Tag Archives: http://www.erichall.eu

Sunday 10th May 2020 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I really don’t know when, I haven’t put my sooty foot outside the door today.

And that’s no surprise because right now we’re in the middle of a howling gale the like of which I have rarely seen, with torrential rain lashing down everywhere.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been out in all kids of weather but I ain’t going out in this one.

With it being Sunday, I had a nice lie-in without being disturbed and it was a very reasonable 09:45 when I finally hauled myself out of bed.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I had been anywhere during the night. And I wasn’t disappointed. I was actually told off last night! I’d gone to watch the football at Granville and Granville were winning so we were all chanting. We were making a lot of noise and it sounded really good but the manager came over to speak to us and to thank us for coming but said that it’s going to be a bit peculiar for everyone at the football club that all that they can hear are applause and cheers and people shouting in English. He said that that was giving the wrong impression of the club. “We’re not an expat club, we’re a French club” and gave us a bit of a lecture, although I don’t know what he expected us to do about it.
Anyway a little later I was off with a girl – I can’t remember who it was now which is a shame because I always like to know who I’m with – and we were walking in the countryside. We saw a road sign and I’d seen a road sign going to the same place, something like Pound Hill, somewhere else so i wondered if these two roads connected with each other. “So let’s go and find out”. This road or track petered out after about 50 yards and went through a field. In this field was a cow and I wasn’t sure if it was a cow or a bull so I was a bit wary. The animal didn’t really do all that much attacking – it just nuzzled a bit. Then a dog appeared and was quite wild – a medium-sized dog he jumped and grabbed hold of my jacket by the back of the neck and pulled my jacket. In the end I had to get this dog and drag it off my back, put it on the floor and stamp on it a few times until it calmed down. It was a strange thing.

With there being something of a late breakfast and with it being a Sunday anyway, I haven’t done too much today.

Some of the morning was spent sorting through the music to prepare in advance some kind of playlist. That’s a project that I started half-heartedly while I was digitalising the record collection and I’ve been expanding it as I go along. Today I started adding into the playlists the tracks that have already been played, but that’s not an urgent task.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned that I would be reviewing a past web page every day and rewriting it. Today I’ve done the first page but there wasn’t an awful lot that needed doing.

The other web site needed a revision in the same way that the first one has had. It took me an age to design the template and then the home page that I was going to use (it was superseded by events in 2010 that have in turn been superseded) was so out of date that I had to rewrite all of the text.

But having done that, I now want to redo the template into another, more logical fashion, so I’ll have to start again. But the thing about all of this is that it takes hours to set it up correctly but then once it’s correct it take minutes to deal with it.

There was even time left to spend an hour or so working on the photos of July 2019 and right now I’m standing on the edge of a lava field on the island of Heimaey.

There was the hour on the guitar of course and I was quite enjoying what I was doing this evening – not the least of which reason being that I reckon that I have got the hang of this 6-string guitar business, although I’ve a long way to go yet before I’m going to be any good, if I ever am.

Sunday night here is pizza night of course.

Just one more ball of dough left from the batch that I made a couple of weeks ago and I’d left it out of the freezer to thaw overnight so that it was ready to use.

So I flattened it out onto the baking roll, dusted it with flour and then rolled it out.

As I mentioned last week there wasn’t really enough pastry mix so it ended up being quite thin and wouldn’t lift off safely from the baking roll, so I simply picked up the baking roll and flopped it over onto the pizza tray.

All of the usual topping of course and then into the oven. And there’s nothing wrong with this whatsoever.

For pudding there was of course a slice of that delicious apple pie that I made, with the almond soya dessert stuff. And that was just as good

While I was waiting for the pizza to cook I went to check something on the internet and found, much to my surprise, that the missing football match that I had mentioned yesterday (Bangor City v TNS, not Rhyl as I had thought) had just started and I had missed the first 100 seconds.

So while I had my pizza I watched the football.

It was the championship decider for the season 2010-11. TNS were in front by one point but Bangor had home advantage. And they duly made it count in the 68th minute. But both teams had a couple of chances to have added to the score during the 90 minutes.

Heady days, of course, which Bangor City will never see again of course, having been sold a few years later to a bunch of crooks (and I use the term in full confidence in view of the nature of the criminal convictions, which include inter alia Defrauding the Exchequer, of the new owners) who promptly added the club to the long line of sports clubs that they have trashed during their ownership.

So no walk or run this evening, but it’s still late. I’m off to bed ready to start work. I’m interested to see how much time this “sorting of my music” will save me when I come to start the next radio project tomorrow.

Saturday 9th May 2020 – IT WASN’T …

… a very good start to the day today either.

The alarms went off as usual and I heard them, but by the time that I arose from the dead it was 06:45. I’d missed the third alarm again!

And another thing that I need to do is to apologise for having doubted the word of Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves. She complained once about my snoring in my sleep and having on a couple of occasions heard the dictaphone still working when I’ve been asleep, and not heard a thing, I had the temerity to doubt her word.

However, we had another occasion during the night where I went back to sleep in the middle of dictating something and … errr … well … quite.

Sorry, Percy Penguin.

Interestingly though, when I came back into the land of the undead, I resumed the dictating at exactly the same point as where I fell asleep.

There have been many occasions where I’ve awoken during the night and gone back to sleep and stepped right back into a dream at the point where I left it, but this is, as far as I’m aware, the first time that I’ve ever done the reverse.

It was another hot and sweaty night and I don’t know where we are but Crosby Stills and Nash are here and they played a concert and then disappeared offstage. I went to have a look at the equipment, all of these boxes. There was a box of accessories for each musician but there was also (…fell asleep right here in the middle …) some boxes on the stage with the names of the people. Each musician had his box and the supplementary musicians had theirs but their names were a bit vague. There was one that said something like Dino with a question mark stating that he was a native American who died in 1975 and nobody – they didn’t even know his name and didn’t even know where he came from but he played guitar with Crosby Stills and Nash and he had died away and they had practically forgotten about him – not forgotten about him of course because obviously he had his box but they didn’t find out anything about him while he was playing there, not even his real name.

After breakfast I had a look at a couple of files on the web server that shouldn’t be there at all and upgraded one that should and then went and had a shower.

And a shave. And a weigh-in and I’ve lost a couple of hundred grammes since last time. Still not enough though – it’s a slow process.

In town today it was difficult to tell that we are still in lockdown here until Monday. It was just like any other Saturday in normal times with the vehicles and the crowds and the local Council have recognised this, I reckon, because the traffic lights are now working properly instead of flashing amber like they have been.

There was a queue to enter LeClerc and even so, the place was packed with people, just like any normal Saturday. My own shopping bill wasn’t all that much and could well have been even less, except that the coffee that I bought on a super-special offer for 6 packs the other week was back on an even more special offer – 6 packs for €11:74.

At that price I had to buy a packet because it really is quite nice, that coffee.

Back here, I had a busy afternoon.

First thing was to go through the web server and identify the files that shouldn’t be there – of which there were plenty. They were brought home to the hard drive here and deleted from the server.

Then I had a look through the hard drive to identify
i) files that aren’t meant to be on the web server anyway
11) files that aren’t ready to be uploaded
give them all a meaningless suffix simply to identify them so that they aren’t uploaded again in error

And then updated the ones that needed updating, and then loaded them back to the web server.

They are all done now, but many of them will have to be done again because there was a slight change to the format halfway through.

But I think that what I’m going to do now that this project is temporarily finished, along with the digitalising of the record collection that has ground to a halt near the end, is to pick on one web page per day and rewrite it with suitable editing.

However, I’m not forgetting the second web page. I shall have to attend to that in due course and update that. However, there are only about 200 or so of those, half the amount that I’ve just done.

There was still half an hour left before knocking-off time so I attacked a few more photos from July 2019. I’m now inside the harbour at Vestmannaeyjar, on the island of Heimaey just off the coast of Iceland but I’m still not moored.

Just for a change, the hour on the guitar was much more enthusiastic. I’m not sure what happened there but anyway, I enjoyed it immensely.

For tea, I had one of the best stuffed peppers that I’ve ever made, followed by a slice of that apple pie from the other day. And that was excellent too. If I’m not careful, I’ll really be pushing the boat out – although evidently not as far as the quayside in Vestmannaeyjar.

After the washing up I went out for my evening runs. But I didn’t get far before I was brought to a dead halt.

A short while ago I wrote about people not respecting this detention à domicile, and I don’t know what to say about this. There are at least two cars like this Mercedes S500 Maybach here, and what is interesting is that they both appear to have number plates from Luxembourg on them.

So how did they get here? And what are they doing? Don’t they realise that there’s a lockdown here?

Apart from that Jersey-registered caravenette that was here just asfter the ferries stopped sailing – presumably having missed the last ferry, these are the first foreign-registered vehicles I’ve seen in the town.

Talking of ferries to the Channel Islands … “well, one of us is” – ed … look who’s back.

When I was out last night in the dark I thought that I recognised the change in silhouette in the harbour but it was too dark to see what it was. But sure enough, Victor Hugo is back from her winter sojourn in Cherbourg.

No idea why, though. We’ve been told that the ferries to the Channel islands won’t be starting up any time soon so there doesn’t really seem to be too much point in her coming down here right now.

We’d had rain earlier so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of a sunset with all of the clouds about.

It wasn’t anything like as good as some of the ones that we’d been having just recently but that can’t be helped. You can’t win a coconut every time.

And as for my run up the hill, yesterday must have been an exception because it was a struggle once more up the hill. I’ll try it again with no food late in the night and see if it’s that which makes the difference.

On my way past the chantier navale this morning I’d had a quick look at the boats there and came to the conclusion that the one that appeared late last night was not the one that had been there before.

This evening I took my time to have a closer look and indeed it isn’t. It’s a slightly different shade of blue and it has a name – Joker – which the other one didn’t have.

But it’s good to see the chantier navale looking so busy. That’s a bonus for the town.

Having inspected the chantier navale I ran on down the Boulevard vaufleury all the way down to my resting point and then walked back to look at the harbour and Victor Hugo

And having done that I ran on round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord overlooking the Ile de Chausey to see the sunset.

And quite unexpectedly I was in luck. It wasn’t an impressive one but just as I arrived the sun peeked through a gap in the clouds and i was able to photograph it.

a day or two ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we had seen some people fishing from the steps that go down to the beach.

They were there again today casting into the water, but I couldn’t see whether they had caught anything. So I ran on back home.

On the doorstep I met one of my neighbours so we had a good chat for half an hour and then I came in to write my notes.

Now that they are finished I’m going to go off to bed. No alarm (it’s Sunday) and a Day of Rest – the first one for quite a while too so I intend to make the most of it

Thursday 7th May 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… this evening’s beautiful sunset, let me tell you about my day today.

Just for a change, I went to bed last night at a not-unreasonable hour and I was just about on the point of throwing off my bed covers when the alarm went off.

So, a narrow defeat this morning, which was a shame. It’s high time I got myself onto a winning roll with all of this getting-up lark. I can’t afford to spend my time lying in bed.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night.

There had been some kind of radio meeting during the night. There was a new woman there and we’d been discussing a few things. There was a brochure that we had prepared, like a magazine. It was in French with an English translation. I was looking through this translation and I noticed that this new woman was standing there not too far away and she was trying her best to speak in English. I’m not quite sure why. And then the meeting came round about we were going to abandon our Saturdays. One project that the chief decided on was that we were each going to bring in a piece of fruit once a week and we’d talk about this piece of fruit. He went through the catalogue and when it got to Saturday, he said “of course Saturday we won’t be here so we can’t do Saturday”. Then he came out with a list of reasons why we couldn’t do it with coffee – because some people like it with sugar and some don’t and so on. And it all became confusing.

After breakfast I had a go ata couple of pages of the website and upgraded them.

That all led to a shower and a general clean-up. And for all of my efforts this week, i’ve lost another 100 grammes. At this rate it’ll be years before I’ll disappear completely.

But in other news, I’ve cut my hair today. And it needed it too. I’ll probably find that I’ve lost half a ton of weight now that that lot has gone.

Thursday today and so that means shopping. I grabbed my bag and headed to the hills.

One thing though, and that was that I was interested to see what was going on today with all of the shenanigans down in the harbour over the last few days.

And so this morning we could admire the big yellow crane that was now back again, and it seemed to be doing some stuff with the new pontoons over there.

So that looks like progress.

Down here on this side of the harbour by the rue du Port we saw them last week manoeuvring one of the walkways into position.

This week we can see that it’s been installed properly now. I can’t wait for the detention à domicile to end so that I can go for a walk down there and see how it is. I want to find out how the bottom is fastened to the pontoon because the pontoon won’t be at a constant height.

But just look at that car park on the right. How disappointing is that? There was so much that they could have done to it to make it so beautiful and all that we’ve ended up with is a slab of tarmac with painted white lines.

So, filled with disappointment I pushed on through the crowds (and I DO mean crowds) up the hill out of town.

