Tag Archives: washing

Monday 18th September 2023 – WALKING UPSTAIRS …

… to visit my neighbour this afternoon was rather a depressing climb. I’m noticing now that I’m losing the power in my left leg and that was all too evident.

As it was, I tried a few exercises in bed before I arose from the dead this morning and I couldn’t raise my left leg as much as I used to be able to do.

This morning I awoke several times during the ni ght and I was even planning a dramatic early rising but I dozed off again and had to rely upon the alarm clock to do the business.

After the medication and checking the messages I went for a shower. At least that kind of effort hadn’t deteriorated all that much but I don’t think that it will be long before that will become a major effort. I can remember just how bad things were when I came home from hospital.

This was the first decent shower that I had had since before I went away and you’ve no idea how much I enjoyed it.

The nurse came to inject me and then after he’d gone I sent an order off for some things that I need to buy. Jackie had found a steaming pot to make Christmas puddings and she had sent me a link, I need a couple of new USB cables and there was also a special offer on accessories for air fryers, such as a non-stick liner.

There was time too to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night too. I was back in Shavington. For some reason I had the occupants of 217 Crewe Road locked in their garage. I was just going by every couple of days to push some food in. I think that they were either crazy or something, I don’t really know. I was being really cruel to them and no-one was taking any notice or anything. Things were going along quite ordinarily. I was chatting to a couple of girls, one of whom (who I think might have been my Greek friend) had a crush on me. I heard the other girl call for a taxi and ask it to take her to 217 Crewe Road. By this time the first girl had her arms around me so I couldn’t get up and go to try to stop her etc. Off she went so I expected any moment that my little scheme would all come crashing to the ground.

We also had another long rambling dream again. It started off with me having to open a Post Office bank account because of things I needed to do. I turned up at the Post Office at about 11:00 and had to wait for someone to come to see me to fill in the forms. It came to about 11:45 and I thought that we’d be thrown out here and I’d miss the opportunity – they’ll close for lunch. Eventually someone came to see me. We filled in all the forms and did the necessary details so I could go back to carry out the transaction that I wanted to do. A little later I was with a guy and his wife, his 2 daughters and a very young girl. We were hanging around together and decided that we’d go out for a meal. We all eventually piled into his car and he said that we’d go to the Westminster branch of a particular restaurant chain. We drove off and went down this extremely narrow street with cars parked on one side. There was one occasion when a Morris 1000 tried to reverse into a parking space and hit another car that was already parked. We drove down to the end of the street where they’d realigned the junction. The guy driving didn’t realise and took the old way and came to a dead end. He had to reverse and take the new way down to the junction. A little later we were on foot walking through this old industrial estate, chatting. At one point I ended up miles away from everyone else which brought a light-hearted comment from some of the other people so I rejoined them. I didn’t understand that because I was quite keen on the younger of these 2 girls. I couldn’t see why I wasn’t with her. They suddenly realised that the other girl was missing from the group. She was with the extremely young one. We waited for them to catch up. One thing going through my mind was that I’d seen a car for sale, a Mk II Cortina, a green Cortina GT. I was hoping that my money would come through so I could buy it. I didn’t understand why my money wasn’t already there. I thought that I’d have to wait for ever for this money to come through. By the time that it does this car will probably be sold and I’d have to start thinking again. There was all this issue about what car would I then buy? Would it be good value etc? This was recurring through all this dream, this particular thought.

While I was at it, I transcribed another day’s worth or arrears and they will be on line in due course.

Before I went away, I had forgotten to do something with the fruit on the table so that was something of a mess so at lunchtime I had to tidy that up, throw away a pile of it (I hate throwing food away) and wash the rest thoroughly

And then I wandered off to see my neighbour. We were there chatting for quite a while and that’s not at all like me. And she gave me an anti-slip mat for my bath. That was really nice of her and it makes me feel much better about taking a shower. It was something quite high up on my list of things to buy at the weekend

While I was busy I’d had a washing machine going with all of the clothes from the last couple of weeks so I took them out once the cycle had finished and hung them up to dry.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper – one of the ones out of the freezer. And with cooking the frozen pepper on a lower heat for much longer, it was cooked to perfection. There’s plenty of stuffing left so if I can lengthen it with a sheep’s head that still contains the eyes, it will see me through the week.

So much later than usual, I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I’ll be busy. I have to register myself at the hospital and book my train ticket and a taxi to the station. I mustn’t forget to do that otherwise I’ll end up looking rather silly.

In fact, I can end up looking rather silly without making any mistakes or omissions, but there’s no need to go around asking for it.

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Wednesday 6th September 2023 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… I’ve had a much better day today.

Mind you, having said that, it couldn’t have been any worse at all.

In fact, with a little application I could have been up before the alarm went off because I was awake at 06:56 but I wasn’t quick enough to haul myself out of bed.

When the alarm went off I stirred my stumps and hauled myself out of bed. As expected, it took me an absolute age to bring myself round into the Land of the Living, but at least I managed to have my morning coffee and fruit bun.

Later on, I staggered into the bathroom for a shower in the hope that it might awaken me and whether it did or not, at least I felt better – and cleaner too.

And while we’re on the subject of “cleaner”, I had a lap around the kitchen and dining area to make sure that the cleaner wouldn’t die of fright when she came.

The rest of the day has been spent on the radio programme. I completed the one that has been hanging around for a couple of weeks waiting to be finished, and then I managed to finish off the notes for the next one.

There was even a few moments for me to make some kind of desultory start on choosing the music for a further one.

The cleaner came round this afternoon and attacked the apartment. It’s looking much nicer and cleaner now which makes a change. Although how long it might last like this is anyone’s guess.

I don’t suppose that it will take too long to mess it up. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my kind of life reminds me of Ezra Pound’s comment about Ford Madox Ford – "Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos"

After she left I put the washing machine on. There was some bedding in there from the other week so I put it all on quite a hot heat today to give it a really good and deep washing. Normally I just put everything on a 40°C “mixed fibre” wash but every now and again it needs a little extra.

Having set that off on its way I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I’d gone quite a distance too. I’d been quite friendly with a girl and decided that I’d ask her out to the cinema or something. We agreed that we’d go out for the Friday night. In the meantime I was very friendly with a girl who worked in the Building Society (as indeed I used to be in real life years ago). I was laughing and joking to her about taking her out. She said “why not?” so we arranged to go out together on the Saturday to the theatre because there was something on. Later on (I’m not sure whether this would be the Saturday) I was with this girl walking through Crewe. She wanted to know about going home. I said that I had my car parked somewhere nearby. She then added “unless you want to go for a walk-around in the woods or something like that. It would be a great place to find some firewood. Do you need any firewood?”. Seeing as she was keen and it was her idea I said “yes, OK” and we walked into the wood, actually down on the west side of the town. We were in the town centre. We had an interesting discussion about Spain and the castles, how in certain circumstances some rebellious knights could be charged with treason for attacking the King but the charge for treason would be raised by the Constable of Spain. That seemed to be a strange situation in which to be, where it was someone else who would be deciding on treasonable activity and not the King. We had a really lengthy discussion about that.

There was another lengthy dream. I’ve forgotten most of it. It was about me owning an electric bus and doing some work in it. We were dividing up a kind-of list of things, ecological things, between us. I asked if I could do the beekeeping. That was agreed but it was disappointing news to someone else who wanted to do it. Later on we were told that we could have an assistant part-time so the lad who was refused the time before when I was given the job came over to me to ask if he could help. Considering that he was interested and seemed to know more about beekeeping that I did, of course I said “yes” because it would be quite useful to have someone who knows his stuff and is keen working with me.

And then we’d been out with my father somewhere around the Audlem way. He had a Rover 2000 estate and we’d gone in that. He was driving extremely quickly. The people whom we went to see were in some way distantly related to me. Another friend of mine was there with us too. He had to go inside to see these people. When he came out ha was going on about how poor they were etc. I don’t think that he realised that they were part of my family. I asked him if there was a weedy man there with a very short, very fat woman to which he replied “yes”. These were of course my uncle and aunt but I didn’t like to say anything to him. We drove back extremely quickly. My father was telling us of a Portuguese guy who lived in the village who had really been something of an odd-job man but had now bought one of the local small businesses and was running that. When we came into Nantwich my father said that it’s probably quicker to go home via Wells Green so we ended up driving through the centre of Nantwich past the bus station.

There was a Court hearing taking place about something or other. I was involved in some kind of abstract way as a potential witness or similar. We were taken in a vehicle to somewhere and left in the vehicle while they went into Court. This went on until about 13:00 when someone came back to tell us that we could go but we needed to come back the next day. So we had to sit in this vehicle again, and no-one came at all. In the end I was outraged and so were the other people sitting in the vehicle. We saw on of the Clerks of the Court walking down the street. I grabbed hold of her and asked her what was going on. We found out that it was 16:00, I’d missed a football match, I’d missed everything. I was really angry and tore strips off this girl. In the end several people came over. They explained that this Hearing was still going on and hadn’t finished. I still couldn’t get over this discourtesy of leaving us sitting here in a car or van in the middle of the town centre while all this was happening. We’d been there for what seemed like 8 hours, no refreshments or anything so I was in an absolutely foul mood. I was tearing shreds off everyone and they were scattering and disappearing. In the end there was someone on the ‘phone and I asked him about what was happening. He said that he was still on the ‘phone to the Court trying to make them hurry up with the case otherwise everyone would be going and the case would collapse. I told him a lot of home truths about my thoughts and opinions on the way that this was going on, how everyone had been treated and I was on my way up the stairs to this ‘phone in the gallery to wrench the ‘phone from his hands to speak myself to whoever it was to whom he was speaking.

That dream was something quite interesting. When I said that I was involved “in some kind of abstract way as a potential witness or similar”, it wouldn’t be anything unusual.

In fact in the Old Days in the Crewe and Nantwich Magistrates Court they had a special term to describe people like me. We were called “The Defendant”.

Some people would even say that I gave the local farces of law and order in South Cheshire a great deal of assistance. They always seemed to be asking me to help them with their enquiries.

Finally, I had another dream that I can’t remember how it began. We had to go somewhere. Someone was having to organise the trip. My mother was somehow involved but she was prevaricating about it and decided that she wouldn’t go. After some discussion I asked her to state unequivocally that she didn’t want to go, which she did so I said to another person “then we can go any time at your convenience then”.

Tea tonight was the remainder of the stuffing lengthened with a small tin of kidney beans, with rice and veg. With a little extra chili added to it, it really was delicious. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my meals might be boring but they are delicious.

There are just a few things to do and then I’m off to bed. Surprisingly, I managed to go the whole day without crashing out and that’s something well-worth noting after yesterday. I hope that I can keep it up for the next few days.

Maybe an early night might help – I dunno. But it can’t do any harm.

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Wednesday 23rd August 2023 – IT’S QUITE STRANGE …

… how my Welsh course is going. It seems that every time I have a good day, a bad day follows immediately on its heels. I can’t seem to manage to have two good days one after the other.

And so having had a reasonable day yesterday, today wasn’t so good at all. Couple that with the fact that the mike on my webcam is feeding back and I can’t make the remote mike work on the computer, it’s not been a very good day.

That’s a shame because I’d been to bed fairly early (comparatively speaking) and had a reasonable (comparatively speaking) sleep for a change. And at some point during the night, Zero put in an appearance, so “hello” again to Zero.

Then I had awoken at 06:30 ready to leave the bed early but I fell asleep again and had to be aroused by the alarm.

Once I’d had my mails and medication etc I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going for a ride on something like an elephant. There was a couple of others and we were quite high up on this thing that was moving around. It ended up in some kind of hall or ante-chamber. At that moment a young girl whom I know came out of her room with what looked like her baby brother or something like that. She had a chat with me up on whatever it was that I was on and she down below. She said that she was taking whatever it was to the bathroom. I said “we’d better make sure that we don’t step on him then”. She asked what I meant by that. I replied that i had to go to the bathroom too.

