Saturday 16th January 2021 – IT’S AS QUIET …

… as the grave around here this evening.

In fact, it’s as quiet as the grave just about everywhere in France right now. Due to the failure to bring the Covid figures down to a reasonable figure, quarantine has been advanced from 20:00 to 18:00 all throughout the country.

That’s knocked my evening outings well and truly on the head , and all that I have to say on the subject is “thank heavens that we have a Government here that is taking the initiative”. And when I mention that the figures that are causing the French Government such unease are actually only about a third of the chaos and carnage in the UK you’ll understand why I’m happy to be here.

Another thing that has changed is that regular readers of this rubbish will recall yesterday that I mentioned that most of the local fishing boats were still in harbour despite the good weather and I expressed my surprise.

The reason for this is that despite the provisional agreement over fishing rights that was agreed the other day, Jersey announced on Thursday that it was reneging from the agreement.

What will happen now remains to be seen, but we are now living in very interesting times in a French fishing port in Normandy.

As for me, I seem to be living in interesting times here too, as I actually managed to beat the third alarm to my feet. Not by much, I have to say but by enough to call it a victory.

Nothing on the dictaphone unfortunately, and I had something of a vague recollection going round in my head and even more unfortunately I forgot it as soon as I awoke, before I had the time to reach for the dictaphone. So I’ll never know where I went and, even more interestingly, who came with me.

After a shower I headed for the shops. At NOZ I spent rather a lot of money, but most of that was on liquid refreshment like coconut milk, cans of Schweppes bitter lemon and the like rarely if ever seen in France. NOZ does have some good stuff every now and again like this and that’s why I like going there.

At LeClerc, in contrast, I spent very little. There was nothing there that particularly caught my fancy. I did forget (once again) to buy some tomato sauce for the pizza tomorrow so I’ll have to use that aubergine stuff.

Back here I just about managed to put the frozen food away (having to rearrange the freezer as it’s rather full in there right now), made myself a hot chocolate and fetched the last mince pie, and then promptly fell asleep. I suppose that that was completely on the cards after the early start and how I’ve been feeling just recently.

A rather late lunch then, and afterwards I attacked the kefir.

Plenty of juice oranges left from last week so it was only natural that I would use those to make another batch. And it’s probably going to be just as volatile as the last lot, I reckon. But it does taste nice so I can’t really complain.

There’s another batch busily festering away now too, and I have in mind some kiwi and pear for this batch next week. That kiwi and pear that I made the other week was pretty good.

later on it was time for me to go walkies. My only walk of the day as well, unfortunately.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the seagull that comes along and perches on the windowsill on the first floor of this building by the other entry. Not only was it there again today, its mummy was there with it but she cleared off as soon as I came out.

The best I could do was to take a rather hurried shot of baby before it too cleared off to follow its mummy.

There weren’t all that many people out there today which was no surprise because it was really cold, there was another foul wind blowing and it was threatening rain.

Down there on the beach though there were a few people wandering around taking in the iar. Not like the person down there the other day ina wet suit – that was rather exaggerated – but they were certainly enjoying it all the same.

There has been some heavy rain overnight so the path was pretty much flooded along the top of the cliffs so picking my way along there, I ended up at the end of the headland.

The sun, such as it wasn’t, wasn’t anythign to write home about, so I carried along the path on the other side of the headland.

And we have a change in the occupancy of the chantier navale. Joker is still there, as is the yacht and the other little fishing boat but the big trawler that’s been there for quite a while has no cleared off, back into the water hopefully.

Things must be moving down there.

And I must be moving now too. The rain is coming down quite heavily now and I need a nice hot coffee.

Back here, clutching my hot coffee in my sweaty little mitt I made a start on the day after I left Chateau Gaillard. Strawberry Moose and I are currently laying siege to the Chateau de Chalus to avenge the death of Richard the Lionheart who was killed by an arrow there in 1199.

We actually went (well, I did – he didn’t as it isn’t the kind of place that he should go) to Oradour-sur-Glane to see the ruined village. This was the village that was destroyed by Das Reich on 10th June 1944 and the remains are still there as the Waffen-SS left it.

That is however going to be something of an epic and I need a few really good solid sessions of uninterrupted time (as if I am ever likely to have that) to make a plan of how I’m going to tackle it.

There was an hour on the guitar and then tea. I’d thought of something nice to have but unfortunately I’d forgotten what it was so I had to think of something else.

Someone had sent me a recipe for a cheese sauce with a difference – butter and garlic to make it richer – so I cooked some pasta with a pile of mixed frozen veg and did one of these cheese sauces. And it was delicious too, especially followed by another slice of my jam tart.

There’s no bread so after the washing up I prepared a pile of bread dough. That’ll be proofing overnight and I can deal with that tomorrow morning, if I’m up in time.

Now I’m off to bed. I have visitors tomorrow and I’m not really up to it and the apartment is a tip because I haven’t cleaned it for a fortnight but I really can’t find the energy to do it.

Maybe a decent sleep tonight might give me enough energy for an hour to do something about it.

But I’m not optimistic.

Friday 15th January 2021 – LET’S NOT TALK …

… about this morning. It wasn’t 05:45 when I left my stinking pit – and neither was it 06:45, or 07:45, or 08:45, and while I might have been awake at 09:45, it wasn’t then that I left my bed either.

So that was the whole morning ruined.

It’s my own fault though. It was already a late night when I was planning on going to bed, but just as I was about to retire, onto the playlist came LA GAZZA LADRA, and if I ever have to make a list of the 10 best live rock albums of all time, this one would be well in there.

And so I need not continue.

Much to my surprise I’d been off on my travels during the night – or rather, the morning. We had a French exchange student staying with us – it was actually one of my little nieces – who was very uncomfortable as she had a different approach to life than some of the other kids so she didn’t socialise easily but she fitted in well where I was living with my friends from on the Wirral as the mum and dad. I don’t know what i was doing there but anyway it was now time for me to leave. The father, who has now turned into my niece’s husband was working on the car that would take me back into town to pick up my bus and he had to get the car out and give me time to be washed and ready but the time went so quickly that the mother had to call me. As I was going downstairs she said “do you want to go back upstairs? There’s some suntan oil in my bathroom cupboard. I replied “there’s no need for any of that”. She explained to our exchange student, who really WAS our exchange student from Summer 2019 by now, that in between living in the Wirral and where we were living today she’d lived in the USA for a while. Then we started to get the car ready for me and I thought “well, I’m being rushed a bit here and they are running me out of the house a bit”. This was making me a bit wary about what was happening and I don’t know why.

And at some point in all of this, Castor appeared in this dream – playing cards or doing a jigsaw with someone in a room upstairs, something that filled me with dismay and has more of a significance than any casual reader might realise.

So another exciting night and having had a shortage of pleasant nocturnal companions for quite some considerable time, I end up with a plethora thereof, all at once. I wish that my real life was this exciting.

What was exciting was that I actually managed to finish the magnum opus that is my account of the history of Chateau Gaillard. Well, it’s not finished – it’s merely the rough first draft and although it’s on line it’s going to be edited quite considerably before I publish it.

There was of course the afternoon walk around the headland. And in the beautiful weather too because although it was cold, the wind had dropped and we actually had a bright sunshine.

What surprised me about that was that many of the fishing boats were tied up in port this afternoon. Having seen the weather through which many of them had struggled over the past few days, I would have expected them to have made the most of the good weather today and been out there in droves.

But there must be someone out at sea because the tractor and trailer that hauls the shellfish around the local area is parked on the ramp, implying that they are waiting for someone to arrive.

There was no change in the chantier navale either – the same four boats.

And over at the ferry terminal, there was nothing happening either. Chausiais and one of the Joly France boats that provide the ferry service over to the Ile de Chausey are still there, moored up and aground with the low tide.

But no Channel Islands ferries. They are moored in the inner harbour where they have been since services were suspended with the virus. And it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing them up and running, because I’ve heard a story that unless the Channel Islanders dip their hands in their pockets to subsidise the service, something that they have so far failed to do, then the ferry service won’t be restarting.

Back here I had a hot coffee and, fighting off the waves of sleep that were somehow overwhelming me despite the long lie-in that I had had, I finished off the Chateau Gaillard and then had a very depressing hour on the guitars. I wasn’t there with it at all.

There was then the evening run of course after I’d finished the guitars.

Here’s a view that we’ve seen on several occasions, but not quite like this. This is the Rue du Nord looking back towards the Place d’Armes in the background over to the right. But tonight we had a beautiful sliver of crescent moon to light up our path a little.

From there I disappeared down through the gate and along the path underneath the walls, part running and part walking. There was no storm tonight whipping up the waves down at the Plat Gousset so I pushed on … “pushed off, he means” – ed.

My route took me at a run across the Square Maurice Marland on the way home.

having seen everything that was going on with the machinery yesterday I reckoned that I would go and investigate the Rue St Michel to see how they were doing. And they haven’t been hanging around either. They’ve dug quite a trench already so they won’t be long in doing this.

Unfortunately the alleyway was closed off at the other end so in order to make it to the walls I had to turn round and go the long way around.

It was all quiet at the fish processing plant this evening. But I was lucky enough to catch La Grande Ancre (for it is indeed she) moving away as if she has just unloaded her catch.

Once she’d moved away I moved away and ran for home and for tea.

Tonight I took a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit from the freezer and ate that with pasta and frozen vegetables, followed by more of my jam pie. That was a really good invention, that was. I’m pleased with how that turned out.

Although it’s not early, it’s earlier than it has been just recently so I’m off to bed. I really must try to do better than I have because this is all beginning (well, not beginning – well-advanced, actually) to bring me down and the last thing that I need to do is to bog myself down in a depression with all of this going on.

Look for the positives! And who knows? I might even find one one day.

Thursday 14th January 2021 – JUST FOR A …

… change, I managed to beat the third alarm again this morning.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t. When it started up I was still in bed but I was on the point of hauling myself out of my stinking pit at that moment, and I was out of bed like a ferret up a trouser leg.

Mind you, to be perfectly honest I would have given all that I had to have been able to go back to bed and back to sleep because I didn’t feel like it at all today. It wasn’t a good start to the day at all.

The orange kefir has calmed down enough to drink now, so I took my medication with that this morning. And it is delicious, I do have to say that. It’s a good batch.

And then I came back in here to check the dictaphone. That was one of the things that I promised yesterday that I would do first thing. And indeed there were several files recorded on there so I sat down to have a listen and to transcribe them.

There was one for yesterday and one for the day before and they are now on-line where they ought to be. But don’t worry – there was nothing exciting which is a shame. And no interesting companions, which is even worse.

The ones from today weren’t any more exciting either.

We started off on a ferry – one of these boats with cabins. I’d designed a pile of furniture and fitted it into these rooms – cabins the previous year. Some kind of incident had taken place between me and a girl. This year I had to design the same cabins and a similar kind of furniture but the measurements were completely different. When everything was laid out in the room it looked fine, OK, but the measurements were different. People crowded in to see what was happening. The guy in charge asked me what I thought about it so I told him. He told me what he thought, that it was very good, that sort of thing but when I mentioned “of course the measurements aren’t the same, are they? I’d like to know why there is the difference. He made a remark about “all the youngsters of today, they aren’t the same as in the past”. I could see that that was some kind of barbed comment. We were making all kinds of barbed comments about this and he even had some kind of winch thing to compress the furniture to see if it would fit any better.

