Category Archives: Leclerc

Saturday 6th March 2021 – SOMETHING RATHER UNUSUAL …

… happened this morning. The alarms didn’t go off and I’ve no idea why.

Not that this is a surprise in itself, but the surprising thing was that despite something of a late night again, I was wide-awake at 06:08. And I don’t understand that at all.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working the radio for someone last night. They couldn’t come. I was having my rock show but was doing it live. There was no power and everything was being generated by wind and solar. It was going OK but it was a shop at the same time and I was having to sell stuff and I didn’t know where half of the stuff was. Someone came in and asked for a certain brand of tobacco but I couldn’t see it and I couldn’t sell it to them. They were all lounging around the wrong side of the counter anyway. When the programme finished the Chinese Embassy just threw out a pile of cakes from their window into the ground. I sat down to do the cashing up but I couldn’t concentrate. There was a Peter Hammill album playing in the background, one that I hadn’t heard before. I just couldn’t get the maths and the additions right about the profits and loss of the day. In the end I decided that I’d unplug everything and go home and do the working out at home but I couldn’t get this record to stop. When I finally did manage to stop I couldn’t find the stuff that I’d set aside by the record turntable to bring home with me. This was all extremely frustrating.

Later I’d been in a pub in Crewe, the Duke of Bridgewater where I’d bumped into a well-known guitarist. We jammed together and and decided to do this again. For the next occasion I wanted to bring a drummer and I knew exactly who I wanted but try as I might I couldn’t get hold of him. The only drummer I could find was one who wasn’t as good and I was worried that if he came, the guitarist wouldn’t be interested in doing anything further but if I couldn’t find the one that I wanted, what else could I do?

This was the usual scenario of doubt that goes through my mind every so often during the night. We’re back here again, aren’t we?

Part of the day has been spent dealing with merging the old back-up disks and the like and at long last I have integrated everything into just one archives. Tons of stuff went into the bin although there wasn’t enough to free up the space that I need to move the back-up files from the main disk in the computer. But once I get to reviewing the directories and files in the archive, there will be much more room to be going on with.

There were several breaks in all of this.

Firstly there was a shower and a general clean-up, and then I went out to the shops. Nothing very special in Noz and nothing really special in LeClerc either. In fact I wasn’t really out there all that long

back here I carried on with what I was doing but unfortunately I crashed out yet again. Probably one of the longest spells that I’d had too – about 90 minutes or so. That was extremely depressing.

As a result, instead of having my lunch at 13:00 it was 14:30 or thereabouts when I finally went to make my butties.

There was the afternoon walk around the headland as usual.

The weather was really nice out there. It was quite cold – very cold in fact – but bright sunshine. This kind of weather had brought the crowds out and we could see plenty of people wandering around and playing about on the beach, even if the tide wasn’t that far out.

Once again, there was plenty of haze about out to sea so I couldn’t see as far as Jersey or down the Brittany coast, but in the other direction down past Donville les Bains and inland towards Cerences and that way it was reasonably clear.

It wasn’t just down on the beach that there were crowds.

The path along the headland was swarming with people too. There were crowds of them out and about swarming around on the path and on the lawn round by the Pointe du Roc in the beautiful weather that we were having. Not a cloud in the sky this afternoon.

And as you notice, the wearing of facemasks was definitely optional. I really don’t understand what goes through the minds of some people. This last week or two has shown a plateau of between 20,000 and 25,000 people with no sign of reducing. And it won’t ever reduce to anything like reasonable numbers if people don’t take this pandemic seriously

There was no change in occupancy in the chantier navale today. Still the four boats that were there on Thursday.

But there’s yet another change in the boats that are grounded over by the Fish Processing Plant. The little old shellfish boat that was there yesterday is still there today, but she’s now been joined by another one that has been left to settle into the silt.

They aren’t quite aground just yet. When they overhauled the harbour a couple of years ago they dug out a channel alongside the wharf at the Fish Processing Plant in order to prolong the amount of thime that the Plant was accessible. It’s still holding water right now even though the surrounding harbour bed is drying out rapidly.

A few of the fishing boats were out at sea but several others are still moored in the harbour.

Amongst others, we can see La Grande Ancre and, on the right, what looks like Le Pearl. Also down there is Anakena, the boat that was on its way to Northern Europe but which was caught in the Covid lockdown and hasn’t moved since.

Back here I had a coffee and a slice of my cake and then made a start on the arrears of my journey to Central Europe. I’m just pulling in to Lech right now, where I spent two or three happy days relaxing after my long drive from France and my efforts back at my old house in Virlet.

There was football tonight on the internet – top-of-the-table TNS against Bala Town. Despite it finishing 0-0, it was an extremely exciting match. Bala had the best of the play at the start although TNS gradually took control of the match. But right at the end it was TNS with their backs to the wall as Bala Town pushed forward to grab a winner.

Exciting it was, but it would have been even more exciting had the referee given Bala Town a penalty for a handball by a defender. It’s all very well if the referee hadn’t seen the action but in this case he indicated “shoulder” when it was quite clearly the lower arm, well extended from the body.

And had he sent off the TNS player who deliberately elbowed the Bala Town winger Will Evans in the face, right in front of the linesman, it would have been more exciting still.

What with the sending off of Disney a few months ago for Connah’s Quay, it’s no surprise that many people in Welsh football are of the opinion that there are more than God and the Angels looking after TNS.

Tea was taco rolls, made with the left-over stuffing from Thursday, with jam pie for pudding.

Now that my notes are finished, I’m going to make my kefir for the next batch and then I’m off to bed. A nice lie-in on Sunday and then I need to catch up with the photos that I hven’t had time to do today.

Saturday 20th February 2021 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the waves that are crashing down on the sea wall at the port this afternoon in the gale that was blowing outside this afternoon, I was trying desperately to struggle out of bed.

The two alarms had gone off and I’d even heard the one that I’d set to remind me that the third one is about to go off and give me a three-minute warning to rise.

However I felt myself drifting away and I just about managed to pull myself up out of bed in time to beat it. I didn’t want to miss out on another complete week of beating the third alarm call. It’s not every week these days that I can do it and two complete weeks on the run was is a memorable achievement these days, not to be discarded lightly.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There wasn’t anything on there but I have a completely vivid memory of watching through a window as two white dolphins were leaping up and down in the water, calling my brother to look but he didn’t have the least interest in coming to see the spectacle.

Now that my magnum opus is done for now, the next task is to continue with the subsequent entries and make sure that they are up to date. And I even managed to do NEXT DAY’S ENTRY.

After a shower, I headed off to the shops to stock up with stuff for the next few days and have a few bits and pieces left over for when I come back from Leuven.

Noz didn’t have very much worthwhile except for a new Sports Bag. I’d been looking for one to take with me to Leuven so I don’t have to struggle with a shopping back to bring back the supplies. Black and yellow too!

At LeClerc, no confrontations or anything like that on the car park this week, and inside there wasn’t anything exciting or interesting or useful on sale this weekend. All in all it was rather boring. There was however 20 cents off soya milk so I bought as much as I could carry away because the sell-by date is a year hence and I can certainly use it.

Such are the highlights of my life these days, hey?

One thing that I had done was to go to the techy bit of the shop to see if they had a travel keyboard that might work with the laptop that I repaired. It was a forlorn hope anyway.

Back here I had a mug of hot chocolate and a slice of my sourdough fruit bread and carried on with my work. However at some point I crashed out – crashed out good and proper too and it was another one of those “feeling really awful” ones from which I seem to take an age to come round.

As a result, lunch was rather late today.

One task that needed doing is to feed the mixtures here – the sourdough and the ginger bug. They both seem to be doing quite well and the ginger beer that I made earlier in the week, after a very slow start, is now fermenting nicely. I’ve been venting the pressure on the ginger beer and the kefir every half-day and at last, this afternoon the beer almost presented me with a gusher.

One more feed of those on Wednesday morning before I head off for Leuven and that will see them right for when I come back.

It was a beautiful afternoon today even with the gale-force winds that were blowing and it had brought out the crowds in force.

I went out dressed for the Arctic temperatures only to find that it was a balmy 14°C – or maybe that should be “barmy” given the fact that we are in the middle of winter. But the crowds down on the beach were enjoying themselves. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so many people down there at this time of year.

It’s not as if they had a great deal of beach to go at either because the tide hasn’t gone all that far out right now. But there are still quite a few people having a go at the peche à pied, scrabbling around on the rocks.

Having satisfied my curiosity down on the beach I headed off along the footpath on top of the cliffs.

Considering that this is mid-February and there was a howling gale blowing, I couldn’t believe the crowds of people who were out and about. Everyone was jostling everyone else on the footpaths just like on an August Bank Holiday Weekend. The path down by the Gymnase Jean galfione was packed.

Despite how bright and sunny it looked this afternoon, there was quite a haze about. It wasn’t possible to see out as far as Jersey and it was just as bad down the Brittany coast this afternoon. Warm as it might be this afternoon, it wasn’t warm enough to burn away the haze.

Across the lawn and the crowded car park I went down to the headland. Nothing much happening there at the moment so I turned away to walk on down the path.

But just as I moved away I felt the sun come out from out behind a cloud so I turned round. And there was the sun streaming down right into the middle of the bay with another one of these TORA TORA TORA moments.

Having photographed that I pushed on past the waves roaring into the sea wall with quite a force considering how shallow the water is there right now, and had a look over into the chantier navale

There were a couple of guys clambering all over the yacht that’s been in there since time immemorial . And just as I went to take a photo of them, they dodged back down into the cabin.

“Obviously very shy” I mused to myself. It wasn’t my day today.

There were fewer people around here on this side of the headland so, taking my time, I went to see what was going on in the port.

Not many fishing boats out at sea by the looks of things this afternoon. There are plenty of them tied up at their berths. Granville and Victor Hugo, the Channel Island ferries, are there too as you might expect. Apart from a brief flurry of activity in June, they haven’t sailed on a paid voyage for almost a year.

The future is looking quite bleak for the Channel Island ferries right now, and the Joly France ferries to the Ile de Chausey aren’t doing all that much better. I know that I haven’t been out as regularly as I have been in the past, but it’s been a good while since I’ve seen one of those out and about with passengers.

Back here I had a hot coffee and then carried on with the work that I’d been doing and there are now several days’ worth of updates that I’ve completed. I knocked off at about 18:30 to telephone Ingrid for a chat and then went for tea.

Baked potatoes, veg and one of those breaded soya fillets of which I’d bought a large supply from Noz ages ago. And the last of the apple crumble. For the couple of days that I’m here next week, I’ll defrost some slices of apple pie from the freezer.

Having written my notes, I’m not going to be up for very long. That repairing a disk failed – overnight it reached 30% before the repair crashed. But the drive is still recognised so there’s hope for it. There’s a diagnostic tool that I can try to see if I can access the files but it’s very complicated so I need to be at my best to work it to make sure that I don’t make an error.

Saturday 13th February 2021 – IT’S USUALLY FRIDAY …

… that is considered to be a very unlucky day. But for me, it’s usually some other day on which the 13th falls.

It started off really well too because I beat the third alarm to my feet yet again. That’s every day this week.

And I’m sure that you are wondering what is the secret of this new vitality. And it’s really quite simple. I’ve decided that there’s too much of a gap between the second and third alarms, giving me too much time to fall back into a deep sleep. And so I’ve inserted an extra alarm call to stop me dropping off. Whether it works in the long time, I really don’t know. We shall have to see.

So there I was, up on my feet (well, sort-of) when the alarm went off and that will come as a surprise when you consider that I hadn’t gone to bed until quite late. And according to the dictaphone, I’d travelled miles and miles during the night too – so you can tell what kind of day I was going to have.

We started off talking about food last night. There was some food somewhere, all kinds of curries and things like that. 3 different varieties. I was a chef whose recipe had been turned down by this place. It preferred its own recipes to ones from a top London chef. There was much more to it than this, some of which I can’t remember and some more that, as you are probably eating your tea, I don’t think that you would want to hear it

A little later on, my friends from the Wirral came to see me and had a very long chat about my health issues, that kind of thing. I wasn’t convinced at first that they were taking this seriously but later on they certainly were. I told them that the major problems were that my employers were being only a bunch of temps they shifted their offices every few days and we ended up in places miles away from any station or so on and walking takes hours. This is what’s going to finish me off more than anything, walking from the railway station to this office. They told me to take good care of myself – at least if the offices are going to kill me I should do it in comfort, something like that, I can’t remember now. I thought “that’s not much good to me”. They arrived at my apartment while I was still in bed so I had to get up and go into another room to get changed and get ready while they waited for me but instead they came into the room where I was getting changed which was a bit unfortunate.

Somewhat later, I had to go somewhere and I had someone with me. We had to catch a train at Crewe Station. The train pulled up right by us, the first carriage, a non-corridor train so we climbed in through the first door. Just as we got in the train took off and I nearly fell back out again – the door wasn’t shut. We had to wedge ourselves into a seat. Someone noticed that I had a book in English and was asking about it. I said that I’d got it from so-and-so. I said that it was one of 7 English books that he had. he didn’t have all that many and the guy seemed to be in agreement. Another guy was sitting there reading an old Bartholomews Map. He was talking, looking at the map saying “I hope that we’re going down the West End of Crewe. I said “we might end up going that way. He asked “where was the West End of Crewe?”. I replied “if we aren’t careful we’ll end up driving through it”. We got down to the end of Delamere Street and I expected the bus to turn left then turn right at the lights and along Wistaston Road but it turned right instead, heading back towards the top end of Victoria Street. I imagined that it was going to go down West Street so I said “it looks like you’re going to get the West End now”. We drove down there and I was appalled at all the that were empty and boarded up and being demolished. It was like a war zone. I’d never seen anything like this. He said “it’s not looking very good for Crewe is it?”. I replied “you’re absolutely right there”. We got to the end of Victoria Street but turned right instead of left. I thought “this bus is going back to the bus station now”. We had to do a bit of a U-turn on the quiet and work out how much it was going to cost this guy and somehow turn the bus round without he guy noticing so that we could go back the right way.

As an aside, before going to bed last night I’d been looking at some photos of the demolition of the huge Shopping Centre and Bus Station in Crewe town centre. Built in the late 1950s as “the pride of South Cheshire” and demolished after just 60 years or so while buildings around it built 100 years or so earlier still stand proudly erect. And the demolition site really DID look like a war zone. And children of the future won’t have the public conveniences on the bus station with all of the artwork on the walls that was largely responsible for me passing my “O” Level Biology.

