Tag Archives: welsh

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 – I WAS WRONG …

… about having a good night last night. All kinds of things were going off.

But never mind that – something much more important and unusual happened this morning.

In fact, a priest came to see me.

The timing makes me think that it’s to do with my request for euthanasia but he never mentioned the subject. He listed to all of my complaint. He even made me ages late for my Welsh class but I wasn’t all that bothered because I enjoyed his visit, strange as it it to day it.

However the antics of last night were hilarious.

Having an urgent need to visit the bathroom and tied to the bed by the sac of fluid from my pericardium, I asked for a bottle.

Sitting in bed trying to use a bottle was psychologically impossible so after a while I changed position and sat on the edge of the bed to try again

Just then a nurse came in and asked how I was doing My reply of “nothing yet” brought forth a lecture about the dangers of a full bladder

She measured it and found that it was indeed full so she went to find another nurse who subjected me to yet another lecture on the subject of full bladders and insisted on fitting a catheter. Naturally we had quite a stand-off on this point and the argument raged for quite a while.

At some point a third nurse joined in the fun. and with three nurses now watching me, however was I supposed to use the bottle under these circumstances?

In the end I chased them and their catheters away and once they had gone it took about 10 minutes to make use of the bottle.

The upshot of all of this is that they brought me a “toilet chair” that I can use in comfort and taunt whoever it is who is interested in my “output”.

Eventually I finally managed to drop off to sleep. There was something about being in a cricket pavilion last night. I was there with Nerina. There was something about people had to register and register the clubs from which they had come and where they were signing for. After 3 or 4 entries it all became very confused. There was some kind of issue about Derbyshire but nevertheless I wrote “Derbyshire” on the form and thought that I’d deal later with any flak about it. It was raining outside. I thought “how are they going to start this cricket match?” but anyway they did, as far as I knew. Later on I was standing on a bank at the side of the road when a large lorry pulled up, a farm cattle truck-type of thing. It was Sherman Downey with a couple of rubber edgings for doors or windscreens. I was surprised and said that I hadn’t actually ordered anything at the moment. That took him by surprise too. he was there with these 2 rubber edges that I didn’t want.

So with the priest making me late for my Welsh lesson I joined in the class somewhat later. And I wasn’t there for long before an endless stream of nurses kept on interrupting me. In the end I logged out.

This afternoon I went for a couple of tests and examinations. The last one of this bunch was an echograph performed by a doctor with an assistant who looked as if she was about 12.

After he finished with his examination with the echograph I asked the little girl if she’d like a go and so with a big smile and with help from me and from the echpographist she used the echograph to examine my heart

The net result is that here is no more water around the heart for now – just a bit of sediment that causes no problem

After the echographist went to make his report, I had a chat with his little assistant. I asked her how long she’d been a student and she replied “2 days!”.

She’s actually a schoolgirl on a work placement and she was ever so pleased because I was the first patient she’s ever examined. But as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m all in favour of letting the students practise on me.

They have to learn somehow.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’ve finished my notes, had a good chat with Alison and Rosemary and have everything prepared just where I need it.

And I’ve had a fever too – a temperature of 38.7°C. They’ve packed me in bed with a few ice-packs and it’s down now to 37.9°C

After falling asleep yesterday evening and having all kinds of issues during the night, I want a peaceful evening and a good sleep. I wonder how someone might come along and disrupt me again.

It goes without saying that they won’t let me have any peace and quiet. This crew in the ward this week are nothing like the kind souls of last week.

Tuesday 15th November 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about them planning to heave me out in the near future.

The doctor came to see me this morning and gave me an examination and I went through my usual spiel about the hospital going round and round in circles and I was pretty sure that she understood.

However she came back a short while later with her professor who had a chat with me. She explained that there were at least two viruses in my body and there are still traces of pneumonia in my body.

However she did yell me that despite everything, they were still planning on letting me go. Apparently they were worried that I’d catch Covid if I remained in the hospital;

And so I asked whether she was worried about me catching Covid during the 1400km round trip to the hospital and back to the various appointments that (I hoped) was sure to follow.

Now that took her completely by surprise and totally deflated her. Apparently she was totally unaware that I lived in France. Making the most of her bewilderment I mentioned that when patients were temporarily discharged from the hospital a room was made available at St Pieter’s Hospital. However they have demolished that, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

There’s always Pellemberg, where I’ve stayed before, out in the wilds of the back of beyond, so I made sure that she was aware that I knew all about it.

However I have a feeling that I’m going to be out on my ear in a few days time regardless of anything else, a golden opportunity will be missed, and I’ll spend the rest of what’s left of my life travelling to and from Granville to Leuven and going round and round in circles when I get here

And isn’t that a depressing thought?

There was something quite important that happened on Monday that I forgot to mention last night

During the night of Sunday and Monday I must have had a dream at some point early on about a doctor wanting a urine sample for me the next time that I went from the bathroom. Consequently when I awoke at some point to go to the bathroom I rang for help

When the nurse came I babbled something incoherently about giving a sample, even though my body was desperately trying to process when it might have been that the doctor had come to see me.

Anyway, the story ended with the nurse helping me totally unnecessarily to the bathroom and no sample being taken.

It was really, really confusing.

Last night was much more quiet. No-one came to see me and apart from the odd trip or two to the bathroom nothing happened at all. Mind you there was some stuff on the dictaphone.

I was travelling on a train and it had an accident. I ended up falling across my youngest sister. When we picked ourselves up there were3 of us in the compartment, me, my brother and my youngest sister. I had some dresses that needed to be tried on by someone but seeing as she was there I had her try them on. They fitted her beautifully, these exotic party dresses that looked as if they might have been made for an adult but fitted a child. There were 1 or 2 gasps of astonishment from another woman who was there too. I gave her one, I gave her the second and I gave her the third. It all went really well. I asked my sister if she wanted some coffee. She’d never tried coffee before so I made her something weak. she drank it and thought that it was nice. The second dress, I gave her a second coffee and I’d made it the same. She thought that was nice too. But the third dress I made the coffee just how Nerina liked it. Of course she wasn’t there so I offered it to my sister. She tasted it and pulled a face. She asked about it so I said that it’s coffee that I’d made for Nerina. I could see that she was putting it on one side as if she was going to deliberately forget to drink it at some point or other.

I was moving house and I had a few people who were going to help me. They’d come round to see me to talk about the job, some young people and have a look through. The vehicle we were going to use was an elderly Ford Transit heavyweight van, a kind of van built on the long wheelbase rather than the panel van integral design method. An ancient, elderly thing but it would do the job. As we were talking a friend of mine rang up. He started to talk to me about the move. He asked me what my plans were. I felt terrible trying to discuss it with him without actually having discussed it with these people. That’s why they were here. The plan was that Day 1 we’d pack up the apartment into this van, Day 2 we’d drive to Shrewsbury, Day 3 we’d have a day off to recover and Day 4 we’d unload the van at the new house. My friend was astonished about this. He thought that it would cost the earth. I couldn’t talk about that because I wanted to talk to these people about it first. It was a very awkward, stilted telephone conversation. One or two things did actually come out which resulted in one of the people with me sending me an e-mail. I thought that this conversation with my friend was going to go completely out of hand if I wasn’t careful. How I wish that he hadn’t called up at that moment so as to give me some time to agree terms with these people who had just come round.

There was more to it than this but you don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating a meal.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already awake. There’s that much racket here in the early morning that after about 05:30 it’s almost impossible to sleep if you’re as light a sleeper as I am.

We had all of the usual routine but a physiotherapist came to see me and ran me through a few exercises. My legs are much weaker than you’d expect and it’s going to be ludicrous if they let me out into the wild blue yonder.

As well as the doctor and her professor I had a Welsh lesson too. Surprisingly that passed OK and in fact I was quite pleased about how it went.

And that makes a big change, doesn’t it?

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with nurses, falling asleep, all kinds of stuff like that. And eating my rather boring meals. They are good, well-prepared and filling but they are all the same and after nearly 3 weeks I would die for something different.

Anyway it’s early now and I’m told that a nurse will come by later on at some point but even so I’m going to settle down under the bedclothes and listen to the old-time radio.

Tomorrow there are no appointments so it should be a quiet day. There’s something happening on Thursday and then several appointments a week later. So if they throw me out after my Thursday appointment I’ll have to kick my heels around Leuven for a week.

This is all turning into something of a farce, except that it really is no laughing matter.

Tuesday 8th November 2022 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what happened to me today.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 today I was sound asleep. One of the deepest sleeps that I’ve had for a while. And when it went off at 06:35 it awoke me again

When breakfast came round at 08:00 the nurse awoke me to eat it, and a relentless chain of nurses, doctors, specialists and the like continually awoke me throughout the day.

On the way in my bed down to an ECG scan I fell asleep twice as well.

In fact I’ve been in a deep sleep for most of the day today. Right now I just want to go to sleep again and I really don’t know why.

But at least after the panic last night when I had a relapse they are taking things seriously. They have examined my chest thoroughly, carried out a few examinations on my right leg and checked over a few other things

There was the dictaphone to check over too I was in hospital last night being seen to because of this problem that I have with the chest. They were busy arranging me and I was trying to make myself comfortable. There were some temporary blankets that somehow ended up on fire and some of the blankets fell off. I realised that I wasn’t as cold as I had been so I must be improving. I went out past the office where people like my friend from Munich would sit but it was empty. I was gradually being brought downstairs, I thought, presumably for another examination but I didn’t really know

We all also went to Vire last night, to the cathedral, but it was nothing at all like the real Vire. We drove there, drove through the town to see the sights. We had to follow the road round. We thought that this would be where all the signs were for various things and sure enough there was a sign for the cathedral. We went that way and parked, got out and then walked al the way down these steps to where the cathedral was and began to have a good look round

There have been so many people in here today interrupting me that it’s only now that I’m on my own.

My Welsh class today was a fiasco. There were far too many interruptions for me to concentrate on what was happening in the lesson.

Apart from that it’s been a busy day and I’m hopeful that they will eventually find out what’s going on with my body.

However I’m not to hopeful. It seems to me that with my underlying illness, my body is slowly breaking down and it may shortly be beyond repair. That’s really disappointing but it’s inevitable that this would happen.

With Waldenstrohn’s Disease, no-one has survived more than 11 years. I was diagnosed 7 years ago and I probably had it a year or 18 months before that.

My only regret is, as you know, the fact that they have taken so long to deal with this breathing issue – 18 months, in fact, but even that has been overtaken by events with my mobility issues.

There’s really no end to it.

Tuesday 25th October 2022 – MY WELSH LESSON …

… this morning was a disaster.

At least though I was there. And in spades too. When the alarm went off at 04:45 I was actually up and about. With having had no sleep the night before, I made sure that I was in bed early last night but even so I didn’t have much sleep. I was awake by 02:30 and had given up trying to go back to sleep round about 04:00 I hauled myself out of bed.

