Category Archives: TaHu

Sunday 26th March 2023 – I’M NOT GOING …

… to tell you the time that I left the bed today because you’ll be as embarrassed as I am. And losing an hour because of the change of time made things even worse.

By the way, did you all remember to adjust your clocks last night? If you live in the real world your clocks should have gone forward an hour but if you live in the UK under Tory rule your clocks should have gone back to 1770.

So really there wasn’t much left of the day in which I could do all that much. The toasted cheese sandwich in the air fryer was not a particular success but not a particular failure either. However, it might have helped had I turned it over half way through the procedure.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And having had plenty of time last night to go places, I hadn’t hung about. I’d recently bought a house in Crewe, in Bedford Street. I was waiting for completion so I could move in because living with the family was just getting on my nerves completely. I felt that everyone was trying to provoke me into a fight or an argument etc, and what is there that is news about any of this? I happened to overhear by accident a conversation that proved that it was in fact the case so I couldn’t wait to leave the family and move into mine. But for some reason signing the contract was just taking an age, just like the contract here to buy the apartment downstairs.

Later on there was some kind of dream about a couple of girls. One of them was very fond of the alcohol and possibly a few drugs as well. I was talking about the situation with a female friend of mine but I can’t remember who it was. I can’t remember the rest of the dream either now but it was a very long and complicated one that went on for quite a while

And congratulations to one of the girls in that dream for being ready in 20 minutes. Congratulations to another one who might have been Zero who was ready in a tenth of the time. And if it had really been Zero, I’m dismayed that that was all that happened concerning her last night – a very brief cameo appearance like that.

There was also something about 3 people, a boy who was rather arrogant and full of himself. He invited a girl out for an evening and she decided to go with him. He also invited another girl out too at the same time and they all met up. He picked up the girl first and then another boy but as the night went on it was the other boy who was spending most of the night with this other girl, flirting around with her. It looked as if they’d become something of a couple instead. When it was time for going home the other guy had disappeared. It was the first guy who had to take the girl home even though it was quite clear by now that she was no longer interested in him. And if that sounds confusing, then don’t worry because it sounded confusing to me too.

Later still I was in prison in the USA I think. First of all I’d been placed in a holding cell and then taken out and put into a reception area. Someone came to fetch me. He handcuffed the 2 of us together and set off with me to my real cell. He was in such a rush that he was dragging me along. I asked “are we in a race or something?”. He replied “you have to be in your cell by 18:30”. We walked down this corridor with doors opening in front of us and closing behind us as we approached the cell where I was going to be imprisoned.

Tonight’s pizza was the best that I’ve ever made. The dough was made to perfection and it just goes to show what happens when you use a decent batch of flour. It might be expensive but it’s worth it. The base ended up being all light and spongy around the edges but beautifully cooked and tasted even better.

So now, after my exciting day, I’m going to bed. It’s exhausting having a lie-in and then doing almost next-to-nothing all day. But tomorrow it’s a 06:00 start as I have a radio programme to do. I’ve not dictated the text yet, never mind edited it, so I’ll be busy for a bit. And then on Tuesday I have the nerve specialist to tell me the damage about my visit to the hospital.

That should be exciting, I don’t think.

Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

… of the last few days, everything finally caught up with me today.

Again, it wasn’t helped by having another miserable, depressing night when I had a real struggle to go to sleep and when I finally did, I had a real wander around in the ether all the way through the night.

Mind you, not that I’m complaining about that because first of all TOTGA and then Zero came to see me during the night and that’s something about which I can feel quite content. They (and Castor too, who has been disappointingly absent for some considerable time) can come to visit me any time they like.

Once again, I was out of bed and up and about before the alarm went off. I had my medication followed by a shower and then I headed for the shops.

First port of call was a bathroom shop called “Aubade”. They sell all kinds of bathroom equipment and fittings, like showers for example, and seem to be quite an upmarket kind of establishment. Although they don’t do installations themselves, they have a couple of teams of approved contractors and the assistant gave me their ‘phone numbers.

She also gave me a catalogue of their products, and that was rather a shame for the poor rain forest that had to be sacrificed. One more page in it and I would have had to have borrowed a fork-lift truck to bring it to Caliburn.

Noz had nothing at all of any interest and LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special. They had some grated vegan cheese on special offer so I bought a couple of packs. I have to encourage their vegan range of products.

When I returned I brought up a few of the things that I’d bought and the rest can wait for later. I had to think about some food though, and there was a stray leek hanging around in the vegetable rack that needed to be used.

First of all I fried a small onion in a saucepan with some olive oil until it was browned.

Then I added the chopped leek and a pile of garlic

Half a teaspoon of cumin, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of tarragon and a pile of fresh ground black pepper went in next.

Two small potatoes were washed and cubed and then added into the saucepan. It was all stirred around in the pan.

Then I covered the food with enough water and added a stock cube and a helping of soya cream, and let it simmer for 15 minutes while I put away the food that I’d bought.

Then I whizzed up what was in the saucepan, added a little more water until it had a nice consistency and then sat down to eat the most delicious soup that I’ve ever made, along with some nice crusty bread that I’d bought.

While I was at LeClerc I’d bought a bargain pack of 2kg of carrots. Next task was to wash, dice and blanch them. When they were ready I put them in the sink in sieves to drain so that I could put them in the freezer later.

Back in here I sat down in my chair and promptly fell asleep. So much so that in the end I struggled into bed where I stayed until I awoke – at 18:00. That was some crashing out.

And while I was away I went off on a little voyage too. I was doing a coach trip. We ended up in Germany. I dropped the passengers at the coach park and they all disappeared with their suitcases. I sorted out the coach etc. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I thought that I’d better go along to look for a hotel. I’d seen a hotel on the way in that looked nice. It was a 5-minute walk away so I set out to walk. As I walked up the back of this car park there was the back of a big hotel-type place there but it looked dirty and scruffy, not very niceat all so I ignored it. As I waslked up to the main road I looked behind me. I could see that the hotel was called the Hotel Adler. It was a huge place. I seemed to remember that it was something that all the passengers had talked about so I wondered if it was actually the tour hotel and where I was supposed to be staying. I had better turn round and retrace my steps to the hotel to have a look.

Once I’d finally recovered I decided that I’d finally make a start on some work but as luck would have it, Rosemary called me for one of our chats. I’m convinced that she set up a camera in here when she came to visit because she always seems to call me at exactly the right moment.

After we’d finished I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about me having a cat. Also, there was a radio presenter who was presenting some stuff. He was quite well-known for certain reasons. But ass I was dictating it I awoke instead and at that moment it all disappeared.

This was another one of these dreams where I had to visit South London, where I seem to visit quite often. We were all at the Underground station picking up the tickets etc. When we had the tickets everyone left. Of course, I couldn’t run – I could only hobble. I shouted at someone to hold the lift for me but he didn’t hear. he went in and went on down. When I reached the lift I couldn’t remember to which floor I was supposed to be going. I always end up on the wrong level at this station and on the wrong train so always end up with an enormous walk at the end because the Underground in South London is pretty poor. I was there scratching my head trying to think which would be the best platform for me in order for me to go where I needed

And then I had TOTGA round last night. She was here at the same time that the physiotherapist was here. As well as giving me plans for the physiotherapy he was giving me plans for counselling. He was trying to have me agree to do 3 things differently and gave me a list. I had to choose 3. But I was trying to talk to TOTGA as well because she was having to leave at 15:30 because her plane back home was at 18:30. I was trying to have this 3-way conversation talking to these 2 different people about 2 different things and nothing seemed to be resolved. I could see that in the end TOTGA was going to go and the 2 of us had never resolved anything that needed to be resolved between us and I doubted that I’d ever have the chance to see her again, which is probably true. He was babbling on all the time about me making pizzas.

Next I was with a couple of people, man and wife. I’ve no idea who they were. We were in Stoke on Trent. They were a couple much older than me. I was round at their house preparing some food but they had no mushrooms. We were down at the Fenton area somewhere so they suggested going to the market in Stoke. The husband and I set off on foot. It was quite a trudge. We went through one set of market stalls, out into the street and reached the main road. He stuck his head in a shop and said that they had none. We wandered round a few market stalls outside that were closed up. They had things like meat out in the open air etc that can’t have been hygenic. By now the wife was with us. We came to a cheese stall where they had some cheese samples. They kept on trying to offer me cheese samples but I told them that I couldn’t take it. In the end we went back to the shop where we were first because we had seen someone coming down the street carrying giant-sized mushrooms. We could see through the window that we had some that were individually priced. We thought that we’d go in. By now the woman had selected some fish from one of the outside stalls. We were about to go in to pay. To go in you had to climb up this rickety wooded ladder and somehow slide in between the rungs into the shop. I thought “I’ll take the stuff and go in to pay because I’m staying with them”. Because of my disability I couldn’t bend my leg enough to enter through the ladder. After trying for a couple of minutes and holding up everyone I gave it up in the end and one of them went in with the stuff. Eventually I managed to enter. There were some people in bed like a geriatric ward or hospital, all this stuff on sale. The woman there was making some drinks, a kind of cocktail. She passed one to me and said “this is for my husband”. Then she passed another one to me and said “this is for the baby. Whatever you do, don’t get them confused”. I had to take them out to the door and pass them to the husband and try to remember whose was what and to make sure that he kept them the way that this woman wanted them keeping so there would be no confusion as to who had the alcoholic drink and who had the soft one.

There was another one about a bunch of people including me getting a round of drinks and something to do with a large box or packet full of butter but I can’t remember anything at all of this.

Finally I was round at Zero’s parents. I hadn’t seen her father for ages and we weren’t on particularly good terms but I had to go round there for something. I was having a chat to Zero etc when he came round. He was surprised to see me but anyway we had a vague little chat. I don’t think that he was very happy but suddenly it started to rain and we all had to go indoors. There was another little girl there and she was out on a bike. Zero ran down to the end of the garden to look to see if she could see her. She shouted that she was on her way back. They started to ask me about my house. He said that I had 2 properties. I replied that in fact I had 3. His wife asked if I’d signed for my house. I replied “not exactly but it’s all paid for etc”. She asked if I’d used the money in that Santander account. I replied “no. I managed to keep away from there and 1 or 2 other accounts. I had no idea how many other accounts I had in total”.

With all of that it’s hardly any surprise that I was totally wasted this afternoon.

Tea was a delicious breaded quorn fillet with baked potato and salad. What with my leek and potato soup at lunchtime I’ve had some really excellent meals today. I’m really doing well with this cooking at the moment.

Tomorrow I have to make some fruit bread again and also go into town for this Home Renovations Fair thing for a few tips about my new bathroom. So it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

It’ll be pouring down with rain probably and that would be enough to dampen my enthusiasm but if I do make it into town I might stop and have my first ice cream of the year. I’m not even sure if I had one last year.

Saturday 25th February 2023 – NOBODY WAS …

… more surprised than me to wake up this morning, bolt-upright, at 07:22. 8 minutes before the alarm went off.

For a change, I’d had a decent night’s sleep. I’d gone to bed at something like a reasonable time and apart from taking a while to go off to sleep, I can’t remember anything at all about the night.

And that’s a big disappointment because one of my favourite visitors came to see me last night. or, more exactly, I went to see her. I went round to Stoke on Trent to see Zero and her parents. They were all there still in bed in their bedrooms so I went up to see them. We had a chat and they all slowly got up out of bed. They talked about going off to a holiday camp sometime in August and asked me if I wanted to go with them. Of course I said “yes”. There was someone else there as well who talked about going somewhere exotic. I said “if you’re thinking of going to North America, go from Casablanca to Montreal because it’s beautiful” remembering the trip that I did a few years ago. A bird flew into the window and later one of the cats was hunting it. I went to grab it but missed. It flew straight past Zero who caught it. She went to put it out of the window. As she opened out her hand it flew back in again so we had to hunt it down again. She stuck her tongue out at me playfully so I scratched the top of her head with my hand like a crane basket. She carried on hunting for this bird.

Fancy missing out on an evening with Zero. You couldn’t make it up.

