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Saturday 30th November 2019 – THINGS ARE …

… looking up here in Granville. And not before time either, I have to say.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I posted a photo of a vegan meal on offer at the local take-out bakery. Admittedly that’s a specialty local baker who cooks on the premised, but today I can post a photo of some industrial vegan bread on sale in the LeClerc hypermarket.

How about that for progress?

We’ve had a little progress here today too. I heard both the first and second alarms go off and then began to drift off into the arms of Morpheus again (hardly a surprise seeing as it was 01:30 when I went to bed and it was now about 06:10)

Anyway, I snatched myself out of it in a desperate attempt to beat the third alarm, only to find that it was in fact just 06:14 – still 6 minutes to go. In fact, by the time the alarm went off I was having my medication.

At about 09:10 I hit the streets today but before that I’d had breakfast, had a shower and done some dictaphone notes.

But outside I headed for LIDL. And although I didn’t spend too much, I did pick up a clothes airer, the type that hangs over a radiator. It’s not very big and doesn’t take too many clothes, but at least it’s an improvement on hanging it all in the bedroom window in this weather.

And that reminds me – I did a machine-load of washing while I was out.

Noz was next, and there was nothing of any great interest there. I only spent 4-odd Euros. But they did have some rubbish knitwear in a bin at €0:99 and I found a woolly hat … “to go on your woolly head” – ed … that was just about my size. And that’s important seeing as mine is in the pocket of the jacket that is hanging up in a hotel in Calgary.

Dodging the gilets jaunes who were out if force today – about a dozen of them – I headed for LeClerc.

We’ve seen one lot of vegan industrial bakery and here’s a second. It’s actually a brioche – that which Marie-Antoinette told the peasants to eat when they said that they had no bread.

It’s perfectly true by the way that this isn’t the first lot of vegan industrial bread at LeClerc. A year or so ago we had vegan croissants and vegan pains au chocolat but all of that was somewhat ephemeral. I hope that they stick around this time.

Once more, I didn’t spend much money here although I did buy some fresh ginger. Jackie has given me her recipe for a cold lemon and ginger drink and I’m determined to try it.

One thing that features quite often in these pages is the subject of pathetic parking, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And it doesn’t get more pathetic than this. A huge car park that can probably accommodate a couple of thousand vehicles, and this guy parks in the access road right outside the front door.

The access road is pretty narrow there and it’s right by one of the three doors out of the hypermarket, so it’s obstructing the pedestrian access too.

That wasn’t all either. Final stop was at BUT. I’d had a voucher for €50 off for this weekend in view of the purchases I made there a while ago. And as my office chair has now officially collapsed, I went to see what they had.

So now in the back of Caliburn is a replacement chair which will be installed in here tomorrow. I hope that it’s as comfortable as the demonstration one was.

While I was having lunch I heard a commotion out at the back.

My living room overlooks the Public Rooms and they are quite often hired out for activities. Today it looks as if we are having a wedding out there.

So here we are then, complete with confetti. And I hope that they will be very happy together.

After lunch I did a few more dictaphone entries and by the time that I had lost interest, I’d reduced the number to just 38. A good week on those should hopefully see them off and then I’ll start on my photos for the four months that I was away this summer.

But having lost interest, I remembered that I had some washing to put out and also some food to put away. And now the freezer is officially full again. Nothing else will go in there at all.

Some tidying up too, and a play around on the new guitar. And I’ve decided that it’s really good. I’m quite enjoying it.

A quick glance at the clock showed me that it was 17:10. I shouldn’t be here because US Granville are at home against FC Lorient.

Back out on foot and I stormed through the crowds and right across town to the ground. On the way though I stopped to photograph this house in the Route de Villedieu.

It seems that Christmas is coming early for some people.

At the ground, some more exciting news. US Granville are away at some team in Brittany next Saturday night and the club has laid on a free bus for the supporters.

There was a free place too, but there isn’t now! I’m going to have a day out!

As for the match itself, it was another one of those rather aimless games where Granville had no shape and no plan either, relying on breakaways out of a congested midfield.

It almost worked too, but they had an early goal disallowed for offside and also a very dubious offside give against a forward who was nowhere near interfering with play.

Lorient took the lead late in the game and never really looked like conceding it. Top of the table they are, and they deserved the win.

But there were some bizarre substitutions out there. Most of Lorient’s good work was coming down the left wing from a combination of left-back and left midfielder. So both of them were substituted, and I’m still wondering why.

Granville were no better than this. They have a forward who doesn’t look as if he does much but he always sticks a foot out and score a goal at a crucial moment. But they took him off and replaced him with someone who hasn’t done very much at all.

And they have a forward whose energy and keenness is unmatched. He was kept on the bench until it was far too late for him to be doing any good.

By the time we left it was raining heavily so I didn’t hang about on the way home – even running up part of the steep hill to reach the apartment.

And tea was out of a tin too, as is usual on a Saturday when i’ve been footballing.

But now I’m off to bed. i’m really tired (no surprise) and looking forward to my lie-in. And I wonder if those two people who buttonholed me in the street did manage to fond an open pizzeria.

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Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

But he won’t be back for long.

Although he passed his controle technique, and with ease too, the garage owner and I had quite a chat about him.

He’s now not far short of 13 years old and several areas of corrosion on his bodywork have been brought to my attention and need to be looked at before the next full controle technique in 2 years time.

As a result of our discussion, I’ve been provided with the name and address of a good body repair place in Gavray that the garage owner recommends and I’ll be going off to have a chat with him in due course as soon as I find out what I’ve done with the paper.

It might cost me €1000 or so to put him right, but I know every nut and bolt on the vehicle and apart from the very odd little bit here and there, no-one else has ever driven him. If I move him on and buy something else, I don’t know what it is that I’ll be buying and that could be fraught with danger.

The kind of vehicle that I want – another van of the same or similar size – could have been doing anything and being driven by everyone. So in the circumstances I’m going to stick with Caliburn

It was a nice walk out of the apartment this morning. The weather was coo and overcast – an ideal day for a good walk.

Passing by the harbour I gave my usual glance over the wall to see who was in there today. Granville and Victor Hugo are there, and so is Charles Marie. But there’s a new boat down there that I haven’t seen before.

It’s some kind of landing-craft type of freighter and I can’t see her name from up here. I shall have to go for a walk down to the harbour tomorrow for a closer look

With it being Saturday, it was market day. And as well as all of the stalls in the Market Hall, there’s something of a street market too.

One of the attractions of the market is the woman who has got crabs. There’s always a large crowd around her as she is selling her wares and se seems to be doing quite well.

Mind you, I have enough problems of my own without adding crabs to them.

There’s definitely something going on that I don’t understand because I stormed up the hill to the top in the kind of fashion that I would use as if I were invading Poland, even singing to myself as I strode out.

And I kept on going all the way out to the garage with just one or two little deviations (and if its deviations you want, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”).

I don’t know if I mentioned it but the last time that I was out this way on foot I’d noticed a big red double-decker bus being used as a restaurant. And so I went for a closer look.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-disappeared guises will recall that that was my plan with Laurence – to have a mobile restaurant. And I actually encountered one once on Cape Breton Island in Canada.

One of the places that I called in at was the motorbike shop to see what they had on sale. There was only one bike that I liked – a Yamaha 4-cylinder. But it was too heavy for me to manoeuvre easily so I’ll have to forget that idea.

The second-hand shop, Happy Cash, had a few things in there that looked interesting, including a couple of decent bass cabinets. But my eye was caught by an electric piano on sale at €25:00 and I’m still wondering about it now.

That wasn’t all the excitement either.

It seems that the gilets jaunes are back demonstrating again. Both of them in fact. They must find it a pretty lonely vigil standing out there like that.

It’s not as if they serve any useful purpose either. They can stand on that roundabout for as long as they like and it won’t change anything one single iota.

Talking of changing things … “well, one of us is” – ed … just for a change, I didn’t have another early night either. I was playing on the guitar again until some silly time of the morning.

And yet again I managed to beat the third alarm to the draw. And that’s not like me at all.

