Tag Archives: high winds

Sunday 29th March 2020 – AND IF YOU …

… were wondering whether today was any better than yesterday, the answer is “I don’t know. I missed half of it”.

And that’s no exaggeration either. It might only … “only, he said” – ed … have been 11:00 when I awoke, but it was 12:05 when I finally heaved myself out of bed this mor … errr … afternoon.

So that was basically the day ruined.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said … “on many occasions” – ed … that everyone should have one day each week when they can do nothing and not be ashamed of the fact, but as far as I’m concerned that was yesterday. I was hoping to be much more focused today.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. And I’d certainly been much more focused during the night, that’s for sure.

Last night I had started off with Laurence and Roxanne when Nerina put in an appearance and wasn’t very happy to see me. It was an evening when I was on my own. The next morning along came Laurence and Roxanne and they had come to see me too. Nerina had turned up by accident by the way. As it happened there was some kind of swimming regatta so we got Roxanne to take part in this. It was like a swimming obstacle race. Of course she leapt in the water and went right round this obstacle race but something happened on the very last section and she had to be lifted out and whatever happened was put right and she had to jump back in. But they wouldn’t let her do the underwater somersault but we were urging her on to go back and do it. In the end she turned round and swam back but they wouldn’t let her do it so she swam away. Laurence went to fetch her. As we were walking back to our little spec of seats and Nerina walked past us with a scowl on her face and said “we met yesterday” and just walked off. Laurence came back and Roxanne was crying, really disappointed and we put her on a shelf. In the end she got off this shelf and went to stand up where we were sitting. These two girls who were using this shelf were having a bit of, well, not a moan but going on about how Roxanne had got their shelf wet but Roxanne said “I was sitting on the one above where there were just things” and not where they were sitting.
Some time later I was doing one of these extraordinary exploration things that come on the TV every now and again about phenomena. There had been a helicopter crash in a small village and it had been one of these normal things but suddenly a white stain had appeared on the parapet of a bridge and people wanted to know what it was. They were all so suspicious about it being the sign of the Gods or something. We went to track it down, a woman and I, and I had a look round and I could see that there was some kind of watercourse where rain water had been flowing out of a field discreety onto the road. This had changed its course since the accident. You could see that there was some discolouring in the earth of this little watarcourse that had made the earth go a lot whiter than the earth of the soil. Se we suspected that the crash had changed this watercourse slightly and it was just a natural phenomenon that the water was now flowing through where it never flowed before and was percolating up some kind of hidden fissure in the bridge. Then we were prowling around a churchyard. Someone else in Cheshire had observed a fire in the sky that went on for weeks in the direction of the Gobi Desert and the Sahara Desert about 150 years before any explorer had actually been there. We were walking around this churchyard and there was someone’s visitor book there and a page had blown off it that was a report about “St Anne’s Day” or a diary page for St Anne’s Day. It had blown onto the floor so I picked it up and put it back on the lectern and put a kind of embossed stone on top to hold it on. The woman with me said something like “we haven’t come here to change things around, have we?” all this kind of thing. I said “no, I’m just putting things back where they had blown from”. She was going on about changing things round and taking things away. Of course we weren’t doing that at all.

Breakfast at 13:15 is a much more reasonable way to go about things on a Sunday, and then I attacked the music.

Another four albums split up and filed without two many problems – just one album where a couple of tracks wouldn’t work and I had to hunt them down elsewhere which took some time.

While they were doing, I was catching up by working on the photos for July 2019. I’m now in Rif setting out on my walk to the Svodufoss waterfall and I remember that walk very well. The waterfall looked as if it was just a couple of fields away and it was too, but no-one said that there was a big river in the way so we had to walk in large figure “Z” shape to reach it. My fitbit at the end of the day showed 12.4 kms and I felt every step of the way.

Another thing that I did was to join up all of the speech files for the Grande Marée broadcast and intersperse the joins with beach ambience soundfiles. As for the speech, I’ve asked Laurent if he will do an introduction and a conclusion and he’ll get back to me. When he replies, I’ll see what he has to say and I’ll do a brief text for the other intervals.

Then of course, there was the hour on the guitar. Mustn’t forget that.

For tea tonight I had something of a bake-in.

With needing the oven for the pizza I’ve been baking desserts in there every Sunday evening and tonight, having remembered the cooking apples yesterday, I made an apple pie.

And with the left-over pastry and left-over apple, I rolled out the pastry and squared it off, added the apple and desiccated coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar, and made an apple turnover.

The pizza was delicious of course, and so was the apple turnover with the soya coconut. I shall be attacking the pie as from tomorrow evening and I have high hopes.

With being distracted by the time and all that, it was very late when I went outside for my exercise.

And my first run was a dismal failure. There was a gale blowing out there that was the equal of some of the best that we have had and trying to walk around in many places was impossible. If you wonder why this image was so blurred, the fact is that I was being blown around in a Force 10 gale at the moment that I pressed the shutter.

Liz had told me earlier that the wind was coming from Greenland and that I ought to complain to Heidinnguaq. Well, I dunno about where it was coming from but I know exactly where it was going and it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

Finding a spot that was out of the wind I managed a run in the end.

And that led me down a new alley that I hadn’t walked before. The rue des Degres. So at least all of this stuff is broadening my horizons.

Back here, I wrote up my journal as I listened to some music. It didn’t take me long because of course there wasn’t much to write.

It’s still late though so I’m heading to bed. It’s a busy week next week because I have two rock music projects to do, an audio diary to write and then to finish off this Grande Marée thing when Laurent lets me have his notes.

No matter what I do, the work still keeps on piling up, doesn’t it?

Saturday 28th March 2020 – WHAT A WASTE …

… of a day this has been.

For some reason or other, I just haven’t been able to get going at all and I don’t know why. Possibly with all of this doom and despondency, I dunno, but I feel rather like the Lady of Shalott (although where I’m going to find the Lady of Shalott at this time of night is anyone’s guess) and “the curse has come upon me”. And if I can’t find the means to snap out of it sometime soon, the curse really will be here and it will be more than the mirror that will crack from side to side.

The day started so well too.

As luck would have it, I did have my early night last night and, even more luckily, I was up before the third alarm too. Well before it in fact.

And that is something of a surprise because when I looked at the dictaphone after my medication and saw the distance that I had travelled during the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time.

Talking about a blast from the past I was studying history last night and in the same class as me was a girl who I haven’t seen for almost 50 years and about whom I haven’t given a passing thought even when I knew her. So what she’s doing coming with me on a nocturnal ramble I really don’t know at all. That’s the kind of thing that can only happen in circumstances like this. But I digress. She was struggling with her lessons so I was going to make a suggestion that the two of us study together and that was I could get to know her rather better (and why I would really want to do that I don’t have any idea either). But something had happened and she had upset a couple of people, a couple of young black guys and they called her out. Feeling that this could turn rather nasty, I followed. I didn’t want her to be in any kind of danger. As for how all of this worked out, I really don’t know because it reached a point where it was so stressful and distressing that I actually forced myself to wake up (I did too, and that’s probably what is the most astonishing thing about the whole affair) rather than sit and witness it. It was so disturbing and I really didn’t know why.
And a bit later on it involved something similar with Steven Stills of all people making an appearance but I awoke again before that too got out of hand
I was with a former friend of mine last night and someone else, and this other person – we were in an old mini. We’d gone into Stoke on Trent and my friend had gone to fetch an Indian meal. We were waiting, we other two, in the mini. The guy with me said “I have to go to the loo – the bathroom” so we set off. My friend was still in the takeaway so I made a gesture to him “5 minutes”. We drove and first of all we came to a petrol station but we couldn’t find anywhere in there. Then there was the abandoned railway station. But that was locked up and we couldn’t even work out which was the station building where the toilet might be. Then I found a hedge that looked suitable that he could go behind but it turned out that there was a housing estate behind it. We were now on somewhere like Chell Heath and all the ground had been disturbed. These were called “arths”, where the frozen ground beneath had melted and bubbled up and pushed up the soil. We were talking about these and all the time this guy was being extremely flippant about all kinds of things and wasn’t taking the slightest bit of notice about wanting to go to the bathroom again even though that’s why we had pulled away and why we had left my friend in this restaurant and that was about an hour ago now and I wasn’t very pleased about that.
Somewhat later again I was at a Crewe Alex football match watching the game. I saw both goalkeepers make some pretty good saves. Strangely enough it was Garratt in goal for Crewe and the stadium was as it was before it was modernised back in the 90s. Someone was talking about this fitness coach – they’d signed a fitness coach from Melbourne and asking if it was a good idea. I made some comment about his age. Crewe had this player playing, n°25 or 26, I dunno. His name was Ralston. I didn’t recognise him at all so I was keen to know how come he had ended up at the club because he wasn’t one of the players whom I would normally see there.
Later yet again, I was with a couple of girls and we were planning on moving somewhere so we were packing. Something about an object that they had – I’m not quite sure what they had to do with this object but it involved that the only way that they could do this was to unpack it from their bag and put it in a separate bag ready to take with them. And that was when the alarm went off, at that moment.

That was some night, that’s for sure.

After breakfast I made a start on hunting down digital sound files. And after I’d done one, I broke off for a shower, a change of clothes and a clean-up.

At LeClerc there weren’t too many cars on the car park but there was a queue around the side of the building. They were just letting 50 people in to start with, then then one in as one came out.

It took me 10 minutes to get in and I wasn’t there for long. There were a few things missing – out of stock – but nothing of any great importance. Just a few different varieties of tinned stuff. Nothing at all like the UK where they say that it looks as if a flock of locusts have descended on the place.

The only thing that inconvenienced me was the lack of pizza rolls – good job I always have one at home. There were none of the cheap pastry rolls either but the next one up is vegan too. And they had some beautiful-looking blackcurrant jam which, I reckon, will make a beautiful blackcurrant pie like my jam pie last week, so I bought a jar.

This week I spent a little more than I usually do and while I haven’t been panic-buying at all, I’ve been making sure that I’m one week ahead of where I normally would be.

Back here I finished off the digital files – another 4 albums have bitten the dust today, and then I edited that sound file for the Grande Marée that I had missed. What was 03:42 of rambling conversation is now 02:40 of hard-hitting action.

After lunch I carried out another task that I’d been putting off – redesigning one of the home pages for one of my browsers. I don’t use “favourites” at all on web browsers – I wrote several web pages with all of my favourite sites on one or more them as clickable links and use each one as a home page for each browser that I use, depending upon the purpose for which I use the browser. One web page was well out-of-date and needed revising.

But it was round about here that I ran aground and ended up doing nothing at all for the rest of the day and that’s a disappointment and no mistake, with so much that needs to be done.

Nevertheless I found some energy to play the guitar for an hour and to make tea. Pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a burger, followed by the last of the jam pie with vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce. I’m sorry to see the last of that pie because it was delicious.

The evening walk was a shambles tonight.

There’s nowhere for me to go really and the high winds disrupted my running. At one point a huge gust of wind stopped me dead in my tracks. When I stopped to catch my breath I was by the Richard Anacréon Museum of Modern Art so I took a photo of it.

And then I came home to sit and vegetate again and do nothing except to listen to some excellent music.

But I really do need to snap out of this lethargy soon and push on. I don’t have the time to waste doing nothing and I wish that I knew what the answer was.

What I’ll have to do is to write off today as a failure and start again tomorrow.

Thursday 12th March 2020 – I WAS ALMOST …

… right about the pontoons. So almost right in fact that I’m going to give myself 9 out of 10.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I counted the pillars on the quayside and decided that they were going to install two rows of four, and then they went yesterday and put a fifth one in the row on the north side of the harbour that confounded all of my expectations?

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “thank goodness” – ed … they might have installed five n one row, but today they are indeed starting on a second row, just as I reckoned that they would.

But that’s going to be bad news as far as I can see for the shipping in here, where they are installing that second row.

Here’s Tiberiade, a sister ship to Coelacanthe, and I watched her for a good five minutes struggling to negotiate her way around the pillars in order to find a berth to which to tie up.

And that’s just a fishing boat. We have both of the Joly France boats, Chausiais, and then the two Channel Island ferries, Granville and Victor Hugo, that tie up more-or-less where they will be fitting that pontoon. I’m not sure how that’s going to work for them

And while you admire the photos of the storm that we had tonight, let me tell you about my totally miserable day. A day when everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

And we started off my oversleeping. Not by five minutes or ten minutes but a good hour and a half. Staying up and listening to decent music might be a good plan from that point of view, but 01:30 is being rather optimistic when I want to be up by 06:15

That got me off on the wrong foot and things disintegrated from there on.

The medication was no problem, and then I came back and looked at the dictaphone.

And no wonder that I was exhausted this morning. I’d been miles during the night.

There was a whole group of us discussing some guy’s application for something or other. It was an unusual application – it turned out that he had an eagle on a ring not too far away and he wanted something to control this eagle but no-one would take him seriously about this. Everyone was saying that if he had an eagle living there it would be fantastic. But no-one could quite get to grips with the seriousness of the thing because eagles can even carry off people. This all came about I think when someone was getting married, I’m not quite sure, and there was a fear of this eagle but this sighting was dismissed and they never saw it again. People were saying “ohh well, there you are, it must have been a false report, this kind of thing, but this whole thing was based on the fact that an eagle had reappeared and been seen at a different place entirely so maybe it hadn’t actually gone away but had just basically moved nest into somewhere else.

Later on, three kids were staying at our old house in Vine Tree Avenue. We were there and there was a hell of a lot going on in this dream. One of my things to do was to go round and check on the flies. For some unknown reason, the flies were of interest. I’d read a book on flies and the life-cycle of the flies, the family of the fly, all this kind of thing and it was interesting to see how much the families of the flies around our house actually bore to it. So I used to do my rounds and check on things while everyone else was out and I still kept on doing my rounds. And on one of my rounds I walked into my parents bedroom and there was one of my sisters. “So what are you doing here?” I asked her “I’m looking for a quiet place to study and write some letters and people wouldn’t leave me alone so I came in here”. I said “the easiest thing to do to be left alone is to not make any noise and people won’t remember about you. You should really be in here and shut the door and that would be better still” and I gave her some more advice like that as well. But it was something about the life cycle of the fly and the family of the fly that interested me.

I was in the area of Shavington last night, (…Rope Hall Lane…). I was on a motorcycle and I was following someone in a car. This motorcycle thing went past us, grey but with an orange-painted tank on it. As I went round a bend the guy in the car was busy turning the car round to come back the other way towards me. I asked him what was up. Apparently the motor cycle had hit him and driven off. A crowd of people came round, someone on a police motor bike but it wasn’t a policeman. The guy with me was telling a story about how he had hit him and said a few impolite things and driven away. I suddenly realised that I knew this guy, and I bet that I knew his name as well as he sounded like the kind of person whom I’d met. I mentioned it to him, that he’s a regular on this road and we can find him again at some other time.
But then I was in Shavington (… Rope Lane by the Vine …) with someone else, someone from Canada but not Josée I think. We were talking about my childhood as we drove through Shavington so I took her down Vine Tree Avenue and showed her the house where we lived as kids. Of course it’s much different now than it was in those days. We were having a chat about it when some woman came up and asked me if I knew the area. I said that I had lived here. She replied that she had lived here since the 50s and she knew this street – pointing to Edwards Avenue – by some other name. I said that if she had been here in the 50s she must have known me then so we had a chat. I don’t think that we actually got to mentioning my name, who I was, but we were talking on about Edwards Avenue and Vine Tree Avenue and I was pointing out some garages (… which don’t exist …) that still bore some kind of resemblance to how our houses looked at the time

As I said, no wonder that I was exhausted.