There was one of these Raleigh Runabout-type standard 1950s type of mopeds, a blue one. There were a man and a woman on it. The man might have been my father and the woman might have been someone else. He was a little older than he was. We were at my house, the family home and my brother was painting a painting-by-numbers kit. He’d done several abstracts like this and I was wondering if I could take one home with me to my house. There was one that was warped a little but wasn’t too bad. He said that he was going to present it to “that girl who taught us about the metric system”. “Ahh – Pamela Smith”. “Yes, that’s right. Would you mind if I were to present it to her?”. I replied “you can present as many paintings as you like to Pamela Smith as far as I’m concerned”. I went to make a coffee. We were talking about things and I asked “where’s the ice-cream that you bought the other day?”. He replied “it’s in the fridge”. We took the ice cream out and I took a scoop and went to put it in my coffee – hot chocolate, rather, and add some fresh chocolate sauce, real decadence. Just then the front door opened but we couldn’t hear a thing. No-one was coming in. I asked my brother “what’s happening now?”. He replied “it’s dad coming home”. At that moment father walked in but he left the doors open, the door open to the street, everything. There was this thing about a project that would take about a month to do but if we were going to have to do it now in the middle of winter it would take him absolutely ages in his spare time at night because he wasn’t working overtime any longer so he had all of this spare time.

I’ve forgotten where I was in this (that was what I said and how I opened this speech, so it seems that I might have missed something out) so I went into a chip shop to buy some chips. The woman behind the counter asked me what I wanted so I replied “a bag of chips” but I couldn’t see anything else that I could eat so I just ended up with a bag of chips. While I was there someone came over to talk to me and the subject of George Formby came up. I agreed with what he was saying. He said “do you know George Formby?”. I told him about Hans who had left some cassettes behind. The guy said “I bet you thought that they were something else, didn’t you?”. I replied “I knew that there wouldn’t be any nude women because he’s not that type”. We began to talk about films at the local cinema. They had a late-night showing at 01:20 on Saturday night/Sunday morning. And somewhere in all of this the corner shop on the apex of the junction between Gresty Road and South Street figured in it.

And even more interestingly, I’d been watching a George Formby film while I was having my evening meal.

So after my marathon ramble during the night, I’m surprised that I’m back even now.

Transcribing all of that took me right up to shower time, and then having set the washing machine off on a cycle (a clever washing machine, mine) I set off for the shops. Again, there wasn’t anything of any excitement and I forgot half of the stuff that I needed from LeClerc. Mind you, I have never ever seen LeClerc with so many people in there doing their shopping. There were queues for miles, as well as an altercation that I witnessed on the car park.

While I was out there, I went across the road and bought a new hat (that isn’t all that much warmer than the one that I was wearing) but they had more of the tactile gloves, the same as the ones that I bought 2 years ago and left in my jacket pocket in a hotel in Calgary. And they are nice and warm.

By the time that I returned home it was late and I was cold. It wasn’t worth having any breakfast. Instead, I sorted out a few things here that needed doing, including charging the battery for the NIKON 1 J5 as it had gone flat on me yet again.

While I was at it, I charged up the battery for the NIKON D3000. I was planning to take that for a walk – the first time for a year for it to have a run out. And then, I … errr … went off with the fairies.

After I recovered from my repose I headed off out for my afternoon walk, the freezing weather notwithstanding.

There were very few people out there walking around this afternoon which is hardly a surprise. The tide was way, way out do we were unlikely to see a fishing boat making its way back into port. But there were a few people brave enough to go for a walk down there on the beach this afternoon and I didn’t envy them at all.

The path was churned up again with all of the melted snow but there was still plenty of ice and so on in the shade where the sun hadn’t reached it. That’s going to be there for quite a while, I reckon.

Off I trotted across the lawn and the car park and down to the end of the headland.

This afternoon, my walk was rather later then usual and so by the time that I reached the end, the sun was starting to sink slowly down towards the horizon. It’s been a good while since I’ve been able to take a photo of the sun like this.

It wasn’t very clear out there either. We can’t see the Brittany coast out across the bay this afternoon. But there is a little bit of sunshine peering through a gap in the clouds and lighting up the water.

We can also see plenty of ice-hard snow on the top of the cliff here too. We’re still in the grip of winter.

As it happened, I wasn’t the only person out there enjoying the view, such as it was, this afternoon.

Down there right on the point by the old watchman’s cabin was someone else surveying the scene. He’s certainly dressed for the weather.

Have I mentioned anything about the watchman’s cabin – the cabanon de guet – down there yet? The watchman served two purposes – firstly he would be looking out for the English (and later British) fleet that might come a-raiding. From the beginning of the 18th Century right up until the end of the Napoleonic Wars the British and the French were in almost perpetual conflict.

The second reason was a civilian matter. The route between the Channel Islands and the French mainland was a smuggler’s paradise as all kinds of contraband passed up and down the bay. Consequently they had watchmen positioned up and down the coast to look out for boats passing by, just in case they were engaged in smuggling.

Further along the path, there was no change in the occupancy of the chantier navale so I went to see what was going on in the harbour.

Nothing much happening there either. Charles-Marie is down there all wrapped up for the winter, and alongside her is the boat Akena. I’m not sure what’s happening with her now. At one stage she was heading to the far north but couldn’t travel because of the virus lockdown. She hasn’t moved since.

As for the people who were crewing her, I’m not sure whatever happened to them. They were at one time living on board but as we aren’t allowed out at nights these days, I can’t go to see if there are any lights in her cabin during the evening.

By now I was freezing to death so I went on home for a nice hot coffee, and then spent the rest of the early evening editing the photos for the Greenland trip in 2019.

Tea was out of a tin tonight. At Noz, they have been seeing tins of chick pea curry so I bought some a few weeks ago but I’d never managed to try one yet. They had more in today so I bought some more. And to my surprise, they aren’t bad at all, considering it’s all tinned stuff. If they have any more next week I’ll buy some more.

But now it’s bed time. I’m exhausted after today but at least it’s Sunday so I can have a lie-in. And then I really MUST book my journey to Leuven otherwise everything will be sold out.

Saturday 6th February 2021 – HAVING MOANED …

… incessantly with all of this “woe is me” nonsense about how I can’t get out of bed any more in the mornings, I have to say that when the first alarm went off this morning I’d been out of bed already for a good 8 minutes. And by the time that the third alarm went off 15 minutes later I was already sitting at the computer doing some work.

All of which goes to prove that the problem such as it is isn’t a medical issue but more a personal issue because I can clearly do it when I have to.

What the issue was this morning was that I was dictating the account of a voyage and the batteries went flat in the dictaphone. And for some unknown reason the spare batteries that I keep by the bed were flat too. And so I had to go off and track some others down in the living room.

And by the time that I’d done that, there wasn’t much point in going back to bed just for a couple of minutes otherwise we might have had another wasted morning.

So as for where I’d been during the night, there wasn’t really all that much that was exciting. I had to go somewhere and so for no reason at all I leapt on board a ferry which was the Staten Island ferry but wasn’t and sailed across the bay or river to the other side. There were about 3 or 4 people on there and I stayed on there ready to come back without even bothering to get off the boat. Gradually a few people came on to join me. There was a guy there who was in charge and there was some kind of display stand with newspapers on there and things. I was casually reading a newspaper that was on there. This guy came past and he was talking about me to someone else. My ears pricked up. It turned out that I’d been given a guide with my mobile phone. I’d filled it in but I knew all of the stuff because I’d had mobile phones for years so I hadn’t really bothered much with the guide. It was there so he gave it back to me. Then they started to serve the tea on board this boat so we all stood in a queue. I was with a Flemish guy, next to him. He heard some English people talking – apparently one of the English people had said that now that we are in Flanders we’ll have to learn to speak Flemish. The Flemish guy turned to me and said “that’s a bit crazy, isn’t it? Everyone here in Flanders speaks English”. What was strange about this was that I could actually smell the tea and coffee while this dream was taking place and I’ve no idea who might have been brewing up by the air went to my apartment.

Later on there was me, a guy and a couple of other women. I can’t remember the beginning about this but we had to go and take some things round to see from school (who incidentally is making his debut appearance in my voyages even if he didn’t actually make an appearance), why we would do that I don’t know. I’d made tea and my brother was late coming in. he was carrying a gun – he’d been to fetch a rifle and I was annoyed by this. I didn’t want to have firearms in the house. I told my old standby about when I was working with that boss and I was supposed to carry a firearm and he asked why I wasn’t. I explained and he asked “what would you do if we were held up somewhere”? I replied that I would rely on the force of my own personality. But no-one seemed to think that that was funny. I explained to my brother “the tea’s here, the tea’s there, there’s something here, there’s something there. Make your own tea”. He pulled a face and started to complain. I said “it won’t take long. Even if you put a potato in the microwave it only takes 5 minutes”. I collected what I had to take and I had to take the dog for a walk with me. There were 2 or 3 dogs and I kept on getting the wrong dog. I knew which dog it should be that I should be taking but I kept on being confused. Eventually I sorted it out with the help of someone and a little girl said that she would come with me for the walk. We set out and walked down the street straight into a police barrage. Of course I’d forgotten to fill in my form – it was after 18:00. Luckily I had the dog with me so I said to this policeman “I’m taking the dog for a walk but I’ve forgotten all about the curfew” so he smiled and let me go. This was where I met up with this guy and these 2 women. We talked about places where we had worked, the humour and the acronyms that we had made up, like Work Experience on Employers Premises which made WEEP which is of course what people did who were on the scheme when they received their pay. I said that there were 3 places where I’d worked which had been the most humorous and had the most sense of humour, Crewe, Stockport and Stoke on Trent, and then only half of Crewe.

By now it was shower time, following which it was time to make an early start for the shops.

Nothing of any interest in NOZ but they had a pile of different varieties of canned drinks so I bought a selection. I like to vary my diet as often as I can, and NOZ is the place to do that because they sell all kinds of end-of-range stuff and bankrupt stock from all over Europe and even North Africa at times and quite often there’s some interesting stuff that I don’t normally see.

LeClerc had another pile of fresh veg on offer. 2kg of potatoes at €1:16, 2 heads of broccoli at €0:99 and two bell peppers at €0:99 will do me nicely. Some of the broccoli I’ll blanch and freeze tomorrow as I won’t be able to eat it all at one go.

3kg of carrots at €1:60 was quite tempting too but there simply isn’t enough room in the freezer for that.

Back here I made my hot chocolate and cut a slice of sourdough fruit loaf then I came in here to wade through a pile of e-mails and I managed to file quite a few in the great waste-paper bin in the sky before I was … obliged to close my eyes for a while. 90 minutes actually, and I could have done without that.

The potato and leek soup didn’t look up to much and so that went the way of the west. I had to have sandwiches instead. Next time I’ll leave the eyes in the potatoes so it’ll see me through the week.

After lunch and my little rest, for some reason I was feeling quite productive so I bashed out another 1,0000 words about the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane as well as updating a previous blog entry from several years ago with more stuff that I had found while researching.

Another thing that I did was in connection with something that I found while sorting through the e-mails. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m having issues about the Covid vaccination, or lack thereof. There was a newspaper article that I had somehow missed about “how to apply for a vaccine” which although not being of much use to me, it nevertheless gave details of a website run by the Health Authorities.

It took me about an hour of surfing through it until I found what I was looking for – “if you have any more questions not covered by our FAQ please complete this form …” and so I did, setting out my case as fully as I could.

Not that it will do any more good than what I’ve been doing so far, but any straw is good enough to clutch at because you never know what might happen. And it reminds me of the story that I heard about Fish, after he had left Marillion, made contact with Rick Wakeman and the ghost of Sandy Denny to produce an album that would be entitled “Clutching at Strawbs”.

In between all of this, I broke off for my afternoon perambulation.

Earlier on, on the way back from the shops I noticed the trailer from the Nautical School parked up in the car park, and sure enough, there were several yachts sailing about offshore in the bay and in the English Channel.

The morning had been miserable, grey and overcast but it must have warmed up and cleared up quite quickly later in the morning after I had returned from the shops because it was another nice and pleasant afternoon, even if the wind has risen up yet again.

The views outside were really magnificent today and in the fine weather conditions you could see for miles.

All the way down the coast way past Hauteville sur Mer and the Sienne estuary. In fact the wind turbines at the back of Coutances are clearly visible with the naked eye.

For a change this afternoon, I went for my wander around the footpath underneath the walls instead of my usual route around the headland. It’s been ages since I’ve walked this way … “and anyone who mentions “talcum powder” is disqualified” – ed … and I was keen to see what changes (if any) there had been.

And despite the dry, sunny windy weather of the last couple of days, the path was still muddy and depressing.

There were hordes of people milling around outside today, both on the footpath and down on the beach and promenade at the Plat Gousset, all taking advantage of the unseasonal sunny weather.

In fact, thinking on, coming back from the shops this morning the roads were packed coming into town and once I’d wrestled my way out of the shopping zone I came home via the back streets to avoid the jams in the town centre.

It makes me wonder whether it’s school holiday time and all of the tourists from the Paris region have come here to their second homes and holiday bolt-holes. And that’s bad news for me because the past has shown that they bring the Covid with them and the infection rate here soars upwards.

And here I am, not able to have a vaccination.

On the way back I went to see how they are progressing with laying the new gas pipe in the Rue St Michel.

And the answer to that question, as we expected, is “very slowly”. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of urgency amongst the Belgian and French workforce.

Back here I had a coffee and carried on with my tasks until guitar-playing time, which was spent completely with the acoustic guitar. I have an idea of an hour’s worth of music that I can play comfortably and sing with the acoustic guitar, including, surprisingly, Fleetwood Mac’s “Behind the Mask”.

That song is not as complicated as it sounds when you first hear it. What sounds like a complicated chord arrangement can be played by just moving your fingers around the derivatives of the “A” chord. But I can’t make the lyrics fit the beats at the moment.

Anyway, I wanted to have a work through it and see how it would come out and what I can say is that it has potential. Give it a couple of years.

Tea was a burger with pasta followed by apple pie. The remainder of the apple pie will go in the freezer now until later in the week because tomorrow I’m going to make a rice pudding. If I have the oven on for the pizza I may as well make the most of it.

But I must remember to put the pudding on a tray in the oven as it has a tendency to boil over.

Saturday 30th January 2021 – AS EXPECTED …

… I’ve had a pretty miserable day today. No surprise here of course.

Although the alarms went off as usual, I didn’t take much notice of it at all and it was actually 08:15 when I finally found the energy to leave my bed.

After a shower and having set the washing machine en route I headed off to do my shopping, not feeling in the least bit like it either.

There wasn’t anything special anywhere where I went. Just a few different cans of drink at NOZ whereas at LeClerc there was only the usual stuff and I even forgot the frozen peas.

Back here I made myself a hot chocolate and sat down for a while and transcribed the notes off the dictaphone. I hadn’t been anywhere last night but I found something from the previous night that needed transcribing.

It was quite an effort to leave my chair for lunch, and I even managed to empty the washing machine and hang up the clothes before I had to sit down again. And that was the last that I remember of my afternoon until I awoke at 16:06, feeling totally dreadful.

It took me a good 20 minutes or so to lift myself out of my chair before I could go off for a walk around the headland this afternoon.

The weather was totally miserable – windy and wet and the crowds of people down there on the neach at the Plat Gousset were braver men than I am, Gungha Din.

