Tag Archives: lys noir

Sunday 28th February 2021 – SPOT THE …

… difference between this photo and any other photo that I’ve taken of the chantier navale over the last few months.

Yes, as you have probably noticed, the yacht that’s been over there at the far end for the last I don’t know how long has now disappeared, presumably having gone back into the water at long last. I was beginning to think that she was going to be there longer than I’m going to be here, but there you go.

What else didn’t go on as long as I was expecting was the amount of time that I stayed in bed last night. There are some days when I have an alarm to help me to be up and about and I still can’t be on my feet by 08:10 so the fact that I can do that on a Sunday when there’s no alarm is something quite surprising.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been. I’d had a very big row with the people for whom I drove coaches at one time. I’m not sure whether I ended up being sacked or resigned but they were sitting there calculating my wages and then ended up owing me 29 days pay for days in lieu of notice. They said that I’d get it in due course. That had all been arranged and they said “what about these Friday nights where we start to sort out the yard so you’d come down and do the office while we do it?”. I made a very non-committal reply to that and wandered off. I ended up playing cricket again, a girls’ cricket team and I was keeping wicket. The girl who was bowling was a pretty wild bowler but she took this long run-up and the ball in the air took this beautiful swerve and caught me on the left shoulder where my catheter is instead of in the gloves. I have the ball back to her and she started off on her run again so I asked “where are you off to? Nantwich?”. She stopped for a minute and burst out laughing. Another girl who was fielding at slip started to move back behind me. I said “no, don’t go behind me!”. I explained that these balls swerving around so much, she’s likely to get one in the face the further back she stands. Someone else turned up from the office where I was working and said to the girls’ captain – he gave her a form and said “just fill this in for Eric, will you? I want to see how he gets on now that he’s in a higher age group” so they started to fill it in before they took their next ball. He asked “what shall I put your occupation down as? Are you still a bus driver with (those people I mentioned earlier)?”.

So what’s this thing about me going back to playing cricket and keeping wicket doing reappearing just now? That’s what’s bewildering me at the moment.

But somewhere along the way I was watching a very large pair of aeroplane wings with four engines falling out of the sky on fire and hitting a tower block, destroying the block and there was debris and all kinds of things all around. Later I talked to a few of the passengers who had been seated in what remained of the fuselage.

There was quite some time left before my visitors arrived so I worked on the notes for my trip to Central Europe back in July and I edited a couple more days.

Liz and Terry turned up at 11:30 and they brought me a lovely present, a nice vegan coffee cake that I’ll be trying out with my afternoon coffee during the course of the coming week. And I have to provide feedback on the recipe and the cake itself as it’s a new recipe that she hasn’t tried before.

When we had drunk our coffee we went out for a walk in the beautiful sunny early afternoon.

There were plenty of people down on the beach which wasn’t any surprise at all given the weather. It was quite warm for February, rather like an early May afternoon. There was not a single cloud in the sky anywhere and, just for a change there wasn’t all that much wind.

Liz, Terry and I had a lot to talk about as we walked around the path. I think that we’ve only ever seen each other once since the autumn. I’ve been on the road to Belgium quite often since October and they were stranded in the UK for quite a while.

One of the things that we discussed was the colour of the sea.

It’s a beautiful emerald greeny-blue colour in this kind of light, the kind of colour that you don’t see very often. It was rather unfortunate though that there was such a haze. It would have been the kind of weather where you might have been expected to see for miles down the coast and miles out to see but today you couldn’t even see the Ile de Chausey, never mind the Channel Islands or the lighthouse at the Cap Frehel.

For a change, we went down the steps at the far end and right around the headland on the narrow path. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been that way.

The crowds were out around there too, walking around the path making the place look rather busy.

The people sitting on the old concrete gun emplacement with their feet dangling into the void was quite interesting, and there were even people sitting on the rocks against the harbour wall. There were a few people picnicking higher up in the cliffs, perched like seabirds on their little nooks.

We ended up back at home and Liz prepared lunch. She’d brought with her some vegan sausage rolls and a salad followed by a sticky lemon cake. It’s nice having good friends who look after me when it’s my birthday.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends anyone could ever have in all of the world. Quality, not quantity.

We also had some of my ginger beer. And that was what I call “fiery” without any doubt.

After they had left I went and sat down in the bedroom and that was that for about an hour or so. I was well away with the fairies, right out of it and it took me quite a while to come round to my senses, which is quite a surprise seeing as these days I don’t have all of that many senses to come to.

Later on when I recovered I went off and started the weekend’s cooking, hours late.

First task was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier and that was now defrosted so I kneaded it again, rolled it and stuck it into the pizza tray to proof again.

And while that was doing, I made myself another batch of kefir, with the last of the mandarines from Christmas. I used those cheap mechanical bottles that I’d bought a while back but replaced the seals with some of the spare ones that I have which were more substantial.

While I was at it, I set another batch off on its way ready for next week.

Some pastry was next and I made myself a jam pie with some of the leftover strawberry jam. And with the pastry that was left I made a quick apple turnover.

By now the pizza base was ready so while the pie and the turnover were baking I assembled my pizza. I had no fresh mushrooms so I drained a tin and dried them in the oven for 10 minutes. While the pizza was baking I fed the sourdough and the ginger mother solution.

Having had a big lunch, I wasn’t all that hungry so I only had a couple of slices of the pizza, and it was quite delicious. I’m going to have the rest with a baked potato one night this week. That should make quite a nice tea.

Tonight I’m going to bed early. There’s a radio programme to be prepared tomorrow of course and while I’ve already done some of it while I was away, it still needs a good deal of work.

And for some reason or other that I don’t quite understand, I’m feeling rather more optimistic about this coming week.

That’s a feeling that I can’t explain.

Sunday 14th February 2021 – WE’VE SEEN THE …

… last of the snow and ice for a while, I reckon.

The temperature has warmed up, the wind has risen and round about 118:00 this evening we had a torrential downpour. That will wash away the last of the snow and ice that’s been lingering around. Unless the temperature drops substantially and the rain turns into snow.

Talking of lingering … “well, one of us is” – ed … I didn’t linger around very long in bed this morning, just for a change on a Sunday. In fact by 09:30 I was up and wandering around looking for my medication. That’s not something that happens every Sunday.

Listening to the dictaphone, I could hear that I’d been on my travels during the night. I was with a friend and some kind of taxi driver person yesterday. My friend had wanted something doing and I had organised some help for him, this Pakistani person whoever it was was the right kind of person so I got the 2 people to meet. My friend and I had a very long chat about all kinds of things, the past, the future, all of that kind of thing. Then I had to go home. Round about, I dunno, it was dark in the evening. I had no socks on and I had to walk to my locker which was somewhere in Shavington in order to get them without any socks. I said goodbye to him and checked the dates for when we’d be meeting again and waved goodbye to this Pakistani guy and set off to walk. I walked back down Crewe Road towards Sugar Loaf Corner and I could hear in the distance the sounds of one of my sisters or brother being beaten for something or other for some act of misbehaviour. I could hear the kid shouting acts of defiance while this beating was going on. It seemed to far away yet seemed so near. I was the only person out there in the street just in my bare feet walking down the street. There was no-one else around at all.

First task was to book my voyages and hotel accommodation for Leuven. And luckily it seems that all of the trains are back up and running normally again. The price that they wanted from me too made it a very worthwhile occupation this morning.

Plenty of room in my little hotel too so it all worked out very well. It seems to have been a very good idea to change my day to a Thursday. The only downside is that I’m having to travel up on the Wednesday which is my birthday, so happy birthday to me, hey?

While I was there I had a little shuffle around of my money. With not going off on any holidays just now, the money that I had set aside was sitting there not doing very much.

Next task was to book an appointment with my Welsh tutor. We are all having a little one-on-one with her next week just for 15 minutes and I needed to reserve my little spec.

The rest of the morning was spent dealing with the photos from Greenland in July 2019. And one or two of them have really come out well too, like THIS ONE and THIS ONE.

After lunch I spent some time working on my Oradour sur Glane stuff. All of the notes are now finished and I’m starting to fit in the photos in the places where they ought to go. And that’s not easy either with 53 photos to go at.

At some point in the afternoon I went out for my usual afternoon walk.

At the end of the car park I looked over the wall down to the beach. There were several people down there on the beach wandering around this afternoon and, just like yesterday, I didn’t envy them one bit. The temperature has warmed up somewhat, but the wind has warmed up too and it’s blowing a gale right now.

The tide is of course way out, almost at its limit. It would be interesting to see how the sea would be behaving when the tide is right in. And I’m interested to know what those two tracks are down there on the beach.

