Tag Archives: back-up

Saturday 2nd September 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

… believe this (or maybe you will, I dunno) but this afternoon and evening I have wiped off the various hard disks that are running at the moment from this computer a total of over 600GB of duplicate files.

That’s not all either because even as I’m typing this I’m coming across more files that I can delete so i’ve no idea how much free space I’ll create by the time that I finish.

That is, of course, if I ever do, because I’ve been at this project and off since August 2021 when I began to upload the contents of ever hard drive that I’ve ever owned that is still working.

And seeing as I bought my first PC over 30 years ago and always kept the hard drives when I dismantled them, you can imagine how many I have.

It’s now quite late so I’m hoping for a good sleep and a nice long lie-in in the morning, something that I didn’t have today.

Struggling to my feet when the alarm went off was quite an adventure and I still wasn’t feeling much like it when Caliburn and I hit the streets.

Noz was a big disappointment today because there was nothing of any interest in there.

However I struck it lucky in LeClerc There are some really nice but expensive vegan burger and vegan sausages that are well out of my price range but they had some on special offer in the Clearance range so I stocked up.

Something else that I bought was a set of cheap pyjamas. If I’m going into hospital sometime soon I’ll need a pair. I don’t like these hospital ones.

On the way home I went via the Biocoop. I need to make some more hummus and I don’t have a lot of tahini. They don’t sell that in LeClerc

Back at home I sorted out the freezer and packed away the stuff that I’d bought. The freezer now really is quite full but at least it’s full of stuff that I can eat. I’m not going to be short of interesting meals for a while now.

Armed with my coffee and my cheese on toast, I came back into here to sit down where I promptly crashed out, not that that’s any surprise given how things have been just recently.

When I eventually awoke, that was when I began to crack on with the duplicate files. There are a couple of handy utility programs that help here but the files still need to be sorted and filed away by hand first and that’s what takes the time.

Tea tonight was chips (potato and sweet potato) with a vegan salad and burger in a bun, made with my own home-made dough in the air fryer.

Following that I had my chat with Rosemary – quite a lengthy one as I suspected. She’s going to see a specialist at the end of the month and wanted to have a chat about it.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. One of the dreams involved a brawl between players at a women’s football match with a few despicable scenes that concluded with one player slamming another one’s head against a wall and a table on several occasions really hard. The noise of the head hitting the wood etc in my dream was awful, it really was.

There was another dream of which I can only remember bits. I was going to a rock concert somewhere. When I’d arrived or was on my way there I’d met these Hells Angels, I suppose. One of them took me under his wing a little. I can’t remember much about it but I had to change my clothes, ending up getting completely dirty working on a motor bike. At the end of the concert I had to leave of course. That guy said that he’d run me home. I thought that with all the beer he’s drinking and breaking wind it’ll certainly be uncomfortable on the back of his motor bike like that. Then I began to change my clothes. Then I realised that I had the model of a church or something that I’d built to exhibit somewhere. The whole idea was quite controversial so why don’t I ask this guy, seeing as I’m on his right side at the moment, whether he’d like to be a bodyguard for this model while it was being exhibited. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember any more than this, which is a shame.

Did I dictate this huge long dream about writing a thesis? … "no you didn’t" – ed. I kept on being interrupted by all kinds of people. There was a deadline by which it had to be done. Not only that, I was staying in a hotel in the Pigalle. All of my possessions were there. The day was drawing on. When I finally finished I had to send it off. Then I realised that I had no conclusion so I had to think of a good one. The conclusion ended up not being very good because the final photo of my thesis was a group of people fighting. I had somehow to tie my conclusion to that. Then I still had to go to the Pigalle to pick up my affairs. I’d told them a while ago that I’d be another hour when they asked. I thought that at this rate it’s going to be another one of these things where they’ll take my possessions in charge and that will be that. There was then a queue of people all waiting to use the computer to send off their theses. Everything seemed to be going wrong. There was much more to it than this too but I can’t really remember the earlier parts of it

So having finished, I’m going to bed. And not before time either. Tomorrow I have some hummus to make and some tidying up to do ready for next week. Work is beginning to pile up yet again and I need to crack on and do it.

Friday 1st September 2023 – FOURTEEN MINUTES …

… of added time was played at the end of the second half of the game between Caernarfon and Connah’s Quay this evening.

When a spectator ran onto the pitch after 53 minutes I thought “here we go again. A repeat of what happened at the game of Y Fflint v Caernarfon towards the end of last season”.

However, it was slightly different this evening. The fan was wildly gesticulating at the Medics’ bench and they suddenly got the message because they sprinted over to the supporter with their medical bags.

After much confusion and a lengthy waiting period, we saw the two medics helping from the ground someone who was clearly in a great amount of distress. And then the game could restart.

When I awoke this morning I was in great distress too because I’d had another turbulent night, as seems to be the pattern these days. I managed to beat the second alarm, but not by much, and then gradually dragged myself into the Land of the Living.

The 09:10 bus was late this morning and so I had to hang around in the wind for a while. But I made it to Carrefour with enough time to do some shopping for the weekend. A few bits and pieces including a couple more small peppers.

The freezer is now full of those but that’s just as well because I can’t ever find them when I want them. Giant peppers I can find by the dozen but they are too big for my air fryer. and there is too much of them anyway for a small appetite like mine.

Back here I had my coffee and cheese on toast and then attacked this back-up task that I’ve been planning.

And by now it’s all ready in principle. I just want one more hard drive for the images which I want to keep separate from everything else. There’s a spare drive bay (in fact there are two) in the array on the shelf so there’s no problem there.

While I was waiting for things to happen I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And I had a surprise visitor. I’d been round to Stoke on Trent to talk to someone whom I used to know. Just at that moment Zero came back home. She went into the house and came out on a scooter, a 3-wheeled thing where you put both feet on and push yourself off and go whizzing down the hill. Her mother ran after her and I ran after her too. Then her mother was on a bike and I ran. She shouted at me “come on Eric, keep up”. I thought “there’s no way that I could keep up with people going at this speed the way I am”. She reached the bottom of the hill, turned round and came back up, came up alongside me, stopped and jumped off She said “get on, we’re going to ..” I thought she said “Meir” so I replied “that’s miles away”. “No” she replied” My house nearby”. She shot off and I chased after her on the scooter thing.

Mind you, I didn’t catch her. Even in the ethereal world she manages to keep well out of the way of my evil clutches as, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, so does TOTGA.

That wasn’t the only excitement of the night either. I’d been away somewhere and then come back with a load of clothes etc all of which I’d washed and hung up. We were a big family living in this house, sleeping anywhere. We didn’t so much have bedrooms allocated. I slept on the sofa in the living room and my chest of drawers of clothes was behind it. Someone whom I knew came and began to disrupt my entire routine. I had to go to have a shower. The first thing that I needed was some clothes so I went to fetch some but the only top that I could find was a thermal vest top. I thought “never mind – I’ll take that”. My mother asked me if I was taking that. I replied “yes”. Once I’d climbed over this rubbish and back to my settee I had to climb back because I needed my deodorant etc to take with me into the bathroom. The visitor was ever so confused about what was happening and so I think was everyone else including me.

Later on I was looking for clothes for one of my 3D figures. I’d just uploaded a whole pile of brand-new stuff and the folders weren’t sorted out correctly as I would like so things were in a bit of a mess. I wasn’t quite sure where I should be looking to find the item of clothing that I wanted my figure to wear. This meant that I was going to have to start to do a big organisation of all of that but I certainly didn’t feel like it at this time of the morning when I’d been asleep.

I’d also invented some kind of leg brace to improve the posture on young girls, like a V_shape with holders at the open end of the V in which you’d put your legs so your legs were always a constant distance apart and could only go forwards and backwards so much. This was intended to keep their composure and poise while walking. They could buy one for use at home if they didn’t have access to one during the day

Finally, and depressingly, I was with my family last night, a whole bunch of them. Everyone was there and many more besides. My youngest sister was marrying and I’d been invited to the wedding. I didn’t want to go but I couldn’t find a good excuse to turn it down. There was some pre-wedding meeting. I’d finished doing a taxi job so I went. From the freezer I brought some things that I’d cooked to take with me as some kind of offering, only to find that they’d leaked in the car. I arrived and everyone tried to hoist onto me the job of giving my sister away. I flatly refused, saying that it’s my father’s job. He was unwilling because he wasn’t very confident. I just didn’t want to become involved at all in any respect other than to be there and then only reluctantly. I was telling my father that he’d been working up his life for giving away his daughter and there he was, “bang!” she’s gone and I’ve given her away. Everyone looked at me, outraged, when I said that. But I added “well, that’s what the gist of it is, isn’t it?”. It wasn’t very popular at all but then again neither am I.

So much for all of that. After the sunshine comes the rain, as we all very well know.

Tea tonight was chips from the air fryer with vegan salad and some of those nuggets. Eaten quickly because of the football.

Caernarfon were second in the table, unbeaten so far this season, and Connah’s Quay were uncharacteristically quite low down having been swept aside by TNS the other week and then beaten by Y Bala. So we were expecting a really tough match

The Cofis, having been known for their flaky defence for the past few seasons, had been playing much better this season and had been the main reason why their team was second in the table, so no-one expected them to fold up so dramatically.

Although they had their moments in the attack, they didn’t amount to anything and conceded four of the sloppiest goals that I have seen ever since Aberystwyth shipped a miserable bagful against TNS 9 months ago.

A 0-4 home defeat was a disaster and they are going to have to do much better than they did tonight.

