Tag Archives: place d’armes

Thursday 6th December 2018 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again.

With having the appointment for my anti-flu injection at 11:00 this morning I decided to go and do my shopping at LIDL as normal and call in at the medical centre on the way back.

And do you know? I was halfway into town, quite wet in the rain, before I realised that I had forgotten to take the injection with me and that it was still in the fridge. And that’s despite leaving a prominent note on the table in the dining room.

Last night was a rather later night than normal and I was still asleep when the alarm went off. Much to my surprise I was up and about fairly quickly too which is a change.

After breakfast I had another letter to write. One that I had forgotten to write the other day and which needed doing quite rapidly as there was a time limit involved.

After my abortive trip into town, and back here having found the medication, it was too late to go back out to LIDL so I stayed here and made a phone call. And as a result it was arranged that I can make another phone call on Monday afternoon in this respect.

But as an aside, I was given an e-mail address to which I can send a mail. But knowing the way things work, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I will be surprised if I have a reply.

Back into town for my injection.

That isn’t snow down there in the place General de Gaulle, even though it might look like it. They are busy setting up the decorations for Christmas.

Only two and a half weeks away now.

The nurse who attended to me is from Lille, and he has a Flemish surname. It turns out that he has relatives in Flanders and we spent some of the time talking in Flemish.

At the Post Office I posted off all of the letters that I had written over the last few days, and then worked my way round to the Railway Station to pick up my tickets. And I’m glad that I picked them up well in advance during office hours because the ticket-printing machine was once again out of order.

One of these days I’ll forget, turn up at the station for my train and the machine will be out of order again. I wonder what the penalty is for travelling without a valid ticket.

There were a couple of things in LIDL that I would have picked up today but I wouldn’t be able to carry them home. I’ll have to wait until Saturday when I go up there in Caliburn and hope that there will be some left.

The exertions of the morning had worn me out and I ended up crashing out for half an hour in my comfy office chair. That took me up to lunch.

This afternoon I attacked the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer. And I found all of the OU postings that I had saved for further reference, including the legendary “I’m a Pottymouth” message by the equally legendary Lee Prostitute, fairy boots and all.

Now that the wet weather was drying out this afternoon, there were crowds out there walking around the Pointe du Roc.

And on my way out of the apartment I bumped into one of my neighbours coming in.

But there’s a storm brewing in the offing as the waves are slowly to climb up the sea wall. I hope that it it will be as good as the one last winter.

By the time that I rounded the headland and came back, it was school chucking-out time.

And so of course we have cars parked all over the pavements by the College Malraux and on the boulevard Vaufleury which is the main bus route and where the school coaches pass by.

There’s a huge free public car park just 50 metres up the road from there, but that is clearly too far for our poor little dears to stagger, so let’s just disrupt all of the traffic instead.

Why not?

And as I was coming back in, I met the same neighbour going out. It’s a small world.

Remember the tin of potatoes that I had opened in error yesterday? While I was ferreting around in the freezer I found a pie from last year left over. So I switched on the oven, prepared a quick rice pudding, soaked some of the tinned potatoes in olive oil, and bunged the rice pudding, the pie and the potatoes in to cook.

While that was going on, I cooked some frozen peas and carrots, and made some gravy. And it was all very delicious. Except the rice pudding, which wasn’t ready. But I’ll finish that off next time that the oven goes on.

No-one else was about on my walk last night, which isn’t much of a surprise.

I had plenty of time to stand on the walls and admire the view. The Christmas lights down in the town were illuminated quite brightly.

They seem to have done a good job of lighting up the mairie and I hope that they can do as good a job of the rest of the town as they have done down there.

There is quite an array of lights going up the rue Couraye too.

One of these evenings I’ll go for a walk up there and see what they are really like in the dark.

Alone out there I might have been, as far as human company went. But Minette was there though, and she let me stroke her for a few minutes before having a spit at me and wandering off. Dunno why she’s in such a bad mood just now.

On the way back to the apartment, I walked up along the rue St Jean.

From the corner of the rue du Nord there was a good view right down the street, under the gate and off into the place d’Armes. So I stopped to take a photograph of it on my way up.

Back here, I bumped into yet another neighbour. And she told me about a music course in the vicinity. I asked her to make further enquiries on my behalf.

So an early night is now on the cards. Tomorrow I’m going to wire up a big external hard drive to the desktop computer and copy the entire contents of the desktop computer onto the external drive.

Then, I can review it at my leisure without having to worry about the reliability of the desktop computer.

That lot should keep me out of mischief.

storm sea wall port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

fishing boats port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 5th December 2018 – WE DIDN’T …

… have any blue screens today. Or any frozen keyboards or major crashes on the big desktop computer today. For the simple reason that I didn’t switch it on at all.

To preserve it for a while longer I left it switched off and used the laptop computer to examine the portable drive onto which I had downloaded all of the data.

First thing was to remove all of the duplicate (and triplicate and, in some cases, quadruplicate) files. 22,000 or thereabouts out of the 78,000 or so that I downloaded yesterday and it took quite some time to do all of that. But luckily there’s a little program that I have on the computer that does it all for me, otherwise I would still be here doing it this time next year.

And I’ve come across yet more stuff that I had forgotten, including a pile of photos, and the sad thing is that I can’t remember where many of them were taken. The sad part about it all is that I downloaded onto the desktop computer all of the files for one of the previous versions of the blog when the host closed down, but the dates of the entries don’t seem to be on the files. It must have been a javascript key running from the webhost at the time.

I’ll have to think much more deeply about this.

There’s also a pile of data that needs to be sorted, and so I’ve a feeling that this is going to be a very long job.

I was interrupted by a phone call at about 11:00. Could I come to the doctor’s at 12:00 instead of 16:00? So I had to have a shower and a good clean-up before setting out.

On the way down into town, I noticed that Neptune was still in port, tied up at her quayside next to Marité and Normandy Trader.

I’ll go for a nosy round there after the doctor’s to see what’s going on.

At the doctor’s, I discovered that the situation about the vaccines is that you need a prescription from the doctor, and then go to the chemist for the supplies, and finally make an appointment with a nurse to do the injection.

The doctor did that all for me so I have to be at the nurse’s office at 11:00 tomorrow for the injection.

The doctor prescribed me a helping of Vitamin D to reinforce the injection. And you’ll be pleased to know that all of this medication cost me a grand total of €13:48. Cheap at half the price.

On the way back, I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and then went for a walk around the harbour.

Neptune was still there, and Normandy Trader had sneaked in on the morning tide.

I’d never had a close look round at Neptune before, so this seemed to be the correct moment to go for a suitable exploration

She’s a small bulk carrier of 2400 tonnes deadweight with a gross tonnage of about 1500 tonnes.

Built in 1992, she was formerly known as Islay Trader but changed her name quite recently, something presumably not unacquainted with the fact that she acquired something of a bad habit just recently of running aground and having to be towed off.

As you can see, she’s registered out of the port of Faversham, although I don’t imagine that she sails … “diesels” – ed … out of there these days seeing as how it’s silting up so rapidly.

These days we’ve seen her heading into Whitstable or, occasionally, Ridham whenever the tidal conditions are right.

That’s because Ridham is what is called a NABSA port – “Not Afloat But Safely Aground” – whenever the tide is low and no-one likes to have a heavily-loaded ship sitting on the bottom.

Victor Hugo was in port too.

