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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.

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.

Monday 24th February 2020 – THERE’S SOMETHING MISSING …

… from this photograph, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Where’s the big red Iveco van that has been parked on the parking area at the fish processing plant since before I came back from North America at the end of October?

The answer to that conundrum is pretty simple. On Sunday morning the police, the fire brigade, the ambulance crew and a heavy breakdown truck lifted it out of the water where it had ended up sometime over Saturday night – early Sunday morning.

If someone were to tell me that someone had been up to mischief with one of the forklift trucks I wouldn’t be at all surprised, or else a group of revellers had decided to have a little bit of drunken “fun”.

But anyway, it’s not there now – the ground’s all flat.

As for me, with no alarm I slept through until round about 09:00. And it took me a while to force myself out of bed afterwards too. I was in no hurry.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. Apparently I was in Toronto last night which was strange because I’ve never really been there and I was walking around the streets. I ended up in a street that was 250 yards away from the main centre according to the adverts because there was a shop that was closed “who would like to rent this place 250 yards away from Toronto’s main shopping street?”. As I walked on, there was this building advertising musical instruments and motor bikes so I went in. On the ground floor by where the door was was all drum kits. So I walked in and this place was absolutely amazing like a labyrinth of things and they had all this equipment down on the ground floor except the guitars. I walked upstairs and it was like vaults only upstairs. All these rooms, all these kinds of things in it except eh motor bikes and guitars. A lovely guitar workshop with all tools of all kinds on the walls and a couple of guys in wheelchairs who were working there. I couldn’t see the guitars or the motorbikes. As I walked around I discovered that there was a third floor as I heard one of the guys say “we aren’t going to expand onto a fourth floor yet – we’re all right as we are”. So I said “oh the third floor sounds good”. So I walked through this dark dingy recess place and out into the main stair well which was a huge stone stair well but the third floor was comics and magazines so I thought “where the heck are the guitars and motor bikes? I’d better go back in and ask”. But just then a girl came around ringing a handbell saying “closing for lunch, closing for lunch! Everyone outside” just like something out of a Dickens novel.

After breakfast I had a shower and a general clean-up. I weighed myself too and I’m now within just 400 grams of my first target weight. I’ve actually touched it once but couldn’t keep it there. I’m hoping for better luck this time.

Then off I headed to the shops.

As is my custom these days, I had a look down to see what was going on in the harbour. And we have another crane down there, round where Joly France and La Grande Ancre are moored.

From up here, it’s not easy to see exactly what it’s doing, but it seems to be involved with a pile of scaffolding. When I go for my bread tomorrow I shall go for a closer look and see

At LIDL there was nothing special that I bought – unless you count a tube of superglue. However I did buy some lemons because I’m getting low on my home-made orange and ginger syrup so I shall be having a go at making some lemon and ginger syrup and see if I’ve really got the hang of it.

In the summer there will be many more fruits (I hope) to have a go at if it all works out.

On the way back I stuck my head over the wall of the rue St Gaud to see what was happening down on the car park in the rue St Sauveur.

The fete foraine – the funfair – is now in full swing so I imagine that everything that is going to be here is here already, erected, up and running.

We seem now to have a fully-fledged kiddies’ corner with quite a few attractions, which is a good sign. But I must admit to having spent a good few minutes admiring the French windows and verandah in that showman’s living accommodation.

Back here it was already lunchtime and having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline, I had my butties.

After the break I made a start on project 27 for the radio. In the time available I chose all of the music (except for the last track of course) but then came across a problem that I did not have a suitable break for my invited guest.

What I did then was to grab one of the lengthy sound-bite files that I have and cut it down into the individual sound-bites and save them all. From there I was able to pick out a suitable one.

Tomorrow I’ll crack on and do the text, and then do a “live concert” for the end of April.

There was the usual break for my walk outside around the headland this afternoon.

There were a few people out there this afternoon wandering around, and some action on the water too. The tide must be on the turn because the fishing boats were heading home.

At first I wasn’t sure exactly what that was, seeing as it was so far out to sea in the English Channel. But a little “crop and enlarge” brought out the fishing boat

In past years I couldn’t remember if the fete foraine – the funfair – worked at all during the daytime in the week.

But anyway, there it is, all illuminated and the attractions seem to be going round and round.

having stood there and admired it all for a while, I came back here for a coffee and a slice of cake that I happen to have around here right now.

After all, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but It’s my birthday today. Another day older and deeper in debt.

There was a disagreeable task to be performed this evening too.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours, including much of the night when I ought to have been sleeping, mulling over the events of yesterday. And something else has happened in this connection in the early part of the afternoon that has merely underlined my thoughts.

As a result I’ve sent a mail to the co-ordinator to say that –
1) I’ll continue to do my rock music programmes
2) I’ll undertake spontaneously any other project that attracts my interest, and do it alone.
3) If he wishes me to undertake any other solo project, then I’ll be happy to do it, as long as it really is alone.
4) If one or two of the others (and I mentioned a few names) wish me to help them with any project that they have in mind, then they can contact me.
5) But I’m not going to involve myself in any group project
6) I’m not going to involve myself in any live broadcasts
7) I’m never going to work with him and one or two others (withdrawing from two projects to which I had previously committed).
8) I refuse to be in the same room as one other person whose name I mentioned.

If you think that I’m being rather petulant, the fact is quite simply this –
I’m slowly dying of a wasting, debilitating illness and I’m reaching the critical point. There’s not enough blood in my body to carry around the oxygen that I need and so my heart needs to beat almost twice as fast to pump sufficient blood -and oxygen – around.
The doctors have told me on several occasions that the only reason I’m keeping going so well is that I have a very strong heart and the moment that my heart gives out, I’ll have had it. And so I must do absolutely everything in my power to avoid anything that puts any unnecessary strain on my heart and stress is to be avoided at all costs.
And the stresses of the events of yesterday are no good at all. Stressing myself for a good purpose is fine because I think that the means are better than the end as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But stressing myself for no good purpose is not what I have in mind at all.

Tea tonight was one of the new burgers that I had bought a while ago from Leclerc. It wasn’t disagreeable but it wasn’t anything special either. Apsta and vegetables tossed in a spicy tomato sauce too and followed by some delicious rice pudding.

When I went outside for my evening walk it was raining quite heavily. But it wasn’t going to put me off.

And it had occurred to me that I hadn’t taken any photos of the grockles in their caravanettes parked all over the Place d’Armes and they have already started to break camp and several have left.

But up here on the walls of the medieval town there was a good view right across to part of the car park. Despite the weather the photo isn’t too bad and at least it’s picked up the vehicles on the car park.

The first part of my run was waterlogged but I managed to fit in the stand-by run which wasn’t too bad. and once more I overran by a good 25 metres and that’s always good news.

For the second part of my run I managed half-way up the ramp which was quite impressive seeing as how I hadn’t properly recovered from the first part. But, impressively, I’m running for about 4.5 minutes per day according to my fitbit, which at my age and state of health is pretty impressive.

The tide was well in now so the big trawler-type of fishing boats were in the inner harbour unloading their catch at the fish processing plant.

As for me, with no cat to stroke tonight, I came home and wrote up my notes.

The alarm goes back on tomorrow so I’ll be back hard at it again. So an early night is called for. But I’d much rather listen to the decent music that’s just come onto the playlist.

Wouldn’t you?

Sunday 23rd February 2020 – THE FIRST DAY …

… since I don’t know when when whe I haven’t taken a single photo.

And that’s because during the day I never had the time, and during the evening’s walk it was pouring down with rain.

But anyway – despite the alarm set at 08:00 this morning, I was up and about well before it went off. And that was easy because when people decide to have a party right underneath your bedroom window at 07:30 it’s pretty much impossible to continue to sleep.

Ohhhh! For the old days when you had a slop bucket by the side of the bed!

No medication this morning because there wasn’t the time. Instead I had breakfast, gathered up my things and went downstairs by the barrier for my guests.

Yesterday they were early and I wasn’t ready. But today, because I was ready early, they were late. We went into town where we all assembled and then set up our little studio.

That took up most of the morning and then after lunch we set about our various tasks.

For a change, I’m going to say nothing about what went on during the course of the afternoon except for this – viz I will quite happily work with professionals any day of the week. I will quite happily work with amateurs who know their limitations and muddle along as best as they can and somehow manage to get the job done in one fashion or other despite their own limitations (in which class I place myself, by the way). But I will NEVER AGAIN work with amateurs who think themselves as professionals.

What counts in organisations like this is TEAMWORK. We are all part of a team and there is not one person who is more important than anyone else.

It was about 19:45 by the time that I made it back, and I made tea. Pizza, of course (it’s Sunday) and seeing as I’ve run out of apple pie now, it was a rice pudding in the oven for afters – and for the next few days too.

The evening run in the rain took me to over 100%. Two runs in fact. And although one was on a totally different course than previously, both runs were well over the distance that I normally run. I know that it’s too early – and in any case it’s always tempting fate – to crow about things bu that period in January when I wasn’t feeling up to all that much was quite possibly due to some illness or other that I might have had, and that this is much more like my normal self these days.

But tonight I’m going to celebrate by having an early night. And no alarm tomorrow either. having worked hard this weekend I’m going to allow myself the luxury of an unexpected lie-in.

That is – unless they decide to have another party underneath my bedroom window again tomorrow morning.

Where’s the slop bucket?

Thursday 20th February 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING!

When the first alarm went off this morning at 06:00 I was actually sitting at my computer working.

And yes! I had been to bed – not a case of staying up all night, as has happened on several occasions, eben though it was something of a rather late – in fact very late night (a huge pile of my favourite tracks came onto my playlist while I was thinking of going to bed so I stayed up and listened to them).

It all happened this morning quite by accident too. I awoke at about 05:20 to find myself dictating into the dictaphone that wasn’t switched on. The reason – a flat battery.

None around by the bed (I forgot to look in the camera bag) so I had to leave the bed to find one. In the radio bag there was only one so I had to search the apartment to find some more.

By the time that I found them, I was wide awake so there wasn’t much point in going to bed. I may as well start work. And I wish I knew where that battery disappeared to. It was one of my new ones too.

So I had my medication and was checking the dictaphone when the alarms went off.

I was back in Hankelow Hall again There was a huge crowd of us having a party or something and Clare Channing was there and I can’t remember who else and her husband. They had the electric on for some reason or other and were having a party. I was upstairs trying to do something and had to go to the bathroom so I went in and it was overwhelmed with cobwebs and things but there were still things hanging everywhere and so on. But there was toilet paper which was great. I switched on the light but the light wouldn’t work. I tried putting the bulb in various positions to see if that was something wrong but no. But I thought it was still light so I could go anyway. But I was called down at that point. A lot of people had gone and there were just a few around. Someone brought a big plate of sandwiches and gestured towards them “there’s some here that you can eat”, some kind of paste or something on really dark brown bread like German. I said I hope that I’m going to get more than this for my tea because there was really only two triangles and I can eat a lot more than that when I’m going. But no this seemed to be my entire teatime and I felt a sense of dismay at that.
I was In Hankelow Hall last night and there was a lot of us there doing something downstairs. I went upstairs to use the bathroom and it was all covered in dust and there were decorations everywhere all over the wall and everything, cobwebs, but I went in al the same. I found some toilet paper which was just as well but I couldn’t get the light switch to work which was odd. It wouldn’t come on. I messed around with the cable for a bit trying to get that into a better position but that didn’t work either. I realised that I was going to be more embarrassed by getting further, deeper into this than I intended to. And someone shouted out, it was a cry of “Maths” so I had to go downstairs and eat my maths. We were in a building like St Joseph’s so I went downstairs and changed my money and got some maths, changed some more money and got some motorbike company and had my evening meal. Although I was sitting at a table with a few people I had my thoughts practically about me and I stayed like that until the alarm went off at 07:15 when I was the first out of the door and got a boat ready to sail off to see the animals to see how they had survived the winter.
I’m not sure if the second part of the above is the same as the first part and dictated a second time in a different fashion, or whether it really is a different voyage that, by simple coincidence, is related to the first one.
A little later I was doing something but I can’t remember quite what that involved a couple of old cars and I had to swap these old cars around. I ended up in a black Citroen traction avant. I had to drive it up the road and down a slip road onto the motorway and off again somewhere. I got up to the set of traffic lights where you turn left for the motorway and turned onto the sliproad. Round about there, there was a boy and a girl weaving about in the road on pushbikes talking to each other and I clipped the heel of the boy on the bike. Of course that was all I needed! he insisted on filling in an accident form, all this kind of thing. Of course this traction hadn’t moved for years and there was no paperwork with it. he was quite insistent about this so I had a root around in the vehicle, found some kind of paper about something and he seemed to be quite satisfied with this, saying that the controle technique was OK and so on. In the meantime I was talking to this girl about the car. She said “if this was 30 years older it would be a real veteran”. I said “I know. It came out of a barn down on the French border somewhere (… I was in Belgium …) and we were having a friendly chat about this car and he was getting a bit up in the air about all kinds of things which he was right to do but anyway …

After breakfast I sat down and split up a few digital music files into their component tracks. And while it might have been more straightforward that on previous occasions, it was not without its complications.

One of the albums ended up with 19 minutes of extra music and of those, I only recognised one. I ad to search all the way through a pile of catalogues until I could find which version of the album it was and, more importantly, the timings because not every catalogue entry has the timings.

And then I had to listen to samples of the extended tracks to make sure that it really was what I was expecting to hear and that it was all in the correct order – because I’ve been caught out with out-of-order recordings before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

“But why are the recordings out of order?” I hear you ask

The answer is that with studio master tapes, they are recorded, quite simply, in the order that they are recorded. However, unless it’s a concept album or something where the running order is crucial, the producer will then try to sort out the tracks so that there’s as near as possible an equal length of recording on each side of an LP or a cassette. And quite often, that’s nothing like the order in which they were recorded on the studio master tapes.

That was the cue for me to head into town and LIDL so I had a quick shower and put the washing machine on the go before leaving the apartment.

There was nothing whatever of any relevance on the way down into town so I didn’t loiter around. But my route took me onto the Place General de Gaulle where they have assembled the stage, to see what else was happening.

And there was certainly plenty of excitement there this morning.

There was a bunch of guys manhandling a trailer around on the square, so thinking that they might be trying to steal it, I went to see if they needed a hand.

Actually there were delivering it, not taking it away. And I’ve no idea what it might be except that it makes reference to ma vie dans la Manche – “my life in the Manche” (the département here).

And so my thought is that it might well be some kind of sales pitch, tourism or advertisement thing ready to try to seduce the crowds at Carnaval.

Instead of going up the rue Couraye I went along the Cours Jonville to see how they were getting on with the chapiteaux, the marquees that we saw yesterday.

And by the looks of things they might well be almost finished over there now. And that’s a really impressive task that they’ve undertaken to do it so quickly.

Mind you, they’ve r^probably had plenty of practice doing it. I imagine that the marquees are hired in and that the fitters and installers come from the hirers and do this every week.

But this is a new thing and I’d forgotten all about this, even though I stood on it last year to have a good view.

There’s a Princess of Carnaval and on Sunday she’ll be standing on this stage to address her loyal supporters.

And I’m amazed at just how quickly they’ve set up this stage too. There wasn’t even a hint of this here yesterday lunchtime when I came for my bread so it looks as if they must have dashed through the installation yesterday afternoon.

Up past the cinema and onto the rue Couraye that way up towards LIDL.

At the roundabout at the Place Pierre Semard by the railway station, I came to another halt. On Monday as I came by there were just a couple of lorries here but today the fête foraine, the funfair is practically all installed ready for the opening on Friday evening.

These people don’t ‘arf crack on with this kind of work when they have a timetable to which they have to adhere

When I first moved here there was a car spares shop and rally centre in the avenue du Marechal Leclerc but it closed down not long after I arrived.

A few months ago the windows were pained over on the inside as if something was going on there but there were o visible signs of anything at all. Today though, they’ve ripped out the shop window.

And so with this work going on, it looks as if there’s going to be a new occupier in there. I wonder who it might be and, more importantly, what they might be selling.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few weeks we’ve been examining LIDL here for vegan and vegetarian products on sale as their range slowly expands.

What we’re featuring today is another discovery that has taken me by surprise, namely a range of gluten-free products. This is a major Leap into the Unknown by a shop like LIDL but it’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

But it’s not all good news though. It’s a good job that I bought those vegan burgers when I did because there are none in the freezer today. Whether it’s a temporary rupture of stock or something more permanent remains to be seen.

And LIDL felt the benefit of my largesse rather more than usual today. They were selling bathroom stuff in there and one of the things that they had was a magnifying tabletop mirror, something that I don’t have and which I can certainly put to good use.

being rather later than usual today I didn’t loiter around too much but headed for home.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall a while ago that we saw them erecting a crane outside a house in the Impasse de la Corderie, but not a great deal happened subsequently. Today though, there’s some shuttering gone in and a pile of breeze blocks have been delivered.

Clearly things are going to start happening there sometime soon. I wonder what that will be.

Over the last few days we’ve seen them erecting the fairground attractions on the Parking Hérel.

That’s all the heavy stuff going in there but there’s a smaller car park next to it in the rue Saint-Sauveur and they are setting up a few attractions there today.

So that looks as if it’s going to be Kiddies’ Corner for all of the tiny tots to have their round of fun. As you can see, in one fashion or another the Carnaval and the fête foraine are taking over the town.

