Tag Archives: place d’armes

Sunday 21st April 2019 – THIS SPENDING SPREE …

… is continuing.

Having received a totally unplanned and unexpected windfall the other day, I’m taking the opportunity to improve my situation somewhat.

Not to any major degree, it has to be said, but simply to make me feel better. I’ve been examining the hobbies and pastimes (such as they are) with which I seem to spend most of my time, moving out a pile of substandard equipment and replacing it with some much better stuff.

Browsing around on the internet, I’m surprised at how much decent second-hand gear there is on the market, as the purchase of that lens for the Nikon 1 the other day proved.

So I’ll keep you posted as and when things start to arrive.

having had a late night last night, I slept right through until about 08:15. Not quite as long as I was hoping, but better than some nights that I had.

I’d been on a voyage too during the night. I had been driving a coach somewhere around the Worcester-Gloucester area, a route that I’d driven on a couple of occasions, and I was close to the lunch stop. The bus pulled up at what is in fact Millstone Lane in Nantwich and the passengers alighted. I drove on empty to the lunch stop, but the passengers never arrived. The place was becoming busier and busier and I thought that if they don’t come quickly there wouldn’t be any room for them. Then I realised that I hadn’t told them where the lunch stop was so I took the coach to go to look for them. I found them all at the pickup point waiting for me so I loaded them up to take them to the lunch stop. But the street that I was in was narrow and was blocked. One driver in a car – e Renault Dauphine – reversed to let me past but I had to manoeuvre around a dark green Jeep Cherokee – and scratched the coach and the car in the process. The street then narrowed and narrowed until it became nothing more than the back-entry between two rows of houses. It was so narrow that I was amazed that the coach could fit down there and one passenger said that it was because the coach was so high that the walls of the back yards were passing underneath the bodywork.

After breakfast I did some much-needed tidying up and cleaning, because I was expecting visitors. And sure enough, at about 11:00 Liz and Terry turned up. With Liz’s elder son, his partner and their little child.

We all went out for a good walk around the walls and ended up in la Rafale, the café down the road, for a drink.

later on we went for a picnic lunch next up on the grass by the lighthouse, and then down the steps to the beach.

A lovely walk out to the sea and it was really amusing because the tide was going out quicker than we could walk towards it.

Once the tide started to come back in again, we retraced our steps back up the beach.

I’m not as young as I was and my health issues don’t help very much, so the steps – all 112 of them – back up to the town killed me off.

I wasn’t the only one feeling the strain either, so it was back to la Rafale for all of us yet for another coffee.

They all cleared off afterwards and I made tea – another delicious pizza followed by rice pudding.

There were quite a few people out there tonight enjoying the warm evening sun.

And out here a delightful conversation took place
Young girl – “did you see the dolphin”
Our Hero – “no, I didn’t. Where was it?”
Young girl – “in the sea”.

Well, yes.

There was another group of people down there at the Cap Lihou enjoying the sunset, with the bright orange glow reflecting off their faces.

And the good news is that according to another group of people, the footpath all around the headland is now repaired and open, so we can walk all the way around it now instead of taking the short cut through the car park.

I’ll have to go for a good look around there tomorrow and see what it’s like.

But now, it’s bed time. A Bank Holiday tomorrow so no alarm. And I intend to make the most of it.

oarsmen yachts fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset old town granville manche normandy france

frogmen zodiac plat gousset granville manche normandy france

buoys baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset old town granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Saturday 20th April 2019 – THE FOOTBALL …

… season rolls on towards its inevitable conclusion as Connah’s Quay Nomads threw away 2 points against Barry Town and TNS won 3-1 against Caernarfon Town.

I can’t remember now how many consecutive Welsh Premier League titles that TNS has won. Despite their mid-season hiccup when they fell as low as fourth place, they inevitably pulled themselves together to chalk up an impressive series of victories with a match or two to spare.

There are two reasons for this. And two reasons only.

Firstly, all of the other clubs suffer from an incredible amount of inconsistency. They can put together two or three good results and then blow up, and that’s no good at this level of football in the Welsh Premier League.

Secondly, a close examination of the victories of TNS will show that the crucial goals that they score are always in the last 15 minutes. And that points to one thing, and one thing only – and that is that the players on the opposing teams are just plain and simply lacking in match fitness.

For 75 or 80 minutes the leading teams can slug it out toe-to-toe with TNS, just like Caernarfon Town did last night. They were excellent for 75 minutes, and then they run out of steam.

Barry Town the other night were an embarrassment. For the final 10 minutes TNS were attacking at will without any pretence of a defence and counter-attack.

If these clubs want to compete properly over the whole season, working seriously on the fitness aspect of the game is crucial.

But all of that aside, the biggest difference between TNS and Connah’s Quay is Greg Draper. Easily the best striker ever to grace the Welsh Premier League, he’s not played as often this season as I would like, but astonishingly, he’s scored a goal every 37 minutes that he’s been on the pitch.

On the other hand, the strikers who have played for the Nomads haven’t impressed me at all. If they want to be more successful, they need to find a high-class striker from somewhere.

With the alarm going off early as usual this morning, I was out of bed quite rapidly. Plenty of time to go for a wander though. There were a few of us in a harbour and we went to board an old ship. We walked along the gangplank onto the shop, which was a small 50-tonner something not unlike Pecheur de Lys except that the bridge was set quite far back. The ship had been painted red but it was faded and flaked off quite badly so that we could see the oak planking. The hold was planked over. Everyone else was wandering around up front but I went back to the bridge to look at the instruments. They were brass and, surprisingly, in perfect and clean condition. I noticed that the binnacle was showing 150° so I shouted out of the window to the others “Left Hand Down a bit – course 150°” like any good sub-Lieutenant might do on the Navy Lark.

With having had an early start I had an early breakfast, followed by a shower. I was going out early to the shops too but just as I was on the point of going out, someone to whom I wanted to speak came on line. As a result I was late away.

There was just the usual stuff at LIDL. Nothing exciting, although because supplies had run down, I did spend more than usual.

NOZ was exciting though. Quite a few different bits and pieces and a pile of stuff for a special occasion in the future.

At LeClerc, it was another expensive shop, but once again just the usual stuff, but a lot of it to stock up the supplies.

I did buy a new memory card though to replace the one that was damaged the other day. And also a proper memory card reader to replace the ad-hoc device that I was using which contributed to the disaster.

Another thing that I bought was some frozen spinach. A couple of people have told me that spinach is good for the red blood cells, and I’ll try anything that will help.

Back here I put the frozen stuff away and then sat down for a drink and a relax. That took me nicely up to lunch, which was taken in the glorious sunshine out on my little wall overlooking the harbour.

This afternoon I put everything away (and there were piles of it all too) and then did a few things here and there on the computer. But I couldn’t keep on going and ended up crashing out for a while on my chair.

There was the afternoon walk at some point too. My perambulations too me around the walls and in the general direction of the rue du Nord.

That gave me an opportunity to have a good butcher’s and see how they were getting on with the renovation of the house at the corner.

They don’t seem to have made much of a progression since the last time that I looked. But it’s definitely clear that they are going to be putting a balcony or terrace over there.

And the place was heaving with people as usual in this glorious weather, especially down on the beach at Donville-les-Bains.

With a bit of crop and enhancement, and blowing up the photo (because I can do that these days despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) I could see that there’s actually some kind of showjumping or dressage event taking place down there this weekend.

But we know how quickly the tide comes in, so I hope that the horses can swim. Or maybe they are sea-horses

What with all of the excitement on land and on sea, all that remained was to find some excitement in the air.

And sure enough, while I was wandering around with my camera at the ready, a ULM – or microlight – went flying by overhead.

Not exactly the kind of machine that would ever entice me up into the air. I’d want something more substantial than that.

There was no football in Granville this evening, but there was a match at Cerences. I was trying to make up my mind but had my mind made up for me as Liz rang me up on the phone. We had a chat for a while and by then it was too late.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc

My little trip once more coincided with the arrival of Victor Hugo in the harbour. She’d presumably just come back from a ferry trip to Jersey in the Channel Islands.

After all, it is School Holiday time and I imagine that there would be lots of takers for a trip.

With all of that out of the way I came back to watch the football from Oswestry on the internet.

With having a few more things to do, I was late going to bed. And I’m planning on a good lie-in because I need it. And it’s a bank Holiday too.

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

horse showjumping trials beach donville les bains granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

victor hugo port de granville manche harbour normandy france

Friday 19th April 2019 – THERE’S NOTHING …

… like a good rice pudding for tea.

And that rice pudding that I had for tea this evening was nothing like a good rice pudding. I’m not sure what happened there. Maybe I didn’t put enough milk in it but it wasn’t as smooth and creamy as I would like it.

But there’s enough left over for the next couple of days so there’s a chance to improve it.

Last night’s sleep was somewhat better. Although I didn’t go off to bed early, I had a somewhat better sleep, even if I did awaken at about 07:00.

No chance of me leaving my stinking pit at that time though. 09:00 was much more like it.

