Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 6th December 2020 – JUST FOR …

… a change today I’ve been working. even if it is a Sunday.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve not been feeling too good this last couple of days and today was no exception. I didn’t feel like doing anything at all but then I have a theory that whenever one is feeling like this, it doesn’t matter what one does, as long as one does something.

And so, for some of the day I’ve been selecting the music for the next radio programme, editing it, remixing it and merging it into pairs.

When I say “some of the day”, I do have to say that there wasn’t much of a day to have some of. Not when one doesn’t wake up until 12:15 and doesn’t leave one’s bed until 12:30. And that’s something of a surprise when I actually made it into bed as early as 00:30. All that I can say is that I must have needed the sleep.

And sleep I did too, although there were a few travels involved in it all too. I was running a bus company last night and some of my buses were doing a shuttle service around town. I pulled up to where these shuttle buses were parked and ready to to and one of the guys with one of the coaches was someone who shouldn’t be driving for some particular reason. I asked him where the driver was and he looked panic-stricken and flustered and said “ohh he must have been here. He’s probably gone. He’ll be back in a minute”. We waited for a couple of minutes but he never showed up so I asked again “where’s he gone? Tell me where he’s gone”. he was becoming even more flustered. In the end I said that I wanted to see the tachograph disc that’s in the coach. Reluctantly he opened the tachograph. I couldn’t see it fairly well but the guilty look on this guy’s face made me believe that it was his tachograph and he’d been driving the bus despite not being allowed to. I said “right, get everything on board. We’re going”. We picked up all of the luggage that was lying around and got ready to set off. I don’t know whether I was going to drive it back or not but we were ready to go back and sort this out back at the depot.

And later on during the night there was something going on with my family. I had to take my father into work in the morning that meant that I would be late into work again. As I’d already been late getting into work the previous day, not getting in until 09:50. I was up early as usual doing a few things and I was getting rather impatient thinking that he’d better get a move on”. One of my sisters came out. “Dad says to tell you that he’s getting up. He’ll be up in half an hour’s time and you have to take him to work when he gets up”. I said “this is just stupid because I’m going to miss an entire morning’s work now, having done this”. I was extremely annoyed. She said something like “there’s been 5 coffees waiting for you already this morning”. I dismissed that. He finally did get up and said something about responsibilities, all that kind of thing. I said to him “are you going to take responsibility for telling work why it is that I’m so late this morning?”. He brushed off the question so I was really annoyed about this yet again.

I’d had a couple of job interviews lined up anyway so later on I was walking through the streets still in a totally foul mood about this but who should be coming the other way but Doctor Chaker. I couldn’t even bring myself to give him a cheery greeting. I just mumbled “hello” at him and walked on past. As for the 2nd interview this was taking place at a football ground in Belgium, either Mechelen or Beveren. It involved getting the train. I got the train to the railway station and could see the ground quite clearly close by so I set off to walk to the ground. I was looking at houses seeing if there were any rooms to let. I’d rent a furnished room for a while and put my furniture in store. I suddenly realised that I’d gone miles from the football ground. I could see the football ground away in the distance and I remembered now that I’d dne exactly the same thig when I’m come to watch a football match here – that I’d taken a wrong turning and gone miles away and been late for the kick-off. And then I thought “I only have 10 minutes before this interview starts. I’m going to have to run like hell”. I could see the floodlights of the football ground illuminated in the distance. I thought “if I can get there in 10 minutes I’ll be doing really well” so I set off to run down this dirt path past this startled pedestrian thinking to myself “I am never ever going to get there in time”.

But I seem to be spending a considerable amount of time travelling around with my family during the night, something that is totally strange seeing that I don’t spend any time at all thinking about them during my waking time. I’d love to know what’s churning up in the back of my mind and, more importantly, why.

Having recovered my composure I made a start on the music for the radio programme but them knocked off to make the dough for my pizza.

And putting it on one side, I then went out for my afternoon walk.

Just for a change recently, the sky was quite clear. Plenty of heavy cloud about but visibility was really good today. There was an excellent view right across the English Channel to the island of Jersey 38 kilometres away.

Unfortunately the sky wasn’t quite clear enough to make out any of the individual buildings over there today. In the past they have on occasion stood out really clearly and we could even see the radio mast at the back of St Helier, but not today.

Whilst the skies over the English Channel were grey and cloudy in the vicinity of the Channel Islands there was quite a different kind of sky looking over to the west.

The clouds in that direction were even heavier but there were a few gaps in the clouds that were giving us another TORA TORA TORA as the rays shone through and reflected off the sea.

No lights on the semaphore masts this afternoon though. I’m intrigued to know what that was all about yesterday and that was something to think about as I walked around the path.

From the Point on the headland there’s a good view across the bay towards the Brittany Coast so I walked across the lawn and the car park and made my way there where I joined someone else taking a photo.

There was even a better view of the rays of the sun here than in the previous photo. The sun is hiding behind the heavy cloud and shining through the gaps. The town of Cancale is standing out really well in silhouette over there on the clifftop in the centre of the photograph.

From there I moved on down the footpath on the cliffs down the southern side of the headland, where a dog tried to bite me. I hope that its ribs aren’t too badly bruised.

At that particular moment the sun came out of another gap in the clouds and lit up the town of Carolles as if it had been floodlight. The reflection in the sea over there was extremely interesting too.

But I couldn’t hang around all that long to admire it. I had things to do and so I headed for home. There was nothing in the chantier navale or the port to detain me for very long.

Back here I carried on with the music in some kind of desultory way and even crashed out for 10 minutes too, something that surprised me considering all of the sleep that I’d had this morning.

Round about 18:00 I went to look at the pizza dough and see how it was doing.

It had risen incredibly but was far too wet still to do anything with it. In the end I had to add more flour to it, I ended up with four helpings of dough rather than the usual three. Three of those went into the freezer and the fourth I rolled out and put on a pizza tray, folding the edges over, to proof some more.

After about an hour or so I went to check on it. It had risen quite nicely again so I prepared my pizza and put it in the oven to cook. 30 minutes later I pulled it out of the oven, cooked to perfection.

It was delicious, especially when followed down by a banana with banana sorbet and chocolate sauce.

later on I went out for my evening run around the walls of the city

There was only a slight little drizzle this evening but even so I didn’t go around the footpath underneath the walls. Everywhere else is flooded so the footpath is bound to be, so I carried on along the Rue du Nord. I took a photo back down the way that I came and if you look to the right-hand side of the photo you can see the postern gate that I would usually take when the weather permits.

Right in the background you can see the Place d’Armes, and to the right there’s also a light out to see as if a fishing boat is going past.

It’s a bit of a climb up the hill for someone like me but I broke into a run as soon as I could and ran all the way around the corner.

Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen several photos of the Rue St Jean down at the end near the Place d’Armes, and also round by the Place Cambernon. But this is the bottom end of the street at the Place d’isthme.

And here I was surprised by a police car that came round the corner. For a change, they must be carrying on a night patrol, although I’m not sure why they would be doing it around here. I was half-expecting to be asked to produce my documents and my laissez-passer but they just drove straight past me.

On the same corner is the end of the Rue Notre Dame. We’ve walked down this street dozens of times but I don’t recall having photographed this end before.

Down the steps from here to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch. The tide was was still an hour or two from being right in and with the sea having calmed down from how it has been over the last couple of days, there was nothing in the way of waves breaking onto the sea wall of the Plat Gousset.

With no-one about to disrupt me, I ran all the way across the Square Maurice Marland down to the far end.

At the end of the Square there’s a ramp that goes up through another postern gate onto the walls again, but there’s also a kind of lower garden with stairs that lead down to the Rue des Juifs.

In the past it’s made a nice pleasant walk but today the stairs are all closed off due to the deteriorating state of the city walls above. It’s one of the things that I’ve talked about in the past – the fact that the city walls are deteriorating rapidly and since I’ve been here there have been three areas that have been roped offas unsafe without any any attempt being made to repair them.

It makes me wonder where this lack of maintenance is all going to end.

Back here I wrote up my notes and now I’m ready for bed. I’ll finish off the radio programme tomorrow and then try to plan what I have to do for the rest of the week. There’s plenty to do and I have to organise myself better than I am doing at the moment

Saturday 5th December 2020 – I’M NOT …

… feeling myself today.

And quite right too, as it’s a disgusting habit.

So while you admire some more photos of storms at night on the Plat Gousset, I can tell you that there’s probably a reason for part of my issues, in that not going to bed until about 02:00 and waking up at 06:00 means that I’m probably quite exhausted. But looking around me and the state in which I seem to be living right now, I can see all of the signs of having fallen into the Black Pit.

When I moved here from the farm I vowed that I wouldn’t let my place ever get into this condition, but they seem to be somewhat hollow words now.

But yes, I was indeed awake at 06:00 and although I didn’t quite beat the third alarm to my feet, there was only a matter of seconds in it.

Having had the medication, I listened to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And even though there hadn’t been much time in bed, there had still been plenty of time to wander off. We (whoever “we” were) were living in a house in Africa, a great big house. There were servants and all of these people who were living there. Armed guards and everything because the area was a little out of control. We noticed, peering through the forest, that there were 3 horsemen going past in the distance. We didn’t really pay too much attention to them because there were people always going past and usually it was better not to know who they were. Then a few minutes later they came back. One of the servants pointed them out. It turned out that they were dressed as policemen but they were carrying with them this enormous collection of knives. That made them the strangest kind of policemen I’d ever seen. The servant stuck his head out of the window to see. One of the men saw him and gesticulated so he opened the door and words were exchanged. The woman of the house went next to the window to speak to these guys, then turned back and said “we all have to present our papers to these people”. I made sure than I appeared in the window to make sure that they realised that there were a lot more than just the 2 people they had seen so far in the house.

a href=”https://www.erichall.eu/images/2012/2012044.html”> storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall Later on I had a shower and then headed out for the shops. NOZ had a few bits and pieces but nothing of real interest and at LeClerc the only thing that I bought that was unusual was some puff pastry sheets. That is something really complicated to make and way beyond my capabilities, but I have to turn my attention to making my mince pies very soon.

Back here I was too exhausted to unpack straight away so I made my hot chocolate and with a slice of chocolate cake I came in here to sit down and to do some work.

After lunch I came back to continue but fatigue had caught up with me again and I crashed out for half an hour on the chair, feeling pretty much awful.

Nevertheless, I awoke in time for the football. Penybont playing Caernarfon, a nice mid-table match in the JD Cymru League. And whatever it is that I’m suffering from Caernarfon must have had it too because they were as awful as I was. 6-0 the scoreline was to Penybont and, believe me, Caernarfon were lucky to get nil.

With Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann in the defence, Penybont were striding through on goal at will. I felt really sorry for Tyler French in the Cofis goal because on one occasion he made a brilliant reflex save only for the ball to hit the bar with three of his defenders and one attacker standing on the goal line, the ball did have to drop at the feet of the Penybont attacker who did the necessary.

Caernarfon’s midfield was non-existent too and Mike Hayes and Jack Kenny were totally isolated up front waiting for balls that never came. In fact, “balls” is probably a good word. Loads of them.

By now it was time to go for my afternoon walk. A rather late one, in fact as it happens. And I bumped into one of my neighbours on the stairs and we had a little chat amongst ourselves for a couple of minutes.

When I eventually made it outside, the torrential downpour that we had been having for most of the day had ceased and there were just the occasional gusts of rain coming in with the wind. Mind you, further up the coats of the Cotentin Peninsula they were taking a right battering by the looks of things. That’s an evil-looking cloud up there.

The waves, although still quite fresh, aren’t as turbulent as they were last night which is one good thing, I suppose.

It was quite dark by the time that I made it out, partly due to the time and partly due to the thick, heavy clouds blocking out the sunlight.

Instead of the usual Zoom lens, I had the f1.8 50mm lens on the camera and while it doesn’t zoom in or out, it’s made to perform in these conditions. I don’t recall if I have taken a photo of the Rue du Nord in the twilight before, so here’s one of them to be going on with.

You can see where the city walls zig-zag just to the left of centre where the cars are parked. That’s where there’s the little postern gate that leads to the path that runs around underneath the walls which is part of my running track.

This afternoon I was the only person out there, which is hardly a surprise given the weather conditions so I had the place to myself.

My route took me around the path towards the lighthouse and I was surprised to see that the coloured lights on the semaphore were illuminated. I’ve no idea what message it was supposed to be and to whom it was signalling because I couldn’t see any lights on the semaphore stations on the Ile de Chausey or over on the Brittany coast.

Even though it’s pretty dark now (and wasn’t that quick?) the beam on the lighthouse isn’t illuminated yet. They need to get a move on.

At the top I cut across the lawn and then across the car park to the headland but there was nothing going on there. So with no-one about I ran all the way down the footpath on top of the cliffs on the other side.

My route went past the chantier navale where Ceres II and the yacht were sleeping peacefully still on their own.

One set of Christmas lights that I hadn’t checked were the ones in the Rue du Port. usually they haven’t been up to very much and so I was intrigued to see what they had done. And the answer was simply that they had done nothing to improve on last year’s.

In fact, it’s all pretty depressing, isn’t it? There’s nothing actually around the port at all.

By now it was raining fairly heavily, so I took another photo of the Rue du Nord from a slightly different aspect.

When you think that the Port is the main entry to the town for many visitors you would expect the Council to make much more of an effort than this with the Christmas lights. And if I were the owners of Marité I’d have a pile of Christmas lights strung up all over her rigging too.

She would look quite magnificent like that, I reckon, but it seems to be too much effort for some people . I’ve talked about my “interactions” with the crew of the ship before … “and on many occasions too” – ed.

