… my first “H” reg car today.

France isn’t like the UK – they simply issue all of the numbers consecutively until they run out, and then move on to the next letter and so on.

It’s about time that I saw one. They seem to have been stuck on GZ numbers for quite some considerable time, but this evening on the way home, parked in the Rue des Juifs there was an HA.

Interestingly, on the radio on the way home there was a talk about what the Press sees as the current financial crisis in France, with the cost of borrowing reaching 2.88% of GDP. That intrigued me because I don’t think that this amount is any big deal. Anyway I had a look, and found that the UK’s cost of borrowing is 4.4% of GDP – over half as much again.

In the USA it’s 2.86% – about the same as in France – and no-one is panicking over there. Interestingly, the USA’s borrowing is without anything even resembling the amount of social welfare that any other country pays out.

The record, by the way, according to the International Monetary Fund; is held by Ghana with 7.49%. In the Western World, it’s held by Iceland with 5.88%.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I was late again going to bed but I didn’t care at all. And once in bed, although it took an age to go to sleep, I slept the Sleep of the Dead once more, all the way round to … errr … 06:20.

Whatever awoke me I really have no idea, but once awake I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I thought but I definitely had my head in the clouds at 07:00 when the alarm went off.

It took a while for me to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and when the room stopped spinning round I alighted and headed to the bathroom.

After a good wash I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but to my disappointment there was nothing on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on during the night.

The nurse came early yet again, which cheered me up because the quicker he comes, the quicker he goes. He’s on duty on Christmas Day, apparently, so I told him not to bother coming here that day. I’m going to have a lie-in.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to tell Isabelle the Nurse not to come on New Years Day either.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK, which I have now finished – at least, part I of it.

He’s absolutely sold on Canada by the way. He lists several really good reasons why one should leave the UK and go West. And while the USA is the preferred destination for so many at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and for so many good reasons too, he goes to great lengths to explain why each of these good reasons is even better in Canada.

He concludes with "From a due confideration of every one of the before mentioned circumflances, it appears evident to me, that there is no part of America fo fuitable to an Englifh or Irifh fettler as the vicinity of Montreal or Quebec in Canada,"

Tomorrow I’m going to start on part II as he travels back to Montréal on the CHEMIN DU ROY but in the opposite direction to that in which I travelled when I wrote my magnum opus.

After breakfast I came in here to finish off my Welsh homework. I had to write an essay on my favourite screen character so I chose James Bond.

If I were to ask people to name the first two Bonds they would inevitably say Sean Connery and Roger Moore. In fact Moore was the fourth. Second was David Niven in the first version of “CASINO ROYALE and third was George Lazenby in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE.

Having finished my homework I started to prepare the next radio programme but was interrupted by the arrival of my faithful cleaner, come to fit my anaesthetic patches.

This new series of restrictions on the use of taxis is biting hard. We were three passengers in the taxi down to Avranches today. The other two came from somewhere miles out in the back country going home from a stay at the Centre Normandy and the car was driven by a driver who had no idea where anything at all was in Granville.

We were a crowded clinic today. Every bed was taken and once more I was last to be plugged in. The first pin went in my arm totally painlessly and I didn’t feel a thing. The second hurt like Hades and then they found that it wouldn’t work, so they had to fit a branching pipe to the first. They needn’t have fitted the second at all.

I spent the time studying my Welsh and downloading more literature that I’d been able to find. It turns out that Isaac Weld had a nephew, Charles Weld, who wrote extensively on the Arctic so I downloaded as much of it as I could find.

He also followed his uncle’s steps around Canada and the USA 50 years later and also wrote a book about his adventures. That too is a must-have as far as I’m concerned and it took a while to find a copy that I could download.

As I mentioned the other day, I can now access my LeClerc account from the Dialysis Clinic so I was busy reviewing the site and adding products onto my shopping list. Can you believe that my next LeClerc order will be the last one before Christmas? Hasn’t this year passed quickly?

While I’m at it, I’ll have to work out what other on-line shopping accounts I can access. The hospital’s firewall is quite restricting and using my ‘phone to access the internet isn’t always possible if I’m in the hospital too deep to access a wi-fi signal.

As well as all of that, I was being force-fed orange juice as my glucose level was so low.

My favourite taxi driver brought me home. She was strangely quiet which was a shame because I quite enjoy her running commentaries, especially when she’s annoyed.

Once more, I strode out and climbed the stairs boldly. I’m a long, long way from being able to climb even one of them without dragging myself up by the handrail on the wall, but at least It’s quite a change from how it used to be.

Back in here I had a little rest and then I made tea – a stuffed pepper with pasta. It was quite delicious too. It was followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert.

That’s the last of the lemon soya, and tomorrow will see the last of the chocolate cake that has done me so well over the last couple of weeks. The ginger cake is cut into slices and is in the fridge ready for the next set of desserts

So now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow.

Talking of James Bond, I once met Sir Roger Moore and I had a chat to him about the character that he played
"That’s right" he said. "They called me ‘Basildon Bond’"
"Why was that?" I asked, rather naively
"Well," he replied. "Since I’ve been knighted by the Queen I have letters after my name."