be losing his interest in them, judging by the lack of clear description, and I can’t say that I blame him.

He tells us on page 490 that for Taunton Castle, "The inner court is further subdivided into two parts, of which the eastern half seems to have been raised into a sort of platform upon which probably Ine’s actual residence was placed.".

Just a handful of lines further down he tells us that "The walled part is roughly triangular, the base being the east side, arid the truncated part open to the west. This area seems further to have been divided by a cross wall into two parts, the keep, hall, and gatehouse being in the western, and in the eastern, the earthworks, which favours the notion of this having been the old English citadel.", totally forgetting that he mentioned that just a few lines previously.

On page 498, with regard to Tickhill Castle, he tells us that "The outer front of the first floor is ornamented with four stiff rude pediments". I don’t know about you, but my imagination is working overtime.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and finally finished the outstanding unit ready to send off. I also reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and sent it off. It’s a concert that came from Germany in 1982 and it’s certainly interesting.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and sorted out my patches, and then I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. And waited.

It was 13:11 when it finally turned up and I was not in a very good humour. We arrived at Avranches at 14:00 and it was, would you believe, 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had vowed to “have a discussion” with them about this fiasco of changing the dates, and so regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, knowing my luck, it would have to be Emilie The Cute Consultant on duty today.

She explained basically that it was only an idea, apparently not understanding that it’s the kind of decision that involves not just me but half the town as everyone else has to shunt their appointments around. She definitely doesn’t love me any more now.

No-one else bothered me at all. They were far too busy organising a new visitor who was not co-operating with them. I tried to revise my Welsh but I couldn’t keep going and drifted off into oblivion, to be shaken awake by the little student who told me that things were finished.

Nevertheless, they took their time sorting me out and the little student drew the short straw so uncoupling me took longer than it should. Weary and exhausted, it was 18:50 when I finally staggered out to the taxi and it was 19:35 when I finally sat down in my apartment.

And so I’m just about done for the day. It’s an afternoon that I would like to forget, and the quicker the better too.

Right now I’m off to bed where I would like to sleep for a hundred years but I’m up early tomorrow to go to Paris. I am not looking at all forward to this trip. Not in the least. But before I go to bed, I’d better check on my stiff, rude pediment and make sure that it’s OK.

But this idea of moving my apartment towards the city centre reminds me of the American tourist who staggered into a pub in Dent and asked the landlord "why did they build the railway station so far from the town?" (it’s three miles away).
After thinking for a moment, the landlord replied "they probably thought that it was a good idea to build it at the side of the railway line."