Tag Archives: help yourself

Thursday 29th February 2024 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what the hell is happening to me right now.

Most of the afternoon I’ve spent fighting off wave after wave of sleep. In fact, it’s reached such a stage that I probably would have been better off and accomplished more had I succumbed and had a comfortable half-hour on the chair in the office.

The trouble is that it never turns out to be half an hour though. I could be crashed out on the chair for several weeks and it all would be the same.

Despite everything else it turned into another quite late night. I was browsing away on the internet before going to bed and came across a match between Stenhousemuir and someone who I’ve forgotten in the Scottish League Second Division.

It was such an exciting match that not only did I not remember the opposition but I can’t even remember the score. All I know is that in some kind of vague ethereal kind of way I know Stenhousemuir’s goalkeeper

So I watched the game until the final whistle (at least, according to the Internet broadcast which was running way in arrears) and then went off to bed.

When the alarm went, I fell out of bed as usual and the first thing that I did was to check my blood pressure. And to my surprise, it’s 12.9/8.0, which is well within the limits that they’ve set me. Last night it was 15.5/9.3 so that’s quite a significant drop.

So with the blood pressure medication apparently working, I went into the kitchen for some more, and a pile of the rest of the stuff too.

Back in here I sat down and began to deal with the dictaphone notes from the night. We started off with a group of us working on songs last night, a group of us. We were singing some of Help Yourself’s songs. The person who recorded it made something of a mess of it so we had to start again. In the meantime he went to fetch the albums and put the albums on for us to listen to. One of the tracks of course was MONA and the other one was WHO DO YOU LOVE (which is not by Help Yourself but by Quicksilver Messenger Service, but let’s not go letting facts get in the way of a good dream). I was getting everything ready when a woman came over to chat. She introduced herself and said that she was talking on behalf of her two children. They really loved these songs even though the timing was rather weird. We asked what about the timing that was weird. In the end she identified the gaps in between the songs. We said that if the gaps between the songs was the problem we could record the whole thing for her but have a gentle lead-in to each one where the album started. She seemed quite pleased with that. She asked me if I was going on a holiday this year I laughed and said “when I can get the timing right I’ll be going” to which she laughed too.

And later on one of our group was summoned to hospital. Although he currently couldn’t walk he was sent a taxi voucher and could apply for a taxi to go there. We went to reception to make this appointment. He left the paper with the agent and told her to book a taxi for him. After he’d gone she began and reached the letter C before she found a firm willing to take him. She wrote down all the details carefully but it turned out that that one was owned by her husband …fell asleep here …The people booked the taxi for him and sent him the details. But when it turned up the driver was actually his wife’s ex-husband so it was a very gloomy, depressing ride to Paris, and even worse because on the way back they had to stop to pick up something else. The conversation proved to be extremely difficult with this guy because of the issues that he was having with his wife’s ex-husband etc. Eventually he made it back home. When everyone learned about his trip to Paris we all tried our best to have the trip covered by another company but we couldn’t find another company that wanted to go to Paris so we could see that this was going to be an extremely difficult proposition getting this guy to Paris without the insurance company or his wife knowing about it

And that reminds me of the story of the woman who ordered a taxi to driver her and her new husband to the airport to go on their honeymoon the day after their marriage, only to find that the taxi was driven by her ex-husband. I could well imagine the conversation that took place during that 40-mile trip.

My taxi passengers were much different than that though, like the one whose claim to fame was to have beaten her partner to death with a frozen chicken. Crewe is a very strange place.

Having dealt with that, the next task was to hunt down some music. There are two tracks that I need for a radio programme that I’m preparing right now. and finding them is complicated. But it was worth it because I came across some more stuff that will come in handy too at a later date.

Then I had to download it all, convert it into a format that I could use and then edit it so that it’s suitable to broadcast. All of that takes time.

But it’s probably going to be worth it because while I was delving deep into some very lost archives I came across not just a copy of an album that was considered by Columbia Records to be their worst-selling album ever and abandoned quite quickly, but some songs that were actually recorded during the sessions but omitted from the pressing

So having assembled all of my music, I could pair it off and then join the music together in each pair, and then begin to write the notes. And I’m about a third of a way through them. I can hopefully finish off the rest tomorrow.

Things might have been much more advanced today had I not had to keep on fighting off these waves of sleep.

And then there was the nurse bringing back my medical card, then breakfast, followed by the cleaner bringing me to post, followed by the lunchtime fruit, and then the mid-afternoon hot chocolate.

