Tag Archives: high winds

Tuesday 15th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that on Saturday, while looking for something completely different, I found the mobile phone that I had lost back in December.

Today in the post was a letter to the effect of “could I contact the Prefecture of Police in the Arondissement 15 of Paris, quoting reference …” – and for those of you who don’t know it, Arondissement 15 is just round the corner (well, sort-of) from the Montparnasse-Vaugirard railway station, the terminus of my train from Granville.

So, what have I been up to now? I contacted them to find out.

“You reported a wallet lost or stolen on December … last year. A wallet containing documentation with your details thereupon has come into the possession of the Police. Would you like to come and pick it up?”

Well, badger me? That was most unexpected, wasn’t it?

I tell you what though. At this rate, by the end of the week I’ll have found Lord Lucan, Martin Bormann, the Lost Tribes of Israel and the Loch Ness Monster.

But I wish that I could find my appetite. I’ve had no tea tonight because I couldn’t stomach it. Mind you, I can’t say that I need it. I need to shed a few kilos these days as you know so a few days without tea will do me good. But it’s depressing all the same.

Mind you, it all stems from the rotten night that I had last night. The perils of crashing out good and proper during the afternoon are that by the time that it’s bedtime, you’re still wide awake. 02:25 whe I finally went to bed and as a precaution, I switched off the alarms. I didn’t want to make myself any worse.

And so it was 09:05 when I crawled out of bed. A late morning, and with a late breakfast that followed it too. I’d missed the best part of the day. But there was a stack of e-mails that needed attention and so this morning I sorted out all of those.

And there was one from Nikon’s Customer Service people about my lens. “We are sorry that you have had trouble with your lens. Other people have reported the same error so please return your lens for our attention ….. The repair time will be between two and four weeks”.

It goes without saying that this has dismayed me more than most other things just recently.

Another thing that has dismayed me is (yet again) my useless load of bankers. I received a text message the other day “your account has gone into deficit. Please regularise the situation …”

Deficit? How is this possible?

So I went into town to look. And sure enough, my account is in deficit by all of €12:57. It seems that when the bank transferred my money from Pionsat to here, they transferred it into the wrong account.

I despair.

But it wasn’t a totally wasted trip into town.

I was able to see where they had reached with the fibre-optic cable laying that they were going. It’s not at the roundabout on the edge of the port so they seem to be making some good progress which is always useful.

And while I was down there I bought a baguette in the town because I like the bread from that boulanger on the corner, and came back here to make my butties

And having done that, I went to sit on the wall in the wind for lunch.

Back here, I was gone again. For a good hour or so too. I’m really fed up of this right now and I wish that I could do something about it. it was a real ache to haul myself off outside for my afternoon walk in the wind.

I managed some kind of session on the guitar but I’m not up to that too much either. I couldn’t stand up for more than about 15 minutes. I had to sit down.

No tea of course as I said, but I did crawl off outside yet again for my evening walk.

The wind was strong at lunchtime but this evening it seems to be worse. And with it being high tide at walkies time, we were treated to the glorious spectacle of some mega-waves and tons of spray crashing over the sea wall onto the promenade.

And as I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … this is why I’m here

And that wasn’t all of the excitement either.

We’ve been having some beautiful sunsets just recently and while the one tonight wasn’t quite up there with the best, it was still quite impressive nevertheless.

And I was surprised about how quickly the sun goes down. I almost missed it tonight and that will never do.

Back here now and I’m going to have to think of a plan to get to Paris to pick up my wallet. How am I going to manage that?

Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that when I bought my cheap Chinese smartphone back in January, I couldn’t remember the times that I had set the alarms to awaken me.

Well, I know now, don’t I? It was 06:00 and 06:15 and I’m sure that you can gather how I managed to find it out can’t you?

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit and going through the usual morning routine, and also chatting to Liz who appeared on line before she went to work.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then phoned up to book Caliburn in for his annual service. And it seems that the garage is closed on Mondays too. So I’ll have to phone them back tomorrow now, won’t I?

Once that was out of the way pro tem I had another task to perform. There is another huge pile of photos having accumulated over the last week or two, so I sat down and edited them.

Having done that, I started to work backwards in the blog and add photos that were missed off. I’ve done about a week’s worth so if you missed them, you need to check back and have a look.

Lunch was quite late what with one thing and another (and once you get started you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) and I didn’t eat much. Perhaps that’s a good thing, or else I’m sickening for something yet again.

But I did have a really bad afternoon. Wave after wave of fatigue overwhelmed me and it was all that I could do to tear myself out into the hurricane and go for a walk, not feeling much like it at all.

But I’m glad that I went out because we haven’t featured an old car in these pages for quite some time, and there parked on the car park down by the lighthouse is a old Land Rover.

It’s British of course, and the registration number tells me that it was registered in Lancashire some time during the second half of 1969 and the first half of 1970.

Leaf springs of course, not coil springs, and the headlights in the wings not the grille means that it’s probably a later Series IIA model, and also, of course, it’s a very desirable station wagon.

In my opinion, although I wouldn’t say this at any Land Rover gathering, I consider the IIA Land Rovers to be the best model that they ever produced, especially when fitted with a “two and a quarter” diesel.

Back here, I made a coffee but I never had the chance to drink it. 18:20 when I awoke and the coffee was cold. Hardly surprising – I must have been stark out for a couple of hours.

