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.

Friday 16th October 2020 – SOMEONE ELSE …

… has had his chopper out today, so it seems.

We’re used to seeing a helicopter flying around here but it’s usually the Eurocopter one that the Air-Sea Rescue uses. In fact we saw that one out and about the other night. But today it’s a new one that I don’t recall having seen before.

It looks as if it’s a private helicopter, not one belonging to a Government department or organisation. And it makes a change from the autogyro that we usually see flying around here in the afternoon.

And if it had been flying around here when the third alarm went off, I would have missed it because, once again, I failed to make it out of bed at the appropriate time and that has filled me with dismay.

And it’s not as if I had a late night either – well, not as late as some have been.

And I didn’t really go all that far during the night either. I’m not sure what was happening here but it was in lockdown and no-one was allowed out. There was one group or orchestra practising in a shipping container that was floating on the sea. But the container suddenly nose-dived and anyone in it was taken below the water. There were a lot of people appealing to the Ministry to allow people back out onto the beaches to avoid another tragedy

And later on, after many struggles Wales finally had its own navy although no-one ever called it out for very much. It wasn’t safe to go out in the ruler’s boat too far because of all kinds of different complications but we certainly had a navy by now.

It’s certainly interesting, the things that I get up to during the night.

All of the morning has been spent dealing with the photos from August 2020. And that took an age as well because the system that I tried, of dictating my notes out loud so that the recorder on the Dashcam would pick it up, was also a dismal failure.

In the end, I had to follow on the Dashcam the route that I took, look for road signs that I could decipher (which was not easy with the bright sunlight shining into the windscreen) and then timing the difference between two photos.

That’s complicated enough when it has to be done in German, but when you are dealing with notices, adverts and signs written in Czech, Slovak and Hungarian, it’s another thing entirely. It took me all the morning to do about 30, and there’s still plenty more to go at.

After lunch, I had to go out. Caliburn is now a teenager, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and for his birthday he’s having a makeover as I promised him. So basically I had to drive to Gavray where we repeated the process that we has done several months ago, and now he’s booked in for a week from 27th October.

There’s plenty of life left in him, that’s for sure, but his bodywork is looking his age and the MoT examiner made a few comments about it. It’s going to cost me an arm and a leg, and I really do mean that, but buying a new vehicle will cost me 10 times that. And if I get a second-hand vehicle, who knows what I’ll end up with?

And the repair will come with a 5-year guarantee, which is about all the life that I have left in me if I’m lucky, according to the doctor’s. They gave me a lifespan of between 5 and 10 years, and we’ve entered that period now.

Having returned from my rather pointless drive from Gavray, I went for my afternoon walk.

And at least I had very good weather for it. The weather was really beautiful this afternoon. A little cold and windy but really sunny outside. There were quite a few people down ther eon the beach making the most of the mid-October sunshine.

However, on the way out of town, I’d seen people carrying buckets and rakes and all kinds of things off onto the beach, so I wonder if it’s another Grand Marée when they’ll be swarming onto the beach for the shellfish in the public area.

There was other activity going on out to sea too.

The white boat that we saw away in the distance in the English Channel is still there, only now a bit closer to the Ile de Chausey. A look on the live plotter of the Fleet Monitor that I have (regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I host in my apartment the AIS receiver and antenna for the port) tells me that the research ship Antea is still out there.

That leads me to the conclusion that she is in fact none other than the aforementioned. The next question of course is “what is she researching?”

There were quite a few people out there on foot today wandering around in the good weather.

And the brats were out there again today, with their orienteering project. I’m not quite sure what it is that they are actually supposed to be doing because when I was walking past, one of the monitors was sending them off in pairs to stand by the control points.

It seems to me that one of these days I shall have to grab hold of a brat and interrogate it to find out what they are up to out here.

So off past the lawn to the Point of the headland to see what’s going on there.

Even though it’s the same time as yesterday more or less, the tide is about 35 or so minutes slower so it’s not deep enough in the tidal harbour for the fishing boats to come in to unload. But they are streaming back from their stations in droves and I counted probably 8 or 9 that I could see with the naked eye.

Here are a couple of them – a trawler-type on the left and an inshore shellfish fisher (and try saying that with someone else’s teeth in) heading back to port.

There was another one of these strange lighting effects today too.

There wasn’t a rainstorm today but there was plenty of cloud obscuring the sun in places. And every now and again the sun would pop out to say hello and there would be this extraordinary floodlighting effect, just like over there in the fields at the back of Kairon-Plage

Le Loup, the marker light on the rocks at the entrance to the harbour is nevertheless all in the shade and the guy fishing on the rocks in the bottom-left is nothing but a shadow.

While I was looking at the live plotter of the Fleet Monitor, I noticed that there had been a change in the boats in the harbour.

Victor Hugo, the older one of the two Jersey Ferries, the one that’s blue, is no longer shown as being present in the harbour. So while I was out I went for a look and sure enough, there’s only Granville, the newer one of the two present.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the ferries to the Channel Islands have stopped for the time being as the Channel Islands have closed their borders, and both of them were moored here. So why, at about 06:20 this morning did Victor Hugo suddenly pull up sticks and head off – to Cherbourg as it happens?

And of course Normandy Trader has cleared off too. Out on the early morning tide on her run back to St Helier.

There was the hour on the guitar with the same lack of enthusiasm, and then tea. I added a small tin of kidney beans to the remainder of the stuffing from yesterday and had taco rolls. That was followed by the third of those desserts, and there’s one left for tomorrow.

later on I went out for my evening walk and runs. 5 more runs, to be precise. I’m stepping up my fitness activity as much as I can.

And it’s just as well, because I was all alone tonight and I had the old walled city to myself. There was nothing much going on worth photographing so I settled for a photo of the Eglise St Paul – on eof the world’s first modern concrete buildings.

However in 1999, not even 100 years old, it was found to be in a deplorable condition and was closed. Bits of concrete drop off without notice so parking at the side of it is forbidden. A project of renovation has been considered, but at a cost of €7,000,000 which is considered to be beyond the budget of any interested party.

Now, here’s a thing.

A short while ago, I mentioned that Victor Hugo had left port early this morning and that Granville was there all on her todd. But after I’d finished my run across the Square Maurice Marland and looked down onto the port, I noticed that she had disappeared too.

At 16:53 to be precise according to my live tracker, not long after I came in. Or, in other words, as soon as the harbour gates opened. And she’s also in Cherbourg now apparently, so the crew who took her sister out there earlier must have come back by train and gone straight back out again.

It looks as if the ferries have now finished for the season if they’ve gone into winter quarters already. It was a pretty lean year for them, then.

Thursday 15th October 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… when I asked yesterday “surely this can’t continue” or whatever it was that I said.

Consequently this morning, I missed the third alarm. Not by many minutes, but a miss is as good as a mile, I suppose.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels again somewhat. I’d been looking around, searching for different things about the house and came across an automatic firearm – a big heavy thing, silver one. I was messing around with that and then took it off to show a friend. He and I had a play around doing all kinds of different things. Then we were out in the town with it and there was a lot of trouble about theft and violence, groups, all this kind of thing. We thought that we would be bound to be searched and if they found this firearm we’ve had it even though we aren’t actually doing anything with it. The nearest official building to where we were was the Nigerian embassy so we took the gun there and handed it in. Back home a few days later I was about to go into the living room when I heard my father ask “does anyone know what’s happened to my gun? It’s gone”. One of my brothers and sisters piped up to say “Eric and his friend had it”. He rang up my friend and he told him what had happened but cutting out the flamboyant bits. I was concerned about this because I was going to get into a load of trouble by taking it but my father seemed to be rather nonchalant about this. I walked off into the room something like a hospital waiting room and as I was walking in a woman was walking out. “Ohh I have your food here” she said. “I wondered when you were coming back. I’ll bring it in”. I was loaded up with loads of other stuff that I was dropping on my way in and had to try about three doors before I found which one was the correct one. I went in and sat down and waited for the next part of this story to happen.

Which of course, it didn’t.

Having sorted out the dictaphone I had a good shower and clean-up. And a weigh-in too. And I’ve lost that extra weight that I put on in Leuven, having now accelerated my fitness programme a little. If I keep up this regime and continue to lose weight at this rate, by the time my next birthday comes round I’ll have gone completely.

And now it’s time to head for the shops.

For a change I didn’t but anything extra, but I was still loaded up like a packhorse. And when the 2kg bag of apples burst, I ended up having to stick them in the shoulder bag too and that wasn’t part of the plan. It was quite a stagger back home, loaded up as I was.

And to make matters worse, the battery in the NIKON 1 J5 decided to go flat even though there were plenty of interesting things to photograph. And I only charged up the battery the other day too. I hope that that’s not going to start playing up.

Back here I made a drink and sat down – and then crashed out, which is no surprise. I recovered in time to perform a major upgrade of the computer before lunch, something that surprised me too.

After lunch, with more of my delicious bread, I had a task to perform that I’ve been putting off for several months. There were a plie of *.mkv files on my computer that simply wouldn’t allow themselves to be deleted. I spent some time experimenting with the file properties of one of them and in the end I managed to delete it.

There were about 20 altogether and I had to adjust their properties one by one too, but at least they have all gone now, which is good news.

Next task was the photos of July 2010 in Switzerland and Austria. And here I came up against another problem. Instead of using a dictaphone, I was speaking loudly so that the dashcam in Caliburn would pick up the details. But it didn’t do it well enough so that can be classed as a failure.

But this is how you learn, isn’t it?

In the end I had to look for road signs, names of buildings, town signs, that kind of thing on the dashcam recordings to work out where I was and to follow my route on an internet mapping service to work out where I was.

That took an age, as you can imagine, but now all of the photos for that month have been edited, processed and correctly identified. Another job completed.

There just remains the photos for August which should be interesting, because all of those road signs are in either Czech, Slovak or Hungarian and that is going to lead to difficulties when I see a building name.

Having made some good progress I could go outside for my afternoon walk, almost bowling over four people whom I hadn’t seen before entering the building. Elderly people, so I reckon that someone has let out their apartment for holidaymakers.

Across the car park, the scaffolding seems now to be complete as far as they intend to go. They’ve even put their advertisements on it to let us know who they are. And as for the container, it’s not a container at all but a very large skip. Benne pour bois – “skip for wood”. So that’s where they will be disposing of all of their old laths.

And their compund has blown down again. They aren’t having much luck with that. I mean – it’s not as if it’s windy right now outside.

In fact, the weather is quite changeable today.

And no photo can sum that up better than this one of the coast higher up the Cetentin Peninsula. If you look at the view round by Montmartin sur Mer towards the left, you can see the sun shining down on the houses, making them appear so nice and bright.

But yet just a couple of miles away, there’s a huge rainstorm throwing it down just there and everywhere is dark and gloomy.

Yesterday I mentioned that it looks as if the fishing season has started in earnest, and I’m very probably right.

We’re still a good half-hour before the time that the harbour gates open, so all of the big trawler-type vessels are heading for home, presumably with quite a good catch. Here are three of them heading for home and they all seem to be surrounded by socks of fleagulls

We also have a yacht out there over towards the Ile de Chausey. He’s picked a nice day to go out for a sail because it looked quite nice over there.

While I was scanning the horizon for more trawlers, I came across this object out at sea just off the coast of Jersey near the port of St Helier.

It certainly wasn’t one of our two freighters or a trawler – the superstructure is all wrong. And so I took a photo of it with the aim, when I’m at home, of cropping it and blowing it up (the image, not the object of course) to see if I can identify it.

Not that it was easy, but an examination of plots of ships in the area reveals that there’s a French research ship, the Antea, out there in that vicinity. And an examination of her photo reveals a superstructure quite like the superstructure of this ship here. So it may well be her

As I walked on along the lawn at the Pointe du Roc I came across all of the brats. It looks as if the orienteering classes are back up and running … “very good!” – ed … again after a pause last week.

My route continued on past the Coastguard Post to the end of the headland, and looking down onto the rocks I could see that the fishermen are back again. And as usual, in the time that I was watching them, no-one actually caught anything.

We also had a kayaker out there, and I bet that he was quite cold out there this afternoon because you aren’t supposed to light a fire in your canoe. Everyone knows that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last year or so there have been plenty of rebuilding projects going on all over the port area.

And it looks as if they aren’t finished yet. There’s another crew over by the Ferry Terminal. They have a digger, a shipping container or skip and an assortment of all kinds of other stuff. it will be interesting to see what they are doing.

Joly France, one of the ferries that go out to the Ile de Chausey, is paying no attention whatever to the machinations. It’s the older of the two ferries – you can tell because there’s no step in the stern, the windows are smaller and the superstructure on the top deck is larger.

We’ve seen – or, at least, talked about – plenty of people, and we’ve seen a great deal of maritime activity too.

