Tag Archives: caliburn

Thursday 28th June 2018 – HAVING BOMBED …

… on Tuesday night with my choice of sleeping accommodation, I can say without any fear of contradiction that I more than made up for it last night.

The issue of the plug for the slow cooker not working is a minor inconvenience really. The rest of it scored a good 11 out of 10 and I’ll be back here again.

I’m not sure who or what awoke me at 04:30 but it was nothing to do with the hotel.

At one moment or another I’d been off on my travels. With a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) where I was invited to a meal given by a friend of hers. Not long after I’d ordered my meal, the person whose party it was started passing round some literature and seeking orders. It turned out that they were all “Biffers” and this was all about freeing their friends who had been imprisoned. Of course, I had no wish to associate myself with them, so I was all for walking out. But as I’d ordered my meal already, I was wondering if I should go and sit on a separate table. But I didn’t want to embarrass my friend.

After a shower I did some work on the laptop until breakfast time when I went downstairs to try out the delicious bread.

My landlady’s story was quite interesting. She’d come from Australian a back-packing holiday, run out of money and so had found a job as a chambermaid in Lech. Here, she had met a local boy and the rest is history.

She’d never seen snow before she came here, and neither had her family when they arrived for the wedding. And so, in June, they had a snowstorm on her wedding day.

“A real white wedding”, I told her.

After I’d finished my work, I went for a walk around the town to see what was going on.

I didn’t manage to make it out there last night and I was keen to take a few photographs to show you what you are missing.

It really is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I’d be happy to come to live here permanently.

And not for nothing am I here in Lech this morning. Today is the start of a vintage vehicle rally here in Lech and there are all types of old cars on parade in the town.

Ordinarily, every one of the 50 or so that I saw would have made it onto this page but I really was spoilt for choice. But you’ll have to make do with seeing a select few until I have more time to sit down and expand my notes.

After all, it’s not very easy doing this kind of thing when you are limited to irregular hotel internet connections and timed-out motorway service providers.

One thing that we do have to do is to give Strawberry Moose a suitable photo opportunity.

It’s not every day that he visits his favourite town in Europe and so it deserves to be recorded for posterity.

No camping allowed here in Lech, but that’s not a problem for him, although it might explain why Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick never visited the area.

His Nibs has only been here for 12 hours or so, but he’s already opened his own taxi business as you can see. It didn’t take him long to get his feet firmly planted under the table here.

Set up for life with a vehicle like this.

Lech, by the way, is twinned with the town of Beaver Creek in the USA, and you can make of that what you like.

Despite having come here on a few previous occasions, I’d never been right through and out of the other side of the town.

And with the urging of the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I set off northwards.

A little diversion was called for though.

There’s a back road that goes out to Bregenz (and had I known how this story was to unfold I’d have gone out that way) where there’s a mountain pass, the Hochtannberg Pass at 1675 metres, that I hadn’t climbed before.

There are dozens of photos going back to the 70s of all kinds of various vehicles photographed on the top of various mountain passes, and we are putting together a little collection of Caliburn there too.

But there wasn’t any parking here to make a really good photograph of Caliburn. A quick flash at the side of the road in between the traffic had to suffice.

But the view westwards was quite impressive too. And you can see what a magnificent area this is and why I was so happy to come here, even though the clouds were closing in rapidly.

It was round about here that I started to have the feeling that it wasn’t going to be my day.

And as I retraced my steps in the general direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberammergau, a few drops of rain started to fall on the windscreen.

By the time I reached the German border the torrential rain was lashing down on everything in sight.

Considering the tropical weather that we had been having up to that point on this journey, this was quite a surprise. It put paid to any plans that I had to go sightseeing.

There was however a small town along the route that was crammed full of tourists and it was here that I stopped to pick up some bread.

But do you know – I forgot to make a note of where I was so I can’t tell you anything about it.

I shall have to do some more research in due course when I update this page.

For lunch, I pulled over onto a layby at the side of the road. And here, shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep for a while. I’m not doing too well am I, these days?

This made me run quite late and what with all of the roadworks on the A95 (I decided to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn after all in an attempt to make up the time) I hit Munich just in time for the start of the rush hour.

And having come from the south, I ended up straight in the city centre too. It was this point that I’d wished that I had come in from Bregenz on the south-west and hit the ring road instead.

As a result, the last 19kms of my journey took me 90 minutes and had I not performed a marvellous “taxi-driver’s creep” on a bright red Audi estate, much to my pleasure and his chagrin (he had a beautiful set of motor horns), I would probably be still stuck in Munich right now.

But it seems that The lady Who Lives In The Satnav doesn’t understand grade-separated junctions. A couple of times now she’s wanted me to turn right onto a road that’s 300 feet below the viaduct over which I’m driving. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With me being so late, I’d missed the vegan shop around the corner from Hans so tea ended up being chips and salad from the beer garden next door.

Later that evening, Hans (who runs a whisky importing business) was having a tasting evening with 10 invited guests.

Everyone seemed to be having a really good time which was just as well. For me, I don’t drink alcohol and even when I did I couldn’t abide the smell, never mind the taste, of the stuff.

But good luck to those who do.

And so with the place smelling like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom, I settled down for the night on one of the most comfortable sofas in the world.

And here I intend to sleep right through until I awaken.

Wednesday 27th June 2018 – WHAT A DREADFUL …

… night that was!

It was stifling hot in that bedroom so I had opened all of the windows. And not long after going to be I was joined by a moth and a mosquito. That put paid to any hope that I might have had about a decent night’s sleep.

No breakfast at the hotel either, so I had another shower and then my laptop decided to crash. It was clearly not going to be my day.

Having sorted myself out I took my stuff downstairs and handed in the key, to find the proprietor and her friend tucking into a hearty meal. “Kein frühstuck” indeed.

All in all, what with one thing and another, I wasn’t very impressed. But you can’t win a coconut every time and I’ve had some pretty good deals in the past.

Outside, all of the streets were full of policemen. I’m not sure why, unless they had heard that I was in the vicinity.

Apparently it is something to do with the roadworks and they are directing the traffic.

But all of Switzerland’s roads seem to be undergoing repair right now. It’s like one huge building site and there’s no end to it.

The road to Zurich was fairly rapid for a change and it didn’t take long for me to arrive there. But driving around it took me much longer than it might have done. It’s changed considerably over the last 30 years and the last time that I was here it was dark.

Another thing that they have a habit of doing is putting the main destinations on the “motorway” road signs and only the small villages on the ordinary road signs. And when you only have a small-scale atlas, it doesn’t help.

No point in asking The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav. She doesn’t recognise Swiss Motorways as being toll roads and doesn’t understand the concept of “avoid all motorways”.

Winterthur was easy to negotiate, although people there don’t understand the idea of roundabouts, and I had not one, not two but three close encounters at various times.

At St Gallen, I gave up. No idea of the village on the Swiss side of the border and “Bregenz” was only advertised by the motorway, so I bit the bullet and went that way.

I dodged off at the exit before the border, and luckily there were no police patrols checking for motorway toll stickers, and crossed into Austria at Lustenau.

Diesel was only €1:21 at Lustenau so I fuelled up Caliburn. I also fuelled up myself – Austrian bread is nothing like as good as German bread but a couple of bread rolls with my salad and that was me organised.

Through Feldkirch and onto the S16 eastwards, and I took a little diversion.

The Arlberg Pass has always been my preferred destination over the Alps but there’s another pass over the mountains between Partenen and Tschafein that I had never taken. So boldly going where the hand of man had never set foot, Caliburn and I set off.

But somewhere stuck up a blind allet is the little village of Silbertal.

Somewhere else that I had never visited before today, and it’s one of those villages that in a country that had 99 out of the 100 prettiest villages in the world, Silbertal is well in the Top 10.

Unfortunately parking was an issue here, as was time, so I didn’t have the opportunity for a good look around.

At Schruns, where I was trying to find a place to stop to take a couple of photographs, I nearly squidged a pedestrian who couldn’t make up her mind whether to cross the street or not.

Having both dillied and dallied, we decided to advance at exactly the same moment.

But eventually I found a parking space and could whip out the Nikon and show you some of the beautiful South Tyrolean scenery.

