Tag Archives: lie in

Monday 5th November 2012 – IN POSSIBLY WHAT …

… is going to be one of the shortest blog entries ever, I’m clearly not quite 100% – but then you knew that anyway.

The effects of my weekend away must have taken out of me more than I realised because it’s been quite difficult for me to move. Leaving my bed was quite exciting, I’ll promise you.

So today, I’ve been slowly catching up on what I should have done this weekend, including writing up yesterday’s mammoth blog entry and when I finish it (whenever that might be) I can restart work.

Always assuming of course that it stops raining sometime soon. For if not, I’ll be building myself an ark

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Thursday 1st November 2012 – I’M GLAD …

… that it was today that was a Bank Holiday and I decided not to work, because it has done nothing but pour down all day – at times with some really torrential rain.

And after a not-so-early night, switching off all of the alarms and so on, I managed to stay in bed until all of … errr … 08:56am. So much for that!

so after breakfast (which included coffee for the first time since when I was ill – i’ve been reintroducing foods one by one to see if there is anything that is bad) I sat down and watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone;

It’s a really excellent film, much better than you might expect if you can steel yourself to pass the dire 10 minutes of opening.

I had loads of other things to do as well, but I did … precisely nothing. Sat and vegetated for all of the day. I didn’t even go downstairs to make any food – just nibbled on bits and pieces (but I did make a second coffee though).

Still, as Joy said, I deserve a day off every now and again where I shouldn’t feel guilty about doing nothing.

But if it’s as bad as this tomorrow I’ll crack on with the shelving in the cupboard. I really want that to be finished.

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Thursday 25th October 2012 – A BIG THANK-YOU …

… to everyone who thought about me while I was ill. I appreciated it very much.

A couple of you have suggested taking it easy for a while – sentiments with which I totally agree. Accordingly when the alarm clocks went off, I turned over and went back to sleep for a while.

Most of the day has been spent with paperwork – or rather, fiddling about with the printer so that I could print off a pile of paperwork.

It didn’t print in black last month and so I did everything in blue, but today I spent ages cleaning the heads and managed to get half a black printout.

One of the nozzles is blocked, and so I went to clean the heads again, and it ran out of black ink. I changed the black ink, but it still wasn’t printing properly and so I cleaned the heads again.

This time it ran out of blue ink.

I changed the blue ink, cleaned the heads, and it’s still not printing properly in black.

This means that for the foreseeable future I’m back to printing everything in blue again. I never seem to have any luck with printers.

This afternoon, I selected all of the music for the rock programmes but this evening was something exciting and unusual – Nan was having a little do and I was invited, as were Cécile, Gilles and Zoe.

We had a snack and played charades and so on for a few hours. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?< Tomorrow is recording the Radio Anglais rock programmes for Radio Tartasse and so I won't be doing too much tomorrow morning either.

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Saturday 20th October 2012 – I’M ALL ICKY-POOHS

I started to feel ill on Friday night and I wasn’t feeling so good this morning either and so I decided to stay in bed to sleep through it.

Or, at least that was the plan.

But it didn’t quite work out quite like that as for reasons that I won’t explain because you are probably eating your lunch right now, I couldn’t stay in bed for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Consequently I reckon that I’ve eaten something that disagrees with me – but what, I do not know.

On the basis that if nothing goes in, then nothing can come out, I decided not to eat or drink anything until the crisis passed but nevertheless I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines (and wasn’t that an exciting adventure?) to do some quick shopping.

Having taken a few elementary precautions, I went down to watch the football, including watching FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI win their first game of the season against the Goatslayers. but that was really too much.

Back home, I retired to bed and that was that.

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Thursday 6th September 2012 – I DIDN’T GET MUCH …

… done on the wall today either. This deadline of next weekend is looking less and less likely

The effects of all these early mornings proved too much for me today. I vaguely heard the alarm clock go off, but it was 09:10 when I set foot out of bed.

Had It not been for the fact that I needed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse (or what passes for a porcelain horse around here) I would probably still be in bed right now

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceA good few hours on the website and then outside at 12:30 and I managed to bung two really good bucket-loads into the wall.

Even better – after lunch, even with rearranging some of the stones, I still heaved a couple of bucket loads in by 16:30. However, such is the condition of the wall that all of that chalk mortar isn’t advancing me very much.

And 16:30 though saw me come to a rather shuddering stop.

