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Sunday 5th April 2026 – YET ANOTHER NIGHT …

… when I’m going to bed without any tea, except, of course, a slice of my home-made chocolate cake and a helping of home-made ice cream

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m valuing my sleep much more than I’m valuing my food right now, and that’s not like me at all, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

You wouldn’t think that I’d had a decent lie-in last night. As usual, things rather dragged and it ended up being just after 22:00 when I went to bed. Never mind though, at least I could have a decent sleep.

That’s what I thought, anyway, but as you might expect, it didn’t work out like that. I awoke on a couple of occasions and once, round about 05:30, I thought that I would never go to go back to sleep.

However, I must have done at some point because, when the doorbell rang, I was so far out of it that I thought “who the heck is this waking me up at this time?” and I was half out of bed before I realised that it was Isabelle the Nurse. I had to dive quickly back under the covers and pretend to be asleep for when she came in here.

She was her usual chatty self, which is something that I don’t really need, early on a Sunday morning. But after she left, I could turn over and go back to sleep.

Eventually, I awoke and once I’d managed to stand up, which was not easy, I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out. It was a respectable 09:40 when I arrived in the kitchen. No medication this morning except the urgent stuff. I simply made breakfast, including more of my delicious hot cross buns.

We started a new book today too. It’s HISTORIA BRITTONUM, written by Nennius in the tenth century. It’s a book with probably the most obsequious introduction that I have ever read, and it’s also one of the most inaccurate, although it’s one of the first to mention Arthur, even if it doesn’t describe him as a king.

The translation dates from 1838 and it contains one of the most glorious mistranslations that I have ever seen. How it passed the proof-readers, I really don’t know. Our translator tells us that "St. Germanus, after his death, returned into his own country". That would have been interesting to witness.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

When I awoke, round about 00:44, I was busy working on planning a radio programme about some kind of index. It was importing likely songs into it but at the moment that I awoke, I was puzzling over what name to give to the file. That was the point that I reached when I awoke.

Usually, I can think of a really good name for my files, but most often, it’s about ten minutes after I’ve already named them and backed them up. But this actually relates to a discussion I was having on Friday with one of my regular readers, who was talking about my database. Actually, I keep an index in a series of text files and in an Open Office spreadsheet under the rather prosaic name of “Playlist”.

There was also some more about something from the other night. They had managed to identify the cowling of that ice cream lorry and had prepared one in plastic and sent it to him to fit himself. In the meantime, they were still making enquiries about that project that was discussed the other day but they hadn’t as yet made very much progress.

Now, I wonder to which dream this relates. I can see the cowling now – it’s off a Leyland FG-550 and it’s green – but this dream and the one to which it refers still don’t ring any bells with me now that I’m awake.

I was down in Virlet last night with Nerina. We were sorting out a few things down there with someone else. Then this other person left and we decided to leave too. Nerina climbed into her car, which was a blue Ford Classic … "it was actually a Ford Corsair" – ed …, and I locked up the house. As I approached Nerina’s car, she let out the clutch and moved off about fifty yards, so I walked along towards the car, and she did this on several occasions. I thought “what on earth is the matter with her?”. So we carried on like this, but then the next-door neighbour arrived in a kind of horse box. Just as I was about to go out of sight round a corner, a little boy shouted after me “mister, mister”. I turned round and he said that their house was on fire, so I immediately ran down there and asked them if they had a hose, which they hadn’t, so I went into the barn. They followed me in, and they were amazed by the three cars that were in there that dated to the 1930s and early 1940s. I was rummaging around looking for the hose, and I found it and plugged it into the tap, but it was very short. I thought that I had much more hose than this, so I had a search around and I found another length. It still wasn’t very long so I began to look around outside. Nerina was there by this time, and she pointed out a hose that was lying on the ground underneath some wood. I went to fetch it, but it was the wrong connection. In the meantime, no fire brigade had turned up, no ambulance, no police or anything, so I asked them if they had ‘phoned the fire brigade. They replied “you have a decent-looking pushbike there. Why don’t you ride into the village and tell the mayor?”. Although the pushbike might be decent, which it probably wasn’t, I was in no healthy state to get on a bike and cycle up and down a few mountains, so I carried on looking for this hose.