I’d fallen asleep reading the works of Henry de Bracton, one of the first of the modern judges from the 13th Century. And I carried on reading them during my voyage. And my voyage took me to the coast where the seas were stormy, just like they are now in fact, and most people were leaving the beach. But a couple of boys were doing some slalom stunts in a kayak through the waves, with a girl on the beach pleading with them to come in. “Even …. (she mentioned the name of someone who was clearly important in this sport) has come in now”. But my route took me along the headland and I came to a car park where several people were boarding a bus. Standing next to the bus was TOTGA, a very young TOTGA, dressing herself up in black leather and a crash helmet and sitting astride a silver scooter of the Vespa type. “Did you come on the bike or in a car?” I asked, being aware that she didn’t have the brats with her. “Yes” she replied helpfully. “Yes?” I enquired. “Yes” she answered. “I came here in the car and I’m now going home on the bike”. And even during a nocturnal ramble that sounded most illogical.

This evening I made myself a surprise tea. Someone on the internet was talking about Bombay aloo, and that had my mouth watering. And just as it happens, I had some tinned potatoes left over from my lentil doodah last week.

So I chopped up some onion and garlic, diced a carrot and put them in a casserole dish, added the potatoes, cumin and turmeric, covered it all in oil, stirred it up and put it in the microwave for three minutes.

While that was doing, I started to cook some rice and frozen peas.

Once the stuff in the microwave was finished, I added some water and gravy powder, stirred it all up, and then put it back in the microwave on medium heat for six minutes.

And absolutely beautiful it was too. I’ll have to make some more stuff like this, I really will.

I mentioned “hurricane” a little earlier didn’t I?

It was high tide again later this evening and sure enough, during my little evening walk around the walls, I stood and watched the waves crashing onto the sea wall and the spray going over the top onto the promenade.

The amount of power that there is in the sea during a storm like this is impressive. No wonder people want to harness the energy from it.br clear=”both”>

Another thing that I noticed was that there’s now a huge pile of gravel from the quarry near Avranches accumulated in one of the berths down in the harbour.

It looks as if we might be having a visit some time soon, doesn’t it? And that’s probably just as well because it occurs to me that there’s been no gravel ship been here for quite some considerable time – since the new lock gates in fact

We could do with building up the maritime traffic in the port otherwise my utility as a ship reporting station here will be called into question.

So now it’s bed time. I hope that I’ll feel more like it tomorrow.

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

… visitor this morning.

Some time round about 09:00 (I have really no idea) there was a buzzing on the door. Terry had an appointment in town and was early so he came round for a coffee.

But it’s always the case though, isn’t it? I can have this place looking spotless and clean as a new pin and no-one ever comes round at all. Yet here I am, still not properly unpacked from Africa, papers all over the place yet to be tidied away and me not having cleaned up seeing as I’m not too well, so I have a visit , don’t I?

Not that I’m complaining of course. I don’t see enough people and so visitors, especially good friends, are always welcome round here. But it always happens like this, doesn’t it?

I had another miserable night last night, but I had made sure that I’d switched the alarms off before going to bed so that I could sleep until I awoke. Which was several times during the night, unfortunately. And so much for my good sleep too, because I was up and about at something silly like 07:20.

Terry told me that he had sent a message to tell me that he was going to call round but one of the difficulties that you have when you switch off the alarms is that you have to switch off the phone too, so that explains that.

It’s been another one of those days where I haven’t done very much. I managed some breakfast but didn’t feel like anything at all for lunch. And so you can tell that there’s something wrong with me if it measn that I’m off my food.

But I did manage my two trips out today again. And I’m glad this I did because we were having yet another famous night.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen some magnificent sunsets since we’ve been here. Nothing like as magnificent as what we saw on Long Island Sound in New York State back at the beginning of October last year, but pretty good all the same

And last night’s was a belter.

The thing is, though, that there was nothing like as many people out enjoying it as I would have expected, so I had a pretty good spec all to myself.

And there I stood for a good 10 minutes watching the sun slowly sink down below the horizon into a stormy sea.

And if I’m managing to wax all lyrical about it, then you know that it must have been good. Shame that there were no more than three or four people out there with me.

But “stormy” was certainly the word. That was probably why there were so few people out there enjoying the sunset.

Clutching grimly … "lucky grimly" – ed … onto my hat i staggered off into the wind along the path at the foot of the old town walls to the little spec overlooking the casino and the Place Marechal Foch

And there I could watch the waves crashing onto the sea wall

There were a few intrepid pedestrians down there dodging the waves as they crashed over onto the promenade.

And they needed to be intrepid too because some of the waves were quite impressive. I was lucky enough to capture one of the best ones right at its apogee and I shall enjoy this photo for a while.

There was a tremendous storm here on 3rd January which kept me in the house all day. That apparently caused a considerable amount of damage down there and I regret now that I never managed to struggle out to see it. It must really have been something.

Tea was more oven chips, sausage and beans followed by strawberries and kiwi sorbet. Delicious all of it too. And with a helping of sausages and some grated vegan cheese left (I can get some more next week) I’m going to go for cauliflower, sausages and cheese sauce for tea tomorrow.

Yes, all this talk of food. I must be feeling better than I was just now.

Saturday 31st March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

… an exciting football match this evening.

US Granville were playing CS Villedieu – a team one Division below them – in the Normandy Cup, and ran out 5-1 winners.

