Tag Archives: coelacanthe

Friday 9th April 2021 – I’VE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a bad day today and I really don’t know why.

It all went wrong during the night when I spent most of it wracked with attacks of cramp and having to get up and walk about to ease it off. They say that the medication that I’m taking takes its time to work but I was expecting it to work quicker than this.

As a result I missed the first alarm this morning. Well, I didn’t because I did actually wake up, but I must have gone back to sleep because the second alarm brought me round properly. And then I spent the rest of the day fighting off the impulse to go back to sleep, sometimes unsuccessfully.

After the medication I went to listen to the dictaphone to hear if, despite the disturbed night, I’d been on any travels anywhere during the night. There was a train that had pulled into a platform but had stopped short to allow a pilot engine to be coupled up with I so consequently getting to it was a bi of a problem. People were having to leap over some adjacent track and a bay platform in order to get to the train. 1 passenger made it and the crew of the train made it over with the help of someone. Then another passenger tried it. It looks as if he made it OK and he got into the train but apparently he hadn’t. Then a 4th couple tried it and made quite a mess of it all. Then the train took off and it was all swaying around quite dramatically. 1 person who had only just caught it was hanging on for dear life in between 2 carriages and it wasn’t long before the whole thing was derailed. That was when I had a wicked attack of cramp that forced me to get up and walk about.

Somewhere along here was the story of a guy and his 2 acquaintances who were rustlers and were knocking everyone off. They’d already had 2 off this particular train that we were talking about and I don’t know how many more they were intending to have before they did some real damage.

For much of the morning I’ve been working on the photos from August 2019. I’ve dealt with another big pile of those today and I’m well ahead today. I’m now at the site of the ghost town of Kooi north-east of Sheridan in Wyoming heading towards the site of the Battlefield of the Little Big Horn

As well as that, I’ve done some of my arrears of my trip around Central Europe and some of my revision for my Welsh course but unfortunately I fell asleep in the middle of that and ended up dropping my papers all over the floor.

All in all, it’s not been a very successful day.

There was the afternoon walk around the headland, rather later than usual today, what with one thing and another.

But time doesn’t seem to be an issue with this guy here on the beach.

The first thing that I did as usual was to stick my head over the wall at the end of the car park here to see what was going on down on the beach. There wasn’t much beach for anything to be going on this afternoon but the guy here managed to find a place to rest, leaning on a rather large rock as he admires the view of whatever was going out at sea.

But with the tide coming in quite rapidly, he’s chosen a good spot, at the foot of the steps up to the Rue du Nord to which he could make a hasty retreat without being cut off anywhere by the tide

Having seen the beach, I headed off along the top of the cliff towards the headland.

There was an endless stream of trawlers heading out of the fishing port this afternoon. One after the other they were coming around the headland.

There could have been any one of them that I could have photographed but the one that caught my eye particularly was the trawler Philcathane, on her way out to the fishing grounds in the English Channel.

We’ve had the opportunity to examine her in the past when she’s been up on blocks in the chantier navale for a while and ONE NIGHT LAST AUGUST when she was sailing around the harbour late at night.

So leaving the other trawlers to their fate, I carried on with my walk along the headland towards the end of the Pointe du Roc

Our friendly neighbourhood bird of prey is out there again this afternoon.

And I’m glad that it was too. With having seen people on the beach and people i.e. trawlers out at sea, all we needed now to make up our trilogy is is SOMETHING IN THE AIR, as Thunderclap Newman might have said.

You might have noticed in the photographs so far that we have really thick ten-tenths cloud which means that it’s impossible for us to see anything in the way of airliners and there was nothing going on in the way of light aircraft going to and from the airport. A bird of prey is just as good a substitute for an aeroplane in these circumstances.

While I was here I had a good look across the sports field to see how they were getting on with the roofing job on the College Malraux.

And they seem to have put a spurt on just recently. They’ve been working from right to left on this side of the roof so they have now done over half of the roof on this side. Give them another six months and they might actually finish the job. They’ve been at it long enough.

What’s surprising though is that they seem to have found enough scaffolding to go all the way down that side. When they were doing the other side they only had enough to do half of it and they had to dismantle it and move it down the side halfway through the job.

As well as the man on the beach, there was another man out there this afternoon down on the rocks.

My journey from the lawn takes me down the path by the war memorial to the Resistance and then across the car park. From there I can go down to the end of the headland and see what’s going on.

Having seen two guys the other day fishing off the rocks at the headland, they were both there this afternoon but today they were fishing off different rocks.

And once again, they didn’t actually catch anything while I was there. I’m at the stage where I’ve given up expecting to see someone haul a sea-bass out of the water, bad-tempered or not.

While I was taking the photograph of Philcathane I’d noticed something else out to sea heading our way from the Ile de Chausey.

Having seen Chausiais coming back from the Ile de Chausey yesterday, today it’s the turn of one of the Joly France boats to make an appearance on these pages. We’ve seen both of them tied up at the ferry terminal and in the inner harbour and it’s been a long time since we’ve actually seen one riding the waves.

As she came on over across from the Ile de Chausey I wandered off along the path along the south side of the headland towards the viewpoint overlooking the harbour to see what was going on down there this afternoon.

And we have a change of occupancy in the chantier navale this afternoon

Yesterday we saw the portable boat lift loitering around above Lys Noir as if it was about to pick up the boat and take her to the water. Today, we can see that Lys Noir has now gone from the chantier navale back into the water.

That leaves us with just Anakena, Hermes 1, the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou and, out of shot, Aztec Lady in there right now, with plenty of room for a couple of other boats to come in.

There’s plenty of activity going on at Anakena though right now with a couple of people standing on her deck talking. She is the boat that was marooned here when all of the ports in Northern Europe closed their doors to foreign boats. With Covid easing off now in several countries, it may be that she’s getting ready to leave port and continue with her journey.

Further on along the path I could see the boats that are still tied up at the fish processing plant.

Two of our favourite trawlers are moored to the quayside over there. They haven’t followed all of the rest out to sea this afternoon.

It’s not easy to tell which one is Coelacanthe and which one is Tiberiade when you see them on their own, but when you see them together like this you’ll see that Coelacanthe is slightly bigger and has the raised sides of the hull to protect the bridge doors.

The inner harbour was fairly empty this afternoon. Normandy Trader has left the port, probably on the early morning tide today, so I wandered off home for my hot cup of coffee and try to summon up the energy to carry on with what I had been doing.

As usual I knocked off for my guitar practice and then went for tea. I had a curry out of the freezer tonight with some rice and veg, followed by some more jam roly-poly.

But I imagine that I’m going to have some nightmares tonight because the video that I was watching while I was eating was one of these spaghetti westerns in Italian where right in front of my eyes we had a real genuine scalping with plenty of blood followed by someone being devoured alive by lizards and bats and the like.

Not the kind of thing that I enjoy watching at any time, especially when I’m eating my tea.

Now I’m off to bed. I don’t know where the time goes. Tomorrow I’m off for my second vaccination for Covid. It’s a long way to go, and an early start so I need to be on good form for that. Here’s hoping that I’ll have a better night than last night.

Wednesday 7th April 2021 – I’VE HAD A …

… nautical afternoon out there again this afternoon.

There was so much traffic out there at sea this afternoon that you wouldn’t believe it. Out there at sea is one of the local trawlers, either Coelacanthe or her sister Tiberiade heading out to the fishing grounds near to the Channel Islands now that the fishing agreement has been extended, being followed by an optimistic seagull or two.

There was a smaller boat out there too, heading back to port from I don’t know where because there isn’t any land out there in that direction for her to come from.

Out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel they had the sailing school as well. A pile of little tiny yachts and their tutor accompanying them in his little boat.

One of the students appears to be trying to get away from the others, so good luck to him.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s my ambition to be out there with them one of these days. Having been to the school last Thursday I am now in possession of the literature to enable me to apply. All I need now is 10 minutes of my time to fill in the forms. But where I’m going to find that time at the moment I really do not know.

At least I made a start in the right direction this morning. Once more I managed to leap out of bed as the first alarm was ringing.

And after I’d had my medication I forgot to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. Instead, I started straight away to attack the photos from August 2019. And by the time that I was bored enough to knock off and do something else, not only had I done the arrears, I’d done today’s supply and a few of tomorrow’s too. I have to get ahead because I’m not going to be here on Saturday.

Another thing that I’ve been up to today is to make another supply of kefir because I’m running low on stocks.

In the fruit and veg cupboard were several rather ripe kiwis (one of which was rather too ripe to use) so I whizzed up three of them with a ripe pear or two and strained them through the sieve into the big jug. The brewing kefir followed it in and I made a new batch in the big jar for next time.

The stuff in the jug was all mixed up and then poured through the filter stack and bottled in the flip-top bottles where they will fester away for a few days and ferment until I’m ready to use them, hoping that they won’t explode under pressure.

There was also time for a bash at the arrears from Central Europe last summer and I made some headway. Not as much as I would have hoped but I had an interruption, as you will find out as you read on.

Other interruptions of course were the morning break for my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit cake, my lunch, and then my walk out around the headland this afternoon.

Outside the building I was greeted by one of the regulars who hangs around the neighbourhood.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have often seen the seagull out here. He perches on the windowsill of one of the apartments at the other end of the building and I’m not sure why.

But there was quite a change today. Normally he’s on the windowsill chatting to the model bird on the shelf inside but today, for some reason that I don’t know, he was standing on a different windowsill chirping away to no-one in particular. No model birds for him to talk to there.

And he wasn’t alone there either.

Sitting on a lamp-post just next to the building is one of the first-year juvenile seagulls. It’s clearly not very happy about the larger one on the window sill in front of it because it’s sitting there bleating away.

Eventually it became fed up of sitting on its perch because it took off and did a few laps of the car park before settling down on the wall at the end of the car park. It’s presumably waiting for daddy (or mummy) to move off the window sill so that it can follow on to the next port of call

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last summer we saw a yellow zodiac flitting around in the water here and there.

We haven’t seen much of her since then, up until today. But here she is, moored in the English Channel just off the Pointe du Roc with a couple of guys in it casting out a line or two into the water. It looks as if the fishing season is now underway.

It seems that sea bass is the thing that they spend so much time trying to catch around here, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we have yet to see anyone actually catch anything while they have been fishing. And I’m not going to hold my breath waiting.

Over at the end of the car park, I could look over the wall now that the baby seagull has gone and see what is going on down on the beach this afternoon.

There wasn’t very much beach to be on this afternoon with the tide being a good way in but nevertheless some people had managed to find a secluded little spot down there for a little relaxation. The little kid running towards the sea seems to be enjoying himself but the others are more content with keeping quiet and keeping warm.

Winter coats and woolly bonnets abound down there and it’s no surprise because it really was cold this afternoon and there was a bitter wind. I was certainly wrapped up in my winter coat and wished that I had remembered to put on my woolly bonnet.

As I said earlier, there was an enormous amount of activity going on out at sea this afternoon.

Right out in the English Channel halfway across to Jersey I managed to pick out a yacht that was sailing on its way to St Helier. It certainly had the right kind of wind to push it along in that direction this afternoon.

And as regular readers will recall, the last time that we saw Jersey we could only just about make out the island and that was our lot. Today, the sky is a little clearer and we can actually see the individual buildings at St Helier. That’s always a good sign.

So with just one or two people walking around on the headland this afternoon, I walked off along the path to the end of the headland to see what was going on.

With the really good view across the English Channel to Jersey this afternoon I went and stood on the roof of the bunker near the end of the headland to see how things were down the Brittany coast.

For the first time for quite a while, we’re able to see the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel down the coast 70 kilometres away. And we can see it quite clearly too, just to the right of centre in this photograph.

When I’ve finished the story of my trip around Central Europe I’ll be starting on the notes of my trip in the Spirit of Conrad down the Brittany coast, and you’ll be able to see exactly how the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel looks from close up, because we sailed right up to it while we were out there and I was able to take some good photos of it.

Climbing down from the roof of the building I made my wy round across the lawn and across the car park down to the end of the headland.

Down there on the rocks there were a couple of fishermen having a go at fishing from off the rocks at the foot of the headland.

A little earlier we saw a couple of fishermen fishing from the yellow zodiac and I mused that the fishing season might be under way now. These two guys here would certainly lend credence to that sort of thing.

But once again, despite all of the time that I spent watching them, they didn’t catch anything either. In the end I lost interest and headed off along the path on top of the cliffs on that side of the headland to see what was happening in the harbour.

Not that I travelled particularly far because I came to another halt half-way along the path.

By now the sailing school that we had seen earlier had regrouped and they were all performing their own version of a nautical danse macabre over there in the bay.

