Category Archives: mairie granville

Thursday 22nd June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… depressing day today. And I bet that you are as fed up of reading about it as I am about living it.

My own fault though. I had a doctor’s appointment at 10:00 this morning so I decided that I’d be brave and walk – or, rather, hobble – down the hill into town on my crutches.

The idea didn’t exactly fill me with confidence but I had to do it. And it passed without any serious incident, which was good news. Just the occasional wobble here and there.

But as you might expect, I was well out of it this afternoon. Totally out of my tree in fact.

And that’s not really much of a surprise because apart from the fact that it seems to be par for the course these days whenever I go anywhere, when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I’d been up for ages.

First thing that I did after the medication was to try to resolve a computer issue. I said yesterday that I’d fitted a new hard drive into this machine. A couple of my graphics programs weren’t functioning correctly so I left them in the end and went to bed.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, graphics is one of the reasons why I bought a machine like this big desktop machine. But it’s not a proprietary machine, it’s something of a “bitsa” with a collection of assorted bits and pieces for the best possible performance, and I’ve upgraded it since I’ve had it.

Consequently you’re wasting your time looking for a manufacturer’s upgrade.

After prowling around for a while in the innards of the machine, I found that it was working with the drivers for a Windows-generic video card and I couldn’t remember the make of the video card that we fitted. I had to work through quite a collection of drivers until I found the correct one.

It’s working so much better now, which is nice.

All I need to work out now is why although the operating system recognises the 32GB of RAM that’s fitted, only one bank of 16GB seems to be working.

Even so, with a Solid State Hard Drive powering the machine it’s working a lot quicker and a lot quieter too.

In between all of this I had a shower to make myself look pretty and then struggled down to the doctors for a check-up and for the prescription for the next lot of Aranesp. I mentioned the hospital in Paris and he says that it’s one of the best in the country with a famous nerve-centre, if you’ll excuse the pun.

But the good news, if you can call it that, is that because there is no obvious element that’s affecting my nervous system, he reckons that I’m classed as permanently disabled. He’ll type a report for me to pick up tomorrow and told me to go the the Mairie and tell them.

And so I did, and they gave me half a rain-forest worth of papers to fill in. And if I need any help I can call a Social Services rep to help me. I have to fill it in and send it to the Prefecture at St-Lô, and then prepare for a long wait.

But if I’m lucky, I’ll have a disabled parking pass, free transport on the buses (mind you, buses are free here in Granville anyway) and things like that.

Next stop was the Post Office.

Something else that I’d done this morning was to gather up the papers that I needed and to fill in my Tax Return. That needed to be posted and there was a recorded delivery letter to pick up.

Next week it’s the annual general meeting of the owners of this building and as I own 250/10,000 of it since April I’m invited. So there was another rain-forest worth of papers about that sent to me by recorded delivery.

There’s a new artisanal high-class bakery opened in town so I stopped off for some specialty bread for my cheese on toast. I thought that in view of the effort that I’d made, I deserved to pousser le bateau dehors as they might say around here.

Final stop was to go to the chemists to drop off the prescription. 6 months worth of Aranesp but they can only order it one month at a time. I have to ring her every 4 weeks to reorder it.

It was the nice cheerful girl who served me today. “do you want to pay for it now?” she asked.
“Just this four weeks” I replied. “Not all of it”
“That’s what I meant” she retorted.

It was a struggle to come back up the hill onto my rock and I was exhausted. I had my coffee and cheese on toast but that was really my lot. I was in no fit state to do anything else for quite a while.

Later on I did manage to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And it’s a surprise to me that I was up and about so early because I travelled miles. In fact, I probably got out of bed on my way back home from my travels. I started out in Labrador last night. I’d been to visit a spot where a member of my family used to live. There was some information that I gathered there that I knew would be of interest to someone else who was hunting down family relics. I made a note and brought the information or copies of it with me and met up with this guy back at his place where because of the way that whatever was written on this information that I had, it was all about snow etc which of course would be most unlikely in South Cheshire but it was a very complicated ritual involved in making sure that he had the information. Then I had of course to get the information from him that he had found out about my family so it was all extremely confusing about this Labrador in Cheshire kind of thing.