But not right now because I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow but I won’t need much Rosemary gave me a quick ring this evening just before kick-off so she’s going to ring me tomorrow. I’ll have to lay in some supplies though as it will be a long phone call.

Thursday 31st August 2023 – I FORGOT …

… that the nurse would be coming round to visit my neighbour and that they’d need me to open the door to the building.

So that put paid to my lie-in this morning, didn’t it?

What was a shame though was that I was in the middle of a voyage somewhere and as soon as the doorbell rang the whole lot disappeared out of my head – not that there’s much to stop it.

As seems to be usual these days it took me an age to come round into the Land of the Living and I wasn’t in any great rush to actually do anything.

However, after I’d had a coffee and something to eat I transcribed the mountain of dictaphone notes.

The memory card in the dictaphone is now full so I took off all of the files and stored then onto one of the hard drives.

That led me to a great idea. What with an external hard drive and the hard drives in the array on the shelf I set about consolidating the drives and back-ups in a project that is going on even as we speak.

Having set all of that off I then wrote up the notes for yesterday.

The backing up has gone on all day and I’m creating tons of space that I didn’t know that I have. And it’s high time that I organised all of this in a way that makes some kind of sense.

As for my voyages from last night, we started off with some drawings and photographs and had to describe them – I’m not sure now in which language we were doing it. People picked a photo and said something about it. Mine was a photo of an athlete which was done in 16 shades of blue and white. I wanted to say that the colour was flat. There was no gloss or anything about it. It was like a faded newspaper image. I couldn’t think of the word to describe the colours that I wanted to use when I was halfway through the sentence.

I was next with my friends from the Wirral last night. They each received a teddy bear. The girl’s, you could tell it was for her because there was a label attached to the bear saying something or other and the same with that of the guy. It was a different type of bear but again with a label that made it quite clear that it was to be given to him.

Then I was with a friend from school. We were talking about coffee. He’d been doing something and the previous day he’d had some strong coffee to keep him awake. He said that that had kept him going all day. I agreed with coffee and as a 3rd person came to join us I said something like “with my coffee if you stir the coffee and the teaspoon comes out bent then you know that the coffee is about the correct strength”.

I was also with Nerina last night, back in that dream about motorbikes. I was showing her those motor bike engines again with the different attachments like the Francis Barnett engine in a generator frame and the other ones lying around that I never managed to go very far before I awoke. We’d been out for a drive during the night in the snow, driving around looking at everything and the snow was really quite deep. We were having a lot of fun driving, looking at things. It was becoming quite late and the snow was falling quite heavily. Earlier in the evening I’d suggested that we’d go to have a look at it in Winsford because I was still living in Winsford at the time. Round about 00:00, 01:00 she said “let’s go up to Winsford and have a look at the snow, then go to your house for coffee. Where we stopped to look at those engines, the first thing that I had to do was to clean up. I was absolutely filthy. I was scrubbing all this oil etc off. A couple of other people came by and wondered what was going on, why I was looking so dirty. I explained that I’d just been changing a car gearbox – that’s why I was all covered in oil. Someone else who was with us, I can’t remember who it was, was talking to one of these guys. He came over to me and asked “are we going to see that other guy now? He’s invited us round”. I replied “I’m showing Nerina these motor bike engines but you can go. But come back when we’re ready to leave”. He said that he’d do that but he walked up with us to look at the motor bikes. I said to him “I thought that you were going to look at cars, aren’t you?”. He replied “yes I am” but he still came with us. I said “don’t be too long because we’re going soon but if that guy has any Ford Cortina bits let me know and I’ll come down too”.

Finally, there was also something about a single decker bus but a noise in the street awoke me and it vanished out of my head just as I was about to dictate it.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with the last naan bread, and it really was delicious. I shall have to make some more of that in due course.

But not right now because I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with my back-up project and see where that takes me. And I must send off my order for my new course book otherwise I’ll be up a creek without a paddle.

That’s a condition in which I usually find myself and from which I’m trying these days to extricate myself.

And by the way – that’s to everyone who sent me messages about my trip to Paris. But there’s some kind of problem with G-mail right now and my mails to thank people have been returned as undelivered. I’ve no idea why but I’m sorry about it.

Wednesday 21st June 2023 – HAPPY SOLSTICE

Happy World Giraffe Day, Happy Seashell Day and Happy Cuckoo Warning Day too.

Not quite so happy for me today though because when I went to switch on the computer it wouldn’t fire up.

After a couple of hours of tinkering I managed to make it fire up but not even the BIOS would work. The hard drive has been creaking away over the last few days but last night it must have creaked its last croak..

it wasn’t all that unexpected and I had a few spare hard drives lying around so I started it off with a 1TB Solid State drive and spent a very happy morning configuring it and uploading an operating system

When I’d finished that and everything was running properly I had a rummage around and found an old 4TB drive that I’d been using at one time as a back-up drive before I bought the desktop array. This drive had about 900GB free space on it so I added that into the computer.

And so even as we speak, I’m going through the stuff on this drive and sorting everything out.

But it goes to show just how important having a back-up is. There’s a big memory stick that lives permanently in a USB port at the back of the computer. Every night before I go to bed I copy onto it the data files on which I’ve been working during the day

In case of an emergency it takes a while to sort out the directories in which each file might belong but at least they are all there. and at least it all kept me out of mischief while the cleaner was here.

Something that has been quite strange though is that while all of this was going on, I didn’t somehow manage to crash out. That’s quite a rare event these days, especially when I was up and about before the alarm went off too, despite how I was feeling yesterday.

There was even time to transcribe the notes that were on the dictaphone from the night. I’d been off somewhere last night. While I was away someone had taken one of the cars out. There had been a boiler explosion and it was sitting in the middle of the road with bits all blown around about it. Apparently no-one was hurt but the car had been sitting there since 03:00 and it was becoming light. People were having to pick their way around the wreckage in the street. I wanted to know whether my father had been told about this and if so what was he doing. It turned out that he had. One of these days he was going to get round to fixing it but he was busy right now. he was going out taking our exchange student back to college. I said “of course you can’t just leave the car there”. I was planning on phoning up having it moved, having a breakdown truck in etc. In the end I decided that it was really none of my business. If that’s what he wanted to do with it then that’s entirely up to him. By now our exchange student was ready to go to bed but she wasn’t very happy about me being there while she was being dressed so she asked me to leave. I thought to myself “I’ve seen plenty of girls in a state of undress before. One more isn’t going to make any difference but I suppose that I’d better go to find something else to do so I walked out of the room.

Later, I went to see Man play somewhere in Belgium I think. I’d arranged to interview Micky Jones afterwards so I had to catch the bus so far, walk the rest of the way. While I was walking I bumped into Deke Leonard. We were both soaked to the skin and wet. We arrived where Micky Jones was. I had to wait. He kept me waiting for quite some time while he finished off a few things. By this time I was dying to go to the bathroom but I thought “if I go to the bathroom now and he comes down I’ll miss him”. Eventually he came down and when he came close he looked nothing like he did on stage. We began to chat. He said that he was one of several who came from somewhere specific in Wales and went on to tell me about all the problems they’d had, how Deke Leonard hadn’t stored the stuff where it was supposed to be. It was in some other place which wasn’t very convenient and he didn’t think was secure. He has to go round every couple of hours to check on the instruments etc to make sure that they are still there and not moved

Tea tonight was another on of these leftover whatsits with the leftovers, some kidney beans and tomato sauce with pasta and veg, followed by the last of the cinnamon roll and ice cream. A good meal it was too.

So having been busy, I’m off to ned now, hoping that the computer will start tomorrow without having to wind it up. But at least, in principle, a Solid State Drive is more reliable than an old type of drive and I’d been planning to change things for quite a while.

At least, it’s done now.

Thursday 18th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

… read this posting, then the internet is finally back on.

Well, actually it was on this evening at about 17:00, for all of about 30 seconds. There was just a flicker from the modem, it began to initialise and then it packed up again.

And then checking the error ticket that I registered, it’s still an active ticket so even they don’t believe that they’ve repaired it yet.

But I have to go out tomorrow so while I’m there I’ll stagger up the hill to the Internet suppliers, and instead of crutches I’ll take a pickaxe handle with me. That will sort out the men from the boys right enough.

Last night actually was something along those lines too because I had another reasonable sleep – just waking up a couple of times here and there during the night. There have been one or two like that just recently, I’m pleased to say.

Even more pleasing is that when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was actually up and about. There have been one or two of those just recently too.

So after the medication, there was no internet to check the mails and messages. And no work that I could undertake either.

But I’ve not been idle. Far from it in fact. I’ve been making the most of having no internet.

First thing that I did was to go through the memory stick in the back of the computer. It’s 128GB and it lives in its little socket. Every night before I go to bed I back up the files that I’ve used during the day by copying them onto the memory stick.

Since I reconfigured this computer (in August 2021) it’s become pretty full up so I went through and reviewed all of the files on there. Many of them are superfluous, having been overtaken by events or saved elsewhere. And that freed a pile of empty space.

Having done that, I turned my attention to the main backup. There’s one of these server boxes in here with a couple of hard drives in it. I bought my first PC would you believe 30 years ago, in 1993, a 386SX (prior to that, Nerina and I had an Apple II).

Since then I’ve gone through about 20 or 30 hard drives of different descriptions and everything has been copied onto some kind of backup hard drive all of which has been copied onto bigger and better back-up hard drives over the years.

About 18 months ago, my backup storage became full and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I began to go through and merge everything in to try to free up some space.

That’s what I’ve been doing for most of the rest of the day and although the project is far from finished, I ended up with enough free space to perform a complete and thorough back-up of the big computer, and there’s plenty more free space left.

