Tag Archives: ambulance

Tuesday 8th September 2020 – THIS EVENING …

… I have seen something that has caused me a great deal of disquiet.

There was an ambulance and police car in the rue Cambernon here and about half a dozen people, ambulancemen and police, were struggling with a hysterical adolescent girl to put her into the ambulance.

There was no clue as to what had caused the incident, but her hysteria was way beyond the norm and quite suggestive of some kind of stupefiant-ignited issue although of course from the distance at which I was observing the affair and the fact that it was in the dark, there was nothing other than the audible indication to promote this idea.

But whatever it was, my hat goes off to the police and ambulancemen. It was a very stressful event, quite a battle to put her inside and strap her in, and they showed far more patience and discipline than I ever would have done.

It goes without saying that it’s not the kind of incident that one photographs, but it’s still bad news when the affairs of the banlieux of Paris come to, quite literally, our own doorstep.

As for me, much to my and everyone else’s surprise, I was out of bed before the third alarm went off. At least – I was sitting on the edge of the bed trying to summon up the courage to take some kind of drastic action, like moving.

Once I’d gathered my wits, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

I was on a galleon last night, one of these Spanish galleon things with crowds of people on it, a big tourist attraction. I was there with a certaib lady of my acquaintance. Something happened, me being careless I think, and she ended up with a sea-full of face – or, more likely, a face full of sea. I said that I was sorry but she started to whine on and on and on in this silly voice that she had, mimicking what I was saying so on that point I’d had enough so I just turned round and walked away. She changed her tune afterwards, apologised and asked me to come back but I’d really had enough so I just walked off. There was someone climbing up a ladder into the rigging of this ship. He was carrying a tray with about 10 different drinks on it. I thought that that was adventurous. I wouldn’t even do that with two. I was wandering around this ship, trying to find my way around and try my best to totally ignore her while she was still having one of these tantrum display things. There were some people sitting down – I was wondering whether to go to sit with them but I thought “no. I really want to be somewhere quite a way from this end of the ship somewhere on my own”.
Somewhat later we were having a look at some photos last night about all of the abandoned properties around Crewe and Nantwich, places like the old Co-op brewery and so on, a lot of them with photos of abandoned cars on them. There were several in Nantwich, three of them being churches close together in Hospital Street and their congregations transferred to the main parish church there. These churches, one of which was called St Werburgh’s, were all very eerie but very magnificent, Victorian Gothic-type but in terrible states of disrepair and decay. Even though I don’t remember them as a kid (because they weren’t there) we were having a good prowl around these places last night in this dream. It was really quite interesting. On one occasion we ended up being at a church service. They came along and asked for a collection. The girl I was with said she didn’t have anything and I just had a few copper coins that I gave them. later, we were on a railway station watching the trains come in. We moved away but a train had pulled in so I prepared my camera to take a photo. As it pulled out another one, a magnificent really big powerful locomotive pulled out of this station hauling an express train so I went to take a photo of them with the NIKON 1 J5 as it pulled out of the station but it wouldn’t work at first. I had to press the shutter a couple of times for it to work. While I was doing this there was some woman standing nearby. She was excited because she could see the main railway station from here. I thought that she meant the one at Manchester which was quite some way away and you can’t see with the naked eye, but bathed in fog anyway. But she said “no, it’s Denton station! Look over there! So I looked over there but I couldn’t see it at all with my naked eye.

Having dealt with all of that, I finally got round to having a look at Sunday’s effort. And after a good deal of listening, of thought and of transcription I managed to sort something out and you can READ IT HERE.

Surprisingly, even though I had the strongest impression that Pollux was one of the people with me, there was no mention whatever of her name at all, so I’ve no idea where this impression comes from. Mind you, there are several minutes missing here and there, either because

I didn’t dictate it (there seems to be a hole in the middle of the story somehow).
I didn’t transcribe it because I couldn’t decipher it (there was some of that too)
I didn’t type it out because there was a significant part of the voyage that would put you off your tea. And there seems to have been quite a bit of that just recently. I’ve been having some really disturbed – and disturbing – nights just recently.

As I was finishing everything, which had taken me long enough, someone with whom I wanted a chat appeared on the internet. We ended up having a lengthy chat and that was, basically, the morning finished.

After lunch I set about the radio programme. All of the tracks have been paired and combined and the text is written. Not dictated though because I ran out of time.