There was another trawler leaving the port too and heading for the fishing grounds. They seem to be leaving in dribs and drabs just now rather in the mass charge en flotte as has been the usual procedure up until very recently.

There was a nice little cabin cruiser following the trawler out of the port and I wondered where he might be going this afternoon.

While I was there I had a look down into the chantier navale to se what was happening there. There was no difference down there from yesterday – the lifeboat Notre Dame de Cap Lihou was still in there, with some paint now missing from her hull.

Meanwhile there was some excitement going on in the inner harbour this afternoon.

Thora, the little Jersey freighter, is in there this afternoon and as I watched , she was being loaded up with material destined for Jersey. Sneaked in on the tide, I reckoned.

With the heavy cloud this afternoon it was impossible to see what was going on above me in the air so I headed on home airless, as you might say. And first task was to collect up all of the rubbish that was lying around and taking it to the big waste disposal bins outside. They were rather overflowing.

Rosemary had rung me up while I was out so I phoned her back. And as a result I missed finishing off my Central Europe trip, missed my guitar practice and missed my evening meal too. In the end I banged a couple of potatoes and some beans into the microwave while I was doing something else.

But now I’ve finished and I’m off to bed. I’ve crashed out twice already while I’ve been typing this and I reckon that the third time will be a good one. Tomorrow is shopping and I need a few things as well. And I have to book my travel to Leuven too for the end of the month.

And to have a go at fixing Caliburn’s door if the wind will drop. I’m going for my second vaccination on Saturday morning and entering and leaving the van is pretty much essential.

Earlier the next morning I finally managed to sort out the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in France yesterday and I was in Granville. I still had Les Guis. It was a Friday evening and I had Caliburn completely emptied out so I popped into Caliburn and headed off back to Les Guis with the aim of throwing another load of stuff in the back of the van and setting off back to Normandy. I arrived there and made a start on a couple of things. As well as that I was organising the furniture in there – the stuff that I was keeping and the stuff that I was throwing away, that kind of thing. I started to write out a note and I was doing it on a piece of wood that was an old bed base. There was a ridge where two pieces were joined and a strengthening batten and I was having to write around that. I remembered that TOTGA lived just down the road from me in France near Virlet so I arranged that I ought to go along and see her. She had this great big trailer that I had borrowed and I might need it again for removing. But in any case I wanted to go to see her. I worked out where she lived and of course it was a Saturday morning by the time I’d arrive so I wondered if maybe she’d gone shopping or something like that or should I invite her to come shopping with me or something.

This dream continued later on. I was going into a café and there were 3 girls whom Î knew in there. They shouted out “what’s this about you going for a drink with someone’s secretary?”. The girl whom we knew, it was her secretary. I remember saying something in a bit of a jokey jest type of thing and I hadn’t reckoned on her taking it seriously but apparently she had. She had written out directions of where she was going to meet. I remember her being a sweet little kid, Anoushka, and she’d written out this letter for me and where to meet so I thought that I’d better do this because it sounds interesting. The 3 girls asked me what I was actually doing down here. I said that I’d driven through the night to get to Brussels and I was sleeping in that little lodge place down near St Jacobsplein in Leuven. June Wayland said “but they’ve closed that route that you use, haven’t they?” and I was trying to think of which route she meant because I’d been coming a different way just recently. One of the things that I do remember was that a game of cricket was taking place, England v Pakistan or India or someone and the match was taking place in the conconrse of the airport – the arrivals lounge or the departure lounge. I thought that that was a strange place to have a cricket match. But they were playing there, and I was watching for a few minutes and wandered away but I could hear the commentary. It came down to the final couple of overs and at a certain point England can’t possibly lose the match now. I had to go to the bathroom from my room in this lodge and there was an Indian guy actually standing in the doorway listening to this. I couldn’t make him move. I thought that he might have seen me but he didn’t so I waited until the math finished. Then he saw me and stepped out of the way so I could leave my room. Then I suddenly realised that I ‘d forgotten my towel so I went back for it. Then I’d forgotten something else and had to go back for that. I ended up at the bathroom but there was someone already there.

Tuesday 6th April 2021 – JUST IN CASE …

… you are wondering what the weather was like this afternoon when I was out for my afternoon walk, this photograph will tell you everything that you will need to know.

You can see the white caps on the waves as this trawler batters its way out to sea. Th wind from the north-east was probably about as strong as it has been for the last few weeks and despite, or maybe even because of the bright blue sky with barely a cloud visible, it was absolutely freezing out there. I was dressed in my winter clothing and I was absolutely perishing out there.

But let us turn to this morning, such as there was of it because having broken the habits of a lifetime and spent a Bank Holiday working, and with no Welsh lesson this morning, I had a lie-in instead.

And it was necessary too because it wasn’t until about 04:30 this morning that I felt myself dropping off to sleep.

Juqt for a change I’m not going to tell you what time I awoke because it’s rather embarrassing. But there was plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble. So first thing after the medication was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from yesterday and today.

Yesterday’s are now on line for those of you who missed them but as for this morning I was at work in a new office somewhere. We were talking about the training and so on that we were getting. Someone was talking about how in a previous job she had to answer the phone and it had taken her 6 months to learn how the switchboard operated. I explained about my job where i worked once and just put at the switchboard and told how to work it out. They all looked astonished and asked why. I explained that in that job you just basically did everything and they wouldn’t wait a minute on saving a penny to make sure that the fewest number of people did the most amount of work there. The work drifted on, talking, and I was watching a video of some people assembling some things. They were using soldering, electric TIG welding and a few other bits and pieces to do these jobs. I was soldering mine and I wasn’t much good at it. I thought that I’d have a go at TIG welding one of these days when I had a moment. This conversation was going on and this guy looked up and saw me soldering. He said “God! Soldering! Did you do that?” I replied “soldering? That’s nothing! Just wait until I bring a plasma cutter in here!”

After that I went for lunch – porridge and toast which was very nice, followed by hot chocolate again. And then I attacked the radio programme from yesterday. Now that’s corrected and all runs together pretty well. In fact it’s even better than it was before.

The rest of the day, such as it was, was spent dealing with the photos of August 2019. I’ve dealt with the photos that I should have done yesterday and half of today’s batch. I’ll hopefully do the other half tomorrow along with tomorrow’s batch.

Right now, I’ve been to the site of the Waggon Box Fight in Story, Wyoming, and I’m now pulling up at the gates of Fort Phil Kearny, the scene of a disaster that befell the US Army that was second only to the humiliation of Little Big Horn.

There was a break for my afternoon walk of course, and I actually made it outside on time too.

First thing to do was to look over the wall at the end of the car park down onto the beach below and to see what there was going on.

Actually, today there wasn’t all that much beach to look down upon. The tide was quite well in just now. Nevertheless there were a few people down there sitting on the rocks. But pretty soon there will be one person less down there because someone was making for the steps that lead back up to the Rue du Nord. He’s clearly had enough of the weather this afternoon.

And it won’t be long before the other people join him in climbing up to the street because the tide will be there in a very short space of time and they will need to make good their escape.

Despite the bitter, wild wind this afternoon the views out to sea were terrific.

Away in the distance we could see the island of Jersey quite clearly. And it’s been a good few weeks since we’ve seen that. It wasn’t so clear that we could see the buildings of St Helier, something that we can do every now and again. We’ll need a better day than this in order to do that.

Once more, there were very few people around this afternoon on the path so I made my way quite freely along the top of the cliffs without anyone else getting in my way – quite a novelty for just recently.

As I was going about my business along the path on top of the cliffs, around the corner of the headland another trawler came a-chugging.

From my viewpoint I could see that it was one of he trawlers whom we know very well, and on enlarging the photo when I returned home later I discovered that it’s our old friend Le Coelacanthe

In fact there were several trawlers heading out to sea today, not just the two that we have seen so far. It seems that the Easter break is now over and with the ink now dry on the agreement to prolong access to the Channel Islands fisheries for the local boats, they are all heading out that way to take advantage of the situation.

Round on the other side of the headland we were in the shadow of the wind so it was reasonably warn there. This gave one or two people the opportunity to sit down on a bench and admire the view.

Not that there was very much of a view to admire right now because all of the trawlers that had set out from port had passed the headland and were now well out at sea, hidden from view by the headland. There wasn’t anything else going on in the bay and while the Brittany coast and Cancale might look really nice, it’s not exactly riveting over there.

To such an extent that I pushed off along the headland path towards the viewpoint over the port.

At the viewpoint I had a good look down to the chantier navale to see what was going on down there this afternoon.

And we have a change in occupancy down there today.Hermes I, which I suspected was being prepared to go back into the water is still there up on her blocks along with Anakena, Lys Noir and Aztec Lady but they have now been joined by Notre Dame de Cap Lihou, the local lifeboat.

While I was watching her they were revving up her engine and two guys down there were observing the smoke that was coming out of her exhaust. Another couple of men were spraying her hull with a pressure washer while a couple more were examining a part of her superstructure.

So what’s the matter with her then?

There was even more activity going on over at the ferry port.

Chausiais is over there right up at the end of the quay but there are none of the Joly France boats were there. However the red crane is partially extended so it must be doing something interesting.

Just for a change just recently I wasn’t overflown by any aeroplanes this afternoon. I was able to come home quite tranquilly for my hot coffee and to carry on my work editing the photographs.

That took me up to guitar time where I had an enjoyable time working out the chords to Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”. Of course I don’t have Sandy Denny here to help me, but this would be just the kind of thing that Castor would be able to do were she here.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with rice followed by a slice of my jam roly-poly and soya coconut dessert. And I’ll tell you something, and that is that the roly-poly is cooked to perfection and it tasted absolutely delicious. That was a good idea for dessert, that was.

Now that my notes are written, I’m off to bed. The alarm is set for the morning and I’m due to restart work properly so I need to have a really good sleep and be on top form.

That’s not going to be easy because if I can crash out like I did today after all of this sleep and a late start to the day, I can certainly do that with a 06:00 start, can’t I?

Monday 8th March 2021- A NOT-SO-UNEXPECTED …

… Brexit dividend reared its ugly head this afternoon.

Amongst my friends is a woman in the UK who had a daughter who is a keen and accomplished junior ballerina (she’s danced at the Royal Ballet) and is hoping to come to France for an audition in the summer. And when I was in NOZ at the weekend I found a kids’ novel about a girl who was a ballerina.

It’s full of all of the technical-speak in French for a ballerina as well as all of the current kids’ slang and as it cost only €1:99 I bought it for Evie to give her something interesting and useful to read before she comes over.

This afternoon I took it down to the post office to send it off to the UK.

For a product that weighed just about 300 grammes and cost €1:99 and being sent non-commercially as a gift between friends, it took me half an hour to do all of the paperwork, involving the completion of four forms, and the postage came to €15:90.

And I’m still recovering from the shock.

And as well as that, I’m still also recovering from the shock of being up and about once more long before the third alarm went off. I wonder how long I can keep this up.

After the medication I made a start on the radio programme, this time doing the programme that I should have done last week. With having done all of the music already, it was all up and running properly by 11:30, all hours-worth of it. And I found a really belting final track to finish it.

The rest of the morning was spent working on the Greenland photos and by the time that lunchtime arrived, I’d done just over 40 of them and we are now in Arsuk Fjord in a zodiac cruising around looking for THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR which had moved off from where we had left it and then been lost in the fog.

After lunch I started off by listening to the dictaphone. I had been in France during the night. I’d gone there from Dunkirk and I’d met up with two people while I was there. I had to escort them back to the port of Calais in order to catch the ferry back to the UK. I was able to retrace my steps in reverse on most occasions although we did lost the way once or twice particularly when we were in buildings having o work our way through buildings. There was one particular part where someone was rather nasty to me so I was rather nasty to them. One of these girls was shocked. She didn’t really want to walk the way that I went – she wanted to find another way. I said “yes I understand your predicament but really there was a war on”. She was the one who found the lift down in one of these buildings. It had some luggage in it but we squeezed in anyway. The weight was such that the lift cable broke and it hit the ground with quite a thud. We eventually made our way into Calais to find out that our boat hadn’t arrived yet so we had to wait around for a couple of days. We were there when there was a huge ship that crushed a small one as it came into port and one or two other little things.

