Tag Archives: place d’armes

Monday 6th April 2020 – OHHH NOT ANOTHER …

… bad day today!

And I was so careful too about going to bed at a reasonable time too.

But as for sleep, I was awake for most of the night with a really bad attack of cramp that persisted for hours. At one stage I was hopping around the bedroom trying to find some way of easing it off.

It goes without saying that I missed the alarms this morning. 07:40 when I awoke. And nothing on the dictaphone either. It can’t have been much of a night.

After the meds then I made a start on chopping up digital audio files. One or two of those were straightforward but the others certainly weren’t and took quite a bit of effort.

There were a few interruptions too. Breakfast was one of them of course, and then we had an impromptu telephone conference call for the radio, about our Grande Marée Virtuelle

And if you want to know what that is all about, you need to listen to THE RADIO at 17:00 European Time, 16:00 UK Time and 11:00 Toronto time on Wednesday this week.

Anyway, it took an age, all told, to finish off this batch of files. And all the time, the pile is diminishing. And even more interestingly, this pile isn’t as big as it might look because there are several albums there that I won’t be recording. In fact I’m not quite sure how come I have them – there are albums here that I never ever remember buying and some that I wouldn’t ever have bought at all.

With no time to go for bread, I used a couple more taco rolls with salad, and this seems to be working quite well. So much so that if things worsen here and the lockdown continues, I might thing of this as a long-term temporary solution.

This afternoon, I decided on a new tack. Rather than mess about with different lots of dictation all over the place, I chose the music for another couple of radio broadcasts.

One of the is all joined up and edited and I’ll do the other tomorrow morning, and then write out all of the text, for those two as well as the missing bits for the previous two. I’ll do all of the dictation then at one go.

That took me all the way up to guitar-practising time and having been listening to “Carry On” by Crosby Stills and Nash, I had a play around with that. And it’s easy to play it simply, but a darned sight more difficult to play it properly.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with more rice pudding for dessert. And it really is one of the best that I’ve made and I wish I knew what it was that I’ve done differently.

Just for a change I was late going out for my evening walk. But I had a good run in a couple of stages all the way up to the end of the Pointe du Roc.

The sun had long-since disappeared but there was a glorious reddish tinge in the sky over on the horizon somewhere in the general direction of the Brittany coast.

It was far too good to miss out on a photograph of course, although the guy in the Coastguard station gave me a weird look.

And the flock of birds that fle across the camera as I was taking the photo was interesting too

Last night I’d taken a photo of the Pointe de Carolles in the dusk, so tonight I reckoned that I would move the camera around a little.

So tonight we have the new road that goes into town with, to the left of the harboure entrance light, the town of Jullouville and then to the left of that, the town of St Pair Sur Mer with, if we believe what we are told, all of the Parisians who have fled the city to the coast and have brought the virus with them.

And from here I had another run along the top of the wall overlooking the harbour and the chantier navale

And we have more excitement in there tonight.

We’ve seen for the last week or so the two large trawler-type fishing vessels that have been up on blocks down there. It seems that today, they have acquired a new neighbour. We’re seeing a third one in there now to keep them company.

Social distancing, of course, as you can see.

Two more lengths of run (making 5 in total) saw me back at the apartment and writing up my notes for the day. I’ll go to bed in a minute

Sunday 5th April 2020 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… wasted day today. And it’s my own fault too.

It all started to go wrong last night. As I was preparing to go to bed, some decent music came on the playlist. One thing leads to another, and once you have started, you’ve simply no idea how many other things there are.

It was one good piece of music after another, all kinds of nostalgia came flooding back (this is what happens when you start to listen to music that you haven’t heard for 40 years and more) and in no time at all I was in the depths of a depression.

So much so that, believe it or not, it was 04:00 when I finally went to bed. And I still wasn’t able to sleep.

At some point, I must have dozed off, because I awoke at 11:00. That was a good start to the day – having missed half of it. And even worse, it was 11:45 when I finally hauled myself out of bed.

Nothing on the dictaphone, which is hard to believe after the exertions of just recently, so after the medication I attacked the digital sound files.

That’s another four albums out of the way, reasonably straightforwardly. Only a couple of tracks that weren’t readily available and which took some tracking down. And while I was at it, I disposed of some more photos from July 2019. I’m not up to 19070400 or thereabouts, which means that there’s only about another 1200 from that month to deal with.

And then there are August’s (of which there are so much more) and September’s and October’s too.

That meant that breakfast was at the rather democratic time of … errr … 13:45, which is a late time even for lunch. And the apple purée is running low and I don’t have enough apples to make any more. I sense that a supplementary trip to the shops is on the cards some time soon.

After breakfast – or lunch, or whatever you might like to call it – I buckled down to the 2 radio projects on which I have been working.

They are both done now except for the speech for the last tracks which needs to be recorded, edited and merged into position. And they could so easily have been finished had I not … errr … closed my eyes for a while.

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

It’s just some more stuff to do tomorrow, isn’t it?

There was the hour or so on the guitars and I spent much of the time working out the rhythm and bass parts to U2’s “In God’s Country” and David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”.

Tea was another vegan pizza with the last pizza base, followed by one of the best rice puddings that I’ve ever made.

My daily exercise was after tea of course.

It was going dark now because I was so late, but I took a photo of one of my running spots in the rue du Roc. I start way back there beyond the farthest street light, and you can see the rise that always brings me to a halt.

The usual spot where I run out of steam is just by where the hedge begins but just recently I’ve been pushing on to the point at which I took the photo.

“Nothing much to shout about” I hear you say, but it is at my age and in my state of health. And it’s just one of four running tracks that i’m using

Feeling in something of a good form, I ran across the lawn to the top of the cliffs where the lighthouse looked really good, silhouetted as it was against the darkening evening sky.

That was well worth a photo too, and it’s come out rather well.

And so it should, because I’m back in business again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had had an issue with the big NIKON D500 CAMERA. It wasn’t reading any memory card.

However, there is a second slot for XQD memory cards, an obsolete but much better form of memory storage.

So even though it’s much more expensive than SD format, I ordered a card to see whether the fault lay in the camera or simply in the SD card slot.

As you can see from the quality of the photos, like this one of the Pointe de Carolles, the XQD memory card seems to be functioning perfectly well.

The fault must therefore be in the SD card slot and I don’t know what to do about that. It’s probably going to be an expensive repair and unnecessary too as long as I can obtain XQD cards.

But one thing that I won’t be doing if I can help it is to take out the cards to upload the photos to the computer.

It’s only a passing thought of course, but I wonder if the regular removal of the card is what has caused the card slot to fail.

So once the card is in, it stays in and I’ll upload it using a cable, like I’ve been doing for the last few weeks with the NIKON 1 J5 and the old NIKON D3000

With the new card, I took a photo of the port with Chausiais and Joly France moored up over at the ferry terminal, and then carried on.

A poor woman had the shock of her life as I came round a corner at something rather less than a canter – but not as much of a shock as I had.

But anyway, 5 runs tonight and a good bit of distance too. This is starting to be a bit more like it.

But for how long? It’s well over an hour since I came back in and i’m still out of breath. But I must push on. Keeping fit, losing weight and watching my health is how I’m going to keep on going, not to mention an improvement in my diet.

But hard work tomorrow. There’s still plenty to do and less time to do it of course.

And the weather has changed. In the space of two days we’ve gone from being far too cold to having the heat switched off and the windows opened.

Has Spring finally arrived?

Saturday 4th April 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

… when I’ve been nothing like as productive as I ought to be.

And that’s a shame because it all started so well too. I comfortably beat the third alarm to my feet and after the medication I attacked the dictaphone.

Once again, the excesses of the couple of nights just recently seem to have been curbed. But while the quality seems to have been cut down, it’s done nothing the stem the emotion.

Last night I was in hospital and that I was going to have an operation. It was an appendicitis operation but it was on my throat of all places. Af course these were strange times with all kinds of different people having all kinds of different things wrong with them because of this virus and I couldn’t get into the hospital at all, but in the end they let me in. I’d been on board a ship which may or may not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour going round the Far North of Scotland and they had given me some gas anaesthetic. They clamped it over my nose and mouth and started to feed me the anaesthetic and I wasn’t going under. I was just sitting there looking at them, that kind of thing. They got a teddy bear out and started to play with this teddy bear to try to distract me but that didn’t work. In the end they simply turned up the gas until the gas was full on. Eventually I managed to pass out. Even though I was unconscious I could hear them moving all the knives, equipment and everything around. I was absolutely dreading what was going to happen next and this was another occasion where I actually awoke myself in order to avoid it.

There have been one or two like that just recently where the situation has been such that I’ve been obliged to awaken myself to avoid it. I’ve often said … “on many occasions” – ed … that the whole idea of hospîtals and surgery and all of that kind of thing is something that I can’t stomach.

What I’ve been going through this last four years or so, with hospitals, operations, tubes and pipes and all that kind of thing is my worst nightmare and there are medical actions that have been proposed to me that I’ve turned down flat because I couldn’t even stand the thought of them, not the action.

