Tag Archives: place d’armes

Friday 19th January 2018 – MYSTERY SOLVED.

I now know what the shipping containers and the crane down in the harbour are all about. And unfortunately it’s nothing to do with a nes ship coming to the port.

I’ve always said that if you want to know the answer to the question you need to ask the question, so while I was out and about on my travels I went down to where everything was assembled and buttonholed a workman.

The harbour here is tidal as you know, but there’s the deep-water bit where the larger visitors tie up and that has a pair of tidal gates across it so that the water stays in the basin so the ships will stay afloat.

And it seems that we are going to hae new lock gates. All of the pieces are here, and the containers are simply tool stores and offices and the like.

So with the new gates we might be having some new visitors. Who knows?

I had another miserable night last night. I ended up watching a film – Austin Powers as it happens – and as you know any film normally sends me to sleep after 5 minutes. But not last night. I could have watched the film two and three times over had I so desired and I still would have been awake.

But I must have gone to sleep at some point, because I remember waking up. Still dark, long before the alarm. And by the time the alarm sounded, I was up, medicated and well on the way to breakfast.

It didn’t look very hopeful outside with yet more driving rain, but round about 09:45 the rain stopped and we had a very watery sun. “If I don’t go now I never will” I mused, and so off I set.

One of the places on my travels was the laboratory. There was an extra charge that I had to pay because they had to examine part of it again. Apparently I’m missing something in my body (and it’s not a brain).

And then to LIDL where I bought a baguette, some pears and some biros.

Now here’s a thing.

I need a black pen to fill in a computer input form, and there in one of the bins at LIDL were several packs of pens, some coloured blue and others coloured black. So I bought a pack of black ones, like you would – only to find that they have blue ink inside. How weird is that? I’ll go back tomorrow and buy some blue ones and see what colour ink they have.

On the way back, I called at the port as above, and then staggered (because it really was a struggle) back up the hill for a coffee.

This afternoon I made a start on the correspondence. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because the last time that I updated my letterhead was in 2011 and a lot has happened since then. I had to redesign it completely from scratch.

Then I needed a pile of attachments so first of all I had to scan in a few documents. And then spend the next half hour looking for them in the laptop. But then I could write my letters (I managed three today) and print them, as well as all of the attachments.

And not only that, I could print off a few things. It’s a good job that when I received my French driving licence back in 2009 I scanned it into the laptop, because now I have a reasonable facsimile to use with my “declaration of loss” if I’m help up in a police spot-check. It’s good to finally have a working printer

It’s always a good plan to scan your official identity documents for cases such as this.

It was then walkies time and as the rain was still holding off – just about – I went out for my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc again.

But look at that storm out there! Drifting along – and quite rapidly too – in the general direction of St Pair sur Mer. And as I watched, they got the lot too. It really was something quite impressive to see and I’m glad that it went over there and not over here.

Mind you, it did start to rain shortly after that, but nothing like what they had over there.

And down in the tidal basin the digger was out there again digging away. So I stopped to watch him for a while.

And to my surprise, there’s nowhere provided for him to dump the silt that he’s excavating. He’s just swivelling his jib around and dumping it elsewhere.

And so he can’t be dredging the basin then. It’s almost as if he’s looking for a body or something like that. I shall have to go for a walk down there sometime and see if I can find out what he’s up to.

Soup for lunch again, and tea, because I didn’t know what I fancied to eat, was baked potatoes and a tin of ratatouille. And that’s significant because that was the last tin of ratatouille from the European tinned food mountain.

Still plenty of other tins of other stuff from back then, but it’s all looking optimistic that ine day sometime soon I might clear it all out.

The walk this evening was punctuated my a couple of showers, and also by a couple of cats – I took a different route up on the walls to avoid the muddy footpath. So according to my fitbit I’ve done 113% of my daily effort today which is quite impressive.

In a short while I’ll be off to bed, and I’ve clearly earned it. I just hope that I can make the most of it.

Thursday 18th January 2018 – IT WASN’T …

… such a good, exciting day today as it was yesterday.

It started to go wrong when I went to bed last night and found that, once more, I couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning for much of the night and waking up bolt-upright part-way through.

Mind you, I had been on my travels during the night but you don’t want me to tell you about them. You’re probably eating your tea or something. It’s what probably awoke me too.

When the alarm went off I managed to crawl out of bed at a reasonable time thereafter, and after the medication and breakfast I had a shower. And SHOCK! HORROR! I did a machine-load of washing, including the bedclothes. Tonight I’ll have brand-sparkling-clean covers on the bed and won’t that be luxury?

But no chance of going out. The rain was back, and in spades too. I really didn’t fancy the walk up to LIDL in this kind of weather.

I’m not really sure where the morning went, because I don’t recall doing anything much. It wasn’t as if the washing took all that much time. It was actually 14:00 when I noticed that it was lunchtime.

After lunch, checking my e-mails, I found that I had had a reply from the French Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés. I had sent them an e-mail to ask them where I could find the two documents that I need for Tuesday. They sent me a link, but that wasn’t the answer and I had to spend a good hour or so exploring the site before I found them.

They are not at all called what the Doctor told me that they were called at all, but they correspond to the description. And so I downloaded them.

And then they needed to be printed.

It took a while to sort out this mains connection but it seems to work now, which is good news. But the next issue is trying to make the thing function. The drivers aren’t loaded onto this laptop and I don’t seem to have brought the disk with me.

And so I had to track down an installation disk image on-line and download it – only 255mb of it and that took an age. And then set it up.

And much to my surprise it actually worked and I was able to print off the documents.

While it was doing all of that I did some more sorting out of papers and all of those are ready for a good examination in due course.

The weather had cleared up by now so I went for my little walk around the headland again.

And there’s yet more excitement in the port today. Part of the port area is tidal and this is where some of the yachts and smaller fishing boats tie up, and ground out at low tide.

But there’s a digger out there just now working away. On what, I have no idea but it’s interesting to say the least. I shall have to go back tomorrow for another look.

Back here, i made myself a coffee. But I didn’t drink it though. I crashed right out and was gone for over an hour. A really deep sleep too and I felt quite feeble when I awoke.

