Tag Archives: fruit bread

Tuesday 24th August 2021 – LOOK AT MY …

… fruit bread and loaf from this morning’s baking session!

Using this new technique that Liz taught me seems to be working quite well and although the ordinary bread didn’t seem to rise very much, it’s honeycombed with air galleries so it must be something like right.

As for the fruit bread, I tried a new technique. I mixed the banana in when I was making the dough but when it was ready for the second kneading, I rolled it out on the worktop dropping in the rest of the fruit and nut as I did so.

And that technique seemed to work in spades.

This morning I was awake when the first alarm went off, despite the lateness of the hour when I went to bed. I had the medication and came back in here to read my messages and the next thing that I remembered, it was 08:10. I’d been asleep for about 90 minutes.

Missing all that time meant that I had to rush and make the dough for the bread, especially as I noticed that the Welsh lesson today had been brought forward half an hour. There was just enough time to start the second kneading before the lesson started and I ended up being five minutes late.

The lesson lasted 90 minutes and passed by okay. I’d put the bread in the oven half-way through and it was doing quite well too.

For lunch I tried the bread that I made and it was really delicious. Nice and soft, just like bread ought to be.

This afternoon I had all kinds of plans but after working away for a while I fell asleep yet again. That meant that my afternoon walk was rather late.

First port of call was, as you might expect these days, the beach at the Rue du Nord.

With being later than usual, it’s not possible to see how the tide is doing right now. But there is plenty of beach down there today. The tide is quite a way out.

There weren’t too many people down there either today and that was a surprise. There was a little wind today but it was quite warm and sunny. I would have thought that there would have been many more people down there today making the most of the last few days of the summer break.

Mind you, there were a few more people further along the headland, as I noticed when I walked further along the path.

Down on the rocks this afternoon was a fisherman casting his line into the water. But once again, he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of equipment in which to haul in or to keep whatever it is that he catches.

There weren’t any boats out there just offshore fishing either. That’s quite possibly due to the state of the tide but there isn’t really any reason why a boat couldn’t go out just before the gates closed and came back when they opened, just to fit some daytime fishing it.

Mind you, there were actually some boats out there somewhere.

My roving eye was at it again, looking out to sea to see what was happening. And I managed to pick up a yacht that was out there in the Baie de Granville

And while I was looking at her I noticed that she was stationary, and that there didn’t seem to be anyone on board. Maybe they had gone below for a kip until the harbour gates open this evening Their sail is furled so they clearly have no intention of going anywhere right at the moment.

The air was really clear this afternoon and there was quite a good view out to sea.

While I was scanning the horizon to see if there were any ferries or anything like that I picked up another yacht much further out beyond the Ile de Chausey. Judging by the way her sail was billowing out in the wind, she was moving along quite rapidly.

However, as for the rest of the ocean that I could see, there wasn’t another boat knocking around. The Ile de Chausey and the sea outside St Helier were completely deserted and it’s been a long time since that has happened, from what I have seen.

Meanwhile, it was at this point that I was overflown by a light aircraft.

And the slow speed at which it was approaching me told me that it wasn’t one of our more usual ones but I took a photograph of it so that I could have a look at it at my leisure back in the apartment.

When I enlarged it and enhanced it, I could see, with some disappointment, that it wasn’t carrying a registration number. She’s probably a microlight aircraft which won’t appear on any registration list to which I have access.

Round on the other side of the headland I walked down the path towards the port.

One thing that I noticed almost as soon as I came in sight of the chantier naval was that we seem to have had a change of occupancy. There are seven boats in the position where seven boats were the last time that we looked, but a couple of them at least looked rather different.

In the meantime though, I was quite interested to see Chausiaise over there at the ferry terminal. And none of the other three Joly France boats though. They must be all over at the Ile de Chausey although I didn’t see them.

Meanwhile as I walked further round I had a good look at what was going on in the chantier naval.

At long last it looks as if Charlevy has gone back into the water after her overhaul and repainting. And in her place there’s a similar trawler. Luckily they haven’t painted over her wind deflector so I could see her name. She’s called “la Soupape”.

And the trawler Trafalgar has gone back into the water too. In her place is one of the smaller inshore fishing boats but I can’t see her name from here.

The other boats look to be pretty much the same as before.

There was one more boat that we needed to check on before we leave the area.

Just before we went to Leuven we say a yacht out at the back being stripped down for repainting. When we saw it the other day much of it had been masked off. But today, a lot of the masking has been removed.

The hull though is still in primer so there is still quite a lot of work to do before she’s ready to go back into the water. And I hope to be there when the portable boat lift comes to pick her up. Watching it manoeuvre through all of the objects lying around would be quite a sight.

Meanwhile, in the inner harbour there’s a nice little sailing boat having a lap around in there.

This is quite an interesting boat. By the looks of things it’s a régate de chausey – one of the traditional small sailing boats from the area. There aren’t all that many still around and I’ve only ever seen one of them before.

After that I came back to the apartment to check over the photos that I’d taken, and also to drink my nice, really cold strawberry smoothie.

Tea tonight was the rest of the stuffing with kidney beans and taco rolls. No pudding again as my appetite still hasn’t fully returned.

Anyway, now I’m off to bed. I have my first physiotherapy session tomorrow. That will be exciting.

Monday 9th August 2021 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… yet more excitement in the chantier naval today.

When I walked past there this afternoon I discovered that the yacht Rebelle has once more gone back into the water today. But for how long, who knows? We might be seeing it back again quite soon if past history is anything to go by.

Also missing today is the trawler Monaco du Nord II. Her repaint and renovation job seems to be finished.

All that remains today is the trawler Charlevy and the two others whose names I have yet to discover.

Meanwhile, over at the ferry terminal is one of the Joly France boats – the older one without the step in the stern and with the windows in landscape format.

It may well be that she’ll be going out to the Ile de Chausey when the tide comes back in, even if the tide doesn’t come back in until later this evening, unless she’s there in preparation for an early start tomorrow.

Despite the weather not being exactly summer-like, there are still holidaymakers who need to be ferried out to the island and back. And it’s really sad that the weather isn’t what they would have been wanting after all of the events of the last 18 months.

And the sleep that I had last night wasn’t quite what I was wanting. Despite my early night and feeling as tired as I was, I couldn’t get off to sleep for ages and when I finally did, it was one of those sleeps that was rather intermittent.

And one thing that I noticed that I had to leave my bed in the middle of the night, something that I’ve now done for a few times just recently after going without for a couple of years.

There’s a pile of stuff on the dictaphone too. It was 21st birthday party of one of my niece’s daughters and a late 16th birthday party for another. They had waited until Covid was over and were having this celebration. There were some kids next door who were having a party and the parties somehow intermingled. At some point there was a fire and the fire brigade were called. The police came and arrested me and took me off. Some woman policewoman started to question me about the party – what was I doing allowing this and that to happen? I replied “hang on – what’s this got to do with me? I’ve only just turned up from Europe. I have no idea of what was happening at this do. I wasn’t in charge of it or anything like that. Why isn’t my sister here? Why isn’t her husband here? If anyone was in charge of it, they were more than anyone else because they live there and they were their kids”. After this went on for a couple of minutes I said “I’ll tell you exactly whose party it was. It was my niece’s daughter’s party. She’s 21, she’s an adult. Why isn’t she here?”. The policewoman looked at me, thought for a minute and said “get out of here”.

I was having camera issues and things weren’t going very well. Suddenly a box turned up and I opened it. It was 3 cameras, one of which I’d ordered but the other 2 were 2 that I’d looked at and decided that I didn’t want. It seemed that Amazon had sent me the 3. Liz then asked “is that the one that I got you?”. It turned out that Liz had bought me one as well and someone else had bought me one. I thought “that’s really nice of my friends, isn’t it?”. They were all going out and I was having to stay behind. They were getting ready to go but there were all kinds of things – it was like being in an office. Instead of closing at 17:00 it was open until all times of hours. There were people coming and going, all that kind of thing. A friend of mine (and I’ve no idea who she was) with 2 daughters, she’d gone of to take her kids to ballet class but she didn’t have time to come back. She came back with the older daughter who was about 8. We’d had a chat and a hug. We were just about to go off and get the other car when the other girl appeared from her ballet class and asked “where are the others going?”. I replied “they are going away home and leaving you behind”. “No they aren’t” she retorted “No” I said “they are going to get the car and bring it round here so you can go”.

There was more than this too but as you are probably eating your meal right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

What had occupied my time this morning was the radio programme that needed to be prepared. Yesterday I’d paired the music so I had to do the rest this morning.

And much to my surprise it was all done and dusted by 11:20, which is a new record, and I could even have finished earlier than that had I not forgotten to deduct the 35 seconds of speech from the time left over at the end of the programme.

As a result the final track was 35 seconds too long and I had to spend some time editing out a pile of speech to make the final track fit.

There was the usual break for breakfast, and my fruit loaf, the one that I made yesterday, is delicious.

When the radio programme was finished and while I was listening to it to make sure that it’s OK, I wrote up the notes from yesterday and posted them on line

After lunch I sat down to work on the journal entry from 31st JULY from when I went out socialising, and the excitement that I had on the way home. Unfortunately I … err … closed my eyes for a while, even though I had a full mug of hot coffee by my side.

Cold coffee doesn’t really taste the same.

Coming round from my reverie took longer than usual and it led to rather a late afternoon walk.

Down to the wall at the end of the car park to look at what was happening down on the beach.

And today, not only were there people sunbathing, there were a few actually in the water enjoying themselves, although I can’t see how anyone could possibly be enjoying themselves in any kind of water at a temperature less than 37°C.

Mind you, today there was hardly a breath of wind and it was fairly warm. I’d even gone out without a jacket or pullover, for the first time since I can’t remember when.

One thing that we haven’t seen for quite a while has been any fishermen.

Today, there was one of them standing on the rocks down at the end of the beach at the Place d’Armes. Of course, as you might expect, he never actually caught anything while I was watching, but then that’s par for the course.

And for a change, there wasn’t anyone in a boat fishing just offshore. Usually you don’t have the one without the other but we haven’t seen any seaborne fishermen with rod and line for quite a while.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of seaborne commercial fisherman.

My roving eye out at sea had picked up some kind of activity going on round by where we spent the night in the Spirit of Conrad last year. It looks as if it’s one of the inshore shell-fishing boats.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are some shellfish beds out there and I suppose that the boat is engaged in harvesting the fruits of the sea.

There are some bouchot beds out there too and I suppose that the quality of the harvest from there would be beautiful seeing as there’s almost no human interaction over there.

But there was something else going on even further out behind the Ile de Chausey in the English Channel, something that looked rather like a large boat.

Although I couldn’t see it clearly, I took a photo of it with the aim of blowing it up (the image, not the object) and enhancing it to see if I can find a clue as to her identity.

Having done that and enhanced the image sufficiently, I noticed that her silhouette resembles one of the Condor high-speed ferries that works the round trip between Poole, the Channel Islands and St Malo.

This photo was taken at 16:33 (remember, the camera is set to standard, not Summer time) and I noticed from the radar that at 16:53 the high-speed ferry Condor Voyager pulled into the harbour at St Malo

Over the fast few days we’ve seen storm and rain clouds gathering across the bay along the Brittany coast.

Today, there’s yet another rainstorm descending onto the sea just offshore over there. There ware a couple of boats, one a yacht and the other one that looks as if it might be a small fishing boat, that look as if they are about to be engulfed.

There are several small beaches over there that are quite popular with holidaymakers and they must be having something of a torrid time with the weather over the last few days.

Around the path on top of the cliffs to the viewpoint overlooking the port where I could look down onto the chantier naval and the ferry terminal.

Earlier on in this journal I posted a photo of Joly France settled down in the silt over by the ferry terminal, and here in front of here is Chausiaise, the freight barge who has moved from her mooring in the inner harbour where we saw her yesterday.

That would seem to indicate that she too is either about to go or has just been out on a run with freight over to the Ile de Chausey. The service is still continuing despite the depressing summer so far.

Yesterday, we saw a shrink-wrapped boat on the quayside waiting for transport out to the Channel Islands.

The boat has now been joined by a pile of building material so we can assume that there will be a freighter coming into the harbour imminently.

And if we look to the side, we’ll see that Marité has gone off for a sail today. We’ve not seen her out there at sea but I can tell you that she left port this morning at 08:06 and apparently she came back on the evening tide.

That isn’t everything either.

There’s an issue, just as there is everywhere, of kids on motorbikes running around with little respect to the rule of law (and just in case anyone wonders, I was a young tearaway on a motorbike too in my youth) but here in the car park at the Boulevard Vaufleury, a couple of the local police force are giving one of the motorcyclists the third degree.

They are checking his papers, under the scrutiny of that woman over there who seems to be expressing a keen interest in whatever is going on.

Back at the apartment I finished off the outstanding journal entry and then went off to prepare a dessert for this week.

