Tag Archives: eric hall

Thursday 28th June 2018 – HAVING BOMBED …

… on Tuesday night with my choice of sleeping accommodation, I can say without any fear of contradiction that I more than made up for it last night.

The issue of the plug for the slow cooker not working is a minor inconvenience really. The rest of it scored a good 11 out of 10 and I’ll be back here again.

I’m not sure who or what awoke me at 04:30 but it was nothing to do with the hotel.

At one moment or another I’d been off on my travels. With a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) where I was invited to a meal given by a friend of hers. Not long after I’d ordered my meal, the person whose party it was started passing round some literature and seeking orders. It turned out that they were all “Biffers” and this was all about freeing their friends who had been imprisoned. Of course, I had no wish to associate myself with them, so I was all for walking out. But as I’d ordered my meal already, I was wondering if I should go and sit on a separate table. But I didn’t want to embarrass my friend.

After a shower I did some work on the laptop until breakfast time when I went downstairs to try out the delicious bread.

My landlady’s story was quite interesting. She’d come from Australian a back-packing holiday, run out of money and so had found a job as a chambermaid in Lech. Here, she had met a local boy and the rest is history.

She’d never seen snow before she came here, and neither had her family when they arrived for the wedding. And so, in June, they had a snowstorm on her wedding day.

“A real white wedding”, I told her.

After I’d finished my work, I went for a walk around the town to see what was going on.

I didn’t manage to make it out there last night and I was keen to take a few photographs to show you what you are missing.

It really is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I’d be happy to come to live here permanently.

And not for nothing am I here in Lech this morning. Today is the start of a vintage vehicle rally here in Lech and there are all types of old cars on parade in the town.

Ordinarily, every one of the 50 or so that I saw would have made it onto this page but I really was spoilt for choice. But you’ll have to make do with seeing a select few until I have more time to sit down and expand my notes.

After all, it’s not very easy doing this kind of thing when you are limited to irregular hotel internet connections and timed-out motorway service providers.

One thing that we do have to do is to give Strawberry Moose a suitable photo opportunity.

It’s not every day that he visits his favourite town in Europe and so it deserves to be recorded for posterity.

No camping allowed here in Lech, but that’s not a problem for him, although it might explain why Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick never visited the area.

His Nibs has only been here for 12 hours or so, but he’s already opened his own taxi business as you can see. It didn’t take him long to get his feet firmly planted under the table here.

Set up for life with a vehicle like this.

Lech, by the way, is twinned with the town of Beaver Creek in the USA, and you can make of that what you like.

Despite having come here on a few previous occasions, I’d never been right through and out of the other side of the town.

And with the urging of the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I set off northwards.

A little diversion was called for though.

There’s a back road that goes out to Bregenz (and had I known how this story was to unfold I’d have gone out that way) where there’s a mountain pass, the Hochtannberg Pass at 1675 metres, that I hadn’t climbed before.

There are dozens of photos going back to the 70s of all kinds of various vehicles photographed on the top of various mountain passes, and we are putting together a little collection of Caliburn there too.

But there wasn’t any parking here to make a really good photograph of Caliburn. A quick flash at the side of the road in between the traffic had to suffice.

But the view westwards was quite impressive too. And you can see what a magnificent area this is and why I was so happy to come here, even though the clouds were closing in rapidly.

It was round about here that I started to have the feeling that it wasn’t going to be my day.

And as I retraced my steps in the general direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberammergau, a few drops of rain started to fall on the windscreen.

By the time I reached the German border the torrential rain was lashing down on everything in sight.

Considering the tropical weather that we had been having up to that point on this journey, this was quite a surprise. It put paid to any plans that I had to go sightseeing.

There was however a small town along the route that was crammed full of tourists and it was here that I stopped to pick up some bread.

But do you know – I forgot to make a note of where I was so I can’t tell you anything about it.

I shall have to do some more research in due course when I update this page.

For lunch, I pulled over onto a layby at the side of the road. And here, shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep for a while. I’m not doing too well am I, these days?

This made me run quite late and what with all of the roadworks on the A95 (I decided to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn after all in an attempt to make up the time) I hit Munich just in time for the start of the rush hour.

And having come from the south, I ended up straight in the city centre too. It was this point that I’d wished that I had come in from Bregenz on the south-west and hit the ring road instead.

As a result, the last 19kms of my journey took me 90 minutes and had I not performed a marvellous “taxi-driver’s creep” on a bright red Audi estate, much to my pleasure and his chagrin (he had a beautiful set of motor horns), I would probably be still stuck in Munich right now.

But it seems that The lady Who Lives In The Satnav doesn’t understand grade-separated junctions. A couple of times now she’s wanted me to turn right onto a road that’s 300 feet below the viaduct over which I’m driving. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With me being so late, I’d missed the vegan shop around the corner from Hans so tea ended up being chips and salad from the beer garden next door.

Later that evening, Hans (who runs a whisky importing business) was having a tasting evening with 10 invited guests.

Everyone seemed to be having a really good time which was just as well. For me, I don’t drink alcohol and even when I did I couldn’t abide the smell, never mind the taste, of the stuff.

But good luck to those who do.

And so with the place smelling like a Babylonian boozer’s bedroom, I settled down for the night on one of the most comfortable sofas in the world.

And here I intend to sleep right through until I awaken.

Tuesday 26th June 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today, but at about 16:30 this afternoon despite having been on the road for about 5 hours, I’d covered just 190 kilometres.

I’d started bright and early too, being up long before the alarm went off, thanks to whoever it was who decided to make a loud noise at 05:00.

When Jacqueline awoke, she baked some bread which was delicious and we had breakfast – home-made bread with home-made cherry jam. And chatted for a while too, but at 10:30 I hit the road. There’s a lot to do.

First stop was the Chateau de Chasselas, well-known to all Monty Python fans of course.

Last time that I was here I’d bought a dozen bottles of wine to give as gifts. There are still plenty left but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can’t get at them. So I need some more.

And it was quite a hike to get there too as they were resurfacing the driveway and we had to go the long way round.

But this was just one more unnecessary expense. This “relying on friends to return favours” is costing me an arm and a leg. Far cheaper to pay for everything professionally than to go through what I’m going through right now.

That building there on the corner used to be the village café of Chasselas.

Jean-Marc’s grandmother was the owner of the place back in 1970 and this is where I stayed for part of the time that I was here back then.

Of course, it didn’t look like that then. It had much more charm back in those days.

I headed into Macon because I had noticed diesel at €1:39 a litre last night, and Caliburn could do with a drink. And from there I headed off through the centre of the town and across the Saone.

And I don’t recognise a thing about Macon these days. I’d be totally lost wandering around there today, it’s changed that much.

The road out was uneventful, but quite slow behind all of these grockles in their mobile homes. And also due to the multitude of roadworks and diversions that interrupted everything. Not to mention The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav who took me on the scenic route through Bourg-en-Bresse.

But at Lons-le-Saunier it all went horribly wrong. Too busy trying to beat a long line of lorries across a roundabout I must have missed my turning and ended up on a road that I’ve never travelled before.

It took me deep into the Jura Mountains and right over the top of a series of mountain passes, at one of which I stopped to make lunch.

We crossed into Switzerland at a frontier post that I never knew existed and round another mountain pass that presented me with this beautiful view of Lake Geneva and what I was expecting to be Lausanne.

And I would certainly have known if I had seen this view before because this really was so stunning. I joined another pile of grockles busily photographing the scene.

But it wasn’t Lausanne at all as I found out as I dropped down to the lake, but Noyon, home of UEFA.