I’d parked up on the car park of the local football club, FC Schruns, and seeing as the ground was open, I went for a wander inside to see what was happening.

Certainly an improvement on many French football grounds that I had visited, although when I saw the prices for a season ticket for the forthcoming season’s matches, I’m surprised that they weren’t playing at Wembley Stadium.

“Somewhat elevated” would have been an understatement.

Over there, that’s not Schruns but those houses on the side of the hill are in the town of Tschagguns.

I’m not sure how the name of the town should be pronounced, and so I’ll leave you to pronounce that as you see fit.

All I can say is the name sounds very appropriate if you have to carry your heavy shopping up there. You can rule me out of that, no matter how idyllic the view might be.

Tschagguns has a very good claim to fame in the realm of Winter Sports, in that it’s a ski-jumping centre.

Not that you would, of course, expect me to be up there. For me, I’m all in favour of terra firma when it comes to skiing. The more firma, the less terra.

And even so, they can’t be much good up there because even Eddie the Eagle once beat an Austrian ski-jumper.

And now I realise why I’ve never come this way before.

Just up there shortly before the head of the Pass is a toll booth. And they expect me to pay €21:50 to pass the next 40 kilometres to Landeck.

Even having negotiated the price down to €15:00 that was still €15:00 more than I was ever intending to pay, so I turned round and retraced my steps.

Maybe it might cost me more in fuel, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Now, this is much more like it. I’ve made my way all the way round and this is St Anton at the foot of the Arlberg Pass.

When you see the road up there, that’s been improved considerably since the late 1970s when we used to struggle up there with 47 passengers in lightweight Ford R1114 coaches in the good old days of Salopia.

Caliburn leaps up there of course, as you might expect and one of these days I’ll post a video of the climb.

Only one town in the whole wide world where Strawberry Moose and I would be right at home, and that’s the town of Lech.

The name is quite appropriate.

Nerina and I first came here on our honeymoon in 1988 in a beat-up old, rusting Ford Cortina estate OCC 883S (which, by the way, was younger than Caliburn is now, although you wouldn’t ever think so).

And we so liked the place that we vowed that one day we would come back.This is the second time that I’ve been here since then.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I came here in June 2014 in the snow, although this year, the snow is way up the mountain.

I do wonder sometimes if Nerina ever made it back. Knowing how things pan out, I’ll probably bump into her walking through the streets here tomorrow morning.

And in case you are thinking that I’m joking, it did once happen in Brussels like that in 1991. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

I went to the little guest house where I stayed before but that was closed up and deserted.

Several other places were fully booked but one hotel, although totally deserted like the Marie Celeste, had left its doors open and the internet switched on.

Consequently an on-line booking agency quickly found me a room that was well within my price range only 390 metres from where I was standing, and the Lady WHo Lives In The Satnav did the rest.

So here I am. A nice comfy single room run by an Australian landlady (yes, Australian, not Austrian) but the plugs won’t fit my slow cooker so it’s a scratch tea tonight.

Apart from that, no complaints whatsoever and I’m going to be very comfy here.

I hope.

Tuesday 26th June 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today, but at about 16:30 this afternoon despite having been on the road for about 5 hours, I’d covered just 190 kilometres.

I’d started bright and early too, being up long before the alarm went off, thanks to whoever it was who decided to make a loud noise at 05:00.

When Jacqueline awoke, she baked some bread which was delicious and we had breakfast – home-made bread with home-made cherry jam. And chatted for a while too, but at 10:30 I hit the road. There’s a lot to do.

First stop was the Chateau de Chasselas, well-known to all Monty Python fans of course.

Last time that I was here I’d bought a dozen bottles of wine to give as gifts. There are still plenty left but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can’t get at them. So I need some more.

And it was quite a hike to get there too as they were resurfacing the driveway and we had to go the long way round.

But this was just one more unnecessary expense. This “relying on friends to return favours” is costing me an arm and a leg. Far cheaper to pay for everything professionally than to go through what I’m going through right now.

That building there on the corner used to be the village café of Chasselas.

Jean-Marc’s grandmother was the owner of the place back in 1970 and this is where I stayed for part of the time that I was here back then.

Of course, it didn’t look like that then. It had much more charm back in those days.

I headed into Macon because I had noticed diesel at €1:39 a litre last night, and Caliburn could do with a drink. And from there I headed off through the centre of the town and across the Saone.

And I don’t recognise a thing about Macon these days. I’d be totally lost wandering around there today, it’s changed that much.

The road out was uneventful, but quite slow behind all of these grockles in their mobile homes. And also due to the multitude of roadworks and diversions that interrupted everything. Not to mention The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav who took me on the scenic route through Bourg-en-Bresse.

But at Lons-le-Saunier it all went horribly wrong. Too busy trying to beat a long line of lorries across a roundabout I must have missed my turning and ended up on a road that I’ve never travelled before.

It took me deep into the Jura Mountains and right over the top of a series of mountain passes, at one of which I stopped to make lunch.

We crossed into Switzerland at a frontier post that I never knew existed and round another mountain pass that presented me with this beautiful view of Lake Geneva and what I was expecting to be Lausanne.

And I would certainly have known if I had seen this view before because this really was so stunning. I joined another pile of grockles busily photographing the scene.

But it wasn’t Lausanne at all as I found out as I dropped down to the lake, but Noyon, home of UEFA.

And I couldn’t remember exactly where Noyon was, so I guessed, guessed wrong, and ended up going about half an hour in the wrong direction before I realised.

So back into Noyon and back out the other side, in plenty of time to hit the 17:00 rush-hour queue at Lausanne, where I could leisurely take photos out of Caliburn’s window while we waited in traffic jams.

I’d been feeling quite ill for the last couple of hours and had been wishing that I could stop. But once I got beyond Lausanne I found my second wind.

Here I could put my foot down and I began to eat up the miles. And it was amazing just how quickly and how far we managed to move.

But another major road-works and diversion meant that there was no time to reach my favourite motel opposite IKEA on the outskirts of Zurich so I pulled up at a guesthouse in a small town off the beaten track.

Switzerland is frightfully expensive so having negotiated a price of €60 cash (I didn’t have any Swiss money – that’s something else stuck back in Virlet) I wasn’t expecting much.

And it’s just as well, because I didn’t get it. This place would have been fine 50 years ago, but they might have changed the carpets and the electrical wiring.

For tea tonight I have a tin of potatoes, a tin of mixed veg, a tin of lentils, some gravy browning and a slow cooker. and furthermore I managed to make it plug in (I forgot about Swiss plugs, didn’t I?) And it was all very delicious too.

I ended the night with a shower, and now I’m having another early night.

It’s been another long day.

Sunday 24th June 2018 – I’M NOT ANGRY.

Neither am I annoyed. And neither am I furious.

I’ve gone waaaaaaayyyyy beyond that into the stratosphere .

It’s the last time that I ever do anyone a favour ever again. If anyone ever wants something from me ever again they can pay full price for it. and if I ever want anything off anyone, I’ll pay full price for it too.

That way, it avoids all disappointments.

I must have MUG tattooed on my forehead in letters two feet high.

despite what I said about the hotel last night (well, it is rather overpriced and very tired, but it was the cheapest that I could find when I was tired) I had a really good sleep.

And it would have been even better had I not had a severe attack of cramp during the night – so severe that I had to get out of bed and stand up to ease the muscles;

Back in bed though, I was off on my travels and with no dictaphone handy I had to try my best to remember it.

But basically, I decided that I would like to learn a new language, so off I trotted to the night school.And who should be giving the course but TOTGA. Of course, I sat at the front of the class (my body might have given out but my mind certainly hasn’t). The end wall of the classroom sloped in at 45° so the white board attached to it was over the heads of the students at the front. And TOTGA needed to clean it. But whatever had been written on it had been written on it a long time ago and it had dried pretty hard so it took some scrubbing. So of course I volunteered to help, to the ribald remarks of my fellow classmates.

Back in the Land of the Living again, I had set the alarm for 08:45, even if it is a Sunday, but I didn’t need it because I was wide awake at 08:00. And amongst the (many) things that I have forgotten to bring with me (as usual, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) are my pills and medicines.

I shall be like nothing on earth by the time that I get to Leuven – but then it’s not as if that’s anything new is it?

After breakfast I hit the road and headed south. I fuelled up Caliburn, tight to the brim and continued on my way.

A short while later, I picked up a hitch-hiker … "well, you shouldn’t have knoched him down" – ed. A Prisoner On The White Lines Of The Freeway, as Joni Mitchell would have us believe.

I’ve hitch-hiked all over the UK and North-West Europe in my youth (and not-so-youth) and been grateful for everyone who has stopped for me. Now that I have an empty and tidy Caliburn following my efforts of the other week, I’m not ashamed to stop for casual strangers.

“You wouldn’t by any chance be going anywhere near Tours, would you?” which is about 125 kms away.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am” I replied.
And so we drove all the way round past Le Mans, down the Mulsanne Straight (without, unfortunately stopping to take a photo) and on into the suburbs of Tours where I dropped off my companion.

Regular Readers of This Rubbish will recall that I don’t like company, but it makes the journey pass that little bit more quickly when there’s someone else there.

Having picked up a baguette on the way, I stopped at the car park by the river in Loches for lunch.

And there in the shade of some kind of tree I made myself a butty and had a quiet repose.

Another thing that I did was to have half an hour on the guitar. My Vox amPlug has an input socket as well as a headphone socket, so I can run tunes off my laptop into it. As a result, I can play along to the tracks that I’m learning even in the middle of a car park and that’s impressive.

I must keep up with things.

Talking about keeping up with things, there won’t be much difficulty keeping up with this, because the insurance ran out a few months ago and it doesn’t look as if it has moved since.

I bet that you are all wondering what’s so exciting about this Daihatsu Hijet and the answer is that it’s not actually a Daihatsu HiJet at all but a Piaggio Porter.

And even more excitingly, if you peer through the grime and dust, you can see that this vehicle once bore the livery of “La Poste”. And that’s really interesting because it’s not very often that you see “la Poste” driving around in vehicles that weren’tmade in France.

Actually, you might say that it’s a Daihatsu, because it’s part of a project that Daihatsu and the Italian manufacturer Piaggio had on the go between them.

Daihatsu did drop out of the project when that company was taken over by Toyota and Piaggio carried on alone.

There are three versions of this, and I think that this might be a Version II, that dates it sometime between 1998 and 2011.

One version of this that I would really like to see is the Italian Military version that is fitted with a machine-gun. Contrary to rumours, it does NOT have one forward gear and five reverse.

A little later I did have a spell of fatigue. I did think that this trip might be too much for me, but I pressed on all the same.

And then we had the disappointment back at my house. I imagine that you all guessed that it was there.

Instead of staying there for a couple of nights, which was the plan, I went for a coffee and a chat with Rob and Nicolette, and then hit the road yet again. By now I’d found my second wind and i was ready to drive all night, but one has to be sensible about these things.

There’s a B&B hotel just on the edge of Moulins and I’m here tonight. Two nights of additional expense and 150 miles out of my way. I could have stayed at home until Monday had I known how thing were going to turn out.

I’m now running ahead of my plans at much greater expense than imagined and I’m one extremely unhappy bunny.

Let’s hope that tomorrow cheers me up.

Saturday 23rd June 2018 – I’M NOT HERE

But then you knew that already – at least, in the sense that I’m not all here most of the time.

The morning started off with me being well and truly here – up and about again nice and early which makes a change two days on the run.

And once breakfast was over and I had had a little relax, I went and assembled the coffee table.

once the coffee table was assembled, I went downstairs to fetch the desk. And by elephants that was heavy. I really struggled to get that up the stairs.

Assembling it wasn’t easy either. It was quite a complicated piece of furniture and very heavy tomove about. To have it finished, in position, vacuumed up the stuff on the floor in the bedroom where I wanted it to be, that was a task of a couple of hours.

I can certainly now understand why “old” people have to sit down for a cup of tea so often.

There are still some things left in Caliburn but I can’t bring them up by myself. It’s going to have to be a job of opening the packets in Caliburn and bringing up the stuff in two or three trips like I did last time.

But not today. It wore me out just doing that. But at least the place looks as if someone lives hers, and that’s certainly progress. Although the European Cardboard Box Mountain is blocking just about everywhere.

I managed some tidying up, but not a lot, and then I began to lose interest.

Instead of putting the clean clothes away in the cupboard, I put them in my suitcase, grabbed a few other things and then Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and I hit the road.

First stop was the estate agent’s. The barrier here to the car park is broken so we are having a new one installed. But the remote controls need to be handed in to be reprogrammed.

After that, we didn’t come home, we carried on driving.

Having a look at this sleepy little town here, you would be forgiven for thinking that it’s the back of beyond and there’s nothing whatever exciting about it.

And if you were to rely on the French Tourist Board and the French Ministry of the Interior, you’d still believe that.

Because there is absolutely nothing whatever to tell you that one of the most crucial moments in English history took place here at the town of Tinchebray.

While you admore some of the beautiful buildings and scenery here, let me tell you a little story.

And for this, you’ll have to turn your clock back 950 years.

William the Conqueror was Duke of Normandy prior to becoming King of England in 1066. And when he was King of England, he still retained his title to the Duchy of Normandy.

This was only a temporary solution. He had three surviving sons and on his death, he bequeathed his Normandy lands to his eldest son Robert Curthose.

His Kingdom in England was bequeathed to his second son, William Rufus, or William II. His youngest son Henry Beauclerc was given a suM of money.

William Rufus died childless (and regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall thatwe once visited the scene of his death) and Robert being the oldest son expected to add the Crown of England to his titles.

Unfortunately Henry beat him to it and had himself crowned as Henry I, much to Robert’s dismay.

He gathered up a small army and invaded England, but the population refused to rise up to support him and he was obliged to return to Normandy.

There were continual intrigues as each brother tried to undermine the other, and there had been several skirmishes in Normandy between Robert’s supporters and Henry’s supporters.

Henry had already led an army there in a campaign that had ended indecisively, but in the summer of 1106 he was back again.

Late September saw him besieging the Castle here at Tinchebray.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no trace of the castle today. All that I know is that one contemporary report of the battle desribes the castle as “on a hill above the town”.

So if I were having to have a wild guess as to where “a hill above the town” might be, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, that is the most likely-looking “hill above the town”, over there.

Robert led an army down from Falaise to try to break the siege, and the armies clashed on some flat land at the foot of the castle.

The site was constrained, and so the knights had to dismount and fight on foot, and if my guess is right as to the site of the castle, then the only constrained flat land at the foot would be that field there.

The result was a tragedy for Robert.

In less than an hour, his army was smashed and he was taken prisoner. He lived for the rest of his life, all 30 or so years of it, in captivity.

Normandy was united with the English crown and remained so until 1204.

And you won’t find a word of this anywhere in the town.

During the Royal Progress of Saint Louis, King Louis IX in April and May 1256 to consolidate his Kingdom, he is said by the Chronicler Eudes Rigaud, the Archbishiop of Rouen, to have visited the town.

This didn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere either, as far as I could see.

But here’s something exciting.

When was the last time that you saw one of these?

I saw one in Leuven once but you won’t have seen on in the UK for a while because only 15,000 were ever sold there and the last time that I checked, there were only about 700 still on the road.

It’s the Ford Probe of course, a badge-engineered Mazda that was intended to be the replacement for the Mustang and the Capri. But honestly, who would want to be seen in one of these?

That was the general Public’s response and the car bombed spectacularly. It was on sale for just three years – 1989-1992, and whereas the Capri was always in the Top 10 in the UK? this one was well stuck in the bottom 10.

Finding one on the roads today is something of a rarity.

So now I’m in a flea-pit in Alençon. When I’ve finished kicking out the bed bugs from between the sheets I’ll be hopping in.

I’m carrying on along the road tomorrow – I hope.

But I’ll just mention my tea, which was supposed to be chips with a tortilla wrap with nothing in it but vegetables.

And so the guy behind the counter thought it was funny to fill it with meat. He wasn’t laughing when I finished telling him what I thought of him.

It’s amazing how much French I know when I want to be offensive. Working for 15 years with a bunch of French-speaking chauffeurs did come in quite handy.

Thursday 21st June 2018 – I WAS WRONG …

… about doing a few bits and pieces and then having an early night last night.

