Tag Archives: place d’armes

Thursday 8th March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

… all of the excitement this morning.

Much of the Pointe de la Roc is out of bounds to heavy vehicles, and coaches are only authorised to use a short stretch of the road that leads to the big car park.

But that didn’t stop this driver, and his mate in the coach behind thinking that the rules don’t apply to them. And they duly came up here and then tried to negotiated the corner into the Place d’Armes.

You have probably noticed that the registration number of the bus is “75” – a Paris number. And that explains everything. Rules in the Provinces don’t apply to Parisians as we know. They are far superior to be bothered by that sort of thing

And it was quite amusing to watch the drivers as they were suddenly confronted by the roadworks here.

One coach managed just about to negotiate the tight corner after many vicissitudes, but the other was well and truly wedged and it took the driver about 20 minutes to extract himself.

I did at one stage go over to the driver to ask him if he would like me to manoeuvre the coach for him, but I was met with the kind of greeting that would have been considered out-of-place in the fo’c’sle of an Australian whaler.

But he eventually extracted himself, turned round (narrowly avoiding missing a couple of parked cars) and then disappeared the wrong way down the one-way street.

I had my early night, but I didn’t have much of a relax though because I was tossing and turning throughout most of it. But that didn’t stop me goign on one or two of my voyages.

We started off with one of our 3D characters (and when you have your own 3D characters coming with you on a nocturnal ramble you know that you have problems) having to choose a new ski suit for a holiday and ended up after many more vicissitudes choosing a lemon – coloured one. And simple as that sounds, you have no idea just how long that took.
And from there we moved into the realm of realism (such as it might be) with my father telling me about one of his former colleagues (who actually drove my schoolkids about when I had my taxis) who was selling a Ford Cortina 2000E at the local auctions – for a reserve of £4800. Of course that was way out of my price and so I wasn’t planning to go, but a series of events conspired to have me in Whitchurch at the time of the auction and so I ended up there just in time to see him list the vehicle at a reserve price of £4080. But turning into the car park I had run over a glass bottle in Caliburn, and the tyre was punctured and a ball joint damaged. This man told me that he’d look at it after the auction as he was now running a small tyre business. So the bidding started on his car and was very sluggish round the £2000 mark, when suddenly it took off and went well over the reserve. And at the end of the auction the man told me that he now had to go to a funeral – but I shouldn’t go to Garage X because they weren’t as good as Garage Y – which coincidentally was the one to which I went anyway. He went off to look for his hearse, which he couldn’t find, and his wife told me what a marvellous person he was, to which I replied that I knew all about him. I ended up (I’m not sure how) with Caliburn at Garage Y (which bore a surprising resemblance to my father’s workshop) where the puncture was repaired. But I wanted to fit the wheel, to which he hummed and haa’d because he was planning to close up and didn’t have the time. But eventually I wa son my way and it was now really late. I was obliged to crash out in Caliburn at the side of the road, thinking to myself that seeing as how I’d just got back together with Nerina (it was all happening last night, wasn’t it?) what would she think about me having promised to live a more regular lifestyle, and being out at night like this. So being crashed out like this, I was rudely awakened by a police patrol (reminiscences of Switzerland a few years ago) for a “control” and I could in my befuddled state only find half of the papers that I needed. I had to admit that while I had the insurance certificate, I didn’t have the insurance policy and that led to some harsh words and difficult moments.

No wonder that I was thoroughly exhausted this morning after all of that during the night.

After the usual start to the morning and the Thursday shower, I postponed my trip to the shops seeing as it was totally pouring down. But by about 10:00 I could see some blue sky in the distance heading this way so I took to the streets, having my encounter with the coach drivers on the way.

LIDL was the port of call, and there was nothing special to tempt me. But the place was heaving – a vast contrast to last Thursday in the snow. Four of the tills were open but we still had to queue for ages to be served. That’s why I like to go early.

On the way out I’d noticed a load of stuff piled up at the quayside and so I reckoned that Grima was due in.

And I was right too. There she was on the way back, having the sacks of gravel or whatever they were hoisted aboard, giving her something of a list to starboard.

I hope that they had corrected that before she sailed.

Back here I had my coffee and then a little … errr … relax, before another session on the bass. ANd I ws working out a couple of Groundhogs and Hawkwind numbers – so intently tht I was surprised by how quickly the time passed.

After lunch, I was once more … errr … away with the fairies (I really don’t knwo what’s the matter with me these days) but pulled myself out of it and went for a walk instead.

There was quite a number of people out there this afternoon, even though the weather wasn’t the nicest. School holidays, apparently.

But I was distracted by movement down on the quayside just here. It seems that one of the large boats is being moved – and moved by road too. It’s a huge thing and they were having to take all kinds of special precautions.

Still, it all adds to the excitement of living here.

For tea tonight I had a frozen potato and lentil curry out of the freezer. And delicious it was too.

And that took me nicely round to my evening walk.