The path around the headland being totally churned up, was a waterlogged soggy morass in all of this miserable weather and we had to pick our way around the puddles. I say “we” because while wandering around the perimeter of one giant puddle I fell in with one of my neighbours also taking the air.

There was nothing happening out at sea so while my neighbour cleared off down the steps, I went across the lawn and car park and down the other side.

There have been some changes in the chantier navale while I had been away. There are now four boats in there, including the yacht that seems to have put down roots.

By now it was raining again so I hurried on home again for a hot coffee and later on I actually managed to find the energy from somewhere to unpack the shopping and put it away. I should have made my kefir for the next week but that was just one step too far.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with veg and rice followed by more of my jam roly-poly and strawberry sorbet.

Having amended yesterday’s entry to add the dictaphone notes and the photos, I wrote up the pnotos for today. And after I’ve fen the sourdough, I’m going to bed. It’s a Sunday tomorrow and a lie-in and I can’t say that I don’t need it. I’m always like this after my journey home, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and I do wish that I wasn’t.

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… another depressing, dismal, miserable day as far as my health has gone.

But more of this anon

Today has also been the first day that I’ve had to scrape the ice of Caliburn’s windscreen before I could take him out for a drive to the shops.

Overnight the temperature had dropped to -0.5°C – the first time that it’s been below freezing, and we had had a heavy frost as you can see in this photo of the grass down the side of NOZ. It’s not quite the -16°C of the Auvergne of course through which I lived for 9 years, for the first couple of years at least in the most primitive of circumstances, and there was no snow either.

But winter is here with a bang and although it’s still above freezing even as I type, this brilliant clear sky outside fills me full of misgivings. I’ve turned the heating up.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, it was another horrible day for me. Once again I heard the alarms but I couldn’t get out of bed and it was just after 08:00 when I finally tore myself from underneath the covers.

And it took me quite a while to find enough energy to go and find my medication too. It was definitely one of the worst starts to the day that I’ve had.

However I did manage to have a shower too and then I wandered off to organise Caliburn so that I could go to the shops.

NOZ came up with a few odds and sods of this and that but nothing worth shouting about so I wandered down the road to LeClerc.

Excuse the extremely blurred photo but the camera has focused on some dirt on the windscreen of Caliburn instead of the car over there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite often in these pages, and here’s another fine example. Of course, it’s an Audi, as you might expect, and the driver has just abandoned (I won’t say “parked”) his car like that in two spaces and cleared off inside.

As for me, I had my own parking issues. With Caliburn being wider than a standard car, I always park at the end of a row and park right over so that there’s a good gap up the side. That was what I did today, so the person in the next bay parked right over on the white line which meant that it was a struggle to put my shopping into the side door.

And talking of the shopping, I bought loads of fruit and some other bits and pieces but there was nothing in the sales that caught my fancy.

Back at the apartment I put the frozen food away and then made myself a banana smoothie with plenty of ice – I really did have a fancy for that this afternoon.

And then, regrettably, I fell asleep on the chair and that was that until 14:00. Just going to the shops had totally exhausted me. And I felt totally dreadful when I awoke. I know that I’ve had some bad re-awakenings but I don’t think that I’ve ever had one quite like this.

After a rather late lunch I went for my afternoon walk – into town and the chemist’s to pick up the medication that they didn’t have on Thursday.

At the foot of the Escalier des Noires Vaches there was one of the shellfish boats unloading its catch into a fish shop van – presumably there’s some kind of connection between the two. But I didn’t stop to enquire. I pushed on along the quayside where I bumped into the itinerant and we had a little chat.

Having picked up my medication I came on back home and sat down to listen – at long last – to where I’d been during the night.

At some point during the night I ended up in Accrington, although it was nothing like the Accrington that I know, and as I’ve only ever been to Accrington twice in my life I wondered why I would suddenly find myself there on a nocturnal voyage.. I ended up in a big office building and I was looking through all the stuff that was on sale in the Oxfam shop there. There were 2 Oxfam shops and I’d gone from one to the other in these 2 big skyscraper buildings and I hadn’t found anything that I wanted. I ended up in the living room of one of these shops. There were 2 people in there so I asked them if they could tell me the way to the railway station. They said “it’s only a few minutes walk away from here, but really you aren’t supposed to be in here”. I apologised and said “just point me in the direction of where the railway station is and that will be fine”. Some other guy said “we’ll have to get someone to take you”. “Why’s that?” “Well, you aren’t qualified to do that”. I looked at this guy and could see that he’s a foreigner but I could see the first bit clearly that he was talking about the other 2 guys had hushed him up. One of them said that he would sort something out but I shouldn’t really be in that room where they are. It’s a private room.

Later on I was working in a nursing home in the UK. We’d started to organise holidays and I’d been based in Dover. I had to pick up a group of people and they were all elderly and infirm, on crutches and in wheelchairs, that kind of thing and I had to meet them at the station. when they came off the train I was staggered at my lot which wasn’t much good. I had to take them into town, so I pointed out a few things to them. After we’d set off for a couple of minutes someone made me aware that there were 3 people missing. I knew about 1 who had gone off to do her own thing but another couple had apparently gone off to visit a fort in the vicinity. That left me with 15 instead of 18. I told them about an anecdote – how I’d met a hotel keeper down here when I was travelling back and to to Europe but I didn’t have the chance to finish it as I was kept on being interrupted. Eventually I had to tell them about the area where we were and took them to a corner of a street basically. This was the street where my newsreader lived and at that moment my newsreader suddenly decided to update and started to pump out loads of information going back a couple of years. With my newsreader 99% is rubbish and you have to sift through to try to have the 1% that’s good. I thought “how am I going to explain to people that they are going to be seeing news 5 years old that we already know what has and hasn’t happened and how are they going to act when they start to get it again.

Later still I was with 1 of my regular girls but I can’t remember who it was now – something that really fills me with dismay as I’m sure you can imagine. We were talking about cars. I had my collection of vehicles, a Cortina, a couple of others and a BT estate from Italy that I had that I was quite happy showing off. It came to the question of doing them up, and I decided that I would sell everything except the one that I really liked and I’d spend all my money restoring that one. Then off we separated and a short while later she was sitting at a table with a couple of people who had kidnapped her. I walked over and said “hi”. I was breakfast time so I mouthed that I would fetch a loaf and bring it back. I brought it back to the table and these 2 guys were still sitting there. They wouldn’t take a hint about going and leave the 2 or us on our own. I cut a couple of slices off this bread and put them in the toaster but it jammed the toaster and 1 piece just wouldn’t come free and wouldn’t switch off. All smoke started to come out as if the toast was burning inside it.

But this thing about kidnapping (which thing? Have I missed something?) relates to something else that happened earlier where there was a young girl who had to be home at something like 22:30 but it got to 22:15, 22:20, 22:25 and she still hadn’t turned up. I ended up going to a night club and she was sitting on 1 of the tables there. There were a couple of people with her so I gave her a wide berth although I kept an eye on the proceedings. Round about 02:30 her mother stormed in, grabbed hold of her and they had this really intense discussion and I don’t know what happened after that, which is disappointing.

There was more stuff too, but as you are probably eating a meal right now, I’ll spare your stomachs. But it seems that the really disturbing dreams are back again. They went away for a while so I wonder what has summoned them to return.

For my evening walks I had a quick dash around my circuit – four legs of my run tonight as well.

There were a few people out there tonight but nothing else much going on at all. I took a photo of the Christmas lights in the shop in the Rue Georges Clemenceau just to prove that I was out and that I wasn’t the only one still with Cristmas lights illuminated, and then I ran back home for tea.

There was some stuffing left over from my stuffed pepper so I added a small tin of kidney beans and a mushroom and then had taco rolls with rice and veg followed by the last of the apple crumble.

So now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. A lie-in tomorrow of course and I hope that it’ll do me some good. I can’t go on like this. It’s getting on my wick.

Saturday 19th December 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

… you were wondering (which I’m sure you aren’t) I missed the 3rd alarm this morning too.

Nothing like as dramatically as yesterday, it has to be said. Only by about 20 minutes as it happened but still, a miss is as good as a mile as they say. And after something of a rather late night, I’m not really all that surprised.

So after the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been. And it’s no surprise that I was late getting up with everything going on that went on during the night.

I’m not quite sure what I was doing during part of the night but I had a cat. I was cooking a bone and the bone had obviously been there for a very long time because it had all dried out and the meat was dry and the skin made a kind of sub-cutaneous fat crackling that all broke away from the bone. It was like eating a packet of crisps. I was Eating this and the recipe had been sent to me by my friend in Galashiels so I asked her if her meat had turned out like this, whether it was simply a cheap cut, something like that, but I never really got an answer. That was when I awoke.

Later on there was a bunch of us in a school yard. We’d been on a trip by coach or a cruise or something like that and it was the final day. We had a big debriefing session and a little snack but that was before the evening meal which was the last on that we’d be taking together. I wanted to say goodbye to these girls with whom I’d been friendly. They might have been Castor and Pollux or they might not, I dunno. I knew which table they usually sat at so as soon as the meeting was open I made a beeline for that table and I was the first basically there. I sat down and other people came to join me. But at the evening meal there was only about a quarter of the people there, just 4 tables and the rest of the people, including the two people whom I was hoping to see, hadn’t come down. I imagined that the snack that they’d had in the afternoon was enough for them. That was extremely disappointing to me as you could imagine. Anyway I started to pass the cups and plates around – they were actually underneath the table on a shelf thing that pulled out so I was passing them around. I started out by pouring out tea and I asked if anyone else wanted one. Someone did, and I got into such a confusion about his mug that in the end he took the mug off me and held it while I poured it. The conversation descended into telling bawdy jokes and everyone was having a really good laugh. The annoying thing was that I couldn’t think of a joke to tell and that’s not like me. I couldn’t think of a single 1 and everyone else was telling these jokes and we were laughing, having a really good time about this but I felt terrible because I couldn’t think of a single joke and feeling even worse because these 2 girls hadn’t shown up. This put a real damper on my trip in the end.

Having had a shower, I put the washing machine en route (I’m having clean sheets tonight) and then headed out to the shops. Caliburn started straight away with his nice, new battery so there was no problem there.

NOZ came up with a couple of CDs and not really much of anything else important. On the other hand I spent a lot of money in LeClerc on all kinds of exciting things, mostly food-related. I didn’t buy much in the way of fresh vegetables for Christmas – I’m leaving that until Thursday when I’ll also be hoping, if I’m lucky, to find some Seitan slices.

But on the way back from the shops we had some excitement.

In the Rue Paul Legibon in the Quartier St Nicolas we had a police van and a fire engine in attendance at a house. And as I watched (firstly from stuck in a queue behind the fire engine and then in the church car park across the road) two firemen shinned up a ladder onto the terrace and proceeded to break into the house.

So whatever was going on there must have been quite important, if not serious, and doubtless we’ll be hearing more about this in due course.

Back here I put the frozen food (there wasn’t all that much) into the freezer, hung up the washing and then made myself a hot chocolate. And with a slice of my delicious fruit bread I attacked some arrears.

That took me up to lunchtime, and then after lunch I started to put some of the purchases away. Not all of them of course, I’m not feeling that much better. And when I felt up to it, I had a few things to do here that needed doing.

That took me up to walkies-time so I set off out of the apartment.

And almost straight away, as soon as I had set foot out of the door I was buzzed by a light aircraft that had obviously been hovering around, waiting for me to come outside.

It’s none other than our old friend F-BUKK, the rather elderly Lycoming-engined Wassmer W54 that seems to have moved into the vicinity these days. And strangely enough, she’s not on the list of arrivals and departures for Granville Airport today although she was briefly picked up on their radar at 15:57 (roughly when I saw her) and disappeared as quickly as she appeared.

And I can’t find her anywhere else.

But it’s a surprise really that there was anything very much going on outside today.

The howling, bitter wind that has plagued us these last few days, or weeks, or months, is still here. It’s churning up the sea quite considerably as you can tell from this photograph. All across the bay this afternoon we cansee the whitecaps that have been whipped up by the wicked wind.

It might be difficult to work out where it’s coming from, but I can tell you with extreme confidence exactly where it’s going. And I’m glad at times like this that I’m not a Scotsman.

For that reason I’m not going to hang about and I wandered off across the lawn and car park to the end of the headland.

Nothing much happening around there today either so I wandered off down the path on the other side of the cliffs.

And here in the chantier navale at long last, we have a new arrival. We seem to have acquired one of the little trawlers that has come in here to have some work done on her. I’ve seen her about the port here and there in the past and she does have a local (Cherbourg) registration so she’s one of ours.

Is this the start of another rush of work, or are we just going to be having work in dribs and drabs until people start preparing for next summer. After all being alone on a small boat is probably about the safest place you can be in a pandemic, and we’re certain to be having a few more waves of this virus.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks or so ago we saw a phenomenon in the harbour that seemed to represent the outline of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.

As I wandered along the clifftop, lonely as a cloud etc etc, I noticed that we had the same phenomenon again today. And just as before, we had a sock of fleagulls reposing upon it. It’s not quite as accurately drawn as the time before but you can still make out the eastern and northern parts of the country, with the County of Kent just disappearing underneath the harbour wall.

That’s something else about which I would like to find out more. There’s a story that there’s a previous harbour wall somewhere prior to the building of the present one and this may be where the foundations are, the shallow depth of silt on top causing the water to dry out quicker.

Back here I grabbed a coffee and organised one or two things quickly because there was more football on the internet today. A bottom-of-the-table match between Y Fflint and Aberystwyth. I was impressed with Flint when I first saw them but they slid down the table at an alarming rate after that really heavy defeat and have recently changed their manager to no-nonsense Neil Gibson who a few years ago kicked Prestatyn Town three divisions up the pyramid in a very short space of time.

On the other hand, Aberystwyth are a good side with some good players but for some reason have simply failed to fire up and are in desperate danger of being sucked down into a relegation scrap. A win for both sides was vital today.

And the match went pretty much as expected. Aberystwyth throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Flint who had to sit back and hope to absorb it, and hit Aberystwyth on the break.

And I do have to say that Flint’s defence was magnificent today. They fought like lions with what at times was desperate defending and were unlucky with a break after 35 minutes when a header was pushed over the bar by Connor Roberts in the Aber goal.

But Roberts could do nothing in the 40th minute when one of the most beautiful, inch-perfect long balls out of defence that you have ever seen fell to Mark Cadwallader who shrugged off a desperate challenge TO TOE-POKE THE BALL PAST ROBERTS.

In the second half Aberystwyth had even more of the game and were pounding the Flint goal at will but were undone late in the game by not one but two breakaways for probably the most surprising victory that I’ve seen for a while and a result that just goes to underline Aberystwyth’s season to date.

They were unlucky to lose at all, and certainly not by a score of 3-0. Now both clubs are stuck right in a pack of four at the bottom with Y Drenewydd and Cefn Druids and this can all go in any direction.