After breakfast, there wasn’t much time before I had to go to the shops, so I looked at the digital soundfile that I’d downloaded yesterday. And one brief listen to that, and that one followed the previous version into the bin as well. The first couple of minutes of the opening track are missing, and that’s no good to anyone.

What I’ll have to do is to download yet another version if I can find one.

Before I went out I grabbed a quick shower and then headed uptown, stopping to watch Tiberiade perform her nautical danse macabre around the harbour.

At LIDL there was nothing of any particular interest, although I did watch in mild amusement as someone came into the shop in plastic gloves and a face mask to do his shopping. I think that some people need to get a sense of proportion. More people died in the 2003 heatwave, and more people will die of influenza in a normal winter. The trouble is that because those things are so normal, the Press never mentions them so people don’t realise.

Talking of journalists, I have a journalist friend in the USA who is currently having a hysterical panic about this virus. So I asked her how the tally of deaths and illness from the virus compares with the amount of firearm-related deaths and injuries in the USA.

She didn’t reply, but kept on having her hysterics.

Yes, never mind this virus. There are people walking the streets in the USA with enough firepower to wipe out a small-sized district at the drop of a hat, yet that causes these silly Americans no concern whatsoever. But then again, I suppose that the USA is such a violent bloodthirsty country that they are accustomed to the idea of violence.

And that’s a dreadful state of mind to be in.

Several weeks ago, I posted a photo of what I considered to be the first buds of the year. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at the time I expressed my scepticism.

But there’s no doubting whatsoever about these. here in the rue de la Houle there are definitely buds here on this creeping plant that’s growing up the wall.

Yes, we can definitely now say that Spring is on its way quite definitively. That put a little spring into my step, although I wish that I knew what happened to winter.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we’ve been keeping an eye on the new building that’s going on on the corner of the rue Charles Guillebot and the impasse de la Corderie.

Being in an energetic mood today, I went to have a closer look at it today. It is indeed a new house. But the people who are building it don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to finish it.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed here with the local builders. They don’t seem to be in any rush whatever to actually complete anything and we’ve seen projects like this go on for ever.

Just by way of a change, seeing as I’d never come this way, I went down into town via the rue Charles Guillebot.

That takes me down the north side of the eglise St Paul, a side of the church that we haven’t seen before. I’ve probably mentioned this church in the past. It was one of the earliest concrete structures built in modern times (the Romans were well-advanced with the use of concrete) but like most things, was never maintained.

As a result, there are bits dropping off it and there are notices all over the place telling the public to keep well clear.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed back home.

But once more, I stopped half-wau up the rue des Juifs to admire the view. We saw them earlier knocking the support pillar into the floor, but that was a photo that I had taken later this afternoon.

What we are seeing in this photo is the floating pontoon setting out from its mooring with that support pillar in its evil clutches and being shunted into position by the little boat.

It’s actually quite an exciting procedure watching then manoeuvring about the harbour with all of their equipment. All of this free entertainment that we are having.

Back at the apartment, I had a little surprise. I bumped into one of the more energetic owners here, and he invited me to come with him on a little guided tour.

Underneath this building are several big man-made caverns which had been bricked off and a year or so ago they had found the entrance and smashed their way through the wall to the inside.

There were apparently the water tanks for the old city in the days before there was the mains water supply. All of the rainfall from the roofs of the houses and from the street was channelled into here.

And it’s certainly an impressive sight to see. Apparently, it was full of all kinds of things before they started to clean it out. The plan was to divide it up into private cellars for the owners of the apartments, but it’s hit a major snag.

And he showed me what was the snag.

One of the underground caverns was well-blocked off and took some smashing down. And when they finally broke their way in, they could see exactly why it was so well sealed.

If the story that I was told is correct, and I would gladly learn otherwise, the building was divided into rooms by all kids of ad-hoc partitions that had accumulated over the centuries. When it was converted into apartments, the old partition walls had to be smashed down and taken away.

Included in the contract for the work was a large sum for “hire of containers and transport away of the waste” and this was duly paid. However it seems that the waste was never transported away at all but thrown down the lift shafts into one of the caverns and the cavern was then sealed off so that no-one would see it.

Of course, this is just one person’s view of the matter and there is very likely another, but one inescapable fact is that m’learned friends have been called in by the building’s management committee.

We shall see how all of this develops over the next few months. But nevertheless, it was exciting being down here and seeing all of this that I had never seen before.

After lunch I boiled up some ginger and then started to make my orange and ginger syrup.

I peeled 5 large juice oranges, gave then a quick whizz in the whizzer and poured off the juice, which I put into a bottle that I had sterilised. That went into the fridge.

The left-over pulp was whizzed down finely and then, after the ginger had simmered for an hour or so, I added the left-over pulp, brought it to the boil again and then left it to simmer.

While that was happening, I made a start on the sound files that we had recorded at the Grande Marée yesterday.

There were a few people out there this afternoon but I didn’t loiter very much.

My route took me round to the chantier navale where I could see that La Granvillaise and one of the fishing boats have gone back into the water. But Charles-Marie is still in there, minus a good few of her planks. This is going to be a long job

There was another classe decouverte out there today too, but no-one whom I recognised so I headed for home. I’m still shaking my head about that unexpected encounter yesterday.

Back here, I had a look to see how my orange and ginger was doing.

Nicely simmering away so I took it off the heat, added a couple of tablespoons of manuka honey (that’s how I make it into syrup), poured it all into the whizzer and gave it all a really good and lengthy whizz around.

The syrupy mass was then poured into the orange juice that I had put in the fridge earlier and it was all shaken up to mix it in. It all went into the fridge where over the course of the next week or so I’ll be using it up as my morning drink.

Back at my desk, I carried on with the sound file but I didn’t get very far as I drifted away with the fairies. And I also had my half-hour on the bass.

Tea was a burger on a bun with potatoes and veg. And I forgot the veg until the very last minute and had to rush them. The apple pie and ice cream for pudding was delicious too. I really am living well these days.

There was quite a wind blowing outside this evening.

Not one of the strongest winds that we have had and not really enough to knock me out of my stride either. And so i was astonished to see how the waves were roaring in to the Plat Gousset.

It is the period of the fullest moon and the highest tides, but even so, I hadn’t expected to see waves like this coming into the Plat Gousset with such incredible force. I stood there for quite a while to watch the show.

Windy it might have been, but not enough to frustrate my two evening runs. I managed to fit them in without too many problems and managed to push the distances on again. For my second run, I even made it up to the top of the ramp and I haven’t done that for a while.

But there was a lot of activity in the port and at the fish-processing plant. With it being nearly high tide, the gates are open so the big fishing boats can come in and unload.

For my part, I went and had a little play with the NIKON 1 J5 and the f1.8 18.5mm lens

The photo above was taken with the shutter speed at 1/20 at f1.74 with ISO 900

This photo here was taken completely manual with speed of 1/125 at f1.74 and ISO 2800.

They have both come out rather well and I’m quite pleased with them. Still plenty of room for improvement but I’ll just keep on working away at it until I improve.

So back here I’ve written up all of my notes and now, a lot later than I hoped, I’m going to bed. I hope that I have better luck trying to drag myself out of bed tomorrow morning, but who knows? It’s really driving me to despair

Monday 9th March 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about those piles of gravel that had been appearing over the last couple of days on the quayside down in the harbour.

This blurred and illisible photo (I still have a lot to learn about the NIKON 1 J5) shows a ship that I have every reason to believe is Neptune moored at the loading bay by the conveyors where they ship the gravel on board.

At long last we’ve had a gravel boat in the harbour and I shall go out tomorrow (and try to be early) just to confirm that it is indeed she. It would be just my luck for her to have a rapid turn-round and for me to miss her.

But here’s something else quite interesting.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a regular topic in these pages, particularly in the boulevard Vaufleury which is on a service bus route, is just 50 metres from the High School and is an access road for the fleet of school buses that come in the opposite direction to the service buses.

Where Madame (it is indeed a Madame) is parked is
1) the wrong way round
2) half on the pavement
3) blocking the buses
4) at school chucking-out time
5) just about 20 FEET from a huge free car park
so finally, at long, long last, the local police are doing something about it and they are making her move her vehicle.

That is pretty much encouraging news.

What else is encouraging news is that I was awake before the first alarm went off, and I was out of bed before the final alarm. Crashing out half-way through last night’s entry and so giving up and going to bed was good news in that case.

After the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone. Apparently I was in this labyrinth of a theatre complex last night all the way through this underground reception hall place with doors going off leading into theatre auditoriums and all kinds of things. There were all kinds of announcements about the place, many of them were out of date, 2011 I noticed. There were all kinds of things happening here. But I was just wandering through listening to the radio. They were talking about “hypocrites of the year” I suppose – some guy who was telling us all about how keen he was for this and how good he was going to be for that but while he was doing that he had increased all your library charges. Someone else was going on about how brilliant a cricketer he might have been, all this kind of thing, but he made one fatal mistake and that was heroin. I was drifting through this auditorium that had a couple of very faded leather chairs and the leather was worn out in certain places. Something to do with catching a London Underground train somewhere. There was a thing too about caring for your vans if you were on a limited income, like a hippy, and a warning that the supply of LDV vans even in scrapyards was drying up now – the van that was chosen for an example was a silver LDV M-reg.
A little later I was outside with someone who was supposed to be Liz’s husband but he was more like the father of a couple of friends of mine. He had Liz’s daughter with him. She’d been on a student exchange and she had a student back with them. He was saying “you’ll have to come round for a game of pinocle or something one of these days. We’ll have an evening of five people”. He indicated roughly a place in eastern Manchester, Hyde or that area Stalybridge where he was living but he didn’t go into any further details about that. I was wondering who this “five” was because I knew that he was on his own, the daughter had her friend and there was me, so who was the 5th? I couldn’t think.

After breakfast I had a look at the digital sound files. I managed to unsort three of them too. One of them however needs much more attention because for some unknown reason there’s a load of “additional music” which seems to be a mixture of selections of various tracks, so I’d like to know what was going on there.

It isn’t the first one like that that I had found either.

By now it was time to go for my shower and to clean myself up somewhat, and then head up into town.

Not that I actually got very far before I was interrupted.

Remember yesterday when I photographed all of the pontoon-supporting pillars on the quayside and I mused that they might be assembling them in two rows of four?

Here’s the big floating pontoon travelling across the harbour with one of the pillars within its clutches almost at the place where one would expect to see it if we were going to have a fourth pillar in that row.

And the scaffolding too. We talked about that as well.

My attention was drawn from a distance that the masts of Marité were not where they would usually be. And that was strange because she doesn’t usually roam around the harbour but stays put in her habitual little corner.

But she’s definitely moved, and the reason for that is that they’ve put the scaffolding, complete with OSB wallboards, in her usual berth and there are a couple of guys down there doing something.

So at least I know that the scaffolding is actually a working platform for some kind of task.

From here I headed down into the town centre and up the rue Couraye towards LIDL.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several weeks ago we watched them fit some kind of protective shuttering around the front of the boulangerie here and start to smash out the old window.

The protective shuttering has now gone and, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the new shop front is in glorious display. That’s quite a nice job that they’ve done there. It looks quite good.

Now for the first time ever in my whole life, I’ve seen every till open at the same time in a LIDL. And that will give you some kind of indication of just how busy it was in there today.

No cucumbers, which is a problem, and nothing else of any real interest as far as I was concerned. All in all, a little disappointing. 3-kilo bags of apples was about the closest that I was to a bargain. And they won’t last long now that I’m making my purées myself.

On the way back I headed to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette but i was held up outside the shop as Birnam Wood went past on its way to Dunsinane.

There was actually a tractor and trailer parked around the corner with several large plants stacked thereupon, and presumably this machine was busy distributing them around the town.

It’s certainly a different approach to beautifying the town. I’ve said often enough … “indeed” – ed … that there isn’t enough greenery in this town and we ought to have some more.

Having picked up my dejeunette I headed back home again.

Only half-way up the rue des Juifs before I was distracted yet again. Not that I would know much about these things but they look pretty much like new pontoon supports and new pontoons over there on the west wall of the harbour.

What with one thing and another, I can see that I’m going to be quite busy tomorrow having a look at all of these things. But at least the harbour gates will be closed again by 09:30 or thereabouts so it doesn’t have to be an “early” early.

And in other news, there’s activity in the chantier navale today too.

It’s been quite busy in there up until very recently, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the boats have been going back into the water one by one until just now we had none whatever left.

But that’s all changed now. There are two boats in there now, one of which is a large yacht that might actually be La Granvillaise. I’ll go for a stroll over there this afternoon to check on that.

Back at my apartment I made myself a coffee and then split up a fourth music file. Pretty straightforward except that there were three extra tracks on it that aren’t on the LP that I have, so I had to track down which version of the master tape I had obtained so that I could identify the tracks.

There was still time before lunch to send off my project for this weekend and to start a new one to add to the stock.

After lunch, I carried on with the radio project but didn’t get too far before I was overwhelmed with a wave of fatigue. I didn’t quite crash out but for about 15-20 minutes I was teetering on the edge and didn’t actually do any work or anything while I was sitting there

By now it was raining outside when I went for my afternoon walk.

Neptune was due to come into port, that I knew, so when I saw an object the same colour as Neptune far out to sea in the English Channel I took a photo with the intention of enlarging it back in the apartment.

Which I did, and it wasn’t Neptue at all but one of the fishing boats heading back to the port. Neptune must still ne well out of range, which wouldn’t be a surprise because there’s a while yet before the harbour gates will open and she won’t want to sit around outside waiting.

She might not want to, but everyone else is.

The tide is well out and the little creek that leads up to the side of the fish-processing plant is only just starting to fill with water. It’ll be another half an hour or so before she’ll be deep enough to accept the fishing boats but they are all starting to congregate just outside.

There were at least 10 of them out there – maybe more but I had run out of fingers by this point and I wasn’t going to start taking off my shoes and socks. Mind you, had I had my hands in my pockets, I might have been able to count up to 11.

While I was walking round across the lawn by the War memorial, I noticed this.

We haven’t had an earthquake or a landslide or anything. That house is actually built like that. It’s what they call a trompe l’oeil – “something that cheats the eye” and it’s the window thats aligned strangely to follow the contours of the roofs rather than being in the hotizontal/vertical plane.

What’s bewildering me right now though is why I never noticed that before. It’s not like me to miss out on something this.

Anyway, enough of this. I continued on my way around the headland to go to see what was going on in the chantier navale.

And I was right here too. It’s my lucky day, isn’t it? The “G90” painted on the side of the yacht tells us that it is indeed La Granvillaise down there on blocks.

Crowds of people milling round her too so there’s clearly something important going on with her. At least, I imagine that the people are there for her. It’s unlikely that a fishing boat would receive that much attention unless she had caught the Loch Ness Monster.

