Tag Archives: place d’armes

Thursday 28th February 2019 – DESPITE MY BEST …

… efforts over the last few weeks to maintain a positive point of view, I seem to have slipped into the abyss again.

And not just by a bit either.

Just by way of a change, it was 04:43 when I awoke this morning. So our old sleeping habits are now properly back aren’t they? That didn’t take long.

Plenty of time for me to go off on my travels though. To visit my neice and her family who were now living in Millstone Lane in Nantwich near Crewe Road end. And everyone was there, and that didn’t suit me at all and I spent most of my time trying to avoid everyone.
A little later, there was some African-American guy rather similar to Bill Cosby who had been a professional baseball umpire but had fallen on hard times. Now stranded in North Wales he was trying to find some kind of work to keep his head above water, but there was very little doing, going from place-to-place doing odd jobs. IN the end, he managed to find a parcels delivery job going down to the south so he took it, but it all went wrong, ending up in Court being accused of stealing pyjamas to the value of £54:00 and how he had abandoned his good name and his reputation.
Later still I was a passenger on a coach that was somewhere in Paris but no-one had a clue where because there was a thick pervasive fog and no-one could see where we were. There was a guide next to the driver who was giving the directions, and we could see the lights of the coach reflected off some kind of reflective strip in the road setting out the route. Eventually we turned up outside some kind of hotel where we assembled and where we could take luggage labels from a lamp post. Our own coach piled on board and there I met my mother, who was actually this old French woman who I had met on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We amm piled on board, and I had Strawberry Moose with me, which made things difficult and he was getting in the way of everyone. The guide started to talk about a place called Vercingetorix’s Bay which was a place on the Seine. As the coach pulled forward, we suddenly saw a magnificent vista ahead of us, of the river between the cliffs and a big meander, and I regretted that I hadn’t gone down the road for a walk to see. But the coach stopped so that we could all go out to see. It was then that I suddenly remembered that our coach trip was taking up down the Seine, through the mountains, and then along the Danube valley.

Nevertheless, I was up and about before the final alarm went off and organising myself for the morning.

There was a shower too and, much to my own surprise, an unexpected haircut. I took one look at it and that was what made me decide.

As I mentioned yesterday, it was shopping today. And I didn’t buy anything special at all even though I spent a lot of money. Stocks were getting rather low.

NOZ was quite exciting though.

All of the nonsense about this Brexit garbage is rebounding and the biters are being bit. Here in Noz is a big tray of British souvenir garbage, like “St George’s Autograph Book” (doubtless with St Jude’s phone number just in case) and other assorted stuff.

No prize on it, which means in NOZ that you take it down to the till and “debate and discuss”.

Returning back here through the hordes of caravanettes and the lorry that blocked the street to unload, I bumped into a neighbour. We had a little chat but I warned her to keep a little distance.

She doesn’t want what I’ve got.

Back here, I didn’t have the strength to unpack and in fact sat in a cataleptic daze for a while trying to recover. I shouldn’t really have gone out in my condition but I have to have something on hand to eat.

And that reminds me, I prepared far too many sandwiches for lunch given my current situation.

But nevertheless I took them outside to sit on the wall – right into a rainstorm. First for a while, that is.

I made it as far as the sea wall to see what was going on, and noticed that Normandy Trader was down there tied up at her berth, and they were actually working on her as if they were loading her up ready for sail.

Loads of those savarins around, the kind in which they bring the sacks of shellfish over.

There was some kind of sports boat heading into the harbour too.

She’s not one that I’ve noticed before, so I’ll probably have another wander around down there sometime in the near future to see what it is.

That was enough for me. The rain drove ma back in where I disturbed the neighbours on the door whom I had disturbed as I went out.

Today’s work was starting on the text-searchable database for October 2018 and I didn’t really accomplish anything like as much as I was expecting.

I’ve had a little enthusiasm this last couple of days. But for some reason I’ve slipped into the abyss again, and quite a way in too and I’m not sure why.

At least I can recognise the signs, which is always something.

And so instead I went for my afternoon walk around the walls in the beautiful weather, because the rain had stopped and the sun was back out.

There were some nice views across to Donville-les-Bains today which cheered me up a little (but not much).

And I had a chat with the builder doing that house on the rue du Nord – although he didn’t have too much to say for himself.

And so I carried on with my perambulations around the walls, and was able to have a good look at the beach at the Plat Gousset.

Not many people out there enjoying the sunshine today, which is hardly a surprise. A brief glance at the sky in the distance will tell you why.

Having been caught up in hordes of schoolkids this morning, instead this afternoon I was caught up by a woman pushing her dog around in a pushchair.

And had I not had the sun in my eyes, I would have treated you to a photo.

With having had a larger-than-expected lunch, I had no tea tonight. Just a banana and one of my birthday chocolates from Jenny.

And then out for a walk in the dark. Picking my way through the caravanettes parked everywhere all over the place.

In the wind and cold too because I reckon that lunchtime’s storm front has brought in some different weather.

But now it’s bed-time.

Let’s hope I’m feeling more like it tomorrow.

donville les bains granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 27th February 2019 – DESPITE MY …

… early night I took ages to go off to sleep. And when I did, being wide-awake at 04:45 was not what I actually had in mind.

I did manage to go off again to sleep at some point but much to my, yours, and everyone else’s surprise, I was up and about before the final alarm went off.

There had been time to go off on a voyage too. I’d been out driving in one of my own vans – that might even have been Bill Badger, my old A60 half-ton van. There was something about extracting digital images off kerbstones so I had a little electrical kit that could do that and I was driving up and down the streets doing it. At one point, there on the street corner was a girl called Carolyn (it’s amazing who appears in my travels) whom I knew probably about 35 years ago and who I encountered quite by chance under strange circumstances 10 years later. She was much younger than she was when I knew her, and dressed in a fashion that would have been inappropriate for the house, never mind standing on a street corner. I was having difficulty extracting these images, to which she replied that the electricity was usually turned off at midnight. I explained that it wasn’t midnight as yet and carried on, but with no result. In the end I decided to move on, but I told Carolyn that I’ll drop by later to see if she was still there.
A little later I was in my room – or, rather, not my room in Davenport Avenue. I was wrestling with a couple of different computers (as usual these days) trying to make sure that all of my confidential files and open web pages were just on one computer being run off just one web browser so that I could close down all of my searches and research in a hurry if some unauthorised person came too close.

We had the usual morning procedure of course, followed by a some what later breakfast – a bowl of porridge and some orange juice.

Interrupted by the sound of crowds assembling on the car park of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs. No idea what’s happening there.

And while we’re on the subject of breakfast, that reminds me – apart from a coffee at the football on Saturday night I haven’t had a coffee now since the Tuesday morning that I was in Leuven.

Once I’d done what needed doing, I settled down to work. And haven’t I been a busy boy today?

I’ve amended all of the blog entries all the way back from 13th December 2018 to the 1st November 2018.

Not only that, I’m a long way down the text database for November 2018 too.

When I have finished that, whenever it might be, I’ll be starting on October. So you can see – I’ve hardly been idle.

For lunch, it was yet another beautiful day so I went to sit on my wall.

I was going to say “with my butties” but I forgot to defrost some bread from the freezer.

So in the end I took the little bread left over from the weekend and a packet of crisps that needed eating, and watched the fishing boats unloading at the quayside.

That wasn’t all of the action down there either.

Down there at the bottom end of the commercial harbour is our old friend Thora. She must have come in on the morning tide from Jersey.

Loads of merchandise all around the crane, presumably awaiting loading. But I couldn’t see any of the crew around there at all. Presumably they have all gone off for lunch too.

Over the past week or so I’ve been telling you all that it’s soon to be Carnaval, and I’m going to be locked in up here for the weekend.

But I shan’t be alone.

The public car park outside our premises is being transformed into a mobile home park full of caravanettes as all of the grockels turn up to come and pollute the atmosphere again.

But why should I complain? It’s activities like this out-of-season that keeps the town ticking over for the rest of the year.

And that’s why I’m here.

There was the usual mid-afternoon walk too.

The day really was beautiful and the sea was gorgeous and a nice deep blue colour.

It was one of those days here when it really was a pleasure to be out and about – me in just a sweater (and trousers too of course) in late February.

My little walk took me around the headland of the Pointe du Roc.

At the bungalow round by the lighthouse and the coastguard station, there was a lorry there. This brings back many happy memories of my time in the Auvergne.

No mains drainage there of course, nor here, apparently. The tanker is here busily pumping out the contents of the septic tank.

Presumably to treat its 75mm gun with Dettol.

The air was very calm and still, but there must have been a long rolling sea coming in right across the Atlantic with some terrific force.

You can tell that by the power of the waves as they break on the angle of the sea wall down there.

It’s quite surprising really, comparing the wind speed with the force of the water.

While I was watching the waves, we had another one of our residents returning to the fold.

There must have been a ferry trip out to the Ile de Chausey today, because she turned up back here on the end of her round-trip while I was out there.

I was feeling rather envious, because this would have been a marvellous day to have gone out for a sale, and I suppose that with Carnaval, the tourist season is starting up.

And I missed out the chantier navale today too, didn’t I?

It’s quite busy in there today. We have the yacht in there of course, and Armor halfway through its respray down there.

The modern little fishing boat is interesting too, by my attention is drawn to the big wooden boat of some description in the centre of the photo.

I wonder what that is and what they are doing to it. I shall have to go for an investigation.

We saw yesterday the workers repairing the flashing around the roof windows of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

It looks as if they might now be finished. They were busy loading up a lorry with all of the left-over building stuff.

Presumably the container and the machine will be leaping aboard too and disappearing off into the sunset some time soon.

I’ll probably find out tomorrow.

When I returned, I got on the ‘phone again.

I tried another tack with the bank, going in through the soft-underbelly. Not for nothing do I have friends. And about 15 minutes later, they discovered a way that might help me out and which will really upset the Worst Bank In The World.

Back to work with the text database, and then a stop for tea.

While I was finding my crisps, I found a pack of tortilla wraps, so I made myself a pile of stuffing with kidney beans and had a couple with some pasta.

I was stuffed too. No pudding or anything, so I’m doing my best to cut down my appetite. It will probably help if I keep on drinking as much liquid as I am right now.

But then I’ll have my water retention issues.

On my evening walk around the walls, I almost flattened a pedestrian skulking in a dark corner with an obviously secret cigarette.

But apart from that, not a soul. No matter how nice and pleasant it was out there.

Well, not quite alone. Minette was sitting on a car bonnet taking the air and enjoying herself. So I gave her a good stroke and came home.

I’m off for an early night now. Although it’s Thursday, I’m going to be doing a good shopping round.

No sense in going out on Saturday. The town will be heaving with tourists, the streets will be blocked and I probably won’t be able to get out at all.

Do it first before it’s too late.

fishing boat coming in to unload port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht speedboat granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 26th February 2019 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

… the water heater switch itself off this morning at 06:25 but if anyone thinks that there was a possibility of me leaping sprightly out of bed at that time of the morning, they are totally mistaken.

Instead, I turned over and went back to sleep. 08:25 is much more like it for someone recovering from a viral bronchitis.

Plenty of time though, to go off on a few little voyages.

We started off on a big ship last night and sailing down some channel, and a few fires breaking out here and there, including a large one that, in order to put this one out, I had to sail the ship into the lee of the shore. I was tempted to laugh off these attempts and dismiss them, pretend that they hadn’t happened, but somehow there were too many witnesses and there were too many signs of damage.
A little later on, I was wandering over some kind of park supervising the cleaning. There were papers littering the place, torn ones of the kind that would have been the track of a 1920s paperchase in a Public School. One of the young gardeners had made very little effort to clean them up, and I wondered why. He exlained to me that his blower wasn’t working properly so that there wasn’t very much that he could do. I asked him whether he had reported the matter or taken the machine to be prepared, to which he didn’t respond. So I gave him a little lecture.
Later still, I was in a room in my house. This was somewhere round by the east end of Crewe by where Nerina’s family lived. I had to go off to the south of the town so I wheeled out the old Honda Melody that I had when I first moved to Brussels. I wasn’t sure how much fuel was in it, and whether I ought to go down Earle Street on it to the cheap petrol station or down Macon Way to the petrol station on the roundabout by the station. The latter was a shorter route by a couple of hundred metres but the fuel was dearer, and bearing in mind the fuel consumption of the Melody, how much difference would it make? And then I had the big motor-scooter – a four-stroke foot-first thing that ought to have a run out too. There was also a bike lying on its side on the floor of what I imagined was my bedroom. The wheel was wedged up against the wall so when I moved it, the wheel spun round and the dynamo front light illuminated. And I couldn’t understand why there was sand all over the floor.
Finally … “thank God” – ed … I was at the seaside. We were sitting in a coach that was being used as a waiting room. A discussion broke out amongst a few people about some kind of pink pottery on board a ship and that corresponded with some kind of nocturnal voyage on which I’d departed years ago. I tried to insert it into the conversation but no-one paid any attention. So I ignored the conversation and tried to read the newspaper. But reading a newspaper on a coach even when it was stationary was rather difficult. Eventually I looked up to see that the people to whom I’d been talking had all moved on. Instead, there were other people, talking about Mr Soandso whose car had just been badly damaged by some kids whose sled had gone out of control and collided with the car.

I eventually crawled out of my bed and went off to sort out my medication and some time later, I went back for a pile of porridge for breakfast.

And having done that, I had some errands to run.

Not that I managed to go very far.

There has been some work going on at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs for a few days now so I was interested to see what was happening.

It looks as if they are replacing the window seals around the dormer windows in the roof by working on one of the mobile platforms that they had out here over the early part of the winter.

On the way down the hill I met the “electrician” from the other day. Busy erecting wooden shuttering around an empty shop front.

Just as I thought. Some electrician.

First stop was at the estate agent’s. I’d had a reminder about a bill that I’d missed and I needed to find out what.

Seems like I have the dustbin tax to pay.

Second stop was at the Mairie. I’ve decided to take the Bull by the Horns and tackle Madame la Maire about my little project.

It’s not easy because she’s busy, but it you don’t try, you don’t get.

I made it past the downstairs and as far as her secretary, and the latter took a pile of notes. We shall see where we go with this, but at least I’ve put my feet on the road.

Final stop was at the bank – firstly to pay the dustbin tax of course, and secondly, to find out why my telephone provider had sent me a reminder for a bill.

It seems that it’s not from the telephone provider at all but, as I suspected, one of these scams that is going around.

I checked at the Telephone company, and they confirmed it.

Back down the hill in town I noticed that they are pushing along with the preparations for Carnaval.

The roundabout that was there the other day has gone, and in its place is a stage. I seem to remember there being some music on there last year, as well as the MC of the whole proceedings.

I hope that it’s going to be a little more lively this year than last.

Round the corner and up the hill, and a temporary road closure.

The rue des Juifs is where they park some of the floats for the carnaval, and so they are clearing the streets of some of the street furniture to give them more room to manoeuvre.

Outside one of the cafés here is an old rowing boat that is used by customers to sit in and admire the evening. They are in the middle of winching it off to I’ve no idea where.

Back up here I carried on with updating the blog but it was soon lunchtime.

And it was such a beautiful afternoon that I made some butties and went to sit outside on the wall.

While I was there I took a few photos with the different lenses of the camera and edited them.

You can see the results down below and these shouls give you some kind of idea of what the camera is – or isn’t – doing.

After lunch, I attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland yet again.

