Tag Archives: Carrefour

Friday 2nd June 2023 – MY LUNCH TODAY …

… was just as good as last Friday’s.

And for the same reason too. I’d been for a walk down into the supermarket in town and they had more of the fresh broccoli on special offer.

So once again I chose the head with the thickest stalk and made a broccoli stalk soup.

Not that it did me much good though because we had something of s struggle throughout the day

Once again, I wasn’t up before the alarm went off. Its raucous rattle awoke me at 07:00 while I was deep in the arms of Morpheus and it was a struggle to leave my stinking pit.

But leave it I did, and before the second alarm too.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I carried on with Canada 2017.

At the moment I’m on Day Three – happily wandering around my favourite building in Montreal, the abandoned Gare Viger GARE VIGER of the Canadian Pacific Railway which I think is the most beautiful building in the city.

It was a lovely day out and I certainly put the miles on Montreal’s public transport system and then a wander around the docks on my way to my hotel for an evening meal and bed.

But by the looks of things, during my time in Montréal I didn’t go to my favourite Indian café out at the Cote Vertu. I really must be slipping.

So with Day Three not yet finished – out of a total of 60 that I spent in North America that year, you can see that this is going to be a very loooooooooooong project.

But there is one thing, and that is that I’m beginning to understand why I wasn’t in a rush to finish things off once I became ill. And that’s because right now I’m having huge pangs of nostalgia and I can’t wait to be on a plane again for Montreal

However, although I know that being in Montreal on crutches is totally impractical, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

There was a break in the proceedings for my trip into town this morning. And walking down the hill I fell in with one of my neighbours and we had a good chinwag for quite some considerable time.

However, a little further on my right leg gave way again. Luckily I was leaning on a crutch at the time otherwise I would have ended up in an undignified heap, and I’ve ended up in more than a few of those in the old days with some of the cars that I owned.

At the Carrefour I bought the broccoli, some mushrooms, some more peppers for freezing (making sure that they weren’t too big for the air fryer) some peaches that were on special offer and another crusty bit of bread. I’ve I’m going to have broccoli stalk soup, I’m going to have it in unashamed luxury.

The walk back up the hill onto my rock from town finished me off as it usually does, but I blanched the broccoli and set it to drain while I made the soup.

Half an onion cut into small pieces and fried on a very hot heat with cumin and coriander, and then garlic, diced broccoli and a couple of diced small potatoes and left to simmer in the water in which I had blanched the broccoli.

After 20 minutes I went and whizzed it up, realising as I type these notes that I had forgotten to add a stock cube. Nevertheless, it was extremely nice with my crusty bread.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I’d been out somewhere in Caliburn. There was a bad tyre on him. I had some wheels in the back of the van so I bought a new tyre and had it fitted on the wheel. I drove to where I was going and then took out my tools to change the wheel. Everyone looked at my enormous power bar. You could see that they were impressed and about to say something about it but I changed the tyre anyway. Then I noticed that Caliburn’s Controle technique was about to expire. I phoned the garage but they said that there was nothing at all that they could do for 6 weeks. I thought “well, I’ll have to take that, won’t I? And trust to luck for a few weeks driving around without one. Then he said that he could fit it in on Saturday morning. However I wasn’t going to be here on Saturday morning. I’d still be in Leuven. I wasn’t sure at all what I could do. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity having made a fuss, otherwise I’d have to wait 6 weeks and it wouldn’t show me in any good light having made such a fuss and then turning down the appointment

Later on I was at a football match and we were in the dying seconds of the game. The ball went out for a throw-in. The team wanted to restart it really quickly. A few players including their goalkeeper ran to take it. Someone else from the other team took the throw-in and threw it really quickly while the goalkeeper was out of position so one of the other players tried to stop him advancing. He threw a punch. There was a huge melee after that. The referee had to pull everyone apart and had to find a megaphone to announce to the crowd what had happened, what he’d seen and what he would do.

Finally, a plane had gone down in the sea. While they reached the plane and were able to rescue it they couldn’t find any of the people who had been in it when it had hit the water. I don’t know where it went after that

So no Harry Potter, no family, no cats and no Castor, TOTGA or Zero.

What there was though was that I crashed out for some of the afternoon. It seems that walking down into town and back again is too much for me in my state of health.

But is it going to stop me? It reminds me of that sticker that I saw on the back of an old Renault a few years ago – “Nothing is going to stop me! Not even my brakes!”

Tea was the last of those small breaded quornburgers that had been in the freezer since the Dawn of Time. They went down well with another vegan salad and the remaining small potatoes cubed and fried in the air fryer.

Tomorrow I’ll be shopping and there’s quite a list of things that are running low again. I had to use my cherry tomatoes on the salad this evening and the cucumber had gone the Way of the West.

And then there’s some radio work to be done of course. I have to push on with that of course.

No football though. There’s a match here but I haven’t been at all this season to watch any game, never mind one in the French Fourth Division at the Stade Louis Dior. I’m having to content myself with internet highlights. I watched Partick Thistle v Ross County just now.

Nnot because I really wanted to but, as the old saying goes, “it’s the only game in town right now”.

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Friday 26th May 2023 – MY LUNCH TODAY …

… was delicious.

Down at the supermarket in town this morning they had some fresh broccoli on special offer so I bought a chunk, trimmed off the florets, blanched them and then stuck them in the freezer for a later date, now that I have room.

There was a nice, thick, chunky stalk left over so I made a soup. I fried an onion and garlic in olive oil with some cumin and coriander, diced a couple of small potatoes and diced the stalk, added it to the mixture to fry and when it was all soft, added some of the water in which I’d blanched the broccoli.

After about 20 minutes’ worth of simmering, I whizzed it with the whizzer and ate it with some crusty bread.

And I’ll do that again!

But here I am, waxing lyrical about going to the shops and buying some broccoli as if it’s the highlight of my life. One of those memory things popped up on my social network, reminding me that 11 years ago today I was out on an icebreaker as we smashed our way through the pack-ice on our way back to Natashquan after taking relief supplies out to THAT ISOLATED ISLAND off the “forgotten coast” of Québec.

The moral of this story is “whenever an opportunity comes your way, grab it with both hands and go right to the end. You’ll never know if you’ll have another chance, and you never know what the future has in store for you”.

While we’re on the subject of the High Arctic … “well, one of us is” – ed … the first track to come round on the playlist this morning, after what I had said yesterday, was THE VANILLA QUEEN.

It’s been a long time since that “fascinating lady” has been to “haunt me in my dreams” after “the bright, nocturnal Vanilla Queen” and I stood together on the bow of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR watching the midnight sun in the Davis Strait. I was never the same again.

And while we’re on the subject of the High Arctic … “well, one of us is” – ed … the lovely Dyan Birch, whose voice is up there with Kate Bush, Julianne Regan and Annie Haslam, put in an appearance shortly afterwards.

She was well-know of course for her stint in Kokomo but before that she sang in an obscure Liverpool group called Arrival and their first album was one of the very first albums that I ever bought all those years ago.

The song that featured on the playlist was HEY THAT’S NO WAY TO SAY GOODBYE and I picked that as one of the ones to be broadcast in one of my radio programmes in due course.

It’s the song that came into my head up in the High Arctic as I watched “someone” walk from out on this desolate windswept and icebound airstrip to her aeroplane without waving or looking back and I thought to myself “hey, that’s no way to say goodbye!” but a few years later when I was saying goodbye to someone else on another airport, I suddenly realised the reason why some goodbyes have to be said in that way.

Samuel Gurney Cresswell, the artist and Arctic explorer, was once asked to explain Robert McClure’s loss of nerve after their dreadful experience in the moving pack-ice not too far from the first airport that I first mentioned. He replied that a voyage to the High Arctic “ought to make anyone a wiser and better man”.

However it didn’t work for me. One day I’ll write up the story of those three missing days.

But that’s enough maudlin nostalgia for the moment. We all know that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

Let’s turn our attention instead to this morning, and the fact that one more I was up and about (in principle because I was far from awake) before the alarm went off.

But a shower slowly brought me round and I put the washing on the go. Oh! The excitement! It’s almost as riveting as the day that I had when the highlight was taking out the rubbish.

There was plenty of time before I had to go anywhere so I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. This was another one of these work dreams again, and I’m having plenty of those. I was working in an office but I wasn’t very productive and I wasn’t doing very much at all. Mostly wasting time. The Germans invaded the country and occupied the town where our office was situated. They ordered most people to leave. Those people gathered their things together and started to set off. At that moment I came back into the building having missed everything that was going on, saw them going, and said something like “goodbye, my colleagues. I don’t know how many of us will meet again after this thing has happened. Wishing everyone the best”. I’d heard some stories that some farmers had been far too friendly with the invaders and denounced a couple of people already. So we sat and started on what was going to be a very long ordeal.

But invaders again? We had them the other night, didn’t we?

Then there was something else on these lines. Someone ended up sending something or other to the office where we were working, as a kind-of sign of discontent but I can’t remember anything about it.

I also spent much of the night in company with a young girl and I wish that I knew who she was. We were talking about the area up at the back of Barrow, places like that. I mentioned a fishing port that was formerly very busy. When the fishing died out they came and moved some of the railway lines that connect the port network to the main line but left a diesel shunter behind that was now stranded on the dock and can’t be moved. We were chatting about all kinds of interesting things. Right at the end there was some kind of problem about her having to pay her rent on her little apartment so I suggested that she comes to live in mine. This was another one of those really nice, warm comfortable dreams that I wished would go on for ever and I don’t have too many of those.

But seriously, who would want a relationship with me?

It was a slow stagger down to the doctor’s and I didn’t have long to wait to see him. But as I thought the other day, he confirmed that with this series of injections, there’s nowhere else to go. He wrote out everything that I needed, wrote out the prescriptions, and that was that.

And that got me thinking.

It’s not the first time that I’ve mentioned it but a few years ago I was standing ON THE CREST OF SOUTH PASS, the gap that the “trails west” emigrants used when crossing the Continental Divide where to the east the waters drain into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, and to the west they drain into the Pacific.

It’s the most peaceful place on earth and I want to go back. I’m getting itchy feet again.

At the Carrefour round the corner I bought the broccoli, some mushrooms, some potatoes and a couple more of the small peppers. Now I know that I can freeze them, i might as well put a stock in the freezer now that there’s room.

Have you any idea how much a month’s supply of Aranesp costs? You really don’t want to know. And because it’s not on the list of GP-prescribed medication I have to pay for it up front and claim it back from my health insurance. That will hurt for a while.

