Tag Archives: football

Thursday 7th January 2016 – EEEUUURRRGGGHHH

Talk about dart boards. I’ve had no fewer than 6 injections today. That’s right – SIX, and I’m thoroughly fed up of it all. For a start, there was my twice-daily injection of anti-coagulant and the one thing that I’m really looking forward to about this operation is the ending of this particular circus.

And then we had the blood test. I’m fed up of that too, but that’s something that I’m going to have to suffer for the rest of my life, I suppose. I imagine that even when they’ve done this operation they will still be wanting to check that, to make sure that they cut out the correct bit. And as an aside, my blood count has gone up to 8.6 following the recent transfusion that I had. It’s not been this high for a while, but it’s still a long way from normal and it’ll be going down again even as we speak.

But the final straw that has broken this camel’s back are the other three injections that I needed to have. When my spleen is removed, it will remove a good deal of my immune system too and so I need to be vaccinated against certain illnesses and diseases, starting before the operation. I’d picked up the injections the other day and so I phoned up the doctor’s surgery after lunch, 13:30 to be precise. The receptionist – she who runs the pit hut at Pionsat’s football club – told me that the doctor would see me at 14:30, so off I went. It has to be done at a doctor’s surgery because, apparently, there could be some side effects after the injection so I would need to sit somewhere for a good half hour afterwards, somewhere where there was medical surveillance to hand.

I’ve complained in the past (and I’ll be complaining again – wait and see!) about the lack of formal information coming from the hospital. However, it appears that I am not alone because the doctor has received nothing either, despite me having to fill in a form each time I visit, when I’m clearly asked the name of my GP.

So I’m in the dark and she’s in the dark too. And when she saw the three injections, her eyes rolled too. “Are you supposed to have these three together?” she asked
“Apparently so” I replied. “That’s what I’ve been told”
It was news to her and so she had to sit there and read the instructions to make sure.
“Well, it doesn’t say that you can’t, so I suppose you can. Are you right-handed or left-handed?”
“Right-handed”
“Good. So that’s your left arm and your two legs we’ll use then. Better not do everything in the same place”.
So now you can see why I’m totally fed up

“What have they said about what is going to happen after the operation” she asked.
“No idea” I replied
“Didn’t they tell you?” she asked, with an air of astonishment.
“I didn’t want to know” I answered. “What is going to happen is going to happen anyway without me spending all this time worrying about it. I’m trying to push the lot of it out of my thoughts”.

It was quite fun in the waiting room after that, watching the world go by. And I really do mean that, because it was spinning around at quite a rate of knots. It was much longer than half an hour before I felt fit to leave the room.

But while I was there, I was reading a magazine, and this answered a question that has been puzzling me for a while. There’s a team in Division 3 of the Puy de Dome football league that has suddenly started to win its matches by some … errr … interesting scores, and now I know why.

There’s an empty old-people’s home in the village and it’s been converted into a temporary hostel for asylum-seekers, where they go while their papers are being processed. And currently in there are a former Syrian football league goalkeeper and a centre forward who was a Nigerian under-17 international, as well as one or two others with an interesting football pedigree. While they are awaiting processing they aren’t allowed to earn money or travel very far so they can’t play professional football. But they still need to train, keep fit and keep their match-fitness, much to the delight of the local football team and its supporters.

A flash in the pan it may be, but who says that refugees are nothing but a negative influence? It’s a really ill wind if it doesn’t blow anyone any good.

When I left the doctor’s, I went round for a while to my house to see what was going on and to relax a little. It was here that I realised that Bane of Britain didn’t have his laptop with him. And it was cold up there too. 8.4 degrees in fact. I’m glad I wasn’t planning to stay there long.

After tea, I managed to stay up until almost 22:00, but that was mainly because we watched a good film on television. My Darling Clementine, which is a highly-fictionalised story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. What’s interesting in this film is not so much the film itself or the stars who act in it, but the supporting cast. We have Grant Withers, who played the Police Inspector in the Boris Karloff’s James Lee Wong films (of which I have all, downloaded from www.archive.org), Walter Brennan, who plays Stumpy in Rio Bravo and which bears more than a passing resemblance to the OK Corral, Ward Bond, who has played second-fiddle in dozens of leading westerns and several other names that ring great big bells with me.

The film itself is rather over-dramatised, which rather cuts up the action needlessly (thank heavens that by 10 years later this kind of thing had gone) but enjoyable all the same. Even more enjoyable was that much of the action takes place over an area over which I have driven in the past and which is probably amongst the most spectacular scenery in the world.

And so off to bed – not so early this time. And I doubt if my travels tonight will be anything like as interesting as last night’s, because I sat bolt upright at about 06:00 with it all ringing in my ears, and I dictated it almost immediately so that I wouldn’t miss a moment of the action.