At one point I had been on my travels. There had been some kind of visit. We had a friend staying with us so I wasn’t working on the coaches that night. I was taking him and Nerina around showing him the town. Some girl had driven the coach that I should have been driving and she had STRAWBERRY MOOSE with her. It was late at night and we were on our way home and were discussing going down to the end of Beachey Head to show the guy the view from there night when we met the girl coming the other way in a kind-of Mini Moke machine. She flagged us down so we stopped. She gave Strawberry Moose back and said that she’d see us back home in a minute. After she left Nerina said “if we’re going there it’ll take us longer than a minute”. I replied “she was the one who made the arrangements. She’ll have to wait for us” and something about a song. There was a coach that had a certain song to perform so its registration number needed to be changed. Two of the coaches were identical but Nerina changed the number of the wrong one. I pointed it out to her but instead of changing it back and then changing the second coach’s number she went to change the number of the second coach first. That way she’d end up with two identical numbers and she wouldn’t know which one had been the original one which had been changed back. I could see that this was going to be extremely confusing but wit the woman turning up in this car she’d interrupted our train of thought in mid-action. This was bound now to lead to all kinds of confusion that we didn’t want to have and never be able to sort out.

With steam-driven internet, my loss of voice and all of that I couldn’t concentrate on anything so I just sat there and observed without contributing anything.

When the lesson finally finished I had my leftover slice of cold pizza and with checkout being at 11:00, I set the alarm for 10:00 and went back to bed. I didn’t sleep but just relaxed ready for the corvée that is to follow.

At 11:00 I went down to reception, stored my luggage in the still-incomplete after all these years annexe and went for a walk in the sunshine.

In the Rue St Catherine I stocked up with medication. And then sat for a couple of hours in the glorious weather. In fact I shall be sorry to say goodbye, maybe for ever, to Montreal. Sitting here in the Place Gamelin in short shirt sleeves in Summer temperatures with not a cloud in the sky watching the leaves falling at my feet.

At 14:00 I went back to the hotel, picked up my possessions and began the long, slow crawl to the bus stop The bus was actually there but the driver was having a break so we has to sit around and wait for him to finish.

Driving down the Boulevard René Levesque we hit every traffic light on red and then at our final pick-up we had to retrace our steps somewhat because of the roadworks and deviations.

Apart from the heavy traffic on the highway it was an uneventful drive and we were there by 15:20. By now I was pretty much played out so I staggered off to the check-in. Having checked in on-line last night my aisle seat was already reserved. I handed over my suitcase and drank my last can of energy drink

While finishing my drink I noticed that there was only a handful of people waiting in the queue for Security so I thought “sod it – I may as well go now while it’s not busy. Better sooner than later”.

And I don’t know what has happened here, but I have made many remarks about how the Dorval Airport – called these days the Pierre Trudeau Airport – has the rudest, most uncivil staff in the world but today I was impressed by their politeness and amiability. Times are certainly changing.

There was several hours to wait but a radio thriller of 150 minutes passed the time quite nicely. I’ve downloaded tons of old radio plays and shows to which I wan listen. It help pass the time

My plane pulled up eventually at the gate.

This was the best way that I could find to photograph It. I couldn’t see the registration number and the radar plot was “confusing”, so unfortunately I’m not able to identify it. There wasn’t even a guide in the seat pocket to tell me what model of ‘plane it was.

To my surprise, for a Transatlantic flight, the plane had several empty seats but I was on the end of a row of three.

And we were crammed in too because I had a lot of stuff with me. There are new rules on aeroplanes that you have to carry on board with you all of the electronic items that you have. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have plenty of that.

Our take-off was about 10 minutes late and everyone settled down to sleep except me because I couldn’t sleep with all this coughing that I’m doing.

We were served our evening meal in the dark – probably a cunning plan so that we don’t get to know what we are eating. I was assured that my meal was vegan but I remain unconvinced.

And then we hurtled off into the night

Tuesday 18th October 2022 – A FUNNY THING …

… happened this morning. But anyone who knows anything about cats will know that there is nothing whatever strange about it.

The alarm went off as planned at 05:45 ready for my Welsh lesson but immediately (and I DO mean “immediately”) Cujo the Killer Cat jumped on me and trapped me in bed.

She refused to move until she’s had a good 20 minutes of strokes and consequently I was late for my lesson.

Once the lesson began she came and sat on my knee for an hour or so, hogging the camera while the lesson continued.

At last I think that I’ve sorted out the best way to deal with the Zoom meetings on this computer.

A year or so ago I upgraded it by swapping the hard drive for a solid-state drive but the processor is still quite slow. Zoom uses up all of the resources which means that when I open the course book *.pdf the Zoom window stutters. However if I minimise the Zoom window so that it shows “active speaker only” then it doesn’t work too badly.

As for the lesson itself it passed quite quickly and it wasn’t too bad. In fact I did rather well in what I was asked to do. But I really need to work on my vocabulary. Well, more than that actually. I’m feeling that I’m falling way behind.

After the lesson finished I … errr … relaxed for a while and then had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were at an archaeological dig last night having to clean some of the artefacts. There were quite a few of us there. I found some kind of switch made from bakelite from the 1950s. It was extremely delicate and took me ages to get into all the nooks and crevices etc to scrape away years years of dust. Then I had to go to work on some kind of miniature man, wrap him in ivy seeds and ivy runners. It was called a “gorseinon” whatever that might be. I didn’t have a clue how to do this but there was some young girl there who was making one who gave me some instruction as to how to do it, hanging part of it around his neck and twisting it round so that the whole length of whatever it is that you had was covering his whole length to varying degrees.

Then I was out with Rachel. We were shopping somewhere. She was telling us about all the chaos there had been over the Christmas shopping. She had a list of shops that she wanted to visit but there was so much chaos on the roundabout and traffic junctions that she never actually managed to make it to one particular shop which was a pretty important one on the list. She was describing to me how people just take so much time doing their shopping because they would want to talk to the counter clerk, inane, banal things. She was imitating some of their conversation in this perfect Canadian accent while everyone in the queue with us was listening and smiling. We’d already had some kind of chaos on the roundabout with telling some stories to my brother who was in the car behind and was so intent on listening that he ended up being in the wrong lane coming into this roundabout and caused an almighty snarl-up of his own while he tried to sort himself out and get him on the right track

There was also something that I vaguely remember about a gold BMC1800 “ADO17” being parked up at a house in Canada. And that’s a surprise because the car was never available in North America as far as I can tell.

After lunch I headed off down to the mill again. It was quite busy there these days especially as they are loading up the feed truck to go on a delivery round. But these days I’m in no condition to help out as I used to.

But at least I think that I’ve worked out why the transmission in Strider might be slipping occasionally. There wasn’t a drop of oil in the gearbox so I topped it up – with about a litre of hypoid.

Strider has been stood for three years, I know, but I didn’t think that the oil would leak out over time. I shall have to put him up on a ramp and see of there’s a leak. Gone are the days when I could crawl underneath.

We were there until quite late this evening and when we came home, we were in no mood to cook. Consequently we ended up with leftovers. I had what I had yesterday except with a baked potato instead of the spaghetti squash.

Rachel and I chatted for a couple of hours and made plans for the future, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to start to pack as I ought to be thinking about going home.

Not that I want to, but I can’t stay here for ever. Apart from anything else, I have no fewer than 6 hospital appointments in Leuven a week on Thursday. Things are hotting up.

Tuesday 11th October 2022 – THE CAT SAT …

… on the mat, as the old saying goes.

But this morning, she didn’t. As I found out when I went to sit on the chair to take part in my Welsh lesson.

Of course, at 05:55 it’s quite dark and you can’t see all that much. And as I’m half asleep anyway and my eyes aren’t focusing properly after another miserable night, seeing a black cat on a dark blue chair is not easy.

However, she soon let me know that she was there. Poor Cujo, the Killer Cat.

The Welsh lesson itself was quite awful. I wasn’t in the mood, I was tired, I was having to juggle computer screens around and at one point my microphone stopped working. I was really glad when the lesson ground to a halt.

Cujo the Killer Cat had forgiven me for my faux pas earlier because during the first part of the lesson she was on my knee.

She cleared off at some point but as soon as the lesson ended she came back again. For an hour or so while I was dozing after the lesson I didn’t mind but when I wanted to work she just sat on the laptop on my knees and that was that.

No chance whatever of actually doing any work this morning so I relaxed instead.

Later on, I went for a shower and a clothes-washing session, and having rounded up all of the felines, I hung up my clothes in the wind. Then Strider, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I headed for Woodstock.

And by the time we got … errr … etc. etc.

This sunroof is enormous. It only just fits into the back of Strider. It’s heavy too and sending it back to Europe is going to be astronomical. Buying it hit the limit on my bank card so that’s grounded out right now and I had to use my European card for the balance.

It was a good job that I had some cash on me for my purchases at Sobey’s afterwards.

From there I drove to Florenceville to go to the bank to sort out my card, but I wonder is any of the regular readers of this rubbish would recall which day of the week is the one when the Scotia Bank closes early?

Round to the mill in Centreville to see what was happening there but, falling asleep, I ended up going back home for a coffee and a doze.

There was time before tea to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I had joined some kind of internet chat room but the nickname that I had chosen, I didn’t really want to advertise so I only published it as a form of coded URL so that only a certain few people would be able to know the URL and know that it was me but that’s really all that I remember of this at the moment

I should mention somewhere that Hannah and Jake were involved in this but I can’t remember how or why.

But I remember a bit more about that dream now. We were having a party somewhere in North America. I’d had a friend on the internet, a girl whom I knew. They wee talking about travelling so I said that if ever they were to find themselves in the UK they can come to Crewe and I’d be quite happy to put them up, cook a meal, that sort of thing. She said that that wouldn’t be possible because she and her partner were lesbians. The authorities would look very dimly on the idea of a pair of lesbians travelling with a very young girl and sharing accommodation with her, that kind of thing. They needed to be very careful about it which I thought was ridiculous.

Tea was a burger with baked potatoes and the left-over beans from yesterday’s brunch. I had a long chat with Darren and when Rachel came home we had a good chat too.

But right now I’m off to bed. It’s early but I’m exhausted and I have a long day tomorrow. I need to be on form, and I also need to avoid sitting on any cats. If they want to sit on me, that’s fine. But not the other way round.

Tuesday 4th October 2022 – WE HAD A NEW …

… student in our Welsh class this morning.

There I was taking part in the lesson when suddenly something black and furry stuck her head in front of my camera. It’s been three years since I’ve seen Cujo the Killer Cat but she certainly remembered who I was. She jumped up onto my knee in mid lesson and has spent much of the day sitting on my lap being stroked.

