Tag Archives: sherlock holmes

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a nice uninterrupted sleep all the way through to when Isabelle the Nurse would shake me awake by the shoulder when she comes in to sort out my legs.

And so waking up at 01:06 this morning was something of a disappointment.

It wasn’t as if I had gone to bed early either. It was well after 23:00 by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and crawled in under the covers. Mind you, I fell asleep quite quickly with the kind of sense of relief that you have, knowing that a good sleep is just about the ideal solution for all known ills.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at 01:06 and when I noticed the time, I was devastated. I was not expecting this at all. However, I was lucky in that I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

But only until 07:46 though. I might not have moved a muscle in the intervening period, but it was still not long enough to have really enjoyed it. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

In the end, round about 08:00, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

It would, of course, happen to be a day when Isabelle the Nurse decided to reorganise her round in order to give me more time to sleep, so she was rather put out to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

She had something of a mumble about it, sorted out my feet and then went to carry on with the rest of her patients.

It took me about fifteen minutes to summon up the courage to rise from my chair in the kitchen in order to make my breakfast – coffee, porridge and home-made croissants from the batch that I had made last weekend.

While I was eating, I was reading more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. I mentioned the other day that he had put me on the track of John Horsley’s BRITANNIA ROMANA. Codrington is not very impressed with Horsley’s interpretation of the Iter Britanniarum though, saying that "the way in which he dealt with the Itinerary distances is remarkable.".

Codrington talks about a Roman camp called Epiacum up on the northern edge of the Pennines. It’s described as "not rectangular but lozenge-shaped, with probably the most intricate system of defences of all the known Roman forts". So I had a little search around on an on-line aerial map, and what do you think ABOUT THIS? Isn’t it magnificent?

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there. We were trying to smuggle someone out of mainland Europe last night into the UK. We had something of a trial run at one of the border posts but it didn’t work very well because he had a kind of wrong attitude towards the Customs officers and it rather shattered his nerve somewhat. So rather than adapting his behaviour and comportment, he just sat there like a clam and refused to co-operate. We tried everything we could to cajole him to coming along and crossing the border but each time, he refused. When we told him to prepare himself a drink, he’d prepare a drink and then pass it to one of us instead of bringing it with him. In the end, full of frustration, we decided that we’d leave him and go back on our own. There was no point trying to force someone. But there was some kind of dispute at the border between him and one of our army officers. It seemed that the guy at one time had stolen the girlfriend of one of the army officers, and that was what made one of the army officers in our group rather bitter and terse with him.

This dream probably relates to some of the issues that the Secret Intelligence Service had with trying to bring out their agents from occupied Europe in World War II. They had many different escape routes, but going over on a ferry would have been novel, especially as no ferries ran during wartime.

There had been talk of a giant whale stalking people in London. Things came to a head when it appeared before a group of Year Two children, so Holmes and Watson set out on the trail. They waited until it was a foggy night and then took a boat, and rowed to a wharf where this school was. These two young boys who were rowing were telling them stories about it. They climbed out and went for a little walk themselves, and stopped to have a bag of chips each. They put their chips on their plates and were sitting there outside, waiting. Suddenly, out of the mist, the whale appeared. The first thing that it did was to launch itself at the plate of Sherlock Holmes. He quite simply cut a piece out of it with his knife and fork and ate it. That was basically at the end of the drama.

There have been dreams involving Holmes and Watson before, but this one was one of those surreal ones that has no explanation at all.

I was somewhere in France. There was a road down which I had driven hundreds if not thousands of times, only today, I found that I was walking down it. When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed that there was an old car just at the edge of the field with a sign pièces detaches written on it. I’d not noticed it before, so I went through into the field and at the back was a kind-of wood or coppice. There were probably about thirty or forty old cars scattered around there, and there was some kind of workshop. Someone came by and asked me what I wanted. I asked if it was OK if I were to have a look around. The guy told me to please myself, so I did. Eventually, someone came over to me to chat. He pointed to an old 1930s-type car that was there. He said “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this because the cylinder block has cracked”. He couldn’t find anyone to weld it because it was such a long crack. I asked him if he had thought about re-sleeving the bores and putting smaller pistons in. I thought that when he had an idea that I knew what I was talking about, he began to chat with me. I told him that I had one or two old cars andA TRACTION. He replied “we have four around here”. I noticed that there was one that was being restored and painted. I told him that I would give my right arm to have a Traction that was running but he didn’t really hit on anything like that. We had a long chat, and then I found myself driving back into town again afterwards. I wasn’t thinking, and I was following two cars. One was a Rolls-Royce and one was something else. I suddenly realised at some point that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. I hoped that no-one was watching and that there were no cameras. Eventually, I found the supermarket and grabbed myself a plate of chips with some weird Indian accompaniment. I had to struggle to find a seat in the café but I did in the end, and the chips were nice. But these Indian things, I wasn’t all that impressed. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat them after I’d tried a couple. Then I looked at the time and it was almost 18:00, time that I was due home, so I had to hurry up and move on.

This dream reminds me of that time ON LONG ISLAND when I stopped at this warehouse where I’d seen an aeroplane parked outside. I spoke to the manager of the place who interrogated me on my knowledge of the history of early aviation and, satisfied that I knew my stuff, allowed me in to see their prize exhibits, including a replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis and sit at the controls inside it.

The Indian meal reminds me of tea last night.

Going back to that dream about the abandoned cars, later on, I was driving around somewhere in the USA in a hilly area. I found a nice patch of green at the side of the road where I thought that I’d pull up and I could eat my sandwiches there. I noticed that there was a group of kids in the field at the side. They were all playing about. One of them came over to say “hello”. I had a little chat with her, and it turned out that she was in Year 6 and was going to High School soon. She was talking about her new English teacher, that he was always crying and becoming angry. I explained that not everyone is always very happy and in a good equilibrium. Sometimes, people are like that and you have to push the emotions aside and push on with what you are doing. Learning English is fun. We carried on chatting and we talked about sports. It turned out that she wasn’t American at all. She was from somewhere else. She was saying that one thing she hated about the Americans was how they blew themselves up into something that they weren’t. They were always showing off etc, and how she couldn’t really cope with it. I told her a story about one of my niece’s children who played sports. They were playing against some team from a High School on a Native American reservation. There was one young lad who was winning everything, and no-one knew why he was so good until a few days later when they checked the results and discovered that he was an Olympic champion in some kind of events. That was much more like the way that people should be. She agreed. Then, one of her friends came over and the three of us began to chat. I said how well they had done, that they had gone through elementary school so quickly and were nearly ready for the High School, and I hope that they’ll enjoy it. Then, the school bell rang and they had to leave. I said goodbye to them and “maybe I’ll see you again”. I drove off and back over the hills with this beautiful view in the distance of what was going on in the valley.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a lot of time for kids. I think that they have a really raw deal in life. They have such a lot to say, much of which is interesting, yet no-one wants to listen to them

There was football next. Stranraer v Clydebank in the Scottish Cup. The third round was full of shocks and surprises, with many clubs being knocked out by lower-league opposition, such as Dumbarton losing 4-0 at home to West of Scotland League side Auchinleck Talbot, for example.

