Tag Archives: les guis

Sunday 4th April 2010 – Easter.

Yes, it’s a Bank Holiday and that can only mean one thing – a day off.

So coffee in bed once more and a lie-in until 10:15. After that I read a book and did some work on the computer and that is the sum total of my day.

In fact I’ve been having a bit of fun on the computer. There’s a 3D animation program that’s been doing the rounds – pretty old technology and ages out of date, and it’s just been released on freeware with a few specimen characters. Anyway I downloaded it (it took almost all afternoon because it’s huge) and had a play.

Actually it’s something of a misleading offer because although it’s true that it’s all free, you get characters that are for all intents and purposes featureless and although you can animate them as they are, you have to buy the accessories like hair, eyes, clothes and the like. The program is tremendously complicated and there is also no instruction manual or help facility – what there is is an on-line forum where the contributors, in typical internet on-line forum manner, just hurl all kinds of abuse at each other. Total waste of time.

But after about 3 or 4 hours at it and with a shed-load of perseverence I managed to create my first animation – not very exciting but it’s a start. It’s the kind of thing you can have hours of endless fun doing if you have the time to spare. But it’s not something I’m going to be chucking any money at.

In other exciting news it seems that our radio programme has attracted the attention of French television who want to be put in touch with the presenters (Liz and Yours Truly). It’s something to do with a television programme about the Combrailles. It all sounds thoroughly exciting.

And in other other news, I see that the Zionists have allowed a delivery of clothes into Gaza – the first since 2007 in case you were wondering. For a race that complains about the inhuman treatment that they received 70 years ago they should know better about treating others with even more inhuman treatment. And the fact that they claim so bitterly about “terrorism” when the territory they occupy was captured through terrorism is so ironic as to be insulting and indecent.

I have no sympathy with them at all – if they treat the Palestinians (many of whom are Christians) like dogs, then they deserve to be bitten.

-2

Saturday 3rd April 2010 – I didn’t feel much like it this morning.

I woke up with the alarm, just by way of a change, and heard the rain pouring down on the roof (15mm we had today). What a way to start the day! So after a while of vegetating I heaved myself out of bed and set off for Montlucon. Late

At Carrefour they were selling baby lettuce plants – €1:95 for 12 and that’s a bargain so I bought two dozen seeing as mine haven’t taken yet.

I also went to the huge sports shop – Decathlon – to buy some football boots. But firstly they were mostly sold out of the popular sizes. I tried on a couple of pairs of boots my size but they weren’t half tight and pinched my feet like mad so I asked the footwear assistant which ones she recommended for wider feet.
“How should I know?” was her helpful reply. “You’ll just have to try them all on and find out”.
As if I don’t have anything better to do! So that’s Decathlon crossed of my shopping list with their crap customer service.

Noz was quite interesting and I spent a few bob in there too – nothing special (except a proper tray small enough to go through the door downstairs amd with high edges to stop me spilling stuff). There were a few good films – an old black and white Study in Scarlet and a copy of Douglas Fairbanks’ silent movie The Three Musketeers. I passed on the obviously interesting and highly relevant Women In Cages and the astonishing “Dracula in Pakistan”. “A rare film from the archives of Hollywood” it said in the trailer. Well, what more can anyone say?

Next stop of course was the Auchan and I was behind a woman who had spent almost €200 at the checkouts. she couldn’t find her carte de fidelite so she said to the cashier “Put the points on that gentleman’s card” – meaning me! That’s not something that happens every day either.

At Brico Depot I had an encounter with a woman and her daughter. They were looking at dowelling and just happened to catch me on the head with a length.
“Look out!” cried the daughter to her mother. “You’ve just given that man a coup de baguette“.
“It’s okay” I replied. “I used to be married”.
“Ahhh” said the mother. “You’ll know all about coups de baguette then”.
Now my sense of humour has been described as “special” and so I was absolutely astonished to find anyone – let alone a French woman – who was on my wavelength. And imagine my further astonishment when 10 minutes later I collided with the same females.
“We meet again” said Mum
“Yes” I replied. And if you are still here in 15 minutes you can help me load my van!” I was rather loaded up with wood at the time.

But who should I bump into but Simon who was also looking for wood. It’s nice to meet friends and have interesting chats, but why just then? I was onto something with that woman I was sure.

But anyway Simon helped me load up Caliburn and we had a coffee together afterwards.

I told him about my adventures in the swimming pool last week and explained that I was off there right then, so he made sure I had his mobile phone number in case there was another swimming match.

