Re-visiting, and listening

1 For a short while, it just Could Have Been. With fewer than ten minutes to go, Italy were leading Wales. Imagine the response if that lead had held. But it Was Not To Be. Italy lost. Ah. For every member of the Italian team, the game will remain one which might just have had another result. If only .... .

2 Meanwhile, Radio 3 has just turned to Opera from the Met, Rusalka. And I am here, listening. The tea is drawing in the tea-pot. I also have Kobbe on the table. How better prepared could a man be. (Maybe you could find the performance on the R3 archive?) The radio at my back, the screen in front. And the sun is setting. And a lovely soprano, perhaps Aimee Fleming, is singing to the moon of her love for the prince, what Kobbe calls 'one of the most touching yet chaste of operatic love songs'.

3 I cycled to Tinsley H on the road-bike. Like your response to Doris, I was conscious that the road-bike was not the comfortable touring one. Re-familiarisation was required. But all was accomplished. I cycled to TH on the drops, head down, eyes just ahead of the tyres. I cycled there in about 40 minutes, perhaps a few more; the return journey took 37 minutes.

3.1 How good it was to have the right kit, to be warm, breeze-tight, and compact. The similarities with the experience of swimming are obvious. After a while, one settles into the routine. In swimming, it is a matter of 'Let the stroke work for you'; on the bike, particularly perhaps the road-bike, the injunction must be 'Keep a steady cadence and let the bike do its job'. In swimming, get your head down; on the bike, get your head down.

4 The detainee, Sergio, was born and raised in Congo (Brazzaville). Now 32, he came to the UK in 2003. He has lost contact with his parents and with his two older sisters. He speaks good operational English. By the time I was ready to leave we had taken to each other (I reckon). The diagrams worked well again. The family trees. The robust map which showed London, Gatwick, East Grinstead, and Brighton. The London to Brighton bike-ride. The Tour de France. I will write to him later on; I will take a postcard with me next time, and he has undertaken to write to me, in French. A bargain. So it looks as if I am back in business.

5 His legal status? He has served six months in prison (for offences which, if I heard aright, were connected with false papers), so I sense that he is the subject of a removal order (or deportation), against which (if I'm right) he has appealed.

6 So a worthwhile day or so. A client's application for a holiday at PMH has been sent; I have received an unexpected cheque for £1500 as a contribution towards the double-glazing of a bungalow; I've posted some papers to the Pilgrimage Office; the profoundly-deaf onetime rear gunner on Lancasters has died; there's just the possibility that two elderly gentlemen, both of whom played squash, may take up their racquets, go on to a squash court, and undertake a simulacrum of a game.

Stayathome