Cool and a little windy, with another marvellous view of Jersey, and also a marvellous view of the harbour here under the lights. You can see in this pic that when the gates are up and the water isn’t high enough to admit boats, there’s a couple of chequered poles visible, presumably to warn ships not to enter.

And there were crowds of people at the bar tonight. I wonder what’s going on there.

So if I’m lucky, I’ll have another early night. I’ll leave you to digest this … errr …. 1246 words.

Wednesday 7th March 2018 – AND IN KEEPING …

… with my previous efforts just recently, I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifth of five eights of … errr … nothing.

So after finally managing to have an early (that is – before midnight) night last night, I went off with the fairies to what seemed to be a Virtual Reality word somewhere. Clearly the events of the past few days have been getting to me. And the highlight (if you can call it that) of this world was being arrested by the police and being on the end of some customary police interrogation that made me unable to walk for the next three days. I’ll have to stop reading this book about Canada in the 1930s, won’t I?

We had the usual performance this morning and then I was sidetracked as I ended up speaking to someone in the USA for 90 minutes or so on the internet. It was about work so I don’t begrudge the time of course, especially if there might be some folding stuff in the offing, but it always happens at the wrong time, doesn’t it?

I was sufficiently distracted after that that I had a change of practice and had a practice on the bass guitar. Something that I usually do late in the afternoon but today it was here and now. And for some reason or another not only did the bass line to Led Zeppelin’s “Communications Breakdown” come back into my head after an absence of 40-odd years, I found myself playing the bass line to Hawkwind’s “Damnation Alley” and that goes back even farther in time.

And not only that, I seem to have regained the flexibility in my left little finger and I can now hold down the string with that. And that’s progress.

But I’ve now worked out why five-string bass guitars have come into fashion. I’m sure that I played the bass line to several tracks in the past – “Born To Be Wild” and “Locomotive Breath” spring immediately to mind – in the same key as I do now, but I find that I run out of notes at the bottom end. It’s maybe because my hearing has changed as I’ve become older and I’m playing it an octave lower than I did in the 70s. And if that’s true, it probably explains why all the bassists of my age and older are now using five-string basses, so they have an extra range of notes.

After lunch I did my best to fight off the temptation to close my eyes for a short while, but I wasn’t successful. But I dragged myself out after 10 minutes and went for a walk. It was nice weather outside and quite a few people were about, but there was nothing exciting going on.

Tea was, as promised, the falafel and vegetables with a vegan cheese sauce. And it was rather … errr … disappointing. In my haste I forgot to test the vegetables before I put them on the plate and to my dismay I found that they weren’t cooked enough. But you can’t recook them after you have smothered them in cheese sauce so I had to make the best of it.

It was another beautiful evening out there with the lights of Jersey glowing in the distance again. Visibility has been impressive at night this last couple of days.

So an early night again tonight – it’s my walk to the shops tomorrow.

Tuesday 6th March 2018 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with the weather today.

It was bordering on the vergoe of reasonable for much of the day, but that changed as soon as I put my foot outside, as you might expect. It started to rain and my walk this afternoon was undertaken in the wet.

And I wasn’t the only one out in the wet either. We had one of the council workmen out and about practising a little topiary.

Mind you, he wasn’t practising long (and by that I don’t mean that he was perfect either). As I was walking past he was climbing back into his van and by the time I had prepared the camera for the photo he had long-since cleared off down the road.

Clearly a cup of tea was more exciting than being out there in all of this, and I can’t say that I blamed him either.

And if that wasn’t quite enough, this evening it was positively teeming down. But that didn’t put me off by any means. I still went outside and did the rounds nevertheless. I have to keep moving.

And I was certainly moving last night.

I was playing in the attack in some kind of competitive field sport like football or hockey and I managed to get myself into some really good positions, but the speed of the ball off the surface took me by surprise every time and I was always 6 inches short of the ball.

So having just about beaten the second alarm and done the usual morning offices, including a shower, I had a quiet day today. Dealing with some photos as usual, and then investigating this 3D site that I told you about.

Apparently it’s not based on the one that I use but on one that’s much more simple and so I’ll need to find a free copy of that and learn it. That should be exciting but, as I have said in the past, it keeps me out of mischief.

Talking to someone on the internet this afternoon, I almost fell asleep in mid-chat. But I struggled through and felt much better after my walk.

Tea was some more tortillas with the last of the filling that I made the other day. Tomorrow there will be falafel and cheese sauce, which I am looking forward to intently.

And tonight an early night – I hope. It’s going to be another calm day again with a bit of luck.

Monday 5th March 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I managed to wake up bang on the first alarm – and be well out of bed by the time the second one went off. That’s not happened too often just recently, has it?

And it’s astonishing considering the voyage that I was on during the night. That’s enough to tire out almost anyone, never mind me.