According to my weather reporting, weather comes in five grades

  1. overcast
  2. cloudy
  3. clouds
  4. scattered clouds
  5. cloudless

We started to day with scattered clouds but by 16:30 we had progressed to a cloudless day. The water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was 63°C, the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and there was a good wind blowing.

There was also a big pile of dirty clothes to be washed up here in the attic and the bedding needed changing – the kind of things that need doing no matter what other plans you have, and so I stopped work on the wall and dealt with the washing.

Put all of that out of the way.

While this was going on, I did a few odd jobs around here, like changing plugs on appliances and so on.

As you know, I don’t use Continental plugs and sockets here but British ones, for the simple reason that the plugs themselves are fused and so any issues with my system won’t damage the appliances.

‘ve also wired in the new media trolley that I assembled on Sunday. It now has a 4-way 230-volt socket that plugs into the wall – I can plug all of the external drives and so on into it, and it also has 3 x 12-volt DC sockets for things like the DVD player, the video player and so on.

Finally, even though the water in the solar shower was quite cold, I bunged 5 litres of hot water out of the dump load into it and had a shower myself – clean myself up.

And so now there are clean sheets, clean pillowcases, a clean quilt cover, and a clean me. I’m quite looking forward to that and it won’t be long before I’m in it either.

And then tomorrow I really must get cracking and no mistake.

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Sunday 2nd September 2012 – ONE THING THAT MAKES ME …

… appreciate how lucky I am with my friends is that they appreciate and respect my little foibles and peccadilloes.

Of course these days, nobody respects my little foibles quite like Percy Penguin, and then nothing like half as often as I would like, and as for my little peccadilloes, I bet that you didn’t even know that armadilloes and peccaries could mate

But back to the plot – having rung me at 09:00 a couple of Sundays ago, someone must have had a quiet word with Rosemary because it was at 12:30 this afternoon that she phoned me.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how you wrap it up, it still comes as a hell of a surprise, if not a disappointment, when you yourself are still wrapped up in the arms of Morpheus in your comfy little bed at the time.

So after my rude awakening and my breakfast, I turned out a corner of my room here – the corner which was the likeliest to be the hiding place of my mobile phone.

No such luck with the phone, as I was half-expecting, but I did find another pile of missing stuff – something that always happens and something that is always a great comfort to me.

I’ve also rearranged a few things over there, put the printer in a more-permanent home, and sorted out all of the stationery too

After lunch, by which time I mean about 17:30, I assembled the desk-on-wheels thing that I bought the other day at Centrakor in Commentry, and that was no mean feat as the instructions for that were wrong too and I had to work it out myself.

It’s quite a nice piece of furniture, excellent value for €19:99. I’m well-happy with this for a purchase. I’ve loaded everything onto it now and it works quite well.

The downside of it all is that I seem now to have lost the remote control to the AKAI 12-volt DVD player.

So that’s the sum total of my day. I’m off now to have an early night to catch up my beauty sleep. I need an enormous amount of that.

But before I go off to sleep, let me just confirm something that you might already have gathered from a couple of comments that I’ve already made.

When I went off to Canada at the end of April I planned to go back again this autumn. Especially so, seeing that I left all of my winter clothes there when I came back.

But I’m making rapid progress with this lean-to as you know. I’ve accomplished so much since I came back from Canada last October and the end is in sight. I’m still all-fired up to carry on and if I stop, I might not have the momentum, the motivation and the weather to be able to continue.

It’s a shame to stop now when I can finish it off in a couple of weeks, and so Canada is now officially cancelled and I’m going up the wall.

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Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

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Sunday 5th August 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… that I mentioned yesterday seems to have resolved itself.

When I checked the statistics earlier, we had had 5.5mm of rain up to that point. and it’s still teeming down outside.

All the plants will be having a good watering anyway, and you can’t say that they don’t need it – a few of them were really gasping a bit.

I worked out that the catchment area of the water is about 30m². Therefore 1/30 of a metre of rain – about 34mm – will give me 1 cubic metre, or 1000 litres, of water.

So 5.5 mm of water will give me 5.5/34 x 1000 = about 160 litres of rain. I won’t have any issues about using that lot.

fete annuel de pionsat brocante puy de dome franceIt started to rain while I was at the Pionsat brocante this afternoon. And it served me right because I didn’t arrive there until about 14:30.

Mind you, I don’t think that I missed very much because it was mostly awful as you can see.

But I did have the most extraordinary stroke of luck.