And we almost had another one here at Stranraer, where but for several slices of good fortune, the score could have been 2-1 to Clydebank rather than the 2-1 to Stranraer, as the match finished.

This afternoon, I tackled my Welsh homework and waded through it from start to finish. I just need to review one or two questions and then I can send it off.

While I was at it, I was chatting to my friend from Munich, but I had to abandon that because Rosemary rang with a computer issue and needed help. It was another one of those long conversations where we can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it made me late for my baking.

The loaf that I made looks to be excellent, and the pizza really was delicious. However, I could only eat half of it, so the other half will do for tea tomorrow. Based on the weight, I’m eating between about a third and a quarter of a pizza that I would have comfortably eaten six months ago.

While everything was cooking, I wrapped my two Christmas cakes in baking paper and tinfoil, and they are now cooling in the fridge ready for marzipanning next weekend.

So now, horribly late, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately, but at least I’m only out twice next week, which is a major improvement. I can get on and do things.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to Holmes not so long ago and I asked him how his crime investigations were going.
"Ohh, I’ve retired now" he told me. "It’s only the elderly who remember me and appreciate me. The young people don’t know me at all."
"So I suppose you’re really an Old People’s Holmes" I replied. "But do you keep up with the news from London?"
"Watson still lives there" he replied. "He keeps me up-to-date with the news."
"So he’s your ‘Watson in London’ then."

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Tuesday 18th March 2025 – THEY HAVE HAD …

… the results of all of the tests and examinations that I underwent at hospital in Paris several weeks ago, at long last.

"And Mr Hall, we need you to come to see us as soon as possible." said the secretary. "And bring your jammies."

"You’ll be seeing Professor Roos-Weil" (my haematology specialist) "and Professor Maisonobe" (my neurologist). " They both want to see you. I’ll talk to the dialysis people tomorrow and arrange for some of your sessions to be undertaken here."

All of that sounds quite ominous to me. Heaven alone knows what’s going on and why I need to be away from home for so long that they are arranging dialysis sessions in Paris. But never mind. I have so much going on right now to worry about that it will be at least another three weeks before I’ll be able to spare the time to worry about this latest development.

One thing that can be said for all of this though is that they are actively doing something and that can only be good news as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t leaving me to stew in my own juice.

So having pushed that out of the way I can go back to doing what I ought to be doing, and that is to write up the notes of today before I forget.

As usual, we’ll start (or maybe finish) with yesterday. After writing up my notes and backing up, I stayed up for a while, wandering around in cyberspace having a good look round before I went to bed. And it was 00:30 before I knew it. That was the cue to sling my hook and I crawled into bed.

Once more, it was another good night’s sleep where I hardly moved a muscle as far as I’m aware. However when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about, and had been for a good half an hour. It’s the morning following a Dialysis Day so no surprise there.

There was the good scrub up of course, and then into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

To my surprise there were some items on it. It had obviously been a busy night. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were driving a taxi. They had to go to pick up someone at 25 Vincent Street Crewe. That was a house that I had bought and was waiting for the tenant to leave so I thought that it might be interesting for me to go along to see and have a look at the tenant. I turned up and it was a younger woman and an older woman. The younger one helped the older one down towards the car and helped her climb in. She told them that she had to go to the pharmacy rather than mess around with the British Government’s telephone health service. The only place where there was likely to be a pharmacy was the airport. I said “I think that its 24 hours at the airport, the pharmacy” but they weren’t so sure but we took the lady and set off. Holmes and Watson had noticed that she looked like a typical alcoholic and they’d been whispering amongst themselves about it. It turned out that she had been out last night and someone had put some pills in her drink, I’m not quite sure why. They set off in the car and reached the airport. She told them to wait in the waiting room while she went to the pharmacy. Watson told her to be careful not to go back on the stage again. Holmes and Watson were waiting there, waiting for quite a while but the woman never reappeared. They slowly began to realise that it was they who had been taken for a ride. They began to discuss the woman and noted a few of her identifying characteristics which were almost certainly false. When they began to talk about her voice, which was disguised, they suddenly realised that they had taken Professor Moriarty to the airport. He’d enticed them there by the story that they were at this house that I had bought and it would give us an opportunity to see the tenants. Holmes and Watson were then wondering what would now happen that Moriarty had planned for them while they were at the airport.

It’s interesting that Holmes, Watson and Professor Moriarty should appear during the night. They aren’t my usual night-time companions by any means and I wonder what has happened to drag them out of the woodwork. As for Vincent Street, it’s certainly not the type of house that came into my mind when I transcribed the notes (distant recollections like this are triggered off when I write them out) but the parallel with “waiting for the tenant to move out” is quite clear. However, why Vincent Street?

A little later I’d been out with some guy from University, a student who was a disabled campaigner. We’d been seeing people and he’d been driving the car and had come back home. Then there was something else that needed to be done so I said that we’d go in my car. He replied “we could always carry on in mine”. I answered “it must be my turn to drive”. He opened the door to climb out of his car. At that moment a big old Ford came past. I expected him to climb back into the car to let it go but he just climbed out in front of it and made the car swerve round him. But the car didn’t. It drove very close to him and brushed him as it went past. He walked after the car to have a word with it which I found amazing because he’s usually in a wheelchair. They began to have an argument in the street. I went to the house and picked up some slices of apples that I’d been preparing and put them in a plastic container and swirled them around with a little water to keep them fresh while I was waiting for him to come back. However, in all the time that I was waiting he never returned.

Knowing the guy concerned, it really would be just like him to go waging war on innocent motorists and other people who have unwittingly trod on his rather principled toes. He was a lovely guy and I liked him a lot, but he had become disabled following a “serious incident” involving a representative of a group of people of whom one would expect much better behaviour, and he was rather bitter about it, which is no surprise. He had my deepest sympathy, but I wish that he would have restrained himself once or twice instead of taking far too personally everything that happened subsequently that had no connection whatever with anything that had happened previously.

