Tag Archives: football

Sunday 4th December 2011 – YOU ARE PROBABLY ALL WONDERING …

… how come I didn’t post this entry on Sunday night as I usually do.

Or even Monday morning, which I do if I’m too tired to go on line.

The truth is that we have had a tragedy.

On Sunday morning when I was organising the football photographs and text from last night, the battery went flat on the laptop – which it does quite often, as you know.

And so I plugged it in to charge up, like you do, and went back after a couple of hours to start up work again. Switched the computer on – but nothing happened. No charge in the battery.

So after much messing around with AVO meters and the like, I worked out that power is getting to the recharging unit and out the other side, but it isn’t getting to the battery to charge it up. And nothing that I tried to do would seem to make it.

Mind you, it might be a tragedy, but it’s not a catastrophe as it might otherwise been, because it was on its last legs since it fell off the roof of the car in Canada in September, and it was surely only a question of time.

And as it happened, when I was in Montlucon at the Auchan the other day I had seen a laptop for sale at €449 that had 1TB of hard drive and 6gb of RAM. I quite liked the look of that so I shall be going for a little wander tomorrow, I reckon.

Good job that there was no footy this afternoon, wasn’t it?

Saturday 3rd December 2011 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… anything at all today.

A miserable wet windy Saturday was enough to keep me up here.

All I’ve done is to tidy up (just a little), do a little work on the radio programme, and read a book on Canadian railways. It’s a long time since I’ve had a lazy day like that.

This evening I went to Pionsat with the new lens to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire. I’ll post a pic up here so that you can see what it looks like, but action night shots at 1/640 on ISO1600, and sufficient light to do it as well is amazing.

And with being manual focus, the reaction time is instant.

However one slight drawback is that the focus doesn’t stay locked and I didn’t realise that. It floated off from infinity and I didn’t notice, and one or two pf the photos at least are not much good.

I’m curious to see what the rest are like

But I’m going to do that tomorrow. I’m pretty tired again right now. All of this lazing around is no good for me.

-4

Sunday 27th November 2011 – I WAS A BIT PUT OUT TODAY.

But before I tell you about that, let me first tell you the good news.

Although it was late when I went to bed, I managed to sleep for 6 hours or so. And after breakfast, I finished off the scripts for the radio programmes that we will be recording this week for Radio Anglais

I had to rush though as Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI were playing away at Combronde at 13:00 but just as I was stepping out of the door to go, Percy Penguin chose that moment to ring me.
“You fell on your head? It might knock some sense into you”.
It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?

And so at Combronde, 5 minutes late and the place all deserted. There was no-one around at all. So what’s going on here?

Anyway, that was an hour and a half and 75 kilometres wasted. There was clearly no point in staying on here so I fuelled up and went off to Ceyssat for the 1st XI match instead.

That long drive took me round by the Puy de Dome – right past the foot of it, and it was remarkable to notice the change in the weather. From my humble abode to round about St Bonnet it was grey miserable and overcast.

But south of there we had glorious sunshine. The Puy de Dome (and you pass within about 200 metres of it) was especially nice. But once over the Col de Ceyssat I drove straight into a fog and that was that.

I met Bernard the club president. he said that the 3rd XI match was cancelled, and so I berated him for not sending me a text – after all, I told him last night that I would be going. It’s a couple of times now that they have done this on me and I’m becoming rather fed up.

But the actual match cheered me up considerably.

Olby-Ceyssay were a pretty poor side and FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no trouble whatever in demolishing them 4-0, hardly breaking sweat in doing so.

it’s a shame that they can’t play like that every week.

From there I went on round to Liz and Terry’s where we rehearsed our radio programmes – we’re recording next week.

Liz had baked potato pie and rice pudding for afters, and she even made up a doggy bag and a lump of fruitcake for me to take home. It’s that kind of thing that makes it worth-while having good friends, and helps me to forget all of the worries and disagreements.

