Tag Archives: late night

Friday 13th January 2023 – IT JUST GOES …

… to show that I can do it when I really try and what’s going wrong with me right now is inside my head rather than anywhere else.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about dressing and when the second alarm went off at 07:45 I’d already had my medication and was sitting down working at the computer.

And if that’s not extraordinary behaviour, it should be borne in mind that I didn’t go to bed until 01:00, I was wide-awake again at 06:45 and I didn’t crash out at all at any point today.

There was however something or urgency to be done, and that might explain things. Having done a lot of work on the radio programme for Jeff Beck by the time that I wrote up my notes last night, I stayed up and finished everything that I had on hand – dictating the notes, editing them, pairing off the music and then joining everything together.

No wonder that it took me until 01:00 this morning!

And this morning, I wrote out a few more notes to conclude the programme, dictated and edited them, and then joined them in with the final tracks. I’d finished everything and listened to it to make sure that it was OK and it was all ready to go by 10:00 this morning.

And it was broadcast this evening.

Having been done in a hurry, it would have benefited from some further editing, but the joints for the tracks were perfection.

That was the cue to sit down with a mug of strong coffee and a fruit bun and relax for an hour or two. It’s not like me to work like this, especially these days.

At some point in the morning I had a ‘phone call. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a little project simmering away on the back burner. The gist of this phone call was that in about 10 days or so I may have some news to impart to you in this respect.

Not before, though. There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

At some point I was intending to go off down into town to try out my new crutches. When I felt like going out I looked out of the window and saw that instead of the bright sunny weather that we had had earlier, we were now in the middle of a tropical downpour.

That was the cue to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on a holiday somewhere, one of these walking holiday things where you stay in a hotel for a week and go to different places for walks around interesting sites. We’d just been on one and were on our way back. Someone mentioned something about a walk that they had done that was extremely interesting. I told them about my trip to the High Arctic. As the lift thinned out someone said to me “hey Reverend, where’s your dog collar today?”. I made some kind of joke about that. The question of cars came up. I said that I had 2 cars, rather a car and a van. I left the lift and to my surprise I could walk up a step with my left foot, something that I haven’t done for ages. I thought that this walking is certainly doing me better. I was expecting a letter for a radio programme that I was doing. I thought “the post has come this morning so it should be in our pigeon hole”. I went to the post room and picked up my key to go to look inside my pigeon hole. There were envelopes everywhere, all over all the tables, the reception counter, piles of post that hadn’t been sorted as yet. I thought to myself “I won’t find my envelope here”. Then I put the key in the key hole in my pigeon hole so that I could open it to make sure that it hasn’t arrived and found that the key wouldn’t fit. For some unknown reason I was trying with the wrong key.

And then I was at another holiday hotel with a lot of people my age or maybe younger. I decided that I wasn’t really going to do any of the optional trips. I’d just sit there and relax. Somehow I was swept along, chatting to a woman here and another one there etc. We all were going on a car-sharing ride. I ended up with a woman who I was convinced that I’d been with yesterday. We were chatting ever so friendly. We reached this car park and the first thing that we saw was piles and piles of dwarves who were all going somewhere. The woman with me made some remark about how nice it was to see them all there obviously in a group with friends etc. We pushed on and reached where these cars were parked. I was dithering about finding a seat. I couldn’t make up my mind which seat in which car to take. I was sure that I must have been frustrating this woman. In the end we found a car with 2 empty seats. We got in and began to chat with the people with it. I looked across and in the car parked next to us, there was the woman with whom I’d been the previous evening. I wondered who on earth this woman was with whom I’d palled up and what she had to do with anything.

It looks as if I have the wanderlust again and I’m ready to go off on another journey. But that’s out of the question right now, and for a variety of reasons too. Health is one of them, and money is another. I shall have to give up my wanderings for a good while while I get myself on an even keel.

At least the crutches seem to work as they are supposed to. I finally made it out to the bus and ended up in town. And from getting off the bus to getting back to the bus stop with my shopping took me less than half the time that it did when I tried it previously. At least I have the fresh stuff that I wanted to buy

It was much easier, even if it was very tiring, and I’ll have another go at travelling into town on the bus next weekend, I reckon. I might even try to go for a little walk tomorrow if I can.

But regardless of anything, I was glad to be back and have a mug of hot chocolate. Coming back up the stairs with the shopping was hard work and provided all kinds of entertainment to one of the neighbours.

Tea tonight was chips and veggie balls with a salad. The lettuce was starting to look rather sad to I was glad to attack it once again. There’s enough good stuff left in the lettuce for tomorrow too. A salad every now and again is really quite nice

So that’s that for now. I’m going to bed, having just had a nice long what with a friend of mine on line. I don’t know what i’ll be doing tomorrow but it won’t be shopping. At some point I have to bake some bread and some fruit buns so we’ll see how I get on with that.

But that’s for another time. I’ve done enough for today.

Thursday 5th January 2023 – I HAVEN’T SET …

… any records today with preparing my radio programme. Unless it’s for the slowest one on record because I haven’t finished it yet. I’m a long way short. Everything is written and dictated and I’m in the middle of editing it.

Actually, I have an excuse for this. And that is that I didn’t leave the bed until lunchtime.

And I have an excuse for that too. Gradually, over the course of the evening the pain in my right foot became worse and worse. And by the time I went to bed I was having stabbing pains in the sole of my foot every couple of minutes or so.

That was disappointing of course because having tidied away all of the paperwork etc yesterday, I could fall into bed without actually having to move anything so I was looking forward to a nice, deep, comfortable sleep.

But this pain kept on going and going. I was certainly still awake at 04:30 because I checked the time, and I was awake long after that too. I’d dozed off by the time that the alarm went off, but only just and I just couldn’t haul myself out of bed.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone, which was surprising, so I must have gone off to sleep at some point. We started off on a Friday evening. I was working in an office and everyone started to go home. A group of people where I’d been working had been passing a box of biscuits around and for some unlnown reason no-one had offered me any. After they had left I went and found a box of biscuits, opened it and saw that it was empty. That was pretty bad newz. By now I was starving so I had a hunt around. Eventually I found a box of biscuits open on someone else’s desk. Just as I took 2 of them someone walked in and said that they were looking for a file. I had to act very nonchalantly and help them look for this file with these 2 chocolate biscuits melting away in my hand.

Later, I was working at a building company, something to do with old lorries. There was a discussion going on about some bungalows being built a few years ago that weren’t built correctly. My mother was going through a few things and showed me a packet of red liquid. I asked what it was and she replied that it had something to do with Morse Code that one of her distant relatives had found and sent to her because they thought that it might be of some kind of historical interest for her. She was interested in having a play around with it. There was a lot more to it than this but I can’t remember at all now.

Finally, I was in Shrewsbury last night driving around, having to dictate some kind of information about the route. These 3 roundabouts near the slaughterhouse were different than all the others because they had been installed in a different programme from a different budget. Of course I was having a laugh about this kind of thing. I was having a quiet 5 minutes trying to transcribe my notes but the vehicle was vibrating and rocking so much that I wasn’t able to do it. I could tell that my ribald comments were disturbing one or two other people in this vehicle. They weren’t happy about the levity in which I was treating the subject of these 3 roundabouts. It was just typical to me that there would be all this strange talk about different budgets for this and different budgets for that, different budgets for something else but they were all in fact doing the same thing

With all of that, the night can’t have been all that bad although when I finally awoke the pain was still there.

Once I’d sorted myself out somewhat, I had a shower. And getting into the bachtub was a little easier than it had been on Tuesday. I think that I must be right about this improvement that I’ve been noticing. It’s not much, and I still can’t walk very far at all, but it does seem to be a little easier.

This afternoon I made a start on the radio programme but had to stop because the physiotherapist came. I mentioned the problem with the foot and he showed me an exercise. And at least, fot the moment, it seems to have worked. Whether it will continue to work is another thing.

He also mentioned that the doctor is planning on coming to visit me again in due course. presumably he’ll be in touch with me.

The Mairie from Virlet has been in touch with me too. They need to talk to me about one or two things and will be in touch with me in due course.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg. That was quite nice, as usual, especially as I put some chili powder in the tomato sauce. That will put hairs in places where I didn’t even realise that I had places.

Having had a late morning today, I can’t sleep now. It’s actually quite late – or early – and it’ll be dawn shortly. I may as well keep on going though because there’s no point going to bed and not sleeping. There’s always something that I can be doing that means that I don’t have to do it another time, but sleeping would be nice.

We’ll have to see how tomorrow unfolds but as long as I can finish my radio programme I’ll be no further behind than I already am.

Monday 2nd January 2023 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight.

Not as late as it was last night and hopefully not as late a start as … errr … 11:30 this morning when I finally crawled out of bed, but I’m still not in any rush and I’m not really tired either.

And ?I’ve no idea why that might be because this afternoon I vacuumed the bedroom – the first time that i’ve done that for quite a while.

And if that might sound like a surprise, it certainly was as far as I was concerned because I had no idea just how tiring it was to do that. It didn’t take me long to do it, but I had to have a good sit down afterwards, and for quite a while too.

But I digress for the moment. There was tons of stuff on the dictaphone from last night. And surprisingly, several of my little voyages followed on one from another. There was a Carry On film going on last night. Most of the actors of the Carry On team had been arrested by some kind of Greek people going back to traditional times. Charles Hawtrey dressed as a Roman centurion was sent to rescue them. He landed ashore and walked up this valley with all these people lying in wait to capture him. When they leapt out from behind a rock they had the masks and sacks over their own heads rather than putting them over his head, so wondering why they never succeeded in being able to capture him. Of course he was taken aback and burst out laughing while these people were groping around trying to find out what had gone wrong.

Then later on there were these little girls about 8 or 9 dressed up in some kind of green and yellow dress like elves or something, dancing around this kiddies’ playground place where I was standing

And next time it was a similar scene with similar girls except that they were dressed in blue for the next time they ambushed another girl

Back here again and there was another bunch of similarly dressed kids, young girls in elvish clothes in Crewe somewhere round about North Street, somewhere like that, again dancing around on the station this time. And if anyone is wondering, which I’m sure they are, the railway station there was only there for three years – from 1837 to 1840. And yes, that is almost 200 years ago, not that I would remember it.

We still haven’t finished here yet. There was a small boy, about 3 or so, on the petrol station on North Street on the corner of Underwood Lane with another boy, a little older. They had all of these dancers as miniatures on white leather leads. He was holding a bunch of these leads. As I came out he held the leads up to me to show me what he’d caught

As for the final bit, I’m not quite sure what that was all about. But all of that on North Street was really impressively real, especially when it came to going to the Post Office with all of the dancers but I can’t remember much about that but it certainly seemed real to me.

There was a ‘phone call from Leuven this afternoon, but they hung up before I could actually answer the call which was just as well. I wasn’t in any mood to speak to them. And there was also a ‘phone call from the chemists about the bill that I haven’t paid. I shall have to get on with that, and quickly too

But really, that was all of the excitement. All of the Christmas food has now been eaten except for the last few crumbs of the Christmas cake, such as it was. The next two days will see the end of that and then I shall have to bake a loaf of bread.

That reminds me that I need to order some flour, and so I’ll need to send off my order for food from the supermarket. I shall have to do that on Friday too. So I shall have to have a further think just in case there is anything else that I might have forgotten. At €9:95 a delivery, I can’t afford to be doing this every day.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with some really nice stuffing. Not as nice as the stuffing that I made with kidney beans and I shall have to remember that for whenever I have no mushrooms, because that was really something special.

And now I’m off to bed. No alarm, because it’s late and I need to do my best to catch up with whatever it is that’s wearing me out. The physiotherapist is coming tomorrow and Thursday, the cleaner on Wednesday, so I need to have another think about doing some more cleaning so that the place looks at least respectable.

Not that “respectable” is a phrase that anyone might usually associate with me, but here we are.

Sunday 1st January 2023 – EVEN AS I …

… type, it’s just coming up to 02:45 tomorrow.

Not that I’m complaining because having spent the last couple of months in such an air of indolence, if I end up doing something I may as well carry on as long as I can. After all, it’s high time that I did some work some time.

Not like last night though. I was busy doing nothing until about 00:30 when I finally staggered off into bed and there I stayed until 11:00 this morning. I’d awoken a couple of times during the night, including having another one of these night sweats that I used to have so regularly.

That was always something that worried me to a certain extent. Whenever I went to the hospital, they used to ask me the same 20 questions, one of which was “do you have night sweats?”. And whether I replied “yes” or “no”, it didn’t seem to make any difference with what they were doing to me so I didn’t know why they ask.

Still, they aren’t going to ask me tomorrow, for the simple reason that I’m not going to be there. Firstly, transport is quite limited today and secondly, I can’t walk that far.

