Tag Archives: place d’armes

Tuesday 17th December 2019 – 10:30 am

Remember yesterday when I said that I had a day with no interruptions booked, and that I bet some basket comes along and spoils it.

Well, 10:30am. That’s when I had my first phone call, about a job that needed doing more-or-less immediately and with someone hanging on the phone while I made a start I could,’t put it off until a time more convenient to me.

That was followed at various times during the day of about half a dozen e-mails all of which needed some kind of immediate attention. At one point I was so engrossed that I almost missed the Post Office.

But let’s just say that after all of that, I didn’t manage to accomplish anything really of what I had set out to do, and that includes continuing the updating of the web pages, a task that I had missed off the list yesterday.

Last night wasn’t as early as I would have liked. I’d started a task – editing the photos – and I was intent on at least doing some of it. Again, not as many as I would have liked but at least a few of the enormous backlog.

For a change, I beat the third alarm quite comfortably and after the medication I attacked the dictaphone notes – with a little pause for breakfast.

It seems that I’d been on something of a travel last night too. I was recording programmes again for the radio (and when I say “again”, you’ll find eventually that I’d been dreaming about this a couple of times just recently). There was one that should be done every month and we were having to record four or five of them. We were doing them from different venues and there was some guy who was extremely interested in it and was hanging around watching and listening and making notes of what was going on. And there was another one that should have been done every month and that was a cricket broadcast and for some unknown reason they had done three broadcasts consecutively one after the other in the USA, about cricket matches in the USA and broadcast to the USA. Whether they were trying to get the USA to take up cricket, something like that I really don’t know. The chat with this guy who wanted to know what was going on was extremely interesting and I wish that I could remember more of what I was doing during the night.

Once the dictaphone notes were finished I began the photos. I thought that there were probably 100 or so. I never expected them to be as many as 146.

And with the continued spate of interruptions throughout the day it took me up to about 16:00 just to edit them. I haven’t written up the tabs yet

Despite everything that was going on today, I did manage to get out and about for my three walks today.

But wait a minute – what’s this? Here’s Spirit of Conrad right enough, and I know that Omerta has gone, and went a few days ago too, but where’s Aztec Lady?

She was here yesterday but she’s not there now. The ground’s all flat etc etc.

Actually, I do know what happened to Aztec Lady because I saw her go when I went out for my dejeunette at lunchtime.

Here she is, in the portable sling being carried down off her perch to the dry dock which, presumably with the tide being in, is now a wet dock.

And you’ll notice the steps there on the left. They are the stairs of the Escalier des Noires Vaches, my route down to the rue du Port that I take on my morning perambulation.

And here she is again.

Having been put back into the water after (presumably) the repairs have been completed, she’s off to find her berth again in the wet harbour, presumably somewhere over there between Victor Hugo and Charles Marie.

What I’ll have to do now is to go and hunt down her web site and see what trips are planned for the forthcoming season. I want to get back out to sea.

Maybe I should turn my attention elsewhere in that case.

Under cover of darkness it seems that Normandy Trader has sneaked into harbour. She’s now tied up in the usual place underneath the lifting crane which they use for unloading her and Thora.

Anyway, I was late. I was doing something – one of these urgent jobs – on the computer when I suddenly noticed the time. 11:40 – and there was a parcel to pick up from the Post Office and they close at 12:00.

Having picked up my parcel just in time, and picked up my dejeunette for lunch, I went down to the harbour to talk to the guys on Normandy Trader. I’d seen just now that they were about.

But badger me! Just as I got round to the quayside it was a case of “cast off for’rard, Sub Lieutenant Phillips” and they let go of the lines and set out for sea.

They must have heard me coming. That’s all I can say.

It’s really not my day, is it?

Lugging my heavy parcel I headed off back up the hill in the rue des Juifs and stood at the top, watching Normandy Trader heading off out of the harbour into the open sea with the Pointe de Carolles in the background.

Still, there will always be another day, I suppose. I went back to the apartment and carried on with the photos.

At about 15:50 I downed tools and took myself outside for my walk around the headland.

The wind had died down but there was some kind of weird sunlight effect yet again. The Ile de Chausey seemed to be bathed in some kind of bizarre blue light and everything seemed to be so clear. You could even see the colours of the houses quite clearly.

I’ve never seen it look like this before so I took a photo of it for the record.

While I was musing about the island, I was buzzed by a light aeroplane passing by overhead.

Because of the angle at which it’s flying, I couldn’t make out its registration number so I can’t tell you what it is. Anything that I might likely say would be pure guesswork and your guess is as good as mine.

And so I walked on, past the chantier navale and took the photo of Spirit of Conrad that I showed you earlier.

From up on the top of the cliffs I could see blue flashing lights in the distance so I took a long-distance photo to see what was going on.

It’s the day of the General Strike today and everyone seems to be demonstrating in the streets.

And that’s what gets on my wick. This strike is supposed to be against the Government yet the strikers are out there not interfering with the Government but interfering with the ordinary citizens.

Why should the ordinary citizens suffer because of all of this? It’s nothing to do with them at all.

Something else on my list of jobs to do was to start another project in order to keep myself well in advance. And so Project 007 is now under way. The music has been selected and tomorrow I’ll dictate the notes.

And then on Thursday I can make up the file. Three days per project – if I can keep that up it will be fine I reckon.

That took me up to tea time and I made the pizza that I had promised myself. It took ages too because I made a rice pudding too and that seemed to absorb all of the heat because although that was cooked to perfection, the pizza wasn’t. I’m really going to have to get a decent oven, I reckon.

Walk time afterwards and I was totally alone in the cold and darkness.

Except for the fishing boats. A whole line of them were in the English Channel on their way into port to unload their catch.

So having watched them for a while I carried on with my walk and did my run quite comfortably, although I was whacked at the end of it.

So tonight I really am going to have an early night. I’ve been ready for this for a while and I think that I ought to make an effort to catch up with my beauty sleep.

God knows I need it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so I walked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, this one beats the lot to date.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the heck is this all about?

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

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

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

And that reminds me

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday 15th December 2019 – AND FINALLY …

… I made it back home.

And the journey was exciting, but nothing like as exciting as the outward trip.

Once again last night I was in bed early with every intention of watching a film. But before I went to do so, I carried on listening to the radio programme to which I had been listening before I slipped beneath the sheets.

And that’s how I found myself a couple of hours later. Out like a light of course. So I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

During the night there had been a few voyages. And strange ones they were too.

There was a fancy dress party taking place and I had decided to go as a woman, don’t ask me why because I don’t have a clue either. I had the dress and tights everything like that and I went out all dressed up and people were looking at me rather strangely as you could imagine. But I ran out of time and didn’t have the make-up so I had to do without the make-up which spoiled the whole effect as you can imagine. But I went outside and there were all these people outside, cheering me on, men were pretending to chat me up, so on. There was Malcolm Madeley (!) and he clearly didn’t recognise me, something like that and he made some kind of offensive remark. I said “you want to get a grip, Malcolm” to which he suddenly stopped and disappeared. He realised that it was me. I had to walk round to Aunt Mary’s. I knocked on her door and the guy who was with her who was a guy a lot younger than she was but was something to do with our family from somewhere or other and these two little kids about 3 or 4 came out. We were talking about some kind of court case involving these kids. Aunt Mary was saying “well now they are here it’s only 5 weeks to go before this case”. But as these kids walked out of the step there was this pram coming the other way. It hit them and they flew through the air and actually landed on top of the pram. I thought “these kids are going to get hurt. They are always doing these kinds of thing, always getting hurt, all kinds of stupid accidents, breaking their arms, breaking their legs, something. But this time they were all right which was quite a surprise. Then we had to hobble off – me hobbling on my high-heeled shoes back towards picking up my car to go to this do again but it was this thing with the kids that was so surprising. And I’ve no idea what that was all about at all.
Later that night I was with someone last night and it might have been Nerina but it might not and we were in Northern Wyoming, somewhere like that. On our way to visit some battleground, somewhere like that of the Native Americans. The road was a really difficult road. It started off being a decent road but was all gravelly, a dirt road as you might expect. We were behind this lorry and there was a car coming the other way, a big jeep-type thing swerving in and out of the traffic and he nearly hit us going past this lorry. We were wide-eyed about that. The GPS was talking to us about this road, giving us a talk. We suddenly breated the brow of this hill and came to where all these dressed stones were, in a pile like some kind of wall. It was telling us that this was where the fort was this was the barbecue was, all this kind of thing .We dropped down the hill into the village by the river and there were ancient railway locomotives on display there. We went inside the museum and there were all beds there with people sleeping in them like they might have done 100 years ago, 2 or 3 to a bed, babies in the bed, all this kind of thing and newspaper reports about “how my parents are going back to the UK after visiting us”. It turned out that we were now in Newfoundland and Labrador for some unknown reason and we were giving a tour of this museum with all of these toys and artefacts going back 100 years or something and life must have been really primitive for people living there in those days. So we had a tour of this museum with these old toys and old dirty beds and dirty people sleeping in them and I remember saying to whoever I was with that we ought to be going as we have a lot to do and in any case I wanted to see these old steam locomotives but she was busy engaged there talking to people and she didn’t really want to come away.

But despite all of this, I was soon up and about when the alarm went off at 06:00. Beat the second alarm by a country mile.

First task was to make my butties because I had a feeling that this was going to be a long day. Tidying up everything and packing my bags and collecting up my shopping, I headed out for the station.

I arrived at the railway station about 06:50 and didn’t have long to wait for a train.

There was a direct train at about 07:20 direct to Brussels but there was an earlier one from Genk at 07:08 that goes via the airport and on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth any number in the bush I leapt aboard that one.

It’s one of the AM96 multiple units built by Bombardier and delivery to the SNCB started in 1996. They have a peculiar characteristic in that the driver’s cab pivots round 90° so that when two or more of these multiple units are coupled together, the passengers can go through from one unit to the next.

My train to Paris was at 08:43 so I had about an hour to kill. I drew some cash out of the bank and then bought my raisin buns for breakfast from Carrefour.

I didn’t have to wait long because the train came in quite early and we were ushered up to the platform.

It’s one of the Belgian SNCB PBKA (Paris Brussels Cologne Amsterdam) train sets, number 4302 upon which we have travelled on previous occasions. These PBKA train sets are becoming somewhat long in the tooth these days, being first delivered in 1995, but they still rattle along at an impressive 300 kilometres per hour when there’s nothing in the way to slow them down.

While we were waiting to move off, I had a quick look on the internet. The 13:54 to Granville was still down as running so I hoped that it would still be listed by the time I reached Montparnasse.

Bang on time we were, pulling into the Gare du Nord. I wandered over to the SNCF offices where they checked the trains. The 13:54 is still listed as running for the moment, but there’s nothing else going anywhere near Granville now for the rest of the day so it’s that one or nothing.

The girl stamped my ticket to Caen to effectively prove that I’d been to the SNCF offices (one thing that I’ve learnt since living in Europe is that European officials love paperwork and rubber stamps so you should never ever miss out on an opportunity to have a rubber stamp put on a document whenever there’s a crisis looming).

Well over three hours to go before my train, and the day wasn’t too bad out there so I decided to walk.

Unleashing the big Nikon D500 I took a test shot of the big hotel, the Hotel Terminus Nord, just across the road from the station.

There is also this rather bizarre statue here too, just outside the station and I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to represent. I imagine that it’s some kind of winged beast, but that’s about it.

According to the route map that I consulted prior to setting off it was something like 5.5 kilometres as the crow flies between the Gare du Nord and the Gare Montparnasse.

But the way that I was planning to go, it worked out (I checked later on the fitbit) at 7.5 kilometres because I wasn’t going to miss out on a few of the sights while I was in the vicinity. Paris isn’t my favourite city – far from it in fact – but there are still places to see that ought not to be missed.

Like Notre Dame for example.

It’s been years since I’ve seen it and it doesn’t half look different now. On 15th April 2019 it caught fire and was very badly damaged. The roof has gone and it took the spire with it. It’s really in a sad condition like now and so here’s hoping that like a phoenix it will rise again from the ashes.

The estimates are that it will cost billions of Euros to restore it, although a considerable part of that money will be to restore parts of the cathedral that were in poor condition prior to the fire.

Across the Pont Neuf or “Bridge number 9” we’re in the Latin Quarter, so puer amat mensam to you, hey?

My intention was to go for a wander around for half an hour but I completely forgot, being sidetracked by this beautiful outfit here. A horizontal twin motorbike, which might have been an elderly BMW or a more modern Urals or Cossack, with a very period sidecar attached.

It’s not the kind of thing that you see on the streets every day and it took me completely by surprise.

Something else that took me by surprise was on the corner of the Boulevard St Germain.

It goes without saying that on my travels I’ve seen plenty of polar bears, but never one on a street corner in Paris. We’ve seen actresses standing over the air grids of the Paris Metro and seen their skirts disappear in the updraught, but an inflatable polar bear family is something else.