So loaded up with a ton of medication (I’m singlehandedly keeping the French pharmaceutical industry afloat and they won’t ‘arf miss me when nature takes its toll) and having to go back tomorrow for some more, I crawled back up the hill onto my rock where I made my soup, had lunch and then … errr … relaxed. This stagger back takes its toll of me.

This afternoon I finished off choosing the music for the next batch of radio programmes but I’ve run aground at the moment. There’s a French musician called Miquette Giraudy who collaborated with Steve Hillside-Village and she wrote and played on several tracks. But you try to find them. None of my usual sources came up with the goods. The best example of her work that I can find so far is the album on which she collaborated with Hillage after he left “Gong”.

Both Alison and Liz were on line later so I ended up chatting to both of them. Alison was telling me more detail relating to our chat yesterday and Liz was showing me photos of her little week away in the Marches.

Tea was chips (now that I have some potatoes) done in the air fryer, with salad and some of the veggie balls. So you might say that part of my meal was a load of balls this evening. But then again, you might not.

Shopping tomorrow, not that I need very much at all but I have to go through the motions. I’ll go to LeClerc of course to see what they have to say for themselves, and I’lll also go for a prowl around at Noz. There’s usually a few surprises there and it’s nice to buy something different. It helps to shake up the diet.

And then after lunch a walk into town to pick up the Aranesp, which means that in the afternoon I’ll be crashing out. Terrible, isn’t it?

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Friday 19th May 2023 – AT LONG LAST …

… the internet is back up and running, as you might have noticed.

What has apparently happened, as the technician who came round just after lunch told me, was that there was a short-circuit in one of the apartments that had fused the main installation in the building.

They had repaired the installation but the short circuit persisted so they had to disconnect the circuit and gradually reinstate it apartment by apartment until they could find out which one it was.

Of course, it was in one of the apartments that is a “second home” for someone from Paris who wasn’t here so it couldn’t be fixed until they’d contacted the apartment owner and found a keyholder so they could go in, and of course it was in the circuit before mine which meant that I was disconnected while all of this was going on.

Whether that’s the case or not, I don’t know. But it will explain why the connection flickered on a couple of times quite briefly during all of this.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and it’s a real ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good. It gave me an opportunity to catch up on a mountain of outstanding work, which isn’t all done but it’s still progress, and also, because the technicians were coming to check my installation, it meant that I had to tidy up the bedroom. I even had the vacuum cleaner going for a while.

And while I was tidying up, I found the missing spare battery for the NIKON D3000 that I lost a long time (as in several years) ago. It had fallen underneath one of my bookcase units.

So how did I celebrate everything? Well, while I was in town this afternoon I treated myself to an ice cream. I felt that I deserved it.

Especially after last night. I was so engrossed in a couple of tasks that it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was stark out. It was an effort to haul myself up out of bed before the second alarm went off five minutes later.

Mind you, after the distance that I travelled durning the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time for the alarm. At one point I was living with a group of Mexicans from 100 or so years ago, the time of the Revolution. We were living on the margins. We weren’t actually revolutionaries or criminals. I can’t remember most of this but there was one part where we were in a cave and there was some kind of event taking place concerning someone who had made a promise that he’d pay to have his wine crop blessed and fruitful but hadn’t done so. And so they held him to submitting his youngest daughter, who was 10, to be sacrificed. He had to fill in all this form to state about her etc and that he was willing for her to go and that he recognised that he was in default for not having thanked whoever it was properly for promoting the fruitfulness of his crops

Did I mention the story … “no you didn’t” – ed … about the 2 girls who had tried to buy some wine from an off-licence to get a teacher at school into trouble? The server recognised them and wouldn’t sell it to them. He had his revenge quite accidentally. It was the school outing and he’d forgotten to tell the parents of one of these girls. She hadn’t gone to school that day – she was paying truant. She thought that everyone else would be at school and cover for her but of course not being there on a day when there were so few students her absence was noticed and someone complained to her parents. When this all came out, the shopkeeper had forgotten to tell the parents about the trip as well, he said “don’t forget that I remember you from the day when you were in my shop so be careful not to make a fuss. You can see why karma has caught up with you”.

And then I had to go to meet someone in the centre of London so Aunt Mary had given me a book, an ancient book about Civil Engineering that she wanted to sell and have some money. All of the booksellers were around Angel Bridge Railway Station. I arrived at the Metro and the guy in the ticket office saw me coming. He had a ticket all ready. I asked for a return too but he replied “no. This is a weekend ticket and you can use it any time like but you’ll have to hurry. The train is in”. I took the ticket, paid for it and dashed downstairs but missed the train, found that I was on the wrong platform, walk back up halfway and enquire of the guard or look at the sign to find myself on the correct platform ready to go. But there was something else in this dream about someone being pregnant. They were discussing the pregnancy and talking about gifts that they should buy. One of the girls was very upset that someone else had been chosen to buy the nappies etc because she said that she didn’t have all that much money. That would have been an ideal present for her bearing in mind her shortage of money.

And we’ve had quite a few dreams when I’ve been wandering around the Underground in London, haven’t we?

Finally I had to go to do some research on Emerson Lake and Palmer. I found someone who had some information on them who lived in London so I went down. She was a bus conductor on the buses. Rummaging around in her office I came across a book that was an assembly of photocopied press cuttings going back all the way to 1967, news articles and everything. It was an absolute goldmine and I was enthralled reading it. It mentioned a whole load of clubs and places in London that you could see from the window of this woman’s house. I was there making notes. When she came up onto the top deck of the bus to show someone some damage that needed to be repaired I told her about the book and told her that on no account was she to let it out of her sight. It’s something that she really ought to keep for posterity. When I finished I was going back downstairs to her house. They were talking about a car going for an MoT. I thought “I’m not doing anything this afternoon so I can take it”. I put the book in my rucksack hoping that no-one noticed and went round to see about this car. It turned out to be a pedal car for children. I thought “this is strange” but I’d already offered now so I’ll have to go. I asked her where I’d go. She replied “turn out of here, go up the hill to the roundabout and it’s the 5th street on the right down there”. I was trying to make a mental note of this but it sounded like more than 5 minutes away but I was already committed now so I’d have to go and do it. This book of press cuttings is a little gold mine. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, especially in a dream.

After the medication I came here and slowly unwound myself and then attacked another project. A while ago I’d found the soundtrack of an obscure German rock band that had performed at one of the Hawkfests some time ago.

Back in those days technology wasn’t what it is today and this was full of holes from a worn recording tape. Using the techniques that I’d been practising just recently about “cutting in” pieces of music from elsewhere in the track, I set about repairing the holes. It wasn’t easy, but I managed in the end to make something quite presentable and you’d never find the joins. Even I was impressed.

There was a break for coffee and a fruit bun and I do have to say that the fruit buns that I made in the week are excellent. And as for the biscuits, that I have yet to mention, they have really worked and are even better than the chocolate ones that I made a while back

By now it wasn’t far off lunchtime so seeing as I was expecting visitors I started to prepare for a shower but bang on the dot Rosemary rang me for one of our marathon chats.

Just as she finished, Christian from the radio came round for the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend. We had a drink and chat, and he told me about a local musician who is looking for a bassist. That piqued my interest, as you can imagine. It’s quite lonely here sitting in my bedroom playing with myself.

As soon as he left, the technician came round and checked that everything was working properly, and once he’d gone I could finally have my shower.

It was a painful walk into town to find some mushrooms for my salad tonight, and whet there were were pretty grim. Mind you they had some of those small peppers so I bought a couple for future use.

Next stop was the estate agent to drop off this paperwork, and then the long painful walk back up the hill to home, punctuated by a call at the new ice cream parlour that’s just opened

Back here I cleaned the peppers and put them in the freezer, and finally the physiotherapist turned up. His “marathon session” turned out to be 20 minutes but he had me working quite hard. I was glad when he left and I could have my hot chocolate and delicious ginger oatmeal biscuits.

And then , regrettably, I crashed out for about an hour.

Liz awoke me and we had a chat on the internet (now that I have an internet on which to chat) for a while and then I ended up with a late tea. Chips and mini sausage rolls cooked in the air fryer with a salad.

The mini sausage rolls are starting to run out now so I’m going to have to search for a vegan savoury stuffing so that I can make my own. Puff pastry is quite time-consuming and difficult to make so I might have to by a roll of ready-made stuff and use that.

So shopping to morrow, so I’d better have an early night. I’ll pop into Noz and see what there is there on offer. I could do with a change of diet. I’m still wading my way through the asparagus tips that they had but there are bound to be other exciting things.

Mustn’t forget the vegan yoghurt either. I’ve run out of that and it makes a lovely addition to my leftover curries. Things are definitely looking up around here.

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Saturday 22nd April 2023 – I HAVE SEEN …

… some of the best, most exciting football over the last week or so that I have seen for the whole of my life. And I’ve seen plenty of matches in the past.

When you desperately need to win in order to have any chance at all of avoiding relegation and you go 1-0 down after 60 seconds to A GOAL LIKE THIS then you know that you are right up against it.

But then YOU EQUALISE only to find that you GO BEHIND AGAIN just a few minutes later.

And the game drifts on into the second half and you are 2-1 down, only for the MOST EXTRAORDINARY THING to happen. I’m surprised that the crossbar was still intact after Sam Litchfield’s header.

So deep into stoppage time with just seconds left to play. You couldn’t write A FINISH LIKE THIS because no-one would believe it. What a way to avoid relegation!

As I said the other day, I’ve really found out what it means to be gripping the edge of your seat tightly as events have unfolded.

But you have to feel sorry for Y Fflint. They have played some good football at times and I liked what I saw but silly errors at the back have been their undoing all season. And they just couldn’t get the ball forward often enough to Simmonds and Akpa-Akpro to counter the mistakes in defence.

While we’re talking about mistakes … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m not sure what mistakes I made this morning but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was sitting at my desk drinking coffee and dictating radio notes.

In fact I’d been awake since 04:20 and I gave up going back to sleep an hour later, and that was that.

Making the most of the peace and quiet at that time of the morning I dictated no fewer than three sets of radio notes and they are all loaded up. And in between everything else that happened I made a complete radio programme. That means that I can have a day off on Monday.

A lot of things did actually happen today. At 09:15 I nipped out into town on my crutches and ended up at the Carrefour supermarket in the town centre. I bought some mushrooms and they also had a net of those small-sized peppers, 2 for €0:99 that I like for making my stuffed peppers.