That’s probably not all the interruptions either. It’s quite likely that there were others in amongst all of that but I can’t remember them now.

Tea tonight was a burger cooked in the air fryer and that was a success but the onions weren’t they don’t need 10 minutes in there with the burger – 5 minutes is plenty for them and I’ll have to remember that. They were somewhat … errr … overcooked.

Still, never mind. This air fryer is all one big learning curve. We’ll get there in the end.

But right now the only end that I seem to be getting to is the one at the end of my tether. I’m going through another one of those phases where I just can’t seem to actually accomplish anything.

There’s so much work around here, yet I start something and never seem to finish it, with all of these distractions going on and I don’t know how or am not able to stop them.

At times I feel rather like Fridtjof Nansen, the Polar explorer and humanitarian when he said "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"

But as Louis XIV said, "at our age, we must no longer expect good fortune". I shall just have to work harder.

Either that or put my bed in the microwave. That way I’ll have my 8 hours sleep in just 10 minutes.

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Friday 12th January 2024 – IT WON’T BE …

… doing my head in tonight anyway, this bluetooth tethering. Believe it or not, I’m back home at last.

Carefully avoiding a Golden Earring cliché,
"Home on a kite we fly,
Home on a breeze we blow
Eyeing the folks below and
Watching everybody run,
Each one heading for a different place
Watching everybody hide,
Each behind a different face

Forever forever your lamp will burn
Forever home forever would that you’d learn
That you came with nothing
So with nothing you’ll return"

And that’s truer than you might think too – except that I came home in a taxi, flying along with the speed limiter set at 133 kph, stopping just for a coffee at the half-way point and slowing down just for the heavy traffic on the prif at Caen.

We weren’t even held up, not even for a minute, in Paris. It was straight through the traffic and onto the prif there too. First time that I’ve ever had a journey like that.

And in case you are wondering, I wasn’t discharged from the hospital, I was expelled. And I heard at least one nurse say "if he comes back, I’m leaving".

But to be serious … "for once" – ed … I’m glad that I left today because we had a change of crew this morning and those miserable bar stewards who seem to hate me so much were back on duty.

There had been a few rumours flying around starting yesterday evening that I’d be leaving today and this morning, almost everyone for sure, even the cleaning supervisor who came to check the room over, seemed absolutely convinced, except for one person who hadn’t been told. Of course.

Soon enough I found out when the doctor came to hand me my leaving papers.

"Someone had better ‘phone my taxi" I said. "It’s 4.5 hours to come here"
"Don’t worry about your taxi" she said. "He’s already been called. He’ll be here at 13:30."

Definitely expelled.

Just enough time for me to have a shower, transcribe the dictaphone notes and pack my things.

The shower was nice and lovely, but I didn’t wash my clothes. Then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at a schoolkids’ end-of-year concert last night. It was a concert with a difference because they had one of these horse-racing games and they were all gambling on the horses. Then there was a kind-of gold-mining competition with kids having to report on what they mined, and a whole variety of other things including my middle sister parading up and down dressed as someone so much older. As the event drew to a close I walked up the hill from where this event was taking place. It was in a kind-of mountainous forest that you’d find in the Alps, with loads of fir trees all around. Several clumps of fir trees that I’d recognised from previous years had been cut down. While I was waiting for my sister I noticed a couple of lorries on the road going past.

A little later I was attending a few classes at night school. I had to go to these classes but the subjects were extremely complicated and way over my head. In the end I ended up abandoning them. It was so real going to these night school classes that I really thought that at one stage in my life I’d actually done this and gone to these classes for a short while before abandoning the subjects.

And then I was at a party last night being given by a woman whom I knew from the Auvergne whose boyfriend had very recently left her. We were all having a really good time which surprised me because I didn’t usually socialise very much. Then it came to quite late. She began to talk about the sleeping arrangements – “so-and-so and someone else would sleep here”. There was a variety of single people so she asked “who wants to sleep with me?”. There was a long pause for several seconds that seemed like a lifetime so I said “yes, I will”. She replied “right, that’s settled. So-and-so and someone else would sleep in the other bedroom and the rest of you can sort yourselves out”. Someone asked for a receipt to show that they had slept separately. I couldn’t believe my luck that no-one else had actually said anything and we’d waited for a good couple of seconds. I thought “this isn’t like me, is it?”.

So what’s this all about? Me getting the girl! Imagine that!

