Category Archives: la granvillaise

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall, today has been a difficult day.

It always is the day after I return from hospital, but today was rather different from the others.

Margaret Thatcher (and how we miss her, with this shower in charge) once said “anyone could do a good day’s work when they felt like it, but the key to success is to be able to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it”.

And that’s what happened today. I didn’t feel very much like it at all, but I did do a very good day’s work all things considering.

Admittedly, when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10 and 06:20) I didn’t take much notice. I turned over and went back to sleep. And that’s no surprise either. Despite being tired it took me ages to go to sleep last night and I thought that I would never drop off. But I did, and was awoken by the alarms. No chance of leaving the bed at that time though. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was how I stayed until 07:22

Last night I was in London with some other guy and we were looking for a place to stay on a long-term basis. There were student flats available and we were sent to see one near the Thames on the north bank somewhere Fulham way, in a modern block of flats. It was the tiniest room that you have ever seen, with two beds in it and there was already one person in it, so we didn’t know if this person was to leave or whether we would end up with three sharing this tiny room. I was fitted with some kind of arm bracelet, for a reason that I didn’t know at the time. There was a large ginger cat roaming around the area so I picked it up and stroked it, and took it outside with me, to the horror of everyone else who explained to me that the arm bracelet meant that I wasn’t allowed to hold a cat outside the building. Someone mentioned that my Aunt Mary lived in London so why don’t I telephone her. So I did. She told me that she now had a bike so I asked her why she didn’t cycle down the Embankment to meet me. So off she set and we – by now Cecile was with me – went down to meet her. She came out of the subway in the wrong direction as if she had been riding east, and then we lost sight of her. But there she was, a few levels down at street level so we waved and she came up. By now she had transformed into Marianne, and she came over to give me a great big hug and said how much she had missed me. But strangely she had another guy with her too.

07:50 was when I left the bed. So it was rather a late breakfast this morning.

Never mind though. Off into town.

I didn’t gte very far though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are some very low gates into the old medieval walled town and the streets are very narrow, so large vehicles are not permitted in there.

Everything has to be off-loaded and trans-shipped, including ready-mixed concrete.

We saw Normandy Trader in port yesterday afternoon, loading up with a cargo.

She’s now gone from the port, but there’s plenty of cargo left on the quayside. This means that we might well be expecting a visit from Thora.

On the other hand, it could be that Normandy Trader was actually unloading, and we are waiting for the cargo to be taken away.

First stop was at the Railway Station. My old fogey’s railcard is on the verge of expiring so I need a new one. And it’s a good job that I went early because the lady in front of me looked as if she wanted to be there for the Duration.

So armed with my new railcard, I headed off (on foot, not on the train) to LIDL.

We’ve talked in the past about recycling and waste here in Granville, and I was lucky enough to see one of the waste lorries emptying one of the town’s waste containers in the avenue des Matignon.

I hope that they will be emptying the paper bin near me so that I can dispose of some more of the European Paper Mountain.

Although I didn’t buy anything special in LIDL, I did treat myself to a bag of brazil nuts. Two people – one of whom is a doctor and the other one is a patient – have told me now that brazil nuts contain plenty of vital vitamins and minerals, one of which is selenium, a deficiency of which is said by some to be one of the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Back here, I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then did the filing of all of the mail that had built up while I was away. And there was a lot of it too.

There were four letters that needed my attention and so after lunch I set down to work. One of the letters was unnecessary because over lunch I had received a mail to say that the issue was resolved, but I managed the other three without any problem.

And then, I … errr … crashed out on the chair for 20 minutes.

On recovering, I headed off back into town and the Post office and dispatched the three letters. That’s another task out of the way. We’ll have to see what comes of those.

on the way back, I took a little sight-seeing diversion to push my daily fitness target up to 100%.

Round by the harbour now we have a lorry just pulling in. So is he going to be delivering more supplies for the next freighter, or is he going to be taking away the supplies that are already here?

Watch this space.

At the moment we are experiencing one of the lowest tides of the year, and for a town that already has the highest tidal range in Europe, a low tide is pretty exceptional.

With all of the fruits de mer around here, the peche à pied or fishing on foot by scavenging in the rock pools and the sand for oysters and mussels is very popular.

The situation basically (it’s much more complicated than this in fact, but this will give you a basic idea) is that the accessible fishing rights between the high tide and the low tide are leased out to people and companies and are thus private.

But the fishing rights for the beach beyond the low tide limits aren’t leased out because they aren’t usually accessible. They are public access fishing areas.

So when we have exceptionally low tides, about a dozen or so times a year, everyone floods out to the public access areas to try their luck.

They are still quite busy at the Chantier Navale.

It seems that Armor has cleared off, but Charles_Marie and la Granvillaise are still here.

We have a new boat too. I’m not sure if she’s one of the ferries for the Ile de Chausey, or whether in fact she’s something else.

I Shall have to go out and check at some point.

Back here I attacked the mountain of photos that have built up while I was away – fighting hard the temptation to go and lie down for half an hour. But I survived up until teatime. Pasta and a burger, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

This evening it was dark when I went out for a walk, and spent much of the time out there watching a trawler coming out of the English Channel towards the harbour.

I took a pile of photos of it at different speeds, apertures and ISO settings and you can compare them all by looking at them here and also below.

But I’ve done 118% of my daily activity today, which is good news. I’ve been at or over 100% for almost every day since last Thursday. It’s hardly a surprise that I’m feeling the pressure just now.

So on that note, I’m going to bed. And it’s not even 21:45 yet. I’ve had a hard day.

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night trawler tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 11th March 2019 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since the football over two weeks ago, I had a mug of coffee – when I was at Liz and Terry’s. In fact I had two.

And that probably explains why I was still wide awake working on the computer this morning at 02:30, unable to sleep.

Eventually, I did manage to go to bed. And a short while later I did actually go to sleep.

When the alarms went off at 06:00,06:10 and 06:20 there was absolutely no danger of my leaving my little bed. 09:05 was mush more of a respectable time given the circumstances.

As a result, we can almost dismiss the morning as a write-off. by the time I settled down to do some work it was 12:20.

One thing that I had done was to get on the phone to my web hosts. My domain names need renewal and for some reason the direct debiting wasn’t working.

After several attempts I was connected to the French helpline where the formalities were completed. And I was struck by the accent of the girl to whom I was speaking. it turns out that not only was she a French speaker from Acadie in New Brunswick, she was actually there, and my call had been diverted to Canada.

a little later I nipped out to Caliburn. the memory card in the dashcam in Caliburn had filled up yesterday so I’d brought it in with me. This morning I uploaded all of the media onto the hard drive and then took the empty card back down to keep as a spare.

One of my neighbours was out there so we had a chat. But freezing in the howling wind, I came in quickly.

Lunch was as usual, and then I set to work with the shredder. Another huge mound of paper has gone to meet its maker and another day or two will see the rest of it on its way. And then there’s more to attack, to keep me out of mischief for the next 6 months.

This afternoon I braved the hurricane and went outside, bumping into another neighbour on the way.