Yes, its a real puzzle. That’s a couple of times that I’ve been so wrong just recently and that’s not like me at all. But then no-one can predict what is going to happen when it comes to dealing with the Worst Bank In The World.

There was an e-mail sent to me from them about this payment.
“In order to action your request we need to speak to you … please get in touch on ******** by 17:00 (UK time) on 21/06/2018…If no reply is received by the date and time quoted, your payment request will be cancelled.”

It’s timed at 18:30 which, coincidentally, is the time that their International Branch closes. But it arrived in my mailbox at just about 22:00.

So the bank that refused TWICE to speak to me about this transfer now wants to speak to me about this transfer.

The mail also read “We have been unable to contact you on the telephone numbers we currently have recorded on our system” which is hardly a surprise seeing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the bank entered my phone number incorrectly in its database.

But nobody speaks to me like this, least of all anyone who has so much of my money as they do. And so I hit the customer services department’s all-night line.

A 25-minute wait was not guaranteed to improve my humour at that time of the night and when I finally did speak to someone, the help that he gave me was “call back in the morning”. So he had an earful too.

After a great deal of discussion and much insistence on my part, I was eventually put through to the all-night complaints line. The girl there refused to listen to my complaint and after the discussion became rather heated, she hung up the phone on me.

And so I spent the next half-an-hour tracking down the on-line complaints department.

And do you want to see what you get when you click on the link to the on-line complaints service? It’s a real Third-World Bank isn’t it?

But I’m nothing if not persistent and I eventually tracked down a method by which I can make a formal complaint. And now they have had a 3,000-word formal complaint from me about all of this.

It also goes without saying that I didn’t call them back today either. I’ll call them tomorrow and if they don’t make the payment I’ll be closing all of my accounts. A man can only take so much garbage from the Worst Bank In The World.

The result of this was that I was completely stressed out after a couple of hours of extremely heated argument. In the old days I would have gone for a run – guaranteed to calm me down. But I can’t run these days, so I ended up having the worst night for quite some considerable time. None of my relaxation techniques seemed to worK

So much for trying to lead a stress-free existence these days.

Despite everything, I did manage to crawl out of the bed at an early hour, and following a shower and breakfast, Caliburn and I hit the road.

We called at Roncey to pick up Liz and then we went off to IKEA.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year ago I bought the first instalment of furniture for this place, and I needed a second load.

However I’ve not managed to make it there in Caliburn, and as Liz wanted to go to purchase some bunk beds for her grandchildren who will be arriving shortly (much to Strawberry Moose‘s delight as they are amongst his most devoted fans). So today was the day.

We had a lap around buying the small stuff and making a list of the big furniture. Then we went for lunch, and I lost the list, so we had to go around again.

And having made a second list, we could buy up the stuff that we needed and load up Caliburn.

All in all, it took much longer than it otherwise might have done because there were plenty of coffee stops as we went around. It’s hard work looking for furniture, and even harder work hauling it about.

Back at Liz’s we unloaded her purchases and she made a baked potato, salad and beans for tea which was very nice. Saved me a job.

Caliburn and I returned home to find that there was a music evening in the town and all of the roads were closed. It took some negotiating to find our way back here.

Interestingly, despite the dreadful night and the exertions of today, I’ve not crashed out at all. Bizarre, that. maybe it’s because I’ve been keeping busy today and the adrenalin levels have been high. Perhaps I ought to argue with more people more often?

But not tonight. I really am going to try for an early night.

Tomorrow is another day as we all know.

I wonder which b@$t@rd$ are going to come along and spoil it.

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

Wednesday 13th June 2018 – WHAT A MISERABLE …

… day this was.

Mind you, I think that I laid the foundations for it by not going to bed until 01:25 and that’s no good. I was so engrossed in the page that I was working on that I hardly noticed the time. But at least it’s all on line now, all [gulp] 4651 words of it, a new world record and by a country mile too, and you can read it at your leisure.

And at 4651 words, you’ll need a lot of leisure.

So it’s no surprise that leaving my bed this morning was rather difficult and it was a long hard crawl into the living room. And crawl too. I’d had a bad attack of cramp during the night and I could still feel it – in fact I felt it for all of the day.

Once I’d breakfasted and organised myself, I went out to attack Caliburn – or more correctly, the untidy mess that is within him. He’s been emptied out, given a good brushing out, vacuuming and a wash of his dashboard.

Not only that, he now has his new seat covers fitted, although they are too small and I’m not sure how that can be, seeing as they are described as “Universal”.

And I found the missing spring clip. It had sprung into the tool box. So now the window winder winds properly.

You have no idea of the amount of stuff that went into the bin. And all of the stuff that was in Caliburn that really needs bringing in here.

By the time that I had finished, no-one was more surprised that me to see that it was 13:30. I’d spent a short while chatting to a neighbour and another short while giving Gribouille a stroke, but not that much. So I came in, made my butties and then went to sit on the wall in the sun because it was beautiful.

The lizard was there waiting for me and he even climbed up my leg to try to reach the pear before I had finished it. He’s getting to be very friendly now.

Back here I made myself a coffee and sat down for a moment. Next thing that I knew, it was 16:30. I’d been totally out of it for over two hours and hardly felt a thing. That filled me with dismay.

It took me ages to come round too. I’ve been noticing that not only am I crashing out for longer and longer, it’s becoming more and more difficult to shake myself out of it.

As a result of my indisposition my walk this afternoon was very late.

But I’m glad that I made it outside because the weather was really delicious. Even nicer than it had been at lunchtime. The sun was penetratingly warm, truly the First Day of Summer.

The crowds were out sunbathing on the beach for the first time this year after the long, wet and windy winter that we have had and I can’t say that I blamed them either

There were crowds of people splashing around in the water too. But sooner them than me. It wasn”t that warm – or, at least, warm enough to tempt me.

But you’ll notice the diving platform here. You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of a couple of people swimming around in the sea by the diving platform and it was almost submerged by the tide.

This gives you some idea of just how much of a tide we have here in Granville. And it goes out much further than this too.

Once I’d returned for my walk I had to phone up the UK to pay for my clothing order. It’ll be here within a week they reckon, ceteris paribus. But as for the order from BUT and LeClerc, not a sign anywhere. And I noticed that prices are starting to rise slowly but surely over there.

There was a meeting of the inhabitants of the old town this evening, chaired by the mayor of Granville so I went along to see what was happening.

I learnt a few things about the future projects but most of the time was spent listening to certain people airing their petty grievances which was a waste of time. And not the kind of stuff that needs to be discussed in a public meeting anyway.

But one exciting scheme was a project concerning the refection old railway lines down on the quayside. Could it be that they are going to actually do something about reopening the lines?

It would be exciting if they did, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer and now I really AM going to have an early night. I can’t last the pace these days.

But at least Caliburn is sorted and ready for the road.

Saturday 9th June 2018 – THIS IS TURNING INTO A DISASTER

And I’m not quite sure about where to start either.

I could, I suppose, make a start by telling you all about last night’s nocturnal ramble. And that was such a confused, jumbled, rambling voyage too and I’ve probably forgotten most of it.

But I do remember leading a party of other motorists to Granville but it was nothing like the Granville as we know it, and the road to there was even more different. Doing it in the semi-dark was another thing too, especially as there were no signposts. However I had been there once before and I could remember the way – at least everything looked familiar like the roundabout near the yacht harbour where we had to turn left. At a certain moment we left the main road and were driving along a farm track where there was suddenly a terrific drop. I remembered a drop, but nothing as terrific as this one but it had to be here because there was no other way that resembled this. Everyone else looked in a panic but I pressed on down the slope and it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.
At some other time during the night I ended up in Bill Badger, my old BMC half-ton van from the 1970s. I’d put it back on the road after more than 20 years and it was running fine. I’d done some work on the engine too and that had me thinking about “why don’t I find a BMC 1622 diesel engine and fit that in the vehicle?”
From there I drifted into YLO, my first Cortina mkIV and I was going round to visit some sportsman. Much to my surprise he was living in very modest circumstances, the only sign of affluence being a small sailing boat in his garden that he was restoring. There was a notice on the gate to the effect that “no matter what, the boat isn’t for sale so don’t waste my time and yours enquiring”. He explained to me that his wife had just given birth and people always though that when you were there with new family commitments that took up much of your time, your hobbies would be the first to go, and go quickly and cheap too. I sympathised, explaining that I had a Transit van and another vehicle up on ramps in my garden right now.
Somewhere in all of this my mother put in an appearance. I’m not sure why. She was being assailed by a couple of women and even though I had no time for her at all, I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for what she was suffering.