That flight that I mentioned was quite a good flight. It was when I came back from my encounter with Castor (who has been missing from these pages for far too long in recent times) on board THAT BOEING 787 DREAMLINER. I had no idea of when (if ever) I would be likely to return.

Having gone from Europe to the Far North of High Arctic Canada on board a ship I hadn’t booked a return flight of course, so when I finally decided that maybe I ought to go home, the prices of direct flights were completely out of my pocket so I had to negotiate for a reasonable price. That brought me to Brussels via Casablanca with Air Maroc and I didn’t regret my choice for a minute.

But I shan’t be going back to the High Arctic any time soon. I’ve spent all my mad money on buying this apartment and that will be that for a considerable while.

It wasn’t all that i spent either. I had a rather hectic morning.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I went out to the shops. First of all, I called at Noz where I was in luck. They had some vegan nuggets, rather like chicken nuggets. 2 different varieties so i stocked up with a couple of boxes of each and they are in the freezer now.

They also had one of these silicone baking moulds that I like. I have a few of them for different things, but this one is cake-sized and I don’t have one of those. When I finally move and have a real oven, I shall put that to use. It will be better than trying to bake in a pyrex casserole dish.

At Leclerc, I struck lucky.

When I’d been there a couple of weeks ago I’d found a lump of vegan cheese and thought that that was lucky. Today though, they had slices of vegan cheese and also some grated vegan cheese. It looks very much as if Leclerc is slowly dragging itself into the 21st Century. I bought some of each because, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I have to encourage these places to stock more vegan food.

Back here as I was struggling up the stairs with some shopping I fell in with a couple of neighbours and we had a good chat about not very much at all. I have to be sociable, I suppose, and keep on good terms with my neighbours, even if I don’t feel much like it. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not what you would call a sociable person.

Having put away as much as I could, we’re now back to the situation of no room in the freezer and no room in the fridge either. I bought plenty of other stuff and I’m not going to miss out on buying the burgers that I like at €1:99 for two with a second packet of two at just €0:67

Just after lunch we had football on the internet. TNS v Penybont. TNS took an early lead and missed a couple of sitters. And that was something that they came to regret as Penybont equalised laste in the game from a penalty. And we had the unusual situation of a referee being substituted. That was quite a swelling that the had on his left ankle.

This afternoon I finished off the notes for the radio programmes and i’ll be dictating them tonight before I go to bed. With the Carnavalers having mostly all gone home, it’s much quieter outside now so there’s not as much danger of being disturbed and having to redictate everything. It’s pretty depressing when you have to do that.

Cooking the potatoes in the air fryer worked really well and I’ll have to remember that for the future. It’s not a practical proposition if I’m cooking veg but if I’m having a salad or something like that it’s ideal.

But anyway, that’s all that I’ll be doing today. Tomorrow is a day off but I need to bake some bread rolls. I’m hitting the road on Wednesday for a couple of days so I’ll need something for breakfast on Monday and Tuesday and then something to make some sandwiches for my journey

it looks as if I’ll have to have the air fryer out again.

Wednesday 15th February 2023 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

… left-over curry that was for tea tonight. There was some stuffing left over from the stuffed peppers, a few mushrooms and sweetcorn from the weekend salad, a few fresh mushrooms and a small potato all fried together with an onion and garlic and some soya cream. A handful of rice and frozen veg made it into something special.

The next couple of curries should be OK but I’m running low on some of the spices that I use. I can see that I’m going to have to go shopping if ever I make it back to Leuven, whenever that might be. I can’t find a decent source of spices around here unfortunately.

Anyway, it’ll give me something to think about when I go to bed tonight. I spent far too much time thinking rather than sleeping last night and I expected to regret it, especially when I fell out of bed before the alarm went off, simply because I couldn’t go back to sleep having awoken earlier.

And there was plenty of time during the night to spend thinking too because it was what I would call a “difficult” night. I was in bed much earlier than usual, having finished all that I intended to do quite a bit earlier than I expected, so I decided to make the most of it.

It took a while to go off to sleep though, not that it bothered me too much, and once I was properly asleep I went off on a little travel. There was a group of us who knew each other from our school days. We’d come together, 6 of us, and we reckoned that we’d form a group and go off to perform some kind of series of concerts somewhere. 5 of us assembled but the 5th one was missing so we had to go into Crewe to find him. We suspected that he would be at a railway workers’ social club because he worked on the railway. We went there and I left everyone in the car park while I went in. I asked after him but he wasn’t there. Another one of my friends from school was. He came over. He was extremely upset because he’d read something that I’d written where there was a quote attributed to my father. He was furious that I was putting his words into the mouths of others. I told him in no uncertain terms that if I’d attributed a quote to someone, it’s because that person had said it. It’s extremely possible that in similar circumstances on similar subjects 2 people whom I know are likely to have the same kind of comment in reply.

It was a most unpleasant encounter, so much so that it awoke me. And it was from then on that it all went downhill. I’ve really no idea why such a dream, about nothing very much in particular, should be so disturbing.

But lying awake made me think about other things too and there ended up being all kinds of things churning around in my mind, more of which anon.

However, I must have gone back to sleep on a couple of occasions because I was off on my travels again. And who should come to join me on my perambulations but Zero? What a lovely surprise that was. I was round at her parent’s last night. I’m not quite sure what I was doing. She was there and she had 2 friends her own age round. They were outside in the dark playing housewives, all sitting around a plastic table pretending to drink tea. I was watching them through the window. 1 of the girls took hold of Zero and asked her if she could have a blueberry ice cream with some kind of syrup on it. For some unknown reason Zero was reluctant to make it. The girl was rather unhappy about that idea. She thought that Zero should go and make this ice cream for her.

Then later on I’m not sure whether I stepped back into this dream or whether I had some kind of flashback, but we were back on the subject of Zero’s unhappy family again. I was at home and her brother asked if I would go round to see their father. I told him that I couldn’t because I had plenty of things to do myself. I was busy. In the end I nipped out really early at about 06:00 in the gold Cortina estate. When I arrived there was no-one about so I just sat outside and waited. Then they all got up and started to have a party. I waited until the father came out so I could see him but his son walked past. He said “I thought you said that you couldn’t come”. I explained that I’d managed to find a little time. We wandered off. I thought that he would go to fetch his father but instead his father came out and wandered off doing something else. I could see him in the mirror.

And finally there was something else about something going on in a shopping arcade where there was a post office and post box and films. I wanted to go along to photograph this post office but it was pitch-black. There were all these people walking around there running around. I took the camera but it had to be on a time exposure. I had to hold the camera at a strange angle and press the button then wait for about 20 seconds without moving. Of course trying to push the button with this camera at this awkward angle removed the perspective that I wanted because the camera moved. I had then to quickly try to re-find the perspective that I wanted and wait for the film to take. of course it was a very long exposure being so dark and everyone was moving around. I couldn’t get them out of the way of the lens. I tried 3 or 4 times and had this really difficult struggle to actually make the button work and hold the camera straight, stop the camera moving, keep the people out of the way. None of the photos that I was taking were coming out properly.

So with all of that going on, I must have had some kind of sleep at some point. Especially if I managed to conjure up Zero after all this time. What with TOTGA the other night, all I need now is for Castor to put in an appearance.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I had a few things to do. Like chosing the music for the next round of radio programmes. That involved going through the playlists and tidying them up because over the last few weeks I’ve decided to do things in a different direction.

That means doing some kind of major adjustment to the … errr … 6 playlists that I maintain. With over 1200 albums and 300 artists I’ve split the playlist into 6 with different artists in each one so that I don’t play the same groups too often.

But going back to what I was saying earlier about things going round in my head, one of the things that I was pondering was this question of paying for the apartment. I had a feeling that all of this was about to go pear-shaped so I spent several hours thinking of a cunning plan.

Sure enough, the company charged with dealing with the transfer rang me again today and came up with yet more demands for information. And in the end after much debate and discussion and having thought of a Plan B, I ended up telling them to clear off.

In the past, I’ve said that my bank in the UK is a regular favourite for the title of “worst bank in the world”. But right now, I’m firmly in their hands with their wicked exchange rate, their stupid daily limit and all of that, and it’ll take me forever to transfer the money over at an absurd cost. But the quicker I start, the quicker I’ll finish and the first daily amount has gone off today.

But as we have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … there’s no such thing as a recession. What there is instead is a whole load of money floating around waiting to be spent and no-one can be bothered to put the work in to go out and collect it.

And that reminds me – still no replies about that work I want doing. It’s unbelievable.

The cleaner came here for an hour as usual and made the place look a lot nicer. It’s a good plan having her here. And she took out all of the rubbish which was nice of her. That was a good decision.

So having sorted out allthe music, paired off the music for one lot (and I’ll pair off the other lot tomorrow morning) and had my nice tea, And having written my notes, I’m going to bed.

So who’ll come to see me tonight? It must be Castor’s turn of course, but “I could be bound in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams”. I reckon that it’s going to be more like some member or other of my family.

Monday 23rd January 2023 – THAT RADIO PROGRAMME …

… that i’d been trying to do since Thursday was finished off today quite quickly.

and so was the one that I was going to do today. In fact they were both up and running and ready to go by about 11:30 and I was quite pleased about that.

Mind you, it was all thanks to yet another early start. I might have been in bed by 22:00 but I was awake again at 01:30. I couldn’t go back to sleep either and so by about 04:45 I was up and about having my medication. And then I sat down to start work.

Despite the short amount of time that I actually spent asleep, I managed to go off on quite a few travels. I was in Shavington, in Crewe Road with a great big rucksack on my back. A lorry went past me but he had to stop just afterwards because there was something large like a tractor parked in the road and he needed to go past the tractor. But there was something coming the other way. I could see that this was quite a big lorry so he was probably going to need to go on the pavement to go past the obstruction. The other vehicle was halfway across the road waiting to go past the tractor. I walked back down the path about 50 metres so that it could come past. It turned out to be a Land Rover towing a trailer loaded up with these wooden stakes that are used for making fences. As it went past me I thought that I could go to Crewe this way down a side street so I set off down there. The idea was to go and wait for Zero because I’d waited for her yesterday.

And then I was at work. Someone rang me up to ask if I could go to fetch some roast chicken for his lunch and a few other bits and pieces from the supermarket. It was quite late at night so I went out of the building but couldn’t see anything because it was pitch-black. I couldn’t find the footpath. Groping around, I heard a bicycle coming so I stopped. The bicycle went past me. I found that as my eyes adjusted to the light that I was in fact on the gravel path that leads up to the other office on top of the hill. I walked up the path thinking to myself that maybe I ought to ask for the footpath to be illuminated during the night because I was sure that it wasn’t just me who was asked every now and again to go out again in the dark. It must be helpful for people if they are going between the two offices when it’s dark and they could see where they are going. Eventually I walked through the town and came to where the supermarket was. As I approached I was wondering whether it would be open at this time of night because I wasn’t sure whether it was a 24-hour supermarket. As I turned the corner I could see down into the car park and saw that some of the lights were on, but I wasn’t convinced that there were enough lights on that meant that it was open

Later on I was at work again. My lunch hour finished and I walked through the office. I was originally heading back to my desk but it had been weeks and weeks since I’d actually been given any work to do. I just carried on walking and went out of the front door of the building and then up the hill to the corner of the road. On the left was a big square set down a few steps from road level with some lovely buildings in there. On the right were some more old buildings with a hotel and a market where there was a covered walkway that went over the road to connect two halves together. It was all very Gothic, Victorian etc. I was wondering whether to go for a big explore but I thought that I’d better turn round and retrace my steps and head back to the office just in case on the offchance there might be something for me to do.

There was much more than that too but if you are eating your meal right now you won’t thank me for telling you about it.

Once the radio programmes were finished and the dictaphone notes had been transcribed, the rest of the afternoon has been spent in an exchange of messages with the President of the Residents’ Committee for this building. There are one or two things thzt I need to discuss with her that are quite important but she wasn’t able to help me all that much. I shall have to figure out a few things for myself.

