Monday 12th February 2018 – IT’S SNOWING!!!!

We had bright sunlight quite early on and I’d turned the light off early today. But round about 10:30 it went pitch-black outside.

And so out of curiosity I went for a peep out of the window and sure enough, we were having a fall of snow.

No-one was more surprised than me to see it, that’s for sure. I love the snow as you know, and I was bitterly disappointed to think that I might have missed out.

Mind you, when I say “snowing” – that’s something of an exaggeration. Especially when regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen photos of the Auvergne where I lived and where we could have half a metre of snow at the drop of a hat.

This was just a bare covering of snow, and unfortunately it didn’t last long. The weather quickly brightened up and within 20 minutes it had all melted away.

But it’s snow nevertheless, and here are the photos to prove it.

I’d had another good night’s sleep and been travelling again. I can only remember a small part of it, and that involved a cruise liner with a scene something reminiscent of Carry On Cruising. There was also a pile of loose change to be considered too, and the pieces of money were large and mis-shapen, nothing like what you would expect coins to look like these days.

Medication and breakfast, and once it all worked I settled down and attacked the European Photo Mountain. I’m at the stage where I can slowly start to add things back into the stuff on the external hard drive. It’s certainly a lot tidier – and a lot emptier – than it was when I resurrected it.

But there’s still tonnes of stuff missing and I do wonder where it’s all gone to. There must be another external hard drive somewhere, but I’m badgered if I know where it might be.

With a minor interruption to look at the snow, I carried on with it until lunchtime, and soup again.

Back at work and I had a phone call to make. It’s another one of these cases where you send a letter to someone telling them of your change of address, so they send the next document to your old address. I’m fed up of all of this.

And then there was a letter to write. That involved a lot of work and research, but that’s done now. And then there was a pile of stuff to print off. My Health Insurance want a declaration that I’m still alive (I’m not even sure of that and I’m sure that you aren’t either) and there are some documents from the Health Insurance to hand in to them. All of that needed to be printed off in order to take with me on Wednesday.

And then I tidied up and filed away a load of paperwork that had been lying around.

It was a beautiful, bright, warm sunny afternoon so I went for my afternoon walk around the headland again.

And I was in luck – just in time to see Normandy Trader cast off forr’ead and cast off aft, and set sail … "diesel" – ed … out of her little mooring.

Yes, the tide is right in, so there’s no point in my going down to look at this new gate arrangement thing to see what they have done.

So with a touch of “left hand down a bit”, Normandy Trader negotiated the exit to the tidal harbour and headed off out to the open seas.

I thought that we might have had a maritime disaster on her hands as just as she was leaving, two fishing boats appeared coming in.

But keeping starboard to starboard instead of the more usual port to port, there were no shipwrecks, nobody drownding and nothing to laugh at at all.

Back here I had a cold drink for a change – it was so warm (for the time of year) and then my exertions caught up with me.

Half an hour later, I had a session on the bass guitar – this time picking out the bass line to “Ride a White Swan” by T Rex. As the skunk said when the wind changed, “it all comes back to me now”.

Tea was more tortillas (I want to finish off the packet before I leave) with another load of my home-made stuffing mix, which really is good, even though I say it myself.

The wind had got up again when I went out for my night-time walk. It seems like the easly Spring has come and gone.

So I’ll have an early night, I reckon. Plenty to do tomorrow and there’s the Mardi Gras parade for the carnaval tomorrow afternoon.

Not to be missed, so I’m told.

Sunday 11th February 2018 – IT’S STILL CARNAVAL!!!

And if you thought that it was good yesterday, you ain’t seen nuffink yet.

I’m cold, frozen to the marrow, soaking wet, aching in places that I didn’t even realise that I had, and yet I’ve had a really good time. And if the truth be known, I should really be out there even now, partying with everyone else, but I’m not up to it. I’m going to settle down with a mug of hot wincarnis.

What with all of the exertions last night I was out like a light. And off on my travels again. I’d bought a “York” semi-trailer that needed some repair a,d so I had welded it up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I used to do a lot of welding at one time – even owning my own oxy-acetylene set-up – but I haven’t done anything serious for nearly 30 years – except for welding up the exhaust on the VW Passat in 1997. And so when I bumped into the previous owners of this trailer and told them what I had done, I was rather embarrassed when they suggested that they come and look at it, because you can forget an awful lot in 30 years when you aren’t using the skills regularly.

It was still dark when I awoke, but you can forget that. I turned over and burrowed back down under the quilt. 09:15 is much more like it on a Sunday.

The morning was spent editing the photos and videos from yesterday and found that I had missed lunch. So I hit the streets, passing by a couple of carnival floats parked up in various side streets waiting to join the parade.

I found a decent spec in the rue Couraye and waited for the procession. And I wasn’t disappointed either because there were 48 floats in all, as well as countless thousand ad-hoc paraders. And the streets were packed too. The parade went on for hours.

We had sunshine, blue skies, high winds, clouds, rainstorms, absolutely everything while we were standing there watching everything inch slowly past us and up the hill. And apparently it was all going to do a U-turn and come back down again, but I was far too cold and achy to wait for it.

No-one was more surprised than me to find that it was 17:20 when I arrived back. I’d been standing on that street corner for three and a half hours. And it felt like it too. I had not one but two hot coffees and it still didn’t warm me up.

Tea was pizza of course, and I’ve practically finished off the vegan cheese. Just as well that I’m going to Leuven this week. And with the pizza I remembered the olives this week – but forgot the onions. It’s either one thing or another, isn’t it?

During my evening walk I could see – and hear – the entertainment going on down in the town. I had half a mind to join them but I’m not really up to it. It’s not done me too much good, standing down there this afternoon in all of that.

What I’ll do instead is have a hot blackcurrant and then go to bed. Curled up under the quilt will do me good. And I’ll start on the photos tomorrow. There are hundreds.

Saturday 10th February 2018 – IT’S CARNAVAL!!!

And I’ve been out for most of the day.

I have dozens of photos and a good few videos but they aren’t edited yet, so you’ll have to come back over the course of the next few days to catch up with what I was up to.

But during the night I was off on my travels again and found myself, as some people were saying, in Coventry. People in a bar where I was were pointing out the cathedral down in the square at the bottom of the hill, but this was nothing at all like Coventry – the hill was unimaginably steep and it immediately suggested “Oldham” to me – I’m not sure why because in reality it was nothing whatever like Oldham either. Far too “posh”. But as for me, I continued on my way and found a rambling brick complex of buildings, now having the air of being totally deserted and boarded up. I went over for a closer look and found that the decaying noticeboard outside showed evidence of having once had writing in Welsh written upon it. Apparently it was a former school (although what a Welsh-speaking school was doing in Oldham wasn’t clear) and as it happens, there was nothing “former” about it because there were two classes still taking place, despite how derelict and abandoned the place looked. It turned out that one of the classes didn’t have a teacher and seeing as it was the Welsh-speaking class, I volunteered (not like me at all is is, volunteering and teaching?). It all seemed to be going okay until one of the fathers came to see me. He was concerned that his daughter was not doing as well as he thought she should, and that it was all my fault (not hers of course) and wanted me to inflate her marks. “And if I didn’t …”. For the next test she didn’t do so well either so he came back, insisting that I up her marks to 81%. That I refused to do so he whipped out a gun, waved it around under my nose and told me that I would. I gave a weary sigh. I told him that I was old and tired and couldn’t care less, and if he wanted to shoot me then to go ahead because I really was beyond the point of arguing with anyone.