From the car park I walked along the path at the back of the College Malraux and along the top of the cliffs.

Although it might not look like it, it wasn’t all that much later than usual. The clouds were quite dark and heavy, a promise of things to come, I reckon, with the strong westerly wind that was blowing. But there was that great big hole in the sky and with that lucky old sun having nothing to do but roll around heaven all day, the bright spot has now moved around a couple of degrees.

It’s now lighting up the Brittany coast, as much as we could see down there this afternoon with the rainstorm that’s falling down over there.

For a change, I’d taken with me the NIKON D500. I’d had a little play around with it this morning and managed to make the camera recognise the memory card that’s in it.

With having to use the NIKON 1 J5 which doesn’t have an eyepiece viewfinder, I’ve not been able to take any photos of the aeroplanes and other aircraft that have been flying overhead. And so I celebrated the occasion by taking a photo of an aeroplane that went flying by overhead at the Pointe du Roc.

Unfortunately I couldn’t quite read the serial number and there was nothing on the database having taken off from Granville airport this afternoon, so I’m not able to say exactly what it is. I shall have to do some further research.

Down at the end of the headland there wasn’t anything at all going on. Nothing out at sea and of course with the tide well out there would be no fishing boats coming home.

Down at the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale I had a look down to see what was going on. There is no change in occupancy today – the four boats that we have seen for the last few days are still there not having done very much.

There’s no question as to why Aztec Lady and Lys Noir might be in there. With no business to attend to due to the postponement of all holiday activities, this is a good moment moment to have a full overhaul. But the big yacht has been there for months with no sign of moving.

Further on along the path I had a good look down to see what was happening in the port.

There are quite a few fishing boats there in the port this afternoon and of course our two Channel Island Ferries Granville, with Victor Hugo hiding away behind her, are still there too. No sign of them moving as long as the pandemic is still running wild, and as I’ve said before, unless Jersey puts its hands in its pockets, there’s a possibility that they might not run again.

Seeing as I was ready for my afternoon coffee, I headed home, and not running either because of the howling gale that was blowing up.

Having finished my days’ work, Next step was to prepare my food. having taken out a lump of pizza dough from the freezer earlier this morning. I kneaded it, rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray.

While it was busy proofing, I made myself a big apple crumble. That’s going to be my pudding for the next week. Lots of apple, with sultanas, desiccated coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and lemon juice, all topped with a lovely crumble topping.

While that was busy baking, I prepared the pizza and when the crumble was baked I took it out and stuck the pizza in for the usual 30 minutes. And it was absolutely delicious, as usual. It’s becoming something of a production line thing now, these pizzas.

As for the apple crumble, I’ll have to tell you what that’s like tomorrow, because I’m rather full right now.

Having now typed out my notes, I’m going off to bed. I’m working on a radio programme tomorrow so I need to be on form. I’ve already crashed out once and I don’t want to do it again. I may as well go to bed and make a really goos start in the morning.

There’s plenty to do, as usual.

Thursday 11th February 2021 – I’VE HAD A …

… really busy day today and accomplished quite a lot.

And when was the last time you heard me say something like that?

Once more I managed to beat the 3rd alarm, although not by much. And that was a surprise because even though I was in bed early, I’d had a really bad night.

Several bad attacks of cramp in my right leg, a couple of which obliged me to stand up to relieve the pressure. They were really painful and I was in agony for a good part of the night, something that I didn’t enjoy one little bit.

After breakfast I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. because despite the difficulties that I’d had, I had managed to wander off on my travels, cramp and all.

I had some stuff to leave around and I didn’t want to leave it in my car while I was away for a week so i thought that I’d go to the hotel where I’d been staying or where I would stay on my way back on 12th. I drove my beige MkIV Cortina there, parked it in a temporary parking place on the street and walked round to the hotel, leaving my luggage in the car for a moment. When I arrived there was a Shearings coach tour ready to depart. I could hear them calling my name asking whether I’d be going. Instead I carried on and there were hordes of people because it looked as if there was another coach tour actually starting from there. Everyone was hanging around there at the front of the hotel and I thought that I’d be hours trying to get through this queue into reception. Suddenly 2 coaches pulled up for this coach tour so everyone surged forward into the hotel and I surged in as well. People were complaining that I’d pushed in but I arrived at the reception desk. There I was going to buy some sweets but when I saw the prices I changed my mind. I made up some story about me going on a coach tour and didn’t want my possessions to get damp in the car so she agreed to take my suitcase until 12th when I returned. I went out of the hotel and started to go back the way I’d come. She said “no, there’s a quicker way. Go down this street here, turn left and left again”. The was she said it was so confusing so she said “follow me”. She took me down the first bit and there, there was someone with a collection of old military vehicles behind a hedge, a couple of jeeps and a couple of Jeepnis from the Philippines. Round the bend there was someone else. She said “this is always the person of last resort if you need something urgently”. It was a guy who repaired all kinds of things. he had all kinds of old cars and all bits and pieces parked up in his drive. She kept on taking me down all these footpaths and I was getting so confused. I thought that we would end up miles away from my car and I won’t have a clue where my car is. It was only a 15 minute parking space and what happens if I’ve been towed away because I’ve been so long? But I followed her anyway as she seemed to know where she was going

So fighting off huge attacks of cramp that had brought me out of bed on a couple of occasions I carried on walking down here to find the BASF factory and I’ve no idea why. I was told that it was just near the overbridge but it certainly wasn’t around here. I was going to walk some way to find it and no-one seemed to be interested in telling me where it was. And I’ve no idea what that second part was about either.

But talking about Shearings … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve had to tell Satan to get well and truly behind me this afternoon. Someone’s offered me a 1997 Volvo B10M coach with a Plaxton Paramount body in good running order but needs tidying – for just £1500.

When I worked for Shearings I had years of fun driving those around Europe when I couldn’t lay my hands on a Van-Hool bodied one and they were really nice to drive. I loved Volvo coaches. And so it’s a good job that there’s a lockdown and we aren’t allowed to travel anywhere, especially to the UK, because it saves me from myself.

But what a bargain that is! The thing is that at the moment with companies (including Shearings) going bankrupt, there’s loads of good second-hand stuff on the market that the liquidators are desperate to move so they are slashing prices. This means that everyone is upgrading and modernising their fleets and so there’s all this good old stuff about that is worthless.

Next task was to make some dough for my loaf. Another 500 grammes of wholemeal bread and having bought a pile of sunflower seeds the other day, I forgot to add them in. But I fed the sourdough and the ginger beer while I was at it.

With half an hour free, I attacked the photos from Greenland and made some good progress and then I went for my shower.

By now, the dough had risen sufficiently so I shaped it and put it in its mould and headed out for the shops, with my two pairs of trousers on because it was absolutely taters again outside and the cold wind didn’t help.

At LIDL I didn’t spend very much. There wasn’t anything special that I needed – just a few bits and pieces.

On the way home from LIDL I had to take a diversion from my usual return route.

There had been a few notices knocking around telling us about a new block of flats that they are going to build in the Rue St Paul and I was wondering where that might be. But this here seems to be the answer because the road was closed off while a bunch of workmen were busy knocking down this old cafe on the corner of the Rue Victor Hugo.

For a couple of minutes I watched them in action but it was really far too cold to hang about for long, so I pushed off along the footpath that seems to be the pedestrian diversion at the back of the Community Centre and headed back into town that way.

The town centre is all decorated again, which is very nice to see.

As you might expect and as I have probably said before … “here and there” – ed … there’s no Carnaval this year. That’s hardly surprising given all of what’s going on. But it hasn’t stopped the Carnaval Committee doing their best to decorate the town to make up for it, and here’s a statue of Covidius Horriblis that might otherwise in a good year (does anyone remember those) have been mounted on a decorated lorry.

Of course, it’s a sad and sorry state of affairs but I’m convinced that we really need a lockdown much more severe than we have had to date in order to neutralise this virus. It’s no good just some people taking the utmost precautions if they are at risk of catching it from totally reckless people as soon as they go out

Talking of which, be prepared for a surge in cases being reported from here next week. The Government’s mobile testing unit is here on Saturday and everyone is invited. I’m not going though. I’m not mixing with a load of potentially ill people if I can possibly help it.

On up the Rue des Juifs I went with my shopping, to inspect the work that’s been going on repairing the wall and repointing the wall at the Rampe du Monte a Regret.

And disappointing as it is to say it, they haven’t really made any progress at all since we last looked. The (lack of) speed at which workmen work these days is quite depressing. They should be doing much better than this.