Another thing that I needed to do was to ring up for a lift to take me to this EMG thing on Friday late afternoon. If I have a free taxi voucher because of my health issues I may as well use it0

Tea tonight was a departure from the usual stuffed pepper. The pepper that I had in the fridge ended up in the bin and if it had stayed in the fridge for another 5 minutes it would have walked on its own into the bin without any help at all from me. It was just a shame that i’d already made the stuffing.

When I’ve finished these notes I’m off to have a shower. I have to be up early and out on my way for this important meeting tomorrow morning. And if I have a car I’m going to buy a big load of shopping. I might as well stock up with stuff while I can.

And hopefully Caliburn will be fixed next week so I can get back into the swing of things as I used to. But that will depend on the physiotherapist and what he has to say. I’ll find out about that tomorrow afternoon.

Tuesday 13th December 2022 – WHAT A STATE …

… to be in! Downstairs on the front door there’s a notice “if anyone is going to the shops, could they take me with them?” Can you imagine how things have worked out for me over the last few months?

This afternoon I went out to try to start Caliburn and eventually after much coaxing, he staggered into life. I set off for a drive and probably went about 30 kms trying to warm him up and charge up the battery.

However it didn’t seem to do much good because when I pulled into LIDL car park to see whether I could stagger over to the trolleys, I tried the starter and it was a desperate moment as I almost ended up walking home.

That was enough for me and I decided that if I didn’t leave the engine running and go home now, I never ever would get home. I can’t believe that I’d gone so far and the battery was even more dead than when I started.

As well as that I had to park where there was a kerb because I don’t have the strength to haul myself into the cab off the ground.

And so you can see, there’s a very fine line to walk between discretion and valour and God knows where it is right now.

Last night was another miserable, depressing night with me tossing and turning and I really don’t know what’s happening here either. When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was in no fit state to leave the bed and it was a real struggle for me to sort myself out.

The Welsh lesson though went reasonably well because I managed to prepare for it and I feel so much better when I can do that. However I’m not making the kind of progress that I would like. I’d be the first to admit that.

After the lesson I went for my run around in Caliburn and then came back to listen to the dictaphone. And there was tons of stuff on there from the night. There was a group of us packing to go somewhere. The conversation drifted round to all sorts of things. Several of the people were being extremely difficult in my opinion. One woman was really taking her time filling out a form. Everyone was explaining the difficulties that she was having but I didn’t think that they were anything at all. A few of us were talking about insurance and how it was sometimes quite catastrophic. I told them about how I worked in an insurance company (… and I did too …) and someone a few years later had T-boned my car. They actually worked for that insurance company and had their insurance there and how it was an endless tale of delays. We were discussing this. Suddenly I remembered the girl’s name who I worked with who this girl who was talking knew. I said her name and of course it cut the conversation. I felt extremely guilty about this. We were all sitting there trying to organise this and that one woman was taking so much time filling out a simple form. I was of the opinion that we weren’t ever going to get away at this rate
This meeting where there were people on about this insurance company and everything like that was where that guy stood up to make that announcement that his girlfriend was pregnant or they were getting married or something. That was really raining on everyone else’s parade at that particular moment. They were all disappointed that their thunder had been stolen.

There was some kind of tropical storm hitting the Carolinas and everyone had taken shelter. I’d gone with a news party to have a look at the situation inside one of these bunkers because the roof was damaged and water is getting in. I found several women, one of whom I knew very well, busy rolling up tissue and cloth in order to make some kind of something or other that would pass the time. This particular girl was working so quickly that she was way ahead of everyone else. While I was talking to her I looked up. A young girl who had come with her into the shelter was walking past on her way to the corner to lay down. I drew this woman’s attention to it. She invited the other one over to come along and join her to fold up tissue. Of course they started chatting like a couple of people in this situation would.

It was Friday night. I’d finished work and gone home. There was a story on the radio about how business was suffering from big bankruptcies and P-registered Cavaliers were being sold for as little as £3,000. I was wondering whether to go round to see a friend of mine and his wife, and of course Zero but thinking that I’d been round there every night this week I imagine that they must be becoming pretty fed up. The last thing that I wanted them to do was to stop me going round at all. So much as it hurt me, I decided that I’d stay at home tonight and start to sort through my toolbox. While I was doing that the TV was on. There was something happening about relief supplies involving DiY equipment. A whole pile of Opposition amendments were taking place to ensure that the Queen paid VAT on everything. They were all being passed so obviously there was some kind of mini-revolt going on in the House of Commons. Ordinarily that would have been just the kind of thing that I would have talked about with my friend but with having made a vow not to go round tonight I decided to keep to it and stay at home. I started to go through my toolbox making up kits of things that I might need in the future like electric sockets and so on

But imagine that? How many times is this that during the night I’ve turned down an opportunity to go and see Zero. I must be ill or something.

Tea was falafel with pasta and veg. I was hoping to have some potatoes so that I could have sausage, beans and chips tonight but that was something of a failure due to the issues that I had at LIDL. I hope that some good comes of my sign because I can’t go on living on my stocks of food. Rosemary and I talked about that on the ‘phone earlier and this was one of the things that galvanised me into making my sign.

And so we’ll see. It’ll be nice if it works and I can get some stock back in. The cupboard will be bare before I know it if I’m not careful.

Tuesday 27th September 2022 – NOT VERY MANY …

… photos today. And when you look at the photo of the beach down towards Donville les Bains you’ll see why.

When I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland I was almost swept away in a rainstorm and at one point I was even thinking of giving up and going back home. However I trudged wearily and wetly on around my circuit.

So providing that I haven’t caught pneumonia or something else and don’t pop my clogs I’ll tell you all about my day.

And as usual, when the alarm went off at 07:30 it was a struggle to leave my stinking pit. And after the medication I came back in here to revise my Welsh ready for my lesson.

Mind you, I need not have bothered because it was a pretty gruesome lesson. It didn’t go according to plan at all and I made rather a mess of things. Somehow I’ve not been able to get to grips with things since we started back and that’s quite depressing.

After the lunchtime fruit I’ve been organising a few things. There’s a little something simmering away on the back burner and I need to prepare for it. and so I’ve been dragging stuff out of cubby holes and that sort of thing today

Another thing that I’ve been doing is checking all of the electric stuff and making sure that it’s fully-charged. It’s twice this week that I’ve been caught with my batteries flat.

And that took me up to the time when I usually go for my afternoon walk.

It’s no surprise that there was almost no-one down there on the beach. There was just one person out there at the water’s edge eyeing the waves but I was more interested in this guy here.

Al dressed up for the wind-surfing complete with board, but he’s on his way back to the steps up to the Rue du Nord. Obviously the storm was far too much even for him.

It was certainly far too much for me and as I said, I was in half a mind to turn round and go back home.

However, I carried gamely on, not that it did me any good at all because I couldn’t see a thing out there. There was just one person running around on the lawn and that was that. There wasn’t even anyone on the bench at the cabanon vauban..

And so I pushed on along the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was going on there.

And yet more excitement in the chantier naval again today. The only boat that remains in there today is Briscard. The other two, Gerlean and Chant des Sirenes, have now gone back into the water.

Not that this is a good day to be going back into the water. I certainly wouldn’t want to be out there today, not in a 25-ton fishing vessel anyway. We would have been OK on a 12,000 tonne vessel like THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR

And thinking about that has got me going again, hasn’t it? High time I hit the frozen north. What actually brought that to my mind was how cold and wet and windy it was. It actually felt like the Arctic standing there today.

Today is usually the day that one of the freighters from Jersey comes into port.

And there’s a huge pile of freight waiting on the quayside to be picked up as you can see, but this isn’t really the kind of weather that you would expect to see one of them struggle into port.

The two lorries there are quite interesting though. The other day we saw two refrigerated vans parked back-to-back with their doors opened. Today, there are two refrigerated artics doing the same thing.

It must be some kind of ritual, I suppose.

But there’s something going on here in the Rue du Port right now.

There was something in the news this morning about the bus routes being closed this weekend and this is probably why. There’s some kind of concert taking place by the looks of things and they are busy setting up the stage.

Last year, I vaguely remember something about this so I’ll have to look through the old records to find out.

Back here I had a coffee and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams where I had all of my work in a total mess so I was planning on retiring. I had my German homework to do but I hadn’t done it and I hadn’t done the next lot. The tutor started to harass me about my German. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to drop it or not. I explained that I was in a really bad place in my head at the moment. This wasn’t really the time but she kept on insisting. She started to talk about how badly she’d been done by some people. The football team that she’d trained for a football match who had let her down. This conversation started off being about me and my homework very quickly became a conversation all about her. I felt even more isolated while this was going on than I did before.

And I also have the very, very strong feeling that Zero was around last night too, but there was nothing on the dictaphone about that. That’s bizarre.

The rest of the day has been spent doing a load of washing and carrying on with what I was doing before I went out.

Tea was a burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes and then I had another meal to cook because there was still some stuff left in the fridge that needed to be eaten.

So now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. I’ve forgotten all about a football match tonight which was sad, and I have a busy day tomorrow so I’m not going to be hanging around for long.

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

And never caled me “mother”!

Thee have been wholesale changes in the chantier naval today and I seemed to have missed them all!

The only boats that are still there from the five that were lined up at the side are Briscard and Chant des Sirenes. And add to that the fact that Gerlean has now moved over there too, and you can see that they have been really busy.

Everyone else that we have seen in there over the last couple of days has now gone back into the water.

So what’s going to happen next?

Also gone! And never called me “mother!” either are the crowds of people

Autumn has certainly arrived, and arrived in spades too. As a result, despite the fact that there was plenty of beach to be on, there wasn’t a single person – or a married person either – taking advantage of it.

By the looks of things, everything is quietening right down ready for winter to arrive. All we need to do now is to clear out the caravanners and we’ll be back to our normal sleepy selves, and I won’t ‘arf be looking forward to that!

The beach isn’t the only thing where winter is a-cumin in.

Over there at the ferry terminal we now have two of the ferries parked up. Belle France is over there at the front of the queue and behind her is one of the Joly France boats.

We can tell from the windows in “portrait” format and the lack of step in the stern that it’s the newer one of the two. Chausiaise is in the inner harbour so all we need now is the other ferry and we’ll have a full house.

In the foreground, nothing to do with winter, is the little Le Roc À La Mauve III whom we saw for a while in the chantier naval

The final event that has underlined the arrival of winter relates to the Channel Island ferries.

Victor Hugo has been moored in the harbour for quite a few days but she’s now been joined by her sister, the single-hulled Granville that plies between some of the smaller ports up the coast and some of the ports on the minor Channel Islands like Alderney and Sark.

The fact that they are now both here seems to imply that they aren’t going to go anywhere until next Spring. And I hope that next year when everything starts up again we’ll have a much better service than we had this year.

But while we’re on the subject of going anywhere … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve been going places today.

So while you admire some of the photos that I took while I was out and about I’ll tell you all about it.

And the first thing that I wanted to say was that I actually went out on the bus. The event that I attended was taking place at the rear of the Agora Centre on the edge of town and as the bus passes by there, I reckoned that I would leap aboard instead of going in Caliburn.

Especially as travelling on the bus around the town is free. I should really do more with that.

Mind you, I was lucky that I went.

The bus was due to leave at 09:10 and the nurse was also due as well and he can come at any time. I was half-expecting him not to come until after the bus had left but he turned up with 10 minutes to go.

Having had a shower earlier in the morning I was ready and so immediately after he left I grabbed my things and was out of the door. I made the bus in seconds flat, which you must admit is an amazing piece of engineering.

It was pouring down with rain this morning, and I had to wander around in the wet to find the place that I wanted.

It’s the old Ecole Pierre et Marie Curie that closed down last year. The town has bought it so that they can bring into one place all of their outlying offices instead of having them scattered all around in various buildings.

It’s been refurbished, so they tell me, which I find surprising – it must have been in a dreadful state before – and some of the services have moved in. Today was the formal, official opening and I’d been invited.

There’s plenty of room in there. I must have counted as many as 20 old classrooms, of which only a handful were occupied.