But it’s easy to see why our two teams tonight are deep in the mire. Too many wayward passes, not marking close enough and, in Aber’s case especially, not having the killer instinct when they need it.

Now it was time for me to go out for my evening walk and runs. And the first two legs of my evening adventures brought me to the gate where I would disappear down to the footpath underneath the walls

Looking back behind me from this particular spot the view back down the Rue du Nord to the Place d’Armes over to the right was really impressive this evening. And the beam of the lighthouse down at the Pointe du Roc was making a nice hazy fog of light, as you can see over on the right behind the College Malraux.

Having taken the photo I disappeared down the path and along underneath the walls.

With no rain for at least 24 hours, which is strange just recently, that path under the walls wasn’t all that wet so my runs down there were reasonably comfortable tonight.

But where I stopped, halfway around to catch my breath, the view over the Plat Gousset was looking quite nice and special so I decided to have a little fun. I’d take three or four photos of the same view on different settings and see how they worked out.

The photo up above was one of them, and the one below is another of them. All of the rest were filed under “CS”.

This particular one has had a little post-work done on it but the first one is just as it came out of the camera and all in all, they aren’t too bad really.

The discarded ones were over-exposed. You’ve no idea (well, some of you have, of course) how difficult it is to set the camera for the right amount of light for artificial light when the surroundings are in pitch-black.

From there I did the next leg of my run down to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch. And, as usual thse days, there was nothing whatever going on down there, interesting or not so I turned and headed for home.

And tonight the crescent moon was back.

A little higher in the sky tonight so I could see it before I crossed the Square Maurice Marland, and I spent a couple of minutes trying to take a good photo of it.

From there I ran on down to the walls, walked along the walls and then ran on home for tea. I can’t get used to this “early” lark.

Tea tonight was pasta and nice fresh (and I do mean fresh because broccoli was the special offer today and I had bought sprouts on Thursday) steamed vegetables with vegan pesto (I’d bought some of that too) and an old falafel burger followed by rice pudding.

Rosemary had called me while I was out so I phoned her back and we were chatting for a couple of hours, which is why I’m still writing my notes long after 02:00. But now I’ve finished, I’m off to bed.

But I’ll leave you tonight with a special treat. For those of you who worry about me, I put it all down to the kind of company that I keep. This is ONE OF MY FRIENDS FROM OTTAWA in Canada. I hope that you enjoy it.

Saturday 5th December 2020 – I’M NOT …

… feeling myself today.

And quite right too, as it’s a disgusting habit.

So while you admire some more photos of storms at night on the Plat Gousset, I can tell you that there’s probably a reason for part of my issues, in that not going to bed until about 02:00 and waking up at 06:00 means that I’m probably quite exhausted. But looking around me and the state in which I seem to be living right now, I can see all of the signs of having fallen into the Black Pit.

When I moved here from the farm I vowed that I wouldn’t let my place ever get into this condition, but they seem to be somewhat hollow words now.

But yes, I was indeed awake at 06:00 and although I didn’t quite beat the third alarm to my feet, there was only a matter of seconds in it.

Having had the medication, I listened to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And even though there hadn’t been much time in bed, there had still been plenty of time to wander off. We (whoever “we” were) were living in a house in Africa, a great big house. There were servants and all of these people who were living there. Armed guards and everything because the area was a little out of control. We noticed, peering through the forest, that there were 3 horsemen going past in the distance. We didn’t really pay too much attention to them because there were people always going past and usually it was better not to know who they were. Then a few minutes later they came back. One of the servants pointed them out. It turned out that they were dressed as policemen but they were carrying with them this enormous collection of knives. That made them the strangest kind of policemen I’d ever seen. The servant stuck his head out of the window to see. One of the men saw him and gesticulated so he opened the door and words were exchanged. The woman of the house went next to the window to speak to these guys, then turned back and said “we all have to present our papers to these people”. I made sure than I appeared in the window to make sure that they realised that there were a lot more than just the 2 people they had seen so far in the house.

a href=”https://www.erichall.eu/images/2012/2012044.html”> storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall Later on I had a shower and then headed out for the shops. NOZ had a few bits and pieces but nothing of real interest and at LeClerc the only thing that I bought that was unusual was some puff pastry sheets. That is something really complicated to make and way beyond my capabilities, but I have to turn my attention to making my mince pies very soon.

Back here I was too exhausted to unpack straight away so I made my hot chocolate and with a slice of chocolate cake I came in here to sit down and to do some work.

After lunch I came back to continue but fatigue had caught up with me again and I crashed out for half an hour on the chair, feeling pretty much awful.

Nevertheless, I awoke in time for the football. Penybont playing Caernarfon, a nice mid-table match in the JD Cymru League. And whatever it is that I’m suffering from Caernarfon must have had it too because they were as awful as I was. 6-0 the scoreline was to Penybont and, believe me, Caernarfon were lucky to get nil.

With Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann in the defence, Penybont were striding through on goal at will. I felt really sorry for Tyler French in the Cofis goal because on one occasion he made a brilliant reflex save only for the ball to hit the bar with three of his defenders and one attacker standing on the goal line, the ball did have to drop at the feet of the Penybont attacker who did the necessary.

Caernarfon’s midfield was non-existent too and Mike Hayes and Jack Kenny were totally isolated up front waiting for balls that never came. In fact, “balls” is probably a good word. Loads of them.

By now it was time to go for my afternoon walk. A rather late one, in fact as it happens. And I bumped into one of my neighbours on the stairs and we had a little chat amongst ourselves for a couple of minutes.

When I eventually made it outside, the torrential downpour that we had been having for most of the day had ceased and there were just the occasional gusts of rain coming in with the wind. Mind you, further up the coats of the Cotentin Peninsula they were taking a right battering by the looks of things. That’s an evil-looking cloud up there.

The waves, although still quite fresh, aren’t as turbulent as they were last night which is one good thing, I suppose.

It was quite dark by the time that I made it out, partly due to the time and partly due to the thick, heavy clouds blocking out the sunlight.

Instead of the usual Zoom lens, I had the f1.8 50mm lens on the camera and while it doesn’t zoom in or out, it’s made to perform in these conditions. I don’t recall if I have taken a photo of the Rue du Nord in the twilight before, so here’s one of them to be going on with.

You can see where the city walls zig-zag just to the left of centre where the cars are parked. That’s where there’s the little postern gate that leads to the path that runs around underneath the walls which is part of my running track.

This afternoon I was the only person out there, which is hardly a surprise given the weather conditions so I had the place to myself.

My route took me around the path towards the lighthouse and I was surprised to see that the coloured lights on the semaphore were illuminated. I’ve no idea what message it was supposed to be and to whom it was signalling because I couldn’t see any lights on the semaphore stations on the Ile de Chausey or over on the Brittany coast.

Even though it’s pretty dark now (and wasn’t that quick?) the beam on the lighthouse isn’t illuminated yet. They need to get a move on.

At the top I cut across the lawn and then across the car park to the headland but there was nothing going on there. So with no-one about I ran all the way down the footpath on top of the cliffs on the other side.

My route went past the chantier navale where Ceres II and the yacht were sleeping peacefully still on their own.

One set of Christmas lights that I hadn’t checked were the ones in the Rue du Port. usually they haven’t been up to very much and so I was intrigued to see what they had done. And the answer was simply that they had done nothing to improve on last year’s.

In fact, it’s all pretty depressing, isn’t it? There’s nothing actually around the port at all.

By now it was raining fairly heavily, so I took another photo of the Rue du Nord from a slightly different aspect.

When you think that the Port is the main entry to the town for many visitors you would expect the Council to make much more of an effort than this with the Christmas lights. And if I were the owners of Marité I’d have a pile of Christmas lights strung up all over her rigging too.

She would look quite magnificent like that, I reckon, but it seems to be too much effort for some people . I’ve talked about my “interactions” with the crew of the ship before … “and on many occasions too” – ed.

Back here I did more work in a kind-of desultory fashion and then called a halt for tea. Not that I was all that hungry – I just had a bowl of pasta and veg, including some fresh steamed broccoli (this week’s special veg offer from LeClerc) tossed in olive oil, garlic and some vegan pesto that I found in NOZ a while back (that’s why I like NOZ – it comes up with all kinds of interesting things now and again).

later in, in the drizzle, I went out for my evening run around the walls.

Not along the footpath under the walls though. Many of the footpaths are flooded after the rains of today and down there it must be dreadful. I stayed up on the road and walked and ran around to the Place de l’Isthme and the Musée d’Art Moderne Richard Anacréon which I haven’t photographed in the night before as far as I remember.

And I needn’t really have bothered tonight either because I couldn’t find a decent spec to take the picture.

From right up here though there’s a good view across the town and we can see more Christmas lights down there on the Bank and the Post Office in the Cours Jonville.

But what we can also see by the side of the Rue du Bosq is the abandoned railway line down to the port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that here and there I’ve posted photos of bits of the railway network that runs through the town and around the port. It’s quite substantial and must have seen a lot of use when the harbour was full of all of the cod fishers that went out to the Grand Banks around Newfoundland.

All that has gone though now with the exhaustion of the cod stocks, and the railway network has unfortunately gone with it.

The wind was back up too and we were having some more stormy waves, as you saw earlier. I took a few pics and then ran on home to write up my notes and have a long chat with my friend in the UK.

A lie-in tomorrow and I can’t say that i’m sorry either. I know that i’m sickening for something but I don’t know what, so plenty of rest and sleep will be the order of the day I think.

But I mustn’t forget to make some pizza bases. I’ve run out yet again and we can’t have a Sunday evening without a pizza, can we?

Saturday 28th November 2020 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again. I went out somewhat early this morning on speculation now that the “unnecessary” shops are allowed to open and sure enough, my luck was in I found “mon bonheur” as they say around here. It was expensive and I do mean that, but it will be well worth it in due course.

It’s for my Christmas present so I can’t tell you what it is until I open it at Christmas time but it’s what I’ve always wanted ever since I moved here three and a half years ago.

Even though I said “early”, it wasn’t as early as I was hoping though because I didn’t leave the bed until about 07:20 this morning, to my dismay. But at least I was in a better frame of mind than I was last night, which is one thing I suppose.

First thing to do is to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’d made contact with my old school last night and I’d volunteered to talk to them about certain things. They suggested that I came round to see them on Saturday. So off I went on a Saturday morning and found to my surprise that a lot of kids were still in school. I thought that it must be something to do with Covid or something like this. I arrived at the front of the school but couldn’t find the door in. All the front of the school had changed. In the end I found a door and went in – I thought that I’d look for the secretariat. All the kids were telling me not to go in through this door for some unknown reason but I went in anyway. I couldn’t find the secretariat but then I saw a hatch that was an opening in the wall and there was a queue of people around there talking to whoever was going on inside. I thought “well, I’d talk to these people, whatever was going on in this hatch and they can point me to the right place”. So I waited my turn. Then a guy came over and said “ohh don’t you go missing now that I’ve got you here. I’m going to give you a class”. I thought “this is strange. he doesn’t even know who I am”. But on my way in parking my car or going into the school grounds or whatever I bumped into one of my old teachers. I said “you must be Mr Lighton” but he didn’t recognise me. But this other guy obviously recognised me, and I didn’t have a clue who he was and I was certain that he ought not to know who I was but he got me right. He said “well …” and we were talking about what I could do. he said “you could give this class a talk on iron ore, the miracle of iron ore”. I replied “yes, I can tell them all about iron ore mining in Labrador”. I thought for a moment “I wish I’d remembered to bring my photographs with me” but then I thought that I had my laptop and they are all on there. Another teacher who was there said “I didn’t know that they mined iron ore in Labrador” so we had quite a chat about that. I had some gold with me and I produced this sample of gold and said “what about this from Labrador?” He looked at it, the amazed guy, but the one who came to talk to me first was totally nonplussed by this gold. he didn’t think that it was anything extraordinary at all.

Next thing was to have a shower and to check my weight. And in the last 2 days I’ve put on 0.6 kilo. That’s clearly incorrect and I shall have to check this again.

Having changed the bedding (I’m going to be in the lap of luxury tonight) and set the washing machine off on a cycle (very clever, my washing machine) I hit the streets with Caliburn.

Our first stop was miles out of town and more of this anon and then it was time for NOZ and LeClerc. Both were open but neither came up with anything of any special interest. It was just more of the boring same so I came on home without hanging around too long.

By now it was quite late so there was barely time to put the frozen food away before I had to make my soup for lunch (more of the butternut squash) and then there was football. Connah’s Quay Nomads against Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League.

Barry Town scored first after just a couple of minutes but from the restart Connah’s Quay went up the field and equalised. Even with half a team out injured or suspended they were still far too good for Barry Town and the final score of 3-1 was fair enough. Barry Town need to find a striker from somewhere if they want to push on up the table.

It was by now way after the time that I would usually go out for my afternoon walk, but I went out all the same.

Winter has certainly arrived. It was cold and quite windy out there, but there was plenty of sun to encourage people to come out for maybe the last fine day of the year. This guy in his yacht was certainly enjoying himself just offshore.

And you can see what I mean about the sun by looking at the sails of his yacht. They are supposed to be white but they are reflecting the late-afternoon sun and are looking a rather bright shade of gold.

And he wasn’t the only one out there in the water today.

There were several people in kayaks having a paddle around the Pointe du Roc too. And it’s a good job that it’s warm because it’s not permitted to light a fire in a canoe. They say that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

Back in the apartment I noticed that someone else had taken a photo of the kayakers and posted a “group photo” on the Social Media. And someone complained about them being allowed to congregate but ramblers were not allowed to do so.

I despair of some people.

And it wasn’t just on the water that there were crowds of people. The air was quite busy too.

A light aircraft had flown over my head just as I was setting out but I wasn’t quick enough to take a decent photo of it. But a few minutes later one of the little microlights went past. This time I was ready and when it turned out of the sun I was able to take a photo to speed it on its way.

What was disappointing was that our autogyro didn’t put in an appearance. We can usually rely on that going past overhead whenever the air is busy.

It’s that time of the month too.

There was a beautiful moon out there tonight – we missed the last one due to heavy clouds, if I remember correctly, but no danger of missing this one. It really was quite beautiful. And as you can see, there isn’t a cloud in the sky to get in the way of seeing it.

So it looks like either tomorrow or the day after, I’ll have to be shaving the palms of my hand. I used to be a werewolf but I’m all right noooooooooooooow”.

And that reminds me, the use of shockingly poor English is even threatening the Film Industry. They are planning to remake an old classic horror film of the 1930s, but the modern version this next year will be called “I Were a Teenage Waswolf”

Enough of that. I turned tail and headed for the headland to look out over the Baie de Mont St Michel to see what was goign on.