Plenty of time to go on a ramble though. Last night I’d been invited to some kind of meeting at the Solar Energy Institute so I went along to some café-restaurant place and people were around there eating. My impression was that I had been invited to a meal too, and I was loaded up with a camera, telephone, laptop, notebook etc and I was desperately trying to do something on the laptop using just one hand before I could get to see this person. It too kme so much time that I was getting later and later, and I was 10 minutes late when I finished sending this document. I put everything down and sat at this table but no-one came so after 5 minutes I picked everything up and went to find the manager. I found that I had left the laptop behind, but I needed it as it had the name of this person on it. In the end I managed to locate the manager. He looked through the list of people on duty and said “it’s Katie” (or was it Kathy or similar?). But then he said “I’ve heard about you. You were camping out at that festival for a week and didn’t change your underwear” and made a gesture of holding his nose, which I found rather offensive because I had been washing my undies every day in the sink as I always do when I’m on the road. I went back into the restaurant and there was this girl sitting there with some small parcels. I thought that there can’t be anything for me, so I just sat down and had a look at the writing accompanying them, and it was mine. She approached me to confirm who I was, and satisfied, she undid these parcels which had some print work in, stuff that I had informally enquired about when I’d been at this festival. We began to discuss the festival and I made the point that it was one of those things that the people in the Auvergne had been organising, the same thing for 12 years and nothing has ever come of it. She said that this year it seemed to be really, really good. I replied that anything with Francois Carriatt involved in it couldn’t be really, really good. We had a lengthy discussion about how these people would start something with loads of enthusiasm but run out of steam before it got anywhere. The same old story every year for as long as I could remember. How all of the ex-pats would go along to help, full of enthusiasm but when they saw how it was all working out they all stopped going and left the locals to their mess and that was that. After a lengthy discussion she was telling me about the stage, to which I replied that I’d seen it al before. The discussion went round to selling things. How her parents used to sell tents, big heavy canvas ones but weren’t very good at it. They would take tents to camp sites and similar, and stick their tent next to the one they were selling and have a sign “tent for sale – see next door” but it never really worked. I said that this was a thing of the moment. People would come with their own sleeping arrangements and the only time that this was likely to change would be if there would be a torrential downpour in the middle of a festival when people who had been planning to sleep out would need shelter and then you could sell anything with no effort whatsoever

For breakfast I had, as well as the usual muesli, fruit juice and apple purée, a toasted hot cross bun. That was delicious too, I can tell you.

Today I’ve had a busy day, despite it being a Bank Holiday.

I started off by attacking the photos from my trip away. Quite a few had survived the short-circuiting of the memory card. and now they are all edited and uploaded.

I’ve also uploaded the photos that I took last night with the new 18.5mm f1.8 lens for the Nikon 1 J5.

Here’s one of them in its unadulterated glory. It’s simply compressed and not otherwise manipulated. And taken on totally automatic setting with no input whatsoever.

In fact, the images that I took in street lighting needed compensating because they were coming out too bright.

All in all though, I’m as impressed with this as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

The photos took me up to lunchtime, which I spent sitting on the wall outside in the glorious sunshine. The lizards haven’t found me yet, but the blackflies have.

The crane was there again, with a couple of pontoons by the look of it. And I now know their purpose because it was in the local newspaper this morning.

They are talking about replacing the floating walkways in the harbour, and they need to take core-drill samples of the seabed there to see what kind of anchorages would work best there.

I still can’t see why they hadn’t done it when they had the harbour drained out last winter.

This afternoon, in between falling asleep for 20 minutes and going for my afternoon walk, I attacked the dictaphone entries. All of them from my trip to Leuven and also another 8 from the backlog. another couple of months at this rate and it might all be done, ready for my next voyage, whenever and wherever that might be.

As for my walk, there were crowds out there today, enjoying the sunshine sitting and lying about on the beach.

There were even some people in the water enjoying themselves, for there were some who were braver than others.

Not for me of course. I’m well-known for having refused the swim in the Arctic Ocean just 100 miles from the North Pole.
“I have this catheter port in my chest”
“What would you do if you didn’t have the catheter port?”
“I’d have to think of another excuse”.

Tea tonight was a slice of my leek and tofu pie from last year, with baked potatoes, vegetables and gravy. It was delicious. And even though the rice pudding didn’t come out as it was supposed to, it was still enjoyable.

later on this evening I went out for my walk, and there were crowds of people enjoying the sunshine.

Wandering around the headland was a party of teenagers, and they were trying to speak English to the couple of people who were leading the group.

Other people were out and about cooking tea in their caravanettes (and I didn’t half give one woman a shock when I walked around the corner)

There were yet more people enjoying the beautiful weather sitting on the benches overlooking the sea, including this couple on the Cap Lihou by the old sentry box.

It was that kind of evening tonight – nice and warm with plenty of sun. It really made me happy to be out there and I sauntered off singing quite happily to myself

It’s been a while since I felt like that.

My reverie was distracted by Victor Hugo coming in from Jersey with a load of passengers. It was quite an impressive sight because she’s an impressive ship.

I’ve not seen her sister ship around for a while so maybe she’s still under repair. They bought her fairly new from a Swedish ferry company but she’s been giving nothing but trouble since she came here.

Something of a white elephant, she’s turned out to be.

And in the Chantier Navale we were back down to the two boats that have been there for a few weeks now. The two trawlers that were there yesterday have now been released.

Shopping tomorrow so I’m going to have an early night. And quite right too. I need to gather up my strength for my next vicissitudes.

la grande ancre buoys granville manche normandy france

crowds on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Thursday 18th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night I wasn’t feeling tired so I didn’t go to bed until late. Not that it would have mattered very much because I switched off the alarms on my telephone so I could have a lie-in – necessary when I’ve been on a trip back from Leuven.

The fact that I hardly slept at all during the night didn’t bother me too much either because I was going to have a nice long lie-in this morning.

And all went perfectly according to plan as well, right up until 06:00 when I was awoken bolt upright . Bane of Britain had apparently forgotten that before going to Leuven he had set up the back-up alarms just in case the main alarms failed to go off.

And so that was that.

Mind you, it wasn’t until about 09:00 that I finally crawled out of bed. But it was rather a waste of three good hours.

After a rather late breakfast I had a shower and then later I set the washing machine off on a cycle. Dirty clothes have been building up all around here and they need to be sorted out.

And I’ve had another piece of devastatingly bad luck here. I took the memory card out of the Nikon 1 J5 and put it in the card reader – backwards. So now it’s shorted out the terminals and damaged the card.

Luckily I had copied some of them from my trip onto the portable laptop, but the ones from yesterday’s return trip and the previous evening’s walk have gone.

It always happens like this.

I couldn’t go off to the shops right then because I was expecting a delivery. And it finally turned up at 12:10.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I happened quite by chance to notice a second-hand Nikon I 18.5mm f1.8 lens that would be ideal for very-low-light conditions. I’d had a message to say that it would be delivered today.

What surprised me was that the price for which it was on sale was one of these unbelievable prices – less than a third of the new retail price. And so I didn’t really expect it to arrive at all. But here it is.

And I didn’t expect it to work either, but I gave it a quick try in here and it seems to do what it was supposed to. I’ll go and try it out in the dark outside later on tonight after dark and see what it can do.

Once I’d organised the camera lens, I headed out for a rather late visit to the shops.

However, I was delayed by some kind of activity in the harbour. They were out on their little pontoon again working away with their machinery.

It’s really intriguing, what is going on right now. I really ought to go down there one of these days and buttonhole the guys, in order to enquire as to what is going on.

Further on up the hill and into the avenue Aristide Briand just a short hop from LIDL, when my attention was drawn to this clever piece of urban engineering.

They were working on one of the parking spaces the other day, and now it seems that they have in fact been installing a couple of bicycle racks.

But I wonder about the purpose of the disabled parking sign just here. How are you going to manage to park a disabled person’s vehicle in there?

LIDL came up with nothing special except for a pack of jubilee clips. I don’t have any here and that’s not a very good situation in which to find myself.

But on my way home, my attention was diverted by the objects on display in an antique shop in the rue des Juifs.

This is a painting that is actually on display here for sale. It’s not been painted by a 4-year old, but by a mature adult painter, so we are informed, and if you want to buy it, it will cost you a grand total of $650, believe it or not.

The art critic Linda Merrill in her book ” target=”_blank”>Aesthetics On Trial recounts a delightful story where John Ruskin once criticised James McNeil Whistler’s painting “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket” by saying that he “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

Well, I never expected to hear one ask six hundred and fifty Euros for it either.

Lunch was on the wall in the glorious sunshine. it really was nice today outside.

The Pecheur de Lys was down there in the harbour, nestling on the mud because the tide had gone out.

No sign of my lizards though. I would have expected to have seen them by now. I hope that they all managed to survive the winter in hibernation. It’s not as if it was a really hard winter again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a habitual feature on these pages.

This one takes some beating though. On a blind bend by a road jusntion, right by a “no waiting” sign and blocking off part of a zebra crossing, we have some stupid motorist stopped to talk to his friends.

I really don’t know what it is that goes through the heads of some of the people on this planet. I really don’t.

Back here, I crashed out for a while and then awoke to find that there was a football match on the internet this afternoon.

There’s an international Under-15 tournament taking place right now, and Wales had made it to the finals against Belgium. It was quite an exciting match, especially as Wales won 4-0 and you can see the goals here.

Mind you, it might have been a different matter had the Belgian keeper not conceded a penalty and been sent off for his pains.

Tea tonight was another helping of that shepherd’s pie with vegetables and gravy, followed by fruit salad and soya cream. Totally delicious.

Later on this evening I went out for my eveing walk.

There were plenty of trawlers out and about out there tonight. And the two boats in the chantier navale have now been joined by two small trawlers undergoing repair.

There were also a fair few people out in the fine weather enjoying the evening air.

Later still, I went out for a walk again with the new lens to see what damage I can do with it.

And now I’ll be having another early night. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow so another lie-in, if I have remembered to switch off every alarm.

I’ll leave you to admire the rest of the photos. The ones in the dark were taken with the new lens.

pontoon port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

pecheur de lys port de granville harbour manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 rue du roc granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 donville les bains granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that back in 2010 in the wilds of Labrador I encountered a musician who sat in isolated scenic spots around Canada and played the accordion.

This evening out on the Pointe deu Roc there was a bassist, keyboardist and drummer doing the same thing.

Well, they weren’t actually doing it, but they had their instruments set out and I found out, as they came running down towards me to stop me giving them a solo on the double bass, that they were only pretending to and that they were filming it with a drone.

Not a sign up anywhere to tell me – or anyone else – what was going on. So serve them right. Having ruined their film set, I wandered off.

Last night though, I didn’t wander far. An early night, but yet another one where I couldn’t go to sleep. By 04:45 I had given up, and I was even up and about before the alarms went off.

It didn’t take me long to finish tidying and packing, and I was actually on the road before the third alarm went off.