I was in my old beige Cortina (UOB, not YLO) driving over Chester Bridge and up to the turning in Delamere Street when I slid on some ice, overshot the turning and collided with a vehicle on the opposite side of the road coming round the bend. The police were called and statements taken, and the policeman told me that it wasn’t really my fault because of the weather conditions and the ice. So back in the car and up Delamere Street and turned into Queensway, where I collided with some cyclists coming the other way. And I wondered how I was going to explain to my insurance company these two accidents in a matter of five minutes, especially as my dash cam will show that although the cyclists were totally in the wrong, I could have done more to avoid them.
From here we were back in the London Underground (a fairly regular destination for our nocturnal rambles as regular readers of this rubbish will recall). I was buying a ticket for a long-distance flight (like you do in the Underground of course) and the flight wasn’t for 90 minutes so I would have plenty of time to go home and pack (of course). But one woman said that I had dropped my insurance card so when I had completed the transaction I bent down to pick it up, but it was only the stub. I had to prove to the person in the booking office that it really was mine by comparing the serial number of the stub with that on the card. And so I went back home again (to Gainsborough Road) to pack for my trip, pulling up in my car (by now a Mark 2 Cortina) on the opposite side of the street a way down, leaving me with a lengthy walk back). As I arrived, my sister’s husband came round the side of the house ad came in with me. He said that he was hungry so I offered him some rice and a tin of something, which he accepted. And I had to show him how to use and induction hob – a strange parallel with something that had happened in the LeClerc on Saturday.

After the usual start to the day, and a little relax, I attacked a pile of photographs that needed things doing to them – and that took longer that I reckoned. And the photos are coming out far too blurred with this new camera, as I have said before. I’m not all that happy with it now, which is a shame.

Having done that, I attacked my travel arrangements for next week.

The rail journey isn’t as cheap as it might have been, due to the fact that I’m coming home on a Saturday rather than a Sunday. If I’m having some kind of transfusion, I’ll be staying the Friday in my room without doing too much.

But the increased rail fare is offset by the room. I can see now why the manager told me to book directly with him rather than with the booking agent that I usually use. They have smaller, cheap rooms for working men that aren’t offered via the booking agent and they are at something of a reasonable discount. I wish that I had known this a couple of years ago.

So at the end of the day, it still works out cheaper.

This afternoon I designed and furnished a room. Yes, I’ve managed to get into the depths of this 3D site that I mentioned the other day and had a play around with furniture, accessories and poses . And once you solve the key, which is not very easy to do, it’s pretty straightforward and I can see some kind of opportunity here.

We had the usual walk this afternoon at 15:30, and I was joined by the heaving multitudes today, including a family looking for a playground for their children.

But my attention was distracted by what ws going on in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have discussed … "on numerous occasions" – ed … the crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers and how once or twice there has been another crane present too.

I was lucky enough to see what it was doing today, and it wa winching some heavy stuff into the building site underneath.

And that puzzled me, because that is three times to my certain knowledge that the crane has been there. And it must cost them a fortune to pay for these regular visits. Why didn’t they just hire in a bigger crane in the first place?

Back here I almost managed to stave off the falling asleep bit – succumbing for a mere 10 minutes.

Tortilla wraps for tea, and then my walk, and now my early night. High time I had one. It’ll set me up for an early start.

That is – is I don’t have phone issues. I noticed that this morning the phone was on 78% charge, and tonight, a mere 9% even though I haven’t used it.

Something’s clearly not right.

Sunday 4th March 2018 – WELL, THAT WAS AN …

… interesting afternoon, and no mistake.

I was planning on going to watch US Granville’s 2nd XI this afternoon but a flash up on the internet announced that it was postponed.

Never mind. Subsequent research indicated that La Brehalaise up the road in Bréhal were to play La Patriote St Jamaise. And so I duly made my butties and hit the streets.

At Brehal the ground was almost deserted except for a couple of guys hanging around. They were indeed players from La Bréhalaise and they told me that the match had been forfeited by La Patriote St Jamaise. So that was that.

But never mind. There was a 4th Division match at Gavray between AS GAvray and ES Tirepied and I had just enough time to get there before kick-off.

And, as an aside, I’ll be coming here again. There’s a small covered area for spectators and that will be very handy in inclement weather.

As for the game itself, ES Tirepied are rooted to the bottom of the table and AS Gavray ran out 7-4 winners. You might think that this showed some level of poor quality, but far from it. It was a very interesting match.

Being a 4th Division encounter, quality was very lacking as you might expect, but there were a great many thoughtful and intelligent passes and play during the game that had the quality been up to it, it would have been wonderful.

ES Tirepied were not at all as bad as the scoreline suggests. They matched AS Gavray blow for blow but the difference was that this was a match of two goalkeepers.

The US Gavray keeper made a couple of saves that any goalkeeper in a higher division would have been proud to make, whereas the keeper of ES Tirepeid was, and without wishing him any malice whatsoever, clearly a guardien de fortune, pressed into service, one assumes.

And he did his best, and you can’t ever fault anyone for that. Chapeau to him for taking it on and persevering.

