… change, I actually beat the third alarm to my feet this morning.

Well, not exactly to my feet but I was definitely out of bed sitting on the edge when it rang, so it all counts.

Even more interestingly, apart from a little wobble in the afternoon, I didn’t crash out either. This must be progress. Especially as I went out to the shops this morning and that probably wore me out.

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves here.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. And phew! I’m surprised that I made it back home in time to leave my bed so early. I’ve lost half of this particular voyage but it was to do with a house in the UK in the 1930s. I’d gone to visit it, something like that, and there were a few kids there. The kids had wanted to leave home but their parents had refused them permission. In the end their parents granted them permission so they could go up and take their socks off and put their shoes on and leave, but they had to go upstairs. Once they had gone upstairs they were locked in their bedroom, all of them in one room. Their mother refused to allow them to take their socks off and put their shoes on. Basically they were imprisoned so they started to put up signs about their mistreatment etc but their mother took absolutely no notice. In the end they started stamping on the floors of the bedroom. Their mother told them to shut up and you could hear her chuntering away in the background about how she ought to go on strike as well, how perhaps she ought to have days off without doing any work and stand there and criticise the Government etc.

There was another voyage with tons missing. It was to do with football and 2 well-known 3rd and 4th Division footballers who were suddenly loaned by their clubs to teams in Scotland. We were waiting for the official news but it never came. Then of course with Covid all the matches were cancelled so it was pretty irrelevant anyway. Bt they had actually been seen in Scotland and that was breaching lockdown. Then the casualty figures came out and it was something to do with that, I’m not sure. It coincided with a period when Scotland was to declare its independence so everyone waited for the relevant day but it never happened so there were all these jibes in the newspaper about it but then as the Scots pointed out “you can’t have an insurrection and everyone rise up when Scotland is in lockdown. But they had been planning a border and the border went down the middle of the street and everyone was wondering how they were going to fix the boundary in this street. I had an idea of course but it wasn’t for me to pre-empt the ideas of some of these multi-million pound industrialists and show them what to do.

But Covid? Scottish independence? I’m becoming all topical, aren’t I? Current events are even infiltrating my nocturnal rambles. It’s not all about the past and about history either, then.

Later on I was on an old War Department sidevalve BSA with fairing rather like an old LE Velocette. I’d Left Stoke-on-Trent and was heading for home. I was going through Middlewich and realised that I needed some fuel. I pulled into the Texaco (but it was actually blue and yellow like an old Jet) petrol station at Winsford. It was a strange place and I thought that I’d overshot the pumps at first but there was one by the side where I ended up. It had diesel (although why would I put diesel in it?) then I had a good 5 minutes hunt around trying to find the fuel cap because it was hidden in all the fairing. Eventually I managed to track it. Someone was concerned that I was parking too close to them so they came to have a look and found that it was OK. Then they started to talk about the machine. By now my former friend from Stoke on Trent who was with me was telling them that they were used to carry the ammunition, these machines, and it was either a case of “stop” or “go”, no finesse. The guy asked “how do you close down?” and I replied “you cut off the fuel” and I had him and all his friends really puzzled now.

having done all of that, I prepared my things and had a shower.

There was a letter to post and also a form that needed printing off the computer once I found it on my bank’s web site, so having done that I headed out for the town.

Halfway down the hill at one of the viewpoints overlooking the harbour I had a glance down to see what was going on there. And today, the quayside is totally crowded with all kinds of stuff. That can only mean one thing – and that is that we are expecting a visit from one of the Jersey freighters – either Normandy Trader or Thora

Mind you, I’ve never ever seen that much stuff on the quayside before. This is going to be a really big load, I reckon.

Carrying on down the road I came to the Rampe du Mont Regret – the slope down to the steps that take me to the Place Pléville.

But I can’t go that way today. A few months ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of guys were having a play about with the wall just there. Today, it seems that they have sent a team in to chisel out the rotten mortar and repoint it.