She’s one of the ships that works the ferry service out to the Channel islands from the Normandy coast.

But it wasn’t her herself that caught my attention. What I was admiring was the notice where Hugo talks about the fact that there are four islands in the Channel Islands, which he mentions, but he can only find something to say about three.

As well as that, Aztec Lady had regrown her masts. There was a girl on deck working away so we had a chat for a while. They are off to the Far North of Norway soon, but not unfortunately to where I want to go.

As I arrived back here I was treated to a strange sight on the car park.

I’m all in favour of eating out wherever possible, but not in this kind of weather. So I admired the people who were taking their picnic lunch outside.

Not much danger of me joining them, I have to say. I’m going to eat my lunch indoors.

While I’m eating my lunch, I can tell you about the early part of the morning. With having had a really early night I’d had a really good sleep and was awake at 05:46.

I’d been on my travels too. Firstly, I had encountered someone from the Open University – an old guy whom I happened to quite like. A very quiet, timid type but last night he was busily killing off everyone who had offended or upset him. That was actually the plot of something that I had been watching on a DVD a couple of nights ago.
A little later I’d been at a football match, something like at Pionsat. But it was Bangor City who was playing and at a certain moment a long clearance out of the opposition defence had gone straight up towards the Bangor goalkeeper, who ran out to clear it. However he pulled a muscle and fell down, grabbing hold of the football as he did so in order to stop any attacker getting to the ball and scoring a goal. Clearly a free kick of course, but in view of the circumstances was it a yellow card offence for deliberate handball, or was it a red card for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity? The debate raged for quite a while about that one. Unfortunately, I awoke before the referee reached the scene and made a decision.

This afternoon I typed a couple of letters. Time to get a few things moving to secure the future. They’ll be posted tomorrow and then things will be off. And I forgot to go for a walk this afternoon, being so engrossed. Not that it matters quite so much as I’d had a good stroll out this morning.

Tea was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer followed by pineapple and coconut-flavoured soya dessert. I’ll do this again because it’s lovely.

And on my walk around, I was all on my own except for a jogger. Minette was there and I gave her a stroke but she must have a sore spot somewhere because she suddenly leapt up, spat at me and cleared off.

Not quite an early night tonight, but I’m off shopping tomorrow and I’ll call at the nurse’s on the way back. Another thing crossed off the list.

normandy trader neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

samsung digger neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

low tide port de granville harbour pilot light manche normandy france

4th December 2018 – FIVE SCREENS OF DEATH …

… and that’s my lot today. The desktop computer seems to have been working so much better today. Especially as all 5 of these screens of death occurred in the last half-hour as I tried to use the Duplicate File Finder program to eliminate the duplicate files.

Because there were thousands of those. You have no idea of how many hidden directories and partitions I have found. Loads of files for which I have been searching for years and many of which I have even forgotten all about.

Most of them have now made it onto the portable hard drive and when the desktop computer has cooled down tomorrow I’ll have another run through it and see what else I have missed.

But there won’t be much time tomorrow though, because I’m going out in the afternoon. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a considerable amount of health issues over Christmas last year and I don’t want to have the same this year. And so I have made an appointment to have a ‘flu injection.

It’s free here (at least, I am reimbursed 100% for it) so as much as I hate the idea of injections, I’m going to have it. And I hope it works.

But back to the computer again.

I had it running again last night and it was doing so well that I let it go. And it was at about 02:30 when I finally decided to switch it off and go to bed.

So even though the alarm went off this morning at the usual time, I took little notice. It was more like 07:45 when I came round far enough to haul myself out of bed. And as a result it was a rather late breakfast.

Once all of the nonsense was out of the way I have spent all day with the big computer extracting the files. I’m doing it while the doing is good because I’m not sure how long it will keep going.

We had lunch of course, indoors these days, and then a little later, it was time for my afternoon walk.

Neptune was still in the harbour but Thora must have crept in on the morning tide because she was on the point of leaving the port at 16:00.

For a while I stood around watching her manoeuvre and I took several photos of her passing out.

By the time I got back home I could see Thora rounding the headland of the Pointe du Roc and heading out to sea past the Ile de Chausey

Opportunity for a good photo was looming so I loitered around for half an hour and took several photos of her disappearing into the sunset.

And given the lighting and weather conditions out there, some of them came out quite well.

On the way back, I bumped into Gribouille. He came for his stroke but could smell Minette on me from last night so he wasn’t too impressed.

The laptop was playing some of the old-time radio shows in the background while I was working.

And you have to admire Leslie Charteris. We had another episode of The Saint with my favourite Simon Templar, Paul Rhys in the title rôle.

And we had the immortal exchange of conversation
” ‘Orace, old chap. Things have been a bit dull for a while. Do you feel like a spot of action?”
“I’ll just load the revolver, sir”
You can’t beat the good old days.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes. And talking of potatoes, when I went to open the pineapple slices for pudding, I found that I had opened the tin of new potatoes instead. It’s not my day, is it?

But that soya dessert stuff that I had bought – it went down really well with the pineapple slices when I eventually opened the correct tin.

Just me again on my evening walk tonight.

Neptune was still at her quay with her hydraulic hatches wide open.

I’m not sure of where they are up to with loading her but things must be progressing and she’ll probably be on her way tomorrow if they get a move on. I’ve never known her loiter in port for this long.

But there’s something else going on round by the place Maurice Marland just right now.

There has been talk of some kind of repairs to the city walls but tonight I tripped over some kind of crane or machine that was just dumped here without any warning.

And it’s pretty dark down here at night, you know. I could have done myself a mischief.

But the Christmas decorations around the town are advancing.

In the rue Paul Poirier, where I lived when I first came here, they have been out stringing up the fairy lights.

And it all looks quite pretty down there right now with the overhead lights in the foreground and the artificial palm trees in the background.

Round the corner in the rue Notre Dame Minette was sitting on the roof of a van. In order to come down to my level, she sat on her rear end and slid down the windscreen. I haven’t seen anything as funny as that for quite some considerable time.

With no desktop computer right now (it’s cooling down) I’m going to have an early night. After my exertions last night I reckon that I deserve it.

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holiday camp donville les bains granville manche normandy france

trawler cancale baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

neptune thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

north end ile de chausey semaphore lighthouse granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

thora fishing boat ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

crane place maurice marland granville manche normandy france

night neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 3rd December 2018 – FIVE SCREENS OF DEATH

four mouses frozen
three keyboard crashes
two total failures
and a partridge in a pear tree.

You can tell that not only am I in the festive spirit for a change, but I’ve been working on the old desktop computer.

While I was poking around in there this morning after breakfast, I found yet another wad of interesting files in another partition. There must be tons of stuff on here that I have forgotten.

Certainly, there are all kinds of programs and utilities that I can’t remember what they do, and the only reason that I know that they are there is because there is a relentless stream of error messages telling me that they have failed to load.

But seriously, who remembers the Myspace Instant Messenger? Or Pigdin? Or the Crystal Media Player? Stacks of programs, all of which have long-since gone to that great Windows Exploder in the Cloud.

It seems that I built this computer in the winter of 2001 and I worked with it, screens of death and all, for five long years until I went to live in the Auvergne. And every time that I came back to Belgium for something too, until I finally sold Expo.

So far, I’ve extracted about 40GB of files from it today, and there are still plenty more to go at. I’ve no idea how many because it’s quite clear that my filing system back in those days was lamentable. However did I cope?

