… then there is a very good reason for this, because I was well away with the fairies during the night.<\/p>\n
“Away” was not the word. I must have crashed out listening to the radio because I awoke at about 01:30, in the middle of the night, to the sound of the Clitheroe Kid.<\/p>\n
And I wasn’t alone last night either. I had companions during all of it and I started off with none other than Nerina and my brother. He had a Ford Fiasco which had a luton body on it (don’t ask me how – or why) and he was out and about on his travels when he bumped into me, somewhere on the corner of Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close in Shavington. As we were talking, a police car loomed over the horizon and he beat something of a hasty retreat away from his Fiesta. I asked him why but he didn’t give a convincing reason and in the end I cornered him over the fact that it wasn’t insured. “Don’t you remember that as soon as I got my licence I was planning to go off on that drive across Europe but in the end I had to cancel it. That was because the insurance hadn’t come through”.
\nSo from there we made our way into the company of Nerina who wanted some stuff moving. She didn’t care about how ill I was, and I couldn’t make her understand. We ended up bringing a quad motorcycle down some narrow stairs from an attic, getting it stuck at every turn, and once it was down, off we set. We carried on arguing all the way to where we were going, to Hankelow Hall, to my house in France, and even arguing in some roadside petrol station near Audlem (which was nowhere near Audlem of course) and I’d lost patience long ago.
\nAfter a trip down the corridor I was at the seaside. Only a teenager, I was with a group of others and there was a huge storm raging sending spray everywhere and one girl of our party was out running around in it. I went out to bring her inside but I ended up being overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all too and staying out with her. As the storm subsided we went for a walk and ended up taking a short cut through someone else’s garden . I asked her if she knew the people to which she replied that she did. I had no intention of meeting them so I persuaded her to retrace our steps and we were met at the gate by a crowd of people including the fire brigade. Apparently the place had caught fire and so we were asked what we had been doing. I replied with the first thing that came into my head – that we were collecting the pools money – but that was clearly the wrong thing to say because there was some scam going around about the Football Pools and I’d put my foot right in it. Nevertheless, an elderly couple whom I knew saw me with this girl and gave me a “knowing wink”.
\nAnd later still, I’d been out with a friend and her husband to a local bar. The husband was quite the worse for wear so she asked me to escort him home. I agreed, provided that she would bring a few bottles back for me to take to my friends. However, outside the bar, husband jumped on a bicycle and despite his wife’s most earnest entreaties, he wouldn’t get off and wobbled off down the street. I grabbed hold of the nearest bike, a kind of Moulton mini-bike with a flat rear tyre and weird handlebars, and shot off after him. But I was so impressed by this bike. Even with a flat rear tyre, the gearing was such that the momentum of going down Vine Tree Avenue took me all the way back up the bank in Chestnut Avenue, and I remember thinking that I shall have to look much more closely at modern bicycles <\/p>\n
No wonder that I’m exhausted – but I’m curious to know what Shavington doing featuring in all of this these days.<\/p>\n
I slept almost right through to the alarm this morning but it was a slow crawl to the breakfast room. And back here, I crashed out again for an hour straight afterwards. It took me ages to come round sufficiently but the cleaner threw me out of my room at about 11:00. This gave me an opportunity to go to the office to pay for my accommodation. I’ve paid up until Thursday morning because I’ve no idea where I’ll be after then. Will I be detained in hospital or will I be released?<\/p>\n
As an aside, the receptionist complimented me on my Flemish. I suppose it must be returning by now but I don’t feel anything like as confident – or as competent – as I think that I ought to be.<\/p>\n
I crawled to the supermarket to buy food for lunch and then crawled back here afterwards to eat it and then have another crash-out for a couple of hours. But at 20:00 I staggered out to the fritkot<\/em> – not feeling very much like it at all but I have to eat and frits<\/em> are full of fat which, apparently, I must have.<\/p>\n I was in luck at the fritkot<\/em> – it was the anniversary of the opening of the place and so a medium portion was free. How often does this kind of thing happen to me? I had a struggle to eat them but they all went down and they must have done some good because now it’s 22:00 and I’m still awake.<\/p>\n But not for much longer. I’m off to bed and I’ll see where I end up tomorrow. <\/p>\n