At la Mie Caline I picked up my bread and headed back up the hill towards home.

And my progress was erected in dramatic fashion by the sight down on the parking area that they’ve been renovating where they ripped out the old railway lines.

We have a compactor down there now flattening down the surface. So I imagine that they are going to be putting the top layer on there any day now.

That’s going to be exciting to see what they are doing – I hope.

Back here at the apartment I reflected on the fact that I hadn’t made any observation whatever about the climbs up the hills today. That alone tells me tjat I must be feeling somewhat better than of late.

And so I made a coffee and returned to the digital sound files.

As well as the ones that I’d previously downloaded, I actually managed to track down a couple more and they were summarily dealt with too.

The next task was to make myself a decent badge with my name on it for the weekend. We have badges for the radio but with our given names scrawled on the back in felt-tipped marker pen. I wanted something much more official so I scanned my badge, inserted text with my name in bold font, and then printed out two copies on stiff paper and glued them back-to-back

And it’s moments like this that I wished that I had my laminator here.

This was another job that took an hour to do. 5 minutes to scan the badge, 5 minutes to insert the ext and 5 minutes to print it out and stick it together, and blasted 45 perishing minutes to find that flaming thing that I sodding well had in dratted hands 10 damned minutes earlier.

By now it was lunchtime so I made my butties.

This afternoon I had plenty to do.

Not the least of which was to contact the company who made the desktop mike stand that I ordered and which came the other day. The mike mounting is about 2.5cms and yet the diameter of the microphone is actually 4.5cms.

It looks as if the wrong mounting bracket was put in the box so I had to photograph the set-up to send off to the suppliers.

Of course I don’t have my coloured ruler – that’s in the pocket of my jacket that’s hanging up in a hotel bedroom in Calgary – so I had to invent one.

Coloured rulers – where each inch or centimetre is coloured differently are really useful because when you are photographing objects like this you can lay the ruler alongside it then take your photo, and the presence of the coloured ruler in the shot shows at a glance the effective size of the object.

Tidying up was next. I’ve found that the plastic containers in which I’ve been buying my carrots fit nicely in the small drawer of my desk – suspended from the top of the sides leaving a space underneath.

And so I tidied the drawer out and found a few things about which I had completely forgotten

Final task for today was to start the photos from the summer. All of June is now finished and I’ve now started on July.

But so much for my shipboard idea about placeholders. By the time that I’d reached just number 7 I’d already overtaken the placeholder numbers.

And the fault in the images on the portable computers doesn’t seem to be the photos but the screens, as I suspected. On this screen, which is quite expensive and good quality, as well as being more modern technology, they look so much better.

A couple of interruptions though. The afternoon walk was one of them but I didn’t go far as we were having a torrential downpour and hurricane-force winds. I did about half a lap in an ad-hoc direction that kept me out of the wind, and then came back.

The second interruption was … errr … a little relax. And no susprise given my night. The only surprise was that it was only for about 10 minutes and wasn’t all that deep.

Tea was all of the leftovers with spicy tomato sauce and pasta with vegetables, followed by apple pie and raspberry sorbet with chocolate sauce and it was magnificent.

And then the evening walk. The weather had subsided but it was still quite damp outside.

Nevertheless that didn’t stop me going for my evening runs. And for two days on the run … “groan!!” – ed … I ran on for a good few metres on my first run and on my second run ended up halfway up the ramp instead of flaking out at the foot.

Yes, I’m definitely feeling better.

And for two days on the run, Minette was there on her windowsill waiting for her stroke. It’s very relaxing, stroking a cat. Good for easing the stress.

The pizza van was there again, parked bang outside Le Contremarche, the new posh restaurant in the Place Cambernon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I pointed out the other week that she had a new van. And now it seems to have been painted. Business must be good.

So now I’m home, finished my notes and ready for bed. And with new batteries in the dictaphone I’m hoping for a decent night’s sleep.

Whether or not I have one is another matter.

And no water craft today either. What is happening to me?

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.

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.

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.

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – TODAY IS THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when that I haven’t done 100% of my daily target of exercise.

Mind you, there were a couple of good reasons why that was the case

There was so much rain today that at times it was impossible to go outside. At one point there was a deep puddle right outside the door that was enough to put anyone off setting foot outside
I didn’t wake up until … errr … 10:50 this morning and by the time that I’d finished having my breakfast at midday, it was rather pointless thinking about lunch

Yes, for once I’d managed to have something of a decent night’s sleep. It wasn’t all that early when I went to bed but still, a good sleep is a good sleep.

It wasn’t continuous though. I remember waking up and looking at my watch a couple of times but if anyone thinks that I’m going to be leaving the comfort and safety of my stinking pit at 05:35 and 07:40 on a Sunday morning they are sadly mistaken.

Still, the medication was taken and then I had a look at the dictaphone. With plenty of time to go on my travels during the night I was quite optimistic. And I wasn’t disappointed either.

I’d been walking through the streets of a city in Indonesia and I’d been with a coach party or tour party or something. I had my suitcase and something had happened that meant I had to stay behind. Si I sent my suitcase off with them and I had to go to attend to whatever business this was, and then I had to meet up with Rosemary. I headed off to the bus station to see if Rosemary was at the bus station as she said that she was at a café because she had sorted out her issue. So I went to what I thought was the cafe but it was a school. Loads and loads of kids hanging around. Of course there was no chance in finding Rosemary so my next thought was how am I going to get halfway across Indonesia. The first thing o my mind was the train. I knew where the railway station was so I set out on foot. There were crowds of people there and one of the things that I’d done was that I’d changed my clothing. I had Western clothing on but I had got rid of that end ended up in just a local pair of sweat pants and te shirt so that I would blend in more easily with the people and look like a tourist. So I walked with all these people and got close to the station and could hear the tannoy announcements for the trains, in Indonesian and just as I was getting very close to the station with all these people around me and that was when I awoke for a moment at some silly time or other.
Somewhat later we were doing an enquiry into children taking supplements – athletic children, swimmers, that kind of thing. We were interviewing a couple of kids about this and then we had to leave. We’d been staying in a hotel and we were leaving really early next morning so I was going to have an earlyish night but it wasn’t as early as I was hoping. I had to drive these couple of people back with me. I went for a walk, a walk up from where the hotel was where we were staying past the railway station where we arrived. We were driving back for some reason and did this walk to see what it was like, to se how I remembered it from when we arrived. The I realised that I had to pay my quarterly bill fr my flat. I had to go to a bar, a bar where I would usually go for a drink and I usually paid for my drinks with cash that kind of thing although these days something happened and I was paying it by bank card or bank draft or something. The old woman behind the counter she came over to deal with me and I gave her a credit card to take this payment for this three-monthly thing. She was surprised about that but did it and I went for my walk. So I walked up and just the other side of the railway station there was a Shell petrol station and the petrol there looked really cheap. I thought “God I should have come up here in the car and fuelled it up and we would have been really ready to go tomorrow morning early”. I thought that I had better get some money out as well from the bank but it was the bit where there had been a level crossing over the road by the railway station and they had put an overbridge so the shops were at ground level but the road went up this overbridge. At a certain point there was a set of steps that went down to the shops so I thought that I would go down these steps. There were crowds of people climbing up. They were sort-of temporary steps held up on scaffolding and it was really quite a scramble. I only had one hand free for some reason so I was making heavy weather of it. There were these people talking to me, talking to me in Dutch and I didn’t understand very much of what they were saying so I pressed on regardless. I eventually got down to the bottom and some woman at the bottom said something like “you should have listened to what those people were telling you. They were telling you how to get down, giving you all kinds of advice and you totally ignored them” She was quite bossy about this. She said it in Flemish as well which was a surprise for me that I understood it so I turned round to her and in my really bad Flemish i basically said that they could tell me what they like but if they say it in Flemish I’m not going to understand it because I’m a foreigner and don’t speak Flemish which took the wind right out of her sails and I said it in Flemish that I didn’t understand Flemish at all which must have confused her somewhat. That was when I awoke.

After breakfast I attacked the radio project n° 18. And by the time I knocked off for my evening meal at 19:00 I’d finished that and it’s now up and running and I’m well on my way to writing my notes for Project 19.

This week’s task is to finish Project 19 and to do Project 20. Then I’ll be 7 weeks ahead, and then a couple more weeks of doing two per week will see me two months or 9 projects ahead and that’s how I want to stay.

There were pauses in between all of this though. Round about 15:30 I was feeling peckish and there was a lump of bread left over from yesterday’s baguette from LeClerc so I demolished that with some hummus and salad.

The weather abated slightly too so I seized the opportunity to nip out for a walk.

There was that much fog that it was difficult to see anything at all, but I did manage to see down into the chantier navale to see what was happening in the way of new arrivals.