If you ever hear me complain about any new laptop or something, please have the courtesy to whisper “Windows 98 SE” in my lughole, just to remind me how lucky I am these days.

After the awful voyage of Saturday night, last night’s little voyage was much more pleasant. And I’d tell you all about it too except that by the time I came to type it out, it had gone completely. I must finish the unpacking from Canada and rescue the dictaphone again.

Having completed breakfast, next task was to book my rail journey to Brussels for Christmas. And as you might expect, there are no cheap fares or discounts for the days on which I would like to travel and I am having to pay full price. I don’t much like that idea at all.

And then to work. I attacked the big computer and we were doing just fine until the external drive was full. I’d tried another one beforehand but the computer didn’t recognise it, and I was wondering whether to use the huge dashcam drive or even to use one of the big external IDE drives. And I should have done that first, because it was in changing over the drives that I started to have problems.

There was an interruption from the church – they wanted to invite me to a carol service and they wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, even when I told them that I wouldn’t be here.

I don’t do too well with churches. The first time that I went to church someone stuck my head in a bucket of water. The second time, someone gave me this strange woman to share my house. So I’ve finished with churches. If anyone wants to drag me to a church in future it will be over my dead body.

We also had a little … errr … repose.

What with one thing and another I forgot to defrost some hummus. I had to attack the jar of red pepper spread instead. But that’s no problem. I like these jars. They make handy spice jars when they are washed and cleaned.

Later on I had my afternoon walk, out in the hurricane that was blowing.

And Neptune is back in town too.

I said the other day, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that it looked as if we were going to have a gravel boat in very soon, and here she is.

There was a pile of mushrooms left over from the weekend, so I decided to make a curry. I had some dodgy potatoes, some peppers, a leek or two, a tin of lentils so I went into the kitchen and fried it all up. It wasn’t until I finished eating it that I remembered that I hadn’t added the mushrooms.

It’s not my day, is it?

Out again this evening for my usual evening walk around the walls.

By now the wind had dropped dramatically. Neptune was still at the quayside, still loading, and Minette was sitting on her windowsill waiting for her evening stroke. She was the only living creature that I saw.

So now that the big computer is up and running again (for now) from its latesT crash, I’ll carry on downloading the data. I’m not sure how long it will take but it’s not going to be finished this week.

However did I manage with that computer for all that time?

storm baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 2nd December 2018 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and that generally means no alarm call and a lie-in. And so I was in no mind whatever to get up when I awoke at … errr … 04:35.

But there was a good reason for waking up at that time of morning. I was off on another one of my nocturnal rambles. And I’ve had some dreadful nocturnal rambles during my time, some of which, with very good reason, are not the kind that I would recount because you are probably eating your tea or something while you are looking at this. But last night’s was one of the most dreadful that I have had and it was difficult for me to write in my diary. It wasn’t the kind of thing that I would be pleased to remember.

So 07:45 was a slightly better time to awaken, and 08:30 was an even better time to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit.

With a late breakfast, sightly delayed because I made a mess of my morning sudoku and ended up with two eights on the same line. Can’t go round doing things like this.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I didn’t do much at all this morning. Just doing things that I like to do. After all, Sunday is the day that I can laze around and do nothing without any thought of disappointment. Everyone needs a day like this.

After lunch, I headed off into the rain in the direction of St Pair where the US St Pairaise were playing US Mortainaise at the Stade Croissant.

St Pair would be higher in the table if they could score more goals, and Mortain just simply can’t defend. So I’m not sure of what game I was going to get.

It was obvious from the first 20 minutes that St Pair were much the better side, but it’s true that they didn’t offer anything up front. Mortain, were at least, organised but well off the pace.

Eventually, St Pair scored a goal after much huffing and puffing, but much to everyone’s surprise Mortain equalised, with only their second attempt in the whole of the half.

In the second half we had a couple of changes. One of Mortain’s players had turned up late and judging by how he was greeted, he was obviously the star of the team. He came on and went up front in place of the n°9.

And St Pair brought on the n°14 – the guy with all the hair who impressed me so much the other week.

This was the crucial point in the match. The Mortain replacement, well, he might have touched the ball two or three times during the second half, but for most of the game he was merely an ornament on the field.

As for the St Pair n°14, they played him at first on the right wing, but when they moved him into the centre of the attack he ignited the game.

What didn’t help was that the Mortain n°8 – the only player on the Mortain team who was showing any real ambition, was the victim of a very heavy challenge and was forced out of the game. And that was that for Mortain.

Mortain tired rapidly in the last 20 minutes and folded up. The St Pair players were stampeding in droves through a non-existent Mortain defence, stranded out of breath halfway up the field. And the final score of 5-1 was rather exaggerated.

It could have been much worse too. St Pair were denied what I considered to be a stonewall penalty, we had a beautiful step-over from the n°14 that sold a dummy not only to the whole Mortain defence but unfortunately to his onw team as well, and a keeper in the Mortain goal who was clearly not a keeper (his first instinct was feet, not hands) and who couldn’t catch a ball, but could dive and punch with a great amount of bravery and would have done credit to any other keeper at this level.

Back here I was shelling walnuts.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I liberated a pile from Liz and Terry’s lawn a few weeks ago and they have been drying in the sun. This evening I shelled them all and grilled them while I was making my pizza. They’ll be ground up and made into nutburgers in early course.

The pizza was delicious, and so was the rice pudding that I made yesterday.

And my walk in the wind and rain was very nice.

The air was quite clear and visibility was beautiful. The street lights reflecting off the clouds over St Malo were definitely impressive tonight.

Cancale is to the left and the lights of the lighthouse on the immediate left margin of the photo.

It’s Monday tomorrow so I’m back at work. That’s a cue for an early night tonight. And where will I go while I’m asleep?

Saturday 1st December 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… beautiful pie.

I remembered to buy the leeks this morning so I fired a leek with some onions and garlic and then tipped into it the pie filling from last time. While it was all frying around I greased my pie dish and put the roll of pastry in it. And then added the mix once it had cooled.

One thing that I hadn’t noticed was that it was “thick pastry” and not the usual roll. And because it weighed the same as the usual roll, it meant that it was of a smaller circumference. And so it didn’t join in the middle.

But not to worry. I cheated and covered the gap with a couple of slices of cheese.

While the oven was warming and before I started the pie, I made a small rice pudding and put that in the oven. The pie followed it later.

When it was nearly done I made some potatoes with some frozen peas and carrots, and some gravy. The pie I cut into 4 slices. Three for the freezer and one for the meal. And it was absolutely delicious. I’ll do this again, that’s for sure. And how I wish that I had bought a bigger freezer.

Last night was quite a good night. I did awaken here and there but not so that I remembered it particularly. I do remember going on a little wander though.

