… an exciting football match this evening.

US Granville were playing CS Villedieu – a team one Division below them – in the Normandy Cup, and ran out 5-1 winners.

You might think that this indicates that CS Villedieu were on the receiving end of a right spannering, but nothing could be further from the truth. The scoreline is extremely unfair to them.

The game hinged on a two-minute spell after about an hour. Up until then the teams had been very evenly matched and although Granville were 1-0 up thanks to a goal after about 15 minutes, the lead was by no means whatever a comfortable one.

But then CS Villedieu broke away upfield with some nice play and had a shot on goal that beat absolutely everyone, including the US Granville keeper, but flashed about half a millimetre wide of the post. Had they scored, it would have been no more than they deserved.

However, from the goal-kick, Granville roared upfield and won a corner. And the Granville centre-forward had a free header into the net.

From the restart, the US Granville midfielder intercepted the ball, played it upfield and with some neat passing play from the forwards, the n°10 (I think) found himself in a one-on-one with the Villedieu keeper and made no mistake.

So within 60 seconds of what should have been 1-1, CS Villedieu found themselves 3-0 down.

After that, things went from bad to worse for Villedieu. They were still playing some nice football and even pulled back a goal, but every time Granville had the ball up front they looked dangerous. As well as 2 more goals, we had two point-blank saves from the keeper and a resounding, thunderous volley that came back off the foot of the post.

5-1 it was. 2-1 would have been a fairer result but it could so easily have been 7 or 8 for Granville.

And I’ll tell you something else that I missed too. And I’m as malade as a perroquet about it, as they say around here.

There’s been a dash-cam in Caliburn for several years and it’s never ever recorded anything interesting. And yet today, there we were at the roundabout near LeClerc and a motorist a few cars in front of me stops to give way. A tourist behind (yes, it’s grockle-time again), too busy admiring a seagull, runs slap bang into the rear of him. Ad here I am with the dash-cam running!

Or, at least, I thought I was. But it turns out that the SD card filled up about 100 yards beforehand and so had switched off. How upset am I?

With having had a late night last night I didn’t have much sleep . And although I’d been on my travels, all memory of it disappeared in the time that it took to reach for the dictaphone.

We had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a general clean-up, and then it was shopping-time.

LIDL and NOZ came up with nothing much of any excitement, and I went to Mr Bricolage for some PTFE lubricant for the machine heads of the bass guitar.

We then had the accident, and as I was pulling onto the car park at LeClerc, I almost collided with Liz and Terry coming in the opposite direction. So we went for a coffee, that passed into lunch, and I’m very grateful to Terry for hosting me.

Nothing much of any excitement in there either, but I do now have an office chair (even though I don’t have an office as yet – but I will in early course) and that was quite by accident.

With all of the time that it took for chatting and so on, it was just coming up to 14:00 when I was driving past BUT and they were reopening after lunch. And there was a big sign outside – “Clearance Sale – Massive reductions – Free Installation on Fitted Kitchens”.

So I went in to see about a kitchen for here because I hate what I have and I want something much better than this. However, it won’t be happening from BUT. The “free installation” only applies to purchases of over €2500 and I’m looking to spend a tenth of that.

But I had a look at the office chairs and there was one that was quite comfortable and quite robust. Not quite like the one that I had in Brussels that I could (and did on many occasions) curl up and go to sleep in, but it was €79:99 – which is cheap in itself – reduced by 50%! And they had run out of stock so after much discussion they let me have the display one for €36:00. I’ll go for that.

This evening I had a brisk walk out to the Cité des Sports in the rain and howling gale for the football and because I’d brought a flask, the Hall and bar were open. Isn’t that typical?

And on the way back I grabbed a portion of chips for tea. It’s good to catch up with old habits.

Tomorrow is of course a Bank Holiday and a Sunday, so I’m going for two lie-ins.

And why not?