Tag Archives: boulevard des terreneuviers

Tuesday 18th May 2021 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

… a story about a destroyer in World War II. It was ordered to join a convoy that was sailing into a battle zone where there were a couple of U-boat wolfpacks. The destroyer signalled “mechanical problems prevent joining convoy” and the convoy commodore signals back “this is not the time for destroyers to be breaking down”.

And this is not the time for me to be breaking down either. The day before I have a long tiring journey to Leuven and I have had a dreadful afternoon. Crashed out on the chair in the office for 2.5 hours, missing guitar practice, missing absolutely everything.

There was even the mug of coffee from after my afternoon walk, half-drunk and freezing cold, as I discovered when I awoke.

This is absolutely no good at all and if I can’t pull myself together soon I’m going to have a real struggle on my hands.

It wasn’t as if I had had a late night last night either. I was in bed by 23:00 And had a decent almost-uninterrupted sleep all the way through until the alarm went off at 06:00. And then, I leapt out of bed with alacrity. Well, almost, but you know what I mean.

After the medication I came along to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And surprise! Surprise! Having complained the other day about the absence of congenial company on my nocturnal rambles, Zero put in a welcome appearance.

I’d been working at the house of a former friend of mine and it was time for me to go home. They very kindly made me breakfast which I had and then I got up. While I was organising my things his wife asked “Eric do you have any washing that needs doing?”. I thought “my clothes are a bit dirty” but I asked if it would be ok and she said yes so I went to the van to fetch some clean ones – there are always clean clothes in the van. Zero was there and where I’d been sitting was some kind of hair clasp or something. I looked around again and she was sitting there having breakfast. I said to her “have you seen your hair holder, your thing?”. She replied “yes thanks” I said “it’s there with your doll”. She said “yes” and carried on eating. There was something else on the settee so I went over to it and asked if anyone had put anything there about these pearls that they had in a necklace that was there but how nice it was” and Helen Whatshername from the Open University, Scots girl, joined it and really told me off for noticing them which I thought was a strange thing to do.

There was much more to it than this but it deteriorated rapidly after than and as you are probably eating your tea or something right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

Most of the rest of the first part of the morning was spent revising my Welsh and working through the notes for the forthcoming lesson, although I did take 20 minutes off to go for a shower and a good clean-up.

Armed with a mug of hot chocolate (made properly with real chocolate) and a slice of my sourdough fruit bread, I went for my lesson and it passed quite quickly and for a change I didn’t have too much trouble.

Well, I did, but not with the lesson. My laptop hung up in the middle and in the end I had to go and fetch the other laptop and fix it up. It would be nice if I could make the mike function on this big machine work, but that’s a job for again, I reckon, when I upgrade the hard drives.

We finished quite late, as usual and I had some work to do and a letter to write so it was something of a latte lunch today. and then I could go off into town.

At the end of the street I could look out over the harbour and see what was going on down there this afternoon.

The tide is in so there were plenty of boats bobbing up and down in the harbour right now. And just outside the harbour the sailing school was in full swing with the little boats being led out to sea by the pilot boat. And I haven’t forgotten that I have to contact the sailing school one of these days to find out about when I can go sailing.

But not right now. I have things to do in town so I headed off down the street. I cast my eye on the pointing on the wall at the head of the Rampe du Monte à Regret and noticed that they hadn’t advanced any further than when I last noticed.

And the workmen and apprentices weren’t there either. They don’t seem to be all that keen on completing the job, which is a bit of a shame. I could have had this job finished all on my own right now.

However there is plenty of action on the Place Pleville where all of the layabouts play boules instead of doing an honest day’s work.

Summer is definitely acumen in and lhude sing seagull because the bar ephemere, the temporary bar, has arrived. It’s an old shipping container that has been transformed into a temporary bar and by the looks of things it’s just been dropped off in its usual temporary summer home.

You can see the owners talking out the benches and tables from the inside of the container and setting them up ready to receive their clients.

The post office was my next port of call where I dropped off the letter that I needed to send and then wandered off to the bank for my appointment.

And I didn’t understand why they had called me in for a chat because there wasn’t anything that needed doing or needed signing. It seemed to me that the bank clerk just wanted a chat.

He got that, all right, and I managed to deal with a little issue here and there that needed doing, although they don’t seem all that interested in pushing on to the next level which is a bit of a surprise. That’s the problem with these little provincial banks and it’s one of the reasons why I keep my accounts open in Brussels.

Next stop was the public library where at long last I was able to find a map of the town in the early 1950s. Although the tacot, or “rattletrap”, the old narrow-gauge railway network had been ripped up by then, there was still evidence of the earthworks so I could at least trace its course, but only to the town boundary.

It seems that I shall have to cast my net wider if I’m to find out more about it.

Having left the library I wandered off down to the port to see what was happening down there these days with all of the changes going on.

And there is some activity going on in the loading bay as supplies of wood and so on and a couple of tractors are now parked up. It looks as if Normandy Trader or Thora, the two little Jersey freighters, are expected in the port soon enough to take them away.

But there is still no news on what is happening with the shellfish of the Jersey Seafarers’ Co-operative. That looks as if it’s well and truly blocked from being landed here in the port.

When Normandy Trader came into port the other day – minus the shellfish – she was met with a couple of jeers and catcalls but that was about it. I imagine that had she come in with the shellfish, the reception would have been a darn sight warmer.

These are the seats on board Granviile, the newer of the two boats that (in theory at least) provide the ferry service from here to Jersey. As you can see, they are all covered up to protect them from deterioration from the sun.

There was some kind of fitter on board doing something so I engaged him in conversation. Apart from a period of about a week last summer, they haven’t run out since March last year at the start of the pandemic. I asked the fitter if there were any plans to restart the ferry soon and he replied “maybe at the start of July. We’ll have to see”.

They know about as much as I do about the future of the ferry service from here. I hope that they set it up and are allowed to start running again. It’s good for the town of course to bring people here from abroad. They spend their money here and provide employment, and you can’t have too much of any of that.

Just a little further along the quayside Spirit of Conrad, the yacht on which I went down the Brittany coast last summer, is moored. She has Black Mamba tied up behind her and an unidentified boat that I didn’t recognise tied up at her side.

Pierre, her owner, was there and we had a chat. He has 3 trips organised all the way down the coast as far as Ouessant and my ears pricked up at that. I made further enquiries but it turns out that the first trip is going on Friday when I am in Leuven, the second clashes with my Welsh exam, and the third one clashes with my next trip to Leuven.

Not much luck there for me, so I asked him to keep me in mind for his next series of trips. I’m keen to get away for a week or two and a trip on a yacht will do me a world of good, I reckon.

Another thing that I was hoping to do was to speak to the owners of Anakena to find out more about the boat and what her plans are for the future.

She’s moored here of course, where she has been for well over a year (apart from her sojourn in the chantier navale recently) and with Aztec Lady to keep her company. She was on her way to the Far North when she was held up in here when everywhere closed their ports to visitors and I was hoping to find out when – and where – she’ll be going.

However, rather like the Marie Celeste, she was completely deserted. There was no-one about at all so that was rather a pointless visit. She’ll be in good company here with Victor Hugo and Granville, the two Channel Island ferries in the background keeping her company as well.

And so I crossed over the top of the closed harbour gates to the other side and climbed up the steps to the top road, the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

And there’s yet another fishing boat left at the quayside at the Fish Processing Plant to settle in the silt as the tide goes out.

She’s L’Omerta, one of the larger fishing boats that collects the shellfish. And I’m interested in whatever story there might be in her name. L’Omerta isn’t just Silence in Italian, it’s the name of the Oath of Silence that members of the Mafia take when they are recruited into the Society.

And another thing that interests me, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, is why the boats are left to go high and dry at the fish processing plant instead of being moored in the main harbour or moored somewhere else out of the way.

One thing that I needed to do of course was to go and check on the beach near the Rue du Nord to see how things were going down there.

And so when I arrived back at my building I went down to the end of the car park to look over the wall.

It had been a warm day today, the first really warm day that we had had, so it was hardly a surprise to see people actually settling down to soak up the sun. A day like today has been a long time coming.

A couple of my neighbours were up there on the car park talking so I joined in and had an exchange of pleasantries while I was about it. I’m not the sociable type as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I can’t ignore my neighbours too much.

There was also a fishing boat out there too, trawling away in the Baie de Granville in the gap between the Pointe du Roc and the Ile de Chausey. They are a lot more active in the local area these days, given the situation further out in the bay.

Back here in the apartment I made myself a mug of coffee and brought it in here to do some work, but the next thing that I remember is that it was 19:20. and it was another one of these occasions when I didn’t even remember going to sleep.

Anyway, girding up my loins, I made myself pasta and veg with a burger, one of the pile that I need to finish off. There a couple of dozen or so of those in the fridge that I’m going to have to eat sometime, not to mention the pile that are in the freezer.

When I come back from Leuven I’m going to have to go through everything and see what I have and what I need to make to keep the supplies going.

But not right now. I’m going off to bed. I’ve had a hard day and a bad evening and I’m off to Leuven in the morning. I haven’t even printed my rail tickets yet and I have to do that pretty quickly

Saturday 26th September 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

… about the weather last night. We didn’t have the rainstorm today. Or the plague of locusts either. But we had just about everything else.

The high winds are still here and still wreaking devastation about the town. I blame the baked beans that I had for tea the other night.

We also had one of the coldest days that I can remember for a good while too.

That’s probably why I didn’t feel like springing into action this morning and leaping joyously out of bed. Consequently I missed the third alarm. Only by 10 minutes or so, but missed it all the same.

And that’s hardly surprising as I must have been exhausted after my travels last night. I was with my aunt and we were doing a lot of stuff on the computer quite happliy working away. There was another guy with us as well. Suddenly my computer hard drive caught fire. This boy was all for dashing off for phoning up the fire brigade. Of coure I wouldn’t let him do that – I put it out myself. The fire brigade would just smother it in foam and ruin everything. In the end I managed to put out the fire. Of course the hard drive was ruined. My aunt and this boy were going into the City – Bishopsgate, although I don’t know why I thought Bishopsgate because it wasn’t there that I meant. There was a huge computer shop there. I felt really annoyed because I’d been to a computer fair that day and I could have bought a new hard drive there for peanuts had I known but it’s too late now. I asked this boy if he knew about this computer shop. Oh yes, he knew it very well. I asked “while you’re up in London with my aunt can you nip in there and pick me up a hard drive?”. I told him the one I wanted. He said “wouldn’t it be better to pick up a differet type for a MAC or something like that?”. He only ever uses MACs. I said that I use PCs and I’ve used them for years and I know them pretty well so I’m going to stick with them. He had a little bit of a chunter about that. Then I thought that I would have to get him some money as well and I probably don’t have enough cash on me so how am I going to do that? Then it came to booking the tickets so I went to look on the railway site. It turned out instead that I was looking at the bus site. It took endless goes for me to log in on it because everyone was meithering me and I kept on typing the wrong word. Eventually I got in to find that it was buses that we were looking at because we were now actually living in Bath. The first thing my aunt said was that they don’t have a direct bus service from Bath to London any more. We have to go on the train. We had to start looking for things like that. In the meantime we managed to find the times of the buses which would at least get them some of the way. Then the phone rang. My aunt talked to whoever it was and so on. When she hung up she said “that was George and that’s strange. He’s after his wages for the taxis. He’s on holiday and he wants it posted to him in York by cheque”. She couldn’t understand why he wanted it. I said “he’s probably going to buy something special while he’s in York”. “Yes but it’s early. he doesn’t get paid until Thursday but anyway …”. She had a chunter about that. Then I had to go and get her ready for this bus so they could get on it and this other guy too and head off into London
A little later on there was a girl and she was a lot older than she ought to be and she still had a dolly that she cuddled. People used to make remarks about it (Wiske and Schanulleke, anyone?). They decided that they would pass a Law about it. Somewhere inside there they inserted a clause that people who cuddled a pet or other object or person for the purpose of comfort would be exempt, which of course wiped out the whole purpose of this Law anyway. So we all had a debate about it.
Just then this other girl turned up. She was in a purple and gold kind of trouser suit kind of thing that looked more at home in a Middle-Eastern harem. She had long dark-brown hair that was cut in the style of an Egpytian, really precise cuts and edges and so on.
There was much more to it too but as you are probably eating your meal right now I’ll spare you any discomfort.
And once again I was dictating without the dictaphone in my hand. Either this is starting to become a habit or else it already is and a whole load of stuff has slipped quite literally through my hands.

