{"id":18496,"date":"2024-07-04T21:03:46","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T21:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=18496"},"modified":"2024-07-04T21:06:24","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T21:06:24","slug":"thursday-4th-july-2024-the-die-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=18496","title":{"rendered":"Thursday 4th July 2024 – THE DIE IS …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… cast<\/p>\n

And in a most unusual turn of speed that can only be described as “indecent haste”, I’ve had a communication this afternoon from the letting agent for the apartment downstairs – <\/p>\n

"Dear Sir
\n Please find attached a copy of the formal notice that we have today sent to your tenant … in accordance with your instructions of … "<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So in other words, proceedings have begun to recover occupancy of the apartment on or before the end of this current tenancy lease on 3rd June 2025.<\/p>\n

As it happens, I feel quite awful about putting someone out on the street. I wouldn’t like it at all and I didn’t when it was done to me. <\/p>\n

However I shouldn’t feel bad because the tenant had two opportunities to buy the apartment herself. It’s the law in France that if a let property is put up for sale, the tenant has first dibs and it’s been sold twice since she’s been there.<\/p>\n

Secondly, I’ve offered to exchange my rights in this apartment (which I rent, of course). It’s configured differently but it’s basically the same apartment from a point of view of size and accommodation. However, she turned down my proposal, turned it down flat.<\/p>\n

All we need to know now is what I have forgotten or overlooked.<\/p>\n

If I were doing all of this myself there would almost inevitably be something or other that I have failed to consider, but having a letting agent means that there’s someone else to blame when it all goes pear-shaped<\/p>\n

So with half the new kitchen packed on the landing outside the door here and the other half in the back of Caliburn, and a cat awaiting in a shelter or refuge somewhere close by, it’s “all systems go”. It looks as if I shall have to do some serious packing.<\/p>\n

But one thing is for certain is that when I finally sit down in that apartment I’ll breathe a huge sigh of relief. I shan’t miss the 25 Steps one little bit.<\/p>\n

When I went to bed last night I breathed a huge sigh of relief too. It was actually quite late when I finally fell into my stinking pit but after my exertions during the day I was good and ready for it<\/p>\n

During the night I don’t recall moving a single muscle. When the alarm went off I was flat-out in exactly the same position in which I’d hit the hay earlier<\/p>\n

And it was a very confused me who responded to the alarm this morning by trying to answer the ‘phone, something that would have brought a smile to BILLY COTTON<\/a>‘s face if only he had seen it. <\/p>\n

Eventually I managed to tear myself away from my nice warm bed and went for a wash and brush up etc before coming back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something going on with my ill-health again. There had been demonstrations in Montlucon. I’d been sent a form to fill in for me to say whether or not I’d been at this demonstration for just the one day or the two days. If I’d been there for the two days I was entitled to go along there and help clean it up, and I’d receive a daily subsistence allowance for the two days. I thought to myself that this is the first time that someone had really made an effort to bring the sufferers of this disease together and actually make it worth their while to come out of the shadows and announce who they are to the World and then be paid for this clearing-up of these sites in Montlucon. I thought that this was a definite amount of progress for this illness and I was wondering where it was going to take us next with this idea of opening up everything.<\/p>\n

Transcribing that little lot, I was thinking to myself that anyone reading this article would imagine that I was suffering from the Bubonic Plague or something equally contagious and nasty but of course as far as I am aware, what I have isn’t contagious so you’re all quite safe.<\/p>\n

That is, apart from this ‘flu bug that I don’t seem to be able to shake off at the moment. And that’s not frightened the nurse away because he’s still coming round. <\/p>\n

He didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was clearly in an introspective mood. He changed the dressing on my right foot, organised my puttees and then left in a hurry.<\/p>\n

What I’ve been doing today is to finish off the radio programme that I started yesterday. I have had to perform a lot of judicious (and not so judicious) editing, cutting and chopping about and in the end I’ve finished with 56:39 minutes of music and musicians” banter<\/p>\n

That is leaving me just 3 minutes and 21 seconds, or 201 seconds in fact, for an introduction and at 300 characters of text per 17 seconds, I need about 3500 characters of text. So far, I’ve written 3672 so there’s a little room for manoeuvre.<\/p>\n

But as usual when I write stuff for programmes like that, I’ll review it a few times before I go with a definitive version. The usual programmes where I have 11 songs and about three quarters of a minute to introduce each one, you can’t do all that much. But I like to think that the text for any concert that I broadcast says all that it needs to in the time available to it.<\/p>\n

Seeing as we are talking about concerts … "well, one of us is" – ed<\/em> … I came across the soundtrack for an interesting concert.<\/p>\n

There was a group quite active on the British Rhythm and Blues scene in the early 1960s, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and their claim to fame is that their guitarist at the time, Mick Green, is credited with having invented the concept of the “power trio” of guitar, bass and drums, by being able to play lead and rhythm guitar alternately and inspired whole generations of some of the most important musicians and groups in rock music. I’ve played bass in many a power trio and to me, that is rock music at its best<\/p>\n

Johnny KIdd was killed in a car accident in the mid-1960s but is group reformed later and produced three or four LPs that I would love to find. Instead though, I came across a concert that was recorded in 2006 in a pub in Northern France with the Pirates, including Mick Green<\/p>\n

The quality is rubbish unfortunately, but nevertheless …<\/p>\n

Later on this afternoon I’ve been busy. Firstly, the cleaner stuck her head in. She brought my next batch of injections that had now arrived at the pharmacy. But poor girl – if it carries on like this, she’s going to need a lorry. I’m sure that I have more medication here than the chemist has in his stock.<\/p>\n

And then, having used up the last of the bread this morning I need another loaf for starting tomorrow so I’ve been baking. <\/p>\n

And what can I do with half an oven while there’s bread in the other half? The answer is to make a big vegan lasagne – tofu, mushroom and red lentils with tomato sauce all covered in a bechamel sauce.<\/p>\n

That was a lovely surprise for tea too, lasagne with steamed veg. One slice to go and two slices for the freezer for another time. Like I say, the food in this place is simple but it’s really first-class. <\/p>\n

So I’m going to bed and hopefully to have a good night’s sleep and to make all kinds of plans about the apartment downstairs.<\/p>\n

But thinking about my dream earlier, it reminds me of a story that I heard from a schoolteacher friend of mine on the Wirral in a particularly rough primary school.
\nShe set the children an exercise in their English language lesson – to write a sentence with the word “contagious” in it
\nAfter two minutes little Johnny put his hand up to say that he was finished, so my friend asked him to come out and read his sentence to the class
\nSo little Johnny coughs to clear his throat and begins "Next door’s garden fence blew down in the gales and it will take the contagious to pick up all of the bits"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… cast And in a most unusual turn of speed that can only be described as “indecent haste”, I’ve had a communication this afternoon from the letting agent for the apartment downstairs – "Dear Sir Please find attached a copy of the formal notice that we have today sent to your tenant … in accordance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1710,44,4507,1616,8571,12057,7876],"tags":[13133,5577,1302,212,2560,5565,8581,13592,1137,15914,15892,15915,15372,12058,7891,14889,1859],"class_list":["post-18496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleaner","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-nurse","category-place-darmes","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-cleaner","tag-crash-out","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-home-made-bread","tag-ill-health","tag-johnny-kidd-and-the-pirates","tag-live-at-leeds","tag-mick-green","tag-n6","tag-nurse","tag-place-darmes","tag-pozzo","tag-vegan-lasagne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18496","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=18496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18498,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18496\/revisions\/18498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}