So let’s not go forgetting the air today. And so, our friend, the yellow autogyro who we first encountered AT THE CABANON VAUBAN in August 2018 just before I set off for the North Pole, decided to put in an appearance today.

And that reminds me – I’ve not been on a plane this year, and the only time that I set foot on the sea was our trip on the Spirit of Conrad. I don’t even think that I managed to get onto a ferry this year at all.

Mind you, it’s not good for my blood pressure to see a ferry. Every time I see one, it makes me cross.

Having finished the photos I crashed out yet again for a little while, and then had my hour on the guitar. And I’m still not enjoying it, which is a shame. But I’ll stick at it of course.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, now that I have some, followed by one of those desserts that I made yesterday.

Later on tonight I went out for my evening runs. And in pursuit of even more fitness I managed to fit in 5 runs tonight. I have to control my weight now I’m back on the intravenous drips.

But it really was a beautiful night tonight – one of those nights when you can see for miles and it made me wish that i’s taken the tripod. Although these next two photos don’t add up to much, the fact that I’ve taken them at all is significant.

Here we have the street lights of St Helier in Jersey reflecting off the clouds. And also, quite clear in the photograph, are the lights that are on the radio tower or whatever it is on the hills at the back of town.

And when you consider that this is a hand-held shot taken with a f1.8 50mm lens of objects that are 58 kilometres away in the pitch-dark, it’s quite something. But what would it have been like with a tripod?

And pretty much the same thing might be said of this photo too.

While I was casting my eyes around trying to see what was going on out at sea, my eyes alighted yet again on something else. Three lights out at sea, presumably from working ships. My plotter seems to think that the one over to the left might be Antea, whom we encountered earlier, whereas the two brighter ones to the right might be fishing vessels.

There are in fact two in the area according to the plotter – Philcathane may well be the bright light to the left of the two, and the second one might be L’Alize III

While I was there, I wasn’t just admiring the view out to sea. There were plenty of other things to see.

In the foreground of this photo is the area where the walls are crumbling away along the Rue du Nord. You can see the barrier that they have put up to stop people walking too close to the edge. It was this barrier that was swept away in Storm Alex and ended up littering the Rue du Nord.

Over in the background is the car park at the Place d’Armes, that used to be the old parade ground when all of the buildings there were Army barracks. And illuminated there is the College Malraux with its coat of scaffolding and its big banner advertisement.

If you see what looks like a diamond-shaped light, that’s the building where I live.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned that with all of the building material stacked up on the quayside, it looked as if we might be expêcting one of the Jersey freighters to arrive.

And sure enough, anchored at the quayside next to Marité underneath the loading crane is our old friend Normandy Trader. She’s obviously come into port on the afternoon tide on one of her regular runs across from St Helier.

Talking of runs, I’ve managed to do 5 tonight. Nothing particularly energetic but being back on the intravenous drip means that my weight is going to balloon up again and that’s the last thing that I want. I have to keep it down.

But not right now. It’s late and I’m off to bed. I need a good rest.

Wednesday 14th October 2020 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… the fishing season is now back with a bang.

While you admire the piles of fishing boats queueing to get into harbour and unload, I’ll mention my day and we can talk about fishing boats later.

For a start, just by way of a change, I was up and about well before the third alarm yet again, which is something that is surprising me as much as it’s probably surprising you too. I can’t keep this up, surely?

And so first task this morning was to listen to the dictaphone to see if I had been anywhere during the night.

And I had too!

It started off last night with a scandal when a bowls team was disqualified for fielding an ineligible player in a tournament. Once his identity had been discovered they awarded all of the remaining points to the opponents. However the organisers took no further action because his arrival at the club had been well-documented in the Press previously.

And just WHAT am I doing dreaming about bowls? It’s a game with which I have absolutely no empathy whatsoever. I’ve only ever played bowls once in my life and then not very well.

So while they are unloading the bouchots about which we talked the other day, there was something going on during the night about car parking. I wanted to park a vehicle on some waste land between some buildings. I parked the building but left a note for the people who owned it. They telephoned me back and passed me on to someone. We ended up having quite a chat about it. They wanted money for it so in the end I decided not to do that. In the meantime they told me that if I would be passing the representative’s place which was at n°230 such-and-such a street in Shavington. So I went there and knocked on the door but no-one came, no-one answered, so I thought “never mind. I’ll drive on”. Then all of the family were going for a meal and this meant picking up a few other people. I had to go to pick up someone at 230 again – a street in Nantwich, near The Leopard. When I pulled up at that house, it looked exactly like the description of the property that I’d been given over the phone (… by the previous guy…). When the guy came out he said “ohh yes, you’re Eric” and started to chat to me. The discussion came round about welding. I’d just been given back my MIG welder so I said “yes I can do MIG welding now. I’m going to practise when I get home”. We ended up with Liz and Terry in a big field somewhere to go sunbathing. There were quite a few people there already and it was fairly busy and there weren’t all that many places to go. Terry had a word with the owner of the field. He said “if you want to eat, you’d better go and eat now as the restaurant is really busy. There might be a table free now at 18:30 but later on there might not. One of the women with us suggested that it might be an idea to at least go down and find out about “should we eat now while we would or see if we could book a table for later. We ought at least to make sure that there would be a table later”.

So while you lot admire the fishermen on the rocks at the end of the Pointe du Roc, I carried on with a project that I’d started back in May and which had ground to a halt on 24th June.

My web pages are becoming unwieldy, especially the earlier ones. As more and more stuff has been added to them they have done a pretty good imitation of Topsy and “just growed”. So I’ve started redrafting them and cutting them up differently to make them into smaller, bite-sized pages for the truncated attention span of the MTV generation.

The ones for MY 1999 TRIP TO NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY were done ages ago when I first started this project. Then there were a few miscellaneous ones, but then I ran aground with my trip to Canada and New England over the period of New Year 2001-2002.

But finally today, that one is finished and ALL OF THEM ARE NOW ONLINE TOO.

And that knotty web-coding problem that I had? After a good night’s sleep I resolved it in 5 minutes this morning. However it didn’t give me the result that I wanted so in the end I abandoned it for something else.

There was the usual break for lunch with more of my delicious bread and then there was work to do.

There were four extremely ripe kiwis here so I peeled them and whizzed them up to turn them into a nice runny liquidy mess. That was them filtered through my stack of filters to remove as much solid matter as I could, leaving just a kind of juice. I threw in the last of the grapes too for good measure.

Then I strained the kefir that I had brewing and put the resultant liquid in with the kiwi juice and mixed it around, leaving an inch or two in the bottle as my mother solution.

This was then strained through a fine mesh filter into two cleaned and disinfected glass bottles with stoppers where it will brew for the next 48 hours.

Last night I’d finished the blackberry pie so for a change I opened a tin of apricots and found a packet of coffee-flavoured dessert that you make with milk and it sets like a blancmange. That all went in together into four Sundae glasses and will do me until my next cookery session on Sunday.

And here is one that I made earlier, children.

No – seriously, these are the finished products. The bottles are now brewing in a dark corner of the kitchen at the side of the fridge, and the dessert is in the fridge cooling. For tea tonight I tried one of the desserts and even though I say it myself, it was delicious.

Back out for my afternoon walk of course, and straight into the action across the car park.

Our scaffolders are now back at work. The scaffolding has grown considerably since we last saw it and they have even no started to put stairs into it. This is going to be a serious job, I reckon.

And the compound has been repaired too. There’s now a shipping container in there, which is presumably going to be used as a store, and there are also a few pallets of bits and pieces. No slates yet though. I imagine that they will take a day or two to arrive, presumably after the scaffolding is finished.

Just for a change, the sun was out today, and that made a pleasant change from just recently.

It wasn’t particularly bright over here where I was, but across the bay on the promenade at St Martin de Bréhal it was really lighting up the area and making it all look so beautiful. I bet that it must have been really nice to have been out there in all of this.

In that direction you could see for miles too. The big wind turbine on the way out to Cerences is clearly visible on the range of hills on the horizon. It’s not every day that you see that too.

We’ve seen all of the fishermen in the harbour and those fishermen on the rocks, and the fishermen in the small boats seem to be back out again now that the weather has calmed down.

In the usual place amongst the rocks on the northern side of the Pointe du Roc we have three fishermen in a zodiac casting their rods into the water after, I presume, the sea-bass that is said to swim around here in these waters. I say that carefully, because in all the time we’ve been watching the fishermen, we’ve yet to actually see anyone catch anything.

There were quite a few pedestrians around here and I became embroiled in a lively chat with a very pleasant young lady who was aged about 4, I reckon. She had quite a lot to say for herself.

One thing that surprised me was that there was nothing much going on right out at sea today. No trawlers or freighters or anything like that – after all, the trawler men were queueing up to get into port right now.

But the good weather had certainly brought out the pleasure-boat men in their dozens today. There were yachts everywhere, including this rather beautiful one scudding along in the wind and going around the headland.

The purple sail was making a beautiful reflection in the water and it was a shame that the water wasn’t calmer.

Still the two usual suspects in the chantier navale so I ignored them and carried on home to finish off the web site work that I’d been doing.

Just as I was completing everything, Rosemary rang for a chat so we were on the ‘phone for an hour or so putting the world to rights. And then the hour on the guitar.

It was quite depressing mainly because I could not summon up the enthusiasm yet again. But I perked up a little towards the end when I tried to work out the chords to Steve Harley’s beautiful RIDING THE WAVES.

And it’s not as easy as you might think either, especially as in order to be able to sing it, I have to go down to a different key and then I lose my place.

For tea, I made an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit. I’ve run out in the freezer, as I discovered when I did an inventory the other day. And my pudding as I mentioned.

There was some excitement tonight out there as well.

This photo might not look much but it is in fact the air-sea rescue helicopter that we’ve seen on several occasions carrying out an air-sea search with its floodlight. I’ve no idea why but doubtless I’ll find out tomorrow in the newspaper, if it’s anything serious.

So four runs tonight. No wonder I was exhausted when I returned home to write out my notes.

Shopping tomorrow and there’s quite a list too. I don’t know how I’m going to carry it all home so I’d better be on top form. A good shower will probably do me some good.

Nevertheless it’s a long walk there, and an even longer one back when I’m loaded up.

Tuesday 13th October 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was in bed quite early – long before 23:00. And it’s been a while since that’s ever happened when I’ve been feeling good.

Furthermore, I was up and about a long time before the third alarm too which is something that’s becoming less and less common as time passes by.

And nothing on the dictaphone either – I can’t have gone anywhere during the night too. But that’s not as relaxing as you might think because I woke up a few times that I can remember, tossing and turning about.

For much of the morning I was revising my Welsh. I missed last week’s lesson so I needed to catch up with it. And even though it is the language of my grandmother, I’m still bewildered about the fact that so far, after just 6 months of study, I’ve encountered so far about 9 different words for yes and 9 for no. There’s probably plenty more to go at in the future too.

It’s not the easiest language in the world to learn either. It has a thought path and a sentence and tense construction all of its own quite unlike any Romance or Germanic language.

But we had our lesson for 2.5 hours, learning yet another couple of words for “yes” and “no” and then I went for lunch.

After lunch I did some tidying up (just a bit – I don’t want to disillusion you all) and then dealt with a couple of knotty coding problems on my website which no matter what I do and what I try, I can’t get to work.

It has really bad weather to stop me going out for my afternoon walk, so the rain that was falling didn’t prevent me from setting off, even if two of my neighbours out at the front door were less than enthusiastic.

And I’m glad I did because although the rain wasn’t all that heavy here, it was pelting right down in the immediate vicinity and out at sea, we were being treated to the most glorious rainbow in the distance. It was the kind of thing that made me wish that I had a shovel handy.

And that reminds me of Nerina who told me once that when I died she would come round and dance on my grave. And for that reason I’m going to be buried at sea. Although the last time that someone else wanted to be buried at sea, 5 gravediggers were drowned.

Yesterday when I was out in the evening I didn’t notice anything special about the wind, especially when compared to what kind of wind we’ve been having recently.

However it’s significant that there were no workmen working on the scaffolding this afternoon and that a large part of the compound seems to have been blown down. That’s some kind of indication that we’ve been having really bad weather for part of the day and I must have missed it

Mind you, when I was having my Welsh lesson this morning I noticed that the weather was going through a rapid sunny/cloudy cycle so maybe there was a strong wind that was driving all of that.

But I’m not going to miss this if I don’t get a move on.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel there’s a wicked rainstorm in progress and the wind is blowing it this way. It’s not going to be long before it makes the shore and then we’ll know all about it.

In the foreground on the right you can see one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, the German coastal protection of World War II. And on the left are some of the remains of another one.