That’s because I wasn’t in any condition to go out and about today.

But anyway, more of this anon.

Last night was spent doing a lot of tossing and turning about. The bed isn’t as comfortable as the one in Montreal, that’s to be sure, but I really wasn’t in much of any state to go to sleep.

An alarm going off at 05:45 didn’t improve my morale any, and when I connected to my Zoom lesson at 06:00 and found that I’d downloaded the wrong course book to bring with me, I didn’t feel any better.

Eventually I managed to sort myself out, download the correct book and introduce Cujo to my classmates, accompanied by a pile of “ooohs” and “aaahs”, then the lesson could continue.

It was slow and painful, not helped by the internet connection, and I was glad when it was over.

Next stop was to listen to what was on the dictaphone. There was some kind of nightmare about everyone who was in the water. Some were in tattoos etc. I was watching them. It was the end of a film. When the whistle went, these people set off to start to swim. There was a load of people coming up behind them dressed in Victorian clothes of the era, very posh, who were just shooting them in the water like some kind of sport until there wasn’t anyone left alive. It was so realistic a nightmare that I thought it was the end of a film of a real event. It really was realistic

And then I dreamed that there was a contract out to build a pile of boats for the Canadian Shipping Company or something that meant that some of them had to be redesigned. I submitted work to redesign 4 but when it came down to it I was awarded the contract for 3 but I couldn’t find out what had become of the 4th. So when we had to introduce ourselves to everyone who was watching, this was what I said. Basically that I’d applied for the contract for 4 but only had 3 so it seemed as if boat n°4 which was called Zodiac had not been remodelled and I really didn’t have the remotest idea whether or not that was correct. I might have been given the plans and lost them, something like that, but that was what I said.

Finally I was with my Welsh group. We were about to take part in a lesson so I was changing. There were other people around there changing as well. It was a very small changing room so there wasn’t much room to spread out at all and we had our feet around everyone else’s faces etc. They were talking about photos. The photo that we’d submitted for our group came 2nd. They were talking about a few of the others. One of them of the Weddell Sea in the Australian Antarctic (that’s what I said) was won by someone called June Weddell or something. I said that I knew someone of that name with whom I’d been on trips. Someone said that she studied at the OU and I said “yes, that’s the girl”. Of course my friend’s name is quite similar to that but it’s not the same. I said that I’d talk to her about it and find out more about her photo.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned so far is that when I awoke this morning my foot had swollen up again like a balloon and I was in no fit state to go out anywhere. And so instead I’ve been sorting out photos and recovering from my exertions over the last few days. And that has been that.

Darren came home late from work this evening but he found me a bowl in which I can soak my foot tomorrow. And when Rachel returned we had food and a really good chat.

Right now I’m off to bed for a good sleep. And tomorrow I’ll soak my foot and then I’ll take Strider out for a run to see how he goes. It’ll be good to get out and about up and down the road and see what’s happening in the world.

Not to mention the vegan food on offer at Sobey’s. I need to stock up the larder in here for the next few weeks.

Tuesday 27th September 2022 – NOT VERY MANY …

… photos today. And when you look at the photo of the beach down towards Donville les Bains you’ll see why.

When I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland I was almost swept away in a rainstorm and at one point I was even thinking of giving up and going back home. However I trudged wearily and wetly on around my circuit.

So providing that I haven’t caught pneumonia or something else and don’t pop my clogs I’ll tell you all about my day.

And as usual, when the alarm went off at 07:30 it was a struggle to leave my stinking pit. And after the medication I came back in here to revise my Welsh ready for my lesson.

Mind you, I need not have bothered because it was a pretty gruesome lesson. It didn’t go according to plan at all and I made rather a mess of things. Somehow I’ve not been able to get to grips with things since we started back and that’s quite depressing.

After the lunchtime fruit I’ve been organising a few things. There’s a little something simmering away on the back burner and I need to prepare for it. and so I’ve been dragging stuff out of cubby holes and that sort of thing today

Another thing that I’ve been doing is checking all of the electric stuff and making sure that it’s fully-charged. It’s twice this week that I’ve been caught with my batteries flat.

And that took me up to the time when I usually go for my afternoon walk.

It’s no surprise that there was almost no-one down there on the beach. There was just one person out there at the water’s edge eyeing the waves but I was more interested in this guy here.

Al dressed up for the wind-surfing complete with board, but he’s on his way back to the steps up to the Rue du Nord. Obviously the storm was far too much even for him.

It was certainly far too much for me and as I said, I was in half a mind to turn round and go back home.

However, I carried gamely on, not that it did me any good at all because I couldn’t see a thing out there. There was just one person running around on the lawn and that was that. There wasn’t even anyone on the bench at the cabanon vauban..

And so I pushed on along the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was going on there.

And yet more excitement in the chantier naval again today. The only boat that remains in there today is Briscard. The other two, Gerlean and Chant des Sirenes, have now gone back into the water.

Not that this is a good day to be going back into the water. I certainly wouldn’t want to be out there today, not in a 25-ton fishing vessel anyway. We would have been OK on a 12,000 tonne vessel like THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR

And thinking about that has got me going again, hasn’t it? High time I hit the frozen north. What actually brought that to my mind was how cold and wet and windy it was. It actually felt like the Arctic standing there today.

Today is usually the day that one of the freighters from Jersey comes into port.

And there’s a huge pile of freight waiting on the quayside to be picked up as you can see, but this isn’t really the kind of weather that you would expect to see one of them struggle into port.

The two lorries there are quite interesting though. The other day we saw two refrigerated vans parked back-to-back with their doors opened. Today, there are two refrigerated artics doing the same thing.

It must be some kind of ritual, I suppose.

But there’s something going on here in the Rue du Port right now.

There was something in the news this morning about the bus routes being closed this weekend and this is probably why. There’s some kind of concert taking place by the looks of things and they are busy setting up the stage.

Last year, I vaguely remember something about this so I’ll have to look through the old records to find out.

Back here I had a coffee and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams where I had all of my work in a total mess so I was planning on retiring. I had my German homework to do but I hadn’t done it and I hadn’t done the next lot. The tutor started to harass me about my German. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to drop it or not. I explained that I was in a really bad place in my head at the moment. This wasn’t really the time but she kept on insisting. She started to talk about how badly she’d been done by some people. The football team that she’d trained for a football match who had let her down. This conversation started off being about me and my homework very quickly became a conversation all about her. I felt even more isolated while this was going on than I did before.

And I also have the very, very strong feeling that Zero was around last night too, but there was nothing on the dictaphone about that. That’s bizarre.

The rest of the day has been spent doing a load of washing and carrying on with what I was doing before I went out.

Tea was a burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes and then I had another meal to cook because there was still some stuff left in the fridge that needed to be eaten.

So now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. I’ve forgotten all about a football match tonight which was sad, and I have a busy day tomorrow so I’m not going to be hanging around for long.

Tuesday 13th September 2022 – THAT WAS HORRIBLE!

Quite the worst Welsh lesson that I have ever had. I couldn’t remember a thing and it all went from bad to worse.

Having a lay-off for three months or so was clearly the wrong thing to do, but unfortunately there didn’t seem to ba ny other way to keep going during the Summer break. That’s something to which I ought to attend in the future.

Right now though, I’m worrying about the present.

Going to bed was rather later than I was hoping so I didn’t have too much sleep. And compared with the last couple of days it was rather a lethargic raising of the dead when the alarm went off.

When the alarm did go off I was talking to some people about someone who was in a harbour somewhere along the coast over in the Channel Islands. I’d only just started this when the alarm went off and spoilt my journey.

Actually making a start on my Welsh revision was even more lethargic than leaving the bed, although at least I didn’t suffer the indignity of falling asleep. Finally, grabbing hold of my coffee and fruit bun I went for the disaster that was my lesson.

What made it worse was that there were only 4 of us today rather than the usual dozen or so. Consequently we were under much more pressure and there was nowhere to hide when you are constantly in the spotlight.

This afternoon I finally caught up with the guy with whom I needed to speak about this weekend and, regrettably, it’s not possible to involve myself in it. It was an extremely long shot but if you don’t ask, you won’t get.

And that took me up to time for me to go for my walk this afternoon.

As usual, my walk took me across the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

There weren’t all that many people down there this afternoon. The good weather hadn’t arrived today so it was much more like a mid-September day with a heavy overcast and a wind.

The tide was well out again today so those people who had actually managed to go down there had plenty of room to spread out. But surprisingly, there wasn’t anyone up at this end of the beach having a scratch around for shellfish.

No-one flexing their mussels today, you might say.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of people out there on the rocks this afternoon.

Not scratching around with pèche-à-pied instruments but actually brandishing a rod and line from the rocks. In fact, almost every rock down there had a fisherman perched thereupon.

And this isn’t our usual spec at the end of the headland either there wasn’t any room out there for any more fishermen. This lot were down the northern side of the headland.

And, as you might expect, we didn’t see anyone pull anything out of the water this afternoon. Not that anyone was expecting it.

The view out at sea this afternoon was quite miserable. But the view down the coast was so much better.

The headland at Cap Fréhel was quite visible this afternoon, even with the naked eye, but strangely we couldn’t see the lighthouse at the end. There was something out there that I could see so I took a photo with the aim of enhancing and enlarging it when I returned home.

Back here, when I had a closer look, I could see that it wasn’t the lighthouse. It’s actually a large ship, a blue one. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to identify it.

There was nothing in or around the port of St Malo that might have corresponded, but it could be a serviceship for the proposed offshore wind farm there.

and so I carried on with my walk around the headland.

Fighting my way through the throngs of the people too. There might have been only a few people down on the beach this afternoon but there were plenty of others around and they were all up here walking around.

And it looks as if there are a couple of new people who have rented one of the apartments in our building because there was one of the occupiers showing them around out here, explaining how the buses and the refuse collection works.

And it’s all of these temporary lets via the Internet that are killing the accommodation possibilities in these seaside resorts.

There wee crowds everywhere up here on the cliff path and lawn this afternoon.

Even down on the bench by the cabanon vauban. There was someone else down there with his backpack and his bottle of water looking around at what was going on down there. Fishermen and that ship that I’d seen a little earlier.

Not much else though. No-one is going out right now with the tide being as far out as it is. I can see me having to change my timetable in order to capture a little more of the action when the boats are going out and coming back in.

From there I walked around the path on the other side of the headland down to the port.

It looks as if the summer season is dying out right now because this afternoon we have two of the three ferries moored up over there this afternoon. There is Belle France and there is the newer one of the two Joly France ferries with its windows in “portrait” format.

No sign yet of Victor Hugo though. She ought to be coming back pretty soon because later on in the week she has some work booked, running out the last ferries of the year to St Helier.

