Category Archives: carnaval

Sunday 23rd February 2020 – THE FIRST DAY …

… since I don’t know when when whe I haven’t taken a single photo.

And that’s because during the day I never had the time, and during the evening’s walk it was pouring down with rain.

But anyway – despite the alarm set at 08:00 this morning, I was up and about well before it went off. And that was easy because when people decide to have a party right underneath your bedroom window at 07:30 it’s pretty much impossible to continue to sleep.

Ohhhh! For the old days when you had a slop bucket by the side of the bed!

No medication this morning because there wasn’t the time. Instead I had breakfast, gathered up my things and went downstairs by the barrier for my guests.

Yesterday they were early and I wasn’t ready. But today, because I was ready early, they were late. We went into town where we all assembled and then set up our little studio.

That took up most of the morning and then after lunch we set about our various tasks.

For a change, I’m going to say nothing about what went on during the course of the afternoon except for this – viz I will quite happily work with professionals any day of the week. I will quite happily work with amateurs who know their limitations and muddle along as best as they can and somehow manage to get the job done in one fashion or other despite their own limitations (in which class I place myself, by the way). But I will NEVER AGAIN work with amateurs who think themselves as professionals.

What counts in organisations like this is TEAMWORK. We are all part of a team and there is not one person who is more important than anyone else.

It was about 19:45 by the time that I made it back, and I made tea. Pizza, of course (it’s Sunday) and seeing as I’ve run out of apple pie now, it was a rice pudding in the oven for afters – and for the next few days too.

The evening run in the rain took me to over 100%. Two runs in fact. And although one was on a totally different course than previously, both runs were well over the distance that I normally run. I know that it’s too early – and in any case it’s always tempting fate – to crow about things bu that period in January when I wasn’t feeling up to all that much was quite possibly due to some illness or other that I might have had, and that this is much more like my normal self these days.

But tonight I’m going to celebrate by having an early night. And no alarm tomorrow either. having worked hard this weekend I’m going to allow myself the luxury of an unexpected lie-in.

That is – unless they decide to have another party underneath my bedroom window again tomorrow morning.

Where’s the slop bucket?

Saturday 22nd February 2020 – NOT A SINGLE …

… photo of the Carnaval today.

And that’s because I’ve been far too busy. In fact I still haven’t finished Friday’s notes yet, I missed out on the shops, I missed out a football match at the Stade Louis Dior (which US Granville won) and I’ll miss out on my lie-in tomorrow.

However, start as we mean to go on. And I was once more up and about before the third alarm. And after the medication I attacked the dictaphone and sure enough, there was an entry

There was a big group of us living in these like ships cabins things, 4 or 5 ships cabins. I was in a room with Andy Morrison of all people and what was happening was that I wanted to go to bed early. But it was the night of the budget and he wanted to record the budget so this was going on and on and on this discussion, and he went off somewhere. I went to the bathroom and ended up peeing into the chimney – the pot-bellied stove, I’ve no idea why. Just then he came in and we were talking about this. I said “do you want to record it or don’t you?”. He said “well, yes”. So I found a video tape we could use to record it and he said something about a cowboy film that was on afterwards. I was really tired by this time – I couldn’t really think straight and I didn’t want to have to programme the machine in case I programmed it wrong. I asked “when’s it starting? Is it starting now because I can get 6 hours out of this tape so I can switch it on and record it. Would that be enough time for the budget and this film?”. He was going on about “it’s not very fair on these boys” meaning he boys in another group because they want to do something and want to know about the budget. I said “they’ll have to look out for themselves. Do you want me to record it or don’t you?”. While he was vacillating like this I awoke. He was going on about things being unfair for the others which was of more importance than what he wanted to do in his dormitory where he was sleeping for your own personal affairs.

After breakfast it was the calm before the storm so I dealt with a pile of file-splitting for this digital sound file project. I’ve now split enough to fill a DVD so I burnt one and put it in the store for future reference.