I went to the baths via Virlet to pick up the village’s defibrilator (you never know – there might have been a swimming gala again) and I was half expecting to see a heavy contingent of medical personnel and a tonne of ice ready to dump into the swimming pool in case the water boiled, but no – my luck wasn’t in and I just had a quiet swim with the usual 20 or 30 people who go there.

But there is a swimming gala on Sunday afternoon 11th April. Unfortunately for me Pionsat are playing away so I shall either be at St Gervais or Charensat. But if anyone would like to join me for a rain dance on the Saturday night they will be more than welcome.

-1

Friday April 2nd 2010 – I thought you might appreciate …

… an aerial photograph of the new vegetable garden, such as it is right now.

You can see that I’ve now installed the 8th and final (for the time being) raised bed, but I’ve had to cover it with corrugated iron sheeting as I have run out of black plastic. I’m going to have to buy some more of that.

You’ll also see the nest part of the exercise. I’ve put a board up about 50cms from the edge of the raised beds (just to the right of centre behind the old-pallet duckboarding) and I’ve started to fill the gap with rubble. This will also be covered with old slates in due course and become part of the main path. It will also serve as a slug trap as two beds will be surrounded completely by old slate and these will be the brassica beds. I hope that this anti-slug idea works.

Next part of the plan is to dig out to the left of the new raised bed (the one covered in corrugated iron sheeting) as that is where this new large cloche is to go. I reckon about 1m20 or so at the back sloping down too maybe 35cms at the front and it will make a great place to grow melons, chilis, peppers and the like. I need to experiment with some hot beds in the autumn to see if it will work and provide the heat that I need to force some produce.

Once the cloche is made, that will be the heavy manual work ended in the garden for this year. Ultimately there will be another few raised beds to the right of the new path but I need to move the old van for that and that won’t be happening any time soon. And when I move the two cars I can set down a lawn there but that’s a long time hence.

And I noticed today that the onions have started to rear their ugly heads.

-1

Thursday 1st April 2010 – We’re cracking on in the garden!

You can see the seventh raised bed – it’s the one on the extreme right at centre-height in the photo. Having dug over everywhere yesterday I made the raised bed – out of Brico Depot Bargain Basement shuttering board, of which I have a considerable amount as it is very handy stuff to have

The older raised beds were made out of board and were 1.40m square, but this board comes in 3m length so I have done this one 1.40 x 1.60.

Once I organised that, I started on digging over where the 8th raised bed will be – behind bed no7. This took ages to dig over – in fact it’s only had its first digging – on the grounds that there are tree roots everywhere and they all need to be hauled out. Mind you I might have made much more progress had I left my bed this morning long before … errr … 10:40. I dunno what’s happening to me about this.

After breakfast I did a couple of hours up here and I’ve put two of the footy web pages on line – this one and this one. Only another 12 to do.

This evening I went round to Michael’s and we had a bit of a jamming session. Because he’s not been playing guitar long I had to teach him some music theory, which is quite difficult as I don’t know it myself. He’s off to the UK in a couple of days time but we resolved that when he came back we would try to get together maybe once a week and see what we shall see. In the meantime I’ll have a rummage through my record collection and look for some 12-bar blues stuff (some Flying Aces stuff or JJ Cale – that kind of thing) and make up a disk of stuff to have a play with.

And all day we had intermittent showers, hailstorms, heavy rain – you name it, we had it. And last night the temperature dropped below freezing.

-6

Wednesday 31st March 2010 – Yeeuucchhh

A couple of weeks ago I made a comment something along the lines that summer had finally arrived because over the previous 7 days the minimum temperature had risen from minus 9 to plus 9.

Well, a week ago we had just had a 7-day period of extremely minimal rainfall. This last 7 days though we have had a grand total of 54mm. 7 days ago I did a load of washing and noticed that the water butts were running really low. Tonight they are overflowing.

Terry and I went down to football training but there was no chance of any football tonight. Those girls from Saturday could have held their swimming gala on there, there was that much standing water.

But the plants seem now to be bursting into life. The herb trays are bursting forth, the radishes have gone berserk and now the carrots, spinach and beetroot have come to life. They are obviously enjoying this weather. I’m glad someone is.

This morning I did two hours work upstairs. I’ve transcribed all of my outstanding footy notes and I can bring the football website up-to-date. But while I was transcribing the footy notes I came across some notes that I had dictated on a journey to Hamburg back in early 2007. I’d forgotten all about those.