Later on I was living in some kind of digs and right outside them I was talking to some Pakistani girl. We’d started off talking in a café somewhere. I’d been in to order a glass of kefir. I’d had one of one type and later on I’d gone in and ordered another one. We were chatting inside this cafe place. She was serving and telling me all about how she’s graduated from University and how she’d done this and done that and it hadn’t really worked out for her. She was going to get a gang together and go off and do some work. We were discussing different places in France where this worked and I told her about all of the British people in the Combrailles who worked as a team when necessary. We finished off by talking outside a house in a run-down area, a terraced house at the end of a cul-de-sac. While we were talking a guy pulled up on a motor scooter and drove it right up against the wall, almost crushed me. After she went I had a speedway motor cycle type of thing, an old Jawa and I pushed it towards Caliburn – I was going to put it in the back of Caliburn. I realised that I needed a ramp so I went round to fetch my tools. They were all underneath a van, a trolley jack and a box of tools. I thought “how come I’ve left these there and they haven’t gone?”. I picked up a plank of wood. These kids were watching me wondering what I was going to be doing. I knew what I was doing because the plank of wood was going to be the ramp to put this speedway bike into the back of Caliburn. I pushed it towards Caliburn but then the alarm went off.

For the rest of the afternoon I’ve been working my way through the duplicate files that I’ve been backing up onto the back-up disk on which I’d uploaded all of the external drives and memory sticks and so on. Another 83GB of memory space has now been created and there will be much more to come.

In fact I was so engrossed in this project that I missed my evening meal completely and it was 21:30 when I finally noticed the time.

Having spent some time wrapping up the present for Evie and writing out a little note for her, I went out for my afternoon walk.

We didn’t have the sea fog that we have been having for the last few days, but instead there was quite a haze out there.

And we had some traffic sailing around outside as well. Out in the distance heading into port was one of the larger trawlers, presumably with today’s catch. At first I thought that it might have been Le Coelacanthe or else her sister ship Le Tiberiade, the big green and white trawlers with the gold stripes.

But back here at the apartment afterwards when I examined the photograph I noticed that she was actually pale blue and white and I didn’t recognise which trawler she would be.

There was another trawler out there too, only this one was heading out to sea, rather later than the rest of the fleet.

By what is presumably a total coincidence, whereas the homeward-bound trawler is white with a blue stripe, the outward-bound trawler is blue with a white stripe.

While I was admiring the two trawlers and hoping to catch a photo of them both crossing each other out in the English Channel, one of my neighbours put in an appearance and we ended up having a good chat instead of concentrating on the local shipping.

She needed some advice about booking her vaccinationcara

appointment. Apparently I must be the local expert or something.

For the last few days we’ve been looking at the crowds of people wandering around on the beach at the foot of the steps in the Rue du Nord.

Today we didn’t have so many people down there, and certainly no-one going out for a swim. There was however someone sitting comfortably on a rock reading a book – the very epitome of deep and intense relaxation. Mind you, she didn’t look as if she was very warm.

Clutching my parcel for the post I wandered off around the footpath, across the lawn and the car park. There wasn’t a great deal of activity out there of course. After all, the kids are now all back at school starting today so there were just the old fogeys wandering around.

Nothing new down in the chantier navale, just the same four boats that we’ve seen for the last few days.

But on the edge of the quayside down in the inner port there’s a whole pile of plastic pipes. They are far too long to be transported by one of the little Jersey freighters, so I’m wondering what they are doing here and how they’ll be moved onwards to wherever they might be going. I’ll have to watch this space.

Down in the town I went to the Post Office to post off my parcel to the UK, and then round to the Carrefour to but a lettuce that I had forgotten on Saturday. And there I bumped into yet another one of my neighbours and we had another lengthy chat. I seem to be in demand right now.

While I was down in the town I had a little wander around to see what might be happening down there.

And it looks as if we are preparing for the summer season already because the sweet and candy floss caravan has now turned up and parked in its usual spot ready to snare the holidaymakers and day trippers. That’s definitely a sign of the times. I wonder if the Big Wheel will be back in the town too this year.

From there, I went back to the steps at the Rampe de Monte à Regret and climbed back up to the Rue des Juifs ready to head for home and my coffee.

Having a look down into the port to see what was going on, something that I hadn’t seen before caught my eye.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, they spent a lot of time installing new pontoons, ladders and walkways in the port 12 months or so ago. But it seems that there’s a new pedestrian ramp of the same style of the rest of the equipment of the port that now leads down onto the deck of Marité.

That’s certainly quite new, as far as I can tell. I don’t recall having seen it before. But what interests me even more is how the deal with it when Marité is ready to sail away from the quayside. That should be a complicated manoeuvre.

One final thing caught my eye while I was out there.

Just as I started back up the hill I heard the bells to indicate that the harbour gates were closing. By the time that I had the camera ready they were almost closed. You can see the red traffic light indicating that the passage is now closed, and a couple of pedestrians on the walkway waiting to be able to complete their passage to the other side.

Back here I had my coffee and my slice of chocolate cake and then carried on with the editing of the back-up hard drive.

At 18:00 I remembered to stop for my guitar practice but I missed just about everything else.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh lesson and then I need to make some more enquiries about updating my big computer. I need to make more extra space and while I’m at it, make it work faster too.

Sunday 27th December 2020 – WITH IT …

… being a Sunday, I had a nice long lie-in this morning.

There are lie-ins and there are lie-ins, but 12:30 is stretching something of a limit. My excuse is that I didn’t go to bed until about 02:30 this morning, and the time wasn’t wasted anyway because I’d ben choosing the music for the next radio programme and remixing them ready for use. Not as much as I would like to have done, but it’s progress of kinds all the same.

And then, when you see where I’ve been during the night, you’ll understand why I was in bed for so long. Last night there was a Russian industrialist who had a huge factory. He was very disillusioned about having to turn out stuff for the Russians during the Winter War against Finland in 1939-40. They had surveillance on him because of course he was a very important cog in the wheel and they couldn’t really work out at one time whether it was in fact him or a plant from another country but no-one knew the right kind of questions to ask him and when they did ask him something he came back with the correct answer anyway. Then the was ended and he got down to doing some more usual stuff and then the war erupted against Germany. They ended up with a triumvirate of 3 people who would control the Russian industrial production, at least through the plants in which he had a say about the Russian Army. But it was this lack of trust that was the thing and at 1 point in this dream we were wandering through the streets of Moscow just wondering what on earth was going on and who was doing what to whom and such

I was with someone last night, a cross between a certain girl of my former acquaintance and my Greek friend from Brussels. We were together somewhere and I had to go along and take the van but Caliburn started squeaking again from the wheel bearing so I asked someone at the local garage if they could have a listen to it to see what they thought. The girl there said “yes, fine”. She’d fetch someone and it turned out to be the mechanic from the building where I was living. I didn’t really want him to look at it because I didn’t really like very much of his work but he said that he’d look at it, and of course I’d need a spare vehicle, wouldn’t I? So we made some arrangements to look at it. This girl and I wandered off somewhere and I ended up having to stay in a temporary room in my hotel place where I was staying while Caliburn was being fixed so I asked this girl if she would like to stop with me but she didn’t give me a definite answer on that. From there a few things happened that I had forgotten and I had to head off and walk somewhere alongside a river but the river was probably 200 yards away from the edge of the road. So I walked and at a certain point on my right, down from the highest part of the land was this really steep railway line and this steam locomotive and coal train came down it. I looked over the other side of the road to see where it was but it was so steep that it went into an underground tunnel so you couldn’t see the train. But then this train emerged near the river and swung round to the right to follow the river in the same way that I was walking

But going back to that dream with my Greek friend again – I must have stepped right back into it when I went back to sleep – I was off, picked up to go back to the hotel and I’d had to drop off somewhere at my old place but I crashed out and went to sleep. It was about 17:15 when I awoke in a real panic and had to get dressed and get ready, and I wondered what she had been doing all of this time and whether she was still waiting for me. Of course I couldn’t find any clothes, the clothes were wrong, the oranges – I went to eat an orange but they were all bad. Every time I went to peel one it was bad, rotten. Later on I ended up at another hotel and they gave me the bill and I thought “God, this is half as much again as where I’m staying at the moment” but I had a look round at the hotel and all of the facilities they had and thought “€60 isn’t all that bad for this place”. I went to find myself my room but instead ended up in the dining room. I fetched a coffee and went to sit down at a table. There was all piles of EU stuff all over the place including the new chauffeurs’ arrangements. For some unknown reason I hadn’t had a copy of this but there was a copy on display so I rooted round in a cardboard box for one. When I went back to my table someone was sitting in a seat very close to it so I excused myself wanting to sit near to them and sat down at another chair at the same table. All this time I was wondering about this girl. What was she doing, would she still be waiting etc?

I’d been off to a jumble sale and I had the Minerva and a trailer and a whole pile of other stuff that I was going to sell at this car boot sale. I’d arranged to meet Nerina a little later on. I’d been to this sale and it wasn’t particularly successful and I had loads of stuff left over so I started to get ready to go round to Nerina’s house. Going down Middlewich Street with this trailer but there was loads of stuff on here that belonged to other people. A group of kids had put a pile of flip-top bottles on board. I was trying to tell them that they aren’t mine and I had to explain to them in detail that they’d paid a deposit on these bottles and they wouldn’t have the deposit back if they didn’t take the bottles back. Eventually I found the adults who were with them and told these adults. I stopped my Minerva and said “take them off the trailer”. I went for a stroll down to do something – I can’t remember now and that took me far longer than I thought it would take me. Again I was worried if Nerina would still be there. What was happening about her? When I went back I found that the Minerva had been completely stripped and there was just the bodyshell. Everything else had gone. The trailer had disappeared and all that I was left with was my handcart with a couple of really heavy objects on it. I thought “God, I have to push this all the way home. I can’t pull it with the Minerva”. I was trying to work out which would be the best way home. In the end I worked out to go back up Bradfield Road, past Leighton Hospital and down Middlewich Road and past Wistaston Green home. Then I thought “why don’t I ring up Nerina and get her to come and pick me up, or at least explain what’s happened”. But try as I might, I couldn’t get my phone to work then, switching it on and off, it was still not working when I switched it back on. It came up as if I had a new account and I had to register myself, all this. I was in this narrow lane and there were these 2 tractors coming. They had to drive over the fence and into a field in order to get round me. I was in all kinds of states here about this and I awoke in another cold sweat. But quite often in tis dream I was calling the Minerva a Marina. How strange that was. There’s obviously some kind of Freudian slip involved here.

And all of this missing appointments and anxiety too. There’s been too much of this going on just recently.

What with the late start, transcribing all of that took up most of the early afternoon, especially with a pause for hot chocolate and a mince pie for a break.

Later on I was able to go off and about, armed with the little NIKON 1 J5, fitted with the NIKKOR 30-110mm LENS, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been out like that.

The first thing that I did was to take a photo of the moon with the zoom lens at its fullest extent, and then cropped it to see what it would do and how it compares with a photo taken with the NIKON D500. And while the quality is less than that of the big Nikon, it’s certainly good enough, all things considered.

And the moon isn’t all that far away from being full. I shall have to give consideration to shaving the palm of my hands in a day or two’s time.

As you might expect, I wasn’t alone out there this afternoon either. You can see all of the people out there taking a stroll in the afternoon.

There are plenty walking around on the Plat Gousset away in the distance, but you can also see the Rue du Nord to the right, the little postern gate through which I run, and the path that goes long underneath the walls.

I can’t imagine why the people would be walking around on the path underneath the walls. I would reckon that they might need a snorkel and flippers to go around the path.

And in case you are wondering why, just have a look out to sea from at the English Channel just now where I’m standing in the car park.

We are in the grip of a severe storm last night and for most of the day, even earlier in the morning when I was still working, it’s been pouring down and with really high winds for most of that time. I even had to postpone my walk this afternoon for half an hour.

We can’t see any ships or anything like that out there and that’s not a surprise at all, given everything that was going on out there.

From my viewpoint on the car park I pushed on a little further along the track on the top of the cliffs.

And the further along the path that I walked, the more the weather deteriorated. You can see in this photo here just how much it has deteriorated too. In the background, that’s not land at all. There is no land out there at all. That’s the force of the spray of the rain off the surface of the sea.

This is not the moment to be hanging around right now. I need to push on and complete my circuit because if I don’t, I’ll catch the lot of it.

And it seems that I wasn’t the only one out there taking advantage of the weather to take a few photographs.

This guy was enjoying himself out there taking a photo or two or three of the approaching storm. And I wasn’t convinced by the idea of doing it with a lightweight tripod without a ballast weight securing it. The wind was extremely strong here, blowing everything about and a camera and tripod would soon be gone with the wind in all of this.

And look at all of the puddles lying around here. You can see what I mean about the miserable weather that we have been having and why I wouldn’t be on the path under the walls right now.

So instead, I walked across the lawn and then across the car park down to the point of the headland to have a look out across the Bay to see what is going on over there.

There is nothing whatever going on as far as boats and shipping were concerned but we were having another brilliant sunset evening out there. Not just the heavy clouds and the sunset streaming through the gaps, but also the effects of the rainstorm as it tumbles out of the clouds.