Not too feeble though to have a session on the bass guitar again. And this time, one of the things that I was working on was “Orgone Accumulator” – the Hawkwind track that I played when I was with Mike Allen and one or two others whose names I forget. After all, it is over 40 years ago.

For tea I tried some pasta and managed to eat it all although it took some time.

But the walk was a bit of a disaster. I hadn’t gone 400 yards before the heavens opened and I was drenched to the skin. NO point in risking double-pneumonia so I came back home.

So here’s hoping for a better night, and a better day tomorrow. But at the moment I don’t feel like it at all.

Wednesday 17th January 2018 – AS PROMISED …

… yesterday, here’s a photo of my repaired saucepan lid.

I’m quite impressed with this – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. You can’t tell that it’s a repair at all and the knob actually matches the surround of the saucepan lid.

But ohhh! what an exciting life that I lead that this is the highlight of my week, hey?

As I said yesterday, today was going to be a relaxing day. And I was right too. In fact, when the alarm went off, I was in no hurry whatever to leave my stinking pit and it was more like 08:30 – never mind 07:30 – when I decided to arise.

I’d been on my travels too. In a car where the alternator light was flashing on and off. My father reckoned that the alternator was scrap but I checked it over all the same. The fan belt was fine, so I took the alternator off and started to dismantle it. It was then that I noticed that the rotor and points (on an alternator!) were rusted solid so I gave them a good soaking in penetrating oil and attacked them with a wire brush. That seemed to make the rotor turn and the points open and close so I asked my father if that might make it work. But he gave one of his usual evasive, non-committal remarks and that really was that. No chance of him ever giving any positive advice.

Once the medication and breakfast were out of the way and I had a little relax, I started to work. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are several hard drives, either from old computers or external drives, going back to … errr … 1998 with all kinds of photographs on them, all confused and jumbled all over the place. So this morning I spent a couple of hours carrying on with the little project that I have on the go of sorting them out and trying to make one consistent and coherent library.

And it’s not easy either, because it wasn’t until 2007 that I started this current numbering scheme. You’ll see above that the photo of my saucepan lid is numbered 1801025.

18 is the year
01 is the month
025 is the number – in consecutive order. And if it overflows, as it sometimes does, the first digit becomes an “a”, or a “b” and so on.

But prior to 2007 they were numbered in some kind of haphazard order, and sorting by date doesn’t help because on at least one old disk I seem to have saved them as “date modified” rather than “date created”.

So I’ll have to plod on

And that’s by no means all.

A huge pile of paperwork from last year was sorted and weeded through, and then filed away. Three or four of them actually need some kind of action, and rather smart-ish too. So tomorrow I really must organise the printer and find a way to make the cable plug stay in.

I went through my e-mails both on my server and on the EU’s intranet system and discarded well over 100 of them that were serving no useful purpose. And I’ll go back one day sometime soon and create a few directories to tidy them up properly.

The telephone has taken a bit of a bashing too. A few things there needed to be sorted out so I’ve done some of that too. There’s still a lot more that needs doing. And then there was the half-hour on the guitar, which ended with me dramatically remembering how to play the bass lines to “All Right Now”.

As the skunk said when the wind changed – “it all comes back to me now”.

For tea, my third meal of the day, I had mashed potatoes with cheese, vegetables and a veggie burger with gravy. And I think that I made far too much because I feel totally bloated.

Two walks too. It was nice when I went out this afternoon but there was a storm brewing in the distance over by Jersey and it started to rain when I was about 400 metres from home.

It rained for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening too, but after I’d been out on my evening walk for 5 minutes, the rain stopped and the sky cleared.

So let’s hope that the weather improves because it’s Thursday, and my walk right across town and up the hill to LIDL.

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

Sunday 14th January 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall telling me … "on many occasions" – ed … that I ought to get out more.

And so with this in mind I went out this afternoon in the beautiful sunlight to St Pair.

US St Pair were playing AS Gavray so I headed to the stadium in the rue du Croissant.

And I found a really nice stadium, well-maintained with a grandstand and even a social club and pie hut – but of course it goes without saying that both of those were closed.

And furthermore, the match wasn’t played there anyway.

One of the players pointed me in the direction of the second pitch here, which was nothing like as comfortable as the first. And there was a pie hut here too, which was likewise closed.

As for the match itself, for the first 20 minutes or so it was all St Pair and they could have had several chances to take the lead had their finishing been any better.

But gradually Gavray hauled themselves back into the match and started to look dangerous. As a result the St Pair trainer made an early substitution, which had the desired effect as with almost his first touch of the ball, he lobbed the goalkeeper beautifully to open the scoring.

In the second half Gavray came out of the blocks quicker and soon equalised. And after that, the match swung back and fro. Unbelievably, in the middle of their best spel, Gavray conceded a second goal from a breakaway with a swerving shot that totally deceived the keeper and instead of parrying it to the floor, he parried it into his own net.

If that wasn’t bad enough, what happened next was appalling.

St Pair broke upfield again and in the penalty area, a Gavray defender madea brilliant tackle to take the ball away from the attacker. Unbelievably, the referee pointed for a penalty. He was the only one in the ground who thought that it was a penalty – even the St Pair trainer with whom I had been chatting, was astonished. He was as convinced as I was that it was a fair tackle.

So 3-1 down out of nothing.

Gavray were well-inspired by this and soon scored a second goal, a really good header from an excellent cross. And they had the ball in the net a third time, but the goal was disallowed for offside.

But while they were pushing forward for the equaliser they were caught on the break again ans St Pair scored a fourth with an overhead kick that, quite frankly, could have gone absolutely anywhere. I think that the scorer was more surprised than anyone else.

But there ere a few really good moments of skill from several players on the pitch – but they eren’t consistent with it. They would do something really impressive at one moment, and then make a hash of something simple.

However, this was the first match that I have seen where teams played the ball early (but still not early enough for my liking) and also here the teams were very quick on cosing down the opposing attackers. It’s a feature of the modern game that defenders seem to give attackers too much space and too much time on the ball, and it doesn’t suit me at all.

FInal word must go to the referee, who, apparently, seemed to be refereeing a totally different match than the one that everyone else as watching.

And so much for my lie-in. When I awoke it was still dark and I didn’t dare look at the time.

When I finally plucked up the courage, quite a while later, it was just 07:46. No chance of my leaving the bed at that time – I had a little relax and finally crawled out at 08:45. Still not what I wanted though.