Consequently they have made a lot of the empty rooms into “communal rooms” where the various associations can rent a space to hold meetings, and several “likely tenants” were there. I spent a lot of time talking to someone who runs a ballroom dancing class.

Interestingly, they have ploughed up what I suppose used to be the school playing field and that has been converted into some kind of communal garden rather like an allotment site. Now doesn’t THAT have possibilities?

But why I was there was that one of the rooms has been seized by the organiser of our radio station.

We’ve never had a studio. Everything is always done at the home of whoever is presenting the programme and that can sometimes be inconvenient. But right now we have staked our claim and thinks can only (hopefully) improve.

It’s nothing like the type of studio that I would like to have, with a separate control room, sound insulation and absorption material all around it, but from small acorns large oaks grow and they’ll begin to realise the shortcomings and do something about it.

Thierry drove me home afterward so I didn’t even have to wait for the bus, and I could then carry on with my work.

As it happened, I’d already done quite a lot of work. With the alarm going off at 06:00 I was out of bed immediately even if I hadn’t gone to bed until after 23:00 and had a bad night, all of which just goes to show that I can do it when I really try.

After the medication, having a shower and checking my mails I made a start on the notes for the radio programme that I’d be preparing today. And not only did I finish writing the notes I’d actually dictated half of them when the nurse interrupted my progress.

Back here later I had a very late breakfast and then carried on with the work.

And it took an absolute age to do because it was rather a different way of doing it today. Usually I just trawl through my databases when I’m choosing the final track and pick one that matches the available timeslot less 45 seconds for a closing speech.

Today though was a themed programme and I didn’t have the same choice that I would otherwise have. I had to choose a track from a very small selection and adjust the length of the speech to fit.

And then in an error of calculation I was 10 seconds short so I had to re-dictate the final speech with some extra stuff in it and then re-edit it.

As a result it was a very late walk around the headland. At least the rain had stopped for a moment but there was a howling gale that had sprung up. I was the only one out and about and I could understand why.

You’ve seen the beach already, and there was nothing else of any note on the north side of the headland.

The storm was keeping everyone else in today except for a few brave souls such as those people in the little boat out there sailing … “dieseling” – ed … past le Loup, the light on the rock at the entrance to the port.

You can see how much she’s struggling against the wind in this photo, and although I wasn’t in the best position to take it, it was too good an opportunity to miss as it would soon be in the shelter of the headland.

This boat is having even more difficulty coming into port.

This is Calean whom we have seen on many occasions in the past. And I’d seen her way out at sea fighting her way past the waves and she had taken an age to come into the bay.

In fact she didn’t have it easy coming into port either because as you saw in one of the earlier photos there wasn’t a lot of water in the harbour so she’ll have to ride outside in the storm for a while until the tide comes in a little more.

Surprisingly, there was someone on the rocks at the end of the headland.

THis fisherman was having plenty of fun fighting the storm but he didn’t last long. He evidently heard me coming because as soon as I arrived he folded up his gear and cleared off.

There was someone on the bench at the cabanon vauban as well but as soon as I arrived he did likewise. I really ought to change my deodorant.

Crossing the road was rather a bad time as I hit the school buses going home. A whole fleet of them. Discretion was the better part of valour so I stayed on the pavement until they’d all gone by.

On the way home I took a few photos that you have already seen, but there was this one too.

Actually it’s cropped out of another one and although it is missing some of the hull of Cap Pilar, it’s of interest because it shows quite a lot of her distinguishing features.

One of the things to do eventually is to make my own fishing boat database for the port with photos of all of the boats showing their name and registration number so that I can refer to it in future.

No time like the present.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And then later (“later than what?” I asked myself) I was walking around an island. I started off in the company of Zero but we met other people. Gradually they wandered off and I was on my own. Because I’d had no orange juice I went to look for a shop that would have them. There weren’t many shops on this place. There used to be 3 but now there were only 2. Now the hotel had a few possessions as well, things to sell. I went to the first one but I ended up being side-tracked. I bought something else but completely forgot about the orange juice. Later on, when I was wandering around waiting for someone I remembered the orange juice as well. By this time I was a long way from where the shops were and I didn’t want to go to the hotel to see if they had one to fill so I had to go all the way back to the shops and have a look in there. But there was much more to it than this. It was a dream that went on and on and on as I was walking around this island and it lasted for ever.

I couldn’t go back to sleep after this but I must have done at some point because there was some kind of office meeting taking place. I was having to question a couple of people at this meeting. It concerned an interview between 2 people that had taken place on Monday. One of them was management. Some meetings between more members of staff who were senior grades and representatives of employers. There was a third topic too but I can’t remember that. I had to ask that question at 4 or 5 separate meetings. The first 3 or 4 went fine but in the final one I lost my plot, lost where I was. That was because in the first question I asked about this meeting with one member of staff, someone whom I believed was a member of staff shouted up and shouted “yes” in answer to a question. Of course no-one was even supposed to know about it except me. Anyway I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep after that

When the alarm went off I was somewhere in a hotel with a group of people. We’d been driving somewhere and going down this steep hill it was pretty dark. Some guy kept shouting “no, no, no! You’ve gone the wrong way! Stop, stop stop!”. In the end we stopped and had to retrace our steps then turn to the right. We followed a canal for a while. There was a sign for an abandoned railway station and we passed through some kind of derelict abandoned village. That was where I dropped something that I was carrying over the side of the jeep so we had to do a U-turn but the jeep behind us picked it up and gave it back to me. Someone in the jeep asked if I really enjoyed camping. “No” I replied. “I’m a hotel person myself”. And this really was an extremely realistic dream too that shook me rather when I awoke and found that it was a dream.

But at least Zero had come to see me during the night, although not for long. But let’s just be thankful for small mercies.

Tea was a delicious stuffed pepper, interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary, so I called her back later.

1 hour 45 minutes we were on the phone talking about this and that, and especially how Miss Ukrainian is enjoying going to school even if it is just part-time for a crash course in French. As a result, I’m running horribly late today.

And a Welsh lesson too so I need to be fully fit and raring to go. Still, we can all dream, can’t we?

Friday 23rd September 2022 – THE END OF …

… an era. And I’m not talking about anything to do with la Soupape I and Philcathane either.

What I’m talking about is what is – or more correctly, isn’t – behind them on the quayside.

In all of the excitement yesterday I omitted to notice that all of the equipment for the gravel boats has gone.

When we were on our travels on Wednesday we noticed a huge crane pull into the harbour but I forgot to go and check what was going on on Thursday and so I missed its removal.

It’s all been sold to the port of St Malo and they sent a lorry or two to pick it up and take it away. And that’s the end of the gravel boats coming into the port.

Presumably that’s going to underline the slow demise of the port as a cargo hub and I wonder how long it will be before the little freighters to Jersey move on. With the gravel trade going, the Chamber of Commerce who runs the port will have to think about how it’s going to finance all of the rest of the operations here.

But there will be another time to worry about that. While you admire a few photos of Le Coelacanthe and Le Tibériade having fun and games out in the Baie de Mont St Michel, I shall tell you about my day today.

And although the night was rather later than it otherwise might have been I still leapt out of bed with alacrity (and you thought that I was on my own too!) at … errr … well, maybe not quite 07:30.

After the medication I spent some time slowly dragging myself to my feet, which was not easy today, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And we started off the night at Zero’ house, and wasn’t that a nice surprise?. There was something going on there about books. I can’t remember what I was actually doing now but she was there. So was her father. Our mother had died. There was a handbook for a Ford van, an E83W vzn, of which my father had two, one after the other, when we were kids and I do actually own a handbook for one, would you believe?. This was being given now to my father so I had to write an inscription in the flyleaf. There was also an encyclopedia left to my mother by someone called “Red George”. That had to be gifted to my father as well so I wrote the dedication in the flyleaf for the workshop manual then I was hoping to disappear with that so that I could present it and the pen over to my brother so he’d write the second dedication then I could get off and see Zero but I had a feeling that this was something where there would be some kind of ceremony or something about and of course she would be long gone by the time that all of this ended.

And this situation with my family trying to spike my guns when I have something interesting going on has a very familiar ring about it, doesn’t it?<

This next one was another dream that didn’t really get going. It was all about how I write up my blog. How I list all the image files which I normally do and then copy them onto a blank page and then fill in the text all around it but for some reason I was copying and pasting into the wrong file at the wrong time at the wrong place and generally speaking I couldn’t really co-ordinate my movements at all. It ended up being something of quite a mess which was a shame. It should have been so simple but I was finding all these ways to complicate it and time was slipping away.

And that’s a regular occurrence too, isn’t it?

But later on, when I was in work. TOTGA turned up for the first time in God knows how long and that was quite nice too. It’s been a good while since she’s been around. We started to talk and I invited her out for a meal as it was lunchtime. She agreed but she told me that someone else had invited her out at lunch and she was thinking of going with them. I immediately downed tools and said “let’s go now ourselves”. I asked her if there was anywhere she didn’t want to go because of other people whom she might meet. I stood up and started to walk out but suddenly realised that I had to pay for the meal that I’d had a while ago. I had to find a waiter but it was the equivalent of LIDL in here. Everyone was queueing etc. In the end the guy with me (for I was now with a guy) muscled his way in to the front of the queue and started to prepare my bill for me as if he was a waiter here or someone like that so that I could leave.

So while you look at the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou going out into the bay past le loup, I was in Virlet last night, taking stuff down to my house. I was doing it and there were one or two other people as well. Loads of other people came to join in. They were bringing stuff with them and putting it in my house as I was trying to sort through it to see what I had. Amongst the things that took me by surprise was a box that I thought was full of screws but when I looked underneath there were boxes of nuts and bolts etc, spark plugs and a condenser and set of points for the Cortina, all kinds of treasures, so I started to sort them out. Other people were bringing stuff. Someone pointed out a lorry fuel tank that was there. He was saying that when he put it there it was in good condition but someone had dropped something on it so it was now dented and useless. I was bringing a large plank with me. there were a couple of kids who were trying to get in my way by grabbing hold of the plank as I went past so I shouted at them. Some woman came past with some stuff that she had found that someone had apparently dropped. There was a fire burning in the grate even though the place had been empty for years. I asked if someone had lit a fire and they replied “yes”, not that I minded because it was cold. It was quite a little hive of business going on in there. At one point I had to find something. I remembered that it was in the fuel tank of my old CZ motorbike so we had to dismantle that but I couldn’t get my hand in to pick it out. I needed things like a long twig or something that I could push inside to dislodge this item. Everyone was really busy.

And apart from that, I’ve been doing stuff on the internet and not having a great deal of fun doing it either.

But there are moves of some description afoot to which I need to attend and they won’t be done if I sit on my derrière and do nothing.

Consequently I have had “arrangements” to make.

And as usual, half the people to whom you write or otherwise try to contact don’t reply to you. People talk about there being a recession and how hard it is to earn money these days. And here I am, with a desperate need to spend some of it and it’s far too much like hard work for anyone to do what is required to prise it out of me.

That was the cue for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

It was like November today. Wet, windy, foggy and overcast so my hat comes off to these two people here, especially the one who looks as if she’s just this minute come out of the water.

Not quite à la Ursula Andress, but never mind, hey?

And as far as I could see, they were the only people down there on the beach, and that won’t be a surprise to anyone who was out there this afternoon in this weather. I was in a sweater and a rain jacket in a vain attempt to keep myself dry.

Here are some people in a zodiac having a sail around offshore, as I noticed as I continued on my way.

I don’t know what they were doing but whatever it was, they were doing it with a loud-hailer for the rest of the day,

The kids were also out there again though, orienteering around on the lawn around the bunkers. One little girl had a little chat with me which was nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I competed in the North West England Schools Championship on one occasion.

As an aside, not long after I moved to Brussels I saw someone wandering around in sports gear carrying some orienteering equipment so I wandered over to him to ask him.

He was aghast. The moment I began to speak to him he took one step back and stuttered “On se connait?” – “do we know each other?”.

In the end, I ended up running around the streets of Schaerbeek and Evere at night on my own

You’ve seen already a few photos of Le Coelacanthe and Le Tiberiade and one of the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou out in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

At one particular moment we almost had one of Tom Rolt’s “Greek v Greek” moments and I thought that it was quite appropriate that the lifeboat was in the immediate vicinity.