Yesterday, you’ll recall that we saw a couple of kayaks out there in the baie de Mont St Michel.

And so when I saw something else quite small out there in that general direction, I reckoned that it might be another one so I took another photograph of it to examine back in the comfort and safety of my apartment.

But it wasn’t a kayak at all but one of the small flat-bottomed boats that they use for transporting the boxes of seafood to the quayside from boats that have for one reason or another not been able to moor at the fish-processing plant.

And earlier this morning we saw the large flaoting pontoon carrying one of the pillars across the harbour.

A short while later the noise of the pile-driver started up and it’s been going on for most of the day. And so I had expected them to have made substantial progress, and I was quite right about that.

It’s been pounded quite well and quite deeply into the bed of the harbour and I imagine that they’ll be connecting up some pontoons to it in early course.

It’s certainly interesting.

And while I was musing on this, I witnessed the “police interaction” that I mentioned earlier.

Back here I did a little more to the radio project but ended up having an hour or so playing with the bass guitar and the 6-string electric/acoustic. It’s been a good while since I had a decent play about and I must work harder on this and make more of an effort.

Tea was a delicious stuffed pepper with rice, followed by some apple pie and coconut soya stuff. And despite the absence of spices, it was really nice. I’ll have to make a few more like that one of these days.

But I’m really going to have to buy a bigger fridge and a bigger freezer.

For my evening walk I went to see what was going on with the winds.

The tide is well out now but the wind is still causing the waves to smash against the wall down on the Plat Gousset. I bet that they didn’t do much repair work on that wall today.

My two runs weren’t a problem, except that my first run had to be on a different course due to waterlogging. And then I went to have a look at Neptune.

Now i’m back here and ready for bed. I’ll finish (I hope) the radio project tomorrow and then I can deal with another outstanding matter.

However did I find the time to go to work?

Sunday 8th March 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

… whose idea it is to ring that cacophony of church bells at 11:00 on a Sunday morning but it’s almost as if they don’t want you to have a decent lie-in on a Sunday morning when they go around awakening the dead like that.

It certainly put paid to my morning reverie and I was obliged to leave the comfort and warmth of my beautiful bed.

It wasn’t the first time that I had had to leave the bed either. Round about … errr … 04:00 or something like that, I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse. I thought that I had passed beyond that, but apparently not.

So I went off and had my medication.

While you admire the high winds that we were having and the storm that was raging somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean, let me tell you about my morning.

First thing that I did of course was to check on the dictaphone. And sure enough, I’d been on a little voyage. I was with someone last night who resembled a girl with whom I had worked for a while although it wasn’t her I’m sure, someone like that. We were discussing languages. Something weird had come up and we had a reply to do which we had done in French or Flemish or something. This led to some kind of discussion about languages and what do we do, how did we behave, all this kind of thing. I made the point sometime during this discussion that what we did is that we’d have the radio on if we were at home and just listen to a French programme or a Flemish programme. It didn’t really make any difference to the two of us what we were listening to. Any of the languages were usually pretty good for us.

After that, I carried on with the project that I’m undertaking – of digitalising my collection of LPs.

On thing that I’ve been able to do is to find about 120 digitalised sound files of albums that I own, and I downloaded them all. I’ve then had to split them into individual tracks.

It isn’t easy because many of them are studio master tapes where the tracks are recorded in “recorded order” of course which is quite often very different than the order in which they are published on CDs and LPs

Another issue is that some of the tapes include tracks that were never ever published – rejected for one reason or another – and which I don’t have a clue what they are.

And sure enough, one of the sound files on which I was working was one of the latter.

Eventually, after a great deal of effort, I tracked it down. It seems that I have somehow managed to lay my hands on a rare Swedish-only version of a master-tape with one additional track that was only available in a couple of countries and a second additional track that was only available in Sweden.

That should be quite a curio when it comes to playing it on the radio programmes.

13:30. That’s a very civilised time to have breakfast, I reckon. And the last of the home-made apple juice from when I made the apple and pear purée. It’s certainly quite interesting when I am responsible for the making (within certain limits of course) of almost every product that I eat for breakfast.

After breakfast I didn’t really do all that much. After all, it is Sunday and I’m entitled to a break one day a week when I don’t do much.

Nevertheless, round about 15:30 or thereabouts I decided that I would have lunch. I wasn’t all that hungry, and there was an end of a baguette from yesterday hanging around in the kitchen.

Luckily, I had remembered to fetch some hummus out of the freezer yesterday. Roasted pepper hummus too, made with my own fair hands.

So I had a hummus, tomato, cucumber and lettuce butty for lunch, followed by the usual apple, pear and banana for afters.

And that reminded me (although I’ve no idea why it would) that the lemon and ginger syrup that I make for my medication is running low. Sometime later this week I’ll have to make some more. I’ve plenty of ginger but I bought some juice oranges so I’ll go for orange syrup this time.

Whatever happens, I mustn’t forget my afternoon walk. I’m only on 3% wandering around the apartment.

Mind you, sticking my head out of the door, I wasn’t too impressed about the idea of going out.

By the looks of things, there was a huge storm brewing away across the baie de Mont St Michel over there on the Brittany coast. And knowing my usual luck, I would probably end up finding myself right in the middle of it before I’d gone too far.

But anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound. I set off out.

And I wasn’t alone either. Despite the wind there were crowds of people milling around enjoying the weather and I was determined to join them.

My route took me right around the headland and down the steps at the end. And the farther on my travels I advanced, the more I didn’t like the look of the weather. It was just looking worse and worse

Mind you, my luck was in, for once.

The storm was advancing quite quickly but as I rounded the headland at the Pointe du Roc I could see that it was going to miss me by a good few miles.

It had found shore down by the Pointe du Carolles and places like Carolles-Plage and Jullouville were taking something of a pounding. I’m glad that it wasn’t here, because it did look particularly nasty over there.

My perambulations brought me further around the headland and here I was greeted with a sight that made the walk all worthwhile.

As I have said before … “many times” – ed … there’s nothing between that harbour wall and the eastern seaboard of the USA and here we have the highest tides in Europe.

Consequently the power that can build up in the water whenever there is a major storm anywhere in the North Atlantic is really impressive and the sea walls here catch the lot of it full force.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen some really impressive seas come roaring in just here.

And today is no exception to that. I stoop and watched it all for a good 10 minites even though I had other things to do, just because it was so impressive.

Strangely enough, there were several people passing by here, but no-one else seemed to be interested in staying to watch the free show.

So instead, I had a wander down to the port. The harbour gates were closed as, believe it or not, the tide is well out (although you might not think so) so I could cross over to the other side of the harbour.

One thing that has been interesting me is the story of the new pontoons that they have been installing in the harbour. We’ve seen the pontoons on the north side of the harbour alongside the rue du Port but I wanted to look at the new ones on this side

That is, assuming that I can get close enough to them, because they are crowded out with fishing boats right now. There can’t be too many out at sea today.

Another thing that we’ve been looking at as we have been on our way around is the scaffolding that is bolted to the side of the harbour wall here.

Being a Sunday and with no-one around, I took the opportunity to have a closer look, trying not to fall into the harbour while I was doing it.

And the result is that I’m still not too sure of its purpose and the OSB boards here fixed to the wall don’t seem to be able to throw any light upon the subject.

All that I can think of, as a wild guess, is that it’s a set of steps for the crew of the floating pontoon to descend to their little boat.

We’ve also seen them installing steel pillars in the harbour in order to extend the row of pontoons out perpendicularly from the harbour walls.

Three have already been installed in the harbour and I was sure that there were others although I couldn’t remember how many. Consequently I went to have a good look aroud and eventually came across them.

And I was correct. I had seen them and here they are – five of them by my reckoning. That seems to indicate two lines of four each and that’s not going to be good news for the commercial boats that come here and need the open space to manoeuvre.

And that’s going to be interesting even sooner than we imagined, because Neptune, one of the gravel boats, has just left Shoreham Harbour – “next stop Granville”. I was right about the heaps of gravel.

As you probably saw in the previous photograph, the storm has passed, the clouds are now all gone and the sun is now out.

That made me decide to push on and have a marathon walk all the way along the Quai Hérel all the way down to the new block of flats (and how I would love to live here!) and the Pointe du Roche Gauthier.

That’s as far as you can do around here. The path comes to a sudden stop and you have to retrace your steps 100 metres or so until you come to a flight of steps that go back up to the road.

So, retracing my steps, I can show you the big modern building over there on the left.

That’s the CRNG, the Centre Regional de Nautisme de Granville, and it’s also where the Youth Hostel and the Salle Hérel are.

The Salle Hérel was quite interesting today – or should have been – because they were having a “Free Market” where everyone takes the stuff that they no longer want so that others may help themselves.

However I was too late because anything that might have been of interest had probably long-since gone.

My walk brought me up past the Tax Office and it was round about here that I had an exciting encounter.

It’s not so much the car, but what the owner was using as a bulkhead to stop whatever was in the back sliding forward into the passenger seat.

It’s an old freight pallet cut down to size and trimmed to be an exact fit. I was well-impressed by this and wished that I had thought of it in the past when I had the Passat.

My walk took me onwards down little alleys that I had only glimpsed in the past.

My aim was to do down past the station and down into the Park de Val es Fleurs to see what was going on around there but in the distance I noticed a flight of steps that I hadn’t seen before.

That made up my mind to go and follow my star wherever it was going to lead me and see what was at the other end – stopping for a glance backwards at the railway engineering depot in the background where the trains are stored and repaired.

My little climb brought me out into a little housing estate where a small path led to the main Avenue de la Liberation.

This path in turn led me past a nice modern block of flats in the chemin de Choisel. And nice though the flats might have seemed, it wasn’t my cup of tea because someone was playing some music full-blast with the windows in one of the apartments.

Where I live, I have solid stone walls 1.2 metres thick so I can play music as loud as I like without disturbing the neighbours. That wouldn’t work here at all.

Out on the avenue de la Liberation and here’s a thing.

Ever since I’ve been in Granville, and probably for many years prior to that, there were some old, abandoned houses that were fenced off from the road.

It’s been a good while since I’ve been past here on foot and to my surprise something seems to be happening to them right now. We have a crane, a new roof and all other kinds of exciting things.

That will be a nice place to live when it’s all finished.

While I was here, I could have carried on down the road into town, gone down another footpath and the steps to the Park de Val es Fleurs, or else through the gardens of the Musée Christian Dior and down the steps to the Plat Gousset.

Obviously the latter will bring me closer to the sea and with me being a Pisces, being close to water is one of my aims, so I made my way down the side of the tennis club.

Last time I was out here, I saw a big cruise ship out to sea, so I had a look to see if I was going to be lucky again.

Not quite. No shipping out there today but we did have one of these mysterious buoys bobbing around in the sea down there. I still haven’t worked out what they are four but my suspicion is that they are something to do with fishing gear – nets or lobster pots, that kind of thing I reckon.

There were crowds of people out there today and a long, continuous line of people coming up the steps.

The steps are quite narrow and there isn’t much room to pass anyone so I had to wait for a while while they came up. That gave me an opportunity to take a photo of the nice archway down there that leads to the final flight of steps down to the promenade.

And the sea was looking pretty rough down there too. This could be very interesting.

And i wasn’t wrong either.

It’s now 17:40 which means that there’s still an hour or so to high tide, and the sea is totally wicked out there, smacking into the sea wall here with an incredible force and sending spray everywhere.

It’s lucky that the promenade s quite wide otherwise I could easily end up marooned down here and that wouldn’t be very pleasant, having to climb all the way back up the steps again..

And I wasn’t alone here either.

This was a show that you would have to pay a fortune to watch in some places, but we were having it for free. There were probably a couple of hundred people down here this afternoon making the most of the entertainment and we were all having more than our money’s worth.

So impressive was it that I stayed down here for half an hour taking photos when one of the very big waves came in

We’ve had quite a few storms down here so far this year, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and we’ve seen plenty of areas that have been fenced off due to the damage that the wild seas have caused.

There’s some more over there and apparently this needs to be fixed before the Grand Marée, the very high tide, comes in on Wednesday. They’ve engaged some workmen to do the job and they have erected some scaffolding to work from, but I don’t fancy their chances out there today.

It’s a good job that it’s a Sunday – a Day Of Rest – today when they can have a day off.

While you admire a few more photos of the storm on the Plat Gousset, I climbed back up all of the steps and walked home via the square Maurice Marland.

There was still about 40 minutes or so before teatime, so I busied myself with another pile of photos from July 2019 and my trip to Iceland. I really need to press on with that before i’m much older.

The trouble is, though, that with having no internet out there, I wasn’t able to do any research into the photos. Consequently every one that I am editing, I need to research to find out where it is and what’s in the image.

Sunday is vegan pizza night of course, but it’s also pudding time seeing as I have the oven on already.

It’s usually rice pudding or some such, but last week we had a delicious apple crumble. Apple pie has been on the menu too in the past and that was what I intended to try today, using the new pie dish that I bought.

These pastry rolls are the business. The cheap ones from LeClerc are vegan of course so I always have a stock of those on hand. And I’d picked up some backing apples too on Sunday.

So, grease the pie dish and unroll one of the pastry rolls and put that in, gently pressing down so that it’s in at the seam at the bottom.

Thinly slice a couple of the apples and lie the slices in on top of the pastry, making as many layers as you can fit in, so that the pastry is completely covered.

On every layer, a think coating of desiccated coconut, brown sugar and lemon juice (and some cinnamon and nutmeg, which I completely forgot, for some reason or other that I can’t explain).

Unroll another pastry roll, cut out a top for the pie, with an overhang of about 2 cms.

Wet with some mile the part of the pastry that is on the lip of the pie dish, then put the top on and press it down really hard with a fork to the pastry underneath on the lip. Then trim off the excess pastry.

Put a few slits in the top of the pie to let out the steam, brush with milk and sprinkle with brown sugar. Then bung in the oven.

With the excess pastry, coast it on both sides – and your rolling pin – with flour to stop it sticking, and roll it out with your rolling pin. It won’t be square, so keep on trimming it off and adding the trimmings into appropriate places so that it’s as square as you can make it

Grease a flat oven tray and gently with a couple of spatulas, pick up your flat pastry and put on the tray. Add the leftover apple slices into the centre, with desiccated coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg (which I remembered this time) then fold over all of the pastry and press it together to seal it.

Prick it with a fork to let the steam out, brush with milk and sprinkle with brown sugar, and bung that in the oven too.

And here’s the end result. It all looks pretty impressive and I bet it tastes even better even without the spices in the pie. I won’t be trying it this evening though because there’s still some apple crumble left.

Instead, the turnover was cut into 2 and put in the freezer, and the pie went in the fridge ready to start on tomorrow.

Rather like the time that I made a meat and potato pie when I was younger. I left the eyes in the potatoes so that it would see me through the week.

I’ll get my coat.

One thing that I mustn’t forget is my evening walk. I’m already up to 95% so i don’t intend to go far.

The NIKON 1 J5 and f1.8 18.5mm lens came with me so that I could have a little play around. I reset the ISO to “MAX 3200” rather than “MAX 6400” as the graining is too much, and stopped down a couple of stops to see what I could produce with that.

And f1.74 at 1/50 second and ISO3200 gave me this image. And for a hand-held shot, it’s quite reasonable. Joly France looks quite nice out there at the ferry terminal.