Nevertheless, I’d been on my travels during the night. Living in some spurious accommodation on the edge of Nantwich at the Welsh Row end. And having to visit the centre of the town, I set off quite jauntily and confidently. My route took me past the Swine Market and up the High Street into the Square. Of course the Square was nothing like what it really is – just a huge open grassy plain on a couple of different levels with some impressive brick-built buildings across on the other side. I only had my phone camera with me at the time so I couldn’t do much with it so I went over to the buildings for a closer look. The basements told the true story though. The buildings had been thrown together any old how, with rising damp so evident that it was actually dripping back into the basement. Some old couple had followed me down into the basement and there was something not quite right about them. It made me uneasy, especially when the old guy started to brandish around like a weapon a large piece of heavy metal rod. I was trying to take these photos and yet every one that I took seemed to have him brandishing his metal rod around in a very menacing manner.

After breakfast I didn’t do much – after all, it IS Sunday. I finished off the soup for lunch and then went to the football.

Back here afterwards, I made myself a hot chocolate and tried to keep warm.

I’ve had a vegan pizza for tea and been for another walk. And my thirst is back. That’s usually a warning sign.

But I’ll be off to bed in a minute. It’s going to be a tiring morning tomorrow.

Saturday 13th January 2018 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to be able to watch the football on the big screen?

Unfortunately the laptop with the broken screen didn’t work – it’s quite an old laptop of course and the software in it won’t run the video plug-in for the browser.

But the laptop that I’ve been using as a media centre up until recently did the business, that’s for sure, and I was able to watch the first half of Cefn Druids v Llandudno in perfect comfort.

Unfortunately it wasn’t such a perfectly comfortable night? I was awake in the middle of the night and took a while to go back to sleep again. But I was dead to the world when the alarm went off and it was a struggle to leave the bed. How I’m looking forward to a nice lie-in tomorrow!

After breakfast I had a shower, a good clean-up and change of clothes, and then off to the shops, where I spent another pile of money.

LIDL had some hand towels of the type that I bought the other day so a pack of three disappeared into Caliburn, as did a battery charger. All of mine are back at the farm and in any case are over 30 years old. A little hi-tech modern one will do much better when I might need it.

At Mr Bricolage I bought a knob for my saucepan lid – the one on which I broke the handle the other day, and NOZ came up with the usual stuff.

Centrakor provided a new washing-up bolw of the correct size (so my wok and my pizza platter will fit into it), a few other bits and pieces and a box with a tight-fitting lid – just the thing in which to keep my socks and undies.

At LeClerc I went to look at the HDMI cables because the one-metre cable that I have isn’t really long enough for what I need. And with -metre ones on offer at just €9:99, that’s long enough for just about everything.

LeClerc was also having a sale on suitcases. And a small cabin-sized one on wheels at just €15:99 – just the thing for my trips to Leuven – also ended up in the back of Caliburn.

And I’m glad that I had bought that TV last weel, because there wasn’t a cheap one anywhere to be seen in the shop.

After fuelling up, I came back home, made myself some soup and then … errr … had a little rest for half an hour. And then cracked on with organising the shopping and sorting out another pile of papers. There’s actually some room in the drawers here now, and isn’t that astonishing?

At the end of the football I had to leave.

Caliburn and I went off to Cérences where we were the other week.

It’s the nearest Saturday night match and the home side were playing the Mouettes of Donville.

The first half was all one-way traffic towards the Donville goal. But the Donville keeper put in a performance that neither he nor I will ever forget, including a magnificent “Banks” reverse save. It was the performance of a lifetime and I don’t think that I’ve seen better.

At the start of the second half Donville made two substitutions and the two players that came on, playing down the left, changed the balance of the game and we had a much more even contest.

However it didn’t last. The new left winger had clearly unsettled the defenders and after about 25 minutes he was on the receiving end of a bad challenge and limped off the field. We then went back to the one-sided match that we had in the first half.

The Donville keeper was finally beaten with just 10 minutes to go – a long-range shot that dipped and curled out of his reach and in underneath the angle of the post and crossbar – but he still made a couple more top-class saves to make the result look a lot closer than it deserved.

But there was a lot of naughty stuff going on in this game about which the referee didn’t seem at all concerned. One Cérences player made two tackles in as many minutes, either of which merited a red card in my opinion but nothing was given. And so a minute or two later a Donville player exacted his own retribution by giving him a kick that would have felled an ox. No card for that either.

And that’s just a couple of examples. There were many more.

So, frozen to the marrow, I drove back here and now I’m going to bed.

A nice lie-in, I hope. I deserve it.

Friday 12th January 2018 – IT’S JUST LIKE …

… old times in here. Here I am, sitting cross-legged on the floor (just like sweet Regina who’s gone to China) surrounded by piles of paperwork. Only difference is that there aren’t four cats circling around trying to work out which pile of paper you are actively working so that they could sit on it and stop you.

Yes, I’m having another “missing paper” session and so the easiest way to deal with all of this is to bring out all the papers that I can find, sort them into date order and then file them away now that I have bought a binder. And I reckon that I’ll have to buy some more too because this is going to be a long job.

After crowing for the last few days about how good my sleep hs been just lately, it’s inevitable that sooner or later it would come back to bite me.

And so after being thoroughly worn out by my adventures yesterday and aching all over, there I was, wide awake at 03:30.

Mind you, I did go off on my travels again. On a field, which strangely enough was the office car park of where I used to work between 1992 and 2004. I was in a Mercedes 814 bus watching the people walk by and I made some kind of cheerful comment to a girl going past. She made a petulant remark so I got out to speak to her. She was curious to know what I was doing in a bus – and it was a curious bus. There were the three seats in the fron and then a glass partition, and then the door to the passenger compartment. I was trying to explain to her how it all worked but I didn’t know either. She reckoned that it would have been just as well for me to walk to work, but I told her that I’d just come back from taking some people skiing. And our chat continued along those lines for a while.
Suddenly I realised that I had some work to do about fishing – or, more precisely, angling. The deadline was within the next hour or so and I’d done nothing, not to mention the fact that I knew nothing abiut it. I dashed into the building to see if anyone in the Reception knew anything but as usual they were very distant. And there sitting in the corner was my old colleague Frédéric – long-since retired. He was filling a cupboard there as if he had come back to work. Ordinarily I would have gone over to say “hello” but I was far too preoccupied right now.