After a shower, Caliburn and I hit the streets and headed to the shops.

NOZ is always on my shopping list. That’s a shop that buys job-lots of bankrupt stock, overstocks, that kind of thing from all over Europe.

In the past I’ve found plenty of useful things in there and also a whole variety of different foods to vary my diet somewhat. Today they had stocks of Sharwoods products on offer so I now have some vindaloo and madras sauces as well as some mango chutney. Stocks of curry in the freezer are getting low, an I’m also going to learn to make poppadoms, I reckon.

At LeClerc I didn’t spend very much, and most of what I did went on fruit. The place is now looking like a greengrocer’s, which is good for my health (and that reminds me – my kiwi, lemon and ginger cordial is delicious and I’ll be doing that again – hence more kiwis today).

One good thing is that, after much searching, I finally found the fresh figs. So back here, I finally set my kefir en route. How that will pan out remains to be seen.

This afternoon I had a whizz through some more photos of my adventures with Spirit of Conrad in July and we are now in our anchorage for the final night aboard. I reckon that there are about 50 more to edit before I finish.

Then, there are the 400 or so from my voyage into Eastern Europe and once they are completed I can turn my attention to the 3000 that remain from the High Arctic in 2019 and the 2000-odd from the High Arctic in 2018.

And then, finally, I can write up the notes for all of this.

The burning question of the day is not Rafferty’s motor car but whether I’ll finish all of this before all of this finishes me.

A few more albums bit the dust too, some more work was done on revising the web pages, Rosemary rang me and we had a chat for just over an hour, and I even found time to crash out for 15 minutes.

And as for that latter, with everything else that I’ve been doing today, it’s hardly a surprise. I must have been exhausted by then so I’m not too disappointed, even if for the last couple of days I’ve managed to keep going.

The day is far from finished too. There’s football this evening so I headed off into town.

And here’s another sure sign that the summer season has ended. The beach cabins have gone and they’ve taken down the diving platform at the Plat Gousset already, but now the itinerant bar Chez Maguie has folded up its tent and crept silently away in the night.

It’s a very significant sign for some of us, but for others it means that the locals can have their boulodrome back until next summer.

Professional football started back up a few weeks ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But this weekend amateur football has had the green light.

Consequently I headed off up to the Stade Louis Dior to watch Granville’s 2nd XI play FC Flerien, the team from Flers, in Normandy Regional 1.

For the first 15 minutes Granville’s control of the ball and their passing and movement was extremely fluent, but by the end of this little period they were already 2-0 down – a corner that the goalkeeper dropped into the path of an onrushing forward (he seemed to have a good pair of teflon gloves) and a misplaced header under pressure back to the goalkeeper that went to another onrushing forward.

After that, a couple of heads dropped, and the Fleriens got into their stride. We had to wait 55 minutes for Granville’s first shot on target (and about 10 minutes before the end for their other one) and 65 minutes for their first corner.

It was literally men against boys because Granville’s team was quite youthful whereas Flers had three or four old hands who had clearly been around the block far more times than the Granville players could handle.

The match ended 2-0 but really Flers could have had half a dozen and no-one in Granville would have complained.

And I’m glad that the match finished when it did because I was absolutely frozen to the marrow. It’s a long time since I’ve been this cold. I’ve been much warmer than this in the Arctic and next time I go to the football I’ll put on the thermal undies that I bought on Thursday.

On the way back, here’s something that I haven’t noticed before – mainly because it’s been an age since I went into town in the dark at night.

But now there seems to be blue lights shining down on all of the pedestrian crossings on the main roads. Presumably to give motorists a better chance of spotting civilians trying to cross the road.

It brought back many happy memories of a press release that we wonce received from the Parisian authorities when I worked at Shearings – “The policeman who directs the traffic at the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe will from now on be floodlit to make sure that motorists don’t miss him in the dark”.

My route home had to be extended tonight for the simple reason that “if I’m out, I’m well out” and there’s no point in going home with just 90% on my fitbit. I may as well push it up to 100%.

For that reason I wandered on down into the port to see what was going on.

“Nothing much” was the answer to that. Marité was there of course, tucked up in her little corner and so were the two Channel Island ferries, Granville and the older Victor Hugo.

As an aside, we haven’t seen a gravel boat in here for almost 6 months. I was hoping that this new mayor would do something about stimulating the freight trade to the port.

My route continued along the rue du Port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen several photos taken of this street in the dark, all of which have been taken from the cliffs up above.

And so tonight, in an effort to do something different, here’s the reverse-angle shot taken from the street looking back towards the cliffs.

Not that you can actually see the cliffs in this (lack of) light. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

On the climb back up the Boulevard des Terreneuviers I stopped (for breath) to look at the tidal port.

There was a beautiful bright moon tonight, even though it’s only half-full, and there was a wonderful reflection of light down in the Baie de Mont St Michel looking across to Jullouville and the Pointe de Carolles.

Actually, considering that this photo was hand-held and taken with the little NIKON 1 J5 with the standard lens, it’s not come out too badly, even if I did have to stop it down by 8 (in fact by 10 because normally the camera has to be opened up by 2 since the lens was repaired).

Back at the flabberblok there was yet more football so I grabbed a bowl of rice pudding and settled down in a ringside seat in front of the internet.

Y Fflint, newly promoted to the JD Cymru League this season after a 20-year absence were entertaining Barry Town. Barry, usually a strong competitive side but who misfired so spectacularly in European Competition earlier and then against TNS on the opening day of the season, have yet to grace my screen this season and I’ve only ever seen Y Fflint play once, in a cup match a few years ago.

The match was quite entertaining because while Barry were much more powerful and street-wise (which you have to expect), Flint matched them blow for blow and I was quietly impressed.

There were three significant items in this match

Alex Titchiner, Flint’s ace striker, was carried off injured after just 2 minutes.
Mike Lewis, in the Barry goal, played the game of his life and made a couple of stunning reflex saves (and that’s not to say that our old favourite, Jon Danby, formerly of Connah’s Quay Nomads, now next-door in the Flint goal didn’t have his moments too)
and had a Flint defender kept his head when Matt Jarvis burst into the area and not conceded a penalty

then the new boys would have had something from this game. They are no mugs, and certainly not cannon-fodder like some promotees have been.

And if TNS managed to sweep away this Barry side so convincingly, then just HOW good are TNS?

There is also some exciting news from Deeside too. It seems that the idea to build a new football stadium on Deeside to be UEFA-compliant for junior international matches, and European club competition and to be shared by next-door neighbours Connahs Quay Nomads and Y Fflint has taken a giant step forward.

Who knows? It might even become a reality if the two clubs can keep up the momentum they they have established over the last couple of years. The announcement that “certain funds have been made available” is major news but, as expected, BBC Wales, with its hands so deep in the pockets of the Welsh Rugby Union to an indecent depth that it imposes a news blackout on Welsh football, has totally passed it by.

But by now, it’s late. Long after midnight, so I’m off to bed. I’ll write up my notes in the morning – if I’m here. It’s Sunday and a day of rest and I might sleep in long past midday.

Sunday 21st June 2020 – HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Yes, that six months from winter went pretty quickly, didn’t it? It’s all downhill now until the end of the year

So while you admire one of the Birdmen of Alcatraz entertaining the crowds with his daredevil stunts, let me tell you something of my day today.

And it all started off on the wrong foot as usual, when I found myself wide-awake at 07:40.

And if anyone thinks that I’m going to be heaving myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, especially as I didn’t go to bed until 01:30, then they have another think coming.

09:30 is a much more reasonable time for me to see the light of day on a Sunday.

It’s a day of rest of course and I allow myself one day a week when I can do nothing at all if I so choose and not feel guilty about it.

First task after the medication was one that I had forgotten to do. The dashcam is almost full and the files need downloading onto the computer.

It had to be done quickly because otherwise I’d be tempted to drive off somewhere and forget to take it with me.

26.7GB of files on there, and they all need converting to *.mp4 one of these days whenever I find a moment. There’s masses of them all told.

But while I was doing that, I forgot to do something else – and that was to check the dictaphone.

Well, rather, I did check it, saw that there was a voice file on there (so I must have been somewhere during the night) but said to myself that when I unplug the dashcam I can plug it in.

And then I forgot.

However I did subsequently remember.

There were a couple of little girls who were having some kind of wrestling fight. There had been three of them, one a little older than the other two. This worked its way round to me being in Belgium and having to come home. I had to do it with a whole series of buses and I had plotted out this route and then forgotten it. All I knew was that I had to be at the Gare du Midi at 09:00. It was 08:45 and I had to get back to the hotel, get all of my stuff, check on this route, arrange – make sure that I got on this bus, book a hotel, all this kind of thing. So I was running back to the hotel but the hotel seemed to get further and further away.Eventually I got there, got my stuff together but there wasn’t enough time to look for a hotel. I realised that I was going to be stranded in the middle of the country somewhere in a small town and if there wasn’t a room at that hotel I was going to be stuck for the night. So I ran out of the hotel and ended up in the company of a friend and she was looking at old derelict houses that another friend had told us about. I was trying to push on to this bus station and she was still looking at these houses. In the end I was looking at cars to see if there were any cars that I could buy just to go there. They were old wrecked lorries the kind that even the Africans wouldn’t touch. We ended up looking at this really depressing single-storey building in a really rough area. She went inside and I thought “God at last I can push on”. She came out and I thought that she had finished but ohh no “can you pass me this tape measure?”. God, I thought all my chances of getting this bus have just totally evaporated now.

Next task was to look for the paper from the controle technique where the guy pointed out a few things about Caliburn that needed attention

That ended up being a massive paper-filing job … “at long last” – ed … and general tidy-up, but there was no trace of it. So I grabbed the new door mirror glass for Caliburn that finally came a few weeks ago, the dashcam and the insurance certificate for the coming year to take down to Caliburn because I was going to search in there for the papers.

However, I stuck my nose out of the door and changed my mind. There was a torrential downpour going on out there.

Back up here I carried on with the tidying up. This time the medication in the bathroom needed arranging to see what I have in stock and what I need from Leuven.

That reminded me – I needed to book my travel to Leuven and my accommodation while I am there. So that was the next task.

Mind you, I don’t know why I might need accommodation. I noted that my appointment is for 16:00 and not at the Outpatients department either but at the main entrance. For a 5-hour process that’s not going to be possible in a department that closes at 17:30.

Do they mean to keep me in, I wonder?

By now the rain had stopped so I went to pick up the stuff to take to Caliburn and there, on the windowsill right underneath where I’d put the stuff was the note from the controle technique.

Anyway, all of that is now in Caliburn and he has his new mirror glass. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

There was no hummus for my lunchtime sandwiches (I’d done all of that this morning!) so I went to make some more.

By the time that i’d finished, I had two batches. One with olives and cumin and the other with dried tomato and herbs. Both with plenty of garlic, pepper and sea salt of course.

As for the olive and cumin, I dunno about that but the dried tomato and herbs is wicked, it really is. No danger of any werewolves and vampires coming around anywhere near me tonight.

With it being Sunday, that’s the day for me to go for my walk down into town for my vegan ice cream.

There were hordes of people out there today. We’ve seen the Birdmen of Alcatraz swarming around like Nazguls after a Hobbit, but there were a darn sight more than 9 walkers out there on the paths.

And on the narrow path around the headland we were jammed shoulder to shoulder in places. I don’t think that social distancing was much in evidence today.

These people over there are certainly respecting their social distancing though.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen countless fishermen perched on rocks at the water’s edge casting their lines into the sea and with the tide being right out just now, they have gone right out with it.

And as I have said before – I have yet to see anyone ever catch anything.

With the tide being out the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the path over the top to the other side.

What was interesting me was the pontoons at the ferry terminal. With the tide being out, I wanted to see how they were holding up. And the answer to that question is “not very well”.

Either the silt is building up quickly around them, or else the pontoons are slowly sinking into the mud. My money is on the latter and I wonder how long it will be before they have to send a few diggers in to dig the pontoons out again

Not much else was happening at all around the harbour so I went into town to pick up my ice cream. The guy in the shop recognises me now and that’s bad news.

On into town and life here is definitely back to normal, as the monthly brocante is in full swing.

They aren’t anything like the brocantes that we used to have in the Auvergne which is a shame.