Nothing much happening out there, except at the chantier navale where Armor, Charles-Marie and La Granvillaise were receiving attention.

But the funfair seems to have gone, and so does Neptune. She set off at 06:08 on her way to Whitstable.

Back here, I opened my birthday present from Liz and Terry. A gorgeous chocolate cake.

It won’t keep for too long and seeing as I’m off to Belgium on Thursday half of it went straight into the fridge.

But I also cut myself off a slice to taste. And it’s delicious, as you might expect. As I have now run out of apple pie, I’ll be having a slice here and there for pudding with my coconut-flavoured soya cream.

Rosemary rang me up later and we had quite a chat – 1:33 of it, to be precise. She’s back now in France and here she intends to stay.

Tea was the pizza that I should have had yesterday, followed by the last slice of apple pie.

And then the walk around the walls.

There was only a thin sliver of moon but with the clear sky there was a beautiful reflection on the sea.

The wind had dropped and it was cold, but there was no-one around at all, apart from a new black cat that came for a stroke.

So now I’m going to bed. Nice and early. I want to have an early start tomorrow as I have a lot to do.

But before I go, spare a thought for my niece’s eldest daughter. Her boyfriend was seriously ill and his chances of survival were slight. He had proposed marriage to her and they tied the knot on Christmas Eve.

Unfortunately their time together was short. He passed away on Saturday morning.

Poor Zoe.

Friday 8th March 2019 – SPRING IS SPRUNG!

the grass is riz
I wonder where de boidies is;

But never mind the birdies for the moment. We have the first sighting of buds on the plants today and I can’t believe that this has grown overnight, so I don’t know when they first appeared.

But nevertheless, it’s a welcome sign and always cheers me up when the buds appear. The sun can’t be far behind.

Last night was another good sleep, right the way through until the alarm went off. I’d been on a little voyage too. I was planning to travel to Canada one evening, and so sometime during the precious small hours I decided to go for a walk, despite the fact that I hadn’t even started packing. I was going along Nantwich Road in Crewe and on the corner of Ruskin Road where Chatwins was, there was an open-air bar with people sitting outside on long tables and benches. At that moment this really beautiful petite girl turned up and I was overwhelmed by her, but just as I was about to go over to talk to her, she took out a cigarette and lit it up. And nothing is more guaranteed to turn me off is someone starting to smoke. I ended up back somewhere where there was an array of television screens hanging from the walls, with a row of comfortable spacecraft-type seats in front of them. There were two people sitting on them – an older man and a young girl aged about 12 or so. I sat down on one of the chairs and pressed a button to select a film, which was something like a Star Wars film or similar.

07:00 when I finally arose from my stinking pit and I do have to admit that I could have forced myself out a long time before that too.

But having had the medication and then the breakfast (I’m enjoying my porridge) I set to work.

My trip around my blog and the searchable text database had brought me back to 14th October, and I could see why I had stopped there, because the previous day was our trip to the Ile de Chausey, with about 80 photographs.

And so I revised the blog entry for 13th October to make it much more readable, and to remove most of the photos from there.

Instead I created another web page specifically to show the photos and while I was at it, I noticed a little problem.

It seems that I have put an extra closed division in the coding of the web page that had forced some of the coding out of its container. I must have done that when I changed the web counter over.

So I had to go through and identify where it was, and remove it. And from all of the pages for the Carnaval too. And there were one or two other coding issues that needed correcting.

All of that took me up to lunchtime – a good morning’s work that was.

After lunch, talking of the carnaval, the first task was to vacuum the apartment. I think that I’ve shaken all of the confetti out of my clothes and the apartment was looking as if it had dandruff. So all of that was dealt with.

I seem to recall that last year I was still vacuuming up the confetti 6 months later, and it’ll probably be the same this year.

Next task was to shred another load of paper. The European Paper Mountain is looking much more manageable now and it won’t be long before it’s all gone.

The rest of the afternoon, such as it was, was doing a few more blog entries and, unfortunately, a little repose for 10 minutes on my chair.

Of course we had the usual walk around the headland this afternoon, and I stopped to see what was going on in the chantier navale

As well as Armor and La Granvillaise, we seem to have acquired another boat down there. She’s the Charles-Marie, another one of the tourist boats that hangs around the harbour.

I’ll have to go for another wander around down there to see what they are doing to her.

Tea tonight was a potato and lentil curry from 5th December … errr … 2017 and it really was delicious too.

And then I went for my walk around the walls. There was a strong wind and rain but the sea had died down so we didn’t have anything whatever compared to last night.

No-one around at all again so I was on my own. So I didn’t hang around.

Tonight will be an early night. I’m hoping for an early start tomorrow because it’s shopping day.

I don’t need much of course because I’m leaving on Thursday

Thursday 7th March 2019 – WE’RE IN THE …

… grip of another major storm here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the weather station by the lighthouse here recorded one of the strongest blasts of wind ever registered in France.

And while it’s not anything like that windy (it’s quite easy to move about) there must be a really strong wind blowing somewhere out to sea

Standing on the old medieval walls overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was a really impressive sight watching the waves go smashing over the sea wall and crashing down on the promenade over there.

The power and force that there must be in the sea could power the whole of the world many times over if it were properly harnessed, that’s for sure.

Just for a change I managed to sleep right the way through until the alarms went off. Although I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to leave the bed.

I’d been on a travel too during the night. Something to do with some kind of outrageous posting made to a group of which I am a member in a French Social network. It unravelled itself into a scenario where I hd various packets of flour and so on and some olives and I was having to put them into different jars, and becoming confused to such an extent that I ended up with the olives in the flour and wondering how I could separate them.

After the medication and breakfast I had a good shower, a clean-up and a change of clothes, and then headed off to town.

I didn’t actually get too far though.

Right outside the door the recycling lorry had just finished emptying one of the containers.

I loitered for a while to see if if was going to empty another container, but in the end I had to clear off.

On the city walls in the rue des Juifs, I had a look down into the harbour.

I thought that I detected some lights down there last night but I wasn’t sure, but sure enough, it looks as if Thora came in on the evening tide yesterday.

It was pretty quiet down there though today. They didn’t seem to be doing much working.

Through the town and up the rue Couraye, I headed for the station to pick up my tickets for Leuven next week.

ON the square outside the station though there’s another small fairground. I remembered this from last year as soon as I saw it.

A shame though that I hadn’t remembered it on Tuesday evening when I was around the town at night taking photographs.

At LIDL I spent €16:00, about half of which was spent on batteries. They are having another sale of AA and AAA batteries and I’m running low on them. Most of the ones here date from about 12 years ago when I had the old Pentax K100D and they are not performing as they should.

Seeing as I put coriander in my apple pie the other day, I looked around and found some cinnamon (and also some ground nutmeg) and so I’ve added them to the shopping basket ready for the next round of cooking. I fancy an apple crumble next.

On the way home, I went down the rue Sainte Genevieve.

There’s another house-building project going on down there and I’ve been keeping my eye on that over the last few months.