He then asked if I would be interested in taking the cabin. Of course I was going to hold out for the old measurements, the stuff that I had designed for last year but my partner said something about “we’ll take the bed It’s a lovely diesel-powered bed”, all of this but I was trying to get whoever it was to keep quiet about this because I wanted to solve this problem first but this was knowingly aiding this other guy in dealing with this year’s issues and not the issues that I wanted dealing with last year about this girl – that was it (what was? Which girl?). There had been a disco on board and he was posting all the photos of the New Year’s disco. For some reason I hadn’t gone – whether I hadn’t been invited I don’t know but I’d been scanning these photos to see whether this girl was on there but I couldn’t see her on there so I was wondering whether she had gone or not.

And I wish that I knew who she was.

Later on, there was a question of winning an Audi car in a competition but I had undone the wrong tin and got the wrong food in this so I’d put the stuff somewhere like under the bed or under the pillow in the hope that no-one would notice it and we’d carry on that I might qualify to win this car. I’m not sure if anyone had noticed but a TV presenter had started to make all kinds of cracks about Covid as if he knew that I had some kind of guilty secret about it and he was grinding the axe in me, making me suffer instead of minding these Series 19 Brush locomotives which was what I wanted to do in the first place.

And I don’t know what all that was about either, to be honest.

Later on, I had a shower and a general clean-up, then grabbing my shopping bag, I headed out into the street for my Thursday shop at LIDL.

And if you thought that the weather had been bad just recently, it had absolutely nothing on what was going on this morning. One glance at the rough seas engulfing that trawler out there would give you a clue as to what the weather was doing.

We’ve had winds, and we’ve had more winds, but this morning’s winds were more than we have had for quite a while.

At first, I wasn’t sure what the ship was that I had seen, so I waited for it to pull into the harbour.

Now that I can see it closer up, I can recognise it as one that’s been in the harbour before, but I can’t think of her name right now. And in the background is the new trawler Le Pearl.

You’ll notice the red light illuminated at the harbour gate too. It started to flash just as our trawler came in and once it was safely in, the gates closed right behind it. Perfect timing, I would say.

Calling at the Post Office to post a letter, I pushed on along my way out of town.

There were a few things of interest that I bought in LIDL but I’m not going to say too much about them right now as it’s something for the future. But I bought my fruit and so on and then headed for home.

On the way back, I stopped off to try out their new cheque paying-in machine. All straightforward and easy once you know what to do.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking takes up a lot of room o these pages – so much so that you are probably as fed up of reading about it as I am of writing about it.

But sometimes, something happens that leaps out at you and you can’t pass it by – like this little incident here. On the left of where this delivery van is parked is a special parking bay reserved for deliveries and it happens to be empty right now. But our hero has parked alongside the loading bay, in the street, right next to a bollard, something that prevents anyone behind him from driving past

You really can’t make up things like this.

Anyway, I pushed on up the road, not feeling anything like it at all, until I reached my building.

And here, I had something of a surprise. We have visitors in the square. A few huge earth-moving machines are parked up in the car park of the building across the road. It looks as if we are going to be having some major work done somewhere in the vicinity in the very near future.

No doubt we shall find out more about this in the near future.

Back here, I didn’t even have time to unload the shopping before I sat down and promptly dozed off. These walks, loaded up with shopping, are killing me at the moment but I need to do it. But eventually I recovered and was able to drink my cold chocolate and eat my slice of fruit sourdough.

At lunch I used the last of my bread so I need to make another loaf pretty soon, and then I came in here to carry on with the arrears of work. I’m still at the Chateau Gaillard but we’ve reached the period of the Religious Wars right now, so not very much to do.

There was of course the afternoon walk. And even though by now it was raining, I was determined to go out and stretch my legs even more.

But not quite like this person is doing right now. In this wind you are not going to get me anywhere near the water’s edge, not even dressed in what appears to be a wetsuit. He’s a braver man than I am, Gunga Din.

Instead, I wandered off along the footpath on top of the cliffs, battling against the raging storm and the rain.

Across the lawn and across the car park by the lighthouse and then down to the headland to catch the full force of the gale.

The weather was comparatively clear today, and for once you could see the Brittany coast and just about make out the church of Cancale on the cliffs across the bay. There was another nice sunset – although it’s not really a sunset right now – out there in the middle of the bay with the rays of sun shining through the gaps in the clouds and illuminating the water.

It’s a shame that the weather was so bad, but then again we wouldn’t have had the effect if the weather had been different.

The weather might indeed have been bad, but it wasn’t bad enough to put off these two people here down below where I’m standing.

As usual, there is always someone somewhere doing the peche à pied – the scavenging amongst the rocks for the shellfish. This are is quite famous for its shellfish, as you have probably gathered from the number of boats that go out from here and the number of people that we see on occasion when there’s a huge tidal coefficient.

There are always people going around armed with their gratter and bucket.

From there I wandered off along the path on top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland.

This path takes me to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale and I always like to look down to see what’s going on there. And we have a change of occupant as well today. The yacht that has been there for ever is still there, as are the trawler and Joker, the blue and white shellfish boat.

But there’s a nw visitor in there today – the little silver and grey shellfish boat that has come to join in the fun.

Having admired the boats back at the chantier navale I headed off for home, to find myself confronted by yet more machinery.

This low-loader has just dropped off a little mini-digger. And seeing that there were a few guys hanging around I went to ask them what was going on.

There’s a street near here called the Rue St Michel and for the last 2 weeks it’s been covered with all kinds of multi-coloured hieroglyphics. It seems that some of those markings indicate a gas pipe, and these guys have come to dig it up and replace it.

Back here I carried on with my arrears and then broke off for my hour on the guitars, which I didn’t enjoy because I discovered that I seem to have lost my voice today, something that will please my neighbours mightily.

By the time that I went out for my evening walk the rain had stopped and we were treated to just the hurricane-force winds that made it difficult to run.

But at least the sea was enjoying the weather. You’ve already seen several photos that I’ve taken showing the waves coming crashing over the sea wall at the Plat Gousset with such incredible force. And I have to admit that I enjoyed the view as well – in fact I stayed there for a good few minutes watching them.

But I can’t stay there for ever. I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland in the direction of home.

On my way home, I go past a little alley that leads down to the Rue t Michel, a dead-end street of old stone houses in the old Medieval town.

In the past I’ve wandered down it a couple of times but I’ve never taken a photo of what’s going on because it’s usually too dark. But tonight, taking my time, I managed to take a rather respectable photo of the end of the street. You can see all of the fencing that they are presumably going to put around the hole that they dig.

You can also see the crazy markings on the surface too but unfortunately, you can’t see the mini-digger, because that’s right behind where I’m standing.

The little alleyway continues on to the old Medieval walls and so I went that way for a change.

From there I walked along the walls to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour where there is the really good view over the Fish Processing Plant. Quite a few of the fishing boats are still out fishing so the plant is open with people working there, a refrigerated lorry in the loading bay and a couple of vans on the car park.

And there’s a trawler moored up there too unloading even as we speak

But some of the trawlers are already in, moored up at the quayside. And I’m not really sure if they are parking up or preparing to go out, with their lights ablaze like that.

Braving the wind and rain, I ran on home for my tea. With the leftover stuffing from Tuesday, I added a small tin of kidney beans and made myself taco rolls with rice, followed by another wedge of jam pie with soya coconut sauce.

Tons of stuff to write out again today so t’s going to be another late night by the looks of things. And what with an early start, I’ll end up looking and feeling like death. At least I don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow.

Wednesday 13th January 2021 – IN NEWS THAT WILL …

… surprise almost everyone reading this rubbish right now – because it certainly surprised me – I managed to beat the third alarm to my feet this morning. And that’s not something that has been happening very often these days is it?

Mind you, it wasn’t actually a sprightly leap out of bed. More of a stagger to the edge of the bed and a sit there until the room stopped spinning sufficiently for me to try to stand up. I’ve had many better mornings that this. But then again I’ve had many worse too.

So while you admire more photos of the storm stirring up the waves to break down on the Plat Gousset I’ll recount the history of my day today.

First of all, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I usually start with details of last the previous night’s nocturnal rambles.

Last night’s voyage was a really long, rambling one. I’d been giving some kind of interview to someone or other and I’d dictated a few things about my brother about how he needs to work on his charm and all this kind of thing in order to get on much better with the opposite sex – just part of what I said. I’d said a lot of other things too. A couple of weeks later I was sitting on a wall outside a factory or something and my brother walked past. He saw me, stopped, took off his rings and handed them to me saying “if you think that these are no good, you can have them”. I said “that’s not what I said at all” but he carried on being argumentative and in the end left them to me and walked off. I took them thinking that it would get rid of him and he can calm down and have them back at a later date.

There was so much more to it than this but this is all that I remember, which is a shame.

What I have been doing in a rather desultory fashion today is some of the arrears from my trip around Central Europe in the summer.

For several weeks now I’ve been bogged down in recounting the history of the siege of Chateau Gaillard on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen, but finally at some point this afternoon the trebuchet or mangonel (history does not recount which one it was but I suspect the former) finally succeeded in propelling its missile right through the front door of the keep allowing the forces of King Philip to swarm inside.

As an aside, we built trebuchets and mangonels as part of our “Historical Technology” degree, but I digress.

Another thing that I managed to accomplish today was to finally contact the local tax office about the payment that they wanted me to make before Friday.

She had to run off and do some hunting around but, much to my surprise, she did actually phone me back. And it’s good news too.

The issue was that I had received a request to make 2 Taxe d’Habitation payments, but of course that can’t be right as you can only live “officially” in one place. I had noticed that my registration number in the Registre Natioanal as quoted on the two documents was different so I suspected that that had something to do with it.

And I was right too. The Belgian Pensions Office has me down as Nationalité Belge and so as that’s different from my Nationalité Britannique the French authorities have assumed that it’s a different person and so created another entry in the register.

She confirmed that I didn’t need to make the 2nd payment, and I had to e-mail her a copy of my passport and ID Card so that she can update the registers and delete the duplicate entry.

We had the usual pauses of course. Hot chocolate and sourdough fruit loaf at 10:30 and lunch at lunchtime. And there was of course the afternoon walk.

At least the weather was slightly better today. I could leave my guide dog and white stick behind, so just the NIKON 1 J5 and me went out this afternoon. There were some people out there doing the pèche à pied down on the beach but very few other people out there this afternoon.

And so I trudged off along the muddy path. What DID they actually do to it to churn it up like this?

Down the path I trotted towards the headland. And at least with the view being better this afternoon I could see right out to sea.

With the tide well on its way in by now, the fishing boats were on their way back home to unload their catch at the fish processing plant. When I noticed the pink trawler in this photo I took a photo of it or course, but I didn’t notice until I returned home and enlarged it that there were two others out there in the shot as well.

It looks as if I should have gone to Barnard Castle the last time that I was in the UK.

So off I went across the lawn, across the car park and round by the bunker to look out from the headland across the Baie de Mont St Michel and the Brittany coast.

And we’re in luck this afternoon because, compared to the last couple of afternoons there’s actually something to see. It’s not the best sunset that we’ve had, and in any case with the changing season we are quite far from sunset right now anyway.

The Brittany coast is however still obscured in fog though – the weather can’t be that clear further out.

From there I pushed on around the headland and down the path along the top of the cliffs on the other side.

The tide is in some way and the smaller boats can make it up to the Fish Processing Plant but the larger ones look as if they have to wait a while for the harbour gates to open so that they can go into the inner harbour and unload there. These two are busy making a circle around Le Loup – the marker light on the rocks at the harbour entrance – while they wait for the tide.

While I was here I had a look in at the chantier navale to see what was happening there. And there’s no change – the same three boats as yesterday.

But there’s a change in the inner harbour down by the loading bay.

Moored underneath the loading crane is our old friend Normandy Trader who presumably came in on the morning tide. She doesn’t seem to be in such a rush now as she was just before Christmas where she would be in and out on the same tide.

For my part, although I wasn’t in all that much of a rush, I still cleared off home. It’s not that warm outside (although it’s warmed up since the weekend) and a mug of hot coffee would do me some good.

Shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out at some point in the early evening and so missed most of my bass guitar practice. In fact, had Alison not messaged me and awoken me, I’d probably be still asleep now. But I did manage to find the time to run through a few scales before going for my half-hour on the acoustic guitar.

For the evening run tonight I was pretty much on my own. I don’t recall seeing anyone else at all.

At the moment I’m still stuck to doing 4 of my running legs instead of the previous 6 but I seem to be running a little freer than just now. However I did walk along the Rue du Nord instead of running down it as I might have done previously.

But I still managed to run down the path underneath the walls and even put 20 metres on my previous distance. I must be slowly recovering from whatever infection I had just now.

Eventually, having had a pause to watch the raging storm at the Plat Gousset, I arrived at the Fish Processing Plant again.

And while there are no boats there, the place is lit up and there’s a refrigerated lorry waiting at the loading bay. This must indicate that there are fishing boats still out at sea and they’ll be heading home very shortly to unload.

And it was time for me to head home too. I was hungry. For tea I had falafel and steamed vegetables with vegan cheese sauce followed by jam pie and coconut dessert.

And I have a cunning plan for my next attempt at a pudding.

Tomorrow (well today, because it’s after midnight) I’m off to the shops. I don’t need much but I need to keep going because it frees me up, this long walk up to LIDL. And I have a few things to do on the way too which I mustn’t forget.

So I won’t be having too much time in bed tonight so I’ll probably be like death tomorrow.

We shall see.

Tuesday 12th January 2021 – IT GOES WITHOUT …

… saying that I failed to beat the third alarm this morning, much to my chagrin.

So while you admire of the waves crashing down and over the sea wall down at the Plat Gousset in the storm that was raging this evening, I can tell you that I was lying in bed trying desperately to summon up the energy to leave the bed. And it was about 08:10 that I finally managed to haul myself out of my stinking pit.

And that’s a far cry from yesterday where, to my own amazement I actually managed to beat the third alarm to my feet. That was rather a flash in the pan, wasn’t it?

According to the dictaphone I’d been on my travels too. I was with a group of people on a train journey. We set out from a place on the Underground and reached the main station but had to change Metros and there wasn’t many minutes between the two trains. Then there was only about 8 minutes between our train arriving and the next one departing. We installed ourselves in the train and it took off. After a while a ticket collector appeared and asked for everyone’s tickets so I gave him mine. He said “no, this isn’t the correct ticket” so I had a look and it was the ticket around France so I had a look through my pile of tickets that I had but couldn’t see one. It suddenly occurred to me that in all of the confusion I hadn’t actually stopped and picked it up. I asked whoever I was with and they couldn’t remember me picking up the ticket either. I was about to explain it to this ticket collector when suddenly he had to dash off somewhere elsse I was wondering what was going to happen now. This drifted on for 5 or 10 minutes then a woman came back and said to me in one of these stage whispers “you are going to complain about the lack of time between the trains, aren’t you? You are going to say that you didn’t have time to do anything in between the arrival of one and the departure of the next, aren’t you?”, explaining to me what I ought to do.

The kefir that I made yesterday – that was rather far too volatile to use this morning with my medication. I ended up having to open a carton of soft drink that I had bought in NOZ a couple of weeks ago. I hope that it settle down by tomorrow.

After the medication I had to sit down and revise my Welsh. I’d been doing quite well with the revision over the Christmas period bu with the cancellation of last week’s lesson I’d somehow lost the thread.

And in fact it was pretty hard going because I’m finding it extremely difficult to concentrate these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And I’m not sure what I can do about that.

As for our Welsh class, it’s grown in size. One of the teachers of our course has left, and her students have been passed on to swell up our group.

What’s interesting about this course from a student point of view is that previously it’s run with about 100 students per year. But a combination of three factors, namely

the current rise in Welsh nationalism
the move of the courses to an on-line Zoom platform
the start of lockdown, working from home and people having more free time with flexible working hours

there was a record total of 1038 students who enrolled for this course back in March. I’m in France and one of my classmates lives in Dubai. Even more interestingly, there’s a Polish girl living in Connah’s Quay who is in our class too.

So grabbing a slice of home-baked sourdough fruit bread and a mug of hot chocolate, I signed myself in to my course. It was painfully slow to start with as we all struggled to come up to speed but by the end we were doing OK.

We had a mock test paper at the end and I had 80% in the oral comprehension.

This afternoon I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. For one of them, I was disappointed as the office wasn’t open this afternoon. I must get through tomorrow as there’s a time limit on this.

The second ‘phone call that I had to make was something of a speculative enquiry. And if it works out, it’ll be something of a rather silly thing to be doing at this stage in my life, but if there’s an opportunity going, I need to find out more about it.

But that was enough about that for the moment. There will be more to say about this I imagine.

It was now time for me to go out for my afternoon walk. Braving the rain I set off to see what was happening. And the answer to that is that if anything was happening out there, I wouldn’t be able to see it in this weather. This is another one of these white stick / guide dog days, even worse than the weather yesterday.

But never mind. I have to make the most if it. It is the middle of January after all.

It’s no surprise to anyone to learn that there were very few people out there taking the air this afternoon.

As I picked my way around the puddles on the churned-up path at the top of the cliff I could hear the distant throbbing of a long-stroke diesel engine out there in the fog. And as I approached the end of the headland one of the trawlers from the port loomed out of the gloom and disappeared around the far side.

It was all extremely eerie, like something out of a horror film with ghost ships and all of that.

From the path I walked across the lawn and then across the car park down to the end of the headland to see what was happening out to sea.

While I was standing there, a couple more trawlers went happily sailing … “dieseling” – ed … past me where I was standing, and it’s a good job that they were close inshore because I would never have seen them had they been any further out.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve stood in this spot and seen some really beautiful sunsets with the sun reflecting off the water but as you can see, in this wind and rain it would be a waste of time waiting to see it today.

Having waited there and watched a few of the trawlers and other fishing boats come back into port I moved away from my viewpoint, walking along the path on top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland.

Previously, I mentioned the rain that was falling down in a very fine mist, there was also a raging gale going on as you might have noticed from the photos of the boats out at sea. You can see it even better in the couple of photos here of the waves breaking over the sea wall.

It’s a good job that there wasn’t anyone walking around on the sea wall in all of this. They would have known all about the storm down there.

Further on along the clifftop there’s the viewpoint over the chantier navale from which we’ve seen dozens of boats in the past.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw Joker, having unloaded her catch at the fish processing plant, perform an interesting nautical danse macabre in the harbour in the vicinity of the portable boat lift, and I speculated that she was indicating that she needed to be hauled out of the water.

And sure enough, there she is up on blocks down there, presumably about to have some kind of work undertaken on her. The other two boats that have been there for a while, the yacht and the trawler, are still there too.

While you admire another photo of the waves crashing over the harbour wall, I came on home for a mug of hot coffee and a warm-up.

Later on, I had my hour on the guitars and I seemed to enjoy it a little more today. On the acoustic guitar I’ve been trying a new way to play the G chord and the Bminor chord and I seem to have managed to improve on that. But I have to keep it up and keep on improving.

For my evening walk tonight I ran off down the road and despite the weather and the rain and the wind I carried out my usual (for these days) course around the walls.

We’ve seen the photos of the storm and then I carried on for home and tea.

Tonight it was stuffed peppers followed by a slice of the delicious jam pie.

Now I’m off to bed, ready for a day on the arrears and hoping to bring at least some of them to a conclusion as quickly as I can.

Monday 11th January 2021 – JUST TO PROVE …

… that I can do it when I really try, I beat the 3rd alarm to my feet this morning. And I bet that you weren’t expecting that, were you? I know that I wasn’t.

After breakfast I made a start on the radio programme and with having to start it from scratch, it took me until about 14:30 to finish.

It would have taken a lot less time but I rather seriously overran. What I normally do is to choose 10 tracks for a total length of 50 minutes, some text to introduce the tracks which I edit down, and then a final track to finish to make up an hour’s worth of programme.

Unfortunately I was rather carried away with what I did today because I ended up with 51:40 in my 10 tracks, and then 11.46 of text which when edited down made 7:30, did not leave enough time for a decent final track. Consequently I had to go through and edit the text right down again to make some space for a final track.

There was the usual pause for my mid-morning hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread, and a pause for lunch as well with my home-made bread.

Spending the afternoon not doing all that much at all, I did however stop what I wasn’t doing in order to go out for my afternoon walk.

And we were having the kind of weather where I would have been much happier being out with a white stick and a guide dog. This wasn’t a rolling fog but in fact a thin mist of very light rain.

As it was out there in the English Channel and I couldn’t see the Ile de Chausey at all, I was tempted to think about the people out there on the island looking over to us over here and coming out with the old hoary chestnut “fog in the Channel! Continent cut off!” – a throwback to the days when to be born British was to win the lottery of life and wasn’t tha a long time ago.

Anyway I continued along the footpath at the top of the cliff, dodging my way past the mud patches that have mysteriously appeared over the last couple of days.

As I reached the footpath and the car park, out of the doom and gloom came a fishing boat, chugging its way back into port.

It was extremely windy out there this afternoon and the sea was quite rough so it can’t have been very pleasant out there this afternoon, and these small boats take quite a battering out there in this kind of weather.

There were quite a few people out there this afternoon walking around despite the weather, and it wasn’t just people out there enjoying the weather either.

Every now and again we see a bird of prey hovering over the cliffs here at the Point du Roc looking for little rodents and baby rabbits in the grass. And he’s here again doing his stuff on the clifftop.

He spends a lot of time hovering around over the cliffs here and, just like the local fishermen out here sometimes on the rocks, I have yet to see him actually catch anything. But if the cliffs here were barren he wouldn’t be coming back here at all.

The port this afternoon seems to be packed with fishing boats today. And there’s a reason for that too.

With the Treaty of the Bay of Granville being revoked by the British, the Channel Islands should be issuing permits under the Brexit withdrawal agreement for fishing boats from here, but by the middle of last week they had yet to do so. The French Minister for Fisheries came here at the end of last week and told the fishermen that if the Channel Islands hadn’t issued the permits by Sunday, they could head out there on Monday accordingly with the blessing of the French Government.

And so I imagine, they must have set out for the Jersey fishing grounds this morning.

One of the fishing boats that we saw in the previous photo was the shellfish boat Joker that we have seen on several occasions.

As I watched, she left the quayside by the fish processing plant and chugged off across the harbour in the general direction of the chantier navale. As she came into the shadow of the portable boat lift, she did a U-turn and I was treated to a delightful little nautical danse macabre as she pirouetted around.

Actually, I was expecting her to reverse into the lifting bay, and that was what I was expecting the guy on the end of the bay to be organising.

But as I watched, she pulled forward again and came to a stop. For about 10 minutes or so I waited there expecting things to develop but she didn’t move at all.

While I was there, a couple of trawlers came out of the gloom around the headland and headed into port. And as well as that, one of the school buses passed by on the road at the foot of the cliff so it was quite a busy afternoon all in all.

But after waiting for 10 minutes in the rain and Joker hadn’t moved at all during that time, I turned and headed for home.

But that wasn’t the only action taking place in the harbour today.

The fact that the trawlers were heading back into port suggests that the harbour gates were about to open. And sure enough, not only did they open as I watched, Chausiais appeared out of the fog and passed through the harbour gates into the inner port where she moored up at the loading bay underneath the crane.

Having seen her safely home, I wandered off back to my home for a nice hot mug of coffee. With all of this rain and wind, I needed it.

There was the usual hour on the guitar and after that I set off for my evening walk and run.

It was still raining when I went out but I put a brave face on it and headed off outside.

This wasn’t the weather for hanging around so I didn’t stop to take too many photos. I made my way all round my usual route, either running or walking, and ended up overlooking the harbour. We’d seen the gates open earlier today but I was lucky enough to be out here to see them close tonight.

It’s not every day that I manage to see them both on the same day. So, rather content with my self, I ran off home again.

Tea was pasta and burger with vegan pesto sauce, and followed by jam turnover and soya coconut. That turnover was delicious and I hope that the pie is just as good.

Having done all of this, I’m off to bed. I have my Welsh lessons tomorrow (I hope) so I need to be on the top of my form. And that’s not very easy these days, is it?

Sunday 10th January 2021 – IT WILL BE …

… of no surprise to anyone that I slept right through until about 11:00 this morning. Furthermore, it was 11:30 when I finally fell out of bed.

But then again, I do have to say that because of the deep sleep that I’d had earlier during the day, it wasn’t until about 02:30 that I went to bed this morning. And so the sleep wasn’t as deep and as long as it might otherwise have been.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were off on another coach trip. We were leaving from some kind of stately home and there were 2 coaches there. Ours was pretty much full – there were only about 3 or 4 seats so we were all waiting around. One of the coaches pulled up. It happened to be ours so we all scrambled aboard and the driver set off. I had a look round and there were more empty seats on this coach than I remembered but I couldn’t see anyone running after the coach. We reached the end of the driveway and had to cross the traffic and turn – we had to wait for a gap. I looked around and there was still no-one running after the coach. Well, it must be right but there were more empty seats than I remembered. We set off but by now we were on foot, walking. We had a load of giant dolls with us, about 3 feet tall. They were walking. One doll was a female and another was a male. The male was about 40 and the female doll looked as if she was in her late 20s. Someone made a joke about what a good couple they would make and the female doll said “we’ve already had a kiss and he didn’t seem all that interested” and she started ordering him about, this doll, to give her another kiss. It was really funny, this doll giving these orders like this. We were walking up West Street and one of the girls with us was spotting golf balls so we were making jokes about her and her golf balls. There was one that we went past but she didn’t bother to pick it up so we had a few jokes about that. But while we’d been on the bus some people had lapel badges about something or other. Someone had done a deal but hadn’t let on – he’d passed an order around and people had ordered and paid him for these but instead of sending off to buy them he pocketed the money and had some cheap substitutes made. One of the people on the coach actually belonged to this organisation and he could tell straight away that these badges were false so he made the people buy the right ones and pay the money for it. I was keeping a low profile about this because although I wasn’t involved, I knew what had gone on and I was afraid that my name would be mentioned in this connection by someone or other.

That brought me all the way round to lunchtime and so I went off and had a bowl of porridge

After lunch, I went off on a cookery afternoon.

First task was to mix up a pile of dough for the next three pizza bases as I have now run out. That flour mix stuff that I found in Belgium when I was there in November is really good and did a great job. I’ll be sorry when it runs out.

Next stop was to deal with the next load of kefir as I’m running low.

When I was in LeClerc on Saturday I noticed that they had a pile of juice oranges so I bought a bag of a couple of kilos so I took four of them and whizzed them in my whizzer. I strained them through my filter stack into my large jug and then added most of the kefir that had been brewing for a few days.

Leaving an inch or so in the jar, I made up another batch for a few days later.

Having mixed the kefir and the orange juice in the large jug, I filtered it back through the filter stack into the bottles. And this will keep me going for the next 5 days.

By now it was time to go off for my afternoon walk around the headland.

There were quite a few people walking around too because although it was cold and windy, it was quite nice and sunlight. The wind was such that there were several yachts out there on the water having a good sail around. This one here was out in the English Channel on its way back presumably from the Ile de Chausey.

For some reason that I didn’t understand, the path was al churned up and muddy so I had to pick my way around the mud on my way along the top of the cliffs.

Across the lawn and down the path across the car park, I ended up at the end of the headland looking out to sea.

There was nothing going on out there to sea as far as boats go, but there was yet another example of a really nice sunset this afternoon. The rays of the sun was pouring through the gaps in the clouds and illuminating the sea right in the middle of the channel.

There were quite a few people out there admiring the sunset and this view this afternoon, and I left them to it as I walked on around the headland and down the path on the other side.

At the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale, I had a look down to see how they were getting on.

The trawler was still there up on its blocks and the yacht was still there too. But there were some people on board in protective uniforms and it seemed to me that they were painting the boat. It certainly looks better than it has done from that point of view, although this isn’t really the weather to be out there painting.

There was nothing else going on in the harbour so I came on back home and made myself a nice hot mug of coffee and prepared to start work on some more cookery items.

First of all I fed the sourdough – mustn’t forget that. I need to keep that going even if I’m not having much success right now.

The pizza dough had risen nicely so I needed it again and split it into three. Two of them I rolled in oil, wrapped in baking paper, put in a plastic bag and bunged them in the freezer.

The third one I rolled out and put it into the pizza tray and put it on one side.

Next off I made some pastry and having rolled it, I lined a pie dish with it. There are plenty of half-open jars of strawberry jam around here so I tipped some into the pie dish and put a pastry lid on top and sealed it down and brushed it with milk and water.

With the pastry left over I made a jam turnover and then put the pie and turnover in the oven to bake.

While that was cooking, I prepared a vegan pizza and when the pie and turnover were cooked I took them out and put the pizza in.

While the pizza was cooking I headed off for my evening walk around the medieval walls.

Once again, I was all on my own out there except for a couple walking their dog, so I could do my running bits quite happily. At the viewpoint overlooking the town I took a photo of the Rue Pau Poirier just to prove that I was out there and then I turned for home and ran across the Place Maurice Marland.

It was so quiet out there and there was so little going on that I don’t really remember anything about the trip home. However I did run the last length back home again just to keep going.br clear=”both”>

By now the pizza was cooked so I took it out of the oven. And here we are – doesn’t it look delicious? The jam pie and the turnover look really nice.

The pizza was delicious too, although the tomato sauce wasn’t as I would have liked because having forgotten to buy any tomato sauce I’d ended up with a jar of tomato and aubergine purée to use as a base. And as for the jam pie and turnover, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow as I wasn’t hungry after my pizza.

Now I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a short day but if I’m not too well I don’t want to push my luck. I need to take it easy until I’m feeling better, whenever that might be.

After all, I have to start back to work in the morning with a radio programme to do.

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… another depressing, dismal, miserable day as far as my health has gone.

But more of this anon

Today has also been the first day that I’ve had to scrape the ice of Caliburn’s windscreen before I could take him out for a drive to the shops.

Overnight the temperature had dropped to -0.5°C – the first time that it’s been below freezing, and we had had a heavy frost as you can see in this photo of the grass down the side of NOZ. It’s not quite the -16°C of the Auvergne of course through which I lived for 9 years, for the first couple of years at least in the most primitive of circumstances, and there was no snow either.

But winter is here with a bang and although it’s still above freezing even as I type, this brilliant clear sky outside fills me full of misgivings. I’ve turned the heating up.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, it was another horrible day for me. Once again I heard the alarms but I couldn’t get out of bed and it was just after 08:00 when I finally tore myself from underneath the covers.

And it took me quite a while to find enough energy to go and find my medication too. It was definitely one of the worst starts to the day that I’ve had.

However I did manage to have a shower too and then I wandered off to organise Caliburn so that I could go to the shops.

NOZ came up with a few odds and sods of this and that but nothing worth shouting about so I wandered down the road to LeClerc.

Excuse the extremely blurred photo but the camera has focused on some dirt on the windscreen of Caliburn instead of the car over there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite often in these pages, and here’s another fine example. Of course, it’s an Audi, as you might expect, and the driver has just abandoned (I won’t say “parked”) his car like that in two spaces and cleared off inside.

As for me, I had my own parking issues. With Caliburn being wider than a standard car, I always park at the end of a row and park right over so that there’s a good gap up the side. That was what I did today, so the person in the next bay parked right over on the white line which meant that it was a struggle to put my shopping into the side door.

And talking of the shopping, I bought loads of fruit and some other bits and pieces but there was nothing in the sales that caught my fancy.

Back at the apartment I put the frozen food away and then made myself a banana smoothie with plenty of ice – I really did have a fancy for that this afternoon.

And then, regrettably, I fell asleep on the chair and that was that until 14:00. Just going to the shops had totally exhausted me. And I felt totally dreadful when I awoke. I know that I’ve had some bad re-awakenings but I don’t think that I’ve ever had one quite like this.

After a rather late lunch I went for my afternoon walk – into town and the chemist’s to pick up the medication that they didn’t have on Thursday.

At the foot of the Escalier des Noires Vaches there was one of the shellfish boats unloading its catch into a fish shop van – presumably there’s some kind of connection between the two. But I didn’t stop to enquire. I pushed on along the quayside where I bumped into the itinerant and we had a little chat.

Having picked up my medication I came on back home and sat down to listen – at long last – to where I’d been during the night.

At some point during the night I ended up in Accrington, although it was nothing like the Accrington that I know, and as I’ve only ever been to Accrington twice in my life I wondered why I would suddenly find myself there on a nocturnal voyage.. I ended up in a big office building and I was looking through all the stuff that was on sale in the Oxfam shop there. There were 2 Oxfam shops and I’d gone from one to the other in these 2 big skyscraper buildings and I hadn’t found anything that I wanted. I ended up in the living room of one of these shops. There were 2 people in there so I asked them if they could tell me the way to the railway station. They said “it’s only a few minutes walk away from here, but really you aren’t supposed to be in here”. I apologised and said “just point me in the direction of where the railway station is and that will be fine”. Some other guy said “we’ll have to get someone to take you”. “Why’s that?” “Well, you aren’t qualified to do that”. I looked at this guy and could see that he’s a foreigner but I could see the first bit clearly that he was talking about the other 2 guys had hushed him up. One of them said that he would sort something out but I shouldn’t really be in that room where they are. It’s a private room.