Not so much though as another former friend of mine, also disabled and on crutches, who once left his car and was on the point of hobbling over, on his crutches, to a motorist who had blown his horn at him in order to give that motorist something rather more than a piece of his mind. At that point I decided that this was an association that ought to be wound down. I suffer enough from my own issues as it is, without suffering them by proxy on behalf of someone else.

This morning I also had a lovely chat with a friend, at it looks as if the Hound of the Baskervilles might be paying me another visit, dragging its master behind it all the way from Memph … errr … Munich. That will be nice.

The “other” nurse started his round today. He picked on my choice of a variety of food, complaining that it was industrial not good for the health, and he had a friend … etc … I explained to him that I didn’t like it either, but when you are housebound as I am, all that you can do for shopping is to buy whatever is in the catalogue of the supermarket’s deliver service. If it’s not in there, you can’t buy it and that’s an end to the matter.

It was a rather disappointing breakfast today – no book to read. As a result I was finished much more quickly and came back in here to revise my Welsh.

The lesson passed quite well today, presumably due to the extra time spent in revision. We had a quiz today and I even finished on the podium. It’s very rare that that happens. One of the things that we had to do was to summarise a newspaper report on infectious diseases. I found it really difficult to translate it word for word but it was quite easy to pick up the sense and I was surprised to find that my summary was quite accurate.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door later on. She’d been to LeClerc and bought my coconut oil and Brazil nuts. So the baking will continue for the next few weeks. But as for that flapjack that I made two weeks ago, I’ve still not eaten any of it.

And while we’re on the subject of food … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked my Artificial Intelligence search engine about suitable vegan foods to take to hospital that will be nutritious, filling, and keep at room temperature for a week. It came up with a list of about a dozen. So it’s clearly doing its stuff. I’ve already taxed it with several complicated questions and I’ve only managed to confound it a couple of times.

But while we’re on the subject of Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s quite a thing going on in cyberspace about it. I’ve been hunting things down and I’ve come across an Artificial Intelligence web browser that accesses an enormous suite of Artificial Intelligence programs that is absolutely frightening in what the programs are capable of doing. I’ve been manipulating … "PERSONipulating" – ed … photos and voices and produced some really good results.

For some light-hearted relief this afternoon I found an Artificial Intelligence chatbot, invented for myself a fictional scenario, and had a very lengthy and in-depth conversation with it. What I intend to do when I’m at dialysis next is to use the travelling laptop, create another account and, using the internet connection there (which of course has a different IP address) to have a similar conversation, but with the completely opposite viewpoint to that of today. I’ll compare the comments from the bot, to see if it criticises the opposite of what it praised today. If it does, then we know that we are on to something. But if it keeps on agreeing with me, then we know that it’s really not up to all that much.

As for the voice manipulator … "PERSONipulator" – ed … whilst it has a very good front-end, I’ve found that I can produce very similar results with the audio editor that I use. So the AI program, good though it might be, is not everything that it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve also been working on the radio programmes and I shall carry on there tomorrow and complete another programme ready for dictating on Saturday night.

Tea was, as usual, a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now I’m off to bed, ready for work and a shower tomorrow. We’ll have clean bedding too (I hope).

But seeing as we were talking about Holmes and Watson just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … Watson came back to 221B Baker Street to find Holmes sitting by the fire.
"Now, let me see" said Holmes. "You went to the Capital and Counties Bank in the Strand. You stood in the queue for ten minutes, then you went to window number three. You wrote out a cheque for £10:00. The cashier gave you two x £5:00 notes, the large white variety. You folded them in four and put them in the left ticket pocket of your waistcoat. You chatted to the cashier for two minutes and then left. You forgot your umbrella at the window and had to come back for it. "
"That’s amazing" Said Watson. "It’s all incredibly true too. How on earth did you deduce that?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson" said Holmes. "I was standing in the queue behind you."

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Friday 23rd August 2024 – WELL, IT’S ANOTHER …

… really late night tonight.

For some reason that I don’t understand I completely forgot about the football tonight. Y Bala v Y Fflint and this was a game that I really wanted to see.

But it slipped my mind and when I came back from tea tonight the first half was almost over. Luckily it’s on a recorded stream so I could wind it back to the start and watch it from the kick-off, but it means that now the final whistle has gone, it’s not really late

There’s definitely something going on here because I seem to be forgetting just about everything these days and I can see this bringing me into some serious trouble at some point because there’s a load of stuff piling up and some of it is really important.

At least I remembered to wash my puttees. After I finished my notes last night I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then washed the puttees. They had been soaking for 36 hours in warm soapy water so it didn’t take long and they were quite clean afterwards.

Furthermore, I managed to do it without knocking myself or making myself bleed and that’s an achievement in itself these days.

It was quite early too when I went to bed. In fact I beat my 23:00 target. Only by a couple of minutes but even so, that’s still important. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

A couple of times during the night I awoke but I remained stuck to my mattress until the alarm at 07:00 when I crawled out of bed and into the bathroom. I had a good wash and shave of the parts that I missed yesterday, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had been recruited to hunt down an old friend of Watson’s who had disappeared, someone who lived in salubrious surroundings. It was no surprise that he’d disappeared but a lot of people were worried soo they were set on the trail. Eventually, following a series of clues, they managed to track him down to a doss-house in Limehouse where he was staying under an assumed name. Apparently he’d had money difficulties so he’d sold a lot of his possessions to a pawn shop and with the money was living the life of an escapee in crude digs or something. When Holmes and Watson caught up with him he was extremely remorseful. He said that he’d spent £2900 but that was everything that he had and there was not a penny left so Holmes and Watson had to sell whatever possessions he still had in order to recruit him back into society. They had the cunning plan of advertising an Electricity Service where they could band together all the residents in one particular area and agree to arrange their electricity for them, including new houses that hadn’t had electricity up until now so they were going through these houses and photographs, selecting the best photographs. There was one there with a ghost walking out of the front door between two people and they were trying their best to capture this image but for some reason the image didn’t seem to want to be captured

There were several stories similar to this one in the Sherlock Holmes repertoire and of course his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was very interested in the paranormal, being a huge supporter of spiritualism, séances and the supernatural arts to an extent that was almost fanatical. Seeing a ghost in between two real live humans would have been no problem for Conan Doyle.

When the nurse came I told her the good news about her supplies, my new puttees and the switch for the door. She gave me my injection and then dealt with my legs while chatting away. She reminded me that it’s a blood test tomorrow and she also need another … errr … sample … of a different type. I hope that I remember.