And this is a far cry from 21:00 and 21:30 of early this year, isn’t it? You can tell how late it is that I’ve gone out because the sun is quite low in the sky and about to sink into the sea, where it will presumably sizzle.

we are certainly having some spectacular effects just recently. This one I stayed and watched for a few minutes before pushing my way onwards around to the south side of the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a new trawler in the chantier navale and we watched it being hoisted aboard the mobile boat lift.

This morning when I went out to the shops I was half-expecting to see it comfortably installed on one of the sets of blocks so that they can work on it, but to my surprise she wasn’t there. They must have been putting her back into the water yesterday when we saw them manoeuvring around.

Still, Ceres 2 and the yacht are still there. They must be completely fed up of spending all this time together on their own without any company.

With nothing else going on, I walked on back to the apartment.

There were some carrots that needed dicing and blanching, the sourdough needed feeding and then there was the kefir to attend to. The kiwis that I had bought last week weren’t ripe enough and besides I was rather pushed for time so I grabbed a handful of clementines (I’d bought another load today), whizzed them around to extract the juice, and then made another batch of clementine-flavoured kefir.

Having done that, I set another batch of kefir en route. And one of these days when I have more time, whenever that might be, I’m going to look into making my own ginger beer.

Today’s special offer on veg at LeClerc was “Cauliflowers at €0:99”, and large illegitimate ones too. I love them when they are fresh so I bought one and for tea had veggie balls with steamed veg (including lots of cauliflower cooked to perfection) and vegan cheese sauce. And I’ll be having more of that too in due course.

But the sad thing is that I finished the last of my ad-hoc raspberry and custard tart. That worked really well and I was pleased with that. It encourages me for the future now with other fruits.

The moon was incredibly bright tonight. It really lit up the night sky and it would have been a perfect evening for photography had we not had one of the sea mists yet again.
With something of a struggle I ran on round to the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset and took a photo of the beach in the moonlight just to see how it would come out.

And I have to say that I’ve seen worse than this one. And, of course, it goes without saying, a great many so much better too.

Nothing doing at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch so I ran off all the way across thez Square maurice Marland where I stopped for my breather.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on a couple of occasions we’ve had a quick look at the house in the Rue LeCarpentier that is undergoing renovation by this specialist building company. Tonight, I couldn’t help noticing that with the light mist that we were having, the street light wrapped in the scaffolding netting was creating some kind of ethereal effect.

This is the kind of thing that is worth photographing, even if just to let arty people gasp with admiration. I don’t think all that much of this kind of thing

This on the other hand is much more like my kind of photograph.

Only Marité at anchor – or should I say “moored” – down at the bottom end of the harbour tonight. But she’s all lit up and looks quite pretty and for once, I managed to take a decent photo of her that actually worked out doing what I wanted it to do.

But everywhere is like death now with this lockdown due to the Corona Virus. Once more I was the only one out there tonight and I didn’t see another soul. I’m starting to feel quite lonely these days.

Mind you, that’s not exactly true. I wasn’t the only one out there tonight.

As I walked up the Rue St Michel a pretty long-haired cat, looking rather like a heavily-pregnant female, came out of one of the alleyways. I called it and it came to me for a stroke so we had a little bit of socialising. Strange as it is to say it, I miss having a cat, but it’s not possible with my lifestyle.

So having said goodbye to my new friend I ran on home to write out my notes.

Despite being in a better humour than I was yesterday and having had something of a lie-in this morning, I’ve still had a bad day. For some unknown reason I’ve been fighting off sleep (and not very successfully on some occasions) for most of the day and because I’m so tired, everything is taking 10 times longer.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last week because of a few rather extreme, if not ridiculous Sunday lie-ins, I was talking about setting an alarm on Sunday mornings in the future. But not tomorrow. This is going to be one of those “sleep until I awaken” days. I have clean bedding, I’m clean and tidy and I think that a good rest and long sleep will do me a world of good.

It makes me wonder who will come along to spoil it.

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

… look smart with his new bodywork all finished off?

Mind you, he ought to at the price that it cost me for the work. Before he gave me the bill, the garage proprietor asked me if he should fetch the defibrillator, and when I saw the cost, I wished that he had.

But there’s a 5-year guarantee on the body repairs and that will see Caliburn and I go out together. No-one has ever lived longer than 11 years with this illness and although it was only 5 years ago that I was diagnosed with it, I reckon that I had it for a good while before then. I remember CLIMBING UP TO THE CHATEAU DE MONTSEGUR in early 2014 and being totally wiped out in a situation that I would have run up without any problem a couple of years previously.

There’s no reason to dispose of Caliburn and have something else for whatever time remains. A new vehicle wouldn’t be worth it at all and if I were to buy something second-hand, who knows what I’d end up with?

What I need to do now is to attend to the wheels. He’ll need two tyres on the front sometime soon, and I have two old wheels in the back. I’ll clean those up and paint them and have winter tyres fitted, and then with the two that I take off, I’ll clean and paint them and have new tyres fitted on there too.

But I’m not impressed with the broken mirror though. That’s “disappointing” to say the least.

Something else that’s disappointing is that I missed the third alarm. What makes me feel even worse about that is that after the second one had gone off I remember saying to myself that I’ll beat the third one easily seeing as I’m so wide awake.

Oh Folly! Folly! As the late-lamented Stanley Unwin would have said.

First thing to do was to listen to the dictaphone.

There was a whole group of us looking at a map of the Far North of Russia. One of my friends was there and we were pointing out where we’d been on our famous trip to the North, although she was getting it wrong so I was having to show her on the map a lot better than she was guessing where we’d been. Another friend was there as well having a good look. We were talking about our journey, all this kind of thing very much in the same sense as we did about a dream quite a while ago when we were out in the High Arctic. I went to get my things. I had a tray with coffee and a jug of tomato juice, a few other bits and pieces. As I picked up the tray off the table the jug brushed the kitchen cupboard overhanging it and knocked it over. The tomato juice went everywhere. I just put the tray down in despair because I knew that this had really happened to me before and it’s going to happen to me again. It’s always the case when I’m in a rush – I have to do 3 jobs instead of 1. There was much to it than this but I can’t remember now – something to do with the taxis as well. I was having to go out on the taxis later but it was getting late and no-one had rung me. We were bound to be busy because it was a Saturday night and I’d have to go out. But I thought “who was going to take over on the radio?” This kind of thing. Then I thought that Nerina isn’t here either. She’s still away somewhere but she’ll be coming back and be stuck in the office. Maybe she could do the radio but I don’t know anything more about that.

Some other time during the night I had a computer and I was trying to do something. We were looking at this home video of someone’s bedroom and marvelling at the old selection of electronic and electrical appliances that there were back in the 70s and 80s that we don’t see now. Later on I had my computer coupled up to a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I was recording tracks that I was picking up on the internet radio onto that with the idea of editing them afterwards with Audacity or something. The idea was that once everything was stored onto master tapes it can be copied onto CD and filed away. I was having to work out how this was going to work

After the medication I carried on with a task that I started yesterday and hadn’t mentioned. There were almost 250 unread e-mails in my mailbox, some of which were going back to the early summer, as well as a whole pile of ones that I’d already read and which were now serving no useful purpose except to waste space.

Consequently I’ve been going through them yesterday and today, dealing with a pile of stuff that I should have dealt with a long time ago and there is still some to do. And a few more people will have a surprise over the next few days when they start to receive replies to messages that I sent out months ago.

Something else that required attention was to ring up a certain telephone number in the UK. Between 1972 and 1974 I worked for an Insurance Company in the UK and I was wondering whether I might be entitled to a pension payment in this respect. It took me ages to track down who I should speak to because the company has changed hands a few times since then but I eventually managed to speak to someone who reckoned that he could help me.

In the end it turned out that because I

was under 30
worked there for less than 5 years

There was nothing for me at all. But still, it was worth the phone call simply to find out.

It’s hardly a surprise that after all of this I crashed out on the chair for half an hour. And a really deep one too, just like the ones that I was having a week or two ago. Just recently, if I have crashed out at all, it’s just been drifting off for 5 or 10 minutes or so.

After lunch I headed off to pick up Caliburn – yes, I’d telephoned the garage too to see if he was ready.

Down in the harbour there was a trawler that I don’t recall seeing (although I must have done, I suppose) before. She’s registered in Cherbourg and she’s called “Le Pearl”, and proudly displays on her superstructure the fact that she comes from Granville

She’s quite a pretty craft, and by the looks of things she’s fairly new too so maybe she really is new and has replaced an older one that has been put out to grass somewhere. She’s only been mentioned in shipping records since 20th October this year.

We’ll have to see if there’s anything in the papers about it.

Further along in the harbour, there are signs of activity at the loading bay underneath the crane.

A whole pile of builders’ material is now there ready for loading. It looks as if one of the Jersey freighters is going to be coming back into port very shortly to take it all away.

The next question is not “which one will it be?” but “will I get to see it?”. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen just recently a really rapid turnround of the ships and we’ve probably missed more than we have seen since they have begun to extricate their digits

I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … into town on my way to the garage, but I only got as far as the Cours Jonville before I stopped again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we’ve seen the Christmas decorations pushing up like mushrooms all over the town. Here I was lucky enough to stumble upon a couple of Council workmen with a cherry-picker who were busily stringing up a collection of fairy lights around a few of the trees down here.

Leaving them to it, I pushed on along the Boulevard Louis Dior (and forgot to take the photo of the alley yet again) and up the steps at the end, past the railway station and out of town.

It’s a long, weary trudge all the way out of town but I was determined to do it on foot as a form of good exercise, and I’m glad that it wasn’t very warm.

Past the centre of St Nicolas and into the countryside and here at the roundabout on the edge of town is the water tower that we have seen in the background of so many photos. I quite like this water tower. usually they are simply slabs of dull-grey concrete but with this one they have made an effort to try to make it blend into the environment.

By now, I’m well in the countryside and still a kilometre or two to go.

However I wasn’t alone on my travels.

There is a housing estate on the very edge of the town beyond the roundabout and here standing on the corner watching the world go by is a chicken. What he’s doing here I really don’t know but seeing as he near to a pedestrian crossing he might be trying to cross the road.

And as for why he would want to do that, it’s anyone’s guess.

At the garage they clearly have more faith in me than I have because they had left Caliburn parked in the street Had I had a spare pair of keys I could simply have driven away.

And I made rather a fool of myself in here by complaining that they had set the Controle Technique to expire in July, before I realised that I had been looking at the insurance sticker.

Having paid the bill and recovered from the shock, I went down to Leclerc for the weekend shopping, where I spent a fortune.

One thing that I like about the end of the grape season is that it’s the start of the clementine season and I can polish those off just as quickly as I can polish off grapes.

With not having bought any heavy stuff for ages the bill was somewhat elevated but a lot of that can be blamed on the soya milk that was in three-packs on special offer. My mid-morning hot chocolate gets me through a lot of that.

And interestingly, when I arrived at rhe checkout I found that I had a pile of ham in my trolley. Somewhere along the line I had picked up the wrong trolley and had to retrace my steps until I found mine

Ohhh! The exciting times that we lead these days!

Back here I made a start on the arrears, still getting nowhere rather fast. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

The hour on the guitars was successful again – I enjoyed it just as much as yesterday – and for tea I had a burger that needed eating with some pasta followed by apple crumble.

Just as I was about to go out on my run, Rosemary phoned for a chat. And 2 hours and 48 minutes later we stopped. We had a lot to say.

23:15 is far too late to go out for a run so I was glad that I’d had the marathon walk this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m going to try my hand at baking seeing as I’ve finished off the banana bread. See what damage I can do to a chocolate cake. But that’s for later. I’m off to bed.

Saturday 24th October 2020 – YESTERDAY I MENTIONED …

… that the high winds that we had been promised for Wednesday and Thursday and which we never received looked as if they might be arriving during the evening.

Well, they certainly did. And in spades too. So while you admire a few photos of the waves crashing over the sea wall even though the tide is a long way out, I’ll tell you about how my day went.

And unfortunately it didn’t start off too well at all. Another miserable day when it was 06:55 when I finally pucked up the courage to leave the bed.

Mind you, I had been out on my travels last night.

We started off, my German friend and I going off on a OUSA meeting in London. We pulled up at a car park and I started to get my stuff ready. he said “we have plenty of time yet” and there were one or two jobs that we needed to do, so we went off to do a couple of these jobs. We then got onto the station. I hadn’t brought my ticket reference form with me but luckily when Hans had booked his ticket he’d booked 2 seats so I was able to scan my ticket off his booking. We went downstairs to find our train. We ended up in Granville, in the Rue Lecampion waiting for our train there. We were waiting and waiting, and suddenly a horrible thought “God, my computer! I’d forgotten to bring my computer!”. He said “gosh! What are we going to do now?”. I replied “I’m not sure”. He said “we could borrow one off the place where we were staying”. I said “maybe” and he added “of course you could. You’ve paid to stay there. Of course they will lend you a computer”. We saw a train in the distance and we thought “this is it now anyway”. Eventually the train pulled in and we ran after it because it was shorter than we were expecting, only to find that it was the wrong train. We all went to wait underneath the bus stop. I was thinking that if I’d known that it was the wrong train I could have had time to go back to the car to get my computer and come back again. We got on board our train and the ticket collector came round. He was warning people that there was a £400 fine for not having a ticket. My friend said something about them using judo and the guy replied “I use judo. I’m a judo expert” so they started to discuss throws and moves. My friend was definitely getting the upper hand with this practice. Then they asked “what happened if someone came to knock on your door? How would you respond to that?”. I said immediately “with a tanga”. The guy immediately recognised that and Hans recognised it so they did this Tanga-type of attack and ddefence down the corridor of this train, disturbing all the public and making themselves conspicuous in front of the passers-by. This was a feverish sweat again.

I must have gone back to sleep and stepped right back into the voyage where I left off because by now we were on the Metro heading towards the hotel and my friend booked himself in. I said “don’t forget to book me in as well. The woman said “I’ll deal with you in a moment”. Eventually she turned to me and I went to book myself in. I said “there will also be a name for Mr Huysgen” so she had a look through and found his reservation. “But he’s not eating here tonight. He has no meal reservation”. I said “no, he’s probably going to be eating at the Embassy”. I took his reservation but then thought “how are we going to know where to meet know that I don’t have my computer with me.

Later on, we were in Stoke on Trent, sitting in a car, a RHD Ford Cortina mkI but driving on the right as in Europe so my driving seat was against the kerb. We were looking through the papers. There was an election and there was a woman there called Margaret Williams or Maureen Williams. How it began was that we noticed that two pages in the local newspaper were stuck together. I separated them and found out that they’d actually printed the wrong candidates. They’d printed the candidates for the previous year 1992 instead of this year 1993 so they’d had to glue an extra page over the top to cover this up. The girl whom I was with – it could have been TOTGA even pointed to this Williams woman “I’m going to vote for her because she wants any job that’s going and we want to get her out of where she is now”. I replied “I actually know her and I’ll be disappointed if she goes because she’s a really, really keen worker”. My partner said “yes, the day that all of the taxis were deregulated she had someone infiltrate into there”. I thought “yes!”. So I said “yes, and not just taxis either. She was getting people infiltrated into travel agencies and several other occupations and she was even working on getting someone infiltrated into estate agents”. The girl I was with said “that’s going to upset a load of people isn’t it?”. Just then we decided to pull away from the kerb where we were parked but there was a queue of traffic behind up. I set off but some woman behind was really annoyed that I’d set off. She came along and overtook me and almost forced me into the kerb in order to get past. Whoever I was with made some remark about it. I replied “don’t you worry. We’ll get her around the next corner where we branch off”

It’s hardly a surprise that it took me so long to wake up with all of that going on.