It goes without saying that I’m quite disappointed with the ferry service to the Channel Islands. Half a dozen trips per month, and just in the summer season too, and the service isn’t going to last all that long.

Meanwhile, there were things that I needed to check in the chantier naval

Yesterday we saw the portable boat lift hovering around over Peccavi looking as if she was about to be put back in the water. Well she’s not there now, the ground’s all flat. And in her place is the trawler Pierre de Jade.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we know a lot about her because she was marooned in the chantier naval for quite a long period of time.

There’s another change too. Pescadore has gone back into the water too and her place has now been taken by a trawler that unfortunately I don’t recognise. She’s switched off her AIS transmitter so I can’t pick up a signal to tell me who she might be.

Time for another reconnoitre, I reckon.

Before I go back home I had a look down into the inner harbour.

Shtandart hasn’t come back yet but Marité is there in port. That’s another sign that the Summer season is drawing rapidly to a close.

So another day during which I managed to make a complete tour of the headland after my fall a couple of weeks ago. But I was decidedly unsteady on my feet today and I had a few wobbles. I don’t think that I’m in much shape to go anywhere really.

There xas some chocolate milk today for a mid-afternoon drink, and then I had a good listen to the dictaphone to find out where i’d been during the night.

I started off on a ferry going across the Gulf of St Lawrence somewhere. There were all these strange goings-on happening in the water but that was all that I remember. I can’t actually remember anything about this dream.

And later I had a house with a big front yard, a piece down the side and planty of room at the back. It was looking like a scrapyard with bits and pieces everywhere. Cars and cars etc. I started one evening trying to tidy up the place. By the time dawn came up there were only a couple of cars and a car bonnet that needed to be moved. I’d installed a sign outside the house that pointed to “Eric”. I’d made arrangements to build a sign so that people could see that it was here where I lived and that I had cars and everything. I programmed the sign so that if you typed up the name it came up with another. For some unknown reason that function didn’t work. I couldn’t make it change automatically. But the first sign that I mentioned was still out there. Liz and Terry popped by. They saw what was going on so they came for a chat. They had a look around and asked what this sign was for on the street. I couldn’t think so I said that it was a bed-and-breakfast. She said that I wasn’t going to have many people in here. I said that it’s basically for people driving past who want somewhere to stay for the night. If they came past here late in the evening they would never make it to the coast. She had a look and the place was all untidy. She said that she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to stay here. It became later and later and they decided that they were going to stay. I had a little giggle to myself with Liz saying that at one time she’d never want to sleep in a caravan but here they are, they’d actually bought a caravan. I went outside to finish off. A Cavalier, the type from 1984 turned up, a beige one, Y-registration. It was all smashed in down one side. Behind it an elderly Jaguar or Daimler stretch limousine came along. The guy in the Cavalier went to exit and enter this Jaguar thing and drive away with the driver. I went to have a look. This Cavalier was actually a Private Hire vehicle complete with plate but it was all smashed in down one side, far worse than any one that I’d ever had and I couldn’t understand at all why it would still be working.

During the night I’d also been out doing a coach trip to some kind of market or trade fair. All these passengers on board and we were wandering around here. Someone knew half the stalls and told me where to go to try on a leather jacket. As the crowds were drifting away I went round. Most of the stuff had been packed away and there was only one rail. I tried on a leather jacket and I happened to like it so I walked away with it without paying, wearing it. No-one said anything, no-one chased after me. I ended up walking right out of the market ready to go home. I ended up back at the Leese’s. She had noticed the time and thought that I was going to be hours late because when she’d seen me she was sleeping. She thought that this was a bad sign. If course Iw as soon awake, soon tidied up, soon had everything ready and soon back. She was surprised. There was another job to do that they didn’t think I’d be ready for. That was another coach trip. She had the paperwork ready and gave me a portable ‘phone. She started to explain it to me how it worked, the numbers and what the numbers meant and so on. of course I knew all this thing really well with having used mobile phones before but she insisted on showing me like some 5 year old baby would be shown something. It was all extremely patronising

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. And as I expected, the stuffing was quite powerful after marinading for 24 hours. Perhaps I ought to leave it for longer and see what it would be like then.

So, bedtime after a really disappointing day – for the Welsh lesson and for my little weekend project too. But as one door closes, another one opens and we’ll have to see where that one takes us

But that’s tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a better day.

Tuesday 23rd August 2022 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING!

And while you admire several photos of the piles of waterborne traffic that was out there today, I’ll tell you all about it.

This morning I had a conversation class with my Welsh group, from 11:00 until midday. And I was the only student in the class. There were just me and the tutor.

And to my, your and probably the tutor’s surprise, I managed 53 minutes of conversing in Welsh before I ran aground. And that must be quite remarkable. And by the time that it finished I was totally wasted

It wasn’t particularly good, but it does go to prove that I can talk a load of total rubbish in many different languages, not just in English.

Not that I was feeling very much like it because it was another kind-of late night.

As usual, something interesting came up on the radio just as I was about to go to bed and so I stayed up to listen to it. I can’t remember what it was now but it must have been something interesting, like an Agatha Christie or a Paul Temple.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was away on my travels but the moment that it went off, the details of the voyage evaporated and I can’t remember anything at all.

It was a slow start to the day while I tried to gather my wits and organise myself ready for my chat. And then grabbing a strong coffee and a fruit bun, I switched on the portable computer that has the webcam and the Zoom extension.

After the lesson was over I finished off the coffee and sighed with relief for quite a while, following which I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anywhere else that I’d been that I’d recorded..

Firstly, I was Christmas. I was up in my room working and the rest of the family were in the house. When I went downstairs to fetch something I found that they had all had Christmas dinner. Everything was spread out all over the table mostly and the cake was mostly eaten etc. I wanted to know what was happening. I was told “you should have come down”. I replied “no-one told me when it was going to be ready”. They all seemed to be extremely disinterested so I called my father a few names and he moved away. Some other girl decided to pick a fight with me so I called her a few names as well. A found a plate and a fork and managed to find myself a piece of Christmas cake which was going to be my Christmas dinner as I stood defiantly in the middle of this room where everyone else was sitting around eating and slowly ate my Christmas cake. I made sure that everyone saw me and they all kept their distance from me after I’d snapped at a few of them and no-one said a word to me

And then I was flying out to Canada. In the morning I had been at work. As the morning wore on it became increasingly difficult for me to slip away to catch my plane. The take-off was at 15:00 so I had to be there at the latest at 14:00. It was just dragging on and on the morning that I couldn’t get away. Eventually I managed to tear myself away with about 15 minutes to go. I had to drive to the airport, park the car, take a bus back to the terminal, check in etc. This was going to take ages. When I went outside my father was there with someone. He said “come over here. I’d like you to meet someone”. I said “no, you can’t drive me to the airport can you? I’m running so late”. he said “oh no, I can’t do that”. That was annoying. In the end I got into my car and drove like the wind to the airport. part of the time I was driving on the wrong side of the road. I couldn’t remember whether I was in the Uk or Europe. I was only when I was halfway to the airport I thought “do I have my passport?” I could see that if I stopped to check I’d be totally late for my plane and I’d have to search when I was in the queue for checking in. If I didn’t have it then it would be even more of a catastrophe. I was really panicking. So much so that I had a night sweat and I’ve not had one of those for several weeks.

By the time that I’d finished, it meant that my lunchtime fruit was rather later than usual, and then the rest of the afternoon was spend dealing with some notes of previous days from when I was gallivanting around in Central Europe.

Not all of it, that is, because I couldn’t keep going and ended up drifting away into the ether for half an hour or so at one point.

And that meant that my afternoon walk was later than usual.

As usual I went off over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening. And to my surprise there were crowds of people down there. And some of them had even gone into the water too.

Surprise, because it was still cold out there, cloudy and overcast. Not the weather for me to have gone willingly into the sea. I would have been much more likely to have taken refuge in the tent that’s down there on the beach than lounge about on the beach in my cozzy.

You have already seen the boats out there in the bay.

While I was walking down towards the end of the headland I was stopping to take a few photos of the loads of marine traffic that was out and about.

And while the weather out to sea was fairly hazy at a distance, the view along the coast was one of the best that I have seen.

Even standing on the clifftop I could see the lighthouse at Cap Frehel quite clearly with the naked eye, and when I clambered up on top of the bunker with the camera, the photo revealed not only the headland on which it stands, but the headland behind it too further over to the right.

That’s possibly the Cap d’Erquy or even the coast that leads up to the Ile de Bréhat although it would be astonishing if we could see that far out. It’s already about 70km to the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel.

There is a formula about how far you can theoretically see to the horizon depending on how high up you are, but the real distance also depends on the atmospheric conditions. Sometimes you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.

There were crowds of people milling around at the end of the headland and on the car park.

These people were however getting away from it all this afternoon. There were in fact several people out there on the rocks fishing, but they all kept to their individual rocks.

We didn’t see anyone catch anything while we were out there this afternoon and that’s just as well. We can’t have the fishermen going around making a habit of catching anything, especially when I’m watching them.

The seagull that was swimming around just offshore was enjoying himself though, relaxing in the surf.

Meanwhile just offshore at the Pointe du Roc we had plenty of traffic too.

In previous photos we saw Marité and then Monaco du Nord II out there going for a sail. Marité wasn’t in anything of a hurry but Monaco du Nord II I was and for a moment I thought that they might be on a collision course.

Consequently I loitered around in the vicinity hoping for some spectacular entertainment but they managed to avoid each other and the latter passed the former without any incident.

You can see what I mean about the view though. The town of Cancale across the bay was quite clearly visible today just above Marité.

It’s no surprise that I wasn’t alone watching all of the activity going on out there today because there was plenty of activity to keep people occupied.

Down on the bench by the cabanon vauban there was a couple of people. They were evidently concentrating on what was happening out at sea and that’s no surprise either. When Marité is in full sail she’s quite a spectacular sight.

While I was there I filmed a little video of Marité and then I headed off down the path on the other side of the headland down towards the port to see what was happening there this afternoon.

The only boat that was tied up at the Fish Processing Plant was one of the harbour lighters.

What I was interested in though was what was going on underneath the Plant. They must be expecting a few of the little fishing boats to come in shortly.

While most of the catch is hauled up to the Plant by the cranes that you can see, a couple of the smaller boats are owned by private individuals and seafood shops who process their own catch and those vehicles are there to take it away

That’s a lovely collection of fish boxes there on the quayside too. I suppose that the boats drop off their full boxes and take away some empty ones for the next day’s work.

And right on cue one of the little fishing boats comes into port.

There are two that look pretty much the same – Petite Laura and Lysandre. and even if we couldn’t read the name on the wind deflector above the wheelhouse we can tell by the registration number, that begins with “SM” for St Malo, this this one is Lysandre.