And I couldn’t remember exactly where Noyon was, so I guessed, guessed wrong, and ended up going about half an hour in the wrong direction before I realised.

So back into Noyon and back out the other side, in plenty of time to hit the 17:00 rush-hour queue at Lausanne, where I could leisurely take photos out of Caliburn’s window while we waited in traffic jams.

I’d been feeling quite ill for the last couple of hours and had been wishing that I could stop. But once I got beyond Lausanne I found my second wind.

Here I could put my foot down and I began to eat up the miles. And it was amazing just how quickly and how far we managed to move.

But another major road-works and diversion meant that there was no time to reach my favourite motel opposite IKEA on the outskirts of Zurich so I pulled up at a guesthouse in a small town off the beaten track.

Switzerland is frightfully expensive so having negotiated a price of €60 cash (I didn’t have any Swiss money – that’s something else stuck back in Virlet) I wasn’t expecting much.

And it’s just as well, because I didn’t get it. This place would have been fine 50 years ago, but they might have changed the carpets and the electrical wiring.

For tea tonight I have a tin of potatoes, a tin of mixed veg, a tin of lentils, some gravy browning and a slow cooker. and furthermore I managed to make it plug in (I forgot about Swiss plugs, didn’t I?) And it was all very delicious too.

I ended the night with a shower, and now I’m having another early night.

It’s been another long day.

Monday 25th June 2018 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that I have to avoid is stress. I’ve been told that many times. That’s going to finish me off quicker than anything else. All stressful thoughts need to be banished immediately from my mind.

And so after yesterday afternoon’s issues, there I was lying on my palliasse watching the clock tick round. And I definitely remember 03:44 at one point in the morning.

But I must have gone to sleep at one point because the alarm at 06:20 dragged me out of my slumber.

And out of a nocturnal ramble too. I was back in Canada picking up Strider who had been parked by the side of the road since I left him last year. And people had been using him as a rubbish skip. so he needed to be emptied. I also put my hand inside the rear door behind the rear seats (which he doesn’t have of course) and started to pullout loads of rubbish – dirt, paper, leaves and so on. And I wondered how it had come to be there. The answer was that the rear part of the cab roof that folded over down to the rear window was made of plastic (which it isn’t of course) and the plastic had rotted, allowing the weather to get in. This needed to be replaced but I wasn’t sure of the best way to do it. Meanwhile Darren was there calling his friends over to have a look at the rubbish in it. When I said something to him about that he excused himself saying that he meant come and look at how old it is. But, as I reminded him, he himself is much older than Strider.

A shower didn’t do much to revive me and my spirits, and neither did breakfast, seeing as I had chosen decaffeinated coffee by mistake.

So I came up here to pack instead and headed downstairs to load up Caliburn.

First stop was the Brico Depot just across the way, where the automatic sliding door knocked the free coffee right out of my hand.

With not being able to get into my house, I wasn’t able to pick up my hole saws so I bought a cheap set from there. And “cheap” is certainly the word. They might get through the hardboard but not very much else.

From here, the next part of my route should have been pretty much straightforward, but an accident on the N79 had closed off a section of that road and we ended up being diverted through a delightful rustic rural route that meandered for miles behind a whole series of heavy lorries. To cover what must have been a 5-mile stretch of road took us 45 minutes and added 25 kilometres to the route.

There’s a LeClerc just down the road from here and so I stopped to stock up the supplies for the next week or so, as well as to buy a few things that I had forgotten to bring (and to forget a few more things that I wanted too).

Dodging the roadworks, because the whole place is being dug up right now, I pressed on.But running rather early and feeling rather tired after last night, I found a little place to stop and rest for 10 minutes.

And 10 minutes, did I say? When I awoke it was 13:52. I’d been flat out for almost 2 hours and as a result I’d missed my lunch.

But I hadn’t missed going on a travel though. In some kind of university where some kind of official woman – might even have been the Dean – informed the students that because of some kind of irregularity in their conduct, a certain order for their new hats had been cancelled. I recounted this (with a few embellishments) to a group of other people there, one of whom noticed that her order of hats for her students had been cancelled too. So at the following meeting, the lady concerned raised the issue, stating that the order had been cancelled by a majority vote of just one. Her friend hastily corrected her, so the first lady returned to the original story, and asked why her order had been cancelled too. The Dean or whoever she was replied “well, I don’t know” in one of these stage remarks where the tone of voice conveyed more than the message. “I bet I do” was the tart reply from the lady raising the complaint. Of course, I exploded into laughter – a stage laughter too – which left no-one in any doubt that I was fully aware of what was going on.

Having been startled into awakening myself, I hit the road immediately. Due to my running a day or so early, Jean-Marc and Jacqueline had changed all of their plans to fit in with mine (which was nice of them) so I didn’t want to disappoint them.

They live in the mountains at the back of Macon in some of the most beautiful countryside that I have ever seen, where Jean-Marc had his own vinyard and made his own wine before he retired.

We’d met on a student exchange programme almost 50 years ago but lost touch with each other afterwards until 4 years ago when I bumped quite by accident into his aunt in a village where his grandmother owned a café, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

It just goes to show you exactly how small the world is these days.

Threading my way through the hills and the vinyards of the Maconnais, I ended up chez them where I duly presented the newlyweds with a bottle of champagne.

We had such a lot to talk about, seeing as the last time that Jean-Marc and I had seen each other, I was stretched out in a hospital bed having just been brought out of an operating theatre in the hospital in Montlucon.

On eisn’t at one’s best under the circumstances

Jacqueline had to go out later so Jean-Marc took me on a drive out to the countryside to revisit some of the places where we had been in 1970.

The obvious place to visit at first was the Roche de Solutre, the most prominent hill in the landscape for miles around. We’d climbed to the top of it (there’s a path) back in 1970 but that was a long time ago and I’ve slept since then so I don’t remember much about it.

He remembers that we cycled here all the way from Macon, but again I don’t remember a thing about the journey.

Jean-Marc told me that we had met all of the other exchange students at the foot of the rock and had a picnic but I don’t recall anything of that. Old age is definitely creeping on.

The next rock is the Roche de Vergisson and so we walked a little way along the track towards it.

Not all the way, of course. I might have done that in 1970 but I’ve no intention of doing it now, thank you.

The track is called La Voie Romaine by the locals and there’s no reason to suppose that it isn’t a Roman Road, although I do know of a Pont Romain – the Roman bridge – in the Auvergne which wasn’t built until the 13th Century, as do listeners of our former radio programmes.

There are several good views all over the Saone valley and up in the hills.

There are only so many of them that you can see when you are on a pushbike or an old Mobylette, so Jean-Marc took me all around the hilltops to see the things that I had missed all those years ago.

And it certainly made a great difference being able to get about in a car.

Mind you, I’m not as young as I used to be so I couldn’t go galloping up to the top for a better view like I might have done at one time.

And so you’ll have to make do with a photo of Macon taken from half-way up a hill at the side of the road.

And I don’t think that it loses anything in the view. It’s still quite impressive.

While we were waiting for Jacqueline to come back, Moonn the long-haired cat was sitting on my knee. And when she returned, Moonn leapt off me, leaving behind most of her fur. I ended up looking like a snowman.

Jacqueline and Jean-Marc offered me a bed for the night which was very kind of them, so in return I took them out for a meal in Macon.

There wasn’t a great deal of choice for a vegan meal with it being Monday and everywhere being closed, but we did find somewhere.

My vegan soup and couscous with vegetables followed by raspberry purée was totally delicious and I’ll be going back there again some time in the future.