Final word has to go to an “incident” in the 50th minute. Just as ES Trepied were pulling themselves back into the gale after being 4-0 down at half time (the slope here gives a decided advantage to whoever is attacking down it) the referee blew for a penalty against them. And even the AS Gavray supporters, with whom I was sitting, were totally mystified as to what the referee had seen. The ES Tirepied players were stunned into disbelief and I have a good deal of sympathy with them.

This morning, I had a lie-in until 09:30. And quite right too. It is Sunday, and anyway, I was exhausted after my voyage during the night.

I was on my travels with TOTGA last night – hardly a surprise I suppose as I was speaking to her just before I went to bed (wonderful things, these social networks). We’d been to a rock concert in Carlisle and we had to return home. But we both had vehicles so she needed to follow me as I knew the way. She was impressed with the Motorway system and asked me loads of questions about it, which I could answer her of course. The route out of the venue car park was jammed with traffic and we slowly inched our way out and found the motorway, but there was a complicated section where you joined the motorway, crossed all three lanes to the far side and then crossed back to exit, all in a space of a couple of hundred yards which was no picnic in heavy traffic, so I had to stop and explain it to her and make sure that she understood exactly what was required.
Later, we were both working in an office which was run by a former inept boss that I had very early in my career. The accounts that he had managed were in total chaos and so he had engaged someone to maintain them, someone whom he had been pursuing for two years, so it seems. I spoke to the guy who told me that he’d turned down the job previously but had been persuaded to accept it, and wished he hadn’t because he’d never seen anything like the disorder and disarray. And then he started to rant about the facilities. There was no reception room, no canteen, nowhere to take a rest (a subject very dear to my heart as I worked such long hours in that place) and a whole host of other shortcomings. “And a condom machine” I quipped, making TOTGA blush to the roots of her hair.

THis morning I didn’t do too much. It’s about time that I had a good relax. And then we had the football of course.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and rather overcooked. And I know why too. It’s the frozen mushrooms. For a change I put them in the oven to defrost while it was warming and I prepared the pizza, and you should have seen the water that cme off them. No wonder the pizza hasn’t been cooking thoroughly. I’ll have to do that again.

And a walk this evening. It was a gorgeous day for a change and tonight I have never seen Jersey so clearly – even the house lights, which is pretty astonishing seeing that it is just over 30 miles away from here.

Ordinarily that would be something that would bode well for the morning, but here the wind changes so rapidly that it could bring anything in overnight.

We shall have to see.

Saturday 3rd March 2018 – OHH HECK!!!

Yes, I awoke this morning to find bright sunlight streaming into the bedroom.

Blasted 08:20, wasn’t it? The alarms hadn’t gone off.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that the battery and gone flat in the telephone. And so I was in something of a panic.

So much so that I forgot where I had seen during the night. But it did involve a spare wheel of a vehicle – the type that hangs on the back door of a 4×4 and how the owner of the vehicle wanted to make sure that we knew precisely what wheel was under the rainproof cover before we ordered a spare part or something for it.

But I medicated, breakfasted, showered and hit the streets – out of the apartment at the usual time. And here I bumped into Mrs Neighbour who had with her husband just come back from 2 months in Vietnam. It seems that he too spent New Years Eve in hospital, with the same bronchitis that I had. It seems to have been an epidemic all around the world, this illness.

I did the usual round of the usual shops today. At LIDL they had a couple of the sorbet makers left over so I blagged one and I shall have a go with it this coming week.

And at Leclerc I ought a computer mouse. The “other” laptop that I use as a media centre has a broken mouse (that was how I bought it so cheaply) and I’ve been using an old plug-in mouse to work it. And it is so easy to manoeuvre for my 3D programs that I went out and bought one for this laptop. It makes a whole world of difference.

But going into Leclerc it was bright sunlight so I ought a ticket for the cheap open-air standing area at the football ground. nd when I came out the rain was asolutely teeming down. That wasn’t a good plan, was it?

After lunch I spoke to Rosemary on the phone but having only given my phone the briefest of charges the battery went flat. And for some reason the phone wouldn’t charge up off the laptop … "it won’t if it’s not plugged into the mains" – ed … and so I ended up doing a few other things before going to the football.

And as for that, the 540-odd of us in the stadium were treated to a rather unusual sight of a linesman and a referee officiating at a totally different match to the one that we were watching, and I’m still shaking my head at some of it.

Tonight’s opponents were the reserves of Stade Rennais – a professional outfit with a professional set-up and a professional approach to the game. And it told, too.

They might be a couple of places below Granville in the table but I don’t know why because they played some very pretty football. They were well-organised and moved the ball around well, and their three goals were all excellent.

What didn’t help matters was that US Granville allowed them far too much room in midfield and it looked to me as if they wre refusing to close them down.

But the three goals of Granville were from the usual breaks down the wing from the rapid wingers and overlapping full-backs.

However, going back to Stade Rennais’s professionalism, they were very careful to punch the Granville n°5 when the attention of the linesman and referee was elsewhere.

And the Granville was stupid enough to punch back as soon as the referee had turned round. The red card that the referee gave him was more for stupidity than the punch.

