Tag Archives: place d’armes

Thursday 3rd August 2017 – I HAD TO …

… turn on the light over the sink while I was washing up tonight. That’s a first. The nights are definitely getting shorter.

But then again, I was rather late – 21:15 in fact. Although it was just a quick tea (pasta and the last lot of the aubergine and kidney bean whatsit) I didn’t start to make it until late because I was preoccupied in some work that I was doing.

But more of this anon.

Although I was rather late going to bed, I was out like a light and off on my travels again straight away. Somewhere really exciting, so much so that I awoke at about 04:30 and dictated it into the dictaphone.

And it’s a good job that I did too because when I awoke at 07:00 with the alarm, I couldn’t remember a thing. So you’ll have to wait until I copy the notes off the thing before you can find out where I was.

And before I find out where I was too.

Crawling out of bed was difficult (to say the least) and then after breakfast I had to sit around. Expecting a parcel delivery.

By 12:00 it hadn’t arrived, and knowing full well that no-one works between 12:00 and 14:00, I nipped into town for a baguette and some tomatoes seeing as how I had run out.

Far too windy to sit on my wall so I ate in here, and I was dead right about the parcel delivery. 14:15 on the button he turned up, and the final piece of the jigsaw for my trip to Canada is all here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a very good mega-suitcase from years ago that took everything that I needed (and more) to Canada. But in 2014 I broke the zip on it so it had to be abandoned.

I found a substitute in a junk shop over there that was the correct size, but everything else about it was wrong. It was completely out of balance and very difficult to control

so, totally fed up, I found exactly the one that I wanted on the internet. A “four-wheeler” pull-behind upright suitcase that is actually bigger in volume but the dimensions are much less (it’s actually fatter). Lightweight reinforced too.

Cost an arm and a leg but I’m not up to much these days and this should (I hope) be great to pull along behind me. Because I have miles to walk.

Strawberry Moose fits inside it perfectly and there’s plenty of room for other stuff too. Which is good news.

And I need it too. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Now I’m off for my walk, and I’ll have another early night. Now that I have my suitcase I can start to pack tomorrow.

Wednesday 2nd August 2017 – I HAD A …

… slightly better day today.

Probably due to the good sleep that I had last night – out like a light and that was how I stayed. And it was something of a struggle to heave myself out of the stinking pit (the bed, I mean).

A good shower and a change of clothes made me feel like a new man (pretty fed up of the old one) too.

What with the weather (torrential downpour for most of the day) all that I’ve managed to do is to struggle through the floods for the baguette. No possibility of going to sit on the wall with my butties at lunchtime.

So I hope that it’s better tomorrow – I need some things from town.

Tea was more aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – the longer it sits the better it tastes which can’t be bad. Just one more lot left for tomorrow.

Despite the weather I’ll be off for a walk in a bit. To stretch the legs and to see the outside. It’ll do me good to go out and about, even if it is into a rainstorm I suppose.

Hopefully it will be another good night like last night, and then a good walk into town should do me good.

Tuesday 1st August – DO YOU REALISE …

… that this time in 2 weeks I’ll be stepping off an aeroplane in Montreal?

And I hope that I feel better than I did today because if was another day like the last three or four.

Last night wasn’t quite as early as I was hoping, but when I went to bed, I went. And until the alarm went off I remember absolutely nothing. A deep sleep – you can certainly say that!

They were unloading chairs and tables in the little square down the road this morning. I’m told that there’s to be the “Fête de l’Haut Ville” this weekend, both days, with lots of things going on.

Dancing girls, cheerleaders – I’m all in favour of that but I bet that there won’t be any. Probably a buvette though – no social entertainment can ever take place in France without there being a buvette.

Lunch was on the wall, tea was the second instalment of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, and apart from that, precious little else. I’ve just been stirring a few papers round on the laptop.

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as you know. The secret is to ignore it because I know that things will be better tomorrow. The sun will still shine, the seagulls will still sing and the tide will come inexorably in.

So I’m going for a little walk and then a drink (there’s some Vitamin B12 juice in the fridge) and an early night.