Not enough time to go on a nocturnal ramble either last night. I was doing something with a couple of this big briques – the two and three-litre ones the kind that milk and so on comes in and just as I was getting myself organised and about to pour some orange juice or something into them the alarm went off.

So I’ll never get to know what happened about that.

After the medication I sat at the laptop and dashed off a few dictaphone notes – 9 to be exact. There’s a lot to be said for making an early start.

Another thing that I did was to go back to a project that I started a while back in Canada and look on the internet for digital recordings of “complete albums” that I own on vinyl. Over the course of the day I found 6 and they are all now downloaded and coverted to *.mp3 ready for splitting into individual tracks.

having picked up Caliburn I went to NOZ for the first time in months and although there was nothing special, I spent €16:00 in there.

For the benefit of my new readers (of which there are many) NOZ is a shop that sells off bankrupt stock, near-shelf-life items, overstock and that kind of thing. Occasionally you can pick up bargains in there and I’ve had a lot of good stuff from there.

The near-shelf-life products can be interesting too. And there are always some surprising things on offer that make quite a nice surprising change to my diet.

At LeClerc I stocked up with stuff that I hadn’t been able to carry while I had been on foot, although I forgot to buy any water. I’ve decided to cut out completely the sugar-laden fizzy pop stuff and just go for water instead.

Tap-water is always a possibility of course but here it’s held in a storage tank on the headland so I don’t know what its quality will be like.

By now the heavens had opened and I was soaked walking to Caliburn. And back here I was drenched as I ran down the road chasing the papers that had blown out of my hand.

Lunch was a baguette with salad and my home-made hummus. And it really is wicked too. I shan’t be bothered by vampires, that’s for sure.

This afternoon I did another pile of upgrading of the website but ran aground when I found a half-completed web page that I must have uploaded by mistake. To rectify the situation I had a go at that, and it will take much longer than I anticipated.

To have a little rest and to fight off the fatigue here and there, I had a play on the guitar too. I must keep on keeping on.

Suddenly though, I noticed the time. 17:20. Kick-off was at 18:00 and it had stopped raining.

That was the cue to leg it off up town to the Stade Louis Dior.

On the way through town though I stopped at the Place General de Gaulle because there was some kind of ephemeral air about the kiddies’ roundabout tonight, all lit up as it was in the damp and doom and gloom.

And then I sailed off back up the hill that I had climbed this morning.

By the time I reached the football stadium I was in great form, which is surprising, and also just as well because we were drenched by the torrential rainstorm that suddenly opened up.

This was a match that I hadn’t wanted to miss because I hadn’t seen Entente Sannois Saint-Gratien – the Entente SSG – before.

They had been relegated from Division 2 last year and were still struggling to find their feet at this level. It’s a tough league.

In view of the rainstorm, they allowed those of us brave souls out in the open to come along and sit undercover in the grandstand, which was nice of them.

We could then settle down and enjoy an exciting match, although some of my fellow spectators didn’t think it as exciting as I did.

Granville had the better of the first half without anything to show for it despite the several good chances that had fallen to both teams – mainly down to the unusual formation that they had adopted. They were playing a kind-of 4-5-1 lineup with a centre-forward who hasn’t been getting much game-time, and probably the club’s best attacker playing in central midfield.

It clearly wasn’t working and so at the start of the second half he pushed Sullivan Martinet up front. And almost straight away the match transformed itself into one-way traffic towards the ESSG. For about 15 minutes the goal was bearing a charmed life as Granville peppered it from all directions.

And eventually it paid off for Granville and Martinet who broke the deadlock.

Granville were still pressing forward and threatening the goal, but the trainer pulled off his two attackers and went to shore up the defence.

A strange decision to me because Granville lost their momentum and allowed ESSG back into the game.

And they could have equalised too but for some wretched luck in front of goal, but Granville held on for the win.

Back here in the rain without a pause for breath, and I even ran up the slope at the top of the hill just to get my heartbeat racing. It’s been an excellent day from that point of view and I notice that I’d walked 16 kms and done over 21,000 steps today.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit followed by rice pudding. And once this posting is finished, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a long, exhausting day, I’ve done a lot of things and, surprisingly, I’m feeling so much better.

And it’s Sunday tomorrow too. I can have a lie-in.

Saturday 4th May 2019 – WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE!

US Granvillaise have not been playing so well just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And tonight, they were playing Stade Briochin, the league leaders, who were in yellow.

And I could see all of this ending in tears.

But to the surprise of everyone in the ground, and probably the players too, Granville actually won. 2-1 it was too.

They scored first with a penalty – a carbon copy of the goal the other week. The little n°10 wiggled his way into the penalty area, going nowhere and inviting a foul challenge.

And the opposition defence duly obliged.

Mind you, Stade Briochin equalised 2 minutes later – another penalty from a rather soft and accidental handball in the area.

Granville scored a second goal about 5 minutes into the second half with a beautiful flowing goal, and then hung on for the rest of the match.

We had no less than 6 minutes of injury time at the end of the match and I’ve no idea at all where all of that came from.

Stade Briochin, whose supporters turned out in numbers, complete with flags and drums, can count themselves unlucky in this game because they were the better team, but we were treated to a goalkeeping masterclass by the Granville keeper Florian Verplanck.

He’s a player who has impressed me right from the start of the season, and what he’s doing keeping goal at this level I really don’t know, and today he played the best that I have ever seen.

He made several brilliant saves at crucial moments, and even managed to get his hands to the penalty. The only time that Stade Briochin got past him, there was a defender present to clear off the line.

And Granville had their moments too. They had a couple of excellent chances too. One that will stay in my mind for a long time was the quick, long throw-in from the n°2, a back-header from the n°9 and a beautiful shot on the half-volley from about twenty-five yards out that screamed into the area, grazing the crossbar on its way out for a goal kick.

Last night was another depressing night. I had my early night and went off to sleep, but I kept on waking up throughout the night.

Plenty of time to go on a ramble though. And more than one too.

I’m not sure about what happened first though. It was something to do with 3D modelling or something like that. I’d found a modelling site that I had wanted to use but I couldn’t get access to it. There was something about the minimum order being £10:00 or something like this or whether this was the minimum payment sent to someone. It ended up with me meeting a guy who didn’t really correspond to what I had in mind to do. I wanted something more aggressive than he had. He tried then to provoke me into a fight so in the end I hit him. he went down and I thought “that’s not what I want, is it?”. I don’t know where it went after that.
A little later on I was with a group of young girls. They had already had a telling-off about overplaying to the customers and there they were again on another occasion. One of the girls came round to see me again – it was A and we were talking, saying that they had to calm down their act now and can’t go any further with it and be very careful not to go inciting the customers. I made a joke that “you can incite me any time you like. It’s nice to have that week in every two where it’s nice to have something going it – it makes like much more interesting”. I thought about the time where I’d found that bag or file with about 12 different identities in it and how I had to apply for them. I found that pretty boring but at east this idea with the girls doing their dancing etc makes it extremely interesting for those who have to wait. Like the houses in Chestnut Avenue in Shavington where house sales were such that it was taking 11 months to sell a house and move away and I’m sure that in that particular time these girls would entertain people waiting, one week in every two like they might be doing if we were lucky.
Later still I was with an old school-friend (but it wasn’t him, it was a former friend from another time) and a lady of my acquaintance last night and we’d been going for a good walk around somewhere that gave me the impression that it was somewhere in Germany but she had to wander off somewhere. She got on the bus and we carried on walking. We walked down this suburban road past a big pub and took a turning off to the left onto some kind of new industrial estate. There was a Social Club called the 5MM there so we had a look inside. Then my phone rang and the ring tone distubed everyone so they threw us out. It was our ladyfriend, saying she’d finished and where should we meet? I described where we were – the Social Club, a Hotel also with 5MM in white and blue on it, shops and things and a café and this lady (and I called her another name at the time, no idea why) knew it, but said that it was miles out. I asked this old school-friend/former friend character what we should do, where should we meet up? He replied something along the lines of “well she can get here, can’t she? It won’t take her all that long”. I suggested that to the lady and she replied “that’s miles!” I asked the old school-friend if there was anywhere in between where we could meet. He was rather offhand about it so I passed him the phone and told him to arrange a meeting place with her. He basically told her to come here in rather a brusque tone. She turned up (quicker than I would have expected) and she was really annoyed, shouting at my friend “don’t you know any North German people you could be nice to?”