There will be even more too as this project keeps on going, as long as the internet doesn’t start up again. If it does, I’ll have to go back to work.

But what’s exciting about this is all of the stuff that I’ve been finding, including all of our texts and programmes from when Liz and I were running “Radio Anglais” in the Auvergne.

Something else that I also found was all of my old University stuff. Those were the good old days when I was studying in the back seat of my car while I was waiting for my boss to finish his meetings.

Unfortunately I wasn’t a particularly good student because I couldn’t stick to the curriculum. I’d pick up something during the course and then go to put it into practice instead of reaching the end of the block. ONE OF THE THREE theses that I did for my degree was really good, well researched and involved a great deal of effort. I enjoyed every minute of doing it and learnt a great deal. But it was rather a shame that it went miles off-topic.

That’s the story of my life unfortunately.

There was some time left to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I had actually been away during the night, but not to anywhere exciting and not with anyone of interest either. However a young girl came over to me at some point during the night. She asked me how the door-locks on Caliburn worked so I took her over there and gave her and her her friend a demonstration. They didn’t say why they wanted to know that and I didn’t ask but it certainly seemed to be a curious thing to me that they’d be interested in something like that.

And later on the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and I was fighting in the Soviet Union Army. Our unit was at the rear and the General refused to order us to the front. We prepared ourselves anyway and were waiting and waiting. In the end the General came to see us and told us that we weren’t going. I marched up to him in a very formal voice “we are going to the front and you aren’t going to stop us”. It was a very tense situation but in the end he gave us instructions and we set off. We set up some kind of preliminary camp somewhere. The front line was several miles away and we were going to walk to it. I gave instructions to the chauffeur to follow us with the car and caravan which would be our office. People thought that it was best to leave it where it was but I wanted it closer to the front line. He and the other chauffeurs were chatting to a bunch of girls in a field. We set off to march. There were one or two people heading our way as if they’d come from the battle. We could see planes overhead. We made ourselves psychologically ready for confrontation

Finally, I was in Crewe. I was body-filling a car door, making a bit of a mess of it. Someone else was with me. An old L-reg Duple-bodied coach pulled up. Although it had a couple of other operators’ liveries on it I recognised it as one of Barratts. Someone with me asked whose it was so I replied that it was one of Barratts. They asked how I knew. After the driver parked it he walked round the corner, boarded another one that was there and drove away. I said “let’s go and check the legal writing on it”. We set off to walk around the corner to where he’d parked the coach. Just as we were coming up to it someone else boarded it and drove it away. I said “ahh well, never mind”.

The physiotherapist rang me up to say that he wasn’t going to come (once again!) and it’s just as well that he rang because at that moment I was stark out on my chair. The excitement of finding all of these files must have overwhelmed me.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It’s been a while since I had pasta and there’s quite a bit lying around here, as I discovered when I was sorting through stuff the other day. I might actually try some pasta instead of rice with my stuffed pepper next week, if I remember to buy an peppers.

But after all of this thrilling day that I had, I’ll transcribe a couple of the backlog of dictaphone notes and then go to bed. I’ll need a shower in the morning because the radio guy is coming to pick up my work as I can’t e-transfer it right now, and I have to go out to the letting agent at some point.

The physiotherapist says that he will come too, but we shall see. I’ve heard all of that before.

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has finally been resumed. And not before time either because I’m pretty much fed up of this. I did think that their estimate of the time that the internet would be back up was rather optimistic.

In actual fact, the internet did come back up – but only for a very brief moment and then it went again. I received a message from my provider telling me “to contact the service department”.

And so I did. And it’s all automated these days, but my complaint has been recognised and registered because when I tried to log in again to register another complaint, it explained that there “is already an intervention signalled for this number”.

So I just have to sit and wait, and contemplate my navel.

There wasn’t much time for contemplation in bed last night because I seem to have been extremely busy, as I discovered when I listened to the dictaphone. I started off regrettably with my brother. It was coming up to Christmas. We were talking about everything. The subject of presents came up and I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present for someone this year. I couldn’t think of what to buy anyone so I hoped that no-one had bought anything for me because I didn’t want anything. When my father asked me what I wanted for Christmas I had to think for about half an hour before I could come up with anything. My brother said “I would straight away have been able to answer that. I’ve seen this beautiful chandelier”. I replied “yes but that’s for a special purpose, isn’t it, a special thing like that? That’s understandable but I don’t really need anything at all”. When I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present what I meant was one present gratuitously. There were a few people who had done me favours throughout the year and I’d bought something for them but I wasn’t including that.

There was something else about a space probe that had just come back to land on Earth. The guy had undergone some kind of spiritual conversion and was going on about how the Vatican had ordered the rainforest to be destroyed, lots of other kinds of similar things. The Press mocked him about it for thinking that he’d become such an important and new, different person since his exploration, that people would spend more time listening to him. They were having a bit of a Field Day at his expense. There were lots more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

And then a little girl who was barely a toddler had been left at home to learn to walk etc while the rest of her family had gone away. She learnt quite quickly. One thing that they left was all these films about “baby’s first steps” and “baby discovers that she has arms”, all these patronising kinds of films that were aimed at making her grow up quicker and a little earlier if she felt so inclined.

Later on I’d gone away for a weekend. It was in Amsterdam but no Amsterdam that I ever knew. I’d gone to retrace the steps of a journey that I’d made a few years earlier. The Saturday was OK but the Sunday morning before I caught my aeroplane home I went back to do the second part of it. I ended up in an underground tunnel where there were all these cars etc. There were some extremely tight 90° bends in there. These coaches were having a hell of a job trying to negotiate their way round. I was walking round and I saw the girl whom I was with. She was sitting in a waiting room at the far end of this subterranean tunnel. I ran quickly back to a parking space halfway along to collect a few things. I was interrupted by a coach trying to manoeuvre its way around again. Then a load of people came through the double door. At first I thought that one of them was a bear but it was a small rotund man in a fur coat. But it was really so surprising. I made my way back to this waiting room and had to go down all these metal steps. I thought “I hadn’t gone down these metal steps when I saw her and she certainly wasn’t in the ante-room”. When I reached the bottom I found that I’d actually climbed to the very top of a huge radio mast. The view was terrifying. I just looked down at my feet al the time. At the top they were doing some work on it so they had to help me go round to find a place to stand. I made the remark “Oh God! I don’t want to know how high up I am here”. Someone said “you’re at 5000 feet”. Of course I went berserk. I just said that I didn’t want to know. There was some tension. There was a guy there pointing out all these people on these advertising posters that you could see from the top. I tried my best not to look and he was prattling on about this and that. What was going through my mind was “how on earth am I going to get down again from here because I’m paralysed”. And I never did find that girl again.

Finally I was in New Brunswick at my niece’s. I had to go to the solicitor to sign a document so we agreed to meet on the Sunday afternoon. Another woman from the village wanted to come with me too. Sunday at 14:00 I presented myself at this woman’s house and knocked on the door but she didn’t come. A few minutes later a guy turned up with a few young girls. They all went in the house but I still waited. 10 minutes later a couple of women and a pile of children came out. I wasn’t sure whether one of these women was one of the women for whom I was waiting so I said something about going to the solicitor. She replied “you’re lucky”. I said “eh?” but she wandered off with all of the kids down to the lake. I began to go back to the bus stop. Just then a council employee on a moped and pillion went past. I thought “this must be the bus” so I shouted and ran after it but he took no notice and rode past. I walked up to the top of the street because I knew that he’d be coming back along the main street and walked a little way to where there was a bus stop. Sure enough, bus routes 3 and 4 stopped here. I suddenly realised that it’s Sunday. There’s no public transport on Sunday. How am I going to get to town to see the solicitor? I suppose that I’d have to go back, pick up my car and drive there. Then I wondered what I would do if he wasn’t there. I don’t have a Canadian ‘phone and I wouldn’t be able to contact anyone if I were out there wandering around waiting for things to happen.

And not only that – when the alarm went off this morning i was already up and about.

You can imagine that a good part of my morning was spent transcribing that lot of dictaphone stuff. No cats, no TOTGA, no Zero, no Castor either but once again, member of my family rear their ugly heads in the middle of my nightmares. I’ve no idea why either because during my waking (notice that I didn’t say “lucid”) hours I don’t spend a single moment thinking about them.

But what was interesting about the night was me being terrified (not even simply “scared”) of heights. That’s not like me at all. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I reroofed my farm back in 2009 I was working off a ladder overhanging a steep drop down onto solid rock and I didn’t bat an eyelid.

But anyway, I digrsss … “yet again” – ed.

With there being no internet, and hence no work, I spent some time this morning tidying up a few of the directories on the hard drive, making things a little easier to find my way around.

And the rest of the day has been spent going through the arrears on the dictaphone from when I was in hospital. Only 37 entries to transcribe now and if this internet breakdown carries on, I might even finish them at some point.

Updating the relevant blog entries might be problematic however. We shall have to work on that somehow.

The cleaner came round this afternoon. She told me that the neighbour to whom I referred yesterday has had a really bad fall and is off to the hospital to have an x-ray and all that kind of thing. Not that anything is broken (otherwise she’d have been in hospital a long time before this) but I gather that there are other issues. She’s quite elderly.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. The naan was really nice but for some reason it didn’t cook as well as the previous ones. I think that I must be losing my touch

So now there’s not a lot else that I can do. This internet issue is getting on my nerves, not simply because it’s not working but because I have to take my work physically to the radio station tomorrow rather than sending it by e-mail. I can really do without that but it’s a case of “needs must when the devil drives”.