All of this awoke me bolt-upright at 05:21, but no chance of leaving the stinking pit at that time. I curled back under the bedclothes until the alarm went off at the much-more-reasonable time of 06:40.

After breakfast I had an hour or so on the database but for some unknown reason it locked up and that was that. I’m not doing very well with this at all.

But all of a sudden, the memory stick in the hi-fi came to an end. That was the cue for some major amendments.

For the last few weeks the hi-fi has been perched precariously on the bookcase behind me, with wires and cable causing all kinds of problems. So today I moved the old computer hi-fi gear off the shelves where I keep the records and installed it there.

To make that work I had to drill four holes in the back of the unit, and feed all of the cables through for the mains power, the aerial lead and the two speakers – and lengthened the speaker wires with the cable that I bought last week.

Feeding the mains cable through the back meant cutting off the moulded plug – but I’d bought a replacement so that wasn’t an issue.

With the extra lengths of cable I now have the stereo speakers far enough apart to have real stereo sound and that is definitely progress. I’m very happy with my set-up now.

And remember the memory sticks that I bought yesterday? I made up another one (there’s four just now) and made a note of the albums that are on each memory stick so that I don’t double them up.

After lunch I went down to the carnaval to see the childrens’ procession. And I’ll tell you much more about that in due course when I’ve organised all of the photos that I took. I will say that I was impressed.

However, I did feel out of place in civvies. Exactly the opposite to the time when I was in Jerusalem and due to a misunderstanding, I was the only one at the Wailing Wall who was carrying a harpoon.

There was someone there carrying a girl sitting on his shoulders.
“What are you supposed to be?” I asked him
“I’m a snail” he replied
“And what about the girl on your shoulders?”
“She’s Michelle”.

And there was a character there dressed all in brown with little green bits stuck to him
“What about you?” I asked
“I’m a character from ‘Star Trek'”
“Which one?”
“Captain’s log”.

It quietened down later in the afternoon but by now the rain was coming down heavier (it goes without saying of course that it was raining all day) so rather than hang around, I came home for a coffee.

Later on I braved the cold and rain to go up to the Stade Louis Dior for the football. US Granville were playing the reserves of Lorient – a professional team.

And they looked it too – much fitter, quicker, sharper. And I particularly liked the way that they sped about the field to close down the Granville players whenever they had the ball. It’s long been my complaint, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that teams give their opponents far too much time and space on the ball.

But Lorient spent most of the match trying to pass the ball into the net. They had probably 65% of the possession but were comparatively ineffective up front. They just weren’t direct enough and hardly made a single killer pass. And when they did beat the keeper, a Granville defender was behind him to clear off the line.

Their big blond n°9 was quite ineffective and didn’t contribute much at all, but one thing that he did do was to continually harass the defence and the keeper whenever they were playing the ball around at the back. And he harried them on several occasions into hasty, wayward clearances and a couple of occasions into losing possession in dangerous places, situations that would have undone Granville with a more attack-minded team.

Granville were quite subdued today – the efforts of playing three matches in 7 days is probably too much, and so a 0-0 draw was about right. But it was a good match for all of that.

ON the way back I went round the funfair to see what was happening and take some photos, so that’s another pile to organise.

But again I didn’t hang about. I was frozen to the marrow and soaked to the skin. How I’m going to regret this.

A tin of ratatouille with pasta was fine for tea and now I’m off to bed. It’s Sunday – a lie in, and with 148% of my daily activity accomplished, I need it too.

I’ll be dead to the world in a minute, and I hope that I can have a really good, long sleep.

Friday 9th February 2018 – HAVING REGAINED MY COMPOSURE …

… after the mail that I received from the Bank yesterday, I sent them a reply this afternoon. Carefully thought out, I’ve asked for a reply to five points that, for me, are quite important in my dealings with them.

And I received an answer from them as well- which basically didn’t answer any questions at all.

But I did learn one thing – and that is that the person with whom I have been dealing recently “is no longer with the Bank”. So that’s two employees of the Credit Agricole in Granville that I’ve seen off. Who’s next? The woman who is dealing with my affairs now is a Madame Rottier. And I bet that that’s a spelling mistake too.

And for another change I had the Sleep of the Dead yet again last night. And quite rightly so. It’s about time. And I was up and about when the second alarm went off, which is even better.

We had the usual arrangements this morning of course, and once the medication worked I went out and about to do my shopping. The idea was to do it this morning before they started to close off all of the roads for the Carnaval. The downside of this is that everyone else decided to do the same thing too, and so everywhere was crowded.

First port of call though was the Tax Office. I’ve had the bill for my stay in hospital over New Year so that needs to be paid. With me going to Leuven next week, I’m staying for a couple of days extra and I’ve arranged to go into Brussels on Friday where I can call in at my Health Insurance people and hand in all of the receipts.

But the queue there was quite something. I don’t know how long it takes to pay a bill – for me it’s about 30 seconds – but the woman on the cash desk was really making a performance of it all and everyone was quite frustrated by her “work to rule”.

LIDL came up with nothing at all spectacular, but all of the excitement was outside in the car park.

Liz told me the other day that they had had a heavy snowfall where she lives – just 15 miles or so from here – and that was hard to believe considering the weather that we have had.

But here in the car park at LIDL was a car with snow embedded under the wheel arches and with a large lump that had just fallen off.

After LIDL I went to a new shop. Liz had told me about a frozen food place called Picard that she had found and there is one in Granville. So I popped in for a look around. There’s tons more stuff than there is anywhere else, but at a price. Nevertheless, it’s handy to know if I need anything that isn’t mainstream.

Bureau Vallée was next, and they had restocked their 2GB memory sticks. So another two have now disappeared into my apartment.

After lunch and my little correspondence session, I braved the howling gale (it really was wicked) and went for a walk.

My route took me around the headland and it was well-worth the struggle against the wind because I was treated to a most spectacular sight of the waves being hurled over the sea wall into the tidal basin.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve come to live by the seaside. The power of the waves and the storms is quite impressive. You need to remember that I’m living right where the highest ever wind speed to hit the French coast was recorded – 220kph in 1987

Back here with a coffee and a … errr … relax, and then a session on the database followed by the usual half-hour on the guiter. And I suddenly found myself playing the bass line to Budgie’s “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”. That brings back memories from when I met Ray Phillips, the former Budgie drummer who had played on that album and was looking for a bassist for a gig he was playing with an ad-hoc band at a pub in Nantwich one night in 1977.