Jacqueline drove back and when we arrived, I declined a coffee went straight to bed.

It’s been a long day and I’m thoroughly exhausted. I’m not used to all this effort.

Sunday 24th June 2018 – I’M NOT ANGRY.

Neither am I annoyed. And neither am I furious.

I’ve gone waaaaaaayyyyy beyond that into the stratosphere .

It’s the last time that I ever do anyone a favour ever again. If anyone ever wants something from me ever again they can pay full price for it. and if I ever want anything off anyone, I’ll pay full price for it too.

That way, it avoids all disappointments.

I must have MUG tattooed on my forehead in letters two feet high.

despite what I said about the hotel last night (well, it is rather overpriced and very tired, but it was the cheapest that I could find when I was tired) I had a really good sleep.

And it would have been even better had I not had a severe attack of cramp during the night – so severe that I had to get out of bed and stand up to ease the muscles;

Back in bed though, I was off on my travels and with no dictaphone handy I had to try my best to remember it.

But basically, I decided that I would like to learn a new language, so off I trotted to the night school.And who should be giving the course but TOTGA. Of course, I sat at the front of the class (my body might have given out but my mind certainly hasn’t). The end wall of the classroom sloped in at 45° so the white board attached to it was over the heads of the students at the front. And TOTGA needed to clean it. But whatever had been written on it had been written on it a long time ago and it had dried pretty hard so it took some scrubbing. So of course I volunteered to help, to the ribald remarks of my fellow classmates.

Back in the Land of the Living again, I had set the alarm for 08:45, even if it is a Sunday, but I didn’t need it because I was wide awake at 08:00. And amongst the (many) things that I have forgotten to bring with me (as usual, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) are my pills and medicines.

I shall be like nothing on earth by the time that I get to Leuven – but then it’s not as if that’s anything new is it?

After breakfast I hit the road and headed south. I fuelled up Caliburn, tight to the brim and continued on my way.

A short while later, I picked up a hitch-hiker … "well, you shouldn’t have knoched him down" – ed. A Prisoner On The White Lines Of The Freeway, as Joni Mitchell would have us believe.

I’ve hitch-hiked all over the UK and North-West Europe in my youth (and not-so-youth) and been grateful for everyone who has stopped for me. Now that I have an empty and tidy Caliburn following my efforts of the other week, I’m not ashamed to stop for casual strangers.

“You wouldn’t by any chance be going anywhere near Tours, would you?” which is about 125 kms away.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am” I replied.
And so we drove all the way round past Le Mans, down the Mulsanne Straight (without, unfortunately stopping to take a photo) and on into the suburbs of Tours where I dropped off my companion.

Regular Readers of This Rubbish will recall that I don’t like company, but it makes the journey pass that little bit more quickly when there’s someone else there.

Having picked up a baguette on the way, I stopped at the car park by the river in Loches for lunch.

And there in the shade of some kind of tree I made myself a butty and had a quiet repose.

Another thing that I did was to have half an hour on the guitar. My Vox amPlug has an input socket as well as a headphone socket, so I can run tunes off my laptop into it. As a result, I can play along to the tracks that I’m learning even in the middle of a car park and that’s impressive.

I must keep up with things.

Talking about keeping up with things, there won’t be much difficulty keeping up with this, because the insurance ran out a few months ago and it doesn’t look as if it has moved since.

I bet that you are all wondering what’s so exciting about this Daihatsu Hijet and the answer is that it’s not actually a Daihatsu HiJet at all but a Piaggio Porter.

And even more excitingly, if you peer through the grime and dust, you can see that this vehicle once bore the livery of “La Poste”. And that’s really interesting because it’s not very often that you see “la Poste” driving around in vehicles that weren’tmade in France.

Actually, you might say that it’s a Daihatsu, because it’s part of a project that Daihatsu and the Italian manufacturer Piaggio had on the go between them.

Daihatsu did drop out of the project when that company was taken over by Toyota and Piaggio carried on alone.

There are three versions of this, and I think that this might be a Version II, that dates it sometime between 1998 and 2011.

One version of this that I would really like to see is the Italian Military version that is fitted with a machine-gun. Contrary to rumours, it does NOT have one forward gear and five reverse.

A little later I did have a spell of fatigue. I did think that this trip might be too much for me, but I pressed on all the same.

And then we had the disappointment back at my house. I imagine that you all guessed that it was there.

Instead of staying there for a couple of nights, which was the plan, I went for a coffee and a chat with Rob and Nicolette, and then hit the road yet again. By now I’d found my second wind and i was ready to drive all night, but one has to be sensible about these things.

There’s a B&B hotel just on the edge of Moulins and I’m here tonight. Two nights of additional expense and 150 miles out of my way. I could have stayed at home until Monday had I known how thing were going to turn out.

I’m now running ahead of my plans at much greater expense than imagined and I’m one extremely unhappy bunny.

Let’s hope that tomorrow cheers me up.

Saturday 23rd June 2018 – I’M NOT HERE

But then you knew that already – at least, in the sense that I’m not all here most of the time.

The morning started off with me being well and truly here – up and about again nice and early which makes a change two days on the run.

And once breakfast was over and I had had a little relax, I went and assembled the coffee table.

once the coffee table was assembled, I went downstairs to fetch the desk. And by elephants that was heavy. I really struggled to get that up the stairs.

Assembling it wasn’t easy either. It was quite a complicated piece of furniture and very heavy tomove about. To have it finished, in position, vacuumed up the stuff on the floor in the bedroom where I wanted it to be, that was a task of a couple of hours.

I can certainly now understand why “old” people have to sit down for a cup of tea so often.

There are still some things left in Caliburn but I can’t bring them up by myself. It’s going to have to be a job of opening the packets in Caliburn and bringing up the stuff in two or three trips like I did last time.

But not today. It wore me out just doing that. But at least the place looks as if someone lives hers, and that’s certainly progress. Although the European Cardboard Box Mountain is blocking just about everywhere.

I managed some tidying up, but not a lot, and then I began to lose interest.

Instead of putting the clean clothes away in the cupboard, I put them in my suitcase, grabbed a few other things and then Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and I hit the road.

First stop was the estate agent’s. The barrier here to the car park is broken so we are having a new one installed. But the remote controls need to be handed in to be reprogrammed.

After that, we didn’t come home, we carried on driving.

Having a look at this sleepy little town here, you would be forgiven for thinking that it’s the back of beyond and there’s nothing whatever exciting about it.

And if you were to rely on the French Tourist Board and the French Ministry of the Interior, you’d still believe that.

Because there is absolutely nothing whatever to tell you that one of the most crucial moments in English history took place here at the town of Tinchebray.

While you admore some of the beautiful buildings and scenery here, let me tell you a little story.

And for this, you’ll have to turn your clock back 950 years.

William the Conqueror was Duke of Normandy prior to becoming King of England in 1066. And when he was King of England, he still retained his title to the Duchy of Normandy.

This was only a temporary solution. He had three surviving sons and on his death, he bequeathed his Normandy lands to his eldest son Robert Curthose.

His Kingdom in England was bequeathed to his second son, William Rufus, or William II. His youngest son Henry Beauclerc was given a suM of money.

William Rufus died childless (and regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnations will recall thatwe once visited the scene of his death) and Robert being the oldest son expected to add the Crown of England to his titles.

Unfortunately Henry beat him to it and had himself crowned as Henry I, much to Robert’s dismay.

He gathered up a small army and invaded England, but the population refused to rise up to support him and he was obliged to return to Normandy.

There were continual intrigues as each brother tried to undermine the other, and there had been several skirmishes in Normandy between Robert’s supporters and Henry’s supporters.