-2

Saturday 26th November 2011 – OUCH!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that won’t be at all popular.

-2

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 – I’VE FINISHED …

… building the staircase to the first floor in the lean-to, and so you can really say that we have an upstairs and a downstairs now.

The staircase is more like a ladder in a sense, because it has rungs rather than stairs, but then again there’s only a confined space to work in so it can’t be helped.

The gas bottle is in its permanent home and I’ll be drilling a hole through the wall at the back (the top edge of the photo) to pass the gas pipe through into where the kitchen will be. To change it over, you jut drag it out to the right.

And you can see the stud wall that’s in front of the stairs. I have piles of cheap tongue-and-grooving and that’s all going to be going on there in very early course (once I can find it in the barn).

The washroom, when it’s finished, will be a sort-of U-shape, from the back studding, down the side wall and then down to front wall to where the camera was when I took this shot.

We’ll have worktops (I’ve bought those already) with the washing machine underneath, a sink (there’s one of those lying about somewhere) and cupboards, which I can make. And, of course, a 12-volt immersion heater running off the surplus electricity that I generate

It doesn’t quite look like that now though. After I took the above photo I made the structure even stiffer by adding a diagonal bracing bar. That stiffened it up quite considerably and it’s all quite solid now. It’ll be stiffer even still when it’s cladded.

You can just about make out the gap in the rear studding where the gas bottle will be coming and going through. And I’ll be covering most of that rear stud wall as well, once I’ve cut up all the scrap wood in the rear section and moved it out for burning.

As you can see, this is something of a long-term project.

And in other news, my new window for the living room is ready. I’ll have to go Lapeyre at Montlucon to pick that up this weekend.

And in other other news, I seem to have become something of an unofficial sports reporter for the local newspaper.

Following Marianne’s suggestion, I’ve been sending some of the photos of FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s opponents to the reporter covering the town where they come from. And now twice – two weeks in succession, the reporter concerned has asked me to send in a match report.

-2

Sunday 20th November 2011 – WE HAD A FOOTFEST TODAY.

We were down at Montel de Gelat for the whole afternoon watching the 3rd XI take on the 2nd XI of Montel-Villosanges, followed by the 1st XI taking on the 1st XI of the Chimps.

The 3rd XI were a man short and with no goalkeeper either (chapeau to Xavier to donning the gloves) once again, and lost 1-0 to a disputed penalty. For much of the game they were playing as if it were they who had the extra men and they never looked in any danger against one of the worst teams I have ever seen.

With a couple of extra players to make up a decent pool of players, and with a proper goalkeeper, they could – and should – have demolished this side.

The FC Pionsat St Hilaire administration needs to be asking itself a few serious questions about how seriously they are taking the 3rd XI, as I have said before.

As for the 1st XI they lived up to my expectations by conceding two soft goals, one of thmm being an unchallenged header from a free kick.

The second was when a defender pulled up with a hamstring chasing a loose ball, allowing an attacker a free shot at goal, and I don’t suppose you can do too much about that.

And that was all that Matthieu had to do in the game really – to pick the ball out of the net on those two occasions. For the rest of the match he was pretty much a spectator

not like his opposite number who was in the thick of the action for most of the game.

How the Pionsat side only managed to score 2 is one of those things that people will be asking for years to come because the 1st XI weren’t any better at football than their reserves.

They were however much better at punching and kicking their opponents, and collapsing like a sack of potatoes any time a Pionsat player got within 10 yards of them.

And we had a mass brawl in the closing stages of the game, with even the Chimps trainer becoming involved in the action.

Add to that the crowd hurling gratuitous abuse at FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s linesman and with a few other incidents that were just as unsavoury, I wasn’t sorry when the final whistle was blown.

Saturday 19th November 2011 – WELL, I’M A BIT ….

… disappointed today.

In the last 24 hours we’ve had 21 hours of recorded wind and the turbine has been going round like ye veritable clappers.

And do you know what?

There’s not even one watt recorded on the dial.

