Category Archives: brigitte

Friday 3rd November 2023 – SO MUCH FOR THAT …

… idea about having a good night’s sleep.

It might have been only 23:00 when I went to bed but at 03:30 I was still wide awake with no sign whatever of ever going to sleep.

However I must have done at some point but I was awake again before the alarm went off even if I wasn’t actually up and about.

Once the alarm went off I made it to my feet and went off for my medication. And then back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. I’d been away somewhere for several weeks, it might have been the hospital, and I’d parked Caliburn in a shed on a piece of waste land at the back of a pile of terraced houses. I went there to pick him up. There were cars all over the place, being worked on or being dismantled etc. Going into the shed Caliburn, who was now an LT Volkswagen, had had one of his air vents bodily ripped out so there was a hole in the front panel. I opened the doo and there were engines, cowlings, covers and shrouds everywhere. I fought my way in. A guy came running over. He asked if I could give him a jump start. I started the van and rolled forward and it was to his father’s wheelchair. We had to put the leads from the van to the wheelchair in order to make it start

There had been something earlier. I’d gone on a long-distance journey with someone. Everyone else had gone at the end of whatever this meeting was. The only way out for me was to climb over the fence. That was extremely complicated and I ended up having to do practically a forward roll over the fence to go out again. I’d brought someone with me. We were talking about the accounts and he said “I’ll let you off some of the accounts in view of the fact that you drove”. I thought that the reason why we took so long was because we had to go back once or twice for things that he’d forgotten. That really bumped up the mileage. He’s not doing me any favours at all by knocking a couple of things off. I should be sending him a bill for all the extra mileage.

This “Peace Train” thing (whatever that might have been) was about Joan Baez and her guitar being hung from some kind of monorail track and being driven around as if she was a train on the monorail while she was playing the guitar and singing that particular song.

A kitten was wedged underneath the foot of the table and stuck up against the glass surface which was why it was looking so peculiar. I actually dreamt that bit in French and began to dictate it in French.

Finally I was coming back from work somewhere and I’d stopped in a town to have a coffee. I had a wheelbarrow with a few bricks and things like that in it which I no longer needed so I just abandoned it in the street and went in. The coffee bar was packed and there wasn’t room anywhere but the proprietor encouraged the patrons to move up a little. It made a space for me next to a girl. I sat there with my coffee and we had quite a chat before she disappeared. Then I had to leave. I was in a wheelchair by this time, doing down the steps in it when I noticed her outside. She asked if she could give me some help but I told her that I’d be able to manage. We were sorting through a few things of hers, LPs and CDs etc because there was a market on in the town where there was a stall for 2nd-hand CDs etc. I noticed in her glove compartment things like books about camping, scouting and so on. I thought that she was one of these strange “jolly hockey sticks” types of girls who never seem to grow up.

Later on I staggered out onto the bus and went to St Nicolas for my shopping. There wasn’t much that I needed but it was nice to be out and about and to have my coffee while I waited for the bus home.

Once more it was a struggle up the stairs and I really can’t go on like this much longer. But back in here I made myself some soup – and then I crashed out for half an hour.

In a couple of weeks’ time it’s the birthday of one of my neighbours and she was having some of her family around so I went up to say hello and to give her a box of chocolates that I’d bought her.

But as usual, I didn’t stay long. I’m not really the sociable type, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and after an hour or so I came back down here to crash out yet again.

What I’ve been doing this afternoon is to hack some sound-files about, tidy up some of the music directories (yes, directories – I’m still working in DOS 5.0 in my head) and reviewing some pages in my blog. There are quite a few that need updating with things missed off that I never had the time to do at the time, and I want to catch up with that.

As well as that, I’ve been chatting on the internet. Liz is helping me choose a couple of new domestic appliances, Rosemary and I talked about the storm and then Hans in Munich has found some real Bavarian gingerbread spice mix and would I like some?

Actually, today I finished the last of the honey and oat biscuits that I made and some gingerbread biscuits would be nice but the spices won’t be here by then. I fancy making some chocolate ones this weekend. The last batch of chocolate ones that I made were really good. Add some orange and some coconut flavouring and they’ll be really nice.

Tea tonight was chips cooked in the air fryer and salad with one of those strange burgers that I bought a while ago, and it was actually quite nice.

But that’s got me thinking. I’ll have to send my spies out to look at the pavements at one of the bus stops at Yquelon. There’s a bus stop that’s not too far away from Noz and I’m wondering if I ought to have a go at going there on the bus some time to see if I could survive the journey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve hit the jackpot on several occasion at Noz with the end-of-range stuff that they have, and I wonder if I ought to think about going again.