There had been a few interruptions during the afternoon.

First of all, there was the afternoon walk in the beautiful pleasant if not slightly windy afternoon.

There wasn’t all that much activity out there at sea this afternoon. Whatever that big ship was yesterday, that’s cleared off and there was only a speeedboat roaring past out at sea.

They are clearly going far too fast for fishing and I can’t think of any other good reason why they would be out there this afternoon. It’s not as if there’s anywhere to go in that direction.

In theory I suppose that they might be heading towards shore because there is something exciting going on over there on the beach by the looks of things.

We saw the other day that the bouchot harvesters were out there on the mussels beds at Donville-les-Bains. Over there on the beach bear Breville-sur-Mer they seem to be gathering again.

They are quite possibly waiting for the tide to go out so that they can access the mussels beds over there too. I doubt that the cabin cruiser there has any involvement in the activity.

They are probably local fishermen, because there have been quite a few of those out there over the last week or 10 days. There are plenty of mooring buoys and pot markers out there right now.

And plenty of other fishermen too. While I was walking along the path on the north side of the promontory a boat came around the headland. They are clearly intent on fishing as they have rods and fishing nets clearly on display.

It beats me why, because I have yet to see anyone out there ever catch anything.

My route arounf the headland took me past the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

And there was plenty of activity in there once again. The usual seven boats of course – nothing has changed that much. But the fishing boat from which they had been stripping the paint the other day, that’s now in the process of being resprayed.

Give it a week or two and we may well find that boat back in the water. And one or two others because there was a considerable amount of work being carried on on the other boats too.

Back here, another interruption was to deal with the question of Strider’s insurance. That expires in a few days and needs to be paid, even though I won’t probably have the pleasure of going over to Canada to drive him this year.

So this involved several e-mails, a ‘phone call to Canada, a complicated series of transactions with the bank and then a discussion on the internet with Rachel.

That took much longer than I expected and meant that my third interruption, my session on the guitar, was somewhat curtailed.

Tea was my burger on a bap with potatoes and vegetables, followed by a slice of my delicious apple pie and soya dessert.

When I went out for my evening walk it wasn’t quite dark outside.

In the distance out in the English Channel there was a yacht looking as if it was heading towards port. Of course it was far too far out for me to be able to identify it.

There were also plenty of other lights out to sea on the horizon. It wasn’t possible to say anything whatever about those.

Instead, I carried on and ran all the way along the footpath underneath the medieval walls. And, having recvered my breath again I ran across the Square Maurice Marland

During my walk across the Place Cambernon I observed the incident that I related earlier and by the time that I moved on, it was now quite dark.

We’ve seen a couple of fishing boats here and there just recently – not as many as we saw three or four months ago. However there was one coming into port and performing a U-turn to tie up alongside the fish processing plant, presumably to unload its catch.

From there I walked down to the road and then ran all the way home to write up my notes.

And having done that, I’m now ready for bed. A nice early night, finish off the radio programme (which might take all day) and then do some tidying up

There is still plenty of work to be done and I’m not really catching up with very much at all. That needs to be changed, and rapidly too.

Saturday 29th February 2020 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a change in my kitchen.

Only a small one but a very significant one at that.

On the floor underneath the shelves are two large plastic storage boxes. One has all of the spare food like packets of spices, packets of rice, all that kind of thing. The other has all of the cookery stuff.

Because of the way that things are arranged, one box has to go at the back and the other one at the front and it’s been the cookery one at the back.

But today I swapped them over. The cookery one is now at the front and easier to access, and the spare food is now in the more difficult position at the back. It’s quite clear that these days I’m using the cooker stuff much more than I’m needing to access the spare food, and that’s Progress with a capital P.

Not much progress this morning though. I couldn’t heave myself out of bed with the alarms and it was more like 06:30 when I finally made it to my feet. That’s disappointing.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. And we started off at the football too. Yes, a mid-table 12th finish in the Football League I ended up with last night. I’d swapped my managerial job at Oldham Athletic with a manager from somewhere else whose team had been right down near the bottom and over the remainder of the season I’d slowly managed to drag this other team up and into 12th position. But there was a lot more to it, much more to it but I can’t remember anything now. As soon as I awoke it all completely disappeared from out of my mind. I do remember that involved me having to do something that was a disagreeable task yet I managed to do it. I just can’t remember now what it was.
A little later, it was the Carnival procession all the way out past the rue Couraye, down the rue Paul Poirier and out to the harbour. As things were drying up it was a rival across the musicians so I managed to force my way into the airwaves and I broadcast them instead. It was rather difficult broadcasting the musicians because they were of course more interested in the music than any other surroundings but it was a broadcast that had to be made. But again there was a lot more to it than this but I just can’t remember now.