You might think that this indicates that CS Villedieu were on the receiving end of a right spannering, but nothing could be further from the truth. The scoreline is extremely unfair to them.

The game hinged on a two-minute spell after about an hour. Up until then the teams had been very evenly matched and although Granville were 1-0 up thanks to a goal after about 15 minutes, the lead was by no means whatever a comfortable one.

But then CS Villedieu broke away upfield with some nice play and had a shot on goal that beat absolutely everyone, including the US Granville keeper, but flashed about half a millimetre wide of the post. Had they scored, it would have been no more than they deserved.

However, from the goal-kick, Granville roared upfield and won a corner. And the Granville centre-forward had a free header into the net.

From the restart, the US Granville midfielder intercepted the ball, played it upfield and with some neat passing play from the forwards, the n°10 (I think) found himself in a one-on-one with the Villedieu keeper and made no mistake.

So within 60 seconds of what should have been 1-1, CS Villedieu found themselves 3-0 down.

After that, things went from bad to worse for Villedieu. They were still playing some nice football and even pulled back a goal, but every time Granville had the ball up front they looked dangerous. As well as 2 more goals, we had two point-blank saves from the keeper and a resounding, thunderous volley that came back off the foot of the post.

5-1 it was. 2-1 would have been a fairer result but it could so easily have been 7 or 8 for Granville.

And I’ll tell you something else that I missed too. And I’m as malade as a perroquet about it, as they say around here.

There’s been a dash-cam in Caliburn for several years and it’s never ever recorded anything interesting. And yet today, there we were at the roundabout near LeClerc and a motorist a few cars in front of me stops to give way. A tourist behind (yes, it’s grockle-time again), too busy admiring a seagull, runs slap bang into the rear of him. Ad here I am with the dash-cam running!

Or, at least, I thought I was. But it turns out that the SD card filled up about 100 yards beforehand and so had switched off. How upset am I?

With having had a late night last night I didn’t have much sleep . And although I’d been on my travels, all memory of it disappeared in the time that it took to reach for the dictaphone.

We had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a general clean-up, and then it was shopping-time.

LIDL and NOZ came up with nothing much of any excitement, and I went to Mr Bricolage for some PTFE lubricant for the machine heads of the bass guitar.

We then had the accident, and as I was pulling onto the car park at LeClerc, I almost collided with Liz and Terry coming in the opposite direction. So we went for a coffee, that passed into lunch, and I’m very grateful to Terry for hosting me.

Nothing much of any excitement in there either, but I do now have an office chair (even though I don’t have an office as yet – but I will in early course) and that was quite by accident.

With all of the time that it took for chatting and so on, it was just coming up to 14:00 when I was driving past BUT and they were reopening after lunch. And there was a big sign outside – “Clearance Sale – Massive reductions – Free Installation on Fitted Kitchens”.

So I went in to see about a kitchen for here because I hate what I have and I want something much better than this. However, it won’t be happening from BUT. The “free installation” only applies to purchases of over €2500 and I’m looking to spend a tenth of that.

But I had a look at the office chairs and there was one that was quite comfortable and quite robust. Not quite like the one that I had in Brussels that I could (and did on many occasions) curl up and go to sleep in, but it was €79:99 – which is cheap in itself – reduced by 50%! And they had run out of stock so after much discussion they let me have the display one for €36:00. I’ll go for that.

This evening I had a brisk walk out to the Cité des Sports in the rain and howling gale for the football and because I’d brought a flask, the Hall and bar were open. Isn’t that typical?

And on the way back I grabbed a portion of chips for tea. It’s good to catch up with old habits.

Tomorrow is of course a Bank Holiday and a Sunday, so I’m going for two lie-ins.

And why not?

Wednesday 28th March 2018 – I DIDN’T …

… go into town today either.

One look out of the window was enough to tell me all that I needed to know. It wasn’t quite as bad as yesterday but it was near enough.

Another reasonable sleep though – out like a light and slept right through to the alarms and then the usual morning performance.

Once the medication had done its job I started to attack the pile of photographs here. And I don’t want to tell you how many went into the bin because you probably wouldn’t believe that I even had that many. But I’m whittling this down – not necessarily into manageable proportions but at least disposing of unnecessary duplicates … "and triplicates and quadruplicates etc etc" – ed.

And it’s just as well that things are advancing because delivery 2 came today. A 4TB hard drive. The old 250GB one that has run for ever is now overflowing, the 750GB one I’m going to use just for backing up data and so the 2TB one is going to have its work cut out.

And to give you some kind of idea as to how things are shaping, I paid more for the 250GB one that I paid for the new 4TB one, and I do remember that thanks to its mammoth size I won’t ever need anything bigger than 250GB. But then, that was back in the days when a high-quality digital image was 25KB, never mind 25MB.

After lunch and the session on the guitar I went out to brave the howling gale, seeing as the rain had stopped.

And “howling gale” were definitely the correct words to use as, once gain, it was blowing a good ‘un. It is starting to depress me just a little this weather. It’s been a miserable, wet clingy winter that seems to have gone on for ever

Ready for a change, aren’t I?

The high winds and bad weather weren’t clearly upsetting too many other people though.

They have suddenly put quite a spurt on with this house that they are building, and have now started to put on the roof.

Not much of a pitch on that though. It’s a good job that they don’t have snow like in the Auvergne. We’ve seen roofs collapse under the weight of the snow that we can have down there.

