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.

There were no hunters ...

... shooting off their guns in the neighbourhood, no low-flying Air Farce jets, no driving rain beating down on the windows in the roof, no mice scratching in the ceiling, none of the neighbours using a chainsaw - and so to disturb my Sunday morning Day of Rest, some b****** rang me up on the phone at 09:00. Makes me thoroughly sick.

So seeing as how I started my day in a bad mood, that's how I carried on.

I watched the odd Bulldog Drummond film. It's amazing what is available to download on www.archive.org - before I went to Canada I downloaded tons of films from there to watch out there in my car at night. Who needs DVDs?

I also continued to catch up with registering the data that I collect from the various recording instruments around here. Every night I write it all down but I've been very lax in entering it on the computer. I need to organise myself much more.

This afternoon, braving the howling wind, the driving rain and the freezing temperature, I went off to watch Pionsat against Clermont Foot.

Clermont sent their under-21 team for the match and even so, it was still no contest. Pionsat were simply swept aside, as everyone was expecting.

  What made it worse was that Pionsat had no goalkeeper again. Michael bravely volunteered once more and despite some heroics between the posts, as you can see in this photo where he brilliantly saves from a Clermont attacker, neither he nor anyone else could do anything about the relentless Clermont side. If I remember correctly, the Clermont goalkeeper just had one shot to save during the entire match.

As is usual in matches such as these, most of the damage was done in the final 20 minutes when the benefits of full-time "proper" training pays dividends. Pionsat's players were run into the ground whereas the Clermont players hadn't even broken into a sweat.

 But hang on a minute - what is this?

Yes, the referee this afternoon has stopped the game and held up play so that a Pionsat player could tie up his bootlaces that were trailing everywhere and risking tripping him up.

Contrast that with last week when the referee allowed play to continue with Pionsat's goalkeeper flat-out unconscious on the edge of his own penalty area, and you will see exactly what I mean about just how much of a poor decision that one was last week. It really was an awful decision.

So with the football over and Pionsat well-out of the cup I came back home and, believe me, I'm not going anywhere else tonight. The weather really is atrocious.

What happened to Sunday morning?

Well, to be honest, I worked through much of it, but from the wrong end. 03:34 when I finished what I was doing last night. I was a little wrong with my estimate of what time it was when I woke up. I reckoned about 10:40 - it was in fact ... errrr ... 12:41.

I must have been really tired and even though this is what Sundays are for, I still felt bad about having missed the morning.

I was having a lovely dream though - I was driving a minibus through some forests on a main road through some mountains and explaining to the passengers that these were the Bluegrass areas of Kentucky (work that one out). We were being chased - not in a threatening way - by two cars, one of which was an old metallic mid-blue Peugeot 403 estate, and they overtook us on a sharp right-hand bend, crossing well over the solid white line in the centre of the road, which was divided into one lane for vehicles going mly way, and the other way had two lanes coming towards me. This bit - the overtaking - I was watching from the air - maybe 500 feet up. Strangely, we were all driving on the left-hand side of the road, so I dunno what all of that might be telling me.

After that, I had just enough time to grab something to eat and then off to Cellule, near Riom, to watch the football.

I shan't be saying anything about the football in this column this evening.

As Ron Atkinson once said, "I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat", or as Jim Finks, manager of the New Orleans Saints once said, after a match against the St Louis Cardinals in 1986, "I'm not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating".

We'll just leave it at that.

But there's a fruit stall at the side of the road just outside Combronde and I noticed that it was having a sale of apples. I'm getting low on them and so a 3kg bag of Red Gala apples for €2:50 seemed like a bargain, espcially as the way fruit prices are at the moment.

So that's Sunday dealt with. Monday is another day.

It was Saturday today ...

... and to be honest, I didn't do very much.

Up with the alarm as usual, and after breakfast wrote the text for the rock radio shows for next month. That seems to be the current way of spending Saturday mornings these days as I try to organise myself so much better.

After lunch I went for a whizz around St Eloy. LIDL now has acquired a bakery, like the LIDL in Commentry. It was the grand opening today and so they were handing out free bits of bread and also coffee to the clients. Nothing of any such at Carrefour though, and in any case I just bought the usual items - nothing at all that was special.

It was my day for meeting people though. In Carrefour I met some friends of my Dutch neighbour Lieneke and we had a lengthy chat. In LIDL I met Michael from the footy club, and we had a lengthy chat too. And he had some exciting news. The draw for the Cup was made this morning and Pionsat, for their pains, have been drawn against none other than Clermont Foot. They were in the French Premier League not so long ago and now play in Division Two - only about 9 levels higher than Pionsat. Even if they send their reserves, which is likely, it'll still be the biggest day ever in the history of Pionsat. We'll have to go all out to attract a bumper crowd.

This evening I went to see Marcillat play, and a more one-sided match I have never seen. About 89 and a half of the 90 minutes were played just outside Marcillat's penalty area and how Villeneuve only scored one goal is a total mystery to me. Even so, it still wasn't enough to win the game as during the 75th minute one of Marcillat's players, the n°8, took the ball all the way from his own penalty area through about 30 tackles and into the Villeneuve box. His shot was blocked but another player following up slotted the rebound into the net. Taking the ball out of the net and kicking it upfield was all that the Villeneuve keeper did during the match.