Back here I did more work in a kind-of desultory fashion and then called a halt for tea. Not that I was all that hungry – I just had a bowl of pasta and veg, including some fresh steamed broccoli (this week’s special veg offer from LeClerc) tossed in olive oil, garlic and some vegan pesto that I found in NOZ a while back (that’s why I like NOZ – it comes up with all kinds of interesting things now and again).

later in, in the drizzle, I went out for my evening run around the walls.

Not along the footpath under the walls though. Many of the footpaths are flooded after the rains of today and down there it must be dreadful. I stayed up on the road and walked and ran around to the Place de l’Isthme and the Musée d’Art Moderne Richard Anacréon which I haven’t photographed in the night before as far as I remember.

And I needn’t really have bothered tonight either because I couldn’t find a decent spec to take the picture.

From right up here though there’s a good view across the town and we can see more Christmas lights down there on the Bank and the Post Office in the Cours Jonville.

But what we can also see by the side of the Rue du Bosq is the abandoned railway line down to the port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that here and there I’ve posted photos of bits of the railway network that runs through the town and around the port. It’s quite substantial and must have seen a lot of use when the harbour was full of all of the cod fishers that went out to the Grand Banks around Newfoundland.

All that has gone though now with the exhaustion of the cod stocks, and the railway network has unfortunately gone with it.

The wind was back up too and we were having some more stormy waves, as you saw earlier. I took a few pics and then ran on home to write up my notes and have a long chat with my friend in the UK.

A lie-in tomorrow and I can’t say that i’m sorry either. I know that i’m sickening for something but I don’t know what, so plenty of rest and sleep will be the order of the day I think.

But I mustn’t forget to make some pizza bases. I’ve run out yet again and we can’t have a Sunday evening without a pizza, can we?

Friday 4th December 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change I had a lie-in today and didn’t leave my bed until about 07:30.

And it wasn’t necessarily through oversleeping either. When the alarms went off I was regaled by the sound of a torrential rainstorm and all kinds of wicked things going on outside and they certainly weren’t the kind of conditions conducive to constructive thought.

When I finally arose, I had my medication and then set a pile of lentils on the go in the slow cooker.

Back in the bedroom, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was back at school last night. I had a girlfriend but one of my friends from school started dating her. After the first time he told me that he was going to be taking her out again. I told him that I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could. I would be taking her out. He started to turn all violent saying that he had all of the weapons arranged, all the oil and everything like that and he’d be dealing with it. But I stuck my ground and we ended up having this fierce argument.

Later on there was something to do with a dog. We’d come into possession of a dog for some reason. My brother, father and I were coming down Underwood Lane in Crewe and were talking about going to get some dog biscuits. We turned left into West Street but it wasn’t out of Underwood Lane but out of Minshull New Road. There was a pet shop right on the corner there so we stopped. But I couldn’t believe West Street. It was like the Blitz had hit it. Everything had been demolished and there was just the odd house here and there on the south side sticking up and a little Sprite 400 caravan with people living in it parked there with a washing line and a load of washing outside. We went into this shop and the woman asked what we wanted. My brother said that we were looking for dog treats. My father took out some money and it must have been a couple of hundred quid he brought out. I said “dad, what are you trying to do? Buy the shop or something?”. This woman put a pile of dog biscuits into a bag, this kind of thing and then a few packets of sweets, saying “this will do you right for Christmas” and charged I dunno about £20 or something for it. He took it and went outside but then started to give my brother a lecture about buying stuff. “What she’s probably done is given all kinds of stuff that aren’t suitable for the dog, stuff that’s past its sell-by date, all this kind of thing. We should have taken much more care about what we bought”. he started to go through it and found loads of stuff that wasn’t suitable. he decided that he would go back into the shop and renegotiate the deal. I was outside, looking at the road, how it went further on and zigzagged up this spectacular cliff like a wild west mesa or whatever. There were birds flying over there and a couple of dogs flying around. I thought that this was a really idyllic setting here but my brother and my father were in such a deep discussion about these dog biscuits that they failed to notice it.

By now, the weather had cleared up so I rinsed the lentils, put them back in with fresh clean water and flavouring, and then fried some onions, garlic, tofu and beans with more flavouring. When it was all cooked properly, I added it all to the slow cooker and left it in there to fester on “low”.

Grabbing my rain jacket and the rest of my equipment I headed off outside for the shops.

And you can see here what was going on this morning. I thought at first that it was snow but in actual fact it was a mega-hailstorm that had descended upon us from a great height. Most of it had melted now but there were still a few vestiges left.

So leaving it at that, I set off into town. And before I’d gone a quarter of a mile the heavens opened again and I was absolutely, totally and thoroughly drenched. This was not what I was expecting at all. There had been blue skies 15 minutes earlier.

How long is it since we’ve had an old car on these pages? It must be a while, I reckon, so here are two for the price of one.

The red one is a Porsche 924, a model made from about 1976 to 1988. About 150,000 were made which was no surprise because for a Porsche, they were relatively affordable. However, it was its affordability and popularity that were its downfall because many people who bought one were mocked for being “nouveau riche” arrivists. Although the vehicle handled well, its actual performance was lamentable for a top-end sports car until they began to be fitted with turbos. And the turbos brought with them their own problems.

The blue one is much more like my car of course. A Ford Capri from the early 1980s, this one. It’s described as a “280” by which I imagine that it has the 2.8 litre V6 “Cologne” engine in it (Strider has a 4.0 litre Cologne engine in it). Of course, if I were to own such a car, which I wouldn’t turn down, it would be a black one and the V engine would be binned and replaced with a 2-litre Pinto engine

having done a lap around LIDL, then loaded up like a packhorse I headed for home. As well as the immense shopping list that I took with me, they also had a few Christmas dainties that I could eat and so as they won’t be there for ever, I grabbed a few.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few weeks we’ve seen them demolishing the facade of a bar, La Civette, in the Rue Paul Poirier, and then building a wooden wall around it while they worked inside.

It looks as if they’ve had the unveiling of the new facade since I last passed this way. It’s a big improvement on what was there before and, thankfully, it doesn’t resemble too much the other new facades going up around the town that all look the same.

And you can tell how the weather is doing right now. Teeming down with rain and it’s really dark. all of the lights oare on in the street, despite it being 11:00.

Of course it’s Friday, not Thursday, so there are different things going on in the street that I wouldn’t normally see when I’m out and about usually.

We’ve talked … “at great length” – ed … about the fishing industry in the town and all of the lorries and vans that go to the fish processing plant to cart away the catch. But some of the produce is sold locally and every Friday morning there’s a stall on the harbour where one of the local fishermen sells his catch.

Straight from the sea.

It’s a far cry of course from the fish market in Oostende that we have seen before but nevertheless it’s an interesting venture. Seafood doesn’t get any fresher than this.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and a slice of my chocolate cake, and then had to speak to Rosemary. She’d rung me up to say that she was having computer issues. So I had to talk her through a remote session in order to fix it.

My Diploma in Computing does come in handy some times even though it was 20 years ago since I obtained it.

After lunch I had a look at the pie filling that was simmering away in the slow cooker. Far too liquidy and so to bind it and make it nice and glutinous, a couple of handfuls of porridge oats went in and were stirred around. That should stiffen it up somewhat.

Once that was organised I went and carried on with some of the arrears from Central Europe.

Later on it was time for me to go for my afternoon walk. And it was just as well that it had stopped raining.

But just look at the sky over there down the Brittany coast. When you consider just how nice it has been at times, this is rather depressing, isn’t it? This is what they call around here un ciel de plomb – a leaden sky. And you can see that it lives up to its description.

All that I can say is that I’m glad that I’m not out there at sea in all of that. The Brittany coast must be taking quite a pasting at the moment.

Over towards the Ile de Chausey it’s somewhat brighter, but there is still a terrific rainstorm cascading down on the population over there.

And the wind is blowing it my way so I don’t want to hang around here. I’m the only person out here walking and I can understand why if all of this weather suddenly arrives. So I clear off around the headland to see what’s on the other side.

And nothing of any significance over there either, except for more of the same. Nothing of note, apart from the usual, in the chantier navale. But by now the rain has arrived and it’s starting to fall quite heavily so I don’t want to hang around.

But there’s something bizarre going on down in the loading bay in the port.

Those two lorries shouldn’t be there unless they are delivering, and if they are delivering, we are going to be having an interesting nautical arrival down there pretty soon. I wonder what it might be. Still, we’ll find out in de course I suppose.

Musing on that for a moment, I turned and headed on home and a nice hot mug of coffee. And I can’t say that I didn’t deserve it. By now the rain was teeming down once more and I was soaked to the skin again.

Back here, I switched off the slow cooker and emptied the contents out to cool. A nice glutinous sticky filling. Just what I wanted.

So I made my pastry and put it in my mould. And when the filling had cooled down properly, I filled the pie base and made a pie lid out of some of the remaining pastry. With the pastry that was left, I made a quick apple turnover.

Now it was time for my session on the guitars. And I spent much of the time trying (and eventually succeeding) in working out the chords to Richard Thompson’s “Keep Your Distance”.

I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic for certain events that occurred over three nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour that one day I might talk about when I’m in the mood. There are a couple of lines in that song that really are quite relevant.

Half way through the proceedings with the guitar I’d switched on the oven and started off the pie and the apple turnover. Now, having finished the guitar, I came in and did a huge mound of washing up.

There were some potatoes left so I had put those in the oven too so I sorted out some veg – sprouts, carrots and runner beans, and put them in a small pan and cooked them in some gravy with some herbs.

Eventually the pie was done – at least on top. I wished that I had cooked it lower down in the oven and not on a metal tray as I had done. It’s a mistake that I always make, cooking too high in the oven and having a heat deflector underneath doesn’t help anything either.

But it actually tasted delicious and there are another 7 slices for the freezer for a later date. The apple turnover was impressive too. That worked really well.

It was time for me to go out on my evening walk and runs so I hit the streets, straight into the biting wind that made running almost impossible.

Nevertheless I pushed on as well as I could but I eschewed the route down on the footpath under the walls due to the bad weather. And as it was by now raining quite heavily I carried on the route that I took yesterday.

From up on the Place de l’Isthmus I could hear the waves crashing down onto the promenade at the Plat Gousset so I wandered down the steps of the Escalier du Moulin a Vent to have a look at what was happening.

It was certainly wild out there. And it’s hard to believe that we are still a fair way away from high tide. What this is going to be like in an hour’s time will be anyone’s guess, but it certainly would be something to see.

But not for me, unfortunately. By now the rain was coming down in sheets and I was being soaked to the skin.

Braving the weather, I stuck it out just long enough to take a second photograph and then ran all the way across the Square Maurice Marland in the general direction of home.

Just for a change, I took the shortest route possible. I’d had my walk out to the shops and back, my afternoon stroll and now my evening runs so I was quite confident that I’d done enough today.

Coming back the short way, I ended up in the Rue St Jean. And I reckoned that I haven’t taken a photo down here at this end for quite some considerable time. I’d better put that right.

And you can see the weather in this photograph. teeming down with rain and everywhere soaking wet. Including me.

And the Place Cambernon just down there with the Christmas lights peering around the corner.

having done that, I ran on home to write up my notes. 147% on the fitbit is good enough for me today.

Shopping at LeClerc and Noz tomorrow. And there will probably be other things that I need but which I’ve forgotten that I’ll remember when I return home. That always happens to me.

Thursday 3rd December 2020 – I DIDN’T …

… go to the shops today.

On looking out of the window I noticed that it was absolutely chucking it down and there was a violent wind bending all the branches of the trees. It’s not as if there’s anything particular that I need today, so I’ll wait until tomorrow and try again.

Another thing that I didn’t do today was to beat the third alarm. When it went off, I was still in bed. Mind you, I was up and about within seconds so it didn’t make a great deal of difference either.

With it being shopping day (even though it ended up not so being) I had a shower, and then while you admire a couple of photos of tonight’s storm, I’ll attack the dictaphone.

A gang of thieves had raided a large shop and had escaped with an enormous amount of money in the run-up to Christmas. They decided that they would go on and do it again thinking that there would be more money in it now and they would have learnt a lot from their previous escapade. So that was what they did. But what was lacking this time was a suitable watch-out, a suitable dedication and a certain amount of ruthlessness. They obviously thought that they knew it all before and that they knew it all but whereas the authorities had learnt quite a lot, these people hadn’t. The person who was actually the security guard was actually one of the criminals. He faked the hold-up while someone fired a shotgun blast that blew out one of the windows in a door and the guard let everyone in. They started rampaging through the store, going through the safe but there was just one guy working. The others were larkign around a bit. There was no-one in the foyer of the place keeping an eye on who was coming up and down in the lift which was still working. Of course the Police appeared pretty quickly because they were all clued up by this before the gang had even finished loading up the stuff from the 2nd safe. It was the look on the guy’s face when everyone was urging on the safecracker, when he got everything out of the 1st safe and they said “there’s another safe to go now”. You should see the look on his face because he’s the only one working. The others were just larking around when speed was the essence. if they had taken what they had out of the 1st safe and disappeared they might have made it. As it was there was a running battle all the way down this street with the police and these gangsters. They’d set the whole street on fire in trying to make away their escape in the confusion. But it hadn’t quite worked like that and they were trapped by the flames. And I awoke in a night sweat

A little later I was staying in a house with a family. A house very similar to Davenport Avenue. There was a question about this mattress. We had to put it out of the way and I had assured everyone that it would go somewhere in a cupboard so I tried to push it into a cupboard but after a while trying, it wouldn’t go so I said in the end “what would it matter if it went into the attic?” They all agreed to put it into the attic so I climbed into the attic ready for them to pass it to me. But it looked far too long to go into the attic and had to be folded in half. I wasn’t sure whether it would fit. We needed it to be in the box to keep the dust away from it and that was going to be even more difficult. It was going to turn out to be one of these Chinese puzzle things . Again I awoke in a sweat. There were a few other things we could get into the attic afterwards as well if we persevered which would make the place look a lot better anyway

There was more to it than that too but as you are probably eating your meal I’ll spare you the gory details.