After breakfast I tidied up a little and then went to my Welsh class. It’s the last day today for a week or so so we can relax but she still had us working hard. I feel much more confident about my skills right now, but there was an awful lot to take in.

The big issue is that Welsh is not a Romance language like French or Spanish or Italian. It’s a Celtic language similar to Breton, Gaelic and Scots Gaelic so the rules of grammar are nothing like those to which I’m accustomed.

The vocabulary too bears little resemblance to any Latin-based language so sometimes it’s impossible to have a guess at the words.

There was a pause at midday when my cleaner came in to bring the medication – or, at least, the first load. The rest will come over the next day or two.

When the lesson finished I was surprised once more by the cleaner. We have a friend in the building who has now gone into a Home, and my cleaner, who had been tidying up her apartment, brought down some apple purée and tinned food that might be of use to me, which was very kind of them.

A neighbour popped in to, and left me some lovely strawberries. I seem to be flavour of the month right now.

Then Rosemary wanted me on the phone so we had a quick chat. Only a short chat today – just 58 minutes. We seem to be losing our touch

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad – delicious as usual but I’m running low on salad stuff. It might be sausage, beans and chips for tea tomorrow night yet. But regardless of that, the strawberries were delicious and there are some left for the next few days.

Then we had the football. Newly-promoted Y Fflint v Y Bala down at maes Tegid – Bala’s “Cae Tatws” football ground.

As has been said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s a massive gulf between the second tier and the first tier and that was evident today.

But while Llansawel, the other promoted side, were being well and truly turned over by Cardiff Metropolitan, Y Fflint put up a gritty battle and while the result (Y Bala won 2-0) was never in any doubt, Y Fflint were in the mix all the way to the final whistle.

A loss though is a loss and already we’re starting to see a little gap open up between the two new sides, stuck at the foot of the table, and the other 10 clubs in the division and it’s rather early for this kind of thing. Three games without a point is still no points, no matter how well you play and how close the game are.

So right now I’m going to bed, hours later than I intended. I’m not doing myself any favours at all.

But talking of mediums and spiritualism and the like I once had someone ‘phone me up
"I’m phoning to tell you about Madame (whatever)". said the voice. "She’s a world famous Medium …"
"Well, she can’t be much good, can she?" I said
"Why?" asked the voice
"Because if she’d been any good, she’d have foretold exactly how this conversation would end …" and I hung up the ‘phone.

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Saturday 16th December 2017 – AND AS BARRY HAY …

… once famously said – “there’s one thing that I want to tell you, man, and that it’s goof to be back home”.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t make it, because I didn’t have a very good day.

Sherlock Holmes – or rather Arthur Wontner – did the trick last night. I managed about 2 minutes of the film before I was away with the fairies. All of my walking – 155% of my daily exercise – had seen to that.

Mind you – if I do lay my hands on the person who decided that it would be fun to slam all of the doors in the building at 04:18 this morning he would be someone else who will be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.

None of that prevented me from going off on my travels though. I was in some kind of warehouse plece with a few other people chasing after a long-haired cat – a black mangy type of animal – with the intention of stroking it. But it disappeared from my view and I couldn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to be chasing and found myself chasing after a large wasp. Just imagine trying to give that a stroke!

This morning I wasn’t feeling so good. I had a bad attack of nausea that made me quite unsteady on my feet. But I managed to calm myself down intime to go searching for a bakkerei. I trawled the streets for 15 minutes before I found a supermarket, and only realised on the way back that had I turned right out of the alley instead of left, the first door in that direction would have sold me a baguette.

I made my butties for the journey but had run out of time so no shower – I can wait until I return home for that.

The train to Brussels was pretty uneventful but the bad news there was that to catch the earlier train would have cost me an extra €46:00. That’s not part of the plan at all so I sat down quietly in a very cold, draughty waiting area and read my book for a while.

The Thalys was one of the older generation of trains with everything manual and I couldn’t make the wi-fi work. But that’s not the end of the world at all really. I have plenty of other things to do.

Apart from visiting the bathroom I slept almost all of the way to Paris, and then I managed to cross Paris on the metro without any incident – and isn’t that a change for just recently?

The walk down the platform to Vaugirard was pretty uneventful, except that some woman was urging her mother on, in the most ungracious terms, to hurry for the train. Mummy was about 80 and so this situation brought back some memories from a previous existence.

They missed their train but there was another one in half an hour so they had to run all the way back to the ticket office to swap tickets and then run all the way back.

The look of despair on this old woman’s face was something that I shan’t ever forget.

But Vaugirard was packed out completely. I’ve never seen it so busy. Apparently it’s school holidays starting today. I grabbed a seat in the waiting room next to a nice girl who was going to Granville from Martinique for Christmas – the last seat available. We had quite a chat and I had to fight people out of her seat when she nipped to the bathroom.

The train was packed to the gunwhales with people and once again, I slept most of the way back. But on the station I bumped into my girl from the waiting room and I wished her a Merry .

Then began the long trudge back here.

It was cold in here, which is no surprise, but I had the heating on full blast while I watched Bangor City beat Cefn Druids on the laptop. The little laptop because the big one decided that it would do an upgrade as soon as I switched it on, and that took hours.

Tea was once more out of a tin, and then I went for a walk – for no good reason other than the fact that I was at 89% of my daily activity. I might as well wind it up to 100% – as it has been for every day this week.

Now it’s an early night. i’ll watch a film too. That seems to be working well right now.

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Saturday 7th May 2016 – I DIDN’T FORGET …

… my spicy loaf thing after all that. It was actually in my rucksack where I hadn’t thought to look. It was about midnight when I suddenly remembered where it was, so I ended up with a midnight snack, and didn’t it go down well!

But a midnight snack will tell you something about yet another night here. Here I am all on my own in my room and once more I’m wide awake at silly o’clock not being able to go to sleep. We even had – and who in their right mind would ever engage – a night-nurse with a deep booming voice? He can’t whisper to the patients – you can hear him all down the corridor. I ended up closing my bedroom door, which is something that I hate to do here.

It seems to be that it’s the noise of the air-conditioning that’s making the racket that keeps me awake, so I made a few investigations this morning and I think I know how I can switch it off. I’ll try that tonight, which will mean that it will then be too hot to sleep.

Just wait and see.

But I did drop off to sleep at some point because although I do remember 01:00, the next thing that I remember was 06:30 and it seemed to be continuous too as far as I know, with not even a trip down the corridor this time. That’s progress, I reckon.