Even though there’s a pepper still in the freezer I bought a net of peppers because at LeClerc these days they only seem to have giant ones and I’m not an American.

The walk back up the hill was tiring and it took a while to make it home. But a strong coffee and some cheese on toast done in the air fryer soon revived me.

Next stop was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There were several bits and pieces last night as if they came out of a Harry Potter film. One part was a group of kids in a room shouting abuse at another group of kids walking past. Across the road was a religious group from a local church who thought that the abuse was directed at them. They complained to the headmaster so there was an identity parade to identify the culprits. Everyone was wearing false glasses and moustaches etc to try to hide from this Christian group

Later on one of the adults burst into one of the kids’ dormitories saying something like “just come here a moment to do this” waking everyone up and was met with a torrent of abuse including from me for I was fast asleep. It awoke me with a start too.

Later still one of the cleaning staff stole Harry Potter’s ring and that was complicated.

By the way, can you guess which film I’m watching at the moment while I eat my evening meal?

After the football I finished off the radio programme but that took much longer than it ought to have done because the early start to the day caught up with me during the late afternoon, as I thought that it might.

Tea tonight was a really delicious burger on a bun with chips from the air fryer and a lovely salad. As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my diet these days is showing a vast improvement.

And while we’re on the subject of burgers … “well, one of us is” – ed … when I was at Aldi they had some cheap hamburger presses for sale so I bought one. For only €2:99 they do three sizes and that’s fine by me because I’m collecting a few recipes these days for things like not only burgers but hash browns and so on. A hamburger press doing different sizes is just what I want.

And while I remember, in the cookery sale at Noz yesterday they had some ready-ground nut power so I bought 300 grammes of it. Nutburgers will now be back on the menu in early course. I have some gram flour in a jar somewhere and I’d buy more oats if I only would remember.

But all that’s for another time. I’ve just finished another marathon phone call to Rosemary and despite my sleep this afternoon I’m pretty tired so I’m off to bed.

Nothing to do tomorrow as I have some biscuits and some fruit bread left and there’s some pizza dough in the freezer too. But I’m sure that I can find plenty of things to do to keep me out of mischief. I’m too old for that kind of nonsense these days.

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Wednesday 12th April 2023 – MY HOME-MADE …

… garlic naan was delicious. And what’s even better is that there are two more balls of dough in the freezer for further use for the next batch of leftover curries. And shock! Horror! I didn’t use the air fryer but stuck the naan in the wok to cook when I’d finished cooking the curry.

The leftover curry tonight was even better than usual too. The naan bread recipe called for just half a pot of soya yoghurt so instead of soya cream, I added the remains of the pot to my curry and that definitely gave it a certain je ne sais quoi that it didn’t have before.

The fact is that gradually I’m working on my diet and my meals and I’m having some really good stuff. My diet is improving in leaps and bounds and that can only be good news.

It’s better news that what happened during the night. That’s certainly true. I was late going to bed and when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already sitting down here working. I’d been up since 06:00 and awake for more than an hour before that. It was quite a dreadful night.

Anyway I went for a shower and then set off to walk to the doctor’s, with both my crutches. I almost had a fall going down the steps to the Place Pelley but I managed to hang on and made it the rest of the way.

The doctor was extremely pleased to see me and he said so. He also said that when he saw me for the first time after I came back from Canada via the hospital he was extremely worried and wasn’t sure at all that I would pull through.

Not the first time that I’ve heard that either. I had a friend once who told me that he had been at death’s door but the hospital pulled him through.

After the doctor threw me out, armed with a pile of prescriptions, I went first to the little Carrefour and then round to the pharmacy. Outside, I met the friendly neighbourhood itinerant street dweller and we had quite a chat.

The chemist has to order in my Aranesp so that’s another trip down into town tomorrow. And I’m slowly warming to the idea of going to Leuven next by train regardless of the struggle through Paris because right now I seem to be managing to walk fairly well, all things considered, on my crutches and I’m hoping for an improvement after my week next week at the hospital.

What underlined that was the walk back home afterwards. I made it all the way back here without having to stop to catch my breath and it’s been an age since I’ve been able to do that. Things are looking up.

While i’d been in town I’d bought a crusty baguette so I made some cheese on toast for a late breakfast, especially now that I can actually buy vegan cheese in the big supermarkets. It’s not just my cooking that’s looking up but the supply of ingredients too.

Tons of stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night despite how short it was. I was driving a taxi last night. I had my little company going but all kinds of issues were going on. I ended up with just one car doing a few bits and pieces here and there. I was fed up with trying to organise everything and do everything. It ended up in Court for some reason or other. It was all very depressing last night.

And then I was in a house with someone. She was going to have a bath. She had left me alone in the living room. I’d seen all of her plants. She had some books on plants.

There was also a dream about a big female cat like Chloe (the cervil). She’d had kittens and one of them wasn’t very well. It had a respiratory issue. She brought the kitten to me to presumably take to the vet. I took the kitten and her too at the same time.

Later on I stepped back into one of these dreams again about a girl whom I’d been dating. Her parents began to accept me as some kind of fixture. She told me that Robert had rung up to talk to me. She thought that this was my father. I explained that this was Percy Penguin’s father. I couldn’t understand why he would want to get in touch with me. Her mother didn’t say very much and wandered away so I talked to this girl who by now had become Percy Penguin. She was saying that she’s being treated much better at home now because she’s been spending more time with them and more time looking after the pets and animals which has made har parents quite grateful. Maybe my new favoured position has something to do with all of that.

When I awoke later on (whatever that’s supposed to mean) I was with this girl again. I don’t know what’s happening here now.

That’s not everything that happened during the night by the way, but you really don’t want to know about the rest of it.

The cleaner came round this afternoon and we had a good chat while I wrote out some notes for one of my radio programmes. But then I crashed out – good and proper too – for at least an hour so I didn’t do as much as I would have liked. But I still managed to find the time to make some dough for the delicious naan bread.

having talked about my curry earlier, I’m just going to do a little more work and then I’ll head for bed. No lie-in tomorrow of course because I’m having a blood test and I have to have had nothing to eat. So right now I’m finishing off the last of the special chocolate that I bought for myself for Easter and then I’ll be going to bed.

But after crashing out like I did today I probably won’t have much of a sleep tonight either. Still, a good walk into town should wear me out enough and I’ll be fit for nothing when the physio comes round on Friday morning.

It’s all go around here, isn’t it?

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Friday 10th February 2023 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

… tea that was tonight. Burger on a bap with salad and a pile of chips cooked to perfection in the air fryer. I’m really pleased with my air fryer, that’s for sure, and I ought to explore a few more of its capabilities if it’s going to cook stuff as well as it did my chips and, when I added it to the pot, my burger.

And the salad was delicious too. That’s an excellent plan and makes my meals much more exciting.

But I wasn’t very pleased though with last night. I went to bed at a reasonable time but didn’t go off to sleep for ages. I’ve no idea how long I spent tossing and turning because I was afraid to tempt fate by looking. But it seemed like an age.

There was plenty of time though nevertheless to go off on my travels. And I clocked up some distance too. A former friend of mine had bought a Hillman Hunter and wanted it delivering to his house so I said that I would go to do it. I went into Stoke on Trent to find this car and started to push it towards his house. It was comparatively easy to do that, much easier than I thought it would be, especially up the hill. I had to push it on the kerb, the pavement, not on the road which was fine in some places but in others the grass was extremely long. There was that much dirt on the pavement that at some times I had to dig out the pavement and the side of the road so I could keep on pushing the car up the hill. This went on for ages and ages. It was dark and going into the small hours of the following morning. There were one or two people around, someone in an old MkI Cortina with no headlights driving down the hill practising his rallying. Eventually I got to where he was living, in a motel. Pushing the car down the corridor became quite easy. There was a girl there whom at first I thought was Zero but it wasn’t – she was a couple of years older than her. I said “hello” to her anyway. Just as I reached his front door which was of course where I might have expected to find Zero, I suddenly awoke bolt-upright.

And then we were living next door to him. We had an electric car. The gap between our houses was fitted up with a charging cable. It was a split charging cable with different wires coming out of it so if you had a car there to charge up you had to connect up these 8 wires separately. We were out there and a young schoolgirl went past, I don’t know why. Back inside we could hear him and his wife arguing about something or other. I thought “here I am, wide awake in various places and this is another occasion where I’m close to getting to see Zero again but I haven’t actually seen her”. It’s strange that I thought that in my dream because there have been a few times (including a little earlier this evening) where I’ve been on the point of meeting her in a dream and I’ve awoken suddenly. My subconscious is clearly trying to tell me something, and I wish that I knew what it was.

Did I dictate the story about the car rally that we organised? … “No you didn’t” – ed. Once everyone from the office had taken off, we headed off back home to pick up a few things. We encountered a couple of cars on the way back just as we were pulling into our drive. They were looking for something or other in the vicinity. We had a chat with them and gave them a little clue about one of the clues which was going to be difficult if they didn’t stop and think clearly. The guy who always seemed to run the office seemed to be the bossy type even went to the police station to try to persuade them to let him speak to a prisoner in there who had been involved in a car accident earlier that day. He was of the opinion that the clue involving this ironing board was something to do with him and his accident.

Finally, we’d gone skiing to this mountain. When we reached the top, instead of skiing down there was like an escalator covered in snow that took you back down to the bottom of the hill again. Although I was not able physically to ski, I was still bewildered by everyone else going down the hill on this escalator and not actually skiing down. There was someone in a wheelchair whom I thought was brave to reach the top of the mountain anyway and come back down again but I still couldn’t understand why there would be this escalator when all you had to do was to ski down to the bottom. And it’s interesting to see that my mobility issues are now featuring in my nocturnal rambles.

Much of the day has been spent in some kind of desultory fashion writing the notes for my next couple of radio shows. I’ve not been in much of a rush to do it and there have been plenty of distractions along the way. Consequently there are still some to write out before I can dictate them.

But I’ve been having a little think about my radio programmes and how I can change them to make them better (or, at any rate, different) and I have a cunning plan about that on which I’m working in my spare time, whenever that might be.

This afternoon I went into town on the bus. I had some medication to collect from the pharmacy and then there was a little bit of shopping to pick up.

Not all of the medication was there so they had to order it for me and I have to go to pick it up tomorrow. That should be interesting with a bus strike so I’ve been thinking that I might actually try to walk down there on my crutches and hope that one of the few buses running tomorrow might bring me back.

It should be an interesting trip, especially if there are no buses back, and one thing is for sure, and that is that I won’t be trying it with just one crutch. I’ll persevere with two for now and see how I feel after a few more weeks.