This wasn’t the Virlet that I know. In fact, I’ve no idea where it might be. And I can imagine Nerina driving off as I approached the car. In fact, I did that one with Laurence but she didn’t notice and climbed into the car that had pulled up behind.

The garage with the old cars is the same one that appeared in a dream several weeks ago, but down in the Auvergne, there would be no problem about hosepipes as I have miles of the stuff.

When I’d finished, there was a footfest. Firstly, Stranraer fighting to a 1-1 draw with Dumbarton, followed by Greenock Morton throwing away a one-goal lead to go down 3-1 away to Dunfermline Athletic.

After that, I attacked the radio notes for the next programme. And by the time that I’d finished, I’d prepared and assembled the two halves of the programme, chosen the joining track and written the notes for it.

That’s three radio programmes that I’ve assembled this weekend. That’s some good going, and I wish that I could do it every weekend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happened after this. And for over an hour too. And when I finally did return to the Land of the Living, I couldn’t move for a good fifteen minutes. As I said earlier, it’s hard to believe that I had a lie-in this morning.

In the kitchen, I made a loaf of bread. Not a pizza, because as I said a little earlier, I’m valuing my sleep more than I’m valuing my food right now. And the loaf is cooked to perfection. I hope that it will taste as nice as it looks.

While it was baking, I washed up everything and then had my chocolate cake with home-made ice cream. The pudding was delicious as usual.

So right now, I’m going to sort myself out and go to bed. And as well as that, seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow, I’m going to set the alarm to 07:30 and have an extra hour in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about house fires … "well, one of us has" – ed … there were two men sitting on a pier in the Bahamas quietly fishing.
Neither of them actually looked like the flashy type so the first one asked the second "How come you managed to come here?"
"I had a house fire and I lost absolutely everything" he replied. "But the insurance company was very generous and paid me for everything."
"It’s pretty much the same story for me" replied the first man "except that it was a flood that wiped me out."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck!" said the second man. "However did you manage to start a flood?"

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Saturday 27th April 2019 – A HURRICANE …

… is not the ideal weather in which to be playing football.

It’s even worse when you are standing on the touchline watching the game too. Howling, whining gusts of winds of incredible violence, sudden torrential downpours that drenched everyone through and disappeared before one had time to put on one’s rain gear.

What surprised me was that the match was quite entertaining given the circumstances.

I didn’t feel much like going, though. yet another bad night. Yet another early awakening.

And yet another interesting nocturnal voyage. Last night I was doing my pension calculations. I worked out that I would get about £19:00 per month from the Belgian Government, £19:00 per month from the French Government but then I suddenly realised that i was living in Canada and I was entitled to a small pension from them because I’d been here for a couple of years and been working. That meant that I would be entitled to about £57:00 per month. I thought that that was fine because if I were very careful I could live on that. Of course everyone ridiculed this and said that it can’t be done, but one girl sitting at this table in the café said that there were loads of other things that I could do to raise money – for example she picked the entire crop of tea in the whole of Canada, to which I thought “I bet that it doesn’t take you long, does it?” because there isn’t all that much there at all. We were sitting outside what used to be a café but had closed down and the sign had been practically painted over. Someone was giving me some food – two cheese and onion sandwiches cut into triangles and put in a plastic bag and they went to give me the plastic bag. They said “hang on a minute – where’s your tray?” so I went over to where I had been sitting. “Ohh it’s over there is it?” they said and gave me this pack of sandwiches.

I was wide awake when the alarm went off at 06:00 but it was more like 06:45 when I left the stinking pit. Medication, breakfast and then a shower, and I was ready for the shops.

storm place d'armes granville manche normandy franceBraving the tempest raging outside, I made it to Caliburn ready to head to LIDL.