So I’ll sit and twiddle my thumbs for a while and then go off to bed, unless some other inspiration comes my way. But I’m a bit short on inspiration right now.

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

… a happy star wars day today. May the Fourth be with you.

It’s certainly been with someone, because it hasn’t been with me at all. I don’t know why but I seem to have gone several paces backwards today.

It was another one of these usual nights that started off with a disaster. Every night before I go to bed I back up my computer.

There’s a powerful memory stick in one of the back ports and I use the search option to identify all of the files that I’ve used during the day and copy them onto the memory stick “just in case”.

So there I was using the “search all files saved today” function and all of a sudden it came up with “no files found”. That’s of course nonsense because I’ve spent much of the day working on the computer.

Three or four attempts came up with the same result, but then all of a sudden the light went on in my brain. In the time it had taken (a mere few milliseconds) to actually start and then finish the search it had passed midnight. So “today” was now “yesterday” and I wasn’t searching that. In the couple of milliseconds that had been “today” I hadn’t used any files.

From all of the foregoing you’ll gather that I had a late night. But even so, coupled with all of the usual difficulties that I’ve been having about sleeping, I was still up and about before the alarm went off at 07:00.

When I say “up and about”, I mean in the figurative sense. The body was there but the mind certainly wasn’t and I can’t think of a single thing that I did during the morning. I just sat and vegetated.

At lunchtime though I went and had a shower in the hope that that would revive me (it didn’t) and then I walked into town. And I hadn’t gone 20 yards from my doorstep before my right leg collapsed again. Luckily I had my crutches to hand otherwise we might have had a nasty accident.

It gave out again a bit further on as I headed down the hill and this is extremely discouraging news. I’m off to Leuven next Wednesday and this is not the time for my leg to be breaking down.

At the letting agent’s I introduced myself and gave them the necessary paperwork and discussed my plans. They shall make further enquiries and get back to me. But it’s not going to be as quick as I was expecting or hoping. Not to worry though. The news that they were able to give me was encouraging from my own point of view.

It was a bright sunny day when I set out so of course I went without a coat. And so as you might expect, it was raining when I returned. Only for a while tough. It soon brightened up again.

Still warm though, so the sight of two elderly tourists wandering around in thermal bubble-jackets, woolly hats and scarves was rather bewildering.

Back here I had some hot chocolate and more of my coffee biscuits and then transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. And for a start I had awoken again right in the middle of a dream only for it all to completely evaporate away the moment that I awoke. This is all very depressing and disappointment because I want to know who it is on whom I’m missing out.

Later I’d gone out for a run in a wood in an old quarry. I was running around there when my brother appeared (yet again). For a while he was with me but I accelerated a little and left him behind. When it came to going back home I started to race and I was quite some distance in front. I pounded up a steep gravel bank to the top, only to find that he had caught up with me somehow. He said something like “oh I’m going to catch you up”. I replied “no you aren’t”. He asked why and I replied “I’m going to go ‘BOOOH” to you” which of course I did. he was so startled that he fell down in this quarry all the way to the bottom again. I could have carried on had I wanted but I stopped to see how he was. Then we carried on back towards home talking about football and things like that.

And then I was with a girl from University last night. We were talking a bit about old times, then I forget most of what happened after that. But later I stepped back into this dream and she was running a newspaper or some kind of similar office. I’d started to do some volunteer work for her. I turned up in the afternoon after lunch. She was doling out the work to different people. She gave me a couple of pieces, one of which was some information about someone who lived in a certain building in the City of London. At first I didn’t recognise the name of the building – then I did because it was the building where my aunt used to live but had changed names. I knew that there was a pretty disreputable guy who lived there. This was asking all kinds about him. She wanted someone to research it. That’s why she asked me to do it. There was more stuff too, a little more complicated. I was reading this memo that had come. It was a simple straightforward memo by the looks of things. I suddenly had a kind-of Writer’s Block. I couldn’t think of how I was going to reply to it. Then I began to worry thinking that I don’t have much time as it is. I can’t afford to spend this time sitting here staring at this and not actually doing anything about it.

I also had a phone call to make. It was really early in the morning. Another friend of mine from University (and I wish that I’d noted who he was) was in a Court case. He’d said something about something or other. I’d sent him a message asking him if he needed me to do anything for him – to find anything. But late last night as I was going to, I noticed that he’d replied and said “no” so this morning very early as soon as I awoke I phoned him and had a very quiet word with him to wish him luck and making sure that there had been no new developments overnight that needed me to do something on his behalf.

Finally, coming into Paris, I was with a couple of good friends. We were driving. The first thing that I noticed was that at the slip road at the side of the motorway there were a couple of motor bikes that looked as if they’d had an accident and were blocking the road. A little further back there was a car and someone was moving a pile of cones so that the car could join the main motorway rather than carry on along the small road. Then there was a whole pile of motorcycles that looked as if they’d been flattened by something and cars that were parked any old how. It all looked as if they’d been disturbed by a hurricane or tornado or something. As we dropped down the hill into the city we could see everything in the distance. There was what looked like a huge gorilla walking around in a park quite some distance away. We could make it out with the naked eye. We all stopped and had a look. Just then our car performed a 360° pirouette then carried on driving.

After all of that I … errr … reclined for a while.

Tea tonight was one of those curried vegan burgers with some curried fried rice. And for some reason it didn’t taste as nice as my food has been doing just recently. In fact, thinking about it, yesterday’s meal didn’t taste as good as it might have done either. I wonder if I’m sickening for something.

Like I said just now, this is really not the time for me to go breaking down.

But break down I did because when I came back in here after tea, I crashed out yet again. This really is too bad.

Things are going to have to improve at some point soon, I hope, because all of this is getting on my nerves as you can imagine. I’m not looking forward to my trip next week if I can’t do better than this.

But one thing is certain after what I learnt today, and that is that I’m not going anywhere without my crutches. Not on your Nellus Secundus

Saturday 10th December 2022 – IF I WERE …

… to say that I stayed in bed until 11:00 this morning, you would probably think that I had had a good night’s sleep for a change.

However, when I tell you that I didn’t go to bed until at least 04:00 you might change your mind.

And when I tell you that I had a pretty dreadful night in between, then you might be even more convinced. I had a mad fit of the itching that means that I was having withdrawal symptoms to something that they were giving me at hospital and I had to smother my legs in this type of cold cream that they give me.

There was this extremely depressing and dismal dream as well and what was even more depressing and dismal was that after I’d settled down again I had exactly the same dream again word for word. But don’t worry – it’s one of those where if you are having your tea right at this moment you wouldn’t thank me for typing it out.

When I left the bed at 11:00 it really was more of a case of not having anything better to do. I’d been awake for quite some time without being able to go back to sleep.

It should be no surprise to anyone that making a start this morning was rather difficult. I had to slowly bring myself back into the swing of things. And having spilled a pile of lemonade all over the floor part of the morning involved giving the kitchen floor a good seeing-to.

Steam-cleaning (and I DO mean “steam-cleaning” the microwave oven as well, that was next.

And then the fridge. When I first opened the fridge door, something inside switched off the light and closed it again. So I had to put on a brave face and attack the cartons of overinflated and fermented drink in there. I’ll look at the rest another time.

Add to that the tidying up and putting the washing away from before I went off on my travels, and I was exhausted even before I’d started, and I wasn’t feling very well either.

With a clean microwave and a fresh carton of milk I could make myself some porridge. And together with a strong coffee and a glass of orange it was something like a decent breakfast. And didn’t that make a change from jam butties?

Next step was a shower, and that was hard work in itself. Somehow managing to climb over the edge of the bath into the shower was only half of my problems. The other half of my problems was climbing out afterwards. You’ve no idea how much of an exertion that was altogether and I’ll have to do this for as long as I’m still breathing

The rest of the day has been spent backing up the computer and even as we speak, that’s a task that’s still going on. It seems to be never-ending and is an indication of maybe how much time I had on my hands in the hospital.

But just when I was feeling really down and looking for a lift, there in the bottom of the freezer was a portion of pepper-and-lentil vindaloo and that went down extraordinarily well. I needed that very much.

And if you’ll notice, I haven’t been out of the building at all today. The steps are going to defeat me if I take things too quickly. I’m going to have to spend some time just walking around the apartment, I reckon, building up my muscles on a daily basis.

Yesterday, on my way home I did 21% of my daily target and while that may not sound like much, it’s 10 times the daily rate of what had been happening while I’d been in hospital. Consequently 6% today is slowly stepping up the rate from how things have been in hospital, and clambering in the bath will stretch a few muscles more.

That’s not to say that things were easy today but by the time that tonight came round I was feeling a little more optimistic. I wonder how long this new wave of optimism will last.

Wednesday 28th September 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a room in a Première Classe Hotel at the Parc des Expositions in the suburbs of north-east Paris.

And when I say “we”, I do mean “we” because I am not alone. And who I’m with and what I’m doing here, well, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow evening to find out.

That is, if things go according to plan. But they may well not because I have a start tomorrow morning at 04:45 and I’ll still be on the road at 04:00 the following morning too so trying to get some sense out of me at that time of morning is not going to be easy.

We shall have to see

So this morning I fell out of bed almost as soon as the alarm went off and compared to how things have been just recently, it was rather a rapid rising too.

After the medication I had several things to do that were quite urgent, namely to book myself a train and a bus. That was much more complicated than it ought to be too and in a few days time we really will be breaking new ground if it all comes off

All of this is necessary because there have been quite a few changes just recently things aren’t as they were and all of the changes are for the worse. It seems that, as usual, people are determined to go around sticking the batons dans les roues as they say around here and disrupting everyone’s progress.