It’s quite true that pointing (and roofing, because the roofers haven’t been on the roof of the College Malraux for the last couple of days) isn’t a job that you can do very well in a snowstorm, but it does beg the question “why on earth did they start the job in the middle of winter in the first place?”.

As I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … up the Rue des Juifs, I noticed some movement in the inner harbour. One of the trawlers was setting out from her berth at the quayside.

The gates were closed and the lights were on red so I imagined that she was manoeuvring into position ready to leap out of the port like a ferret up a trouser leg as soon as the gates would open. But the tide was well out – no chance of them opening in the very near future.

What she did was to go off and tie up at the quayside behind the fish processing plant where someone was waiting with a van. She must be taking on supplies ready for her next trip out.

One of the disadvantages of living in a medieval walled city is that the roads are narrow and the gateways aren’t very high at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen on several occasions all kinds of large vehicles parked up by the gate in the Rue St Jean while the driver has to offload his charge into a car and trailer or an electric wheelbarrow or something similar in order to pass underneath the gateway.

And here’s someone else having a similar issue with his delivery. But there was nothing around onto which he could offload and he actually carried his parcels through the gate and into the town.

Back here in the apartment the bread had risen to perfection in the time that I had been out, so I switched on the oven and bunged it in.

While it was cooking I made myself some hot chocolate and a slice of sourdough fruit-bread and then came in here where I rather unfortunately fell asleep for half an hour.

But later, having recovered my composure, I dismantled two of the laptops here that have failed hard drives. One of the little portable Acers – the one in which I upgraded the memory and the big one with 8GB of memory that gave up 3 days after the guarantee ran out and which prompted me to buy the big desktop machine.

Both the hard drives are easily accessible, which is good news and on browsing the internet I came across a couple of Samsung 1TB Solid-State Drives at just €89:00 each. They are now winging their way in this direction along with a new battery for the little Acer and also a new SATA caddy – you need an external caddy for this job because you have to download the BIOS programs from the machine’s manufacturers into the new disk to make it start to work.

Why I’m interested in doing this is because I’m trying to lighten the load of what I have to carry around with me. The little Acers are quite light and while this one is older than the one that I used from 2014 to 2019 and which handed in its hat in North Dakota, everything in it is accessible so I upgraded the memory in it quite significantly and so it was a quick little machine, even if it was only running Windows 7.

As for the big machine, that actually came with 8GB of memory so it was quite rapid. No point in it sitting around doing nothing when it can (hopefully) be fixed quickly, easily and cheaply.

By now the bread was baked so I took it out of the oven.

It looked pretty good considering everything, and it tasted even better, and I know that because I had a slice for lunch with the remains of the bread from last time.

After lunch and having recovered from a post-prandial nap, I carried on with my Oradour notes and I’ve made my way all through the Court cases and onto the final paragraphs. So with a good couple of days on it, it should at long last be finished and I can crack on.

But it won’t be tomorrow morning though. I am required to do some work on a radio programme for someone.

We mustn’t forget the afternoon walk of course.

And we were in luck with the fishing vessels coming back towards port because I managed to take a snap of two of them out in the English Channel heading for home.

And later on as I walked around the headland there were half a dozen others hanging around outside the harbour entrance. The tide is still quite far out and there isn’t enough sea at the Fish Processing Plant for them to come in and unload. It can’t be long though because there wouldn’t be so many out there waiting for Godot when they could be spending the time out there increasing their catch.

But let’s turn our attention back to where we are at the moment, namely the north side of the headland.

This is pretty much in the shade here and so the sun, such as there is, hasn’t had an opportunity to do very much melting right now and so unless the weather warms up, that snow will be here for a little while.

Not many people out there today either and that’s not much of a surprise. I had on two pairs of trousers so my legs weren’t cold, but that’s about all that wasn’t. I shall be going to the Sports Shop on Saturday morning if I remember for a new woolly hat for my woolly head.

And also a decent pair of warm tactile gloves. My last pair are in the pocket of my blue Adventure Canada jacket, which is hanging up on a peg in a hotel room in Calgary.

With nothing doing out on the Baie de Mont St Michel, I continued on around the other side of the headland to see what is going on in the chantier navale

And we seem to have had a tactical substitution here on one of the sets of blocks. The fishing vessel that was here for a while has now disappeared, presumably back into the water and has been replaced by Lys Noir, one of the charter yachts that plies for hire out of the port.

With no business right now (and now idea when business might restart) they would be quite right in using this dead period to overhaul the boat and make it ready just in case something positive might happen soon.

That was enough for me. I decided to head on home before I froze to death. But not before I had a good look to see what they were doing down in the Rue des Juifs.

Earlier on in the day I’d noticed this cherry-picker out around the town with the guys doing some work. It looks as if they are checking the street lights to see which ones are out and to replace the dud light bulbs if necessary.

But that’s a pretty pointless exercise if you ask me because with no-one out and about at night, why do you need the street lights? And in any case, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I almost went base over apex in the dark on my way to the railway station because the street lights had been extinguished.

When I finished my notes on Oradour sur Glane I had my hour on the guitar and it was quite enjoyable. And I’ve noticed that my bass playing seems to have moved up to another level which has pleased me immensely. At one stage I was playing a lead guitar solo on the bass to Neil Young’s “Like A Hurricane” and Tom Petty’s “Mary jane’s Last Dance”.

And my singing seems to be improving too – not actually singing in tune because that’s way beyond the realms of possibility but the fact that I can keep on singing while I’m playing more complicated stuff on the bass.

But at the moment, I’m going all of this on the Gibson EB3. I really ought to be playing it on the 5-string fretless that I bought for my birthday last year, but that’s a complicated machine and there are limits to what I can try to do at any one time.

Tea was a Madras Curry out of the freezer followed by rice pudding. And now I’m off to bed. Flat out tired, I am and that isn’t a surprise given everything that has happened today. And I made 100% of my target today according to the fitbit. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, considering the lockdown.

No wonder I’m exhausted.

Saturday 14th March 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day this has been for me. Easily one of the worst that I have ever had in recent times.

It started so well too.

Once more I managed (just about) to beat the third alarm call and that’s always good news.

After the medication (more of my delicious orange and ginger syrup) I had a look at the dictaphone to see where i’d been during the night. And hadn’t I gone some distance?

We were in a wagon train or something like that heading to the far west of the USA or somewhere. At a certain moment we came across some kind of supermarket or café, place like that, or shop that was empty. We were having a good look round and there were all kinds of things, cauliflower seeds, that kind of thing, packets all over the floor and ripped open. But there was a lot of food left on the shelves so we started to have a look through the food on the shelves and in the cold store and fridge to see what we could take with us. Someone talked about “yes, we could go to the pub and have chips and a pint there”. I said “oh no. I haven’t been to the pub 5 times in the last 10 years I reckon. I’m going to see what I can make out of all of this”. I was busy wandering around trying to see what there was there in this shop place that I could take with me. My brother and one of my sisters were there too but I’m nor sure what was going on with them. But it was round about there that I woke up. There was beer and all kinds of things in this place.
Having gone back to sleep, a little later I found myself back in the same dream again. The sister was there and she had her handbag but it had holes in it, as if it had a pattern punched through the leather. Of course it might look pretty but I thought “what use is that in a rainstorm?”. I was making a pizza and I had my brother there and I was showing him how to make it. I had to make some room on the worktop in order to have room to make a pizza, just like in my house. You have to unwrap the pastry and tease it out with your fingers to the correct shape, all that kind of thing before you can use it and how carefully you have to put it in the pizza tray.
And so later again, this dream continued. There were four of us by now – me, someone else, a young girl who might have been Percy Penguin and my brother. We were arrested for something or other and marched off. I had my guitar and a pile of other stuff as well. Percy Penguin picked up my guitar and my stuff and walked off with it. We were all ushered away somewhere and for some unknown reason I came back – there might only have been three of us and the fourth person had been taken away previously. She came back and saw me and was trying to find out what was happening. I was trying my best to explain it to her without giving away too much of the game. These people came back to start the interrogation of me. They hadn’t really got very far because I wasn’t sure what they wanted and I don’t think that they were sure what they were wanting. It came to tidying up the room, like in a hotel where you tidy away the breakfast. You cover everything up, put labels on it, stuff goes of the fridge into the main room down to the fridge at the back which is better. One of the guys said something like “can you deal with all of this and all of that” which meant throwing away the orange peel and orange pith and so on. There were some maraschino cherries lying around. I asked “what do you want to do with those?”. One of the guards said “you don’t need to do anything with those because there’s someone whom we took down earlier who’s dealing with all of those”. he meant Percy Penguin who was sitting there eating a lot of them. Anyway I awoke again at that point.
There was also something about Percy Penguin doing a modelling job. We finally caught up with her but I can’t remember what happened then but I had a really bad attack of cramp, awoke yet again and that was my lot.