The 06:36 to Oostende arrived at the station at the same time that I did. So benefiting from the advantages of my pre-purchased ticket I could leap aboard.

This meant that I was in the station at Brussels-Midi quite early. Plenty of time to go to Carrefour to grab my raisin buns for breakfast, and I took them into a quite corner for a little relax.

The train was in early so we were allowed up. And there I encountered a jobsworth who insisted that I take my ticket out of its plastic jacket so that he could see it.

Sitting next to me on the TGV was an elderly lady, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. I was either attacking my Antiquities Americanae again or else I was having a little … errr … relax.

We were bang on time in Paris Gare du Nord and the metro was good too – just the odd hiccup here and there. But the two metro stations underneath Notre Dame seem to be closed for now.

With no hold-ups along the way I was soon at Vaugirard, and while I was waiting to board the train, I had a chat with a couple of other people too. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?

The train was quite empty so my neighbour went off to find a seat on her own. I carried on with my book and had a doze for about half an hour too.

But one thing that happened on the train rather offended me.

There was a large North African family in the train and they all alighted at Alençon, bags, baggage, kids and all. And after they had left, one woman sitting in our carriage went down to the luggage rack to make sure that they hadn’t taken her case with them.

It was very conspicuous that she didn’t do that whenever a European family alighted from the train.

It was a nice walk back to here in the warm sunshine, and on arrival I simply sat and vegetated for a while to gather my strength. And I wasn’t as tired as I thought I might have been.

Tea was a plate of pasta and veg tossed in garlic, pepper and olive oil, and then my walk around the Pointe du Roc.

My little walk took me around to see what has been going on at the chantier navale while I was away.

There’s what seems to be an old small trawler that has been converted into living accommodation, and there’s also some kind of pleasure boat or passenger tender in there undergoing repair. There must be plenty of work here for the company there.

The fishing industry is keeping on going too.

There were a couple of trawlers out there tonight and the one on the left looks as if it is doing a circuit with its net out taking a catch.

But now it’s after midnight, and I don’t feel at all tired, which is a surprise. I can see me heading for a little crisis tomorrow when the lack of sleep catches up with me.

Sunday 14th April – LUCKY ME!

I’ve had a free upgrade at the place where I stay when I’m in Leuven. Usually I’m in a small single room (with kitchenette and all facilities of course) but for some reason that I don’t understand, I’ve been given a comfortable duplex apartment and it’s very nice.

I shall have to come here more often.

Last night was a pretty bad night for some reason. I was very late going to bed and once more, I spent most of my night tossing and turning. This isn’t a very good sign for my day tomorrow.

Nevertheless I was out of bed very smartly and attacked the tasks necessary for my trip today to Leuven. Making sandwiches, packing, all these kinds of things. Even a little cleaning. There was still 20 minutes to go before I needed to leave to I took my shower – the one that I missed yesterday.

08:10, I left the apartment and a brisk stroll saw me at the station by 08:35. And I do have to say that “brisk” was the word. Despite having had a really short, bad night, I was feeling quite sprightly for a change.

And even in sprightly mode I made several stops along the way.

The first stop was in the Boulevard des 2ème et 202ème de Ligne to see how the repairs to the old medieval walls are getting on.

And they seem to be making really good progress and the new stone blocks that they are blending into the existing walls really look quite the part.

They have several sections to go at and it will all be looking quite good when it’s done.

And despite it being early, I wasn’t alone in the street either.

I was being stalked all the way up the rue Couraye by the Sunday morning street cleaner. He was heading on quite nicely, making U-turns and going the wrong way down the one-way street to brush the other side, whether there was another car coming or not.

At least he was useful as some kind of pacemaker to help me on my way.

My cleaner was there at the station so I said “hello”, and then purchased a coffee from the machine. And then waited for the train because it wasn’t in the platform.

And fortune smiled on me too on the train. I had a very charming young companion next to me and although she didn’t have too much to say for herself, it’s the kind of thing that does my ego a great deal of good.

Surprisingly, I stayed awake for most of the trip. I ate my breakfast (crackers and mandarins) and settled down to read Carl Rafn’s Antiquities Americanae.

Written in 1837, its claim to fame is that Rafn was the very first person to take seriously the prospect that the Norse Sagas about the voyages to “Vinland” were actually based on fact and not mere fireside fiction, and he actually set in motion some kind of technical research and calculations to back up his theories.

His theories and calculations were dismissed by later hisotians, most notably by Arthur Reeves who wrote in 1914 “… If less effort had been applied to the dissemination and defence of fantastic speculations, and more to the determination of the exact nature of the facts …” and then proceeded on after 200 or so pages in his book “The Finding of Wineland the Good” to reach almost the same conclusions as those of Rafn.

But today, as we all know because we’ve been there and seen it, tangible evidence of Norse occupation has been discovered in the New World and although it’s not where Rafn expected it to be, my opinion is that the site at L’Anse aux Meadows isn’t Vinland at all but another unrecorded Norse settlement, and Vinland remains to be discovered.

We pulled into Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard more-or-less bang on time and I strode off through the massed ranks of travellers down to the heaving metro station. There’s a change on the metro there too, because they have now put up crowd control gates on the platform.

The train was crammed to capacity and I had to wait a while before I could find a seat. I sat next to an African woman and her little daughter Adela who proudly told me that she was two years and three months old.

The two of them sang all the way to where I alighted, and I had the pleasure of telling mummy that it made my day to see a little kid so happy.

Although it was cold and windy, it was so nice outside that I went for a good walk around outside for a look at what goes on in the vicinity of the station.

And now I know that if ever I forget my butties I won’t be short of something to eat because there were plenty of fast-food shops right in the immediate vicinity.

But seeing as I hadn’t forgotten them, I sat on a bench in the station, surrounded by a group of schoolkids and ate them (the butties, not the kids) and then went for my train.

My train was another one of the Paris-Brussels-Koln-Amsterdam “PBKA” trainsets.

And as I boarded it, fatigue caught up with me and I travelled all the way to Brussels in a state of blissful subconsciousness, to the strains of Traffic’s On The Road” – one of the top-ten best live albums ever.

My neighbour had boarded the train carrying, of all things a rolled-up carpet. I asked him whether it had run out of fuel, or else why he didn’t just unroll it and travel to Brussels on that.

However, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously remarked, “it’s a waste of time trying to tell jokes to foreigners”.

At Brussels my train to Leuven was already in the station so I was able to reap the benefits of having pre-purchased my ticket on the internet. No waiting in a queue for a ticket or finding that the machines are out of order. I just leapt on board.

It was our old friend 1861, and that was crowded too for some reason. There seems to be an awful lot of people travelling today.

I suppose it’s with it being Easter weekend next weekend and everyone is off for their holidays.

I’ve already explained about my change of room, and once I was settled in I had a lengthy talk with Rosemary on the telephone.

That took me up to the time to go out and meet Alison. We went off for a vegan burger at the Greenway

Our route there took us through the St Donatus Park where we could admire the Toren Oude Stadsomwalling – the Tower of the Old City Wall.

This wall was started to be built in 1160. It had 31 towers, 11 street gates and 3 water gates. 2740 metres long, it enclosed 40 hectares.

It was superseded in 1360 by another wall roughly where the ring-road is now, and demolition began towards the end of the 18th Century.

There’s still a fair bit remaining, and on our travels we’ve seen quite a bit of it.

After our burger we went for our usual coffee at Kloosters Hotel.

And on our way back to the car, weaving our weary way through the side streets, we came across this really beautiful mural in what I think is the Jozef Vounckplein.

I don’t recall having seen this before.

And good old Alison. While she was at the English Shop yesterday she found some vegan hot cross buns. So now I’m properly prepared for my Good Friday anyway.

On that note, I’ll go upstairs and try out my new bed. I hope that it’s as comfortable as it looks.

gare du nord paris france

Saturday 13th April 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… footfest today.

We started off at the Stade Louis Dior this evening when US Granvillaise were playing Le Havre AC’s 2nd XI. And what a giant of a side hey turned out to be. The two centre-backs, the centre-forward and a couple of other outfielders must have been 6 feet at least, and the goalkeeper towered over everyone by a good head.

And not only that, the two centre-backs were absolutely excellent in the air and with Granville being without an effective cenre-forward (story of their life) they didn’t get a sniff from open play.

The match started off at a roaring pace, with Granville streaming forward in droves, but to no effect whatsoever although they did hit the bar on one occasion. But as the match progressed Le Havre came more into it and they must have had the fastest team down the flanks (wingers and full-backs) that I have ever seen.

But that was all to no avail too because fast though they might have been, they couldn’t cross a ball to save their lives so we never got to see how good in the air the centre-forward might have been. And in the end, he was taken off and replaced by someone smaller, faster and more direct.

But Granville took the lead after about 50 minute. The little n°10 had the ball at his feet and dribbled his way into the penalty area. He was going nowhere so he was just inviting someone to bring him down – and of course, someone duly obliged. Penalty for Granville, which was duly slotted away.

The fast guy up front scored an equaliser about 15 minutes later, but then with about 15 minutes to go, Granville won a free kick about 25 yards out. It was a beautiful ball over the wall and although the big keeper got his hand to it, he could only help it on its way into the net.

So at ling last, after about 10 matches, Granville finally win a game. They hung on against some desperate last-minute attacks and we were all relieved when the final whistle went.

Back at home, we had TNS playing Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League. No matter how good a part-time team might be, they can’t match the level of fitness of a full-time club and in almost every game you see, the last 15 minutes, when the part-timers run out of steam, areusually crucial.

And so it was today. Barry played well for the first 60 minutes. They couldn’t match the quality of TNS of course – no-one in the Welsh Premier League can, but at least they were keeping up and being 1-0 down wasn’t the end of the world. But they flagged badly at the end and at about 80 minutes, at 2-0 down, they had clearly thrown in the towel. They basically stopped playing and it was embarrassing to see how easy it became for TNS as they had no opposition out there.

The match finished 4-0 to TNS and they could have had four or five more had they really tried.

I had a reasonable night’s sleep last night although it was still something of a struggle to rouse myself.

