Tag Archives: tidying up

Tuesday 16th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has been resumed and we have our internet back. Round about 08:00 this morning when I was trying to do something interesting, the internet went “phut”.

Having contacted the Internet provider, they informed me that there was a “technical issue” and it will be out until at least Wednesday morning. As a gesture, they have offered us 200mb of mobile internet per day via our smartphones, but have you ever tried to type out on a smartphone keyboard the rubbish that I churn out?

Anyway, I had another more reasonable night last night and that makes quite a change. It’s a shame that I was rather busy and ended up not going to bed until later than I intended. It would have been quite nice to have had a longer more reasonable night.

And that’s not all either. I awoke bolt-upright at about 06:25 and couldn’t go back to sleep. Consequently, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

with the internet crashing out, I wasn’t able to do anything of the things that I needed to do and so in the end I transcribed the notes on the dictaphone from the night. I was with 2 friends at some point. We were driving somewhere down a narrow lane. As we continued a cement mixer came towards us. For some reason he had a change of opinion and decided to perform a U-turn and return the way that he had come. He stopped and reversed off to the side of the road ready to pull back round the other way but the bank of the road gave way underneath him and the lorry fell over on its side. We dashed over there. When we arrived he was busy extricating himself from the wreck. We asked him if he was OK. he replied “yes, there’s no problem”. We then wanted to know if there was anything that we could do but he couldn’t think of anything that needed doing. He could quite happily arrange all of that himself. To be on the safe side I took his phone number and gave him mine. I said that I’d phone him in half an hour and se what he was up to. where this happened was near a railway line. Just as we were talking a 4-4-2 tank engine fitted with condensing apparatus went past on the railway line obviously pulling an old London Underground train. We climbed back into our van and set off. These 2 people with me, 1 was a guy and 1 was a girl. They were a couple. I know who they are but I just can’t think who.

There was a group of us going into the house. We’d been out shopping, buying stuff. As we went in, one of the people noticed that my shoelaces were undone so he bent down to tie them for me. Of course I had a lot of trouble with my legs. Where he put his hand was right on one of my sore spots. I told him to stop, that he was hurting but he couldn’t understand and carried on trying to tie my laces. I was going berserk. I told him that I had cancer. He replied that I must be imagining the pain. For some reason it became a very complicated thing. In the end we went in. He was sulking somewhat. He asked “what about that think we were going to do if we had the part?”. I replied “I don’t have it but I know that it’s in here. It can’t be anywhere else”. He sat down and looked at his watch and made a note of the date and time, sitting there with his arms folded waiting for it to be produced.

With not much to do until my Welsh lesson, I did some revision, However, the trouble is that with having a teflon brain, nothing sticks to it and I needn’t have bothered really. My memory issues are quite annoying. And it’s strange – I can remember the words of some kind of extremely obscure rock song from the mid-60s but ask me why I wanted to go into the kitchen 5 minutes ago.

Trying to have a Welsh lesson on a smartphone isn’t easy either but it went so much better than I expected, and far better than when I tried it in Canada back in October.

Once the lesson was over, I had a really big baking session.

There is now another pile of fruit buns, most of which are in the freezer waiting for another day, and there’s a mountain of lovely biscuits. And I DO mean “lovely”, because I sampled them.

It’s the basic 4/8/10 recipe (sugar, vegan butter and flour) with vanilla essence, fleur d’orange, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and yeast.

Added to that was some diced fresh ginger and then some honey, and several tablespoons of oatmeal to restore the consistency after the addition of the honey.

You won’t find me telling you about times and temperatures because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my oven is pretty much hit-and-miss and nothing is consistent. Here in this apartment, it’s all done by trial and error.

While I was waiting for everything to happen I sorted through my collection of herbs and spices. And just like the bathroom stuff at the weekend, I found that I’d actually bought the spices that I needed when I was there on a previous occasion and had forgotten about them.

Ahh well! See my bit about “memory” above.

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital. The coughing, spluttering and rasping throat were difficult to decipher so I hadn’t really touched them until I would feel more like it, so I had a bash today, with nothing better to do.

There are still plenty more to go at of course – this isn’t something that will be done in 5 minutes, or even in the next week or so. It’s taken me 6 months to reach this point.

When the physiotherapist came round, I was actually … errr … relaxing, so he awoke me. But he needn’t have bothered because my neighbour in this building, whon he also sees, has had a bad fall and he’ll be spending all of his time with her.

How many sessions is this that he’s missed with me just recently?

Tea was a lovely taco roll with rice, using some of the stuffing left over from yesterday. There’s still a bit left so I’ll have a leftover curry tomorrow, with one of my naan breads from out of the freezer.

Looking back (and forward) to my meals just recently and my cooking and baking, things are definitely taking a turn for the better around here. Living down on the farm was enjoyable when I was fit and healthy, but cooking was somewhat limited and for obvious reasons too. Things are so much better here and when I eventually have a real and proper kitchen things will be even better.

But that’s something about which to worry on another occasion. Right now, I have things to do before going to bed. And with a bit of luck, the internet might be back up tomorrow and I catch up with whatever needs doing.

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Monday 15th May 2023 – AFTER ALL THAT …

…I said last night about my radio programme, I did actually finish it today, and before tea too.

Mind you, it was a case of “only just”. There wasn’t all that much time left.

As I said yesterday, the trip to and from Leuven is really tiring and trying to do it in three days instead of four (missing out on my day of recovery following my treatment) is just contributing to the problems.

However, knowing that the walk from the hospital back to the station is possible, the shorter walk to and from the old place where I used to stay will become theoretically possible. The major issue though is that it’s far away from places to go to eat, and even farther from the shops if I wanted to buy my own food.

However, there’s bound to be a solution somehow, I reckon.

Anyway, when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I was stark out and isn’t that a change? In fact, by the looks of things I must have had a good night. I can’t really remember too much in the way of disturbances.

After the medication I made a start on the radio programme. But I wasn’t really in the mood and there seemed to be plenty of distractions to divert me from the job at hand.

One of them, which will come as a huge surprise to many people, is that I rearranged things in the bathroom.

Having gone overboard at the weekend stocking up on bathroom products that I didn’t really need because I’d stocked up the last time that they’d had a sale, I was running out of place to put them. And so that was a nice little job for a while.

And I do stress the word “little”. The way things are at the moment, I can only work for about 10 minutes and then I have to go to sit down for an hour to catch my breath.

No physiotherapist today. he sent me a message to say that he’ll be coming on Tuesday and Friday this week. That’s despite me saying to him that I’d like him to come on the same days and at the same time all the time. I can’t do with this continual disruption. Of course, I didn’t get the message until I’d had a shower and a good clean-up, but I don’t suppose that prettying myself up is a bad idea.

Another thing that I’ll have to do tomorrow, straight after my Welsh lesson, is to bake some more biscuits. I used the last ones today. I have plenty of fresh ginger and plenty of honey, so I might go for some kind of honey and oatmeal biscuits. But I don’t think that anything will be as good as those chocolate biscuits that I made a while back. They were special.

So with the radio programme finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone. But that was rather disappointing. There was something to do with a calendar and some cats last night but that’s really all that I remember. I can’t remember a thing apart from that.

And then I was on my travels again later on and that evaporated too as soon as I took hold of the dictaphone. I’m really not doing very well at the moment remembering all of these and I’m really puzzled as to whether any of my favourite companions have been coming to see me and slipping away without me remembering. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?.

Finally, I’d heard a noise outside my apartment so I went out to see. There was a small kitten in the gutter, a tortoiseshell kitten that was crying. It looked as if it had been abandoned and was starving. I went over to look at at and while I was looking at it, another one appeared. A group of people assembled. They said that they hadn’t noticed these kittens around before. I went to go back into my apartment but noticed that I’d left the front door open. I walked in and could see kitten footmarks in the hall. I followed them into the living room. These 2 kittens had come inside and had started to make themselves comfortable. I couldn’t grab hold of them and put them outside so I had to sit down and ponder my next move. One of them came to sit on me and began to purr. I thought to myself “it looks as if I’ve acquired a couple of cats, doesn’t it?”.

One of the plans that I have for my new apartment is to think about whether I can have a cat. If I’m not going on any more mega-voyages to North America and not going so often to Leuven, it’s something that wouldn’t be impossible.

But the amount of time that my subconscious has been dwelling on the question of cats, maybe there will be one or two here sooner rather than later. Some people whom I know in the USA have a Serval, an African savannah cat, and that would be something really interesting to have around the area. Have you seen the size of them? It would scare the tourists and holidaymakers to death.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, the pepper coming from out of the freezer again. But in the air fryer at a lower temperature but for a longer iime, the stuffing wasn’t cooked sufficiently. I’m going to have to spend more time working on this to do it properly. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But that’s enough for tonight. I’m off to bed, later rather than earlier, and I’ll probably dream about cats again, I dunno. It would be nice to have some kind of company round here seeing as I don’t go out very often these days, and cats certainly aren’t demanding.

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Tuesday 25th April 2023 – MY CHOCOLATE BISCUITS …

… are absolutely delicious. I’m well impressed with how they have turned out.

