Tag Archives: caliburn

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.

Thursday 24th May 2018 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

Yes it did too. Dead to the world for an hour and a half this afternoon, and still a little unsteady on my feet even now.

Something of a late-ish night last night. And dead to the world until the alarm went off. And then it was something of a struggle to leave my stinking pit.

But after the usual morning routine I had a shower and a clean-up and then phoned the garage. Caliburn is ready so I could go to pick him up.

It’s a long walk – almost 6kms to the garage and no point in hanging around, so off I set.

There was quite a bit going on in the town today. There’s a cycle race taking place at weekend so the local council was out putting up all of the bunting and other street decorations ready for the (af)fray.

And I’m glad that I went early because the sun didn’t start to heat up for a while. The first half of the journey was quite pleasant.

Not so the second half once the sun was full out, and I had to stop a few times to get my breath.

First stop was at the motorcycle shop just for a nosy around. There wasn’t anything of interest – not that I expected there might be, but worth a look all the same.

Second port of call was a new Bio shop that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s pretty much like the Amaranthe in Montlucon but with only a quarter of the stock. And as for the vegan selection, well, they needn’t have bothered. That was a waste of time too.

Third port of call was the cheap electric shop that had done the business for me before. And yet again, I didn’t leave empty-handed. Tomorrow, I’ll take a photo of what I bought and you can see it for yourselves. But I never expected to see one of these in a shop like this.

Ironically, last year when I was wandering around on foot with Caliburn’s service last year, I stumbled upon an oven. That’s rather a strange coincidence.

Biggest surprise was at the garage. Caliburn has his controle technique on Saturday morning so he needs a service and a check-over before he goes. And for all of that, the bill came to all of €110. That’s the cheapest service and pre-controle technique that Caliburn would ever have.

All they found wrong was a numberplate light bulb not working and nothing else. I asked them to check the steering and front suspension but they found nothing wrong there.

Seeing as I was up at that end of the town I did my mid-week shopping at Leclerc and then came home for a coffee and a chat on line with Liz. After that, it was outside for my butties.

There was a lot going on there too. Not much in the way of people but they had a guy on a sky jack pressure-washing the building behind me. And every so often the spray would drift over to where I was sitting.

He had to stop every time a car or a pedestrian went past so it took him longer than it might otherwise have done.

Butvery so often the spray would drift over to where I was sitting and it was actually quite pleasant and cooling in the sunshine.

There was also quite a lot of activity going on down below in the port.

The tide was on its way in and so were all the fishing boats. They were queueing up several deep at the wharf by the fish processing plant waiting to unload their catch, with a few more on their way in to the harbour as I watched.

Still, it keeps them out of mischief, I suppose.

Now that Caliburn is organised (or he will be on Saturday morning) I had some plans to make, and I spent a while up to no good and chatting to a couple of friends on line. And then that was that.

I missed my afternoon walk yet again, but I still managed to have the session on the guitar.

Tea was a burger in a bap with a potato and veg done in the microwave with some vegan margarine spread.

And I managed to make it outside for the evening walk, which was just as well because it really was a beautiful night.

Instead of going around the walls I went around the headland instead and there was a beautiful view across the bay towards Jullouville and Carolles although there was a sea mist that was obscuring the far coast itself.

Nevertheless, the colours came out really well in this photo. You would never imagine that it’s almost 21:00.

And so 108% of my daily total today, and it feels more like 1008%. I feel dreadful but I have to keep going. One thing for sure though – I won’t be doing much tomorrow.

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the long walk home at lunchtime. Five and a half kilometres back from where I left Caliburn having his service, in the sun and the heat.

I did it all in one go too, although I did stop for a baguette and also at the place that does iced sorbets – I deserved a treat, I reckon.

But when I returned here, I crashed right out. And for a good while too. A very late lunch therefore, and then I came back – and crashed out yet again. Ruined my day and all of my plans, but that’s just how it’s going to be for the future so I may as well get used to it.

I’d had an early start too – out of bed before the second alarm went off at 06:60, even though I didn’t feel much like it. And then after the usual morning performance I had a good shower and a clean-up. Have to look my best if I’m going out.

First stop was at the second-hand shop where they allowed me to try out the lens that I mentioned, for which I was grateful. I’ll have to examine closely the results and see if there is any difference between the images taken with their lens compared to mine. This will tell me once and for all whether it’s the lens or the camera.

As for the other camera with the useless lens, I’ll have to organise sending that off for examination sometime soon.