After tea (the rest of the oven chips, beans and falafel) I went into town to see what was happening with the carnaval.

The funfair was all closed up and in darkness, but there were quite a few people around in the streets. So much so that a fast-food outlet had opened its doors to serve them.

I can’t say that I was tempted very much – the smell of roasted flesh is disgusting if you ask me.

Everyone was heading into the square so I followed them to see what was going on.

Almost everyone was in fancy-dress, and that’s because there was a carnaval-eve ball taking place, with a rock band and everything. But far too “young” for me. Never mind the Phyllosan to fortify the over-40s – what do they have to sixtify the over-60s?

But it did remind me of the noise that I once heard from the village hall in Byley a good few years ago.
“What’s all that noise going on in there?”
“They are holding a Young Farmer’s Ball”
“And what’s the matter? Can’t he get them to let go?”

Not feeling in the least bit tired (but rather fatigued nevertheless) I went for a walk to the Place Maréchal Foch and the Casino.

I’d not really been for a good wander around there in the dark before, so now seemed to be as good a time as any.

There were cars parked all over the place, as you might expect with it being carnaval and half of the streets closed off, and it rather spoilt the view unfortunately.

We’ve seen plenty of photographs of the casino in the past but we have never seen it quite like this.

There’s definitely something about the effects of artificial lighting at night-time to bring out the best of a building, and that’s exactly what we have here. It really does look good.

In the corner to the left of the casino we have the little theatre. I’ve not yet been there – but that’s basically because there’s nothing that ever goes on there that is of interest to me.

Instead, I continued with my walk around the Place Marechal Foch, and passed by the Hotel des Bains.

This has been described as “delightfully chic” in some travel guides, which means that it isn’t the kind of place that you are ever likely to find Yours Truly spending a night these days.

But nevertheless, the building is quite impressive. It’s fairly modern but it’s been built with some kind of tasteful eye on the history of the town which is always nice to see. It’s a shame that more people can’t make an effort.

With still 12%of my daily activity to do, I carried on with my walk. and I’m glad I did because I spotted this way in the distance.

And when was the last time that you saw a Bedford CF on the road anywhere? I haven’t seen one for years. The last British “Vauxhall” vehicle, they wer emade from 1969 to compete with the Ford Transit but came on the scene far too late.

The Transit was already well-established by then, with the previous CA Bedford putting up no resistance, and the CF didn’t last long. It disappeared with hardly a whimper in 1987 when the “Cevel” vans of Peugeot and Citroen flooded into the UK.

And I for one never expected to see one again.

No shopping tomorrow, but there’s a carnaval procession. I mustn’t miss that, so I’ll have to be in the Town Centre at 13:30.

No peace for the wicked.

Thursday 8th February 2018 – AND IN NEWS …

… that will surprise absolutely no-one – certainly not the regular readers of this rubbish – having been deposed from the top of the pile by our historical favourites the Royal Bank of Scotland having risen briefly from the dead, the Credit Agricole of Granville go back in front in the race to reach the bottom of the barrel.

Having had a telephone call yesterday from my “service agent” asking me to confirm that everything was in order, at 23:00 last night I had a message from my mobile phone and internet supplier to tell me that th monthly standing order has been missed.

It was previously being paid by the Credit Agricole in Pionsat and the account that I wanted to be closed. And I imagined that it was also being paid from my Granville account, because I remember distinctly taking all of the paperwork there back in the early summer.

And futhermore I had sent the details to the Bank on the 5th of January and again a week or 10 days ago.

So now I’m wondering about my Electricity account and my annual insurance payments.

Just for a change I had the Sleep of the Dead last night. And I went on an exciting voyage too, although every memory of it disappeared the moment that I awoke.

After the medication and breakfast, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. Need to make myself look pretty because it’s shopping oday of course. And the weather was, just for a change, beautiful. Cold but very little wind and -SHOCK! HORROR! – some strange golden thing in the sky.

First port of call was the offices of my phone supplier. I explained the situation about my payments and they gave me a telephone number to call. I could have done the change of bank details then and there, but Brain of Britain hadn’t brought his details with him.

Next stop was the railway station, and that took some finding seeing as how a fairground seems to have grown up around it.

Of course, everyone is preparing for Carnaval, and it looks like it might be exciting. I shall have to go for a good walk around tomorrow evening to see what gives.

At the station I picked up my rail tickets for next week, and I noticed that the times have changed. There are engineering works on the line so the train is departing half an hour earlier, at 08:34. That’s going to upset my plans a little, isn’t it?

Up the hill to LIDL – the usual struggle – and in there I didn’t buy anything exciting at all. I’ve run out of carrots and seeing as they don’t sell t hem individually, I had to buy a kilo. That means before I leave here, I shall have to make some carrot soup and freeze it.

On the way back I popped into the harbour to see what was going on. The tide was in, and so was our old friend the Normandy Trader.

Not in the usual berth for the freighters – I wonder why that is. Probably due to the lock gates and the depth of water in the basin I reckon.

But with the tide being in, there wasn’t much point in going to photograph what they were doing. I’ll have to go again.

Lunch was the remains of the vegetable soup and then I attacked the European Photograph Mountain. Having been out today, I’m exempt from a tidying-up session.

As well as that, I’ve been tackling a little bit on the database, playing the guitar and ringing up the number that they gave me in the phone supplier’s. That at least is up-to-date, no thanks to the Credit Agricole. I really don’t know why I pay them for the service that I’m receiving. They should be paying me.

Having bought some peppers at LIDL, tea tonight was a pepper stuffed with the last of the stuffing that I made the other night. And how delicious that was too.

As yet I’ve not been for a walk. There’s footy on the TV – Bala against Cefn Druids in the Welsh Premier League. And I’m glad that I’m not in Bala – the weather over there is worse than we’ve had.

But I’m on 96% of my daily fitness total so I’ll go for a brief walk around later after full-time. A shame to stop so short of my target.

Wednesday 7th February 2018 – I MISSED …

… the first alarm this morning.

Well, I actually didn’t. I vaguely remember it going off, and I vaguely remember reaching out and turning it off. And then that was that until the second alarm went off. Dead to the world. And it was a struggle to haul myself out of bed – I’ll tell you that.

A,d I’d been on my travels again during the night. I Was with some girl or woman – and I can’t remember who now – watching some old cat try to come to terms with three kittens who were doing their usual kitten antics like falling into the bowl of milk. Watching the bewilderment on the face of this old cat made us both remark at the same moment that it was like he had completely forgotten that a few years ago he was a kitten too.

After the usual performance this morning, I cracked on with this huge pile of photos that I’ve discovered. And anther enormous pile has headed the way of being stored on the External Hard Drive in the Sky. Duplicates, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, we’ve got the lot.