Breakfast this morning was beans on toast with sausage and home-made hash browns followed by toast with mushroom paté. That’s almost all of my holiday food eaten. Just the last of the beans and some of the mushroom paté to finish off tomorrow.

Strange as it might seem, I fell asleep this afternoon. Even after all of the sleep that I had. But I did manage to pair of the music for the next radio programme that I’ll be preparing. Not that I’ll be doing it tomorrow though because I’m having another lie-in to catch up on the fact that it’s both a Sunday and a Bank Holiday today so I’ve really missed the Bank Holiday lie-in.

No neighbours today. In fact no-one disturbed me at all which makes a change considering the way that things have been just recently. It was quite a peaceful day.

Tea was nice – vegan pie with vegetables and gravy. That pie that I made for Christmas was a resounding success and I’l have to remember the recipe. There’s some stuffing left so I might even push the boat out and have a shepherd’s pie – made of real shepherds of course.

Some stuff on the dictaphone from last night too. There was a group of us going out to visit some submarines last night, probably I dunno about 20 of us. We all boarded some kind of pilot boat and set out from shore to the deep water. The sea was quite rough and there was plenty of spray going about. We sailed over a couple of submarines that we could see below us and then a pile of World War II bomber aircraft that had obviously crashed into the sea for scrapping that we saw down below. Then we were out in the bay about a mile or two and it really was rough. We pulled up alongside some kind of submarine. I had to call out the full names of the submarines one after the other so that people could sit in the right kind of position on board this pilot boat. Everyone was becoming soaked to death being taken off their boat onto this submarine thing. There were people with dogs. I wanted to make sure that the dogs were on board first before I moved otherwise that would be chaotic. Eventually we managed to have everyone moving and sorted out

And later I was in Canada last night driving, somewhere down the coast. There was a girl or woman hitch-hiking so I stopped to pick her up. She was going to the local supermarket to buy some stuff So I said that I’d run her as I had time. As we drove a little way along this road to where she told me to turn off I could see the signs for Miramichi so I knew where I was and was able to drive some of the way. I was torrential, pouring down with rain, a downpour. I took her so far. By now this passenger had turned into a guy. We were talking about old cars. He took me to some kind of abandoned street where there was a whole row of derelict houses. He took me down a pathway in between two derelict houses. I could see an old American car that I thought at first was a Peugeot 403 parked there. The closer I looked, I could see that there was probably about a dozen old cars there like an MG Allegro, a BMC MG1100, all kinds of things, all in various stages of disrepair. Some were quite valuable and interesting. Others had been cut up with an angle grinder. We talked about these. I asked if I could take some photos of them. He told me that I could but to leave one particular car out. He was by now this woman again. She asked me why I didn’t come down here every Saturday to have a play with them. That idea appealed to me somewhat for a variety of reasons. By now there were lots of other people down there, members of my family, so I took my camera and asked them all to stand still while I took some photos. It had to be a very long exposure because it was dark. For some reason the photos wouldn’t take. I was there for several seconds with my finger on the shutter trying to take these photos but they were just coming out blurred because the shutter wasn’t clicking off. I had to try on several occasions but nothing that I coud do would help me take some really good photos of these old cars.

So now I’m going to bed, even if I’m not tired. No alarm tomorrow so I’ll wake up when I wake up, unless they ring me from the hospital to ask me why I’m not there. They probably ill do something like that, especially as I’ll be sleeping.

But it’s a silly idea to expect me to be there at 10:20 the day after a Bank Holiday when there’s no transport.

And a Happy New Year to everyone too. I’ve not said anything to celebrate the season because I’ve not been feeling very festive just recently and I’ve had plenty of other preoccupations.

I’m sure that you’ll all understand. It’s difficult for me to summon up any enthusiasm, when I have nothing to be enthusiastic about.

Sunday 21st August 2022 – HAVING FINISHED …

… all of my work for the weekend by Saturday afternoon, I did something that I haven’t gone for quite some considerable time, and that was that I spent a few hours doing nothing at all except passing the time on the computer to no good purpose.

It was probably something to do with crashing out during the morning and the strong coffee that I’d had at half-time during the football but it was 04:00 when I finally fell into bed and I wasn’t tired then either. But with no alarm in the morning, I didn’t care either.

No-one went past with a steam engine this morning but even so I awoke a couple of times and at one point I was even planning on leaving the bed. But at … errr … 12:30 I finally saw the light of day.

First thing that I did of course was to go for the medication and then the next thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were going for a ride on a fairground attraction but it was at an airport. We were in the queue and people just kept on pushing in front of the queue or pushing in ahead of us. There was no discipline in this queue. I rang up the owner or organiser etc to tell him. Of course while this was happening there were even more people pushing in to the front etc so that was a pointless exercise.

Later on I’d ordered a bank robbery in the style of THE LAVENDER HILL MOB with a few people, someone like Sid James and one of the women out of SAINT TRINIANS films. We had the money and secreted it away waiting for an opportune moment. Someone had come along and recognises Sid James as bandit from in the past, even though he’d been keeping his name quiet. Another member of my team came to hear about this and began to feel really edgy. He came to see me and I explained that this was all part of the plan. Instead of them using me to lay their hands on the money and no-one else I’d been using them to lay hold of their experience to pull the job and that I was well in control of the situation even if I didn’t think that I was.

And then there I was lying in bed until some ridiculous time when I decided eventually to get up. As I was sitting on the edge of the bed my father went past the room and shouted at me “isn’t it about time that I got myself going, something like that?”. So I started to dress. I picked up a few things and went downstairs into the street to walk down to the living room. I suddenly realised that I somehow seemed to have acquired one wellington boot and one cardboard box in which to fit my feet. I couldn’t understand what was happening here so I had to go back to my room and sort out some proper footwear so that I could go back down to the living room.

After brunch I did something even more exciting, which was to transcribe not one but two days’ worth of dictaphone notes from my trip around Europe. If I’m not careful I’ll be catching myself up at this rate and that won’t ever do.

By the time that I’d finished it was time to go out for my afternoon walk.

Not many people down there on the beach today, and there wasn’t anyone sunbathing.

Not that I was surprised because it was quite cool this afternoon. at one stage I was wondering whether to put un a sweater or something. And had I done so, I wouldn’t have been the only one wearing one.

There was someone wrapped in a towel so if he had just come out of the water he’s a better man that I am, Gungha Din.

And as usual while I was here I was having a good look around out to sea.

The first thing that I saw was something fairly large heading out of the bay past the Ile de Chausey and into the English Channel.

It wasn’t easy to identify it so I took a photo with the idea of enlarging and enhancing it when I returned hom later.

And in fact it’s a trawler heading out to sea, something that’s quite unusual for a Sunday. My understanding is that to preserve stocks, commercial fishing is discouraged if not prohibited on a Sunday. So maybe it’s a positioning voyage.

Unfortunately I can’t identify who she is at this distance.

She wasn’t the only boat out there this afternoon.

The tide is well in so I imagined that the harbour gates and the port de plaisance are open. And with it being a weekend, every man and his dog have brought their water craft to the port.

Five or six yachts in this photo along with several other assorted craft, but really I could have taken a dozen photos from here, all in different directions, that would have included as many boats in each one

So on that note I wandered off on my walk. Today I’m going for my post-prandial perambulation around the medieval city walls

Trawlers and yachts aren’t all of the watercraft out there this afternoon either.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m always on the lookout for a few oars here and there and I spotted some others out in the bay this afternoon.

Having seen the kayakers practising in the tidal basin next to the Nautical Centre behind the port, it’s no surprise to see a couple of them out here in the bay this afternoon.

The little wheels on the deck of the one in front are quite interesting too. I suppose that they help when you are trying to manoeuvre your kayak around on dry land. I remember the fun that I used to have trying to do that when I was kayaking at school.

Anyway off I went around the walls and found myself along the little path at the foot thereof that leads to the Plat Gousset.

There was something flailing around out at sea and I wondered if it might be a dolphin or a whale or something like that. After all, there have sightings of all kinds of strange beasts in and around Normandy just recently.

But it is in fact a swimmer and he seemed to be making good and steady progress. And in this weather he deserves a medal.

There have already been REPORTS OF SHARKS IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL. I’m not too sure if any are man-eating sharks but to be on the safe side I’d only swim far out if you are a woman or a child.

“And would a shark swallow me whole?”
“No. He’d spit that bit out.”

I’ll get my coat.

The path leads on round to the viewpoint that overlooks the Plat Gousset and I always stop there when I’m round this way.

Down below there aren’t the crowds that we have been having over the last few weekends. The cooler weather today is keeping them off the beaches which is just as well as sometimes just recently it’s been overwhelming down there.

There was a line of people sitting on the concrete wall at the edge of the slipway down to the beach.

Don’t ask me why because there was no entertainment down there today. Some weekends, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there has been street theatre, musicians, all that kind of thing down on the Plat Gousset.

No policemen causing a road block this afternoon down on the corner of the Place Marechal Foch.

There were thousands of people milling about in the streets of the centre of the town though.

There’s another braderie taking place at the town-centre shops today. All of the streets are closed to traffic and the shopkeepers have set out their stalls for all of the passers-by.

It’s all surplus stock, last years unsellable items, this years end-of-summer-season sales with the aim of emptying the shops so that they have room for all of the autumn and winter stock that will be arriving soon.

In the past I’ve been for a wander down there but there never was anything that particularly caught my eye at a price that I could afford.

So resisting the temptation to go down the steps into the town, I carried on with my walk around the walls.

In the Square Maurice Marland there seems to be something rather bizarre happening.

While the square itself is descending into something of a less-than-genteel shabbiness we suddenly seem to have acquired a handful of plant troughs.

They are labelled with the names of individual “gardeners” who have presumably adopted the troughs and there are all kinds of things growing in them.

In this one for example, there’s what looks like a beetroot and some kind of strange plant with fruit that bear more than just a passing relationship to a tomato. Whatever the third plant it, I really have no idea.

A little further on down the path in the square there was something quite interesting to see.

This is something about which I’ve heard so much said just recently. The drought is causing all kinds of problems, one of which is that there is no longer enough water to hydrate the leaves of many of the deciduous trees.

The result of that is that many of the leaves are drying out and the tree is obliged to shed them in order to guarantee the survival of the ones less badly affected. That’s clearly quite evident here with dead leaves in the trees and an enormous pile of discarded leaves blown into a corner by the wind.

All of this behaviour in nature is in a sharp contrast with human behaviour. In humans, if one member is weak o unhealthy, the mother sacrifices everything to keep the weakest one alive. In the natural kingdom the weakest are often discarded to aid the survival of the strongest or healthiest.

There was a small sailing ship just outside the harbour heading our way.

And so I waited accordingly until it came into view so that I could photograph it. I have a feeling that I ought to know who she is but no name springs to mind. Regular readers of this rubbish ought to recognise them just as well as I do these days.

With nothing else happening out there this afternoon I came home for a glass of iced coconut milk and then to sort out the photos.

After lunch today I’d taken a lump of frozen dough out of the freezer and it had been defrosting during the course of the afternoon.

When it was ready I kneaded it, rolled it out and put it on the pizza tray where it could sit proofing itself.

When it was ready I assembled it and put it into the oven to bake and once more it looked quite appetising when it came out of the oven.

It tasted delicious too, which it always does these days. I seem to have found the knack of making them now which is no surprise after the number that I’ve baked over the last couple of years.

So having finished my notes, I’m off to bed. Despite the short day I’m exhausted and I’m ready for bed, especially with an 06:00 start in the morning. There’s a radio programme to do tomorrow.

Considering that Sunday is a day of rest, I’ve had a busy day today. In fact, I’ve had a busy weekend and if I manage to keep this up I shan’t know myself.

It’s quite possibly no coincidence that I had my first shot of Aranesp on Monday for over 2 months but I dunno. They say that it’s the injection of last resort and when I read THE SIDE-EFFECTS I can understand why. And now they want to increase the dose.

There’s no way that I would be having that injection if there were any other solution.

Tuesday 16th August 2022 – SUMMER IS BACK!

After the couple of days that we had of grey overcast weather conditions, Summer came back with a bang today.

Not quite the record-breaking temperatures that we had, but blue skies all the same.

And while we’re on the subject of the hot weather … “well, one of us is” – ed … I thought that you might like to see how things are doing around here.

This is the footpath on top of the cliffs at the back of the Sports Ground. It’s the route that I take down to the end of the headland and you can see how it is (or isn’t) holding up.

The path itself is a layer about an inch thick of dust. On the edges of the path the grass has dried out completely and has died off in places. The rest of it, what’s left, is a burnt shrivelled mass and it’ll take a while to regenerate.

Those little showers of rain that we have had just recently haven’t done anything towards improving the situation.