What made me think about it was that I actually managed to stride out something like rapidly (or what passes for “rapidly” these days) and I covered a lot of ground at a reasonable turn of speed. I need to keep on pushing myself forward.

When I came back I bumped into yet another neighbour and we had yet another chat. I seem to be quite popular for the moment and I don’t know why.

After my delicious tea I came back in here and promptly fell asleep for half an hour. All of this walking is wearing me out and I imagine that if I do go into town tomorrow on foot, I’ll live to regret that as well.

And so I’d better go and try to have a decent sleep. I certainly need it. And who knows? I might even finally get to meet Zero.

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Friday 3rd February 2023 – IT REALLY WAS A …

… lovely afternoon today. Sunny and once I was out of the wind, quite warm too. It really was a pleasure to be out and about.

With it being Friday today, I needed to go to the supermarket in the town for my fresh fruit and so on. But I’m not sure whether it was worth the effort from that point of view because although I managed to buy a lettuce and some mushrooms they had no bananas, no cucumber and there were a few other things that I wanted that were missing in the shops.

The reason for that though was clear to see. There was a big notice everywhere saying that the shop will be closed on Monday and Tuesday for stocktaking, so I suppose that they didn’t want too much fresh fruit and veg hanging around that they might not have been able to sell.

Hoad I known, I would have gone to one of the other supermarkets in the town centre. There are three altogether. I had plenty of time. But regardless of anything else, I was glad to be out and about in the nice weather.

Before I went to bed last night I was out and about too. I went for a walk up and down the stairs here, without my crutches too. And going down the steps I led with the left leg, to give me an opportunity to bend the right knee. Unfortunately, I couldn’t lead with the right going back up the steps. I’m a long way from there, so far that I doubt that i’ll ever be back.

It was a bad night too, tossing and turning around for quite a while trying in vain to go to sleep. Another night where I didn’t do much except watch the clock go round and round. I did eventually go off to sleep, but for nothing like as much sleep as I would have liked.

There was however enough time for me to go off on a few travels here and there. I started off going to work. I had a great big Audi saloon. I had to take the director or one of the big directors to somewhere in Germany not too far from Berlin. They explained the name of the hotel and the town, and I said that I knew it although I didn’t. When they asked why, I said that because my aunt used to go there because my family is connected with royalty (which they didn’t believe but anyway …). So the next morning I awoke. I was in Shavington. There was a lot of traffic on the road because it was rush hour. I got into the car and started it. I thought that I’d do a lap or two around the block to warm it up but I noticed that it was low on petrol or diesel so I thought that I’d go to the garage on Newcastle Road and fuel it with diesel then come back and we’d be ready to go. I was driving up Chestnut Avenue which was a 4-lane road at the time, in the right-hand lane ready to turn right at the top.

I can’t remember very much about this next bit though but I was creating a 3D figure. The telephone rang so I answered it and said that I’d call them back because I was busy with this thing and hung up. Then I realised who it was and tried to call them back so that I could continue talking to them while I was continuing to work on this 3D figure.

And then I’d bought an apartment in a big house. Rosemary had come along to help me clean it up, the house and the balcony, and do some cleaning up outside in the public areas. We ended up making the place look pretty nice although it could do with a coat of paint inside because I didn’t like the red walls. The communal parts outside were confusing. It was a tiny village with several houses dotted around and what you would think at first was private to this particular house was actually a pathway that led to one of these other buildings. It was extremely confusing to try to work out which was the communal area, which was private to our house and which was private to some other house. While we were standing on the balcony having a look out because it was quite high up we could see loads of old vehicles moving around in the distance. It suddenly occurred to us that there was a vintage vehicle rally in the vicinity that weekend. I told Roemary that I knew where I’d be going to be this weekend.

Later on there was something about one of these American mobsters. He’d been convicted of an offence but there was some kind of public enquiry into his conviction. The FBI was involved in this but the cross-examination of this guy by the FBI was particularly bizarre because it almost amounted to the FBI agent going down on his knees and pleading with this mobster to tell the truth, which I thought was quite a strange way of going about cross-examining someone.

Once again I was up quite quickly when the alarm went off, despite the lack of sleep. And when I’d finished the medication and checked my messages I made a start on continuing the notes for the next round of radio programmes. I didn’t get very far though because Rosemary rang me up and we had another one of our marathon chats.

And she brought me some good news. The sunroof that I’d bought in Canada for that Ford Flex in the Puy de Dôme finally turned up today after several months of dispute and discussion. So that’s now been passed on to whom it may concern.

And the Genz Benz 200-watt bass combo that I’d found on sale for peanuts in a pawn shop in Ottawa turned up with it too. That’s going to have to stay at Rosemary’s for a while until I can go down and rescue it, but at least it’s on this side of the Atlantic and I’ll be back on the road.

It’s nice to have some good news for a change. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Later on I went out for the bus into town. It was the new bus too, the first time that I’ve travelled on that one. and i’m definitely becoming used to these crutches because I was off the bus, in and out of the supermarket and back at the bus station all in 15 minutes and I had 15 minutes to wait for the bus back home. So I had plenty of time to soak up the sun.

Back here, with still no reply to my reminder to the solicitor handling the sale of this apartment, I filled in all of the forms that I need to organise the transfer of the money and sent them off. But there were a couple of things that need more explanation and I’ll have to sort that out over the weekend. And once I’ve done that, then the ball is firmly in the court of the solicitor.

Tea was a burger on a bap with a pile of salad and some chips that had been fried in the air fryer. It really was delicious – one of the best meals that I’ve cooked. That air fryer really is the business and I ought to experiment more with it to try to have my money’s worth out of it. I’m told that it will bake bread and that might be worth an experiment.

Tomorrow i’ll finish off the notes for the radio programmes and then I really can have a complete day off on Sunday. And won’t that be nice?

High time I had a good rest and relax. Anyone would think that I haven’t done that for ages.

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Friday 27th January 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… lie-in this morning.

But that was completely involuntary and by accident because the alarm failed to go off this morning.

When I checked the mobile phone I found that the battery had gone flat and it had switched off. Further enquiry revealed that what had happened was that the charging plug had somehow become detached from the telephone. With no possibility to repair something like this, that was that.

We aren’t lost though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I lost my mobile phone and being totally unable to find it, I bought another one. A few months later, when I was tidying Caliburn looking for something else, I found the ‘phone down underneath the driver’s seat. so it went into a drawer and I forgot all about it.

Today’s events made ne remember where it was so I hunted it down but found, to my dismay, that the SIM card wasn’t the same size. But not to worry – I’ll sort it out later.

The morning was spent working on the notes for the radio programmes that I’ll be doing on Monday and chatting to Liz and Rosemary on the internet. But once the afternoon came round I dressed myself up and went out to catch the bus.

And today I’m very proud of myself in one respect, but not in another. When the bus dropped me off at the Place Godal I set off on my marathon hike to the Orange Telecom shop. That really is quite a walk, only about 400 metres short of the railway station and I was really impressed that I made it all the way there on my crutches.

But not so impressed when I spoke to the assistant at the shop. he took both telephones, took the SIM card out of the one that i’m going to use, peeled off the small adapter that was around it, put the SIM card from the broken ‘phone into the adapter and put that in the other ‘phone.

It was as simple as that and had I noticed that earlier when I was at home this morning, I could have saved myself the walk.

However the walk did me good and it’s made me think a little more about how I might go for broke and try one of these days to walk on my crutches to the railway station. But the last 400 metres is a killer hill, and I bet that the whole route will be a lot more difficult when I have things to carry.

Back down in the town I went to the Carrefour and bought a few bits and pieces, like mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and the like.

At the bus stop there was a 45-minute wait for the bus and it was cold out there and so I decided that I’d cross over the road and catch the bus in the other direction, round to the terminus at the other end of the line and then rode the bus back. At least it was warm and comfortable on the bus out of the wind.

Just about 45 minutes after I returned home I had to go back out again. The taxi came to pick me up to take me to this nerve specialist. and I’ll tell you now that pumping electricity through me as he did was one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me.

There’s nothing much wrong with my arms but there’s an issue with my left leg. As for my right leg, well, the least said about that the better. It’s quite clear according to him that there’s some serious damage.

He’s going to discuss things with my doctor but he did warn me that I need to pack my suitcase. I suppose that I’ll have to buy a couple of pairs of pyjamas too. Hospital nightwear is pretty depressing and I … errr … don’t actually have any of my own.

After I returned I transcribed the notes of my voyages from last night. I’d just finished work and I needed something for the weekend, which was in Chester, so I set out for Chester. It was such a nice evening so I decided that I would walk. I took a t-shirt, a cagoule, a fleece and another rainproof jacket just in case. The walk as far as the suburbs of Chester was quite uneventful and I quite enjoyed it but as I arrived closer to the city, it went really dark. We suddenly had a torrential downpour of rain. Luckily with the 2 rain jackets that I had and the fleece in between the 2 I kept warm and dry. I was able to walk quite comfortably up to the traffic lights on the edge of the city. Then the rain stopped and it went bright again. I stopped to take off the rain jacket. There were some people coming the other way who started to admire my rain jacket and particularly my yellow fleece, starting to talk to each other about it. They asked me a few questions but for some unknown reason I replied in French. I could see a look of puzzle on their faces as I did so but I didn’t really want to hang around and chat to them because I had a lot to do. I wanted to have it done as quickly as possible because of course it’s a long way to Chester and a long way back if you are walking.

As an aside, I walked back through the night from Chester to where I was living near Audlem a couple of times – all 30 or so miles of it – when the girl whom I was seeing went to College there and I didn’t have a car. It didn’t take me as long as you might think and even once or twice I walked straight to work and did 8 hours before going home to bed. I couldn’t do it now, even if I didn’t have the crutches.

I can’t remember who I was with later on, but it was a married couple. They were my age. It concerned a Ford Granada and there was some work that needed doing on it, the front wheel bearings and a few other bits and pieces. It had been around for a while and the work hadn’t started. I was with the woman who said that she had had a dream last night about her husband who had gone off to do this and that and somethign else. She’d happened to mention the Granada and he replied “oh yes, I’m going to get down to do it starting tomorrow”. He seemed so enthusiastic so she said that that’s possibly a good sign that means that he will. I said “strangely enough, I had a dream about someone working on a Granada too”. Then I told her the story of a friend whom I knew who had a Granada and who had been in the same position. He just wouldn’t start doing the repairs which was something to do with the wheel bearings and the front wings. After so many months he’d just put everything in a box and sold it, including the car, for someone else to do. She was surprised. Next time I went round her husband was there. He said “by the way, I’d done one of those front wheel bearings. It only took me 15 minutes as well”.