So there I was, at 05:20 sitting on the edge of the bed typing out all of this before I forgot it, despite the fact that with a long and exhausting day ahead of me, I needed all the sleep that I could get.

So an early breakfast etc, and organising myself, packing and the like. Ant at 08:30 I was at the supermarket buying a bottle of drink and a baguette.

Having made my butties I went off to hand in my keys and book the room for my next session, giving a big stroke to the cat on my way past.

It was here that today all started to go wrong, if you don’t consider awakening at 05:20 to be wrong.

My next visit here coincides with the big Werchter Rock festival in mid-Belgium, so there is no room at the inn. Not at any other inn in the region so I have been told. And I can’t change my appointment at Castle Anthrax because it fits in nicely with my other arrangements. And I can’t book a hotel in Brussels because I’m in Caliburn and there’s nowhere reasonable to leave him.

But there’s always a Plan B. It’s been years since I’ve been to Liège and I hardly know the city so I might book a hotel there and that will give me an opportunity to go for a wander around the city. I might even at last get to visit Welkenraedt – something that I’ve been trying to do for 45 years since I first saw it as a train destination at Oostende in the early 70s

Not only that, it’s easy to escape from too – avoids the necessity to struggle through the traffic on the edge of Brussels. There’s a motorway that goes from there to France via Charleroi instead.

But it’s still annoying.

At the station I didn’t have to wait too long for a train. It was another Oostende train and so it was heaving with holidaymakers. I ended up being crammed into a corner with about 20 young German kids, several crates of beer and a music centre playing “oompah” music.

That was certainly not what I wanted at that time of the morning, but at least I had a seat. So I can’t complain too much. Especially as one of the boys actually offered me a beer (which I of course declined).

At the Gare du Midi I didn’t have to wait too long for the TGV to be called and to my surprise it was already in the station so we could take our seats and settle down in comfort.

But that was to no avail because the train didn’t move. After a while we were told to dismount. We were apparently having a “technical problem”. They called for a new trainset and they coupled that up to the next TGV so we were half an hour late leaving Bruxelles-Midi.

I went in search of the train manager and made a fuss about my connection to Granville. We had a lengthy discussion and in the end she endorsed my ticket to Granville to the effect that I would miss my train due to their fault and not mine.

We pulled into Gare du Nord 35 minutes late, not 30 minutes late – and that extra 5 minutes proved to be crucial as we shall see.

There’s an RER “express” that does part of the route of Metro Line 4 missing out several stations, so I gambled on that as far as Les Halles. It was indeed much quicker but whatever time I saved was lost by having a long walk between platforms so it wasn’t any quicker really. But I have timed the journey in the past going on Line 5 and then Line 4 and I know full well that I didn’t have enough time today so it was a gamble to nothing.

At Montparnasse I rushed as quickly as I could but it’s a long way, and I reached my platform just in time to see my train departing. For the first time since 1992 I wished that I was back in the UK where the trains run when they feel like it and only pretend that there’s a timetable.

This meant a trip all the way back to the ticket office. It’s possible to travel to Granville on the TGV to Rennes and then the Caen and Cherbourg train from there, alighting at Folligny where there’s a bus that connects with the train. But that goes at 14:14 and by the time I’d walked all the way back to the ticket office and queued to see a counter clerk, that train had long-gone.

The clerk wasn’t all that helpful and I was in no mood for her light-hearted attempts at laughter. She refused to consider finding me an alternative route (far too much effort of course) and so there was no alternative but to wait three hours for the next train.

Another marathon walk back to my platform where I ate my butties and read my book. And listened to the desperate news that “the train arriving from Granville” … which will be the one that will be taking me back … “has been delayed by 40 minutes due to a signal failure”.

But to give them their due, as soon as it arrived and the passengers alighted and the crew had checked it for lost property, we were immediately waved on board. They hadn’t had time to clean it so it was something of a mess, but I didn’t want to wait around for another half an hour. 10 minutes late was quite enough.

During the whole route back I was in something of a daze. That 05:20 start had done me no favours whatsoever and the marathon dash and consequent stress had made things even worse. I wasn’t in much of a state to pay much attention to what was going on.

To make things worse, in view of everything that had happened today I was going to treat myself to a bus back home. But the last bus goes at 20:00 and we arrived back at 20:10 so that was that i had to walk.

And to make things even worse, the only bakery open in the town at that time of night had sold out of bread and buns for tomorrow.

It was a very long drag up the hill and I was stopped by a couple of tourists who needed directions.

So back here after all of that and I’m not up to much at all. I couldn’t even face making any tea. I’m going to go to bed and sleep until I awake. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Monday 4th June 2018 – I’M NOT SURPRISED …

… that there are people complaining that there’s a recession going on.

Here I am, with a pile of money burning a hole in my pocket (well, I’m not, but you’ll see where we are going with this) and no-one wants to take it off me.

At least, at Brico Cash this afternoon, they had done my quote for this kitchen. But it’s not all that cheaper than IKEA – not when you consider the difference in quality.

But I wasn’t going to leave it at that. Next stop was the LeClerc DIY place, that was having a promotion on kitchens. And despite all of this money (there isn’t going to be much change from €2000 to buy what I want, if the landlord agrees to pay it) that I’m planning to commit (on my landlord’s behalf) it took over 20 minutes for someone to come to see me.

And then we had the usual salesman’s performance.
“Which worktop do you want?” – “I told you, the cheapest”.
“And which handles do you want?” – “I told you, the cheapest”.
“And which tap do you want?” – “I told you, the cheapest”.
And so we went on and on. And then he showed me two sinks to chose from. One was €98:00 and the other one was €105.
“What’s up with the one at €57:00?” – “Ohh – do you want that?”

So you can see that when I finally receive the estimate in my mailbox I won’t be going there. Someone who doesn’t understand the meaning of “le moins cher”.

But the icing on the cake has to be at BUT. They too are having a kitchen promotion so I went there. I had to wait 15 minutes while the salesgirl was dealing with a customer (but that’s not a problem) and then we got down to business.

“We only do this by appointment”
“OK, so let’s make an appointment”
“I’m going on holiday for Friday night so it won’t be for three weeks”
“So isn’t there anyone else?”
“Yes, my colleague, but she’s on holiday this week. You need to call her and book an appointment for when she comes back”
“Can’t you do that now?”
“I don’t have her diary, but I know she’s booked up when she comes back”
“So why don’t I give you the dimensions and you can do it at your leisure, and I’ll pick it up at the beginning of next week?”
“We don’t work like that. We need the customer face-to-face”.

So that’s another company that won’t be having my business either. It’s what the French called Je m’enfoutisme – or “I can’t be bothered”. And then the companies don’t have clients, and then they close down complaining that no-one is spending any money. Well, people have the money, and they will spend it, but the companies can’t be bothered to engage competent staff – and enough of it either – to deal correctly with the customers.

And I mean that too. During both of these discussions today, the phones of the salespeople were ringing constantly, they were dealing with other enquiries too and on occasion getting up and going down the aisles to look for things.

It’s a total lack of politeness, a total lack of courtesy and a total lack of respect for the customer. One thing about IKEA is that when you get your hands on a salesman, he’s yours for the duration and there are no interruptions. Even in Belgium too, and regular readers of this rubbish from many of its previous incarnations will recall the exciting encounters that we’ve had with Belgian customer service!

And the guy in Brico Cash, at least he was honest about what he could do and when he could do it, and he kept his word too.

While we’re on the subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … you’ll recall that I sent two mails to two different camera companies about camera lenses. That was about a week ago, and how many replies do you think that I have received?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall mailshots that I have sent out in the past about solar panels, wind turbines, camper backs for pickups – a thousand other things too – and they all have in common that 99% of the recipients never bother to reply.

And that, dear reader, is why you have a recession. The companies can’t be bothered. A bunch of je m’enfoutistes.