After breakfast I set about cutting up a couple of digital sound files into their component tasks and, for once, that was fairly straightforward. And doesn’t that make a change?

A shower was next, and then I was ready to hit the streets.

These days, now that I’m walking to LIDL twice a week (although that will change starting from next week), I start my little Saturday shopping adventure at NOZ.

And NOZ is always good for a laugh, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall because the parking here is totally ridiculous. Here I am, 5 minutes before the shop is due to open, just one car on the front car park (where there are eight spaces) and just four cars on the rear car park, where there are as many spaces as you would like to have.

But despite the signs all over the place warning people of the penalties for parking in the street, and the empty car park right in front of the shop, Madame (and it was a madame) in the black car on the extreme left of the image decides to park in the street with two wheels on the pavement.

You wouldn’t believe it unless you were to see it for yourself.

Today was a rather expensive day for shopping. For a start, at NOZ they had a big round pyrex casserole bowl with lid, twice the size of the one that I have.

I have to make my rice puddings in a meat tin and cover them over with aluminium foil so I’ve been on the look-out for one of these large casserole dishes for some time.

And then there were loads of other things, including the last container of that delicious Alpro vegan nut ice-cream that I bought, as well as some coconut milk.

At LeClerc, there was €50:00 spent on diesel for Caliburn and then another hefty load in the shop. But a good of that went on coffee. There’s a brand of ground coffee that I like that is sold in three-packs for €8:95 and so I usually buy something cheaper, but today they had on offer some 6-packs for just e11:95. That’s much more like my price.

They also had some big 3-kg bags of juice oranges on special offer. As my orange and ginger syrup worked quite well, I’ll make some more of that and so the juice oranges will come in handy.

Some cooking apples and a pile of pastry rolls too. An apple pie is on the agenda, and there’s also some tofu left over so I recon I ought to have a go at a bean-and-tofu pie. Monday sounds like a good baking day to me because I’m out tomorrow.

Back at the apartment I organised myself a coffee while I dealt with a few more digital sound files and did some general tidying up on the computer.

But one track that I worked on today brought back all kinds of memories – nights on board ships in the frozen North, mornings on desolate windswept airports in the High Arctic. I thought that I’d put all of that behind me but clearly I haven’t.

After lunch I set to work. I’m right down on apple purée and I really should have bought some more apples today (I did buy cooking apples but they are for the apple pie). Only four eaters that I could spare so I peeled them, diced them and boiled them up with some cinnamon. When they were starting to go mushy, I drained off the liquid (and drank it – it was delicious), stuck it in the whizzer, added two bananas and whizzed it all up.

It’s made about half a jar so that’s about four days, I reckon, and it’s now in the fridge cooling off. The first batch of banana-flavoured purée didn’t work too well but I have better hopes for this one.

The afternoon’s walk was a really long one seeing that I didn’t have any plans to go anywhere special this evening.

All the way around the headland and down the old path into town. It gave me an opportunity to have a good look at Joly France sitting on her bottom in a NAABSA position at the ferry terminal.

There are two boats called Joly France – the original which is here and a newer one, Joly France I. To tell them apart, the newer one has larger windows and a cut-out at the back, which this one doesn’t have.

Onwards and upwards, across the harbour gates and around the port.

And then across to the funfair – the fete foraine to see what was going on. There weren’t too many people around and there wasn’t all that much going on. But at least the little kiddies were having a really good time.

As for me, I walked down the rue St Sauveur, round the back of the Mairie, across the car park and through the maze of narrow streets to make my way back to my apartment

By now, the weather had eased somewhat and the sun was now out.

The view across town over to the Chateau Gautier and the Pointe Gautier was really pleasant with the town of St Pair sur Mer in the background.

And how I would have liked an apartment in the new block down there to the left. But I’ve never seen one at all available, whether to let or to buy.

And I’m not surprised either.