Meanwhile, over at the chantier naval there is no change in occupant. Still the same trawlers that were there yesterday and for much of last week. 6 boats in there at once is quite good and there’s not much room for anyone else, although we have actually seen nine in there at one time.

My path carried on down towards the inner harbour.

The arrangements for the Festival of Working Sailing Ships are proceeding apace. They have erected plenty of marquees down there now ready for all of the displays. And while I was watching they were testing the lighting.

The Russian sailing ship Shtandart is still there, as is Marie Fernand out of shot over on the right. But also in there is La Granvillaise who has now come in to join the party.

Who else will be coming in to join them?

Also in port, but not taking part in the Festival of Working Sailing Ships, is Victor Hugo.

She spent overnight the night before last on a sleep-out at St Helier and came back to Granville at 17:35 yesterday evening so I only just missed her arrival.

Back here I finished off the last of the coconut milk and then finished off the dictaphone notes on which I’d been working. There’s still a pile to go that represent seven days’ worth of dictating and there’s a considerable volume of stuff in there.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with the remains of yesterday’s stuffing. I’d forgotten to put any garlic in it yesterday so I added it in. And having been marinading in spices for 24 hours it was pretty powerful.

Although I’m listening to the Old-Time Radio (and the Navy Lark right at this moment) I’m going to try my best for an early night. Strange as it is to say it, I’m more exhausted having spent 53 minutes talking in Welsh than any other activity that I’ve performed for a while.

A good sleep will do me good.

Friday 22nd July 2022 – THAT WAS HORRIBLE!

It really does look as if I’ve slipped right back into where I was a couple of months ago. This morning I crashed right out in front of the computer, a proper, deep crash-out of the kind that I was having a couple of months ago. I was away with the fairies for a couple of hours and as a result I was late for my Welsh class.

That’s probably the most depressing thing that’s happened to me just recently.

So while you admire a couple of photos of a group of people flying a couple of kites around on the lawn at the Pointe du Roc I’ll tell you about my day today.

Actually, last night I ended up going to be rather later than I had hoped. Not as late as I have done on some occasions and certainly not late enough to to have caused all of the problems this morning.

Nevertheless, leaving the bed this morning was something of a struggle and I had to get a move on in order to beat the second alarm.

After the meds I came in here to start on transcribing the dictaphone notes but I didn’t even make a start before I wandered away into the ether.

Eventually I made it to the Welsh lesson.

Now that we’ve all worked out a few things on our own like screen sharing of *.pdfs and the like we managed to organise ourselves so much better and the lessons went quite well.

It really was a shame that the course came to an end because the group of people on the course were amongst the nicest whom I’ve met for quite a while. Consequently we’ve created a group on Social Media where we can keep in touch.

And I really hope that we do.

After I’d had my fruit for lunch I had a listen to what was on the dictaphone. I had actually managed to go for a wander around during the night, even if I hadn’t gone far. I had been at school last night. There was a lot happening last night but I can’t remember much about it but I do remember towards the end doing bakery and I had all of the children making cream cakes etc using all kinds of tools etc that we had lying around. It became after a while a gardening expedition as well. I taught them how to lay out a garden and grow vegetables. I gave them all seeds etc. We were going through the gardens digging up their potatoes. They had potatoes, these kids, steam the back way with all these potatoes around etc and the next group would go up and go through their gardens borrowing extra tools and showing off the fine band of potatoes that they’s managed to grow and put them in a basket. It was all very satisfying and rewarding watching these kids working like this.

As well as this thing about cream cakes there was some kind of hide-and-seek or some kind of game that involved a delivery of the products and you could only accept delivery when it’s your turn. You had to wait standing by the tree if it wasn’t your turn but I don’t know how it finished from there. It was all certainly complicated.

But this is what is something of a surprise to me. I’ve had nights where it seems that I’ve been off on a non-stop series of rambles from the time that I’ve gone to bed until the time that I’ve awoken and I’ve carried on during the day with no problem at all.

Yet here I am, not having gone very far at all last night and I’m totally wasted. It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, that’s another problem. I went off for my afternoon walk around the headland, much later than usual.

as usual, I went over to the wall at the end of the headland to see who was down on the beach.

There weren’t all that many people down there today and no-one at all in the water and that’s no surprise because the weather has changed dramatically. It’s cool, overcast and there is quite a wind that has sprung up from somewhere.

It’s not really the weather for the pèche à pied either but there is someone down there with a fishing net so they must be quite optimistic.

There were no fishing boats out there in the bay this afternoon so with nothing to detain me I headed off past the kite-fliers and down to the end of the headland.

At the end of the headland I ran into a yacht that was going out into the bay.

She’s called Captain Corsaire which, apparently, is the name of a clothing company from St Malo.

Not that I know very much about the registration numbers of yachts, but I’m wondering if the “GBR” that’s written on her sails implies that she’s registered in the UK

She’s struggling to make headway against the wind at the moment and it must be making things quite exciting for the members of the crew who are on board. They must be shipping quite a bit of water in this wind.

There were a couple of other yachts out there too, and a few people down there by the cabanon vauban watching them all.

This family had been walking along the lower path and had gone down to the end of the headland for a closer look at all of the maritime activity.

There weren’t any fishermen out there today either, neither with the rod and line nor at the pèche à pied.

They are leaving the local fish alone and having a day off so I decided to leave the headland alone and go off on the path down the other side of the headland to see what was happening down in the port this afternoon.

No changes in the chantier naval today.

La Confiance II is still over there up on her blocks but no-one else has come in to join her. We could do with a bit more business in there right now. It’s the kind of things that keeps the wheels of industry turning.

Meanwhile, over at the ferry terminal, one of the Joly France boats is moored up. We can tell by her windows being in “portrait” format that she’s the newer one of the two.

As to where the older one of the two is, stick around and you’ll find out in very early course.

Over at the Fish Processing Plant, L’Omerta is still moored up there.

It doesn’t look as if she has moved for a few days now. But at least she has another companion today. I can read her registration number, CH714339, and that tells me that according to my fishing database she’s a fishing boat called L’Iris de Suse.

Her colours are really eye-catching and it’s not easy to confuse her with any other fishing boat.

There are no refrigerated lorries up at the Fish Processing Plant right now so it doesn’t look as if they are expecting many fishing boats to come in on this tide.

There wasn’t anything going on up above at the Fish Processing Plant but there was plenty going on below.

There were a couple of cars driving down the ramp underneath, each one towing a trailer on which was a zodiac. Down at the end they performed a U-turn and then reversed up to the slope that drops down into the water.

By the looks of things they were going to drop off the zodiacs into the water, upsetting a flock of seagulls as they were doing so. But why they would be doing that right now, I wouldn’t know.

The way the tide is though, they won’t be in the water for all that long, unless they plan on staying out until the tide comes back in later on tonight.

Just now I mentioned something about the older Joly France ferry.

While I was walking around the headland just now I noticed something large making waves out by the Ile de Chausey and I imagined that it was one of the ferries on its way back to port.

Sure enough as I headed for home, around the headland came the older Joly France boat complete with a big load of passengers, coming back from the island this afternoon.

No trace of the very new Belle France though. We haven’t seen her for some time so I wonder where she’s got to.

On the way home I stopped for a look at the loading bay down at the bottom of the inner harbour.

Even though a pile of stuff was loaded up onto Chausiaise for delivery to St Helier the other day, yet more stuff has arrived. I don’t know whether the Jersey freighters come in at the weekend so it looks as if we’ll be having a visit quite early next week.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I went for tea. Sausage, beans and chips thanks to my air fryer and how glad am I that I bought one of those? The chips and sausage were cooked to perfection, much better than any other way that I’ve tried to cook them.

Yes, that was €28:00 very well spent.

So having started off talking about kites, then seeing as I’m not able to “fly a yellow paper sun in your sky when the wind is high, when the wind is high”, I’m going shopping tomorrow and “all of these and seven wonders more will I find” if I’m lucky.

But right now I’m off to bed with the hope that I’ll find an interesting companion for tonight’s travels so that “In letters of gold on a snow white kite I will write “I love you” and send it soaring high above you for all to read” tomorrow.

Yes, the Shulman brothers were churning out DECENT STUFF long before they formed “Gentle Giant”.

Thursday 21st July 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… when I said the other day that it looked as if Les Bouchots de Chausey wasn’t going to be around for very long in the chantier naval.

When I went past this afternoon she had gone! And never called me “mother”. There was just La Confiance II in there now and that was that.

Meanwhile, in other news, over at the ferry terminal is Chausiaise, the little freighter. The last time that we saw her was when she was underneath the crane in the loading bay in the inner harbour.

However someone whom I know sent me a photo this morning of Chausiaise in the harbour at St Helier. That will explain why she was loading up the other day.

It will also explain why ships like Southern Liner have been in port sounding out the possibility of running additional freight services to the Channel Islands. Business must be booming if they have pressed Chausiaise into service on that route too.

While we’re on the subject of ferry terminals and ferries … “well, one of us is” – ed … other things that have gone! And never called me “mother” either are the two Channel Island ferries.

Granville departed at 11:04 and is currently in St Helier. Victor Hugo also left at 11:04 and may currently be found in Cherbourg.

So what’s happening there I really don’t know, but the plot sickens. Whatever it is that’s going on, I wish that they would sort themselves out quite quickly because all of this isn’t doing anyone any good.

Last night’s sleep didn’t do me much good, unfortunately. It was another one of those nights where I struggled to go to sleep and when I did, I was soon awake as the bedroom warmed up dramatically.

Things were such that I could even have left the bed at 07:00 but I loitered around until the alarm went off at 07:30, for old time’s sake.

After the medication I went outside to take some stuff out of Caliburn. A pile of rubbish went into the waste bin and some more stuff came upstairs.

The idea was that someone was coming round this morning. There was a request on Social Network for an offcut of linoleum and I have some here.

We’d agreed a deal that he could have it for free in exchange for helping me bring upstairs the flat-pack units that I’d bought from IKEA in Germany the other week, hence the tidying up in Caliburn. However it goes without saying that after all that effort on my part, he never turned up.

What else never turned up was the Zoom link to the Welsh class. As a late addition to the course I’m not on the mailing list. I had to send an e-mail to the tutor and hope that she saw it. I ended up being 45 minutes late for my course.

She was much more organised today which was good, and that was helped by the fact that we as students are starting to take the initiative and between us we’ve worked out screen-sharing for powerpoints and so on and that makes things much easier when we are in break-out rooms.

Once again we bashed right through without lunch and finished early. That gave me time to deal with a few things such as the dictaphone.