Just for a change I was up before the final alarm, and organised fairly quickly too. And in the shower as well having a really good scrub ready for the weekend.

All of this led to an early start. I was out in the rainstorm before 09:00 and in LIDL early. There was nothing of any excitement there although I did spend some money there – Supplies are running rather low.

Next stop was, surprisingly, At Espace Auto in the rue de la Fontaine Jolie. Calburn’s Controle Technique is up at the end of the month so I needed to make an appointment for him to have a service and a check-over.

Leclerc had nothing exciting, and neither did NOZ, except for some vegan coconut sorbet – half a litre for €0:99!

I’m not expecting very much from this, but at that price I’m quite willing to risk it to see how it turns out.

Anyway, at least it will be different. I’ll be making an apple pie tomorrow so when I’ve finished the soya cream that’s open I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like.

Back here I put everything away and then, quite an important task -I made some more muesli. I’m running out and I can’t be doing without that.

Into the bedroom afterwards and there I made a start on the dictaphone notes. Another huge pile disappeared and there are only 150 left. But it might be slow for a few days – there was a gap in my blog entries while I was underneath the knife, but it didn’t stop me making notes on the dictaphone.

After lunch I carried on with the dictaphone notes but unfortunately I couldn’t keep going and ended up asleep on the chair for a short while.

At 17:15 I went off to the football now that the weather had cleared up.

There had been some talk around the town that the Council had been on the prowl around painting helpful notices on the street in strategic places, and this must be one of them.

You can tell that it’s the holiday season, with all of these elferly people with their little toutous messing up the streets and refusing to clean it up, despite the best efforts of the council to place plastic bags all around the town.

It’s hardly a surprise that everyone is so fed up of certain types of tourists who behave like this.

After the football I wandered back home through the crowds of people and the group of young girls who followed me almost to home.

They left me behind at the look-out over the harbour where I stopped to take a photo. You can tell that it’s weekend and the harbour gates are open because all of the fishing boats have come in and are tied up at the quayside.

Our old friend La Grande Ancre is over there on the far side.

Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine how the port might have been 120 years ago when it was crammed with sail-powered fishing boats who would make the voyage out to the Grand Banks off the coast of Canada.

How times have changed.

Back here it was tea out of a tin seeing as I’ve been out late.
Tomorrow is Sunday – lie-in time. No alarm so just you watch me be wide awake at 05:00.

Saturday 13th April 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… footfest today.

We started off at the Stade Louis Dior this evening when US Granvillaise were playing Le Havre AC’s 2nd XI. And what a giant of a side hey turned out to be. The two centre-backs, the centre-forward and a couple of other outfielders must have been 6 feet at least, and the goalkeeper towered over everyone by a good head.

And not only that, the two centre-backs were absolutely excellent in the air and with Granville being without an effective cenre-forward (story of their life) they didn’t get a sniff from open play.

The match started off at a roaring pace, with Granville streaming forward in droves, but to no effect whatsoever although they did hit the bar on one occasion. But as the match progressed Le Havre came more into it and they must have had the fastest team down the flanks (wingers and full-backs) that I have ever seen.

But that was all to no avail too because fast though they might have been, they couldn’t cross a ball to save their lives so we never got to see how good in the air the centre-forward might have been. And in the end, he was taken off and replaced by someone smaller, faster and more direct.

But Granville took the lead after about 50 minute. The little n°10 had the ball at his feet and dribbled his way into the penalty area. He was going nowhere so he was just inviting someone to bring him down – and of course, someone duly obliged. Penalty for Granville, which was duly slotted away.

The fast guy up front scored an equaliser about 15 minutes later, but then with about 15 minutes to go, Granville won a free kick about 25 yards out. It was a beautiful ball over the wall and although the big keeper got his hand to it, he could only help it on its way into the net.

So at ling last, after about 10 matches, Granville finally win a game. They hung on against some desperate last-minute attacks and we were all relieved when the final whistle went.

Back at home, we had TNS playing Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League. No matter how good a part-time team might be, they can’t match the level of fitness of a full-time club and in almost every game you see, the last 15 minutes, when the part-timers run out of steam, areusually crucial.

And so it was today. Barry played well for the first 60 minutes. They couldn’t match the quality of TNS of course – no-one in the Welsh Premier League can, but at least they were keeping up and being 1-0 down wasn’t the end of the world. But they flagged badly at the end and at about 80 minutes, at 2-0 down, they had clearly thrown in the towel. They basically stopped playing and it was embarrassing to see how easy it became for TNS as they had no opposition out there.

The match finished 4-0 to TNS and they could have had four or five more had they really tried.

I had a reasonable night’s sleep last night although it was still something of a struggle to rouse myself.

And after the usual morning procedure I did some work until about 09:00 when I headed into town.

No major shop today seeing as I’m heading off to Belgium tomorrow, so just a couple of things from the market.

Seizing the opportunity, I went to to harbour to see if the pontoon was there and if there was anyone around it who could tell me what was going on.

I was however totally out of luch. No-one about at all.

But all of the machinery was lying around on deck, and the nature of all of this is still mystifying me.

But the pipes on board would seem to give me some kind of clue. They look rather like core drill bits to me, but why would they be drilling into the bottom of the harbour.

After a prowl around the docks I had a prowl around the market. I picked up a nice baguette, but no baking apples anywhere so I shall have to wait for a while to make my apple pie. But I did have a joke with a vegetable stall-holder and dome Belgian clients about a Potatomat, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

My route home via the rue Paul Poirier was interrupted by yet another disgraceful example of bad parking.

There’s a parcels delivery van from France Express delivering parcels in the street, and he’s simply pulled up, on a busy Saturday morning too, right in the middle of the street.

And that’s notwithstanding the fact that there is a parking place available right at the side of where he’s stopped.

I went over to ask him if he needed any help in parking his van, because if he didn’t know how I would gladly do it for him, but he took no notice.

Back here I had a … errr … relax for a while before doing some more work, and then out on the wall for lunch.

During my sojourn on the walls, I was entertained by one of the Ile de Chausey ferries. It had gathered up a load of tourists and was heading off for an afternoon’s trip around the bay.

There was also a wedding taking place in the public rooms so there were crowds about and around all of the parking places.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone notes and shifted another big pile of those, before walking off to the football, where I spent most of the second half talking to an old man there.

So now it’s bed-time, even if I don’t feel much like it. I’m travelling tomorrow so I need to be at my best.

And I forgot my shower today. Ohhh dear.

l’iris de suze fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Saturday 30th March 2019 – MOVE OVER IMELDA MARCOS

I’ve been shopping for shoes today.

Last weekend after the football there was someone outside the ground handing out vouchers for 25% off the winter sports goods at Intersport.

For a while now I’ve been looking for a new pair of hiking boots and also a new pair of trainers and not found anything that I really liked. So I thought that this morning I may as well go there and see what they have.

As a result, I walked out with a decent pair of walking trainers and a decent pair of hiking boots, and also a pair of photography gloves. And 25% off them all too, and that’s off the mark-down price on the last day of the sale too.

They both have 5 stars for everything, except for impermeability, for which they scored three stars. But this afternoon I gave them a really good drenching in waterproofing solution and when that’s properly dry in the middle of the week, they’ll receive a second coat too.

It worked, and worked in spades too, for the trainers that I wear right now and which have all of the tread worn off due to constant use, so it may well work for them too.

Last night I went to bed and slept right through all the way until the alarm went off. I only have a vague recollection of going on a voyage, concerning a man whose dog had died and he wanted to bury him, but he was lamenting the fact that the only thing that he had was his mother’s old silver casket and how he was going to miss it.

Despite waking up with the alarm, as is usual these days I turned over and went back to sleep again. 07:25 when I arose from the dead, and by the time that I had finished the usual performance and the weekend shower, it was 09:10 before I hit the streets.