What else took a while to regenerate this morning was me, unfortunately.

It wasn’t until 09:00 that the alarm went off for me to awaken but there was a good reason for that. Late last night a Paul Temple adventure came up on the old-time radio feed just as I was thinking of going to bed. A programme that is timed at 3:25:00

These old radio programmes are really excellent and so I was planning on listening for an hour or so before going to bed. But instead I ended up listening to the whole programme and it was long after 01:00 when I fell into the stinking pit.

Not that I’m bothered about that because life is for enjoying too as well as working and let’s face it – I’m not getting much pleasure in anything else right now

So after I’d finally staggered into the kitchen for my medication I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

And it’s no surprise that I wasn’t feeling like much today when you look at where I went during the night. Having stayed awake until all hours listening to a Paul Temple episode, when I was asleep I had a Paul Temple episode going on in my head. It went on for hours and hours and hours. It involved some saucepans and saucepan lids but everything was just so confusing that I can’t remember any of it. It rambled on and on and on about these guys who I think might have been sportsmen on small boats or something. That’s all that I can really say about this that went on for hours.

And then we were still in Istanbul (had we been there before? I dunno). We’d been talking to some people about meeting up with someone and performing an interview. They to whom we were talking was a taxi driver had something to do and he produced a girl. She exited his cab and walked away. The person with me said that that would have been a good interview. He explained that she was rather too far in in this organisation and would likely cause a lot of problems. She spent most of her time being institutionalised and the rest of the time going round with this gang. So we agreed and he said that he’d see who else he could find for us. He drove away. The person with me said “God, I have to go” and dashed through the door in this stone terraced house and disappeared. I went through this door. There was a set of really steep steps that went down to the river. I went down there as best as I could. I had no idea where he went. There were 2 or 3 cafés at the bottom. He didn’t appear to be in either so I wondered whether he’d gone to the toilet so I’d wait around. There was a girl painter there with a boy whom she was painting. He was carrying this brown and black cat. She was drawing the cat so I went over to talk to her and to stroke the cat. It wasn’t all that friendly but it didn’t fight or anything. We chatted about the cat for quite some time.

Later on we were on a train heading north towards Doncaster somewhere like that. We were on board and it was an express. There were a few seats taken, not all that many. We walked along the train trying to find our places to sit. I can’t remember any more than that

At some point or other a girl with me announced that she was pregnant but it was sort-of announced by accident. It wasn’t a planned announcement, it came out in the conversation. I asked her what she was going to do but she didn’t give a reply so we went back home and went in. The house was totally filthy and really awful. Everyone was just sitting around in a complete state of untidiness. Someone said “you’ll never guess what the baby (for there was another baby in there) had been playing with. He went on to say that it was a half-dead mouse. “I just threw it i ntothe middle of the room” he said which made everyone shudder. I had to start to look for this thing. I thought that if any girlfriend of mine was going to be pregnant this place is going to have to be cleaned up because she shouldn’t bring up a child in this no matter how someone else was bringing up another one. It clearly wasn’t any good at all and we needed to do something about it.

And finally I was walking along the shore on the edge of a beach. There was some people and a dog down there playing about in somewhere where there had been a great big fire. I could hear them discussing it. They seemed to think that it was some form of spontaneous combustion of whatever was underneath the sand. They were busy digging away at it and walking in for a closer look. I carried on walking past and ended up in the mountains in the snow looking at the maps about the ski resort and the various tracks to descend into the valley again. I was looking for either a blue or a red run. Eventually I found what I thought might be a good place to go down but there was a lot of fog around. It came swirling around cutting off the view of the valley and then the view of the sign with the routes on it. I thought to myself that this is going to be extremely difficult for me to go

That skiing excursion actually reminded me of a skiing adventure in which I took part in Cervinia in Italy in the days of my youth. I was with my Italo-Russian friend and we were up in the mountains of Italy near the Matterhorn. We were with a few other people but we were actually in front and when we returned to the village we found that we were on our own.

There had been hanging clouds in the mountains and they had missed the left-turning in the mist and carried straight on downhill into a different valley and ended up in Switzerland. In the days of border controls with no passports or anything, and the 38-mile taxi ride to return to the hotel was the least of their problems.

But something else that was interesting was the dream about the untidy house. We all know only too much about that these days and so for the rest of the day (because there wasn’t much of the rest of it after typing out all of that) I’ve been tidying up in here.

A huge pile of rubbish, papers and the like, bit the dust today. It’s all in the bin and a lot more would have followed it except that each time that I went out I bumped into a neighbour and we had a lengthy chat. Not that I’m one for chatting to the neighbours but I do have to try to be sociable occasionally.

And I now know why the barrier to the car park isn’t working. I wondered where the car of one of my neighbours had gone

As well as taking out the papers I’ve actually put some stuff away too, I have cunning plans for more stuff and later on tonight I’m going to go outside with my old non-working printer and … errr … forget where I left it. This is going to be quite a long job.

In fact I was so carried away that I forgot to go for breakfast. That’s not like me, is it? Although I am eating less these days than I have done in the past.

It was a surprise that I actually managed to make it out for my afternoon walk.

As usual I went across to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach. With the weather being a lot warmer and sunnier than it has been this last couple of days I was expecting to see the crowds.

And as usual, I’m not disappointed. This was just a few of them, with many people having taken to the water to cool off. There were crowds of people elsewhere disporting themselves on beach towels catching the sun all the way down the coast.

While I was at it, I had a look out to sea to see what was happening there.

When I’d been walking down to the end of the car park I’d seen something white out at sea. It’s actually a yacht with a white sail with green stripe that’s cavorting around out there and it has a friend way over there towards the northern Normandy shore.

Over to the right of the yacht in the foreground is a marker buoy, presumably indicating another lobster pot, and then we have one of the many bouchot farms of the area in the background with its stakes rearing up like a medieval cheval de frise

As you can tell from the previous photo, the view was so much better today with the air being much cleaner.

That meant that I had high hopes for a photo of Jersey and St Helier so I went and found a piece of high ground where there might be a really good view.

And once again I wasn’t disappointed. It’s not the clearest view that we have had of St Helier but it’s still pretty good all the same.

One of these days I’ll really have to get myself out there somehow so that I can identify all of the buildings that I can see from here. The way that things are right now, I’ll have to hitch a ride on a freighter.

Or else flag down a friendly cabin cruiser.

As I walked through the sandy wastes towards the end of the headland I noticed this cabin cruiser pull up. At first I thought that it might be a group of fishermen but as I watched they lowered something down at the stern.

A couple of minutes later someone climbed in and kayaked away. And it’s a good job that it’s summer because you don’t need to keep warm. After all, we all know that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

And on that not, I wandered off further down the path.

The car park was crowded again with cars so I was expecting to see a lot of people here too.

Plenty of folk down on the lower path and there was a couple of people sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban.

Not that they had very much to see because there were no boats out there this afternoon and no-one fishing on the rocks.

However, the buoy that we saw yesterday marking what I assume to be a lobster pot was still there so they can keep their eye on that.

So I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland to see what’s happening in the port.

And there are yet more changes in the chantier naval as another trawler has come in to join the fray today. The black and blue trawler in the middle of all of that is Pescadore.

She always confuses me because when I first came here she was actually blue and white but had a repaint a while back.

Meanwhile over at the ferry terminal out of shot is Chausiaise, the little freighter. She’s not going anywhere at the moment.

While I was here I went to check to see if anyone was playing “Musical Ships” at the Fish Processing Plant this afternoon but I was side-tracked.

Over there in the inner harbour is a yacht. At first I thought that it might be Charles Marie because it seems to be the same style, but the colours are different. This one here is dark brown rather than dark blue.

So I shall have to go for a closer look to see if I can pick up a name.

But there’s another lorry in the port this afternoon, presumably dropping off some more freight for the Channel Islands. Things are certainly hotting up here as far as freight goes. We’re starting to be over-run and that’s good news.

Heading off towards the inner harbour (forgetting all about the Fish Processing Plant) I noticed that Victor Hugo is back in port.

The last that I heard of her she was running a shuttle around the outlying islands of the Channel Islands but now she’s back in the inner harbour and moored up at the quayside. It looks as if her mad dashes out and about over the last couple of days have come to a halt.

However I hope that it’s only a temporary pause. I mentioned earlier that I want to get out to the Channel Islands at some point in the near future and I had some high hopes that the ferry might become a regular thing. It’s no part of my plan for her to be laid up for long.

So back at the inner harbour and the yacht that’s in here.

It was not easy to read her name but a check of the fleet radar later revealed that she’s called Marie Fernand. She was built in 1894 as one of the harbour pilots for Le Havre and the northern Frenc coast, duties that she carried out until motorisation of the pilot service after World War I.

She was sold to someone in the UK in 1922 and for a long time disappeared from view.

Someone told me a delightful anecdote about her though. They planned to build a reconstruction of her in time for her centenary so they cast around for the plans. However someone had the rather brilliant idea “why don’t we just copy the original?”.

That was the first that the organisers knew that she still existed so they convinced the British owners to sell her back to the port and since then she’s been restored and was present at her own centenary.

There’s the Festival of Working Sailboats taking place soon so I imagine that she’s come here to be part of it.

Back here I had my iced coconut drink and did a little more tidying up. It’s going to take me an age to do what I want to do.

Tea was the second half of that rather wicked curry. and it was wicked as well. I’ll have to put the toilet paper in the fridge later.

But I didn’t go out to put the printer out. Even as I write we’re having a thunderstorm and a rainstorm. The printer doesn’t really work but I want to give someone a sporting chance and soaking it in water won’t help.

No radio tonight – I’m listening to music so I doubt if I’ll have a late night. I must remember to reset the alarm and then tomorrow carry on with my cleaning plan, otherwise known as “throwing out surplus items”.

A good night’s sleep would be nice too. We can live in hope.

Friday 30th July 2021 – THE THING THAT …

… surprised me most about this morning was that after so little sleep – much less than 5 hours, I was up and about so early and so … well … maybe not so energetically but at least I wasn’t staggering about incoherently (inasmuch as I am usually incoherent). And I was even back in here to check my mails and my newsfeeds in a reasonably rapid rate of knots.

It wasn’t long though (geologically speaking) until I had to leave the apartment and head off to the doctor’s and my early morning appointment. And I actually made it almost to the surgery before I realised that i’d forgotten to bring my injection with me, by which time it was too late to go back.

On the way to the doc’s I walked past the docks as I usually do

My attention had been drawn there a long, long way before I could see them by the racket that was coming from down below. When I reached the viewpoint I could see that there was a skip lorry that was picking up the scrap metal in the skips there.

Bearing in mind my post from several days ago, I mused that it was probably old bicycle wheels and World War 11 munitions that had been dredged up in the shellfish scrapers. Start the day with a bang? Why not!

“This is not the time to be hanging around within pressure-wave distance” I thought.

A little further on down the hill, this little matter of interest caught my eye.

In actual fact, it was a closed-off car parking space across the road that I noticed at first before I saw the builders’ tape. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, without any help from me, that the old medieval walls around here are crumbling away quicker than they can repair them.

Thai wall here, in between the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne and the Boulevard des Terreneuviers has been quietly crumbking away and bits have gone missing, but it looks as if the local builders have been having a go at it.

Whatever next?

Next of course was the doctor’s. Having forgotten the injection, it wasn’t much of an omission because the doctor wrote out a prescription for me to have a nurse come round.

Furthermore, stocks of this injection are available in France and he’ll write out the prescription for me when I run out of the stock that I had from the hospital.

The Covid certificate is easy. Now that I have a Carte Vitale and an account at the French Government’s Health database, he could do all the necessary and I now have a proper Covid Europass. My telephone even reads it too.

The knee isn’t so simple. he thinks that it’s just the menisque, the meniscus muscle, and he’s prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication (which means that my daily dose has now gone up to 10) and a course of physiotherapy.

But prescribing a course is one thing – finding a therapist to do it is something else completely, especially in midsummer when everyone has gone on holiday.

At the chemists I had to wait five minutes before they were opened – first in the queue as well. But clutching my medication I headed back home.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish might recall that a few days ago we saw Charles Marie come sailing into the harbour.

Not having been this way since then, I hadn’t seen whether or not she was still there but sure enough, she’s the blue and white boat across there.

As for the dark blue boat behind her, I couldn’t make out at first whether she was Anakena, the boat that had set off to go to Scandinavia but had been caught in the pandemic. If it had been she, she probably would have set the record for the boat that’s been the longest in the harbour.

However, a closer examination of the photo shows that she’s Aztec Lady and she’s been in there for quite a long time too.

But remember yesterday? When we saw a pile of goods on the quayside as Normandy Trader was busy loading up, and I speculated that they wouldn’t be getting all of that into her with the swimming pool as well?