I beat the alarm quite comfortably this morning and after breakfast I set about doing some things. And here’s something interesting that you might not believe (or, maybe, knowing me, you might).

For a project that I have on the go, I need a medical certificate. I doubt if I’ll pass it but you never know. And there are ony certain doctors who can do it – just one in Granville.

And so I phoned him – and his secretary told me that “Doctor so-and-so isn’t taking on any new patients”
“But it’s not a question of taking on a new patient” I explained. “It’s for a once-only medical examination and he’s the authorised doctor”
“It doesn’t matter” she replied. “He’s still not seeing anyone else”.
“You mean he’s going to turn down €45:00 for 10 minutes work? That’s the strangest thing that I’ve ever heard, and believe me, I’ve heard some strange things in my time”.
“Goodbye”. CLICK

So I’m going to have to travel all the way to Coutances for a medical. And I have to take all kinds of things with me, including a urine analysis. And I had that done in Leuven just now and I have the report, but can I heck as like find it?

Talking of phones, I also had to ring up Montreal and my storage facility. We’re having credit card issues as you know so my payments are falling behind. But with my new card I can go back up to date which is just as well, because otherwise they will foreclose on my camping gear and whatever else thereis in there.

Lunch was another load of soup with bread again. Took a while for the bread to go down but the soup itself was delicious and I’ll have to look out for some more of that.

And after crowing about how nice the weather has been this last few days, it’s been miserable, misty and overcast all day. And after lunch I had to go out. With this urine sample thing, if I can’t find my paperwork I’ll have to have an analysis and I need to know what to do and where to go.

So my route took me around the walls and down the steps to the pharmacie where they helpfully gave me a little container and told me where to go. I have friends like that of course.

Regular eaders of this rubbish will recall that parking features quite a lot on these pages.

And here’s another miserable example of total and utter laziness and selfishness.

The school is just round the corner from here, and here’s a mother parked on the kerb waiting for her brat to come out. It’s just before chucking-out time and all of the school buses will be coming by here any minute now, as well as all of the usual traffic. And she’s blocking the free movement of traffic.

And if you look closely, there’s a free public car park just 50 metres further on, but her darling little angel is too bone-idle to walk that far.

Makes you sick.

For tea tonight I tried some rice with mixed vegetables and a frozen curry. The rice was difficult to eat but I eventually managed it, so that’s something I suppose. One day I’ll try some pasta again and hope that I’ll have better luck next time.

And my walk this evening too. I need to keep it up no matter how unsteady on my feet I feel.

As for the music, I’m up to Neil Young. There will always be a special place for him as far as I am concerned. When I was in a very bad place 25 years ago it was he who kept me going. He suffers from depression – which must be bi-polar, for if you listen to his music you can tell the songs that he wrote when he was “up” and the songs that he wrote when he was “down”.

I remember playing After the Gold Rush on a cach with Percy Penguin, and she enquired about the album
“Released in 1970” I said
“Bimmin’ ‘Eck” she ejaculated. That’s three years before I was born!”

Thursday 11th January 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… pf this rubbish will not be at all surprised by today’s news.

I believe that I mentioned that I had tracked down the mobile telephone repairer in Granville – there is only one. And so this morning I set off to pay him a visit. And there on the door was a notice “Gone on Holiday”.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

I had another excellent night’s sleep, and off on my travels yet again. My mother was having yet another one of her “performances” and so I left home yet again. I found myself in a big house where there was a place for me to stay – but it involved climbing up a rope and leaping across a three-foot gap, hanging on by my fingers and hauling myself up. But somewhere along the line I had acquired a cat, and trying to climb a rope with it in my arms was difficult, and jumping across a three-foot gap would be impossible. And then what made it worse was that another cat decided to come along and join in the fun. He climbed up into my arms too.

After breakfast I had a shower and general clean-up, and then it was tile to hit the streets.

First stop however was the port.

I’d seem them the other day unloading a pile of stuff n the quayside and so I reckoned that it might be Grima coming in. But instead it’s his rival, the Normandy Trader.

She’s a converted landing craft as you can tell, but apart from that I’ve not been able to find out anything about her history. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s a former Caledonion-MacBraye island hopper, but who knows?

The phone repairer was closed as I said, so I struggled on to LIDL. And it was a struggle up the hill as you can imagine. I’m not really in fit state to go on foot but I do need to push myself onwards.

And seeing that I didn’t want anythinf really, I did well to spend €25:00 in there. But they had unleashed some more towels so I grabbed another set to make two now. And the last set of AAA batteries (but it’s not the batteries that are the issue in the remote control – it must be goosed).

But on the way back, I made an exciting find.

I had to make a sharp deviation to avoid being run down, and found myself face-to-face with the letter boxes of the Associations that use the public rooms.

And there are a couple of things on here that I find quite interesting, as you might expect. I shall have to make further enquiries.

Back in the town, I had a cunning plan.

Being frustrated with this message limit that is blocking my credit card from making on-line payments, I headed to the Post Office. When I was there the other day I’d seen pre-paid credit cards on offer. One of those, with a payment up front, should enable me to complete this driving licence.

But regular readers of this rubbish will not be in the least surprised to learn that the Post Office has sold out, and doesn’t plan on having any more.

You can’t make that up either.

But not to be outdone. I went to the Orange shop and had a bit of a moan at one of the salesmen. And hey! Presto! A quick manipulation with my phone and a raft of messages suddenly appeared.

You might think that I can now go ahead and complete the form, but I have a better idea that might take a couple of days to come to fruition.

All in all, I was out for almost three hours,and I’d done 82% of my daily exercise, so I’d earned a sit-down. And at lunchtime I made myself a thick vegetable soup with pasta and bulghour in it. Delicious it was too, and I even managed some bread.

I was going to say that I had a good relax all afternoon, but that’s not quite true. It was such a beautiful afternoon that later on I tore myself off the sofa and staggered outside for a walk around the headland.

There was a strange-looking yacht out there too. It’s either sailing at a strange angle or else it’s one of these historic yachts of the type that you see around here every now and again.