Henry had already led an army there in a campaign that had ended indecisively, but in the summer of 1106 he was back again.

Late September saw him besieging the Castle here at Tinchebray.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no trace of the castle today. All that I know is that one contemporary report of the battle desribes the castle as “on a hill above the town”.

So if I were having to have a wild guess as to where “a hill above the town” might be, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, that is the most likely-looking “hill above the town”, over there.

Robert led an army down from Falaise to try to break the siege, and the armies clashed on some flat land at the foot of the castle.

The site was constrained, and so the knights had to dismount and fight on foot, and if my guess is right as to the site of the castle, then the only constrained flat land at the foot would be that field there.

The result was a tragedy for Robert.

In less than an hour, his army was smashed and he was taken prisoner. He lived for the rest of his life, all 30 or so years of it, in captivity.

Normandy was united with the English crown and remained so until 1204.

And you won’t find a word of this anywhere in the town.

During the Royal Progress of Saint Louis, King Louis IX in April and May 1256 to consolidate his Kingdom, he is said by the Chronicler Eudes Rigaud, the Archbishiop of Rouen, to have visited the town.

This didn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere either, as far as I could see.

But here’s something exciting.

When was the last time that you saw one of these?

I saw one in Leuven once but you won’t have seen on in the UK for a while because only 15,000 were ever sold there and the last time that I checked, there were only about 700 still on the road.

It’s the Ford Probe of course, a badge-engineered Mazda that was intended to be the replacement for the Mustang and the Capri. But honestly, who would want to be seen in one of these?

That was the general Public’s response and the car bombed spectacularly. It was on sale for just three years – 1989-1992, and whereas the Capri was always in the Top 10 in the UK? this one was well stuck in the bottom 10.

Finding one on the roads today is something of a rarity.

So now I’m in a flea-pit in Alençon. When I’ve finished kicking out the bed bugs from between the sheets I’ll be hopping in.

I’m carrying on along the road tomorrow – I hope.

But I’ll just mention my tea, which was supposed to be chips with a tortilla wrap with nothing in it but vegetables.

And so the guy behind the counter thought it was funny to fill it with meat. He wasn’t laughing when I finished telling him what I thought of him.

It’s amazing how much French I know when I want to be offensive. Working for 15 years with a bunch of French-speaking chauffeurs did come in quite handy.

Friday 22nd June 2018 – GUESS WHAT …

… arrived in this box at my apartment this morning in this box.

To give you some idea, the dimensions of the box are 50cms by 37cms by 17cms – in other words – it’s a pretty big box

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m expecting a clothing delivery (that also came this afternoon) but that was in a bigger, heavier box. This box was quite light.

This is the answer.

Something else that I was expecting today was the repaired lens for the Nikon 1 J5 camera – the one that was repaired on a factory recall.

That lens is 3cms deep and has a diameter of 5.8cms, and sure enough, they had sent it back to me in that enormous box.

I really don’t know what must go through the minds of some people. I really don’t.

Just for a change just recently, I’d had a really good sleep and was awake bright-eyed and bushy-tailed long before the alarm. I even managed to beat the second alarm.

And after breakfast and a little relax, I made a start on unloading Caliburn.

But there were several interruptions.

We’ve seen several buses try to force their way through the tight corner into the Place d’Armes, but today we really touched rock-bottom.

The Place d’Armes now seems to be a destination to HGV learner-drivers. We had one of those here this morning doing his best to negotiated the very tight corner.

Luckily he made it without demolishing anything, but if this is goinf to become a learner-route, it won’t be long before the wall disappears underneath an errant lorry.

The second interruption was telephoning the bank. It took them a while to answer but not anything like 25 minutes. And the matter was resolved in minutes, although the person to whom I spoke had to put his head in the fridge to stop his ears burning.

And a series of e-mails has arrived that seems to indicate to me that the transfer has indeed taken place. So watch this space.

Once that was out of the way, I started to bring the furniture out of Caliburn and assemble it.

I now have a kitchen trolley for the kettle and coffee machine etc, a larger kitchen trolley for a work surface (the table can return to being a table), several shelf units for CDs and DVDs, a set of shelves in the bathroom and a cupboard underneath the sink.

The bedroom and office furniture isn’t unloaded yet, but I might have a go at some of that tomorrow morning if I can. This place is slowly looking like it might be a home.

This afternoon I went for my walk around the headland, and there was Marité, back in her berth in the harbour.

This photo here was taken with the repaired lens. I wanted to see if it’s working – and working properly ytoo, because it’s going to be playing a very important role in a little project that I have in mind.

It mustn’t fail when I’m off on my travels or I will be upset.

Having taken a photo with the repaired lens, I took a photograph of the same scene with the telephoto lens.

It’s been cropped and enlarged to bring out the best in Marité.

But comparing the two different original photos taken with the different lenses will show me whether or not there’s a discrepancy between the images, but they look pretty good to me.

There is a difference, but it’s not big enough to worry me too much.

Later that evening, I was outside socialising. And that’s not like me is it?

A mysterious notice appeared on our door announcing a get-together for the inhabitants of the building, and I need to be much more sociable than I am.

So I made one of my lentil, onion and rice curries (not too spicy for the French palate of course) in the slow cooker while I had a chat to Rosemary on the phone. And then I went off downstairs with my food.

I was there for two hours too, and I wasn’t the first to leave. I’m definitely not feeling myself, am I? And just as well for it’s a disgusting habit anyway.

Now I really will have to have an early night. There’s so much to do tomorrow. So an early night is called for. I’ve not crashed out today, with being so busy.

But my apartment is starting to look nice now. It’s about time too.

Thursday 21st June 2018 – I WAS WRONG …

… about doing a few bits and pieces and then having an early night last night.

Yes, its a real puzzle. That’s a couple of times that I’ve been so wrong just recently and that’s not like me at all. But then no-one can predict what is going to happen when it comes to dealing with the Worst Bank In The World.

There was an e-mail sent to me from them about this payment.
“In order to action your request we need to speak to you … please get in touch on ******** by 17:00 (UK time) on 21/06/2018…If no reply is received by the date and time quoted, your payment request will be cancelled.”

It’s timed at 18:30 which, coincidentally, is the time that their International Branch closes. But it arrived in my mailbox at just about 22:00.

So the bank that refused TWICE to speak to me about this transfer now wants to speak to me about this transfer.

The mail also read “We have been unable to contact you on the telephone numbers we currently have recorded on our system” which is hardly a surprise seeing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the bank entered my phone number incorrectly in its database.

But nobody speaks to me like this, least of all anyone who has so much of my money as they do. And so I hit the customer services department’s all-night line.

A 25-minute wait was not guaranteed to improve my humour at that time of the night and when I finally did speak to someone, the help that he gave me was “call back in the morning”. So he had an earful too.

After a great deal of discussion and much insistence on my part, I was eventually put through to the all-night complaints line. The girl there refused to listen to my complaint and after the discussion became rather heated, she hung up the phone on me.

And so I spent the next half-an-hour tracking down the on-line complaints department.

And do you want to see what you get when you click on the link to the on-line complaints service? It’s a real Third-World Bank isn’t it?

But I’m nothing if not persistent and I eventually tracked down a method by which I can make a formal complaint. And now they have had a 3,000-word formal complaint from me about all of this.

It also goes without saying that I didn’t call them back today either. I’ll call them tomorrow and if they don’t make the payment I’ll be closing all of my accounts. A man can only take so much garbage from the Worst Bank In The World.