My solicitor came round last night and he brought his managing partner with him. This was when my parents were out then – there was me and one or two other people. They began to talk and said that they had some good news for me. Firstly all my accounts had been accepted. They confirmed that I didn’t actually buy or sell anything so I’m not liable to anything. Secondly they aren’t interested in any accounts for previous years. The third thing is that I don’t have to sit any English exams at all. For unknown reasons this really delighted me. When my parents came back it took an age for them to stop talking. At the end I could tell them all my good news. They wanted to know all about the implications of it. They were wondering about this English exam because they thought that I could have some really high marks with my English. Not taking it would reduce my overall average. I explained that things like time was an issue, my energy was an issue. If I could receive a credit for my English without taking an exam then I would go that way. We had quite a long talk about everything about this.

There was something going on later about 2 girls who knew each other. They had been to the USSR and had noticed a few business opportunities that they could exploit. One went back to the USA and the other stayed in the USSR. They set up this import-export agency. For one of them it went really well and so was living a life of comparative luxury but the other one was living in poverty in a caravan and eventually on an old boat. She had to cross the Atlantic in this boat but it was not particularly seaworthy. Things like the wind generator was only held on by an old nail etc. This was going to be a voyage fraught with disaster. I was on it as it slipped out of harbour and she went off to do something. As we rounded the bend to leave the harbour there was a catamaran coming in with children on board. I couldn’t really stop the boat so I had to put it into the side wall where it bounced along the side wall and out so that it left this catamaran plenty of room. She was quite upset about that and asked me what I thought that I was doing. I explained that I’d never been on board a boat before in these kinds of circumstances and I was doing what I thought was correct to the best of the ability that I had

It was rather later than usual when I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

That meant that it was cooler than it otherwise might have been when I went out so I wasn’t expecting to se too many people out there but I was pleasantly surprised.

It was warmer than I was expecting anyway and the crowds were wandering around everywhere even down on the beach and even one or two brave souls who had gone into the water.

No Nazguls out there today though. There wasn’t all that much wind about.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of the things that I have mentioned recently is the fact that the fishing boats seem to be exploiting new areas of the sea since the issues with the Channel Islands.

This wzs illustrated today by not one but two trawlers out there in the bay with their nets out and I was expecting to see one of Tom Rolt’s “Greek vs Greek” moments as Hera in blue and Suzanga in pink sailed towards each other on a collision course.

They did however pass by with a couple of metres spare, and then both did a U-turn and went back for another go at each other.

This was certainly exciting and I stayed around for a few minutes to watch but eventually they formed themselves into parallel lines and headed off into the sunset.

There were plenty of other boats out there this afternoon too.

This blue inshore shell-fishing boat heading back from the Ile de Chausey is blue and white and that tells me that it’s either Lysandre or Petite Laura because there isn’t much differenc ebetween the two and I can’t read the registration number from here.

But for reasons that you will find out if you have the patience to read on to the end, I reckon that this boat is Lysandre.

And there were others too but they were too far out to identify.

And there weren’t just crowds on the path or on the sea either.

Although we had to Nazguls in the air today while I was out, we did have a light aeroplane. As far as I can tell, its registration number seems to be 10SA and that’s one of the ones that isn’t on the aeroplane database that I can access.

But that’s a number that hasn’t appeared before in our paperwork so I’m wondering it it is in fact 50SA with some dirt or staining obscuring part of its registration.

Or maybe I should have gone to a well-known chain of opticians.

My eyesight can’t all be that bad today though.

Although there’s quite a bit of haze about today I actually did manage to see the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel with the naked eye, even if it is about 70 kms away from where I’m standing.

In fact it was easier to see with the naked eye than it was with the camera and that’s not something that heppens every day. Usually the camera picks out objects much better than the naked eye at any kind of distance.

One of these days I’ll post the photo that I took of the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel that I took when we sailed past on Spirit of Conrad so you can see what it is that you are supposed to be seeing.

With the crowds out there this afternoon it was quite busy at the end of the headland so I fought my way down to the end of the headland.

There were plenty of fishermen out there too. There seemed to be one on every rock. This guy, and presumably one of his offspring, were out there near the cabanon vauban.

Only the father seemed to be fishing though. Although the younger one had a fishing rod handy, he seemed to me more interested in scrambling around on the rocks and I’ve no idea why.

But then we’ve only ever seen one fisherman actually catch something so I imagine that the younger one found it to be rather boring.

Mind you, there was an audience out there this afternoon.

Not sitting on the bench but standing down at the end of the headland was this guy armed with a camera. And there was plenty going on down there so I’m surprised that he wasn’t taking any interest in anything that was happening around him.

There were more people in the vicinity too, including a Dutch family of a father and two young girls who were taking photos of almost everything. And much as I like to take photos of people taking photos, there are some limits to what it’s polite to do.

From the end of the headland I wandered off around the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

There was plenty going on there as well. Out by Le Loup, the marker light on the rock at the mouth of the harbour, a few yachts from one of the sailing schools were happily sailing by.

There was a speedboat too roaring past, as well as another boat hiding behind the light.

There was quite a lot of other stuff too but they somehow managed to make themselves out of shot.

Having made a photographic note of what was going on at the ferry terminal and the chantier naval, I carried on along the path towards home.

Over at the Fish Processing Plant we can see L’Omerta. She’s still there from the other day and doesn’t look as if she’s moved.

And behind her is a blue and white shell-fishing boat. She has a “CH” (Cherbourg) registration number so she’s not Lysandre, who has an “SM” (St Malo) number and so she must be Petite Laura

That means that the one that we saw earlier out in the bay must be Lysandre because it’s certainly a different boat.

With my chocolate drink awaiting me at home, I headed off back to the apartment

It looks as if the flyposters have been out overnight.

There’s a project afoot to turn the road between Granville and Avranches into a dual carriageway and it’s causing a great deal of controversy. It now looks as if the Extinction Rebellion movement people are now on the case.

Actually I sympathise with their campaign because the road isn’t all that busy. And they could deal with much of that by making the train service more reliable and regular.

At the moment it’s just trains between Caen and Rennes but they really need to restore the trains between Cherbourg and St Malo and that will double the frequency of trains on the section of the line between Granville and Avranches.

Bus transport around Granville is improving and if they would make more of an effort at Avranches I for one wouldn’t need to use the van to travel there.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bun and that was quite delicious with potatoes and vegetables. Tomorrow I’m going for sausage beans and chips.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed and prepare for the last day of my Summer School. I’m glad that I found this Summer School because even if it’s not as well-organised as it might be, it’s still bringing my Welsh out of the dark recesses of my mind and that can’t be a bad thing.

There’s still 6 weeks until our course restarts and I bet that I will have forgotten it all again by then.

Wednesday 20th July 2022 – SUNDAY NIGHT’S PIZZA …

… may not have been as good as others might have been in the past but tonight’s curry was a belter. One of the best that i’ve ever made.

Basically it was the left-overs out of the fridge with a potato added thereto and cooked to perfection with lots of lovely spices and some soya cream.

And if I can make curry like that again on a regular basis, I’ll be in business.

Quite a lot more pleasure boats out there at sea today so while you admire them all in the next few photos (becase these are all that there were), I’li start at the very beginning.

And at least last night was somewhat better than the previous one. Even with the bedroom window closed and the fan switched off it was a lot cooler in the bedroom and I actually managed to go to sleep.

So much so that when the alarm went off at 07:30 it was a struggle to leave the bed.

Nevertheless I beat the second alarm to my feet (which is always good news) and staggered off into the kitchen to take my medicine.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We started off with a neighbour just like that guy in Virlet who was bad-tempered and miserable, always finding fault, always being picky. We’d all been somewhere on board a bus, a pile of us. He had 2 young girls with him. When the bus stopped and everyone alighted he disappeared for a moment. I was going through my things and found some small bottles of water so I gave one each to these 2 girls and also a sweet. When he came back I gave him one as well, a bottle of water and a sweet. He was going on about how I was trying to buy friends, this kind of thing. I said “no, not at all. It was just something that I wanted to do because I’m that kind of person” or something like that. While they were all sitting there talking I took out my laptop and my headphones and was going to sit down to transcribe some notes.

And then someone had heard of a photographer so he went to see him about doing some photographs. When the photos were done they were so good that he was wondering who it was who recommended him, whether he was a relation or simply just a friend of that person

Finally I was with a group of friends and we had gone to a meeting or something. There was a lunch laid on so we started to help ourselves to lunch. This meeting had cost us £8:00 each to go. We went but the meeting wasn’t particularly inspiring but the lunch was quite nice. This carried on for a short while afterwards and then they started to lay out the table with all these curries etc so I asked if we were going to stay for this as well. They replied “well we’d better start moving around or else we’ll be stuck in one place”. We started to wander around and they started to bring all of the things that they were going to serve. In the meantime where was this nice curry. I thought “never mind anything else. I’m going to have some of the curry”. We started to help ourselves to the meals. One of the things that was happening was a display of firearms with the children. The firearms discipline was hopeless. All the kids were turning their backs on each other while they were carrying loaded firearms. I said to one of the girls with us that that was terrible. If they had done that anywhere else they would have been thrown out immediately. Some fellow turned round and made some kind of remark to me. I replied “don’t worry. I’m a foreigner”. He asked “why is it that you are telling her then?”. I said that’s OK because she’s a foreigner too” so he turned round and walked away at that point.

The Welsh class continued with its usual chaotic structure but I’m not complaining. After all, it is free and it’s the best offer that I’ve had for a Summer School. And once again we didn’t stop for lunch but crashed on right through.

One of the tasks that we had to do was to read a couple of chapters of a book. The book was able to be downloaded as an *.epub but no program that I have on any of my computers would read it.

Eventually I tracked down a program – CALIBRE – that would read it but the field of view is so small that I can’t read the text and after spending about an hour at it I’ve still not found a way to zoom the page up to a realistic size.

It really beats me why people can’t stick to a good old-fashioned *.pdf format for on-line books.

When the course finished I had my lunchtime fruit and then a play about on the guitar for a while. That took me up to the walkies time.

And as usual I went out across the car park over to the wall at the end so that I can look down onto the beach.

Less and less beach down there today, and fewer and fewer people too. It was really warm out there this afternoon but I think tht what must have put people off was the fact that it was nothing like as warm as Monday. That really was exceptional.

And while we’re on the subject of the beach … “well, one of us is” – ed … someone trying to negotiate the steps that lead to the beach missed their footing and fell from the cliffs onto the beach yesterday evening.

That was the reason why the Air-Sea rescue helicopter was hovering around here while I was on the ‘phone.

You’ve seen all of the photos of what was going on out at sea this afternoon, so I had a look elsewhere to see if there was anything else going on.

And as I watched, a couple of Nazgul reared up from the field at the side of the cemetery and began to head my way.

“Your Only Protection is Flight” as Hawkwind sang in SONIC ATTACK, especially as I’m over 10 years old and don’t have a cocoon, but whereas a couple of years ago I could quite happily run all the way around the headland, these days I can’t even run for a bus.