It’s a simple biscuit recipe of sugar, butter and flour in a ratio of 4:8:10. And then I ground up some almonds in a whizzer, added some vanilla and some of that concentrated orange essence and off we went.

And when it was all mixed together I added in a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and mixed it in. And then I rolled it out and cut it into small squares.

When they were baked, there was one that was distorted so I tasted it and I really do think that I’ve hit the jackpot with that. I’m tempted, when I have time, to make some chocolate-flavoured buttercream and make some bourbon-like sandwich biscuits. They should be extraordinary.

But that’s for maybe tomorrow. I’m more interested at the moment about what happened today.

As usual it started off pretty badly. Once again I took ages to go off to sleep. And I was wide awake again at 03:30. However I did manage to go back to sleep at one point because the alarm awoke me at 07:00.

It was a struggle to leave the bed but I managed to beat the second alarm, and after the medication, mails and messages I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

Once again there weren’t all that many of us there but nevertheless it passed off quite well and I was surprised about how much of the comprehension exercise I managed to complete. I actually had all of the questions correct but there was one where I’d guessed the answer from what I heard.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a baking session.

There wasn’t just the biscuits but also a pile of fruit buns. I’d run out of fruit bread this morning so I need to stock up. And they came out quite nicely too. I’ll definitely make some more of those. Some have gone into the bread tin and the rest have gone into the freezer where they can be pulled out as and when required.

While I was waiting for everything to bake or cook or to rise up I tidied out the food shelves in the kitchen to make sure that I knew what I had. Some stuff found its way into the bin. It was stuff that I’d bought from NOZ and I was surprised that the sell-by date was in 2020. It wouldn’t have been so bad had they been in tins but they were in fact in glass bottles.

A pile of stuff found its way into the bins outside too. The bag with the glass and plastic was overflowing so a little walk around outside would do me good.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. Not very much though. I’d joined the Army last night. I was obviously not cut out for the basic training. We’d all started, checked in and found out where we were sleeping. Next morning we had all the stupid army routine then we all had to assemble to go off on a bus somewhere. The sergeant in charge was reminding us to do this and do that but of course we hadn’t done it because we didn’t know and no-one had said. He said “turn your room keys in now because you should have all your possessions with you”. Most of the platoon had left their coats in their room so he was haranguing everyone. We all had to go back. I said “I’m sorry sarge” but at least I had a smile from him which I suppose was something or other.

With the time that was left I was editing down the final batch of notes that I have recorded for one of the radio programmes. It’s not finished yet of course because I wasn’t as focused as I might have been. Things are going to start to become complicated from now on because I’m now reaching the stage where I’ll be changing the format and content of my programmes.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll, and there’s enough stuffing left over to go into a nice curry tomorrow, with naan bread and yoghurt.

And while we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m off to sign for my new apartment tomorrow morning. It’ll be a while before I move in because I have to give the tenant three months notice to leave and then I want to have the bathroom and the kitchen done.

So whatever, I’m going to have my work cut out once it all goes through.

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Saturday 8th April 2023 – THAT WAS DISAPPOINTING

There I was this evening settled down in front of the internet to watch Y Fflint play Caernarfon Town. Y Fflint deep in trouble at the wrong end of the table and Caernarfon only a few points ahead desperate not to be dragged into a relegation scrap themselves.

It took just 90 seconds for Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro, the Côte d’Ivoire international centre-forward to put Y Fflint 1-0 ahead. And after 9 minutes they went 2-0 up and we were going to be in for a cracking match that would promise everything as Caernarfon would have to throw the kitchen sink at them to get anything from this game.

But then what can only be described as an “incident” off the field which led to stewards, paramedics and the police being summoned led to the players being led from the pitch. After a delay of 45 minutes, the maximum allowed by rules, and the game still not being restarted, the match was abandoned.

There will doubtless be some repercussions about all of that. It was extremely disappointing.

Just like my night, really.

My clean and tidy bed was quite comfy and I nestled down in there quite early. I even managed to go to sleep quite quickly too but it didn’t last. In fact, when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. I’d long-since abandoned the idea of going back to sleep.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I set the washing machine off on a cycle (a very clever machine, mine) only to discover later that I’d forgotten a pillow case (but that’s another story) and then hit the streets, carefully dodging the crane that was outside the door repairing someone’ window surround on the top floor.

Noz came up with nothing except for a small hard-backed spiral-bound notebook that has now been pressed into service as a recipe book, and LeClerc was pretty much the same, although I found that I’d forgotten my vegan biscuits.

But never mind. That’s what the internet is for and I’m sure that i’ll be able to find a few good recipes there.

As I said yesterday, I went off with just one crutch which worked sort-of, but I still don’t have enough force in my left leg (never mind the right) to haul myself up a tall kerb. Back to two crutches it is then.

Back here, Liz told me that my web hosting sites were down so I had to chase that up. It appears that there had been an upgrade to the server during the night and instead of switching the main server back on, they’d switched off the back-up server instead, or something like that.

Having put away the frozen stuff and the cool stuff, I made some coffee and cheese on toast and had a very late breakfast / early lunch.

This afternoon I sorted out my paperwork and filed away a pile of stuff so the place is looking a little tidier. I’m going to try to do some stuff every day to reduce somewhat the amount of stuff I have to take with me when I finally move.

And then I turned my attention to the dictaphone. Despite the miserable night there was plenty of movement. At one point I was walking down the street on some kind of 1930s council house estate. There were all kinds of people at the window. I don’t know why they were there or what they were doing but you could see them there, and their shadows etc because it was late at night. It was something really weird.

And then I was with people who had gone out for a walk. They were staying in Yorkshire and were walking down some of these old stone-walled country lanes. They’d all gone their separate ways but met up again. I was watching them. Suddenly my whole perspective of view changed. It began to be a telephoto view as if I was miles and miles away. It was just zooming out all the time. I tried to bring myself back to the point of view where I could see them or to advance in little stages so that I could catch up with them again in stages but no matter where I was, my viewpoint ended up being miles away from where they were. I couldn’t bring myself back to be with them. I wasn’t with them physically. It was some distance from me standing there basically in the background as a spirit I suppose watching them

Later on I was with a rock group last night, either Semisonic or From Good Homes. A girl singer had not long joined them. She needed something doing to the roof of her house so someone from the group had arranged for her to have some slates. She went to pick them up but there was an argument about them. Considering that these slates were costing her nothing she should have kept quiet and just taken them. Instead she got into an argument that started the Gods sending thunderbolts at each other and the people taking part in this play.

Finally I was with the brother of a girl friend of mine from school who was with his wife. He was farming near Nantwich but had to go somewhere up in the mountains to bring back a trailer. I said that I’d go with him. We’d been camping out somewhere at this festival at first. I’d been there with another girl, whoever she might have been. I’d put our tent up. I was assembling something. I turned round to my wife and said “can you give me a screw” that brought everyone nearby to fits of laughter. When the festival finished we met up with this guy and went to pick up this trailer. I can’t remember what vehicle we were in but he was in a Land Rover. He said that one the way he’d drop off a box of stuff at someone. We set off through the mountains and eventually arrived where we had to be with this trailer. Then he realised that he hadn’t stopped to drop off this thing. He arranged that when he’d return home he’d post it. We coupled up this trailer to the Land Rover and set off back to Nantwich. It was a huge thing and was towing a trailer itself. How he was doing it with a Land Rover was anyone’s guess. Eventually we were back in Nantwich and went round to see his childhood home (which it wasn’t). It was being renovated and work was being done on it. He began to talk. He had the Land Rover, one of these Japanese pickups, a Volvo saloon and was thinking about selling maybe the Land Rover. He also had a Transit van by this time, not a Land Rover. He’d had the Transit from new, a brown swb one. He said that his wife didn’t understand why he still had it and he was thinking of selling it. I saod that the vehicle I would have sold could have been the Volvo saloon. Everything else was the right kind of vehicle to keep when you are working on a farm. He wasn’t convinced. He was talking about either moving back into the college or moving house into the area to do something differently. We talked about farming but at this point I fell back into sleep and all you can hear is me yawning.

Having dictated the text for the next couple of radio programmes I settled down for the football but as I mentioned just now, that was rather a disappointing waste of time.

Tea tonight was more of those baby roast potatoes with a salad. I’d taken some stuff out of the freezer that I thought was small breaded quorn fillets but was in actual fact some small falafel discs. But they were nice anyway and the air fryer does do a nice job on stuff like this.

So now I’m going to bed. It’s a Day of Rest tomorrow but if it’s anything like last Sunday there won’t be much rest for me. But I’ll track down some biscuit recipes and see if I can’t have a little baking session.

It will be interesting to say the least.

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Tuesday 7th March 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

… tonight was absolutely delicious.

Half a small courgette, a pile of mushrooms, some garlic, some chick peas and an onion and there we go. Lots of nice spices (I still have some left even though I was unable to buy any on my last trip to Leuven) and it was delicious. But I must remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge tonight because I was rather heavy-handed with the chili.

Anyway, last night was rather better from a sleep point of view. Not by much, I have to say, but I did manage to fall asleep comfortably at some point.