After that I carried on laying the paths around the raised beds and I’ve done as much as I can. That’s another pile of builders’ rubble and old slate accounted for. So bearing in mind the garden springing to life I’ve started to dig over where the last (for now) of the raised beds will be. And while I was digging up tree roots and the like I noticed that one of the apple trees I planted all those years ago seems to be coming to life, even though it is thoroughly overgrown by rampant ground alder. I reckon I ought to have a go at clearing some of that rubbish away from it to give it some room.

But back at the football there was only a handful who had turned out for training and someone suggested we practised dribbling around some old bollards that they have for training purposes. But I cautioned against it. It recalled too many memories of when this kind of training became a la mode back in the late 1960s. Crewe Alexandra, my home team, was one of the first to try it back in 1967 and during one of the very first training sessions the sports editor of the Crewe Chronicle rang up the club
“How’s this new training session going?” he asked.
“Dreadful” replied Ernie Tagg, the club manager. “The bollards are winning 2-0“.

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Tuesday 30th March 2010 – Think of a well-known expression …

… involving booze-ups and breweries.

We were in the studio this afternoon recording our radio programmes for the month of April and I must admit that I am impressed by the hi-tec equipment available here. Have a close look at the bracing support on this microphone stand. It’s terrific.

As you know, last Sunday evening Liz and I prepared our programmes for today so I sent to everyone concerned a notice telling them that I wanted their submissions by 28th March at the latest.

So having had our discussion and made our plans then of course on the 29th March we had a mail from the SMADC (Societe Mixte pour l’Animation et Developpement des Combrailles), one of these local QUANGOs, telling us about stuff we must absolutely advertise without fail!

So imagine my pleasure in writing back in saying that “these meetings are for the week 2/6 April and we recorded the programme for this week back in February so you are too late!” Some of these events also concerned communes to whom we had written requesting information and who couldn’t be bothered to reply and that got my goat too. So this afternoon I buttonholed the author of this famous mail to
1) remind him of our deadlines
2) tell him that if the communes of St Gervais and Manzat want their events published then they need to reply to MY e-mails first.
As you know, my normal method of impressing the importance of something into someone’s consciousness is to beat it into their skull in morse code with a pickaxe handle and I can see me adopting that method here if things don’t improve.

This evening it was the CREFAD meeting at St Gervais about these “cheques-service” so Liz and I turned up at the venue to encounter
1) Bill, who had been attracted to the venue by our publicity
2) a totally darkened and locked room.
The lady at the library opposite tried the door and confirmed that it was locked so we had a wander around the town to see where else it might be.

Answer = nowhere at all, but the door of the Mairie was open so we went in, and there was the Mayor. He looked at the agenda and comfirmed that the meeting room had indeed been booked by CREFAD for the evening.
“Ahhh – you must have gone to the wrong room” he insisted, and very kindly led us across the road.

But no – we had indeed gone to the correct room and yes, it was indeed locked and in darkness. That even surprised him. We even tracked down a leaflet advertising the meeting and he confirmed that we did indeed have the date, time and venue perfectly correct.

And to think that we had even advertised this meeting on our radio programme!

Anyway I’ve just written a stinking e-mail to CREFAD about this. I included the phrase “since our involvement in this radio programme and having sampled a few of the examples of the organisation of these kinds of Organisation I’m beginning to wonder if this ‘lack of seriousness’ is engrained in the region”. If they want us to advertise their meetings then they have to persuade us that they are serious. We don’t want our own credibility undermined by these sort of happenings.

And I can write mails like this now. I’m a Prima Donna … “you mean a pre-Madonna” – ed … now so I can throw teddy out of the pram. I don’t know how they expect us to run a radio show if the kind of organisation that we have encountered today is typical of what we are likely to receive.

Honestly, you thought OUSA was bad, didn’t you?

And in other news, I have the fire on in here. It’s freezing outside.

+13

-12

Monday 29th March 2010 – We now have SIX raised beds in the vegetable plot.

The last one of these I had to cut a couple of new sides as the original ones had split. The next couple of beds I’m going to have to build up from scratch.

There’s only two more to make, but I’m going to be building a new cloche about 3 times the size of the existing one and about twice as high. That’ll be for melons and cucumbers and so on and I’ll use the existing one for strawberries.

MInd you there was a point when I didn’t think I would get anything done today. What with the change in hours today I found it a little difficult to leave my stinking pit. And then I had a phone call, a parcel from the postwoman, a parcel from a courier (my new Nikon camera has arrived!!!!) followed by a visit from my Dutch neighbours. By the time I’d finished my breakfast it was almost 12:00!

This morning started off bright and sunny snd for a moment I thought that Spring had come back. But of course it wasn’t to last and it clouded over progressively until by teatime it was positively pouring down with rain.

You might remember a few months ago I had a jamming session with a guitarist and a drummer in Montaigut. Michael the guitarist phoned me up this afternoon and asked if I wanted to get together again. So with being out tomorrow night at a CREFAD meeting, wednesday football training and Friday in Clermont Ferrand, that only left Thursday evening.

Do you know that when I lived in Brussels there was so much more to do and so many more people to do it with, yet I never seemed to do very much. However down here in the back of beyond I’m rushed off my feet and have far more going for me than I ever did back there!

-6

Sunday 28th March 2010 – Blimey, that was quick!

Yes, summer has been and gone and taken autumn with it, and we are back in the middle of winter.

I was at Giat today to watch Pionsat’s 2nd XI play them (they lost 2-0). 790 metres up on an exposed plateau and I froze to death in the biting wind. And the locals are expecting snow this evening, so they said.

13.9 degrees in here when I set out and 12.8 degrees when I came back so I lit the fire for a while to warm up the place. So much for the 20.2 degrees we had early last week.

After the footy I went round to Liz and Terry’s to insoect the work in progress in the new kitchen (very impressive) and to plan our radio programmes for the next month. We are highlighting medical insurance and the like to go with Julie’s account of her hospital encounters.

And much to our surprise our radio programme from last week is being streamed. You can listen to it at
http://lemagazine.canalblog.com
Send us your feedback, please.

-7

Saturday 27th March 2010 – You have to feel sorry …

… for Pionsat’s 3rd XI. Struggling near the foot of the table and desperate for points they were leading 2-1 tonight against the league leaders and playing like lions until not one but TWO wicked deflections robbed them of glory.

When your luck is down it is really down.

And it was flaming cold on the terraces tonight. Winter has returned, so it seems. Horrible grey overcast windy with driving rain. I couldn’t be bothered to get up this morning when the alarm went – I just wasn’t in the mood and it was 10:40 I when finally crawled out of my heaving pit.

After a leisurely breakfast I wandered off to Commentry to do the shopping and had an excellent day in the Bargain Shop. Apart from the usual mundane nonsense and cheap food products I bought a blackboard for €3.50 and some chalk for 20 centimes, a mobile kind of table thingy, two levels and on wheels, for €2:00 and a little tiny rucksack thingy for €1 which, lined with an old foam gym mat that I have lying around, will make an excellent camera bag.

After that it was off to Neris-les-Bains for my swim and shower. Yes, two showers in a week and we aren’t talking OUSA here either. I’ll be washing myself away here.

But while I was in the swim all of a sudden about 30 young teenage girls wearing tight-fitting swimming costumes burst onto the scene. There was to be some kind of swimming tournament after the pool closed to the public. And as the girls were doing their exercises, rhythmically stretching their lithe and supple muscles, I didn’t know where to look
… “Ohhh yes you did” – ed …
“I mean I had too much choice of where to look. 3 or 4 would have been sufficient”
But really, it isn’t fair. I’m not young any more and I can’t cope with things like this. My heart can’t take the pressure any more.

But it goes to show that I’m still quite capable of chasing after the women. I just hope that if ever I catch one I can remember what to do with her. And if I do remember what to do with one, I just hope that I will last long enough to be able to do it.

-8

Friday 26th March 2010 – On my way …

… to Clermont Ferrand this evening I passed under the autoroute, went round the bend … “no surprise there” – ed … above Beauregard Vendon and noticed this absolutely magnificent rainbow dangling underneath the clouds.

You need to enlarge the photo to see it and it’s not really all that clear even then, but it wasn’t half impressive. I wish I had taken the Pentax, poorly though it is, with me.

A couple of miles further on at St Bonnet there was a Citroen U23 lorry from 1951 parked at a garage at the side of the road so I stopped and took some pics of that too. No old vehicles for months and months and then two good ones – the Studebaker of Sunday and now this one – in a couple of days.

This morning I was much more mobile – most of the aches seem to have worn off. But after breakfast I came up here for three hours and did some more stuff for the radio programme. I can now tell you all about registering with French Social Security.