Tea tonight was some of these mini sausage rolls with baked potatoes, veg and gravy. They were actually quite delicious. I’ll have to work out a way of ordering some more of these “Green Cuisine” products. Noz has them in on the odd occasion but I’d love to have a more regular supply. It’s not possible to order stuff like this from the UK these days, what with Brexit and all that.

So hopefully tomorrow the alarm will go of and awaken me properly this time. Not that I have too much to do this weekend – do my cleaner’s accounts, do some more work on sorting out how I’m going to pay for this apartment that I’m supposed to be buying and that kind of thing. So I might even finish the notes for these radio programmes.

And having been to the shops this week, I have everything that I need, I reckon, but I really am going to try to go out for a walk more often, even if it isn’t far. Having made it as far as the Orange Mobile place today, I need to keep up the good work and see if I can exercise myself back into some sort of condition.

Only time will tell.

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Friday 20th January 2023 – THAT’S PUT SOMETHING …

… of a hole in my bank account this afternoon.

And that’s just the start of things too. It’ll get much worse than this over the course of the next couple of months.

But that’s for some other time. There are many more things that are much more important going on right now.

Like yet again, I had a lot of trouble struggling out of bed again. Not as late as it has been sometimes just recently, but later than I would have liked.

And I couldn’t hang around too long because I had a taxi coming for me. Thanks to the doctor who issued me with a travel voucher, I had a free taxi this morning to and from this nerve specialist person with whom I had an appointment.

He didn’t give me the electric examination that was organised – he was much more interested in testing my reflexes with some kind of vibrating tuning fork. And sure enough, while I could feel the vibrations in the left leg, I felt nothing at all in the right leg. He seems to think that a hospital intervention might be needed, and so he’s called me back next Friday evening for a full examination and he’ll write an appropriate report.

And, as you might expect, I don’t like the sound of this at all. However, if it means that I might actually be able to regain some of my mobility it might well be worth the suffering.

While I was waiting for my lift back home, one of my neighbours drove past. he stopped for a chat and later on sent me a copy of an interview that a friend of his had carried out with the late lamented David Crosby. That will come in handy for something or other.

Back here I had a nice strong coffee and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. As for my first little voyage, you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

Later on Cardiff City had been relegated to the Welsh 2nd Division. They were playing at home for the 1st match so I went along to see. They had a new entrance to their front of the ground like an archway through into a park. We walked past there and round the top at the end of these houses then back down behind the houses to the pitch. It was basically being played on a public park that was full of timber that had been felled so the game was extremely bizarre watching them playing the ball and trying not to hit these piles of timber. I ended up chatting there to a guy who was telling me about everything that was wrong with Cardiff City and why they were relegated. He could see that they were pleying quite well but lacked any kind of enthusiasm. He said that it was something that the captain needed to organise to bring some enthusiasm and energy into the team.

And then I was in Lesotho of all places with an African guy who was driving some kind of small lorry. We were driving through this mountain pass and came to a small village. There was a policeman there who stepped out in front and stopped the vehicle. It turned out that he only had a 5-figure number on his vehicle which meant that it hadn’t had an overhaul in 5 years so the policeman decided to examine it. I was intrigued by this situation never having seen this kind of thing before. I was asking the policeman all kinds of information about what he was doing and the reasons. Eventually he waved on this guy to drive and I followed on behind on foot. As we came close to a big city I lost him in the traffic. I ended up walking into the centre of town through these parks etc trying to check my internet. One thing that I wanted to do was to log in while I was here so that everyone would know where I was but for some unknown reason the logging-in system on the mobile phone wasn’t working. Apparenty I read somewhere that not every country had adopted this system, which was probably why. Lesotho was one of them. I had to just wander around to try to find a quiet place where I wouldn’t be overlooked and disturbed and have a think about how I was going to do this.

This afternoon I had to go into town. The Belgian Government pays my Belgian Old-Age pension by cheque. And although it might only be €34:00 per month, it’s still something that I can spend and one of the cheques was about to run out of time. Luckily, the bus stops right outside my door here so I don’t have to walk far at all to catch it once I can get downstairs.

The walk at the other end though is quite long and I was interested to see how I would manage on my crutches. It was slow and laborious but I made it in the end and I paid in my cheques. So spend! Spend! Spend!

On the way, I bumped into the homeless guy who wanders around the town and we had a good chat. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen him so we had a lot of things to say to each other.

But back at the bank, I had another reason to be there. I have a project on the go at the moment as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and this is the moment to put my hand in my pocket. And how long do you think that it takes to transfer money from my savings account to my current account and then to make a bank transfer?

Back here at home on the internet I could do it in a couple of minutes but there’s a delay of a few days if I do that. The transfer needs to be done “on the spot” and done correctly too so I wanted the bank to do it and it took over an hour. And then the bank clerk forgot to give me back my card.

Once I’d recovered my card I went to the Carrefour in the town and did a bit of shopping. Mushrooms for the pizza and the stuffing, some salad and a couple of other things. Much as I would like to buy more, I can’t actually carry it. And if I take my wheeled trolley I can’t use my crutches so I can’t walk very well.

With having been so long at the bank I had a long wait at the bus stop for the bus back home. It was crowded too but I found a seat so I had a comfortable ride.

Back here I made a hot chocolate and then regrettably I crashed out – and for quite a while too. The walk to the bank must have worn me out but at least I have one less thing to worry about.

Tea tonight was my sausage, beans and chips and it was delicious. I really do like my air fryer although I feel that I ought to be doing more with it than I actually do. I shall have to find a recipe book from somewhere to see what vegan meals I can conjure up. There has to be something going on somewhere

So tomorrow I don’t have anything organised that needs doing so I can catch up with the radio programme that I’ve been trying to do for several days. What I can do, I suppose, is to prowl around in cyberspace and see what I need to make things more comfortable for me.

But having spent more today in one swell foop than I have ever spent of my own money in one day than I have spent for some considerable time and with plenty more to go out as well, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to afford anything else.

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Friday 13th January 2023 – IT JUST GOES …

… to show that I can do it when I really try and what’s going wrong with me right now is inside my head rather than anywhere else.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about dressing and when the second alarm went off at 07:45 I’d already had my medication and was sitting down working at the computer.

And if that’s not extraordinary behaviour, it should be borne in mind that I didn’t go to bed until 01:00, I was wide-awake again at 06:45 and I didn’t crash out at all at any point today.

There was however something or urgency to be done, and that might explain things. Having done a lot of work on the radio programme for Jeff Beck by the time that I wrote up my notes last night, I stayed up and finished everything that I had on hand – dictating the notes, editing them, pairing off the music and then joining everything together.

No wonder that it took me until 01:00 this morning!

And this morning, I wrote out a few more notes to conclude the programme, dictated and edited them, and then joined them in with the final tracks. I’d finished everything and listened to it to make sure that it was OK and it was all ready to go by 10:00 this morning.

And it was broadcast this evening.

Having been done in a hurry, it would have benefited from some further editing, but the joints for the tracks were perfection.

That was the cue to sit down with a mug of strong coffee and a fruit bun and relax for an hour or two. It’s not like me to work like this, especially these days.

At some point in the morning I had a ‘phone call. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a little project simmering away on the back burner. The gist of this phone call was that in about 10 days or so I may have some news to impart to you in this respect.

Not before, though. There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

At some point I was intending to go off down into town to try out my new crutches. When I felt like going out I looked out of the window and saw that instead of the bright sunny weather that we had had earlier, we were now in the middle of a tropical downpour.

That was the cue to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on a holiday somewhere, one of these walking holiday things where you stay in a hotel for a week and go to different places for walks around interesting sites. We’d just been on one and were on our way back. Someone mentioned something about a walk that they had done that was extremely interesting. I told them about my trip to the High Arctic. As the lift thinned out someone said to me “hey Reverend, where’s your dog collar today?”. I made some kind of joke about that. The question of cars came up. I said that I had 2 cars, rather a car and a van. I left the lift and to my surprise I could walk up a step with my left foot, something that I haven’t done for ages. I thought that this walking is certainly doing me better. I was expecting a letter for a radio programme that I was doing. I thought “the post has come this morning so it should be in our pigeon hole”. I went to the post room and picked up my key to go to look inside my pigeon hole. There were envelopes everywhere, all over all the tables, the reception counter, piles of post that hadn’t been sorted as yet. I thought to myself “I won’t find my envelope here”. Then I put the key in the key hole in my pigeon hole so that I could open it to make sure that it hasn’t arrived and found that the key wouldn’t fit. For some unknown reason I was trying with the wrong key.

And then I was at another holiday hotel with a lot of people my age or maybe younger. I decided that I wasn’t really going to do any of the optional trips. I’d just sit there and relax. Somehow I was swept along, chatting to a woman here and another one there etc. We all were going on a car-sharing ride. I ended up with a woman who I was convinced that I’d been with yesterday. We were chatting ever so friendly. We reached this car park and the first thing that we saw was piles and piles of dwarves who were all going somewhere. The woman with me made some remark about how nice it was to see them all there obviously in a group with friends etc. We pushed on and reached where these cars were parked. I was dithering about finding a seat. I couldn’t make up my mind which seat in which car to take. I was sure that I must have been frustrating this woman. In the end we found a car with 2 empty seats. We got in and began to chat with the people with it. I looked across and in the car parked next to us, there was the woman with whom I’d been the previous evening. I wondered who on earth this woman was with whom I’d palled up and what she had to do with anything.

It looks as if I have the wanderlust again and I’m ready to go off on another journey. But that’s out of the question right now, and for a variety of reasons too. Health is one of them, and money is another. I shall have to give up my wanderings for a good while while I get myself on an even keel.

At least the crutches seem to work as they are supposed to. I finally made it out to the bus and ended up in town. And from getting off the bus to getting back to the bus stop with my shopping took me less than half the time that it did when I tried it previously. At least I have the fresh stuff that I wanted to buy

It was much easier, even if it was very tiring, and I’ll have another go at travelling into town on the bus next weekend, I reckon. I might even try to go for a little walk tomorrow if I can.

But regardless of anything, I was glad to be back and have a mug of hot chocolate. Coming back up the stairs with the shopping was hard work and provided all kinds of entertainment to one of the neighbours.

Tea tonight was chips and veggie balls with a salad. The lettuce was starting to look rather sad to I was glad to attack it once again. There’s enough good stuff left in the lettuce for tomorrow too. A salad every now and again is really quite nice

So that’s that for now. I’m going to bed, having just had a nice long what with a friend of mine on line. I don’t know what i’ll be doing tomorrow but it won’t be shopping. At some point I have to bake some bread and some fruit buns so we’ll see how I get on with that.

But that’s for another time. I’ve done enough for today.

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Tuesday 20th December 2022 – THERE I WAS …

… deep in the arms of Morpheus observing some kind of exciting spaghetti western and someone rings the front doorbell.

Still, serves me right for deciding to have a lie-in this morning instead of springing to my feet with alacrity.

Last night, I’d even gone to bed reasonably early as well and was looking forward to a decnt 8 hours sleep but it never quite worked out like that. There was the usual tossing and turning that seems to have become a regular feature of the way things are these days.

So having kept my doorbell-ringer hanging on the door for several minutes while I threw on some clothes, I staggered (and I DO mean “staggered”) down the stairs to find the pharmacist who had brought me my medication. The doctor had dropped off the prescription at the pharmacy yesterday.

My injections haven’t come yet. They need to be ordered specially and will arrive when they arrive. But I’ll make sure that I’m up early tomorrow.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had plenty of things that I needed to do but it didn’t quite work out like that today. There’s a project, quite a serious one, that I have on the go and about which I’ve alluded in the recent past and that has occupied much of my day today.

It’s something that if it comes off it will change my life dramatically for the better and so I’m keen to push things along as quickly as I can. So when people want to talk to me about it, I’m not going to be obstructive.

One thing that I promised to do was to try to go into town and the Carrefour supermarket at the port. So despite the heavy rain, I made an attempt.

Getting to the bus stop itself just 10 metres from the front door was enough to convince me that this was not one of my better ideas, but I pushed on all the same.

Hauling myself up onto the pavement by clinging onto the wall, I managed to board the bus. I even managed to alight but the walk to the supermarket, all 50 metres of it, was a nightmare.

Luckily I managed to find almost everything that I needed, except the vegan mushroom pâté. And then the walk back to the bus stop, even though it was only half the distance, was dreadful. When the bus came to pick me up and take me home, he stopped well away from the kerb and his wheelchair ramp wasn’t working. And so you can imagine how much of a problem it was to board the bus to come home.

That finished me off. The walk back from the bus to home even more difficult and I was glad to return home in the end. I had to have an energy drink to recover but at least I had my frozen peas and beans, tomatoes, taco rolls and a couple of other things too. There were a few carrots and sprouts too so when I’d recovered somewhat I peeled, diced and blanched them. They are now in the freezer freezing.

Rosemary and I had a chat too and the question of on-line shopping came up. And to my surprise Amazon came up with my mushroom pâté as well as a few other interesting things so I assembled an order. I even ordered one of those wheeled shopping bag things, thinking that I might be able to move a little better if I didn’t have things to carry and I had something on which I can lean.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. This was something of a nightmare. I was in a kind-of swamp and there were all these primeval small creatures in there that were trying to eat all of the human beings who were trying to wade their way through it. Eventually we managed to extricate ourselves from it and sit in trees etc while these small creatures prowled around underneath. Then these other animals started to appear out of the shrubbery when it was dark and we watched the animals start to attack those and carry them off into a quiet corner where they could eat them. In the end we were finally called to where we were supposed to be. We had to make a run for it and eventually reached some kind of safety. But this was a nightmare and horrible while we were sitting in these trees watching all of this going on.

And then we had a dream where I’d lost the use of my legs but had to go into town. I’d somehow got on the bus and bought some stuff and was on my way back. The bus did an emergency stop. A few of us went flying up the bus but held onto our possessions etc. When the bus finally stopped we were greeted with a round of applause for having been so good at doing that. Interestingly, that felt as if it was 03:00 in the middle of the night when I was trying to go to sleep rather than in the morning when it was supposed to have been and I was up and about going shopping with the bus and my things.

Later on we were back at Nantwich Grammar School again. Me, my German friend and a group of others. The whole system had changed. There wasn’t the assembly followed by the lesson – I don’t know what they were doing but we could see that everything had changed since our day. Even the school uniform was a kind-of pale green blazer. We decided that we weren’t going to take any interest in this. We would go and play cricket on the tarmac at the back of the gym. A group of us, 3 or 4 of us, set off and walked down the boys’ corridor past all the boys sitting in the changing rooms and out of the back. Suddenly this golf club came whizzing past. it was my brother playing golf. My German friend was going on about how it was obvious that all these changes about sport – no-one was playing any sport or games any more. It’s obvious that the school playing fields are going to be the next to go and the kids won’t have anywhere to play, never mind whether they wanted to or not. My German friend took up a position at some invisible stumps, my brother kept wicket and I took a nice long run up. I suddenly set off on my run down to what was the other wicket and my legs just gave way underneath me. I fell flat on my face.

When I awoke a little later I had an enormous pain in my knee. That was strange.

later still I was back on the taxis last night. For some unknown reason I awoke really early and Nerina was organising one or two things. There were a couple of jobs in so I said that I would go and do them. First of all I had to go round to see the girl who drove for us in the daytime, if she was still ill. She lived in High Street, n°3. I drove round there in this beautiful sunny morning really early. There were 2 surnames on the door that were the same. I didn’t know which one so I pressed one of them but she answered. I could see that her issues, a lot of it was physical, some of it was psyschological. I had the impression that she just had a great depression so I started to talk to her to see if I could be of any help

Finally I was in the middle of a spaghetti western with the goodies shooting up the baddies and the baddies slowly disappearing into this old wooden shack like in any good Clint Eastwood film. There were a couple of women one of whom was holding a stash of jewels for one of the baddies but another woman found it and managed to hide it under her clothing. When it wame to the time for them all to leave she made sure that she had the fastest and best horse and began to out-ride the other one and make good her getaway. Just as we were getting to the climax when the front doorbell rang. It was the pharmacist.

But as you can see, my walking difficulties are now working their way into my dreams. That’s rather a worrying thought.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, and there’s enough stuffing left over for a taco roll, now that I have some. And now I’m off to bed. I want to be early because I might have the pharmacist coming round in the morning and I need to be ready. Things had all the potential of being rather embarrassing this morning if I’m in a state of only semi-awareness.

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Saturday 18th June 2022 – I WAS THINKING …

… “which is always dangerous” – ed … of hitting the road this weekend.

But a temperature of 32°C in an old van without air-conditioning heading off into the wild blue yonder is more than any man can stand and so I eschewed the idea for now.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022In order to underline the situation, I’ll post a couple of photos that I took of the crowds of people swimming in the sea today

You can tell how warm it was just by looking at these photos.

It was quite warm during the night too and I was tossing and turning for much of it. It was really difficult to go off to sleep.

By about 06:45 I’d effectively given up and I was sitting there waiting for the alarm to go off when with about 5 minutes to go I drifted off to sleep again and when the alarm went off I awoke with a start.

people on beach plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Nevertheless I was out of bed as it rang and went off for my medication.

When I’d checked my mails and messages afterwards the first thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’d had the insurance through for the van. I remembered distinctly putting the certificate and policy in the container up on the roof rack while I was sorting everything out but it wasn’t there when I went to look for it. I turned the van inside out but still couldn’t find anything. By now we were 6 months into the insurance. I said that I would have to have a duplicate but my brother didn’t think that they would send me one after 6 months if I turned round and said that it was missing. I was just going to say that I’d misplaced it but he didn’t think that that was a good enough excuse for having a duplicate. We had one of our interminable discussions about it. In the end he decided that he would search through Caliburn to see if he couldn’t find the papers. at that point I left him to it. No point in both of us doing the same thing and getting annoyed with both of us doing it

We’re now in a Welsh lesson. A few of us given Welsh lessons on top of this double decker bus. One by one we must have been plucked off and disappeared because further along the programme nothing was heard but Welsh on this bus. The people weemed to be unaware that there was a party of English persons I fell asleep here

Finally it was the World Series of baseball and one of the coaches would be happy having amateur referees in it. That was a crazy thing to do because these World Series games go on for every. In any case his tactics were all wrong and the other teams were exploiting his tactics. The one team that had made it to the final had some depressing tactics of their own, like timewasting and making each play count minutes although they did manage to bottle up the defence of the others and make them run down one corridor. This violent hugging had cost the coach a $25 fine at the last game and was likely to be repeated if he continued.

At some point as well I was with Louise. She had had a long wheelbase Landrover that she had fitted a short cab. She’d sold the long wheelbase cab to someone in the area but he’d died before he could collect it so his executor was trying to haul away the cab. She was a kind of mouse who wouldn’t engage with him because she said that it was this other guy’s, even though he’d died. She had it all laid out in bits where it should go, here and there, everything. She showed me round quite proudly. Her uncle was there as well. He was talking to me about this and that. We were out there and all of a sudden it started to rain a torrential rainstorm. He said that he had to nip over and buy some fish but if I got in his car and sheltered from the rain he would come back when he had his fish and drive me home

The bit about Caliburn’s insurance was interesting. It expires at the end of the month and I had the new paperwork the other day. I’d forgotten all about it completely and dreaming about it reminded me, so I nipped out to put it in Caliburn before I forget it completely.

What I started to do next was to download a load of music. Not sound files but “proper” music because if I do manage to go off on my travels I’ll be taking the Gibson EB3 and the acoustic with me and having a little ja session all of my own.

at some point I had to break off because I needed some bread for lunch. I’m not taking half a loaf out of the freezer.

la grande ancre les bouchots de chausey l'omerta le roc a la mauve 3 port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022So on my way into town I stopped at the viewpoint overlooking the fish processing plant to see who was there this morning.

And we had quite a crowd down there today. From front to back we have La Grande Ancre, Les Bouchots de Chausey, L’Omerta, Le Roc A La Mauve III and a small boat that as far as I know doesn’t have a name.

Plenty of vehicles down on the lower level too, unloading the boats and taking away the catch. It’s always quite a profitable affair and sometimes I’ve seen the tractor and trailer groaning under the weight of shellfish taken off Les Bouchots de Chausey

yachts baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022There was plenty of activity outside the harbour in the bay too.

This yacht that was sailing past the entrance to the harbour was gorgeous and I quite liked the sails on the smaller one that was following along behind her.

And that wasn’t everything out there either. There were more than enough boats of all types, shapes and sizes sailing around there today ad I could have spent all afternoon there photographing them.

But instead I pushed on down the hill towards the town centre and the supermarket for my baguette.

marité port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Now here’s quite a surprise.