A quick check revealed that there’s no current reaching the battery bank. That’s sad.

I checked the two joints to the wind turbine and they seem to be working fine – I connected up a little piazo buzzer and that was ringing like Big Ben – and so it’s either going to be the final joint or else there’s a break in the cable somewhere.

That’s going to be a job for the multimeter on Monday morning

But it was certainly encouraging to see how the thing was going around today. And of course, all the time that it was going round, the big AIR 403 wind turbine didn’t move a muscle. It proves the point that I’ve been arguing with everyone for years that a small turbine can quite often produce more energy than a large one.

Why this is so is quite simple.

Feel the weight of the motors. The heavier a motor is, more powerful it is (generally speaking, of course. There are always exceptions). And the weight is made up of the copper coil and the magnet in the motor (it’s not this simple, but for the purpose of this discussion we’ll leave it here).

So the more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet and the more magnetic resistance it contains. And so the more wind that you need to overcome the magnetic resistance. A less-powerful wind turbine will have less magnetic resistance and so it will need less wind to make it work. In low-wind situations (which is what I generally have here) two smaller wind turbines will pump out more power than one large one.

This afternoon I went to St Eloy-les-Mines where I spent next-to-nothing again but I did do a mega-wash at the launderette. That’s cheered me up. All clean clothes again. All I need to do is to find a way of getting me nice and clean as well, and then I can have nice new bedding. I shall work on that.

It was the Annual General Meeting of Pionsat Patrimoine this afternoon and interesting as it might be, I still can’t deal with the egos and the people who take 100 words to say either yes or no – and then say it 10 times over.

No footy tonight at Pionsat – Gerzat couldn’t raise a team to play the 2nd XI. But there was a game on at Marcillat, and that provided me with the biggest laugh that I have had for quite a while.

A goalkeeper and a forward went for a 50-50 ball and the keeper came off worse. It was a foul but a genuine attempt to play a loose ball with no malice whatsoever. The ref,in his wisdom, shows the Gannat forward a yellow card.

Outrage from the Gannat bench – and quite rightly so if you ask me. “We have to protect the goalkeepers” shouted the ref.

30 seconds later we have an almost-identical situation and this time it’s the forward who comes off worse And no yellow card. And in the silence of the still night up on the plateau where Marcillat play, the Gannat trainer bellows out (and I mean Bellows Out- he could be heard back in Gannat I reckon) “and you have to protect the forwards too!”

At that remark, the whole ground collapses in laughter, except for the ref who clearly has no sense of humour whatever and goes over to talk to the trainer

Well, I wasn’t the only one who thought it funny. And doesn’t that makes a change for round here?

-2

Sunday 13th November 2011 – I DON’T THINK …

… that I will be seeing the wild boar again.

The farmer came down this morning to bring his cows to the field behind the house. He went for his usual walk around to check the boundaries and he must have seen the wild boar tracks because half an hour later the hunters arrived.

I was once at a meeting where I heard a hunter describe hunting as “a noble sport”. I’ve no idea what is noble or sporting about 20 armed men ringing a thicket, sending a bunch of dogs in to flush out everything that is in there and then blasting into oblivion whatever comes fleeing out.

It’s all really sad and pathetic, and brings out the worst in human nature if you ask me. But it’s legal to do it and part of the French rural tradition, so I have to put up with it whether I like it or not.

>This afternoon I went down to Loubeyrat. FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing there today and it’s a nice drive down.

We’ve been here before, a few years ago, and one thing that impressed me then was the view that could be had from the corner of the football ground. It’s right on the edge of the Faille de Limange – the fault line that runs down the centre of the département and there are views from here right across the plain and the valley of the River Allier all the way over to Vichy and the Montagne Bourbonnaise.

It was a real shame about the match though.

Although FC Pionsat St Hilare lost the match 3-0 they were desperately unlucky here. Two superb free kicks and a defensive howler were responsible for the goals but apart from that they did really well. This was probably the best that I’ve seen them play in recent times. They even managed to have a good shape that they kept throughout the match.