Having typed all of that I spent the morning dealing with the arrears of my journey to Central Europe. There was a break for my hot chocolate and chocolate cake and I do have to say that despite how it looks, my chocolate cake is delicious. And the icing, once it had set, was perfect too.

That recipe will be used again, certainly, but with individual cake cases to better manage the dough mixture.

After lunch I had the kefir to attend to as stocks are getting low right now. The earliest batch of kiwis are now super-ripe so they were whizzed up into a pulp, the juice was extraced and the remainder squashed to extract the final drops.

The kefir that had been brewing was now passed through the filter with the kiwi pulp in so that it would rinse more liquid through into the juice in the big jug while I made up another batch of kefir

The kefir and kiwi juice in the big jug were all mixed together and then filtered through the very fine mesh filter into the bottles where it will ferment for a few days

By now, believe it or not, it was time to go out for my afternoon walk.

And so walk I did seeing as the rain had stopped for the moment. But the weather had certainly brought out the mushrooms. They were sprouting everywhere and were quite an impressive size. This one must have been about three inches in diameter.

Many people have asked me if I know whether these mushrooms are edible or not. I usually reply that I don’t know, but there is a test that works. All you do is just before you go to bed, take a small piece, cook it and eat it. If you wake up next morning then you know that it’s perfectly safe to eat.

It’s infallible

Strangely, even though the weather was heavily overcast and it was threatening rain, there was a really good view down the Brittany coast.

If you look closely at this photograph you’ll not only see the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel but also the headland behind it that it is protecting. And while seeing the lighthouse is not an everyday occurrence, seeing the land is even less so.

The gap in the land mass that you will notice just to the right of centre, that’s the bay with Saint-Cast-le-Guildo at the bottom – the little port where we stayed one night in early summer when we were out aboard wem>Spirit of Conrad.

The view in the other direction from where I was standing is pretty impressive too despite the weather.

from left to right, we have

Coudeville-sur-Mer on the extreme left
The “Route Blanche” caravan site
The large white building which I think is the grandstand for the racecourse
the airport buildings
Bréville church on the skyline
L’Oasis camp site
the start of Donville les Bains just disappearing behind the hedge

From there, I pushed off around the headland and down the path on the other side to see what was happening.

Chausiais and Joly France were over there at the ferry terminal of course. And there’s a sign of things to come in the chantier navale this afternoon. For some unknown reason they have erected a tarpaulin tent over the rear of Ceres II as if there’s some kind of important work like repainting going on underneath it (although it’s rather too cold and damp for painting right now, I would have thought).

It looks as if we might have to wait for a few days to find out. But could this be a sign that at long last she might be going on her way very soon?

And while we’re on the subject of comings and goings in the port … “well, one of us is” – ed … here’s someone who has come into port this morning and, presumably waiting for the gates to open so she can go out again.

Yes, we’ve been honoured with the presence of Normandy Trader over there being loaded up ready for departure. And moored the correct way round too, not like Thora yesterday, although it’s not so crucial which way round she moors as her accommodation is at the rear.

With that much excitement going on, I was overwhelmed so I had to come on home for a mug of nice hot coffee to warm myself up.

There was the usual hour on the guitars and then I went for tea. I fancied a vegan pie but to my surprise I’ve run out completely of main-course pies. I had one of my vindaloo curries that I made a few weeks ago instead, followed by apple pie.

So tomorrow, I can see that I’ll have a job to do – like bake a pie. I really fancied one today too so I’ll have to make one tomorrow instead, I reckon.

This evening I almost came within an ace of not going out for my runs. It was teeming down with rain and there was a howling gale blowing.

But having missed so many, I gritted my teeth (well, it was freezing) and set off.

Running was pretty difficult and I didn’t even consider the path underneath the walls. That’s waterlogged at the best of times so heaven alone knows what it would be like right now. I remained on the Rue du Nord and round to the top of the Escalier du Moulin a Vent

That’s possibly one of the highest part of the walls at this end and you can see all the way out across town. And down into the Cours Jonville and the Mairie – the Town Hall – which is now all decorated in blue Christmas lights.

There’s a hint of decoration in the trees opposite the Mairie too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the electricians stringing up the lights in the trees down there a while ago.

My usual viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch is down there.

You’ll see the metal fence, and if you look below it you’ll see what looks like a row of small arches. I’m usually tucked in the corner on the far right of those arches when I’m taking my photos. You can see the difference in height between the two positions. It’s probably about 30 feet to right down there.

And that was where I went for my photos of the storm that you have seen, and then I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland and straight home. No detour around the walls in this weather.

So if the weather is better, it’ll be shopping tomorrow. I shan’t be going if it’s still like this though. I was soaked to the skin and frozen to the marrow. Never mind my woolly hat – it’ll be gloves tomorrow if I go out.

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 – THIS IS MY …

… first culinary disaster for quite some time.

The apple pie and apple turnover that were in the fridge awaiting baking have turned out quite well but the chocolate layer cake has, unfortunately, flopped. And I do mean “flopped”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the last time I made a chocolate cake with this vegan brownie mix recipe, it was far too thick, took about three times longer to cook, and then was totally crisp on the outside and very soft in the middle.

And so today I had a cunning plan. I cooked it in a long, wide dish so that it was quite shallow and thus would cook quickly, then I cut it in half, spread one surface of each half with strawberry jam; and then stuck them together. And in the meantime I had a go at making some icing..

But what happened was that the cake collapsed, rather like the edge of a cliff crumbling off, and the icing ended up being too liquidy. For the icing, it was possible that the cake hadn’t cooed down enough and caused the icing to melt, and that also might be part (but not all) of the reasons why the cake collapsed.

On the other hand, it could simply be that the mixture isn’t intended for this kind of construction. I’ll have to go to a Plan B which involves making individual little cakes in their own cake moulds. I have a batch of those.

But they say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And despite how it looks, the sample that I tried tasted 100 times better than the previous one. I seem to have the quantities correct this time and used the correct oil.

So plan B it will be next time, with this same mix, and see where we go from there.

And the proof of the pudding about my sleeping is also in the eating because this morning I was up and about (well, sort-of-ish anyway) before the third alarm, and that’s despite not being in bed until well after 01:00.

After the medication, I turned my attention to what went on last night while I was asleep. I remember waking up saying that I received a notice to quit the defensive wall as I was being moved out of my position because some attacking football team wanted to install a defensive wall. However I couldn’t understand what this was to do with as I don’t recall anything at all. There was some vague chat about baking and so on and me being in a similar situation to which I am now but that’s about it. I don’t know where this footballing thing came from.

And the more that I look at it, the less I understand about what I was actually discussing during the night. But that’s the one thing about these little rambles. Very often they make no sense whatsoever and it’s always interesting to try to work out what (if anything) was going on in my head.

While I was at it, I transcribed the mountain of arrears that had built up over the last few days. I’ll try to put those on line sometime this week too.

And then the cookery session which took up almost all the rest of the morning and I didn’t even have my mid-morning break which was a shame. The colza oil was much better and lighter than the olive oil and I used less cocoa because mine is too sweet. As well as that, I put a few handfuls of desiccated coconut in there too – I’m a big fan of coconut as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Anyway, we’ll have a formal tasting session tomorrow when I come back from the shops, and I’m sure that I won’t be disappointed.

After lunch I’ve been working on the arrears of the journey to Central Europe and at least I made some progress so I can’t complain too much.

But then of course it was time to go out for my afternoon walk. And several neighbours of mine were there today too and I couldn’t really get away from them for quite a while.

But eventually I managed to extricate myself and go over to the wall to look out across the sea. And there was a fishing boat coming back into port. It’s that time of day again, obviously.

Apart from my neighbours, there weren’t all that many other people out there. I walked on to the headland and then seeing as there was no-one else about I ran down along the path on top of the cliffs overlooking the port.

There was nothing new happening in the chantier navale. Still the same two boats and that was that.

And so I turned my attention to what was going on down at the Fish Processing Plant. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when they dredged the harbour a few years ago they dredged a little channel up by the wharf at the fish processing plant so that the smaller craft can come into port even when the tide is quite low.

And sure enough, down there right now it must just be the right moment because there’s a queue of them. They have been waiting outside the harbour but as I watched, they started up and headed in to unload their catches.

There’s another visitor in port right now too and if you can peer through the gloom (because it was dark, overcast and misty) you can see Thora down there at the quayside underneath the loading crane.

She must have nipped in on the previous tide and hadn’t quite made it out again. But what I find intriguing is that if you compare this photo with all of the others that I’ve taken of her, you’ll find that she’s turned round.

Both she and her friend Normandy Trader tied up port-on and I’ve never seen them do any other in that loading bay, until today. But why it’s unusual with Thora is that she has her superstructure offset to one side – the starboard side – so moored as she is, they have to load and unload over the superstructure.

And that will be rather unfortunate if the load slips in the cradle as it’s up in the air.

Having admired Thora for a while I turned tail and headed for home.

When I’d set out, the roofers were still out there on the roof so I’d made up my mind to photograph them. But in the time that it had taken me to do my lap around the headland they’d all cleared off and gone home. And as for me, I cleared off home too and made a nice hot coffee.

This evening I had my usual hour on the guitars. On the bass I just had a play around and a sing-along. On the acoustic I tried to play a lead solo to “Like a Hurricane”. That might sound adventurous but at the moment all I’m doing is, I suppose to pluck the strings individually while I’m holding down the chords.

Still, it’s progress from a while ago.

Tea was taco rolls and more apple pie, which really is delicious, I have to say. In fact it really was a good tea tonight.

Having had a little chat with my friend who is now well on the road to recovery I went out for my evening runs. And I was the only person out there tonight which is no surprise because it was raining.

And on my own I might have been on land, but there was some kind of activity out at sea. When I finished the first leg of my run I stopped at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord and looked out to sea where I could see what looked to be a fishing vessel on its way around the headland towards port.

It’s not really possible to take much of a distance photo with a f1.8 50mm lens so it’s not come out with very much and I had to have three or four goes to get that one.

From there I ran on down the Rue du Nord towards the footpath underneath the walls, but ended up having to go back and retrace my steps.

As I’d gone past one of the little alleys I’d glanced down and seen that at last they’ve illuminated the Christmas lights in the Place Cambernon. It makes the place look really pretty, but it’s a shame that with the lockdown there was no-one else but me there to see it.

Back on the footpath I ran all the way down to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch, but there was nothing going on there as you might expect.

But with the Christmas lights being illuminated in the Place Cambernon, it’s odds-on that they will be illuminated elsewhere too.

Like down in the Rue Paul Poirier, for example. And I was right too. They’d switched them on too and from up here on th path just underneath the walls there’s a good view all the way down the street. One of these days I’m going to have to go for a good walk all around the town with the camera late at night and see what’s going on.

But that’s not going to be any time soon. With the lockdown we aren’t allowed to stray too far from home except for shopping and that isn’t done after dark of course. So we’ll have to see.

My route took me across the Square Maurice Marland where I had a good run, and then up the ramp and through the gate at the far end up onto the walls.

And the fishing boat that we saw earlier? She’s now just about coming into port and at the same time there was another one making ready to leave, so we were treated to yet another nautical danse macabre as they waltzed around each other trying to avoid a tragedy.

So with no collisions or shipwrecks and nothing else to provide some entertainment this evening, I wandered off around the walls on my way home.

Not before I’d had another look at the lights in the Place Cambernon.

By now they were blue so they must have some kind of time controller there. It’ll brighten up the place and make it look very Christmassy, but I wish that they would refresh the decorations instead of using the same ones every year. Why can’t they swap with neighbouring towns? That’s what I want to know.

So I finished my walk and ran on the final leg home to write up my notes and then go to bed.

Shopping tomorrow so I need to be on form. After all there’s plenty to do and not enough time. But at least it was a better day today. Apart from the cake of course.

Tuesday 1st December 2020 – I HAVEN’T …

… had a very good day today. Not at all.

In fact I haven’t done anything at all that was productive and even managed to pile up another load of arrears, like today’s dictaphone notes which I have yet to check, never mind transcribe.

Mind you, if I don’t awaken until 08:30, what was I expecting? After doing so well on Monday morning too. It’s enough to fill anyone with dismay.

So once I finally managed to sort myself out this morning, I had to crack on with my Welsh preparation and revision and that took me straight up to the start of class without any time to think about anything else.

And there, we overran. And not just by 5 minutes too. So that put a brake on a few more things that I needed to do.

After a very late lunch, I had an urgent phone call to make. This was, well, not a matter of life and death, but pretty darn close as there’s a deadline for this and I couldn’t afford to let it slip. I knew that it involved a long and complicated matter and would take some time so after lunch I made the ‘phone call.

As I said, I knew that it would take quite a while but what I wasn’t prepared for was the length of time for which I had to wait for my call to be answered. I was queued for hours and I couldn’t let my place go by hanging up and ringing back again.

Eventually my call was answered and while the situation is, shall we say, “disappointing”, it’s not the end of the world by any means. And had I had a decent life expectancy instead of this couple of years that I have left, I would have won out by it anyway. So “spend spend spend” has been put on hold for a little while longer and with a little less money.

Had I rung up yesterday it would have been a little better, but had I left it another 4 weeks it would have been much worse.

By now it was long after walkies time but that wasn’t going to prevent me from going out. I took to the streets.

There were several people wandering around outside, the workmen were still on the roof of the College Malraux and there was plenty of activity out at sea with several of the fishing boats in the Strait between the Pointe du Roc and the Ile de Chausey, as well as a larger boat way out to sea that despite what I tried, I couldn’t identify.

It’s not been this busy out at sea for quite a while, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. maybe the fog of yesterday kept them all in port.

The brats weren’t out there orienteering tonight, which is hardly a surprise in view of the time so I walked on across the lawn, undisturbed, to the headland to look out across the Baie de Mont St Michel to the Brittany coast.