But more of this anon.

Having done that and printed out my tickets for later next week, I finished off backing up the computer and then began the tidying and cleaning up.

A shower and a haircut were next and then I bleached everything as usual, washed the lino in the kitchen, finished off the packing and staggered off out.

A bus was there at the bus stop but I didn’t take it for the simple reason that it doesn’t go anywhere where I want to go, and the connections are all totally up the spout. It’s unbelievable what they have done with this stupid bus service.

So having exchanged a few pleasantries with a couple of my neighbours who were chatting outside, I headed off on foot for the town.

As usual, I stopped at the viewpoint overlooking the port to see what was happening there and to check the camera.

Down there moored at the fish processing plant this morning is La Grande Ancre. We’ve been seeing quite a lot of her just recently going out and back to the Ile de Chausey. She’s usually loaded up with fishing gear but she doesn’t seem to have much on board today.

A little further back tucked around the corner is Les Bouchots de Chausey and a couple of even smaller boats.

Plenty of people on the quayside working because there seems to be a considerable amount of shellfish deposited on there this morning

Meanwhile, over at the ferry terminal is Belle France, one of the ferries that go over to the Ile de Chausey. I wonder if her presence there has anything to do with the coach that’s parked at the terminal building.

And yet even more activity over at the chantier naval this morning

Yesterday we saw that all of the boats that had been in there just recently, apart from Briscard, had gone back into the water and she was then the only one still there.

This morning though, she seems to have acquired another companion. There’s another trawler that has come in to join her. By the looks of things from here, she could possibly be Charlevy but I’m really not sure. She was in there for a while a month or so back so I wouldn’t have expected her to be back at the moment.

Meanwhile, in other news, there’s plenty going on out in the bay in front of the port.

It looks very much as if a couple of the sailing schools are going out and about early this morning. There are a couple of kayaks too.

They aren’t going to have a very good day for it though because it’s threatening rain right now.

The walk down into town was agonising as I was expecting but at least I was in time for the bus, along with a whole crowd of schoolkids. But I could at least grab hold of a seat and have a rest.

The bus dropped me off at the station in plenty of time so there was quite a wait for the train.

The coffee machine was out of order yet again (or, more likely, “still”) so there was nothing to do except sit outside and watch them shunting a train around across the station.

At least the rain was holding off for now so it wasn’t too depressing.

One added issue was that my electronic ticket wasn’t working but the ticket inspector was also waiting for the train so we had a chat about it. She inspected my receipt and said that it would be sufficient.

The train pulled up a few minutes late and we swarmed aboard. There was quite a crowd gathered on the platform by now.

At first I had a pair of seats to myself but at Vire I had someone come to join me. I spent the journey backing up the computer from the data stick as far as I could, but the rattling and shaking of the train on a badly-laid line put a stop to it.

At Paris we all swarmed out again and I hit the streets in something of a wave of agony on my way to the metro station.

Going down the steps to the platform was bad but that was nothing to what happened at the Gare du Nord. The escalator was out of order and the climb upstairs on the narrow walkway was agony and I was blocking the path for just about everyone.

Did I mention that I have much more luggage with me than usual?

At the Gare du Nord when I eventually arrived there I wandered off for the train that would take me to the airport. That’s by far the easiest way to find the hotel as all of the directions seem to start off there and, furthermore, there’s even a service bus – the 349 – that passes within 400 metres from where I need to be.

When I arrived, the coffee machine was out of order as well and that’s even more depressing news but they made me a coffee for which I was very grateful.

Holed up in my little room, I had tea. Last night I’d made some rice, veg and my taco roll and I’d put them in a plastic container. For an ad-hoc, impromptu tea it was really nice, especially washed down with a couple of tangerines.

And now I’m off to bed. I’m not looking forward at all to this early start but needs must when the devil drives.

Tuesday 2nd August 2022 – I REALLY THOUGHT …

… that I was going to have a good day today, but it all went pear-shaped round about 18:00 when after valiantly fighting off sleep for most of the day up to that point I finally succumbed.

And it might only have been for about 45 minutes too but it was still 45 minutes more than I wanted.

Mind you, last night I did end up going to bed rather later than intended, having been stuck at the computer longer than I wanted because a “Paul Temple” episode came up on the playlist just as I was going to bed.

However, at least the night was better than the previous one and I didn’t go as far on my travels.

But more about that in due course.

Much of the day has been spent going through the kitchen sorting out the herbs and spices, seeing what I have in stock and working out what I need to buy. And that took me longer than you might think as well because I had stuff everywhere.

It’s all sorted out and counted now, and arranged so that I know where it is.

When I’d done that, the next thing to organise was the medication. That’s something else that I have spread about all over the apartment and I don’t really know what I have. In fact there is probably more of medication that I no longer use than medication that I currently take

Something else that I needed to do was to back up the computer. I haven’t backed up the big computer onto the portable computer since I was on my travels back in June and so I’ve had to copy everything over onto the memory stick that I take with me so that I can do it on the train.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on my key ring I have a tiny 64GB memory stick that’s about half the size of a postage stamp. That lives on the key ring and I use it for transferring files between the desktop machine and the travelling laptop

Strange as it may seem, all of the foregoing took me until quite late in the afternoon. I do have to admit that I wasn’t in much of a hurry but all the same there was still plenty to do.

As usual I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland today.

And first stop was the wall at the end of the car park where I could look down onto the car park to see what was going on down on the beach.

There was plenty of beach to be on too because the tide was quite far out this afternoon. And the nice weather had enticed quite a few people out there to take advantage of it as well.

Some of them had even gone into the water too which was a surprise. It wasn’t that nice

And as usual, while I was there, I had a good look around out at sea to see what was happening out there too.

There was a stationary cabin cruiser down there just offshore with a couple of men on board who looked as if they might be fishing. And so I’m sure that they weren’t all that happy when that zodiac roared over so that the crew thereof could exchange a few pleasantries with them.

And that really was that in Granville Bay. There weren’t any fishing boats or any other pleasure craft or any other water craft of any nature out there. I had no idea where they had all gone. This was the kind of weather where I’d expected to see quite a few people out and about.

Right out in the English Channel beyond the Ile de Chausey there were a couple of sails away on the horizon.

With the 70-300mm LENS I took a photo of one of the sets of sails to see if I could enlarge and enhance it when I returned home so that I might be able to identify it.

And so having done the necessary, I couldn’t identify the ship but I could certainly identify the arrangement of her sails, and that told me that she was either La Granvillaise or her sister La Cancalaise who sails out of Cancale.

Sure enough, when I checked the fleet radar, I could see that La Cancalaise was out and about on her travels in that general area this afternoon so that seems to answer that question

That wasn’t all of it either.

While I was walking down the path in company of all of the crowds of people, I was overflown by a light aeroplane out there in the bay.

She’s another one of our regulars – F-GCUM – a Robin DR400-180 that belongs to the aero club and which flies around the bay quite often.

This afternoon she took off from the airfield at 16:05 and flew down the bay where she did a lap around Mont St Michel and then flew straight back up the coast, when she landed back home at 16:33

There were crowds of people down at the car park, so much so that they were queueing to find a place to park.

Nevertheless there wasn’t anyone down at the bench at the cabanon vauban this afternoon, and that means that they missed quite a free show.

One of the sailing schools from Granville had gone out this afternoon and they had ended up right across the bay on the Brittany side.

And it’s not every day that you see the sailing schools go so far on their travels. We’ve only seen them over there once or twice in all of the time that we’ve been here.

You can see how far the tide is out in the bay this afternoon too. The water on the Brittany side of the bay is quite shallow.

and right now, as I was looking down the bay, I was overflown yet again.

Unfortunately the aeroplane didn’t manoeuvre itself into a position where I would read its registration number, and there wasn’t anyone out and about on the radar there at that particular moment so I couldn’t identify it like that.

So instead I set off to walk down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was going on there this afternoon.

There was no change at the chantier naval today. There were the same five boats there that were there yesterday.

There’s a little change going on at the Fish Processing Plant though.

L’Omerta is still there playing “Musical Ships” today, but she’s there on her own. Gerlean isn’t there though though. She’s cleared off and right now she was moored at one of the pontoons in the inner harbour.

It beats me why L’Omerta can’t do the same.

But they are assembling quite a collection of fishing equipment on the quayside up above her. Is that all going into L’Omerta at some point, or is someone else coming in to take it away?

Meanwhile, in the inner harbour, Victor Hugo is back again.

She’s spent the last 12 days in Cherbourg apparently, without going anywhere at all. And so as far as this plan to reopen the ferry service between Granville and St Helier goes, the plot sickens.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were with a group of people last night discussing these films on TV last night about how some of this surrealist comedy was done so well that you’d think that it was real even though you knew that it wasn’t. Then there was the kind of tragedy that you’d have that was done really well but you knew immediately also that it wasn’t real so you had a hard time equating to the other film because you always had in the back of your mind that this isn’t real at all, quite a difference from the comedy type of film. We were having an extremely in-depth conversation in our sleep. Of course I had my foot firmly in the comedy camp. A couple of people arguing against me mentioned films but I had never seen them so I didn’t really know.