There were quite a few people out and about on the path today and so we had the dust-clouds to deal with. I shudder to think what it will be like if the wind gets up with all of this dust about. It won’t be pleasant.

Down at the end of the headland there was no-one sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban.

However we did have a fisherman out there on the rocks. What with the ones that you might have seen earlier in one of the boat it seemed to be quite busy from that point of view.

There were even a few people having a go at the pèche à pied although I’m not quite sure, for the tide is nowhere near far enough out.

But that’s their problem, not mine. I left them to it, in the hope that a Nazgul would get them, and headed off down the path towards the port.

And yet another change in occupancy in the chantier naval.

We still have Les Bouchots de Chausey if it is indeed she, and La Confiance II but Monaco du Nord II has disappeared. back into the water, I suppose.

And while L’Omerta is still tied up – on her own – at the Fish Processing Plant, there wasn’t anyone this afternoon over at the ferry terminal. All of the ferries to the Ile of Chausey are presumably out.

But a friend of a friend tells me that Granville, the newer of the two Channel Islands ferries, has turned up this evening in St Helier and is planning on staying the night over there. So some kind of skeleton service is being run at the moment.

And if you are wondering where Chausiaise is, the little freighter is over there at the quayside underneath the crane, presumably being loaded with supplies for the island.

Marité is over there too. She’s not going anywhere right now by the looks of things. It doesn’t seem to be much of a summer so far for the town’s water craft.

Back at the apartment I had a good clean-up and a shower to make myself look pretty and then, bang on cure, Rosemary rang me. She MUST have installed a camera here somewhere.

It ended up being another one of our long chats, mainly about her Ukrainian guests. By the sound of things they have settled in the Auvergne and seem to be at home.

Their issue is first of all to learn to speak French, and secondly, to sort out some kind of employment. This involves contacting all kinds of Government agencies and finding out what facilities are available for Ukrainian refugees to integrate into French society, and so we spent the time of our ‘phone call making lists

Hopefully, progress can be made. But I can see myself being recruited into going for another trip into Central France some time in the near future for a hands-on task.

Tea was my delicious curry and then I came in here to write up my notes.

And now I’m off to bed. Another day at Summer School tomorrow and I’ll see how I get on. I’m not expecting too much but it’s all that’s on offer right now.

And considering that all of these supplementary courses are free, I’m just grateful that the Welsh Government is taking the trouble to educate us.

Tuesday 19th July 2022 – THAT WAS HORRIBLE

There can’t have been too many nights like last night.

When I finally went to bed I had every door and window open in the apartment and a fan on the chest of drawers going off blowing cold air onto my body – no cover over me of course.

The racket was indescribable and totally impossible to sleep but when I closed the doors and windows and switched off the fan the heat was indescribable and totally impossible to sleep. In the end I decided that if I wasn’t going to sleep, at least it’s a better plan not to sleep when it’s hot and noisy rather than not to sleep in the boiling hot, stifling and stuffy oppressive heat.

When the gale sprung up at about 02:00 I wished that there had been a third alternative too. Not even hanging a heavy weight to the end of the curtain would stop it flapping about.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 and I’d had such an awful night, and with a Welsh lesson to come, I decided that a lie-in would do me some good and there I stayed until 09!15

Having organised myself I went for Day One (well, Day Two really) of my Welsh Summer School. This tutor doesn’t seem to be as organised as the others whom I’ve had in the past. She’s one of these people who doesn’t believe in breaks. Instead she crashed on regardless and finished early.

However I can’t complain because
1) it was very nice of her to squeeze me into her course
2) the course is free

What I’ll have to do tomorrow is make a flask of coffee and have some biscuits standing by.

By the time I’d had my midday fruit (at some time considerably later than midday) I went out for my afternoon walk.

As usual, I wandered off across the car park to the wall at the end so that I could look down onto the beach.

There wasn’t a great deal of beach today. The tide cycle here is about 25 hours or so so every day when I go out the tide is about half an hour later and with the speed that the tide comes in and out here that can make a considerable difference.

There weren’t too many people down there this afternoon either. The weather was not quite as warm as yesterday and, strange as it might seem, at midday or thereabouts we’d had a little shower of rain for a couple of minutes.

While I was here I was looking out to sea as well.

And as I watched, one of the Joly France boats came out of the mist (because it was quite misty this afternoon) from the Ile de Chausey and was heading back towards the port.

The small upper-deck superstructure and the windows in “Portrait” format suggests that this is the newer one of the two.

And she has quite a crowd on board too. It looks as if they have had quite a busy time out on the island today. There are water supply issues on the island and I bet that this weather has been taxing their facilities.

And that wasn’t all the excitement either.

As I watched, a light aeroplane went flying by out in the bay from the south. And as I watched it performed a U-turn and headed back southwards.

When I enlarged the photo back home, I could see that she’s a German-registered plane, D-EQDK. She’s a Breezer B600 and we have in fact seen her before, on the 13th August last year.

According to the flight radar she took off from Avranches 16:04, headed north towards Granville, turned back southwards and then disappeared off the radar near Dinard at 16:27. My photo was taken at 16:13 (adjusted).

She wasn’t the only aeroplane in the sky either.

A few minutes later another one went flying by in the bay. This one is one of our usual suspects, F-GBAI, a Robin DR 400-140b that belongs to the Granville Aero Club.

She’s been out and about a couple of times today but at the time that I saw her, according to her flight plan, she was still on the ground at the airfield and certainly wasn’t picked up on the radar.

Maybe someone has the time set wrong somewhere.

Jamais deux sans trois – “never two without a third” as they say around here.

Sure enough 10 minutes later, out of the mist came the familiar rattle of another one of our old friends.

This is the yellow autogyro that we see quite regularly, taking passengers for a spin up and down the bay to see Mont St Michel and whatever else there is of interest in the area.

All we need now is the Loch Ness Monster and Godzilla and we will have had everything.

There were plenty of people wandering around on the path today kicking up the dust so I didn’t hang around.

Narrowly avoiding being squidged on the car park I went down to the end of the headland. No-one fishing off the rocks today but there were a couple of people sitting on the bench by the cabanon vauban.

And they had plenty to see as well, like the Joly France ferry going past and the aerial display too.

Quite a few people down there on the lower path as well. The slightly cooler weather this afternoon has brought out the crowds.

Some more changes in the chantier naval today.

La Confiance II and Monaco du Nord II are still in there but over there on the left they’ve now been joined by one of the shell-fishing boats. Her number isn’t on the database that I have but I reckon that she may well be Les Bouchots de Chausey.

Whoever she is, there are several workmen already swarming all over her so it doesn’t look as if they are going to be hanging around.

Mind you, I’ve said a few things like that before and lived to regret it, haven’t I?

Over at the ferry terminal there’s some congestion.

We have Chausiaise, the little grey, white and orange freighter, and also the two Joly France boats. The one that just arrived is the one at the back of the queue.

By the looks of things Belle France, the newest ferry, isn’t there. She’s not in the inner harbour either so I reckon that she’s probably still out there at the island.

Not much happening in the way of pleasure craft today though. That yacht that went sailing past in the background was the only one that I saw.

Mind you, had I been out there 10 minutes earlier I might have seen a zodiac out there in the bay.

But as I went past just now, the zodiac was at the ramp underneath the Fish Processing Plant and there was a van and trailer there. By the looks of things they were loading up the zodiac onto the trailer ready to take it away.

L’Omerta was still there too, but she was on her own. Everyone else who was tied up there yesterday has now cleared off.

Having taken my photos, I cleared off too. I have plenty of things to be doing this afternoon and not much time to be doing them either.

Things seem to be heating up in this ferry dispute too.

In the inner harbour Victor Hugo has now been joined by the newer Granville. They are both tied up there now and that seems to be that for the moment.

It would really be nice if this dispute could be resolved and we could get back into the business of running a ferry service. Right now we seem to be going one step forward and two steps back.

Incidentally, Granville, although the newer of the two ferries, is a second-hand boat. She was built new as the Bornholm Express in 2006 and sailed between Simrishamn in Sweden and the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and was last seen on that service in 2014.

One of the problems of living in a medieval walled city is that the streets and gates aren’t designed for modern traffic.

The Porte St Jean into the old town is quite small and many larger vehicles can’t enter. They have to park up outside the walls and arrange some kind of trans-shipment of their cargoes.

Just like this van delivering wine, in fact. I suppose that his cargo is destined for one of the restaurants in there.

Back here I had a glass of cold coconut drink and then sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I must have gone to sleep at some point during the night.

There was some kind of tennis match taking place. I don’t really remember who it was or what it was about or anything but I think that one of the participants was quite young. There was something about an advertising campaign where you could have stencils to stencil over your vehicle. The company would give you money for doing that kind of thing so that they would have the publicity from the moving vehicle as well as anywhere else.

And then we had to go to stay in a dormitory for some reason, a load of us. It wasn’t separated by sex at all for young people. I found a bed right by the alleyway, the walkway in this dormitory in the hope that a young girl whom I knew would sleep in one of the other beds around me. She was with a group of people so hopefully she might go on the other row and be down this end. I had to go to the bathroom. It was again a communal bathroom and wasn’t restricted by sex so there were all kinds of people coming and going, including one rather insistent girl while I was using the facilities. That was rather uncomfortable. Then I had to hurry back to make sure that I had my bed and that no-one else had it and hoped that this girl would have the bed that was across the walkway from mine.

There was something about a bookstore. all the books were in a total mess and it needed some arranging. I was there doing some work. a young girl kept on coming in to look at the books. She would also come in to chat to me and we became quite friendly. It turned out that she was leaving school and didn’t know what to do. I asked her why she didn’t want to work in a bookshop with us. We always had vacancies and she would enjoy it. Of course I had a two motives. One was to be nice to her and the second was to get to know her much better but that’s beside the point isn’t it?

Just recently I seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about young ladies. I must be becoming broody or something.

I forgot to mention that one of the offices in this dream had a sheep’s skull nailed to the door as a kind of talisman. Someone else who came to see me once and there was a dispute in the corridor which was upsetting. I explained that but it made no difference about people having disputes as long as they weren’t with each other.

Someone with whom I used to work in Chester was teaching at the school where I was working. He came up to me in a class and we were talking. “Do you know what I would really like? I would like to go on holiday to the Isle of Thanet and for you to come with me” which I thought was really nice. We had a really good chat about the Isle of Thanet and me going on about things that we did when we were kids and things that my mother used to tell us that she did etc. This talk went on for quite some time about all kinds of things.

My mother lived in Birchington as a child until she and her sister were evacuated to Frome in Somerset when Manston Airfield down the road came under attack. She had plenty of stories to tell us and in fact we used to go down there every summer in the late 50s and early 60s while she still had her connections there to see things for ourselves.