There was time to have a shower and then it was off to the shops. Neither Noz nor LeClerc came up with anything of any importance, although Rosemary phoned me for a chat while I was on the LeClerc car park.

Back home I put down the shopping and then came into my little office where, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out. Out completely and properly – so much so that I went off on a voyage.

I was somewhee in the High Arctic and I head that a supply ship that would carry passengeers would be here the next day. I thught that there might be an opportunity for me to finally get to Grize Fjord but before I booked a berth I needed to find out what the weather was like. There was a café in the town, a very primitive, spartan place so I thought that I’d ask in there. I went in but just as I went in the woman behind the counter said that she needed to pop out for a moment. I waited but she never came back so I went over to the computer against the wall to check my e-mails. After a while she still hadn’t come back but more and more people were coming into the café. I thought that if she doesn’t come back soon or starts to serve these new arrivals before me, I’d miss my opportunity of getting out there.

By the time I awoke it was way, way past my lunch break and there wasn’t time to do much else before it was walkies-time.

So finally shaking myself out of my lethargy I headed off outside – head first into a gale-force wind.

But however strong the wind might be, it’s never going to be strong enough to daunt the spirits of the local fishermen. Here are a few scrambling over the rocks, loaded up with equipment.

I can’t tell unfortunately if they are coming back from or going to their positions but one thing is certain. They aren’t carrying any catch with them so if they are coming back, they haven’t had any luck, which seems to be quite usual.

With hordes of epopel about, despite the weather, I walked along to the gate in the Rue du Nord where you go down to the path underneath the walls.

You can see how they are doing with the roof to the College Malraux. No-one up there today of course. The building to the front of it is mine, then the white one in front of that is the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs and then there is the building in which are the Public Rooms.

You can see the medieval … errr … bathroom built into the walls as well and between there and the garden of the Public Rooms is the viewpoint that looks out over the bay.

Only one or two people down on the path, which was surprising seeing as it’s pretty much out of the wind, so I took the opportunity to have a couple of 100-yard runs while there was no-one in view.

Stopping for a minute or so down there, I noticed some activity round by the tidal swimming pool. A few people have decided to go for a walk down there on the beach and for reasons that only they know, to do a lap of the swimming pool.

The tide must be going out right now, because the swimming pool is pretty full. If you’ve seen my photos of the tide right out, you’ll have noticed that the pool is quite empty. Water doesn’t stay in it for long.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago we saw some people dressed in their winter clothes sitting in camping chairs on the beach. A rather bizarre sight, I thought.

Today, we have something pretty similar. There’s a guy clearly making himself at home down on the sand so he’s much more brave than I am in this weather. And you’ll notice the people wearing facemasks on the promenade. That’s one of the “designated areas” where masks must be worn.

And wheelchairs too. There’s a Centre de Re-education – a place where sick people go to recover their life-skills like walking, talking etc – in one of the buildings here and there are always plenty of infirm people and people who have suffered accidents walking around – or being wheeled around.

Some of them make me feel quite sorry and make me realise how lucky I am. Just recently I’ve seen a couple of kids with bits missing.

There’s an old saying that “it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good” and that’s certainly the case here.

Most of us are here struggling in a howling gale that’s really difficult to walk against and down there in the bay is someone who is, would you believe, kite-surfing! Kite-surfing in this storm that we are having. I hope that he has some good insurance.

Watching that was more than I could stomach right now. I wandered off to watch the waves hurtling down over the sea walls at the port.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had finished editing all of the outstanding photos from over the summer. That’s not quite true. They all needed the copyright and information layers added, and that was my task for right now.

That took me up to 18:00 and the football on the internet.

A few weeks ago TNS had played Y Fflint and put 10 past them. Today it was the turn of the other promoted side, Haverfordwest County, to come up to Oswestry and face the music.

And much to everyone’s surprise, despite TNS having 65% of the possession, Haverfordwest took the lead. And when TNS equalised, Haverfordwest went and scored another to go back into the lead.

Of course, it was too good to last. An expensively (for the Welsh Premier League) assembled team training full-time would eventually have too much in the tank for a bunch of part-timers from South-West Wales and late in the game TNS scored two goals to win the match. But it was a very plucky performance by the losers and they can go home with their heads held high.

Tea was at half-time, out of a tin. I was in a rush.

There’s no chance of going out for a walk tonight. It’s raining down in sheets and there’s a gale blowing. One look out of the window was enough to tell me that I’ve had it for tonight. I’ll stay in instead. After all, you can’t win a coconut every time.

In fact it reminds me of that scene in Bamber Gascoigne’s “Share My Lettuce” where the character talks at great length about his birdwatching activities and how he camouflages himself. But then he always carries a large umbrella.
The narrator asks him “but doesn’t that frighten away the birds when they see that?”
To which the character replied “of course it does. But I’m not getting wet for a load of bleeding birds!”

Saturday 17th October 2020 – WE CALLED IT …

… a draw this morning. I’d just thrown off the bedclothes and was on the point of sitting upright ready to crawl out of bed when the third alarm went off. Just one second earlier would have been a glorious victory.

And seeing that I was in bed by 22:30 last night I ought to have done better too.

And during the night I’d been on my travels as well. I was with Nerina and we were in Gainsborough Road. I don’t remember too much about this but we’d been doing a lot of sorting out. I’d been to see a lock-up garage somewhere near Manchester which would be ideal for me to use as a store to store a lot of stuff that was lying around that I didn’t need but didn’t want to dispose of. Then we were back at the house and I don’t remember a great deal but I seem to remember that I’d bought a house in Winsford – it might have been Plantagenet Close – years ago and I was wondering what on earth I was still doing with it. I couldn’t find the keys so I wondered if the estate agent still had them, or if Nerina had them – I’d given them to her to look after, or her mother, something like that. In the end I went to ask her but each time I started to ask, she interrupted me and said something else. We ended up in the Post Office in Crewe. I was going to go to Winsford the next afternoon but it was a Saturday afternoon and the Post Office wouldn’t be open. The aim was to ask someone in the Post Office about delivering letters – where do they go to, who had a key? All of that kind of thing. I got myself into a queue by a counter but there was no-one there at the time, just a customer but no member of staff so I was idly loitering around. One member of staff came and started to deal with it. When she had dealth with this person, a young guy and his father walked up in front of me straight to the counter. Nerina said “those two guys have pushed in front of you. I said “yes, they haven haven’t they?”. The younger of the two turned round and made a smart remark to me – in Dutch. I turned round to Nerina and said “yes, Ne’erlandssprekers” so this guy made another comment and strolled away. Then I got to the window and the cashier, and that was that..

But it seems that dreaming about a new house elsewhere that I own is becoming another recurring feature of my nocturnal rambles. So what’s going on here?

For an hour or so this morning I tracked down some more photos of my trip around Central Europe at the beginning of August. And one or two of those took some tracking too. German road signs are not the clearest, especially when viewed on my low-resolution dash-cam through a bug-infested windscreen but in the end I managed to do some good with them and they are all properly labelled.

One or two in Munich were likewise difficult but reference to Hans, my friend there, soon resolved that issue.

After a shower and a clean-up (and a weigh -in, and I’ve lost another couple of hundred grammes) I went off to the shops. NOZ came up with one or two things, but nothing to get excited about, and it was the same at LeClerc.

No figs though, but luckily the Fruit and Veg shop, la Halle Gourmande, had a few. The lady there told me that they are seasonal, so I’m going to have to think of a substitute for my kefir.

Back here, I put some of the stuff away and then sat down to continue the photos but ended up falling asleep on the chair after my exertions. A whole hour or so I was out, and that’s good for neither man nor beast, especially when it means a very late lunch.

After lunch I attended to the kefir that had been fermenting away for the last few days.

Four juice-oranges were whizzed up, strained and filtered and put in a large jug. Then most of the kefir liquid was strained and filtered (always leave an inch or two in the bottom of your jar to cover the grains that you are making) into the orange juice.

The whole lot was then mixed together and then poured through a filter into a few stoppered glass bottles, and I hope that this batch is going to be as good as my lime-flavoured kefir from last time, which was excellent.

Finally, I set another lot of kefir en route for later in the week.

By now it was time to go for my afternoon walk

The other day I mentioned the Peche à Pied – the local pastime of scavenging amongst the rocks and the beach during the very low tides when the public areas below the commercial concessions are exposed

It seems that I may well have been right when I mentioned that it looked as if we are having another very low tide – a Grand Marée – this weekend because, sure enough, the crowds were out on the beach with their buckets and rakes, and whatever else they bring with them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the Peche à Pied at the Grand Marée in April was forbidden due to the virus, so two of us from THE RADIO broadcast a “virtual Grand Marée instead.

and there weren’t just crowds of people on the beach either.

There were the veritable hordes swarming around in the sunshine too, but also plenty going on in the air. As I watched, I saw a couple of light aeroplanes take off from the airport at Donville-les-Bains. One of them obligingly headed my way but before I could take a decent photo of it head-on, it veered off out to sea.

While we’re on the subject of the airport at Donville les Bains … “well, one of us is” – ed … there’s some talk about allowing international flights to land there again, mainly from the Channel Islands. This will mean that a permanent Police and Customs presence will be required.

All of this can only be a good thing.

Back here, a few more photos, and that leaves just 75 to do. But at the rate that I’m doing them, they are going to take forever to finish off.

Then it was time for the football. An early evening kick-off on the Internet for Barry Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

It was a game that finished 0-0 which is hardly a surprise because Connah’s Quay are still missing four of their star players – Danny Holmes, George Horan, and their two star attackers Jamie Insall and Mike Wilde. Chris Curran who normally plays on the wing, had a really good game up front for them but he was never likely to score.

Barry Town had a solid central defence for a change after their debacle the other week, but they too were missing their star attacker Kayne McLaggon and they still haven’t recovered from losing Momodou Touray at the end of last season so they were never really likely to trouble Connah’s Quay’s makeshift defence without Horan and Holmes.

The match though turned on a decision made after just two minutes. A Barry Town attacker burst through the defence and broke clear, only to be fouled by a Nomads defender. Certainly a foul, no doubt about that, but a red card for “denying a player a goalscoring opportunity”? The ball was only just beyond the centre-circle in the Nomads area, about 50 yards from goal with another two defenders bearing down on him and with the ball about 10 yards in front of him that the keeper might even have reached first? To call that a “goalscoring opportunity” is rather stretching things a bit in my opinion. I didn’t agree with that at all.

In fact the referee seemed to have a pop-up toaster in his top pocket because it seemed to me that there was always a yellow card popping up. I think that I counted 8 all told, many of which I wouldn’t have given myself. And the red card given to Barry’s David Cotterill, the former Welsh International, in the dying seconds of injury time for “kicking an opponent” was likewise somewhat exaggerated.

So Connah’s Quay played for 88 minutes with just 10 men and you wouldn’t have noticed because Barry never really had a serious shot on goal. A powerful header right into the arms of keeper Lewis Brass is all that I could think of.

Tea was out of a tin at half-time, and after the final whistle it was time for my evening walk

For a change I went around the headland tonight and over some of the runs that I used to do.

The first leg was along the Rue du Roc for some of the way – not as far as I used to go, and then a second leg across the lawn down the side of the hedge to the clifftop where the lighthouse was busy sending out its beam.

Something that not many people know is that each lighthouse has its own individual sequence of lights, to distinguish it from another lighthouse somewhere in the vicinity. Here at Granville it’s four short pulses of light followed by a long pause.

There’s a rotating shield inside the light with bits cut out for the light to shine through which is responsible for that.

There were a few people out there tonight so I wasn’t as alone as I might otherwise have been.

There was even someone inside the Coastguard Station because there was a light on outside and when he saw me about to take a photo he switched it off just to confuse the issue and I had to take the photo again.

At least everyone had cleared off by now so I could run my third leg, along the clifftop. And that wasn’t as good as it might have been because the car park has now become the centre of assembly for all of the adolescents in the town with their motorbikes and music.

But who am I to complain? At their age I was doing just the same. And probably getting into more mischief too while I was at it.

On my way back from the shops this morning I went past the chantier navale and I could see that it really is Les Epiettes in there.

There was also a new arrival, to make the total now three in there, so while I was catching my breath in the viewpoint at the top of the cliffs I could take a photo of it for the record.

And from there I ran on home – two extra legs of my fitness regime runs to make up five.

Back at the apartment I encountered one of my neighbours coming back home so we had a lengthy chat about putting the world to rights. And then I came up here to write my notes.

Having done that, I’m off to bed. Sunday tomorrow and a lie-in, but I also have pizza bases to make as well as some kind of dessert. It’s been a while since I’ve made an apple pie so I might have a go at that – either that or a crumble.

It might be a case of waiting until tomorrow to see how I feel.

Saturday 10th October 2020 – WE’VE HAD A …

… footfest today again.

Starting off was a match between second (US Granville) and third (FC Fleury 91) tonight in French National 2. And I’m not quite sure how these clubs are as high in the league as they are right now.

Granville’s attack was the usual lightweight aimless effort that was easily dealt with by the Fleury defence but if you think that that was pretty poor, Fleury’s attack was even less effective and never really put the Granville keeper under any pressure. He just had one or two awkward crosses to take and he made a good save with his feet on one occasion.

Admittedly, for 15 minutes or so after the start of the second half Granville had something of a purple patch and forced the Fleury keeper into a couple of brilliant saves, but I reckon in all honesty that both teams could still be out there now and it would still be 0-0.

That was followed by a match in the JD Cymru Welsh Premier League between Bala Town and Aberystwyth Town. And anyone would be forgiven for thinking that the score – 5-2 in favour of Bala – represented a pretty one-sided match.

But it was far from that. Aberystwyth were giving as good as they were getting but the difference was that Aberystwyth really didn’t offer anything much up front. In contrast, Bala were electric and had Connor Roberts in the Aberystwyth goal not had such an outstanding game, Bala could easily have doubled their score.

But Aberystwyth’s captain Marc Williams impressed me tonight. He scored one of their goals, cleared a Bala shot off the line, and was always in the thick of the action for his team. In short, I don’t think that Aberystwyth Town can be too disappointed with their performance.

As for me, I’m quite disappointed with mine. 07:45 when I finally arose from my stinking pit this morning. And as a result, everything was running rather late today.

It’s no surprise however that I was so late arising this morning. With the distance that I travelled during the night I must have only just come back by then.