Later on I was working in a nursing home in the UK. We’d started to organise holidays and I’d been based in Dover. I had to pick up a group of people and they were all elderly and infirm, on crutches and in wheelchairs, that kind of thing and I had to meet them at the station. when they came off the train I was staggered at my lot which wasn’t much good. I had to take them into town, so I pointed out a few things to them. After we’d set off for a couple of minutes someone made me aware that there were 3 people missing. I knew about 1 who had gone off to do her own thing but another couple had apparently gone off to visit a fort in the vicinity. That left me with 15 instead of 18. I told them about an anecdote – how I’d met a hotel keeper down here when I was travelling back and to to Europe but I didn’t have the chance to finish it as I was kept on being interrupted. Eventually I had to tell them about the area where we were and took them to a corner of a street basically. This was the street where my newsreader lived and at that moment my newsreader suddenly decided to update and started to pump out loads of information going back a couple of years. With my newsreader 99% is rubbish and you have to sift through to try to have the 1% that’s good. I thought “how am I going to explain to people that they are going to be seeing news 5 years old that we already know what has and hasn’t happened and how are they going to act when they start to get it again.

Later still I was with 1 of my regular girls but I can’t remember who it was now – something that really fills me with dismay as I’m sure you can imagine. We were talking about cars. I had my collection of vehicles, a Cortina, a couple of others and a BT estate from Italy that I had that I was quite happy showing off. It came to the question of doing them up, and I decided that I would sell everything except the one that I really liked and I’d spend all my money restoring that one. Then off we separated and a short while later she was sitting at a table with a couple of people who had kidnapped her. I walked over and said “hi”. I was breakfast time so I mouthed that I would fetch a loaf and bring it back. I brought it back to the table and these 2 guys were still sitting there. They wouldn’t take a hint about going and leave the 2 or us on our own. I cut a couple of slices off this bread and put them in the toaster but it jammed the toaster and 1 piece just wouldn’t come free and wouldn’t switch off. All smoke started to come out as if the toast was burning inside it.

But this thing about kidnapping (which thing? Have I missed something?) relates to something else that happened earlier where there was a young girl who had to be home at something like 22:30 but it got to 22:15, 22:20, 22:25 and she still hadn’t turned up. I ended up going to a night club and she was sitting on 1 of the tables there. There were a couple of people with her so I gave her a wide berth although I kept an eye on the proceedings. Round about 02:30 her mother stormed in, grabbed hold of her and they had this really intense discussion and I don’t know what happened after that, which is disappointing.

There was more stuff too, but as you are probably eating a meal right now, I’ll spare your stomachs. But it seems that the really disturbing dreams are back again. They went away for a while so I wonder what has summoned them to return.

For my evening walks I had a quick dash around my circuit – four legs of my run tonight as well.

There were a few people out there tonight but nothing else much going on at all. I took a photo of the Christmas lights in the shop in the Rue Georges Clemenceau just to prove that I was out and that I wasn’t the only one still with Cristmas lights illuminated, and then I ran back home for tea.

There was some stuffing left over from my stuffed pepper so I added a small tin of kidney beans and a mushroom and then had taco rolls with rice and veg followed by the last of the apple crumble.

So now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. A lie-in tomorrow of course and I hope that it’ll do me some good. I can’t go on like this. It’s getting on my wick.

Friday 8th January 2021 – TODAY WAS …

… the worst day so far of this little bout of ill-health that I’m having.

The alarms went off as usual and even though they awoke me and I was wide awake, I didn’t have the physical strength to leave the bed. It took me until about 09:15 before I could find the energy to leave the bed and for the next hour or two I was right out of everything.

When I finally pulled myself together I sat down and had a play with the dictaphone. And it seemed that I’d travelled miles during the night. Including one trip with one of my sisters, although I shan’t elaborate as you are probably eating a meal right now and I don’t want to spoil your appetite.

Somewhere along the line my wife and I had got back together and were living together. Things weren’t going too well and I had to be very careful about checking my post to make sure that no unexpected letters were being slipped in somewhere that I might have missed. I had to regularly keep an eye on the pile of paperwork for filing that nothing had been slipped in there. This caused one or two raised eyebrows when people started to work out what it was that I was actually doing. I had plenty of things to do the following morning but my brother was around living there I think talking about what we were going to do. He said that he needed some help to put some silencer paste on an exhaust and change a wheel over on his car. He showed me a wheel and the tyre had split. I had plenty of things to do myself that were pretty important but I would give him a hand for 10 minutes. One of the things that I needed was a new tyre for my car. I had a look at one that I had just taken off. It was completely perished and there was a huge split right across the canvas. I showed it to my brother and said “I wet down to London on this on Monday.

In the middle of all of this there was a story about me being in a lorry, a lorry driver and we were filming or rather watching a film of a route that someone had driven and I was trying to have some kind of indication or hints from this video about driving, a Youtube camera shot thing.

The third part of this was when I’d been working with something like Shearings or Adventure Canada and we were going on our Christmas Holidays. We’d each been given a place to go to. I’d been given a place that was only about 3 or 4 miles away from where we were which I thought was a bit miserable. I wasn’t very happy. I was sitting at a table with 3 or 4 old people and they were making jokes about Russian spies. One of them asked me a question “was I a Russian spy?”. I made some kind of sarcastic remark so he started to make a real issue out of this kind of thing. An old guy, Admiral of the Fleet or something. In the end I’d had enough of this. I stood up, threw down my napkin onto the table and said “I’ll tell you what. When I go from here I’m going to become a Russian spy and what I’m going to do will make you look a total and utter fool, and that’s not going to be difficult”. He went apoplectic. I stormed out. One thing that I’d noticed over the last few days that no-one was really speaking to me or giving me anything to do. Even a couple of girls whom I knew walked past. I said “hello girls” but they didn’t respond so I shouted “hello girls” and then they waved to me. 1 of the girls was coming with me. We were in the room where we were working and there was such a racket going on and suddenly one of the chairs caught fire. It had been right up against the heater and the heat had set it off. She switched a few switches and the noise immediately died down to just a noise. It was still annoying but a lot less than it had been. I realised that it had been the air conditioning or the heater fan or something that was blowing and making all of this noise. She was talking about the trip that we were going to go on, asking how long it was going to take us to get there and when would we be ready. I said that I’d be ready in half an hour because I’m not taking very much and if I’ve forgotten anything I can always come back here because we’re only round the corner anyway. I remember saying that the first thing that I’d be doing when I come back before I do anything else is to weld a sill on the red Cortina. That has its MoT very shortly.

As you can imagine, it took me an age to transcribe all of this and I haven’t really done all that much else. I did make the telephone call that I needed to make, only to find that with the Covid situation their office is only open Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The only other thing that I’ve done that can be classed in any way productive was something on the principle that if you can’t think of anything to do, or don’t have the energy to do anything, then just do something – anything – so I edited another pile of photos from Greenland in 2019. That’s not a productive day by any means, but I’m struggling with ill-health right now and I have to do what I can.

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch of course with my delicious bread – and I forgot to mention that the fruit bread that I had with my hot chocolate this morning was delicious.

Another thing that I did was to peel, dice and blanch another kilo or so of carrots. They are in the freezer now freezing away to themselves.

There was the afternoon walk too, in the freezing weather. The temperature had dropped to 1°C overnight and had risen to about 3°C by this afternoon.

Not too many people out there today but one person who was there who I hadn’t seen for a while was our bird of prey – hovering around over the rocks at the headland looking for a tasty snack. He didn’t catch anything while I was there watching – perhaps I had disturbed the prey, I dunno.

So after a while, I cleared off and left him to it. I walked down along the path overlooking the chantier navale as usual but there was nothing going on there at all that hasn’t been going on before.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days I talked about the new door on the public conveniences here.

Previously it was a kind-of roller shutter door, quite lightweight and it looked as if someone had kicked it in. And so they other day they came out and fitted a really heavy-duty sliding door instead. I’d love to see someone try to kick that one in.

However, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a design fault in it and they’ll be out to fix it again, sooner than you might think actually because there are already signs that it wont last long.

What they have done is put the staple for the padlock when the door is closed (on the right-hand side of the door itno the wall and cemented it. That means that any reasonably-sized iron bar can prize it off and there are signs that someone has already had a try. It needs to be in an L-shaped backing plate and screwed to the frame on the inner profile, so that no-one can get behind the screws to prize them out.

Back here I had a coffee and then carried on with some photos in rather a half-hearted fashion. I stopped for guitar practice of course, and that went somewhat better than last night.

Outside again in the freezing weather I set off for my walk – and four runs tonight. I’m slowly pulling myself up again.

It was too cold ro loiter around outside so I just took one photo of the Plat Gousset to say that I was out, and then I came back home – at a run again.

But to tell you the truth, there wasn’t anything else much to photograph tonight. It was singularly quiet, as it has been all day.

While I’d been out I’d turned on the oven again and was cooking a potato. When I came back I put a slice of pie in there and while I was at it, a frozen apple turnover. I cooked some veg and gravy too, and had pie with baked potato and veg and gravy, followed by apple turnover for tea. I’ll finish the apple crumble tomorrow.

Now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. Which is more than … gulp … 68,000 British people will be doing tonight. One person in every thousand in the UK has been diagnosed with Covid today. And apart from the 1325 who won’t be waking up tomorrow – a disgraceful record for a developed nation, my friend Erika from Atlanta and I were working out that in the USA the Death Rate from Covid is 1/59, yet in the UK, with its much-vaunted and magnificent NHS, the death rate is 1/37.

There’s something dreadfully wrong in the UK.

Thursday 7th January 2021 – I STILL DON’T …

… know where all of the time goes, that’s for sure. All that I’ve done today as far as work goes is to answer about 10 e-mails and that’s my lot.

Mind you, it was something of a late start this morning. I heard all of the alarms go off but it was still about 07:00 when I finally left the bed.

First thing was to check the dough. 2 loads because I had prepared a normal yeast-driven loaf as well last night before going to bed.

And while the sourdough hadn’t risen by much, the standard loaf had gone up like a lift. I kneaded them both and put them in their respective moulds to proof a second time and then, after the medication, I came in here to check the dictaphone.

There was a really weird kind of dance thing going on last night with 3 young girls who were dancing and singing and performing these really rhythmic movements. There were me and two other people at the other end of the dance floor just basically keeping in time to the music. For some unknown reason, what we were trying to do was that the movements that these people were performing led to them being separated at some time and our job seemed to be that one of us, when we saw someone separated was, in keeping in time to the music, to go off down there and somehow capture the one who had come out of the pack if you like and was dancing on her own halfway down the hall. I noticed that at one time that it was always the same girl who was doing this. She had a beautiful voice and I remember thinking to myself “I wouldn’t mind capturing her”. On one occasion when this rhythmic dance was going on I had to rhythmically make my way back to my group and one of my colleagues was preparing to advance. He ended up pirouetting round and his hand caught in my clothes and went underneath the top that I was wearing and missed my catheter by a millimetre otherwise it would have been really really dramatic. We had a bit of a joke about that.

What goes on in the night is really exciting, isn’t it?

As I was off out I put a load of clothes into the washing machine to do while I’m out at the doctor’s.