And after the usual morning procedure I did some work until about 09:00 when I headed into town.

No major shop today seeing as I’m heading off to Belgium tomorrow, so just a couple of things from the market.

Seizing the opportunity, I went to to harbour to see if the pontoon was there and if there was anyone around it who could tell me what was going on.

I was however totally out of luch. No-one about at all.

But all of the machinery was lying around on deck, and the nature of all of this is still mystifying me.

But the pipes on board would seem to give me some kind of clue. They look rather like core drill bits to me, but why would they be drilling into the bottom of the harbour.

After a prowl around the docks I had a prowl around the market. I picked up a nice baguette, but no baking apples anywhere so I shall have to wait for a while to make my apple pie. But I did have a joke with a vegetable stall-holder and dome Belgian clients about a Potatomat, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

My route home via the rue Paul Poirier was interrupted by yet another disgraceful example of bad parking.

There’s a parcels delivery van from France Express delivering parcels in the street, and he’s simply pulled up, on a busy Saturday morning too, right in the middle of the street.

And that’s notwithstanding the fact that there is a parking place available right at the side of where he’s stopped.

I went over to ask him if he needed any help in parking his van, because if he didn’t know how I would gladly do it for him, but he took no notice.

Back here I had a … errr … relax for a while before doing some more work, and then out on the wall for lunch.

During my sojourn on the walls, I was entertained by one of the Ile de Chausey ferries. It had gathered up a load of tourists and was heading off for an afternoon’s trip around the bay.

There was also a wedding taking place in the public rooms so there were crowds about and around all of the parking places.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone notes and shifted another big pile of those, before walking off to the football, where I spent most of the second half talking to an old man there.

So now it’s bed-time, even if I don’t feel much like it. I’m travelling tomorrow so I need to be at my best.

And I forgot my shower today. Ohhh dear.

l’iris de suze fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Friday 12th April 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what kind of day it has been today.

It’s been one of those days where I haven’t felt like doing too much, but at least I kept on working and managed to be productive. So it can’t be all that bad.

What didn’t help was that despite the nice clean bed and the nice clean me, I didn’t have a very good night at all. I hardly felt as if I had any sleep at all last night.

However I must have done, because I went on a nice long ramble or two during the night.

My first voyage was something to do with the railway – the line blockages. a group of us were talking about someone who wanted to go off photographing and we had seen a place where a tram coming into town turning right at a curve and one coming out of town was turning right at the same curve (like at a T junction) and it all looked so beautiful that we thought about having some kind of choreography photographs of trams darting around bends in opposition to each other like this. Someone else asked “what do you think about this situation?” and showed us a model of a train that had derailed because the points had moved underneath it. Someone said something like at the front of this incident was a shop that was 2m60 away and all of his electricity was stopped because it was outside the limit of 2m from the accident where the current was broken, to give everyone time to escape. Electricity was only available very close to the accident. One feature of this railway line being blocked was a very large photo or model of someone that had apeared over the end of the railway line behind this accident blocking it off – someone like Nigel Garbage or another one of these far-right people. people were discussin ghow this could possibly be that a dummy like this could block the line. Wasn’t that just typical of the far right that in the interest of free movement they are blocking the railway line
A little later there were three of us on a voyage something like out of the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, me, another guy and a girl. And I knew even though I was asleep that I seemed to join this in the middle of the voyage. At first I thought that this girl was Nerina. She was ill in bed with a heavy cold moping around so in the end I asked her if she would like some Vicks Rub. Her ears picked up at that “Vicks Rub? Yes!! Do you have some?” So I had to search through my medical case and I found some so I gave it to her. her eyes lit up at that and she immediately got better. The three of us were in a car driving up Stewart Street and Valley Road with this most amazing moon or sun, rather like a half-eclipse of the sun. I suggested that we turn right down a side-street for a better view but then I thought that there would be a better view from a side street further on. We went on to that turning and then found that somehow the moon had gone behind the sun and it wasn’t as good as it had been earlier. That was quite a shame. We carried on, had a couple of adventures, things like that. In the end it was all over and we were due to go home. We were walking back into Sandbach from near where the M6 is. The guy went off somewhere to do something, which left me and this girl. She said that she was going to get a coffee. When she came back she was in tears, about how the guy with whom she was living had been quite nasty to her about the fact that she had been away. I was consoling her. Now, even though I was asleep, I knew exactly how it ended – that she ended up by leaving this guy and the two of us became a couple, but it was this little step in between where I couldn’t find the courage to take this step to ask if I could see her again, even though I knew exactly how it was all going to end up – very positively in my favour.

The alarms went off as usual, and it still took me 15 minutes to haul myself out of the not-so-stinking pit this morning.

After the usual morning ritual I attacked the dictaphone. And despite a few interruptions for nothing in particular, I was still going on at lunchtime.

There’s a whole whack of them now done and that’s made me feel a little better.

With it being such a beautiful day although it might have been a little cold, I went out with my butties and sat upon my wall.

Down below in the harbour, we might not have had any ships of any importance in there, but it doesn’t look as if it will be long before there’e one i-cumen in, just like William de Wycombe’s sumer.

The gravel lorries from the quarry are back in the port tipping the gravel. And tipping it on the quayside near to the conveyors rather than the bins too.

That can only mean that we should be expecting the arrival of a gravel boat in the not-so-distant future. Lhude sing cucu.

When I came back, I did a little tidying up (not too much of course) and then ran the vacuum cleaner around the floor for a short while. It makes the place look a little tidier.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with the photos for June 2018, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because I didn’t recognise half of them.

I ended up spending an hour or two on Google Earth trying to mate up images with screen shots. But in the end, I managed all but one. That’ll teach me to lose my dictaphone in Caliburn during that trip to Germany, won’t it?

There were two little interruptions during the day. The first one was for a little … errr … snooze, and my second was for a walk arounf the Pointe du Roc.

My attention was drawn to some movement way offshore so I coupled up the big zoom-telephoto lens to take a photo to see what it might be.

It turns out to be a zodiac going flat out there way out to sea. That’s a lot farther out than I would be happy to take a zodiac, that’s for sure.

While I was out there with the zoom lens I scanned the horizon to see if there was anything else of interest out there.

Round to the right not too far out from Saint Martin de Bréhal is another one of these buoys that miraculously appear every now and again.

At one time I thought that it was something to do with fishing, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of any fishermen tending to it.

Around the corner into the Baie de Mont St Michel I heard a little putt-putt-putt of some kind of small diesel engine.

A few seconds later a little yacht came round the corner and hove into view. It would have been nice to see it with all of its sails unfurled, especially in this wind when it could have taken full advantage of it.

I can understand why a yacht might need a diesel engine, but not why anyone might be using it in the open sea in this weather. br clear=”all”>

Pathetic parking is a feature of these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We’ve seen some pretty miserable stuff but this here really does take the biscuit. Here’s a van driver far too lazy to even walk across the street.

Bad parking doesn’t get much worse than this. it really is quite shameful if you ask me. Whatever is the world coming to?

Back here I carried on with the photos and the research, and then stopped for tea. There’s a pepper lying around here that needs eating so I made myself a stuffed pepper with spicy rice.

That was followed by pineapple and soya cream, and a chat with Liz, another one with Alison and a third with rosemary. I’m in demand right now.

I had to cut the chats short though because it promised to be a beautiful sunset and I didn’t want to miss it.

Unfortunately there was a large cloud on the horizon over the Ile de Chausey so I didn’t get to see the sun sinking slowly down below the horizon this evening.

But never mind. there will be other opportunities, especially with what I have in mind for later this year, if it all goes according to plan.

Back from my evening walk, I watched the football. Bala Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Premier League. And Bala have come right off the rails just recently and Colin Caton has lost the plot a little.

Bala, totally disorganised at the back and leaderless up front, were easily swept aside for the third match in succession. What we were watching ir real relegation fodder for next season, and if only the Nomads had played with a decent striker, they could have scored 14, never mind just 4.

So I’m off to bed. No shopping tomorrow as I’m on my travels on Sunday. So i’ll have a little wander down to the market instead and see how the land lies.

It’s not an early night tonight, so I won’t be on very good form tomorrow. But I’ll see what I can do.

chateau de la crete baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

pecheur de la lys chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france

sunset ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Thursday 11th April 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day when I haven’t been all that productive.

It didn’t help by not being out of bed until 07:30. I really need to get a grip these days before I miss a train or something.

Plenty of time during the night to go on a little voyage though. I was with Alvin last night and we were going through a pile of LPs that he had left. He wanted some of them copied, which meant playing and recording on blank records. I had a look through some of the stuff but there wasn’t anything there of any interest or importance as far as I was concerned, but he insisted on having it done. He told me that when it had been done the original records had to be taken to a certain place where I would get some money for it but the duplicates would be retained here. I shouldn’t take those as they would hand them back and cut down on his money. I said fair enough but it was a strange way to go about it. I couldn’t get the thing organised properly and made loads of mistakes trying to copy these albums but I carried on. While this was doing he was doing some calculations so I went to see what he was doing – “working 11 hours at $8:10 per hour”. I asked what it was and he replied that he was trying to work out if he could afford to be a policeman in Los Angeles. I said “not at $8:10 per hour! No-one could work for that”. He told me about all of the advantages he would receive and there was a fund to help out people who moved from a high-paid job to a low-paid job to make sure that their mortgages were paid. It all sounded quite precarious to me. But somewhere along the line, up in Neston I had an old house, on the roadside with newer houses build behind it. I was trying to find out how old it was but I wasn’t being very serious with my enquiries but I don’t remember very much about this.

After breakfast I had a shower and prettied myself up, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle. One of the things that I did was to put new bedding on the bed and wash the previous bedding. The stuff that was on it was on the verge of walking into the washing machine all on its own.

And then I headed off into town for the shopping.

And I was surprised to see, amongst the boats that were waiting to leave the harbour when the gates open, this particular boat.