Over there it would be private people clearing out stuff that they no longer wanted or needed. Here, it’s professionals trying to make a living and so the stuff is basically banal rubbish sold at 10 times what it’s worth and probably 100 times what they paid for it in a deceased person’s house clearance.

Just out of interest I had a wander round to see what there was.

A book on the History of Normandy looked interesting, but not €8:00 worth of interesting by any means. And a nice looking work bench with built-in vice and clamp caught my eye, as did the price of €250:00. Free woodwork thrown in – or burrowed in more likely.

So at that point I abandoned my stroll around and headed for home.

The weather might have been quite nice, warm and sunny but there was quite a rolling sea out there this afternoon.

The yacht was quite obviously enjoying the windy weather but the fishing boat was making quite heavy weather of it all. Towing a dinghy behind it can’t have helped much either.

All of this windy weather is making me very nostalgic for the sea and a maritime voyage so somewhere – anywhere in fact. I need to stretch my sea legs at some point pretty soon.

Back here I had a bake-in.

First task was to make a pile of pizza dough. Just like bread dough but wit a little oil in the base. 400 grammes of flour is enough for three bases, and having mixed it and got it really nice, i left it on one side.

Next stop was some pastry. 250 grammes of flour and 125 grammes of vegan margarine makes a decent-side pie. Knead it all together for about 10 minutes until it’s thoroughly mixed through, and then add a couple of spoons of water and mix that until it reaches the right texture.

Take 2/3rds of it, roll it out and put it in a greased pie dish.
Peel, core and slice a couple of large apples and fill in the pie base.
Desiccated coconut, sultanas, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg go nicely in there too.
Trim off the excess pastry, and damp the edges of the pie with some milk.
Add the trimmed-off pastry back to the 1/3 of pastry, roll it out and stick it over the top, pushing the edges down with a fork onto the dampened edges of the pastry base to seal it in and then trim off the excess.
Brush the top with milk, dust with brown sugar, pierce a few holes to let out the steam, and bung into a hot oven.

With the excess pastry that you trimmed off, roll it out into a square, add some of the apple and the other interesting bits, dampen the edges with milk, fold it over and squeeze together, brush with milk, dust with sugar, pierce some steam holes and stick that in as well.

By now the pizza dough will have risen so divide into three.
Lightly dust two of them in oil, wrap in greaseproof paper, put in a plastic bag and stick in the freezer.

With the third one, roll it out to size and stick it in a greased pizza tray. brush with tomato sauce, add your toppings and herbs, then cover with your grated cheese.
Then stick your pizza in with the pie and the turnover.

“And here is one I made earlier” – not out of a toilet roll holder and sticky-backed plastic as we used to do with Peter Pervert, John Dope and Valerie Simpleton.

Well, actually, this is the finished product. Today’s culinary offering. The pizza was delicious but I don’t know about the pie because I wasn’t that hungry so I didn’t try any of it.

My run tonight was painful – really painful – but I pushed on al the same and did it all.

But we have a new visitor on the car park by the lighthouse. Not exactly new – in fact he’s been there for two evenings now.

It’s an old rescue van from the fire service and you can still see where the vinyl writing used to be on it. But now it seems to have been converted into a mobile home of some description.

But I couldn’t help but admire his optimism when I read this notice.

He’s looking for a female companion to accompany him on his travels “in search of the sun” and he plans to be gone a long time.

Judging by the dampness in the plastic and the faded writing, the sign has been up for a long time too so he’s not been having much luck in that respect.

And I can’t say that I’m surprised either.

My walk continued on around the headland to the other side.

There was a strong wind that was blowing and we were having a really rough sea this evening. This fishing boat, which at first I thought was our old favourite Coelacanthe but is in fact her sister la Tiberiade was really making heavy weather of it.

She’s only just out of harbour too – hasn’t even passed le Loup – the light and marker for the big rock that is out there and the entrance light for the harbour itself

From there I ran on all the way down to my first resting place.

And there I was entertained by an interesting spectacle on the roof of one of the buildings in the Boulevard de Terreneuviers. A group of seagulls were having a fight over something, although I don’t know what.

It was a nasty fight too. They chased one away but he kept on circling and coming back for more. This battle went on for quite some time abd the seagull didn’t seem to have any attention of giving up easily.

From there I ran on all the way down on my elongated run right to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

No picnickers again, but that was hardly a surprise because there was only a couple of feet of beach here right now. The tide is well and truly in. there was a fisherman here on the rocks, so I hope that for his sake the tide was on its way out.

If on the other hand it’s on its way in, he’ll find himself stranded if he’s not very careful

The sunset tonight was a little much – a little too bright to be able to reproduce a good effect.

This is the best of several photos that I took and it’s still not what I would like to see, which is a shame.

So after a couple of minutes and no sign of improvement I ran on home to write up my notes.

Back to work tomorrow and there’s plenty to do. A live concert for a start, followed by my Welsh homework.

We’ll see how far we get with all of that but right now I’m off to bed.

Tuesday 16th June 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today!

So while you admire the photos of the frenetic activity in the chantier navale as they winch the fishing boat Saint Andrews out of the water on the boat lift and load a marker bouy up onto a flatbed lorry, let me tell you about it.

It actually started off quite well, for I was out of bed before the third alarm this morning and that’s not something that happens every day these days.

And then after the medication, I came back to listen to the dictaphone to hear where I’d been during the night.

I had a girlfriend last night – a nice young girl very slim, not very tall pale complexion, shoulder length black hair, black jacket and black jeans and I wish I knew who she was. We started to hang around together and we had to go to hire a car for her for some reason. We went (I don’t know why) to the local chemists near the airport to fill in the forms there but they said that they didn’t do it any more. We’d have to go to the airport itself, which dismayed me to have to go back to that place and fight with the crowds. I had a hard job trying to explain it to her – I didn’t want to disappoint her. So we set off to go to the airport ended up trudging through the streets of Nantwich, holding hands. It was all ever so sweet. We’d come down Hospital Street into Millstone Lane around Crewe Road end and were chatting about all kinds of things – food, hairdressing, meals and all this. In the end I ended up with her in my bedroom and she was on my bed. I was beginning to think that it was going to be my lucky day because luck is certainly what I need right now – as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any – but for some unknown reason she transformed herself into a black cat, lying on my bed as a black cat and I was just stroking her and she was purring, and I just couldn’t think of where to go and what to do next.

At some point during all of this there was a photo of a house near Shavington – the one on the corner of Eastern Road and Rope Hall Lane near where I used to live as a kid, dated 1917 and taken from Eastern Road to the east with the railway on the right showing that the house was surrounded by field guns. They were obviously using it as some kind of depot and anti-aircraft establishment. I was trying to get my hands on the book that the photo was in so that I could photocopy it and post it on the internet.

Yes it was all go last night and when I awoke I was covered in sweat – that’s something that I need to note because it’s a side-effect of one of my medications. The hospital always ask me about my night sweats and how else am I supposed to remember after almost 6 months away?

So having got all of that out of the way, I had a few things to do.

While I was doing them I had a listen to what I recorded for my radio project yesterday.

And I’m glad that I did because there’s an error in it. One of the “applause” tracks that I overdubbed into the project has become misplaced.

That’s the one problem with working with four-track recording and not eight-track – if you start from the end and work backwards as I sometimes have to do, if you forget to anchor what you’ve added in tracks three and four and then add something else onto those tracks in front of it, it shunts everything else ahead of it on those tracks further on down the line so that it no longer synchs in.

But me no daft, me no silly. Having been caught out like that before and having to completely re-do a project from the start on one occasion, I now save all my working files as well as the finished output so I simply rework the recording by cutting out a time segment of the appropriate length.

So that’s a job for some time later in the week.

Next job was to tidy up the top end of the apartment ready for my Welsh lesson. The place needs to look tidy if I’m broadcasting myself on the internet.

Having made the place look something like, I did the revision for last week’s course and then looked at the notes for today’s lesson.

One of the thing that we were discussing was the weather and it was interesting with people from the four corners of the world and the different weather that they were experiencing.

Shame as it is to say it, I almost fell asleep twice in the lesson and I’ve no idea why.

Well, actually I do, as I worked out later, but I’ll explain that as I go along.

After lunch I made a start on yet another radio project. There’s another live concert – one for the end of August that needs to be completed for Thursday night.

There’s no time like the present so I made a start on that. And that wasn’t straightforward either as one of the tracks that I had been sent had two seconds missing from it.

It wasn’t a commercialised track either so it took me an age to hunt down, record, covert and edit a replacement.

And, as it happened, I didn’t need it either. But that’s another story.

By now it was time for me to go out on my afternoon walk.

The weather was absolutely dreadful too. It was raining hen wragedd y ffin as they say in the Land of My Father (well, grandmother, actually) but wrapped in my yellow raincoat, i was fine.

Despite the weather there was plenty of activity out at sea today. And not just fishing boats either. The two cabin-cruiser type of boats were stationary so it may well be that they were indeed actually fishing, but I bet that they didn’t appreciate the speedboat roaring past them like that.

The itinerant was out there too, wrapped in his plastic sheet and sheltering under a tree. I really don’t understand that at all when there are so many places where he could seek shelter.

Carrying on through the rain my walk took me around the headland and back down the other side along the path overlooking the chantier navale

There was a pile of activity going on there this afternoon, including this fishing boat that was racing away from there and I’ve no idea why. I missed that little bit of excitement.

But we had the men in the little engineering yard putting one of the marker buoys that they had made onto the back of a small lorry with their JCB lifter.

And also, the boat lift was in operation, winching the fishing boat Saint Andrews out of the water, presumably to put it on blocks alongside the others that are still in here

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago now we saw a giant crane come and settle itself down in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers to do some lifting work at an apartment that was undergoing renovation.

This afternoon, it’s back. And with its pattes extended, it’s clearly going to be doing some work sometime soon enough. That’s something to watch out for in the near future.

My walk back home was uneventful and I settle down to do some work. I wanted to finish off this radio project today so I started to write out the text.

And this is where it all went wrong.

Quite simply, I crashed out again after about forty-five minutes. And not just a little five minutes either but I was totally gone, curled up on my chair, for almost two hours.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been totally out of it like that – just like the worst of the days when I was living in Leuven. I’d missed my target, missed my hour on the guitars and when I finally awoke (at 19:05) I felt absolutely dreadful – the worst that I have felt for a good while.

No appetite either. I didn’t feel in the least like food. But to help me function, I had one of these energy drinks. I keep a little supply in stock for emergencies – I lived on those for a while in Leuven.
The foregoing notwithstanding, I still went out for my evening run. It takes more than a bout of serious illness to stop me in my tracks.

And for a change, I only performed four runs, not my usual six.

But there was a reason for this as well, and it’s something that I don’t understand. Whether it was the absence of food, or the couple of brazil nuts that I ate, or the sleep that I had, or the energy drink that I drank, I missed out two of my pauses for breath.

Straight up the top of the hill and without pausing for breath I ran on round the corner, past the itinerant and down to the clifftop.

Nothing happening out at sea so I walked on along the path to see how the War memorial to the Resistance was doing.

By not the weather had really brightened up and it was quite pleasant out there. I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying it either. There was a small group of people there admiring the remains of the Atlantic Wall and the War Memorial and as I drew closer (I’m not very good at drawing so it was a terrible likeness) I could hear that they were speaking German.

Something inside me was tempting me to go by and say Tschuss as I passed but I resisted the urge.

There was someone else out there this evening profiting from the beautiful weather.

He wasn’t alone either. As I passed, he shouted something at someone (not at me) and when I looked back I could see that there was someone else standing on another rock who had been out of my view.

It beats me how they manage to scramble down there onto the rocks and, as I said yesterday, how they manage to scramble back up with all of their gear and their catch.

It looks as if we might be having more visitors from the Channel Islands soon as well.

The lorry that brings in the freight has appeared on the quayside down there right now and is parked up. So my guess is that sometime over the next day or two we’ll be seeing either Normandy Trader or Thora coming into the port.

Or maybe even both. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they both came sailing into port one after the other last Thursday morning.

In the chantier navale there was no sign of Saint Andrews. It must only have been a flying visit and I was lucky to have caught her visit.

Having disrupted a couple of girls taking selfies, I ran on down the Boulevard Vaufleury, round the corner, right past my resting place and on down the rue St Jean.

Almost at the Place Cambernon I ran through an alleyway to the rue du Nord and back up to the viewpoint there. I don’t understand this at all – I really don’t.