Later on I’d been out around the town with a friend of mine from Manchester of all people. We’d been wandering round a couple of bars and places. It was quite busy because it was I dunno Roses Day or something, a day of a Battle of the Roses. In the end I had the idea to go down to the computer halls at the University even though it was late, take STRAWBERRY MOOSE with us, climb into the laboratories and send a few messages to Yorkist supporters about their failure at one of the battles that was being celebrated today. i’d done it before on previous occasions and thought that this might be another moment to do it. My friend was rather reluctant but anyway we went out. We found that the streets were totally deserted. There wasn’t a soul around. We couldn’t understand why. We expected to see crowds of people around there. I’d been trying to get some kind of picture on my laptop before going out but that hadn’t worked at all. That was one of the reasons why I suggested going out for it I had my laptop working we could have done it with that. Everywhere was totally quiet, the driveways were closed and locked. They had these metal fences up to keep people out but there wasn’t a soul about at all. It was just so eerie considering what was going on in the bar and what kind of important historical day it was.

They were still carrying out experiments on people’s knee joints with this machine. They kneel down onto the floor and are clamped into this machine and it puts vibrations through it. I was clamped into one after much complaining by authorities but it was designed for me anyway. A few other people were clamped in. One guy had osteo-arthritis but they turned him down. I was the one who had to tell him that he couldn’t be included in the study and had to send him back to wherever it was that he came from. The question of my knee is even infiltrating into my dreams these days.

Tea tonight was the rest of the curry from yesterday and it’s even more delicious when it’s been marinading for 24 hours in its own juices.

Now here’s a surprise. After I finished the washing-up I steam-cleaned the microwave. It hasn’t been cleaned for a while and needed a good going-over.

But that is one of the things that needs to be replaced in due course. It was a small, cheap microwave with a plastic cover over the metal interior and the plastic is now lifting off and the metal is rusting. It’s not very hygienic but there’s no point in replacing it until I have my new kitchen units up here.

So an early-ish start tomorrow because I’m off on the train to Leuven. Not that I’m looking forward to it but we’ll see how it goes. It’ll do me good to get out and about, even if it’s only going just that far.

Sunday 19th June 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a Premiere Classe hotel in Tours in Western France.

And when I say “we” I really do mean “we” for I am not alone. As you might expect, STRAWBERRY MOOSE has come with me too. I can’t leave him behind.

And just in case you are wondering, I’ve already made a considerable list of things that I’ve forgotten. Most people make a lost and pack accordingly. I pack and then make a list of what I’ve forgotten.

Despite a late night last night I was awake at 08:30 and drifted in and out of sleep for another couple of hours

After the meds and checking the medication I started to back up the big computer onto the little portable memory stick that travels with me. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes.

Then I had to finish off emptying out Caliburn and packing up everything to go in him. The final task was to do all of the washing up and cleaning and then disinfect everywhere.

There were plenty of notes on the dictaphone too. I was writing stuff for a radio programme, the notes for the music. One was for a particular group from the 60s. I remembered seeing them and I got on really well with them. They were busted for drugs like most groups were at the time. I always remembered the last time I saw the girl singer was that some of her group had gone already. She was singing with just one or two of them in the street on this makeshift stage. At the end she got off and came over to see me smiling and we bumped fists. She wandered off down the street and that was the last I ever saw of her. I remember thinking about how nostalgic this was and things might have been different to everyone’s lives if instead of bumping fists I’d grabbed hold of her and held her like I wanted to do but I didn’t really know whether I should have done at the time.

Later I was with Nerina and she was having problems as well with her new relationship. They were no longer sharing a room together. Where they worked in this motel they had a room made up for both of them but they were actually sleeping in separate rooms. I asked how long this had been going on and she replied “a couple of years”. Anyway they had been caught doing this and it had led to all kinds of different complications and for all kinds of different reasons that they were no longer actually living together.

Finally there was a group of us on board a boat. We’d had a meal and we were doing the washing up on the back of the boat outside. There was a little guy on board something similar to Hercule Poirot. He came over and said that he had a request for us. We asked what it was and he asked could we go and do the washing up in the kitchen, in the sink. I couldn’t understand why so I asked him why but he couldn’t really come out with a really good answer. Someone else cottoned on to the fact that he didn’t think that the washing up was being done correctly. It needed to be done in running water and the plates properly scrubbed and everything like that. He didn’t think that what we were doing was very hygienic. I was basically on the point of telling him that if he wanted the washing up done down in the boat in the kitchen he can take the bowl away and do it himself rather than disturbing us who were doing it while he was doing nothing but discretion got the better of me. I tried to find out exactly what his precise objection was but for some unknown reason he wasn’t really all that keen in spelling it out. It was annoying me that we were working and he wasn’t and he didn’t like the way that we were working but he didn’t actually volunteer to come along and do the work himself if he wanted it done in a different way.

There was much more to it than this but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

By 16:00 I was on the road again. First stop was at LeClerc to fuel up (and that cost me an arm and a leg) and then we had a leisurely drive through the French countryside.

We hit Tours, 250 kms away, at 20:00 and saw a cheap B&B hotel so I left the ring road, found myself stuck on the motorway and couldn’t find my way back, came off and couldn’t get back on to retrace my steps.

However, all was not lost. After I’d been driving for a while around the suburbs of Tours trying to find that hotel, a Première Classe Hotel loomed up out of the gloom.

A room was a mere €45:00 which I’ll take any time, and they arranged for a vegan pizza for me at a nearby hotel that even gave me 15% off.

As you might expect, I’m totally wasted after the drive. I’m clearly not up to this. The day that I drove non-stop pulling a trailer for 32.5 hours are long-gone.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I’ve earned a good night’s sleep.

Monday 11th April 2022 – I REALLY SHOULD …

… have put my mortgage on it yesterday because, the way that things were panning out, it was inevitable.

Sure enough, at 08:20 this morning the doorbell rang. “Mr Hall, I’m in the building. May I come and give you your injection?”.

So there I was, hurriedly trying to dress myself while he was banging on the door. After all, I don’t want to give him an inferiority complex.

Something else on which I should have bet my mortgage was “how long will it be before they dig up that brand-new road on which they spent all that money just recently”?

It’s been completed and opened for traffic for just about a couple of months but sure enough, here they are with half of the width coned off and someone hacking away at the surface. It was inevitable, wasn’t it?

Anyway, back to where we ought to be.

Last night I fell into a very cold bed and that was the last that I remember of anything until this perishing ring on the blasted bell this flaming morning.

No-one was more surprised than me to find that there was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night because I didn’t remember a thing about anything So after having taken my medication I sat down and transcribed them.

I started off with something to do with a radio show. I bet that I’ve missed out lots of it. It was that I couldn’t do all of my radio programmes this week and so they had done some kind of message to say that I’d been unwell or injured myself climbing onto a railway station platform or something like that although they didn’t elaborate why I would want to climb onto a railway station platform. There was the inference that it was something to do with refugees or something and they didn’t want anyone to know that I was doing that kind of thing so they had to invent some kind of excuse.

Later on the 4 of us had gone off for another weekend. I can’t remember where it was now. We’d been looking at hotels but because of the budgetary issues we were looking at hotels further out of the city. I’d done some research and I’d come up with 4 that fitted the bill in the same kind of neighbourhood. They were miles from anywhere. We reached the 1st one which was a brand new chain hotel type of thing. Its budget was like €55 per night but they looked at it and decided that it would be far too expensive for us even though I told them that it fitted in with our budget. They still thought that it was far expensive so we went to the next one. To my surprise they only booked 2 rooms. It seemed that the girls were sharing the one and the boys (me and whoever) were sharing another. Across the road was another hotel of a similar type but it was blue. I’d stayed there once the very first time that I’d started out on my travels and thought that it was expensive for what it was supposed to be. They asked about restaurants but there weren’t all that many in the area at all. Nevertheless we booked in. We had to take a table and banqueting stuff out of our room so we carried the headboard out. It was enormously heavy. The guy who was with me carried it first but he almost dropped it so I had to help him. One of the waiters came along. He had a tray and put the coffee machine on it and the sugar in the bowl. It was quite interesting the way he put the sugar in the bowl. He had 2 spoons, 1 with white sugar and 1 with brown and he poured it into the sugar bowl so that it was half-and-half. He put some milk onto the tray. Another woman came in and began to hurry around. She prepared a second sugar bowl and put it on the tray so we made some kind of funny remark about that.

The rest of the morning, once I’d awoken, was to back up the computer – to copy all of the files that I had created or changed on the laptop while I was away and then load them up onto the big machine. There were quite a few of those as well and it took me a while to organise it all.

With what time was left before lunch I went for a shower, and I’ve put back all of the weight that I’ve lost over the last few months despite all of the walking that I did while I was away. I also had to organise the clothes ready for washing, which I’ll be doing while I’m out at the physiotherapist

There have also been several in-depth discussions on the internet too about the events of the last couple of days.

As well as that, although the trip was a success to the extent that everyone reached Granville safely and without losing anything along the way, there were several aspects that needed to be improved. Whatever you do, it’s always a good idea to sit down afterwards to see how things could have been accomplished better.

And so on that note I headed off to the physiotherapist for my Monday afternoon session.

As usual I paused at the corner of the Boulevard Vaufleury and the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to check that the NIKON 1 J5 was working and also to see what was happening down there this afternoon.

There were a few fishing boats down there this afternoon. At the front is Roc A La Mauve and at the rear is Le Styx at the rear. I can’t see who the boat in the middle is.

You can see the crane unloading Roc A La Mauve and the pile of boxes full of shellfish on the quayside already unloaded.

And as I watched, another trawler came chugging into port

Unfortunately she’s far too far out for me to be able to say with any certainty who she might be but I can see that the seagull over there was having a really good look.

Over there to the left at the ferry terminal is Chausiaise, the little freighter that runs over to the Ile de Chausey.

There’s something over there in front of her too – probably one of the Joly France ferries. It’s holiday time for the next two weeks so I imagine that there must be plenty of custom for a trip out to the island.

