{"id":21362,"date":"2026-07-28T20:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=21362"},"modified":"2026-07-28T20:46:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T20:46:03","slug":"tuesday-28th-july-2026-my-cleaner-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=21362","title":{"rendered":"
Tuesday 28th July 2026 – MY CLEANER IS … <\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"

… a heroine, I’ll tell you that.<\/p>\n

Leclerc’s drive-in didn’t have in stock the vegan cream cheese that I love when I made my order last Friday, and so I asked her if, when she goes to the Leclerc supermarket the next time, she can look out for a couple of packs.<\/p>\n

While I was looking for an old, empty pack for her to photograph, I came across a really ancient empty pack of vegan Boursin spreading cheese that I had bought one Christmas a long time ago and thought was wonderful, so, even though it was years ago that I’d bought it and hadn’t seen it in the supermarket since, I asked her to keep an eye out for that too, just in case.<\/p>\n

And so, just after 14:00, she came into the apartment to do her stuff, not only carrying two packs of vegan cream cheese and two packs of vegan Boursin but also a pack of another type of vegan spreading cheese made by the same company that made the vegan Boursin.<\/p>\n

For the next few weeks, on Friday nights as I’m watching the football and eating my savoury biscuits, I shall be regaling myself with the toppings that I’ll be spreading on them.<\/p>\n

It’s a pity that I couldn’t regale myself with anything during the night, because it was a long, hard slog. Totally exhausted and falling asleep before I’d even hit the pillow, it was 21:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And how much was I needing that?<\/p>\n

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed<\/em> … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning. Like 01:23, for example.<\/p>\n

That really put the tin hat on just about everything. Having this awful cough come back is one thing \u2013 disturbing me and waking me up is another. <\/p>\n

So I lay there, coughing my insides out, slowly looking at the day beginning to dawn, and then I must have gone off to sleep because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.<\/p>\n

There have been days when I simply haven’t felt like getting up at all, and this wasn’t far short of one of those. And although I felt dreadful, little by little I began to feel a bit more human. It took me a very long time, though, to make it into the bathroom.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.<\/p>\n

\nWe were at the beginning of World War II and the Germans were invading Belgium. In the absence of any news, they asked me if I would take a patrol of people under cover and survey the battlefield and where all the German troops are. It sounded like a complicated, difficult and almost impossible task. There was a German prisoner at Headquarters so I asked for him to come along too, for no other reason than if there was going to be a disaster, there wouldn’t have been anyone better-suited to share it with us. We had to dress in uniform and then with overalls on top, like we were from a tank or something. Then we were studying maps of what we knew so far. I was in charge of the fire-watching in the cathedral. For me, it was in the crypt underneath, so I wanted to spray the materials and everything like that with water so it wouldn’t catch alight. But one of the things was that they had a rare set of encyclopaedias going back to the end of the eighteenth century and I didn’t want that to become wet or to catch fire, so people were laughing and joking with me about the possible consequences thereof. In the end, we set out on this mission and we arrived eventually at a caf\u00e9 that was still in Belgian hands, and everyone there was having a drink or a moan or a chat. I happened to mention to the landlady that we were looking to connect up to the German forces, and we noticed a couple of ears pricking up at one of the tables and the two men sitting there left rather hurriedly<\/div>\n

Just recently, I’ve spent a lot of time in various crypts, reading the current breakfast-time book. But I can’t recall fire ever having been an issue with any of them.<\/p>\n

The ending of this dream, however, reminds me of the Hobbits in the bar at Bree and the stranger there, as recorded in LORD OF THE RINGS<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Apart from that, nothing else seems to ring a bell, although it would be the kind of thing that would make an interesting book.<\/p>\n

\nThere had been another one of these parties at someone’s house miles away, and as I was on my travels, I decided that I’d pass by there. However, I was on my old red 50cc moped so it took me quite a while to get there. The people there weren’t really having too much of a good time \u2013 it was a very relaxed kind of social gathering \u2013 and I didn’t know anyone there. There was just me in my car. Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving. Most people were leaving on Friday but others would be leaving on the Sunday, so I told her that I’d be leaving on the Sunday evening and she made a note of that. The reason was that the car in which I was, the Land Rover, had been left at Berchtesgarten by someone else who wasn’t there. Anyway, I set off and … fell asleep here<\/em> …<\/div>\n

