Yes, there I was at the station here in Granville at 13:55 when the Paris train pulled in and disgorged a pile of passengers, amongst them my friend Josée from Montréal.

She’s on holiday in France for a few weeks and is calling by to inspect my premises and see how things are.

I must admit that I’m very popular these days. When I lived back on the farm for 9.5 years I didn’t even have a handful of visitors. I’ve had more than that in just the last months since I’ve been properly installed here. Either I’ve become much more popular in my old age or else the sea has an attraction all of its own.

It was early (for me, anyway) when I went off to bed last night. And I was stark out pretty quickly too. But it didn’t last and by 23:35 I was awake again.

From here on I didn’t think that I had gone back to sleep again but I suppose that I must have done because the alarms awoke me at the usual time.

It took me a while to heave myself out into the Land Of The Living and even longer to drag myself into the kitchen. But at 08:35 I was standing under the shower having a good hose down. Have to look … “and smell” – ed … my best, don’t I?

The washing machine had a good run out too with the clothes and the bedding. I have special new sheets and quilt cover etc for visitors – after all, no-one would like to sleep in any bed covering that I have slept in, no matter how many times it has been washed.

Tidying up was next – the place now looks as if someone normal lives here – and I even found time to vacuum the floors, clean the sink in the bathroom and to clean th toilet.

By now the washing was finished so seeing as it was a really windy day, I hung everything up to dry in the window in the bedroom, having opened the window first of course. After all, it was a nice sunny day outside as well.

Shopping was next on the agenda so Caliburn and I hit the road in the direction of LIDL and Leclerc. Nothing of any importance (except a magnetic strip for the knives for whenever I install the third stage of the kitchen) but it was still a substantial bill. My living standards are improving, as well as having to buy enough food for two people for a few days.

While I was at Leclerc I’d nipped across the road to the Sports shop to look at the rucksacks, but I was sidetracked by a car on sale at the executive car sales place.

It’s a Mark 10 Jaguar from the early 1960s and I’ve seen much worse examples of these than this one.

In fact, when I had my taxis I had one of these that was a total wreck. We had a Daimler 420G that was intended to be used for weddings, and had the same running gear and other parts that were fitted on the Mark 10s.

So when we were at McGuinness’s scrapyard in Longport once and someone was bringing in a Mark 10 for scrap, we did a quick bit of negotiation and it ended up on my trailer heading for my little yard in Crewe.

The intention was of course to break it for spares but I ended up being overtaken by events.

But as for this Mark 10 here, these are huge cars as you can see, they take a lot of maintenance and have a tendency to evaporate overnight into a pile of iron oxide.

Someone has had a good go at stopping this one – but for how long? It would be well beyond my capacity these days to keep it on the road.

When Josée arrived, we went the pretty way back to the apartment and she immediately fell in love with it. We made a big salad with all kind of stuff going in it and it was delicious. We did well there.

After that we went for a walk around the headland and a little rest at the halfway point where I took a few photos of her (on her ‘phone) looking out to sea in a thoughtful pose.

A little later we went to the bookshop in the rue des Juifs. Josée always likes to buy a book from each place that she visits.

On the way back we stopped at the bar in the old town for a drink and she had something to eat. I think that she needs to brace herself for a vegan diet over the next few days.

The eveing’s plan was to watch a film and so I chose Louis de Funès and Les Folies Des Grandeurs – one of my most favourite de Funès films. But Josée is still in jet-lag so she went off to bed after 20 minutes.

I won’t be long either. I may as well take advantage of the possibility of an early night too, but not before I’ve finished listening to Colosseum Live.

I’m back here again, aren’t I?