Tag Archives: Rampe du Monte Regret

Thursday 1st April 2021 – THERE’S A TIME …

… for fishing, and a time for mending the nets, as we are so often told.

It beats me what these guys have been doing but they have a net stretched out here in a V shape, all rolled up as if they are about to fold it back up. There’s quite a crowd of people around them watching, and also a pile of other nets in the big plastic boxes there.

Of course, with it being a big, busy fishing port, this is the kind of thing that you expect – fishing nets and other fishing accessories all over the place. And it’s a surprise to me that they can keep the place so tidy. Maybe I should ask a few fishermen to come round and help me tidy up this place as it’s rather a mess right now.

Another thing that’s important in this port is the presence of charter yachts and also the chantier navale to keep everything in proper order.

Over the past few months we’ve been keeping an eye on what’s been going on in there and this morning on my way back to the shops I could see that there’s a new occupier in the blocks where Spirit of Conrad was laid up for a while.

That boat that’s there today is Anakena, the boat that’s been parked up for a year in the inner harbour.

But talking about this morning, I almost missed the first alarm this morning I don’t know why but I almost ended up going back to bed again. Nevertheless I pulled myself together and scrambled out of bed.

After the medication I came back in here and had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There was a group of us playing after some kind of meeting. While we were playing we’d heard that a famous folk performer had died. I was waiting at the side of the stage waiting to go on to interrupt their act and announce the news to everyone but one of the musicians came over to me and asked me what I was doing. I explained and he replied “you’ll have to wait until 18:30 to say that. We’re booked until 18:30”. I replied “that’s OK as long as you announce it”. “I’m not announcing anything. You’ll have to wait until 18:30”. Later on as they were going off stage he came over to me and started to be a bit aggressive. I just grabbed him by the hands and waltzed around with him for a bit. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect to calm him down or anything like that. I thought to myself that there’s absolutely no reason why there should be this ungracious behaviour – none at all.

Having done that I had a go at the photos from August 2019 and another pile of those bit the dust. I’m now just coming up to the border between South Dakota and Wyoming on my way to the battlegrounds of the Powder River Country.

A shower was next on the agenda and then I headed out for town.

My route took me down the steps by the Rampe du Monte à Regret where they are repairing the walls.

This is the first time that I’ve taken a photo from this position. As you can see, they have put up a banner to announce that this is a school of masonry.

There were a couple of students on there working. One of them was wetting the wall and the joints by pouring water over them from a container. I explained that the best way to do it is with a big, thick paintbrush. That always worked for me when I was doing THE POINTING ON MY HOUS back all those years ago.

First stop was the Post Office. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Rosemary accompanied me on the first part of my journey across the Atlantic and left when we reached Kangerlussuak. When I’d seen her last summer I’d given her the photos that I’d edited up to date but there were still a couple of thousand that I’ve done since.

The other day I burnt them onto a DVD and this morning I packed in into an envelope and posted it off to her. She should receive it in a couple of days and I hope that she likes it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been seeing all of the weird graffiti that’s been appearing around the town over the last few months.

On the way from the Post Office to the shops I passed by the Select Cinema which is of course closed for the Duration. And on the windows is pasted more of the graffiti that we’ve been seeing around the town. One could actually say that the graffiti artist has gone to town with his work.

At LIDL I spent more than usual, because I’d run out of fruit. And there were also a few extra things – like some pots of grow-your-own herbs. The had quite a few varieties so I bought some Aneth and some Basil. I would have bought some coriander as well but they had run out.

Here’s hoping that they have some more next week.

On the way home I called at the Salle Herel and the vaccination centre, which was now open for business. I asked about having my second vaccine there instead of having to drive all the way to Valognes. In principle I could but they had no vacancy until 26th April and that would be too late, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

It’s important that I respect the manufacturer’s instructions because when the borders start to reopen, some countries, Canada for example, will only accept people who have been vaccinated according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Anyone else won’t be admitted.

Back in the apartment I made some hot chocolate and cut myself a slice of sourdough and then came into the office to do some work but unfortunately I crashed out yet again. It was 14:10 when I hauled myself out of my chair to go and have lunch. This is getting rather depressing.

After lunch I made a start on the page that I’m working on from my trip around Central Europe. I wrote the text for a few more photos but at this rate it’s going to be another month or so before I finish it. No chance of doing it by Friday as I wanted.

There was the break for me to go out for my afternoon walk. On time as well for a change.

First port of call when I went out was to go to the wall at the end of the car park and look over to see if there was anything going on on the beach.

There were some people walking about, paddling in the sea but they were of little interest today. I had more interest in the group of kids playing rounders or whatever. That seems to be a strange thing to do – not the playing of the game but the fact that they were doing it on the beach when there are facilities at the Gymnase Jean Galfione where they can play games to their hearts’ content.

From the car park I wandered off down the path along the top of the cliffs. There were quite a few people out there this afternoon which was no surprise because it was really warm today. I’d even opened one of the windows in the apartment.

At the end of the path and on the lawn I came across the Monument to the Resistance.

There’s a noticeboard there to remind us of a group of about 20 local soldiers of the Resistance who sailed to the Channel Islands on various trawlers as the Germans swarmed into the area in June 1940. They fought for the Free French in Africa, the Middle East and Italy. Several of them lost their lives.

The path across the lawn too k me across the car park and down to the headland. There was nothing going on there or out at sea. I can’t think of where the fishing boats might be. Instead, I continued along the path down the south side.

Down the footpath I came to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour where we were treated to another unusual sight.

Well, it might have been unusual a few months ago but just recently we have been seeing rather a lot of fishing boats tied up in the outer tidal harbour and left to settle on the silt when the tide goes out. And here’s another one – and it’s one of the bigger fishing boats too.

It’s a catamaran hull so it’ll settle down comfortably without careening to one side. It’s what they call “NAABSA”, or Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground

It’s quite a surprise to see one of these moored up in the dry, and you can understand where the phrase “high and dry” comes from when you see something like this.

These men down here in the harbour caught my eye as well.

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen the diggers in there digging the holes and laying the concrete slab s for the new mooring chains. The diggers weren’t actually out there on the silt this afternoon so I reckoned that they must have run out of work for the moment.

That would mean that the guys here today are surveying the harbour to work out the siting of the next row of mooring cables. if you look to the right-hand side of the photo you’ll see a marker of some description that they seem to have left in the silt. Presumable that’s where one of the concrete blocks will go for the next row of mooring chains.

A little earlier, you will have seen a photo of the chantier Navale with the new arrival, Anakena up on the blocks there.

From my little viewpoint overlooking the harbour I can see down into the chantier navale and we can have a better view of the proceedings.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s a little story behind the Anakena. She came into port on her way to Scandinavia a year ago but was caught up when those countries closed up their borders to foreigners. The boat was stranded here with its family owners aboard and for the first few months at least the children were studying remotely via the internet.

Since then I’ve not seen any news of them and I’ve no idea what has become of them since then. But it looks as if they are preparing to move on elsewhere.

Just now I mentioned that the diggers weren’t out there in the harbour this afternoon.

Both of them are over there on the concrete by the fish processing plant. One of them is having a friendly chat with the tractor that pulls the trailer that one of the fishing boats uses, but the second one is behind them on a low loader trainer. Does this mean that their work is over and that they are heading home?

Talking of heading home, I was going that way too. There wasn’t anything else going on out there.

Back here I made myself a coffee, watered the herbs that I’d bought earlier, and then came in here to carry on with the work that I’d been doing.

At 18:00 I knocked off and had a session on the guitar and then went for tea. Tonight it was stuffed peppers (I’d bought some peppers today) with rice, followed by apple crumble and the last of the soya stuff. Tomorrow I’ll be making some custard.

It’s bed time now and seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow there is no alarm. and that suits me fine. I’m ready for a good break for a few days without an alarm. A couple of good lie-ins will do me some good.

Tuesday 30th March 2021 – HAVING HAD A …

… really bad night last night, caused n the main by only having 5.5 hours of sleep, I’ve had a rather bad day today.

So bad in fact that most of the afternoon had been spent sleeping on the chair in the office. In fact there were times when I could quite easily have crawled back into bed and gone to sleep. and it probably would have been more productive had I have done so too.

But I can’t complain altogether because despite everything, today has been reasonably productive even if I didn’t spend the morning revising my Welsh (school is out for Easter by the way) as I had intended.

In news that will come as totally earth-shattering to most people, I’ve finally finished the photos for July 2019. And furthermore, I’ve burnt a DVD with those on it that I hadn’t burnt previously. This will be sent to Rosemary who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, accompanied me from Aberdeen to Kangerlussuak.

As well as that I’ve finished another page of my voyage around Central Europe and THAT’S NOW ON LINE.

There’s just one more page to do but unfortunately that’s the page where I ran aground months ago. So don’t expect that to resurface any time soon.

In the middle of all of this I had to break off this morning to go into town. I’ve run out of fruit so I need some to keep me going until Thursday.

Off I set down the street towards town and I was arrested by the sight of the lifeboat going out and about for a run around.

They probably haven’t been out for a rescue but it does go out quite often for training exercises and the like and that’s probably what it’s been doing this morning.

There was plenty of other activity going on there at the Fish Processing Plant. Amongst the boats unloading there is our old friend la Grande Ancre who has probably been out collecting shellfish.

And there are plenty of vans parked around there too, presumably to take away the catch from the fishing boats. Whilst the Fish Processing Plant handles a lot of the catch, some of the boats belong to private enterprises such as wet fish shops or restaurants and they have their own vans to take away their shellfish.

Having watched them for a while I skipped off down the street towards town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the pointing that’s been going on on the wall on the Rampe du Monte à Regret next to the Rue des Juifs.

Having stalled for a few weeks, this project to have apprentices training on the wall seems to have led to something of a spurt and they have advanced quite considerably. Maybe they might even finish it some time soon and start on something else.

Down the steps I went and landed in the Place Pleville and then strode out to the Super U. With the bag that I had in my sac banane I carried away a couple of apples, a couple of pears and a couple of bananas.

It was a shame that the battery in the camera went flat at this point as I would have taken a few more photos while I was out.

Next stop was the Nautical Centre on the seafront. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned something about going on a sailing course and that’s the place to be. They were another one of these places where they know nothing but tell you “look on our website”. But at least they have courses and that’s always a start.

Next door to the CRNG is the Salle Hérel. That’s where the new vaccination centre is so I stuck my head inside to talk to someone. There was someone there so I started to tell my story but he cut me short. “I’m just the technician” he said. “If it’s a medical enquiry you need to come back tomorrow when the centre opens”.

So that’s something else that I need to do on Thursday morning on my way back from the shops. If I can have my second vaccination here instead of going all the way to Valognes, so much the better.

Back at the flat I carried on with work until lunchtime.

After lunch I came back in here to carry on work but I didn’t do a thing. I was curled up on the chair in here for most of the time.

When I awoke I was rather late for my afternoon walk so I grabbed the NIKON D500 and headed off out.

When I reached the wall on the end of the car park I looked down onto the beach to see what was going on down there.

It goes without saying that I had to admire those people down there on the beach. Not just those paddling around up to their knees but the people who were even deeper in looking as if they were about to launch themselves off swimming in the water. They are braver men than I am, Gungha Din.

Mind you, one can hardly blame them. The sun was out, there wasn’t much wind at all and according to my thermometer at my apartment it was 22°C. Not the kind of weather in which I would want to be seen in the sea but I could understand others wanting to have a go.

It wasn’t just on the beach that there were people around.

Right out at sea by one of the lights on a rock off the Ile de Chausey is one of the trawlers heading off into the English Channel to make its catch. As we saw this morning, they are very busy at the Fish Processing Plant wit all of the boats coming in with their catches.

Having looked around at what was going on I headed off towards the end of the headland, weaving my way through the throngs of people who were out there enjoying the weather this afternoon.

Across the lawn and the car park I went, to see what was happening out at sea. But there was nothing whatever happening out there so I continued on my way along the path on the other side if the headland.

You can tell that we are at the time of the Grande Marée. Just look at all of those cars parked on the harbour wall right now.

That is presumably where many of the people will be waiting for the “all clear” to go out onto the beach to scavenge for shellfish.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall because I’ve mentioned it before … “on many occasions” – ed … the foreshore is let out to commercial enterprises but at the very low tides of the Grande Marée the shore is uncovered beyond the commercially-let areas and the public has access to those areas.