It made me quite nostalgic for the High Arctic and I wonder how I’m going to get there next year, having had a little disagreement with some people

By now I was starting to flag a little, so it was with an enormous sigh of relief that I caught sight of the Tour de Montparnasse at the end of the street as I rounded the corner into the rue de Rennes.

It seems to have slipped my mind to mention that I was not actually travelling light today. I had my rucksack which was quite heavy anyway with this and that, and a carrier bag with with a pile of heavy shopping in it.

And even though I can see the Tour de Montparnasse, my walk is far from over. The railway station is a good few hundred yards behind the tower and then I have this enormously long hike all the way down the station to reach the Vaugirard annexe.

Walking down the rue de Rennes I came across this wonderful sight.

Definitely a sign of the times, this is. With the European Union promising to phase out the manufacture of the internal combustion engine by 2040, there needs to be more electric vehicles on the streets. But there won’t be unless the authorities provide places where the owners can recharge them.

And so this charging station here shows how far along that road the French authorities are in this respect – in great contrast to how they are in several other countries, including the UK.

On that shocking note I went past the Tour de Montparnasse and there in the distance behind it is the Gare Montparnasse.

The original station, the one where the Granville train failed to stop all those years ago and went hurling across the concourse and out of the end wall into the street, was actually on the site of the tower. And that explains why when the metro from the Gare du Nord throws me out at the “Montparnasse” metro station, I still have this very long underground walk to the Montparnasse railway station.

Yes, they moved the railway station but they didn’t move the metro station with it

Looking at my watch, it was 12:00 or thereabouts when I reached the Gare Montparnasse. 90 minutes or so it had taken me, and that was really impressive considering that I’m not at all well and I had my heavy load to lug around with me.

Mind you, it’s not something that I want to do too often because I was pretty nigh exhausted after that. I was pretty much at it non-stop, without a rest. Next time I do it, if there is a next time there will have to be a pause-café somewhere along the route.

There was a long wait for the train but we were allowed on board earlier then usual. And so we had a longer wait for the train to leave, seeing as its start was delayed by 15 minutes.

Without a ticket I had to sit anywhere in a vacant seat. And so of course it goes without saying that it was reserved to someone else so I had to move.

The ticket collector came by so we had a chat about my ticket, in a delightful conversation where I spoke in French and he replied in English.

And that was one thing.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that having gone for time after time after time in the past without having my ticket checked, it was checked on every train today. Probably a grève de zèle or “work to rule” going on too. So it was just as well that I’d been to the SNCF office to declare myself a “stranded traveller” and have my ticket rubber-stamped by an official.

After all of that I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we reached Vire. And we pulled into Granville bang-on time despite the extra stops that we had and the 15-minute delay.

Having left the station and feeling surprisingly fit considering my long walk today, I walked back through the town to the apartment.

While I was going up the rue des Juifs I looked over the wall and there tied up at the unloading quay is our old friend Thora. She’s come in on another trip from the Channel Islands.

This evening I’ve not done much. Finished off the falafel with some veg and cheese sause, and I declined the opportunity to go for a walk. I reckon that with 162% of my daily activity carried out, I’ve done enough. No wonder I was exhausted.

But now I can’t sleep. So I’ll probably be awake for ages but we’ll see how it hangs out. I have a busy day tomorrow.

And as an aside, there were plenty more photos from where these came from that haven’t made it onto this page. If you want to see them, which I hope you do, you need to go to THIS PAGE.

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

… ever thought that I would make it to Leuven today. But here I am none-the-less, sitting in my little room in the Dekenstraat waiting for tomorrow and my rendezvous with doom at Castle Anthrax.

It all started so well too this morning, even though I was the first to realise that on a day of “National Action”, the situation can change in the blink of an eye.

Last night I wasn’t in bed as early as I would have liked, what with having a few things to do, but nevertheless I comfortably beat the second alarm call this morning, never mind the third.

During the night I’d been on my travels too. There was something going on about something to do with the radio last night. We were in Granville and it was to do with the copyright. Someone said that I had gone on for an hour doing something yet according to my calculations it was less than 10 minutes. But they insisted that it was an hour. Ann Myatt was there and she was getting involved in this argument about copyright and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

No time for breakfast or anything this morning. I made my butties (I’d bought an extra dejeunette yesterday) and generally packed my things for the trip. As well as that, I took all of the recycling down to the bins.

Eventually it was time to hit the streets so valiantly braving the rainstorm I set off.

The first thing that I noticed down in the harbour is that there had been a shuffle-round of the ships. Thora had moved place and that Normandy Trader was now in the unloading bay underneath the crane next to Marite. She must have slipped into port under cover of darness too.

And all that I can say is that Normandy Trader must have had a really rapid turn-round.

At the station, much to my surprise, my train was in and waiting. Yes, start with some good luck because I didn’t expect it to hold out.

And I was right too.

Firstly, the station coffee machine was out of order. That always puts a dampener on any of my travels, that does.

Secondly, I don’t have much time to traverse Paris, and no Bourvil to carry my suitcase either so when they announced that “the train will be making a few additional stops” my heart sank into my boots.

The weather was quite miserable though. There’s a good place to take a photo of the Eiffel Tower from the train and I was in a good place on the train to seeit and photograph it.

But not today though. There was a pile of damp mist and low cloud obscuring it and the photo was a waste of time.

12:05 is the arrival time of my train in the Gare Montparnasse-Vaugirard in Paris. We finally pulled into the station at 12:20. And with my train out from the Gare du Nord at 13:15 I needed to get a wiggle on.

No chance of the metro though. All closed off and boarded up with the strike.

Still, there’s always the Bus 39 so I hurtled off outside to the bus stop to find that everyone in the whole wide world had had the same idea. When the bus eventually came, we all piled in and were crammed in like sardines. I’ve never ever in my life been in such a crowded bus.

It wasn’t to last though. After about 5 or 10 minutes or so the driver announced that he wasn’t going to go to the Gare du Nord but his “colleague behind” will be doing the trip. We all had to alight knowing full well that we had been sold a pup, but there was nothing that we could do about it.

No “colleague behind” either. We were standing there like piffy on a rock for about 15 minutes until a 39 came by. It was already heaving but nevertheless there was a mad scramble and once the lucky first 10 had wedged themselves aboard, he closed the doors and off he shot, leaving the rest of us behind.

After about 10 minutes I realised that any further wait was pointless. I’d been keeping my eye open for a few minutes and then, sure enough, a taxi with his flag up came by. I let out a yell and he pulled up. Grabbing hold of the door to claim it, I shouted to the people at the bus stop “taxi share to the Gare du Nord?” but they all looked at me as if I have two heads – which I probably have. No-one came to join me so I set off alone with the driver and badger that lot!

Finding a taxi was one thing – getting to the station was another. Everything was conspiring to be in our way today and we eventually reached the Gare du Nord at 13:35. It cost me @24:00, which was not, I suppose, too unreasonable for Paris on a day of General Strike.

Next stop was at the Thalys office to negotiate a new train, but it turns out that it’s not them but the SNCF that I need to see (exactly the opposite of the situation last time) so I wandered off to their office.

Another lengthy wait but it was worth it because there was just one more train out to Lille – at 14:45 – and I managed to blag my way onto it, free, gratis and for nothing.

While I was waiting, I’d done some research. My new train is due to arrive in Lille at 15:48. There was a local train from Lille going across the border to Tournai in Belgium at 16:02 (arriving at 16:34) and an SNCB train from Tournai to Brussels at 16:44 (arriving at 17:48)

Having found my seat, I settled down and dozed off (and who can blame me after my exertions?).

I awoke some time later to find that our train was stationary in the countryside. “Obstruction on the line” was the reason. By the time that it was removed and we had set off again, I could see all of my hopes melting away into the distance. And when we finally arrived at Lille, it was 16:20 and my train had long-gone.

But I’m nothing if not determined. Browbeating an attendant, she sent me off to the SNCF offices to see what they could do. They could find me a Local train to Tournai at 18:08 but from there I would be on my own.

It sounded like a reasonable option to me though – at least I’d be on the right side of the border. But I was convinced that I could do better.

Off down the road to Lille Europe – the big new TGV railway station. It took ages to find my way in, due to all of the reconstruction, but eventually I made it to the SNCF office. After yet another long wait, I was told that they could get me on a TGV direct to Brussels – the next one being at 20:08. And the receptionist wasn’t very pleasant either about that.

Another option is the Eurostar office. I’d seen that there was a Eurostar from London to Brussels, calling at Lille-Europe at 17:30. I tracked down the Eurostar office and went in there with my sob story. The girl there listened, looked at me for a moment, had a little think, and then simply stamped my ticket “bon for voyage 17:30” – free, gratis and for nothing as well! She told me that I would have to make my own seating arrangements.

And she was right too. The train was heaving and it took me ages to find a free seat. Probably the last one on the train.

But what was interesting was the ticket control on the station. It wasn’t the railway company as such that did the ticket checking but a couple of security guards. They were wandering up and down the platform checking people’s tickets on a rather ad-hoc basis rather than at a barrier at the head of the stairs, which would have been the most logical place to control the passengers.

They had a brief glance at my ticket, saw the rubber stamp from the girl in the office and that was that.

We pulled in to Brussels-Midi at 18:11 and I had to wait until 18:28 for my train to leuven.

But no matter what, I wasn’t going to wait on the platform. There was one of those bitter, biting winds that finds its way through your clothing, your skin, your flesh and your bones. I came down onto the little walkway underneath the platforms where I could admire the station and the crowds of people.

Brussels-Midi is a very old station in the sense that it hasn’t been modernised any time recently, so it has a quaint kind of character all of its own that many main-line stations have lost.

Bang on time at 18:28 our train pulled in and I was well on the way towards Welkenraedt.

Today we had one of the Class 18 electric locomotives, one of the workhorse classes of the Belgian SNCB that pull a great many of the long-distance trains around the country, even if their introduction to the railway network was not without its issues. But now you see them all over the place.

We finally pulled in to Leuven at about 19:00. And when you think about this, then despite all of the issues that I’d had, I was only two and a half hours later than normal. And Had I gone via Tournai on the train that I had planned, I would have been just 15 minutes ahead.

Now I’m settled in. Too late for the shops, I’ve had beans and chips for tea and now I’m off to bed. After all of that effort I think that I deserve it too.

How close was I to having my chips today?

fishing boats unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy france

christmas lights rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

This afternoon while I was out and about I noticed a movement out to sea, right out on the horizon near Jersey.

Not being too sure what it was – it might even have been a rock for all I knew – I took a photo of it with the big Nikon lens at full stretch, with the idea of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) back in the apartment.

Nevertheless I had a sneak preview on the camera’s monitor and although I couldn’t see clearly, it looked as if it had the outline or silhouette of Thora setting out to come here.

And sure enough, when I went for my evening walk tonight, I noticed that there anchored in the inner harbour tonight at her usual mooring place next to Marité and underneath the crane is Thora.

Crept in on the afternoon tide while my attention was elsewhere of course. There must be quite a lot goign on right now because she’s made quite a few trips over here just recently in rapid succession. It’s good for trade, that’s for sure.

As for me, I was right about having a late night. Long after any time that I wanted to be up and about, but can’t be helped. There’s a lot to do.

Eventually though I crawled off into the stinking pit. Straight into the Arms of Morpheus and also, simultaneously, off on a voyage or three.

One more I had this group of young escapees with me (have I had them with me before?) and there was one in particular being lodged at my house. Someone connected with a political party – the Labour Party – thought that this was inappropriate and the Party started to run this kind of campaign to get the situation changed (…now doesn’t this all sound remarkably familiar?…). Their tactics including running some kind of spurious article or poll or something in the local newspaper, including a photo, about some girl or other. This girl wasn’t any younger than the girl who was staying with me and was probably older too, but even so, that situation didn’t go down very well with me, particularly after I had read all of the articles about it. They were all completely irrelevant and so far from the truth even though they weren’t actually supposed to be about the particular girl but some other spurious character, but there was very little truth in any of it.
Yes, this all rings a big bell about a certain incident in the past, doesn’t it? They say that old sins cast long shadows!
However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I ended up a little later back on board a ship last night. It might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, I dunno, I didn’t recognise it and even in the dream I didn’t recognise it. This voyage was all about dreams again and how my dreams were getting all mixed up about people and things and so on, in parallel to how mixed up these things seem to be being in life right at the very moment. For once even though the tracks were muddled up and I didn’t know which track went where, all that kind of thing I seemed to have some kind of better arrangement about sorting out these tracks. And what would I give in real life to have a method like that?
Later on I was playing football for Crystal Palace last night, don’t ask me why. There were high balls being pumped into the penalty area and I had to bring them down under control. Qite bizarrely, I was doing much better with the difficult ones rather than the English were doing with the easy ones, just like being a multi-million pound footballer or something, and isn’t that pretty much how I’ve been talking about Lee Trundle just recently after his one-man show for Rhydaman the other night?
And that’s not all either. There was also something going on about one of these extreme right-wing Fascists, something about the roundabout up near LeClerc and I’m not quite sure what. He was down by the Post Office in the Cours Jonville and a British policeman as it happened came over to talk to him about his book saying that if he was going to publish it he needed to submit it to magistrates first to be reviewed. 20 magistrates would look at it rather like they did with Marguerite Radclyffe Hall’s book The Well of Loneliness to decide whether or not it was obscene or fit for publication. Apparently he’d been witnessed kicking some kind of Pakistani or immigrant, something like that but the immigrant had refused to press charges so the police were powerless, but they were intending to stop him somehow.
Ironically, when I was dreaming this, I remember thinking that I was actually awake so it wasn’t a dream so I had no need to dictate it. But then the alarm went off and awoke me, so I must have been asleep at the time.

