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Monday 12th March 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday 5th February 2018 – MY HUMBLE AND SINCERE APOLOGIES …

… to the Crédit Agricole for having described them … "on numerous occasions" – ed … as being the worst bank in the world.

As part of my mega-letter-writing activities the other day I sent a letter to the Royal Bank of Scotland telling them of my new address. I received a reply today –
“We’ve changed your address. Thanks for your request to update your address; we’ve now changed this for your personal account. …. then there’s nothing for you to do”.

And they sent it to my old address!

I don’t know why it is but I seem to be surrounded by a staggering level of incompetence – much of which is not, surprise surprise, of my making. I’ll be the first to admit that my financial affairs are not straightforward, but this is astonishing. In the days before blogs were invented, I had endless troubles with the Generale de Banque in Belgium, but I sorted them out “good and proper” and since they’ve been taken over by Fortis Bank, they have been good to me. But I can’t be doing with the rest of the motley crew. What on earth is going on?

And I was asking myself this this morning when the alarm awoke me. I’d been driving a komatik – complete with huskies – around the frozen wastes of Northern Labrador during the night and ended with me being shacked up – or, more probably, iglooed up – with a girl called Sylvia whom I know from another parallel existence. Not my ideal choice of companion to share my sleeping bag for the 6 months of night in a dark and crowded igloo but then again in the frozen wastes of Northern Labrador you have to make the best of whatever entertainment is available, as many a Métis‘s father will tell you.

After the usual start to the day I had a task to perform. In my mission to inform the Rest of the World about the Welsh Premier League I challenge every news source that I see that concentrates on Welsh rugby at the expense of football.

I had a good attack on a news source on Friday and they challenged me to send in my own information about the Welsh Premier League. And so this morning I sat down and wrote off a report covering all six of the weekend’s matches.

It goes without saying that they haven’t published it. I didn’t expect that they would, but one has to go through the motions.

After that, I once more attacked the database, determined not to let my frustrations overwhelm me. And it was a hard task too, I’ll tell you. Eventually I ran aground in Verdun when I was taken ill, and with reams of photos and no notes, and the blog wasn’t written up for that period, I’m stuck up a gum tree. I can’t even find the map that I had with the notes on it.

As for the hi-fi, I’ve found another unexpected hitch. For some reason it doesn’t like tracks longer than 24:59. And so all of my hour-long live concerts are being cut off in less than midstream – after all of the effort that I went to in order to prepare them. One unhappy bunny here.

Lunch was onion soup with pasta and bulghour and for some reason it tasted awful and I’ve no idea why. I’ve noticed that my taste buds seem to have changed since my illness and some foods – and even coffee – doesn’t taste like it did.

This afternoon I took everyone, including you lot and including myself, completely by surprise. Having cleaned and tidied the bathroom the other day, you may remember that I resolved that, when I had no plans to go off anywhere special, I would do a little bit of cleaning. And so today, I attacked the kitchen.

It’s been cleaned from top to bottom, a home found for almost everything that was loitering about, and it’s been vacuumed and the floor washed.

And it does look different.

Having talked to Steven and Rosemary for a while on the computer I went out for my afternoon walk. And for once, it wasn’t raining. But it’s cold out there. Down to 0.5°C last night – a far cry from the -16°C and -19°C of the Auvergne but still the coldest night yet. And it even snowed chez Liz and Terry. And more low temperatures are on the cards for tonight.

Tea was another splendid tortilla and spicy rice with an excellent filling. I’m getting good at these. And then my evening walk.

Bed-time in a minute, presumably to go back into my igloo. With a different companion tonight, I hope. Where is TOTGA when you need her?

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Wednesday 24th January 2018 – I HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

… lie-in this morning. It seems that the telephone battery went flat during the night and so it didn’t ring. Instead of a 06:45 awakening, it was something more like 08:45 when I left my stinking pit. It’s a good job that that hadn’t happened yesterday, isn’t it?