Back here, I edited another pile of photos from July 2019 s well as, rather unfortunately, crashing out for some time. That wasn’t part of the plan and it was rather dismaying.

With not going anywhere tonight, I had a proper tea. One of the pile of vegan burgers that I bought the other day, in a bap with potatoes and veg. Followed by pineapple chunks with the Alpro vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce.

There is absolutely no doubt, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … that while I might eat simply, I don’t half eat well. My diet is healthy, quite varied and it’s absolutely delicious.

later on I went for my evening walk. And run!

There were quite a few people about and my first running track was flooded out so I had to run on one of my reserve tracks.

The second part of my run was dry but that was something of a struggle – not as easy as it has been – because I was running into the teeth of a gale and that’s no good for me.

But as I was heading back, I was nearly squidged by an emergency ambulance, blue lights flashing, roaring through the narrow streets.

97% on the fitbit now so I extended my walk and even managed part of another one of my running tracks. This time though, it was more exposed to the wind and I had to abandon after only half of the track as I couldn’t catch my breath.

Back here now just finishing my notes with some good music playing in the background. No alarm tomorrow so, for a change, I’m in no rush to go to bed. And a lie-in will do me good.

Friday 14th February 2020 – IT’S ST VALENTINE’S DAY …

… and someone loves me evidently.

No-one tangible unfortunately, but someone “up there” … “down there, more like” – ed … must do, because I’ve had some good fortune. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Those of you who read my notes from yesterday will remember that I’d received this strange letter from some insurance company in Belgium. I rang them up this morning to enquire about it because it was puzzling me.

It turns out that, not that I remember, but when I worked for that strange American company in Belgium I’d been part of their occupational pension scheme which involves a “lump sum” payment on retirement.

As I officially retired, as far as Belgium is concerned, last year on reaching 65, I claimed my Belgian retirement pension to which I’m entitled having worked for this company and also my spell at General Electric.

This was awarded to me and as a result my identity number in the Belgian national records system has been reactivated and the Insurance company has thus been able to track me down and write to me telling me to claim it.

Usually I like to slip sideways off national registers because being on them brings the wrong kind of attention from the Authorities, but for once, as I said, it’s good news

Other good news – well, almost good news – is that I’m feeling a lot more like myself today. I must have had one of these 24-hour bug things, that’s all that I can think of, and of course I have no immune system to fight it off.

And I almost beat the third alarm today too. I had my head off the pillow and I was just about to sit up straight when it went off. Still never mind. Close enough!

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. And another night of rambling away to myself. I started off with something to do with the dictaphone last night but as soon as I picked up the dictaphone whatever memory I had in my mind had gone completely and I’d completely forgotten what it was all about. But I did remember a bit of it. I was walking past an outdoor swimming pool. It was pouring down with rain and there was a big fat boy swimming in there. He climbe dout and got his clothes on and started to get dressed. He went inside the office and there was something happening inside the office with a couple of people and he was one of them but this is where my memory runs out. This certainly involved something to do with dancing and i was trying to work out a dance step with someone or other, a girl but I’ve no idea now.
Later last night I was emptying out Marianne’s apartment getting a pile of stuff in her living room and throwing away some of it, putting some of it in boxes and bags and getting it ready to be taken down to Caliburn. I was working quite well and was quite impressed wuth myself but when I had a look at the bedroom and kitchen there was still tons to do there and I started to get a bit despairing. But I thought well, it’s no good me standing here looking at it is it? I may as well press on regardless and get on with it, which was what I did. I was looking out of this window at Caliburn parked in the street, all that kind of thing.

So whatever all that was about, I really have no idea.

After breakfast I set about cutting up a few albums and this was an agonising task. The first one just wouldn’t cut as it was supposed to and after much binding in the marsh I realised that it was actually titled wrongly and not the track it was supposed to be.

The second one wouldn’t cut properly either but after a while (and I do mean a while) I realised that it was a studio acetate rather than a recording master and so the track order is quite different than the published and printed album.

The third one was one of the very few that had survived the Universal Studios fire so it was actually very high quality although it was “in bits” and needed reassembling.

But just a reminder – I’m only tracking down digital tracks for albums that I already own on vinyl or on tape.

Having resolved the issue of this pension thing, I had to go to the bank to have my payment details confirmed and stamped.

But on the way I was … errr … detained. We saw the trawler
Coelacanthe doing some kind of weird nautical danse macabre in the harbour the other day, but here she is again manoeuvring herself around.