UNfortunately, without the zoom lens it’s difficult to say.

Yesterday I mentioned the lighthouse here on the Pointe du Roc.

I did say that I’ve yet to take a good photograph of it, and so I resolved to put that right today.

I’ve mentioned … "on many occasions" – ed … that each lighthouse is painted a different colour so that mariners can distinguish them in the daytime, and different sequences of flashes so that ditto in the night.

But I think that they could have been a little more imaginative with the colour scheme here. But at least it blends in with the ruins of the Atlantic Wall.

There’s also a coastguard station here, operated by the French Military.

It’s complete with a radar installation as you can see. A really impressive piece of equipment.

And so I continued on my way around qnd passed the 100% mark so I’m now feeling very virtuous. And quite right too. It’s been a while, although I know that I’m going to suffer for this.

Back here I had a spell on the guitar and listened to the music on the new hi-fi. And we’ve now passed onto Tangerine Dream.

I’m not too keen on some of their more experimental music, but they went through a stage – well, two stages actually – of producing some albums that were unbelievably superb, and bring back many happy memories of when I was living in Hankelow in the mid-70s.

And talking of superb, let me tell you about tea tonight. Not really knowing what I fancied, it was mashed potato with cheese, and a huge plate of mixed vegatbels with bulghour and gravy. Tons of protein in that lot.

That so buoyed me up that I went for another walk (well, more like a stagger) this evening. And I’m now up to 128% of my daily activity.

So I’m off to bed now to easy my aching joints. God knows what I shall be like tomorrow.

Wednesday 10th January 2018 – IT REALLY WAS …

… a beautiful afternoon this afternoon. And I took advantage of it by going out for a walk.

Peering over the wall just along the footpath here I had a really good view of Donville-les-Bains out there, with that big white building the former hotel where I saw that miserable studio back in the Spring.

I’m glad that I didn’t move there, I can tell you.

My walt took me up around the headland and round by the lighthouse.

No photos of there though because the sun was quite low and right in my eyes. But a little further on round the bend there was a nice view across the harbour to the upper town near the Sports Complex.

In the foreground though you cans ee the old dry dock – dating from the Napoleonic era so I am told. NO gates on it now, which is a shame, and there won’t be if the cost that I have heard bandied about is anything like correct.

That’s a shame because I’d love to see the port here have more use.

Returning back here by the road, I noticed that we are having the pavements dug up.

There have been hieroglyphics scrawled on the pavements for about 6 months and they are finally getting round to doing something aboout it.

It’s an EDF project, so I was told, so it came as something of a shock.

What else is nice that this afternoon, Spirit came round on the hi-fi. One of the most underrated bands ever,

they were another one of the “Summer of Love” California jam-bands, led by guitarist Randy California and with the … errr … elderly Ed Cassidy.

I’d had another decent night’s sleep last night. And been on my travels too. My mother was having another one of her “moments” so I cleared off. I had a couple of these big paper carrier bags with some things in, and I was trying to find a place to stay. I came across what might have been a motel but the entrance was miles away so I hopped on a bus. I was sitting on a longitudinal seat and a girl next to me was talking across me to another girl sitting on the first perpendicular seat. I suggested that we swap places so that they could talk more comfortably, as I would be getting off quite soon. But the entrance to the motel wasn’t an entrance at all and it wasn’t a motel either, so I stayed on the bus. But I needed to alight sometime soon for a tour around the shops, but then I noticed that one of my bags was badly split, and how was I to go round the shops with my bags anyway? THat would lead to complications.

All of this took me right through to the alarm and it was something of an effort to leave the bed. But leave it I did, at something like a reasonable time.

I’ve not done too much today though. Sorted the washing, which dries quite quickly in front of the radiator, and I’ve also had a play with the damaged HTC smartphone. It charges up fine, and switches on too. The alarm works and even the laptop recognises it and all of the software seems to be there. But the touch screen doesn’t work.

Nevertheless, the signs are quite optimistic, but we’ll see what the repair place has to say.

Three meals again – tea being mashed potatoes, peas, a vegggie burger and gravy. It took a while to eat but it seems to be staying in which is good news of course.

And a walk again tonight, although that was something of a struggle.

Tomorrow I’m going to try for the LIDL on foot. I don’t know why because I don’t need anything, but I have to go and sort out this telephone anyway.

And Thursday is LIDL day usually so it will do me some good to make an effort. I need to push myself forward because if I don’t I’ll just wither away and that’s not going to be any good at all.

Tuesday 9th January 2018 – THIS IS JUST RIDICULOUS!

Following the exciting events of my trip to Belgium the other week I need to apply for a new driving licence.

This isn’t going to be easy – in fact it’s flaming well complicated because it all has to be done on line these days and I’ve been putting it off for a while. But it needs to be done so I’ve bitten the bullet and made a start.

All kinds of different documents are required so this morning I set to work.

Firstly you need a photograph. And not any old photograph either but a digital photograph loaded onto the ANTS (The Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés) database with a serial number. You can’t do this yourself – you need a certified photographer who has access to the database.

Having made the appropriate enquiries the other day at the Driving School, I went off up there and eventually tracked him down. It took 5 minutes and, €20:00 poorer, I left clutching a pile of photographs and more importantly, the serial number of my photograph in the National database.

Back here, rather tired after my walk, I had a look at what else is needed.

Most importantly, I need to open an account with ANTS. And so I set to work on that. Eventually, that was up and running too. It took a while, with everything that I needed to enter.

Once that was done, I needed to make my application for a duplicate licence.

To replace a licence that is lost or stolen, you need a copy of the declaration made to the police. That was what I obtained the other day when I was out on the town. With no scammer handy, I took a photo of it and uploaded it it to the laptop. So I could add that to my file.

Next is a proof of address. This is going to be complicated because I no longer live at the address to which it was issued and any proofs of address that I have for there have long-expired.

Ordinarily I would have edited the date without batting an eyelid – we have the technology – but times have changed over the last 25 years and the French judiciary is not noted for its benevolence. There’s a space to add “additional documents” but only in *.jpg or similar format, so I typed a letter of explanation, took a screen print and saved it as an image. And attached that.

Then I needed a National identity document. Luckily I had scanned my passport when I received it a few years back, so that was no problem.