They can scratch away to their hearts’ content subject to the rules and regulations about quantity and size

Also scratching away to their hearts’ content down in the harbour are the two diggers that are laying the new mooring chains. They seem to be having a whale of a time.

But it beats my why they are doing this now. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or two ago they had whole performance down there working on the mooring chains, digging them out of the silt and refurbishing them. So I wonder why they didn’t do this work then rather than making everyone come back now to do it again.

It seems to be typical of the authorities around here that they don’t have a complete programme of work. They drained the inner port a few years ago to replace the harbour gates, and then came back 6 months later to install the new pontoons. They could have done it at half the cost and in half of the time had they done it when the harbour was empty.

Then there was the notice board giving details of the Pointe du Roc. They dug up the grass and installed a path to there. And then 6 months later they installed the monument to the Resistance and dug up the path that they had laid to the noticeboard and replaced it with a path to the Resistance Monument.

They don’t seem to have the aptitude to be able to think things right through

There’s yet more activity at the chantier navale today.

While Hermes I, Lys Noir and Aztec Lady are still on their stocks down there, Spirit of Conrad now seems to have cleared off back into the water after her little sojourn in the chantier navale, all fully repaired and ready for the coming season, if we are actually going to have a tourist season this year.

Hermes I looks quite nice today, all masked off with brown paper. if the weather holds I could see that she’s going to be sprayed with a new coat of paint in certain places. She’ll be as good as new, if not better, by the time she goes back into the water.

And having seen that, and having noticed that there was nothing else going on anywhere else, I cleared off back to my apartment. I have plenty of things that I need to be doing this afternoon.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make another batch of kefir.

Plenty of juice oranges around here so I whizzed up 4 of them to extract the juice which I sieved, and then added the brewing kefir that I had made last time. I’d left an inch or so of the mother solution to use as a starter and then added the sugar lemon and fig and then filled it up with another couple of pints of water.

By now the kefir in the big jug had mixed in quite nicely with the orange juice so I stirred it all around and poured it through my filter stack into the bottles.

So here’s the finished product, all nice and orange. That will keep for a few days until I’m ready to use it.

And you’ll notice that I’m using the two bottles in which I had bought the lemonade the other week. We can see how they get on under the pressure of the fermentation. And if they hold out well enough, I’ll know what to buy the next time that they have a special offer.

As I was settling down afterwards to carry on work, Rosemary rang me up. And we had another one of our marathon chats – a mere 2 hours and 24 minutes. I’m amazed that I have so much to talk about.

That meant that I missed my guitar practice and a few other things besides. But at least with the ‘phone and the headset etc, I could wander around and do other stuff while I was talking.

Tea tonight was some vegan nuggets that I had bought in Leuven and hadn’t eaten. They were a couple of months past their sell-by date so I’ll be having the rest tomorrow. They were actually quite delicious with veg and potatoes and the apple crumble that followed it all down was just as delicious. I am eating well these days.

Having written my notes, I’m now ready for bed. I’m exhausted and ready for a really good sleep and it’s high time that I had one as well.

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

… Brexit dividend reared its ugly head this afternoon.

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

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

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

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

And I’m still recovering from the shock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She needed some advice about booking her vaccinationcara

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 4th March 2021 – YOU HAVE TO ADMIT …

… that the standard of graffiti that we have around here is far superior to anything that you’ll find anywhere else.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day on our way to the railway station we saw some banners stuck in the windows of a few of the bars and restaurants, made by someone with some kind of skill in calligraphy. It seems that our phantom calligrapher has been out on his travels elsewhere too.

The town is now littered with more of the same kind of notices talking about all kinds of different subjects. I wonder where he’ll be going next.

As for me, I’ll probably be going back to bed next because once again, I’d been up very early. Just after the first alarm again this morning.

Plenty of time to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’d killed some woman and I’m not sure how and I’m not sure why. I didn’t admit to it. This woman was a friend of someone who was something of a tough character and he was trying to find out who did it. I was quite confident that I would be particularly safe. He was talking to me one day and the subject of minivans came up in the conversation. He asked me if I knew what a minivan was. Seeing as we were in North America at the time I said that it was something like an F250 or an F350. He immediately said “it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who killed these people. I’m going to make you suffer as much as these other people suffered”, grabbed hold of me and went to put me in this car, to take me to pick up the rifle and the books I’d been reading at the time and 1 or 2 other things.

Later on some woman in a block of flats where I was living had had a row with everyone, I don’t know what about but she got into her car and drove it around the car park. She’d bumped into 1 or 2 cars while she was doing it and ended up rolling down the steep bank and ended up with her car in the pond. I’m not sure what else had happened but my yellow estate car MMB was in the pond as well and a couple of motorbikes and so on. I asked my father “what are we doing tomorrow? Do you think we could rescue my car from out of the pond?”. He said “yes, I suppose we could” so I asked “what time? Morning? Lunchtime? Afternoon?” and he didn’t really give me a definite answer. I was just chatting saying “I really hate working in water” which I do. I was loitering around because I was half-expecting someone to come along to call a breakdown truck and winch this woman’s car out of the pond. I was thinking that if they were going to do that I may as well slip them £50 or something and winch MMB out of the pond as well at the same time so I was loitering around waiting for something to happen.

There was plenty of time to have a shower and set the washing machine off on a cycle (a clever washing machine, mine) before I went off out to the shops.

Not that I had gone very far before I had to start to brandish the camera about.

Although the harbour gates were closed, there was a big yacht coming sailing into the port. With her sails not being up I didn’t recognise her at first as she was so far out but as she sailed in deeper to the port I could se the number – G90 – painted upon her bow.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recognise her as being La Granvillaise, another one of the charter yachts that plies for hire from the port. And with the harbour gates being closed, I couldn’t work out why she’d come round here right now from her berth in the yacht harbour, although I did have my suspicions.

There was actually quite a lot of activity in the port this morning.

Marité is still in there tied up in her little corner, and while we don’t have a gravel boat (we haven’t seen one of those in here for a good few months) we have Normandy Trader coming to pay us a little visit. She always seems to be here on a Thursday morning.

Once more she’s fully loaded, and I’ve heard a little whisper here and there that her owners are contemplating buying a bigger ship as they are actually having to turn away freight. It’s one of the very few upsides of Brexit that rather than export their goods to the UK and then into mainland Europe, all of the difficulties that this is presenting means that it’s easier for them to send them direct to here first rather than last.

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the pointing of the wall on the Rampe du Monte à Regret ground to a halt a few weeks ago and nothing more was done to it since.

Today, the workmen are back and the work has recommenced. They aren’t working particularly fast of course, but the fact that they are here is something.

My walk up to LIDL was quite energetic and while I wasn’t quite at the “invading Poland” speed I made it all the way up the steep bank without stopping for breath and that’s rather better than it has been of late.

At LIDL I loaded up with tons of stuff and had I been able to carry it, I would have come away with more. But I wasn’t going to turn down 3kg of potatoes at just €1:69 even if I have to live on potato curry for the next couple of weeks.

So loaded up like a packhorse I staggered out into the fresh air (because I’ve never seen LIDL as crowded as it was today) and headed for home.

A little earlier we’d seen them pointing the wall at the Rampe du Monte à Regret – the face that looks down onto the Place Pelley.

But it looks as if they are going to be doing this face too – the one that looks out onto the Rue des Juifs. That’s all been raked out and cleaned out They’ve left a few weeds growing in there, I have to say, but I imagine that they are hoping that the lime in the mortar will do for them.

That’s horrible, nasty caustic stuff as my hands will testify when I was pointing the wall of my house in the Auvergne.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and came in here to work – but fell asleep. It was a short night, an early start and an exhausting visit to the shops so what do you expect?

For most of the afternoon I’ve been clearing out the back-up drive on which I copied all of the data from every single hard drive or memory stick that wasn’t actually connected to the big machine. Little by little I’ve been eating away at it and now there are just 4 items to examine.

Even more interestingly, there is now 715GB free on it and I need for that to be over 1TB so I can start to back-up onto it from the big computer – although a lot of stuff on the big computer will over-write some of the older stuff.

And talking of older stuff, I’ve been finding files dated 1997 and 1998. It won’t be long before I find the stuff from 1992 when I first bought a PC. Stuff from the 80s when I had the Apple II – I think that Nerina might still have that.

There was the usual break for lunch of course, and also the walk around the headland in the afternoon.

Mind you, I’m not too sure about the walk around the headland because it was another one of those days where had the fog been any thicker, I would have had to grope my way around the path.

It beats me what the matter might be the weather just now. We’re going from gale-force winds to this thick oppressive calm that’s letting the fog bank up against the cliffs here and we can’t se a thing. That might explain why there were so few people out and about on the beaches.

The strange thing about this is that around the corner, the fog isn’t anything like as thick.

This is the lower footpath that goes right round the end of the headland and as you can see, that’s comparatively clear. Clear of fog, and clear of people too, which was surprising because up here on top in the car park it was heaving with all kinds of young families going walkabout. No-one braving the lower footpath though.

And nothing to see out to sea either. All of the fishing boats that were going out have gone out and they will be well out to sea by now.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there’s a seafarers’ monument here on the path – in honour of two crews of lifeboatmen who lost their lives going out to sea to rescue distressed mariners.

All of the writing on the monument is very hard to read as it’s long-since faded away but today we had a guy from the local council with his fine paintbrush and pot of black enamel paint busily painting back into the monument all of the names and the details of the events in which they lost their lives.

It’s about time that they started doing things like this to make the place look as if people live here. Everything has become just a little run-down just recently.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, I’m not quite sure what all of that is over there.

Joly France is moored up at the ferry terminal. It doesn’t look as if she’ll be going anywhere anytime soon. There’s nothing doing over on the Ile de Chausey right now and while sometimes the ferries will do little trips with tourists all around the bay, there are no tourists particularly right now.

But I’m more interested in the rather large red builders’ bags that are being unloaded over there. They are dropping off a couple of dozen from that lorry and trailer so it looks as if there’s something really serious going to be happening there sometime soon and I wonder what it will be.

While we’re up here on the cliffs we can look down and see what’s going on in the chantier navale today.

And I was right about my little thought this morning. We’ve yet another change of occupancy down there today. As well as Aztec Lady, Lys Noir and Charles-Marie down there on blocks, La Granvillaise has now come in to join them. That was why she sailed into the outer harbour when the harbour gates were closed – she wasn’t going that way but coming over here for an overhaul.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … with no possibility of any yacht charters at the moment the owners may as well take their boats out of the water and have them overhauled ready for whenever the season might start. I shan’t be surprised to see Spirit of Conrad, the boat in which we went down the Brittany coast last summer, in there next for an overhaul.

Just now we’d seen Joly France in a NAABSA (Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground) position over at the ferry terminal but here we have a trawler also in a NAABSA position by the firsh processing plant.

And being a catamaran, she is of course even more safely aground than the others.

Back here I had a coffee and some of my vegan coffee cake and then carried on with my work. I’ve done another 20 photos from Greenland 2019 and some more work on the arrears from Central Europe.

All of that took me up to guitar practice time, which passed quite enjoyably this evening.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by jam pie ad ice cream, all very nice and delicious.

But now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to mix some sourdough before I go to bed. I have nothing to eat for my mid-morning breakfast so I reckon that it’s time to make a sourdough fruit loaf. I need some real bread too so if I make that in the morning they’ll both be ready to be baked in time.

No point in having the oven on just for one thing when there are two things to be made.

Thursday 18th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

… really nice tea tonight. And I’ve no idea why either.

For a start, it was the same stuffing that I’d used on Tuesday in my pepper (well, not the same, but leftovers from the same batch) lengthened with kidney beans and stuffed into tacos to make taco rolls with rice (which I remembered to put in the pan tonight). All followed by apple crumble with (because I’ve run out of coconut dessert) some soya vanilla cream dessert.

What beats me is that it’s the same stuff that I’ve had on a regular basis over the past ever so many years and yet it tasted far better tonight than it ever has done.

What else beats me is the news that I was up yet again before the third (now fourth) alarm. That’s not like me at all these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise. What’s even more surprising was that it was a horribly late night – or, more to the point – early morning. I was half-expecting to be still in bed right now.