But that’s the difference between a professional team and an amateur one. THese amateur players are sometimes so naïve.

The referee did however lose control of the match, which is hardly a surprise with some of the decisions, and it all ended rather nastily. I don’t know what went on in the tunnel afterwards but it was greeted with hoots of derision from the crowd in the stands.

And If I’ve read some of the subsequent comments, it looks as if a few red cards were brandished in the tunnel. We shall see.

It was a pleasant walk back and I didn’t feel the strain, surprisingly. AND i4M ON 111% of my daily activity.

Tea was different. With running low on tinned curries? I tried a new line that LeClerc was offering. Mushrooms in the Greek style. And to my surprise, it wasn’t too bad. Not up to curry standard, but nice enough. I always eat out of a tin on Saturday because I’m usually out at the football or something and I don’t have much time, energy or ambition to cook very much.

So we’ll try this time for an early night, and see where that takes us. Sunday is a lie-in and I need it.

Friday 2nd March 2018 – ONE LOOK …

… out of the window at 15:30 told me everything that I needed to know about my plans to go for my afternoon walk.

Never mind the rain that we were having, there was a couple struggling towards the apartment desperately clutching each other, hoods huddled around their heads, taking two steps back for every step forward that they were taking. You didn’t need to notice the trees being bent double by the force of the wind to realise what was going on.

I closed the curtains and made a coffee instead.

It was a lot warmer this morning – above freezing in fact, although the apartment was still rather chilly. And with having a desperately late night last night I didn’t quite beat the second alarm to leave my bed.

And after breakfast I started to work.

I told you about this 3D virtual world site that sells content from suppliers. So I created myself a couple of accounts and went for a stroll through the rooms to see the clothing, furniture and buildings to see what they are up to and see what the things are like and the quality that they expect.

The quality is very basic – not like the quality that I’m used to. And I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I’ve binned stuff that is better than they have there. But then with over 10 million members and a whopping 90,000 on line at any one time, you don’t go far with your processing power if you turn out high-quality stuff.

It’s the PARETO principle – 80% of the quality takes 20% of the processing power, and the remaining 20% of the quality takes the remaining 80% of the processing power, so I do see and understand their point.

But as for what goes on in this virtual world, well, you’d blush if I told you.

We had the usual crash out this afternoon – but with only three and a half hours sleep last night that’s no surprise, and then for tea, I found a pepper that I had forgotten, so it was stuffed pepper with rice and vegetables followed by the last of Liz’s birthday dessert with a soya yoghurt.

And with the rain having gone and the wind having dropped, I managed my evening walk around the headland. Now I’m going to bed. I deserve an early night.

Thursday 1st March 2018 – IT WAS A …

… lot warmer this morning.

Yes, the temperature when I awoke this morning was at the giddy heights of all of minus 3°C. It wasn’t as cold in here either this morning, but after less than 4 hours sleep, it certainly felt like it too.

What didn’t help though was that after breakfast it started to snow. I wondered why it had gone completely silent outside, with no cars or pedestrians passing.

Under normal circumstances that would have put paid to any idea that I might have had about going to the shops. These, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, are not normal times and I need to move about.

And in any case, you wouldn’t exactly call that a snowfall after what we are used to in the Auvergne, regardless of what they might think around here.

So I had a shower and a general clean-up and cut all 20 of my finger and toe nails (and anyone who knew me even a couple of years ago will realise that an achievement that is). And then I hit the streets.

And there over across the far side of the harbour where the fairground people had their residential caravans are a couple of lorries owned by the Irish company O’Toole.

Everyone knows of course that the company is owned by Plenty O’Toole, one of the James Bond girls from Diaminds Are Forever and who was, famously, “named after her father”.

But more to the point, what are they doing there? And even more interestingly, how did they get here?

That wasn’t all of the excitement down at the harbour either. As you can see, we have a gusher – a ge flow of water into the basin.

I did wonder what it was doing – whether there had been a leak in the gates or whether they were trying something new, but it seems to be the outlet of a rather large pump and I’ve no idea what it’s supposed to be doing.

Or even where the water is coming from. I mean – I know that it’s coming from the sea, but that’s not what I mean.

We had some excitement in the town too. Someone in a 7.5 tonne lorry was delivering parcels – blocking the narrow streets as he unloaded, even though there was a free space just 20 metres higher up.

And another100 metres further on, he stopped OPPOSITE a free space and blocked the passage for the large queue behind him. So when he came out of th shop I asked him if he needed any help to park it – after all, I now have my HGV licence – but he just gave me a dirty look and drove away.

I made it to LIDL to find that there were no more than 20 people in the sho, and I had a till all to myself – something that deosn’t happen very often in LIDL as you know. Clearly the weather had defeated most people. But there was nothing exciting to buy in there, although the sorbet maker looks exciting – I’ll need Caliburn for that.

My usual route back home takes me down past the streets in the upper part of town and there was some excitement here too.