Last night, I was planning on setting off to London in my car and I had the most unusual travelling companion. Her name, I think, was Lynn, but she didn’t resemble the Lynn whom I thought that it might have been. She did however strongly resemble someone from one of my previous existences – someone fairly similar to the Sue who shared my apartment for a week or so not long after I came to Brussels, young, quite vivacious, small, thin-faced and mousy blond hair in a pony tail. Anyway, we were getting ready to, and I was changing into some clean clothes and put on a pair of jeans, but this Lynn vetoed them. Although they were washed and cleaned, they still had faded oil marks upon them. The next pair of jeans that I found were perfectly clean and quite new although they had holes in them. And although they were clean, they had all kinds of things in the back pockets too – a CD, some papers, all kinds of stuff. And then I had to change my shirt. I’d been in a white dress shirt but I wanted to wear a tee-shirt. And I finished off with that light blue jumper that I had bought in the USA years ago and which I wore for years as people said that it matched my eyes. In the meantime my elder sister and her husband (them again???) were busily tidying up my room and sorting through a pile of stuff that I had in there. But in there was a pile of stuff that I rather wished that no-one knew about and they were working their way frightfully close to it. They’d already uncovered a pile of stuff (some of which, incidentally, featured on these pages a short while ago) without realising the significance so I needed to distract them. I told them to hurry up because we were about to go. We should have left the house at 16:45 – that was the usual time – but it was passing 17:00, 17:05 and we still weren’t on the road (as if 15 or 20 minutes was here or there on a trip from Crewe to London down the M6 at that time of day) and there were still one or two things that needed doing. It was at this point, as they were leaving, that my sister’s husband found one of my bank statements so we had all kinds of grumbles and groans and so on that you might expect. Anyway, after they had left and we were finally preparing to leave, I said to Lynn that my sister’s husband wasn’t very happy, and she explained to me a couple of reasons why he wasn’t so happy – a few things that had happened before he found this bank statement and not a thing about this bank statement at all. So we were finally ready to go and piled into the Cortina. Now a Cortina has a range of about 250 miles or so and I noticed that on the fuel gauge we had three-quarters of a tank of fuel and that might just be enough to get down to London. But we were going to the west side of London – Shepherd’s Bush or Hammersmith or somewhere like that – and I knew a way, a kind of short cut that I’ve taken on numerous occasions during my previous nocturnal rambles. You drive down the M1 almost to Luton and head south on this nice, wide A road round by High Wycombe, and there across a field you can clearly see a big BP petrol station, which you reach by carrying on half a mile to a major road junction and turn right. And that was where I was planning to fuel up. However, if we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to there, there’s another fuel station that I’ve also used on many occasions on my night-time voyages somewhere round about the A5 or M1. Here, you pull off the main road up to a roundabout and then turn into what looks very much like a motorway service area, with the fuel on the right as you pull in, and them a big rectangular car park with the buildings right ahead of you way across the car park. We couls always fuel up there if necessary.
But what puzzled me in all of this was this girl, Lynn or whatever her name was. I’m not used to people being so fond of me like this, although of course anything is possible during the night. But even more so, is that I know her, and I know who she is too. Her face, her build, her features seemed just so familiar to me but I just can’t recall her at all. I’ve no idea who she is, although I feel that I ought to know her, and know her so well. It’s bewildering me, all of this, and I do recall it bewildering me while the action was taking place.

So why did I say earlier on that you would hear more about the lack of news?

The answer was that when I was at the doctor’s in the hospital at Montlucon back on 23rd December, I asked the doctor for a letter setting out my illness, what treatment was required, all of that kind of thing, the doctor promised that she would do it. But I still haven’t had the letter, some two weeks later.

Being rather fed up of this, I telephoned the hospital and spoke to the secretary in order to find out what was going on. And she asked for my name.
“Ohhh yes – Mr Hall. The doctor did dictate a letter for you. I’ll type it this afternoon”.

Totally unbelievable.

I’ve often said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … that all civil and public servants should be given 6 months unpaid leave after every ten years of service, and made to find a real job in the private sector. Then they would have to learn what life is like in the real world.

It would probably wake up quite a few of them – and probably kill off all of the rest.

And 2114 words – something of a world record this. I clearly have nothing better to do.

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Saturday 2nd January 2016 – IT’S DEFINITELY LIZ’S COOKING …

… that’s causing me to go on these astonishing nocturnal rambles!

Here we are, back in the bosom of Liz’s family (minus the younger ones of course) and off I go to bed, and there I go, off on my travels again.

Well, not quite. I had a really early night as you may remember and fell straight asleep, but I was awake half an hour later and couldn’t drop off again for hours. But once I’d gone again, I’d really gone and only a nocturnal stroll down the corridor at 05:00 broke up the reverie.

Firstly, there was a big queue of HGVs – fuel tankers and all sorts – trying to enter this country park-type of place which had a stone wall all round it and big gates through which everyone had to drive. I’d turned up as a passenger in a fuel tanker but with all of the chaos no-one was entering this park, so in the end I alighted and started to direct all of the traffic, making lorries do U turns and so on in order to sort them out into a proper queue all in one direction so that everyone would pass through these gates with the least amount of fuss.
From here I moved on back to Crewe and my old taxi business. It was in the winding-down phase. We weren’t particularly busy but there was a fair amount of work for two cars during pub-chucking-out time on Saturday night. However it was at that moment that someone called up for a taxi to go somewhere up the A74 way beyond Carlisle, somewhere that I estimated was a 6-hour round trip and which was to be a regular Saturday evening journey. This kind of work is not to be sneezed at and I didn’t want to turn it away. Ordinary for a trip like this I would have used an unregistered car and driver but looking around at the vehicles here in the queue for either dismantling or rebuilding, there didn’t seem to be one that would have been good enough for the journey, and I certainly didn’t want to take a licensed taxi and driver off the road in Crewe when we needed them at all of the pubs. This was going to be quite a problem and I needed to solve it quickly – could I manage to do all of the pub work with just one taxi all by myself while the other car and driver went off to Scotland?

So puzzling over this quandary, I ended up downstairs for my breakfast and my injection. And then after that, precisely nothing! “Take it easy and don’t do too much” everyone keeps on telling me, and who am I to disagree? If I moved off my comfortable little corner of the sofa, it was just for meals and visits down the corridor and that was that.

Much of the time was spent writing up my notes from Canada last autumn, or else watching the football on the TV.

The football today was disappointing. Last weekend was exciting with huge shoals of minnows having really good results against bigger sides. Not so this weekend, with the larger clubs reasserting themselves. Manure’s victory was particularly depressing, although seeing the bin-dippers trounced in East London was impressive. However Crewe were demolished yet again at home, Morton lost at home in the local derby against the soap-dodgers and add to that, Bangor being likewise demolished at home yesterday and it’s been a really bad weekend all round as far as I’m concerned.

I skulked off to bed yet again at an unseasonably-early time of 20:40. I just can’t last the pace these days. Heaven alone knows what it will be like when I have to start doing things for myself

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Sunday 15th November 2015 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… gone out this afternoon.

I had planned to go out to Menat for the football today. Two matches – one of the 2nd XI who play at the same level as Pionsat’s 1st XI, and the Menat 1st XI who play a couple of divisions higher. But then last night’s Pionsat 2nd XI match had been postponed until today and so I was wondering whether to go down there instead.