There were no picnickers there tonight which was a surprise, but there was someone sunning themselves on the sand. And the towel that was down there with them suggests that they have been for a paddle in the sea.

The weather might well have been nice – but it wasn’t that nice. Says he who has been in it up to his knees (deliberately too) IN THE DAVIS STRAIT JUST 600-ODD MILES FROM THE NORTH POLE and up to his chest IN THE HAMILTON INLET IN NORTHERN LABRADOR

But let us return to our moutons as they say around here.

Whoever it was who was enjoying the evening sunshine on the beach had every reason to be there.

It was another one of those really beautiful evenings and the sunset scene was stunning. I took a pic of it and admired it for a while and then I ran on home.

Back here I’ve finished writing up my notes, and now I’m off to bed. I really don’t understand anything at all about how I could be so ill and yet have probably the longest run that I’ve done since about 1999 – cancer and all.

All part of life’s rich pageant, I expect.

Tuesday 18th February 2020 – I CAN NOW ADD …

… to my list of accomplishments that of “tying up a trawler”.

I arrived at the harbour at exactly the moment that the harbour gates opened, and I actually do mean that because I was walking across the path on top when they started to close and I had to scramble underneath the barrier.

There must have been eight or nine fishing boats of various sizes sitting in the queue outside the gates waiting for the off.

Anyway, as soon as the gates opened, they shot in like greyhounds out of a trap and headed for their berths.

One of the later arrivals pulled up right by me as I was walking down the quayside. The skipper shouted “tie us up, will you?” and hurled me a rope. I missed the first time but the second time I caught it and looped it over a bollard and wound it round.

he seemed quite satisfied that I’d done it correctly so I cleared off. I had no idea that passers-by – civilians like me – were expected to know how to do things like this and be roped (if you’ll excuse the pun) into participating in the antics of the fishing fleet.

You learn something new every day.

Nothing new though in this morning’s antics. I missed the alarms again and it was about 06:45 when I finally arose.

But I’d been awake a couple of times during the night and on both occasions found myself dictating the account of a nocturnal voyage … into my hand. Dictaphone still on the chest of drawers.

It’s enough to make me wonder how many times I’ve done that in the past and what I might have missed.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone and … GULP there’s enough on here to keep me busy for a week or so, enver mind half an hour.

There was a group of kids, 7 or 8 or 9 and it was some kind of adventure quest. They had to travel to France for some reason or other, all dressed up, even two of them dressed as a pantomime horse with a girl dressed as a princess sitting on top, all dashing off down to Dover docks. I was one of the monitors – I had to follow them around and make sure that they weren’t getting up to any good. They had challenges that they had to meet on the way, like one where it was the task of this pantomime horse to actually involve itself in the encounter, this kind of thing. I pile of them made it down to Dover so I said “what happens now? Do you have to get your tickets?”. One said “ohh no. They said we could get our tickets at the other side” which sounded strange to me but they all seemed to agree that that was what was supposed to be happening. They were all jostling around for a place to sit. One of the girls was Helena who was probably a little older, 10 or 11 I dunno so i got talking to her. “What have you been doing?” “Well apart from having to drive my car to the Isle of Man, not a great deal” so I asked her to tell me about her kind of adventure in this particular thing but she didn’t have the chance to before I awoke
And I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Dictating a dream in my sleep without the Dictaphone. Strange. I was up on the Elm Drive estate in what should have been a council house but it was a big private house of mine. I was doing it up but I’d been taken ill as you know and couldn’t work so the work had really slowed down on this place. But Castor and Pollux were there and Jerry Kobalenko (welcome into my nocturnal rambles, Jerry) too. We were preparing for an expedition and it had started and we had lost a lot of equipment and I’d fallen through the ice. We’d had to arrange this kind of thing and ended up with no clothes so we were back at my house again drying off. I started to lend Jerry some clothes and stuff like that and get myself organised. Jerry borrowed my car which was a Mark IV Cortina RHD but with the gear lever on the right up against the door. He went off and did something and then I came back and took the car for a drive. Went down West Avenue and Richard Moon Street and out to Nantwich. Round Nantwich and back again all the way up Middlewich Road. I can’t remember where I ended up then, some town or other and had to do a U-turn. I pulled out of a side road and nearly knocked a lorry off over into the centre of the road. There was a huge power station where I did my U-turn and came back. Castor and Pollux were talking to me. They asked me what I intended to do about the house. I said that I was going to finish it off and live here. They were surprised and asked if I ought to be taking more care of my health. I gave them the usual story about wanting to enjoy what life I had left rather than being afraid and not doing anything. They were a bit surprised by this but I told them that was how it was. They asked what I was going to do for money. I wasn’t going to say anything but yes I’m OK for money, plenty of it. I said “you don’t need a job”. Castor said to Pollux “but everyone needs a job, you know” and Pollux was still wondering how you manage to live, all this kind of thing. I was trying my best to explain to her. I’d forgotten that bit about taxis when I was out in the car. I wasn’t supposed to be taxiing and I had to stop thinking about being a taxi driver. So this discussion went on and then was when I awoke to find myself dictating this dream out loud into my hand not the dictaphone so I’ve no idea what has happened there – and how many other times I might have dictated into my hand during my sleep and never been aware of it.
Interestingly, it proves the point that dreams are connected with memories and not out-of-body experiences – at least this one was. The area of West Street around West Avenue, Richard Moon Street and Middlewich Road has undergone all kinds of changes since the demolition of the railway works after I left the town. But not one of these changes appeared in my voyage around that area.
Somewhat later I was doing exactly the same thing again – dictating my dream into my hand while asleep. It was a cowboy situation – the James Brothers. One of them was an outlaw, fed up of them being on the run and wanted to go straight. He was talking to me about it. I went outside and there was the other brother trying to break in a horse. That was when I awoke to find myself dictating my dream in my sleep again
Later on I was with Nerina and we’d been working on a taxi. We’d had to have some letraset done to make some stickers and Karen Brierley had done it. The job was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t have had the patience to do this, as I told her, but this was really good. In fact we’d been talking about business cards prior to this. Someone had taken us to a place and the guy had opened up a set of drawers that he rented out, right by the doorway. “You’ll know what’s in here” he said and opened the top drawer but there was nothing in it. he opened the next one and it was full of business cards and that’s how we got talking about stickers. We much preferred stickers for the taxis because you could stick them everywhere. Anyway then people then were going on about this taxi, painted white and letraset it but it was really late. My family were all up and Nerina was really tired, and I needed her to do some more work. In the end I smiled and said “yes, go on Nerina, go to bed”. I said to my mother that I won’t be up very long either. Even though they were planning to be up all night I’d go to bed and do this first thing in the morning. She went off to bed and I went out to work on this car. But I came back because I was in a suit. I took off the jacket and shirt and went to get an old tee-shirt. And as for jeans I’d but on a pair of overalls to protect the trousers.

As you can imagine, it took me much more than half an hour to type out all of that. I had a break for breakfast at some point and then came back to carry on and it was right into mid-morning by the time that I’d finished all of that.

That meant that finally I could start on the notes for the radio project on which I’m working, but I wasn’t at it for long because I needed to go for my bread.

First task was to leave the house of course. And it was a bright sunny day so i’d planned a nice long walk.

Not that i would get very far though before I had to stop. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m quite interested in the plant life around here – this kind of plant of course, not the other kind. So when I saw this mobile crane pull up on the other side of the harbour I stopped to photograph it.

No idea what it might be doing there. There’s already enough plant and machinery over there as it is.

As I walked down the boulevard des Terreneuviers I noticed that the fishing boats were now jostling for position at the entrance to the inner harbour even though the “traffic light” was showing red.

That could only mean one thing – that the harbour gates were closed but would be opening very shortly. I had a brief look at the chantier navale but there was nothing there any different from the last time I looked.

And so I pushed on rather rapidly, not even stopping to take a photo of the shellfish that they were hauling up from a boat at the fish-processing plant.

Just as I set foot on the footpath across the top of the gates the siren sounded. I moved rapidly but the barrier came down and the gates started to open before I could cross over.

Luckily I was on the far gate so I didn’t have to jump for it, but I still had to scramble under the barrier at the far side. But I’m glad I did because it gave me an opportunity to inspect the fishing tackle on one of the fishing boats.

So now I know where everything goes and what it’s for. I’ll have to get myself out there on a fishing boat one of these days and have a first-hand look at it.

So as all of the fishing boats cleared off into the harbour, I cleared off after them. And that was when I had my encounter with the other fishing boat that I had to tie up.

The guys were there with the pontoon and the large mobile crane. Having been rebuffed the other day I decided not to waste my time asking them anything but to wait and use my own eyes to see what was going on.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed at all, as you will see in due course.

Another one of the things that I’m doing right now is to go round by where the fête foraine – the funfair – will be for the carnival and see how they are getting on with arranging everything.

In the Place Godal, where some of the caravans of the entertainers are parked, there was this popcorn, toffee apple and ice cream stall.

Not that i reckon that it’s supposed to be set up there (although it wouldn’t come as any surprise) but my thinking was that they are waiting for the funfair to erect itself and then these stalls will fit in around the amusements.

So down to the Parking Hérel to see how they were doing.

And the big machinery is going up together quite nicely – and quickly. In fact the apparatus on the left was actually working, swinging back and forth. It made me wonder whether the inspectors were actually there today checking it over.

These machines are impressive but they are quite dangerous and can’t ply for hire until they have been inspected and have a permit to operate.

The Palais de Rire – the Palace of Laughter – looks impressive and they must have worked impressively to have it done this quickly. They had barely started on it yesterday.

But I learnt something today too, and I’m always in the market for learning new things.

There was a lorry there that was towing a couple of trailers – the typical “showman’s goods” lorry. So I asked someone with it what licence yuo needed to drive with more than one trailer.

The answer was (the Fench equivalent of) “a HGV Class one licence – nothing else”. In other words, any ordinary Heavy Artic licence. And I have one of those, don’t I?

But don’t worry. My days of driving all this heavy stuff are over.

From there I walked into town and La Mie Caline to pick up my dejeunette

And here across the road is something that wasn’t here this time yesterday. Clutching my bread quite tightly, I went for a closer look.

They are pushing along quite rapidly with the features for Carnaval as we can see. This is the stage from which they will make all of the announcements I reckon and where there might be some kind of entertainment during the evening – I dunno.

Yesterday I’d been past the car park in the Cours Jonville and seen them laying out the edges of the chapiteau – the big marquee where the Friday night Ball will take place.

And so I went that way today to see how they were getting on with it. And “getting on with it” they certainly are. It’s quite impressive the speed with which they are putting up these things and the marquee is certainly one of the more exciting things

So Friday night we’re going to ba having a Ball. Well, they are. I shall be tucked up in my warm little bed ready for the onslaught the following day.

The roadworks in the place des Corsaires have gone now and the street is open. Me though, I pushed on up the rue des Juifs until I was interrupted.

Excuse the dreadful shot but the sun was right in my eyes and in the camera lens. But here’s our mobile crane, now on this side of the harbour in the rue du Port and the big pontoon has sailed over here too.

And between the pair of them they are manoeuvring one of the pontoon supports into place ready for fixing against the harbour wall. I was lucky to catch this photo today.

Back here I had a late lunch and then set about my afternoon project.

Peel some ginger, dice it into some very tiny squares and then put it in a small amount of water to boil, then leave to simmer.

Meanwhile, peel four good juicy oranges and put them in the whizzer. Whizz them round and then filter out the orange juice which goes in the fridge in a bottle.

The left-over pulp goes into the pan with the ginger and it’s all left to simmer.

While that’s doing, put about 5mm of water in the bottom of your nice new big saucepan and add plenty of lemon juice to it.

hen peel, core and dice seven apples and three pears. When they are finely cut, add them to the water and lemon juice as you go along, swirling them around so that there’s some lemony liquid covering all of them to stop them browning.

Then add desiccated coconut and some cinnamon to the apples and pears, take off the orange and ginger and put the apples and pears etc onto the heat and bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

With the orange pulp and ginger add a couple of dessert spoons of honey and stir well in. Then add to the whizzer and give it a really good whizzing around to liquidise almost everything. Then when it’s cooled down, add to the orange juice and give it all a really good shake.

There’s a nice orange and ginger syrup to add to filtered water.

That was the cue to go for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there today because it was so nice, and I’m glad that I went out when I did because I saw a most unexpected sight. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the new pontoons stacked up on the quayside the other day, but here’s one in the water heading across to the cranes that we saw earlier.