I’m almost certain that it’s the boat that was up on blocks in the chantier navale for a couple of weeks being resprayed and painted. She looks as if she’s off on her travels now.

And despite having all of this massive array of scaffolding erected on the wall higher up, they are still working away at the base of the walls moving away all of the loose rock.

The machine that they are using is quite impressive. It’s a little mini-digger with a hydraulic breaker on the jib of it.

It’s breaking off all of the loose rock which is then being shovelled up into a skip which you can see in the foreground.

It’s quite busy down in the harbour this morning too.

We have La Granvillaise moored up at the quay where Marité usually hangs out, and Thora is still there too, but she’s moved berth over to where the gravel boats tie up.

That’s because Normandy Trader has come into port, presumably on the early morning tide. They are already loading her up too, so clearly they don’t intend to hang about.

On the way up the hill in the rue Couraye I noticed a really old man with a very interesting machine.

In there is a grinding wheel worked by a foot treadle rather like an old-fashioned sewing machine in the pre-electric days, and he seems to be sharpening knives with it.

It’s really nice to see a good old-fashioned artisan peddling … “groan” – ed … his craft on the streets even today. There ought to be more of it, I reckon.

LIDL didn’t come up with much so I headed off for home, picking up a baguette on the way.

The gates of the harbour were now open and boats were leaving the port, including this fishing boat. Quite a few had already left, including Thora and Normandy Trader.

While Thora was in and out in 24 hours, the latter had an even quicker turn-round. I was right about her not intending to hang about in the harbour. They must be really busy just now.

It makes me wonder when I was saying last year that I hadn’t seen them for quite a while. I just reckon that their turn-round must have been so quick that I must have missed it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the harbour, the men were out there again on their pontoon.

It’s quite a mystery to me what they are doing out there. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that about 18 months ago they drained the harbour completely and dredged it out. So there can’t be much in there that needs checking.

I shall have to make enquiries at the port office next time I’m down there. Maybe they will tell me.

Back here I had a drink and a sit down, and then hung out the washing to dry. Once that was done I made a start on the dictaphone notes, but had to knock off for lunch.

Even though it was rather windy out there, it was such a beautiful warm afternoon. And so i took my butties outside and sat on my wall overlooking the harbour.

And I was in luck this afternoon too. One of the ferry boats that does the run to the Ile de Chausey was coming into harbour. She’d obviously been on a little outing earlier this morning as there was quite a crowd of people.

She pulled up at her mooring at the ferry terminal and then unloaded all of her passengers.

And then much to my surprise, she collected up another load of passengers, and then headed off out again into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And with her having her back turned towards me, I could see that she’s the Joly France. Her sister is tied up in the harbour.

Of course, it shouldn’t really be any surprise that she’s busy. It’s school holidays in Granville of course and all of the kids are at a loose end and will be for next week too.

And so we can can expect to see much more of the Ile de Chausey ferries out and about then while the kids are off school.

The Ile de Chausey ferries aren’t the only things out there right now.

There’s an old sailing ship or, rather, a large yacht out there too. From what I could see of her, I think that she’s the Lys Noir.

We haven’t seen all that much of her just recently, so it’s nice to see her back. In fact, I’m wondering whether she might have been the sailing boat out there the other day that I thought was the Charles-Marie

Butties having been eaten, I came back and had another marathon session on the dictaphone notes.

Now I’m back into my notes for my trip around Labrador in 2017 which is good news. That’s good news because when that’s finished I can tie up the photos to the text and make a start on those web pages too.

Later on, I went out for my afternoon walk as usual. Today, it was around the Pointe-du Roc.

It was such a beautiful day and the haze was farther out than it has been just recently, so i could tke a really good photograph of the Baie de Mont St Michel and St Pair sur Mer just across on the other side.

And I was really impressed today with the colour of the sea today. Fr the last few weeks it’s been a murky grey colour, but today we have a nice proper blue sea.

And with it being rather windy out there today, I could see the flag that they were putting up yesterday.

It’s actually the flag of Granville and that’s new to me because I didn’t realise that Granville actually had its own flag.

The red one with the two golden lions on it is the flag of the Duchy of Normandy, and I’m sure that you don’t need me to explain the other two.

On that note, I came back for a hot chocolate and, shame as it is to say it, a little … errr … relax on the office chair.

There was still enough time to do something else before tea, so seeing as I wasn’t in a particularly enthusiastic mood, I made a start on the searchable text database for the photos for June 2018.

For tea, I founf a lentil and mushroom curry in the freezer. It was one that I had made on 7th November … errr … 2017 and it tasted just as delicious as it did back then.

It seems that I’m getting right down to the bottom of the pile of curries now. I’m not sure how many ancient ones there might be still in there, but there can’t be many.

In a short while I’ll have to make a start on making some more.

later on I went for my evening walk around the city walls.

There were still a few people out there enjoying the evening sunshine, and also a dozen or so fishing boats loitering around just outside the harbour.

It must be that the tide isn’t in enough for them to reach the Fish Processing Plant and tie up to unload. But I don’t imagine that they will have long to wait.

And so I carried on and came home.

Tonight I’m hoping for another early night and a good sleep. Tomorrow I’m planning on having something of a tidy-up in the kitchen and living room.

Things are getting a little untidy in there so I need to apply myself. After all, I’m off on my travels again early on Sunday.

scaffolding medieval wall granville manche normandy france

“boats ready to leave port de granville harbour manche normandy france

joly france ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

lys noir baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 10th April 2019 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days when I just couldn’t get going.

Too many distractions, I reckon, and in the end I gave up.

What I don’t even understand is that I had a good sleep too last night. When I eventually got to bed I slept right through to the alarm, with just one brief awakening.

Plenty of time for going on a ramble or two. Last night I was teaching my brother how to access messages and images on usenet. I’d bought my big computer with me and a load of external hard drives and everything. It was all set up and I was busy showing him how to work it. And then he had to go out and left me alone in this flat and left me alone in this flat on the ground floor of this tower block place, which was terrible, dreadful, untidy, dirty, all of this kind of thing. being there on my own. I thought that this isn’t any good because anyone could come along and see me and wonder what I was doing here, because I don’t belong. I had to unplug all of this equipment, collect it all together and try my best to stagger out of this block of flats carrying it all
Later on there was a girl scientist working on some kind of project and had two other younger girls with her. It was during World War II and their laboratory caught fire. It was burning away but she made the girls stay in the burning room while she went upstairs into a room that was even more burning, locking the door so that there would be no currents of air fanning the flames. She had gone to rescue her notes and then returned via the lift shaft. They all left the burnign building and were in Nantwich on the corner of Pillory Street and Hospital Street. A policeman cycled past, making some kind of offensive remarks like “she’s holding a bowl of flowers while everyone else is starving”, this kind of thing. They were waiting for some kind of lift and a big old lorry turned up and stopped to take them. This was a typical lorry of the 1930s, dirty grey colour, and two discs in the window. One was the tax disk and the other was the old operators’ licence,white with black writing and arranged rather like an old Welsh tax disk with the month in letters not words. But here the month had been cut out. Just before they set off they saw this policeman again, on foot by now on the beat, so she happened to repeat in a sarcastic way some of the comments that he had said to her, to make him know that she knew who it was who had said them and to threaten him a little. This lorry set off and took them to another place where they had friends and relatives. They were dropped off there and went into this house where they were greeted. She went down to the cellar to do something and found a notebook lying on the floor. This looked extremely interesting so she picked it up and put it in her pocket to read later. She then left the house. Her husband was a Merchant Navy seaman due to dock in Liverpool on his way back from Suez so she was going to meet him. As she was leaving the house she heard these people talking “wow – he’s dropped his notebook and his accounts and we really need to find it. I’m sure it will be there because it’s going to be extremely important”. From the way that they were talking, she realised that these people were possibly spies, and she had got out of the frying pan into the fire (or the other way round!). By this time she was reading a four-page broadsheet, one item of which was about a large block of flats in Bangor that had all of its windows opened to stop them being damaged in a blast, and another about a group of temporary shops that had been installed in the town of Cropredy to replace those that had been damaged. So she was supposed to be on her way to meet her husband at the docks but she never actually started to go there with all of this going on.

After the medication and breakfast I had a session on the web pages that I’m doing for the First Day Of The Somme.

It took me an age to find my reference books, and then I had to do some research into some graves from World War II. In the end I was in full possession of not only the number of the aeroplane, but where it had come from, what it was doing and where it had been shot down;

As well as that I also found the names of all of the names of the crew. Not all of them were killed and buried at Foncquevillers – one was captured alive and another one evaded

Round about 10:15 I ground to a halt. I’d been sent a load of paperwork yesterday that needed examining and it’s not the kind of stuff that can wait.

It also involved making three payments, one of which was due immediately, so I had to deal with that. That took some work too, but with now having an internet banking arrangement, it was surprisingly straightforward and seemed to work.

And I’m glad about that too. That’s why I have set up some internet banking – it means that I can do everything myself without the Royal Bank of Scotland fouling everything up.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me up and we had a good chat for quite a while. She needed some help with booking a flight from an out-of-the-way destination and that’s not as easy as it might be either.

What with one thing and another, it took me almost up to lunch so I made a quick start on the dictaphone notes, which I carried on transcribing after lunch.

Off I went on my walk around the headland in the afternoon.

There wa sa council lorry parked up on the footpath so I wondered what it was doing. But the answer quickly revealed itself. It looks as if they are fitting a new guard rail by the lifeboat memorial.

The old guard rail was lying on the grass, ready, I suppose, to be taken away.

There was another council lorry in the vicinity too, parked up on the car park opposite the Aquarium.

There was a guy from the council there with a skyjack, and he seemed to be installing a new flag on one of the flagpoles here.

I couldn’t see what flag it was so I suppose that I’ll have to go back there on another windy day and have a good look. It wasn’t really possible to shout up there and ask him.

But there’s a big surprise in the chantier navale this afternoon.

The large boat from Brittany that we have seen over the last few weeks now seems to have disappeared and in its place is another trawler receiving attention.

The Pecheur de Lys is still up there on her blocks. I’m looking forward to seeing her moving about on the water next month or whenever it might be.

There’s another visitor in the harbour today.

Thora is in there at the quayside, having come in earlier today on the morning tide, I reckon, on another one of her shuttle runs from Jersey. On eof these days I’ll have to go down for a chat.

And while I was admiring the view I was also treated to the ight of another small trawler doing a nautical danse macabre around the harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the other day with the crane here in the harbour, and I found out that it was to do with the delivery of some new pontoons to the harbour.

One of them made it into the water the other day, and today there were a couple of men on board it – if you go on board a pontoon – doing some kind of work on it.

My walk to the shops is going to be quite a lengthy one if I have to go round and talk to all of these people to find out what is going on.

On the way back to the apartment I went to see how the stonemasons were doing with the repointing of the old medieval town walls.

They must have finished what they were doing the other day, because now they are erecting a huge scaffolding higher up the hill.

It looks as if this is going to be something of a major reconstruction job on the walls and it’s another thing that I can’t wait to see when it’s all finished, whenever that might be.

Back here I tried to restart work but as I said earlier, all of my motivation seems to have gone. In fact I didn’t do very much at all for the next couple of hours.

Tea though was good. I had another slice of my giant cornish pasty with vegetables and baked potatoes followed by strawberries and cream. And it all really was delicious too.

And I was right about the house on the corner of the rue du Nord.

When I saw them enlarging the windows and fitting what looked like patio doors, I mused to myself that they might be fitting a balcony.

And judging by what they are building now at the side of the garage doors, it really does look as it they are going to fit a balcony in there. I wonder if they are going to rent it out.

There’s an unusual visitor in town this evening too.

We have a vehicle parked up here that belongs to the Institut National de l’Information Geographique et Forestiere, or IGN. That’s quite an important organisation in France because the IGN is the French equivalent of the Ordnance Survey, responsible for all of the mapping in the country.

I was surprised that they were using a foreign vehicle and not a French one. That’s quite unusual over here.

Further on round the corner, I was lucky enough to capture Victor Hugo coming round the headland into port.

She’s the passenger ferry that does the run between Granville and Jersey. One of these days I’m going to take myself off on a trip to St helier to see what’s going on.

There’s a newer ferry on the run too, but only some times. She’s had a pile of mechanical problems and I haven’t seen her around for quite a while.

The light was going quickly by this time, and the lights had come on at La Courtine, the restaurant in the rue Cambernon.

I had a play around with the light and exposure and ended up with quite an impressive night-time shot. It’s worked out really well.

On that note I came back home. And I’ll be off to bed in a moment. I’m getting myself behind with my work and I need to crack on quickly.

There’s such a lot to do.

But there’s shopping to be done tomorrow, although I won’t need much because I’m away again on Sunday.

Doesn’t it come round quickly?

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

house rebuilding rue du nord granville manche normandy france

channel island ferry victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

channel island ferry victor hugo baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 9th April 2019 – HELLO SAILOR!

This evening I’ve been out in the half-light playing around with the zoom-telephoto lens to see what I could conjure up.

The tide is on the turn and so the trawlers are starting to come in to the fish-processing plant.

There were dozens of them out there in the English Channel heading in to the harbour this evening. It’s going to be busy.

And talking of being busy, so was I today, although I didn’t accomplish anything monumental.

The alarms went off as programmed and, much to my surprise, I was out of bed quite early too.

There was the medication and then breakfast of course, and afterwords for several hours I had some personal stuff that I attended to, including reprogramming the fitbit. And that took me longer than I anticipated too.

Once that was out of the way I had a shower and then made a start on tackling the web page for the First Day On The Somme.

Or, more to the point web PAGES because there are going to be more than one. Many more than one in fact.

With a break for lunch, it took me all the way up to my time for the afternoon walk to go through all of the dictaphone notes, extract the notes for each photo and put them in the correct place.

It also involved a considerable amount of research too, especially trying to track down the fate of two early RAF flyers buried in Carnoy military cemetery.

But I did manage to go out for my walk around the walls this afternoon.

And in keeping with my nautical theme of today, I noticed a movement or two out to sea so I coupled up the big telephoto zoom lens to the big Nikon so I could see what was going on.

The first image is actually a trawler out there in the English Channel.

The second movement was much more exciting.

There’s a zodiac or other type of inflatable boat steaming along flat-out across the bay. It’s difficult to see where it has come from and where it’s going to. There was nothing obvious at all out there.

But as long as they are enjoying themselves it doesn’t really matter.

But around the other side of the walls I was treated to a considerable amount of excitement, not the least of which was the sudden rainstorm that had erupted.

For some reason or other a couple of seagulls decided to have a fight, and they were going at it hammer and tongs, egged (if that’s the correct word to use for a bird) on by a couple of spectators.

Had I not had the telephoto lens on the camera already, i would have missed all of this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw a red and white trawler doing a nautical danse macabre in the inner harbour.

It’s here again today, tied up at the quayside by the fish-processing plant. On reflection, it probably is a local trawler – one that maybe I haven’t noticed very much over the last couple of years.

I suppose that I really ought to be paying more attention to what is going on out there in the harbour.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and my brazil nuts, and then attacked the dictaphone notes. It’s amazing, the stuff that I had dictated and then completely forgotten all about.

In fact, I’m quite looking forward to getting into the notes from three and four years ago. I wonder what gems I’ll unearth then.

Tea was a burger with baked potatoes and veg followed by strawberries and that coconut-flavoured soya cream.

And then I went out for a walk. Luckily the rain of this afternoon had stopped so it was a reasonably fair night. And as I said earlier, the trawlers were now coming into harbour.

So I quickly took a photo of this one before I coupled up the big lens.

And I’m glad that there was still some light left and that I had the big lens on the camera, because I noticed something moving across the bay near the Brittany coast.

I couldn’t quite make out what it was so I took a photo of it. And when I was back here I enlarged and enhanced it. And as luck would have it, turned out to be some kind of galleon-type schooner thing.

I was really impressed with how this turned out considering the lack of light and the distance it was from me.

That wasn’t the only sailing craft out there this evening.

out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel is another one. and although I can’t be sure as to which boat it might be, it could well be our old friend Charles-marie going out for a sail into the evening sun.

And one of these days I’ll be out there with them. I’m determined to get out to sea one of these days.

As I said earlier, there could have been anything up to a dozen fishing boats heading in to harbour this evening.

It really is busy in there. Ther emust have been at least a dozen already tied up in there and some were having to be parked two abreast.

It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish that I was here 40 years ago when the fishing was in its heyday. it must have been a magnificent sight with all of the deep-sea trawlers going in and out of here.

So now I’m back, and looking foward to a good night’s sleep. Although I did a lot today, there was nothing of any substance. Tomorrow will be different as I have a lot of important stuff backing up.

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

la grande ancre trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

seagulls fighting granville manche normandy france

charles marie baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Monday 8th April 2019 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… yet more money today.

And something that I vowed a good while ago that I would never ever do as long as there was a breath left in my body – well, i’m going to be doing it.

Not without a great deal of regret, it has to be said, but there is no other way to complete a certain task if I want this certain task to be completed. And as it’s one of the things that’s on my bucket list and has been for a considerable number of years, then I shall just have to shut up and get on with it.

“And what is this disagreeable task?” I hear you ask. Well, one other person knows, and the rest of you will know in due course. But the die is cast now.

But at least it’s given me an opportunity to set up an on-line banking service with the Fortis Bank, thanks to a very helpful girl in Belgium. And once I’d done that, the world is my oyster.

All of my bank accounts now have on-line access, and once I can work my way through the labyrinth of portals, the rest is pretty easy.

Last night, with having had a coffee at the football, i was still going on at long past midnight this morning. And when I finally went to bed, I didn’t really need to. And it took me an age to go off to sleep.

There wasn’t much time to go on a voyage. But nevertheless last night I was on board ship again. There were about 100 or so kids being formed up into four lines on a stage by a teacher. And although this took place two years ago (don’t ask me why or how I know) it was so outrageously camp how they were doing it that it would never be tolerated today. They were pushing each other apart to be at arms length like raw recruits might do on one of their earliest parades. Everyone broke for lunch and lined up for the self-service food. There were two queues, each heading towards a central point and somehow I had managed to find myself in the position where these two queues met, so I couldn’t go either way to collect any food. Definitely “stuck in the middle”.

The alarms went off as usual but unfortunately I didn’t. 07:25 was when I finally hauled myself out of the stinking pit.

But once I’d gone through the usual morning procedures, I’ve had a very busy day. And that included some tidying up, filing and sorting out the wardrobe a bit better.

But as far as productive work goes, I had a really good attack at the dictaphone notes. That was the first task and it took me long enough. But I’m down to a mere 305 audio files. So some time within the next 25 years I might finish.

A brief pause to look for something – which ended up as a massive reorganisation of the wardrobe, and then I attacked yesterday’s blog to finish it off and to add the photos.

Once i’d done what needed doing, I carried on with the photos for July 2018. They are all finished now apart from the ones that I did around the Somme battlefield, and that’s my next task – to start on the web pages for that trip.

That shall keep me out of mischief for a good while.

After lunch I got on to the bank to organise a few things, as I mentioned, and then attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland’s on-line banking accounts. I’ve had some new cards from them, but the PINs need changing. Unfortunately I can’t do that with my on-line card reader, which was why I wanted the card reader in the first place.

Seeing as I had come to a natural stop, I went out formy afternoon walk.

And seeing that there was someone down there working on the large boat down there, I went for a chat.

Unfortunately he wasn’t the garrulous type at all. After grudgingly telling me that “she’s a boat from Brittany” he walked away and carried on painting it. I was hoping for rather more from him than that.

Instead, I went to have a look at the Cale sèche, or dry dock.

It has a name apparently – the Cale de Raboud. Built, like most things around here, out of blocks of granite from the Ile de Chausey, it dates from the 1880s at the time that the port was in its heyday.