My passport – I’d lost it a while ago and I’d been issued with a temporary Belgian 6-month passport. That was running out so I had to go to renew it. It meant going into this warehouse place, a dingy Government office and queueing. There were quite a few people in there. It was rather disorderly. It was coming to 21:00, 22:00 and we were still there, a few of us waiting. I was worried that a couple of people would push ahead of me in the queue and be seen out of turn, meaning that when the place closed I’d be out on my ear. One person was being attended to and the girl working the machine was having no end of problems. Eventually one or two of the people in the queue had to show her how the thing worked. I was sitting here thinking that this is totally crazy. It’s 22:00 and I suppose that she wants to go home – I know that we do – and what will happen if it turns out that my passport isn’t actually valid and I should have applied for a British one when I lost my original one?

Finally I was back in Virlet. My place was a total mess as usual but there were all locals around there cleaning all the vegetation away from around the house. When I arrived I couldn’t enter the house so I was sleeping outside. The bad-tempered neighbour was there with her brush-cutter cutting away all around me. They were all going in and out of my barn and garage etc. I was becoming annoyed about this but they were taking absolutely no notice at all. Then I decided that I had to think about leaving as I was leaving the following day and had someone to pick up at some town near Chartres at 17:00 and I needed to make arrangements as to where they’d be. I also had some bits and pieces that I had to take back to Caliburn. That was a real hike through the village to where I’d parked the other van and then march back. While I was asleep it had begun to rain. I was asleep out there in the rain but the neighbour who was brush-cutting abandoned her cutting, went and lay down in the grass and pulled a tarpaulin over herself which I thought was the strangest thing I’d seen for quite some time.

That wasn’t everything either but you really don’t want to know about that, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

Once I’d done all of the I spent a while revising my Welsh and then, armed with a coffee and fruit bun, attacked the lesson. We had a new tutor today who has a strange way of teaching, it has to be said, and that took us through to knocking-off time.

At lunch time I went for a shower and then sorted out the dirty clothes, seeing as I’m on the point of running out of clean ones. I also tidied up the place a little so that the cleaner doesn’t die of horror.

At the weekend I’d bought a pile of fruit because it was cheaper to buy in bulk than loose, but I was somewhat overwhelmed with the stuff, so I gave my cleaner a pile of fruit when she left.

And then I set the washing machine off on a cycle and then went to see a neighbour for a chat. Not that I’m all that much in favour of socialisaing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I have to make an effort.

Back here I hung out the washing and then made tea. There was some stuffing left so I added a small tin of kidney beans and ate it with rice and veg, another really nice meal tonight, nice and spicy. But I do like those new containers that I’d bought.

So right now, nice and early, I’m off to bed. Two more days of my course to go and then I’m going to relax. Until Wednesday next week, that is, because I’ll be then off to Paris and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

They probably won’t be able to do much for me, but I won’t ever find out if I don’t go.

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Firday 21st July 2023 – I MADE IT …

… back from town this morning.

Actually, going down into town was the easy bit because I went on the bus.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t because just as I was stepping out of the front door I realised that I’d forgotten half of the paperwork that I needed so I had to come back.

These days I can’t move very quickly at all so I was afraid that I’d miss the bus. But luckily I managed to stagger aboard just before she pulled away.

Something else that might have made me miss it was another miserable night. What with the football and everything it was long after midnight when I went to bed and it took me an absolute age to go off to sleep.

Once again, I was up and on my feet before the alarm went off, and after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I went and had a shower to make myself smell nice.

Before leaving for the bus I put the washing machine on the go so that at least I’d have some clean clothes for when I came back. I’m running out of clothes at the moment.

At the Carrefour I forgot the cherry tomatoes but I remembered everything else, and then wandered off to the Post Office to post a couple of letters, one of which was the demand for a disabled parking badge, and to pick up a registered letter.

At the chemist’s the staff were fighting over serving me and I ended up with the girl who lost the bout. She gave me the Aranesp, which cost an arm and a leg as usual, and then I set off for home.

The walk back was agony. It really was. It took me an age and I was exhausted by the time I returned. I had my cheese on toast but regrettably fell asleep almost immediately.

It’s no fun waking up to a cold mug of coffee. I’ve no idea how long I was asleep but it wasn’t five minutes – I’ll tell you that for nothing. It felt like an eternity and at one point I really was contemplating the idea of going to bed.

Anyway, instead I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. I was with a friend of mine. We’d gone to some kind of sports hall place to do a job. As we left Crewe to join the motorway there was a policewoman at the top of the motorway exit watching the drivers join the motorway. She shouted “drive safely, watch your speed limits and don’t speed”, something like that. Of course my friend immediately shouted back some kind of comment as he would about “what do you mean? I’m not going fast. What are you saying? What are you implying?”. Of course I could see exactly where this is going so I said “come on mate, let’s get to work” but he still wanted to pick a fight with this policewoman. In the end I managed to organise him and I apologised to the policewoman. The last thing I wanted was for her to chase us down the motorway. So we did what we were doing and it worked quite well. There was a roulette table and a few one-armed bandit things there. He looked at his watch and said “we can spend an hour here and have a play on that”. I’d put all the money safe so I didn’t want to go bringing it out again. I should have put my possessions into some kind of safe but I didn’t fancy the idea of it because there was no lock. Everyone could go in and take the stuff so I kept them on me. I really wanted to go home but he was dead set on staying here wasting his money so I suppose we’ll have to. But I hope that he really is only going to be here for a short while and not spin it out for the rest of the night. I could see that happening quite easily.

Later on there was another group of us who had been out for a walk. I’d ended up with a man and a woman who might have been some friends of mine, I dunno. We met an American couple. The woman-friend of mine had gone off to do something so we were just wandering around when the American couple appeared. They asked if we knew where a certain café was. My friend thought that it was the one around the corner from where we were standing although I thought that it was the one where we had been earlier in the day. We went round the corner to this one and could see that it was a really expensive place. There was nothing special about it. The guy said “let’s walk up to some place or other at the end of the track”. I asked “what about your wife?”. There didn’t seem to be much of a reply. Off we set. It was slowly going dark. We reached the end which was by the water. There was a girl there. For some reason I was asked to take a photo of her so that she could be put on a poster. I had the little Nikon and went to take a photo but for some reason the camera wouldn’t take the photo. It might possibly have been too dark. I took the big Nikon which doesn’t need the light so much and I positioned this girl in the street light at a table in the café so that the light would fall on her to give the best possible view, went to take the camera but found that the battery was flat. This American couple had a bit of a moan to me about all my things etc.

Later on I spent some time back in Canada. I’ve left Cartwright and I’m heading down the Métis Trail back towards the Trans Labrador Highway.

The area around Cartwright and Sandwich Bay in particular is populated by the Métis.

When the early European traders came out here in the 18th and early 19th Century, those employees who opted to stay usually took a native wife, sometimes an Innu but mainly an Inuit. Their descendants are known as Métis

Almost everyone out on the coast is descended from probably about 20 distinct families and it’s interesting to read the Censuses of 100 or so years ago. Each cove or sheltered bay would have its own “family” who would work the salmon fishing, the cod fishing and then go off into the interior trapping during the winter.

Even more strangely, suddenly you’ll find that in a certain location there might be a different family than in the previous Census. Almost inevitably, one family might just have daughters. When she married, she would stay at home and bring her husband to her, and he would inherit his father-in-law’s cove and trap lines

Every now and again you’ll come across a French name – Michelin being one of the most common. For a while there was a trading firm from Montreal – Revillon Frères – out here on the Labrador coast trying to establish a foothold against the Hudson’s Bay Company.

There were also a few merchants from the Channel Islands who tried to establish themselves here but a big bank crash in Jersey in 1873 wiped them out.

The Métis did not have any rights at all until the 1980s. Being the children of native women they were never recognised as Europeans by Law according to the European settlers, and because they were the children of European men, they never acquired the rights of native indigenous people. It wasn’t until Section 35 of the Constitution Act was amended in 1982 that the Métis became recognized as one of Canada’s three Aboriginal peoples and began to receive their rights.

Tea tonight was falafel, chips and salad. Quite delicious but it’s given me stomach ache and I don’t know why.

But now I’m off to bed for a good night’s sleep ready to fight the good fight around the shops tomorrow. But before I go, I’ll leave you with the HIGHLIGHTS OF LAST NIGHT’S FOOTBALL. I hope that you enjoy them as much as everyone else seems to have done.

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Friday 23rd June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… morning today when I’ve been up before the alarm has gone off. And a good while before it too. I’ve no idea what’s happening right now about that.

So having had such an early start I downloaded a couple more programs that I’d overlooked, and then fine-tuned a couple of others.

A few directories that I’d copied back from the back-up drive were rather all over the place so the next task is to go through and tidy them up.

No time like the present, so I cracked on with them. That’s the one thing about doing a clean install is that it gives you an opportunity to tidy things up and eliminate unwanted files and programs. There must be tons of programs that I only ever use once every Preston Guild so they won’t be added back for a while.

And files too. I usually only like to keep on the computer the files that I need on a regular basis but I forget to weed the unused ones out.

Round about 10:15 I suddenly remembered that I needed to go into town so I threw the dirty clothes (of which there was quite a pile) into the washing machine and then staggered off into the wind.

First stop was at the doctor’s – or, rather, the receptionist – to pick up the certificate that the doctor had prepared for me. I can crack on and apply for my disability permit now.

Then I went to Carrefour for a bit of shopping. And amongst the bits and pieces that I bought was another head of broccoli. Ad for two reasons too

  1. I’ve been slowly working my way through the stock just now and it’s going down
  2. there was a lump in there with a nice thick stalk and I fancied some broccoli stalk soup again for lunch

Final stop was the chemist’s. And as soon as she saw me my favourite server said to her colleague “I’ll fetch Monsieur Hall’s stuff”. I’m not sure whether to be flattered that she was so interested, or concerned that people are beginning to recognise me.

Staggering back up the hill was agony yet again and it took me a while to make it to the top of my rock and back home.

But the climb is worth it because I do like my building and my apartment. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … it’s the first place where I’ve ever felt actually at home.

Back here I blanched the broccoli and then made my soup. I fried an onion in cumin and coriander, added a pile of garlic and then the finely chopped broccoli stalk with a finely diced potato, stirred it all in and then added some of the broccoli water from the blanching along with a stock cube.

While it was doing, I took the washing from the machine and hung it up to dry. I’ll have some clean clothes for a change when they are all done.

When it was sufficiently done I whizzed it all up and ate it with the crusty bread that I’d bought. Totally delicious

Back in the office I almost fell asleep and my coffee almost went cold, but I managed just about to fight it off. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my niece’s husband last night cleaning out the kitchens of a couple of elderly people who had died in isolation somewhere in Canada. All of their things and possessions were simply abandoned and we were going through throwing most of it away because it was all old, muddy, sticky, an absolute mess. One thing that we were trying to do was to try to decipher why they had half of this stuff. With no labels we couldn’t see what it was. Even with labels on it was hard for us in modern times to understand the use to which they would have put these products back in the old days. But there was all kinds of things even down to old cough drops and boiled sweets, stuff like that, all disgusting really.