Obviously the fishing is back on the agenda right now that Storm Ciara has passed.

Meanwhile, at the Bank, in the headlong plummet into the abyss of being The Worst Bank In The World, the Credit Agricole Normandie once again rises to the top, or maybe I should say “sinks to the bottom” to snatch the lead from the Royal Bank of Scotland once more.

“Ohh we can’t do that here” said the second cashier to whom I had spoken. “Our Head Office has to do that”.
“All I want is for you to confirm my bank account details and to apply your stamp”
“No, our Head Office has to do that”.

Totally pathetic, that is. Whatever happened to the excellent service and first-class customer consideration that I had at Pionsat? There was none of this nonsense.

On the way back to the apartment I picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and then went to see what was happening in the harbour.

And the gates were open now, so Coelacanthe was heading off out so sea. And at the same time there were fishing boats coming in so we had a kind of traffic jam at the port entrance as they jostled for position.

But as for me, I came back here to carry on work. There was plenty to do

This afternoon I started to attack the outstanding photos. And there are more than I thought because there were those few weeks when I had my broken hand and couldn’t type or do anything.

Not only that, there were piles missing so I had to fire up the failed laptop and see if they were still left on there, and also to fire up the travel laptop to see what was on there.

They’ve all been copied over, although I’m still not convinced that they are all here as they are supposed to be. And it took an age to do so.

By the time that I’d knocked off for tea I’d finished all of the photos for June. And I think that I was unnecessarily depressed about the quality – at least of the early ones – because they didn’t need much post-work at all. Well, not as much as I was expecting anyway.

But of course that’s without making any reference to the ones that were taken under the Arctic light which is a great deal different than any light that I’m used to.

My afternoon was interrupted, as you might expect, by my afternoon walk. And, for a change and I’ve no idea why, there were hordes of people out there. A nice day, yes, but not that nice.

And I’d hardly set foot out of my apartment before I was shocked out of my usual reverie by the sirens of an emergency ambulance roaring past me.

So, as you might expect, I wandered off down the footpath at the top of the cliffs in order to catch up with it to find out what was going on that needed an ambulance.

But when I finally caught up with it I was none-the-wiser. And not even better-informed either.

The ambulance was parked at the side of the road sure enough and there was an ambulance man talking to a family group on the grass verge. But as for why, I really have no idea.

And whatever was going on there didn’t look like anything particularly urgent to me, so I left them to it.

By now, the tide was well on its way out. Not quite right out yet though.

And so I was totally surprised to see the digger and the concrete-breaker already making their way out across the water to the ferry terminal. What was really quite amusing was that, as I watched, the digger bogged down a couple of times and he used his jib and bucket as a lever to pull himself out.

On eof the best free afternoon’s entertainments that I had had.

But the sight of the digger bogging down, even with its caterpillar tracks, had presumably convinced the tractor driver that the time wasn’t right for him to set out.

He was waiting patiently at the foot of the concrete ramp for the tide to subside some more and for the ground to dry out a little before he sets off.

And I can’t say that I blamed him. After all, he doesn’t have a bucket and jib to pull himself out if he becomes bogged down.

But they had the order of proceeding all wrong anyway.

The tractor should have been the fourth, not the third machine to move. Because he’s not ready to set out quite yet he’s stopping the other concrete breaker from going across.

The other two by this time had actually made it across and had started work while they were still sitting there.

Desperate to bring the day’s total up to 100%, I went on another extended walk to clock up the miles.

My route back brought me along the rue St Jean towards home, and there at the dressmaker’s there was some excitement going on. Someone was all dressed up like something out of the 19th Century and there was someone else taking a photo of her using a tablet.

With nothing better to do, I stayed and watched them for a minute to see what they were up to but after the photo they just hung around chatting so I cleared off home.

And it looks as if I have a new neighbour too.

Whoever they are, they must be acclimatising their family pet to his new surroundings as they had a cat tethered to a lead that was tied in through their window on the ground floor.

A very friendly cat too, and we had a good ten minutes of chat and socialisation. I hope that he’ll be there again.

Back here, I carried on working despite having a little snooze here and there. But nothing like as complete as they have been just recently.

Tea was next and, having tidied the freezer once more, I came across a potato and lentil curry of 2018. That was totally delicious with rice and vegetables.