They aren’t far off finishing it now. A coat of rendering will make it look so much better.

Back here, I unpacked the shopping and put it away. Not very often that I feel like doing that straight away.

There were a few things that needed doing today. Firstly, to change the hit counter over on the web pages that I did yesterday. I’d put the wrong one on there.

And then there was the question of working back over the blog entries for the last few days and adding some of the photos.

In between all of this, there was lunch to arrange. And as I had forgotten to defrost the hummus in the freezer I ended up eating more cheese from the supplies. I’ll have to buy some more in Leuven.

Outside this afternoon, the wind had increased in velocity from this morning.

Not unpleasantly so, but there was an impressive sea building up with loads of whitecaps.

“Building up quite nicely for this evening” I mused. And I was right too, as you have seen.

Anyway, I carried on with my walk around the headland, and paused for a moment to see what was going on down in the chantier navale

Armor is still there, with her hull still in aluminium but the deck superstructure looks as if it’s been painted white now.

And La Granvillaise is stil there too, with a couple of the volunteers working on her. That’s going to be a big job, preparing her for the coming tourist season.

Further on round the headland, and over there down in the port Thora is still at her station alongside the quay.

She seems to have been loaded with some stuff since I saw her earlier this morning so I’ll be expecting her to move out at high tide later on this evening when the harbour gates open.

Back here I had a couple of mugs of hot chocolate to warm me up and then did a whole pile of shredding.

One huge load has gone out to the container and there’s a half-a-load now waiting, but the shredder seems not to be coping with the volume of work that I’m expecting it to do.

I’ve had to dismantle … “disPERSONtle” – ed …it a couple of times to clean out a paper jam.

But by about 17:00 I’d have enough and I was in bed asleep for a good 90 minutes, which was a complete surprise following the amount of sleep that i’d had.

Tea was a slice of the leek and tofu pie from a few weeks ago. And it really was delicious, with potatoes, vegetables and gravy. Followed by apple pie and the coconut-flavoured soya dessert stuff.

This evening, I was alone again on my walk around the walls. No-one else seems to be keen to go for a post-prandial somnambulation.

I stayed of a good 15 minutes watching the storm break on the Plat Gousset and took a pile of photos.

And then I came back and edited all of them.

On the way back though, I had a look over into the harbour.

There was a trawler up by the fish processing plant, busily unloading its catch.

And Thora was still in port too. It looks as if she’s going to be in here for a while then. There must be something going on.

So now, I’m off to bed, always assuming that I can go to sleep after my little repose earlier.

Tomorrow, now that I’m up-to-date, I can start back into my programme of revision of October’s blog entries and see where that takes me.

lifeboat memorial storm baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night storm waves pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone.

And haven’t I had a big surprise today.

Remember when I went into the Mairie the other day to have a discussion with the Maire and ended up with the secretary?

Well, the secretary phoned me back today. Apparently the Maire has taken on board my remarks, made a few enquiries and come back to me.

I wasn’t expecting that, that’s for sure.

It’s not advanced things very much, as I didn’t expect that it would, but having someone like the Maire on your side is a comfort in these difficult times.

And difficult times they are.

Being completely wound up last night as I was, I was still up working at 02:00, totally unable to sleep. More like 02:30 when I went to bed,. And as for sleep, well, there wasn’t very much of that. I was tossing and turning all night.

There was enough time to go off on a travel. I was in Greece in some kind of primitive café helping with moral support (although what support I could ever give anyone would be considered as being moral) some girl who was trying to run it despite all of the opposition and difficulties that her family – the nominal owners – were putting in her path. The strange thing was that when the alarms went off, I totally ignored them and stayed in bed. And although I was by now awake, the journey carried on. And carried on for miles too from exactly the same place where I awoke. Not something that happens every day.

By 09:25 I was ready to awaken, and straight into controversy yet again where a couple of self-important auto-sycophants were bragging about how they had “briefed” a politician and “won a famous victory for UK citizens in Europe” by getting him to look at at. Completely oblivious of the fact that the EU had thrown out this idea weeks ago.

And so this totally shameless display of self-serving egocentricity caused me to explode yet again. And even deeper into the abyss.

I went for a very late breakfast after that. and then came back to start on the blog and the text database.

But not for long, because the Mairie interrupted me.

And then, almost immediately, another phone call from someone else who is on my list of things to do.

This started me off on a wave of work. From somewhere, I summoned up a piece of energy so went on a tidy-up in the bedroom.

Bank statements are fairly tidy now and I found a couple of other papers. And so I then sat down, made a few more phone calls, sent out some e-mails and wrote a letter too.

It may sound not much, but it certainly made an impression on the stuff in here.

My lunch was a light one, and that made me feel a little better.

I did manage to do some work on the photos and the database. Not a lot, but I’m back as far as 18th October 2018. It’s going a little quicker than I was expecting.

Later on in the afternoon I went for my afternoon walk.

I went around the headland at the Pointe du Roc through the crowds and hordes of tourists up there

And there was a beautiful view across the harbour right over to the coast on the far side by the Cale de Hacqueville.

There were quite a few people at the Chantier Navale, loitering around that big wooden boat that I mentioned last time, so I went over for a chat.

The boat that is on there is in fact La Granvillaise – a yacht that we have seen on many occasions around the harbour.

She’s been taken out of the water for a complete refit and overhaul by the volunteers, and she’s going to be there for a while.

While I was down there at the Chantier Navale, I went over to have a look at Armor – the ship from the diving place down the Brittany coast.

They’ve stripped off most of the old paint, and are currently giving it a good go over in white primer, ready presumably for its top coat.

They have put a lot of work into it. It will look good when it’s finished.

My route into town took me past the place Charles de Gaulle.

Here I could admire the stage that they had erected the other day. Events will be getting under way tonight, although I won’t be down there.

Instead, I went to the Post Office and sent off the letter that I had written. It won’t go until Monday afternoon but it needs to be on its way.

Back up the hill, I stopped to watch one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming into port.

And there was a weird commotion going on behind me.

Some woman pulled up in her car, shouted to a passer-by “watch my vehicle” and ran off down the road shouting “Chantal” or something.

Everyone was standing around there shaking their heads.

Back here, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend of mine in the UK has sent me a little present for my birthday to help me along my way. That was just so very thoughtful of him and I’m overwhelmed.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with a little rice followed by a pot of soya dessert and a banana.

And then football. The Welsh Cup, Caernarfon Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Connah’s Quay were strangely subdued, michael Wilde was at walking pace and Callum Saunders was somewhere else in his mind, I think.

But Caernarfon seem to have gone off the boil too – a shadow of the impressive hard-working side of earlier in the season.

The Nomads won 2-1, but it was a very long game.

So it’s bedtime now.

I’m feeling a little better, and maybe a decent sleep might cheer me up again.

It’s Carnaval tomorrow.