Later on I was being pestered by someone on the internet about something that I’d written. He wrote back with things like “see page so-and-so of this article” and when I looked, it had nothing whatever to do at all with the subject under discussion. I wrote back and told him. He sent back an e-mail saying something like “Oh God there’s obviously been some mistake in the page number or formatting of the book where this paragraph was inserted in here where it shouldn’t be”. Of course I’d heard this trick before so I sent him an equally-dismissive e-mail about that. He sent me a reply back as if he wanted to carry on the fight regardless. I had to sit and compose a mail telling him to basically clear off because he was wasting my time and that of everyone else with his nonsense

And then a whole group of us had been out somewhere and had come back to my house afterwards. The first thing that I did on returning was to switch on the heater. Everyone swarmed in and someone began to cook some breakfast, some bacon. They’d asked what we were going to have to eat but I didn’t really have much of an idea because I didn’t have very much in. Someone found some bacon and began to cook it. They were cooking it in a kind of oven that was like an old toolbox. After a while they complained that it wasn’t cooking correctly, asking me what I was going to do about it. I replied “nothing. It’s nothing to do with me. You don’t cook bacon like that and if you want to cook bacon anyway that’s entirely up to you”. They weren’t very happy about this but I wasn’t very happy about people cooking bacon in my house. I had a few things to do so I thought that I’d wander off in a corner and so them. But with all of this stuff going on in my house I couldn’t really do anything until everyone had left and I wasn’t sure when that was going to be.

Finally we were back in Canada around a camp fire making coffee with one of these plunger coffee makers but I awoke just as it was starting so I can’t think about what that was all about

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been back in Labrador trying to resolve a knotty problem.

At the back of the town of Cartwright is a hill called Flagstaff Hill where it is said that Captain Cartwright installed two cannon after his fishing station was raided by an American pirate.

So everyone says, and so I was having a peruse through his diary to find the date that the cannon were put there and, strange as it is to say it, he doesn’t mention the cannon in his diary at all. In fact he doesn’t even mention the hill.

That’s bewildering because he talks about just about everything else, including strange things like how many fish his team caught on certain days.

Something else that I found bizarre in his diary was that he records every little event of what happened the day that the pirates came, including all of the unpleasant details and he lists all of his employees who deserted his post to go with the pirates and concludes with
“A very fine day”,

But apart from that, he makes no mention of the guns so I’m intrigued now to find out more about how they came there..

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with chips and salad, and quite nice as usual. But there’s not much room in the freezer right now, especially since I bought the broccoli and a couple more peppers, so I shall have to be circumspect at the shops tomorrow.

Rather like when Kenneth Williams told Peter Butterworth “there are people around. We’ll need to be circumspect”
“Oh I was, sir. When I was a child.”

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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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Saturday 15th April 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I was fast asleep in bed when the alarm went off this morning.

It’s been quite a while since that’s happened, hasn’t it?

Anyway, I struggled to my feet and went off for my medication and then I set the washing machine off on another cycle. That’s all of the arrears of washing done now, which is good news. I’ve been letting things build up too much again just recently.

Saturday is shopping day so braving the hurricane that was blowing outside (and I DO mean “hurricane”) Caliburn and I set out for the shops.

Noz came up with a few bits and pieces but nothing of any special excitement, and ditto at LeClerc, except that they had an icing bag with a few assorted nozzles on sale at €2:85. It’s nothing very much – just like a refillable tube of toothpaste really – but it would have been handy for putting the crosses on my hot cross buns the other day.

What usually happens with tools and things like that is that I’ll buy the cheapest thing to see how it works and how much use I’ll have from it. And if it’s something that I like and will use often, I’ll pousser le bateau dehors and buy an expensive, better one.

That’s the story of my apartment really. When I moved here I bought everything brand-new but at the cheapest possible price so that I could have everything all at once. And as it breaks down, replacing it with much better-quality stuff. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my saying that the way my health was, I didn’t actually expect to outlive any of it.

Back here, I made it up the stairs quite comfortably with one crutch and the shopping trolley loaded to the brim with goodies, and after I’d put everything away I settled down with my cheese on toast and coffee.

After food I had a listen to where I’d been during the night. I was with my brother at one point. We were camping out somewhere in an old ruined house. We’d set up our kitchen outside. It became tea time so we went outside. The skies were really heavy, overcast and grey as if it would rain at any moment. We had to push on to make food. There wasn’t much to eat so we made the most of what we could find to hand. Some of the stuff had gone off, unfit for human consumption so it ended up in the bin. I was still hungry at the end of the meal and knew that there were more bread rolls in the car so I was going to go back to the car to fetch them while my brother went back into the house. I set off to the car to fetch them

And then I’d been doing some work on a car in a yard somewhere to do with a former friend of mine. There was an article going round on the TV about someone who had died and left some motorbikes one of which he wanted to be left in the original condition and the others he wasn’t all that bothered about. What they had done with one of the others with a Norton Featherbed frame was that they had taken off the fuel tank to fit on another bike, they’d taken out the engine to fit it somewhere else and they’d ended up with the Featherbed frame and wheels and very little else attached to it, no engine, tank, seat or anything. I thought “what a waste of a really good bike this is. It looked lovely before they started messing around and breaking it for bits”. By the time that I’d finished I had to leave the yard. There were so many vehicles parked in here that trying to leave was a nightmare. I had to reverse as far back as I could and then try to swing round somehow. I could see that I was getting it all wrong. Then the clutch started to slip. I put it in reverse at one point again and the clutch was slipping. The car was slowly rolling forward. That wasn’t what I had in mind at all. I thought that i’d have to rev the engine really hard to move from here and that’s not at all my way of driving.

Finally I was in the offices of a ferry company last night trying to arrange some kind of travel accommodation for that former friend and his wife who were going to Europe for the day but who would be stranded because of the ferry strike but the alarm went off in the middle of it. You’ve no idea how disappointing that was because those two actually have some kind of connection with Zero, a young lady of my acquaintance who figures in these voyages not half as often as she deserves or as I would like, and here’s a chance where at some point she might put in an appearance and the flaming alarm goes off.

The rest of the day has been spent sorting out some stuff for the spacerock festival about which I talked the other day. There’s well over a year before it becomes important but knowing me, I’ll lose track of time at some point and the date will be upon us before I know it.

It’ll take some research too because I know very little about most of the groups who appeared and who my friend’s son recorded when he was Hawkwind’s sound engineer – well, he was actually sound engineer for the Pink Fairies but there was an awful lot of overlap between the backroom staff of the groups who moved in that circle.

Later on, we were treated to one of the best football matches that I have seen in quite some considerable time. 2nd-bottom Aberystwyth Town were away at 5th-bottom Haverfordwest County in a game that they absolutely had to win, and which Haverfordwest needed to win too in order to keep their season alive

Consequently both teams threw everything that they had, including the kitchen sink, at each other for the whole 90 minutes and with the score at 1-1 with 10 minutes to go, I began to understand the meaning of the phrase “gripping the edge of your seat” because I was, and so, I imagine, was everyone else in the ground.

However it finished 1-1, not for any want of trying. And if you have a spare 90 minutes and want some decent entertainment, why not WATCH THE GAME yourself? If you’re a football fan you’ll quite enjoy it. I’ve even found you an English language commentary instead of the more usual Welsh

But one thing – well, more than one thing, but one thing in particular – impressed me with the Haverfordwest team today. They had their third-choice goalkeeper in between the posts today, a young lad called Zak Turner. Not only did he have an excellent game, he’s the first keeper whom I’ve seen for ages who would come off his line to intercept crosses like that Uruguayan goalkeeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz who had an outstanding World Cup in 1970 and impressed me greatly.

They had some of my favourite burgers in LeClerc today so tea tonight was a burger on a bun with diced fried potatoes and a big salad. And that was absolutely delicious too. I really am eating very well these days, especially with the air fryer.

Tomorrow I have to make some pizza bases as I’ve run out. I should also be baking fruit buns and biscuits too but there’s not really much point as I’m not going to be here to eat them next week. I’ll be in hospital being poked and prodded about.

So a quiet day tomorrow then. About time too. I need to build up my strength for next week.

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Saturday 8th April 2023 – THAT WAS DISAPPOINTING

There I was this evening settled down in front of the internet to watch Y Fflint play Caernarfon Town. Y Fflint deep in trouble at the wrong end of the table and Caernarfon only a few points ahead desperate not to be dragged into a relegation scrap themselves.

It took just 90 seconds for Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro, the Côte d’Ivoire international centre-forward to put Y Fflint 1-0 ahead. And after 9 minutes they went 2-0 up and we were going to be in for a cracking match that would promise everything as Caernarfon would have to throw the kitchen sink at them to get anything from this game.

But then what can only be described as an “incident” off the field which led to stewards, paramedics and the police being summoned led to the players being led from the pitch. After a delay of 45 minutes, the maximum allowed by rules, and the game still not being restarted, the match was abandoned.

There will doubtless be some repercussions about all of that. It was extremely disappointing.

Just like my night, really.

My clean and tidy bed was quite comfy and I nestled down in there quite early. I even managed to go to sleep quite quickly too but it didn’t last. In fact, when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. I’d long-since abandoned the idea of going back to sleep.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I set the washing machine off on a cycle (a very clever machine, mine) only to discover later that I’d forgotten a pillow case (but that’s another story) and then hit the streets, carefully dodging the crane that was outside the door repairing someone’ window surround on the top floor.

Noz came up with nothing except for a small hard-backed spiral-bound notebook that has now been pressed into service as a recipe book, and LeClerc was pretty much the same, although I found that I’d forgotten my vegan biscuits.

But never mind. That’s what the internet is for and I’m sure that i’ll be able to find a few good recipes there.

As I said yesterday, I went off with just one crutch which worked sort-of, but I still don’t have enough force in my left leg (never mind the right) to haul myself up a tall kerb. Back to two crutches it is then.

Back here, Liz told me that my web hosting sites were down so I had to chase that up. It appears that there had been an upgrade to the server during the night and instead of switching the main server back on, they’d switched off the back-up server instead, or something like that.

Having put away the frozen stuff and the cool stuff, I made some coffee and cheese on toast and had a very late breakfast / early lunch.

This afternoon I sorted out my paperwork and filed away a pile of stuff so the place is looking a little tidier. I’m going to try to do some stuff every day to reduce somewhat the amount of stuff I have to take with me when I finally move.

And then I turned my attention to the dictaphone. Despite the miserable night there was plenty of movement. At one point I was walking down the street on some kind of 1930s council house estate. There were all kinds of people at the window. I don’t know why they were there or what they were doing but you could see them there, and their shadows etc because it was late at night. It was something really weird.

And then I was with people who had gone out for a walk. They were staying in Yorkshire and were walking down some of these old stone-walled country lanes. They’d all gone their separate ways but met up again. I was watching them. Suddenly my whole perspective of view changed. It began to be a telephoto view as if I was miles and miles away. It was just zooming out all the time. I tried to bring myself back to the point of view where I could see them or to advance in little stages so that I could catch up with them again in stages but no matter where I was, my viewpoint ended up being miles away from where they were. I couldn’t bring myself back to be with them. I wasn’t with them physically. It was some distance from me standing there basically in the background as a spirit I suppose watching them

Later on I was with a rock group last night, either Semisonic or From Good Homes. A girl singer had not long joined them. She needed something doing to the roof of her house so someone from the group had arranged for her to have some slates. She went to pick them up but there was an argument about them. Considering that these slates were costing her nothing she should have kept quiet and just taken them. Instead she got into an argument that started the Gods sending thunderbolts at each other and the people taking part in this play.