There have been much worse shots than this.

I’m wondering what else I can produce with this camera if I show some patience. Some good might come out of the enforced deprivation of the big NIKON D500

While you admire the rest of the photos of the storm there is something else that I mustn’t forget – and that is to go running.

And it’s a good job that I did those two-and-a-half runs yesterday because I only managed one and a half today. Not because of lack of willingness or lack of fitness, but because my first run down the rue du Roc was right into the teeth of a howling gale.

When I hit the slope of the hill about half-way or so along my course, it stopped me dead in my tracks and that was that. Luckily the return run along to boulevard Vaufleury was with the wind so that was a lot easier and I managed an extra 20 metres or so.

So now I’m back home and in the warmth.

There are tons of photos to edit and lots to write, so i doubt that I’ll be able to finish it tonight. But I’ll do what I can before I go to sleep and whatever remains to be done, I can finish it all off tomorrow.

Not that I’m complaining of course. This was a good day out and a really good walk around – more than enough to tire myself out. If I do fall asleep while writing out my notes, it will be for a very good …

ZZZZZZZ

Wednesday 5th March 2020 – YOU’RE PROBABLY SITTING …

… there wondering why on earth I’m posting a dreadful photo like this in my journal tonight – and giving it pride of place as well.

The fact is that I’m totally surprised by this too.

This evening I went out with just the NIKON 1 J5 to see what damage I could do with it in the dark.

Adn dark it was too – about one-third moon and you could hardly see anything at all out there. Mind you the howling gale was telling us a story all of its own with the sound of the waves pounding down into the surf.

So, I tried to focus. Nothing whatever enough light for it to find a focal point so I set it to “automatic exposure”, focused on a street light an equivalent distance away, swivelled round in the direction that I wanted to face, and pressed the shutter more in hope than expectation.

And frankly I wasn’t expecting anything at all, so no-one was more surprised than me to produce an image as bright as this one.

The automatic settings were f1.74, ISO6400 at 3 seconds exposure, and it’s produced an image as bright as this. That’s impressive.

Of course, I’m going to need a tripod if ever I do it again, and then I’ll have the issue of focusing on a dummy point and then swivelling the camera around.

But I could use the exposure compensation mechanism to darken the image somewhat and speed up the exposure time. But it isn’t half interesting nevertheless.

While you admire the storm that has been raging all day and the waves that it’s been producing, let me tell you something about my day, because it’s been another disappointment.

Once more, I failed to beat the alarms and it was 06:30 when I finally pulled myself together and left the bed.

After the medication, I had a look on the dictaphone to see where I’d been. As well as the notes from yesterday afternoon, which I’ll add in in early course, there were a couple of files from during the night that needed attention.

There was something going on in the street like a gardening club meeting. A couple of people were turning up and going again. I was there with a young girl who might have been Percy Penguin, I dunno but she didn’t hang around long. I was waiting for something and there was another guy there. A girl came up and she got out of a car and started to kick this medicine ball around. I ended up playing football with her and this medicine ball. She was kicking it up the hill towards me and of course the ball was rolling back down the hill again. I was running after it to kick it back to her but I couldn’t get a kick on it at all because it was rolling back down the hill quicker than I could catch up with it. This went on for a while and then gradually people started to turn up. There was a young girl there who was with another man. apparently she’d been someone’s servant or maid before she’d settled down with this guy. They were handing out these old clothes that had been really tatty but someone had sewn up so they weren’t as tatty as they were before. They were passing these around to whoever they belonged to but I always seemed to be in the way, standing in the wrong place when someone was passing round an item of clothing

After breakfast I had a look at some more digital sound files.

Just for a change they were quite straightforward and, more to the point, quite long. One of them ended up with no fewer than 17 tracks, several of which I had no idea existed.

Such it was that I had to break off near the end and go for my shower..

Once I’d had a good clean-up, I braved the hurricane and went out to do the shopping.

Not that I managed to go very far though before I came to a grinding halt. One of the issues about living in a medieval walled city with really narrow streets is that heavy vehicles like this cement mixer can’t go in.

You have to invent a work-around, or Système D as they say in France, like a little fork-lift truck type of thing and a cement hopper.

And you’ll notice the plastic sheet on the floor to prevent cement or concrete sticking to the road surface.

Yesterday, we noticed the pile of gravel that had appeared in the port near the conveyors.

This morning, the big digger was out there and he seemed to be moving more gravel across from the bins to the centre of the port apron. The pile is certainly growing.

This can surely mean that we are at long last about to have a gravel boat coming in some time in the near future – the first one that I will have seen in 9 months.

Here’s hoping that i’m not going to be disappointed.

But here’s a surprise. The big floating pontoon is in a different position.

Does this mean that they will be installing a new walkway pontoon there as well? That’s going to restrict the movement of the boats like Marité that congregate down there in that corner.

For a change I went to the new Bio shop, La Vie Claire, near the Stade Louis Dior in the avenue des Matignon. Josée had bought me a book on making drinks from a product called Kefir so I went there to see if they had any.

They had both lots, the fruit Kefir for making soft drinks and also a pseudo-dairy Kefir for making yoghurt from vegetable milk like soya milk or almond milk. I bought one of each and I’ll be having a play with them in early course.

At LIDL I didn’t spent all that much, except that I did buy a pair of wellingtons. I don’t have a pair and there have been a couple of occasions when I wished that I had.

Not only that, in a week or so I’ll be scampering about in a pile of rock pools so a pair of wellingtons will come in handy.

On the way back I was interrupted by a noise coming from above.

Someone has had his chopper out again and I was wondering if it is the same red and yellow and one that we see wandering around. But it’s a different one that I haven’t noticed previously.

By the way, if you are wondering about the images, the fact is that Brain of Britain forgot to change the lens over this morning and on the little NIKON 1 J5 there’s still the f1.8 50mm lens that I’ve been using at night. It doesn’t “do” distance of course.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I headed for home. But we’d had a moment’s amusement in there. Some young woman in front of me was complaining that her colleagues had left her alone in her office for the day. Boththe guy behind the counter and I said at the same moment that we’d go round and give her a hand, to which she laughed.

Ohh yes, I can still chase after the women at my age. I just can’t remember why.

Back here, I had a major disappointment to deal with. I have a project in mind, an important one, and I have set my heart on doing it. I’ve already set steps in motion in this respect but the disappointing news is that due to this stupid virus thing going around, it’s been put on hold and may be cancelled.

That will be devastating news for me.

After lunch (some more of that delicious soup) I started off another batch of purée and then made a start on finishing off the notes that I’d begun to write yesterday.

There was the usual break for my afternoon walk of course.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned yesterday about the path that they spent a couple of weeks laying and then dug up to replace with a different path. Today I had another closer look at the new patch and you can see that they’ll be having to dig this one up and replacing it very soon.

As you can see, it’s cracking already, due to insufficient foundations, I reckon. I don’t suppose that, given the record of this Council, that they expected it to be down this long before there was a change of plan.

But the winds were thoroughly and totally wicked. I was being blown about all over the place and even had to chase after my hat on one occasion.

The fishing boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel was making really heavy weather of trying to get into port and I’m not at all surprised.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve been buffeted about so much in a wind like this. At times it was impossible to advance and I really was being blown backwards as I tried to advance.

And I’m sure that you have been wondering, just as I have been, how the big floating pontoon has been moving across the harbour.

This afternoon I was lucky enough to catch it in motion. And it’s being pushed, so it seems, by that boat with the outboard motor.

It’s certainly one of the strangest sights that I’ve ever seen – and, believe me, I’ve seen quite a few strange sights in my lifetime. There’s not as much friction in water as there is on land, but it still must take a lot of effort to move the pontoon.

Back at the apartment I organised the purée.

8 small apples and four small pears, peeled, cored and diced into small cubes. Put into a large pan with some desiccated coconut and cinnamon, with a very small amount of water and lemon juice. All stirred up and stirred well in.

It had been brought to the boil and left to simmer on a very low heat. All in all it had been on there for an hour or so.

The liquid was drained off and put in a glass jar to drink at breakfast, diluted as necessary. The solids were put into the whizzer and whizzed around until they made a purée.

Two large glass jars were steamed in the microwave (a little water put in them and they were heated for a minute) and the tops boiled in water. The purée was then ladled into them, the lids put on and they were left to cool.

Once they have cooled and created a vacuum they can go in the fridge. I’ll start on the first jar tomorrow and see how it is. But the sampling was delicious.

At long last I could dictate the notes that I’d written – but first I had to fight off a wave of sleep, not very successfully I’m afraid. But at least it’s all dictated and I’ve even started to edit it and clean it up.

For tea tonight there was a pile of mushrooms to be finished off that hadn’t found their way into the soup the other day. And so I cut a potato into squares and cooked it with spiced in the microwave while I organised some onion, garlic and the mushrooms with half a stock cube and more spices in the frying pan.

It ended up all being mixed together and stuck in the microwave on a low heat while I cooked some rice and veg. And wasn’t it all delicious, especially when chased down by apple crumble and soya coconut dessert stuff

Out for my walk tonight, and I’ve already shown you the astonishing photo of the waves.

The wind was wicked and at my favourite running spot it was totally impossible to move. I ended up having to run on another stretch that was well sheltered.

That took me to the cliffs overlooking the Place Marechal Foch and the Plat Gousset where I decided to have a little fun with the settings with the camera.

It wasn’t easy to work out what I was supposed to be doing, but I did notice that I hadn’t set the exposure compensation correctly.

Back here I had to edit out some red and blue colour and darken the image three stops, but even so, they haven’t come out too badly. Of course, now that the tide’s not in, they’ve left the lights on along the promenade. They couldn’t do that when it’s needed, when the tide is in and the waves are crashing down along the prom.

Anyway, I carried on with my walk and managed my second run too.

So now it’s bedtime. I’m having (I hope) an uninterrupted day tomorrow – except that the blasted bank has phoned me and I have to go to pick up my document after lunch

One thing that I want to do is to finish off this radio project. I should have done it by Wednesday night but I’m just falling behind.

I must organise myself better.

Thursday 27th February 2020 – AFTER CARNAVAL …

… this last few days the big clean-up begins.

Here in the rue Couraye this morning was one of the several pressure-washers washing the confetti off the walls and the windows down into the grids where it will be eventually discharged into the sea.

Somewhere in the press I read that there had been a total of about 7 tonnes of confetti thrown during the carnaval, and looking at the state of the town on Sunday evening I could well believe it. It was as if we had had snow.

Talking of the Press, I have an apology to make to one of the local newspapers, Ouest-France. When we had our press conference the other week, only two of the three journalists invited actually turned up. I was told, and so I wrote, that it was Ouest-France that was refusing to cover our radio station.

That however is not the case. It’s La Manche-Libre that is boycotting the radio station.

This morning, I had my own clean-up.

The day started a little later than I hoped, due to the difficulty that I had leaving my stinking pit. Only 10 minutes or so but nevertheless …

After the medication, I attacked the dictaphone. I was in with some kind of circus last night. There were all these people dancing around in this kind of blue-ish costume. They were all ages, from quite young to twenty-something. One of them, a young girl, was covered in henna tattoos from head to foot. I can’t remember who I was with – my brother or someone – but we were remarking on all these people and I was reading a circus magazine, a Dutch circus magazine but it was actually written in English and was going on about all of the activities at various circuses and fairgrounds. It was all extremely interesting as I read one, put it down, picked up another, all these dances. Then it turned into a marriage. My brother poked me in the elbow and said “look over there! That is going to be really something”. There was a young girl standing on some kind of table or other surrounded by all these other young girls. This girl was the one being married. There was an older woman there, probably her mother or something, ginger-haired. The look on this mother’s face was priceless because I think she just realised that with the weight of people on this table it was going to collapse any minute and this was what my brother picked up to (assuming that it was him) and all these people would be decanted all over the place.
Later I was back to doing something around the port as well with different people, a kind-of broadcast with what was going on there. What I remember mostly was the guy who claims to be tax-exempt in the Uk but all of the hoops that he had to go through to get that tax-exempt status. Apparently it’s not granted automatically any more. You have to apply for it even though you don’t know how to apply or what to do. And there was something about me being the only one to wear a hat.

Breakfast was next and then I attacked the digital files. One soundfile was scratched but I managed to edit it out but several others were, as expected, hopelessly out of order and it took me an age to sort them out as they should be.

And I’ve no idea who noted the running times in the library files but they bear no resemblance whatever with the actual times that I recorded.

On that note (seeing as we are talking about music) I went and had a shower and a general clean-up. And a hair-cut too because it was actually becoming rather longer than I liked. It’s now nice and short.

In fact, I wasn’t sure that I like my new haircut at first, but I think that it will grow on me.

That was the cue to hit the shops – rather later than I anticipated.

There was a howling gale blowing outside again. Not as bad as some days that we have had recently but bad enough. Poor Thora was making heavy weather of her way into port, and that was no surprise.

At LIDL I didn’t buy anything whatever that was extraordinary. It was still a reasonably-expensive shop though because I’m going to have to make some muesli tomorrow I reckon so I may as well buy in the stuff that I need seeing as I’m there. I do like my home-made muesli.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and, dodging the rain showers, made it back home just in time to answer a call from Rosemary. She’d “hit the wall” and was looking for inspiration.

We had a lengthy chat, like we always do, and that took me up to lunchtime.

After my butties I wrote and then dictated the text for my “live concert” for the month of April. I like to be ahead. That’s now all edited and merged, and when I played it back it sounded really good. One hour exactly, and that’s just what is required.

There were a couple of interruptions to the proceedings too.

Firstly of course, there was my afternoon walk around the headland. Quite a few people out there again seeing as it’s still the school holidays. And down in the chantier navale we seem to have come down to just one boat.

There were two in there last night, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I wonder where the second one went.

Earlier on today, we’d seen Thora fight her way into port on her trip over from the Channel islands.

She had made it safely in, evidently, for here she is tied up at the usual mooring dock by the unloading crane next to Marité

It’s going to be tomorrow before I can get down there to have a chat to them, and I bet that she will have sailed by then. That’s usually the case. I never seem to be able to catch up with the skippers of the two Channel Island freighters.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that just before Carnaval they had a compactor flattening the surface of the car park that they are refurbishing in the rue du Port.

We’ve not been able to give it a close look since then so I took the opportunity to give it a good looking-over today. There’s more machinery on there today and they also seem to have been digging a trench that they are lining with concrete.

So it looks as if they are pressing on with their plans. I hope that they’ll do a good job, and that they’ll plant a good pile of greenery down there. The twon centre is a little desolate with an absence of growing stuff.

But talking of them growing stuff, the new pontoons down in the harbour seem to be springing up like mushrooms.

Yesterday, we saw a lorry delivering some of the pontoon mounting brackets to the far side of the harbour, and today it looks as if they have not only managed to install them in the correct position, but fitted some of the new pontoons in place.

It’s all looking quite impressive, but I’m wondering if they are going to be leaving any room for the commercial traffic. I know that we haven’t had any gravel boats in for months but even so, there still needs to be the facilities for one to arrive if necessary.

Meanwhile, back on the north side of the harbour, work is likewise continuing apace.