There was a whole group of us, including the guy with whose family I stayed in 1970, wandering around somewhere. e were having to be lodged in a house somewhere in the town because of overcrowding (no surprise here) but we ate at home, in a house that wasn’t really much different to Davenport Avenue. We all turned up there one day, to find a rather pleasant, cheerful (for a change) father actually cooking the meal, and that in itself is a major surprise.
A little later on I was watching a football match where a group of players with features resembling those of Mongolia were playing the Polish team. The pitch was very rough and uneven and had a famous downhill slope. The Mongolians (for want of a better word) were attacking downhill and missed a couple of sitters, blazing them over the bar when clean through on goal. The half-time score was 0-0, thanks also to a dogged rearguard defence by the Mongolians, and I had a feeling that with the Poles ttacking downhill in the second half, the Mongolians would deeply regret these misses. But I went over to talk to one of their players standing on the fringe of things at half-time. he explained that his country was actually a breakaway republic from Poland and so this match had a deep and emotional significance for his players and his country. How the Poles thought themselves superior! I explained that the Poles always had had a reputaion for being a dour, battling side that doesn’t give in easily, but he winked and said that he didn’t mean just about football. I had the impression that he meant to say that the Poles looked on their opponents as some kind of untermenschen who deserved to be dominated and their rightful place was right at the bottom of the pile.

There was the usual breakfast and shower and so on, and then I hit the streets. And despite visiting LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc, I didn’t buy anything at all extraordinary. Just maybe the €1:99 for a pair of pliers.

But one thing that they seem to have started to sell in LeClerc is the big tub of soya dessert and the one that caught my eye was the natural soya dessert laced with coconut. I’ve had some pineapple slices hanging around here for ages and one day soon whenever I finish the rice pudding I’ll have them with the coconut soya. That will keep me going for a few days I reckon.

It took me ages to summon up the energy to unpack everything and put it away and then I had lunch.

There was plenty to do on the laptop but unfortunately I didn’t do much. And falling asleep was only part of it. Sorting through some of the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer was another big part of it.

I’ve mentioned the pie of course, but I didn’t get my rice pudding because the football came up on the internet. Barry Town v Newtown in the Welsh Premier League.

Played in the driving rain, it was all Newtown in the first half but they couldn’t find a striker to put the ball in the back of the net.

Whatever it was that they put in the half-time tea in the Barry Town dressing room, I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. They scored almost straight from the kick-off an0d then went up a gear, finishing a comfortable 4-1 winners.

And when the referee looks at the game later, he’ll probably agree that he has had better games than he did today.

However, I didn’t pay full attention to the second half because Rosemary rang up. She was keen to find out how I did in the hospital and we ended up chatting for about an hour and a half. And that was very nice.

As a result though, I didn’t have any of my daily walks today. I’ll just have to do twice as much tomorrow.

Friday 30th November 2018 – THE THINGS YOU FORGET

Computers that take hours to load. Documents that take weeks to open. Files that disappear into the ether. Screens that hang up for half an hour.

And who will ever forget the Blue Screen Of Death?

Yes, I’ve been working with the old desktop computer today. And I had completely forgotten just how unstable it was, and how unstable all computers were back in those days and how we were resigned to it.

It makes all my problems with the modern generation of computers look pathetic by comparison.

What I have been doing is (trying to) extract the files from it onto a portable hard drive. And the fact that the USB ports were on the back (they were quite a new invention in the days of Windows 98) was the least of the problems.

We had two Blue Screens of Death, a keyboard that hung up, a mouse that hung up, Windows Exploder that hang up I really can’t remember how many times. When I built this computer, I remember being proud of the fact that it had 512k of memory and 256k of video and this was almost unheard-of in those days.

But imagine that today? No wonder it doesn’t want to do what I would like it to do. I’m struggling to make 8g of RAM to work effectively. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very long process.

This morning I had a really good sleep, right the way through to the alarm. And much to my own surprise, I was up and about fairly quickly too.

After breakfast I had a pile of work to do but something made me look through a folder that I had brought from the Auvergne in August and in there I found a document for which I have been searching for quite some considerable time.

It was the date on it – July 2008 – that made me decide to look for the corresponding paperwork and that was round about the time that the desktop computer was being retired from use, so I went to have a look on one of the hard drives (there are eight in there – well, eight partitions on two drives) to see if I could find it.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have spent the last I don’t know how long looking for a batch of images that I knew that I had and couldn’t find. And there they all were, on one of the partitions in the desktop computer.

And after all of this searching over the past few years too. I was convinced that when I was up at the old apartment in Brussels in 2011 just before I sold it, I had taken all of the images and data off it. But apparently not.

There is a short-cut to dealing with the data. I could take the hard-drive out, because it’s in a snatch-out carrier, and put it in an external IDE caddy, which I just happen to have around here. But the carrier has a lock to prevent it being removed, and Brain of Britain didn’t bring the key with him, did he?

Apart from all of that, I’ve been for both my walks. And it was nice and pleasant out there. And I would have had a nicer and more pleasant time had I not run out of memory on the SD card in the camera.

For tea, I found some vegan burgers in the fridge (I’ve been tidying it out too today) that were past their sell-by date. So I made some pasta and veg and tomato sauce and it was delicious.

Another thing that I found in the fridge that is past its sell-by date is a roll of puff pastry. There’s some pie filling in the freezer so i think that tomorrow I’ll buy a couple of leeks and make a large pie.

That should keep me out of mischief for several days.

Thursday 29th November 2018 – WITH HAVING HAD …

… a late night last night and with no alarm, it was 08:58 this morning when I awoke.

I’d been on my travels too – helping to unravel a very peculiar situation where they discovered that the descendants of the two princes born to a King in the first half of the 17th Century had plenty of DNA on the mother’s side but none whatsoever on the paternal side, meaning that the King was certainly not their father and implying that they had no right to inherit the throne, hence all of their descendants including the current Royal Family, were usurpers to the throne.
A little later, I was out in my old Passat estate driving somewhere where, going round something of a blind bend, I encountered a big yellow crane coming out of a field and I had to swerve around it. The interesting thing about that though was that I was driving on the left-hand side of the road as in the uK. So that was highly unlikely.

Despite the late awakening, I was in no hurry to heave myself out of my stinking pit. And so in consequence it was a rather late breakfast. Followed, as it’s Thursday, by a good shower, some clean clothes and a general clean-up. I have to make an effort.

By the time that I summoned up the effort to go to LIDL it was rather late in the morning. But the stride out did me the world of good. There wasn’t anything on special offer that I needed, but seeing as the nuts are still on offer and the sell-by date is 6 months in advance, I bought a couple more packets.

Back here, after lunch I carried on unpacking and did a little sorting out, but once more I ended up away with the fairies. And for quite a while too

As a result it was going dark when I finally made my way outside.

The headlad around the Pointe du Roc was pretty deserted which was hardly a surprise given the wind that was blowing. And there seemed to be quite a storm raging over the Ile de Chausey

I’m glad that I wasn’t out there in all of that. It looked quite miserable.

Things looked slightly better away across on the Brittany coast.

It was still quite light in that direction and relatively clear too. The new 50mm lens was picking up the lights in the villages on the coast quite easily and I was pleased with that.

I’m not sure about the bright light that seems to be just offshore. We’ve seen a couple of brightly-illuminated fishing boats here at Granville so it might be one of those.

Tea was a frozen curry with rice and veg – a curry that I made on 17th November … last year! I need to go through the freezer and tidy it out to see what else there is in there.

And now I’m going to try for an early night again. The alarm goes off at 06:00 tomorrow morning and I need to get back into the swing of things. There’s plenty of work to do.

Wednesday 28th November 2018 – I DID MY BEST …

… to have an early night last night. In bed at some respectable time but not able to go to sleep. And when I did I was awake again at 01:45.

But the body clock is working well again, for I was awake bolt-upright at 05:59, just seconds before the alarm went off.

With having done almost everything last night, it didn’t take me long to clean up and make sure that I had everything. And by 06:25 I was on my way.