Then there was a tractor for sale at a rather cheap price. I went to see it but when I returned Nerina asked me about it. I told her that basically it’s been taken in part-exchange and they want rid of it quite quickly so they’ll do a good deal for cash. She was wondering why it wasn’t on the forecourt. I explained that word about this tractor would go around by word of mouth quickly enough. They don’t need to make any effort to sell it etc. There was one guy there who insisted on shouting me down, giving me his own interpretation of what was happening even though I’d just been to talk to the owner about it. he wouldn’t let up no matter how I tried to explain to Nerina. In the end I told her “the vendor knows exactly how much that tractor owes him, exactly how much it’s costing them to keep it on the forecourt”, all the little details like that. They’ll know exactly where the breakeven point will be so if someone comes along with the cash they’d let it go. But this guy was not having any of this at all. It was really strange how he thought he knew absolutely everything without even having been to see it and talk to people about it. He thought that I was totally wrong.

I’d also been out with one of my schoolfriends. On the way back we stopped at his house. I started to chat to his sister who I fancied (and I actually did too in real life). We had something of a flirty exchange as a couple of teenagers would. I happened to mention something about Saturday night. she said that she was doing something that night which was a shame because I was hoping that she might be free and want to come out somewhere. We continued this chat and she asked me “what are you doing Tuesday night?”. I replied “nothing”. She continued “do you want to come with me on Tuesday night instead?”. Of course immediately my ears pricked up. I asked “where are we going?”. She asked “how do you fancy going to church?”. I replied “if it means going with you, I’ll come”. She said “it’s every fortnight”. I replied “that’s not a problem. I can manage that”. We arranged to meet on the Tuesday night. I went outside after that ready to go home. My friend was outside so I said “you’ll never guess what I’m doing on Tuesday night”. He replied “you’re going to church youth club aren’t you?”. I asked “how do you know?”. he didn’t really give me an answer about that but he obviously knew that there was something in the wind. She didn’t really like me all that much in real life when we were at school, which was no real surprise. But she went to University in Manchester while I was living there and we did meet up a few times, but nothing much ever came of it.

I was at work last night. I’d gone into the office which was packed. I went to find the lift to take me up to my floor. There were dozens of people hanging around the lift, people making music and singing Christmas carols, a little choir etc. It looked as if everyone was preparing fo Christmas. I was hoping that I’d see my Irish friend so that I could talk to her about my date on Tuesday night (so I must have gone back into that previous dream) but I can’t remember what happened after that.

She was a nice girl too and I liked her very much. We went on a skiing holiday once together which was really good fun but she had far too much good sense ever to become involved with me

Finally we were in Iceland waiting for a ferry back to the mainland of Europe. There was a storm and the ferry was delayed. It looked as if it wouldn’t sail for ages. Everyone was dashing around trying to find accommodation but I had a cunning plan. I would hire a van and sleep in it for a few nights which I reckoned would work out a lot cheaper. There was a young girl there whom I liked very much. We’d spent a lot of time chatting. We were standing in the queue and I bought her a coffee. I asked her what she intended to do. Obviously if she didn’t have any accommodation i was going to invite her to share the van. She mentioned Tom, another guy on this trip with us. She said “I’ll be spending the night with Tom, my boyfriend. I’ve been spending the last couple of nights with him anyway so another night won’t make any difference”. Of course you’ve absolutely no idea how disappointed I was, or maybe you have, I dunno. It’s quite a regular occurrence during the night – me being confounded like this while I’m engaged in the evil pursuit of nice young ladies. Anyway that was that.

The physiotherapist came round today too and massaged my right knee which is now playing up after my walk. I’m wondering what is going to break next. I’m at the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet.

Tea was a big bowl of pasta and veg with the rest of that vegan bolognaise stuff from last week. I livened it up with some chili and garlic salt and that gave it a kick.