But how are them moving? They aren’t rowing them so maybe there’s an outboard motor somewhere, I suppose.

There had been a heavy rainstorm briefly a short while earlier but it had passed and was gone.

Not too far though because we had this gorgeous rainbow. We’ve certainly seen some impressive rainbows since we’ve been living here but this one is one of the best.

Back here I checked to see that the apples were done, and then strained off the liquid. That’s in a bottle ready to be diluted in early course.

As for the solids, they went into the whizzer and turned into purée for me to bottle. That’ll keep me going for a week or so.

Now I could finish off writing the texts and dictate them, just interrupted by a little 10-minute crash out. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to finish editing them before it was tea-time which was a shame.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with rice followed by apple turnover and Alpro soya almond with chocolate sauce. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that now that i’m much better-organised my diet is improving 100%

Cutting out these shop-bought sugary drinks and their plastic bottles was really a good New Year resolution.

For my walk I managed my two runs and then headed back here to write up my notes.

And now bed-time. After my marathon adventures during the night last night I’m ready for a good sleep. I just hope that I remember to use the dictaphone if i want to dictate any notes.

Wednesday 5th February 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. It’s been easily the worst day that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Most of the afternoon was spent curled up on the office chair with me valiantly resisting all temptation to go back to bed. I felt dreadful and it totally ruined my day with everything that I had to do.

Mind you, I’m not blaming anyone but myself for this. I was still up and about working at 02:30 and no matter how heroic I might feel, I’m not ever going to be at my best after just 3.5 hours sleep.

Yes, 3.5 hours because despite the late hour of going to bed, I still beat the third alarm call to get to my feet.

The only consolation that I can offer myself is that I really was working until that late hour so it’s not as if I actually failed to accomplish anything.

After the medication I began to cut up a couple of digital tracks. But that took me much longer than it ought too because the track running order on the digital track was completely different from the running order that I had in my notes and because I didn’t really recognise the album all that well, I couldn’t do it by recognition.

Another thing that I accomplished was that all of the odd “singles” tracks that I’ve accumulated, they are filed into a folder all of their own and out of the way

There’s also a spare hard drive in this big computer so I did a mammoth back-up of absolutely everything onto it from one or two of the external drives. My plan is to go through it, tidy it up and then use it as a copy base for the other laptops that are loitering around here.

There was a break for breakfast of course, and I found that I’d run out of muesli so I had to make some more. And supplies are pretty low – I’ll have to do something about that tomorrow.

Once those issues were resolved I selected some more music to finish off the choice (except the last track of course) for the final one of the three projects that I have on the go right now. And then to clean up because I’d made something of a mess on the floor that needed vacuuming, and I’ll wash the floor before I go to bed

All of this took me up almost to lunchtime so I had to head out to La Mie Caline for my bread.

There was no-one around in the boulevard des Terreneuviers so i went to see what they had been doing with the crane the other day. Apparently there’s an apartment here on a building in the rue du Port but access is by a footbridge from the boulevard here.

What they had been doing was taking the old footbridge away, and it looks as if they are going to be installing a new one.

In the meantime, how does the inhabitant reach his apartment?

Meanwhile, the tide was still out so I could walk round by the fish-processing plant and across the footpath across the top of the harbour gates.

Any my luck was in today because I arrived here at the same time that the fishing boats did. There were a few of them here unloading so I had a crafty look over the side to see what they had. This one here had dozens of boxes full of crabs

Obviously they must have had a very good day out at sea today.

As for the others, I didn’t recognise what was in the boxes. A seashell-type of creature … “crustaceans” – ed … that was a spiral of some sort.

As I know nothing about this kind of thing, I enquired of one of the fork-lift truck drivers. He told me that they were bulots, and I’ll have to take his word for that.

The only thing is that I hope that everyone shares their catch out with their friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we talked to the guy from the company working in the port who told me that they were installing a new pontoon.

As you can see, they are making rapid advances in this respect because some of the anchoring mounts have now been installed, and they certainly weren’t in position at this time yesterday but lying on the ground where the old railway track was.

This is turning into something quite exciting. I wonder what they will be doing tomorrow when I go past.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed back to the apartment.

It was now later than usual and the workmen were now back at it after their lunch break. Over on the other side of the port I’d been past another place where they had been digging another trench.

In my opinion it looks as if they are putting in more electric wiring so things are hotting up now in the port. The mayor’s “modernisation” project might actually be coming to fruition.

We saw them earlier having installed the mounting brackets for the pontoon that they will be installing.

If you look back up the page, you’ll see that I was wondering what it will look like tomorrow and I’m even more intrigued to find out now because there’s a huge crane that has miraculously appeared down there now and he won’t be there for nothing.

Back at the apartment it was lunchtime. And I’d forgotten to take some hummus out of the freezer. However, I do have some lovely vegan smoked cheese that needed eating so I used that instead.

The apple purée that I made the other day has almost run out (I told you that there was too much liquid in it) so I made another batch only this time instead of pears I used a couple of bananas.

With having used much less water, that’s come out really well and I can’t wait to try it tomorrow for breakfast.

After the purée I made a start on writing up the notes for the first project but had a break while I went for my afternoon walk.

The first thing that I noticed was that there were still a pile of fishing boats out to sea and heading back to the harbour. I suppose that the tide will be going out so they want to come in to port while there’s still time to get to the unloading quay.

So they will need to get a move on because the tide won’t be staying in for long.

The second thing that I noticed was that the large crane had lowered his jib. It looked as if he is ready to move away.

And so I’ll be definitely down there tomorrow to see what he was doing.

For a change I took my walk around the walls this afternoon. At times there was no-one around so I managed about one and a half of my runs today.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I have to press on with my fitness even though I don’t feel much like it.

And it was an extended walk too. I’m trying to push it up to 100% every day to keep the pressure on.

And then back at the apartment after my walk I had all of the issues that I mentioned at the start. Mind you, I did manage to pull myself together long enough to finish the notes that I’d started, although I’m not quite sure what gibberish they might be.

Tea was pasta and veg with the left-over stuffing and kidney beans, with the left-over mushrooms added in. And even though I say it myself, it was pretty delicious. One of the better meals that I’ve cooked, especially when followed down by rice pudding. I am eating well these days.

And while that was cooking I had a go at tidying up all of my plastic storage containers, of which I have more than enough

The walk was around the headland tonight. Nothing whatever going on anywhere, but I managed my run. So 2.5 runs today and i’m good with that.

This evening I was going to dictate my notes but instead, as I’m not feeling up to much I’m going to bed. I might have 7 hours sleep tonight and that will be a bonus the way I’ve been going just recently.

Wednesday 29th January 2020 – THIS TOWN AND I …

… have a lot in common. We’re both falling apart at the seams.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that part of the public car park outside is cordoned off as a rather large crack has appeared in the wall. And on my walk around the walls this afternoon I noticed that a part more, in the Place du Marche Aux Chevaux is likewise cordoned off.

I had a quick browse and ACCORDING TO THE LOCAL RAG the wall there has developed a crack that, for the moment, renders it unsafe to the public.

Doubtless someone will come along and look into it pretty soon.

And that reminds me about the story of the ugly crack that appeared on the wall of Trump’s office in the White House. However, workmen came along and painted over it before Trump could find someone to read it to him.

As for falling apart, I certainly am. The alarms went off as usual but I ‘eck as like haul myself out of bed. 06:45 when I finally struggled out and put my feet on the floor and that’s no good whatsoever.

Not only that, I couldn’t seem to get started and it was long after breakfast before I was up to attacking the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night . I had a woman with me and I can’t remember who she was but she was the kind of woman whom I would have been extremely flattered to have been with. I knew who she was – a blonde. We went out to see my father about something. I had to do quite a lot of work and I can’t really remember now what the work was to be done but we finished and I asked father if he had one or two other things that needed doing. he said “no”. he was having to nip out straight away to see someone for 18:00 and it was 17:40 now. We had another thing to do which was to go to see someone in Stockport and we were in Stoke on Trent at the time. I remember opening the door for this girl in Caliburn thinking to myself “well she can get in and come with me and wouldn’t I feel proud to have her coming with me to Stockport”. I was trying to work out my route – should I go up round the M6 and across or should I go sraight up the A34 and A6 or wherever like that. It was while I was waiting for this girl to come back to the car and people were doing things on their mobile phones, making appointments and that was when I unfortunately awoke.

There was a lot more too but seeing as you are probably eating your evening meal at the moment you won’t be wanting to read it.

Having finally dealt with that, I started on the music project that I have on the go. It meant listening to the notes that I’d dictated and looking at the sound waves, cutting out any breathing, any clicks and bangs and any pauses. And, of course, any faults. I’m at the stage now where I just dictate one sound file from start to finish and if I make a mistake I simply re-dictate it and tag the section that needs cutting out.

That way, I can reduce a sound file from well over 10 minutes down to just a little over 6 minutes.

Mind you, it takes a while to do it, but it’s relatively straightforward with a good sound-editing program and a decent (at last) fast desktop computer.

That took me up to a rather late lunch and that meant heading down into town and La Mie Caline for mydejeunette.

And there’s a surprise in store for me here too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I moved here in April 2017 part of the pavement alongside the city walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne was blocked off. And round about a year ago, the workmen moved in to start to repair the walls.

Today, there is a dramatic change in the situation.

A few weeks ago they took away part of the protective fencing and vehicles began to park there in the bit that was now open.

But today, all of the fencing has been taken down. Furthermore, all of the material has been tidied up and they look as if they are ready to move away.

The young guy to whom I spoke the other day told me that “it won’t be long” before they have gone and it’s looking as if he was right.

There was activity in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers too today.

That road was closed off a few days ago, although I couldn’t see why. It’s closed off today but at least I can see why. There’s a huge crane here and he was just lowering his jib as I walked past.

Apparently they are rebuilding a public stairway down between the houses and he’s been lowering down some equipment and material. Apparently they don’t do that by hand any more as we did in the old days.

The harbour gates were closed again so i could walk across to the other side of the harbour on the path across the top of the gates.

They were there working on Spirit of Conrad so I stopped for a chat. Some of the hull has been replaced and the plan now for the rest of the year is “to complete the repairs”.

No mention of a sailing plan which is annoying, but we’ll work it out I suppose.

By now the Post Office was open so I posted off my parcel, then picked up my bread and headed for home.

After lunch I started to join up all the different sections of the radio project and in the end I overran by twp and a half minutes. I had to do some hefty editing of the text that I had dictated before it would come down to one hour.

One hour is what they want and one hour is what they get. Not 59 minutes and 59 seconds or 60 minutes and one second, but 60 minutes exactly.

That took me up until about 18:00, with a break for my afternoon walk.

The rue du Nord is a private street with an automatic control for the residents, but more often than not the rising posts that protect the entrance aren’t working.

That’s been the case just recently but today there are some workmen with a laptop investigating the situation.

Having observed the collapsing wall, I pushed on and did my run along the north side of the walls seeing as there was no-one about. I have to push on at every available opportunity.

But I came to a stop at the end of my track as something out to sea by the Plat Gousset caught my eye.

Despite photographing it and blowing it up (the photo, not the object) back in my apartment later, I’ve no idea what it is. If it’s floating debris, it looks as if it’s been in the water for a considerable amount of time.

Anyway, I pushed on. But I wasn’t able to do my run along the square Maurice Marland because there were people about. My running is ungainly to the point of embarrassment and I’ve no intention of showing myself up.

Every now and then we take a look at the buildings that are undergoing renovation, and there have been quite a few of those up here in the old town just recently.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago they were delivering a pile of plasterboard to a house in the rue St Jean. The workmen are there today going at it full-tilt.

That’s yet another project going on up here and I can’t wait to see just how it all will unfold in the fullness of time

After I finished the radio project I cut up a few more digital music files into their component tracks and that’s looking a lot more respectable now.

All in all I’ve done about 20. That just leaves about … errr … 150 to do.

For tea tonight, I fancied a slice of vegan pie with veg and gravy so I took one out of the freezer. While I was there I found the left-over slice of apple pie from just before I went away and both of those went in the oven to heat up while I made some gravy.

They were absolutely delicious, but there’s only enough lemon sorbet now for half a portion tomorrow. Good job that it’s a shopping day and I can buy some more.

Later on, I went for my evening walk. I’d been around the walls this afternoon so it was around the headland this evening.