But like the port, its use declined after World War II with the building of larger ships and the collapse of the deep-sea fisheries finished it off.

There is talk of restoring it, and maybe putting an old Terreneuvier in there as an exhibit, but that’s all a long way from happening, if it ever does.

The guy driving the fork-lift truck around the yard was slightly more garrulous.

He told me that the ancient fishing boat – the Pecheur de Lys – is destined to go back into the water. “But not today” he told me. Apparently, it’s going to take about a month to fit it out correctly so that it doesn’t sink.

On that note I came back and cracked on with the photos from the High Arctic. And I managed to classify another 150 or so of those today. Another week like that and this will be ready, so I can then start on adding them to the blog and doing some more web pages.

As you can see, there’s plenty of work around here that needs doing.

Tea tonight was shepherd’s pie and veg, followed by more strawberries and soya cream stuff. But no walk this evening. I wondered why it had suddenly gone cold again this afternoon. That’s because it’s teeming down outside.

That was just as well, because I seem to be submerged by paperwork yet again. I’ve had a shed-load of stuff sent to me this evening and it all needs attention.

A good night’s sleep is called for, if that’s possible.

Sunday 7th April 2019 – TODAY I HAVE BEEN …

… to the bunker.

And for those of you who don’t remember Lenny Henry, David Copperfield and Tracey Ullman, let me explain.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just down the road from me a mere cockstride away is a huge set of defences that formed part of the Atlantic Wall. They tried to blow them up after the war but with all the dynamite that they used, they just shifted a few lumps of concrete a couple of feet, so they bricked them up and left them.

When I drove past this afternoon, there were a couple of cars and a few people hanging around outside the big one.

With having had a coffee at the football last night, I didn’t get off to sleep anything like as early as I would have liked. I was tossing and turning for what seems like hours.

But I must have gone off at some point because I had a few really interesting voyage or two during the night. Last night I was staying again in the Auvergne in a hotel which was a hotel at the time. There were events and so on taking place in this hotel but the owners announced that they were closing it, so it closed down. I was looking at it and having a look around it wondering how I could make it pay, thinking about having events there but one problem about that was getting people to come there because they would have to travel, and that wouldn’t do that kind of thing in the Auvergne because they would have to go miles. I ended up taking a pile of bottles down and stacking them in some place – I don’t know if I was moving out or whatever so I had to take these bottles out. Some of them were full. I had four milk bottles and another bottle and I was taking them to the bottle bank. This wasn’t in the centre – it was a good walk out of town where I was. So I took these bottles and ended up seeing this farmer, outside his field on the verge on this corner which was covered really thickly in what looked liked cabbages. I walked right over and on them to get to this bottle bank. He came out of his field and he must have recognised me. “Where are you staying now? Marianne’s? Because I have some onions for you”. I replied that I was staying down there permanently now but I don’t know where I’ll be except for the period from the end of June for about three months or so. So he said that he would be in touch with me.
A little later on I was out walking along this track at the side of a road following the traces of a canal. I was taking photos with the Nikon 1. I came to a place where there was a huge waterfall which was actually the water coming down the canal overflow through a sluice. I went to take a photo of it but I didn’t have the camera with me. I thought “God, where have I left this?”. I started to walk back to the last place where I had used it. I came across an elderly woman with a couple of young boys. She had the same camera around her shoulder. So I asked her “you haven’t found my Nikon, have you?”. She said no, that this one was hers. I could see that because it had one or two attachments that mine didn’t have. I told her that I must have put mine down somewhere and left it. So I walked back and they made a couple of comments about me being English. I replied that I wasn’t English really. They followed me and when I reached this place where I had been before and saw this cascade I started to hunt around but couldn’t find it anywhere. They all helped me look. All of a sudden I had to touch my shoulder and I found the camera strap. I’d had it around my shoulder all the time and I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it. It was probably just a little moment of panic that I had had while I was looking at this sluice

No alarm as I said, so a very pleasant awakening at … errr … 09:25, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve been so lucky as to have had a decent morning like that.

With a late start, it was a late breakfast and then, imitating my namesake the mathematician, I did three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

In fact I was so busy doing nothing that I didn’t have time for lunch. I made my butties and a flask of coffee and headed out for St Pair.

At the Stade Croissant while I was eating my sandwiches and drinking my coffee, US St Pairaise were playing the Entente Sportive d’Haylande from La Haye-Pesnil.

Despite it being a District League Second Division match it was really exciting and just for a change at this level, we had a very even aerial contest with two teams who were both excellent in the air.

And Haylande had a guy playing right-back who looked almost as old as me, with a head of whitish greying hair, but he’d clearly been around the block several times and St Pair’s left winger had no change out of him at all.

The score ended 3-1 for ES Haylande, which was rather unfair on St Pair. But the big difference was that Haylande made the most of their chances and St Pair didn’t. They even had a penalty saved by the Haylande keeper.

But at long last – two teams who knew how to play in the air. Back to the 1970s certainly, but it was very interesting to watch. And the referees’ assessor, with whom I was sitting in the stand, enjoyed it as much as I did.

On my way back home from the football the people at the bunker were still there when I came back so I went to see what was going on.

As I have said before, if you want to know the answer to a question, you need to ask the question.

I’ve mentioned before that there is some talk of opening them up to make a museum and what they were doing today is some kind of inspection after a preliminary clean-up a few days ago.

Me being me, I managed to blag my way in for a visit.

We couldn’t go in by the steps (of which there were two separate entrances down) because they have long been walled up, but there is another way in through a reinforced steel armour-plated blast door.

And so once inside, our little private tour commences.

One of the things that caught my eye once inside was the door into the crew quarters.

As well as being a reinforced armour-plated blast door, it also appears to be a gas-tight door too. You can see the rubber seal around the door if you look closely.

And there were the remains of the rusty, corroded air treatment pipework in the room too.

But this was what I found to be quite interesting.

From the crew room there was a reinforced metal aperture overlooking the main corridor. The guy who was taking me around speculated that it was an aperture for a machine gun so that if the enemy managed to enter the bunker the defenders could seal themselves in and fight back.

That seems to be a logical idea, although the attackers once inside could simply roll hand grenades down the air tubes.

After my tour around the bunker, I walked back home. But on the way back I had an opportunity to look over the hedge at the athletics track.

This is now part of the Gymnase Jean Galfione, named for the local Olympic gold medal in the pole vault, but I reckon that it was all part of the barracks when the army was stationed here.

In principle they could put a football pitch in the centre, but the fierce winds that we have here would make any match here unplayable.

Back here, I make tea. One of the best pizzas that I have ever made, followed by strawberries (I bought a punnet yesterday) and coconut-flavoured soya cream.

Not much happening tonight around the headland when I went for a walk.

There were just a couple of few people standing around on the headland at the Pointe du Roc watching a trawler setting out to sea.

Nothing exciting at all so I came back to do my notes.

Now I’m ready to bed and I need a decent sleep because I have a lot to do tomorrow. Time is running out for some things that I need to do.

Saturday 6th April 2019 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… a most astonishing football match.

When I tell you that the score was USM Donville 0 US Sainte-Croix St_Lô 4, you’re probably thinking that it was a really one-sided match.

But nothing could be further from the truth. It took about 25 or 30 minutes for the teams to find their feet but then we were treated to a thrilling, pulsating match where the game flowed in waves from one end of the pitch to the other.

We had several misses from open positions in front of goal, superb saves by the two goalkeepers, a good half-dozen desperate last-minute tackles and goal-line clearances and the intervention of the woodwork.

US Sainte-Croix St-Lô were marginally the better side and had the match finished 1-0 in their favour, then no-one could complain about the result. But to lose a match like this by 4 goals to nil is extremely flattering for the victors and extremely depressing for the losers.

Last night was rather a late night, and we had a really strange thing happen this morning. There are three alarms that go off in the morning – at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20. I definitely heard two of them and I dozed off waiting for the third one.

But either I slept right through it or else it didn’t go off because the next thing that I remember was that it was 07:25.

But at least there was plenty of time to go a-wandering. I’d been doing something with music, playing in groups and I’d been trying to write a song but al my songs ended up being the same. I reckoned that I would work on one while I was away with Alvin and Ann, because we had a skiing holiday arranged. We’d arranged to meet at the airport. I went with Ann and we were waiting to get all of my stuff off the conveyor belt, she had got some of hers, and Strawberry Moose was there of course. Alvin turned up and he was asking about our things and we replid that we hadn’t received them all yet. They were coming round and people were asking me questions about Strawberry Moose, was he coming skiing and all of this kind of thing. But then the phone ringtone sounded in my pocket. But it wasn’t the phone that was ringing but the dictaphone. I’ve no idea why that should be. We met up with our tour guide – there was 6 of us. She took us into this shopping complex that was like an Indian temple, all done out in green and brown tiles. All different shops and I was wondering how anyone could afford to rent a place in here but yet more and more shops were being let out all the time. She took us through a discreet side door and down some stairs. I said that I hadn’t realised that there was another way around this building to which she replied that her husband was a football agent and had an office in this building. We ended up in his office, that was even more like an Indian temple and much more luxurious, said hello to everyone and took us outside. She started to talk to us about the holiday and our ship, and pointed it out. It was across a valley and on top of a hill. She said it’s called the “(I forget) but don’t worry about it being brown – the colour has nothing to do with it. These names are fleet names. She said that it was time to go – her watch said 11:00 but I looked at mine and said it was 08:50 – that tells you how efficient I am. Where we were standing was at the side of a road that ran along the bottom of this slope and there was a big coach depot just a little further along on the other side. There were half a dozen coaches there, all Plaxton Elites from the late 1960s that they had in this yard but with central doors rather than front doors as usual. There were also two brick pllars with a beam across which was uses I suppose for lifting engines and the like. But now I was worried about my blog entry – I hadn’t done it yet (I hadn’t as it happened, last night before going to bed). But there was so much going on that I would be squeezed back all of the time and there would be all kinds of things that would be left out of my usual daily routine
A little later I was with a group of soldiers. We’d been captured on this island and held in a kind of detention cell. One of our party had escaped and was hiding about this building site somewhere. A couple more of our people had been never been arrested. I managed to talk my way out so I thought that I would walk around. I was standing on the roof of this bunker but someone told me to come down. I stayed up there in defiance so he was making all kinds of threats about me. In the end I picked up a flare gun that was lying around and loosed off a couple of flares. He dashed up onto the roof and in the confusion I grabbed hold of his rifle and pushed him so he fell off the roof, fell on his back and broke his back. By now I had alerted all of my friends so I climbed down. The guy who escaped was hiding in a plastic box with a cement mixer and polystyrene tiles. The people who had evaded capture had seen the flare and come back. We took over this island and this building site, imprisoned all of our enemy. Right at the very end this girl came running out and ran up to one of my partners and threw her arms around him. I asked “is this the comic relief then?”. He replied “no – this is … and we are going to get married soon”

There was the usual morning procedure and then I had a shower and a general clean-up ready to hit the streets quite early. But a message on the phone stopped me in my tracks. “Your delivery will be made this morning between 09:00 and 11:00”.