And I seem to have lost one of the camera gloves that my friend Liz bought me for my birthday of 2008. I’m dismayed.

coastline granville manche normandy france

chateau de la crete granville manche normandy france

harbour light st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franc

Sunday 18th November 2018 – AS KENNETH WILLIAMS …

… and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

There I was, down at the brocante this afternoon admiring the head of a wild boar affixed to the side of a van. So I went up to the stallholder and asked him “don’t you find it rather inconvenient when you are loading up your van?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Having the body of that wild boar going crossways across the van. Doesn’t it interfere with the loading?”
So he looked at me with a rather bewildered look in his eye.

As for other matters however, waking up at 03:45 didn’t help me very much last night.

And neither did 04:40. Or 05:40. Or 06:45. but 07:45 I’d had enough though and couldn’t go back to sleep, so at 08:20 I was up and about.

I’d been away during the night though – to see a former friend of mine in Stoke on Trent (and it’s a long time since he’s appeared in one of my voyages, isn’t it?). I was walking down a street that bore more than just a passing resemblance to Coleridge Way in Crewe. I arrived at his house and had to walk in the street as the pavement was blocked by two huge Jaguar Mark X cars of the like that we saw the other day. One of these two was silver and the other one was red like the Daimler that I owned. Up his drive I walked and couldn’t quite get into his garage because there was a third Mark X Jag blocking the entrance. He was inside the garage, sweeping the floor and fixing something. I noticed that his inspection pit had been filled in and the floor of the garage had been painted red. He told me that I shouldn’t have come down to the garage without letting him know I was coming, but I go the impression that he was implying that I shouldn’t come down to his house at all.
A little later, I was thinking about buying a new coach. I needed to think about what I wanted and to see a few examples, so I asked a (female) friend who lived near a coach sales place to see what they had for sale. She was thinking that she would have to buy it for me but I explained that all that she needed to do was to look at it, see if the body had any rust on it or something like that.

With a rather late, leisurely breakfast, I didn’t do all that much this morning. However, that didn’t prevent me from changing the habits of a lifetime and actually doing some tidying up in the bedroom. Putting away a pile of papers that have been loitering around here for a while.

Another thing that I have done too was to change the plug over on the record deck. There was a British plug on it but if I’m going to use it here, which I shall do in early course, it needs a French plug on it. And looking for something else yesterday, I came across a couple doing nothing very much.

Once that was working, I had a play around with Audacity – the audio program that I used to use to edit my live tracks for the radio program. I’ll be using this to record all of my LPs and I need to make sure that I can remember what to do.

After lunch (and wasn’t my home-made hummus delicious?), I went for a walk down into town. No football today. It’s Cup week and all of the local clubs have been eliminated.

I retraced my steps from yesterday and went down the steps to the Rue du Port. And then across the road and onto the docks again right by the fish-processing plant.

However the tide was in so the harbour gates were open. I couldn’t come across to the other side but instead it gave me an opportunity to photograph then.

You’ll remember that I took a photograph of them while they were closed yesterday.

While I was down there in the beautiful sunny afternoon I took the opportunity to have a good mooch around the fish docks for a while and take a few photos

The pile of gravel down at the edge of the quayside is now growing rather quickly. It looks as if we will be having a visit of the gravel boat quite soon.

She’s not been here for a while.

On my way down into the town centre I had a good look at the old railway track embedded on the quayside.

In an early photograph that I had seen, there had been something that looked as if it might have been a broad-gauge rail-mounted crane.

And on closer inspection, what this looks like to me is not, as I had originally thought, a double-track line, but a single-track railway in the centre. The two outer rails are raised slightly higher than the two rails in the centre, so I reckon that they might well be rails for a crane.

I’ll have to find an imperial tape measure and go down to measure the gauge. That will tell me what I need to know.

The stupid, ignorant racists from Britain First are launching a campaign to boycott the Subway chain of sandwich restaurants because they are offering halal food in certain outlets.

It’s all quite reminiscent of the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops in the 1930s – and they say that they aren’t racists!

But here, our local Subway is offering a promotion involving that famous cartoon character Shaun the Sheep.

I wonder if it is he who is rotating on the skewer. And whether he has been killed humanely.

It does rather remind me of the story of Larry the Lamb and when the BBC abandoned the series.

When they came to sell off the assets of the programme, someone asked how much they had received for Larry the Lamb.
“Three and six a pound” was the reply.

Something similar happened when they stopped “Children’s Playtime” on the BBC.
Someone asked “what did they get for Muffin the Mule?”
“Eighteen months” was the reply.

Back here later, I organised a few photos on the internet and then did some more work on Day Three of the High Arctic. As well as a little … errr … repose.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and it all worked out rather well. One of the better ones that I’ve done.

Back out tonight for my walk around the headland and I was the only one there. Hardly surprising because it’s freezing outside. Well, 6°C actually, but that’s still the coldest that it’s been so far this half of the year.

Winter has definitely arrived.

The sailing ship Marité in the harbour in the Port of Granville

The harbour and port and the walled town of Granville

Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou in the walled town of Granville.

The sailing ships Marité and the little La Granvillaise mooored here in the harbour of the port of Granville.

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… been back at Mont St Michel today doing my tourist guide bit, but Josée contacted me yesterday to say that there had been a change of plan and she was off elsewhere.

And that was just as well because I wasn’t feeling all that much like it this morning.

Last night had been quite a late night – I was absorbed in a pile of work – so leaving my bed at 06:00 or thereabouts (and I did too – I was taking my medication in the kitchen when the alarm went off at 06:20) was something of a struggle.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then finished off the photos from yesterday’s walks. And now they are all on-line. All 40 or so of them so you can tell that it took me quite a while.

Another thing that I did today was to catch up with some tidying up and to do the washing-up that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’m starting to let things slide in here as far as tidiness and cleanliness goes and I need to get myself back on track while I’m still able to do so. I won’t always be fit enough to tackle things when they need tackling.

There are also a couple of other projects on the go here and I’ve been dealing with a few of them too this morning.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It was overcast, cold and windy outside so I reckoned that I could do with the comfort of a chair in the dining area.

This afternoon, I did a few other bits and pieces and then sat down to tackle the photos from the Arctic. I’m still in Yellowknife on the Pilot’s Monument, and this afternoon I rewrote the things that I wrote about it earlier in the week.

Well, not exactly “rewritten”.

What I do is to write down things as they occur to me, put them into paragraphs and then cut and paste the paragraphs to make a continuous text, adding in a few conjunctions to make the text stream together.

It also involves research. And it’s amazing what you find when you start to look. Instead of worrying about finding enough text, I now have quite a considerable excess.

We had the usual afternoon walk around the headland this afternoon in the sunshine.

And there, sailing about out in the bay off the coast of Bréville-sur-Mer was the sailing ship that we have seen over the past few days.

I had the standard lens on the camera so I took a quick photo of it at long range.

But we haven’t bought a new zoom/telephoto lens for nothing, have we?

Seeing as the ship was sailing slowly, I stuck on the new lens and took a zoom photo.

I’ve still not been able to track down the name so I cropped the photo and blew it up (I can do these things, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) but it seems that the name of the boat isn’t painted on the bows … “she’s La Granvillaise” – ed.