I use kee klamps to make the mounting frames for my solar panels and they are expensive. But there was a Dutch guy here with a box-full for sale for all of €5:00 – you can’t even buy one for that – and so I duly knocked him down to €4:00.

I had a very good reason for my somewhat-delayed start to the morning. Brain of Britain here forgot to cancel his early morning alarm and so at 07:45 I had an unexpected cacophony.

Anyway, badger that for a game of soldiers. I tuned off the alarm and went back to bed until 10:45, and that, dear reader, was that.

caleche fete annuel de pionsat puy de dome franceMarianne was there of course with one of her sons, in her role as active member of the Amis du Chateau de Pionsat and we had quite a lengthy chat.

Marianne was actually in charge of the caleche, the horse and carriage that had ben hired to give sightseeing trips around the town, and I was even invited aboard for a free lap of honour.

It goes without saying that if it’s free, I’ll have ten of those.

That was it really – a really lazy day. But I’m entitled to one every week. A day where you do nothing and don’t feel guilty about it is really important.

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Saturday 14th July 2012 – IT’S ONLY 23:15 …

… and I’m thoroughly whacked.

I’m also extremely tired, but that’s another story. Anyone would think that I’ve had a really hard day, but in fact I’ve done probably not much more than nothing.

I didn’t even have an early start either – it was 09:30 when I crawled out of Quatermass’s Pit.

And on that subject, I wish that the weather would improve so that I could do some washing. We’ve had more torrential rain again to day and if it carries on I’ll be uprooting my vegetables and planting rice instead.

After a leisurely morning’s breakfast I started on the radio programmes but it wasn’t long before I was sidetracked.

The Music folders on my external hard drive are in a mess and having sorted out the photos last weekend, I decided to organise the music. Strangely enough, that freed off a couple of gigabytes of space on my hard drive and there’s room to move about now.

And that wasn’t all either.

In 2002 I was in Utah and spent a very pleasant half a day prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert in Utah. Today though, it’s in the news.

All over the American newspapers today though was an article about someone else who had been prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert for three weeks totally lost and being found in the nick of time by some searchers.

I had a look at my web page, and realised that it was one that had only received the briefest of updating when I did a major update of my website in February 2007.

Sensing that the page would receive a few hits today (and I wasn’t wrong either) I spent the afternoon rewriting it and bringing it right up to date.

So much for the radio.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’m out with Marianne tomorrow and I need to be on form. I’ve no idea why I’m so tired right now.

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Sunday 8th July 2012 – 11.5 mms …

… of rain fell last night. And apart from the very start of the downpour I heard nothing at all because I was in bed by 23:40 or so and that was that until Marianne rang me at 10:00.

Well, almost, because if I ever find out who it was who telephoned me at about 04:00 or thereabouts, I shall go round to visit them with a piece of lead piping.

Despite my early night it was still a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning and I was late for Marianne, but eventually we arrived at La Cellette and set up Marianne’s exhibition even though I wasn’t feeling much like it.

la cellette string quartet rick the trailer hire guy st fargeol puy de dome franceNane was there and she made me a cup of coffee and that made me feel a little better, and Rick the trailer guy was there with his string quartet – they were doing the music today and a very good job they were making of it. That made the day so much better too.

The crowd was rather disappointing though, but better than last year when, rather astonishingly, no-one turned up at all.

This afternoon I finally finished sorting out all of the photos – all nicely arranged, stored and documented – and I’ve sent the ones off that this author guy wants. That’s that out of the way and hopefully the cash will be in the bank in early course. Some photos were in triple, if not quadruple, examples and I’ve cleared tons of room out on the external drive that I’ll be storing them on from now on.

But there are files stored on there from when I first started backing up on external drives, back in 2002, and what might be a good idea would be to go through them all and make a proper continual stream of files instead of having them stored by reference to the hard drive that they used to be on. Another thing that I might do is now that the big desktop computer is redundant, to take one of the 500GB drives out of that and fit it into a caddy that I have lying around here, and make an external drive just for photos. You’ve no idea how much space these photos take. The first few years of digital photography, 2001-2005, take up less than 1 DVD of space. In one week in Canada in 2010 I used more space than that.

And before I forget, for I’ve already forgotten twice, a big thank-you to Rhys as the phone that he sent to me arrived on Friday and it works fine.     

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Thursday 28th June 2012 – ONE OF THE REASONS …

… and there are many of them, to be sure, as to why I keep a blog is that I can refer back to it and find out when I did something.