From what I could see on their radar plots, they had both been fishing just offshore and were now considering whether or not to head for home. You saw Le Coelacanthe coming into the harbour in one of the earlier photos after she had made up her mind.

And on the AIS database she didn’t have a photograph. But now she does!

With no-one at the cabanon vauban this afternoon, I pushed on towards the harbour on the other side of the headland.

And it’s “all systems go” at the chantier naval this afternoon. And about to go is Le Poulbot after her length stay in port.

She’s sitting in the cradle in the portable boat lift waiting for the tide to come further in deep enough to drop her into the water.

Gerlean is still there though. You can just about make her out on the right. And L’Omerta is still there too, although you can’t see her.

But also gone! And never called me “mother!” is Pierre de Jade. Her berth is looking quite empty now.

But someone stepped into Le Poulbot‘s shoes before she has even gone into the water. In her place is the pink Suzanga, one of the newest trawlers here in the port.

She’s been here not quite two years and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we “scooped” the local press by having her photographed and recorded here before they did.

So who is going to come along and claim the empty berth then?

Meanwhile, with both Gerlean and L’Omerta being in the chantier naval, we have other fish frying over at the Fish Processing Plant.

Moored there today, amongst several other boats were Calean and behind her, La Grande Ancre. And there are a couple of guys standing on the lower level by the van taking a great deal of interest in whatever is on the stern of La Grande Ancre.

Behind them, Le Coelacanthe had by now come in to unload. There was another boat too and waiting her turn to dock at the quayside was Le Tibériade.

It’s a shame that there are a few boats that habitually moor up at the wharf and prevent other ships from unloading quickly and having a rapid turnround.

So that was that and I headed for home and a coffee.

And I wasn’t the only one heading for home as around the corner towards port came Belle France from the Ile de Chausey with a crowd of passengers on board.

And I bet that they would far rather have been out there yesterday when there was everything going on in the bay. It was quite quiet and boring there this afternoon.

Armed with my coffee I carried on working and then knocked off for tea.

What I’d been doing, surprise surprise, is going through the Accounts of a football club in Wales to see if I could identify why they would want to allow themselves to be struck off the register at Companies House and compulsorily liquidated when they had assets of about £400,000.

That’s a saga that will run and run too.

Tea tonight was a Left-over Curry, delicious as usual, and then I had to run as I’d forgotten about the football this evening.

It’s this weird competition organised by the Scottish Football Association that includes the leading part-time clubs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. TNS were at home to Dundee tonight live on the internet.

Really, it was no competition. TNS had by far the lion’s share of possession but I don’t think that Dundee ever broke into a sweat. They just stepped up a gear when it mattered and made it look easy.

The difference between the “professional” clubs and the “amateur” club is the fitness.

You watch when a big team is playing against a minnow. For much of the game the teams can slug it out toe-to-toe but the danger periods are the first five minutes of each half when the lesser team is struggling to come up to the rhythm and the final 15 minutes when the steam has gone out of the lesser team.

And sure enough, Dundee rattled in two goals almost straight from the kick-off for the second half, and added another one right at the end. They were just in a completely different class to TNS.

Bed time now, and I wonder who’ll be waiting for me. Zero and TOTGA again? Or Castor? It’s about time she put in an appearance again. But my money will be on one of my family coming along to spike my guns.

Watch this space.

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… a new record for the completion of our radio programme this morning. So while you admire several photos of the marine activity out on the water today I’ll tell you all about it.

Actually, I’m not quite sure what happened today but at about 10:10 this morning I was about to start dictating the final speech for the last track, and once that it would be edited, it would be done.

For some reason though, probably an error of mathematics, I ended up with 10 seconds too much of speech. That was quite disappointing because I’d taken great care to make sure that the length of speech was correct. One like of text in my text editor is about 290 characters and that equates to about 17 seconds when it’s edited down so I have a reasonable idea of how long a piece of text takes to dictate.

So finding 10 seconds of speech to “lose” from what I’ve already dictated and merged into the programme so far isn’t as easy as it might be. Sometimes there’s a nice piece of speech that is ripe for editing out but there might be the introduction of the track of music to which it relates that overruns it.

Anyway, while it finally saw the light of day at about 10:50, which is still quicker than quite a few that I’ve done just recently.

But almost as soon as I started to listen to it to make sure that it was OK, Rosemary rang me up. I’m convinced that she hid a camera in here when she came to visit a few years ago. Anyway, we had one of our lengthy chats again.

But the good news is that Miss Ukrainian has started school today at the High School in the nearest town to where Rosemary lives. I’m sure that that’s a good idea.

Even if she can’t speak French and follow the lessons, she’ll be mixing with kids of her own age. Where she’s living right now there’s no-one around at all of her age and a young teenager needs to socialise

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was something of a mess.

It was later than intended that I went to bed, and then I didn’t have much sleep because I must have travelled miles during the night. To start off there was a lady-friend of mine. I don’t know who she was but she started to date someone who was a cross between Boris Johnson and Bill Bailey and only had one leg. he was a famous politician and would sneak away from meetings etc to be with her. On one occasion the two of us had booked somewhere to stay but there was only one double-bed so we thought that we’d just have to make the best of it. Biy he turned up as well so it ended up with three of us in the bed. I went out to go to the bathroom ready to go to bed. He and this woman were in there so I said to them on parting “don’t forget later on in the night that your partner is the one on your right. When I prepared to go to bed his security team was there. They were looking for him so I didn’t say anything. I went back to another room after I’d had a wash in order to leave them to it for a while.

Back in the same dream later I was up and about. Those two were still in bed. Meantime the house was filling up with people. Eventually the woman got up and came in to join us. I asked her if she knew what “discussing Uganda” meant. She replied that she didn’t. I said that if I come out with the phrase, do me a favour of bursting out laughing and I’ll explain it to you later”. She wondered what I meant by that. Eventually he came out of the room. I explained that Zero (who must have put in an appearance somewhere but shame as it is to say it, I can’t remember her being there)’s mother had been to collect her, implying that we had a young child in the house at the time last night etc. After about 10 minutes of embarrassed chatting from their side I said that I’m going off to wash my hair so I’ll leave them alone and they can “discuss Uganda” or something like that. The other people in the house knew exactly what that meant and burst out laughing. I went into the bathroom, used the bathroom and went to wash my hands and found that someone had coupled the shower up to the tap and hadn’t undone it afterwards. As soon as I turned on the tap the water went everywhere and soaked the bathroom. I managed to stop it, opened the bathroom door and hurled a huge volley of abuse about the person who’d had a shower and left the shower attachment attached to the sink and not removed it at the end. Of course you can guess who that probably was but it was an impressive volley of abuse all the same. I started to look for something to clean up the mess.

Back in this dream for a third time. I said that Zero had gone home and the kids who had been on the trampoline were leaving. I gathered that those 2 had gone back to bed again so I made some remarks about “ships that pass in the night” etc while they were there and various other things to give the game away that I knew exactly what had happened although I said them in a manner that implied that I knew nothing.

Moving on from there, there was a big party in the office. The office was absolutely filthy. There was stuff all over the place. There was only one girl and I think that it might have been my elder sister who was attempting to tidy it up. I wasn’t going home as I had something arranged in the town so I stayed behind and helped her as best as I could. I did several huge bowls of washing up. Then it came to be 19:10 so I went to put back everything that I’d done so far. She asked how the room was so I told her that it was still a mess. I told her what I’d done. She said “OK, you’d better wander off now and do what you have to do. I’m going to be late in the morning” she said. “I’m not going to be in at my usual early morning time”. I said “never mind. I’ll try my best to be there myself something early and see what happens”. I was really disappointed that all our colleagues, none of them would stay behind and help and none of them were interested in coming along to open up the office tomorrow either.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a meeting with the owners of this building but they were only just setting up the bottles of water for people to drink and I never found out what went on. It was all about some abandoned farmhouse and buildings on the side of a main road that they were talking about demolishing even though it was nice, old Victorian stuff. It would have made a really nice conversion to flats and houses etc rather than being just swept away.

Anyway so when the alarm went off I did manage to leap to my feet quite quickly even though it was early, and after the medication I cracked on with the radio programme, as I mentioned earlier.

There were a couple of interruptions. Firstly for an early morning coffee and secondly to answer the door. The nurse had finally printed out my vaccination certificate from last June. Just one or two things that I need to do now.

Having listened to the radio programme and also the one that I’ll be sending off for this weekend, I went for my lunchtime fruit And then I had the notes on the dictaphone to deal with.

So I stepped back into a dream not just once but twice last night. And a mention of Zero too. What a shame I can’t remember her being about although I know that she must have been there.

After all of that it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

And once again, it seems that the Nazguls were waiting for me to step outside the door again. I hadn’t gone more than three feet outside the building when one of them came swooping over the roof of the High School and heading in my direction.

A solo outfit too, but not to worry. There were several others waiting around in the distance, some of which were two-seater Nazguls. So at least there’s still an opportunity to go for a flight around.

And I haven’t forgotten …

So dodging the diving Nazguls I wandered over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

But first, my attention was focused on the events just offshore. yesterday we had a zodiac watching events unfold on the beach. Today, we have a paddle-boarded paddling past.

There were a few people down there as well for him to watch. Probably a dozen or so scattered about all over there.

No-one in the water as far as I could see, but then again the paddle-boarder hasn’t fallen in yet. There’s still plenty of time for that.

Lots of other stuff down there for me to watch as well.

As I made my way along the path amongst the people who were wandering around, I noticed that out there on a rock just offshore was a whole colony of birds.

Cormorants, I reckon, but what do I know? All that I do know is that they aren’t any kind of bird which I would be interested in watching. I should have paid much more attention, because when we were married I had several long lectures from Nerina about bird-watching.

What I could do I suppose is to go on and on about how I don’t particularly like those birds, but it would just be another cormo-rant.

and so on that note I suppose that I’d better carry on with my walk and see what’s hapening with the aeroplane that has just taken off from the airfield.

It’s one of the aeroplanes that we see quite regularly as we are walking along the cliffs around here. She’s F-GCUM, a Robin DR400-180 that belongs to the local aero club.

My photo is timed at 16:01 (adjusted) which corresponds with a flight that she undertook when she took off at 15:15 and flew northwards. That’s not a usual flightpath for an aeroplane out of the airfield. usually they go out to sea and then down the coast to the south.

However there was something bizarre about the flight that she was undertaking just now.

As I watched her, she did a U-turn and headed back towards the airfield, almost as if when she had taken off but the pilot had forgotten his sandwiches.

Her actual flight plan though was she went north, as I said just now, and then flew back south, back over the airfield and out to sea but after just a couple of miles she performed a rather dramatic U-turn and flew back towards the airfield.

Once back over the airfield she carried on inland, performed yet another U-turn and back to the airfield where she landed at 16:09.

My route along the top of the cliff and across the car park was pretty much without incident today. Just a few craft out at sea that you have already seen, and no change either in the inner harbour or in the chantier naval.

Now that the heaving masses have headed back home at the end of the holiday season, we have the next generation of visitors.

The town and the cliffs are crawling with the pensioners out of the caravanettes or day-tripping on the fleets of coaches that are now arriving.

The poor little Iveco that waits to take the Homework Club schoolchildren back home at 17:00 is sandwiched between two rather large Mercedes Tourismo coaches, and thanks to Duncan Payne on the “Bus and Coach” group for identifying the bodywork.

It’s a good job that he did too. The driver of the brown one with whom I had a lengthy chat didn’t know and the driver of the green one drove off when he saw me approaching.

Unfortunately I’m out of the loop these days. I was left behind on Van Hool Alizees and Plaxton Premieres. I can’t believe that it’s almost 28 years since I last drove a coach after all the miles that I did in the past.

Back here I had a coffee and then I had a few things to do which took me up to teatime.

My stuffed pepper tonight was a really good one. I have really grasped the principle of those now. Plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and maybe even some more to add into Wednesday’s curry.