And the answer was “nothing much at all”. Still the same two boats but there was a big van down there so it looked as if someone was working on one of them at least.

Maybe we might have a new arrival or two during the week.

It was busy over there at the ferry terminal.

There, settling down gently into the mud over at the ferry terminal are Chausiais and Joly France. And so it looks as if something might be happening with them pretty soon too.

But we might be seeing more and more fishing boats in the harbour. Despite the Withdrawal Agreement setting down a status quo for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU until the end of the year, Guernsey has unilaterally taken action that effectively bans French fishing boats from its waters.

What I have to say about this is that I shall be very disappointed, very disappointed indeed if the French fishermen take this lying down. Knowing their history, I imagine and fully expect that they shall be back in Guernsey waters, in great numbers and properly “tooled up” to deal with the matter in their own inimitable way.

It’s been PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED THAT THE ROYAL ?AVY DOES NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT PATROL SHIPS TO PROTECT ITS WATERS and I’m sure that the French fishermen are well aware of this.

It won’t take much to blockade St Peter Port and St Sampson, and the island would grind to a halt in a couple of weeks.

I have often said that if the answer is violence, it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on that referendum paper was probably the most stupid that I have ever seen or heard.

By now I was thoroughly soaked to the skin so it didn’t make much difference as to whether I stayed out or went in.

So I continued my walk for a little while and went up to the top of the city walls to see what they had been doing round by the Place du Parvis Notre Dame.

And the answer is “pretty terrible” – although on second thoughts, there’s nothing pretty at all about this. It’s easily the worst bit of repointing that I have ever seen

It’s just a total mess and there’s nothing whatever to be proud of about this. How is it possible that they can do such a good job on one side of the wall and such a dreadful job on the other?

As well as my vegan pizza, I made another rice pudding seeing as I had the oven on. And they were both really good. But I’m hoping that my rice pudding lasts a lot longer than the last one that didn’t make 4 days.

Despite the rain I went out again this evening and even managed two runs, although I had to improvise the first one on a different track because the one that I use on the north side of the wall was about a foot deep in water.

That walk was extended somewhat and I ended up today with 70% of my daily activity. Not enough but I can catch up tomorrow with my walk up to the Centre Agora for the weekly radio meeting.

And that reminds me – in January I walked 274.54 kilometres and ran for 1 hour 54 minutes. There were just 5 days when I did less than my daily target.

Here’s hoping that I can keep it up.

Tuesday 28th January 2020 – IF YOU WANT …

… to know what the weather was like today, this photo here will tell you everything that you need to know.

Miserable, horrible, grey and overcast with huge and violent rainstorms and incredibly high winds stirring everything up. In fact, a typical day on the western Normandy coast for just recently.

And when is it going to end? It looks as if this weather is here for the duration and isn’t going to let up very easily.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I could hear the howling weather quite clearly and ashamed as I am to admit it, it drove me back underneath the covers where I stayed until just after 07:00. This wasn’t the kind of weather that would make anyone want to raise themselves from the dead, least of all me.

After the medication I had a look to see where I’d been during the night. I had been at a house with a group of people and we needed some things from a shopping parade down the street. There had been a really heavy snowfall and it was difficult to move around so I said that I would go. I had to go on foot because Caliburn was at the menders and I could pick him up and bring him back on the way back so that was what I decided to do. As I was leaving, one of the girls in this house shouted out “don’t forget it’s time to go and get your food and organise this and Eric’s going to get this and that”. I don’t know why she did that. Anyway I was off. I went to get a coupe of shopping bags. It was a really steep slope down the hill to this shopping parade and with the snow it was quite icy and slippy. There was a group of people coming up the hill. One of them was a girl dressed a kind of white smock kind of arrangement and she had a couple of other kids with her running up there. All of a sudden they slipped, came down the hill and collided with me. They knocked me over onto the ice, and there was me, this girl and a boy sliding down this hill and where the road went round a bend we went straight on over the edge and crashed into a snow bank. The girl was laughing about this and the boy said to her “you’re disgusting”. She said “yes, I know that I’m disgusting”. It all went rather downhill from there.

Those rubber spatulas proved their weight in gold today. Ordinarily I would have said that I had run out of apple purée for breakfast but with the rubber spatula I managed to scrape enough out of the jar for a small portion for breakfast.

After breakfast, I attacked the travel notes. In a change to previous voyages, I’m not taking all of my files with me on the laptop. I’m making a “travel noes” file where I can record everything, and then bring it back home and edit the entries into the various data files. It’s much less confusing that way.

But it seems that I’ve made a bit of an error with the radio projects. I’ve forgotten to leave a space for the live concert at the end of February. As a result, everything that I did that was labelled “Project 16” has now to be labelled “Project 19” to preserve the integrity of Projects 17 and 18 and the series of material from which I draw is now out of order and needs to be changed.

While I’d been in Leuven I’d found something that a friend of mine had asked me to see if I could find. I’d been successful so i’d wrapped it and I took it with me to post on my way to pick up my butties.

But as usual, I was side-tracked by the sound of a pneumatic drill coming from the other side of the harbour and seeing as the gates were closed, I could go over the footpath on the top to see what was happening.

And it’s not a pneumatic drill at all but a hydraulic concrete breaker on the jib of one of the diggers that have been dredging the harbour just now.

What they seem to be doing is chiselling out the rocks at the foot of the sea wall at the ferry terminal.

This will explain the pile of piles that regular readers of this rubbish will have seen with me the other day – removed so as to give access for the concrete breaker.

But does this mean that, with the dredging of the harbour to make it deeper and removing the rocks at the side to make it wider, are we going to be expecting the arrival of a new ferry boat that is larger than those that we have at present?

We are living in interesting times indeed.

This fishing boat, the Rocavi II is quite interesting.

There has been an article in the local newspaper about the Rocavi II just recently. It’s a brand-new fishing boat that has only recently been launched and on Saturday it was blessed by one of the local priests.

What with living in France, I suppose that breaking a bottle of champagne over the bows is pretty ordinary stuff and nothing whatever special at all.

A little further along the port, it looks as if Thora has been here while I’ve been away.

Much of her work involves taking building supplies out to Jersey and she doesn’t seem to have a regular load off the island. Instead, her owners collect scrap metal and as there are no scrapping facilities on the island they bring it here for processing. Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen quite a few loads of scrap on the quayside.

This lot of scrap metal looks as if it has been part of some structure that has been destroyed by fire.

With all of these distractions I missed the post. So I went to la Mie Caline and picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

After lunch I made my own apple purée. Four apples peeled, cored and diced, a pear ditto and some cinnamon put into a saucepan with some water and boiled for about 45 minutes.

And it’s not a success. I’ve used far too much water – or else the fruit was too juicy – and it’s more like an apple drink than an apple purée. But I’ll use it over the next few days just to dispose of it and then I’ll make some more – with much less water this time.

But pears, bananas, rhubarb, apricots, all kinds of fruit can go into it and I’m hopeful of making some good stuff with this. I need to push on and do a lot more about being self-sufficient.

And then I started to write the notes for the first of the radio projects. But I wasn’t at it long because it was walk-time. What hadn’t helped was that for about 10 minutes or so I had … errr … had a little relax.

While I was out there earlier we had had a moment of sun. But not now. A howling gale and the rain that we had seen over the Brittany coast had caught me.

For that reason I didn’t hang around very long. Chausias was over there at the ferry terminal in a NAABSA (Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground) condition so presumably they are expecting her to be doing something in the near future.

The two passenger ferries were moored up in the inner harbour where they usually stay.

But no Channel Island ferries. Both Granville and Victor Hugo are currently moored up in Cherbourg and I have no idea why.

Spirit of Conrad has made good her escape from the Chantier navale so I was keen to see who had taken her place.

The answer is that there isn’t anything special in there right now. We have two of the inshore fishing boats that haul in the shellfish and one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that is over there where Spirit of Conrad used to be.

So at least there’s plenty of work for the shipyard to be doing and that should keep them out of mischief for a while.

Back here I finished off the writing and then dictated the notes. They are going to need some hefty editing too as I seem to have been somewhat extravagant.

Anyway, I had made a start by the time that I went to make tea. Vegan burger on a bap with baked potatoes and vegetables, followed by fruit salad and sorbet. And there’s still that left-over slice of apple pie in the freezer from before I went to Leuven. But that’s an oven job so it will probably be to go with the pizza on Sunday.

Howling gales and torrential rain tonight, and I was out in it. To make it worse, I had to go for a longer walk than usual as I was in touching distance of my 100% target so I may as well push on over.

The storm was raging and although the tide wasn’t all the way in, the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset and soaking everything. It’s disappointing that they haven’t left the lights on along the promenade so that we can see the waves better.

And despite the miserable weather I managed to fit in my two runs this evening. My two little tracks were quite well sheltered.

