Through a great green front door, thick with decades of layers of paint. Up ancient, rickety, Dickensian stairs in the gloom, each step yielding a creak. Then into the apartment looking out onto the Loire in the dazzling sun.

I've renewed my friendship with the black Labrador called Jaeger at Les Blancs Manteaux, and thereby came to an act of civic heroism. An elderly man walking a small dog was trying to hold back the Jaeger, but was too frail. I promptly grabbed Jaeger by the collar and the old man gratefully carried on his way. The people of the town have commissioned a statue in honor of my bravery.

The Loire burst its banks in the deluge, and there are still parts of the riverside path that are inundated. Walking along, a woman on a bike stopped and asked if the way I had come was flooded. I replied that it wasn't flooded, and it was clear for her to keep cycling along. She didn't seem to grasp what I was saying, and so I became quite insistent that the way was clear. This went on for some time until she pointed behind her at a flood that I was about to encounter. It dawned on that she hadn't been asking me about her way ahead, she had been warning me about my way ahead. I laughed, but she did not.

Even though I'm a hypochondriac, I'm convinced I've got a sleeping disorder.