Le Chevalier Anglais

Wake at seven thirty with the strangest dream still vivid in my mind, last night I had browsed electric cars on Autotrader and that must have triggered the dream. In it I could see, vividly, a new kind of battery based on a massive array of capacitors at nano metric scale. The capacitors were made of a graphene and silicon sandwich and discharged sequentially, under digital control, to provide a power source which could drive an electric motor and be rapidly recharged. The key lay in the interface between energy and information at the nano metric scale. A voice in my head said they were two aspects of the same reality. I have no idea whether sequentially discharging capacitors are capable of providing a realistic power source, but my grandson, Clement, is studying engineering with nanotechnology at University College London, so I will email him my dream and ask him to check it out. During my business career, I would often leave tricky problems for a few days, in order to sleep on them and quite often, a solution would pop up out of my subconscious. Today is a perfect winter's day, it is minus 8 degrees centigrade outside, high pressure dominates, the sky is clear blue and there is not even the hint of a breeze. After our full English breakfast, Norman and I collect the terriers and drive to the Westwood. Teddy dashes off at high speed into the woods, while Normy navigates his way round the deeper snow in the wake of myself and Dolly, who remains on the lead. This weather, reminds me of winters in Germany, and is my favourite of any time of the year, perhaps my Nordic genes respond to this kind of environment. I could wander for hours on a day like this, but I have promised to visit Leslie for lunch and to take him some more grapes, so I need to call in at the supermarket first. Norman sleeps in the back of the Chrysler, while I call at Beverley Grange Nursing Home. William is just leaving as I arrive and we chat in the car park before he goes home, he tells me Leslie is in sparkling form today, and when I arrive in his room, the friend I have known and liked for over twenty years, is back. His optimism renewed, at least for now. We walk the corridors, and he laughs when I ask a nurse to make way for the 100m relay team and then we chat for ten minutes before lunch. Today's meal is chicken casserole, with mashed potatoes, broccoli and carrot and swede mash. We are seated with Barbara, Christina and Betty again, Leslie and I discuss our experiences of winter driving, his in the USA and Canada and mine in Germany and the Scottish Highlands. Christina chips in with a comment about the harsh winters in Newfoundland as a girl and lunch progresses in a friendly, convivial atmosphere. Leslie asks if I heard the article about horsemeat being discovered in Tesco beef burgers and it brings to mind a scuba diving course in the summer of 1966, in the South of France, at a place called Le Presque Ile De Porquerolles. We had driven down from Germany and were camping next to a French Naval Base, which supplied us with compressed air for our tanks. The daily living allowance was 6s 8d per day in old money, or 38p in decimal currency. For the Cote d' Azur, it was barely adequate and as the only French speaker, I was assigned the task of shopping for food in Hyeres, the nearest town. There were twenty of us on the course and I fed us all on horsemeat for the three weeks we were there, stews, curries, even braising steak and no one knew any different. However I nearly got rumbled one night in a bar near the harbour, when the butcher I used, sent a beer across for his friend, "Le Chevalier Anglais", I told the lads that he liked to call me his English Cavalier. Leslie enjoyed the story, as did Christina, who like many Canadians has French as well as English. I walk Leslie back to his room and then drive home to Tickton and give Norman some more of the pea and ham soup, which has congealed into a solid mass in the slow cooker. Norman loves the stuff and there is still enough left for supper after the cinema with Alice. After lunch, I play with the drawing app and make a picture of a snowman, that I saw this morning on the Westwood and whilst I am no artist, it is strangely therapeutic and satisfying. I leave the house at a quarter to four, after first letting Norman out and making sure he has plenty of water, before collecting Alice from North Bar Without and then driving to Cineworld at Kingswood. When we arrive, the car park is full, clearly we aren't the only ones intending to see "Les Miserables", for the early showing. We take our seats in screen 3, ten minutes before curtain up, which proves to be a wise move, as the theatre fills completely before the film starts. The director, Tom Hooper, has the cast sing live, and whilst the singing might not be in the first rank, the emotional clout thus delivered is enormous, a real five handkerchief movie, but it is also almost unremittingly miserable, apart from star turns from Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, as the villainous innkeeper and his wife. Carter is in danger of being typecast as the go to girl for weird, but her sense of fun and lack of inhibition, are a marvel to behold. She is, for me, the finest actor of her generation. I hope that she gets some weighty part that will earn her the recognition that she so richly deserves. I would give her the best supporting actor Oscar, for either this, or her Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. Belatrix Rules! As we drive home, the outside temperature gauge reads minus six degrees Celsius, and will probably drop to double digits overnight. Sarah is drying her hair when we get back, so I give Louis a cuddle before bed and then return to Tickton, where I feed Norman and then curl up with Cormack McCarthy's "The Orchard Keeper", before bedtime. A good day, I am particularly pleased with Leslie's progress, long may it continue!