After that I was in a really interesting dream about trying to take an oil filter off a car. There were 2 of us doing it and we were there for hours. The reason why we couldn’t take it off was that I was undoing the wrong bolt. But as this dream went on and on the flaming alarm on this blasted machine by the bedside began to go off and awoke everyone in the hospital

And that’s typical, isn’t it? There I was having a good night’s sleep and not even coupled up to the perfusion machine and its alarm goes off. The only surprise is that it didn’t go off just as I was about to get the girl. That’s what usually happens.

But not to worry. There’s usually half an hour between saying “yes” and going to bed. Still plenty of time there for me to pull defeat from the jaws of victory as usual.

Later on the whole family was having a competition to see how many interesting things one could find abandoned in the street and bring home. I was doing something near a school and someone mentioned a computer so I went to have a look. It was the old-type computer with keyboards for opening up this and opening up that etc. But it was 16GB and I couldn’t believe it. Someone said that there was something jammed inside so it had been thrown into a corner. A couple of people had taken bits off it so it had been abandoned. I went to have a look and sure enough I couldn’t work the keys to operate this particular drawer thing. But all the memory was complete on it and the processor was a powerful one so I thought “I’ll take this home”.

In the meantime there were some signings going on at the local football club. It signed two full-backs who turned out actually to play centre-half. The original two centre-halves a couple of days later left. The story was that they were both keen on some other player’s wife and he’d had words about it and they’d had to depart as the club signed two centre halves

Finally, the issue came about this gold Ford Granada MkI covered in dust that no-one could start. I was sure that I could so I went to have a look at it. It was on sale at £370 which I thought was a bargain for this vehicle. It was covered in dust as if it had been in a barn for a while. The story was that they couldn’t lift up the bonnet. That wasn’t anything that was going to defeat me. I went to have a good look at it with the correct kind of tools to lift up the bonnet when someone with an amazing booming voice shouted out something in the hospital right outside my door and I awoke

And when I awoke, it was 07:47 and I must have had the deepest sleep that I’d ever had. And the hospital was like the Mary Celeste – there wasn’t a soul about. No-one rushing about pushing trolleys and the like. That was what made me realise that it was the miserable team of je m’en foutistes.

Je m’en fous is a very impolite way of saying “I don’t care” and if a kid were to say that to its parents or teacher it would expect a clip around the ear. A je m’en foutiste is someone who couldn’t care less about his job and does the barest minimum to avoid being sacked. And there are lots of those about.

They grudgingly brought me two bread rolls for breakfast, the smallest that they could find, with just one portion of jam. And a box of apple juice with no straw.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s the little things that make a great difference.

The taxi turned up at 13:15, just after I’d had my lunch, such as it was, and once we’d organised the paperwork we hit the road for the easiest journey that I’ve ever had.

My cleaner was waiting for me at the door and she helped me upstairs where I crashed out into a chair. I couldn’t do very much except chat to a neighbour and to Liz on line.

Grahame has sent me another nice mail about Hawkwind and Help Yourself so I sent him a little present, including two of the best improvised live tracks ever.

There are several groups that make it up as they go along during live concerts, but that night at the Patti Pavilion Help Yourself, aided by Deke Leonard and Cochise’s BJ Cole who played pedal steel guitar, they churned out two of the finest ever improvised tracks EDDIE WARING and the old Elias “Bo Diddley” McDaniel standard MONA

Tea tonight was chips, ordinary and sweet potato, with a salad (thanks to my cleaner who bought me a lettuce and some mushrooms) and a veggie burger. And after the deprivations of last week it was absolutely delicious.

And tomorrow it’s soup. There are a couple of leeks that are looking rather sad so leek and potato soup looks as if it might be on the lunchtime menu. I’ll have to bake some bread for that and it’ll be delicious.

But I’m not sure when, because there’s no alarm tonight. I’m sure that it’s more tiring being a passenger than a driver on a long-distance car journey. Even a double espresso didn’t do anything about keeping me awake.

So an early night between my own sheets under my own quilt cover? How nice is that? And no alarm too

It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. Watch someone ‘phone me up at 08:00 tomorrow morning.

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Thursday 11th January 2024 – THERE SEEMS TO BE …

… some confusion about when I might be going home.

The doctor who came to see me this morning told me that if all goes well and my improvement continues, I might go home at the end of the weekend or on Monday.

The orderly who has just brought me my evening meal tells me that I might be going home as soon as tomorrow.

And if the evening meal that he brought me is anything to go by, tomorrow isn’t soon enough. On the other hand, if my medical condition isn’t up to it, then the longer that I stay here, the better, even if it means drinking more of the dreaded sodium sulphide.