So after medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’m not sure what was happening here but it was another hot, sweaty dream. There were a few of us on a bus or train and we had to go to the toilet. The conveyance came to a stop so we all had to rush to the public conveniences. We stampeded like mad to go there. It was obvious that some people who were older or more infirm than us and we overtook them. One of our party became a steward and was letting people in in accordance with how they had descended from the coach or even people sitting at these tables. We had to wait our turn. In the end we could enter a cubicle but in the one that I was in you had to use a bottle. I went to use it but a guy knocked on the door asking if he could have his bottle back. I said that I was just about to use it to which he replied “oh no, I need it back”. I said “you find me another bottle and you can have this one back no problem whatsoever”. He produced something tiny like a nail file brush container thing. I said “don’t be silly, a proper-sized bottle”. He replied “I can’t see one”, something like that. “There must be one here – there are all these toilets”. Despite the intervention from a couple of other people who were trying their best to help out, he wouldn’t supply a second bottle and insisted on trying to take his away. I wasn’t having any of this. I couldn’t move because I was sitting on the toilet by now. This became something of a stupid impasse. Each time I looked at him, there was always something more missing off his car. It was becoming a wreck and he wouldn’t be able to go there anyway but he kept on insisting for his bottle back and I kept on insisting that he find me something else to use and he offering me this little nail file brush thing and it was all becoming really stupid.

You can’t say that you aren’t being overwhelmed with excitement by some of this stuff, can you?

Later on, there we were, 3 of us, me, a young girl and a woman and we were dressed in some quite elaborate and decent clothing for the carnival, to be a police officer, constable or police observer, whatever but we had to travel in civilian clothes so you don’t know. Everyone was lined up there taking off their ex-military underwear and swapping it. This is where I joined in and we had exactly the same argument as we had before about the issue of handing over the tokens.
So what I want to know is “what have I missed off here that wasn’t recorded?”. That must have been good too.

Later on, I had a shower and a general clean-up, and I even went one better than David Crosby because while he almost cut his hair, I cut mine. It was starting to become too long for how I like it so I’ve cut it right back with a n°2. That’ll keep it out of mischief for a few weeks.

Grabbing a slice of sourdough fruitcake and a mug of hot chocolate I had my one-on-one with my Welsh teacher. It should have been for 15 minutes but we were finished long before that. I told her about my Teflon brain (nothing sticks to it) but she thinks that I’m doing pretty well. That’s surprising because I’m sure that I can do much better than I am.

Rather later than usual because of my one-on-one, I headed off for the shops.

Down at the end of the road I had a look over the wall to see what was going on down in the harbour.

Not a lot – no freighters in today so it seems. But the yachting school seems to be in full swing. You can see the little boats with their green sails out there in the bay.

And seeing them there reminds me. That’s one of the things that really needs my attention – to go down there and enquire about taking a course in yachting this Spring. It’s not actually the yachting that interests me but the whole seamanship thing. I know about port and starboard and fore and aft but that’s about it.

However I’m not the worst at this. I know that one of my female friends was most upset when a sailor shouted “avast behind” as she walked past him on the deck.

It had been raining earlier but it had dried up a little so it was quite pleasant walking around the back of the town on the way to the railway station.

When you’ve paid for your tickets on-line you are given a security code and with the code and the bank card that you used to buy your tickets, you obtain your tickets from the machine at the station. But sometimes it’s out of order and the booking office doesn’t open until 09:30 whereas the train leaves at 08:55.

For that reason I always like to go for my tickets a couple of days earlier as I pass on the way to the shops when the ticket office is open. If the machine is out of order the booking office can print them out.

LIDL was expensive today. I spent a lot of money there. But then again I’d forgotten to buy a lot of things at the weekend so I suppose it was about right, I reckon.

On the way back home I went to look at the old cafe on the corner of the Rue St Paul and the Rue Victor Hugo to see how they are getting on with the demolition.

And it’s not there now – the ground’s all flat, although I doubt if there is a man with a bowler hat beneath it. What there are though are a couple of large signs fixed to the fence telling us that planning permission has been applied for so that a block of flats might be erected on the spot. But I’d heard all about that a week or two ago.

The town was quite busy this morning as I passed through. It’s school half-term this week so the brats are at liberty running around with stressed-out grandparents in tow.

On up the hill in the Rue des Juifs I staggered with my heavy load. And I reached the park bench on the pavement at a very propitious moment.

Just as I arrived, the red light at the harbour entrance started to flash and as I watched, the gates slowly started to close. I stood and watched them for a while and I was trying to work out the pressure that the hydraulic rams must have to exert to close the gates against the pressure of water that must be upon them. It’s hardly surprising that they have to replace the gates every now and again.

Many of the trawlers are out at sea by the looks of things, but one that isn’t is our old – or maybe I ought to say “new” – friend Le Pearl moored up over there next to the harbour offices.

Where I was sitting was right by the Rampe du Monte à Regret, the path and stairway that leads down to the lower road at the Place Pelley (in case you haven’t guessed it, Granville is honeycombed with alleys, ramps and stairways due to the steepness of the cliffs around here).

This is where they have been doing the pointing of the retaining wall for the last while, so I was intrigued to see just how they were doing. And the answer is, as you can see for yourself, that they’ve made no progress whatever over the last three weeks at least.

However, I have heard an interesting little story about this wall. Apparently one of the local Employment Project things that they have around here is running a course in stone-pointing starting in March and the only place where they can have some real practical experience is just here on this wall. So I wonder if that’s why work has ground to a halt – they are going to be having the apprentices doing it as the practical part of their course.

And with all of the renovation plans that they announced for the walls the other day, I suppose that they’ll need all of the apprentices they can find.

So having recovered my breath I headed on up the hill to the viewpoint overlooking the fish processing plant.

Although the gates to the harbour are closed, there is still plenty of activity down there. Some of the trawlers must have only beaten the gates by a matter of a couple of minutes because as I watched , a couple of them jostled for position at the fish-processing plant so that they could unload their catch.

Back in the apartment it was lunchtime so I grabbed my sandwiches. I found some smoked vegan cheese with a sell-by date of January 2020 when I was cleaning out the fridge so I’ve started on that today until it’s gone.

Rosemary had rung me while I was out so I rang her back. Just a little phone call today – one hour and fifty-two minutes. I don’t know what it is that we find to talk about during all of this time.

That took me all the way up to walkies-time so I went back out to see how things were doing.

There were plenty of people around today too, especially down on the beach by the steps up to the Rue du Nord. Not as many people as the other day when there seemed to be hordes of them, but more than enough to get into a pile of mischief.

Up here on the car park there were dozens of people milling around, including a couple of brats whizzing around on scooters between the parked cars. Mind you, it was quite warm for the time of year. 9°C on the thermometer that I have and isn’t that quite a bit warmer than this time last week?

So having sorted out all of that, I headed off down the path on my way out to see what the rest of the world was up to.

Today was another one of those days where although there was a sea mist, the coast was fairly clear and you could see for miles down that way even if it was hazy out to sea.

The lighthouse at Cap Frehel was quite clearly visible with the naked eye today, long before I reached the headland and that’s always impressive considering that it’s about 70 kilometres away from here. And one of these days, when I’ve finished the photos and the web pages for my summer in Eastern Europe, I’ll do the photos from my boat trip down the coast and you can see the lighthouse for yourselves in glorious technicolour.

But don’t hold your breath. It’s going to be quite a long job.

Even from down where I was standing I could see a big dirty cloud away in the distance so I was keen to go and have a closer look to see what that was doing.

Plenty of people around on the paths and the lawns and even a broken down car with its bonnet up on the car park so it was rather a slalom course that I had to take in order to reach the end of the headland. And I do have to say that I found that cloud quite impressive to watch.

That must be a really impressive downpour going on over there in the bay, and the coastline over there seems to be taking a real pounding. Luckily the wind is in another quarter so we won’t be getting any of that, which is just as well.

The kind of weather that we were having was so much better.

It was quite cloudy and dry, with not too much wind. But we did have another hole in the sky that was letting through a rather large amount of sunshine that was lighting up the bay right in front of me. And the town of Cancale on the other side was brought out quite nicely in relief by the light.

But I can’t stay here all day. I headed on down the path on the other side but there was nothing at all of any interest in the port or in the chantier navale I came home instead for my hot coffee.

Having drunk the coffee I turned my attention to the kefir that had been brewing for the last few days.

There are still some oranges remaining that need using so it was orange kefir today, and here are three bottles of the aforementioned that I prepared today, with the new kefir mix to the side and the ginger beer from the other day to the left.

Those bottles that I bought the other day don’t look very happy though. I hope that they are reliable enough to work under the kind of pressure that my kefir reaches.

As well as all of this I’ve done a few more photos of our trip to the hot springs in Greenland and also some more work tagging and indexing the photos from Oradour. They are all completed and I’m now doing them for the Chateau de Chalus.

It’s disappointing that they aren’t ready because I was hoping too have had them finished today. But friends come first of course. And tomorrow I have bread to bake, a Course to study and probably half a dozen other things that I’ve forgotten too, so I’ve no idea when they will be finished.

Talking of friends, Terry has had the statement setting out what French Old Age Pension he’s likely to receive on the basis of his own contributions. He’s amassed enough credits for a monthly pension of €25:00. I told him that I’ll chip in my monthly Old-Age Pension from my employment in Belgium – all €30:23 per month – and the two of us can go berserk.

Spend, spend, spend, hey?

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.

Friday 29th January 2021 – HERE I AM …

… back home again after my marathon voyage.

The journey always takes a lot out of me but usually I’m back by 14:30 so I have a few hours to recover before I can deal with whatever needs dealing with. Today though was rather different.

This morning not only did I beat the third alarm, I beat the second one too. I had a quick whizz around the pad and tidied everything up, washed up, made my sandwiches for the journey and then packed my stuff for the road.

The rain wasn’t all that heavy which was very good, and a quick walk brought me to the station in time for my train – the 07:22 which was the first one on my list.

It was another one of the expresses from Welkenraedt to Oostende – a rake of modern double-deck coaches pulled by one of the SNCB class 18 electric locomotives. Nice and comfortable and quite rapid and much better than one of the elderly multiple units that sometimes travel on the line.

It arrived at Brussels-Midi with 90 minutes before my train was due to depart but after an hour or so the platform for the train came up on the display screen so we could go up to the train.

Our train to Paris this morning is one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam) units and either it was a short train or else (more likely) a unit is to come in from either Amsterdam or Cologne and couple up behind it.

And wasn’t I disappointed? Having read all the Official Notices for travelling, had a Covid test, filled in piles of paperwork, had all my documents to hand, there wasn’t a single policeman about to check my right to travel.

Our train left on time and, even more surprisingly, arrived in Paris Gare du Nord on time. During the trip I had dozed off for a couple of minutes and they had to wake me up to see my ticket. There wasn’t even a wait at the Metro because I arrived on the platform at the same time as a train.

At Montparnasse there was an hour to wait before we could all pile on board our TGV. This is one of the “TGV Atlantique” Series 24000 units.

Some of these are over 30 years old but you wouldn’t think so by looking at the interiors because they are quite clean, tidy and comfortable. And even more interestingly, between 1990 and 2007, it was one of these train sets (admittedly a shortened unit) that held the world railway speed record of 515.3 km/h.

This one unfortunately took two hours to travel all the way to Rennes, which is not really surprising as it also stopped at Le Mans and Laval. But two TGVs in a day – I’m really living it up, aren’t I? T

We pulled into the railway station at Rennes at about 14:00 – – only the second time that I’ve been to the railway station there. Plenty of time to go for a wander around and photograph the town from the overbridge.

Despite the time available, I didn’t go far and for a couple of good reasons too. Firstly I had a rather heavy load to carry around with me and secondly, the railway station is such a maze that to find out where I would find my connection took me a good bit longer than it ought to have done.

By the time that I had reached where I needed to be it I was glad to sit down.

There was no train back home this time. There was a coach connection to Granville and I had to wait for 75 minutes for it.

To wait for the bus I had to go to the Gare Routier or “bus station” which is presumably built in what might have been the old goods yard sidings a five-minute walk away from the station.

We had to wait outside in the open air for it to turn up but by now it was sunny and reasonably warm for the time of the year. And although the journey home on the coach was comfortably, it still took about two hours to reach Granville railway station.

There’s no carnival this year in Granville dur to the virus but that hasn’t stopped the town from decorating the place.