The choice fell on an apple crumble, and this is one of the best that I have ever made. You can see that I’ve already taken a helping out of it. That went down really well after my vegan pie and vegetables for tea.

But now that everything is done, i’m off to bed. Another early night and I hope that I have a better one that I did last night. I’ve been feeling a little better today and I hope that it keeps up. Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson and I need to be on form.

Sunday 8th August 2021 – NOW THAT I HAVE …

… dealt with the issues of the radio programme for Monday, I can turn my attention to the journal entry for Sunday.

Having gone off to bed early and being awoken almost immediately by a bunch of revellers going home (as you’ve seen previously, it’s Concert Fortnight in the Old Town) I didn’t really have the relaxing night for which I was hoping.

Several times during the night I awoke, usually for no good reason and had I been really keen I could have been up and out of bed at 06:20. But I’m not that keen so I stayed in bed and didn’t leave until 09:30, which is early enough on a Sunday as it is.

Despite the turbulent night I’d been off on quite a few voyages and traveled a long way. And much to my surprise, things started off quite positively and pleasantly which is a surprise considering how things have been just recently, although it didn’t take them long to descend into the more habitual chaos and disorder.

Last night I started offin Crewe on Nantwich Road and there was a whole load of stuff that we had to somehow dispose of. We’d started by dumping it into an empty shop that was near where Barclays Bank used to be. While we were doing that someone came in and asked if we could repair the ferrule on their umbrella. We repaired that then someone else came in for anoher simple job like that which we did. The 3rd person who came in was a young girl and it was somethign similar as well, a ferrule on an umbrella Hers was a retractable one and I ended up dismantling it and found out that one of the set screws had sheared off. I cleaned it and did what I could to repair it. We started to talk about music and everyone there joined in. We were having a really good time discussing all kinds of groups. she’d been to see groups like Men at Work, all of those. As she was about to leave I called her back and asked for her e-mail address which she gave me. The ws started to talk about Strife. She said that her mother used to go to concerts as well and we jokingly said “Barry Manilow”. This was turning into something really quite pleasant. My radio programme came up and she said that she listened to my shows. She’d heard Strife and it was a pretty good thing
Later on a friend of mine put in an appearance. There was a group of us and we’d been doing something. i’d been involved in this from the beginning and my e-mail address had been handed in. The guy who’d been orgaising it had asked for a couple more addresses so I was going to say “I think you have mine already” and read it out so that she’d get a hint of this but instead he asked for hers and she wrote it down on a piece of paper and I could see it. She put it into an envelope and made sure that the woman who was co-orinating everythign had seen it, and then she popped it inside my envelope and said “here, you can have this”so I made a romantic kind of gesture and that seemed to go down well.

Later on I was doing somethingwith my partner and I can’t remember what it was but it was something to do with jars and containers and their contents. She made one of her remarks again and I said something and then I said “I suppose that you’re going to tell me that it’s all over in a minute are you?”. She replied “yes. It’s been all over between the two of us for quite some time” and generally going on like that.

At another point during the night i’d been researching an article on Greenock Morton FC, reading all the way through it and making notes. i’d got through to something like line 10,000 and something but I kept being drawn back to something round about 4,000-odd where there was some talk of a certain name who had a nightmare game for Morton. It looked as if he’d been on trial or something. His name was mentioned and it seemed to imply that he’d been a goalkeeper but I’d never ever remembered a goalkeeper of that name being there even once. I kept on being drawn back to this particular chapter or paragraph and trying to find out more about it. Talking to all these people and I was really bogging myself down in this research. It was a kind of thing that could be cleared up in a minute but for some unknown reason I just couldn’t get myself out of this paragraph.

And doesn’t that sound just like where I am with several projects right now?

This morning with it being Sunday I took it relatively easy because there will be plenty to do this afternoon. I simply edited a few photos from Greenland, and we are now ashore at Ilulissat visiting the abandoned Inuit village of Sermermiut and the stage is being set for the subsequent dramatic events that took place.

After lunch there was baking to do. The bread that I’d made with Liz had died a death and so I needed a new loaf, and I’d also run out of fruit bread. No pizza dough either so I had to make a pile of that too.

By the time that I was ready to go walkies all of that was sitting away simmering quite nicely.

First place to go and visit was the beach – in a virtual way of course because I can’t get back up the steps these days.

The tide is a long way from being in and if you compare this photo with THIS ONE that was taken at almost exactly the same time yesterday, you’ll see how the tide develops from one day to the next.

The difference between the two water levels represents just 38 minutes according to the tide tables so you can see how quickly the tide comes in on the beach down there.

As usual, while one of my eyes is roaming around on the beach, the other one is looking around out at sea.

There weren’t any marine craft out there at sea today which was a surprise because for a change just recently, the sky is quite clear out at sea . The lighthouse and the houses surrounding stand out quite distinctly today.

The lighthouse itself is 37 metres above sea level and there are 79 steps that take you to the top. The beam of the light can be seen 45 kilometres away in good weather.

While I had the camera poised, I took a photo of the northern end of the island .

When I enlarged it I was able to make out a yacht that was sailing around just offshore. There wasn’t any other kind of water craft out there around the island this afternoon. I suppose that the tide isn’t high enough for the Joly France ferries to be out working yet.

So with nothing else going on out at sea right now, I set off down the path on my walk around the headland

And I wasn’t alone out there this afternoon either, as you can see in this image.

Set against the backdrop of a heavy dark grey cloud, the lighthouse stands out magnificently, with the semaphore post to the right and surrounded by the remains of the German fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.

Standing out there to the right was a crowd of people gawking out to see, although I couldn’t see what it was that had attracted their attention because there was nothing whatever going on out to sea.

But when I reached the top and stood on top of the old bunker, I could see something moving out in the English Channel, in a completely different direction to that in which everyone was looking.

Back at the apartment later I was able to crop out the section of the photo, enlarge it and enhance it. And I was able to discern that it was some kind of large sailing ship of a type that resemble our Newfoundlander, Marité.

Keeping that idea in my mind, I wandered off down the path across the car park and down to the end of the headland.

Yesyerday, when we were standing at the end of the headland we saw an impressive storm brewing away over the Brittany coast.

Today, we’ve been lashed by showers on and off throughout the day and we can see that there’s another big storm brewing over there this afternoon too and it’s pouring down with rain in Brittany.

It won’t be long before the storm arrives over here so I don’t want to hang about to long over here. I’d better be heading back home rather quickly.

Down the path on the southern side of the headland I arrived at the viewpoint overlooking the port where I could see what was going on.

No change of occupancy in the Chantier Naval over the last 24 hours so I had a look over towards the ferry terminal. The tide is out and Belle France is over there in a NAABSA position, and we can therefore see her shape.

Yesterday, when we saw the ferry terminal we noticed that because of the weather the terminal and the surrounding harbour wall were completely deserted. Today though, with the slightly better weather, there were some people loitering around and others walking along the top of the wall around the port de plaisance.

But we can rule out the idea that it was the Marité that we saw out at sea earlier.

In this photo we can see her bow intruding into the photo. Therefore she’s at anchor and we’ll have to think again about the identity of the sailing ship that we saw.

Next to her in the loading bay is the trawler L’Alize 3 that we saw for a while in the chantier naval.

But my eye has been caught by the shrink-wrapped boat on the quayside. This would seem to me to indicate that one of the little Channel Island freighters will be in port quite soon to take it away.

Back at the apartment I added the mixed fruit to the fruit bread dough and then kneaded all of the three dough mixes the second time and put that for the fruit bread and the ordinary bread into their moulds and left everything to proof a second time.

When they were ready I put the two loaves into the oven.

With the pizza dough I divided it into three and put two of the parts into the freezer. The third, I rolled out and put into the pizza tray and when it had proofed again, I assembled my pizza.

Out of the oven came the bread and into the oven went the pizza, and half an hour later it was ready. And here are the finished products.

As for the bread I’ll tell you about that tomorrow but it certainly looks good. The pizza was for some reason or another undercooked and I don’t know why because the oven was switched to full and the baking tray was lowered in the oven. It’s rather bizarre, that.

You’ll probably notice that there is no pudding made today. I was going to make an apple crumble but there was no room in the oven. I’ll bake that tomorrow evening and make some baked potatoes while I’m at it. Maybe a slice of home-made vegan pie too
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Just as I was settling down to start to write my journal entry, the telephone rang. It was Rosemary who wanted to have a chat.

We were there talking for almost two hours and after, I was far too tired to write anything. Consequently I took myself off for an early night and I’ll write up my notes tomorrow.

Thursday 29th July 2021 WHILE I WAS …

… out for a walk with Liz at lunchtime on our way back from a coffee we came via the rue du nord, one of the reasons for which being that I wanted to see how they are progressing with the repair work to the medieval city walls.

Much to my surprise, they have already made a decent start to the work and I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen A SIMILAR STYLE OF WORK in the past when they were repairing the walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne.

When they did that work they did what looks like a decent job so I hope that they’ll bet on and do the same here.

And then hopefully they can get on and do the rest of the walls that are falling down around our ears. If medival builders can build something that will last for 600 years there’s no reason why modern builders shouldn’t be able to do so.

But anyway, be that as it may, I was awake at about 06:00 this morning as usual so I had my medication and came back in here listen to the dictaphone. We were all at home but home was dirty, disgusting and untidy and a complete mess. For some reason, at a court my mother’s family life as a young person was being discussed. Then some time later or was it earlier, I dunno, we ended up with anoher girl staying with us and we were trying to think of a place to go. But then this girl started talking about going to somewhere on the North Wales coast where she had been. She asked if we had ever been there and we replied “ohh no, we had far too much class. We went to Rhyl” which provoked howls of laughter but this gave us an idea and we booked a trip to Rhyl. When we arrived on the coach we all piled off and this girl “ohh yes I know all of this, I know all of that” so we were having a laugh and a joke and teasing her. Our mother was telling us to be quiet, we mustn’t be so rude. Then something happened to my mother and she ended up talking about other people behind their backs and we were sitting there saying “mother, don’t be so rude” which of course didn’t go down very well. We crossed the road over to the river.

At that point I’d switched off the dictaphone, which makes a change from the way that things have been just recently.

When I’d finished transcribing the notes I finished off the tidying up of the apartment as far as I could and it actually looks quite tidy, which is just as well, because Liz turned up.

We started off making the first dough for my fruit bread and she gave me several valuable hints for the first kneading, and then we put it into a basin to proof while we had a nice cold drink.

After the drink I mixed the fruit for the filling but Liz thinks that I’m putting too much fruit and nuts in it – and she would leave out the banana too. As for the banana chips she thinks that I should be breaking them up.

Liz showed me her method of adding the fruit and nuts, which might have worked had I not been using so many.

That was the cue to go for a coffee so we walked down to La Rafale, bumping into one of our neighbours on the way. And also meeting another one at the bar.

On the way back we came via the Rue du Nord and I’m pleased to report that the absence of boats out to sea over the last couple of days must have been an aberration because they were all there today.

As many yachts as you might care to see this afternoon and I suspect that it might have something to do with the state of the tide. The tide is well in, the outer port is under water and the gates to the harbour and the port de plaisance are open.

It will be a completely different situation, I suspect, when the tide is ebbing and the gates are about to close. Then all of the marine craft will scuttle off home to safety.

Incidentally, there’s a dark blue flag right out there in the distance. I wonder if that’s Black Mamba gone off for a run around in the bay.

It wasn’t just water craft that were out there this lunchtime.

There was a swimmer down there doing the Australian crawl along the coastline just offshore. In a wetsuit too, and I can’t say that I blame him either because although it was sunny, it wasn’t actually all that pleasant.

Now comes the story of a disaster. Liz hadn’t asked me how I baked my bread and I hadn’t thought to tell her, so when I produced the bread mould back home she was taken by surprise.

The bread fell apart as we tried to move it gently into the mould so that didn’t work too well. Anyway we put it in the oven to bake while we had lunch.

After lunch, our next trick was to make a pineapple upside-down cake. I don’t know why but I’ve been hankering after one of these for a while and Liz had a recipe. Well, of an apple upside-down cake but the theory is still the same so we had a go at that.

That went into the oven and while it was baking, Liz still had some time to spare. A while back she had sent me a recipe for cranberry and pecan cookies and as I actually had some cranberries (but cashew nuts instead) we made a pile of those too. They went into the oven as soon as the upside-down cake was baked, and we went for a walk outside.

We hadn’t gone more than five yards out of the building before two things happened.

Firstly, we were overflown by a light aeroplane. Well, not exactly overflown – it was in fact right out at sea and it was difficult to pick it up with the camera.

Some judicious editing when I was back home later showed it to be 50SA – another light aircraft that does not figure in any register that I have been unable to find, even though we’ve seen it before. It’s painted out in the style of a World-War II US Army Air Force fighter although its fixed tricycle undercarriage tells me that it is anything but.

The second thing that happened was that we were swept away in the turmoil of a furniture removal. Someone else is moving out of the building. There won’t be anyone else left except me at this rate, and I won’t be here for all that long at the rate that bits are dropping off me.