They gave me another dose of it at midday, and I was out like a light again for several hours. I think in all honesty that they do that simply to sneak in here and turn down the heating while I’m away with the fairies. I wondered why it was going cold here.

So apart from being cold and being away with the fairies, I’ve been a busy bee today. Rhys and Helena have been sending me messages to which I’ve been replying.

Helena is one of my oldest friends and we go back well over 50 years to our school days in Nantwich. She, along with Robert, is part of my personal on-line medical staff, having been a nurse in Yorkshire for quite a while.

A couple of neighbours from Granville have spoken to me on the internet too and my neighbour who is currently in Paris spoke to me on the phone.

There have been the dictaphone notes to transcribe as well. With our amazingly busy schedule Nerina and I had hired help to do some of the more mundane tasks around the house. One of them was cutting all the lawns and there were specific days to do it. We were walking through Willaston one afternoon when it was a lawn-cutting day. Th guy who was cutting our lawn was there with our lawn mower and had just gone into a shop to buy a cup of coffee. So evidently I walked nonchalantly into the shop and said “hello” to him. His jaw dropped completely to the bottom. He’s obviously been doing someone else’s lawn and claiming payment for it as well as claiming payment for ours that he never did. He simply left, and left me with the lawnmower equipment which I had to pick up and bring back to the house

Later on, I was asleep in my hospital room when a machine started up, started to make its alarm noise. I waited a minute to see if it was the case then I rang the bell for the night porter like you do. It was actually for real. It really was bleeping and I really did ring the bell. The night nurse appeared. Of course my dream disappeared completely because what I was dreaming was actually the thruth about what was going on yet I’d done it all in my sleep.

I had a kind of field somewhere that needed cutting. I’d talked to a young Filipino boy whom I knew who worked as a coach driver for a local company taking schoolkids around. His boss had one, a tractor with a grasscutter so we agreed that he’d borrow his boss’s tractor and go to cut our grass one morning. I don’t know whether he’d discussed it with his boss or not but that wasn’t my particular concern. We drove him up there that morning but he was in quite an emotional state, going on about how he hated the job, how he hated the coaches, how he hated the boss, how he hated everything, how the boss had paid him £70:00 short on his wages once. It was a real emotional tirade from this young boy. I was sitting listening because if he really was going to throw in his job, that might make a vacancy for me. Talking about tatty coaches – I’ve driven tatty coaches in the past and it’s never bothered me. Tatty bosses, that’s never bothered me either too much so I was listening to all of this. We turned up at the buses place. The tractor with lawn mower attachments was still there. We all stepped out of the car and walked over to it

Having said that during the night, I was always very careful about whose coaches I drove. It was mainly for Shearings and its subsidiaries and one local coach company. And if I was operating “on my own account” the coaches only ever came from one company.

From several other companies I respectfully declined work, including the company who shared the yard from where our taxis operated.

Loads of medical staff have been by today. The doctor has stopped the perfusions because my legs are swelling and regrettably, after all my efforts, I’m gaining weight. So there will be probably something else that will keep me awake during the night now.

But it’s like I say – they give me some medication to cure something and it just creates a problem somewhere else in my body. I don’t think that I could have been assembled correctly in the factory.

The physiotherapist came round, took me for a walk, and then gave me plenty of exercises to do while I’m sitting down, many of which I was already doing.

So while I can certainly criticise the food, I can’t criticise the care that I’m receiving.

While all of this was going on, I’ve been listening to “Help Yourself”.

Effectively an artificial band created by Famepushers, the Entertainment Agency, as a support for singer-songwriter Malcolm Morley, they might be a London band but they have always been considered as honorary Welshmen following their participation in the “All Good Clean Fun” tour, their appearance at the Patti Pavilion with a whole host of Welsh bands at Christmas 1973 and the fact that on the drums was Dave Charles, who for many years was sound engineer at Rockfield Recording Studios in Monmouth.

Due to a failing memory I can’t remember where I met them but it was in the days when they had Ken Whaley and not Paul Burton on bass guitar, although it was Burton at the Patti Pavilion, I seem to remember.

Their claim to fame is the legendary track REAFFIRMATION on their album BEWARE THE SHADOW that just goes to prove that you don’t need to play a lead guitar solo of 10,000 notes in 10 seconds to produce something that is one of the best, if not the most bizarre, lead guitar solo in the history of rock music.

So right now that I’ve finished my notes I intend to go to bed, where I’m hoping to have the best, if not the most bizarre, dreams possible. Not that there’s too much chance of that with all of the noise that goes on around here, but we can always live in hope.