The sky was really clear and you could see for miles. There was plenty of activity out to sea and had there not been such a wind I would have gone back for the tripod and taken a few photographs.

Instead I had to make do with the trawlers in the port.

There were four or five of them unloading at the fish-processing plant but I imagine that those out to sea would be joining them pretty soon.

With no-one about I managed to do another run down the street – that’s important to do as much as I can to keep up my fitness levels and keep my weight down.

Being so close to my 100% target I went for an extended walk tonight and managed to push it up to 101% by the time that I came in. I’ll be intrigued to see this month’s figures on the fitbit.

And while I was on my travels we came across yet another example of bad parking.

In fact, it’s exactly the same bad parking as we had a few days ago. Someone in his Range Rover thinks that it’s amusing to park his vehicle across the entrance to the fire lane at the back of our building because he’s too lazy to walk another 20 yeards to the car park

Whatever goes through the minds of these people I really don’t know.

So while I’ve been writing up my notes I’ve been checking through the photos to make sure that they are all uploaded to the computer. The next immediate project is to start to go through those for my voyages to the High Arctic and for that I need to start mastering a decent graphics program.

Someone sent me a link to a high-powered program that was free and I’ll be trying that. If it won’t do what I want, I’ll have to bite the bullet and start paying some money.

But there’s another two radio projects that need finishing. That’s the job for tomorrow morning.

But before I go, let me just mention that on my Social Networking page the other day I mentioned that the results were not what I was hoping. And today, two people from the radio, who must have seen the entry, contacted me, one by telephone and the other by e-mail, to ask how I was.

That was rather nice of them.

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

Went down to ma Mie Caline for my dejeunette this morning, didn’t I? Normandy Trader had sneaked in on the early morning tide and there were a few other things that I needed to observe so I made sure that I had the big Nikon D500 with me.

It was when I was reviewing a photo that I had taken that I discovered that I had forgotten to put the memory card back in it last night.

And badger me if I went out this afternoon still having forgotten to put it in. But at least there, I cold go back for it which was more than I could do when I was down on the docks.

Last night, just for a change, I was in bed before midnight. Only just, by a couple of seconds or so but nevertheless …

And I slept right through until the alarm went off without moving, and not going anywhere, either virtually or for real The alarms went off as usual and while I didn’t beat the start of the third alarm, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when it stopped. So I suppose that I kind-of beat it.

The early part of the morning was spent cutting up digital music tracks as usual. That’s another pile organised but there are still plenty – dozens if not hundreds – to go at over the next while.

Another thing was that while I was looking for a track that had somehow been missed, a few things by Louis de Funes popped up. Anyone who has listened to my “A La Pointe Du Rock” programmes on OUR LITTLE RADIO STATION will know that Louis de Funès is my regular studio guest and having as many examples of his speech as possible is always useful so I downloaded a pile more of that.

With the Zoom I’m entitled to a free download of Cubase and also Wavelab. Not that I intend to use them – I’m quite happy for now with Audacity – but I can see possibilities so I downloaded Cubase.

That was the cue to go for my bread, take my camera and forget the memory card.

There was no indication of anything that would indicate what work was going on in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers so I pushed on down to the docks where there was no water vessel beached today.

Across the top of the harbour gates and over to the other side of the harbour where I fell in with someone wrestling with a huge, really long wire rope that was about 10mm in diameter. He was opening it up with a file head and threading a nylon rope through it. “Something for the fishermen” he told me, after I’d asked him about four times.

Normandy Trader was bearing more of a resemblance to the Marie Celeste. Fully loaded up but not a soul about anywhere. One day I’ll get to meet the skipper and his crew I suppose.

Back home I attacked the radio project and that took me all the way up to about 18:00 to finish off. There was all of the text to finish writing, and then it needed to be recorded, spliced into its individual sections and then merged in with all of the music files. It’s just like a little military operation.

Some of it needed to be redone because it overran by about 10 minutes. Hefty editing was called for, including the dropping off of a song that I was hoping to play but then that’s what editing is all about.

There were the usual interruptions of course. Lunch was one of them and my afternoon walk was another.

Normandy Trader was already leaving port and heading off into the wild blue yonder so I went to take a photo of her. That’s when I remembered the memory card.

But a dash back to the apartment and load it up again. Then back outside just in time to see her disappear into the afternoon fog that’s been swathing us for a couple of days now despite the wind.

And the yacht that’s out there with her – that might well be Aztec Lady. There’s certainly a resemblance.

And there wasn’t just Normandy Trader out there either.

Here’s Chausiais heading back into harbour having clearly been somewhere. And not too far either so it’s quite possible that she’s been doing a delivery to the Ile de Chausey.

If I remember correctly, this is the first time that I’ve seen her out in the open sea (although I have seen her sailing around the harbour) so I’m glad that I went back for the memory card.

This afternoon’s walk took me, for a change, around the city walls, just by way of being different.

Out there in the bay just off the holiday camp there were a couple of windsurfers enjoying the sunshine and the wind out at Donville les Bains near the Hermitage holiday camp. Like I said, there was a lot of maritime traffic today.

As for me, I had my run along the north side of the walls, and again along the Square Maurice Marland, although not all the way for the latter because there were some people loitering around.

But nevertheless I actually made it to the top of the first ramp so that’s something.

Desperate to reach the 100% figure, I carried on further than I otherwise would have done, basically to see what was the purpose of the bollards in the Boulevard Vaufleury last night.

Talking of bollards, how about pollards? They are pollarding the trees along the boulevard. Something that they do every spring before the growth starts so as to make the place look pretty.

The machine upon which they are standing is extremely interesting and I could find a hundred uses for something like that.

Back round to the rue du Roc to clock up the miles and here’s an interesting notice that I saw.

“No parking from 08:00 on 23rd January while they connect up the fibre-optic cables”. This can only be good news. They’ve been playing about with the installation almost since the day that I arrived here, so it’s about time that they finished it off.

Here’s hoping that I’ll be connected soon!

back at the apartment I … errr … closed my eyes for a few minutes before finishing off the programme. And then I did nothign whatsoever until teatime.

Tea tonight was an everything curry with all of the leftovers going in the pot. And as there wasn’t quite enough, I lengthened it with a handful of peanuts.

Apple pie and sorbet for afters and the remaining piece of pie went in the freezer for when I come back.

The evening walk was around the headland. Freezing cold it was and I didn’t hang around. I just went out and came back. No photos, although I did get yet another run into the programme, but fell short of my target point.

Not that I’m worried too much, because it was the third run of the day.

So in a minute I’ll be having an early night. I’m off on my travels tomorrow so I need to be on form.

Tuesday 21st October 2020 – I’M FED UP …

… of being buzzed by just about every man and his dog who owns any kind of flying machine in this vicinity. It’s getting on my wick.

If it’s not the guy who had his chopper out the other week, it’s now someone in a low-flying aeroplane who has come for a look around outside my apartment.

This plane is actually F-BRTM, which is the 152nd Jodel DR-253B in the series apparently. But whether or not Jodel actually built it is open to question. The company stopped manufacturing almost 60 years ago and now just sells to home-builders licences for construction of its aeroplanes.

But as for flying, I certainly didn’t get off to a flying start. With my really late night last night – after 02:00 in the end – I couldn’t leave the stinking pit at all. 06:45 when I finally pulled myself together and arose from the dead.

After the medication I checked the dictaphone and here I drew a blank. I hadn’t been anywhere during the night, which was a shame. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … what I do and where I go during the night is much more exciting than what I do and where I go during the day.

After breakfast I began to catch up on a few outstanding tasks. First off, I cut up quite a few digital sound tracks that I had downloaded in the past into their individual component tracks

That took me up until almost lunchtime so I went to have a look in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers to see what this work thing is all about.

And I do have to say that I really didn’t see anything that looked relevant. In fact the only thing that really caught my eye was the tree shredder here, parked up for lunch, with loads of bits of small trees around it.

It would be quite surprising if they had closed the road and banned all parking simply for this.

Who knows?

This method of beaching ships and boats in some kind of ad-hoc informal dry dock situation is becoming something of a habit.

The other day we had the trawler type of fishing boat lashed to the harbour wall but today we have a small motor boat and outboard motor beached on the boat-loading ramp.

And I do have to say that I like how they have done this – dropped it onto the wall so that the outboard motor overhangs the steep drop and doesn’t ground out.

The heavy equipment that they have been using for the dredging over by the ferry terminal seems to have moved so I went to look for it.

And here’s one of the huge dumper lorries, being loaded onto a low-loader ready to be moved. There was a driver chaining it down so I asked him if the work was now completed. He replied that he didn’t think so but the equipment was required elsewhere.

And so we might be seeing it back some time in the near future.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day they were doing some kind of building work over by the ferry terminal with a concrete breaker and I’d said that I’d go for a look some time.

Today, with the tide being out, the harbour gates would be closed so I could cross to the other side by the path on top and go for a look.

And surprisingly there was nothing evident. But there were all of these columns that look as if they have been some kind of ferry pier at some time in the past.

So I shall have to make further enquiries.

The place to go for that, I reckon, was the compound that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few days ago too.

And I was in luck – at least, I thought that I was – because there were two guys just coming out of it. I went over to one of them but just as I walked up to him he got into his van and drove off.

Not to be outdone I turned round to grab hold of the other one but he must have seen me coming and disappeared off in a fork-lift truck.

Ahh well – I’ll have to come down here again too, won’t I? It’s not my day.

So instead, I went to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette and came back home for lunch, to find workmen painting the windows in the communal part of the building.

On the way up the hill there was a workman in what’s left of the compound that they had when they were working on the wall.
“Nearly finished?” I asked.
“Yes, nearly” he replied.

After lunch I started on another radio project – a rock music programme. And I’m glad that I chopped up all of that digital music this morning because I’ve been selecting bits out of there.

At one point I must have fallen asleep because I sat bolt-upright and it was 15:50. Time for my afternoon walk.

Outside it was bitterly cold to the point of being uncomfortable so I didn’t want to hang around. Having been buzzed by someone’s aeroplane, I did stop to take a photo of these two fishing boats crossing each other in mid-channel.

And I don’t know what happened to the photograph here but for some reason it didn’t want to work properly.

Continuing my walk around the headland in the piercing wind … “what wind?” – ed … PIERCING … “ohhh!” – ed … I was distracted yet again by the sound of a rather large engine.

Consequently I scampered around the bend and had a look over the wall to see what I could see, and there was yet more activity in the Chantier navale today.

Spirit of Conrad is there of course and so are a couple of fishing boats that have been there for a while too. But there is someone else coming to join them.

We saw the mobile sling working the other day when it was lowering the blue and yellow trawler-type vessel back into the water.

But today it’s pulling another fishing boat out. And as I watched, it moved across the yard with the fishing boat suspended beneath it and dropped the boat off on a set of chocks next to Spirit of Conrad.

And here, I imagine, she’ll be staying for a while. So I’ll keep my eye on her as I go for my daily wander.

But here’s a thing.

We saw the little blue boat with the outboard motor earlier, beached on the boat-loading ramp. But here she is now back in the water moored to the fish-processing plant, and she seems to have acquired a friend.

And if anyone were to ask me I would say that the latter is in the colours that I would expect to see on a Police boat.

So what with the Customs yesterday and the Police today, tomorrow we might be having Godzilla.

Back here I pushed on with the music and that’s all chosen, and I’m halfway through writing the notes. But I have a feeling that it might have to change because somehow I seem to have over-run by some considerable amount.

That’s something for me to look into tomorrow.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta for a change, followed by more apple pie. And it really was a nice tea too.

having frozen to death this afternnon, I put on a fleece underneath my jacket and at least I felt a little warmer tonight outside.

Those lights that regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning ages ago were on tonight and they stayed lit long enough for me to photograph them.

They seem to be in the position where I would expect Donville’s football pitch to be, but I don’t recall it having floodlights at all so who knows?

Despite the cold, I managed to do both my runs tonight because there was no-one around to laugh. My style of running these days is rather awkward to say the least but considering my illnesses and my age I’m surprised that I can do it at all.

With being nearly at the 100% mark I stretched my walk to pass the limit.

And here in the Boulevard Vaufleury in another miserable photograph (what on earth is happening to my technique?) we can see that the bollards are back.

So what are they going to be up to tomorrow? I can’t wait to find out.

The barrier into the car park is now fixed so I brought Caliburn back from the public car park and he’s now in his usual little place.

Now that I’m back I’ve written my journal and I’m off to bed – unless something exciting comes up on the playlist meantime.