But then I had something of a late start today (well, it IS a Sunday) and then I had a bad attack of Writer’s Block and couldn’t make a start on what I had to do today. By the time I could tune myself into whatever I was going to do, it was too late to go anywhere and do anything. But at least I’ve finished the radio programme, eventually.

I’ve also emptied the beichstuhl today. The first time since I’ve been back home. And it needed it too. So that’s one job well-done. And with the temperature in the verandah being 19°C and then temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater reaching 49°C, that was the cue for a shower. And gorgeous it was too.

Rosemary rang up for a good chat later, and we were on the phone for an hour or so. It seems from local gossip that our little ex-pat community is going to be thinned out even more, something that is surprising us because, by all accounts, it’s going to be an enormous backward step for the people involved. But then, what’s it all to do with us?

And in other news, we have had a definite candidate for not just “Quote of the Year”, or “Quote of the Decade” or even “Quote of the Century”, but what will probably end up being “Quote of All Time”. One of my “friends” on my Social Network who lives near Guildford posted, in relation to the events in Paris this weekend “… it could happen in Guildford or Bristol …”. it appears that the poster has totally forgotten that it DID happen in Guildford

And this just goes to prove a point that I have been saying for years. Atrocities committed by white-skinned Christian terrorists are totally forgotten, conveniently swept under the counter even by people who were exposed to the acts, whereas the mere threat of an attack by brown-skinned “terrorists” brings them out all in a cold sweat.

And why “terrorists” in inverted commas? That’s because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. As a good example of this, certain white-skinned Christian terrorist swho had conducted a bombing campaign all through London in 1974 and 1975, convicted of 7 murders as well as a whole string of other serious crimes, were described as ‘our Nelson Mandelas’ by an MP who had served in the British Houses of Parliament for over 20 years and who was indeed a serving MP at the time he made the remark.

However, history conveniently overlooks all of this.

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Saturday 14th November 2015 – IT SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE …

… to anyone that after the amount of time that I’ve spent just recently discussing Hadrian’s Wall in the North of England, last night I was on my travels up to the Wall with a huge load of uniforms for the soldiers based there. But strange uniforms they were too, nothing at all like the contemporary styles that they would have worn, and it didn’t escape my attention either that they would all look quite bizarre up there confronting the Picts and Scots in what I had fetched them. From there, I went back home by train (my nocturnal rambles are superb, aren’t they?), the kind of multiple unit with lateral seating. This train took me I’m not quite sure where and I came across a huge digger crawling into a railway depot. I reckoned that the engine in this digger would be ideal for my lorry and so I alighted from the train and chased after the digger but couldn’t catch it. I had a great discussion about the engine with the guy on the gate and we agreed after much discussion that it ight have been a Cummins. He eventually let me into the depot and I had a good hunt around the huge hangar without finding it. Never mind though. Back with my friends, I dropped my bombshell. I was going to stay on in the USA for all of five months while I changed the engine over in my lorry. From here we went back to my old flat in an old building in the city centre (and we’ve been here before recently) and I went downstairs to meet some girl friend outside the ladies hairdressers on the ground floor. We arranged to go off somewhere else in the town but I had to leave my huge moose behind so I asked the hairdressers if I could leave it there instead of taking it up to my apartment. They had a little smile and a little bit of a moan about me always leaving stuff with them.

It’s no wonder that I was exhausted before I had to get up, what with all of this going on.

After breakfast I had to turn the place here upside down to find my cheque book. It’s time to renew my web hosting services and this is about the only time that I need my cheques. And after all of this I found it in the glove box of Caliburn, and so I nipped into Pionsat to post off my renewal.

Back here I spent most of the rest of the day working on the new series of programmes for Radio Anglais. I lost my motivation halfway through but I managed to pick it up and I’m about halfway through the Radio Arverne sessions tonight.

I went off to Enval too in order to watch the footy. Pionsat were well-beaten and I shan’t dwell on the match too much, except to say firstly that Enval scored only one goal that contained any kind of skill. All of the rest were presents from the Pionsat defence with some of the worst defending that I have ever seen. It was embarrassing to watch and I was ashamed. Secondly, Pionsat received three or was it four yellow cards. One was for pushing an opponent, an off-the-ball incident, and all of the others were for arguing with the referee. This kind of thing is embarrassing too. It’s all childish, juvenile stuff and counts for absolutely nothing. Stupid bookings that you might think that the Pionsat players would have grown out of by now, especially when one of the yellow cards is shown to the team captain and another one to the President of the club. What kind of example is this?

All in all, what it boils down to is that 4 or 5 of the players aren’t up to the standard required, and four or five others aren’t “grown-up” enough for this level of football. Pionsat needs an under-11s team for players like these until they learn how to behave like grown-ups.

But at least I had my pizza as promised.

Apart from that, almost all other news has been overshadowed by the night’s events in Paris. What I have to say on the subject will be well-known to many regular readers of this rubbish because I’ve said it all before.

Firstly, what are European forces doing fighting in Asia anyway? What has it all to do with us? Who cares if these people kill each other anyway? It’s nothing to do with us. We should stay on our side of the world, let them stay on their side, greet each other with a polite nod and leave it at that.

Secondly, I can’t believe how naive and innocent all of these people are. When you declare war on someone, you expect them to fight back. Surely everyone knows that? And when your opponents fight back, you should expect casualties. Surely everyone knows that too? And so why the surprise and shock that there are casualties in Paris? I don’t understand.

If the politicians were possessed of courage, they would have warned their citizens that WAR = CASUALTIES and the population should have been prepared. But politicians everywhere have no courage and have behaved like ostriches with their heads buried in the sand, hoping that the problem would never arise. And then we have the mock outrage and the crocodile tears. It really is shameful.

But going back to the question of waging war against guerilla forces, it’s a fact that even with the gloves well and truly off and using the most horrible reprisals, no regular army has ever succeeded in defeating a determined guerilla force. The Nazis couldn’t overcome the French, the Yugoslav and the Greek resistance, the French couldn’t overcome the Algerians, the Septics couldn’t defeat the Viet Cong and the Soviets couldn’t overwhelm the Afghans. Why does anyone think that the situation has changed?