A brisk walk from the station and through the back of the town brought me to the viewpoint from the Rue des Juifs where, looking over to the roundabout at the Place Pleville I could see a cow and several penguins loitering around there watching the traffic.

It’s certainly something different to liven up the time a little and bring a smile to the faces of the general public. It’s making me wonder what the theme of this year’s Carnival would have been had it gone ahead.

A little further on along the Rue des Juifs I came to where they had been doing the pointing at the Rampe du Monte Regret.

During the whole week in which I’ve been away, they haven’t made as much progress as I might have expected . No-one engaged in the building work that I have seen over the last week seems to be in an awful hurry to complete their tasks.

My brisk walk brought me back home at just about 18:00, having been on the road for just about 11 hours and I knew all about every minute of it. For a couple of hours I vegetated in the chair and then grabbed a frozen meal out of the freezer.

Later on I had a listen to my dictaphone to see if I’d been on my travels during the night. I was at home and there was a sports match about to come on the TV. Terry and Liz – Liz had asked me if I could buy her some special cheese from LIDL. She had given me the packet and I’d managed to get one or two bits for her which I’d left on the kitchen table in my house but my brother was coming round so I went outside and hid, with the idea that he would go past, find my house with everything all laid out in there and so on and the sports match ready. He’d be wondering where I was and I could creep up and surprise him. He walked past, it was about 19:10 and just then the bus came past, a Crosville bus. So I hopped on board and went to sit upstairs. It started to drop a few people off but instead of going into the village of Shavington it shot off down a back lane somewhere and ended up on the road between Crewe and Nantwich via Willaston. All the roads had been realigned – it wasn’t the same road alignment. Everyone was wondering why he hadn’t gone to Shavington. He said that he was going to Shavington but he was just going to drop someone off in the country lanes first. We thought that this was going to be a hell of a long way round to get home if he’s going to be doing things like this

Bed-time now and I have to be up early in the morning as I need to go shopping. But i’m not going to be fit for much for the ret of the weekend. At least, if I can change my appointment to Thursday, come home on Saturday, I can have a complete lie-in on Sunday and I won’t have so much stuff to carry around with me.

And I’ll look forward to that.

Saturday 23rd January 2021 – IT WAS A …

… really nice afternoon on the beach today.

You had to be well-wrapped up though because there was a biting wind and it was quite cold despite the sun. A decent pair of mittens would be a great help in these conditions so you have to be prepared.

As for me, I wasn’t prepared at all for this morning. I heard the three alarms but that didn’t do me any good at all. It’s a good job that I had decided not to go to the shops today because leaving my bed at … errr … 09:40 is not going to be any good for anything.

In fact I was feeling so dreadful again this morning that after the medication although I did spend some time working out “Tangerine” on the acoustic guitar I didn’t do very much else at all except try to recover myself. I’m really going to have to do so much better than this on Monday morning with an 04:30 start.

It wasn’t until after lunch that I started to feel myself again … “disgusting habit” – ed … and the first task was to organise my voyage on Monday. As well as printing off the rail tickets for Belgium and checking the hotel log-in details, I have to fill out a travel warrant for the Belgian government.

The way things are, I’m not allowed to travel unless I tell them where I’m coming from, how I’m arriving, where I was sitting and where I’ll be staying. And until I receive an SMS from the Government I can’t travel.

But luckily where I live is in a “safe” zone so although there was some wait for the confirmation, it was pretty straightforward.

Having received that, I could then go out for my afternoon walk.

As I mentioned earlier there was bright sunlight everywhere but the wind was fierce and it was quite cold. My route took me off along the path around the walls past the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset for I had an errand to run in town.

Not the form for the Sécurité Sociale – I’d missed the Post and in any case I didn’t have a current rental statement. But returning home from the Estate Agent’s on Thursday I found that they had written to me to tell me that I had the payment for the rubbish collection to make.

With being away next week, I couldn’t let it hang about or I’ll probably forget so it seemed to be a good plan for me to take it into town this afternoon for my walk.

With it being such a nice day I decided to go for a little walk along the Plat Gousset and even take a stroll along the beach.

The tide was just on its way out so everywhere was quite wet but nevertheless people were still enjoying themselves. There were quite a few families with kids playing around there too making the most of it.

From there I headed back into town to the Estate Agent’s and slipped the envelope with my cheque in it through their letter box and while I was looking at the window I saw someone pick it up. So that’s another issue resolved without any great effort.

On the way back up the hill towards home I went past the end of the Rampe du Mont Regret to see how they were doing with the pointing.

And honestly, if this is the best that they can do with at least four men working for two days, I’m clearly in the wrong job. That’s about 2 days’ work for me, I reckon, from when I was repointing my house. And I was mixing my mortar by hand too, not with a machine.

Back at home I had a coffee and then made a start on the Chateau de Chalus. And I believe that I can see daylight et the end of the tunnel here. And about time too. It’s taken me long enough. Give me another 6 months and it might be done.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg and vegan cheese sauce. I’m enjoying making this, and it’s working really well. No pudding though – I’m not that hungry tonight. That cheese sauce is quite filling.

Eventually I managed to find the time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something about being with a woman but I can’t remember who it was. We were out in the wilds of Arizona somewhere in the desert. We came across a little place and started to chat with the proprietor, rather like I did at that motel AT HANKSVILLE IN UTAH IN 2002. He was telling me about his theory of how people’s birth places and the dates affected their future lives. This was something that I had heard before so I listened. he showed me a magazine or something like a newspaper that he had written. I grabbed a copy to read and asked my friend if she wanted a copy. She said no, she’d share mine. I could see that she wasn’t interested. She asked “what does it say about you?”. “I’m a new computer hard drive” something like that. It turned out that I was looking at the classified ads and this one had been placed on my birthday. The talk came round to horse riding and what were we doing around here. Why were we interested in learning to ride horses? I replied that it was one of our plans one day to cross the USA by horse and see all of the sights. Then we ended up back home, 3 of us me, my partner and another young guy. I’d been playing around with my computer and experimenting with a new operating system. It wasn’t particularly brilliant and was making the hard drive run really noisy. My machine was part-dismantled so it was noisier still as there was no soundproofing. When I went to switch it off it went through its close-down procedure but the racket was intense so I said to someone “I don’t think much of this making all this noise. It’s a bit noisy, isn’t it?”. They replied “yes” so I said goodnight and went off to bed.

Tomorrow is a lie-in – as if I haven’t had enough of those just recently. But there’s plenty to do and of course I shan’t be here from Monday onwards.

But that start at 04:30. I’d better get my beauty sleep.

Thursday 21st January 2021 – JUST FOR A …

… change, I actually beat the third alarm to my feet this morning.

Well, not exactly to my feet but I was definitely out of bed sitting on the edge when it rang, so it all counts.

Even more interestingly, apart from a little wobble in the afternoon, I didn’t crash out either. This must be progress. Especially as I went out to the shops this morning and that probably wore me out.

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves here.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. And phew! I’m surprised that I made it back home in time to leave my bed so early. I’ve lost half of this particular voyage but it was to do with a house in the UK in the 1930s. I’d gone to visit it, something like that, and there were a few kids there. The kids had wanted to leave home but their parents had refused them permission. In the end their parents granted them permission so they could go up and take their socks off and put their shoes on and leave, but they had to go upstairs. Once they had gone upstairs they were locked in their bedroom, all of them in one room. Their mother refused to allow them to take their socks off and put their shoes on. Basically they were imprisoned so they started to put up signs about their mistreatment etc but their mother took absolutely no notice. In the end they started stamping on the floors of the bedroom. Their mother told them to shut up and you could hear her chuntering away in the background about how she ought to go on strike as well, how perhaps she ought to have days off without doing any work and stand there and criticise the Government etc.

There was another voyage with tons missing. It was to do with football and 2 well-known 3rd and 4th Division footballers who were suddenly loaned by their clubs to teams in Scotland. We were waiting for the official news but it never came. Then of course with Covid all the matches were cancelled so it was pretty irrelevant anyway. Bt they had actually been seen in Scotland and that was breaching lockdown. Then the casualty figures came out and it was something to do with that, I’m not sure. It coincided with a period when Scotland was to declare its independence so everyone waited for the relevant day but it never happened so there were all these jibes in the newspaper about it but then as the Scots pointed out “you can’t have an insurrection and everyone rise up when Scotland is in lockdown. But they had been planning a border and the border went down the middle of the street and everyone was wondering how they were going to fix the boundary in this street. I had an idea of course but it wasn’t for me to pre-empt the ideas of some of these multi-million pound industrialists and show them what to do.

But Covid? Scottish independence? I’m becoming all topical, aren’t I? Current events are even infiltrating my nocturnal rambles. It’s not all about the past and about history either, then.

Later on I was on an old War Department sidevalve BSA with fairing rather like an old LE Velocette. I’d Left Stoke-on-Trent and was heading for home. I was going through Middlewich and realised that I needed some fuel. I pulled into the Texaco (but it was actually blue and yellow like an old Jet) petrol station at Winsford. It was a strange place and I thought that I’d overshot the pumps at first but there was one by the side where I ended up. It had diesel (although why would I put diesel in it?) then I had a good 5 minutes hunt around trying to find the fuel cap because it was hidden in all the fairing. Eventually I managed to track it. Someone was concerned that I was parking too close to them so they came to have a look and found that it was OK. Then they started to talk about the machine. By now my former friend from Stoke on Trent who was with me was telling them that they were used to carry the ammunition, these machines, and it was either a case of “stop” or “go”, no finesse. The guy asked “how do you close down?” and I replied “you cut off the fuel” and I had him and all his friends really puzzled now.

having done all of that, I prepared my things and had a shower.

There was a letter to post and also a form that needed printing off the computer once I found it on my bank’s web site, so having done that I headed out for the town.

Halfway down the hill at one of the viewpoints overlooking the harbour I had a glance down to see what was going on there. And today, the quayside is totally crowded with all kinds of stuff. That can only mean one thing – and that is that we are expecting a visit from one of the Jersey freighters – either Normandy Trader or Thora

Mind you, I’ve never ever seen that much stuff on the quayside before. This is going to be a really big load, I reckon.

Carrying on down the road I came to the Rampe du Mont Regret – the slope down to the steps that take me to the Place Pléville.

But I can’t go that way today. A few months ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of guys were having a play about with the wall just there. Today, it seems that they have sent a team in to chisel out the rotten mortar and repoint it.

It’s not before time that they are getting to grips with the lamentable state of parts of the old medieval walls.

At the Post Office I posted my letter and then cleared off up the hill to the railway station.

And at the railway station, I found out that in fact the railway network has also gone into furlough as a result of Covid. That’s why there are so few trains running just now and why my journey next week is going to be flaming difficult.

Having bought at Noz last Saturday a couple of these mechanical flip-top bottles that I use for my pressurised drinks, today in LIDL they had the same bottles in at the same price, but with lemonade in them. But never mind. I like the lemonade and the bottles will come in handy when I start to make my ginger beer. I’m getting a good collection now.

On the way back, I called at the Estate Agent’s to drop off my insurance certificate so that I’m in order, and then headed off up the hill.

And I was right about expecting a visitor here in port this morning. Here at the quayside underneath the crane, is our old friend Normandy Trader. She’s come in this morning from Jersey – direct by the look of things without going first to St Malo. That trip last week over there must have been a one-off, I suppose.

And they’ve wasted no time in starting the unloading as you can see, swinging that big blue box off her deck.

Marité is there of course. She’s been out a few times in the summer but she won’t be going far for quite a while, I reckon.

As I watched the unloading that was going on down there, I heard a very familiar engine noise in the distance – the steady throb of an old long-stroke diesel engine.

That can only mean one thing too, and that will explain why there is so much material piled up on the quayside this morning. Sure enough, Thora, the other Channel Islands freighter, pulled into the harbour.

They must be really busy at the moment with all of this freight. Mind you, I did hear on the grapevine that a lot of material can’t be shipped to the Channel Islands via the UK right now, so I imagine that European suppliers are sending it here instead.

But to my surprise, instead of coming into the inner harbour and waiting her turn for the crane to be free, she did a U-turn and went to moor up by the Ferry Terminal.

There’s probably a very good reason for that too, why she didn’t want to wait in the harbour. And that is possibly that she has foot passengers aboard who will obviously want to disembark as quickly as possible. She’s the ship that does the emergency repatriations when there is no passenger ferry running.