While I had the big new lens on the camera, I took a photo of the caravan site out at Bréville sur Mer near the horse racing course.

That was another place where I had enquired about accommodation when I arrived here.

Liz and Terry have a little caravan and one idea going through my head was to park it on there for the summer, and then try for a good deal in a long-term holiday let through the winter.

When I arrived back here after my walk I found that I had an important e-mail message.

The third lens that I had ordered – a refurbished 18x105mm lens – hadn’t been delivered as promised. And the tracking showed that they had tried twice, even though I had been here on both occasions.

Having instigated a search, I was told that it was now awaiting collection at the Post Office. So I went down there to pick it up.

And down there I found the reason why it hadn’t been delivered, and why I was puzzled as to how come no-one from the delivery company had rung the bell.

It turns out that the address for delivery was incorrect. An error on the part of the dispatchers.

But I’m not complaining, because when I wrote to them to tell them of the delay and the inconvenience, they refunded my postage. I’m quite content with that.

After all of that, I had to sit down for a while and have a little … errr … relax for half an hour.

Tea was a curry from the freezer and it was just as delicious as the day that I cooked it.

Later on I went out for the evening walk around the walls with the camera and the new lens.

Part of the plan was to retake many of the photos that I had taken the other day with the 50mm lens so that I could compare them and see the difference.

Just like this one of the sea front at Bréhal sur Mer

And this one of the rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background to the right.

It won’t be as good as the 50mm low-light lens because it needs more light to work it, but its advantage is that the new lens is a zoom lens rather than a fixed lens.

That means that it’s more useful as a general-purpose lens (which is why I bought it) but I still need to see how it performs.

The other day I took an almost-identical photo to this one and the difference is quite apparent. The earlier one has come out much better

But that’s only to be expected with the difference in the light and in the quality of the image.

But it’s still something that the new lens will bring out an image. The Nikon 1 would quite simply not have registered enough of an image to work.

So now I’m off to bed. In the morning I have to go shopping of course. In the meantime you can admire (or otherwise) this evening’s photos.

Night time – rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background.

The Place Marechal Foch in the night-time.

The Plat Gousset in the night-time

Night time – the rue Georges Clemenceau

Moon (hidden by the copyright details) shining over the harbour in the Port de Granville

Moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

More moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

Moon light in the night over Granville and the Baie de Mont St Michel

Yet more moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time with St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville in the background

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

Place Cambernon in the night

The Bar Rafale in the Place Cambernon at night

The rue St Jean in the medieval walled town in the night.

Thursday 18th October 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… last night I was on board a ship again and it might even have been The Good Ship Ve …… errr … Ocean Endeavour. And I don’t remember much now about the journey except that the terrain over which we were walking bore a remarkable resemblance to the Ile de Chausey, where I was the other day and of which one day I’ll finish off adding all of the photos. I was with some woman and her teenage daughter on this trip – and don’t ask me who they were. The daughter was hungry and kept on going to the fridge for some food. There were a couple of plates of beans and sausage on there and she kept on helping herself to one of them. I put it back though, not because I didn’t want her to eat it, but because I was going to cook something special and I wanted her to try it. But every time I put the plate back, she would sneak back and take it out again.

With all that going on, I was actually awake on time, and out of bed before the alarm at 06:20. And it’s been a good few weeks since that’s happened, hasn’t it?

After breakfast etc I had a few things to do, and then I leapt … “well, sort-of” – ed … into the shower for a good scrub and a change of clothes.

On my way out of the apartment I went past the harbour and there, moored up at its quay is the Marité.

Of course, she’s back home now that the weekend is over and all of the tourists have gone home and won’t now be back for a while.

But it always happens like this, doesn’t it?

But down in the town I came across an exciting sign. And next time that Alison comes here I’ll take her for a beer.

Although France might well be 100 years behind the times when it comes to allergies and dietary issues, you occasionally come across some little gems.

Just like this one, in fact. Gluten-free beer must be something exciting.

At LIDL I didn’t buy anything special really, although it might have been a good idea to have bought some tomatoes, because I don’t have any left over for anything exciting.

And on the way back, I was distracted yet again.

There’s a Catholic Primary School, the Ecole St Paul, that I pass on my way back. And I hadn’t noticed until today the statue of the saint up there, having been left holding the baby.

I thought that I would add a photo of the statue to my collection.

And just down the road from there, again in the rue Saint Paul is a house that I have noticed in passing but at which I have never taken a good look before. 4

It’s a beautiful house as you can see, but a close inspection of it indicates that the house seems to be abandoned and derelict.

This would be just my kind of house, and there might even be a sea view from the top floor of the building.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the demolition that took place in the rue St Genevieve over the winter when an old house was knocked down.

And then a sign appeared advising that planning permission had been granted for a new construction.

First time that I’ve been down here for a couple of months, and during that time we can see that construction of whatever is going to be here is well under way.

It doesn’t look particularly solid but then again this is a feature of modern construction.

Back here I had a drink and then did some tidying up (just by way of a change). And then attacked yesterfday’s photos. And to my surprise, I’d finished them off pretty quickly (there weren’t all that many actually) and put them on line.

Another important thing was accomplished too.

After the success the other day of my frozen sprouts, I had some carrots here which, I expected, would start to look doubtful in a few days time. So I peeled them, diced them, par-boiled them with some bayleaves and then stuck them in the freezer in a zip bag too.

Lunch was once again on the wall overlooking the harbour, looking at the fishing boats coming and going.

It was quite warm out there – a really sunny day – so I suppose that the fishermen were making the most of the good weather of this Indian Summer.

And I was practising with the light, bouncing it off the sea and onto the side of the boat.

Fishing boats weren’t the only things that were wandering around outside the harbour.

That sailing boat that we saw the other day – that was back again with another crowd of people, towing its zodiac behind.

One of these days I’ll have to go down and check up to remind myself of its name.

Back in the apartment I attacked the pile of photos from my trip to the Ile de Chausey on Saturday. They are all on line now with some brief explanatory notes.

There was even some time to attack the notes of the second day of my visit to the Arctic when I was in Yellowknife. The notes for the first day have been on line for quite some time as you know, and I need to press on.

I’d gone out at the usual time too and the weather had improved even more.

It wasn’t possible to see Jersey for some reason or other, but a couple of what might have been fishing boats were just about visible right out on the horizon, so I had a quick go with the big zoom-telephoto lens.

They are probably 30 kilometres out to sea where they are there.

While I had the big lens out, I had a good look aout along the coast to see what I could see.

That’s probably 30 or so kilometres away too, right out at Blainville-sur-Mer up the coast in the direction of Cherbourg.

I’ve not yet been for a walk on that beach, so I’ll have to put that right in due course.

On the other hand, this here is a beach that I’ve walked upon. And on several occasions too.

And not only that, I was watching Terry, Darren, Kate and Dylan sand-yachting on there earlier this year.

It is of course Agon-Countainville and it’s one of the nicest beaches around here, with one of the largest tidal ranges around here too.

Yesterday, we were walking around the Pointe du Roc and we saw a handful of what might have been fishing boats loitering at the foot of the cliffs.