After lunch I went into the garden and braved the wind and rain (we had ONLY 22mm of rain today and it’s p155ing down now). I didn’t install any more raised beds today but I’ve started doing the paths in between them. People keep asking me what I ontend to do with the rubble and old slate still in the first floor bedroom- well now you know. The rubble from the dividing wall is the base of the path and the slates are the top covering. They say that slates discourage slugs from crossing but I don’t care – it makes a good path and there’s plenty of it. Slug-repellant capacities will be a bonus.

-7

Thursday 25th March 2010 – God it was hard this morning …

… but that’s enough about Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she ought to.

It was agony in bed last night with the muscles in my legs tightening up continually. It kept me awake for much of the night, as did the French Air Force, who decided on carrying out night-time manoeuvres … “personoeuvres please” – ed … until gone 02:30. Getting up for a gipsy’s at 06:00 was probably the most painful thing I have ever tried.

Going downstairs for breakfast was interesting too, and I was clearly in no fit state to go out working so I came back up here and did a load of outstanding work on the computer – much of which was the preparation for our radio broadcast next week. I managed a fair bit too – but that’s enough about … “you’ve already done that” – ed … and that’s got me thinking.

When I was in Brussels I used to do my computer work from 11:00 until 14:00 and then work on the apartment in the afternoon and evening. Pretty soon the clocks will go forward and we will have more daytime daylight so bearing this in mind I could easily work from 10:00 until 12:00 up here on the computer and then work until maybe 19:00 or 19:30 outside. That would be much more useful.

By about 12:00 I felt a little better so I went outside and did another raised bed. That’s 5 in position. But the weather has changed. It was blowing a gale when I went outside, so much so that it’s lifted the cucumber and tomato seeds off the shelf in the greenhouse and spilled them all over the floor so I needed to replant them which was a pain.

Now the weather has really turned and it’s pouring with rain outside. I have mixed feelings about that. I love the hot weather but I’m getting low on water and also the plants that I have sown need the water. This is the sign if a true rural peasant, definitely a distinction from the vacancier.

-6

Wednesday 24th March 2010 – I must be off my head

Yes – at my age (which I shudder to think about) I’ve restarted football training! I’m out of condition, I realise that, and it’s one of those things that if I let it drag then it won’t ever improve. It’ll just get worse and worse. It’s probably 25 years since I last played a football match and 10 years since I last did anything serious in the way of fitness. When I lived in Brussels I used to go running every night and I could run for miles, but when I moved from Duysbergh to Expo in 2000 I stopped as the terrain was not suitable. And since I was ill and lost all my energy I’ve just not been able to do a thing.

Three laps round the football pitch tonight finished me off and then we had a 7-a-side game for 30 minutes each half. But after about 10 minutes I went to play sweeper as you don’t have to run around very much.

At least I managed to get a shower out of it (and we aren’t talking about OUSA here!) – but it’s a hell of a way to do it. I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this tomorrow morning and I can already feel my leg muscles tightening up.

This morning I went round to discuss this newspaper thing. Apparently there’s going to be a committee of three running it – an owner/editor, a financial consultant, and a typestter/website manager. You can guess which role I’m earmarked for. Two years of doing General Electric’s training leaflets followed by 11 months redesigning The Conference Board’s documents has sttod me in good stead as I knew it would. I also took the opportunity to rustle up the deatails of events taking place in due course – we need to pad out our radio programme with stuff.

And while we are on the subject you might remember a photo that graced these pages a while back – that of Le Quartier all lit up with Christmas lights. I sent it to a friend who is the reporter for that area for the local newspaper. She sent it in to the paper and apparently they featured it in glorious technicolour as “photo of the day”. Now how about that?

In other news, back at the ranch I don’t just have my radishes coming up, I also have my marjoram and my spinach. This garden is looking impressive if it all works. And I put in my fourth raised bed today.

But somehow I have a feeling that I won’t be doing too much tomorrow. Ouch!

-6

Tuesday 23rd March 2010 – If you look in this photo …

… you’ll notice a few changes. From right to left we have the outline of the greenhouse. It’s far from being erected as I said previously as I don;t have the bolts for it and there’s no glass. But at least it’s in position.

Next to it is a water butt. It’s one that has been hanging around here for quite a while so I reckoned that I would put it to use. There are loads of receptacles full of old rainwater so I filled it with that. Bucket by bucket as there is no way of connecting it to my water system. Not yet anyway, but I have a cunning plan.

Thirdly you will notice a third raised bed. I installed that this afternoon too. I need to get a move on with these as I noticed to my astonishment that the radishes seem to have germinated (since Thursday!) – there’s definitely signs of movement in that seed tray.