On my laptop I’ve a duplicate file finder program and I set it to work in one of the directories, but it took one look at what I was expecting it to do and promptly crashed. And I can’t say that I blamed it.

But I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was gone 13:30 when I stopped for lunch. And another packet of that “5 assorted vegetables passed through a sieve” soup, with small pasta and bulghour. Add some bread and fruit as well, and there you are.

This afternoon, with not having gone out, I attacked another corner of the living room – the part between the sofa and the window. That’s all vacuumed, cleaned and tidied and things put away.

The good news is that when I moved the sofa back to vacuum underneath where it had been I found the miniature 64GB memory stick. I’d totally forgotten about that. But that prompted me to do a back-up of the laptop. You never know.

And I’ve started to pack for Leuven next week. It’s never too early for that of course.

We had the usual walk around the headland, in the bitter biting wind, followed by a coffee, a … errr … relax, and then an attack on the database, as well as a play on the bass guitar.

For tea we had oven chips, beans and some falafel that I had bought at the weekend. And it’s nothing like as good as you might find in a Leuven fritkot.

Out into the wind for the evening walk, and then back here. And that’s that for today. I’ve done quite enough. Shopping tomorrow of course, and I need to stock up a little because the town will be in chaos this weekend with the carnaval.

So I’d better have an early night, hadn’t I?

Tuesday 6th February 2018 – YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP!

I had the Royal Bank of Scotland on the ‘phone this morning. Complaints department ringing me back about my call yesterday.

They gave me a brief and unconvincing explanation about why they had sent out the letter to my old address but I didn’t pursue it any further – they were well and truly on the back foot. They did however confirm that my new address had been noted.

So having dealt with that, I asked about my bank cards. In my letter advising them of my change of address I had told them of my … errr … missing bank cards and requested duplicates. So I wanted to know when I might receive them.

There was a brief silence – and then a cough. “It seems like no-one has dealt with the second part of your letter” was the embarrassed reply. So he had to deal with that, and then pass me through to the Bank’s credit card centre to talk to them.

“Please enter your credit card number” said the automatic reply.

And so I did.

“I’m sorry. We don’t recognise that as a valid card number” replied the machine. And that’s hardly a surprise because when I noticed that the card was missing, I rang up to cancel it.

And so we went round and round in circles until some human intervened.

You really couldn’t make up any of this nonsense.

Although I didn’t have a very long sleep last night, it was quite deep. And I was off on my travels too, not into an igloo with Sylvia or with TOTGA either, but I ended up running around after some neurotic 40-something woman. Very tense and edgy – and also armed with a pistol. And the people whom whe was intended to confront were likewise armed, but much more experienced and much more at ease with it, so I had to try to persuade this woman to calm down and at least disarm herself, otherwise this could all end in tears.

One look at the weather convinced me that I wasn’t going anywhere this morning, despite my plans. Howling gale, freezing cold and torrential rain. I didn’t even have my shower, but sat on the sofa sorting through that disk full of photos and merging another pile. That was my morning’s work.

Despite not liking the soup, I finished it off at lunchtime and then – surprise surprise – I did some more housework. I’ve cleaned the hallway and what will be the dining area. That’s all tidied, vacuumed, washed and cleaned. And Brigitte, one of my neighbours, caught me washing the floor. That will go down well, I reckon.

And then I braved the elements for my walk. I declined the opportunity to go round the headland in view of the howling gale. It was tough enough going around the city walls.

Back here with a coffee, a little .. errr … repose, and then I attacked the issue of my train and accommodation next week in Leuven. Fortunately I can receive messages on this new phone now so I could pick up the bank’s confirmation code.

And then the database. I’m still no further forward in the long run with this.

Tea was more tortillas and spicy rice, and then a walk. And bumped once more into Brigitte. Apparently there was a meeting this evening of the local residents and I missed it.

But back around the walls and now I’m home again in the warm and my nice partly-clean apartment. If the weather eases tomorrow I have things to do in town. But there’s no chance whatever if it continues like this.

Monday 5th February 2018 – MY HUMBLE AND SINCERE APOLOGIES …

… to the Crédit Agricole for having described them … "on numerous occasions" – ed … as being the worst bank in the world.

As part of my mega-letter-writing activities the other day I sent a letter to the Royal Bank of Scotland telling them of my new address. I received a reply today –
“We’ve changed your address. Thanks for your request to update your address; we’ve now changed this for your personal account. …. then there’s nothing for you to do”.

And they sent it to my old address!

I don’t know why it is but I seem to be surrounded by a staggering level of incompetence – much of which is not, surprise surprise, of my making. I’ll be the first to admit that my financial affairs are not straightforward, but this is astonishing. In the days before blogs were invented, I had endless troubles with the Generale de Banque in Belgium, but I sorted them out “good and proper” and since they’ve been taken over by Fortis Bank, they have been good to me. But I can’t be doing with the rest of the motley crew. What on earth is going on?

And I was asking myself this this morning when the alarm awoke me. I’d been driving a komatik – complete with huskies – around the frozen wastes of Northern Labrador during the night and ended with me being shacked up – or, more probably, iglooed up – with a girl called Sylvia whom I know from another parallel existence. Not my ideal choice of companion to share my sleeping bag for the 6 months of night in a dark and crowded igloo but then again in the frozen wastes of Northern Labrador you have to make the best of whatever entertainment is available, as many a Métis‘s father will tell you.

After the usual start to the day I had a task to perform. In my mission to inform the Rest of the World about the Welsh Premier League I challenge every news source that I see that concentrates on Welsh rugby at the expense of football.

I had a good attack on a news source on Friday and they challenged me to send in my own information about the Welsh Premier League. And so this morning I sat down and wrote off a report covering all six of the weekend’s matches.

It goes without saying that they haven’t published it. I didn’t expect that they would, but one has to go through the motions.

After that, I once more attacked the database, determined not to let my frustrations overwhelm me. And it was a hard task too, I’ll tell you. Eventually I ran aground in Verdun when I was taken ill, and with reams of photos and no notes, and the blog wasn’t written up for that period, I’m stuck up a gum tree. I can’t even find the map that I had with the notes on it.

As for the hi-fi, I’ve found another unexpected hitch. For some reason it doesn’t like tracks longer than 24:59. And so all of my hour-long live concerts are being cut off in less than midstream – after all of the effort that I went to in order to prepare them. One unhappy bunny here.

Lunch was onion soup with pasta and bulghour and for some reason it tasted awful and I’ve no idea why. I’ve noticed that my taste buds seem to have changed since my illness and some foods – and even coffee – doesn’t taste like it did.

This afternoon I took everyone, including you lot and including myself, completely by surprise. Having cleaned and tidied the bathroom the other day, you may remember that I resolved that, when I had no plans to go off anywhere special, I would do a little bit of cleaning. And so today, I attacked the kitchen.

It’s been cleaned from top to bottom, a home found for almost everything that was loitering about, and it’s been vacuumed and the floor washed.

And it does look different.

