… of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw Chausiaise loading up at the loading bay in the port, and then go and tie up.

This afternoon, while I was out on my post-prandial perambulation around the perimeter, I noticed Chausiaise right out there in the Baie de Granville about eight or nine miles offshore.

What caught my eye about this was that she wasn’t in the normal shipping lane that she would use to travel to and from the Ile de Chausey, her usual route, but in fact she was in the shipping lane that the boats use when they are travelling to and from the Channel Islands.

A quick look at the shipping register showed that she had in fact been in the port of St Helier this morning.

When she first came here a couple of years ago, I REMEMBER SPECULATING that there might be more to her presence in the port than mere trips back and towards Chausey. It looks as if there is some kind of substance in that.

Mind you, I was lucky that I actually managed to see her today because the way I was feeling this afternoon, I may well have ended up in bed and not gone anywhere at all.

Part of the reason for this was that I ended up having a rather late night, despite what I might have said yesterday.

As I was closing everything down last night, I went into the living room where I noticed that down at the Porte St Jean we had a fire engine with its blue lights flashing.

One or two other smaller vehicles with blue lights were loitering around too but it was very difficult to say what they were doing. I might ordinarily have been tempted to have gone out for a wander to see but I was ready for bed and it would have been rather an interesting sight had I done so.

At least I didn’t wake up at 04:00 or something silly like that. I managed to stay asleep (or thereabouts) until the alarm went off and then it was quite a struggle to rise up and leave my stinking pit.

Things didn’t improve as the morning went on either and I couldn’t concentrate on my Welsh lesson either. It ended up as being something of a disaster today. I didn’t fall asleep but it would be wrong to suggest that I was awake.

And not only that, I was freezing cold again. Despite the thermometer in the dining room showing some kind of reasonable temperature, I was sitting on an electric heater and I still wasn’t warm.

After lunch I came back in here and … errr … fell asleep. And that was how I was until it was time for me to go for my afternoon walk. I really don’t know how I managed to wake up in time for going out.

Nevertheless, out I went and staggered off down to the end of the car park to look over the wall onto the beach.

Despite how miserable the weather was, as you can tell from this photograph, there were a couple of people down on the beach. And there was plenty of beach for them to be down there on this afternoon too.

Very few people up here on the path though. All the way around the circuit I didn’t count more than half a dozen people. I imagine that they had far more sense then to be out here this afternoon. At least it was warmer than it ought to have been.

While I was looking down on the beach I was also looking around out at sea. And that was when I saw Chausiaise in the distance.

By the time that I’d walked down to the end of the headland by the lighthouse she had made some progress in towards the coast.

She wasn’t the only boat out there either this afternoon. I noticed later on when I was looking at the first photo of Chausiaise that there was a trawler hiding away in the gloom, and there were several others too out here in the bay.

Consequently I waited until she approached another vessel out there and then took another photo of her. Things were quite busy out there at sea this afternoon and it’s about time that we saw some more seagoing stuff.

There wasn’t anyone sitting down on the bench at the headland this afternoon and that was a shame because everyone was missing quite a show.

Not only were they missing the boats massing out in the bay, they were missing another beautiful sunset.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … this is one of the things that I like about this time of the year – the really nice sunsets in the bay. We’ve seen a few of those over the last few days.

And that was quite a storm that was brewing across the bay obscuring the Brittany coast.

Just now I mentioned something about the boats massing out there in the baie de Mont St Michel.

It will be quite a while before the harbour gates open but even so there were several boats hanging around waiting for the tide to come in.

This one is called Calean, I think. It’s very difficult to read her name or her registration number at this distance but everything seems to correspond with who she is.

The others were even farther out to sea so I left them alone and headed off down the path towards the port to see what was happening there.

And we have a new vessel in the chantier naval today.

Le Roc A La Mauve III is still there over in the far corner out of shot but Arc en Ciel – “Rainbow” – has come to join her.

Behind her on top of the silt you can see the mooring chains in the inner harbour. There are small buoys tied to the chains that float up to the surface when the tide comes in, so the boatmen know where to fish with their boathooks to pick up a chain so that they can tie their boats to it.

Back here I regrettably fell asleep again but eventually I came round enough to listen to the dictaphone notes. I was back in the UK last night and there had been a revolt by the Army, or, at least, part of the army. It had led from a misunderstanding about a training exercise and hed lef to fighting and bloodshed amongst units of the Regular Army. Eventually control had been regained and those engaged in the rebellion, such as it was, had been rounded up. Some of the fighting had really been vicious. The Queen was involved in it somewhere, being threatened, and was out of the Public eye for 3.5 weeks. They thought that either the strain had been too much for her or she’d been injured or had had a health crisis triggered by it. It was a training exercise gone wrong rather than a deliberate act of rebellion. Eventually they rounded everyone up suppressed it but it was really nasty while it was going on.

Later on I was down in London. I can’t remember which car I had. I think it was the blue estate. There was something going on with some people, market traders of something, and they were looking for as much help as they could get. I volunteered but they kept on coming out with all kinds of weird suggestions as to why I shouldn’t help them, the Cortina estate was too good, but it wasn’t. It was another one of my vehicles where nothing really worked on it except that it kept going, it needed “that type of insurance”, “that type of cover” etc. They were coming up with minute details of legislation which I thought for a market trader was completely ridiculous. I’d never yet met a London market trader who had stuck to the letter of the law so rigidly. I kept on coming up with counter-arguments but they weren’t interested in them at all. I had the impression very quickly that they were just not interested in my helping them no matter what I offered to do. I kept up the pretence of arguing with them simply to annoy them and get on their nerves because it was annoying me and getting on my nerves the fact that they weren’t interested in accepting any help from me.

So none of my favourite companions last night. I think that they must all be as exhausted as I am after the last couple of weeks.

Tea was a taco roll with the remainder of yesterday’s stuffing – a quick tea because there was football on the internet. Aberystwyth Town third from bottom were playing Haverfordwest, second from bottom, in what was Aberystwyth’s 1000th game in the League – the first team to reach that milestone.

Haverfordwest were actually the better team as far as skill went but Aberystwyth play with a spirit that is only mayched by maybe Caernarfon Town. I’ve seen Aber play several times this season and I’ve said … “and on several occasions too” – ed … that all they needed were a few breaks.

And they certainly got those this evening. They punished a Haverfordwest mistake to go one up and then scored a second out of nothing from another defensive mistake that led to all kinds of panic in the Haverfordwest defence and the giving away of a penalty.

Two-nil was something of an exaggeration but having seen them lose games when the rub of the green has gone against them, it’s high time that they had some luck.

So now I’m going to bed. It’s been another bad day today and I really ought to be doing my best to pul myself round. let’s see how I do tomorrow. Things surely can’t become any worse.