It’s just a pity that they can’t play like that every week.

Back here this evening I watched one of the videos that I had bought at Noz in Montlucon for a couple of Euros the other day. This was a Frank Sinatra film called Tony Rome.

Not only does Sinatra not sing in it (for which I am extremely grateful) he acts spectacularly well in his role as a private detective in Miami. If you know any of the Philip Marlowe films, then think of Humphrey Go-kart in The Big Sleep, bring it up to date by 20 years, film it in technicolour with good outdoor scenery and give it some meaningful and convincing co-stars and there you are.

It’s easily the best film that I have bought for quite a while and it will be one that will feature on my regular playlist.

There was a follow-up of it called The Lady In Cement. While it is very very rare for a follow-up to be anything like as good as the original, I shall be trying to track down a copy of that.

But it really was a good film, this.

Saturday 12th November 2011 – I’M GOING …

… to bed in a second.

Yes, I’m thoroughly exhausted and I don’t know why. Probably the early start this morning had something to do with it.

Up with the alarm waiting for a phone call for this photo safari thing, and it turns out that I had not been patched in to an earlier e-mail circular and so I’d missed the point of this trip out. But anyway it didn’t take us long to do what it was that we had to do.

This afternoon, seeing as how the weather was so beautiful I went to Commentry to do my shopping there.

And while I was in the car park of the Les Bonnes Affaires I was buzzed by one of these motorised hang-glider things passing low over the town. I was trying to think where he might have come from because there’s no suitable cliff in the vicinity off which to leap into the ether – unless he can run with his feet fast enough to make a clean take-off.

And I wonder what the rules might be about low-flying over a built-up area like this

While I had the camera out, I noticed another example of poorly-sighted solar panels – over there on the roof of that bungalow. Facing full west they are, so they don’t receive a glimmer of sunlight until early afternoon.

These “become a producer of solar energy and sell to the electricity board” high-pressure salesmen have struck again. It’s hardly surprising that the industry has such a bad name when they do things like this.

I did make a couple of interesting discoveries though. And they were both at Bricomarche.

they have a huge pile of water-resistant 8mm plywood at €39 a sheet of 2.5×1.25 metres. It’s expensive all right but it’s what I need for the roof of the lean-to and they do have it in stock.
they also have the stove that I want for downstairs. A woodstove with an oven and with a central heating boiler built in – for €1499 too. That’s exactly what I want, because the sun will heat the water in the summer and I need something for heating it in the winter. If this does everything, it will be perfect. I can even do cooking with it as well.

But the real reason for going to Commentry was that with the weather being so nice I could nip down the road to Neris-les-Bains for a swim. It was glorious in there – the water just right and the pool quite warm as well. Shame it can’t be like that all the time.

At the footy tonight the 3rd XI match was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team, and the first XI went down 2-1 to a team that they had played off the park, something of which they seem to be in a habit of doing

I’d tell you much more about the game but enough of this for now. I’ve fallen asleep twice already while typing as far as this, and if I don’t get a move on I’ll be ……..THUD THUD

…….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

Friday 11th November 2011 – I COMPLETELY FORGOT …

… about a sack of sand that I had in the barn. I’d bought it to use for storing the carrots and so I had put it on one side. But the carrots aren’t up yet and I can always buy another sack of sand another time.

I hadn’t forgotten that it was a bank holiday today, but when I finally crawled out from underneath the quilt and saw what a gorgeous day it was (23°C in November?) then I changed the habits of a lifetime and decided to put in a day’s work on the wall.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, especially as I had remembered about the sack of sand.

And I’m glad I did as well because even though I was still working outside when the light went, I managed to finish the wall as far as I could reach and I’m ever so impressed by that. All that remains of the wall is the bit that I can’t reach from the scaffolding, and for that I can put a ladder up on Monday and quickly do that if I get a move on, and then that will be that.