Another thing was that I haven’t done a USB memory stick for albums that I’ve purchased recently and there was enough to fill a 2GB USB stick. The hi-fi here can only read up to 999 files so 2GB is about the correct size for that.

While that was doing, I attacked a pile of photos. Of the several thousands that need doing, I’m now up to 83 but there could have been more, but some of the morning wa spent doing some research. There was a photo that I took of a distinctive object on shore so I tried to track it down. And after a great deal of searching I found it, and that set me right for another pile of objects.

Time to go down into town for my dejeunette at la Mie Caline.

In view of the short time available I went the direct way. I looked over the wall and saw the reason why they had the compactor on the dug-up car park the other day. It’s been pressed into service as a relief car park for the period of tCarnaval and I imagine that the chars will be parking down ther eon Tuesday.

At least I hope so and that they aren’t going to leave it like that. It will be a shame if they were to.

Having picked up my bread, I had a quick look across the road at the stage that they erected the other day.

It seems to have sprouted a few figures all ready for Carnaval. Satire plays an important rôle in the proceedings and we can be assured that someone somewhere will be up to no good somewhere.

So I came back home and made myself a sandwich but was caught unawares by Thierry who turned up early so I had to bolt my lunch and then we headed out.

Up in town it was the defilé des enfants and my task was to interview the kids. Kids have a tough time because they usually have a great deal to say but no-one ever listens to them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at one of our live broadcasts a while back there was a family of two adults and three kids standing there. The interviewer wanted to know what the kids thought of the affair so he asked … the parents.

That was something that I didn’t appreciate at all. I have a great deal of time for kids so I made it my mission to be spokesman on their behalf.

And when I came back here at 16:30 I had 29 soundfiles that I had recorded with the kids. I had to sit down and edit every single one of them and then send them off to be processed and that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. I ended up having a very late tea out of a tin.

Still had to fit in my walk though, although I didn’t need to go far seeing as I’d done all that walking today.

The fete foraine is in full swing as you can see. I walked – or rather, ran – all the way down the rue do Roc to the roundabout and then came back through the car park.

That gave me a good view across the bay down into the town where I could see what was going on.

The car park right now is full of grockles in their mobile homes making a mess of everywhere and I must have disturbed half the camp site.

But taking photos is much more interesting than dealing with them so I couldn’t really care.

Back on the road again and I ran back along my usual course and found that I could fit in an extra 25 metres or so of running. and the only reason that I came to a stop was that I hit an incline.

It seems to be the inclines that kill me off but that’s unavoidable round here.

So I’ll listen to a little music and then go to bed. I have to be up at 08:00 tomorrow as they are coming for me at 09:00 and there are things to do.

Saturday 15th February 2020 – OH GOD NO!

Yes, I’m off again. You didn’t think that it would be long before we returned to the subject of pathetic parking, did you?

The little street outside NOZ is notorious for it. And there are posters all over the place advising people that parking in this street carries a more severe penalty, for Parking Très Genant, not merely Parking Genant. And notices to say that there is a big free car park right behind the shop.

So today we don’t just have people parking half-on, half-off the pavement on one side of the street, we have them on both sides. Just how ridiculous is this going to become before we start seeing the Police towing cars away?

How can people be so bone-idle?

Talking of being bone-idle, I missed the alarms today. Not bu much but it was still disappointing. I’d been to bed early too, having crashed out while writing up the notes for yesterday.

There was the usual procedure, namely firstly the medication and then to check the dictaphone. Last night apparently, I had been with a group of people and we were discussing religion seeing as something had cropped up about that just recently. We were discussing these religious sects where they would send a preacher off somewhere to convert the people and get them to worship his way and then gradually expand a bit outward. It’s all divided into halves like “could you use another half a person to help you with your area of your ministry” so they would send out someone young and keen to help you out and gradually take over part of it. It would keep on expanding like that. Then one day of course it would all go “POP” as someone worked out what was happening and made the announcement to everyone so they all quit the church. It was just at that point that two people actually had discovered the truth behind this particular religious sect. He’d left and gone to mull over the situation and that was when the alarm went off.
Somewhere along the line I was doing something with the people from the radio too but I can’t remember now.