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special, so having bought the basics, I headed for NOZ.

But it took me a while to get there due to an enormous queue in the avenue des Matignon. It turns out that there had been a road accident involving a car and a motor bike.

If you look carefully, you can see the debris all over the road.

Eventually, I made it to NOZ and here once again, we are confronted with another pile of pathetic parking. It’s the kind of thing that really gets on my wick.

But in Noz, I made one or two interesting purchases. At long last I’ve found a proper pie tin and that cheered me up no end. And a couple of small ramekin dishes for the oven

Furthermore, there was an Inspector Maigret full-length DVD that will go quite nicely with my collection.

The shoes were next, and then back to LeClerc.

And isn’t it embarrassing and shameful when you see your country pilloried liks this even in the French local press. How could 17.4 million xenophobic racists, backed by a small group of opportunistic extremist politicians, drag the country through the mire like this.

But back to the plot, I didn’t buy anything special here either.

On the way home, I called at the second-hand shop to see what they had on offer. But there was nothing really that caught my eye at all.

Enormous queues again around the town with everyone taking the summer air. I’d even taken off my jacket. And the rue des Juifs is closed because of the works to the wall, and I had to go all around the houses to get back home.

Having half-unpacked my shopping, I had lunch.

It was such a beautiful day that I took my book and the special baguette that I had bought and went out to sit on the wall overlooking the harbour to see what was going on in the sunshine.

And it was quite a busy lunchtime out there too.

We had La Granvillaise out there doing her stuff after her major refit, and in the company of several other yachts.

And as well as that, we had one of the catamarans owned by one of the fishermen coming into port, presumably to unload this morning’s catch.

No lizards for my pear droppings though. they are probably still hibernating somewhere in a gap in the stone wall.

And then, back in the apartment I unpacked the other half of the shopping, having to stop for a little … errr … relax halfway through. And no surprise there.

US Granville’s 2nd XI were playing tonight. USAN Mondeville were the visitors.

I think that I’ve only seen them once this season and I don’t remember much about it. But it was such a nice evening that I went out for a good walk.

And I’m rather disappointed that I did go, because it didn’t turn out as I was hoping.

While you all admire the official photographer and his equipment, I can tell you something about the match.

Although the two teams were pretty much even on the field, Granville had no answer to the power and pace of the corners that the Mondeville winger was banging in.

And they had even less answer to the power and the pace of the defenders who were running in unmarked.

Panic and chaos ensued at every one and Mondeville scored from three of them. Thei fourth goal was from a good clearance by a Granville defender that had the misfortune to find a Mondeville attacker totally unmarked with all of the time in the world 15 metres out.

And, as usual, Granville didn’t have anyone out there who had the striker’s instinct.

On the way back, Rosemary called me, so we arranged that she would call me back later.

But in the meantime, I was distracted by this vehicle on the car park of the Foyer Des jeunes Travailleurs. Excuse the very blurry photo but I only had the time to shoot off a quick image

It’s a cut-down Ford Fiasco being used as a trailer, and that’s exciting in itself.

An the apartment, Rosemary called me back while I was watching TNS v Barry Town in the Welsh Cup.

Rosemary and I had a very lengthy chat while TNS did the predictable. Barry just couldn’t seem to get going tonight.

So now it’s late, I’ve had no tea but I didn’t care. I’m going to bed and I intend to sleep for a week.

la granvillaise port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Saturday 23rd March 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… the most one-sided football match that I have ever seen in my life.

US Granville were totally clueless today. They had just two shots on goal, one of which was collected easily by the keeper and the second went over the bar.

What didn’t help matters was that US Granville had a player sent off after 30 minutes. And it was probably the most ridiculous sending-off I have ever seen. A foul in front of me on the left winger by the Granville right-back, who is booked. The Granville left-winger shouted something from right across the field at the referee, who went over and booked him. So, immediately, the left-winger said something else that was probably equally uncomplimentary.

The remainder of the match was spent camped in the US Granville half with the FC Lorient goalkeeper playing centre-half. And he could easily have played centre-forward too and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

And so we had relentless attacking pressure on the US Granville defence, all of which led to nothing whatever because FC Lorient’s attackers couldn’t hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument.

The Granville keeper made two or three excellent saves, but for the rest of the match he was a virtual spectator.

But he could have been the saviour of the hour too, if only he had thought quicker. On two occasions late in the game he made good clean catches in his own area. But with the opposition keeper standing in the centre-circle, I would have gone for a good Route One clearance right down the centre of the pitch over the keeper’s head and who knows? One of them might have found the back of the FC Lorient net.

Instead, the match petered out surprisingly to a 0-0 draw and I reckon that the teams could still be playing there for a whole week and the score would still be the same.

Last night was an interesting night. I was tossing and turning all night and hardly recall having any sleep at all. But there was plenty of time to go on a few voyages, and did I voyage!

Last night I was in a Tax Office somewhere where there was a young guy examining some tax returns while I was looking through a drawer full of weeded-out files held in green envelopes. This guy asked if he should e completing a tax return, which I thought was rather strange seeing as where he was working, but then I noticed a huge file for the Duke of Somewhere, with a note that “no returns to be issued to this person”, and I was wondering whether this young guy had inherited the title. But even so, he should be making tax returns so I decided to send him a few and if it was inappropriate, he could always put them in the waste bin.
At some other point I’d been living in an apartment with several other people, mainly girls. I decided that I had to get up and get ready for work, even though it was only about 00:30 and most people hadn’t even gone to bed. Going to get washed was quite an adventure because it meant a walk of several miles down some old cobbled street rather like the Via Appia Antiqua in Rome. On the way down there I met Terry who was on his way to work on some church that was down there. He asked me if I would like to help him, which interested me not because of the work but the chance to get to see inside the church that was normally kept closed.
I was living in a house near to the sea and the tide was quite high and there had been floods. And at the next high tide I went out to see what was happening. It was clear that the waves were coming over the top of the sea wall – not very many at first but we still had a few inches of flood water. Nerina was there insisting that I come inside otherwise I would end up in a tragedy.
Finally, and last but not least, I was in school, going around with a girl who was much younger than me. But we couldn’t have some time together alone because people kept on interrupting us, riding bicyles around us, talking loudly, misbehaving, all of that, so in the end we walked back to school and I dropped her off at ther class. I walked on up several flights of stairs and the higher up I went, the more out-of-breath and ill I became. so that by the time I was almost at the top, all of my friends kept on rising out of their seats asking me if I was OK and did I need any help. I arrived at the top eventually and to go down for a drink, which I badly needed, it was quite a jump – three and a half storeys I reckoned, and I told the boy who was with me that I didn’t fancy the idea of jumping down there at all.

At 06:30 I was out of bed, and I had an early breakfast too. A shower and a shave and a good clean-up saw me hit the streets and the shops.

There was the usual round – LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc – and I bought nothing at all of any interest and forgot my pears to boot. There was another dark-blue sheet in NOz on special offer, so I added that to the collection.

Back here, I didn’t have the strength to unpack. Instead I sat on the chair and crashed out for a while. I’m still not getting better. I had to wait until after lunch before I could manage it. And after that, I didn’t do anything – just gathered my strength ready for the walk up to the football.

Tea when I came back was out of a tin. And now I’m heading off for an early night. Sunday is a lie-in and I reckon that I need it.

Saturday 23rd February 2019 – WITH HAVING WHAT …

… can only be described as “disturbed sleeping patterns” just recently, going to bed at 23:30 was never going to be a good idea. By about 01:00 I’d given up the struggle and by about 02:30 I was up and about, working. I must be feeling better, to say the least.

Round about 09:00 I went back to bed for a couple of hours. By 12:00 I was up and about again working and at 13:00 I attacked a bowl of porridge. Even more surprisingly, it managed to stay down.

Another even more surprising thing is that I managed to attack a little bit of tidying up. Not much, it has to be said, but the fact that I was able to do something is already … errr … something.

It was such a beautiful afternoon that I opened all of the windows in here.

I was tempted to go for a walk, but then I had another thought instead. I carried on doing some work and then at 17:00 I girded up my loins and hit the streets.

