… I really will have myself an early night.
Last night was some time around 02:00 when I finally went to bed. I stayed up to finish off this radio programme in a case of “ship or bust” so that it would be ready for our meeting, and that was that.
No peace for the wicked. I cracked on and on and on, and now it’s finished. It could be better, I suppose, had I taken more time, but there is a vacant broadcasting space tomorrow at 17:00 CET and it was there for the taking.
And when I finally went off to bed, I found that I couldn’t sleep and ended up having a dreadful night. And although I heard the two earlier alarms, I was still debating whether to get out of bed when the third one went off.
Something of a failure there.
After the medication, I attacked the dictaphone notes from the night. And yes we had been on our way home yet again from the High Arctic. However, instead of an aeroplane, we were all standing around waiting for a pile of buses. Our particular bus was a single decker and there were a lot of people waiting for it so they sent for another bus which turned out to be a double-decker. We were being strictly controlled about entering – only being allowed 20 at once or something like that so the driver could check our tickets (… doesn’t this sound familiar? …) but then the double-decker appeared so everyone wandered off there and there didn’t seem to be any control on that. There was one girl most upset about not being allowed on the single-decker coach with the driver there. She was pleading with him trying to make her some room so that she could travel with him rather than the double-decker.
After breakfast I did some more work on my own radio project, and then went for my shower. My weight is going up again and I don’t like this one bit. I have noticed that my raging thirst has dried up, that I’m not as sprightly as I was a couple of weeks ago and that I’m more tired than before (I crashed out again for 15 minutes today).
Maybe all of this is related.
Anyway, I hit the streets and headed off for our weekly meeting at the Centre Agora. We weren’t all that many today. Three of our usual suspects were missing. And that reminds me – one of those missing had a parcel waiting for him at Carrefour that he couldn’t collect, so he had e-mailed me a copy of his identity card and I went to pick it up.
At the radio meeting I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that the only way that I’m ever going to get anything done is simply to do it and present it as a fait accompli, so I’ll be working on my notes from the trip to Versailles next.
While we’re on the subject, the affair of this musician rumbles on and on. The guy who thinks he runs the place has had the notes for over two weeks and done nothing at all with them. Today he gave them to me and asked me if I could translate them into French so that he could dictate them as an overdub.
Talk about making work for yourself and everyone else. If it’s beyond his capabilities, why did he take it on in the first place? Mind you, regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying something about how possessive these people are of their ideas.
Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall exactly how I suggested that it should be done in the first place. And had it been done like this, the programme would have been completed, broadcast and filed away a long time before this
It’s hardly any surprise that nothing seems to get done when they work like this. I’ve always considered myself in the past to be totally disorganised, but I’m rapidly changing my opinion.
They way it’s going, I can see it ending up as a rambling, hopeless monologue. At least with Laurent, he was quite amenable to my ideas and quite malleable and we made a decent outside- broadcast radio programme “on the fly” in a matter of 8 hours and it’ll be on the air on Tuesday.
On the way home I called in at LIDL and I spent a larger-than-usual sum of money. Mind you, one of the purchases was a pile of new undies to go with the new socks that I bought 10 days or so ago. My undergarments are starting to look quite threadbare and it’s high time that I thought about some new stuff. The older stuff can go in the pile to go to Canada.
There was some more of that delicious sorbet there too. Strawberry this time too so I bagged a tub. I seem to be overflowing with sorbets just now but it’s a case of getting them while the getting is good.
Carrots too. I’ve run right out so I need more. There were 2kg-bags on offer again so tomorrow I’ll have a mega-carrot-preparing session ready for the freezer.
On the way back home, at the corner of the rue Herel and the rue St Paul I encountered the recycled rubbish-emptier.
In haste, I managed to grab a quick photo of him, but while I might have been too slow to actually photograph the rubbish being emptied, I was too quick to press the shutter and the image didn’t have time to settle down so it’s come out blurred.
But then that’s life.
At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.
For the rest of the day I’ve been working on my radio project and that’s taken longer than it ought to have done too. One of the reasons was that I had to redesign the web page for the playlist. And to make it more interesting, I’m just going to do one for the whole of the year 2020 – if I manage to keep on going for that long.
As usual, there were several interruptions during the day. Lunch was one of them of course (and my new hummus is delicious) and … errr … having a little relax was another.
Going out for a walk was a third interruption too.
And I didn’t get far before I was waylaid as usual. Yes, I’m still on this “pathetic parking” lark, aren’t I? And here’s another example for the record.
It’s usually brand-new Mercedes and BMWs that do this kind of thing, but how about a little Peugeot that is almost 11 years old at least?
Some people have no shame.
Once again, I noticed some movement way out in the English Channel so in order to identify it, I took a speculative shot with the aim of blowing it up (the image, not the object) back in the apartment.
And it’s not a gravel boat. It really does look as if they have stopped coming. Instead it’s one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that operate from out of the port.
Loads of gulls around it, so it looks as if she has a full hold today which is good news.
Talking of fishing boats … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a look in at the chantier navale this afternoon
Spirit of Conrad is still there – she looks as if she has taken root down there – and so is the small shellfish boat. But there’s also another fishing boat in there now and people are working on her like 13 to the dozen.
And I’m not at all sure what is coming out of the air vent. Steam or water, but it could really be anything.
Over at the ferry terminal there has been some movement of the shipping too.
Chausiais and Joly France have been parked up over there for quite a few days now, but they seem to have changed places. That quite possibly means that there’s going to be some movement very soon, although I’m not quite sure what.
And I stil haven’t worked out what it is that Chausiais will be doing.
Movement too in the inner wet harbour.
We haven’t seen a gravel bot for an age now, but the smaller freighters are coming in quite regularly still. Thora has now turned up in the harbour and although you can’t see them in this photo, there are a large pile of these builders’ bags, the kind of stuff they put sand and gravel in, lined up on the dockside.
But Thora is starting to look a little run-down now compared to how she was when she first arrived. She could do with a coat of paint.
Back at the apartment there was yet another interruption. The lemon and ginger drink that I made a couple of weeks ago is now on its last legs. And with a pile of juice-oranges (or, rather, clementines) lying around here, I set a clementine-and-ginger drink off to start. We’ll see what that turns out like.
Once the radio project had been completed and I’d had a little relax, I made tea. I’m away from Thursday morning for a few days so it was another “leftover curry”. It was absolutely delicious and, even better, there’s enough for another two days
On my evening walk, I wa all alone again. The run wasn’t a success either as I struggled to even make the foot of the ramp and in the end just managed four paces up it.
But now I’m back and totally exhausted. I have a feeling that tonight I’ll be asleep long before I finish writing this …
ZZZZZZZZZZZ
