It's been Sunday today ...

... and so I had a nice drive out in the countryside. In fact as far as Terjat, where the home team was playing Target in the Allier League 3rd Division. It's a beautiful setting up there, and you can see right across the valley to the snow-covered hills in the background, and it's over there somewhere, where I live.

Another thing about Sunday is that there's no alarm clock and so with no-one ringing me up at some stupid time of the day, I can lie in until 10:24 without the least pang of guilt, in clean sheets and bedding the bed in its "double-bed" position, back in its old place by the little window. Luxury!

The temperature in here was 13.2 degrees and that's one thing about this new fire that I've bought - with the old one, there wasn't enough residual heat to keep the room warm once the fire went out and the temperature would often drop into single figures overnight. But this fire keeps warm for ages and it's maintaining a reasonable heat (up to now, anyway). and first thing that I did, even before breakfast, was to light the fire again. And I've been warm all day, which is really impressive and just what the doctor ordered. I'm well on the way towards the end of my presentation - one or two more days and it will be done, I hope.

The football promised to be a real struggle, in tjhe cold (coldest day of the winter so far) and the wind. And with Turgid being 3rd from bottom of the lowest possible league in the Allier, and Target being one place below them, I'm not quite sure what I expected. But it wasn't much.

But having been overly critical of the football in the Allier, I have to say in fairness that this was a good game. Turgid played quite well, helped by the fact that Target, while they weren't "bad", they were rather clueless and ran out of ideas whenever they had the ball. In the Allier, where there is no official referee, it's the away side that provides the referee. And so it was a Target referee in the middle today. And he disallowed no fewer than three Terjat goals (two for offside - on one occasion overruling the *home* linesman) and one for pushing in the box, and to be fair I have to say that I was in no position to make any judgement. But despite the handicap, Turgid scored two more goals that were allowed by the ref, and should have had three or four more. Had those disallowed goals been given and had Turgid won 5-0, it would have been a fair reflection of the match. Third from bottom in the worst league in the area? Not on this showing they aren't. I'll be keeping my eye on the fixture list for whenever Pionsat don't have a Sunday match, and I'll wander along here again.

And this evening, with a rip-roaring fire and 24°C on the thermometer, I carried out what is fast becoming a ritual on Sunday evenings, and cooked pizza and garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven bit of my stove. At €270 or however much it was, it's proving to be something of a bargain.