The night started off with me round at my mother’s place which was actually my place in Gainsborough Road and on the worktop was a newspaper folded over …. and here I must have fallen asleep here.

Then we were at a market stall. We were doing something and I can’t remember what it was. It might have been the records or LPs. I had a wind turbine up there and it was stuck on a pole that was stuck over a kind of spike. It wasn’t particularly secure and the blade wasn’t particularly well attached. I had it up there and every now and again it would go round but suddenly the wind got up and it started to go round like the clappers. It had been powering a small radio but now I thought that I’d better take it down because it would come off or fall over and this could be quite dangerous in the middle of this marketplace so I switched it off. Then this family walked past, a mother, father and a couple of girls. They were speaking German. By this time the machine had started off again. I’d been up on a ladder doing something to it. These girls went past and were talking in German. One of them had picked up something and had greasy, oily hands so whoever I was with said “ohh yes come and wash them on our stall”. I thought “I’m going to have to take this wind turbine down because it’s dangerous the way it’s going round like this.

At one stage we (whoever “we” were) were afraid of being attacked by vampires so we were wrapping our bed in clingfilm so at least the sheets would stay where they were and wouldn’t be distorted while we were raunging around in bed

Later on, I was with a girl. We were a couple and we had started going out together. We were walking hand in hand aimlessly around Nantwich. She’d been telling me a few things here and there. There was a dance on at a club. She happened to mention it so I said “if I give you some money could you get a couple of tickets on Monday?”. She said “it’s not been officially announced yet” but I replied “we could get into the queue and get some”. There was one of these Viennese waltzes that was playing so I picked her up and we waltzed off down the street with a couple of other couples as well. Considering that she’d never danced before she was at least keeping in time to the music as we waltzed off down the street at the side of the church. We went round the corner and coming towards us was a Morris Oxford MO-type pickup, making a hell of a racket. The first thing that went through my mind was that it had a diesel in it. We waited for him to park and I went over to talk to him. You couldn’t hear a word that he was saying, it was so noisy. I asked him about his pickup. “Is it a diesel?”. he said “no, it’s a 17-litre engine in this, very powerful and they use them to power aeroplanes “. “Ahh” I replied. “A Lycoming”. he was immediately pleased that I knew exactly what a Lycoming was. But when he pulled up the bonnet is was the weirdest kind of Lycoming that I’ve ever seen. 17 litres of this engine, a parallel V twin combine thing, probably about 8 cylinders altogether. It was hot and steamy and making a racket – clearly a custom job. I asked if I could take a couple of photos of it as I had the camera on the telephone. he said “no problem but don’t put them on the internet here”.

Later a group of us were talking about an architect from Nantwich and in 1709 he collected the keys for his new building, the new National Westminster Bank because the older one had proved to be much too small at the time. But it wasn’t the NatWest bank, it was the one on the Square (Barclays?) that we were talking about but I had the NatWest Bank in my mind at the time.

Finally I was in work last night in Stoke on Trent and I was retiring at the end of the following month. However due to accumulated leave I was retiring in 2 weeks time. I’d told no-one about this before but now that my plans were finalised I started to tell people, but it didn’t create any kind of emotion from anyone and I was surprised if no disappointed. I was trying to avoid doing any work and the post was building up, but I didn’t care too much – just hoping that I’d gone before the post count. In the toilet were several cards and a few candles welcoming a new arrival – someone with a strange name that I can’t remember. A few people were in there and I asked anyone if they knew him but apparently not. Back in the main office (which was now back in Crewe) I met the Manager. He told me that I could come and watch the full moon in his office that evening at 08:00 but part of it might not be visible as it wouldn’t quite be over the roof of the building and we’d have to crane our necks round. I arranged to meet my father at 20:00 to see it with him but I reckoned that I could bring him into the office seeing as it was after working hours. But when we looked outside it was pouring with rain and I thought that we wouldn’t see very much if this carries on.

Is it any longer that I stayed so long in bed when I’d been out this far during the night?

So after a shower and setting the washing machine en route, I headed off for the shops. But not without a sense of disappointment. I noticed that my decline in weight came about through a variety of factors, one of which was the fact that I’d not been having the medical treatment. On the scales, I noticed that my weight is now risen back over my first target weight again despite everything that I’ve been trying to do to keep it down.

At the shops, NOZ came up with nothing and neither did LeClerc. And what it didn’t come up with was fresh figs. The season has finished, so it seems. I’m not sure how I’m going to make my kefir now in these circumstances.

But there was some excitement on the carpark when some motorist came the wrong way around the one-way system there and blocked all the traffic.

And not only that, the car park came up trumps again for another reason. I’ve lost count of the number of old cars that I’ve seen there quite recently.

And whilst this car may not be particularly old – probably somewhere between 35 and 40 years old – it’s nevertheless quite an exciting and rare find. That’s because these cars had a dreadful reputation for poor quality and unreliability.

It’s a Talbot Samba, a modem that was launched in late 1981 by PSA. It’s basically a Peugeot 104 and not one of the even worse Chrysler drop-offs from the late 70s that PSA took over when they purchased Chrysler’s European operations

The Chrysler models like the Alpine and the Solara were so bad that the very name of Talbot was tainted and these cars just didn’t sell at all. The total number of Sambas made over the 5-year period was 275,000, despite it being marketed as “Europe’s Most Economical Car” and its rally successes.

What’s even more unusual about this particular model is that it’s a cabriolet, or convertible. These were launched the following year and until production of the Samba finished in 1986, a grand total of just 13,000 or so was built.

To give you some idea of the longevity of these cars, a good proportion of Sambas were sold in the UK and in 2016 there were said to be only 14 remaining. And so finding a convertible still on the roads even in France is something quite astonishing.

Back home, having put the frozen food in the freezer, first job was to peel and then whizz up three oranges. And then I threw in a handful of grapes for good measure.

The resultant mash was filtered and pressed through a series of filters to extract the juice. The kefir that was brewing was then filtered too and added into the juice. It was all mixed together.

Having sterilised a few flip-top pressure bottles, I poured the kefir-orange-grape liquid into the bottles and sealed them. And then, with my last fig, I made up another kefir solution and left that fermenting for when I’ve exhausted the bottles that I’ve just made.

Back in the office I had a few things to do after a rather late lunch and shame as it is to admit it, I fell asleep for a good 45 minutes. We’re back on this lark again, so it seems.

On my way out to the football I went past the la Vie Claire, Health Food Shop, so I popped in to see if they had any figs. They hadn’t, but the greengrocer’s, la Halle Gourmande, further down the street did. There were three left but one of them looked distinctly dodgy so I left with the other two.

At the football we were drenched with a shower of rain for a few minutes. It had looked so nice earlier too, but it cleared off quickly and I had a nice walk home afterwards to watch the football on the internet.

It’s late now and I’m tired despite all the time that I’ve spent asleep so I’m off to bed and I’ll finish my notes in the morning.

Saturday 3rd October 2020 – I ONCE STARTED TRAINING …

… as a fortune teller, but I had to give up my studies due to unforeseen circumstances.

That is just as well because I would never have made the grade. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last weekend I mentioned Y Fflint – a football club from Deeside that has just been promoted to the JD Cymru League I mentioned that “They are no mugs, and certainly not cannon-fodder like some promotees have been.”

Today they played TNS – and TNS put 10 past them. That’s the heaviest defeat that I recall in the JD Cymru League for quite some considerable time … “August 2016” – ed …. although in fairness, Flint’s keeper was carried off after 23 minutes and they had to put a substitute in goal.

But anyway, I’ll stop predicting and shut up. Except to ask the same question as I did last weekend – “just how good are TNS this season?”.

They are obviously better than I was this morning because once again I had trouble hauling myself out of my stinking pit. Only by a few minutes, but a miss is as good as a mile.

But it seems that I have a lot on my mind right now, judging by what was happening last night.

There was a boat last night and a few of us were on it. It was called the “Son Derwyn”, something like that it was called. There was some woman on there but I can’t remember what she was doing. In fact I can’t remember anything about it at all apart from that.

Later on I’d been seconded onto a job to go to work in the South Atlantic (that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?). There was a group of us and three of us were leaving on the same flight so we were waiting around at the ferry terminal (don’t ask me why). I was with Nerina. We were sitting there talking to each other and there were these two other people talking and making a couple of phone calls. It turned out that they were indeed two of these people. They’d been told to look out for a third so I was wondering whether to introduce myself but I couldn’t be bothered. Nerina and I sat there and carried on talking then we got on this plane and flew to wherever we were going. We ended up in the hostel where we were staying, all sitting around but these two other guys hadn’t come. We weren’t saying too much about anything to anyone. In the end it was time to go to our rooms to get ready for dinner. We went off to our rooms but ended up in the wrong one. We’d all been waiting in one of the rooms so we went off to ours. All it consisted of was two divans, sofas, wickerwork type bamboo things. We thought “this is strange. It’s not going to be very comfortable. We’re not going to be able to get up to much good in here”. We realised that we’d left all of our stuff in the other room. One of the other guys had been for a shower. He came out and said “God you don’t want to go in that shower. It’s freezing cold”. I said “I’m not a penguin. I don’t fancy that idea”. He said “it’s all there is”. We went down into the communal bar place. Apparently there was some bread and jam somewhere so Nerina asked one of the waiters or staff or someone where the bread and jam was. They replied “you have to do things for yourself you know here. You’re expected to work on Saturdays”. I explained that we were quite happy to go and get stuff for ourselves – that’s not a problem. We just wanted to know where it was because we were new. We didn’t get our bread and jam but nevertheless Nerina went off to try to find some and I went to find some tables. It was pretty crowded and in the end I found a couple of chairs and we tagged ourselves on to some other group we were with. Then I realised that I needed some names of people who did things in the town – tradesmen and I’d left the telephone directories that I’d pinched from the library in this guy’s room so I thought that I’d better go and find some more. I walked out into town and found a few. On the way back I was being harassed by this little boy and I almost picked him up and thumped him one but I restrained myself just in time. As I got to the traffic lights – we’d been passed by buses and whatever – I thought “this is a bigger city than I expected. Much more modern”. An ambulance came out of a junction and was rammed by a little white van. A few people piled out of this little white van and another vehicle pulled up as well. They started dragging people out of this ambulance. I noticed that the people in this little white van had police jackets on. One of them gave this gorgeous right hook on one of the passengers in the ambulance. i’ve no idea what this was all about. The ambulance guy was radioing through that he’d been hit by this van and that there was a fight going on with some of his passengers but he had a woman who was seriously ill who he was taking to hospital. Could they send another ambulance to pick her up and take her on while he sorted everything out here. I was making my way back to where I was staying. I do remember thinking “how the hell am I going to be expected to keep the peace in a town like this if this is the kind of behaviour that goes on and it’s such a busy place anyway?
Somewhere along the line was a pizza that had to be put in the fridge so we went to arrange the slices so we could but found that it was all too big for the fridge and there wasn’t the room to put it so what would we be doing about that? I had some ribald comments from my father and my brother about all of this while I was doing it to so I thought that if I can’t find a solution to a little problem like this how am I going to manage doing anything major?
And what was this next bit all about? “This train was crowded with people. Everyone was crammed in and no-one dare move in case someone took their seat. I was handed a telegram which when I opened it said that there was a mumbled something that I couldn’t decipher. immediately. I thought that this was a reference to this new job or else they’d found out something about me that I hadn’t wanted anyone else to know.

With a reasonably early start nevertheless I managed to edit about 15 photos before I went for my shower. And today I had the heater on in the bathroom. The first time this back-end. And I needed it too.

Next step was to empty out the fridge and switch it off. It’s frozen up again and needs to defrost. It can do that while I’m out at the shops.

NOZ had nothing exciting and Centrakor couldn’t supply a new bread mould.

In Leclerc I spent very little – most of which went on things like a box of 2kg of grapes. I bought three fresh figs too and when I reached home, I set another kefir mix en route. Mind you, I needed a boat to come home in, not Caliburn. It was raining hard when I set out but by the time I made it home we were having a torrential downpour of the type that you don’t see very often.

Brigitte had left the window open on her car too so I rang her and told her. But it was rather too late to do any good.

Having set the kefir going, I alternated between the photos and hacking lumps of ice out of the fridge. That latter is now done – all nice and clean and defrosted (but for how long?) and I’ve done almost 70 photos today. And some of them needed quite a lot of editing too. That took some time.

By the time that I was ready for my afternoon walk there had been a dramatic improvement in the weather.

By now not only had the rain ceased but we were having a beautiful afternoon – one that had really brought out the crowds. And the views were splendid too. You could see for miles and miles – all the way to St Helier in Jersey 58 kilometres away. In all the years that i’ve lived here, I’ve never ever seen the Channel islands so clearly with the naked eye, and with the BIG NIKON D500 and the 18-300mm ZOOM LENS it all looked even more clear

It’s tempting me, if I remember, to go out with the tripod tonight if the wind has dropped to an acceptable level

and it wasn’t just on the footpaths and the lawns around here that there were plenty of people either this afternoon.

The severe storms that we have had just recently, such as Storm Alex and what went of before it have certainly shaken up the sea bed and who knows what they have unearthed? And so that’s another reason for the people doing the peche à pied to be out there this afternoon, over and above the beautiful weather and the very low tide today.

And I hope that they share the catch with all of their friends and neighbours. After all, one shouldn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

And so I left the viewpoint overlooking the beach and walked on along the Rue du Nord, and down the footpath underneath the walls. Too many people about today to go for my run so I shelved that until this evening.

There was quite an assortment of items to note going on this afternoon on the beach at the Plat Gousset and down all the way past Donville les Bains.

In the foreground we have the medieval fish trap (at least, I’m assuming that it’s medieval). The water flows over the walls when the tide is coming in and when it retreats it leaves behind a large pool of water in which, in theory, there should be fish trapped which the inhabitants can then pull out with their hands.
Plenty of people out there too, including more pecheurs à pied
The bouchot farm. These are mussels that instead of growing in the sand, somehow manage to grow on the strings that are attached to those poles. These are supposed to be something of a delicacy because with not having been in the sand, they aren’t anythign like as gritty. I once talked to one of the ropes and asked him about the affair. He told me that at first he didn’t like the bouchots but then after a while they began to grow on him.
More pedestrians
The caravan park, with the airfield behind it
The Church of Bréville sur Mer

It beats me sometimes where all of these people come from because as well as the crowds milling around on the footpaths etc., there are also quite a few loitering around on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

You can see that all of the beach changing cabins on the promenade are no longer there, having been taken away for winter storage a couple of weeks ago. And that’s just as well because had they still been there the other night they would have been smashed to matchwood with the force of the waves that were sweeping up over the wall onto the promenade.

There are one or two people on the beach as well, but not as comfortably-installed as they were last weekend with their folding chairs.

Anyway, I left them to it and wandered off through the Square Maurice Marland where I was engaged in conversation with a boy about three years old.