No walk outside the building these days is complete, or even begins, without a walk across to the end of the car park to look down onto the beach to see the activity down there.

By now the tide has gone well out and there’s plenty of room for people to be moving around this afternoon. Not that there were too many people though because while the weather had improved, it hadn’t improved that much.

nd while I was admiring the people in the water, Liz’s eye had picked out a father rubbing his young children with sun tan oil so that they could all run into the sea and wash it off.

Yes, I used to be a child too, believe it or not.

While I’d been watching the beach with one eye, the other one had as usual been roving out to sea.

Out there was a silhouette on the horizon that looked quite familiar to me so we headed for the nearest high ground where I could have a better view.

Once safely installed I took a photo and later on after Liz had left, I had a look at it, cropped it, enhanced it and blew it up (the photo, not the object)

No prizes of course for guessing what it might be, because we are all familiar with this silhouette right now.

Anything that’s big, with three masts and loads of sail can only be the Marité, our sole remaining Newfoundlander fishing boat, gone out on the morning tide for a lap around the coast and will probably return home this later on the evening tide.

Liz had also spotted this and wanted to know what it was. I explained that it was probably asylum-seekers who had gone to the UK, decided that they didn’t like it and came back.

Seriously though, I thought that it might have been fishermen at first, which it may well be, but of what description?

And I wonder if they had anything to do with the strange square object bottom left? It doesn’t look like a mooring buoy marker or a lobster pot marker, so I wonder if it’s a diver in a face mask?

Mind you, what would be be diving for that he couldn’t find quicker and easier in an hour or so when the tide has gome out and the sea bed is uncovered?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw the swimming pool on the quayside and I intimated that this would mean that Normandy Trader would be on her way into port quite soon.

And look who’s in port this afternoon then? I wasn’t wrong. And I was very lucky to see her because usually she comes in as soon as the harbour gates open and she does a quick turn-round and disappears back to Jersey with her load before they close again.

And so I’ve no idea why she’s loitering in port this afternoon. I suppose that these swimming pools have to be stowed very carefully because they are quite fragile, especially when they have a rolling sea to contend with.

Tons of other stuff on the quayside too and they’ll be lucky to fit all of that in. They can’t exactly drop it inside the swimming pool.

But in the meantime, while you are admiring Normandy Trader, there’s another item worthy of note.

Here moored up at the quayside by the fish processing plant is another one of the local fishing boats, left to go aground as the tide goes out.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve discussed this phenomenon on many … “many, many” – ed … occasions in the past so I shan’t dwell on it again. Instead, Liz and I will go home and see how the biscuits are doing.

And cooked to perfection they were too, so we had another cold drink to celebrate, and rightly so because when you are out of the wind it’s really quite warm in the sun.

After another chat, Liz decided to head off for home and make tea for Terry who had been out working.

That was a shame because I had a few things that I wanted to discuss, but they were things of the moment and it’s doubtful that the moment will ever present itself in the same way again.

Having seen Liz safely off on her way, I had a look at all of our cooking efforts for today.

As I mentioned earlier, the fruit load was not as it was supposed to be. The consistency and texture were perfect – the best that I’ve ever tasted and that was certainly a success. But picking it up and putting it into the bread mould halfway through its second proofing was not a success as you can see.

We’d already sampled the cookies and I do have to say that they were pretty good too. That was certainly a success and instead of cranberries and pecans, almost any kind of dried fruit and nut will do.

It’s like most things, when you are baking, you have your basic recipe and you adjust it as you go along, depending on what you have to hand.

When I worked in that Italian restaurant in Wandsworth, the woman who owned it told me that whenever she interviewed a new chef she would always have him make a tomato sauce. If that were good, then everything else would be.

Incidentally, my tomato sauce passed muster, but then Nerina was full of fiery Italian blood so what do you expect? I had a good teacher.

Back in my little office I sat down on my comfy chair and found that I couldn’t move. Not actually stuck in it, but I lacked the energy to pull myself out of it. I started to do some work but I couldn’t concentrate on it and that was the most difficult part.

Eventually a football match came on the internet. Connah’s Quay Nomads were playing FC Pristina in the European Championships. Having lost 4-1 in Kosovo last week they were up against it but it all started so well for them and within 3 minutes they had pulled a goal back.

They were pushing forward and forward incessantly and could have had several more but in the space of five minutes were hit for two soft, sucker goals, the kind that would kill off any team.

Nevertheless, Andy Morrison isn’t one to throw in the towel. He pulled off a defender at half time and sent on an attacker and then it was a relentless stream down the field towards the Pristina goal.

To everyone’s surprise, they managed to score three goals as they created all kinds of panic in the Kosovar defence, and had Mike Wilde not been offside in the 70th minute or had Jamie Insall had a clearer connection on the ball in stoppage time, who knows where they would be now?

But this is the problem with so many Welsh clubs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They are up against teams that are much more street-wise and astute than they are, with several internationals from all over the developing world in their teams, and while domestic Welsh teams can turn on a performance like this, little lapses of concentration and stupid, silly mistakes are ruthlessly punished and rob them of just about everything.

Meanwhile, in the other match that wasn’t broadcast, events went on to prove just how wrong I can be. Having stuffed no fewer than 5 goals past FK Kauno Zalgiris of Lithuania last week, TNS went out and did exactly the same again tonight, to record the biggest ever aggregate win by a Welsh domestic side in any European competition anywhere. Teams with a long history in European competition, like Dinamo Tbilsi, Austria Wien and AA Gent were knocked out of the tournament last night.

It was 01:00 when I finally found the energy to go off to bed. And with getting up at 06:00 and going to the doctor’s tomorrow, I’m not looking forward to that at all.

Sunday 18th July 2021 – YOU CAN TELL …

… what kind of weather we’ve had today by looking at this photo.

Piles of boats out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel heading back towards the Port de Plaisance before the gates close with the turn of the tide. It seems that everyone has been out to sea this afternoon.

And that’s really not a surprise at all because the temperature reached the upper 20s this afternoon and there was almost no wind and it’s a long time since I’ve been able to sat that

But I missed a lot of the day today because of course I was going to have a lie-in this morning to recover from my journey to Leuven.

And with the intention of having a lie-in, 07:20 is far too early for me to be thinking of leaving my stinking pit. Even 09:30 was far too early but because couldn’t go back to sleep I was up and about shortly afterwards.

My push for fewer medications seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Instead of there being 7 pills and tablets to take every morning, there are now 9. So that didn’t work.

And what else didn’t work was relieving this fatigue either. I’ve spent most of the day trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, not to fall asleep.

First thing that I did after the medication was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was at the Grammar School last night and there was a meeting taking place of the School Committee – some teachers, some pupils. The door was in a position where from the top of the stairs I could take photos of people coming and going so that was what I was doing. I’d been talking to a few people whom I knew. Then a girl appeared. I know who she is but I just can’t put a name and I wish that I could remember her name, and she was wearing some kind of ridiculous plunging neckline top. From where I was on the top of the stairs I had a really good view. There was a lavatory block in the middle of the hall with the Gents on one side and the Ladies on the other and on one of the ends. For some unknown reason none of these were suitable so this girl asked me where else do the ladies go. So I told her about the loos next to the 5th form common room. She looked bewildered and I thought “well, I’ve not been in this school for so long. The 5th form common room is bound to have changed from where it was in my day” and I had to try to explain to her where it all was. They said “okay” they’ll go off and find it. So off they went in a kind-of completely different way to the way that I had told them to go so I’d no idea what was happening there.

Some time later I was round at a friend’s and he was in a couple with a girl who is in real life the wife of someone else. He was talking about going on holiday and he had a trailer coupled up to his car but he had just a piece of paper as the rear numberplate with a number written on it put over the top of the number of the trailer. I told him that he would be far better off getting a real numberplate and putting it on. He was convinced that he was doing things the right way so I left him to it. I told him that in Europe trailers were registered themselves with their own numbers, all that kind of thing. So the girl and I were there after he had gone and we were doing some things. There was something important that needed doing for which I needed her help but I can’t remember what it was now but she said “we’ll see how it goes” but then as time drew on she said “we’re going to have to do this scene with some vehicles on it” so reluctantly I agreed and anyway so something was getting on and there were a couple of lively cats and a small dog playing around and then she made a decision about having a cup of tea so I got up to make one. I put the tea bags in the pot and I was about to fill the pot and she said “no, don’t make a pot of tea because I won’t be drinking it” so I said “I won’t bring you tea in the morning then in that case” so I went off to I don’t know where.

But there was somewhere along the line that I’d been out in a car and we were going to somewhere near Aberystwyth. I was with Percy Penguin and we drove all the way out there to do something but in the end came across an auction where they were selling old motorbikes. There was one old British one in a terrible state but looked complete but there were no bids on it so the guy said “does anyone want it?”. I was feeling really bad because had we gone in Caliburn I could have brought that back without any trouble at all but instead we’d gone in an ordinary saloon car and there was no room in it for a thing like a motor bike. I was really upset by that, and not just when I was asleep either.

Before lunch I went and mixed three loads of dough – one for the pizza bases for the next three weeks, the second for the jam roly-poly and the third with wholemeal flour for the fruit bread. That was all mixed up and then I could go for my lunch.

This afternoon, in between bouts of sleep I tried to bring up to date Friday’s journal entry, but I have to say that I didn’t get very far with it and nothing has changed with the entry already so far on line.

Another thing was to give all of the dough a second kneading. The roly poly was flattened out square and spread with jam, and then rolled up rather like a swiss roll. I had to cut it in two to make it fit the baking tray.

The pizza dough was kneaded, divided into 3 and two of the lumps were rolled in oil, wrapped in greaseproof paper and put in the freezer. The third was rolled out and put in the pizza tray to proof.

To the wholemeal dough, I added a ripe banana, some desiccated coconut, dried fruit, sultanas and various assorted nuts ground into powder. That was all mixed up, kneaded, shaped and put in the smaller bread mould.

As well as all of that, I’ve been pairing off the music for the next radio programme bur I won’t be working on that this week because I have a full-time Welsh course stating at 11:00 on Monday

In between that I went off for my afternoon walk, not forgetting that I have to go to the beach to see what was happening there.

Across the car park I went and looked over the wall to see what was happening, and I was amazed by the crowds of people down there. And although there wasn’t very much beach to be on right now, the sea was pretty much full of people this afternoon.

It seems that every man and his dog has gone down to the beach to frolic about in the sea this afternoon. It would surprise me if there was enough room for everyone to find a little spot to sit down

And it wasn’t just down on the beach that there were crowds of people either.

The sea was quite full as well with all kinds of craft out there this afternoon. There were several interesting boats but my vote for pride of place has to go to this inflatable zodiac thing that was paddling around offshore with a man and a woman on board doing the paddling.

And I particularly liked their version of a lifeboat that they were towing behind them. An inflatable rubber ring in the form of a car tyre that will be a great help if ever it were to be called upon to perform the task for which it was intended.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are four flagpoles by the Monument to the French Resistance, but one of them was taken away a few weeks ago.

While i was away it seems that they have done whatever it was that needed to be done to the flagpole and it’s resumed its place down by the lighthouse. So the German flag was once more flying quite happily by the American, French and British flags.

There were crowds of people out there this afternoon, most of whom weren’t wearing masks despite the rising infection totals here in France. I still wear mine and in any case I did my best to keep my distance as I walked around the path.

While I’d been walking around the path I noticed something moving out at sea. I took a photo of it with the aim of enlarging it whe I returned home.

Actually, I had a really good idea of what it might be and as I enlarged the image I could see that I was right too. It’s one of the Joly France boats that runs the ferry service between here and the Ile de Chausey.

She’s pretty much loaded up with passengers, either day trippers or holidaymakers coming back and presumably catching the evening train to Paris.

But back to our story, and I carried on down the path and across the car park to the end of the headland. There wasn’t much going on there so I continued on down the path and round the other side.

It was round about here that I was overflown by a light aircraft that had apparently just taken off from the airport.

She’s one whom we haven’t seen before – F-BSLF, a Robin DR-315 “Petit Prince”. She’s not one of the Aero Club aeroplanes who we see on regular occasions.

In fact she only arrived this morning at the airport. Although she didn’t file a flight plan, she was picked up by radar at 08:51 somewhere near St Seglin heading towards the airport and disappeared off the radar near Mont St Michel, presumably to have a closer view as she came in to land.

And then she took off again at 16:13, when was when I saw her, and she flew south before disappearing off the radar again at Baulin near St Seglin. So it’s reasonable to suppose that she comes from somewhere around there.

Having disposed of the aeroplane I could continue on my way along the path towards the harbour and see what’s going on down there.

And there have been changes at the chantier naval while I’ve been away. We are down to just two trawlers, L’Alize 3 and Galapagos. The other two trawlers that were there, Black Pearl and Charles Marie II have gone back into the water. The latter boat wasn’t in the chantier naval.