Whoever it was over there at the ferry terminal, it isn’t Belle France.

She’s down there tied up at the quayside in the inner harbour. There can’t be that much trade over to the island today.

But I was more interested in seeing Marité back in port again. She’s been away for the last while or so having her annual overhaul. She can’t be overhauled here in the chantier naval because the portable boat lift over there doesn’t have the lifting capacity to lift her out of the water.

There’s also a swimming pool over there. That means that one of the little Jersey freighters will be coming over in the course of the next few days.

One thing that we usually see down on the Place Pelley during the summer is the Bar Ephemère, the temporary café that they erect on the boulodrome.

It’s here already and they are busy unloading it and erecting it all, ready for the Easter rush.

And it’s not disturbing the boules players at all. They are still managing to fit in a few games around all of the goings-on.

One of my friends had asked me to find out if there were any golf courses near here so I went to the Tourist Information Office. That was a waste of time because there were crowds of people in there and of the assistants, two of them were helping one client and all the rest of the assistants were Miltonists.

And in case you wonder what a Miltonist is, there’s a line in Milton’s poem “On His Blindness” that goes “They also serve who only stand and wait”.

On my way up the hill in the Rue Couraye I noticed that the Rue Roger Maris was closed off to traffic so I made a mental note to go back that way to find out why.

Not now though. I pushed on to the physiotherapist.

She had me on the couch again with the electro-massage machine and then I had the honour of being the first to have a go on the new electric bicycle. And finally a few kinetic exercises before she threw me out.

Back again on Wednesday for my last session with her before she moves on to her new job. She’s fixing me up for sessions with one of her colleagues.

Who remembers the Place des Docteurs Lanos?

The last time we saw it, it was a huge mess of mud that had been churned up by all of the vehicles that had been on there while they had been using it to store the building materials.

On my way to find out why the Rue Roger Maris was closed, I had a look to see what they had been doing there and as you can see, they have made quite a bit of progress there since I was last down this way.

But as for why the street was closed off, there wasn’t anything evident that I could see, apart from the guy digging up the road around the corner in the Rue du Boscq.

My route took me back through the town and up the hill in the Rue des Juifs towards home.

Near the top I stopped because there was something interesting going on out in the bay. One of the sailing schools was out again this afternoon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve promised that I’ll be out there with them one day soon but the way things are with the physiotherapy, the Welsh lessons, the radio and my trips to Leuven it’s difficult to know when I can fit anything else into my programme.

You can see that most of the fishing boats are now back home too and tied up in the inner harbour.

While I was here I had a look to see what was happening in the chantier naval.

Spirit of Conrad has now gone back into the water. I saw her moored up in the inner harbour. La Roc A La Mauve III is still there though, up on the blocks. How long has she been there now?

Also in there is Anakena. We saw her being lifted out of the water the other day just before I set off on my voyage. She has a programme of voyages out to the North so I imagine that she’s having her annual overhaul too.

One of the places that she’s visiting is Greenland, according to the local newspapers of a while back, so I sent a mail to her owners to see what the plan was because I’m keen to get back to Uummannaq and my little Inuit friend Heidinngauq but they never replied.

That’s the story of my life. People complain about there being a recession but how many times have I sent out mails to enquire about products and never received a reply?

As has been the case in the past, I can’t go back into the apartment without seeing what was going on down on the beach.

With it being holiday times and reasonably good weather I was expecting to see the crowds down there and I was right as wzll. The place was heaving. No-one actually in the water though.

One thing thatt I did while I was out was to make sure that Caliburn started. We have to go out on Wednesday and with him having stood around for over a fortnight it’s as well to check.

Back here I had a good play on the guitar and then organised my photos from today. I have to stop letting things hang around here for as long as I do. Especially as I may well be off on yet more travels some time soon

And regrettably, I also crashed out for half an hour too.

Tea was a disappointment. It should have been steamed veg with falafel and vegan cheese sauce (now that I have some) but the veg was over-steamed which is quite rare these days with my steamer that doesn’t seem to work as I would like it.

So having written my notes I’m going to hang around for a while and then go to bed. I have a radio programme to do tomorrow seeing as there is no Welsh course tomorrow.

But it’s not going to be a 06:00 start. That I can promise you.

Thursday 6th January 2022 – LOOK WHO’S BACK!

And he’s brought a friend with him too.

It seems that I was exceedingly premature the other day when I said that they must have finished down at the roadworks by the Rue St Michel, because ever since then, the lorry with its trailer and machines has been back every day.

And in the past I’ve mentioned about the difficulties that large vehicles have of passing underneath the Porte St Jean into the old town. It’s usual therefore for there to be a means of trans-shipment using a smaller vehicle, and today there’s a pick-up by the side of the lorry unloading stuff that it’s brought from within the walls

This morning I needed a pick-up to move me from my bed into the living room because I certainly wasn’t capable of doing it under my own steam.

It had been another “nuit blanche” – a night without any sleep. At least, that’s what it felt like and the fact that there was nothing at all recorded on the dictaphone tends to give that idea some credence. I suppose that the awful afternoon that i’d had yesterday was preying on my mind.

After the medication and so on, I came back in here feeling sorry for myself and not doing anything at all. And that’s how it went for a couple of hours.

But a strong mug of coffee at breakfast time gradually seeped down all the way through my muscles and I began slowly to feel more like it. I even went out and did the “end of the month” back-up onto the memory stick that I take to Leuven with me that I use to update the travelling laptop.

And feeling a little more like it after that, I set myself a little task, to prove that I am worthy.

There’s been a persistent … well, not a fault, but something that I would like to change in my notes and I’d made a start back in November and all subsequent entries have reflected it.

It’s to do with a song by Al Stewart that I heard while I was preparing a radio programme and it reminded me of something going back to 2006-07 that I did that I had forgotten, inspired by the same song. The lyrics were … well … extremely appropriate at the time.

Anyway, being up-to-date with that from November, there were entries going back all the way to the start of this journal to amend and so I made a start. Not every day of course, maybe one every few weeks (although just recently they have been a lot more frequent than that) and I made it as far back as the end of October 2020.

And if I have time tonight I’ll do a few more too because it’s quite therapeutic. Al Stewart has a lot to answer for.

Another strong coffee brought me even more into the land of the living and I attacked the soundfile that I started the other day.

With a pause here and there and a pause for my afternoon walk, I was well-advanced. Over 10 minutes of this interview has already gone the way of the west leaving me with, at the moment, just about 15 minutes, of which there will be more following its friends into oblivion.

There is at the moment 8.5 minutes of how I want it to be, so I’m looking as if I’m going to end up with about 12 minutes in total.

It won’t be done tomorrow morning though because I have bread to make. and now that I have a new whizzer, I need to finish off making this large batch of hummus.

In fact there would have been much more of this sound file edited but Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we had another one of our marathon sessions.

As for the afternoon walk, well, it was like a March day outside – not cold, not wet, not particularly anything.

First place to go to is the wall at the end of the car park where I can look down onto the beach to see what’s going on down there.

And there was plenty of beach for all kinds of things to be going on, but there weren’t many people down there going on with it. In fact, for the whole length of the beach, I could only see one person, although there was some movement down by the bouchot beds at Donville les Bains.

While I was there, I had a good look out to sea to see whether we might have any kind of maritime activity, but there wasn’t a sausage out there this afternoon that I could see, and it was quite clear this afternoon again.

There might have been nothing going on out at sea, but there was something going on up in the air this afternoon.

As I walked down the path I was overflown by an aeroplane that had taken off from the local airfield. No need to look for a flight plan because it’s our old friend 50SA and, being an ultra-light aircraft, she doesn’t file one which is a shame.

And it’s my intention to go out to the airfield when I come back from Leuven to make further enquiries about these planes and find out what I can about them. But I bet that there will be no-one there to ask when I arrive.

Yesterday, I mentioned that the views out to sea were amongst the best that we have ever had.

That’s certainly the case today and the view of Cap Fréhel, 70 kms away, even with the naked eye, was quite impressive. Not only that, if you look carefully at this image you can see the headland beyond it.

If I’m correct, that headland in the background to the right of the lighthouse is Cap Erquy and that’s a further 10 or 12 kilometres further on.

Yes, the views were really impressive, but it was a shame that there was only me out there enjoying them. There wasn’t another soul about this afternoon, and that suits me, with another 261,000 infections. I’m dreading going to Paris next week with all of this.

No-one down by the bench at the end of the headland so I carried on along the path towards the port.

And there’s been another change of occupant in the chantier naval as well since I was last here. Pescadore and La Bavolette II now seem to have gone back into the water and in their place is the trawler Trafalgar whom we have seen in there before.

On the othe rhand, Gerlean is still in there, having a lot of work carried out on her. But I’ll refrain from saying “it looks as if she’s in here for a long stay” for that’s the cue for her to be back in the water when I come by tomorrow.

Joly France boats, the older one of the two unless I’m much mistaken, is still over there as she has been for the last while, but she’s been joined today by Chausiaise, the little freighter that runs out to the Ile de Chausey occasionally.

But wouldn’t it be nice to see the Channel Island ferries back at the ferry terminal? It’s been almost 2 years since they last went out (apart from that little window in the early summer 2020) and with the infection rates being so appalling, that’s not likely to change any time soon.

On the way home, I passed by the lorry and its trailer and little friend, and came back here for a coffee and to carry on work, until Rosemary called.

Tea tonight was pasta and burger with vegetables. Very nice and it made me feel much better. In fact, I’ve not had too bad a day today despite how it started (and how yesterday finished).