The large floating pontoon with the cranes is over here now and they seem to be fitting a couple more of the floating pontoon walkways.

You can see that the fishing boats are already moored up against it, and so I wonder what they are going to do about the little cranes that they use to load and unload all of the fishing gear that they use.

It doesn’t look to me as if the reach is long enough.

Back here I … errr … closed my eyes for a few minutes and then quickly finished off the April live concert. With the time that was left I had a good listen to it while I edited a few more photos from July 2019.

There was some good news, in that I managed to track down a couple of things that had been puzzling me – like the names of islands out in the Atlantic Ocean and the name of a ship (a mis-spelling that I managed to track down) to name but two.

Tea was frozen pie out of the freezer, with potatoes veg and gravy followed by pineapple chunks with raspberry sorbet and chocolate sauce. Totally delicious

It should have been a burger on a bap but what happened there was that I’m very low on hummus and I have to make some more tomorrow. As I have plenty of peppers lying around I decided that I will make two batches – one with olives as usual but the other with roasted peppers. Hence the oven, for roasting purposes

It was a beautiful evening out tonight, even though it was rather windy.

That light out there – I’m not sure where it was but it was a good way out. And you could even see the lights of Jersey yet again.

As for me, I managed my two runs, overrunning both of them with still a little bit left in the tank I’ve put on 200 grammes since I last weighed myself so I need to run it off again.

There are no plans whatever for tomorrow so I’m going to spend the morning after the digital music exercise dealing with my health insurance repayments.

o just watch someone come along and spoil my day.

Wednesday 26th February 2020 – I’VE HAD VISITORS …

… today.

Or, rather, one visitor. The person who is responsible for this radio shambles came to see me this afternoon about the e-mail that I had sent him on Monday evening.

And basically, I told him about my take on the events of this weekend and, for good measure, all of the things that I’ve been telling the regular readers of this rubbish ever since last November.

Anyway, he’s gone away to mull over the things that I mentioned.

The irony is that of everything that went wrong, it could all without exception have been prevented and would never have happened had they been willing to listen to advice right from the very start.

Simple things, like “we had no contact” because one particular mobile phone network doesn’t reach to where the control was. The idea of swapping phones over so that the person at the control had the phone that worked in there and those in the street had the others went totally over their heads.

All stupid little things like that which destroyed the broadcast.

Anyway, I promised that I wouldn’t mention anything, so I won’t. But it remains to be seen whether things change and whether he has the courage to confront the major issue.

But to my surprise, I’m not alone either. By pure coincidence the other two people who were implicated in this affair as “victims” (as opposed to “perpetrators” of the actions) had been in touch with him and told him pretty much the same thing that I told him too.

As for me, I had a late morning this morning. It was 07:00 when I finally crawled out of bed and had my medication. That’s already 45 minutes of my day lost before I begin.

After the medication I looked at the dictaphone but for once it had been a quiet night and I hadn’t gone anywhere. Ahh well!

Instead I spent much of the morning splitting up some digital sound files into their individual tracks. It was another one of those “all mixed up” days with tracks in any kind of order.

Furthermore, two of the albums weren’t from digital masters and were so deformed that no effects function that I had could restore them. In the end I had to search even further to track down a better copy of each.

Round about 11:00 I called it a day and headed off towards town and La Mie Caline for my dejeunette.

Once more, now that the wind had subsided from last night, I went the long way, all the way around the headland. And out in the distance I could see something moving on the water.

It was too far away for me to identify properly so I took a hopeful photo with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) when I returned home to see what it was.

And actually it’s nothing really exciting. Merely Joly France on one of her ferry trips out to the Ile de Chausey.

A little earlier, I mentioned that the high winds had subsided from how they were yesterday evening.

But even so, it must have been powerful out in the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean because the seas were roaring in. The harbour gates are still open, which means that high tide is at least two hours away but even so the waves are crashing up to and in some cases right over the harbour walls.

The energy that there must be in those waves, just waiting to be harvested instead of using coal, gas, oil and nuclear.

The tide was out, as I mentioned, so the harbour gates were closed and I could take the path over the top to the other side.

As I crossed over the top of the gates, I could see that one of our regular visitors is back again. Normandy Trader is sitting at the quayside over there underneath the unloading crane.

She must have sneaked in on the early morning tide while I was asleep, I reckon. Whatever blockade there might have been of the Channel Islands ships, it’s clearly over.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned the large grey post that had appeared at the quayside across by the rue du Port.

The big floating pontoon was back over on this side of the harbour so there was a very good view of what they had been fitting.

And so even though I’m better-informed, I’m still none-the-wiser. I shall have to make further enquiries. But at least you can see the new pontoons that they’ve been fixing.

There are things that I need to discuss with the skipper of Normandy Trader and also with the skipper of Thora, the other Jersey freighter.

And so I took myself off over there for a chat. I stopped on the way round though to look at all of the shelfish that they had been unloading. Normandy Trader works for, amongst other customers, the Jersey Fishermen’s Co-Operative and brings in the catch for the buyers here.

It’s one thing that the silly Brits have forgotten. There’s very little market for shellfish and the like in the Uk but that’s the predominant catch in inshore fisheries there.

However, there’s a huge market for it on the Mainland and that’s where most of it ends up. The British fishermen need the European market to sell their catch and the imposition of tariffs will kill the trade stone-dead.

We saw earlier this month how the Channel Islands were brought to their knees after just 4 days of boycott.

The skipper of Normandy Trader wasn’t about. In fact the whole ship had the air of the Marie Celeste about it.

Disappointed yet again, I pushed on … “pushed off, more like” – ed … to La Mie Caline where my path was interrupted by this rather large lorry trying to squeeze its way in between the fairground vehicles and the parked cars.

One thing that i’ve noticed is that the pontoon mounting brackets are now starting to be affixed on this side of the harbour wall too, and here are a couple more making their way onto the construction site.

While you admire a couple more photos of the storms at sea I bought my bread and headed slowly back up the hill to home.

Plenty of time before lunch so I dictated the notes for Project 027, uploaded them to the computer and began to edit them.

Not that I managed to go very far because I stopped for lunch – and then there was my visitor for the afternoon.

Basically, I vented my spleen – or, rather, I would have done had I still had my spleen – for a good 95 minutes (I timed it) but unfortunately it didn’t make me feel any better.

Not that I was expecting it to either. But I made my point and that was the important thing.

After he had left I carried on with the editing and managed to turn 10:24 minutes into just 7:10, which is always good.

But when I played it back, there was a horrible noise. Somehow I’d made an unconscious manoeuvre of some control or other and it had distorted the sound.

Had I known what I had done I might have been able to reverse it and restore the sound but in the end I had to redo it.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this I went for my afternoon walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that buoys pop up every now and again in the sea around here, and there was another one out there today. I still haven’t worked out what their purpose is though.

There were plenty of people around today so I wasn’t able to fit in very much in the way of a run. The way that I run these days is quite embarrassing and I’d rather not be observed.

The radio project is now complete and ready to go (in about 3 months time) but I didn’t have time to finish a “live concert”. Mind you, I’ve had plenty of tile to think about things and I known now what i’m going to do if none of the irons that I have in the fire come up trumps this time round.

No harm in preparing something and being well ahead.

Because tea was late, I had an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit with pasta and vegetables followed by the last of the rice pudding. It won’t be long before I have to start cooking mega-curries again. The pile in the freezer is diminishing.

Outside tonight, it really was beautiful.

There was a really cold wind out there but the skies were clear and you could see for miles. This trawler here right out in the English Channel stood out really well and the photo hasn’t come out too badly considering the distance at which it was taken.

But at least, after the wicked storms that we have had just recently, they’ve been able to go back to work.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I took a photo of the lighthouse and the coastguard station her eon the Pointe Du Roc.

It subsequently occurred to me that I don’t remember taking one of the same view in the dark. So seeing as I was going that way this evening, I duly obliged.

As you can (or can’t) see, it’s nothing whatever to write home about. But I suppose that it’s something for posterity.

“The fishermen are back at work after the storms” I said earlier.

And as I rounded the headland I saw this bright light heading my way. The fishing boats aren’t merely just coming into harbour, there are others heading out to sea too at the same time.

This is another photo that could have been much worse that it actually is, but I’m clearly in need of much more practice at shooting in the dark if I want to do anything special.

There have been changes in the Chantier navale too just now.

Yesterday we managed to make it up to three fishing boats, but this evening we’re back down to two again. So it’s all go in the shipyard.

It wasn’t all go though on my little running route. Far too many people about, as well as two cats squaring up to each other.

And so I continued my walk to another one of my reserve courses and had a good run along there instead. Must keep going as much as I can.

So bed-time now once the good music stops. Shops tomorrow, do the text for this live broadcast and then spend the rest of the week attacking the arrears of work.

It’s all go here after having fallen considerably behind. I must pull myself together.

Tuesday 25th February 2020 – THE WIND OUTSIDE …

… tonight is probably one of the most wicked that I have ever experienced in all the time that I’ve been here.

You might be wondering how come it is that the fete foraine – the funfair – is still managing to operate in this kind of weather.

In fact, firstly only part of it is. Several of the rides have closed down, presumably due to the high winds. But then again, the Parking Hérel, where the funfair is situated, is pretty well sheltered.

Where I’m situated is on a headland right on the English CHannel with nothing between me and North America and I’m certainly taking the brunt of it. There’s another headland to the south of the Parking Hérel and there’s a high cliff right behind it.

But returning to our story, a rather strange thing happened to me during the night. I had the same dream no fewer than four times, one after the other. I couldn’t believe it when I listened to the dictaphone.

We were at school. I was with a friend of mine and we were taking photos of all of the school children. They were all sitting at the big long tables eating their meals. At the end of the session we went over to the headmistress and asked “what about our meal?” She asked “haven’t you had yours?” “No, we’ve been busy taking the photographs”. It developed into a long, lengthy discussion about how we should have had a meal which of course we knew. She couldn’t understand anything because of this issue about the photos. She knew that we’d applied for the contract and that we should have had the contract as our quote was the best, all this kind of thing and we were entitled to a meal. She went on and on for a while. In the end she went off and my friend went off. She came back with a pile of paperwork and asked “who’s filled in these forms?” They were forms to show the directors and officers of the company. I could remember filling one in when i was appointed but my name wasn’t there. It was still directors of the company from school years ago who were still there. She said “I remember (… someone else from the past …) filling in this form only yesterday about taking kids for a walk. It’s clearly something that wasn’t right and it had to be put right so that the situation could be regularised. When my friend came back in I asked him what he would be doing on Wednesday night. He came out with some kind of comment about getting ready for school on Thursday. I told him that we had a pile of paperwork to fill in. I started to explain to him about the paperwork
I had this dream four times this evening as I mentioned earlier. But in the third one the headmistress was going on about cupboards in front of the radiators which were small with close-fronted cupboards and doors. She was saying that in the old days they were porous so that the heat could pass through and warm the room more but the ones they have now are solid and so the heat doesn’t pass at all.

So explain that if you can!

After breakfast I set about cutting up a pile of digital sound files into the component tracks. And once more I had the misfortune to find a pile that were out of order and it took a considerable amount of time to unravel them.

What with having something of a late start this morning, it was about 11:00 by the time I finished my morning tasks.

That was the cue for me to go for my bread before I actually settled down to do some work.

For a change I had no intention of going out to see the parade this afternoon so I went for a long morning walk all around the headland, which would give me an opportunity for a close-up view of the chantier navale to see what was going on.

And we seem to have acquired another new resident. We now have three fishing boats in there receiving attention

The tide wasn’t quite in so the harbour gates were closed and I could pass over the path on the top to the other side of the harbour.

The big pontoon with the cranes was hard at work again over by the rue du Port. They are cracking on with the installation of the new pontoons for the landing stages and they might well be finished sometime soon.

But I was more interested in that very large grey post that now seems to have appeared over there behind the floating pontoon. That’s something else that I shall have to check.

But there was one thing yesterday that I mentioned and that I said that I would check up on today.

That was the crane and the mysterious scaffolding construction that it seemed to be erecting. So down at the quayside today I had a look to see what was going on, and there is the scaffolding bolted to some poles that are screwed firmly to the quayside and clamped down.

So it looks as if there’s some kind of serious and semi-permanent arrangement of things happening here right now.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline I headed back home. The crowds were already starting to assemble and I didn’t really want to be caught up in it.

Instead, in the run-up to lunchtime I began the notes for the next radio project.

After my butties I spent an hour or so in the kitchen. The orange and ginger syrup is running out and having bought a pile of lemons yesterday, I decided to make a lemon and ginger syrup.

First step was to slice up the rest of my ginger root (I must buy some more) into tiny pieces and put them in a little water in a saucepan, bring it to the boil and let it simmer.

Meanwhile, peel the lemons and remove as much pith as possible, put them in the whizzer and give them a whizz around to extract as much juice as possible. That was strained off, poured into a bottle that I had sterilised and put in the fridge.

The rest of the lemons went into the whizzer again and properly broken down, and then added to the water and the ginger and left to simmer.

In the meantime I cracked on for a while with the notes for the radio project and then went out for my usual walk.

If you are wondering why there are no photos of the afternoon walk, it’s because the heavens had by now opened and we were having rain like I haven’t seen for a long time. I did have my camera with me but it was tucked up inside my wet weather gear and I had no intention of taking it out.

However, I did find a dry bit of my walk, one of the places where I usually go for a run, and so I took the opportunity to clock up another couple of minutes.

Back in the apartment I took the ginger and lemon off the heat and added a couple of tablespoons of honey to sweeten it. And then the whole lot went into the whizzer for a really good whizz around until it became a syrupy mass.

Final step was to take out the bottle of lemon juice that I had earlier put in the fridge, add the syrup to it and give it a really good shake up so that it was all mixed well in. And that will be the drink for the next week or so, diluted with my filtered water.

However, I am tempted to see what it might be like with some sparkling water.

Having finished writing the notes, I turned my attention to tea. Stuffed pepper with rice and veg, followed by rice pudding.

And I bet that you are all wondering how I make my stuffing too.

So, a handful of either bulghour or quinoa – whichever is first to hand – goes into a saucepan with a very small amount of water and some spicy chili power. It’s brought to the boil and left to simmer.

In the meantime, I chop up some onion, garlic, mushrooms, olives and anything else that looks as if it might be suitable and chuck it all into a bowl. And then I add a fistful of salted peanuts.

By now, the quinoa or bulghour should be ready (it doesn’t need to be competely cooked) and you add that to your mix with herbs and black pepper.

Finally, add some tomato sauce (I have some nice arrabiata sauce that they had in Noz and I bought a few jars) and olive oil and mix it all up together.

Cut round the stalk of your pepper and pull out the core, the seeds and the pith. Then stuff it with your stuffing and pack it well in with a fork.

Finally, 6.5 minutes on medium-high wattage in the microwave (in a microwave-proof bowl of course), followed by whatever time it needs on full power to finish cooking until the pepper itself is nice and soft. And there’s your stuffed pepper.

Outside, I was absolutely whacked by this thoroughly wicked wind that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere.

My original pla was to go around the walls for a second time today rather than around the headland which would be … errr … somewhat exposed. But it didn’t quite work out like that.

The wind was so violent that it was impossible to walk at all in the rue du Nord and that’s the way that I go when I’m off on my travels out around the walls.