It’s certainly something special today as you can see. But I’m not going to be here admiring it for too long

And I was right too, because the wind was quicker than I was.

By the time that I reached the viewpoint overlooking the cliffs on the south side (having dodged the flood on the footpath I was soaked to the skin. and whipped by the hailstones. And over there underneath the crane in the loading bay in the port, Joly France and Chausiais are moored there and I’ve no idea why they would be moored over there at all.

Particularly Joly France because she’s not able to carry the type of load for which they would need to use the big crane to load her up. If it were Chausiais moored under the crane, I could maybe undertsand it a little better.

You will have noticed that there were plenty of fishing boats moored in the harbour this afternoon.

But not for long. Despite the miserable weather, they were all preparing to go out to sea. One of them, our old friend Le Coelacanthe was making her way out of the harbour being photobombed by a seagull on her way out to sea, her crew all decked in rain and wet gear for what they are about to receive and will be receiving any minute now.

As for me, I’d already been receiving it and I was in a rush to return home to the warm and dry.

When I returned home, I rolled out the pizza dough and put it in the tray ready to rise for the next hour or so.

While I’d been away, Rosemary had telephoned me so I called her back and we had a chat for an hour or so, meaning that I had missed my Welsh homework. I’ll have to do two lots on the train to Leuven tomorrow and that wasn’t part of the plan.

By now it was time to assemble my pizza – with tinned mushrooms unfortunately as I didn’t have fresh.

And when I put it in the oven I set out for my evening walk. But there was no possibility of going out anywhere in what was awaiting me outside. This was the kind of rain that I was hoping not to see and it will be disappointing if it’s like this when I go out tomorrow morning.

Instead I came back in and did the washing and tidying up while the pizza was cooking.

Delicious it was too, and no pudding either because it was quite filling.

And now, my notes are written so I’m off to bed. No matter what, I have to be up early tomorrow for my train. I can’t afford to hang about.

Monday 21st December 2020 – MY SOURDOUGH FRUIT LOAF …

… today is excellent.

The dough rouse by about 30% which although isn’t a lot, is more than it had managed to rise before today. And although it was heavy and soggy, it was extremely tasty when I had a slice for my morning break and I shall make much more of this.

And in case you are wondering, I beat the third alarm to my feet this morning, which surprised me more than anyone else. First thing that I did was to put the oven on to warm up while I took my medication, and once the oven was warm enough I put in the sourdough mix that I had shaped and put into its mould last night.

While it was cooking I made a start on the outstanding radio programmes – two and possibly three live concerts if I can manage the third.

After an hour though I stopped to go and organise the sourdough loaf. Out of the oven and tipped out onto its wire grill to cool off.

It was a rather late lunch today, but at least I’d done all three of the radio concerts. Now I’m right up to date until the end of April next year and that’s really good going. And I’d stopped for 20 minutes for my hot chocolate and delicious fruit bread too.

When I remembered, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

It was a Chronicles of Narnia thing where a group of kids had wandered off somewhere and ended up at the restaurant near the end of the highway. All the lost souls were gathering around there. They came back home again and when they returned home they found that their home was deserted. Music was still playing through the hi-fi but there was no-one around at all. They couldn’t understand what on earth was going on. They were making all sorts of enquiries and setting all kinds of tests like touching objects remotely to make sure that they weren’t booby-trapped or anything like that. The idea that they should ring someone up and speak to them never really entered their minds. They didn’t do that. They had all this lengthy discussion about what was happening, what was going wrong and so on but none of this was making any sense whatsoever about how their whole environment seemed to be totally deserted. Maybe 30 years later they had made contact with more people, I don’t know how and they were living the kind of life that survivors of a nuclear holocaust would lead but there was nothing in between there, that was the thing about them coming back from wherever they had been and finding the place all deserted to 30 years later living in this survivor situation.

During lockdown a couple of us had been playing cards or something. This had finished and the result had been published but not the exact details of the score in the same way that one of the football teams had had its scores mentioned in the press but some had been missed off. Someone had then said something that made us suspect that he knew about the scores so we asked him about it and how come he found out all the scores and the manners of scoring but just as he was about to reply the alarm went off.

After lunch I had a few things to do and then I went out for my afternoon walk.

And despite the miserable weather today, cloudy and overcast and windy, there were still plenty of people about

There were several people down there today on the beach too, and I’m not really sure exactly what they were doing down there. It looks as if it’s a paper bag that they are carrying so it’s not likely to be anyone doing the peche à pied down there today. And in any case there wouldn’t be anything to catch or to harvest round by where they are standing.

There was nothing else going on down at that end of the beach so I walked off across the car park and along the path.

As I was walking along the path I was looking out to sea in order to see if there was anything going on out to sea.

Once again, there was something moving out to sea round by the north-eastern end of the Ile de Chausey. It was too far out to see for me to be able to identify it with my naked eye so I took a photo so that I could crop it and blow it up (the photo, not the object of course) to identify it back at home.

And once again, it is neither Thora nor Normandy Trader coming into port but it is yet another trawler.

Incidentally, there is to be a sailing of Normandy Trader this week. There’s a pile of freight piling up in French ports that can’t go to the UK in view of the new restrictions, and some of that freight is destined to the Channel Islands. So it’s being diverted to here and we are expecting a couple of lorries to turn up sometime over the next few days with goods for the Channel Islands

But what a state to get into in the UK, and it’s not even Brexit yet.

I plodded off on my merry way along the path and then across the lawn and the car park to the end of the headland to see what was happening there.

Nothing very much at all, so I carried on around the headland on the path on top of the cliffs to have a look at what was happening down in the chantier navale. And we’re having another change of occupant down there today. The trawler that came in here the other day now looks as if its ready to go back into the water.

That was a very quick turnround, I have to say. It didn’t take them long to sort out whatever it was that needed sorting out.

There had been rain throughout the whole morning and the paths around here were flooded so I had to pick my way gingerly along the paths.

Down at the end of the path there’s a viewpoint overlooking the port and while there wasn’t much in the way of traffic anchored in there, one of our regulars is tied up there underneath the loading crane. It’s the big trawler le Coelacanthe and judging by the presence of the van in the background, it looks as if they are loading her up for a long trip out.

And look how quickly it’s gone dark. It’s the shortest day of the year of course and darkness has crept up on me rather quicker than I anticipated.

Further along the path I can look deeper into the harbour and there, moored to the quayside, is le Coelacanthe‘s sister le Tiberiade.

There’s no-one around her right now but I imagine that she’ll be loaded up – if that’s the case – in her own turn in early course.

But it’s very interesting to reflect on how things used to be in the port before the Cod moratorium in 1992 when the deep-sea trawlers would go out from here on a sailing that would take them several weeks. There must have been scenes like that with le Coelacanthe several times a day with different boats.

And so I headed off home for a mug of hot coffee and to do my Welsh homework. I have to keep that up as much as I can.

There was the usual hour or so on the guitars, and then I went off for my evening runs. I took several photos out there with the delayed-action shutter but of all the ones that I took, not a single one came out as I would have liked. They ended up being filed away under “CS”.

Tea tonight was stuffed pepper and rice with fresh vegetables, followed by the first instalment of the apple crumble (the remains of last week’s rice pudding ended up in the bin), which was as delicious as the sourdough fruit bread.

Having dealt with the notes for today, I’m off to bed. I’ve already fallen asleep twice typing them out. No welsh course tomorrow of course so I can have a good day (I hope) on some arrears. But a good day means a good start, and that means a good sleep. So I’m not going to hang about.

Friday 13th November 2020 – AFTER EVERYTHING …

… that I wrote yesterday evening about an early night and an early start? it was … errr … 10:30 when I finally crawled out of bed.

If you think that that is devastating, just let me say that after finishing my notes, I started on a little project of no significance, a project that I dip into every now and again, and by the time I started to feel tired enough to go to bed, it was after 04:00.

So 10:30 isn’t really all that bad, I suppose, and at least there was some work of a sort being done.

During the night I’d been on my travels again. I was going somewhere laat night on a bus or something so I had to leave my car, the mk V Cortina NMP parked up at the side of the road. I was going to be away ages so I was worried about leaving it there for so long but as the bus passed by I could see two of the guys from the taxis opening it and climbing in Obviously they needed it for things so that was OK. I ended up round at my mothers where suddenly I had some kind of panic attack – what about all my personal stuff that I’d left in the car? What was going to happen if the people at the taxis got their hands on it? But anyway I got dressed, in a pair of grey trousers that I wore when I was at Shearings. And as I pulled the belt tight, it went two notches over where it usually went which was strange. As I was setting off to visit the parents of a friend my mother shouted “make sure you ring them to tell them that you are coming. Don’t just turn up unannounced”. I thought that that would be difficult to arrange but I said nothing. However my mother said it twice so I wondered what was happening here.

My Covid friend was on line so we had a chat while I finished off what I’d been doing last night. And with the late start that took me right the way up to lunchtime. Something of a waste of a morning, really.

After lunch, fighting off the temptation to go back to sleep, I made a start on amending one of the journal entries from my voyage around Central Europe but I ran aground half-way through.

There was enough time however for me to go off on my afternoon walk around the headland.

The tide was well on its way in when I went out, and I noticed the effect of the waves breaking on the rocks that were there on the beach and which by now had disappeared beneath the waves near the marker light for the rocks.

They were actually submerged but only to a very minimal depth so although you couldn’t see them, you could see the waves breaking on them.

It was something that held my interest for a couple of minutes and then I pushed on, passing three or four others who were out there this afternoon.

There was very little going on out at sea this afternoon – no boats of any description in the English Channel or the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But there was an exciting phenomenon occurring down the bay round by Carolles. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the sunlight reflected off the windows of St Pair sur Mer in the late afternoon earlier in the year. Of course, the sun has moved round in the sky and we now have the windows in Carolles picking up the glint of the sun.

You wouldn’t credit just how dark it’s starting to go now, even though it’s only about 16:00. Winter is going to be upon us a darn sight sooner than we think.

Still no change in the occupants of the chantier navale. The yacht is still there, as is the vessel Ceres II

But it was interesting out in the tidal harbour though. The gates must have been on the point of opening and boats were queueing up to go into the inner harbour. Here we have one of the Joly France boats, the older of the two, and also one of the two trawlers, either Coelacanthe or her sister La Tiberiade.

There were a couple of other boats in the queue too, and as I watched, the harbour gates opened and the boats went steaming … “dieseling” – ed … into port

I came to the conclusion that the trawler that I had seen just now was Coelacanthe, and I concluded that for a very good reason too.

Moored up at the Fish Processing Plant was her sister and I could clearly see her name on the side of her superstructure. She’s Le Tiberiade, and one of these days I’ll be able to tell them apart. I’ve noticed a couple of little differences between them when they have been next to one another.

She’s busy unloading her catch right now. There’s a van with an opening cargo door that looks as if it might be taking away some of the seafood, and the tractor is busy negotiating the loading ramp with a full trailer.

While I was there, I watched Coelacanthe pass through the gates and into the harbour.

Once inside she began to perform a little nautical danse macabre as she made for her mooring at the rear of the two Channel Island Ferries. And I noticed that Thora was still in port this afternoon. It seems that for one reason or another, she’s not benefitting from these rapid turnrounds that I’ve mentioned before.

But one thing that I did notice from the image that I couldn’t see with the naked eye is that she has steam … “diesel” – ed … up, so it does look as if she’s actually on the point of heading out to the open sea.

And it all was turning out to be quite interesting in there this afternoon.

As Thora “cast off forr’ard, cast off aft” in the inner harbour, Le Tiberiade did likewise and as the one headed for the harbour gate so did the other from the other side, out of view of each other. Half expecting a “Greek meets Greek at the Hull Paragon, Valentine’s Day 1927” moment, I gripped the edge of my seat in eager anticipation.

However le Tiberiade just about made it into the harbour without a collision, Thora

While I’d been wandering around, I’d noticed that the sea was becoming rather rough. And with the tide being well-in right now I was keen to see what was happening down at the Plat Gousset.

And it was a good move too because even with 90 minutes to go before high tide, the waves were coming in with something of a powerful force and smashing into the sea wall over there.

There weren’t very many people out there enjoying the spectacle from close to, but I imagined that they would all be out there a little bit later at high tide when they really would be treated to something of a spectacle.

By now I imagined that Thora would now be rounding the headland on her way out to sea, so I retraced my steps of earlier up to the viewpoint next to the College Malraux to see how she was doing.