So abandoning yet another good rant for a while, I had a real struggle to leave the stinking pit today. It’s not as if I was all that late going to bed but there you are.

And after breakfast, I actually crashed out for 20 minutes or so. What a way to start the day.

I was going to make a start on tidying Caliburn, but one look out of the window told me not to bother. It was raining. Instead, I attacked the blog and I’ve dealt with the entries going back to late April adding photos that I missed. If you’ve missed them too, you need to go back and look.

Not only that, I tidied up the shelf unit in the kitchen, rearranged things better and now there’s much more space on there, which is just as well because it was getting quite out of hand.

Lunch was indoors today – no sense in going out to eat my butties in the rain. But when I went outside to do the rounds of the kitchen shops the rain had stopped.

Back here I went for my afternoon walk. It was school chucking-out time again and once more we have another fine example of pathetic parking.

Never mind the two cars in the background blocking the pavement, how about this guy? Not only parked on the kerb, right by a road junction, he’s parked across a pedestrian crossing too. You wouldn’t believe it.

But I did note his registration number. It began with DK. Can you think of which two letters are missing from in between?

Back here, I had another crash out and then some more blog-editing. I’m not back at 23rd April and my trip to North Africa now.

Another session on the guitar later on, and then tea. There was some of my vegan stuffing mix left over from last week and a green pepper from the weekend so I had stuffed pepper with spicy rice. Delicious it was too.

But while I was editing the blog I came across the Bombay Potato that I made myself the other week and it got my mouth watering again. So tomorrow night, in the absence of anything else, I might go for that for tea.

We had the usual walk around the walls tonight and I noticed that there’s a new craft gallery opened in the Medieval town.

It’s called “L’Envolée” which, I suppose, is supposed to mean “flight”, and it’s presumably named to describe the actions of the potential customers when they notice the prices of the objects on sale, because I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything so absurd in my life.

Small rocks painted to look like sheep, on sale for as much as €60:00. That kind of thing. One thing is for sure, and that is that you won’t catch me spending my money in there.

So now I’m going to have to gather my strength. I have a voyage ahead of me on Wednesday morning.

And remember me saying that Caliburn and I might be off on a voyage very soon? A discussion this afternoon may well mean that I’ll be going on a voyage a long time before then.

Saturday 2nd June 2018 – I HAD A REALLY NICE …

… evening out this evening.

I’ve never been to a US Granville away game and in fact I’ve never been farther than Cérences or Gavray to watch a football match since I’ve been in Normandy. But it’s the last weekend of the season and there were no Saturday evening matches in the vicinity.

However, I noticed that US Granville’s 3rd XI was away at La Barre de Semilly in the suburbs of St Lô about 60 kms away from here, it was a lovely evening, and as Caliburn and I are off out on an adventure sometime soon maybe, a good run-out would do the both of us some good.

So fighting our way through the grockles driving along at 10 kph admiring the seagulls and having to make a stop for fuel (the first since February, would you believe?) we hit the open road and Caliburn had a really good run out all the way to the match.

And through a rainstorm too for about 10 minutes. That was a surprise.

As for the game itself, Granville – in black – lost 1-0 to a penalty that … errr … excited a considerable amount of animation. Beautiful ball through the defence, forward racing on to it, keeper ditto, forward beats the keeper to the ball by about half a millimetre and instead of saving the ball, the keeper saves the attacker.

Keeper upset about the penalty (although he shouldn’t have been, because it was a penalty) and the US Semilly-St André bench upset about the lack of card being brandished (but they shouldn’t have been because there was clearly no intent to commit a foul).

After that, the match became … errr … somewhat heated and wasn’t far off boiling point until the final whistle. At one point the Granville trainer hurled a load of what one newspaper reporter described 120 years ago as “language lower than Billingsgate” at an opposition player, much to the derision of the home supporters.

But having had a mug of coffee specially made for me, who am I to complain? US Semilly-St Andre are 5th in the table and US Granville are 8th. 1-0 would have been a fair reflection of the score under normal circumstances, and particularly this evening when the Granville attack was, I’m afraid to say, utterly clueless. I don’t recall the Semilly-St André keeper having a single shot to save whereas the Granville keeper was kept quite busy (although he too really only looked in difficulty on two or three occasions).

And I don’t recall seeing a team caught offside on so many occasions during a match as the Granville side was either.

Now just a word about the Man in the Middle.

Anyone who saw the team sheet that the Federation Francaise de Football published will have seen that the referee for this match should have been a certain Rene Lechevallier but quite clearly he didn’t turn up.

In his place we had Arthur Lowe, the legendary Captain “They Don’t Like It Up ‘Em Sir’ Mainwaring of “Dad’s Army” fame refereeing the match

So now you know what happened to him, don’t you?

So we had a really quick drive home after the match. It’s been a long time since Caliburn has had a good run out like that and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

That wasn’t the only football that I saw today either. A message appeared in my mailbox (probably a generic one I reckon – I mustn’t flatter myself unduly … "quite!" – ed …) that one of Granville’s female teams was playing against FC Rouen’s female teams in their division’s playoff finals. Rouen were said to be bringing a bus-load of supporters so could we all go along to cheer.

It was a beautiful afternoon to go out for a good walk so I made an icy flask and some butties and set off for an unexpected afternoon out.

There was a big crowd too – probably 120 people watching the game. And having not seen a female football game (except that one in the USA in 2015) and so I didn’t know what to expect. But it was certainly much better than I reckoned that it was going to be, although the number of foul throws was astonishing.

I was quite impressed with Rouen’s n°3 – a girl called Zoe apparently – and she was quite a good footballer too. I would have gladly massaged her clavicles to warm her up for the game had I been there any earlier.

But the best player on the field, and by a country mile too, was Rouen’s centre-forward called Afssia. Big, awkward, and quite a handful for any defence, and with a surprising amount of skill too, she made all of the difference. She hit the woodwork, had a goal disallowed, forced the Granville keeper into a brilliant one-handed save, and scored the only goal of the game. She was a league apart from the other players on the field.

At first I thought that Rouen would run away with the game because they looked menacing right from the kickoff and Granville looked a good couple of yards off the pace. But after 25 minutes the Granville trainer changed the team formation around and brought on a girl called Magdalena to play behind what was a very lightweight front two. That made a world of difference and Granville looked much more threatening from then on.

In fact, when Afssia ran out of steam near the end and was stuck in midfield (to be fair, she’d been on the receiving end of a very heavy challenge late in the game) the run of the game changed dramatically. Granville were surging forward in streams for the final five minutes and had they had someone who could have produced just a single moment of magic, they could have done something here.

1-0 was about the right score, I reckoned, but after watching the first five minutes I had been anticipating a cricket score by the final whistle. And after all said and done, I quite enjoyed the game. It was certainly different.

We saw the other day that the Council was out beautifying the town ready for the summer season which starts to get into swing this season.

They put up the bunting, but I’m not quite sure what is the purpose of all of these wind decorations that seem to be dotted all over the place.

They are certainly quite interesting, but I’m not sure that the Council’s thinking that this sort of thing will bring the millions of masses out of Paris to see them tells us more about the mentality of the Council or more about the mentality of the Parisiens

Apart from the girls’ football match and the pretty decorations, what else was different about today was the fact that I was actually out of bed before either of the alarms went off. I had been in bed fairly early (for me anyway) and for some reason I ended up being wide awake at 06:10. No sense in lying in bed.

First task after breakfast was to copy all of the dashcam videos onto the laptop and free up the SD cards. And after that, I connected up one of the external drives now that I can access it, and did a mega-back-up of all of the images on the laptop. While that was going on, I had a shower and a clean-up.

Then it was off to the shops.

LIDL came up with nothing special but I did buy some loose sugar and some flour. After all, I have a cunning plan. NOZ was next, and again, it was just the usual stuff, but also a pile of DvDs because they were having another mammoth sale of surplus stock. That’s piles of DvDs that I have acquired just recently. One day I might sit down and watch some of them.

The Foirfouille was practically cleaned out. Anything really exciting had long-gone. But I did finally find something in which to keep my oil and vinegar and I’m pleased about that. And they had a set of front seat covers to fit a van too, with the one single and one double seat. Seeing as they were reduced to just 30% of the normal price and that it was Caliburn’s birthday, I treated him to a set.