Just the wind turbine to mount after that (I have some funny … "you said that the other day" – ed …), and to anchor it to the wall, and then I can get on with putting the roof on the lean-to. I’ll be really pleased if I can get that far this year.

I took the camera up the scaffolding just in case we had Part Two of Wild Boar Wars but of course, with the camera on hand, they were conspicuous by their absence. No surprise there, then.

Tomorrow I’m off on a photo safari around the local area, and then shopping in St Eloy. Tomorrow night it’s Pionsat’s 1st XI against Methanol and the 3rd XI against Blot l’Eglise.

Ohh the joys of footy!

Talking of which, you can see last week’s matches which I have now put on line.

Saturday 5th November 2011 – ONE THING …

… that I will never understand is how tonight Pionsat’s 2nd XI, with a full complement of players, a decent goalkeeper and several players back in the side who have been missing for ages, can totally outplay an opposition so convincingly and STILL lose 4-3.

It simply beggars belief and those who were watching it will still be pinching themselves tomorrow about this. It seems like as if the football team has been and gorn and done it again and it’s driving me to despair.

Mind you, what also had many spectators scratching their heads was why one of the left-backs and who had played sweeper so successfully for the 2nd XI the last time he played, was playing as an attacking midfielder.

And why a guy who had played in central defence for the 1st XI so successfully (to such an extent that he won my “man of the match” awards the other week) was playing in midfield, and why one of the usual centre-forwards was playing at centre-half.

And why this formation was persisted with after the guy who was playing centre-forward this week (and who was quite effective too) was carried off injured after 30 minutes.

It was all totally mystifying.

This morning I was up early and into Montlucon. I picked up the new wheel for Caliburn that I had ordered last week and I also bought some stuff in Brico Depot, including some cheap kitchen worktops that I’ll use in my laundry room.

But pride of place, and the reason why I went to Montlucon today, was to go to Lapeyre to order the window for the downstairs here.

And Terry was perfectly right, as he usually is. A made-to-measure window for the bedroom cost me €650 back in the early part of the year. The window in the living room is larger but rather than go for a made-to-measure window, there’s a standard-size window that’s 1cm narrower and 2cms shorter than the opening.

If I don’t mind filling in around the window opening, then that window will cost me all of €342. Do bears go for picnics in the woods?

And it will be ready on 25th November as well. That means that it will be installed before the severe winter sets in.

So what I’ll do on the next rainy day or two is to plan the fitting of the front door. It probably won’t be glazed, but I’ll screw a board and some insulated plasterboard over it and that should stop the draughts.

And with the new fire, I might even be warm here this winter at this rate.

-1

Saturday 29th October 2011 – IT TOOK …

… just 30 seconds of madness for Pionsat to throw away a football match this evening.

4-3 up and in the dying minutes of the game against a team 2 Divisions higher up, one of the attackers elects to take the ball down to the corner flag and sit there to waste a minute or two.

But he loses the ball, it’s played hurriedly upfield into space deep into the Pionsat half. There’s a race on for the loose ball, which is won by a Pionsat defender

Under pressure from two attackers, and after all that I have said and after all that I have written and after all the time that I have been saying and writing, he goes to whack it upfield instead of playing it out into touch to give his fellow defenders time to come back.

His kick is poor as you might expect, and it cannons right into the midriff of one of the attackers, and then bounces out into the path of the other who has only Matthieu in goal to beat and that, dear reader, is that.

So it’s now 4-4, and Pionsat go to kick off.

And from the restart, Pionsat lose possession and Clermont go on the attack. The forward is brought down and a quickly-taken free kick is fired into the penalty area and headed home while the Pionsat defence is still trying to organise itself. And Pionsat are out of the cup and thats a shame because this was an excellent match played at high speed and in a good temper.

One of the best matches I’ve seen played here since I’ve been following the team, in fact.

Today was shopping in Montlucon and I was off on the wrong foot again as I slept through the alarm and so was 2 hours late going.