Instead, what I did was to go for a walk through the narrow streets of the old medieval town where there was at least some kind of shelter.

One of the streets was actually quite well-sheltered from the wind and as there was no-one about I broke into a run.

It wasn’t as long as I would have liked but it wasn’t the kind of weather to be out there discussing things like that. It was one of those occasions where I was obliged to go with what I had and make the best of it.

The route that I took brought me back into the Place Cambernon and there, a little surprise was awaiting me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on Thursday evenings we have a pizza van parked up in the square. But tonight we seem to have acquired a burger van.

Whether it’s going to be a permanent arrangement every Tuesday or whether it’s just a temporary arrangement for the period of Carnaval remains to be seen. But whatever it is or will be, it’s nice to see some life coming back into the medieval town.

By the time I made it to th city gates there was still 6% of my daily target to have a go at so I went for another little extension to my walk.

From the top of the walls there was a good view down into the funfair so I experimented with different speeds, exposures and ISO settings to see what I could produce.

And then I came back to write up my notes.

Now it’s bed time, later than I was hoping, but still …

The wind is sill howling away outside but in a minute I’ll be tucked up under the covers. I wonder where I’ll be going tonight. And how many times I’ll be going there.

Sunday 16th February 2020 – DESPITE IT BEING A …

… day of rest today, I have been a very busy boy.

And here is the evidence. Frm left to right we have a lentil-and-tofu pie, an apple pie and, to use up the rest of the pastry and apple, an apple turnover.

The other day I mentioned that there were only a couple of slices of pie left in the fridge. Well, there was some tofu that needed using up and I bought a couple of pastry rolls yesterday.

Lentils are never in short supply here and so there we were.

A couple of hundred grammes of lentils went into the slow cooker with some parsley, sage and rosemary, and then some water. And they were left to boil up.

Once they had boiled, I drained them off, rinsed them and put them back in clean water with some tofu, more herbs as above and a couple of stock cubes. And left them for a couple of hours.

And talking of a couple of hours, it was more than a couple of hours of sleep that I had last night. In bed at a relatively realistic time, I slept right through until about 07:50.

But there was no chance of my leaving the bed at that time of the morning. The howling gale and rainstorm that I could clearly hear going on outside made me crawl back down under the bedclothes. 10.30 is a much more reasonable time to arise on a Sunday.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone. Apparently I was at a rock concert last night in Nantwich and there was a group playing and I was watching the group. I was with someone but I can’t remember who now and a woman came over. I knew this woman but I can’t remember who she was. She was big and tall and in a wide-brimmed black hat with a small crown, black cloak type of overcoat. She looked like a Bishop. She shouted at me but I didn’t recognise her at first but then I did and got talking with her. I noticed that one of the musicians was someone who had been a chauffeur with me, and he was with a saxophone. I thought “ohh, how strange”. We had a talk and a joke about cars, that kind of thing. I was meeting someone else but it was quite early so I went back to my apartment and got a burger and started to fry it. But being hit overwhelmingly by an overwhelming way of sleep I went to get into bed. I took off all of my clothes to get into bed and just then the doorbell rang. I staggered out of bed past a half-cooked meal, half asleep and asked who it was. “Oh, it’s Mikhael” the bass guitarist from the Hillbilly group. That was the guy I was waiting for. So I thought “‘I’d better let him get in and get dressed, stop eating and trying to cook this food, all of that kind of thing”.
After that I was in a museum somewhere and there was a discussion about a play taking place where two actors were throwing balls at each other – Roman actors. They were on version 2 of a CD or DVD and I had to check first of all to check that I had DVD version 2, which I had. So we checked and it was the Romans in bed that were throwing, these two guys were throwing these hard balls at each other until one was hit on the head and killed. We were discussing why the other guy hadn’t killed the first one and we thought “maybe he had been lying on his arm so long so his arm was weak and so he had to use his bad arm. This led to a discussion about military tactics at Flodden -Culloden rather where British soldiers were instructed to attack the man on their right whenever he raised his claymore to attack the British soldier standing on his right and never mind about the guy in front of you because your mate on the left would be taking care of him. Whenever they raised their right arm, their soft under-belly was exposed and that was where you would bayonet them. That went back to the crusaders and armour, how you would kill a knight is underneath the right armpit. Someone said “should we all go and get a glass of water out of the tap and resume this discussion somewhere more comfortable rather than around a few library desks.
A little bit earlier I was having to do something that was extremely urgent and I’d got off the Metro and there on the Metro was someone, the guy who played someone in Hawaii 50 and I can’t remember his name – a very famous actor. I quickly got back onto the Metro to get off a bit further down and was hoping that there was no-one at the station waiting for me. It was a long and convoluted route to get to where the safety deposit box was because obviously the previous Metro Station would have been better for that. I had to come off and walk across a crowded street which took ages and walking up this hill in the countryside. As I was doing it, some woman’s dog came along and started growling at me so I kicked it away. She complained. The dog came back and bit me so I gave it a really good heavy kick and she complained about that. I said “you should have your dog on a lead”. She said that lLeads are compulsory here which I thought strange. I had to walk up this hill and I reckon that it was a climb of about 500 feet and it was hot, in the summer and we were quickly out of the urban area into the rural area. I was feeling really uncomfortable at this walk and this climb. I have this the wrong way round haven’t I? It was first the man then the story about being on the tram and the dog biting me then finally the third part.
Later still I was on the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again with a group of people, a family with very young kids and we were doing the usual family type of thing that you do with young kids, playing games and things. And then I went for a walk. We’d only been on this ship half a day or so but I’d been on it before so I knew my way round so I was wandering around quite happily. I walked past all these people on the deck sitting there in the lounge. I walked out and upstairs, outside and round and ended up being on the top of a double decker bus, an old green Crosville one. I worked out that on the top deck there was only room for about 20 people that you would expect on a double-decker bus or maybe more I dunno. Anyway I walked back down and these people were looking at le with amazement thinking “where’s he been?”. A stewardess called Kerry who I knew so I said to her, calling her by her first name and they all thought “wow he’s learning quick about the ship” and then we approached Crewe Bus Station which was a dock and I said to her “gosh, he’s coming in quick! Is he on a mileage bonus or something?” “Ohh God yes he is!” and he hit the quayside, bounced up on top of the quay. I said “that’s our holiday finished, isn’t it now?” But he kept the power on and the sip sailed round in like a U-turn, back to the edge of the quayside and dropped over and into the water again. I thought “God, I’d never ever thought of doing that” but there we were, back in the water again.

By the time that I’d finished typing that lot out I’d had breakfast, had a quick bit of butty and it wasn’t all that far off teatime. After all, it’s Sunday and I was in no hurry.

One thing though – because of the weather I hadn’t set one single foot outside the apartment but round about 16:00 the rain briefly stopped.

Seizing the chance I grabbed my coat and went outside for a walk. The weather was still grey and totally miserable as you can tell from this photo of the lighthouse and the coastguard station at the Pointe du Roc.

But the most important thing was that the wind had dropped considerably and that was good news. it had really been wicked.

And while the wind might have dropped there was still plenty of power in the sea.

That’s quite evident in this photo. The tide is well out right now and yet there’s enough force in the waves to bring them right up to the sea wall with something of a splash.

If it keeps it up, it’s going to be really impressive out there this evening at high tide I reckon. Not that I’ll be there to see it though.

Heading into town for a long walk by the very old road – or path more like – here’s something that I don’t remember encountering before.

It was the fencing and the “keep out” notices that drew my attention to it so I went to look. It seems that the cliffs are eroding just here and undermining part of the wartime German concrete.

There’s tons of that around here in the Atlantic Wall and we have seen plenty of it in the past, but this looks like one piece that we won’t be seeing for much longer.

But while I was there my attention was further caught, this time by the sound of running water.

There are a couple of springs up on the top and these days they disappear into some kind of guttering system. I’ve never worked out where they go to from there but now I think that I know.

This culvert here that discharges into the sea looks very much like the outlet for all of this.

With the tide being quite far out right now the gates to the harbour were closed so I could walk over the pathway at the top to the other side of the harbour.

Yesterday I mentioned the fete foraine here in Granville. The machinery and amusements are to arrive today and start to set up tomorrow. It looks now as if most of them have turned up already.

Here they are anyway, parked up at the car park at the end of the quayside near to the ferry terminal and here they’ll stay fr a couple of weeks.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been following the fortunes of the two concrete breakers, the digger and the two tractors and trailers that are removing rocks from the ferry terminal.

The havy stuff parks over by the fish processing plant but here on the quayside are the tractors and trailers and all of the stuff that they have brought with them.

And this can only mean that we won’t be expecting a gravel boat for a while because all of this is parked where the gravel would be dumped for loading.

Last night we saw the arrival of the first lot of caravans for the fete foraine and they were parking up at the Place Godal.

Today there are a lot more of them as well as a couple of lorries that might well be something to do with the fairground attractions.

and just in case you hadn’t already noticed, it was now back to raining again. But the wind was still keeping down so I pressed on with my walk. After all, I can’t get much wetter than I am.

My little voyage took me along the sea front and down to the Parking Hérel.

Starting tomorrow this will be where the fete foraine will be erected. And it’s a complete work of art the things that they do to get it going.

Tomorrow I’ll be coming back from my radio meeting this way and I’ll be able to see how they are doing. And hopefully take a few photos of the erections that they put up. And it doesn’t take them long to do it.

For a variety of reasons there aren’t too many old houses of the traditional Normandy-Style here in Granville.

And this is one that I haven’t seen before, in a little alleyway off the rue Commandant Yvon. A real Normandy wooden-framed house. And not falling down either like the one in the rue Ernest LeFranc.

By now I was ready to return home but still wishing to push up the percentages on the fitbit I continued around the town for a while getting wetter and wetter and eventually made it back home for coffee and cake.

For tea I made myself the usual pizza, forgetting the sliced garlic, and then made my pies.

Before I’d gone out I’d checked the slow cooker. The mix was too liquidy so a couple of spoonfuls of oats had taken care of that and it was lookign quite good.

So pastry in the pie dish, add in the filling, moisten the edge of the pastry, put a top on, press down the top with a fork so that it seals, trim off the excess pastry, paint with soya milk and prick with a fork.

Roll out all of the excess pastry so that it’s flat again, cut out a circle to put in a pie dish, slice a few cooking apples very thinly and pack the pie dish with them, some lemon juice and brown sugar and forget the cinnamon and nutmeg but remember the desiccated coconut.

Roll out the remaining pastry, cut out enough for a lid, repeat the process as for the previous pie except to sprinkle on the top some brown sugar.

With the pastry that you’ve trimmed off, roll it out again and keep on trimming and adding back as you roll it to keep it square, fill it with the leftover apple brown sugar and coconut, fold it over and then bung the lot in the oven to cook while I’m eating my pizza.

And while I was eating my pizza I was wondering why I hadn’t fried any onions and garlic for the pie mix.

The pies weren’t ready so for pudding I had a banana with some of the Alpro almond-flavoured dessert stuff that I’d bought for the apple pie.

No-one about at all on my evening walk so I had a good couple of runs. My usual track on the north side of the walls was waterlogged so I improvised. And I even did a third run – or, rather, half a run – later on because having seen that I was now on 93% of my daily target, I extended my walk.

Now my notes are finished, my day of rest is over and it’s back to work tomorrow. A good night’s sleep is required and then i’ll be fighting fit for tomorrow.

I don’t think.

Thursday 13th February 2020 – LIDL IN GRANVILLE …

… is slowly dragging itself into the 21st Century at long last.

Over the past year or so its BIO range has slowly been expanding and there have occasionally been things there that I can eat, but today, the freezer has been restocked and there are now not only vegetarian frozen foods but even a (very small) vegan selection.

And that’s god news for me and even though i’m struggling for space in my freezer, I bought a box, on the grounds that if no-one buys it, they won’t stock it.

Yes, I made it to LIDL this morning although I’m not quite sure how because I was feeling really dreadful. Last night I slept right the way through the alarms and it was 07:35 when I hauled myself out of bed eventually.

And to say that I wasn’t feeling at all like it is an understatement. Looking back on what I wrote last night before I went to bed, then nothing whatever had changed.

It was preying on my mind too during my sleep (such as it was) by the look of things. After the medication I struggled back to the desk to check the dictaphone. It had taken me ages to go off to sleep but I went back on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and there was a party type of thing that we were having and a group of people – the organisers – got up and did a song that involved banjos and guitars and a bass. It was really good – they were all disguised as Mexicans. I dashed in with my camera to take a photo but I couldn’t remember how to set the settings on it to get the photo that I wanted because they were standing right by an open window where the sun was streaming in so I wanted to play around with the settings but I couldn’t remember how to do it and it was the subsequent panic attack that awoke me, about 30 seconds after I’d gone to sleep.

After breakfast I had a quick shower and then headed out to LIDL even though I didn’t feel much like it.

And the first thing that I noticed was that the wind was back after its day off yesterday. And back in spades too. The port gates can’t have been opened long so the tide still has about 90 minutes before it’s full but even so it was still looking very impressive.

The waves were hurling themselves with all of their might against the sea wall and some were going over the top.

The wind wasn’t the only thing that was back either.

For the first time in well over a week, Normandy Trader had turned up in harbour. The blockade of Channel Island ships has ended of course with Guernsey’s capitulation (in four days!) and Normandy Trader, which brings in the shellfish from the Jersey Fisherman’s Co-operative, can now come into port.

But for how long remains to be seen.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been following the antics of the workmen down in the port and the gradual assembly of the big pontoon.

A large crane turned up yesterday too, and now it seems that it has been taken out onto the pontoon.

But for what, I have no idea. I can’t think what they would need something like that for in a harbour like this – unless it’s to act as a counterbalance for the crane on the quayside as it lowers the new walkways into the water.

Even so, that’s using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

But then again, ther emight be something in this argument.

There’s now another mobile crane turned up in the rue du Port where they have been fitting the mounting brackets for the pontoon walkway on that side, so it looks as if they are almost ready to start there too.

This is all going to be extremely interesting over the next few weeks or so and I hope that I’ll be here to see it.

After something of a struggle I made it to LIDL where I forgot the mushrooms, but it was an expensive shop there today and for a good reason too. The largest saucepan that I have here is a 20cm one with a capacity of 2.5 litres and for what i’m doing now with making soups and drinks and also freezing carrots, it’s just not big enough.

On Monday I noticed that they had nig saucepans in on offer but I couldn’t bring one home. Today though, I was prepared with a large carry-bag and a 24cm 5.5 litre saucepan is now sitting in my kitchen.

That’s even big enough to sterilise all of my jars too.

Having picked up my dejeunette at la Mie Caline I headed for home.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the other day the workman on the roof of that house that they are slowly renovating in the rue des Juifs. They are obviously going quicker than I was reckoning because now they are doing the floors and the concrete pump is here punping the concrete in.

It’s a good job that the local buses here aren’t double-deckers, isn’t it?

Despite the winds having started up again, it seems that the marine activity is still going on.

We’ve seen Normandy Trader braving the winds to come into port but now it’s the turn of La Grande Ancre to head off for a life on the open waves out there on the open sea.