And you can tell just how late it is this afternoon by how low the sun is in the sky. We’ve been out at 22:00 in summer and it’s been higher than this. But we are now in December (only just) and there’s merely three weeks to go before the days start to lengthen again so I suppose we can expect this.

But it really did look beautiful out there in the Bay this afternoon with the sun behind the clouds. A nice red sky too. Probably because St Malo is on fire or something like that, I suppose.

Over the last few days or so the wind has died down considerably, although it was blowing quite hard last night.

Not a raging storm like the kind that we have had so often, so I was really surprised to see a heavy, rolling sea out there this afternoon with the waves coming in with some force against the harbour wall, especially with the tide well out.

There must have been a storm blowing quite strongly out at sea somewhere, I reckon. There’s nothing out at sea to the west of us except the open Atlantic and then the North American coast so the waves can reach quite a speed if they are whipped up by a storm out there somewhere, with nothing to break their flow.

We mentioned fishing just now … “well, one of us did” – ed … and you can see what I mean about the boats being out today.

They are still out there where we saw them earlier but there are quite a few that have already come in and are busy unloading at the fish processing plant. All of the vans are there to take away the catch for the local market and there’s a refrigerated lorry that’s there to take the produce to the main wholesale market, presumably in Paris.

But see what I mean about how late it is? The street lights are on and reflecting off the water. That wasn’t what I was hoping for today. Not at all.

Back here I just about had time for a coffee and then it was guitar practice time for an hour. And being all adrift as I was, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have been doing which was a shame.

Tea was more of my fresh cauliflower with vegan cheese sauce and veggie balls followed by apple pie, which all told was a really delicious tea.

Just as I was about to go out for my evening run, Rosemary rang for a chat with some good news. And by the time we finished chatting, it was 2 hours and 40 minutes later. So I could forget going out.

So no evening run, no dictaphone notes, no baking a cake, no catching up of any arrears. All in all, what a disappointing day. And to make matters worse it’s now almost 01:00 so I’m going to have another bad day tomorrow and the internet seems to be down right now.

It’s just not my day, is it?

Monday 30th November 2020 – WHAT I SAW …

… when I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night when I was out and about on my travels I noticed the fog creepign in to cover the harbour. When I went out for my afternoon walk you can see that not only did arrive, it stayed around too and slowly settled on the town. That fog isn’t going anywhere at all.

As for how long it has been there, I can’t really say. That’s because this morning when I left the warmth and comfort of my own bed, it was still dark. Despite not going to bed until 01:00 or thereabouts, I still managed to beat the 3rd alarm. And that’s quite impressive these days.

After the medication I listened to the dictaphone (I haven’t forgotten that there is still Sunday’s to do)

One of my sisters and I were together. We were the only 2 in the house and I’d made tea. I’d served it all up and set it out and we ate it. But I must have dozed off in the dream because I didn’t remember very much. But I suddenly awoke with a start and remembered that there was pudding to eat. I went to put the pudding out, a fruit pie type of thing. I cut a slice off and put it n a bowl for her and went to get the coconut dessert stuff for her, but found that she wasn’t there. I went into the living room and she was there drinking a cup of tea in the dark. I asked her why she hadn’t awoken me to tell me that there was pudding. She said she just fancied a cup of tea and came in to sit down.

On a couple of occasions in the same dream (which dream do I mean? Have I missed something?) we were on a bus and I think that we must have done the same route twice. We were basically divided into 2 groups, the bus did one and then the other. There were these 4 Asian girls on there and 1 in particular caught my eye. She was gorgeous. Whoever I was with was a woman but only a friend, not a girlfriend. I made a beeline for this Asian girl as much as I could and we ended up sitting side by side on the seats at the back chatting. Then they stopped to take a couple more but everyone else got on and the bus was crammed. They were talking about they’d been out yesterday somewhere and I’d deliberately not gone on this particular group because I didn’t want to make it too obvious that I was after her. This girl was saying that they’d been doing some kin0n of primitive wrestling and was talking about the guys who wrestled with her. I thought “I missed my chance there didn’t I? I should have gone all the same regardless”. We drove out of this town up a hill past some fortifications and an old castle. For some reason I thought that it was Durham which was strange because it was a seaside town. Then we were walking somewhere on this railway viaduct and to get down we had to jump or else it was a really long and involved scramble. The jump was about 30′. The first time, the people who were with us just jumped down and I had to scramble my way around but the 2nd time there were just 3 of us, me, this woman I was with and this Asian girl. The woman I was with just took a running leap, leapt off and landed in a pile of dust and she said to this Asian girl “are you going to jump off?” She replied “yes” and she jumped. The woman I was with said “what about you, Eric?” I said “come on – with my knees?” (when I was an adolescent I’d broken my knees on three occasions – twice on motor bikes and once skiing, or was it the other way around?) and I mentioned her name – it was the wife of a friend from the Wirral so I went to scramble down. But suddenly out of nothing an Asian guy with a little baby sitting on his shoulders, he just ran down this embankment, which I thought was extremely dangerous, I wouldn’t have considered it, but he just ran down with this baby on his shoulders and made it look so easy.
One of the things that we were discussing was names of towns. She asked what was the English name for Abertawe (it’s Swansea by the way). For some unknown reason I didn’t really want to tell her, I don’t know why. Someone else piped up with a few long explanations that were totally wrong but I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t going to say anything to this girl about this.

There was much more to it than this but as you are probably eating your tea right now I’ll spare you some of the gory details.

First task once I got myself going was to deal with the sourdough that had been festering overnight.

But not before my attention was diverted by a noise outside. I’ve seen a van and a workman here on a few occasions just recently. It looks as if it’s a “nothing much else to do” job of cleaning out and repointing the old medieval walls near the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs. If you peer through the trees you can just about make out his flourescent jacket.

he was here for an hour or so raking out the joints, and then he cleared off. Next time it goes quiet, he’ll be back, I bet, to do another hour’s worth.

So I kneaded the sourdough again for about 15 minutes and shaped it, and then put it in a mould for the second stage of rising. Then I went back to attend to the radio programme that I’d started yesterday, armed with a mug of hot chocolate and a slice of my chocolate cake.

Round about 11:00 I knocked off and went to see how the bread was doing.

It hadn’t risen up all that much but it will have to do. I switched on the oven to warm up and while it was doing its stuff, I made an apple pie. Plenty of pastry left over so I made a much smaller one as well and whatever was left I prepared an apple turnover.

When the oven was nice and hot, the loaf went in, and when the apple pie was made, that followed it.

No room for the little pie and the turnover, unfortunately. They went in the fridge for whenever I bake my next cake. I really do need a bigger, better oven and I really am going to have to look into that pretty soon.

While everything was doing, I fed the sourdough and did the washing-up, a whole mountain of it too with everything that I’d been preparing.

Eventually, the oven pinged and switched itself off and I went to see how everything had done. The bread was rather depressing. It hadn’t risen all that much, and was rather lopsided, which I suspect points to uneven heating of my oven, even with a circulating fan.

On the other hand, the apple pie looks done to perfection and I’m quite impressed with that.

But as for the bread, it might not look all that much, but in fact it was exactly as it should be as regards texture. And it tasted delicious too when I had some for lunch, still warm out of the oven with my home-made hummus and salad.

It’s a shame that I can’t make it look nicer.

After lunch I finished off the radio programme and then I went for my journey into the unknown, my woolly hat on top of my woolly head. It’s winter.

Whatever was going on out at sea, I couldn’t see it. It was pointless trying to do anything about that.

One of the things that I did though was to go and look at the seafarers’ monument to see if the wreaths are anything to do with commemorating any of the disasters. But apparently not. The two disasters that are commemorated on there are 23rd December and 10th January.

Having dealt with that, I went for a walk along the path on top of the cliffs to se what was happening in the chantier navale but that was rather a waste of time.

Further along the path I could hear a racket coming from the direction of the Fish Processing Plant.

One of the refrigerated lorries that calls in there was just leaving and eventually, it came out of the gloom and onto the main road. I’ve no idea what it might have on board though because I wouldn’t have imagined that there would have been too many fishing boats out in this weather.

Groping my way through the clag I made my way back home for a nice hot mug of coffee. I felt like I deserved it after all of this.

The hour on the guitars passed quite happily. And I found that I’m beginning to ejoy playing the bass again, especially as I can now sing as I’m playing. A couple of weeks ago I spent some time trying to work out the bass solo in the chorus of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”. Today I spent almost all of my little bass guitar session trying to sing in time to it.

It’s not at all easy but eventually I found that I could do it, although I’m going to need a lot more practice at it. The first time that I’ve really been able to do this for about 40 years.

Tea tonight was stuffed pepper. The stuff that I’m using instead of bulghour or quinoa is really different with a much better taste. And as for my apple pie, it was delicious

Later on I went out for my evening walk and runs. By now the weather had changed. we had quite a strong wind,, the fog had gone from the immediate vicinity and it was raining.

With the fog having lifted somewhat, the view down the coast was fairly clear as far as I could see. The lights of the promenade at Donville les Bains were quite visible tonight from the viewpoint along the walls where I stopped for a breather.

Only one or two people wandering about so I managed all of my runs. And things might be looking up a little because instead of breathing in fours, on a few occasions I was breathing in sixes and once or twice in eighths A far cry of course from 25 years ago when I started running again and I was breathing in eighths for miles after only about a fortnight. I won’t ever reproduce that but it’s nice to think that just occasionally I can do it.

It was much clearer in the port tonight too. Although there were no boats about and nothing moored up in the unloading bay, it made quite a nice photograph.

There was nothing else going on anywhere so that was the only other photo that I took. After my walk around the walls, I ran on home in the rain to write up my notes and then to have an early night.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh lesson so I have to organise myself and so I also need a nearly start. In the afternoon I’m going to have a go at baking another cake and as I have a recipe for biscuits and everything that I need, I might have a go at that too.

But let’s have this early night first.

Sunday 29th November 2020 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I’ve been working today.

Yes, even though Sunday is a Day Of Rest around here, it became a necessity when I failed to show a leg this morning until about 11:30. By then it was way, way too late to start off the sourdough (you’ve really no idea just how long this process takes) mix and as I have no bread in the house and shall be needing some for Monday lunchtime, I’ll have to swap my hours around a little.

Plenty of time in bed therefore to go off on a whole series of nocturnal rambles but not having had time to transcribe them, you’ll need to check back in here in a couple of days to find out where I went. I’m curious to know too.

So after a rather desultory start while I pulled myself together I made myself a mug of hot chocolate and with a slice of my chocolate cake, sat down and chose the music for the next radio programme. And then I had to edit it, remix it all, reformat some of it and then combine them all in pairs.

What didn’t help matter is in this respect was that I had “computer issues”. One of the files that needed reformatting was a *.mkv file and is regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it makes my window explorer “hang”.

In the end I had to save all of my work (which is not easy with a dozen different programs and “alt-tab” doesn’t work) and then reboot the computer.

Finally I made a start on writing the text notes.

It’s not a lot for an afternoon’s work but it will save me a couple of hours in the morning while I deal with the bread and make a pie for pudding.

of course, there was a break in mid-afternoon for my usual walk around the headland.

The weather was really nice outside and the sea fog that had been lingering around on and off had lifted slightly. In fact there was a view farther down the coat today as far as Hauteville-sur-Mer. Although there wasn’t much that you could see beyond there.

There were a few people wandering around there this afternoon too, and not all of them wearing their face masks despite the Préfet having announced that the compulsory wearing of facemasks has been extended to 21st January next year.

While I was looking out to sea, I’d seen a fishing boat approaching from the direction of the Ile de Chausey so I walked on up to the headland of the Pointe du Roc to intercept it.

And I’m glad that I waited until then to take a photo because I managed to catch it in company with a pleasure launch that was heading out to sea. It made quite a good photograph, the two of them combining like that.

But that was all that I could see going on out there today. The rest of the sea was quite quiet today. And so I wandered off around the footpath to the chantier navale to see what was going on.

Having seen a few different boats on the fringes of the chantier navale just recently, I was wondering whether there might be another new arrival today.

No boats today, unfortunately, but nevertheless I’d swap all of them for this gorgeous machine. A Van Hool-bodied coach of what looks like the early 1960s, but as for what chassis it might be, I couldn’t see. It’s a beautiful machine of course although it’s not really comparable with the Volvo-engined Van Hool Alizées that I drove for years all round Europe.

According to the nameplate, it’s owned by a local bus company so I can always make enquiries. But I’m more interested right now in knowing why I cut off the rear of the coach. That isn’t like me at all.

And the coach? it’s a Fiat 314 of 1965 – one of the earliest of the integrals.

Having satiated my interest at the chantier navale, I had a look around to see what else was going on.

That small fishing boat that I had seen just now wasn’t the only one that was about. There was another one that had arrived earlier in port with a huge load of shellfish. They were busily being unloaded by the crane on the trailer on the back of the tractor and the crane on the stern of the boat.

Being loaded onto the tractor and trailer, I wouldn’t have thought that they were destined for the public market in one of the big cities. It’s more likely to be one of the local shopkeepers who harvests his own stock of crustaceans.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to check on a boat that I understand was moored in the harbour.

We can see Aztec Lady in this photograph here but behind her is a boat called Anakena. There was a brief mention of her in the local newspaper over the weekend but I wasn’t able to read the full article.

From what I read, I understand that she was en route for the Far North to spend the winter out there and the family on board had even gone as far as to register their kids in the French “distance learning” programme.

However the confinement due to Covid has seemed to have trapped them in the harbour and they are unable to leave for their destination.

Back here I continued on somewhat with my notes for the radio programme, but even managed to fit in a quick 15 minutes on the guitar – the electric 6-string too.

Earlier on during the day I’d taken out the last pizza dough from the freezer and it had been thawing out in the living room. I rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray and left it to rise for an hour or so.