And while I was out, I was off back to Nantwich and my old school, and to something of a sex scandal, where someone was accused of sending indecent messages to a young girl pupil there. All of this was splashed over the BBC and questions were being asked everywhere. However, I happened to be watching a Polish sports programme on TV and they had a news broadcast at half-time, and this featured this particular story. It went into much more detail, saying that the girl was Polish and the messages consisted of words such as “Katya (or whatever her name was), go 20 paces forward” and “Katya (or whatever …) go ten paces left”, all like the instructions in The Musgrave Ritual and nothing like the innuendo that the BBC was implying at all. All it showed was how short of news the BBC was that it was blowing up out of all proportions a harmless media nothingness.

In fact, this bears a startling parallel to something that had actually occurred to me 30 years or so ago. In those days, the BBC finished broadcasting its radio programmes at 02:00, ending with a news broadcast, and when I was driving taxis through the night, I always listened to it. But a quick turn of the dial at 02:00 brought into reception Radio Free Bulgaria , the Communist-supported English-language radio broadcasts,and they always started at 02:00 with a news broadcast. It would have the same broadcasts using the same vocabulary, but by changing the stresses of the words and by changing the punctuation, it could make it sound totally different and, in many cases, mean exactly the opposite.

That was my first encounter with “propaganda” because even back in those days I was never so naïve as to believe that whatever the BBC was telling us was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and hearing the same news being told from a completely opposite viewpoint made that news sound just as credible as the BBC reports. So who was right?

Like I said, I was never so naïve enough to entirely believe the BBC and my cynicism has just gone worse over the intervening years.

So today we have made outstanding progress.

I was up and about and in my window for 08:00, basking in the sun for a couple of hours, and I scavenged a pile of fruit, a few bottles of lemonade, the rest of the biscuits and some spicy loaf too throughout the day. That kept me out of mischief.

But the highlight was definitely my permission. Being given leave to wander around the hospital for an hour, I went for a slow walk this afternoon. I ended up with a big hunk of bread and some of my cheese slices from Caliburn ending up with a huge cheese butty in the sunshine. It was the most delicious thing that I have eaten for ages.

A long chat on the internet with Liz followed and we discussed a cunning plan, more of which anon.

So now I’m winding down for the evening and I’ll have an early night hoping to catch up with my sleep. If it’s true that I’m being ejected on Monday, then there are just two more nights to go so I want to make the most of whatever time I have left here to catch up on my sleep.

But Alison is coming to see me tomorrow, so that will be nice. Especially as she will be bringing some vegan ice cream with her. I do hope that she remembers to bring a spoon with her.

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Tuesday 12th January 2016 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… why they pay some of these people. If I were in charge, they would be paid in washers.

It’s no surprise to anyone to learn that neither of the two letters that I was promised, by two different secretaries of the hospital at Montlucon, has been prepared – let alone signed and posted. And so we had another fifteen minutes of unpleasantness at the reception counter when I went to collect my droit d’entrée to go to see the anaesthetist.

However, this was resolved in rather dramatic fashion while I was talking to the head of the accounts department. She told me (again – because she had told me this three or four weeks ago) that I needed to have the authorisation of my insurance company for the hospital to send the bills for consultation directly to them, and for this, I needed a letter from the doctor who was treating me.

I then (rather patiently for me) explained that I was in total agreement, but having asked for those letters on 23rd December from my Doctor and again on 4th January from my Surgeon, I had still received nothing despite the re-assurance on the telephone the other day, and in fact the letters hadn’t even been typed out.

At that news, the head of the accounts department picked up the telephone, dialled a number and had what can only be described as “a frank exchange of views” with someone on the other end of the line, including the phrase “do you realise that you are holding up the work of the hospital?”. And after she hung up the receiver, she gave me the form that I needed.

I don’t need all of this stress, and even less so when I’m ill like this. And I just go back to the very first day that I was admitted to the hospital, back in late November, when I handed my insurance card to the hospital. As you may remember, the hospital refused (and on a couple of occasions too) to telephone the insurance organisation as I was admitted. Hod they done so, they could have opened a file ON THE SPOT and established all of the information necessary to establish the necessary procedures and coverage ON THE SPOT and all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided. I don’t know enough about hospital procedure to be able to explain to anyone else what is happening and what to expect (from an accounting point of view), and the procedure in Belgium (where my insurance organisation is based) is so much different from that in France.

It’s all so unnecessary.

But abandoning yet another really good rant for the moment … "thank God!" – ed …
let us retourner à nos moutons, as they say around here.

The alarm went off at 07:00 and I crawled agonisingly out of my bed. I’d had an early night and crashed out really quickly.

And during the night, I’d been trying to go to a rock concert somewhere but I had never managed to make it. And so I was at home somewhere or other (a house that I actually know but I can’t put a name or address to it, although it strongly resembled Davenport Avenue), and the musicians arrived! The three of them fitted into my tiny bedroom and started to play, just for me. The group might have been “Rush” or it might even have been “Strife” (I’ve been talking a great deal about them on my social network account just recently) but one thing was sure and that was no matter who it was, there was just one musician – the bassist – from the group and the other two members were the guitarist and drummer with whom I used to play back in the 1970s. And when they finished, the bassist said something along the lines of “that’ll teach you to come to our concerts next time”.
So from here, the drummer, guitarist and I had to catch a bus back to Crewe (we were in Chester at the time apparently – scene of many of my earlier musical successes) and so we waited – and waited – and waited – and no bus came (back in those days the C84 ran every hour). Eventually another bus came. This was a bus of the type of the mid-60s – an early Bristol RE single-decker with a green lower and white upper, but with large windows and very curved rather than angular corners – and on the headboard it was indicating “Whitchurch”. Buses heading from Chester to Whitchurch usually travel down the A41 through Christleton and that way but this bus was on the road out of Chester in the general direction of Tarvin, so I assumed that it might be going to Whitchuch via Nantwich, from where there were buses every 15 minutes to Crewe. But chatting to the driver, it appeared that he was only going so far down the Nantwich road, turning off just after Tarporley somewhere in the general area of Bunbury. And so we were there for a good while – the guitarist, the driver and I debating whether or not to take the bus, alight where it turns off the main road and wait for the very late C84. But what if the C84 overtakes us along the route? We’d then be even later and that would clearly be no good (the idea that if our C84 wasn’t running, we would be stranded wherever we were hadn’t entered our heads at all, apparently). The driver said that he could as a favour, pass by Aston Juxta Mondrum (which is nowhere near where we want to go and in any case didn’t have a bus service to anywhere) and drop us there, but we stood for ages at this bus stop, haunted by indecision and being totally incapable of making up our minds.

I was on the road by 07:30 and pulled into Pionsat at more-or-less the same time as the nurse (she who runs the pie hut at the footy) and so paying for my consultation from the other day was quite straightforward.

I arrived at the hospital in Montlucon at 08:30, having found a good spec to park Caliburn, and despite having had a little adventure on the way. It was pouring down with rain and round about St Gervais, the driver’s side windscreen wiper became attached from the arm. Luckily, I was able to rescue it and replace it but it came loose again and so I drove all of the way there without wipers (once you go through the initial 5 minutes of blindness, you’ll be surprised at how clear the view is through a “liquid windscreen”). Subsequent enquiries in the daylight revealed that the blade hadn’t been fitted correctly and I was able to deal with that.

It was just as well that I was early at the hospital. Once more, I had the choice of seats (the one in the corner by the power point) for we ended up 5 people in a room made for two and they were turning people away, to wait in the waiting room until there was a space for them. It really is no surprise that they couldn’t fit me in last Monday afternoon if this is how busy they are in the day hospital.

It was the efficient nurse who dealt with me today. Not only did she fit my drain at the first attempt, it hardly hurt (in comparison to all the others who have tried). And then we reverted to the marvels of modern 21st-Century technology, warming up the blood by stuffing it up my jumper.

I took advantage of my stay there by having a browse through www.archive.org. I discovered a while back that they are now grouping as *.zip files many of the old-time radio programmes instead of having them as individual downloads, but 1.4GB is beyond the capacity of my internet connection at home or here chez Liz and Terry. But not at the hospital where a real (as opposed to “notional”) 600kb/s is readily available, and so I downloaded all of Beyond Our Ken, all of the Sherlock Holmes radio shows of the 40s and all of the Philip Marlowe radio shows.

If I’m back next week (which is more-than-likely) there’s the Clitheroe Kid and the Navy Lark to download. And then I’ll be keeping an eye out for ITMA and Much Binding In The Marsh. And if it keeps on and on and on, I’ll end up with more radio shows than the BBC.

I declined the lunch that was offered, and for two reasons too.

  1. The food in the hospital is disgusting
  2. I was hoping to be in and out long before I became hungry

and wasn’t all of that a silly mistake?

I was indeed finished early – at 12:45 in fact. So much so that I had time for a coffee in the café, but I won’t be doing that again. Coffee from the machine is just €0:60 but in the café it’s €1:70, and it’s not as if the surroundings are any more pleasant than the hospital foyer. It did give me an opportunity to spy out the land there and check the food on offer (I need somehow to supplement the hospital diet) but there was, as I expected, nothing there that I could eat.

Then it was time to deal with the anaesthetist, and this is where we had all of the nonsense mentioned above. By the time that I had finished, it was almost 15:00 and how I wish that I had had lunch in the hospital earlier.

I gave the usual spiel to the anaesthetist. “I hate tubes, injections, internal cameras and all of that kind of thing. I don’t want to know what you are going to do to me – just do it and get on with it. if you find anything else when I’m opened up, do that too because I don’t want to come back a second time. But when I wake up, I want to have both my hands and both my feet, and I don’t want to see any tubes, pipes and cameras”.
“Both your hands and both your feet?” said the anaesthetist? “Not your head?”
“I lost my head years ago” I replied.

So we had a nice friendly chat. He’s an old guy, probably my age, with a sparkle in his eye and a devilish sense of humour which makes a change from most French people whom I know. I wish that there were more like him. And then I went for another spy around the 3rd floor to see what I could see. There seems to be a nurse there who would love to sooth my fevered brow, but I’ll be b*gg*red if I let him.

I did some shopping at Amaranthe, the health food shop. A pile of vegan cheese (we’re running low here) and a few other vegan bits and pieces. I bought myself a big pile of vegan muesli biscuits for lunch and nibbled them throughout the afternoon Liz didn’t give me a shopping list for the Carrefour so I had to improvise, and ended up forgetting a pile of stuff that would have been useful to us.That’s a shame, because I feel that I ought to be paying my way while I’m here, and a load of shopping each week would certainly help.

A new pair of slippers and a few pairs of sock was on my shopping list though. The slippers that I have are falling apart and my socks are … errr … quite religious. There was a special offer of 6 pairs of socks at €5:99. Terry asked me if they would last any kind of distance, to which I replied that maybe I only need to worry until the 27th January.

I didn’t feel like much in the way of tea. Too stuffed up with muesli biscuits I reckon. And then I had an early night, leaving you to digest a mere 2000 words this evening.

And serve you b*gg*ers right too!

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Tuesday 4th March 2014 – THIS MORNING TOOK ME BY SURPRISE

caliburn heavy snow hotel gaspa ordino andorraAs you can see by looking at poor Caliburn, we’ve had a right pasting of snow this morning. It was certainly impressive!

But then again I had an interesting night. A couple of Security guards were accompanying some notable person and how they communicated with each other was by coded flashes of a torch. They thought that it was quite novel but I took the trouble to explain to them that we had been doing that for years – even down to having different lenses (clear, green, red) and even Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes adventures had been doing it. (The Speckled Band as it happens).


gondola ski lift La Massana andorraSo that was enough excitement for the morning. I headed off into the town of La Massana at the bottom of the hill.

There’s a huge ski slope up in the mountains and the lifts start from right in the town. A gondola or two went a-clattering over my head and so I resolved for a closer inspection.


Seems that these days Yours Truly is entitled to a Senior Citizens’ discount but even so, €7:50 was still a lot of money to spend. But anyway, as Martin Luther once said – “hier stehe ich – ich kann nicht anders”.
upper ski slopes la massana andorraI was tempted to hire some skis and other kit for a little go but I’m glad that I didn’t because of course it’s Carnaval and school holidays. The slopes were absolutely teeming with kids.

It was freezing cold too and the wind was perishing so after a cup of coffee and a wander around, I came back down again and continued my walk around the town.

houses for sale andorra adverts in russianBut you can see where much of the money in Andorra is coming from these days. Some of the Estate Agents have their adverts written in Russian for their nouveau-riche visitors. And as for the prices, well you and I can forget it. Think of a number, double it, and then add some more on top;

It wasn’t just the house prices in Russian either. We had menus in Russian, notices in Russian, signs in Russian, all that kind of thing. In 25 years the Russians have gone from being oppressed Communists to the worst kind of Capitalists. That’s what a western lifestyle does for you.

hatch for exclusive use of bombers andorraThe country is, however, very welcoming and even terrorists are made to feel at home and given every assistance possible.

Almost every commercial building has a little place where a terrorist can leave his bomb … “are you sure about this?” – ed … no sending it by post or sticking it in a waste paper bin here.

Good old Andorra!

hotel gaspa ondina andorraSo after a really good wander around and some falafel with hummus, I went back to my hotel.

That’s it up there – the Hotel Gaspa. And such a nice, warm, friendly place it is too that I’ve decided to stay on here for an extra day. I don’t want to be going far by road in this weather, and at least I’m comfortable here.

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Wednesday 14th August 2013 – YET ANOTHER MORNING …

… when I was up long before the alarm clock went off. I dunno what’s been happening to me just recently – it’s not as if I’ve wet the bed or anything.

So for an hour or two at least it was “full steam ahead” with adding these tags to my web pages and I really didn’t realise exacly how many pages there are. All this time and I’ve hardly scratched the surface.

What’s even more frightening is that I’ve realised just how many web pages are in the pipeline and how much I still have to write. I hope that my stay in Greece will be productive.

Once Cécile’s mum had woken up we sorted out all of the boxes here – Cécile has had a good look at all of the stuff that was in them. THen we attacked the kitchen, and the least said about that the better. I never realised just how much stuff there is in here – it’s amazing just how much useless rubbish one can accumulate.

The big wardrobe went today, that means that tomorrow we can all go shopping and buy some food. We might even be able to eat too.

And later on this evening we went for a long walk around the University grounds and somehow ended up at the Abbaye de la Bois de La Cambre, the abbey that is just down the road from here, sitting quietly in the sunset watching the fish and the ducks and the herons in the old fish pond.

Cécile’s mother, who has never been to Brussels before, is quite pleased with what she saw today. She might not be so pleased with what she might see tomorrow, because Cécile and I are going to empty the cellar.

And in other news, the much-maligned (and quite rightly so) FAW, the Football Association of Wales, has made a complete and utter U-turn and inviting not only Barry Town but also Llanelli FC to rejoin the Welsh Football League. I suppose that “it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all”, as Sherlock Holmes said in “The Man With The Twisted Lip”, but this sordid issue could have been resolved in the same fashion with just 5 seconds of goodwill and earned the FAW all kinds of applause, instead of having disputes, arguments, lies and Court Cases and even more vilification heaped upon the Football Association of Wales.

As long as the FAW continues to shoot itself in the foot, there is really no hope for Welsh football. It’s high time the FAW councillors got a grip or else that’s going to be another group of people stood up against the embankment in the Tir National up the road.

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Tuesday 18th June 2013 – SHERLOCK HOLMES …

… and Doctor Watson had to deal with Professor Moriarty who was using 5 gold pieces to blackmail someone. This led to Holmes and Watson disguising themselves as workmen and along with 2 other people similarly disguised, one of whom was the interested party, having a most violet fight in a private bar in which Moriarty was present. At a certain moment Moriarty, fearful that things were getting out of hand, discharged a firearm, a duelling pisol in fact, in the general direction of one of the participants and that was the signal for Holmes to seize both the gold pieces and Moriarty.
After this, a girl and I were outside talking. But it wasn’t the talk that was interesting, but that we were looking at the sky. It was quite dark and there were thousands of stars in the sky, and the moon, less than half-full, was flitting by at a rapid rate of knots and there were wisps of cloud everywhere passing even faster. And on the way home, I noticed some workmen at work in a glass building, using the natural light because even though it was 22:22, it was still light enough to work by and so I took a photo of the scene.

Ahhh well, such are dreams made of, and it was really depressing to be awoken by the alarm at 07:30 when I had all of this going on in my head, especially as the morning was all miserable, grey and cold.

But I’d done a good evening’s work – a huge pile of stuff that had been building up over a year or so and now sorted out.

Apart from that, it’s been a quiet day today.

Cécile somehow managed to chainsaw her way through the electric extension cable the other day without electrocuting herself and so first job after breakfast was to pick up a new plug and fit it to what remained of the cable.

We took the opportunity to do another load of shopping as well – anyone would think that we are eating like pigs the amount of stuff that we are buying. I dunno where it all goes.

Exciting news after lunch, though.

Cécile received a phone message that her internet connection was ready and so we spent a good few hours trying to configure the connection. Even with the aid of a friendly cousin who lives on the island we had no luck at all.

grande phare la petite foule ile d'yeu france In the end we gave up the struggle and went for a walk

Our perambulations took us down to the sea shore yet again, and from a certain spot where we stopped there was a good view of the lighthouse that we had visited yesterday.

Here it is rearing its head up above the trees in the distance on top of La Petite Foule. It does look impressive
.

port de la meule ile d'yeu franceLater on, we all went for a little walk again – down the road in the general direction of Port de la Meule where we had stopped for a drink just as everywhere was closing up.

We didn’t go that far today because Cécile’s mother is getting on and it’s probably much too much for her.

Bit it’s still good to stretch our legs and breathe in the fresh air before going to sleep, I reckon.

But as for the internet, last thing at night, just as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that the thing seems to have struggled into life and after a few minutes’ manipulations I seem to be on line.

The world really is my oyster now.

-4

Sunday 31st July 2011 – While I was having breakfast …

… I was watching the Sherlock Holmes film the Golden Pince-Nez and in it is the immortal line, something like “he’s still in bed. If the weather is really bad he stays in bed until midday”. And that really started my day quite badly because it was the easily the most beautiful day for quite some time and and for reasons that I really do not know, it was 12:22 when I woke up.

No – what happened there I have no idea at all.

Anyway, after breakfast, instead of living in the middle of all kinds of boxes and so on, I revised the media corner and made a pile of impromptu shelves out of old bits of wood and some wine boxes, and now all of the CDs, videos and DVDs are neatly piled up properly where I can see them and where I won’t trip over them. There’s still a long way to go before this place here looks presentable, what with everything I brought back from Brussels, but at least it’s a start. You can’t say I didn’t work at all this afternoon.

barbecue isolde krejci espinasse puy de dome franceThis evening, just by way of a change, I went out socialising, and that’s not something that happens every day. I was invited to a barbecue by Isolde – the girl for whom we did a furniture removal last year. She was entertaining and there were loads of people there, including a huge pile of kids which was nice.

I spent most of the time chatting to Karl, Lou, Jean and Elizabeth – after all, it’s really nice to see them.

sunset espinasse combraille puy de dome franceBut as dusk descended on Espinasse I started to feel homesick like I usually do – I don’t do crowds as you know – and so in the best traditions of the News of the Screws, I “made my excuses and left”.

And I’m glad that I left before it went dark because it gave me an opportunity to photograph the sunset and tonight it was absolutely beautiful. It’s not very often that I really catch it exactly at the right moment seeing that I can’t actually see it from my house.

Tomorrow, if I remember to wake up, I’ll do a load of washing if the weather is as nice as it was today. It really was a glorious day.

-3

Wednesday 6th April 2011 – What an exciting day.

Breakfast outside in 19°C on the pallets that I’m using as an impromptu terrace for the moment, interrupted by the postie bringing me a huge (and I mean huge) box of goodies from Amazon – my birthday present in fact.

And then the rest of the morning gardening. I’ve dragged the herb beds out of the smaller cloche (they are in large plastic troughs) and put them by the verandah so I can get at them for cooking, and then spend the rest of the morning clearing up some more raised beds and sowing seeds – putting tons of stuff out in fact. And it was beautiful weather to be out in, that’s for sure. Summer is well and truly back.

home made 12 volt immersion heater les guis virlet puy de dome franceLunch on the terrace of course, and by the time I was ready to resume, the water in the home-made immersion heater (that takes its energy from the excess solar power) had reached the magical 50°C (did I mention that I’d insulated it this morning with a load of the left-over offcuts of the bubble-wrap insulation?) and so that called for a washday, and now I’ve a load of clean clothes drying outside.

But isn’t it nice to have piping hot water for washing clothes without having to boil an array of kettles?

While I was in the washroom I made a start on tidying it up too – years of rubbish accumulated in there. Only a start, mind you. There’s a lot of stuff in there that needs to be sorted and a lot of it can be binned or burned as well. In fact it might be an idea to have a fire around here and dispose of a pile of stuff.

Once the washing was done it was back into the garden and planting herbs in the herb bed and delicate stuff into pots to warm up in the smaller cloche (which is why I moved the herb beds out). I’m now curious to see what my crops will do this year. Last year was rather disappointing as you may well remember, with snow in May that killed everything stone-dead.

18:10 when I knocked off too, and the water in the solar shower was at 38°C. That called for a shower (and we aren’t talking about the Executive Committee of the Open Unversity Students’ Association either) and so never mind the clothes – I’m clean too (well, at least on the outside anyway).

Back up here I had my coffee, watched the first one of the 41 episodes of Sherlock Holmes – Complete Collection [DVD]  while I sorted through all of my purchases. I must admit I can’t wait to watch Bring Me The Head of Turdi de Hatred [DVD] [1974]  sometime in the near future.

Switching on the computer, I found myself the recipient of some astonishing news and it’s the best news that I’ve had since Monday. I’m not going to sat anything about it as yet because it is too good to be true and I’m not going to believe a word of anything until I have a piece of paper in my sweaty little mitt. I’ve no idea why it is that my luck has suddenly changed  for the better this last 9 months – it’s not like me at all. But things have certainly been turned upside-down just recently. So much so in fact that I’m convinced that there’s a huge banana skin waiting for me somewhere to compensate. But then again, if this news is as good as it seems to be then it won’t matter at all.

So now I’m listening to Made In Japan, and in particular “Highway Star” – the theme song for my trip to the Rockies and the Utah Desert in 2002 – at full volume before I go to bed. But no point in going to bed right now – I won’t be going off to sleep.

-2

Saturday 3rd April 2010 – I didn’t feel much like it this morning.

I woke up with the alarm, just by way of a change, and heard the rain pouring down on the roof (15mm we had today). What a way to start the day! So after a while of vegetating I heaved myself out of bed and set off for Montlucon. Late

At Carrefour they were selling baby lettuce plants – €1:95 for 12 and that’s a bargain so I bought two dozen seeing as mine haven’t taken yet.

I also went to the huge sports shop – Decathlon – to buy some football boots. But firstly they were mostly sold out of the popular sizes. I tried on a couple of pairs of boots my size but they weren’t half tight and pinched my feet like mad so I asked the footwear assistant which ones she recommended for wider feet.
“How should I know?” was her helpful reply. “You’ll just have to try them all on and find out”.
As if I don’t have anything better to do! So that’s Decathlon crossed of my shopping list with their crap customer service.

Noz was quite interesting and I spent a few bob in there too – nothing special (except a proper tray small enough to go through the door downstairs amd with high edges to stop me spilling stuff). There were a few good films – an old black and white Study in Scarlet and a copy of Douglas Fairbanks’ silent movie The Three Musketeers. I passed on the obviously interesting and highly relevant Women In Cages and the astonishing “Dracula in Pakistan”. “A rare film from the archives of Hollywood” it said in the trailer. Well, what more can anyone say?

Next stop of course was the Auchan and I was behind a woman who had spent almost €200 at the checkouts. she couldn’t find her carte de fidelite so she said to the cashier “Put the points on that gentleman’s card” – meaning me! That’s not something that happens every day either.

At Brico Depot I had an encounter with a woman and her daughter. They were looking at dowelling and just happened to catch me on the head with a length.
“Look out!” cried the daughter to her mother. “You’ve just given that man a coup de baguette“.
“It’s okay” I replied. “I used to be married”.
“Ahhh” said the mother. “You’ll know all about coups de baguette then”.
Now my sense of humour has been described as “special” and so I was absolutely astonished to find anyone – let alone a French woman – who was on my wavelength. And imagine my further astonishment when 10 minutes later I collided with the same females.
“We meet again” said Mum
“Yes” I replied. And if you are still here in 15 minutes you can help me load my van!” I was rather loaded up with wood at the time.

But who should I bump into but Simon who was also looking for wood. It’s nice to meet friends and have interesting chats, but why just then? I was onto something with that woman I was sure.

But anyway Simon helped me load up Caliburn and we had a coffee together afterwards.

I told him about my adventures in the swimming pool last week and explained that I was off there right then, so he made sure I had his mobile phone number in case there was another swimming match.

I went to the baths via Virlet to pick up the village’s defibrilator (you never know – there might have been a swimming gala again) and I was half expecting to see a heavy contingent of medical personnel and a tonne of ice ready to dump into the swimming pool in case the water boiled, but no – my luck wasn’t in and I just had a quiet swim with the usual 20 or 30 people who go there.

But there is a swimming gala on Sunday afternoon 11th April. Unfortunately for me Pionsat are playing away so I shall either be at St Gervais or Charensat. But if anyone would like to join me for a rain dance on the Saturday night they will be more than welcome.

-1