There was a train at 06:52 for Brussels. One of the old dirty, filthy, graffiti-covered AM80 multiple units heading for Quievrain down on the French border.

The lack of care and attention that these are receiving – surprising for the SNCB – tells me that these trains are the next to go under the cutter’s torch, and fairly soon too, I reckon. They aren’t far off being 40 years old and haven’t in the main had an overhaul for nearly 25 years.

Our train was pretty crowded too but I managed to find a seat where I could settle down for the journey. And as we passed though the various stations in Brussels the train emptied rapidly.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour and bought my raisin buns for breakfast, and a packet of crisps and a bottle of water as emergency supplies.

And then a wait for the TGV.

It should have departed at 08:13 but when I went up to the platform it was ominously marked “12 minutes late”. And by the time we left, we were 25 minutes behind schedule.

That’s enough to give me the willies as I don’t have too much time to change stations in Paris and it’s quite a hike across the city.

It was packed to the gunwhales too – not a spare seat anywhere. hardly surprising that even when I booked my tickets I couldn’t have a corridor seat.

We didn’t make up any time either and it was 25 minutes late that we pulled into Paris Gare du Nord.

I’m not into running about these days but I pushed on as quickly as I could. I was lucky with the metro in that I didn’t have to wait too long, and there were no delays. I chose a position right by where the exit to the platform at Montparnasse would be, and so I could step off the train and straight out of the station.

With no delays on the way, and no other incidents, I could push on and arrived at Vaugirard with 10 minutes to spare.

The train was already loading so I composted my tickets and leapt aboard. There was someone sitting in my reserved seat ao I was obliged to heave him out so that I could sit down.

There was plenty that I needed to do on the way back, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. Instead, I had a good sleep and that made me feel a little better.

We pulled in to Granville bang on time, which makes a pleasant change. And I stepped off the train straight into a wicked, high wind.

There’s a train timed to go out at about 15 minutes after ours arrives and I had always thought that ours did a simple turn-around. But apparently not. There was another train parked in the platform next to ours and all of the passengers for the afternoon trip to Paris were piling aboard.

I’m not too sure about the logic of running another train on the return. If I had invested as much money in captial equipment as the SNCF had, I would want it out there working and generating passenger income as much as possible

I stopped at the boulangerie on the way home for a baguette. I didn’t want to fetch any bread out of the freezer.

It’s good to be back home, even if it was cold in here. But the heating soon dealt with that issue.

After a very late lunch I started to unpack but I can’t keep it up like I used to of course. I ended up crashing out on my chair at the desk in the office. And I was away for quite a while too.

With lunch being so late, I was in no mood for tea so I simply stirred a few papers around in here and then went for a walk. I was on 90% of my daily activity so I didn’t go far, which was hardly surprising because, if anything, the wind had increased.

All of the fishing boats were now coming up to the fishing quay by the processing plant. There was quite a line of them waiting to unload, rather like the queue at the self-scanners in a supermarket.

You can see how strongly the wind was blowing by looking at the waves in this photo. And remember that this is actually inside the tidal harbour. You can imagine what it must have been like outside the harbour, but this wasn’t the weather for going for a look.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t tired now so not having had my lie-in on Sunday I switched off the alarm and watched something on the internet.

It’s now 02:30 and I suppose that I’d better make an effort to go to bed. I’ll be still here in the morning if I don’t make an effort.

Sunday 25th November 2018 – I WAS REALLY …

… Looking forward to my good night’s sleep, having made a determined effort to have an early night. But it all went wrong round about 01:45 when I awoke with a severe attack of cramp. So severe was it that all of my usual methods of relaxing the muscles failed to work and I ended up hopping around the apartment in agony until I could reset the leg;

It didn’t take me long to go back to sleep either. And when I did, I was away with the fairies again. On board ship, yet again, but this time on the way to Whittlesea Bay where Mrs Povey was busy organising the support for the local carnival. I really must stop listening to all of these episodes of the Navy Lark.

The body clock was working fine and I was awake before the two alarms. As a fall-back I have configured an older mobile phone to work as an alarm clock when it’s important, in case we have another upgrade.

No breakfast – just to back up the computer onto the travel memory stick attached to the keyring. And then to make my sandwiches, pack my rucksack,take out the rubbish and do some cleaning up.

It was raining outside, so I sorted out my raincoat again and had a rather wet and weary trudge through the dampened streets.

The tide was in so there were several fishing boats tied up at the quay by the fish-processing plants, unloading last night’s catch.

This one here has a great set of lights for seeing what it’s doing. It might be the same brightly-lit one that we’ve seen on a couple of previous occasions just now.

The town was quite deserted, as you might expect at this time of a sunday morning.

I mentioned the other day that they had begun to install the Christmas lights and I’d noticed last night that some of them were illuminated.

And so I suppose that I had better take a photo of them illuminated while there is no-one abot.

At the station I reckon that whoever had used the coffee machine before me had had a hot chocolate, because my coffee didn’t half taste strange.

There was a very friendly cleaner on the railway station and we had a very interesting while waiting for my train to arrive. There are all kinds of changes happening on the railways with the Caen-Rennes trains being diverted to pass by Granville, the doubling of the line between Dol-de-Bretagne and Avranches and the reinforcement of the shuttle service between Pontorson and Mont St Michel.

This is all good news, because there has been some talk about the possibility of closing the railway station and putting everyone on buses. But here we have an example of stopping one of the buses here (the bus to Folligny station) and increasing the rail connection. I’m keen to see how this is going to develop.

The train wasn’t all that full at first, although I had a couple of people witting opposite me. But slowly, little by little, the train filled up as advanced towards Paris. By the time that we arrived at L’Aigle the train was packed.

Somewhere between L’Aigle and Verneuil sur Ayre we stampeded a herd of deer in a field by the railway line. It must be that time of the year now, with the hunters starting to come out.

As we pulled into Paris, I admired the courage of the lady opposite who started to reapply her lipstick as the train rattled over all of the sets of points. I didn’t get to see the finished job but it must really have been something

The station at Montparnasse-Vaugirard wasn’t quite the chaos that it has been for the last few Sundays but it was crowded all the same. The Metro was pretty crowded too and I had to stand all the way up to the Gare du Nord.

At Gare du Nord I was lucky to find a seat where I could eat my butties but we had a rather curious incident there.

Some woman pushed a goblet with money in it under my nose. Thanking her, I took the contents. It was several Moroccan coins and a British sixpence. I put them in my pocket.

She then made a gesture, pointing to her mouth, saying “money – eat”.
I told her that she would break her teeth, eating money.

She then pointed to her belly, saying – “eat – baby”
I replied that if she has eaten a whole baby she would get indigestion.

This kind of desultory conversation continued for a few minutes and then she wandered off elsewhere.

Our TGV was packed to the gunwhales. Not a spare seat anywhere.

Luckily I was one of the first on board so I didn’t have to scramble for my seat, which was right down at the far end of the coach.

I spent most of the journey in a deep and profound sleep – with just one awakening to let my seating companion out, and another one for me to visit the bathroom.

We were bang on time in Brussels but so was the 15:42 to Leuven, which meant that I missed it. But there was another one right behind – at 15:56 to Eupen

That was 5 minutes late so there was quite a crowd gathered for it. Luckily I was right at the front so I was able to grab a seat but those who boarded the train at the middle had to walk the whole length of the train before they could find somewhere.