It seems that a couple of old houses in the Rue St Gaude are being demolished, with plans afoot to replace them with modern apartments. This is a street with a good view in places over the harbour and in much demand – I saw a ruin here at an exorbitant price – and quite a lot of the old single-occupancy properties have gone.

But I admired them for attacking the job with a digger.

The day warmed up later and we were treated to rain – put the dampers on my two walks later on though, but at least I made well over the 100% daily exercise target which is always good.

And tea tonight was all kinds of vegetables and falafel with a cheese sauce, and that was delicious too.

But despite my short night last night and my exercise today, I’m not at all tired and I don’t know why. It’s going to be yet another late night.

Wednesday 28th February 2018 – BRRRRR!!!!

It was cool in the bedroom when I awoke this morning, despite the heater being on during the night. But never mind cool, it was taters in the living room. But then, it WAS Minus 5°C outside – the coldest temperature that I have ever recorded here.

That is of course a far cry from the minus 16°C and minus 19°C that we had in thz Auvergne, but theres the fierce wind here to deal with. When I was out for my walk this afternoon the cold wind was blowing straight through my woolly hat and freezing the woolly ears on my woolly head. And that wasn’t anything to be passed over lightly.

It was a slightly more reasonable night last night but what with one thing and another (and once you get started you have no idea how many other things there are) going to bed was nothing like as early as I had hoped.

But when I went I was off on my travels again. Some kind of confusing voyage amongst a group of adolescents, one or two of whom had difficulty understanding the difference between “sleeping with” and “falling asleep with” and couldn’t understand the significance of why a series of doors might be marked as being locked. There was a plate of something like spaghetti involved i it too, although I’m not sure what that was doing in there or what was its significance.

So fist act in here was to switch on both of the heaters in here and put them full-on. Not something that I was ever planning on doing but minus °C here is rather exceptional so I can be excused.

Again, it doesn’t seem that I’ve done very much today but in fact I’ve been rather busy, although there isn’t much to show for it at the moment. Idly surfing the internet like you do, I found a 3D virtual world that acts as some kind of agent for 3D designers to sell their output to the members. I’m far from being at the stage where anything that I ever create is worth selling. However the terms and conditions are not as unreasonable as they otherwise might be, so it gives me some kind of impetus to get myself in order and work on something positive for a change.

Apart from that, not a lot has happened. It’s not been the weather to do to much and it’s not going to get any better tomorrow. I can see my walk out to LIDL being … errr … put on ice.

And I wonder how I’ll sleep tomnight. For some reason I was out like a light for an hour just now and that’s banjaxed all of my plans.

Tuesday 27th February 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I’ve done very little today. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I’ve done badger all. Not even any of the usual tasks that I set myself.

It was another late night, although nothing like as late as the previous one, and I was out like a light until the alarm went off. And if I had been anywhere on my travels I certainly don’t remember it.

It was still a haul to crawl out of my stinking pit, but I did manage to beat the Billy Cotton and the second alarm clock. But to say that I was lethargic for a couple of hours after breakfast is probably an understatement.

Once I’d got myself into gear I started to attack the 3D project that I had begun yesterday. And to be honest, I didn’t end up any further forward despite all of the hours that I put into it. And in the end I discarded it.

But it’s not any time wasted. I tried a different approach by using a program called Hexagon, a freeware 3D image editor, and while it didn’t complete the project as I had hoped, I learnt an awful lot about the program and that’s time that is never wasted. You can’t have too much education

I had a shower of course, and the usual walks today too, and tea was the doggy bag from Saturday and Liz, with some potatoes. And really nice it was too. Standing for a couple of days definitely improved the flavour as it always does with spicy food.

So with nothing at all done today, there’s a lot of catching up to do tomorrow. That will probably mean an early night, just for a change.

Monday 26th February 2018 – DON’T SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO RUB IT IN?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I went to my Health Insurance people the other day to hand in a pile of documents so that the Doctor who oversees my case at the Insurance office could see them.

And today I had a leaflet from them. “What steps to take when a member of our scheme dies”.

Yes, nothing like rubbing it in, is there?

Mind you I felt like death this morning. Having had a really good sleep yesterday it upset my body rhythm completely and it was 02:00 and beyond before I went to bed.

Struggling out at 06:20 was clearly too much and after breakfast I crashed out well and truly for a good 90 minutes.

However during the night I’d been on my travels again. A few of us were on a train travelling from Chester to Crewe past the old Calveley station, but someone kept on inserting into the voyage old photos of the Chester – Mold – Ruthin railway line. And I’ve no idea why.

After my little wasted morning I decided that it was time to do some work. And so I’ve been hard at it since then. I’ve had another session with this 3D program that I use. I’ve been doing something that I promised quite a while ago, and that is to experiment with textures and templates.

It’s one of those things that the first step takes for ever, but once you have done one of them, it’s fairly straightforward. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro as my graphice editor for over 20 years, but even now I’m having to find and use facilities and functions that I never knew existed.

Despite all of my efforts, it’s still not doing what I think it ought to do. And so I’ll have to put a great deal more effort into it. It’s certainly progress though, all the same.