When it was ready, I assembled my pizza and put it into the oven to cook. And while this was going on, I made the sourdough.

having found that 400 grammes was not sufficient last week I used 500 grammes of flour and adjusted the quantities accordingly, and when it has settled in, I tipped it out and began to knead it. And now that I know what I’m doing with the sourdough, I could feel when it “turned” and it ended up really nice and smooth.

Halfway through the mix, I realised that I’d forgotten the sunflower seeds so I had to add them in. And it all turned out quite nicely. It’s now sitting in a bowl quietly festering where it’ll stay all through the night, and it’ll have its second kneading tomorrow morning.

By now my pizza was ready and I attacked it with gusto. It had turned out really nicely too and I do like how the edges, where I roll them over, swell up quite nicely as they do.

No pudding tonight, firstly because I don’t have anything and secondly I’m rather full. These pizzas are very filling.

And so running rather late yet again, I set off for my evening walk and runs. No-one about at all so i could run around for as much as I liked. And I quite enjoyed that idea too because for some reason tonight, I was able to go around without really putting any effort into it.

It’s true that I was often out of breath but that’s normal these days. I didn’t feel as if I’d been stretched in any way. And doesn’t that sound revolting?

By the time I ended up walking around the walls, the fog that had kept away for most of the day was rolling in rapidly and there were wisps of it now blowing across the harbour.

It was a beautiful night though. The sky was clear and there was a cold breeze blowing but for some reason it was quite nice to be out there.

But it didn’t look as if many people would agree with me. There was no-one else out for a walk tonight, and the fish processing plant was all closed up and in darkness, indicating that none of the bigger trawlers are expected to come in on the next tide with a catch.

From there I ran on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I have my radio programme to finish of course, but early on I have the sourdough bread and a pudding to make. I’m going to be busy tomorrow so I need an early night. I’m not sure that I’m going to get one though.

Saturday 28th November 2020 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again. I went out somewhat early this morning on speculation now that the “unnecessary” shops are allowed to open and sure enough, my luck was in I found “mon bonheur” as they say around here. It was expensive and I do mean that, but it will be well worth it in due course.

It’s for my Christmas present so I can’t tell you what it is until I open it at Christmas time but it’s what I’ve always wanted ever since I moved here three and a half years ago.

Even though I said “early”, it wasn’t as early as I was hoping though because I didn’t leave the bed until about 07:20 this morning, to my dismay. But at least I was in a better frame of mind than I was last night, which is one thing I suppose.

First thing to do is to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’d made contact with my old school last night and I’d volunteered to talk to them about certain things. They suggested that I came round to see them on Saturday. So off I went on a Saturday morning and found to my surprise that a lot of kids were still in school. I thought that it must be something to do with Covid or something like this. I arrived at the front of the school but couldn’t find the door in. All the front of the school had changed. In the end I found a door and went in – I thought that I’d look for the secretariat. All the kids were telling me not to go in through this door for some unknown reason but I went in anyway. I couldn’t find the secretariat but then I saw a hatch that was an opening in the wall and there was a queue of people around there talking to whoever was going on inside. I thought “well, I’d talk to these people, whatever was going on in this hatch and they can point me to the right place”. So I waited my turn. Then a guy came over and said “ohh don’t you go missing now that I’ve got you here. I’m going to give you a class”. I thought “this is strange. he doesn’t even know who I am”. But on my way in parking my car or going into the school grounds or whatever I bumped into one of my old teachers. I said “you must be Mr Lighton” but he didn’t recognise me. But this other guy obviously recognised me, and I didn’t have a clue who he was and I was certain that he ought not to know who I was but he got me right. He said “well …” and we were talking about what I could do. he said “you could give this class a talk on iron ore, the miracle of iron ore”. I replied “yes, I can tell them all about iron ore mining in Labrador”. I thought for a moment “I wish I’d remembered to bring my photographs with me” but then I thought that I had my laptop and they are all on there. Another teacher who was there said “I didn’t know that they mined iron ore in Labrador” so we had quite a chat about that. I had some gold with me and I produced this sample of gold and said “what about this from Labrador?” He looked at it, the amazed guy, but the one who came to talk to me first was totally nonplussed by this gold. he didn’t think that it was anything extraordinary at all.

Next thing was to have a shower and to check my weight. And in the last 2 days I’ve put on 0.6 kilo. That’s clearly incorrect and I shall have to check this again.

Having changed the bedding (I’m going to be in the lap of luxury tonight) and set the washing machine off on a cycle (very clever, my washing machine) I hit the streets with Caliburn.

Our first stop was miles out of town and more of this anon and then it was time for NOZ and LeClerc. Both were open but neither came up with anything of any special interest. It was just more of the boring same so I came on home without hanging around too long.

By now it was quite late so there was barely time to put the frozen food away before I had to make my soup for lunch (more of the butternut squash) and then there was football. Connah’s Quay Nomads against Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League.

Barry Town scored first after just a couple of minutes but from the restart Connah’s Quay went up the field and equalised. Even with half a team out injured or suspended they were still far too good for Barry Town and the final score of 3-1 was fair enough. Barry Town need to find a striker from somewhere if they want to push on up the table.

It was by now way after the time that I would usually go out for my afternoon walk, but I went out all the same.

Winter has certainly arrived. It was cold and quite windy out there, but there was plenty of sun to encourage people to come out for maybe the last fine day of the year. This guy in his yacht was certainly enjoying himself just offshore.

And you can see what I mean about the sun by looking at the sails of his yacht. They are supposed to be white but they are reflecting the late-afternoon sun and are looking a rather bright shade of gold.

And he wasn’t the only one out there in the water today.

There were several people in kayaks having a paddle around the Pointe du Roc too. And it’s a good job that it’s warm because it’s not permitted to light a fire in a canoe. They say that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

Back in the apartment I noticed that someone else had taken a photo of the kayakers and posted a “group photo” on the Social Media. And someone complained about them being allowed to congregate but ramblers were not allowed to do so.

I despair of some people.

And it wasn’t just on the water that there were crowds of people. The air was quite busy too.

A light aircraft had flown over my head just as I was setting out but I wasn’t quick enough to take a decent photo of it. But a few minutes later one of the little microlights went past. This time I was ready and when it turned out of the sun I was able to take a photo to speed it on its way.

What was disappointing was that our autogyro didn’t put in an appearance. We can usually rely on that going past overhead whenever the air is busy.

It’s that time of the month too.

There was a beautiful moon out there tonight – we missed the last one due to heavy clouds, if I remember correctly, but no danger of missing this one. It really was quite beautiful. And as you can see, there isn’t a cloud in the sky to get in the way of seeing it.

So it looks like either tomorrow or the day after, I’ll have to be shaving the palms of my hand. I used to be a werewolf but I’m all right noooooooooooooow”.

And that reminds me, the use of shockingly poor English is even threatening the Film Industry. They are planning to remake an old classic horror film of the 1930s, but the modern version this next year will be called “I Were a Teenage Waswolf”

Enough of that. I turned tail and headed for the headland to look out over the Baie de Mont St Michel to see what was goign on.

And this is a far cry from 21:00 and 21:30 of early this year, isn’t it? You can tell how late it is that I’ve gone out because the sun is quite low in the sky and about to sink into the sea, where it will presumably sizzle.

we are certainly having some spectacular effects just recently. This one I stayed and watched for a few minutes before pushing my way onwards around to the south side of the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a new trawler in the chantier navale and we watched it being hoisted aboard the mobile boat lift.

This morning when I went out to the shops I was half-expecting to see it comfortably installed on one of the sets of blocks so that they can work on it, but to my surprise she wasn’t there. They must have been putting her back into the water yesterday when we saw them manoeuvring around.

Still, Ceres 2 and the yacht are still there. They must be completely fed up of spending all this time together on their own without any company.

With nothing else going on, I walked on back to the apartment.

There were some carrots that needed dicing and blanching, the sourdough needed feeding and then there was the kefir to attend to. The kiwis that I had bought last week weren’t ripe enough and besides I was rather pushed for time so I grabbed a handful of clementines (I’d bought another load today), whizzed them around to extract the juice, and then made another batch of clementine-flavoured kefir.

Having done that, I set another batch of kefir en route. And one of these days when I have more time, whenever that might be, I’m going to look into making my own ginger beer.

Today’s special offer on veg at LeClerc was “Cauliflowers at €0:99”, and large illegitimate ones too. I love them when they are fresh so I bought one and for tea had veggie balls with steamed veg (including lots of cauliflower cooked to perfection) and vegan cheese sauce. And I’ll be having more of that too in due course.

But the sad thing is that I finished the last of my ad-hoc raspberry and custard tart. That worked really well and I was pleased with that. It encourages me for the future now with other fruits.

The moon was incredibly bright tonight. It really lit up the night sky and it would have been a perfect evening for photography had we not had one of the sea mists yet again.
With something of a struggle I ran on round to the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset and took a photo of the beach in the moonlight just to see how it would come out.

And I have to say that I’ve seen worse than this one. And, of course, it goes without saying, a great many so much better too.

Nothing doing at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch so I ran off all the way across thez Square maurice Marland where I stopped for my breather.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on a couple of occasions we’ve had a quick look at the house in the Rue LeCarpentier that is undergoing renovation by this specialist building company. Tonight, I couldn’t help noticing that with the light mist that we were having, the street light wrapped in the scaffolding netting was creating some kind of ethereal effect.

This is the kind of thing that is worth photographing, even if just to let arty people gasp with admiration. I don’t think all that much of this kind of thing

This on the other hand is much more like my kind of photograph.

Only Marité at anchor – or should I say “moored” – down at the bottom end of the harbour tonight. But she’s all lit up and looks quite pretty and for once, I managed to take a decent photo of her that actually worked out doing what I wanted it to do.

But everywhere is like death now with this lockdown due to the Corona Virus. Once more I was the only one out there tonight and I didn’t see another soul. I’m starting to feel quite lonely these days.

Mind you, that’s not exactly true. I wasn’t the only one out there tonight.

As I walked up the Rue St Michel a pretty long-haired cat, looking rather like a heavily-pregnant female, came out of one of the alleyways. I called it and it came to me for a stroke so we had a little bit of socialising. Strange as it is to say it, I miss having a cat, but it’s not possible with my lifestyle.

So having said goodbye to my new friend I ran on home to write out my notes.

Despite being in a better humour than I was yesterday and having had something of a lie-in this morning, I’ve still had a bad day. For some unknown reason I’ve been fighting off sleep (and not very successfully on some occasions) for most of the day and because I’m so tired, everything is taking 10 times longer.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last week because of a few rather extreme, if not ridiculous Sunday lie-ins, I was talking about setting an alarm on Sunday mornings in the future. But not tomorrow. This is going to be one of those “sleep until I awaken” days. I have clean bedding, I’m clean and tidy and I think that a good rest and long sleep will do me a world of good.

It makes me wonder who will come along to spoil it.

Friday 27th November 2020 – HAVING NOT GONE …

… to bed until 02:30 this morning, I totally surprised myself by actually being up and about at 06:30.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered for all the good that I’ve done today. I’ve not been able to get started today and I’m getting rather fed up of this.

So having slowly recovered from my extremely lethargic start and taken my medication, I listened to last night’s adventures on the dictaphone. Despite only being asleep for less than 4 hours, I still managed to find time to wander off.

There needed to be a big marriage in this family in a house very much like my old Grammar School and for some unknown reason they chose me to impersonate the bride. I was OK doing that until the groom appeared along with a couple of wedding cars. Then it became a kind of Brian Rix farce scampering around with all of this. My brother threatened to tell this guy and was making all kinds of suggestions. In the end he said that he needed someone to comfort him and console him, and the groom volunteered. I thought “that’s great. It will get rid of him. I can grab my shoes and clear off”. But I couldn’t find my shoes – I could only find one. The place was an absolute tip with presents and wrapping paper and everything around. But I could only find one shoe, which meant that I was stuck there. This guy came back down again and started to make some story about we needed to get this place tidied up. That was not what was going on in my mind at all. I was hoping to find a way to distract his attention so I could go but I had to find my shoes first and possibly my money and computer and loads of other things but the place was in such a mess that I couldn’t find anything.

It sounds rather like my place right now where I don’t even seem to have the energy to take the rubbish out to the bin.

Most of the day has been spent working on the arrears of when I was in Central Europe back in the summer, although you wouldn’t actually notice. My excuse that “much of the time was spent researching” isn’t really valid. It’s a far cry from the days 15 years ago when I could sit down and dash off 10,0000 words in a session without really thinking about it and without losing concentration and it’s making me even more depressed. Thank heaven that there’s music.

It will be no surprise to anyone that I crashed out round about midday. Crashed out good ‘n’ proper too, for more than an hour or so, curled up on the chair.

And so deep was I in it that I actually went off on a voyage. I was living with a large family and it was a weekend. I was wondering if all of the shops in Crewe had now reopened as I was thinking about going to B&Q for an exterior light for my house at Gainsborough Road and finally getting round to sorting a few things out there, but it was only a half-hearted thing. I was picturing myself doing some wiring but using some green flexible trunking. We were talking about things to do around the house to entertain us and I suggested a party. Someone wondered if I was being serious but I asked them if we had any jelly and cakes in ready. Feeling hungry, I went to the fridge where I had a tin of sweets and took one out, but I didn’t have the time to eat it as I found a Mickey Mouse cut-out of mine so took it over to the settee, sat down and went to put it in a folder. That mad me think about work, how I didn’t really like it and how I was creating arrears but thought then that I could always leave as I’m over the Retirement Age (how many times have I had this dream?) but then the downside would be that I would be really bored and going round in circles like I am now. The little girl came to sit by me with her big black long-haired cat that she was stroking. After a couple of minutes she got up to go somewhere and put the cat on my knee. That awoke me with a start.