Start again tomorrow.

Monday 31st July 2017 – THAT WAS A NICE …

… tea tonight. Another aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, with enough left over to last the rest of the week.

And it would have been even nicer had I remembered the olives. And the peanuts. Ahhh well!

But it wouldn’t have made much of a difference because I couldn’t find a small aubergine at the weekend. The one that I bought was the smallest in the shop, but “small” in this case is purely relative. In any other place it would have been “enormous”.

It all makes up for my extremely bad night. Still awake and kicking at 03:30 this morning, and although I do remember stretching out to switch off the alarm at 07:00 I remember nothing else until the repeater at 07:15. And then it was a slow crawl out of bed.

But I’d been on my travels though. And it involved a flock of sheep, some of which were wandering around freely and others in a tightly-grouped flock. One of the sheep in this flock was quite a vicious sheep but the shepherd replied that he was a good defender of the others and so they kept him with the flock for precisely that purpose. Any monkey business and the vicious sheep would sort it all out.

Down at the magasin de presse I solved the issue of the water sprayer from yesterday. Yes – if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question, don’t you?

Once every year there’s an open-air mass on the quayside and all of the cliffs around here are good vantage points for the crowd to congregate.

And then a priest blesses some water which is taken by a ship to a point just off the headland which is significant as being the site of a marine tragedy when a lifeboat was lost in a storm.

The Holy Water is then ceremonially jettisoned into the sea at the site of the tragedy and boats sail by through the spray hoping that they too might be blessed.

Lunch on the wall again, watching Grima come a-dieseling in.

And doing a couple of laps of the harbour because some stern trawler had pinched her spec underneath the crane and had to be moved, otherwise she would not have been able to unload her cargo of scrap.

45 years of age, and looking every day of it.

But there was some excitement up there at lunchtime. A big family-size car with Dutch plates pulled up and a large family disgorged itself to take a photo.

After much hoo-ing and haa-ing they decided that a selfie wouldn’t work so they looked around for a suitable volunteer. And there I was tucking into my hummus salad butty.

The matriarch came over to me and asked in very faltering French if I would oblige – so I replied that I would – in very good Dutch – something that took her completely by surprise.

I was going for a walk tonight but I was distracted. There’s been an “issue” at the tyre place in Canada, and as a result I ended up being on the phone across the Atlantic for half an hour instead. It was nice to talk to people over there, even if the circumstances could be better.

And, despite my bad night, I’ve managed to avoid not crashing out today. But this won’t last. An early night is beckoning, I reckon.

Sunday 30th July 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I had a proper Sunday?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the Good Old Days Sunday was a Day Of Rest. And not only that, but a lie-in too. And there were some Sundays when I didn’t show before midday too.

Those days seemed to be long-gone, didn’t they? Several times just recently I’ve been wide away on a Sunday long before my usual rising time of 07:00.

So what happened today that I was asleep until … errr … 10:13?

And a good sleep too. I was away on my travels too – carrying on from yesterday round here somewhere outside, with with three other people. All of them pseudo-priests, and were in fact three young lads whom I knew when I worked in Brussels.

10:15 in here, breakfast over by 10:45, and then a sit-down for an hour or so. Far too late to go for the baguette at the magasin de presse so I reckoned a quick stroll down the hill.

But what the …! What’s going on here?

Hordes of people clinging to various vantage points looking at what looks like a ship blowing off thousands of gallons of water for some reason or another.

I had to go and check that out. Maybe it was a shipwreck or something (I’d seen a ship on the horizon in the dark last night);

But I didn’t get too far down the hill though.

The Marité might not have been at home (she’s been gone for a few days now) but lots of other people were there on her quayside.

Some kind of military vehicle display I reckon.

So cancel the baguette I nipped down to the fritkot for a bag of chips and threw all of my plans into the air.

Some kind of military vehicle display it was indeed.

Probably about 20 wartime vehicles all told, of all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Tanks, jeeps, lorries and motorcycles, and so I had a good wander around.

Quite a lot of stuff that I would have happily taken home in a heartbeat.

But pride of place anywhere, anyhow and on any occasion has to go to the magnificent Welbike.