It’s that time of the year again.

The Baie de Mont St Michel and the area around here has the highest tides in Europe. Not quite on the Bay of Fundy scale but impressive all the same.

This weekend the tidal coefficients are the highest of the year and the sea right now is the farthest out that we are likely to see it.

It’s certainly impressive.

In the beautiful weather it was a sweaty trudge through the streets and a weary climb up the hill, and even though I took my time I was at the Stade Louis Dior in good time for the match against FC Mantois 78.

I’ve not seen them before, and they are currently adrift at the foot of the table. So I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to see them this time

Having witnessed US Granville’s dramatic loss of form just recently that has seen them plummet down the table like a Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what the outcome would be.

From the kick-off, it was clear that the US Granvillais left-back was playing in a match on his own. In the first five minutes I counted three times when he wandered miles away from his opponent, allowing his opponent to get in behind him.

After 10 or so minutes, I mentioned to my neighbour that he is going to cost the team dear if he doesn’t concentrate on his game – at that point he was a good 25 metres away and in front.

Sure enough, just a couple of minutes later, the left-back was miles out of position as the n°7 soared down the wing and put in a cross to the centre where a forward slotted the ball home.

And he kept it up too. Another ball down the wing, another cross, a header onto the post this time. I’ve not seen anything like this for years. We had no coaching whatever at school but even at Primary School it was drilled into us by our 11 year old team captains not to let our attackers get between us and the goal, even when they didn’t have the ball.

After half-time there was no change whatever.

It took 60 minutes for the coach to realise the problem. He eventually took off the n°3 and the defence tightened up – but only just a little.

US Granville pulled one back too. A quick throw-in, a long one into the penalty area from the right-back with the long throw – which caused uproar from the Mantois players and some of the crowd who are clearly unaware that you can’t be offside from a throw-in (or a goal kick either for that matter).

And then Granville pushed forward for a winner. And who knows what might have happened had we not had a moment of total madness as we entered into injury time.

The Mantois goalkeeper’s kicking was dreadful and they were just wild, aimless lunges down the field. One totally aimless kick right upfield fell to a US Granvillais defender, totally alone and unmarked with no-one anywhere near him. He turned to face upfield, took his time, and took a really good hard kick – straight into the midriff of a Mantois player charging down on him about 20 yards away.

You’ve no need for me to tell you what happened after that. The attacker controlled the ball, took half a dozen steps forward, rounded the keeper and that was that.

All hopes that Granville had of catching the game disappeared into the sunset.

A long painful walk back here – in time to watch a top-of-the table match in the Welsh Premier League between Y Barry and Cei Connah. Winner takes all tonight, and so quite obviously we had a draw.

A good goal from Jonathan Hood for Barry was cancelled out by a goal from Michael Bakare for the Nomads.

Many people saw Bakare’s goal as controversial but not me, not the referee and not those people equipped with slow-motion facilities and a camera behind the goal. Mike Lewis in the Barry goal was clearly “fouled”, but by his own player who pushed him hard into the patch of the Connnah’s Quay n°10. When the highlights go on line, I’ll post a link.

It was an exciting match that pulsated from end-to-end but Connah’s Quay had the better of it and the Barry woodwork knew all about it. A couple of goal-line panic-stricken clearances too but the Nomads couldn’t get the bal over the line.

So now it’s rather late, I’m rather tired but I’ve kept on going. And if that’s not impressive, seeing as how I’m feeling, then I don’t know what is.T

Saturday 2nd February 2019 – WHAT AN APPALLING …

… football match this evening.

US Granville excelled themselves in cluelessness against CMS Oissel, 5 places below them in the table, at the Stade Louis Dior.

Oissel were a lively, energetic team and could easily have scored three goals in the first five minutes as they tore relentlessly into the Granville side. Only some excellent goalkeeping kept them at bay.

Granville had no answer and never really looked remotely like troubling the Oissel goalkeeper. The only surprise was that the score was only 1-0 for Oissel at half time.

It went from bad to worse on the hour mark. A Granville player put in a rather heavy challenge on a Oissel player and received a yellow card. And, for absolutely no reason that I could see or hear, while the Oissel player was on the floor receiving treatment, the referee strode over to the Granville player and showed him a straight red card. There was nothing whatever, no off-the-ball incident, no foul language, no dissent or anything that I saw that could have possibly warranted the straight red card.

Surprisingly, being a man down, Granville played their best football after this and had the Oissel defence under pressure – only to be hit by a breakaway upfield and a second Oissel goal.

There should have been a third one, for with the Granville keeper stranded, an attacker completely unmarked had a shot at the goal … and hit the post!

And even more astonishingly, a Granville player picked up the loose ball, kicked it upfield catching the Oissel defence cold and a Granville player slotted a goal back, after much binding in the marsh in the penalty area.

Granville then pushed on upfield, only to concede yet another breakaway with the last kick of the match.

But all in all, it really was a dreadful, clueless, aimless performance that was going absolutely nowhere. If you have the strength or the courage, you can see the goals here

Last night, I was in bed early. Long before 23:00 in fact. Not that it did me much good because I was awake again at 02:45. Eventually I did go back to sleep, where I remained until the alarm went off.

But during the night I was in the East End of London last night and ended up with a girl – a girl who was clearly someone of ill-repute. We were walking along the streets arm-in-arm having a laugh at a politician who had likewise met a girl of ill-repute and was walking the streets with her but pretending that they weren’t together, even though it was quite obvious that they were. This girl and I ended up in a typical East-End dosshouse right in the heart of Ripperland London round by Fashion Street and Thrawl Street off the Whitechapel Road. The house was was far, far worse than anywhere where I have ever stayed in my life. I stayed there the night and in the morning the girl disappeared off to have a shower, so as I needed the bathroom I followed her, although I lost track of her even though I could hear the water running. I was appalled at the state of the house – the toilets were nothing more than a couple of holes cut into benches, the plaster was falling off the walls and my fellow-tenants did not inspire me with any confidence whatsoever. When the girl came back she made a remark about being glad that she hadn’t bought the other shampoo because there was conditioner in it. I asked her if she didn’t use conditioner, to which she replied that she liked to use a separate conditioner.

Just for a change, I was up fairly early too. Breakfast was early and then I had a shower, even doing a machine-load of washing.

Before going out, I shredded another load of paper from the European Paper Mountain and then it all went into the paper bin outside.

Today was one of the most minimal shopping days for quite a while. LIDL had nothing special, and neither did LeClerc. In fact, I spent a mere €16:00 in there. And that includes some tofu. I remembered the vegan pains au chocolat too.

At NOZ, they had a guitar lead, a couple of nice cereal bowls and a couple of CDs. Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation and Joe Satriani’s “Super Colossal”. And at €1:99 each too.

This afternoon, having had a brief doze for 10 minutes, I made the filling for the next pie.

I fried some onion and garlic in olive oil until it was caramelised and then added sage, rosemary, parsley and the tofu. All of that was fried on a low heat for about 20 minutes, and then I added a stock cube and some water.

While all of that was marinating, I went off for the football.

Back here was tea out of a tin and then I put the tofu in the fridge. Tomorrow, I’ll fry up some leeks and green flageolet beans and then add the tofu mix. That will make a beautiful pie filling.

So no alarm tomorrow. It’s Sunday and a lie-in. And I can’t say that I’ll be sorry.

I’m looking forward to a decent night’s sleep, and I have clean bedding to enjoy. So I hope that I can make the most of it.

Saturday 12th January 2019 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done for more than 25 years.

And that is …. to buy some batteries.

I don’t mean rechargeable batteries. I buy quite a few of those here and there and of course I buy batteries for Caliburn and for solar energy systems. But I wouldn’t ever buy a throwaway battery – until today.

There are two pieces of equipment round here – the pre-amp in the Ibanez acoustic guitar and the tuner foot-pedal – which take PP3-size batteries and both are flat. I have some rechargeable ones, but I left them in the Auvergne and I didn’t bring the PP3 recharger with me either. So when I saw a couple on sale in NOZ at €0:99, I set my scruples aside for the moment.