But Iw as feeling the strain, I’ll tell you. It seems that the spell of good health I had in December is about as good as it is ever goign to be.

So having finished my notes, I’ll wait until “Yes In Concert” finishes ad then I’ll go to bed. The problem is that I have far too much good music here to which to listen to waste my time by going to bed and sleep.

Monday 27th January 2020 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed at 05:30 but I managed it – only just.

And by the time the third alarm went off at 05:45 I was already on my way down the road having rinsed my empty bottles, packed my rucksack and put the key to my room in the key disposal box.

When the first of the normal series of alarms went off at 06:00 I was sitting in a train at the station in Leuven.

It’s an elderly AM80 electric multiple-unit. Covered in graffiti and not very clean at all. But the fact is that it’s here, it’s leaving at 06:04 and it’s travelling non-stop into Brussels.

That’s good enough for me.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour, bought myself some raisin bread for breakfast and then went to sit down to wait until my train is called.

With half an hour to go before departure, I took the initiative and went myself to look for the train on the off-chance that it might be ready.

And sure enough, here it is sitting on the platform ready to go. It’s one of the “Reseau 38000” PBA (Paris Bruxelles Amsterdam) trainsets built for the start of thatservice in 1996.

To my surprise the door was open and I was able to go in and find my seat – a good 25 minutes to go before departure.

A ticket inspector came by and I thought that he was going to heave me out but he simply checked my ticket and that was that.

As for the journey itself, I have no idea at all about it because I slept for most of the route. This early start caught me up good and proper.

We arrived about 10 minutes late but that didn’t inconvenience me at all. The Metro was quite rapid even though it was crowded and I had to stand all the way, and I arrived at Montparnasse a good hour before my train was due to leave.

With the new timetable, it now arrives and departs from a platform in the main station complex rather than the Vaugirard annexe. In some ways that’s a good thing because it saves me a 10-minute walk, but in other ways it’s not so good.

That’s because Montparnasse is a huge, windswept desolate, cold station whereas the Vaugirard annexe had a nice draught-free glass waiting room where it’s reasonably comfortable to sit.

But hunting around, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … I found an ideal hidey-hole where I could even see an electronic departure board.

With 15 minutes to go, my train still hadn’t been posted so i went to look for it. And I found it sitting at one of the platforms. Meantime, the PA announcer was telling us that “the departure details are currently unavailable” – which was the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard seeing as at the time she was making the announcement I was actually looking at it.

Eventually we were called to the train – exactly where I said it was – and we could board it.

For part of the way, as far as L’Aigle, I had a very charming young female companion but after she left, I dozed off and there I stayed, fast asleep again, almost until we reached Granville.

Bang on time into the station we were, although it took me a few minutes to get my things together. And then I headed off into the rain.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago a notice had appeared in the car park of the Parc de Val es Fleurs to the effect that a chapiteau – a marquee – was to be erected there.

Just for a change I came back home that way to see if there was anything exciting happening. And sure enough, we did have our chapiteau in all of its glory, surrounded by a load of caravans.

It’s a circus, apparently, and even as I watched a huge pile of schoolkids filed their way into the chapiteau. They were obviously going to be treated to a matinée performance all to themselves.

Now here’s a thing!

For the last I don’t know how many weeks we’ve seen Spirit of Conrad up on blocks in the chantier navale. But no longer, by the looks of things.

Here she is, in the inner harbour with Joly France on one side of her and Charles-Marie on the other side. But no Aztec Lady. It must have been her that we saw heading out into the English Channel in the wake of Normandy Trader the other day.

Barry Hay once famously told us “one thing that I gotta tell you man – that it’s good to be back home!” and he’s absolutely right. A year or two ago, for the first time ever in my life I felt the pangs of homesickness after I’d been away from here for a couple of months.

This place really is my home and I was glad to be back here, even if it was absolutely freezing cold with no heating having been on. And to my delight a parcel for which I had been waiting since the end of November has finally arrived, at long last.

Nevertheless I sat down in my nce comfy chair and did nothing until tea time. I’m entitled to a relax after my efforts of today.

For tea, in the absence of any special willpower just now, I grabbed a frozen curry out of the freezer – the left-over leftovers from a few weeks ago. With rice and veg, including sprouts and spinach, it was delicious. And followed down by fruit salad and lemon sorbet.

The rain held off tonight for about 5 minutes after I set out for my evening walk – and then I caught the lot. All of it!

The tide was well-in and there were several trawlers out there heading in to harbour with their catches so I took a pick of one.

The lights of St Malo were looking quite good tonight too but the wind was far too strong for me to take a steady shot with the camera. The tripod wouldn’t have fared any better either – the wind would have had that over in a matter of seconds.

But round by the chantier navale I could take a photo of the inmates there.

No Spirit of Conrad of course – just a couple of fishing boats and another one right at the back. But the photo is no good because of the wind and rain. I wasn’t going to stay out long.

Getting back into the rhythm, I managed my little run just to keep up with my progress. Whatever else I do, I have to concentrate on getting fit no matter how much it hurts me. I do actually feel much better with having less weight to carry around these days.

So having written up my notes for the day, I’m going off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be getting back into the routine. There are two and a half radio programmes that need finishing and that’s the priority task for this week.

So I need to be on form.

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I ENCOUNTERED A WEIRD CEMENT CONVEYOR in the avenue Aristide Briand.

This morning on my way to LIDL the gate to the chantier was open, and while I was admiring the machine and the cementing that they were doing, I fell in with the owner.

He let me have a good look around it and we had quite a chat. he told me that he was so impressed with it that he had actually bought another one for another site.

And when I think of all the humping around that I did by hand all those times …

For once last night I had a decent sleep. being in bed before midnight meant that I had at least 6 hours sleep and that’s pretty good these days.

Nevertheless I didn’t beat the third alarm. A good five or so minutes behind it I was, and I’ll have to be doing better than this.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it’s no surprise that I was quite exhausted.

I was having to record my latest radio programme so I went to a Working Men’s Club where I usually went but there was some guy playing guitar there on the stage entertaining the public so I asked the guy at the door what it was all about. He told me “ahh well it’s just someone on the guitar with him”. There was a woman standing next to him. She had her had round him or on his arm or something. He said “yes, maybe she’s someone who has a claim on him”. I replied “maybe he has something in her” which made everyone laugh. But a former friend of mine was there and he was standing by the other door and somehow I pretended not to notice because I wasn’t really up to actually going along to socialise and to meet and talk to him
A little later on I was wandering around some kind of Medieval town somewhere, going up and down all of the paths and everything, picking my way through people’s ornaments and so on. On one occasion someone had on their steps a pile of little animals like santons, that kind of thing. As I was climbing up I was thinking “how am I going to get down?”. I started to go down the steps on the other side but of course there were all these little santon things all over the place. I put my foot on one place and flattened half a dozen of the things so I had to sit down on the step and move myself back up the step one by one until I reached the top where I could jump off but from where I was jumping I couldn’t see what I was jumping on to because I’m not very good at heights as everyone knows. It was some old woman’s place, this was and I was worried in case someone had seen me come to grief on these steps. It was about 03:00 so they shouldn’t have done.
A little later on I was back in the office, talking to a group of people and we were discussing things like how we were working, cameras, recording equipment in the place, all of that kind of thing. Someone said that they envied me because I could go home and so it was home time but I ended up not going home for some reason or other. I had to stay behind and do something. I do remember that it was 17:40 and I was still there, thinking that I might be home for 18:00 like this, I don’t really know but I can’t remember all that much more about it but somewhere there was something about me moving apartment leaving Jette and moving somewhere like the back end of Laeken where I saw that apartment that I liked when I was with Laurence and I don’t remember too much about that either. Someone else who put in a cameo appearance at some point was someone who was probably the only civilised adult on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour

After breakfast I attacked the translation with a determination and before long I’d finished it off. Almost 5,000 words there, of which I reckon about 4,000 is going to end up in the bin.

But anyway, it’s done and dusted and sent off and that’s that. I went and had a shower and then headed for the shops.

We’re going to be having more excitement in the area soon.

The local council were out today putting up “No Waiting” signs in the boulevard de Terreneuviers and that will upset the two vehicles down there for a start. They’ve been there for quite a while.

There wasn’t any time for me to go and enquire what was happening, but I’ll keep an eye open.

As for the red mini-artic, I’ve seen that quite a while now, and it seems to have inherited the sport of the old CF Bedford that used to park there regularly.

Both of those vehicles have Dutch registration so I’m wondering if the Bedford has gone to the Great Car Park In The Sky and this is its replacement.

At LIDL they had every kind of electrical appliance that you could name – except a kettle of course. So I’ll have to pick one up at the weekend from a mainstream shop.