It didn’t stop Normandy Trader from making her way into harbour either.

No idea what she brought in today, and when I took this photo she was fully-loaded and ready to depart.

And depart she did because when I was out and about this evening, she had left her berth and gone back to Jersey. She and Grima do seem to be keeping quite busy just now.

Back here, I had a coffee and really good chinwag with Rosemary on the ‘phone about this and that. She’s feeling a little miserable after her operation and needed cheering up.

And then tea. Tidying up the other day I had found a leftover pepper and so it was a case of “stuff that for a lark” – and I duly did. Delicious too, as were the strawberries and vegan cream for pudding.

When I went out for my walk is was still comparatively light, so I took a nice photo of some of the houses in the the Medieval town through the gateway at the back here.

20:46 in the evening, that was too. The nights are definitely getting shorter now. It was only a couple of months since it was pitch-black at 17:00.

This year is going just so quickly that I can’t keep up with it? Whatever happened to that six-weeks summer holiday that we had that used to last for ever?

JUst 15 minutes later though it was a totally different story.

By the time that I had gone round to the fortifications on the north-east edge looking over the Place Marechal Foch and the Casino it was pretty dark.

I had the 50mm lens with me too, but that has an issue with it, so it seems. The aperture ring isn’t locking, according to the camera, although I can tell that it is. I was going to take some photos with that tonight, but instead, tomorrow I’ll be looking at that to see what’s wrong.

And my mate the black cat was there again tonight. But he wasn’t in very much of a sociable mood, and neither really was I.

And just in case you were wondering, I’ve reached “Marillion” on the playlist. Can’t you tell?

Monday 12th March 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

.. last night when I said that I wouldn’t be doing all that much today. In fact, I’ve done another emulation of my namesake the mathematician.

And despite my early night last night and being completely stark out, I still had a struggle out of bed this morning.

And it’s not as if I had done much during the night either. TOTGA put in an appearance again though. Well, actually she didn’t, but one of her kittens did. A tabby and white one found its way into my car and was roaming around the floor getting in the way of the pedals. So I told the girl in the passenger seat that we would have to go round there to drop off the animal. That’s not anything that should wear anyone out now, is it?

We had medication and breakfast and then the usual morning ritual, and then as promised I attacked the photographs that I took yesterday. And if you missed them, they are now on line in yesterday’s entry.

But looking at them, I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that I’ve wasted my money with this new camera. The photos are, quite frankly, total rubbish. The standard lens that’s included in the package is just not up to the job and can’t produce a properly focused, sharp image if it were to try all night.

Consequently, on my walk this afternoon in the howling gale that we were having, I wound up the Nikon and took a couple of lenses with me. The max extension on the standard lens is the same focal length on the min extension on the zoom lens, so I took several photos of the same views with the two lenses, matching the aperture, speed and ISO, and I want to see how they turn out.

It might be possible that it’s the standard lens, and not the camera that is at issue and if so, I’ll see what I can do about finding a cheap AF-S lens to fit it. The irony of it all is that I do have a spare standard lens, and I’ve left it back at the farm, haven’t I? That’s annoying.

Another thing that has occupied some of my time is this 3D program.

You remember a few weeks ago that I had a little project on the go about some items, and then this other 3D site appeared that resells content. So I searched the Internet this morning too and found a tutorial about making clothes.

It uses Hexagon, the deep-level 3D design program that I have, but it assumes a level of knowledge that I don’t have. Something that took the narrator of this video almost three minutes took me almost three hours and I still wasn’t satisfied with what I had done.

But then Rome wasn’t built in a day and I’m certainly learning a lot as I go round, and if that’s not a positive sign of progress then nothing is.

Tea was the rest of the pepper that I hadn’t used on the pizza, stuffed with the usual mixture, and with spicy rice. And I seem to be running out of salad dressing. But I have a recipe for vegan mayonnaise and now that I have a blender, I intend to take full advantage of it.

But I cracked this evening. I turned the heating off on Friday night as I went to bed and it’s not been on all weekend. But with the wind and the clouds it’s gone quite cool again. So this evening I switched it on low again. No point in freezing to death is there?

So an early night and tomorrow I need to go and fetch my rail tickets. My train leaves before the ticket office opens and I’ve seen what happens when the automatic ticket printer fails to work. I’ve no intention of arguing with an intransigent ticket inspector so I want my tickets in my sweaty little mitt before I set out on Wednesday at … errr … 07:45.

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.

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 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

Sunday 11th February 2018 – IT’S STILL CARNAVAL!!!

And if you thought that it was good yesterday, you ain’t seen nuffink yet.

I’m cold, frozen to the marrow, soaking wet, aching in places that I didn’t even realise that I had, and yet I’ve had a really good time. And if the truth be known, I should really be out there even now, partying with everyone else, but I’m not up to it. I’m going to settle down with a mug of hot wincarnis.

What with all of the exertions last night I was out like a light. And off on my travels again. I’d bought a “York” semi-trailer that needed some repair a,d so I had welded it up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I used to do a lot of welding at one time – even owning my own oxy-acetylene set-up – but I haven’t done anything serious for nearly 30 years – except for welding up the exhaust on the VW Passat in 1997. And so when I bumped into the previous owners of this trailer and told them what I had done, I was rather embarrassed when they suggested that they come and look at it, because you can forget an awful lot in 30 years when you aren’t using the skills regularly.