Tomorrow I’m off to town again for my Aranesp and a bit of shopping. That means that in the afternoon I’ll be flat out on my chair again. It’s becoming far too much of a habit but there’s nothing that I can do about it regrettable. Onwards and upwards, hey?

Wednesday 1st January 2020 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May I take this opportunity to wish all of my readers (both of you!) a very happy New Year. I hope that you will receive everything this year that you wished on everyone else during the course of the last year.

It goes without saying, of course, that whatever you wished on Brexiters, the Conservative party, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, the Republicans and Canadian Tories are exempt from this. If the World comes to an end in 2020, we’ll all know who to blame.

And for that reason, this song is going to be my anthem for the current year. I have often said … “and you will say more often” – ed … that if violence is the answer, then it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on the Referendum paper in 2016 is about as stupid as they come.

And the fact that 17.4 million people were stupid enough to vote for it, and 14 million people were stupid enough just now to vote for the Tories shows you that people still haven’t got the message.

The only way for you to tell them the message in a fashion in which they will understand it is –
1) to tell them about it slowly
2) on their thick skulls
3) in Morse code
4) with a pickaxe handle.

Yes, “if you want your rights you’re going to have to fight” and “we’ll walk hand in hand to the promised land” “if we bring down the Government now”.

On the subject of walking, as I mentioned last night, I went out for a walk at about 23:30 to see what was going on in town. Not hand in hand though. I was on my own and had a camera to carry.

The harbour gates were open so I had to walk along the rue du Port and that way into town and just as the clock struck midnight, I found myself at the end of the rue St Saveur.

Having a think about it, I don’t recall if I took a photo of the street with its Christmas lights so I took a photo of it just now to complete the picture.

Mind you, I’m not sure why I bothered, because they aren’t really all that much to write home about, are they?

From there, my perambulations took me along the street into the place Générale de Gaulle.

This is much more like it. They seem to have pousseé‘d the bateau dehors a bit more here as we have seen before. The ski slope is certainly different, although I’m still not sure why they would want one.

But apart from that, it’s still pretty much the same as previous years and I do with that they would try to do something different next year.

As for the rue Lecampion, I’m not quite sure what to say.

What certainly didn’t help was that they put out the overhead lights just as I was preparing to photograph the street, so we were just left with the lights up the sides of the shops.

The overhead lights going out was the cue for me to go home. And by the time I returned here I reckoned that I hadn’t even encountered a dozen people wandering around.

There were a few noisy parties going on – even one in this building, and so I was grateful for 1.2 metres of solid Chausey granite walls between me and the rest of the world.

Not feeling in the least bit tired, I did some personal stuff on the computer. And no-one was more surprised than me to notice that the time was now 03:30. Where had the time gone?

Bedtime by now, I reckon, even if I didn’t feel like sleep. I have to make an effort.

And sleep I must have had. No alarm and so I awoke at 07:00. Not the slightest chance of me showing a leg at that time of morning.

And neither was there any chance at 09:00. This is after all a Bank Holiday, no alarm, I’m entitled to a rest, and I’ve had a late night too.

What is much more like it is … errr … 12:15. That’s a REAL lie-in.

As for any voyage that I might have had, well, what’s this bit about hunting furs last night? I don’t remember very much at all but apparently someone living in France who could catch 60 squirrels and skin them had the same style of life as someone normal, which of course I found hard to believe and the people to whom I was telling this story they found it hard to believe too but apparently that’s how it went and that’s really all that I remember about last night.

Breakfasting at 13:00 is much more like it too and so seeing as I had my fig roll and (finally) some strawberry jam. Yes, jam today. And I hope that it will last so that there will be jam tomorrow too. Perhaps I ought to think about making a jam tart.

So once the breakfast was over, there was work to be done. And as I promised myself, I attacked Project 008 for the radio.

That’s now finished and, even though I say it myself, I think that it’s the best to date. It’s not just that my technique is improving, but that instead of speaking “off the cuff” as I would normally like to do, I’ve started to write scripts.

That means that I’m not umming and ahhing as much (which means that there is less stuff to cut out) and I’m not pausing the dictaphone as often while I look for material, so it sounds much more seamless.