At Leclerc there was nothing exciting either, alhough I did buy some pizza flour. I have a cunning plan for that too.

Back here, I crashed out for a while before heading off to the football. And for some reason which I don’t understand because I have been feeling a little more like my old self just recently, it was a long hard slog up the hill this afternoon.

So now I’m back and I’m off to bed for my Saturday night lie-in. A Day of Rest tomorrow

Friday 1st June 2018 – IT REALLY WAS …

… nice this evening while I was out for my walk.

The air was clear, the tide was high, there were scores of people wandering round on the promenade way below the medieval walls of the old town – exactly the right conditions to take a few really good photographs.

And so I would have done too, had Bane of Britain remembered to put his memory card in his camera before setting out.

It’s the kind of thing that only I can do, isn’t it?

We had another late night last night, and another disturbed sleep. there’s clearly something going on right now, or else it’s my guilty conscience telling me things that I don’t really want to know.

And so it was with an enormous effort that I crawled out of the stinking pit this morning, rather later than I had intended.

After breakfast there were a few photos that needed attention (hence the removal of the memory card from the camera) and then Caliburn and I hit the streets.

First stop was a shop out on the edge of town. For reasons known only to a certain courier firm, they have chosen this inaccessible location for their parcel drop-off point for the town. And seeing as I had an eBay purchase (nothing at all exciting) to pick up, off I had to go.

Second port of call was Brico Cash in St Pair. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I hate this kitchen in here and I want to upgrade it. I went to IKEA in Zaventem the other week for an estimate, but I know for a fact that the landlord won’t pay their prices. But a flyer through the door on Monday told me that Brico Cash was having a kitchen sale.

I showed the IKEA estimate to the guy there and he burst out laughing. Yes, he can certainly beat their prices. It won’t be as good as IKEA’s of course, and won’t last as long. But then again, neither will I so it doesn’t make any difference. I have to go back on Monday to pick up the estimate.

And I’m glad that I went there too. I have computer stuff scattered about all over the place here with nowhere to put it. I bitterly regret not buying a nice little trolley that I saw in IKEA last year, but here today they had an even nice trolley complete with little drawer for just €27:95. So that’s now assembled and nicely stacked out with stuff.

There’s a big Casino supermarket down the road from there, so I went in for my carrots and a (very disreputable) baguette. So I remembered the carrots, but forgot just about everything else that I intended to buy while I was there.

Lunch on the wall in the cool weather eating this miserable baguette and then back here to sort out a few things and make an urgent phone call. However, I fell victim to a little urge to … errr … relax, and missed my time slot. That’s upset me considerably.

Hordes of people swarming around outside this afternoon including a couple of school parties so it was rather difficult to move around. But I managed a coffee later, a chat on the internet with someone and the usual session on the guitar. And it seems that half an hour a day is no longer sufficient and I’m not reaching the end of the stuff that I need to practise. But that’s a good sign isn’t it?

Having bought some carrots, I could make a decent tea tonight. Stuffed pepper with spicy rice followed by strawberries. Totally delicious.

The we had the walk, and I foolishly directed some grockles to the wrong address. I bet that they will love me for that.

So shopping tomorrow, and I shall be going to an additional shop too (if I remember) – la Foirfouille, one of these cheap shops that are all over the place. It’s closing down soon and they are having a sale so I shall go for a prowl.

Will make a pleasant change, won’t it?

Thursday 31st May 2018 – I HATE PEOPLE …

… who have no sense of humour.

What can possibly be wrong with, when you have a piece of paper that needs a signature, going up to a counter clerk in the Post Office and saying “hey, put your cross on this”? No reason for anyone to pull a face or get upset is there?

At least the guys who were digging the trench for the new fibre-optic cable (yes, they are moving on quite rapidly now) can still have a laugh and a smile.

Especially when Yours Truly goes up to them and says “don’t fill in that trench until I’ve brought the wife down, will you?”

Not of course that I have a wife around here these days, and even if she were around here, she would know better than to let me lead her anywhere near an open trench where there were people on the point of filling it in.

But that’s not the point, is it?

It was another bizarre night last night. In bed comparatively early but for some reason I awoke slap bang in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep again for ages. Mind you, when I did, I had a real struggle to leave the stinking pit.

After breakfast we had a shower and a shave and then I set the washing machine going. Even washed the bedding so that I can have a nice clean bed tonight (and I’ve just remembered that I’ve forgotten to fit the clean bedding) for a change.

And then it was off up town, calling at the railway station on the way for my tickets for next week.

talking of roadworks … "well, one of us was" – ed … the roadworks in the Avenue des Vendéens near LIDL are continuing apace.

They are now working on both sides of the road – digging a trench on the northern side (and I don’t know what they are putting in it that they couldn’t have put in the trench on the southern side when they were digging that a couple of months ago) as well as reorganising the kerbstones on the southern side.

They look as if they are going to be there for ever.

That wasn’t all of the excitement in the town either.

Here we have one of Renault’s answer to the CA Bedford and the Ford Thames – Renault Estafette. 20 or 30 years ago you wouldn’t have been able to move around France without stumbling over one of these. The police used them by the thousands back in the 70s.

Over half a million were built between 1960 and 1980, but I bet that you won’t find half a dozen on the roads in everyday use today.

I didn’t buy anything exciting in LIDL today except a magnetic tray for holding screws and bolts. I don’t have one of these here and I was bewailing the fact the other day that I don’t have a magnet to sift through the rubbish in Caliburn to find this missing spring clip.

Another thing that I didn’t buy today was some carrots. I have run out and that’s bad news.

And I was rather upset to say the least when I returned here. Nikon has finally sent me the prepaid return envelope for me to send off my lens for the little camera. As regular readers of this rubbish might recall, it slowly slid into oblivion and when I complained to them, they advised me that it was a well-known fault and they would repair it for free.

But had then sent the label earlier, I could have dropped it off while I was on my way to LIDL.

After lunch I packed the lens (I still had the original box) and wrapped it carefully, and then went back into town to the Post Office, where I had my “interaction” that I mentioned earlier.

And badger me if I didn’t forget the carrots AGAIN!

Back here, trying my best not to succumb to a wave of fatigue I sorted out the paperwork that I needed to change the address for my insurance. That took about half an hour – 5 minutes to scan a copy of my bank account details, and the remaining 25 minutes to try to find where my scanner had put it on the laptop.

Next step was to contact my clothing suppliers to see if they still have my logo on their records. I need to order some new clothing as the stuff that I have here is looking rather tired.

Finally, I had a search of a couple of web sites to see about a lens for the Nikon D5000. But these web sites are just a mess. I want to find a Nikon AF-S lens – that’s the type that my big camera uses, but neither of the sites that I tried seems to be able to isolate that lens.

In the end I sent them mails to ask what I should be doing.

Having reached 103%of my daily effort I didn’t go for a walk, which was just as well as it started to rain. Instead I had a play on the guitar.

With no carrots, I ended up with baked potatoes, baked beans and the last of the sausages for tea. And strawberries for pudding too. LIDL had some more of the cheap ones in stock today.

The evening wasn’t as nice as it was yesterday which was a shame.

But the tide was high and so there was a lot of activity at the fishing wharf. And there were a couple of strange-shaped trawlers in there unloading.

Here’s one of them setting off back to sea. A long time since I’ve seen a trawler looking like that. Not much room for storage aboard it, so I wonder what they might be catching. And I bet they don’t go far to catch it either.

And not only that, La Grande Ancre was over there in the commercial docks.

She was in and out of here on a very regular basis earlier in the year but I’ve not seen her about for a while. Now she’s back, and she has a tractor strapped to her decks.

Another delivery to the Ile de Chausey I reckon. That was what she was doing here before anyway – running a shuttle to and from the island.

So back here and back into another argument on line. The Football Association of Wales announced a change to the rules in a press release dated 13th November 2017 and invited interested parties to submit their opinions.

In March this year, a definitive arrangement was announced.

And now many people are up in arms about it, saying that they knew nothing about it and objecting. I spent about an hour posting all of the stuff that I have, but no-one seemed to take the slightest notice of it.

I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that British people these days just don’t want to actually do anything – they just want to sit there and complain. THat’s an attitude that really annoys me and is one of the reasons why I emigrated. Many British people have problems. I don’t have problems – I have solutions.