And good luck to her too. She’s going to need it, a small thing like her out there in waves like that. As I’ve said before … “on many occasions” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those going out there

On the way back I bumped into my neighbour and we had a lengthy chat, buffetted by the wind as we were standing there.

Back here I had a coffee and then started work. And I can safely say that today I didn’t do a single thing that had anything whatever to do with the radio. And I think that this must be the first day since well before Christmas too.

First thing was, due to my late start this morning, to split up a few digital tracks into their component parts. And I’ve given up relying on the official data for cutting the tracks because they are just so hopelessly wrong.

That took me up to lunch time and my butties.

This afternoon I attacked the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few months. Some of it was quite urgent too so it wasn’t just a case of simply filing it away, I had a few letters and e-mails to write for stuff that I should really have attended to a while ago.

There was a pile of photocopying too that needed doing. All in all, I was still at this by the time that I knocked off for tea and there’s more to do.

But here’s a surprise. I’ve found a document that tells me that I have an employment assurance policy maturing at the end of February that is going to pay me a pension. The only pensions that I know of are my morks pension, my UK and my Belgian State pension (not that these are anything to write home about) and some old pension from when I was in the UK years ago.

So what is this all about? I’ll have to ring up tomorrow to enquire about it because I don’t have a clue. It can’t be anything substantial otherwise I would remember it. But was I in a works pension scheme when I spent that 12 months working for that crazy American company in Brussels?

There were several interruptions to my afternoon walk.

First and foremost was my afternoon walk. And that was interrupted too by me noticing a couple of guys out in the sea windsurfing. They must be out of their minds in this weather with this wind and these heavy seas and as I prepared the camera, one of them capsized into the sea.

This left the other one to engage with me.

And if I thought that the wind was bad around here, I hadn’t yet gone round the headland.

and there it really was wicked. Not as bad as it was earlier in the week but still enough to disrupt almost everything that I was trying to do. The waves were rolling into the Baie de Mont St Michel with quite a considerable force and I reckon that this evening when the tide is in it’s going to be quite dramatic.

So I wish that they would fix up some lights somewhere to make it easy for photography.

No change at all in the Chantier navale so I pushed on to see what they were up to at the ferry terminal.

The big tractor and trailer (there are in fact two of them) was heading back out there for another load of stone, with it being low tide. And wedged up in the corner was a concrete-breaker and a large digger.

The breaker breaks it off, the digger picks it up and puts it into the trailer and the tractor drives away the loaded trailer.

The photo this morning of Normandy Trader hadn’t come out too well as I had had the sun in the lens at the time.

But now, mid-afternoon, I have the sun behind me so i can take a much better photo of it too, and with the big NIKON D500 instead of the little NIKON 1. The Nikon 1 is a useful little camera and I take it with me when I go for long walks or go shopping because it’s very lightweight and fits nicely in my pocket

But it’s not up to big panoramic distance shots unfortunately. It’s very good at what it does, but it doesn’t do much.

For the same reason as the previous photo, I re-took a photo of the pontoon and the big crane.

No idea at al what they are doing but as I said earlier it’s going to be interesting in the next couple of weeks as the story unfolds.

Back here and a coffee and then I tried to carry on work but I crashed out again. And that was a shame because my head had cleared and I was starting to feel a little better

But once I was back awake I carried on and now I have a huge blood blister on my finger where I caught it in the hole puncher.

Tea was a kind-of curry of everything left over – namely the rest of the stuffing with more onion and garlic and, to lengthen it, a good handful of salted peanuts. It was delicious with a tomato sauce, veg and pasta.

And the last of the rice pudding that followed it was equally delicious.

All alone again on my evening walk, and I managed my two runs, even putting an extra 10 metres on them which was quite surprising.

But now it’s bed-time, later than I had hoped but it can’t be helped. Tomorrow I’m going to finish off the paperwork and then start on the photos from my Arctic adventures.

That will be exciting.

Tuesday 11th February 2020 – IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING …

… why the photos of the storm tonight aren’t anything as impressive as last night’s images, the answer is pretty clear.

When I was outside just now, it was still an hour or so before high tide. The sea was still coming in with an incredible amount of force though and I reckon that by the time it’s high tide, we’ll be having a belter again.

But I won’t be seeing it as I’m off to bed shortly.

Just for a change, I slept right though the night as far as I’m able to tell. There was certainly nothing on the dictaphone anyway

And furthermore, I even managed to beat the third alarm call so that’s progress of some kind or other.

With no dictaphone notes to deal with, I spent the early part of the morning cutting up digital tracks. Well, actually, repairing some really dire cutting before I could cut them properly (I don’t know who the heck they employed in some of these studios, I really don’t), as well as chase down a missing track which I eventually found stuck on the wrong soundtrack long after I’d downloaded a duplicate.

After breakfast I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio project and by the time that I knocked off for tea I’d even written most of the notes.

Had I applied myself to the task I could have had it finished, I reckon, but there were loads of interruptions

Much of the morning was spent trying to take a decent “selfie” (uuurrrggghhh) because I need a photograph that isn’t a standard size. Eventually I managed to seize up the memory card in the telephone and that has spent most of the day being recovered and repaired. Ancient laptops are really good for doing that because although they aren’t as quick as modern stuff, they are much more reliable and aren’t equipped with all of this modern fail-safe stuff that would stop a modern one.

During a break in the rainstorms – because we have been drenched today good and properly – I went down into town for my dejeunette from la Mie Caline.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the dredging that was taking place a few weeks ago over at the ferry terminal. Well, it looks as if the material that they were using – well some of it anyway – is back.

We saw one of the diggers heading out there yesterday afternoon, so they muct have turned up sometime after lunch yesterday

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been following the work that’s been going on at the quayside in the rue du Port.

This lunchtime I managed to catch them at it, fixing one of the pontoon supports to the side of the harbour wall. No sign of any pontoon yet, but I imagine that it won’t be too long before it’s here. There can’t be many more supports to fix.

And then we shall see just how this is going to work out

The tide was well on its way out so the harbour gates were closed. That meant that I could cross on the path over the top of the gates to the other side.

And it’s all go here too since I was over here too. We’ve had quite a few deliveries of all kinds of stuff and a giant crane too. This has excited my curiosity and as there are some people over there with it, I shall go and enquire.

And you have probably noticed the clouds in the sky. It was quite bright early but now it’s turning ugly.

And so I made my enquiries of the guys standing by the stuff and their response was “we’re going to erect a wind turbine – three wind turbines in fact – at the harbour mouth”.

Well, quite! I was sorely tempted to reply something like “pull the other one, it’s got bells on it” but instead I played along with them for a while and then wandered off as it had now started to rain.

But anyway, I worked out what it is and we’ll see if I’m right in early course I reckon.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d go and see what was going on that had caused the road in the rue Roger Maris to be closed. But no chance of that today because we were being pelted with rain and it was dreadful. I came home instead.

After lunch I made some apple and pear puree seeing as I have run out. And I solved the problem of excess liquid by draining it off and drinking it. I didn’t think until later that I should have made a cordial out of it.

As it was, I ran the fruit through the whizzer once it was thoroughly cooked and it’s come out exactly as it was supposed to. I’ll see what it tastes like tomorrow.

Being on a roll I peeled some ginger and boiled it. While it was simmering away I added some honey and turmeric, and then peeled three lemons. The lemons went in the whizzer too and the juice was drained off and put in the fridge.

The lemon pulp was added to the ginger and all of that was left to simmer for a while.

By now it was walk-time so off I went.

By the looks of things it was low tide and a very low tide at that too. The sea was miles out. And while the rain might well have stopped … “for the moment” – ed … where I was standing but across the bay at Jullouville they were getting the lot.

And the wind was still there of course. That couldn’t clear off across the bay too, could it?

And it didn’t look as if we were going to be spared the rain for very much longer … “I was right” – ed.

There was a wicked storm brewing up across the baie de Mont St Michel on the Brittany coast and whatever they were getting in Cancale, we would be getting it very shortly too give the speed of the wind.

This isn’t the time to be hanging around waiting for things to happen.

But neither the rainstorms nor the high winds were going to deter the fans of peche à pied.

They are out there regardless of the weather scavenging among the rocks for shellfish and the like. There are some kind of rules about the exploitation of the coastline and the part beyond the normal low tide limit is apparently fair game.

But of course you can only access it at an abnormally low tide and today seems to be one of those. And I hope that they share out the catch with their friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

With the tide being so far out and with the weather being so vile today, many fishing boats that we wouldn’t normally see in port were all still there today.

And the low tide meant that you can see all of them too. As I’ve said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … this is what is called a NAABSA harbour – Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground – when the tide is out.

It might look impressive to see boats like this but some NAABSA harbours are even more impressive. Take Ridham in kent for example, one of the destinations of our gravel boats. That’s a NAABSA harbour and ships of a couple of thousand tons can sit on the sea ed there at low tide.

And the mystery of what that digger was going to do yesterday is solved because it was doing it again today and I managed to catch him at it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the concrete breaker working away on the rocks over by the ferry terminal. They’ve obviously reached the limit of their reach up there because they are now working away from down at the water level.

I makes me wonder if we are going to be having a bigger ferry boat in here sometime soon

And I was right!

Earlier on we saw them with the crane and the equipment and we heard their “wind turbine” story. What we actually have is a floating pontoon or two out in the water now, which is what I thought it might have been.

That doesn’t answer the question as to why, and seeing as I doubt very much if I will get any sense out of the workforce, I’ll have to wait and see for myself.

By now the rain had eased off so I extended my walk a little and then came back to the apartment.

Having put some coffee into the microwave to heat up, I sat down to wait for it and promptly fell asleep for 20 minutes. How awful this is!

But then I finished off making my cordial and then cracked on with the work. But you can see why, with all of these interruptions, I didn’t manage to get as much done as I had hoped.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and it was the best that I had ever made. It really was good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The rice pudding was excellent too.

That took me up to my evening walk time.

The rain had stopped by now … “for the moment” – ed … but everywhere was thoroughly soaked. One of my running tracks was submerged so I had to do that run somewhere else.

Abd as I mentioned earlier, the tide is still quite far out right now. The waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset though but without the force that they’ll have a little later.

Just for a change I was the only one out there enjoying the spectacle so I stood and watched it for a while.

With no-one about I managed my second run too and then headed for home, exchanging pleasantries with a guy cleaning his window sill. Some people have some funny ideas.

Back here I’ve finished my notes so now I’m ready for bed. But the lemon and ginger cordial that I made was totally wicked. I mustn’t spill any or it will strip the varnish off the floor.

But being tired, I’m off to bed, hoping for another good night’s sleep. I need it.

Sunday 9th February 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the effects of Storm Ciara as the waves come crashing down onto the harbour wall here this afternoon, a good couple of hours before High Tide too, let me tell you a little about my day today.

With it being a Sunday of course, there was no alarm call. And I wasn’t in any great rush to go to bed last night either (not that it was late by any recent standard) but I was still hoping to have a pretty decent sleep.

But, unfortunately, it wasn’t really meant to be, was it?

One glance at the dictaphone was enough to tell me that.

There were files on there that had been dictated at 04:25; 04:48 and 05:27 and all of that points to a very disturbed sleep. And while I finally awoke at about 09:30, it was still another 20 minutes before I could haul myself out of bed.

After the medication I attacked the digital file-splitting project. And I was right when I thought to myself that this seems to bear no relation to what I knew of the album, because it isn’t the album that it’s supposed to be.

Heaven alone knows what it is because it features three tracks that I don’t recognise at all and I wouldn’t even bet that it was the singer who it was supposed to be either.

And even worse, I can’t find any mention of the lyrics anywhere on the internet, which is even more strange.

After breakfast I set about looking at the notes on the dictaphone. And I wish that I hadn’t because they are all somewhat confusing to say the least.

To begin with, I’d received a huge packet of envelopes through the post and one of them -I can’t remember what it was about – but it was really complicated stuff giving me all kinds of information that I didn’t really need and inviting me to do things and be things, so on. The next day I got another letter from a different source saying “be a travel agent” this was and it was a quote for a life assurance, like £36,000 and a bit of insurance for this and a bit of insurance for that and how I would have to make payment for this. Of course I had no intention of making any payment for life assurance as my life is on its way out so I was sitting there trying to work out a way how I could decline this offer and not take it up because it seemed for some unknown reason to be pretty binding and I don’t know why. It had something to do with a voyage I was making with Liz and Terry and we had to go to a club in somewhere like Wrenbury. We left Crewe – we were in Nantwich Road and for some reason I took them down Wistaston Road and out past the park and down the Middlewich Road into Nantwich. They were wondering why I’d gone that way and I said that there’s far less traffic this way and they didn’t understand because it was longer. I said “trust me” and they replied that they had trusted me the last time about this and you’ve brought us this way again. I said “yes but we got there and we got there fine didn’t we?” so I didn’t see a problem. We were going to a party or something and it was in a pub. I asked “is there something like a separate room or a quiet room or something ebcause I don’t really feel like mixing wiht a lot of people and making a lot of noise” They said “yes, you’ll enjoy it and it’s one of the reasons why we go there because there are other things to be doing as well”

A little later, there was a concert or something due to take place about the blues or somewhere like that and I know that I had to go there and I was trying to think of a way out of it. There was something about us being on board ship as well and there was a girl here with a very long plaited pigtail-ponytail thing and that’s all I remember about this.

Later still, I’d received an invitation to go and take part in some research on this animal scientific centre out near Wrenbury (… why Wrenbury all of a sudden? …). I wasn’t very sure about this. Everyone was saying what a really good opportunity this is because it’s one of the market leaders in this kind of field. But being vegan I was pretty much opposed to it yet everyone was saying what a great opportunity this might be for me.

And finally, we were on a bus, me George and someone else, it might have been Darren dunno. We were heading towards the French coast and – a tram, not a bus – and the tram was rattly and crowded and people were gradually getting off as we got lighter. I was having a chat to this George character about nothing in particular. At one moment we came round a bend and there was a beautiful view of the port and the ships in it at Ouistreham, all of this. I went to get my camera but by the time that I got myself organised the vuew had gone. Just the canals and the barges on them like Chausiais. I didn’t get a photo of those. As we came round a corner where there was an abandoned railway station with hoardings outside all covered in fly-posting. I thought “Ahhh I know where I am now”. We got off the tram and whoever was the third person came up behind us on a bicycle. They were having a conversation and they asked “what did I think?”. I hadn’t heard the conversation so I said “I don’t know – I haven’t heard it” so they started talking again about Valentines Cards. How many Valentine’s cards do you buy? I replied “as many as you need”. They replied “you just buy one don’t you, for people you like?” I said “and what about the people you love?” They replied that you don’t need a Valentine’s card for them because they know it already. I replied “you should never take people for granted, especially women” but they disagreed with me. In the meantime I was trying to do something with the lends of my camera. I’d put some glue on it to hold something on but it had come off and I was trying to get all of this pink glue off my camera where I had this lens attached

As you can see, that took up the greater part of the morning and a little chat with Liz on the internet took care of the rest.

Luckily I had made myself a pot of coffee so I was able to keep on topping myself up throughout the morning as I was going on.

And I needed it too because despite the lengthy sleep, I was creaking away and ready to drop off at the drop of a hat.

Somewhat later than I was expecting or hoping, I went for my walk into town for my bread.