Finally I was with the brother of a girl friend of mine from school who was with his wife. He was farming near Nantwich but had to go somewhere up in the mountains to bring back a trailer. I said that I’d go with him. We’d been camping out somewhere at this festival at first. I’d been there with another girl, whoever she might have been. I’d put our tent up. I was assembling something. I turned round to my wife and said “can you give me a screw” that brought everyone nearby to fits of laughter. When the festival finished we met up with this guy and went to pick up this trailer. I can’t remember what vehicle we were in but he was in a Land Rover. He said that one the way he’d drop off a box of stuff at someone. We set off through the mountains and eventually arrived where we had to be with this trailer. Then he realised that he hadn’t stopped to drop off this thing. He arranged that when he’d return home he’d post it. We coupled up this trailer to the Land Rover and set off back to Nantwich. It was a huge thing and was towing a trailer itself. How he was doing it with a Land Rover was anyone’s guess. Eventually we were back in Nantwich and went round to see his childhood home (which it wasn’t). It was being renovated and work was being done on it. He began to talk. He had the Land Rover, one of these Japanese pickups, a Volvo saloon and was thinking about selling maybe the Land Rover. He also had a Transit van by this time, not a Land Rover. He’d had the Transit from new, a brown swb one. He said that his wife didn’t understand why he still had it and he was thinking of selling it. I saod that the vehicle I would have sold could have been the Volvo saloon. Everything else was the right kind of vehicle to keep when you are working on a farm. He wasn’t convinced. He was talking about either moving back into the college or moving house into the area to do something differently. We talked about farming but at this point I fell back into sleep and all you can hear is me yawning.

Having dictated the text for the next couple of radio programmes I settled down for the football but as I mentioned just now, that was rather a disappointing waste of time.

Tea tonight was more of those baby roast potatoes with a salad. I’d taken some stuff out of the freezer that I thought was small breaded quorn fillets but was in actual fact some small falafel discs. But they were nice anyway and the air fryer does do a nice job on stuff like this.

So now I’m going to bed. It’s a Day of Rest tomorrow but if it’s anything like last Sunday there won’t be much rest for me. But I’ll track down some biscuit recipes and see if I can’t have a little baking session.

It will be interesting to say the least.

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Saturday 11th March 2023 – THIS AFTERNOON I …

… had a go at manipulating the shopping trolley that I bought a few months ago on my return from hospital.

When I was at the shops this morning I bought quite a bit of stuff and although I managed to bring some stuff (the important, cool and frozen stuff) up with me, the rest was left behind for another time.

But feeling the need for a little exercise I went downstairs with the shopping trolley, loaded it up and brought it all back upstairs. It wasn’t as easy as it ought to have been, particularly the final couple of steps up to my front door, but probably a little easier than making two or three trips up and down stairs. It’s something that I’ll have to develop for the next time.

The next time that I go to bed, I’ll be spending much more time in there because it’s Sunday. I would have been happy to have spent much more time in bed this morning because when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was stark out.

Not exactly stark out because I was off on my travels. I was busy coming round to the conclusion that I had to sell off my taxi business and empty my storage lockers of car bits etc and make a start on making an inventory. There was so much stuff that it would take for ever. The idea was that I’d go up to the storage unit every day, bring home some stuff that I’d put on an on-line auction somewhere and move the stuff on like that. I was just getting into it when the alarm went off and awoke me.

After the medication and organising myself I bunged a load of washing into the machine and then headed out for the shops.

And at Noz I had a little bit of luck. The physiotherapist had told me that I need to invent some weights, like plastic bags with sand in, to use as an exercise barbell on my foot to practise raising my legs when I’m sitting down. And there at Noz was a shelf full of proper 2kg weights at €3:50 each. A bit of string and I’m a la maison et sec as they say around here.

There were a couple of extra things in LeClerc that I bought over and above the usual stuff. Sean had suggested (thank you, Sean) that a pyrex bowl would work nicely in my air fryer so I had a rummage around in the kitchenware department and managed to find one that would fit.

It’s a good job that I went over there too because I managed to pick up something else important. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or so ago I managed to find a real and proper cake tin for baking. While I was there today they had some half-size ones that would be ideal for making smaller cakes.

Cake tins are, for some reason that I haven’t understood, extremely rare in France. They don’t seem to use them as often as they might do anywhere else, so grabbing one while the grabbing was good was a good plan.

So what with the silicon mould that I bought the other week I’m slowly getting myself organised ready for when I once finally have a decent kitchen and oven to go with it.

Back here I put away the food that i’d brought up, hung up the washing and then made myself some toast and coffee and had a nice relaxing breakfast. And then, rather regrettably, I crashed out. And for an hour too. It really was quite awkward.

First thing this afternoon (after I’d eaten a plate of fruit) was to listen to the dictaphone because there was some stuff on it from the night. There was a group of us studying some subject or other, 8 in total, and we were going to take an exam. We all met up at our tutor’s apartment in the morning to make sure that we had anything. She gave us a quick test and although I was feeling pretty depressed about this particular exam I found to my surprise that in this quick oral test I seemed to do ok at it. We set out and came eventually to the building where we should be, up several flights of steps. 6 of the people disappeared. Whether they went in a lift or something I don’t know but I went with someone else up the stairs. The other guy with me ran out of steam halfway through and had to stop. He told me to go on to say that I was there. I entered the teacher’s apartment and said “hello! We’re the Jackson 5, or Jackson 8 in reality!”. Everyone else turned up at this point. We started to take our place at the table. I could see in the distance some kind of dog. I made a nice friendly gesture to it so it came over to sit by me. I began to talk to it and it began to do little tricks with its paws like if I asked it to do something it would hold up a paw.

And then there was a programme on the radio (which of course there wasn’t). After it finished (which of course it didn’t) I ended up dreaming about it in my dream. It concerned a drug-smuggling ring of quite ordinary people led by some woman who was no-one in particular, an old poor type of working class woman from the East End of London who was in fact a tie salesman and who kept a Public Convenience clean. There was a false panel in this Convenience where drugs were deposited. People would come along and remove drugs for their own use if they knew the secret. There were these 2 people hot on the trail of this. This radio programme went on for hours just like a Paul Temple series until right at the end when all the pieces fell into place and this secret panel with the drugs was found.

All exciting stuff again.

The rest of the day has been spent working on the radio stuff. I was making ready to dictate the stuff that I’d already written but then I had a different idea. I ought to be shuffling the pack and changing things around so that they don’t sound all the same.

Every now and again I do something special depending on whatever falls on a Friday and so far we’ve had a Brexit programme, an Armistice Day programme and a Jeff Beck tribute programme to name but three, and there’s another special day coming up on a Friday quite soon. That’s another cue to do something special so I had to sort out a pile of music.

That meant tracking down the soundtrack archives for a certain album that can’t be any more obscure than it is. One that not only did Jimi Hendrix play on but one that he produced as well, and there aren’t many of those.

It took some tracking down as well but I finally managed to find a decent copy. And then I had to cut it and edit it.

When I went down to Caliburn for the rest of the shopping, as I mentioned earlier, I bumped into one of my neighbours and we had a good chat. It seems that I’m flavour of the month around here right now.

For tea tonight I put Sean’s idea to work and tried the pyrex bowl with some diced potatoes, a sprinkling of olive oil and some mint and rosemary in the air fryer. It worked to perfection and I’m really impressed with that idea so thanks again. They went down really well with a salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn slices that I like very much.

So right now I’m still waiting for the music to finish off what it’s doing and then I’m going to bed. I’m going to have a lie-in tomorrow as usual but I want to break the back of this special radio programme so that I don’t have it all to do on Monday.

In fact on Monday I should be in Leuven at the hospital for these heart issues but there’s not much point in going and being passed around from pillar to post again. I wrote to them at the end of December, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to complain about the situation and to ask them to get themselves together but they never replied to me. I’m not going all that way to undergo the same tests that I had a year ago and finish up with the same results.

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Thursday 12th January 2023 – I’VE GIVEN UP …

… making a note of the time when I finally heave myself out of my stinking pit because it’s becoming rather embarrassing that all of my energy in this resepct has evaporated. Instead, I’ll try to concentrate on more positive aspects of everything – if I can actually find any.

It wouldn’t have been during the night though. I did my usual awakening at some silly time and then being unable to go back to sleep for hours. I once read someone’s thesis on Medieval sleeping patterns where there was mention of “first sleeps” and “second sleeps” with people getting up and performing tasks in between. I might not be old enough to remember any medieval sleeping patterns – it just feels like it right now.

Plenty of time to go off on a voyage here and there too. Someone was moving house last night and my family from Wardle was going to look after some stuff for a couple of days. Maybe they had some use for it or something. It was a case of bringing some of the stuff out of this house and putting it onto a trailer that would be towed by a van of theirs. First of all they had to go off somewhere so this girl and I stayed behind. We had to start to take the stuff outside but she was taking ages to do the slightest thing. We were going nowhere because she didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm or energy for the task. Eventually they turned up back so we made a better start. The first thing was these 3 enormous plants. She picked up 2 and went outside. I picked up the third but the stem broke quite low down. I thought “I’ve ruined this”. Then it was the case that she was bringing all kinds of stuff out that these people weren’t going to look after. I couldn’t see the point or purpose in doing that. She started to move bit by bit. The place was dirty and dusty, hadn’t been dusted for years by the looks of things. There were spiders everywhere. I thought that this is really not going to be how I would expect a furniture removal of this sort to be taking place. I felt that we were going to be here while she got organised.

Later during the night we were living in one of these families with children from different parentage. My mother was looking after a couple of children for which she was receiving some money per week. One of these children was actually my elder sister. We didn’t get on and we’d had several fights. One of them was really serious so my mother told me that she would send me away. I thought that if this is an issue between the 2 children and my mother has to choose one of them, why is she choosing the one for which she receives money and want to send away her own child. I made quite a big fuss or argument about all of this. I told her flatly that I wasn’t leaving. If they wanted me out of the house they would have to drag me out. Shortly after that my mother announced that she was having to go away. Because my elder sister and I didn’t get on, I would have to stay temporarily with people while she was away and come back later. Again I refused to go because I saw this for what it was, a plan to simply get me out of the house and once I’d gone they would be no way that she would bring me back in it again so once again I refused flatly to go.

And then I was about to be arrested for something or other. I knew that it was inevitable so I decided that I’d go and surrender myself. I was with 2 girls who might have been Alison and Jackie. I was going through all my paperwork with them making sure that they had everything that I needed. I had all my notes there and pointed out that there were other notes as well, the most recent of which were in a carrier bag in Caliburn on A4 paper folded in half. I went down the various phone numbers with them to make sure that they had them all. Suddenly the question of Zero cropped up. I wondered whether I should give them Zero’s phone number. In the end I decided that while one number more or less won’t make any difference so I gave them her number. I told them that if ever they were to ring it up and her father answered, not to speak to her father but to phone back another time because they would only every have one shot at talking to her. I wrote the number down but the pencil was very blunt. The number was very indistinct so I had to repeat it a couple of times. It didn’t really look like how it ended up being written but it was the best that I could do at that moment because I had a feeling that I ought to go straight away and not wait around any longer otherwise things would just become worse.

At some point I was visiting Clause and Francoise. They had some Ukrainian refugees staying with them, including a girl who I thought was quite cute. We were there, a group of us, hanging around until the evening. I had to go. They asked if I would be back tomorrow but seeing as it was 8 hours home then 8 hours back that might have sounded unlikely but I said to myself “yes, why not?”. I arranged to be there for 09:30 which was totally ridiculous. I set off and drove home like the wind, basically turn round and drive straight back again. The idea that I’d spend the night in a cheap hotel in Montlucon never ever occurred to me until I was well on my way back. As I pulled round the corner towards their house it was 09:35. I thought that I’d done really well to arrive like this. As I came to a stop I looked at my watch and saw that it was 08:30. My watch was clearly playing up. I wondered what on earth the time really was and whether they were still going to be there or if they were fed up and gone without me because I was so late.