And so I waited, and at 10:05 the package turned up. Or, should I say, one of the packages. Now I’m the proud possessor of at 57-inch telescopic monopod.

Tripods are quite clumsy things to carry around, especially when you are on foot with luggage, but in many circumstances, particularly with the high winds that we have round here and with long exposure times in the dark, you need lots of stability.

There isn’t always a handy wall to lean on or lean against. And so a nice telescopic monopod that will collapse into a corner of your rucksack for just €12:99 is a good deal in anyone’s language.

The rest of the package will follow (hopefully) on Monday and then I’ll tell you all about it.

But I’ve spent even more money today.

Despite its issues I’m still persevering with the mirrorless Nikon 1 J5 because it fits nicely in the pocket when I’m walking and under normal conditions it doesn’t let me down at all. I’ve had some good photos with it.

Its difficulties come under abnormal conditions like very low-light or high-speed situations.

Now that these cameras are gaining wider acceptance there’s moe stuff on the market, so every now and again I’ll keep my eye open on the camera sales to see what second-hand lenses are available.

And much to my surprise one of these popped up on the second-hand market for less than a third of the price that is listed here for a new one.

The price seems to be too good to be true but an f1.8 lens working at 12800ISO should give some incredible low-light photos, so it has to be worth a try and to see what I can make of it. I’m not holding my breath though – if it does turn up and works it will be something, I suppose.

Once the lens had come, I nipped out to the shops, in my new trainers from last weekend. LIDL coughed up a couple of little extras but there was nothing in NOZ worth talking about, except for one of these vacuum storage things that compress your clothing. I’m going to give it a try to see if I can do something about the clothing that I take on holiday with me.

LeClerc had nothing exciting at all, although I bought a spare pair of bootlaces to keep in my rucksack in case I need them on my travels.

Back here, I’ve run out of hummus, so I made another batch. I forgot the garlic unfortunately, but it still tasted really good.

This afternoon, I sat down to work, but by 14:40 I couldn’t go on. I ended up back in bed where I stayed until about 16:30. Dead to the world in fact.

Later on, in the rain I wandered off in the rain and my new boots to the football at the Cité des Sports.

Eems Sea was still down there at the quayside. And in the daylight I can say that it looks so much better than it does in the half-light and I really can believe that it was built comparatively recently.

And furthermore, it looks as if all of the gravel has been loaded and the hatches are all battened down.

While I was walking through the town centre Rosemary telephoned me, so we arranged to speak later.

While I was on the phone, I was admiring the roundabout that has appeared just recently in the Place Charles de Gaulle opposite the Mairie

It looks quite bright and cheerful over there and there were a couple of kids on there having a whale of a time. And why not?

Further on along the road to the Cité des Sports I happened to glance down the driveway of a house and found an old car parked at the end of it.

It’s a Citroen Acadiane and regular readers of this rubbish in one of its many previous guises will recall that I owned one of these for a short while.

I bought it as a D-i-Y project from one of the Ixelles Council’s abandoned vehicle sales but I “lost” it when the garage in which I stored it was cleared out when the site was redeveloped.

After the football I came back home, passing by the empty berth where Eems Sea was moored just three hours ago (that was a quick turnaround) and had a very long chat with Rosemary again.

So now it’s another late night, without any tea too. But I can have a lie-in tomorrow because it’s a Sunday and there’s no alarm.

And then I can try to get back into the rhythm of things.

Friday 5th April 2019 – – I WAS RIGHT!

Remember the other day when we were watching them pushing around the great heaps of gravel and moving them closer to the quayside and conveyors, and I was saying that we must be expecting the arrivale of one of the gravel boats?

So say hello to today’s arrival, someone whom we haven’t seen beforen and it’s nice to welcome new visitors to the port. Moored up at the gravel bay is is a new ship, the Eems Sea.

She must have slipped in on the late afternoon tide just now while I wasn’t looking.

Last night I had another decent sleep, with only a minor interruption. I was off on a travel too, but I’ll spare you all the details, seeing as you’re probably eating your tea or something right now.

There was an early start to the day too. I was out of bed pretty promptly too. And once the usual procedures were accomplished, I set to work. And I’ve had a very productive day too.

First task was to attack the searchable text database for July last year, starting from the beginning and working forwards this time. That wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because it needed quite a considerable amount of research to work out where I was, including hunting down an on-line version of Field Marshall Blücher’s memoirs and downloading them.

In fact I only managed about 60 photos. But serves me right because this was the period when I had mislaid the dictaphone somewhere in Caliburn.

Having run aground a little with that, I turned my attention to the photos for the High Arctic. That wasn’t quite so simple as it might have been either because I had to look up a few things for those too.

You’d be amazed (or maybe you won’t) about how much I’ve forgotten. But by the time I knocked off for lunch, I’d done another 160 of those too. Another day like that and I’ll have done a third of them.

In total I ended up with almost 1800 from that trip and the more closely I examine the photos on a decent screen, the more I see, the more I crop out, and I am slowly increasing the number all the time.

But as I said at the time, I’m dismayed by the quality of some of them – most of them in fact. I’ve a good mind to go back and take them all again.

It’s still winter outside so I stayed in for lunch. And this afternoon I had a phone call to make. My enquiry was actually successful in part, because although I didn’t receive the information I wanted, I was told that it had already been posted to me so it might be here any day soon.

While I was at it, I had a look around on Amazon for a few things that I needed. So I’ve been spending my money again.

But not in the USA. It seems now that Amazon is charging a “customs anticipation” amount to USA orders that makes the price no longer competitive with European pricing.

I smell a rat here, and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble either.

On my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc, in a howling gale which explains why there were so few people about, I had a look at the chantier navale to see what was happening.

And I appear to have been mistaken about the band of colour that had appeared on the hull of the boat that’s being resprayed. It seems to be nothing more than a different type of masking tape.

And I’m not surprised that they have had to replace some of the masking in this wind. I imagine that the original stuff will be half-way down the Baie de Mont St Michel by now.

There was more excitement than that too.

In the harbour I was treated to the sight of a trawler doing a very impressive nautical danse macabre around the basin.

From this distance I didn’t recognise the trawler, but I doubt very much if it’s one that’s new to the harbour. Usually they stay quite close to the fish-processing plant to which they are attached these days.

And I now know the story behind the crane – why it was here the other day. There was an article in the local paper about it.

Apparently they are replacing some of the old pontoon walkways in the harbour and they were delivered the other day. The crane was there presumably to lift out the old ones and lower the new ones into the harbour.

They are spending quite a lot of money on the harbour just now, what with renewing the harbour gates, dredging and all of that. All they need now is a lot more commercial traffic.

A hot chocolate was on the menu when I returned from my wanderings, and then I had another whack at the dictaphone notes. At this rate, I’ll probably be finished sometime in about 2525. All of the tasks that I have to do will keep me out of mischief for years, if I live that long.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, and having cooked it for a little longer on a lower temperature in the microwave, it was even better than it has been in the past.

It was still quite light when I went out tonight for my walk. And I was all alone out there too, even though it wasn’t dark outside just yet.

In the past I’ve taken a few photos of the Place d’Armes in the evening from up on the walls by the rue du Nord, but this is the first time this year that I’ve been able to do so in the light.

You can’t see very much of my building though. There’s part of it visible behind the cream building – the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs just to the left of centre.

Having done that, I carried on around the corner and there I could overlook the harbour and see Eems Sea tied up at her berth.

Although she might not look it, she was built as recently as 2010 in, of all places, Haiphong in Vietnam. 87 metres long, she is a bulk carrier with a deadweight of 2600 tonnes and a gross tonnage of 1862.

Being owned by a group of people from Werkendam, near Dordrecht, she flies the flag of the Netherlands.

And isn’t it nice to see a new arrival here in the port?

After that, I hurried home because we had football on the internet. Caernarfon Town were playing Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Premier League. The Nomads needed a win to keep clinging on to the coat tails of TNS whereas Caernarfon needed a win to give them hope of home advantage in the Euro playoffs.

The Nomads’ lack of a striker was apparent yet again because Caernarfon scored early in the match and the Nomads, despite all of their possession and pressure, never ever looked like pulling one back. If only the Nomads had a goalscorer, their season would have been completely different.

And so a late night tonight. and with me needing an early start in the morning, I shan’t be getting too much sleep.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: place d’armes

Sunday 21st April 2019 – THIS SPENDING SPREE …

Saturday 20th April 2019 – THE FOOTBALL …

Friday 19th April 2019 – THERE’S NOTHING …

Thursday 18th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

Sunday 14th April – LUCKY ME!

Saturday 13th April 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

Friday 12th April 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

Thursday 11th April 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

Wednesday 10th April 2019 – I’VE HAD ONE …

Tuesday 9th April 2019 – HELLO SAILOR!

Monday 8th April 2019 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

Sunday 7th April 2019 – TODAY I HAVE BEEN …

Saturday 6th April 2019 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

Friday 5th April 2019 – – I WAS RIGHT!