At least my butternut squash soup was delicious even though it was quite late. And that was another thing – when I awoke from my little reverie I had the strangest feeling that I’d actually already eaten my lunch.

Back at my insipid work after lunch, up until walkies time and then I forced myself to go out into the cold.

And cold it really was too. Winter has definitely arrived now in Normandy.

The sea fog that we saw yesterday morning – or would have done had the camera worked properly, it was back again. Or maybe it hadn’t gone away. The whole of the coast was shrouded in it and visibility was only about 7 or 8 miles, as you can tell from this photo.

You can just about see the coast beyond Donville les Bains, but not much further. It’s certainly a foretaste of things to come and I think that it’s going to be a cold one this year. We haven’t actually had a really cold winter for a while

The brats were out orienteering on the lawn again and I helped a little one find a marker that she was looking for, and then I pushed on.

Round on the headland we had another one of these beautiful sunny effects where rays of sunshine shine through the gaps in the clouds and make pretty patterns on the water. It’s not as spectacular as the one a week or so ago but it’s pretty good all the same.

Nothing else going on out at sea so I continued on my way. Too many people around for a decent run so I had a nice sedate walk.

While I’d been round at the headland I’d heard the sound of an old diesel motor chugging away somewhere so I was wondering what was going on.

And it seems to be all excitement this afternoon at the chantier navale. The green fishing boat that we saw in there yesterday seems to have disappeared but nstead they’ve hauled out another one from the water and dropped her on blocks.

I’ve no idea who she is, so I suppose that I’ll have to make further enquiries. But whoever she is, she’ll be in good company there with the yacht and with Ceres II who seem to have settled in for the Duration.

Sudenly the engine that I heard revved up. It’s the engine on the mobile boat lift and as I watched, it over-rode the new fishing vessel and they wrapped the lifting tackle around it.

Moving her off to a new more permanent location I imagine. I waited for a while to see but they didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry.

But can you see the driver’s cab of the boat lift? he has a good view of what’s going on around him while he’s in motion. But it’s quite a beast, that. They need something like that here for lifting the boats in and out of the water. 100 tonnes is no lightweight.

Back at the apartment I made a coffee and then carried on with my paper-stirring until it was time to practise the guitar. At least all of that went well and I had an enjoyable time. Thank heaven there’s music.

Tea was taco rolls and rice followed by another slice of my pie with banana sorbet.

After tea, I had to dash out pretty smartish-like for my runs as there would be football on the internet later.

It was another day where I really wasn’t feeling up to all that much but I persevered all the same and managed my 6 runs, to some kind of degree. One of the legs of my runs goes past the other end of the trench that we saw yesterday. There’s no light here at all so you can’t see very much of it but anyway …

On I pushed round to the viewpoint over looking the Place Marechal Foch.

Although there was nothing going on down in the Place, there was some excitement happening in the Avenue de la Liberation.

Here we are, the first Christmas lights of the year, shining away in the biscuit shop over there. A sure sign that Christmas is coming. Next it will be the public lighting that we’ve seen them installing throughout the town over the last couple of weeks.

So I cleared off again, running across the Square Maurice Marland and making my way home via the shorter route rather than going by the walls. I was in a hurry.

It’s been quite a while since we went up the Rue Notre Dame so I was wondering if we’d see any changes along there.

Not really, I have to say. After all, it was quite dark. But it looks as if there is going to be yet more digging up of the road here, as if there hasn’t already been enough, judging by the fact that some of the parking is now fenced off.

There was a public notice pinned to one of the hurdles but the weather had got to that before I did, so I couldn’t see what it said.

Back in the apartment, I just about made the kick-off. Bala Town were playing Newtown and, to be honest, Bala had far too much in the tank for Newtown. Nevertheless although Newtown’s defence stood up well, they were undone by a couple of moments of magic down the right wing. A score of 3-1 to Bala was probably about right, I reckon, and no-one can complain about this.

And, rather shamefully, I fell asleep for a couple of minutes in the middle of the game.

Not an early night tonight again, unfortunately. One of these days I’ll manage a good, decent sleep without oversleeping. I’ve no idea when that will be, though.

Thursday 26th November 2020 – I SCOOPED THE PRESS!

And I did too!

Headlines in the local paper this morning – NEW TRAWLER ARRIVES IN GRANVILLE but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that LAST FRIDAY I’d mentioned that she’d arrived.

So remember, folks, you heard it first here!

Mind you, I wasn’t as quick off the mark with getting up this morning though. It might not have been 10:00 but 06:30 is still quite depressing nevertheless.

First thing that I did after the medication was to listen to the dictaphone. A cricket match had been arranged between us and some other people. It had been arranged months previously starting at 19:00. Of course now it was late November so we all turned up at 19:00 and it was going dark, impossible to play cricket in these kind of conditions. People were experimenting, putting cars around the pitch so that their lights shone on there, that kind of thing. A few of us were just waiting for something to happen. I went up to one of the players who I knew and asked if I could have my lunch out of the car – he obviously had my lunch or something. After a bit of a rummage round he handed me a bag. He asked “what do you have in there?” “Clams” I replied “Gorgeous clams” and wandered off leaving him rather green in the face. In the middle of the pitch was a guy sitting there quite calmly cutting a lump of bread of a loaf and cutting a lump of cheese off another block and sitting there eating. I went over to talk to him and we ended up discussing the radio, talking about contracts and shows and the Copyright Act. he talked about all these little girls who had taped these performances on their mobile phones and were sharing them amongst their friends and how the Copyright Act people were getting at them. I noticed that he was listening to a group and was telling me about them, how he’d found them on some kind pf Internet chart and had risen to n°71 in the charts. We talked about the charts and I noticed that he was listening to it on Hi5, an elderly social network thing going back 10-15 years so I was intrigued to know if Hi5 was still going and was determined to ask him about it

later on I was with my father and one of my sisters. He was messing around with some car that he’d obviously just bought, a T registered MkIV saloon, the beige colour. The paintwork was scabby on it but it wasn’t too bad. Joanie was sitting in there bouncing around in the back and he was saying how much she was going to like the particular car. Then it was my turn to get into it, so I got in, started up the engine and drove it off down this yard where the vehicle was parked, got to the end and put my foot on the brake just like how I’d normally drive a car. But the brakes were useless on this and it shot out of the yard before it came to a stop. I had to push on down the road until I could find a place to turn round. It was dark by this time so I had the lights on so I went to put it on main beam so that I could see better. But it was really stiff. But before this I’d gone past a place where there was a llama. At first I thought that it was a horse but it was a llama and was stuck underneath what was basically a shed but with no floor on it. It had fallen on the animal’s back, the building and it was struggling trying to get free of it. So I went to put the lights onto main beam and fiddled about with this dip indicator but suddenly all the lights cut out and I couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch-black and I had to bring the vehicle to a standstill without driving off the road or into an object, anything like that which I managed to do. Then I had to wait until it was light and I could go home. All these vehicles were coming past me including a Crosville bus so I had to set off and turn round a bit further on or wait for them to go past and then turn round. In the meantime this llama came round, extremely bad-tempered and I thought to myself “I’m going to be in a confrontation with a bad-tempered llama”.

Anyway when I awoke, I found that there was no cause for allama.

And for a change, I managed to find the time to have a shower. I can’t remember when was the last time. And I did feel much better afterwards too. Mind you, that 100 grammes that I lost – I’ve put it back on. We’ll see how we go after a month with no perfusion.

And then off to hit the streets and head for the shops.

And a couple of really miserable photos too because, once more, the battery in the NIKON 1 J5 was flat again. That’s been added to my shopping list for this weekend now. And that’s a shame because this morning we had our very first sea-fog of the winter and I would have loved to have photographed it properly.

Instead, a rather depressing one taken with the camera on the telephone will have to suffice. But I can’t keep on going like this.

And only 2.5 years out of a camera battery? Whatever is the world coming to?br clear=”both”>

This miserable photo here isn’t all the fault of the camera on the phone (or the operator).

As you can see, Thora has left port for the Channel Islands and in her place on the morning tide, Normandy Trader has come in. And unfortunately she’s brought with her a load of sea-fog. And not only that, the sun shining directly into the lens has amplified the effect of the fog and crated something like an obscure translucent effect.

Ordinarily I would leave the photo until on the way back when the fog has dispersed and the sun moved out of shot, but with the speed of the turnrounds these days, Normandy Trader might be gone by then.

LIDL was an expensive shop because I needed quite a few things. Even so, they didn’t have everything that I needed and I did forget some more of it too. But that will be for another time.

One thing that was depressing me was that there are no grapes. However the end of the grape season means the start of the clementine season.

Back in the apartment I attacked the butternut squash.

I cut it in quarters, deseeded it, sliced it ad put it in the oven coated with oil in order to roast the pieces.

Meanwhile I fried a large onion and plenty of garlic with some cumin, coriander and chili in a very large saucepan. While that was doing, I peeled and diced three large carrots and added them to the onions etc.

When the butternut bits were nice and soft, I peeled them (and that took longer than I imagined), added them into the saucepan, put enough water in to cover everything, brought it to the boil and and left it to simmer for half an hour.

Finally I added some coconut cream and fresh ground pepper, and then whizzed it all into a purée. Here’s the finished product anyway. And it really was delicious with some of my home-made bread. However if the truth is known, I’ve probably put a little too much of the spices in it. It’s something that you might more appropriately call a “hotpot”.

The good news is that there are four helpings left over. Two of them are in the fridge for tomorrow and Saturday, and the other two are in the freezer for “again”. I really must buy a bigger freezer because I’ve long-since run out of room in there.

So it ended up being a very late lunch as it took much longer than I was expecting. And by the time that I’d finished it was time to go walkies outside.

There weren’t too many people out there this afternoon which was surprising because although it was cold, it wasn’t all that windy and properly dressed, it was quite acceptable.

The fishing fleet seems to be back in action too Here’s one of the trawlers making its way back to the fish processing plant, presumably with a full load of whatever it is that they catch.

And talking of catching things, I managed to catch hold of a brat this afternoon. The kids were all out on the lawn doing what they do and as one came by me, I asked her what it was that they were all doing. And as I expected, it is indeed orienteering that they are practising.

The next stage will be to grab hold of another one at some later time and to ask it why.

Leaving them to it, I walked on across the path and down to the headland to see what was going on out at sea.

The trawler had gone past of course, and so there was nothing really to see out across to Cancale and the brittany coast. But there was a pleasure craft out there heading into port past Le Loup, the big marker light on the rocks just at the entrance to the harbour.

And you can see how far the tide is in by looking at Le Loup. When the tide is right out you can see not only all of the light but also the rock upon which it stands. When the tide is right in, it comes to just underneath the lower red line.

The tide being right in means that, in principle, all of the fishing boats that were out would be at the Fish Processing Plant unloading their catch ready for shipment to the markets in the big cities.

And today is clearly no exception. There are 7 or 8 boats there and the fleet of refrigerated vans on the quayside and the deck underneath means that this lot is more likely to be the individual owners who make their own arrangements to sell their catch to local restaurants or seafood shops, that kind of thing.

And the fact that there have been two new boats this year at least – Rocavi II and le Pearl – just goes to show that business must be good and that there’s confidence for the future.

Business also seems to be good in the chantier navale too, which is likewise good news for the local economy.

The boat that we saw hauled out of the water yesterday must have gone back in, because she’s not there now, but they have just brought another one out. I missed it coming out of the water, but the mobile boat lift was on its way back to its station when I arrived here.

This boat will be in good company with Ceres II and the yacht that seems to have put down roots right now.

With nothing else of any excitement I hurried on home to see what else I ought to be doing – like a mountain of washing up, for example.

My friend who had Covid was on line so we had a chat, and she’s been offered a new job, much more in line with her line of work. So well done her! And then I fell asleep.

The hour on the guitar is rewarding, except that it was difficult to play the acoustic because I have an issue with my thumb. These kitchen knives are flaming sharp when they are in the water and you can’t see them.

Tea was stuffed pepper made with more of that really nice couscous, chick pea and quinoa stuff, and then the raspberry tart with banana ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

Out on my run tonight and for some reason that I don’t understand, I just couldn’t get into it. For all the good that I felt like out there, I needn’t have bothered.

But I pushed on regardless and made really the barest minimum of my 6 targets. At least I managed them all so I suppose that that is something.

All the way down the Rue du Nord and then along the footpath underneath the walls to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch, a run that I do in 4 stages because it’s quite long and I’m not here to kill myself off – just to keep in some kind of shape.

Nothing at all going on down there again because it is quite late and there’s no-one about, so I sent a few minutes taking photographs in the dark to see what I could reproduce. This one is supposed to be of the steps of the Escalier du Moulin a Vent that goes down to the bottom.

But I seem to have managed a nice bright photo of a tree and very little else. But it’s not easy pointing your camera blind over a wall.

This one is a little more like it. I could capture something interesting even though the darkness defeated it somewhat.

Where I’m standing is on a little bridge that leads over to the Place du Marché au Blé. There’s a kind of trench that’s been cut through the solid rock to make a meutrier – a death-trap in which soldiers can become stuck when they are assailing the fortifications. They can easily get into it but getting out is much more difficult and they will be at the mercy of anyone on the walls with a bow and arrow as they try to scramble out.

A great many medieval fortifications have something similar and it was a very effective technique – and also a very good defence against anyone trying to undermine the walls. They would have to do it twice – once on the outer wall and then once in the meutrier on the inner walls, exposed to whatever the defenders could throw down from above.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other night we took a photo of the tree that stands on its own in the Square Maurice Marland.

This evening I thought that I would take a photo of the reverse angle of the shot so that you can see it from this way round, just for a change. The statue of Maurice Marland and his colleagues of the Resistance who were murdered is just beyond it.

And from here, I ran off all the way down there right to the other end – about 300 or so metres.