But right now that’s that. Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson and I hope that there will be more than four of us. But to be on the safe side I shall have to have a good night’s sleep and do some more revision tomorrow.

That is, if I can remember.

Friday 9th September 2022 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned that it seemed as if Summer is over now for the rest of the year.

This morning, after I awoke, I went and closed the window in the living room – the first time that it’s been closed since my return from Leuven in August.

And the only reason that I closed it then was because I didn’t want to come back home and find that a family of seagulls had taken up residence.

And so as Le Coelacanthe and Le Grande Ancre struggle through the storm towards the harbour, I’m struggling to heave myself out of my stinking pit.

And to my surprise it was a little easier today than it has been of late. Not that I wasn’t tired, just that I had rather more resolution than I’ve had in the past and where that came from I’ve really no idea.

Having had the medication this morning, I had a rather slow, desultory session of transcribing the dictaphone notes. And that was quite confusing as it seems that somehow I’ve managed to miss recording a dream somewhere.

I was heading off somewhere and who should come bouncing down the road but Zero? We started to talk and she told me about how things were at home. She was telling me that amongst other things she really wasn’t getting on well with her father. All he was doing was staying at home moaning about the money, the rent, about prices and his wife going out all the time amongst everything else. She was pretty much fed up of it. She started to tell me all kinds of things like that. She was standing really close to me, probably no more than half an inch or so. We set off to walk into Crewe and ended up at Edleston Road near the old NUR club. That was when the dream ended which was a shame and I tried my very very best not to let it finish.

And then I was at the River Neva at Leningrad. It was really, really wide but it was basically some kind of flood plain that had flooded which was so wide and the river itself was fairly narrow. I was waiting there trying to cross but there was no way of crossing so it looked as if I was going to have to swim. A young Russian girl came along and asked me in English if she could come with me. I replied “sure” and I jumped in. I found an old light deal table and was pushing that in front of me. She asked me why so I told her “this river is enormous and I’m going to have to stop for a break halfway through. If my feet can’t hit the floor I need something on which to sit”. In the end we reached the dyke and set off to walk down the dyke across the river into town. She was talking to me about the city and how no-one has any money any more, how it’s sad etc. Of course I’d heard all these stories before. I began to wonder to myself what it is that she’s doing. Why would she want to be with me? Why is she being so nice to me etc?”. There had to be something going on here that is beyond my comprehension for the moment.

To continue my dream about my father (and which dream was that?) the biscuit rolled off itself down South Street past “Up The Junction” and this girl and I were forced to run after it and try to catch it before it hit the main road.

This final part was rather embarrassing last night. I went to stay at a guest house where I usually stay, somewhere round the Wardle/Barbridge area. On my way I popped into a house to see the people and the husband of this guest house was there. We chatted away but in the end I decided that I’d have to leave. But I completely forgot to ask him if he had a room free. It didn’t enter into my mind. I drove round to that house and went in. There was only a young girl there making herself some food. I started to assemble the bed in the spare room as I would normally do. She came in, looked at me and said “I think that you’re going to get yourself in trouble”. I asked why and she replied “you’ve not told anyone that you’re coming, have you?”. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t, and here I was making myself comfortable in someone’s room. I had to wait for the landlady to come back but she didn’t come back. Lunch was served and they even managed to find me some food even though I wasn’t expected. I settled down for a long wait until the landlady came in. It was ever so embarrassing having gone and assumed for myself that I could stay and organised a room in which I wanted to sleep without asking a single person.

So Zero made an appearance last night. And how nice that was to see a familiar face. She should appear more often. And the tales that she was telling me last night were really quite true as well. The times that she had in real life confided in me all kinds of stories of things that happened at home.

By the way, that wasn’t all that went on during the night, the missing dream notwithstanding. But honestly you wouldn’t thank me for posting the rest, especially if you’re eating your meal right now.

While you are looking at another photo of em>Le Coelacanthe, I was off to finish off the tidying up in the living room.

That was quite a battle too but now it actually looks as if someone lives here. It’s not been as clean or looking as nice as this for quite some considerable time. Just one or two bits to finish off but after all of that effort I ran out of steam and that’s hardly a surprise. I was glad to sit down again.

After the fruit I sat down and bashed away at the trip to Jersey. I’ve still not set foot ashore but I’ve managed now to complete over 20% of the photos that need doing. It’s a slow process but it’ll be good when it’s finished.

At least, I hope that it will.

It does remind me of the story about the destroyer that was having no end of difficulty manoeuvring during a fleet exercise in World War II.
“What on earth do you think you are you doing?” asked the exasperated admiral.
“Learning a lot” was the reply.

And I’m certainly learning a lot.

Still, there’s a time for fishing and a time for mending the nets. Right now it’s “walkies” … “staggeries, more like” – ed.

As usual I staggered across to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach. and with it now being autumn in all but name I wasn’t expecting to see much.

There were a few people down there this afternoon but no-one was sunbathing. I was in my shirt sleeves but they were dressed for colder weather. And in a few weeks, if not sooner, I’ll be doing the same thing.

Having satisfied myself with events on this side of the headland I went across the road to the other side.

The first thing that I noticed was the tractor and its trailer on the ramp underneath the fish processing plant. That would seem to indicate that the little Les Bouchots de Chausey is on her way into port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen the trailer loaded up to the sky with crates of shellfish. And one of these days I really will follow it to find out just where it goes when it’s loaded.

The second thing that I noticed was the storm that was raging out at sea.

The spray over the base of Le Loup – the marker light on the rocks at the entrance to the harbour – wasn’t as impressive as we have seen it in the past but you have to remember that the tide is quite far out at the moment.

It’ll be much more impressive in an hour’s time but by them I’m hoping to be tucked up back at home with a glass of warm Wincarnis.

They used to do Phyllosan that fotifies the over-forties. Why can’t they do stuff that will sixtify the over-sixties?.

A little earlier we saw a couple of photos of Le Coelacanthe out in the Baie de Granville looking as if she’s heading for port

However as she came past the headland she did a marvellous little U-turn and headed back out to sea. A closer look revealed that she had her nets out.

Since the issues about fishing out in the bay in waters that have been unilaterally claimed by the Channel Islands, we’ve seen them fishing in all kinds of strange places but I can’t recall anyone having been fishing just there.

We are living in strange times indeed.

So that was the story of Le Coelacanthe.

We saw her the other day moored at the Fish Processing Plant with her sister Le Tibériade. The two are clearly inseparable because a few minutes after she went past, Le Tibériade appeared from behind the headland.

She had her nets out too by the looks of things because she did the same U-turn and headed off back out around the headland into the Baie de Granville. I wonder how long they’ll be keeping it up, or is this just something to fill in the time while they are waiting for the harbour gates to open?

right at the beginning when we saw Le Coelacanthe coming across the bay followed by La Grande Ancre.

Not long after we’d seen the two trawlers in action, La Grande Ancre came around the headland too. But she didn’t perform a U-turn like the others. Instead, she carried on towards the harbour.

She still has the lighter on her deck that she had the other day when we saw her, and there’s a pile of fishing equipment in it.

What caught my eye though was the sailor sitting on the lighter. In the rough weather like we are having just now that can’t be a very secure place to be.

Coming in a couple of minutes behind La Grande Ancre was another one of our old friends, one that I was expecting to arrive.

And sure enough, into port fighting her was through the waves came Les Bouchots de Chausey. You can see how rough it is there with her being tossed around there like a cork.

She must have quite a load on if she’s coming in so early in the tide. They wouldn’t send the tractor and trailer for half a load and in any case, she’d stay out as long as possible to make sure that it was worth her while to come home.

While I was watching the arrivals into port, I also happened to notice yet another change over at the chantier naval.

It was a slow, agonising walk down there to the viewpoint but I went all the same. It was worth the crawl because I now know why Le Poulbot was moved to sit in front of Le Styx yesterday.

That’s because previously she was in front of la Soupape and that latter has now been put back into the water. In fact Le Poulbot has now taken her place.

And where she was, there is now the trawler Massabielle. It’s her turn to have a good working-over.

On my way down to the chantier naval I heard an old couple sitting on the wall talking about the Ile de Chausey.

When I hobbled back I noticed that they now had a brochure in their sweaty little mitts and were making plans. And it looks as if there are still plans to be made because one of the Joly France ferries is already at the quayside ready for an early start tomorrow morning.

One glance at the windows of the boat is sufficient to tell us which one she is. With her windows in “portrait” and not “landscape” format, she’s the newer one of the two.

The other two aren’t around anywhere just now so they must still be out at the island.>br clear=”both”>

On my way home I stopped to look at what was happening now in port.

La Grande Ancre was not only in port now, she was actually tied up and they were beginning to unload her. That was what I called “quick work”.

Alongside her is Les Bouchots de Chausey. She wasn’t loitering around either. She’l be tied up and unloading in a minute too.

No-one interrupted me on my walk back home today. And now that summer is over, it’s coffee time and I’ll finish the ginger beer another time.

The Trip to Jersey will be finished another time too. You’ve no idea how time-consuming it is to do what I want to do and there’s tea to prepare.

Sausage beans and chips with real baked beans and they were really delicious. Those sausages and beans that I bought in St Helier really are the business.

And then I had to send some info to someone before I could start on writing my notes, hence they are rather late tonight.

Tomorrow I’m in a rush so I’ll just nip to LIDL early, I reckon. They open at 08:30 and if I’m lucky I’ll be there at the door when they open. So this means that the phone will probably upgrade tonight and switch itself off.

It wouldn’t be for the first time, would it?

Thursday 1st September 2022 – THE DECISION …

… about whether or not I ought to go for a walk this afternoon was taken out of my hands today.

For the first time since I don’t know how long (several months, probably) it was pouring with rain outside this afternoon. You can tell that by simply looking at the photos of “The Hermitage” – the old seafront hotel that is now converted into apartments. You can hardly see it through the drizzle

In the past though, I’ve been out for a walk or two in weather much wetter than this but I had a feeling that today this was nature’s way of telling me to go back inside and rest.

And rest I did. No alarm this morning so I stayed in bed until 09:30 and I needed it too.

Moving about was a little easier. Only a little though. I was still aching in my knee, my hip and now my groin. I know that yesterday I’d performed 180% of my daily activity according to the fitbit but I’ve done far more than that in the past without feeling as bad as I did.

There was no rush to start work today. I had a nice, leisurely morning and in the end I didn’t even sort out any music to which to listen this week. I ended up instead listening to the old-time radio and my favourite radio programmes from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Eventually though I started on transcribing all of the notes on the dictaphone. There were two days’ worth – yesterday and today, and all told there were tons of them. Having dealt with all of yesterday’s, I made a start on today’s. I was doing something with the taxis again last night. Someone phoned up – it might have been my brother probably, I dunno – and was shouting at the girl who was answering the phone and doing the radio. In the end I took over. It took me a whole while to chisel out the information from him bit by bit. It was basically “Friday 12:50 or earlier if possible, pickup from Glasgow and take him to Northampton”. It took an age to chisel all of that out of him bit by bit. Everyone was short-tempered by the time that I finished this call.

And then I can’t remember much of this bit. There was Nerina and I, once again having our marriage difficulties. She and her friend had once ganged up on me once playing cards, even going as far as to look up the rules about borrowing cards from the pack which I thought was totally unnecessary. anyway they were there working on some other stuff again about that. There was much more to this but I can’t remember it now.

And Zero was back last night. After all this time and how nice it was to see her smiling face, even if it was only for a fleeting second. We were tidying up in her school classroom and she was one of the last to be there. She went home and we said that we’d be round later. There was me and another girl but I can’t remember who she was. We were getting close to finishing. The guy in charge said that he was leaving. We said that the place wasn’t tidied up yet so he replied “you stay and finish it but don’t take too long”. There was just the 2 of us there and we were tidying it up. The girl with me thought that she’d telephoned to Zero to say that we’d be round in a few minutes. I could tell that the conversation was going quite badly. It finished off by her saying “well, we’ll see you tomorrow”. I wondered what was going on. It turned out, so she said, that Zero’s father who was the last person to leave was probably not feeling too well so they’d be spending a lot of time dealing with him. I said “I’m having to go tomorrow so we could I suppose always turn up unexpectedly tomorrow to say goodbye. We did that once before and it went quite well but I’d much rather have gone round on a day when we’d been invited and when people were expecting us. That way there’s no question of having any kind of conflicting interest etc”. I forgot to mention that after the girl with me had hung up on Zero she went and sat down somewhere and put her feet up. I was still wrestling with these 3 enormous boxes. I had to insist that she got back on her feet and came to help me otherwise I would never finish this lot either and I’d be here all night.

