If you thought that last night ...

... was dramatic, what with the Miners coming back from the dead, you should have been at Briffons this afternoon!

Yes, with no goalkeeper and 2-0 down with the game dragging on, suddenly someone flicked the switch and the team came to life - and in the space of probably 20 minutes - they scored 4 times to win the match and to progress through to the next round of the League Cup.

You might indeed wonder how come they managed to score 4 times, especially as Cedric was having the day off, but for a change the rest of the attackers, once they had come to life, looked the part as well and tore the Briffons defence to shreds. Even Vincent, an 18 year old lad who signed for the senior team this year, although about 6 feet tall but weighing about 6 stones, threw himself about and made two goals for his striking partner, as well as hitting the post in the closing stages of the game.

 It was a lovely day to be out as well, a really nice day for a long drive, and I arrived at the ground early enough to see the second half of the previous game - a match in the Ladies' League. Briffons won that quite comfortably (they are second in the league) but the standard of play is much higher than I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised by it all. In fact it made me wish that I would have arrived even earlier to watch all of the match.

But this morning, I'm not sure what happened. Chatting to Rhys until about 02:30, and with it being a Sunday too, I expected to be in bed until midday. But 08:45 when I woke up, and I could not get back to sleep.

So a lazy morning, but I did repair my two chests of drawers that are slowly starting to fall to pieces. At least now they open and close properly.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. I need to clean out at the side of the lean-to and then move all of the stuff onto there from off the hardstanding. That isn't going to be the work of five minutes.

I saw something this evening ...

... that I have never seen before. I was at St Eloy watching Nord Combraille play Beauregard-Vendon in the league cup, and halfway through the match the home supporters started to hurl abuse at the visiting linesman. The Miners' captain ran across the field to his supporters and told them to "fermez la geule" - or "shut your gobs".

It was an exciting match too - with 10 minutes to go Beauregard were comfortably winning 3-1 but then the Miners scored a goal right out of nothing to bring it back to 3-2. Then, with the last kick of the match, they scored an equaliser from a corner. Extra-time followed, and the Miners ran rampant, winning 5-3, including as the 4th goal one of the best that I have ever seen at this level of football.

That led to me doing something that I have never done before in all the time that I've been here. By the time the match had finished, what with extra time and everything, it was 10:45 and so I wouldn't be home for another 20 minutes, far too late to cook tea, but the kebab house was still open and so I bought a large portion of chips to eat in Caliburn on the way home. No vinegar, of course, but they were pretty good chips and I'll go there again if ever I'm out late at weekend.

So what about today then? I nearly missed my shopping slot at Commentry today as well. But there was a good reason for this. Just as I was closing down to go to bed (at a comparatively early 02:30) I had a message to ring Rachel in Canada urgently. And so I did, and it turned out that at the garage in Centreville they had mislaid a box which included, inter alia, my bank card that they keep for me. It's surprising, if not amazing, that you can spend over 90 minutes talking to people whom you like, about a subject as simple as that (and it was all a false alarm anyway as they found it this morning)

The result of that was that it was gone 04:00 when I finished and then I couldn't sleep - still awake again at 05:30. and so it's just as well that the guy up the road started up his chainsaw at 11:00 otherwise I'd still be asleep now.

So what with one thing and another it was gone 14:00 when I set out for Commentry. One of the things that I needed to do was to buy even more tool handles as I'd broken one or two more during the week, and so I needed to strip out the old broken bits before I could go. I've managed to sort everything out (at a price) but the handle for the pickaxe - they didn't have a wooden handle and so he sold me a fibre one.
"This is unbreakable" he said.
"Leave that to me" I replied. "I'll see to that".

I also bought the bits I need to do some work for a client with a solar hot water system, and at LIDL they still had a couple of packets of those LED light strips and so I liberated them. Makes me wonder how many I might have liberated had I managed to make it there last week.

No swimming baths though - far too late to go there, and so I came back here and crashed out for a couple of hours.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Mont Dore - Pionsat are playing Briffons-Perpezat in the cup.