Yet again I beat the third alarm quite comfortably and that led of course to an early medication and an early breakfast.

With all of that out of the way I sat down and with an air of determination I bashed out all of the 4-odd minutes of text for the live project that I’m preparing. I overran somewhat but it all fitted in so well that I had to do some editing of the music. And believe it or not, it sounds so much better now.

Talking of things sounding better, I listened a couple of times to the teaser that I had prepared yesterday. I decided that it needed some amendment so I re-did that too. That’s much better now but I’m convinced that I can make it even better still. But that’s a job for again.

All of that took me right up to almost lunchtime, would you believe, so I went for a nice long walk around the harbour, the long way round seeing as the gate was closed so the walkway was open, and went to pick up my dejeunette.

With the gates being closed and the tide being right out, the sluice hate is open. This discharges water slowly out of the inner harbour into the sea. Not enough to drain it of course, but to lower the level so that the harbour gates can be opened a good deal before high tide when the water level will of course rise again.

And with each tide being of a different height, some kind of regulation of the water level is necessary.

And have you noticed the tidal depth gauge by the way?

The way back was via the rue des Juifs as usual.

That gave me an opportunity to have a good look at the Christmas decorations that they have set up in the street. And … well … it’s not exactly going to set the town alight, is it? They could have done so much better than this, I reckon.

On the way back up the street I bumped into one of the guys who was at that strange meeting Monday evening. We had a little chat and then I came back here to eat my butties.

Feeling in a productive mood, I sat down after lunch and attacked another one of the projects I need to do. And now that it’s 23:30, I’ve just finished it and I’m having a listen to it.

All that remains is to send it off and then I’ll be right up to date for the New Year, and then I can get on and do stuff properly and make an attempt to catch up on this ever-increasing backlog.

As well as all of this, I had a little five minutes away on the new comfy chair. It’s doing the business, this is.

But I managed to pull myself together long enough to go out for my afternoon walk.

And if you think that I’m having trouble with the weather and the gale-force winds, then how about these two guys? They’ve decided to go out surfing at the Plat Gousset. And all I can say is “good luck to them” because you wouldn’t get me out there in any water less than 37°C. Not even if Castor and Pollux were in there ready to catch me.

But one advantage of the miserable weather was that there was no-one around so I could have an extra run without being observed.

The surfers weren’t the only ones out there taking to the waters.

We had one of the trawlers from the port out there too. Well, in fact there were probably a dozen of them at least but there was this one right outside the harbour on its way in. In view of the rough weather that it was having to face, I reckoned that it deserved to have its photo taken.

And on that note, I headed back into the apartment to carry on work.

But not quite straight away because there was something else that needed doing.

There’s the old Municipal building in the Place Cambernon that has been empty or thereabouts for as long as I’e known it, although just recently iy’s been covered in scaffolding, covered over and there have been workmen in there.

But today it seems that its cover has gone and we can actually see some of the work that they have been doing to the building. And it’s looking quite good. I can’t wait to see what they are going to do with it when it’s finished.

Later on this evening I went out for my evening walk – and another run too as there was no-one around. I have to keep up the pressure.

As well as Thora I was also looking to see what else I could see of the Christmas decorations. There’s a certain point where you can see right up the rue Couraye to the railway station and I reckoned that if the Christmas lights are going to be good from anywhere, they’ll be good from that place.

Seeing the lights and seeing Thora meant that I had to take a slightly different, longer route. And when I finished, I found that I was on 95% of my daily effort. And so I did another lap around the block to reach the 100%.

Quite right too, because I had a big tea tonight. A pile of steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. Totally delicious it was too, especially when followed down by some of Liz’s apple cake with sorbet.

So another very late night, and I do need to be up early. The indications are that my morning train to Paris might be going (well, it’s not shown as cancelled) and my train from Paris to Lille is running too. But from Lille to Brussels it isn’t. So the plan is that I cancelled the bus trip and I’m relying on the trains to get me to Lille at least (if I can’t negotiate a trip direct to Brussels).

If I can only get as far as Lille there may be some public transport to get me across the border to Mouscron or Harelbeke in Belgium, and then a local train to Brussels. But if I’m confounded here at Granville, I’m going to go in Caliburn. My appointment isn’t until 13:30 on Friday so there’s plenty of time to do it in two stages

So I’m off to bed. I need to be ready for my adventures tomorrow.

surfers plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 10th December 2019 – I HAVE OFTEN SAID …

… “and you’ll say more often too” – ed … that it is really nice to speak to people, especially friends. And that friends always come first before almost everything.

So despite the amount of work that I have to do and how much of it is piling up and how I decided that I would crack on and have a really good whack at some of the outstanding backlog, then spending … errr … 2 hours 16 minutes and 34 seconds instead talking to Rosemary on the telephone was nevertheless quite enjoyable, even if it isn’t getting the baby bathed.

Not that I’m complaining. Far from it in fact … “perish the thought” – ed … but I seem to be going one pace forward and ending up two paces backwards right now.

Last night was another late-ish night as I was working on project 005 and trying to sort out the mess that I’d made of the vocals. But seeing as I was getting nowhere, in the end I finally gave up and went to bed.

Not much time in bed last night – probably not more than four hours in the end, but still time to go on a voyage of some description. I was out and about being placed into a group of people for some reason or other. They were going through the names of the groups and there was one group with a name like Anvil Brown and the Red Shoes, something like that. I knew that there was a girl in charge of this group and running it so I immedately opted to go into this particular one. I went over to see her to present myself and it was at that point that I awoke.
Back asleep, a little late I was doing some photography with a group of young girls. I was wanting to do it my way instead of the way that some interfering busybody was trying to have me do it and which was totally wrong in my opinion, but I awoke pretty smartly there too so I’ll never know how that one ended either.
But strangely, these are two other circumstances in which I can see parallels with actual events, and it’s rather worrying.

Not so worrying that it’s disturbing my sleeping and waking patterns though. I managed to struggle out of bed before the third alarm and deal with the medication issues followed by breakfast, and then I attacked the vocals for my project.

In the end I gave it up as a hopeless task and re-dictated them. And with a little judicious “cut and paste” I was able to make some kind of progress. It took ages though before it finished and I do have to say that I learnt quite a lot while I was doing it.

There was an interruption though from a text message. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a message yesterday evening telling me that my train for Thursday had been cancelled due to industrial action. And so I booked a seat on the bus last night. And so today I had a message to say that my train has now been restored, as you might expect.

There was just about enough time for me to have a shower and clean up before heading to town. And HOORAY!!!! I’ve reached my target weight – a weight that I never thought that I would ever see again. But I’m not going to stop. I’ll keep on pushing my fitness regime. 12 kilos in 5 months means that in about 33 months I’ll be gone completely.

At the Grand Café I met this musician guy who showed me his songs. Luckily there are no glaring errors like in Alquin’s Mountain Queen where Dirk Franssen invites a girl to his house to “see the Morning Glory”, although I did reckon that he should change “the Poles are melting” to “the Ice is melting” in one of his songs. After all, Poland has a tough enough time as it is.

For my trouble I was given a coffee and a CD of this guy’s band, and from there I walked up to the railway station to chat to the clerk about the trains.

I had to wait half an hour for her to come back from lunch, so that gave me plenty of time to have a nosy around the station to see what was going on. And the short answer was “nothing”. There wasn’t a soul about and the train that does the route Caen – Granville – Rennes, a Bombardier B82500, was parked up and abandoned.

Something similar to the Marie Celeste, I reckoned.

Granville is also home to several of the GEC Alstom Regiolis trains too – the ones that perform the service between Granville and paris and on which I travel.

But they were all down there parked up in the sidings and slearly had no intention whatever of moving today either. This strike looks pretty much complete.

Eventually the girl in the ticket booth came back. And when she did, she knew even less than I did. “We won’t know until tomorrow” she said.
“What time?” asked our hero.
“After 17:00” she said. So that’s a lot of help then, isn’t it?

La Mie Caline for the dejeunette was next, and then the doctor’s. It pays to be on the good side of your doctor because when I asked him about a prescription for a ‘flu jab, “ohh, I’ve got some stuff here” and gave it to me on the spot.

On my way down into town I’d noticed that Normandy Trader was in the harbour again.

I was pushed for time (as usual) just then but now I don’t have anything particular organised for the rest of the day so I went to pay a courtesy call.

But I didn’t have very much success at all. I shouted and shouted but there was no answer and so seeing as it’s inappropriate to go on board without an invitation, I wandered off and I’ll go back down there again in early course.

Although the weather was failrly miserable, I decided to come the long way home all the way round the Pointe du Roc.

That route would take me past the chantier navale that we had seen in the dark last night and I could see how things were doing in there. As we can see, Aztec Lady is there in the foreground and in the background behind it we have Spirit of Conrad.

Both of them are still there receiving attention although there doesn’t seem to be anyone about down there just now.

From higher up the hill we can see just how rough the seas are this afternoon.

There’s quite a heavy sea out there right now and La Grande Ancre – for I’m sure that it is she – has a battle on her hands as she fights her way across the baie de Mont St Michel towards the harbour.

And you can see how the weather has closed in across the bay at St Pair sur Mer

For a change just recently, I managed to make it home without falling over. I wonder where it all went wrong yesterday.

The first part of the afternoon after lunch was spent working on this teaser for this project of mine. That’s all done and dusted now and you can hear it here.

That led up to my afternoon walk time in the rain and the wicked wind. This storm that we’re having is blasting just about everything that gets in its way.

The tide is still quite a way out but even so you can see the mess that it’s making of the sea wall down here. Imagine what it must be like at high tide when the waves are at the peak of their force.

I wouldn’t want to be standing right there at that particular moment, that’s for sure.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my photos are being constantly photo-bombed by the flocks of the feathered and flying creatures that live around here.

While I was admiring the scenery, another one came flying by right in the area where I didn’t want it to be so in order to humour the bird I took a photo of it with nothing else in the image at all.

Now perhaps it will go away and leave me alone to get on and do other things

Although the tide wasn’t right in, there was still enough of it in for the fishing boats to be able to tie up at the quay by the fish processing plant to unload their catch. It was quite useful to dredge out a little channel there so that the boats would have more time.

The cranses up on top are working full-tilt winching up the catch to the processing plant and to the large commercial vehicles that will take the catch off to market somewhere.

But underneath where the private and small-scale operators unload their catch, they are quite busy too. In fact, it’s a very busy port with a lot of fishing activity going on.

Mind you, it must have been a magnificent sight down there 50 years ago with all of the deep-sea trawlers that went out to the Grand Banks, and the working railway line down to the port and the trains that took the catch away.

Apart from that there wasn’t a lot going on, although I did have to give directions to a passing motorist and then I came back here.

One of the things that I’m doing is to work on a live project for 27th December, so I made a start. And despite it being in theory quite straightforward, it wasn’t ‘arf complicated because the raw material that I had to work with was full of holes. You’ve no idea the lengths to which I had to go to in order to make some reasonable patches, but in the end it sounds something like a live project – all 56 minutes and 4 seconds of it, so I need just under 4 minutes of talking. That will be a challenge.

Tea was the leftovers from Sunday evening, with a few oven chips to lengthen it out. Totally delicious it was too

When I went out for my walk later in the evening, I noticed that there had been a change in the wind outside this evening. It had gone from being ridiculous to violent.

At times it was a real struggle to make any headway, so I didn’t hang about outside for too long. Just long enough to take a couple of photos including this one of Donville-les-Bains in the dark with that big floodlight thing shining away in the background.

But despite the wind I did my lap around as usual, even managing the full length of my run, and into a headwind too. Even I was impressed with that.

Rosemary rang me as soon as I returned home and now having updated my notes, I’m off to bed. All that I had planned to do this evening, well, it’ll have to be done some other time.

Story of my life, I suppose.

storm waves on rocks granville manche normandy france

fog at sea english channel fishing boat granville manche normandy france

storm high winds waves sea wall port de granville harbour manche normandy france

normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boats unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy france

donville les bains night granville manche normandy france

christmas lights place cambernon granville manche normandy france

Monday 9th December 2019 – I HAVE NEVER EVER MET …

… so many people so gifted with the art of expanding so little thought into so many words.

It’s true that I have said this before, but here I am saying it again under different circumstances. Like at another one of these volunteer meeting things.

Following my exploits at that meeting with the kids from Greenland the other day, I was invited to take part in this twinning committee because “my mother tongue is English and I speak French pretty well”

And so there in the upstairs room in the Grand Café they were going on about “we could do … (X, Y and Z) … but the stuff is in English so if only we had someone to translate it into French” – and there I was sitting right next to and right opposite the two people having this discussion who both had totally forgotten that I had translated from the English to the French at that meeting the other week. “There’s someone here who could translate it for us” said another person, and pointed to … another (French) woman sitting at the corner of the table.

And in order to introduce myself to the others, I had to make a little speech of introduction to the rest of the gathering, so I began with “there are six people in Greenland who I know really well …” and named them. And a few minutes later someone said to me “surely you know … (Mr X) and (Mrs Y) and (Master Z) and (his pet gibbon)” who were not among the people whose names I had mentioned.

Obviously, people not taking the slightest bit of interest or notice of what I have been doing or saying.

The conversation carried on about not very much for two hours, except for who could speak the longest and say the least. I was effectively shunted off into obscurity, musing to myself that these are the kind of meetings that should be held standing up, outside, in the pouring rain. And then all of the work would be accomplished in probably a tenth of the time, and much more effectively too.

But it’s my own fault. I paid the €15:00 membership fee as soon as I arrived. Had I held out until the end before waving the folding stuff about, I imagine that they might have made more of an effort to engage with me until they had managed to chisel the cabbage out of my sweaty little mitt.

This morning though was just as bad. Apparently I had to go with someone to interview someone in English. I thought that we were doing that a couple of weeks ago but it was merely a telephone call. Today it looked like the real thing but when we arrived, it was simply a case of going for a meal with this British guy with the purpose of arranging a date for the interview.

It’s all complete, total and utter chaos and what made it worse was that when we were outside this restaurant the British guy and I were having a chat and the French guy who was trying to set up this interview said afterwards to me “if only we had the gear hear to record that. It was exactly what I wanted!”

Had I not needed him to drive me home from Avranches, I would have beaten him to death on the spot.

That’s not the worst of it either. The way to do this interview is to prepare a list of questions. I ask them of this English guy and we record the answers. We then superimpose a French person asking the questions into the recording and then I do a translation into French with a nice British accent and it’s overdubbed so you can hear the British guy talking in the background but hear the French (with accent) over the top.

It’s such a simple thing to do and I can do it all in half an hour here at my desk but the guy who thinks that he’s running the show (as distinct from the guy who is supposed to be running it) feels that he needs to be there and to do it in a way that is about 10 times more complicated and gives nothing like the same effect.

As I’ve said before … “and you’ll inevitably say again!” – ed … the lack of professionalism is really annoying me. And these are hours of my life that I won’t ever get back and I don’t have all that many to spare.

The proof of all of this was that I was up until quite late last night working, trying to catch up with the arrears of work (some hope).

And just as I was about to go to bed the gale got up, we were hit by a tempest and as I opened the bedroom door there was an enormous flash of lightning – just by way of a spontaneous greeting to me.

Despite the late night I was off on my travels last night, with Batty Bat (and it’s been YEARS since she’s accompanied me on a nocturnal voyage) and TOTGA. I’ll spare you all of the gory details because you’re probably eating a meal right now and I don’t want to turn your stomachs. But what was surprising about this particular journey is that encompassed several events that have or had a parallel with events that have or had taken place in real life and one event in particular that has been going through my conscious mind for the last week or so. It was quite surprising when I heard it on the dictaphone.

With a Herculean effort I was out of bed before the third alarm and after breakfast I attacked the outstanding project that needed to be done by today.

And ohh me miseram … “well, puer amat mensam!” – ed … I miscalculated the timing and ran 5 minutes short of my hour. A frantic search found a piece of music exactly the correct length, and then I needed a vocal explanation to go with it. Which I recorded incorrectly.

Too late now for my shower, I shot off for my meeting at the Centre Agora.

One thing about being late for my meeting is that had I been on time five minutes earlier I would have missed this glorious light. I’ve spoken … “at great lengths” – ed … on several previous occasions, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about the peculiar lighting effects that we can sometimes have around here and we’ve seen a few examples, but there has been nothing quite like this one.

This is one of the best that I have ever seen.

At the Centre Agora I made another suggestion but this one suffered the same fate as the other suggestions that I have made – viz kicked into the long grass. And then this abortive drive to Avranches with people who have nothing better to do with their lives.

Back here again I cracked on and finished the project that needed finishing and then I attacked the following one that I had already prepared. The music was ready and just needed the sound so I dictated that and began to edit it when i discovered that I had forgotten a track.

Down into town for this other meeting and on the way back I had a text message – “your train on Thursday is cancelled due to a strike”. So much for that!

On the way back home after the meeting I went the long way round in order to clock up the kilometres and also to see what was going on in the Chantier Navale.

We stall have our three boats in there – Spirit of Conrad, Omerta and Aztec Lady but never mind them for a moment. Just admire the photograph.

It’s quite true that I’ve taken many photos that have come out far better than this one, but the fact is that this one was taken with the little Nikon 1 and if it could take photos like this all the time I wouldn’t be so reluctant to rely on it.

Whenever I go out on foot for any distance I take that one with me because it fits nicely in the pocket, but its night-time photos have usually been something of a disappointment.

With my train being cancelled, the first task when I reached home was to see what Flixbus had to offer me.

Nothing at all from Avranches, but there is a bus going from Caen at … errr … 08:00 that morning. So it looks as if Caliburn and I will be having an early start. The station car park at Caen is quite expensive but I’ll be badgered if I’m going to leave him in the street for four days.

But something happened to me today. Walking up the hill towards my meeting at the Centre Agora this morning, I suddenly came over all queer. And then tonight, I had another fall. Luckily onto a raised grass surface so I did myself no damage. But what’s happening here?

Tea was the rest of the leftover curry with rice and veg followed by the last of the pineapple with sorbet. Now I’m carrying on working as I listen to a “Traffic Live” concert. A brilliant band, Traffic, especially live.

Tomorrow I have a couple of things to do in town as well as cashing in my rail tickets, but I want to finish this project on which I’m working as well as doing another one at least before I go.

There’s tidying up to do too, so I’m hoping to be on form. But I doubt if I’ll have an early night. Far too much to do!

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… what is happening right now but the clock seems to be running down rather rapidly and I don’t seem to be doing anything at all.

And there’s a huge backlog of work and I just don’t seem to be getting through any of it.

Last night I was up until some ridiculous hour sorting out the day’s photos and videos. Much later than usual, and much later than I hoped, I tottered off to bed.

There were a few travels during the night too. I’d been on board the ship again that might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’d made friends with three different women and girls. I’d been spending quite a lot of time with them. On the last night we had to leave the shop at about 03:00 and one of the girls – it might have been but I don’t think it was Castor – said something like “why don’t you come down to my room tonight?” Another one of the women had said exactly the same thing to me as well, so I replied that I’d see how things develop. Then she discovered me on the deck of this other girl with my suitcase – quite obvious where I was going so she said “yes will I see you or won’t I?” I said “it’s pretty hard to say. I have to go round to say my goodbyes to people” – pretty non-committal as I had intended. Then we got talking about this third woman She was a flighty type and I hadn’t seen her around that day. “What happened to her?” I asked. “She was supposed to be round her tonight too” “Ohh she got sent home from the tour last night. Didn’t you know?” replied the first woman. “Ahh well” I thought. “That’s why I didn’t see her”. There was another couple on board the ship who talked to me (I had more passengers talk to me in my sleep last night that I did in the whole two months that I was really on board) and they talked about us going dancing. My attention fastened on the girl however so I said I’d see how things develop. But things had obviously developed quite dramatically and quite rapidly after that as I wasn’t allowed to see this girl at all. I was basically shunted off into this corner and it was too late to make arrangements with anyone else. We all filed off the ship, the last day, last morning. I bumped into someone. “Hey, did you hear about such and such a woman” the conversation went. “What happened to her?” “She got sent home” all the usual kind of gossip. We were waiting near a tram stop and I noticed that Castor (so it very likely was Castor earlier) was actually standing at the stop waiting for a tram. I thought it’s our final day and we’re all going. Now that Castor is on her own whould I go over and speak to her, try to make my peace and salvage something of what had all gone wrong. I was debating things – should I or shouldn’t I go over there? In the end I decided that I would. Someone asked “are you coming up to us, Eric?” I said that I’d see how I feel but I have one or two things to organise. I thought that with Castor I could just go for a walk around the town, a chat anything, as long as we were together but that was when I awoke at that particular moment. This was another one of these occasions, of which there have been far too many just recently, where I have been plagued by a wicked kind of indecision during the night and it’s becoming quite a regular pattern. However, the bit about being too late when I finally make up my mind is rather a new twist to this although it does have quite a bit of relevance.
There was also a bit somewhere in here about us on the docks and we had to go to the islands. Some were going to the British islands of course and the trader but I was going to the little offshore island. I can’t remember his name but the girl came out to see me go, found me in the state of a swamp and got the girl Crystal to come and take over the business. Of course they didn’t want you and your party to be there. They wanted the glory that came from the Government but without the other party being there too, and make it happen (anf if you can understand any of that garbled nonsense, please let me know).
Somewhat later I was at some hotel in Germany in a Bavarian type of setting there and had to go to the airport and call a taxi. It needed to be quick and the taxi turned up. I had tons of luggage and the driver was just wedging it into the boot any old how so I had a word with him about that. Then we set off for the airport and then I don’t remember very much about this after that.
Later still I was given my shopping list – a pile of potatoes, at least 10 really thick milk of +10% and coffee. When I came back the barrels of coffee had been arranged like an entrance to the town and this was upsetting one or two people. Someone made the remark that Americans aren’t like this but I said that there is certainly some who are and anyone who has ever read anything I’ve written will know that while I’m pretty much opposed to the USA I’ve always said that when I’ve found Americans on their own I’ve found them very nice, friendly and charming people.

As you can see, it was a very busy night last night. Quite exhausting in fact so it will be no surprise to anyone that when I awoke at 07:30 I simply turned over and went back to bed. 09:45 is much more like it on a Sunday.

By the time that I was wined and dined etc, it was almost 11:00 and the first thing that I did, that I haven’t done for a while, was to back up the computer. I’ve been somewhat lax from that point of view just recently and I can’t afford to make to many errors in this respect.

That took longer than it should have done too so there wasn’t much time left to start yesterday’s blog before I had to go down into town to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

The harbour gates were closed so I could walk that way round on the walkway over the top of the gates and around the harbour.

And I’m glad that I went that way too because while I was standing on the edge of the harbour looking at some of the fishing equipment I fell in with a couple of people of the fisherman-type who clearly knew what they were talking about, so I seized the opportunity to ask them about this equipment that has been puzzling me for quite a while.

And they are indeed shellfish dredgers. They scape them along the sea bed to uproot the shellfish. The shellfish stay in the cage but the silt is washed out.

So having satisfied myself on that score I could move on.

Chausiais is now back in her berth, moored in the inner harbour next to her fellow ship Joly France, so we could say “hello” to her, and then push on to the shops to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

It’s certainly a good idea for me to come out in the morning-ish for my lunchtime dejeunette every day. I need to exercise much more than I do and this is all good for me.

After lunch I carried on with the blog entry – just one of the five or six things that I needed to do today before I did anything else, but ran out of time before I’d even finished that one.

Liz and Terry are leaving in a few days so I’d been invited round there to Roncey for tea. Rather embarrassing because Liz’s birthday present hasn’t arrived yet and neither have their Christmas presents.

But never mind. Off I went into the wind and rain (strangely enugh, coming back with my bread earlier I’d been thinking to myself that the walks seemed to have missed most of the rainstorms just recently, and almost immediately the rain had started up), stopping at LeClerc to fill up with diesel.

And here’s a thing. The diesel that I put in prior to this was put in in March, and the time before that was 8th October last year. And neither of those three fills was filled right up. In a little over 13 months I’ve travelled about 700kms – a far cry from the first two years when I owned Caliburn and did 66,000 kms.

It’s been a good while since I had the chance to have a good chat to Liz and Terry – so much so that it was almost 22:00 by the time that I left. Left with a carrier bag too because not only was there my Christmas present (more of which anon) but the remains of the meal- vegetable wellington with carrots, broccoli and fried parsnips. And apple turnover cake too.

They do look after me, and it’s nice.

So a drive back here and it’s very late and I’ve still not caught up with everything. Yesterday’s blog is still in a “to be continued” state, I’ve not done today’s photographs and, even worse, this week’s project is far from finished and it needs to be done by 09:15 tomorrow morning.

But I can’t do it now because I’m far too tired and I’ll just make mistakes.

Looks as if an early start is on the cards.

Saturday 7th December 2019 – WHAT DO YOU THINK …

… of the Christmas decorations in the rue Paul Poirier this year, Strawberry Moose?

