Contrary to recent rumours ...

... I'm still alive and kicking (as a few people may well discover in due course). What is happening is that my life has, for the moment, gone off in a new direction and, at least temporarily, I'm no longer living at Pooh Corner.

When one is sharing someone else's living space, it also involves sharing someone else's daily routine and that is a daily routine that is totally different to that which I am used to. Consequently, things in my life that I have previously taken for granted are now not so easy to accomplish.

Added to that, we're in the grip of a severe spell of winter just now and travelling the 12 or so kilometres back to Pooh Corner to carry on the good work, fight the good fight and to use the internet - well, that's not so simple either just now.

Apart from that, things are ticking along. Liz and I are still recording the radio programmes, I'm still writing them and researching them (when I can manage to have internet access of course) and there are also loads of new things. Previously, I've visited the far-flung corners of the Puy-de-Dôme thanks to the Pionsat football club. I'm now visiting corners of the département that are even further-flung, but thanks to Leboncoin, the French equivalent of Craigslist or Kijiji. Not only that, I was the other day an interested spectator at a French criminal trial (who says that I don't live an interesting and varied life?) until the Judge decided that the contents of the evidence were not fit for impartial ears and ordered the court to be cleared.

Clearing Bill's house is another activity that is occupying some of my time. We have an interested client for his little Berlingo, but we've no idea where the keys might be, and I promise you that rifling the house of someone for a missing object is not as easy as you might be led to believe if you are an avid follower of these American crime thrillers.    

So tomorrow if the weather improves and we can move about, there's football at Chatelguyon as the season restarts.

And then I'll be on my own for a week or so, which means that I'll be able to go home and resume normal service for a while. Hopefully I'll do the second level of bathroom floor and make a start on plasterboarding the walls. You never know.

In the meantime, enjoy yourselves and I'll be back in touch.