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Tuesday 18th July 2023 – TONIGHT’S FOOTBALL …

… was a little better than last week’s.

TNS were at home to BK Hacken from Sweden with a two-goal deficit that they needed to overcome.

However, the first half of the game was played just like the match last week with TNS defending on the edge of their own penalty area and letting the Swedes bring the ball to them and the half-time score of 1-0 to Hacken was probably fair enough.

Nevertheless, Craig Harrison must have put something in his team’s half-time cuppa and I wish I knew what it was because I wouldn’t mind some of it myself.

TNS came out for the second half and actually took the game to the Swedes and we had a couple of really long periods where the Swedes were under the cosh.

There was even some panic in the Swedish defence and TNS had a couple of really good chances that they could well have converted.

However, like most Welsh clubs, they ran out of steam and fitness and Hacken scored a second, rather flattering goal in injury time.

If only TNS had played like that for the rest of the two games, and if only they would work on their fitness. Just have a look at any team playing against another team several levels higher. They can usually give a good account for themselves but it’s always the start of each half and the final 15 minutes where it all goes to pieces.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I interviewed US Granville’s manager for the radio just before their match against Olympique Marseille. I asked him about the phenomenon but he didn’t think much of my thoughts.

And Granville were still 0-0 with 15 minutes to go and conceded 3 goals right at the end of the game to prove my point.

And to prove another point, I still managed to fall asleep at my desk this morning despite having done nothing at all during the day that involved any effort.

And for a change I had a decent night’s sleep, once I’d actually finally managed to drop off.

During the night I didn’t go far either. I was in the office and there was something like a party on but they were all visiting dignitaries, important people being invited. I’d mentioned it to a couple of my friends who said that they’d turn up. By 18:30 when this event was in full swing I was in there waiting for them but they didn’t arrive. I began to become dispirited about this. I went over to the window to look out to see what was going on. There was one of these great big American motorhomes parked up in the street at the side. Someone saw me looking out of the window and made some kind of remark. I said “I was miles away” at the time. They said “we thought that you were admiring that machine”. I said “my brother-in-law from Canada, he was here a few days ago. I showed it to him and told him that that’s what he wants to get for me next time I’m over in Canada”.

I was working for a local coach company driving school buses, that kind of thing. One set of school buses was continuing to run through the Summer for children who were at some kind of camp. I had to take a coach out early one morning to go to the camp. There was no-one on the road when I set out so I was driving much quicker than I would ordinarily have done. There was a car behind me so I just kept on driving at quite a quick speed in this old Ford. I almost came a cropper at a T-junction but luckily one of the roads that fed into it was closed so nothing was coming out of it. But I was really enjoying myself driving this coach quite quickly so early in the morning with nothing about on the roads at all. I was really disappointed when the alarm went off just as I was driving through a deserted village. I must have been flat out at the wheel.

It’s been almost 30 years since I last drove a coach and I must be missing it. My little drive around in an old Ford R114 was quite a happy, cheerful trip out and I was really sorry when the alarm awoke me.

After the mails and medication it took a while for me to sort myself out, especially as I fell asleep at one point, but the ‘phone awoke me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the nerve specialist in the town seems to have taken me under his wing right now.

In the town in an old hotel is a “Re-education Centre” where people go after they have had a long period of incapacity. Here they re-learn life skills such as walking, talking, all that kind of stuff in order to be let back to live independently in normal life.

They rang me this morning. “Doctor Gervais has sent us a note about you. We need some personal information from you in order to open a file for you”.

So it looks as if they are going to become involved too, and that will be quite useful if they take me in as an outpatient.

And then my neighbour contacted me. Her friends from Québec are over. Would I like to come round to meet them this evening?

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off the scanning of all of these medical receipts and then I started to make the claims out. So far, I’ve just finished my 6th page and I’m not even half-way through. I hope that my insurance will actually pay me back. I could even afford to buy myself a new microwave instead of the death-trap that I have right now.

There was no tea tonight. I’d been up to see my neighbour’s visitors and say “hello” and then I came back down here to watch the football.

Now all of that is done, I’m off to bed. Later than I would have liked but never mind. It can’t be helped. Tomorrow I’ll finish off the receipts and then do some work on the radio. I really need to organise myself so much better than I am right now.

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Saturday 6th January 2018 – I’VE BEEN CHANGING …

… the habits of a lifetime today.

And how!

We started off with another bad night last night. Despite going to bed at something like a reasonable hour I was tossing and turning for ages and spent most of the night watching the clock wind down.

