Tag Archives: eric hall

Friday 14th June 2013 – TODAY I INSTALLED …

… a cat flap. Such is the highlight of my life.

Chaupette likes to arrive at the house at about 23:00 after everyone has gone to bed, and then likes to leave at about 05:00 before everyone has awoken, and that’s clearly something that can’t continue, as far as I am concerned.

The one pet shop on the island has a cat flap for sale at … gulp… €29:99 but a quick look on Amazon produced a catflap at just €10:99 plus a couple of Euros postage

And that turned up this morning, so I launched an attack on the back door. That is one of those hollow plastic doors and so I had to cut out the shape of the hole in both leaves and then stiffen it between the outer and the inner skin with some wood offcuts.

Anyway, it’s done and up to the present, Chaupette isn’t sure exactly what to make of it

Later on this afternoon we went for a walk – a nice, pleasant little stroll in the countryside in the lovely early evening.

Plenty of things to see around here, such as the nice little cottages. Once you leave the built-up area of Port Joinville, most of the houses in the villages scattered across the island look like this.

Typical single-story bungalows that were generally homes for local fishermen back in former times

Nothing like that now, unfortunately. Even if there are any fishermen still on the island, they wouldn’t be able to afford anything here

Most of the cottages now are holiday homes – second homes owned by people from Paris and the like who just come here in the summer and leave the place looking empty and derelict out of season.

In the street where Cecile’s mum lives, I think that there are only two other houses that are permanently occupied.

So what started out as a pleasant little stroll in the country ended up with us at Port de la Meule, about 6kms away from Cécile’s mother’s.

The bar there was just closing up at the end of the day but they kindly served us refreshments which, believe me, were sorely needed.

And while everyone else recovered from their exertions, I wandered off for some photographs of the bay where the boats tie up.

On the way back, Cécile’s mother ran out of steam (which is hardly surprising seeing as how she is 82, after all) and so while I stood guard, Cécile ran home and fetched the car. We didn’t make it back here until about 21:00.

Still, a good time was had by all and it managed not to rain at all throughout the entire day, which must be something of a new record.

Tomorrow, the island’s Charity Shop is open and I’m told that they sell books there. Looks like an early start for me.

-4

Thursday 13th June 2013 – THE ANSWER …

… to that question was “no”.

At least, that’s how it appeared at 07:00 this morning when I awoke.

Absolutely hissing down with rain. No-one felt like leaving the comfort of their heaving pit and so it wasn’t until about 09:00 that we all assembled for breakfast.

A quick nip into town afterwards for one or two purchases, being soaked to death by the rain, and that was about that for the morning.

This afternoon though it did brighten up somewhat so after we dropped Cécile’s mother off at the OAPs club for the Thursday singalong, Cécile and I went for a walk along the rocks on the shore.

We spent much of the time looking in the pools for the marine life left behind by the tide. And believe me, there wasn’t half enough of it.

Cécile spent quite some time pointing out to me all of the different varieties of marine life and, true to form, I have now forgotten them all

This evening we were invited around for drinks and a chat by Cécile’s mother’s neighbours so I had to be sociable – not like me at all. And we were there until well past 21:00 too.

Cécile and I went for a long walk afterwards in the gathering gloom and that was that – the rain was still holding off.

Highlight of the day was that Cécile’s mother’s cat, Chaupette, finally allowed me to pick her up and stroke her.

We are definitely making progress.

-3

Wednesday 12th June 2013 – WE ACTUALLY HAD …

… some sun today.

I know that that might be had to believe but it is in fact true.

Not this morning, though.

Horrible, wet, grey and miserable, but that’s enough about me. So was the weather.

I had a bad night’s sleep for one reason or another – probably the rain through the night but anyway, this morning it was my turn to be sociable as we kept bumping into Cécile’s mother’s neighbours and relations as we were doing the shopping.

The bad news is though that I’ve nearly finished my book on the Titanic A Night to Remember, and so we called at the library, which has Wednesday and Sunday mornings as its opening times.

Closing time on Wednesdays is 12:00 and we arrived at 12:05, as you might expect.

Ahh well.

But Cécile has at least been persuaded that, as her future might lie here for a good while yet, she would be better-off opening an internet account on the island and so we coped with that today.

Not sure when they might open the line, though. Probably long after Cécile has left, I reckon.

A stroke of luck in the builder’s yard though.