The story goes that the local demolition packed that one full of explosive and detonated, hoping to remove it. They apparently broke every window within a 50-mile radius and moved a hatful of concrete bunker about half an inch. So they abandoned the procedure.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of the Atlantic Wall … “well, one of us is” – ed … the story of the storming of the Atlantic Wall on the Normandy beaches has always been one of those jingoistic gung-ho episodes that’s gone down in British and American folklore, but it really is nothing like that at all. The concrete to build the wall was supplied by a Belgian company that was issued with the plans and dimensions in order to calculate correctly the amount of concrete needed. The company was run by someone who was actually in the pay of the Russians and he transmitted all of the information to Moscow who sent it on to the British who then became aware of every last detail about the fortifications.

Of course, it wasn’t politic to admit that the Soviets had contributed substantially to the success of D-Day on a couple of the more-heavily-fortified beaches.

With no-one around this afternoon, I broke into a run along the path on top of the cliffs. An extra run will keep me fit and besides, it’s going to rain in a moment and I want to be home when it starts.

It seems that today I wasn’t going to be the only one heading for home in a hurry.

The fishing season is apparently now well under way again and with the pause in the bad weather the trawlers and other fishing boats are going out to work. And here’s one of them, heading for home across the Baie de Mont St Michel, presumably in the hope of making it home before the rain reaches here.

But it’s hard to work out if it has a catch or not. usually, the laden trawlers are surrounded flocks of seagulls hoping to catch a misplaced fish but this one looks as if it’s unaccompanied.

A few weeks ago we saw Coelacanthe and Le Tiberiade having their nets taken off by one of the cranes in the harbour.

Here today we have another trawler up at the quayside having its nets removed. After she’d been stripped, Le Tiberiade ended up on blocks in the Chantier Navale for a week or two having work done on her. I wonder if this means that within the next couple of days we’ll see this one up there on blocks too.

On the other hand, they could simply be going to sew up the nets. We’ve seen plenty of nets in the past spread out on the quayside being repaired.

As I watched the activity in the harbour Chausiais, the little freighter that runs out with goods to the Ile de Chausey, started up her engines and slowly moved away from the quayside.

It could be that she has a run out there to perform this afternoon now that the harbour gates are open, or else it could be that one of the Channel Island freighters, Thora or Normandy Trader, is on its way into harbour and need the berth. The building supplies that we saw on the quayside the other day are still here.

And so was the rain now. It was starting to rain quite heavily so I decided to clear off home without waiting to see what she was going to do.

Back here I had a few other things to do around here and then ended up with my hour on the guitars which went a lot better than it did yesterday.

A quick tea tonight and then outside for my runs where I was nearly swept away by a car coming the wrong way down the one-way street.

The footpath underneath the walls was still flooded out so I had to make alternative arrangements for my runs. In fact I ended up doing four lengths, not three.

Out at Donville les Bains those bright lights at the back of that old hotel are all lit up again. I’m not quite sure what they are. They might possibly be at the football ground where they might be training, but I don’t recall any floodlights the last time that I went to watch a match there.

Apart from that, there was nothing else of any interest so I ran on home. There was football on the internet.

Tonight was a top-of-the-table clash between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads. TNS won 1-0 which is no surprise seeing as I counted at least 4 regular Nomads first-team players, including their two main strikers, out injured. Despite being quite lightweight up front, they did the best that they could and it was an entertaining game, but TNS were always going to win this match.

So to bed now, not as early as I was hoping. And maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll be going off for a wander during the night. It makes quite a change to have a night in.

Monday 12th October 2020 – PHEW!

Looking back through the reams of rubbish that I regularly write, I recall on a couple of occasions spending almost an entire week not so long ago preparing one radio programme.

Since I last wrote up my notes yesterday, in a space of just 16 hours, of which 7.5 hours was spent either sleeping, eating or doing other things, I have prepared not one but two. It just goes to show that I can do it when I really try.

But as Margaret Thatcher once said, “anyone can do a good day’s work when they really want to. But the secret is to do a good day’s work when you don’t want to” and I’m a long way from that.

It all started after I’d finished writing my notes last night. Having had a decent night’s sleep last night and a crash-out in the afternoon I wasn’t in any way really tired and ready for bed. During the day I’d been listening to a concert that I intended to edit down for my monthly “live” concert and I’d an idea which tracks I wanted to use so it was a case of splitting the concert and selecting the tracks, and then transferring them to a holding directory.

That didn’t really take all that long, which was a surprise because it’s the kind of thing that sometimes can take forever. And much to my surprise, and probably yours too, I ended up with 58:24 of music without any messing about. That’s the kind of thing that never ever happens and I can spend hours and hours editing live concert tracks and still have a substantial shortfall.

It then needed to be joined seamlessly and that’s usually a long, complicated process which sometimes can take hours because you don’t only have to make the beat and the rhythm fit in, you also have to control the sound balance so that it sounds like a smooth, flowing concert. But for another reason that I don’t understand it snapped together almost perfectly. There was only one join that was in any way complicated.

At that point I’d ended up with 58:21 of music which meant that there was just 1:39 of introduction – a big change from the usual 3:30 or something when I’m scratching round for things to say and how I wish that I could mix more concerts like this one.

On that note I went to bed. It had taken quite a while to do all of that and I was tired.

Much to my surprise, and probably yours too, I beat the third alarm to my feet. How did that happen after my late night?

Sensing that this might be my day, first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. I was doing some work over the weekend or an evening or something and I had to be ready for work later that morning. I didn’t have time really to take it round to the person I was going to see so I was wondering if Zero, who used to accompany me regularly on my nocturnal rambles but hasn’t put in an appearance for a while, so hello to you again at last – would do it for me or if she had to see it I can’t remember but for some reason I had to make her see it. I was thinking that maybe I could post it somewhere and send her a mail for her to link to have a look at it. But there was much more to it than this that I can’t now remember, and some more that I can but as you are probably eating your meal right now, I’ll spare you any discomfort.

Next task was to attack the notes for the live concert. Having done some research I sat down and dashed off an introduction. And by the time I’d finished it, uploaded it to the computer and edited it down, I ended up with 1:46 of notes. 7 seconds over which makes a change from either being 30 seconds over or a minute short, but as there is a lengthy applause lead-in to the concert, I simply overdubbed it and ended up with my hour programme just like that.

It wasn’t yet 08:30 so I decided while I was at it, I’d make a start on the programme for the following week, a standard one with 11 tracks, a speech from my special guest and an introduction to each track. And by the time that I was ready to go for my afternoon walk at 15:40, it was all done and dusted and complete, despite the usual break for lunch. I don’t think that I’ve ever done any standard programme that quick.

After all of that I was ready for my break.

But once I went outside, I didn’t get very far. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they had a cherry picker up at the College Malraux the other day after Storm Alex, with some people apparently checking the roof and the guttering. Today, they are erecting some scaffolding outside against the walls of the College.

There’s a little compound there so I went to have a closer look at it. There was a huge pile of laths there, and a section that was empty but labelled ardoises – “slates”. So it looks as if the College is going to be having a new roof in the very near future.

And so I wandered off to the sea wall to have a look at what might be going on there.

The tide is well in now so there’s no beach to speak of for anyone to be on, but over in the English Channel by Breville-sur-Mer there’s a yacht that looks as if it’s anchored. “Probably fishing” I mused to myself. That’s the usual reason for boats to be anchored out there.

But it shows you how the weather has calmed down now. A week or ten days ago at the height of Storm Alex there were no boats out at all and even a hardy fishing skipper would be thinking twice about it. But you can see in the background that it’s raining over there. Less windy it might be, but the weather is still depressing.

There were a few people out there this afternoon – the weather wasn’t that nice – but there was nothing else going on out at sea that I could see except a yacht way over by the Ile de Chausey.

But there’s been a change at the Monument to the French Resistance here at the Pointe du Roc. It seems that it’s not just the leaves that come off the trees at autumn, the flags in the flagpoles do as well.

And if you look very closely at the photograph, you’ll notice that we have only three flagpoles there today. The fourth one seems to be missing. So I’ve no idea what’s going on there. It’s something on which I’ll have to keep an eye as I go on my rounds here and there.

There was no change in inhabitant in the chantier navale today so I pushed on along the path.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking is something that takes up a lot of pages in these notes, and as I went past the Rue Saint Pierre that leads up to the College there were the usual suspects parked with wheels on the kerb blocking the path for the pushchairs and wheelchairs.

Thinking that you are probably fed up of seeing it, I resolved not to take a photo today, but here’s a photo that I couldn’t help but take.

Parking is prohibited here in the layby in the Boulevard Vaufleury from 08:00 today for the next few days so that they can trim the trees, but this hasn’t deterred this motorist and a couple of others from parking here.

And by the look of things the seagulls didn’t think very much of this “no waiting” sign either

Having taken my photo I turned for home. I’ve plenty of work to do and can’t afford to spend the time hanging around aimlessly.

While I was sorting through the photos I had a listen to the two programmes that I’d done today. And I’m quite pleased with them. They’ve come out well.

There was the usual hour on the guitar but for some reason I couldn’t get into it and I don’t know why. I’m not quite sure what’s going on right now but this isn’t like me at all.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with potatoes and veg followed by more blackberry pie and soya coconut dessert.

This evening I almost didnt go out for my walk and runs. The rain was teeming down.

Nevertheless I did, and here’s the photo to prove it- a photo of the Place Marechal Foch in the rain and the only reason I took it was to prove that I’d been out. My footpath under the walls was totally waterlogged so it wasn’t possible to have my evening run down there. However I did manage to improvise something and at least made the distance.

Apart from me, there were just two other people out tonight in the distance, walking dogs, and that was your lot. I didn’t stay out there too long either in this weather. I came home quite quickly.

Having finished the notes, I’m off to bed. I deserve an early night after this. Just my Welsh revision tomorrow and then my Welsh course, and all my programmed work will have been completed by Tuesday lunchtime. Hopefully I can then push on and catch up with some arrears. I’ve done a pile of photos from July 2020 and I’m now deep in Switzerland.

There’s just about 20 more to do and then I can turn my attention to those for August 2020. There’s about 120 of those but they will take some finding

Sunday 11th October 2020 – SUNDAY IS …

… Day of Rest, but you wouldn’t have thought so today. I’ve been really busy.

And not just during the day either. Having gone to bed quite early, totally exhausted for some reason or other, I went off on the kind of rambles which would put me to shame in my daylight hours.

I started off around Oldham way last night although it turned out to be around Stockport. It was again to do with taxis. Someone had had a burglar alarm fitted inside their commercial garage premises and someone was talking to me about it, a passenger. I said that my vehicles are all fitted with stuff like this as well. As we were talking about this one of the alarms went off. I went round to see and they were busy trying to deal with this alarm so I had the long extension coil out that you could plug into it from where my car was parked but it didn’t quite make it. I was able to give a little advice to these 2 guys. They were Pakistani guys running this garage, talking about having their own taxi service so we talked about planning permission, where they could park their cars for it. They had plenty of room and plenty of ideas. And then all of a sudden one of the fridges had broken down, one of the freezers so they needed to move the stuff out of there. I have them a hand to do it. It was all like Indian takeaway food, all very unhygenic, stacks of mushrooms in these cardboard crate things, all over the place, stuff dropping off everywhere. It wasn’t the kind of place where I would like to eat once I’d seen how they were storing their food.

A bit later on there was something going on somewhere else where there were two guys, really tough guys who had taken over control of someone’s life. It was again to do with some garage or other – it may even have been the same one. They had beaten this guy severely and got him doing all kinds of menial stuff for them and they were getting him to brush the curtains with a wire brush. In the end you could see that he just put the brush down. They went over to talk to him and get him to do it again – “you know what happened last time” but you could see the look in his eyes. He had snapped. These two people were going to be in a lot of trouble once he let himself go. They couldn’t see it but I could. Then they started picking on me. One of them tried to push me arpund but I got him in a backbreaker on the floor and just sat there like that. He said “let me go! Let me go!” but I just sat there on him in this backbreaker just leaving him there. In the end he got free. “I’m not really interested in fighting you” I said. “Just leave it like this”. Then he started to try to provoke me again. I was sitting there doing nothing but I could see that the only way that I was going to stop this was by doing the same again like I did last time. I awoke in a feverish sweat at this point – something that I need to note because they ask me about this at Castle Anthrax.