There was even more to it than this but as you are probably eating your tea right now I’ll spare you all the gory details.

After breakfast I made a start on splitting a couple of digital tracks. The first two were straightforward and it wasn’t long before I was having my shower and preparing for the road.

The streets were empty today, except for by the drive-in collection point for LeClerc. The queue was right down the street as people chose to suffocate themselves in motor vehicle pollution rather than to risk the shops.

As a result, NOZ was empty. There were just three customers in there and that’s nothing for a Saturday morning. I bought a small baking tray, some small pie moulds a few other bits and pieces of no great importance, some more of that cranberry-and-rosemary alcohol-free beer and another pot of that Alpro salted caramel vegan ice-cream that is now back in stock.

They had some of the expensive soya burgers too with a short sell-by date at about two-thirds price so I bought a couple of packets. I can always use those.

Although there were fewer cars on the car park at LeClerc, the place wasn’t noticeably more quiet. Still the usual crowds.

My shopping there today came to very little because I don’t need much. In fact, a large proportion of the bill went on a large pot of thyme. I’ve been wondering for ages what has been the missing ingredient in my cooking and it clicked with me the other day.

For some reason, when I came back, I couldn’t find the energy to put anything away. It was an effort to put away the ice-cream before it melted.

But I didn’t get to rest for long. Rosemary rang up for a chat and we were on the line chatting until almost lunchtime.

After lunch I attacked another couple of digital sound files and then, a terrible thing happened. I crashed out completely, absolutely and definitively. It was just like a couple of years ago when I was totally devastated.

Eventually I awoke and it took me a good 15 minutes to find my bearings. I felt really dreadful too – worse than I have felt for quite a while.

Nevertheless, you can’t keep a good man down. Nor me either. I staggered out for my afternoon walk.

My route this afternoon took me the long way round the headland and down the old path into town past the Chantier navale where there were hordes of people clambering all over Charles-Marie doing all kinds of things to it.

For my part, the tide was out so I headed down to the harbour and crossed over to the other side via the path on top of the harbour gates.

And here’s a boat that we haven’t seen for a while.

Built in 1914 and considerably overhauled in the 1990s, Lys Noir has been up for sale for quite a considerable time and at an asking price of €120,000, I’m hardly surprised.

But word on the streets is that she now has a new owner, and it looks as if they are having a little celebration aboard the vessel.

So we should be seeing her out and about this summer.

A merry and mazy way through the town eventually brought me to the Parc de Val es Fleurs. There wasn’t an awful lot going on there either.

However, I did find a new footpath that I hadn’t noticed before. This one brought me out round the back of the Ecole Primaire Docteurs Lanos – the Doctors Lanos Primary School, whoever the Doctors Lanos were when they were at home, if they ever were.

So I had a little look around, but there was nothing of any importance going on. Just a father and son playing football and the boy hit the post with three consecutive shots, much to the amusement of his father and Yours Truly.

The footpath is called the Allee des Cygnes – the Avenue of the Swans – and it’s a continuation of the Chemin des Moulins.

Why it’s so called is that apparently there’s a river flowing through here that has now been culverted over. It’s supposed to discharge into the sea somewhere, so I wonder if that’s what we saw the other day that I thought was a drain outlet.

But anyway, the path brought me round the back of the town centre and out by the Casino. And so I decided to come on home. It had been a long walk.

Back here, I tidied up the music. It’s somewhat all over the place and it’s very confusing when I’m trying to arrange some radio programmes. By the looks of things, the last time that I sorted it properly was back in 2006.

But now it’s divided into 5 groups of 55 groups or solo musicians each, and that’s about 750 albums that have been digitalised to date. There are probably that many again that remain to be done.

While I was at it, I updated THE PLAYLIST FOR THE RADIO PROGRAMMES. At least, even if I don’t feel like it, I ought to be doing something or other.

Later on, I sorted through the burgers that I have in stock. There were some that were a couple of months past their sell-by date so I attacked one of those with some pasta and vegetables. I’ll gradually work my way through those as I go along.

For pudding, I had the last slice of that delicious apple pie with some soya coconut dessert stuff that I bought. Tomorrow, it’s pizza of course so with the oven on, I’ll make a rice pudding in that new casserole dish that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a rice pudding and I do happen to like them

And so for my evening walk, even though I didn’t feel much like it.

The NIKON 1 J5 and the f1.8 18.5mm lens came with me, and I managed a rather iffy shot of the College Malraux with the lighthouse beam hovering over it.

Nothing would stop me attempting my two runs and not only did I manage them, I even pushed on beyond my boundaries, making the top of the first ramp on my second track across the Square Maurice Marland. I can’t be as ill as I was thinking.

So now I intend to have an early night, and sleep until I wake up. I’m off to Leuven, trains and Government legislation permitting, on Wednesday and I really have to pull myself together if I’m to sort all of this out.

Wednesday 1st January 2020 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May I take this opportunity to wish all of my readers (both of you!) a very happy New Year. I hope that you will receive everything this year that you wished on everyone else during the course of the last year.

It goes without saying, of course, that whatever you wished on Brexiters, the Conservative party, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, the Republicans and Canadian Tories are exempt from this. If the World comes to an end in 2020, we’ll all know who to blame.

And for that reason, this song is going to be my anthem for the current year. I have often said … “and you will say more often” – ed … that if violence is the answer, then it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on the Referendum paper in 2016 is about as stupid as they come.

And the fact that 17.4 million people were stupid enough to vote for it, and 14 million people were stupid enough just now to vote for the Tories shows you that people still haven’t got the message.

The only way for you to tell them the message in a fashion in which they will understand it is –
1) to tell them about it slowly
2) on their thick skulls
3) in Morse code
4) with a pickaxe handle.

Yes, “if you want your rights you’re going to have to fight” and “we’ll walk hand in hand to the promised land” “if we bring down the Government now”.

On the subject of walking, as I mentioned last night, I went out for a walk at about 23:30 to see what was going on in town. Not hand in hand though. I was on my own and had a camera to carry.

The harbour gates were open so I had to walk along the rue du Port and that way into town and just as the clock struck midnight, I found myself at the end of the rue St Saveur.

Having a think about it, I don’t recall if I took a photo of the street with its Christmas lights so I took a photo of it just now to complete the picture.

Mind you, I’m not sure why I bothered, because they aren’t really all that much to write home about, are they?

From there, my perambulations took me along the street into the place Générale de Gaulle.

This is much more like it. They seem to have pousseé‘d the bateau dehors a bit more here as we have seen before. The ski slope is certainly different, although I’m still not sure why they would want one.

But apart from that, it’s still pretty much the same as previous years and I do with that they would try to do something different next year.

As for the rue Lecampion, I’m not quite sure what to say.

What certainly didn’t help was that they put out the overhead lights just as I was preparing to photograph the street, so we were just left with the lights up the sides of the shops.

The overhead lights going out was the cue for me to go home. And by the time I returned here I reckoned that I hadn’t even encountered a dozen people wandering around.

There were a few noisy parties going on – even one in this building, and so I was grateful for 1.2 metres of solid Chausey granite walls between me and the rest of the world.

Not feeling in the least bit tired, I did some personal stuff on the computer. And no-one was more surprised than me to notice that the time was now 03:30. Where had the time gone?

Bedtime by now, I reckon, even if I didn’t feel like sleep. I have to make an effort.

And sleep I must have had. No alarm and so I awoke at 07:00. Not the slightest chance of me showing a leg at that time of morning.

And neither was there any chance at 09:00. This is after all a Bank Holiday, no alarm, I’m entitled to a rest, and I’ve had a late night too.

What is much more like it is … errr … 12:15. That’s a REAL lie-in.

As for any voyage that I might have had, well, what’s this bit about hunting furs last night? I don’t remember very much at all but apparently someone living in France who could catch 60 squirrels and skin them had the same style of life as someone normal, which of course I found hard to believe and the people to whom I was telling this story they found it hard to believe too but apparently that’s how it went and that’s really all that I remember about last night.

Breakfasting at 13:00 is much more like it too and so seeing as I had my fig roll and (finally) some strawberry jam. Yes, jam today. And I hope that it will last so that there will be jam tomorrow too. Perhaps I ought to think about making a jam tart.

So once the breakfast was over, there was work to be done. And as I promised myself, I attacked Project 008 for the radio.