I want to buy a demi-chevron to make a handrail for Cécile’s mum down the steps out of the house. But Cécile recognised the guy there and he let us have a pile of offcuts for free which was very nice.

Not only that, he’s a rock and blues drummer too.

Furthermore, seeing as how he knows everyone on the island, I’ve sent him off to make further enquiries about this Peugeot 203 pickup that I saw the other day.

For tea tonight I made another one of my potato pies, and that went down just as well as the first one did.

That’s got me thinking that I might go absolutely wild and have a go at making a pear tart next and see what that turns out like.

So after our couple of hours of really good weather this afternoon, it’s now clouded over again and rain is threatening once more.

Will it never end?

-3

Tuesday 11th June 2013 – I HAD A GOOD …

… night’s sleep last night, just for a change.

In bed long before 22:00 and awoken by the alarm clock at 07:30. The sea air must be doing me some good.

Mind you, I felt better than the weather because once more, it was persisting down and this weather is really doing my head in right now. Happy holidays, hey?

This morning while mumsie had a little snooze Cécile and I went for a wander around the old port

This afternoon, while mumsie was at her Seniors’ Club, we went to visit the posh side of the island.

That’s the site from which you can see the mainland if you look really hard enough and have a good telescope or, in my case, a really good 30mm telephoto lens.

By this time the rain had stopped and so we went for a good walk along the beach

We came across quite a pile of fishermen’s cabins on the shoreline.

Almost any one of which would suit me down to the ground, and I would have been tempted to make an offer.

I would, however be wasting my time apparently. According to Cecile, you could by a two-bedroomed apartment on the mainland for what they would want for one of these cabins.

Down at the south end of the island at the Pointe des Corbeaux is a lighthouse, and you all know about my fascination with these.

It’s 19.2 metres tall and its light can under normal conditions be seen out to see for about 21 miles.

It was built in 1950 to a design by the local architect Maurice Durand, and replaced an earlier lighthouse tat the Germans had demolished on 25th August 1944 when they evacuated the island.

The roads are very much like the roads around Labrador and so I felt quite at home.

What even made it more so was that I encountered a grader, and it must be quite a while since we last saw one of those.

But what made me realise that it was not at all Labrador was the fact that we had a compactor as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that during all of the 2000 miles of the Trans-Labrador Highway we encoutered a mere … err … three, despite there being hundreds of graders at work on the Highway.

And while I’m writing this, the heavens have opened again. We really are having some astonishing weather.

Monday 10th June 2013 – IF YOU PEER …

… through the doom and gloom and the fog and mist you can just about make out the town of Port Joinville on the Ile d’Yeu.

I’ve managed to struggle across the Bay of Biscay. Strawberry Moose was smuggled aboard as a stowaway in a suitcase along with the usual bottle of the hard stuff.

As a result we were treated to strains of “It Was On The Good Ship Venus” all the way across.

After all, you can all remember him rehearsing for the chant de marins competition in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada last year.

Here’s my spec from last night though. Tucked out of the way down a dead-end road near a sailing school kind of place.

That was another comfortable night spent here – as you know, I’ve stayed here before and I had no complaints that time either.

I was up and about quite early too, and took Caliburn to the garage where he’ll be staying for the next week or two.

The owner is a big fan of old cars and we had quite a chat – so much so that I almost missed the navette that would take me to the ferry.

Luckily though I managed to leap aboard – well, with such leaping as I do these days – I’m not as young as I was and we headed off into the briny.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a ship of the day and there isn’t a great deal of choice here in Fromentine.

This little offshore supply vessel will have to do for now. She’s the Fort Boyard, built in 2002 (although you would never think so to look at her) and just 472 tonnes.

She takes her name from the Napoleon-era island fortress just down the coast near Rochefort.

Our boat, which I forgot to photograph by the way, is just a simple jetfoil thing.

It’s the kind of ship that people as old as me would remember that used to do the express connection between Dover and Oostende back in the 1970s and, looking closely at it, it was probably the same boat.

And not a coffee machine in sight. What a waste of time this is.

And so I passed the time on the way across by reading one of the books that I had bought at the bookshop yesterday.

And it wasn’t until I was half-way across that I realised the significance of the book that I had chosen. Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember – probably the most-famous (and most-likely the most accurate) story of the sinking of the Titanic.

How appropriate was that?