A mere 87 minutes on the telephone and not much further forward either and this is going to be a very long job to persuade them to do what I want to do, and take me a great deal of effort.

I just don’t know why I’m stuck with the useless pile of bankers that I seem to have acquired. I am really totally and absolutely full of dismay about all of this.

Totally fed up, I went off for a walk around the walls. And took another pile of photos on different settings.

Strangely, it seems to work like it should on automatic exposure, and about three stops up on manual exposure – in other words, it needs twice as much light than it says that it’s receiving.

I’ve had a look on the internet to see if there’s any firmware update, but not at all. So I’ve no idea now.

No tea tonight. I had a few biscuits and one of Jenny’s chocolates, followed by a chocolate soya drink. Not that I couldn’t have eaten anything but I’m trying to keep some weigh off now that I’ve got it off.

I don’t suppose that I’ll be able to keep it up but that’s no reason for not trying.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc in the pleasant evening, and to play with the camera again – this time with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

Of course it’s very difficult to tell what’s happening with that lens because I only every use it in the dark and set it by eye anyway, frame by frame.

But they don’t look like they used to, that’s for sure, especially after all of the work that I’ve been putting in.

Round to the entrance to the harbour to watch the trawlers come in with their catch.

This would have been a beautiful photo in the right conditions with reliable equipment, and I was expecting to have done something much better than this after all of the practice that I’ve been doing.

I’m going to have to upgrade the camera some time soon, which is a shame.

So, dismayed, I’m off to bed. An early night. I’ve decided to start with the alarms tomorrow and see how I’m going to get on.

——— RANGE ONE ——-

beach quay herel granville manche normandy france

——- RANGE TWO ——–

donville les bains city walls granville manche normandy france

crowds beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

trawler coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 25th February 2019 – HAVING MADE A …

… special effort to turn of all of the alarms this morning, I managed to sleep though all the way to … errr … 06:00.

But I still ended up going back to sleep and a gorgeous leisurely 09:10 before I finally saw the light of day.

Plenty of time to go on a wander during the night. Last night was rather confusing. I remember Cecile being around and I was somewhere on some housing estate that might have been old military property (going back to a discussion that I’d had a few weeks ago). I knew where a girl lived and the neighbours that she described in some disparaging terms. To where I lived, you had to go past – well past too and into the countryside, turn right and then right again, and I found that I wasn’t living too far away from her and that was a surprise. The garage door of my property had been forced in as if someone had driven into it and I was sure that I would be blamed for this, especially as my brand-new office car was parked in the drive, left there by a colleague. But I knew that I hadn’t driven it, I hadn’t had the keys and hadn’t signed for it, but that wouldn’t ever change anything about the apportionment of blame as I knew only too well. But we had to move on for there was work to do, and another colleague came and took my car away, leaving the garage door unprotected which annoyed me but I had things to do, so I wandered down to where Cecile and her friends were standing, and she indicated “over there” where the rest of the huissiers were assembled (I’m starting to see a few parallels here by the way) so I wandered over. They were all lounging around so I asked what was going on. They replied that they were all “just chilling”. So with nothing better to do, I “just chilled”.
A little later I was working away under a car doing something mechanical, and on finishing, I hauled myself out from underneath. The car was a big Jag V12 XJS and a former friend of mine and his friend were touching up the paintwork – and doing a nice job too, gloss white with black pin stripes all done by hand. They’d paid £200 for this car and were expecting to receive about £500 for it. I asked if there was anything that I could be doing, so they told me to help with the paintwork. Car painting is not my forte at all and I’d probably make it look worse than better, but I was told to help. After a minute or so, my ex-friend told me “you don’t do it like this … ” which I knew, but I said that it takes a while to work up a rhythm, so he gave me one of his customary long lectures which ended with “.. and of course you need to work up a rhythm” which was all more-or-less what I had just been saying. Yes, one of these long and pointless lectures. And the point is that people spend more time supervising someone doing a job poorly than they would spend doing the job perfectly themselves.

After breakfast (a big bowl of porridge), I attacked the blog. That’s up-to-date now as far back as Friday. That took a while.

And then I had run out of photos so I downloaded them off the cameras and started working on them to edit them. And now I’ve noticed another problem with the camera. The light sensor is fading out and over-reading. All of the photos from the weekend is under-exposed.

Seven years, I’ve had this camera. And seven years I had the Nikon D5000 before that started to play up too. Looks to me as if seven years is the life expectancy of a Nikon DSLR.

Just for a change, I was overwhelmed by hunger and ended up having a plate of cheese on toast for lunch. And that made me feel better.

And then to war.

The Bank statements that I had received from the Royal Bank of Scotland had shown that my letter of 2nd January 2019 had not been actioned. So I rang them up.

No point in asking a guy at a help-desk why, so we went through half of it and did it on-line. And then for the rest, having clearly told him that I intended to speak further to someone else higher up the chain, and told him what I thought about his employers in no uncertain terms, especially after he had held me on hold for 15 minutes because the “technology wasn’t working” he … errr … passed me on to another colleague to deal with the rest.

She didn’t have a clue either (although she was nice about it) and put me through to a third person who had even less to do with the matter. But she noticed something outstanding from 1990 which is good news to me, so passed me on to yet a fourth colleague to deal with that.

Well over an hour I was on the phone to them, and I’m still not much further on. But then that’s what happens when you are obliged to bank with the Worst Bank In The World.

After that marathon I went out for a walk around the walls testing the light – and there’s about three or four shots’ difference of light as what you might expect.

This is one taken with the exposure set by the exposure-metre gauges in the camera.

And this is one of the same view taken seconds later with the exposure set by eye with all of the other settings remained the same.

I’ll go out tomorrow with another lens and see what that can come up with, just to check.

There were a couple of minutes of fatigue – although not too much to worry about, and I carried on working. But with a stop for tea. lentil and mushroom curry from January last year. First time since Monday I’ve had three meals per day.

And then more football. A delayed match in the Welsh Premier League between Caernarfon and TNS. Caernarfon have gone off the boil this last few weeks and TNS always looked as if they could change up a couple of gears. 0-3 was by no means a false result.

And the mystery as to why TNS only play their star forward in brief cameos just recently looks resolved to me. He looks really ill to me.

So I’m off to bed. Another lie-in tomorrow to gather up my strength and do some work. If I feel as well as this tomorrow evening I’ll go back to the alarm on Wednesday.

And as an aside – I turned off the heating today.

peche à pied beach granville manche normandy france

new house building rue du nord granville manche normandy france

crowds on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Sunday 24th February 2019 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!

I’m officially (I think) an old-age pensioner, having reached the ripe (and getting riper as I get older) old age of 65.

And you can tell, too. This morning I switched on the hi-fi and then waited for ten minutes wondering why the computer hadn’t switched on.

Last night wasn’t all that late, but I was expecting something better than being awake at 05:30. I heard the water switch off at 06:25 but then I must have gone back to sleep somehow because it was 08:30 when I awoke a second time, and 09:00 when I crawled out of bed.

Piles of goodwill messages already, which is always very nice. I’ll have to reply to them at some time. But now I’m going to have breakfast. To dive into a big bowl of porridge, and maybe some grapefruit juice as well.

Back here, total chaos yet again as that evil dictator in nominal charge of this mad, insane flight over the cliff into disaster goes off on another pointless walkabout with no purpose other than to prolong the delay in suffering another humiliation.

We’re experiencing a coup d’état from the top, just word-for-word and action-for-action as Jacques Benoit-Mechin predicted in De La Defaite Au Desastre.

Rosemary rang me for a chat too but I couldn’t stay talking for long. My throat gave out after a while and I had to hang up. I need to look aout after myself.

Instead, I went for a walk in the glorious sunny weather.

Around the headland amongst the crowds and then down the steps to the harbour.

I had a walk underneath the fish-processing plant to see what I could see, which included a horde of gulls picking over the broken shells that had cascaded down through the floor into the mud.

Over the gates to the other side of the harbour and out to the other side of the town.

On the Parking Hérel the lorries were arriving; bringing the fairground in. Carnaval starts tomorrow so they’ll be setting up tonight ready for things to get swinging underway.

Back into town, I went for a sorbet – the first of the year. And I sat in the sun on the square to eat it too. It really was a beautiful day today and I was enjoying every minute of it.

The way back home was via a diversion in a street that I had never visited before.

I’d seen some construction work going on at the Place des Corsaires and I had wondered what it was. They are in fact demolishing – or half-demolishing – a house and building it up with breeze blocks like they are doing with that house on the rue du Nord that we visit from time to time.

Back here, I opened my birthday presents. Jenny sent me some chocolates and Alison a money belt and a useful tool for eating out. I have some lovely friends.

Tea was a vegan pizza – not as nice as usual because there wasn’t much to go on it. And then a lovely walk around the walls in the dark and the solitude.

I’ll go to bed now. Not too early but not too late. No alarm tomorrow either. I’m going to take it easy which I try to get back my strength.

crowds sunshine pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france

sanding down respraying armor port de granville harbour manche normandy france

lobster pots port de granville harbour manche normandy france
“How do you train a lobster to go on one of these?”

underneath the fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

rue etoupefour granville manche normandy france

Saturday 23rd February 2019 – WITH HAVING WHAT …

… can only be described as “disturbed sleeping patterns” just recently, going to bed at 23:30 was never going to be a good idea. By about 01:00 I’d given up the struggle and by about 02:30 I was up and about, working. I must be feeling better, to say the least.

Round about 09:00 I went back to bed for a couple of hours. By 12:00 I was up and about again working and at 13:00 I attacked a bowl of porridge. Even more surprisingly, it managed to stay down.

Another even more surprising thing is that I managed to attack a little bit of tidying up. Not much, it has to be said, but the fact that I was able to do something is already … errr … something.

It was such a beautiful afternoon that I opened all of the windows in here.

I was tempted to go for a walk, but then I had another thought instead. I carried on doing some work and then at 17:00 I girded up my loins and hit the streets.

It’s that time of the year again.

The Baie de Mont St Michel and the area around here has the highest tides in Europe. Not quite on the Bay of Fundy scale but impressive all the same.

This weekend the tidal coefficients are the highest of the year and the sea right now is the farthest out that we are likely to see it.

It’s certainly impressive.

In the beautiful weather it was a sweaty trudge through the streets and a weary climb up the hill, and even though I took my time I was at the Stade Louis Dior in good time for the match against FC Mantois 78.

I’ve not seen them before, and they are currently adrift at the foot of the table. So I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to see them this time

Having witnessed US Granville’s dramatic loss of form just recently that has seen them plummet down the table like a Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what the outcome would be.

From the kick-off, it was clear that the US Granvillais left-back was playing in a match on his own. In the first five minutes I counted three times when he wandered miles away from his opponent, allowing his opponent to get in behind him.

After 10 or so minutes, I mentioned to my neighbour that he is going to cost the team dear if he doesn’t concentrate on his game – at that point he was a good 25 metres away and in front.

Sure enough, just a couple of minutes later, the left-back was miles out of position as the n°7 soared down the wing and put in a cross to the centre where a forward slotted the ball home.

And he kept it up too. Another ball down the wing, another cross, a header onto the post this time. I’ve not seen anything like this for years. We had no coaching whatever at school but even at Primary School it was drilled into us by our 11 year old team captains not to let our attackers get between us and the goal, even when they didn’t have the ball.

After half-time there was no change whatever.

It took 60 minutes for the coach to realise the problem. He eventually took off the n°3 and the defence tightened up – but only just a little.

US Granville pulled one back too. A quick throw-in, a long one into the penalty area from the right-back with the long throw – which caused uproar from the Mantois players and some of the crowd who are clearly unaware that you can’t be offside from a throw-in (or a goal kick either for that matter).

And then Granville pushed forward for a winner. And who knows what might have happened had we not had a moment of total madness as we entered into injury time.

The Mantois goalkeeper’s kicking was dreadful and they were just wild, aimless lunges down the field. One totally aimless kick right upfield fell to a US Granvillais defender, totally alone and unmarked with no-one anywhere near him. He turned to face upfield, took his time, and took a really good hard kick – straight into the midriff of a Mantois player charging down on him about 20 yards away.

You’ve no need for me to tell you what happened after that. The attacker controlled the ball, took half a dozen steps forward, rounded the keeper and that was that.

All hopes that Granville had of catching the game disappeared into the sunset.

A long painful walk back here – in time to watch a top-of-the table match in the Welsh Premier League between Y Barry and Cei Connah. Winner takes all tonight, and so quite obviously we had a draw.

A good goal from Jonathan Hood for Barry was cancelled out by a goal from Michael Bakare for the Nomads.

Many people saw Bakare’s goal as controversial but not me, not the referee and not those people equipped with slow-motion facilities and a camera behind the goal. Mike Lewis in the Barry goal was clearly “fouled”, but by his own player who pushed him hard into the patch of the Connnah’s Quay n°10. When the highlights go on line, I’ll post a link.

It was an exciting match that pulsated from end-to-end but Connah’s Quay had the better of it and the Barry woodwork knew all about it. A couple of goal-line panic-stricken clearances too but the Nomads couldn’t get the bal over the line.

So now it’s rather late, I’m rather tired but I’ve kept on going. And if that’s not impressive, seeing as how I’m feeling, then I don’t know what is.T

Friday 22nd February 2019 – HAVING HAD …

… a really bad night last, I couldn’t wait until 08:30 came around.

At 08:33 I was on the telephone. “Could Dr Plunet see me for 5 minutes some time soon?”
“How about 09:30?”

Eat your hearts out, NHS.

With not having had even a wash since Monday and not daring to try a shower, I had as good a scrub as I could and then headed off – in Caliburn because I couldn’t walk and I wasn’t really all that much up to driving either – down to town.

I was seen immediately – by a locum as the doctor is on holiday. He examined me, had a good listen to my bronchites wheezing away and identified straight away what was the problem with me. And I was right too. The viral infection is back.

So loaded up with medication, a loaf of bread and some pears, I headed off back home.

And having dosed myself up – back to bed where I lay and sweated myself to sleep.

However, the medication must have done some good because a while later I was up and about feeling better. The cough had eased, the streaming head had calmed down somewhat and I could actually think straighter.

This afternoon, Shock! Horror! after a bowl of soup I started on doing some work. I have so much to do that I haven’t done, and so much that I should have done these last few days.

So now is the time to press on. One of my web pages from 2005 is attracting media attention – positive attention too for a change. But the style is quite dated and needs rewriting, so that was my first task today.

And that took me longer than I expected too. But I kept on plugging away and even found time to make a start on the missing blog entries. They might be up to date sometime soon.

But not right now. It’s late and I’m off to bed. It’s Saturday tomorrow but I’m not going shopping. I’m not eating anything so there’s no need to buy anything. I’ll have a leisurely day instead and build up my strength.

Thursday 21st February 2019 – HAVING GONE …

… to bed at all of 14:30 yesterday, that was that until some time round about 08:40. And by now, the viral infection that I had had last winter and which I knew was on its way (one of the many reasons that I keep this blog is that I can keep track of my health and my symptoms) was fully installed.

Just like last time I was coughing so much that my ribs were hurting, my nose was streaming and I just felt like death.

But I had to haul myself out of bed because I was expecting a visitor this afternoon and the place was in no state to receive any.

First off, the vacuum cleaner wouldn’t work properly. But that was soon remedied when I emptied the container and unblocked the pipe. I could then move the furniture around and wash some of the floor.

That killed me off completely so I went back to bed.

When the doorbell rang, I leapt out of bed and let in the electrician. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have been having electricity issues with the apartment and I’d been to see the estate agent about it.

He simply disconnected the socket, looked inside and saw that there was no wire adrift, said “it looks all right to me” and reassembled it. And that was that. No test meter, no oscilloscope, no nothing whatever. He did nothing that I hadn’t done, and even less than Terry had done.

He was a musician too, and he was far more interested in the Gibson bass. We had a lengthy chat about guitars and music that took up far more time than the electricity bit. And for that reason I refrained from casting any nasturtiums on his performance (or lack thereof) on the electrical stage.

Once he’d cleared off, I went back to bed. And that’s how the rest of the day unfolded.

Round about 19:30 I struggled out of bed, with the idea that I might try something to eat. It’s been 54 hours since I last ate.

A packet of vegetable soup with water and this vermicelli pasta all stirred up, and I managed – ever so slowly – to have half a litre with some bread from the freezer.

And then back to bed where I immediately broke out into a fever. The food was right, but the timing was wrong.

The coughing and the uncontrollable nose increased in vigour and I had a really incomfortable night. I couldn’t find the Vick and my olbas oil is pretty ancient now and lost most of its efficacity. So I suffered. And suffered.

A few minutes sleep here and there was all that I managed throughout the night.

Wednesday 20th February 2019 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… difficulties, today was different. I felt much worse.

To my own surprise I managed to haul myself out of bed at some kind of smart-ish time. And I completed my packing by simply stuffing everything into my rucksack (something that will cause me a great deal of anguish and anxiety in the future) and then heading out to the station. I was definitely feeling the strain of everything that had happened.

With having bought my ticket on line, I didn’t have to wait for my ticket and could take my place on the platform. With 15 minutes to wait, I was feeling the strain of standing up by the time that the train pulled in and I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of the trip.

So tired and ill and totally fed-up, I boarded my rather blurred and shaky (because I couldn’t stop my hand shaking) train to Quievrain (the old border crossing to France) and curled up as best as I could as far as Brussels Gare du Midi

45 minutes to wait at Brussels, but I didn’t want to go for a wander around or even go for something to eat. I couldn’t stomach any food even though I hadn’t had enything to eat since yesterday lunchtime.

Luckily I found a seat, even though it was in the cold, draughty waiting area. And there I waited until my train was called.

It was another one of the Reseau 38000 PBA sets that we had today and it was 10 minutes late departing, due to the arrival of the connection from Amsterdam that couples up behind it.

And there was a freezing fog all over the landscape that meant that even with the little leeway in the journey timing, we were unable to make up any of the lost time.

But a 10-minute delay isn’t of any great importance in the normal run of things, but as we have said, things just now aren’t normal.

What made matters worse was that just as I descended onto the platform at the Metro, the train that was waiting there pulled out before I could board. And the one that I eventually clambered aboard was held up for a couple of minutes by a power failure.

Nothing was going to plan.

Just for a change, I used the travelators to move around in Montparnasse. The Gare Montparnasse was moved 30 or 40 years or so ago (I can’t remember exactly when) when the Tour Montparnasse was built.

But they didn’t realign the metro or rebuild the metro stations so you have a very long – almost 1km – walk down in the bowels before you reach the station, and once on the station, the longest walk within any terminal of any railway station anywhere in the world that I have ever visited before you reach your platform.

It’s good for clocking up the fitness miles, but not good enough if you are in a rush or your train is late. Nevertheless, I managed to arrive at my train with 15 minutes to go. It’s a good job that it wasn’t like last time where even running flat out – or as flat out as I can go these days – I only just managed to leap aboard.

First thing that I did on settling down in my comfy seat was to go to sleep. And that was all that I did – occasionally drifting into some kind of semi-consciousness here and there.

By the time I got to Phoe … errr … Granville I was totally wasted.

But there was time to photograph the train – another GEC Alstom Regiolis of course – but with one of the Bombardier X76500 class of automotrices alongside it.

This has oulled in just two minutes earlier from Caen on the new curve off the Caen-Rennes line.

These trains were built specifically to replace a whole generation of earlier multiple-units and to provide a higher capacity on the lines.

We’ve travelled on these before from Riom to Lyon and they are very comfortable

No problem about being exhausted though. There was a bus in just 15 minutes time and so in yet another change to the habits of a lifetime, I waited for it and had a ride back home.

Past the quay where Thora was tied up, but I didn’t take much notice.

It was cold in here so the heating and the hot water were switched back on straight away. I just dumped my stuff in the living room and that, dear reader, was that. I went to bed.

Sunday 17th February 2019 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL …

… day today.

Shame that I had to spend much of it sitting about on the Gare du Nord in Paris.

The mystery of why my train was cancelled was revealed today, and I really ought to stop myself from being so cynical. Apparently some workmen digging a hole by the side of the railway line during the week had come across an unexploded bomb from World War II.

It was still viable and so it needed to be defused. This had been programmed for Sunday morning and the entire neighbourhood had been evacuated and all of the trains stopped while the bomb squad defused it.

My suggesting that they run a Eurostar full of Brits past the bomb to make it explode was greeted with a great deal of support by the railway staff, but was not (unfortunately) put into practice.

For once in my life I had leapt out of bed with alacrity (and you all thought that I slept alone!) when the alarm went off.

And without my breakfast and without my medication, I attacked the packing, making sandwiches and the tidying up. As well as doing a back-up on the big computer. I also copied a pile of updated files onto the USB key that I take with me when I travel.

Off into town with my heavy load – I don’t know why I need so much stuff just for a couple of days, and past the Place General de Gaulle.

Here, they were setting up a brocante for the day. They always seem to have them when I’m either not here or on my way out.

And when I have been here to attend, there’s never been anything actually worth buying.

My route to the railway station takes me from the Place General de Gaulle up the rue Couraye.

I’ve seen this building before but I’ve never really taken much notice of the facade above the shop window.

It seems that this has been a ladies’ outfitters since it was built, judging by the inscription in the concrete work above the first-floor windows.

The train wasn’t in when I arrived so I had a coffee and a sit-down outside. It was a pleasant morning for the time of the year. No-one would ever have said the middle of February

Once the train pulled in, we all piled aboard, me clutching the coffee that I had bought from the machine.

Drinking the coffee and nibbling away on the biscuits that I had bought for breakfast, off we set. And for a couple of hours I had a comfortable sleep on board – just a little tossing and turning here and there.

During all of the time that I’ve been travelling this line, I’ve never really managed a good photograph of the Eiffel Tower.

Today, thought, the conditions were perfect and I finally managed to take a good photo of it.

And in thz background to the right on the crest of the hill you can see the Eglise Sacré Coeur away on Montmartre.

The metro though Paris was crowded today, but it was a strangely deserted Gare du Nord to which I arrived. Just a few people about and only two people in the queue for metro tickets. So seeing that I’m running out, I took the opportunity to buy another packet of 10 tickets.

In the Thalys office they wouldn’t put me on an earlier train – for the simple reason that there wasn’t one.

There was another Thalys on charter to a private group and the girl telephoned to see if I could go on it. The reply on the phone was “yes” – but at the gate it was “no”. So we had a big discussion about that.

And as it happens, it didn’t make any difference anyway because nothing was moving until 15:00.

Eventually I was ushered onto the TGV anyway, and at 15:01 we hit the rails. What surprised me about that was that the train was half-empty. It seems that everyone had been turned away or decided not to travel.

Another thing that surprised me was that we didn’t seem to take the usual route either. It looked completely different until after Charles de Gaulle Airport.

At Brussels I had a wait for my train, so I went to the shop for something for pudding and a bottle of water. I always seem to develop quite a thirst when I’m in Leuven.

The train that brought me from Brussels to Leuven was heaving. It was one of the “push-me-pull-u” express trains from Oostende and there were kids all over it brandishing sand-encrusted buckets and spades.

They had clearly been enjoying themselves in the fine weather – and who could blame them?

I took the lift up to the gallery to walk across the railway lines, only to find that the lift on the other side was out of order. So I had to go back down again and brave the subterranean passage.

Here at my little hotel complex I had rather a surprising conversation with the manager.
“There’s something that I’ve always been meaning to ask you. Didn’t you used to play in a rock band years ago? Your name looks quite familiar”.

Now I can’t remember what I was doing even half an hour ago. So I’m bewildered how come some Flemish guy might remember my name from the only time my name ever appeared in the Music press – when I played bass for a well-known drummer from Wales in an ad-hoc band that played for just one night at Crewe Teachers’ Training College in 1976 or 77.

Having had a good sleep on the train I wasn’t really all that tired so much to my own surprise I didn’t crash out on the bed. Instead, I had a few things to do.

A little later I went for a walk into town for my pizza. After all, it IS Sunday.

Walking past the Herbert Hooverplein, the University library looked splendid, all illuminated in the dark. And with no-one around to spoil my view.

It was just inviting to be photographed and so I duly obliged.

Having had tea now, it might only be 22:00 but this is probably the cue for an early night. I need to catch upon my sleep and save my strength for the battle ahead tomorrow.

Saturday 16th February 2019 – THAT WAS AN …

… exciting football match.

The semi-finals of the Irn-Bru Cup, where various Scottish clubs compete against selected invited sides from Wales, The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Tonight, Edinburgh City were playing against Connahs Quay Nomads of the Welsh Premier League for a place in the finals. It was something of a scrappy match – with Edinburgh City having more skill but the Nomads having more possession and more directness.

The Nomads went behind after just one minute, but after that, Edinburgh didn’t really threaten the Nomads’ goal very much, except from corners.

After that, the Nomads equalised from another long-throw, and hit the woodwork a couple of times.

We ended up with extra time and penalties, and Jon Danby in the Nomads goal did really well to save two penalties to push the Nomads through into the finals. This competition is certainly putting the Welsh premier League on the map, and not before time either.

Last night was quite a reasonable night.

I had a decent sleep for once, and was off on my travels. I was meeting a guitarist somewhere in Granville. he lived in the flats on the left halfway up the rue Couraye but when I pulled into the courtyard, he wasn’t there. His wife came down for a chat and as we were talking, her husband turned up. The asked me if it was me that they had seen last night coming back down from the football stadium. I replied that it was, to which they added that I needed to be careful if I were going there that evening because there would be crowds and there was some violence threatened.
This led on to two people being chased around a park by a polar bear. They climbed up a ladder to escape but to everyone’s surprise, the polar bear climbed up after them. They climbed down another ladder and ran off, leaving me looking at the polar bear. So it came over towards me. For some reason, I didn’t run either and as the bear approached me, it suddenly transformed itself into a tall, thin youth with a bushy black beard.

Despite the alarms, it was more like 07:00 when I arose. and after going through the usual ritual I had a shower and then set a washing machine on the go. It was a nice sunny day outside so I wanted to put the washing in the window to dry.

Once I’d organised the washing in the window, I headed off into town.

Our old friend – and I do mean “old” – the CF Bedford transformed into a mobile home was back there in its usual spot overlooking the harbour.

One day i’ll get to speak to the owners and find out more about it. It’s a pretty anonymous vehicle in the sense that it doesn’t even display its département number on the number plate.

While I was down there I had a look over the wall at the new building that that they have been constructing.

The back wall is finished now and I imagine that they will soon be putting in the windows.

But my attention was drawn to the rear of the house, and in particular the annex extension. I was wondering what it is supposed to be and what they are intending to do with it.

From there I walked down the stairs and across the rue du Nord and onto the harbour by the fish processing plant.

Dodging the seagulls dropping the crustaceans onto the concrete to break them open, I crossed over via the harbour gates that were closed.

The tide is well out and all of the boats in the harbour are aground.

We’ve seen a few times the layout of the fish dock underneath the fish processing plant, but we’ve never had a close look at it.

One of these days I’ll go for a walk around underneath and see what it’s really like, but this is the best view that we can have of it for now. We’ve not seen it from this angle before.

You can see the tidal gates to the port here on the right, and you can see from the stains the height of the tide when it’s in.

On the southern side of the harbour there were a couple of guys messing around with tools and measuring tape and all of that kind of thing.

And on the principle that if you want to know the answer to a question, you need to ask the question, and so I did.

It seems that they are erecting bollards along the edge of the quayside, presumably to stop motorists driving off the edge into the harbour.

Our old friend Le Grande Ancre is in port today, moored up at the other side of Marité

There’s some kind of interesting tractor with double rear wheels, parked on the deck of the boat. I wonder what that’s for and where it might be going.

There was also a boat there too – presumably the lifeboat for the ship if ever she were to sink. As we know, she’s actually been involved in one rescue a few years ago, as a rescuer, not a rescuee.

In the town centre the gilets jaunes were out there in force, disrupting the traffic.

Regardless of whether or not their protest is a valid one, they should be protesting against the politicians and the tax officials and the like.

That’s far too difficult, however. They aren’t brave enough for that. Their level is just about coming to a peaceful market and harassing the passers-by and the motorists. It really does get on my wick and I wish that they would all clear off.

Anyway, I made it to the market today for my special baguette.

And as you might expect, the boulangerie is on holiday this week so I had to do without. I picked up some pears though, and also some cooking apples. I’m going to make an apple tart when I come back from Belgium.

I went to another boulangerie for a baguette and then went home.

After lunch, I pushed on with updating the blog and I’ve made it back to 15th December 2018. Still plenty to go at.

I would have done even more, except that round about 14:30 I had to go to bed. No idea why because I’d had a good sleep during the night. I was out for 90 minutes yet again.

Still plenty of time to go out and join the madding crowds milling around on the Pointe du Roc.

Hordes of people out there, even more than yesterday. And that was no surprise because it really was a beautiful day today.

Out in the bay there were the yachts out again having a bit of a sail around in the Baie de Mont St Michel. It made me want to be out there with them too, and one of these days I will.

There was quite a racket coming from the chantier navale while I was out there, so I went for a look around.

Armor, the ship from the diving people, was still in there and receiving attention. It looks as if they are taking off all of the paint for it, presumably ready for giving it a bare-metal respray.

When I come back from Leuven I’ll have to go over there for a look and see what they’ve done to her, if she’s still in there.

Tea tonight was out of a tin and then we had the football. Now I’m off to bed because I really need a decent sleep as I do have to be up early.

There’s a lot to do.

tide out boats aground port de granville harbour manche normandy france

market rue saint saveur granville manche normandy france

steps rue saint saveur granville manche normandy france

lifeboat memorial baie de mont st michel st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

Friday 15th February 2019 – AS WHAT SEEMS TO BE …

… the normal procedure this morning, I heard the alarms go off and then turned over and went back to sleep.

The irony about that is I was wide awake at 04:40 and lay there tossing and turning until 06:00. Going back to sleep straight away and not waking up at 07:25 is bizarre.

During the night I’d been on my travels. On a bus holiday too but the bus was huge – it was more like an aeroplane with over 200 people in it, although it was rather laid out like a bus. I had a double-seat to myself but I had noticed a girl who would have been an ideal companion to share my seat. The driver announced that those people going on the optional excursions needed to alight and board another bus. That meant me, but I hadn’t been to my hotel yet. So I had to fight my way down to the front to speak to the driver. He told me that it did include me, so I had to fight my way to the back again, pick up my possessions, struggle through the crowds with my huge suitcase and find my bus. The driver looked at me and laughed. He said that it was the first time that he had ever had a passenger wishing to bring all of their possessions on an optional excursion. I replied that this was because I hadn’t yet been allowed to go to my hotel, and what was he going to do about it? But he walked off.