Although the other one has packed up after just a little over 2 years, i’m not too disappointed. I remember saying at the time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I needed so much stuff when I came here that I was going to buy it all at the cheapest possible price and when it gives out, I can replace it with decent stuff. I couldn’t afford decent stuff right at the start so cheap it had to be.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I climbed up the hill towards home.

Just at the right time to see Thora come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the harbour. I was quite pleased about this. I’d seen her go out on several occasions but I’d never seen her actually come in and dock.

So that’s a first for me then. I wonder how long she’s going to be in port. Maybe it will be another rapid turn-round like Normandy Trader had the other day.

Back here I made a start on the next radio project – the one that I should have done on Monday had I not had this blasted translation to do. And by the time that I’d knocked off all of the music had been chosen and recorded, the text had been written and dictated and I was busy editing the dictation.

Tomorrow morning I’ll just need to finish off the editing, splice the speech into the music and then deal with the last track. That is of course the bit that always takes the longest as the track needs to be of a specific type and of a specific length.

Sad as it is to say it, I could have done a lot more to it but this afternoon I once more succumbed to the fatigue and crashed out on the chair. How I hate this, but I shall have to grin and bear it.

We had a break for lunch of course, and then a break for the afternoon walk.

The wind was horrible again so I didn’t loiter around. But I was intrigued by the antics over at the ferry terminal. It seems that it isn’t just dredging that they are doing there but they have a concrete breaker and a pneumatic drill going on.

Perhaps I ought to go over there one of these days for a closer look and see what they are doing.

There’s a good view from up here on the cliff as I have said before.

Today we aren’t going to look at the construction works on the car park but we’ll admire Thora instead, parked in her usual place underneath the unloading crane. She looked quite nice when she first came here just under two years ago but today she’s in need of a coat of paint.

Mind you, it’s a hard life for a small ship in these kinds of waters doing the job that she does.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that part of the parking in the Boulevard Vaufleury had been coned off?

Sure enough, there they are – not actually doing anythign right now but you can see that they’ve been active. All of the small trees that were growing up on top of the wall have been removed and the wood has been chipped.

It’ll be nice to have a vue degagée this summer over the wall down into the harbour. The vegetation was becoming rather wild.

The tide is going out, I reckon.

And you can see where the fishing boats unload their cargoes of shellfish. The obviously drop quite a fair amount over the side when they are swinging the crates upwards, and the seabirds are taking full advantage of that.

There must be ahundred or so congregating down there feeding on the fallen shellfish. And good luck to them too

Having knocked off work at 19:00 as usual, it was tea time. Burger on a bap with microwaved potatoes and vegetables. And for some reason or other it was the most delicious that I have ever tasted. I’m not sure what it was that I did right but whwtever it was, it worked.

As for the rice pudding, that went into the bin. Yesterday it had a strange taste that I didn’t recognise. And tonight the taste was stronger and it didn’t seem right to me. So off it went.

Instead, I chopped up a banana and had some of that delicious banana sorbet with it. That was wonderful.

There’s no doubt that since I’ve become more settled, my eating habits have improved dramatically.

This bad parking thing is becoming a bit of a habit now, isn’t it?

There’s a free public car park less than 50 yards away fro mwhere this guy is parked but because he doesn’t want to get wet in the rain that we were having, he’s parked right by a “No Parking” sign across the yellow hatch marks that clearly indicate that this is a Fire Lane

And not only that – it’s the Fire Lane that leads to the back of this building. So we can all burn to death because the fire engine can’t reach here, but that’s okay as long as Monsieur doesn’t have to walk 50 yards in the rain.

As for me, I did my evening walk and I’m now up to 115% of my day’s activity which is good news for me. I managed my run too – along the path at the north side of the walls out of the way of the wind.

It doesn’t look pretty, the way that I run, and I can’t run too far but considering my age and my state of health a few hundred metres every night is good going.

So tomorrow I’ll finish off my Project and then make a good go at this Press Conference. Then in the evening we have US Granville v Olympique de Marseille in the French Cup.

Who knows what that might bring?

Wednesday 15th January 2020 – IT’S REALLY NICE …

… when someone’s project that you have been following for quite a while finally comes to fruition.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been following the renovation of the big old building in the Place Cambernon for a couple of years now on and off, but now here it is, the Restaurant La Contremarche, in all its glory. Open to the public this evening

And it’s a right place too. There’s a piano, and waiters in aprons, all that kind of thing. Definitely not for the likes of you and me.

And there’s another reason why I won’t be going there either. And that’s because, although I did look, I couldn’t see a menu on display outside.

There are two reasons why that fact would disappoint me too –

It’s not possible to see whether there’s anything that I could eat. And with my rather restricted diet, that kind of thing is very important. In fact it will put a lot of people off going.
With not knowing what’s available, I can’t see the prices. It’s like the old saying about Rolls Royces, which is quite apposite seeing as I lived for several years in the town where Rolls Royces were made – in that “if you have to ask the price, then you can’t afford it”. Rather than being embarrassed about the price, I wouldn’t go in at all.

So Fritkot for me.

But more importantly, where are they going to put the pizza van now? I don’t think that the owners of the restaurant will want it outside their front door.

We’ll find out tomorrow.

But never mind tomorrow, let’s talk about today. It was a night that was rather later than intended last night, and as a result I didn’t quite manage to beat the third alarm. Only a couple of minutes in it but still disappointing.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I can’t remember now who I was with but we were in a hotel waiting to be called for our aeroplanes. We had been told that they were going in 5-minute intervals or 10 minute intervals. The last plane had been called at something like 12:00 and it was now long after 13:00 and we still hadn’t been called. We’d all packed and had everything ready and were just sitting around waiting, getting more and more annoyed and stressed out about this. In the end I was actually staying on for an extra week so it didn’t really concern me that much but the two people I was with, they were going back. IN the end I picked up the hotel phone and tried to dial out to try to find out what was going on. These two people told me the number but as I was dialling I had this light voice saying “doing my best, doing me best”, a female voice, obviously an automatic machine. As I was doing this a noise started up in the hotel corridor as if everyone was moving out. I had my old shoes on, the ones with the broken laces and whoever I was with came up and said “here, look at this” and he tied my laces in a realy peculiar way that ended in a dead-knot. “How’s that?” I said “if you can remember how to undo it, it’s fine”. My laces were a nice lime green and with black trainers that didn’t look right at all.

After breakfast, I’d still had no news of what I was supposed to be doing with the audio files from the Press Conference at the Stade Louis Dior yesterday. It’s all very well sending me to this meeting, but I have to know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Deciding that any action is better than none at all, I went through the one with Johan Gallon, the trainer of US Granville, all 25 minutes of it, and made copious notes.

It worked out that there was an opportunity to ask about 25 questions to be inserted into the interview, so I set about and recorded them.

There was a brief interruption in the middle of all that to go and fetch my bread. The wind had stopped but we were now having a rainstorm.

It’s half-day at schools in France on a Wednesday.

They close at midday and sure enough there are hordes of people milling around. And load of cars like these here.

Bit I watched the one across the road pull up. I’m standing right by an approved parking place which is vacant, there’s a huge public car park 50 metres further up the Boulevard Vaufleury but the selfish driver chooses to block the pavement by parking with two wheels upon it, and blocking the access down the road for the service buses and school buses that come down here.

And if that’s no enough to be going on with, the eagle-eyed among you will notice that the driver is parked on a bus stop. You can’t see the yellow hatching on the road but you can see the “bus stop” sign right in front of the car.

My walk took me onwards towards the Chantier navale

Our old friend Spirit of Conrad is still in there of course and so are the two fishing boats that have been there for a while. But they are now joined by a third one, to the right of Spirit of Conrad.

It looks as if there’s a lot going on in the Chantier navale right now and that’s always good news. The port needs to be kept busy with as much work as possible.

The tide was well in today so the gates were open and I couldn’t walk across.

It also meant that the earth-moving equipment doing the dredging at the ferry terminal weren’t out working, They were parked down at the rue du Port so I could go and inspect them,

Two large diggers and two huge earth-moving lorries. And whaen I was “huge eath-moving lorries” I do mean huge. I could have hours of endless fun with one of those.

Having bought my dejeunette at la Mie Caline, I headed for home, chatting to a neighbour on the way.

It wasn’t quite lunchtime so I had a listen to what I had dictated. It needed some background white noise, a little echo and some background noise so I spent a while adding some of that.

By now it was lunchtime so I knocked off for half an hour or so.

After lunch I set to copying and pasting the audio files and my questions and I’d done half of it when the telephone rang. I finally know now what I have to do with it all, and it means that my morning is wasted.

As I’ve said before, the lack of professionalism is really annoying me.

Instead, I carried on with this blasted, flaming translation. By the time that I knocked off for tea I’d reached 46 minutes – that’s about 83%. With a bit of luck I can finish that tomorrow before I go to the shops.