We had some travels last night, but I didn’t go all that far. I was in the Army, in World War I. I was in a front-line trench during an artillery bombardment. Suddenly the whistle blew and we charged out of the trench. My regiment was the Cheshire Regiment. For some reason the NCOs and officers wanted us to follow the Hampshire Regiment but once I passed through the barbed wire into No-Man’s Land (and I will never ever forget the University ) I came across a group of North Staffords. I followed them. It was probably lucky that I did because from what I understood the regiment I should have been with was massacred yet we of the North Staffords were able to find some kind of shelter in the lee of a hill where we could build a trench to occupy. That way we were at least spared for the moment from artillery fire.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was deep in the arms of Morpheus so I awoke with a start. It all took me by surprise.

But anyway I was up and out of bed straight away and after the medication and checking my mails and messages I started to revise my Welsh ready for the lesson.

However there was an interruption. The bank telephoned me to invite me to bring forward our appointment to tomorrow. One day here and there doesn’t make much difference in the great scheme of things so I agreed. I shall hobble down into town on my crutches and see what happens, passing by the chemist on the way..

We were very few at the lesson today so it’s always hard work in these circumstances. However, once again it passed off fairly well. I don’t know whether it’s my preparation that’s paying dividends or whether things are becoming easier or whether my brain is functioning better, but things might be looking up.

After the lesson I had a shower and a good clean-up. And it was much easier climbing into the bath for my shower. I remember how awful it was when I came back here in December. I’m not going to pretend that things are now back to normal but I don’t have to put any thought into climbing into the bath.

And to your surprise, and certainly to mine, I did some tidying up later. There have been all kinds of papers lying around here but the bin across the road has been full for a while. But my paper bin was now well overflowing so I gathered it all up and took it down there.

Somehow I managed to fit it all into the paper bin and it made the apartment look so much better, and I profited by bringing back the last of the shopping that was hanging around in Caliburn.

The physiotherapist was impressed with my progress. He’s going to design an exercise programme for me to follow to make sure that I work hard at my leg muscles. And he didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him that I intended to walk to the bank tomorrow. He just warned me to use both crutches.

The rest of the day has been spent pairing off all of the music for the next radio programme and making a start on writing the notes. I’m not working very hard, I have to admit, but I’m making slow progress

The curry was, as I said, absolutely delicious and after that I ended up having a lengthy chat with someone who lives in Virlet who has tracked me down via my social network. We had a lot to say to each other and we’ll be working a few things out in due course

Right now though I’m off to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow apart from my little trek into town. And I’m actually looking forward to that one way or another. It would be nice though if there were a café half-way up the hill where I could stop for a coffee. That would make things much easier but I don’t suppose you can have everything.

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Thursday 2nd February 2023 – I’VE BEEN TIDYING …

… out the freezer this morning.

Not that I’ve made any more room in it but I’ve managed to sort out everything and put it where I wanted it to be. I’ve not finished yet either though because I’m convinced that I can do even better than this and I might even have another go tomorrow to see what I can do.

I’m still convinced that a bigger freezer might have been a better idea, but then I would only have filled it even fuller of stuff and I wouldn’t have been any better off afterwards.

There had to be something to do to keep me busy today because the physiotherapist didn’t come this afternoon. He sent me a text message this morning to tell me that something had cropped up and he had to cancel all of his appointments for today. So If I remember, before I go to bed I’ll go for a walk up and down the stairs to see how I cope. I have to do some exercise.

Especially as I spent much of the afternoon curled up asleep on the chair in the bedroom. Coupled with the previous night or two where I didn’t have too much sleep I suppose that things have caught up with me. Last night was rather later than usual, what with one thing and another, and I suppose that that tipped me over the edge. And I’d been doing so well too. I hadn’t crashed out during the day for a while.

Going off on a few travels too during the night might have had something to do with it. I’m not sure what was going on with this particular dream but at one point there was a girl and a cat. The girl was sitting on the edge of something or other. I asked “how would it be if I were to jump over you and land down there in front of you?” to which she made some kind of non-committal comment. I had a look and the drop down wasn’t half as much as I thought it would be although it was still something considerable. I just took 2 or 3 steps, lauched myself and jumped over her and landed below at her feet. Someone said something about some other guy who had tried this somewhere else and had injured whoever it was who was sitting down. It had caused an awful lot of problems. I was lucky to get away with this without doing any damage

There was something else too about going off to see someone in Caliburn. I was told to fetch some chips back with me too, nice and hot. On the way out I noticed that they were putting the fish and chip caravan in place on Place Godal so I thought that I’d stop and pick some up. When I glanced at the time it was only 17:00 so I thought that I’d go to see this other person first and pick up the chips on the way back. I drove out of the car park that I’d just reversed into and carried on driving.

Later on, back in the dream about going to fetch the chips but it was too early as I said, and the chip van had only just arrived so I went off to do whatever else it was that I had to do, to see someone. I was early at his place too and the gates wouldn’t open. He had electric gates. On the way back I had to come straight home but I understood for some reason that I was to alight at Cammell Laird’s and walk through the town. When we arrived at Cammell Laird’s there was a group of people outside the ship company offices there. One of them was wearing a brown suit and a sheep jacket. She saw me knock. It was a quick knock today rather than a long usual one. She saw me knock and came after me to chase me away from the building.

Finally I’d been invited to a meeting on behalf of the employees to a management meeting of all the higher-ups. There had been another meeting a month or so ago that had been quite controversial because there had been a lot of anti-feminist sentiment and debate and discussion so no woman had gone to this particular one. I was there, and someone was using it as a vehicle to complain all about FIFA’s restrictive practice in broadcasting football matches etc. I asked the question “how does FIFA differ from UEFA and the national football associations?”. All I was met with was a pile of bluster so I burst out laughing. That embarrassed the person who was speaking. After the meeting I went back to the office. Someone was climbing up the stairs. He had one of these 3D masks on. He was taking his time trying to climb up so I tried go past him but he wouldn’t let me go past. All he did was to complain about other people trying to push him along. Then he cleared off. I had to go down to a storeroom to fetch something. There was some issue about some chocolate that was in there. Some woman had been let down over this chocolate and needed someone to go. I said that I would. It was a low concrete corridor with Christmas trees down it. I set off, very careful not to bang my head on the concrete beams.

That wasn’t everything either. While I was asleep during the afternoon I was at work in an office. In my desk drawer I had a barbie doll hidden and when I went to add a second I found that my drawer was open and that the doll was on clear view to everyone who cared to look. I grabbed some fruit to lunch and thought that I’d go and sit on a chair outside in the hallway to eat it. When I went outside I found that there was a girl whom I liked sitting at the reception, a girl who has featured in these pages before. I quite liked her but I didn’t want to give herthe impression that I was stalking her so I pretended to do something somewhere else that involved a trip down the corridor and then I went back to my desk inside the other room.

After the medication and checking my messages (and still no reply to my reminder to the solicitor about the documents that I need) I spend a pleasant hour or two with the freezer. Rinsing out the drawers to dispose of the build-up of ice made something of a difference and makes them look cleaner. I can actually see what’s in there now much better than I could before.

So apart from having a good sleep, I’ve also been writing up the notes for the next series of radio programmes. Not that I’ve done very much because there’s always something that crops up to distract me when I’m trying to work.

It’s true that I’m having a very hard time concentrating these days but news about what’s happening in Labrador about the controversial fall-out from the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project is enough to distract anyone who has an interest in it. In fact, the whole issue of the development of Hydro-electric power going back to the 1950s in Labrador is so controversial that this is just one more raccoon skin on the wall.

But finally the First-Nation Innu of the region have had enough. In the words of Peter Penashue, the chief Innu negotiator, the next stage of the development, “the Gull Island hydroelectric project, is dead on arrival”. The project, that should have realised $5,000,000 per annum for the Innu community in Central Labrador for the loss of their traditional hunting grounds, has been reduced to just a small fraction of that “because of substantial cost overruns”. Had this been anywhere else in Canada, the compensation figures would have been ring-fenced

And it’s crazy cost overruns too. When I first went to Labrador the road was NOTHING MORE THAN A 1800-KILOMETRE FARM TRACK. Over the years that I’ve been travelling north the highway has been metalled, every last inch of it, and for no good purpose either. But that’s typical of what’s going on out there just to appease NALCOR, the contractors, and Valard, the builders of the project.

Tea tonight was veggie balls with pasta and veg in tomato sauce. And it was quite delicious too. But tomorrow I’m going off on the bus to the supermarket in town and amongst the stuff that I’ll buy will be some salad stuff. I’ve become quite accustomed now for salad with my potatoes and burgers.

A nice burger on a bap with salad and chips fried in the air fryer sounds like a nice tea for tomorrow night.

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Wednesday 4th January 2023 – MY SHEPHERD’S PIE …

… was absolutely delicious this evening. With the left-over pie filling from Christmas, the left-over mushrooms from the weekend and topped with potato mashed in milk and butter( vegan, of course), and not to mention made with real shepherds, it was really nice with vegetables and gravy.

This is going to be something that I’ll have to work on for the future – although I doubt that it will be every day that I have a mugful of lentil and tofu pie-filling lying around left over from a previous project.