That’s now finished and, even though I say it myself, I think that it’s the best to date. It’s not just that my technique is improving, but that instead of speaking “off the cuff” as I would normally like to do, I’ve started to write scripts.

That means that I’m not umming and ahhing as much (which means that there is less stuff to cut out) and I’m not pausing the dictaphone as often while I look for material, so it sounds much more seamless.

Once I’d finished it and played it through to make sure that it was as I wanted it with no mistakes, I went out for my afternoon walk.

With having not been out for any bread this morning (I’d missed lunch of course) I took the long way out right around the new bit of path that they had excavated after the rockfall and where I had met my Waterloo in May.

Crowds of people out and about, even if the weather was pretty miserable and you couldn’t see a thing.

Once I was out, I was going to stay out, and well out too.

My trip took me past the chantier navale where I could see what was going on. Pecheur de Lys was back on dry land after her little sojourn through the summer in the water. She’s looking rather sad though and could do with a coat of paint.

Spirit of Conrad was there too, as were the other two fishing boats. But there was no-one out there working on them. “Knocked off for the holidays” I reckoned.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed, which meant that I could take the path over the top and across to the other side.

Where the fish processing plant is, there is a huge concrete apron and the seabirds here have learnt quite quickly to take advantage of it.

This gull is just one of many that will scavenge a mollusc out of the silt and fly over here to drop it on the concrete to break it open, and then dive down for a feast. It really was quite impressive.

The wildlife kingdom is amazingly versatile and can adapt to most kinds of environment – if only humans would let them.

With nothing exciting going on in the inner harbour, I went for a walk over to the port de plaisance, the yacht harbour, to see what was going on there.

Not an awful lot, but there were a few boats that we have seen on several occasions, such as the lifeboat over there on the far side.

That has plenty of use of course and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw it disappear into an enormous wave during the storm that we had the other day.

Here’s another one that we have seen a few times in the past.

She’s Lys Noir, and when we’ve seen her moored up in the harbour, it’s usually been in the wet harbour at the back of where I’m standing, where boats like Thora, Normandy Trader and the gravel boats tie up.

So why she should be here, I don’t know. If she’s advertising cruises, she won’t have many people passing by to read the notices where she is.

This is a boat that we’ve seen even more often than Lys Noir.

She’s La Granvillaise and immediately recognisable by the “G90” on her bows. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she too spent some time in the chantier navale a while ago being given a good going-over.

But with all of these boats, there isn’t presumably much happening right now so they are laid up for the winter.

Nevertheless, with all of the tourists here right now, wandering aimlessly around the harbour, I’d have had them plastered with adverts for the summer season trips that they do, and put them where people could actually see tham.

My perambulations took me right along the seafront, such as it is here, through the new modern apartment complex at the end, and back into town via the rue St Gaud and the rue St Saveur.

But round the back of the Mairie in the rue du Commandant Yvon, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, is another set of electric vehicle charging points.

Europe needs to get its act together with the phasing out of new internal-combustion engines cars by 2040, and it’s good to see that here in France they are organising themselves.

And so I decided that I’ll keep a closer eye out to see what I could find, and I didn’t have to go far to find some more.

Not even 50 metres, I reckoned. Here are two more on the public car park around the corner off the Cours Jonville. So with the two that I saw at the railway station earlier this week, that makes 6 that I’ve found in Granville without looking too far.

And that’s not counting the half-dozen or so that are installed at the LeClerc supermarket on the edge of town.

Across the road from the car park I noticed this old Porsche Carrera.

Nice and interesting the car might be, but it wasn’t the car that caught my eye but its registration number. It has the “F” for France on the number plate of course, but the registration is hors serie – out of the usual run of numbers, whether pre-2009 or post-2009.

It could mean absolutely anything of course, so I shall have to make further enquiries about it. I did look at the insurance sticker in the window and that was displaying a “WW” series number, indicating Trade Plates.

Back home, I didn’t do a great deal. After all, it is a Bank Holiday.

later on, I made tea though.

Same as Christmas night as well. Seitan slices roasted in olive oil with onions, garlic, gravy and herbs, with roast potatoes in olive oil and mint. Vegetables included an endive, peas and carrots, green beans, a leek and some sprouts.

Followed by Christmas cake for pudding, you really cannot even begin to imagine just how delicious it all was.

Plenty of sprouts and endives left to finish off, ad a leek too, but I intend to make a leek and potato soup with that sometime soon.

This evening I was all alone on my little walk around. Not a soul out there. I managed my run too, and made it to the top of the first ramp.

So I’m off to bed now. It’s not early, because I’ve been busy. I found a “live” concert from the BBC with only a small audience, and as I have a project on the back burner that needs a small audience, I was stripping out the applause to use.

But here’s a thing – the applause is evidently over-dubbed, without question. And as they didn’t have enough material for the spot, they’ve extended the applauses by adding three or four together.

None of that is the issue though. What is the issue is that they seem to have done it all on a two-track recorder in stereo and without the overdubbing facility that multi-tracking can give you, they have simply joined the tracks together – and you can see all the joins. Tiny little milli-seconds of silence.

What I’ve had to do is to edit the applauses after I’ve stripped them out, so that the joins have gone and it all looks pretty seamless.

Given the facilities they have there, it’s not very good at all, especially when even a home-based four-track set-up like the cheap affair that I have can produce a seamless show.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job.

Monday 11th November 2019 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… another day like yesterday.

No alarm of course so I was banking on a good sleep. Especially as it was about 04:00 when I finally wandered off to bed, such is the exciting life that I lead here.

And so awakening at 08:30 was no part of the plan whatsoever.

Just like yesterday I turned over to go back to sleep by by 09:30 I gave it up and raised myself from the dead.

Somewhere during the night I’d been off on my travels too. And it all had a very familiar ring when I compare it with what usually happens in my life too.

I was up getting things ready for a party and this involved doing all of the organising, the paperwork and the tickets and so on. I’d folded up a pile of tickets to put in my pocket and so on – my pockets were full of stuff and now I had to sit down and start to do the paperwork. First thing I needed to do was to find my pen – a highlighter pen – and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I emptied out all of my pockets and put the tickets in a nice pile and they all fell over and fell on the floor. I had a really good hunt around and in the end I found my pen – my highlighter pen – and then I had to go and get the letter to pick it up and highlight it and I couldn’t find the letter and I’d only had it in my hand a minute ago and I had to hunt around for this letter and I couldn’t find it and I could hear all people outside and I don’t know whether they had started to ocme to the party early or something like that but I was nowhere near ready at all and I still couldn’t find this paper and I’d only had it just that minute before.

Doesn’t all of that sound familiar?

We had the usual medication and breakfast, and then I spent an hour or two updating some pages on the website. I’m now somewhere on the north-west coast of Newfoundland in 2010 which means that I’m about a third of the way through – and that’s just doing the active pages too. When I look at all of the pages in the queue, it makes me shudder.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is working on my little project. This involves the help of Youtube and the Allman Brothers Band and a considerable amount of research. And I’m still at it even now.

There has also been some considerable excitement here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the strap on my fitbit broke a few weeks ago and I ordered a new one.

It never arrived, so I complained. And it turned out that according to the supplier “it was delivered and signed for on 29th October”.

Well, not here it wasn’t, so I complained again. This morning they sent be a copy of the delivery receipt from the carriage company, and asked me about the signature.

My reply was that it certainly was not mine, and I could say that with confidence because the address on the delivery receipt is wrong. For some unknown reason about which I know absolutely nothing at all, they seem to have sent the bracelet to an address in Italy.

Nevertheless, we now have to go through some stupid claims procedure with the freighter, when the reason is there right before everyone’s eyes.

What will inevitably happen will be that it will take a year to sort out, by which time they will tell me that the product is now out of stock and I can’t get one anyway.

So in the meantime, I’ve found a generic one on eBay at a quarter of the price, and that should be on its way here now even as we speak. I can’t be doing with all of this.

With a late start I had a late lunch, and then I went out for another long walk – and then had to come back because I’d forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera.

And, even more strangely, there are 25 steps from the ground floor up to my apartment – and I ran all the way up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there have been days when i couldn’t even crawl up.

So armed with a memory card, it was back out into the howling gale (when is it ever going to stop?) and along the rue du Nord.

There was another really rough sea rolling in from the Atlantic and the waves breaking on the beach were quite impressive.

The tide is still quite far out right now.

And with the tide being quite far out right now, there was a large crowd out there on the Plat Gousset looking as if they were waiting for something.