Here we are on a Saturday in summer and there are crowds of people round about, as we have seen already in our photos of the beach, yet for some unknown reason the crew of Marité has decided not to put to sea today.

It’s the kid fo day when I would have expected them to have rounded up hordes of passengers and gone off for a lap around the bay.

As for me, I went off for a lap around to Carrefour where I bought a baguette and a can of cold drink for the climb back up the hill to home.

saturday market place general de gaulle Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022On the way back home I wandered back through town past the Place General de Gaulle.

With it being a Saturday morning it’s market day and the open-air market is in full swing. Mind you, there isn’t really anything there that is of interest to me.

The walk up the hill in the heat was agonising as I expected and I enjoyed the stop that I made halfway up when I drank the can of cold drink. That made me feel better.

Back here I made a sandwich for lunch and then carried on with the downloading of the music. I ended up having a play around with Wishbone Ash’s THE BALLAD OF THE BEACON. It’s much easier than you would think.

In the middle of all that, rather regrettably I dozed off for 10 minutes or so. And I was doing so well too.

fishermen in zodiac baie de Granville Manche Normandy Francec Hall photo June 2022As it happens I was rather late going for my afternoon walk today.

Having already looked down onto the beac I wandered off along the path towards the end of the headland, having a look out to sea to see what was happening. Out there in the bay this afternoon was a zodiac with a few people in it.

At first I thought that they might have been fishermen but before I could have a good look at them they started up the engine and cleared off around the headland out of sight.

As for me, I cleared off around the headland too, but at a rather more sedate pace

belle france ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022There wasn’t anyone on the bench at the cabanon vauban this afternoon so I carried on down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

Over at the ferry terminal across the harbour we had Belle France, the newest of the ferries that go over to the Ile de Chausey. The other two aren’t in port anywhere so I imagine that they are out there at the Ile de Chausey already waiting for the tide.

Still no Victor Hugo either. According to the maritime radar she spent the night at St Helier and left early this evening, presumably to come back here. I’ll get to see her yet!

marité port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Earlier this morning I mentioned that Maritéwas still in port despite it being a summer Saturday today

And she was still there this afternoon too. By the looks of things she hasn’t been out at all today. I know that it’s none of my business but if I were in charge of Marité she’d be out all weekend during the summer, as much as possible.

Most of the fishing boats are also in the harbour too. They don’t go out at weekend either. Even L’Omerta was moored up at the fish processing plant, settling down into the silt. All on her own as well.

port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Just now I mentioned Victor Hugo being out at St Helier.

Also out at St Helier, according to the maritime radar, is Southern Liner, the freighter that was in port yesterday.

And I can tell you much more about her today. The company that owns her has started a freight service between St Malo and the Channel Islands just recently and as they had a couple of days free they sent the ship over here to see how she would get on in and around the harbour here.

Apparently the plan is that they want to see if there is sufficient demand for another freight service between Granville and the Channel Islands, using small containers rather than loose freight that the other little freighters carry.

This is something that is going to be interesting

Back here I crashed out again for rather longer than I was hoping – so much so that my coffee was stone cold. But I did some more music downloading. There’s still plenty to go at.

Tea was a breaded quorn burger with baked potato and veg, and then I had my notes to write, interrupted by another marathon phone call from Rosemary, hence I’m way later than I intended.

We’ve had a storm and a rainstorm too so that might cool everything down. I hope so because I’ve been in shirtsleeves with z fan going all day and I’m still struggling for breath in this heat.

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Tuesday 7th June 2022 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …

… day that I’d much rather forget, because I’ve spent most of it asleep again.

Surprisingly the day started quite well because I was wide-awake shortly after 07:00 and didn’t have any trouble at all leaving the bed at 07:30 when the alarm went off. But that was as good as it got.

After the medication I came back in here to prepare for my Welsh course, and I promptly fell asleep. And not just for a few minutes either but for over an hour and that was disappointing. Even more disappointing was that Zero didn’t come to watch over me while I was asleep, like she did yesterday.

Eventually I managed to find the strength to prepare for the Welsh lesson, and actually it didn’t go too badly. I was actually surprised with what I could remember and that’s not like me at all.

When the lesson finished I went for a shower and a good scrub up, and I actually smell quite nice for a change.

Lunch was quite late, what with one thing and another, and then fighting off waves of sleep I headed off out.

gerlean port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022There was no physiotherapy yesterday because it was a Bank Holiday, but she had offered me a session today.

So on my way out I stopped at the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to see what was happening down in the port.

And it looks as if we are back playing another game of “musical ships”. L’Omerta isn’t there this afternoon nut in her place today is Gerlean.

There’s another boat moored behind her too but I can’t see who she is from here. Whoever she is, she’s quite small so she can’t be anyone special.

yacht school baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022There was plenty of activity going on in the Baie de Mont St Michel this afternoon too.

One of the sailing schools has gone out there and they are all having a really good time, being shepherded around by a couple of zodiacs.

One of these days I’ll be out there with them. I haven’t forgotten that. But I just don’t know when I’m going to find the time what with everything that I have going on right now, physiotherapy, language lessons, hospital appointments and all of that.

But anyway, that’s something to worry about for another time. I headed off down the hill towards the town.

la grande ancre p692 maroni gendarme maritime port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022The other day we saw one of the Gendarme Maritime boats, P692 Maroni, in port.

There’s one moored over there against the wall today as well. Of course I can’t say whether it’s Maroni, but it would be most unlikely to be a different one.

Plenty of smaller boats over there as well, and we can recognise La Grande Ancre amongst them.

The walk up the hill was total agony. It was just like the dark days of last summer when I was at my worst. Just recently I’ve been making it all the way up the hill in one go but today I lost count of how many times I had to stop for breath

She put me through my paces for a while and then we finished off with 10 minutes on the exercise bike. Luckily she didn’t wind it full up otherwise I would never have managed it.

My plan when she threw me out was to go round to Lidl for some shopping but I was honestly in no state whatever to go there today. Instead, I went to the Carrefour across the road for just enough apples and onions to see me through until the weekend.

kiddies roundabout biofood stalls place general de gaulle Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Back in the centre of the town the kiddies’ roundabout was still there.

It’s certainly smaller than the pink one that used to come here, about which there was all of that fuss with the mairie.

And with it being Tuesday, it’s the bio market in the Place General de Gaulle and you can see a couple of stalls in the background. But it’s not much of a bio market at all. Last time I looked, there were only two stalls and that’s not going to change significantly anyone’s eating habits.

But the walk back home was pretty awful again with several stops for breath. I’m definitely right out of this.

omerta hera victor hugo port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022A little earlier we saw Gerlean moored at the quayside by the fish processing plant and you were probably wandering where L’Omerta, who usually lives there, was moored.

She’s actually just there in the inner harbour, just to prove that she can do it at times when she wants to. It’s just a mystery why she doesn’t want to do it all the time.

Also in shot is the trawler Hera on her way back to the quayside after a day out fishing in the bay. And Victor Hugo is there too. One of these days we’ll see her actually taking passengers out to the Channel Islands, although I’m not holding my breath.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Before going into the apartment for a coffee I went to look down onto the beach.

There were just one or two people down there this afternoon, and no-one brave enough to go into the water. It was a nice afternoon, but clearly not that nice.

Back in the apartment I made myself a coffee but before I could drink it, I crashed out. And I was out for 90 minutes too in a really deep sleep.

One of the things that was disappointing about that was that after yesterday, Zero didn’t come to watch over me while I was asleep. That was something that I actually found extremely touching. I’m not used to people being so solicitous about my welfare.

It’s a shame that it never happens in real life. But then again I would take Zero in a dream watching over me rather than anyone whom I know in real life.

While I was drinking my very cold coffee later on I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There was a young person, a little person running around creating mayhem in a kitchen somewhere that was doing something for a fair or a fête or something but that’s all that I can remember.

And then I was on a beach somewhere but it wasn’t a beach it was a snow field. It was like a holiday thing and a meeting and we’d all connected to the internet to try to follow this meeting. I’d managed to make a connection and I could follow it vaguely although it was clicking in and out. There were a few things that needed to be doing here and there and I could follow them vaguely. The girl in charge of it was coming round. She came to me and asked me how I was doing. I showed her that everything seemed to be fine and working after a fashion so she left me to it. People started breaking up and drifting away as it was starting to go dark and cold. I didn’t see much point in being here for very much longer so I was planning on drifting away as well, I reckoned, and seeing what maybe tomorrow might bring or later on that night somewhere else might happen

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg and then I sat down to type up my notes. I had intended to deal with my Welsh notes for my exam once I’d finished but Rosemary rang to tell me about her trip to the mairie with her Ukrainian refugees in order to start their registration process. That should keep her busy for the next few weeks.

But right now I’m off to bed. An early night because I have a lot to do. Here’s hoping that I can do it without falling asleep. Or if I do, then that Zero will come to watch over me while I’m sleeping.

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Monday 30th May 2022 – EVEN THOUGH I DIDN’T …

… feel much like it, I actually made it to my feet as the alarm went off at 06:00 this morning. And to tell the truth, I could have actually made it to my feet a couple of minutes earlier because I was wide awake round about 05:55.

And after the medication I sat down to start work on the radio programme for this week only to find that I forgot to pair off the music yesterday. And so I had an extra 45 minutes work to do that I wasn’t expecting and that disrupted all of my plans.

As a result it was about 11:30 when I finally finished. That included several stops for coffee, for breakfast and so on. I wasn’t able to sit down and blast my way through it as I have done in the past. I’m struggling for motivation at the moment, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

While I was listening to the finished product I was having a play around on the guitar and when I was satisfied with the programme I went to have a shower to make myself look pretty for the physiotherapist this afternoon.

After lunch I had to download a huge file that i’ve been sent. My friend in Munich has sent me his group’s latest playlist and I have a month to learn it all. I can see that i’ll have my work cut out for this.

replacing kerbstones place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo May 2022There had been a huge racket going on outside on and off all the way through the morning.

When I went outside on my way to the physiotherapist I saw that they had been digging up the grass verge just outside the building.

They are busy replacing the kerbstones along here, and I’m not quite sure why because there didn’t seem to be very much wrong with what was here before.

It’s possibly going to be something else for cyclists, but as I said the other day, Granville is all up-and-down and it’s not really the place for cyclists. But I’ll keep an eye on it over the next few days and see what develops.

port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo May 2022Meanwhile, down in the port, there was nothing happening at all.

The tide was well out and there were no boats down there settling into the silt this afternoon, not even L’Omerta.