Having spoken to Rosemary on the telephone, I went for a rather late walk this afternoon.

And I once more fell in with the workmen digging the trench. It seems that they are laying the conduit first, and the cables will follow. And then there will be the connection to the network later.

I did ask about the timescale, and he reckoned that it would be about a year to have it up and running. That’s disappointing from my point of view – I was hoping for it to be much more rapid than that.

But nevertheless, that’s progress too, and I can’t complain too much about that.

Back here, it was time for coffee, as it always is when I come back from my walk.

And I usually allow myself a little treat, and that’s why I like birthdays so much because, having visited Liz and Terry, I’m supplied with another vegan chocolate birthday cake.

Sticky, gooey and chocolatey, and absolutely delicious. This should last me a couple of weeks and then I’ll have to have another birthday.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with the leftover stuffing from the other day. And my walk this evening took me past quite a few people also out taking the air.

So having had a decent morning’s sleep this morning, I wonder how I’ll get on tonight.

Sunday 25th February 2018 – WHAT ODDS …

… would you have had on a team 3-1 down, with two of four minutes of added time played, coming back to snatch a draw?

Yes, an exciting football match in the Welsh Premier League this evening with Aberystwyth Town playing Carmarthen. And Aberystwyth running away with the game until a dramatic substitution late in the game threw on a reserve centre-forward who is clearly made of granite.

And Carmarthen could even have snatched a winner too – they wrestled possession away from Aberystwyth from the restart after their third goal and raced upfield, and only a dramatic save from Chris Mullock at point-blank range saved Aberystwyth from one of the most dramatic collapses that I have ever seen.

As for the football that I saw this afternoon, that was dramatic too, but for different reasons.

With it being a cup weekend, there should have been no local football but several clubs took the opportunity to catch up on some of their postponed matches.

US St Pairaise and ES Saussey in the Departmental Third Division were two of those. So in the nice sunny but windy weather I headed out to St Pair.

Saussey won the match 2-0 which was a rather harsh scoreline. St Pair had their fair share of the play but found a couple of centre-backs who looked far too good for this level – even in the warm-up you could see that nothing would get past them – and when it did they found a keeper in excellent form.

But the difference was really that although Saussey didn’t have many chances, they took the ones that they had. One was a poor clearance headed back over the defence to a forward running on, who rounded the St Pair keeper really well to score, and the second was one of those goalmouth melees with another poor clearance played back into the melting pot.

However that wasn’t the most exciting part of the match. This was really a grusge match between two teams who clearly hated each other, and the referee had his work cut out to keep order. How the teams finished with 11 on each side is beyond me. The Saussey player who scored the first goal – he had loads of skill for this level and St Pair gave him some rough treatment, to which he responded quite often in a manner that had he done so on the public highway he would have been given 30 days without the option. On a couple of occasions his team-mates, and once even the referee, had to drag him away from some unpleasantness and eventually he was substituted for 15 minutes to calm down.

And he wasn’t the only one whose behaviour left something to be desired so no-one should think that I’m singling him out. Several of the other players ought to have a close look at their own behaviour on the pitch too.

Still it all adds to the atmosphere I suppose.

Talking of unpleasantness, I shall be very unpleasant if I lay my hands of the person who sent me a text message at about 06:00 this morning. On Sunday, my day of rest too!

But badger that for a game of soldier, I went back to sleep until 09:30. And quite right too.

And this morning I’m not ashamed to say that I did nothing whatever. After all, it IS Sunday.

After lunch it was the football, and then back here it was more football of course as I mentioned at the start.

Tea, rather late because of the football, was pizza of course and I have to say that it was the best that I have ever made. Just for a change, the base came clear of the greaseproof paper without any problems at all. And the rest was excellent too.

A late tea meant a late walk. And the temperature has dropped again considerably. And now I’m going to bed.

But we’ll finish where we started – with the football on the internet. And I’m really glad that I bought this television because it makes such a difference watching it on the big screen.

Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

Friday 23rd February 2018 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… mystery is resolved today.

And I’ll tell you about it in a little bit.

But first, let me tell you about last night. Although I didn’t get to bed as early as I would have liked, I was still right away with the fairies almost from the word “go”. And I did go on my travels too during the night.

And when I awoke suddenly at 06:15 I thought to myself that I would remember all of the details about this.

But a lot can happen in the five minutes between going back to sleep at 06:15 and the alarm awakening you at 06:20. But what I can remember is that a group of us went a-shopping in different place and when we compared our articles ad the prices that we had paid, they were so wildly fluctuating that we were convinced that something was wrong somewhere.

It was a struggle to leave the bed, and the leisurely start didn’t help much to get me going. But I was jolted out of my reverie by an urgent appeal.

A friend of a friend of a friend has some kind of website with some kind of chatroom facility on it, and he’s changed the chat program for another one and although he could make it work, he couldn’t explain the mechanism to anyone else, even after two days of trying to draft something.