It was still dark when I awoke, but you can forget that. I turned over and burrowed back down under the quilt. 09:15 is much more like it on a Sunday.

The morning was spent editing the photos and videos from yesterday and found that I had missed lunch. So I hit the streets, passing by a couple of carnival floats parked up in various side streets waiting to join the parade.

I found a decent spec in the rue Couraye and waited for the procession. And I wasn’t disappointed either because there were 48 floats in all, as well as countless thousand ad-hoc paraders. And the streets were packed too. The parade went on for hours.

We had sunshine, blue skies, high winds, clouds, rainstorms, absolutely everything while we were standing there watching everything inch slowly past us and up the hill. And apparently it was all going to do a U-turn and come back down again, but I was far too cold and achy to wait for it.

No-one was more surprised than me to find that it was 17:20 when I arrived back. I’d been standing on that street corner for three and a half hours. And it felt like it too. I had not one but two hot coffees and it still didn’t warm me up.

Tea was pizza of course, and I’ve practically finished off the vegan cheese. Just as well that I’m going to Leuven this week. And with the pizza I remembered the olives this week – but forgot the onions. It’s either one thing or another, isn’t it?

During my evening walk I could see – and hear – the entertainment going on down in the town. I had half a mind to join them but I’m not really up to it. It’s not done me too much good, standing down there this afternoon in all of that.

What I’ll do instead is have a hot blackcurrant and then go to bed. Curled up under the quilt will do me good. And I’ll start on the photos tomorrow. There are hundreds.

Tuesday 6th February 2018 – YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP!

I had the Royal Bank of Scotland on the ‘phone this morning. Complaints department ringing me back about my call yesterday.

They gave me a brief and unconvincing explanation about why they had sent out the letter to my old address but I didn’t pursue it any further – they were well and truly on the back foot. They did however confirm that my new address had been noted.

So having dealt with that, I asked about my bank cards. In my letter advising them of my change of address I had told them of my … errr … missing bank cards and requested duplicates. So I wanted to know when I might receive them.

There was a brief silence – and then a cough. “It seems like no-one has dealt with the second part of your letter” was the embarrassed reply. So he had to deal with that, and then pass me through to the Bank’s credit card centre to talk to them.

“Please enter your credit card number” said the automatic reply.

And so I did.

“I’m sorry. We don’t recognise that as a valid card number” replied the machine. And that’s hardly a surprise because when I noticed that the card was missing, I rang up to cancel it.

And so we went round and round in circles until some human intervened.

You really couldn’t make up any of this nonsense.

Although I didn’t have a very long sleep last night, it was quite deep. And I was off on my travels too, not into an igloo with Sylvia or with TOTGA either, but I ended up running around after some neurotic 40-something woman. Very tense and edgy – and also armed with a pistol. And the people whom whe was intended to confront were likewise armed, but much more experienced and much more at ease with it, so I had to try to persuade this woman to calm down and at least disarm herself, otherwise this could all end in tears.

One look at the weather convinced me that I wasn’t going anywhere this morning, despite my plans. Howling gale, freezing cold and torrential rain. I didn’t even have my shower, but sat on the sofa sorting through that disk full of photos and merging another pile. That was my morning’s work.

Despite not liking the soup, I finished it off at lunchtime and then – surprise surprise – I did some more housework. I’ve cleaned the hallway and what will be the dining area. That’s all tidied, vacuumed, washed and cleaned. And Brigitte, one of my neighbours, caught me washing the floor. That will go down well, I reckon.

And then I braved the elements for my walk. I declined the opportunity to go round the headland in view of the howling gale. It was tough enough going around the city walls.

Back here with a coffee, a little .. errr … repose, and then I attacked the issue of my train and accommodation next week in Leuven. Fortunately I can receive messages on this new phone now so I could pick up the bank’s confirmation code.

And then the database. I’m still no further forward in the long run with this.

Tea was more tortillas and spicy rice, and then a walk. And bumped once more into Brigitte. Apparently there was a meeting this evening of the local residents and I missed it.

But back around the walls and now I’m home again in the warm and my nice partly-clean apartment. If the weather eases tomorrow I have things to do in town. But there’s no chance whatever if it continues like this.

Sunday 4th February 2018 – 07:30 …

… is no time to leave the bed on a Sunday

09:15 is however much more like it, so I’m glad that I turned over and went back to sleep when I awoke earlier.

It also gave me a chance to go back on my travels too. I’d started off living in a room in some woman’s house – some woman whom I know in real life but I can’t think now of who she is. And we were joined by a young girl who had fled her own home and was looking for refuge. This girl was, like most teenagers, not very reliable. She needed an early start every morning so this woman arranged to wake up quite early ready to have her breakfast ready. One particular morning I needed to see this girl so I made a special effort to be up and about early. However when I arrived downstairs in the kitchen, the woman there showed me a note to the effect that the girl was saying that she wasn’t in the house and furthermore, she wouldn’t be back. We both felt rather disappointed that she hadn’t said anything about leaving, especially after the effort that it required to be up and about early.
A little later I was out on my horse on the Plains of North America and came across this sad, tired homestead. In there on her own was some woman in a red dress. For some reason she attracted my attention despite being a very scrawny unkempt woman (but then, on the frontier of North America in those days there wasn’t exactly a very good choice of woman). However at that moment her husband came back, and I had to pretend to be the local doctor giving the woman a medical examination in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
Later still, there was some television comedy series thing being broadcast. Not that it was of any interest to me but the people with whom I was associated found it very interesting and amusing. The series was then transferred to the theatre where it was merged with some other comedy series. My friends were keen to see it so in the end I succumbed and off we went. But I had a look at the poster outside the theatre where the cast was listed, and it seemed that the stars of the two series weren’t in fact going to be appearing in the play. So that was rather a waste of time.