Well, of course, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but nevertheless, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m singularly unimpressed by the (lack of) imagination shown by the city fathers (and mothers) this year.

It’s not a great deal different that in any preceding year and when I see some of the effort that goes into making the chars, the carnaval floats, each year, I was expecting more than this, I have to say.

But talking of imagination, my imagination was working overtime last night. Despite being a night much (indeed very much) later than I had intended, and despite struggling to my feet somewhere in the same vicinity as the alarm calls, there was plenty of time to go off on a ramble.
And that was even though it took absolutely ages and ages and ages to go off to sleep last night. At one stage I thought that it must be getting light by now and I still hadn’t off to sleep, but sleep I must have done and dream I certainly did. I was with a group of people and as is my wont, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’d given a few of them nicknames as would be appropriate. It actually came out in the discussion as I mentioned a nickname about someone or something. These people were all dying to know who it was and what I meant and what other nicknames I had given to anyone or anything else. There was one nickname in particular that I’d given to someone and I really didn’t want anyone to know because it was a very special nickname. So I was there and I decided that I would resist all efforts. One girl in particular came along and started to question me much more about this and this was a surprise really because it was this particular girl to whom I was referring with this special nickname. I told her that it wasn’t something that I usually talked about, who was what, and I was aware that I was fobbing them all off all the time. Just when the questioning was starting to become intense, I told the girl that if she guesses correctly I would give her my farm, something like that. But just as she started to question me intensely the alarm went off and I breathed a sigh of relief.

And I wonder who the girl was. And, much more interestingly, what the nickname was.

After breakfast I started to try to figure out a way of combining these … errr … 68 track fragments from the mixer panel into one coherent track that I could edit down, but after about three or four, I gave up the idea. The lack of a pause control (or “until I can figure out how to pause a recording” more likely) is putting the kybosh on any of my attempts to do anything with that right now.

And so I turned to my faithful old dictaphone. A mike socket in, a headphone monitoring socket, a USB cable connection and – a pause control (I’d made sure of that when I was buying that!)

Switching the mike setting to “unidirectional” instead of “omnidirectional”, I plugged one of the expensive mikes into the microphone socket and did a couple of trial dictaions.

Much to my surprise, the quality was phenomenal. Much better by far that any other recording equipment that I’ve had here. And in stereo too. So I bit the bullet and re-recorded the audio vocals onto that using the mike, and then uploaded it to the laptop.

Once it was on the laptop I started to make a start to edit it. And even though I say it myself, what I have done so far (because I haven’t done it all by any means) sounds quite impressive.

But at a certain point I had to give up. I’m going out shortly and I need to make my butties, so a trip down into town was called for.

The tide was well out this morning so I could go the long way round and over the path on top of the harbour gates and then alongside the quay that way.

And Normandy Trader was conspicuous by her absence. Sneaked out of the harbour under cover of darkness.

having picked up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline, I wandered for a couple of minutes into the town centre to see how the market traders were coping with the decorations.

And we were being entertained too. A duo, backed by digital music unfortunately, were singing “The Pink Aeroplane”.

And I bet that you don’t know of a song of that title, but it is in fact a mondegreen. It refers to the title of the song la Vie En Rose – “Life in the Pink” that was on several occasions misheard, as in any good mondegreen, as L’Avion Rose – “The Pink Aeroplane”

With nothing much else to do I had a good walk around the stage to watch them, but the Nikon 1, good little camera that it might be in normal circumstances, isn’t up to being pushed beyond its limits.

So as I was taking a photo of the girls still singing, someone nearby came into the frame and the camera focused on them and not on the stage.

Perhaps I should say that the Nikon 1 is always set on “manual exposure” as its whole purpose is to be a quick “point and shoot” camera, leaving the big Nikon D500 for the more challenging work, when I have it with me.

The automatic setting though isn’t light enough for my requirements, so I’ve set the function (FN) button to work the exposure compensation and I always go two stops down with that.

If there are any minor lighting challenges with that setting I can edit those out

Strawberry Moose who was with me in spirit, if not in body, drew my attention to this sign just here.

He’s absolutely right, of course. Security cameras are designed to prevent crime of course. But the word volée in French can mean two things. It really and literally means “flown”, but in common usage an article that has “flown” will mean that it has been stolen.

And this little play on words has been used to great effect when I lived in Belgium. The Belgian Army bought a load of helicopters from MV Agusta. These helicopters were totally useless, and it was very strongly believed that a pile of well-filled brown envelopes had passed underneath the table at the signing of the contract.

One Francohone comedian asked the question “what’s the difference between a Belgian Army helicopter and a Belgian Government Minister?”
“Well, in Belgium it’s the Ministers who voléew/em>”

Heading quickly home to organise a shower and make my butties ready for departure, my attention is drawn to yet another piece of pathetic parking – a subject that features quite often on these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And this isn’t just bad parking, this narrow street is actually a bus route and service buses come up here every 40 minutes or so. And they are pretty busy on a Saturday morning.

But don’t let that fact get in the way of a selfish effort to save oneself a 20-metre walk.

Back here I had a quick shower and clean up, made my butties and headed back out up town.

13:30 I had to be at the football stadium, and I was there by 12:15.

The crowds were already gathering, and quite right too. US Granville are playing away in the Coupe de France at Plabennec three hours or so away, and the club had laid on free transport for the supporters.

And that was a gesture that I appreciated very much and I wish that there were more opportunities to travel to away matches.

There were so many fans wishing to attend that there were actually two buses. Mine was the yellow Van Hool but there was this black one too.

All very nice, and took me back to my halcyon days when I used to drive tour buses like this all over Europe.

We were only about 20 minutes or so late getting away, which surprised me greatly, so I settled down to eat my butties and, shame as it is to admit it, slept for most of the way.

Not something that I really should be ashamed of, because I had had a bad night and it wasn’t as if there was anything else to do on board the bus.

Armed with the obligatory blue-and-white scarf (left over from a cup exploit a few years ago and cost e3:00 – still, the bus was free and the club deserved some reward) and a Normandy flag (free provided by the Normandy Chamber of Commerce) we poured out of the buses at the car park that had been set aside at the local high school up the road.

This young boy was very proud of his scarf and flag, and also his make-up too.

There was a girl on board the bus doing the make-up for free, but I declined. My mush is ugly enough without a load of makeup adding to it.

Down the street we all filed in a crocodile tothe football stadium, where the gates were firmly closed for another half-hour.

One idea that was in my mind was to go for a walk into town for a look around and see what was going on, but the stadium was quite some way out of town.

Much as I fancied a coffee, I could get one here in the ground.

With 90 minutes to go before kick-off I grabbed a coffee (and a bag of chips) and went for a walk around the ground.

The reason why it’s so far out of town is that it was formerly a farm, bought by the town in 1968 and transformed into a sports complex that was opened in 1972.

And, by looking at things, they did quite a good job of it too for a small town and a club playing in the equivalent of the Northern Premier League

There’s a main stand that runs down the side of the pitch like most football grounds, and also a smaller stand behind one of the goals.

That’s where we are installed – some form of crowd segregation I suppose – and I do have to say that the facilities here are somewhat better than Granville offers its away supporters when there was crowd segregation.

It was somewhat embarrassing to see the facilities (or lack thereof) offered to the Bordeaux fans at the stade Louis Dior two years ago.

The club had hired two coaches, as I think I explained earlier, and as they were pretty much full, that worked out at about 100 people or so.

As well as that, several people had come under their own steam (I’m not quite sure why when the buses were free) so by the time that kick-off took place, there were probably about 150 people in the away end.

That’s the figure that was reported by the club and it looks about right to me.

Plabennec play in white so Granville had to play in a blue kit tonight. And it brought them quite a bit of luck too.

It’s probably fair to say that Plabennec had the lion’s share of the game tonight, but they huffed and puffed their way through the match without threatening ever to bring Granville’s house down.

Granville in the meantime sat back and soaked up the pressure, setting out on a few forays of their own.

One thing that I have said … “and on many occasions too” – ed … is that the tactic that Granville adopts of playing the ball quickly down the wings counts for absolutely nothing if they can’t put the crosses into the penalty area and don’t have anyone taking advantage of them.

And so today it was a pleasant surprise when during a foray upfield after a corner kick, the big centre-half got his head to one of these crosses that usually pass uninterrupted over the goalmouth.

Never mind a goal, it almost burst the back of the net and just goes to show what you can do when you have the correct players and when you put your mind to it.

Later on in the match Granville scored a second from a well-worked routine just outside the penalty area.

That must have been a disappointment for Plabennec because at 1-0 down and having more of the ball there was always a possibility that they could pull something out for an equaliser, but at 2-0 down it was a uphill struggle.

That was how the match ended – 2-0 for Granville.

And at the final whistle the players came down to the away end to greet the fans. Something that I thought was a very nice gesture. It was only right too because the noise that the fans had kept up during the match had helped the team push onwards.

A real “12th man” in the stadium tonight.

On the way back, I slept for some of the way, which was just as well. There wasn’t much else going on.

And by the time that we returned to the Stade Louis Dior it was about 23:45. We’d had a really good afternoon out all together, and it was really nice of the club to lay on the buses for the fans.

It was just as well that I’d put on my winter woollies because it was pretty taters outside too by now.

My walk back home was a long, lonely, cold vigil. I was probably the only person out there at that time of night.

Still, it gave me plenty of opportunity to admire the town’s Christmas decorations. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d seen them erecting the decorationsa few days earlier, but I’d yet to see them properly working.

But I was really a little disappointed by what’s on offer.

Not necessarily because of the quality and the amount of decorations, but apart from the famous ski slope that we saw the other day, it’s all pretty much the same as last year.

It wouldn’t be too much, surely, to have a redesign of the Christmas decorations or even to shuffle the decorations around so that they are in different places, just to relieve the monotony.

So while you admire the rest of the Christmas decorations, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a very long day and I need my beauty sleep.

hristmas tree place pierre semard granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations rue couraye granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations gare de granville railway station manche normandy france

christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

artificial ski slope christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

christmas decorations place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… one of the strangest football matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

It’s the Welsh Cup this weekend and there are several banana skins lying aound. One of those is Carmarthen Town v Rhydaman, and this was shown on the live internet feed tonight.

Carmarthen are at the foot of the Welsh Premier League and struggling whereas Rhydaman, one division below them in the pyramid, are in 5th place and having a good run of form. Not the match that I would have picked – I’d have gone for Colwyn Bay v Airbus – but’s good enough. It’s the kind of game where you can smell that someone is in for a scalping.

And a scalping there certainly was. Rhydaman, playing away from home at Carmarthen, ran out winners. And not just by the odd goal either but they won 0-4.

You would have thought from the scoreline that this was a right spannering, but that was very far from the truth. Whilst Rhydaman were the better side, they weren’t all that better. The difference was that we were treated to 4 magic moments of Trundlemania

Yes, Lee Trundle. He must be 45 now if he’s a day but still proving that he can cut it with the best and while he’s slowed down considerably as you might expect, he still showed the kind of magic that made him a multi-million pound footballer in the days when multi-million pound footballers were still quite thin on the ground.

I mean – just HOW do you defend against something like this?

Despite a reasonably early night, I missed the alarms again. Not by much – only a few minutes in fact, but missed them nevertheless.

Not only that, although there was nothing on the dictaphone, I had a vague recollection that during the night I’d been on a voyage and found something that was way beyond exciting – the same feeling of elation that I had when I I came across that Santana concert after 42 years of searching.

But what it was, we shall never know now.

After the medication and breakfast, with no dictaphone notes to do, I attacked a couple of digital music files to break up into tracks.

One of them took me four hours to do, and for a variety of reasons too. It was an album of a live concert and with this digital sound analyser program that I have, I could see that it was a series of individual tracks that had been artificially joined together – and by a blind man by the looks of it too.

16 tracks altogether so it took me quite a while to edit all of the joints together properly so that it actually looks like a live concert as well as sounds like one too.

Then I had to break the file down into 16 individual tracks and save each one of those individually, but not before I’d copied about 15 decent applause tracks (some of which went on for half a minute and more) from the file, cut out any speech and unnecessary noise from them, boosted the volume in what are called “S-curves” in places to hide the difference in volume in the joins where I’ve cut things out, and then saved them to disk as 15 individual files.

Applause tracks are good and I love them because I can do all kinds of exciting things with them. But you need a good number of them from the same concert because if you “mix and match” applause tracks from different concerts, the applause doesn’t sound similar and it gives the appearance of being false. And if they are long applause tracks, you can cut them down and that gives you even more opportunity to make something different.

Round about 12:45 I knocked off for lunch.

No bread here and no lettuce either so a walk into town was on the cards. And quite right too. Past the docks where the harbour gates were open sothe trawlers could come inside to unload.

And Charles-Marie is still over there with her winter wrap on.

The gates to the harbour can’t have been open all that long because there were several fishing boats on their way into port right now.