After breakfast I went for shower ready to hit the shops. I weighed myself too and the weight that went back on over the last couple of weeks while I’ve not been too well has mostly gone. I’m now just 900 grams from my target weight.

Hopefully I can press on and lose that too. I was actually beyond it once just before my last bout of ill-health and I’m hoping to be there again.

Back here ready to leave and I noticed an e-mail telling me that our meeting at 12:00 today has been brought forward to 11:00. Not enough time to go to the shops before hand so I stayed behind and finished off the notes.

When that had been done I cut up a few digital tracks and at the same time was involved in a discussion with a couple of people who are extremely touchy about any hint of criticism about HS2. That touchy in fact that it makes me wonder what they are afraid of.

Anyway, off I went to the huge Council hangar at the back of town where I met up with a couple of colleagues from the radio and where I discovered that I had forgotten my microphone.

The purpose of today’s visit was to interview the owners of the chars – the Carnival floats that will be parading in the streets next weekend. We’re broadcasting Carnaval live and what we intend to do is that as each char passes our commentary point, we’ll have a soundbite that we recorded today that we can broadcast, with the owners telling people about their char rather than us.

Unfortunately I’m not going to tell you lot anything about it because we have been sworn to secrecy, as you might expect. No-one wants any details to leak out until their chars appear in the streets.

One thing that I did learn is that Carnaval isn’t just a town wide, or déprtement-wide, or even nationwide event. It’s actually listed on the UNESCO World Heritage sitelist so it’s of International interest, which is good news.

When we’d finished I went off to the shops.

At NOZ I spent a bit of money but it was all on good stuff, including some stainless steel pastry-cutting rings. I don’t have any and it’s pretty inconvenient cutting round saucepan lids and the like.

Another white board too because the one that I bought last week has since then become a permanent wipe-off calendar and to-do list, so I can keep track of what I’m doing and when I ought to be doing it.

Pride of place though has to go to the half-litre tub of Alpro vegan icecream, almond and smoked caramel flavour. There’s no room in the freezer but nevertheless I wasn’t going to pass that one up.

LeClerc was next and that was a very cheap shop. That came to almost nothign at all and would have been even less had i remembered to buy the mushrooms and peppers at LIDL on Thursday.

Another thing was that I bought a couple of vegan pastry rolls. I’m going to make a tofu bean and lentil pie and an apple pie tomorrow while the oven is on – and while I have some ice-cream to eat with the pie.

Back here I had lunch and then started to edit the sound files that i’d recorded.

a couple of interruptions though.

Firstly of course there was my afternoon walk and in view of the fact that I hadn’t walked much today I went on a super-long walk around the walls, part of which included my run, down into town, around the block and then back up the hill.

Nothing whatever of any interest at all happening there, although I did go for a little diversion for a look around inside the library.

But not for long because almost as soon as I had put my sooty foot inside they announced that it was closing time.

The second interruption was, unfortunately, a little crash-out for five minutes. Only five minutes but five minutes I could well have done without.

Tea was out of a tin tonight as it’s Saturday and it was delicious. And pudding, of banana and raspberry sorbet, was even nicer because NOZ was selling some chocolate sauce for ice cream so I bought a couple of bottles.

That’s one thing that I like about NOZ – every so often it comes up with things that I don’t normally buy and it varies my diet.