And tomorrow I’ll find out more about going home. But I can’t wait to be back there, if not for the food and decent internet.

Using a bluetooth tethering system is like going back 30 years to the days of dial-up and 14.4 kbs external modems. Click on a link and then go for a coffee and a walk around the village while it opens.

It really is doing my head in.

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Thursday 20th January 2022 – DAY THREE …

… of my enforced confinement was very much like Day Two; with very little of any kind of note happening at all.

And seeing as I’m not going anywhere, doing anything or seeing anyone is hardly any surprise.

Although I just about beat the alarm to my feet this morning, it was a dreadfully slow start. But there was a reason for that. I’m suffering from a lack of football and my thirst was satiated last night instead of going to bed early.

It’s the Scottish Cup at the weekend and Greenock Morton, a team in which I have an interest since I wrote a newspaper article about the club and its controversial chairman 20 years ago, have drawn Premier League opposition.

In the past, Morton have had four major acts of giant-killing and last night someone strung together a video of the highlights of those four matches and broadcast them on the internet. So I stayed up to watch them – videocam recordings of old 405-line transmissions in the good old days of steam-driven television.

And worth is just to watch ANDY RITCHIE’S MARVELLOUS GOAL that dumped Aberdeen, Alex Ferguson and all, out of the Scottish Cup.

Anyway, having struggled out of bed and having taken my medicine, I came back in here to see how things were with the dictaphone. There was something on there from last night – and about 20 things from the previous few nights. And you can tell how lightly I’m sleeping these days with the volume of stuff that’s on there. This is no deep, profound sleep that I’m having.

But never mind the dictaphone for the moment. I had other things that needed my attention.

As it happens, I’m a member of an organisation that is fighting to defend the SNCF from the onslaught of privatisation that the right wing of the political spectrum is fighting to impose on the rest of the country. And I happened to post a couple of messages relating to a couple of things that related directly to me.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … the organiser of the campaign asked me for dates and times. And that meant going through about 18 months’ worth of blog entries. They were relatively unimportant, minor things so I hadn’t tagged them and that explains the time that it took.

Perhaps I ought to mention in passing that my journal is tagged and indexed. I keep it as a diary and as a reminder because my memory is hopeless, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I can sing any number of lyrics of songs from the 1960s and 70s totally word-perfect, but ask me what I was wanting when I walked into the kitchen 5 minutes ago …

It also serves other purposes too, as I have probably mentioned in the past.

Then I could turn my attention to where I’d been during the night. As it happened, Nerina and I had another one of our arguments. This time she had a friend with her and it was pretty permanent so she stormed off, leaving me with the business and the dry-cleaner’s to run. All the people wanted assurance that I’d still be open at 09:00 on a Wednesday. I replied “of course”. Then I realised that it was going to be difficult because there was going to be a bus run that I normally did but I didn’t return until 10:00 so I could see that I had about 2 days to organise a pile of changes to make sure that everyone else was happy and that they could have their dry-cleaning when they wanted but it wasn’t going to be easy.

After lunch (I remembered today) I carried on with the entries from yesterday and was actually planning on doing a lot more but I rather sadly fell asleep. And to my surprise, I was off on my travels there too. I was with my brother and someone else. I can’t remember why now but I had some work to do so I set myself up in a room in some kid of village hall place to do it and they wandered off. However I couldn’t settle and when someone came in – a big ugly-looking man rather like Jack Elam, I lost my concentration completely. I went out for a walk to settle myself down. There, I bumped into my brother and the other person. They were angry that I wasn’t working so I invented a story that I was looking for a torch. The third person said that he had one and went to fetch it and they accompanied me back to where I was working while I tried to invent a story as to why I needed the torch. When we arrived back where I was, my brother bumped into this strange man and let out a gasp of surprise and shock which awoke me.

Later on I went for tea. I’m not feeling very hungry right now but I have to go through the motions. There was some stuffing left over from Monday’s pepper so I had a taco roll with some rice.

Rosemary rang me up while I was eating so I called her back and we had a chat. But not for long because my throat gave out.

But the question of food was rather interesting. Last time that I was ill like this was when I was in Minnesota in July 2019 (in the days when we could travel) and I lost 10kg in weight. If I can lose even half of that during this bout of illness I’ll be happy with that and I’ll have gained something.