After the problems of yesterday, I ended up not being able to sleep, and doesn’t that always happen? But I did go off to sleep at one point and even managed to go off on my travels. My phone had been cut off and I had to telephone the supplier. We ended up having quite an argument and my French started to break up. The person on the other end made a remark so I asked him what he expected when I had just awoken at 06:00. I asked for an appointment so he replied that he would fix one for me – one and that was all and I had better be there. I replied that it wasn’t much good ringing about it and telling me the time and expecting me to be there if the phone had been disconnected so I wouldn’t receive the call. he told me that that was my problem – I’d get one, and one only.

At this point the alarm went off and I awoke.

It was a struggle to leave the bed and having a good shower didn’t make me feel much better. Nevertheless, I headed off to the shops regardless.

No-one produced anything special, although the bill at LeClerc was more than it might have been due to the necessity of buying a load of coffee. And I forgot which coffee it was that I am currently drinking that is really nice. I bet I have the wrong one.

Just for a change I also called in at the Biocoop because I forgot to buy some vegan sausages at the Loving Hut in Leuven and I fancy some for tea some time.

Back here, I didn’t have the strength to put away the shopping. I just had a coffee and sat down.

After lunch, I tried to sit down and do some work but in the end I gave up and went to bed. And there I stayed for a good two hours too.

Nevertheless, I struggled up to the Stade Louis Dior (and it was a struggle too) to watch US Granville play FC Nantes.

And if you think that the score 5-2 to FC Nantes reflects a one-sided game, you might be right. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have been criticising Granville’s defence on a regular basis for its somewhat casual approach to defending. Today they were up against a really clinical team that made them pay for it.

2 goals flattered Granville. Unless there was something that I missed, the player who scored Granville’s second goal looked about a mile offside to me.

Back here, there was more football. Y Bala v Caernarfon in the Welsh Premier League. I have never seen so many misses from so close to the goal in one match as I have in this game. And Alex Ramsey, who didn’t impress me all that much when he played for Rhyl a few years ago, had a blinder in the Caernarfon goal and rightly won the man-of-the-match.

Bala, and in particular Henry Jones, ran all over Caernarfon in the first half and could have had half a dozen. And they will look long and hard at that period too and wonder how they went in for their cuppa at 1-1.

But in the last 15 minutes a couple of inspired Caernarfon substitutions transformed the game. They clamped right down on Henry Jones and scored two late goals to win 3-1.

Tea was out of a tin at half-time, so now I’m ready for bed. But whether I go to sleep is another matter.

Saturday 15th December 2018 – WE’VE HAD A BIT …

… of an issue here today.

Coming back from shopping this morning I put on the coffee machine to make a coffee and the whole electrical system in the apartment went “bang” and cut out. Everything had gone and even when I switched the main fuse back on, there was still no current.

Down to the cellar to check the master switch but the door to the electric room was closed with a special lock which I couldn’t undo. And so I called up the Estate Agents.

She came round, showed me the secret to opening the door to the electric room, and I could then power up the apartment. But we had a chat about the electrical system and she said that she would arrange for an electrician to pass by after the New Year.

Last night wasn’t quite so early and as a result it was a struggle to leave the bed this morning. I’d been on an exciting nocturnal ramble too but by the time I’d sat up in bed it had completely gone from my head. I’m not doing too well here either am I?

After breakfast I had a shower and a clean-up and then went off to the shops. It was freezing cold, howling with wind and teeming down with rain.

We did the usual round of LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc, and bought nothing special at all. And on the way back I stopped off to pick up something special for a friend, more of which anon. Back here we had the electrical issues, and then I crashed out for a while.

After lunch I tidied up and put away the shopping. It takes me longer to do things like that these days as I’m slowly slowing up. And that reinds me that one of these days I must go through and clean the apartment from top to bottom.

Later on this afternoon, I hit the streets again. US Granville were playing AS Poissy and I’d bought a ticket for the game in the hope that the weather would change.

And indeed it had changed – it had become worse and it was dreadful outside.

But me no daft, me no silly, I’d dressed in my Arctic wet-weather gear and it worked to perfection.

I was comparatively comfortable squelching my way through the Christmas lights of the town and by the time that I reached the Stade Louis Dior I was hot and sweating despite the freezing weather.

After about 20 minutes, the weather changed again. And I’ve never ever in my life been out in such a torrential downpour and felt so completely dry. The money that I had spent in Montreal three months ago was well-worth it.

For the second half of the game, the weather changed yet again. The rain stopped, the wind dropped and the sky cleared. The stars appeared and the temperature fell.

As for the football, it was a good match. Poissy were better than their league position suggested and Granville made heavy weather of a narrow 1-0 victory. They had bags of chances too, most of which were blazed over the bar.

We had a peculiar incident too. A Poissy player was badly-injured and rolled off the field. And so the game went on. But the Poissy trainer then dragged him back onto the pitch so that the referee would stop the game. A yellow card at last for the player and the trainer, the former for stopping the game and the latter for entering the field of play without the referee’s permission, but the referee simply stopped the game for the medical treatment and ignored the sanction.

The referee also got a throw-in wrong. A Granville player kicked the ball out of play, but then took the throw-in. I noticed it, and so did the linesman who waved his flag like a chef de gare. The referee took no notice but a minute or so later, ran past the linesman and said (and I heard him correctly) “I know – I know”.

Walking back through the town in the cold but dry weather, I could take some time to admire the Christmas lights on the way home.

We saw this decoration here at the same spot last year at the roundabout at the start of the avenue des Matignon.

We seem to becoming quite festive all over the town now. it’s a shame that I won’t be here to enjoy it all but it can’t be helped.

Back here at home there was more football. On the internet this time.

Newtown v Llandudno in the Welsh Premier League. Newtown are a mid-table side and Llandudno are bottom of the league. And it’s easy to see why because Newtown swept them away 3-1 without too much difficulty.

Tea was out of a tin at half-time.

So I’ll be in bed in a minute. It’s late but it’s Sunday tomorrow so I’m having a lie-in. And about time too.

christmas lights avenue du marechal leclerc granville manche normandy france

christmas lights place de la gare rue couraye granville manche normandy france

Saturday 24th November 2018 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

And, just for a change, we aren’t talking about events on the North Shore of the English Channel either.

Up at the Stade Louis Dior this eveningin the beautiful sunset watching US Granville play US St Malo. Granville came straight out of the traps and missed two complete sitters in the first five minutes.

Granville scored the first goal after about 20 minutes and looked as if they were doing wuite well, but then they started to lapse into the usual lack of concentration and silly, stupid schoolboy mistakes.

Just after half-time they scored a second goal. This new n°10 whom they have just signed and who was playing a blinder, the smallest man on the field, rose highest at the back post to a deep cross and headed in.

But then, an astonishing thing. Granville went to sleep. This new n°10 drifted into anonymity and was later substituted, and St Malo then took the game by the scruff of the neck. They pulled one back after 74 minutes and a second, from a panic-stricken penalty, with five minutes to go.

And as the game drew to a close, it was Sr Malo who looked the most likely.

This bizarre behaviuor by Granville has cost them yet another two points. They’ve signed a whole raft of new players this season with the cup money, but they have still kept the same old habits, and they will cost them dear.

Last night was another reasonable night and I was away on my travels again – although I have absolutely no idea when or where I went.

And up reasonably early too, medicined and breakfasted.

With it being Saturday, it’s my usual practice to go to the shops today. But with my going off tomorrow morning, I decided against it. No point buying food that I don’t need right now.

I did go out, however. A nice walk around the docks.

But first I had something to do. Remember the story the other day of the railway line at the side of the docks?

I followed it a bit further along the docks and found a spot where the two rails merged into one. And so now I’m having third thoughts about my theory of the railway crane.

The tide was well out today so not only were the harbour gates closed and I could walk over them, I could satisfy my curiosity about how the harbour empties.

The harbour would have to slowly lose water over the course of the day as the tide goes out, so that the water inside could go down slowly and the gates could be opened before high tide

And there’s the drain, down there at the foot of the wall.