Having talked to Steven and Rosemary for a while on the computer I went out for my afternoon walk. And for once, it wasn’t raining. But it’s cold out there. Down to 0.5°C last night – a far cry from the -16°C and -19°C of the Auvergne but still the coldest night yet. And it even snowed chez Liz and Terry. And more low temperatures are on the cards for tonight.

Tea was another splendid tortilla and spicy rice with an excellent filling. I’m getting good at these. And then my evening walk.

Bed-time in a minute, presumably to go back into my igloo. With a different companion tonight, I hope. Where is TOTGA when you need her?

Sunday 4th February 2018 – 07:30 …

… is no time to leave the bed on a Sunday

09:15 is however much more like it, so I’m glad that I turned over and went back to sleep when I awoke earlier.

It also gave me a chance to go back on my travels too. I’d started off living in a room in some woman’s house – some woman whom I know in real life but I can’t think now of who she is. And we were joined by a young girl who had fled her own home and was looking for refuge. This girl was, like most teenagers, not very reliable. She needed an early start every morning so this woman arranged to wake up quite early ready to have her breakfast ready. One particular morning I needed to see this girl so I made a special effort to be up and about early. However when I arrived downstairs in the kitchen, the woman there showed me a note to the effect that the girl was saying that she wasn’t in the house and furthermore, she wouldn’t be back. We both felt rather disappointed that she hadn’t said anything about leaving, especially after the effort that it required to be up and about early.
A little later I was out on my horse on the Plains of North America and came across this sad, tired homestead. In there on her own was some woman in a red dress. For some reason she attracted my attention despite being a very scrawny unkempt woman (but then, on the frontier of North America in those days there wasn’t exactly a very good choice of woman). However at that moment her husband came back, and I had to pretend to be the local doctor giving the woman a medical examination in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
Later still, there was some television comedy series thing being broadcast. Not that it was of any interest to me but the people with whom I was associated found it very interesting and amusing. The series was then transferred to the theatre where it was merged with some other comedy series. My friends were keen to see it so in the end I succumbed and off we went. But I had a look at the poster outside the theatre where the cast was listed, and it seemed that the stars of the two series weren’t in fact going to be appearing in the play. So that was rather a waste of time.

With it being Sunday, I took it easy this morning. Plodding along with my database of photos. And it really is doing my head in without any doubt at all. Even the simplest task is either beyond the capacity of the program or else it’s beyond my capacity to make it work.

Who could ever have imagined that it would have taken an hour to add in an extra column and make the column fit into the order in which I want it to appear – and that’s in addition to all of the problems that I encountered yesterday?

As I’ve probably said before – back in the early 1990s we had a lightweight Office program called “Works for Windows” and that was our introduction to integrated office suites – and we could make the parts of that program do anything that we wanted – in a matter of seconds – never mind all of this nonsense that I seem to be encountering.

The lunchtime soup was delicious with the added herbs and spices that I added yesterday. It warmed me up nicely. And then I hit the streets.

On my way to the Sports Centre I passed by the building that is the headquarters of the Granville Terre et Mer” Comcom – the Community of Communes.

With many of the French communes being quite small – there’s even one with just one inhabitant – several might group together in a “Comcom” to organise a common water supply or a common refuse collection service or engage a public gardener to be shared between them – all of that kind of thing.

And this beautiful building is the headquarters for the “Comcom” that covers the smaller communes around here.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Sports Centre, and it would really have been a nice afternoon to be out, except for the bitter, howling wind.

It was really agony to stand here this afternoon, and it didn’t help by the building being closed and so there was no coffee on offer.

I can’t understand the lack of buvette here. It seems to be open whenever I bring a flask, and closed whenever I don’t, as if it knows that I am coming.

US Granville’s second XI were in action again this afternoon, against FC ST Lo Manche, the league leaders in blue.

The team that is second in the table obliged US Granville by losing, in the only other match to be played in the whole of Normandy, last night. So if can avoid losing today, they will go into second place.

The wind made this match a complete lottery and neither side seemed to be able to play with it and it was rather a scrappy match.

But US Granville did take the lead after half an hour when a cross into the area was headed out indecisively by a defender, right to a US Granville midfielder on the edge of the area. He had all the time in the world to pick his spot and fire into the bottom corner.

At the start of the second half, we had the only time that one of the teams attempted to use the wind to its advantage, and that, I suspect, was more by accident that design.

A high corner taken into the wind that caused a panic-stricken scamble on the St Lo goal-line, and eventually the ball was forced home by a US Granville attacker.

So Granville ran out 2-0 winners, the first team to beat FC St Lo Manche this season and are now in second place in the table. But I still think that their attack is far too lightweight for this level of football.

Just for a change, I came home a different way, walking down to the coast road.

There’s a good view across to St Pair sur Mer from just here so I stopped to take a photograph, almost being run down by a local policeman in the process.

And then I walked back along the coast road into Granville. I’d never been this way on foot before and it made a nice change to see some different scenery.

7It’s carnaval here next weekend, and all of the fairground lorries are coming into town. There were quite a few streaming past the Sports Centre while I was watching the match.

I was convinced that I saw an artic go past pulling no fewer than THREE trailers, and I was right because I tracked it down in the car park opposite the port.

Generally speaking, a “showman’s goods” licence allows a vehicle to pull a trailer containing his act, another containing his living accommodation and maybe yet another pulling the power unit such as a generator. Nowadays with most sites having mains electricity you don’t ever see the generator, and I suspect that this driver may well have been interpreting the rules in an unduly generous fashion.

Unless, of course, the rules for “showman’s goods” in France are different from in the UK, which is always a possibility. But anyway, it certainly puts my North American roadtrains into perspective.

They are apparently also setting up a fairground on the harbour and as I climbed up the hill towards home I could see all of the lorries and caravans set out on the end of the harbour.

I’ve yet to experience a really good mainland European “Carnaval” and I’m told that the Granville carnaval is one of the best that you can find.

And so I’m quite looking forward to being here when it all happens. Especially when the day after it ends, I have to head for Belgium.

Tea was, of course, vegan pizza. And I didn’t go far for my walk as the wind was astonishing. But no matter – what with the rest of my exertions I’ve done 111% of my daily activities today.

I reckon that I deserve a good sleep.

Saturday 3rd February 2018 – WELL, THAT WASN’T …

… very much of a walk this evening. And I didn’t go out at all this afternoon either.

Mind you, I can’t say that I blame myself at all. The respite that we had from the rain yesterday didn’t last and it’s pouring down outside. All football cancelled tonight, which is hardly a surprise. This has to be the wettest winter that I have ever encountered.

I ended up being late to bed last night, but I still found time to go on a perambulation during the night.