There have been a few of these “party” dreams just recently. However, unsociable creature that I am, I wouldn’t be going to all that many in real life.<\/p>\n

“Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving” \u2013 just as a nurse does at dialysis so that she can ring up the taxi companies. It’s an everyday routine there.<\/p>\n

As for Berchtesgarten and the Land Rover, I have no idea how they came to figure in this at all. It’s a shame that I fell asleep just as it was becoming interesting.<\/p>\n

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual to soothe my fevered brow and to sort out my legs and feet. We chatted about the fire yesterday, La Havaudi\u00e8re and other fires, and then she pushed off.<\/p>\n

Once she’d gone, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE<\/a> by Charles Freeman.<\/p>\n

We’ve now moved on from the Arabic (with the usual derogatory comments) to discussing his evidently favourite period \u2013 the Gothic period. And we’re not even a dozen lines in when we have "the forms that had their root in an age of persecution joyfully surrender their supremacy to those which breathed the spirit of a Church triumphant alike over heathendom without, and secular oppression within. We shall see how they built who bore alike the spear and the crozier in her holy cause ; when ” the praises of GOD were in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hands \u2022”"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bearing a spear and a “two-edged sword in their hands” is hardly a Christian attitude, what with “thou shalt not kill” and all of that. But when we have ministers of the church married two or three or even more times after various divorces, you have to understand that the Christian religion has very little whatever to do with the words of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had a few more things to do, and then I wrote out my notes from yesterday. And that took longer than it ought to have done too, due to me drifting in and out of sleep for most of the morning. <\/p>\n

After I had finished and everything was online, I relaxed in my chair for a while, and the next thing that I remembered was that it was now 13:05. I must have been asleep for an age. <\/p>\n

Once I’d recovered my enthusiasm and energy, I went to sort out the bathroom And when my cleaner arrived, bearing gifts as I mentioned earlier, she chased me under the shower. And actually, now that I can go in and come out of the shower all on my own, today I had my first-ever shower in the altogether. And that was nice too.<\/p>\n

After she left, I had a second disgusting drink and then started to track down the music that I need for this next radio programme. And this will be difficult as the search motor that I use is currently offline. <\/p>\n

Rosemary rang me for a chat in the middle of it all. Just a mere fifty-five minutes today \u2013 we’re obviously losing our touch. And after that, a neighbour stuck his head into the open bedroom window for a chat.<\/p>\n

For tea tonight, I lengthened the leftovers from the taco roll stuffing from last week and made another taco roll with rice and veg. And that was really nice too. I seem to be eating much better these days. Mind you, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t eating anything at all.<\/p>\n

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better sleep than yesterday.<\/p>\n

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of Christianity in the church these days … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … an old man walked into a church wearing tatty, threadbare clothes. The preacher was outraged and told the man "before you come into this church again, have a good talk with God and ask him what attire you should be wearing to come into this church!"<\/em><\/strong>
\nNext week, the old man was back, still in the same threadbare clothes.
\n"I thought I told you to have a good talk with God about your attire before you came back!"<\/em><\/strong>
\n"I did,"<\/em><\/strong> he replied "but God said that he didn’t have a clue. He’s never been in this place before."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… a heroine, I’ll tell you that. Leclerc’s drive-in didn’t have in stock the vegan cream cheese that I love when I made my order last Friday, and so I asked her if, when she goes to the Leclerc supermarket the next time, she can look out for a couple of packs. While I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1710,44,4507,1616,8571,16250,12057,12527],"tags":[16585,3501,4788,13133,16586,5577,1302,212,1712,2560,5565,8581,801,5368,2644,15372,12058,12532,288,462,13547,749],"class_list":["post-21362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleaner","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-n6","category-nurse","category-pierre","tag-a-history-of-architecture","tag-archive-org","tag-bad-night","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-charles-freeman","tag-cleaner","tag-crash-out","tag-dream","tag-early-night","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-httpwww-amazon-co-uk","tag-leclerc","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-n6","tag-nurse","tag-pierre","tag-rosemary","tag-shower","tag-taco-roll","tag-vegan-cheese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21362","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=21362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21363,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21362\/revisions\/21363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}