And never mind the alarm going off at 07:30 – at that time of the morning I was up, medicated and thinking about breakfast. And my porridge did go down nicely too.

At about 09:15 I hit the road for the shops and I’ll tell you more about them in due course. But my shopping trip was interrupted by Rosemary phoning for a chat, and we passed a very pleasant half hour or so, with me parked up at the side of the road.

Back here, a late lunch (because I’d been out for ages) was followed by a snooze as you might expect, and then I had plenty of things to do – such as making start on tidying up the paperwork seeing that I bought a binder today.

This was followed by watching Cardiff Met play Aberystwyth in the Welsh Premier League, and then off out I went.

Up to the 3rd floor and Odile’s apartment. She was having a little fête to celebrate Epiphany and I’d been invited, which was very nice of her. Brigitte was there, and Roberte, David, Nicolas and Patrice. We all had a good chat for ages, and I wasn’t the first to leave either.

Not like me to be sociable is it? But then, I was never really invited anywhere before. My reputation hasn’t reached here yet, obviously!

But the shops!

I have resolved to make my life easier and more comfortable, and that includes buying things of a better quality than maybe I might usually do, and also to have one one or two luxuries around the place to bolster my morale.

And didn’t that work in Spades today?

Not that it means abandoning my trips to NOZ of course. IN fact I was there today and another €15 of near-expired food and a few other irrelevancies ended up in Caliburn. And the braderie at LeClerc was hit as well, with a waste bin for the living room and a bucket-waste bin for the bedroom.

But that’s only part of it – and a small part of that.

I seem to only have two towels here and both of them seem to have long-since seen better days. So with LIDL having a sale on and luxury towels reduced to a reasonable price, they had one blue shower towel and one blue hand towel (the bathroom is blue) left, as well as a matching blue bathrobe (my old one is falling to bits).

So they ended up in Caliburn too.

Next stop was NOZ, and then Centrakor for a new wallet to replace the one that was lost.

After that it was to “Happy Cash”, the second-hand shop.

Regular readers of this rubbish will be surprised to hear that I’m looking for a cheap television. I have a DVD player here – the one that I bought in Belgium years ago, complete with hard drive, and I only used it for about 6 months before I moved to France.

It’s been in a cardboard box ever since, and here I am watching DVDs on an old laptop. So I want a cheap TV and the second-hand shop seemed to be the place to go.

No such luck unfortunately, but I did strike gold in a quite unexpected direction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I moved here I went looking for a stereo hi-fi. It needed to meet several criteria, like AM/FM radio, CD, auxiliary input, USB port (for a memory stick or a USB turntable). And how I had been singularly unsuccessful.

And there sitting on the shelf was an old battered LG stereo hi-fi with absolutely everything that I wanted, and as an added bonus, a cassette player/recorder. All powered by a remote control.

A lengthy chat with the manager saw it disappearing into Caliburn for the grand sum of … errr … €49:00.

One very happy little bunny here. I spent part of the afternoon wiring it up and the rest of the afternoon having a nostalgia trip listening to a pile of cassettes from the 1970s. Ohh Happy Day!

And later, having bought a memory stick, I copied a pile of music onto it and it’s running even now in the hi-fi. It recognises 999 tracks, which is quite acceptable

But that’s not all. Ohh no it isn’t!

Still in search of a television, I went, more out of curiosity to LeClerc. They had some televisions advertised at €99:00 and that could have been a possibility. But a 57cm screen won’t go far and besides, no SCART socket – just a HDMI cable, so my DVD player wouldn’t work. And after all of the money that I paid for it (because it was a top-of-the range machine) I didn’t want to throw it away lightly.

But there in the corner in the sale were three or four cheap Chinese TVs – 80cms – much more like it. With SCART and HDMI cable plugs and a USB port. €149:00.

So >copulatum expensium , as we Pompeiians say.

That’s now in the back of Caliburn too and it will be up in here tomorrow.

And if that’s not enough, I lost my carte de fidelité the other week and with this kind of thing it’s important because if there’s a complaint they can track your article.

The girl at the cash desk sent me to the accueil and I had to queue behind another guy. He asked for two tickets for tomorrow’s Cup Match against Bordeaux. I thought they would be sold out but “we only have six left”. So he bought two and that left four.

So badger that for a game of soldiers. I bought two too. And Terry is going to come with me to watch the game.

But shopping did wear me out – the first time for three weeks that I’ve hit the shops. I’ll be hitting the sack in a minute to gather my forces for tomorrow.

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