This one coming into port just here gave me a good opportunity for a photo-shoot but as I took a shot, my photo was once more bombed by a blasted seagull.

They get absolutely everywhere, these perishing things.

At the Super-U the lettuce was extortionate. €1:39 for a small one. That’ll teach me to forget one at LIDL, won’t it?

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and walked across to the Place general de gaulle to see what was going on.

Nothing right now as you can see, but clearly something will be going on in the very near future because we seem to have acquired a stage.

That’s going to upset a few of the marketeers tomorrow. It’ll quite take the shine off their sausages, now that they can begin to roast them again with charcoal following a recent Court decision.

But what about our famous ski slope in the town?

No room for any humans on there because we seem to have been overrun by animals. I can understand why they might want to use animals as decoration, but why beavers … or … errr … Castors to the French people around here.

What does a beaver have to do with the festive season?

This is much more like the kind of thing you would expect to see at Christmas, isn’t it?

We have a sledge here and a reindeer pulling it. Presumably there will be a Father Christmas around somewhere to travel in it.

But I have a cunning plan and I shall be having a word with Strawberry Moose in early course and we will go for a little walk together late one night for a photo opportunity.

Yesterday I mentioned and indeed showed you a photograph of the Christmas decorations that they were unloading at the Square Potel in the rue des Juifs, and I remember saying that I would go for a butcher’s today.

So here I am in the Square Potel with the decorations and I do have to say that I’m considerably underwhelmed by it all.

Mybe it’s just me I dunno, but I was expecting much more than this.

After lunch, I attacked the sound mixing desk for the vocals for the current project. It took me hours to figure out again how to record anything with it because I had forgotten what I did last time. And then I had to clean out all of the test files, set the volume levels and the like, and then clean out those test files too.

And then I could start.

The recording level is quite low using the built-in mike but my sound analyser program enhances that with no loss of quality. But there is a major problem with it, in that there’s no “pause” facility. So every time you stop for a think or to clear your throat, it restarts with a new track.

Trying to edit out about 40 of those into one coherent track and then split that down into tis segments is going to take me an age.

But I have made a startling discovery, and that is that the mikes that I bought for the mixing panel, using the adapter that came with them I can plug them into the dictaphone, which DOES have a pause facility. And also an output for headphones.

In view of this, I see a whole new world opening up for me here. For although the sound is somewhat tinny, it seems to be of a much higher quality.

One thing that I didn’t mention today is that the high winds are back. And with a vengeance too.

There was quite a storm raging out offshore and so even though the tide was on its way out, the waves were still rattling down on the rocks.

Not too many people out there today and that’s hardly a surprise given the conditions.

But overcast and miserable and foggy it might be here, over across the bay on the Brittany coast they were having a different kind of weather.

Low cloud, yes, but on the periphery there was bright sunshine and it was creating a most unusual lighting effect over there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it could do the same thing around here on this side of the bay?

Going around the headland was taking my life in my hands with the wind that was sweeping around there.

narrowly avoiding being squidged on the pedestrian crossing, I went round the cliff to see what the waves were doing on the sea wall.

Not a lot, because the tide was going out rapidly. It must have bee quite impressive an hour or so ago.

Nothing changed at all in the chantier navale today, and Normandy Trader had sodded off too … “that was quick” – ed … so I stood and armired the waves for a little longer.

Every now and again there was a wave more powerful and deeper than the others, and that was providing me with some exciting entertainment.

But after a while I gave it up and headed for home and coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite regularly in these pages. Here’s another example.

I’d seen her pull up as I was on my way home with my lettuce and bread, and I thought to myself at the time “she’s not going to leave that car there, straddling two places and with 6 feet of room in front, is she?”

But yes she is. Gets right on my wick it does.

Back to the sound files and then a break for tea. I made a curry with the leftovers again and there were so many leftovers that there are some leftovers left over. That’ll be a tea for another night then, won’t it?

This evening it was raining when I went out so I didn’t hang around. I had my run though, right up to the top of the ramp and another 20 paces further on. It was feeling good today.

Then we had the football and now, considerably later than planned (like 01:45) I’m off to bed. I’m a busy boy tomorrow and another task has reared its ugly head as well.

Where will I find the time?

Thursday 5th December 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

… I’ve finished all of the dictaphone notes. I dragged the final ones into the “filed” subfolder at about 12:15 today. That was another job well-done and I can start to get on with things now – or, at least, I can when I’ve backed them up and deleted them from the back-up folder on the dictaphone.

If my memory served me correctly, from the time that I left France on 27th June until I’d recovered from my exploits away on or about 26th October, there were something like 286 entries to be transcribed.

Some of them were quite long too. Leaving aside the one of over four hours (which was 3 minutes of me talking and four hours of me sleeping), there were quite a few that ran into double figures too.

And some of the stuff was quite exciting too. It’s amazing the kind of thing that goes on in a nocturnal ramble and about which I am totally unaware until I come to dictate it.

Talking of “exciting” … “well, one of us is” – ed … you should have been with me during the night too, because it’s been a good while since I’ve had such an exciting time.

We started off the evening on board a ship – not sure which one but it could quite easily have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We sailed at night into this port that was held by the Germans, at night so that while they could see the ship, they could not see its nationality or anything. We sent a big party ashore – almost everyone in fact and made our way peacefully to the supply depot. We overwhelmed the people in the supply depot, one of whom was a 19 year old Danish Freikorps soldier boy by ruse or trick. I was having to speak to the German officer in charge who congratulated me on my German but didn’t much like my accent. I said that I was a Volksdeutsch, not a natural German. Having overwhelmed the supply depot, we collected the supplies and sent our first group off to clear the way back to the ship. However, they ended up being pinned down under fire by a young boy there. Whoever was leading that column said that he wasn’t going to go along and flush out this boy because he was only a kid. This obviously upset our commander because in war everything is important and no individual, regardless of age, merits consideration. He decided to send this young Danish Freikorps boy out there. He told him “he’s your mate – you do and get him out of there” and packed him off with one of our soldiers to try to talk this young kid out of his position so we could get off and go home before the Germans woke up and realised exactly what was happening.
And, dear reader, that was really exciting that was. For some unknown reason it was the most exciting and most realistic voyage that I’ve been on for quite some time.
A little later on – a good while later on in fact – I was away again, on the same ship and we ended up in New York. We saw our ship come into the harbour but I couldn’t find my camera to take photos of it. I was really dismayed by that. But as we docked, a group of people disappeared off onto the shore. I couldn’t find my camera and, even worse, I couldn’t find Strawberry Moose. I thought well, I’m going at least to have a look around on shore even if we can’t stay here long and I can’t get any photos. However, just as I got off the ship two people from the crew came back to the ship again. They were carrying Strawberry Moose in that big shoulder bag that I have and they had my camera. They explained that they had taken him off on a few photo shoots. So Strawberry Moose and I – I should say that I took Strawberry Moose with me. He came for a climb but having been in that bag he was all matted and his fur was a total mess – set off to climb up this hill up a load of steps where there’s a really good view over the docks. But it wasn’t the docks that I particularly remembered though, it’s the kind of New York that we have visited on numerous occasions on one of our nocturnal excursions where there’s the big elevated highway out of the city off to the left. Our ship was moored almost underneath that flyover type of place and all around the docks was greenery. There was another main road at ground level off to the left of the docks. There were steps up to the top and there were some people climbing them in front of me, obviously locals, and going on about the health clinic at the bottom, saying that it can’t have been there before these steps were open. Someone laughed and said “oh yes of course it was, it’s just that we couldn’t get to it”. I got to the top of the steps and the view from the top was stunning as you could imagine. You could see the ship and see all the docks below me and that highway that I mentioned and a couple of other roads and I went to take a photo of it all. As well as that there was something about a couple of other people up there. They were fuming because they had asked someone to take a photo of them and he had turned round and said “so you aren’t really third-party intimates are you?”. Their camera was one of these with different picture settings and “third party intimate” was one of the choices. That was the style of photo that they wanted but he had changed the settings and it ruined their photo. But just as I was about to take a photo of everything spread out before me, that was when I awoke.
And that’s not all either. I had another dream – a political dream this time. Clearly the situation in the UK is getting to me big-time. Again we were on the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and again Cook was being broadcast on the TV, again all kind of falsehoods about Jeremy Corbyn, even though he was on the ship and even though we knew that these things were false. Even though they had been disclosed publicly as being false, the BBC was still broadcasting them as if they were the real thing.

All that I can say is that it was a good job that I had had an early night for a change. I would otherwise have never fitted all of that in.

Unfortunately I missed the alarms this morning, but I was up pretty quickly regardless, round about 06:30 or something like that.

It took me an age to transcribe my notes from the night, and that was followed by breakfast and a shower. With some time before I needed to leave the apartment I made a start on the remaining dictaphone notes.

It was soon enough time to leave the apartment and I wish that it wasn’t because, once more it was absolutely taters out there again.

We’ve had a visitor during the night. Normandy Trader has made it in and she seems to be pretty well loaded up. I can’t see what with though because of this blasted fog and mist that is shrouding everything.

One of these days I shall have to go for a look.

It seems that I shall also have to go and have a look to see what’s going on with Marité too.

They have set up a cherry-picker in the quayside and there were some guys up there in the nacelle doing some work on Marité‘s mast.

It seems a shame, but it seems that the days when you would send a small boy up the mast to fix the rigging are long-gone. Times are definitely a-changing.

The railway station was deserted when I arrived. The whole of the French public service is on strike today apparently. But no matter. I went simply to pick up my tickets for next week and I can do that out of the machine there.

There is something of a reliability issue with regard to the machines so I like to go and collect my tickets before the day of travel, just in case there’s a problem.

The main reason for going to LIDL was to buy a lettuce because I had run out, so while I was there I did a quick run round and picked up some other stuff.

On the way back to the apartment I passed by the big St Paul’s Church.

At the back of it, in the impasse de la Corderie, they have erected a large crane. And I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s for the church because that is definitely in need of urgent repair, or it might be for one of the houses nearby.

And it was round about here that I realised that while I had indeed bought a few other bits and pieces, I had forgotten to buy the lettuce.

Nevertheless, I did remember to call at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette and then I sailed on up the hill towards home.

There’s a little Square – the Square Potel – just off the rue des Juifs and here they seem to be setting up some Christmas decorations too. But what kind of decorations these are going to be I really don’t know.

When I come by here tomorrow I’ll have another look and take a photo of how everything has turned out.

Back at the apartment I made myself a quick coffee and then knuckled down to the dictaphone notes. And as I said earlier, they are now all done and dusted and I can relax somewhat until the next project – like the photos for example.

After lunch I made a start on cutting up some more of the digital music that I have downloaded. I only did about four all day, but one of them was quite complicated. Not because it was difficult (although the mixing that was done in the studio was appalling and I had to redo it here) but because there were plenty of little extras, like loads of applause tracks for example, that I could extract and keep in my sound library for future use.

We had a break in the middle of all of that for my afternoon walk.

it was still really cold outside today and the freezing fog hadn’t really lifted at all. You can see the haze covering the medieval walled town and the Plat Gousset.

And it waas much worse further down the coast and out to sea.

No chance of spying any fishing boats out there working today, but there was one leaving the harbour just as I rounded the headland.

Nothing worth photographing in the cjantier navale or, at least, nothing that we haven’t seen just recently, so I took a photo of the trawler instead.

And that didn’t take long to disappear out of sight into the mist either. I was going to take another one of it further out in the Baie de Mont st Michel but I couldn’t see it at all.

But there are strange goings-on at the passenger terminal for the ferries to the Channel Islands and the Ile de Chausey.

Joly France, one of the boats that runs to the Ile de Chausey, was moore dup there today, but Chausiais, the boat that the company has bought to carry out a freight service, that’s over there too having come out from the inner harbour.

Does this mean that the freight service is about to start? Watch this space.

There was no-one around at all so I tok the opportunity to have a good run. And I managed it all the way to the end of my little track where I cross the road. It might not be all that far – a mere three hundred metres or so – but it’s the principle of the thing.

One thing that I had forgotten to do was to take the rubbish out to the large collection point. So I went and did that too and reflected, on the way back, that this is now three times today that I have run up the stairs. When I first moved here, I couldn’t even walk up them.

Tea was a lentil and carrot burger with pasta, followed by rice pudding. And then off for my evening walk.

It’s even colder out there now so I didn’t hang around. Just a bried pause to admire the Christmas lights in the rue Paul Poirier.

And I have to say that they are something of a disappointment. Not because they aren’t very good but they seem to be no different from the previous years.

Ohh for someone with some imagination!

Moving on, I ran (yet again!) on my track but didn’t quite make it up to the top of the ramp. But then again, with all of the running that I’ve done today, I’m reasonably happy with that.

Minette was there so I said hello to her and then came back here in the warmth. An early night is called for, and a quiet day tomorrow. I’ll make a start on the photos and maybe even unpack the final box from the big delivery last week. High time I did that.