I was working … "he means “employed”" – ed … in a Government office such as the VAT office somewhere and it was announced that we were moving out to another town. The secretary of the local Workingmen’s Club had been sending us notes about entertainment that I had been using in the Staff bulletins so I decided to go to thank him and return all of his notes. I had them all copied into a mauve-coloured binder that I intended to return to him. In the club he was on the stage so I climbed up there to thank him and return his notes but at the very last minute remembered that there were all kinds of other notes from other people in there and it wouldn’t do any good whatever for them to fall into the wrong hands and enter the public domain.

Once more, it was a struggle to leave my bed and you’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to my Sunday lie-in tomorrow.

After the usul start to the day I had a shower and a general clean-up in my nice, clean bathroom, and then headed for the shops.

In the usual shops, LeClerc and LIDL, I just bought the usual stuff with nothing exciting at all. And I bought the hi-fi cable and connectors at Mr Bricolage.

But I discovered a new shop that has just opened – an office supplies shop called Bureau Vallée. And here I struck quite lucky.

Remember me saying that I wanted some 2GB memory sticks? Well as it happened, they had three on sale at a reasonable price too, so they have disappeared into my shopping bag. They had a decent 4-hole perforator at a reasonable price for which I have been searching for years and a few other bits and pieces too for good measure.

I shall be going back there too, because while their mainstream stuff is rather pricey, their budget products are really good value, which makes a change these days.

But I had to laugh at NOZ. That’s the kind of place that’s almost impossible to describe. It sells surplus, fire-damaged and bankruptcy clearance stocks, time-limited food goods a,d all of that kind of thing. They try their best to keep it tidy but it inevitably turns into something like a jumble sale within half an hour of opening.

Now my new smartphone is a cheap Chinese import that I reckon might have been for a mainstream manufacturer but now outdated. I’ve had it a week but with there being no case for it, the screen is already scratched more than I would like.

And there in NOZ was a huge heap of all different kinds of mobile phone shells, all mixed up and (for the most part) taken out of the boxes so that people could try them.

I spent a good 15 minutes rummaging around and in the end found one that is an exact fit for my phone, with even the switch buttons being uncovered, but the camera hole is slightly out of position (I can drill that out). Not in the box of course but after a good five minutes rummaging around I found an empty box and packaging, and put it in that to take to the checkout.

The fact that the price tag on the box said €2:99 – the cheapest that I could see – had nothing whatever to do with my choice of box.

Just for a change, I decided to spice up my lunchtime soup a little. It’s tomato and vermicelli for the next couple of days, so besides the usual pasta and bulghour, I added some basil, oregano and chili powder. And different it was too.

With no football and no possibility of going for a walk this afternoon I sorted out the music onto the 2gb data sticks. I now have three and I could do with a pile more. I shall have to go back to Bureau Vallée next weekend and hope that they have some more.

But as well as that, I sorted out a box of paperwork that I had collected ages ago from hanging around in Caliburn. That’s been weeded, sorted, filed and some of it binned. And I didn’t say that I found in NOZ some container that will do fine as a waste paper collector.

Having organised that, I set out to master this database that I want to build for my photos.

And if there is a worse database program in the world I have yet to find it.

In the old days, you could program them so that the numbers would automatically increment, fields would “fill down”, “fill up” or “fill series” like with spreadsheets, and columns could be programmed to auto-adjust for width of data. But if this can do all of that, I have yet to discover how to make it work.

I was hoping to have this running in a couple of hours but I have this uncomfortable feeling that unless I can find out how to make it do what I want, I’m going to be here for ever.

Like with most computer programming, there has to be a way to do things like this because they are the kind of requirement that everyone needs.

But I wish that I knew how to do it.

Friday 2nd February 2018 – IN NEWS WHICH WILL SURPRISE …

… everyone who reads the rubbish that I write, I have spent a good part of the afternoon cleaning the bathroom from top to bottom.

And I have to be honest and say that it wasn’t a case of the bathroom not needing it either. I seem to have been somewhat remiss of late.

It now makes the rest of the apartment look rather dubious and so I have resolved that when I don’t have any other fish to fry, like going to the shops or to football matches, I shall attack the apartment corner by corner.

As Nietzsche once famously said, “out of chaos comes order” – but Nietzsche had never ever visited anywhere where I might have been living.

Sleep was better last night and I almost (but not quite) beat the second alarm. I was poised on the point of putting my foot to the ground when it went off.

And after the usual daily start and a little relax, I attacked the European Photo Mountain – and freed up another 10GB of space on the external hard drive, with plenty more to go. But it’s going to take for ever to do, I reckon.

While I was ferreting around in the freezer I came across another part-loaf of bread from the days when I was feeling well. So I liberated it and treated myself to cheese on toast for lunch. It’s difficult to eat because of my mouth problems, but I managed it, taking my time. And nice it was too. I’ll have to pick up some more cheese from Leuven when I go back there.

But that set me on to tidying up the freezer a little and finding a pack of frozen mixed vegetables about which I had completely forgotten. Next time that I make a curry, instead of using tins I’ll add this stuff in and use it up. Then I’ll have room for more oven chips. Not had them for a while.

And I had a quick go around the fridge too. More stuff that I had bought when I was well that had now time-expired. And all of that went into the bin too.

After lunch I arranged the bathroom as I said, and while the floor was drying I went for my afternoon walk.

It was quite windy but very bright out there this afternoon.

And the tide was right out too. And so we had some unusual activity on the beach, with this person out here going for a walk and, I thought, maybe a paddle too.

Not exactly the weather for it if you ask me, but then some people do have some weird ideas about what constitutes amusement and entertainment.

But then I changed my mind about that person, because as I walked farther around the headland, I discovered that they were not alone.

There were at least three other people here on the beach, and they were carrying some kind of tools. So perhaps it’s mussels season or something like that and they were searching in the tidal pools.

But then, what do I know about shellfish?

Back here, I made myself a coffee, sat down quietly – and went to sleep. You’d be surprised about how much a little thing like tidying the bathroom takes it out of me. I know that I’m not well and unfortunately I’m not going to get any better.

Tea tonight was a frozen curry that I had liberated from the freezer. and delicious it was too with rice, fresh carrots and frozen peas. I can’t wait to install a proper kitchen here – my meals will be even better when I have the correct facilities. As it is, I seem to be managing fine enough as I am.

And so back out for a walk this evening. And it’s probably the first evening for quite some considerable time when it hasn’t rained.

My route took me round the walls again and the Place Maurice Marland where we were the other day. It looks quite beautiful now that it’s all finished and the temporary fencing has been taken down.

The photo of the floodlit trees has come out really well and I’m quite pleased with that.

It’s the shops of course tomorrow; and I’ll have to find some football for tomorrow night too. The season should restart, if there are any pitches that aren’t waterlogged.

But not much hope of that.

Thursday 1st February 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what I did yesterday, but as well as having a message service on my phone, both of the alarmss now seem to work fine this morning. Ask me how I know.