At the viewpoint overlooking the port, I could see that one of the Joly France ferries to the Ile de Chausey, the newer one with the smaller upper superstructure, is there whereas the other one looks as if it might be out at sea.

But it wasn’t that which caught my eye, it was the seaweed in the dock. The storm has clearly devastated the sea bed, as I suspected that it might, and the tidal current has been so strong that it’s brought the seaweed right into the head of the harbour.

That must have been some storm.

Football tonight on the internet tonight again. And Sgorio is still having problems with its service. Apparently the English-language stream stalled and while they were fixing it they transferred the viewers over to our Welsh language stream. And the presenter apologised to the English-speakers – IN WELSH.

As for the match itself, it was Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon Town.The Met had 60% of possession, 15 corners compared to the 5 of the Cofis and a dozen shots on goal compared to the 4 of the opposition. When the Met were awarded a penalty early in the game those of us who were watching were saying “here comes the first of many”.

However Josh Tibbetts in the Cofis goal saved it, and from then on the result was predictable. The Met could still be playing out there all alone right now on an empty pitch and they would still be unable to score. As for Caernarfon, three of their four shots went into the back of the net, to produce one of the most unlikely results that I have ever seen.

The Met had a right-winger out there – a young lad called Liam Warman. I’ve not seen him before but he impressed me considerably tonight and I’ll be looking out for him again.

Despite what I said earlier, I didn’t get out with the tripod tonight.

When the weather brightened up earlier this afternoon as it did, I reckon that it must have simply been the eye of the storm, because it’s back, and with a vengeance too. So well wrapped up and in my waterproof jacket (and how I wish I’d taken my waterproof trousers too) I went out to take a photo or two of the storm.

And if you are wondering about the dreadful quality (because they really are dreadfully blurred and over-exposed) there was a wind blowing at over 100 Km/H and a driving, torrential rainstorm right into the lens of the camera and I had to do the best that I could.

While I was out there, I noticed that there was no-one else whatsoever taking advantage of the view tonight.

That’s hardly surprising because I don’t think that I’ve ever been out in such dreadful weather. There was no chance whatever of going around the headland so instead I went back around the walls. It was impossible – absolutely impossible to run down the path as I usually do. Not only was this absolutely awful headwind and driving rain, but the path was about two inches deep in water.

That meant that I had to pick my way gingerly around, which wasn’t easy as I had the hood of my raincoat pulled firmly down and I couldn’t really see where I was going.

Eventually, after many difficulties, I reached the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

Here, I was being battered and buffetted by a blinding blizzard of rain and I could hardly see a thing. But I’d caught glimpses of the spray as I walked around the path and you could hear the noise of the waves smashing down on the promenade for miles, so I knew that it was going to be a good one.

Basically, it was just a case of waiting for a really loud crash, counting to three to give the spray enough time to make it high into the air, and then pressing the shutter blindly, hoping that something would work out. And, quite frankly, it was something of a failure altogether but you can’t have everything. Ideal conditions and nothing to photograph – miserable and depressing conditions and lots of excitement.

isn’t it always like that?

Having stuck it out for as long as I could and with rivers of rain running down the back of my jacket and soaking my legs through to the bones, I headed off for home, thanking the heavens that there had been no football in the area tonight that I might have gone to see.

The Square Maurice Marland was pretty well sheltered so I managed to run all the way across there and even halfway up the second ramp. I need to try my best to keep my heart working. But the final run that I do – from the church back home, there wasn’t any possibility of attempting it tonight in that wind. And I was right yesterday about the wind tunnel. The howling gust coming up there as I walked past almost bowled me over.

Back here I’ve written up my notes and that’s that. Sunday tomorrow and a day of rest too. No cooking or baking either (except for the usual pizza) because I shan’t be here for a few days. I might stretch myself and, having defrosted the fridge today, defrost the freezer tomorrow.

In this weather, it’s not as if there’s any danger of anything defrosting, is it?

Saturday 26th September 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

… about the weather last night. We didn’t have the rainstorm today. Or the plague of locusts either. But we had just about everything else.

The high winds are still here and still wreaking devastation about the town. I blame the baked beans that I had for tea the other night.

We also had one of the coldest days that I can remember for a good while too.

That’s probably why I didn’t feel like springing into action this morning and leaping joyously out of bed. Consequently I missed the third alarm. Only by 10 minutes or so, but missed it all the same.

And that’s hardly surprising as I must have been exhausted after my travels last night. I was with my aunt and we were doing a lot of stuff on the computer quite happliy working away. There was another guy with us as well. Suddenly my computer hard drive caught fire. This boy was all for dashing off for phoning up the fire brigade. Of coure I wouldn’t let him do that – I put it out myself. The fire brigade would just smother it in foam and ruin everything. In the end I managed to put out the fire. Of course the hard drive was ruined. My aunt and this boy were going into the City – Bishopsgate, although I don’t know why I thought Bishopsgate because it wasn’t there that I meant. There was a huge computer shop there. I felt really annoyed because I’d been to a computer fair that day and I could have bought a new hard drive there for peanuts had I known but it’s too late now. I asked this boy if he knew about this computer shop. Oh yes, he knew it very well. I asked “while you’re up in London with my aunt can you nip in there and pick me up a hard drive?”. I told him the one I wanted. He said “wouldn’t it be better to pick up a differet type for a MAC or something like that?”. He only ever uses MACs. I said that I use PCs and I’ve used them for years and I know them pretty well so I’m going to stick with them. He had a little bit of a chunter about that. Then I thought that I would have to get him some money as well and I probably don’t have enough cash on me so how am I going to do that? Then it came to booking the tickets so I went to look on the railway site. It turned out instead that I was looking at the bus site. It took endless goes for me to log in on it because everyone was meithering me and I kept on typing the wrong word. Eventually I got in to find that it was buses that we were looking at because we were now actually living in Bath. The first thing my aunt said was that they don’t have a direct bus service from Bath to London any more. We have to go on the train. We had to start looking for things like that. In the meantime we managed to find the times of the buses which would at least get them some of the way. Then the phone rang. My aunt talked to whoever it was and so on. When she hung up she said “that was George and that’s strange. He’s after his wages for the taxis. He’s on holiday and he wants it posted to him in York by cheque”. She couldn’t understand why he wanted it. I said “he’s probably going to buy something special while he’s in York”. “Yes but it’s early. he doesn’t get paid until Thursday but anyway …”. She had a chunter about that. Then I had to go and get her ready for this bus so they could get on it and this other guy too and head off into London
A little later on there was a girl and she was a lot older than she ought to be and she still had a dolly that she cuddled. People used to make remarks about it (Wiske and Schanulleke, anyone?). They decided that they would pass a Law about it. Somewhere inside there they inserted a clause that people who cuddled a pet or other object or person for the purpose of comfort would be exempt, which of course wiped out the whole purpose of this Law anyway. So we all had a debate about it.
Just then this other girl turned up. She was in a purple and gold kind of trouser suit kind of thing that looked more at home in a Middle-Eastern harem. She had long dark-brown hair that was cut in the style of an Egpytian, really precise cuts and edges and so on.
There was much more to it too but as you are probably eating your meal right now I’ll spare you any discomfort.
And once again I was dictating without the dictaphone in my hand. Either this is starting to become a habit or else it already is and a whole load of stuff has slipped quite literally through my hands.

After a shower, Caliburn and I hit the streets and headed to the shops.

NOZ is always on my shopping list. That’s a shop that buys job-lots of bankrupt stock, overstocks, that kind of thing from all over Europe.

In the past I’ve found plenty of useful things in there and also a whole variety of different foods to vary my diet somewhat. Today they had stocks of Sharwoods products on offer so I now have some vindaloo and madras sauces as well as some mango chutney. Stocks of curry in the freezer are getting low, an I’m also going to learn to make poppadoms, I reckon.

At LeClerc I didn’t spend very much, and most of what I did went on fruit. The place is now looking like a greengrocer’s, which is good for my health (and that reminds me – my kiwi, lemon and ginger cordial is delicious and I’ll be doing that again – hence more kiwis today).

One good thing is that, after much searching, I finally found the fresh figs. So back here, I finally set my kefir en route. How that will pan out remains to be seen.

This afternoon I had a whizz through some more photos of my adventures with Spirit of Conrad in July and we are now in our anchorage for the final night aboard. I reckon that there are about 50 more to edit before I finish.

Then, there are the 400 or so from my voyage into Eastern Europe and once they are completed I can turn my attention to the 3000 that remain from the High Arctic in 2019 and the 2000-odd from the High Arctic in 2018.

And then, finally, I can write up the notes for all of this.

The burning question of the day is not Rafferty’s motor car but whether I’ll finish all of this before all of this finishes me.

A few more albums bit the dust too, some more work was done on revising the web pages, Rosemary rang me and we had a chat for just over an hour, and I even found time to crash out for 15 minutes.

And as for that latter, with everything else that I’ve been doing today, it’s hardly a surprise. I must have been exhausted by then so I’m not too disappointed, even if for the last couple of days I’ve managed to keep going.

The day is far from finished too. There’s football this evening so I headed off into town.

And here’s another sure sign that the summer season has ended. The beach cabins have gone and they’ve taken down the diving platform at the Plat Gousset already, but now the itinerant bar Chez Maguie has folded up its tent and crept silently away in the night.

It’s a very significant sign for some of us, but for others it means that the locals can have their boulodrome back until next summer.

Professional football started back up a few weeks ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But this weekend amateur football has had the green light.

Consequently I headed off up to the Stade Louis Dior to watch Granville’s 2nd XI play FC Flerien, the team from Flers, in Normandy Regional 1.

For the first 15 minutes Granville’s control of the ball and their passing and movement was extremely fluent, but by the end of this little period they were already 2-0 down – a corner that the goalkeeper dropped into the path of an onrushing forward (he seemed to have a good pair of teflon gloves) and a misplaced header under pressure back to the goalkeeper that went to another onrushing forward.

After that, a couple of heads dropped, and the Fleriens got into their stride. We had to wait 55 minutes for Granville’s first shot on target (and about 10 minutes before the end for their other one) and 65 minutes for their first corner.

It was literally men against boys because Granville’s team was quite youthful whereas Flers had three or four old hands who had clearly been around the block far more times than the Granville players could handle.

The match ended 2-0 but really Flers could have had half a dozen and no-one in Granville would have complained.

And I’m glad that the match finished when it did because I was absolutely frozen to the marrow. It’s a long time since I’ve been this cold. I’ve been much warmer than this in the Arctic and next time I go to the football I’ll put on the thermal undies that I bought on Thursday.

On the way back, here’s something that I haven’t noticed before – mainly because it’s been an age since I went into town in the dark at night.

But now there seems to be blue lights shining down on all of the pedestrian crossings on the main roads. Presumably to give motorists a better chance of spotting civilians trying to cross the road.

It brought back many happy memories of a press release that we wonce received from the Parisian authorities when I worked at Shearings – “The policeman who directs the traffic at the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe will from now on be floodlit to make sure that motorists don’t miss him in the dark”.

My route home had to be extended tonight for the simple reason that “if I’m out, I’m well out” and there’s no point in going home with just 90% on my fitbit. I may as well push it up to 100%.

For that reason I wandered on down into the port to see what was going on.

“Nothing much” was the answer to that. Marité was there of course, tucked up in her little corner and so were the two Channel Island ferries, Granville and the older Victor Hugo.

As an aside, we haven’t seen a gravel boat in here for almost 6 months. I was hoping that this new mayor would do something about stimulating the freight trade to the port.

My route continued along the rue du Port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen several photos taken of this street in the dark, all of which have been taken from the cliffs up above.

And so tonight, in an effort to do something different, here’s the reverse-angle shot taken from the street looking back towards the cliffs.

Not that you can actually see the cliffs in this (lack of) light. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

On the climb back up the Boulevard des Terreneuviers I stopped (for breath) to look at the tidal port.

There was a beautiful bright moon tonight, even though it’s only half-full, and there was a wonderful reflection of light down in the Baie de Mont St Michel looking across to Jullouville and the Pointe de Carolles.

Actually, considering that this photo was hand-held and taken with the little NIKON 1 J5 with the standard lens, it’s not come out too badly, even if I did have to stop it down by 8 (in fact by 10 because normally the camera has to be opened up by 2 since the lens was repaired).

Back at the flabberblok there was yet more football so I grabbed a bowl of rice pudding and settled down in a ringside seat in front of the internet.

Y Fflint, newly promoted to the JD Cymru League this season after a 20-year absence were entertaining Barry Town. Barry, usually a strong competitive side but who misfired so spectacularly in European Competition earlier and then against TNS on the opening day of the season, have yet to grace my screen this season and I’ve only ever seen Y Fflint play once, in a cup match a few years ago.

The match was quite entertaining because while Barry were much more powerful and street-wise (which you have to expect), Flint matched them blow for blow and I was quietly impressed.

There were three significant items in this match

Alex Titchiner, Flint’s ace striker, was carried off injured after just 2 minutes.
Mike Lewis, in the Barry goal, played the game of his life and made a couple of stunning reflex saves (and that’s not to say that our old favourite, Jon Danby, formerly of Connah’s Quay Nomads, now next-door in the Flint goal didn’t have his moments too)
and had a Flint defender kept his head when Matt Jarvis burst into the area and not conceded a penalty

then the new boys would have had something from this game. They are no mugs, and certainly not cannon-fodder like some promotees have been.

And if TNS managed to sweep away this Barry side so convincingly, then just HOW good are TNS?

There is also some exciting news from Deeside too. It seems that the idea to build a new football stadium on Deeside to be UEFA-compliant for junior international matches, and European club competition and to be shared by next-door neighbours Connahs Quay Nomads and Y Fflint has taken a giant step forward.

Who knows? It might even become a reality if the two clubs can keep up the momentum they they have established over the last couple of years. The announcement that “certain funds have been made available” is major news but, as expected, BBC Wales, with its hands so deep in the pockets of the Welsh Rugby Union to an indecent depth that it imposes a news blackout on Welsh football, has totally passed it by.

But by now, it’s late. Long after midnight, so I’m off to bed. I’ll write up my notes in the morning – if I’m here. It’s Sunday and a day of rest and I might sleep in long past midday.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Leclerc

Saturday 6th March 2021 – SOMETHING RATHER UNUSUAL …

Saturday 20th February 2021 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

Saturday 13th February 2021 – IT’S USUALLY FRIDAY …

Saturday 6th February 2021 – HAVING MOANED …

Saturday 30th January 2021 – AS EXPECTED …

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Saturday 19th December 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

Saturday 5th December 2020 – I’M NOT …

Saturday 28th November 2020 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

Friday 20th November 2020 – DOESN’T CALIBURN …

Saturday 17th October 2020 – WE CALLED IT …

Saturday 10th October 2020 – WE’VE HAD A …

Saturday 3rd October 2020 – I ONCE STARTED TRAINING …

Saturday 26th September 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring