It’s really difficult to sleep when you can only sleep in one position.

Each time I rolled over into another position something else hurt.

And coupled with that,I suffer from bad attacks of cramp every now and again and last night I had not one but two attacks. And that was probably the worst bit.

it was dawn when I finally managed to go to sleep and …gulp … 12:34 when I awoke.

So what I did today was to work on the notes for the programmes for Radio Anglais. For the next few weeks we’ll be discussing winter driving techniques, as well as all of the usual stuff that we do.

Tonight at Pionsat the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI were playing against Clermont Franco-Algeriens and they were totally played off the park.

Even when the opponents had a man sent off (two yellow cards, both times for insulting the referee – how silly can you get?) they still had enough in the tank to demolish a weak FC Pionsat St Hilaire side that during the whole 90 minutes of the match could only manage only two shots on target (and somehow scored both times as well, which totally astonished me).

The number of times Clermont broke through the weakest FC Pionsat St Hilaire defence that I have ever seen (and we’ve seen some pretty weak ones just recently, believe me) and blazed over the bar from five yards out – never mind only scoring 4, 14 would have been more like it.

By the way, excuse the poor quality of the photo. Not only did we have the usual problems of lack of light in crucial zones of the pitch to contend with, the match was played in a very thick fog and there were moments when I thought that the match would never be finished.

But I’m starting to get worried. If the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI are relegated to the 4th Division (which they will do if they carry on playing like this) the 3rd XI will have to go into hibernation.

And that won’t be at all popular.

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