So that was this afternoon’s work. What about this morning? Well there wasn’t all that much of that. I had to get up in the middle of the night to go for a gipsy’s but the next thing I remember was that it was 09:54. A leisurely breakfast on the terrace was followed by the realisation that –

it was a gorgeous bright sunny day
all of the batteries were fully charged (and it was only just 10:30)
there was a decent wind blowing

That can only mean one thing – WASHING! So I scouted around and found a machine-load of stuff

While the washing was a-doing I did a bit of housekeeping and general arranging so as to keep on top of what there is to do around here.

And did you all hear us on the radio this evening? Yes, Liz and I were on the air!

-7

Monday 22nd March 2010 – It’s 23:11 right now …

… and I’m absolutely shattered. I crashed out at lunchtime, I crashed out when I knocked off, and I’ll be crashing out any moment now at this rate.

It’s not as if I’ve done anything major either, so I don’t understand it. This morning I finished off repotting the Liz Ayers memorial orchard – the trees are now all in fresh soil with a light scattering of wood ash over the topof the soil and covered in gravel to prevent weeds from settling. The bottoms of the plastic buckets have been crocked to allow for drainage.

I was also going to go into St Eloy for LIDL’s gardening day but I passed on that. In fact I couldn’t really justify the expense of buying the stuff and I’m on another economy drive.

So instead I sowed my Brussels Sprouts seeds and that’s now everything for March. I can have 3 weeks off before I need to do the April planting.

But talking of Brussels Sprouts I noticed that the ones I planted last year now have a decent look about them so I had some of those for tea. It’s nice to eat your own food. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and what the garden is supposed to be doing too.

This afternoon I extracted the bits of aluminium greenhouse from the shrubbery. This is one that someone gave me – it’s a 3×2 metre with no glass so I need to organise that somehow, and I also need to find some of the aluminium screws and nuts to fasten it together. But at least I have it in place (which meant that I had to saw away several inconvenient branches) so I can work out where to put the next beds.

And I’m in demand! The English-language newspaper that spectacularly collapsed back in November has been put up for sale by the owner (some people have quite a cheek – it made nothing but losses throughout its entire existence) and a French person I know is interested in buying it (there’s one born every minute you know). She needs an English-language technical adviser and yours truly has been roped in for that. We have a site meeting on Wednesday morning.

As if I don’t have enough to do. Who said that the rural life was quiet and boring?

But I’m off to bed now before I fa ………..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-4

Sunday 21st March 2010 – One thing that has been missing from these pages …

… has been “old cars”. I don’t mean the Merc and the Cortina and the old Transit, that have graced these pages just recently – I mean the real stuff.

If Nerina were here right now she would tell you of our holidays in Europe during which I spent most of my time scavenging around in hedgerows for the real old stuff, like this … errrr… Studebaker Champion from about 1950.

This (or rather the first model for this one is a type two) was the car that saved Studebaker from bankruptcy. A big straight-six sidevalve engine that was phenomenally economical for its day and during the petrol rationing in the USA during World War II this car sold like hot cakes.

So what is it doing here in St Pardoux? Especially as it is sporting California licence plates.

Talking of sporting, I was in St Pardoux on my way to somewhere near Maringues to watch Pionsat’s 3rd XI play ES Thuret. Pionsat had 10 players and Thuret were complete but Pionsat still gave them a good run for their money and the game finished, surprisingly, 0-0. It’s the only game so far that I didn’t take any action photos, for the simple reason that there was no action.

Well, there was – in the second half a Pionsat defender whalloped the ball into touch (they’ve been clearly reading my notes) and a girl – and a girly girl at that – who happened to be walking around the ground – she caught it fully and completely in a fashion that any goalkeeper would have been proud of. And the cheers from the crowd were encouraging.

And not to be out-done, a high clearance into touch fell just nicely for me and I headed it back on the volley into play and into the arms of Xavier who was running up to take the throw-in. Again, this was greeted by enormous cheers from the crowd.

But this has got me thinking. This was a basement clash between two of the worst clubs in the entire Puy-de-Dome league. The standard was appalling and I’ve had enough of this so I spoke to Jerome, the organiser of the team, and he’s agreed that I can come and join in the training on Wednesday evenings. And I spoke to Terry when I got home, and he’s coming along to the training too. We probably won’t get to play at all, but at least it’ll get us both up to a decent level of fitness.

You would think that we were both old enough to know better.

-5

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality