{"id":16600,"date":"2022-12-30T23:22:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T23:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=16600"},"modified":"2022-12-30T23:22:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T23:22:52","slug":"friday-30th-december-2022-i-have-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=16600","title":{"rendered":"Friday 30th December 2022 &#8211; I HAVE BEEN &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; out and about this evening socialising.<\/p>\n<p>Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there&#8217;s something going on in the background here in this building that might burst out into the open at some point in the future. Consequently I&#8217;ve been out to see one or two people in the building for a meal and  for a good chinwag while we work out a cunning plan.<\/p>\n<p>It certainly pays dividends to have the right people on your side at moments like this because you end up on the inside track when it&#8217;s all filtering through. But how things develop, we shall have to see because there&#8217;s many a slip &#8216;twixt cup and lip.<\/p>\n<p>One of the slips was that I nearly didn&#8217;t make it. When it was time for me to go I was actually asleep on the chair in the office and I had quite a job to drag myself out and upstairs.<\/p>\n<p>Not that you would have thought so because I was in no rush this morning to leave my bed. WHen the alarm(s) went off I could hear the howling gale roaring around outside. And so in the words of the old song, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oGvux7w1Ea4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLINGS SPENT, MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was actually about 09:00 when I finally did leave the bed and for a change I had no pangs of guilt whatsoever. It&#8217;s clearly getting to me, this strange mood in which I find myself.<\/p>\n<p>First things first &#8211; I had to do the finances for the end of the year to see how I stand. And to my surprise, I can actually afford my little project without making too much of a special effort.<\/p>\n<p>And no-one is more surprised than me. When I embarked on this plan back in early November while I was lying in hospital I thought that I might be pushing out the boat a little too far but apparently not. So let&#8217;s get on with it. Unfortunately it doesn&#8217;t really depend on me &#8211; I&#8217;ve done all that I can for the moment and I&#8217;m waiting on others to extricate their digits.<\/p>\n<p>When the streets had quietened down for lunchtime, I went out for a play in the pouring rain with Caliburn. He struggled into life again so I took him for another good run, but it&#8217;s still not made starting any easier. It sounds to me as if the starter motor must be on its way out. I&#8217;ve put the spare battery on charge and at some point I&#8217;ll swap them over to see whether that improves things.<\/p>\n<p>In case you are wondering (which I&#8217;m sure you are) I&#8217;m not going far in Caliburn in busy times because with having no force in my right leg, braking is proving to be something of an issue. I&#8217;m having to leave plenty of space in front of me just in case an emergency arises<\/p>\n<p>This afternoon I&#8217;ve had to register with URSSAF, the body that deals with minor self-employed people. My &#8220;cleaner&#8221; (and how embarrassing is it for me to admit that I have one?) is actually employed under these regulations and so I have to pay URSSAF for her services and they deal with all of the paperwork and any tax liability for all of her clients.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s some good news about this too (and it&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve had any)  and that is that because I&#8217;m over 65 and suffering from a serious illness, I can actually claim part of my payments to be offset against my income tax. The French Social Security system is certainly up to the mark.<\/p>\n<p>Although it had taken me ages to go off to sleep last night, I must have fallen asleep at some point because there was this huge, long rambling dream about me being in Crewe with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/The-one-and-only-Strawberry-Moose\/146696445365437?ref=ts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">STRAWBERRY MOOSE<\/a>, my three sisters and all their kids and dozens of cats etc. I even ended up at a couple of their houses. I&#8217;ve no idea what was going on there but it was one of these things that went on for just about ever.<\/p>\n<p>And then I&#8217;d been on my travels later on last night. I bumped into Claude and his daughter and her kids. It turned out that there had been some kind of water fair near where I&#8217;d been living and they&#8217;d been to see it that morning. They&#8217;d even bought some boats and had been sailing around on the canal. I couldn&#8217;t understand why I hadn&#8217;t gone, never mind not seen them. One of the things that was taking place was the throwing of some kind of mechanic&#8217;s tool like a set of Stilsons and embedding it in a door. This had all finished but I was throwing one or two things about and having some good results. I felt a shame that I&#8217;d missed the early part of this where it had been competitive and I might have had a good score. In the end after much messing around someone gave me a set of Stilsons to try. I threw it and it bounced off the door into the canal. I had to go to fish it out. Eventually I had to leave. It was like leaving one of these spaghetti western type of things with the plains and the shot in the distance, riding on a horse across the plains up the side of a hill into the mountains and disappearing out of the shot.<\/p>\n<p>When the alarm went off for the first time I was with Beth I used to know from my time on the Scottish borders trying to relax her for an interview that she was due to take. I would have loved to know how all of this unfolded.<\/p>\n<p>When I came back from my evening out I watched the football. Y Drenewydd were playing Aberystwyth and the least said about this the better as Aberystwyth were simply swept aside. It was really no contest and how the score was only 1-0 at half-time was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.<\/p>\n<p>But 10 minutes of madness shortly after the restart saw Y Drenewydd rattle in 4 more goals and they scored a sixh later in the game that was the result of some of the worst defending that I have ever seen in my life. Aberystwyth scored a goal out of nothing in the dying minutes of the game but the game was long-since finished by then.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow I&#8217;m having a little shopping done for me. Some mushrooms and peppers ready for my meals next week but that&#8217;s about it. Walking around today, I seemed to be moving a little easier and I might have been tempted to have another go on the bus into town had it not been a day when we might have the crowds out in the streets doing their shopping for the New Year.<\/p>\n<p>And i&#8217;ll try to make an effort to haul myself out of bed at some reasonable time too, except that its already much later than it ought to be. I&#8217;m going to have to organise myself much better than this.<\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-16600 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='16600' data-nonce='eff2189b0a' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Like' \/><span class='lc-16600 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-16600 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='16600' data-nonce='eff2189b0a' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Unlike' \/><span class='unlc-16600 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-16600 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; out and about this evening socialising. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there&#8217;s something going on in the background here in this building that might burst out into the open at some point in the future. Consequently I&#8217;ve been out to see one or two people in the building for a meal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,7876],"tags":[4710,15103,5381,1302,212,2560,5287,5565,8581,1217,1731,15372,11900,7891,5274,2279,6322,4882],"class_list":["post-16600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-place-darmes","tag-aberystwyth","tag-beth_b","tag-caliburn","tag-crash-out","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-football","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-jd-cymru-premier-league","tag-lie-in","tag-n6","tag-neighbours","tag-place-darmes","tag-strawberry-moose","tag-urssaf","tag-www-youtube-com","tag-y-drenewydd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16601,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16600\/revisions\/16601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}