{"id":20799,"date":"2026-01-18T21:56:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20799"},"modified":"2026-01-18T21:56:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T21:56:44","slug":"sunday-18th-january-2026-what-a-lovely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20799","title":{"rendered":"
Sunday 18th January 2026 – WHAT A LOVELY … <\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"

… way to start a Sunday. A slow, gentle awakening and a gradual sliding out of bed into the daylight – at 10:00 this morning. I really should do it more often.<\/p>\n

Especially if I can manage to be in bed before 23:30 the night before.<\/p>\n

Last night, though, I didn’t quite manage it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied while I was trying to finish off everything, and in the end, it was about 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.<\/p>\n

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it was something of a disturbed night and I awoke on several occasions. Mind you, I was fast asleep when the nurse breezed into the bedroom to deal with my legs. I actually took no notice so he did what he thought was necessary and then breezed out again. He can’t have been here longer than two minutes.<\/p>\n

It hadn’t really disturbed me, and I was soon asleep again, right up to my rather gentle awakening at 10:00.<\/p>\n

My clothes were in here from last night so, for a change, I didn’t bother with the bathroom. I dressed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.<\/p>\n

Porridge and piping-hot coffee, and a couple of my homemade croissants warmed in the microwave. What a lovely breakfast that was too!<\/p>\n

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, James Curle has been emptying the various wells and pits around the fort and camp. So far, he’s examined no fewer than one hundred and seven, and that’s an enormous number.<\/p>\n

Some of them are empty of relics, some have a few, some have more, but some are astonishing.<\/p>\n

Take Pit I for example – "Near the surface a fragment of an inscribed table. At \u00a7 feet, a piece of twisted silver wire, part of a penannular brooch, two bronze rings, and twelve links of a small bronze chain. At 8 feet, a human skeleton, near it a bronze penannular brooch, as well as two pieces of bronze, perhaps part of a second brooch. At 12 feet, an altar dedicated to Jupiter, and below it a \u2018first brass\u2019 coin of Hadrian. From 14 feet downwards, bones of animals; the skulls of oxen (Bos Longifrons), and of horses were-frequent ; also soles of shoes, fragments of leather garments, and deer horns. At 18 feet, fragments of stone moulding, pieces of amphorae, and small bits of undecorated Terra Sigillata; also two pieces of deer horn fitted together like a rude pick. At 21 feet, an iron bar. At 22 feet, a human skull complete and part of another skull near it, remains of scale armour of brass, also the necks of five large amphorae, and the bottom of a cup of Terra Sigillata (Type Drag. 33), with the stamp PROBVS-F. At 25 feet, the upper stone of a quern, an iron knife with a bone handle, an iron knife, a linch pin , a bar of iron, a sickle, portions of an iron corselet mounted with brass; the staves and bottom of an oak bucket, 7 inches high, 8 inches in diameter; the iron rim of a large bucket; a large block of sandstone having a rudely-sculptured figure of a boar on one side; a small fragment of stone, with a figure of a boar in relief; five arrowheads of iron; pieces of chain armour; the iron umbo of a \u2018shield and fragments of brass, perhaps belonging to its decoration; a brass coin of Vespasian or Titus; a stirrup-like holdfast of iron; a fragment of wall plaster, necks and sides of several amphorae"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s just one example of a well-filled pit. <\/p>\n

He makes the point that it seems to be the earliest pits that have all of the relics. That would fit in with the idea that the abandonment of the fort was a panic-stricken flight and whatever couldn’t be carried away was cast into the pits and quickly filled in, in the hope that it could be recovered at a later date. However, with the passage of twenty years before the return of the Roman Army to the area, the generation that had hidden it was gone and the whereabouts of the caches forgotten.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. <\/p>\n

\nMy friend from Wellington was around last night. He’d come to see how I was and to see how my house move was going. He was having a look and he saw that I had a toolbox. He asked me about the toolbox – it was a dark green cantilever thing. I said that I’d picked it up for a couple of quid with one or two tools in it and I’d gradually been expanding it. I now had about three or four of these toolboxes with different tools in them and more complete toolkits etc. He seemed to be quite interested in it. In the end, he asked me what we were going to do so I replied that we would rearrange the living room and sort out the furniture in there. We decided to go in, and we were looking at the big, black wall unit with mirror doors. I was thinking of putting it across the door to protect everything from the draught but pulling it about four feet forward so that people could slalom around it in comparative ease\n<\/div>\n

The cantilever toolbox that I have here is a light green, but there are several others back on the farm. There isn’t a dark green one though. And my friend from Newport (not Wellington) did come over here to help me design the plans for the new apartment. The large black wall unit with mirror doors didn’t fit in with the plans and that was taken away by the charity shop people. When it was upstairs though, it was across the doorway but pulled a few feet forward. It protected me from draughts when I was sitting at the table.<\/p>\n

\nDid I miss the end of that dream about my friend from Wellington? We went into the other room to rearrange the furniture. We thought that with the black and white shelf unit which was much too close to the porte, it would have been interesting in bringing the certifed form ending and the final reel over to my new address and sharing oil one night. But for some reason, it became very complicated … fell asleep here<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