And eventually she came a rattling around the headland into the teeth of the wind and the waves and set course for St Helier. It’s not going to be an easy ride for her in this kind of sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I keep on saying that one of these days I’ll hitch a ride on her when she has a couple of trips in rapid succession and see how she does. Luckily I’m in a good position in that I hold a British passport and a Permanent Residency Card for France so there needs to be little in the way of border controls to ease my passage.

But that’s not going to be for a while with all of this Covid going on. No-one will be going anywhere for quite a while yet.

And so I watched Thora battle her way through the waves for a while and then headed for home.

On the way across the car park I’d seen Gribouille, the big ginger cat, sitting on his windowsill so I went to give him a stroke. And there I fell in with his owner, and learnt some pretty sad news. She’s had a couple of falls just recently, during one of which she fractured her had and it had to be stapled together. But as she doesn’t seem to be able to cope particularly now, she’s moving into sheltered accommodation

Of course, she’s taking my mate with her, but regardless of that, it’s another convivial soul from the building who is moving away. Nothing stays the same for long, and rightly so, but it’s a shame when people move away like this and break up a happy little circle.

Back here I caught up with a few notes and then went to make some kefir. This morning, I’d started on the last bottle and there was another batch brewing nicely.

The four kiwi fruits that I had bought three weeks ago were now nice and ripe so I peeled them and threw them in the whizzer, followed by a generous handful or two of grapes.

Having whizzed them around for quite a while to extract as much juice as possible and then passed it all through my network of meshes and filers into the big jug.

Having done that, I drained off the brewing kefir through a very fine-mesh filter and added it to the juice, stirring it well in, leaving an inch or two of liquid in the bottom to keep the kefir grains covered.

Several slices of lemon, a fig bisected and 40 grammes of sugar went into my big jar, followed by 2 litres of filtered water. That’ll brew now for a few days while I wonder where I’m going to get some figs from for the next batch after that as I’ve now run out.

The mixed kefir and juice was then strained through a mesh coffee-filter into the various flip-top bottles that I use. They’ll be put into a cool place out of direct light now to complete the second fermentation and in a couple of days they will be ready to drink.

But I made a bit of a boo-boo here. Remember the pineapple slices that I’d had the other day? I’d put the syrup on one side to use in my kefir today but I’d forgotten it. I don’t know whether it’ll keep for four or five days now.

All of that took so much time that I didn’t have my guitar practice, which was disappointing.

Instead, I ended up with some of the best taco rolls that I’ve ever made. That chick pea and couscous stuff that I used in error instead of the bulghour certainly made a difference. And my defrosted apple pie was delicious too

later on I went out for my runs around the walls.

No-one else was out there, everywhere else was quiet, not even the Pizza van in the Place Czmbernon tonight with the lockdown. No-one down in town either.

I had a look to see if the Christmas decorations had gone up in the Rue Paul Poirier but while there is certainly something or other, and several thereof, strung up across the street, there’s nothing illuminated yet.

All of this is to come very soon, I imagine. But I’ll find out more in due course. I ran on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow it’s shopping day, and I have to track down some figs. That’s not going to be easy because I’ll still without Caliburn so wherever I go and whatever I buy, I’ll have to carry it home and I’m not looking forward to that.

Luckily the freezer is pretty well stocked up and that should keep me going for a week or so but I really do need to organise myself better. I don’t know what it is that I’m doing right now but whatever it is, I’m doing it all wrong.

Wednesday 11th November 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change I managed to beat the third alarm to my feet. And that’s not something that happens every day these days.

And that’s not the best of it either.

Twice during the night I had to leave the bed – once to find the dictaphone that I had forgotten to put by the bedside as I went to bed, and the second time to look for the spare batteries when the batteries in the dictaphone went flat.

And considering that I’d had yet another late night consoling my friend on the internet, this is all pretty astonishing too, especially when you consider that today is a Bank Holiday and I don’t normally have an alarm call on a Bank Holiday.

With all of this going on, it’s even more surprising that I managed to find the time to go off on my travels during the night.

I was on a big cruise liner last night, an American one. There were loads of people on there and for some unknown reason I was feeling a bit tetchy and irritable like I normally do after a few days in other people’s company. These Americans were really getting on my nerves and it reached the stage where I could barely hide my contempt for them, something that regular readers of this rubbish will know about only too well. It reached the stage where on one occasion I had to go somewhere and the quickest way for me and a couple of other people with me was to unlock a kind of emergency door and step through that out to the other side. As we did that and stepped through we had to stoop down to do so there was a couple of other old guys there and they started to try to push us around. I spoke in some kind of derogatory term to them and this situation slowly started to escalate out of hand, if it wasn’t out of hand already.

This has quite a familiar ring about it doesn’t it? And even more so if you consider the events of early September last year that I’ll write about one of these days when I learn to moderate my language.

Later on we’d been out to the South Pole. It was the 19th Century and we had gone very far but hadn’t reached the Pole. We’d got onto the Antarctic continent and gone quite a way but couldn’t go any further so we turned round to go back to our base camp and set out back for the UK. We’d left Caliburn there and a few things had been left inside Caliburn including a book that belonged to Nerina. We sailed back. It was quite interesting by the way to see an aerial photo of the area a bit later on where a town had grown up etc and where we had been. We could see our route. When I returned to Gainsborough Road Nerina was being very sullen and offhand with me. What I did was to take her bookmark back that was in the book. She was extremely annoyed about this book. I said “don’t worry. We’re going back to get it next year”. There was some confusion about whether it was a library book. She’d had notice that it had already been renewed. I said “no, that was another one. This was such-and-such a book”. It had a duck-egg blue cover. She was just extremely offhand. Then she asked if I knew where a place called TK fasteners was in a certain town, a town where I was working. When she described what it was for – you could buy snowmobile bits there – I knew immediately where it was but it was very difficult to describe it. She’d been to the area once so I was trying to explain. “Which way did you come into the town?” because there were a couple of ways but she wasn’t really answering. Then she sat down and started to draw herself a map. “Oh, you’ve remembered, have you?” She replied “no, someone has sent me a photo and I’m copying it out”. When she finished that she stood up, picked up her coat and said “I’m going”. “Going where?” “Going home. i’m not staying here with you any more and you’re going to regret something”. “What?” “This 99”. “Regret what about 99?” “99 pence”. “Well, what about 99 pence?”. “You’ll find out” she retorted. “I suppose you’re going to be keeping the warmth, are you?” “I suppose so, yes” I answered. “That’s a shame. And it’s a shame about that lamp as well. I like that lamp”. “Well, take it with you”. “It was your friends who bought it for us”. “Well, take the lamp if you want it”. But she wouldn’t take it and just turned round and walked out of the house. I didn’t have a clue what was going on and what was the matter with her and what all of this was about. I was completely bewildered.

After this, I had an attack on the outstanding notes from my stay in Belgium. And now they are all transcribed and that’s that job finished. And right at that moment my friend came on line and we had a good chat while I soothed her fevered brown from this distance, poor kid.

With a few other things that needed doing, that took me up to lunch and more of my delicious bread (I’d had some of my wonderful fruit loaf with my morning hot chocolate).

This afternoon I sat down and finally made a start on finishing the radio programme that I had started in Leuven and by the time I knocked off for my guitar practice I’d just about finished it – another hour’s worth of music.

There was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk, and I remembered to go around the old medieval walls today as well.

There was quite a wind blowing out there today so there weren’t too many people out there this afternoon. There was a lot going on out to sea though, such as this trawler heading back home to port with today’s catch.

It was having quite a battle against the waves too. The wind had whipped up quite a storm this afternoon.

And something else that was interesting was that we had the different coloured streak of water out there again today that you can see in the foreground.

The weather might have been extremely windy and so keeping a lot of people indoors, but there were some out there taking full advantage of the solitude.

The tide was only just on its way out so there wasn’t much beach to talk about yet these people here were making the most of what beach there was.

Having observed them for a few minutes, I set off – at a run – along the Rue du Nord until I encountered a group of pedestrians coming my way so I slowed down to a brisk walk.

That caused me to look behind and see what there was going on behind me.

When I’d set out just now, I’d noticed a light moving about in the harbour so I suspected that there was a boat on the move in there. And sure enough as I watched, around the headland and out to sea came another trawler. I can’t tell at this distance if it’s Coelacanthe or her sister ship Le Tiberiade but it’s certainly one of them.

Doing her impression of Steve Harley, she went off riding the waves right past the streak of different-coloured water. And one of these days I’m going out to test the salinity of the streaky bits to see if it is indeed fresh water being discharged into the saline water of the sea. It’s a well-known phenomenon that’s been reported on on many occasions in the far north of Canada and places like this.

It’s another way of mariners being able to tell if they are near land when big rivers are involved, and I would love to prove this for myself.

From there I managed to break into a run again and push on a little way until I encountered another group of people.

Once they had gone, I broke into a run and went all the way down to the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset. The wind here on this corner really was wicked and I was surprised to see even a handful of people down there.

There were several people in the Square Maurice Marland too, so that put paid to any plans that I had to go for a run across there. But there was nothing else whatever of any importance or note going on so I walked on home to warm up with a nice hot mug of coffee.

Having finished the radio programme I had my hour on the guitars, which wasn’t as successful as it has been of late and then went for tea – steamed vegetables and veggie balls in a nice vegan cheese sauce, followed by pineapple and ice cream.

When I stuck my head out of the door, I was glad that I’d had a few goes at my running this afternoon because the wicked headwind put a stop to anything in the Rue du Roc.

But I made it around as best I could to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour, even managing a couple of legs of my running. No change in the chantier navale today, and nothing special going on in the harbour either – quite probably because the tide was right out by now.

One of the Joly France boats – the older one – was moored up over there at the ferry terminal, and it looked as if Chausiais was tied up in front of her. But that was about it really.

There was nothing happening in the inner harbour either tonight. None of the Jersey freighters had paid us a visit today.

But by now the rain and started and with the wicked wind out here it was as if I was being lashed by a rather vigorous cat-o’nine tails. And seeing as I was the only one daft enough to be out here right now – not even any kids on the car park, I took a photo of the Rue du Port and then ran all the way home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I have to go shopping. With no Caliburn here I don’t have much in the way of fresh stuff so I can see me making two trips to LIDL – one tomorrow and the next on Saturday.

It’s rather inconvenient but it’s all in a good cause.

And then I can push on, update the journal for when I was in Leuven just now and then, hopefully, push on and catch up with yet more arrears from my trip around Central Europe earlier this year.

It’s high time that I put that to bed and got on with the real stuff.

Monday 5th October 2020 – IT’S AN ILL-WIND …

…. that doesn’t blow anyone any good, so they say.

And that certainly seems to be the case even with Storm Alex. You can see the waves and the whitecaps that have been caught by the wind, and there are a couple of kite-surfers making the most of the horrendous weather, and a very interested seagull intent on watching them at it.

It must have been the same ill wind that blew me out of bed this morning, because I was up and about this morning before the third alarm. “Up”, anyway. I’m not quite sure about the “about” though.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And while you admire the photos of the waves crashing down on the Plat Gousset in the aftermath of Storm Alex, I’ll tell you all about it.

Yes there was definitely something going on during the night but I picked up the dictaphone and promptly forgot it again. No idea what it was. But after a minute it all came back to me, as the skunk said when the wind changed. It was vaguely something to do with being at work. Someone whom I knew from school was there and someone else and we’d been spending a lot of time chatting. I wasn’t doing any work because I was retired officially. I was just keeping on going as long as they would let me so I was spending most of my time talking or reading books. One or two people had been to see me so we’d talked and then I’d been reading a book hidden in the corridors between the library shelves. It came to coffee time so I went to get my coffee.

I’d met someone there and we’d had a chat, talkng about football and the football pitch down below. I said that I’d seen the Belgian Prime Minister playing there. This brought a howl of incredulity for he was a big guy, the Belgian Prime Minister. I said that it was only for a couple of seconds and he was substituted. But there were a couple of other people there having some kind of fitness thing. There were 2 guys there streets ahead of everyone else with their fitness so I asked if they should be signed up to a club. He said “no, they aren’t interested in football although they coach some team for their children, something like that”. Then I was on my own and carried on doing a load of stuff, messing around in this canteen. I thought that I’d better get back to my desk anyway so I picked up my breakfast and gently ran through the offices. That schoolfriend was there and he looked at me with a bit of surprise so I waved at him and carried on running to get back to my desk in a hurry and I couldn’t remember what happened next.

Somewhat later there was an old couple and they had a job working for someone. because they had very long arms, or the husband had, long arms and very thin hands he was often asked to do some tasks. On one particular occasion he had to put his hand through a wheel or something to reach the other side to play about with something on the vehicle. He was doing this and suddenly the vehicle rolled back. Of course he had his arms through the spokes and that broke his arm.