Today I had another look over the clifftop where they were yesterday, and there was another one down ther today loitering around at the foot of the cliffs.

I’m still not sure what they are doing.

And talking of not knowing what they are doing, this is what the council workmen have been doing to the car park by the lighthouse at the end of the Pointe du Roc.

And having seen the results of their work, I’m still none the wiser.

And I’m not even better-informed either. But that’s because the workmen weren’t there to ask.

The weather was even better in the shelter of the wind down at the head of the bay.

So now that I have a decent zoom-telephoto lens I could take a photo of what I have glimpsed before at the head of the Baie de Mont St Michel, to see if this lens will pick it up any better.

And sure enough, this lens is so much better than the older one and we can see quite clearly not only the Cabanon Vauban which we have visited on several occasions, but the hotels round by the foot of the Mont St Michel.

Not the Mont itself though. That’s hidden behind the Pointe de Carolles.

Back here I carried on with the work that I had been doing, and then made tea. Stuffed peppers (now that I had bought some) and spicy rice, with my frozen carrots too. And that worked!

And then off for my walk around the walls.

There are tons of photos though.

During the afternoon, the weather was so good that I took plies of photos with the zoom-telephoto lens all along the coast from the Pointe de Carolles back up t0 Granville.

And then this evening, the clear moonlight made the night-time photos even better.

And so I’ll be adding these in due course so that you can see them in all their glory and admire the new lenses that I have bought.

fishing boat port de granville habour manche normandy france

Port Foulon The southern part of the town of Granville

The Cale de Hacqueville

The Beach at Carolles.

The large building just to the left of centre is another one in which there’s a ruin of an apartment that was offered to me.

The Beach at Carolles.

Jullouville

Kairon Plage

St Pair sur Mer

Chateau de la Crete

Granville – Boulevard des Amiraux Granvillais

Marité

Fishing boat in the port de Granville awaiting the tide.

Crew working aboard fishing boat in the port de Granville awaiting the tide.

A rather over-exposed photo of the moon.

The Place d’Armes and the medieval town walls

Moonlight over the Baie de Granville

Another over-exposed moon shot with one of the planets

Pizza van, Place Cambernon

Tuesday 16th October 2018 – THIS MORNING …

… didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. The alarms went off as usual and I switched them off as usual, but it was actually 07:34 when I awoke. That’s not going to do me much good, although it’s probably true to say that I needed the sleep.

And I took full advantage of it to go off on a decent nocturnal ramble too. Not into the High Arctic (just by way of a change) but to Eastern Austria and the ski slopes (and not the usual nocturnal ski slopes either). In company (which is not like me, as regual readers of this rubbish will recall) with two other people – a friend from Germany (who makes his debut in a nocturnal ramble) and a girl who, should we say, I would have been more than happy to have had as my companion 40 years ago, and why she should suddenly appear like this I really have no idea at all because we were extremely friendly during this voyage. In fact, the whole set-up last night bore some kind of resemblance to a voyage that I had once made round round about that period 40 years ago. Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … we’d all been skiing in Austria, dining across the border in Hungary, all of that kind of thing, and now we were on our way back. We stopped off somewhere and there was a former friend of mine from Stoke on Trent and a girl who used to move about in his circle of friends and whom I didn’t really like all that much (it’s just like the Gathering Of The Clans, isn’t it?). I was telling them about my trip (with a few embellishments of course to make it sound even better) and they were complaining about things with them and how they wished that they had been lucky enough to have come along. I replied by saying that the opportunity was there – I had asked if anyone wanted to come and I’d found a couple of volunteers, and we’d all had an excellent time. And if they hadn’t wanted to come then that was their problem and I didn’t want to hear about it.

This does actually bear out some parallels with how things are in real life. I have managed to cram into my life quite a lot of excitement and adventure and people quite often come up to me and tell me how lucky I am and how they wish that they could do it.

And how all of that makes me sick.

I’ve never ever done anything else in my life that no-one else couldn’t have done had they wanted. I used at one time to invite people to come along if they liked but I have long-since abandoned that idea because no-one ever wanted to (except of course the much-maligned Percy Penguin, who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves). They would always find some good reason why not to do something. It might be money (yet they could find the money to go to the pub or buy a new toy or to eat out every weekend) or it might be health (yet I’m slowly dying but I’m still rolling along as best I can) but whatever it is, they’ll find an excuse not to go anywhere.

And then they complain about it.

It’s all down to this though. It’s all about what you consider your priorities in life to be, and what you are prepared to sacrifice in life to get to where you want to go. Some people have their priorities all wrong, and aren’t prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.

So abandoning another really good rant for the moment I eventually tore myself away from my bed, had my medication and a little later had breakfast.

Once that had digested itself I started to attack last night’s photos. I found a few more that I seemed to have overlooked so while I was at it I dealt with those too.

Following that, I then worked my way backwards through the journal for the last week or so and updated them with the images that are now ready, including last nights photos on yesterday’s entry.

It’s not all complete though because dealing with the 80-odd from Saturday isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’ve rewritten the page for the Ile de Chausey and added a dozen or so photos, and I’ll add the rest tomorrow if I have an opportunity.

That took me nicely up to lunchtime but before I made my sandwiches I had a shower and a change of clothes to make myself look pretty – or, at least, as pretty as I can.

It wasn’t particularly sunny but I took my book and butties outside and sat on the wall to eat them – the butties not the book of course.

And I wasn’t alone either because while there might not have been any lizards about, there was one of the sailing boats that frequents the harbour.

And it shows you how long it is since I’ve been down in the harbour and how good my memory is, but I’ve forgotten its name. I shall have to go down there one day soon for a butcher’s

And that’s not all either.

There was quite a procession of fishing boats and other craft coming in and out of the harbour. And here’s one that I don’t recall seeing at all.

But it goes to show the benefits of having a really good zoom telephoto lens at last. And how I wish … “here we go again” – ed.

But returning to our moutons as they say around here, I didn’t stay out there all that long though. The weather looked as if it might turn round so I came back here instead.

There were a couple of jobs that needed doing this afternoon – involving the photos and so on. They are all backed up now onto the external drive.

And it caused me to have a little smile. When I first started to digitalise my photos 20-odd years ago I could get a whole year onto one CD, with plenty of space to spare. While I was in the Arctic just recently I had a grand total of 27.2GB of images – enough to fill over 40 CDs. How times have changed!

This afternoon I took my walk around the headland amongst a pile of schoolkids doing some kind of map-reading exercise. But apart from that there wasn’t all that much excitement.

But all of the excitement was back here afterwards when I had a little … err … relax for a while.

For tea, I had more steamed vegetables and one of the pasties that I made before I went off to the Arctic.

And how delicious were they? I shall have to make some more.

Outside this evening for my evening walk and I surprised a bunch of kids having a party in a secluded corner. We had an interesting discussion in Franglais yet again.

I also took a few more night-time photos that I’ll add to this entry in the morning. There aren’t quite as many as yesterday’s and the quality might be … errr … different because I was experimenting with the ISO settings and one or two other tricks too.