It was much better than the sleep that I had last night, that’s for sure. I have a problem with an ingrowing toenail on my left foot and last night it began to play up – to such an extent that I had first to take off my elastic stocking and seeing that it didn’t resolve the problem, to take off the plaster that was protecting the toe.

That didn’t seem to help very much either, but at some point I managed to doze off into sleep. I ended up with the guys off The Navy Lark, Pertwee, Johnson and someone else. It was my birthday so I’d been round to see if they would come out with me but for some unknown reason the 2 girls didn’t realise that it was my birthday, they were busy or they didn’t want to come or something so in the end it was just the 4 of us. Just as we were leaving Pertwee’s apartment the telephone rang so we nipped back upstairs to see if it was anything for him. No it wasn’t, and nothing to do with any of us. They asked me where I’d like to go so I suggested that in the Chaussée de Wavre down the road there was a good Italian restaurant. Actually there were 2 but I meant a different one. They said “yes, let’s go there”. We walked down the Boulevard towards the Chaussée de Wavre and suddenly ended up in a restaurant, just the 4 of us, no-one else. The place was empty but it looked really nice, nice paintwork, curtains, tablecloths etc, very much the pastoral Italian place. I thought that if the food’s as nice as this place looks we should be OK here. We settled down at a table where there were 4 chairs by a fire.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already awake but I wasn’t in much of a mood to leave the bed. I missed the second alarm too but when the third one went off at 08:00 I was actually up and about. High time that I showed willing.

Once I’d managed to come round into the Land of the Living, whenever that was, I made a start on tidying up in here. I was hard at it too and managed not only to put everything away and file away the pile of papers that had accumulated over the last few months, I wrote a couple of letters that were necessary – a couple of bills had come in at some point and I’d overlooked them.

All of that was enough to make me crash out for half an hour and I didn’t feel any regret because it does look so much better in the bedroom and I won’t be afraid or embarrassed to let people see inside here. In the run up to going away I had rubbish just about everywhere and nothing had improved since I’d been back. Quite the contrary, in fact.

My freidnly neighbourhood cleaner came round at 14:30 and spent an hour here. And she accomplished far more in the apartment in an hour than I have accomplished in all the time that I’ve lived here. She found tons of stuff that I’d missed as well and that was good news. I did wonder where half the stuff in this apartment had gone.

So it’s looking quite nice in the place at the moment. And as she catches up with the arrears it’ll look even nicer. I can’t wait for this place to look as if someone lives here.

Just now I mentioned tea. It really was nice and as I said yesterday, I ought to spend more time looking after myself properly as far as food goes.

And while I was at at, I had another look at my shopping list. I’ve decided that Friday afternoon is when I’ll send off my order to the supermarket and see how I get on with that. I’ll probably order a delivery every couple of weeks and in the meantime ask my cleaner if she’ll pick up some mushrooms for me on the weeks when I don’t pass an order. That was I can keep on top of everything.

And who knows? At some point I might even have another go at going to the shops myself if my walking improves. You never know.

But that’s for later. Right now, much later than I was hoping, I’m off to bed. Whether I sleep or not is another thing because I now have a pain in the other foot. It’s non-stop, isn’t it?

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Tuesday 3rd January 2023 – I’M NOT SURE …

… whether I’m imagining this but I seem to be moving just a little easier today.

Getting into and out of the bath in order to have a shower didn’t take me as long as it has done in the recent past, but whether that’s because I’ve found a new way to do it or whether it really is easier is something that I haven’t quite worked out.

If it’s anything to do with the amount of rest that I’ve been having just recently, then that might explain something because it was at about 10:45 when I finally arose from the dead today. A little earlier than yesterday of course but seeing that I was actually in bed over 90 minutes earlier, then it’s nothing really that’s worth raising the roof.

Some stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night. The most astonishing thing during the night was like a deltaplane. There were probably 10 or 12 people underneath it pedalling away to get up some speed. All these people cycling, they were in a kind-of foot-forward position, 10 or 12 of them in a V-shape underneath this wing, really low down. Suddenly the rear end lifted off the ground, they went up this ramp and over the sea wall. The thing actually took off and flew. I was there with my camera trying to take photos of it but for some unknown reason the shutter wouldn’t click and I couldn’t take a photo of this most extraordinary thing that was going on during the night.

And then I was in Bangor in North Wales. There was a hurrican blowing absolutely everything about. I was waiting there for the Shearings coaches to turn up to see whether they needed a driver for something or other. There was someone there with a couple of pieces of paper and I noticed that he put one down but it blew away. Eventually I ran after it and caught it. I was actually addressed to me and concerned a coach trip that I’d taken a couple of weeks earlier where I’d had to collect some money off people. I’d collected the money but I couldn’t remember what I’d actually done with it. It was a huge piece of old dot-matrix computer print-out stuff that had been heavily edited and tippexed out or felt-penned out and overwritten, everything, listing the people, how much they should have paid etc. I seemed to remember that what I’d collected had been nothing like as complicated as this. But this wasn’t the right time to read this with all of the confusion etc so I folded it up and put it in my jacket pocket thinking that I’d find a quieter moment when I could concentrate, have another read of it and see what I could sort out and whether I could make head or tail of it.

Apart from having a shower today, I’ve tidied up the bathroom as well. Some stuff has been thrown away and if I could make it comfortably out to the rubbish bins more stuff would be gone too but that will have to wait.

However, having done the bedroom (after a fashion) yesterday and the bathroom today, whatever will I accomplish tomorrow?

The physiotherapist came round this afternoon too and put me through my paces. He seems to think that there’s a slight improvement too in how I’m moving about and has given me a few more tips and hints. Nevertheless, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and I’ve a feeling that if things are ever to improve (which is not certain) it’s going to be a long, long time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with the left-over stuffing from yesterday. And tomorrow I’m going to have a curry made with the leftovers of everything that is in the fridge. High time that normal service is resumed around here. And then I can get on with ordering what I need for the next round of stuff.

Just one more slice of my Christmas cake to finish as well. That’s for tomorrow of course so I’ll then have to think about what to do next. I have some fruit buns in the freezer that will need defrosting and I’ll also have a think about baking some more bread as I’ve run out of that too and I’m not in a position to go out and buy a tasty baguette for the weekend – one of my rare luxuries.

With all of the foregoing, I can see that I need to begin to organise myself. I can’t sit around and mope and do nothing, even if I don’t feel like doing anything special. I still have to eat and I ought to devote more time to making myself some nice stuff.

But ohhh: For a decent oven instead of the one that I have here. That would make a nice difference.

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

… late night tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tuesday 27th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a little more motivated today.

Not by very much, I have to say, but at least I’ve managed to do a couple of things today.

Not that you would have thought so the way the morning unfolded because I spent more of it in bed than I ought to have done. No chance whatever of me leaving the bed when the alarm went off at 07:30. It was much more like 09:00 when I finally broke surface today.

Mind you, that’s not a surprise judging by the amount of travelling that I did during the night. I was running some kind of school but it wasn’t a boarding school, it was a front for something else. However it was such fun having this boarding school teaching the kids English etc that it actually became the principal occupation rather than whatever it was that we were intending to do. We taught the boys and girls poetry. We had a couple of them write out poems. I had to go to print them so I sent one boy down to the printer while I printed them off so he could bring them back. For some unknown reason I couldn’t remember the key combination to print and the screen was too far away for me to read. It took me ages to remember the CTRL+P shortcut to make these things print off

Later on, I stepped back into this dream, took the school up again and these pupils there. One of the pupils had to write out a poem so I let him do it. He was comfortably over the limit of words but it sounded so good that I tried to have him write another. His parents were away with the British Civil Service so he was staying at our boarding school. He sat down to write a second one but was shot in the rigging as he did so and all his possessions that he’d found had all been wiped out and broken

Then later still I was back in there yet again. We were checking photos of these kids at this school. There was one of a boy and girl. They each had a sticker in their ear. One had a green sticker, one had a red sticker in it. The girl’s said “gaffer” or “boss” and I can’t remember the boy’s but it implied that the girl was in charge and he was just her servant or something.

And now for something completely different. When I went into the shed after having been out for a day or two I found this motorbike and sidecar in there. It was an old fore-and-aft V-twin that somehow I had an impression that it was a BMW although it wasn’t. I was trying hard to identify it but but I couldn’t see any maker’s name on it at all. It was black and quite old, probably from the 60s and looked as if Laurent and Xavier had dropped it off on me. It was really the most impressive beast that I’d ever seen. I’d been talking to them about motor bikes a few days ago. I’d no idea how come this had appeared in my shed but it was an unidentified V-twin fore-and-aft. Everything about it said BMW but there was no plate on the engine or on the frame or tank to say what it might be. It was completely blank.

After that I was with a boy and a girl. We ended up at a cottage. There was a huge pile of Mary’s paperwork. While the boy and girl were sitting in front of the fire keeping warm I was going through the paperwork finding all kinds of things. I sorted out as much as I could but there was still a big pile of unsorted stuff. It was 03:00 and I said that I had to go. I said to these two “whatever you do, you mustn’t leave until the fire had gone right down because we don’t want the place burning down”. They agreed to stay. I couldn’t find my guitars. They thought that they had been taken by someone else into the hall so I had to hunt around for them at the very last minute before leaving. It was about 03:15 before I was finally ready to go.