Here in Leuven it was freezing cold and foggy and I had a bitter walk all the way to my digs.

I’m in a room at the top overlooking the courtyard – I’ve not been in one of these before.

Tonight is pizza night so I had a stroll into town in the rain to the place that does my special pizzas.

They’ve put up the Christmas lights in the Tiensestraat, although they seem to be somewhat feeble. I was expecting to see much more than this.

It’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

Back here, I had my tea, and then a shower and clothes wash.

And it seems that I’ve forgotten to bring a spare pair of trousers so I hope that these will dry for the morning.

With the computer locking up, I decided to have an early night. 121% of my daily activity is enough for any man and I have a busy day tomorrow?

rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Saturday 24th November 2018 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

And, just for a change, we aren’t talking about events on the North Shore of the English Channel either.

Up at the Stade Louis Dior this eveningin the beautiful sunset watching US Granville play US St Malo. Granville came straight out of the traps and missed two complete sitters in the first five minutes.

Granville scored the first goal after about 20 minutes and looked as if they were doing wuite well, but then they started to lapse into the usual lack of concentration and silly, stupid schoolboy mistakes.

Just after half-time they scored a second goal. This new n°10 whom they have just signed and who was playing a blinder, the smallest man on the field, rose highest at the back post to a deep cross and headed in.

But then, an astonishing thing. Granville went to sleep. This new n°10 drifted into anonymity and was later substituted, and St Malo then took the game by the scruff of the neck. They pulled one back after 74 minutes and a second, from a panic-stricken penalty, with five minutes to go.

And as the game drew to a close, it was Sr Malo who looked the most likely.

This bizarre behaviuor by Granville has cost them yet another two points. They’ve signed a whole raft of new players this season with the cup money, but they have still kept the same old habits, and they will cost them dear.

Last night was another reasonable night and I was away on my travels again – although I have absolutely no idea when or where I went.

And up reasonably early too, medicined and breakfasted.

With it being Saturday, it’s my usual practice to go to the shops today. But with my going off tomorrow morning, I decided against it. No point buying food that I don’t need right now.

I did go out, however. A nice walk around the docks.

But first I had something to do. Remember the story the other day of the railway line at the side of the docks?

I followed it a bit further along the docks and found a spot where the two rails merged into one. And so now I’m having third thoughts about my theory of the railway crane.

The tide was well out today so not only were the harbour gates closed and I could walk over them, I could satisfy my curiosity about how the harbour empties.

The harbour would have to slowly lose water over the course of the day as the tide goes out, so that the water inside could go down slowly and the gates could be opened before high tide

And there’s the drain, down there at the foot of the wall.

There are tidal markers too at the side of the wall so we can see the state of the tide. I’ll have to be down there one day as the gates open so that I can see the height of the water when they open the gates.

I carried on with my walk around the quayside to see what else was going on.

And it looks as if whatever has been going on with the Aztec Lady in the ship repairers has now finished because she’s now tied up at the quayside.

There was no-one about on the boat so I was unable to make further enquiries;

I was intrigued by the yacht that was moored next to Aztec Lady.

Closer observation revealed that she’s the Spirit of Conrad and we ought to know about this because she’s actually owned by one of my neighbours and if my memory serves me correctly I’ve been to a birthday party on board.

One of these days, I might even go for a sail on her because she goes off occasionally to the Arctic too.

Leaving the quayside, I off up to the railway station to collect my rail tickets for tomorrow morning. I always like to have them in my hand before the day of departure. There has been more than one occasion when the ticket machine hasn’t worked, and the booking office isn’t open by the time my train leaves.

After lunch, I did a little tidying up and cleaning up in here – not that you would notice the difference. But the microwave has been steam-cleaned and now looks a little more healthy.

And I had a play with the big tower computer too. But that wasn’t very successful – the CMOS battery is flat and the settings are erased. I’ll have to buy a new CMOS battery and reset everything.

Not that it’s any surprise of course. This computer hasn’t run since March 2011.

A little later I went off to the football, as I mentioned earlier.

The other day we had seen them putting up some Christmas lights around the town.

The main shopping street – the rue Campion – would ordinarily be the best place to start, but this is something of a disappointment.

I’m not much of a one for celebrations and festivities but I would have expected the Christmas decorations to be much better than this. I hope that they are going to add some more in early course.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a regular feature of this blog.

Here in the boulevard of the 2éme et 202éme de Ligne there’s yet another example, and while it might not be a BMW it’s a Volvo, and that’s almost as bad.

I don’t know why he needs to take up two parking spaces with his vehicle, but it’s clearly pretty selfish of him.
But what do you expect from a Volvo driver?

I eventually returned home and set about making tea. Something out of a tin as usual on a Saturday when there’s football, and then some more tidying up, including cleaning the coffee machine.

Now it’s bed-time, having had a very pleasant hour or so reprogramming the CMOS on the tower computer. It’s amazing how much I have remembered from my T223 course all those years ago, and it’s running along quite happily. Although for some reason or other I’ve programmed in the wrong settings for the video card. I’ll have to look at that when I come back from Belgium next week.

But now it’s an early night. There’s an alarm call in the morning.

Friday 23rd November 2018 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… for quite some considerable time, we’ve had rain today.

Not enough to prevent me from going for my series of perambulations but enough to make me put on the raincoat and do up the hood. And it’s not a long knee-length raincoat, Rhys.

With having had a reasonably early night, I had a good sleep too.

During the night last night there was something of a family reunion. I’m no longer sure of the beginning or even the middle but right at the end I can remember going to bed – in Vine Tree Avenue of all places. But when I went to get into bed with Nerina, my younger sister was asleep in there too. When I awoke her to find out what was going on, she told me that there was someone else asleep in her bed so she had to find somewhere else to sleep. I went to look in her bed and found that one of my friends had actually gone to sleep in there.
As an aside, in real life whoever was asleep in her bed later became her husband. But that’s another story.

It wasn’t a particularly early start this morning either. I had a bit of a lie-in, and then I attacked the breakfast.

This morning I’ve been a busy little B. The blog for the last week or two is up to date and you can see where I updated starting from this page and working forward.

When I’m more organised, I’ll be starting from the end of October and working backwards, doing three or four a day until it’s all done. It might take me several years to do it but if I don’t start, I won’t finish.

Another task that I’ve done this morning that took me far longer than it ought was to merge the clipbook libraries.

The program that I use the most is a text editor called Notetab. I do evrything with it, from making brief notes right up to hand-coding my own web pages.

The main advantages that it has are that

you can have several *.txt or *.html files open at any one time
you can build up a whole series of clipbook libraries, so that you can save a regular block of text or coding that you use on a regular basis, and just one click inserts it into your document, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall

There are enough old computers here to sink a ship, and there are backups that date to about 1999, so this morning I started to extract the libraries from the various machines and merge them together.

having done a couple this morning, I then did a big back-up of the laptop and I’ll be backing up my data a couple of times a day from now on, always assuming that I remember.

While I was searching for something else, I came across a rare book going back to AD731 that has now been uploaded to the internet and available for free download. And so I’ve now added a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People to my virtual library.

This is one of the very earliest histories of England and, along with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was the basis of much of what was known about English history in the Dark Ages.

And that reminds me. I brought my Domesday Book with me from the farm, but did I bring my Anglo-Saxon Chronicle?

This muesli that I made really is wicked. It went down a treat on my butties at lunchtime and there is still plenty left. And after lunch I came back into my little office and carried on with Day Four of the High Arctic.