And a big hats-off to Alison whose Belgian nationality papers came through today. So she’s been saved from the stuoidity of Brexit. Well done, Alison.

Saturday 26th May 2018 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… something that I have never ever seen before.

One of US Granville’s attacker bursts into the EC Tessy Moyon Sports box, and goes down under a challenge from a defender. The referee blows hiw whistle and points to the penalty spot.

The match is being played at the Stade Louis Dior despite it being the 3rd XI. I’m in the grandstand, absolutely level with the incident and quite high up, so I have a perfect view. And in mt opinion that was one of the best challenges that I have seen at this level of football.

The Tessy Moyon players are furious, their coach is livid, The US Granville player comes to the touchline and shouts something to his captain. The captain takes the kick – and kicks it to the corner flag.

Apparently the referee was the only person in the whole stadium who thought that that was a penalty. But I’ve never seen a team kick away a penalty before. The Age of Chivalry isn’t dead after all.

It was another struggle to leave the stinking pit this morning, We Went through the usual morning procedure followed by a shower, and then Caliburn and I hit the streets

We went the long way out to the garage, out to near Bréhal and down the by-pass. The idea is to get the engine stinking hot so that it burns more efficiently and shows a better reading on the air meter. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley, as Robert Burns would have us believe. I ended up being stuck behind a load of grockles crawling along the road.

However, none of this caused a problem and at the Controle Technique, not only were we early but we were in and out and finished even before the time of the appointment. Caliburn passed with no problems and there is nothing to worry about as far as his bodywork goes. He’ll be 11 on Tuesday by the way

Sopping today was just Noz and LeClerc. I didn’t feel like going all the way round to LIDL. And it didn’t take me long to buy what I needed (and to buy nothing else) and I was home by 11:30. Maybe I ought to go out this early again.

Having put everything away and having had a coffee, it was lunchtime. Beautiful weather for it too, sitting on the wall watching the shipping, eating my butties, reading my book and chatting to the lizard. He was enjoying the weather too.

Back here, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out yet again for a good hour too. Perhaps this early start wasn’t such a good idea after all. But I was up and about and ready for my trek up town.

Some of the trek involved following a couple of beautiful young maidens. They stopped somewhere along the route and gave a kiss to some boy who was clearly a friend.
“Could I have a kiss too?” I enquired. But the trouble today is that no-one has a sense of humour.

It was a beautiful evening for football and we were lucky enough to be at the Stade Louis Dior for this. It’s not very often that the 3rd XI get to play here.

No-one on the gate at all of course so we could just walk in and go anywhere, so I blagged a seat in the stands where the view is quite good.

US Granville were 8th going into the match and EC Tessy Moyon Sports were 7th, and eo we expected a hard-fought tight match and that’s exactly what we got.

Granville had most of the play but couldn’t convert the chances that they were making. And it seemed that fortune might have been on their side when Tessy Mosson were obliged to replace their goalkeeper with an outfield player after a collision.

But the new keeper was actually quite good – he’d clearly played in goal before and at a reasonable standard too. He was coming out for crosses – and catching them too – and his handling and distribution was quite good too.

But he was eventually beaten by a ball over the top and a Granville player running on for a one-on-one. No-one could complain about the keeper there.

But the real highlight of the evening was the weather.

There had been some rumbling and grumbling in the distance, and then a huge dark cloud started to blow over the ground.

And you can see, if you look closely, the torrential rain that is falling, away over there in the distance. We were going to be in for it.

The rain waited until we were leaving the stadium before it let go. And then we got the lot.

Luckily there was a strong wind blowing so I kept in the lee of the buildings at the side of the road. Had I been in the open, I would have been a drowned rat before I’d gone 50 yards.

But it was quickly over. And we had one of those unusual phenomena of a sharp weather front, where you could see the end of the rainstorm like a curtain as it drew away from me up the street. It’s been a while since I’ve seen something like that.

Back here, I hadn’t completed my 100% daily activity which is a surprise. There’s definitely something wrong with the fitbit.

And so I went for a lap around the block until the 100% came up, and this enabled me to watch the sun sink slowly into the sea, surrounded by flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder something like The Return Of The Demon King.

But I was too tired to do much back here. I even fell asleep talking to someone on the laptop. So in the end I went to bed.

Sunday tomorrow. A day of rest. And I need it too.

Friday 25th May 2018 – AND SO HERE’S …

… the new toy that I bought yesterday. It’s a vitro-ceramic twin-hob cooker, all plugged in and working.

Strictly speaking, you aren’t supposed to plug these in. They should be wired in to a dedicated cooking point, but as you can see, it has possibilities of being either a free-standing unit as well as a fitted unit in a worktop, and seeing as the max power output is 2960 watts, that’s well short of the 16 amps that they use in domestic circuits here.

So its utility as a free-standing plug-in unit is not to be sneezed at.

And I’m glad that I bought it because I’m fed up of only having one burner, which means that I have to shuffle things around when I’m cooking. An added advantage is that you can use any kind of flat-bottomed saucepan on it. So the ones that I stuck in a cupoboard that didn’t work on the induction hob, I can fetch them out again.

I spent an exciting afternoon stripping down, cleaning and reorganising the table that I use for cooking and eating. That’s all clean and tidy … "for the moment" – ed … and it actually looks as if someone is working on it now.

I’m amazed at just how dirty it was, especially when I’d done my best to keep it clean. It’s amazing when you discover when you take the oilcloth off to turn it around.

Just by way of a change, I didn’t crash out this afternoon. But as the Duke of Wellington said about the Battle of Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”

You can either attribute that to the fact that I was keeping quite busy this afternoon and didn’t have time to sit down and relax, or else you can attribute it to the fact that when the alarms went off this morning, I was in no hurry to leave my bed.

In fact, all in all, it was a rather leisurely morning while I sorted out a few things that needed doing. I wasn’t in any rush.

It was quiet at lunchtime. No-one really loitering around on the streets. But a workman had pinched my spec on the wall so I had to sit further down to eat my butties and read my book. And my friend the lizard eventually tracked me down for the pear leavings.

I mentioned the tidying up of the cooking area. And I was hoping to make a start on emptying out Caliburn. After all, there is tons of stuff in there that I no longer need or use, as well as hoping to find the missing spring clip. But I didn’t have time. Looks as if that might be next week’s task.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And then I went for a walk.

The evening walk is usually the one where I go around the footpath at the foot of the walls of the medieval town and it’s a very nice walk.

But not all of the walls are medieval. There have been some later additions to the fortifications and this covered passageway down there that leads out to the part that overlooks the Place Marechal Foch certainly looks much more recent.

The stairway and footbridge over the walls is of course even more recent.

As I walked further on around the walls I noticed something away across the Baie de Mont St Michel in the distance over near Cancale that might have been another ship lurking in the doom and gloom, like the one we saw a few weeks ago.

The benefits of having some good equipment and a decent graphics program is that you can photograph it and manipulate it so that you can have a better view of what there is to see. Hard to believe that that’s about 18 miles away, isn’t it?

And it seems as if I have photographed a fishing boat, an island and part of another island with a church thereupon. And not a ship at all, which is something of a disappointment.

I shall have to go back with a compass and take a bearing so that I can work out exactly where it all might be situated.

An early night tonight too. Caliburn has his controle technique tomorrow morning so both of us need to be on form.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: caliburn

Thursday 28th June 2018 – HAVING BOMBED …

Wednesday 27th June 2018 – WHAT A DREADFUL …

Tuesday 26th June 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

Sunday 24th June 2018 – I’M NOT ANGRY.

Saturday 23rd June 2018 – I’M NOT HERE

Thursday 21st June 2018 – I WAS WRONG …

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

Wednesday 13th June 2018 – WHAT A MISERABLE …

Saturday 9th June 2018 – THIS IS TURNING INTO A DISASTER

Monday 4th June 2018 – I’M NOT SURPRISED …

Saturday 2nd June 2018 – I HAD A REALLY NICE …

Friday 1st June 2018 – IT REALLY WAS …

Thursday 31st May 2018 – I HATE PEOPLE …

Saturday 26th May 2018 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

Friday 25th May 2018 – AND SO HERE’S …

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