Not that I might know what it would be, but if it’s waiting for the waves to come in and crash over the sea wall, I reckon that they have about another hour.

They could have gone for a coffee or two and come back with plenty of time rather than waiting out there in the wind.

My route this afternoon was longer than usual seeing how I’d missed my morning walk.

Instead of the habitual route I went down the steps, through the lower town and out to the port de plaisance – the yacht harbour – to see if there was anything exciting going on there.

And here tied up at one of the pontoons is one of our old favourites, the Lys Noir. I’ve no idea what she’s doing moored up out here, but she’s not doing very much right now.

Something else that I will have to do is to check her itinerary for the near future and see where I can go.

She wasn’t the only one of our old favourites in port today either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Pecheur de Lys was taken out of storage earlier this year and put afloat in the harbour. And she’s still there too, riding out the waves.

But I wonder if she’ll ever get to see the open sea?

It was busy in there too. One of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey had just come in and it was disgorging its passengers and cargo out onto the quay.

However, my attention was elsewhere. Right now we were in the middle of one of these flash rainstorms that we have ever now and again. And a heavy one too.

And right there over the town we were being blessed with one of the most beautiful rainbows that I have seen in a long time.

We’ve had a few just recently and I’ve photographed a couple, but this one this afternoon takes the cake. And look how black the sky was too.

Meanwhile returning à nos moutons as they say down there, the inner harbour was very busy too.

The harbour gates can’t have been open for all that long because there was a regular procession of trawlers coming in to tie up at the fish-processing plant.

And also smaller trawlers too, with all of their family and friends lined up at the quayside ready to catch the catch as it’s thrown up by those down below in the boat.

There are two of our regular boats that weren’t in the water today.

Here up on blocks in the Chantier Navale is our old friend Aztec Lady that appeared in port the other week. There didn’t seem to be much evidence about the work that might be being undertaken and there was no-one with her to ask.

Mind you, I doubt that they would tell me anyway. Commercial charter companies are very reticent to talk about defects in their equipment.

Next to her up on more blocks is our other old friend Spirit of Conrad. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been for a birthday party on board about 2 years ago.

Her owner, one of my neighbours, was down there so I had a chat to him. Apparently she has a hole in the hull caused by some kind of impact damage and she’s going to be patched up.

He showed me the hole and it wasn’t really all that big and it seemed to be above the waterline too. So it won’t take long to fix.

On the way back, I walked all around the headland, in the teeth of a howling gale.

Out at the Pointe du Roc where we turn into the English Channel, the seas were quite heavy and this little trawler here was having something of a rough time of it turning her beam to the wind.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you think about the real cost of the lump of fish that goes onto your plate on a Friday. How would you like to work out there in conditions like that?

Coming into port in a storm like this is one thing, but how about going out to work in it?

When the other trawlers were coming in, there was one just setting out. And here she is ploughing her way out through the waves in the doom and gloom on her way to her fishing station somewhere off the coast of the Channel Islands.

It’s not something that I mind doing once in a while, but to be out there in weather like that all the time is not for me.

My mega-walk is now one hour or so later than when I started and the tide is now well in.

The waves are giving the sea wall at the Plat Gousset a real pounding and as you will probably notice, the crowd has diminished considerably.

And seeing as it’s rather late, I shan’t be joining them either. I’m going inside for a coffee, some warmth and to do a little more work.

In fact, I’m going to make tea. Stuffed pepper with rice followed by the last of the rice pudding. Bearing in mind last week’s problem, I gave the pepper an extra two minutes (one minute on medium and one minute on high) and it was done to a turn.

Delicious.

Back outside for my evening walk around the walls and I was all on my own, which was no surpise given the wind.

The tide was on its way out too so the crowds on the Plat Gousset have dispersed. I carried on with my walk and to my surprise not only did I run all the way up the ramp at the end, I ran on a few more paces.

What with running up the steps, and running here like this, I’ve no idea what is happening. But I’m going to make the most of it while I can.

And my fitbit tells me that I’ve done 104% of my daily activity too.

If I’m not very careful, I’ll be getting myself fit, and where will I be then?

Rather like the guy who decided that he was going to run 4 miles every night. By the end of the week he had to run 28 miles back home again.

I’ll get my coat.

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trawler rough seas english channel granville manche normandy france

Sunday 23rd June 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… much more productive day today, even though it might not seem like it.

For a change I’ve been hard at at for most of the day, what with one thing or another. The pile of outstanding dictaphone notes has now gone down to a mere 11, after I’ve spent most of the day bashing away.

And that’s not all of it. I had a reasonably early night and stayed in bed until 09:30 and I must have spent all of that time on the road. There was a ton of stuff that had accumulated on the dictaphone overnight that needed transcribing.

I started off the night going through the Arctic on a ship that might have been the Ocean Endeavour and were having to break our way through some of the ice there. There was a question of which port we were going to dock into. We had a choice of 3 and supplies were being moved to 3 different ports to await us. I had to go to these ports to check them out and make sure that all of the stuff was appearing in the right kind of position. I was amazed at some of the stuff that was being sent on shipment. There we were, been struggling in the ice and supplies were getting low I suppose etc, and they thought strange things like pairs of tights were among the most important supplies that we needed.
Later on, we were into motor racing and preparing a car, a Mark II Cortina for racing. We had to modify the exhaust so I was busy making the modifications out of bits of pipe and tin can. Of course it didn’t have to be very solid, for one race then rebuilt for another. Someone was helping me and they had assembled it all up and came to fit the rear part. They said that it went on the inside of the front pipe but I replied “no, the outside”. They couldn’t see why they would dispute with me but then they tried it and it actually DID go on the outside. They could push it all the way up until the front pipe ground out on the baffles inside. But the thing was that this back box was made of glass. We had to fit it and seal it by by getting it hot and moulding the glass, a glass-blower technique or something. They were going “this is great. We can make 50 of these and sell them on” but I was thinking “hang on! We haven’t got this one to work yet”. Someone asked me when I thought that it might be working. I replied that it might even be working tomorrow night because there’s only this exhaust to fit now. It needs some tempering and reshaping, joints and gaskets but I’m sure that that won’t take me all day. There was some certain music going off in the background, martial music with marching movements
From then on we had a new girl come to work in our office although she was an entertainer. We were the administration staff and it was our job to organise people like this and I came in – we were on flexible hours and 10:00 was the latest start. It was 09:29 when I arrived and someone, one of the girls, said something about “ohh Eric you’re early this morning”. I said that I’m not that early, but they said “earlier than normal”. The girl who was manning my post until I arrived asked “are you ready to take over now Eric?” I said “just give me a minute to get myself organised”. I took my coat off and hung it on my chair and went to open my briefcase for my paperwork. I found that the lock had jammed. There was much more than this but I can’t remember it now. This woman had fallen apparently and someone from the section had picked her up and sat her down
later still I was in an office and my work was hopelessly in arrears and I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I had tons of stuff. I was supposed to tell switchboard that I was in but I had forgotten. People were ringing me up ordering battleships and brochures and I didn’t know where to get the brochures from. It was quite a mess. I went to look for some brochures in the storeroom but found myself outside. So I walked up into town out of the mud and who should I bump into but Margaret Stockton who was coming out of our other office. She was limping, just been involved in an accident. We had a chat and she told me about the accident, how it had happened. I found myself in the indoor market in Crewe looking at the cheese stalls. I thought that I would buy something and go back – cheer myself up. But while I was rummaging around in my pocket I found some bits of old cheese fallen out of a sandwich that I had had in there. They were all musty, covered in fluff but I ate them nevertheless. I noticed that at the side of the wall there were loads of off-cuts of cheese, the bad bits going mouldy had been trimmed off and dumped in this corner by all the stalls, ready to be moved by someone or other.
Finally, I was packing last night ready to leave, folding up a long-sleeved dress shirt (and I’ve no idea why), but I couldn’t find my light-tan shoes. I had my comfortable boots of course but not the others. And I was panicking around looking for them and whoever I was with was making a few suggestions. But then I realised that I did have my deck shoes so it wouldn’t be so bad. However I still was keen on finding them. Nevertheless, I ended up being ready and was about to set off when I suddenly glanced across to the bed and discovered that not only had I left the Sat-nav behind but also Strawberry Moose, and wouldn’t that have been a catastrophe?

It’s hardly a surprise that I awoke in yet another feverish sweat.

After a rather late breakfast, I cracked on with the dictaphone notes, with a brief pause for lunch. And by the time my eyes went all blurry and I could no longer see straight, it was about 17:00.

That was the cue to go off on my rather late afternoon walk.