Once again I could see that all my best-laid plans here were coming to nought even before we’d gone very far at all, and that’s just typical whenever any of my interests seemed to coincide with those of anyone else back in the old days. No wonder I prefer to live alone. It’s far less complicated.

There I was with a date with Zero and everyone else was deliberately pushing spokes into the wheels. Just as always.

All that remained (for the moment at least) was the blog entry for yesterday. That took a total age to write but at least it’s all nicely on line now. Without the photos though. I couldn’t stomach working my way through 97 of those this afternoon. I wasn’t in the mood.

The proceedings were interrupted by me finally deciding to risk my knee on an adventure outside.

And despite the poor weather I went off for a stroll across the car park to the wall.

With the weather being as it was, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone down there on the beach so the half-a-dozen or so people down there took me somewhat by surprise. I don’t know what they were doing down there but at least whatever it was, they had plenty of beach to do it on.

It was a waste of time looking out to sea because the mist was pretty thick out there and you couldn’t see anything.

Going to to St Helier yesterday was a good plan because I had the last of the decent weather. It would have been miserable out there today.

But this took me completely by surprise.

This photo isn’t about Caliburn. You can see the bus stop over there on the left-hand edge of the photograph so why is the bus parking there? And for not the least of the reasons being that any passengers would have to go into the street in order to board the bus.

You can see the rain too. It was pretty miserable but I can’t say that I’m sorry that we’ve finally had some rain.

Before I went back in I was buttonholed by one of my neighbours who attracted my attention from her second-floor window. We had quite an impromptu chat at distance, with me being slowly and inevitable soaked to the skin.

Back in the flat I had a nice strong coffee and then carried on with the blog until it was finished (for now) and then I breathed a sigh of relief.

Tea tonight was a left-over curry with mushrooms, potatoes and the left-over stuffing along with a big handful of peanuts. And I do have to say that it was the best one that I’ve ever made.

A quiet evening now and I’ll probably end up with an early night. It’s still raining and my legs are still hurting and who knows how all of this will pan out.

We’ll all find out tomorrow

Tuesday 12th July 2022 – GUESS WHO …

… came to see me during the night?

So while you all admire a few water scenes, there I was at work sitting behind my desk sitting next to some woman I don’t know and who should walk in to come and buy some cheese but Zero. She didn’t see me as she came in but she went over to the cheese counter and they cut her some cheese. When she turned to go she saw me and so I waved. She came over and chatted. The girl sitting next to me also knew Zero and said “don’t forget, when you come in you can talk to me any time”. The woman who was a supervisor beckoned her over and said “young lady, do me a favour. When you come in again don’t talk to (the girl who was with me)”. I whispered to her “you can always talk to me anytime you like when you come in”. She smiled, I patted her and she went skipping off. This woman asked me “who is that child?” (because don’t forget that I’ve known Zero ever since she was born). I replied “that’s probably the nicest child in the universe” (and she was, too). They asked me who she was so I told them. Of course they knew the parents of this girl so they all thought that it was marvellous how she’d grown up as she had, so bright and cheerful and energetic.

Then I was back in Stoke on Trent later but Zero wasn’t there. What had happened was that a member of her family had been killed so we’d been scrolling through someone’s phone trying to find hers and her father’s chat pages so that we could post some kind of message of condolence on them. As we kept on looking we just couldn’t find which were the correct pages on this person’s phone. There were thousands of different chats. It was very hard to see whose was what. Eventually we found a photo of both of them with their heads covered in towels but we didn’t even think that that belonged to one of them so we scrolled through this phone for ages trying to find what we were looking for

We were back in this dream again on our way to this funeral. We ended up round at someone’s house trying to find their contact details on Social media or their phone number etc so that we could send them messages of condolence. I couldn’t find them on my phone but I knew that I had them somewhere from years ago – probably on the old phone that lies in the van and a few other things. It was becoming late, already 18:30. When we arrived at this guy’s house she asked me who someone was so I explained that there were 4 people currently wandering around, 2 friends of mine who I named but I can’t remember and Zero and her father. I had to work out how to get in touch with them but I couldn’t do it – I needed some help from these 2 people with me or maybe even the 2 people who were going to turn up but time was drawing on and I was going nowhere. In the end to my surprise the guy who was with this woman where I was was actually Zero’s father. I was completely confused then about what was going to happen where, when and how. If that’s the case, where has Zero gone and with whom has she gone?

Finally I was with her father and we were talking about these people who were going to arrive. He said that he’d better push on and tidy everywhere before they arrive. It was 09:15 and I was still in bed so I thought about getting up. I asked him if I could send Zero a “Happy Birthday” message. He handed me his phone so I started to send a message on it. Then I thought that perhaps if I copied the number onto my phone I could send it from my phone and she would know who it was. Then I was trying to take some car registration numbers because they had something to do with how I could contact her although I don’t know how but I couldn’t get close enough to read the numbers. I was either too far away to see them or else I’d overshot. This was becoming extremely confusing. I was turning something simple into something of nightmarish complications.

Later on I was in Caliburn driving quite recklessly through rural France until I came to a stop because there was something going on. I ended up talking to a group of teenagers. There was some guy being harassed by someone or other. he quickly reached over his wall and handed me a cardboard box. He said “here, take this”. I took it and there was a trailer in it and a few other bits and pieces etc, and a couple of phones, one of which was a UK phone and it had a charger. There was no plug on the end of the charger. I was thinking “at last this is how I can contact Zero but I have somehow to make this phone charge”. I asked these kids if anyone had a charger. They replied “no”. They were interested to know why I was in France and what I was doing but they gradually drifted away. Someone told me a cheat how you can charge up your phone without a charger but it looked extremely dangerous to me. I wasn’t going to try it. I thought “once again the solution is here in my hand but I just can’t make it work”.

And isn’t that a regular occurrence? And not just in dreams either.

And here’s a dream without Zero in it although it started off that way. I was again with her father who was running me back to Crewe. I was telling him about the guy whom I used to know in Moathouse Drive who had just given me 3 cars, 2xMkIIIs and a MkIV Cortina. I had to go and pick them up at some time in the near future. I ended up back at my garage and walked in where I had a couple of cars. I found that there were half a dozen cars in there some of which weren’t mine. There was a woman so I asked her what she was doing with her car in my garage. She said that someone had given her permission. I said “I’m the occupier of this garage and I haven’t given any permission”. This escalated and there was a crowd of people who came in who didn’t care at all the fact that I was renting this garage. They had their cars there and other possessions and weren’t intending to leave. They made sure that I knew that I was pretty powerless to make them too.

So stepping back yet again into several dreams one after the other, that’s quite a strange situation too. usually stepping back involves just stepping back once, but how many times ws this?

But why is my subconscious telling me to get in touch with Zero? In the past my subconscious has told me many things that have subsequently turned out to be true, to such an extent that I rely on my subconscious intuition rather more than most people. And it was certainly quite insistent last night.

Especially when after she skipped out of the first dream I awoke bolt-upright and it took me quite a while to go back to sleep. Awakening fully as I did, I’ve always found that in the past it’s been impossible to step back into a dream but I managed it last night, and in spades too.

No surprise then that I was thoroughly exhausted when the alarm went off this morning but nevertheless I staggered out of bed for my medication quite smartly.

And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and that took much longer than it ought to have done.

We had a Welsh conversation class this morning too and so as you might expect when I switched on the laptop that I use to connect to Zoom, it decided to perform a full upgrade.

When it had finally finished upgrading I connected to my course but nothing was happening at all. Eventually, further investigation revealed that the internet server at Coleg Cambria had crashed so they had no internet connection. “Your course will be re-arranged”.

That left me with some free time to deal with the photos from June when I was in Germany. I’m now inside the camp at Dachau heading up to the crematorium.

Once again, I didn’t have lunch – that is, except for some fruit. I’ve just been making do with fruit at lunchtime right now. I’ll weigh myself on Saturday to see if I’ve kept this weight off.

This afternoon I fell asleep for an hour or so which is no surprise given the exciting events of the night. Not exactly stark out but it was near enough.

By now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland so grabbing the NIKON D500 I set out.

As usual my first stop was at the wall at the end of the car park where I can look down onto the beach to see what was going on there.

And once more, we had the crowds out in force enjoying the beautiful weather, even if there wasn’t all that much beach to be on right now.

Of course, they weren’t all on the beach either. Quite a few of them have taken to the water. I suppose that after a week or so of heatwave the water must be nice and warm. But I’m not going to be the one who goes to try it. I’ll take their word for it.

While I was taking a few photos that you saw earlier of the local shipping, I was being overflown.

It’s not one of our regulars either. This one is a helicopter belonging to the Armée de Terre, the French Army. I’ve no idea what it is except that it’s one of the “Puma” family. It closely resembles a H225M “Caracal” except that the fairing over the wheels doesn’t look right.

The French Army has 18 Caracals although none of them are based anywhere near here.

It’s strange though to see an Army helicopter flying around here. We have the Air-Sea Rescue one of course and the occasional Navy, Fishery Patrol or Customs helicopter. So I dunno.

So with nothing else happening anywhere at the headland I wandered off down the path towards the port.

And there has been a change in occupancy at the chantier naval. Philcathane who was up on blocks by the portable boat lift has now gone back into the water.

No-one has yet come in to replace her though. But I’m keen to see who else we might have next in there. We could do with a few strangers in there like Wavecat Express who was in there for a wile a month or so ago.

Whatever happened to her? I was hoping that she would bring something new to the port.

However there is plenty of stuff happening over at the Fish Processing Plant this afternoon.

We have L’Omerta over there this afternoon, and behind her from left to right we have Calean, Le Styx and Peccavi. And plenty of vehicles around there on the lower level taking away the catch that they are unloading.

Once more, we had quite a few other boats either coming into the harbour or else leaving the Fish Processing Plant for the inner harbour but I was in a rush so I didn’t wait around.

However I did wonder who will be there playing “Musical Ships” tomorrow. It’s all pretty exciting.

Down at the far end, Marité is back.

She’s finished her trip around to the southern Brittany coast and has come back home. With a bit of luck I’ll see her out in the bay some time soon. If she’s based here in Granville she ought to spend more time closer to home unless she’s off on a real expedition.

Lots of activity going on down at the loading bay. There’s a lorry there and the crane is busy moving a huge pile of building material around. That can only mean that one of the little Jersey freighters will be coming here soon.

And while we’re on the subject of the Jersey freighters … “well, one of us is” – ed … I wonder what was the result of the trials when the freighter Southern Liner came in here to try out the port for size

When I came back home I went into the kitchen to fetch some ice for my banana drink I noticed that the ice box in the fridge was full of ice and so I empted as much out as I could and set the fridge to “defrost”.

That should keep me out of mischief for a while so I had a play with the acoustic guitar and then, as promised, I had the bass out and had a play for an hour or so.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice, and then I carried on defrosting the fridge for a while. That’s all finished now so I came in here to write up my notes.

So who’s coming out with me tonight? It would be nice if it would be one of my favourite companions but I don’t suppose that I should be greedy and expect anyone special after last night’s excitement.

So it’ll either be no-one at all or else one of my family. Perhaps I ought to organise a sweepstake.

Sunday 19th June 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a Premiere Classe hotel in Tours in Western France.

And when I say “we” I really do mean “we” for I am not alone. As you might expect, STRAWBERRY MOOSE has come with me too. I can’t leave him behind.

And just in case you are wondering, I’ve already made a considerable list of things that I’ve forgotten. Most people make a lost and pack accordingly. I pack and then make a list of what I’ve forgotten.