Designed to fold to fit into a parachute supply container, these were used by paratroopers and resistance fighters all over Occupied Europe.

A brilliant idea, but the Villiers 98cc two-stroke engine was hopelessly underpowered for the rough terrain and many were abandoned by the paratroopers as an unnecessary encumbrance once the War opened out.

Naturally, this part of France, not too far from the D-Day beaches, would be where you might expect the odd one or two to surface every now and again.

From there I wandered off down the quayside and onto the harbour mole to see if I could see anything that was going on where that ship might have been.

It had cleared off, so it can’t have been a shipwreck, but nevertheless I had a superb view of the Iles de Chausey and so I gave the new zoom lens a run-out.

And the verdict? Not as good as I would have liked, but I’ve had much worse than this. And it IS automatic focus.

But it did occur to me that I’ve not taken a photograph of the port of Granville from this vantage point yet.

I was over there where that black triangle was the other day, and you can see one of the boats that go to the Iles de Chausey in the bay next to it.

To the left of centre are the lock gates for the commercial port. It’s a tidal basin so when the tide is going out they close the gates so that the water stays in and the big ships like Pluto and Victress can stay afloat.

I waled all the way back to here via the Coastal Path. First time that I’d done that.

There’s a good view right back across the port and the town from up here, and you can see the ship repairer’s yard too. They have a novel way of hoisting ships out of the water.

So I carried on back here but couldn’t see anything to suggest what that ship or whatever it was might have been doing.

And had a rest when I arrived. It was a long walk back here – 4.8 kilomtres in fact according to the Fitbit.

Tea was pizza tonight (well, it IS Sunday) and I had a chat with Liz on the internet. Now another walk and an early night. Start again at 07:00 tomorrow.

We have church bells going off and a choir singing in the vicinity tonight.

Saturday 29th July 2017 – I’VE HAD A BAD …

… day today.

It’s probably something to do with my very late night last night – gone 02:30 when I finally crawled off to bed. And it was difficult to leave it at 07:00, I’ll tell you.

For the first couple of hours I didn’t do too much and then for the rest of the morning I went into town. It’s market day, and seeing as I hadn’t been into town during the week I took the opportunity to go for a prowl around.

Still no bank accounts transferred over, and so we had “words” in the branch office there. And quite right too. They seem to think that a wait of almost three months is “normal” – but I don’t, and I told them so too.

But the good news is that at least my pension is now being paid into the account – which means that I can afford to eat now.

Although whether I can do that soon is another matter. We’ve had an “incident” with the fridge today and I can see me having to replace that if I find a cheap one.

It’s my fault – I’m the first to admit it. But chiselling off the surplus ice with a blunt instrument has always worked in the past on every other fridge that I’ve ever had. Why didn’t it work on this one?

I declined the butties on the wall at lunchtime. There was a howling gale blowing and it was pointless to try to sit in that.

Fighting off the fatigue (and not always winning) I attacked another blog page today but ran aground. My heart wasn’t in it at all. I have days like this occasionally as you know and so I’ll have another go tomorrow.

Tea tonight was exciting. I planned something quite different and ended up with stuffed pepper (not made one of those in years), baked potato and frozen veg (and wrestling with the freezer door in the process).

A mix of tomato, mushroom, onion, garlic, olive oil, spices and tomato sauce into the emptied pepper and cooked in the oven for 40 minutes at 180°C (with the baking tray out, of course). Done to a turn it was.

And the veg smeared in butter and black pepper – it was gorgeous. But I never thought on to cook a rice pudding while I was at it. I’m clearly losing my touch.

So I’ll brave the hurricane and go for a walk in a minute, and then an early night.

I wonder where I’ll end up tonight. Last night I was somewhere that looked very much like this place, but I was looking down on it from a couple of hundred feet. We were (or, rather, whoever down there was) fixing a lighthouse that needed a good clean as it was all oiled up and sooty. And we had it working, and the beam was magnificent. Well-impressed with that.

Friday 28th July 2017 – NOW HERE’S A FIRST!