Finally, I was in Shrewsbury. I had to come home by catching a coach. I boarded this coach and set off. It drove through the back streets at a hell of a pace and out into the countryside. Then it was me on foot escorting 2 people. I was basically having to crawl on my hands and knees with them. I could see that I was becoming slower and slower. It was quite obvious to me that I can’t keep on doing this. I’m going to have to stop. I’ll be lucky if I make it home. I put on a spurt and we climbed up this steep climb. At the top was this most beautiful view of the sea and inland. Everything from this craggy rock. We talked about the view and everything. They asked why the French didn’t advertise this more. I explained “yes, it’s French. It’s ice to visit and French people have the right to see it but they don’t want it to be overwhelmed. There were a few people round as well running around here and there. These 2 people headed off down the hill but I stood there to look around for a moment. There were people who were just letting themselves go, running full-tilt down this slope. I waited for a moment and when it was clear I ran full tilt down the slope too all the way down to the bottom. Then I looked for the 2 people whom I was conducting but couldn’t see them at all. I wondered where they had gone because they were nowhere in my view at all.

But it was interesting that once more Zero was lurking around in the background but something came up to stop her actually making an appearance. It’s been quite a few times now that that has happened and it’s probably a fact of some significance that she has failed to cross the threshold.

It appears to me that what goes on during the night has far more significance than it might appear at face value although I don’t think much of Freud’s ideas. This exercise that we did 20-odd years ago into dreams seemed to indicate that a dream was an episode of maybe half a dozen long-running threads that ran through someone’s subconscious life but what this actually meant, we never found out. The leader of this project graduated with his Master’s Degree as a result of our efforts but we never saw his thesis.

Today was supposed to be a radio day and indeed it was, although we haven’t set any records today – far from it. I hadn’t as much as sat down and warmed up the computer when I had a message “could I do a tribute for Jeff Beck?”.

Of course I can, but I wanted to do something of a difference. Everyone else will be playing his more famous stuff but I know of at least one unofficial recording that took place in a club when he was in an amateur group long before the Yardbirds, another that he did for a more famous rock star long before he was ever famous and also some session work that he did for a group from Bolton that Jimmy Page sent him via his sister.

Consequently most of the day has been spent following all kinds of casual leads from here or there and I’ve ended up with about 15 tracks, including the tracks for which I’d been looking and also a recording of the only track on which he sang when he was with the Yardbirds.

There’s some rare stuff in there, especially the track on which Jimmy Page plays bass and when I’ve finished writing up the notes (I’ve done the notes for 11 of the 15 songs) it will be something special. I shall see if I can finish it tomorrow morning.

In the middle of all of this, I stopped for a shower, seeing as the physiotherapist is going to be coming round later. Getting into the bath was easier today than it has been of late, and also I can get myself back upright from a kneeling position if there’s something on which I can hang on to pull myself up.

Ask me how I know.

While I was in there I set the washing machine going. There was much more than one machine-load to do so I shall have to do a second load in early course. At least the bedding has been washed and once it’s dried it will be ready. I need to change my bedding much more often than I do.

The physiotherapist regulated my crutches for me and then had me walking around the apartment practising for 10 minutes or so. And once I got the hang of how to walk with them it was much better than trying to hobble around. I’ll try to go for a walk tomorrow if the weather is nice – down to the supermarket on the bus and find some mushrooms and peppers. I’m not sure what else I might need – maybe some frozen peas or something. I’ve plenty of carrots, and if I mix up the beans and sprouts, I can keep that lot going for another week or two.

Talking of sprouts, I had some with my slice of vegan pie tonight with potatoes and gravy. It really was delicious and I shall have to make some more of that.

So I’ll go back and dictate the notes for the radio programme as far as I have done them so far. And then see whereabouts I can reach. I have my final track already planned, as well as my final speech, so it’s the bit in the middle that is the issue.

That will take some thought, but not at 23:00 in the evening.

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Wednesday 21st December 2022 – I’VE HAD A …

… horrible, really horrible day today. In fact I’ve spent most of it fast asleep on my chair with no enthusiasm to do anything and much of the stuff that I planned to do today has remained undone.

It actually started off quite well too. Although I didn’t beat the second alarm to my feet, There wasn’t much in it and I was good and ready if the pharmacist decided to bring me my injections. But, as you might expect, she didn’t come past.

Someone who did come past though was one of my neighbours saying that she was going shopping. I passed an order for potatoes, carrots, sprouts, pears and clementines. It cost a fortune but now I’m set up with everything in the fruit and veg line for the next two or three weeks.

In the time that it took for her to go and come back, I was flat out asleep on the chair in here. I really have never felt so awful as I did this morning and I’ve no idea why. I reckon that the effects of yesterday were just far too much for me.

This afternoon I’ve been asleep for quite a while too but when you look at what I’ve managed to do, it looks impressive nevertheless. Like tidying up, for example. The place looks a little better now that I’ve cleared a few things away.

And a big load of washing too. Surprisingly that’s all up-to-date now and it’s been a while since I’ve been able to say that.

1kg of sprouts and 1.5kg of carrots took some peeling and blanching, but they are all done now too. The sprouts went into the freezer but there was no room for the carrots so for the moment they are in the ice box in the fridge. It’s not ideal but I wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to stock up.

For my Christmas meal, seeing as I don’t have anything special, I’ve decided that I will make a nice pie. So I put a cup full of lentils in the slow cooker. When they boiled up, I drained and rinsed them and put them back with some tofu and a pile of herbs and some garlic. They will marinade on a slow heat overnight and should be delicious.

Tomorrow I’ll fry some onions and add the tuff from the slow cooker and then add porridge oats to bind it all together. And when it’s cooled, I’ll make a nice tasty pie. But I can’t find the pie dish that I want to use and I have a feeling that I might have to invent something for that.

Ingrid telephoned me too and we had a chat. Not quite a Rosemaryesque chat but a long and interesting one nevertheless. She’s just as appalled as everyone else about what went on in the hospital in Leuven.

So this afternoon, I’ve been a really busy little beaver despite the fact that I didn’t feel at all like it and didn’t think that I’d done all that much.

Although I didn’t make any progress with the radio programme that I’ll be trying to prepare tomorrow, I managed to find the energy to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I started off taking a coach tour party to Blackpool. We made it as far as a motorway service area where we’d stop for half an hour although I forgot to tell everyone that it would be just half an hour. It was so tight in there that I had to get off the coach, shunt the other coaches around so I could find myself into a place to park. So there I was, heaving and mauling on these coaches. Eventually I put mine into a decent place. There was a guy with me who was looking at it. I said “it’s a good job that I can do this on my own, isn’t it? I used to be married”. We had a little chat. Gradually the passengers started to drift back. We ended up having another talk about monsters and that kind of thing, how gruesome and everything these slimy creatures were, the kind of stuff that I wouldn’t normally print on my blog but I seem to be doing it a lot just recently.

This next one is a story about a group of kids and adults, all extremely wealthy except 2 boys. 2 young girls move into their neighbourhood and the two boys seem to be more interested in the new girls than these women and girls who had been here before in this rich type of scenario. It starts to cause a load of problems.

So tomorrow I’ll be having a go with making my pie. I also have to make some more fruit buns as there are only enough for breakfast tomorrow. What i’m going to do with the ones that I don’t eat quickly I really don’t know as there is now no room in the freezer.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow. Right now I’m going to bed even if it is early. It’s been a horrible day – the kind that you just want to switch off and start again. But I’ve had a quick taste of my simmering pie filling and it is rather special. provided that I can find a pie dish it should work out really well.

Here’s hoping.

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Saturday 27th August 2022 – I CAN’T REMEMBER …

… the last time that it was as quiet as it was today on the path overlooking the port.

Maybe yesterday, with all of the painters and everything, was exceptional, I dunno, but today there was hardly anyone about at all round there.

wet pavement boulevard vaufleury Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Mind you, that did actually have its own advantages.

During the night we must have had a really heavy rainstorm because you can see just how wet the path is there. That’s the bit that usually floods in the heavy rain so considering that we’ve had no rain to speak of in an age, it must have been something impressive last night.

And you can see the vegetation here. It’s turned a lot more green just overnight. Things must be looking up and if we aren’t careful, we might have our lawn back.

And while we’re on the subject of “during the night” … “well, one of us is” – ed … I actually had quite a disturbed night.

And not just during the night either. I sat up bolt-upright 10 minutes before the alarm was due to go off, to find myself once again dictating notes into my hand. How many times must I have done that?

Nevertheless I grabbed the dictaphone and dictated what I could remember The milk was rather late being delivered so they sent some elderly guy round to check and to go to see his way into the attic. And it was at that moment that I awoke and whatever else was going on just evaporated,

Not a success.

Regardless of that it was still a struggle to fight my way out of bed and take my medicine. And then in an effort to liven myself up, I had an energy drink and then a shower.

It’s shopping day today, not that I need all that much, but I set the washing machine off just to finally at long last empty to linen basket and then we went to the shops.

There wasn’t much that I needed so I didn’t buy much. It still came to €24:00 though, mainly due to the big bag of peaches and the vegan spread and I was back home by 10:05.

But i’m beginning to notice another problem – and that is that it’s a long way up into Caliburn and I’m struggling to make it. That’s ominous.

Back here, armed with a coffee and some toast, I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. Someone came to the door of the house where I was at that particular moment. He walked in, saw me and someone else there and asked for “Professor (so-and-so)”. For some unknown reason I went white and began to shake. The person I was with said that he was Detective-Sergeant (someone-or-other) and was here to make a few enquiries. Before he could continue I asked wht=at this was all about so they explained that the professor had been murdered some time previously which caused an enormous amount of upset. At least I discovered that it wasn’t me whom the person was after.

And later I had a train to catch in London at 22:15 and was coming back again early in the morning. I’d been camping so I had to pick up everything and prepare to leave. When it was time to leave I looked around for everything and couldn’t find my bumbag anywhere. I had a good hunt round but couldn’t find it. In the end I decided that I’d have to go without it. I tied my tent to the bottom of my sleeping back, stuck my parasol in the sleeping bag, hoped that my bumbag was in there. I had to walk somewhere to say goodbye, forgot my sleeping bag, walked back, picked it up, got into the car, drove into Crewe. It never occurred to me until far too late that I should have gone to a suburban railway station in a village somewhere and caught a train to Crewe and could have left my car there. When I arrived in Crewe I was too far away from my house to park there so I had to look for a parking space. There wasn’t any in the public highway. In the end I found myself thinking “how much will it cost to use the British Rail car park by the station for 10 hours or whatever. It’s only going to be expensive if I’ve lost my bumbag. If I have to start paying for parking it’s going to be the end of the world

I’d just gone into a restaurant to have some salad sandwiches. Although the place wasn’t crowded the 2 people behind the counter were working like demons. One of my friends from Germany was there and someone else. The someone else was making the sandwiches and my friend was waiting on table and waiting at the counter and also making some sandwiches. I stood there while they were all busy running around. They’d smiled at me but they hadn’t otherwise said “hello”. I thought to myself that this is taking much longer than it ought to fetch me something to eat. There was a dispute about someone – they thought that they’d organised the wrong meal but my friend was adamant that they hadn’t. Someone had set the toaster too high and burnt a lot of the sandwiches. I was beginning to think at the end of the day that I was invisible because no-one took any notice of me at all.

My niece was pregnant last night too. She’d come round for something and had gone off to the corner shop on the corner of Brookhouse Drive and Davenport Avenue (which there isn’t). In the meantime I’d had to nip out to do something so I went off in my red Cortina. It took much longer than I thought. By the time that I returned my niece was sitting in her car on the car park looking extremely miserable so I have her what it was that I had, parked my car and went back to our flat. I found that I was even so late that everyone had already started to deliberately eat it as well. THis was incredibly late as well, I don’t know why everything had taken so long but it wasn’t supposed to be anything like this at all

With not being in any great rush that took me up until my lunchtime fruit. And one of the peaches is bruised already. I can’t seem to keep fruit very long here and I don’t know why.

