… day it’s been today.

Although I was out of bed round about 06:45, by 09:50 I was back in bed again. And I’d already fallen asleep twice on the chair in the meantime.

So in bed I was and in bed I stayed until about 11:30. That was a horrible start to the day.

What was even worse about all of this was that I had had an early night last night, and a decent sleep until the alarm went off, even though I did wake up twice during the night.

But there was enough time for me to go on a nocturnal ramble during the night. I’d been sent to prison and it was something like Alcatraz – a big grim grey stone horrible, stinking place. There were all kinds of horrible people and things in there, but what stood out were 4 elderly Confederate soldiers still in their uniforms – Confederate blue-grey but with a big Union Jack on the front as if they were British volunteers who had been caught by the North. Although they were imprisoned there, they were trying to negotiate some kind of good deal to have their conditions eased. But the Commandant was something of a swine who might well take advantage of their willingness to negotiate by doing good things, while he remained intransigent. I was ushered in to this meeting and I could see myself there. There was someone else there who said that he was a brewer, and the Commandant’s eyes lit up at this news. I was thinking along the lines of “those who work get paid” so I told the Commandant that it might be possible for the inmates to have an easier life if they could all do things like this for the good of the community (ie him) and he seemed to be quite open to the idea. He started to offer a little bit of a concession, although I knew deep down that there was no reason to become excited by this as he was probably being hypocritical. He would probably end up by taking advantage of everyone anyway, but there was no harm in trying to ease our conditions anyway.

I awoke at about 03:50, but it wasn’t long before I was back to sleep again. And I stepped right back into almost the same place that I had left earlier.

Back to the plot of our prison encounter. We were all having lunch and only the starter arrived. No main course, and we were all sitting there waiting. In the end, I was fed up so I stood up and leaving the table and mindless of any reprisals, I walked all the way up Edleston Road to near the top where I thought the food came from. It turned out that the food didn’t come from there but from next door – an old chapel that had been a car sales pitch. But that was closed down and the windows were all whitewashed over with rude messages written into the whitewash by a finger. There was no-one around at all and it looked as if the whole place had closed down and we weren’t going to receive our food.

After the medication and breakfast I made another start on catching up on some of the dictaphone notes, but I wasn’t at it for long. As I said, I went back to bed.

Once I’d awoken and was out of bed and back in the land of the living, I carried on and did a few more dictaphone notes. That took me almost up until lunchtime.

This afternoon I attacked the previous blog entries and added the photos back until last Wednesday.

On my walk this afternoon there were a few people around enjoying the nice weather.

However, I seemed to have interrupted some kind of photo session going on on on the public car park. There were a couple of girls there, a photographer and an assistant.

Why, I don’t really know, although there was some kind of fireman’s helmet involved in the proceedings.

Back here, fighting off another wave of sleep, I worked on editing the database for the photos of the High Arctic. That involved some research too and it’s amazing what you come across once you start to look.

Carrying on around the headland, I passed by the chantier navale.

There seems to have been a big change-around there right now. La Granvillaise seems to have left there, and so does Charles-Marie.

The large boat is still there, but we now have another yacht that might be the Spirit of Conrad together with a couple of other assorted smaller boats.

I’ll have to go for a wander around down there one of these days.

Back home to carry on work, but at 18:00 I came to a dead stop. I peeled the kilo of carrots that I had bought the other day and then par-boiled them. Rinsed, drained and par-boiled again, they were rinsed again and then left to drain right through for an hour while I had tea.

More shepherd’s pie out of the freezer, with plenty of frozen veg and gravy followed by rice pudding, which didn’t quite work as it boiled over in the microwave when my attention was elsewhere.

There was still some light in the sky when I went out for my evening walk around the walls.

Mind you, it was quite early. I’m eating my evening meal earlier these days, in an attempt to aid the digestion before I go to sleep.

I spent quite some time out there on the walls enjoying the sunset and photographing a trawler coming into the harbour.

Its lights stood out nicely as the boat was silhouetted against the sunset with the Ile de Chausey there in the background.

But now, I’m off to bed even though it’s early. Today was a dreadful day so I’m hoping for something better tomorrow. I’m sick of all of this.

sunset trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

sunset trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawler entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france