There wasn’t anything like as much shipping out there in the English Channel or the Baie de Mont St Michel as there was yesterday.

Nothing in the way of trawlers or yachts, just a couple of small boats and rafts with people either fishing or diving from them

But that’s not really quite all.

Right out in the English Channel off the coast near St Malo was some kind of large vessel. I couldn’t quite make it out so I took a long-distance photograph in the hope that I could crop and enlarge it at a later date.

And although I managed to create something out of it, I’m still none the wiser. Judging by the way that it’s rigged though, it could be Lys NoirLa Granvillaisn but that is pure conjecture.

while I was admiring the view, I was overflown by a light aircraft. And with the new Nikon D500 I was able to grab a shot of it for further examination at home.

It turns out that she’s F-GBAI, a Robin DR-400-140B Major presumably on its way to Donville les Bains.

She set out from St Nazaire on the afternoon of 21st June and wasn’t recorded as landing anywhere else in between. But then again , the smaller airfields don’t have data loggers as yet

They were back working at the bunker on the Atlantic Wall today.

And they had a visitor too. An ex-Army 6×4 heavy lorry of the type that ran the “Red Ball Express” from the Normandy landings to the front-line troops.

I meant to go round for a closer look but as it happens I forgot. I’m clearly not feeling myself these days

Back here I made some more of that dessert stuff. A Coffee-flavoured one this time with pineapple rings. And it goes without saying that that too was quite delicious when I tried it for tea.

First though, I did some more of last Monday’s blog, which I will finish one of these days and then I made myself a vegan pizza. And it wasn’t half delicious too.

Back outside again for my evening walk, and the sky had now clouded over.

There was another Tora Tora Tora evening as well, with the rays of the sun breaking through small gaps in the clouds.

We’ve seen quite a few evenings like this over the last couple of years since I’ve been living here. I don’t recall seeing anything like as many as this when I lived elsewhere.

And just for a change, I wasn’t alone out there enjoying the scenery and the sunset;

There were quite a few people out there on the beach enjoying the evening sun.

And that’s hardly surprising because it really was warm despite the late hour. I’d even taken off my jumper and was walking around in my shirt-sleeves. It’s not very often this year that I’ve been able to do that.

Now it’s time for an early night. I need to be up and about early because I have the Doctor’s tomorrow at 08:45.

Then I’ll find out exactly where I stand.

square maurice marland granville manche normandy france

men in zodiac ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

men on raft donville les bains granville manche normandy france

Saturday 22nd June 2019 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… this year as far as I am able to tell, it actually felt like summer today.

And it’s been a long time coming, especially now that the solstice has been and gone.

Last night I didn’t get much sleep at all but whatever I had was certainly a deep sleep. I slept right through without moving until the alarm went off, and I lay abed until about 06:45

There were definitely some nocturnal voyages at some point, but they disappeared out of my head before I even had time to grab hold of the dictaphone.

After the medication and breakfast I did a little (only a little) tidying up and took the rubbish out to the bins. This idea of having a much smaller bin in the kitchen seems to work because it was full after only a week and I was obliged to take it out. With the bigger one, there was a tendency for the rubbish in there to hang around so long that it walked out of the apartment on its own.

Liz and Terry came round and while Terry went off to finish a job at brigitte’s, Liz and I went to the bar for a coffee. Terry joined us later and we had a lengthy chat about nothing in particular.

Later we went to LeClerc where I did a little shopping, and then we went for lunch. I had chips with a side-salad.

back here, Liz and Terry dropped me off and I came in to crack on with the dictaphone notes.

By the time that tea-time came round, I’d reduced the outstanding number to 25. I’m hoping for a good day free from interruptions and if so, I’ll be in a position to finish this before I go away on Thursday morning, which will be nice.

Tea tonight was out of a tin. I had a fancy for some spicy beans so I had a tinful with some rice and vegetables followed by the leftover pineapple rings and cocnut soya cream.

When I’d gone out with Liz and Terry earlier in the morning, I’d seen lots of boats out in the Baie de Mont St Michel and the English Channel.

So when I went out this evening I took the camera, hoping to see another pile of naval craft out there on the water.

And I wasn’t going to be disappointed at all.

There were dozens of water craft out there this evening, ranging from jetskis out to full-blown three-master yachts.

Due to the distance and range I couldn’t see which yacht the two-master might be. I’m wondering if it might be La Granvillaise having an evening out, but I couldn’t really be sure.

But there’s a zodiac-type of craft in the foreground just there, and doesn’t that bring back many happy memories of last September up in the High Arctic?

But here’s a boat that we all recognise, even if we haven’t seen her since a fleeting glimpse last summer.

By definition, she’s actually a yawl and was built in 1914 in Arcachon down in South-West France for a German owner but was seized as war reparations.

She fell on hard times and was laid up in the 1980s, before being saved in 1990 and subsequently underwent a complete refit.

Talking of complete refits, I went for a look around in the chantier navale to see what was going on.

The long-term trawler has now disappeared. Maybe they have finished it and it’s gone back into the water.

Instead, alongside the Belle de Carentan we seem to have acquired one of the lightweight fishing boats of the type that goes out for the more-inshore varieties of aquatic life.

One day, I’ll have to actually go and find out what it is that boats like these bring in.<

Last night, I was certain that I saw a silhouette of three tall masts in the harbour.

And I wasn’t wrong. Marité has turned up back in port. Apparently she came in yesterday afternoon from Cherbourg just after 15:30, but I don’t recall seeing her as I came back from my afternoon out.

One of these days I shall have to go for a sail out in her, even though I don’t think all that much of the people who represent the organisation.

Tomorrow is Sunday and this is going to be my very last lie-in for quite some considerable time. I hope that I make the most of it.

Thursday 11th April 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day when I haven’t been all that productive.

It didn’t help by not being out of bed until 07:30. I really need to get a grip these days before I miss a train or something.

Plenty of time during the night to go on a little voyage though. I was with Alvin last night and we were going through a pile of LPs that he had left. He wanted some of them copied, which meant playing and recording on blank records. I had a look through some of the stuff but there wasn’t anything there of any interest or importance as far as I was concerned, but he insisted on having it done. He told me that when it had been done the original records had to be taken to a certain place where I would get some money for it but the duplicates would be retained here. I shouldn’t take those as they would hand them back and cut down on his money. I said fair enough but it was a strange way to go about it. I couldn’t get the thing organised properly and made loads of mistakes trying to copy these albums but I carried on. While this was doing he was doing some calculations so I went to see what he was doing – “working 11 hours at $8:10 per hour”. I asked what it was and he replied that he was trying to work out if he could afford to be a policeman in Los Angeles. I said “not at $8:10 per hour! No-one could work for that”. He told me about all of the advantages he would receive and there was a fund to help out people who moved from a high-paid job to a low-paid job to make sure that their mortgages were paid. It all sounded quite precarious to me. But somewhere along the line, up in Neston I had an old house, on the roadside with newer houses build behind it. I was trying to find out how old it was but I wasn’t being very serious with my enquiries but I don’t remember very much about this.

After breakfast I had a shower and prettied myself up, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle. One of the things that I did was to put new bedding on the bed and wash the previous bedding. The stuff that was on it was on the verge of walking into the washing machine all on its own.

And then I headed off into town for the shopping.

And I was surprised to see, amongst the boats that were waiting to leave the harbour when the gates open, this particular boat.

I’m almost certain that it’s the boat that was up on blocks in the chantier navale for a couple of weeks being resprayed and painted. She looks as if she’s off on her travels now.

And despite having all of this massive array of scaffolding erected on the wall higher up, they are still working away at the base of the walls moving away all of the loose rock.

The machine that they are using is quite impressive. It’s a little mini-digger with a hydraulic breaker on the jib of it.

It’s breaking off all of the loose rock which is then being shovelled up into a skip which you can see in the foreground.

It’s quite busy down in the harbour this morning too.

We have La Granvillaise moored up at the quay where Marité usually hangs out, and Thora is still there too, but she’s moved berth over to where the gravel boats tie up.

That’s because Normandy Trader has come into port, presumably on the early morning tide. They are already loading her up too, so clearly they don’t intend to hang about.

On the way up the hill in the rue Couraye I noticed a really old man with a very interesting machine.

In there is a grinding wheel worked by a foot treadle rather like an old-fashioned sewing machine in the pre-electric days, and he seems to be sharpening knives with it.

It’s really nice to see a good old-fashioned artisan peddling … “groan” – ed … his craft on the streets even today. There ought to be more of it, I reckon.

LIDL didn’t come up with much so I headed off for home, picking up a baguette on the way.