So from there I pushed on home for my hot chocolate and not my sourdough because that was starting to grow whiskers. I had some Christmas cake instead.

First job now that I’m back is to finish off the filing.

Well, not finish it off because there is tons, but to deal with the filing for 2020 and 2019 which I started yesterday.

There was the break for lunch of course, and more of my home-made bread, and then of course my afternoon walk.

It was blowing a veritable gale out there this morning and it hadn’t abated at all when I went out there. It must have been pretty rough coming over from Jersey this morning and the trawlers that were out there just offshore – I counted three – can’t be enjoying it very much either.

There had been plenty of rain earlier this afternoon with a shower that had passed us by so all of the paths were flooded again so it was rather a delicate process to walk around the headland.

But across the lawn and across the car park went I, and down to the very end.

Once again, we seem to be having yet another beautiful late afternoon despite the miserable weather. And we finally have a really good reflection of the sun through a hole in the clouds shining off the surface of the sea. It’s even better than yesterday’s, and the surprising thing is that it’s not late at all – just my usual time.

So off along the path, minding where it’s all flooded out, and down to the viewpoint to see how things were at the chantier navale. No change there, so I came on home.

Not quite all of the way home.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of the perils of living in a medieval walled city is that the gate arches are pretty low and the streets are quite narrow so that large lorries can’t go in. Consequently, if you order anything and it comes in a large lorry, it needs to be trans-shipped into something smaller that can pass within the walls.

It’s something that we see quite often, and here’s another example this afternoon.

By the time that I’d finished for my guitar session, all of the 2019 and 2020 papers had been filed away and I’d even found time to some work on my visit to the Chateau de Chalus in July.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by jam roly-poly. It’s a shame that it’s overcooked because it’s a great idea and it works really well, but I’ll know for next time, won’t I?

It’s late now unfortunately but I’m hoping for a good day tomorrow. There’s nothing to do except the arrears so hopefully I can make some progress. I need to push on and get things done.

Tuesday 19th January 2021 – IT’S BEEN …

… another bad start to the morning today.

As you might expect, I missed the third alarm again. When it went off I thought to myself “I’ll just have another quick 5 minutes” and then it was 07:51. And so with my Welsh class due to start and a pile of homework to do, it was rather a mad scramble.

In the time that was available I did what I could (which wasn’t all of it) and then I grabbed some hot chocolate and a slice of my sourdough bread, and we began.

Surprisingly, it was a better lesson today and I quite enjoyed it. I even managed to bluff my way through the missing homework which was quite something, I suppose. But I need to be more disciplined. I keep on saying that I learn to be more self-disciplined – unless I become a Tory MP and pay one of these women in Soho to do it for me.

No time to stop for lunch. I needed a good clean-up and that took up my spare time.

Then it was time for me to go for my doctor’s appointment.

But first I have to take a photo of the guys playing boules or petanque or whatever down on the Place Pléville at the foot of the Rampe du Monte Regret. No social distancing, not a facemask in sight, right next door to the Police Station. No wonder the virus is soaring out of control.

Yes, that’s right. We’ve just had a Christmas holiday with tourists arriving from Paris, haven’t we? And cases of Covid in the département have gone up 250%.

Just what is going through the minds of these people? It’s unbelievable.

At the doctors I had one of my two injections. Now that I have no spleen, and hence nothing to vent, I have to have a series of vaccinations every 5 years and the time is up for the renewal.

Just one today, and the next one in two months’ time.

There’s a problem though wit my Covid injection – I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it. I’m a foreigner with a foreign comprehensive medical insurance and so I’m not registered with the Social Services here in France. In Belgium it’s the GPs who do the vaccination apparently but as I’m not registered with a Belgian GP I can’t have it done there.

In France it’s the Social Services who do it. Everyone agrees that I’m a priority case but if the Service doesn’t know about me, there’s nothing that anyone can do. So my doctor rang them up today for a chat. They didn’t know either but they’ll call him back (so they say) and then he’ll call me.

But what he’ll call me, I can only imagine.

Next stop was the Police Station to have my certificat de vie from the Belgian Pensions Service signed to prove that I’m still alive. Not that I’m convinced that I am, but there you go.

There are two police stations in Granville – the Municipal Police and the National Police (and also the Gendarmes but that’s another story). Of course, given a choice of two, I went to the wrong one and so had to go back to the other.

On the way home, instead of walking along the top of the cliffs I cut through the Medieval town to see what they were doing in the Rue St Michel.

They are still digging it up and it looks as if they are going to be there for the Duration. But at least you can see all of the strange hieroglyphics and markings on the roadway. I’ve mentioned them a couple of times.

When I arrived home, very late as you might expect, I stopped and finally had my lunch. And the bread that I made the other day really is good too and I’m proud of this loaf.

It was so late that by the time that I’d finished it was time for my afternoon walk.

If it had been windy earlier, it was now even winder and I was being blown around by the storm. The other day we saw a fishing boat out in the English Channel having a bit of a fish. Today, it’s still there – at least, I think that it’s the same one

And she has some friends out there with her today. I can see two others fishing not too far away from her. But it’s rare to see them fishing so close to shore. The fishing ban seems to be having an effect and I’ll be interested to see what happens when Normandy Trader tries to unload the shellfish from the Jersey< Fishermen’s Co-operative.br clear=”both”>

Regular readers of this rubish will recall the huge firt that took place here last year when we were lost in the billowing clouds of smoke.

There always seems to be the odd fire or two of some sort or another taking place, and we have another one today. That’s out behind the Holiday Camp on the way to Breville sur Mer and round about where the airport is.

At least, I think that it’s round by the airport so I hope that there’s nothing serious going on over there. The last thing that we need is an air accident.

Anyway, I pushed on … “he means ‘pushed off’ ” – ed … along the footpath along the cliffs, which was now drying out somewhat in the wind after the heavy rain.

Just a few people around but no-one got in my way this afternoon although a dog took more of an interest in me than I would have liked. But I made it unscathed to the end of the headland to look out across the bay to the Ile des Rimains that was even clearer than it was yesterday.

Unfortunately, the sun is now so high in the sky that it’s not illuminating the water in the bay. And give it a couple of weeks and it won’t even be illuminating the water at all when I go out.

Yesterday, we saw Courrier des Lies – or some of her at least – up on blocks in the chantier navale.

Today though, we can see much more of her because Joker who was obscuring our view, now seems to have cleared off and gone back into the water. It’s not clear what is being done to her. And, of course, the big yacht is still there. I think she’s put down roots and become a permanent fixture.

It’s not for me to put down roots either. I cleared off too only back home, where I made myself a nice hot coffee and sat down for 5 minutes quietly.

And the next thing that I remembered was that it was 18:15. About 90 minutes or so I was crashed out, I reckon. This is becoming really bad.

Although I managed an hour on the guitars, I was in no fit state to move – hence I had a very late tea of just pasta and veg in a cheese sauce, and I’m going to have a very late night tonight.

One of these days I’ll break out of this vicious circle – but I’ve no idea when that will be. But in the meantime while I ponder on that, I’ll just append the dictaphone notes of my voyages during the night, which I didn’t have the time to transcribe earlier

I was staying with friends and in the apartment building where we were living there was all talk of the supernatural and everything like that. Everyone was panicking because the demons were going to visit the earth – the graveyard or something. They were all going to come down to look for the humans and kill them all off. I suggested that a couple of us went out to confront the demons taking crosses and holy water, things like that, on the grounds that cowering in our attics and rooms, they are going to find us anyway. We’ll be locked in and we won’t have any room to manoeuvre whereas if we are outside we have a chance of taking them by surprise, taking the initiative and with plenty of room to manoeuvre it will take them by surprise and we might be able to actually achieve something. In the end I convinced one person to come with me so I thought that I’d go upstairs and find Marianne’s cross and holy water etc so I went, and found that the door to my apartment was open so I burst in and there was a family sitting there eating a meal. I’d heard that there was a family who had had some accommodation difficulties and had some problems about their kitchen but here they were borrowing mine. There were a couple of cats and dogs running around my apartment and I was most unhappy to say the least, as you can imagine. I started to look for Marianne’s cross and holy water but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Then I realised that Marianne’s cross had been buried with her. We began to run out of time and we needed to be getting off. I wasn’t in the least bit ready for this but it was a case of having to go as you were.

This is another voyage where I awoke and it immediately evaporated. We ended up walking through a town and I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my camera with me. I remembered putting it on the seat of the car and putting my coat over it so that no-one can see it and we walked away, so I couldn’t take any photos. We went for a meal – there was one place open – and had something to eat. Then we came out and walked back to the car and reached a place where there were a couple of old American vehicles. Someone had sculpted the bodywork of one so that it was like a kettle. I went to take a photo and had this horrible feeling that I’d left the camera in the place where we’d had lunch. Of course that place would be closed now. I realised now that I hadn’t brought it with me so we nipped back to the car and I fetched my camera and nipped back to the place where this old American car was. By now about 30 kids had all piled into it and in it and around it. The engine started up and it started to set off. I went to take a photo but once again I couldn’t take a photo – the shutter just wouldn’t let me photograph it.

Later on last night I was in one of these great big coffee places. I ordered a coffee and had a bunch of grapes but I had to hunt to find a table or a sofa to sit on. I found myself a table and sofa and sprawled out on there and realised that I didn’t have my coffee yet. In the meantime the place was filling up rapidly and a family with 2 kids came to sit at the table next to me. I stood up to go and fetch the coffee and reached the island in the centre of the place where all of the coffee was. I had to walk around it and did two laps round but couldn’t see where the coffee was. There were all kinds of different things, teas, chocolate and so on, desserts, ice creams and everything but I just couldn’t find the jugs with the coffee in it.

Thursday 10th December 2020 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… when you see that someone has actually read something that you’ve posted and actually gone out and acted on it?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago when we were discussing the miserable array of Christmas lights around the port, and I aid something to the effect that I thought that at least they might have made an effort with Marité and having lights strung up in the rigging?

It seems that whoever they are in charge of her have read what I have had to say on the subject and strung up some lights in the rigging as I suggested. But you can’t exactly say that they have pushed the boat out, can you? I’ve seen far better lights than these in my time, as I’m sure you have.

All in all, it’s a rather disappointing effort and they could – and should – have done so much better with this. But at least they’ve read my notes and done something.

But what a bad day I had today.

And that’s a shame because it started off so well as I beat the third alarm to my feet – something that it always good news.

With the medication today I tried the mint cordial-flavoured Kefir that I had made but it wasn’t anything special and was also pretty inert which was a shame. I’d expected something much more lively.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working on my own with doing a videographic thing and this kid and her mother had done some kind of magic performance and her father asked me if I could add it on to a video which I agreed that I would do. But it wasn’t going to turn out as easy as I thought because some of it needed cutting out because it was too long but there was music on there and it would disrupt all the sequencing so I had to think of a way in which I could do that. The father was very precise about the bits he wanted including in this film and I started to be worried about whether I had the technology to actually be able to do it despite what i’d been telling people. First I’d have to look for a video editing program but I don’t have one of those.

I was with Castor last night in a pub in south-west London (hello Castor!) but I can’t remember very much about it except that she went to the bathroom and was gone for ages and ages and I was wondering if she’d run out on me again. Eventually she came back. We’d been talking about doing a furniture removal, something like that for her. She said that people she knew had some stuff. They lived in a place called Abbey Sides. They said that it was only like a 5 minute walk away. I had a look on the A to Z and she was right – it wasn’t all that far away from where we were. I suggested that we drank up and went to have a look. For some reason this was taking an awful lot longer than it ought to have done. But I don’t remember any of the rest of this and I can’t really remember the beginning either.

After that, I had a shower and shock! horror! I cut my hair! Now I look a little more human. And I wish that I’d weighed myself after I’d cut it, something that might have made me feel better.

After the shower I made a start on some of the arrears of my trip to Central Europe. It’s one of the three big ones today – the one where I spend a whole day in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic and this is going to take ages to deal with – there are about 50 photos in this.

Before setting off to the shops I had to pay a bill – or, at least, write out a cheque to pay a bill. The rates on my house in France are due again. And I bet that you wish you only paid … gulp … €26:00 per annum for your rates.

It was cold this morning as I went down into town, so I was glad that I had taken my gloves.