And last night I was in some kind of public place like a shop where I’d bought a DVD, and I wanted to check that it worked correctly. This involved putting it in my DVD player, passing the signal trough some kind of pre-amp and then into a television to watch. And conveniently, all of my equipment was there on the shelf and wired up. I reckoned that this would be quite an impressive thing to accomplish in this public place so I duly set it all up. But it wasn’t as impressive as I wanted it to be and I was left with a pile of omelette sur le visage because somehow there was a radio programmme running in the background of ll of this with the sound coming out of the television as well as the sound of the image and the picture, and it was all very disappointing.

Not feeling much like leaving my bed this morning, the second alarm did the business which is just as well, otherwise I might still be in bed now. No idea why I was so tired, unless it was the after-effects of feeling so bad yesterday.

But the medication, breakfast and a nice hot shower brought me round somewhat and once the medication did its stuff I braved the high winds and headed for the shops. It was the usual struggle up the hill to LIDL and there wasn’t really anything that I needed or wanted. I just made do with a baguette and a couple of bits and pieces of food.

On the way back I went down to the docks to see if I could see what was going on.

But I was out of luck. It’s not easy to see from there at the best of times and particularly now, because they have fenced off everywhere in the vicinity where they are working.

What I’ll have to do is to wait until the tide turns, and then go off to the other side of the basin with the telephoto lens and see what I can see from over there

Back here I made a coffee and settled down for a relax – but not for long. The doorbell rang. It was the Postie with a registered letter for me.

Yes, my new driving licence has arrived – complete with the authorisation to drive buses and articulated lorries for hire or reward. I really can’t take that seriously. But it’s scanned into the laptop for future reference just like all of my important documents

After my soup I tackled some paperwork that had been building up and ow that’s all filed away. I’m certainly more organised than I have been for quite a while – and quite right too. Let’s hope that I can persevere.

My work was however interrupted by a need to have a little rest. And I don’t know what it was that awoke me but I sat bolt upright for some reason or other.

Despite already having had a good walk, it was a nice if windy afternoon so I went for another walk.

And I was wondering what was making all of the noise yesterday. It seems that they’ve been doing some gardening round at the back of the college and it looks quite neat and tidy now.

High time that they did something about it too. But whatever vehicle they had used had churned up the lawn by the lighthouse. It’s really not the right kind of weather for driving heavy vehicles on there.

But here’s a thing!

We saw the other day that there was a big digger out in the tidal harbour during low tide raking over the bed. He’s still out there, but today there was some other activity in the tidal basin.

Like this digger and a couple of earth-moving lorries hard at work making a deep channel.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, there was another digger and an earth-moving lorry working closer inshore too.

That’s the place where the fishing boats tie up – right by the fish-processing plant. And they seem to be making the channel along the sea wall there much deeper.

Whether this means that we are going to be having bigger trawlers coming into the port I don’t know. But all of this work in the barbour is exciting for a ship-spotting fan like Yours Truly.

Back here I carried on with a few things that I needed to do (without very much enthusiasm it has to be said) and then made tea. The falafel that I had bought weeks ago went straight into the bin untouched – well past its sell-by date. So I had rice with vegetables and a vegan burger.

With only one cooking ring, it wasn’t easy. But a little oil in a pyrex bowl with onions and garlic and cooked in the microwave for three minutes, and then add the burger for 6 minutes (3 minutes each side) and then add a little water and gravy power, and there you are.

I’d planned to go for a walk but just as I was getting ready we had the most astonishing storm. So I stayed here and played the guitar.

But later I did go for my walk, and you can see what weather we had had.

There had been a hailstorm and it seemed to have fallen like snow – fairly deep in places. I’m glad that I hadn’t gone out in it earlier.

Football on the laptop (or on my television of course) later. A Welsh Premier League match between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Bala Town. A pretty sad game, just like the bad old days of 15 years ago on the Nomads’ sodden, waterlogged pitch that gave no hope whatever of a decent match.

So I’ll see what tonight brings. A nice relaxing sleep, I hope.

Wednesday 31st January 2018 – AND I DIDN’T …

… go out to take my mobile phone to be seen to today either.

And there were three good reasons for that

The weather this morning was almost as bad as yesterday. Not quite, but almost. And seeing as I shall be out at the shops (weather permitting) tomorrow, there’s no point in giving myself an unexpected drenching for no really good reason
I’ve not been feeling too good today. In fact this afternoon I was feeling pretty awful
I’m not quite sure what I’ve done, or what buttons I pressed, but all of a sudden the “messages” started to work as it should. And I’ve been able to send and receive messages now. So I hope that it continues tomorrow. We shall see.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night but waking up was a struggle. I dozed back off to sleep again and the second one didn’t go off (and I’ve no idea why – it’s correctly programmed). So it was with rather a jolt that I awoke a couple of minutes later than I should have done. And that set the tone for the day.

This morning I attacked the photos again and made more progress. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this thing about photos started because I was looking for a certain couple of photos that I couldn’t find anywhere where they were supposed to be. But I found them today – called by a different name than I remembered and in a totally different directory too.

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

But I wondered why, as the day drew on, it was starting to go cold in here. It seems that I had forgotten to switch on the heating this morning.

After lunch, my exertions caught up with me and I was flat out for a good 45 minutes. Really feeling the strain. And then the Bank finally called me up and we had a chat for a while. It seems that the information that I had given them back on the 5th of January wasn’t sufficient (but of course they hadn’t let me know) so that needed re-doing.

And tracking down the information wasn’t easy either.

The weather had eased off a little by late afternoon so I went for a walk – around the walls today missing out on observing the bad parking. I don’t want my blood pressure going through the roof.

And it seems that they have installed some kind of step at the entrance to the harbour – the tide was out but there was definitely water in the basin and ships were moored in there without grounding out.

I shall have to go for a wander around there tomorrow for a look around and see what gives.

Back here, I grabbed a couple of memory sticks and copied a pile of music onto them. My new hi-fi only plays 999 tracks so I organised the memory sticks accordingly.

But there are thousands of CDs, tapes and records here, with tens of thousands of tracks, and by the time that I’ve finished I reckon that I’ll need a dozen. So anyone who has any old 2GB memory sticks, let me know.

Tea was more tortillas with my spicy filling, and then I went off for a walk around the headland.

It’s full moon tonight so I need to shave the palms of my hands in the morning of course, but it really was nice watching the moonlight reflecting off the water in the harbour.

It made me realise how lucky I was to find this little apartment. It’s only 38.8 m² but it’s ideal for what I want. A sea view and a balcony would be nice of xourse, but having seen the rubbish that is on offer here, I’m glad that I’m in this place.

And final news will surprise you all as much as it surprised me. I’ve had a message from the Driving Licence people – “your application has been processed and your licence sent for printing”.

Well, well, well.

Tuesday 30th January 2018 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

… that I would be going out this morning. But one look at the weather once it started to become light persuaded me otherwise.

We all know about hanging clouds as a phenomenon in the Auvergne, but they aren’t the kind of thing that you expect to see right on the coast, but here we are.