The gates of the harbour were now open and boats were leaving the port, including this fishing boat. Quite a few had already left, including Thora and Normandy Trader.

While Thora was in and out in 24 hours, the latter had an even quicker turn-round. I was right about her not intending to hang about in the harbour. They must be really busy just now.

It makes me wonder when I was saying last year that I hadn’t seen them for quite a while. I just reckon that their turn-round must have been so quick that I must have missed it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the harbour, the men were out there again on their pontoon.

It’s quite a mystery to me what they are doing out there. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that about 18 months ago they drained the harbour completely and dredged it out. So there can’t be much in there that needs checking.

I shall have to make enquiries at the port office next time I’m down there. Maybe they will tell me.

Back here I had a drink and a sit down, and then hung out the washing to dry. Once that was done I made a start on the dictaphone notes, but had to knock off for lunch.

Even though it was rather windy out there, it was such a beautiful warm afternoon. And so i took my butties outside and sat on my wall overlooking the harbour.

And I was in luck this afternoon too. One of the ferry boats that does the run to the Ile de Chausey was coming into harbour. She’d obviously been on a little outing earlier this morning as there was quite a crowd of people.

She pulled up at her mooring at the ferry terminal and then unloaded all of her passengers.

And then much to my surprise, she collected up another load of passengers, and then headed off out again into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And with her having her back turned towards me, I could see that she’s the Joly France. Her sister is tied up in the harbour.

Of course, it shouldn’t really be any surprise that she’s busy. It’s school holidays in Granville of course and all of the kids are at a loose end and will be for next week too.

And so we can can expect to see much more of the Ile de Chausey ferries out and about then while the kids are off school.

The Ile de Chausey ferries aren’t the only things out there right now.

There’s an old sailing ship or, rather, a large yacht out there too. From what I could see of her, I think that she’s the Lys Noir.

We haven’t seen all that much of her just recently, so it’s nice to see her back. In fact, I’m wondering whether she might have been the sailing boat out there the other day that I thought was the Charles-Marie

Butties having been eaten, I came back and had another marathon session on the dictaphone notes.

Now I’m back into my notes for my trip around Labrador in 2017 which is good news. That’s good news because when that’s finished I can tie up the photos to the text and make a start on those web pages too.

Later on, I went out for my afternoon walk as usual. Today, it was around the Pointe-du Roc.

It was such a beautiful day and the haze was farther out than it has been just recently, so i could tke a really good photograph of the Baie de Mont St Michel and St Pair sur Mer just across on the other side.

And I was really impressed today with the colour of the sea today. Fr the last few weeks it’s been a murky grey colour, but today we have a nice proper blue sea.

And with it being rather windy out there today, I could see the flag that they were putting up yesterday.

It’s actually the flag of Granville and that’s new to me because I didn’t realise that Granville actually had its own flag.

The red one with the two golden lions on it is the flag of the Duchy of Normandy, and I’m sure that you don’t need me to explain the other two.

On that note, I came back for a hot chocolate and, shame as it is to say it, a little … errr … relax on the office chair.

There was still enough time to do something else before tea, so seeing as I wasn’t in a particularly enthusiastic mood, I made a start on the searchable text database for the photos for June 2018.

For tea, I founf a lentil and mushroom curry in the freezer. It was one that I had made on 7th November … errr … 2017 and it tasted just as delicious as it did back then.

It seems that I’m getting right down to the bottom of the pile of curries now. I’m not sure how many ancient ones there might be still in there, but there can’t be many.

In a short while I’ll have to make a start on making some more.

later on I went for my evening walk around the city walls.

There were still a few people out there enjoying the evening sunshine, and also a dozen or so fishing boats loitering around just outside the harbour.

It must be that the tide isn’t in enough for them to reach the Fish Processing Plant and tie up to unload. But I don’t imagine that they will have long to wait.

And so I carried on and came home.

Tonight I’m hoping for another early night and a good sleep. Tomorrow I’m planning on having something of a tidy-up in the kitchen and living room.

Things are getting a little untidy in there so I need to apply myself. After all, I’m off on my travels again early on Sunday.

scaffolding medieval wall granville manche normandy france

“boats ready to leave port de granville harbour manche normandy france

joly france ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

lys noir baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Thursday 22nd March 2018 – IT WAS BUSY …

… down in the harbour this morning.

First of all, we had the Normandy Trader in. She’s on one of her shuttle trips between Jersey and Normandy bringing in a load of scrap, and I couldn’t see what she was taking away.

That was because by the time that I had got down there, she had loaded up and gone out. She didn’t hang about at all.

The reason for my delay was that another bit of movement in the harbour had caught my eye.

La Grande Ancre was just setting out on the tide – presumably heading towards the Iles de Chausey (she was back a short while later).

So despite her being registered in Cherbourg, it looks as if she’s now a permanent fixture here in Granville, and I’m all in favour of that as you know.

Also in the harbour today is a piece of history.

She’s the Lys Noir – the “Black Lily” and was built in 1914 in Arcachon as a pleasure yacht for a German prince. But on the outbreak of World War I she was confiscated by the French authorities as a prize of war and subsequently sold into private hands.

She was rebuilt here in Granville in the 1980s and now belongs to an Association to which she has given her name.

In front of it is the ferry that goes to the Channel Islands – presumably being prepared for the season.

But my attention was caught by the name that has been painted out underneath. She is in fact the famous former “Bornholm Express”.

She was built in Singapore in 2006 and came to Denmark on the deck of a cargo ship. Her task was to operate a fast ferry service between Sweden and the island of Bornholm. But the ferry service was unsuccessful and closed down.

And this is where she has ended up – arriving in 2014.

So apart from that, last night was a better night’s sleep and I was off on my travels.

I was in fact at a football match – Altrincham v Morton. But at the ground the end where I usually stand was full of yellow-shirted Southport supporters. However, walking into the ground (there was no-one on the gate) I was just in time to see Morton’s second goal – and we hadn’t played 15 minutes yet. A beautiful shot from a narrow angle on the right wing across the keeper. I headed to an open spot on the far side and found myself in a group of about 50 Morton supporters who were clearly delighted by the result. I started to chat to a young girl there, with half an eye on the game, but a group of very tall men came and stood right in front of us. Despite me asking, they weren’t inclined to leave so we went down to the front – a wooden wicker fence to keep the crowds off the pitch, but there out view was obstructed by a concrete wall which was actually the support of a motorway flyover

We had the usual morning performance, and then the shower, shave and general tidy-up, and then it was shopping time.

And remember the roadworks by LIDL? There was a workman loitering in the vicinity so I went over to quiz him, but he saw me coming and walked away.

Did I mention that there’s a new line of product on sale at LIDL? I can’t remember.

But we have kangaroo meat now on offer, and I bet that you are hopping mad about that.

As for me, I didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary as such but they did have some of the Swedish vegan oatmeal biscuits on offer – the second box half-price – so two large boxes came home with me. And delicious they are too.

On the way back I stopped at the building site that we saw last week, to see what was going on.

They are still clearing the site at the moment, but I did notice that they have put some retaining supports in between the two houses on either side.

The are obviously worried about movement while there’s nothing in between them holding them up.

They say that Auvergnats have a reputation of being près de leurs sous, as they say around here. But Auvergnats have nothing on a Normandy Solicitor.

Solicitors in FRance are allowed to act as Estate Agents and their price calculation is worked out on the basis of the asking price for the client, plus 6% to cover the expenses of the transaction.

So have a close look at the price of this property for sale in a solicitor’s office.

While I was on the docks just now, another thing that regular readers of this rubbish might recall is the piles of shipping containers that arrived for the people rebuilding the harbour gates.

You can se what they have done with them – made two walls and put a roof of sorts over the top.

And I can’t say that I blame them either what with this weather that we have been having.

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

And I was right yesterday about “Spring is Sprung”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning the topiary guy the other weeK. He’s been back and cut the bushes and this gave me an opportunity to inspect them.

And sure enough – the first buds of 2018 are out already, although you might not believe it given the weather that we have just been having.

There are also hundreds (and I am not joking either) of Primary School kids wandering around Granville at the moment in the company of dozens of adults. Being a firm believer in “if you want to know the answer, you have to ask the question” and so having buttonholed a teacher I was told that it’s “Classe de Découvert” – discovery class, and the kids (at least, those to whom i was talking) had come from Nancy for the week.

But when was the last time that you heard of British kids being sent halfway across the country for a week for a Discovery Class?

Tea was stuffed peppers and spicy rice again, and then my evening walk.

And now I’m off to bed – see where I end up tonight, hey?

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: lys noir

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