After the American defeat in Vietnam the USA government held an enquiry into the war. Here are a few quotes from the report –

The alternative – no matter what we may wish it to be – is almost certainly a protracted war involving an open-ended commitment of US forces, mounting US casualties, no assurance of a satisfactory solution, and a serious danger of escalation at the end of the road – UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE W BALL, ON VIETNAM 1st JULY 1965

No-one has demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerilla war – GEORGE W BALL ibid

The war could well become an albatros around the Administration’s neck – ASST SEC OF STATE FOR FAR EASTERN AFFAIRS WILLIAM P BUNDY 16 APRIL 1966

We will find ourselves mired down in combat in the jungle in a military effort that we cannot win -JOHN McCONE, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO DEAN RUSK AND McNAMARA – 2 APRIL 1965

The USA found itself at the end of August 1963 without a policy and with most of its bridges burnt – PENTAGON REPORT ON SOUTH VIETNAM

While tendentious reporting is irritating, suppression of news leads to much more serious trouble – WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN 17 SEPT 1963

A feeling is widely and strongly held that the Establishment is out of its mind – JOHN T MCNAUGHTON, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE 1967

The feeling is that we are trying to impose some US image on distant peoples we cannot understand and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths – JOHN T MCNAUGHTON, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE 1967

White men can’t win this kind of fight – WILLIAM BUNDY, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE ON INVOLVEMENT OF US FORCES IN VIETNAM 1961

You would have thought that with all of these comments, what on earth would the USA be doing, dragging itself and its “Imperialist running-dog lackeys” into other similar wars? It’s as if the Septics have learnt absolutely nothing from their involvement in Vietnam and they are simply making the same mistakes. And as the events unfold and the opposition fights back, the west is sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom. You only have to look at all of the incidents here in the West – under attack, overwhelmed by fleeing refugees, all of the border, airport and train controls – to see just how much the opposition has us on the run.

And our politicians won’t tell us the truth either. Brits will recall that over 400 British soldiers died “freeing” Helmand from the Taliban. What most Brits don’t know, because the Government hasn’t made an official announcement, is that most of Helmand has been retaken by the Taliban. So those deaths were really useful, weren’t they?

Just to repeat, “The war could well become an albatros around the Administration’s neck” and ‘We will find ourselves mired down in combat … in a military effort that we cannot win”.

“A feeling is widely and strongly held that the Establishment is out of its mind” – at least, from this particular point of view.

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Sunday 8th November 2015 – THAT WAS NICE!

It certainly was. Fast asleep in my nice new and clean bed. And I was so comfortable in there that when I awoke at 09:30 I lay in bed until … errrr …. 12:30 doing some work on the laptop.

I could do that because I had the laptop with me at the side of the bed. I should never have drank those two cups of coffee at the football last night because despite going to bed at 12:00, I was still wide awake at 01:30 so I went and fetched the laptop and did an hour’s work.

I didn’t even have time for “breakfast” this morning because I’d planned an afternoon out with friends from FC Pionsat St Hilaire. Pionsat 2nd XI’s match had been cancelled this afternoon but just down the road from here, Le Quartier were playing two matches. The 2nd XI kicking off at 13:00 against St Maurice and the 1st XI playing Lapeyrouse at 15:00, and we had arranged to go. And such a beautiful afternoon it was too that I didn’t regret it for a moment.

Le Quartier won both matches, and deservedly so. Their 2nd XI wasn’t up to much but St Maurice were pretty dire and didn’t offer very much. As for the 1st XI match, Lapeyrouse were definitely better-organised and more skilful on the ball but were simply too slow. They couldn’t break out of defence quick enough to capitalise on attacks and on many occasions there was just one of them isolated up front on his own. They didn’t move around enough give the ball-player a choice of alternatives, and they were too slow to get back into position once the game had spread out – and that was fatal because Le Quartier had a couple of speedy players up front. They played the ball around nicely on one or two occasions and made the most of it.

And it seems that I’ve upset the military lobby again. My feelings on the Armed Farces are well-known to anyone who has been a regular reader of this rubbish, and I make no apologies whatsoever for my stance. But what was quite surprising (although it isn’t really) was that one of the contributors, a quiet and erstwhile well-mannered and polite woman, replied to my posting in language that would have been considered rather extreme had it been uttered in the fo’c’s’le of a whaler. It seems that the Military Lobby considers itself to be untouchable and above criticism, and if this is the kind of response that you have from “a quiet and erstwhile well-mannered and polite woman” then it’s no surprise that the military members behave as they do, burning down mosques, acquiring arms and murdering innocent civilians. They are all pretty much of a muchness and if I had my way, they would all be stuck on an isolated island and left to fight it out amongst themselves.

As I’ve said before, next time anyone proposes a war, there should be a vote on it. And everyone who votes in favour should be gived a rifle and a tin hat and sent off to fight it. These bumper stickers “We support our troops” are totally laughable. Anyone can be brave and belligerent when they are 5000 miles away from the conflict. If they really did “support our troops”, they should be out there in the front line with them, and we’ll see how brave and belligerent they are then.

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Saturday 7th November 2015 – IT’S ALL HAPPENING …

… at the swimming baths at Commentry.

Firstly, I forgot my cozzy and had to go back to Caliburn to find it. Secondly, the big pool was freezing. 29°, it said on the temperature, but I reckon that that must have been Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. Thirdly, there was a group of kids aged about 7-8-9 playing on a couple of foam-rubber rafts down one lane of the big pool. They were having an enormous amount of fun, trying to row, totally out of synch and quite often in opposite directions. As a result, every now and again there was a squeal and half of the kids fell off. They clambered back on again and a short while later we had another squeal followed by a splash. And so it went on. They were having a great time and it was quite amusing watching them.

But the fourth thing was the most interesting. There I was sitting on the jacuzzi steps and some young girl swimming past under water grabbed hold of my foot. I thought that my luck was in, but it turns out that she was aiming for her boyfriend sitting next to me.