First stop was at the laboratory for my test results and to pay the bill. There’s a one-way system in force there so we had to go in through the back door (and out of the front).

And in astonishing news, it’s been months since I had any treatment and my blood count has gone UP! 9.7 is quite ridiculous if you ask me. I’ve no idea what’s going on there.

On the way up the hill to LIDL I went past a house renovation that appears to have started, here in the Avenue Marechal LeClerc.

In fact one of the things that I noticed was that in a lot of the shops that are currently closed there are all kinds of repainting and redecorating going on. It looks as if everyone is getting ready for reopening, and using the downtime profitably.

At LIDL I spent a little more money than usual but there was a reason for that. I need a new plugboard with more sockets, and there was a seven-way switchable one on offer for €5:99. So that joined the happy throng.

On the way back I called at la Mie Caline for a dejeunette and then headed home. And the shopping was really heavy, what with everything in it. Like two bags of flour for a start.

But my eye caught a change over at the chantier navale. There have been four boats in there just recently but today it looked as if there was now a fifth.

And even more interesting – the boat on the left in the line of four is not the same boat that’s been there for the last couple of weeks. That’s gone and another has taken its place so it seems.

Back here I had a coffee and then made a start on the images for July 2019. For a couple of hours I had a good back at those and another 40-odd have bit the dust.

Right not I’m on the upper deck of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour watching the tight manoeuvres as we attempt to make our way into the port of Vestmannaeyjar on the island of Heimaey.

There was a break for lunch of course, and I happened to glance out of the window where I saw this.

It’s been years since we have featured an old car, so this old Citroen Acadiane is a welcome visitor to our pages.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its many guises years and years ago will recall that I had one of these that I bought at an auction, but it was “lost” when the lock-up garages where it was kept were swept away when the site was cleared for houses.

After lunch I launched an attack on the updating of the web pages. And here I made an exciting discovery.

At one stage a while ago I was looking for the working files for my 2014 trip to Canada that I could never find and which I assumed had been lost when the old laptop gave up the ghost in Germany.

But I’d obviously at one stage done some kind of directory compare between the files on the computer and files on my web server, presumably found them on both and knowing that they weren’t ready for publishing, deleted them – but from the computer and not from the web server.

They’ve now been moved over to the correct location, so obviously some more good has come out of this project.

But what with that and an early finish this afternoon I didn’t manage to do as much as I would have liked, but I can’t win a coconut every time.

So after my hour on the guitars, my early finish had given me half an hour spare so I put it to good use.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve run out of pudding and so I decided to make a small apple pie.for the rest of the week or so.

However, rather than use a pastry roll, I’d seen a simple recipe for making simple pastry – basically any given welght of flour and half that weight of butter (or in my case, vegan margarine) all kneaded together until it looks and feels good, and then a couple of tablespoons of water added and kneaded in until the texture feels good.

Take out your silicon baking sheet, dust it with flour, stick your pastry on there, flatten it out and then roll it with your rolling pin, keeping it dusted with flour so it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin as you roll it.

Grease your little baking pan (I used a 15cm one) and cut your pastry to fit it. 150 grammes of flour was enough to make the top and the bottom and there was some left over.

Peel, core and slice a couple of baking apples and add the slices to the pie with some cinnamon, nutmeg, desiccated coconut, brown sugar and lemon juice.

Then add the top, milk the edges and press them down with a fork to seal them. Brush the top with milk and dust with brown sugar, then put a couple of slits into the top to let out the steam, and then bung into the oven.

With what’s left over (pastry and apple) make an apple turnover.

And here’s the finished product. It looks absolutely delicious. And the apple turnover certainly was because I had it for pudding with some of that almond soya stuff after my burger-on-a-bap and baked potato.

And I’ll have another go at this pastry lark because it really was quit straightforward and simple. In fact, I’m wondering what I can attempt next.

After the washing up (of which there was more than enough) it was time to go off on my evening runs.

There were quite a few people out there tonight, presumably fed up of the lockdown (which seems to be working – only 600 new cases today). And we had plenty of fishing boats to admire too – like these out and about in the stretch of the English Channel between the Ile de Chausey and Bréhal-Plage.

They seem to be working all kinds of new areas these days, and a lot closer to home too.

So much so that it didn’t surprise me to see these buoys just a few miles offshore.

At first I thought that it might be a seal or a porpoise or something so it was rather a speculative shot that I took. But back home where I could crop it out and blow it up (the cropped image, not the object) I could see that they were these temporary marker buoys that we see floating about every now and again.

Despite all the time that I’ve lived here I’ve never been able to find out exactly what they are but having seen them on fishing boats, my best guess is that they are markers for fishing traps, like lobster pots and the like.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday (and for a couple of other days just recently too) we’ve walked round the headland to discover a fishing boat setting out of the harbour.

There was another one today heading off out today too. There were a few boats out fishing off the Brittany coast near Cancale across the bay and it looked as if this one was on its way to join them.

Looking more closely though, it seems to be surrounded by seabirds so I wonder if it is in fact fishing with its nets out just there.

But here’s another thing.

My evening run took me along the path on top of the cliff past the chantier navale and I could see that there was yet another change of occupants.

We’d seen this morning that we’d increased to five occupants – two of which were new because one of the older inhabitants had gone from the chocks. But tonight we’re down to four again, with one of the new ones having now been put back into the water.

It can’t have been much that she needed

The next leg of my run takes me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round into the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne and once I reach my marker (the second pedestrian crossing) I can pause for breath.

So I walked back down the road to the walls overlooking the harbour to se what was happening. Chausiais is now back in her habitual mooring spot at the ferry terminal and Marité although you can’t see her, is still moored at the far side of the harbour (and I forgot to look this morning to see why she had been moved).

Apart from that, there was nothing very evident to indicate what work they had been doing around there.

So I ran off round to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord just in time to catch the sunset, as you have already seen.

There were a few people out there again tonight, including these people who were fishing with rod and line from the steps that go down to the beach (or would do at low tide, of course)

They seemed to be having a great deal of fun, whether they were actually catching anything or not, so I left them to it and ran on home.

Half of my notes are finished now, but so am I too. I’m off to bed and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow. It’s a Bank Holiday (VE Day) in Europe tomorrow but in defiance of usual practice I’m setting an alarm so that I can finish my notes early tomorrow.

If I can.

Wednesday 6th May 2020 – THE LEAST …

… said about this morning, the better.

It was quite a late night last night as a pile of good music came onto the playlist just as I was thinking of going to bed, so that was that. I stayed up to listen to it.

And even though I heard the three alarms, ask me if I cared. 08:15 when I finally exerted myself and that’s no good to anyone at all.

To make things worse, there was nothing on the dictaphone either. That’s always a disappointment because I have said on many occasions … “indeed” – ed … as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I have more excitement on my little nocturnal voyage than I ever do in real life, and meet far more interesting people

In fact, apart from a brief bonjour to two women walking their dogs together while I was out, I haven’t spoken to anyone else today.

After a very late breakfast I had a knotty problem to resolve. For some unknown reason, none of my mice (or mouses, I dunno) want to work on my big computer, except one that isn’t up to much.

As to why that might be, I’ve no idea. They work fine on other machines and the USB ports work fine with other appliances so it beats me.

After a good rummage around the apartment I eventually found an ancient radio mouse and, to my surprise, that seems to work for the moment.

The rest of the morning was therefore spent editing photos from July 2019. There wasn’t much time to do many and right now I’m on a sandbank in South-East Iceland admiring a bunch of harbour seals.

That loaf of bread that I made seems to improve with age because it was totally delicious – even better than yesterday.

But I was thinking about that at lunchtime. There’s too much of it and it’s going to mean that there will be some left by the weekend. So what i’m going to do is to make a smaller amount (maybe 400 grammes of flour instead of 500 grammes, always assuming that I can find some tomorrow) and make two small loaves.

Smaller loaves will also mean that it will bake quicker too and that’s always a good plan.

After lunch I took out the 10x4GB memory sticks from their quarantine and set about reorganising the music. It took two of them and there was still about 3.5GB left on the computer, mostly of incomplete files that need looking at. But they’ll receive “the treatment” in early course once my hi-fi arrives, whenever that might be.

For the rest of the afternoon I carried on updating the web pages and there’s another 16 or so now done. I’ve no idea how many are left to do but I have to go back and do the earlier ones again – the first batch that I did – as I missed something off.

As for my hour on the guitars, I’m not sure what happened but I couldn’t find the enthusiasm. It was a very long, weary but not very productive time.

It’s probably a sign that that the spirit must be quite weak these days and that usually means that I’m due a bout of ill-health any day now.

And that’s not surprising because it’s now three and a half months since I’ve had my four-weekly cancer treatment and I remember how I was feeling when I was in the High Arctic. The last couple of days out there, I was running on pure adrenaline and I well remember the counter-reaction that I had while I was waiting for the aeroplane in Kugluktuk and my two days in that hotel in Calgary.

Tea was falafel and steamed vegetables in a cheese sauce followed by the last of the rice pudding. I might bake a small apple pie for pudding for the rest of the week, and if there is plenty of flour in LIDL I might have a go at making my own pastry to see where that takes me.

The other day I mentioned that they had been planning last week to repaint the white lines in the car park at the back here.

So off I went on my evening run tonight and sure enough, the painters have been past. They’ve done the car park, right enough, but they’ve also repainted the yellow lines here in the rue du Roc for the area where buses and coaches are allowed to park.

Judging by the signs that have now appeared on the other side of the road, it looks very much as if they are going to be back to paint those lines there sometime in the near future.

Having recovered my breath, I ran on down to the clifftop to see what was happening out there in the English Channel.

For a change just recently, there weren’t so many clouds in the sky so we had this beautiful sunset out there over the Ile de Chausey.

There were a few people out there enjoying the evening, including a couple with a dog. And they were disturbed by the arrival of these two women with their mutts who wanted to play.

No social distancing for pooches of course but there are for owners and they were amm rather tangled up for a while.

What I did was to ignore them and concentrate on what was going on out to sea. There were the usual trawlers and other fishing boats out there and this one here was on its way out to join them.

This evening I could see about five in total, working away a little farther out to sea this evening.

I USED TO BE A WEREWOLF!
But I’m all right nooooooooooooooooow!

Yes, it’s full moon again and with there being no clouds to speak of in the sky I had a really good view of it tonight.

Again, it’s a hand-held shot so it’s not as steady as it might be with a tripod.

And that reminds me – I need to set up one of the function buttons on the NIKON D500 to work a “delayed action” shot sequence

This photo was interesting because it shows that Chausiais has moved over to the harbour wall by the harbour offices.

And in the foreground is another trawler-type of fishing vessel, the Cap Pilar. I’ve no idea why she might be here or what she’s doing, because she’s actually a boat from St Malo.

So pondering over that, and also the fact that there’s still no change of occupant in the chantier navale I carried on with my run down the Boulevard Vaufleury.

Halfway down along my run I noticed that Cap Pilar had “cast off forr’ard, Mr Phillips” and was turning round.

So having reached my marker (the second pedestrian crossing up the hill) I walked back to see what was happening. So off she goes out into the evening sunset.

As an aside, when I returned home, I checked on my AIS detector beacon to see where she might be going. And to my amusement her destination was signalled as où je veux – “where I like”.

It’s all very amusing, that kind of remark, but it’s not very much help if she fails to arrive anywhere. No-one can report her missing if they don’t know where she’s supposed to be.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the first lot of new pontoons put out and fastened to the support pillars that they have installed.

Parked up here down in the rue du port is an articulated lorry with a couple of new pontoons on it. So they are pushing along with this plan to finish the port as soon as possible.

And we saw the road-painting earlier. It looks as if they have been down here too because there are white lines painted on the new car park.

And that’s a disappointment, that car park. They could have done so much more than a squalid slab of tarmac with just a little imagination.

But we can see why Chausiais has moved, and why the pontoons are on the back of the lorry just here.

First of all, Marité is now moored where Chausiais had been, so that means that there’s something going on down in her corner. I’ll have to check that tomorrow when I go out shopping.

But you can see that the line of pontoons has extended now, but they are still a couple short. So they’ll be taking those off the back of the lorry tomorrow, I imagine, and installing them.

Nothing doing at the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord tonight. I’d missed the sunset and the crowds were dispersing. And so I ran home.

The notes are finished now so I’m off to bed. It’s not as early as I would have liked but I’m hoping for a decent sleep (such as it is) and an early start tomorrow. I must crack on.

Tuesday 5th May 2020 – I THOUGHT SO!

For some reason or other, I had it in my mind during the night that we were having a rainstorm.

It’s one of those things that I’m not quite sure why and when day dawend, although it was a miserable morning it certainly wasn’t raining. But on my run around the walls in the evening I pass by a spot that always floods when there’s heavy rain. It’s been dry for a few weeks yet this evening we have a puddle on the path.

And so there you are. Yet you would never have said anything because once the day got under way it was quite pleasant.