And you can see just how violently the storm was raging. You can actually see a wave of storm moving across the image of the photograph here.

I was glad that I was only out there for a matter of 30 seconds while I ran across the car park, and not actually having to walk to the shops.

After LIDL I went next to Noz and then to LeClerc. And all in all, I bought next to nothing and spent about €25:00 in all.

On the shopping list today was an aubergine. I’ve run out of aubergine and kidney bean whatsit so it’s time to make some more. I’s probably going to be an idea for me to spend one evening a week cooking some mega-meal, like a curry or a giant pie or an apple tart or something, parcel it up into individual-sized portions and freeze the portions. But then, how about me getting organised? I must be getting older.

Back here, I put the frozen food away and then crashed out for 20 minutes on the chair. Feeling the strain early in the day, I am.

Once I’d recovered myself, I put the shopping away and that took me nicely up to lunch. Once again, indoors in view of the horrendous weather.

This afternoon I had plenty of things to do but ended up as usual being side-tracked. I was having a little 10-minute play around with my 3D program and ended up running off down a long alleyway with a little application that I had discovered.

As well as that, I had an eye on the live updates for two football matches being played this afternoon. Crewe Alexandra came back from being dead and buried at 3-1 to run out 4-3 winners against Forest Green Rovers, and Morton scored a late winner at Dunfermline to escape relegation. Morton have in fact won more points in their last two matches than they have won in the previous two months.

At 18:15 I headed off to the football. The weather had improved in that the rain had stopped. But I wasn’t taking any chances and took my waterproof gear with me in the small rucksack.

There was a little deviation on my route. I had run out of that caffeine-based energy drink and that is what I use sometimes to lift me up when I’m flat out. I’d forgotten to buy any today but as LIDL was open and I was early I popped in for a few cans.

football us mouettes de donville us percy cite des ports granville manche normandy franceAt the football, USM Donville were playing US Percy. I noticed quite a difference in the stature of the players on the field. The Donville players looked as if they were 11 ordinary people whom you might find on any street anywhere, whereas the Percy players looked more like athletes.

Nevertheless, on the field they were quite evenly matched and despite the wind it was an entertaining game. Donville had a n°9 playing up front who had some skill but was pretty much a lightweight easily pushed off the ball.

After 30 minutes, the Donville player pulled off a midfielder, pulled the n°9 back into a rather attacking midfield position, and sent on a substitute to play up front. He didn’t have the skill, but was much more aggressive and the game picked up.

Percy, playing against the wind, took the lead but Donville soon pulled back to level.

After the break, the second half was a game of two quarters. At first Percy had the ascendency and scored a second goal. But later in the game Donville gained the upper hand.

The n°12 playing up front got himself into some good positions. Had he had someone playing up front with him, something may well have come of them. He was quite unlucky with two good chances that he had too.

Not only that, had the ref not been unsighted and had the incident happened on the side of the field where the linesman could have seen it, Donville might have been awarded a penalty for a handball in the penalty area.

So 2-1 to Percy, which was rather unfair on Donville but these things happen in football.

On the way back, I was caught in a torrential downpour and by the time I had struggled into shelter to put on my waterproof trousers I was soaked to the skin and the downpour had passed.

Back here and hungry, I fancied something different for tea rather than a tinned meat.

So I cooked some pasta and when it was done, drained it off, added a big handful of frozen spinach, some garlic, some ground pepper and olive oil and warmed it all right though. The secret of course is not to overcook the spinach. That’s how you kill off all of the vitamins and minerals.

Once it was thoroughly warmed through I added a big handful of grated vegan cheese and stirred it all around.

That was probably the most delicious instant meal that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday and a lie-in I hope. I need a decent sleep, a good relax, and the will and energy to get myself back on track. My life is running away with me and I can’t seem to catch it up.

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