All that remains now is to pay for it, and to do that you can buy a stamp on-line with a credit card – €25:00 this will cost me. And so I attacked that too – almost done now!

But you wouldn’t believe it. Or, knowing me as you do, maybe you would.

I boked the stamp and went to pay for it. The bank needed to send a confirmatory code for me to enter so I waited.

And waited.

And I tried again.

And waited

And waited.

In the end, Liz sent me a text. Which I didn’t receive. So while I was clutching the phone in my hot sweaty mitt, she sent another one.

And a brief error message flashed up – “your mailbox is full. Please delete unwanted mails”.

There are all of 18 mails in my inbox so I went to delete them. And if that isn’t a complicated procedure I don’t know what is. It took ages, but they’ve all gone.

So Liz sent me yet another – with the same error message. This just can’t be right

There must be a hidden message box xomewhere on the ‘phone and can I like as hell find it. I had a look on the internet to see if that is of any help, but I seem to be one of a thousand people with the same problem. It’s an old Samsung Young S5360 so it’s not too much of a surprise.

But to fall at the final, easiest fence like this after having done al of the hard work is a real tragedy.

Anyway, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and galvanises us into action.

I’ll be in town on Thursday morning so I’ll go to Orange and see what they have to say about all of this. And I’ve also found a phone repairer in the vicinity. You’ll remember that I had an HTC smartphone that fell into a bucket when I was ill in Verdun. I managed to make it fire up but the keyboard didn’t work, so I’ll take that in on Thursday to see if it can be fixed.

GRRRRRRRR!

I’d had a reasonable sleep too last night, and was up and about shortly after the alarm. After breakfast I had a shower and a general clean-up and cut mu hair too. And a machine-load of washing turning away while I was in town.

But apart from that I didn’t have much time for anything else. Half an hour on the guiter again but struggling to keep awake while I was doing it.

Three meals again – breakfast, soup for lunch and for tea I had mashed potato and a frozen curry that I had made a while ago. Delicious it was too.

And I went for another walk in the rain this evening.

But now it’s bed-time. And I’ve earned it. I’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

Monday 8th January 2018 – I’M CRACKING …

… on with the arrangements in here, I’ll tell you.

I had a closer look at the TV today. there’s a USB socket that, surprisingly, can be used to record TV programmes (not that this concerns me of course) but it’s also a data input socket.

And so Brain of Britain had a marvellous idea. He found a USB memory stick and copied a pile of black and white films onto it, and then inserted it into the USB socket.

Making the TV read the memory stick wasn’t the work of five minutes though, but eventually I managed to make it function, and there on the menu were all of my films.

The problem is, however, that the format of most of them isn’t supported by the television and that was something of a disappointment.

But not to be outdone. Where there’s a will there are relatives, so the old saying goes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an old laptop that runs perfectly well, apart from the smashed screen and keyboard. And it has come in useful at times too in the past.

But it’s having a dramatic lease of life right now. Because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I bought an HDMI cable in the NOZ for €1:99. And there’s a HDMI socket on the laptop and two on the television.

And so I connected the one to the other via the third, and spent the next considerable while trying to make the TV read the signal from the laptop.

It was easy once I’d figured it out, and then I had the delightful pleasure of not only watching all of my films, but a slideshow of my photographs and also some Youtube videos in full glorious technicolour.

Not only that, I reckon that the streamed football matches that I watch at weekend can be picked up on the old laptop and I’ll be able to watch them on the TV too and maybe even, if I can configure it properly, to record them too.

But I need a much longer HDMI cable. At the moment I’m having to make do with an old cordless mouse to control the laptop – or I would if I had any batteries. I must sort this out.

Yes, it’s all systems go here – even if it did take much of the day to sort it out.

For one reason or another I still had the alarm set at 07:30 this morning. But I did manage to beat it out of bed.

After breakfast and doing some paperwork and watching a couple of miscellaneous itemsfor which I was bidding (and winning) on an on-line auction site, I began my marathon odyssey with the television.

We had an interruption for lunch when I finished off the soup from Saturday, and another one when I went for a walk around the headland – first time for quite a while. And yet another when I stopped for half an hour on the guitar, during which I … errr … fell asleep.

Just for a change I managed a third meal tonight too. Baked potatoes with cheese stuck in the cuts and baked beans. The cheese melted nicely in the microwave and it was all delicious.

When the washing-up was finished I went for a walk around the city walls. And that’s the first for quite a while too. But that proved to be a little too much and it was something of a struggle over the last 400 metres.

So now I’m sitting listening to Led Zeppelin on my new hi-fi, with which I’m even more impressed that I am with my galvanised steel dustbin, and I’ll be off for a well-earned sleep in early course.

I really can’t stand the pace these days.

Sunday 7th January 2018 – HEROES!

The players and officials of US Granville do a lap of honour around the pitch after their match against the Girondins of Bordeaux.

And quite rightly so, because they have just pulled off the Shock of the Century in French football. A part-time team playing Regional football in CFA2 North-West – the equivalent I suppose of the Conference North in the UK, have just knocked Premier League Bordeaux out of the French FA Cup.

And they made it look easy too.

Getting to the ground was quite something because the street was cordoned off and I had to drive miles to meet Terry. But we made it in plenty of time. And I was interviewed on France 3 too! My fame is spreading!

And it’s just as well that we got there early because the Stade Louis Dior was packed.

We ended up standing on the bank on the training ground looking aross at the pitch because it was the only really decent vantage point.

And we were treated to an event that I for one won’t ever forget.

I’d had another less-than-impressive night and despite it being Sunday I was wide-awake at 07:30.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels during the night, and a welcome return to our nocturnal rambles of Nerina and Zero. Formerly regular visitors but have been conspicuous by their absence for a while. Nerina and I were trying to book ourselves into a hotel in West London and having an inordinate amount of difficulty doing so, and I was close to losing my cool. Nerina suggested that we went for a walk to cool down, so we went outside and found ourselves aongst a large numger of Orthodox Jews who were diriving horses and carts laden with goods and produce pretty much as they might have done in the late 19th Century. We ended up walking along the towpath of a canal and Zero went skipping off with her head in the clouds. I was pointing out these tourist signs of historic object and the like and trying to interest her in them but like most kids of that age she was more interested in flowers and butterflies and the like.