And I’d been on my travels too during the night – reliving parts of a nocturnal ramble that I had undertaken a good while ago. I was at one of the railway termini in South London (Victoria? Waterloo?) and needed to travel to Leicester (why, I have no idea). So instead of going on the Tube, I took the bizarre decision of crossing London on the bus, despite the heavy traffic on the streets. So I walked away from the Underground station that we have visited before on a nocturnal ramble and leapt aboard the bus, with the conductor telling me that it might take TWO HOURS. We ended up going down Euston Road on a high ridge looking northwards to some kind of rural view (which we have seen before) quite unlike anything that you might see around Kilburn and Kensal Green. I cant remember who I was with now but she insisted that we stop for a meal, even though time was running out. And there she was, gaily chatting away quite nonchalantly with her food and the sands of time were disappearing. It all fitted in with another nocturna ramble, where I was on a train heading somewhere but ended up at Crewe Station instead.

With no reason to go out early, I could have my medication and eat breakfast. But I didn’t feel like doing very much at all. In the end I made a start on the pile of photos that I mentioed earlier, trying to sort them, but my heart wasn’t in it and I was easily distracted.

When I was at Coutances yesterday I saw some more packets of soup that I could eat – no milk proteins or anything like that. “9 vegetables passed through a sieve” so I bought a few packets. This lunchtime I made one up. And while it isn’t the best soup that I’ve ever tasted, it went down quite nicely with some more bread. Thickening the soups out with this small pasta and bulghour is definitely the way to go.

This afternoon I finally knuckled down to work and scanned all of the paperwork from yesterday. Tomorrow when I come back from the shops I’ll send off for my new licence. I hope that I have all of the paperwork now.

Many people have asked me why I keep a detailed blog like this, and I always answer that there are several reasons.

  • When I used to work on rebuilding the farm and installing all of the solar panels and wind turbines and the like, it kept people up-to-date with that I was up to. Believe it or not, there were many people who were interested
  • When I’m on my travels, it lets people know what I’m doing and where I am, so that they have plenty of time to head for the hills if I’m on my way in their direction.
  • With my health issues, it lets people know that I’m still here and still alive. And if there’s a silence for a couple of days, like there was in Verdun last March, they can come to look for me and mak sure that I’m okay.
  • I’m the world’s worst at self-motivation. And so if I put down o here that I’m going to do something the next day, then I’m obliged to do it so that I don’t look silly, as well as being some kind of reminder.

But it serves another purpose too which is much more important. It’s an indexed blog and I can save keywords. And then I can search the keywords and see the entries that relate to those words. And that way I can tell, for example, exactly how many times I went to the Bank since 2009, and more importantly, the text of the blog will tell me why I went.

So when I receive a rather aggressive letter from the Bank, as I did yesterday, about something that they think that I have failed to do, I can search through my index (which takes about half a second) and tell them in an even more aggressive reply of the FIFTEEN times that I have been to the Bank since 27th April 2017, whom I saw and the reason for each of the visits. All there, documented in black and white.

And if they don’t like my reply, which I’m sure they won’t, they can close down my accounts and send me back all of my money. And then I’ll go and look for a competent Bank where my custom will be welcomed.

crane new lock gates port de granville harbour manche normandy franceHaving written my letter, I went out for a walk.

Today I took the route by the city walls – but on the pavement, not on the footpath below due to the weather conditions.

And we can see that our crane has now moved from the side of the quay down to the entrance to the port area where there are the lock gates. I imagine that it’s those that are going to be replaced.

And I wonder what that might mean for the port.

aerial erector granville manche normandy franceBut there’s a thing over there.

They have been building a new block of flats at the port for as long as I can remember and they are slowly reaching their finish. There’s a radio aerial been erected and today there was a guy climbing up there connecting the wires.

A hard hat, but no safety harness, not colleague to assist, no nothing. Just imagine that in the UK Nanny State with all of the Health and Safety restrictions.