The yacht Rebelle is still in there. They told me last time I was down there that she would be back in the water “shortly”, but they were clearly talking in Geological terms.

Further along the wall I could see down into the inner harbour.

There wasn’t a great deal of activity down there this afternoon. But our old friend Marité is still in there. It looks as if that trip that she was planning yesterday when all of those people were going aboard can’t have been going very far – probably just into the bay and back.

The big wheel is there of course, and it was actually working as well. There must have been plenty of people wanting to go for a ride. It’s not the thing for me though – I’m sure that I have a much better view from up here on top of the cliffs than I would on top of the wheel.

While I was admiring the inner harbour a siren from the ferry terminal brought me back to reality.

When I looked round I could see that Joly France was reversing out of the terminal – hence the siren – and heading back out to sea. There must be plenty more people out there on the island waiting to come back to the mainland, more than the other Joly France boat can handle.

But I couldn’t wait for the two boats to come back. I came on back home to carry on work and trying hard not to fall asleep.

Round about 18:00 I put on the oven and bunged in the fruit loaf followed a few minutes later by the jam roly poly. And when they were cooked I bunged in the pizza which I had been preparing.

When the pizza was cooked I took that out of the oven. And here it is with the jam roly poly and the fruit bread.

The pizza looks absolutely delicious and it tasted delicious too. As for the jam roly poly and the fruit bread, you’ll have to wait for a day or two before I can tell you what they are like.

Back in here, fighting off the fatigue yet again, I wrote up my notes for the day and posted them on line. And that’s all that I’m doing today. I’m completely exhausted and I have so much to do tomorrow, so I’m off for an early night in bed tonight.

And I can’t wait for that either. A good night’s sleep will do me the world of good – I hope.

Sunday 4th July 2021 – CONSIDERING THAT IT’S …

… Sunday today and a Day of Rest, you’ll be surprised at just how much work I’ve done today. I know that I am.

There was even the customary lie-in, right up until about 10:30 too before I saw the light of day, and then once I was up, I was well-and-truly up, as Errol Flynn was heard to say on more than just the odd occasion in the past.

First thing that needed doing was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And you can tell that I had forgotten to take my sleeping pill thing last night because there were pages and pages of notes of adventures while I was asleep.

I started off by having marital problems last night. I went to start to get to know one or two people a little better. The problems with my wife increased. She had no interest in me and our marriage and was going about everywhere with her friends both male and female and using this house as a kind of hotel coming and going as she pleased. One night she came back in and as soon as she came in she disappeared. I had to search the property and eventually I found her at an old type of church hall place like St Mark’s with a load of her friends. They were having a party and I thought that well this is on my premises so I said “fancy having a party without inviting me to it”. I thought that they ought to have had me in it at least so I muscled my way in. She was on the floor dancing at the time but tried to intervene. Eventually I became so obnoxious that everyone started to leave and she started to go. I had this 2lb bag of flour with me and for some unknown reason I poured it all down the back of her t-shirt and patted her back with it. Of course this made her extremely uncomfortable and was the rift that drove our marriage apart. I was thinking “how is she going to retaliate to this because she surely wasn’t going to leave things on their own as they have been?”…. I fell asleep here… Yes, the pressure on these not-really-married people was so intense and it soon became clear that whoever didn’t want my wife or anyone of her family in our country. I was quite pleased by this as I could start to get on and do something and issue some directives and at moments at the house but she wasn’t very happy at all when she saw me with what I was doing.

There were some tanks and all the heavy equipment, a full garage … I fell asleep here … at the end we were trying to get more stuff through but because of the train traffic we couldn’t … fell asleep again … I had two apples still in the oven there that couldn’t fit in the loaf that was going in the sixth car bonnet … fell asleep yet again … I can’t think of anything else.

There was something as well about some of my friends trying to rescue the owner of the older freezers and they had us change places and so many responses would be hanging out … fell asleep yet again … when you get there you’ll see that the big pile of equipment and property lined up that people have had to as they have been going past the city hall and this property is all going to be burned at the races and sometimes set on fire … fell asleep again …

And with all of that, I’ve absolutely no idea what was going on and, more importantly how much of everything I might have missed.

Later on there was something else about me being at my place for the last day of work before I retired. I decided to have a lie-in and this lie-in went on and on and I was in danger of not even getting there for midday. Eventually I managed to organise myself then someone came in and checked a letter that I’d written before I sent it, or maybe it was notes of an interview or something. I didn’t think that whatever I’d written was complete or good enough but I didn’t really care all that much because apart from having to come back on my final day this was the actual last day that i’d be working because I had so much holiday to take so I wasn’t all that bothered. But this woman came in and checked my letter and all my notes. She seemed quite happy and went off. I turned up in work. The first thing that I did was to go to the bathroom which was situated on the ground floor right near the front door but the corridor had a kink in it so no-one at the door could actually see what was going on inside there. The ladies’ bathroom was on the 2nd floor at the top of the stairs and I don’t know why I remembered that. This dream just faded out at this point and I probably faded out with it, but this is one of these recurring dreams that we have.

Rosemary rang me up just as I was finishing. She had a question to ask me about access issues she was having to one of her sites. In the end after much discussion I managed to identify the problem and helped her to resolve it. She went off happy and I went to have my lunch.

After lunch I had a look at the bread dough that I’d made yesterday. It had risen quite well, both lots, so into the smaller load I added all of the nuts, suitably ground up, and then the fruit and seeds, folded it all in and made sure that it was properly mixed in

With the larger amount of dough, I added in several handfuls of sunflower seeds and mixed them well in. Then both lots were shaped and then put in their respective moulds and left for their second proofing.

Back in here, I then had to organise my voyage to Leuven and back in 10 days time. Because I have some extra appointments, I’m going a day early, on the Tuesday. But with our Welsh class now being on holiday travelling on a Tuesday is no problem.

Although I have extra appointments on the Friday as well, I was at one time thinking of coming home on the Sunday but I’ve decided in the end to come back on the Saturday again. I’m becoming a real home-body, aren’t I?

But eat your hearts out, you Britishers. 1300 miles on a train, half of which is on an ultra-high-speed TGV, all for the grand sum of €123:00 – about £108:00. When I once wanted to go from London to Bath, about 150kms, it cost more than that and it worked out cheaper to hire a car, put the fuel in and drive there and back

and then it was time for walkies so I went outside and across the car park to stick my head over the wall at the end to see what was happening down on the beach.

Owing to the crowds of people hanging around, I couldn’t make it to my usual spec, but from where I ended up I could see that there wasn’t much of a beach for people to be on this afternoon. The tide was well-in by now. But nevertheless there was still the odd little crook and nanny on the rocks where people were perched to enjoy the last of it before the water drove them up the steps.

But there was at least one person this afternoon who wasn’t too bothered by all of that. He was well away, enjoying himself in the water up to the top of his legs.

As is customary, while I was here I had a good look out to sea to see if there was anything else exciting going on down there this afternoon.

At least the sea mist that we have had over the last few days seems to have lifted and so we can actually see what’s going on out at sea this afternoon. Even the Ile de Chausey is looking quite nice and resplendent in the sunshine today.

And in between here and there in the Baie de Granville are a couple of boats to whet our appetite this afternoon. A really nice large white catamaran heading our way and also some kind of speedboat travelling quite rapidly towards us too. Presumably they have both set out from the Ile de Chausey.

But that’s enough nautical action for right now. There was plenty of activity going on in the sky this afternoon.

It was difficult to read the serial number of this aeroplane that had taken off from the airfield because it kept well out to sea. The best I can come up with is that it’s F-GNJC. That’s a Diamond DV20 Katana although this doesn’t look much like one of those to me, although the angle might be deceptive.

But whatever she is, she hasn’t filed a flight plan from the airport and she didn’t fly high enough to be picked up on the flight radar either so it’s another one of those things that’s of no help whatever in enabling us to identify it.

And that wasn’t all by any means either. A short while later something else buzzed by overhead.

This one is a powered hand-glider that had also taken off from the airfield – or, at least, I think that they come from the airfield – this afternoon just after the aeroplane that we saw previously, and headed my way as I was walking around the path on the cliffs.

Of course, there is no flight plan for any of these and they aren’t ever picked up on the radar. Neither do I have access to the registration database and in any case the information would be meaningless to me so I can’t tell you anything whatever about it

After I’d walked a couple of hundred yards, threading my way through the maskless crowds again, I heard once more the sound of the powered hang-glider.

Thinking that it was the same one coming round again I didn’t pay too much attention but as it passed by I noticed that not only was it a different colour but it was in fact a two-seater machine. That has to be worth photographing before it goes out of view.

One of these days I shall have to go out to the airfield for all kinds of different purposes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I shall have to see if I can blag a ride in that as well. There’s probably some good photography to be had at 500 feet up.

And that’s not all the aerial activity either. In between the two shots of the powered hang-glider, there was more aerial activity that caught me eye.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we have a couple of birds of prey that fly around the edge of the clifftop here. There is plenty of small wildlife in the long grass, including a colony of rabbits.

It must be good hunting ground for food because we started off with one bird occasionally, and then it became a more frequent visitor. This Spring it brought a friend and now they seem to be here almost every day.

And so am I there days, but not hunting for food. And today I did something completely different and instead of going across the lawn and the car park, I went down the steps and along the lower path.

Down here we meet all kinds of activity, and it’s the favourite spot for us to catch a few fishermen.

Today there were three of them out there in a zodiac busy casting their lines into the water. And I thought that my luck might be in today as I saw the guy on the left reel in his line. “Are we going to see someone actually catch something after all this time?” I mused, but he reeled in and cast out his line again.

There were a couple of guys fishing from the rocks but they were of little importance today. They weren’t even close to catching anything, so I left them to it and continued on my way down the path.

And I can now reveal the name for which I have been searching for the trawler that has been in the chantier naval for the last few days.

This was my purpose of going down on the lower footpath that takes me round to the port this afternoon. I wanted to check up on her name because, knowing my luck, she’ll be back in the water before I would otherwise do it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I reckoned that she was the sister-ship to the new trawler Le Pearl and I bet that I’m correct too because apart from the colour scheme; she’s called Black Pearl and that’s all pretty conclusive. And it’s nice to be in a position to take a good photo of her.

As for the other boat that’s here on the other side of Philcathane, I was right about that yesterday too.

She is indeed the trawler L’Alize III, the trawler that appeared in the inner harbour a short while ago and about which there was all that commotion a couple of months ago. I was rather hoping that there would be someone around with the boat who might want to chat, but there was no-one.

Disappointed, I headed back up the hill in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers in the general direction of home and a nice hot coffee. It was quite a warm afternoon but a hot coffee never goes amiss at any time of the day.

When I reached the top of the hill I could look down into the port to see what was happening.

It’s a Sunday today and most of the fishermen are having a day off today. All their boats are moored in the inner harbour. It looks as if there has been one out there working earlier because she’s now come in and is looking for a place to tie up for the rest of the day.

Back at the apartment I made my coffee and then looked at the pizza dough that I’d taken out of the freezer earlier today. It had now defrosted so I could roll it out and put it into the pizza tray (that I’d greased earlier) and left it to fester.

That was the cue to switch on the oven and when it was nice and hot I stuck the two loaves of bread in there to bake.

And while they were baking I came in here and dealt with a large order of things that I need to makr from Amazon.

I know that it’s a popular thing to go “Amazon-bashing” but have a look at where most of the products come from. Amazon might be the handler but in most cases (and in the case of almost everything that I buy) it isn’t the supplier or the expeditor. Most of the products are sold and distributed by small retailers who simply use the on-line “shop window” provided by Amazon.

During the pandemic with more and more small businesses being obliged to close their doors to face-to-face sales, they have turned to on-line shop windows like Amazon.

But anyway, when the bread was nearly ready I went and assembled the pizza and once the bread was cooked, out it came and in went the pizza. And when that was done, I sat down and attacked it. It was delicious as well, as was the bottle of that alcohol-free beer that I bought yesterday.

As for the bread, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

“And no dessert?” I hear you say. Well, there’s plenty of chocolate sponge left that needs finishing so I didn’t bake anything else. That’s enough for the next few days and in 10 days time I’m off to Leuven anyway.

Talking about being off, I’m off to bed right now. It’s hard to believe that it’s been my Day of Rest today with everything that I’ve done today. I’m exhausted. I can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow so that I can have a rest.

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 – THERE AREN’T MANY …

… many photos today. And when you see the weather that we were having, it’s hardly any surprise.

When I went out for my afternoon walk today I was in sou’wester, oilskins and gumboots and had to battle my way along the coastal path in the teeth of a howling gale. Of course I stuck my head over the wall at the end of the car park as you might expect, but as you also might expect, there wasn’t a soul down there this afternoon. The place was totally deserted.