And so I spent the morning looking at this chat program and as luck would have it, it’s based on something that was pretty common 20 years ago and a testament to the idea that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. And, as it happened, I happened to know all about it because I worked with it extensively during the period 2003-2007 during another existence.

And so having refreshed myself with the program quickly, I spent the morning writing a tutorial for it.

The problem was that the one that came with the program is, well, let’s just say “complicated”. And people don’t want anything that is complicated. The truncated attention span of the MTV generation doesn’t run that far and they’ll just walk away. So I had to express it all in about 10 or 12 simple bullet points.

That took me up to lunch, which was another butty, and then I … err … had a little relax. And a little later, another session with the European Photograph Mountain.

And then we went for a walk.

And beautiful weather it was too and so I took myself off around the headland.

On the car park by the lighthouse was a digger digging a trench, and I fell in with a couple of workmen. It seems that, at long last, fibre-optic cable has come to Granville and they are laying the cables.

For once, I’m going to be at the head of the queue for something rather than at the tail end, as I was back on the farm, but when you consider that my first encounter with fibre-optic internet service was back over 20 years ago in Brussels, then maybe it’s not all that much to crow about.

My walk though was considerably extended because away in the distance I could see that myastery ship of yesterday back in the harbour.

So seeing as it was such a nice day I continued on with my walk and went down to the harbour for a closer look.

She is indeed called La Grande Ancre and is indeed out of Cherbourg. But apart from that, I’ve not been able to find anything about her at all, except that back in 2005 she assisted at a shipwreck off the Iles de Chausey, rescued the survivors and towed the damaged boat here to Granville

And while I was there admiring La Grande Ancre, two men from the harbour office came from the port office to liberate a pontoon that was in the way of something.

And so seizing my opportunity I pounced on them. I’ve always said that if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question. And so I did.

And no the mystery is solved.

The lock gate that we have seen is only temporary and will be replaced in two or three weeks by the new ones.

And as for how it works, it’s on a horizontal pivot and simply folds flat on the bottom of the harbour when the tide is in.

So now we know.

Back here I had a coffee and then SHOCK! HORROR! I did some vacuuming. The place was still littered with confetti from the carnaval and it was getting on my wick. It filled the dust container of my vacuum cleaner (it’s only a smallish one) and I had to work out how to empty it. But at least the place looks a little better now.

After the guitar session it was tea time, and that was frozen lentil and green pepper curry from a couple of months ago. And delicious it was too. And once more, I took the route along the clifftop outside the walls for my evening walk.

Now I’m going to have a glass of lemonade and an early night (I hope). And a pleasant dream too.

Thursday 22nd February 2018 – TWO MEN …

… went past my window this afternoon.

And that was something of a surprise because I live on the first floor about 25 feet above the ground.

But it was no mystery when I went out to see what was going on.

There’s a cherry-picker out at the back with two men in attendance, looking at the guttering and the corner of the roof on the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs next door.

My guess is that the vicious winds that we’ve been having over the past couple of months have dislodged something important and now is the time to fix things.

What was a mystery was how I managed to forget completely and totally where I had been during the night. When the first alarm went off I could remember it but in the panic to be out of bed before the second alarm went off, well, that was that I’m afraid.

We had the usual slow start to the morning and while I was waiting for the medication to work I attacked the European Photograph Mountain for an hour or so and freed off another few GB of memory space on there. If I keep up like this, the disk will be empty.

A little later I went for my Thursday shower and general clean-up. And having done that, I hit the streets.

My perambulations took me down to the harbour of course, and there I just missed the raising of the drawbridge or whatever they do to it.

And we have a new ship in port, and I’ll have to make further enquiries about this one because it looks extremely interesting, having a van the size of Caliburn anchored to the deck.

Here she is; just joining the queue to leave port. I wasn’t early enough to see her when she was tied up.

With not having the telephoto lens with me, and being too far away to take a decent shot, I had to make the best of the job that I could.

I couldn’t read her name correctly because of all of the equipment dangling over the stern, but it looks as if she’s called La Grande Ancre out of Cherbourg.

There’s no reference of her on the internet that I’ve been able to find and she’s not in the port records either. So I’m not quite sure how I’m going to track her down.

I carried on to LIDL as usual and didn’t buy anything special. But being fed up of soup right now, I’ve bought some proper bread and lettuce and I’ll be making myself some butties for the foreseeable future. And much to my surprise, at lunchtime I found that I could actually eat them. It took a while, but there we are.

This afternoon I was feeling the strain of my walk. I’d made it all the way up the hill without stopping which is quite a feat and I knew that I would pay for that. But it didn’t stop me going out for my afternoon walk in the sunshine. It really was nice, although a bit windy.

Back here, I crashed out yet again, which is no surprise of course. And then I had a session on the guitar.

Tea was a stuffed pepper which was really nice of course, and then my evening walk. And 116% of my daily activity too, which is good news.

And so maybe an early night. And if I go anywhere during the night I’ll try to remember where it was.

EPIC HALL

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