It’s the law in France that any surgical intervention, no matter what, has to be explained in precise detail to the victim and his or her consent obtained. When they wanted to do stuff to me I flatly refused to hear what they wanted to tell me and there was something of a stand-off.

In the end they had to prepare a document to the effect that I would give my consent to the operation but I didn’t want to hear anything about it. They weren’t sure just how that would stand up in Court if it came to that, but that’s all that they were getting from me.

After breakfast I made a start on the digitalising of my album collection. No major issues today except that one of them took a good while to deal with. And Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a good chat.

As a result of all of this, I was late going for my shower and even later going out to the shops. No queue when I arrived (there was when I left) and I was able to buy most things that I needed.

No small tins of kidney beans and still no pizza bases. No pizza flour either, so I bought some ordinary flour and I’m going to have a go, once I’ve used the last base in my stock this weekend, to make a pizza base. I have yeast, salt and oil and I can’t think what else I might need.

But years ago, I used to buy flat round bread in Belgium, slice it horizontally rather than vertically, and use that as a pizza base. There’s always a way, and I seem to remember that the bread base worked quite well.

There was ice cream that needed to be bought but I baulked at the price that LeClerc wanted for the Alpro stuff. However, they had a tub left of that delicious banana sorbet.

Back here, Laurent had returned to me his comments on our project so after a little bit here and there I could send it off for consideration. We then ended up in a discussion about the audio diary that we are keeping.

In between all of this, I was speaking to someone on the internet. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the hi-fi that’s connected to the computer is in the process of giving up the ghost. 18 or so years, 6 of which were being stored in a damp shed, hasn’t done it any favours.

I’m not going to waste my money on any cheap stuff, seeing as how much time I spend here and the kind of work that I do, so I’ve been talking to a specialist place in Germany about what I need to have some really decent desktop quality.

Eventually I was able to turn my attention to my own radio projects, but not as much as I could because I ended up … errr … relaxing for a while. And a proper, deep relax it was too and that was quite depressing.

As a result I ended up not even finishing one, never mind both of them. So although it’s against my principles, I’ll have to work tomorrow – my day off.

After the session on the guitar, I made myself some tea. Saturday night so it’s usually a meal out of a tin, but the way things are, I’m not doing anything with my tins right now.

But I have plenty of vegan burgers which are quick to cook and anyway, I believe that some vegan burger mix is heading my way in the post sometime. So pasta, veg and tomato sauce with a vegan burger it was too.

The last of the apple pie and the last of the Alpro soya ice cream. Tomorrow, it’s the day that I cook a dessert and I haven’t had rice pudding for a good while, so I reckon that we’ll have a rice pudding for the next few days.

That was the cue for me to go off for my evening walk.

It was still light out there, but the sun was quite low in the sky. I ended up with this beautiful image across the day of the sun shining directly into the windows of this building on the hilltop across the bay at the back of town.

It would have been a beautiful sunset tonight, but we had a good one last night and I don’t want to clutter things up with too much of the same photograph.

It’s hard enough as it is for me to find things of interest in the time that I’m allowed out. I mean – we haven’t had a “pathetic parking” photo for weeks.

But returning to the sunset, there were all kinds of people out there enjoying it. Almost every secluded nook and cranny had a couple of people in it, keeping out of the way of their neighbours and, I imagine, out of the way of any surveillance.

What a state in which we are living. We are told that it is for our own good, which is probably correct right now, but it’s also correct to say that it’s usually been a war or a violent revolution that has been required to take back control from a fascist once he’s laid his hands on it.

The easiest way to control a population is to frighten it. It was a principle of the Nazis expounded by Goering. At the moment, the people don’t need any more frightening in order to let themselves be controlled, but it’s going to be interesting to see what steps the Governments will be taking in the future to control the population in this measure.

How many more virus scares will we have once this one is out of the way?

Talking of scaring people, anyone who had the wind put up them by the Hitchcock film THE BIRDS won’t have enjoyed what’s been happening in the old walled town just now.

Whatever is going on I really don’t know, but the seagulls are becoming a lot less nervous of people and are clamouring around so much more. In fact there was quite a flock of them this evening circling around above the old town this evening.

Whoever was out there walking this evening, I hope that he was wearing a hat. These gulls have an accuracy that would put Bomber Command to shame

And keeping up with the routine, I managed all four runs tonight and, much to my surpise, they weren’t difficult. In fact, I overran the first by about 30 metres and had it not been uphill I could have carried on..

And I’m glad that I’m doing it because of that 800 grammes that I had gained, I’d lost 400 since Thursday.

And that reminds me of the time That Nerina told me that during a certain two-week period she had lost 2kgs.
“Keep it up, darling” I urged. “At this rate, by Christmas you’ll be gone completely”.

On that point, I’ll clear off. It’s Sunday and I can have a lie-in. But I’ll have to work, I suppose. These things don’t get done themselves, do they?

Friday 3rd April 2020 – WHILE YOU ALL ADMIRE …

… the photos of the beautiful sunset this evening, let me tell you something about my day today

Just for a change, I actually struggled to my feet before the third alarm went off and when it did ring, I was sitting on the edge of the bed half-dressed. That’s definitely an improvement.

And then, after the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night. And that was something of a disappointment, I have to say.

I was walking past a big block of flats right by where I lived where there was a big car park. On this car park were two or three really exotic vehicles of a type that I had never seen before and coming onto the car park was another one with two motorcycles accompanying it. The parked it up in a kind of alcove in the far corner. I went down to ask permission to photograph them seeing as the owners were there otherwise I just wouldn’t bother – I’d take the photos anyway. But there was a party or celebration, like a christening something like that and so I went to ask someone if the owners were around. They kept me hanging on for a minute and in the end someone beckoned someone over. And so I asked the question but he seemed to be completely and utterly distant and wasn’t on this planet at all. He was holding up his hand as if for silence, just standing like that for about 20 minutes and it was impossible to get any kind of sense out of him at all. All these cars and motor bikes, Triumph 350 “bathtub” kind of motor bikes, were all kind-of metallic duck-egg blue colour.

And that, I’m afraid, was the lot. Hardly on a par with what has been going on over the last few days, but at least it meant that I had a good sleep for a change, I suppose.

After breakfast, I attacked the digital file-splitting.

Today, it was something of a challenge. For two albums, there was not a trace of anything available anywhere. I know that they are obscure – in fact I bought one of them in a library sale for £0:60 simply on the strength that I knew one of the guitarists, but I was expecting to find at least something.

It must mean that I have the only copies of these albums still in existence.

Despite the setback, it was still slow going and I had to ferret round for a couple of files for those as well because one or two were not easy to find.

Mind you, it wasn’t all bad news. I came across an album that I don’t ever remember playing – or, at least had I ever played it I would certainly have remembered it because I hadn’t realised just how good it was.

With a break for a coffee I carried on working and then checked my mails. And Laurent had replied to me with his observations, his recorded speech and the written speech that he wanted me to dictate.

And so I dictated my part of the speech, listened to it, didn’t like it, throw it away and do it again.

Once I’d arrived at something that I liked that matched Laurent’s intonation, I then had to merge it in with his speech so that we had a “question and answer ping-pong”.

The next bit wasn’t quite so easy. I had to crop our dialogue into segments and merge it into the recorded speech. And in some places, there was no pause in which to insert it, so I learnt quite a lot, not the least of which was how to convert a mono recording into stereo

There was then the music to insert into the affair, and luckily I’d prepared that a couple of days ago.

Finally, there was the background ambience, including seagull noises, to add in. And once all of that was done, I could join it all into a continuous stream.

There’s just short of 28 minutes of recording there and, even though I say it myself, it’s one of the best things that I’ve done for quite some time and I’m really happy.

Here’s hoping that Laurent is too. It’s currently with him so that he can approve it, and then I’ll upload it.

There was a break for lunch of course, and there was no bread in the house.

And apart from the fact that I didn’t have the time, I couldn’t leave the apartment either as I was expecting a parcel delivery and I’d already missed it once.

But all was not lost. I’d bought an extra pack of taco rolls for just this kind of emergency and a couple of those made a most acceptable substitute.

While I was out there picking up my parcel, one of my neighbours was on her way in.

We ended up having quite a chat for a considerable time discussing the current situation and we came to the conclusion that the least that could be said for the situation is that it’s giving the planet a chance to recover.

There was some stuffing left over from my stuffed pepper the other day, so I added a small tin of kidney beans (a good decision that was to buy those the other day) and some more tomato sauce to that and had yet more taco tolls, but with spicy rice and vegetables.

Apple pie and ice cream with chocolate sauce for pudding. Totally delicious too.

On my walk tonight I had a look around and it was strange to see everywhere so deserted and with “footpath closed signs” everwhere.

We were however quite a crowd – all keeping the regulation distance – at the Pointe du Roc watching the beautiful sunset. One guy, with whom I was having quite a chat, told me that he came out on the same day every month to take a photo of the sunset, as he was aiming to superimpose them so as to show the progress of the sun throughout the year.

Unfortunately, the girl from last night wasn’t there. So that’s going to remain a big mystery, I reckon.

But here’s a thing.