I forget all too easily these days what I’ve been up to and when I was up to it – and just remember, before you start laughing, that you will be as old as me too one of these days too.

So I looked back and found that it was exactly a week ago today that I planted the courgette, cucumber, gherkin etc seeds, and sowed some lettuce seed in pots.

And while I was sorting out the herb buckets (those nice heaps of oregano and tarragon have gone – cut down now and hanging up to dry in my attic) I happened to notice that the lettuce were growing.

Blimey! That was quick!

So they had a really good watering, and they need it too in this heat.

And so, out of curiosity, I went to look at the beds where I had planted the courgette etc seeds.

And guess what?

Absolutely! They are rearing their pretty little heads too.

There’s even some beetroot from what I planted a week earlier, but the carrots are once again doing nothing at all.

Anyway, it seems to be all go in the garden again.

I didn’t manage an early start today, unfortunately. It was so hot that at 03:00 I was still up and about and I would probably still be flat out on my back right now if a hornet hadn’t come in at about 08:45 and chased me around the bedroom.

Still, makes a change from Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves, chasing me around the bedroom.

This afternoon I started to draw up the plans for the next stage of construction work, and began to make a list of the bits that I need. Right on cue, Rosemary rang me up and asked if I would be interested in going to the Brico Depot in Montlucon.

Seeing as how it won’t be very easy getting all of this wood onto Caliburn’s roof rack all on my own, and it’s no skin off my nose whether I go tomorrow or Saturday.

And when I heard that half a day’s gardening was the reward on offer, then that was it, mercenary that I am. It’s a good job I emptied out Caliburn yesterday, wasn’t it?

In between the surveying I dragged out the tabletop washing machine and did a load of washing seeing as I had a pile to do, it was gorgeous and warm, and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus solar energy was at 60.5°C.

To finish off the day I treated myself to yet another solar shower seeing the temperature of the water in the black plastic solar hearing box had reached 41.5°C. And that was gorgeous too

It’s all go here right now, isn’t it?

    

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Wednesday 13th June 2012 – BLIMEY!

This is early!

But I’ve finished everything that I need to do and I’m not sure now how to go about killing time until later. I might even go and have an early night just for a change.

And I’m not sure what’s going on either, because if anyone were to ask me what is it that I’ve done today, the response would effectively be “badger all”!

It all started to go wrong when the alarm clocks rang this morning. “Just another 5 minutes” I said to myself, and the next thing that I knew was that it was 09:40.

Mind you, the weather was gorgeous at that time of the morning and so I profited by having a leisurely breakfast – interrupted by a knock on the door. That was Liz, who had brought back the rest of the washing that I had left there on Monday.

As a reward, she departed with some oregano and tarragon, because all of that is going berserk at the moment.

But that reminded me – the washing that I did on Monday was still in a plastic bag in Caliburn and so seeing as it was a lovely day, I hung that out to finish off drying.

And wasn’t that a big mistake? Cue the big black rain cloud and that was that.

And while I was discussing the washing situation with myself the phone rang. Rosemary – “they can’t fix the wheel on my car today and seeing as I’m at a loose end I’ll come round and help you do some weeding”.

That led to a hasty tidying up and so on around here. Must exhibit some dignity and pride.

But of course when Rosemary arrived she brought with her a few more rain clouds and so we sat around drinking coffee and chatting for most of the afternoon. And she also departed with some oregano and tarragon.

I have a great deal of work to do and I cant really spare the time to lounge around but nevertheless time spent with friends is never wasted. I’ll just have to work twice as hard tomorrow, won’t I?

And thanks, Joy, for your little note about the spray bottles for the vinegar mix. I’ll give that a go when (if ever) the weather dries up. It’s too wet for anything right now.

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Tuesday 5th June 2012 – I’VE MADE FURTHER STRIDES …

… in the garden today.

after another late start and breakfast I carried on with my notes from my recent trip to Canada and the USA and they are now all up-to-date.

Following that I had a huge pile of stuff to pack and prepare for shipping – and it was then that I realised that the UK is closed today.

Bearing in mind the catalogue of disasters that occurred while I was away, after lunch I started the repair programme.

A few batteries needed recharging and replacing and it didn’t take long to do all of that

new fuse 12 volt immersion heater les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe new fuse is now fitted to the overcharge circuit that powers the home-made 12-volt electric immersion heater and so I have hot water again at last.

