… said about this morning, the better.
It was quite a late night last night as a pile of good music came onto the playlist just as I was thinking of going to bed, so that was that. I stayed up to listen to it.
And even though I heard the three alarms, ask me if I cared. 08:15 when I finally exerted myself and that’s no good to anyone at all.
To make things worse, there was nothing on the dictaphone either. That’s always a disappointment because I have said on many occasions … “indeed” – ed … as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I have more excitement on my little nocturnal voyage than I ever do in real life, and meet far more interesting people
In fact, apart from a brief bonjour to two women walking their dogs together while I was out, I haven’t spoken to anyone else today.
After a very late breakfast I had a knotty problem to resolve. For some unknown reason, none of my mice (or mouses, I dunno) want to work on my big computer, except one that isn’t up to much.
As to why that might be, I’ve no idea. They work fine on other machines and the USB ports work fine with other appliances so it beats me.
After a good rummage around the apartment I eventually found an ancient radio mouse and, to my surprise, that seems to work for the moment.
The rest of the morning was therefore spent editing photos from July 2019. There wasn’t much time to do many and right now I’m on a sandbank in South-East Iceland admiring a bunch of harbour seals.
That loaf of bread that I made seems to improve with age because it was totally delicious – even better than yesterday.
But I was thinking about that at lunchtime. There’s too much of it and it’s going to mean that there will be some left by the weekend. So what i’m going to do is to make a smaller amount (maybe 400 grammes of flour instead of 500 grammes, always assuming that I can find some tomorrow) and make two small loaves.
Smaller loaves will also mean that it will bake quicker too and that’s always a good plan.
After lunch I took out the 10x4GB memory sticks from their quarantine and set about reorganising the music. It took two of them and there was still about 3.5GB left on the computer, mostly of incomplete files that need looking at. But they’ll receive “the treatment” in early course once my hi-fi arrives, whenever that might be.
For the rest of the afternoon I carried on updating the web pages and there’s another 16 or so now done. I’ve no idea how many are left to do but I have to go back and do the earlier ones again – the first batch that I did – as I missed something off.
As for my hour on the guitars, I’m not sure what happened but I couldn’t find the enthusiasm. It was a very long, weary but not very productive time.
It’s probably a sign that that the spirit must be quite weak these days and that usually means that I’m due a bout of ill-health any day now.
And that’s not surprising because it’s now three and a half months since I’ve had my four-weekly cancer treatment and I remember how I was feeling when I was in the High Arctic. The last couple of days out there, I was running on pure adrenaline and I well remember the counter-reaction that I had while I was waiting for the aeroplane in Kugluktuk and my two days in that hotel in Calgary.
Tea was falafel and steamed vegetables in a cheese sauce followed by the last of the rice pudding. I might bake a small apple pie for pudding for the rest of the week, and if there is plenty of flour in LIDL I might have a go at making my own pastry to see where that takes me.
The other day I mentioned that they had been planning last week to repaint the white lines in the car park at the back here.
So off I went on my evening run tonight and sure enough, the painters have been past. They’ve done the car park, right enough, but they’ve also repainted the yellow lines here in the rue du Roc for the area where buses and coaches are allowed to park.
Judging by the signs that have now appeared on the other side of the road, it looks very much as if they are going to be back to paint those lines there sometime in the near future.
Having recovered my breath, I ran on down to the clifftop to see what was happening out there in the English Channel.
For a change just recently, there weren’t so many clouds in the sky so we had this beautiful sunset out there over the Ile de Chausey.
There were a few people out there enjoying the evening, including a couple with a dog. And they were disturbed by the arrival of these two women with their mutts who wanted to play.
No social distancing for pooches of course but there are for owners and they were amm rather tangled up for a while.
What I did was to ignore them and concentrate on what was going on out to sea. There were the usual trawlers and other fishing boats out there and this one here was on its way out to join them.
This evening I could see about five in total, working away a little farther out to sea this evening.
I USED TO BE A WEREWOLF!
But I’m all right nooooooooooooooooow!
Yes, it’s full moon again and with there being no clouds to speak of in the sky I had a really good view of it tonight.
Again, it’s a hand-held shot so it’s not as steady as it might be with a tripod.
And that reminds me – I need to set up one of the function buttons on the NIKON D500 to work a “delayed action” shot sequence
This photo was interesting because it shows that Chausiais has moved over to the harbour wall by the harbour offices.
And in the foreground is another trawler-type of fishing vessel, the Cap Pilar. I’ve no idea why she might be here or what she’s doing, because she’s actually a boat from St Malo.
So pondering over that, and also the fact that there’s still no change of occupant in the chantier navale I carried on with my run down the Boulevard Vaufleury.
Halfway down along my run I noticed that Cap Pilar had “cast off forr’ard, Mr Phillips” and was turning round.
So having reached my marker (the second pedestrian crossing up the hill) I walked back to see what was happening. So off she goes out into the evening sunset.
As an aside, when I returned home, I checked on my AIS detector beacon to see where she might be going. And to my amusement her destination was signalled as où je veux – “where I like”.
It’s all very amusing, that kind of remark, but it’s not very much help if she fails to arrive anywhere. No-one can report her missing if they don’t know where she’s supposed to be.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the first lot of new pontoons put out and fastened to the support pillars that they have installed.
Parked up here down in the rue du port is an articulated lorry with a couple of new pontoons on it. So they are pushing along with this plan to finish the port as soon as possible.
And we saw the road-painting earlier. It looks as if they have been down here too because there are white lines painted on the new car park.
And that’s a disappointment, that car park. They could have done so much more than a squalid slab of tarmac with just a little imagination.
But we can see why Chausiais has moved, and why the pontoons are on the back of the lorry just here.
First of all, Marité is now moored where Chausiais had been, so that means that there’s something going on down in her corner. I’ll have to check that tomorrow when I go out shopping.
But you can see that the line of pontoons has extended now, but they are still a couple short. So they’ll be taking those off the back of the lorry tomorrow, I imagine, and installing them.
Nothing doing at the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord tonight. I’d missed the sunset and the crowds were dispersing. And so I ran home.
The notes are finished now so I’m off to bed. It’s not as early as I would have liked but I’m hoping for a decent sleep (such as it is) and an early start tomorrow. I must crack on.
, which will forever be associated in my brain with late, dark, cold nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in the High Arctic, and that is exactly what I’m trying to put out of my mind.