Next stop was the car wash where I gave Caliburn his annual bath. And with all of the dirt that fell off him, you wouldn’t think that I’ve only done a mere 1800 kms since last March. There were times, as we all know, when I could do 1800 kms in a weekend, never mind in 15 months or so.

So he’s now at the garage, I walked home and I’ve been pretty useless … "so what’s new?" – ed … for the rest of the day. Even missed my afternoon walk. But I’ve had to get myself into gear because I ended up having two simultaneous conversations on the internet, both of which might involve lengthy journeys on the road and for which a great deal of preparation will be required.

And not only that, I’ve seen a little trip that is tempting me. But for that I’ll have to start selling my body on Boots Corner. It’s a little expensive.

Tea was a frozen curry out of the freezer, and then I managed an evening walk. But I’ll have to go back out again in a minute because I forgot to look at the fitbit when I was out just now. And when I did remember, I was on 97% Being so close, I’ll have to push it over the 100%

And then bed. I’m absolutely whacked, and I have to do it again tomorrow but in reverse when I go to pick up Caliburn.

I’m clearly not as young as I was.

Monday 21st May 2018 – I’VE GOT ONE …

… of these special spray-on cream tin things.

The one that tells you that it “contains the equivalent of 800 ml of fresh soya cream” – but doesn’t tell you that it only contains enougb propellant to eject about a quarter of it. That’s not very good and I’m not impressed.

In theory, I could puncture the can to liberate the contents but knowing my luck, there will be just enough propellant trapped inside to whitewash the whole apartment and everything in it.

Something else with which I’m not impressed is that the alarm went off at 06:20 as usual and again at 06:30 and I was out of bed something like. Only to read later on that morning that one of my friends is off on his annual Pentecost walk. Yes, it’s a flaming Bank Holiday here, isn’t it? Another day when I can lie in bed without feeling a pang of guilt. And I missed it.

And so I had a glass of Dandelion and Burdock instead. A bottle left over from Christmas 18 months ago. High time that I had a little treat.

I was going to say that I had done badger all today, but that’s not quite true. I’ve done a little tidying up of the crockery and cooking stuff. I’ve been looking for some glass mixing bowls for ages and as luck would have it, I found some in NOZ at the weekend so I bought two. Cooker, dishwasher, microwave safe too,, and at €1:99 each.

However, I have nowhere to put them, so I needed to have a sot-out of stuff. Didn’t take me long but it’s definitely working and it’s definitely tidying up. I ought to award myself a medal.

A beautiful afternoon so a long sit on the wall with my butties and my book, watching the heaving multitudes go straggling past.

And not so “straggling” either on some occasions.

The tide was right for the day trippers (or afternoon trippers in this case) to take the Joly France out to the Ile de Chausey – or were they going just for a lap or two around the bay?

But anyway, there was more than enough of them. The boat was pretty full.

And it’s rather ironic really. There was an article in the local paper about “Are there too many tourists going over there?” And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is that if the tourists stopped going over there would be another article in the local papers about the islanders complaining that their economy has collapsed because there aren’t enough tourists going over.

Like many places, the inhabitants would be quite happy for the tourists to stay at home and just post their money over to the island.

That wasn’t all of the excitement either.

There’s another boat – the La Granvillaise – that does tours around the bay too. And that was setting off on a jaunt too. She looks quite an elderly boat too but in fact was built in 1990, albeit as a replica of a fishing boat – the Rose Marie – of 1897 that was a typical fishing boat of the bay at that time – a bisquine.

She has 410 square metres of canvas sail – the largest amount of any boat of her class in France – and so that’s much more like my style of voyaging

And I was there for ages sitting on my wall, totally engrossed in the Hundred Years War.

We British people think of the Hundred Years War as just being Crécy and Agincourt and not much else in between. For the French though, it was almost 120 years of complete and utter terror. In the past I’d been hunting high and low for a book that gives a detailed French perspective on the war and I finally found one a couple of years ago.

It’s certainly a right riveting read and it’s easy now for me to understand why the French hated the English so much after reading the stories of the atrocities that were committed by the English and their allies. “l’Albion Perfide” indeed.

With the weather being so nice, I had my two walks too, even though the place is heaving with people. And for tea tonight I had vegetables with a burger and some delicious gravy. It was really nice too.

So tomorrow I must take Caliburn to the menders for his service. And it’s a loooooooonnnnnnnng walk home from there. I’m not too keen on that idea. I’ll probably be ill for a week afterwards.

Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that when I bought my cheap Chinese smartphone back in January, I couldn’t remember the times that I had set the alarms to awaken me.

Well, I know now, don’t I? It was 06:00 and 06:15 and I’m sure that you can gather how I managed to find it out can’t you?

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit and going through the usual morning routine, and also chatting to Liz who appeared on line before she went to work.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then phoned up to book Caliburn in for his annual service. And it seems that the garage is closed on Mondays too. So I’ll have to phone them back tomorrow now, won’t I?

Once that was out of the way pro tem I had another task to perform. There is another huge pile of photos having accumulated over the last week or two, so I sat down and edited them.

Having done that, I started to work backwards in the blog and add photos that were missed off. I’ve done about a week’s worth so if you missed them, you need to check back and have a look.

Lunch was quite late what with one thing and another (and once you get started you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) and I didn’t eat much. Perhaps that’s a good thing, or else I’m sickening for something yet again.

But I did have a really bad afternoon. Wave after wave of fatigue overwhelmed me and it was all that I could do to tear myself out into the hurricane and go for a walk, not feeling much like it at all.

But I’m glad that I went out because we haven’t featured an old car in these pages for quite some time, and there parked on the car park down by the lighthouse is a old Land Rover.

It’s British of course, and the registration number tells me that it was registered in Lancashire some time during the second half of 1969 and the first half of 1970.

Leaf springs of course, not coil springs, and the headlights in the wings not the grille means that it’s probably a later Series IIA model, and also, of course, it’s a very desirable station wagon.

In my opinion, although I wouldn’t say this at any Land Rover gathering, I consider the IIA Land Rovers to be the best model that they ever produced, especially when fitted with a “two and a quarter” diesel.

Back here, I made a coffee but I never had the chance to drink it. 18:20 when I awoke and the coffee was cold. Hardly surprising – I must have been stark out for a couple of hours.

I’d fallen asleep reading the works of Henry de Bracton, one of the first of the modern judges from the 13th Century. And I carried on reading them during my voyage. And my voyage took me to the coast where the seas were stormy, just like they are now in fact, and most people were leaving the beach. But a couple of boys were doing some slalom stunts in a kayak through the waves, with a girl on the beach pleading with them to come in. “Even …. (she mentioned the name of someone who was clearly important in this sport) has come in now”. But my route took me along the headland and I came to a car park where several people were boarding a bus. Standing next to the bus was TOTGA, a very young TOTGA, dressing herself up in black leather and a crash helmet and sitting astride a silver scooter of the Vespa type. “Did you come on the bike or in a car?” I asked, being aware that she didn’t have the brats with her. “Yes” she replied helpfully. “Yes?” I enquired. “Yes” she answered. “I came here in the car and I’m now going home on the bike”. And even during a nocturnal ramble that sounded most illogical.

This evening I made myself a surprise tea. Someone on the internet was talking about Bombay aloo, and that had my mouth watering. And just as it happens, I had some tinned potatoes left over from my lentil doodah last week.

So I chopped up some onion and garlic, diced a carrot and put them in a casserole dish, added the potatoes, cumin and turmeric, covered it all in oil, stirred it up and put it in the microwave for three minutes.

While that was doing, I started to cook some rice and frozen peas.

Once the stuff in the microwave was finished, I added some water and gravy powder, stirred it all up, and then put it back in the microwave on medium heat for six minutes.

And absolutely beautiful it was too. I’ll have to make some more stuff like this, I really will.

I mentioned “hurricane” a little earlier didn’t I?

It was high tide again later this evening and sure enough, during my little evening walk around the walls, I stood and watched the waves crashing onto the sea wall and the spray going over the top onto the promenade.

The amount of power that there is in the sea during a storm like this is impressive. No wonder people want to harness the energy from it.br clear=”both”>

Another thing that I noticed was that there’s now a huge pile of gravel from the quarry near Avranches accumulated in one of the berths down in the harbour.

It looks as if we might be having a visit some time soon, doesn’t it? And that’s probably just as well because it occurs to me that there’s been no gravel ship been here for quite some considerable time – since the new lock gates in fact

We could do with building up the maritime traffic in the port otherwise my utility as a ship reporting station here will be called into question.

So now it’s bed time. I hope that I’ll feel more like it tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: caliburn

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 …

Thursday 24th May 2018 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

Monday 21st May 2018 – I’VE GOT ONE …

Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring