… finishes rather abruptly, what has happened is that the football has finished and I’ve gone straight to bed.
As I’m typing this out on the portable travelling laptop I’m actually watching the football tonight on the big office machine. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League – an important match that Connah’s Quay must absolutely win.
And as soon as it’s over I’m off to bed. The alarms are set for … gulp … 04:30 in the morning and I’m not looking forward to that at all.
This morning I was up once more for the first alarm and after the medication I had a few things to do, amongst which was to sort out my papers that are getting into a mess.
Armed with a mug of coffee I attacked the Welsh revision for a couple of hours – a spell of concentration that totally surprised me.
With my hot chocolate and last slice of sourdough fruit loaf I went for my lesson. To my surprise it all went rather well although I’m still struggling to get to grips with the basics. I’m going to have to go back to the beginning and start again, I reckon.
It’s quite strange really. I can remember some surprising things but I’m totally at sea with some of the easy stuff.
After lunch and a little … errr … relax I spent a little time editing the photos from August 2019 and Wyoming, and then went for my afternoon walk, rather later than usual.
As usual, I strolled off down to the edge of the car park to look down over the wall towards the beach so that I could see what was going on down there.
There weren’t so many people down there today, something that probably bears some relationship to the fact that it’s a weekday today.
Had it been weekend there would have been hordes of people down there because we were having one of the nicest days of the year so far. There wasn’t very much wind to talk about today and with few clouds in the sky it was quite warm outside, compared to how it has been for the last few days.
There was some excitement going on along the path towards the lighthouse too this afternoon as I strolled over that way.
It seems that the local council is doing its stuff this afternoon, with someone out there attending to the vegetation (I’m not sure why I almost typed “devastation” there – a Freudian slip perhaps?). He was cutting off the old dead branches from the bushes and throwing them into the back of his pick-up.
As I went past he stepped into the cab and set off to drive, almost squidging me underneath his wheels. Obviously my fame has spread to this neck of the woods. And when I mentioned to a friend that I had almost been squidged by a motor vehicle she expressed her regret.
We’ve been having another encounter with the local fishermen again this afternoon.
From the lawn and underneath the wheels of the pickup I followed the crowds, walking along the path and across the car park to the end of the headland to see what there was going out in the Baie de Mont St Michel.
And right inshore close to the headland was this little cabin cruiser going past my viewpoint. It wasn’t difficult to guess what they were up to. The fishing net standing upright in the stern gave away the game.
But what was interesting me was whereabouts they were actually going to fish. They don’t seem to have too much luck too close to shore, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
Further out to sea in the Baie de Mont St Michel they seem to be having more luck.
Every now and again the fishing boats from the port put in an appearance in the bay and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last week they were out there in force. They all disappeared when that military vessel put in an appearance, but now that’s gone the boats are back there again.
There’s one of them there that I could see, and there may have been more. But there was so much haze on the water this afternoon that I couldn’t see very much and very far. The whole of the Brittany coast was shrouded in the stuff this afternoon.
It’s jackpot over at the ferry port this afternoon.
Over the last few days we’ve been seeing various combinations of Joly France boats and the little freighter Chausiais moored over at the ferry terminal, but today we have the lot. All three of them are over there today moored at the terminal so that must mean that they are quite busy.
What wasn’t very busy though was the chantier navale. There were just the two – Aztec Lady and Anakena remaining from the rush over the last couple of weeks but no-one else had come in to join them over the last 24 hours.
We haven’t finished with the excitement in the outer harbour yet. There was plenty more to go at.
For a start, there were those two people down there dragging that little boat out there with them across the mud. They are probably trying to reach one of the boats that’s moored up further out on the harbour where the tide has already reached, and so they’ll need the boat for the final 20 metres or so where the water is too deep to wade.
But they really are making heavy weather of the stretch across the mud though. They would probably be better off carrying it to the water’s edge and then going back for whatever there is in there.
And once more, we have a couple of fishing boats tied up and abandoned at the quay near the Fish Processing Plant. They’ve been there for a few days now showing no sign of moving.
In the inner harbour we have one of our regular visitors in there today.
It’s the little Jersey freighter Normandy Trader, come into port to take away a load of supplies. We don’t see too much of her these days because one of the Brexit bonuses is that she’s obliged to go into St Malo to unload the shellfish that she carries for the Jersey Fishermen’s Co-operative.
The shellfish need to have a health certificate before they can be landed and there’s no Health Inspector here in Granville as yet.
There’s no Customs Inspector either for the freight as yet, although there is talk that there might be one in the town pretty soon to deal with the port traffic and the airport landings. Planes from the Channel Islands have to fly elsewhere at the moment where there are customs and immigration facilities.
Back here afterwards I had a shower and shock! Horror! I cut my hair too. I’m actually looking a little more respectable now.
Most of the guitar practice was spent either working out the bass line to “China Grove” or else the chords to Steam’s “Nah Nah Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” and Donnie Elpert’s “Little Piece of Leather” – not usually the kind of song that you would expect, but I have a cunning plan …
For tea I had another helping of curry with rice and veg followed by some apple pie out of the freezer. That took me up to the football.
It was quite a fierce struggle too with the Nomads needing to win. And at half-time with it being a stalemate, Andy Morrison threw caution to the winds, took off a defender and a midfielder and threw on two attackers, changing from a 4-3-2-1 formation to an out-and-out attacking formation.
And later on with the score still 0-0 he took off yet another defender and brought on another attacker.
In the final stages of the game it was all-out attack from the Nomads with big centre-half George Horan playing up front as a striker as well.
And it all paid dividends when with just minutes to go, a shot through a crowded penalty area from a Nomads player took a wicked deflection into the back of the Bala net. And three minutes later as the game was ticking over into injury time George Horan rose highest to a cross into the area to thunder home a powerful header.
So having downloaded onto my memory stick the necessary files that I need to add to the portable laptop, I’m off to bed, fully-clothed, ready for my alarm all at 04:30 and my train at 05:55 if I make it there with this early start.