And I spent a fortune too. I’ve all the hydrofuge plasterboarding for the shower room seeing as how it was on offer at Brico Depot, and I’ve bought a wheel for Caliburn. That’s because I have two snow tyres that I fit in winter and one of them is on the spare wheel but the other is not on a wheel at all and I have to keep getting it swapped over with one of the summer tyres and that costs me €15 a time.

It makes much more sense to pay €65 for a wheel and keep the tyre on it around here like that, and then I can swap the wheels over whenever it suits me to do so.

But I have also spent €279 on a new woodstove for in here. You may recall that I bought a cheap pot-bellied stove for up here and though while it does what it’s supposed to do it has a very small capacity and it needs to be filled every 15-20 minutes, which is quite difficult when you are chatting for 30 minutes to someone on the telephone.

What I saw in Mr Bricolage a short while ago and which I mentioned at the time was a more conventional woodstove with a glass front. It’s larger and it takes logs of 33cms. It burns horizontally and not vertically, then I can stack it up and it should last for quite a long time without reloading.

But that’s not the exciting bit. This woodstove has a rear exit for the smoke and I recall mentioning that the top of it has a lift-up lid, under which is, I suppose, a small top-loading oven about 6 inches or so deep. I’m immediately thinking “pizza”, “shepherd’s pie”, “oven chips with spicy been taco rolls”, “baked potatoes and baked beans”, “rice pudding” and loads of other things besides.

Yes, when winter bites and I feel the need for hot food and it’s too cold to go downstairs and cook in the verandah at -10°C, and when I want to boil some coffee last thing at night and put it in a flask so I have hot coffee in my room first thing in the morning, I can see a lot of benefit in this new stove and its oven.

I’m hoping to have my money’s worth out of this machine.

The pot-bellied stove isn’t going to be lost, though. I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

I also managed to fit a swim in this afternoon at Neris les Bains. And it was perishing freezing in there again. Even the Polar Bears were complaining. I’m going to have to give the piscine at Neris les Bains a miss for a while if it carries on like this.

-2

Monday 24th October 2011 – AND JUST WHAT ON EARTH …

…is happening here?

Yes, it’s absolutely ages before midnight and here I am blogging already.

What on earth is going on?

The fact is that I’m absolutely whacked. Three nights without much sleep have finished me off and I shall be in the arms of Morpheus before much longer.

But I dunno why I’m having these sleep issues. I know that I habitually keep late hours but what has been going on just recently is absurd.

This afternoon I carried on with moving the cattle trough in the lean-to. Here is a photo of how it looked after I’d been bashing away at it for an hour or two the other week.

What it looks like now is something else completely thanks to Terry lending me a concrete cutting disk and a huge sledgehammer yesterday.

They made quite short work of the bit that I can get to, and the rest of it will have to be done when I can get to it.

I did say that once I’d done that I would be starting on the pointing of the wall. However we’ve had a howling gale here today with winds gusting up to 20mph. I know that that isn’t particularly fast but if anyone thinks that I’ll be standing on top of a ladder 10 metres or so above ground in a wind like that then they are mistaken.

According to one of the litttle-used functions on the anemometer, we had 20:42 hours of wind in the last 24 hours and that is quite phenomenal. The wind turbines have been earning their keep today.

What I did do instead was to make a start on the framework that I’ll be using to make the dividing wall in there. That involved cutting up a few chevrons and shaping them,and cutting lets into the rafters of the ceiling in the lean-to.

And while I was doing that, the wind dramatically dropped. “Time for me to go and get the ladder out and make a start on the wall” you are probably thinking. But “not bloody likely”, as Eliza Doolittle once famously said, because we had a torrential downpour and it’s still raining now.

Instead, I did some tidying up and sorting out until knocking off time at 19:00 (I’m still on summer hours).

Seeing as I’m still on summer hours, this morning I was working on the website and I’ve put on line the reports for the 1st XI and 2nd XI matches from this weekend.