In the photo, taken at 16:00 or thereabouts, it had lifted quite considerably. But round about 08:30 to log after lunch you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face out there. And it was wet too as you might expect.

Just for a change I had a better night’s sleep again, although there wasn’t all that much of it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are several recurring themes running through my nocturnal voyages. For a start, there’s a certain ski-slope that figures quite often, but another one concerns cars. And we were off again on that one last night. It actually started off with me having to dress myself one morning – and in women’s clothes too (and I’m not sure why either). This led to the obvious question of what do I wear?”. Dressing as a man, it’s always quite easy. Whatever is on th floor from the previous night – or week – or month.
But later on, Nerina and I were moving house and so we were packing. And this involved finding the cars. As some of you might recall, this recurring dream involves me having a pile of Ford Cortinas, some of which might be taxed and some of which might be insured and some of which might be MoT’d – but none of them with all three – parked up at random all over Crewe. And so with having to move house, we needed to round them up. Nerina managed to find one of them, which was an off-white coloured Austin Cambridge as it happened, but I couldn’t remember at all where I had put my brown Cortina 2000E (the one that’s actually in the garage in Montaigut-en-Combraille). And so off we went on another panic-stricken crisis search – something that seems to be a regular feature of my life.

Despite not going out today, I had a shower and cleaned myself up quite considerably. I look rather respectable now, which will come as a great surprise to anyone who knows me. And I spent all day on these photos – making another 23GB of space on my external hard drive by clearing away masses of duplicates.

I went out for my walk this afternoon in the drizzle seeing as the cloud had lifted a little.

And to my surprise, despite the hanging clouds, we had a mini-storm in the bay and the waves were crashing on the sea wall. Some of them were quite impressive but of course there weren’t any of those while I had the camera ready.

But that’s the story of everyone’s life, isn’t it?

But we’re back yet again on this dreadful parking that seems to be dominating our pages right now.

Here’s another car parked with two wheels on the pavement across the road from the school, blocking the pavement for the kids walking down the hill, and there’s an empty parking space right across the road from where she is parked.

It’s this kind of behaviour that really gets on my wick. There’s just no excuse for it.

Tea tonight was spectacularly good. With the rest of the bulghour stuffing from yesterday, I made some spicy kidney beans with yet more bulghour, onions, garlic, mushrooms, olives, tomato sauce and olive oil. And while a spicy rice was cooking itself with some peas and carrots, I rolled some of the stuffing into two tortillas and cooked them in the microwave.

Thoroughly, absolutely and totally delicious. And there’s enough stuffing left over for another couple of tortillas for tomorrow.

We had the usual walk this evening in the light drizzle and now I’m thinking about having an early night.

But not before I tell you about the experiments with the hi-fi. I need to move it to a more permanent place, and while I was measuring up (I need some more speaker cable and I have miles of it back on the farm of course) I tried to experiment by connecting the old speakers to it – the ones from the old hi-fi system that doesn’t work.

And the result was that it seems to be the speakers, not the hi-fi, that have given up the ghost. They were coming through muted and distorted like they did on the old set-up.

And so the next time that I’m moving things around, I’ll try the new speakers in the old hi-fi. And see what happens then. That was a very expensive hi-fi system and I don’t want to discard it lightly.

Monday 29th January 2018 – I’M OFF …

… on this parking thing today again.

Out on my walk this afternoon I came across two of the worst examples that we have yet to encounter. Here is Madame, parked (with her engine running of course) with two wheels on the pavement right by the school, forcing the kids to walk in the street, and directly opposite her is an empty parking space.

Can you ever get more selfish and stupid than this?

The answer is “of course you can”. And just around the corner too.

Here’s another motorist actually on the main highway, and not only does she have her two wheels parked on the pavement, she’s also parked on a bus stop and she’s blocking someone’s driveway to boot.

This particular parking probably takes the biscuit for being the most stupid of all of the stupid and selfish parking that we have ever seen – but I’m sure that as time passes we’ll see some better examples somewhere.

Just a little reminder – there’s a huge free car park just 50 or so metres from where these vehicles are parked.

The new alarm awoke me just fine this morning, although for some reason the second alarm failed to go off. But as I was up and about by the time that it should have gone off so it didn’t make much difference. But I’ll look into it all the same.

After medication and breakfast, and a little repose I went out to the shops.

And one of the penalties of living in an old Medieval walled city with narrow streets is that delivery is sometimes rather a … errr … challenge.

There are a couple of houses undergoing major renovation and someone has ordered a pile of plasterboard, insulation and the metal framework.

The lorry that has brought it can’t pass underneath the gateway so they are having to trans-ship it in several loads with a smaller van. Ohh the exciting life that we lead!

And remember our crane working on the back of one of the houses at the port?

We have a bigger mobile crane here too and he looks as if he’s beginning to dismantle … "disPERSONtle" – ed … the crane.

But then again we’ve seen that here before and I thought then that it was dismantling the crane, but apparently not. So we’ll have to take our walk around there tomorrow to see what’s going on.

And here’s a sight that I didn’t think that we would ever see. You’ll notice that the harbour basin is empty – not just of ships and boats but of water too.

I told you the other day that they were getting ready to replace the gates to the harbour and they look as if they have started.

And aren’t the seagulls enjoying it, with all of the livestock marooned in the little ponds. But it doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of the dredger that we had here the other week. He’s not done a very even job.

And the issues about the harbour and replacing the gates is that the port is not able to be used at low tide.

There’s the Grima out there riding at anchor waiting for the tide to come in and fill the basin. I imagine that she’s nipping in and out as the tide allows here and that’s going to interrupt their schedule.

And it’s a good jon that the weather has calmed down these last few days. It would have been uncomfortable riding at anchor out there in the storms that we’ve been having.

I struggled off up town (and it was a struggle too these days) to LIDL. And my luck was in.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago LIDL had on special offer some of these kitchen tool kit things – whisk, chopper, shredder and squidger – ad by the time that I arrived, they had sold out.

The same offer was on starting this morning and I was in luck because they still had some left when I arrived. My squidger is an old one that I liberated from Marianne’s and the plastic body is broked, and the rest of the utensils weren’t there. So I liberated a kit. I’m going to be working on my cooking.

The struggle back here was something else too and I reckoned that I deserved the coffee.

For much of the rest of the day I’ve been attacking that pile of photos that I’ve mentioned. And on a very cursory initial examination, I’ve cleared 21.7GB of duplicates. That cheered me up to, because there’s plenty more to go.

So an evening walk too as well as the morning and the afternoon – 110% according to the fitbit. I shall be meeting myself coming back at this rate.

Lunch was soup of course, and tea was a pepper stuffed with tomato, bulghour, onion, garlic, olives, cumin, olive oil and tomato sauce. Thoroughly delicious it was too. There’s some stuffing left over too and that will come in handy tomorrow for I have a cunning plan for tea.

So bed-time again. An early night, I hope, a good sleep and a nice alarm call. For I’m in town yet again tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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