This quickly degenerated into a pile of whatever, didn’t it?<\/p>\n

\nWhen the nurse came, I was somewhere in the Alps. I’d been there before, years ago, and I had plenty of photos, including photos of the boats that were on the lake right up in the mountains. There was even an imitation Spanish galleon on this lake. Don’t ask me how it arrived there. There were several pleasure cruisers. I remember talking to one of the guys in a rowing boat who was just sitting there, lying on his back enjoying the freezing cold weather as his boat followed the current through this lake. This inspired my German friend to go there once he’d seen all of my photos so we’d arranged to meet one day. But he’d met someone the previous day who had some kind of horse-drawn contraption. He became friends with him, and asked him if he could borrow this horse and cart, or whatever it is, and go off camping for the night. We made some kind of strange remark about leaving a holiday in order to go on another holiday, a holiday within a holiday or something. He eventually turned up, and all that he had was a metal chair. He had to try to make himself comfortable on this metal chair during the night but it had casters on it. He was afraid that during the night, if he moved, it would begin to roll and he would be over the edge of the cliff so he was looking for things to try to chock the wheels to make sure that it wouldn’t move while he was asleep.\n<\/div>\n

As for this, I’ve no idea to what it refers, although I have vague recollections of being somewhere similar in a dream several weeks ago. It wasn’t as detailed or as complicated as this, though.<\/p>\n

\nThere was also something about being on board a ship. I was the captain of it. It was a cruise ship, that sort of thing. I’d been receiving secret messages by the time the ship went into port, it would go slowly along the docks until it reached its berth and someone would walk alongside the dock and tell me these messages. But when it came to berthing down, the cabin for the captain was also the cabin for the First Officer so we had to share. So I grabbed the bunk on the ground floor for mine and I thought that I’d let the First Officer climb up the ladder to the one on top. It turned out that the First Officer was a woman. I thought that this was going to be rather complicated but neither of us really cared and we both went to bed. We had a little chat about this and that. But while I was trying to fall asleep, I was rummaging through the lockers at the side of the bed. There were all kinds of things in there. There was a huge homemade battery clamp, there were other kinds of bits and pieces in there, but I was going through it, trying to take an inventory while I was waiting to fall asleep.\n<\/div>\n

The First Officer, I can see her now. She was the driver who brought me home on Thursday from dialysis, although why she should pop up here, I don’t know. Walking along the shore at the side of a ship reminds me of being AT THE WELLAND CANAL IN 2010<\/a> where I did just that. The rest is about my preoccupation with the untidy state of this apartment, I imagine.<\/p>\n

After that, there was football. Greenock Morton were away to Stenhousemuir in the Scottish Cup yesterday, and I have to say that I have never in my life seen such an inept, incompetent display from a professional club.<\/p>\n

Giant-killing acts in cup matches occur so frequently that it’s hardly ever worth mentioning them, but when a full-time professional club in the second tier of Scottish football comes up against part-timers in the third tier and loses, it’s not really headlines, but to lose 4-0? It’s an embarrassment. Morton were really lucky to get nil, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme. It took an age to find all of the songs that I wanted, and then they needed to be reformatted, remixed, edited, paired and segued. By the time that I knocked off, it had all been done. It just remains now to write the notes, which I shall do during the week.<\/p>\n

There was time to make the pizza base for tea – not a loaf, though, because there’s plenty of bread in the freezer that needs using. And for a few minutes, I reviewed my Welsh for Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The pizza was delicious, and there’s a half left over for tomorrow night. Right now, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed<\/em> … for dialysis tomorrow.<\/p>\n

But seeing as we have been talking about the Welland Canal … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … the Welland Canal was built to by-pass Niagara Falls.
\nWhile I was there, I went into Niagara where I heard a story about a couple, a 95-year-old man and a 94-year-old woman, who were there on their honeymoon.
\n"Did they have a good time?"<\/em><\/strong> I asked
\n"Not really"<\/em><\/strong> was the reply. "They spent the whole two weeks trying to get out of the car."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… way to start a Sunday. A slow, gentle awakening and a gradual sliding out of bed into the daylight – at 10:00 this morning. I really should do it more often. Especially if I can manage to be in bed before 23:30 the night before. Last night, though, I didn’t quite manage it. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,16250,12057],"tags":[16412,3501,13133,212,13385,2560,5287,5565,8581,10797,5714,16364,389,16021,1731,15372,12058,5595,16439,5164,5970],"class_list":["post-20799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-n6","category-nurse","tag-a-roman-frontier-post-and-its-people","tag-archive-org","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-dream","tag-dream-in-french","tag-eric-hall","tag-football","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-greenock-morton","tag-hans-field","tag-home-made-croissants","tag-httpwww-lesguis-com","tag-james-curle","tag-lie-in","tag-n6","tag-nurse","tag-ric-baines","tag-stenhousemuir","tag-vegan-pizza","tag-welland-canal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799","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=20799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20800,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799\/revisions\/20800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}