Back here I made myself a coffee – but promptly fell asleep for an hour instead so it was cold. And then I’ve spent the time, apart from the half-hour on the guitar, re-reading my letter and tweaking it a little. When writing something off the cuff like that, it’s always a good idea to go for a walk and a think before sending it.

I had some grated vegan cheese left over from the other day so I made myself a pile of mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables all drowned in a cheese sauce. And delicious it was too. And then the evening walk around the headland.

And I hope that the alarm works tonight.

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Monday 14th August 2017 – AT THE HOSPITAL …

… the news is not so good.

While the blood count is up slightly at 9.6 from 9.5, something else in the body (and I’ve forgotten what it was) has plummeted by over 25% – from 39 parts to 29 parts.

This has caused a few raised eyebrows and they wanted me to come in again to see if it might be just an errant result.

But no chance of that! My flight to Montreal is at 15:20 and I intend to be on it – and I won’t be back until 12th October. So my appointment is on 13th whether they like it or not.

And here’s a thing – I asked the hotel manager whether it’s cheaper to book a room over the counter or over the internet by a booking agency. To my astonishment he replied “over the internet”.

That was the last thing that I was expecting because I know how much commission these booking agencies charge. But if that’s what he wants me to do, then that’s what I will do.

Despite being awake at about 06:00 or something, there was no chance of me moving. It took the alarm at 07:00 to shift me from my stinking pit. And after breakfast I came back here and attacked yesterday’s magnum opus.

sncb bruselles gare du midi leuven belgium aout august 2017That took me up to shower time, and then a slow meander down the road to the railway station.

And my luck was in too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the trains to Leuven run at peculiar times – there are three all at once and then nothing for 40 minutes.

And so no-one was more delighted than me when an Inter-City pulled in just as I arrived at the station.

sncb bruselles gare du midi leuven belgium aout august 2017It was a double-decker too. Very nice, comfortable and modern, so I went off to sit upstairs.

Of course, Brain of Britain had forgotten his book and so he had to sit there and admire the scenery for the whole route.

Not of course that he was complaining about that too much.

At Leuven we had a nightmare of queueing for a new travel ticket – mine is on the verge of running out. But once it was organised it was off on the bus to the hospital and my appointment with Destiny.

I walked back through the town, picking up some stuff for lunch tomorrow as well as a nice sorbet as a treat. I reckoned that I had earned it.

sncb leuven bruxelles gare du midi belgium aout august 2017You know about the irregular running of the trains between Leuven and Brussels. But here again I was in luck.

The train to Knokke was running late so just as I arrived on the platform, so did the train. otherwise I would have had an uncomfortable wait for the train from Welkenraedt.

These trains are old, dirty and rattly but they are here and that’s the important bit. I was soon back here.

We had another disaster for tea tonight. I’d been saving my plate of lentils for tonight but after they had taken my order and having waited for 20 minutes, they told me that “lentils were finished” even though I’d seen a plate in the cooler.

I ended up with a bag of chips instead.

It seems that I’m fated to have bad luck with my meals this time round. And so I’m glad that I’ve bought some emergency supplies for the plane tomorrow, to go with the crisps that Alison gave me on Sunday and which I forgot to mention.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Saturday 22nd JULY 2017 – SO WHAT …

standard lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy france… 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.

standard lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceRegular 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

30-110 lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceAs 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.

30-110 zoom lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceNot 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!

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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.

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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.

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Wednesday 19th July 2017 – THIS WALKING IDEA …

… is supposed to make me sleep better at night.

And it worked for the first couple of nights, but last night I dunno what happened because I was still sitting up here working at 01:45 and even when I did go to bed I couldn’t sleep (note to self – check Fitbit next time that I charge it up)

So a very tired me staggered out of bed this morning … errr … somewhat after the alarm had gone off.

Grey, miserable and windy. But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the weather. And I didn’t feel much like going out for my baguette this morning. But I was early too, which makes a change.

Lunch on the wall, with no lizards and mice to keep me company, a little … errr … repose this afternoon, and another helping of lentil and mushroom curry for tea.