And never mind “walk”. It was more like “crawl” in this wicked wind that was blowing. Nevertheless I made it down to the chantier navale to see what was going on.

And there’s another boat in there now, next to the mobile sling. One of the trawler-type of fishing boats that operate from out of the port here. So things are looking up.

But to give you some idea of how strong the wind was, there wasn’t a single boat out that I could see. They were all moored up in port.

And look at the waves that are chopping around them too. They ave to be at least one foot-waves, and you have to remember that the tide is out and the harbour gates are too.

So those waves are building up in just the wind and in a run of a couple of hundred metres.

Imagine what it must be like out in the open sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they have been digging a trench on the quayside for the past week or two.

Despite the fact that it’s a Sunday and there would be no-one around, I went for a look to see what was going on. And that was a waste of time because I couldn’t see much. Whatever they have been doing is finished and the trench is now filled in.

Still, if there’s someone around during the week I can also ask him

One thing on which I have been musing is the situation re Chausiais.

As far as I could tell, there didn’t seem the capacity to take a lot of stuff aboard so I was intrigued to see how she was arranged. I had vowed next time that I was passing to take a closer look.

And I can now see what the score is and how she is arranged. If you look closely you’ll see that the roof is divided into sections and they slide back one underneath the other to make a big open space for goods.

So while you admire a few more storm photos, I picked up my bread from La Mie Caline, came back here and had my lunch. The last of the smoked cheese so I fetched some home-made hummus out of the freezer.

Having eaten, I went back into my office to finish off the notes for the radio project on which I’m working. And unfortunately I couldn’t keep going for long.

In fact I crashed out a couple of times and that really annoyed me because I seem to be getting worse and worse from that point of view

Mind you, a couple of coffees brought me round and I did manage to remain awake long enough to finish them.

There seems to be quite a few too, more than the usual so I hope that they will edit down to a more manageable size. These days I seem to be letting myself be carried away by my verbosity and that’s not good.

Still, I suppose that it’s better than not saying enough. At least it gives my listeners a little break to go to the bathroom.

Despite the winds, I headed off for my walk – around the city walls this afternoon.

And surprisingly, there were a lot of people out there this afternoon despite the weather. A few people down on the beach, including one rather intrepid soul carrying his surfboard.

With there being lots of people about, I didn’t manage to fit in any runs either which was disappointing. I’ll never improve at this rate.

With the urge to push on and do 100% every day as often as possible, I extended my walk out along the headlands.

There were crowds of people standing on the cliffs watching the waves from Storm Ciara smashing their way into the harbour wall so I went and joined them.

And with the trusty NIKON D500 I could take plenty of photos to record the occasion, because it was definitely one of those days

All in all, I stayed out there admiring the waves and then came back to my apartment.

First thing that I did was to dictate the notes onto the new ZOOM H1 and then copy them over to the computer for editing.

Ten minutes to the second, there are, but that lot needs quite some editing. And by the time that I’d knocked off for tea, I’d reviewed about 60% and got it down to 07:20, which is good going.

Even if it were to stay as it was, a final track of about 3:00 would fit in nicely, but I can reduce the amount of discussion by another minute or so at least.

On that note I knocked off for tea. I prepared a rice pudding and put it in the oven while I made the pizza, and then took the rice pudding out when I put the pizza in.

Ohhh! For two shelves in my oven. I really must look into this and see what I can do about inventing something to work as a second shelf.

The pizza was really delicious and so was the rice pudding. And then I braved the elements for the evening walk around the headland.

And brave it was too because the wind was thoroughly wicked. It was a struggle to open the front door, never mind to go outside in it. And once I did make it outside, every step was a struggle.

There were times when I was in a mind to turn back but I pressed on regardless to see what I could do in the weather. It wasn’t easy.

On the south side of the headland it was relatively sheltered so I went for my run.

And that was what I called “agony”. Only pride kept me going, I reckon, and I had to sit on the wall for five minutes afterwards to catch my breath as I couldn’t move.

So now I’m back here, finishing off my notes and regardless of the fact that there are still things that need doing, I’m going to bed.

I really am on my last legs and it’s a long walk tomorrow. You can admire the rest of the photos while I curl up in bed.

waves storm ciara port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

Tuesday 4th February 2020 – I DIDN’T QUITE …

… get that one right yesterday.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the mini-digger that was operating with a hydraulic concrete breaker yesterday and I speculated that it was excavating some more old railway lines.

In fact that wasn’t what it was doing at all. I went over there this morning on my way to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette to see what it had been doing, and it seems that it had been digging out a trench for some kind of cabling.

So now we know.

This morning, just for once, I was actually up and out of bed before the third alarm went off – despite the fact that I didn’t go to bed until about 01:30.

And after the medication I spent a very pleasant hour or so cutting up a couple of digital tracks into their component parts. You might think that this project is advancing nicely but the fact is that it isn’t. Having disposed of two digital tracks, I came across another three that I needed that somehow I had missed before.

So instead of getting shorter the list is getting longer.

Today’s task was to do a radio project, and by the time that I knocked off I was about half-way through one of them. But in fact I’d actually done two others – at least, selected the music (except the final track) and edited the tracks together in their running order.

What had happened was that while trying to choose the music for the first one, I kept on coming across some tracks that made really good opening tracks for the projects. And so not to lose them I had a play with those too.

Eventually the first one wad done but there was sufficient music for half of the second, so I finished that and I’m no into the third.

The final track is always the last to be done because with having just exactly one hour to play with, I need to know how long the other tracks are and how long the speech is, and then the final track takes up the time that is left, whether it’s one minute or eleven minutes.

There were several breaks in the working cycle today.

The first was, of course, to go down to pick up the bread for lunch. I went to see how they were getting on with the car park in the rue du Port that they are kitting out, and was surprised to see these objects that have appeared here over the last day or so.

They certainly weren’t here the last time that I looked, and it aroused my interest. I went off to make further enquiries.

But not before my reverie was interrupted by the arrival of an articulated lorry and trailer.

He had another pile of metal or aluminium objects on his trailer and as I watched, they attached some chains to them and began to lift them off with the digger.

It wasn’t long before a workman came walking my way (obviously uses the talcum powder) around the edge of the harbour so I fell in with him.

He told me that they are installing a pontoon down that side of the harbour for more boats to tie up to. And that explains what those guys were doing a while back taking test-drilling samples out of the bottom of the harbour. The question of “pontoons” was raised then, as I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

having picked up my bread, I went to see what was going on in the Place General de Gaulle.

It looks very much as if they are starting the serious preparations for Carnaval. I’ve no idea what that tractor and so on were doing yesterday, but now we have a lorry here unloading a kiddies’ roundabout thing.

From there I went for another long wander around on the way home in order to clock up the miles but there wasn’t really much of any interest, apart from the usual of course.

There was also the break for lunch, evidently, and also a break for our afternoon walk around the headland.

And I hadn’t gone far when I noticed the window in one of the classrooms in the College Malraux across the Place from here. Whether it’s the high winds that have caused that I really don’t know, but had that been something at my old school I would have put it down to Jack Clifford hurling a blackboard duster at me during a German class.

He was single-handedly responsible for giving me this mental block that I have about being able to absorb anything in the German language. I love languages but he destroyed any kind of enthusiasm that I had.

Despite the lovely sunshine that we were having today, there were more gale-force winds to contend with too.

You can see that in this photo and in the next one too. The tide is still a good way from its highest point but the waves are still coming crashing in with an incredible force.

Of course, there’s nothing between that sea wall there and the North American coast when the wind and tides are in the correct alignment and so a storm just about anywhere could be causing this.

As there was nothing happening right at that moment, I loitered for a couple of minutes and was rewarded when this huge roller came roaring in from out in the Atlantic somewhere.

It’s a long time since I’ve seen something as impressive as this.

And seeing as I wasn’t far off my fitness total I went for an extended walk and I’m glad I did because I had a little bit of luck, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But I’ll tell you more about this in a few weeks time.

For a change, I manage to avoid crashing out (but only just) and Rosemary rang up for a good, lengthy chat too. We had a lot to talk about as well.

For tea I had the remains of the stuffing from yesterday and added a tin of kidney beans, and made taco rolls with spicy rice, followed by rice pudding.

There’s still some stuffing left, which now has kidney beans in it, bit I’ll add the rest of the mushrooms and make an everything curry for tea tomorrow night.

Despite the wind I managed to go out for a walk, and two runs as well, and now I’m up to 105% of my daily activity which is good news as far as I am concerned.

But there was a no-waiting sign in the Place Cambernon so I went to have a good look to see what was happening. And it’s more good news as far as I can see because it seems that they will be digging up the street to install the fibre-optic cable.

It might be a good idea tomorrow for me to call in at my internet suppliers and see what the plan is about connecting us up. It will be great if it all works.

By rights I should be going for an early night but there’s some good music on the playlist right now.

Nothing like music for soothing the savage beast, is there?

Monday 3rd February 2020 – SHE’S BACK!

Yes, there I was this afternoon out for my walk, looking across the harbour, and there she was.

Yes, the Bond heroine Plenty O’Toole, named for her father of course, has turned up again in Granville. It must be a couple of years since she was last here but here she is.

Who is going to be next to put in an appearance here in Granville? Foxxy Cleopatra? Or Godzilla?

Last night, I was on something of a roll. Somehow and for some reason (probably the very late lie-in that I had) I didn’t feel like going to bed. And so making the most of it, I carried on attacking the notes for the current radio project. By the time that I was overwhelmed there was only another 5 or 10 minutes left to finish so that was a good plan of work.

And even despite the late night, I was just on the point of putting my feet on the floor when the third alarm went off. So we’ll call that a draw today.

After the medication I checked the dictaphone but I had nothing on so instead I chopped up a digital sound file into the component tracks. That was interrupted by breakfast and by the fact that the sound file bore no resemblance to the details that I had and I had to hunt down a revised description.

A little later I had a shower and then headed off outside.

And it was my lucky day because for once there was plenty going on outside. Chausiais was on the move again, heading out with presumably another cargo for the ile de Chausey

That’s a couple of times now that I’ve seen her on the move. I’m intrigued to know what her plans are in the long term because it’s a lot of money tied up for just the occasional crossing to the ile de Chausey

That wasn’t everything either, because Joly France was on the move too.

At first I was wondering whether or not she was taking out a load of passengers to follow in the wake of Chausiais but I eventually came to the conclusion that where she was, she was preventing Chausiais from leaving her berth.

And that would account for her manoeuvres in port this morning, I reckon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s this big project going on in the port right now.

They are ripping up the abandoned railway lines from when this place was a thriving deep-sea fishing port and “improving” the car park. Here today, their work has advanced out of the protected zone and there’s a mini-digger with a hydraulic drill attachment breaking up the surface where there ware more railway lines buried.

It makes me wonder just how long they are going to be at this project and what it’s going to be like when it’s finished. It was something of an eyesore so almost anything will be an improvement, but I hope that the plans include some greenery too.

And out in the Place Charles de Gaulle I’m not quite sure what’s happening here.

We have a tractor and trailer and another piece of heavy equipment parked up outside the old Tourist Information office. That’s now an ephemeral display room so it might be something to do with that, or else they are starting to kit out the Square ready for Carnaval, which will take ^lace in 3 weeks time.

We shall see what we shall wee.

Around the corner in the rue des Carrosses we are faced with a more mundane, even banal problem.

Something is clearly up with the guttering or the chimney of this building because they have brought in a cherry-picker and sent up a couple of men in the nacelle to deal with the issue.

As for me, I pushed on up the hill towards the Centre Agora for our weekly meeting

Regular readers will recall that I’ve mentioned in the past all of the time that is wasted in these meetings … “not ‘arf” – ed … but in the past there was nothing like as much wasted as today.

For a change I was second there and the others arrived after me. But they stayed outside having a smoke and a chat and didn’t come in until 10:30. And most of the meeting was spent discussing a subject that could have been dealt with in about 2 minutes.

Someone turned up from one of the Council’s committees and she was introduced to us. The guy in charge told her about what we did and while he was very careful to mention several programmes that we had done, he very carefully omitted anything that I had done from the list.

If they don’t like what I do and are ashamed of it, I wish that they would tell me and either stop me doing it or tell me how it can be improved. It’s quite true that the stuff from the last couple of weeks has been light years ahead of what I did at the beginning, but that’s because I’ve worked it out for myself.

If they have something to say, I wish that they would come out and say it.

The real business of the meeting didn’t come out until everyone was almost ready to leave – at about 12:30. These are hours of my life that I won’t ever get back.

On the way home I stopped at LIDL. I needed some olive oil and a few other things, but forgot the stuff to make my muesli and I’ve run out of that. If I can’t find all of the stuff it might be porridge for the next few days.

Back down in town again I picked up my dejeunette at la Mie Caline and came back home for a late lunch.

This afternoon I pushed on with the radio project and although I hadn’t quite finished it at knocking-off time, I hung on in and had it done regardless. And so a late tea.

But there had been a couple of interruptions to my day. Firstly, and unsurprisingly after my late night and early start, I crashed out on my chair for 20 minutes in a really deep sleep

Secondly, there was the afternoon walk as usual. Mustn’t miss out on that!

And this photo will tell you exactly how things unfolded during the course of the afternoon. There’s a huge, powerful rain cloud about 8 or 10 miles out to sea and judging by the wind right now, it’s heading this way.

This kind of thing is looking quite ominous for later on.

And although it’s not as windy as it might be and indeed has just recently, it’s blowing a terrific gale somewhere out to sea.

We’re a good hour or so away from high tide but even so, there’s enough power in the sea to send the waves crashing right over the harbour wall. No wonder I couldn’t see any fishing boats out there today.

It’s not the kind of day at all to be out there on the ocean waves in the kind of boats that hang around in this harbour.

Talking of fishing boats, there’s been another change of tenant at the Chantier navale.

One of the fishing boats has now left and presumably gone back into the water. There’s only the one left now and judging by all of the people on board working away at here, it doesn’t look as if she’s going to be there for much longer either.

So new tenants all round in the near future, I reckon. It will be interesting to see who comes in and who does what to it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen this boat before just recently.

Seeing as it’s in the national colours, I thought at first that it might be something to do with the Government but judging by the large bucket of seafood on her deck and the van there that has come to take the stuff away, it’s probably just a private fishing boat.

And that’s something of a disappointment. I was hoping for a lot more excitement around here now.

While you admire another photo of the raging sea, let me tell you about teatime.

With plenty of mushrooms lying about here and there I made myself a stuffed pepper with pasta. And I’m not sure quite why but it was one of the best that I’ve ever tasted even though I forgot the herbs.

It was followed up by rice pudding and that was delicious too. I may be eating quite simply but by ‘eck I am eating well these days.

By now the storm had arrived, the weather had broken, and how! There was the deep puddle outside the roor and the streets were like running rivers. I went for my walk regardless, even managing two runs.

Not on the north side of the walls though – that was about a foot deep in water. I had to find a place a little further on even though the ground underfoot isn’t as smooth. And of course, my run across the Square Maurice Marland.

So now I’ve finished, I’ve re-heard my radio project and it’s fine, so I’m going to listen to some music for half an hour before going to bed.

A little luxury is something that I deserve.

EPIC HALL

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