No more rice pudding so I had a banana and raspberry sorbet. And even though it was the cheap LIDL sorbet it was still delicious.

But one thing that I noticed was that there are only a couple of slices of pie left. Sunday’s task will therefore be to make another pie. If I can fit in two pies at once I might even make an apple pie.

The evening walk was, as usual, all alone around the walls. That meant that I could fit in my two runs in relative comfort, regardless of the howling gale.

Being almost at 100% I extended my walk and went on the cliff by the fish processing plant where, from my lunchtime spec when the weather is good, I could see the fishing boats coming home now that the tide was coming back in.

Fishing is back on the agenda now that Storm Ciara has passed.

Back here, there was the football. Bala Town v TNS in the Welsh Premier League

TNS have swept all before them over the past 10 seasons although Connah’s Quay are catching them up. And with TNS losing at Newtown the other day the gap has narrowed.

Bala are, somewhat surprisingly considering that they have two of the best players in the league in their team, somewhat off the pace.

The match though, went according to expectations. TNS had about 80% of the possession and had Bala pegged back in their area for most of the match. But we were treated to something much more than a defensive masterclass – more like a desperate rearguard “thin red line” defence as bala did everything they possibly could.

Henry Jones and Chris Venables were surprisingly subdued today and so they offered little in attack. The big winger Lassana Mendes though had an excellent game and why he didn’t win the man of the match award I really don’t know.

Surprisingly, despite having nothing much up front, Bala took a surprise lead when a corner into the TNS penalty area was headed into his own net by Aeron Edwards. But TNS pulled one back with a penalty late in the game – a case of “blaa to hand” rather than “hand to ball” but a penalty none-the-less.

But no matter how much they threw at the Bala defence they couldn’t break through for a winner.

Meanwhile over on Deeside, Connah’s Quay put four past Caernarfon to go top of the table. Interesting times indeed.

But asI write up the notes I have a feeling that I’m not going to reach the end before I crash out at my desk so i’d better ….

ZZZZZZZZZ

Tuesday 5th March 2019 – IT’S MARDI GRAS …

… and there’s been the afternoon parade of floats around the town.

But the day started off with me ignoring the alarms and staying in bed until about 07:20.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble or two.

We were having some kind of meeting at school with a few of the kids and I was on the interview panel. The first kid to be interviewed was my own daughter (which of course I don’t have, as far as I am aware) but was in fact Zero. I had to give her something of a lecture about one or two things that she hadn’t done, or had done incorrectly. And in the end I asked her if she was going to wait for me and we would go home together. That was what she wanted to do so I told her to wait “over there”. The next girl was a little think rake of a girl who had, apparently, failed her dancing exam. She’d put in a lot of effort and it was a shame that it hadn’t been rewarded. We needed to encourage her and bring her forward, and so we’d set up a little rehearsal lesson for her and one or two others. But this was going on far longer than it should have done and I ended up being worried about being late.

Later on, there was a crowd of us with my father in his old black Zephyr 6 3816TD. We were bowling along down the motorway and hit a traffic queue that slowed everyone down. The third lane was open so we swerved into there and passed the obstruction but ended up crawling along behind some motorist going really slowly. Eventually we pushed him (metaphorically of course) out of the way and even in fourth gear, tried to pull away from almost a crawl. I was interested to see if the car would do it. I mentioned that if my father wanted to fit a diesel engine into the Zephyr I had a Peugeot 2.3 diesel lying around out of a Sierra (I actually do, believe it or not) and that would go in quite nicely, especially as now all of my plans had changed and I was not going to use it. My father came up with a few objections about how all of the gearing would be wrong and much too over-geared, but I remarked that it seems to be coping quite well with the 2.5 litre petrol engine that’s in there right now.

We had the usual morning medication ritual, and later on a breakfast. Following which, I caught up with the outstanding photos from Sunday.

One task that I’ve been trying to do on a kind-of ad-hoc casual basis is to go through a few of the older web pages and update them with stuff that I’ve discovered subsequently, or with photos from subsequent visits.

I’d noticed that on one page from 2005 I’d missed a couple of photo shots that I had taken when I was there in September 2017, so this morning I attacked that web page and it’s now up-to-date until the next revision.

But here’s the exciting bit.

I was looking for yet another paper, and this led to a major tidy-up in here and filing of papers. That took a good couple of hours and things are looking much more optimistic in here now.

But surprisingly, while I was looking for something else, I came across the missing taxe d’habitation certificate for 2013. So that folder is now up to date and that’s good news.

A whole pile of stuff ended up in the shredder too and that went down to the paper container outside, and another half-bag has been shredded in here too, for finishing off tomorrow.

After lunch, I carried on tidying up in the bedroom and a lot of stuff has been put away. It’s certainly made a difference.

Later on, I went down to the harbour to see the floats arriving from their lap around the town. I took plenty of photos and videos and I’ll sort those out tomorrow.

The tide had turned while I was down there at the defilé.

As I was climbing back up the rue des Juifs I noticed that all of the fishing boats were starting to come in on the tide.

It was quite impressive watching them all come in in line-astern like this.

And you can tell that the tide had only just started to come in.

The channel is deepest nearest the left-hand side of the harbour entrance, and you can see that the fishing boats are keeping well over to that side of the entrance

And you’ll notice at the bottom of the image the seagulls are forming a queue for the leavings

With it being Mardi Gras, I had some taco rolls with stuffing and pasta, followed by apple pie and coconut-flavoured soya cream. That pie is getting better and better.

Following that I went back into town.

Despite the high winds, all of the big attractions at the fairground were in full flight, so I went down to photograph and film them.

I was down there for a good hour or so with the big Nikon taking photos and the Nikon 1 J5 taking the films.

ambulance attending emergency rue des juifs granville manche normandy france On the way back, I encountered something of a medical emergency in the rue des Juifs.

There was an ambulance parked blocking the street, with the personnel attending to someone in the driving seat of a car parked by the pavement.

I’ve no idea what was going on ther, and it didn’t seem to be the bet moment to enquire

Only a vague wave of fatigue today – no crashing out. So I’m off to bed now and hopefully I’ll have a good sleep ready for tomorrow and yet more work.

Meanwhile, If you want to see all of the photos from today, you need to go to THIS LINK

Sunday 20th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN BUILDING …

… up for a while so it’s no surprise that I was going to have a bad day sooner or later. But to have one on the day that I’m travelling is not what I was expecting at all.

Possibly it was the late-ish night that didn’t help, or possibly it was the fact that I couldn’t drop off to sleep..Or maybe even the fact that I awoke at about 05:40. But whatever it was, it wasn’t very good.

Still, no point in holding off the inevitable. I crawled out of bed.

No medication, and no breakfast either. Instead, I had a shower, a clean-up and a change of clothes, and then unplugged all of the electrical appliances (although I realised later that I had still left a few plugged in).

Packing the food and making the butties was next. A quick bit of cleaning up and tidying was next and then I hit the streets.

It was a long, lonely, difficult crawl up to the railway station and I really didn’t feel at all like it.

When I arrived at the station the garrulous cleaner was there so we had a little chat about things.

Luckily the train was in so I quickly grabbed a coffee and clambered aboard to my seat. I could sit and eat my breakfast in comfort while I waited for things to happen.

The train set off bang on time and that’s always encouraging, but my optimism didn’t last all that long. We’d only travelled a few miles before there was a call over the PA ystem “could any doctor or nurse on board make themselves known to the ticket collector?”.

Is there a doctor in the house? I hadn’t realised that I looked so bad.

But as it happens, it wasn’t for me.

Our train made an unscheduled stop at Folligny and all of a sudden there were a lot of people running around outside. Eventually, an ambulance pulled up on the station forecourt and the emergency personnel started to run around.

Round about this time I dozed off to sleep but by the time that I awoke we had the SAMU here too. And after a good while they evacuated a person on a stretcher. Judging by the heavy covers over the stretcher and the lack of urgency of the emergency personnel, it can’t have been good news for whoever it was.

75 minutes late, we headed off on our route. I made sure that I had the ticket collector sign my ticket to say that the train was delayed. It’s going to be touch-and-go for me to catch my TGV in Paris.

At Villedieu-les-Poeles I was joined by a fellow-passenger – a charming lady. I was looking forward to some convivial company but she just buried her head in her book and that was that.

70 minutes late at Montparnasse-Vaugirard so I had to move fairly rapidly – the last thing that I felt like. I was interrupted too by some African woman who wanted me to tell her the directions to somewhere or other – but what do I know?