A late breakfast of course, and then a relaxing day without doing anything exciting.

And by the time that I’d finished, I’d finished the web-page with the photos of Cologne back in December and put it on line. The photos are a little disappointing, mainly because the weather was so dreadful, but one or two of them have some remarkable effects.

Having attended to that, I could then press on with the blog entry for that day too. That’s now on-line too.

That doesn’t sound as if I have done very much today but, believe me, it wasn’t particularly straightforward. And having done the difficult bit, I can press on with the rest of the blog.

That hummus that I made the other day is even more wicked than it was when I made it. It’s maturing nicely and the garlic smells delicious. It should keep me going – in many more senses than one – for a considerable time.

This afternoon was one of the nicest afternoons that I have ever experienced in a February.

It really was a pleasure to be out and about in it – so much so that I actually went out earlier than normal.

There was a light sea mist that prevented a really good view down the coast, but the skies were blue and so was the sea – a really deep summery blue.

And I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either, as you might expect.

There were hordes of people milling around on the grass on the Pointe du Roc around the old military installations of the Atlantic Wall. And who can blame them?

In the foreground on the left is one of the rotation tracks for one of the large guns that were positioned here, and on the right in the background is the former military athletics track that is now the playing field for the College Malraux.

There was plenty of activity on the sea too.

A yacht was quite happily sailing past the headland of the Pointe du Roc and I went to take a photo of it – and just at that very moment a seagull flew past the camera.

That’s what they call a “photo-bombing with a difference” and I couldn’t reproduce that photo if I tried for a hundred years.

Round the corner and today’s walk took me on the cliffs above the chantier navale.

As I mentioned the other day, there’s a lot of activity going on in there right now. They seem to be very busy and that’s always good news.

There are a couple of new boats in there today too. We saw the yacht and the trawler in there when we went past on Monday, but the third one in there is new.

She’s Armor owned by a leisure diving company from near Lannion in the Côtes d’Armor, in between St Brieuc and Roscoff. So she’s come a long way to be serviced here.

I had to fight off a wave of fatigue round about 17:00, which is an improvement from just recently.

Tea was a vegan burger with pasta, veg and tomato sauce. Quite delicious it was too.

I was alone on my walk again this evening. And I can’t think why because it really was pleasant out there. Not at all like a February night.

I had a wander around the walls and spent a couple of minutes looking at the traffic driving up the hill and round the slalom of the Avenue de la Libération.

No-one – not even a seagull – disturbed me at all while I was out there

No cats either tonight, so I trudged on homewards.

There’s a small house in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame that has attracted my attention. Some evenings it’s illuminated by a lampt outside, and tonight the building was looking particularly attractive.

It would come out even better if I had a better camera that would stop down even lower. This was taken with the 18-105mm lens at f3.75 at ISO800.

Saturday tomorrow and ordinarily I would be going shopping. But on Sunday I’m heading off to Leuven again so I shan’t bother.

I might have a little wander into town tomorrow morning though and visit the market to see what is going on. They should be starting the preparations for the Carnaval too and I’ll be interested to see where they are up to.

brehal plage granville manche normandy france

marker light rocks waves granville manche normandy france

waves on rocks pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boat english channel granville manche normandy france

lifeboat memorial port entrance marker light baie de mont st michel st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

sailing boats yachts baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawler fishing boat refuelling port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Thursday 14th February 2019 – TODAY’S BAD NEWS …

… is twofold.

Firstly, my TGV to Brussels on Sunday is cancelled. Due to a perturbation, or disturbance, so they say, but more likely it’s under-subscribed and there’s plenty of room on the ones before and after.

Secondly, I had a letter back about my taxe d’habitation. I asked for the years 2013 and 2015, but instead they sent me the ones for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Just as did the Tax Office in Montaigut-en-Combraille.

So I’ve no idea what’s going on there. I’ll have to ring them up to find out.

Last night wasn’t as early as I was expecting, and I left the bed … errr … somewhat later than the alarms. i’d been on a nocturnal ramble too, but all that I remember was going into someone else’s office to sharpen my pencil – the plot of something that I was watching on a DVD at teatime last night – to write it down.

We had breakfast and a shower and general clean-up, and then headed off to the shops. Just LIDL today of course. And the only thing that I bought was a new balaclava helmet to wear under my crash helmet. The old one that I have is ancient and filthy and so it’s high time that I replaced it.

But I was waylaid on my way to the supermarket.

Normandy Trader was in port this morning, moored up at her usual mooring place next to Marité. She was unloading what looked like piles of shellfish, and the empty crates were being loaded back on board.

There were also sacks of what looked like sand or gravel just there on the quayside, presumably waiting their turn to be loaded up on board.

Back here, I made myself a coffee and attacked the remaining carrots that needed preparation and freezing. They were peeled, diced and blached with a couple of bayleaves, and then stuck in the freezer.

That was anough for the morning. I had a little relax while I reviewed what had been going on during the morning.

No excitement as yet – that is to come later.

After lunch, I carried on with my text database and all of December is now complete. I’ve done a few more blog entries and I’ve now reached back as far as 24th December 2018. The 23rd is the day that I went to Köln to see Jackie, and there are so many photos from there that I’m working even as we speak on a web page to display them all.

later on this afternoon, I went out for my usual walk.

Around the walls in the glorious winter sunshine. It was such a beautiful day today.

And I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather. There were crowds of people swarming around on the pathways and down on the beach making the most of the school holidays.

The tides and currents were interesting too, and the crowds on the beach down there at the Plat Gousset weren’t the only ones enjoying them.

There were some beautiful swirling waves coming onto the beach with the tide, making some spectacular patterns up and down the beach.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything look quite so artistic as this. Nature can do some wonderful things sometimes.

Carrying on around the walls, I looked down on the rue Paul Poirier. They have strung up a pile of decorations across the street – probably today because I don’t recall seeing them yesterday.

This year, Carnaval is the weekend of 2nd/3rd March and it looks as if they are setting their stall out already.

The Carnaval here in Granville is certainly special, and attracts crowds from hundreds of miles away.

Down in the harbour, Normandy Trader had cleared off – presumably fully loaded with whatever it was that was piled up on the quayside.

But it looks as if the sailing school was in operation today because there were a few yachts outside the harbour doing a little manouevring around in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

Everyone seemed to be out there enjoying the weather today and I can’t say that I blame them.

Back here, I had a coffee and carried on working, fighting off wave after wave of fatigue. In the end, I went to bed where I stayed quite comfortably for 90 minutes, most of which was spent asleep.

I’ve gone on from an occasional 10 minutes here and there to a regular flat-out 90 minutes and it’s worrying.

For tea tonight I didn’t have my potato curry. In fact, by the time I’d been through and sorted out the bit of a leek and the mushrooms that were remaining in the vegetable rack, the rest of the stuffing from yesterday made a decent-sized proportion.

And it was delicious too.

Outside tonight for my walk in the calm, cool evening, and almost colliding with a couple of shadows making their way around in the dark, I noticed that there wasn’t anything to see in the tidal harbour.

Probably something not unconnected with the fact that the tide was too far out.

Instead I noticed that the restaurant down on the rue du Port was open and, presumably, frying tonight. I’ve taken a few photos of the street down there but I’ve never noticed the restaurant before.

This photo and the next one might not be of any interest to you, but they are to me.

Right out in the distance there was a bright light slowly moving across the horizon. And so I took two photographs of it, messing around with the exposure controls and the camera speed.

The first one (this one) is over-exposed, and the second one, below, is underexposed.

They aren’t very clear at all and you can’t see what they feature, because after all, it’s only a 50mm lens, but I can have a wild guess.

It was round about 21:15 when I took the photos, and so that tells me that the lights could well be those of the Brittany Ferries ship Pont Aven setting out on its 20:35 sailing to Portsmouth.