Once I’d finished it and played it through to make sure that it was as I wanted it with no mistakes, I went out for my afternoon walk.

With having not been out for any bread this morning (I’d missed lunch of course) I took the long way out right around the new bit of path that they had excavated after the rockfall and where I had met my Waterloo in May.

Crowds of people out and about, even if the weather was pretty miserable and you couldn’t see a thing.

Once I was out, I was going to stay out, and well out too.

My trip took me past the chantier navale where I could see what was going on. Pecheur de Lys was back on dry land after her little sojourn through the summer in the water. She’s looking rather sad though and could do with a coat of paint.

Spirit of Conrad was there too, as were the other two fishing boats. But there was no-one out there working on them. “Knocked off for the holidays” I reckoned.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed, which meant that I could take the path over the top and across to the other side.

Where the fish processing plant is, there is a huge concrete apron and the seabirds here have learnt quite quickly to take advantage of it.

This gull is just one of many that will scavenge a mollusc out of the silt and fly over here to drop it on the concrete to break it open, and then dive down for a feast. It really was quite impressive.

The wildlife kingdom is amazingly versatile and can adapt to most kinds of environment – if only humans would let them.

With nothing exciting going on in the inner harbour, I went for a walk over to the port de plaisance, the yacht harbour, to see what was going on there.

Not an awful lot, but there were a few boats that we have seen on several occasions, such as the lifeboat over there on the far side.

That has plenty of use of course and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw it disappear into an enormous wave during the storm that we had the other day.

Here’s another one that we have seen a few times in the past.

She’s Lys Noir, and when we’ve seen her moored up in the harbour, it’s usually been in the wet harbour at the back of where I’m standing, where boats like Thora, Normandy Trader and the gravel boats tie up.

So why she should be here, I don’t know. If she’s advertising cruises, she won’t have many people passing by to read the notices where she is.

This is a boat that we’ve seen even more often than Lys Noir.

She’s La Granvillaise and immediately recognisable by the “G90” on her bows. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she too spent some time in the chantier navale a while ago being given a good going-over.

But with all of these boats, there isn’t presumably much happening right now so they are laid up for the winter.

Nevertheless, with all of the tourists here right now, wandering aimlessly around the harbour, I’d have had them plastered with adverts for the summer season trips that they do, and put them where people could actually see tham.

My perambulations took me right along the seafront, such as it is here, through the new modern apartment complex at the end, and back into town via the rue St Gaud and the rue St Saveur.

But round the back of the Mairie in the rue du Commandant Yvon, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, is another set of electric vehicle charging points.

Europe needs to get its act together with the phasing out of new internal-combustion engines cars by 2040, and it’s good to see that here in France they are organising themselves.

And so I decided that I’ll keep a closer eye out to see what I could find, and I didn’t have to go far to find some more.

Not even 50 metres, I reckoned. Here are two more on the public car park around the corner off the Cours Jonville. So with the two that I saw at the railway station earlier this week, that makes 6 that I’ve found in Granville without looking too far.

And that’s not counting the half-dozen or so that are installed at the LeClerc supermarket on the edge of town.

Across the road from the car park I noticed this old Porsche Carrera.

Nice and interesting the car might be, but it wasn’t the car that caught my eye but its registration number. It has the “F” for France on the number plate of course, but the registration is hors serie – out of the usual run of numbers, whether pre-2009 or post-2009.

It could mean absolutely anything of course, so I shall have to make further enquiries about it. I did look at the insurance sticker in the window and that was displaying a “WW” series number, indicating Trade Plates.

Back home, I didn’t do a great deal. After all, it is a Bank Holiday.

later on, I made tea though.

Same as Christmas night as well. Seitan slices roasted in olive oil with onions, garlic, gravy and herbs, with roast potatoes in olive oil and mint. Vegetables included an endive, peas and carrots, green beans, a leek and some sprouts.

Followed by Christmas cake for pudding, you really cannot even begin to imagine just how delicious it all was.

Plenty of sprouts and endives left to finish off, ad a leek too, but I intend to make a leek and potato soup with that sometime soon.