But anyway, back to this morning. I awoke with the alarm at 06:00 and was up and about quite promptly. First thing that I did after the medication was to add all of my secret ingredients to my fruit loaf and give it all a second kneading, shaping, and put in the bread mould.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I started off on board a ship again. We’d gone up to the quayside and the captain said “you’re in for a surprise with all these changes”. Anyway we went aboard and there was some kind of meeting so we went to participate in it. There was this yellow dick running around called Donald. Someone said “right, we’re going to talk about photography. I want you to imagine that you are sticking your head outside your tent in the morning” – something like that and he stuck his head outside the tent and said “we’re going to take a photo of it”. In the meantime this duck had come to me. There was a little 3 year old girl sitting next to me. She saw this and said “ahh, Donald”. I said “no I’m Eric actually”. She started talking to this duck and I has a feeling that there would be lots more of this to come.

Later on I was reporting to a ship at the harbour side and came on board. The captain said something like “things are changing now. You’ll find things the other way round” or whatever. Then he said “the task for today is to work out how you would get from x to y”. Of course this was quite easy because I used to do this thing with taxis and underground trains pushing me around. So I planned a route from the Strand to Underwood Lane without going anywhere near Gordon. he said “that’s maybe OK but what would God say if he came along and saw it” but I supposed that I’d been doing my good story here on the scene and … I fell asleep here

Incidentally, I was surprised by the similarity between the way the two dreams started, and I wonder where I would have ended up in the second dream had I not gone back to sleep.

By the way, when I say “fell asleep” – what I mean is that my speech descends into a slur and I stop talking. And you can tell by my breathing that I’m in a deep sleep. When I dictate these details I’m usually unaware of what I’m doing – it’s an automatic reaction to grab hold of the dictaphone even if to all intents and purposes I’m asleep.

Having done that I put the fruit bread in the oven to bake and, armed with a mug of coffee I attacked the Welsh revision and also took advantage of the possibility of booking myself onto a week’s course at the end of July. There’s so much going on in July now that I’ve actually started a calendar.

When the lesson began I armed myself with my hot chocolate and a slice of fruit bread which was now ready, and attended the lesson. It passed quickly enough, and I only fell asleep once. All in all, it was quite good today. And my fruit bread was perfection. Putting the fruit in at the second mix rather than the first seemed to do the trick.

After lunch and a little clearing up I came in here to do some work but unfortunately I hadn’t gone too far before I crashed out. And it was one of those occasions where I hadn’t realised that I’d been asleep until I awoke.

And that had actually taken me up to walkies time. A look outside this morning had made me fear the worst and nothing had changed at all as the day had progressed so it was the rainwater gear.

We’ve already seen the beach and the absence of people thereupon, but that wasn’t much of an indication of what the weather was doing. This photo sums it up quite nicely.

That’s the Spirit of Conrad, the boat on which we went up and down the Brittany coast last year, coming back from the Ile de Chausey. You can see that the wind is catching it beam-on and even with such a small amount of sail, it’s careening right over under the force of the wind.

It’s the kind of weather than makes me glad that I’m on dry (well, not exactly dry in this weather) land right now. I bet that it was really wild out there this afternoon.

As I went round the corner at the end of the headland there was another boat battling hard against the headwinds.

It was quite a distance out at sea and so thinking that it might be Black Mamba I took a photo with the aim of cropping it out and blowing it up (the photo, not the boat) when I returned home so that I could have a closer look.

But it’s not Black Mamba unfortunately. It’s another unidentified yacht that’s sailing around in the bay and I’ve no idea where it has come from. There’s no chance of reading her name.

So I pushed on into the gale and headed off down the path to the viewpoint overlooking the port to see what was going on there.

Even though there’s a howling gale out there people still have to eat, and I think that too many people take the fishermen for granted.

They’ve all been out there this morning and now the tide is well in, the larger boats are coming into harbour to unload their catch at the fish processing plant. There are quite a few of them at the quayside with several more in the queue waiting for a space to moor up and unload.

And that’s an indication of what happens when boats are left at the quayside – the room for unloading is smaller and the queue is longer.

With no change in occupant at the chantier navale I headed off for home and my hot coffee to warm me up.

The rest of the afternoon was spent tidying up stuff on the computer and I was so engrossed that I forgot my guitar session. I’ll have to do that tomorrow morning.

Tea was one of those breaded burgers that I bought in Noz ages ago, with baked potato and veg, followed by apple pie. And wasn’t it all delicious? I really enjoyed that. And now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a tiring day and I need my beauty sleep.

As much of it as I can get.

Wednesday 17th February 2021 – REMEMBER ME TALKING …

… about my sourdough mother solution going berserk the other day? Bearing that in mind, I thought that you might like to see it this morning.

The green rubber band around the jar is the height of the solution after I’ve mixed it, fed it and poured it back into the jar. The idea of course is so that I can check to see if it’s active, which it does by rising in the jar as the gases generated in the fermenting make the liquid less dense.

And here you can see that it’s risen by about 30% since I fed it yesterday, which is pretty good going. And if you look very carefully at the elastic band, you can see traces where it bubbled over the other day and ran down the outside of the jar.

This is turning into a pretty good batch.

Another thing that rose up pretty well this morning was me, for a change. Once more I managed to beat the third (now fourth) alarm to my feet.

First task to do once I was up was to switch on the oven to warm, and when I’d taken my medication I could check the sourdough loaf mixture in the mould.

That had risen pretty well overnight so I brushed it with milk and sprinkled it with brown sugar and bunged it straight into the oven. And in the oven it rose so well and so quickly that it fouled the lid that was on it for the first 25 minutes. It least it spread the mix about more.

After 60 minutes I took it out of the oven and hey! Presto! Here’s my finished product. It’s the best sourdough loaf that I’ve ever made as far as appearance and consistency go, and when I had a slice of it with my hot chocolate at 10:30 I can say that it was the best that I’ve ever made from a taste point of view too.

In the meantime I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night. It had been another long rambling marathon session and I can only remember bits of it. I was in uniform in the Forces at one point and we had to check the papers to see how Bangor City was doing in the English Football League and came across a column where Port Vale had signed one of Crewe’s promising youngsters. The person to whom I was talking was Youth Coach at Chelsea and saying that in the Youth Team that Chelsea had picked the previous week had been a player called Littlefield, a really small guy playing on the wing. He was saying that it was nice to see him having a chance in the team so close to the end of the season. But going back to this dream again they were putting a barricade in a cross some beaches that were below us trying to cut us off from having relief from other places. That was one of the reasons why I’d actually gone down onto the beach to see what was going on.

Later on there was a football match and I was refereeing it, being played all the way down Nantwich Road out of Crewe. There was a bit of a collision between a few players down near the junction with Manor Way and I didn’t give a throw-in for the attackers as I didn’t see who it was who kicked the ball out. I have the benefit to the defence. The attacker just picked up the ball, walked over to me, stuck it in my hand and walked off into a house. I went out to restart the game and the chairman of one of the clubs came over and told me that he admired what I was doing as a referee but he thought that I needed to improve or do better.

The rest of the morning I’ve been dealing with the photos from Greenland 2019 and that’s another large batch that has gone the Way of the West. There are still plenty to do but at least it’s some kind of progress. I’m currently on an island that is just about probably the most recently-discovered island on earth.

And if that sounds exciting, it isn’t really because it’s a bit of a trick or a cheat. And all will be revealed in due course.

After lunch I cracked on with my visit to Oradour sur Glane. It’s all written now, and rewritten, along with the visit to the Chateau de Chalus, the caste where Richard the Lionheart was killed in 1199. That’s been rewritten too.

All of the photos have been inserted in the correct place and I’ve even had a trial run of it on-line to make sure that it works. At the moment I’m in the middle of indexing the photos. I was hoping to finish it today but it’s a bigger task that I was expecting and I ran out of time. I even missed my guitar practice today too, so intent was I at pushing on.

Had I not gone off for my afternoon walk I might have done rather better, but exercise (and the hot coffee that follows it) is a vital part of the day’s proceedings. So off I trotted out into the glorious sunshine – or at least – it would have been glorious had it not been so windy yet again.

And I hadn’t expected to see a trawler out there in the English Channel seeing as the tide is so far out. But this one isn’t actually heading for home. Even with the naked eye I could see that he’s streaming all of his equipment behind him so he’s hard at work.

But it’s quite rare to see a trawler working as close inshore as this one is. I suspect – without any evidence whatsoever – that they are sounding out new fishing grounds in order to have something up their sleeves in case the Jersey authorities turn nasty again.

By now, with the sun and the wind, the path had dried out considerably so I was able to push on along the path in some kind of comparative comfort.

As I walked along the path I had a glance behind me and just at that moment the promenade that runs along the coast between St Martin de Bréhal and Coudeville-Plage was suddenly bathed in the most glorious sunlight.

It lit up as if it had been lit up by a spotlight on a stage and it was far too good an opportunity to miss. For some reason that area over there seems to attract whatever sun there is. Maybe it’s the white houses and the pale sand that reflect the light so much better than the rather more drab surroundings. It’s the same with any kind of high-gloss finish.

There were quite a few people about this afternoon – almost what you might call “crowds”. Not only is it half-term with all of the kids being off school, people are of course off work with the quarantine and curfew, so they were all taking advantage of the unseasonable weather.

If the light over at St Martin was so good there had to be something equally good in the Baie de Mont St Michel and so fighting my way through the crowds I went to have a look at what I hoped would be the light show that was taking place in the bay.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed either. There were a few gaps in the clouds that were letting the sunlight through and it was making quite a beautiful effect.

You can’t see it very well in the foreground but there is actually the breech of what I reckon is a 105mm gun The bunkers here were equipped with them for firing out to sea and when the Germans retreated in 1944 they left behind quite a bit of useless ordnance and some of it was put on a kind of display.

And that reminds me – what has a 105mm gun and should be washed in Dettol?
Of course, it’s a septic tank.
I’ll get my coat.

Yesterday I was wondering whereabouts Chausiais was moored, and I eventually managed to track her down by her AIS signal. Not for nothing do I have the port’s AIS receiver on my windowsill here.

My route took me down the path along on top of the southern edge of the cliffs and just there, there is a place where you can lean out and have a good view right down into the port. And there she is, down there at the end on the left of Marité

It’s much easier to see her today because, as we have seen, all of the trawlers that were hemming her in are now almost all out at sea.

While I was admiring Chausias I was overflown by another light aircraft.

This time, not only could I see her registration identity number, she actually came up on my flight radar too so I can tell you quite a lot about her. She’s F-GCUM, a Robin DR 140-800 Regent fitted with a Lycoming flat-four engine.

Most of her recent flights, including that of today, involved a take-off from the airport, a quick lap up and down the coast and then a landing back at the airport. That makes me wonder whether she’s something to do with a pilot school or whether she’s chartered for sightseeing trips.

After my coffee I pushed on with my Oradour page and then went for a rather late tea. Burger on a bap with veg followed by apple crumble.

And now it’s bed time. My Welsh tutorial tomorrow followed by shopping. And a few other things to do, like make some more kefir. I’m using it at an extraordinary rate right now.

Thursday 7th January 2021 – I STILL DON’T …

… know where all of the time goes, that’s for sure. All that I’ve done today as far as work goes is to answer about 10 e-mails and that’s my lot.

Mind you, it was something of a late start this morning. I heard all of the alarms go off but it was still about 07:00 when I finally left the bed.

First thing was to check the dough. 2 loads because I had prepared a normal yeast-driven loaf as well last night before going to bed.

And while the sourdough hadn’t risen by much, the standard loaf had gone up like a lift. I kneaded them both and put them in their respective moulds to proof a second time and then, after the medication, I came in here to check the dictaphone.

There was a really weird kind of dance thing going on last night with 3 young girls who were dancing and singing and performing these really rhythmic movements. There were me and two other people at the other end of the dance floor just basically keeping in time to the music. For some unknown reason, what we were trying to do was that the movements that these people were performing led to them being separated at some time and our job seemed to be that one of us, when we saw someone separated was, in keeping in time to the music, to go off down there and somehow capture the one who had come out of the pack if you like and was dancing on her own halfway down the hall. I noticed that at one time that it was always the same girl who was doing this. She had a beautiful voice and I remember thinking to myself “I wouldn’t mind capturing her”. On one occasion when this rhythmic dance was going on I had to rhythmically make my way back to my group and one of my colleagues was preparing to advance. He ended up pirouetting round and his hand caught in my clothes and went underneath the top that I was wearing and missed my catheter by a millimetre otherwise it would have been really really dramatic. We had a bit of a joke about that.

What goes on in the night is really exciting, isn’t it?

As I was off out I put a load of clothes into the washing machine to do while I’m out at the doctor’s.

The interesting thing there was that he doesn’t recommend a ‘flu injection. Everyone is in facemasks and the ‘flu isn’t expected to take a hold this year.

As for my booster injections for my immune system (I have to have them every 5 years) he gave me a prescription, along with the prescription for the medication that I forgot.