I waited until 08:00 to leave the bed and by 09:00 I had breakfasted. And then – SHOCK! HORROR! I went working on a Sunday. I brought up the television and assembled it, and then had to do some rearranging of my living room to find a place to install it. That even involved some more vacuuming!

Configuring it was another thing – not helped by the fact that there were no batteries in the remote control and I had no fully-charged ones lying around. I’m short of good AAA batteries so I need to buy some more.

It took me ages to try to find the “DVD” switch on the remote control and in the end gave up. But I installed the DVD player anyway (and the remote control for that has stopped working) and much to my surprise the TV recognised automatically the signal from the DVD and started to play the disc.

So I sat and watched a film. And it really is nice to watch a DVD on a decent screen after all these years. 80cms is pretty big in my apartment.

And then the football.

Quite frankly, the Girondins of Bordeaux were abysmal. They had a midfielder by the name of Jérémy Toulalan. In his career he’s had 36 caps for France, transfer fees of almost €20,000,000 and when he was in Spain he was on a salary of €4.2 million. And yet if ever there was a player so disinterested in a match I have yet to see it, even in District football. In my own personal opinion he should have been ashamed of himself because it’s players like him who ought to be pulling his team up when they are down, not chickening out of the game.

If there ever was a gulf between the two teams, you would have said that it was Granville who were the Premier League team. They took the match by the throat and went on the rampage from the kick-off. And Bordeaux had no answer.

Had Granville’s finishing been any better they would have been 3-0 up after half an hour. They missed a penalty after 10 minutes and had two other shots at point-blank range either saved or blazed over the bar. And that’s not counting the shot that the keeper completely misjudged and had to hastily scramble over the bar to save a load of omelette sur le visage.

The Girondins of Bordeaux scored with their first attack after 37 minutes, but that was their best effort. US Granville’s keeper didn’t have too much to do.

In the second half, Granville came out as they went in – storming down the field driven on by the n°2 and the n°8 who had the games of their lives. And as the match progressed you could sense that it was not impossible that they might do something here.

And as we drifted into the final 5 minutes with Granville camped in the Bordeaux half the most amazing thing happened. The Girondins began to lose their discipline. We had a rash of yellow cards and then, totally inexplicably, the Girondins right-back put in a dreadful challenge on the Granville winger right out on the touchline. There was no need for it – the winger was going nowhere and it really was a vicious tackle. Result – a RED CARD.

Girondins of Bordeaux down to 10 men.

4 minutes of injury time and with 3:50 played, the Granville n°2 put in a low cross into the area. It took a wicked deflection, right into the path of a Granville attacker who sidefooted it straight into the empty net. He was probably more surprised than anyone else in the Stade Louis Dior.

The crowd was in raptures.

There was just enough time for Bordeaux to kick off before the referee blew for time.

No replays in France – we play on. And Bordeaux for once started to play. They looked quick and keen but by now Granville’s tail was up and they kept them out quite comfortably.

And then a break downfield. No fewer than two Girondin defenders missed the ball and it fell right in front of the Granville centre-forward. Surely he must score with an open goal – but a Bordeaux defender wrestled him to the ground.

Bordeaux now down to 9 men – and the penalty? Well, Stanislaus wasn’t going to miss aanother one. Granville take the lead – and they deserved it.

We haven’t finished yet. Granville, with a two-man advantage, burst forward yet again and a midfielder hauls him back by the shirt. The referee goes over to speak to the midfielder about it, and we will never know what the reply was. But it must have been good because the referee reached into his pocket and pulled out a straight RED CARD.

Bordeaux down to 8 men.

The rest is history. You can’t come back with just 8 men on the pitch and Granville hung on for the most unlikely victory which they richly desrved and did a lap of honour around the pitch.

The manager of the Girondins of Bordeaux said after the match “it was just one long nightmare of a Sunday afternoon”. His side, losing its cool like that and having three players sent off against a bunch of regional part-timers was disgraceful. US Granville came out of the game with credit.

We walked back to the car park and I drove home. Frozen to the marrow and I’m still cold now even though the heating is going full-blast and I cooked a pizza in the oven.

I’ll probably be ill for a week now, but ask me if I care? I’ve had a memorable afternoon and there won’t be another one quite like this.

Saturday 6th January 2018 – I’VE BEEN CHANGING …

… the habits of a lifetime today.

And how!

We started off with another bad night last night. Despite going to bed at something like a reasonable hour I was tossing and turning for ages and spent most of the night watching the clock wind down.

And never mind the alarm going off at 07:30 – at that time of the morning I was up, medicated and thinking about breakfast. And my porridge did go down nicely too.

At about 09:15 I hit the road for the shops and I’ll tell you more about them in due course. But my shopping trip was interrupted by Rosemary phoning for a chat, and we passed a very pleasant half hour or so, with me parked up at the side of the road.

Back here, a late lunch (because I’d been out for ages) was followed by a snooze as you might expect, and then I had plenty of things to do – such as making start on tidying up the paperwork seeing that I bought a binder today.

This was followed by watching Cardiff Met play Aberystwyth in the Welsh Premier League, and then off out I went.

Up to the 3rd floor and Odile’s apartment. She was having a little fête to celebrate Epiphany and I’d been invited, which was very nice of her. Brigitte was there, and Roberte, David, Nicolas and Patrice. We all had a good chat for ages, and I wasn’t the first to leave either.

Not like me to be sociable is it? But then, I was never really invited anywhere before. My reputation hasn’t reached here yet, obviously!

But the shops!

I have resolved to make my life easier and more comfortable, and that includes buying things of a better quality than maybe I might usually do, and also to have one one or two luxuries around the place to bolster my morale.

And didn’t that work in Spades today?

Not that it means abandoning my trips to NOZ of course. IN fact I was there today and another €15 of near-expired food and a few other irrelevancies ended up in Caliburn. And the braderie at LeClerc was hit as well, with a waste bin for the living room and a bucket-waste bin for the bedroom.

But that’s only part of it – and a small part of that.

I seem to only have two towels here and both of them seem to have long-since seen better days. So with LIDL having a sale on and luxury towels reduced to a reasonable price, they had one blue shower towel and one blue hand towel (the bathroom is blue) left, as well as a matching blue bathrobe (my old one is falling to bits).

So they ended up in Caliburn too.