Cécile met me at the terminal at Port Joinville and took me for a ride around the island to show me everything.

And one thing that I do like about island life is that the Controle Technique – or MoT regulations to the British – are somewhat relaxed if you have no intention of ever taking your vehicle to the mainland.

And so here’s a vehicle that I would absolutely die for.

A Peugeot 203 plateau, or pick-up. I would pay a King’s ramsom to have one of these, that’s for sure.

It’s been my dream to own one of these for almost 40 years, ever since I first encountered one on my walking tour of Finisterre in the mid-70s

I’ve seen a few since then, and more than just the odd one for sale, but none that was worth having.

They had rather the unfortunate habit of bending in the middle due to rot round about where the rear of the cab joined up with the pick-up bed and that’s not a do-it-yourself repair by any means.

But this one looks pretty sound underneath, due not least to the amount of oil that has been thrown up out of the rear seal of the gearbox

Apart from that, I’ve had the guided tour of the cote sauvage – the wild part of the island, and it really does live up to everything that I was told that it would.

Mind you, it’s only early June and the tourists haven’t yet arrived.

I bet that it will be nothing like this in August.

-2

Sunday 9th June 2013 – HERE’S MY SPEC ….

… from Saturday night’s sleepover.

Leaving Calais I drove for a couple of hours and parked up at about 03:00 just short of Rouen on a motorway rest area.

And probably one of the best nights’ sleeps I have ever had. Totally painless and I’ll stop here again!

From here it was straight down the motorway through the depressing weather all the way to near Nantes and from there down to Fromentine.

Not a hiccup along the way (I hope that I was sticking to the limit when I drove past the Kojak with a Kodak) except at Rouen where I ended up in some kind of mayhem around the old harbour

We had marching bands, tall ships and all that kind of rubbish and it took hours to extract myself from the chaos.

When are they going to build a flaming by-pass around that blasted place?

At Frometine I arrived, would you believe, in the middle of a brocante.

And what a brocante it was – there wasn’t anything for sale under about €100. I really do think that some people have taken leave of their senses when it comes to valuing their possessions.

A bit of good luck, though – the second-hand bookshop was open so I bought a few more history books.

That’s one thing that I’m finding with raiding a few of these bookshops – that there are huge gaps in the British version of European history that can only be filled by a French perspective on things.

So far, I’ve bought a huge volume on the Hundred Years War, a couple of books on The Battle of the Rail – the fight of the French cheminots against the SS during the crucial 10 days after D-Day and today, a book on the Allied invasion of Provence.

These are all events that British historians simply gloss over, and it’s nice to read about these events from another point of view.

There’s a pizza place in Fromentine, run by a woman who comes from Morlaix, a town in Finisterre where I spent a few relaxing weeks back in 1976 or something.

She made me a nice vegan pizza (good job that I was prepared with my vegan cheese) – after all, it is Sunday – and then I went off to my spec from the other week to pass the night.

I’ve an early sail in the morning.

-2

Saturday 8th June 2013 – IT’S NOT EVERY DAY …

;.. that you are woken up by a steam locomotive these days.

But it does happen every now and again if you play your cards right. and so here I am down on the beach at Dungeness and, true to form, rattling past Caliburn in his nice little spec underneath the old lighthouse went one of the locomotives of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.

“Romney Marsh” I hear you say. That’s right. He played on the wing for Queens Park Rangers and later for Manchester City.

But anyway that was where I spent the night of Friday and Saturday although it was really Saturday morning when I arrived.

And I also told you a little fib about being awoken by a steam locomotive, because about 10 minutes earlier I had been burnt out of the van by the heat and that’s the first time that that has happened this year.

So Dymchurch and Romney Marsh – I was here for a variety of reasons.

it’s by the sea
it’s the furthest south-east point of the UK, closest point to the Real World
I wanted to look for the remains of the old standard-gauge railway that ran down to here (and indeed I found plenty, including the remains of the platform and the base of the station buildings)
Most importantly, though, it was only a short drive from where these famous roofing tiles were awaiting collection.

On the way to the tiles I made a detour to the old Lydd-Ferryfield airport, the home of the service that used to fly you and your car across the Channel in a fleet of weird converted Bombay bombers to Le Touquet and now the home of a flying school and a few private planes.

and once again, if your luck is in it’s really in becuse what should arrive at the same time that I did but a Mark XIX Spitfire, ex photo-reconnaissance, making an emergency landing with an overheating engine, according to one of the mechanics who had been called out.

Having blagged my way out onto the tarmac for a closer look, even I was able to diagnose the fault – clogged radiators.

Maybe a bird strike or maybe simple lack of basic maintenance, but there you are. No-one these days seems to be able to understand the principles of basic maintenance unless they have a computer handy.

The pilot was quite garrulous though, and we spent most of the time chatting about the Lancaster bomber that I’m trying to save from disaster, with me trying to enlist his support.

Afer picking up the tiles I went to do the rounds of the supermarkets and tool shops, being entertained by a Red Arrows just off the coast of Folkestone on the way. Pretty disappointing, because no-one crashed or landed in the sea, and we didn’t have a mid-air collision either. Not much point in having the Red Arrows if you ask me if they can’t entertain the crowds properly.

In one of the supermarkets though, passing through the checkouts, I was asked if I had a bag. I replied that I did, but that she was outside in the car. And seeing as how it was Saturday night, while waiting on the ferry terminal I guzzled down the take-away curry that I had bought from an Indian in Folkestone.

“Pushing the boat out” in many senses of the word.

-6

Friday 7th June 2013 – WELL, I’M OFF.

But then you all knew that already.

The Postie delivered my monster CD order and now I’m free to leave at any time I like for a couple of weeks. Liz found me a cheapo ferry on the site that she uses – it’s at 04:00 so I’ll be leaving in a bit for the UK.

That’s really all that I’ve done today apart from clearing up and dealing with this load of web stuff that I mentioned the other day. The apartment here is still a mess and I’m not really making much progress but I will have a couple of months when I come back to deal with it all and isn’t that famous last words?

I’m not sure when I’ll have internet access again. After the UK I’ll be off to Fromentine and the Ile d’Yeu to do the two weeks’ work that I promised Cécile in exchange for her two weeks here back in April and there won’t be any internet access there, that’s for sure.

after that, it’s back to Pooh Corner, the radio, and two weeks working on the bathroom here as when I return to Brussels at the beginning of July I want to buy all the tiles from that guy who did us so handsomely when we were working on Expo in early 2011.

So, see you soon. Don’t wander away in my absence.

-3

Thursday 6th June 2013 – I MIGHT HAVE BROKEN …

… the back of all of this paperwork. I think that I’ve found it all and I’ve sorted it into at least things that need to be taken home for a further sorting or things that I can simply throw away. A mere 14 sacks there are – and that’s just the stuff for throwing.

Anyway, I’ve started emptying the sideboard in the living room now and that’s exciting too. I opened one of the doors and a couple of bats flew out – it’s that kind of sideboard. I’ll be here for a bit yet.

That was this afternoon though. This morning I made a rather startling discovery – or, rather, rediscovery. I went to Labrador in 2010 as you ll know by now and I wrote all of the web pages to cover the journey from Baie Comeau in Quebec all the way round to getting on the boat at Channel-Port-aux-Basques in Newfoundland that was going to take me across the Gulf of St Lawrence to Cape Breton Island.

But while I was ferreting about looking for something else, I came across a huge file that was in fact a large part of the journey, all properly written up as far as New Glasgow, and I can’t think why I never finished it all off. Anyway, I reckon that now I’ve done all of the radio stuff for the next while I deserve some time to myself so for a couple of hours each morning I’ll be doing that.

And pet hate of the day? When someone asks for my advice and I give it, and they go off and do something else completely, and when that all goes pear-shaped they spend half an hour ranting at me. Agatha Christie wrote in the Sleeping Murder, “Good advice is almost certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason for not giving it” – I’m not convinced of that if I’m going to be getting a pile of earache. I have better things to do with my time.

-5

Wednesday 5th June 2013 – HELLO AGAIN.

I thought that I would have a nice interesting introduction this evening, because in all probability it will be more exciting that the rest of the post.

Basically, nothing much has changed since yesterday. I’m still up to my ears in papers. Mind you, the wardrobes and wall unit in the main bedroom have been emptied and most of the stuff has been packed away.

I suppose that that is progress.

There are three large sacks full of clothes and one of shoes (Marianne seemed to like shoes) and they will all be headed for a clothing bank next time I take Caliburn for a joy ride. Someone else may as well have use of it all.

So apart from that, what else?

Ahhh yes – Julie went into St Eloy-les-Mines today which was quite lucky because today was the day that the compost bins that we ordered from the VALTOM were to be collected. So thanks for that, Julie.

And in other news, I’m going to the UK – to Dymchurch in fact – for a day quite soon.

Just as I was wondering where I can get boxes and packing tape from in bulk and regretting that there was no Screwfix nearer than Dover, and how I was feeling like a day out by the seaside, Terry rang me up. He’s just won a job lot of 400 slates on eBay and they are in Dymchurch, down on the edge of Romney March about 10 miles from Dover. Fuel and ferry fare offered, and you can’t say fairer than that.

It’s a region that I know quite well of course, and if you were following my adventures in March 2009 you will know that I spent a pleasant few days just down the road at Dungeness.

Yes, a nice day out this weekend would just suit me fine. I hope that the weather stays fine.

-2

Tuesday 4th June 2013 – I’M UP TO MY KNEES …

… in papers right now, trying to start the packing. But somehow it’s just not happening.

Someone once saif of Ford Madox Ford that they could put him in a totally empty room and come back later and find the place in total chaos. Anyone who comes here right now will understand exactly what they meant by now.

But never mind. Nietzsche famously said “out of chaos comes order”, but that was many years before I was born.

It depresses me, though. I’m not sure why it is but when God or whoever it was was handing out the tidying-up gene, I dunno where I was. I somehow make the place even more untidy until it looks like a total tip and then I lose interest or something and it’s always the same. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

I’ve been going round finding all of the DC appliances in the apartment, and believe me, ther are tons of them. But not a charger or transformer in sight. Anyway, today, I came across a drawer full of DC chargers and transformers, And not one of them labelled either. This is going to be fun, mating them all up.

And apart from that? Nothing at all. But then, that’s quite enough to be going on with, I reckon

Thursday 30 May 2013 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those depressing dismal days where it has rained almost non-stop from start to finish. It started off badly when I had another one of those dramatic awakenings, where I find myself sitting bolt upright and wide awake. I was having some kind of vivid dream (and I’ve been having a few of those just recently), and although I don’t remember anything about it, I had the uneasy feeling that there was a catastrophe occurring somewhere – and it was that thought that caused me to awaken so dramatically.

Anyway, after breakfast I made a start on writing the text for my next rock radio programme for Radio Anglais but by 13:00 I abandoned it to go and pick up Marianne’s death certificates from the funeral director. I stopped off at the fritkot at the Place Flagey for some frites on the way – after all, I’m in Belgium now.

From the funeral director’s, I went to the local nick to enquire after these allegations that have been made against me and, as I had no doubt whatsoever, they have been classées sans suite. I can’t have a copy of the complaint though – I need to ask an avocat to ask the Procureur du Roi for a copy. The coppers don’t think that it’s worth the effort though. According to them, they never took them seriously, even for a moment but had to go through the motions.

From there I walked through the torrential rain across the city to my notaire to let him have one of the copies of the certificate, passing by the grounds of the European Parliament on my way

There was a meeting taking place and I was tempted to go in and spectate as I have done in the past, but I had other things to do. But I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the sign outside the Paul-Henri Spaak Building.

It’s true that they have extraordinary meetings there – I’ve sat through a few – but if this notice proves anything at all, it is that as long as the UK sits on its haunches and refuses to push for additional staff to deal with the increased pressure of additional translations and leaves it all up to the local Flemish-speaking Belgians whose “English doesn’t need any supervision – it’s totally perfect”, we’ll have a few more extraordinary translations too.

From the notaire’s, it was back to the bank at the Rond-point Schuman to check that nothing unusual was happening to Marianne’s bank account, and then I gave up. My knees were hurting a bit after yesterday’s marathon, I wasn’t comfortable, I was soaking wet and so I took the metro and then the tram back home where I crashed out for a couple of hours. All this walking is certainly doing me good.

Tomorrow I’m having a day off and then I’ll attack the next stage of the clearing up on Monday.

-3

Wednesday 29th May 2013 – When was the last time that you saw …

… one of these? I couldn’t work out what it was at first. Either a Gogomobil or a Frisky was what was going through my head at first, but it is in fact an Autobianchi, a microcar from Italy and so rare that I haven’t even seen one in Italy. But here it was, sitting by the side of the road in the Chaussee de Charleroi in Brussels.

Anyway, after my lost day yesterday where I spent some of it in bed and the rest of it wishing that I was back in bed, I went out and about. And wasn’t that a waste of time?

Firstly to the Maison Communale for a copy of Marianne’s death certificate, and after much ado about nothing I eventually found the correct person. €8:50 they wanted – per copy – and after picking myself up off the floor and asking for two copies, I was told that I couldn’t have them as Marianne and I weren’t married. A notaire needs to apply, so it seems.

Not to be out-done, I went to the undertaker’s. Now I don’t know what he spends his extortionate fees on, but it’s not on his premises, I’ll tell you that. Art-deco 1920s is my guess and it hasn’t been cleaned since then. The kind of place where, if you give the curtains a good shake, a couple of bats would come flying out.

It seems that I’ve paid (well, I haven’t, but I’ve been booked down to pay for) 3 copies of the death certificate. So the secretary asked me “haven’t you had them yet?”, which elicited the obvious response of “why else would I be here if I had?”. anyway, she rang up the commune to enquire and she was told, and I heard it clearly from where I was sitting “but you never asked for them”. So someone else trying to stick me for dosh on false pretences. Anyway, after a lengthy discussion and “frank exchange of views”, I can go to pick them up tomorrow.

From there I went to have lunch and had the estate agents on the phone. They are extremely worried that I’m trying to deal them out of their commission and are thus keeping close tabs on me. But two can play at that game as well – I was not really in the mood for conciliation today.

After lunch I went for a good walk and found a CD sale. I’m €46 lighter but my CD collection is now considerably heavier and it’s all good stuff too. High time I took more care of myself and my well-being. As long as I can still hear the music I’m okay.

But apart from getting myself soaking wet, that was that. Highlight was, of course, the music. And also the Autobianchi.

-2

Saturday 25th May 2013 – There’s a strange round object …

… out there in the sky. It’s a golden orange colour and it hurts my eyes when I look at it. Also, the sky is a funny colour. There are parts of it that are a strange blue colour, not the usual grey that I am used to. It’s absolutely weird.

Not like yesterday, though. Fighting the snow and the rain, I emptied Caliburn. And while there wasn’t a great deal of stuff that I threw away, the fact that it is all tidied up inside means that there is tons of space inside. And that’s good news.

After that, I went off to Pooh Corner and sorted out Caliburn’s summer tyres ready for changing. He has his MoT on Monday morning and then I’ll be changing them over and putting the winter tyres in store. I found the mountain bike that needs to be taken over to Rosemary’s, and I also sorted out my CDs and started to fit the CD racks that I had bought in IKEA in Brussels. The first time I’ve seen some CD racks that actually do what I think that they ought to do.

Back here though, a bit of bad news. Cécile’s mother has had another funny turn and so after Caliburn’s MoT we are hitting the road, but to Fromentines, not to Brussels. I’ll have to drop Cécile off to catch the ferry out to her mother’s island and then I’ll have to head off to Brussels from there – a mere 880kms again.

It’s all happening here.

-1

Tuesday 12th February 2013 – I was dead right …

… about the weather.

This morning was horribly grey and overcast with a hanging cloud. And it didn’t get any better than that either. Talking to Terry a few hours later, he said that it was snowing round by his place, and sure enough in the late afternoon it started chucking it down here too.

With regard to Bill’s affairs, it was too cold to go round there and so we stayed at Marianne’s and went through a huge pile of paperwork and did the accounts to date. After that I went with Pascal round to Bill’s and we moved some more furniture out.

This afternoon was yet another afternoon without working in the bathroom and this is becoming a tale of lost opportunities. Terry wanted to go to Brico Depot and wanted me to go with him. It was only fair and I’m not complaining as after all, a huge pile of stuff was for me but none of this is getting my bathroom done and for the last few weeks I’ve been continually sidetracked by one thing or another and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. What made it worse was that I was building up a list of things that I needed to buy next time I was there, and it went clean out of my head.

This evening I was at St Maurice. There’s a series of walks around France taking place every weekend and in 2 months time they will be walking around there, so they had a meeting of potential volunteers. I went along to find out what was happening.

Back here, it was oven chips and baked beans for tea, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow we’ll have more hanging clouds and snowstorms. And who is going to come along tomorrow to put me off working in the blasted bathroom?

-3

EPIC HALL

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