However at some point during the night I was trying to close the rear doors like Caliburn’s on a van. For some reason, when I pulled the handle down the pegs weren’t coming down far enough to fit into the bodywork to hold the door closed. I was with, I think, the same schoolfriend as before and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get these pegs to come out far enough. I thought that I could conceivably get in and close the door from inside and climb back out through the window because there was no glass in the aperture in the back (I was confusing myself by now with MY RED CORTINA ESTATE . Then I noticed that the doors were rotten and I thought that maybe I could get some more doors for it but for some reason I just couldn’t get this door to shut.

The same ill-wind that was blowing us all into next week blew me into a frenzy this morning. Just for a change, I had a bad attack of motivation and I was able, to my own surprise and probably to yours as well, to sit down and in one swell foop I completed a radio programme from start to absolute finish.

It’s all totally completed, one hour’s worth of it, and been listened to and checked.

We had the usual break for lunch and afterwards, I had a little task to perform because Saturday’s Kefir mix is now good and ready.

I took three juice-oranges and whizzed them into oblivion, and then strained the juice out through a conical sieve into a large 2-litre jug. Then I gently and slowly poured out the kefir mix through a mesh coffee filter into the jug with the juice, taking care that the grains of Kefir remained covered with liquid. There should be a couple of inches of liquid left in the jar.

Finally, I strained the combined liquid back through the coffee filter (which I had placed in a large funnel) into a couple of bottles and capped them.

Having done that, I added 40 grams of sugar to the liquid that remained, three slices of lemon and two halves of a fig, and then a litre and a half of water. That’s now brewing in the jar and will be good and ready by the time that I return from Leuven.

That was about 90 minutes out of my day all told but nevertheless, by as early as 15:30 it was completed and ready to be heard. That was the moment for me to go out for the afternoon walk.

There was an old headline in an English Newspaper about 100 or so years ago – “Fog In The Channel – Continent Cut Off”.

At the moment, it’s not the Continent that has been cut off by the fog but the Ile de Chausey. You can’t see a thing out there today, despite the howling gale that’s blowing around today. There is in fact a fishing boat that’s out here someone – I’ve seen a photo of it leaving port this morning in the storm – but there’s no possibility of knowing where it is in this kind of weather.

As well as that, I’ve no idea where anyone else is either. Probably at home, I reckon, because there was no-one at all out there this afternoon and I don’t blame them for one moment.

Wending my weary way around the headland I was met by an enormous blast of wind that almost bowled me over.

The wind was raging into the Baie de Mont St Michel and even though the tide was quite well out, the waves were being blown in with an impressive amount of force and the poor little Le Loup, the marker light that marks the rock at the entrance to the harbour, was taking the brunt of it.

The yacht school was not out there in the bay today either and that’s hardly any surprise at all. And that reminds me that I still have to go and talk to them about lessons. I should be seizing opportunities like this.

No chance of running along the top of the wall in this wicked wind so I strolled gently along to the viewpoint overlooking the Chantier Navale.

We are now back up to four boats because we now have a nouvelle arrivante in there this afternoon. I couldn’t see a name on her but she looks as if the might be Les Epiettes, the boat that belongs to the French Département de Ponts et Chaussées – the Ministry of Roads and Bridges.

She’s certainly carrying the same official Government colours and so it’s an official boat, and Les Epiettes has been the one that has been around here in the area. We saw it over at the Ile de Chausey when we were there with Spirit of Conrad in July

We know that there’s a fishing boat that’s gone out to sea this morning, but it seems that it’s the only one that is.

There are plenty of other boats moored in the harbour that haven’t put to sea today. From left to right we have Chausiais, the freighter that takes supplies and equipment out to the Ile de Chausey, la Grande Ancre, a small freighter that seems to undertake a variety of tasks from transporting tractors out to the mussel farm on the Ile de Chausey to going out to catch a load of shellfish herself.

On the right is Coelacanthe, the sister ship to Le Tiberiade that we have just seen in the Chantier Navale. She’s one of the biggest trawlers in the port so if she’s not out at sea then things must be nad out there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the streets of the old Medieval City within the walls are very narrow.

Just recently there has been a great deal of work done on the streets in there and it looks as if there is more going on there today. We have another set of traffic lights at the Porte St Jean so presumably they are working on the road in the one-way system somewhere in there. What I’ll have to do, if the weather allows me to go out this evening, is to go and find out where they are. I don’t recall seeing any notices about there.

By this time I was totally fed up of the wet weather so I turned for home and came in. There was a pool of water at the foot of the stairs, presumably blown underneath the door by the wind.

While I listened the radio programme that I had prepared, I went through the photos that I’d taken and edited them. And there was a distraction as I had to hunt down an image file that was lost in the depths of my computer.

After my hour on the guitar, tea was a stuffed pepper, seeing as there was a pepper remaining, followed by the last of the strawberry tart with coconut soya dessert, following which I went out for my evening stroll.

The wind had dropped somewhat by now but still quite blustery, and there were a few squalls of rain swirling around. Nevertheless there was still the heavy fog and it was difficult to see anything out at sea. There was no-one about at all which is no surprise so I ended up having quite a comfortable run all the way along the footpath under the walls in the wind and rain.

Once I’d recovered my breath, I carried on walking and eventually ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset

It wasn’t difficult to gather what was going on due to the noise. You could hear it from half-way around the walls.

The tide is now about an hour and a half from high but nevertheless the waves are really intense in the storm and are crashing down with a considerable amount of force on the promenade at the Plat Gousset. Just imagine what it’s going to be like at high tide if it keeps up like this.

The weather being a little calmer tonight than it was on Saturday, so I could hang around for a little longer tonight. The photos are a little better too because of that but I’d love to be able to improve my technique. Don’t forget that I’m working on the edge of the technology that I have.

Having watched the storm for a few minutes I turned round and ran off down the full length of the Square Maurice Marland.

Having recovered my breath I walked through the alleyway and down the Rue Notre Dame towards home. My eye was open for whatever it was that the traffic lights at the Porte St Jean were controlling, and here at the corner of the Rue Cambernon and the Rue Notre Dame I discovered the issue.

It was far too dark to look into the hole to see what was happening, but I could certainly hear the noise of running water. It sounds as if there’s a burst water main down there. The fact that parking is now forbidden on the way up to the church seems to indicate that they’ll be digging up there tomorroz.

By now I was used to the weather so I went for a wander around the walls.

The other night we saw a fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant but tonight there seems to be three of them currently unloading. There’s another one in the darkness just there too, and a few more over on the other side of the harbour looking as if they are making ready to leave for the open sea.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those heading out to sea in weather like this. I stood there and watched them too, and then turned on my heel and ran on back to the apartment.

Now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m off on the train tomorrow to my appointment with Destiny so I need to be on form. I need to do some tidying up before I go and I must also remember to feed my sourdough before I set off.

It’s all go in here, isn’t it?

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING .

For much of the morning, ever since I awoke, I had a song – the title track from the album ZOOROPA – going round and round in my head.

When I’d finished doing what I had to do I switched on the music here. There are somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 tracks on my computer and the playlist is set to “automatic random”. And the first track that came up on the playlist was, of course, the title track from the album ZOOROPA.

That was uncanny – if not eerie.

Doing what I had to do didn’t take all that long this morning because there wasn’t all that much to do. When I listened to the dictaphone, I discovered that it was rather like my bank account right now – nothing in it.

That means that I can’t have gone anywhere last night – something that surprised me completely, and for two reasons.

I had an early night last night
I treated myself to a lie-in this morning – to wit – I didn’t leave my stinking pit until about 08:30

You would have thought that with an early night like that I would have gone off for miles.

With nothing to download, I did take full advantage and transcribed another pile of the arrears. Now there’s just a handful left and hopefully I can deal with them tomorrow.

“Hopefully” is the correct word too because I’m going to be busy. I have to make some bread quite early on and leave it to proof while I’m out at the shops. Then, of course, I have to come back and bake it.

Something else that I did this morning was to attack a pile of the photos from my trip up the Brittany coast in Spirit of Conrad. We’re now just pulling into the harbour at St Cast le Guildo where we spent out third night on board

After lunch I set about doing some tidying up in the bedroom. Much of the time was spent sorting through a large pile of post that I’d brought back from the Auvergne.

Mixed up in there was all kinds of stuff that I’d wished that I’d found two years ago and which would have saved me a lot of effort.

But at least you can walk around the bedroom without walking on anything and you don’t have to move anything to go anywhere else. It’ll be even better tomorrow after I’ve had another go at it and put some more stuff away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other evening we saw another heavy machine parked up in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame and I mentioned that I would look out for where it’s working.

Here at the side of the church there’s another roofing job going on. They have ripped off the slates and the old laths and are currently fitting new laths.

And helping them in the task is the big machine that we saw the other evening. So now we know.

Mind you, I don’t envy the men up there on that scaffolding. It’s freezing cold this afternoon, quite a dramatic drop over the last couple of days and there’s quite a gale blowing. Definitely not the weather to be up there.

And so it’s hardly surprising that there was no-one about having an afternoon walk.

It had it all to myself – to such an extent that seeing as the footpath under the walls was in the shelter out of the wind I ran all the way down the path.

But this is what I call courage. As I said, the weather has turned and it’s just like winter outside this afternoon. But these brave souls have brought their fold-up chairs and are sitting there on the beach evidently enjoying the weather.

And so are the seagulls too by the looks of things. They are evidently waiting for exciting things to happen but I think that they might well be in for a long wait.

No-one in the Square Maurice Marland either so I had a good run all the way across there too.

But there was plenty of activity in the port this afternoon. I noticed that the big crane was in operation so i wondered if one of the Channel island freighters, Thora or Normandy Trader, was in port.

But it was nothing to do with them at all. Two of the town’s trawlers, Coelacanthe and her little sister Tiberiade were moored up in the unloading bay this afternoon and the crane was busy relieving them of their trawl nets.

Whether they are to be repaired (because we’ve seen plenty of sailors sewing up trawl nets in the harbour) or to be replaced remains to be seen.

But it looks as if Normandy Trader will be in port some time soon. I’ve heard that the company that owns her has bought a lorry to do its own transporting, and the the one that I saw in a photo looks pretty much like that one down there.

There’s still more excitement down there as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing throughout the summer the Big Wheel in the car park down in the Place Godal. But there it is – gone! A sure sign that the summer season is finished.

My walk around the walls continued and as there was still no-one about I ran the final few hundred metres back home.

After I came back I recorded another album with the USB turntable. But I must remember not to go banging about while I do it. I’d completely forgotten about the effect that knocking the turntable has on the LP that’s playing, and I had to re-record one of the sides to eliminate the jumping about.

Thinking about it (which I do quite often these days) it’s been 20 years or so since I’ve played an LP. I didn’t have it set up in Expo, I’m sure of that.

After the guitar, I had tea. Taco rolls and rice, using the left-over stuffing with some kidney beans in it. And the rest of my apple crumble with some vegan chocolate ice cream. While I’m baking the bread tomorrow I’ll make a rice pudding too.

I can also cook a sheep’s head, and if I leave the eyes in it, that’ll see me through the week.

Outside tonight, I didn’t hang around. If I thought that the wind was bad outside this afternoon, it was totally wicked this evening.

The people on board Joly France, the ferry that goes out to the Ile de Chausey who were returning from the island will have known all about the crossing, that’s for sure. They were being tossed around like corks.

And that reminds me of the time that I was on board a cross-Channel ferry with Percy Penguin once, bringing back a coach from France. This was 1992 and there was a hurricane in the Channel and the crossing took 19 hours as we couldn’t get into port.

One guy was leaning over the rails “feeding the fishes” quite dramatically.
“The trouble with you” I said “is that you have a weak stomach!”
“Weak stomach rubbish!” he retorted. “I’m throwing it as far as everyone else!”

Despite everything, I’ve managed three runs this evening too, so what with 6 altogether today I’m feeling quite impressed with myself.

But tomorrow should be a better day. Cooking the rice pudding, baking the bread, making some more cordial and going shopping too. I suppose that I ought to have a look at making this kefir and kombucha too, seeing as I have had the book for two years, the container for 12 months and the powder for 6 months

Sunday 12th July 2020 – MY BREAD …

… seems to have gone somewhat berserk today.

This isn’t cooked. This is it on its second rise in the windowsill. It’s totally overflowing the bread mould and about to expand onto the windowsill.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my previous attempts at bread-making. I’ve never ever had bread perform quite like this. But then again it’s new flour and new yeast, and that must make a difference.

So while you admire this evening’s sunset, let me tell you that the bread rose a darn sight better than I did this morning. Although for a Sunday, 10:00 is quite an acceptable time for me to be up and about.

