Well, I'm back home again ...

... after a working day of a mere 28 hours and 16 minutes - for the benefit of many of my readers.

Up at 8:30 (on a Sunday?) and finished off the work that I needed to do on my book about the Trans-Labrador Highway, which I posted to the internet, if you would like to read it. And so back to Brussels where I fetched Marianne and we went off to the apartment and spent a pleasant hour or two stuffing some of the contents into Caliburn. At 16:30 the daughter of the owner of the garage that I rented came round and inspected it and I returned the key to her, so that was that and I'n now €49:97 per month richer.

Off to pick up the trailer and the Minerva next and we towed that back to Brussels. And then while we were eating tea (Sunday is pizza day of course) we worked out a programme for Marianne to come down and see the Auvergne during the Easter school break.

Armed with a big flask of coffee I then set out for home again and it al went fine with no problems at all until leaving Auxerre when there was a mighty crash from the back. One of the restraining straps (luckily the one that stops the load shifting forwards) had broken and the Minerva had rolled forward into the headboard of the trailer. This had the effect of slackening off the strap on the front which had then become detached and there was nothing then to stop the Minerva sliding backwards (and then off the trailer into the roadway).

And so for a couple of hours I had to free off the handbrake so that it would work, mess about with the gearbox to lock it in gear, and then hunt down some more straps (not easy when you have a van full of rubbish) and then fasten it down. And a tin of paint and a container of oil became dislodged during the struggle and so that's another mess I'll have to clean up when I've emptied Caliburn.

Finally, to the chirping of the early dawn chorus I had the Minerva strapped down properly, locked in place, and by some judicious manoeuvring of straps and fasteners I could get the tailboard of the trailer in position as well - so that the Minerva won't fall off again.

This is an excellent trailer and well-worth every penny that we spent on it, but it's not a proper car transporter and its high centre of gravity makes for interesting cornering on mountain roads when you have a high-sided vehicle like a Minerva and there's a cross-wind. On a couple of occasions the trailer wanted to go in a different direction than I did and when you aren't expecting it to happen it's guaranteed to get the adrenalin flowing. If I'm going to be moving the Minerva about on a frequent basis (and that is the plan) I need a proper low-loader trailer.

Not far from home I was cut up by an artic that decided that 400 metres was sufficient to try to overtake me with just 2kph different but I got my own back on a dual carriageway bit when I ran him up behind a farm trailer and stuck him there for 8 kilometres.

Then we had another police barrage at Montmarault where I had an interesting 20 minutes with a group of gendarmes (30-odd years in driving in France and I've only ever been stopped once before - and now twice in a weekend. Time I was moving on, methinks). And when I arrived back here, there was the news of the sudden cancellation of one of the events that forms a major part of our radio programmes - and we had just recorded 5 weeks-worth of programmes advertising them too.

And so when I finally did get to sleep, the phone rang again - but this is good news indeed.

Now, thanks to Liz and Terry, the Minerva is off the trailer and parked prettily in its new home, and I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I have some cunning plans