Eventually I made my way home and wrote up my notes. But it’s now 02:00, I’m still not tired so I’m working. Tomorrow is goi,g to be another bad day, I reckon.

Wednesday 25th November 2020 – THIS IS NO …

… good at all.

Never mind the three alarms this morning. I didn’t wake up until about 10:00.

This is a really sad situation to be in. But then, it’s probably my own fault. I was distracted after finishing off my notes and didn’t go to bed until 01:30. And so I was thinking that I would be lucky to be up at 06:15. Even so, I didn’t think that it would be this late and waste half a day.

Plenty of time to go on a walkabout during the night too.

By now things were advancing with TOTGA and we were definitely a couple. She was definitely living in Gainsborough Road with me. She had brought her animals with her, a couple of cats and a couple of dogs. The cats were very stand-offish as far as I was concerned. One night she went to bed and I had a few things to do so I stayed up. I was wondering about going to bed, and I thought “no, I have a few things to do and I can make the most of it doing them while it’s quiet”. We’d done a furniture removal and we could have removed all of the stuff out of my house with this van but it didn’t quite work out like that with people not being able to keep to a timetable and likely to run off or something like that. I ended up having to take the van back without moving my stuff but I’d removed the other person’s. It was 01:00 or 02:00 and I didn’t feel particularly like going to sleep so I’d done some some more stuff. But I’d made a mistake. I went to press the button on something but ended up pressing the doorbell and thought “God, I’ve awoken everyone in the apartment building now”. I carried on doing what I was doing. For some unknown reason a heavy lorry started up and drove away. I thought “I’m glad that’s not me waking the neighbourhood even more”. Then TOTGA came down and asked “are you going to come to bed or what?”. I had a little laugh and smile to myself and off I went upstairs. She’d changed all of the bedding in the bedroom so I made a remark about it. There was no room for me in the bed because of all these dogs and cats fighting their way around. Suddenly the alarm went off. I looked and it was only 05:00 instead of 07:00. I couldn’t remember how to switch off the alarm. In the end she had to come and do it for me and it was all. That was all very well – I’d lived in this place and she’d only been here half an hour, something like that. I went to get into bed and some of her cats were all curled up with my cats and it all looked like one big happy family until I got into bed when hers started to move. I thought “that’s just typical, isn’t it? It’ll take them a while to get used to me”.

So it wasn’t all bad then during the night. Not ‘arf it wasn’t.

First thing this morning (or what was left of the morning, should I say) was to make the booking for my trip to Leuven. And that’s not going to happen now either. All of the train across the border are cancelled and there’s just the repatriation trains. The one out is on Sunday and costs €155, which costs more than I usually pay for a return ticket. The one back is on Friday but I didn’t even check that.

In theory I suppose that I could drive there in Caliburn but it’s a long way and a lot of organisation so in the end I decided not to go.

They weren’t impressed when I rang them up to tell them but the way I see it, it was fine for them to annul my 4-weekly appointments for 9 months when it suited them so there’s no reason why I can’t annul a 4-weekly appointment for 4 weeks.

Time for hot chocolate and chocolate cake and then I could press on with work. And I’ve been doing another load of stuff of the arrears for my trip to Central Europe in the summer.

There were the usual interruptions during the day. Firstly of course there was lunch. And I do like my sourdough bread. I’m pleased with how it’s turned out although the shape leaves something to be desired. I need it to be taller and not as wide. But it’s no big worry – it’s all about learning as you go along and I’m doing plenty of that.

There was also the pause this afternoon to go for my walk around the headland

It’s Wednesday of course so no brats out playing or orienteering this afternoon on the field at the back of the sports ground of the school. I can therefore take a photograph of the lawn and also of one of the bunkers of the old Atlantic Wall that are dotted about here.

That’s the one that they opened up about 18 months ago and about which there is some talk of transforming into a museum of the Atlantic Wall and, presumably, of the Resistance Fighters here.

Whether it will ever be a project that gets off the ground remains to be seen of course

With nothing else of very great importance going on I walked on around the headland and then ran all the way down the path (seeing as there was no-one about) to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

And it looks as if there is going to be a change of occupant in the chantier navale today. We have one of the little inshore seafood harvesting boats being winched up out of the sea by the portable boat lift.

You can see that it’s only just come up out of the sea, with all of the water that’s dripping off it. And yet there’s a van parked by it and workmen who look as if they are inspecting something on the port side. So maybe it’s been in a collision with a rock or a mermaid or something.

And that reminds me. A short while ago I asked one of the local fishermen if he knew the ideal vital statistics of a mermaid. He replied “36 – 24 – €9:99 per kilo”

And that’s not all of the excitement going on down there this afternoon either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned the other day that there was a pile of equipment down on the quayside in the loading bay for the Channel Island freighters and so I expected one of them to be putting in an appearance some time soon.

And so it looks as if today is the day because Thora is down there this afternoon and by the looks of things she’s not long come into port. And I’m glad that I got to see her because with the rapid turnover that we’ve been having just recently I might otherwise have missed her.

And then you lot would be moaning on at me to improve my aim.

While I was there looking at Thora into port came another one of our old favourites.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the trawler Cap Lihou was up on blocks i the chantier navale for what seemed like eternity this summer. But here she is today, just having unloaded at the fish processing plant and now heading into the inner harbour.

But I headed off back home for a hot coffee and to carry on with some work. But my friend with Covid (or who had Covid, should I say) was on line so we had quite a chat again.

Anything to keep up her morale. It’s very important that she keeps a positive outlook. And in any case, I happen to like her.

My hour on the guitar was another one that was very enjoyable – playing along on the bass and singing to a few Hendrix numbers that I used to play in a group in which I played all those years ago, and then later playing lead guitar solos to “Riding The Waves” and “Whisky In The Jar”. I’m still rubbish at bar chords though.

Tea was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer followed by more raspberry and custard tart. And this worked so well that it’s going to be added tot the menu for future reference.

Just as I was about to go out for my evening runs Rosemary rang up and we ended up chatting for 2 hours and more yet again. By now it was far too late to go out, what with the curfew and all of that, so I’ll have to write that off tonight. I can’t rely on the coppers turning a blind eye too often.

So I’l lgo to bed, still later than I intended. Shopping tomorrow and there’s quite a list so I need to make an early start. But late as it is, I’m not relying on a 6:15 start. I really need to do better than this.

Tuesday 24th November 2020 – AFTER I’D FINISHED …

… my notes last night I went and kneaded my sourdough mixture. 6 hours it had stood and it certainly hadn’t doubled in size, but there it was.

After kneading it for a good 10 minutes I could feel the change in texture so something was definitely working but I carried on nevertheless and after about 15 minutes of so I wrapped it in a well-floured tea towel and put it in a pyrex bowl to leave it overnight.

And after all that excitement I ended up going to bed at about 00:30 which is bad news as far as I’m concerned, but good news is that I actually managed to beat the third alarm to my feet. I’m not quite sure what’s happening here at all.

Stuff on the dictaphone too. Despite just 5.5 hours sleep I’d managed to find the time to go off on my travels. However, I know that many of you are of delicate sensibility and the rest of you are probably having a meal right now, so I’ll spare you all the gory details. Some of this stuff is colourful, to say the least.

So off to check on the sourdough as soon as I’d had my medication.

It hadn’t doubled in size through the night either but anyway, it’s had all of the resting that it’s going to have. I switched on the oven, put the lid over the pyrex bowl, turned it upside-down so that the dough fell into the lid (having well-floured the lid beforehand), removed the tea-towel, put the bowl back on (with the unit still upside-down) and put it in the oven full-on.

After half an hour I took off the bowl so that the bread remained in the lid (and it had risen somewhat too), scored the top of the bread to let out the steam and put it back into the oven for another half hour.

It wasn’t properly baked by then so I gave it another 15 minutes and when I took it out, it looked and smelt delicious.

One thing that I’ve learnt is that the bread is too small. It’s possibly the pyrex bowl that I’m using because the bread is not tall enough to be of much use. But the exciting part about all of this is that the bread was thoroughly delicious, light as a feather and completely aerated, and I wish that my normal bread would turn out this good.

It looks as if I’ll have to use 500 grammes of flour for the next week and see where that takes me. But it’s a lot more optimistic than it was last night and I’ll be trying this again.

While the bread was baking, I copied out my notes for the Welsh and then revised for my course this morning.

The course passed quite quickly today but I’m still very dissatisfied with myself here. Stuff is going in one ear and right out of the other. I must have a teflon brain because nothing seems to stick to it.

Once the course had finished I had to track down a book. We’re going to start reading a novel and although the tutor offered to send it to me page by page in a *.pdf I really could do with a version of my own. And eventually I managed to find one at quite a democratic price, and also a copy of our course book. Maybe it’s someone who did the course last year who doesn’t want to carry on or who wants to release some cash.

That meant a rather late lunch. I couldn’t wait to attack my bread and as I have said, it really was excellent and I’ll be doing that again, I reckon. But in a different mould to make a better shape.

With that out of the way it was time for me to go for my afternoon walk, bumping into one of my neighbours on the way out.

It was cold outside this afternoon, and I do mean cold. It won’t be long before I have to start to put my woolly hat on my woolly head when I go out. But the air was really clear and we could see for miles today. The view of the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel on the right of the image has never been clearer.

It’s very difficult to believe that it’s about 70 kms away when you see it in a photo like this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last couple of days we’ve spent some time round at the Seafarer’s Memorial.

There have been a few changes there since I came back from Belgium, and there have been a few more today by the looks of things. The flowers that we saw there last time have all been swept away and there are a few wreaths now that have appeared this morning.

At first I thought that it might be something to do with the anniversary of one of the tragedies that are commemorated thereupon, but they are dated December and January – I did check as I said that I would.

So I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s clearly significant

We’ve seen a photo of the Brittany coast right down as far as Cap Fréhel and how clear things were looking today in that direction.

We’ve also seen just recently a couple of photos of the reflection of the sun shining onto the sea over on the Brittany coast round by Cancale. So today, we had the lot. It’s not as impressive as the view that we had a week or so but the colour of the sky is especially interesting. It brings out really well the silhouette of the skyline if Cancale way in the distance.

And so I moved on. Next stop was the chantier navale

Another thing that we saw yesterday was the mobile boat lift in the Chantier Navale in position round by Ceres 2 as if it was about to pick her up and drop her into the water.

But clearly not. The lift has now gone back to her usual position and Ceres 2 is still where she was on the blocks. So I don’t know what was happening there either now.

Nothing else worth talking about this afternoon. I’m sure that you aren’t interested in seeing any more photos of the pathetic parking at the school. Rather later than usual, I came on back for a coffee.

Liz was on line when I returned, and so was my friend who had the Covid, so we ended up having a good lengthy chat for a while. Liz gave me a few pointers about cooking and told me how to cook my butternut squash in order to make a decent soup (that’s Thursday’s task) and my other friend and I had a good chat about Chester, where I lived for a couple of years in the early 70s after I ran away from home.

This evening I was carried away on the bass guitar and ended up having a big bass session for my hour’s worth of playing around. Not like me, but I was enjoying myself so much with the numbers that I was playing.

Tea was a burger on a bap followed by my custard tart. And I’m impressed with how that turned out for an ad-hoc thrown-together dessert. I’ll have to do that again some time, only properly.

All of this was followed by a mega-washing-up session. There was plenty to do and now that the draining board is full, I’ll have to finish off tomorrow morning.

And later than usual (very much later in fact) I was able to go for a run. And even though it was way past curfew time and I was the only one out there, the police car that drove past me totally ignored me.

And so in stages as usual I ran down the Rue du Nord and then along the footpath underneath the walls. The sky was still quite clear and Donville les Bains was looking very bright in the distance, so taking my time, I took a photo of it.

It needed about 3 or 4 shots to take the photo that I wanted, but all the same it’s ended up coming out quite well. And once I’d taken it I carried on with my run.

Nothing much happening at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch either.

To take a photo of something interesting I had to walk round to take a photo of the Place des Corsaires and take a photo of what there is down there, with the Rue Lecampion in the background. I’m getting to the stage where I’m running out of interesting things to photograph.

Mind you, the problem is the lack of light, because I would have loved to have had a photograph of the look on the face of the woman talking on her mobile phone in the Square Maurice Marland when I ran past. I took her completely by surprise and she must have least three feet into the air.

After my walk around the rest of the walls I ran on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to have a good day’s work. But as well as that I have to book my next journey to Leuven. I’m going on Monday but nothing is arranged as yet. I can see me walking to Leuven and sleeping under a bridge if I’m not careful.

Monday 23rd November 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that one of the things that I moan on about from time to time is the question of bad parking.

In the Boulevard Vaufleury round about school chucking-out time it’s particularly bad as people would rather block off the street and prevent the school buses and the service buses passing rather than make their precious little darlings walk an extra 20 metres to the large free car par park just across the road.

And here today is the local police force giving a “Hail Columbia” on the loud hailer to two women (because they are both women) parked opposite each other, the white one with all four wheels on the road and the black one with two wheels on the pavement, combining to block the entire street and one of the two pavements to just about everyone who might be going past.

And that’s good news as far as I am concerned.

What else that is good news is the fact that when the third alarm went off this morning I was already in the kitchen sorting out my tablets. And that’s a long time since that has happened.

After having had the medication I cracked on with this week’s radio programme. And by the time I stopped for lunch it was all done, completed and ready to go. And apart from the fact that I stopped for my hot chocolate and slice of chocolate cake (which isn’t half as bad as I was expecting it to be) I would have finished it earlier had there not been a power cut round about 09:30 which meant that I lost whatever work I hadn’t saved since I’d backed it up a short while earlier.

In actual fact, it’s all worked out really well and it’s certainly one of the better ones that I’ve done. Unfortunately, I missed out the fact that I should have been doing a live concert, so I’ll have to deal with that probably later on this week.