There are tidal markers too at the side of the wall so we can see the state of the tide. I’ll have to be down there one day as the gates open so that I can see the height of the water when they open the gates.

I carried on with my walk around the quayside to see what else was going on.

And it looks as if whatever has been going on with the Aztec Lady in the ship repairers has now finished because she’s now tied up at the quayside.

There was no-one about on the boat so I was unable to make further enquiries;

I was intrigued by the yacht that was moored next to Aztec Lady.

Closer observation revealed that she’s the Spirit of Conrad and we ought to know about this because she’s actually owned by one of my neighbours and if my memory serves me correctly I’ve been to a birthday party on board.

One of these days, I might even go for a sail on her because she goes off occasionally to the Arctic too.

Leaving the quayside, I off up to the railway station to collect my rail tickets for tomorrow morning. I always like to have them in my hand before the day of departure. There has been more than one occasion when the ticket machine hasn’t worked, and the booking office isn’t open by the time my train leaves.

After lunch, I did a little tidying up and cleaning up in here – not that you would notice the difference. But the microwave has been steam-cleaned and now looks a little more healthy.

And I had a play with the big tower computer too. But that wasn’t very successful – the CMOS battery is flat and the settings are erased. I’ll have to buy a new CMOS battery and reset everything.

Not that it’s any surprise of course. This computer hasn’t run since March 2011.

A little later I went off to the football, as I mentioned earlier.

The other day we had seen them putting up some Christmas lights around the town.

The main shopping street – the rue Campion – would ordinarily be the best place to start, but this is something of a disappointment.

I’m not much of a one for celebrations and festivities but I would have expected the Christmas decorations to be much better than this. I hope that they are going to add some more in early course.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a regular feature of this blog.

Here in the boulevard of the 2éme et 202éme de Ligne there’s yet another example, and while it might not be a BMW it’s a Volvo, and that’s almost as bad.

I don’t know why he needs to take up two parking spaces with his vehicle, but it’s clearly pretty selfish of him.
But what do you expect from a Volvo driver?

I eventually returned home and set about making tea. Something out of a tin as usual on a Saturday when there’s football, and then some more tidying up, including cleaning the coffee machine.

Now it’s bed-time, having had a very pleasant hour or so reprogramming the CMOS on the tower computer. It’s amazing how much I have remembered from my T223 course all those years ago, and it’s running along quite happily. Although for some reason or other I’ve programmed in the wrong settings for the video card. I’ll have to look at that when I come back from Belgium next week.

But now it’s an early night. There’s an alarm call in the morning.

Saturday 10th November 2018 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

… with going to bed early is that there is quite often a tendency to awake early too. Early is one thing, but 04:48 is a bit ridiculous.

And even worse, I didn’t go back to sleep either I just lay there and vegetated until the alarm went off.

An early breakfast meant that I had plenty of time left. So I finished off the entry for the third day of my High Arctic voyage and put it on line where you can see it in all of its glory, with a couple of dozen of the … gulp … 127 photos that I took that day.

Once that was done I had a shower and then headed off for the shops.

LIDL came up with nothing at all special, and NOZ wasn’t much better. Leclerc didn’t come up with much either. All in all, it was a very light shopping bill today. And that includes the gram flour from the Biocoop.

But I nearly spent a lot more than that.

Having a look around in the Second-Hand Shop they had a beautiful Ibanez 5-string bass guitar and I had a good play around on it for about 15 minutes. Then I had to tear myself away before I spent a lot of money.

But the printer!

According to the Leclerc website, they have an Epson printer on special offer – €15:00 cheaper than the equivalent on Amazon.

I like Epsons, for the simple reasons that firstly the ink is cheap and secondly the colour cartridges are separate so you don’t need to replace the whole lot when just one colour runs out.

The advert said that the printers were available on order from the shop so off I went. And the usual inept Je m’enfoutiste who couldn’t be bothered to look for it on the on-line catalogue went off to chat to a colleague, and came back to tell me that “they’ve all gone”.

Back here, I had a look on-line, and there were plenty left. So I ordered one on-line instead and it will be in the drive-in in a couple of days.

But I’m getting sick and tired of this modern trend of je m’enfoutisme where shopkeepers and shop assistants are kicking people out of their shops because it’s too much like hard work to try to sell them something.

And anyone who has read Alvin Tofler’s The Third Wave will recall that he foretold all of this nearly 40 years ago.

People argue long and hard in favour of “shop local” instead of shopping on-line, but at least the computer and the warehouse robots are keen and eager to fulfil your demand.

While I was finishing off my lunch this afternoon there was a ring on the doorbell. Liz and Terry turned up to say hello, have a coffee and to give me some shopping that they had brought back from the UK for me. Stuff for Christmas such as mince pies, mincemeat and Christmas pudding, seeing as the English Shop in Everburg let me down.

We had a good walk around the headland and the walls in the wind and rain, followed by a coffee in the cafe in the old town.

Later on, I started to work on the web pages for Day Three but ended up by falling asleep on my comfortable chair.

On awakening, I noticed that US Granville’s 2nd XI was playing against LC Bretteville Sur Odon, and kick-off was in 40 minutes time.

Not wishing to hang around, I sailed off at a rapid rate of knots and was actually there 10 minutes before kick-off. I didn’t know that I could move so fast these days.

US Granville took the lead after just one and a half minutes. From their first attack they won a corner. The LC Bretteville Sur Odon keeper punched it out and a Granville player picked up the loose ball and drove it back into the crowded penalty area where it shot through a ruck of players straight into the net without touching anyone.

They had the ball in the net after 13 minutes too, but it was ruled out for a push on a defender.

LC Bretteville Sur Odon woke up after about 35 minutes and began to get on top. They almost equalised but a shot was kicked off the line by a defender.

The second half carried on with LC Bretteville Sur Odon clearly on top but a few unsavoury incidents which ended up with an LC Bretteville Sur Odon in the dressing room disrupted the game.

Three substitutes all at the same time refreshed the Granville team and, against the run of play, scored a dramatic second goal. A breakaway through the centre saw the ball blocked on the line not once but twice, but the third attempt on goal found the back of the net.

So a rather fortunate 2-0 win for Granville.

By now the rain had stopped so I had a good walk back home.

I’d taken the Nikon 1 with me and so I decided that I would have some fun with it in the dark.

As you know, I’ve not been able to get it to work as well as I would have liked in poor lighting, and the drawbridge into the old walled town here gave me ideas.

I took several photos of the pont lévis, using different shutter, aperture and ISO settings, to correspond and compare with the earlier one which was taken on fully automatic settings.

Most of them were filed under CS, but this one turned out quite well.

1/13 shutter speed, f3.75 and ISO6400, and darkened slightly.

Back home, while I was working on the photos, I noticed a couple of people nicely framed in the archway of the drawbridge.

I cropped out that part of the image and blew it up a little to see what it would give me, and it’s produced a nice effect.

However, it’s ended up being rather pixelated and that’s a disappointment. I don’t seem to be able to produce the quality for which I am looking.

Back home, I made myself a plate of mushrooms in tomato sauce with pasta for tea.

I’m ready now for an early night, especially having done 147% of my daily total, and I hope that I’ll be able finally to have a good sleep.

I need it.

Saturday 6th October 2018 – I’M BEING SPOILT …

… with exciting and passionate football matches just now.

After the thrills of yesterday, today was US Granvillaise v FC Bastia-Borgo, another club from Corsica.

Kick-off was at 20:00 so I had a quick shower, a shave, a change of clothes and headed off in the driving rain – on foot too – to the Stade Louis Dior.

A tiny crowd, which is hardly surprising given the weather conditions, was treated to quite a spectacle.

The match roared from end to end. Granville had marginally the upper hand because although the midfield wasn’t quite as strong as that of Bastia, the play down the wings was once more excellent.

Driving down the wings, they had the ball in the net (disallowed for an offside) and hit the woodwork a couple of times, but they went into the lead after 20 minutes or so with a low ball driven into the penalty area from the right wing and sidefooted in by the n°8 from 12 yards.