There was a break for a walk around the headland. Although it was raining, it wasn’t all that bad-certainly not bad enough to stop me.

At the ship repairers, Aztec Lady was still there, up on blocks. There was a ladder up to her deck but I couldn’t see any sign of any work being done.

The trawlers are still up there too receiving attention. I’m not sure what they are doing to the pink and white one that we saw being lifted out of the water.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back when they were dredging out the harbour, they had a digger in the tidal basin here at low tide.

It was digging out a deep channel at the outside of the fishing quay by the fish processing plant.

This was done presumably with the aim of making a cut there that would provide access to the quay for a greater part of the day

There’s a whole line of smaller boats that have been queueing up outside the harbour now on their way in to tie up and unload.

If you look at the surrounding tidal harbour, you can see that it’s a long way from being submerged right now.

It certainly seems that the little channel that they dug out is working, and in spades too, which is good news for the port and the town.

More time available to unload means that more fishing boats can use the facilities

Just by way of a change I’d been chatting to a couple of neighbours too – one as I left the building and the second as I arrived back. It’s all go here, isn’t it?

In the mail today I’ve had the bill for the taxe d’habitation – the Council Tax – for next year for my house in the Auvergne. Eat your hearts out, you UK dwellers. My council tax for next year is all of €24:00.

Ingrid phoned me up after I came back. And we had a lengthy chat for a good hour or so about all kinds of things. She’s not too well right now, so I told her that some nice, relaxing sea air would do her the world of good.

There was a pepper left over so tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. I need to rid myself of the perishable stuff before I go away on Sunday.

Then, back into the rain. There was just one other person out there this evening but Minette, the black cat, was there on her windowsill. She had a good stroke and even allowed me to pick her up for 30 seconds.

But for some reason or another, I’m feeling quite tired. No idea why – it’s not as if I had a bad night. But I do seem to think that I’ve not had my usual afternoon doze so that might account for it.

It’s a good enough reason to go to bed.

Thursday 22nd November 2018 – I HAD A …

… better night last night, just for a change. Asleep before midnight and slept right through until the alarm went off.

I was off on my travels during the night. I vaguely remember being on board ship somewhere, but apart from that, nothing at all.

Once I was up and out of bed, I had breakfast and then organised the photos from last night which I had forgotten to upload. And the *.ftp program seems to work fine, which is good news.

A check of the thermometer showed me that last night the temperature had dropped down to 1°C. Won’t be long now before freezing point is reached.

Thursday is shopping day so I had a shower and a clean-up, and then put a load of washing on. What an exciting life I lead, hey?

On my way up the rue Couraye, I was noticing all of the signs for “Black Friday”. yet another Transatlantic custom that people over here have started to embrace.

But there are clearly some people who haven’t quite grasped the principle of Black Friday. How can you possibly have a Black Friday sale that lasts for a week?

But it’s something that I’m seeing more and more. People are losing all of their traditional customs and habits in the relentless search for profit, although some of the instances that I have quoted on here just recently would bring that into question.

We feature every now and again the progress of the installation of the fibre-optic cable around the town.

Here in the Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc just a little higher up the hill from the railway station they are now digging out a channel on the pavement so that they can pass the cable higher up the hill presumably in the direction of the telephone exchange

The date of connection is getting closer and closer. And I for one can’t wait.

The other week we saw them erecting the Christmas Tree in the Place de la Gare and on Saturday we saw it in position.

To further add to the chaos in the Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc, they are now erecting the Christmas decorations across the street.

The local council was there with a cherry-picker, and a couple of municipal police personnel directing the traffic around th obstruction.

I shook my head and went on to LIDL where I did a pile of shopping. Nothing special but they have now run out of grapes which is a tragedy, and the packets of nuts that I use in my muesli were still on offer so I bought a few more packets.

A few weeks ago I posted a photograph of a building with “Residence des Granvillaises” emblazoned thereupon.

On the way back from the shops I took a little diversion to the Rue Etoupefour to have a good look at the entrance to the building to see what it looked like at street level.

It’s not anything at all significant, which is probably why I haven’t noticed it at all during all of the times that I have passed by.

Back here I had a coffee and then carried on with the photos from earlier. As well as having a little doze for a short while. It seems to have become a regular thing these days after any kind of exertion.

Lunch was the baguette from LIDL with salad and more of my home-made hummus. It really is quite a fiery concoction and tastes delicious.

This afternoon I added the photos to a couple more blog entries. if you go to this page and work your way forward you can see them.

There wasn’t a great deal of excitement going on during my afternoon walk.

There was a speck of something out to sea and thinking that it might be Thora coming back, I took a photo of it and enlarged it when I returned home.

But it wasn’t Thora at all but a fishing trawler out there doing the business offshore. And I for one am looking forward to the excitement when the UK leaves the EU and we start to have fishing fights between the French and Channel Island fishermen.

I can still remember the 1960s when a bunch of Icelandic trawlermen took on the might of the Royal Navy during the Cod Wars – and defeated them hands-down. French fishermen are far more resolute than the Icelanders, and the Royal Navy is a mere shadow of what it was in the 1960s

My perambulations took me around the headland where I could overlook the shipyard.

Remember the pink and white candy-striped trawler that we saw the other day being lifted out of the water at the ship repairers?

We caught a glimpse of it last night up on blocks, but here it is today in the daylight. I’ll be keen to see what they are doing to it and how the work progresses over time.

And that wasn’t all the excitement down in the shipyard either.

It seems that the mystery of why the Aztec Lady has turned up in Granville has been resolved. Here she is, in the shipyard, up on blocks like the rest of the ships in here.

It looks as if I missed out on the hoisting ceremony which is a shame because that is something that is quite interesting.

Anyway, it enables us to have a good look at her while she’s here.

And we can also keep our eye on her and see what work is being done. It must be important.

On that note, I came back here for a coffee and to start work. And the work in question is Day Four of my trip to the High Arctic.

I need to push on with that otherwise it will never be finished. And there are plenty of pages like that already.

Tea should have been vegan sausages, but I didn’t notice until I’d started the vegetables that the sausages were somewhat iffy. Instead, a vegan burger was rustled up and it tasted just as good with the vegan cheese sauce as the sausages would have done.

No-one about at all during the evening walk, except for a solitary jogger. Nothing at all worth photographing zither tonight, so I can have an evening off.

On that note, I’ll go to bed. Plenty of work to do tomorrow.

Wednesday 21st November 2018 – WINTER IS DEFINITELY …

… here. Temperature was at 3°C again this morning when I awoke. And it wandered around about 5°C for most of the day. Whatever Indian Summer we were having has now gone for good until the Spring.

Last night was a bad night for me. I didn’t go to bed until rather later than I intended, and it was once again a struggle to leave my bed. I’d been on a voyage too but it had gone right out of my head by the time that I was on my feet.

This morning I had a few things to do – like deal with an upgrade to the laptop that somehow managed to wipe out the language settings on it. I had to fiddle around for a while until I could type the password in the correct character setting. And then I restarted it – and the language settings came back.

Second thing to do was to upload Paint Shop Pro to this laptop. I’d forgotten that it wasn’t on board.

Third thing was that I had had a message from the builder of Waterfox – the Firefox clone that I’ve been using. There’s a hidden link to the disabled utilities (and why it should be hidden I really don’t know) and he pointed me in the direction of where I can find the *.ftp program. It has to be configured by hand and it takes a while to do that but now it’s up and running.