It looks as if I was right – although it didn’t really take much of an effort to work it out. There’s still a pile of freight on the quayside despite the fact that the ship has long-since sailed off into the sunset.

That means that we shall be expecting another visit, either from her or from Thora, in the near future. Imagine leaving all of that stuff unguarded on a quayside in the UK.

On the way back home I met a neighbour (I seem to be doing this quite a lot just recently) and we had a good chat for a while. Then I came back in here for my hot chocolate and fruit bread, which really is delicious!

Armed with my breakfast I came in here and settled down to work on yesterday’s journal entry and the next thing that I remember, it was 2 hours later. Luckily I’d finished my hot chocolate before it went cold.

While I’d been asleep on the chair I’d gone off on another voyage. I was in my holiday home getting ready to go back to the Auvergne because I decided that I was going to move my holiday home … start again … I was in the hotel where I was staying in some seaside resort somewhere in the south of France or somewhere in the west of France. I was going to get back into Caliburn and drive back to Virlet to get some stuff because I was planning to rent an apartment here. I’d thought about going to contact all of the Agents Immobiliers in the region about seeing who had a flat to let. I just walked out of my hotel room and across the hotel into the lobby just to walk straight out, get into Caliburn and drive straight back. I saw the rain and thought “do I need anything to take with me to leave back there? Do I need to bring anything else. Then I had a horrible thought about the train – how was I going to get to my hospital in Belgium?

There was really only just enough time to sort out the photos before lunch and guitar practice.

After lunch I had to ring around for a nurse, but everyone seems to be unavailable. Better luck at the hospital where I was able to change my appointment to the following week. And then I could at last push on with my notes.

There was the usual break for my afternoon walk so grabbing the NIKON D500 j cleared off outside.

And while there was no bus parked outside the building today, I would swap any bus on the road for one of these.

This vehicle is probably one of the fasted production cars that Lancia ever produced, and I didn’t recognise it at first because someone has taken off the distinctive bumpers. But in actual fact it’s one of the Zagato-bodied Lancia Fulvia Sport 1600s.

Made for just two years, 1971 and 1972, there can’t have been many of these made, and there can’t be more than a handful that still survive, especially here in France.

But yes, one of these would do me very nicely, thak you.

So having dealt with the car, let’s go and deal with the issue of the beach.

It took quite an effort to make it across the car park because there was now a howling gale that had sprung up. I wasn’t expecting to see too many people on the beach, and I was quite right too because everyone was conspicuous by their absence

Apart from a few brave souls wandering around out there, there was this guy leaping up and down as the waves came into shore. He was certainly a braver man than I am.

And waves of course, there were plenty because there was quite a storm raging out at sea.

There are some rocks that even when the tide is well in, they aren’t covered over by the sea and the waves were breaking on them with quite considerable force. We aren’t likely to see too many ships out there today.

But there were crowds of people at a loose end wandering what to do and I threaded my way through them along the path, chasing after my headgear that had decided to go off for a stroll all on its own with the aid of the wind.

When I said that we aren’t likely to see many ships out there this afternoon, here’s one that I certainly didn’t expect to see.

It was the clouds of spray being thrown around out there that drew my attention to somethign moving so I went to find a high point on top of one of the old bunkers to have a better view.

Exposed as I was to the wind, it was impossible to take the shot that I wanted for when there was a shower of spray over the ship I was being blown out of position. I had to compromise.

Digital enhancement back home brought out the step in the stern of the ship and this tells us that it’s Joly France I battling its way valiantly out through the gale to the Ile de Chausey and I bet that the people on board were not enjoying the trip.

A few years ago I was on a crossing like that, and everyone was leaning over the railings.
“The trouble with you” I said to one man “is that you have a week stomach”.
“Nonsense” he retorted. “I’m throwing it as far as all the others”.

With all of these storms at sea I was expecting to see waves of hurricane proportions dshing over the sea wall and soaking everyone and everything in the inner harbour.

Consequently I dashed down the path, across the car park and around the corner onto the path onto the other side of the headland in eager anticipation.

And this is the best that I can get.

It’s true that the harbour wall is well-sheltered from the nor’westers by the headland around which I have just walked, and you can tell that by the fact that I have now replaced my headgear. But I was expecting much better than this.

If I knew who to complain to, I would lodge a complaint.

Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) we saw one of the shell-fishing boats moored up and aground at the wharf by the Fish Processing Plant.

Today, it looks as if we have had a tactical substitution because while she has now cleared off, another one his come to take her place.

When I went further round to the front, I could see that it’s our old friend L’Omerta who seems to spend a lot of her time moored over there when she isn’t out at sea.

But anyway, that’s not my affair. With nothing going on any different in the chantier naval I carried on with my walk.

Further on down the road I stopped to have a look at what was going on in the inner harbour.

The trawler Le Tiberiade is in there this afternoon. She has a sister-ship, Le Coelecanthe and the only way that I can tell them apart is when I see them together because the latter is bigger than the former.

But as I looked more closely, there was something else that had caught my eye. In the background is a white van and a large commercial pressure-washer, being operated by someone in full hazmat equipment.

So whatever that is all about, I’d love to find out more. Although there isn’t likely to be anything in the local paper about it, and at the speed at which I move these days, I wouldn’t be able to catch him before he went.

Instead, I turn my attention to the rest of the inner harbour.

And remember the pile of builder’s material that we saw there yesterday and this morning, well, like Topsy, it “just growed”.

If you look very closely, you can make out the front of an articulated lorry and there’s also a guy on a fork-lift truck busy manoeuvring stuff around there.

All of this seems to indicate to me that the arrival of one of the Jersey freighters is imminent.

But I shan’t be around to wait for it if it arrives on the evening tide. I’m off back home for my coffee.

Downstairs in my letter box was a letter, from the Welsh Joint Education Council. For my “spoken Welsh exam” I’ve scored … errr … 208 out of 220. The reason for that mark is that I have learnt after many years of bitter experience to “Keep it Simple” and don’t try to complicate things gratuitously. Then you can’t tie yourself in knots of your own making.

Back here I finished off yesterday’s entry, about 7 hours later than I had intended, and then made tea. Falafel and pasta with the most delicious pineapple upside-down cake with coconut soya stuff.

No football tonight so I can go to bed. And about time because I’m wasted after my bad night and early start.

Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Thursday 29th July 2021 WHILE I WAS …

… out for a walk with Liz at lunchtime on our way back from a coffee we came via the rue du nord, one of the reasons for which being that I wanted to see how they are progressing with the repair work to the medieval city walls.

Much to my surprise, they have already made a decent start to the work and I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen A SIMILAR STYLE OF WORK in the past when they were repairing the walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne.

When they did that work they did what looks like a decent job so I hope that they’ll bet on and do the same here.

And then hopefully they can get on and do the rest of the walls that are falling down around our ears. If medival builders can build something that will last for 600 years there’s no reason why modern builders shouldn’t be able to do so.

But anyway, be that as it may, I was awake at about 06:00 this morning as usual so I had my medication and came back in here listen to the dictaphone. We were all at home but home was dirty, disgusting and untidy and a complete mess. For some reason, at a court my mother’s family life as a young person was being discussed. Then some time later or was it earlier, I dunno, we ended up with anoher girl staying with us and we were trying to think of a place to go. But then this girl started talking about going to somewhere on the North Wales coast where she had been. She asked if we had ever been there and we replied “ohh no, we had far too much class. We went to Rhyl” which provoked howls of laughter but this gave us an idea and we booked a trip to Rhyl. When we arrived on the coach we all piled off and this girl “ohh yes I know all of this, I know all of that” so we were having a laugh and a joke and teasing her. Our mother was telling us to be quiet, we mustn’t be so rude. Then something happened to my mother and she ended up talking about other people behind their backs and we were sitting there saying “mother, don’t be so rude” which of course didn’t go down very well. We crossed the road over to the river.

At that point I’d switched off the dictaphone, which makes a change from the way that things have been just recently.

When I’d finished transcribing the notes I finished off the tidying up of the apartment as far as I could and it actually looks quite tidy, which is just as well, because Liz turned up.

We started off making the first dough for my fruit bread and she gave me several valuable hints for the first kneading, and then we put it into a basin to proof while we had a nice cold drink.

After the drink I mixed the fruit for the filling but Liz thinks that I’m putting too much fruit and nuts in it – and she would leave out the banana too. As for the banana chips she thinks that I should be breaking them up.

Liz showed me her method of adding the fruit and nuts, which might have worked had I not been using so many.

That was the cue to go for a coffee so we walked down to La Rafale, bumping into one of our neighbours on the way. And also meeting another one at the bar.

On the way back we came via the Rue du Nord and I’m pleased to report that the absence of boats out to sea over the last couple of days must have been an aberration because they were all there today.

As many yachts as you might care to see this afternoon and I suspect that it might have something to do with the state of the tide. The tide is well in, the outer port is under water and the gates to the harbour and the port de plaisance are open.

It will be a completely different situation, I suspect, when the tide is ebbing and the gates are about to close. Then all of the marine craft will scuttle off home to safety.

Incidentally, there’s a dark blue flag right out there in the distance. I wonder if that’s Black Mamba gone off for a run around in the bay.

It wasn’t just water craft that were out there this lunchtime.

There was a swimmer down there doing the Australian crawl along the coastline just offshore. In a wetsuit too, and I can’t say that I blame him either because although it was sunny, it wasn’t actually all that pleasant.

Now comes the story of a disaster. Liz hadn’t asked me how I baked my bread and I hadn’t thought to tell her, so when I produced the bread mould back home she was taken by surprise.

The bread fell apart as we tried to move it gently into the mould so that didn’t work too well. Anyway we put it in the oven to bake while we had lunch.

After lunch, our next trick was to make a pineapple upside-down cake. I don’t know why but I’ve been hankering after one of these for a while and Liz had a recipe. Well, of an apple upside-down cake but the theory is still the same so we had a go at that.

That went into the oven and while it was baking, Liz still had some time to spare. A while back she had sent me a recipe for cranberry and pecan cookies and as I actually had some cranberries (but cashew nuts instead) we made a pile of those too. They went into the oven as soon as the upside-down cake was baked, and we went for a walk outside.

We hadn’t gone more than five yards out of the building before two things happened.

Firstly, we were overflown by a light aeroplane. Well, not exactly overflown – it was in fact right out at sea and it was difficult to pick it up with the camera.

Some judicious editing when I was back home later showed it to be 50SA – another light aircraft that does not figure in any register that I have been unable to find, even though we’ve seen it before. It’s painted out in the style of a World-War II US Army Air Force fighter although its fixed tricycle undercarriage tells me that it is anything but.

The second thing that happened was that we were swept away in the turmoil of a furniture removal. Someone else is moving out of the building. There won’t be anyone else left except me at this rate, and I won’t be here for all that long at the rate that bits are dropping off me.

No walk outside the building these days is complete, or even begins, without a walk across to the end of the car park to look down onto the beach to see the activity down there.

By now the tide has gone well out and there’s plenty of room for people to be moving around this afternoon. Not that there were too many people though because while the weather had improved, it hadn’t improved that much.

nd while I was admiring the people in the water, Liz’s eye had picked out a father rubbing his young children with sun tan oil so that they could all run into the sea and wash it off.

Yes, I used to be a child too, believe it or not.

While I’d been watching the beach with one eye, the other one had as usual been roving out to sea.

Out there was a silhouette on the horizon that looked quite familiar to me so we headed for the nearest high ground where I could have a better view.

Once safely installed I took a photo and later on after Liz had left, I had a look at it, cropped it, enhanced it and blew it up (the photo, not the object)

No prizes of course for guessing what it might be, because we are all familiar with this silhouette right now.

Anything that’s big, with three masts and loads of sail can only be the Marité, our sole remaining Newfoundlander fishing boat, gone out on the morning tide for a lap around the coast and will probably return home this later on the evening tide.

Liz had also spotted this and wanted to know what it was. I explained that it was probably asylum-seekers who had gone to the UK, decided that they didn’t like it and came back.

Seriously though, I thought that it might have been fishermen at first, which it may well be, but of what description?

And I wonder if they had anything to do with the strange square object bottom left? It doesn’t look like a mooring buoy marker or a lobster pot marker, so I wonder if it’s a diver in a face mask?

Mind you, what would be be diving for that he couldn’t find quicker and easier in an hour or so when the tide has gome out and the sea bed is uncovered?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw the swimming pool on the quayside and I intimated that this would mean that Normandy Trader would be on her way into port quite soon.

And look who’s in port this afternoon then? I wasn’t wrong. And I was very lucky to see her because usually she comes in as soon as the harbour gates open and she does a quick turn-round and disappears back to Jersey with her load before they close again.

And so I’ve no idea why she’s loitering in port this afternoon. I suppose that these swimming pools have to be stowed very carefully because they are quite fragile, especially when they have a rolling sea to contend with.

Tons of other stuff on the quayside too and they’ll be lucky to fit all of that in. They can’t exactly drop it inside the swimming pool.

But in the meantime, while you are admiring Normandy Trader, there’s another item worthy of note.

Here moored up at the quayside by the fish processing plant is another one of the local fishing boats, left to go aground as the tide goes out.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve discussed this phenomenon on many … “many, many” – ed … occasions in the past so I shan’t dwell on it again. Instead, Liz and I will go home and see how the biscuits are doing.

And cooked to perfection they were too, so we had another cold drink to celebrate, and rightly so because when you are out of the wind it’s really quite warm in the sun.

After another chat, Liz decided to head off for home and make tea for Terry who had been out working.

That was a shame because I had a few things that I wanted to discuss, but they were things of the moment and it’s doubtful that the moment will ever present itself in the same way again.

Having seen Liz safely off on her way, I had a look at all of our cooking efforts for today.

As I mentioned earlier, the fruit load was not as it was supposed to be. The consistency and texture were perfect – the best that I’ve ever tasted and that was certainly a success. But picking it up and putting it into the bread mould halfway through its second proofing was not a success as you can see.

We’d already sampled the cookies and I do have to say that they were pretty good too. That was certainly a success and instead of cranberries and pecans, almost any kind of dried fruit and nut will do.

It’s like most things, when you are baking, you have your basic recipe and you adjust it as you go along, depending on what you have to hand.

When I worked in that Italian restaurant in Wandsworth, the woman who owned it told me that whenever she interviewed a new chef she would always have him make a tomato sauce. If that were good, then everything else would be.

Incidentally, my tomato sauce passed muster, but then Nerina was full of fiery Italian blood so what do you expect? I had a good teacher.

Back in my little office I sat down on my comfy chair and found that I couldn’t move. Not actually stuck in it, but I lacked the energy to pull myself out of it. I started to do some work but I couldn’t concentrate on it and that was the most difficult part.

Eventually a football match came on the internet. Connah’s Quay Nomads were playing FC Pristina in the European Championships. Having lost 4-1 in Kosovo last week they were up against it but it all started so well for them and within 3 minutes they had pulled a goal back.

They were pushing forward and forward incessantly and could have had several more but in the space of five minutes were hit for two soft, sucker goals, the kind that would kill off any team.

Nevertheless, Andy Morrison isn’t one to throw in the towel. He pulled off a defender at half time and sent on an attacker and then it was a relentless stream down the field towards the Pristina goal.

To everyone’s surprise, they managed to score three goals as they created all kinds of panic in the Kosovar defence, and had Mike Wilde not been offside in the 70th minute or had Jamie Insall had a clearer connection on the ball in stoppage time, who knows where they would be now?

But this is the problem with so many Welsh clubs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They are up against teams that are much more street-wise and astute than they are, with several internationals from all over the developing world in their teams, and while domestic Welsh teams can turn on a performance like this, little lapses of concentration and stupid, silly mistakes are ruthlessly punished and rob them of just about everything.

Meanwhile, in the other match that wasn’t broadcast, events went on to prove just how wrong I can be. Having stuffed no fewer than 5 goals past FK Kauno Zalgiris of Lithuania last week, TNS went out and did exactly the same again tonight, to record the biggest ever aggregate win by a Welsh domestic side in any European competition anywhere. Teams with a long history in European competition, like Dinamo Tbilsi, Austria Wien and AA Gent were knocked out of the tournament last night.

It was 01:00 when I finally found the energy to go off to bed. And with getting up at 06:00 and going to the doctor’s tomorrow, I’m not looking forward to that at all.

Sunday 20th June 2021 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we’ve featured an old car on these pages?

So here’s one that I saw today and you don’t need any introduction to they type of vehicle that this is because you’ve been introduced to its LITTLE BROTHER on several occasions.

And when I say “little brother” I really do mean this because whilst mine that’s in the back of my garage at Montaigut-en-Combraille is one of the smaller lightweight four-cylinder 7CV models, the one that’s here on these pages is the Real McCoy, the big heavyweight 6-cylinder 15CV models, as you can tell by the badge that is proudly displayed on the right-hand mudguard.

In fact we can actually put a date to this one, assuming that it’s all correct.

The boot lid features the shape of the spare wheel. That was phased out in late 1952. But it has straight bumpers instead of the curved “whiskers” type. That type was phased out in early 1952

But the real Real McCoy, the Holy Grail of all Citroen Traction Avants that I know existed at one time and which were never put into production, and I’ve no idea if there are any left, are the model 22s.

22 is of course twice 11 and so you might be expecting something special, and indeed you are right. It’s an experimental model fitted with a V8 engine made of two of the four-cylinder 11 engines. If only I could find one of those I would be in heaven, but let’s be honest – it’s not very likely.

What else that wasn’t going to be very likely is me being up anything like early. With having crashed out so definitively in the afternoon I couldn’t sleep and I was still up working at 04:00 this morning. Being awake and up and about at 11:30 on a Sunday was something of a surprise.

There had been enough time for me to go off on my travels during the night. We were looking after 2 children about 8 or 9, a boy and a girl. They were rather unruly and it was hard to keep control of them. As it was nearly bedtime I took them outside to let them play around for a while. That was the idea – I brought a ball with them. I left them out there for what was going to be 10 minutes but turned out to be longer than that. They must have gone to bed on their own so no-one said anything. The next morning I went to awaken them. They asked “what are you going to make us do today”? I asked why and they replied “if we’re going to play football we’re just going to make a noise”. I replied “in that case I’d put one of you up here and the other one somewhere else and you can make as much noise as you want”. When we went outside they had made a snowman only it was the two of them kneeling down stroking a big snow cat. I thought that it was wonderful. I asked “who made that”. They said that they did and some of the cats helped. So I made the kids kneel down by this sculpture and went to find as many cats as I could so I could give them to the kids to hold so that they would all be in the photo. But trying to round up a herd of cats at any one time is pretty impossible as anyone who has a large number of cats will tell you.

After the meds, much of the day has been spent going through the music and sorting a few things out. And in a spectacular burst of energy I paired the music for the radio programme that I’ll hopefully be doing tomorrow.

And then I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

First thing to do while I was out was to go and stick my head over the wall at the end of the car park to see what the score is down on the beach this afternoon.

And while there wasn’t all that much beach to be on because the tide was well in, there were still hordes of people clinging on to the rocks like seabirds, or rather like King Canute trying desperately to turn back the tide. There were even some people looking as if they had been into the water too.

That must have been quite a brave thing to do this afternoon because while it’s summer tomorrow, it was rather like an April day out there right now. The heatwave that we had at the beginning of the week seems to be well and truly gone and that seems to be our lot.

Not that that would ever seem to bother a certain part of our society. The fishermen seem to be always there either on the rocks or in their little boats just offshore. That is, if they aren’t right out at sea in a big trawler or two.

Today we have Jerome K Jerome’s “Three Men In a Boat” out there armed with fishing rods and heaven alone knows what else, but probably not a dog called Montmorency. One of the guys has his rod in the water but as the boat is moving along, it’s going to be very unlikely that he will be tempting any of the local sea bass to come in and take the bait.

Of course, fishing is actually very much like having sex. You get your rod out and you never know what you are going to catch.

I’ll get my coat.

And the fishermen in the boat weren’t the only people out there hoping to catch a bite to eat this afternoon.

There are a couple of birds of prey who loiter around in the air around the edge of the cliffs here at the Pointe du Roc. As well as the lizards and mice and all of the usual kinds of wildlife that inhabit the cliffs, there’s a colony of rabbits and I would imagine that a young baby rabbit would be just the thing to feed a growing family of vultures or whatever they are.

But while he was swooping up and down a few times, I didn’t actually see him catch anything either although I reckon that he would have far more animal cunning than the fishermen.

And so I headed off on my walk along the path on top of the cliffs, in amongst the crowds of people who were also out there for their afternoon stroll, most of whom were not taking a blind bit of notice of the order from the Préfet that masks are compulsory here until 30th June.

But there was something interesting down by the war memorial to the Resistance that I noticed for the first time since I came back. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they were flying the German flag down there the other day but this afternoon I noticed that it had gone and in its place is the Union Flag of the United Kingdom.

“Is there a story behind the substitution of the flags?” I asked myself when I saw it. I would have expected the British flag to have been the more likely of the two seeing as we are celebrating the Normandy landings, but the German flag was flown first. So why the change?

While I was pondering over that conundrum I noticed something moving out in the Baie de Mont St Michel and as it looked rather like something a little weird I went to investigate.

It was a yacht that was out there this afternoon and while there wasn’t really anything in the way of wind today, it was careening right over at quite an angle. There must have been quite something of a wind blowing out there to sea to have caused it to go over at that much of an angle. There isn’t the wake of another boat or anything that is causing it.

The little zodiac that looks as if it’s coming over from the Ile de Chausey looks as if it might be having a few yachtsmen dropping in for a coffee if the yacht goes over much more.

But here’s some much more exciting activity going on around the headland in the Baie de Mont St Michel so I wandered off around the path to meet it.

That little speedboat or cabin cruiser with the fishermen in it that we saw earlier is heading back into port at quite a speed, and here it’s about to collide with the wake of one of the Joly France boats that has just left harbour and is heading over to the Ile de Chausey to presumably rescue some holidaymakers from there.

And that’s the older of the two Joly France boats. You can tell that by looking at the windows. They are rectangular but in “landscape” rather than “portrait” mode.

That’s not quite all of the fun that was going on out there this afternoon.

While I was out there watching the activities of all of the boats off the end of the headland and in the Baie de Mont St Michel I was overflown by another light aeroplane. Unfortunately it was far too far out for me to be able to read its registration number.

And as you might expect, the records of the control tower at the airport here were of no use whatsoever. No planes were recorded as having landed round about this time so I couldn’t even check to see if a flight plan had been filed or if it had been picked up by radar at any point during the afternoon.

So I pushed along the path on top of the headland round to the viewing point overlooking the harbour, dodging the unmasked millions as I did so.

From the viewpoint there’s a good view looking down into the chantier navale. I was expecting to see some changes down there over the period while I had been away, but apparently not so. The yacht Rebelle is still down there, up on blocks at the side of the harbour where Aztec Lady lived for so long.

The fishing boat that moved in there not long before I went away is still there too, so there have been no goings, and no comings either, unless I missed them while I wasn’t here.

And there was nothing else going on very much so I went to look at the Citroen on the car park.

One of the things that I did earlier this morning that I have yet to mention was that I made some bread dough. On my return I gave it the second kneading, shaped it and put it in the bread mould.

Then I made a pile of pastry mix, lined a pie dish with some of it, made a filling out of diced apple, raisins, desiccated coconut, cinnamon and lemon juice, and then covered the pie with the rest of the pastry. It was then sealed, brushed with milk, dusted with brown sugar and priced to let out the steam.

With the pastry that was left and the filling that was left, I made an apple turnover.

That lot went into the oven and while they were baking I attended to the pizza. I’d taken the dough out of the freezer earlier and now I kneaded it, rolled it and put it in the pizza dish to rise. After an hour or so when it had risen I assembled the pizza with that I had (which wasn’t much).

And here are the finished products. The pizza is delicious even if it was undercooked because I forgot to turn up the oven after the bread.

As for the rest of the food you’ll have to wait until tomorrow because I had no room for any pudding or any bread tonight after the pizza. I shall look forward to that with eager anticipation.

So now that’s all done and I can think about going to bed. Despite the late start I’m ready for an early night what with having to do my radio programme in the morning. And that reminds me – I mustn’t forget to switch the alarms back on for tomorrow morning otherwise I’ll be in a right jam.

But not a jam pie. Thats maybe for a few weeks’ time.

Sunday 14th March 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I have had today.

This morning I didn’t leave my bed until 11:45 and I even spent a couple of hours asleep this afternoon so it was something of a wasted day.

But on reflection (which I was able to do some time later) I realised that it wasn’t such a wasted day at all.

After I’d finished yesterday’s notes I went and made the sourdough dough for the fruit loaf that I was planning to make today. But by the time that I’d finished I somehow seemed to have lost any tiredness that I might have done.

Not being able to go off to sleep I switched the computer back on. There was someone whom I knew in Florida who was on line so we started to chat and by the time that I was finally ready to go to bed it was … errr … 05:45.

And during the time that I’d been chatting I’d been dealing with the Greenland photos. Another pile of those disappeared and right now we are inspecting a seabird colony at the foot of the Sermitsiaq Glacier that leads from the Maniitsoq Ice Cap into the Evighedsfjorden or Kangerlussuatsiaq Fjord as it’s known today.

After the medication this morning I gave the sourdough its second kneading and put it into its mould and then prepared two lots of yeast-powered dough, one for the loaf of bread that I need for this week and the second batch for the next supply of pizzas.

While that was proofing I made myself some porridge and toast for breakfast, or rather, lunch actually, given the time.

Back in here I made another start on tidying up the back-up drive and despite falling asleep half-way through, I’m now up to 1.11TB of free space and had I remained awake I might even have managed to clear out some more but that was something of a forlorn hope.

It wasn’t until about 16:00 that I awoke and it took me until about 16:30 to recover my composure. I kneaded the dough for the loaf a second time, shaped it and put it into the mould to proof a second time. And then I went out for a walk.

Being rather later going out than normal, the tide was well out by now – farther out than I was expecting it to be.

Considering that it was a Sunday, I was surprised to see that there were so few people out there making the most of it. While there was a fair bit of wind today, it was much less than yesterday’s wind and it wasn’t really all that unpleasant.

If the weather the other day had been such to have permitted a couple of people to go for a swim in the sea, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, I would have expected them to have at least braved the weather that we were having today in order to have a picnic or two on the beach.

Anyway, having taken the photo of the beach I walked off along the path on top of the cliffs all the way down to the lighthouse at the end of the Pointe du Roc.

There were quite a few people out there on the lawn having a walk around in the nice weather, many of them with dogs. As an aside, taking animals for a walk is an acceptable way of being out in the streets after curfew here in France and according to stories that I have heard, the local animal shelters are now running out of dogs for adoption. So at least some things are benefiting from the curfew.

Across the lawn and the car park, I went down to the end of the headland but there was nothing going on out in the bay so I followed the path down on the other side of the cliff.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that after we had seen the two Joly France boats and Chausiais moored at the ferry terminal the other day, yesterday we saw one of the Joly France boats and Chausiais moored in the inner harbour.

We mused about the whereabouts of the other Joly France boats that was conspicuous by its absence.

But muse no longer, dear reader, because she’s now come back and is moored up in the loading bay in the inner harbour. Obviously we aren’t expecting the arrival of one of the Jersey Freighters right now.

Back at the apartment I had my coffee and carried on with sorting out the files on the computer. Right now I’m tidying up the directories on the big computer because some time in the near future I’ll be swapping a few hard drives around and I want to have everything sorted out for when I do.

In view of the kind of chaos that I’ve been in for so long in the past that’s taken me so long to sort out just now, I don’t want to repeat it.

Later on I knocked off and checked the dough over.

The two loaves in their moulds were ready – the sourdough had even risen a little, so I switched on the oven and when it was warm, I put them in to bake.

Meantime I kneaded the pizza dough, divided it into three, oiled two and put them into the freezer, and the third one I rolled out and put in the pizza tray.

When the pizza base had proofed I prepared the pizza and when the bread was cooked I took that out and put the pizza in.

hen that was cooked I had my tea and it was probably one of the tastiest that I have ever had. Definitely a success, this one. No pudding though because I’m not hungry. But there is plenty of apple pie in the fridge for pudding for the next few days.

Now that I’ve written up my notes I’m going to bed, regardless of how early it is. I need a good sleep because I have a radio programme to write up tomorrow and I want to be on form. I can’t afford too many days like I’ve had today.

But at least it wasn’t as total a disaster as I was thinking that it might have been had I not buckled down and did some photos while I was still awake earlier this morning.

Sunday 7th February 2021 – COLD, GREY, MISERABLE, DEPRESSING AND WINDY.

But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about the day instead.

With it being Sunday I had a nice little lie-in today.

It was rather a late night last night because I ended up playing the guitar right through into the small hours, for want of anything better to do. So being awake just before 10:00 and not leaving the bed until about 10:30 isn’t of any importance.

Surprisingly, after all the sleep that I had, I didn’t go all that far on my travels during the night. I only remember bits of this but I was with Terry and Liz and we were talking about my Welsh course. I’d somehow led them to believe that I was taking classes physically rather than virtually and taking place in North Wales, Bangor. Terry said that he had to go there so I replied that if it was a Monday I could take him there in the afternoon. He said that it wasn’t. We started to chat about Bangor and he asked where I stayed when I was up there. I replied out by THE MENAI BRIDGE which of course I didn’t stay there at all. I can’t really remember the rest of this.

But anyway it must have been a deep relaxing sleep if that’s all that I did.

As far as work goes, I really didn’t do all that much at all. After all, it is Sunday and I’m entitled to a day of rest here and there.

One thing that I did do however was to make a start on the ginger bug – the base that you use for brewing your own ginger beer. That’s now up and running and we’ll see how that develops over the next week or so, ready to make into ginger beer. Having over the last couple of weeks accumulated a few more flip-top pressurised bottles, I can do that now.

And while I was at it, I fed the sourdough

Of course there was the afternoon walk – no afternoon is complete without that.

Mind you, I would much rather have stayed indoors this afternoon because it was horrible out there. Only the guy windsurfing offshore at Donville les Bains would be taking any pleasure from the howling gale that was going on out there this afternoon.

With no-one about at all, I even tried to run along the footpath under the walls but gave it up after half a dozen steps because the wind brought me to a shuddering halt as I tried to make progress.

In view of the howling gale I had decided to take the low road under the walls rather than the high road around the headland.

And you can tell what the weather was like because there are so few people out and about compared to yesterday, and those who were had dressed themselves sufficiently to enable them to cope with the Arctic conditions. Even my ears were freezing as the wind somehow found its way to whistle through the woolly hat that I was wearing to keep my woolly head warm.

It was one of those days where I had no intention whatever of staying outside for a second longer than I had to. I was keen to come on home for my hot coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had a few occasions over the depths of darkest winter where we’ve been having some spectacular sunsets on the bay out there by the Brittany coast.

Whilst the day has lengthened to such an extent now, we aren’t having the same effects which is a pity. But there were a couple of holes in the thick, heavy clouds this afternoon and we ended up with another TORA TORA TORA moment this afternoon as rays of sun were shining down onto the sea.

There was someone else out there armed with a camera wandering around looking for objects to photograph but I can’t believe that he missed this view.

While I’d been out on my travels yesterday I’d seen a mural that someone had painted on a gate down in the Rue Carpentier, but there were so many people around it that it was impossible to photograph it.

Today I’d forgotten all about it – until a casual glance down the Rue des Degres brought me face-to-face with it again. There was no-one about here so I could photograph it at my ease, and I’m glad that I waited until today because photographing it like this from the far end of the side street has brought it out quite well.

But I’m curious to know what it’s all about. It’s rather reminiscent of the album cover of COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING but I’d be surprised if anyone recognised that album out here.

Around the walls I walked, to see what was happening. And from up here there’s a good view down onto the chantier navale.

There’s no change in the occupants – the two fishing boats, the yacht that has been there for ever and Aztec Lady which has been there for much longer than I was expecting, but I took a photo of it all because it’s not often that we see it from this perspective.

Seeing as I was dressed for the winter, I took the opportunity to take out the rubbish – the general garbage and the recyclable metal and glass. Such is the highlight of the day, hey?

Having taken out a lump of pizza dough from the freezer at lunchtime, it was now ready to prepare. I rolled it out and put it in the pan to proof again while I came back in here to edit some more photos from Greenland.

Once it had proofed, I switched on the oven and bunged in the rice pudding to cook while I prepared the pizza.

And when the pudding was ready, in went the pizza. Meanwhile, I parcelled up the remaining slices of apple pie, labelled them and put them in the freezer for when the rice pudding runs out.

The pizza was delicious but I can’t comment on the rice pudding because there wasn’t any room left inside me for dessert. So that will have to wait until tomorrow.

So now I’m off to bed for an early night. I need to have a good start tomorrow as I have nothing prepared for the radio so I’ll be doing a programme from scratch.

I’ve not crashed out at all today so despite the late start I’m tired and if I prolong it, it’s going to be another dismally late start tomorrow and I can’t afford that.

Saturday 14th November 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… the way things have been recently, I actually managed to beat the third alarm this morning.

Well, sort-of anyway. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor waiting for the world to stop spinning round before I stood up.

Mind you,with not having gone to bed until almost 01:00 this morning I did realise that it was going to be a very long day.

There was a sale onlast night and there were one or two things that I wanted so after I’d finished writing my notes I went to make my purchases.

Only to find that Paypal now has this weird system like my French bank does, that in order to make a purchase they will send a numerical code to your phone number for you to enter into a box on the vendor’s website. It’s a system that has never troubled me previously with Paypal so I’ve never had occasion to use it. So when I didn’t receive the text message I found to my dismay that it had been sent to my old number in Virlet which has of course been out of commission for well over 4 years.

Now you can change your ‘phone number, but only if you log in. And to log in, you need the four-figure number that they send to your phone. Which is still in the Auvergne.

The next step is to send Paypal a message. But to do that you need to log into your account, for which you need the four-figure number.

There is of course the option to telephone them, for which you don’t need to log in. But you can only call them between 09:00 and 19:30 Mondays to Fridays.

In the end, having exhausted ever other avenue, I created a new Paypal account, which was not easy, and thanked my stars that there was a one-hour time difference between here and the UK and for having an on-line access to my bank statements.

It just goes to prove a point doesn’t it? If something is going to go wrong, it’s going to go wrong with me.

With what little sleep I had, I still found time to wander off.I was in Nantwich last night. I had a little house there in Welsh Row that used to be an old shop at one time. I had all kinds of various friends and acquaintances. Two of them were people like Walter Billington used to be. They had been to visit me and I’d shown them out but I’d suddenly discovered them back in my house again searching for something. I went to grab them both but one got away. The other one I managed to grab hold of him and got him in an arm lock and stuck his head under a cold tap to cool him down, and phoned the police. It was a sergeant who knew me so I explained exactly what had gone on and where I was. He asked me “are you drowning someone?” I replied “yes”. In the end a black policewoman turned up outside in a Ford Anglia panda car so I dragged this guy downstairs, not caring if he was bumping along the floor or anything, let her in and told her the story. She made him sit in a corner while we went through the kind of things that he might have been looking at.

After the meds and transcribing the dictaphone notes I found some time to do some work on the outstanding blog entries, which makes a change. And then I went for a shower. At least my weight has stabilised – albeit at 100 grammes over one of my target weights. It’s not gone up any but it hasn’t gone down either.

And then I set off for the shops, in a howling gale. And I bumped into the itinerant who is still sleeping rough. I urged him to go to the Mairie to seek help, but he says that he will be OK. I’m not too sure about that but I’ve learnt from bitter experience, as I’m sure you have too, that trying to persuade people to do things, even if you think that it’s in their best interests, quite often rebounds.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were on our way to the shops the other day we saw some workmen busily starting to rip out the front of the cafe on the corner in the Rue Paul Poirier.

In just two days, they seem to have really gone to town with it, for not only have they completely ripped it out, they’ve erected a temporary facade around it to protect the building while they set about installing a new shop front.

It would be nice to think that they would replace it with something nice and aesthetically pleasing rather than something that is simply utilitarian. We can always live in hope, I suppose. It’s better than dying in despair.

Talking of utilitarian, this is what I was talking about.

Regular readers of this rubbish will call that we saw a similar temporary structure across the front of a shop in the Rue Couraye when we were out picking up our rail tickets the other day. That’s all been swept away and we’ve been left with this.

But whatever you might say about “utilitarian”, it’s a vast improvement on the cheap and dated 1960s aluminium shop front that was here before.

However there’s a singular lack of imagination around here because there have been three or four new shop fronts in the town since I’ve been living here and they all look like this. Here’s hoping that the one they are doing in the Rue Paul Poirier will be a little more individual.

No figs at the fruit and veg shop, La Halle Gourmande, and none at the Health Shop, La Vie Claire either. It’s the end of the season. So I asked the guy there what I should use in my kefir instead of figs and he gave me a bizarre look and said “dried figs” – the look being the kind of look that means “why aren’t you using dried figs to start with?”.

At LIDL they had a packet of dried figs and they had tons of other stuff too. But I was limited by what I could carry away. It’s a long walk home and the final climb is long and steep. I wish that they would hurry up and fix Caliburn.

Back here I put away the frozen food and one or two other things, made myself a hot chocolate and grabbed a slice of my banana bread, and then came in here to do some work. I was doing all right too up to a certain point, and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 13:45. 90 minutes I’d been out for, I reckon.

It took me a while to come round to my senses and then I ended up with a very late lunch.

That confused all of my timing and I was running well behind after that.

Later on in the afternoon I took myself off for a walk around the headland in the gale force wind that was blowing out there.

Although it was dry at the moment, there was plenty of rain about and the strong winds were blowing it all about at a ridiculous speed. The clouds were so thick and heavy that we were having some really unusual lighting effects in the sky like this one across the bay over the Brittany coast.

And with the wind, everything was changing so rapidly too. I’d go to take a photo of a particularly impressive scene and by the time that the camera had focused it had changed considerably.

Anoher thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we mentioned the other day is the phenomenon of different colours in the sea – this layering effect that we see every now and again.

There was another beautiful example this afternoon in the sea just off the Pointe du Roc. I’d struggled around the headland in the wind but when I saw this I considered it to be worth the effort.

We’ve seen plenty of photos of this point when the tide has been out and there’s nothing on what is at the moment the sea bed to cause this dramatic change in colouring. It’s not even the effect of the clouds obscuring the sun either because you can see what the weather is like.

With there being no-one about I had a little run down to the viewpoint overlooking the port and then had a slow walk the rest of the way home.

It didn’t turn out to be all that slow though because the rain that had been loitering around just offshore came in and got me and I ended up having to run for it. Not before I’d taken a nice photo of the harbour with the two Channel Islands ferries, Victor Hugo and Granville down there along with Spirit of Conrad and Aztec Lady.

The harbour gates can’t have long opened because we can see the trail of sediment flowing into the harbour from outside. It’s quite a dramatic contrast when you see it in this context.

Back here I played with a few photos, chatted on the internet with Rosemary and then it was time for the football. TNS v Barry Town.

And regrettably, Apart from the first 5 minutes, Barry didn’t start to play until there was 15 minutes to go by which they were already 2-0 down. They pulled back a goal pretty quickly but it was too little far too late.

One thing that I noticed though was that the Barry defenders were giving the attackers of TNS far too much time and space instead of closing them down. With the space that TNS was being gifteg, it’s no surprise that they were running the defence ragged and they really ought to have had a couple more, including what I considered to be a stonewall penalty.

But I really do wonder what Kayne McLaggon had to do to be awarded a free kick in his favour. The TNS central defenders were kicking lumps out of him and when he fell over the outstretched leg of a defender (no penalty, and quite right too) he was booked for diving, which was probably the most extraordinary decision that I noticed.

Tea at half time was out of a tin, followed by another slice of defrosted apple pie.

And then I went out walkies on my evening circuit.

As it happens, I didn’t go far. It was much later than usual, there’s a curfew too and the gale is still howling away like mad but I needed the exercise. The Rue du Nord was looking quite pretty in the streetlights and as that’s one of the bits that I run, I set off down there, to the surprise of a couple of small dogs and their owners.

At least it’s in the shelter out of the wind so that it didn’t bother me too much. I could run down there quite comfortably until I reach the incline, which brings me to a shuddering halt.

There’s an alleyway that cuts through there and leads to the Place Cambernon so I nipped down there instead of going all the way around the walls.

And it looks as if the Christmas decorations fairy has paid here a visit too. They might not be illuminated yet but they have certainly been installed. This is looking quite good, I reckon.

But the Place Cambernon isn’t. The bar La Rafale and the restaurant La Contremarche are closed. The place is like a ghost town. But then again, it would be even more of a ghost town if everyone caught the virus and died. I cleared off too, back home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow is a day of rest but I have carrots to freeze, bread to bake and pizza dough to make. My work is never completed, is it?

Friday 13th November 2020 – AFTER EVERYTHING …

… that I wrote yesterday evening about an early night and an early start? it was … errr … 10:30 when I finally crawled out of bed.

If you think that that is devastating, just let me say that after finishing my notes, I started on a little project of no significance, a project that I dip into every now and again, and by the time I started to feel tired enough to go to bed, it was after 04:00.

So 10:30 isn’t really all that bad, I suppose, and at least there was some work of a sort being done.

During the night I’d been on my travels again. I was going somewhere laat night on a bus or something so I had to leave my car, the mk V Cortina NMP parked up at the side of the road. I was going to be away ages so I was worried about leaving it there for so long but as the bus passed by I could see two of the guys from the taxis opening it and climbing in Obviously they needed it for things so that was OK. I ended up round at my mothers where suddenly I had some kind of panic attack – what about all my personal stuff that I’d left in the car? What was going to happen if the people at the taxis got their hands on it? But anyway I got dressed, in a pair of grey trousers that I wore when I was at Shearings. And as I pulled the belt tight, it went two notches over where it usually went which was strange. As I was setting off to visit the parents of a friend my mother shouted “make sure you ring them to tell them that you are coming. Don’t just turn up unannounced”. I thought that that would be difficult to arrange but I said nothing. However my mother said it twice so I wondered what was happening here.

My Covid friend was on line so we had a chat while I finished off what I’d been doing last night. And with the late start that took me right the way up to lunchtime. Something of a waste of a morning, really.

After lunch, fighting off the temptation to go back to sleep, I made a start on amending one of the journal entries from my voyage around Central Europe but I ran aground half-way through.

There was enough time however for me to go off on my afternoon walk around the headland.

The tide was well on its way in when I went out, and I noticed the effect of the waves breaking on the rocks that were there on the beach and which by now had disappeared beneath the waves near the marker light for the rocks.

They were actually submerged but only to a very minimal depth so although you couldn’t see them, you could see the waves breaking on them.

It was something that held my interest for a couple of minutes and then I pushed on, passing three or four others who were out there this afternoon.

There was very little going on out at sea this afternoon – no boats of any description in the English Channel or the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But there was an exciting phenomenon occurring down the bay round by Carolles. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the sunlight reflected off the windows of St Pair sur Mer in the late afternoon earlier in the year. Of course, the sun has moved round in the sky and we now have the windows in Carolles picking up the glint of the sun.

You wouldn’t credit just how dark it’s starting to go now, even though it’s only about 16:00. Winter is going to be upon us a darn sight sooner than we think.

Still no change in the occupants of the chantier navale. The yacht is still there, as is the vessel Ceres II

But it was interesting out in the tidal harbour though. The gates must have been on the point of opening and boats were queueing up to go into the inner harbour. Here we have one of the Joly France boats, the older of the two, and also one of the two trawlers, either Coelacanthe or her sister La Tiberiade.

There were a couple of other boats in the queue too, and as I watched, the harbour gates opened and the boats went steaming … “dieseling” – ed … into port

I came to the conclusion that the trawler that I had seen just now was Coelacanthe, and I concluded that for a very good reason too.

Moored up at the Fish Processing Plant was her sister and I could clearly see her name on the side of her superstructure. She’s Le Tiberiade, and one of these days I’ll be able to tell them apart. I’ve noticed a couple of little differences between them when they have been next to one another.

She’s busy unloading her catch right now. There’s a van with an opening cargo door that looks as if it might be taking away some of the seafood, and the tractor is busy negotiating the loading ramp with a full trailer.

While I was there, I watched Coelacanthe pass through the gates and into the harbour.

Once inside she began to perform a little nautical danse macabre as she made for her mooring at the rear of the two Channel Island Ferries. And I noticed that Thora was still in port this afternoon. It seems that for one reason or another, she’s not benefitting from these rapid turnrounds that I’ve mentioned before.

But one thing that I did notice from the image that I couldn’t see with the naked eye is that she has steam … “diesel” – ed … up, so it does look as if she’s actually on the point of heading out to the open sea.

And it all was turning out to be quite interesting in there this afternoon.

As Thora “cast off forr’ard, cast off aft” in the inner harbour, Le Tiberiade did likewise and as the one headed for the harbour gate so did the other from the other side, out of view of each other. Half expecting a “Greek meets Greek at the Hull Paragon, Valentine’s Day 1927” moment, I gripped the edge of my seat in eager anticipation.

However le Tiberiade just about made it into the harbour without a collision, Thora

While I’d been wandering around, I’d noticed that the sea was becoming rather rough. And with the tide being well-in right now I was keen to see what was happening down at the Plat Gousset.

And it was a good move too because even with 90 minutes to go before high tide, the waves were coming in with something of a powerful force and smashing into the sea wall over there.

There weren’t very many people out there enjoying the spectacle from close to, but I imagined that they would all be out there a little bit later at high tide when they really would be treated to something of a spectacle.

By now I imagined that Thora would now be rounding the headland on her way out to sea, so I retraced my steps of earlier up to the viewpoint next to the College Malraux to see how she was doing.

And eventually she came a rattling around the headland into the teeth of the wind and the waves and set course for St Helier. It’s not going to be an easy ride for her in this kind of sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I keep on saying that one of these days I’ll hitch a ride on her when she has a couple of trips in rapid succession and see how she does. Luckily I’m in a good position in that I hold a British passport and a Permanent Residency Card for France so there needs to be little in the way of border controls to ease my passage.

But that’s not going to be for a while with all of this Covid going on. No-one will be going anywhere for quite a while yet.

And so I watched Thora battle her way through the waves for a while and then headed for home.

On the way across the car park I’d seen Gribouille, the big ginger cat, sitting on his windowsill so I went to give him a stroke. And there I fell in with his owner, and learnt some pretty sad news. She’s had a couple of falls just recently, during one of which she fractured her had and it had to be stapled together. But as she doesn’t seem to be able to cope particularly now, she’s moving into sheltered accommodation

Of course, she’s taking my mate with her, but regardless of that, it’s another convivial soul from the building who is moving away. Nothing stays the same for long, and rightly so, but it’s a shame when people move away like this and break up a happy little circle.

Back here I caught up with a few notes and then went to make some kefir. This morning, I’d started on the last bottle and there was another batch brewing nicely.

The four kiwi fruits that I had bought three weeks ago were now nice and ripe so I peeled them and threw them in the whizzer, followed by a generous handful or two of grapes.

Having whizzed them around for quite a while to extract as much juice as possible and then passed it all through my network of meshes and filers into the big jug.

Having done that, I drained off the brewing kefir through a very fine-mesh filter and added it to the juice, stirring it well in, leaving an inch or two of liquid in the bottom to keep the kefir grains covered.

Several slices of lemon, a fig bisected and 40 grammes of sugar went into my big jar, followed by 2 litres of filtered water. That’ll brew now for a few days while I wonder where I’m going to get some figs from for the next batch after that as I’ve now run out.

The mixed kefir and juice was then strained through a mesh coffee-filter into the various flip-top bottles that I use. They’ll be put into a cool place out of direct light now to complete the second fermentation and in a couple of days they will be ready to drink.

But I made a bit of a boo-boo here. Remember the pineapple slices that I’d had the other day? I’d put the syrup on one side to use in my kefir today but I’d forgotten it. I don’t know whether it’ll keep for four or five days now.

All of that took so much time that I didn’t have my guitar practice, which was disappointing.

Instead, I ended up with some of the best taco rolls that I’ve ever made. That chick pea and couscous stuff that I used in error instead of the bulghour certainly made a difference. And my defrosted apple pie was delicious too

later on I went out for my runs around the walls.

No-one else was out there, everywhere else was quiet, not even the Pizza van in the Place Czmbernon tonight with the lockdown. No-one down in town either.

I had a look to see if the Christmas decorations had gone up in the Rue Paul Poirier but while there is certainly something or other, and several thereof, strung up across the street, there’s nothing illuminated yet.

All of this is to come very soon, I imagine. But I’ll find out more in due course. I ran on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow it’s shopping day, and I have to track down some figs. That’s not going to be easy because I’ll still without Caliburn so wherever I go and whatever I buy, I’ll have to carry it home and I’m not looking forward to that.

Luckily the freezer is pretty well stocked up and that should keep me going for a week or so but I really do need to organise myself better. I don’t know what it is that I’m doing right now but whatever it is, I’m doing it all wrong.

Tuesday 10th November 2020 – WHAT A …

… bad day this was today.

But I could console myself (although it isn’t appropriate to do so) in the fact my day was nothing like as bad as that of some people.

And therein lies the root of it all. Just as I was going to bed last night, one of my dearest friends came on line for a chat and to tell me the news that she has contracted Covid, and is in isolation in a separate room in her own home away from her family.

We ended up talking to each other until about 03:00 about this and that until she decided that she needed to go to sleep. And so no chance of my waking up at 06:00. 09:20 was a bit more like it, and then I would have stayed in bed until later had I had the choice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t have too many friends – I go for quality, not quantity – but that’s now two of them, in widely separated parts of the World who are suffering. These are probably going to be the first of many. This virus is coming too close for comfort and I’m not sure how the rest of us are going to escape.

And as I write this, I discover that another two friends of mine suffered from it too, but right at the beginning of the outbreak and so they didn’t really publicise it like people would subsequently.

Anyway, with my running late, I had to prepare for my Welsh class, which took longer than it ought, and when the computer, when I switched it on to connect to the Zoom site decided to perform an upgrade. I had a feeling that it was going to be one of those days.

Our teacher didn’t help much either. She took us all the way through the course, all 2.5 hours of it, without a single break and my head had turned to jelly a long time before the end of the class.

After lunch, and more of my delicious bread, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

During the night we had been watching some kind of report on the economy in north-east France, an industrial town, about the father of a family who worked on a railway siding that served a couple of factories and how things had already been difficult when they had closed the line for a while to replace everything but now they were talking about the factories closing down with people changing habits by buying from abroad etc. They were saying what a hard time people like this father were going to have, yet there he was. He had 8 children and living in some sort of primitive conditions with a tin bath. he was saying that by the time the 8th child got into the bathwater it was pretty black. It would be even worse by the time all of this work had been going on with the dust and everything that it was creating. My friends and I appeared to have very little sympathy for him because he seemed to be one of these people who was stuck in a routine and had a total lack of imagination. All he could do in his spare time was to just breed children

With one or two other things that needed some attention, it was soon time to go out for my afternoon walk

Looking out across the bay I saw what can only be described as a “mariner’s delight”. And any ancient mariner – and, indeed, a few modern ones too – will tell you about these.

A clear but moisture-laden air is blown across the sea by the wind and then hits the coastline. To cross the coastline the air has to rise up and the change in temperature and pressure causes the moisture to condense.

It’s a sure sign of land ahead and mariners throughout the centuries will have their eyes glued to the horizon looking for these cloud banks as they cross vast expanses of water.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE SAW A BEAUTIFUL ONE when we were in Labrador in 2010.

While I was peering out to sea I saw movement on the water over by the Ile de Chausey and it was heading my way.

And so I carried on walking, knowing that it was drawing even closer to me as I advanced along the footpath. Of course I had a really good idea of who it might be but nevertheless I took a photo of it for closer examination

Sure enough, I was perfectly correct, not that there was ever any doubt. Our old friend Joly France is on her way back from the islands accompanied by a squadron of birds of some description.

Round on the point at the headland and I had a look out to sea westwards towards the Brittany coast.

The weather is completely different here as you can see. It’s almost completely overcast. There are a few obvious gaps in the cloud cover and the bright sunlight is coming streaming through them onto the surface of the water.

This is the kind of thing that is well-worth a photo. It has produced quite a surreal effect over there and that kind of view would be almost impossible to reproduce artificially. Nevertheless it would have been nice to catch a trawler or something in the sunlight.

By this time, Joly France had caught up with me and had come around the headland into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

It’s the older one of the two Ile de Chausey ferries. You can tell that bu the fact that the upper deck superstructure is larger than on the other one and the windows on the main deck are more square than deep-rectangular.

But even with confinement it seems that the ferries are still working. As yet I’m unconvinced of the wisdom of that decision as it will merely entice second-home owners and tourists out to the island, taking the virus with them.

With this virus, which has a shelf-life of two days, the only hope of beating it is for a complete lockdown for a couple of weeks. Half-hearted measures aren’t going to be of any use whatsoever.

Leaving Joly France aside for the moment, I wandered off along the footpath to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour to see what was going on.

And we have a visitor in port today. Normandy Trader is here on one of her runs from Jersey and back again. But she’s not moored in the usual place for loading and unloading. She should be underneath the crane that’s round to the left out of shot.

All that I can think of is that maybe Thora was in port too and had needed the crane for loading and unloading but I must have missed her. It can’t be because of Chausiais as she was moored up at the ferry terminal.

Back here there were still a few things to do and so I never did get round to doing what I had planned to do today. But I had a good and enjoyable session on the guitars his evening – more Bowie stuff again on the bass followed by some Creedence Clearwater Revival, and then another 30-minute concert with the acoustic 6-string.

And my singing is improving too. But before anyone gets excited about it, just let me say that it couldn’t get any worse.

Tea was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer, followed by pineapple and vegan vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. There’s actually some room in the freezer now too, which is a surprise.

Just as I was about to go out for my walk, the telephone rang. It was Rosemary who wanted a “quick chat”. And we excelled ourselves tonight with a ‘phone call that ran on for a grant total of 2 hours and 50 minutes. That must be a new record, especially as during the chat I was also conducting two discussions, one with Liz and the other one with TOTGA, on the internet at the same time.

Not that that’s a problem, because no-one ever knows what I’m talking about so it doesn’t ever make any difference however many people I’m talking to.

But having sorted everyone out, no matter how late it is, I’m off to bed. But I can’t go to bed without mentioning one final thing.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the question of Brexit has affected many of us who left the UK to seek our fortunes in the Real World. It’s caused all kinds of distress and dismay and we are all having to cope with it as best we can, jumping through all kinds of hoops to ensure that we can keep our homes and our livelihoods here.

Between us all, some of my friends and I have been obliged to apply for (and be granted) Permanent Residency in France. Others of my acquaintance from the UK have now obtained Canadian, Irish, Belgian and German nationality, and probably a few other nationalities too.

And so today it’s “hats off” to Grahame, a regular reader of this rubbish who has proudly told me that he is now an official Austrian citizen. Well done you.

When I think of the talent that the UK is losing, just among my own circle of friends, by this stupid, reckless decision no wonder the country is in such a mess.

And that reminds me – if you want to say tell me something, exchange points of view or simply say “hello”, there’s a contact button on the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

Send me a message and let me know that you are here.

Saturday 31st October 2020 – I DID HAVE …

… my lie-in this morning.

Until all of about 10:00 too. Mind you, seeing as I was still up and about at 03;30 it wasn’t all that much of a lie-in today. Not at all. For some unknown reason, despite my exhausting day I just couldn’t go to sleep.

Anyway, when I listened to the dictaphone this morning- or what was left of this morning – there was some stuff on there from yesterday too. So first thing that I did was to add all of that into yesterday’s entry. Then I could concentrate on where I’d been last night and, more importantly, who came with me.

There was some kind of football match going on last night, a team of grown-up men if you like and they were playing in the Cup against another team. This other team sent out its juniors to face them for some unknown reason and Zero was there playing centre-forward. There were two matches that they had to play and this team of kids won them both, with Zero scoring a couple of important goals playing centre-forward. It’s nice to see her around on my travels.

Later on I was in a van or pickup, presumably Strider and I was waiting at some traffic lights. There were three or four people behind me. I was editing Strider’s signwriting while I was waiting at the lights. I could do that with the computer and it would change all over the van. I was busy doing that and the lights changed so I pulled off. There was a big pickup and another van behind me. We advanced up to another road junction and turned right I suddenly realised why this road had so much traffic on it. It was the main road from Ottawa to Québec and I’d just turned off the main road from Montreal to the east so it’s bound to be extremely busy here. It went through a beautiful pass, a big main road going through this beauiful pass and Québec City was just at the end of it. I thought “why didn’t I come this way before because it seems to be so much quicker. The I realised that going home from Adventure Canada the coach had gone this way; He went to the other side of Ottawa to drop off Castor and Pollux and then turned round and gone back to Ottawa to drop off their grandparents. That seemed to be such a sensible way of doing things and I wondered why I had never thought of doing that before either. And all the time I was wondering what these people in these vehicles were thinking with Caliburn’s signwriting changing just like that while I was either parked at those lights or starting to drive away.

There’s something else that spun into my mind as well, to do with a river. There was a girl doing something in this river, it might have been Zero or it might have been Castor. We were all alongside his river – there was something going on on it and I can”t remember very much now. Later on they drained the river and I started looking on this river bed for something that was concerning this girl. I was chatting to a few of the organisers and they were saying something like “yes well someone found something and we saw them using it”. I wondered whether it might have been this girl who had found it without actually telling me. That was a big disappointment for me because I was hoping to find it and give it to her as a way of drawing her attention to me. But I don’t remember very much about this – it was all very confusing.

And there was far more to this series of voyages too but seeing as you are probably eating a meal right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

After hat, I went and had a shower and washed my clothes. I need to look as pretty as I can s eeing as I’m staying here until at least Friday. I say “at least” because with more and more European states closing their borders to travel it might not be as easy as I think it might be to return home.

And while we’re on the subject of lockdowns … “well, one of us is” – ed … the Tory Party’s social media site had a post pinned to the top accusing Keir Starmer of “playing party politics with people’s lives” by demanding a second lockdown. It mysteriously disappeared earlier this morning and then later this evening the Tory Party announced the same measures that the Labour Party had demanded and which they had criticised.

You really couldn’t make this up.

After lunch I sat down here for a few minutes – and promptly crashed out. A really deep and depressing and disappointing sleep that lasted for almost an hour.

Once I pulled myself together I went out for an afternoon walk around.

Not that I went very far before I came to a halt. There’s been a building site at the back here that has been abandoned for longer than I can remember and which had become a local rubbish dump.

A few months ago I noticed that it had been fenced off, and today I noticed that there was a skip there loaded up with much of the rubbish that had been abandoned. It might be that work is goign to restart there sometime soon and if do, that should be very interesting.

Maybe it’s going to be an extension of this place.

If you’re wondering about the photos by the way, the battery in the NIKON 1 J5 has gone flat on me yet again.

It’s a good job that I had my phone with me right now.

So having dealt with that, I pushed onto the Tiensesteenweg where I was nearly squidged by a kid on a scooter.

In the street there’s more stuff of interest going on. There’s a building here that’s been knocked down. The site is fenced off and there’s some heavy machinery there. That presumably means that they are going to be rebuilding something else in its place.

In fact, there were several places up and down the Tiensesteenweg where there is redevelopment taking place. Despite the virus and the retraction of the economy, it still seems to be “full speed ahead” at the moment in this respect.

Down the Tiensesteenweg I went, into the Herbert Hooverplein and then into the Ladeuzeplein towards the main shops.

Down at the bottom end of the Square there was a couple having fun with a camera and tripod. One of the things that I seem to do is to spend a lot of my time taking photos of people taking photos.

And for a change, there weren’t too many people about here today. It seems that people here might be taking this health crisis seriously which can only be good news. It won’t disappear if people don’t treat t with respect and obey the rules.

Mind you, that wasn’t the case here. The maket in the Brusselsestraat is still open and there’s even more chaos than normal.

This is what I don’t understand. With a shelf-life of just 14 days, thus virus could be halted if they simply had three weeks of draconian restrictions. Half-hearted measures are not going to be good for anything.

And on the market there was a stall selling bratwurst – ed and that got me thinking. The idea of making sausages out of unruly children might be the answer to the post-Brexit food catastrophe in the UK. Perhaps they need to think about that to go along with hedgerow foraging and apple scrumping.

There was some more shopping that I needed to so for a change I decided to go on to the Carrefour supermarket on the edge of town.

My route took me down through the Grote Beguinhof, the ancient area on the edge of the city which were formerly a kind of almshouses. Having been derelict for years they are now student accommodation for the University here and it really is a beautiful area.

It’s a pity that it didn’t become private accommodation because an apartment in here would be wonderful. I would be right at home here.

There’s a dual carriageway not too far away from here and a subway takes pedestrians and cyclists underneath.

But the River Dijle flows along right by here and it was looking really nice at this time of the year with the leaves almost all off the trees.

At the Carrefour there was plenty of vegan food, much of which was reduced so I stocked up with a few extra items for my diet. But looking at the selection, I decided that I would come here again the next time that i come to Leuven. There’s much more choice here.

On the way back I went to have a look at the Stadion den Dreef.

Yes, I’m definitely missing my live football here. OH Leuven were promoted to the Premier Division for this season but with matches being played behind closed doors, there won’t be any chance of seeing them again for a while.

But there was football on the internet so I came home;

In the Welsh Premier League we were treated to Haverfordwest County against Bala Town. Haverforwest were promoted this year and I’ve seen them a couple of times this season.

Each time that I’ve seen them they have played quite well and deserve their mid-table position. They gave leaders TNS a fright the other week and this week we were entertained to an exciting 1-1 drawn. And had they been more clinical up front, they might have had more of it.

Tea was burgers and pasta with tomato sauce followed by tinned peaches and ice cream.

Bed-time now because I’m going out for the day tomorrow so I need to be on form. Let’s hope that it’s stopped raining.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: late night

Friday 13th January 2023 – IT JUST GOES …

Thursday 5th January 2023 – I HAVEN’T SET …

Monday 2nd January 2023 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

Sunday 1st January 2023 – EVEN AS I …

Sunday 21st August 2022 – HAVING FINISHED …

Tuesday 16th August 2022 – SUMMER IS BACK!

Friday 30th July 2021 – THE THING THAT …

Thursday 29th July 2021 WHILE I WAS …

Sunday 20th June 2021 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Sunday 14th March 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Sunday 7th February 2021 – COLD, GREY, MISERABLE, DEPRESSING AND WINDY.

Saturday 14th November 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Friday 13th November 2020 – AFTER EVERYTHING …

Tuesday 10th November 2020 – WHAT A …

Saturday 31st October 2020 – I DID HAVE …

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