With it being Sunday, I took it easy this morning. Plodding along with my database of photos. And it really is doing my head in without any doubt at all. Even the simplest task is either beyond the capacity of the program or else it’s beyond my capacity to make it work.

Who could ever have imagined that it would have taken an hour to add in an extra column and make the column fit into the order in which I want it to appear – and that’s in addition to all of the problems that I encountered yesterday?

As I’ve probably said before – back in the early 1990s we had a lightweight Office program called “Works for Windows” and that was our introduction to integrated office suites – and we could make the parts of that program do anything that we wanted – in a matter of seconds – never mind all of this nonsense that I seem to be encountering.

The lunchtime soup was delicious with the added herbs and spices that I added yesterday. It warmed me up nicely. And then I hit the streets.

On my way to the Sports Centre I passed by the building that is the headquarters of the Granville Terre et Mer” Comcom – the Community of Communes.

With many of the French communes being quite small – there’s even one with just one inhabitant – several might group together in a “Comcom” to organise a common water supply or a common refuse collection service or engage a public gardener to be shared between them – all of that kind of thing.

And this beautiful building is the headquarters for the “Comcom” that covers the smaller communes around here.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Sports Centre, and it would really have been a nice afternoon to be out, except for the bitter, howling wind.

It was really agony to stand here this afternoon, and it didn’t help by the building being closed and so there was no coffee on offer.

I can’t understand the lack of buvette here. It seems to be open whenever I bring a flask, and closed whenever I don’t, as if it knows that I am coming.

US Granville’s second XI were in action again this afternoon, against FC ST Lo Manche, the league leaders in blue.

The team that is second in the table obliged US Granville by losing, in the only other match to be played in the whole of Normandy, last night. So if can avoid losing today, they will go into second place.

The wind made this match a complete lottery and neither side seemed to be able to play with it and it was rather a scrappy match.

But US Granville did take the lead after half an hour when a cross into the area was headed out indecisively by a defender, right to a US Granville midfielder on the edge of the area. He had all the time in the world to pick his spot and fire into the bottom corner.

At the start of the second half, we had the only time that one of the teams attempted to use the wind to its advantage, and that, I suspect, was more by accident that design.

A high corner taken into the wind that caused a panic-stricken scamble on the St Lo goal-line, and eventually the ball was forced home by a US Granville attacker.

So Granville ran out 2-0 winners, the first team to beat FC St Lo Manche this season and are now in second place in the table. But I still think that their attack is far too lightweight for this level of football.

Just for a change, I came home a different way, walking down to the coast road.

There’s a good view across to St Pair sur Mer from just here so I stopped to take a photograph, almost being run down by a local policeman in the process.

And then I walked back along the coast road into Granville. I’d never been this way on foot before and it made a nice change to see some different scenery.

7It’s carnaval here next weekend, and all of the fairground lorries are coming into town. There were quite a few streaming past the Sports Centre while I was watching the match.

I was convinced that I saw an artic go past pulling no fewer than THREE trailers, and I was right because I tracked it down in the car park opposite the port.

Generally speaking, a “showman’s goods” licence allows a vehicle to pull a trailer containing his act, another containing his living accommodation and maybe yet another pulling the power unit such as a generator. Nowadays with most sites having mains electricity you don’t ever see the generator, and I suspect that this driver may well have been interpreting the rules in an unduly generous fashion.

Unless, of course, the rules for “showman’s goods” in France are different from in the UK, which is always a possibility. But anyway, it certainly puts my North American roadtrains into perspective.

They are apparently also setting up a fairground on the harbour and as I climbed up the hill towards home I could see all of the lorries and caravans set out on the end of the harbour.

I’ve yet to experience a really good mainland European “Carnaval” and I’m told that the Granville carnaval is one of the best that you can find.

And so I’m quite looking forward to being here when it all happens. Especially when the day after it ends, I have to head for Belgium.

Tea was, of course, vegan pizza. And I didn’t go far for my walk as the wind was astonishing. But no matter – what with the rest of my exertions I’ve done 111% of my daily activities today.

I reckon that I deserve a good sleep.

Thursday 1st February 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what I did yesterday, but as well as having a message service on my phone, both of the alarmss now seem to work fine this morning. Ask me how I know.

And last night I was in some kind of public place like a shop where I’d bought a DVD, and I wanted to check that it worked correctly. This involved putting it in my DVD player, passing the signal trough some kind of pre-amp and then into a television to watch. And conveniently, all of my equipment was there on the shelf and wired up. I reckoned that this would be quite an impressive thing to accomplish in this public place so I duly set it all up. But it wasn’t as impressive as I wanted it to be and I was left with a pile of omelette sur le visage because somehow there was a radio programmme running in the background of ll of this with the sound coming out of the television as well as the sound of the image and the picture, and it was all very disappointing.

Not feeling much like leaving my bed this morning, the second alarm did the business which is just as well, otherwise I might still be in bed now. No idea why I was so tired, unless it was the after-effects of feeling so bad yesterday.