Somewhat later, my brother and I had been somewhere in Caliburn and he was driving (as if that was likely to happen). We’d gone through Angouleme on the way out and driven for loads and loads of miles to see something and were then on our way back. When we got to near Angouleme (wr didn’t know that it was Angouleme at first) we saw a nice view. We thought that we’d go and photograph it. But then we thought that there was no road down there. He had a look on the GPS “there was a little bit of road further along here” so we went that way. We parked up and started to walk. We got to where this view was, a deep river with a gorge running through the mountains and this enormous tunnel as if the river had been canalised at one time and the river was flowing through there. I went to take a couple of photos of it but for some unknown reason my camera wouldn’t work. Every time I pressed the switch nothing happened. it gave a FAULT error. I tried three or four times but then gave up. We came to a building where there was a meeting place, museum or something with a lot of people walking around inside it. I wanted to take a photo of the inside but we weren’t allowed in as we hadn’t paid. We had to wait outside and take a photo through the door. Every time I went to take a photo someone stood in front of me and took a photo. In the end I pushed my way to the front and told my brother “next time this door opens, nip in and close a certain door (that I indicated) because the light coming in through there is spoiling the photo.” He did that and I took a photo but again the camera didn’t work. The woman in charge saw my brother and threw him out so we couldn’t take any more photos so we had to wander back. A girl with us (and I don’t remember her being with us at the time) who was definitely someone I know – maybe Maria, my Greek friend – said “it sounds like you have a card problem” so I took out the card. “Oh look” she said. “It’s melted” and it had as well. I thought “it’s a good job that there’s a spare one in the van”. We carried on walking but then I realised that I’m not using the SD card. There was another type of card in there. In the end I worked out how to take that out, clean it and put it back. That didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. It still wouldn’t work. We were walking on, now me, someone else (a Bourvil-type of character), a 3rd person and my brother. As we walked into Angouleme we somehow separated. My brother disappeared. We were following where we thought he went and ended up on a dirt road. We thought “this isn’t the main highway, is it”? We turned round and walked back. What we had by this time was a wheelbarrow that we were pushing. But it only had one handle so it was really difficult to push so we were taking it in turns. Two of us would carry it. We carried it in all different types of styles in order to exercise all differnt kinds of muscles. It was still awkward and we weren’t making much progress. The handle was a kind of wheelbrace, a metal one. Someone was walking past and I was pushing this wheelbarrow with its one handle and it suddenly flipped up. The handle flew over as the wheelbarrow canted over and the handle hit on the head the one who was walking past. I apologised but he had a good laugh and a smile about it. There we were in the countryside miles from anywhere, totally lost with a stupid wheelbarrow and a camera that didn’t work.

After all of that, what surprised me, and what will surprise you too no doubt, is that I was up and about as early as 08:45. It’s been a long time such a thing has occurred when I’ve not been going anywhere, hasn’t it?

Mind you, it took me a good while for my head to stop spinning round and it having come to a stop, I could get on and do things.

One of the things that I hadn’t done was to write up my notes from last night. In my state of health, the kind of walks that I’m doing with this monumental climb up the rock at the end of it is exhausting me more than you can imagine and I ended up being in such a state that as soon as the football finished I went straight to bed.

And so this morning I had to write them up. That was followed by transcribing the dictaphone notes. All of that took much longer than you might think too because with it being a Sunday I wasn’t really concentrating too much. Part of the time was spent sorting out some of the shopping that I had bought on Saturday which I still hadn’t put away properly, and that meant a little reorganisation in the fridge because it’s full to capacity.

After lunch I made a start on the work. There’s no bread here so I needed to make two loaves. The first was my fruit loaf – 250 grammes of flour with a banana, a couple of handfuls of raisins, a dozen or so ground Brazil nuts (I like my whizzer) and, for some variety, a good handful of desiccated coconut.

Then there was the main loaf. 500 grams of cereal flour with a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds thrown in .

One of the criticisms of my bread has been that it’s too dry. And so I left it rather wetter than I otherwise would have done to see if it improves things any. I put them both on one side covered with a damp tea towel and left them to proof.

Then I needed to feed my sourdough. I mixed it all well in, threw away some to keep the weight down to 100 grammes that’s effectively 50 grammes of flour and 50 grammes of water) and then added 50 grammes of flour and 50 grammes of water, mixed it all in, and then put it in a new jar- a thinner, taller jar. I put an elastic band around it where the level of the sourdough is, so that I can check if it’s rising.

That’s gone into the fridge where it can slowly ferment until next week when I can add some more. It needs feeding with the same weight of flour and water as there is in the mixture. So next week, I’ll have to add 100 grammes of water and 100 grammes of flour.

If I’d left the sourdough out in the warm, I’d need to feed it every day. The warmer it is, the faster is its metabolic rate.

But as I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … it’s just like having pets around the house, the sourdough and the kefir.

By now it was time for me to go out for my usual afternoon walk. Twice, in fact. The first time was to take out the glass and plastic rubbish. It’s been accumulating for a while and the bag in which it lives was overflowing.

The second time was to make the most of the cold but sunny weather on my walk around the walls. And I wasn’t the only one making the most of it either, and certainly not to the degree that some were taking it. This is what I call courageous. You wouldn’t get me in that water in these kinds of conditions for all the tea in China.

it reminds me on the time on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when Castor and Pollux asked if I would be taking the Arctic Dip when we were in the High Arctic.
“I can’t” I replied. “I’m not allowed to go into salt water with this catheter port in my chest”.
“What would you done had you not had that catheter there?” asked someone standing close by after they had cleared off
“I’d have looked for another excuse” I replied. I’ve been up to my knees in the Davis Strait 700 miles from the North Pole and that was quite enough for me, thank you.

Having observed our lady friend for a few minutes, urging her on, I carried on along my path underneath the walls. No chance of going for a run. Far too many people around for that.

Round at the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset I could see what was going on down there. Just a handful of people down there on the beach this afternoon and not one of them taking in the sun, never mind going for a swim. Clearly the hardiness of the locals is something restricted to just a few.

But the seaweed scattered all over the beach had attracted my attention. The storms just recently have been so violent, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that they seem to have torn a pile of seaweed off the seafloor and dumped it on the beach

My route then took me off around to the Square Maurice Marland. Too many people for me to break out into a run so I had a nice walk.

Out at the end I could see down to the docks, and in particular the loading bay where the Jersey freighters come in to dock. And there’s a pile of building supplies in bags down there waiting for loading so it looks as if either Thora or Normandy Trader, or maybe even both, will be coming into port some time soon.

And that reminds me. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen Thora. They have pretty quick turnrounds these days down at the port but I would have expected to have seen it at some point just recently.

And from here I headed on home to my apartment.

Back at the apartment I had a look at the bread. Despite having proofed for well over an our, it still hadn’t risen too much but nevertheless I gace them both a good kneading, shaped them and then put them in their mould.

With the bread being of less weight than in the past (it goes too stale by the end) I used a smaller mould – one of my silicone moulds. The bread was sticking too much to the porcelain one that I have been using. The fruit and nut bread went into the usual small cake mould. I came back in here and did some more work.

With about an hour and fifteen minutes to go before teatime I switched on the oven and stuck the bread in it to cook. Meantime, I rolled out the pizza dough that I’d taken out of the freezer at lunchtime, put it onto the greased pizza tray, folded over the dges and left it to proof for forty-five minutes.

When it was ready, I prepared the pizza. It was nicely timed because as soon as I’d finished it, the oven switched off with the bread. So I took out the bread, tipped out the loaves onto a wire grill to cool, switched on the oven again and bunged the pizza in.

It took about 30 minutes to cook – and cooked beautifully too. The edges had risen quite nicely and I’m impressed about how this folding of the edges has turned out.

As for the taste, it was delicious. And I didn’t have any pudding because it was quite filling.

After tea, I went out for my usual evening walk.

The sky was really clear tonight and you could see for miles. All the way out to St Helier on Jersey in the Channel Islands. And it’s not every day that I can see so clearly like this all the way out there in the dark. It’s 58 kilometres out to St Helier, as I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … so to see the street lights of the town like this is quite surprising.

And you can clearly see the red aircraft warning lights on the radio tower on the hills at the back of St Helier. And what is the bright light to the left of the image? Is it a fishing boat out there working?

After taking the photo I walked on along the path at the top of the cliffs on the north side of the headland.

Away in the distance the lights of the small towns all along the north Brittany coast were shining really brightly tonight. You could see all the way down the coast as far as St Cast le Guildo where we slept overnight on board Spirit of Conrad back in July. Right out to the right-hand side of the image is the light of the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel, about 70 kilometres away and you won’t see it much clearer than that.

Here I was nearly bowled over by a couple walking along with one of these LED headlights to see where they were going. Somehow though they didn’t see me until they had almost knocked me over

They were the only people whom I saw. No-one else was out there tonight enjoying the pleasant evening.

On the point of the headland there was a nice view across the Baie de Mont St Michel over to the promenade at Jullouville. Le Loup, the marker light on the rock at the entrance to the harbour, was looking quite nice tonight in the starlight. The reflection of the flashing light on the water came out really well.

From there I carried out my three runs tonight. One along the top of the cliffs to the viewpoint, the second along the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner into the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne, and the third one from the church back home. And as for the second, I extended my run by another 10 metres tonight. I’m not far from the brow of the hill now and another couple of weeks shall see me over the top and down the other side.

Back here I’ve written up my notes, and now it’s bedtime. Back to work tomorrow and I have a live concert to edit and engineer ready for broadcast. That’s not a work of five minutes.

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.

Friday 9th October 2010 – I’M GLAD …

… that I took Liz’s advice to vent my kefir in the bath.

That’s because it went up like the traditional four-bob rocket when I released the caps, and actually blew the caps and wires out of their sockets. So this will be a good batch. I hope.

Yes, for all my vicissitudes, I’m now back chez moi at the seaside and apparently I’ve brought the bad weather back with me. It was quite nice this morning, so I was told, but about an hour after I came back, it had clouded over.

This morning though, in Leuven, there was a heavy, damp, humid mist of the kind of which I’m so familiar, as anyone who has ever been in Belgium in the autumn will remember. I was up and about bang on the dot of the first alarm at 05:30 – just to prove that I can do it when I really try – and after finishing the packing and making my sandwiches, I headed out for the station.

At the station I had to wait 10 minutes for my train – the 06:21 to Blankenberge from Genk.

Being a shorter train than the usual Welkenraedt – Oostende train that I catch, it pulled up short of where I was standing. I had to run a hundred yards or two down the platform to the train. It was pulled by a Type 19 electric locomotive – basically the same as a Type 18 that we had on the way out to Leuven, but fitted with an automatic coupling system.

It was pretty busy too, even right down at the front where I usually sit. That’s quite a surprise at that time of the morning.

My train to Paris-Nord was already in at the platform when I arrived – 40 minutes before departure, but we couldn’t board right now because while the passengers were there, the crew wasn’t.

This morning we’re going to Paris on one of the Thalys PBKA units – the ones specially-built for the Paris – Brussels – Cologne – Amsterdam service. They differ from the usual PBA units in that they are equipped to work on the German electric railway network.

They are getting on for 25 years old now and surprisingly, are still in quite good and comfortable condition. I’m quite happy to travel on one of these any time. But not so many other people were. Admittedly the 07:35 is the first service to Paris of the morning, and also the cheapest, but there were very few people on board today and we could spread out.

Our train hurtled off from Brussels bang on time and we made such good time that we had to sit outside Paris Gare du Nord for 10 minutes for our slot for the final half-mile.

It was rush-hour of course in Paris – 09:13 when we arrived – and while the Metro was busy, it wasn’t crowded as you might expect. As I said on the way out, it seems that the business life of Paris has changed somewhat with the Corona Virus and that might explain the lack of custom on the TGV.

At the Gare Montparnasse our train was in the station already even though it wasn’t advertised yet. It’s because it’s the only one that has “NORMANDIE” written all down the side of it. No point in trying to board because it will be all locked up, so I took a seat on a bench and read my book.

After waiting around for 35 minutes, the train to Granville was announced we were all allowed on board.

The train set is one of the GEC Alstom Regiolis units. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we travel on one of these each time we go back and forth to Paris. There are 361 of these and they started to come into service in 2013. They were so successful that they allowed a whole raft of old equipment from the 70s and 80s to be swept away, and they are all that you ever see now on much of the French railway network, including the Paris-Granville service. I’ve never done the route in anything else.

And I was lucky in my neighbour today on the way back. She can sit beside me any time she like.

The voyage was pretty uneventful so I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I was back running the taxis again and I had a yellow Mk IV but was completely yellow, a tidy little car. There was a driver driving for me who lived next door to a Hackney driver but didn’t get on particularly with him. He was quite good at his job. When he came round to start work one morning I was in the middle of changing windscreen wipers over. I’d got them off an old car that we’d had, the wipers and arms, and I was busy switching them over to then new one, getting it ready to go out, the yellow one. This guy was going through the sheets writing out his list of jobs. There were a couple of jobs, long ones and he wondered why he hadn’t been given them. I didn’t know so I told him that it might be something to do with the fact that they didn’t think that the car would be ready by then. Then someone else from another taxi company turned up from Northampton. While I was busy changing the wipers the other driver started chatting to them asking their advice – should he put these jobs down on his sheet or not. I had all the wires – dunno why there were wires on this – tangled up and I was trying to untangle them, everything like that. The more I tried to untangle them, the more tangled they became.

Having done that, I merged a few more composite files and than quietly ate my butties.

Our arrival in Granville was a couple of minutes early. I’m not used to this. It was a pleasant if not tiring walk back home from the station, and the first thing that I did was to spray the bathroom with orange-flavoured kefir.

Most of the stuff that I bought was then unpacked (I forgot some) and then I swapped the files over from the portable computer onto the big office machine. I didn’t do as much as I wanted to do because, what with the early start, I … errr … had a little relax.

That’s possibly because I had the heating on in here. It seems that the cold has arrived.

Tea was taco rolls – there was some stuffing left over from Monday followed by a slice of Blackberry pie out of the freezer.

Later on in the evening I went out for a walk around the headland in the dark. And first thing that I noticed is that the old Opel estate that had been been abandoned on the car park for the last however many months has now been removed.

There was a strong wind, but nothing like as strong as it has been. Even so, I didn’t want to hang about. Instead I had a wander around and ended up at the Chantier Navale to see what was happening in there.

We’re down to just two boats now. Les Epiettes, the boat from the Département des Ponts et Cnaussées is still in there on the right, and the trawler on the left which is Cap Lihou is still in there. She’s been there for quite a while and probably now a permanent fixture.

My runs tonight were pretty disappointing. I only managed two and the second one of those was a little shorter than it has been of late. I need to work myself back into it again. Instead of going for my third run, I headed slowly for home. I’ve still managed 114% of my daily activity.

Having written my notes, I’m now off to bed. It’s shopping tomorrow and I need a few things to replenish the stocks. And there’s football tomorrow night too so I’ll be busy.

And what is left of my kefir is delicious.

Thursday 8th October 2020 – IF EVER I …

… get my hands on whoever it was who telephoned me this morning at 07:02, they’ll be eating soup through a straw for the next three month.

It’s always the case though – you can absolutely rely on it. Whenever I plan on having a lie-in, someone always comes along to disturb it. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall that my bank, not having contacted me for several years, once rang me up a good few years ago at 05:00 when I was fast asleep in a motel somewhere in North Carolina.

What was worse was that I’d left my phone downstairs and by the time that I was down there, whoever it was rang off.

Nevertheless, I went back to bed where I stayed until about 09:10.

While i was having a coffee, I listened to the dictaphone. I had walked for miles and miles last night but I can’t remember anything about it now hardly. Except that we were out in the countryside somewhere near Barthomley way and the group had had a huge row and I was sulking for some reason or other. Someone was talking about all of this, the past, showing us photos, all kinds of stuff. One of the photos came across what looked like some kind of farm building. There was an old coach there and drawings showing hos they wanted to extend this farm building to make a garage for the coach. It turned out that one of the guys said “oh yes can you imagine – while you lot were doing whatever it was that you were doing in the early 70s I was living in this coach. We all said “wow that’s amazing”. he said “yes my BMW was behind the hedge here”. it turned out that he was a famous rock star from the period when he was living in the Crewe area. We were talking about all the goings-on in that particular area and how there was someone who hired out wedding cars and how the place would be decorated when there was a wedding. Then he mentioned a name and it immediately rang a bell with me . He played in a rock group from Nantwich and they had an LP out. This album bombed spectacularly so I asked “do you have any idea where I can get in touch with this guy?” “Ohh, he’s still around. Why are you interested?”. I said “I want to get my hands on their LP because I want to broadcast it on the radio”. H replied “I have a copy”. I asked “I don’t suppose that I could borrow it so that I could record it and play it?”. He seemed to be quite enthusiastic at the idea and one or two other people started to become interested in it.

Strangely enough, there was a rock group from Nantwich, a group called Strife. They fitted the bill and there was a musician in this group who actually had the same name as the one last night. And even more of a coincidence, I have in fact during my daylight hours, I have been trying to track down a copy of their album – and for years to – for just that reason.

No success as yet, but I live in hope.

This morning I’ve been doing some housework on the laptop. I have several files that have been duplicated and I’ve been going through a few of them and merging them in together. Plenty to do though, and that reminds me that there is a whole raft (like 4TBs worth) of this to do on the backup drive that I created earlier this year.

In fact I was trying to do something with the trip that I had on board Spirit of Conrad but it seems that I don’t have the edited photos with me and I can’t remember the numbering sequence.

After lunch I decided to go for a nice long walk to stretch my legs

While I was out on my travels yesterday I noticed that a house down the end of the street in the neighbourhood was having its roof ripped off. I thought that I may as well go into town that way and see what was going on.

And they are certainly making a really good job of it – going flat out at it and making a completely thorough job of it. Obviously, with the house being in Dekenstraat -Blanket Street – it’s having a new blanket.

There was nothing exciting in FNAC, nor Wibra, nor Kruidvat, nor Zeeman, nor Hema. But in Sports Direct I bought another couple of pairs of the trousers that I like seeing as they were on special offer. The ones that I’ve had for three or four years are starting to look pretty thin and I damaged a pair when I was in the Auvergne the other week.

After my little trip to the shops I went for a walk out of town.

In the past, regular readers of this rubbish have seen the sad state of the part of medieval city walls at the Handbooghof right by the River Dijle, and yesterday we saw that some renovation was about to be carried out. My trip around to the Handbooghof was to see what was happening there.

They’ve stuck up a sign to give a little hint as to what is going on. Only a little though because it doesn’t contain very much interesting information.

It doesn’t really help matters either that they have shrouded the work in this corrugated iron fence.

Even with the camera held high above my head I couldn’t really see over it to find out hos they were doing. But there were some big bags of rubble lying around so it looks as if they are dismantling them.

But whether they are going to rebuilt them is another matter. It certainly seems to be pointless if they are taking away some of the bricks that were used in its building. It won’t be the same at all with modern bricks.

While we’re on the subject of bricks … “well, one of us is” – ed … I went to look at that building that I mentioned yesterday – the one that has recently been exposed by the demolition of a more modern building in front ot it.

There is no evidence (like a date-carved lintel) to give an idea of the date, and while the bricks certainly look contemporary to the appropriate historical period, they look extremely clean and the pointwork looks to be extremely tidy.

Not at all what you’d expect from a building several hundred years old so you take your choice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that yesterday we went past that building in the Monseigneur Van Waeyenberglaan – the one that was stripped right out.

We’ve been keeping an eye on its renovation over the past while and today, purely by chance, I went past the estate agent’s office where the apartments are advertised for sale.

There seems to me to be little doubt that this is it, and if you have a close look at the asking prices you’ll see why I could never ever afford to come and live in Leuven. Some of the prices here are totally out of anyone’s reach.

One of the things that I intended to do was to go and take a few photos of the old St Rafael Hospital before anything happens to it, so after I’d been and bought my pepper I went round for a look.

The best view of the building is from down the Biezenstraat, and then it isn’t particularly good.

So dodging the school kids coming out of school I took a photo from this corner. At least it had the more modern part visible behind it, and there was a good view of the roof too. It’s green but it’s very unlikely to be copper.

The Kapucinenvoer, the street where the Sint Rafael is situated, is quite narrow and built up on both sides down its whole length so it’s not possible to step back and take a photo of all of it from face-on.

The only way that I could take another photograph is from further down the street on the opposite corner of the building, and it doesn’t look anything like as imposing from this angle.

It’s not really much better inside. I’ve had to go there on a couple of occasions and it’s really just a maze of corridors and tiny consulting rooms. At least – that’s what I saw of it. I didn’t go very far in there.

A little further along the street towards the Brusselsestraat by the Cuythoek, there’s a more modern extension.

It won’t be much of a loss to the community if that part of the building were to disappear. It seems to be nothing more than a typical early 20th Century Government building.

The only drawback would be whatever they would build in its place. We’ve seen PLENTY OF EXAMPLES in the past of modern buildings conjoined to older masterpieces, and all it seems to do is to show up the lack of skill and appreciation held by modern rchitects and builders.

On that depressing note I went around to the Brusselsestraat to see how they were getting on with the demolition of Sint Pieters Hospital.

When we were here in July, we saw a couple of large grabs at work, just like dinosaurs, nibbling away at the brickwork. But they don’t seem to be there any more. Instead, what we seem to have is someone inside the building on the top floor throwing material out of the window.

And if there’s any more pointless task than that, I really don’t know what is.

As I (and quite a crowd of other people) watched, more objcts, and then brickwork and the like, followed the first batch of stuff down to the ground.

And I really can’t see what is going on here at all. Surely, if they are demolishing the building, they’ll do it from the outside with machines like the big ones that we saw back in July. Whatever was still inside it would come down automatically with the rest of it.

It seems to be a waste of time and money to send someone up there like that. It’ll take them forever to knock down the building like that.

While I was there, I noticed that they had taken out a fence panel. That meant that I could approach that machine that I saw yesterday.

On a closer look at it, I could see that it isn’t a water atomiser as I had thought. It’s not powered by compressed air but by electricity (at least, there’s an electric cable attached to it) and the name that’s written on it – “Spray Stream” – seems to indicate that it’s nothing more than a water sprayer.

The huge fan at the back helps to disperse the water all over the rubble. But at least I was right about that – it’s to keep the dust down while they are knocking down the brickwork.

It was a good job that that fence panel was out, because while I was down there admiring the Spray Stream, my eyes alighted on something else.

The city is honeycombed by branches of the River Dijle, and we’ve seen quite a few of those in the past in all kinds of different places in the city.

But this is one that I haven’t noticed before. It’s been pretty well concealed underneath the Leistraat across the road and it isn’t shown on any maps.

There’s a medieval religious house here on the site that has been pretty much built over the river.

It’s the Sint Elizabeth Gasthuis, dating from about 1090 and was the city’s hospital from the 13th to the 17th Century. And when I worked out what it was, that rang a bell with me because I recall having read somewhere that it was the fashion to build hospitals over running water during the Medieval period.

It was something to do with hygene, if I remember correctly, and I’ll have to track down what it was that I read and remind myself.

Back here I had a few things to do, and then I had tea. Another falafel burger with the rest of the vegetables and some pasta with tomato sauce.

No possibility of going out for a walk right now because it was teeming down with rain, so I made a start on writing up my notes.

. The rain did ease up for a little moment so I nipped out to make the most of it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen a few photos of where I stay taken during the day, but I can’t remember whether I’ve ever photographed it in the night. So here it is. My little room is down the little alleyway to the left just by where the tree is.

So having taken the photo I walked on around the block to run up the time on the fitbit to over 100%. I might have gone farther but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my facemask with me so I’d better head back. Not for health reasons, but for fear of frightening the locals.

But now I’m off to bed. It’s a 5:30 start in the morning so I need to be on form.

Wednesday 7th October 2020 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT …

… Castle Anthrax I had my check-up. Blood count is down to a mere 8.2, just 0.2 above the critical limit. They didn’t keep me in, but they didn’t give me a blood transfusion either. They are trying a new treatment on me again, something called Octagam.

One thing that I did was to check on the side effects and symptoms. And to my surprise, I have many of the symptoms that are flagged, a couple of which have even seen me hospitalised. But I assume that they know what they are doing.

Having said that, I’m not convinced that I do. I couldn’t sleep last night and it was long after 02:30 when I finally went to bed. Quite obviously there was no chance of my leaving the bed at the sound of the alarm. I was surprised that I managed to be out of bed by 07:20.

First job was to have a shower and a clothes wash. I need to make myself pretty. And then to make some sandwiches. I’d no idea how long this session was going to last.

And then I hit the streets.

When you have been away for a while from a place that you know, it’s very interesting to see the changes that have taken place since your last visit.

ON OUR TRAVELS AROUND LEUVEN in the past we’ve seen the start of a whole system of changes to the city, starting with the demolition on the Sint Pieter’s Hospital Building where I stayed for a week or two when I first came here in 2016. They are making a considerable advance in dealing with the matter but it looks as if it’s going to take an age.

It’s a shame that A FORMER NEIGHBOUR and customer of my taxis is no longer with us. He would have had that building down in a twinkle of an eye and at much less cost too.

While I was watching some of the demolition, my interest was caught by this machine and I was wondering what it might be.

It took me a while but I think that I know now what it might be. It looks like some kind of water atomiser powered mainly by compressed air, I suppose, that’s blasting a pile of water over the heap of rubble that has been knocked down from the building. I imagine that its purpose is to keep the dust down.

You would never have had precautions like that 20 years or so ago. It seems that Health and Safety Regulations have even arrived over here.

My route continued along the Brusselsestraat to the corner of the place where I lived for 6 months, and then round the corner into the Sint Jacobsplein.

