I was woken up by the sound of Brian's coffee rustling and his spoon chiming against the side of the cup, combined with the atomic bomb-like sunlight streaming through the skylight onto where I'd passed out last night. Never again. Never again. Je ne boirai jamais encore!

When I finally lurched down the nails-on-blackboard-squeaking stairs at about midday, I managed to slug a few cups of coffee whilst listening to William's nose hair growing. I'd almost managed to get my head together when he decided to start assembling the band kit and having a little play on the drums, which sounded as if they were actually right inside my head.

By about 13h30 I managed to face opening the door out onto the yard filled with killer chickens in jackboots with megaphones, squawking as if to tell me it was all my own fault. Even Mildred was unsympathetic, but by the time I'd scrunched out of the explosive gravel drive, all but two of my senses had decided to go into remission, which was lucky.

I lay around for a while listening to the lightbulb and decided that I really couldn't go on so had some William Juice (Ribena-like) and a Nurofen, then called Owen for a bit of a natter. After that, I tried to get a little sleep in but kept on being distracted by the sound of the feathers in the pillow.

At 16h00 or so I ventured out into the big wide world, feeling somewhat better for sort-of sleep and liquids, to get some cable for Pip's weather station. I headed out to the Bricomarche in Nontron and got some bits and pieces, before popping into the SuperU to buy some local wine for Jon and Dubbya. On the way back I stopped off at a garage with a white DS21 outside which looked slightly sorry but certainly not beyond the realms of repair. Some rotting in the bottoms of the doors but it could be a fun thing. We'll see. I've not looked at the markets for a few days (although I think they're closed anyway) so it might be possible.

Didn't get the weather station working. There is now power getting to it but it still doesn't answer the phone, so Philip and are I assuming the modem's gone or something in the data logger has ceased to be. We'll think about it more when I get back from the UK. Tony called in the afternoon and convinced me I did want to go to Quimper next week and get shagged rotten after all, so I am.

Brian's in the evening again for a nice belated birthday meal (for him) with people, and a little bit of a smoke. After a few, I got concerned by the tidiness of his matches so spent about half an hour rearranging them on the table before putting them back in the box very carefully so they were all pointing the same way.