As I rounded the headland I saw something large floating around in the water. Too large for a seabird, I thought that it might have been a seal or something so I took a photo of it in order to have a closer look.

And even so, I’ve no idea what it might be. Possibly one of these plastic 25-litre drums of some description discarded, or possibly blow by the recent gales into the sea.

One thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is the strange patterns that we sometimes see in the sea.

There were several more tonight that piqued my attention and I wish that I knew what they were all about. But they are certainly quite strange.

And in other news, I managed four runs yet again tonight. There were a couple of people around as well but I didn’t really care. And I’m hoping that I can keep this going, these four runs, for as long as I can. I have to make more of an effort.

Another thing about which I have to make more of an effort is having a good, early night. Too late now for the “early” but it could still be “good”.

Shopping tomorrow and then I really MUST finish off these radio projects ready to start on the next two for the following week. I mistn’t lag behind.

Thursday 2nd April 2020 – I’VE JUST HAD …

… a very friendly, very interesting and very lengthy conversation with a very nice young girl. She stopped me for a chat while I was out for my evening runs tonight.

We were there for about 10 minutes or so chatting away about all kinds of things.

And do you know what?

I don’t have the first clue who she is.

Something else that I don’t have the first clue about is why I bothered to waste my time by going for an early night. Just for a change, I beat the third alarm out of bed and after the medication I had a look at the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night.

I’d started out by doing my best to obey the quarantine but I had to keep on nipping out of my apartment to the room in the attic for something or other. That meant going out into the street and in my the next door and up the stairs. This happened not once, not twice but three or four times and I was sure that someone would cotton on to what was happening. Sure enough, one time I did it, I heard another door bang in the room and heard someone going up the inside stairs, so I stood behind the door and waited. When whoever it was came in, I shouted “BOOH!”and scared them. It was a girl with whom I once worked and she’s someone I haven’t thought about for years. I had a laugh and a joke with her about the situation but I bet that she was being very curious about who was where, for reasons that I suspected were not entirely altruistic. The I was talking to someone else about this and they said “whatever happens, it’s not going to be right for ages and ages yet before the world is back to normal. All kinds of things have been cut off and we can basically forget all about”.
Later on, someone at work was selected for some kind of medical test so he started to prepare himself, saying “yes, I’ll call you when I get there and let you know how things are going on”. My boss recoiled in horror “no, no. Just give us a ring – it will be fine”. he was obviously extremely suspicious about this and I had the feeling that he would have been quite happy if this employee had picked up some kind of infection from one of these medical trials
Moi, je lui proposé que lui, il lui garde et envoyer un audio de son voyage et de contacter avec quelque chose d’intéressant mais il l’a réussi. Le patron lui a accordé raise parce que … Now why am I dictating this in French? I know that I sometimes dream in French (and in Flemish too before now) but this is the first ever time that I’ve dictated my notes in French … so they decided that the risks just weren’t worth the experience of broadcasting like that.
The next voyage was similar to the one just now about the being summoned and going for a walk and sending an audio report and that was rejected too as the story was pretty much the same
Later on we were discussing trains, HS2 and all of this and I’m still convinced that it’s just a white elephant and it’s not going to do anything particular. We had the usual arguments so I wrote a song about travelling from Amsterdam Schiphol airport to Brussels on the TGV. It came to the attention of Alquin and they weren’t sure – should I join Alquin or would they create a band for me and find me a couple of musicians or something like that. In the meantime I’d been collecting some stuff – I’m not quite sure what it was. Quarantine had ended and everyone was out on the streets. There was a big cinema complex and I was walking through it with stuff in my hat. And the thing that I remember was a really really familiar voice said “just leave it up here against the wall, Eric”. I looked round and it was a guitarist who I knew. I can’t think whether it was that Mike Averill or Sherman Downey – someone like that. He said it quite clearly in his voice that I could hear it in my sleep “just leave it here, Eric” and it was the surprise of the realism of the voice and how I heard it that awoke me
I was in a office last night working and the place was in a total tip as you might expect. There was a girl sitting next to me at my desk. She was going through all my papers and there was a load of stuff I didn’t want her to see because it was quite personal. I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she was looking for a file or a letter. I asked which one and she told me that it was in connection with an accident that I had had with a Woolworths van or lorry 18 months ago. She was going some kind of survey on it. She said “I thought that would be in the International file”. I said “no, for if it involved two people of the same nation it would be in the national, not the international one” so I had to go and fetch the file. There were papers everywhere in a big bundle and I thought that i would come back to sort these out. Then I got to thinking that I’m not going to be able to cope with all of this. I’ve probably had enough. I decided more-or-less on the spot that I was going to retire. It was only 2 days to the end of the month so I thought that at the end of the month I would retire and that would be that.

So after all of that, it’s pretty pointless going to bed early, isn’t it?

But as an aside, looking at where I’ve been during the last couple of nights, anyone would think that I had something of a preoccupation with this virus that’s going round. But that’s not the case at all.

It’s true to say that I’m being more careful than I otherwise would be, but I’m not taking this situation as intently or as keenly as some others, that’s for sure. Being engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the illness that I have, this virus thing is just another complication to add to an already-complicated tangle of affairs.

After breakfast I had a go at a couple of albums – tracking down the digital sound files and sorting them out.

And then, after a shower (the first for a few days) I headed out to town.

On my way out of the medieval walled city I stopped to have a look over the wall to see what was going on, as I had heard the crane in operation.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw Normandy Trader here in port the other day. And here she is, unloading another pile of what looks like shellfish and taking on board a load of timber as a return load to the Channel islands.

It was another quick turn-round too. When I went out in the evening, she was long-gone. She clearly doesn’t want to hang around with these current health issues going on.

My route into town took me down the Rampe du Monte A Regret

Over the past few months I’ve been seeing workmen there ripping out the vegetation that’s been growing in the cracks between the stones, but today I noticed that they’ve been repointing the joints.

This will look quite nice when it’s all done, but I wish that they would spend more of their time dealing with the bits of wall that are actually falling down.

We’ve seen plenty of those just recently.

As I was going past the laboratory, I called in to see where they had got to with my blood test results. They’d completed the examinations and had posted the results, but of course the post is somewhat sporadic these days.

They gave me a copy so I could review it at my leisure. My blood count is at 9.3, which is quite a surprise to most people because when I last had treatment – two months ago, it was 8.8.

We’ve seen in the past that the results from the hospital and the results from the laboratory differ considerably, and nothing seems to have changed right now. I know that the blood count can fluctuate, but surely not by this much.

There weren’t too many people in LIDL this morning so we didn’t have to queue outside. They didn’t seem to be short of very much at all (except pizza bases – I wonder why there’s a run on those right now) so I did what I needed, as well as buying a metre rule with spirit level and a few other accessories. A baguette too, seeing as my favourite boulanger is still closed.

Back here there was time to deal witha couple more albums before lunch, and also 20 or so photos from July 2019. Dynjandi and the Arnarfjördu were the places for which I was trying to remember the names yesterday.

After lunch I finished off the notes for the two radio projects on which i’m working, dictated them, and started on the editing.

To my chagrin I could have made much more progress than I did, but

I was in discussion for some of the time with Laurent about our Grande Marée Virtuelle – I have some lines to learn
I … errr … went off with the fairies for a good half-hour. And a proper one too – hardly surprising after my last couple of nights but disappointing all the same.

There was the usual hour on the guitars and then I stopped for tea. A slice of that tofu and lentil pie from February with jacket potates, veg and gravy.

While it was cooking in the oven, I sorted out all of the carrots that I had bought on Saturday, washed scrubbed, diced and then blanched them

By this time my tea was ready. And it was followed by a slice of apple pie with vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce. Thoroughly delicious.

Out on my walk this evening, I missed the sunset.

The sky was a beautiful red though, so I suppose that it’s better than nothing. And while I was admiring it was when I was accosted by the aforementioned young lady.

Bad news when I had my shower this morning. I seemed to have gained 800 grams since the weekend and that’s no good at all. As a consequence I put in no fewer than four runs tonight. I have to get things under control

Another thing that I need to do is to have a good sleep. It won’t be as long as last night’s, unfortunately, but it will still do me good.

But I wonder where I’ll finish up tonight?

Wednesday 1st April 2020 – IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY …

… today, so I had a letter from the hospital.

They have offered me an appointment for 7th July this year which I am of course obliged to take (unless I receive a better offer in the meantime).

Two questions therefore spring to my mind –

Will the virus still be here then?

and more importantly

Will I still be here then?

Nothing is as certain as it was before.

Except for one thing – and that is that going to bed early and sleeping longer doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. After the medication (and I missed the alarm by about 10 minutes) I had a look at the dictaphone.

And that was when I realised that going to bed earlier and sleeping longer means that I just have more time to travel farther during the night.

And how!

We started off the night with some kind of court case about something and the Judge wanted something clarifying so he asked his clerk to drive his bus for him into some other kind of area. This bus was an old half-cab double decker but with the cab on the left. He could see vaguely where he was reversing to so that he could turn round. But his rear wheels were wedged up against the pavement so he couldn’t move. People were looking there wondering what on earth was happening but I just walked round – because it was actually the back end of a bed now – and just picked it up and pivoted it round so the driver could move. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember now. It all went when I went to grab hold of the dictaphone
A little later, Chris de Burgh was singing a song by Al Stewart, or was it the other way round, Modern Times or something, and they had to turn round in the middle of it, but he couldn’t turn round so we all had to step back two steps to give him plenty of time to reverse and turn round again. Again I can only remember a bit of it but there was a lot more to it than that.
Then back to the Isle of Wight again and the fact that no ferries were running over to the Isle of Wight and everyone was pleased by that for it stopped the infection spreading there.
later still, we were on board ship again The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, half a dozen of us. We’d been summoned up to the top room at the top of the spiral staircase. Everyone went up in the lift but I was doing something and missed the lift so I had to run up. There, they were handing out a box like a Waddington’s toy box but it was a navigation kit designed by a guy called Ross from Australia or New Zealand about where to go and what to do. There was a Luger pistol there and we were talking about that. I suggested sticking it in the back of your trousers so as to hide its shape and so on. We had a lively discussion about that and about how often people tend to look above the skyline at something particularly in the dark and don’t tend to see what’s below the skyline so you can skulk in the shadows. He recounted the story of an Italian who has spent all World War II going around murdering people because he’d been doing just that.
Some time later I was with someone called Dorothy, Shirley Temple, an American child star. There was another woman with me whom I knew and we’d arranged to interview her. We had lots of questions to ask her about her life as a child star and how she went into business but gave that up in World War II to entertain the troops, then every now and again released an album. She was singing quite a few of her songs to us. Her final album was one about infections diseases. I was dying to interview her about this because I had loads of questions about why she had chosen this subject to make an album. I was hoping that she would quickly get to the end of her song. Then she had a text message from her boyfriend to ring him back, all of this sort of thing and I could see that my interview was slowly being pushed back. If we weren’t careful we’d end up running out of time. But she was talking about New York, how she went to New York, went on a Greyhound bus. They’d got in at something like 06:00 and asked her mum at the bus station “is this where I do my song now?” and her mother was bad-tempered with her but her mother was probably exhausted after the bus journey and all this kind of thing. It was so real, a really real kind of situation
From there we were in some kind of naval base, a harbour, talking to one of her crew, people who were in charge. he had this big Red Ensign and he was taking it down on the sea wall in order to fly it at the very end of the harbour but I was wondering, with this epidemic, would he have very much chance to see it fly.
And we haven’t finished yet – not by a long way. I’d gone into my office on a Saturday morning and there was one of the cleaners who instead of cleaning out the weeds between the edge of the path and the wall was doing something different so I asked her her “are you putting the weeds back in, madam?”. She gave a little laugh. I was carrying a garden hoe and I went to where I sat but in my in-tray was a load of what I assumed was soil with little white bits like desiccated coconut on top in huge clumps. Everyone looked at me strangely. I said “seeing as I was passing with a hoe, like you do on a Sunday, only it’s Saturday today because I have to come in tomorrow, and i’d break all of these up” So I started to hoe all of these big lumps of soil. Where this was going I have no idea but this was when the alarm went off
Yes, I’d introduced myself as King Hook of the pirates and Hastings was there. he said “shouldn’t you have a hook on the end of your hand?”. I said “no, King Hook, not Captain Hook”. I then started again with two boys playing football but I didn’t get very far as the second alarm awoke me.

It’s hardly surprising that I was too exhausted to leave my bed before the third alarm this morning. So would you be with all of that going on during the night. I’m surprised that I had any time at all for sleeping.

After breakfast I had an attack at another four albums to digitalise. Apart from two tracks that didn’t want to work and I had to find another method to circumvent the problem, it went pretty easily, albeit pretty slowly.

It gave me time to deal with some of the photos from July 2019 on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, but not as many of those as I would have liked either, because I’ve ended up at a place in Northern Iceland that I can’t remember what it’s called and for some reason that I don’t understand, because it’s not like me, I forgot to make a note.

Once that was finished, I had a play around with the speakers, mixing and matching. I now have proper, complete stereo sound. It’s still not perfect because I’m using unmatched speakers and I really am going to have to acquire some more.

But I’ve put out some feelers in that respect and I’m hoping for a reply.

Having put all of that behind me, I started on the text for the two radio programmes on which I have been working. And by the time that i’d knocked off, I’d done about one and a half.

There were plenty of distractions, many of my own making, I have to say, but I also had to transcribe some dictaphone notes into text for someone on the radio.

So totally unsure of where much of today went, I had my usual hour on the guitar, and almost fell asleep three times while I was doing it.

For tea, I found an Aubergine and kidney bean whatsit in the freezer. I’m not quite sure, but this may well be the last one out of the huge batch that I had.

That will be the key to get down to making some more curries and so on, and I have a fancy for a lentil, potato and bean curry.

First though, I’m going to empty out the freezer and see what there is (or isn’t) in there. For a start, there’s a bag of mixed veg that’s been in there since the Neolithic and could really do with being moved on. I could start by adding it to a couple of mass curries over the next couple of weeks.

It was still light when I went out for my walk this evening.

That enabled me to have a good shot across the harbour by the chantier navale over to the ferry terminal and Joly France and Chausiais.

There wasn’t much else going on and it was as quiet as the grave out there. I could hear people talking down on the bottom road.

For some reason, my running wasn’t as fluent as it has been this last few days and although I pushed on beyond my usual limits, it was something of a struggle

So on that note, it might be early but I reckon that I can be best employed by going to bed and having a good sleep. I need to go to LIDL tomorrow for some food as I’m getting low on certain things, and I’m expecting Laurent to get back to me so that we can finish off this thing we’re doing.

On the other hand, I might go off for another mega-ramble. See where I end up this time.

Tuesday 31st March 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that the other day I mentioned that people have been posting saying that small fishing boats are prevented from going out to sea, whereas the larger ones are being given free rein.

At the time, I mentioned that that wasn’t the case here. And here is a case in point. One of the little fishing boats that goes out for the shellfish is coming in tonight with a full load.

And I watched it go up to the cranes by the fish processing plant to unload. So there’s no doubt in my mind that they are working here.

And while we’re on the subject of working, my plan for an early night last night wasn’t working at all unfortunately. Some good music came up on the playlist, as you might expect, and while that was playing itself out to a conclusion an interesting debate started up in one of the social networking groups that I follow, on a subject upon which I have a lot to say.

What should have been about 23:00 or so ended up being 00:45 and that kind of thing is no good at all.

This morning I missed the third alarm – but only by a handful of seconds but missed it nevertheless.

There was the usual morning procedure – first the medication and then the dictaphone. And no wonder that I had a hard time leaving the bed. I must have travelled miles during the night.

There was something going on during the night about a girl in Nantwich in one of the houses up by the Grammar School. She had put a note on Facebook that she was on her own in her house with a couple of friends and and so a party from Sartilly of all places, a group of kids hired a minibus and turned up at the house and created mayhem. As it happens, I was actually by the house and saw all of this happen so I was telling a few people all about it, describing the events.
A little later on my mother was involved in something or other although I can’t remember now what that was either. It was something to do with going to pick her up from a place in Catherine Street where she was working. I had to get all ready, get in my car, drive across to there. As I got there everyone was leaving and they were locking up the place. She saw me “you haven’t come to pick me up, have you?”. I said “wasn’t that what you wanted when you sent me that mail?” to which everyone burst out laughing. We had to climb up these steps to get out of this building which was in the basement. I got her umbrella and it was getting in the way, hitting everyone and so on. That’s all that I remember.
Then we were having people around and then news about this virus outbreak came up and everyone was told to go home. There were these people sitting in an album cover (?!?!?) waiting for a person to move their album but of course they were there so they were having to be isolated on the spot where they were, never mind having to go home and be isolated in comfort.
Somewhat later I was walking somewhere with these two people, official-looking type people. I can’t remember what was going on here, they wanted me to do something and I wasn’t going to do it and I told them that they couldn’t make me do it anyway. But one of them picked up a great big rock and started hitting me with this great big rock, not that it made the slightest bit of difference at all because he was a big guy but he didn’t have any force at all behind it – just swinging this rock at me and hitting me with it. It wasn’t hurting me at all – I just carried on walking and all the time this guy was swinging this rock at me and hitting me with it. In the end I became fed up and called the police. They saw me phone and cleared off. A woman and her child had been watching all of this so I buttonholed them and said that they would need to tell the Police what they had seen, but they were most reluctant to become involved.

Yes, I covered some ground last night.

After breakfast it was the turn of the digitalising, and another four albums have bitten the dust, including one about which I had completely forgotten and yet would ordinarily be another on my list of top 20 albums.

The pile is slowly reducing.

While I was doing it, I was dealing with the photos from July last year in Iceland but not very effectively because there were plenty of distractions with one thing and another. I ended up, not paying attention, downloading a few *.mkv files and I came to regret that.

What with one thing and another (and once you make a start, you’ll be surprised just how many other things there are) it was about midday when I was ready to make a move.

No bread in the house (well, there is some, but it’s in the freezer) so it was a good excuse to go for my daily exercise.

Not that I got very far because out at sea there was something rather large moving about. So I took a photo of it to blow up (the photo, not the object) when I returned to the apartment.

And it’s merely a couple of fishing boats of some description, and one of them has just hit a really wild wave and sent spray flying everywhere. It was windy, but not that windy, I thought.

Just as I said earlier, there doesn’t seem to be a restriction on the smaller boats going out to sea here.

That’s the fish-processing plant over there and there are several boats lined up, some using the cranes to winch it up to the plant above, and others unloading straight into their vehicles on the lower level.

So I’ve no idea at all where this story has come from.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw Thora here in port doing a turn-round to Jersey.

Today, it’s the turn of the other Jersey freighter, Normandy Trader, to come into port and turn round. A quick turn-round too, by the way, because when I was out later on, she had been and gone and disappeared

But what won’t be disappearing is the Channel Island ferry Granville, here in port, and her partner Victor Hugo, wherever she might be. The story is that the ferries have now been grounded until the end of April.

That was bad news for a couple in a Jersey-registered mobile home who came into town, presumably looking for a way out.

having picked up my baguette, just for a change I climbed back all the way up the steps – all 148 of them – for the Escalier du Moulin A Vent.

In the distance I’d seen something moving and I wondered what it might be. We’ve seen plenty of little fishing boats out and about doing their bit, and I was wondering about the large ones. And that’s certainly one of the large ones heading to port.

There was no-one around so I had a run along the north side of the walls. And to my surprise I ran on – and on – and on. Not sure how far but it was much further than what I normally do.

After lunch, I made a start on finding the tracks for the Project 36. I want to have two done this week, the music chosen and then I can do the writing and the dictation all in one go.

And it was a productive day as far as it went because I’d almost finished when Laurent came back with his ideas about our project. That meant that I had to drop everything and do some important work on that, including, would you believe, some seagull sound effects.

When I’d done that, I had to send it back to Laurent with a proposed batting order

At 18:00 I knocked off and had an hour on the guitars. I’d come across a couple more tracks on my travels that I was interested in having a go at, and I’m glad that I did because one of them, I’d been playing from memory but in a totally incorrect fashion.

Tea was a burger on a bun with potatoes and veg, followed by apple pie and coconut soya dessert stuff. And it was delicious as usual.

Earlier in the day, I’d seen a couple of people leap over the fence into the athletics ground of the College Malraux behind the Gymnase Jean Galfione.

It seemed to me to be a good idea – it’s nice and flat and a good running surface and it might do me good to have a go around it. However there were a couple of people around overlooking the place so it probably wasn’t a good idea right now.

But anyway, I’d run down here and it’s further than I would usually run, so that would probably do for now.

It was still fairly light this evening when I was outside.

A lovely evening, and it was a shame that I couldn’t enjoy more of it. But there were more fishing boats out there heading to harbour, and I was impressed that the NIKON 1 J5 and the f1.8 18.5mm lens could pick them up at that distance.

The photo came out rather well, considering, and I enjoyed the effect that it produced. I’ve had better, but I’ve also had a lot worse.

Round on the other side of the headland there were a couple of things of interest to see.

Still out two trawlers up on blocks in the Chantier navale, but more important is the fact that Joly France and Chausiais have changed position.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been wondering about how the people on the Ile de Chausey are managing right now. With the two ships having changed position, I wonder if this means that Chausiais has taken a load of supplies out to the island. It’s what she’s here for, apparently, although it’s a lot of money invested in what is never going to be a lucrative trade on its own.

Having finished the photos, I ran back to the apartment. I started my run about 30 yards earlier than usual, but even so, still overran at the end and made a few steps up the hill. I’m definitely improving, although how long that will last I really have no idea.

There’s been a little change round in here now too. Having had difficulties with my sound system, I’ve managed – sort of – to have two speakers (of different sets) working after a fashion so there is something like stereo sound in here.

But it’s going to have to be replaced. A small pre-amp that plugs into the headphone speaker and then two decent speakers. For what I do, I need it.

So it’s bedtime now. Later than I wanted, but much earlier than last night. A good sleep will do me good and then I’m ready for a hard day tomorrow.

I don’t think.

Monday 30th March 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why but I’ve had a much better day today that I’ve had for a while.

It didn’t start off very well though. I missed the alarms and was about 10 minutes late leaving my bed, and that was disappointing.

And after the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. That was disappointing too. We were having some kind of football training session last night but I don’t remember very very much about them whatsoever.

Something of a wasted effort.

And so I started on the file splitting. It might have been straightforward, evan though a couple of tracks didn’t work out and I had to hunt around for some other versions which might (or might not) be the correct ones seeing as the times don’t really correspond so well.

But for some reason that only they will know, it took AAAAAGGGGEEEEESSSSS to download them and I would have been really fed up, except that while I was doing it I attacked the July 2019 photos.

And it was just as well because I managed about 50 of them, and I’m now just about skirting the tip of north-west Iceland with a hell of a long way to go still. I’m glad that I started the numbering by using four digits for I feel that I’m going to need them all.

There was a pause for breakfast of course, and once the digitalising was finished for today, I had my audio diary to do.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve mentioned this before. We are living in times the like of which the world hasn’t seen since the Black Death epidemic of the 1340s and in 100 or 200 years people (if there are any still alive) will be looking at this period with the same kind of intensity that we look at the Black Death.

In the Black Death, everyone had his or her own little stories and while one or two are remembered, from authors of the day or from anecdotes that were passed around, but the ordinary common people were in the main unable to read and write, and their stories were lost for ever.

For that reason, we at the radio have decided to keep an audio diary and we’ll be preparing various radio programmes as we go along to broadcast our stories.

One or two other people from various places have agreed to participate, and if you would like to take part in this project, send me a brief note using the contact button, bottom-right.

With still some time left, I started on Project 035 but broke off for lunch after a short while.

After lunch, I finished off the choice of music, except for the last track of course (which regular readers of this rubbish will recall is always the very last thing to do) and then turned my attention to more exciting things.

Laurent and I had been talking on and off during the day about our Grande Marée programme, and he came up with a couple of really good ideas. That meant that I had to go off on another path to hunt down various items and he sent me something that will be absolutely brilliant with a little editing.

In the end I managed to do something of a test run and he’ll get back to me tomorrow with what he thinks.

By now it was 18:00 and I broke off for a play on the guitar. I had a good go too although I’m beginning to realise that half an hour on the 6-string and half an hour on the bass just isn’t enough. Not sure how I’m going to fit in any more time though.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with rice followed by a slice of my delicious apple pie. It really is nice too and I’m very pleased with that one.

Tonight’s walk was something of an improvised choice seeing as there aren’t all that many places to go. I managed two runs and each one I pushed on an extra 20-25 metres. “Not a lot” I hear you say, but the fact is that the last extra bits were uphill, and up quite a steep hill too, so I’m impressed with that.

Where I ended up was on the grass by the car park in the boulevard Vaufleury. I’d been reading reports from somewhere that smaller boats weren’t being allowed out to fish, but there’s one down there that’s unloading at the fish-processing plant even as we speak.

So I don’t know where this news has come from

But there’s excitement at the chantier navale tonight.

Over the past few weeks, regular readers of this rubbish will recall looking at the progress being made on the overhaul of Charles Marie in the chantier navale. But she’s not there now. The ground’s all flat. She must have gone back into the water.

But it’s still busy in there. We’ve acquired another trawler so there are now two of them in there receiving attention.

Keeping their social distance, I hope.

Anyway, now it’s bedtime. To my amazement, and probably to yours too, I haven’t crashed out at all today. In fact, I’ve been feeling quite lively.

No idea what I did but I wish I could remember because I need to do it again. And more often too!

Sunday 29th March 2020 – AND IF YOU …

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

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

So that was basically the day ruined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 28th March 2020 – WHAT A WASTE …

… of a day this has been.

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

The day started so well too.

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

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

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

That was some night, that’s for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The evening walk was a shambles tonight.

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

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

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

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

Friday 27th March 2020 – AND IF YOU THINK …

… that yesterday was a bad day, you should have seen today.

We started off this morning where we finished last night – in total chaos. It wasn’t as early a night as I was hoping because just as I was about to go to bed, onto the playlist came Al Stewart and his song “Modern Times” from THE ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Al Stewart was pretty much dismissed in the same terms that were reserved for Chris De Burgh several years – “the work of a queasy adolescent scratching his pimples” or some such quote.

And while his early output was considered by many to be mushy, maudlin, sentimental and egoistic, it was something that many of us, brought up in similar circumstances, cast adrift as teenagers in squalid and sordid bedsits, could readily identify.

His later work evolved as he himself evolved, but there was still this underlying nostalgia deep in there somewhere and in the song “Modern Times” he brought out every memory that I ever had of the painful pangs of growing up, coupled with, right at the end, two minutes or so of one of the most magnificent, underrated guitar solos that I have heard for quite some considerable time.

So on that note, rather later than usual having listened to it three or four times and shared it with some of my friends, I went off to bed feeling about as depressed as I could be.

When the alarms went off in the morning, I quite simply missed it. All three calls. it was 07:50 when I finally arose from the dead, feeling completely disappointed about the whole affair. I don’t know what’s getting to me right now.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And no wonder I was so tired. You would be had you gone off on the voyages that I had.

I’m not too sure about much of this first part because in the panic that I had when I couldn’t find my dictaphone and had to wake up and get out of bed to look for it, I forgot all of it. But it was to do with me being in a kitchen, a caravan-type of kitchen although it might not have been in a caravan and I had to get some things out of the cupboard that’s above the sink. So I opened it up but couldn’t find anything at all that I knew was in there. It suddenly occurred to me that what was happening was that for some unknown reason the stuff there in the cupboard was the wrong way round, as if you were trying to get in from the back rather than from the front. That’s why I couldn’t find anything that I knew was i there because it would now be at the back instead of at the front. There were things like little test tubes full of a kind of oily liquid of all different kinds of stuff in there and I was trying to work out what these were that I was pulling out – lots of different stuff like that!

Later on during the night I dreamt that I was arrested for a debt but because it was a debt that related to something weird to do with some kind of Act of 1742 I was arrested and sent to a debtors’ prison, the kind of place we had that still exists today. We were all herded into one great big cell, men women, children. We were all basically put in there and the key was locked upon us. Meals were cooked but there was no organisation or anything. We grabbed a seat where you could and lay down where you could, all of this kind of thing. The Salvation Army would come amongst the prisoners to talk to them, that kind of thing. Surprisingly, I counted quite a lot of solidarity between the prisoners, something that you wouldn’t really expect in those conditions. Certainly an interesting place to be. There was a book passed round with a list of all the prisoners in it. It had me in it, and showed my address and an extract of the roll of my premises and it said “car scrapping and recovery” and something else there that was all quite interesting too.

Finally I was on an aeroplane to Chicago but it was Canada and I’ve no idea why Chicago might be in Canada. It was only the previous day that I had made up my mind that I was going – I had a couple of weeks between hospital appointments so I thought that I would go. I got onto this plane and it was pretty crowded. I was sitting next to a young boy, a college student, something like that, and I had to explain to him that the UK was fighting a war and while there was a surfeit of Canadian students until 2021, that was going to disappear so I said that any Canadian student of which there is a surfeit to get them over to the Mother Country – tell them that the UK is fighting a war and needs their bodies. We were discussing things on board the ‘plane and talking about headphones. he asked “what happens when the staff plug in a headphone for you and you don’t use it – does that count?” I explained that you get a basic radio service that’s free, included in the price of the ticket and you only pay if you go for an enhanced service. There was a problem with my seat – it wouldn’t stay upright and kept on reclining backwards. I thought “God I hope that they don’t make me move prior to take-off because there didn’t seem to be anywhere to move to and I was settled where I was in a nice aisle seat.

Thinking about it later on, it was the whole kind of emotional environment last night going to bed where, had this been another time, I would have expected Castor or Zero to have put in an appearance. But as far as I’m aware, neither of them showed up, which was probably a good thing.

After a rather late breakfast I had a crack at the digital sound files. It wasn’t as good as it might have been because for one album, there was absolutely no trace whatsoever of anything relating to it.

Not that it surprises me because I must have the only copy in existence, so I’ll have to make a digital copy myself along with the others that I’m collecting for which there is no trace.

Two more, all that I could find are *.mkv files. And while I can convert them to *.mp3 just as easily as I can convert almost anything else, it’s disposing of them afterwards. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve identified a fault that makes them almost impossible to remove without a great deal of effort and if you have too many on your computer, they all try to open automatically at once and it slows your machine right down.

As a result I’m trying to hold off downloading *.mkv files until either Yours Truly or Microsoft can find a fix.

Having eventually finished the albums I went out to see if I could find my bread.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned the Ile de Chausey, the folk who live there and the lack of facilities that they have, and I wondered how they would cope.

So when I saw a couple of boats heading out that way in the mist I took a rather speculative shot to see whether it might be either Joly France or Chausiais doing out with supplies.

But it actually appears to be two fishing boats going out that way, presumably for the purpose of fishing. So I’ve no idea what is going to happen over there if they can’t receive any help.

What’s even worse from my point of view is that all of the paths around the clifftops are closed off so I couldn’t take my usual long route around the Pointe du Roc.

Instead I had to walk around the edge of the park in the boulevard Vaufleury. There’s a good view down into the chantier navale and from there I could see that Charles Marie has found a friend.

The fishing boat Cap Lihou has come to join her, but keeping her social distance as she can see. There was someone there with a pressure washer hosing off her barnacles.

That reminds me of the time that I was talking to a ship about barnacles. I was saying that I didn’t like them very much.
The ship replied “neither did I at first, but after a while I found that they grew on me”.

The port and the harbour are out of bounds too with this new legislation so I walked on down the rue du Port.

There was one of the smaller fishing boats moored there, and there in the stern was a lobster pot (however do they train baby lobsters to go on one of those?) and, would you believe, some buoys with red flags like we’ve seen floating in the sea every now and again.

So that might well the answer.

As I expected, La Mie Caline was all closed up again with no sign of life. Luckily I had done my research yesterday as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and the boulangerie at the foot of the hill was open, so I picked up a baguette from there.

On the way back, I took a short diversion.

As I mentioned above, all of the walks around the clifftops are now out of bounds and that includes my running track across the Square Maurice Marland, as I discovered last night.

And so i went that way to have a look at the notice and to take a photograph of the situation so as to record it for posterity. We are living in unusual times and it’s important that we document as much as possible of what is going on so that history will have something to remember.

Somewhere on the internet in some social group or other I was reading that in some places the smaller fishing boats have been prevented from going out to sea.

We saw a couple from here earlier heading out towards the Ile de Chausey, and here’s another one heading into the English Channel towards Bréhal-Plage.

We’ve seen buoys out there where the boat is – in fact, there was one the other day – but I haven’t seen who is out there placing them in the water. But if you look closely at this photo, you’ll see some kind of disturbance in the water between the boat and the photograph.

After lunch, I turned my attention to the purée because I had used the last of that this morning.

Firstly, I peeled, cored and diced 9 eating apples (I prefer them to cooking apples as they need no extra sweetening) and put them as I diced them into a large saucepan that has a small amount of water, lemon juice, nutmeg and cinnamon in there. there was also a large amount of desiccated coconut, for a reason that I will explain.

As I added the diced apple each time I had finished one, I stirred it round in the liquid so that it would remain white and not start to go brown. The desiccated coconut adhering to the bits of apple showed me that they had been treated.

Then I peeled, cored and diced three pears (and I would have added more had I had them) and added them to the mixture, stirring them round as above.

The saucepan then went on the heat and was brought to boil. Then I left it to simmer for an hour.

In the meantime, I made a start on the radio programme about the Grande Marée. There was an interview of almost 8 minutes that needed editing and that took me quite a while to deal with it too – but now it’s down to about 4:30 of quite interesting stuff.

Halfway through the proceedings I broke off to look at the fruit to see how it was doing.

It looked pretty good to me so I washed and cleaned the two jars and put them in the microwave with a small amount of water so as to heat and sterilise them.

The fruit was drained off and the liquid put in a bottle that was put in the fridge for juice in the morning. The actual fruit was put in the whizzer and given a really good whizz round to turn it into a nice purée.

Once it was whizzed up, I put it into the sterilised jars and put on the lids, that I had carefully cleaned. So that’s the apple and pear purée for the next 10 days or so, I reckon. And it’s pretty good stuff, I promise you.

Once it had cooled down, I put it in the fridge. And I carried on with my radio programme. And as I was beginning to assemble it, I found another one of the interviews that I hadn’t actually edited, so i had to turn my hand to that as well.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time. It was 18:00 and time for my hour with the guitars. I won’t get any better if I don’t practise, even if I won’t get any better if I do, but that’s hardly the point.

At 19:00 I broke off and made tea. There was the rest of the stuffing left over so I added the rest of the mushrooms, some more onion and some spinach and tomato sauce, and boiled up some pasta and vegetables.

Pudding was, of course, jam pie and vegan ice cream with chocolate sauce. Totally delicious. And it’s a shame that there’s just one more slice left, because for an ad-hoc improvised arrangement, this was a real success.

And so simple too. There will be many more of these in the future, that’s for sure. With all different kinds of jam. Blackcurrant might be nice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night I went out to photograph the new moon with a camera that had a flat battery.

No such mistake tonight because I had it on charge overnight. So we can see the beautiful moon tonight, with a planet shining quite brightly close by.

Not being an astronomer, I’ve no idea what planet it might be but I understand that Venus is quite visible at the moment. I wouldn’t like to speculate, particularly after the last time when I said to a passer-by “I can see Uranus from here” and the dirty look that he gave me in response.

With all of my regular runnign spots and all of the clifftop paths closed off, I had a rather irregular walk tonight, although I still managed to fit in two runs of some description to the equation.

There was another nice view across the harbour and the town, so I took another evening photograph of the tranquil scene. We’ll be seeing many more shots like this as this lock-down takes hold.

And if it’s anything like any other plague or epidemic in history, it will flare up again for a couple of years until they can either find a vaccine, everyone becomes immune or everyone is wiped out.

So now I’ve finished my notes and I’m off to bed, as long as nothing in the way of nostalgic music appears on the playlist.

Saturday tomorrow, and shopping day. So we’ll see what that brings us. I’m expecting thigs to be much more busy than last week with people having been cooped up and thus short of supplies. I can see me eventually changing my time of visit to a less popular time as this affair carries on.

Thursday 26th March 2020 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a very bad day today. And for a variety of reasons too

Having had a brief flurry of activity earlier in the week, I found my favourite boulangerie closed today and had to walk almost as far as the Proclaimers to find another one
I spent most of the afternoon crashed out on the chair and I’ve no idea why
It was a beautiful evening for photography with a beautiful clear sky and a thin sliver of crescent moon, so when I lined up the camera to take the first of what I hoped was many photographs, the battery went flat on me
My evening routine is now completely disrupted as the terrain on which I perform my evening runs has now been placed out of bounds

And probably many more reasons that I can’t think of right now but I bet that I will as soon as I press “PUBLISH”.

The day started off so well too. I was awake for the first two alarms and out of bed dressing myself when the third one went off. Not something that happens every day.

The last of the ginger and orange this morning for my medication, so I need to deal with that a little later.

And then the dictaphone. In the first part of our adventure last night Castor went missing. It was somewhere round about Ottawa in October. There was a message posted about everyone search their gardens and yards, all this kind of thing. Of course everyone did that and there was still no trace of her so they announced that they were going to search people’s cabin trunks. I remember saying that that’s one way to encourage people to get rid of their travelling trunks. So we (whoever “we” were) unpacked ours, checked it and repacked everything and closed it up again, got it ready. There was still no trace of her and she had disappeared on the 10th and the panic started on the 12th so it then got to the stage of asking people to check her movements before then and to look for human remains in their gardens, all of this kind of gruesome stuff upon which I won’t elaborate.
A little later there was a group of us all going somewhere and we should be setting out because we were – it was getting late. But someone was there listening to some music – Yes as it happened – and we were all urging this person to get a move on. He was saying “yes, I want to listen to the music. We have plenty of time yet”. I said “you might have but I haven’t, I have a lot to do and I need to be getting myself organised”. I had an electric welding kit and aluminium welding rods in the back of my car that I was going to do something with but I can’t remember what, and I needed to have a shower as well and there we were, trying to urge this person to get going but he was just taking his time, taking his time, taking his time.

After breakfast (and the last of the muesli too) I made a start on the digital sound files. Again, no complete file so I had to hunt down probably about 50 individual tracks.

But not to worry – over the next few days there will be some really good stuff coming up and I’m quite looking forward to that. All kinds of classic albums that I haven’t listened to for years.

Once they were out of the way I had a few things of my own to attend to, and then I went out to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette.

As usual, during the lockdown I took advantage of my permit in order to go the long way around, all the way around the headland of the Pointe du Roc.

Over at the ferry terminal were Chausiais and Joly France, the older one (the newer one has a step cut in the stern) and that got me thinking, which is a rare event these days, I know.

There are no facilities on the Ile de Chausey apart from a bar-hotel and a small grocery point, as far as I am aware. So I’m wondering just how they are managing at the moment – whether the ferries are still running and, more importantly, what happens if the virus hits the island when there are no medical facilities for them there

It’s probably something about which they aren’t going to think until it actually happens.

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

It’s no surprise that work on the pontoons has ceased for the duration, and the pillars that remain to be installed are still lying here waiting for something to happen.

But the off-cut is intriguing me. I’ve no idea what they intend to do with that but it wouldn’t be here if it isn’t going to be serving a useful purpose.

Being confounded at La Mie Caline, I went to the boulangerie up the road. But that one is closed on Thursday. I ended up at the one in the rue Couraye where we have seen them install the new shop front.

No dejeunettes of course so I bought a baguette instead. And I was inpressed with their security precautions – a strip of clingfilm posed vertically along the top of the counter to act as a germ barrier. And the people working there were wearing gloves and masks.

And there I was – I’d decided not to go to LIDL this morning because I didn’t really need anything important, and I ended up on a marathon hike just the same.

On the way back I took something of a roundabout route and found myself in the rue Ernest Lefrant looking at this little alleyway that I hadn’t ever noticed before.

That’s one thing that can be said about all of this – that i’m going places that are off my usual beaten track and seeing things that I never would usually see.

And in case anyone is wondering why I was taking something of a roundabout route in the present circumstances, it was to spy out the boulangerie that is nearest to my home to check that it’s still open during the crisis and to see what are its opening hours.

Having bought my bread from there in the past, I seem to recall that its baguettes were quite acceptable and if La Mie Caline is closed for the duration I’ll be going here.

After lunch I sliced up a lump of ginger into very small pieces and put them into a little water to boil. While they were simmering away quite nicely with some cumin and coriander, I made another batch of muesli so that there’s some fresh stuff for tomorrow.

When the ginger was boiling nicely I took a pile of oranges. One or two weren’t looking so goo so of those, I cut off what I didn’t want to use.

Then I peeled all of the oranges, removed as much of the pith as I could, and then put the oranges in the whizzer. I gave them a gentle whizz around, just enough to separate the juice, which I strained off and put into a glass bottle which I had sterilised in the microwave with a little water which I had then emptied out. The orange juice then went into the fridge.

The pulp was put back into the whizzer and whizzed around until it was as fine as I could reasonably make it and it was then added to the ginger and water.

With plenty of other things to do, I came back in here and started on the radio programme for the Grande Marée and edited a couple of the recordings that we had taken.

After about 60 minutes I went to see how my stuff in the saucepan was going. All quite properly done to a turn, so I took it off the heat and added a couple of tablespoons of Manuka Honey, stirring it well in.

It all went into the whizzer again for a really good whizz around for a good few minutes to really break up everything, and then when it had cooled (I did the washing-up meantime) I added it to the orange juice and put it into the fridge. There’s my cordial for the next week or so.

Back here though, I couldn’t keep going. I crashed out I don’t know how many times and it really was a struggle. I did however manage to pull myself together and do some of the stuff though, but I was really disappointed with my lack of effort.

Rosemary rang me too, and I had a chat with Liz on the internet and as a result I missed 15 minutes of my guitar practice. But there were a couple of songs that I had digitalised just recently with which I wanted to have a play around, so I spent most of my time with those on both the bass and the six-string guitar.

For tea I added a small tin of kidney beans (good idea, those small tins) to the left-over stuffing and made myself taco rolls with rice and veg. Totally delicious. There’s some of that left too for tomorrow when I’ll be having an “everything curry” made with all of the leftovers.

Pudding was more jam pie with vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce and it really was a meal fit for a king. I’m eating so well these days and a lot of it is home-made.

And that got me thinking too – that if bread is going to be hard to obtain, then taco rolls and a supply thereof might be useful.

As for my evening outing, I mentioned it just now. I did manage to do two runs but not as I was hoping or where I was hoping, but we all have to make sacrifices too these days.

And no photos either. That’s depressing too.

But regardless of everything else, I’m so tired that I’m going to have an early night. Despite my reasonable sleep I’ve had a really bad day and I don’t want too many more like this. I have so much to do and so little time to do it.

Wednesday 25th March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY STUCK …

… here in quarantine, slowly getting on my own nerves. I’m not sure how people are coping with being quarantined together and not being able to get away from each other.

But for my part, I had a struggle to get away from my bed this morning. It wasn’t late when I went to bed, but later than I imagined. I slept right through (nothing on the dictaphone) until the morning, dozing through the first two alarms and sitting bolt-upright for some reason about 30 seconds before the third call.

Anyway, I was sitting with my feet on the floor and a tee-shirt in my hand when the alarm went off so I reckon that I had just about won that.

After the medication and with nothing on the dictaphone I made a start on the digitalising of my record collection. I wasn’t able to find any complete soundfiles so I had to work track by track and that took hours to do (with a break for breakfast of course).

Just for a change, there wasn’t anything of any great importance on anything that I recorded this morning. It’s just another 4 albums out of the way all done and finished. But I did have a sneak preview and in a couple of days there will be some really good stuff coming up.

One thing about having visitors is that it makes me get down to doing some tidying up. I know that Neitzsche said “out of chaos comes order” but Neitzche had never visited anywhere where I have ever lived.

It took me a good half hour to clean up, vacuum the floor and put stuff away. And now it sort-of looks as if someone lives here. It won’t last very long like that but at least when the nurse came round it was looking ok.

He took my blood sample – with much difficulty as regular readers of this rubbish will recall – and now I have little patches of white plaster all over the place.

He’ll send the blood to the laboratory for examination and they’ll send me a report. I know what figures to look out for and if there’s a problem I’ll contact my doctor.

Despite the quarantine regulations I still need my daily bread so I went off into town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen on several occasions these mysterious buoys that keep on appearing and then disappearing offshore.

Despite all of my enquiries I’ve never yet managed to find out to what they relate. My best guess is that it’s do do with fishing nets or lobster pots but I really have no idea.

And it looks as if Charles Marie isn’t going to be around for much longer.

My route this morning went round the headland and down past the chantier navale. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen them tearing huge lumps out of her bulwarks but the last few days when I’ve not been out have seen them replace much of the wood that was removed.

With no distractions to worry them, they’ve been able to crack on with the work.

Other people have been cracking on with work too, taking advantage the enforced hibernation.

With the tide being out, the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the path on top and over to the other side.

And a couple of people were busy working. The trawler Soupape had had all of its winching gear dismantled and it has all been repainted just recently.

And one of the crew had the wire rope out on the quay and was oiling it and giving it a good servicing. I suppose that they need to keep busy and fixing the fishing gear is one good way to go about it.

There were only a handful of people out and about in town today. It didn’t take long to pick up my dejeunette and I came straight back here. One of my neighbours stuck his head out of his window for a quick chat and one of the women went past and joined in – at a distance.

After lunch I pressed on.

Despite a good crash-out which disrupted my flow, I finished Project 034 and also Project 029 – the live concert for May. They aren’t as I would like them to be because the times are somewhat awkward. I ended up running short on both of them so I had to dictate some more, edit it and merge it in.

Then it was too long so I had to edit some more out, so it was then too short, so I had to add some more back. I’m sure that you get the picture. I could have been there even now but I ended up settling for what I had because it was by now 18:00 and when I’m knocking off these days.

All I need now to catch up is a live concert for June but there’s always something in the pipeline.

There was the customary half-hour on the 6-string and then half an hour on the bass – the acoustic 4-string. And I spent some of the time working out a bass line to Green Day’s “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” – a song that has a certain significance for me and for someone who, for a certain short moment, was very special to me and who still would be, given half a chance.

As Kris Kristofferson once wrote, “I’d give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday” and that’s a song that appeared on my playlist out of nowhere one evening back then and has remained there ever since.

Still, I mustn’t start to become all broody. What will be will be. I went and had tea instead.

Burger on a bap tonight with jacket potatoes and veg. Plenty of mustard on the bap and that gave it a certain je ne sais quoi. A slice of jam pie with vegan caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce for pudding and that was totally delicious too.

This photo might not look like much but it’s extremely interesting nevertheless.

20:30 when I went out for my evening walk and away down the English Channel there was still a touch of light in the sky. The nights are getting shorter which is good news. Summer will soon be here.

But the question that needs to be asked is “will we?”.

There were my usual two runs this evening. along the north side of the city walls and then the second one across the square Maurice Marland and half a dozen steps up the second ramp

But here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall Minette, the old long-haired black cat that sometimes waits for me to let me stroke her.

That’s the windowsill where she normally waits, but she’s not there tonight (which isn’t unusual) but the candle that’s burning there in her place doesn’t look very ppromising. I hope that she’s ok and that nothing has happened to her.

So I’ve had a slow evening listening to music and having to reconfigure my web server so that I could upload my images tonight. I seem to wasting time on such unimportant trivialities right now.

So tomorrow and Friday I’ll deal with the peche à pied radio programme that we recorded and which needs editing because on Friday evening I’m expecting a few audio diaries from various people and that’s my weekend task. They have to be edited and ready for Monday morning because our programme is going out on Tuesday late afternoon.

So I reckon that I’ll have another early night and get myself fighting fit. Fighting for breath and fit to drop, I reckon.

Tuesday 24th March 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

… and that’s a habit that I need to abandon as quickly as possible because that’s twice now this year so far that I’ve been wrong and the French have a saying jamais deux sans trois

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago I said that we wouldn’t be seeing the two little Channel Island freighters Thora and Normandy Trader around here for a good while now, but here’s Thora moored up at the quayside this morning.

And she can’t be in quarantine either because when I went out for my evening constitutional she had cleared off back to St Helier – or, at least, she had left harbour.

And excuse the photo. I’d forgotten about the focusing issues with the little NIKON 1 J5 and it’s managed to focus on a blade of grass in the foreground rather than on the ship in the background.

Another thing that I’ve been wrong about (I really must get out of this habit) is the question of memory sticks. I must be confusing myself with the old hi-fi back in the Auvergne because I tried a 16GB memory stick with 900 tunes in the hi-fi in the living room. I’ve managed to track down a supply of reasonably-priced 4GB memory sticks and I’ll be ordering a dozen of those.

Another thing that I need to be ordering is a new set of speakers for the big desktop computer. The set that I’m using is the set that I had back in Expo which I bought probably 18 years ago. They were stored in a damp corner for 6 years before I resurrected it for here. The bass boombox didn’t work but no worry, the two main speakers did.

That is, up until yesterday when the left speaker is on the point of giving up.

And you try to find a decent mains-powered hard-wired speaker system with pre-amp these days. Everything seems to be battery-powered bluetooth these days and that’s no use to me.

This morning I had quite a shock. Lying there dozing my way through the alarms and I suddenly sat bolt upright. Just a minute to go before the final alarm. I just about made it out of bed as well before it rang.

Due to my extraordinary late night last night, that was impressive.

After the medication I looked at the dictaphone. And I’d had another busy night too. But all that I remember of it was travelling from Paris to the South Of France on the train going via Brussels and I can’t remember why I went that way. And that’s my lot.

After breakfast I attacked the file-splitting. I found another complete sound-file which was good news but for a couple of albums you can tell that I’m getting down to the dregs because there are several albums that I found where there are no digital copies anywhere of any track. It looks as if I’ll have to make my own in the end – wow, flutter, crackle and scratch included. I’m not sure how that’s going to work.

But in the meantime there’s still 100 or so to work on. And as I said yesterday, then there are the cassettes.

Having eventually managed to finish that I had a shower (for once) and then headed into town, complete with my paperwork authorising me to travel.

There were more people out and about than I expected, although there weren’t exactly any hordes of people, but the good news is that my favourite bakery, La Mie Caline, is open again.

LIDL was weird. No more than 20 people allowed in at any one time. We had to wait outside and when 5 people left, another 5 would be admitted. The staff were all wearing masks and the checkout staff were behind plastic screens wearing masks and rubber gloves, and also some weird kind of headgear like a welder’s helmet but with a clear plastic face screen.

Clearly taking no chances.

As for me, I just bought the usual stuff plus 3kg of apples. One of my plans is to make a big apple puree sometime in the very near future and they had big bags on special offer today. My orange and ginger cordial is getting low but I have plenty of oranges so I’ll make another batch tomorrow afternoon.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette. The manager was there and he was telling me his problems about his staff, having to pay them when he has his takings vastly reduced. It’s going to be a huge problem for all kinds of small businesses and the Government needs to step in to help these people otherwise we’ll have a huge economic catastrophe.

It was lunchtime by the time that I returned so I had my butty and then I came in here to do some work.

By the time I’d knocked off at 18:00 I’d written all of the notes for Project 034 and also for the live concert for the end of May, dictated them and uploaded them to the computer.

But if the truth is known, I could have done so much more. Not only was I easily distracted, I … errr … had a little relax on my chair. No surprise there, is it, after my late night.

Half an hour on the 6-string semi-acoustic and then half an hour on the five-string bass. This extra string is confusing me but if I don’t practise with it, I won’t improve, that’s for sure.

Tonight’s tea was delicious. I found a slice of lentil and bean pie in the freezer so I had that with potatoes, vegetables and a nice gravy. For pudding was another slice of this delicious jam pie with the last of the soya coconut dessert. I’ll start on the vegan ice cream tomorrow and that should be interesting.

Despite having been out this morning, I still went out for my evening walk. I heard a few people in town and met someone smoking a cigarette on their doorstep but that was the lot.

The Place Cambernon is deserted too. We saw yesterday that the bar La Rafale and the new restaurant La Contremarche are closed. Today, we can see that Mere Poulain’s creperie is closed too.

Not that any of this would deter me, so I managed both my runs, and over the slightly extended circuits too. So i’m pleased about that.

But I’m going to have an early night tonight. I deserve it. I have a nurse coming tomorrow to take a blood sample. The doctor has requested it so that he can see how I’m doing .

But a blood test? I won’t be doing any studying for it, that’s for sure.

Monday 23rd March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Why am I doing this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And for two reasons too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can but hope.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: place d’armes

Monday 6th April 2020 – OHHH NOT ANOTHER …

Sunday 5th April 2020 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

Saturday 4th April 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

Friday 3rd April 2020 – WHILE YOU ALL ADMIRE …

Thursday 2nd April 2020 – I’VE JUST HAD …

Wednesday 1st April 2020 – IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY …

Tuesday 31st March 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

Monday 30th March 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

Sunday 29th March 2020 – AND IF YOU …

Saturday 28th March 2020 – WHAT A WASTE …

Friday 27th March 2020 – AND IF YOU THINK …

Thursday 26th March 2020 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Wednesday 25th March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY STUCK …

Tuesday 24th March 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

Monday 23rd March 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

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