The afternoon walk – in the bright sunshine now, was interesting. I only managed half of my run along the square Maurice Marland but I wasn’t disappointed because with no-one about at all, I’d done the run along the north side of the walls.

But I don’t understand why I hadn’t taken any photos at all.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding. And it was delicious as usual. Mind you, I forgot to put the peanuts in the stuffing.

Outside, the wind had dropped but the ground was sodden as if we’d had a sudden rainstorm.

The views though were really excellent tonight. I could see dozens of fishing boats right out in the English Channel and there was one of them heading in to port seeing as the tide was in.

The sea was comparatively calm too, so there can’t have been much intensity in the storm that passed us by over the last couple of days. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have on occasion seen waves still come roaring in days after a violent storm.

“A really clear night” I thought to myself.

Out there in the English Channel you can see a couple of the trawlers – or, rather, the lights of a couple of trawlers out there fishing off the coast of Jersey.

But even more importantly, you can see the large red lights on the extreme left of the image. I’m not sure what they are but my best guess would be that they would be warning lights for something like a radio antenna or a radar mast over on the Jersey mainland.

Picking this up with my equipment in the darkest night is quite something.

That wasn’t all either.

The lights of St Malo were nice and bright and clear tonight. With no tripod to take long-delay exposures, I had to do my best with a hand-held shot.

It’s hard to think that 18 months ago I might have been lucky to produce this image but it’s rather small beer compared to what I’ve been able to produce with the new camera and the tripod.

We mentioned a little earlier the parking issues in the Boulevard Vaufleury.

In the future though it’s going to become far more difficult. They’ve blocked off half of the car-parking spaces with a row of cones and I’ve no idea why.

Perhaps I’ll find out tomorrow when I go for my walk. But stopping to photograph them interrupted my evening run (yes, I’ve done a lot of running today). And stand by for some more “pathetic parking” photos of cars whose kids are far too lazy to walk 50 metres.

The fishing boat that I had seen earlier was now at the fish processing plant and was busy unloading.

If you look very carefully you’ll see the fork lift truck that is taking away the boxes of whatever the boat had brought in.

As for me, I carried on with my walk. I was on 90% of my day’s activities so I pushed on for a while. That’s how come I found myself in the Place Cambernon.

But a good walk around brought me up to 100% eventually so I could come home.

Listening to my recordings just recently, I’m well aware of the fact that my equipment for the radio isn’t producing the quality that I would like. In fact, I’m really surprised that it’s doing as well as it does.

But anyway there’s a Special Offer on at the moment on recording equipment and there’s a professional piece of equipment that does exactly what I want on sale at just €88:00. So that, and a microphone desktop stand and (at last) a water filter are on their way here.

There are a few bits and pieces missing for the camera following my aquatic adventures and they are on the way here too, as well as some sticky labels for the new laptop to convert it to a French keyboard.

Money is being spent like water right now but I’m having to do it if I want to move on.

There’s a new electric kettle to be looked for too. The one that I have has just blown every fuse in the house.

Tuesday 14th January 2020 – I WAS WONDERING …

… how long it was going to be before we had a catastrophe.

The answer is “this afternoon at about 14:00” when this tree came crashing down. It was bound to happen sooner or later because the winds outside are horrific. They aren’t quite the worst that I’ve ever encountered but they are pretty close.

And this tree took the full brunt of it and came crashing down. Lucky that there weren’t any cars parked just there on the car park of the other block of flats.

As for me, I had a really bad day today.

By the time that I finished what I was doing, it was 02:30. Sure enough, the elarms went off at the usual time but it was 07:05 when I finally crawled out of bed.

There was the medication of course and while I was waiting for it to work I attacked some more of this translation. In fact over the course of the day I’ve been nibbling away at it here and there and I’m now at 65%. But even so, my good humour hasn’t returned quite yet.

Round about 11:00 I headed out of the apartment for this Press Conference.

And as I was leaving my apartment this fishing boat from Jersey was leaving port and heading out into the wicked wind. I don’t envy him at all heading that way in all of this.

At least the rain wasn’t all that heavy, which was one good thing. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen horizontal rain.

At the Stade Louis Dior I was one of the first to arrive and so I had another good chat with the Vice-president, Guy Lefevre.

We’d met each other ON THE BUS THE OTHER DAY GOING TO VERSAILLES and so we continued the interesting conversation that we’d had back then.

But then everyone else began to arrive and we all settled down.

None of the players were available today but the team’s chief coach, Johan Gallon, came to talk to us.

He gave us a little talk and we all asked loads of questions. What interested me was that I was the only one there asking questions about tactics and the like. Everyone else was much more interested in the emotional side of the match.

He did his best to answer them but without giving away anything that might be of use to the enemy.

He’s well aware that the match is going to be difficult, much more difficult than against Bordeaux and much more difficult than when US Granvillais met Olympique de Marseille back in 2016.

There were about a dozen of us all told, and two television cameras too. One or two of them were interested in me too – where did I come from and what was I doing there.

I suppose that I’m really something of a novelty around here, being British, asking tactical questions in French and gatecrashing press conferences like this

After half an hour or so Johan gallon left us to carry on with his other business.

However the Vice-President Guy Lefevre stayed behind and a couple of us continued our chat.

We also discussed the Carnaval because he has a char that parades there and it’s another idea that I have for the forthcoming.

One thing I learnt, which was of great interest to me, was how they transported the chars from their hidey-holes to the Parade.

Apparently the operators of the chars have to have Public Liability insurance but the road risks are arranged by the municipality. The Police provide an exemption from the Road Traffic Acts to cover journeys to and from the parades and the parades themselves.

Another thing is that there is a limit on the number of chars. Just 47 are permitted to parade. Motorised chars, that is. Push-along chars can turn up in any particular number that they fancy.

By the time that we finished, the rain had stopped so I walked home in something like comfort. On the way back I popped in to la Mie Caline for my dejeunette and then came back here.

By now it was 14:15 so that was it. Lunchtime.

This afternoon I started to listen to the recordings that I had made. The quality isn’t up to much but, rather like Samuel Johnson’s dog, “I’m surprised that it is done at all”. I spent some time enhancing the recordings so at least I could hear what was being said.

The plan is to listen to the recordings to hear parts that are obvious “answers” to questions that haven’t been asked, then to record the questions and edit them into the recording.

It’s an old radio practice that has been done for years – in fact when the Beatles first toured the USA they sent over to each radio station a recording of “answers” so that the reporters there could ask their own questions and have an “exclusive live interview”.

On that point I went out into the horrendous gale. There were just four of us out there in total today and I was surprised that there was that many.

The wild wind hadn’t stopped them working down at the ferry terminal. They were digging out the silt, tipping it into the dumpers and taking it off to be dumped.

They can’t be going to be spending too long on it because sooner or later they’ll be wanting to send the ferries back out again and they won’t want to be working all around a ferry timetable as well as a tidal chart.

Another thing that’s cracking on is the work on the car park in the rue du Port.

They’ve devastated that pretty much over the last 24 hours as you can tell if you compare it to THIS PHOTO TAKE 24 HOURS AGO. It won’t be long before that will be finished and they will have all gone.

What’s going on in my mind is what it will look like when it’s finished. I hope that it’s not simply going to be a bare patch of asphalt. And I hope that they plant some trees in there too.

Back here I was intending to start work but I’m afraid that I simply crashed out on the chair. I was gone for a good hour too in a deep sleep, the kind of crashing out that I used to have before that last spell of good health.

It’s something that has depressed me completely and I don’t really want to dwell on it.

Instead, I had tea. The last of the falafel with steamed veg and vegan cheese sauce, followed by the last of the Christmas Cake. It was delicious too.

So tomorrow I’ll have to start on the rice pudding that I made on Sunday.

If anything, the wind outside had worsened tonight. It bowled me along the street on the way out and on the way back there were times when it was impossible to make headway, so strong were the gusts of wind.

You can’t see it at all well but the waves were smashing over the sea wall at the Plat Gousset with the most astonishing violence.

It’s a shame that they’ve taken this decision to turn out the lights along there in winter. No-one can see a thing out there now and it’s terrible for photography.

The wind was so powerful across the square Maurice Marland that is was impossible at times to walk, never mind run.

But having anticipated that, I’d done my running (such as it is) in the sheltered spot on the north side of the city walls. The huge puddles there made it difficult but I pushed on for a few hundred metres.

It might not be much but at my age and in my state of health I think that it’s pretty good.

There’s a spot on the city walls that is protected from the wind so I went there for a moment.

There was a trawler unloading at the fish-processing plant so I could snap off a quick shot of it through the trees. Winter is my favourite time for photography because there are no leaves to obscure the shot.

On the way back I bumped into a girl walking her dog and smoking a cigarette. We exchanged pleasantries and then I came back.