And they would do more if they were to price everything. Much of the stuff, like the Sodastream syrups in there that interested me for example just didn’t have a price at all.

later on I went for another really long walk to push up the 100% on the fitbit (it made it to 105% in the end). Not around the headland because we now have Storm Dennis. I went to town

And as I walked past the Place Godal I noticed that the caravans have started to arrive. Carnaval is always accompanied by a Fête Foraine, a funfair. Officially they aren’t supposed to arrive until Sunday but some of them anyway are here this evening, much to the displeasure of the motorists who would normally park here.

But it’s all good fun and brings piles of money into the town so you can’t criticise it from that point of view.

It was while I was there admiring the caravans that a trio of women came over to me. “Did I know where … (some restaurant) … was? It’s at the docks” they said.

The name rang no bells with me but i knew where the restaurants on the docks were so I led them that way. It occurred to me that as far as I was aware, I didn’t have a photo of them at night from down here so I resolved to deal with the issue.

And why not? No time like the present and I can add them to the list of photos that I’m making of the town.

Ohh yes, that’s the restaurant there – Le Regate. Anyway, I took them over there and left them to it.

While they were trying to find whatever it was there that they were seeking, I took a photo of the place. I may as well do that while I’m there.

And from here I went foe a leisurely walk into town down past the library. There were a couple of people sleeping in sleeping bags ina dorrway and I hadn’t noticed that before.

The Police Station os right by there too. I wonder why the cops haven’t taken these people in to arrange for them to have help.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw them erecting the kiddies’ roundabout in the Place General de Gaulle a couple of weeks ago, and then we saw it in action.

It’s a different story this evening though. They are actually dismantling it to take away. Obviously his period of rental is over and now, I imagine the whole place will be turned over to Carnaval

On that note I came back here to listen to the rest of my radio programme and then to write up my notes for the day.

And now that they are finished I’m going to go to bed. Sunday so no alarm and, for a change, nothing whatever that needs my attention that will divert me from a totally free day off.

And it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of those.

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.

Sunday 11th February 2018 – IT’S STILL CARNAVAL!!!

And if you thought that it was good yesterday, you ain’t seen nuffink yet.

I’m cold, frozen to the marrow, soaking wet, aching in places that I didn’t even realise that I had, and yet I’ve had a really good time. And if the truth be known, I should really be out there even now, partying with everyone else, but I’m not up to it. I’m going to settle down with a mug of hot wincarnis.

What with all of the exertions last night I was out like a light. And off on my travels again. I’d bought a “York” semi-trailer that needed some repair a,d so I had welded it up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I used to do a lot of welding at one time – even owning my own oxy-acetylene set-up – but I haven’t done anything serious for nearly 30 years – except for welding up the exhaust on the VW Passat in 1997. And so when I bumped into the previous owners of this trailer and told them what I had done, I was rather embarrassed when they suggested that they come and look at it, because you can forget an awful lot in 30 years when you aren’t using the skills regularly.

It was still dark when I awoke, but you can forget that. I turned over and burrowed back down under the quilt. 09:15 is much more like it on a Sunday.

The morning was spent editing the photos and videos from yesterday and found that I had missed lunch. So I hit the streets, passing by a couple of carnival floats parked up in various side streets waiting to join the parade.

I found a decent spec in the rue Couraye and waited for the procession. And I wasn’t disappointed either because there were 48 floats in all, as well as countless thousand ad-hoc paraders. And the streets were packed too. The parade went on for hours.

We had sunshine, blue skies, high winds, clouds, rainstorms, absolutely everything while we were standing there watching everything inch slowly past us and up the hill. And apparently it was all going to do a U-turn and come back down again, but I was far too cold and achy to wait for it.

No-one was more surprised than me to find that it was 17:20 when I arrived back. I’d been standing on that street corner for three and a half hours. And it felt like it too. I had not one but two hot coffees and it still didn’t warm me up.

Tea was pizza of course, and I’ve practically finished off the vegan cheese. Just as well that I’m going to Leuven this week. And with the pizza I remembered the olives this week – but forgot the onions. It’s either one thing or another, isn’t it?

