Sunday, October 27. Day 21

This is my first attempt to dictate my blog to my new iPhone. I am going to try to minimize the number of corrections I have to make. It is so so much better than the Wico Lenny. But as I said to Belle the other day, at least having put up with the Wico for so long and become so dependent upon it I really appreciate the qualitative difference between it and an iPhone. Everything seems to work so much better, and I get 4G in the caravan so at last I can speak to my children and my friends with some degree of privacy when I feel like it, assuming they are available.
Delete backspace correct how do I tell this thing to correct my mistakes?

My last entry was for Monday. As usual I can barely remember what happened yesterday never mind at the beginning of the week. (catch up - whenever I hesitate or go quiet it for some reason inserts the word catch or Catchpole, I can’t figure out why] I’ve got myself a haircut and feel like a new (and much younger] man. We spent our last night together in the caravan  and I’m glad that we did. Somehow my space or our space, and not the community’s. On Wednesday morning I went to the dish eatery (aka the déchèterie) with the last of the rubbish and then into town to the phone shop to get myself a decent cover so I now have a fully armor plated iPhone. Came back in time for lunchtime Meditation and did my packing and then S and I went into Poitiers SuperU to pick up the van  which was an impressively large Renault kangoo which claims to be able to carry a tonne. We got back to the house and loaded up S’s stuff and set out at about 4 o’clock. We spent the night in Montluçon, a little town about the size of Poitiers  and found an OK hotel and went out for a nice meal and had a good night’s sleep. The next morning after a very indifferent breakfast we set off again. I suggested we go to Freiberg im Breisgau but somewhere after Besançon S said let’s stay in Mulhouse so we drove into the town at about five after a very nice drive through lovely countryside and a decent lunch in a Routier. We stopped at the first hotel we spotted, the Bristol, very close to the  center. I dropped S off and she went in to check it out while I drove around the block looking for a parking space. She said it was fine and it wasn’t too expensive and actually it was lovely, much nicer than the hotel in Montluçon. We went out for a curry and had a lovely night. In the morning we went for a walk around the town inspected the Rathaus / Hôtel de Ville, which unusually for a French town is not some 19th century monstrosity but a picturesque 15th century building covered in frescoes, reminiscent of Munich Rathaus. Many other attractive buildings including a rather fine cathedral which looked Gothic but apparently had been demolished in the 19 century and completely rebuilt. It was locked so we could not go inside, in fact everything we saw that morning by way of tourist attractions was closed until the afternoon. Despite the incipient Swiss influence evident in smart trams and general neatness clearly their work ethic hasn’t yet crossed the border to Mulhouse. We found another Indian restaurant where we had a very nice lunch but remarkably not hot; clearly the French can’t stand it. Both it and the place we ate last night had Indian customers; I don’t know whether they got different food from us; I can’t believe they were satisfied with the very mild curries that we were given.

So we set off after lunch for Basel got to Ss old flat and managed to blag our way into her cellar ( she had somehow neglected to dig out her key so we asked one of the inhabitants  if they would let us in which in a very Basel like way they did quite happily although S said she had never seen them before and presumably they hadn’t seen her either-or she’s more memorable).  And then we went to Sabine’s where is she’s going to stay for the next couple of months. Susanne who’s flat we borrowed in Barcelona for Christmas was there as well and both of them were very nice. We had a quiet supper with Sabine and Susanne and then walked back to Ss flat to find her key which we managed to do. And so to bed in a very narrow single. Not the way I would’ve chosen to spend our last night together but we managed to get some sleep. I was going to take S to the station in the morning but started to get in a panic about how long it was going to take me to get back to Poitiers so I left at about 8:30 and set off for the péage. All went well making good progress until somewhere around Besançon  one of my rear tires exploded very spectacularly. Fortunately all the kit was in working order although I couldn’t find the magic triangle and I was able to put on the spare in about 20 minutes and carried on. I took a photograph of the exploded tire and WhatsApped it to S and then got more and more depressed driving back to Poitiers and getting no response. By the time I got to SuperU I was all set to go in and buy a bottle of whiskey but in the event I didn’t and Andres came to pick me up at about five and we went back with Rogero  in time for supper and an early night. Still feeling very fed up until finally S WhatsApped me at about 10. She said she’d been very tearful with  Sabine after I left but hadn’t had a signal all day on the train to Perugia. I felt much more cheerful and went to sleep happy, all the more so because we have an extra hour in bed as the clocks went back last night.

Lots of ideas for my retreat which I am making notes on. It will be interesting to see how Laurence reacts.
I’ve been watching a new Netflix serial  called living with myself  which is quite apposite and challenging. The lead character gets himself cloned by mistake intending to get a new himself for me but now the return of him there are two of him the old miserable one and a bright new shiny enthusiastic one. It will be interesting to see how they resolve it all.
Aden sent me a lovely present douglas Murray‘s new book the madness of crowds and I got a nice card from pol With lots of old photographs and saying rather sweetly how she missed hearing from me. I haven’t been in touch for months and completely forgot her birthday until the end of August. I’ll ring her today and maybe she’ll be prepared to offer me a bed when I go over to see Joe’s play next month .