Baking bread tomorrow, making hummus, and whatever else I can find to do.

Saturday 27th November 2021 – NO PHOTOS TODAY …

… either. And for the simple reason that it isn’t safe to to out.

The winds have been gusting up to 136 kph today and if you remember that little compound that we saw the other day down at the end of the public car park, that is now in bits spread out all over the car park and I feel sorry for those people who left their cars parked there over the weekend.

Some time during the afternoon I went outside to bring in the rest of the shopping from yesterday and made it with the greatest difficulty to Caliburn and back again. I was intending to see if it was safe to go out for a walk but I abandoned that plan.

Strangely enough though, the wind during the night didn’t keep me awake too much and for once I had a decent night’s sleep, even though there wasn’t all that much of it.

Plenty of time to go for a ramble though. There as something happening in a zoo and there were a lot of people around there doing some tests on some of the animals. Someone said something that upset the monkeys and they started throwing stones at this building. They broke the windows and all of the insects and animals and all kinds of laboratory creatures escaped. They all crawled over my legs to get out. I was mortified because I don’t like this sort of thing at all. They had to set through to catch them and all these horrible reptile things, they were talking on the news about how “this one was going to be good for making liver and they are monitoring its progress’. They found a type that was like a stick of rock but it was in fact bone and when you sang to it, it grew. They asked me to take a sample of it back to Leuven when I next went and leave it there with them so that they could perform a whole series of tests on it. I thought that I could make it grow by singing to it any time you like. It sounded such an interesting thing to do. But I was overwhelmed by these insects all crawling over my legs trying to escape, all kinds of horrible things.

With some time before my Welsh lesson I had another go at tidying up my back-up disk and created yet more space. Consequently I ended up with more than enough space to perform a full back-up of my computer for the first time since I don’t know when.

Before anyone is worried about my back-ups, or lack thereof, there’s a 128GB memory stick that lives permanently in a USB port and I back up all of my data files onto there every night. There’s also the portable computer that I take to Leuven and I back up onto there at the end of every month and again the morning that I travel.

There are 123 students at our Welsh weekend and we are divided up into 8 groups of about 15. But depressingly, they have put me into a “South Wales” group.

If you look at a map of Wales, you’ll notice the southern and northern coasts of course, and you’ll also note that the country is bisected in the centre by the Dyfi and Severn valleys that cut the country into a “north” and south”.

These valleys, the Dyfi that flows east to west and the Severn that flows west to east have been a traditional route for invaders throughout history, whether Romans, Saxons or Normans, and were heavily fortified, and so there was little interaction between the north and the south.

As a result, the native Celtic language evolved differently in each area over the last 2,000 years and there are considerable differences between the two.

As my paternal roots are in the north-east, I’m much more home with northern Welsh and so I’m not so much at my ease with a bunch of South Walians.

We are having four sessions of 2.5 hours, 2 today and 2 tomorrow, with an hour’s break in between, and we’re revising the first 5 chapters of our course book for this year. It’s quite interesting, and well-worth the money that I paid for it … “it was free, actually” – ed.

When the course had finished I went to bring in the shopping but not to go for a walk. With the amount of stuff, some of which was quite heavy, being blown around, I didn’t think that it was wise.

However I’m keen to nip out to see how the scaffolding at the Place du Marché aux Chevaux coped, 5 tonnes of water or not.

There was time to dice and blanch a kilo of carrots ready for freezing overnight. Seeing that I was at Lidl in Caliburn yesterday, I grabbed a kilo. I may as well take advantage.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent splitting up albums on the laptop. I found a few more master tapes just recently and I’ve been giving them the business. There are still plenty more to cut up.

Tea tonight was baked potato with a couple of these small breaded burgers that I like and a handful of veg. All very tasty.

So now I’m going to chill out before going to bed. There’s an alarm tomorrow shock! Horror! as I have to go to the second half of my Welsh class.

And I hope that the alarm works in the morning. It let me down for some reason this morning – not that it made any difference because I was awake anyway. I doubt if that will be the case on a Sunday morning.

Sunday 10th October 2021 – CONSIDERING THAT SUNDAY …

… is supposed to be a Day of Rest and I’m not supposed to be working, I’m flaming well exhausted after everything that I’ve done today.

The day started really well too. I finally had what I’d been hoping for several days now and had a really decent, uninterrupted sleep from about 00:45 right the way through to 09:35 without even a flicker.

And staying in bed vegetating for another hour or so was exactly what I needed to do as well.

After the meds I came in here and checked my mails and messages, and then I paired off the music for the next radio programme that I’ll be doing tomorrow.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too. I dreamt that I’d bought my apartment last night. There had been a problem about the evacuation of water out of one of the sinks. There was some complicated kind of arrangement there. We were going through it and trying to clear it without much success until my brother hit it was a hammer and part of a broken slate came out of it. While we were tidying up we noticed that at the back of the sink all kinds of nuts and joints and everything. They had had a hell of a time trying to assemble this sink with all this stuff that they had dropped down the back and couldn’t reach. This dream was so real that I was all for going to see Odile this morning and telling her about my purchase.

That took me up to lunchtime, following which I had a little clean-up in the kitchen to try to make it look a little more presentable.

Back in here, I printed out my rail tickets and then shock! Horror! I did some tidying up.

There have been papers all over the place for the last couple of months, stuff that I have to keep on moving so I can sit down or go to bed or whatever. Anyway today, I sorted right the way through them and filed away the important ones and filed the rest under “CS”.

There were some expenses from various sources for which I need to seek reimbursement and I set them on one side for scanning, but I ran out of time.

There’s quite a change from yesterday in the amount of beach available this afternoon.

That shows you really just how quickly the tide comes in around here. But there were plenty of people down there sunning themselves, and no surprise because it was a nice sunny day this afternoon.

Not as much wind as of late either either. We seem right now to be having a little Indian Summer since the storms, and I wonder how long we can keep it up.

While I was out there looking at the beach, an aeroplane came flying in towards the airport.

She’s one that we have seen before – on the 2nd of April this year in fact. F-HGSM, a Robin DR401-160 owned by the Aéroclub Des Grèves Du Mont Saint Michel down the road at Avranches.

Once more, she hasn’t filed a flight plan, and she’s not been picked up on radar either so I’ve no idea of her route or anything else about her today. She’s being extremely mysterious.

There was nothing whatever going on out at sea this afternoon so I carried on along the path fighting my way through the hordes of people out there.

While I was doing so I heard the sound of an unsilenced rotary engine overhead. On looking up (yes, things are looking up here) I saw that I was being oveflown by a helicopter.

The nice weather this afternoon has made someone take out his chopper and go for a good run around. And even though I can see her registration number – 34-ACI – I couldn’t find out anything at all about her.

And that wasn’t all either.

As I rounded the corner to head down the path towards the car park, something else came over going the other way.

This afternoon, we have once again the company of the red powered hang-glider, this time heading on its way out to sea rather than back home as we saw it yesterday.

But me, I was heading down to the end of the headland to see what was going on. and the answer to that was “nothing”. No crowds of volunteers, no boats, no-one sitting on the bench at the cabanon vauban and no-one skiving off on the roof of the old German observation post.

Instead, I wandered off down the other side of the headland towards the port.

No change in occupancy in the chantier naval so I had a good look over towards the ferry terminal. And once again, they’ve gone off for the weekend and left the gib of the crane fully extended. All that weight resting on the hydraulic seals.

Down there tied up at the terminal is Belle France, the very newest of the three ferries that do over to the Ile de Chausey. One of the others is tied up in the inner harbour so the third one is probably over at the island.

On the way back, I stopped for a look down at the workmen’s compound in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

Things seem to be hotting up in there right now. The piles of gravel that they deposited at the side of the road now have dried out and as well as the white digger that we had before, there’s a large yellow one.

When I come back from Leuven next weekend, I’m expecting to see a few changes down there such as some actual work being done.

Back at the apartment I made myself a coffee and then came back in here to sort out the stuff that I’m taking to Leuven.

This time I’m taking a larger suitcase, simply because it’s easier to manoeuvre and there’s more room to bring things back in it if necessary instead of struggling with a collection of carrier bags.

Everything has been stripped down to the bare minimum too and I’m taking a lot less with me than I usually would. I imagine that it’s still going to be a struggle and I wish that it wasn’t.

While I was at it, I backed up my memory stick with files for the last two months. Last month’s back-up was done in a hurry and wasn’t complete so I made sure that I had time this afternoon to do it.

Earlier in the afternoon I’d taken out the last pizza dough from the freezer to defrost.

Later on i rolled it out and then assembled my pizza ready for baking. After all, what is a Sunday without a pizza?

Especially a delicious pizza like this one turned out to be. It really was nice, one of the best that I’ve made for quite a while.

And now even though it’s early, I’m off to bed as I have an early start in the morning. Tomorrow I’m radioing so I need to be on form. And about time too.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: back-up

Saturday 2nd September 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

Friday 1st September 2023 – FOURTEEN MINUTES …

Thursday 31st August 2023 – I FORGOT …

Wednesday 21st June 2023 – HAPPY SOLSTICE

Thursday 18th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

Saturday 10th December 2022 – IF I WERE …

Wednesday 28th September 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

Tuesday 2nd August 2022 – I REALLY THOUGHT …

Sunday 19th June 2022 – HERE WE ALL ARE …

Monday 11th April 2022 – I REALLY SHOULD …

Thursday 6th January 2022 – LOOK WHO’S BACK!

Saturday 27th November 2021 – NO PHOTOS TODAY …

Sunday 10th October 2021 – CONSIDERING THAT SUNDAY …

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