So I’ll try again for another early night. And this time, I hope that I’ll rise up from the Dead at some kind of reasonable time.

la granvillaise sailing ship port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

More fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

The orange lights slightly to the right of centre are actually the street lights of St Helier in Jersey, some 54 kilometres away.

Yet more fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

The barracks of the Place d’Armes and part of the city walls can be seen on the left margin.

Donville les Bains – about 6 kms away – with a high ISO setting.

Photo cropped and enlarged.

The roofs of Granville and the lights of St Pair sur Mer, Kairon-Plage and Jullouville away in the distance

rue le Carpentier looking down to the rue Cambernon and the museum.

Rue Notre Dame

The Boulevard Vaufleury, the Upper Car Park and the port;

Fishing boat leaving the harbour in the dark.

Boats in the outer harbour

The Place d’Armes

The rear of the Place d’Armes

The Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

The Montéé de St Jean

The rue St Jean and the Montee de St Jean

Friday 17th August 2018 – IT’S BEEN …

… a quiet day today, after all of the exertions of the last week or so.

Much to my own surprise, I was out of bed after the first alarm. And that’s not happened for a while, has it?

And then after breakfast there was more work to be done, and then I started to have a good think about my plans after my next hospital visit. And that reminded me that I hadn’t booked my train to Brussels. That was something that needed my attention, and now it’s completed.

That also reminded me that I needed to go for my blood test. A brisk walk took me to the laboratory and they attended to matters. And much to everyone’s surprise that was all done and dusted and paid for within a matter of a couple of minutes. Not like the UK where you have to wait for a week or so.

And over the road I picked up my railway tickets from the station.

On the way back I picked up a baguette for lunch, but I didn’t make it back home straight away.

My attention was drawn to some movement on the horizon over by the Brittany coast, so I quickly grabbed the zoom lens and went for a wander to see what it was.

Cropping and enlarging the image and then digitally enhancing it, I could see that it’s our old friend the Brittany Ferries ship Pont Aven off a-wandering again.

When I came back home I found that I had no hummus. I’d run out. And so I made another large batch. Chick peas, tahini, olive oil, chick pea water, olives, tomato, garlic and herbs. All whizzed up in the whizzer.

Some of it went into the freezer and some of it into the fridge. That’ll keep me out of mischief for a good while.

Lunch was taken outside on the wall with my butties, my book and my camera.

And while I was there, I was treated to the interesting sight of three lizards side-by-side eating from the same piece of pear.

It makes a change from fighting over it. They must be learning to trust each other after all of this time.

But that wasn’t the only excitement that was taking place.

There was a considerable amout of yachts and boats of all descriptions out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel, including our old friend La Granvillaise out there with a full load of passengers enjoying the sun.

Makes me wish that I was out there with them.

And it looks as if we might be having some entertainment in the Place Cambernon this evening too. A group of musicians were out there doing a sound check.

Seeing as it was nice weather I loitered for a while in the vicinity to see if they were going to do a warming up session too so that I could see what they might be about, but it was clear after a while that they weren’t going to oblige.

In the end I gave up the idea and left them to it.

This afternoon, apart from talking to another pile of neighbours, I attacked another piece of correspondence that had been hanging around here for a while. I’m going to have to keep myself up-to-date.

And I was on the phone to Rosemary for quite a while – so much so that I missed my tea and ended up with a packet of crisps.

No walk either this evening as I was watching football on the internet. Aberystwyth Town v Cardiff Metropolitan in the Welsh Premier League. Aber were really poor in the first half and were lucky to be only 3-0 down. They were much improved in the second half – although still some way off the pace – and the 4-1 final score was really rather flattering to them. Cardiff Met could have had half a dozen without too much effort.

So now it’s bed time. Shops tomorrow and I need to stock up as I’m having visitors. I hope that they’ve stocked up in NOZ – and that they have some staff to person the tills too.

boats baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

beach hang gliders plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Saturday 3rd August 2018 – WE ARE NOT ALONE

Yes, at 17:00 I was at the railway station waiting for the Paris train to arrive and once it was properly parked at the platform Alison alighted.

I’d been up quite early this morning, after another poor night’s sleep (it’s becoming too much of a habit). And after the usual start to the day I started to tidy up the bathroom.

A little later, I loaded up the washing machine and then headed off to the shops and yet more encounters with miserable grockles.

At LIDL I didn’t buy anything exciting, but Noz once again did the business. They were having a clearance sale of gluten-free food today, and as Alison eats gluten-free food I stocked up with it so that she would have a choice of food to eat.

It was the same old stuff in LeClerc too but with more gluten-free stuff as well so that Alison would have an even better choice of food. Nothing like a bit of variety, is there?

Back here, I hung up the washing in the window and set the fan on it to blow it dry.

And then I made my butties and went to sit on the wall with the book and two of the lizards.

It was quite busy out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel at lunchtime.

Amongst the sailing boats out there was la Granvillaise with a good load of passengers, with Le Grande Ancre in the foregound.

That wasn’t all either.

The local sailing club seems to be in full swing too. All of their yachts were out there this lunchtime in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

There was probably quite a lot more going on there too, but I didn’t stay out too long. The heat really was overwhelming and I was glad to retreat into my apartment afterwards.

However, I didn’t have much time to waste. I cleaned the bathroom and toilet, changed the bedding in the bedroom for the new stuff that I had bought the other day (after all, no-one wants to sleep in any bedding that has had me in it, no matter how many times it has subsequently been washed) and then vacuumed everywhere again.

Final taSk was to wash all of the floors. That took me nicely up to about 16:15, time to hit the streets. And the heat.

At the station I was early so I was able to pick up my tickets without any problems, and then Alison and I came back into town.

We visited a few shops and then stopped off at one of the bars on the harbour for a nice long, cold drink. Totally necessary in this kind of heat.

During our walk back up the hill we had a little deviation to visit the medieval walls, and then came back here for a rest and for Alison to sort herself out in the bedroom.

We weren’t particularly hungry at that stage so we went off for a walk around the headland amongst the madding crowds, because there were quite a few people around. We went a different, more energetic way too – to such an extent that I found that I had done 123% of my activity for today which is always nice.

The pies that I made the other evening went down a treat too – with potatoes, mixed vegetables and a vegan cheese sauce. Lactose and gluten-free, every drop of it.

So after putting the world to rights for a considerable amount of time, Alison went off to bed. And I settled down for the night too. I need my sleep for it’s going to be a long, hot day tomorrow.

Thursday 19th July 2018 – IZZY WHIZZY …

… let’s get busy.

That’s been the motto of today anyway, just for a change.

Last night however, I was pretty exhausted and so I was in bed before 22:00 just for a change. But being wary of what normally happens when I try for an early night – that I end up tossing and turning for several hours – I resorted to the old stand-by of putting the laptop close to the bed and watching a film.

Never fails, does it? Didn’t even make 10 minutes.