Sunday 19th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned yesterday that after my posting of the other night a menu dramatically appeared in the window of the new restaurant yesterday.

It was not illuminated so you couldn’t read it in the dark (which rather defeats the purpose of posting it) but anyway, I went along this afternoon to have a look at it and see what was on offer.

And I was right about two things. I can’t afford anything on the menu, and even if I could, there is nothing on the menu that I can eat.

So back to the fritkot then.

It was finally back to bed last night at about 02:30 so there was no chance whatever of my showing a leg at 07:30 when I awoke.

None whatsoever.

Instead I turned over and went back to sleep and there I stayed for about three hours or so until about 10:30. That’s more like it!

Plenty of time to go on a voyage then. There was a lot going on during the night but I don’t remember very much of it at all except one bit where there was a woman with long blonde hair in a pony tail who was talking to me about songs. She was asking me to guess her history which of course I didn’t. It turned out that she was a backing musician to Judy Collins back in the early 70s and can be heard on one of the tracks playing the banjo which I thought was extremely interesting all the same.

After the medication I had a very important task to perform which took up quite a lot of the morning. A ship that once passed by during the night one weekend in another life a world or so ago has dramatically sailed into port during the night.

The world is small, it’s becoming smaller all the time and all of the chickens will come home to roost before it’s over. Still, it’s all part of life’s rich pageant I suppose

But as a result I didn’t really get started on my project until long after midday and by the time that I knocked off at 19:00 I’d only done the first pass through and re-recorded the questions that I asked during the Press Conference.

They need to be edited back in, which I’ll do when I’ve finished this, and then it needs a second run-through to cut out the irrelevances which I suppose will be tomorrow’s task before I go to the meeting.

It wasn’t until about 14:30 that I got out for my bread.

It was a glorious afternoon in the sun and there were loads of yachts and other boats out there taking full advantage of the fine weather, which is no surprise.

And Joly France was out there too, moored up at the ferry terminal. She must have a crossing to do this weekend then, and I bet that that has held up the dredgers today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having been with me when we saw them setting out the “no waiting” signs in the Boulevard des Terreneuvieurs the other day to advise of travaux

It looks as if things will be moving on fairly rapidly. Today, the road is closed off and a diversion is posted.

Out of curiosity I did go for a walk down that way to see if I could see anything of any significance, but there was no evidence of anything out of the ordinary.

As a result, I can’t wait until Tuesday!

There was a brocante in the Place General de Gaulle this afternoon so after picking up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline I went for a look.

Nothing particular caught my eye except a very overprived Epiphone acoustic guitar, but I did buy for e3:00 a book about the fall of the Maginot Line in 1940. I’m running out of exciting reading matter here.

One the way back I bumped into one of my neighbours going out for a walk so we had a lengthy chat and then I came back for lunch. It was now 15:00

After lunch I pushed on with work until about 17:30 when I went for a very late afternoon walk

There were quite a few people out there enjoying the late afternoon sunset and who can blame them? Despite the howling gale that has now sprung up again it really was beautiful.

But I didn’t have time to loiter. I have plenty of work to do and I don’t have the time to hang around.

Despite all of that, I did hang around when I saw this.

It’s a Citroen C5 but apart from that I’m not sure whether it’s an ambulance or whether it’s a hearse but whatever it is, much as I’m not a fan of modern Citroëns I’d take this home in a heartbeat.

Old age must definitely be creeping up on me if I’m admiring modern Citroëns, that’s all I can say. Unless it’s dementia.

Tea tonight was one of the best pizzas that I’ve ever eaten, followed by the last of the banana sorbet (and what an excellent buy that was!).

But while the oven was on I used one of the smaller quiche dishes that I had bought yesterday to make a four-helping apple pie.

In the fridge is some pear sorbet that I bought a good while ago and that needs eating, and I reckon that over the next few nights that will go nicely with the apple pie.

It really does look good.

This evening I was all alone on my walk so I fitted in two runs – one along the north side of the wall and the other on the usual parcours on the Square Maurice Marland. I must keep pushing on.

But now I’ve finished my notes, it’s back to work. No-one would ever believe that I’m retired when I’m under this kind of pressure and deadlines.

Friday 17th January 2020 – I BET THAT YOU ARE …

… all wondering where I’ve been with the posting of today’s activities, aren’t you?

The fact is that I didn’t get home tonight at all. In fact, it wasn’t until about 16:40 on Saturday that I put my sooty foot through the front door of my apartment.

And with not having had lunch either, I ended up running considerably later than planned. But then, that’s what plans are all about, aren’t they?

But anyway, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

It was another morning of missed alarms. Another 07:00 start and I really need to get a grip and get myself organised otherwise I’m just going to fade away.

But then after the medication I attacked the dictaphone in order to see where I had been during the night.

Strange as it may seem, I was back in my house back in Gainsborough Road and it was an absolute tip (I know that I live in total chaos but it has nothing on how my house was, last night, I’ll tell you). There was stuff everywhere all over the place and there was the football on – it was the World Cup or something like that – the European Nations match and I was trying to watch it on TV but there was just so much disorder going on around me that I couldn’t. I went into the kitchen to get something and the place was in such a state clothes and bits everywhere and someone shouted something like “come on, your tea’s ready”. It turns out that my brother and a younger boy had been given their tea and it was probably about midnight or whatever. I went into the room and it was the back room and there was one of my sisters sitting on a chair. I hadn’t seen her for ages and she was talking to someone, another one of my sisters. I went up to her and said something like “what are you going to do tomorrow morning, if you get up early?” She said “I’m going to come and wake you up”.
It was some time shortly after that that we found a young boy hanging upside down by his feet in a four-poster bed. We pulled back the curtains of this four-poster bed and there he was hanging upside-down by his ankles. What was quite bizarre was that after going back to sleep after dictating the first part of it, I stepped right back into it where I’d left off. And it’s not the first time by any means that I’ve done that either.

There was lots more to this voyage too but as you are probably eating your meal or something I’ll spare you the unpleasantness.

Once breakfast was out of the way I attacked the radio project that needed finishing. And that took a lot longer than I expected too, basically because the 10-minute audio file that I had dictated turned out to be only 04:20 by the time that I had edited it and so I had to find a completely different song to end the show than the one that I had planned.

Anyway, I eventually managed to complete it and that was mu cue to go off and buy my dejeunette from La Mie Caline

Having seen a white speck out in the English Channel I went to photograph it, only to find that I’d forgotten to put the memory card in the camera so I had to go back upstairs for it.

Downstairs again, I could photograph it and then in the comfort and safety of my own little office I could blow it up (the photo, not the object of course).

The result is inconclusive but probably a trawler-type of fishing boat I reckon. And you can see the Jersey coast in the background behind it. That gives you some idea of how far out the boat was.

Off then on my jaunt into town, but I didn’t get very far.

It’s all change in the inner harbour today. Chausiais and Joly France II have moved position. They’ve crossed over to the other side of the harbour and are now moored up in fromt of their sister over by the old cold store.

That’s a surprise for me. The only thing that I can think of is that they don’t want any debris from the car park renovation to drop onto the deck. And it also indicates that Granville and Victor Hugo are not going to be back home anytime soon

Yesterday, the regular readers of this rubbish and I saw them setting out a pile of “No Parking” signs in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

Today I went that way to see if I could pick up any clues about what might be happening down there.

Having had a look, I’m not really a great deal wiser. Apparently we are going to be having travaux – some kind of works – taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. That should be interesting to I shall have to go for my walk that way for a butcher’s.

There was excitement too down at the Chantier navale too right now.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had four boats in there this last couple of days. But in about ten minutes time we shall only be having three of them.

Spirit of Conrad is still there and so are two of the fishing boats but the third one, the blue and yellow one, is just about to leave the scene.

Here she is, in the mobile sling, being lowered down into the water. And in a couple of minutes she’ll be sailing … “dieseling” – ed … off into the wild blue yonder.

So with another empty space in the place, does this mean that we are going to be having a new visitor?

But it also means that the tide is quite a way in, which also means that the harbour gates will be closed which also means that the path across the top will not be accessible and I’ll have to go along the rue du Port.

And as I went along the rue du Port I could see strange goings-on on the boat-launching ramp down into the tidal harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen the dredging operations out by the ferry terminal and we had a look at the machinery the other day.

But today they are giving one of the huge dumper-lorries a good hose down with a pressure-washer, presumably to remove all of the silt that has accumulated thereupon while they have been working.

Off I went to la Mie Caline to pick up my bread, and then I headed back home.

What I spend the afternoon (with a break for lunch of course) was to deal with the Johan Gallon (the coach of US Granville)’s speech.

It’s been completed now, with all of my questions edited in, and I’ve been going through to edit out the joins, the silences and the stumbles. When that’s completed I’ll be going through and making another pass to remove the irrelevances and I’m hoping that I’ll have it done for Monday morning – at least, that’s the plan.

At 16:00 I called it a day, grabbed a few things together and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills.

First stop was at the dechetterie. The European Cardboard Box Mountain has now been consigned to a skip along with the old broken office chair and I can now get into the back of Caliburn if ever I need to.

Second stop was at Liz and Terry’s at Roncey.

We had a good chat and I gave them their Christmas present, after which we had tea. Burger and chips with salad followed by ginger cake.

Terry and I then headed off in Calburn down the motorway towards Caen and the Stade Michel D’Ornano. It’s the last 16 of the Coupe de France and Granville have pulled a plum out of the bag for this match.

They are “at home” against Olympique de Marseille but the match can’t be played at the Stade Louis Dior as was the Bordeaux match two years ago. There, there is a capacity of just 3,000 and it’s very uncomfortable at that size too.

But the Stade D’Ornano at Caen is free and has 20,200 places. Even so, it was sold out in about 4.5 hours but I managed to obtain 2 tickets.

We were doing really well until we hit the outskirts of Caen when a road accident slowed our progress. An hour it took to advance 6 kilometres.

Then we hit the traffic heading to the stadium, became tangled up in the mesh of red lights, and then I lost count of the number of roundabouts that we passed in the frantic search for a parking place.

Spotting an ad-hoc parking place, we quickly stuffed Caliburn into it and ran down the road towards the next roundabout. Not seeing the stadium, we asked a passer-by who sent us back where we had started. Brain of Britain had miscounted, and parked Caliburn at the roundabout right by the stadium.

As a result we missed the first 30 seconds of the game.

Having been frisked at the stadium we were allowed in, but finding a seat was impossible. We ended up standing, with about 100 others on the stairs, with a couple of people who had made themselves comfortable sitting on the top step complaining about the “new arrivals blocking their view”.

But at a time like this and in a crowd like this, it’s “every man for himself”. Sardines had nothing on us.

The first half of the match was a surprise to most people.

It was pretty clear that Olympique de Marseille were the better team but it was also clear that US Granville weren’t going to lie down and roll over. They were pegged back for much of the half, that’s for sure, but they were breaking away quite regularly and going forward down the wings, with William Sea throwing his weight around up front.

The Granvillais goalkeeper was the busier of the two but it wasn’t by any means a one-way street.

At half-time we were treated to a display of drumming as the drummers marched around the touchline having a right old bang. There were also two teams of kids having a penalty shoot-out.

What was even worse was that I was dying to use the bathroom and desperate for a coffee but I had no intention of moving away from my good spec on the stairs having fought my way into it.

So we stayed put and waited for the second half to begin.

The second half carried on where the first left off , with Olympique de Marseille attacking, US Granville absorbing the pressure, and then hitting them on the break.

And then the match turned rather sour.

maseille had worked out early on that the danger men for Granville were little Lamrabette with his merry, mazy runs with the ball through crowds of players, and also big William Sea who was showing that despite his injury he still had what it takes to mix it on level terms with the Olympique Marseille central defenders.

As a result, they were flattening the two of them with regular monotony, but being very careful firstly not to do it quite enough to earn a caution and secondly to take it in turns so as no individual would be cautioned for persistent infringement.

It was saddening to watch a display like this from a team like Olympique Marseille against a bunch of amateurs and if that’s the idea of how Villas-Boas wants his team to play then he should be ashamed of himself.

Anyway, it had the desired effect because with round about 15 minutes to go, William Sea was finally fed up of being grabbed from behind every time he had the ball. He lashed out behind him with his elbow and unfortunately caught a Marseille player full in the face.

Having had a yellow card earlier in the game, that was that for Sea and he was off down the tunnel for an early bath and Granville were down to 10 men.