During my evening walk I could see – and hear – the entertainment going on down in the town. I had half a mind to join them but I’m not really up to it. It’s not done me too much good, standing down there this afternoon in all of that.

What I’ll do instead is have a hot blackcurrant and then go to bed. Curled up under the quilt will do me good. And I’ll start on the photos tomorrow. There are hundreds.

Saturday 10th February 2018 – IT’S CARNAVAL!!!

And I’ve been out for most of the day.

I have dozens of photos and a good few videos but they aren’t edited yet, so you’ll have to come back over the course of the next few days to catch up with what I was up to.

But during the night I was off on my travels again and found myself, as some people were saying, in Coventry. People in a bar where I was were pointing out the cathedral down in the square at the bottom of the hill, but this was nothing at all like Coventry – the hill was unimaginably steep and it immediately suggested “Oldham” to me – I’m not sure why because in reality it was nothing whatever like Oldham either. Far too “posh”. But as for me, I continued on my way and found a rambling brick complex of buildings, now having the air of being totally deserted and boarded up. I went over for a closer look and found that the decaying noticeboard outside showed evidence of having once had writing in Welsh written upon it. Apparently it was a former school (although what a Welsh-speaking school was doing in Oldham wasn’t clear) and as it happens, there was nothing “former” about it because there were two classes still taking place, despite how derelict and abandoned the place looked. It turned out that one of the classes didn’t have a teacher and seeing as it was the Welsh-speaking class, I volunteered (not like me at all is is, volunteering and teaching?). It all seemed to be going okay until one of the fathers came to see me. He was concerned that his daughter was not doing as well as he thought she should, and that it was all my fault (not hers of course) and wanted me to inflate her marks. “And if I didn’t …”. For the next test she didn’t do so well either so he came back, insisting that I up her marks to 81%. That I refused to do so he whipped out a gun, waved it around under my nose and told me that I would. I gave a weary sigh. I told him that I was old and tired and couldn’t care less, and if he wanted to shoot me then to go ahead because I really was beyond the point of arguing with anyone.

All of this awoke me bolt-upright at 05:21, but no chance of leaving the stinking pit at that time. I curled back under the bedclothes until the alarm went off at the much-more-reasonable time of 06:40.

After breakfast I had an hour or so on the database but for some unknown reason it locked up and that was that. I’m not doing very well with this at all.

But all of a sudden, the memory stick in the hi-fi came to an end. That was the cue for some major amendments.

For the last few weeks the hi-fi has been perched precariously on the bookcase behind me, with wires and cable causing all kinds of problems. So today I moved the old computer hi-fi gear off the shelves where I keep the records and installed it there.

To make that work I had to drill four holes in the back of the unit, and feed all of the cables through for the mains power, the aerial lead and the two speakers – and lengthened the speaker wires with the cable that I bought last week.

Feeding the mains cable through the back meant cutting off the moulded plug – but I’d bought a replacement so that wasn’t an issue.

With the extra lengths of cable I now have the stereo speakers far enough apart to have real stereo sound and that is definitely progress. I’m very happy with my set-up now.

And remember the memory sticks that I bought yesterday? I made up another one (there’s four just now) and made a note of the albums that are on each memory stick so that I don’t double them up.

After lunch I went down to the carnaval to see the childrens’ procession. And I’ll tell you much more about that in due course when I’ve organised all of the photos that I took. I will say that I was impressed.

However, I did feel out of place in civvies. Exactly the opposite to the time when I was in Jerusalem and due to a misunderstanding, I was the only one at the Wailing Wall who was carrying a harpoon.

There was someone there carrying a girl sitting on his shoulders.
“What are you supposed to be?” I asked him
“I’m a snail” he replied
“And what about the girl on your shoulders?”
“She’s Michelle”.

And there was a character there dressed all in brown with little green bits stuck to him
“What about you?” I asked
“I’m a character from ‘Star Trek'”
“Which one?”
“Captain’s log”.