Ahhh well 🙁

But you can see what the weather was like today. Totally glorious. And there I was, having disconnected the 12-volt immersion heater (I don’t want it to fire up until I’m there to see what happens). In fact, I went off to Montlucon where I spent a King’s ransom. And it wasn’t as if I had bought anything special, except for 2 inner tubes for the power barrow and a new heavy-duty wheel for the yellow wheelbarrow. It was cheaper than buying an inner tube and tyre and I must get myself organised.

But at least I’m stocked up with tins, macaroni, rice and the like ready for when the winter bites. As long as I have plenty to eat, plenty to read and a few good films to watch, I could be snowed in here for amonth and I couldn’t care less

I didn’t meet anyone whom I knew around the shops either, which makes a change. I’m not sure what happened there.

Pionsat had a really good match tonight against Mozac. They won 3-1 and we had four of the best goals that I’ve seen for ages. Peach of the night was Pionsat’s second, which started off with, would you believe, a one-on-one between a Mozac attacker and Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. The ball bounced off Matthieu’s leg and, just for once, went upfield out of danger. It was played forward to Cedric who rode a few good tackles and, surrounded by two or three Mozac defenders, laid it off to Frédéric. He sold a beautiful dummy to his marker and stepped inside, giving him half a yard of space and he coolly spicked his spot in the corner of the net.

For once, Pionsat had the rub of the green, the benefit of a few unclear decisions, and they played like they ought to have played for the last three or four years. I’ve complained about their “powder-puff” approach to the game in the past but tonight they put in quite a few crunching tackles to make their presence felt. If only they had done this in the past, their position would be totally different.

I was on my travels last night again. Once more, as just a couple of nights ago, I was trying to catch an aeroplane out of Canada but I was running really late. During my stay there, I’d used three cars but I only had one to hand back and I was desperately trying to trace the others, and time was running out. It transpired that one of the cars was “in the bodyshop” and wasn’t quite ready. And so, I thought, there goes my return flight home. I dunno why I seem to have this on my mind at the moment.

But tonight, it’s Saturday and there’s a long lie-in, I hope. I’m all clean with clean clothes and clean undies and so what I’m going to do right now is to change my bedding. A nice clean me with clean bedding and a long lie-in and I shall be in my elephant.

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Sunday 1st November 2015 – I WAS IN CANADA …

… last night, getting ready to leave Rachel and Darren’s in order to fly back home.But time was dragging on and on and I wasn’t making too much progress about packing. With 10 minutes to go before take-off I was still in the spare bedroom with all of my electrical equipment all over the floor still charging up. And somewhere along the line I’d been given some ready-mixed cake dough in exchange for some that I had. And I needed to keep it for a few months after I’d returned to France, something that I knew would be impossible.

And by 09:35 I was wide-awake and out of bed which is something of a surprise considering that it’s Sunday. And even more so considering that I hadn’t gone to bed until 03:30. Just as I was getting ready to fo upstairs to bed, I came across a website that was broadcasting some matches from the Football Conference so I sat back down to watch Gateshead v Altrincham, Telford United v Stalybridge Celtic and Havant and Waterlooville V Wealdstone.

Today is a Bank Holiday here in France and I celebrated by doing exactly badger all, as is normal for a Bank Holiday. In fact, I didn’t even go outside except to take the stats. I did however read a book, Man Who Mapped the Arctic, the story of one of the more famous of the Arctic explorers of the first half of the 19th Century.

Not only that, I mad enormous strides yet again with my 3D program and I’m advancing rapidly – much more rapidly than my lamentable internet connection.

So tomorrow I’m back studying again. It’s nice to be back in Education. Tomorrow night, I’ll let you all know how it went.

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Sunday 25th October 2015 – I’VE RARELY SEEN …

… such a one-sided football match as this. It wasn’t that Charensat were any good because they weren’t – it’s just that Pionsat were so flaming awful. For the first half, the whole team was asleep – their bodies were out on the pitch but the rest of them were miles away. For the second half, three or four of them managed to wake up and it was slightly better, but equally, three or four could have stayed in the dressing room for all the good that they did and no-one would have missed them. Pionsat, relegated from the 1st Division last season, are going to be spending several long, cold winters in Divison 2 if they can’t get it together.

Time and time again, Charensat swarmed right through the Pionsat defence as if it wasn’t there (which it wasn’t) and there were about 20 one-on-ones with Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. A few he saved, but by far the most of them were ballooned miles over the bar or miles wide of the post. The Charensat finishing was appalling. On one occasion Pionsat’s defence, such as it was, stayed around arguing with the linesman for not giving an offside instead of following up the ball while two of the Charensat players beamed down on Matthieu. He saved the first shot and had his defence been playing like grown-ups they would have intercepted the loose ball at the very least. But instead, the ball fell kindly to the other Charensat player, who blasted it about 30 feet over the bar, unmarked from about 10 yards out. This was totally embarrassing, from both teams’ points of view.

In fact several Pionsat players spent so much time arguing with the ref and the linesman instead of following the ball and it was totally unnecessary. Players of Pionsat’s experience should know better. In fact, one of Pionsat’s attackers, too busy arguing with the ref instead of concentrating on the game, was caught offside in what would have been a marvellous attacking position had he been paying attention.

Charensat did score one goal, and how they were limited to one is totally beyond me. They were completely in control of this match. And then we had the totally unbelievable. Matthieu kicked a long high ball right out of the area high up front. Cedric leapt up and headed it on over the defence, and Nico, running on, lobbed it over the keeper for the equaliser. The ball didn’t touch the ground until it was in the back of the net.

But like I said earlier, it’s going to be a long hard couple of years for Pionsat.

Now this morning, I would have had a lovely night’s long sleep except that Bane of Britain somehow confused things so that the reminder for the radio programmes went off this morning instead of tomorrow morning.

