{"id":20173,"date":"2025-07-13T20:18:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20173"},"modified":"2025-07-14T05:34:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T05:34:00","slug":"sunday-13th-july-2025-its-a-good-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20173","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 13th July 2025 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… that Sunday is a lie-in where the alarm doesn’t sound until 07:59. Otherwise, had it been a normal day with the alarm at 06:29, it might have been, in the words of the Duke of Wellington when talking about the Battle of Waterloo, "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life"<\/em><\/strong> to failing to be an early start.<\/p>\n

When my feet touched the ground this morning, it was 06:27 precisely, and it doesn’t run too much closer than that.<\/p>\n

It hadn’t been a particularly early night either. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was not far short of midnight when I fell into bed, a liberal application of heat treatment and an ice pack strapped to my knee.<\/p>\n

Once in bed, I was dead to the World and didn’t stir an inch, all the way through to the moment that I awoke.<\/p>\n

And the proof of that is in the fact that there was nothing whatsoever on the dictaphone from any nocturnal voyage. And that’s sad – I thought that I’d left that little barren spell of a few weeks ago well behind me.<\/p>\n

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen for the medication, and once more, I took my time. There wasn’t any great rush which was just as well because I couldn’t find the motivation to exert myself.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I dictated the radio notes for “Woodstock Saturday” or “Saturday Woodstock” – whichever you like. It took an age because there ended up being over twenty-two minutes’ worth. Of course, they will be edited down to make something more manageable, but I’ll be looking for a way to fit a programme with a running time of one hundred minutes into just one hour exactly.<\/p>\n

What compounded the issue was the fact that for some reason, I’d missed off half of the first paragraph and I’ve no idea why. I had to dictate another twenty-two seconds’ worth of notes.<\/p>\n

The nurse turned up early again, applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then dealt with my legs and feet.<\/p>\n

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet again, he mentions some very interesting anecdotes, such as "a baker named John of Stratforde, for making bread less than the assize, was with a fool’s hood on his head and loaves of bread about his neck, drawn on a hurdle through the streets of this city"<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n

He also talks about the sinking of a water pump "near on Lime Street corner; for the placing of the which pump, having broken up the ground, they were forced to dig more than two fathom deep before they came to any main ground, where they found a hearth made of Britain, or rather, Roman tile, every tile about half a yard square and about two inches thick."<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n

Back in here, there was a load of correspondence with which to deal, and several bills that needed paying, and that took all morning.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem was some of the correspondence needed information from my former employer in Belgium, and they have gone totally and obsessively security-conscious to such an extent that it can only be described as “paranoia”.<\/p>\n

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, thanks to my University studies, I hold a couple of Diplomas in computing that I have put to extremely good use over the passage of time. Nevertheless, it took me several hours to figure out how to find my way in to the work’s Intranet service. And I’m not convinced that I’ll know how to do it a second time either.<\/p>\n

How a pensioner, who is not computer-savvy, is going to manage to access the Intranet is totally beyond me.<\/p>\n

It’s probably to do with the fact that some wag somewhere back at work has worked out that the Intranet will be totally safe from hackers if no-one at all is able to access it.<\/p>\n

There was football on the internet this morning too, Stranraer playing their first competitive match in the League Cup against Ross County. The Staggies, relegated from the Premier Division to League One at the end of the season, were clear favourites against an inexperienced Stranraer side at the wrong end of the Scottish pyramid last season, but it ended up as a creditable 1-1 draw with Stranraer going on to win 5-4 in a penalty shoot-out that took about fifteen kicks to complete.<\/p>\n

As well as that, I’ve been speaking to my kitchen fitter about my kitchen and how we are going to proceed next. He reckons that he’ll be here tomorrow to carry on, which will be good news.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes, which are now almost completed, and also closing all the windows when the thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms erupted. It was a shame that it happened on the day of the annual brocante<\/em> here in the walled city. It certainly made the visitors scatter and seek shelter in their cars on the car park.<\/p>\n

Tea tonight was a delicious pizza, not as large as usual because my appetite is still very much diminished and anyway, now that my weight is down, I have to think about keeping it down.<\/p>\n

So although it’s early, I’m tired and so I’m going to bed ready for the kitchen fitter and my Welsh Summer School tomorrow.<\/p>\n

But seeing as we have been talking about bakers … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … a man walks into a bakery carrying a 30lb cod.
\n"I say"<\/em><\/strong> says the man "I don’t suppose that you happen to make fish cakes, do you?"<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe baker looks at the cod. "I’m afraid that I don’t"<\/em><\/strong> he replied
\n"What a pity"<\/em><\/strong> sighed the man with the cod. "It’s his birthday next Tuesday."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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… that Sunday is a lie-in where the alarm doesn’t sound until 07:59. Otherwise, had it been a normal day with the alarm at 06:29, it might have been, in the words of the Duke of Wellington when talking about the Battle of Waterloo, "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life" to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4507,1616,8571,12057,7876],"tags":[3501,13133,2482,2560,5287,5565,8581,16265,12058,7891,2896,15849,16266,5164],"class_list":["post-20173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-nurse","category-place-darmes","tag-archive-org","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-early-start","tag-eric-hall","tag-football","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-john-stow","tag-nurse","tag-place-darmes","tag-ross-county","tag-stranraer","tag-survey-of-london","tag-vegan-pizza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173","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=20173"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20177,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20173\/revisions\/20177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}