And afterwards I paired off all of the music. Only 8 tracks because one of them goes on for almost 22 minutes. I always had a secret admiration for Graham Bond’s Holy Magick.

It took far longer that it ought to have done as well because there were small gaps in the recording at regular intervals, as if the tape had been nicked by something sharp that had gone right through. You’ve no idea how many nicks there can be in 22 minutes of recording and I had to patch each one.

The opening is a very good opening too and I like good openings when they can run underneath my opening speech (which lasts for 13.555 seconds) but as this one wasn’t long enough for that, I looped a segment 8 times and it kept the beat all the way through my extended opening.

As well as that, I had to change a track because one that I had chosen was much more suitable as a programme opener. I don’t have too many of those so I don’t want to waste them.

All in all, I’m glad that I did that this afternoon instead of trying to do it on a Sunday when I don’t really feel like it.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022That took me more-or-less up to the time to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

And once more, I was surprised to see so few people down there. They had plenty of beach to be on but for some reason everyone had deserted the sand.

Many of those down there had made it into the water which was no surprise because regardless of what might or might not have happened during the night, we were back to summer again today and it was hot.

Just the day, in fact, when you would expect to see a lot of people.

medieval fish trap plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Down at the Plat Gousset it was pretty much the same, although I was intrigued by the guy in suit trousers, shirt and tie. What was he doing down there on his own dressed like that?

But you can see how the medieval fish trap works. As the tide goes out, some water is retained in the trap and that’s where you’ll find the fish that have come in with the tide but been stranded when the tide has gone out.

This would be the time when all of the fishwives would wade in and start to pull out the fish by hand. And that evening, everyone would have a fish supper.

yachts baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022As usual, while I’m here I’m also having a good look out at sea.

In the Baie de Granville there was hardly any water craft today. Just recently we’ve seen hordes of craft but it seems that they are all having a day off today. These three yachts and probably a handful of other boats were all that I could see.

Mind you, the weather was quite hazy today in patches and while some of Jersey was visible from up here, the rest of the island that we could normally wasn’t clear.

The ile de Chausey was quite visible and I had a little smile to myself listening to some British guy telling his friends that it was the Plateau des Minquiers which are just off Jersey to the south.

sailing ship english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Further out in the English Channel there was something of interest going on.

There’s another sailing ship right out there again today.

Marité is out at sea but she’s currently behind the Ile de Chausey so I don’t think that it’s her and I’m not sure who else it might be.

La Cancalaise hasn’t been out that way today either, but a couple of other suitable candidates might be Etoile du Roy although that’s unlikely, and Le Renard who was out there in that direction somewhere.

It’s not easy using the radar on my mobile phone and when I return home to look on the computer, all of the ships have changed position so I have to estimate their position at the time from their historical track.

fisherman pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Down at the end of the headland there wasn’t an awful lot going on today so I wandered off across the car park to see what was happening down on the rocks.

We had another fisherman down there this afternoon and I do have to say that I was impressed by his tackle. he had a nice big aluminium box strapped to his back but the way things are around here, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was for a seat rather than to store his catch.

There wasn’t anyone sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban this afternoon. Judging by what happened yesterday, they must have heard me coming and cleared off before I arrived.

Not that I blame them either.

festival of working sailing ships fete des voiliers du travail port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Walking down past the sodden part of the path I could see what was happening at the Festival of Working Sailing Ships.

There doesn’t look as if there are all that many people there today either compared to how many there were earlier in the week.

One reason for the comparative lack of people around today is that we’re coming close to the end of the holiday season. Many people will have packed up and gone home this morning, I suppose.

Nevertheless, there would surely still be plenty of people living not too far away who would want to come away for the weekend and see the sights.

la granvillaise marie fernand rowing boats l'alize 3 festival of working sailing ships fete des voiliers du travail port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022The mystery ship that we saw just now, I can tell you who she isn’t.

It can’t be La Granvillaise because she’s down there giving tourists a lap around the harbour for whatever the local equivalent of half a crown might be. And without her tender either. Let’s hope that she doesn’t need it.

And if you can’t afford the half-crown, you can row your own in one of the rowing boats that are wandering around there. Plenty of opportunity for doing something with a pair of oars.

Up against the wall at the back is of course Marie Fernand and the trawler in the foreground is Alize III

philcathane chausiaise port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Further along the quayside are the trawler Philcathane and the little freighter Chausiaise. Of course there will be no loading up of freight while the Festival is taking place.

But one ship that isn’t there right now is Victor Hugo and I don’t need to consult her itit .. init … tinit … itninnin .. timetable either to tell you where she might be. As I was on my way to the shops this morning I saw her loading up at the Ferry Terminal presumably for a trip out to Jersey.

And as for me, I’m not there right now either. I came back to the apartment for a drink of ice-cold ginger beer. Shop-bought from a while back. And I reckon that I ought to start my drinks-manufacturing again. But in the bathtub in cas eof any unwelcome explosions.

It was a shame about my TV

No football this evening but there were extended highlights of a game last night in the second tier between Ynyshir Albion and Llanelli. I remember Llanelli from their time in the Welsh Premier League but I’ve never seen Ynyshir so I reckoned that that was a good way to relax.

You can’t tell much from highlights of course but Ynyshir looked the better side, even if they couldn’t make their way past Scott Coughlin, who I remember from Afan Lido, in the Llanelli goal who had a good game. Llanelli scored a goal early on and then rode their luck to the final whistle.

Tea was steamed potato, veg and a breaded quorn fillet and as usual it was delicious. I’ll go back to LIDL at some point and look for more of those.

A day off tomorrow with it being Sunday, and no work to do because I’ve done it all already. I’ll have a few more days like that. I’m going to bed early, no alarm, and have a good sleep so I’ll be fighting fit for tomorrow.

And pigs will fly as well.

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Saturday 20th August 2022 – IF EVER I LAY …

… my hands on whoever went past here in what sounded like a steam engine at 06:08 this morning, they’ll be eating soup through a straw for the next month. I was having a really good sleep at that moment and after it had gone past I didn’t go off to sleep again.

And there I was, hoping for a decent sleep as well.

belle france joly france baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022So while you admire a few photos of the Ile de Chausey ferries, including a rather delightful “Greek v Greek” moment between Belle france and the newer of the two Joly France boats, I’ll fill you in.

Although not in the same fashion as I would had you been driving steam engine around here at 06:08 this morning.

Anyway, I suppose that I was being somewhat optimistic about a good night’s sleep. It was another late night, later than intended so I was fighting a losing battle before I started.

Just as I was going to bed last night, the broadcasting company that covers the Welsh Premier League posted the highlands of the games that evening, Y Drenewydd v Y Fflint and Connah’s Quay Nomads v Airbus UK Broughton.

joly france leaving port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Of course I had to stay up and watch them before retiring, didn’t I?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to enthuse about Lifumpa Mwandwe at Y Drenewydd. He’s no longer there, having moved to the North American professional game in the Summer.

But it looks as if he’s been replaced in my estimation by Okera Simmonds, about whom I said a few positive things last weekend.

Top of the League now, Y Fflint, after their impressive victory last night, but they’ve been there before and fallen away towards the end of the season so I’m not making all that much of it.

joly france leaving port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022This morning despite the early awakening I had a difficult start yet again to the day, struggling to leave the bed.

But a good shower after the medication livened me up somewhat. I also set the washing machine off as I’m running out of clothes. By the looks of things I haven’t done any washing for months but that can’t be right

Having organised all of that I headed off to the shops. Well, shop, actually because I only went to Leclerc. There’s not much point going to Noz these days although one of these days I’ll have to go to Lidl I suppose.

At leclerc I didn’t buy anything special at all. It was rather a mundane shop today and didn’t cost very much at all. A few more months of spending like this will sort me out, I reckon.

On the way back home I went to the dechetterie.

Last night I took out the printers and left them by the side of the rubbish bins so that anyone who would like to can help themselves to them and see what they can make of them.

While I was at it, I stuck all of the cardboard boxes into Caliburn and seeing as I was quite early (I was there at leClerc at opening time) and didn’t have any frozen food, I went by the dechetterie to drop them off.

container dechetterie Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022But I was surprised by the grills that they have around the containers these days. It means that you have to tear up or crush your boxes to pass them through the slots and drop them into the containers.

It was all very reminiscent of the old piano-smashing competitions where you had to demolish a piano and pass the debris through a hoop, and the quickest one would win.

Anyone as old as me would surely remember those. And what a waste of good pianos that was.

Back here I put everything away (and that’s a surprise), hung up the washing and then made some toast and coffee for breakfast.

le loup joly france leaving port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022While you admire another photo of Joly France going out and passing Le loup on her way back to the Ile de Chausey, I was finishing breakfast and then having a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There was a concert that I didn’t attend for some reason but a lot of my friends did. I had a visit from someone who told me that the rock group for this concert so would I think about doing something? I took my guitar and things and went off to this concert. There were about half a dozen people messing around on stage. One was my friend from the Wirral with his drum kit. I gestured to the stage and he picked up what I was doing. One of the guitarists stayed up and in the end we made ready to play an impromptu set with just a dozen numbers of typical 3-minute standards. The guitarist was sulking with me and I’m not quite sure why but I determined not to let that bother with me. I’d just ignore him and just be my usual gushing outgoing self on stage and he can sort out his own problems.

Later on I had a girlfriend who worked in a Chinese restaurant. We were due to go to the cinema so I turned up to see if she was ready but she was waiting on in the restaurant. I asked her what was happening. She said that she had to work today because no-one else had come in and her mother who ran the restaurant wanted her to work. I rolled up my sleeves, took off my jacket and said “here, I’ll give you a hand”. I was running around clearing tables etc. A group of young people came in. They knew the girl and saw me. They asked why I was there and I said that I’m taking her to the cinema but she’s having to work and can’t go. They started to talk to her and asked what was on etc. They wanted to know the reasons why she was working in the restaurant instead of being out enjoying herself etc.

Actually that dream reminded me of something that happened many years ago when we used to go skiing on a dry slope on the Wirral on a Sunday evening.

There was a Chinese take-away just down the road with a really cute young girl who worked the counter. We used to go there for a takeaway for tea. Not that I like Chinese food but I would have gone anywhere to see her.

On one occasion a group of us was going to a Chinese banquet so I had a cunning plan. Without saying anything, I asked her to show me how to eat with chopsticks so that I would look good at this banquet and so she gave me a few lessons.

When I felt competent enough, I put my plan into operation. “You’ve been so kind and helpful that i’d like to thank you. Would you like to come with me to the banquet as a recompene?”.

She replied “no”.

Ahh well … . Someone else who had a lucky escape, I suppose. My life is littered with those.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was somewhere like in the story of Tim The Magician from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL but he was actually walking forward as he was making the explosions. They were assembling a team to meet him.

It was at that point that this steam engine thing, whatever it was, went whooshing past on the street and awoke me. I could actually hear the noise that it was making when I listened to the recording.

However prior to that I’d been back at work again, another one of these dreams where I was sitting on piles of arrears of work and thinking to myself that I could retire today if I like because I’m past retirement age and it wouldn’t make any difference. I started to drop a couple of hints to a couple of people. They were talking about where I was going. I replied that if the Northwich office has air conditioning I’ll be going there tomorrow. It’s high time that this place brought itself kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. They started asking someone else questions about the place in Northwich but she couldn’t tell them much.

And isn’t that a recurring dream too, about me being at work past retirement age with piles of arrears?

We had yet another mad fit of enthusiasm and I transcribed the notes for another day when I was off in the Great Wild World back in June-July. I’m not sure what’s happening there.