And the blog.

Having spent some time last night (or, rather, early this morning) untangling my visit to the UK in early June 2011, I started the assault on the pages.

I’m halfway through at the morning, having dealt with pages like this one that never even had a place-holder before. The next half a dozen have been done too.

It’s amazing the things that I have forgotten, and the things that never made it onto the blog. it’s high time that I caught up with it.

And remember the other day when I mentioned my mammoth expenditure?

The first part of it has come today. But of course it’s the part that doesn’t work without the other bit, so you’ll have to wait a little longer to see what it is.

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Tuesday 18th July 2017 – CRASH! BANG!

No, I’m not doing the washing-up.

There I was at lunchtime sitting on my wall at lunchtime eating my butties and admiring the view (and watching the Grima depart for Jersey with a full load of stuff on board) and thinking to myself “it’s going a bit dark across the bay round by Cancale”.

Back here at about 15:30 the most enormous hurricane sprang up – totally astonishing; I stuck my head out of the window and I could see the wild storm lashing the rocks.

About 5 minutes later it went as black as pitch and I thought “hey up – we’ll get the lot in a minute!” and I hadn’t even finished saying it when there was the most impressive flash of lightning followed by an incredible thunderclap.

And then we had the rain.

Sheets and sheets of it, with the orchestra and light show rumbling on and on.

It all cleared up after about half an hour and we were then back in the sunshine. But that was so impressive. I really enjoyed the show.

What else that was impressive was that I was out like a light last night and slept right though until the alarm went off.

I don’t remember too much abut my little voyage last night though. Except that it was in Luxembourg – or was it Liechtenstein – and a visit to the country’s tax office, only to find that because of the small size of the country there wasn’t enough room for the Government offices there so they were all in the next town in a neighbouring country.

Today, I’ve been pressing on with the blog. And most of the time has been spent on just one particular page. 2300 or so words on there, and it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t even a placeholder there before.

Not only that, I’ve probably done another 9 or 10 too and I’m in April 2011. And I would have done even more had I not … errr … had a little rest.

Won’t be so easy in a bit though because there’s a huge mess of pages to untangle from when I was in the UK. It’s hard to believe that I went from March 2009 to early summer 2011 without setting foot in the Perfidious Albion except for a day trip to pick up the tile cutter.

But then again, apart from a quick day trip for Terry’s slates, I’ve not been there since December 2012. And I can’t say that I miss it any. My future is well and truly here.

And those of you with long memories will remember me moaning a while back about a data cable for my Canadian mobile phone, and Rhys using the medium of the “comments” page to show me on that he had seen?

Well, it arrived in the post today.

So many grateful thanks from me, and you will be receiving a plain brown envelope in the post shortly after I set foot in Montreal.

The comments facility on this blog is a powerful thing. Why don’t you try it some time?

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Monday 17th July 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… I had 5 hours 38 minutes of restful sleep and 1 hour 14 minutes of restless sleep. I can see that I’m going to become pretty annoying with this Fitbit thing.

But don’t worry – it only synchronises the data when I charge it up off the laptop. That’s about once every three or four days, I reckon. And if I charge it up off a plug then it will be even less frequent than that.

But it must have been the restless bit when I was away with the fairies. And just for a change last night, with something that doesn’t happen very often at all, I was an observer in this one.

For some reason the star of last night’s show was a woman. She needed to be somewhere at 08:15 and it was now 07:55 so she reckoned that she had a couple more minutes to loiter around before she needed to leave. But just as she was about to go her husband shouted down from his window that he would take her if she could wait a couple more minutes. It turned out that her husband was a medical man of some description and in taking her he was leaving a couple of patients unsupervised. While he was away something went wrong and he was hauled up before the GMC. It was held that as the nature of his wife’s voyage was something medical, he was not wrong to attend to her, but in abandoning his other patients for that period he was guilty of a lack of good judgement.