I really need a better camera to bring out the best in this kind of shot.

So back in the apartment again, and I’m getting ready for bed. If I can go to sleep after my repose later on this afternoon.

I need to sort myself out.

And today’s excitement?

Mrs Mayhem put her proposals yet again before Parliament. And once again, she was defeated.

But is she taking this latest humiliation seriously? Not in the least. She’ll keep on going by keeping on presenting her proposals every week, wearing everyone down with the threat that if they don’t accept her plan, they’ll have to accept a no-deal pull-out.

Something that will suit her husband – and piles of currency traders and Futures dealers – down to the ground.

She will go down in History as having laid down her country for her life.

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Wednesday 13th February 2019 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …

… day when things started off by going wrong.

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 etc – I know because I heard them – but despite having had an early-ish night it was 07:25 when I awoke. And 07:50 when I crawled out of the stinking pit.

I’d been on my travels during the night too. Back in Crewe again in fact, with a group of people planning to travel to a football match – as we did a few times back in the mid-70s. But this time, the match was somewhere near Wrexham and even on a nocturnal ramble I was able to realise that this was something that would be extremely unlikely.

After breakfast I cracked on with my work.

The blog is now done as far back as 28th December 2018, and the text database for December 2018 is almost finished.

But apart from that, the fact that I now have my passport means that I can set in motion a couple of other little projects that I have in the back of my mind. I sent out a couple of mails and I’ve even had a reply from one of them.

That was quick!

As well as that, I have a contact whom I met on board the Good Ship Ve… errr … Ocean Endeavour. He’s an agent for Nikon cameras so I’ve been talking to him today about a new camera. He seems to think that the new mirrorless Nikon Z6 would do what I want, but after my bad experience with the Nikon 1 J5 I’m just a little bit wary of mirrorless cameras.

We had lunch of course, and a session on the guitar.

And then a walk out this afternoon.

And it was another gorgeous day. A real pleasure to be out in the sun and it was actually warm out there which was a surprise.

The beach looked really inviting and I was tempted to go for a walk thereupon but I have too much to do right now than to go off idly passing the time.

There was a sea haze out there looking northwards and visibility wasn’t all that good today.

There was a yacht in the distance off the coast of Bréhal-Plage, but there were also a couple more of these buoys that we have been seeing just recently.

I still haven’t worked out what they might be for. They appear as if by magic and the next day they are gone.

For tea tonight, I had a stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And it was just as delicious as normal. But there’s plenty of stuffing left so it might be a potato curry tomorrow to finish it off. there’s half a leek from the other day that will go in there nicely.

Out for my walk again tonight. And once more I was the only one out there, which is a shame because it really was quite nice out there;

You couldn’t see anything to the north because the mist had closed in, but to the south we were treated once more to the fishing boats going around the harbour.

Only the small ones because the tide was only just coming in. The ones with a deeper draught will be in there later.

So while I go to bed for an early night I’ll leave you with the news that the British Defence Minister has said today that The UK will use Military force to protect its interests after Brexit.

He went on to say “we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality, and increase our mass”.

“Increase our lethality”! Just what planet are these fools living on?

To think that these are the people who are going to lead the UK into the Brave New post-Brexit world. They are insane!

It’s this kind of 19th-Century sabre-rattling that makes me more and more ashamed and embarrassed to admit that I’m British.

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coa

Tuesday 12th February 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… today (because there has been some) is that my new passport arrived.

There was a telephone call this morning asking me if I would be here this afternoon because the courier intended to pass by.

And so having confirmed it, I received a second phone call at about 15:35 to ask me which was the door to my block of apartments. Instead, I went downstairs and a charming lady handed me a big yellow envelope.

So now, being all legal again, that’s one less thing to think about. That is – until I lose this one.

For some reason or other, I was still awake and working at 01:30 last night. That’s usually a recipe for disaster but then again there’s no point in going to bed when I’m not tired and when I can carry on working.

Despite that, I managed to wake up when the alarm went off and I was out of bed comparatively early.

A comparatively early breakfast and then I settled down to work. And by the time that I had finished, I’d finished the blog back as far as 1st January 2019. And it’s not as easy as it might be either because until I fathomed out the depths of this new blog upgrade, the blog was itself inserting all kinds of redundant and surplus *.html code that bears little or no resemblance to the coding that I use.

It all has to be stripped out and while I have a computer program that does that, it strips out everything, including the coding that I want leaving in. And so I have to start again.

As far as the text database goes, I’m now back almost to the beginning of December. That was, by the way, a heavy month for photos so it’s going to take longer than it otherwise might.

I went out and about for my walk this afternoon as usual.

And was treated to the delightful sight of a group of British people blocking off the rue St Jean while they unloaded a trailer of furniture – because they were too lazy to carry the furniture 50 metres from the car park around the corner.

It’s this kind of thing that I hate, because it gives all of us a very bad name when they treat the locals with contempt like this.

However, leaving aside a really good rant for the moment, the weather this afternoon was beautiful.

It was sunny and warm (for the time of year) and the sky was quite clear. There was a beautiful view of the coastline all the way along from Donville les Bains down to Bréhal-Plage.

On the right of the image is of course that old hotel where I saw that miserable apartment that was to let.

And hardly surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the beautiful weather;

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s school holiday so there were crowds out there strolling along the Plat Gousset and walking along the beach.

No-one actually in the water, though. And I can’t blame them. It wasn’t that warm out there.

And not only that, there was some activity in the port too. Our old friend Thora was in the harbour this afternoon tied up at her berth by the dockyard crane.

I could see that she was loaded up with a dozen or so of these enormous gravel bags, but whether or not there was gravel in them I couldn’t really say.

But whatever there is in there, it’ll all be off to Jersey in early course.

having been up on the top of the walls at the back of the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou to take a photo of Thora, there was a really good view of my apartment building.

It’s the building on the right there, part of an old military barracks with the parade ground in the middle.

Part of the old parade ground is closed off and is our private parking. You can see Caliburn in his little parking space just there.

The building in the background is now the College Malraux – the local secondary school. Their playground is the old military sports ground at the back of the College.

Back here, I had the usual strum on the guitar followed by a coffee. No Christmas Cake because I finished that off on Sunday. And then I started work again;

But not for long though. I was soon tucked up in bed under the covers fast asleep. And there I stayed for about 90 minutes. I wasn’t asleep for all of that time but it’s difficult for me to tear myself out of bed.

There was some of that potato and lentil curry left over from the other day. So I added half a leek and some sweetcorn to it to lengthen it.

And followed by tinned fruit salad and that soya cream stuff (almond this week, not coconut) it was thoroughly delicious.

Later on after tea I went out for my evening walk. Around the headland tonight, looking at the trawlers coming in with their catch.

And I tried a little experiment. The photos that I’m taking of various things at night are sometimes coming out poorly because I’m struggling to set the exposure correctly to stop pinpoints of light being too bright and distorting the image.

So tonight what I did was to set the exposure to where I would ordinarily have set it, and then reduced the ISO by one stop and increased the exposure by a couple of stops.

And it’s coming out much clearer – but there’s still room to go.

There was a large collection of lights just outside the entrance to the harbour. It looked as if it might have been a gravel boat such as Neptune standing off and hove to, waiting for the tidal gates to open.

But with the photo being much better and clearer than usual now, I could see that it was actually a couple of trawlers having stopped to have a little chat before they came in and tied up to unload.

But the harbour was really quite busy tonight.

There must have been eight or nine fishing boats in the outer harbour either tied up unloading or waiting for an empty berth. And half a dozen more here or hereabouts on their way in.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I would have loved to have been here in the heyday of the port when it would have been packed with Newfie trawlers.

So now I’m going to try to have an early night. I probably won’t sleep, what with having crashed out this afternoon, but I ought to make an effort.

I can’t keep on going like this.

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