And I was on my travels too. I’d been in the far north of Labrador in a vehicle which was like a “Bigfoot” but with a car body of the late 1940s and how that cruised over the uneven roads. Back in civilisation I’d met up with Nerina again and we’d spent a while in a cheap hotel in some dingy town before I had to leave. Given the price of the return ticket on public transport, I went to the darker side of town to buy a really cheap car (I actually did this once in 1995 when I was in London and ended up with a £70 Ford Cortina instead of a Eurostar ticket, and on another occasion it was cheaper to hire a car and put the petrol in to drive from London to Bath rather than pay the fare for the train). Anyway, we had a good look around all of this area at the cheap cars for sale and one of the vehicles at which I was looking was a BMC MG-1300 in white and pale green. I was wondering whether I should ask her if she still had her Wolseley but I decided that it was best not to sho too much interest.

After breakfast I had a relax and didn’t do too much at all. But by about 13:30 the temperature in the verandah was 19°C, the temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater was 36°C thanks to the sun that we had and thus the fully-charged batteries, and so I had a tepid shower in the corner of the verandah with the warm water and a jug. And nice it was too, especially now that I have clean clothes too.

Still plenty of time before I needed to go and so I cut my hair and made myself some butties, and then I was off to Charensat.

After the football match I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes that we will be recording.

viaduc des fades gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceThe way that I went is not a road that I take very often. It’s from St Priest down to the Barrage des Fades and for the first time today I noticed that at a certain spot there’s a stunning view of the Gorges de la Sioule and also of the Viaduc des Fades from an angle from which I’ve never seen it before.

We did what we had to and Liz made a beautiful vegan meal complete with ginger cake, and Terry and I made a few plans.

Back here, I haven’t done much and I’ll be having an early night. We have a lot to do tomorrow.

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Saturday 24th October 2015 – GRRRR! THEY’VE DONE IT AGAIN!!!

And you’ve no idea how much this is annoying me.

Tonight Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing Teilhet so I duly took myself down to the ground. It was about 19:50 when I arrived, 10 minutes before kick-off, but they were already spotting the ball. So I dashed into the ground and watched the 1st 45 minutes. A strong Pionsat side, with one or two out of the 1st XI and 2 players on the bench, played quite impressively and scored a peach of a goal without the Goatslayers offering very very much during the match.

And then the ref blew for half time and the players whipped up the corner flags. What the heck is going on here? “Ohh, we had an early kick-off tonight” was the explanation. And once more, no-one could be bothered to let me know. And they had scored 3 goals in the half that I had missed too.

But I did well to be here too because I was in a submarine during the night, and you know how unlikely that is likely to be. But it wasn’t a cramped-up U-Boat that we were in, but one of these super subs with a huge glass window like the one that went to the bottom of the sea in that television programme – Seaview, wasn’t it? Actually I’m not quite sure what is worse? Being enclosed in so that I can’t see anything, or having a window to look out of so that I could see the oppressive, overpowering and menacing sea that has overwhelmed me.

But despite a late night last night, I was up early and at 08:20 I was breakfasting. And by 11:30 I’d done the two rock programmes for Monday. And then tonight I had to do the miscellaneous programme all over again when I returned home after the football as I’d forgotten about the standards to which I work and I’d rather messed it up a little.

The live concert though, that I’ve edited, engineered and mixed, has gone together really well and you can only hear the join in one place.

I went shopping today as usual, and bought myself a pair of cheap boots for working through the winter. I met Karl and Lou too, and they told me about another Anglo-Francais group that has sprung up. They are going to try to wangle an invitation for me so that I can see what happens.

And so the football …

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Saturday 17th October 2015 – SO FAR TODAY …

…I’ve changed gear three times with Caliburn’s indicator stalk and put him into first gear twice when I’ve been trying to back him into a parking space. And I can’t get the hang of this tiny button in the place where the steering wheel ought to be.

Yes, I’ve been to the shops today – first time since I’ve been back here of course. And I did a full shop that came to just €27:00 even with a few extra bits and pieces. It’s good to be back in Europe where you can buy the food for a week for the same price that you would have to pay for a few bits and pieces in a North American supermarket. All those people who complain about the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy ought to go for a month and do their food shopping in North America. Even with the benefits of mass-production and cut-throat competition, they can’t match the prices that we Europeans pay for our basic foods.

To give you an example – a baguette in a real boulangerie costs about €0:70 – that’s about 90 cents. In a North American supermarket, you’d pay $2:59 for it. These are the prices that people will be paying in Europe if the CAP is dissolved.

And so the first night back in my nice comfy bed.

And so comfortable was I that it was also first night back at my old school for I’ve no idea how many years. I’d been to the school gymnasium for the rehearsals of the school presentation of a Harry Potter play, and there I’d met the girl who was playing Luna Lovegood – who, as regular readers of this rubbish will know, is my favourite character in the series and the girl who should have been paired with Harry Potter – and we’d started dating. I’d agreed to take her home afterwards but when the bell rang, she was pushing her green and yellow bicycle towards the exit. “I’ll just take my bike home” she said, “and then I’ll come back afterwards and you can take me home” (such is the logic of these night-time voyages that I undertake). Anyway, I’d been waiting half an hour and she hadn’t come back so I wondered if I was waiting in the right place. She’d written down her name (it was Lalana or something) and phone number on a piece of paper, but somehow another piece of paper had become stuck over the top and when I peeled that back, it took off half of the girl’s writing. I then went to look for her classroom to see if she was waiting there, but there had been so many changes at the school since I was there that her class year was scattered throughout the building, not like it used to be with three or four classes adjacent when I was there. Eventually some boy gave me a school directory and so I started to thumb through that to see if I could see her in there. But by now it was 20:30 and I’d almost given up hope of finding her again, and I was distraught.

Considering how late I’d gone to bed, waking up at 09:30 (fully-clothed in bed) was something of an achievement. And even though the temperature hadn’t risen from last night, it felt rather warmer. But what I’m going to do is take the gas heater up to the bedroom. I’ve one of these portable calor-gas heaters and it’s not doing anything, so I reckon that half an hour before I go to bed and half an hour before I wake up with one bar of the fire will work wonders in there, even in the middle of winter.

While I was sorting out my breakfast, it suddenly occurred to me that last night I’d gone to bed without taking the stats, and that might well be the first time that I’ve ever done that. Ahh well – no matter.