And for a change, I had quite a pleasant night too. In bed relatively early and I actually managed to beat the third alarm, which is always a good sign of progress.

After the medication I went and had a listen to the dictaphone. And sure enough, I’d been on my travels again.

First of all, Castor put in an appearance again. Or did she? Because on the dictaphone I definitely use the name on several occasions but even in my sleep I made a note that it wasn’t her. So do I count her as Castor or as an unknown?

No idea myself. It’s the kind of thing that’s really confusing me.

But anyway we were at a party that I was helping supervise. But when it was getting towards the end she said “could you go and fetch me some paper because I need some paper”. I said “there’s some here in the printer” so I went to get some out of the printer but there wasn’t any. I had to go downstairs for it. She came downstairs with me and she started to talk about this game. She’s got to do this – this game has to be done right now – it can’t wait any later as it all has to be finished by midnight and we were getting very close to the time. So we got a piece of paper out. There was a third person down there but we ignored that person. It was a case of asking the questions alternately and doing the actions but the 1st question had been cut out. She was a bit mad at that because some other people taking part in the game had cut it out to spite her and she was not at all impressed.
At some other point during the night I was making sandwiches. I had four people with me doing different things and I had to make sandwiches. I had to buy a pile of strange stuff and the kind of pastry stuff that I had to use as a base had all gone off and gone manky so I ended up having to get some bread and making some sandwiches, but I was just getting completely and utterly confused. It took me ages to do something so straightforward as I was so confused about this. When it came to packing everything up ready to take down to the people I couldn’t find any plastic bags to put them in. It was now 13:30 and I guessed they would be wondering what on earth had happened to lunch. I saw a post on Facebook – one of my people had bought lunch and donated money to LIDL for his lunch and I thought to myself it’s going to be an awful row when I get these sandwiches downstairs. But I had a bit of food everywhere that I couldn’t get organised as to what went on where, anything like that. It was all really confusing and it was taking place on the playing field at Nantwich Grammar School as well.
There was more to it all than this but as you are probably eating your evening meal right now I’ll spare you the details. But the interesting thing was that there was some kind of mix of circumstance – the usual confusion and indecision was there of course, but also for once (and which doesn’t happen very often) something was going right for me until, once again, someone comes along in the night and spikes it. That happens far too often – in real life as well as on a nocturnal voyage. The whole story of my life is that people can’t bear to see me being happy and do whatever they can to spike it.

But anyway, I digress … “again” – ed.

After breakfast (which was late due to the amount of stuff I had to type) I carried on with the radio project and that was done well before lunchtime.

Next task was to sort out the music. All of the irrelevant music (from the radio point of view) was moved into a separate directory so that they are excluded from selection for the radio programme.

The reason for this is that with the 6 directories that I have (AA-FF) next week it’s the turn of music from directory CC to be selected for the radio so I have all of that (50-odd artists with however many albums) going round on a continuous random loop for the next week and I’ll be making a note of likely possibilities.

There’s so much music these days in my collection that it’s easy to lose track of what I have and some really good stuff will slip though my fingers if it doesn’t spring to mind.

So moving the irrelevant stuff out of the way means that I don’t waste my time with it popping up on the playlist.

Another task that I have set myself concerns the updating of the web pages.

That’s a task that I started ages ago and which fell by the wayside as I started back to work on the radio. But now that I have the radio work under control (for the moment) I can return to the programme.

When I started MY WEBSITE it was in 1997 as part of a project for my technology degree. It was completely hand-coded from scratch and pretty basic but over the years it slowly evolved.

The last major upgrade that it had was back in 2007 and I’ve learnt a lot since then. The menus were all handcoded *.css, individually for each page and when the number of pages passed 50, I realised that this would present a problem if ever I had to update anything on the menus.

So while I was laid up in Canada recovering from my exertions in the High Arctic, I taught myself some basic javascript, designed a few javascript menus and some iframe procedure and set about changing the menus over from individual *.css stuff to one common set of menus that can be inserted as a javascript script.

Today, after lunch, I carried on with the project and amended 20-odd pages. I’ll do some more tomorrow too. As an aside, I was impressed with my bread. It’s a much better attempt than the last one.

That still left an hour or so , thus I attacked the photos from July 2019. I managed about 20 of them, spending more time wrestling with a recalcitrant mouse than anything else.

And despite that, I’m still in an inflatable rubber boat in a lagoon amongst the icebergs at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier in eastern iceland

After an hour on the guitars, I went to make tea. I had an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with vegetables, all out of the freezer, with pasta. And having taken stuff out of the freezer, there’s still not enough room for the half of the pie that’s waiting in the fridge for a space.

As I mentioned earlier, it was another pleasant evening.

The wind had died down somewhat and there was a beautiful sky and sunset out there tonight. I went to take a photo of it and then ran off up the road to my marker at the end of the hedge.

Having gathered my breath I ran on down to the clifftop past an extremely concerned pedestrian who gave me a weird look. I suppose that I really am a sight, running around the place at my age.

Walking around on the bumpy bit past the demolished bunker of the Atlantic Wall, I startled a woman having a relax in the bushes watching the sunset. Yes, I would give everything that I owned, and more besides, to be able to sing.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel it was really busy tonight.

A brief perusal of the bay showed no fewer than four (and maybe more) fishing boats out there over towards the Brittany coast, and this one on its way out there to join0 them.

And that will come as a surprise to someone who posted this morning another one of these “news stories” about how the small fisherman is banned from fishing while the big industrial concerns are free to come and go as they like.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen enough evidence to know that that is total nonsense.

Carefully avoiding the big puddle I carried on with my run along the tp of the walls.

No change in the chantier navale today, but there is something bizarre going on in the ferry terminal. It seems that a fishing boat – one of the trawler-types – has decided to tie up there.

And I’ve no idea why that might happen either. I didn’t think that they were supposed to be over there, and for all kinds of reasons too. The pontoon to which it is tied is for foot passengers for the ferries.

Off on my long run down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner to my marker, and then I walked back to see what was happening in the port.

There’s been quite a lot going on today by the looks of things. We actually have some of the new floating pontoons in place attached to the pillars that they have spent weeks piledriving into the ground.

And across on the other side, they’ve fitted a few new anchorage mounts on the wall. I’ve no idea what they will be anchoring to them, but we’ll probably find out over the course of the next few days.

But it’s all exciting stuff.

From a standing start I ran off up the hill and round the corner to the viewpoint in the rue du Port.

No-one else was there but me but that’s no surprise because the low cloud on the horizon prevented me witnessing the sun sinking below the horizon.

Instead I had to content myself to watching in pass through a gap in the clouds.

My final run was back to the apartment where one of my neighbours was disinfecting the stairs. They are a friendly, sociable bunch of people here, not like anywhere else where i’ve lived, that’s for sure.

It’s late now. There was some good stuff on the playlist. So not much of a sleep tonight but we’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s a bank Holiday on friday so at least I can catch up with my beauty sleep then.

Friday 1st May 2020 – A STRANGE THING …

… happened to me during the night.

There was a group of us living in a house in Crewe and I had to get up and go to work to start a new job. But I was lying in bed and it suddenly occurred to me to get up and get dressed because the bus would be going in a few minutes time. I had to get dressed, and my fitbit came off somehow in all of this. I couldn’t find the tie that I had put aside. I was hunting high and low for this tie. In the end I went to the cupboard, opened it and chose another one. There were about 200 ties in there and everyone was looking at these ties and I said “yes I need to get rid of a few clothes, don’t I?” Someone said “oh yes. I haven plenty of stuff”. I actualy awoke at this point and found myself sitting upright on the point of getting out of bed to go to work.

There have been some really realistic voyages during the night here and there over the years, but this was certainly one of the best.

It had been one of those nights last night where I’d been running really late and I ended up going to bed instead of finishing off my notes.

And so in a break with usual tradition I set an alarm call for a Bank Holiday (it’s Labour Day here so everyone celebrates it by … errr … not doing any labouring) and in a break with even more usual traditions I actually beat the third alarm to my feet.

And this time it was for real too. I felt like that guy about whom Tommy Cooper used to talk –
“I knew a guy who dreamt that he was awake. And when he woke up, he was!”
But it wasn’t half a weird thing that in the middle of the night.

So after the medication I attacked the notes to finish them off. And that took much longer than I was expecting too. I’d resolved not to go for breakfast until they were finished and by the time that I was ready my stomach was thinking that my throat had been cut.

After breakfast it was the turn of the dictaphone to receive attention. I’ve already mentioned something of it but a little later I had someone staying with me overnight. It was another one of these panics to get up in the morning. I cooked a breakfast, toasted cheese, stuff like that and I was getting everything ready while whoever it was (and I’ve really no idea who it was either) was getting ready to leave. I made breakfast in my tiny room which was just like the cabin of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour which was so small that I had to sit outside – there was only room for one at the table. However as a gesture of solidarity we both ended up sitting outside in the corridor. But my place quite clearly aroused some appreciation. “Yes, I wouldn’t mind retiring to a place like this at all either” so i was explaining the benefits of these homes and how there were people round but they only came if you needed them and apart from that they only came once a week to clean your room, emergency bell pulls, all this sort of thing. And there was general agreement on this.

There was something else on there too but you’re all probably eating your tea right now so I’ll spare you the gory details. But it concerned another voyage on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, which certainly seems to be receiving an awful lot of my notional custom right now. It’s a good job that I don’t have to pay for these trips for real.

Having done that, I attacked the digitalising of my record collection – the last two albums as well. Whatever is left will have to be done by hand by me. One of those two albums almost ended up in that pile too, seeing that the only copy of one of the tracks was an *.mkv, which is something that I’m trying to keep off my computer, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

However, the light went on in my head, like it does on the odd occasion here and there, and I came up with a very ingenious solution to the problem. And to my surprise it actually worked!

So bearing in mind that one or two albums were shelved because all that I could find was *.mkv stuff, I might go back again and have another run through and see what I can do.

It’s a long process but probably quicker than digitalising them manually.

All of that took me up to lunchtime, would you believe, and there was time to do 30 or so photos. I’m now sitting in a zodiac in a lagoon at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier in South-East Iceland.

The hummus that I made yesterday was really nice and worth the effort that I put into it. And so was the apple and pear purée for breakfast by the way.

This afternoon has been somewhat … errr … leisurely. I’ve tidied up a little of the hard drive in here (only a little) and dealt with some outstanding correspondence. I’m not sure if I mentioned it but someone wrote to me about my University thesis for my “Historical Technology” module of my degree.

When it was finished I PUT IT ON LINE (I think that all research should be put on line for future scholars) and someone well-known in that area has written to me to give me some further information and to express his admiration (really!) for what I had written, which was certainly very nice of him.

As well as that, there’s some more radio stuff simmering away in the background, including something that might involve HIS NIBS, and so that required a little thought.

There was the hour or so on the guitars too during which I almost fell asleep, and then tea, which was a stuffed pepper followed by the final slice (not really the final slice because half of it went into the freezer) of the delicious blackberry pie.

And here’s something surprising (or maybe in isn’t). I’d sat down after the washing-up to digest my meal before I went out running and suddenly the football came on the internet. I’d completely forgotten that it was Friday.

A historical match – Port Talbot Town against Bala Town in a Welsh Premier League European playoff from 2013.

And how the standard of football in the Welsh Premier League has improved since then too. This was a “top 5” game yet you would never have thought so.

It ended 1-0 for Bala which was about right. Port Talbot were denied what looked from my viewpoint like two stonewall penalties, but Bala were denied on several occasions by some heroic stuff from my namesake in the Port Talbot goal and had already had a goal ruled out for a foul that was much more innocuous than the one committed on Cortez Belle in the 87th minute at the other end for which the referee waved “play on”.

But it was a very poignant match in one respect. The Spuds couldn’t maintain the momentum following this defeat and slowly slid down the table.

And then down the pyramid. Now they are in the third tier and the glory days of European football in the season 2010-11 when they went to Finland in the Europa League are nothing but a distant memory.

But here’s another thing. Bane of Britain has struck again!

Because of the football I was late – like 22:30 – going out for my runs. It was dark so I decided to swap over the lenses – put the f1.8 50mm lens onto the big NIKON D500 and the 70-300mm LENS onto the old NIKON D3000 and take the big Nikon with me.

So Bane of Britain swapped the lenses over well enough – but then took the wrong camera, as he discovered when he went to take a photo.

So no photos tonight, but at least I managed all of my runs which was good news.

It’s late now, so it’s bedtime. And shopping tomorrow – not that I need all that much but never mind. I wonder of the supermarket will be packed.

Monday 23rd March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

… of quarantine. And the question that I’m now asking myself is “will I die of boredom before the virus gets me?”

Not that I ought to be bored because I have plenty to do. But I’m beginning to understand how a canary in a cage might be feeling right now.