So I was up early and organised the medication and all of that. And I wasn’t the only one up early either as a friend was waiting on line for me. Seems that she has had some disappointing news and wanted a chat.

And so I did. That’s what friends are for.

A late breakfast was the result, followed by a later shower and then I set the washing machine a-go.

The walk up to LIDL was painful, but I have to keep on doing it. I need to push myself onwards while I can.

But I had a surprise across the road from there in the Avenue des Vendéens.

Two guys were looking at an old scooter which, at first glance from a distance, looked like one of the old Zundapp prototypes, so I went over to have a look.

It wasn’t quite as rare as that – in fact it was a Peugeot scooter from the 1950s. I’d never seen one before which, the owner told me, was hardly surprising as there can’t be more than a handful still left.

And I’d been lucky to see this one as he had only just wheeled it out of his garage for 30 seconds.

In LIDL my eye was caught by the size of these tomatoes.

Not having a tape measure handy, the best guess that I could make was that these were about 4 inches in diameter. You can get some idea of the size by comparing them to the “normal” tomatoes to the right.

I was going to say that I’d spent nothing today in there. But that’s not really true. But if you compare today with what I’ve been spending this week, it is pretty minimal, But all the same …

First thing that I needed was some coffee. I’d run out of the ground stuff, as I said earlier, so I bought a couple of packets to see what it’s like. Had I known that supplies were so low, I would have stocked up on the coffee that I liked when I was in Belgium. It’s not sold in France.

Another thing is that with having guests arriving, I need some spare sheets. No-one wants to sleep in a sheet after I’ve been sleeping in it – washed or not – and I’d bought a new one at IKEA. But today at LIDL they had some blue ones (my bedroom is blue) on special offer so I added one of those to the guest bag.

It seemed to be my lucky day with old motorbikes too. On the way back, I came across an old guy cleaning a Solex – you know, the typical French moped of the 40s and 50s with the engine underneath the handlebars.

This one was a later one from the late 60s with a pressed-steel frame and so I got to talk to him about it. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-gone guises will recall that I unearthed the remains of one of these in a field of brambles when I was doing a furniture removal back in 2002.

It seems that the guy collects bits and makes complete machines up out of the piles. So seeing as the Solex is doing nothing down on the farm and it’s not something that I’m likely to miss, I’ll bring it back whenever I’m next down there and donate it to the cause.

It pays to keep in with the locals.

We were having some more activity in the Bay as well.

Marité was out there having a little sail around the Baie de Mont St Michel, and she was in company with La Granvillaise.

One of these days I’ll have to take myself out and about on one of them, if they decide one day to go somewhere exciting. Quebec would be nice.

Back here I opened the window in the bedroom, put the clothes dryer thing in the window and hung up the washing. But this isn’t going to be easy with the new chest of drawers in the way. I need to have a think about this.

Liz was on line too and so we had a little chat. Strawberry Moose has his holidays to plan.

After lunch I tidied up Caliburn and got him looking much more like it. A pile of stuff went into the bin from there.

With that out of the way then I attacked the European Cardboard Box Mountain. And it’s now all gone down into the back of Caliburn. It’s amazing how uncomplicated it becomes when you have a ratchet strap handy.

But it was tiring work and I had to sit down halfway through and have a little … err … relax.

And if that wasn’t enough, I attacked the bedroom and did some tidying up in there too. And that looks much better, although there’s still tons to do. But it really is nice to be finally able to sit comfortably on a comfortable chair and do some work in a proper office environment.

The walk around the headland about finished me off, so now I’m going to bed. I deserve it too.

Tomorrow I need to make some more hummus seeing as I’ve run out of that kind of stuff for my butties and I don’t really want to attack the cheese as yet.

Mind you, with what I’ve done today I’ll probably be asleep for a week.

Monday 21st May 2018 – I’VE GOT ONE …

… of these special spray-on cream tin things.

The one that tells you that it “contains the equivalent of 800 ml of fresh soya cream” – but doesn’t tell you that it only contains enougb propellant to eject about a quarter of it. That’s not very good and I’m not impressed.

In theory, I could puncture the can to liberate the contents but knowing my luck, there will be just enough propellant trapped inside to whitewash the whole apartment and everything in it.

Something else with which I’m not impressed is that the alarm went off at 06:20 as usual and again at 06:30 and I was out of bed something like. Only to read later on that morning that one of my friends is off on his annual Pentecost walk. Yes, it’s a flaming Bank Holiday here, isn’t it? Another day when I can lie in bed without feeling a pang of guilt. And I missed it.

And so I had a glass of Dandelion and Burdock instead. A bottle left over from Christmas 18 months ago. High time that I had a little treat.

I was going to say that I had done badger all today, but that’s not quite true. I’ve done a little tidying up of the crockery and cooking stuff. I’ve been looking for some glass mixing bowls for ages and as luck would have it, I found some in NOZ at the weekend so I bought two. Cooker, dishwasher, microwave safe too,, and at €1:99 each.

However, I have nowhere to put them, so I needed to have a sot-out of stuff. Didn’t take me long but it’s definitely working and it’s definitely tidying up. I ought to award myself a medal.

A beautiful afternoon so a long sit on the wall with my butties and my book, watching the heaving multitudes go straggling past.

And not so “straggling” either on some occasions.

The tide was right for the day trippers (or afternoon trippers in this case) to take the Joly France out to the Ile de Chausey – or were they going just for a lap or two around the bay?

But anyway, there was more than enough of them. The boat was pretty full.

And it’s rather ironic really. There was an article in the local paper about “Are there too many tourists going over there?” And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is that if the tourists stopped going over there would be another article in the local papers about the islanders complaining that their economy has collapsed because there aren’t enough tourists going over.

Like many places, the inhabitants would be quite happy for the tourists to stay at home and just post their money over to the island.

That wasn’t all of the excitement either.

There’s another boat – the La Granvillaise – that does tours around the bay too. And that was setting off on a jaunt too. She looks quite an elderly boat too but in fact was built in 1990, albeit as a replica of a fishing boat – the Rose Marie – of 1897 that was a typical fishing boat of the bay at that time – a bisquine.

She has 410 square metres of canvas sail – the largest amount of any boat of her class in France – and so that’s much more like my style of voyaging

And I was there for ages sitting on my wall, totally engrossed in the Hundred Years War.

We British people think of the Hundred Years War as just being Crécy and Agincourt and not much else in between. For the French though, it was almost 120 years of complete and utter terror. In the past I’d been hunting high and low for a book that gives a detailed French perspective on the war and I finally found one a couple of years ago.

It’s certainly a right riveting read and it’s easy now for me to understand why the French hated the English so much after reading the stories of the atrocities that were committed by the English and their allies. “l’Albion Perfide” indeed.

With the weather being so nice, I had my two walks too, even though the place is heaving with people. And for tea tonight I had vegetables with a burger and some delicious gravy. It was really nice too.

So tomorrow I must take Caliburn to the menders for his service. And it’s a loooooooonnnnnnnng walk home from there. I’m not too keen on that idea. I’ll probably be ill for a week afterwards.

EPIC HALL

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