The result of this was that I was completely stressed out after a couple of hours of extremely heated argument. In the old days I would have gone for a run – guaranteed to calm me down. But I can’t run these days, so I ended up having the worst night for quite some considerable time. None of my relaxation techniques seemed to worK

So much for trying to lead a stress-free existence these days.

Despite everything, I did manage to crawl out of the bed at an early hour, and following a shower and breakfast, Caliburn and I hit the road.

We called at Roncey to pick up Liz and then we went off to IKEA.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year ago I bought the first instalment of furniture for this place, and I needed a second load.

However I’ve not managed to make it there in Caliburn, and as Liz wanted to go to purchase some bunk beds for her grandchildren who will be arriving shortly (much to Strawberry Moose‘s delight as they are amongst his most devoted fans). So today was the day.

We had a lap around buying the small stuff and making a list of the big furniture. Then we went for lunch, and I lost the list, so we had to go around again.

And having made a second list, we could buy up the stuff that we needed and load up Caliburn.

All in all, it took much longer than it otherwise might have done because there were plenty of coffee stops as we went around. It’s hard work looking for furniture, and even harder work hauling it about.

Back at Liz’s we unloaded her purchases and she made a baked potato, salad and beans for tea which was very nice. Saved me a job.

Caliburn and I returned home to find that there was a music evening in the town and all of the roads were closed. It took some negotiating to find our way back here.

Interestingly, despite the dreadful night and the exertions of today, I’ve not crashed out at all. Bizarre, that. maybe it’s because I’ve been keeping busy today and the adrenalin levels have been high. Perhaps I ought to argue with more people more often?

But not tonight. I really am going to try for an early night.

Tomorrow is another day as we all know.

I wonder which b@$t@rd$ are going to come along and spoil it.

Wednesday 20th June 2018 – THE WORLD’S WORST BANK …

… strikes again!

Remember that letter that I had to fax them yesterday? It seems that I had forgotten something off it.

And yes, I freely admit that it was my error. No argument there.

The bank sent me an e-mail and asked me to rectify the omission. No problem there either.

BUT

I had to reply by fax yet again. I couldn’t do it by phone, and I couldn’t reply to their e-mail either. Even though they had referred to my request in the e-mail that they had sent me, that it would be clear that any reply that I sent would have been in reply to their mail, and that the information was information that they had requested.

So that was yet more wasted time.

Like I say, I’m not denying my responsibility. I’m just moaning about the bank’s procedures. Had I still have been in the UK they would have been kicked into touch a good while ago. But then, had I still been in the UK, I would never have had the issues that I’m having now.

Last night, I didn’t get to see my film. I ended up going to bed fairly early instead. I was hoping to have an early night, but waking up at 03:45 was no part of my intentions whatsoever.

So much so that after breakfast I sat down and ended up being … errr … away with the fairies for a good half an hour.

But I pulled myself through, did some more tidying up and even vacuumed the living room, as well as measuring up a few things here and there, because I’m having a day out tomorrow.

Or, at least, I’m hoping to, if I can find the road.

On my trip into town this afternoon we were lucky to see the harbour. We’ve been swathed in a hanging cloud all day and it hasn’t lifted for a minute. It’s even worse right now.

If it keeps on like this, I won’t even be able to find my way out of the building, never mind out of town.

Having dealt with the housekeeping issues for today (Friday is to deal with the kitchen and Saturday is to wash the floor to let it dry while I’m out at the shops) I went back to the blog again.

The current whereabouts of my amendments is the day that I left Leuven to travel to Oostende. That page is not quite finished (although it might be by the time you read this) but it’s all now done from there onwards.

I’m determined to bring it all up to date before I’m much older, having left it somewhat … errr … incomplete during my all-too-frequent bouts of illness.

No point in going out for lunch today in the hanging cloud. I stayed in and read my book in the peace and quiet.

And then I had to fiddle about with the printer in order to make it work. It’s an ancient Hewlett-Packard that I inherited from Marianne all those years ago. It had an enormous amount of use while she had it, and it’s done some work here over the five years that I’ve had it. So it’s quite temperamental.

And so off into town.

We’ve seen the hanging cloud, but I don’t think that you have seen the workmen down in the bottom-right corner who have now started on another house down on the rue du Port.

It’s difficult to tell whether they are knocking holes in the walls to fit new windows, or whether they are trying to knock the walls down completely. I suppose that time will tell.

Having seen my friendly newspaper shop owner and sent off the fax, I came back up the hill.

And over in the port, another gravel lorry had arrived and had tipped its load. And behind it there was a digger driver busily heaping it all up into a tidy pile on the edge of the quayside.

Not in the gravel bins, you’ll notice. So that can really only mean that another gravel boat will shortly be paying us a visit. And I hope that I’m here to see it.

But I learnt some bad news in the newsagents. Madame la Maire has finally published her proposals for the port. She wants to build another casino and another pile of restaurants down there.

That means, quite simply, that all of the empty shops in the town will immediately be transformed into the kind of expensive boutiques that you see in every other seaside town – vastly overpriced for two months of the year and closed, gathering dust for the other 10.

And the port, instead of being a working, industrial zone, will become a haven for luxury yachts for 2 months of the year and deserted for the remainder.

It will totally destroy the character of the town, but such is the price that one has to pay for a bit of egoism.

And it did not go unnoticed that the proposals weren’t published until after the series of meetings with the residents (one of which we attended last week).

So that was my afternoon walk, and I crashed out yet again for a while. A coffee soon revived me though, and I had a good 50-minute session on the bass guitar. I’m cracking on.

After tea, which was a frozen mushroom and pepper curry in coconut milk, I went for my walk. And managed 120 paces at a run (well, a sort-of run). And if there was anyone else out there, I wouldn’t have an idea in this weather.

So now I’ll do a few bits and pieces and then have another early night.

And I hope that it’s more successful than the last one.

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about my blog, and one of the (many) reasons why I keep it, is so that when I have an altercation with someone, I have it chapter and verse about when and where it took place, and what was said.

So that way, whenever I’m having an argument with a semi-official body, I have the notes to prove my point.

But let’s not get ahead of ouselves.

Last night after having done almost everything that there was to do, I sat down and watched a DVD, something that i haven’t done for quite some time. Last night’s entertainment (if that’s the correct word) was Batman (the Movie). A totally absurd, incredibly camp film that is so bad that it’s good.

And what is probably the funniest part of the film is Adam West trying so hard not to laugh at some of the lines. Brings back many happy memories of the 1960s.

Despite the early night it was a struggle to come up for air this morning and I was a little later than usual leaving the stinking pit. But a breakfast and a hot shower brought me sort-of into the Land of the Living.

First thing was to put the bathroom back together and then to attack the living room. Do it while I’m in the mood. So that’s something like, stuff is sorted out, more stuff has been found (including my missing 32GB memory stick) and more stuff thrown away. And it was quite profitable too, because I found €1:03 too.

Spend, spend, spend!

And I’m glad that I did it too then and there because I didn’t have time after that.

Looking through the e-mails that had come in through the night, there were two that were very important and needed to be dealt with on the spot. And that involved a phone call to my bankers in the UK.

I’d tried a few weeks ago to set up an on-line banking service, but it had spectacularly failed, so I put it out of my mind. That was the first thing.

And despite what they told me, they had indeed been notified of my new telephone number. It’s there in black-and-white in my letter of 19th January, and when I had an argument with the bank’s customer service, they telephoned me back on that number on 6th February.

And since then, they’ve been sending me security codes when I’ve been using my UK credit card.