Much to my own surprise, and to any other one of the regular readers of this rubbish (and hello to my new subscriber from the East End of London – why not say “hello”?) I was awake long before the first alarm went off, and well up and about before the third one started up.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I’d been. And what surprised me was that I’d been able to leave my bed refreshed so early, having travelled so far during the night.

I’d been out on a bike ride. It had started off by being in a car, a right-hand drive British car and I was driving somewhere near Macclesfield way. Suddenly as I was driving, this car and van were coming towards me but they were driving on my side of the road. This was in the UK so I was on the left but they were trying to pass me up my left side like you would do in Europe. I thought “this is wrong” so I moved over into the centre of the road and let them pass up the inside of me. Somehow I managed to transform myself onto a pushbike cycling away and the road petered out, the main road and I ended up on a dirt track that took me round a very sharp bend and back on myself. The end of the road was closed so I had to turn round and go back. There were these young boys fishing there by this river and all these net curtains hanging up on a hedge as if someone had been washing them in the river. I cycled round and found where I should have gone, up a really steep hill and it was so steep that I couldn’t cycke up it. I had to carry my bike up. It was a narrow dirt track thing underneath a modern bridge, fenced off with a very high fence. I’d gone underneath this modern bridge and up to the top and it was a modern bridge into Macclesfield. There was a kind of rest building on it. The coffee was free and this girl showed me how to make a coffee – well, showing everyone how to make a coffee and how I could get a really strong really full cup. She made one for this other person and told him to drink it very slowly as it was very strong and did the same for me. After that I went to find the bathroom and then went outside. I ended up sitting on the entrance to the driveway of a girl whom I knew (well, I don’t know here – she’s no-one whom I’ve ever met), a young teenage girl. She was playing outside and I was watching her for some reason or other. While I was there watching her on the corner of her driveway to her house a car pulled up. A Ford Escort caravanette type of thing, badly brush-painted white with the side window that I could see painted over, drove into the driveway. A youngish guy with a black beard was behind the wheel. I thought “that’s that girl’s father, isn’t it?”. I thought that I won’t hang around because he’s bound to be wondering why I’m here. I stood up to go but had this enormous attack of cramp so I couldn’t go very far. I had to stretch my legs to ease off this cramp. While I was doing this I found loads of Canadian money on the street that had fallen out of someone’s pocket and had been covered in weeds and so on. All cents and quarters, that kind of thing. But the silver money was huge, probably 3 or 4 inches in diameter really big. I thought “how the hell has someone managed to lose this? You’d know when this fell out of your pocket”. There were three or four of these so it was all cents and quarters. While I was doing this, I was thinking “this guy behind me is going to come over in a minute”. I heard this girl’s voice behind me saying “no, don’t! I don’t want you to!” and I wondered “what on earth is going on now?”

Of course, I’ll never know now how all of this ended, which was a shame because it was quite interesting. But one thing is certain – I might be in quarantine but my spirit isn’t. I just hope that it doesn’t catch the virus while it’s out. It’s having far more fun than I am right now.

After breakfast I attacked the digitalising of my record collection. I managed to find another complete digital soundfile which was just as well because it belonged to quite a rare album. So I downloaded that and split it up.

Interestingly, the times did not correspond at all (and by a significant amount too) to the published times on the album sleeve. And there was only one version of this album too, so that was a mystery.

Then I attacked three others. No complete sound file so I had to do them bit by bit and it took ages. And one of them was an album that I was keen to digitalise because if I had to pick a top-20 of albums, this particular one would be well in.

That one of course took so much longer to do because I just had to listen to it as it was going round – and it was a very long double-album too.

But now I’m just down to one shelf, so that means about 100 albums remain to be digitalised. And then there are the cassettes …

Once I’d done that, I had another go at sorting out the files.

But TRAGEDY! Because there’s a file size limit (999 files) on the hi-fi that I use in the living room, I’ve been working my way through a stock of 2GB memory sticks. And woe is me! I’ve reached the last one today. And I probably won’t be able to buy any more.

What I’ve done is to divide my music up arbitrarily into different lots but keeping albums by the same groups together. I have directories AA, BB, CC, DD and ZZ. ZZ is the directory into which the current downloads go and that’s on a continual playlist all day long.

Eventually, I weed out the earliest stuff from ZZ and merge it into the other four directories, having first copied it onto a memory stick that then goes into the hi-fi in the living room. And this is where I’ve run aground because I’ve now created a directory EE

And Why am I doing this?

It’s because for my radio shows I like to vary the artists so that there’s never a case of the same artists being played in consecutive shows. But even though I keep good records of what I play, I quite often forget where I am.

So one week, I’ll play artists from AA, the second week from BB, and so on. and then the cycle goes round again and again. Hopefully I can avoid any unnecessary duplication.

That took me up to lunchtime, so I had my butty and then came back to work.

This afternoon I made a start on the music for project 034 (from directory BB if you are really interested). It’s all been selected (apart from the final track which of course all depends on the length of time left over when the speech is edited in) and I’ve written half of the text. I was aiming to do so much more but my heart wasn’t really in it.

For tea, I had stuffed pepper followed by my jam pie with more of the coconut soya dessert stuff. And the jam pie has worked quite well too.

There’s plenty of stuffing left so I can see myself with taco rolls at some point later in the week.

If things keep on like this, I’ll be going stir-crazy long before this quarantine thing is over.

But we are allowed out for exercise and so I make the most of it. late at night when there’s no-one else around.

And for two reasons too

So that I don’t catch this virus thing
So that no-one else can see the pathetic way in which I run

No-one about at all so I was able to have my first run in comfort – all the way along the north side of the city walls.

My track is about 250 metres but I’ve been extending that little by little and I reckon that I’m another 25 metres further on from that though now.

This run took me to where there’s a good view across to Donville les Bains, which you saw in the previous photo, and also of the totally empty and deserted Plat Gousset that you see just here.

It’s the same place where I stopped to take a photo of the Escalier Du Moulin a Vent last night.

With nothing else better to do, I had a play around with the settings and took another photo of it to see if I could have an improvement on yesterday’s photo. And the verdict?

“Not very much”. I’m going to ahve to work so much harder on my technique but as far as the lighting goes, there isn’t a great deal I can do here. Some of it is too bright and some of it is too dark and there’s no happy medium.

Another thing that I did was to play around with the settings again and retake the photo that I took twice last night of the Eglise St Paul.

Again, not much of an improvement, although I’m sure that with a tripod and a slow shutter speed I could do something quite nice with that.

My second run along the square Maurice Marland was good again. I made it all the way up the first ramp, along to the second one and then four or five paces up that one.

This is an improvement on how things were a few weeks ago and it’s a good sign of the times. It might be only 250 metres or so on this leg too, but at my age and in my state of health it’s pretty good.

A couple of years ago I met a woman in France who had family connections in A&R for a record company. She moved back to the UK and we occasionally said hello when we passed by on our social networks.

But tonight she must be lonely because we’ve been chatting about music and the like for a good 90 minutes just now. I’d no idea that I was so popular.

But all good things come to an end and I’m off to bed. I intend to see if I can keep up this “early rising” lark. And apart from that, I might have some exciting places to wisit during the night.

We can but hope.

Wednesday 12th February 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it was today.

And I’m not talking about the weather either because considering we’re approaching mid-February, it was a nice day from that point of view. The wind had dropped considerably, it was a bright day and there were even people walking on the beach.

What I’m talking about is from a health point of view.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for the end of November and for most of December I was feeling better than I have been doing for quite a number of years.

But then in the new year I could feel a decline in my health and I’ve been going steadily downhill.

Today I reached rock-bottom. Most of the day was spent flat-out in my chair and had this been a few months ago, I would have taken to my bed without a second thought.

But having had this good spell, I’m not going to let this defeat me and I fought it out. Not very successfully but there we go. And at one time I was really feeling totally and thoroughly dreadful.

But then, that’s what this illness is all about. They say that I’ll start to feel the effects after about five years, and it’s been almost four and a half since it was diagnosed – and that’s no telling how long I’d been carrying this illness before it was diagnosed

What I’ll have to do is to resign myself to it and just take things as they come, and reflect on the fact that I’ve been far worse than this.

and to make things worse, last night I did something that I haven’t done for years, and that is to go for a trip down to corridor. Back in the past it was at least once every night but for several years it’s not happened at all. Sign on the times, I reckon.

And to add insult to injury, I failed to beat any of the alarms and it was almost 07:00 when I arose, and that’s no good either. All in all, it’s pretty depressing.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone. We started off with a crowd of us in a room and I was drinking coffee and everyone else was drinking beer. There was a guy there from the – the – and he asked me if I’d had the Audi. “Which one?” “The one that was on your front the other day”. “Ohh that’s been and gone, that has. It just passed through my hands, that kind of vehicle”
A litttle later on we had an unexpected visitor. A footballer by the name of Jamie Reed has just signed for Cefn Druids in the Welsh Premier League and has been making something of a good impression. Anyway, don’t ask me why but last night on my travels he was trying to do something phenomenal with a boat out of Normandy but I can’t remember what now but it had become quite popular but on one occasion there was a balloon in a shop with him and someone else holding onto it. This mobile thing was turning around so they were suspended in the air turning around this object or being turned by it, one or the other (… like a ceiling fan…). Plastic models of them, inflatable plastic models (…not the real Jamie Reed …)
Then I was in a music shop and there was a little old lady there. She had a play on a guitar but played with one of the machine heads so the thing went flat. She put the guitar somewhere not quite right but when the guy came back in, the shop assistant, he saw that the guitar had been moved and said “is anybody here?”. This little old lady spoke up. He checked the guitar and it was out of tune so he plugged it into a machine to tune it up. In the meantime I had a bass and I was busy trying to tune that but it wouldn’t tune for some reason or another. I had the tuning gauge that I had set to percentages instead of an analogue meter and of course that’s much more difficult to tune when it’s like that. Then a parcel arrived, a huge, heavy parcel. I wondered what it could be. Then I realised that I’d gone in for a kind of lifesaving course so I could be a monitor in Canada in the Arctic and this was the first part of that and it was my certificate to say that I’d passed together with a huge wooden framed glass panelled door as a prize. Of course I could use that on my house between the kitchen and the hallway in Winsford, which of course never had a doorway between the kitchen and the doorway, but there you go.

That’s not all of it either but seeing as you are probably eating your lunch right now, I’ll spare you the gory details.

That apple and pear puree that I made – the verdict is that it was absolutely perfect and I really do mean that. You couldn’t distinguish it from any shop-bought stuff.

And then I attacked the splitting of the digital tracks. Again not straightforward because nothing actually corresponded to the published track lists. After much of an effort I came to the conclusion that the published lists are wrong, which is a surprise but there you go.

And also, if that’s not enough, some people have a strange idea of what constitutes a track break and I’ve often had to rebuild tracks before I could split them again.

Apart from that, I’m not quite sure what else I did during the morning. I know that I finished off the notes for the current radio project and I brought THE SET LIST WEB PAGE up to date so that people can see what was played when.

The rest of the time was probably spent fighting off a pile of sleep

From somewhere somehow I managed to summon up something to get me to go into town, even though I really didn’t feel like it at all.

Down into the port and across the top of the harbour gates seeing as they were closed, in order to see what they were up to. No sign of any wind turbine, as you might expect, but a very large floating pontoon with workmen and machinery thereupon.

And so the plot thickens here.

But I have an idea as to what might be going on because I’ve only just noticed that there’s something missing from the port.

In the space where Spirit of Conrad and Charles-Marie were moored up until very recently, there used to be a pontoon. And I should know because I walked on it once

But it’s not there now and I couldn’t possibly say when it went either. But anyway, I’ve only just noticed.

And it makes me wonder what this machine might be doing here.

It’s a proper heavy-duty crane and is carrying a makers plate saying that it’s rated at 60 tonnes. Of course with an outstretched arm it won’t lift anything like that, but nevertheless they wouldn’t have brought something like this down here when they can have a mobile crane like the one that’s here already.

So we are definitely going to be having some strange things going on.

But this might account for a lot of what is happening.

Out of curiosity and the fact that there was no-one around to stop me, I went for a closer look. Nice new rubber and aluminium heavy pontoons I reckon, presumably to replace the ones that they have ripped out and to go where they are installing the new supports.

But whether this brings any more marine traffic into the port remains to be seen. I haven’t seen a gravel boat since before I went on my High Arctic exploits

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and as the weather was nice I went for a little walk.

Round by the Cours Jonville they were erecting a marquee. At first I thought it might have been something to do with Carnaval but the smell of cellulose soon changed my mind.

It looks as if they are spraying the bus shelter there, to tidy it up.

My walk took me along to the rue Roger Maris to see why the street was closed on Monday but whatever it was, they must have done it as the traffic is flowing freely down the hill.

And so I turned my attention to heading back to my apartment.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past we’ve seen a few old wells dotted here and there about the town, particularly up near the Centre Agora.

But here’s one that I must have missed. I certainly haven’t seen this one before. It’s something that I shall have to look into sometime, if I could take off the roof.