The interesting thing there was that he doesn’t recommend a ‘flu injection. Everyone is in facemasks and the ‘flu isn’t expected to take a hold this year.

As for my booster injections for my immune system (I have to have them every 5 years) he gave me a prescription, along with the prescription for the medication that I forgot.

The most interesting thing is the Covid vaccine. Here in Granville, we aren’t a priority, so it seems. Cases here in the town are rare due to the fact that we are on a westerly clifftop in one of the strongest prevailing winds in Europe. Any airborne virus here is blown well inland and the only time that we usually have any outbreaks is when the holidaymakers arrive.

However, he does agree that I should be in the first batch to be vaccinated as soon as we have supplies and he made a note in my file that I would be willing to take it

Having bade farewell to the doctor I set off towards LIDL for supplies.

It’s been a long time since I set my foot in the Rue Couraye, what with having chosen a different route to go uptown just recently, so I didn’t really know much about what’s been going on there for a while. But it seems that we had have some kind of novel decorations in the street – some that I haven’t seen before.

At LIDL it was a major shop and I staggered home under quite a load. Not helped any by the fact that they were selling 3kg of carrots for the price of 1kg, and ditto the potatoes. The freezer is for a change fairly empty and I can always do things with potatoes.

Having called at the chemist’s for a rest and my medication (I have to go back for some on Saturday) I staggered up the Rue des Juifs towards home. And there I noticed that the trawlers were starting to pull away from the quayside.

The harbour gates were closed, so I was expecting them to open any minute now so I hung around to watch. However I was distracted. While I was observing the harbour I fell in with our itinerant friend who is still loitering about the town and we had a chat.

One thing that I noticed was that he had a shopping bag full of groceries so at least it seems that he’s feeding himself, which is one less thing for anyone to worry about.

On returning home I switched on the oven and then, having checked the loaves, I put them into the oven to bake.

Once again, the sourdough loaf hadn’t done very much but the normal loaf had risen impressively again. And this time I did remember to brush the top of the fruit loaf with milk and sprinkle the top with brown sugar.

While it was cooking I came in here and answered a couple of outstanding e-mails and then when the oven timer switched itself off I went to check the bread.

The standard loaf was cooked perfectly but the sourdough wasn’t so I left that in for another 20 minutes and with the standard loaf, I made some sandwiches for lunch. And it really was a good loaf, this one. Just as it should be and it was delicious.

After lunch, I attacked the carrots, peeled and diced about a kilo or so and then blanched them ready for freezing. I’ll do some more tomorrow too and then finish the rest off on Saturday.

Later on this afternoon I went out for my usual afternoon walk around the headland.

The other day, I mentioned that they had started to move the scaffolding from the north end of the east wall and reposition it down at the south end of that wall. Here, on the extreme right, you can see than dismantling some more of it to move that along too. And you can also see where they are ripping off the slates from farther along.

Up until a couple of days ago they were working to the right-hand side of the safety rail going up the roof.

This is going to be a very long job, I can see that

Further along the path at the side of the College I stopped to have a look at one of the bushes that was growing there.

The other day the gardeners had been by and trimmed the bushes back. But I’d noticed, a day or so later, that there seemed to be some small buds starting to grow. Sure enough, one or two of them have burst out into leaves.

It’s very tempting to say that the mild winter that we have had to date has started the first buds of the year off early but I suspect that the bushes haven’t quite gone into hibernation and there has still been some rising sap in the bush, and that has provoked the growth.

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on it.

But whatever else happens today, I won’t be keeping an eye out to see what is happening out to sea down the Brittany coast today.

You’ve probably noticed from a couple of earlier photos that there seemed to be quite a mist hanging around today, but out at sea there seems to be so much more of it and there’s quite a heavy fog bank rolling in along the coast and onto the headland where I’m standing.

It’s one of those occasions where you might expect primeval man, or Godzilla or something similar to come emerging from the miasma.

Interestingly, in the reverse angle of this shot, there’s hardly a wisp of fog to be seen along the coast.

But you can see the reason why the fog is here. If you look closely at the water you’ll notice that it’s calm and almost flat as a mirror. There’s hardly a breath of wind at all – hardly enough to disperse a fogbank, that’s for sure.

But nevertheless out of the fog and gloom came one of my neighbours who had also been for a walk. So we had a chat for a few minutes about nothing in particular before I wandered off to carry on with my perambulations.

There’s one thing about a fog and a really calm sea, and that it encourages people to take to the water.

Paddling around the headland from the direction of the port de plaisance came a couple of kayaks. And as I watched, they paddled their way around the marker light on the rocks below.

There was the idea in my mind to make the old hoary joke which regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about it being inadvisable to light a fire in a canoe because you can’t have your kayak and heat it, but a closer inspection revealed that these aren’t kayaks but in fact sculls, so I doubt if the rowers in there would get up to any such scullduggery.

Over the last couple of days we’ve been having some brilliant sunsets out across the bay. As I walked across the lawn and the car park to the other side of the headland I sensed that today might be different with the fog.

Unfortunately I was correct. There was nothing really like the views that we have had for the last few days. Nevertheless it was quite different and quite unusual, and was creating quite an eerie effect, especially where we seem to be half in and half out of a fog bank.

The rays of sun streaming out through the hole in the clouds and disappearing into the fog bank were quite novel too.

You probably noticed in the previous photo the traces of a wake passing through the image.

There was a boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel and it was making quite a racket and going like the clappers too. My first thought was that it was a fishing boat but no fishing boat goes that quickly. I’ve no idea who he was or where he’d been.

With nothing else of interest out there this afternoon, I made tracks for home. It’s a shame that there was no freighter in port today, and I wonder when we are next going to have another gravel boat.

Back home I made myself a coffee and then went to have a look at the sourdough loaf. It’s been cooling off in the oven for a good couple of hours.

It’s possibly overdone on top, although I did lower the shelf when I put it back in at lunchtime so that the bottom would cook better, but it doesn’t look at all bad really. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. And for that, you’ll all have to wait until tomorrow morning’s hot chocolate break.

Instead, I hung up the washing, something that I had forgotten to do earlier, and then came in here to carry on with my e-mail marathon. And it would have been better had I not crashed out again.

There was the usual hour on the guitars of course but for some reason I couldn’t get my head around the acoustic guitar and I’ve no idea why. I didn’t seem to have the same motivation which was strange.

Afterwards, I went out for my evening walk – and I tried a few more runs today too. In fact I made it up to three legs. Not much, but better than it has been.

When I stopped for breath after one of the legs, I looked out to sea and the fog seemed to have lifted. It as a really clear evening and you could see for miles.

You probably won’t think all that much of this photo but this is taken with the camera perched on a rock, hand-held. And the camera is in fact the little NIKON 1 J5 which in the past has not proved to be very successful in the past in the pitch-black.

However, with some judicious manipulation I managed to take some photos of St Helier, 58 miles away. And the lights of fishing boats out to sea and even some stars too. And for a camera that doesn’t like the dark, that’s quite impressive even if the quality isn’t up to all that much.

Had I taken the tripod with me, and worked out how the time-lapse procedure works on the calmera, I might have done even better than this.

Round at the viepoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch there wasn’t much going on at all. The whole town seemed to be deserted and I hadn’t seen a soul.

Instead I came on back to the apartment for tea. Stuffed peppers followed by apple crumble. There’s only enough crumble left for one meal now, so I might have to defrost a slice of frozen apple pie for tea on Saturday.

But now I’ve written up my notes, I’m going to go to bed. Just a couple of phone calls to make tomorrow, a form to fill in and some carrots to peel and blanche and then I can crack on with work.

And, of course, the fruit bread to try. I mustn’t forget that.

Wednesday 6th January 2021 – I WON’T EVER SEE …

… my friendly neighbourhood ginger cat again.

Regular readers of this rubbish may recall that I mentioned a while ago that his mum, one of my neighbours, had been offered an apartment in sheltered accommodation due to her age and infirmity. This afternoon as I put my head outside the door of the building I saw a removal van outside the door to her block.

And when I went out later this evening, her apartment was totally empty and cleared out. There she was – she and her cat – gone, and never called me mother (next week, East Lynne).

As for me I was totally gone last night too. When I finally made it into bed, late as usual just recently, I was out like a light and didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off. And while I didn’t actually beat the third alarm, I wasn’t many minutes behind it.

After the medication I had a few things to do and then I had to ring up the doctor’s and make an appointment. And you can tell that this isn’t the UK.
“Is it urgent?”
“no, not particularly”
“Is 9:30 tomorrow OK?”

Haven’t dealt with that I sat down to start to dictate the notes that I’d written but then almost immediately I was interrupted by a telephone call. Would I like to go for a coffee with the manager of the radio station?

So I managed to dictate all of the notes and then go and have a shower before I headed off across the car park to the Municipal offices at the back. Coffee was served and then we had a lengthy chat about Brexit and Scottish and Welsh independence.

Very little to do with the radio, and it seemed to me that I was being interrogated for something, although I don’t know what it might be. We shall see what transpires of this in due course, if anything.

There was no bass guitar practice tonight. Even though I seem to be a little better today, it’s not that much better and it took me an age to do what it would normally take a couple of hours to do. When it came to 18:00 and knocking-off time, I wasn’t far away from finishing so I pushed on and by 18:35 both of the outstanding radio programmes were now completed up and running.

Of course we had had a couple of interruptions. Lunch was taken of course and unfortunately the bread supplies are quite low. I need to look into this.

There was the afternoon walk and today this was a walk with a difference.

If I’m baking bread tomorrow morning, I may as well make a sourdough fruit loaf so having fed the sourdough and watched it rise like a lift, I headed off into town. I have no jellied fruit and I need to buy some. The Super U in the town is the place for that.

Outside it was cold and cloudy but with the sun poking through the clouds here and there.

But just for a change, instead of the sun lighting up the sea or the Brittany cliffs or whatever, today the sun was streaming down onto the water tower up near the Shopping Centre. It was all particularly impressive.

The Super U came up trumps with the jellied fruit but my new bank card wouldn’t work. having tried a couple of times I paid in cash and went round to the Bank to try it there. Once again, it didn’t work so I went to chat to a cashier.

It seems that Brain of Britain has struck again. Somehow I must have taken the old card out of my wallet, signed the new card and then put the old card back in the wallet.

With nothing else much going on in the town I headed back for home.

By now, with the sun having moved around on its cycle and with the clouds having been blown around by the wind the sun was now shining in a different direction. It was rather later than usual so we were having a gorgeous orange glow in the sky which was reflecting off the water in the bay.

This is without doubt one of the best sunsets that we’ve seen so far, even though the photo was being photobombed by a seagull flying through the shot and I stayed out there for a while to watch it – the sunset that is, not the seagull.

While I was out there I had a look down to see what was going on at the chantier navale

There was nothing special going on there this afternoon. The yacht is still there on its blocks and there are a couple of cars parked around it. It’s not clear though whether they have anything to do with the yacht or its owners. There certainly doesn’t seem to have been much progress on the yacht, whatever they might be doing, over the past few months.

The trawler is still there too, parked up on blocks at the back near the portable boat lift. There’s a van parked right by it so it might well be that there has been some kind of work being undertaken.

But that’s been there for a while too.

Rather than go straight home I went to have a look out to sea from the North side of the headland to see if there was anything exciting going on.