The second thing though is that I need to make a substantial payment to North America, and make it quickly. And I can’t do it by telephone despite whatever pleading I can use. It needs to be done in writing, although a fax machine is acceptable.

I threw away my old fax machine in 2011 so this meant a good hunting down of a fax machine in Granville.

First thing was to type out a letter, and while I was at it to deal with some more post that needed answering. That took me all the way up to 13:45. And then into town to search for a fax machine.

No go at the library. The Tourist Information Office was closed, the Mairie didn’t have one, and neither did the Post Office. But the Post office sent me across the road to the newspaper offices. They had a fax machine, but it was private.

But the newspaper shop next door advertised photocopies and photo-scanning, so I went in there. And sure enough, a very friendly newspaper shop owner had a public fax machine, so that was that.

I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and came back.

Lunch was exceptionally late and I was joined by no one but two lizards who spent more time fighting over a lump of pear than they did actually eating it. And that was surprising because there was more than enough for two.

Having had a lengthy walk just now, I abandoned the idea of going out this afternoon.

And so I was in my apartment to notice one of the school buses take the wrong turning up to the High School and get stuck in the gateway to the Place d’Armes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a couple of buses do that earlier this year, but at least there was much less drama associated with this one. With a couple of bits of shunting he managed to get round quite comfortably.

Instead of my walk I sat down on the sofa with a cold drink, and the efforts of earlier were clearly far too much for me because I was out like a light for a good half-hour. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

But I managed to fit in my guitar practice, and then made tea. A burger in a bap with baked potato. And remind me next time that when I go to defrost the burger in the microwave, to take it out of the plastic bag first.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, and the view across to Jersey was one of the clearest that I have ever had.

If you notice the radio mast over there, it’s really hard to believe that that is 34 miles away from here. But it is.

There was no-one about so i had another run. 110 paces tonight. But I was disappointed that the last two runs haven’t shown up on my fitbit. It’s disappointing to say the least. I’m clearly not going fast enough, but you can’t run before you’ve learnt to walk, can you?

Round the other side of the headland I could see that we’ve had a whole pile of deliveries to the gravel bins.

There’s gravel all over the place again, and even a couple of hundred tonnes of sand.

Does this mean that we’re going to have another gravel boat some time soon? I shall have to pay much more attention that I’m doing, otherwise I’ll miss it.

Tonight I think that I’ll watch another film. I’m becoming quite bourgeois in my sentiments these days. I’m going to have to snap out of that.

But one thing that I did during the odd period here and there of lucidity was to finally finish the blog entry for one day of my trip to the desert. And never mind finishing it, it almost finished me.

It still needs to be poof-read, have the tpying examined and have a spelchek, but it’s all of 5645 words, a new record and by an enormous margin too. You can read it at your leisure.

I deserve a medal.

Monday 18th June 2018 – I’M WONDERING …

… if I’m mistaken when I say that there hasn’t been a gravel boat in the harbour for quite some considerable time.

The reason why I’m making this observation is that when I went out at lunchtime, Neptune was conspicuous by her absence.

And when I reviewed her port call list, I found that she had set out for Whitstable with her load of gravel at 05:59 this morning. In other words, she had loaded up during the night at ow tide, and as soo as the tide was high enough, she cleared off.

It was only by chance that I spotted her last night, being late for my evening walk and going round the headland rather than round the walls. So if she’s bee, coming and going like that, I could easily have missed her, and on several occasions too.

Something else conspicuous by its absence was the lizard. That’s two days in a row that he hasn’t been for his pear leavings. Mind you, when I went out for my lunch on the wall, it hadn’t long stopped raining so everywhere was still quite wet.

Just for a change last night, I had a good sleep. And I was awake at 06:00 quite spontaneously. There wasn’t anything that awoke me. So after breakfast and a relax I carried on with my blog entry for the first day in the desert.

And we are going to have a problem with that because the reason why it’s taking so long to finish is that it’s already at 5400 words – a new record by far – and there’s still tons to go at yet. It’s the kind of blog entry that could reasonably turn out to be embarrassing with that amount of stuff in it.

After lunch I started to tidy up and clean up in here. I’ve decided to do it bit by bit and it was the turn of the bathroom and toilet today.

So far (and it’s not finished quite yet) it’s taken me 4 hours to do it. Not because it’s so dirty but because I can’t keep going at it. I can only do 10 minutes or so and then I have to come to sit down to recover my strength.

What a state to get in, hey? What am I going to be like in another couple of years? Assuming that I’m still here, of course.

There was the usual session on the bass, made much easier with the practice amp and the chord diagrams of course. Can’t think why I didn’t do that before.

And my two walks. Mustn’t forget them.

The afternoon walk around the headland was quite interesting though.

I’m not sure what was happening but we were experiencing some kind of phenomenon with the lighting in the sea.

I’ve no real idea what might be causing these patches of different-coloured sea. Thee aren’t any rocks underneath there and they weren’t floating patches of seaweed either. And I’d be surprised in different levels of salinity would make that much difference, even if it were the case.

but there is certainly a finely-defined band of separation there; Something strange is going on.

On the way back, outside the building, I bumped into one of my neighbours and we had a chat.

Firstly, she told me that the party aboard the Charles-Marie was to celebrate its 50th Anniversary, and she was actually on board it joining in the celebrations. But then she told me a funny story that really appealed to my sense of humour.

There was a wedding reception in the public rooms on Saturday and several vehicles gatecrashed our private parking area. She had a few words with one of them, who replied to her in language that would have been out-of-place in the fo’c’sle of an Australian Antarctic whaler.

So she said nothing, came in, changed into her best clothes, and went out again to gatecrash the wedding reception where she had her evening meal at their expense.

And good for her too. That’s the kind of thing that really cheers me up.

It’s still quite early right now, but I reckon that I’m going to watch another film and go to bed. I’ve managed to go without crashing out today which is good news, and my evening walk included another 100-metre run. I’ll loosen myself up eventually, and we aren’t talking about syrup of figs either.

An early night will do me good in the circumstances. I have plans to make.

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

Saturday 16th June 2018 – AND THERE I WAS …

… last night crowing about how i hadn’t crashed out yesterday.

Well, pride comes before a fall as we all know, and so this afternoon, I crashed out for today, yesterday and for the whole of next week too. A good 90 minutes in total, I reckon. Well away with the fairies.

I did say, didn’t I, that I would pay for yesterday.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either. Well, not by my standards anyway. Mind you, there was a firework display somewhere in teh vicinity so I didn’t go to bed until after it had finished. And I awoke under my own steam too before the alarm went off.

After the usual morning performance there, I had a shower, a change of clothes and all of that lark and then headed to the shops. And they were all packed to the gunwales too.

LIDL had nothing exciting, but there were a few things in NOZ that were noteworthy, including jars of tahini at just €1:49 which is for nothing. I use a lot of it in my hummus, so I bought 4 jars and Liz asked me (because I sent her a text) if she could have one of them. Not a problem.

At LeClerc I bit the bullet. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have carrot issues. For a reason that I can’t understand, they don’t seem to last more than thre or four days here. I don’t like frozen carrots at all but I can’t see an alternative so I bought a packet. 1kg at €0:79 – even cheaper than fresh and will last a darn sight longer too.

But I did spend some money in GIFI. Something caught my eye when I was in there the other day so I went there to see if they still had one, which they did. And tomorrow, when I’ve assembled it, I’ll show you what it is.

Back here I put everything away and then managed to configure my laptop to watch French television and settled down to watch the football, France v Australia.

But I switched off in disgust shortly after half-time. It seems now that they can stop the game so that the referee can look at the TV and the action replays and reverse his previous decisions.