When we’d been away for a couple of months last year, we came back here to find a great big hole in the middle of the Square. It was all fenced off so we never had the opportunity to look into it, and even though it’s been at least a year since they made a start on it, they still haven’t finished.

This is turning into a really long job and I’m wondering if I’ll still be here to see the finished product. At least, I hope that they will make a better job of it than they did of that deplorable patch of asphalt in Granville.

at the side of the Sint Jacobsplein is the Biezenstraat, and when we were last here IN JULY they were busy making a start on digging it up

Since then, they seem to have made a great deal of progress. And now that I can see the big concrete pipes down there, I can tell now that it’s all to do with replacing the sewer pipes in the street. That makes me wonder if they’ve installed something like a subterranean holding tank or something underneath the Sint Jacobsplein.

And as for the Frittourist, the fritkot on the edge of the Square to the left, the roadworks can’t be doing them much good in the way of passing trade. It’s a good fritkot too, one of the best in the City.

When I turn around to look behind me the other way to face the direction of the Hospital, I’m admiring the Sint Hubertusstraat.

When we came here last time, in early July, there was a huge hole in the middle of the crossroads and we had to walk miles around in order to proceed without falling down a great big hole in the road.

But now, it seems that they’ve filled in that part of the street now and while the surface isn’t finished, and not by a long way either, we can still walk past it on our way up the hill towards the hospital.

Just after the corner there’s a big block of flats on the left that we always walk past.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago all of the residents were turfed out and once they had gone, the building was completely gutted right back to the framework. They have gradually been rebuilding it and it looks as if they are on the point of packing away their tools.

You can see all of the “For Sale” signs on the windows of the apartments. Most of them that I could see are “sold” and that presumably means that the new inhabitants will be moving into their homes very soon. It’s taken them long enough.

My struggle up the hill continued, through all of the roadworks that were there last time. The trench has been filled in and they are reworking the pavements and the cycle track right now.

The actual heavy work is now taking place on the way up between the by-pass overbridge and the roundabout at the foot of the car park. And just as I arrived, they obliged me by picking up a large concrete pipe and dropping it into the hole that they have dug.

For a change, I was early and was quickly logged in. And I found the reason why there had been such a delay in my treatment. In the waiting room there are no longer 40 seats but just 10. and in the communal treatment rooms where 20 people can sit and have their treatment, there are just two seats. There are about a dozen or so confidential treatment rooms where you go for your tests on admission, and now patients are left in these rooms throughout the whole of their treatment.

So Instead of about 50 patients at a session, there are now just maybe a dozen. Hardly a surprise given what’s going on right now.

A nice nurse took care of me and I had a nice young trainee doctor. There have to be some benefits of having this illness. Even nicer, Kaatje came to see me and we has a nice chat. She’s nominally a Social Worker but in reality she’s a psychiatrist, although they don’t let on. Every terminally-ill patient has a psychiatrist allocated to them, and Kaatje can come and administer to my needs any time she likes.

While I had her attention, I mentioned the issues – or lack of them – about not having had my compulsory 4-week treatment since January this year. Not that it will do any good but it’s something that one has to do.

While I was sitting there having my perfusion, I attacked the dictaphone. Last night I was a girl, would you believe? And I was living at home. I’d been downstairs for a meal and tried to talk to people and be interesting but no-one was listening or interested in the least with what I had to say. They were always cutting my speech, that kind of thing. In the end I threw something of a tantrum and stormed upstairs to my room. There was a record player in there and a record on and playing but the needle wasn’t advancing. It was just going round and round he edge again. Sooner or later there was a knock and the door opened. It was my father coming in. I thought that he might have come in to talk to me about things. But no. He just handed me a pair of my gloves that I’d left downstairs and said “you’ve forgotten these” and turned round and went out. I was so disappointed.
Later on there was one of these American sleuths – a Philip Marlowe type. He was renowned for helping his clients in all kinds of ways, many of which were illicit, to escape detection. This came at a price of course. One day he was being interviewed by a gangland boss who he didn’t particularly like. The gangland boss said something like “I understand that you can help people out of certain kinds of difficulties. Well I need a little help – that kind of thing. This private detective taunted him a little bit then said “yes, I’ll do that, $5,000”. To which the mafia type guy, the crook erupted into a rage. He grabbed this guy by the lapels and started to shake him like a dog. Just then, two warders came in to try and sort it all out.

Round about 14:00 my treatment was over and I could leave, having picked up next month’s supply of medication.

Here’s something that I’ve not noticed before, although that isn’t to say that it wasn’t there.

In the middle of the roundabout at the bottom of this car park is this large concrete pillar. And I’ve no idea why it’s there and what it’s supposed to represent. My opinion of modern art IS VERY WELL KNOWN so I won’t waste your time in repeating it. But seriously, I can’t see any attraction whatever in a concrete cast-off like this.

It reminds me very much of one of Albert Speer’s flak towers in Berlin, or something designed by someone from the Donald Gibson School of Wanton Vandalism, as I once mentioned IN MY UNIVERSITY THESIS

While we’re on the subject of wanton vandalism … “well, one of us is” – ed … after my hospital wisit I wandered on down the hill to see what was going on on the Kapucijnenstraat.

When we had walked past there the last time that we were here, they had started on the demolition of the annexes to the Sint Rafael. It’ always very interesting to see how they are doing and it seems to me that right now the whole lot have been swept away. They are even starting to build something on the site, but I bet it won’t be anything like as attractive.

At least the magnificent Flemish-style main building is there, but I may well go for a wander around tomorrow with the camera to record it for posterity because the cynic inside me HAS VERY LITTLE FAITH in modern developers. A suspicious fire could break out at any moment.

There is however a good side to all of this demolition, even if it might not seem like it.

There are loads of old houses from the glory days of the city that have been obscured by new development. There’s a little Close off the Brusselsestraat that I haven’t yet explored but with the demolition of a newer building in the Kapucijnenstraat a couple of the houses down at the bottom end of the Close have been revealed.

When I’m out and about next, I’ll have to go to have a closer look, to see whether it is an original or whether it’s a simple modern reproduction.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that last time I was here I made a note about the lamentable state of the city walls in certain places.

It’s quite clear that the good Burghers of the City are keen and regular readers of the rubbish that I write because they now seem to be fenced off and there is scaffolding up in certain places. So maybe they really are going on to do something about it all.

It was round about here that I found a set of keys lying in the road. As it happens, a couple of Municipal Police were walking in the immediate vicinity so I referred the matter to them. I went on to Delhaize for a bit more shopping to take home.

After Delhaize I went to Origin’O for some grated vegan cheese for my next supply of pizza and then headed for home.

In the Tiensestraat I came across my favourite sweet shop. Or at least, it was when I was allowed to eat animal products, because as far as I know, all of their products contain pork gelatine. It’s the kind of place where you put your sweets into a bag and weigh the bag to work out the price.

The first time I encountered one of these shops was when I was in Bruges getting on for 40 years ago. It’s quite a large chain of shops with branches in most of the towns. in fact, some might say that sweets in Belgium are nothing but a load of Bollekes.

Back here, I had a few things to do and that took some time to organise.

Later on, it was time to go out. Alison and I had arranged to meet in the town centre.

And now I have seen everything I reckon. In the past we’ve seen pizzamats, potatomats and, a few weeks ago, a soupomat. Plenty of other mats too. But today is the first time ever that I’ve seen a Bloemenomat – an automatic flower-vending machine – here at the florist’s on the corner of the Brabanconnestraat.

It makes me wonder whether or not it shouts “violet, get your luvverly violets” at passers-by. That remains to be seen.

Having inspected the Bloemenautomat, I headed off down the Tiensestraat into the town centre.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of my favourite photography subjects is to take photographs of other people taking photographs. Whilst that’s not the case in this photograph, I surprised a group of photographers marching actoss the Rector de Somerplein and it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Alison was waiting for me at our usual meeting place. It was nice to meet up again because it’s been a couple of months since we’ve last seen each other.

There seems to be a new place opened, the Wasbar in the Tiensestraat, and it was advertising vegan food. We decided to go there to see what it was like. It was certainly different and overpriced, but if you don’t go, you won’t know.

After we’d eaten out meal we headed off back down into town.

At the bottom of the Tiensestraat is the magnificent St Peter’s Church – the Sint Pieterskerk. It’s least the third church on this site – the first known church being first recorded in 986. Made of wood, it was destryed by fire in 1176 and replaced by a church in the Romanesque period.

This one was in turn replaced by the present one, began round about 1425 and, surprisingly, still to be finished. Probably a British construction company was involved somewhere in the proceedings.

Here at the western end, the twin towers of the Romanesque church were to remain but in 1458 they were destroyed by fire.

There was a design proposed to replace them with some really impressive towers but firstly the foundations were not solid enough, then they ran out of money, and then there were a couple of collapses of whatever of the towers had been built. Had the plans been properly completed, it would have been the tallest building in the world at the time.

During the Sack of Leuven in 1914 the church was set alight and the roof was destroyed. And then in 1944 it suffered a direct him on its northern side from a bomb

While we’d been walking around on our way to our meal we’d noticed some lights down at the end of one of the streets. On the way back we decided to go and have a look to see what as going on.

Here in the Mathieu de Layensplein where they have the brocantes at weekends, one of the bars here has decided to bring a little gaiety into the area by stringing up some very nice lights.

The whole Square looks quite nice and interesting like this and it would have been nice to see more people try this kind of thing in their neighbourhood. With everything that’s going on right now, we could do with some brightening up.

On the way back home, someone stopped me in the Tiensestraat and asked for directions.

While I was talking, I was having a look round and having the subject of lights going round in my head, I noticed just how nice the lower end of the Tiensestraat looked with all of the lights on the buildings. It’s another subject that seems to be crying out for a photograph.

Having done all of that, I headed home and missed my short-cut, so I had to go the long way round.

And now I’ve written up my notes (and that was a labour of love) I’m off to bed. No alarm tomorrow because the medication usually takes a lot out of me and I don’t know what this new stuff will be like.

And, of course, I have a 05:30 start on Friday so I need to be at my best.

Tuesday 6th October 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that LAST YEAR IN MONTREAL I came across a pizza place that had started to sell vegan pizzas as a mainstream meal.

Here I am in Leuven tonight, and what do I find but that another, different pizza chain is now offering the same. It’s most unlikely that I’ll be able to find them in France, with France about 100 years behind in this respect and Leuven is likely to be in the forefront, having such a huge student population as it does, but it’s certainly progress.

The only downside of this is that I didn’t see the notice until after I’d bought the food for my stay here for the next few days. Had I seen it earlier, I would have changed my meal plans. This kind of thing needs encouragement.

What also needs encouragement is my early starts in the morning. Another day where I was out of bed, up and definitely about this time, long before the third alarm went off. First task was to release the gas in the Kefir, and second was to feed the sourdough. It’s like having household pets in here now and that was something from which I have been trying to escape. The idea of having ties like this of any kind is not part of the plan.

So having loaded the working files onto the portable hard drive, done the washing up, had a shower, taken out the rubbish and bleached the sinks, shower and toilet and finished the packing, I hit the streets.

Last night, the day’s photographs finished with trawlers unloading at the Fish Processing Plant.

So today we start as we mean to go on with a carbon-copy of last night’s photograph, except of course that it’s somewhat lighter right now. And there’s a trawler manoeuvring around in the harbour too. Although the harbour gates are closed, the tide is well on its way in and so I imagine that the gates are about to open and the trawler is ready to leave.

And so I headed off towards the railway station. It was windy, but nothing like as windy as it has been, and the weather was doing its best to rain. It’s a good job that I’d prepared by wearing the correct clothes.

There was still half an hour to go before departure time when I arrived at the Railway Station.

And here we have a disaster. The coffee machine is out of order. I’m not drinking very much coffee these days but I still fancied a cup this morning due to my early and somewhat energetic start. The train, a GEC Alstom Regiolis, was already in at the platform so I was able to board it, find my seat and settle myself down in comfort.

Somewhere along the route I was joined by a miserable, bad-tempered old woman who had clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed and who moaned all the way to Paris. And for the first time ever, I managed to go for most of the way without crashing out. Just 10 minutes or so. I was able to do quite a bit of work.