And that reminds me of somethign out of Frankie Howerd and Up Pompeii
Senna the Soothsayer – “three times have I looked into the bottomless pit”
Frankie Howerd – “well, well, well”.

carrying on along the rue General Patton I came past the rear entrance to the Market Hall.

Although I’ve been out of that door a few times I’d never stopped to give it a good look. And I was impressed with it too – the Art Deco scultures of marine life such as shellfish.

It could do with a bit of a clean, a tidy-up and a repaint. It’s looking rather shabby around the edges, but then so am I and I’m not getting any younger either.

By the time that I returned it was long after lunchtime so I quickly made myself some butties and then attacked the work.

Fighting off wave after wave of fatigue, sometimes not successfully at all, I managed to dictate the notes, edit them, crop them and assemble a complete project, right down to the final track.

And for a change, I was short rather than overrun. Only by 7 seconds so I scanned through a collection of sound files that I’d made, cut out something from a previous project and inserted it in an appropriate place. There’s a lot to be said for building up your own sound library. I even added a cough to it too today.

A littl trimming here and there and off we go.

apart from the sleep issues, I went for my afternoon walk too.

The rue du Nord was advertised as closed so I was intrigued to see why. That scaffolding that we saw the other day in the place du Marché aux Chevaux which I thought might have been for repairing the collapsing wall is in fact for repairing a house wall.

And with the street being so narrow, no cars can pass with the scaffolding erected. That will upset quite a few people I imagine.

Despite the waterlogged ground I managed to fit in my run along the north side of the walls because there was no-one around up here at all.

And when I made it round to the cliff overlooking the Plat Gousset I could see why. We’ve already seen the crowds on the beach and there were yet more people out there walking along the promenade enjoying the really nice weather.

And I can’t say that I blame them either. Given half a chance I would be down there too.

Better down there than up there with that guy.

There’s been a major house renovation project in the rue des Juifs that’s been proceeding along at snail’s pace – in fact they don’t seem to have advanced much since this time last year. But today, someone is up there fitting a new metal roof to it.

It makes me wonder what the seagulls have to say about it. They have been making nests on the roofs over there and I imagine it won’t be long until they are back.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to fit in my run along the square Maurice Marland because there were too many people about and I don’t want to show myself up.

But my ear picked up a noise of stones on the quayside so I went for a look to see what it might be. I thought that it might have been the gravel lorries starting to come back but in fact it was a tractor with a big trailer tipping rocks onto the quayside.

And that was interesting too. Tons of stuff going on around the place today.

keeping my eyes peeled, I followed the tractor and trailer as they left the quayside to see where they went.

And I was in luck again. Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen the concrete breaker down at the foot of the ferry terminal at low tide breaking off the rocks that are jutting out.

And there is the tractor and trailer, presumably on their way to pick up the rocks and drop them off somewhere where they can be collected. They can’t go and dump those off around the corner like they do with the silt.

Back here and in between the waves of fatigue I pressed on, determined to finish the radio project. And even though it meant a late tea, it was all done and dusted and ready for the road.

Tea was steamed veg with falafel in vegan cheese sauce followed by rice pudding. And absolutely delicious it all was too. My cooking is definitely improving.

Out for my evening walk and I was the only one out there too so I managed another run. I have to keep on pushing on with this.

But with the foul weather having subsided it looks as if the fishermen are back at work. Here’s one of the trawler-type of boats unloading at the fish-processing plant, so it looks as if it’s back to business as usual.

So now all of my notes are written and I’ve listened to the radio programme to make sure that it’s okay, I can go to bed.

Here’s hoping that it’s a good night’s sleep and that I’ll be fighting fit in the morning. But I don’t think so at all. I think that i’m stuck with this.

Thursday 23rd January 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a posh living room in a duplex apartment here in Leuven.

The one thing about being a very regular customer of these apart-hotels is that if there’s a higher-grade accommodation vacant, they give me a free upgrade and I’ve struck lucky this visit.

A lovely big double bed, nice and comfortable. All I need is a nice and sweet young lady to share it with me and I’ll be well away. Ohhh yes – even at my age I can still chase after the women. I just can’t remember why!

The only down side is that I have noisy neighbours who seem to be partying. But I can’t hear a thing because I remembered to bring my really good headphones with me and with Colosseum Live going full-tilt into my ears I can’t hear a thing.

But that album has its downside, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Although it’s one of the top five live albums ever recorded, it was the one that was going round and round on an endless loop while I was on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in 2018 and 2019.

Of course it immediately brings back all kinds of memories, mostly good but some quite bad and there are people like The Vanilla Queen and Castor and Pollux going through my mind as I listen to it.

Somewhere I read something along the lines of “anyone who spends any time in the High Arctic will come back a different person” and that’s certainly true.

Just for a change, this morning I was up quite smartly and it didn’t take me long to get everything ready for leaving. I’d had a shower last night before going to bed so I didn’t even need to deal with that.

Plenty of time to go a-voyaging too. The first little trip had something to do with the website and about how I’d changed round the radio programmes or something like that so that there was a whole new series of numbers starting on 1st January 2020 on the first January of the year with all kinds of different – there were two different strands of numbering now one of which was the radio concerts and one of which was something else but I can’t remember any more about it now unfortunately
Later on, there was a huge dispute between us over something or other and it led to someone coming storming round to our house going to throw a cup of cold tea over everyone. I had a cup of cold tea ready and he came storming in. I told him to sit down but he said “I’m going to throw this cold tea over you. What are you going to do?” I replied “I’m at my house. I’ll throw a cup of tea over you and you’re the one who is going to have to suffer”. He looked at me for a minute and then said “I can see that you aren’t going to flinch. You are brave enough”. I asked “so how are we going to sort this out?” He said “we need foue elastic bands like this size” and he showed us one of them. Of course I didn’t have any that size so I had to go across the road and ask one of the neighbours. We were in Vine Tree Avenue at the time during all of this.

Back in the Land Of The Living, I finished getting ready. The rubbish went out of course and then I followed it up to town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking plays a prominent role on these pages.

Hardly a day goes by without me seeing some new depths to which the general public has sunk and here’s another prime example. We’re at the roundabout at the end of the rue Lecampion and this motorist has decided to park his car right across the entry to the new block of flats.

The motorist in the big SUV can’t get his car out of his own car park because of it, and I would have loved to have had the time to hang around and see how this story would unfold.

Instead I headed off to the station and there I was treated to the delight of the train being already at the platform.

No coffee though. Once again the coffee machine is out of order and this is really annoying. How am I expected to go on a journey like this without being armed?

The ticket-stamping machine was having issues too and it took several goes before it would accept my ticket and stamp it.

Bang on time we set off and I fell asleep. A right deep sleep too and it took the ticket collector a good minute or so to awaken me from the dead to check my ticket.

We were 15 minutes late arriving in Paris but it didn’t quite matter so much because, as predicted, out train now arrives in the main station rather than in the vaugirard annex and that saves me a considerable amount of time.

The metro was running too and was quite rapid, so I had a good half-hour to spare before my train to Lille.

That half-hour was spent in a queue at the SNCF office. I’d had an e-mail yesterday telling me that my seat had been changed and I would have to make further enquiries.

Eventually I managed to make someone deal with me quickly and, armed with a new seat number, I could take my seat on the train.

It’s one of the older “Reseau” TGV trainsets, number 226 which puts it in the first wave that were delivered between 1995 and 199.

Nice and comfortable they are, and I could sit and eat my butties and fruit in comfort, which is always nice. And have another little doze too. I’m not in any great rush to do anything.

Due to “affluence on the line” our train was 20 minutes late arriving in Lille- Flanders.

With only 15 minutes (and having to cross town to Lille-Europe) between trains, you might think that I would be panicking by now.

But not a bit of it because if there was “affluence on the line” for us, there would be “affluence on the line” for the Marseille – Brussels train that would be folllowing behind us too and that was the one that I was catching.

Sure enough, that one was half an hour late so I had plenty of time to ring up the hospital and check my appointment time. 13:30 it is tomorrow.

The trainset that came for us is a model that we have seen before on a regular basis because it’s this type that does the Paris-Brussels service, The Thalys PBA trainsets, albeit in a different livery.

My place here was quite comfortable too and I even managed to doze off for half an hour or so yet again.

In Brussels I only just missed the 15:58 – I had my hand on the door when it pulled away.

But there was another one right behind – the 16:13 to Genk. It’s one of the push me – pull you train sets and coming into the station in reverse so I didn’t get to see the identity of the locomotive pushing it.

So by 16:50 I was in Leuven after a relatively painless, straightforward voyage for once and wasn’t I a happy bunny?.

Having organised my room I went shopping at Delhaize. Tons of stuff for the next few days to keep me out of mischief and I shall have to add “herbs and spices” to the list of things that I bring with me from home. I’ll make up a sachet of oregano, basil, tarragon, garlic, chili powder etc and put it with the coffee.

So tea tonight was a vegan burger with mixed vegetables, spinach and pasta, all tossed in a tomato sauce and it was delicious. Pudding was peach halves with mango sorbet.

The party next door seems to have finished so I can go to bed. Nothing much to do tomorrow morning so I’ll have a lazy day before I head off to the hospital round about 12:30, something like that.

I wonder what they will tell me.

Sunday 12th January 2020 – THAT GUY HAD …

… his chopper out again today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that he flew past me at a height of about 10 feet a few weeks ago and I snapped a good shot of him as he went by.

Today, wherever he went to back then, he’s on his way back now. It’s not as good a photo as the last one as the camera wasn’t set up properly and I had to take the shot on the … errr … fly … “ohh well done!” – ed … but nevertheless, here we are.

And here I am too, on a Sunday, having to work. This blasted translation thing, for which I know about half of it at least will go straight into the bin and I’m not very impressed.

And they day got off to a miserable start too. I awoke at about 09:30 but no intention of leaving the bed at that time. 10:45 was when I finally arose and that was the morning effectively done.

First thing was the medication of course, and then I had a look at the dictaphone

I was with a group of soldiers who had been captured in World War II and we’d been herded off into a prison camp by the Germans. It was in a barn, this camp, and had been converted very roughly with wire beds, that kind of thing in it, very dirty, very horrible place to be, no toilets in each of the rooms and so on. The commandant of one of the rooms decided that he was going to escape so he arranged to be sent into solitary confinement, a tiny little box room stuck at the back of a shower from which it was possible for him to get out. Someone smuggled in a key to him that he used as a lever to cut the electricity in order to escape under cover of darkness. We had our meal there that morning and I’d met one or two people and talked to one person, found out that he was in my cell thing so we went back to the cell. Then someone else came into the cell, another British guy, to complain that one of the guards wants the commandant to stop this person singing “he must be a night-time guard” he said. We said “the CO’s not here now – he’s in the shower room so the guy went off into the shower room and started to shout the CO’s name. In the end the CO replied, obviously really upset at being shouted at mid-escape like this. In the end we went back to our cell. It was evening meal time and this guy friend of mine I noticed was already in the queue with his plate. It looked like old roast potatoes and meat of some description so I went to ge tmy plate to join them although I wasn’t very happy about having the meat of course. Yes, there were no toilets in each of the cells and in one all of the ill people were there and a load of people with dysentery and it must have been hell for the people in there, I thought but that was when I awoke, when I was going to get my meal.

Breakfast next, and I tried the surviving glass bowl (the one that didn’t go in the microwave) and that seemed to be much better. I’ll pick up a couple more of those – they are much more like the things that I want for cereal and desserts and so on.

There were a few things that I wanted to do this morning. First thing was to update the Radio Anglais “A La Pointe Du Rock” playlist. After all, you never know. Someone might want to buy an album and that will be an extra €0:16 in my coffers, which will go a long way towards paying for my web-hosting fees, wont it?

Which reminds me – if you appreciate the efforts that I’m making, don’t forget to make your next Amazon purchases via one of the links aside. It doesn’t cost you any extra but I receive a small commission on the sale.

After that, I had a couple of web pages to update. They have suddenly become quite topical, for a variety of reasons, and they were still in the “old” format that I have been changing (or, at least, I was changing until I became overwhelmed with work).

Anyway, they are now in the current format and quite right too.

After that it was almost lunchtime. They will be back at work at the railway station in half an hour so now it’s time to be moving.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed so the path over the top was accessible so I went to see what was happening. And there was Joly France, moored in the position where I would expect to see Granville and Victor Hugo.

It looks therefore if they are going to be away for some time.

However, something that is not going to be away for quite a while is our new friend Chausiais.

She’s been missing from the port for a few days as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but now she’s back, tied up over there to the other Chausey Ferry, Joly France II. So that’s all the full complement back in place.

It’s still something that’s intriguing me, wondering why she’s here and where she goes.

A little further on along the docks I was interrupted in my thoughts by something else that caught my eye.

There’s a chantier – a work site – being created here with this little compound, a storage skip and some machinery. That’s something else for me to keep an eye on as I go past here – to find out what they are going to be doing.