But it wasn’t as enthusiastic as it might otherwise have been as I rather regrettably dozed off for 20 minutes while I was doing it. Mind you, with having had such a rude awakening, I’m not really surprised.

After my lunchtime fruit I peeled, diced and blanched a kilo of carrots. They were on special offer at LeClerc so I reckoned that I should pick some up. Believe it or not, there was actually some room in the freezer.

Next task was to pair off the music for the radio programme that I’ll be doing on Monday. I know that that’s usually my task for Sunday but I need to make the most of this enthusiasm and go ahead while the going is good.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022That took me up to the time that I usually go out for my afternoon walk.

There were quite a few people down there on the beach this afternoon. The weather has improves somewhat and while it wasn’t actually warm, it was quite sunny and that had brought out the crowds.

Some of the people had even managed to drag themselves into the water and my hat went off to them because the weather wasn’t quite that good.

You wouldn’t catch me going into it but then again, water for me to immerse myself in it needs to be at 37°C.

yachts speedboat baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022As usual, while I was up here on the cliff looking down I had my other eye roaming around offshore.

Out there in the bay there was quite a bit of activity today. In the foreground we had a speedboat that looked as if it was in a devilish hurry, as you can tell by the size of the wake that it’s creating.

A little further behind it is a couple of small yachts. Judging by the sails they belong to one of the sailing schools that are in the vicinity.

There are several of those and when I find out what this series of medical appointments is all about, then I really am going to see whether or not there’s a way that I can fit a course of sailing into my activities.

commodore goodwill english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022It wasn’t just in the immediate vicinity where I was looking either.

Right out in the English Channel way behind the Ile de Chausey was something quite large out on the horizon. It’s definitely a ship, but which one?

Back here I had a look at the radar and nothing obvious presented itself. However Commodore Goodwill left St Helier at 11:59 and arrived at St Malo at 19:34 and she has the same silhouette as the ship out there on the horizon.

However 7.5 is an awfully long time for the crossing so I don’t know what happened there.

She wasn’t the only mystery ship out there this afternoon.

la cancalaise baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022Further round was a small sailing ship, far too far out for me to identify it, but I took a photo of it all the same so that I could have a closer look back home later.

Having enlarged it, it’s still not possible to say with any certainly and you’ve no idea how many other ships were out there confusing the radar screen this afternoon.

However one of the boats out there was La Cancalaise, sister ship to our own La Gravillaise but based across the bay at Cancale, and the outline of the boat in the photo is not unlike their outline.

Consequently, I reckon that it would well be La Cancalaise out there, in the absence of any better suggestion.

f-guxa Robin DR-400-120 Petit Prince baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022While I was out there admiring the shipping I was overflown by a light aeroplane that was coming from the direction of the airfield.

She’s F-GUXA, a stranger to us. She’s not appeared in our notes before.

She’s a Robin DR-400-120 Petit Prince, construction number 2467 and is owned by the Aéroclub Regionale De Caen.

Unfortunately she doesn’t seem to have filed a flight plan as far as I can see and she must have been keeping quite low because she wasn’t picked up on the civilian radar to which I have access, so that’s really that.

cabin cruiser speedboat yacht baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022But meanwhile, back in the ocean, the sea was crowded today.

Considering how quiet it’s been out at sea just now, it looks as if everyone has been saving up for the weekend. It’s certainly brought them out in their droves.

There might only be three or four boats in this photo but I reckon that in total there were about 50 altogether in the vicinity of the port today here and there.

No-one from the sailing school, which was a surprise though, although on my way to the shops this morning they were having kayaking lessons in the tidal basin next to the Nautical Centre behind the port.

A right bunch of oars if you ask me.

cabanon vauban people on bench pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022at least the people down on the bench by the cabanon vauban were having their money’s worth this afternoon.

Those who were down there during the week didn’t have all that much to cheer about but with all of the traffic out there today, that probably made up for it.

And all of the pedestrians too. The car park was heaving yet again and there were crowds down on the lower path.

The buoys for the lobster pots were still there, and in fact they seem to have acquired yet another friend for company.

yellow powered hang glider pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022having seen what there was to see at the end of the headland I walked down the path towards the port.

On my way I was overflown yet again, this time by the little yellow powered hang-glider. He’d just come up from down at the end of the bay, presumably having taken a passenger for a sight-seeing trip because there were two of them on board.

There was no change at the chantier naval today either. There were still the same boats there as yesterday.

And no-one at the ferry terminal. We’d seen the Joly France ferry come in but she’d unloaded and gone back out straight away. It must be busy out there this afternoon.

zodiac diving boat port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo August 2022There were none of our usual suspects at the Fish Processing Plant this afternoon.

However my attention was drawn to what was going on at the slipway underneath. One of the harbour lighters is there – the one that takes the divers out and about – and there was quite a crowd on board.

As well as that, a van towing a zodiac had pulled up and there was quite a crowd around there as well. There’s plenty happening over there this afternoon.

Back here I made a coffee and then came in here to play about with the photos for a while.

That took me up to kick-off this early evening, Aberystwyth Town v Cardiff Metropolitan

Both teams had won their opening matches last weekend but with the result tonight, how poor must Airbus have been last weekend?

Even though this game was played at Aberystwyth, the Met tore Aberystwyth to shreds and the final score of 0-4 was no exaggeration. Apart from a spell of about 15 minutes in the second half, Aberystwyth offered nothing at all.

Last season their defence was incredibly shaky and at times they were in deep trouble at the wrong end of the season, but they have made a few new signings and they have done nothing to improve the side.

The defence is going to have to be stiffened up quite considerably and they really need something up front. Alex Lang in the Met goal had very little to do today.

Tea was another one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like from Lidl. They are really nice in vegan butter with baked potatoes and steamed veg.

Tomorrow I’m having a lie-in. It’s Sunday and having done all of my work already it’ll be a quiet day I hope. Who’ll come along to disturb it? Or will that blasted steam engine thing go past again at 06:08?

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Friday 15th July 2022 – AFTER I’D FINISHED …

fete de la bastille firework display 14th july quatorze juillet feux d'artifice port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022… writing up my notes last night I thought that I’d nip out and see if the moon had broken free of the cloud cover that was hanging around.

Instead I ended up being swept along by crowds of thousands of people – and I really do mean “thousands”.

What I’d forgotten is that last thing at night on Bastille Day there’s a huge firework display at the port and it looks as if most of Normandy had come along to stand on the cliffs to watch the spectacle.

And they weren’t disappointed either.

fete de la bastille firework display 14th july quatorze juillet feux d'artifice port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022We were out there for about half an hour while they blasted off a pile of fireworks into the stratosphere.

Considering that it was a free evening’s entertainment, we certainly had our money’s worth and everyone enjoyed it. There was a tumultuous round of applause when it finished, and then I staggered back to my apartment to go to bed.

There were about 60 photos altogether and they are all on line now. You can see them HERE. Remember to click on a thumbnail to see the full-size image.

“Staggered back” is correct too. Yesterday my knee gave way again when I was scrambling over the chest of drawers to close the window in my bedroom. And it seems that I’ve done it a permanent mischief now.

hang glider rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022It was another “mobile” night last night and so while you admire a few photos of Nazguls flying by overhead, I shall elucidate.

My mother told me to take my younger brothers and sisters to the hospital. We didn’t have much time and it was dark so we set out to jog there. We were up there by Goodall’s Corner in Shavington and had to go down the Newcastle Road. There were all these medical cards and records and a few other bits and pieces so I told my brother to take our two sisters and run off down there towards Newcastle slowly while I picked up a few boxes of stuff that need to be carried and I’d run after them to catch them up. In the distance I could see them but when they got to where the petrol station was they crossed over and went into the petrol station. I had to run in after them to drag them out and explain to them that if I hadn’t seen them out of the corner of my eye cross the road I’d have run right past there with the stuff and we would have been separated for ever. I was quite angry and annoyed about this, not because they had crossed the road but because we could have been separated like that. We carried on and came to a place where we had to climb through a barbed wire fence. I knew of a gap where to go but they somehow found some other gap which wasn’t where we needed to be. They all climbed through there anyway. I suddenly found myself alone at this other gap. Once I’d gone through this other gap we had to negotiate a concentration camp and that was very dangerous because if we looked too healthy or too ill we could be exterminated. Then of course we had to exit on the other side and carry on with our trip to the hospital. This required an awful lot of thought and cunning to do it correctly but there I was on my own. I couldn’t work out where they had gone once they’d gone through this other gap and they’d disappeared.

hang glider pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022I forget how this dream actually started but it turned out that we were in native American country and having to be extremely careful. Somehow we ended up losing our way and being attacked or threatened. We had to work our way around and out of there while avoiding a pitched battle which was not going to be easy but I can’t remember all the rest. There was much more to it than this.

I’d decided spontaneously to go to Canada. I booked myself an air ticket and took my suitcase from under the bed. I didn’t even check the case at all – I just grabbed it and set off for the airport. There was a reasonably small-sized queue – we didn’t have to wait all that long to go through the security. But once we were queueing we gradually ended up at the front then it would flash a gate number. Mine flashed. It was 34D. I had a few carrier bags etc that I stuffed in my suitcase and set out to find it. I had to go up some stairs and saw some guys standing by a turnstile type of thing so I went over to them but someone from behind shouted. I looked behind and saw that there was some kind of alcove to the side where there were some immigration or customs people. They told me that I should have gone there first but I hadn’t seen them. There was nothing to indicate that they were there so how was I supposed to know to go there? I thought that this was good. I’d started to have an argument with people already and I’d hardly even arrived, and I’m arguing with the security or immigration people or whatever they were. It won’t do me any good at all.

peche a pied pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022And while you admire a few photos of the crowds engaged in the pèche à pied There were a couple of girls getting into trouble due to a violation of the school’s dress code. What happened was that the skirts could be cut short depending on some kind of ratio relating to the girls’ waists but what they had done was having shortened them once they had turned round and shortened them again and that was against the school rules. They were then causing trouble about their dress code and were going to have to face the music.

There was also something about the dream in which i went to Canada. Someone had been round at my house helping me to pack. They had to write a label to go on my luggage giving all kinds of personal details including the value of my house. They put “£30,000 by auction”. I enquired about that and they said that I’d paid that much money for it when I’d bought it. I replied “yes but look at the improvements”. They replied that it’s still quite a damp house and it needs even more doing to it – one wall repairing. I tried to argue that even so the value must be an awful lot more than £30,000 but they still didn’t agree with what I was saying.

peche a pied baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022When the alarm went off it took me a while to get my head together but regardless, I was still up and about before the second alarm.

After the medication I spent a pleasant hour or so transcribing the dictaphone notes and then edited all of the photos that I took last night of the fireworks.

When that task was completed I prepared the web page with the photos of last night. This 3-column layout that I designed earlier this year needs some work to improve the design but it seems to work quite well and to do exactly what I want it to do.

It’s the kind of thing that makes me with that everything that I were to do would turn out like that.It took quite a while to do,

When the page was finished I had another hour on the acoustic guitar. And I quite enjoyed that session too. It seems to be all coming together at long last but I wish that I could remember what it is that I’m supposed to be playing without having to refer to the music.

Most people think that it’s an age thing but I’ve been like this practically all my life.

It reminds me of a conversation that I had with someone a while back.
“Two things happen to you when you get to my age. The first thing is that you forget almost everything.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“Actually, I can’t remember”

The rest of the day, such as there was, has been spent finishing off everything relating to the photos from June and I’ve started to update the blog entries from when I was away. “Started” yes, but I’m a long, long way from finishing.

people on the beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022There was the usual pause for me to go off and see what was happening down on the beach.

Across the car park I went, noticing that the car that was blocking up the two car parking spaces had disappeared. The sea seems to have disappeared too because the tide was well out this afternoon.