One of the jobs that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. I was with someone last night – it might even have been Castor I dunno. It started off with meeting somewhere – we had to meet and I had to go on back to my digs. I’d looked at a couple of digs and wasn’t really keen on them but the 3rd one was OK so I’d booked in there. Then I had to go out to meet whoever it was. It turned out that 1st of all it was yet another boy from my school days and we met in Claughton Avenue. I said that we had better go to check to make sure that my car was still there because I’d left it there a day or so ago. It was the old Ford Escort that I’d had. We walked down the whole length of the street looking for this Escort but it wasn’t there any more. I thought that either we were in the wrong street or someone has pinched it. If it’d been pinched, it’s been pinched and it’s far too late to do anything about it now. It was all about worrying about a car or worrying about a bike When we got to the end there was a bike rack with a pile of bikes and someone in charge The guy whom I was with picked up a bike and sat on it as if to cycle off Some old guy who was in charge said “put that back! It’s not yours!” My companion replied “ohh yes it is!” so we had this “no it isn’t – yes it is” bit and in the end he said “no it isn’t” and handed the bike back. The old guy said “thank you very much”. By now the situation had advanced and I was with Castor – it could have been Castor, it could have been anyone. We’d come out of a huge building complex type of thing and we had to go home to where my digs were. I said “come this way” and she replied “no, it’s this way”. She wanted us to go in exactly the opposite direction but I was insisting that it was my way and she was insisting that it was her way She’s had a bit to drink and was a bit unsteady on her feet so in the end I guided her back In the end we ended up somewhere walking home and I suddenly realised that you needed a special code to get into the building where I was staying and I didn’t have that code I thought “how am I going to manage that?” To make it worse, whoever I was with decided that she wanted to stay the night with me I thought that ordinarily this would really be my lucky night but how am I going to manage this if I can’t get into my building? I supposed that I could conceivably go and find a room for us in a hotel but it was now something like 02:00 and what hotels with rooms would be open at this time of night? We were on foot so we couldn’t go far. It all became really confusing as well as being a really feverish night again

It’s a common, recurring theme, isn’t it? Here I am, with the bird on my plate and just as I’m about to get my fork stuck in it, something always comes up to spike my guns. Story of my life, I suppose. And Castor too!

A little later I was back in a similar kind of situation and a similar kind of situation running a chocolate factory and mixing chocolate. There was some kind of dispute about the recipe and in the end she chose one. We were busy making it and we got a couple of blocks to take back to the hotel where we were staying to try them out.

Our train arrived in the Gare Montparnasse about 2 minutes late but the Metro trip was rapid and straightforward. Some people didn’t find it that easy though. There was a barrage of ticket inspectors checking everyone’s tickets and a few people fell foul of them.

When I arrived at the Gare du Nord I had half an hour before my train was due to leave so I went for a walk around outside. One thing that I do like about the Paris Metro is the beautiful art-deco work of the entrances. This one, across the road from the railway station, is a typical example.

There were not very many people at all in this photo, which is not what you expect outside the Gare du Nord. In fact, one thing that I did notice was that the Metro was much quieter than usual and the station was quite empty. This virus is certainly affecting the business habits of the inhabitants of the city.

Another thing that I noticed was that outside the Gare du Nord thee was a placard saying that planning permission had been obtained for various alterations.

The work that is planned to be carried out is quite extensive and substantial. It’s going to change the aspect of the railway station quite considerably and that’s a shame because the station is a beautiful building and a rare survival of decent 19th Century railway architecture.

Somewhere here and there I have a few photos of the exterior of the railway station but I don’t have one of this angle here. I reckon that I had better take one to add to the collection just in case they are really going to alter it in any major way and we might not ever see it again.

Back inside the station there was still 20 minutes to go before the train was to depart. I wasn’t going to loiter around outside too long because it was raining and it’s dryer inside.

There was already a train parked in our platform. It was one of the TGV duplex trains, built by Alstom and are getting on for 25 years old now. But nevertheless, they are still very comfortable and very rapid too.

We weren’t allowed on board yet so we had to wait around for another 10 minutes before we were allowed on board. During that time they were loading up the train with the foodstuffs and drink for the journey. I’m not quite sure why because it’s not as if it’s actually a long way to Lille on a TGV.

They eventually allowed us through towards the train. This train set consists of two units joined together and my seat was is in the farthest unit.

We actually left on time and hurtled off into the wild blue yonder at 300Km/H. The train was actually half-empty, which was something of a surprise. Like I said earlier, people’s habits are changing.

Our train arrived in Lille-Flandres 5 minutes late, and then there was the hike down the road to the Lille-Europe railway station. The rain had stopped by now so it was a really pleasant walk down there, although I had to get a wiggle on because they don’t allow you very much time to make the journey and there isn’t a shuttle-bus or anything to connect up the stations.

Negotiating the layabouts with their savage dogs at the entrance, I made my way into the station. Still 5 minutes to go before my train was due to arrive which was just as well because the singing was wrong in the station and I had to walk almost the full length of the platform to where I had to board.

Bang on time, our train came in. It’s the TGV that comes from Montpelier and when I lived in the Auvergne I used to catch it quite regularly from Lyon when I was flying out to North America from Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Arriving on time, leaving on time, and reaching its destination, Bruxelles-Midi, bang on time too. This isn’t the SNCF as we know it. There’s a story that goes around France about how kids spend all of their maths lessons working out train arrivals and departures, and then when they start their working life they encounter the SNCF …

Having arrived in Brussels, I didn’t have to go too far or wait too long for my train to Leuven. It was due to come in at the next platform.

This is the express from the Belgian coast to Welkenraedt on the German border. It’ one of the Siemens Type 18 Electrics, about 12 or 15 years old and designed by Chris “Failing” Grayling. Consequently they came with a great many problems and Siemens had to pay a hefty fine. Once they were eventually put right they’ve proved to be the backbone of the SNCB’s express passenger service.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall by the way that there’s a story to Welkenraedt and WE’VE BEEN THERE to find out about it.

We arrived in Leuven on time (I’m not used to this) and I was soon installed in my room here. One of the benefits of being a regular here is that when there’s room, I am given a free upgrade and as it’s quiet, I have a duplex apartment.

Down at Carrefour to do my shopping, past the pizza place, and then back to here for tea (falafel burger and pasta followed by fruit salad and vegan sorbet) and to watch the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads in a torrential rainstorm against Caernarfon Town.

In the first half, it was all one-way traffic towards the Caernarfon goal. Caernarfon only made it into the Nomads’ penalty area once so you will not be at all surprised to learn that the half-time score was Nomads 0, Cofis 1. Such is the nature of Welsh Football.

The second half was a much more even contest but the Nomads were playing with the rainstorm pushing them forward and they ran out 3-1 winners in the end , 2 goals of which were scored by the centre-half Priestly Farquarson who was pushing up behind the attackers on several occasions and relying on his pace (because he is quick) to get him back.

It was however quite quaint to see, every time the game stopped, a hand come round the front of the camera with a cloth and clean the lens of the rain that was soaking it. That brings back many memories from a less-sophisticated past.

Monday 5th October 2020 – IT’S AN ILL-WIND …

…. that doesn’t blow anyone any good, so they say.

And that certainly seems to be the case even with Storm Alex. You can see the waves and the whitecaps that have been caught by the wind, and there are a couple of kite-surfers making the most of the horrendous weather, and a very interested seagull intent on watching them at it.

It must have been the same ill wind that blew me out of bed this morning, because I was up and about this morning before the third alarm. “Up”, anyway. I’m not quite sure about the “about” though.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And while you admire the photos of the waves crashing down on the Plat Gousset in the aftermath of Storm Alex, I’ll tell you all about it.

Yes there was definitely something going on during the night but I picked up the dictaphone and promptly forgot it again. No idea what it was. But after a minute it all came back to me, as the skunk said when the wind changed. It was vaguely something to do with being at work. Someone whom I knew from school was there and someone else and we’d been spending a lot of time chatting. I wasn’t doing any work because I was retired officially. I was just keeping on going as long as they would let me so I was spending most of my time talking or reading books. One or two people had been to see me so we’d talked and then I’d been reading a book hidden in the corridors between the library shelves. It came to coffee time so I went to get my coffee.

I’d met someone there and we’d had a chat, talkng about football and the football pitch down below. I said that I’d seen the Belgian Prime Minister playing there. This brought a howl of incredulity for he was a big guy, the Belgian Prime Minister. I said that it was only for a couple of seconds and he was substituted. But there were a couple of other people there having some kind of fitness thing. There were 2 guys there streets ahead of everyone else with their fitness so I asked if they should be signed up to a club. He said “no, they aren’t interested in football although they coach some team for their children, something like that”. Then I was on my own and carried on doing a load of stuff, messing around in this canteen. I thought that I’d better get back to my desk anyway so I picked up my breakfast and gently ran through the offices. That schoolfriend was there and he looked at me with a bit of surprise so I waved at him and carried on running to get back to my desk in a hurry and I couldn’t remember what happened next.

Somewhat later there was an old couple and they had a job working for someone. because they had very long arms, or the husband had, long arms and very thin hands he was often asked to do some tasks. On one particular occasion he had to put his hand through a wheel or something to reach the other side to play about with something on the vehicle. He was doing this and suddenly the vehicle rolled back. Of course he had his arms through the spokes and that broke his arm.

However at some point during the night I was trying to close the rear doors like Caliburn’s on a van. For some reason, when I pulled the handle down the pegs weren’t coming down far enough to fit into the bodywork to hold the door closed. I was with, I think, the same schoolfriend as before and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get these pegs to come out far enough. I thought that I could conceivably get in and close the door from inside and climb back out through the window because there was no glass in the aperture in the back (I was confusing myself by now with MY RED CORTINA ESTATE . Then I noticed that the doors were rotten and I thought that maybe I could get some more doors for it but for some reason I just couldn’t get this door to shut.

The same ill-wind that was blowing us all into next week blew me into a frenzy this morning. Just for a change, I had a bad attack of motivation and I was able, to my own surprise and probably to yours as well, to sit down and in one swell foop I completed a radio programme from start to absolute finish.

It’s all totally completed, one hour’s worth of it, and been listened to and checked.

We had the usual break for lunch and afterwards, I had a little task to perform because Saturday’s Kefir mix is now good and ready.

I took three juice-oranges and whizzed them into oblivion, and then strained the juice out through a conical sieve into a large 2-litre jug. Then I gently and slowly poured out the kefir mix through a mesh coffee filter into the jug with the juice, taking care that the grains of Kefir remained covered with liquid. There should be a couple of inches of liquid left in the jar.

Finally, I strained the combined liquid back through the coffee filter (which I had placed in a large funnel) into a couple of bottles and capped them.

Having done that, I added 40 grams of sugar to the liquid that remained, three slices of lemon and two halves of a fig, and then a litre and a half of water. That’s now brewing in the jar and will be good and ready by the time that I return from Leuven.

That was about 90 minutes out of my day all told but nevertheless, by as early as 15:30 it was completed and ready to be heard. That was the moment for me to go out for the afternoon walk.

There was an old headline in an English Newspaper about 100 or so years ago – “Fog In The Channel – Continent Cut Off”.

At the moment, it’s not the Continent that has been cut off by the fog but the Ile de Chausey. You can’t see a thing out there today, despite the howling gale that’s blowing around today. There is in fact a fishing boat that’s out here someone – I’ve seen a photo of it leaving port this morning in the storm – but there’s no possibility of knowing where it is in this kind of weather.

As well as that, I’ve no idea where anyone else is either. Probably at home, I reckon, because there was no-one at all out there this afternoon and I don’t blame them for one moment.

Wending my weary way around the headland I was met by an enormous blast of wind that almost bowled me over.

The wind was raging into the Baie de Mont St Michel and even though the tide was quite well out, the waves were being blown in with an impressive amount of force and the poor little Le Loup, the marker light that marks the rock at the entrance to the harbour, was taking the brunt of it.

The yacht school was not out there in the bay today either and that’s hardly any surprise at all. And that reminds me that I still have to go and talk to them about lessons. I should be seizing opportunities like this.

No chance of running along the top of the wall in this wicked wind so I strolled gently along to the viewpoint overlooking the Chantier Navale.

We are now back up to four boats because we now have a nouvelle arrivante in there this afternoon. I couldn’t see a name on her but she looks as if the might be Les Epiettes, the boat that belongs to the French Département de Ponts et Chaussées – the Ministry of Roads and Bridges.

She’s certainly carrying the same official Government colours and so it’s an official boat, and Les Epiettes has been the one that has been around here in the area. We saw it over at the Ile de Chausey when we were there with Spirit of Conrad in July

We know that there’s a fishing boat that’s gone out to sea this morning, but it seems that it’s the only one that is.

There are plenty of other boats moored in the harbour that haven’t put to sea today. From left to right we have Chausiais, the freighter that takes supplies and equipment out to the Ile de Chausey, la Grande Ancre, a small freighter that seems to undertake a variety of tasks from transporting tractors out to the mussel farm on the Ile de Chausey to going out to catch a load of shellfish herself.

On the right is Coelacanthe, the sister ship to Le Tiberiade that we have just seen in the Chantier Navale. She’s one of the biggest trawlers in the port so if she’s not out at sea then things must be nad out there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the streets of the old Medieval City within the walls are very narrow.