This evening I was all alone on my little walk around. Not a soul out there. I managed my run too, and made it to the top of the first ramp.

So I’m off to bed now. It’s not early, because I’ve been busy. I found a “live” concert from the BBC with only a small audience, and as I have a project on the back burner that needs a small audience, I was stripping out the applause to use.

But here’s a thing – the applause is evidently over-dubbed, without question. And as they didn’t have enough material for the spot, they’ve extended the applauses by adding three or four together.

None of that is the issue though. What is the issue is that they seem to have done it all on a two-track recorder in stereo and without the overdubbing facility that multi-tracking can give you, they have simply joined the tracks together – and you can see all the joins. Tiny little milli-seconds of silence.

What I’ve had to do is to edit the applauses after I’ve stripped them out, so that the joins have gone and it all looks pretty seamless.

Given the facilities they have there, it’s not very good at all, especially when even a home-based four-track set-up like the cheap affair that I have can produce a seamless show.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job.

Thursday 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

… really difficult today today.

What went wrong was the fact that having had a long sleep during the afternoon, I wasn’t all that tired when I went to bed.

Nevertheless I went to sleep pretty quickly and even managed to go on something of a nocturnal ramble. But I’ll spare you the details because you are probably eating your tea right now.

However, I awoke at about 01:30 and that was that. I lay awake tossing and turning until the alarm went off at 06:00.

Just for a change I was up early this morning and after the usual performance and a shower, I set the washing machine off doing a load of washing.

Once that was on its way I went into town. But I didn’t get very far before I had to stop.

A few weeks ago I photographed them digging up the pavement in the rue des Juifs for the fibre-optic cable. But they had filled in the trenches and sealed it all over a good while ago.

But today, the fibre-optic people were there digging it all up again. I asked why but the guy to whom I spoke just shrugged his shoulders

Down at the quayside in the harbour Normandy Trader was there unloading.

I imagine that she had come in on the morning tide,and having missed to opportunity to photograph Thora yesterday, I took a quick photo of here while I was going into town.

After all, the speed in which these ships are turning round these days, she may well not be here by the time that I return.

And so I continued on my way to the Mairie for the Certificate that I needed. But there was no-one there to sign it so I had to go back later.

Next stop was the bank to change the standing order for my rent. The rental goes up at the beginning of next month so I had to do that.

Third stop was the railway station to pick up my tickets for my next trip to Leuven in May. I’m spinning my appointments out now to every 5 weeks so as to fit into a new revised plan.

Just then Rosemary telephoned me. So instead of going to LIDL (I don’t really need anything) I headed for home.

And I was almost right about Normandy Trader.

She had by now left her berth, and I just managed to catch her stern disappearing out of the harbour. Another quick turnround.

And I need to make the most of my sightings of her and of Thora and quite possibly the gravel boats too.

There’s no Customs Post here in Granville so when Brexit inevitably happens, these ships will need to go to a port that has a customs post – like St Malo. No wonder everyone here is so upset.

Rosemary and I had a really good chat for quite a considerable time as usual, and we put the world to rights while we were on the line. Ingrid came onto the internet too and we we had a chat too;

That took me nicely up to lunchtime, which was taken inside because by now the weather had broken and we were having a storm.

Once the weather eased off I went back into town, only to find that the Mairie here doesn’t issue the Certificates. They seem to think that it’s something that only applies to small communes where the mayor knows personally all of his inhabitants.

Anyway, I left them fighting with the prefecture over the issue and came home, being caught in yet another rainstorm;

I had a few things to do, but by 17:30 I was off with the fairies. Back in bed for a good 100 minutes fast asleep.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding, and then my walk around the headland. Away on the horizon I noticed something moving so the horizon out in the English Channel so I photographed it.

I was right about one thing – that it was indeed a huge ship.

No idea which one though because it was too far out, but I thought that it might be Pont Aven, the Brittany Ferries flagship heading to St Malo.

However, when I looked on live ships database later on in the evening, the recorded position at the time I took the photo seemed to correspond with the known position of Bretagne.