I’m sure that there were a few other things that I was doing this morning but I can’t for the life of me remember now what it was. I’m cracking up, aren’t I?

After lunch I started to attack the previous blogs to upload the photos that I worked on yesterday. What with a pile of interruptions (including having a little … errr … relax on two occasions) I worked back as far as Saturday. I’ll push on tomorrow and do the rest.

It was a beautiful walk around the walls this afternoon.

The tide was quite far in and the fishermen were out in their boats at the foot of the cliffs. These people here had a couple of rods and lines and were fishing with them from the boat.

Not sure what they were catching though. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway.

A little further on around the corner, the sun was shining on the beach down at the Plat Gousset.

Although it was quite windy, the tide wasn’t in far enough to push the waves over the sea wall, so there were quite a few people out there taking advantage of the good weather and the sunshine.

And the beach cabins have definitely gone too. I wonder if they take them away and store them out of the season and bring them back again next summer.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel the wind was whipping up nicely.

Someone was out there in a sailing boat and it was really exciting to see the sails billowing out in the wind and pulling the yacht along at an impressive rate of knots.

But you can see that there was a sea mist out there today.

You’ll remember a few months ago that there was an exhibition of paintings and photographs suspended from the town walls above the Place Maurice Marland.

Today there was a tracked machine out there that looked as if it was there to take all of them down.

That’s an exciting machine all right. I wouldn’t have minded having that down on the farm when I was living there. I could think of a thousand and one uses for it.

That wasn’t all the excitement either.

As I was walking by the walls above the harbour, I noticed Normandy Trader down there. She must have sneaked in on the tide and I had missed her, and there she was setting off back out again.

I couldn’t see what it was that she was carrying with her but I imagine that it was a mixed cargo as usual.

It’s a little-known fact but an important claim to fame of the old medieval town of Granville that there’s a connection here with the royal family of Monaco.

One of the ancestors of Prince Ranier was a girl who lived in the town and married into the Grimaldi family. That was the home of her family and there is a plaque on the side recording that Prince Ranier came here a few years ago.

It looks as if they are now going to launch a programme of renovation on the family pile.

By the time that I returned to my own family pile, I was thinking that the Normandy Trader would be well out to sea by now.

And so I coupled up the big zoom/telephoto lens and went off a-wandering round to the Pointe du Roc.

And there, setting off into the sunset against a backdrop of the Ile de Chausey was Normandy Trader, en route for Jersey.

I took another photo of it with the lens at its fullest extent, and then back here cropped out Normandy Trader and blew it (the crop, not the ship) up.

I still can’t see what she is carrying, but the photo has come out quite well considering the distance over which I was working;

When I returned to the apartment, Gribouille was outside and he let me pick him up for a stroke.

Tea tonight was the rest of the falafel with pasta and vegetables in tomato sauce.

After doing the washing-up, I went for my walk around the Pointe du Roc. And it’s freezing outside too. Winter draws on, and quite right too in this weather.

The clear, still weather was great for photography and so I took a few photos of the night. The one that I took of the boats, the harbour and the lights came out really well.

I particularly liked the reflection on the water of the red harbour gate light

And that’s not all either.

Remember the other day when they were lifting that pink and white trawler up out of the water onto the quayside at the ship repair yard?

Well, there she is now. Up on blocks now and a ladder up against the side. There’s obviously some work that needs to be done to it, and it looks as if they have already made a start.

So back here now and I’m going to try yet again for another early night. Curled up under the blankets is the best place to be in this weather, I reckon.

Beach Plat Gousset Granville

The beach down by the Casino at the Place Marechal Foch.

Normandy Trader leaving Granville harbour on her way back to Jersey.

Normandy Trader setting out for Jersey

Tuesday 20th November 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… where I visited during the night but wherever it was, I was still there when the alarm went off. Dead to the world, in fact.

It took me a while to haul myself out of bed and organise myself properly. And after breakfast I had a couple of things that needed doing.

A shower followed, and then I dressed for the streets.

As the tide was out, I took my new route, down the steps, across the fish dock and the path over the top of the tidal gates onto the commercial dock.

I remember seeing Thora in the port yesterday and I thought that I had seen her still here last night. And she’s still here this morning, looking as if she’s taking on a load for Jersey.

But there was no-one about to talk to – she was doing a good impression of the Marie Celeste.

My destination was the Post Office, where I posted off my letter to Canada. And while I was there I bought a pack of 10 pre-stamped envelopes for use in France. i’m down to my last one here.

On the way back, I picked up one of my favourite baguettes for lunch.

Over the last week or so I’ve taken piles of photos but I’ve been too busy to deal with them. So having made myself a coffee, I sat down and started to review them, edit them and upload them.

And believe it or not, I did manage to get a shot of one of the dolphins yesterday. I’ll post it tomorrow so you can all see it.

Lunch was in here again. it didn’t rise much above 5°C today so I wasn’t going to sit on the wall.

Just by way of a change I’ve done some tidying up too. There was a huge pile of cables and lead that I had brought with me from the Auvergne so I sorted them out and tidied them up. And SHOCK! HORROR! I threw away a pile of stuff away too.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

Later on, I went for my usual afternoon walk around the Pointe de la Roc.

And there I was greeted by the sight of Thora sailing … “dieseling” – ed … off into the sunset on her way back to Jersey.

Enhancing the colours a little has brought out a really nice effect on this image.

She put on a slight turn to port after that so I took another photo of her.

Back here I cropped her out and blew up the image. I can do that these days, despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

Considering that this has been cropped out and enlarged at full focal length, it’s not come out too badly given the distances that I was having to cover.

Round the corner and looking out over the Baie de Mont St Michel, I could see that the sailing school had been out this afternoon.

I have half a mind … “yes, quite!” – ed … to go out and learn to sail one of these days, but I’m not quite sure how I can fit it in given my state of health and medical requirements.

A theoretical course on sailing and navigation would be right up my street (or down my river) though.

There wa even more excitement down at the ship repairer’s.

It’s not every day that I’m lucky enough to see them lifting a boat out of the water but I was in luck today. It looks as if they have another job to do on a fishing trawler and they were lifting her out with the hoist.

I’ll have to check tomorrow to see if she has been put up on blocks ready for work.

The highlight of the walk though had to be this delightful nautical danse macabre.

A trawler had unloaded at the fish dock and was heading off into the inner harbour, just as Aztec Lady was on her way out.

They waltzed and weaved around each other as they sorted themselves out into their respective routes.

Back here, I had a little … errr … repose for a while and then there was another job that needed doing. I’ve had a temporary curtain hanging in here ever since I moved in and it’s been on my mind to have it taken up to the correct size.

But that’s not happened so I took it off and pinned it to the right size.

And then I finished off all of my photos and uploaded them to the internet.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and then I went out for my walk. Freezing cold outside, it was, and so that probably explains why there wasn’t a single person (or even a married one) out on the streets tonight.

Beautiful it was though – clear and crisp night with some lovely moonlight.

Now I’m keen to see if I can have another good night. And while I’m dozing off I’ll leave you with a few more photos.

Thora going back to Jersey

Sailing school baie de mont st michel granville

Trawler Port de Granville harbour

Trawler being lifted out of the water and moved across the shipyard on the hoist.

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The Port de Plaisance at Granville harbour

EPIC HALL

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