Despite a late night last night I was awake at 08:30 and drifted in and out of sleep for another couple of hours

After the meds and checking the medication I started to back up the big computer onto the little portable memory stick that travels with me. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes.

Then I had to finish off emptying out Caliburn and packing up everything to go in him. The final task was to do all of the washing up and cleaning and then disinfect everywhere.

There were plenty of notes on the dictaphone too. I was writing stuff for a radio programme, the notes for the music. One was for a particular group from the 60s. I remembered seeing them and I got on really well with them. They were busted for drugs like most groups were at the time. I always remembered the last time I saw the girl singer was that some of her group had gone already. She was singing with just one or two of them in the street on this makeshift stage. At the end she got off and came over to see me smiling and we bumped fists. She wandered off down the street and that was the last I ever saw of her. I remember thinking about how nostalgic this was and things might have been different to everyone’s lives if instead of bumping fists I’d grabbed hold of her and held her like I wanted to do but I didn’t really know whether I should have done at the time.

Later I was with Nerina and she was having problems as well with her new relationship. They were no longer sharing a room together. Where they worked in this motel they had a room made up for both of them but they were actually sleeping in separate rooms. I asked how long this had been going on and she replied “a couple of years”. Anyway they had been caught doing this and it had led to all kinds of different complications and for all kinds of different reasons that they were no longer actually living together.

Finally there was a group of us on board a boat. We’d had a meal and we were doing the washing up on the back of the boat outside. There was a little guy on board something similar to Hercule Poirot. He came over and said that he had a request for us. We asked what it was and he asked could we go and do the washing up in the kitchen, in the sink. I couldn’t understand why so I asked him why but he couldn’t really come out with a really good answer. Someone else cottoned on to the fact that he didn’t think that the washing up was being done correctly. It needed to be done in running water and the plates properly scrubbed and everything like that. He didn’t think that what we were doing was very hygienic. I was basically on the point of telling him that if he wanted the washing up done down in the boat in the kitchen he can take the bowl away and do it himself rather than disturbing us who were doing it while he was doing nothing but discretion got the better of me. I tried to find out exactly what his precise objection was but for some unknown reason he wasn’t really all that keen in spelling it out. It was annoying me that we were working and he wasn’t and he didn’t like the way that we were working but he didn’t actually volunteer to come along and do the work himself if he wanted it done in a different way.

There was much more to it than this but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

By 16:00 I was on the road again. First stop was at LeClerc to fuel up (and that cost me an arm and a leg) and then we had a leisurely drive through the French countryside.

We hit Tours, 250 kms away, at 20:00 and saw a cheap B&B hotel so I left the ring road, found myself stuck on the motorway and couldn’t find my way back, came off and couldn’t get back on to retrace my steps.

However, all was not lost. After I’d been driving for a while around the suburbs of Tours trying to find that hotel, a Première Classe Hotel loomed up out of the gloom.

A room was a mere €45:00 which I’ll take any time, and they arranged for a vegan pizza for me at a nearby hotel that even gave me 15% off.

As you might expect, I’m totally wasted after the drive. I’m clearly not up to this. The day that I drove non-stop pulling a trailer for 32.5 hours are long-gone.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I’ve earned a good night’s sleep.

Monday 6th June 2022 – MUCH TO MY OWN …

… surprise I managed to fall out of bed at 06:00 as soon as the alarm went off. I don’t think that anyone was expecting that – I know that I wasn’t.

So after the medication and checking my mails and messages I sat down to work at the radio programme that I wanted to prepare.

And for some reason or other I’ve no idea where the time goes because even though I didn’t stop except for a coffee and for breakfast, it was 11:40 when I finished. Gone are the days when I could bang them out by 10:30 or even earlier. I’ve no idea why it’s taking so long these days.

However regardless of all that, it did all fit together quite nicely with some really good joins.

When I’d finished it, I had a listen to the one that I’d be sending off later this afternoon. And while I did so I wrote a pile of stuff about “Next Year” as preparation for my Welsh exam

When it finished, I sent it off and went to listen to the one that I’d just prepared. However, before I even started, I crashed out on my chair and that was that. Interestingly, I went off on a little voyage while I was crashed out.

Well, actually, I didn’t. I stayed here sitting on my seat at my desk. From a distance I stood and watched myself sleeping. And then to my surprise Zero came to see me sleeping. She didn’t actually say anything though, I could see her simply standing there watching me sleep. She certainly saw me asleep in my chair, but she didn’t see me watching events unfold from where I was standing. It was a really strange, eerie situation and I’m not sure whether it was unsettling or relaxing, watching her watching me.

Lunch was rather late and then afterwards I finally managed to listen to this morning’s radio programme. And at the same time I wrote some stuff about “Work” as preparation for my Welsh exam

There was time for me to have a run through my acoustic set again before I went out for my afternoon walk.

As usual I wandered off across the car park to have a look over the wall down onto the beach to see what was happening there.

It’s a Bank Holiday here again so all of the schools and offices are closed And with it being a reasonably nice afternoon there were crowds of people down there on the beach.

There were even a few people who had taken the plunge and gone into the water as well. That’s what I call “brave” because although the weather was nice, it wasn’t that nice.

You wouldn’t have caught me in the water on a day like this, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m notoriously nesh at moments like this. Not even Castor could drag me into the sea when we were up in the High Arctic in 2019.

And as usual, while I’m here I’m having a good look around out at sea to see what was happening there.

The Ile de Chausey was looking really nice this afternoon. The weather is quite overcast but even so the colours are quite clear this afternoon.

And while there aren’t any pleasure boats of any description out there this afternoon, there is what looks like a trawler working away out there just offshore.

As for what was happening further out at sea, it wasn’t possible to see anything. There was quite a haze out there this afternoon that was hiding just about everything that might have been further out in the bay.

There weren’t too many people on the path up here this afternoon so I had it pretty much to myself this afternoon.

The car park was fairly deserted too so I walked down to the end of the headland to see what was happening out there.

We had a couple of people sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban but there wasn’t really anything for them to see. There weren’t any boats out there this afternoon and there wasn’t anyone fishing from the rocks this afternoon either.

And so I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland.

a href=”https://www.erichall.eu/images/2206/22060044.html”> trawler baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022 There was a trawler out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel heading down towards the end of the bay.

She was making quite an interesting wake and that was what caught my eye.

It’s not possible to identify her from this distance of course but judging by what I can see of the colour of her paintwork she could well be either Coelacanthe or Tiberiade.

There’s another trawler that has a similar shade of green paintwork too but I can’t recall her name for the moment.

That was really everything that was out there at sea this afternoon so I headed off for home and my coffee.

There was no change in occupancy in the xhantier naval this afternoon. The cabin cruiser and the catamaran were still in there and that was about it.

Over at the ferry terminal though, we had the new Belle France and one of the Joly France ferries, the older one of the two. Presumably they’ll be going back out to the island later this afternoon to bring back the passengers who might be out there.

And while we’re on the subject of the port, what’s happening with the marquee is that there’s a maritime market where all kinds of seagoing accessories are on sale, aimed at all of the boat owners who operate out of the port. It’s the last day today.

While I was walking along the top of the cliffs, a couple of zodiacs came into port.

It’s easy to see what they have been up to this afternoon. They are both festooned with piles of fishing rods so it looks as if they’ve been having a really good time.

What’s interesting though is that there are only two people on board each zodiac and yet there are at least four, and maybe more, fishing rods on each boat.

Maybe they have a fishing rod for each hand, unless they have hit a couple of rogue waves and dropped off half of the passengers somewhere out in the bay.

That’s the thing with white-water raft racing. It’s not the first raft over the line that wins, it’s the one that crosses the line with the most people still on board it. “Rapids” have a whole new meaning.

While I’d been wandering around in the ether at some point during the day I’d seen a photo of Victor Hugo running somewhere between Guernsey and Sark.

And so I was rather surprised to see her back in the inner harbour when I was wandering around there this afternoon. She can’t have been back all that long and I must have missed her return. I’ve given up all hope of ever seeing her out with passengers. I can’t see that I’ll ever manage to catch her for my own trip out to Jersey.

The trawler there is one that we have seen before. She’s called Hera.

And there are several marker buoys on the quayside there. I wonder where they are going to be putting those.

But that’s for another time. I was heading for home.

Here’s someone whom we’ve seen quite frequently, and as recently as yesterday too.

She’s 35MA, one of the light aeroplanes that fly from the airfield up the coast, on her way out for an afternoon’s flight around the bay.

Back here I had a coffee and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s notes are now on line and then I turned my attention to the ones from last night. I was talking on a bulletin board about living in Virlet in my house with alternative energy and water resources etc. It was a bulletin type of thing and we were having an exchange of information. I was typing on there about how a lot of so-called modern groups would maybe be interested in one thing like maybe photovoltaic and know absolutely nothing about anything else. You would join a group to have a good background of all kinds of things and end up trying to teach them something about wind or hydro power etc from what you know because they knew nothing about it at all. You were on there to find as much information as possible about everything. That seemed to be the case with a lot of these societies – a bee in their bonnet about one thing and wouldn’t be concerned with anything else. We had an extremely lively discussion and debate about all of this.

And then I was round at a former friend’s in Stoke on Trent last night, although it was not his house that I ever knew. We were talking a lot about different things, then I had to go out for something. On the way back I couldn’t remember which house his was so I had to look at them all until I saw the one that had the advert for his wife’s business in the window until I finally arrived. He was quite upset because he’d laid out some food and cheese spread etc. Of course it had all gone cold and set etc. I had to get into the house because the driveway was so steep. I was climbing up the side of the house and clinging on to the window with your fingernails, dangling there underneath rying to open this door. It was a nightmare and gave me the chills trying to enter. In the end he said “I’ve made it better. There’s a handle for you to grab”. You could grab it with a couple of ends of your fingers and it wasn’t any better at all. I was having nightmares. He was explaining how you cook your food and how one of Zero’s friends had messed it up and messed that up so it wasn’t like before when you had to do this and do that. All the time you were hanging on to this thing with the end of your fingers dangling over this void. This was the most uncomfortable horrible thing I’ve ever been in. Zero never put in an appearance, which made things even worse. There I was with him going on about this and that and how he needs to do this and that. I was sweating away with fright dangling over this void trying to enter this house and cook this meal and use this thing to light the gas while I was hanging on

Later on I was round at his house again. This time it was someone joining the Army. They were having to cling onto this thing at the side of his house with their hands while they were up there and we were back in this nightmare situation again, clinging onto this side of this house while we talked about this person going to join the army etc. It was all extremely uncomfortable and very difficult.

Finally there was a miserable old woman spying on what was going on in someone’s hotel room who had gone to a meeting with the company where she works but I can’t remember very much about this.

There was time left for me to run through some of the songs on this playlist that I’ve been sent. I need to spend more time working on this but I have so much going on right now and I’m lacking a great deal of motivation too. I wish I could sort myself out.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and then I came back in here to write up my notes before going to bed.

But I’m really bewildered about that visit that I had at lunchtime from Zero when I was asleep. She was just standing there watching me asleep, not saying and not doing anything, and not realising that I was standing behind her watching her watching me. It’s definitely something bizarre that’s happening here and I’m intrigued to know what it might be and what it’s supposed to signify.

It’s all very well having these really bizarre moments when I’m asleep but not knowing their significance is actually quite disturbing.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: TaHu

Sunday 26th March 2023 – I’M NOT GOING …

Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

Saturday 25th February 2023 – NOBODY WAS …

Wednesday 15th February 2023 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

Monday 23rd January 2023 – THAT RADIO PROGRAMME …

Tuesday 13th December 2022 – WHAT A STATE …

Tuesday 27th September 2022 – NOT VERY MANY …

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

Friday 23rd September 2022 – THE END OF …

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

Friday 9th September 2022 – REGULAR READERS …

Thursday 1st September 2022 – THE DECISION …

Tuesday 12th July 2022 – GUESS WHO …

Sunday 19th June 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

Monday 6th June 2022 – MUCH TO MY OWN …

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