There’s some stuff on the dictaphone too so I must have been somewhere during the night. Unfortunately what with one thing and another I forgot to transcribe the notes today.

You’ll have to check back tomorrow to see where I’ve been. I for one can”t wait to find out!

No time like the present! First thing that I did was to mix the bread dough. 600 grammes of flour and a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds seeing as they were reasonably handy. A couple of teaspoons of salt in there too, all mixed together.

Meanwhile I’d heated 400ml of water to about 30 degrees or so, added a little sugar to activate the yeast, and then a sachet of yeast.

That went onto one side until there was a really good froth on top of the water to show that the yeast was working, and then tipped into the flour and thoroughly mixed together.

The thing about bread dough is that you know when it’s exactly right. It makes a lovely elasticky ball that no longer sticks to anything and takes all of the floury mess off your hands.

It’s something of a “trial and error” procedure so you need a bit of flour and a bit of water stabding by in case your mixture is either too wet or too dry.

When it’s done, you stick it on one side under a cloth for a couple of hours and let it do its stuff.

And while it was doing its stuff I was busy editing some more photos from my trip on the Spirit of Conrad. There are about 400 of those and if I’ve done a quarter I’ll be lucky.

For lunch I had breakfast – muesli with soya milk and some grape juice.

Following that, I made some pizza dough – basically the same recipe as the bread dough except that I add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. 500 grammes of that is enough for three pizza bases.

That went on one side while I greased my bread mould and put the bread dough into it. That went onto the side next to the pizza dough.

Sunday is the day when I go for my very long afternoon walk and end up in town for my treat of the week – my vegan banana sorbet.

But with it being such a delicious hot day and all of the bright sunlight that goes with it, it had brought out the people in droves.

And no question of Social Distancing either. Crowds congregating as they wish. Anyone would think that this virus had passed and wasn’t coming back. But several hundred infections and several deaths every day ought to give someone a clue about what is happening.

At least, out at sea, social distancing of a sort can be maintained.

And how many boats did you count out there in this photo? I haven’t counted them but there must be several dozen all jostling about in the English Channel in between the mainland and the Ile de Chausey.

We have yachts, speedboats, zodiacs, everything. You name it and it’s out there somewhere having a splash around at sea. And if I had the chance, I would be joining them.

But it was a really beautiful day for photography.

The sky was hot, the air was clear and there wasn’t a trace of sea mist anywhere. It had all been burnt off. And so the view out to the Ile de Chausey was spectacular.

It’s not every day that you cans ee the colours of the buildings on the island as clearly as this. The lighthouse is there on its peak just to the left of centre, and the semaphore station is the square building on the ridge to the right.

And it wasn’t just the Ile de Chausey that stood out really well in the afternoon sun.

The island of Jersey was looking quite spectacular too today. We can actually see the houses at St Helier too – and that’s at a distance of about 58 kilometres away.

Unfortunately we can’t see if either Thora or Normandy Trader are on their way to pick up that load of timber that’s still on the quayside here awaiting collection

And down the coast the weather is just as good too.

We saw yesterday the outline of the lighthouse away down the coast on Cap Fréhel but today we can even see the the Cape itself away on the extreme right of the image here.

As for the thing that’s farther over to th right, I’m still undecided as to what that might be. It could be a yacht or it could be one of the lighthouses off the coast of St Malo but I really have no idea.

Anyway, leaving that to one side for the moment I carried on with my walk along the top and then down the stairs to the viewpoint right at the end of the Pointe du Roc.

And here’s something that I don’t recall seeing before – or maybe I do, I dunno. A nice flat piece of concrete in the steps leading down, with a little design in it and dated 1943.

Probably a souvenir from when they were building the Atlantic Wall and there must be a story behind this if only I knew what it was. I wonder who inscribed it here.

As it happened, I’d gone down there for a special purpose.

While I was descending the steps I noticed a huge swarm of seagulls on the rocks and riding the waves and I hadn’t a clue why. My first thought was that they might have been fishing but I didn’t notice any bird catch anything – rather like my local fishermen.

It wasn’t as if they were sleeping either. There was plenty of activity going on down there, so it beats me.

But talking of fishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … one of the rocks out there had a fisherman or two perched thereupon.

Jusding by the writing on the back of the tee-shirt – BELGIUM – they are probably grockles come to disturb the peace of the local inhabitants.

For a good few minutes I stood and watched them too but, true to form, they didn’t pull anything out of the water. As I have said … “on many, many occasions” – ed … I’ve yet to actually see any fishermen actually catch anything there

My walk continued along the old road that eventually comes out by the chantier navale.

And dodging the swarming masses I finally made it down there to see what was going on. We still have six boats in there. I know that you can only see five but the sixth is in front of the two on the extreme left and you can’t see it.

There were massive crowds too on the quayside around here. Holiday season is in full swing and it was definitely a case of “dodge the covid-carrier” around here today.

The gates across the harbour entrance were closed so it was possible for me to walk across the top to the other side.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago we saw a rack of portacabins over here for some reason or other – I never did find out why. But they have gone now so whatever they were doing is finished.

Having dealt with that I walked through the port and then around the town in a glorious figure of 8, ending up at the ice cream parlour for my Sunday ice cream

But not before I was buzzed once more by yet another low-flying object. A microlight, or ULM as they call them around here, was flying by overhead disturbing the peace.

So having picked up my ice-cream I headed off once more down the Rue Lecampion and down the Rue du Port

The new car park down there is depressing me completely. A solid mass of tarmac without one blade of grass or any other greenery What a shame.

And that thought brought me along to one of the fishing boats here. Do you notice the buoys and the flags at the stern? Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve often wondered about those, but now I know.

The flags are an indication that a casier such as a lobster pot, is at the other end on the sea bed. And the round buoys can either serve that purpose too or otherwise they might be mooring buoys

A couple of our more well-know trawlers are in the harbour today.

Coelacanthe and Tiberiade probably belong to the same company, seeing as they carry the same livery, but they are in fact different types of boat.

Coelacanthe seems to be a bigger boat, with more solid superstructure at the side rails and with a different array on the cabin roof.

One of these days I’ll have to blag myself a ride out to sea in one of them.

Rosemary called me while I was out so I arranged to phone her when I returned home.

Back here, by now we’ve already seen what has become of the bread in the bread mould, and the pizza dough has expanded dramatically too.

In the meantime I phoned Rosemary back and we had a chat. And I worked out a cunning plan, more of which anon

So while the oven was heating up I prepared an apple crumble. The bread went into the oven when it was hot, followed by the crumble. But there was plenty of crumble mix left over so with another apple, I made a small apple crumble too. There will be enough for ages, I reckon, like that.

Once the bread and the crumble was under way I split the pizza dough into 3. One I rolled out and shaped to fit in the pizza tray and the other two were rolled in olive oil, wrapped in greaseproof paper and put in a plastic bag in the freezer for another time.

Having left the pizza on its tray for half an hour, I then went and prepared it ready for the oven.

When I took out the bread and the crumble, I put the pizza in and let it cook for half an hour. And this is the result.

The pizza base had risen to perfection – it really had – and the toppings of course were the usual delicious items. I have to say that this was the best pizza that I have ever cooked – and I’ve cooked plenty of them, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

As for the bread and the apple crumble, then the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And the eating didn’t take place tonight because I was rather full after my pizza and i’m trying to cut down on what I eat. So I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.

One thing though – with all of this cooking there was a whole pile of tidying up and washing up to do. Not my favourite occupation at all.

later on, I went out for my evening run, dropping off the bin bag in the bin as I went.

With a little effort I managed to extend my run up the hill another 50 metres again, and then having walked up to the corner, i ran down to the clifftop.

Nothing much going on there so I walked across the lawn to the other side. On the viewpoint was a couple watching the evening sunset. And quite right too because, as you have already seen, it really was beautiful again tonight.

The next stage of my run took me along the clifftop but there was nothing going on there very much.

We did however have another case of the different colours in the water.

And while I was on the train the other day i was reading the account of the journey of Vilhjalmur Stefansson to the Arctic coast of Canada between 1908 and 1912

Of the Mackenzie River he wrote “The huge volume of fresh water in the spring (the river usually opens between the fifth and twenty-fifth of May) not only melts away the sea ice, but also by its current drives away any that happens to be floating about, so that none but the strongest ones from seaward can fill the immediate vicinity of the delta with ice. The volume of fresh water is so large, tluit the whaling ships in passing outside of Mackenzie Bay take water for cooking and drinking purposes that has not a taint of brackishness
even where land is not in sight from the masthead”.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

I ran on down the Boulevard Vaufleury and having recovered my breath, I ran on round to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord.

We’ve already seen the sunset out to sea and while there were no picnickers this evening, there were still a few people on the beach.

Crowds up here watching the sunset too so I didn’t hang around for long after the sun had gone down. I ran on home to write up my notes.

And having done that, much later than I intended, I’m now off to bed. It’s been a long day and I deserve a good rest.

Monday 6th July 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not actually sitting in a rainbow but sitting in my little room in this hotel complex in Leuven.

It’s that time again and I’ve been on my travels. I’ve finally made it back here for my appointment at Castle Anthrax tomorrow.

Just for a change I actually made it out of bed immediately after the first alarm, despite not going to bed until 00:45, which just goes to show that I can do it if I really try.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphonr but there was nothing there. I’d not been anywhere on my travels during the night which is a shame. I went and had a shower instead.

There was a little tidying up to do and then I headed off out with my bag, calling at Caliburn to pick up a shopping bag and my foldable rain jacket

As I walked off from the apartment I noticed that it seemed that the harbour gates had just opened.

All of the trawlers were jostling for position and streaming out of port. This one here is Tiberiade, the sister ship to Coelacanthe pulling away from the quayside and lining up ready to rush out to sea

Having watched them for a few minutes, I pushed on into town, avoiding the cherry-picker on the corner with a crew of men in the nacelle cleaning the windows of the estate agents.

At the station, face masks are compulsory, although the casual way in which they are being worn is something of a surprise.

The train didn’t take long to arrive so we all piled in. There were quite a few people with suitcases either going off on holiday or going home from holiday.

And as the train pushed on towards Paris it became more and more crowded. I ended up with someone sitting next to me, which makes a total mockery of any kind of social distancing. At the station each alternate seat in the waiting room was blocked off, but it seemed to be a rather pointless exercise if we were all going to be crammed together on a train

We pulled into the Gare Montparnasse bang on time and despite all of the precautions at the station we were once again crammed like sardines into the trains.

At Paris Gare du Nord our train came in but was delayed in the station because someone had left a bag on board.

The bomb squad had to be called in and I was expecting a very lengthy wait. But it didn’t take too long to deal with the matter, which was a surprise.

Another surprise was that there were only 8 carriages on this train and I had a ticket for carriage 15. However the train was’t very busy and I found an empty seat at the top od the steps where there would be no-one alongside me.

We left 5 minutes late but caught up with the time by the time that we arrived at Lille Flandres.

A brisk walk across the city to Lille Europe and our train to Brussels was already in. I scrambled aboard and walked down the train to find my seat, to find that I ha a neighbour alongside me. I have a feeling that this “social distancing” rule in the railway stations is just a lip-service procedure and nothing more than window-dressing.

At Brussels I only had a 10-minute wait before my train arrived – the 15:28 to Welkenraedt.

The front of the train is always the lest crowded so I found a seat down there and managed to go the whole way to Leuven without a neighbour.

Here at my accommodation all of the entry procedures had been changed, including the password on the electric gate. Luckily another resident was coming in at the same time so she opened the door for me.

The office was locked too and after making a phone call to the manager I was given the password to the safe where the keys were kept.

The place isn’t all that busy so I’ve had another upgrade to a duplex apartment.

Later on, I walked into town to meet Alison. It’s been quite a while since we have met.

It was a beautiful evening so we went for a very long walk around the town looking at the scenery in the old Beguinage and round by the River Dyle while we exchanged our news.

Alison was very interested in my voyage around the coast of northern Brittany and I was keen to hear about the renovations that were going on at her home.

We ended up walking back into town and went for a meal at the Greenway.

The food there is pretty good and I had a Vegan Mexican burger with sweet potato chips and a can of ginger and lemom Kambucha. And that reminds be – I bought some seeder to make my own kambucha and when I return home I’ll organise myself to make some of my own.

We carried on with our walk afterwards round to Kloosters, the bar where we usually go for coffee, but it was closed so we had to go elsewhere.

Later on in the evening we went for yet another walk.

There’s a beautiful footpath alongside the River Dyle alongside the old early Medieval City walls. And they seem to be in quite a depressing state too.