That, of course, is a total nonsense. It’s bad enough, this stop-start football these days, without bringing this into the game. Soon, they’ll be stopping the game to decide on throw-ins and the like, and presumably running commercial breaks while they do it too.

It’s the death-knell for football as far as I’m concerned. Since time-immemorial part of the whole football experience for the fans includes having a good old moan at the referee. Take that away and you lose half of the excitement.

Instead, I made my butties and went to sit on the wall with my book and my lizard.

I was however distracted by something in the distance.

But with the big telephoto zoom lens that I have, I can photograph it and then crop and enlarge the image for a closer look. And it turns out to be some kind of small motor boat, like a customs launch or something.

And if you think that the photo is blurred, you need to remember that the coast over there is over 18 miles away so the boat is probably 14 miles away. It’s not oo bad in th circumstances and I would have to pay a lot of money to have anything better.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I crashed out as I mentioned earlier. But once I revived myself I went for a walk around the headland in the hordes of people who were out taking the air, stopping to give Gribouille a pick-up and stroke on the way out.

Liz was on-line later so we had a little chat and then just for a change I sat down and watched a film on the DVD. Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me. It took ages to get it to play, but fired up in a matter of seconds once I switched the remote control over from “record” to “play”.

Tea was out of a tin tonight (it’s Saturday) and then I went for my evening stroll.

First thing that I noticed was yet more objects way out offshore so this was another job for the big zoom lens.

It turns out that they weren’t ships at all but a couple of islands out to sea, and I realised that I have made this mistake once before.

Still, you can’t win a coconut every time. We did once catch a ship out there with a speculative shot, you may remember.

THis isn’t a speculative shot, by the way, even though you might think so.

Up in that tree is a large tortoiseshell cat.

The tree is growing from the ditch at the town end of the fortifications and the upper branches are leaning against the top of the wall. And this seems to be the favourite route of the aforementioned El Moggo.

She (for I imagine it’s a female) was quite adept at getting up and down there too.

And that sailing boat that we saw coming in to the harbour back three or so weeks ago, it’s coming back in this evening too.

One of these days I’ll wander down to the harbour and find out its name. I’m sure I must have known it at one time.

But I’m very disappointed that it’s not actually sailing, but dieseling into the harbour. I’d be much more impressed to see some real seamanship with it coming in under the power of the wind in its sails.

Talking about wind and sails though, Marité isn’t in the harbour today. I wonder where she has got to. The people who run that have disappointed me too, on several occasions too, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Narrowly avoiding being run down by a motorist going up a one-way street the wrong way, I stopped to take a photo of a little street party in the Place Cambernon.

It seems that the gallery which I mentioned the other week is having an “open day”, or open evening more like. But as I said at the time, the prices of the objects in there are enough to put anyone off.

Instead, I came back home and settled down.

Sunday tomorrow, and a lie-in. And I reckon that I’ve earned it. I’ve had a hard week and I’m feeling the strain. There’s a jazz concert in town this evening, but I’m just not up to going unfortunately.

Friday 15th June 2018 – I TOLD YOU WRONG …

… yesterday about those photos.

They were not in fact by Emma Barthère at all. These are the ones that are by her – people sitting on rooftops (something that was the subject of some not inconsiderable discussion at that meeting the other night) all over Granville.

The ones that I showed you were by a photographer called Thomas Jouanneau and are part of his “Ile de Chausey” project.

So now you know.

What you’ll also know in a moment is that just by way of a change I haven’t crashed out yet today. And that’s despite being wide awake at 05:30. And it wasn’t as if I’d had a particularly early night either.

So I imagine that I’ll be paying for this in very early course.

After the usual morning performance and a little relax, I sat down to get on with some work. But it wasn’t long before I had a little distraction and ended up chatting to a friend of mine in Germany, about music and a few other things too.

And the result of this chat was that I ended up having a good hunt around on the internet. 30 years of storage haven’t been too kind to the bass guitar and it needs a few bits and pieces to restore it to its former glory.

Apart from a seized potentiometer, the machine heads and tuning pegs need replacing. And I’m not putting cheap rubbish on them but proper original Gibson equipment. And they took some tracking down too, but I might have found some in the USA.

They are going to be quite a price, and the person to whom I spoke is working out a price to include delivery to over here.

But before you all faint away at the price, just let me mention that the guy in the USA pointed me in the direction of a couple of basses the same vintage as mine that are currently on sale, and the cheapest one is at $5200 so you can see why I’m not fitting cheap and nasty rubbish to it.

Another thing too is that since I bought the tuning foot-pedal the other week, I have hit an unexpected snag. The foot-pedal goes on the floor of course, with the guitar plugged into it. And I don’t use an amplifier but a Vox Micro amPlug and headphones.

And now the amplug, instead of plugging into the guitar round about waist-height, plugs into the foot-pedal on the floor. And with the headphones only having a cable of 1.5 metres and I’m 1.73 metres, you can immediately see a problem.

You can’t buy headphones with longer cables, so eventually I was able to track down a 15m extension cable. And a proper pair of bass studio headphones while I was at it instead of the hifi headphones that I use. Might as well organise myself properly.

While I’m on the subject, another thing that I’ve been doing is to track down the guitar tabs for some of the tracks that I’ve been working on, and transforming them into images to save. I don’t read music quickly enough to play it with a score, so I play by ear. And I’m finding that these days it’s “ear today, gone tomorrow” and I’m spending more time trying to remember what I worked out the previous day than actually learning new stuff.

At least, having some kind of music enables me to work out at a glance where I’m starting and finishing, and where to keep in rhythm.

All of this took me up to something of a late lunch, so I made my butties (the salad oil mix that I made yesterday is delicious), grabbed my book and headed off for my wall where I was joined by my friend the lizard. He really enjoyed the pear leavings once again.

This afternoon I cracked on with the web page that I’m still miles from finishing, as well as having my walk. And spending 45 minutes trying to figure out the bass line to one of the tracks whose guitar tabs I worked on this morning.

And it’s times like this that made me wish that I’d paid more attention to Miss Ricketts’ music classes at school. That really WAS a wasted opportunity, that was. I don’t know what I must have been thinking when I chose my ‘O’ Level subjects and excluded Music.

My response from Nikon came back this afternoon too. Basically “ignore our earlier e-mail. You’ll have your lens next week some time”.

I had a mental block for tea tonight. I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to eat. After much binding in the marsh, I ended up with a vegan burger and veg with thick gravy.

Out for my walk this evening, there wasn’t much wind but there was quite a sea boiling up.

You wouldn’t have thought that there would have been enough energy in the sea to send the waves crashing up over the sea wall, but there we are.

And the photo hasn’t done too well, has it? I dunno what’s happening to my equipment these days. I think that the nut at the rear end of the camera must have a screw loose.

Just round the corner, I could hear some noise coming from the direction of the town.

Further enquiry revealed that there’s some kind of event in the town tonight, as this photo of the rue Paul Poirier will reveal. I was half-tempted to go down and see what was happening, but these days, I have to consider that it’s a hell of a way back up the hill late at night after a full day’s work.

I’m not as young as I was, am I?

And I was buttonholed by four young teenagers, probably about 13 or so, sitting on the wall with a smuggled bottle of cider. Could I take their photo with one of their phones? And so I duly obliged.

So having written out tonight’s entry twice (having pressed the wrong key and wiped off the previous version by mistake) I’m going to bed. I’ve had a heavy day what with one thing and another and I need my sleep.

Shopping tomorrow, of course.

Thursday 14th June 2018 – I HAD AN EXCITING …

… e-mail today.