But Saturday night’s photos haven’t worked at all and I’m going to have to spend money on a decent lens to take better photos in the dark.

Tomorrow Liz and I are radioing, at Radio Tartasse. I wonder if I will have woken up by then.

Good night, everybody.

-3

Sunday 23rd October 2011 – TODAY I HAVE SEEN ….

… what is probably the worst game of football that I have ever seen in my life. US Menetrol were such a poor side that they could only manage to score four goals against the disorganised rabble that was supposed to be the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI.

There were three types of player on the field for Pionsat this afternoon. We had those with inclination and no skill (but nevertheless, hats off to them for turning out because clubs need willing players like this), quite a few with neither skill nor inclination, and far too many of those with skill but no inclination.

It was such a dismal showing that had I been in charge of the team, I would have gone home with the bus and left them to walk home.

But I’m not. And that was the root of the problem – there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. And whoever it was who was supposed to be giving the orders was giving some pretty strange ones, that’s for sure. It really was an absolute shambles.

I shan’t say any more about it as it will be just gratuitous.

On the way down to Menetrol, I had the misfortune to be behind heaps of those kinds of drivers who think that 90kph is 70, 70 kph is 50, and 50 kph means that you get out and push. That started me off on the wrong foot anyway so it’s hardly a surprise that I was in a bad mood.

Afterwards, I went round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the radio programmes, but we seemed to have spent most of the time dealing with lost hunting dogs.

Terry has very kindly lent me a concrete-cutting disc and a huge sledgehammer to remove this cattle trough, and Liz, apart from cooking a gorgeous tea, has made me up a food parcel. That is really lovely.

So tomorrow, I shall be removing cattle troughs and then carrying on with the pointing of the house wall. We are told that the fine weather will last until Wednesday.

-4

Saturday 22nd October 2011 – AND THIS MUST BE …

… something of a new record.

I went to St Eloy les Mines this afternoon, rather late as it happened, and put my washing in the launderette seeing as there was quite a pile that had built up.

Anyway, once the machine had set off, it announced that the cycle would take 40 minutes to do.

And by the time the 40 minutes was up, I’d been to LIDL and Carrefour and I was back in the launderette. And for what I had spent on the week’s shopping, I had change back from €9:00 as well. Now, as I say, this must be a new record.

But my new plan is that seeing as I have quite a lot of work to do these days, I’m going to be doing the radio programmes on Saturday morning and then shopping in St Eloy les Mines when I’ve finished. And that seems to be working anyway because in 3 hours of work I’d done all four programmes.

Yes, I reckon that if I don’t go shopping until I’ve finished, it’s a good spur.

This evening the 3rd XI match at Pionsat St Hilaire was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team. Instead,I went and watched the 1st half of the match at Marcillat. Although the AS Marcillat team play at what is nominally 1 level higher in the pyramid (they are in a different region) Pionsat’s Ist XI wouldn’t have too much trouble in dispatching them on a good day.

And talking of good days, Pionsat’s 1st XI played one of the numerous teams from Clermont this evening with a 20:30 kick-off, so I was back down there for the start.

They weren’t under too much pressure except down the left side of defence as usual and that was where they conceded a goal. But a substitution in the second half with a new player in the team shored that side up.

The central defence played splendidly with Alex and Julien in there – and Julien has improved immeasurably this season.

but with Cedric scoring early in the game and this new left-sided player scoring a second, following up a loose ball (and if he can play like this every week he’ll prove to be an excellent signing), as well as two or three goals disallowed, Pionsat were never really in difficulty. They won the match with plenty to spare. in the tank.

But the end of the game was rather ugly as the opposition lost their cool and we had a brawl near the end and another one after the final whistle and it was all unnecessary.

And then afterwards we had the draw for the league cup quarter-final.

And Pionsat drew …. the team that had just played this evening.

This should be quite some match.

-3

EPIC HALL

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