But the largest strip fuse that I have seems to be 50-amp and that’s nothing like enough, but it’s all that I have for now. It will have to do.

I’ll have to pay a discreet visit to the local car breaker’s, or else buy some … “Buy? Are you feeling alright?” – ed … when i’m next in the UK. The type that I want actually range from 40 amps to 250 amps so I shouldn’t have too many problems getting what I want.

Not so good news in the barn though. As you fix one problem, another problem rears its ugly head. It seems that one of the charge controllers, the oldest one, has ceased to function.

10 years old so I can’t complain too much but it is rather annoying.

It’s something internal that has gone wrong with it. I can tell this because the voltmeter is registering the voltage on the battery so that side is fine, and the hourmeter wired to the input side is working too, so that bit is okay. it’s all of the bits in the middle where we have a problem.

What I’ve done for now is to connect the two terminals together with an old jump lead – not ideal but at least current is reaching the batteries and so they will charge up.

But there’s no cut-off when they are fully-charged so I will just have to keep my eye on them, and disconnect them if I have to go out on a sunny day.

That left me an hour in the garden and I weeded one of the beds. It’s stil not all done but at least I can see what’s in there. Tons of brussels sprouts by the looks of things.

>Meanwhile in other news, since I graduated from University, the whys and wherefores of OUSA – the Open University Students Association, have been sadly lacking from these pages.

I’ve been doing my best to put it all behind me but it won’t go away.

The latest is that what should have been a private mail from an elected officer to a member of the Association but which was “inadvertantly” (as if that ever happens) published to a public forum.

The memo reads – Hi all. My name is Hazel (http://www.facebook.com/hazel.pegg) and my Alter Ego is VP Comms. For various reasons my official ID needs to be an admin of your FB page. please don’t force me to go the heavy route?

What kind of threat is that to make to a member of an organisation of which the writer is an elected member?

My own opinion is that it is thoroughly shameful. It reminds me of the Kray Twins or the legendary “Dinsdale” sketch – “he nailed my head to a coffee table. He didn’t want to do it – I had to insist”.

But whatever you might think – it just goes to show that nothing has changed in OUSA.

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Monday 4th June 2012 – I MADE A START …

… on work today.

Only a start though.

After (a rather-late) breakfast, I worked on all of the photos of the holiday and wimp that I am, there are only 1200 of them. Not a patch on the 2500 or so of my epic 2010 voyage around the Trans-Labrador Highway, but considerably more than the 78 of my first visit to Canada.

All the photos have now been thumbnailed and had the copyright text added and they are now on-line. I’ll post a link to them in due course and you will be able to see them for yourself.

DEPANNEUR QUEBEC CANADA MAY 2012That took me to a rather late-ish lunch and then afterwards I prepared a little game for the Anglo-French Group.

I took all of my photos of the Québecois language and asked them to see what they could make of them.

No-one came even close to guessing what this was all about so if you have an idea – without cheating and looking it up – make a suggestion in the “comments” bit below.

That left me an hour and a half and so I went out to tackle the weeds. There’s only so much you can do in that kind of time and I didn’t do much, but at least I can walk between the front door and the downhill lean-to now, and the area around the solar shower is free.

And if we have some sun any time soon, I might even be able to use that.

But the disappointment is the hard-standing that we laid down for parking a couple of years ago.

Every day I made it a task to pull up a dozen weeds and I’ve kept it pretty weed-free. But 6 weeks away when everywhere is going mad has just about done for it. Not only is it swamped in weeds, their roots are so deep that they are pulling up the gravel and hardstanding when I try to remove them.

It seems that the only solution is whatever is the local equivalent of Agent Orange.

This is depressing as I have tried ever since I came here to avoid the use of chemical weedkiller but as I am on my own and I’m not as young as I was, I don’t see what alternative there is.

If you can think of anything non-chemical, answers on a plain brown envelope to …

-1

Saturday 2nd June 2012 – I FORGOT TO BLOG …

… before I went to bed last night, so I’ll make up for it right now while I have my Sunday breakfast coffee.

But then again, it wasn’t as if you missed anything important because I hadn’t done all that much to blog about.

We did of course have the usual sleep issues – the issues from which I always suffer whenever I’ve been away on a long journey, but nevertheless I did manage to tear myself out of my stinking pit and of the house and go into St Eloy-les-Mines for some food.

And it was just as well that I did that too because there wasn’t anything in the house worth eating.

After that, it was back on the sofa and that was that.

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