The guy from Chester wanted to know when I’d be free but what he didn’t know and I didn’t tell him was that I was retiring at the end of the school year so I would be free all the time. There was no case of needing a diary or anything to write stuff down but I didn’t want it generally known quite yet that I was retiring so I didn’t say anything to him while he was discussing everything.

And that’s a recurring theme too these days

However I couldn’t keep going and at about 18:30 I crashed out. Only for about 20 minutes and that’s no surprise after the night, but I wish that I could have kept going.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and then I came in here to write my notes.

Rosemary rang me up for one of our marathon chats and that prevented me from going outside to find out why the Air-Sea Rescue helicopter was hovering around. By the time that I could go outside, it had gone.

So bedtime now. Let’s see how we get on tomorrow with this Summer School. It’s not like the usual ones that i’ve had before but it’s free and at least it keeps me interested and helps me remember what I might otherwise forget.

That has to be some kind of positive anyway.

Monday 18th July 2022 – WE’RE LIVING …

… IN A DUST BOWL.

That’s the path that leads up to the lighthouse at the Pointe du Roc (the lighthouse is behind me) and “scorched earth” has nothing on this.

The grass is dying and whenever there’s a gust of wind it whips a cloud of dust into the air. We are “living in interesting times” right now and if people don’t get a grip and do something, it will be like this much more often.

Nature is indeed starting to fight back at the human race and we have only ourselves to blame.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in 2018 I was on Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic with an Inuit guy. He told me that where we were standing was where he used to come with his kayak when he was a boy to collect ice from the glacier that was here so that his grandfather could have some fresh, pure water for his tea.

He then took us to where the glacier was on that day. We had to walk a little over two kilometres.
“How old are you, Michael?”
“I’m 22”

Anyone who doesn’t believe in global warming needs to take a little trip to the Arctic and talk to the Inuit who are watching their traditional way of life evaporating before their eyes..

But anyway, I digress.

Nature was certainly getting its own back on me last night. It was far too hot to sleep and I had a miserable night tossing and turning.

However I must have done at some point because there was some stuff on the dictaphone. I’d been with the boys in the band, one of the groups in which I used to play back in the mid-70s. We’d had to go to the Post Office to pick up some new equipment for one of them. When we arrived there was an enormous queue so we had to fight our way to the front eventually. There were crowds of people in the Post Office but the woman didn’t have the time to look for it. She wanted us to come back later. I said “yes, how about 45 minutes?”. That would give us chance to have a bag of chips or something for lunch. She replied “yes, that’s OK”. We went outside but the other 2 didn’t want to wait. They got into the van and drove off home which left me wandering around Crewe wondering what I was going to do. Eventually I drove home and parked the vehicle. I took this speaker cabinet out of the van. It was on 4 castors and I had to push it home over a muddy farm track. It wasn’t easy to push this. It was narrow and there were cars and bikes coming so I had to pull into the side to let them go. A girl appeared – a girl who lived in our building. She said that she would help me push it. I replied that there was no need, I could manage but she pushed it quite easily which surprised me. We reached the part where I’d put down a wooden flooring in this lane. We started pushing it and it really was easy. We pushed it between us up to my building. She made some facetious remark about the carpet that I’d laid down for my speaker. I said “yes and I’d have finished the rest of the way to the van had I had more wood but I’ve not been to Canada for the last few years and that’s where I usually buy it. It’s dirt-cheap there”. We entered the lift and I asked her what floor she wanted. She said “the first floor”. I wanted the ground floor so the lift took us down. I thought that it would take us to the first floor where she lived but instead it went on down to mine. We both left the lift and started to move the speaker cabinet. I thought that it was polite to ask her if she wanted to come in for a coffee or something but my place was a total tip. Even so I thought that it was the polite thing to do to ask her if she would like to come in.

Later on I was driving a taxi last night. On the radio the instructions came through to go and pick up someone called “Jagger”. They said that the address was in Walthall Street. I reached the street and asked for the number of the house. They said that they didn’t have it but it was the one with the wooden frame and the music. I drove down the street, eventually found it and knocked on the door. This old woman came out and Mick Jagger came as well. They both got into my cab. I asked them where they wanted to go to. The woman said that she lived next door to TB Furnishing. That shop I didn’t have a clue where it was. She said that it was one of the streets off Nantwich Road. I headed up that way and when I reached Nantwich Road heading towards the railway station the woman said “it’s not in this direction. Everyone else usually goes another way”. I replied “you tell me which way they go and I’ll take you that way. It’s no problem”. I couldn’t work out where this place was. Mick Jagger was going to Nantwich once I dropped off this old woman but I couldn’t get this old woman out of the cab because I didn’t know where she wanted dropping off.

Finally I was at work and someone came over to me to ask if I recognised a song. They said the first line of it. It was a Barclay James Harvest song “See The Gambler Make a Stand”, one of the tracks that I play on the acoustic guitar. I recognised the song immediately and told them the name … “THE WORLD GOES ON” – ed … and which album it was off … “Octoberon” – ed … one of the best albums ever recorded in Progressive Rock (which it is). They asked a little more about it so I said that I would look it up on the computer. I went over to their computer to call up one of the music sites to look at it. They were busy playing on their computer, playing something on there so I had to use a different keyboard. This involved pressing piles of mud, pushing my finger deep into these piles of mud outside their vehicle to type this up. Of course, dealing with mud is not very easy to find the correct keys and their computer was even slower than mine. I thought that it would take quite a time to go through.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I was up and out of bed quite quickly. Having taken my medication and checked my mails and messages I sat down to prepare the radio programme that I wanted to do today. I wasn’t in any rush and it took longer to do than some of the ones that I’ve done quite recently.

But it really ought to have taken longer than it did because what I do is to prepare 10 tracks for about 48 minutes, 10 speeches that go for about 8 minutes after being edited, work out how much time is left for a final track, knock off 45 seconds for a final closing speech and then choose a track for the time that remains and then record the final speech which, after editing, should last for 45 seconds.

And in case you are wondering, 300 characters of text works out at 17 seconds of speech.

Anyway, usually it all over-runs so I have to edit some speech out from here and there to make it all fit and that can take a lot of time, but today it was a perfect fit. Just 0.3 seconds under, and lengthening a few pauses took that up in a couple of mouse strokes.

While I was listening to it, I was on the hunt for a Welsh Summer School. The problem with having a teflon brain is that nothing sticks to it so I need to keep it working.

Coleg Cambria, with whom I study, had a couple but for some reason that I don’t understand, our tutor didn’t tell us about them. So they have been and gone.

So rummaging through a few of my contacts elewhere I ended up with a tutor whom I know from Coleg Gwent with whom I did those supplementary classes earlier this year. Her college had a Summer School that started today and after much binding in the marsh I managed to blag my way onto it.

So that’s me occupied for the rest of the week.

While I was at it I also had a good session on the guitar today.

For a change, I missed breakfast so I ended up having my fruit bun for lunch with a pile of fruit. And then, regrettably, the bad night caught up with me and that was that for an hour. No problem sleeping in this heat when I’m on my chair, is there?

As usual I headed off out for my afternoon walk.

And I rather wished that I hadn’t either because it was breathtakingly hot and I was seriously considering going back into my apartment.

As usual I wandered off across the car park to the wall at the end to have a look down at what was going on down there

There weren’t all that many people out there this afternoon and that’s no surprise because anyone with any sense would be sitting inside the fridge keeping cold on an afternoon like this. Somehow I don’t think that being in the water will cool anyone down enough today

There wasn’t anything at all happening out at sea this afternoon, but I was rather intrigued by the people here.

There was a kid on the rocks at the edge of the water doing something or other and an adult with a couple of kids in some swimming rings shaped like swans.

Interestingly though there was a flight of seagulls on their way over to inspect the proceedings and presumably making a bombing raid on the people in the water. That would have livened up the proceedings quite considerably.

The path was completely empty this afternoon. There wasn’t anyone at all out there as I headed off towards the lighthouse.

There might have been nothing happening out at sea but we had something going on in the air this afternoon.

It was making quite a racket even though I couldn’t see it, but eventually I managed to lay my eyes on it. It was one of the powered hang gliders on its way out into the bay.

Unfortunately I can’t tell which one because it was flying so high that I was struggling to make it out.

At the car park at the end of the headland there were just four or five cars and no more than 15 people in total. That was all that I saw out there this afternoon.

No real surprise. One of my friends told me later that the temperature this afternoon had reached 41°C and sent me a photo to prove it. That’s what I call warm.

There wasn’t anyone sitting on the bench at the end of the headland by the cabanon vauban this afternoon.

Nor anyone walking around the lower path either so I was having a good look at the buoy that we saw yesterday, simply because today it seems to have found a friend. There’s another buoy there by its side now.

There were a couple of others further on round the headland too but I left them to it and headed off down the path on the other side of the headland to see what was happening in the harbour.

Not that I was expecting all that much.

Over at the ferry terminal this afternoon we had a couple of boats moored up.

At the front is the little freighter Chausiase and behind her is one of the Joly France ferries to the Ile de Chausey. No step cut out of the stern so she would be the older one of the two.

No Channel Island ferries though. Victor Hugo is still moored up in the inner harbour.

But the situation regarding the Channel Island ferries is becoming clearer by the day. There was a court hearing today that seems to suggest that the previous operators of the ferry service have not handed over the keys and documentation that the new operators require.

They have entered a defence against the action but my understanding is that it’s been struck out, so they are appealing.

For that reason we’ll have to turn our attention elsechere.

Like to the quayside by the Fish Processing Plant where our game of musical ships continues with L’Omerta moored there again in her usual position. And behind her is the little trawler Saint Andrews.

Plenty of vehicles around there too on the lower level, and up above are a couple of piles of fishing equipment.

There is one of the little harbour lighters there too but I can’t identify her unfortunately, even if she does have a name.

On my way back to my apartment and my coconut drink, I noticed that Martité was back in town.

No point though in going to ask when their next trip out will be, because the answer will be “it’s all on the website” and they’ll go back to chatting amongst themselves.

So with my coconut drink I pressed on with dealing with this Welsh Summer School and making sure that I had been accepted. And, of course, thanking Karen (who taught the supplementary courses and who found this course for me at lunchtime) for her assistance.

Byddaf i yna I said. “I’ll be there’.

As I said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … they are taking quite seriously this “Million Welsh Speakers by 2025” or whenever the time limit is.

Tea tonight was a rather sad stuffed pepper. “Sad” in the sense that it was the pepper itself that was showing signs of age. The stuffing was excellent.

So now I’m off to bed. I have four days of Welsh Summer School now for the rest of the week and that will keep me out of mischief for a while. But I bet that I’ll forget it all by the time that our course starts up again in September.

EPIC HALL

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