As for my chocolate cake, the bottom is rather burnt and the rest of the outside is overcooked whereas the centre is rather heavy and slightly undercooked. That implies that the oven was too warm but the cooking time was not long enough. It’s not as much of a disaster as I was thinking and it’s hopeful for the future.

After lunch, I had a listen to the programme that I’d recorded this morning ans also to the live concert that I had prepared a few weeks ago for this weekend. And it seems that in the past I had already edited the part that I felt needed attention so I could relax.

While that was going on, I had a listen to the dictaphone. to see where I’d been during the night.

I was with a lady-friend of my acquaintance last night. We were a couple. Something had happened about a letter – there was an important letter to give to me and even though I wasn’t there she hadn’t realised about it so she said that she would take it. I ended up being back at home again on my own first and I had gone to the bathroom. I’d had a load of issue about closing the door to the bathroom but in the end I managed to do it. Just then she turned up and said “I have this important letter for you”. I was trying hard to pretend that I didn’t know that she had it. I said “ohh right”. She said “I’ll throw it over the top of the door”. I said “no, I’ll be out in a minute. You hang on to it”. So I went to sit on the toilet and she went into the kitchen. There was only a wire netting fence between the two so that you could see. She was getting out this envelope and then she got some cucumbers and cut them in half lengthways so that they were very long and thin and started scoring them to get them into some kind of cut, maybe about 10 to the inch, something like that all the way down this cucumber and then bent the skins inwards then she could trim all of the cucumber off at one go and have all of these half-slices at one go. Some other girl came along into the kitchen, picked up another half of a cucumber and started to do the same thing so I wondered what on earth was going on here now with this other girl. What’s she doing here?

Later on I was on a tram in New York last night travelling up Edleston Road in Crewe when a couple of ticket inspectors climbed aboard to check tickets. I suddenly realised that I’d forgotten to buy a ticket. I had a search around in my pockets and found a ticket that I had used a couple of days previously so when the ticket inspector came to me I handed her the ticket. She had 2 or 3 tickets in her hand at the same time so she checked them, handed the 2 back to the other 2 people and said “I’ll be back in a minute” and wandered off up the tram. Just at that moment the tram reached the top of Edleston Road and of course I was planning to go off down Nantwich Road anyway so I took the opportunity to nip out at that tram stop and walk off down Nantwich Road and tried to think about how the tram system in New York worked – I certainly hadn’t put any of my tickets through any machines or anything like that while I’d been on the trams or so on. And then thinking that maybe it’s probably not a good idea to get a tram back home but to walk. At least it would save me going out for a walk later on at night. I’d have got my exercise in simply by walking home from Nantwich Road.

There was more to it than that too, but as you are probably eating your tea right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

Round about the normal time I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

As you can see from the photo they have made a start on replacing the slates on the roof, and that’s not something that I would fancy doing doing in this kind of weather. It was cold and windy although, admittedly, not as windy as it has been.

One thing that I ought to mention about the roofing task is that a couple of weeks ago while I was in Leuven one of the workmen fell from the roof and was seriously injured. They actually had the helicopter air ambulance in the car park here to take the injured party to hospital.

And as I’ve already mentioned the weather just now, I went over to the sea wall to look out to sea in order to see what might be going on out to sea.

There were no boats out there at sea today which was a shame, but what had caught my eye was the beautiful cloud formation out there in the centre of the photograph just beyond and to the left of the Ile de Chausey. There have been quite a few good ones just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

No brats out there today orienteering so I pushed on round to then end of the headland to see if there is anything going on round there too, but there was disappointment there too. I’ve never known it to be so quiet.

Mind you, there was something going on at the chantier navale as I was to discover when I arrived at the viewpoint overlooking the port.

While there was no change in the actual occupancy of the chantier navale but as we can see, the mobile boat lift has now moved from its usual position over the docking area to a position right by Ceres II as if it’s about to pick up the little boat and drop her into the water at the next high tide.

Having spent a few minutes watching the excitement in the Boulevard Vaufleury with the Police interaction, I came on home because there were things to do.

The sourdough was bubbling away quite nicely so I cleared all of the workplace, cleaned the worktop and started to make some sourdough dough. And it’s a real time-consuming process too – much more than I was expecting and the standing time is quite lengthy too.

While I was at it, I prepared the next batch of kefir.

5 of my batch of clementines were peeled, put in the whizzer and slightly whizzed round to extract the juice. This was filtered through into the large jug and the pulp was put back into the whizzer, whizzed for a good five minutes and filtered through again.

The kefir was then filtered through the filters and the clementine pulp into the jug and then it was stirred round to mix together. I’d left an inch or two of liquid in my big pot with the kefir starter in, and prepared a new batch with sugar, lemon slices and a dried fig and, or course, a couple of litres of water.

The clementine/orange mix was then filtered through the fine mesh filter into the bottles and that will now be left to ferment for a few days until it’s ready for use.

With having used some nice, juicy clementines, I’m intrigues to see how it’s all going to turn out. The big idea of course is to use whatever fruit is handy and in season to make your kefir.

The hour on the guitar was quite enjoyable too and I’m finding that my singing and playing the bass is improving, although I have to keep the bass lines much les complicated than I otherwise would and I can only let myself go during the solos. But at least it’s quite an improvement over where I was a few months ago. I just have to persevere.

Tea was a vegan burger with pasta and vegetables followed by a slice of my raspberry tart, which likewise hasn’t turned out too badly. The custard Filling worked particularly well.

Out on my walk tonight, I was all alone yet again so I could run as much as I wanted, which was not as much as I would like, but nevertheless …

It was a cold, clear, bright night with a good view all the way down the coast so when I stopped at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord I took a photograph of all of the street lights on the promenade down at Saint Martin de Bréhal and further along the coast at Bréhal-Plage.

having dealt with that, I ran down to the footpath underneath the walls and then ran all the way round to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch.

There was nothing going on at the Place Marechal Foch so I went over to see what was happening in the Rue Paul Poirier.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago we saw that the Christmas lights had been installed down in the street and I was rather hoping that they might have been switched on by now. But that wasn’t to be the case. It seems that we’ll have to wait for that to happen, whenever that might be.

There was quite a strong headwind as I ran across the Square Maurice Marland and it was something of a struggle to fight against it. But I made it all the way to the end, despite giving the girl sitting on the wall in the dark quite a surprise.

Continuing along the medieval walls I heard a sound coming from the harbour as if there was an engine running somewhere.

It looks as if they are doing something with Victor Hugo. All of her lights are on and it seems that the engine was running too. What’s going on there is something that remains to be seen, but I do know that there are no plans to resume the ferry service to the Channel Islands in the near future.

From there I ended up at the Place du Parvis Notre Dame and from there I ran on home to write up my notes for the day.

Now that’s done, I have to knead my sourdough dough. It’s been standing for five hours instead of the recommended three but it still hasn’t doubled in size. Nevertheless I’ll give it a go and put it in its mould and leave it overnight ready for the morning when I’ll bung it in the oven.

In view of its lack of energy so far, I’m not convinced by the sourdough procedure. I’ll try three or four loaves but unless there’s something dramatic it’s an experiment with which I may not continue. At least the kefir and the cordial (this batch of orange cordial is delicious) are working.

But that’s for tomorrow. After I’ve kneaded the dough I’m going to bed. I have my Welsh letter tomorrow.

Sunday 22nd November 2020 – I KNOW THAT …

… Sunday is a Day of Rest, but I do have to say that 12:30 is taking this to absurd lengths. So much so that I’m giving serious thought to setting an alarm for 10:00 on a Sunday morning just to remind myself that I have plenty of other things that need doing during the day too.

I could easily understand it if I hadn’t gone to bed until 05:00 or 06:00 (which has sometimes been the case) but going to bed at 23:30 is early by my standards. All I can say is that I must have been tired.

Plenty of time for me t go on a variety of travels, and so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that last night I didn’t go all that far. I’d been in France with Terry and we had to come back to the UK. Terry had his motorbike so we decided that we would go back on his motorbike. I remember that for some reason I was sitting on the front seat but he was sitting on the rear but he was driving. We made sure that we had absolutely everything and we set off. In no time at all we ended up back in Crewe and I don’t remember anything about the journey back except for tiny bits here yet we must have gone on the ferry, we must have stopped for fuel, all this kind of thing and surely did I fall asleep on the motorbike? He replied “yes, it took up 5 hours to come back”. I thought that that was absolutely astonishing. Anyway I ended up at home and had a few letters to post. I thought “I can do that tomorrow” so I went to the Bridge Inn at Audlem to see Alan Findlay. He wasn’t there so I thought that I’d take Liz Ayers with me there because there’s a woman in the bar who was her spitting image and it would be interesting to see their reactions if they were to see each other. But she didn’t come and this woman was looking more like Liz all the time. Then I met another couple of women who looked like her as well. I thought “God, if only Liz had been here this ould have been great”. I eventually tracked Alan Findlay down at his house and did what I had to do. That was when Liz had committed suicide and that was totally astonishing and the thought came over that she had had such a good time in France that to go back to the UK was bound to be an issue particularly with the health problem that she had.

But all of this is certainly weird. Liz Ayers popping up during the night and also Alan Findlay, a name from the past about 45 years ago and about whom I haven’t really thought all that much (if anything) ever since then.

So having wasted half a day there wasn’t really all that much to say about today. By the time that I’d sat down by the computer it was 13:00 and by the time that the paperwork was done it was about 14:00. That didn’t leave me much time because at 15:00 I had a Zoom meeting.

One of my friends, Jem Stuart, is an established poet and it was the launch of his latest book of poetry “No Limericks Left Overnight In This vehicle” today and he was having a “Zoom” party to celebrate. His sister has been a friend of mine for about 50 years ever since she was dating a friend of mine at school and so I’ve been following his career with some interest since we made contact again about 5 years ago. There were about 20 of us there and we had a good chat while he read some of his poems and told us a little story about them.

That took me up to walkies time. Rather later than usual, but never mind.

There were several people out there walking around, and a group of them were pointing at something out on the rocks. At first I thought that it was a cormorant or a heron perched upon a rock but in actual fact, having enlarged the photo on returning home, I could see that it was someone quietly contemplating the state of the nation.

Not that I have too much time to do anything like that of course. If I’m not sleeping I’m working and I don’t really have the time to sit and relax. There are only so many hours in the day, and so many days in the year. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t have many of them left. I want to get up-to-date before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And so accordingly I continued on my way along the path on top of the cliffs.

It was so late when I went out that the sun was on the verge of setting. A far cry from the days when I’d be out at 21:30 and 22:00 and the sun was still visible in the sky. The sun was so low in the sky that it had plunged the reverse side of the lighthouse into pitch-black.

There’s a project simmering away in the back of my head right now and I need a photo like this to illustrate a point that I will be making. So no time like the present.

Round at the end of the Pointe du Roc on the headland overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel and the town of Cancale over on the Brittany coast, the view was even better.

What was really nice was seeing the church at Cancale (on the horizon on the left of the image) and the Ile des Landes (on the right) silhouetted right in the full light of the sun as it was shining through the hole in the clouds over there.

In actual fact, the whole effect was quite pleasing, in a different way from the other day when the sun was higher in the sky.

From there I tried a little run along the path on the clifftop on the other side but encountered only too soon a group of other people so I slowed down to a sedate walk and came on home.

Back here, it was time for baking and I do have to say that it was not a success. In fact, probably my first culinary disaster. The pie base worked well enough, and so did the apple turnover with the rest of the pastry. But the Chocolate brownie mix that I tried went totally wrong. it said “bake for a maximum 30 minutes” but I’d only made about 3/4 of the mixture and as the oven is rather unreliable I put the time at 35 minutes and 15°C over. Even so, when I pulled out the cake mould to check it at the end, I poured half of the liquid all over the floor.

Even 70 minutes didn’t bake it thoroughly so I dunno. I know that my oven isn’t up to much but I would have expected it to have been better than this. I’ll have to write it off to experience.

It goes without saying that, once more, there wasn’t time to make a sourdough loaf. I might start that tomorrow after I finish my radio recording if there is time.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course. I attacked that with gusto and it was good enough, and so I checked the pie base into which I had added the fresh raspberries and agar-agar before tea. And that hadn’t set either. In the end I resorted to some very thick custard to complete the task.

All in all, not a very good cookery day today. Instead I went out for a run, far later than usual as I was running really late, what with one thing or another.

What was good about this was that there was no-one else around so I could run to my heart’s content, at least, as far as my health will let me. And my fourth leg brought me as usual to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch. We’ve seen a few photos from here just recently, but I don’t think that we’ve seen the back of the square.

On the immediate left is what I think might have been an old hotel but is now a Convalescent home (in which, apparently are several Covid patients brought from elsewhere) and to the right is the Rue Jules Michelet, probably the steepest street in France I reckon.

Just imagine what it must have been like trying to take a horse and cart up there 150 years ago. Today, traffic goes up the serpentine Avenue de la Liberation to the right and cover three times the distance to arrive at the same spot.

My route home includes a trip through the Square Maurice Marland.

By the memorial to Maurice Marland, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing on numerous occasions, there’s a solitary tree which has some lights set in the ground around it. Today those lights were actually illuminated and the effect was so eerie that I stopped to take a photo of it.

No-one about calling their dogs tonight so after I finished my walk around the walls I ran on home, rather late.

So despite it being still a little early and that I had a late start to the day, I’m off to bed. Back to work tomorrow and I really must press on instead of idling about like I seem to be doing these days.

There’s a radio show to do of course, and I need tocheck on another one that is due to be broadcast because I think that I need to make some changes to it.

And bread to bake too, and maybe something else if my chocolate cake has turned out to be a total failure.

It’s all go around here, isn’t it? When was the last time that I sat down to read a book or watch a film? I really can’t remember, it was so long ago.

EPIC HALL

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