It quietened down later in the afternoon but by now the rain was coming down heavier (it goes without saying of course that it was raining all day) so rather than hang around, I came home for a coffee.

Later on I braved the cold and rain to go up to the Stade Louis Dior for the football. US Granville were playing the reserves of Lorient – a professional team.

And they looked it too – much fitter, quicker, sharper. And I particularly liked the way that they sped about the field to close down the Granville players whenever they had the ball. It’s long been my complaint, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that teams give their opponents far too much time and space on the ball.

But Lorient spent most of the match trying to pass the ball into the net. They had probably 65% of the possession but were comparatively ineffective up front. They just weren’t direct enough and hardly made a single killer pass. And when they did beat the keeper, a Granville defender was behind him to clear off the line.

Their big blond n°9 was quite ineffective and didn’t contribute much at all, but one thing that he did do was to continually harass the defence and the keeper whenever they were playing the ball around at the back. And he harried them on several occasions into hasty, wayward clearances and a couple of occasions into losing possession in dangerous places, situations that would have undone Granville with a more attack-minded team.

Granville were quite subdued today – the efforts of playing three matches in 7 days is probably too much, and so a 0-0 draw was about right. But it was a good match for all of that.

ON the way back I went round the funfair to see what was happening and take some photos, so that’s another pile to organise.

But again I didn’t hang about. I was frozen to the marrow and soaked to the skin. How I’m going to regret this.

A tin of ratatouille with pasta was fine for tea and now I’m off to bed. It’s Sunday – a lie in, and with 148% of my daily activity accomplished, I need it too.

I’ll be dead to the world in a minute, and I hope that I can have a really good, long sleep.

Friday 9th February 2018 – HAVING REGAINED MY COMPOSURE …

… after the mail that I received from the Bank yesterday, I sent them a reply this afternoon. Carefully thought out, I’ve asked for a reply to five points that, for me, are quite important in my dealings with them.

And I received an answer from them as well- which basically didn’t answer any questions at all.

But I did learn one thing – and that is that the person with whom I have been dealing recently “is no longer with the Bank”. So that’s two employees of the Credit Agricole in Granville that I’ve seen off. Who’s next? The woman who is dealing with my affairs now is a Madame Rottier. And I bet that that’s a spelling mistake too.

And for another change I had the Sleep of the Dead yet again last night. And quite rightly so. It’s about time. And I was up and about when the second alarm went off, which is even better.

We had the usual arrangements this morning of course, and once the medication worked I went out and about to do my shopping. The idea was to do it this morning before they started to close off all of the roads for the Carnaval. The downside of this is that everyone else decided to do the same thing too, and so everywhere was crowded.

First port of call though was the Tax Office. I’ve had the bill for my stay in hospital over New Year so that needs to be paid. With me going to Leuven next week, I’m staying for a couple of days extra and I’ve arranged to go into Brussels on Friday where I can call in at my Health Insurance people and hand in all of the receipts.

But the queue there was quite something. I don’t know how long it takes to pay a bill – for me it’s about 30 seconds – but the woman on the cash desk was really making a performance of it all and everyone was quite frustrated by her “work to rule”.

LIDL came up with nothing at all spectacular, but all of the excitement was outside in the car park.

Liz told me the other day that they had had a heavy snowfall where she lives – just 15 miles or so from here – and that was hard to believe considering the weather that we have had.

But here in the car park at LIDL was a car with snow embedded under the wheel arches and with a large lump that had just fallen off.

After LIDL I went to a new shop. Liz had told me about a frozen food place called Picard that she had found and there is one in Granville. So I popped in for a look around. There’s tons more stuff than there is anywhere else, but at a price. Nevertheless, it’s handy to know if I need anything that isn’t mainstream.

Bureau Vallée was next, and they had restocked their 2GB memory sticks. So another two have now disappeared into my apartment.