She’s one of the oldest ferries working the Channel, having been launched in 1989, and has a gross tonnage of about 24500 tonnes.

She’s actually living on borrowed time, having been taken out of service in 2016, but the contract for her replacement was cancelled and so she’s back on duty for now.

My perambulations took me round the Pointe du Roc and along the path at the top looking over the chantier navale.

There have been a few changes there today. The old trawler that’s been undergoing major reconstruction down at the bottom of the yard has now been brought up to the top end and put on chocs here. It’s weather protection has been removed too.

It’s been joined by another trawler too, the big pink and blue one on the left. No idea what they are doing with that one.

But I couldn’t go back into my building without taking a photo of probably the most beautiful sunset that I have ever seen.

It’s not very often that I produce a remarkable photograph but this one actually worked in spades. The sun was just peeking through the heavy clouds and was illuminating the buildings on the Ile de Chausey just like the spotlights might do on a stage set.

It’s really come out well and I’m very proud of this very dramatic photo.

So I’ll try for an early night tonight. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, but I still have plenty of things that need doing. it’s going to be a long day.

Tuesday 26th February 2019 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

… the water heater switch itself off this morning at 06:25 but if anyone thinks that there was a possibility of me leaping sprightly out of bed at that time of the morning, they are totally mistaken.

Instead, I turned over and went back to sleep. 08:25 is much more like it for someone recovering from a viral bronchitis.

Plenty of time though, to go off on a few little voyages.

We started off on a big ship last night and sailing down some channel, and a few fires breaking out here and there, including a large one that, in order to put this one out, I had to sail the ship into the lee of the shore. I was tempted to laugh off these attempts and dismiss them, pretend that they hadn’t happened, but somehow there were too many witnesses and there were too many signs of damage.
A little later on, I was wandering over some kind of park supervising the cleaning. There were papers littering the place, torn ones of the kind that would have been the track of a 1920s paperchase in a Public School. One of the young gardeners had made very little effort to clean them up, and I wondered why. He exlained to me that his blower wasn’t working properly so that there wasn’t very much that he could do. I asked him whether he had reported the matter or taken the machine to be prepared, to which he didn’t respond. So I gave him a little lecture.
Later still, I was in a room in my house. This was somewhere round by the east end of Crewe by where Nerina’s family lived. I had to go off to the south of the town so I wheeled out the old Honda Melody that I had when I first moved to Brussels. I wasn’t sure how much fuel was in it, and whether I ought to go down Earle Street on it to the cheap petrol station or down Macon Way to the petrol station on the roundabout by the station. The latter was a shorter route by a couple of hundred metres but the fuel was dearer, and bearing in mind the fuel consumption of the Melody, how much difference would it make? And then I had the big motor-scooter – a four-stroke foot-first thing that ought to have a run out too. There was also a bike lying on its side on the floor of what I imagined was my bedroom. The wheel was wedged up against the wall so when I moved it, the wheel spun round and the dynamo front light illuminated. And I couldn’t understand why there was sand all over the floor.
Finally … “thank God” – ed … I was at the seaside. We were sitting in a coach that was being used as a waiting room. A discussion broke out amongst a few people about some kind of pink pottery on board a ship and that corresponded with some kind of nocturnal voyage on which I’d departed years ago. I tried to insert it into the conversation but no-one paid any attention. So I ignored the conversation and tried to read the newspaper. But reading a newspaper on a coach even when it was stationary was rather difficult. Eventually I looked up to see that the people to whom I’d been talking had all moved on. Instead, there were other people, talking about Mr Soandso whose car had just been badly damaged by some kids whose sled had gone out of control and collided with the car.

I eventually crawled out of my bed and went off to sort out my medication and some time later, I went back for a pile of porridge for breakfast.

And having done that, I had some errands to run.

Not that I managed to go very far.

There has been some work going on at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs for a few days now so I was interested to see what was happening.

It looks as if they are replacing the window seals around the dormer windows in the roof by working on one of the mobile platforms that they had out here over the early part of the winter.