Off now up the hill to the station. It was open (which was a surprise after yesterday) and it was the same woman with whom I had that big dispute the other day.

However, this time she was quite amenable and it was a shame that she couldn’t have been this pleasant the other day.

No real problem changing my tickets for Monday 27th, except for one issue.
“I can’t put you on the 08:13” she said. “That’s more expensive and you’ll have to pay a supplement. The train at 07:33 however is the same price as yours …”

Now, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at moments like this, I might begin to lose my self-composure. The terms and conditions laid out in the documentation that I have clearly state “you can change your ticket … at no extra cost”.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that when I did my famous TRAVERSEE DE PARIS (without Bourvil to carry my suitcase) IT TOOK ME 90 MINUTES on foot in no particular hurry to do the 7 kilometres.

I might be faced with the same issues again – i.e. the lack of Metro, and the earlier train gives me 1 hour 50 minutes to cross the city.

Admittedly I’m not in the same good health that I was back then, but if I put my mind to it, I should be able to make it on foot in time if the trains run to the timetable.

Of course, it might be that the train to Granville is cancelled, but that’s a bridge that I’ll cross when I come to it.

Just for a change I came back a different way – around the office blocks and down the steps at the back to the Parc De Val Es Fleurs.

And it looks as if there is going to be something exciting going on here to in due course. There are “no waiting” signs aound all over the place and a few notices talking about the “erection of a chapiteau” – a marquee.

That’s something else to investigate in due course.

It’s amazing, when I take a walk along a road that I’ve not walked for a while, what else I noticed.

Here in the Boulevard Louis Dior right by the abandoned dockyard railway line, there’s this huge stone reinforcing wall that looks in a very precarious, dangerous condition.

One of the props has snapped too, as you can see in the photo. I don’t reckon that that wall will be there for long unless they do something about it quite quickly

Strange goings-on in the rue des Moulins too.

For some reason or other they have been painting a series of numbers in pink paint along the road. There are three rows of numbers, in consecutive order, all along the street and they don’t seem to bear any relation to anything else.

That’s yet another thing to investigate in due course.

Anyway, having picked up my bread at la Mie Caline, I headed back to the apartment for lunch, bumping into a neighbour on the way.

It was such a nice day that I was really tempted to go and sit outside but I had far too much work to do. I just had a quick butty and started on the translation.

We had the afternoon walk of course, where I met the helicopter, but that was about it really. The walk was good but I pushed on rapidly and came back for some more work.

At least, that was the plan but rather regrettably I … err .. closed my eyes for a while. A proper full-blown crash-out too. I awoke half-way through and I remember thinking to myself that this just isn’t any good at all

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, cooked to perfection, I have to say and it was delicious. There was a rice pudding a-doing too, because the Christmas Cake is almost gone.

All alone on my evening walk tonight too. No-one else around. And I had my run, such as it was.

Now I’m going to have another half-hour on this blasted translation and then go to bed. Another session tomorrow morning after breakfast and I might have done about half of it. Whether it’s the half that ends up in the bin or not, I really don’t know.

Friday 10th January 2020 – HE WHO LAUGHS LAST …

… usually lasts longest and loudest too. And that’s certainly the case with me and my rail ticket.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures at the railway station at Granville yesterday and how they wouldn’t exchange the return ticket because the return train was running – regardless of the fact that as the outward train was cancelled, I couldn’t get out to catch the one back.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … I had an e-mail informing me that the return train has now been cancelled. So, off to the station tomorrow to have another go at sorting them out.

But talking of sorting out, I still haven’t sorted out this sleep thing. I heard the first two alarms go off and while I was trying to find the energy and courage to get out of bed, the third one rang too, so I missed that.

But anyway, that was the signal to leave the bed. I went and had my medication.

With a brief pause for breakfast I carried on with the radio project about the football. And by 09:45 it was all done and dusted. And even if I say it myself, it was pretty good and I’m pleased with it. It’s all been sent off now and it’s in the hands of the Admin who will decide whether or not to broadcast it.

And now to turn to important things. After their victory against FC Versailles 78, Granville have drawn none other than Olympique Marseille in the French Cup.

The Stade Louis Dior is deemed to be unsuitable so the match is to be played at Caen. And even so, I’m expecting a healthy demand for tickets. Terry wants to come too so I did some searching about on the internet, found the website of the stadium and Lo! And Behold! There are two tickets for the football now sitting on my desk.

No intention of missing this.

That was the cue for me to go off into town to La Mie Caline for my bread.

On the way down there I passed by the Chantier navale to look and see what was happening. Spirit of Conrad is still there of course – I think that she’s moved in for the duration – but there’s a new addition today. The trawler at the back.

She must have slipped in on the morning tide, I reckon.

We’ve mentioned just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the ships that are disappearing one by one from the port.

Granville went a few days ago, followed by Victor Hugo. Today though, it’s the turn of Chausiais to put in a disappearing act. Joly France is over there at the ferry terminal but she isn’t.

So I wonder where all of these ships are going. It’s a mystery to me.

But here’s a thing.

Walking along the rue du Port after my little inspection of the Chantier navale my perambulations were interrupted by this car going past. a Citroen traction avant of course and a later model one at that. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen one of those on the road.

They are usually all black but I’ve seen the odd grey one and a white one, but I don’t recall seeing a blue one before. The one in my barn is black, by the way.

Pushing on (or pushing off, as the case may be) I eschewed the passage over the harbour gates and instead wandered on down to see what was going on at the old abandoned railway network.

We’d seen them yesterday digging up around the railway lines so I had promised myself a closer look. And sure enough, not only are they digging up around the lines, they seem to be pulling them up too.

It looks like the … errrr … end of the line for the railway network in the port

And so it is too.

There was a workman wandering around the site so I buttonholed him and enquired about the project. It seems that they are going to be working on the car park and making it more attractive to visitors. This means that the rails have to go and they won’t be coming back.

Time for me to have to go too. I went off for my bread.

Back at the apartment I started to address the mountain of correspondence that had built up during my work-in. Pile of stuff needed answering and that is going to be today’s task, I reckon.

Mind you it might take longer than today, that’s for sure. Especially as I had another crash-out. This one a really good one too, just like the old days. Not a brief eye-closing affair but a proper deep disappearance into the void, curled up on my chair with no intention whatever of moving.

After lunch, there were the carrots. I’d bought 2 kilos the other day and they were lying about on the worktop so I attacked them too. They are all now peeled, diced, parboiled, drained, dried and and the freezer on the way to being frozen.

And how I wish that I had a bigger freezer because there is now absolutely no room for anything more and I need a bag of peas tomorrow.

Out on my rounds this afternoon, there wasn’t a great deal of anything at all happening.

A few people out there taking the air of course, and the usual fishing boats heading towards the harbour. La Grande Ancre was out there looking as if she’s heading back from Chausey.

She had a tractor on her decks a few days ago and was loading the other day or two at the crane. So maybe she’s been doing deliveries.

Back at the apartment again I could finally get on with the correspondence and sent out about 6 long e-mails to wish people a Merry Christmas (I was that far behind!). Still tons to do and it will have to be done another time as I’m in a rush.

While I was putting away the stuff in the freezer I found a slice of vegan leek and tofu pie from 3rd February 2019. So in the oven went that and a couple of potatoes while I boiled up some veg and gravy on the stove.

And what a delicious tea that all made.

One thing that I would like to do is to make a couple more pies but there isn’t the room in the freezer to store them which is a pity.

Off on my walk around the walls tonight.

The waves were quite impressive but it was too dark to see them properly so I went off for my run. I made 6 paces up the ramp before I ground to a halt – I’m not doing very well with this, am I?

No-one about at all so I carried on alone and passed this little street – the Venelle St Michel. I hadn’t really seen it before but it’s a good example of the streets here in the Old Town.

Three or four main streets, a couple of squares and the rest are all little alleys like these

By the time that I returned, it was the football. TNS v Newtown, and I don’t ever think that I have seen such a one-sided match as this ever before.

Newton were lucky, very lucky indeed to get NIL abut how on earth TNS only managed to score 2 goals with all of the dominance and possession that they had, we’ll never know.

Newton’s “attack” consisted of desperate long aimless punts upfield to no-one in particular and their two forwards hardly had a touch of the ball. They were substituted after about 70 minutes which was totally unfair in my opinion. It doesn’t matter how good you might be, you can’t play football if no-one gives you the ball.

And the man of the match? The commentators chose Ryan Brobbel but for me, it was Adrian Cieslewicz all night long. He had an astounding game down the right flank tonight.

On that note I’m off to bed. I’m so tired it’s unbelievable. I wanted to finish this before I went to bed but I’m afraid that there’s no chance of …

ZZZZZZ

Monday 6th January 2020 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

… I really will have myself an early night.

Last night was some time around 02:00 when I finally went to bed. I stayed up to finish off this radio programme in a case of “ship or bust” so that it would be ready for our meeting, and that was that.

No peace for the wicked. I cracked on and on and on, and now it’s finished. It could be better, I suppose, had I taken more time, but there is a vacant broadcasting space tomorrow at 17:00 CET and it was there for the taking.

And when I finally went off to bed, I found that I couldn’t sleep and ended up having a dreadful night. And although I heard the two earlier alarms, I was still debating whether to get out of bed when the third one went off.

Something of a failure there.

After the medication, I attacked the dictaphone notes from the night. And yes we had been on our way home yet again from the High Arctic. However, instead of an aeroplane, we were all standing around waiting for a pile of buses. Our particular bus was a single decker and there were a lot of people waiting for it so they sent for another bus which turned out to be a double-decker. We were being strictly controlled about entering – only being allowed 20 at once or something like that so the driver could check our tickets (… doesn’t this sound familiar? …) but then the double-decker appeared so everyone wandered off there and there didn’t seem to be any control on that. There was one girl most upset about not being allowed on the single-decker coach with the driver there. She was pleading with him trying to make her some room so that she could travel with him rather than the double-decker.

After breakfast I did some more work on my own radio project, and then went for my shower. My weight is going up again and I don’t like this one bit. I have noticed that my raging thirst has dried up, that I’m not as sprightly as I was a couple of weeks ago and that I’m more tired than before (I crashed out again for 15 minutes today).

Maybe all of this is related.

Anyway, I hit the streets and headed off for our weekly meeting at the Centre Agora. We weren’t all that many today. Three of our usual suspects were missing. And that reminds me – one of those missing had a parcel waiting for him at Carrefour that he couldn’t collect, so he had e-mailed me a copy of his identity card and I went to pick it up.

At the radio meeting I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that the only way that I’m ever going to get anything done is simply to do it and present it as a fait accompli, so I’ll be working on my notes from the trip to Versailles next.

While we’re on the subject, the affair of this musician rumbles on and on. The guy who thinks he runs the place has had the notes for over two weeks and done nothing at all with them. Today he gave them to me and asked me if I could translate them into French so that he could dictate them as an overdub.

Talk about making work for yourself and everyone else. If it’s beyond his capabilities, why did he take it on in the first place? Mind you, regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying something about how possessive these people are of their ideas.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall exactly how I suggested that it should be done in the first place. And had it been done like this, the programme would have been completed, broadcast and filed away a long time before this

It’s hardly any surprise that nothing seems to get done when they work like this. I’ve always considered myself in the past to be totally disorganised, but I’m rapidly changing my opinion.

They way it’s going, I can see it ending up as a rambling, hopeless monologue. At least with Laurent, he was quite amenable to my ideas and quite malleable and we made a decent outside- broadcast radio programme “on the fly” in a matter of 8 hours and it’ll be on the air on Tuesday.

On the way home I called in at LIDL and I spent a larger-than-usual sum of money. Mind you, one of the purchases was a pile of new undies to go with the new socks that I bought 10 days or so ago. My undergarments are starting to look quite threadbare and it’s high time that I thought about some new stuff. The older stuff can go in the pile to go to Canada.

There was some more of that delicious sorbet there too. Strawberry this time too so I bagged a tub. I seem to be overflowing with sorbets just now but it’s a case of getting them while the getting is good.

Carrots too. I’ve run right out so I need more. There were 2kg-bags on offer again so tomorrow I’ll have a mega-carrot-preparing session ready for the freezer.

On the way back home, at the corner of the rue Herel and the rue St Paul I encountered the recycled rubbish-emptier.

In haste, I managed to grab a quick photo of him, but while I might have been too slow to actually photograph the rubbish being emptied, I was too quick to press the shutter and the image didn’t have time to settle down so it’s come out blurred.

But then that’s life.

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

For the rest of the day I’ve been working on my radio project and that’s taken longer than it ought to have done too. One of the reasons was that I had to redesign the web page for the playlist. And to make it more interesting, I’m just going to do one for the whole of the year 2020 – if I manage to keep on going for that long.

As usual, there were several interruptions during the day. Lunch was one of them of course (and my new hummus is delicious) and … errr … having a little relax was another.

Going out for a walk was a third interruption too.