They make it easy to operate my camera and so when I saw a lorry and a fork lift truck unloading goods at the quayside it was a pretty straightforward operation to take a photo. At least the camera was charged today.

But this unloading can only mean one thing of course. And that is that either Normandy Trader or Thora is heading this way from the Channel Islands, or even now that there’s quite a pre-Christmas and pre-Brexit rush on, that Chausiais is going to be doing another little run.

So down the Rampe du Monte Regret I went and up the Rue Lecampion into town.

Just here in the Place Charles de Gaulle they seem to be setting up some kind of stall for street entertainment, presumably for the Christmas period. I suppose that Christmas still has to go on, even if I have never felt as less Christmassy as I am feeling right now.

All the decorations in the town are there too, and I’ll come by one evening in the dark when (hopefully) they will be illuminated, and take a photo of them to add to the records.

But instead, I posted my letter in the post office and pushed on.

Regular readers of this rubish will recall that several weeks ago I stumbled by accident upon a little alley in the Rue Couraye that had steps going down to the level below.

It was an alley that I hadn’t noticed before, and it’s been my goal to track down the other end and see to where it leads. So when I reached the end of the Rue du Bosq I had a look around and sure enough, I could see it leading down into the Rue du Marias just on the corner.

And from here it looks as if it goes through someone’s terrace. I’m not convinced that that’s a popular idea with some people.

At LIDL I didn’t buy very much, and nothing at all out of the ordinary except a ginger spice cake. I’m going to find some marzipan at the weekend and marzipan it and then ice it. It won’t be the same as a Liz Messenger cake, but it will be the best that I can do.

On the way back home, this delightful little notice here caught my eye.

There are building works going on all over the place and in the Rue St Paul there are at least three houses undergoing renovation. This is one of them and they have fenced off the front and indicated to pedestrians that they must somehow squeeze through the gap between the fence and the wall, unless they would like you to go through the window.

Either way, you need to be either very thin or very athletic so that rules me out. I walked around in the street.

By now the weather had broken and it was raining quite heavily. I was becoming soaked to the skin going home.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and some cake, and then promptly passed out fast asleep. And it was awful – one of these really deep sleeps that makes me feel so awful. I was stark out for an hour and then it took me an hour to come round, so awful was I feeling.

After lunch I crashed out again but I did manage to do some kind of work here and there on my day in Karlovy vary

But by now it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

The rain had stopped falling by now but the wind was blowing somewhat and the sea was rather rough. This little fishing boat was making rather heavy weather of the journey back from the fishing grounds this afternoon back to the harbour.

And I now know why it is that these fishing boats have a roof over the deck like this. It’s to prevent the seagulls, who usually follow the boats in to harbour, from diving down and helping themselves to some of the catch.

While I was looking around, I noticed the view down the Cotentin Peninsula, and there was some astonishing stuff going on there as you can see.

The first thing of note was the rainbow underneath the clouds. We’ve had plenty of rainbows around here and this one is unfortunately far from the best, but it will do to be going on with.

The second thing is the sunlight. You might have to click on the image to see it but there’s a shaft of sunlight shining right down on the town of Hauteville sur Mer, illuminating it like a spotlight would on a stage.

We’ve seen quite a few of that phenomenon just recently too.

You will remember earlier that we saw them unloading a pile of merchandise on the quayside and I speculated that one of the Jersey Freighters may well be on her way in.

Well, not only has one of them come in, she’s going out too on the same tide. That’s Normandy Trader heading back out to sea with a full load on board, having undergone probably one of the quickest turnrounds yet.

If she’s turning round as quickly as this in port, it’s hardly surprising that we haven’t seen her all that often even though I know that she’s been on her way in. And the same with Thora too. I bet that we have also missed her loads of times.

So after watching her fighting her way through the waves on her way home, I walked on around the corner and across the lawn and the car park to see what was going on in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

There’s nothing actually happening right now out there, but we are being treated to another one of these late-afternoon winter suns of which we have seen plenty just recently. If you thought that it looked impressive over at Hacqueville sur Mer just now, how about this for a spectacle?

This is probably just about the best one so far. It’s come out really well and if you look carefully, underneath the cloud you can see the Brittany coast.

Not wishing to hang about too long, I trotted off down the path, across the road (where there was no dog to annoy me) and then down the path overlooking the clifftop, doing my best to avoid falling into one of the very large puddles.

And look at this! There’s been a change of occupant in the chantier navale, so it seems. Ceres II has departed now and our yacht is in there all on its own.

It’s going to be pretty lonely there if it doesn’t find any shipmates to come and keep it company. Not that I’m wishing ill on anyone, but we need a busy shipyard here so that we can have a thriving port.

But where has Ceres II gone to? She can’t have been gone long because the van that has been attending to her is still there.

The answer is that I reckon she’s there. The portable boat-lift still has its engine running so it’s been working quite recently. And that array of aerials and ancillary equipment that you can just about see looks as if it’s off Ceres II.

So I just about missed her going back into he water, which was a shame. But never mind. I decided to push on for home and a hot coffee, and do some work. There’s plenty of it, right enough.

Unfortunately my bad day carried on and instead of working I ended up crashed out yet again. This is absolutely no good at all and I wish that there was something that I could do about it. But it’s the story of my life right now and it isn’t going to improve.

After my guitar practice, which went according to plan, I had tea. I finished off the last of the fresh broccoli along with other steamed veg with some veggie balls and vegan cheese sauce, followed bu apple pie.

And while we are on the subject of tea, they had a big pack of mushrooms (well, it is the season, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall from the other day) on special offer in LIDL today so I must remember to do a pan of lentils in the morning ready to make a lentil, mushroom and potato curry tomorrow.

And if I leave the eyes in the potatoes, then it’ll see me through the week.

My runs tonight were rather half-hearted and although I completed them all (keeping to dry land) I can’t say that I was inspired.

But it was a really beautiful night to be out, another one of those occasions where I could see for miles. St Helier and Jersey could be seen with the naked eye 58 kilometres away and in the phot you can even see the red lights on the radio tower at the back of town.

That’s a hand-held photo by the way. It’s far too windy to take the tripod out at the moment but I’ll be out there with it one of these days when the wind calms down.

Nothing much happening elsewhere either. It was all rather disappointing.

The lights down in the Rue des Corsaires were visible so I took a quick photo and then cleared off for my run across the Square Maurice Marland, where battling against a gale-force headwind thoroughly exhausted me. But I had a look at the lights on Marité and then ran on to home and warmth

And before I went to bed I did a little radio work. I had the music going on in the background, the music from which I’ll be choosing the tracks for the next programme, and two absolutely ideal tracks came up. So I’ve been dealing with them. I may as well make a head start.

But now I’m off to bed. Plenty to do tomorrow still land I really don’t feel like doing it, but I have to crack on, I suppose. It won’t do itself.

Wednesday 16th September 2020 – AS I WAS SAYING …

… only the other day, having my body clock disturbed is not really a good idea.

And as I said yesterday, being awake at 03:00 isn’t a very good plan either. And going to bed at 04:15 (and not being able to sleep either) doesn’t help matters.

It goes without saying that I’d switched off the alarms. I wasn’t going to be out of bed by the third alarm and it’s pointless trying. It ended up being another 11:30 today.

There was something on the dictaphone but it seems that I hadn’t gone too far. We were on board a ship last night and the question came round about ancient Egypt. For some unknown reason I imagined myself as a young baby wrapped in a nappy being worshipped as a god or something like that, an immortal. And it was very like a voyage that I’ve had a couple of times in the past.

Or so I said. While there are plenty of examples of me going on nocturnal voyages on board ships, I actually couldn’t think of a nocturnal voyage that bears any relationship to this one with similar events to these.

While I was at it, I dealt with a few more of the arrears from my voyage around Europe. At least that is now getting down to manageable proportions from the 70-odd that were there at the start.

There wasn’t much time to do very much. I spent some time working on the notes for the live broadcast that I’m doing, but I had another thing in mind to do as well.

There are the albums to digitalise, but also some cassettes. I’d borrowed a cassette player from Liz for the task and while I was messing around with the big desktop computer, I came across an input socket on the front, one that I hadn’t noticed before.

And so I had a rummage around and came up with a stereo audio cable, plugged it into the earphone socket on the cassette player and the other end into the input on the laptop.

After much playing around with the selectors I finally managed to make the computer record a cassette – but in mono only. Yet again!

But the word “earphone” on the cassette player should have given me a clue. Sticking a set of headphones in, I found out that there was only one channel working, but that was broadcasting both tracks.

So that’s a mono output and consequently of not much use. I’m going to have to think of a plan B – which might involve having to bring the big hi-fi into here.

Failing that, I know that my DVD player in the living room will record, so maybe I could even plug the big hi-fi into the DVD, record onto the hard-drive, burn to a DVD and then copy it onto the computer.

But I’ll find a way.

After a shower, I had to set out on my travels. It’s that time of the year again – one of our three-monthly meetings of the radio station.

It’s a long walk out to the Centre Agora but it does me good. The road goes past the top of the harbour where I can look down and see what is going on. Normandy Trader has disappeared into the sunset, and a long time ago too, and her place has been taken by Chausiais.

After a nice long walk I ended up at the meeting where we had to listen to a few people taking several hours to say nothing at all. At one stage, on my notes I had written “Oh God! I wish that this woman would shut up!”

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … these are the kinds of meetings that should be held, standing up in the open air in a rainstorm.

The weather was really pleasant later on and so I had a lovely walk, the long way around, back home.

It’s not very often that I have the chance to see the town in the dark and so I took a couple of photos on my way home. Like this one of the sea front looking across the beach and the port to the old town (where I live) perched on the rocks.

The photo was taken with the little NIKON 1 J5 which I take with me on walks like this. It’s quite compact and light, fits in a jacket pocket and does well enough in normal lighting conditions (but struggles in abnormal condition).

My route went through the town and then up the Rue des Juifs.

From the top of the Rampe du Monte Regret there’s a good view down towards the port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve mentioned the Bar Ephemère, called Chez Maguie, that has sprung up on the little square at the Square Pléville.

It’s open until quite late at night and it looked quite good from up here with all of its lights working so I took a photo of that while I was at it, to add it to the collection.

From there I continued up the Rue des Juifs to the viewpoint overlooking the port.

There wasn’t too much excitement there tonight, except that there was a fishing boat in the harbour, moored up and unloading at the Fish Processing plant.

When I arrived back, I hardly had time to take off my jacket before the phone rang. Rosemary rang me and we had a really good chat for 90 minutes, putting the world to rights, and I ended up missing my tea. But that will do me some good, I suppose.

So, later than I was hoping, I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow so that’s a nice early morning walk. And I have to go via the railway station to pick up my rail tickets, if I remember.

Thursday 16th July 2020 – TODAY WAS …

… not much better than the last couple of days. In fact in some respects it was worse because I missed the third alarm yet again.

So while you admire the photos of tonigh’s sunset, I’ll tell you that I only missed the alarm by 5 or so minutes, but a miss is as good as a mile, as we all know. What didn’t help was that all through the night I was awoken by some wicked attacks of cramp that really had me in pain. I could have done without those, right enough.

After the medication I checked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

Yes I’m not too sure about very much of last night’s dream at all except that I was in Belgium and I’d been out somewhere. I’d ended up on the frontier with France right on the point of a headland by the sea. There was a river that divided the two countries and you could see everything that was happening in France and I took a few photos. Then I went back to tell everyone where I’s been but people weren’t all that concerned or interested in what I was doing.

A little later on I was playing football, playing central defence. I’d gone into a kind of forward attacking role to play the ball but I’d made a bit of a mess of it and the ball had got behind me with three attackers so I was running back after it but I just blew up – ran out of steam completely and could hardly move while I was chasing the ball and chasing these players
After another attack of cramp I went back to sleep and found myself on the playing field at the back of where we used to live in Shavington. There was the upper football pitch and the lower football pitch and I was on the upper one. everyone else was on the lower one and no-one was coming along to play with me so in the end I went down to join the others. But there were many more than 11-a-side there so I reckoned that one team ought to wear chasubles (I’m dreaming in French again) so that we would know who is on which team.

Having disposed of all of that I turned my attention to the photos from July 2019. Another 50 or so bit the dust today which is good news, although I haven’t advanced very far. Right now we are in a fleet of zodiacs zooming around Kangerluluk Fjord on the east coast of Greenland. At this rate I’m never going to get to the North-West Passage, never mind New Brunswick.