Nothing much at all though this afternoon. No boats out to sea or anything else. There were a few people out walking on the beach, presumably looking for shellfish or something similar lying around on the beach. I’m not sure what they have found.

For a couple of minutes I watched them and then came on back into the apartment for a hot coffee and a slice of Christmas cake. Having digested that I cracked on with the radio work that I had been doing until I finished it.

And I might have finished it earlier too had I not crashed out a couple of times.

After the practice with the 6-string guitar, I headed off out for my evening walk.

Seeing as I hadn’t been round the headland this afternoon I went that way this evening in the dark. The gymnasium of the College Malraux was all lit up and so there must have been something going in there. It’s actually called the Gymnase Jean Galfione.

And in case you are wondering who Jean Galfione was when he was at home, if he ever was, he is probably France’s most successful pole vaulter and won the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games as well as winning several other championship events.

It’s a shame that this photo hasn’t worked out as I wanted, but it was taken in quite a hurry.

You can’t actually see clearly in this photo but there’s a woman there with a large dog, and also a laptop computer. And what she’s doing working on a laptop with a dog outside in the middle of winter I really do not know.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago we also saw a couple of other people working on a laptop outside in the cold on the city walls. So I’ve no idea what that is all about.

From there, I ran home – my first run for a week or 10 days. I really wasn’t up to it and I was in agony when I finished but I can’t let this thing pass me by.

Tea was pasta with veg and some veggie balls followed by defrosted apple crumble; And then I made my sourdough loaf – or, at least, the first mix of it so that it can do what it might do overnight. It’s crammed full of goodies like

a pile of whizzed up brazil nuts
several dessert spoons of desiccated coconut
ditto sunflower seeds
a couple of handfuls of raisins
ditto jellied fruits

and I can’t wait to see how it comes out.

And now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to make some dough for my main loaf and let that rise overnight too. It both loaves have their second kneading first thing tomorrow morning, they’ll be ready to bake as soon a I come back from the shops and I can have fresh bread for lunch.

Tuesday 5th January 2021 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… miserable day today.

At least I managed to hear all of the alarms this morning and I may not have beaten the third alarm, I didn’t go back to sleep at all and I managed to rouse yself round about 07:00 so as far as that goes, it’s some kind of progress better than yesterday.

After the medication I came back and had a listen to the dictaphone. And to my surprise I found that I had actually been somewhere during the night.

As it happens, I don’t remember very much about my voyage but we were doing something like besieging a castle. The castle was outside Granville somewhere. One thing that I noticed was that there was a dip in the ground by this castle with a kind of embankment running through it. It suddenly occurred to me after all these years that this could have been where the tacot ran through. I’d never succeeded in tracing the route of the tacot but that looked the right kind of place for the tacot to have been.
Some other time we were all in an office discussing a certain company or other. The company had had rather a rocky reputation. Someone produced on their mobile phone a logo that this company used. I had a look at it and thought “that’s the company that administers my works pension”. I mentioned that to the room and I was quite surprised by that because I always thought of them as being a reliable company but apparently they aren’t and that made me worry about my pension.

Having dealt with that I had a good work through my Welsh homework, revised some more stuff and then reviewed the forthcoming lesson. With a quick tidy up, I made myself some hot chocolate and grabbed a mince pie (the sourdough fruit loaf was … errr … spoiled) and switched on the portable computer, only to find that the tutor wasn’t available today and the course has been cancelled. That was pretty annoying but it can’t be helped.

So having drunk my chocolate and eaten my mince pie I sat down to do the second part of the radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off at 18:00 I’d finished typing (but not dictating) the notes. Again, it was something of a hard struggle today to find any kind of incentive or motivation.

There was a variety of reasons as to why it took me so long. First of all, there was lunch of course. Another helping of my gorgeous vegetable soup with home-made bread – a lunch made with my own fair hands. And there’s enough soup for another helping too so that ended up in the freezer for another day along with the rest of the butternut squash soup.

We had the afternoon walk too as usual.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall my musing about the scaffolding up at the College Malraux. They had erected it on just half of the College and I was wondering whether they were just going to do half of the roof. But here they are, dismantling the scaffolding at the far end and re-erecting it down the other half of the wall.

They have also relocated the compound too.

So it looks as if we are going to have the whole of the roof repaired. And judging by the amount of tie that it’s taken to do the part that they have done, they are going to be here for a while.

There weren’t too many people out there this afternoon either which was no surprise give the cold, windy weather.

The path around the clifftop and across to the headland was pretty deserted so I walked over there to see what was going on. No ships or boats around at all but the evening sunset was shining really beautifully through the clouds onto the water.

We’ve seen a few of these sunsets just recently but the one this afternoon was up there with the best of them. Unfortunately the cliffs at the back were obscured in the low cloud so the distant view wasn’t as good though.

Taking my leave of the view, I walked off along the path on the south side of the headland.

The sun was shining brightly down on St Pair sur Mer and it was looking like a stage set all bathed in floodlights. I carried on walking along the path, admiring the new door that they fitted on the public conveniences yesterday. Nice big and armour-plated but they have made a basic error in its design and installation, and the workmen will be back in early course.

And still no change of occupant in the chantier navale either. The yacht on the blocks and the trawler by the mobile boat lift.

Down there in the port, we have a visitor in there today.

Brexit doesn’t seem to have interrupted the little coastal freighters from Jersey coming into the port here. Down there in the loading bay underneath the crane we have Thora there. She’s probably come in on the morning tide.

Having taken a photo, I wandered off back home for a mug of hot coffee and a slice of my Christmas cake and to carry on with my work. But then we had another problem to delay me, in that having rather unsuccessfully fought off falling asleep, then I crashed out not once, not twice but three times during the rest of the afternoon and it’s making me feel terrible.

There was the usual hour or so on the guitars and then I wandered off out for my evening walk. And walk too because I’m still feeling pretty terrible.

Along the footpath I walked, as far as the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset where I took a photo to prove that I had been out, and then carried on walking back home again for tea.

Tonight I had baked potatoes, burger in a bap and vegetables followed by the last of the Christmas pudding with custard. These have been delicious meals just recently and we’ll have to see what we can do to keep the delicious meals going.

Having dealt with the food and the washing up, I had another task to perform.

The last bottle of kefir is now in the fridge ready to use and so I had to make some more from the stuff that had been brewing. There were only three kiwis because the fourth had been left rather too long, so I added a pear to it to see how that would develop.

And now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be feeling a little beter and that I can get on and do some work and finish off what I’ve been trying to do for the first two days of this week. I really need to get going as I have so much work to do and not a great time to do it.

Monday 4th January 2021 – THAT WAS A …

… horrible day today again.

It is a fact that the day after I come home from Leuven, exhausted by the travel and by the effects of the medication, I find it difficult to do anything the next day while I recover my strength. And when I’ve had no sleep the night before and I’ve been carrying heavy shopping around as well, it simply amplifies the effect.

When I’ve slept through the alarms in the past, at least I’ve heard them somewhere in the distance but I’ve taken no notice. This morning though, I didn’t hear a thing. Nothing in the night disturbed me. There wasn’t even anything on the dictaphone so it must have been one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve ever had.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until 02:30. Despite the heavy couple of days that I’d had, I wasn’t tired at all for some reason and I don’t understand that. And so it’s no surprise that I didn’t awaken until about 09:30, and didn’t leave the bed until about 10:20.

After the medication then, with nothing to transcribe from the dictaphone. I could make a start on the radio programmes. But while in the past I’ve been able to dash off a programme in a couple of hours, by the time that I knocked off at 18:00 to play the guitar I had just about finished writing, neve rmind dictating and editing, the notes for just one programme.

Fighting off sleep (unsuccessfully a couple of times), and not having the same energy that I’ve had just recently, it’s clear that I can’t keep going like I could previously. I hope that I can pick up in due course.

Lunch was some of my delicious vegetable soup, even nicer than it was yesterday, and later on this afternoon I went out for my afternoon walk.

The temperature had dropped to about 3°C and it was damp and miserable out there. There were a few people nevertheless walking on the beach out by the Plat Gousset this afternoon, something that surprised me.

There was quite a mist out there too and it wasn’t possible to see any distance particularly. So haven’t taken a photograph of the beach I headed off along the path on top of the cliff

Across the lawn and across the car park I went until I reached the end of the headland looking out over the bay.

As I mentioned just now, it was pretty cold this afternoon and so I was surprised to see a couple of people sitting on the bench by the old sentry cabin right out on the end. They can’t have been enjoying the view in this weather.

With nothing else going on out there that I could see, I walked off along the path to see what was going on at the chantier navale. And the answer to that was “nothing”. The trawler and the yacht were still there, in exactly the same position that they where before they left.

Not too far away from the viewpoint overlooking the harbour is a set of public conveniences. There’s a roll-up lightweight door that rolls down when they are closed but before I went away, that had been damaged.

Today there were a couple of workmen there. They’d taken away the roll-up door, or what was left of it, and they were fitting a heavy-duty metal sliding door instead. I watched them for a while and then headed home for a nice hot coffee and a slice of Christmas cake.

What with chatting to Liz and dozing off a few times I didn’t do much work, and I knocked off for a very enjoyable session on the guitars.

Later on I went out for my evening walk. Walk, not run. I wasn’t feeling up to running around tonight. I must be feeling under the weather.

It was now 2°C outside and trying its best to rain. Not the best weather to be out there at all. The view along the coast had improved slightly and down the coast to Donville the street lights stood out clearly. The image though, taken with the NIKON 1 J5 didn’t come out as clearly as I liked though. I shall have to have the big NIKON D500 repaired pretty quickly.

As you can tell, I’m down on the footpath underneath the walls tonight. Despite the weather today, it must have been dry while I was away because the path was no longer flooded.

Further along the coast, the lights on the promenade at St Martin de Bréhal were quite bright this evening. The view was nothing like as clear as this earlier today

From here I carried on walking along the footpath and eventually ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch. There wasn’t anything else going on around there either so I pushed on across the Place Maurice Marland – again at a walk.

The rain was starting to fall a little heavier now so I wasn’t going to hang around. I might not be able to run today but I can walk pretty quickly.

Now that the scaffolding has gone from the house on the corner I could walk down the alleyway and into the Rue Notre Dame.

No black cat to greet me tonight, and no Christmas lights in the Place Cambernon either. I’d noticed from my viewpoint earlier that all of the Christmas lights in the town had been switched off so I suspected that that would be the case here.

The lights are still there though. They haven’t actually got around taking them down yet. And so it wouldn’t have heurt to leave them illuminated to add a touch of gaiety to the place in these difficult times.

While I’d been walking around the path earlier I’d seen all of the fishing boats out at sea heading home to unload.

By the time that I’d walked around my circuit, the first ones had started coming into port. The tide can’t be far off coming right in.

Back home I made tea. Rice with veg and a vindaloo out of the freezer followed by Christmas pudding and custard. That was a really nice tea.

While i’d been out Rosemary had rung so I called her back and we discussed this and that. for a whole hour and 38 minutes. This is why I’m just dashing off my notes – because it’s late and I’m tired. Tomorrow it’s the Welsh lesson and then hopefully I can push on with this work. And I haven’t forgotten that I didn’t do my Welsh homework today. That was disappointing.

