… out today, but I decided against it.

Not too far away from here at Chapdes Beaufort is an area that has a system of pathways running through it – the Chemin Fais’art – and these are decorated by all kinds of sculptures. It really is a pleasant walk, especially in the kind of weather that we had this afternoon, but I wasn’t up to the long walk so I spent the afternoon back here.

Mind you, I was probably exhausted by the events that took place during the night.

We were in Crewe, of all places, last night, and having to arrange some kind of deception – a red herring to disguise the fact that the Queen of England was on her travels. This involved finding a stand-in double for the Queen, rigging up a copy of the Royal train and sending it off on a completely different route. As it happened, but we didn’t know this at the time, this was something that was already common practice and the girl who stood in for the Queen was a girl whom I knew from my days in Stoke on Trent. And she – the girl – always started her decoy duties from Crewe in a train pulled by a huge black steam locomotive and on one occasion I was treated to an overhead view of this train pulling out from Crewe and heading northwards as I flew over it.

We then ended up again in Nantwich and having to go by foot to Crewe Station in order to travel to Thailand where there was some kind of meeting taking place, organised by the Islamic State. This was to take place in a hotel that was advertised as 312 metres above the town and in my state of health I was dreading the climb up there. No buses were running from Nantwich Bus Station to Crewe so we had to walk, and our train was in an hour so we couldn’t hang about (it was 4 miles to walk) so we set off down Beam Street. I fell in firstly with two boys who were in the year below me at school and secondly, with Zero, who quite often joins me on my nocturnal rambles. I was chatting to the boys but they turned off to go to the house at the back of Crescent Garage, so I set off to run after Terry (who was to be my travelling companion to Thailand) and Zero. But the faster I ran, the further away they went and they completely outpaced me off down Park View. I could see Zero saying goodbye to Terry and going off down the path to her front door. I wanted to say goodbye to her too but by the time I reached her front gate she had long gone inside her house and, of course, I’m not welcome there these days. In any case I didn’t think that I had the time to spare. Yes, slipped through my fingers yet again.

But it’s hardly surprising that I was exhausted after all of that.

And so I had a leisurely day where I didn’t do very much at all. I just sat and vegetated – and had a shower too, mustn’t forget that.

But the excitement took place this evening too. Southampton have been on a very poor run of matches – in the pat five games they have taken just one point and that was in a draw with the bottom club in the league. On the other hand, the Arsenal have been on a really impressive run of games just recently. So Terry and I both said – and at exactly the same moment too – that it’s odds-on that, given the way the Premier League is going right now, that Southampton would stuff the Arsenal.

And how I wish that I had had the courage of my convictions and put the mortgage on that outcome.

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