The most interesting thing is the Covid vaccine. Here in Granville, we aren’t a priority, so it seems. Cases here in the town are rare due to the fact that we are on a westerly clifftop in one of the strongest prevailing winds in Europe. Any airborne virus here is blown well inland and the only time that we usually have any outbreaks is when the holidaymakers arrive.

However, he does agree that I should be in the first batch to be vaccinated as soon as we have supplies and he made a note in my file that I would be willing to take it

Having bade farewell to the doctor I set off towards LIDL for supplies.

It’s been a long time since I set my foot in the Rue Couraye, what with having chosen a different route to go uptown just recently, so I didn’t really know much about what’s been going on there for a while. But it seems that we had have some kind of novel decorations in the street – some that I haven’t seen before.

At LIDL it was a major shop and I staggered home under quite a load. Not helped any by the fact that they were selling 3kg of carrots for the price of 1kg, and ditto the potatoes. The freezer is for a change fairly empty and I can always do things with potatoes.

Having called at the chemist’s for a rest and my medication (I have to go back for some on Saturday) I staggered up the Rue des Juifs towards home. And there I noticed that the trawlers were starting to pull away from the quayside.

The harbour gates were closed, so I was expecting them to open any minute now so I hung around to watch. However I was distracted. While I was observing the harbour I fell in with our itinerant friend who is still loitering about the town and we had a chat.

One thing that I noticed was that he had a shopping bag full of groceries so at least it seems that he’s feeding himself, which is one less thing for anyone to worry about.

On returning home I switched on the oven and then, having checked the loaves, I put them into the oven to bake.

Once again, the sourdough loaf hadn’t done very much but the normal loaf had risen impressively again. And this time I did remember to brush the top of the fruit loaf with milk and sprinkle the top with brown sugar.

While it was cooking I came in here and answered a couple of outstanding e-mails and then when the oven timer switched itself off I went to check the bread.

The standard loaf was cooked perfectly but the sourdough wasn’t so I left that in for another 20 minutes and with the standard loaf, I made some sandwiches for lunch. And it really was a good loaf, this one. Just as it should be and it was delicious.

After lunch, I attacked the carrots, peeled and diced about a kilo or so and then blanched them ready for freezing. I’ll do some more tomorrow too and then finish the rest off on Saturday.

Later on this afternoon I went out for my usual afternoon walk around the headland.

The other day, I mentioned that they had started to move the scaffolding from the north end of the east wall and reposition it down at the south end of that wall. Here, on the extreme right, you can see than dismantling some more of it to move that along too. And you can also see where they are ripping off the slates from farther along.

Up until a couple of days ago they were working to the right-hand side of the safety rail going up the roof.

This is going to be a very long job, I can see that

Further along the path at the side of the College I stopped to have a look at one of the bushes that was growing there.

The other day the gardeners had been by and trimmed the bushes back. But I’d noticed, a day or so later, that there seemed to be some small buds starting to grow. Sure enough, one or two of them have burst out into leaves.

It’s very tempting to say that the mild winter that we have had to date has started the first buds of the year off early but I suspect that the bushes haven’t quite gone into hibernation and there has still been some rising sap in the bush, and that has provoked the growth.

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on it.

But whatever else happens today, I won’t be keeping an eye out to see what is happening out to sea down the Brittany coast today.

You’ve probably noticed from a couple of earlier photos that there seemed to be quite a mist hanging around today, but out at sea there seems to be so much more of it and there’s quite a heavy fog bank rolling in along the coast and onto the headland where I’m standing.

It’s one of those occasions where you might expect primeval man, or Godzilla or something similar to come emerging from the miasma.

Interestingly, in the reverse angle of this shot, there’s hardly a wisp of fog to be seen along the coast.

But you can see the reason why the fog is here. If you look closely at the water you’ll notice that it’s calm and almost flat as a mirror. There’s hardly a breath of wind at all – hardly enough to disperse a fogbank, that’s for sure.

But nevertheless out of the fog and gloom came one of my neighbours who had also been for a walk. So we had a chat for a few minutes about nothing in particular before I wandered off to carry on with my perambulations.

There’s one thing about a fog and a really calm sea, and that it encourages people to take to the water.

Paddling around the headland from the direction of the port de plaisance came a couple of kayaks. And as I watched, they paddled their way around the marker light on the rocks below.

There was the idea in my mind to make the old hoary joke which regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about it being inadvisable to light a fire in a canoe because you can’t have your kayak and heat it, but a closer inspection revealed that these aren’t kayaks but in fact sculls, so I doubt if the rowers in there would get up to any such scullduggery.

Over the last couple of days we’ve been having some brilliant sunsets out across the bay. As I walked across the lawn and the car park to the other side of the headland I sensed that today might be different with the fog.

Unfortunately I was correct. There was nothing really like the views that we have had for the last few days. Nevertheless it was quite different and quite unusual, and was creating quite an eerie effect, especially where we seem to be half in and half out of a fog bank.

The rays of sun streaming out through the hole in the clouds and disappearing into the fog bank were quite novel too.

You probably noticed in the previous photo the traces of a wake passing through the image.

There was a boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel and it was making quite a racket and going like the clappers too. My first thought was that it was a fishing boat but no fishing boat goes that quickly. I’ve no idea who he was or where he’d been.

With nothing else of interest out there this afternoon, I made tracks for home. It’s a shame that there was no freighter in port today, and I wonder when we are next going to have another gravel boat.

Back home I made myself a coffee and then went to have a look at the sourdough loaf. It’s been cooling off in the oven for a good couple of hours.

It’s possibly overdone on top, although I did lower the shelf when I put it back in at lunchtime so that the bottom would cook better, but it doesn’t look at all bad really. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. And for that, you’ll all have to wait until tomorrow morning’s hot chocolate break.

Instead, I hung up the washing, something that I had forgotten to do earlier, and then came in here to carry on with my e-mail marathon. And it would have been better had I not crashed out again.

There was the usual hour on the guitars of course but for some reason I couldn’t get my head around the acoustic guitar and I’ve no idea why. I didn’t seem to have the same motivation which was strange.

Afterwards, I went out for my evening walk – and I tried a few more runs today too. In fact I made it up to three legs. Not much, but better than it has been.

When I stopped for breath after one of the legs, I looked out to sea and the fog seemed to have lifted. It as a really clear evening and you could see for miles.

You probably won’t think all that much of this photo but this is taken with the camera perched on a rock, hand-held. And the camera is in fact the little NIKON 1 J5 which in the past has not proved to be very successful in the past in the pitch-black.

However, with some judicious manipulation I managed to take some photos of St Helier, 58 miles away. And the lights of fishing boats out to sea and even some stars too. And for a camera that doesn’t like the dark, that’s quite impressive even if the quality isn’t up to all that much.

Had I taken the tripod with me, and worked out how the time-lapse procedure works on the calmera, I might have done even better than this.

Round at the viepoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch there wasn’t much going on at all. The whole town seemed to be deserted and I hadn’t seen a soul.

Instead I came on back to the apartment for tea. Stuffed peppers followed by apple crumble. There’s only enough crumble left for one meal now, so I might have to defrost a slice of frozen apple pie for tea on Saturday.

But now I’ve written up my notes, I’m going to go to bed. Just a couple of phone calls to make tomorrow, a form to fill in and some carrots to peel and blanche and then I can crack on with work.

And, of course, the fruit bread to try. I mustn’t forget that.

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.

Sunday 20th December 2020 – SHRIMP BOATS …

… are coming, there’s dancing tonight

Tonight while I was out on my run, I counted the number of fishing boats out at sea that were heading back to home, and made it at 18 as far as I could see, and there where probably even more others the that I couldn’t see too.

With Christmas rapidly approaching and with Brexit threatening to cut off access to the fishing grounds out there with the repealing of the Treaty of the Bay of Granville, anything that floats has probably gone out to sea to make the most of whatever they can catch between now and the end of the year.

As for me, I made the most of whatever sleep came my way last night. Despite not going to bed until 02:30 this morning, I slept all the way through until about 11:20, which isn’t too bad considering.

And plenty of time for me to go off on a voyage or two here and there. We were on board a ship last night steaming into a harbour – a really big harbour without many ships in there. We were imagining what it would have been like 100 years ago. We had to tie up and manoeuvre around in the port and that meant following the quayside edge very closely for quite a distance. I was thinking that 100 years ago with it full of ships we would never have done this. The cleats that you use for tying up the ship were missing – hadn’t been refitted after a paint job so we tipped out a box of them and found 3 but couldn’t find the screws then to screw them together. The screws that we had chosen out of here weren’t big enough. We didn’t have the right screws for some reason. Rosemary was there and she had to do something. I had the impression that it was to spread some jam on some bread or something but I can’t remember what it was she had to do. Then the ship pulled into port. By this time we were on the quayside and the ship pulled in and they threw out the ropes and tied her up. Down came the gang plank and we had to go back on board to get our things ready to move on. I helped on board those whom I was with.

Some time later I was on Crewe Bus Station with my mother and STRAWBERRY MOOSE waiting for a bus to Shavington. It was starting to become late and I thought to myself “I wonder where the thing has got to. It should have pulled in by now”. Mother was chatting away to people as she usually did. She talked to a bus conductor who told her that it had pulled in at the Zoom platform down there, platforms 4 5 and 6 which was where the buses usually went to. So what were we doing up at the top end of the bus station I don’t know. My mother needed some convincing and in the end she suddenly said “yes it must be” so off we ran. I had to fetch my rucksack which was extremely heavy and pick up Strawberry Moose. There was another girl there who was going to school for her first day. She was saying that it’s not going to be much fun if she turns up late for school or not even get in at all on her very first day. We ran on down to where the voice was, and I heard a voice shout “no, no, no” but I ignored it. I was just about to mount on the bus when I saw my mother up on top making “no” gestures so I had a look at the bus that I was just about to get on that he had indicated which was the K43 that goes to Nantwich via Willaston, not Shavington so I thought “what’s goign to happen now?” I had to get off again. A couple of minutes later she came back down. Then this really ancient kind of tram that was actually now a bus pulled into the bus station at Platform 1. We all went down to see it – it was “P” registered which was of course a nonsense because the thing was about 100 years old. We had a good look around it and found that it was an old Liverpool Corporation tram that Crosville had acquired and were going to use it as a bus. It turned out to be ours and we were actually going to have a ride on it as well. Someone took out his camera to photograph it so we all took out ours and stood back in a ring to take a photograph of it but for some reason my camera wasn’t working again and I just couldn’t get a pic of it. This was annoying of course because everyone else was wanting to walk down to have a closer look at it and I was asking them to wait until I had a photo which they were all willing to do but it was just taking me ages to try to take a photo. The camera just wouldn’t seem to take it

And I’m impressed that I can remember so much about the organisation of Crewe Bus Station in a dream after all these years. And it’s also strange that Crewe Bus Station always seems to put in an appearance round about this time of the year.

Later on during the night I was in Whitchurch – 2 of us had set off from Crewe or Nantwich and the guy I was with wasn’t ready so I said that I’d set off and he could catch me up. The usual way that we’d go to Shrewsbury would be via Audlem and Market Drayton but for some reason I went through Whitchurch that way. When I got into Whitchurch this guy still hadn’t caught me up and there was a huge flood in the centre of the town. By now I was on foot, and there was a Mark II Ford Zephyr taxi up to its doors in the water making really heavy weather of trying to get through. I thought that he shouldn’t have got through at all in this. A rough old thing as well with no interior trim or anything, a real ancient elderly machine. When we got past I took out my camera to take some photos but it wouldn’t work again. I ought to take loads of photos of these floods but I couldn’t get the camera to work. Then I noticed that trains were passing very slowly underneath the railway bridge so I went to see what was happening there. There was a load of workmen digging away at a pile of sand. It looked as if the bridge had collapsed onto the railway underneath in parts. I was there trying to take a photo of that but still the camera wouldn’t work. A guy came up and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was taking some photos for a blog. he replied “you’d better bring some bottles down for us. Me and my mates, we’d like some bottles” I said “I’ll talk to the readers – see what they have to say about it. They won’t even pay me for my travelling expenses”. In the end we were allowed down and I was having a look for the charge utile loading plate on the bridge. You could see where the bridge had collapsed under there – a proper Victorian construction. Again I went to take some photos but again the camera wouldn’t work. All that time I was trying to take these photos these kids kept on running around in front of me and the camera and I kept on telling them to keep away so they would keep away for a minute or two and run back again with all of this going on – the floods and the Zephyr up to its doors and the collapsed bridge and the trains inching their way past and the flaming camera wouldn’t work!

It’s not the first time that the NIKON 1 has let me down in a dream either. It seems to be becoming a regular feature in a nocturnal ramble these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But while I’m on the subject, seeing as it came up in the middle of a nocturnal voyage, if you’ve enjoyed or profited from these notes, please make your next Amazon purchases by using the links aside. It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission that helps defray my web-hosting expenses

All of that took me right up until about 13:30 so I went for a hot chocolate and the last slice of my delicious fruit cake. And that gave me an idea.