After lunch and my little correspondence session, I braved the howling gale (it really was wicked) and went for a walk.

My route took me around the headland and it was well-worth the struggle against the wind because I was treated to a most spectacular sight of the waves being hurled over the sea wall into the tidal basin.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve come to live by the seaside. The power of the waves and the storms is quite impressive. You need to remember that I’m living right where the highest ever wind speed to hit the French coast was recorded – 220kph in 1987

Back here with a coffee and a … errr … relax, and then a session on the database followed by the usual half-hour on the guiter. And I suddenly found myself playing the bass line to Budgie’s “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”. That brings back memories from when I met Ray Phillips, the former Budgie drummer who had played on that album and was looking for a bassist for a gig he was playing with an ad-hoc band at a pub in Nantwich one night in 1977.

After tea (the rest of the oven chips, beans and falafel) I went into town to see what was happening with the carnaval.

The funfair was all closed up and in darkness, but there were quite a few people around in the streets. So much so that a fast-food outlet had opened its doors to serve them.

I can’t say that I was tempted very much – the smell of roasted flesh is disgusting if you ask me.

Everyone was heading into the square so I followed them to see what was going on.

Almost everyone was in fancy-dress, and that’s because there was a carnaval-eve ball taking place, with a rock band and everything. But far too “young” for me. Never mind the Phyllosan to fortify the over-40s – what do they have to sixtify the over-60s?

But it did remind me of the noise that I once heard from the village hall in Byley a good few years ago.
“What’s all that noise going on in there?”
“They are holding a Young Farmer’s Ball”
“And what’s the matter? Can’t he get them to let go?”

Not feeling in the least bit tired (but rather fatigued nevertheless) I went for a walk to the Place Maréchal Foch and the Casino.

I’d not really been for a good wander around there in the dark before, so now seemed to be as good a time as any.

There were cars parked all over the place, as you might expect with it being carnaval and half of the streets closed off, and it rather spoilt the view unfortunately.

We’ve seen plenty of photographs of the casino in the past but we have never seen it quite like this.

There’s definitely something about the effects of artificial lighting at night-time to bring out the best of a building, and that’s exactly what we have here. It really does look good.

In the corner to the left of the casino we have the little theatre. I’ve not yet been there – but that’s basically because there’s nothing that ever goes on there that is of interest to me.

Instead, I continued with my walk around the Place Marechal Foch, and passed by the Hotel des Bains.

This has been described as “delightfully chic” in some travel guides, which means that it isn’t the kind of place that you are ever likely to find Yours Truly spending a night these days.

But nevertheless, the building is quite impressive. It’s fairly modern but it’s been built with some kind of tasteful eye on the history of the town which is always nice to see. It’s a shame that more people can’t make an effort.

With still 12%of my daily activity to do, I carried on with my walk. and I’m glad I did because I spotted this way in the distance.

And when was the last time that you saw a Bedford CF on the road anywhere? I haven’t seen one for years. The last British “Vauxhall” vehicle, they wer emade from 1969 to compete with the Ford Transit but came on the scene far too late.

The Transit was already well-established by then, with the previous CA Bedford putting up no resistance, and the CF didn’t last long. It disappeared with hardly a whimper in 1987 when the “Cevel” vans of Peugeot and Citroen flooded into the UK.

And I for one never expected to see one again.

No shopping tomorrow, but there’s a carnaval procession. I mustn’t miss that, so I’ll have to be in the Town Centre at 13:30.

No peace for the wicked.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: carnaval

Sunday 23rd February 2020 – THE FIRST DAY …

Saturday 22nd February 2020 – NOT A SINGLE …

Saturday 15th February 2020 – OH GOD NO!

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

Sunday 11th February 2018 – IT’S STILL CARNAVAL!!!

Saturday 10th February 2018 – IT’S CARNAVAL!!!

Friday 9th February 2018 – HAVING REGAINED MY COMPOSURE …

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