On the way down the hill I met the “electrician” from the other day. Busy erecting wooden shuttering around an empty shop front.

Just as I thought. Some electrician.

First stop was at the estate agent’s. I’d had a reminder about a bill that I’d missed and I needed to find out what.

Seems like I have the dustbin tax to pay.

Second stop was at the Mairie. I’ve decided to take the Bull by the Horns and tackle Madame la Maire about my little project.

It’s not easy because she’s busy, but it you don’t try, you don’t get.

I made it past the downstairs and as far as her secretary, and the latter took a pile of notes. We shall see where we go with this, but at least I’ve put my feet on the road.

Final stop was at the bank – firstly to pay the dustbin tax of course, and secondly, to find out why my telephone provider had sent me a reminder for a bill.

It seems that it’s not from the telephone provider at all but, as I suspected, one of these scams that is going around.

I checked at the Telephone company, and they confirmed it.

Back down the hill in town I noticed that they are pushing along with the preparations for Carnaval.

The roundabout that was there the other day has gone, and in its place is a stage. I seem to remember there being some music on there last year, as well as the MC of the whole proceedings.

I hope that it’s going to be a little more lively this year than last.

Round the corner and up the hill, and a temporary road closure.

The rue des Juifs is where they park some of the floats for the carnaval, and so they are clearing the streets of some of the street furniture to give them more room to manoeuvre.

Outside one of the cafés here is an old rowing boat that is used by customers to sit in and admire the evening. They are in the middle of winching it off to I’ve no idea where.

Back up here I carried on with updating the blog but it was soon lunchtime.

And it was such a beautiful afternoon that I made some butties and went to sit outside on the wall.

While I was there I took a few photos with the different lenses of the camera and edited them.

You can see the results down below and these shouls give you some kind of idea of what the camera is – or isn’t – doing.

After lunch, I attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland yet again.

A mere 87 minutes on the telephone and not much further forward either and this is going to be a very long job to persuade them to do what I want to do, and take me a great deal of effort.

I just don’t know why I’m stuck with the useless pile of bankers that I seem to have acquired. I am really totally and absolutely full of dismay about all of this.

Totally fed up, I went off for a walk around the walls. And took another pile of photos on different settings.

Strangely, it seems to work like it should on automatic exposure, and about three stops up on manual exposure – in other words, it needs twice as much light than it says that it’s receiving.

I’ve had a look on the internet to see if there’s any firmware update, but not at all. So I’ve no idea now.

No tea tonight. I had a few biscuits and one of Jenny’s chocolates, followed by a chocolate soya drink. Not that I couldn’t have eaten anything but I’m trying to keep some weigh off now that I’ve got it off.

I don’t suppose that I’ll be able to keep it up but that’s no reason for not trying.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc in the pleasant evening, and to play with the camera again – this time with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

Of course it’s very difficult to tell what’s happening with that lens because I only every use it in the dark and set it by eye anyway, frame by frame.

But they don’t look like they used to, that’s for sure, especially after all of the work that I’ve been putting in.

Round to the entrance to the harbour to watch the trawlers come in with their catch.

This would have been a beautiful photo in the right conditions with reliable equipment, and I was expecting to have done something much better than this after all of the practice that I’ve been doing.

I’m going to have to upgrade the camera some time soon, which is a shame.

So, dismayed, I’m off to bed. An early night. I’ve decided to start with the alarms tomorrow and see how I’m going to get on.

——— RANGE ONE ——-

beach quay herel granville manche normandy france

——- RANGE TWO ——–

donville les bains city walls granville manche normandy france

crowds beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

trawler coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about my blog, and one of the (many) reasons why I keep it, is so that when I have an altercation with someone, I have it chapter and verse about when and where it took place, and what was said.

So that way, whenever I’m having an argument with a semi-official body, I have the notes to prove my point.

But let’s not get ahead of ouselves.

Last night after having done almost everything that there was to do, I sat down and watched a DVD, something that i haven’t done for quite some time. Last night’s entertainment (if that’s the correct word) was Batman (the Movie). A totally absurd, incredibly camp film that is so bad that it’s good.