Just recently there has been a great deal of work done on the streets in there and it looks as if there is more going on there today. We have another set of traffic lights at the Porte St Jean so presumably they are working on the road in the one-way system somewhere in there. What I’ll have to do, if the weather allows me to go out this evening, is to go and find out where they are. I don’t recall seeing any notices about there.

By this time I was totally fed up of the wet weather so I turned for home and came in. There was a pool of water at the foot of the stairs, presumably blown underneath the door by the wind.

While I listened the radio programme that I had prepared, I went through the photos that I’d taken and edited them. And there was a distraction as I had to hunt down an image file that was lost in the depths of my computer.

After my hour on the guitar, tea was a stuffed pepper, seeing as there was a pepper remaining, followed by the last of the strawberry tart with coconut soya dessert, following which I went out for my evening stroll.

The wind had dropped somewhat by now but still quite blustery, and there were a few squalls of rain swirling around. Nevertheless there was still the heavy fog and it was difficult to see anything out at sea. There was no-one about at all which is no surprise so I ended up having quite a comfortable run all the way along the footpath under the walls in the wind and rain.

Once I’d recovered my breath, I carried on walking and eventually ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset

It wasn’t difficult to gather what was going on due to the noise. You could hear it from half-way around the walls.

The tide is now about an hour and a half from high but nevertheless the waves are really intense in the storm and are crashing down with a considerable amount of force on the promenade at the Plat Gousset. Just imagine what it’s going to be like at high tide if it keeps up like this.

The weather being a little calmer tonight than it was on Saturday, so I could hang around for a little longer tonight. The photos are a little better too because of that but I’d love to be able to improve my technique. Don’t forget that I’m working on the edge of the technology that I have.

Having watched the storm for a few minutes I turned round and ran off down the full length of the Square Maurice Marland.

Having recovered my breath I walked through the alleyway and down the Rue Notre Dame towards home. My eye was open for whatever it was that the traffic lights at the Porte St Jean were controlling, and here at the corner of the Rue Cambernon and the Rue Notre Dame I discovered the issue.

It was far too dark to look into the hole to see what was happening, but I could certainly hear the noise of running water. It sounds as if there’s a burst water main down there. The fact that parking is now forbidden on the way up to the church seems to indicate that they’ll be digging up there tomorroz.

By now I was used to the weather so I went for a wander around the walls.

The other night we saw a fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant but tonight there seems to be three of them currently unloading. There’s another one in the darkness just there too, and a few more over on the other side of the harbour looking as if they are making ready to leave for the open sea.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those heading out to sea in weather like this. I stood there and watched them too, and then turned on my heel and ran on back to the apartment.

Now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m off on the train tomorrow to my appointment with Destiny so I need to be on form. I need to do some tidying up before I go and I must also remember to feed my sourdough before I set off.

It’s all go in here, isn’t it?

Sunday 4th October 2020 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest, so a lie-in until 10:45 doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And even less so when I was still up, about and working at 02:00 this morning.

Mind, you, I’m surprised that I was even back by that time because I’d travelled miles during the night.

We’d been really busy at home and a lot of things hadn’t been done. I’d been taking the stuff out of the sink. The sink outlet was blocked – there wa s aload of waste food blocking it and I had to pull it out with my hands. My mother made some kind of smart remark about it. I said “so I’ve forgotten to empty the sink properly. Don’t you think that I do enough work around here?” It developed into a bit of a slanging match about this kind of thing. Then my brother started, because something that I’d said he thought referred to him not having done anything so he was annoyed. I turned round and said “what did I say the very first off? – ‘so I haven’t emptied the sink’. How can you possibly think that this relates to you?”. This argument carried on for a good while, and then my mother ended up talking about jobs. I’d seen a part-time job on offer at a local chemist, and I’d mentioned it. My mother rang up about it. She was talking and apparently the chemist had spoken to her and said “I have 2 or 3 other applicants. I have to read their CVs and e-mails and then I’ll get back to you”. My mother said “yes, it’s not every day that you meet someone where there’s a possibility of a job because everyone has these jobs all sewn up for special people”.
Interestingly, that job that I have seen in the South Sandwich Islands – the list of requirements and the essential skills of any applicant is so closely written that it’s clear that it’s a job designed to appeal to just one specific person and merely advertised “just for form”.

Later on last night we were on board ship again. There was a young girls’ rock band there but they couldn’t find their bassist so they never got to play. hey just wandered around a bit. Some time later the bassist appeared, a little blonde-haired girl in a yellow bikini, very attractive. We started to have a chat and I felt that I was well-in here but suddenly I was transferred away and ended up in Stoke on Trent. I’ve no idea what happened in Stoke on Trent now but whatever it was, it was a disappointment compared to what happened earlier

Later again I’d been out in Caliburn and one or two other vehicles here and there. I was pretty busy and dashing all over the place. There was still plenty to do and one of the things was to meet someone. One of our guys had gone off with a pile of kids to take them out somewhere so we were going around Crewe in Market Terrace and we came to the cinema. We had to go inside for something and I met the girl whom I was supposed to meet. She said “ohh that’s so-and-so”. We looked up and there was a pile of kids disappearing up the stairs into the cinema. “Yes, he’s taking them to the cinema”. She said “I have to go in there as well. You come too”. I replied “yes, OK”. It was Mary Poppins or something like that. She said “what about the books?” I replied “I have them outside in the van”. Then I thought “I hope that I’ve come in the van”. I couldn’t remember what vehicle I was in. I had to go outside but the van was parked in Market Terrace on double-yellow lines with its hazard lights on so I had to find somewhere to move it. By now it had transformed itself into a motorbike so I could ride it a little bit and I found a place that would be absolutely ideal to put it. So I had to turn round back the wrong way in this one-way street and found where I thought was good but it was up a couple of steps behind a little low fence. I thought “this is going to be interesting to get in here”. I also had a cat, an old black cat like Tuppence. I thought “what’s she going to do?”. She just got onto the low stone wall that this fence was attached to, curled up and went to sleep. I thought “I’ve got something I can padlock her to the railings so she wouldn’t stray too far. Some old guy turned up, a homeless type of person, and started to chat to me. He was talking a bit of nonsense really and I thought that I would never ever get back to this cinema in time to watch this performance with this girl at this rate if he carries on like this.

I was dictating again into my empty hand but I had to meet someone again at some car sales place. I pulled into the car park at the back but they wanted something else so I had to nip home. I came back in Caliburn. The guy had rung me up to say that he was there in a white Toyota van. I arrived there round at the front and he was sitting there in his van parked up between the vehicles that were for sale. I beckoned him and we went round the back and went to pull into this car park but found that there was now a chain across it. I thought “this is going to be no good because I had my car in there. How the heck am I going to get it out in order to to go home now? ” That was another problem that I was going to have to think of right now.

So some time subsequently I pushed up to North Germany from the south all the way up to the north. I came to a town where there was a bridge to cross over the river. It was a bridge that I knew and had used quite a few times. I arrived and, inexplicably, the bridge had collapsed and there was no way of getting across the river except by walking. I parked my car and picked my way up through the debris of this bridge and somehow managed to cross. I was climbing up the other side to the motorway and the ‘phone rang. It was of all people a guy with whom I used to play in a band. We had a very lengthy chat and the past, everything like that but this really was the wrong moment. So we chatted and yes, he found out that it was me through the internet and guessed that it was me and did I ever do a couple of things that I said that I was going to do when I was younger? Had I heard from our guitarist? “Not for 45 years”. In the end we finished and promised to call each other again but whether we would or not I dunno. I got to this autoroute and of course there were no cars on it – there wasn’t any point with the bridge being down. I set off walking and it really was a hike up. But I pressed on regardless and particularly sailed up this slope past the place where I usually stopped for a coffee to get my breath but just as well, as it was closed. All the way up to the top of this hill and I reached the village and they allowed me in. The first thing that I wanted to do was to go to the bathroom but there was some woman cleaning outside. Some guy coming out made some ribald remark about the woman. Eventually she let me and and I found an empty cubicle.

Writing out all of that was a work of art in itself and accounted for much of what was left of the morning. And while for the rest of the day I didn’t get up to all that much. Sunday is a Day of Rest and everyone should have one day in the week and do nothing, and not feel ashamed about doing it.

No matter how much work I have on hand, a leisurely day once a week is an important part of my rhythm.

Of course, there’s my afternoon walk. So, taking my courage and my raincoat in both hands, I set out in the rain.

Luckily the rain wasn’t quite as heavy as last night and the wind had dropped down to “powerful” (probably about Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale) rather than “horrific”. But that was never going to be an issue. What was however an issue was the sea. As you can see, it’s totally wild out there this afternoon with the strong winds whipping up the waves and creating whitecaps way out to sea. Not the afternon to be out there at all, and there was no chance whatever today of seeing the Channel Islands.

Everyone else thought so too because there wasn’t even one boat out there that I could see. Mind you, I couldn’t see that far.

Walking round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord I could see that there was nothing whatever going on there, so I continued on my way along the street.

There were signs of devastation everywhere. In the Place du Marché aux Chevaux they installed barriers to prevent people approaching the crumbling walls just there But they aren’t there any longer. They have been swept away in the storm and the no-waiting signs, anchored in concrete in old vehicle wheels, have just been bowled over like skittles.

There was no-one about so even though it was raining and I was in my all-weather gear, I ran all the way down the footpath underneath the walls. At least I could see where the puddles were so that I could take avoiding action.

At my usual resting point after my run, I stopped and looked down on the beach to see what was going on.

There was nothing at all happening, but at least you could see the Medieval fish trap and how it works. It would be round about this state of tide that all of the fisherwomen in the Middle Ages would be wading about in there pulling out the fish with their hands.

So please take careful note of this, British people, for after Brexit it might be a handy thing for you to do if hedgerow foraging fails to come up with the goods.

From there I walked on down to the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset but there was nothing whatever going on down there so I continued on my way.

There was no-one at all in the Square Maurice Marland so seeing that it was sheltered from the wind I seized the opportunity to run all the way down there. I may as well push the boat out while I can.

It has been raining steadily throughout the afternoon with no sign whatever of stopping. However I did notice that there was going to be a change. Looking at that cloud out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel and the heavy rain that was streaming down from it, it was going to get worse. This was not the time to be hanging around, I reckon. I headed off towards home.

No-one about on my final leg of my trip from the church to my place so I ran all the way despite the savage headwind. That was my three runs all accomplished during the afternoon which means that I can take it easy this evening, if the rain and the rest of the weather allow me to go out.

Back here, despite my Day of Rest, I had promised to empty out the freezer and defrost it.

All of the contents went into plastic boxes and I unplugged the freezer, plugged in the infra-red heater and set it off.

Meantime I cleaned and dried all of the contents to remove excess ice from the covers and then washed and cleaned the freezer drawers.

It’s hardly a surprise that there was so little room in the freezer because one of the drawers was half-full of ice. And the shelves were so crammed with ice that they were preventing the drawers from being filled completely.

This is going to be a long job.

While the freezer was unfreezing itself in the bathroom I started to make my pizza.

I’d taken a ball of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting for a while. So I kneaded it again to expel the iar and then rolled out out to the right size. Having greased my pizza tray, I dropped it in and where it overhung, I folded over the edges.

After the dough had been standing for an hour or so and gone nice and springy, I added the ingredients. Tomato sauce base, then sliced tomato, diced onion, diced mushrooms, diced peppers, sliced garlic, herbs (I use oregano, basil and tarragon), freshly ground black pepper and grated chees. I’d switched the oven on as I started so by now it was nice and hot so I stuck the pizza in.

And here’s the finished product. It looked beautiful and it tasted really good too. I seem to have acquired the knack of making these pizzas too now and I’m quite pleased with this. No pudding tonight because I’m full up with the pizza. I don’t want to overdo things.

By now the freezer had defrosted completely so I tipped out the water, dried it all off and put everything back. There’s plenty of room now in the freezer and there will be even more now that I know what is in there and what I can eat. Enough fruit pies to sink a ship, I reckon.

Another good job well done.

By now it was time to go out for my evening walk.

But I needn’t have bothered because I only made about 200 yards before the wind and rain that I’d seen loitering in the distance earlier was now well in position and conspired to drive me back in. All that I managed to do was to take a photograph of my building in the middle of a rainstorm. The wind might not have been as strong as it was yesterday evening but the rain was coming down in buckets and despite my rain gear I was soaked before I even reached the end of the car park.

As I reached the corner at the side of the College Malraux I was hit by several gusts of wind and was totally drenched in rain. That was enough for me so I turned round and came home. I’m glad that I managed to fit in the runs around my circuit this afternoon.

Back here now with my notes written up, I might even treat myself to an early night. I deserve one, and then I’ll be fighting-fit for this week. Off to the hospital on Tuesday and then we’ll see what we will see.

And where we’ll go from there.

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?

EPIC HALL

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