We had a long wait for a metro too. This wasn’t looking good. And it was crowded too but I managed to grab a folding seat and make a start on my butties.

Much to my surprise, when I arrived at Paris Gare du Nord our train was already at the platform. She is our old friend PBKA 4304. We’ve travelled on this one on several occasions

Even more surprisingly I found that I still had half an hour to wait before I could board the train. I hadn’t been delayed as long as I thought. There was even a free seat in the public area for me to sit and finish off my lunch and that was even more surprising.

We were allowed on board the train early and I ended up with another charming and personable companion. But she was busy on her telephone so I curled up and went to sleep – just waking up long enough to have my ticket inspected.

The train arrived in Brussels a few minutes early which was very nice. I actually had plenty of time to buy my ticket for my train to Leuven.

That was on time too so it wasn’t long before I was in Leuven. A nice comfortable ride in a nice comfortable train.

But winter is here in Leuven, that’s for sure. It’s minus 2°C and there’s plenty of frost lying about all over the place.

At my little lodgings there is no trace of my passport unfortunately, but at least my room is warm and comfortable. I unpacked everything and then, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out. And for two hours too. I was well away with the fairies.

I was awake later long enough to walk into town to pick up a pizza. After all, it is Sunday.

One thing that I noticed was that the Tiensestraat is closed off and they’ve dug up the road. Judging by the look of things it seems to be something to do with the drainage. But whatever it is, it will keep them out of mischief for a while.

My pizza was absolutely delicious and I really enjoyed it.

But I was soon back in bed. I just can’t last the pace these days, can I?

medical emergency gare du folligny manche normandy france

drainage work tiensestraat leuven belgie

Saturday 28th January 2017 – PANIC AT THE SCOUT HUT!

Here I was, sitting in my little room this afternoon when I heard the sirens.

Two emergency ambulances in fact, one a proper full-sized thing and the other was one of these rapid response estate car things. And they came roaring up the Kruisstraat, the wrong way of course as you might expect, and shuddered to a halt at the scout hut, which is at the rear of this building.

There was some kind of commotion there, and then the big ambulance departed in a hurry, with the little one following on behind with its lights and siren switched off.

The wrong way up the Kruisstraat, of course.

I didn’t have much of a sleep last night and although I was away on my travels everything evaporated as soon as I awoke, which was long before the alarm went off. In other words, I was whacked this morning.

My German housemates were in there for breakfast and it’s a fact that I couldn’t eat mine. Half of it ended up in the bin. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these days. Can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t do anything.

Seeing as I’m out tomorrow, I hope, I went for a shower and a shave and a change of clothes. I may as well, even if they haven’t been this week to change my linen despite the promise that they made on Monday. Can’t say that I’m too impressed with the housekeeping. But then again, the price that I’m paying to stay here, I’m not complaining.

The Carrefour was on the agenda too. I walked down there via Caliburn, giving him a start and a little warm-up for five minutes. I bought a few bits and pieces for lunch and for Sunday tea. No hummus though as I have a pile of vegan cheese. I’ll go for cheese butties instead.

My path down to the Carrefour took me past the Botanical Gardens in the Kapucijnenvoer. And I was arrested by this bizarre sight.

Although it is comparatively warm for the time of year right now, it’s been freezing for quite a few days. And the fountain by the entrance to the Botanic Gardens is still partly-frozen.

I should have come down to see it in the middle of the cold spell, I suppose, but it was still quite photogenic. I wasn’t the only person photographing it today.

This afternoon, in between a little snooze, someone “shared” a football match on their Social networking site. Caernarfon Town against Rhyl in the Welsh Cup. If they simply link to it, I can’t see it as there’s a block on transmission but “sharing” it means that I can watch it, which I did. That was a nice change.

For tea I had more of my kidney bean stuff with pasta. And it was just as delicious as Thursday too. It was followed by pineapple slices and sorbet, which was even nicer.

I’ll try now to have a good long sleep ready for tomorrow. I’m hoping to have an afternoon out tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: ambulance

Tuesday 8th September 2020 – THIS EVENING …

Saturday 29th February 2020 – THERE HAS BEEN …

Friday 14th February 2020 – IT’S ST VALENTINE’S DAY …

Tuesday 5th March 2019 – IT’S MARDI GRAS …

Sunday 20th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN BUILDING …

Saturday 28th January 2017 – PANIC AT THE SCOUT HUT!

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