And it seems that everyone had come out this afternoon too. There were crowds on the beach enjoying the sunshine down there, even if there was quite a lot of wind blowing about right now. So much so that one young boy was chasing down the path after his hat.

kite surfer rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022What also caught my eye down there too was some kind of kite or sail.

What I did was to take a photo of it so that I could enlarge and enhance it when I returned home so that I could see what it might be.

It’s not just the Nazguls that are out and about this afternoon. We have a kite-surfer down there somehwer ein the sea, regardless of the whitecaps on the waves.

At least, that’s what I reckon, even if I couldn’t quite make out which guy was flying it. At least it isn’t a Nazgul that has fallen to a watery grave thanks to a lucky shot from Legolas.

zodiac baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022There was also a zodiac out there in the bay.

No trawlers today, or anything else for that matter. Just the zodiac. It was actually moving quite rapidly towards the port so I don’t think that it could have been full of fishermen. They wouldn’t be heading to port when there’s still a couple of hours before the tide comes in.

So fighting my way through all of the crowds, a couple of people who actually said “hello” to me, I wandered off down the path towards the lighthouse at the end of the headland.

cabanon vauban people on bench pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022Crowds on the car park too with cars parked on the lawn, so I headed off for some peace and quiet.

Down on the bench at the cabanon vauban we actually had someone sitting there today. First time for several days that we’d seen someone there.

And she had plenty to occupy her too. Apart from the zodiac that went spluttering by, we had all of the people out there at the peche à pied whom we saw earlier.

But with no trawlers and no other distractions I headed off to the port to see what was happening there.

la confiance 2 chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022Today we have had another change of occupancy at the chantier naval.

Monaco du Nord II is still in there over by the portable boat lift, but she’s now been joined by another trawler, La Confiance II.

Who she might be, I really have no idea because we haven’t seen her before here in Granville. But her registration number suggests that she’s an older boat so I’m surprised that she hasn’t featured in these pages before.

And it seems that I’m not wrong about her age either. According to the trawler database, she was launched in 1980 and is made of wood.

l'omerta port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022Across the bay, our game of “Musican Ships” is continuing.

Today it’s the turn once more of L’Omerta to be tied up at the Fish Processing Plant and settled down in the silt.

Plenty of activity on the quayside up above here. There are loads of shellfish boxes and ancillary equipment up there as if she has just unloaded.

There were crowds on the car park too and what looked suspiciously like a police car cruising around there too. That reminds me that I must change over the insurance sticker in Caliburn’s windscreen before they come cruising around us.

port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022Gone! And never called me “mother”!

Marité has wandered off today and her berth is now empty. She’s currently at anchor off St. Vaast, just along the coast from Cherbourg.

What else that has also gone is all of the freight that was on the quayside yesterday. According to my maritime radar, Normandy Trader came into port early this morning and loaded up.

Back here I made a coffee and while it was brewing I went and had a shower, a shave and a good clean-up.

When the coffee had been drunk I changed the bedding and then set the washing machine en route. High time that I had some nice clean clothes and clean bedding. I’m letting things slide a little here.

And then I was off to Lidl. I’m running rather low on supplies, especially frozen and fresh vegetables and fruit. The place was packed and the mystery of why stocks had been running low there over the last few weeks was solved. They’ve had a huge change-round in there and everything is in a different place.

That of course is a cunning plan carried out by all large shops. Customers become so used to where all of their regular purchases might be found that they go straight to there and don’t go anywhere else. Shuffling the produce around means that customers have to hunt for their produce, with the shops hoping that they’ll find plenty of other stuff to buy that they haven’t seen before.

Tea tonight was vegan pie with potatoes (now that I have some) and vegetables with gravy. It really was nice.

Tomorrow I’m going to LeClerc for more shopping. Not that I need too much but having broken my floor mop this week, at least I need to replace that. It’s not quite the same as when Nerina went with me to buy a new broom.
“Don’t bother to wrap it” I said to the cashier. “She’ll fly it home” .

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Saturday 11th June 2022 – HAVING COMPLAINED BITTERLY …

yachts baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022… over the last few days about the general lack of water craft out here, we made up for it in spades this afternoon.

While I was out on my afternoon walk today I was spoilt for choice. The sea was heaving with water craft having a good run around.

So while you admire a few photos of various different types of water craft, including La Granvillaise out and about yet again this afternoon, I’ll tell you about my pretty miserable day today.

In fact it was probably the worst day that I’ve had so far in a series of pretty bad days.

yachts baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022It was what I call a “mobile” night but more of that anon.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I struggled to my feet fairly quickly and after the medication I went off and had a shower to clean myself up ready for the shops.

Well, “shop” actually, because I’d resolved to give Noz a miss today. There doesn’t seem to be much point going there. There hasn’t been anything worth buying there for quite some time.

Having had a shower I set the washing machine off on a cycle (a clever washing machine, mine) and then Caliburn and I hit the streets

boats baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022At LeClerc is would ordinarily have been a cheap shop because I didn’t need much after last week.

However, having spend the annual budget of a small emerging nation on a bottle of olive oil last week they had the cheap economy olive oil in stock again today so I bought a litre of it. Stockpiling? Perish the thought.

And chocolate. I usually but the very cheap stuff for a nibble before I go to bed but today they had some really good quality stuff on special offer if you bought a multiple pack so I treated myself to a little luxury.

It didn’t take all that long at all and I was back here hanging out my washing by 10:15.

la granvillaise baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022While I was drinking my coffee and eating my fruit bun, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There was something about being wanted for some kind of activity or rather having to hide but being quite conspicuous about hiding and not finding it easy to find somewhere where I could out of everyone’s view. You were always going to be in the view of different people when you were hiding with all of this going on at the moment.

And I’ve no idea at all what that was all about

yachts baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022There had been a big Inuit celebration with hundreds of young Inuit from all over the place. I’d been keeping an eye on it all and in particular on my little Inuit friend Heidinnguaq. As the event was drawing to a close I was distracted for a moment and when I turned round again she had gone. She was nowhere to be seen in this room. She certainly wasn’t where she was standing a minute earlier. I started to ask a few people where she was but no-one seemed to have seen her. At the same time I had a raging thirst so I had a hunt to find a drink of something. In the end I found a bottle of lemonade. It had one of these child-proof locks on it and I couldn’t break the lock to open it. There was a young couple, a boy and a girl, having a wrestling match on the floor getting in everyone’s way. I still couldn’t find Heidinnguaq and was thinking that I’m going to have to go outside to have a look for her to see where she is. I really wanted to see her before everyone drifted away. There I was, roaming around this hall clutching this bottle of lemonade trying to open it, trying to find her but I couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d just disappeared completely.

I was away at one of these office or factory team-building weekends. It was total chaos as nothing was organised. You had to do everything yourself. It took a while but eventually I had myself in a nice routine for making my toast and coffee. I became quite relaxed about it. Quite a few people remarked about how relaxed I was so I explained my method of getting up in the morning, having a coffee, not having something to eat until mid-morning break etc, demonstrating how to use the toaster but there was always someone’s toast left in it that they’d forgotten burnt to a crisp. You had to pull it out with your fingers burning the ends of them etc. It was quite easy after a short while to build up a routine and stick to it. It meant that you were much more organised than everyone else. It meant that the weekend past so much better and more successfully. This was another thing that was so real as well. While I was dictating this I was looking round for the toast that I’d put in the toaster while I was asleep thinking that it’s probably going to be ready now and I’d prepare the stuff to butter it. I was really that real.

Finally I was with my friend from Munich wandering around near the Thames and near the seaside. he was showing us all this redevelopment which was really looking quite nice. They’d built into this redevelopment some kind of storage units. I was thinking what a great amount of fun I could have with a storage unit here, all the things that I could keep in it. They were trying to dissuade me against the idea but someone else said “with all the stuff you have you could soon fill one of these”. We were wandering around looking at these places. He was telling me about a bad-tempered meeting he’d been to. Then he showed me some of the drawings, really good drawings of people having Superman fights in groups of people. That was his impression of what had happened. I asked if he was going to have them published. He replied maybe one or two but one or two more he was going to bring down and have photocopied then just go round adding bits to it as time went on. He could do that sitting here and have crowds around watching him. Meantime I was still talking about these storage units. I’d gone over to have a look at one or two. There were all kinds of plans going around in my head about these storage units and what I could do with them.

It was a struggle to complete this this morning because I was continually dropping off into sleep. Not even my mug of strong black coffee could keep me going.

But when I awoke later I had a play around with the acoustic guitar and finally managed to work out the chords to ZERO SHE FLIES. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Zero, who features quite regularly, takes her nickname from this song and for that reason I’m keen to add it to my repertoire.

After lunch I came back here and crashed out almost straight away, and crashed out in spades as well. So much so that my walk around the headland was much later than it usually is.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022and as usual I wandered off across the car park to have a look down on the beach to see what was happening there.

And even though the tide was well in and there wasn’t much beach to be on, there were still plenty of people down there this afternoon and if the noise was anything to go by, they were all enjoying themselves immensely.

Quite a few of them were brave enough to go into the sea as well and that’s no surprise because it was a lovely afternoon and I was sorry that I had missed some of it.

And having taken a few photos of the boats out in the bay I wandered off along the cliffs towards the end of the headland.

cabanon vauban people on bench pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022Strangely enough despite it being a Saturday and a nice afternoon there weren’t too many people out here on the cliffs this afternoon.

And yet we had a couple of people sitting down on the bench at the end of the headland by the cabanon vauban. They were being treated to a magnificent spectacle too as La Granvillaise and several other boats went sailing past them.

No Marité today though. I don’t know where she is. She’s certainly not in port this afternoon. She must have gone out on the early morning tide.

But right now I was going to wander off down the path on the other side of the headland and see what was happening in the port.

belle france ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022As I went off to the shops this morning I saw one of the Joly France ferries taking a pile of passengers out to the Ile de Chausey.

By the looks of things she’s stayed out there today because the only one of the Ile de Chausey ferries over there at the ferry terminal is the new Belle France.

Presumably she’ll be going out to the island a little later to bring back anyone who won’t fit on the others that are already out there.

Meanwhile in the chantier naval there is no change. There are still the four boats that we saw yetserday and that was that. I’m intrigued to see what Wavecat Express will be doing when she goes back into the water.

car dressed up for wedding boulevard vaufleury Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022What awoke me this afternoon was the beeping of car horns from what was presumably a wedding in the Civic Rooms.

There was a wedding party wandering around the headland looking for a place to take a few photographs and presumably this car was something to do with them.

Despite the number of weddings that we have here, I don’t think that I’ve seen a car dressed up quite like this before. It’s quite a novel departure from the normal state of affairs.

So with nothing else going on, I headed for home and a strawberry smoothie. It was too warm for coffee.

fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo June 2022But before I go home, let me just mention that apart from the small boat that’s down there at the Fish Processing Plant, there isn’t anyone else.

It looks as if Gerlean and L’Omerta are having a day off from playing “Musical Ships” and have gone off elsewhere.

Not that I’m surprised because I’m going off elsewhere too – back home.

Back here I made my smoothie and came in here, where I fell asleep again. And for well over an hour too. I did manage to find the time to write some notes about “Next Weekend” and “Learning Welsh” for my Welsh revision. That’s all the 28 topics covered and now I just have to revise what I wrote

There wasn’t enough time to play bass or to freeze the kilo of carrots that I bought and I’m pretty much fed up about that. I don’t seem to be able to do anything like what I want to do these days without falling asleep.

Tea was a breaded quorn fillet with potatoes and vegetables and it was quite delicious. But now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up of just about everything right now. I have so much to do and neither the time nor the energy to do it.

And I’ve no idea how I’m going to fight my way out of this.

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