But the medication, breakfast and a nice hot shower brought me round somewhat and once the medication did its stuff I braved the high winds and headed for the shops. It was the usual struggle up the hill to LIDL and there wasn’t really anything that I needed or wanted. I just made do with a baguette and a couple of bits and pieces of food.

On the way back I went down to the docks to see if I could see what was going on.

But I was out of luck. It’s not easy to see from there at the best of times and particularly now, because they have fenced off everywhere in the vicinity where they are working.

What I’ll have to do is to wait until the tide turns, and then go off to the other side of the basin with the telephoto lens and see what I can see from over there

Back here I made a coffee and settled down for a relax – but not for long. The doorbell rang. It was the Postie with a registered letter for me.

Yes, my new driving licence has arrived – complete with the authorisation to drive buses and articulated lorries for hire or reward. I really can’t take that seriously. But it’s scanned into the laptop for future reference just like all of my important documents

After my soup I tackled some paperwork that had been building up and ow that’s all filed away. I’m certainly more organised than I have been for quite a while – and quite right too. Let’s hope that I can persevere.

My work was however interrupted by a need to have a little rest. And I don’t know what it was that awoke me but I sat bolt upright for some reason or other.

Despite already having had a good walk, it was a nice if windy afternoon so I went for another walk.

And I was wondering what was making all of the noise yesterday. It seems that they’ve been doing some gardening round at the back of the college and it looks quite neat and tidy now.

High time that they did something about it too. But whatever vehicle they had used had churned up the lawn by the lighthouse. It’s really not the right kind of weather for driving heavy vehicles on there.

But here’s a thing!

We saw the other day that there was a big digger out in the tidal harbour during low tide raking over the bed. He’s still out there, but today there was some other activity in the tidal basin.

Like this digger and a couple of earth-moving lorries hard at work making a deep channel.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, there was another digger and an earth-moving lorry working closer inshore too.

That’s the place where the fishing boats tie up – right by the fish-processing plant. And they seem to be making the channel along the sea wall there much deeper.

Whether this means that we are going to be having bigger trawlers coming into the port I don’t know. But all of this work in the barbour is exciting for a ship-spotting fan like Yours Truly.

Back here I carried on with a few things that I needed to do (without very much enthusiasm it has to be said) and then made tea. The falafel that I had bought weeks ago went straight into the bin untouched – well past its sell-by date. So I had rice with vegetables and a vegan burger.

With only one cooking ring, it wasn’t easy. But a little oil in a pyrex bowl with onions and garlic and cooked in the microwave for three minutes, and then add the burger for 6 minutes (3 minutes each side) and then add a little water and gravy power, and there you are.

I’d planned to go for a walk but just as I was getting ready we had the most astonishing storm. So I stayed here and played the guitar.

But later I did go for my walk, and you can see what weather we had had.

There had been a hailstorm and it seemed to have fallen like snow – fairly deep in places. I’m glad that I hadn’t gone out in it earlier.

Football on the laptop (or on my television of course) later. A Welsh Premier League match between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Bala Town. A pretty sad game, just like the bad old days of 15 years ago on the Nomads’ sodden, waterlogged pitch that gave no hope whatever of a decent match.

So I’ll see what tonight brings. A nice relaxing sleep, I hope.

Tuesday 16th January 2018 – I HAVE MET THE WEIRDEST …

… mobile phone “repairer” the world has ever seen.

And it wasn’t easy either.

The bad night hadn’t helped much though. I was asleep quite quickly but awoke halfway through and counldn’t go back to sleep for ages. When I finally did, the alarm didn’t have the desired effect and it took me a good half-hour to haul myself out of bed.

Medication followed by breakfast, a shower, change of clothes and a good clean-up, and then I was ready for the town.

The howling gale and driving rain was enough to dampen anyone’s ardour, and might have done mine too, except that I was distracted.

We seem to have acquired overnight a crane and a pile of containers down at the port. What does this mean?

We had all of this dredging just before Christmas to deepen the harbour, so are we going to have a small container ship coming in? Or is there something else happening about which I know nothing.

That wasn’t the only excitement either.

The farces of law and order were out there blocking off the street while a cherry-picker went down there taking down all of the Christmas decorations now that the festive season is over.

No diversions signposted of course. The police were just waving away passing motorists who then had to find their own way around.

I found my way to the mobile phone repairer’s only to find, as regular readers of this rubbish will be expecting, a sign “open at 14:00”. It’s certainly not going to be, is it?

So I decamped to the Library for a duplicate card, only to find that that was closed too, with all of the people inside staring at me as if I had come from another planet.

I gave it up as a bad job and, picking up another baguette to freeze, came back home.

But as I climbed slowly and wearily back up the hill, I was once again distracted by activity in the harbour. The boat that does the pleasure trips out to the Ile de Chausey and round the Baie de Mont St Michel had just returned from somewhere.

And it doesn’t half make a racket as well. It nearly knocked me off my feet.

And we can’t conclude our morning’s walk without once more discussing parking.

Here are some more fines example of total and utter selfishness. The little Nissan was there last night straddling two parking places, so this morning there’s a car parked in front of it likewise straddling two spaces, and a car behind it straddling a disabled parking bay.

It’s hard to imagine anything more selfish than this and it really annoys me.

Back here, I crashed out for half an hour. Gone with the wind, you might say. Yes, I’ve still not recovered from my illness.