And what is probably the funniest part of the film is Adam West trying so hard not to laugh at some of the lines. Brings back many happy memories of the 1960s.

Despite the early night it was a struggle to come up for air this morning and I was a little later than usual leaving the stinking pit. But a breakfast and a hot shower brought me sort-of into the Land of the Living.

First thing was to put the bathroom back together and then to attack the living room. Do it while I’m in the mood. So that’s something like, stuff is sorted out, more stuff has been found (including my missing 32GB memory stick) and more stuff thrown away. And it was quite profitable too, because I found €1:03 too.

Spend, spend, spend!

And I’m glad that I did it too then and there because I didn’t have time after that.

Looking through the e-mails that had come in through the night, there were two that were very important and needed to be dealt with on the spot. And that involved a phone call to my bankers in the UK.

I’d tried a few weeks ago to set up an on-line banking service, but it had spectacularly failed, so I put it out of my mind. That was the first thing.

And despite what they told me, they had indeed been notified of my new telephone number. It’s there in black-and-white in my letter of 19th January, and when I had an argument with the bank’s customer service, they telephoned me back on that number on 6th February.

And since then, they’ve been sending me security codes when I’ve been using my UK credit card.

The second thing though is that I need to make a substantial payment to North America, and make it quickly. And I can’t do it by telephone despite whatever pleading I can use. It needs to be done in writing, although a fax machine is acceptable.

I threw away my old fax machine in 2011 so this meant a good hunting down of a fax machine in Granville.

First thing was to type out a letter, and while I was at it to deal with some more post that needed answering. That took me all the way up to 13:45. And then into town to search for a fax machine.

No go at the library. The Tourist Information Office was closed, the Mairie didn’t have one, and neither did the Post Office. But the Post office sent me across the road to the newspaper offices. They had a fax machine, but it was private.

But the newspaper shop next door advertised photocopies and photo-scanning, so I went in there. And sure enough, a very friendly newspaper shop owner had a public fax machine, so that was that.

I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and came back.

Lunch was exceptionally late and I was joined by no one but two lizards who spent more time fighting over a lump of pear than they did actually eating it. And that was surprising because there was more than enough for two.

Having had a lengthy walk just now, I abandoned the idea of going out this afternoon.

And so I was in my apartment to notice one of the school buses take the wrong turning up to the High School and get stuck in the gateway to the Place d’Armes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a couple of buses do that earlier this year, but at least there was much less drama associated with this one. With a couple of bits of shunting he managed to get round quite comfortably.

Instead of my walk I sat down on the sofa with a cold drink, and the efforts of earlier were clearly far too much for me because I was out like a light for a good half-hour. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

But I managed to fit in my guitar practice, and then made tea. A burger in a bap with baked potato. And remind me next time that when I go to defrost the burger in the microwave, to take it out of the plastic bag first.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, and the view across to Jersey was one of the clearest that I have ever had.

If you notice the radio mast over there, it’s really hard to believe that that is 34 miles away from here. But it is.

There was no-one about so i had another run. 110 paces tonight. But I was disappointed that the last two runs haven’t shown up on my fitbit. It’s disappointing to say the least. I’m clearly not going fast enough, but you can’t run before you’ve learnt to walk, can you?

Round the other side of the headland I could see that we’ve had a whole pile of deliveries to the gravel bins.

There’s gravel all over the place again, and even a couple of hundred tonnes of sand.

Does this mean that we’re going to have another gravel boat some time soon? I shall have to pay much more attention that I’m doing, otherwise I’ll miss it.

Tonight I think that I’ll watch another film. I’m becoming quite bourgeois in my sentiments these days. I’m going to have to snap out of that.

But one thing that I did during the odd period here and there of lucidity was to finally finish the blog entry for one day of my trip to the desert. And never mind finishing it, it almost finished me.

It still needs to be poof-read, have the tpying examined and have a spelchek, but it’s all of 5645 words, a new record and by an enormous margin too. You can read it at your leisure.

I deserve a medal.

EPIC HALL

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