It’s from Nikon and it concerns the repair of my camera lens (which was the subject of a factory recall, as regular readers of this rubbish may remember). It’s the report of the examination of the lens to see if it falls within the guarantee, and the bill for any repair.

It tells me that it indeed a guarantee repair, and that the amount payable is €0:00.

It goes on to tell me that

I need to pay this before 15th August, or else interest of 10% per annum will be levied.
I can’t have my lens until I’ve paid the bill.
if my lens is retained after the 15th August there’s a storage charge of €40:00.

Therefore I have sent them an e-mail asking them for their advice in making payment. Do I pay with cash, cheque, banker’s order or credit card?

And I am awaiting their reply with interest.

We’ve also had a day of neighbourly interaction. I walked into town with one neighbour, and met another one while I was down there.

But first of all, I beat the alarm clock this morning. That is, I was awake before it went off, and that is not of course the same as saying that I was out of bed. That was slightly (yes, only slightly) later.

And a nice hot shower after breakfast and a change of clothes to make myself look pretty, and then off to town.

Remember the other day when I showed you the photographs that had mysteriously appeared on the city walls in the Place Maurice Marland?

Well, here they are erecting some more a little bit further along the walls. It’s going to be some exhibition.

And while I was standing on the wall overlooking the harbour taking this photo I fell in with one of my neighbours. She was on her way to the chemist’s for some medicines so we walked into town together.

From there I walked on up the hill to LIDL and I was in luck by the railway station.

We have central rubbish collection points here in Granville where we recycle our refuse. But the collection points look so small that many people wonder how we cope.

The answer is that they are icebergs. Only one-tenth of the thing is above the surface and the rest is submerged. And there they are lifting a recycling bin out of the ground to empty into the refuse lorry.

Apparently the lorry does the paper one week, the glass another week and the general refuse the third week, or something like that.

The roadworks in the Avenue des Vendéens are well-advanced and the road is open now in both directions.

They are working on the pavements now and there’s at least one car driver that is going to have a big surprise. Remember the car that we saw the other day parked across the pedestrian crossing? The driver isn’t going to be able to do that down the Avenue des Vendéens because the council is actively taking steps to prevent it.

And quite right too, if you ask me.

At LIDL I spent a little more money than I anticipated. Firstly, they had some giant cable ties on offer. And Iw as thinking yesterday that a couple of those would come in handy for fastening Caliburn’s fire extinguisher instead of having it rolling around the floor.

But more importantly, they had one of these Italian expresso coffee makers, the kind that you put on the hotplate to boil up and the steam pressure decants it. Being married to a girl who is half-Italian, I grew to like those very much.

I have one here but it’s not been used for years because it wouldn’t work on my induction hob so it’s in a pretty miserable condition. But this new hob that I bought the other week will work it just fine.

Back into town on my way home and I bumped into another neighbour, likewise on her way to the chemist’s. So I went with her and afterwards I invited her for a coffee. We were there for hours and when I returned here afterwards I found that it was actually lunchtime. It’s not like me to be this sociable, is it?

The weather was rather cloudy, overcast and windy. Not the day for sitting on the wall watching the world go by. I had my butties in here. And then I carried on updating the second (actually the first) page about my trip to the desert.

A long session on the guitar (I have to get weaving) and my afternoon walk as well.

Tea was a burger in a bap with baked potato and vegetables. I’ve now run out of carrots (LIDL didn’t have any loose ones and a big pack of them won’t keep) so I’ll have to invent something for tomorrow.

The usual walk around the walls, and all is revealed. We can now see what this wooden framework was for.

Yes, more photos.

And I can tell you something about the photographer too. She’s called Emma Barthère, born in 1982 at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, which must have been pretty uncomfortable for her mother.

At the age of 20 (ie 2002) she went to study in Paris and after 10 years of Parisian frenzy she abandoned everything and came to Granville in 2015. And if you can work that one out, please let me know.

As for the rest of her biography, I have at times been accused of writing pretentious prose … "you, Eric? Surely not!" – ed … but I can’t hold a candle to Emma Barthère, that’s for sure.

I’m going to try for another early night, but I’m stuck once again with Aqualung and Benefit. That means A Passion Play, Stand Up and Thick as a Brick are due to follow. Five of the best rock albums ever recorded.

And you know what that means, don’t you?

Wednesday 13th June 2018 – WHAT A MISERABLE …

… day this was.

Mind you, I think that I laid the foundations for it by not going to bed until 01:25 and that’s no good. I was so engrossed in the page that I was working on that I hardly noticed the time. But at least it’s all on line now, all [gulp] 4651 words of it, a new world record and by a country mile too, and you can read it at your leisure.

And at 4651 words, you’ll need a lot of leisure.

So it’s no surprise that leaving my bed this morning was rather difficult and it was a long hard crawl into the living room. And crawl too. I’d had a bad attack of cramp during the night and I could still feel it – in fact I felt it for all of the day.

Once I’d breakfasted and organised myself, I went out to attack Caliburn – or more correctly, the untidy mess that is within him. He’s been emptied out, given a good brushing out, vacuuming and a wash of his dashboard.

Not only that, he now has his new seat covers fitted, although they are too small and I’m not sure how that can be, seeing as they are described as “Universal”.

And I found the missing spring clip. It had sprung into the tool box. So now the window winder winds properly.

You have no idea of the amount of stuff that went into the bin. And all of the stuff that was in Caliburn that really needs bringing in here.

By the time that I had finished, no-one was more surprised that me to see that it was 13:30. I’d spent a short while chatting to a neighbour and another short while giving Gribouille a stroke, but not that much. So I came in, made my butties and then went to sit on the wall in the sun because it was beautiful.

The lizard was there waiting for me and he even climbed up my leg to try to reach the pear before I had finished it. He’s getting to be very friendly now.

Back here I made myself a coffee and sat down for a moment. Next thing that I knew, it was 16:30. I’d been totally out of it for over two hours and hardly felt a thing. That filled me with dismay.

It took me ages to come round too. I’ve been noticing that not only am I crashing out for longer and longer, it’s becoming more and more difficult to shake myself out of it.

As a result of my indisposition my walk this afternoon was very late.

But I’m glad that I made it outside because the weather was really delicious. Even nicer than it had been at lunchtime. The sun was penetratingly warm, truly the First Day of Summer.

The crowds were out sunbathing on the beach for the first time this year after the long, wet and windy winter that we have had and I can’t say that I blamed them either

There were crowds of people splashing around in the water too. But sooner them than me. It wasn”t that warm – or, at least, warm enough to tempt me.

But you’ll notice the diving platform here. You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of a couple of people swimming around in the sea by the diving platform and it was almost submerged by the tide.

This gives you some idea of just how much of a tide we have here in Granville. And it goes out much further than this too.

Once I’d returned for my walk I had to phone up the UK to pay for my clothing order. It’ll be here within a week they reckon, ceteris paribus. But as for the order from BUT and LeClerc, not a sign anywhere. And I noticed that prices are starting to rise slowly but surely over there.

There was a meeting of the inhabitants of the old town this evening, chaired by the mayor of Granville so I went along to see what was happening.

I learnt a few things about the future projects but most of the time was spent listening to certain people airing their petty grievances which was a waste of time. And not the kind of stuff that needs to be discussed in a public meeting anyway.

But one exciting scheme was a project concerning the refection old railway lines down on the quayside. Could it be that they are going to actually do something about reopening the lines?

It would be exciting if they did, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer and now I really AM going to have an early night. I can’t last the pace these days.

But at least Caliburn is sorted and ready for the road.

EPIC HALL

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