Yes, I’ve been for a walk in the dark.

In fact, I’d just finished tea when Rosemary telephoned me. And with chatting about this and that, and all things considered, it was about 22:15 when we hung up.

A couple of weeks ago, that would have been broad daylight. But not so tonight. Cold, cloudy, windy – and dark! I can’t wait for it to be dark at a sensible hour so that I can have an hour outside with the new camera and see just how good its much-vaunted “low light” facility might be.

And Rosemary is just as bewildered as I am about what is happening in the UK right now. But don’t get me started on politics. I vowed that I would avoid them in this reincarnation of the blog.

I’d had a really good night’s sleep too. out like a light without a care in the world. And off on a mega-ramble too that was so exciting that I reached for the dictaphone to record it. And by the time that I’d put my hand upon the aforementioned, every single thought about where I’d been had completely evaporated.

Something that’s happening far too often these days.

After breakfast and a nice shower, I went off to the shops. And apart from a pack of button-cell batteries on offer in LIDL (I remember thinking when I had the remote-control issues the other day that I didn’t have any of those) I bought nothing exciting at all.

My trip – just to LIDL and LeClerc, came to a mere €23:00 and I was back here for 11:00.

But I do like the frozen vegetables in LeClerc, and when I come back, I’ll be buying a small freezer. The choice is endless and won’t that improve my diet!

Frozen veg is generally fresher than fresh veg, and you have much more choice – living alone means that you can only buy small quantities, and they don’t do small quantities of leeks, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, that kind of thing.

And diesel – down to €1:10 at LeClerc – and queues a mile long too.

Lunch was on the wall as usual in the uncertain weather, and the Woman With The Dog came to say hello. As I said, people are noticing me now. I’m not sure whether that is a good or bad thing.

Apart from that, I’ve been on the blog doing the Canada 2012 updating. It’s not easy and I’ve only managed to unravel two pages – this one and this one – so far.

But never mind the slow progress – that’s two more pages than were done yesterday so we’re heading in the right direction.

The big question is though – will I finish this rewriting, or will the rewriting finish me?

Thursday 27th July 2017 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, I slept like a log. And woke up in the fireplace too – but you’ve heard that one before.

I’d been on my travels too – but I’ll spare you all the gory details as you are probably eating your tea just now.

I’m still aching in the shoulders, although it’s eased off a little. The pain will all go away probably the night before Terry rings me up to sand down the plasterboard in the second bedroom. That’s what usually happens.

Just the usual things happened today – a walk down for the baguette – a sit up on the wall in the windy sunlight at lunchtime. But for much of the afternoon I’ve been taking it easy.

This morning I finished off uncombining the blog entries for my trip to Brussels over Christmas and New Year of 2011/2012 to see Marianne and sped through until 24th April when I shuddered to a halt.

The period from then until the end of May 2012 is, to put it bluntly, a total mess and this is going to take some untangling.

The pages that I wrote for my voyage are somewhat hit-and-miss. I hadn’t developed a real technique at that time. I spent much of the afternoon having a basic look at them, having a think, and having a distraction or two (and much to my surprise I didn’t actually crash out today).

But the net result of all of that is that I now think that I know how I’m going to do it – and it will be a lesson for subsequent years (although things have improved a great deal since 2012).

So now I’m going for a long walk. I had a letter in the post that needs a reply, and it’s only from the Estate Agents down the hill, so I reckon that it would be a good idea to take it down there tonight.

It will be exhausting, but it will probably do me some good.

Wednesday 26th July 2017 – OWWW!

That hurts!

And in places where I didn’t even have places too.

The early evening snooze that I had didn’t interfere with my sleeping last night because I had a reasonably-early night and was asleep until the alarm went off.

I’d even been on my travels too, and who should appear but Zero. She who occasionally accompanies me on the odd night-time ramble here and there every now and again. Last night she was showing off her new tractor. She was impressed with a couple of features, such as the handbrake that sprung back out of the way after you had released it so far, and foot pedals that slid into place when you sat in the seat. I told her to be careful about the handbrake, and in my day it was the seat that moved, not the controls. But anyway she went off whizzing around in it to show off, and I hoped that she would come back to continue our chat. But then I had to travel off down some dirt track, and this had become part of a housing estate. But the rest of the area was quite overgrown and natural and had been declared a zone of Special Scientific Interest so we had to be very careful what we did and we could only park in certain areas.