In the second half the match was more even and Bastia had a couple of really excellent chances to score, hitting the woodwork and a lob over the keeper headed off the line. But Granville scored a second – a goal quite similar to the first one.

In the final 5 or so minutes Bastia pushed well forward and looked menacing. But they couldn’t convert the chances that they created. On the other hand they laft huge gaps in the defence and on two occasions, the goalkeeper did really well to deny a Granville attacker in some one-on-one situations.

When the final whistle went we all breathed a sigh of relief. But it as a good win for the team and three hard-earned points.

Last night I had the Sleep Of The Dead and stayed asleep until 11:10 without a single interruption. I’d been on my travels too but as soon as I awoke any memory of where I had been disappeared completely.

After breakfast, in a novel departure (and showing signs that I must be feeling a little better) I attacked the tidying-up and I made a good deal of progress. It now looks almost as if someone lives here rather than a bomb site. Another good day should see it looking just like home.

I had a lengthy chat with Ingrid on the telephone too. We discussed all kinds of things before I had to dash off to watch the match.

On the way home I was soaked to the skin, except where my rain jacket had been. The yellow one that I had bought a few weeks before I went away. That was a good purchase too and I wish that I had worn the overtrousers that I had bought in Montreal.

The fritkot was closed, which was a disappointment. So I came home and to my surprise, I was striding out up the hill just like in the good old days. I must be feeling a little more like it.

With no chips for tea I rustled up a plate of pasta and veg in olive oil. This time, including sprouts because although they had no frozen ones in the supermarket the other day, they did have some fresh ones.

Now I’m off to bed, with no alarm and a good lie in, seeing as it’s Sunday. But there will be an alarm on Monday. I need to get back into the routine.

Saturday 25th August 2018 – HIS NIBS …

… is complaining again.

I’ve been packing my suitcase and it’s almost all complete now except for the things that I have forgotten. And much to my surprise the weight of the suitcase is only 13kg and there seems to be nothing at like there usually is in there.

So I’m not quite sure why he’s getting all upset. At least I’ve remembered to take him and he’s not been forgotten at home, like when I went to Africa.

Just for a change I’d had a good night’s sleep, right the way through to when the alarms went off. And I must have gone back to sleep afterwards because it was 07:30 when I finally came round.

After the usual morning routine I started with the serious tidying up. This involved picking up all of the rubbish off the floor, the table and the worktop, cleaning the latter two objects and vacuuming the floor. No shopping today!

Of course, these days I can only work in short bursts and taking a rest in between, and while I was resting I’ve done a serious back-up of the laptop. Kt’e all stored up on one of the hard drives on the top shelf.

Furthermore, I’ve copied all of the files onto the little laptop that I take with me on my travels, so that’s up-to-date too.

Lunch was on the wall again and two lizards came to join me while I sitting was there.

Although it was quite cold out there, the sky was really clear and you could see for miles.

And so, armed with the Nikon 1 and its zoom/telephoto lens, I went round to the other side of the promontory to see what the Ile de Chausey was up to.

That wasn’t the best of it either.

Out on the horizon the Channel Islands – or Jersey anyway – were standing out really well today.

With the lens and the camera the photo came out really well. You wouldn’t think that it was 54 kilometres away.

The results were so impressive that I could cut out a bit of the image, blow it up (which I can do even today despite modern anti-terrorism legislation) and enhance it to see what comes out.

And I don’t think that you’ll ever see St Helier as good as this, especially with the equipment that I can muster up.

Like I said – it’s 54 kilometres away

Back here I carried on with the housework and so on, and on my way out to the football I washed the floor behind me so that it would be dry when I came back.

Granville were playing C-Chartres Football today, and we had a crowd of about 750 to watch the match in the lovely weather.

It was an exciting match today. The Chartres team was better-organised but the Granville team played some really good football – one 15-minute spell midway through the first half was particularly impressive.

But the problem is that despite the beautiful football, Granville don’t have the strikers to turn it all into goals. And with the Chartres team being much better-organised and far more … errr … streetwise, it was no surprise to anyone that they eventually went into the lead.

5 minutes of injury time provoked a frenetic finish. Granville finally did manage to score an equaliser, the Granville keeper was sent off for punching an opponent, and the entire Chartres technical team was sent to the stands.

But 1-1 was the correct result, although it could have been so much better for Granville if only they could find a striker from somewhere.

It was a pleasant walk back from the football.

And the rue des Juifs – the road up to here – was closed again to traffic with street entertainment and all that kind of thing going on.

It’s something of a shame that I don’t have time to enjoy it, but I have far too much to do right now.

But that’s not all the excitement going on this evening.

There’s still plenty going on out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel. We have Marité still out there entertaining the crowds

There are a couple of other sailing boats out there too, but I don’t know which ones they are.

For tea I used the last pizza base, and while my pizza was cooking I had a shower and then put the washing machine on a cycle. The pizza didn’t work very well through. The pizza base had been in the bottom of the fridge and it had been waterlogged so it didn’t unroll as well as it should. And then it took much longer to cook.

So having done some more work here, I’m redy for bed. I’m hitting the road early tomorrow.

ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

lighthouse ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

street entertainment rue des juifs granville manche normandy france

Saturday 11th August 2018 – SO HERE I AM …

… curled up quite nicely in Liz and Terry’s spare bed. We have an early start tomorrow morning so to save time I’ve come here tonight.

This morning though I was up fairly early and manage to make a good start to the day. And after the usual rigmarole I had a shower and then set the washing machine to work. I need to have all of the clothes properly cleaned.

Things were strange in the shops today. I went out much earlier than usual. At LIDL they were still selling their “back to school” stuff but there wasn’t anything else that I needed after Thursday’s visit. Mind you, the grapes at €1:99 per kilo were interesting so I bought a huge bunch.

But NOZ Was certainly interesting.

We started as we meant to go on with yet another fine example of parking round on the car park at the back. I really don’t know what goes on in the head of some people. I really don’t.

As for the shop itself, the place was half-empty as far as stock goes. There wasn’t very much on the shelves at all so there wasn’t very much that I wanted to buy. And when I did reach the check-outs I joined the lengthy queue waiting for someone to appear at the check-outs.

After 10 minutes of waiting for the till to be personned, I abandoned my purchases and left the shop. I have better things to do than to wait around like this.

LeClerc across the road didn’t come up with all that much. But then again, I wasn’t really shopping for much. No point in having food around here if I’m not going to be here to eat it.

Lunch was spent on the wall with my lizards and my book, and then this afternoon I loaded up Caliburn with all of the plastic boxes that had been lying around since I moved in. They are going on a little travel too.

The football season starts today and US Granville are playing Association Sportive Furiani-Agliani -the first time ever apparently that a club from Corsica has played at the Stade Louis Dior.

A whole raft of new players this season, but they seemed to have picked up all of the bad habits of the old players. A careless ball out of defence to an opposition attacker led to a penalty, and only a good save from the new goalkeeper prevented the Corsicans from scoring.

But that was typical of how the game went from a Granville point of view. And two soft goals conceded from free kicks underlined the careless play.

Granville may well have signed a whole host of new players, but not a centre-forward, so it seemed. There was a big n°9 out there but he wasn’t doing too much at all in midfield and I’m not sure why he was on the field.

The fact that they scored three goals (and won the game) was quite by accident.

The first one was from a long throw – one of the longest that I’ve seen – that took everyone by surprise after just two and a half minutes.

The second was a free kick driven low into the crowded penalty area which hit a defender and went in the net, and the third was the Corsican goalkeeper and two of his defenders waiting for each other to clear the ball, giving time for a Granville winger to run in and smash the ball into the net.

Granville did in the end produce a huge n°14 who went up front in the final stages of the game but I couldn’t see what his purpose on the field was either. He didn’t seem to be up to this level of the game at all.

From there I went to fuel up and then out to Liz and Terry’s for tea, followed by an early night.

We have a lot to do tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: stade louis dior

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Saturday 24th November 2018 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

Saturday 10th November 2018 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

Saturday 6th October 2018 – I’M BEING SPOILT …

Saturday 25th August 2018 – HIS NIBS …

Saturday 11th August 2018 – SO HERE I AM …

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