Surprisingly, I stepped back into this dream too. One of the things that we found in these papers was a document dated April 1940, a handbook for farmers issued by the Farmers’ Union. For a start, the back pages were in Dutch so it was intended for an audience of Dutch farmers coming to settle in Nantwich. It included articles like “love your slave” and all kinds of outdated stuff like that which even for the 1940s was extremely near the knuckle. I read it out to these people with me and they were astonished. Then it became time for me to go and do a couple of deliveries and then I’d been told that I could go home after that so I prepared myself to go. But this document was astonishing, 1940 as well and aimed for everyone in the Farmers Union in the Nantwich area.

Once I’d finally managed to drag myself round into the Land of the Living, the first thing that I had to do was to deal with the questionnaire that I had been sent yesterday.

That involved printing it out, completing it, scanning it, scouring around for the supporting documents and then sending off everything. By e-mail of course because I can’t walk down into town and the Post Office.

You’d be surprised how long all of that took to do as well. Nothing is as easy or as straightforward as it might be and I have a variety of good and valid reasons why my information is not as easy or as straightforward as anyone else’s.

Next stop was the bathroom and a shower. And you have no idea how difficult it’s becoming to climb into the bath in order to take a shower. This can’t go on for much longer and something certainly needs to happen in order that I can deal with this, and quite soon too.

There is plenty of rubbish that has accumulated around here and that needed to go to the bins across the road. It was a nice sunny day, if a little windy, so I decided to have a bash. It was a little easier to head that way but I was soon exhausted and the rest of the trip was a nightmare. But I made it in the end.

On the way back I passed by Caliburn and wound him up. He struggled into life so I let him run for a while. While he was ticking over I disconnected all of the ancillary electrical circuits that I wired in when I bought him. I want to see if the battery will charge better with it all disconnected.

We had a few bright sparks while I was doing it, and shame as it is to say it, a job that would usually take me just 2 or 3 minutes with no complications whatever took me half an hour.

The woman who lives upstairs who does cleaning too was in the corridor so I mentioned to her that I’ll be needing her services in due course. She’ll make arrangements to come to see me.

Back in here I sent off that incendiary letter that I’d written a few days ago, mentioning in passing that I’m not going for my appointments next week. Half an hour to the bins is longer than it used to take me to walk to the station. How on earth can I make it as far as Leuven, and on a Bank Holiday too?

The physiotherapist came round later and gave me a little work-out. He thinks that he might have found something and gave me a few instructions about massaging a muscle in my upper thigh.

Tea tonight, power cuts included, was a little different. Stuffed pepper with veg and rice but with no mushrooms I tried a small tin of kidney beans. It certainly made a difference, and a pleasant one too. I’ll try this again.

But I’m running short of onions now and that’s fatal. It looks as if another struggle to the Carrefour is on the agenda at some point.

However that’s for again. Right now I’m going to go to bed for (hopefully) some pleasant dreams. Tomorrow is a day with nothing planned so I might go round to see my neighbour and pay her for the shopping that she did for me last week. I need to pay my debts.

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Saturday 24th December 2022 – I WAS REALLY …

… late going to bed last night. That’s because before retiring last night I changed al lthe bedding.

And while it smelled rather damp, it was beautiful to nestle down into something clean and comfortable for a change and I must do this more often.

It therefore goes without saying that I took no notice whatsoever of the alarms this morning and it was round about 09:40 when I finally crawled out of bed. And quite right too.

Some of the morning was spent tidying up in the kitchen. Not very much though. I could do about 10 minutes and then I’d have to go and sit down for an hour to recover and, on at least one occasion, crash out for 20 mintes.

There was a pile of plastic, metal and glass rubbish that needed to be taken down to the bins. I put it in the new shopping trolley and set off. And I do have to say that that’s not going to work as well as I would like either. In fact it took me over half an hour and it’s only just across the road from here.

However, when Laurent from the radio came round to see me the place did actually look better and I felt much more comfortable in having people round.

That’s just the living room and part of the kitchen though. The rest is pretty appalling. I’m hoping that Social Services will contact me soon about having some assistance because I can’t manage on my own.

But I’ve had another ‘phone call. A different physiotherapist wants to come to see me on Tuesdays and Thursdays in addition (apparently) to the first one who wants to come round on Mondays. So what’s kindled his excitement?

Tea was a baked potato with veg and a couple of these small breaded quorn fillets that are really nice. And on that subject the delivery from Amazon with the vegan food in it turned up today too. So mushroo pâté on my toast for breakfast tomorrow.

Some stuff on the dictaphone too. I was retiring from work (and that’s a recurring dream, isn’t it?). With getting everything ready I wanted to go to say goodbye to the people with whom I used to work in Chester years ago in the early 70s. I recalled that I’d bumped into one of them a couple of years ago telling him that I was thinking of moving on. He said not to forget to call in. It was a fraught journey. I had to catch a train to Chester that arrived at about 08:20 but with all of the roadworks and diversion and new one-way systems it took an age and an age to actually make our way across the city to Stanley Place where the insurance company used to be situated. I thought at one time that we would never ever arrive. Some woman had come with me, a girl, and I was talking to her about it. I kept on having flashbacks to remember different bits of this story. All the time we were walking I was gradually piecing things together about how it had come about that i’d met this guy again after all these years and he’d invited me back. Even then I couldn’t recall the complete story and we were still wandering around the city trying to find a way to reach where we wanted to be with things having changed so much that I hardly recognised anything of the route these days.

And then it all became confusing. The next thing on the list was that I was back in this dream again – but which dream again – about going on this camping thing. We’d stopped at the side of the road to have something to eat and to check all of our possessions. By now the vehicle in which we were travelling had become a 4-seater saloon rather than a 2-seater van with a guy sitting in the back. We couldn’t find half of the stuff. Some of it was missing etc and we couldn’t find anything that we needed for certain tasks. The woman suddenly remembered that on one occasion we’d even taken the doors off the railway carriages to construct a shelter. I said “for God’s sake don’t mention that to anyone or you’ll have no idea what they are going to take off. Let’s hope that no-one else on this trip actually remembers .

A little later I remembered some more of this other dream that I’d woken up back into. It was about me showing some people around the southern part of Brussels. There was a mural on a wall about someone who had been killed in a trapeze accident. We ended up back in my apartment which was a tip even worse than it normally is. I’d made these people a coffee but it was as weak as hell, there was no sugar etc. We decided that we would set off somewhere to go on a camping trip, me and a woman sitting in the front of this Escort van and a guy who was sitting in the back of it. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

So I was clearly becoming all mixed up in my wanderings last night, which is no surprise.

It’s Christmas Day tomorrow and I want to apologise in advance for my lack of festive spirit. I’m not feeling in the least bit Christmassy with all of this going on right now and it’s all too much of an effort.

Rest assured though that I appreciate all of your help and support and wish you all a very Merry Christmas, even if I’m not feeling much like it myself.

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Thursday 15th December 2022 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was sausage, beans and chips. And how beautiful it was too. I really enjoyed it.

One of my neighbours was going for a walk down to the shops this afternoon and he saw my note on the door so he came by to ask if I needed anything. Of course, if someone is going down to town on foot they can’t bring back very much of anything so a bag of potatoes it was.

At least my desire for chips is satiated for now and there’s enough for tea on Saturday night.

And in other news, I’ve had to make a start in tidying up the apartment as I’m going to have a visitor on Monday at lunchtime. I’ve finally managed to contact the doctor and he’s going to make a house call on Monday.

It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out once he comes round. What he’s going to say and what he’s going to suggest. At least it’s a start, but then again as I used to say back in the 70s when I was attending auctions as a buyer, it’s not where we start that’s important, it’s where we finish.

And to tell the honest truth, I’m probably finished already.

While we’re on the subject of finishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … I finished early last night and was in bed quite promptly looking forward to a good sleep.

Not that it worked out that way because I still had to leave the bed to go for a stroll down the corridor, and then apart from that I went off on quite a few little voyages during the night. We were living in Shavington and it was all quite primitive. We only had a cold water tap in the downstairs sink so I was trying to work out how I could make some kind of hot water tank underneath the sink with a candle to heat the water. I had a rough idea in my head but but it wouldn’t be particularly good. I spoke to my brother and said that maybe we ought to give it a go. My mother and my sister had been out somewhere. They came back in. We’d been watching a cowboy film but they switched over to watch The Clitheroe Kid. Then the two of them were in bed and were fighting over a sandwich that my sister was trying to eat in bed so I said something like “fancy swapping the TV over on our programme and then not going to watch it”. She said that we could swap back. It was right at the end, a Western something similar to one of the EL DORADO trilogy of films where the fight was over and the young boy was leaving. A young girl who had obviosly been close to this boy was practically in tears about him going but he said that he had to leave. “We’ve had 3 or 4 years of good times but it’s time to move on”. She was totally distraught about the whole idea of him leaving and rather than it being a happy ending it was a really sad, dramatic one. Even in my sleep I could feel how powerful the ending was.

Later on I had some money so I was going to invest it by buying a property in PIonsat, some apartments but it had to be a good quality apartment (not that there’s anything quite like that in Pionsat). I didn’t want to buy any old rubbish. There were several decent buildings in the town so I had a wander around and ended up at the bank. That was almost fraught because there was a traffic hold-up and a lorry decided that it would reverse down the High Street, nearly knocking me over as I crossed the road. In the bank I had to queue. It looked as if someone had forgotten his carrots but he walked off without them so I asked the guy in front of me if they were his. He said “no”. It was then my turn and I started to chat to this girl. This guy slipped a piece of paper “I know all about you” it said. “Don’t do it”. I asked “what on earth is this about?”. He said that someone chatted up a bank cashier and ended up meeting her in an alleyway and finished by murdering her. I said “I don’t remember this”. He replied “no, it was in 1968 so just you be careful”. I couldn’t understand what this guy was talking about. He was clearly not in the same world as the rest of us.

And then it was this summer and I was deciding to go into work very early, having spoken to someone who worked the early shift once this year. It would start at about 05:45 that meant that I would be in there by then. Of course my mother threw a fit, saying that I was never at home to help out. I told her that I was at home 24 hours per day 7 days per week except when I was at work, and going to work was normal. We had quite a row about it. When I arrived at work, rather than find the place empty there was someone around sticking up posters about the Roman excavations taking place in the wood. I was expected to go to work on some kind of bricklaying supervision. I tok myself out and was watching these bricklayers work while I was supervising this little group that I had with me. I felt that I was talking to myself all the time about what these bricklayers were doing. I thought that these few people here must have thought me totally crazy. When I concentrated on the work I found that we had a dip in one of the courses, a quite bad dip. There was no way that it could be rectified and we were going to have to take it all out again. There was one woman from work whom I came across as I was on my way into work who was sitting in a chair at the side of the road. She said “hello” to me so I said “hello” to her and didn’t think anything of it. Then I saw in the paper that she’s actually been in prison and was on some kind of rehabilitation course so I don’t know what she was doing at that particular moment, just sitting by the side of the street saying hello to passers-by unless it was part of her rehabilitation.

As you might expect, we have the family back in the equation but none of my favourite characters. That’s something that I find quite depressing.

When the alarm went off, I was in no mood to leave the bed. In fact if I hadn’t had to go down the corridor one more time I’d probably still be in there now.

Having slowly come round, I made a start on the radio programme that I wasn going to do, but my heart wasn’t in it. It took me much longer than anyone could ever imagine to complete it, not helped by crashing out on a couple of occasions and then a break to call the doctor.

When my neighbour called, I was fast asleep yet again. That seems to have been the story of my day, but I’m glad that he awoke me because tonight’s tea really was delicious.

After tea I had a long chat with Liz on the internet where we put the world to rights for a good while.

So right now I’m off to bed early again, in the hope that one night at least I’ll have a really good night and a good sleep to go with it. And if one of my three favourite young ladies could come and keep me company, then so much the better.

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Saturday 10th December 2022 – IF I WERE …

… to say that I stayed in bed until 11:00 this morning, you would probably think that I had had a good night’s sleep for a change.

However, when I tell you that I didn’t go to bed until at least 04:00 you might change your mind.

And when I tell you that I had a pretty dreadful night in between, then you might be even more convinced. I had a mad fit of the itching that means that I was having withdrawal symptoms to something that they were giving me at hospital and I had to smother my legs in this type of cold cream that they give me.

There was this extremely depressing and dismal dream as well and what was even more depressing and dismal was that after I’d settled down again I had exactly the same dream again word for word. But don’t worry – it’s one of those where if you are having your tea right at this moment you wouldn’t thank me for typing it out.

When I left the bed at 11:00 it really was more of a case of not having anything better to do. I’d been awake for quite some time without being able to go back to sleep.

It should be no surprise to anyone that making a start this morning was rather difficult. I had to slowly bring myself back into the swing of things. And having spilled a pile of lemonade all over the floor part of the morning involved giving the kitchen floor a good seeing-to.

Steam-cleaning (and I DO mean “steam-cleaning” the microwave oven as well, that was next.

And then the fridge. When I first opened the fridge door, something inside switched off the light and closed it again. So I had to put on a brave face and attack the cartons of overinflated and fermented drink in there. I’ll look at the rest another time.

Add to that the tidying up and putting the washing away from before I went off on my travels, and I was exhausted even before I’d started, and I wasn’t feling very well either.

With a clean microwave and a fresh carton of milk I could make myself some porridge. And together with a strong coffee and a glass of orange it was something like a decent breakfast. And didn’t that make a change from jam butties?

Next step was a shower, and that was hard work in itself. Somehow managing to climb over the edge of the bath into the shower was only half of my problems. The other half of my problems was climbing out afterwards. You’ve no idea how much of an exertion that was altogether and I’ll have to do this for as long as I’m still breathing

The rest of the day has been spent backing up the computer and even as we speak, that’s a task that’s still going on. It seems to be never-ending and is an indication of maybe how much time I had on my hands in the hospital.

But just when I was feeling really down and looking for a lift, there in the bottom of the freezer was a portion of pepper-and-lentil vindaloo and that went down extraordinarily well. I needed that very much.

And if you’ll notice, I haven’t been out of the building at all today. The steps are going to defeat me if I take things too quickly. I’m going to have to spend some time just walking around the apartment, I reckon, building up my muscles on a daily basis.

Yesterday, on my way home I did 21% of my daily target and while that may not sound like much, it’s 10 times the daily rate of what had been happening while I’d been in hospital. Consequently 6% today is slowly stepping up the rate from how things have been in hospital, and clambering in the bath will stretch a few muscles more.

That’s not to say that things were easy today but by the time that tonight came round I was feeling a little more optimistic. I wonder how long this new wave of optimism will last.

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Wednesday 21st September 2022 – I KNOW THAT …

… this is rather late being posted, but better late than never and if a thing is good it’s worth waiting for. And so is this

mont st michel by night Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022In fact I’ve been out and about today and didn’t return home until after midnight, when I would let it all hang out.

So while you admire a couple of photos of Mont St Michel in the darkness, I shall tell you all about my busy day.

As usual, the alarm went off at 07:30 and after the medication etc I set about tidying up because I was going to have some visitors today. I seem to be in demand just now

And it’s a good job that I’d started early because they came early too and I wasn’t ready. I had a few things that I hadn’t done so I had to to finish off while I was chatting.

That’s rather an uncomfortable situation to be in but at least having visitors around means that I have to keep the place looking something like tidy.

mont st michel by night Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022There was such a lot of things to say so we had a coffee and spent quite a while chatting, but it was such a nice day yesterday that it was a shame to waste it.

When they had been here the other day i’d mentioned about the beautiful views along the coast so I reckoned that that would be quite a nice drive today, and so we hit the road, Jack, or Jacques seeing as we are where we are.

The obvious place to go to in this nice weather is the viewpoint up on the Pointe de Carolles where there is the Cabanon Vauban. We’ve been here several times before but my visitors haven’t so off we went. I couldn’t actually remember where the turning was so we almost drove past it

tombelaine mont st michel from pointe de carolles Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022It was something of a long slow path across the fields once we’d parked the car, but the view from the end was worth it.

It’s one of the best views of Mont St Michel from up here, with the island of Tombelaine over to the left.

The tide is well out as you can see, and in certain conditions it’s possible to walk from the coast at Genets over to Tombelaine and Mont St Michel and it’s quite a popular thing to do. But you need a guide who knows the way because it’s not an easy trip and there’s no marked path.

There was plenty of marine traffic down there in the bay too, including a trawler that was having a go with its nets out to see what it could pull up.

fire on brittany coast Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022But also over on the brittany side there was a fire in one of the small towns.

It’s not possible to say what it was at this distance – whether it was a bonfire or a house fire, but it looked as if it had been burning for a while.

We went for a walk along the clifftop but we couldn’t see very much else – I’m not up for clambering over the rocks these days – so in the end we headed for the car, once I remembered the correct trail. I seem to be forgetting everything.

And then we went back to the main road to carry on southwards.

tombelaine mont st michel viewed from champeaux Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022There’s another viewpoint further along the road at Champeaux and I couldn’t remember where that was for a moment either.

The view from here is even better so when we eventually reached it we stopped here as well

Tombelaine was at one time the site of a monastic cell where in the 11th Century two monks from Mont St Michel came to live the life of hermit. The place was fortified in 1204 after the English had been expelled from Normandy and then by the English during the Hundred Years War.

There were various plans, such as to create a mini-Mont-St Michel here or, to turn it into a tourist destination but in the end it’s become a site for birdwatching (but not the kind of birds that I would be interested in watching) and is owned by the State and classed as a National Treasure.

st jean le thomas viewed from champeaux Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022There’s also a good view from up here down onto the town of St Jean le Thomas.

The town was gifted by “William of the Long Sword” to the monks of Mont St Michel in 917AD but there was some conflict 200 years later between the monks and another “Lord of the Manor” about wood-cutting rights so it seems that the gift wasn’t as complete as it might otherwise have been.

There was a castle there at one time but Philippe-Augustus, King of France 1180-1223 ordered the castle to be surrendered to the monks and destroyed. At the turn of the 20th Century all of the remains of the castle had gone.

The narrow-gauge tacot railway line from Granville ran through here between 1908 and 1935. I’m not sure what there is that remains of the railway network in the town today. I suppose that one of these days I ought to go and have a look.

SAMU service d'aide medicale urgente helicopter airbus H145 T2 avranches Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022By now we were hungry so we headed into Avranches for a snack.

We parked up the car and headed into town on foot. And as we did so we were overflown by a helicopter.

It’s not the Air-Sea Rescue helicopter that we usually see but one that belongs to the SAMU – the Service D’aide Medicale Urgente or “Emergency Medical Services” so I suppose that it’s the local air ambulance.

She’s an Airbus H145 T2 and we’ve seen a few of those flying around here. It’s the later version of the Air-Sea Rescue’s Eurocopter EC 145.

Once again we had to struggle to find something to eat but finally a little café came up trumps with some sandwiches.

castle avranches Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022We could sit outside in the sun where there was a really good view of the castle at Avranches.

Shame as it is to say it, I’d forgotten all about this castle. Its origins date from the middle of the 10th Century and was one of the earlies recorded stone castles. However there is no trace of that construction remaining. What we see dates to the time of William the Conqueror.

It’s actually built by the Dukes of Normandy on a promontory overlooking the baie de Mont St Michel on a site that was known to have been occupied by the Celts and then by the Romans.

From its position it could obstruct the passage of Breton forces in the days before both Brittany and Normandy were part of the Kingdom of France.

The castle was surrendered to the French in 1203 and was fought over on many subsequent occasions, including in 1944 when considerable damage was caused to the fabric of the building.

Back to the car after a very long chat and we headed off for our final destination.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, parking at Mont St Michel costs an arm and a leg and we were only going to be here for a couple of hours.

However a friendly café owner, having served us a couple of coffees, informed us that as we were now customers of hers, we could leave the car on her car park. She told us how to unhitch the barrier later and we expressed our gratitude in monetary terms.

mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022There was a 15-minute walk to the shuttle terminus and a 15-minute wait for a bus to arrive, and then we were off.

My friends were quite impressed with the push-me-pull-you nature of the bus and, as they had never been here before, with the view that we had of the Mont as we approached it.

And as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … it’s all changed considerably since I first came here 40 or so years ago. The causeway was different and there was no official car park either. You drove down here and parked where you could.

In those days I’ve seen more than a few cars have to be winched out from the rapidly-approaching tide.

powered hang glider mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022And as we alighted from the bus, we had one of our old friends come to visit us.

When we’ve been wandering around the clifftops back at home we’ve seen the powered hang-gliders dozens of times coming back from the head of the bay and I’ve often speculated that they have been for a look at what’s going on down here.

Sure enough, one of them, the red one, flew past overhead as we walked the rest of the way towards the walls so we all said “hello” and continued on our respective ways.

porte de l'avancée mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022bathed in the glorious early evening sunset is the entry, the Porte de L’Avancée.

Although there is, officially at any rate, only one way in, changes in technology over the past have meant that the original entrance, buit shortly after the Fall of Normandy when the inhabitants were massacred by Breton soldiers, was insufficient to defend the mount from invasion.

And this although the Porte de L’Avancée is the first part of the entrance that you encounter, it was actually almost the last part of the fortifications to be built, as far as I can tell, and dates from 1530.

tour gabriel mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Over to the left is the Tour Gabriel or “Gabriel’s Tower”.

This was perhaps the last part of the fortifications to be built and dates from 1534. It was built on the orders of Gabriel du Puy who was in charge of the mount at the time. Because it’s round, it has a really good field of fire that can defend the entrance from attack by sea in this direction.

There was a windmill built on the tower in 1627 and the tower even served as a lighthouse.

The building in front of it is more modern although I’ve not been able to find out the date on which it was built. But it’s outside the walls so it presumably dates from a period when the military funnction of the mount ceased.

ramparts tour du roy tour de la liberté mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Over on the right are the ramparts, the Tour du Roy, the “King’s Tower”, and theTour de la Liberté, “Liberty Tower”.

The Tour du Roy and the little Tour de l’Arcade that you can just about make out to its right date from the improvements of 1417 at the height of the Hundred Years War, presumably after Henry V of England landed in Normandy on 1st August and laid siege to Caen, which he captured on the 17th.

The Tour de la Liberté used to be known until 1789 as the Tour Beatrix and although I found the plans for it, I’ve not been able to find the date of its construction. It was certainly here in 1434 as it was reported as damaged by cannon fire in a siege by the English, and was repaired in 1441 and reconstructed in 1479.

There were important building works to strengthen the fortifications between 1389 and 1410 and it’s likely that it dates from that period.

mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022As for the abbey itself, this is what everyone comes to see, although I’m not going to see it as I’d never get up the hill.

The village itself is known to have existed in 709 but before that, as a result of several alleged miracles, it was a site of pilgrimage and the Abbots of the cathedral at Avranches promoted the site in various written tracts. Some kind of church was erected in the village and was gradually expanded.

Some monks came here to seek sanctuary but their church was sacked by the Vikings in 847.

It was re-established later but in 965 the construction of the Abbey began. In 1022 Richard Duke of Normandy gave to the monks the Ile de Chausey who then used rock from the islands to expand the Abbey.

However by the mid-18th Century the place was starting to fall into ruins and the French Revolution finished it off.

It was declared a “national Monument” as early as 1862 and restoration began shortly afterwards.

maison de l'artichaut mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022This is the Maison De L’artichaut, so-called because its decorations on the spire are said to resemble artichokes.

It was actually created as part of the Hotellerie de la Licorne – the “Hostel of the Unicorn” which dates from the 15th Century.

It was declared a “Historic Monument” in 1918 and the upper part in 1936, however it’s not stated in the Formal Notice when it was actually built. One can only assume that it was built either at the same time or shortly after the Hotellerie de la Licorne.

On the right just here are the steps that lead up to the ramparts but I wasn’t going for a stroll up there.

porte du roy mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022This here is the Porte du Roy – the “King’s Gate”.

This is another addition from the work of 1417. With no ditch here at the time, the mount was easy to attack and difficult to defend so a ditch was dug and the gate was built, with a drawbridge to protect the entrance.

There was also a metal portcullis here to defend the entrance.

Nevertheless all of this was still insufficient so another entrance was built in 1440, part of which you can see through the arch, because of the advances in artillery that rendered the gate obsolete.

The final entrance that we saw earlier in was added in 1530 following further advances in artillery and offensive techniques..

You can see all of the steps up to the ramparts again on the left of the photo.

grande rue mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022This is the Grande Rue or “High Street”. I reckon that just about every building in here is a listed National Monument.

And it was here that I abandoned my friends for a while and let them carry on up the hill. It had defeated me so I wandered back outside to wait for them and to have a look around while they carried on trudging up the hill.

And while I was waiting outside I took many of the photos that you saw just now.

When they returned we had a very leisurely walk back to the bus stop, and then an even more leisurely wait for a bus to arrive. There are only two running right now so it was a very long wait.

sunset mont st michel Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022At least, the wait meant that we had a good opportunity to see the sun setting. That was quite beautiful.

Back at the shuttle terminal we walked back to the café, rescued the car and I took the photos of Mont St Michel in the darkness as the lights came on.

We had a good drive back to Granville and I invited them to a restaurant where I treated them to a meal to thank them for a wonderful day out. And as a result it was after midnight when I returned home.

No time to write up my notes so I’ll do that tomorrow. which I did, hence the amended page.

And I also transcribed the dictaphone notes too. There was a trawler whose registration number was something like KVKLNO something or other. We’d been to a football match watching Morton. people were saying about how poor the side was these days. I was thinking that it’s not a case of how poor the side was, it’s a case of the money becoming tight everywhere and they are suffering. A subject came up that involved trawlers. One of the group said that thanks to someone else but I can’t remember who, they were saved from certain events that might have happened invloving this trawler because that particular person made them aware of things but I can’t remember what that was.

There was something going on last night with my beige Cortina. I was at home and talking to my sister. She was cleaning the house really deeply but we didn’t have all that long to wait before we had to go out so I couldn’t understand why she had suddenly started on this plan. One of the topics of conversation was the local councillor when we lived in Shavington. He was my age and had been on a student exchange with me. On one particular coach trip coming back from somewhere there had been a few shenanigans as you would expect with a bunch of teenagers. He’d been a part of all of this yet here he was 30 years later being all “Holier Than Thou”. Of course everyone remembered him and we made our best to make sure that everyone knew exactly what had been happening back in those days.

Wonders will never cease.

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Friday 9th September 2022 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned that it seemed as if Summer is over now for the rest of the year.

This morning, after I awoke, I went and closed the window in the living room – the first time that it’s been closed since my return from Leuven in August.

And the only reason that I closed it then was because I didn’t want to come back home and find that a family of seagulls had taken up residence.

le coelacanthe la grande ancre ile de chausey baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022And so as Le Coelacanthe and Le Grande Ancre struggle through the storm towards the harbour, I’m struggling to heave myself out of my stinking pit.

And to my surprise it was a little easier today than it has been of late. Not that I wasn’t tired, just that I had rather more resolution than I’ve had in the past and where that came from I’ve really no idea.

Having had the medication this morning, I had a rather slow, desultory session of transcribing the dictaphone notes. And that was quite confusing as it seems that somehow I’ve managed to miss recording a dream somewhere.

I was heading off somewhere and who should come bouncing down the road but Zero? We started to talk and she told me about how things were at home. She was telling me that amongst other things she really wasn’t getting on well with her father. All he was doing was staying at home moaning about the money, the rent, about prices and his wife going out all the time amongst everything else. She was pretty much fed up of it. She started to tell me all kinds of things like that. She was standing really close to me, probably no more than half an inch or so. We set off to walk into Crewe and ended up at Edleston Road near the old NUR club. That was when the dream ended which was a shame and I tried my very very best not to let it finish.

And then I was at the River Neva at Leningrad. It was really, really wide but it was basically some kind of flood plain that had flooded which was so wide and the river itself was fairly narrow. I was waiting there trying to cross but there was no way of crossing so it looked as if I was going to have to swim. A young Russian girl came along and asked me in English if she could come with me. I replied “sure” and I jumped in. I found an old light deal table and was pushing that in front of me. She asked me why so I told her “this river is enormous and I’m going to have to stop for a break halfway through. If my feet can’t hit the floor I need something on which to sit”. In the end we reached the dyke and set off to walk down the dyke across the river into town. She was talking to me about the city and how no-one has any money any more, how it’s sad etc. Of course I’d heard all these stories before. I began to wonder to myself what it is that she’s doing. Why would she want to be with me? Why is she being so nice to me etc?”. There had to be something going on here that is beyond my comprehension for the moment.

To continue my dream about my father (and which dream was that?) the biscuit rolled off itself down South Street past “Up The Junction” and this girl and I were forced to run after it and try to catch it before it hit the main road.

This final part was rather embarrassing last night. I went to stay at a guest house where I usually stay, somewhere round the Wardle/Barbridge area. On my way I popped into a house to see the people and the husband of this guest house was there. We chatted away but in the end I decided that I’d have to leave. But I completely forgot to ask him if he had a room free. It didn’t enter into my mind. I drove round to that house and went in. There was only a young girl there making herself some food. I started to assemble the bed in the spare room as I would normally do. She came in, looked at me and said “I think that you’re going to get yourself in trouble”. I asked why and she replied “you’ve not told anyone that you’re coming, have you?”. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t, and here I was making myself comfortable in someone’s room. I had to wait for the landlady to come back but she didn’t come back. Lunch was served and they even managed to find me some food even though I wasn’t expected. I settled down for a long wait until the landlady came in. It was ever so embarrassing having gone and assumed for myself that I could stay and organised a room in which I wanted to sleep without asking a single person.

So Zero made an appearance last night. And how nice that was to see a familiar face. She should appear more often. And the tales that she was telling me last night were really quite true as well. The times that she had in real life confided in me all kinds of stories of things that happened at home.

By the way, that wasn’t all that went on during the night, the missing dream notwithstanding. But honestly you wouldn’t thank me for posting the rest, especially if you’re eating your meal right now.

le coelacanthe baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022While you are looking at another photo of em>Le Coelacanthe, I was off to finish off the tidying up in the living room.

That was quite a battle too but now it actually looks as if someone lives here. It’s not been as clean or looking as nice as this for quite some considerable time. Just one or two bits to finish off but after all of that effort I ran out of steam and that’s hardly a surprise. I was glad to sit down again.

After the fruit I sat down and bashed away at the trip to Jersey. I’ve still not set foot ashore but I’ve managed now to complete over 20% of the photos that need doing. It’s a slow process but it’ll be good when it’s finished.

At least, I hope that it will.

It does remind me of the story about the destroyer that was having no end of difficulty manoeuvring during a fleet exercise in World War II.
“What on earth do you think you are you doing?” asked the exasperated admiral.
“Learning a lot” was the reply.

And I’m certainly learning a lot.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Still, there’s a time for fishing and a time for mending the nets. Right now it’s “walkies” … “staggeries, more like” – ed.

As usual I staggered across to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach. and with it now being autumn in all but name I wasn’t expecting to see much.

There were a few people down there this afternoon but no-one was sunbathing. I was in my shirt sleeves but they were dressed for colder weather. And in a few weeks, if not sooner, I’ll be doing the same thing.

tractor trailer fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Having satisfied myself with events on this side of the headland I went across the road to the other side.

The first thing that I noticed was the tractor and its trailer on the ramp underneath the fish processing plant. That would seem to indicate that the little Les Bouchots de Chausey is on her way into port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen the trailer loaded up to the sky with crates of shellfish. And one of these days I really will follow it to find out just where it goes when it’s loaded.

le loup baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022The second thing that I noticed was the storm that was raging out at sea.

The spray over the base of Le Loup – the marker light on the rocks at the entrance to the harbour – wasn’t as impressive as we have seen it in the past but you have to remember that the tide is quite far out at the moment.

It’ll be much more impressive in an hour’s time but by them I’m hoping to be tucked up back at home with a glass of warm Wincarnis.

They used to do Phyllosan that fotifies the over-forties. Why can’t they do stuff that will sixtify the over-sixties?.

le coelacanthe baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022A little earlier we saw a couple of photos of Le Coelacanthe out in the Baie de Granville looking as if she’s heading for port

However as she came past the headland she did a marvellous little U-turn and headed back out to sea. A closer look revealed that she had her nets out.

Since the issues about fishing out in the bay in waters that have been unilaterally claimed by the Channel Islands, we’ve seen them fishing in all kinds of strange places but I can’t recall anyone having been fishing just there.

We are living in strange times indeed.

le tibériade baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022So that was the story of Le Coelacanthe.

We saw her the other day moored at the Fish Processing Plant with her sister Le Tibériade. The two are clearly inseparable because a few minutes after she went past, Le Tibériade appeared from behind the headland.

She had her nets out too by the looks of things because she did the same U-turn and headed off back out around the headland into the Baie de Granville. I wonder how long they’ll be keeping it up, or is this just something to fill in the time while they are waiting for the harbour gates to open?

la grande ancre baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022right at the beginning when we saw Le Coelacanthe coming across the bay followed by La Grande Ancre.

Not long after we’d seen the two trawlers in action, La Grande Ancre came around the headland too. But she didn’t perform a U-turn like the others. Instead, she carried on towards the harbour.

She still has the lighter on her deck that she had the other day when we saw her, and there’s a pile of fishing equipment in it.

What caught my eye though was the sailor sitting on the lighter. In the rough weather like we are having just now that can’t be a very secure place to be.

les bouchots de chausey baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022Coming in a couple of minutes behind La Grande Ancre was another one of our old friends, one that I was expecting to arrive.

And sure enough, into port fighting her was through the waves came Les Bouchots de Chausey. You can see how rough it is there with her being tossed around there like a cork.

She must have quite a load on if she’s coming in so early in the tide. They wouldn’t send the tractor and trailer for half a load and in any case, she’d stay out as long as possible to make sure that it was worth her while to come home.

le poulbot pescadore peccavi chant des sirenes massabielle le styx chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022While I was watching the arrivals into port, I also happened to notice yet another change over at the chantier naval.

It was a slow, agonising walk down there to the viewpoint but I went all the same. It was worth the crawl because I now know why Le Poulbot was moved to sit in front of Le Styx yesterday.

That’s because previously she was in front of la Soupape and that latter has now been put back into the water. In fact Le Poulbot has now taken her place.

And where she was, there is now the trawler Massabielle. It’s her turn to have a good working-over.

joly france ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022On my way down to the chantier naval I heard an old couple sitting on the wall talking about the Ile de Chausey.

When I hobbled back I noticed that they now had a brochure in their sweaty little mitts and were making plans. And it looks as if there are still plans to be made because one of the Joly France ferries is already at the quayside ready for an early start tomorrow morning.

One glance at the windows of the boat is sufficient to tell us which one she is. With her windows in “portrait” and not “landscape” format, she’s the newer one of the two.

The other two aren’t around anywhere just now so they must still be out at the island.>br clear=”both”>

la grande ancre les bouchots de chausey port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo September 2022On my way home I stopped to look at what was happening now in port.

La Grande Ancre was not only in port now, she was actually tied up and they were beginning to unload her. That was what I called “quick work”.

Alongside her is Les Bouchots de Chausey. She wasn’t loitering around either. She’l be tied up and unloading in a minute too.

No-one interrupted me on my walk back home today. And now that summer is over, it’s coffee time and I’ll finish the ginger beer another time.

The Trip to Jersey will be finished another time too. You’ve no idea how time-consuming it is to do what I want to do and there’s tea to prepare.

Sausage beans and chips with real baked beans and they were really delicious. Those sausages and beans that I bought in St Helier really are the business.

And then I had to send some info to someone before I could start on writing my notes, hence they are rather late tonight.

Tomorrow I’m in a rush so I’ll just nip to LIDL early, I reckon. They open at 08:30 and if I’m lucky I’ll be there at the door when they open. So this means that the phone will probably upgrade tonight and switch itself off.

It wouldn’t be for the first time, would it?

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