But I couldn’t get out of bed this morning. I was aching everywhere. But where I’l aching most is in the muscles that go across the top of the chest and into the shoulders. Just the muscles that you use when you are sanding down filler. And I’m still aching even now.

It’s a good job that it was raining outside as I was in no fit state to go and sit on my wall. It was even a struggle down to pick up the baguette. And I spent much of the day drifting in and out of sleep. That’s how tired I’ve been.

However, I’m not going to let it interrupt my plans. I’ve no intention of “taking it easy” because that’s no quality of life. I’ll keep on going just as I always have for as long as I can, and if I have to pay the penalty over the following day or two, then that’s just part of the deal.

So right now, I’ll go for a little walk again and see what I can manage. No matter what I do, I have to keep moving.

And in the communal rooms across the Place, there’s a rock band that rehearses every week at this time. They aren’t much good but they are bashing out all the numbers that we used to play in “Jack the Ripper” and “Orient Express” in the early 1970s. I shall have to go and have a look at them one evening.

POSTSCRIPT
They were still playing when I went out fr my walk so I went for a quick butchers. Four guys in their 40s or so and a girl singer in her late 20s. Not very well-rehearsed, the drummer is too wooden and the lead guitarist isn’t as good as he thinks he is. As for the others, well, credit for them to being out there doing it.

Tuesday 25th July 2017 – I KNEW …

… that it was going to be a lot of hard work today when Terry offered me a slice of Liz’s home-made vegan ginger cake as I arrived.

And I wasn’t wrong either.

I’d had a bad night too. With crashing out so convincingly earlier, it was well after 01:00 when I went to bed. And it wasn’t half an ungainly stagger into the bathroom this morning when the alarm went off.

Having done a bit on the blog (I’m trying to update at least 2 entries every day no matter what) I hit the road. But it wasn’t so easy as it might have been as the telecommand for the barrier didn’t work. I had to rely on a helpful neighbour.

Calling at the Casino for some fuel and the boulagerie in Cérences for some bread, I arrived at Terry’s for coffee and cake.

A quick dismantle of the remote control showed that the battery wasn’t seating right. So I took 10 minutes to repair it properly and even made the warning light function – and that’s a first.

All morning was spent sanding down the walls that we had filled yesterday. Terry had the machines and I was doing it by hand in the corners where the machines wouldn’t reach – Terry couldn’t do that because of his shoulder.

By the time we stopped for lunch we were looking like snowmen.

This afternoon we finished off the sanding, and then we had the cleaning. And I’m not sure which took the longer either.

Final job was to sweep the chimney, which was blocked. This involved a trip around all of the neighbours until someone produced a brosse de ramonage – Terry had packed his so well when he had moved house that he had no idea where it might have been.

Terry was up on the roof and I was down below holding the ladder and checking the fire.

By 17:00 I was totally finished off (remember that I had given up all of this work) and came home. First thing that I did was to have a shower (I forgot yesterday) and rinse my clothes of the plaster dust.

Second thing was .. errr … have a snooze, and until 20:00.

I’d had the remains of Liz’s apple flan for lunch, but Terry had sent me home with the remains of Sunday’s hot-pot so that was tea quickly organised. And just as well too because I’ve seized up, aching everywhere and in far too much pain to move.

But I’ve freed off a little now so I’ll go for a short walk around outside, just to say that I’ve been.

And then an early night – I reckon that I’ve deserved it.

Monday 24th July 2017 – I HAVE JUST MADE …

… one of the best curries that I’ve ever made.

It’s a chick pea and mushroom curry, and I’ve no idea why it should taste so different (or so nice) but it certainly was. And there’s enough for three more days too.

And I’ve been out this morning too. Apparently there was home-made vegan ginger cake being prepared at Roncey so of course Terry needed a hand with the plasterboard in his living room, didn’t he?

