… complete waste of time, that was.
Someone had told me about a folk club that takes place at a bar in the countryside about 25 miles away but its meetings usually coincide when I’m in Leuven. With not going to Leuven this month, I decided that I’d go along this evening and see what happens.
And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been working out a little basic acoustic set so I can contribute something to the evening.
But when I arrived, no-one said “hello” and no-one spoke to me. I tried to engage a few people in conversation but they just cut me dead.
No-one asked me if I wanted to sing or to play an instrument but people who came in after me and who were clearly “known” to the organisers were dragged up onto the stage to do something.
In the past I’ve been ignored by a far better class of person than anyone whom I’d be likely to meet at an event like this so after an hour I paid for my coffee and headed for home, thinking that there are many more things that I can be doing that would be far more exciting than sitting around like Piffy on a rock hoping that someone might condescend to talk to me.
But at least I can forget about the acoustic guitar now and concentrate on the bass for the next 4 weeks. There aren’t any more incestuous events like this one to attend for a while.
What puzzles me though is that usually, people only start to ignore me once they know me and find out about me. It’s quite rare for me to be ignored before someone has even found out anything about me. My reputation must be spreading wider than I realise.
Anyway, today, this is the first time for quite a while, I haven’t crashed out during the day at all. And actually, I didn’t go anywhere during the night either. I wonder if by any chance the two events are connected.
But it certainly was something of a tempestuous night. If only it had been one where I had managed to sleep all the way through I would have felt so much better. But beggars can’t be choosers.
After the medication I had a play around with this music list that I’d been sent and thanks to Grahame who solved the mystery of the “H” chord things seemed to work much easier. But there are one or two songs that I don’t recognise at all and I can’t find anything that might resemble them either, so this is going to be a long job.
But then I had another couple of runs through the acoustic list to see how that was doing. But I’m having problems remembering the chord sequences. Two things happen when you reach my age – the first is that you forget absolutely everything. As for the second thing – I can’t remember what that is.
Before lunch I spend an hour writing about “Food” for my Welsh revision. I need to keep that going.
After lunch I had to complete my tax return. Half the stuff was missing and I had to resort to a few ingenious downloads. And then the printer ran out of ink and I had to hunt down a spare ink cartridge
When I’d finally collected everything together I headed off to town to post it off.
First place to stop was at the viewpoint on the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to make sure that the NIKON D500 was working and to see what was happening in the port.
And the answer was “nothing”. There wasn’t even one fishing boat moored at the Fish Processing Plant this afternoon.
PLenty of vehicles around at the fish processing plant though. It looks as if they are expecting a good catch this afternoon.
With having the big Nikon I could have a much better view of the chantier naval fron here than I ordinarily would with the NIKON 1 J5.
And the big luxury cabin cruiser that we’ve seen for the last few days has a companion in there this afternoon. There’s a catamaran moored in there now receiving attention.
The tide is quite far out this afternoon so there wasn’t anything loitering around in the bay or just outside the harbour so I headed off down into town towards the Post Office to post my tax return and the Bank to pay in my pension cheque for the last couple of months.
The other day I mentioned that Victor Hugo, one of the Channel Island ferries, had been tied up in port for as long as I could remember even though the ferry service officially restarted about a month ago.
It goes without saying that having committed that to print, she’s no longer there this afternoon. In fact, I heard that she arrived in St Helier round about the time that I was staring at her empty berth.
Down in the town I had to wait a while in a queue at the Post Office and then I was only just in time to make the bank to pay in my cheque. So “spend! spend! spend!” hey?
The climb back up the hill was real agony and I’m wondering if my blood count has collapsed. I remember being this ill trying to chop down a tree just before I was carried off to hospital.
On one of my pauses for breath I had a look across the port and noticed this marquee. I haven’t see that before, so I wonder what’s going on that requires a marquee like that. I haven’t seen anything in the local newspaper about it.
But whatever it might be, it’s going to be pretty impressive with a marquee like that.
As for the boats, we can make out the dark blue and white Charles Marie and behind her, the little Courrier des Iles.
While we’re on the subject of boats … “well, one of us is” – ed … Marité is back in port.
She’s been away for several days on a voyage. I don’t know where though because I’m not really all that interested. I love the ship of course but it’s her personnel that get on my wick.
Anything you want to know, go down and ask them and they drudgingly stop chatting amongst themselves long enough to say “it’s all on the internet” and then carry on ignoring you.
In fact, that seems to be the way of the world right now. Customer service has gone right out of the window and “it’s all on the internet”. No-one wants to help you any more.
The rest of the climb up the hill was agony but even so I went to see what was going on down on the beach.
It was trying to rain so there weren’t too many people down there at all. There was just this couple, as far as I could see.
Back here I had a coffee and then learnt all about “Food” for my Welsh revision. They I printed off a few of the songs that I’ve added to my playlist just recently and collected my things together.
A brief stop to buy some diesel and then we drove out to Nicorps – and then drove back.
So that was that. Not a very good day but if you want to find a prince you have to kiss a lot of frogs. I think that I shall just have to accept the fact that I’m not a “people” person and I’m far better off as a hermit. Maybe I should go back to live in the Auvergne.
we went our separate ways.
