US Granvillaise have not been playing so well just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And tonight, they were playing Stade Briochin, the league leaders, who were in yellow.
And I could see all of this ending in tears.
But to the surprise of everyone in the ground, and probably the players too, Granville actually won. 2-1 it was too.
They scored first with a penalty – a carbon copy of the goal the other week. The little n°10 wiggled his way into the penalty area, going nowhere and inviting a foul challenge.
And the opposition defence duly obliged.
Mind you, Stade Briochin equalised 2 minutes later – another penalty from a rather soft and accidental handball in the area.
Granville scored a second goal about 5 minutes into the second half with a beautiful flowing goal, and then hung on for the rest of the match.
We had no less than 6 minutes of injury time at the end of the match and I’ve no idea at all where all of that came from.
Stade Briochin, whose supporters turned out in numbers, complete with flags and drums, can count themselves unlucky in this game because they were the better team, but we were treated to a goalkeeping masterclass by the Granville keeper Florian Verplanck.
He’s a player who has impressed me right from the start of the season, and what he’s doing keeping goal at this level I really don’t know, and today he played the best that I have ever seen.
He made several brilliant saves at crucial moments, and even managed to get his hands to the penalty. The only time that Stade Briochin got past him, there was a defender present to clear off the line.
And Granville had their moments too. They had a couple of excellent chances too. One that will stay in my mind for a long time was the quick, long throw-in from the n°2, a back-header from the n°9 and a beautiful shot on the half-volley from about twenty-five yards out that screamed into the area, grazing the crossbar on its way out for a goal kick.
Last night was another depressing night. I had my early night and went off to sleep, but I kept on waking up throughout the night.
Plenty of time to go on a ramble though. And more than one too.
I’m not sure about what happened first though. It was something to do with 3D modelling or something like that. I’d found a modelling site that I had wanted to use but I couldn’t get access to it. There was something about the minimum order being £10:00 or something like this or whether this was the minimum payment sent to someone. It ended up with me meeting a guy who didn’t really correspond to what I had in mind to do. I wanted something more aggressive than he had. He tried then to provoke me into a fight so in the end I hit him. he went down and I thought “that’s not what I want, is it?”. I don’t know where it went after that.
A little later on I was with a group of young girls. They had already had a telling-off about overplaying to the customers and there they were again on another occasion. One of the girls came round to see me again – it was A and we were talking, saying that they had to calm down their act now and can’t go any further with it and be very careful not to go inciting the customers. I made a joke that “you can incite me any time you like. It’s nice to have that week in every two where it’s nice to have something going it – it makes like much more interesting”. I thought about the time where I’d found that bag or file with about 12 different identities in it and how I had to apply for them. I found that pretty boring but at east this idea with the girls doing their dancing etc makes it extremely interesting for those who have to wait. Like the houses in Chestnut Avenue in Shavington where house sales were such that it was taking 11 months to sell a house and move away and I’m sure that in that particular time these girls would entertain people waiting, one week in every two like they might be doing if we were lucky.
Later still I was with an old school-friend (but it wasn’t him, it was a former friend from another time) and a lady of my acquaintance last night and we’d been going for a good walk around somewhere that gave me the impression that it was somewhere in Germany but she had to wander off somewhere. She got on the bus and we carried on walking. We walked down this suburban road past a big pub and took a turning off to the left onto some kind of new industrial estate. There was a Social Club called the 5MM there so we had a look inside. Then my phone rang and the ring tone distubed everyone so they threw us out. It was our ladyfriend, saying she’d finished and where should we meet? I described where we were – the Social Club, a Hotel also with 5MM in white and blue on it, shops and things and a café and this lady (and I called her another name at the time, no idea why) knew it, but said that it was miles out. I asked this old school-friend/former friend character what we should do, where should we meet up? He replied something along the lines of “well she can get here, can’t she? It won’t take her all that long”. I suggested that to the lady and she replied “that’s miles!” I asked the old school-friend if there was anywhere in between where we could meet. He was rather offhand about it so I passed him the phone and told him to arrange a meeting place with her. He basically told her to come here in rather a brusque tone. She turned up (quicker than I would have expected) and she was really annoyed, shouting at my friend “don’t you know any North German people you could be nice to?”
Just for a change I was up before the final alarm, and organised fairly quickly too. And in the shower as well having a really good scrub ready for the weekend.
All of this led to an early start. I was out in the rainstorm before 09:00 and in LIDL early. There was nothing of any excitement there although I did spend some money there – Supplies are running rather low.
Next stop was, surprisingly, At Espace Auto in the rue de la Fontaine Jolie. Calburn’s Controle Technique is up at the end of the month so I needed to make an appointment for him to have a service and a check-over.
Leclerc had nothing exciting, and neither did NOZ, except for some vegan coconut sorbet – half a litre for €0:99!
I’m not expecting very much from this, but at that price I’m quite willing to risk it to see how it turns out.
Anyway, at least it will be different. I’ll be making an apple pie tomorrow so when I’ve finished the soya cream that’s open I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like.
Back here I put everything away and then, quite an important task -I made some more muesli. I’m running out and I can’t be doing without that.
Into the bedroom afterwards and there I made a start on the dictaphone notes. Another huge pile disappeared and there are only 150 left. But it might be slow for a few days – there was a gap in my blog entries while I was underneath the knife, but it didn’t stop me making notes on the dictaphone.
After lunch I carried on with the dictaphone notes but unfortunately I couldn’t keep going and ended up asleep on the chair for a short while.
At 17:15 I went off to the football now that the weather had cleared up.
There had been some talk around the town that the Council had been on the prowl around painting helpful notices on the street in strategic places, and this must be one of them.
You can tell that it’s the holiday season, with all of these elferly people with their little toutous messing up the streets and refusing to clean it up, despite the best efforts of the council to place plastic bags all around the town.
It’s hardly a surprise that everyone is so fed up of certain types of tourists who behave like this.
After the football I wandered back home through the crowds of people and the group of young girls who followed me almost to home.
They left me behind at the look-out over the harbour where I stopped to take a photo. You can tell that it’s weekend and the harbour gates are open because all of the fishing boats have come in and are tied up at the quayside.
Our old friend La Grande Ancre is over there on the far side.
Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine how the port might have been 120 years ago when it was crammed with sail-powered fishing boats who would make the voyage out to the Grand Banks off the coast of Canada.
How times have changed.
Back here it was tea out of a tin seeing as I’ve been out late.
Tomorrow is Sunday – lie-in time. No alarm so just you watch me be wide awake at 05:00.