So now I’m off to bed – at … errr … 02:05. Just as I was thinking of going to bed earlier, Help Yourself came onto the playlist, followed by Quicksilver Messenger Service with the magnificent John Cipollina, Roxy Blue (a vastly underrated band who could have been another Aerosmith or Bon Jovi and whose lead guitarist is now a dentist), followed by Kate Bush. And that’s enough to keep anyone awake, for all kind sof different reasons.

But now that Kansas has come round, I’ll clear off to bed because we’ll end up next with Lone Star (another vastly underrated band featuring Paul “Tonka” Chapman, later of UFO and Jon Sloman, later of Uriah Heep) and I’ll be here all night.

See you in the morning.

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Sunday 28th August 2011 – It was Sunday today

And so following the principle of “on the seventh day”, I had a nice long lie-in and for most of the day I haven’t done a tap.

This morning I’ve managed to finish a book that I’ve been reading and then I went to track down some more stuff that I need to take with me to Canada. I want to have my packing finished by tomorrow afternoon.

This afternoon I transcribed the rest of my notes from Canada 2010. You might remember that the dictaphone that I had broke down in the USA. That one recorded on either 1.2 or 2.4 ips but I have an ancient one here that records on 1.8 ips and so I’ve managed to transcribe the notes from that, even though I do sound rather like Donald Duck on it.

I’ve recorded a few more CDs to take with me – some Help Yourself, some Lindisfarne and finally (because I won’t be doing any more) Live in the City of Light by Simple Minds.

None of these were difficult choices. Help Yourself I first encountered on Man’s “All Good Clean Fun” Tour and Help Yourself’s subsequent classic
Good Clean Fun has passed our way and gone
But we’re glad that we have met someone
With a little bit of funk and soul
Man we’re glad we know you!
And not only that, if you are fed up of lead guitar solos where the guitarist plays a million notes so quickly that you can’t hear what he’s playing, then have a listen to the lead guitar solo on “Reaffirmation”. THAT‘s how you play a guitar solo.

Lindisfarne were of course the first serious group I ever saw live, Christmas 1971 at “Up the Junction” in Crewe. I was 17, my girlfriend at the time was nearly 15 and as it was a private members’ club, we borrowed the membership cards of my sister and her husband to get in. That was the night that the rest of the band left Jacka on the stage to play the harmonica solo in “We Can Swing Together” while they dashed off to the pub across the road. At 10:30 the club locked its doors as it was required to do by law, and when the band came back 2 minutes later they couldn’t get back in. They had to bang on the door for 15 minutes before someone would let them back in and poor Jacka was exhausted – the longest gobiron solo in the history of the planet.

As for Live in the City of Light, I had to go to Germany for a week and my car was in the garage so I was obliged to borrow one of a colleague. I didn’t have half my stuff with me, and the only music in the car was “Live in the City of Light”. If it had been most albums, it would have bored me to tears after a day, but not that. In fact it’s never been off my playlist ever since.

So that’s about 50 albums recorded. No matter what happens, I’m not going to be short of music in Canada.

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Saturday 9th April 2011 – The weekend is here at last.

And about time too – I thought it would never ever arrive. And seeing as it was Saturday I wasn’t in any particular hurry to raise myself from the dead either.

Once breakfast was over I made a couple of shelves for in here and I now have all of the DVDs nicely lined up. How long they will stay like that though is anyone’s guess. And once that was done and it was midday, I legged it to St Eloy for the shopping. Nothing much of any excitement, except that LIDL was selling soft fruit trees at €1:69 each. I hate goosegogs, and why buy blackberries when I’m overrun with brambles? But there were two blackcurrant bushes and one blueberry bush left, and they have gone now 🙂

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire teilhet puy de dome ligue football league franceThis evening Pionsat’s 3rd XI were playing Teilhet and the Goatslayers won 1-0 due to a disputed penalty (I was in no position to see, it has to be said) but there was quite a bit on moaning and groaning from everyone on the field throughout the match.

Pionsat played quite well for the first hour and were unlucky not to have taken something from this game. They need to win games like these to keep their mid-table slot alive

And this evening I’ve been recording all of the CDs that I bought just recently and copying them onto SD cards to play in Caliburn. The SD cards need to be rearranged and so that means an end to the legendary “Help Yourself to Kate Bush” card, which is sad.

Tomorrow I have a double-header. Pionsat’s 1st and 2nd XI are both away, and they are both playing Charbonnieres – Paugnat at Paugnat. The 2nd XI kick off at 13:00 and the 1st XI at 15:00 so I’m going to be out all afternoon even though I have plenty to be getting on with here.

I hope the weather keeps up.

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