There’s not much left of them these days and it looks as if there will be even less of them in due course if drastic action isn’t taken to maintain them. All that section there looks as if it’s about to all fall down and that will be a disaster.

A little further on ze came across the Sint Pieter hospital. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I stayed there when I first came to Leuven.

The story goes that it was built for the Francophone community of Leuven but instead they all decamped to a new site in Wallonie – Louvain-la Neuve – and despite the millions and millions spent on the building it was never occupied.

They are now on the way to demolishing it and all of the site is going to be redeveloped. Apartments, commercial premises, a park and finally at long last, the culvert over the river there is going to be uncovered.

It’s going to be something well worth waiting for.

While you admire the photo of the old water mill down at the Beguinage, Alison drove me out to look at the improvements that are being made at her home.

And they are impressive too. The house is looking beautiful and I was well-impressed.

She drove me back here afterwards and I sat down to write up my journal. But it’s been a long day and I’ve done a total of 175% of my daily activity.

That’s the cue foe me to call it a day and have an early night. You can admire the rest of this evening’s photos

Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

“river dyle Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

river dyle Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

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.

Thursday 12th March 2020 – I WAS ALMOST …

… right about the pontoons. So almost right in fact that I’m going to give myself 9 out of 10.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I counted the pillars on the quayside and decided that they were going to install two rows of four, and then they went yesterday and put a fifth one in the row on the north side of the harbour that confounded all of my expectations?

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “thank goodness” – ed … they might have installed five n one row, but today they are indeed starting on a second row, just as I reckoned that they would.

But that’s going to be bad news as far as I can see for the shipping in here, where they are installing that second row.

Here’s Tiberiade, a sister ship to Coelacanthe, and I watched her for a good five minutes struggling to negotiate her way around the pillars in order to find a berth to which to tie up.

And that’s just a fishing boat. We have both of the Joly France boats, Chausiais, and then the two Channel Island ferries, Granville and Victor Hugo, that tie up more-or-less where they will be fitting that pontoon. I’m not sure how that’s going to work for them

And while you admire the photos of the storm that we had tonight, let me tell you about my totally miserable day. A day when everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

And we started off my oversleeping. Not by five minutes or ten minutes but a good hour and a half. Staying up and listening to decent music might be a good plan from that point of view, but 01:30 is being rather optimistic when I want to be up by 06:15

That got me off on the wrong foot and things disintegrated from there on.

The medication was no problem, and then I came back and looked at the dictaphone.

And no wonder that I was exhausted this morning. I’d been miles during the night.

There was a whole group of us discussing some guy’s application for something or other. It was an unusual application – it turned out that he had an eagle on a ring not too far away and he wanted something to control this eagle but no-one would take him seriously about this. Everyone was saying that if he had an eagle living there it would be fantastic. But no-one could quite get to grips with the seriousness of the thing because eagles can even carry off people. This all came about I think when someone was getting married, I’m not quite sure, and there was a fear of this eagle but this sighting was dismissed and they never saw it again. People were saying “ohh well, there you are, it must have been a false report, this kind of thing, but this whole thing was based on the fact that an eagle had reappeared and been seen at a different place entirely so maybe it hadn’t actually gone away but had just basically moved nest into somewhere else.

Later on, three kids were staying at our old house in Vine Tree Avenue. We were there and there was a hell of a lot going on in this dream. One of my things to do was to go round and check on the flies. For some unknown reason, the flies were of interest. I’d read a book on flies and the life-cycle of the flies, the family of the fly, all this kind of thing and it was interesting to see how much the families of the flies around our house actually bore to it. So I used to do my rounds and check on things while everyone else was out and I still kept on doing my rounds. And on one of my rounds I walked into my parents bedroom and there was one of my sisters. “So what are you doing here?” I asked her “I’m looking for a quiet place to study and write some letters and people wouldn’t leave me alone so I came in here”. I said “the easiest thing to do to be left alone is to not make any noise and people won’t remember about you. You should really be in here and shut the door and that would be better still” and I gave her some more advice like that as well. But it was something about the life cycle of the fly and the family of the fly that interested me.

I was in the area of Shavington last night, (…Rope Hall Lane…). I was on a motorcycle and I was following someone in a car. This motorcycle thing went past us, grey but with an orange-painted tank on it. As I went round a bend the guy in the car was busy turning the car round to come back the other way towards me. I asked him what was up. Apparently the motor cycle had hit him and driven off. A crowd of people came round, someone on a police motor bike but it wasn’t a policeman. The guy with me was telling a story about how he had hit him and said a few impolite things and driven away. I suddenly realised that I knew this guy, and I bet that I knew his name as well as he sounded like the kind of person whom I’d met. I mentioned it to him, that he’s a regular on this road and we can find him again at some other time.
But then I was in Shavington (… Rope Lane by the Vine …) with someone else, someone from Canada but not Josée I think. We were talking about my childhood as we drove through Shavington so I took her down Vine Tree Avenue and showed her the house where we lived as kids. Of course it’s much different now than it was in those days. We were having a chat about it when some woman came up and asked me if I knew the area. I said that I had lived here. She replied that she had lived here since the 50s and she knew this street – pointing to Edwards Avenue – by some other name. I said that if she had been here in the 50s she must have known me then so we had a chat. I don’t think that we actually got to mentioning my name, who I was, but we were talking on about Edwards Avenue and Vine Tree Avenue and I was pointing out some garages (… which don’t exist …) that still bore some kind of resemblance to how our houses looked at the time

As I said, no wonder that I was exhausted.

After breakfast, there wasn’t much time before I had to go to the shops, so I looked at the digital soundfile that I’d downloaded yesterday. And one brief listen to that, and that one followed the previous version into the bin as well. The first couple of minutes of the opening track are missing, and that’s no good to anyone.

What I’ll have to do is to download yet another version if I can find one.

Before I went out I grabbed a quick shower and then headed uptown, stopping to watch Tiberiade perform her nautical danse macabre around the harbour.

At LIDL there was nothing of any particular interest, although I did watch in mild amusement as someone came into the shop in plastic gloves and a face mask to do his shopping. I think that some people need to get a sense of proportion. More people died in the 2003 heatwave, and more people will die of influenza in a normal winter. The trouble is that because those things are so normal, the Press never mentions them so people don’t realise.

Talking of journalists, I have a journalist friend in the USA who is currently having a hysterical panic about this virus. So I asked her how the tally of deaths and illness from the virus compares with the amount of firearm-related deaths and injuries in the USA.

She didn’t reply, but kept on having her hysterics.

Yes, never mind this virus. There are people walking the streets in the USA with enough firepower to wipe out a small-sized district at the drop of a hat, yet that causes these silly Americans no concern whatsoever. But then again, I suppose that the USA is such a violent bloodthirsty country that they are accustomed to the idea of violence.

And that’s a dreadful state of mind to be in.

Several weeks ago, I posted a photo of what I considered to be the first buds of the year. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at the time I expressed my scepticism.

But there’s no doubting whatsoever about these. here in the rue de la Houle there are definitely buds here on this creeping plant that’s growing up the wall.

Yes, we can definitely now say that Spring is on its way quite definitively. That put a little spring into my step, although I wish that I knew what happened to winter.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we’ve been keeping an eye on the new building that’s going on on the corner of the rue Charles Guillebot and the impasse de la Corderie.

Being in an energetic mood today, I went to have a closer look at it today. It is indeed a new house. But the people who are building it don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to finish it.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed here with the local builders. They don’t seem to be in any rush whatever to actually complete anything and we’ve seen projects like this go on for ever.

Just by way of a change, seeing as I’d never come this way, I went down into town via the rue Charles Guillebot.

That takes me down the north side of the eglise St Paul, a side of the church that we haven’t seen before. I’ve probably mentioned this church in the past. It was one of the earliest concrete structures built in modern times (the Romans were well-advanced with the use of concrete) but like most things, was never maintained.

As a result, there are bits dropping off it and there are notices all over the place telling the public to keep well clear.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed back home.

But once more, I stopped half-wau up the rue des Juifs to admire the view. We saw them earlier knocking the support pillar into the floor, but that was a photo that I had taken later this afternoon.

What we are seeing in this photo is the floating pontoon setting out from its mooring with that support pillar in its evil clutches and being shunted into position by the little boat.

It’s actually quite an exciting procedure watching then manoeuvring about the harbour with all of their equipment. All of this free entertainment that we are having.

Back at the apartment, I had a little surprise. I bumped into one of the more energetic owners here, and he invited me to come with him on a little guided tour.

Underneath this building are several big man-made caverns which had been bricked off and a year or so ago they had found the entrance and smashed their way through the wall to the inside.

There were apparently the water tanks for the old city in the days before there was the mains water supply. All of the rainfall from the roofs of the houses and from the street was channelled into here.

And it’s certainly an impressive sight to see. Apparently, it was full of all kinds of things before they started to clean it out. The plan was to divide it up into private cellars for the owners of the apartments, but it’s hit a major snag.

And he showed me what was the snag.

One of the underground caverns was well-blocked off and took some smashing down. And when they finally broke their way in, they could see exactly why it was so well sealed.

If the story that I was told is correct, and I would gladly learn otherwise, the building was divided into rooms by all kids of ad-hoc partitions that had accumulated over the centuries. When it was converted into apartments, the old partition walls had to be smashed down and taken away.

Included in the contract for the work was a large sum for “hire of containers and transport away of the waste” and this was duly paid. However it seems that the waste was never transported away at all but thrown down the lift shafts into one of the caverns and the cavern was then sealed off so that no-one would see it.

Of course, this is just one person’s view of the matter and there is very likely another, but one inescapable fact is that m’learned friends have been called in by the building’s management committee.

We shall see how all of this develops over the next few months. But nevertheless, it was exciting being down here and seeing all of this that I had never seen before.

After lunch I boiled up some ginger and then started to make my orange and ginger syrup.

I peeled 5 large juice oranges, gave then a quick whizz in the whizzer and poured off the juice, which I put into a bottle that I had sterilised. That went into the fridge.

The left-over pulp was whizzed down finely and then, after the ginger had simmered for an hour or so, I added the left-over pulp, brought it to the boil again and then left it to simmer.

While that was happening, I made a start on the sound files that we had recorded at the Grande Marée yesterday.

There were a few people out there this afternoon but I didn’t loiter very much.

My route took me round to the chantier navale where I could see that La Granvillaise and one of the fishing boats have gone back into the water. But Charles-Marie is still in there, minus a good few of her planks. This is going to be a long job

There was another classe decouverte out there today too, but no-one whom I recognised so I headed for home. I’m still shaking my head about that unexpected encounter yesterday.

Back here, I had a look to see how my orange and ginger was doing.

Nicely simmering away so I took it off the heat, added a couple of tablespoons of manuka honey (that’s how I make it into syrup), poured it all into the whizzer and gave it all a really good and lengthy whizz around.

The syrupy mass was then poured into the orange juice that I had put in the fridge earlier and it was all shaken up to mix it in. It all went into the fridge where over the course of the next week or so I’ll be using it up as my morning drink.

Back at my desk, I carried on with the sound file but I didn’t get very far as I drifted away with the fairies. And I also had my half-hour on the bass.

Tea was a burger on a bun with potatoes and veg. And I forgot the veg until the very last minute and had to rush them. The apple pie and ice cream for pudding was delicious too. I really am living well these days.

There was quite a wind blowing outside this evening.

Not one of the strongest winds that we have had and not really enough to knock me out of my stride either. And so i was astonished to see how the waves were roaring in to the Plat Gousset.

It is the period of the fullest moon and the highest tides, but even so, I hadn’t expected to see waves like this coming into the Plat Gousset with such incredible force. I stood there for quite a while to watch the show.

Windy it might have been, but not enough to frustrate my two evening runs. I managed to fit them in without too many problems and managed to push the distances on again. For my second run, I even made it up to the top of the ramp and I haven’t done that for a while.

But there was a lot of activity in the port and at the fish-processing plant. With it being nearly high tide, the gates are open so the big fishing boats can come in and unload.

For my part, I went and had a little play with the NIKON 1 J5 and the f1.8 18.5mm lens

The photo above was taken with the shutter speed at 1/20 at f1.74 with ISO 900

This photo here was taken completely manual with speed of 1/125 at f1.74 and ISO 2800.

They have both come out rather well and I’m quite pleased with them. Still plenty of room for improvement but I’ll just keep on working away at it until I improve.

So back here I’ve written up all of my notes and now, a lot later than I hoped, I’m going to bed. I hope that I have better luck trying to drag myself out of bed tomorrow morning, but who knows? It’s really driving me to despair

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

… and someone loves me evidently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they had the order of proceeding all wrong anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZZZZZZZZZ

EPIC HALL

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