… to know what the weather was like today, this photo here will tell you everything that you need to know.

Miserable, horrible, grey and overcast with huge and violent rainstorms and incredibly high winds stirring everything up. In fact, a typical day on the western Normandy coast for just recently.

And when is it going to end? It looks as if this weather is here for the duration and isn’t going to let up very easily.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I could hear the howling weather quite clearly and ashamed as I am to admit it, it drove me back underneath the covers where I stayed until just after 07:00. This wasn’t the kind of weather that would make anyone want to raise themselves from the dead, least of all me.

After the medication I had a look to see where I’d been during the night. I had been at a house with a group of people and we needed some things from a shopping parade down the street. There had been a really heavy snowfall and it was difficult to move around so I said that I would go. I had to go on foot because Caliburn was at the menders and I could pick him up and bring him back on the way back so that was what I decided to do. As I was leaving, one of the girls in this house shouted out “don’t forget it’s time to go and get your food and organise this and Eric’s going to get this and that”. I don’t know why she did that. Anyway I was off. I went to get a coupe of shopping bags. It was a really steep slope down the hill to this shopping parade and with the snow it was quite icy and slippy. There was a group of people coming up the hill. One of them was a girl dressed a kind of white smock kind of arrangement and she had a couple of other kids with her running up there. All of a sudden they slipped, came down the hill and collided with me. They knocked me over onto the ice, and there was me, this girl and a boy sliding down this hill and where the road went round a bend we went straight on over the edge and crashed into a snow bank. The girl was laughing about this and the boy said to her “you’re disgusting”. She said “yes, I know that I’m disgusting”. It all went rather downhill from there.

Those rubber spatulas proved their weight in gold today. Ordinarily I would have said that I had run out of apple purée for breakfast but with the rubber spatula I managed to scrape enough out of the jar for a small portion for breakfast.

After breakfast, I attacked the travel notes. In a change to previous voyages, I’m not taking all of my files with me on the laptop. I’m making a “travel noes” file where I can record everything, and then bring it back home and edit the entries into the various data files. It’s much less confusing that way.

But it seems that I’ve made a bit of an error with the radio projects. I’ve forgotten to leave a space for the live concert at the end of February. As a result, everything that I did that was labelled “Project 16” has now to be labelled “Project 19” to preserve the integrity of Projects 17 and 18 and the series of material from which I draw is now out of order and needs to be changed.

While I’d been in Leuven I’d found something that a friend of mine had asked me to see if I could find. I’d been successful so i’d wrapped it and I took it with me to post on my way to pick up my butties.

But as usual, I was side-tracked by the sound of a pneumatic drill coming from the other side of the harbour and seeing as the gates were closed, I could go over the footpath on the top to see what was happening.

And it’s not a pneumatic drill at all but a hydraulic concrete breaker on the jib of one of the diggers that have been dredging the harbour just now.

What they seem to be doing is chiselling out the rocks at the foot of the sea wall at the ferry terminal.

This will explain the pile of piles that regular readers of this rubbish will have seen with me the other day – removed so as to give access for the concrete breaker.

But does this mean that, with the dredging of the harbour to make it deeper and removing the rocks at the side to make it wider, are we going to be expecting the arrival of a new ferry boat that is larger than those that we have at present?

We are living in interesting times indeed.

This fishing boat, the Rocavi II is quite interesting.

There has been an article in the local newspaper about the Rocavi II just recently. It’s a brand-new fishing boat that has only recently been launched and on Saturday it was blessed by one of the local priests.

What with living in France, I suppose that breaking a bottle of champagne over the bows is pretty ordinary stuff and nothing whatever special at all.

A little further along the port, it looks as if Thora has been here while I’ve been away.

Much of her work involves taking building supplies out to Jersey and she doesn’t seem to have a regular load off the island. Instead, her owners collect scrap metal and as there are no scrapping facilities on the island they bring it here for processing. Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen quite a few loads of scrap on the quayside.

This lot of scrap metal looks as if it has been part of some structure that has been destroyed by fire.

With all of these distractions I missed the post. So I went to la Mie Caline and picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

After lunch I made my own apple purée. Four apples peeled, cored and diced, a pear ditto and some cinnamon put into a saucepan with some water and boiled for about 45 minutes.

And it’s not a success. I’ve used far too much water – or else the fruit was too juicy – and it’s more like an apple drink than an apple purée. But I’ll use it over the next few days just to dispose of it and then I’ll make some more – with much less water this time.

But pears, bananas, rhubarb, apricots, all kinds of fruit can go into it and I’m hopeful of making some good stuff with this. I need to push on and do a lot more about being self-sufficient.

And then I started to write the notes for the first of the radio projects. But I wasn’t at it long because it was walk-time. What hadn’t helped was that for about 10 minutes or so I had … errr … had a little relax.

While I was out there earlier we had had a moment of sun. But not now. A howling gale and the rain that we had seen over the Brittany coast had caught me.

For that reason I didn’t hang around very long. Chausias was over there at the ferry terminal in a NAABSA (Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground) condition so presumably they are expecting her to be doing something in the near future.

The two passenger ferries were moored up in the inner harbour where they usually stay.

But no Channel Island ferries. Both Granville and Victor Hugo are currently moored up in Cherbourg and I have no idea why.

Spirit of Conrad has made good her escape from the Chantier navale so I was keen to see who had taken her place.

The answer is that there isn’t anything special in there right now. We have two of the inshore fishing boats that haul in the shellfish and one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that is over there where Spirit of Conrad used to be.

So at least there’s plenty of work for the shipyard to be doing and that should keep them out of mischief for a while.

Back here I finished off the writing and then dictated the notes. They are going to need some hefty editing too as I seem to have been somewhat extravagant.

Anyway, I had made a start by the time that I went to make tea. Vegan burger on a bap with baked potatoes and vegetables, followed by fruit salad and sorbet. And there’s still that left-over slice of apple pie in the freezer from before I went to Leuven. But that’s an oven job so it will probably be to go with the pizza on Sunday.

Howling gales and torrential rain tonight, and I was out in it. To make it worse, I had to go for a longer walk than usual as I was in touching distance of my 100% target so I may as well push on over.

The storm was raging and although the tide wasn’t all the way in, the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset and soaking everything. It’s disappointing that they haven’t left the lights on along the promenade so that we can see the waves better.

And despite the miserable weather I managed to fit in my two runs this evening. My two little tracks were quite well sheltered.

But Iw as feeling the strain, I’ll tell you. It seems that the spell of good health I had in December is about as good as it is ever goign to be.

So having finished my notes, I’ll wait until “Yes In Concert” finishes ad then I’ll go to bed. The problem is that I have far too much good music here to which to listen to waste my time by going to bed and sleep.