One of the things that I’d noticed was after having fed the sourdough mother the other day, I noticed that for the very first time, it had risen spectacularly and the jar was full of gas.

Now one of the problems with my sourdough bread is that it doesn’t rise enough and it’s all rather damp and heavy like a cake. And so I prepared a sourdough dough mix and added all of my fruit and nut mix to it, including a couple of ripe bananas, and left it on one side.

If it doesn’t rise very much and ends up like a cake, as it seems to be doing right now, it won’t make any difference and it’ll still taste just as good with all of the fruit in it and I won’t be inconvenienced. And it’ll be a good opportunity to practice.

Having done that, I fed the sourdough again and put that on one side too.

When I’d been in LIDL last I’d bought a traditional ginger spice cake with nuts (completely vegan of course) because I have no Christmas cake this year with Liz being away. On Saturday I’d bought some marzipan so this afternoon I sprinkled my rolling pad with icing sugar and then rolled out a lump of marzipan until it was very thin.

While a couple of spoonfuls of strawberry jam were slowly melting in a saucepan over a very low heat, then using the cake as a template, I cut five slices of marzipan out of the bit that I’d rolled, for the top, the two sides and the two ends.

With the jam now nice and liquid and runny, I painted the 5 faces of the cake with a nice thick layer of the warm jammy liquid and then pressed the marzipan to it so it was now all covered (except for the base). That’s now going to cool and set for 72 hours and then I’m going to try to ice it.

By now it was time for me to go off on my afternoon walk around the headland to see what was happening.

And there were quite a few people out there today having a wander around on the last weekend before Christmas, and even a couple of intrepid wetsuit-clad paddle-boarders having a go at practising their art. It looks as if one of them didn’t quite make it out to sea, but I imagine that he’ll remount and have another go at joining his friend at some point.

There’s a seagull out there that isn’t all that pleased about what has been going on and is expressing its displeasure at one of the paddle-boarders. And we know all about their accuracy

While I was out there having a good look around, I noticed some movement right out at the north-eastern extremity of the Ile de Chausey.

It was very difficult to see what was happening with the naked eye so I took a long distance photograph to crop and enlarge when I returned home so that I might be able to see what it might be.

What was going through my mind was that it might be either Thora or Normandy Trader coming into port on an additional run, but in actual fact, it’s one of the larger of the trawlers from the port out there doing a little bit of fishing or whatever in that little corner.

From there I wandered off along the path towards the lighthouse, but there wasn’t very much going on that way. And so I wandered off across the lawn and then the car park and round to the end of the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen quite a few good sunsets over here just recently. With us reaching the shortest day of the year I was hoping that we would have a good view of the sun at its perigee and today I was not going to be disappointed at all. It’s not as good as one or two that we have seen, but it’s certainly better than most.

No ships or anything like hat out at sea so I wandered off again on my walk.

But then I didn’t really advance very far before I stopped again.

We’ve seen plenty of fishing boat out at sea today, but it’s not just at sea that there’s a pile of fishing going on. Even though we are not at the period of the Grand Marée there are even so a few people down there taking part in the peche à pied this afternoon.

They were throwing a few things into a bucket, so I watched for a few minutes and then wandered off myself down the path. We still had our two boats in the chantier navale, the yacht and the fishing boat that arrived yesterday, and nothing else.

While I was out there looking down on the chantier navale, my train of thought was interrupted by my being overflown.

We’ve had plenty of people on land, and plenty of people out at sea, so there is no reason at all why we shouldn’t have plenty of people in the air. Today, it’s the turn of a Piper PA-28-181 Archer III, registration number F-GHYZ.

As far as I can tell, it’s a machine owned by the Rennes Air Club and according to its flight plan, it’s on its way to Rennes St Jacques Airport.

And so I wandered on home and made myself a nice hot mug of coffee to keep me going.

It was time for me to think about a puddling for next week. With plenty of cooking apples on hand, I made myself a small apple crumble. And with some crumble left over, I made a second, smaller one.

Earlier on in the day I’d taken out a dollop of dough from the freezer. By now it was defrosted so I kneaded it properly, mixed it around and then rolled it out and put it into the pizza tray, folding the overhanging edges back inside.

With an hour or so to spare I came back in here and had a play around with a few things that needed doing and did my Welsh homework for the day again.

When the pizza base had risen, I put on the oven and brought it to temperature and bunged in the apple crumbles. While the crumbles were doing, I prepared my pizza and when the apple crumble were cooked, I took them out and then put the pizza in.

While the pizza was cooking, I went out for my evening walk and runs. All the way down to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

Earlier on, we saw the photo of all of the fishing boats out there this evening. Plenty more than were shown on the photograph as I mentioned, but there was something else that caught my eye.

This particular light here is something quite out of the ordinary and I’ve no idea at all as to what it might be. It’s not likely to be a fishing work light this close to the rocks at the Pointe du Roc. But nevertheless, there were still a couple of other lights in the background from other fishing boats making their way into the harbour.

While I was standing at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord, I did my impression of Lord Darnhall’s wife at the sermon in the church on the first holiday of the year, and cast my eye about.

And here’s a thing that caught my eye too. I’ve no idea what this might be but there was some kind of light going on and off on the beach down below at the foot of the steps. There didn’t seem to be anyone standing around down there with it and after a few minutes, the light failed to come on again and that was that.

From there, I pushed on along the Rue du Nord, breaking into a run as much as I could. And then I disappeared down the path underneath the walls, avoiding the puddles.

Halfway along the footpath I stopped at my usual place to catch my breath, and there I looked out to sea.

It was reasonably clear on the horizon and so I had a try at taking another delayed-exposure photograph or two (or three or four with all kinds of different settings) of the general area in which lies St Helier. Most of them ended up filed under “CS” but one of them was worth another look, although I’ve taken many better photos than these.

You can’t actually see the street lights of the town down here but the red light on the radio mast at the back of the town is clearly visible on the photo, even if it wasn’t visible with the naked eye.

From there, I walked on down to the end of the path – forgetting to break into a run which was rather disappointing.

Across the Square Maurice Marland I ran, right away to the far side. From there, before I walked up to the top of the walls, I looked back across the square back towards where this leg of the run began and I have to say that I’ve not really appreciated the view from this viewpoint and so I decided to take a photograph from here looking backwards.

Down in the Rue Notre Dame I met Minette‘s mum so we had a chat for a while and then I ran on home.

By now, my pizza was properly cooked so I sat down and ate it, having photographed it first with my apple crumble.

No pudding tonight again of course – the pizza was quite filling and I didn’t need anything else to eat. And then I came back in here to write up my notes for the day.

Tomorrow I have my radio programme to do. I want to finish off the live concert for the month of February and then do a live concert for the month of March. If there’s time again, there’s the month of April to do and then we’ll be right bang up to date.

While I’m in Leuven, if I can do 2, or even 3 radio programme’s worth of music and then deal with the speech when I return, I’ll be well away with where I would like to be. 20 weeks ahead is ideal because if I have plans to do anything over the summer, although I don’t quite know what or whether we’ll even be able to do anything anyway, there will be a breathing space for me to have a little break.

And I can’t say that I don’t need one.

Monday 14th December 2020 – HOW ABOUT …

… this for a photograph this evening?

Juts in case you are wondering what it is, it’s a photograph of St Helier in Jersey, 58 kilometres away from where I’m standing. Across there you can see the street lights, a floodlight or two in the harbour and the red lights on the radio mast at the back of the town.

And if you are wondering how I managed to produce a photograph like this, the simple answer is that I didn’t have the tripod with me, and neither did I have the monopod, but there was a suitable flat stone on top of the walls.

Making sure that the camera was well-positioned and secure, then the timer delay button on the camera did the rest.

Further along the path I found another flat stone on top of the walls and tried again with a shot of Donville les Bains.

And it’s hard to believe that I’ve actually managed to over-expose the shot. That has to be a first, I reckon. But even the white headboards on the swimming lanes in the tidal swimming pool have come out clearly as you can see lower down on the right-hand side of the image.

This is certainly progress as far as the night-time photography goes. Admittedly this is with a 50mm f1.8 lens and it’s going to be a completely different game of cowboys with a huge and heavy zoom lens at f5.6. That’s not going to come out quite like this, is it?

And so back at work today to deal with the radio programme that needed dealing with. And sure enough, by 11:58 it was all done, dusted and completed and ready to go.

What helped was that once more I was up and about before the 3rd alarm. Well, only just but “only just” is just like Kris Kristofferson’s “feeling good” – it’s good enough for me.

And so I had a pretty good bah at everything after my medication, including stopping for my mid-morning hot chocolate and slice of fruit bread. And it’s the best fruit bread that I’ve ever made. Nice and light and airy and packed with goodness. I’ll make some more of this.

Having finished my radio programme, it was time to nip out to the shops before lunch and, more importantly, before it started to rain.

So into town I went, past the Place Generale de Gaulle to see what they were unloading the other day when I went past. And sure enough, it’s the kiddies’ roundabout, so obviously despite the restrictions and quarantines the kids will still be celebrating Christmas.

By the time that I reached LIDL I was thoroughly exhausted and that can’t ever be right. I haven’t felt as exhausted as this for quite a while. I ended up having to have a large can of energy drink simply to find the strength to go home.

And it wasn’t as if I’d bought much either. Just the bare essentials and that was that.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that ages ago we saw a house-building project going on in the Impasse de la Corderie at the back of the Eglise St Paul.

It occurred to me that we haven’t been to look at it for quite a while so I reckoned that we may as well go that way home and see how they are doing.

From here, it seems to me that they have almost finished and there is just the tidying up to do. And while they seem to have done quite a nice job of the building, it would have been nice if they had cleaned up the stonework and repointed it to make it match the rest of the building

Back here, I had lunch and then I had some work to do – namely, to make some kefir. Some of the kiwis that I had in stock were now nice and ripe and so I whizzed them up in the whizzer and pressed out the juice from the pulp through a filter into the big jug.

Then I filtered out the kefir into the jug as well and set another batch of kefir en route. And then mixed up the jug all together and filtered them all back through the filter system into bottles.

There it will ferment for a few days until I’m ready to use it. A nice kiwi-flavoured kefir drink, one of my favourites. And I might have done more too had I not crashed out for about 15 minutes.

By now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was wondering what they would be doing next now that they had almost completed the reroofing of the part of the roof that they had stripped. And here’s the answer. They are ripping off more of the roof.

Therefore it seems to be that they are going to be replacing the whole roof, on this side at least. And good luck to them up there in this weather.

And quite right too because the weather is pretty deplorable this afternoon.

There’s a rainstorm threatening the coast right now. We can see out there in the English Channel that the Ile de Chausey is already enveloped in the rain and it’s heading my way at a rapid rate of knots.

There was only me and one or two other people out there and that’s not really a surprise either in view of the conditions so I wasn’t going to hang around. I pushed on along the path to see if I could complete the circuit before the storm broke.

But that was something of a forlorn hope.

As it happened I’d hardly gone 20 yards when the rain caught me. It was so quick that in the time that it took to line up and take this photograph of Chausiais coming in from a run out somewhere, presumably with the furniture from the weekend, a fine mist of heavy rain had obscured the view and I was soaked to the skin.

But I pushed on some of the way to see what else if anything was going on down there today. But in the chantier navale there was nothing whatever that had changed. Still just the yacht and nothing else.

This is an interesting photograph though.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past couple of days we’ve seen the waves whipped up by the high winds rolling off the end of the sea wall. But with the wind coming now round to its habitual westerly direction, we can see that even with the tide some way out, the waves were smashing up onto the sea wall.

But that was enough for me. Feeling rather wet, and drenched by the rain too, I headed off home for my hot coffee, which I remembered to drink this time. And to feed the sourdough. Tomorrow afternoon after my Welsh class I have to start to prepare another sourdough loaf for the coming week.

After having done an absolute mountain of washing-up, I came in here for my guitar practice which was really quite enjoyable. I’ve finally worked out a passing chord from G to C but I’m no idea what it might be. It’s a derivative of C and G but what it is I’ve absolutely no idea at all. The next step is to learn to play it quickly in passing or else find an easier way of playing it.

Having bought some peppers this lunchtime, I was able to have a stuffed pepper for tea which was very nice, and would have been even nicer had I remembered to buy the mushrooms to add to the stuffing. My rather overdone rice pudding needed some coaxing to make it palatable but it wasn’t too bad.

Later on it was time for my evening run. Despite being over 100% of my daily activity I still intended to go out.

The rain had died down and there were crowds of people out there tonight making the most of the last evening stroll before the 20:00 curfew that starts tomorrow.

You’ve seen the photo of St Helier that I took from the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord, and then due to the fact that there were too many people about in the street I had to run on down the footpath underneath the walls despite the couple of inches of water that was down there. And my clothes look as if I was running down there too.