So after breakfast I bunged a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine and Caliburn and I hit the streets for Roncey.

I went out there via Intersport. Liz had seen my fitbit on Saturday and was having a play around with it. She asked me if, next time that I was passing, I could pick one up for her.

And it was a good job that I was outside the shop already when it opened its doors, because they only had one left! They don’t have any now!

Terry had fitted the plasterboard but having pulled a tendon in his shoulder, couldn’t reach up to infill the joints. And so I spent a pleasant morning with a pile of pollyfilla (I thought that I had left all of that kind of work far behind me).

There’s plenty of vegan ginger cake left, so I reckoned that the pollyfilla would need a good 20 hours to dry, and I could go back tomorrow morning and sand it down.

Back here, I crashed out for a good hour. Clearly even doing that amount of work was too much for me, but you will be amazed at the lengths to which I will go in order to get my teeth stuck into a slice of Liz’s home-made cake.

So curry for tea tonight, and now a walk. And then a shower (for my nice, clean bedding) and an early night. I need to build up my strength in order to justice to another slice of Liz’s cake.

Sunday 23rd July 2017 – THAT WAS A LOVELY …

… pizza tonight.

And it would have been even lovelier had Brain of Britain taken out the baking tray from the bottom of the oven. D’ohhhh!

So having had a coffee last night far later than is good for me, it was about 01:20 when I crawled off to bed last night. And despite waking up at 07:45, I thought that there was little chance of that, so I turned over again.

I reckon that 08:50 is as good a time as any to leave my stinking pit on a Sunday. But that meant a hurried scramble down to the magasin de presse for my baguette before the grockles cleared out the supply.

And, sad as it is to say, I have been “observed”.

My usual spec on the wall at lunch was once more occupied by grockles so I had to sit elsewhere next to a mother and young daughter grockle group a little farther down. And some woman walking her dog came over to me “what’s up? Have the tourists pinched your usual place?”

Yes, I’ve been well and truly fingered, haven’t I?

And I wasn’t alone either – and I don’t mean grockles and women with dogs.

Sitting there minding my own business when along came a young tabby-and-white tomcat. He went around the various groups of people scrounging food, and came over to me to see what I had. Of course I had nothing for him, but he let me pick him up and give him a stroke.

Very relaxing, stroking a cat. It’s good for the stress.

So as well as crashing out for half an hour this afternoon, I’ve been on the blog again. A few more pages unravelled, but one that didn’t even merit a placeholder back in December 2011 has now evolved to almost 1700 words.

There have been a few like that too, haven’t there? I wonder what was so important back in 2011 and 2012 when I never found the time to go back and write up pages like this.

And I’ve had another little play with a computer program.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am a big user of Paint Shop Pro. The first serious computer program that I ever bought in 1996 and it’s served me faithfully for all kinds of image editing ever since – until I … errr … mislaid the disc.

I’ve turned my attic at Les Guis upside down on numerous occasions trying to find it, but to no avail whatever.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "thank goodness" – ed … on eBay the other week was a copy of PSP 8.1 – a major upgrade with many more useful features than my old PSP 7 that has done me almost 20 years service.

The price was far less that what I paid back in 1996 too and so I mentioned it to Terry and he duly obliged.

So that’s me now with about 4 years of work to catch up. I hope that I can remember how to use it!

I’ll make a start when I come back from my walk. It’s actually stopped raining for once.

Saturday 22nd JULY 2017 – SO WHAT …

… do the following four hotographs all have in common then?

Apart from the obvious fact that they were all taken from exactly the same viewpoint.

And I’m sorry about the choice of viewpoint, but if anyone really thinks that I was going to look for a more scenic viewpoint in all of the torential rain that we had for most of the day yesterday, then they are mistaken.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that about a week ago I told you that I had just made (yet another) major expense.

And I also said that the other day I’d had a visitor. The visitor was the man from FEDEX and he had brought me my parcel from Germany.

And I’m now the proud possessor of a new camera.

Cost me an arm and a leg too, but I’m sure that it will be worth it.