I spent some time on the internet and then went off to do the shopping. And I’m convinced, as I’ve said before, that Rosemary has a secret camera focused on my house because I hadn’t been back 5 minutes (and the water for the coffee hadn’t even boiled) before she called me up.

Apparently her mobility is worsening and she needs a hand to move some stuff around, so in exchange for some home-made vegetable soup and bread, I’ll go round and help out – and we can catch up with the latest news.

And so FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI was relegated to Division II at the end of last season. It’s hard to believe that just three or four seasons ago they were challenging for promotion but I’ve mentioned so oftenall of the problems that have been happening off the pitch that you are probably sick to death of them right now.

Tonight they were playing the team from the Portuguese Social Club in Clermont and so I went down to see how they were doing. They’ve managed to retain most of the 1st XI from last year and made one or two additions who looked quite useful. And they looked a lot meaner and more aggressive too.

The Portuguese defence was dreadful – even worse than Pionsat’s legendary Easter island statue defence and how Pionsat only managed to score three (from three dreadful defensive errors and mix-ups) is totally beyond me. Pionsat just failed to put the defence under enough pressure despite all of the ball that they had.

And conceding two as well against this attack. The first one was from a direct free kick that curled nicely around the blind side of the wall, and the second was from the usual Pionsat tactic of failing to clear the ball out of a tight spot in the defence and playing it right into danger instead. If I had an Euro for each time that I’ve said that the ball ought to be kicked into the cemetery, the school playground, the abandoned railway line or the garden of the Queue de Milan, I’d be dictating this rubbish to a bunch of floozies sitting on my knee somewhere on a beach in the Bahamas. And still they don’t listen.

They threw away dozens of points like this over the last couple of seasons – this is what cost them promotion all those years ago, and this has what has caused them to be relegated last season. They ought to bounce straight back, but they have already been on the end of a heavy defeat and they are going to have to work much harder than this to fulfil their potential. There are some good players there at this level. The Portuguese are bottom of the league, and quite rightly so, but Pionsat made such heavy weather of this victory.

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Saturday 25th April 2015 – IT RAINED DURING THE NIGHT

And here’s an added advantage about having a separate bedroom on the first floor, and that is that the rain cascading down on the roof doesn’t awaken me. And that’s certainly a bonus. I slept right through it, and as a result, the washing that I did the other day and which was hanging up outside had an unexpected rinse.

Now I’ll have to wait for another week or so for it to dry.

The 5mm of rain that we had filled up the water butts, and I do have to say that I’m catching much more water than I ever did before, since I repositioned the guttering the other day. That’s good news.

During the night I was on the move again – in a 2-door Cortina MkV saloon although while the main part of the body was MkV cortina, the roof was off a BMW 1602 or 2002 and the car didn’t ‘arf look weird. Being yellow and black, like my old taxis, didn’t help matters too much either.

I was in Crewe, driving up Market Street (before they closed it off) from Badger Avenue past the old Co-op place there and the left-hand lane was colsed off with crowd barriers, meaning that we were having some exciting incidents with cars and buses coming round the corner by the Grand Junction pub. There was a fire or something over on the left at the back of the Old Vine pub Right at the top of the hill (by now, in Stoke on Trent) I turned left and drove down a dead-end road onto an area of demolished houses and below me I could see a big factory with clouds of smoke billowing out of it. Chatting to some people, it turned out that the factory was burning a pile of wood and cardboard dummies as it didn’t need them and had no place to store them, and a group of people were heading off on foot down an old back-entry to go down to the factory for a closer look.

After another good night’s sleep and breakfast, I spent the day in the house and I’ve hardly been out. I’ve had a football day, watching Watford win promotion to the Premier leaguen by beating Brighton, and Barnet winning promotion to the Football League by beating Gateshead.

As well as that, I’ve been hacking bits more out of old radio programmes to make up some more soundbytes and I’m building up a nice library of them to slip into the radio programmes every now and again.

Now, I’m off for an early night and a long lie-in. I intend to make the most of my new bed and bedroom.

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Sunday 19th April 2015 – I HAD A NICE LIE-IN …

… this morning – but I nearly didn’t!

When I woke up, it wasn’t even 08:00 but if anyone really thinks that I am going to heave myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, they are mistaken. I turned over and went back to sleep – and it was a much-more-respectable 10:30 when I finally awoke from the dead.

First job, after the usual offices, was to make another load of muesli, seeing as how the muesli drum was empty. For the benefit of my readers, it’s a pile of porridge oats with cornflakes and bran sticks mixed in. And then a bag of nuts, some trail mix (you know – the dried fruit, raisins, coconut shavings and the like), some dessicated coconut and anything else around here that looks nice. Sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and so on.

After breakfast, I finished off the live concert that I was engineering and I do have to say that it’s the best one yet. Tons of stuff has been hacked out, tons of stuff added in, and now that I’ve worked out how to overlap tracks and dub sound effects and so on, it comes out really well.

Working under pressure is a great way of pushing back the boundaries of knowledge with a computer program. When you know that a task is useful and that it seems logical for people to want to do it, then it’s sure to be there in a program somewhere and you need to spend the time to ferret it out.

When I first started to work with Audacity, the program that I use for sound engineering, I remember posting at length about how disappointed I was with it, and how I wished that I had the older program that we used in another lifetime – Polderbits – back again. But credit where credit is due. I’m becoming much more used to Audacity and each week I’m discovering more and more facilities and functions, and I’m now a quite happy little user of the product.

For lunch, I made some hummus again. A pile of chick peas, tahini, water, olive oil, turmeric, cumin and garlic. I remembered that I had fetched from Marianne’s an ancient electric stick-mixer and with that I made a hummus 10 times easier than I have ever made by hand.

The I sat down to watch the football. Next week is the final match of the Welsh Premier League season (already!) and Bangor are playing Rhyl. There cannot be two clubs anywhere in the footballing world that hate each other more than these two, and Rhyl will be going for the throat. They’ll do Bangor no favours whatever in their battle to avoid relegation. And Cefn Druids have an easier match against Carmarthen Town.

