Wednesday 9th September 2020 – THE BIRD …

bird of prey pointe du roc granville manche normandy france eric hall… of prey that we have seen every now and again flying around above the rabbit colony has been back again today.

This afternoon while I was out on my rounds I came across it yet again. Unfortunately it wasn’t in such a good position to photograph as it was last time, but I did my best.

And that’s something else too. I’ve spoken previously … “and at great length too” – ed … about the fact that I’ve never seen any fisherman actually catch anything but, thinking about it, I haven’t seen the birds of prey catch anything yet either.

For my own part, I didn’t catch anything today either. The early bird might catch the worm but I wasn’t early at all this morning. Even though I was in bed at some kind of reasonable-ish time, I still couldn’t summon up the strength to be out of bed when the alarm went off.

Unfortunately, it was round about 08:45 when I finally crawled out of bed and I didn’t feel much like it then either.

Having finally managed to listen to the events of last night on the dictaphone it appears that I can’t remember very much about the nocturnal events. It seems that I was somewhere in Central Europe and it involved a cavalry army mounted on horseback that was pretty comfortably defeated by some insurrectionists of which I was one and had to retreat. All of its artillery was exposed to the TV cameras and so on during this retreat and it had to be very careful not to fall into the hands of the partisans who were roaming about

Despite it being something or a miserable day in which I was hard-pressed to summon up any enthusiasm, I finally did finish the radio programme on which I’ve been working. And much to my own surprise, it was short by a mere 0.912 of a second by the time that I had finished.

However a few additional small bits of generated silence in appropriate places soon took care of that and it was soon back up to the one-hour limit

joly france english channel ile de chausey granville manche normandy france eric hallThere was of course the usual interruption while I went off on my afternoon walk.

And it seems that I wasn’t the only one heading off on an outing this afternoon. Joly France was heading off into the English Channel. It’s the old one – you can tell that by the fact that there is no step in her stern, and she’s on her way out to the Ile de Chausey with a load of passengers.

It beats me why they would want to go out there so late in the day because they wouldn’t have too much time to stay on the island.

microlight aeroplane pointe du roc granville manche normandy france eric hallThere was plenty of action in the air too.

Never mind the bird of prey that we have seen already. There was also a small light aeroplane too but I didn’t take too much notice of that as my attention had been attracted by the powered hang-glider flying overhead.

There are all kinds of aerial activity going on around here and I suppose that I ought to be paying more attention to it.

But for the moment I carried on with my walk. Apart from the fact that someone seems to have shuffled the boats in the chantier navale, there was nothing else very much going on at all and I came on home.

After finishing the radio programme I made a start on tidying up the bedroom and sorting things out. It’s a lot better now and I can actually move around in here. There’s still plenty to do but little by little I’ll get there.

Sitting down to carry on with my Welsh revision, I had the misfortune to fall asleep and I was out for about 90 minutes on the chair. And when I awoke I was in yet another dazed and confused state that lasted for a good half hour. I ended up missing most of my guitar practice yet again.

Tea tonight was a curry that I found in the freezer, with rice and vegetables, followed by apple pie and soya dessert. Very delicious.

porte st jean granville manche normandy france eric hallFor my evening walk outside, there was no-one out there at all

The Porte St Jean looked very beautiful tonight, all illuminated by various floodlight, and with the streetlights of the Place d’Armes in the background it made a very spectacular photograph.

With it being too dark to see if there was anything going on out at sea, I walked on along the rue du Nord and then ran all the way along the footpath underneath the walls to my usual resting place.

Having recovered my breath I carried on with my walk and then ran across the Square Maurice Marland.

place d'armes granville manche normandy france eric hallNo excitement or tension in the rue Cambernon this evening so I carried on around the walls past the car from Connecticut which seems to be definitively abandoned.

From up on the top, the Place d’Armes was looking splendid in the streetlights so I took a photo of that and then ran on home.

Now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. It’s shopping day tomorrow so I need to be on form. Not that there’s much chance of that because I’m really not feeling as fit as maybe I ought to be.

It’s been over a month since I returned from my voyage and I had been hoping that I would have been much better than this by now.

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