Tuesday 5th January 2021 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… miserable day today.

At least I managed to hear all of the alarms this morning and I may not have beaten the third alarm, I didn’t go back to sleep at all and I managed to rouse yself round about 07:00 so as far as that goes, it’s some kind of progress better than yesterday.

After the medication I came back and had a listen to the dictaphone. And to my surprise I found that I had actually been somewhere during the night.

As it happens, I don’t remember very much about my voyage but we were doing something like besieging a castle. The castle was outside Granville somewhere. One thing that I noticed was that there was a dip in the ground by this castle with a kind of embankment running through it. It suddenly occurred to me after all these years that this could have been where the tacot ran through. I’d never succeeded in tracing the route of the tacot but that looked the right kind of place for the tacot to have been.
Some other time we were all in an office discussing a certain company or other. The company had had rather a rocky reputation. Someone produced on their mobile phone a logo that this company used. I had a look at it and thought “that’s the company that administers my works pension”. I mentioned that to the room and I was quite surprised by that because I always thought of them as being a reliable company but apparently they aren’t and that made me worry about my pension.

Having dealt with that I had a good work through my Welsh homework, revised some more stuff and then reviewed the forthcoming lesson. With a quick tidy up, I made myself some hot chocolate and grabbed a mince pie (the sourdough fruit loaf was … errr … spoiled) and switched on the portable computer, only to find that the tutor wasn’t available today and the course has been cancelled. That was pretty annoying but it can’t be helped.

So having drunk my chocolate and eaten my mince pie I sat down to do the second part of the radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off at 18:00 I’d finished typing (but not dictating) the notes. Again, it was something of a hard struggle today to find any kind of incentive or motivation.

There was a variety of reasons as to why it took me so long. First of all, there was lunch of course. Another helping of my gorgeous vegetable soup with home-made bread – a lunch made with my own fair hands. And there’s enough soup for another helping too so that ended up in the freezer for another day along with the rest of the butternut squash soup.

repositioning scaffolding college malraux place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWe had the afternoon walk too as usual.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall my musing about the scaffolding up at the College Malraux. They had erected it on just half of the College and I was wondering whether they were just going to do half of the roof. But here they are, dismantling the scaffolding at the far end and re-erecting it down the other half of the wall.

They have also relocated the compound too.

So it looks as if we are going to have the whole of the roof repaired. And judging by the amount of tie that it’s taken to do the part that they have done, they are going to be here for a while.

sunset on water baie de mont st michel brittany coast Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere weren’t too many people out there this afternoon either which was no surprise give the cold, windy weather.

The path around the clifftop and across to the headland was pretty deserted so I walked over there to see what was going on. No ships or boats around at all but the evening sunset was shining really beautifully through the clouds onto the water.

We’ve seen a few of these sunsets just recently but the one this afternoon was up there with the best of them. Unfortunately the cliffs at the back were obscured in the low cloud so the distant view wasn’t as good though.

baie de mont st michel st pair sur mer Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallTaking my leave of the view, I walked off along the path on the south side of the headland.

The sun was shining brightly down on St Pair sur Mer and it was looking like a stage set all bathed in floodlights. I carried on walking along the path, admiring the new door that they fitted on the public conveniences yesterday. Nice big and armour-plated but they have made a basic error in its design and installation, and the workmen will be back in early course.

And still no change of occupant in the chantier navale either. The yacht on the blocks and the trawler by the mobile boat lift.

thora port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallDown there in the port, we have a visitor in there today.

Brexit doesn’t seem to have interrupted the little coastal freighters from Jersey coming into the port here. Down there in the loading bay underneath the crane we have Thora there. She’s probably come in on the morning tide.

Having taken a photo, I wandered off back home for a mug of hot coffee and a slice of my Christmas cake and to carry on with my work. But then we had another problem to delay me, in that having rather unsuccessfully fought off falling asleep, then I crashed out not once, not twice but three times during the rest of the afternoon and it’s making me feel terrible.

plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was the usual hour or so on the guitars and then I wandered off out for my evening walk. And walk too because I’m still feeling pretty terrible.

Along the footpath I walked, as far as the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset where I took a photo to prove that I had been out, and then carried on walking back home again for tea.

Tonight I had baked potatoes, burger in a bap and vegetables followed by the last of the Christmas pudding with custard. These have been delicious meals just recently and we’ll have to see what we can do to keep the delicious meals going.

kiwi pear kefir place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallHaving dealt with the food and the washing up, I had another task to perform.

The last bottle of kefir is now in the fridge ready to use and so I had to make some more from the stuff that had been brewing. There were only three kiwis because the fourth had been left rather too long, so I added a pear to it to see how that would develop.

And now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be feeling a little beter and that I can get on and do some work and finish off what I’ve been trying to do for the first two days of this week. I really need to get going as I have so much work to do and not a great time to do it.

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