It’s not before time that they are getting to grips with the lamentable state of parts of the old medieval walls.

At the Post Office I posted my letter and then cleared off up the hill to the railway station.

And at the railway station, I found out that in fact the railway network has also gone into furlough as a result of Covid. That’s why there are so few trains running just now and why my journey next week is going to be flaming difficult.

Having bought at Noz last Saturday a couple of these mechanical flip-top bottles that I use for my pressurised drinks, today in LIDL they had the same bottles in at the same price, but with lemonade in them. But never mind. I like the lemonade and the bottles will come in handy when I start to make my ginger beer. I’m getting a good collection now.

On the way back, I called at the Estate Agent’s to drop off my insurance certificate so that I’m in order, and then headed off up the hill.

And I was right about expecting a visitor here in port this morning. Here at the quayside underneath the crane, is our old friend Normandy Trader. She’s come in this morning from Jersey – direct by the look of things without going first to St Malo. That trip last week over there must have been a one-off, I suppose.

And they’ve wasted no time in starting the unloading as you can see, swinging that big blue box off her deck.

Marité is there of course. She’s been out a few times in the summer but she won’t be going far for quite a while, I reckon.

As I watched the unloading that was going on down there, I heard a very familiar engine noise in the distance – the steady throb of an old long-stroke diesel engine.

That can only mean one thing too, and that will explain why there is so much material piled up on the quayside this morning. Sure enough, Thora, the other Channel Islands freighter, pulled into the harbour.

They must be really busy at the moment with all of this freight. Mind you, I did hear on the grapevine that a lot of material can’t be shipped to the Channel Islands via the UK right now, so I imagine that European suppliers are sending it here instead.

But to my surprise, instead of coming into the inner harbour and waiting her turn for the crane to be free, she did a U-turn and went to moor up by the Ferry Terminal.

There’s probably a very good reason for that too, why she didn’t want to wait in the harbour. And that is possibly that she has foot passengers aboard who will obviously want to disembark as quickly as possible. She’s the ship that does the emergency repatriations when there is no passenger ferry running.

So from there I pushed on home for my hot chocolate and not my sourdough because that was starting to grow whiskers. I had some Christmas cake instead.

First job now that I’m back is to finish off the filing.

Well, not finish it off because there is tons, but to deal with the filing for 2020 and 2019 which I started yesterday.

There was the break for lunch of course, and more of my home-made bread, and then of course my afternoon walk.

It was blowing a veritable gale out there this morning and it hadn’t abated at all when I went out there. It must have been pretty rough coming over from Jersey this morning and the trawlers that were out there just offshore – I counted three – can’t be enjoying it very much either.

There had been plenty of rain earlier this afternoon with a shower that had passed us by so all of the paths were flooded again so it was rather a delicate process to walk around the headland.

But across the lawn and across the car park went I, and down to the very end.

Once again, we seem to be having yet another beautiful late afternoon despite the miserable weather. And we finally have a really good reflection of the sun through a hole in the clouds shining off the surface of the sea. It’s even better than yesterday’s, and the surprising thing is that it’s not late at all – just my usual time.

So off along the path, minding where it’s all flooded out, and down to the viewpoint to see how things were at the chantier navale. No change there, so I came on home.

Not quite all of the way home.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of the perils of living in a medieval walled city is that the gate arches are pretty low and the streets are quite narrow so that large lorries can’t go in. Consequently, if you order anything and it comes in a large lorry, it needs to be trans-shipped into something smaller that can pass within the walls.

It’s something that we see quite often, and here’s another example this afternoon.

By the time that I’d finished for my guitar session, all of the 2019 and 2020 papers had been filed away and I’d even found time to some work on my visit to the Chateau de Chalus in July.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by jam roly-poly. It’s a shame that it’s overcooked because it’s a great idea and it works really well, but I’ll know for next time, won’t I?

It’s late now unfortunately but I’m hoping for a good day tomorrow. There’s nothing to do except the arrears so hopefully I can make some progress. I need to push on and get things done.