Next stop was NOZ, and then Centrakor for a new wallet to replace the one that was lost.

After that it was to “Happy Cash”, the second-hand shop.

Regular readers of this rubbish will be surprised to hear that I’m looking for a cheap television. I have a DVD player here – the one that I bought in Belgium years ago, complete with hard drive, and I only used it for about 6 months before I moved to France.

It’s been in a cardboard box ever since, and here I am watching DVDs on an old laptop. So I want a cheap TV and the second-hand shop seemed to be the place to go.

No such luck unfortunately, but I did strike gold in a quite unexpected direction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I moved here I went looking for a stereo hi-fi. It needed to meet several criteria, like AM/FM radio, CD, auxiliary input, USB port (for a memory stick or a USB turntable). And how I had been singularly unsuccessful.

And there sitting on the shelf was an old battered LG stereo hi-fi with absolutely everything that I wanted, and as an added bonus, a cassette player/recorder. All powered by a remote control.

A lengthy chat with the manager saw it disappearing into Caliburn for the grand sum of … errr … €49:00.

One very happy little bunny here. I spent part of the afternoon wiring it up and the rest of the afternoon having a nostalgia trip listening to a pile of cassettes from the 1970s. Ohh Happy Day!

And later, having bought a memory stick, I copied a pile of music onto it and it’s running even now in the hi-fi. It recognises 999 tracks, which is quite acceptable

But that’s not all. Ohh no it isn’t!

Still in search of a television, I went, more out of curiosity to LeClerc. They had some televisions advertised at €99:00 and that could have been a possibility. But a 57cm screen won’t go far and besides, no SCART socket – just a HDMI cable, so my DVD player wouldn’t work. And after all of the money that I paid for it (because it was a top-of-the range machine) I didn’t want to throw it away lightly.

But there in the corner in the sale were three or four cheap Chinese TVs – 80cms – much more like it. With SCART and HDMI cable plugs and a USB port. €149:00.

So >copulatum expensium , as we Pompeiians say.

That’s now in the back of Caliburn too and it will be up in here tomorrow.

And if that’s not enough, I lost my carte de fidelité the other week and with this kind of thing it’s important because if there’s a complaint they can track your article.

The girl at the cash desk sent me to the accueil and I had to queue behind another guy. He asked for two tickets for tomorrow’s Cup Match against Bordeaux. I thought they would be sold out but “we only have six left”. So he bought two and that left four.

So badger that for a game of soldiers. I bought two too. And Terry is going to come with me to watch the game.

But shopping did wear me out – the first time for three weeks that I’ve hit the shops. I’ll be hitting the sack in a minute to gather my forces for tomorrow.

Friday 5th January 2018 – USELESS LOAD OF BANKERS!

I actually managed to struggle into town this morning.

And it’s just as well that I did too.

my early night didn’t work out as well as it ought to have done because I was wide awake at 05:00. Never mind the former times when the alarm used to go off at 06:00 (and it will again, starting next week) – by 06:00 I was sitting on the sofa having had my medication.

After breakfast, I had a shower and a good clean up, and then spent a good hour or two collecting all of the paperwork that I needed. And I’ glad that I did too because I had a nasty surprise.

But never mind that for a moment. First stop was the Police Station to complete the paperwork about my missing wallet. He had a grouch and a growl because, in his opinion, the work that they had done in Paris was bidon. But at least I now have a temporary driving licence so that I can legally use Caliburn.

And then we went to the Bank ready for a battle.

My bank cards are ready so I picked them up. And I paid a bill that need to be paid, and then battle commenced.

I shan’t bore you with all of the details. But a brief recap is that when I moved here, I went into the bank to open an account here, to close down my account in Pionsat, and to transfer all of my payments to the new account.

And then we’ve had the long sorry story of how everything seems to have gone wrong – a relentless stream of failures and incidents that have shaken my faith in the bank.

But today was the final straw. It seems that they haven’t closed the accounts in Pionsat at all, all of my payments have been paid in duplicate and I’ve been paying bank charges on two accounts that I don’t use.

Anyway I left them busily repainting the woodwork where the paint had blistered off in the heat. They are going to sort it out, so they say, but we’ll just wait until the next disaster. The Credit Agricole here in Granville is like lurching from one catastrophe to another, and my finances are catastrophic enough without any help from my useless load of Bankers.

But the most telling part of all of this was the question “who dealt with your affairs? Was it Madame xxxxx?”
Well, as a matter of fact it was. And having heard one or two stories, I’m not surprised that her name cropped up without any prompting.

Next stop was the Post Office to renew the redirection of my mail. That’s important because of my driving licence issues, more of which anon.

And here we had the delightful, typical Post Office scene of a crowd of people waiting in a queue while no less than THREE assistants dealt with one customer.

Everyone was fuming so I turned to the woman behind me
Our hero – “typical Civil Servants. No idea whatever about the Real WOrld. They should be made to take 6 months unpaid leave every five years and come and scratch around for a living like the rest of us and see what it’s like to live in the Real WOrld”
Woman behind me – “I’m a Civil Servant”.

Final port of call was at the Driving School.

To apply for a replacement driving licence on line, I nedd a special kind of certified official photograph and I had no idea where to obtain one. They would know, of course.

And indeed they did. So next time that I’m out on the town I can pay a visit.

When I returned home Liz was on line so we had a chat, and then it was lunchtime.

After lunch I did some tidying up and even had the vacuum cleaner out for a while. And I’ve made a few plans about organising myself better. If that works, I’ll be amazed because it’s never worked before. But all of this time spent hunting down paperwork is totally absurd.

Havng had a little (well, more than a little) snooze and an hour or so on the bass, I made tea. Baked potatoes and beans with cheese. And my vegan cheese slices will melt if I break them up and put them with the beans in the microwave.

And for pudding, some of Liz’s Christmas cake.

To finish off the day, I’ve been for a walk. It was slow and painful but I did it. So I’m hoping that I’ll have a decent night’s sleep tonight.

Final word must go to my former colleague and friend Anne-Marie. She joined the EU the same time that I did and we went round together for a while, even going on a skiing trip together for a week in Bulgaria. I’ve heard on the grapevine that she received her long-service medal from work the other daY.

Sp hats off to her.

EPIC HALL

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