And I didn’t get far before I was waylaid as usual. Yes, I’m still on this “pathetic parking” lark, aren’t I? And here’s another example for the record.

It’s usually brand-new Mercedes and BMWs that do this kind of thing, but how about a little Peugeot that is almost 11 years old at least?

Some people have no shame.

Once again, I noticed some movement way out in the English Channel so in order to identify it, I took a speculative shot with the aim of blowing it up (the image, not the object) back in the apartment.

And it’s not a gravel boat. It really does look as if they have stopped coming. Instead it’s one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that operate from out of the port.

Loads of gulls around it, so it looks as if she has a full hold today which is good news.

Talking of fishing boats … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a look in at the chantier navale this afternoon

Spirit of Conrad is still there – she looks as if she has taken root down there – and so is the small shellfish boat. But there’s also another fishing boat in there now and people are working on her like 13 to the dozen.

And I’m not at all sure what is coming out of the air vent. Steam or water, but it could really be anything.

Over at the ferry terminal there has been some movement of the shipping too.

Chausiais and Joly France have been parked up over there for quite a few days now, but they seem to have changed places. That quite possibly means that there’s going to be some movement very soon, although I’m not quite sure what.

And I stil haven’t worked out what it is that Chausiais will be doing.

Movement too in the inner wet harbour.

We haven’t seen a gravel bot for an age now, but the smaller freighters are coming in quite regularly still. Thora has now turned up in the harbour and although you can’t see them in this photo, there are a large pile of these builders’ bags, the kind of stuff they put sand and gravel in, lined up on the dockside.

But Thora is starting to look a little run-down now compared to how she was when she first arrived. She could do with a coat of paint.

Back at the apartment there was yet another interruption. The lemon and ginger drink that I made a couple of weeks ago is now on its last legs. And with a pile of juice-oranges (or, rather, clementines) lying around here, I set a clementine-and-ginger drink off to start. We’ll see what that turns out like.

Once the radio project had been completed and I’d had a little relax, I made tea. I’m away from Thursday morning for a few days so it was another “leftover curry”. It was absolutely delicious and, even better, there’s enough for another two days

On my evening walk, I wa all alone again. The run wasn’t a success either as I struggled to even make the foot of the ramp and in the end just managed four paces up it.

But now I’m back and totally exhausted. I have a feeling that tonight I’ll be asleep long before I finish writing this …

ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Thursday 19th December 2019 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… no-one and nothing came along to disrupt my work today so I was able to have a fair crack of the whip, news which should please sadists and masochists everywhere.

Mind you, had something come along to disrupt me today I don’t know how I would have fitted it in. I didn’t get off to the best of starts.

With having had a very late night last night, I didn’t respond very well to the first two of the three alarms that go off here in the morning. The third one prompted me to sit upright with shock at still being in bed, but nevertheless it was a good 10 minutes before I was able to haul myself out.

Even though it was a short night, there was plenty of time to go a-voyaging. We were recording again for the radio last night, a series of programes of a programme, something like that and we all had to set out and go somewhere and do something. I ended up walking all the way through the countryside and I kept on finding abandoned canal courses, falling in them and so on. I came all the way across these places and ended up back in Diffusion to find that the diffusion of documents was being moved from the building where it was to another building close by, something like if Shavington Infants were moving to the old Junior School, something along those lines. It was moving on the Monday but the Friday prior was going to be my last day as Monday I was going to move to another department. I asked why they were moving and they said that the official reason was that there was something to do with security – Diffusion had become famous for something or other and they wanted some privacy, but no-one knows what the real reason is. Of course “security” was nonsense and we all knew this and it seemed a totally illogical decision because or course all the paperwork had to br brought from the old office to the new one, sorted around and all taken back again which was going to take a lot longer and a lot more staff. We started talking and I expressed my dismay and they ask why? About leaving? About moving? I replied “not really but the new building is nearer my home and of course they waited until I changed department before they moved so I don’t get the benefit of having a shorter distance to go to work” something like that. They started to talk about the routes we had taken to get there. I said that I had found this old abandoned canal race and fell in it. They asked if I had plenty of photos then and I replied “Ohh God yes, hundreds of photos”. We were talking about showing them when the alarm went off and awoke me.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes and then went off for breakfast.

With that out of the way, I came back and started on Project 007. And it’s a good job that I’ve been systematically backing up as I go along because Audacity, the program that I used, crashed twice in the middle of what I was doing and had I not backed up, I would have had to start again.

But now that one is completed, 60 minutes to the second, and I do have to say that it sounds pretty good to me. But you lot will have to wait until 10th January to hear it.

In the middle of everything I downed tools and went off to do my shopping in LIDL.

And here’s a classic example of why living within the walls of a medieval walled city is not always a good idea. Having everything delivered, like a lorry-load of furniture or a lorry-load of cement, creates quite a logistical challenge.

They aren’t always easy to solve either.

What they were having to do is to have a fleet of some kind of machines fitted with hoppers, and discharge the cement into the hoppers for onward transport into wherever they might be going.

And I don’t know if you have noticed, that underneath the cement chute there’s a large plastic sheet – presumably to stop the overflow of cement fouling the roadway.

So round the corner and right into the teeth of the gale, one of the strongest winds that we’ve had to date.

At LIDL I didn’t want very much. I don’t these days, going there three times each week, but I do it for the exercise more than anything else as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

On the way back I went via the big Eglise St Paul to see what was going on.

Last time that I was here they had just finished erecting a crane in the Impasse de la Corderie so I was keen to see what was going on today.

It looks as if they are having a load of breeze blocks delivered and they are about to be craned into position, so someone is having a house extension of some kind.

having picked up my dejeunette I headed on back up the rue des Juifs towards home, nearly stepping on someone’s dalmatian.

But I had a little stop when I got to the place that overlooks the harbour, because there was a weird danse macabre going on in the tidal harbour.

Yes, it looks as if, for once, I’ve caught Chausiais on the move.

She carried on with her little dance for a good 10 minutes as I watched, and then took herself off into the corner where the pier is for the ferries that go over to the Ile de Chausey.

It’s intriguing me because what freight that has had to go over to the island in the past has gone over quite comfortably on the ferries.

So why a freighter? My opinion is that the owner has a cunning plan, and it might have something to do with the fact that Brexit isn’t all that far away.

But we shall see.

Earlier on, we saw workmen with the concrete mixer up by the Porte de St Jean.

But here we have another load of workmen with a mini-digger and a pile of these one-ton reusable sacks. It finally does look as if they are cleaning up here ready to close down the chantier

That will be a job well-done.

Now that Chausiais has finished her dance and is moored up at her post, the rest of the boats here can move around.

Here is one of the little fishing boats heading out to sea. And just look at the waves, almost swamping the poor thing. And that’s only a hundred yards outside the harbour in the shelter of the sea wall.

Imagine what it’s going to be like out in the open sea. It gives you an idea of how the rough weather is right now.

Back here, I carried on with my project and that took me until well past lunchtime, but I didn’t want to stop until it was completed. And as I said earlier, it sounds pretty good to me.

After lunch I pushed on with the arrears. There were 50 photos of Leuven’s Christmas lights – clearly far too many to go on a blog page.

And so I sat down and quickly wrote a web page that features all of them, and you can see them at your leisure.

At that point I rather regrettably dozed off, and sat blot upright 10 minutes later at 15:50. late for my walk again.

Nevertheless I took myself out into the wicked wind to see what was going on.

Out at sea in the English Channel there was something moving around. I couldn’t see what it was so I took a random photo, hoping to be able to blow it up (the photo, not the object) back home to see what it might be.

It’s probably one of these small fishing boats that ply their trade out of the harbour, or else it’s Chausiais and she’s farther out at sea that I think she is.

Round the headland where the wind was even more fierce, I passed by the Chantier Navale and had a look to see what was going on.

Spirit of Conrad is still there up on her blocks, and the trawler that they winched out of the water yesterday is now up on blocks too and there are a couple of people working on her.

It doesn’t look as if she is going to be in there long either, I reckon, so we might be having another change of resident in early course.

Earlier this morning I mentioned that they were clearing up the site where they had been repairing the city walls.

Right now they are making rapid progress and they have a small lorry there, with the digger dumping loads of rubbish into the back.

And I don’t know what happened to the photo there, because it’s not one of my best. Not by a long way either.

After a coffee, I changed a light bulb (I’ve no idea why these IKEA LED lights aren’t lasting as long as I was expecting) and then cracked on amending Sunday’s blog.

Not all of the photos of the Traversee de Paris are in there because, as I explained yesterday, there were far too many, and I told you where to go if you want to see them.

Half-way through, I broke off because it was tea time. Stuffed pepper, it was, and it was delicious. Followed by rice pudding too that made it even better.

And then my evening walk.

And I cans afely say without fear of contradiction that I have never seen as many fishing boats out there in the English Channel as I did tonight.

In fact I counted a dozen in easy view, and there may even have been more if the white lights on the horizon weren’t St Helier.

It puzzles me because I’m sure that i’ve never seen as many right out there in earlier years.

But talking of easy views, there was a lovely easy view down one of the little alleys that leads into the Place Cambernon.

The Christmas lights give it quite a lovely effect, especially when they are constrained by the walls of the alleyway.

So having admired the lights I went on with my walk and had a little run over my usual little stretch of level ground. And I made it right to the top of the first ramp too although it really did take it out of me.

So now I’m home, Sunday’s blog is finished and so is this one. And I’m off to bed.

There’s a meeting tomorrow evening so I’m hoping to have a good day cracking on with things and getting myself up to date.

Some hope there!

Monday 16th December 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those meetings up at the Centre Agora this morning. I’m not going to waste any of my time telling you about it because one of my former neighbours when I lived in Crewe had been to exactly the same kind of meeing once upon a time and he can tell the story far better than I ever could.

Mind you, I’m lucky that I actually got there at all. last night, unable to sleep it was well after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. And when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and again at 06:09 and 06:18) I wasn’t really in any kind of mood whatsoever to heave myself out of my stinking pit.

In fact I was all for turning over and going back to sleep but with the kind of willpower that I didn’t even realise that I had, I finally hauled myself out of bed at about 06:40.

After the medication, I sat down and extracted the files off the portable laptop and copied them onto the big desktop machine. And by now, as the medication had worked, I went for breakfast.

Once breakfast was done and dusted I sat down and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes for the period while I was away. There was even a dictaphone file from through the night. I was doing some stuff for the radio, doing all kinds of soundbites and sound clips and doing over a text – the whole idea of this sound thing was that I could cut bits out and paste them in over other bits so I could use the same bit of vocal recording for week after week after week but somehow it just wasn’t working out for some particular reason, but that’s hardly a surprise, is is?

Anyway, despite my eagerness to deal with the dictaphone notes, I broke off for a shower and noticing that my hair was starting to look as rough as I was feeling, I gave it a going-over with the sheep-shearer.

Back at my desk I carried on, only to notice that the time was suddenly 09:45. Where did the morning go? And I have to be at the Centre Agora in 15 minutes and it’s a 4 kilometre walk.

Even though it was raining fairly heavily I refused to go in Caliburn because now that I’m managing to hold off my illness and even fight back to some extent, I want to keep on fighting the good fight as long as I can.

And so I walked.

And I’m glad that I did because there was quite a lot going on here and there today. For a start, it looks as if they might be pretty close to finishing the repairs to the medieval city walls at the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne. They have dismantled all of the scaffolding and are removing the material.

It’s been a long job and while I can’t remember how long exactly, it certainly seems to be well over time.

Down into town and into the rue Couraye, where I noticed that the Rue du Commandant Yvon was blocked off and there was a cherry picker in the way.

In the nacelle of the cherry picker was a guy wielding a huge SDS-type power drill busy bashing his way into the side wall of the building here. No idea what he was doing, so I’ll have to go down there in a day or so and see what he’s been up to.

But wielding an electric power tool in the rain like this is not something that I would do too often.

It was 10:30 when I arrived at the Centre Agora but before I went in to the building I stopped in the rue St Nicolas outside the shops there too look at the Christmas decorations.

We’d seen a couple of inflatable polar bears in Paris yesterday but here’s a wooden one outside the shops. Or maybe it’s supposed to be three, I dunno. But whatever it is, it’s having a good nibble at the Christmas Tree here, which is of course highly unlikely.

At that point I went into the meeting and we had the performance about which Mr Bates told you just now.

Once it was done, I walked off (the rain had eased somewhat) to LIDL and did some shopping. Supplies are running quite low here with me not having been to the shops neither on Thursday nor Saturday.

Quite an expensive shop it was too, seeing as supplies were quite low. But some of the money was spent on a new pair of tactile gloves which they had on offer and which I need for photography purposes seeing that mine are in the pocket of my jacket that’s hanging up on a hanger in a hotel room in Calgary.

Some more money was spent on a new pack of 4 rechargeable AAA batteries. I have dozens here of course but many are over 10 years old and are starting to become rather flaky. The new ones ( I have three sets now all told) will come with me on my travels and the older ones will be used for powering up the equipment in here where they can be changed over rapidly and easily.

On the way back down the hill I called at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette and then came back up the hill to home.

Not quite at a gallop because I was loaded up with stuff like carrots and pears and 3kg of apples that were on special offer.

And I do admit to taking a little break on my climb as I stopped, mouth wide open in astonishment, as I watched what can best be described as the worst piece of bad parking that I have ever seen. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we’ve seen some pretty bad ones on our travels

Yes, this one beats the lot to date.

Here’s some woman in a car unloading her shopping. There’s an empty car parking place right outside her house, and two other empty places 20 metres higher up the street. So what does our heroine do?

She parks across the road right outside her hose, blocking the pavement off to pedestrians, even though there’s an empty parking place less than 5 metres away from where she’s stopped.

What makes it even worse is that this is a bus route and service buses come up here. But don’t let that trouble madam here. She’ll far rather inconvenience the whole world given half a chance rather than walk 15 feet with a shopping bag.

The bad weather wasn’t preventing the fishermen from going out about their business.

Here’s one of the fishing boats heading out into the rough seas of the Baie de Mont St Michel. And the seas will be rougher where he’ll be going too, so he’ll have his work cut out with towing a pontoon or lighter out there behind him. I hope that the cable is strong enough.

Outside the building I fell in with Brigitte and we had a very lengthy chat. She was impressed with my Traversée de Paris yesterday (was it only yesterday?) but we had to break off our chat as the rain came hammering down again. But she did say that she will be requiring Terry’s services again in the New Year. She has more work that needs doing.

After lunch, I had some work to do. Jackie is going for her Official Translator’s exam very shortly and needed her trial pieces proof-reading. Of course, if anyone wants any poof-reading, tpying or speling checked, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”.

Once that was out of the way I had other work to do. We’d been told today that the radio programme that we recorded with Heidinnguaq Jensen and her friends was being broadcast on Tuesday evening (that’s a lot of notice, isn’t it?) and we will be fitting in some of the Nive Nielsen stuff too if there’s time.

That meant telling Heidinnguaq of course, and also everyone else who knew her and Nive. And so I had to extract about 400 names and e-mail addresses from a spreadsheet and prepare a text file address list. I know that I should have done this ages ago but you’ve seen how much work I have on hand and that’s not the half of it.

Copy-pasting one by one is clearly impractical and there HAS to be a way of doing it in bulk. It’s one thing that I’ve not done before so it took quite a bit of trial – and more than a little error – to get it to work.

And eventually I was able to make a start sending out the invitations. And as you might expect, the e-mail server crashed in mid-send and so I had to do some of them again. So if anyone had the same e-mail twice then I’m sorry about that but I had to guess where the break-off point was and I’d rather over-estimate than under-estimate.

In mid-afternoon I broke off for my usual perambulation around the promontory only to find that there was no battery in the camera. The warning light had started to flash earlier so I had put it on charge – and then forgotten. Like I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … Two things happen when you get to my age

Firstly, you forget absolutely everything
Secondly, I can’t remember what the second thing is

But I do remember that the rain started up yet again while I was out so I didn’t hang about for long.

Tea was a burger with pasta and veg and then my evening walk. It was teeming down outside so I wasn’t intending to be out long but by the time I’d turned for home on a dramatically shortened route I was so wet … “nothing new here” – ed … that I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and went for a longer walk which included a couple of hundred metres of running. Must get back into shape.

Despite the rain, I stayed out long enough to watch this trawler come into harbour.

The photo came out really nicely given the conditions, except for the lamp-post that somehow managed to fit itsself into the image. It was so dark out there that I hadn’t seen it

A few other things happened today that I ought to mention.

Firstly, there’s a “live broadcast” on Saturday night, the first that the radio station has attempted. Last Monday I mentioned that I was free on that evening but no-one took me up on the offer. Anyway, I mentioned it again and ditto.

So this afternoon I received a circular mail to the effect that “we’re having a meeting on Friday evening to discuss what we’re doing on Saturday”.
I wrote back “I assume that you won’t be needing me to attend seeing as I mentioned twice that I was free but no-one took up the offer of my availability”
Only to receive a hasty reply “of course we need you to help out and we’re looking forward to seeing you …”
But, we shall see.

Secondly, this “interview” that we are going to do with this musician on Wednesday. Apparently everyone can bring his wife, we’ll eat, we’ll sit round a table and talk, we’ll have music …. ”

What the heck is this all about?

20 questions typed out in French
I ask them in English (not recorded, of course)
The guy replies (in English)
I overdub them in French with a nice British accent
Then someone asks the questions in French, to no-one in particular but we record them
We splice it all together

All done and dusted in half an hour and we all go home. I don’t have many hours left and I have so much to do and I won’t ever get these hours back that are being wasted.

Three times I’ve been dragged out halfway across Normandy to prepare for this blasted interview and nothing has been accomplished! Some people might have nothing better to do but I certainly have!

And that reminds me

That’s the last of my obligations dealt with now with this proof-reading. Tomorrow I can start with my own list of arrears.

finish transcribing the dictaphone notes
finish the blog entry for Saturday 10 days ago
deal with the photos from Sunday last week onwards
do another radio project (now I’m 3 weeks ahead I’m going to stay 3 weeks ahead)
deal with all of the photos from when I was all at sea … “quite” – ed … for four months this year and from my nautical adventures last year too
start to play the guitars again (which I haven’t touched for two weeks
carry on searching for digital files for the vinyl and tapes that I have collected over the last 50 years

And that’s just the urgent stuff. There’s tons more going back to 2007 that needs to be dealt with although when I’m likely ever to get round to dealing with any of that given the rate that I’m currently dealing with things I don’t really have a clue.

So to start with, I’m going to try for an early night. There is nothing arranged for tomorrow so with luck I can sit down and have a really good crack at things here.

“Nothing arranged for tomorrow”. Yes, you just watch some basket come along and spoil that!

Friday 13th December 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that my blood count has gone up yet again. It’s now at 9.2 which is pretty astonishing as far as I am concerned. And I made a point to ask exactly what treatment they are giving me for my illness and the answer is “nothing”. The tablets that I take are to counter various side effects and the medication is to boost up my immune system.

But as for the illness, absolutely nothing.

Mind you, it’s pretty disconcerting to see that your doctor needs medical treatment herself. She had problems with her foot. But nevertheless, she can come and soothe my fevered brow any time she likes. This is a University hospital and all of the staff at this level are young University students. There has to be some benefit of my illness and I intend to make the most of it.

But as for bad news, then there’s plenty of that.

Firstly, my train out of Paris has been cancelled on Sunday due to the strike. It’s not the end of the world though because there are other solutions, amongst which “hiring a car” should never be ruled out. But there are options other than that to consider first.

Even so, hiring a car might sound expensive to some, but when you think about the price of a hotel in Paris, it’s not an outrageous proposition at all.

And that’s not all. You’ve all heard about the results of the Uk General Election where 14 million people voted for the Fascists and only 6.5 million voted to revoke the exit from the EU.

That in itself isn’t so important. But what IS important is that I now lose

Some of my UK pension rights
my health insurance rights
my employment rights
my rights of free movement and residence in the EU

And when one of my (ex) friends in the UK posted something bewailing her lot and I replied telling her to make the most of what she’ll be getting because I’ll be getting much worse than that, she called me all kinds of names (honestly!) and accused me of all kinds of things for not sympathising with her, even though she didn’t spend a single moment thinking about my lot.

But that’s the true spirit of the British people. Mean, narrow-minded, selfish, self-centred. I’m better off without these people dragging me down. And isn’t that just why I abandoned everyone in the UK in the first place? It can’t be a coincidence that they all end up like that. They all show their true colours eventually.

It’s definitely Friday 13th today!

Last night I wanted an early night so I tried the usual standby – switch on the laptop to watch a film. And sure enough, it works every time. Within 10 minutes I was away.

And right away too. There are a few files on the dictaphone that weren’t there when I went to bed, so it should be interesting to see those when I make it back home.

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 etc but seeing as my appointment at Castle Anthrax wasn’t until this afternoon I was in no rush to rouse myself. A little lie-in did me good and it was 07:30 when I finally showed a leg.

This morning was spent firstly dealing with last night’s little perambulations.

I vaguely remember something about ships and fuel tankers having to reposition themselves and so on. Some captain had to reposition his ship but he hadn’t brought his money with him so it was rather pointless. i’d ended up at my electronic studio and I was trying to work on something. I managed to produce a really really good electronic music track and while I was at it I produced some vocals and overdubbed them over a piece of music that someone else had written and they were really really good. A few people came round to my house to do something with the computer so I had these tracks playing in the background and they looked really impressed. Although after a few minutes they asked “are we going to get on with some work or are we going to listen to this all day?” and I thought that maybe I had played a little too much and that was a shame because I was so impressed with what I’d done.
Sometime later we were back with the songs again and someone was going to bring some music over and we were going to do all of the singing. It meant getting out of this crowded tram. Someone was fighting their way to the door but the doors closed and there was a cry of “jam the door”. Someone stuck their foot in it so that it wouldn’t close, and it rebounded open. This person had to fight their way out through the crowds and out of the door. We ended up talking about fishing again and the situation of the British having sold all their permits and are now getting upset because the permits that they sold are now making money and the ones that they still have aren’t, and as usual.

Then we had the issue of dealing with the egocentric and selfish Brits in the UK but I did tear myself away to go to the Delhaize for shopping. Pasta, burgers and frozen veg will be on the menu or the next few days.

Back here, I had a shower and a clothes wash, made my butties and then headed for the hospital, calling at the Delhaize in town on the way because I had forgotten the vegan cheese and vegan mayonnaise.

Pouring down with rain now but I pushed on regardless.

My route today took me, as usual, down the Brusselsestraat and past St Pieter’s Hospital. An early and significant casualty of the linguistic war, this huge modern hospital was constructed to serve the French community, apparently (so I was told) who, once it was built, created a new town called Louvain-le-Neuve and moved all of their infrastructure out there instead.

The memory that I will always retain of this place as they make a serious start on demolishing it is that there were still the makers’ labels on the double-glazed windows on some of the floors because the rooms on those floors had never even been occupied.

By the time that I reached the hospital I was looking something like a drowned rat. 13:30 was my appointment but I was treated at 13:45 and then I was sat in a chair for a while as the medication was pumped into me.

Rosemary rang and we had a good chat while it was all going on, and eventually I was thrown out. A call at the pharmacy for medication and then down into town.

Last time that we were here they were excavating a giant hole in the middle of the car park on the Jacobsplein, and I was interested to see how they were getting on and, more importantly, what they were going to be doign with it.

So here I am, and all that I can say is that in the last 4 weeks or so there hasn’t been very much change in the situation. The hole is still there and there doesn’t seem to be anythign to indicate why they have actually gone and dug it out.

It’s probably one of those things where time wil ltell and I should come back in four weeks time where I shall be equally confounded.

A visit to the Origin’O Health Food shop was also on the cards The Delhaize doesn’t sell all the vegan product that I need.

Before I went in though, I took the opportunity to take a photo of the Christmas lights in the Vismarkt. You can do quite a lot with modern LED lighting and this looked particularly good to me.

That was the cue to go into the shop and see what was on offer. They had some of that nice smoked vegan cheese that I had before so I bought some more of that, as well as some more grated cheese for the pizzas and the cheese sauces.

Though the rainstorm had died down by now, it was still wet and miserable going back to my little room.

For that reason, and also for the fact that I had the little Nikon 1 with me and not the big D500 with me, I didn’t hang around too long looking at Leuven’s Christmas lights, beautiful as they might be like these ones in the Bondgenotenlaan.

What I’ll have to do is that if it’s not raining tomorrow evening, I’ll bring the big Nikon out for a walk and go on a prowl around the city to see what I can see.

By the time that I arrived back at my room it wasn’t far off tea time so I made myself some food. And it wasn’t too bad either. It’ll keep the wolf from the door for a while.

There was football on the internet later. While Connah’s Quay Nomads were being turned over by Cefn Druids, we were being treated to Barry Town v TNS.

And it was easy to see why TNS have been Champions of the Welsh Premier League for the last couple of hundred years. Barry Town had been leading the league at one point this season but TNS dealt with them in summary fashion, winning 4-1 away from home without even breaking sweat.

First to the ball on almost every occasion they never looked in trouble at all and had Ratcliffe in the Barry goal not played a blinder, TNS could easily have doubled their tally.

As far as I’m concerned, they may as well give the title to TNS right now because no-one is ever going to stop them. They could even afford the luxury of leaving Greg Draper their leading scorer on the bench until about the 80th minute.

On that note, I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for now. Nothing planned for tomorrow except to recover from today so if the weather has improved I’ll just go for a long walk.

See you tomorrow.

Incidentally, I did take some photos of the Christmas lights of the city. Too many to put on this page so if you want to see them you need to go to this page

EPIC HALL

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