There’s another place about halfway down there with a nice flat stone so when I stopped for my habitual breather I had another go with a photograph using the delayed timer.

This time, the photo of St Martin de Brehal and Coudeville sur Mer hasn’t come out as well as the others. That’s overexposed too and I would have done so much better with the aperture closed a couple of stops and the ISO decreased.

But anyway, this is it. And at least the one of Donville les Bains came out OK so you can’t evidently win a coconut every time. From here I ran off along the rest of the path to the end.br clear=”both”>

Having run all the way across the Square Maurice Marland, I noticed that the renovations that have been under way on the house in the Rue Lecarpentier now seem to have been completed.

The scaffolding has gone from outside now and we can see what kind of job that they have done to restore it – or, we will be able to in the daylight, whenever that might be. But at least I could push on down the alleyway at the side and into the Rue Notre Dame that way round.

And there sitting on her windowsill was my old black cat Minette. She was pleased to see me so I gave her a good stroke for 5 minutes or so before pushing off.

The tide was out quite a way, so there was no water in the tidal harbour.

In the inner harbour we just had two fishing boats tied up at the fish processing plant. However all of the lights at the plant were illuminated and there was a refrigerated lorry parked there, so they must be expecting a swarm of boats to come in on the tide and unload.

From there I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes, of which there were plenty. And now they are written, I’m off to bed. It’s Welsh class tomorrow so I need to be on form with my revision and preparation for the next chapter of the lessons.

And in the afternoon I’m going to have to start doing a couple of live concerts. And there are a few other tasks to do. I’m going to be busy tomorrow.

Sunday 13th December 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change just recently, I was up and about at something resembling more a respectable time of day on a Sunday – like 10:30 for example, which is a world of a difference away from 12:00 and 12:30, isn’t it?

So having taken my medicine, I went to have a listen to the dictaphone. And phew! Was I busy during the night?

I can’t remember much about the next bit that happened (I can’t even remember any first bit) at night but there was a young girl in it something like my youngest sister. I don’t know what she was doing but later I was out and they were controlling the stuff that was going out of this shop. I had a TV computer screen and took a felt-tip pen and wrote on the screen surround today’s date to make it look as if I’d actually brought this in with me rather than just buying it so that I could take it out of the store without actually paying for it but my big felt-tip pen was all discoloured and the ink didn’t show up very well on the brown surround so I had to take a felt-tip pen off them.

Later, it was my mother’s birthday and I wanted to wish her a happy birthday (don’t ask me why). I was living in Chester at the time so I had to go to Crewe. I had this idea of going with the aid of a stick where I leant all my weight on this stick and pivoted forward like that. I could work up a good rhythm with that and actually go at 7 miles per hour doing that all the way back to Crewe. But then I thought that I would have to turn round and do it all the way back again. There were all kinds of stories about how they were going to use paper boarding but this kind of thing was extremely dangerous after all they had said. There were countless people who had set out with things like this and thought that they could do really well.

Next, we had another one of my “wandering around London” dreams last night. I’d been to see my aunt with a pile of things – I think that I’d been on holiday and I’d called back there just to drop off some stuff. Then I wandered off around and met up with a friend – we were planning on having a night in. But she turned out to me a mixture of herself and my cousin in Canada and we were actually in Canada. I had to go back to her house so I got off this bus with all these people with whom I’d been chatting, and noticed that her street was under more development. They were building another restaurant so I went to talk to her about it and she explained that it was always being modernised and so on. I said that these other people had talked about this restaurant and how good it was going to be and she agreed. Then we got into her car to drive these presents round to Mary’s. But when we arrived it was after the time that their building had been locked up. I said that we ring on the bell and wait 5 minutes and she’ll let us in, then we can get ourselves organised. But she seemed to be reluctant to get out of the car to go to see her and said something about her mother who was in her 90s, the same age as my aunt. In the end I decided that I would go out as well and she would go out and maybe we would just put the presents in the letter box and come back or perhaps maybe just find the time to say a quick hello but we didn’t get to the point of making a quick decision

I was with this same friend yet again subsequently and we had been all around south-west London. She was talking about her relationships and how her husband was moving out at the end of January. I asked her if she knew for sure. Had he given her a date? She said not but reckoned that that was what it was going to be. I asked about her plans and she said that she was going to move to a place called “Sea Breezes” so if he came to look for her he wouldn’t find her. I asked her about this place and she was a bit vague about it. She said that things were going to change – the air, you would feel the sea in it and the ozone. I thought that it would have to be pretty close to the sea but she said “no, it’s in south-west London”. So we set off to go and have a look at it but we ended up being sidetracked miles off our course and we had to come back to retrace our steps. she had been on a bike and in the end she picked up another one and I picked up hers and we both cycled back and came to a place where the hill was really steep. We had to cycle down this hill at an enormous speed. I said “I hope that your brakes work on this bike that I’m riding”. She said “yes so do I”. That unnerved me a little. I had to use my foot to slow down but we reached the bottom and ended up in part of the big urban environment there. I’d lost my friend for a minute and ended up talking to a couple of women. One of them was speaking in a French accent so I started to reply in French. We had a bit of a chat. She noticed the dry ski slope and said “oh, skiers. It’s like Mont Blanc here”. I had a look and I could see someone who resembled my friend going down the slope. I thought “she’s been quick to get there” so I set off. Instead I found her standing in the middle of the road on a traffic island chatting to Jackie. There was a group of about 6 of them. I went over but kept on bumping into this guy and kept on excusing myself. He kept replying “it’s no problem” but I could see that he was starting to become irritated about this but it was a natural reaction that I couldn’t stop. Then I noticed that STRAWBERRY MOOSE wasn’t there so I asked my friend what she had done with him. She pointed “he’s over there” so Jackie went to pick him up. They were all talking to this guy who looked like someone from the OU warning him about the clothes that he was wearing – he shouldn’t go to a certain place wearing those clothes. But his clothes weren’t OU at all – they had some other logo on them that I didn’t recognise so this chat continued

It’s hardly any surprise after all of that that I didn’t have time to do very much today. Transcribing that took a lot of time

But I did find the time to make my fruit bread. Much as I enjoyed my chocolate cake, it was very fatty and probably responsible for the weight that I’m gaining. Not an ounce of fat in the fruit bread, except maybe in the oil from the ground Brazil nuts.

So that was stuck on one side again while I joined up the music tracks for my next radio programme. That’s all done too. And our journey around the World moves on into yet more uncharted territory.

By now I was ready to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland. First thing though was to exchange pleasantries with a neighbour outside who was taking the air.

It was a good job that I was wrapped up in my rain gear as it was raining outside. And as I stepped out of the car park I noticed that our local air-sea rescue helicopter went flying by, right out there in the English Channel. Someone with his chopper out this afternoon

At first I wasn’t sure what it was because it was so far out at sea. It was only when I returned when I could enlarge the photo to see what it was.

Anyway, I set off down the track to the lawn and across and through the car park to the headland to see what was going on.

And the answer to that conundrum was “nothing at all”. Not even a boat anywhere out at sea. So I walked down to cross over the road and I ran off down the path on top of the cliffs seeing as there was no-one about.

There wasn’t all that much going on in the harbour either. There were no fishing boats at the fish processing plant but there was one moving around in the harbour looking as if it was going out to the fishing grounds.

There were several others moored in the harbour but they didn’t look as if they are going anywhere right now. I suppose that they are all having the day off.

But there was certainly something quite strange going on in the background.

The company that owns that lorry is one of the country’s leading furniture removers and you can see that from the lorry they are unloading some very large wooden crates. These are the kind of crates that you would expect to see in a long-distance furniture removal such as a removal by sea.

But why unload them at the ferry port? They can only be for Chausiais but surely it’s easier to drop them in with the crane at the loading bay in inner harbour.

While I was here at the viewpoint on top of the cliffs, I had a look over at the chantier navale to see if there was anything new happening.

We’re still stuck at just the yacht right now. Nothing else has come in over the last couple of days since Ceres II went back into the water. Instead we can just admire the weather.

We’re having something of a rainstorm as you can see. The Pointe de Carolles over there in the background is shrouded in thick cloud and the rain is quite heavy out in the centre of the bay and it looks as if it’s settled in for the night.

But out in the Baie de Mont St Michel the weather conditions aren’t quite as dismal.

We’re having another one of these “sunshine streaming through the heavy cloud” moments across near the Brittany coast, with the rain coming down to the North (on the right) and the South (on the left). In the centre of the image the corner of the cliffs by Cancale and the sea off the coast are really nicely illuminated by the rays of the sun.

But I wasn’t going to hang around to admire it for too long. I was becoming rather wet what with all of this rain. I turned on my heel and headed for home and my coffee, which I forgot to drink.

Instead I kneaded the bread a second time and shaped it, then dropped it into a greased tin to rise again. And having taken a lump of frozen dough out of the freezer earlier, I added some more flour to what was a wet mix, and then kneaded, rolled and shaped it, and stuck it in a pizza tray.

Liz was on line so we had a chat and I did some more work, but later on I put on the oven and when it was warm, stuck the bread in the oven, and then added a rice pudding to the oven as well.

While it was cooking, I prepared the pizza. I had no peppers and, unfortunately, I forgot the olives. But when the bread and rice were cooked, the pizza went into the oven.

The pizza was soon cooked and it was absolutely delicious – one of the best that I’ve made. The bread was left to cool and then stuck in a tin and the rice pudding ended up back into the oven to finish off as it wasn’t quite cooked.

I wasn’t hungry so I didn’t try it. That will be for tomorrow.

Later on I went for my perambulations around the medieval city walls – not that I was feeling much like it and which I won’t be able to do when the 20:00 curfew comes into force on Tuesday.

As seems to be the case these days I kept to the dry land up on top of the walls and the view from up there is different from what I usually see, as is the case with the view over the Plat Gousset.

Down on the path I ran all the way round and after having a pause, ran off around and through the Square Maurice Marland towards home.

back on the walls again, I had to remind myself that there’s a little point where you can see the Christmas lights of the Rue Lecampion and I haven’t photographed those yet.

You can see right down the street into the Place Generale de Gaulle and the blue lights on the Mairie that we saw a couple of days ago from up on top. And in the distance in the top right-hand corner you’ll see the lights at the top of the Rue Couraye.

So back here I wrote up my notes ready to go to bed. I’ve already started writing the notes for the radio programme so I’m hoping that I can finish them and have time to go to the shops before lunch. But that remains to be seen. It’s more important to have a decent sleep and a good start in the morning.

But we’ll see about that tomorrow too.

Tuesday 1st October 2019 – A PECULIAR THING …

… happened during the night.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that occasionally (but far more frequently these days) I have sometimes awoken during the middle of the night and then gone back to sleep and re-entered a dream at exactly the same point where I left off.

But last night we had something completely different. I awoke in the middle of the night and went back to sleep again, stepping back into a dream not at the end where I left off, but right back at the beginning where I had started.

And furthermore, as far as I could tell, it went on more-or-less (as near as I can tell) exactly as it had the first time round.

That has never happened before, and it was certainly an interesting experience.

For a change, I was relieved of duty on the school run today so I was in no rush to start the day off. Instead, I had a lounge around and when Rachel sent me a text message to say that my gearchange cable was in, I went off down to Woodstock in her car.

By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong so it was pretty crowded in the Golf, but I found room for the cable and some shopping from the Atlantic Superstore, including more of the vegan sorbet that we like and some fruit bread for me for lunch today and tomorrow – on special offer today.

Having stopped off at home to put the sorbet in the freezer, I continued on to the tire depot and had a look at Strider.

After much effort and difficulty, we managed to fit the cable. But now we have found another problem. The operating arm has a piece broken off it (which is probably what caused the fault in the first place) and the new cable isn’t holding on as well as it might. No point in spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar, so I’ve ordered a new operating arm and that will (hopefully) be there at Ford’s tomorrow.

But while we were underneath it, we did manage to find an aperture through which we can pass a cable or two. That means that I may at last be able to run a live cable or two through into the cab of Strider.

Apart from that, I’ve been going for parts, carrying sacks of grain about and answering the telephone as well as entertaining the customers. It’s all go here.

Later on, I went to pick up Amber from school (so I wasn’t totally relieved of duty) and had to fight the torrential rainstorm back home.

Tea was pasta tonight, and then I had a play with the failed laptop. Much to my surprise I managed to make it fire up and I can access part of the Windows directory now. Not the part that I want, but it does show me that the thing is not as totally dead as I was imagining.

That means that back home, I may be able to salvage some of the missing data, and that will be good news.

So now it’s bedtime. No idea what I’m doing tomorrow – I shall make it up as I go along. But an early night never goes amiss.

But remember the old Ford 1-tonne that mysteriously moved the other week? The old 20-tonne Ford that was next to it has also mysteriously moved today. But not as far.

After 20 years of standing it fired up first time with some accelerant and a new battery but the accelerator cable is stuck. It’s a long time since I’ve used a hand throttle.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: fruit bread

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