The alarm awoke me and after breakfast I went and had a shave and a shower (and to charge up the Fitbit off the laptop – hence the data – while I was in there). And I nipped down to the magasin de presse quite early for the baguette – before the crowds arrived.

Lunch was of course on my wall, and I saw the Grima come dieseling in. I was going to take a photo but I found that I had left my phone behind. But it was nice up there in the sun – I really enjoyed it.

For tea I put a mug full of lentils in the slow cooker at 17:00 and by 19:30 they wee done to a turn. With the left-over mushrooms I made another mega-curry with enough for three more days.

Good news on the blog front. I’ve now caught up with where I wanted to be. I have however lost 48 entries somewhere that don’t fall in the “unclassifieds” and don’t fall in the “updated” either. I’m intrigued to know what is the issue with them.

But what I’ve done is to start at the beginning – july 2009 – and go through looking for missed days – days which have been conjoined into others. I’ve already found eight or none that I have missed and which now have pages of their own.

Two pages in particular from my 2010 visit to Canada – this one and this one – have taken me all afternoon and quite rightly so.

They were immense and it gave me an opportunity to put into practice the idea about which I told you yesterday – to write up my daily adventures in North America on the blog rather than on the website – although I might do that as well in due course.

Now I’m going to go for a 10-minute stroll. I’ve done this the last couple of nights as the Fitbit is telling me that I’m not having anything like enough exercise and that I’m sitting around far too much.

Sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.

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Sunday 16th July 2017 – ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!

The best yet!

Now that I have finally worked out how to do it, I shall be doing it again and again.

Quite simplt, take out the bottom tray, move the cooking shelf down one notch, and there I had the most beautiful pizza yet, done to a turn just a couple of minutes longer than recommended.

I’m well-impressed with that!

I had a good night’s sleep too, and was off on a considerable number of travels too during the night. And I’ll tell you all about them once I download them off the dictaphone, because I forgot to do that this morning.

D’ohhhh!

So watch this space.

But 07:30 when my feet touched the floor. Best lie-in for a while that was. And a slow and steady start to the day.

But not for long. I had to dash outside for my baguette quite early today.

brocante granville manche normandy franceIt was brocante day today in the old town and I expected it to be heaving.

And I wasn’t wrong either. Crowds in the magasin de presse as well, to such an extent that there was a young boy serving there too.
“Are you the proprietor’s son?” I asked
“Yes I am” he replied
“Tough luck!” I said.

The place was heaving, as I said, and there were dozens, if not hundreds, of stalls there. And the one thing that they had was that their stuff was shockingly overpriced.

Some people had totally taken leave of their senses. A portable radio-CD player that would have done a little job in here – they wanted €30:00.
They can forget that!

l'ile aux fous brocante granville manche normandy franceBut if ever you wanted proof that the Brexit had been long-anticipated by the French, this book will prove it.

It’s all about an island nation that abandons its free ride in its biggest market for exported goods in order to save £350 million per week, and then finds that it has to pay four times as much in customs duties because it hadn’t thought about that.

It’s called l’Ile aux Fous – the Island of the Insane.

Up on my wall at lunchtime it was cloudy, and although I was alone there, the lawn was littered with piles of cars that had been abandoned – I refuse to say “parked” – there.

Apart from that, I’ve been on the blog again and I’ve reached early August 2013. Still 70 unclassified pages to go, but about 70 pages somewhere (and I’m not sure where) that need amending. And then I can start on the conjoined ones.

And I’ve had another plan too.

I’m going to rework the Canada pages so that the travelog is included in here and the web pages shall be for the merged voyages.

What I mean by that is that if you take, for example, my drive up the North Shore of the St Lawrence, that’s a merged page of about six (shortly to become seven) trips.

Keep those as a travel guide and keep the non-travel info on the blog.

But that’s a long way off yet.

And I’ve spent a lot of money today Much more than I’ve spent just recently too. But it’s an expense that needed to be made.

I’ll tell you all about it in a week or so’s time..

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