So today’s match against Prestatyn is vital to Bangor. Bangor are just two points ahead of the Druids and this is their match in hand, so they must get at least a point from this match to be safe. And of course, it’s being streamed live on the internet.

For once, the Bangor players remembered to turn up and while in the first half they were struggling a little (even conceding a penalty, but the Bangor keeper saved it) in the second half they came good and raced into a 3-0 lead before I’d even settled down.

Towards the end, Lee Beattie for Prestatyn scored what must be a contender for the Goal of the Decade – you won’t ever see a better goal than this one.

I was round at Liz and Terry’s later. We’re recording the Radio Arverne programmes tomorrow afternoon and so we had rehearsals to do. And Liz made a nice meal too.

Now I’m going to have an early night – I deserve it.

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Saturday 18th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… again during the night.

It was supposed to be in Brussels but not the Brussels that I knew. However I was with Laurence and Roxanne and we were moving from an apartment to a big 1930s-type of semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac somewhere, a house that was situated down in the far corner. And I had a collection of Cortina Mk111 saloons, all different colours such as yellow, white, bronze and so on, and I used to leave a different one outside the house every day. From here, my friend (he who lives in Stoke on Trent) had to go home and I had to go with him to the edge of the city to put him on the correct road to the coast. Of course there was a huge traffic queue at the roundabout so we were there talking when someone came around the outside of the traffic on a kind-of motorcycle which was coughing and spluttering. So I made my excuses to my friend and went off to see if I could be of any help to this guy.

And on that note, I woke up – or rather, the alarm woke me up. And I’ve spent most of the day on the radio stuff. Finishing off the additional notes was not anything of a problem but I’m STILL doing the editing for the live concert and I’m nowhere near finished with that.

But it is a difficult one as all of the tracks are scattered about here and there and the lead-ins for one track are on the end of the previous one (something of a regular occurrence these days) so they have to be cut off and grafted into place. It’s going to take me for ever.

To give you an idea of how much interest the players of FC Pionsat St Hilaire have in their club, there were about half a dozen of them missing this evening – attending a party so I was told (and how true this is I really don’t know). And that’s with the club battling desperately to stay up in Division One. There were half a dozen from the 2nd XI out there tonight and young Vincent was in goal. They lost 4-0 to Sayat Argnat and while it looks like a heavy defeat, Pionsat had their moment with two shots that hit the woodwork, one kicked off the line and a couple that went close.

In fact, had Pionsat had a full team out there tonight, then they could have dealt with this opposition quite comfortably, but if the players themselves don’t care, why should I?

But credit where credit is due. Those players out there tonight played with fire and spirit and two or three of them, who probably never ever dreamt a year ago that they would be turning out in Division One, had the matches of their lives. So never mind the defeat – the performance is the thing and it was a good performance tonight. The only players who let down the team were the ones who couldn’t be bothered to turn up.

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Sunday 12th April 2015 – I SMELL ALL COCONUTTY AGAIN.

A gorgeous day again, clear blue sky, tons of solar energy and temperature of 46°C in the verandah. Obviously, a nice warm shower is called for, even if it does consist of a bucket of hot water out of the home-made immersion heater and a jug to pour it on.

Now I’m nice and clean, with nice clean clothes and I’m even going to have new clean bedding tonight. Ohhh luxury!

What I might even do tomorrow, if the weather keeps up, is to do another load of washing. And then maybe even a third sometime this week too. If I can clear all of the backlog I shall really be in my element.

Apart from that, I’ve not done much today. I should have gone to Montfermy to see Pionsat’s 2nd XI play but after they let me down last week and I drove all that way and back for nothing, I wasn’t feeling like having another long wasted journey.

Not only that, today’s football match in the Welsh Premier League between my team, Bangor City, and Connah’s Quay Nomads was being streamed live on the internet. So I wasn’t going to miss out on my weekend’s helping of footy.

Mind you, I don’t know why I bothered. Today was the first time that I’ve seen 90 minutes of a Bangor City match this season, and it’s clear to see why they are struggling near the foot of the table. They were totally disinterested, lacking motivation, and playing as if they were out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen two such ineffective forwards in my life. They seemed to be totally out of the game and didn’t put the Connah’s Quay defence under any pressure at all.

On the other hand, Connah’s Quay have recently signed veteran old warhorse Cortez Belle and they played him up front today. He was an absolute nightmare for the Bangor defence. He was up there all of the time, putting the defence under continual pressure, and that was what made the difference.

But if Bangor City do survive this season, then next season is going to see some very thin pickings indeed if the team can’t find any better motivation than this. You don’t need to be particularly skilful to sow all kinds of seeds of panic in an opposition defence as long as you have the right kind of drive, determination and aggression, as Cortez Belle proved today. Bangor City needs to find that, and find it pretty quickly too.

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Sunday 5th April 2015 – I HAD A LOVELY …

… afternoon out today.

My prayers of yesterday were answered and we had the first sunny day for I don’t know how long. And this afternoon I set off all the way across the Département of the Puy-de-Dome for Cisternes-la-Foret, where Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing.

A gorgeous drive it was too, and the ground is in a really nice setting. But much to my surprise there was just me and two other people in attendance. It seems that Pionsat has once more had difficulty in raising a team (and I’ve no idea why for the 1st XI doesn’t have a game this week) and have forfeited the match.

It’s not the first time that they’ve played this trick on me either and if the truth were to be known, I’m just a little annoyed about having been dragged halfway across Central France for no good purpose. They do have my telephone number, and a little message would not have gone amiss.

Still, as I said, it was a nice drive out.

It also gave me a good excuse to have a really good wash, a shave and some clean clothes (because I’m becoming a little slovenly in things like this just now). But if the weather does keep up like this for the next couple of days, I’ll be back in the shower again. And I can’t say that it’s before time either.

So tomorrow is my last day of rest and then Tuesday it’s back to work. Cleaning, sanding and varnishing the stairs is what I have in mind for that on Tuesday if the weather holds, and I sincerely hope that it does because I want to pull up all of the paper and cardboard that is covering the stairs right now, and have this place looking more like home.

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