So I headed off for a very uneventful walk into town and then something of a desperate climb up the hill to the physiotherapist’s. It wasn’t a very good afternoon at all from that point of view and I have a feeling that I’m getting quite close to the end of my tether.

We had the usual 25 minutes of torture and then 10 minutes on the exercise bike, and I couldn’t manage the maximum resistance this afternoon. I was really glad when it was over today. It was the hardest that I’ve ever had and I had to go into Carrefour to buy something to drink before I could go home.

The walk back was agonising and I was thinking to myself how happy I was that I didn’t have to go to Leuven because in all honesty I probably wouldn’t make it, the way that I’m feeling right now.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo May 2022Before going in for my coffee I went to look down onto the beach to see what was happening.

There were a few people down there today. Not all that many. It looks as if everyone has gone back home after the long weekend.

Back in the apartment I made my coffee and while it was percolating I came in here to sit down for five minutes. 45 minutes later I awoke to find that my coffee was cold.

It’s doing me in, all this exercise and it’s not as if I’m feeling any better because of it. 9 months of physiotherapy and there’s no improvement and I’ve not lost any weight. What on earth would I have been like had I not gone for these sessions?

With a mug of cool coffee I had a listen tot he dictaphone. I was somewhere down in South Wales. I’d heard about a place something like the Centre for Alternative Technology that had opened so I went down to find out. They weren’t very good at what they were doing and were only beginning. I ended up giving them more advice than they were giving me. They had a few problems with one of their machines. They gave me the address of a place back up North so I said that I’d call in and talk to these people about the machine that these guys had and see whether they could come up with some kind of solution because of course it was of interest to me anyway to build a network of these kinds of people. I had a good wander around their shop. It was full of all kinds of exciting bits and pieces.

And then I walked into a cafe place somewhere and ordered a glass of hot chocolate and went to sit down. I had a book with me and started to read my book. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later that I realised that my hot chocolate hadn’t come so I had to hunt down a serving lass. That wasn’t easy. There was a group sitting by the till so I asked them. They pretended at first not to understand me so I said it again very slowly and distinctly. They replied “normally it’s for you to go and fetch your order”. I asked them why it was that no-one had said anything, that someone had just taken my order and wandered away with it.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, nice and delicious, and now I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted after all of my exertions today and an early night and good sleep will do me good. At least, I hope so. At least I can’t do any worse than I am.

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Monday 28th March 2022 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what it is with me but having had the news a few weeks ago that Kaatje, my “support worker” (really, my psychiatrist) at Castle Anthrax, is leaving her post at the end of the month, I had the news that Sonia my physiotherapist has decided to leave her post too

It seems to me that they are all sussing me out sooner or later.

Whoever is going to replace Kaatje remains to be seen but I bet that at the physiotherapist’s, they have some retired Bulgarian weightlifter lined up to take over. That is usually about par for the course, isn’t it?

repointing wall rue des juifs Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Meanwhile, in other news, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been keeping an eye on the repairs to the medieval walls, of which there are several miles thereof about the town.

One of the things that they did was to replace the brick capping on top of part of the walls and then leave it unpointed for all of the damp, humidity and frost, whatever else you like to infiltrate.

Anyway, today, they had a bricklaying class out there and to my surprise, they have made a start on repointing the brickwork that they did ever so long ago.

Not that they made much progress this afternoon, so I imagine that they’ll be back over the course of the next few days to complete the task.

scaffolding rampe du monte a regret Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Something else that I mentioned the other day was the scaffolding that they have built over the Rampe du Monte à Regret.

As I was going down the hill I noticed that it was still there so I took a photo of it just for the record. It looks as if it’s going to be there for a few more days yet as they were busy moving the scaffolding around to different parts of the wall.

But anyway, be that as it may, I actually managed to haul myself out of bed just after the alarm went off at 06:00, which surprised me more than it surprised anyone else.

And after the medication, I made a start on the radio programme that I wanted to prepare today.

No records today though, because I was actually working on two at once. Having written the notes for the programme over the last week, I wrote them for the next one this morning and then dictated both one after the other.

There were several interruptions too – for the coffee and for breakfast, and also for the nurse who came round to inject me with my Aranesp ready to go off on my travels.

That prompted me to telephone the doctor for an appointment as I now have run out. That’s for Wednesday morning at 09:30.

Nevertheless, I’ve only prepared the one though. I’ll nibble away at the other here and there over the course of the forthcoming week and see where I end up.

When I finished the programme, I had a listen to it and also to the two that I’m sending off today. Yes. That’s right. I’m not here next week so I need to make sure that my programme will run next week without me.

During the three hours that it took for me to listen to the three programmes I attacked the photos from the High Arctic in 2019. I shifted a good pile of them too and now I’m just arriving at the abandoned RCMP post at Dundas Harbour on Devon island in the Canadian high Arctic.

During a pause here and there, I went and had a shower to clean myself up. I have to look my best for my physiotherapy.

After lunch I carried on with my photos while I listened to the radio programmes and then headed off out.

classe decouverte calean, spartiate, trafalgar, chant de sirenes, black pearl, charlevy fishing boats fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022As usual I stopped at the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to see what was going on.

There was plenty of excitement there too this afternoon. All of the trawlers are coming in to unload and I can identify Calean, with Spartiate behind her. Then a couple of unidentified fishing boats with the blue, white and pink Trafalgar behind her.

Just coming in alongside the others is Chant de Sirenes with Black Pearl behind her, and then Charlevy just entering the harbour to the right.

Also on the quayside are several groups of school children.

One of the things that is quite common here in France is what they call the Classe Découverte – the “Discovery Class”.

They take groups of kids away from their natural environment and put them in another one for a week or so in order that they can experience life elsewhere. So what we probably have here is a bunch or two of kids from some inner city schools somewhere who are staying in the Youth Hostel in the town to find out about life in a fishing port.

And with all of the work going on down there with the seafood being unloaded into the vans, they will be learning a lot today.

And I learnt a lot on the way down into the town today. There is a series of steps that I use to test the force in my right knee and I found to my surprise that I could actually haul myself up them today. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that.

la grande ancre swimming pool freight on quayside port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Down in the harbour it looks as if we are going to be having one of the Jersey freighters in port very soon.

One of them has the contract for transporting the swimming pools out to the Channel Islands and with them being expensive items, they won’t want them to be lying around on the quayside for too long.

At least it won’t be going off on board la Grande Ancre. She won’t be taking them but the fact that she’s there in the loading bay means that they will be loading something onto her.

Down into the town I went and then up the hill on my way to the physiotherapists. And the walk wasn’t all that difficult today. Over the last week or so, things seem to have improved from that point of view and I don’t know why.

roofing rue couraye Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Halfway up the hill I did come to a halt. But not for a breather.

They have been ripping the roof off this building here and they are currently in the process of replacing the woodwork. They certainly seem to have picked the right weather for it at the moment.

At the physiotherapist’s she had me on the couch with her electro-massage thing, followed by five minutes on the cross trainer and then a few exercises. And she showed me an exercise that I can do at home.

After she threw me out I staggered (and it was a stagger too) up the hill and round the corner to Lidl for a few supplies. But to my surprise, they don’t sell baked beans at Lidl and I fancied sausage, beans and chips for tea.

scaffolding on crane new building rue victor hugo rue st paul Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022On the way back I went past the building work that’s going on at the corner of the Rue St Paul and the Rue Victor Hugo.

They had the Rue Victor Hugo closed off and they were unloading some scaffolding into the bucket that’s attached to the hook of the crane so I loitered around planning to watch them hoist it up.

When they had finished, they lifted it about a foot off the ground and then they all knocked off for a tea break, which seemed to be a rather strange thing to do.

Dodging yet another classe découverte I ended up in the town centre and picked up a few tins of baked beans from Carrefour. Can’t do without my baked beans.

On the way up the hill I bumped into one of my neighbours coming down, so we had a good chat for a while. I’m not usually the sociable type, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I have to make an effort seeing as I live amongst them.

person in sea beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Before I went back into the apartment I went to see what was happening down on the beach.

Not too many people down there today with it being a school day, but even so one of our intrepid adventurers had taken to the water. So hats off to him today.

Back in here I had a coffee and then had a listen to the dictaphone. I started off in Russia. I’d been collecting photos of steam trains and I had a couple of books to identify them. There were hundreds abandoned all over the place that I had photographed. But then the Russian authorities – something had happened and they didn’t want me to take any more photos. They made me sit on a bench in a station to wait for a train back home. The train was going to be in ever so many hours and hours’ time. all I had to do to thumb through were these photos and the couple of books that I had. Somehow something had happened and I ended up in some kind of industrial town in Northern England with terraced houses. The kids there were playing a game in the street. Even then, this was being gradually subsumed into this Russia thing where the kids were having to hang around in the street for hours and hours and amuse themselves which is difficult when you are bored, until something happens. It was very much the same scenario as me being in Russia

And then I was at work again. I’d set out to go to work fairly early but I’d gone off to do something else on the way. I arrived just before 10:00 and put my things on my desk and went into the assembly. When we all came out and went to sit at our desks there was a discussion going on about food and bread. Someone had been overcharged for his lunch sandwich etc. I already had my lunch sandwich for today but I had one for Friday which I was going to have for my breakfast because I hadn’t had breakfast yet. A girl with whom I used to work came over and said that someone saw me out at Peruwelz this morning on my way into work and wanted to know why I didn’t arrive until 10:00. We had a chat but I didn’t actually tell her the reason and I was intrigued to know who it was who had seen me. I was in a car a little later. I was driving and she was with me. We were going down this road that I don’t recognise and through a couple of speed limits. We wee chatting about nothing in particular.

I forgot to mention that somewhere in all of this I’d bought a black Rolls-Royce for £3500, a runner apparently. I had to go to pick it up at some point but I had nowhere to leave it. If it was a runner I could park it in the street or even park it in the place outside my building but I don’t know.

Regrettably, but not unexpectedly, I crashed out later. And for an hour too. Having made 90% of my daily activity today with having had a good session on the cross trainer, that’s enough to finish me off for today.

For tea, I fancied sausage beans and chips but one look at the sausages in the fridge told me that it wouldn’t be sausages that I’d be eating today. Instead, I had a burger with my beans and chips and, as I suspected, the beans from Carrefour were appalling. Not even pepper, grated cheese and rosemary could improve the taste.

So now that I’ve written my notes I’ll have half an hour on the guitar and then go to bed. I’ve had a busy day today and I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow. I need to be on form

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