And me? I'm off to Cellule tomorrow for Pionsat's 1st XI. Michael thinks that we might be at almost full strength tomorow and won't  that be a change?

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.

It's hard to believe ...

... that not so long ago, I was up here in my attic melting away to nothing, totally unable to move with the heat. This evening, not two weeks later, there were about 150 of us shivering to death on the terraces of the football ground in Pionsat.

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The footy has restarted. We had a little competition between a few of the local sides followed by a friendly match between two veterans' XIs (some of whom could still crack it in the lower divisions) and we ended up with the final friendly of the season between Pionsat and Nord-Combraille. Pionsat won that encounter at something of a canter thanks to a blistering 3-minute spell midway through the second half when they stuck three into the Miners' net.

What was even more interesting was that Pionsat had no recognised striker on the field. Cedric wasn't there, and it appears that Jérome (who is probably the best player I have seen in Division One) and Thomas (who on his day is as good as anyone) have left the club. But there were two players out there new to the team, one of whom I've seen playing at Marcillat last season, who took the Miners apart and there was another guy called Rene, who I saw play once last season and who looked thoroughly unfit back then, who seems to have been working hard in close-season and ran the opposition ragged throughout the game.

What is even more interesting from my point of view is that my signboard is up, as you can see on the perimeter fencing. I'm something of a sponsor of the club, not in a big way of course, and that gives me the right to have a signboard. I don't expect that too much will come of it, but it's advertising all the same and no advertising is ever wasted.

Furthermore, it shows solidarity with the local community and that is also very important in my opinion. Participating in the community means that you are no longer an outsider and in my opinion, all ex-pats should make some kind of active participation in the community.

As for the weather, I closed all of the windows on Thursday evening which is just as well as the temperature has taken a dramatic plunge. Last night it bottomed out at 5.5°C, a far cry from nights that didn't drop below 30°C just 12 or so days ago.

What is even harder to believe is that despite it being Saturday, I've been working outside - on the lean-to in case you haven't guessed. This morning I wrote up the additional notes for the October radio programmes (I intend to be well ahead in the future) and then I went into St Eloy to do the shopping. I spent absolutely nothing extra although I did go into Cheze, the DiY place, and buy the glass that I needed (€4:80 - made me wonder why I bought that sheet of perspex in the week). I managed to bring the glass back without breaking it and then trying to find a safe place to put it until Monday, I reckoned in the end that the safest place to put it was into the frame. And hence the work on a Saturday.

Still, it's in now. One less job to do on Monday and I can have an extra 15 minutes in bed to compensate.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my first Sunday off for ages. And I'm going to have a lie-in and then do nothing all day. Just you watch someone ring me up at 10:00 and spoil it!

At last ....

... we managed to get some football in today. My withdrawal symptoms are over.

It's League Cup week - round three as it happens -  and this is why matches have been few and far between this weekend. Pionsat has made it through the first two rounds without my help and today they were up against it - in the shape of Les Ancizes who play three divisions higher up the pyramid and who included two players who played in CFA2 (the 4th level of the French pyramid) last season.

And what didn't help matters was that they gave away three silly goals of the type that I have spent the last three seasons trying to get them out of - a lazy defence that won't talk to each other, won't track back and lack a real dominating presence.

They also conceded a fourth goal that was quite a good effort,and Les Ancizes hit the woodwork twice when it would have been easier to score.

With Cedric working hard up front supported by Nico they huffed and puffed but they never threatened to blow Les Ancizes' house down, but then Thomas came on as a substitute for Jojo, who was clearly not having the best of games.

I first saw Thomas play three seasons ago as a new kid on the block and how promising did he look in those days. But the last two seasons he never seemed to fulfill what he showed back in those days. Today, though, he came on clearly with a point to prove and from that moment onwards the match changed in character. Cedric and Nico scored a goal between them and Thomas ran riot down the inside right position and scored two magnificent goals, including a brilliant diving header that would not have been out of place on the telly.

Highlight though was definitely Pionsat's equaliser. The two players that Les Ancizes signed from higher up the pyramid spent much of the time showing off on the ball and it was odds-on that it was going to end in tears. One of them had already had a narrow excape when he tried to dribble around Cedric on the edge of the penalty area and although he eventually managed to keep the ball,his pass out rebounded off a Pionsat player and could have gone anywhere. But hsi colleague was not so lucky. His effort with just 10 seconds to go rebounded off the referee of all people and fell to Cedric totally unmarked in front of an empty net and Cedric doesn't miss those. 

And so we had penalties - and cool heads at Pionsat saw them through by 5 penalties to 4 and a lucky victory that it was too. It's not often that Lady Luck smiles on Pionsat but she did today and the team can bask in their success here for the rest of the week.

It was also probably the hottest October day I have ever known. Absolutely beautiful. We are having most unseason-like weather just now and I expect that we will end up paying for this.