The Nikon, after many vicissitudes, has temporarily given up the ghost. It needs a new lens at least I reckon, and I have just the aforementioned – sitting back in Virlet. No good there, of course.

So being rather stranded for my holidays, I’ve splashed out.

Rhys (and a couple of other people too) are extolling the virtues of these new mirrorless digital SLR cameras – small, lightweight but very rugged, and there have been some good offers going around just recently.

And I’m now the proud possessor of a Nikon 1 J5.

It’s quite small, not the thing if you have big fingers or are wearing gloves, that’s for sure, and it’s comparatively heavy for its size, but it really is pocket-sized, which will be very handy.

And it’s with this camera that the first two photos were taken.

The lens with which it comes is a 10 – 30mm, so it’s a 0.6 to 1.6 zoom – the first photo taken at min and the second photo taken at max.

With all of the photos scaled down to 800×533 from their standard format of … gulp … 5568×3712, quality to 60% and size to 170kb from … gulp … 11,000kb, they aren’t bad at all

As for the following two photographs, the camera was not the only thing that I bought.

While I was at it, seeing all of the fun that I had had with a cheap telephoto lens, I lashed out and bought a zoom lens.

30-110 zoom it is, so with the focal length of a standard lens being 18.5mm, this is something like a 1.6 to 6-times zoom.

Not as powerful as the big one that I had, but these cameras are in their infancy and good second-hand stuff is hard to find right now.

The first shot was taken at maximum zoom, and the second one is at minimum.

It’s a little grainy and not as sharp as I would like at maximum zoom, but like I said, it will be a while yet before decent second-hand stuff comes on the market.

So when I was wondering where most of the day went, now I know.

I was up early – and reasonably brightly considering my late night last night – and I did manage to dodge the rainstorms down the pick up the baguette – but that was about the limit. No going out for butties on the wall, I’ll tell you that.

I cracked on with the blog for the morning and I’m advancing quite well, but knocking off for a coffee round about midday I started to play about with the camera.

Later this afternoon I was invited for tea round at Liz and Terry’s. Vegan home-made hot-pot followed by vegan glazed apple flan and soya cream. Terry is busy plastering the living room but has hurt his shoulder and finding the rubbing down of the joints very painful.

So in a moment of weakness (my spirit easily succumbs when it’s tucking into Liz’s baking) I shall be out working on Monday – and maybe for a couple of days afterwards too. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

But the drive out to Roncey was a nightmare. And living here might be bad for my health – I’ll tell you that.

Grockles wandering down the street pointing to the sky going “oooh look Doris, a seagull” and stepping off the kerb without looking – I bet that he had to go back to his hotel and change his trousers when Caliburn let fly at him with a volley on the motor horn.

And perishing grockles driving along at 10mph admiring the seagulls when I’m in a hurry. And bleeding grockles simply driving out of side streets totally oblivious of give-way signs and road markings – I bet that he had to go back to his hotel etc etc.

And blasted Belgian grockles who can’t figure out how the cash card reader at the petrol station at the Casino supermarket works (and I bet he had a surprise when I told him what I really thought of him – and in Flemish too!).

And the flaming road closed at Donville-les-Bains as they lay out the street for some kind of street festival tomorrow.

I didn’t go for a walk either – what with the rain this evening.

Ahhh well!

Friday 21st July 2017 – WELL, I’M NOT …

… going out for an evening walk tonight, that’s for sure.

Not only do we have a howling gale, we have a lashing rainstorm too. And it’s pretty black over Bill’s mother’s too.

I had another bad night last night, that’s for sure. Only 5 hours and something-worth of sleep, with ony four hours of that in a deep and restful sleep. Yes, I’ve charged up the Fitbit and uploaded the data to the laptop.

I was busy working on another mega-blog page after my walk and somehow ended up being carried away. 01:45 when I went to bed. No wonder that I was tired when the alarm went off, and that I crashed out for a couple of hours this afternoon.

But a shower brought me round somewhet after breakfast and having dealt with “a computer issue”, i went shopping.

And I’ve been spending my money too, yet again. Although nowhere near as bad as last week.