It was shopping today too so I had a shower and a weigh-in. And my weight is still under my first target weight which is good news, I suppose.

And nice and clean, I changed the bedding and did a machine-load of washing. It’s all clean and nice-smelling right now which is good. I like the conditioner that I bought the other week.

So off into town I set, having a quick chat with a neighbour as I left.

But I didn’t get very far. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s a film being made here just now. The seem to have transformed the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs into some kind of Government office and it was all floodlit this morning.

They must be filming something right at this moment, I reckon. And for that reason we are not allowed to approach the site.

My route into town continued. And as I looked over the wall here I could see that down in the harbour “Old Faithful” is nack.

Chausiais must have moved pretty smartly this morning from the mooring underneath the crane because Normandy Traders, one of the little freighters from Jersey, is now in port.

The gates havent long been open so I imagine she sneaked in on the morning tide to drop off a load of shellfish from the Jersey Seafood Co-operative and pick up a load of material.

On I pushed to the Rampe du Monte Regret where I pictured a bizarre kind of house removal.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in Brussels we had portable lifts for all of this, but here apparently not. They were hauling up the stuff by hand with a couple of ropes.

That must have been hard work but it’s not a new experience for me. When I was younger I did all kinds of furniture removals like this, but that was in the days before Health and Safety regulations were in force.

Making my way into town, I called at the Post Office and sent off my letter – the one that I had written yesterday. Then I walked on to LIDL.

It beats me really why I went because I didn’t want to buy very much at all – and for a good reason too as regular readers of this rubbish will find out in a couple of days.

In the end, the grand total of €6:12 or something like that was what I spent.

On the way back down the Rue de la House I encountered this trange phenomenon – some people spraying the streets. That intrigued me greatly so I went to make further enquiries.

On the side of their little vehicle was a little sticker “weedkiller with boiling water”. So that’s what they are doing them. Pouring boiling water on the weeds.

How effective is that? I asked myself. It’s better for the environment than Agent Orange, that’s for sure. But does it really work that well?

On the way back I called at the vegetable shop and bought two (yes, two) carrots. For tea tonight and tomorrow. I won’t be needing any more for a while after that.

And so I headed on home up the Rue des Juifs.

Normandy Trader was still there being worked on. They were loading her up quite rapidly so it looks as if they are pushing to have her out of the harbour and on her way as soon as the gates open this afternoon

Back here I carried on with the photos for a while and then I had something else to do. There are a couple of cunning plans running round my head right now, one or two of which I have put in motion already.

One of the people approached actually replied (and another one did later this evening too) so I decided to push my luck and see if fortune would carry me onwards. That meant replying to the mail with a certain amount of jen ne sais quoi and seeing where we go with this.

But it’s not for right now, although it makes sense to push along while it’s fresh in people’s minds.

After lunch I started on my two courses. Firstly the song-writing course. And by the time that I knocked off I’d done the first week.
It didn’t teach me anything new but that’s not a problem. There is plenty of time and I have great hopes for this.

After I’d finished I went for my afternoon walk around the walls.

The tourist season is well under way as we can imagine right now. Joly France is keeping quite busy, taking day-trippers on a couple of laps around the bay as she waits for the tides to turn so she can go back to the Ile de Chausey and pick up those whom she dumped on there earlier.

They do a lot of work in the tourist season, do the two Joly France boats. This is the older one, with the smaller windows, the larger upper deck and without the step in the stern.

This is the kind of thing that makes me wish that I’d been out here 10 minutes earlier.

There is a huge load of small boats moored just off the headland as if there is a shoal of sea-bass in the vicinity. It seems to me that anyone who can hold a rod in his hand is out there trying his luck at catching supper.

I learnt the following day that it was in fact a shoal of mackerel that had appeared off the headland

And what confusion it must have caused to everyone when Joly France came round the corner at a rapid rate of knots. Scattered them like ninepins, I reckon.

Carrying on my walk around the walls, I came to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

The tide is rushing in right at this moment and the massed crowds of grockles have now retreated up to the sea wall to keep their feet out of the sea.

The tide isn’t a particularly high tide today – a coefficient in the 40s – so they might be lucky and stay dry. But it would be interesting to see the outcome of all of this if the tide does comme in higher than they are expecting.

And not just on land or in the sea was it busy.

It goes without saying that there was plenty going on in the air this afternoon too. The Birdmen of Alcatraz are out there in force swooping around like a bunch of vultures.

The seagull here is taking a great deal of exception to this particular birdman. It spent a good 10 minutes or so buzzing him, presumably to get him to clear off. Unfortunately I didn’t have tile to stay and see how it ended but my money was on the seagull.

And not just boats out on the sea either. There were plenty of swimmers there too.

The diving platform was crowded with people too and others in the sea swimming out that way to take part in the sports. This young boy here showed us quuite an acrobatic somersault into the water.

He received a good 4.9 for artistic impression from the bystanders but he lost a few points on the technical merit. His entry into the water could have been better.

But at least he entered the water quite rapidly. This young boy here was not quite so keen.

The onlookers on the cliff were urging him on, chanting “sautez, sautez” but he didn’t budge. A couple of the people on the platform were also counting him down to enter the water too.

Eventually the young boy in the previous photo pushed his way to the front and leapt in. This seemed to galvanise the other one here into action and he leapt in immediately afterwards, to a loud cheer and round of applause from the onlookers.

Round I went to the Square Maurice Marland I went to check on my baby seagull but he seems to have definitively gone now.

Something else that has gone is Normandy Trader. She must have cleared off the moment that the harbour gates opened because there at the loading bay in her place in Thora, the other Jersey freighter.

You might recall seeing in an earlier photo some shrink-wrapped boats on the back of a lorry at the side of the quay. They are now being loaded into Thora ready to go to the Channel Islands.

And Marité is back in port too after her adventures just recently.

Having spent a few minutes looking at the loading, I carried on with my walk.

And there are changes in the Place Cambernon too today. It looks as if a little market of sorts has sprung up in the square. Only a couple of stalls but it’s a start, I suppose. We could do with more like this in the neighbourhood

There is the pizza van of course. That’s here on Thursdays too so it looks like that’s the day for everyone to come to the old town just here. I wonder if the market will expand over time. I hope so.

On the way back I was walking along the elevated section of the walls when I noticed that the filming at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs had finished.

They were packing up the equipment so I took a photo to show you what was going on.

Back here I started the other course – “building an interactive website”. And unfortunately and depressingly, i crashed out yet again. Another good hour or so on the chair, well away with the fairies.

As a result I didn’t do half as much as I liked, so I’ll have to push on tomorrow as it’s going to be rather a busy day for me

There was the hour on the guitars, followed by tea. A lentil and potato curry out of the freezer followed by apple crumble.

Afterwards I went out for my run. And I don’t know why because my heart isn’t in it right now.

It’s knowing that I had a collapse in health a couple of weeks ago on the Spirit of Conrad that’s done it. I can feel the difference right now and it isn’t very nice.

But anyway I made it a good way up the hill before I shuddered to a halt, and then walked the remaining 100 metres to the corner. From there I ran on down past the itinerant to the clifftop.

There were a few people around but nothing at all happening so I walked across the lawn to the other side and then ran on down the next leg of my run.

From that rest point I could see that there was something going on at the ferry terminal. Joly France is there of course but the lifeboat is tied up next to it.

It beats me why it would be there. The only thing that I can think of is that it’s been out on a job and missed the tide for going back into the port de plaisance where it lives.

The next stage to the viewpoint in the rue du Nord I have to do in two legs these days. The strain is definitely getting to me these days, that’s for sure.

At the viewpoint I watched the sun go down, and you have already seen the photos of that. But once more there were the crowds on the beach enjoying the good weather (it was a really nice evening).

Having seen the sun go down, I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes. And now they are done I’m going to put away last week’s washing that I took off the clothes airer and then go to bed.

It will be a long day tomorrow so I want to be on form for it. I hope that I don’t have another attack of the cramps like last night.

Sunday 5th July 2020 – WITH IT BEING …

… a Sunday and therefore a Day of rest, anyone who thinks that I might have leapt out of bed at 07:30 when I awoke is quite clearly mistaken

09:30 is much more realistic as far as I’m concerned and I’m quite happy with that.

After the meds I had a look at the dictaphone sure enough, I’d been on a few voyages during the night.

There was something going on last night about Space and I’m not sure how or why or where it was but there were three of us – me, a girl and a Welsh guy. Something happened – we’d been in contact with some extra-terrestres (I’m dreaming in French again) and we were all trying to decide what to do. I came up with a few ideas – I couldn’t really remember what they were. This Welsh guy came up with an idea “why don’t I go to deep Space to visit them and talk to them?”. He was a salesman by profession and of vourse being Welsh he knew how to talk so that seemed to be the way forward. We could see if we looked through an inspection hatch that there was a little hole on the side of this planet. That was where he had to aim his spacecraft for. We had to wait until the Americans had a space rocket ready to blast a capsule off into high outer space orbit so that he could contact the extra-terrestres and start selling them things. I thought that this was a really weird thing to be doing.
We were on our boat last night and we came to a place where some of us wanted to get off to go to look at some things. But Strawberry Moose he stayed on board and everyone wondered where he was. I said that he wanted to stay on board and do some things on board. We all got down into our zodiacs but the two girls whom I hoped would come with us stayed on board as well which was disappointing. We finally came ashore in a jungle area where a woman had arranged to meet two people who would be in a bar around the corner. So we went to this bar while everyone else dispersed. There was no sign of these two people at all and we waited for about 10 minutes. In the end we decided to go. Just then this German boy off one of the crossings turned up in the bar and started to talk to us. That was the last thing that we wanted, to end up with him. Before we went in we had to organise our clothes. I had some clothes that wouldn’t go in the washing machine to be washed in the cycle that they had. I was going to do them by hand but the guy in charge of the laundry had this procedure. He had some washing conditioner arranged in a series – a bowl with conditioner, a bowl with clean water, a beaker full of conditioner and another bowl of plain water. He took hold of one of my socks and was pasting this conditioner over it. Normally when I wash my socks I put one over my hand , rub soap into it, put the other sock over the other hand, rub soap into that and rub the two together like I’m washing my hands. He was doing it in a strange way so I thought I’d do it in that way too, watching him and seeing what procedure he was going to use.
There was a group of us in a room in a house later on. The room was really untidy and there was a load of papers and magazines and maps and things. They were all mine and all needed to be tidied up. A couple of girls were helping me, going through the piles and getting them in the right order, unfolding them and laying them flat, merging them together. There were piles of cables, computer and audio cables etc all over the place and they were all arranged in some weird crazy cat’s cradle. While the girls were organising these magazines and I’d done a bit of that I was starting to untangle these cables. One of the girls with black hair and glasses came over and said “I’ve already done that”. I showed here that there was a lot that was still tangled up. She said “just leave it for the moment because we can do that when it’s more convenient”. She started to take down the washing that was hanging up everywhere. We were on a big barge and we had to leave the main waterway to go down some kind of side waterway. It was a very tight turn, almost as if you had to double back on yourself which is no fun when you have a big barge like we had. The girl at the helm up front had to steer this barge round and I knew that she didn’t like doing it here so I said “this is your favourite bend, isn’t it, Judy?”. She didn’t hear me at first so I said it again. She made some kind of grimace. When we got to this waterway it was dry and there were sheep in it. We had to pivot this boat round to get it lined up then get out and drag it up out of the water onto this pathway that was going downhill. The first time we did it the boat ground out. It was in the wrong area and was going to hit the wall so we had to push it back to line it up to start again. I had a feeling that this was not going to be easy having to do this. But somewhere in the middle of all of this was Alan Dean – now when was the last time I ever heard of him? I was at the top of the steps walking down with some swing doors at the bottom. He was down there. It was a case of playing a bass guitar and I was stuck. I wanted to improve and I didn’t know where to go, how to learn, how to change my procedures. I thought that I would look at a few videos on Youtube but that was somewhere stuck in the middle that was.

It was therefore something of a major surprise that I found myself awake so early after that. And even more of a surprise that I kept going all day without a rest.

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves here.

It took me long enough to type out all of that, and then there was my Welsh homework. With having missed Tuesday’s lesson I had to do the coursework myself before I could make a start.