What was sickening about this was that the player who had been fouled them followed Sea to the touchline and taunted him about being sent off. A couple of Granville staff had to grab hold of Sea before he put the Marseille player over the stadium wall and out into the street.

And that, I’m afraid, was that.

At the Press Conference I’d mentioned that the danger time in every game where the professionals meet the amateurs is the final 15 minutes when the lack of fitness shows through and the amateurs run out of steam. And even more so when you are only 10 against 11.

And so it proved. 2 minutes later, Olympique de Marseille went ahead. They added a second 10 minutes later and then deep into stoppage time, a typical US Granvillais “lack of concentration” about which I have moaned on more occasions than many in the past gifted them a third.

Although before the game the general feeling was that had Granville come home with a 3-0 defeat they would have done really well but after the match that we had seen, a 3-0 defeat was a travesty.

And the tactics of a team riding high in the French Premier League against a bunch of students, supermarket shelf-fillers, taxi drivers, teachers and the like have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many, including mine.
.

The drive home was no better than the drive out. We had to fight our way through the maze of traffic lights which took an age and then another accident on the way back had us queueing again for yet another lengthy period.

As a result it was 01:00 when we finally reached Terry’s, and he offered me a bed for the night. By that time and after all that, I was totally done in anyway so I took up his offer and here I am and there I stayed.

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I ENCOUNTERED A WEIRD CEMENT CONVEYOR in the avenue Aristide Briand.

This morning on my way to LIDL the gate to the chantier was open, and while I was admiring the machine and the cementing that they were doing, I fell in with the owner.

He let me have a good look around it and we had quite a chat. he told me that he was so impressed with it that he had actually bought another one for another site.

And when I think of all the humping around that I did by hand all those times …

For once last night I had a decent sleep. being in bed before midnight meant that I had at least 6 hours sleep and that’s pretty good these days.

Nevertheless I didn’t beat the third alarm. A good five or so minutes behind it I was, and I’ll have to be doing better than this.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it’s no surprise that I was quite exhausted.

I was having to record my latest radio programme so I went to a Working Men’s Club where I usually went but there was some guy playing guitar there on the stage entertaining the public so I asked the guy at the door what it was all about. He told me “ahh well it’s just someone on the guitar with him”. There was a woman standing next to him. She had her had round him or on his arm or something. He said “yes, maybe she’s someone who has a claim on him”. I replied “maybe he has something in her” which made everyone laugh. But a former friend of mine was there and he was standing by the other door and somehow I pretended not to notice because I wasn’t really up to actually going along to socialise and to meet and talk to him
A little later on I was wandering around some kind of Medieval town somewhere, going up and down all of the paths and everything, picking my way through people’s ornaments and so on. On one occasion someone had on their steps a pile of little animals like santons, that kind of thing. As I was climbing up I was thinking “how am I going to get down?”. I started to go down the steps on the other side but of course there were all these little santon things all over the place. I put my foot on one place and flattened half a dozen of the things so I had to sit down on the step and move myself back up the step one by one until I reached the top where I could jump off but from where I was jumping I couldn’t see what I was jumping on to because I’m not very good at heights as everyone knows. It was some old woman’s place, this was and I was worried in case someone had seen me come to grief on these steps. It was about 03:00 so they shouldn’t have done.
A little later on I was back in the office, talking to a group of people and we were discussing things like how we were working, cameras, recording equipment in the place, all of that kind of thing. Someone said that they envied me because I could go home and so it was home time but I ended up not going home for some reason or other. I had to stay behind and do something. I do remember that it was 17:40 and I was still there, thinking that I might be home for 18:00 like this, I don’t really know but I can’t remember all that much more about it but somewhere there was something about me moving apartment leaving Jette and moving somewhere like the back end of Laeken where I saw that apartment that I liked when I was with Laurence and I don’t remember too much about that either. Someone else who put in a cameo appearance at some point was someone who was probably the only civilised adult on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour

After breakfast I attacked the translation with a determination and before long I’d finished it off. Almost 5,000 words there, of which I reckon about 4,000 is going to end up in the bin.

But anyway, it’s done and dusted and sent off and that’s that. I went and had a shower and then headed for the shops.

We’re going to be having more excitement in the area soon.

The local council were out today putting up “No Waiting” signs in the boulevard de Terreneuviers and that will upset the two vehicles down there for a start. They’ve been there for quite a while.

There wasn’t any time for me to go and enquire what was happening, but I’ll keep an eye open.

As for the red mini-artic, I’ve seen that quite a while now, and it seems to have inherited the sport of the old CF Bedford that used to park there regularly.

Both of those vehicles have Dutch registration so I’m wondering if the Bedford has gone to the Great Car Park In The Sky and this is its replacement.

At LIDL they had every kind of electrical appliance that you could name – except a kettle of course. So I’ll have to pick one up at the weekend from a mainstream shop.

Although the other one has packed up after just a little over 2 years, i’m not too disappointed. I remember saying at the time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I needed so much stuff when I came here that I was going to buy it all at the cheapest possible price and when it gives out, I can replace it with decent stuff. I couldn’t afford decent stuff right at the start so cheap it had to be.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I climbed up the hill towards home.

Just at the right time to see Thora come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the harbour. I was quite pleased about this. I’d seen her go out on several occasions but I’d never seen her actually come in and dock.

So that’s a first for me then. I wonder how long she’s going to be in port. Maybe it will be another rapid turn-round like Normandy Trader had the other day.

Back here I made a start on the next radio project – the one that I should have done on Monday had I not had this blasted translation to do. And by the time that I’d knocked off all of the music had been chosen and recorded, the text had been written and dictated and I was busy editing the dictation.

Tomorrow morning I’ll just need to finish off the editing, splice the speech into the music and then deal with the last track. That is of course the bit that always takes the longest as the track needs to be of a specific type and of a specific length.

Sad as it is to say it, I could have done a lot more to it but this afternoon I once more succumbed to the fatigue and crashed out on the chair. How I hate this, but I shall have to grin and bear it.

We had a break for lunch of course, and then a break for the afternoon walk.

The wind was horrible again so I didn’t loiter around. But I was intrigued by the antics over at the ferry terminal. It seems that it isn’t just dredging that they are doing there but they have a concrete breaker and a pneumatic drill going on.

Perhaps I ought to go over there one of these days for a closer look and see what they are doing.

There’s a good view from up here on the cliff as I have said before.

Today we aren’t going to look at the construction works on the car park but we’ll admire Thora instead, parked in her usual place underneath the unloading crane. She looked quite nice when she first came here just under two years ago but today she’s in need of a coat of paint.

Mind you, it’s a hard life for a small ship in these kinds of waters doing the job that she does.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that part of the parking in the Boulevard Vaufleury had been coned off?

Sure enough, there they are – not actually doing anythign right now but you can see that they’ve been active. All of the small trees that were growing up on top of the wall have been removed and the wood has been chipped.

It’ll be nice to have a vue degagée this summer over the wall down into the harbour. The vegetation was becoming rather wild.

The tide is going out, I reckon.

And you can see where the fishing boats unload their cargoes of shellfish. The obviously drop quite a fair amount over the side when they are swinging the crates upwards, and the seabirds are taking full advantage of that.

There must be ahundred or so congregating down there feeding on the fallen shellfish. And good luck to them too

Having knocked off work at 19:00 as usual, it was tea time. Burger on a bap with microwaved potatoes and vegetables. And for some reason or other it was the most delicious that I have ever tasted. I’m not sure what it was that I did right but whwtever it was, it worked.

As for the rice pudding, that went into the bin. Yesterday it had a strange taste that I didn’t recognise. And tonight the taste was stronger and it didn’t seem right to me. So off it went.

Instead, I chopped up a banana and had some of that delicious banana sorbet with it. That was wonderful.

There’s no doubt that since I’ve become more settled, my eating habits have improved dramatically.

This bad parking thing is becoming a bit of a habit now, isn’t it?

There’s a free public car park less than 50 yards away fro mwhere this guy is parked but because he doesn’t want to get wet in the rain that we were having, he’s parked right by a “No Parking” sign across the yellow hatch marks that clearly indicate that this is a Fire Lane

And not only that – it’s the Fire Lane that leads to the back of this building. So we can all burn to death because the fire engine can’t reach here, but that’s okay as long as Monsieur doesn’t have to walk 50 yards in the rain.

As for me, I did my evening walk and I’m now up to 115% of my day’s activity which is good news for me. I managed my run too – along the path at the north side of the walls out of the way of the wind.

It doesn’t look pretty, the way that I run, and I can’t run too far but considering my age and my state of health a few hundred metres every night is good going.

So tomorrow I’ll finish off my Project and then make a good go at this Press Conference. Then in the evening we have US Granville v Olympique de Marseille in the French Cup.

Who knows what that might bring?

Monday 5th March 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I managed to wake up bang on the first alarm – and be well out of bed by the time the second one went off. That’s not happened too often just recently, has it?

And it’s astonishing considering the voyage that I was on during the night. That’s enough to tire out almost anyone, never mind me.

I was in my old beige Cortina (UOB, not YLO) driving over Chester Bridge and up to the turning in Delamere Street when I slid on some ice, overshot the turning and collided with a vehicle on the opposite side of the road coming round the bend. The police were called and statements taken, and the policeman told me that it wasn’t really my fault because of the weather conditions and the ice. So back in the car and up Delamere Street and turned into Queensway, where I collided with some cyclists coming the other way. And I wondered how I was going to explain to my insurance company these two accidents in a matter of five minutes, especially as my dash cam will show that although the cyclists were totally in the wrong, I could have done more to avoid them.
From here we were back in the London Underground (a fairly regular destination for our nocturnal rambles as regular readers of this rubbish will recall). I was buying a ticket for a long-distance flight (like you do in the Underground of course) and the flight wasn’t for 90 minutes so I would have plenty of time to go home and pack (of course). But one woman said that I had dropped my insurance card so when I had completed the transaction I bent down to pick it up, but it was only the stub. I had to prove to the person in the booking office that it really was mine by comparing the serial number of the stub with that on the card. And so I went back home again (to Gainsborough Road) to pack for my trip, pulling up in my car (by now a Mark 2 Cortina) on the opposite side of the street a way down, leaving me with a lengthy walk back). As I arrived, my sister’s husband came round the side of the house ad came in with me. He said that he was hungry so I offered him some rice and a tin of something, which he accepted. And I had to show him how to use and induction hob – a strange parallel with something that had happened in the LeClerc on Saturday.

After the usual start to the day, and a little relax, I attacked a pile of photographs that needed things doing to them – and that took longer that I reckoned. And the photos are coming out far too blurred with this new camera, as I have said before. I’m not all that happy with it now, which is a shame.

Having done that, I attacked my travel arrangements for next week.

The rail journey isn’t as cheap as it might have been, due to the fact that I’m coming home on a Saturday rather than a Sunday. If I’m having some kind of transfusion, I’ll be staying the Friday in my room without doing too much.

But the increased rail fare is offset by the room. I can see now why the manager told me to book directly with him rather than with the booking agent that I usually use. They have smaller, cheap rooms for working men that aren’t offered via the booking agent and they are at something of a reasonable discount. I wish that I had known this a couple of years ago.

So at the end of the day, it still works out cheaper.

This afternoon I designed and furnished a room. Yes, I’ve managed to get into the depths of this 3D site that I mentioned the other day and had a play around with furniture, accessories and poses . And once you solve the key, which is not very easy to do, it’s pretty straightforward and I can see some kind of opportunity here.

We had the usual walk this afternoon at 15:30, and I was joined by the heaving multitudes today, including a family looking for a playground for their children.

But my attention was distracted by what ws going on in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have discussed … "on numerous occasions" – ed … the crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers and how once or twice there has been another crane present too.

I was lucky enough to see what it was doing today, and it wa winching some heavy stuff into the building site underneath.

And that puzzled me, because that is three times to my certain knowledge that the crane has been there. And it must cost them a fortune to pay for these regular visits. Why didn’t they just hire in a bigger crane in the first place?

Back here I almost managed to stave off the falling asleep bit – succumbing for a mere 10 minutes.

Tortilla wraps for tea, and then my walk, and now my early night. High time I had one. It’ll set me up for an early start.

That is – is I don’t have phone issues. I noticed that this morning the phone was on 78% charge, and tonight, a mere 9% even though I haven’t used it.

Something’s clearly not right.

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

EPIC HALL

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