The Centrakor was the beneficiary of my largesse today. They had some multi-USB hubs on sale at €3:99 and I need one of those, seeing as how Brain of Britain has somehow contrived to leave all three of his back in Virlet.

But of course one thing leads to another, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised just how many other things there are.

The Bluetooth oyster that I had as a hands-free device before the bluetooth radio – I took that to Canada for use in Strider, but it’s a different kind of lead than a standard USB lead, and I’ve … errr … misplaced that.

And so I’ve been havong a good look around for another one. And they had one in Centrakor – with a Bluetooth oyster device included. All for €7:99, which is the same price as I have been quoted for a cable. Do bears have picnics in the woods?

Not only that, they were having a sale of silicon pie dishes and the like for just €3:99 which is cheap at anybody’s price. And now I have a proper round pie dish, a bread/cake mould and a mould for making six tarts. I’ll be having a go at making mince pies in the winter.

Note to self – ask someone to bring me a couple of jars of mincemeat from the UK.

I stayed in at lunchtime too – the winds were wicked out there and I wouldn’t have enjoyed sitting on my wall at all. And I rather lost direction this afternoon with the fatigue. So it’s not been a very good day.

But I did finish the blog entries about the trip to the UK in June 2011. Now to see what else I’ve missed before I start on the Canada 2011 pages.

And I did have a visitor at lunchtime – and I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow. I’m too tired to go into details tonight.

Footnote
I did go out – just for a quick lap around the block. And in the 5 minutes that I was out, I was soaked to the skin. Except where I had my new McKinley raincoat. That did exactly the job that it was supposed to do – and I wish that I had bought it in a bigger size now.

Thursday 20th July 2017 – TUESDAY NIGHT’S …

… sleep was something of a disaster, if you remember correctly.

Not so last night’s.

In bed at a reasonably early hour for these days (the days when I retired at 21:30 seem to be long-past, thank heavens) and I was out like a light until David Bowie awoke me.

Mind you, for all the good it might have done, I may as well have stayed in bed because it was miserable outside, with a storm-force wind, to such a degree that I was planning on cancelling my Thursday walk into town.

But it brightened up (just a little) and the wind dropped (just a little) by 09:30 so even though I hadn’t showered or shaved, I wandered off into town all the same.

Nothing doing at the docks – “no shipwrecks and nobody drownding, in fact nothing to laugh at at all” as the old song goes. So I wandered off to the bank to check the accounts and sure enough – the money STILL hasn’t come in. I’ll need to see to that.

Having picked up a baguette – one of the nice ones that I like from down town, I wandered back up here.

Lunchtime was as usual on the wall, but I didn’t stay long. I don’t mind overcast weather and I don’t mind winds, but when you have both together it’s a bit depressing and miserable.

But I have made a decision – and that is that I’m going to change my routine slightly.

I had to throw away a melon today and also a couple of nectarines. They aren’t lasting for a whole week in this weather.

What I shall be doing is on my Friday shopping trips, buying just enough for four or five days and having my walk into town on Tuesdays when I can pick up fruit for the rest of the week from down there.

Tea was the last of the lentil and mushroom curry – and nice it was too. I’ll have to invent something for the next couple of days. I’m sure that I can manage.

So apart from craching out for half an hour this afternoon, I’ve been on the blog again. Here’s a page that I half-started last night after I returned from my walk, but fell asleep with it only half-completed.

I can’t believe that I only gave this page a 100-word place holder back then. It concerns two subjects upon which I was working at the time and I remember thinking that I’ll go back and rewrite the page when I had a moment.

And then I must have forgotten.

But I didn’t accomplish too much today, what with my walk, my long chat with Terry on the telephone (a present has arrived for me today, thank heavens – many thanks, Terry), having a rest and that sort of thing.

But in an idle 10 minutes when I was stretching my legs, I brought out the sheep shearer and razed my head. It’ll do now for a bit, although I’ll give it the quick once-over before I go to Canada.

Tomorrow will be the same too with a shopping trip, so I shall have to push along much more rapidly when I can.

EPIC HALL

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