Hello

You are probably wondering where I was last night. The answer is that I was crashed out here on the sofa. I dozed off in the middle of the Panthers v Redskins gridiron game and that was that until about 02:00.

Having lived for so long in splendid rural isolation, I can't come to terms with modern urban living. Traffic all through the night, people moving about at 06:00, dogs barking, horns blowing - no, it's no good for me. I had almost no sleep in my little room.

But anyway, I had a lovely morning up on the panoramic viewpoint just outside Clermont Ferrand playing about with the camera and the lenses and then I went off to Miremont.

On top of an isolated rock near Miremont is a beautiful 11th or 12th century church. It really is a splendid site, the kind of place that has "fortress" written all over it and sure enough, there are the remains of one of these buildings that looks like a Templar Commandery, the large barn-type building with a circular tower at each corner.

It's Marianne's theory that many of the churches that you see on these small buttes in many French villages started life as chapels to some kind of fortified Dark-Age castle-type building, for which the butte was raised as part of the fortifications. During the era of peace in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries the fortifications were dismantled and the chapels were enlarged into churches, prior to the wave of church-building that overwhelmed north-western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Many places however lost their populations as people moved to more-accessible sites and so the churches were never rebuilt by the returning crusaders. Miremont is a fine example of this as the inhabitants moved down into the valley, and so the early church escaped the modernisations and, of course, the stones of the fortifications remained largely unpillaged.

The football was a triumph for the 2nd XI. They've had some really bad luck in matches and at one time were hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table but a good win last week bouyed up their spirits.

This week, for the first time in a couple of years, they played like a team with belief and won convincingly, 3-1, to move up to fourth from bottom. And despite all of the criticism that I have given to the defence, the back four played magnificently and if they could play like this in every match they would have no worries at all.

Emeric, who was unavailable for the 1st XI last night, drove the team on from midfield, and special mention must go to Kevin, who volunteered to play in goal and had an excellent game, and to young Vincent. Vincent has come into the senior side from the juniors this season and has a lot to learn but being coached from the crowd on the touchline, managed to score his debut goal for the team - the first of many, we hope.

The driving rain put a dampener on the proceedings though.

Today I've been catching up on what I should have done this weekend and when I finish it (whenever that might be) I can restart work.

Always assuming of course that it stops raining sometime soon.

I'm not at home.

I'm in one of these cheap unit-hotels in Clermont Ferrand, having a weekend away from home.

In fact there's a good reason for this. Pionsat's 1st XI have a night match (and I can't believe that I've never been to a Pionsat night match away from home) way the other side of Clermont-Ferrand and the 2nd XI have an away match tomorrow early afternoon just outside the city. Seeing as it's almost 100kms home and ten back 80kms tomorrow it was hardly worth going home.

So this morning I went round all od the shops in Mozac, the big shopping centre outside Riom. It's nothing special compared to Montlucon, but at least all of the shops are right next to each other and not scattered across the town. There's a bankrupt-stock kind of shop there and I had some good luck in there. I found exactly the wire netting that I need to make my bean and pea frames, after all this time of looking, and I also found a set of three tyre levers. I only have small ones for things like wheelbarrows, nothing suitable for motorbikes and cars.

The NOZ though is much smaller but they did have a decent selection of DVDs and so I treated myself to 5 for these long winter nights. At €1:95 each it's cheaper than the cinema.

At the footy, Pionsat could only muster a scratch team - it's not easy travelling all this way here for a 20:00 kick-off if you've been working until 19:00 and Ceyrat were a much better side, but Pionsat rode their luck, including François saving a penalty, and the score ended up a lucky 2-2 draw.

Finding food was the next difficulty. I cant believe that even in Clermont Ferrand everything closes at 22:30. Eventually though I did find something and now I'm sitting here and eating it. Then I'm off to bed.