… to the bunker.
And for those of you who don’t remember Lenny Henry, David Copperfield and Tracey Ullman, let me explain.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just down the road from me a mere cockstride away is a huge set of defences that formed part of the Atlantic Wall. They tried to blow them up after the war but with all the dynamite that they used, they just shifted a few lumps of concrete a couple of feet, so they bricked them up and left them.
When I drove past this afternoon, there were a couple of cars and a few people hanging around outside the big one.
With having had a coffee at the football last night, I didn’t get off to sleep anything like as early as I would have liked. I was tossing and turning for what seems like hours.
But I must have gone off at some point because I had a few really interesting voyage or two during the night. Last night I was staying again in the Auvergne in a hotel which was a hotel at the time. There were events and so on taking place in this hotel but the owners announced that they were closing it, so it closed down. I was looking at it and having a look around it wondering how I could make it pay, thinking about having events there but one problem about that was getting people to come there because they would have to travel, and that wouldn’t do that kind of thing in the Auvergne because they would have to go miles. I ended up taking a pile of bottles down and stacking them in some place – I don’t know if I was moving out or whatever so I had to take these bottles out. Some of them were full. I had four milk bottles and another bottle and I was taking them to the bottle bank. This wasn’t in the centre – it was a good walk out of town where I was. So I took these bottles and ended up seeing this farmer, outside his field on the verge on this corner which was covered really thickly in what looked liked cabbages. I walked right over and on them to get to this bottle bank. He came out of his field and he must have recognised me. “Where are you staying now? Marianne’s? Because I have some onions for you”. I replied that I was staying down there permanently now but I don’t know where I’ll be except for the period from the end of June for about three months or so. So he said that he would be in touch with me.
A little later on I was out walking along this track at the side of a road following the traces of a canal. I was taking photos with the Nikon 1. I came to a place where there was a huge waterfall which was actually the water coming down the canal overflow through a sluice. I went to take a photo of it but I didn’t have the camera with me. I thought “God, where have I left this?”. I started to walk back to the last place where I had used it. I came across an elderly woman with a couple of young boys. She had the same camera around her shoulder. So I asked her “you haven’t found my Nikon, have you?”. She said no, that this one was hers. I could see that because it had one or two attachments that mine didn’t have. I told her that I must have put mine down somewhere and left it. So I walked back and they made a couple of comments about me being English. I replied that I wasn’t English really. They followed me and when I reached this place where I had been before and saw this cascade I started to hunt around but couldn’t find it anywhere. They all helped me look. All of a sudden I had to touch my shoulder and I found the camera strap. I’d had it around my shoulder all the time and I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it. It was probably just a little moment of panic that I had had while I was looking at this sluice
No alarm as I said, so a very pleasant awakening at … errr … 09:25, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve been so lucky as to have had a decent morning like that.
With a late start, it was a late breakfast and then, imitating my namesake the mathematician, I did three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.
In fact I was so busy doing nothing that I didn’t have time for lunch. I made my butties and a flask of coffee and headed out for St Pair.
At the Stade Croissant while I was eating my sandwiches and drinking my coffee, US St Pairaise were playing the Entente Sportive d’Haylande from La Haye-Pesnil.
Despite it being a District League Second Division match it was really exciting and just for a change at this level, we had a very even aerial contest with two teams who were both excellent in the air.
And Haylande had a guy playing right-back who looked almost as old as me, with a head of whitish greying hair, but he’d clearly been around the block several times and St Pair’s left winger had no change out of him at all.
The score ended 3-1 for ES Haylande, which was rather unfair on St Pair. But the big difference was that Haylande made the most of their chances and St Pair didn’t. They even had a penalty saved by the Haylande keeper.
But at long last – two teams who knew how to play in the air. Back to the 1970s certainly, but it was very interesting to watch. And the referees’ assessor, with whom I was sitting in the stand, enjoyed it as much as I did.
On my way back home from the football the people at the bunker were still there when I came back so I went to see what was going on.
As I have said before, if you want to know the answer to a question, you need to ask the question.
I’ve mentioned before that there is some talk of opening them up to make a museum and what they were doing today is some kind of inspection after a preliminary clean-up a few days ago.
Me being me, I managed to blag my way in for a visit.
We couldn’t go in by the steps (of which there were two separate entrances down) because they have long been walled up, but there is another way in through a reinforced steel armour-plated blast door.
And so once inside, our little private tour commences.
One of the things that caught my eye once inside was the door into the crew quarters.
As well as being a reinforced armour-plated blast door, it also appears to be a gas-tight door too. You can see the rubber seal around the door if you look closely.
And there were the remains of the rusty, corroded air treatment pipework in the room too.
But this was what I found to be quite interesting.
From the crew room there was a reinforced metal aperture overlooking the main corridor. The guy who was taking me around speculated that it was an aperture for a machine gun so that if the enemy managed to enter the bunker the defenders could seal themselves in and fight back.
That seems to be a logical idea, although the attackers once inside could simply roll hand grenades down the air tubes.
After my tour around the bunker, I walked back home. But on the way back I had an opportunity to look over the hedge at the athletics track.
This is now part of the Gymnase Jean Galfione, named for the local Olympic gold medal in the pole vault, but I reckon that it was all part of the barracks when the army was stationed here.
In principle they could put a football pitch in the centre, but the fierce winds that we have here would make any match here unplayable.
Back here, I make tea. One of the best pizzas that I have ever made, followed by strawberries (I bought a punnet yesterday) and coconut-flavoured soya cream.
Not much happening tonight around the headland when I went for a walk.
There were just a couple of few people standing around on the headland at the Pointe du Roc watching a trawler setting out to sea.
Nothing exciting at all so I came back to do my notes.
Now I’m ready to bed and I need a decent sleep because I have a lot to do tomorrow. Time is running out for some things that I need to do.