By now, THE PODCAST OF MY RADIO PROGRAMME WAS ON-LINE so I had a listen.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a lot of time for kids – sometimes (in fact, quite often) I find them far more interesting than adults – and some of the kids in my radio programme didn’t let me down.

They performed admirably and gave a really good filling to the programme as well as providing some comic relief.

It’s the one thing that I regret – not having a kid of my own and I get quite broody at times. But then if I had a kid I would have to have the partner that went with it and I’m not made for living with other people.

Anyway, it’s later. later than I want to be. Marillion has passed by on the playlist so there’s no reason to stay up any longer. I’m off to bed and tomorrow I’ll crack on and do this radio programme.

Whenever am I going to find time to do my own stuff?

johan gallon guy lefevre stade louis dior us granville manche normandy france eric hall

Thursday 9th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that a good few months ago I spoke about some kind of plan or other involving the abandoned railway network that ran through the port at one time.

This morning on my travels up town to LIDL I happened to look over the wall down to the harbour, and here they are, digging out the infill from where they had covered it up in the past.

It goes without saying that I’m really intrigued with what’s going on down there and on my way for my dejeunette tomorrow I shall be making further enquiries.

With lots of activity going on in the harbour down there right now, you could be forgiven for thinking that that was that.

But not at all. In fact one thing that was conspicuous in one sense was that Victor Hugo was conspicuous by its absence. That means that both of the Channel Islands ferries are out somewhere because Granville, the newer one, is also absent and has been for a day or two now.

It must be all go at the Channel Islands right now

But it wasn’t all go here this morning. The night was reasonably early and I did hear all of the three alarms, but I couldn’t somehow find the intention to leave the stinking pit. It was gone 08:00 when I finally saw daylight this morning and that’s no good at all.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone and I’m not sure exactly what I was doing in some kind of poor mountain village in poverty-stricken USA but it was doing some thing like a radio programme or whatever, I suppose. I had this young girl with me – she might even have been my daughter. The story goes that she was found kissing one of the boys in this village. They rounded up this girl and me and started to change our clothes and gave us nice clothes to wear. It suddenly struck me that this is marriage, isn’t it? This girl is going to be married off to this boy presumably but she was nowhere near old enough for this kind of thing. She was admiring the clothes that she was wearing and started to hum “here comes the bride” and suddenly had this appalling look of horror on her face as she too realised what was going to happen and started to snatch the clothes off her. These people were trying to grab hold of her to keep the clothes on and that was when I awoke.

After breakfast I was straight into the shower and as I seem to be struggling for clothes right now, I stuck a pile of dirty ones into the washing machine and let them have a run round.

And then the excitement began.

Wit my train being cancelled this morning I mentioned that I was changing my travelling arrangements. So off to the railway station in the pouring rain.

Hardly had I presented myself at the ticket window when the girl there beckoned someone else forward and let them have their say before me. Needless to say, there were words said about that.

She then couldn’t piece together my itinerary so I had to help her put the tickets in order (which had been in order until she had started messing around with them)

So eventually I was able to ask –
Our Hero – “as my train has been cancelled today, I’d like to change my travel and go again in two weeks time”
Girl at Window – “what date is that?”
OH – “two weeks from today”
GAW – “what date is that?”
OH – “whatever date two weeks from today is. The 23rd is it?”
GAW – “I don’t know”
OH doing some rough calculation – yes, 23rd
GAW – “the same trip?”
OH – “Didn’t I say that?”
GAW – “I don’t know”
so eventually after much prompting and grumbling she did it.
OH – “now what about the return?”
GAW – “what date?”
OH – “Just what I said earlier – the same trip but in two weeks time”.
GAW – “What date is that?”
OH – “whatever date is two weeks from the date on the ticket”
GAW – “but you haven’t told me what date”
OH by now rapidly losing his patience and his temper was surely bound to follow – “two weeks from the date on that ticket”
GAW – “but what’s the date?”
OH doing some more rough calculations – the 26th
GAW – “that will be €15:00”
OH – “what do you mean €15:00? I’m having to rearrange all of my trip because the outward train isn’t running. You’ve cancelled it”
GAW – “but the return train is running”
OH – “so how am I supposed to get the return train if I can’t travel out to get it?”
GAW – “I dunno”

The net result of all of this is that they will need to repaint the interior of the station booking office where the paint has blistered under the heat of my incendiary comments. I’ve not changed my return trip as yet but I shall be doing so in very early course once I’ve spoken to the SNCF head office.

LIDL next. And nothing of any excitement there, although I did forget to buy the peppers and mushrooms. I dunno what’s the matter with me right now.

Calling at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette, I then headed off for home.

Most of the day has been spent doing this football thing and by the time that I knocked off it was almost finished. There are 7, or possibly 8 main threads now with all of the isolated soundbites incorporated in to one of the threads as appropriate.

The linking texts have been dictated too but all of that needs editing and some background dubbed onto it, and then I can link it all together and dictate a closure to add in.

It’s about an hour’s work, I reckon, but knowing me, it will probably take most of the morning.

And then I have that stupid, pointless translation to do. It hasn’t escaped my attention that with the project owner not having had the time to edit it, I’m going to have to translate everything. I reckon that I keep about 15-20% of whatever I record on an interview and discard 80-85%, so this tells me that 80-85% of my work is going to end up filed under CS.

And that’s a thought that depresses me greatly as you can imagine. As Sheriff Buford T Justice put it so well in Smokey and the Bandit “we don’t have time for that crap!” I don’t know what people think I am … “and I don’t think that you want to either” – ed.

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch was one of them of course and that hummus that I made the other day is tasting better and better as the herbs and garlic spread through it.

We had the afternoon walk of course, around the headland.

The sun was out and it was quite bright now. The rain had stopped. But there was a fierce wind blowing around and whipping up quite a wave down there. Some of the waves were crashing over the sea wall with an impressive force.

Not the kind of day to be out there at all.

Nevertheless, there were quite a few people doing their best. There was a line of about a dozen fishing boats heading into port.

If you have any doubt about what the phrase “making heavy weather of it” means, just one look at this boat will explain it to you better than anything I can say.

She was up and down and in and out of the waves all the way around the headland.

You probably noticed that I mentioned the line of fishing boats out there heading into port.

This is where they are heading and they’ll have to ride out at anchor because there isn’t any room at the inn. Apart from our old friend La Grande Ancre, I count another 8 of them just there.

The pink one that we saw heading this way is going to take the last empty berth and the rest of them out there will have to wait.

Not for long though.

The unloading takes place pretty quickly, as you can see. There’s quite a load on that boat there and they are using the cranes to stack it onto the trailer that is pulled by the tractor.

Where it goes after that I don’t know, but one of these days I’ll track it down.

Back to the apartment now to carry on working.

And the day that I might be able to work even faster might not be far away. That’s the company that’s installing the fibre-optic cable and they are doing something out in the street just outside the Place d’Armes.

Here’s hoping that it’s the cable being connected up.

Tea tonight was a burger – or, at least, it should have been a burger. But in the packet that i bought “on spec” from NOZ were some galette- thinks, like small thick crepes made with vegan components. Quite different from what I was expecting but tasty all the same and I’ll look out for more of these.

For the evening walk I was on my own at first.

Cold and windy but the sky was reasonably clear. Donville-les-Bains was looking quite nice in the dark but I didn’t stay around long to admire it. I went off and had my run.

However I have never ever felt less like it than I did. The strong headwind didn’t help but even so I was all for giving up after the first 100 yards. I kept on going though, and just about made it to the ramp.

There were crowds of people outside La Rafale, the bar in the Place Cambernon, and the pizza van that wa sparked there was doing a roaring trade.

My attention was distracted by a woman taking a rather small cat for a walk. She explained to me tearfully that it had been diagnosed with this cat disease that goes around. It’s survived a couple of attacks but it now had it again and its days are numbered.

And so i commiserated with her and gave her cat a stroke, poor thing.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. It’s later than I hoped but for some reason I can’t concentrate on anything today.

But at least I didn’t crash out. That’s always something to be grateful for, I suppose.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: rainstorm

Thursday 27th February 2020 – AFTER CARNAVAL …

Tuesday 25th February 2020 – THE WIND OUTSIDE …

Monday 24th February 2020 – THERE’S SOMETHING MISSING …

Sunday 23rd February 2020 – THE FIRST DAY …

Thursday 20th February 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING!

Sunday 16th February 2020 – DESPITE IT BEING A …

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

Monday 3rd February 2020 – SHE’S BACK!

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – TODAY IS THE FIRST …

Tuesday 28th January 2020 – IF YOU WANT …

Monday 27th January 2020 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

Wednesday 15th January 2020 – IT’S REALLY NICE …

Tuesday 14th January 2020 – I WAS WONDERING …

Thursday 9th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

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