Must do better.

Sunday 3rd January 2021 – THERE ARE NO …

… dictaphone notes tonight.

And that’s for the simple reason that not only did I not go on a nocturnal voyage, I actually didn’t go to sleep. I had what they call around here a nuit blanche.

It was just after midnight when I finally went to bed, having packed away everything, and with having to get up at 05:00 I didn’t even undress. I just lay on the bed in the hope that I would drift off to sleep.

However it wasn’t to be and when the first alarm did go off at 05:00 I was actually up and about making my sandwiches.

It didn’t take me long to leave the apartment and having deposed my key in the key box, I headed off to the station carrying my rather heavy load.

And just look at the time on the noticeboard over the top of the head of the passenger to the right of the train. This is my train coming into the station and it’s just 05:33. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been out and about at that time. Our train by the way is one of the SNCB workhorse locomotives, a Class 18 electric locomotive taking a train to Oostende.

The train didn’t hang about for very long in the station. It soon cleared off to Brussels and for the first time since I don’t know when, my ticket was checked by a guard.

In the Gare du Midi in Bruseels my train to Lille (actually, to Strasbourg but I was getting out at Lille) was already at the platform.

It’s one of the Reseau 38000 TGV trainsets on which we travel quite frequently and while there was an hour to go before it was due to depart, the doors were locked so we had to loiter around for ages in the freezing cold.

And freezing cold it was too. 2°C it was yesterday evening and I imagine that it’s colder than that right now. And just look at the time here too.

We left on time and arrived in Lille on time too because I had just 20 minutes to cross the town from Lille Europe railway station to Lille Flandres. I’ve no idea why they do this at all because there is no margin for error. And there were hordes of people flooding off my train up the road into town and the Paris train.

What would they do if the brussels train would ever be late? Would they leave everyone stranded in Lille or would they hold the Paris train? I can’t see why they can’t set the Paris train to depart from Lille Europe.

The train in Lille Flandres is one of the TGV Reseau Duplexes, the “double deckers.

We all piled into the train and bang on schedule it set off like a rocket. And for the first time so far today, my eyes started to sag and I drifted away for a minute or two (and really, only a minute or two too).

Our train made it to Paris Nord a couple of minutes early, and that’s a rare event too. And so I took a phot of it and then headed off for metro line 4, carrying my heavy load. There was plenty of food left over from my stay in Leuven and I wasn’t going to leave any of it behind.

The metro wasn’t all that busy and there were no delays or anything like that. One thing that I like, and one of the (many) reasons why I chose Granville as a place to which to retire is that the trains from Paris to Granville depart from the Gare Montparnasse which is on the direct line from Paris Gare du Nord and there’s no need to change trains in the bowels of the city.

There was about 50 minutes to wait at the Gare Montparnasse and once more we weren’t allowed to board the train to wait in the warmth. These big railway stations in Paris are open and really draughty. There’s no-where to go that’s out of the cold.

When the train set off I settled down comfortably and even dozed off for a few minutes, only to be awoken by the ticket collector. And then I couldn’t go back to sleep again, although I was in no state to do any work or anything. I did manage to eat my sandwiches though.

Keeping up what seems to be becoming a habit, we were early into Granville and our train, the one on the left, found a berth next to one of its brothers in an adjacent bay.

Struggling under the weight of my load I headed for home and arrived here bang on 14:30. I’d left one of the radiators working but even so it wasn’t all that warm in here and I had to wind up the heating. With a coffee I came and sat down on my chair but although I didn’t go to sleep, I didn’t do very much.

Later on when I recovered my strength, I went into the kitchen.

First off, I fried a couple of large onion and plenty of garlic in a saucepan (not a frying pan).

When they were brown, I tipped in all of the rest of the mixed frozen veg from Leuven and all of the frozen broccoli except for four stalks, and stirred it all in, along with a mixture of herbs and spices.

When it was all nice and browning, I tipped in the rest of the soya cream that I’d been using for my mince pies before I went away and added some water too, and left it to simmer for half an hour while I took out a pile of rubbish to the bins outside.

Having left it for a half-hour or so, I whizzed it all up with the whizzer and it made one of the most delicious cream of vegetable soups that I’ve ever tasted. I treated myself to a bowl as a snack.

For tea, I had a roast dinner with the seitan slices that were left over from Christmas with roast potatoes and a pile of Christmas vegetables that I’d frozen before I went away along with the broccoli that I’d set aside earlier. And I deserved it too. My New Year’s Eve meal was nothing much to write home about at all.

So now I’m caught up with my notes from this trip I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm tomorrow and I’m back at work. My Christmas break didn’t last long, did it?

Saturday 2nd January – I MANAGED TO …

… beat the third alarm out of bed this morning.

Mind you, I have to admit that I cheated somewhat. Not having gone to bed until late and needing to be on form, I reset the alarms to start at 08:00 instead of 06:00. I reckoned that that was a reasonable compromise, what with one thing and another.

First thing that I did was to have a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. In fact I’d been in Shavington but it quickly transformed itself into Crewe. There was a fire in the outskirts and it was slowly heading into town. We had things to do, we had to sit down there and I wanted to watch a football match or listen to one on the radio. We were making our way into this big building but it was clear that the flames were starting to get worse and I noticed in the end that I was the only one in there. Then someone else came round, a woman with a few things . I had a feeling that if I stopped she would stop too and that was going to be a bit silly so I explained to her about how dangerous the fire was going to be. In the end we went outside and there were a few people outside co-ordinating rescue efforts. One of the guys from the radio was in charge. We stood and watched for a couple of minutes then slowly picked up our things and moved away as we heard that the fire had now reached the outskirts of Crewe round Davenport Avenue and Nantwich Road. We moved away and I had the satisfaction in seeing that I was the last one to gather up my stuff and move away and I checked to make sure that everything was clear before we did so. It reminded me of a General and his troops retreating and how the General ought to be the last and making sure that the way was clear in order to do so just like in the Army.

In connection with the fire, later on in the night 3 objects came up for auction. There was a soldier’s compass, a soldier’s badge and a 3rd thing that I can’t remember what it was. I remember thinking that these would have come in handy if we had been in the fire and these were available. This was where the fire dream came in at this point just here and now and we found ourselves back in Shavington on the corner between Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close with this burnt and blackened paper shredded and flying around.

The next task was the Welsh homework. No matter what, I have to keep up to date with that. It didn’t take me all that long although it’s bcoming more and more complicated and took quite some research. Interestingly, we aren’t now being asked to asnwer questions, we are being asked to come up with questions to ask.

Afer a shower, I made some sandwiches and then, gathering them up, I headed off to the Railway Station.

While I was waiting for my train to Brussels I was eating my sandwiches on the platform. And hence I was taken completely by surprise when the train came in early.

Our train today is one of the strange AM96 multiple units. When one trainset is coupled to another the rubber bellows make a perfect seal, and the drivers’ cabs at the join tilt round 90° so that passengers can walk from one trainset to another.

Our train pulled into Brussels Central Station bang on time, and walking up the steps I met my friend Esi.

Esi and I studied together and University when we both lived in Brussels years ago but she went back to Wales and I went on to France after we graduated. We’ve met up a couple of times since then when our paths have crossed in Brussels but earlier last year when Brexit became a reality she moved back to Belgium to cement her European rights.

The two of us went for a walk around the park opposite the Royal Palace where we chatted about our different adventures since we last met, and then went off to the Belvue Museum in the Place du Palais to meet one of her friends and then for a walk around the museum.

The museum is a fascinating place to visit. It’s all about the history of the country of Belgium since it won its independence in 1830.

There was plenty to see in there and I could have spent a lot longer in there than our alloted time slot. But for me, the pride of the place was this gorgeous FN 4. It’s the world’s first 4-cylinder in-line motorbike – block 4s and V4s had been made previously – and was made between 1905 and 1914.

This is a later one rather than an earlier one – you can tell that by the rear brake. This is a drum brake whereas the earlier ones had rim brakes rather like a pushbike.

Interestingly, to start it up, you had to pedal it until the engine fired up. No kickstart.

One of the more interesting things to see is the view from out of one of the windows.

This view is right up the Rue Royale, past the park where we walked just now, all the way past the old Jardin Botanique and all the way down to the Église Royale Sainte-Marie de Schaerbeek, one of the most beautiful buildings in the city but now sadly delapidated and more-or-less abandoned despite the fact that it was renovated 30 years ago.

After the museum, Esi had a few things to do so the three of us walked around the city running errands. We stopped for a coffee in the Central Station and then like the Knights of the Round Table, we went our separate ways.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are 4 expresses every hour from Brussels to Leuven. However they are all bunched pretty much together and then there’s a long gap.

There is however a semi-urban stopping train that runs across the Metropolitan area and terminates at Leuven. We’ve caught it a few times when we went to watch the football at Tubize and one of them pulled into Central Station just at the right moment. It’s one of the modern class AM08 multiple units that was just coming into service as I left the city.

When it pulled up in the station we all piled out and I headed off back home to my digs, having first stopped to take a photo of the train

Well, in actual fact, I didn’t head off hiome. I had a few things to do first.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other evening when I was wandering around the city in the dark, I took a photo of the Bondgenotenlaan from the Rector de Somerplein looking down to the railway station. Tonight, seeing as I was standing outside the railway station in the Martelarenplein, I could take a photo of the Bondgenotenlaan looking back down to where I was the other night.

Right down the far end of the street we can see the lights of the Stadhuis – the Town Hall – in the Grote Markt.

While I was here in the Martelarenplein I had a good look around the neighbourhood to see what else I could see.

Where I’m standing now is on an overbridge that crosses the ring road – the Tiensevest – that is emerging from a tunnel underground. It’s one of the main throroughfares of the city with the railway station to my left and so just the kind fo place that you would expect to be brightly illuminated to welcome visitors to the city, but once again, it’s quite depressingly banal.

All in all, I’m rather disappointed with the Christmas decorations this year, not just in leuven but in just about everywhere that I have visited.

Turning round further to my left there was a view between the buildings to the eastern end of the train shed of the station.

Behind it, there’s one of the hotels in the vicinity of the station and then a couple of office blocks. This is the area where it all happens.

Back at my little room it was teatime so I made a plate of pasta and vegetables and chick peas with tomato sauce. But just as I was sitting down to start my notes, Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we ended up being on the phone together for 1 hour and 38 minutes.

There was now some packing to do and then I have to go to bed as son as I can because I have to get up at 05:00 and you know how I feel about that these days.

As for my notes, they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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

Saturday 16th January 2021 – IT’S AS QUIET …

Friday 15th January 2021 – LET’S NOT TALK …

Thursday 14th January 2021 – JUST FOR A …

Wednesday 13th January 2021 – IN NEWS THAT WILL …

Tuesday 12th January 2021 – IT GOES WITHOUT …

Monday 11th January 2021 – JUST TO PROVE …

Sunday 10th January 2021 – IT WILL BE …

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Friday 8th January 2021 – TODAY WAS …

Thursday 7th January 2021 – I STILL DON’T …

Wednesday 6th January 2021 – I WON’T EVER SEE …

Tuesday 5th January 2021 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

Monday 4th January 2021 – THAT WAS A …

Sunday 3rd January 2021 – THERE ARE NO …

Saturday 2nd January – I MANAGED TO …

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