Wednesday 4th December 2019 – BRRRRHHHH!

Winter is acumen in. And Caliburn is the first to notice it.

It was absolutely taters in my apartment this morning. And even with one of the radiators going full-tilt overnight in the living room, the temperature was a mere 9°C.

The other radiator won’t be switched on though, because I spend most of my life in the bedroom-cum-office here and even with just one small radiator, it keeps quite warm in here.

But outside this morning, the temperature had descended to just 0°C, with the promise of more frost on the way. Winter is well and truly on its way.

It’s not the only thing that’s on its way either. I was on my way during the night. I had an old beige Cortina mkIV (UOB? YLO? WGS?) that had been involved in an accident and was quite badly damaged at the front so we were taking the seats out of it to put in another one. We were having to do this on the very quiet in the hope that no-one would ever get to see about it because with the floor pans being the same all the seats in the mkIII, mkIV and mkV were quite the same. But the door cards wouldn’t fit and I remember thinking so it was probably a mkIII that we were going to fit these seats in. But apart from that I don’t really remember very much else and awoke shortly after the dream started.

There were further instances too, but the battery in the dictaphone went flat as I began to dictate them and by the time that I had sorted out new batteries, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

An early start meant an early breakfast and I was back at my desk quite early too. And by the time that I knocked off at lunchtime, I’d reduced the dictaphone backlog to just 8 files. I’m hoping to finish those tomorrow if I can get a good whack at it.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was planning to head off for this outside market on the football club car park. So I took a break from the dictaphone and headed off outside.

My route took me up the hill into the avenue des Matignon and here once again we witnessed one of the eternal banes of this site – the pathetic parking of various selfish motorists.

Here’s one guy who’s parked over not one but two places in a loading bay while he went into the boulangerie, despite the fact that right behind where he parked was an empty public parking place.

It really is unbelievable.

Another thing on which we focus is the various house-building activities that are going on all over town.

This site in the avenue des Matignon has featured before, but a long while ago when it was nothing like as completed as it is now.

And judging by the space heaters and moisture extractors in use in the building, it won’t be long before it’s ready for occupation, I reckon.

Ad I’m glad that I wasn’t expecting too much of this open-air market today, because I wasn’t disappointed at all.

There were a couple of bakers there but none of them had a loaf my size so I eschewed the opportunity. And the price of the fresh veg was, well, out of my range I’m afraid.

But there was someone there selling baking apples and had I not been planning my getaway in a week’s time, I’d have bought a few. Instead, I’ll get a few next week and they will be nice and ready for when I return.

On the way back down into town, the workmen were there once more at the roundabout at the place Pierre Semard, working on the Christmas tree.

Today they have brought another pile of smaller trees and they seem to be erecting their own little forest. And without any obvious Health and Safety issues, although had it been the UK, they all would have had to wear armour-plating to defend themselves against splinters.

Having admired them for a few minutes, I continued on down into town, picked up my dejeunette and came back home.

And much to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, I managed to run about 100 metres up the steep hill. I’ve not done that before.

Still an hour or so to go before lunch so I continued with the dictaphone notes, leaving just 8 to do, as I mentioned when I knocked off for lunch.

After lunch I had another play around with the Fostex mixer desk and I’ve managed to make it work after a fashion. At least, it’s recording tracks and I can upload them to the desktop computer, but the recording level is too low for my liking.

Still, I’ve ordered a few of the correct cables for the external microphones and when they arrive, I’ll be in business (I hope).

Next task was to edit out some soundbites of Louis de Funes and his friends from a few video soundtracks so that I can use them in my projects. I had an 8-minutes soundtrack and I’m halfway through it, having selected out about 15 so far.

At some time during the course of the afternoon I must have dozed off on my nice new comfy chair, because I suddenly sat bolt upright with quite a shock. And it’s been a while since I’ve done that.

16:00 – time for my afternoon walk.

There was bright sunlight out there in places, yet it was freezing cold still and the sea was covered in this layer of freezing fog.

All in all, from this point of view it looked like a rather depressing afternoon.

Despite the cold and the fog, there were some people out there enjoying themselves.

Some guy was out there with his bucket, doing what they call round here the peche à pied – fishing on foot. Scavenging in the rockpools for the cockles and mussels, alive, alive-ohh, hey?

And I hope that he shares them out with his friends. After all, one mustn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish

Further on along the coast the beach out at Donville-les-Bains was swathed in glorious sunshine.

There were quite a few people out there on the beach enjoying the sunshine while they could, and that sad former hotel building that is now apartments and where I went to look at something once, even that was looking quite nice today in the conditions.

But as you can see, the fog isn’t all that far away. You can’t see very much behind the building.

It wasn’t just on the beach at Donville-les-Bains that the people were sunning themselves either.

There were quite a few people walking out on the promenade at the Plat Gousset and there were even some intrepid souls who had made their way onto the beach.

As for me, I carried on with my walk and seeing as there was no-one out and about on the Square Maurice Marland where I take my evening run, I leapt into action there too.

All the way along my little track and up the ramp at the end too. It was something of an effort, that final 20 metres and that’s what usually finishes me off, the rise at the end, but I made it up to the top today.

Back at the apartment I started to split into their individual tracks the digital music that I have been downloading just recently. Today, I did two albums and I reckon that along with the photos, this will be my project once the dictaphone notes are finished.

There was some stuffing left over from the pepper the other day so I added a tin of kidney beans and made some taco rolls for tea. And there’s still some stuffing left over now. What I’ll do, probably on Friday, is to make some pasta and eat it with the stuffing and the left-over veg.

Freezin cold and pitch-black outside so I didn’t loiter on my evening walk.

They have installed the Christmas lights on the rue du Port so I stopped to photograph them. And, frankly, if that’s the best that they can do, it’s all rather sad if you ask me. They needn’t have bothered.

No-one about again so I broke into a run and made it all the way down my course here without too much effort.

Even though I say it myself, I’m feeling much better with myself because I’m making the effort to move about more. Who knows? At this rate I might even start looking for a partner. Wouldn’t that be something?

So LIDL tomorrow. I don’t know what they have in the specials but it will be fun finding out. So I’ll catch up with my beauty sleep right now.

After all, with my looks, I need all the beauty sleep I can get.

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

… that I wasn’t intending to do much or to go far today, I’ve actually performed 104% of my daily target today. I was going to brag and say that that’s what happens you are the dynamic self-motivated person to which I aspire, but actually today didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.

It all went wrong long before I went to bed, when I was so engrossed in something or other that it was about 01:30 when I went to bed. And that was certainly no part of anyone’s plan, least of all mine.

It didn’t stop me being out of bed by about 06:15 though – beating the third alarm by a comfortable 5 minutes or so. And we’ll do some more of that too.

I was rather all over the place last night. I started off with a pose set that I’d downloaded for my 3D characters ages ago and that I didn’t know that I had. I came across it by accident and was going through it, and the textures of the articles and some of the poses were really good. However they needed breaking down, going through into different folders for different activities. That got me going all the way through this 3D program for some reason and I was doing all kinds of things with it. I can’t remember all that much about it now unfortunately but that was what I was doing.

Anyway, enough of that for now. An early start means an early breakfast which means an early return to work. And despite several distractions, by the time that I had knocked off at midday, the number of outstanding files in the queue for dictaphone transcription is a mere 17. I’ve had a really good day at that today, especially as some extremely long ones have bitten the dust.

Of those that are left, there are only two that can be classed as “long”, and they aren’t as long as a couple that I have dealt with today.

At midday I knocked off – later than intended but I was in the middle of something – and headed of to town in search of my dejeunette.

An unpleasant surprise met me at the back of the fish-processing plant though. The tide hadn’t gone far enough out so the harbour gates were open. No footpath to cross so I had to come all the way back to the rue du Port.

Mind you as one door close, another opens and through the open harbour doors has slipped out old friend Thora, having come in from Jersey on the morning tide, I suppose, and tied up in her usual spec next to Marité.

But I don’t have time to stop to say hello. Although it’s true that I’m retired, I just don’t know why I don’t have enough time for anything these days.

I’m actually heading for the Post Office. I forgot that I had a parcel that arrived while I was out yesterday and needs picking up.

But I had to make a brief pause in the Place General de Gaulle to look at our new ski slope. I can see that we will be having hours of endless fun on that this year, won’t we,

And no luck at the Post Office. Closed for lunch. Of course, i’m running late. So I pick up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and head for home.

And, what’s more, I don’t even recall stopping for breath going up the hill.

After lunch I make a start on my next project – number 005 – and by the time that it was walk-time I’d finished all of the music. And there’s some good stuff on this one too.

We’ve been talking … “well, one of us has” – ed … about the fishing boats out there in that little square of sea bounded by my promontory, the Ile de Chausey, Jersey and the coast up to the north from here.

And there’s another couple out there today having a go to see what they might catch.

When I have the time I’ll look back over the photos of the previous years and see what the shipping and the fishing was like out there back then. I’m certain that it wasn’t like this then.

Quite a few people out there today in the nice weather but I carry on with my walk without stopping to exchange any pleasantries.

No change in the situation at the chantier navale so I push on … “or push off” – ed … further along the cliff until I get a good overviww of the inner basin and Thora riding away at her moorning.

For a change I’m feeling pretty good so I carry on with my walk and end up back in town. This time the Post Office is open so I can pick up my parcel.

And I head back home with it clutched in my sweaty little mitts

It is in fact my long-awaited mixing panel so I have a play with it. My external mikes won’t plug in (I need an adapter cable) and an ad-hoc arrangement with a guitar input won’t work either.

After a good play around I finally get it to work off the internal condenser mike but there’s no volume to speak of and what I do hear, it sounds as if I have my head stuck in a bucket.

It seems that I have a steep learning curve to follow with this machine. I’ve found a handbook on the internet and I shall get on the case tomorrow.

Tea was a vegan burger on a bap and I don’t know what I did tonight but it tasted absolutely delicious – much better than it usually has. Whatever it was, I shall have to do it again.

After the burger there was the rice pudding and after the rice pudding we had the usual evening walk around the walls.

Not a soul about yet again so I was on my own, admiring the view of the coast with towns like Donville-les-Bains all lit up and their reflection shimmering away in the sea.

No tripod, not even a monopod, so a hand-held shot or two of the place . I’m hoping that now that the wind is finally starting to die down (for the moment) I can go out one nice evening with the tripod and have some fun.

So with a closer look at Donville-les-Bains from by the Plat Gousset I carry on around the bend … “quite” – ed.

No-one about again so I break into my run and tonight make it almost all the way up to the top of the ramp at the end.

Totally out of breath yet again, but I’m sure that it’s doing me good, even if I am in agony for five minutes when I stop

nevertheless, I’m feeling much better because of it so I shall keep on keeping on

Bedtime now, and if I remember to get out of bed early enough I’ll go and check out this vegetable market and see what they have to offer. I’m not expecting too much, but it’s another long walk in the morning and that can only be good news.

Monday 2nd December 2019 – MY FITBIT …

… has told me some surprising things in the pas, but none more surprising than what it told be today.

Having coupled it up to the laptop while I went for my shower this morning, it told me that over the month of November I had performed 103% of my daily fitness routine – the first time ever that I have gone over the 100% for a month. I’d done almost 350,000 steps and I’d travelled an unbelievable 261 kilometres on foot.

Even more interestingly, I had run for a total of 1 hour and 27 minutes.

And if you think that it’s not all that much to crow about, remember that I’m slowly dying and that three and a half years ago I couldn’t even walk.

The hospital wants me to lie about in bed and take it easy to preserve my strength for the struggle that lies ahead, but there’s no chance whatever of that. In the words of Neil Young, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”.

And I’m going to go with a bang, hopefully with a nubile nymphet a quarter of my age. That’ll give everyone something to talk about, won’t it?

However, there wasn’t much to talk about last night. I was in bed rather later than I would have liked, and up and out of bed long before the third alarm.

As for the dictaphone, not a word. It seems that I didn’t go off anywhere during the night and that’s a disappointment. As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … there’s far more excitement going on during the night when I’m asleep than there ever is when I’m awake these days.

In fact, probably my only hope of ever grabbing hold of a nymphet a quarter of my age will be at some point during a nocturnal perambulation.

With nothing to transcribe from last night, after the medication I attacked the backlog of dictaphone notes. With an interruption for breakfast and another one for a shower and clean-up, by the time that it came to leave the apartment the backlog was reduced to a mere 25.

And it goes to prove my point about these nocturnal ramblings because I seem to have passed through the extremely turbulent seas full of whirlpools and turmoil and moved back into calmer waters where I can carry on doing what I do best, whatever than might be.

It’s Monday so I have my regular Monday morning meeting at the Centre Agora at 10:00.

Just for a change I was late getting away, which was a disappointment because when I realised that I had forgotten to bring the little Nikon 1 with me.

That’s the camera that I usually take with me when I’m walking out because it’s small and light, and easy to carry in my pocket. And if I don’t ask it to do too much, the results aren’t all that much less in quality than the big Nikon D500.

And how I wished that I had remembered to bring it because the camera on the telephone is total rubbish. But it’s the best that I had with me so it had to do.

Nevertheless I would have loved to have had a decent high-quality shot of this beautiful image of them preparing the Christmas tree at the Place Pierre Semard.

Health and Safety in the UK would have had a field day, seeing this kind of thing going on. As Isambard Kingdom Brunel once remarked late in his life during an enquiry into procedure at the beginning of the Railway Age, “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

But here’s a more normal photo of them erecting the Christmas tree. It’s nothing like as exciting, is it?

So I carried on to the Centre Agora for our meeting. I had a couple of ideas that might have been useful but because they came from me and not from any of the organisers, they were discreetly brushed aside.

But not to worry. I’ll just keep to doing my own little job and let them get on with it. I hate empire-building but it seems that i’m stuck with it right now. At least they didn’t ask me to make the coffee.

After the meeting I walked all the way back home, calling in at LIDL for a few bits and pieces. Carrots were reduced to half-price and as I’m running a little low, I bought a kilo to freeze.

How, though, I don’t know because there’s no more room in the freezer. I really did make a mistake buying this one. It’s far too small for me.

On the way back I picked up my dejeunette (they are recognising me now in La Mie Caline) and bumped into someone who had been present at the meeting just now.

After lunch I started on Project 004. I need to have about four or five all organised pretty quickly as there seems to be no-one working over the Christmas period and if I want to have my stuff dealt with, it needs to be in by 15th December at the latest.

By the time that I knocked off, I’d done all of the music that I need. I just need to do the speech but I can’t do that yet as my mixer panel still hasn’t arrived and I don’t want to use the dictaphone again.

We had a pause as usual for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The wind had died down somewhat and with the sun being out it was quite a beautiful day. The fishing boat that was out there at the northern tip of the Ile de Chausey was having a good time

And so was Gribouille, the big ginger cat who came for a stoke.

But out there today the skies were totally clear and while the Brittany coast was in haze, the view over to Jersey was the clearest that I have ever seen it.

We had some good shots of the Brittany coast the other day while Jersey was shrouded in haze, but it was the other way round this afternoon.

We’ve never seen the eastern corner of the island looking like this.

That’s St Helier there, and that’s about 54 kilometres away from where I’m standing right now.

We’ve seen the town before, but never with this much clarity. While it’s a tribute to the quality of the camera and the lens, it also has a lot to do with the weather too.

Probably more so in fact.

So as you admire some more of the beautiful Jersey coastline to the west of St Helier, I carried on with my walk.

Surprisingly, given the really nice weather, I counted no more than 5 other people out there taking in the air around my circuit.

This was really a day for being out and about

While you look at the western corner of the island of Jersey, I went to have a look to see what was going on in the chantier navale.

And the answer to that question isn’t “nothing” as you were probably expecting, but “nothing any different from the last few days”.

Just the usual suspects and no new additions.

And that reminds me. I haven’t seen a gravel boat for ages and ages. I wonder why.

It’s no surprise that there isn’t a gravel boat right now and I wouldn’t expect to see one because the tide is well on its way out just now.

All of the boats in the harbour are slowly setting down on the silt in the tidal harbour.

Except for the yellow and white on. That’s careening over quite alarmingly, although careening is a well-known technique in old ship-repairing. Ancient mariners in leaky ships would find a harbour like this where they could careen their boat to one side to repair the bottom of the boat.

And when the tide came back in and the boat would float up with the rising water they would turn the boat round so that when the tide went out next they would careen it over so that the other side was up and they could repair that.

There was no haze down at the bottom end of the Baie de Mont St Michel either. The hotels at the foot of the Mont St Michel were standing out quite clearly and that’s without any effort on my behalf or that of the camera and lens.

The Pointe de Carolles looks beautiful in this weather and the Cabanon Vauban that we visited a couple of times is perching proudly on the top.

Even the little town of Carolles-Plage and the beach is looking quite nice with its reflection in the damp sand

Back here I did a little (just a little) tidying up. The big suitcases for which I don’t have a place, I lifted up the mattress and the bed base and put them underneath the bed. I only use them once a year so they don’t need to be out in the way.

Another thing that I needed to do was to book my next trip to Leuven and Castle Anthrax. As you might expect, it’s on Friday 13th of December.

One of the things that I had been considering was to take myself off into Germany for a couple of days but there was nothing suitable. So I’ve booked my return journey for the Sunday.

And due to rail works, there’s no 08:13 again so I’m on the 08:43. And having to come home via Paris St Lazaire and Caen, I’ll be back 10 minutes early if all goes according to plan even with a wait of over an hour at Caen.

But it’s going to be an exciting trip back because I don’t know the way back across Paris from Gare du Nord to St Lazare and I don’t have much spare time if I miss my way.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, and it was quite delicious too. They’ve been selling some cheap spicy tomato sauce with garlic in Noz so I’ve bought a few jars of that and it adds a certain something to my stuffing.

Pretty cool outside tonight, so there wasn’t anyone about at all as I went for my eveing walk.

A great number of lights out in the English Channel though. Plenty of fishing boats were out there tonight, like this one slowly chugging back to harbour.

I remember saying a few days ago that I don’t think that I’ve ever seen as much fishing activity this close to shore in previous years.

We’ve seen plenty of activity in the bay near Bréhal-Plage just recently too and that’s something that I haven’t noticed previously.

There’s another fishing boat out there tonight having a go at trying to haul in a decent catch.

As for me, I continued my walk and as usual broke into a run on my little track. And I made it all the way to the ramp and half-way up there without too much effort.

So back here and I’m off to bed. 146% and 11.7kms today. Start the month as I mean to go on!

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

… that i’m going to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit at 07:17 on a Sunday morning when I’m having a Day of Rest then they are mistaken.

So when I noticed that time on my fitbit this morning I did what every other sensible person would do in the same situation and turned over and went back to sleep.

09:45 is plenty early enough to be out and about on a Sunday.

And talking of plenty … “well, one of us is” – ed …
there was plenty of time for me to be going off on a nocturnal ramble.

During the night I was living by the sea in a town not too dissimilar to Granville with a rocky promontory, all this kind of thing. One of the things that I had was some kind of animal like a very small human. It was a fighter and it used to fight in events like tournaments and exhibitions and so on. We were at an exhibition and there were people milling around. I was asked about my fighter, whether he would fight. I said that he probably didn’t want to – he’s had a hectic week and he’d been pretty worn out but all these people insisted and in the end they prevailed. I had to go to fetch him and get him ready for a fight in the bottom left-hand corner of the windscreen (…?…). But before we could actually – but the police said that he would be welcome to fight but the more I brought him, the more he got nearer to where we were sitting the more smoother I thought that he was, as if someone had been sandpapering him or something.
And if you think that that lot was confusing, what’s the story about a girl in this little black dress who was watching something or other, I can’t remember which, was it a bird? It had two parasites on it that lived symbiotically and she was going to perform some kind of test on it to see what these parasite things were doing and why. She was an attractive girl and I was attracted to her but she was more interested in doing this scientific thing than any kind of symbiotic arrangement with her that I would have been interested in with her

But “prevailed”? “Symbiotic”? I tell you something – I can’t ‘arf come out with the flowery prose when I’m deep in the Arms of Morpheus. Gor’ Blimey! Strike a Light, guv!

There was the usual medication followed by breakfast once the medication had worked. And then I sat down to deal with the dictaphone notes. And by the time that I had knocked off, I was down to a mere 32 left to finish.

Round about 12:45 at a suitable break in the proceedings I went down into the town for my dejeunette.

The tide wasn’t all that far in so the harbour gates were closed and I could walk on the gangway over the top.

Charles-Marie was in there. She hasn’t moved for quite a while and it looks as if she’s now all protected for the winter.

So if she has no plans for the next while, I’ll move on to other projects and come back here again. There is something simmering away on the horizon right now.

Having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline, I came back up the hill to home. And much to my surprise there were quite a few people out around there in town today.

There were quite a few people out there on the water too.

This beautiful yacht with the big black sails, I don’t recall having seen her before and I’m sure that I would have noticed something like this while I’d been on my travels.

She was performing quite a few circuits around the bay and even though I was extremely hungry and ready for lunch I took some time out to watch her.

And a close examination of the photo seems to indicate that she seems to have found a friend.

There’s another one out there right alongside her and I hadn’t noticed that before.

And so after a while I said adieu and continued on my walk.

And reflecting that I hadn’t even noticed the ascent up to here as I was walking. This new fitness regime serms to be doing the business, and in spades too.

Over the past 4 years since my illness, I haven’t felt quite as good as I do right now, and that’s really tempting fate, isn’t it?

After lunch I went back down to Caliburn and brought up the new office chair that I had bought yesterday.

The package was quite heavy and it was something of a struggle but in the end I managed to bring it up here all the way.

Assembling it might have seemed to be straightforward but that’s not accounting for any gymnastic contortions that you have to do when you are on your own.

In the and though it’s assembled but that’ wasn’t all the excitement. Getting it through the bedroom door was quite an adventure too.

But it’s in now and, believe me, it’s really comfortable. Plenty of room for me to curl up on too if ever I am overwhelmed by fatigue.

One problem that I noticed quite quickly is that the top of the seat overhangs the top of the chest of drawers. And so on swivelling round I’ve knocked more than enough stuff of the chest of drawers. I wonder how long it will be before I knock off something expensive.

Being on a roll, I unpacked another one of the boxes from the other day. Lots of little stuff in there, but also the electric piano that I had ordered. I’m going to attack that one of these days too.

The afternoon walk was taken out around the city walls.

Although the sun was out and it was quite a nice bright day, the wind was howling away at something like the same force of the last couple of days.

And this has contributed to the excitement out there today.

Kite surfing is quite a popular pastime out in this part of the world but up until today I’d managed to avoid it.

Today though there were a couple of kite surfers out there taking advantage of the fine weather and the wind.

And quite clearly enjoying themselves as they passed back and to below me.

While I had the camera out, I was peering around out to sea to see what else I could find.

We’ve seen every now and again some of these buoys that mysteriously appear and then disappear out in the bay round near Brehal-Plage, and sure enough we had a few of them out there today.

There didn’t seem to be anyone attending to them so I’ve no idea what they might be. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen fishing boats out there every now and again just recently.

That wasn’t all either.

There was something else out there just offshore and I couldn’t make out what it was. And so I took a speculative photo with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) when I returned home to see if it gave me a clue.

And having blown it up, which I can still do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, I’m still none the wiser. Maybe it’s just a lump of driftwood, but I don’t really know for sure and I wasn’t going to go and found out.

Not that I would have been alone out there because with it being a nice sunny afternoon there were crowds of people out there walking on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

There were even a few people out there on the beach too.

Seeing as there was no-one around I set off on a run down my little track but a couple of people emerging from the shadows put paid to that idea. The way things are right now, I run something like a walrus and I would rather people didn’t notice.

While you admire another pic of our kite surfer, I was listening to someone having a right old bash on the drums in the little theatre up here.

The doors were all locked though so i couldn’t go in to find out what was going on or to make a suggestion that he might need a bassist to accompany him

Instead, I came home and had a play about on the bass, followed by a session on the guitar. And it isn’t easy when you are surrounded by cardboard boxes.

I’ll open up the final one tomorrow and then take all of the empties out to Caliburn.

Tea was something of a disaster tonight. The pizza base was stuck to the greaseproof lining so it was a wrestle to untangle it. And then it didn’t fit correctly onto the baking plate and any attempt to move it led to disaster. So I had to do the best that I could.

But I did another rice pudding and with the bit of bread left from yesterday and some of the garlic butter from last weekend I made myself a garlic bread snack.

The pizza needed another 10 minutes longer to cook and the base was all to hell. But I suppose that the proof of the pizza is in the eating and it went down just as well as any other.

On my evening walk the lights of St malo were beautiful in the distance. But with no tripod and the high winds that were rattling away at everything, the photos came out far too blurred to be of any value.

And I had a good run home tonight, making the entire length of my run down on the clifftop.

Now I’m writing up my notes and I hope that it takes a while to do because Ocean by Eloy has just come on the playlist. What a magnificent album this is.

But when it’s finished, I’ll be off to bed, musing on the fact that of all of the people in Greenland, I know just 6 of them really well. And of those 6, last weekend I was with 5 of them.

I wonder when Tupaarnaq will put in an appearance.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: place d’armes

Tuesday 17th December 2019 – 10:30 am

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

Sunday 15th December 2019 – AND FINALLY …

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

Tuesday 10th December 2019 – I HAVE OFTEN SAID …

Monday 9th December 2019 – I HAVE NEVER EVER MET …

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

Saturday 7th December 2019 – WHAT DO YOU THINK …

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

Thursday 5th December 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

Wednesday 4th December 2019 – BRRRRHHHH!

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

Monday 2nd December 2019 – MY FITBIT …

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

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