For lunch I finished off the soup and then repaired the saucepan lid. I had to cut down a screw that was in the package that I had bought, but now the lid looks really good with the black plastic remains of the old handle carefully equalled off and a chrome drawer handle to match the chrome decoration.

I suppose that I should have taken a photo of it because it looked so good – but I can do that tomorrow.

After all of that it was back through the wind and rain again to the mobile phone place where I had my bizarre encounter.

He was actually open, and there too. But he may well not have been, for all the good that he was doing.

The lady in the queue in front of me wanted her charging port on her tablet repairing. “But it’s not worth the expense. You’ll be better off buying another”.
“But all of my data is on it”
Well, you’ll still be better off with a new one, sorry”.
I mean – what kind of talk is that?

Then it was my turn. And it wasn’t any better.
“It might be your screen. That will cost about €100 and if it isn’t I’ll have to ty a few other things, so you will have wasted your €100 then. And then even if I do get it to work it will have cost you a lot of money, and I won’t be able to guarantee the repair”.

So what kind of “repairer” is this? Turning away work because he doesn’t want to (or, more likely, isn’t able to) do it?

And intending to charge me for supplying and fitting a new screen even if that isn’t the fault? It’s all total nonsense. I’ll wait until I go to Belgium and have some back-street repairer in Brussels have a look at it.

While I was there, I sorted out my library card (the library is just across the road) and then staggered back home once again where I took it really easy for the rest of the afternoon. Climbing up the hill twice in one day is not good for me right now.

Tea was superb. Rice with fresh carrots and frozen peas, with a green pepper stuffed with bulghour, tomato, onion, garlic, curry powder and tarragon in olive oil and cooked in the microwave. All covered in gravy.

That was just soooooo nice – a real culinary delight.

Just a little walk tonight – the howling wind and rain would be enough to put everyone off.

So I’m off to bed. I’m hoping for a better night tonight, and a better day tomorrow. I shan’t be doing very much, except recovering from my efforts today and cursing this incompetent “repairer”.

Monday 15th January 2018 – IT GOES …

… without saying that this morning didn’t go according to plan, doesn’t it?

In fact, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m continually being confounded by issues not of my own making and I have to go to extraordinary lengths to circumvent them.

Just for a change, I was awake before the alarm went off, but that’s not quite the same as saying that I was ready to leave the bed. In fact it was something of a struggle to haul myself out of my stinking pit.

Fist thing though was the urine sample. Despite a thorough search this last few days I’ve not found the report from Leuven so I had to go through the procedure here. That’s what I call “taking the P155”. Then I could have my medication and once that worked, I could have my breakfast.

There was a form to fill in to take to the laboratory and that involved some tracking down of stuff too. But once I’d done that I could set off. Into the howling gale and driving rainstorm. After the couple of nice days that we have had, it goes without saying that as I’m out and about on foot we are going to have this kind of weather, doesn’t it?

First stop was the Mobile phone repairer. Having been told that he was back today I made this my first port of call. But as I really ought to have expected, it’s Monday today and many places are closed in France on a Monday – the mobile phone repairer included.

Next stop was the mairie. The doctor who is doing my medical examination told me that I could find some forms here. But according to the mairie, not any more. The forms are available to download on line.

But at least this means that I need to take some decisive action to resolve the cable issues that I’m having with my printer. The tag that holds the plug in place has broken off so the plug won’t stay connected. I shall have to invent a means of locking it in position, or even making a direct connection.

But it’s just typical of Hewlett Knackered. They can’t use standard infinity plugs like anyone else – they have to go for something really fancy and complicated that breaks under the slightest pressure and renders the machine unusable (unless you have a devious mind of course).

Hiking up to the laboratory (which is just on the station roundabout) I was running out of steam – I clearly haven’t recovered from my health. And the bad news is that the lack of this urine sample means that I’ve had to pay €6:80. no wonder I’m spending a fortune with being so unprepared.

On the way back I picked up a baguette and then staggered back up the hill to here – thoroughly exhausted and thoroughly soaked to the skin – to such an extent that I had to change my trousers.

And just for a change, I had a coffee. First one (apart from some warm brown liquid at the football the other week) since I’ve been back from Leuven. And it tasted awful.

Soup with pasta and bulghour for lunch again, with some of the fresh bread (the rest went into the freezer) and then I had a relaxing afternoon not doing very much, although I did have a good session on the bass guitar. To my surprise, some of the stuff that we used to play 40-odd years ago came back into my mind.

For tea tonight, I made a huge curry – the first one for a while. Mushrooms, peppers and because it didn’t make as much as I was hoping, a tin of sweet corn. One helping tonight and four more for the freezer.

My evening walk was a disappointment. Pouring with rain still and a howling gale. So I just did a short lap around the streets and came home. No sense in risking another attack of Bronchitis.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m off down to town again to see if this mobile phone repairer is finally going to make it back to his shop. He better had be because it’s getting my goat.

And the music?

For most of the day we’ve had Jethro Tull going round. If I really had to choose one group to be my favourite, it would have to be Jethro Tull. It takes me back to my school days and Benefit, Stand Up, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play – the latter two albums being so good that it took the critics 30 years to realise it.

Those five albums, and many others that they released subsequently, have been on my playlist for getting on for 50 years and won’t ever lose their place. Other bands and artists may come and go but Jethro Tull will always be there

EPIC HALL

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