So what with one thing and another it was lunchtime by the time it was all done.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I spent a few days a couple of months ago copying all of the files from various hard drives onto the new external drive that I had bought.

The aim was to compare them and delete any duplicate files but for some unknown reason the file duplicate detecting program was having issues.

This afternoon I uninstalled it and reinstalled it but it still wouldn’t work. However eventually I found the reason. Two of the drives are “C” drives out of old computers with the deep BIOS settings on them – the settings that drive the drives. Of course you can’t delete those so when the program detected two identical files in the BIOS settings in two drives it was obliged to pause for thought.

Excluding those files from the compare did the trick, and so the afternoon has been spent mostly dealing with this little project.

There was of course the afternoon walk to deal with, and with it being a Sunday it was the day when I go into town for my weekly ice cream.

But I didn’t go very far before I was interrupted. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m quite a keen bird watcher and when I was married I had many a lecture on birdwatching from poor Nerina.

Anyway, this bird here was hovering around over the edge of the cliff where the little rabbit colony seems to be. I imagine that it was looking for any errant rabbit babies.

It’s a bird of prey of some description but whatever it is, I’m none-the-wiser.

My friend Erika thinks that it’s either a white-tailed hawk or a hobby and she certainly has more idea than I do. My bird-identifying is rather like that of a woman identifying a car.

“What kind of car was it, madam?”
“A red one”.

And that’s me with birds too unfortunately

As it’s my long Sunday walk I went down the steps at the end of the path and round the headland on the lower level.

Plenty of people milling around there today. The holidays are well under way now. And there were loads of people out there on the rocks this afternoon too. It’s a low tide today and so those who practise the peche à pied are out there in force.

Here’s hoping that they share their catch out with their friends too. After all, one shouldn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

The path carries on around the foot of the cliff and then past the Chantier navale.

A big surprise in there today. It seems that they’ve been busy while I was away, for every berth has some kind of vessel in there undergoing repair. No fewer than six fishing boats, I make it, up on blocks today.

Having been quiet for a while, it’s good to see them so busy. It’ll just be someone’s luck to have a breakdown while there’s no berth available to accommodate them

The tide was right out just now as we have seen so I was able to take the short cut across the top of the harbour gates to the other side.

On the way past the Fish processing plant I observed this notice pasted to the door. Briefly, and crudely (and if you want anything crude, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man!) translated by Yours Truly, there have been several “incidents” at the Fish processing plant that breach the Corona virus precautions.

This notice informs everyone of these breaches and states that if there are any more, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry will take whatever action they consider necessary.

They don’t mess about here. None of your “driving to Barnard Castle” or “going to Greece via Bulgaria” in these situations.

Our home from last week is still in port.

Spirit of Conrad is quietly moored where we left her on Friday evening, with the big wheel in the background.

The two Channel island ferries, Victor Hugo and Granville are there in port too. We are told that the ferry service is to start very soon – the 11th July is one date that is freely bandied about.

But the regulations for travelling are extremely severe and I don’t imagine that there will be many takers at the moment.

Having observed the shipping in the harbour I walked on round to the end of the wall to see what was going on.

Here was something interesting. There was a zodiac parked up in the water over there and it looked as if there was no-one in it. Enlarging the photo when I returned home, I could see that there was someone in the water right by it.

It was one of those situations where I couldn’t see what he was doing or why he would have been in the water. It’s a shame that I didn’t notice him until it was too late to do any good.

This propellor here from a ship is propped up against the wall of the harbour offices and I must have walked past here 100 times without really noticing it.

It belonged to a small ship of 265 or so tonnes, the Antwerpen. She was a German coaster built in 1917 by the Germans but abandoned in Oostende at the Armistice.

Taken over by the Belgian Navy, she was repossessed by the Germans in 1940 when Belgium fell, and was one of the boats that plied between Granville and the Channel islands taking supplies out there.

In December 1940 in thick fog she was rammed by another vessel in her convoy and sank in shallow water. Demolished finally in 1963, her propellor was found by divers in 1986 and presented to the port office.

One thing that features quite often in these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is pathetic parking.

And does parking ever get more pathetic than this? All of these cars are parked without any regard whatsoever for the road markings. It’s totally unbelievable, isn’t it?

Continuing on my walk, I went round onto the quayside to see what was happening, but there was nothing whatever going on there this afternoon.

That was probably because the gates were closed and the tide was right out. Not much point in anyone being here right now.

Turning on my heel, i went out to have a look at the big wheel. It’s going round and there are people on it too, although it would be wrong to say that it was actually busy. No clues at all.

And so I pushed on into the rue LeCampion to my little ice cream stall and had the weekly ice cream. I need to keep up with my habits while the summer is here.

For a change I walked back along the rue LeCampion, up the steps at the Rampe du Monte Regret and under the drawbridge into the old town.

The aim of going this way was to see how they were getting on with the replacement of the gas pipe in the rue Lecarpentier.

By the looks of things, they seem to have finished the work. And it looks quite a tidy job too. You’ll hardly notice that all of that has been dug up and subsequently replaced.

Up through the Place Cambernon and through the alley down to the rue du Nord and along the walls to the viewpoint.

There was a yacht out there in the English Channel struggling along in the wind. It’s not a boat that I recognise either and I can’t read a name on her anywhere.

Back here I carried on with my work and at 18:00 knocked off for a play on the guitars for an hour or so.

Later on I had tea. Another home-made pizza that was really delicious. But no pudding tonight as I wasn’t that hungry.
In

My run this evening was a dismal failure – and for a couple of reasons too.

When I came back in this afternoon I put the camera battery on charge. And when i went out this evening, I forgot to put the battery back in it – so no photos
There’s a gale blowing out here – 75 kph winds. Several of my runs ended abruptly as I turned a corner and ran into a headwind that blew me backwards. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so depressed. Something of a failure, that was

So I’m packed now and I’ll be off on my travels tomorrow. Back to Castle Anthrax. I wonder what plans they have in store for me there.

Thursday 11th June 2020 -I WAS TREATED …

… to a delightful little nautical danse macabre this morning down in the port.

Normandy Trader had come in on the morning tide – in fact she was waiting outside the harbour for the gates to open earlier – and was tied up at the unloading point while the workers on the crane were busy unloading her.

And into the harbour, full steam ahead, came Thora. She almost came to a dead stop when she saw Normandy Trader moored just there. Being too far over to moor up at the side, she had to go into a delightful 360° outside turn in order to get herself into position to moor in a temporary unloading place.

Mind you, while we’re on the subject of a berth being occupied, mine was occupied for rather longer than intended this morning.

Never mind the third alarm – it was 06:30 when I finally crawled out of bed again.

No breakfast once more so I came back here to listen to the dictaphone. We were on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again and we reached the Far North of Iceland although it was much more bleak and much more cold and much more icy than the Far North of Iceland – it could easily have been the far North of Greenland. There was some kind of settlement there which was pretty much abandoned – there weren’t many people living there. There was one building made of wood and the whole front had been washed away by a high tide in a storm. We typed something into a search engine about this place and it came up with a couple of shots of the boat that we were using to ferry ourselves back and to to the ship and also the World War II 4-engined bomber that had crashed somewhere in the vicinity. Of course I was really keen to go ahead and find out where this plane was but that was when I awoke, with a massive attack of cramp that knocked me right for 6.

So how did this end? I’ve no idea because after I’d eased the cramp off and went back to sleep I missed the restart and that was that.

Looking back on things, I’ve spent so much time during the night on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour that I shudder to think what the bill would be if ever Adventure Canada find out and decide to send me a bill for my stays.

Next job was to finish off the Tax Return and type a letter to the Tax people to explain my particular circumstances. A shower, and a weigh-in, and then off to LIDL

Not that I got very far.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the roadworks that we saw yesterday in the rue Notre Dame. All of the traffic is having to travel down the rue St Jean and as we have seen on many occasions, it’s pretty narrow.

As a consequence they have installed temporary traffic lights now at the Porte St Jean. I shall have to go for a wander and see how far they stretch down the street.

Off I continued on my travels, but I didn’t get very far.

Around the headland came our friend Normandy Trader. As she approached the port entrance I prepared myself ready to take a photo of her entering port, but she came to a shuddering halt just outside the harbour.

Of course, what has happened is that the tide isn’t quite in far enough and the gates are closed. She’ll have to wait until they open but for some reason she’s decided to wait outside.

At last I could push on down the road and down the Rampe du Monte Regret.

And there seem to have been a few changes there too. Everyone is preparing for the summer and as there’s no Nuit des Soudeurs this year, it looks as if they are installing a kiddies’ open air play area of some description with a little casual café.

People won’t be travelling on holiday this year of course so we’ve seen all kinds of preparations being undertaken to make sure that people enjoy their holidays at home.

And on that subject, I’ve no idea what’s going on here.

These look pretty much to me like the beach cabins that we’ve seen them installing on the Plat Gousset just now, but I’m wondering what on earth they are doing unloading in the middle of the town centre here in the Place General de Gaulle.

All will be revealed in due course, I imagine. I see that the route of my Sunday perambulation is already panning itself out without me having to sit and think about it.

Up at LIDL I spent a lot of money but without anything substantial to show for it. A pile of bin liners was one thing, but the principal expenditure was on olive oil. I always cook with olive oil and I’m getting rather low, and today they had two-litre bottles at a ludicrous price. So one of them found its way into my shopping bag.

On the way back I went to the Tax Office to deliver my letter. It’s closed one day a week and regular readers of this rubbish will recall, having followed my exploits around the world often enough, which day of the week it’s going to be.

So I slipped it into the letterbox and headed back towards home.

Thursday is the day for a little treat. Calling at La Mie Caline, I picked up my dejeunette for lunch. I know that I bake my own bread these days but it’s still nice to have something different.

Pushing on I went via the Rue Paul Poirier to see if I could see the roofing works in thr Place Marechal Foch from a different angle.

And from here, there’s a completely different perspective on what they are doing up there. It’s quite a big roof, that much is evident, and it must have been something of an effort to put the scaffolding up in the gap between the two wings.

But on the fork-lift trucks they have a hod of slates so they are clearly pressing on with the job and it won’t be long before they will finish it.

Up the hill in the rue des Juifs, I could see Normandy Trader at her berth.

They are cracking on with the unloading and with Thora awaiting her turn they aren’t going to be long in turning her round ready to leave port.

So I pushed on back home to sort out the shopping. There wasn’t any more excitement on the way back which was a shame.

Having gathered up my strength I went to have a look at Week 3 of my Accountancy course. There are actually 38 modules in this week’s session which makes this “four hours of study per week” look a bit ridiculous.

But by the time that 15:30 came round, I’d done 21 of them, and that was despite a stop for lunch.

At 15:30 though, just as I was planning to leave for my afternoon walk, Rosemary called me up. We ended up having a lengthy chat – to such an extent that it was after 17:00 when I was ready to go for my afternoon perambulation.

And just for a change, it was pouring down outside. and I can’t say that we didn’t need it. All of the grass here is scorched dark brown and needs a really good soaking.

Dressed in my raincoat I was fine and I could watch in comfort yet another nautical danse macabre as a fishing boat sailed into the bay just here, performed an exquisite U-turn and sailed back out again.

If you look at the photo, you can see its wake quite clearly. But the point of it quite clearly beats me.

The weather might be bad for some people but others are taking full advantage of it right now.

Here’s someone down there dressed in the right gear and fishing off the rocks. I’m not quite sure what he might catch down there, apart from pleurisy, but it did remind me of the old guy who once told me that having sex these days was very much like fishing.
“Why is that?” I asked
“Well” he replied, “these days you get your rod out and you never know what you are going to catch”

On that note I strolled off around the headland and down along the path on the other side of the promontory.

That route takes me above the chantier navale where I can look down and see what’s going on down there. And today we have another occupant. A large fishing boat has come in to join the others.

And only just come in too by the looks of things. The crew are still down there with her giving her a good hose down. Not that she’ll need much in this weather.

A rhythmic tapping from further down the Boulevard Vaufleury told me that the roofing work down below in the rue du Port was still going on.

Not that I would want to be working on a roof in weather like this, but the answer to that is that with no roof on the building in a rainstorm you are going to get wet anyway so it doesn’t make much difference.

Talking of getting wet, standing here watching the workers on the roof was having that effect on me so I came on back home. There was my hour on the guitars to occupy my time.

After the session on the guitar I would normally go for tea but I wasn’t feeling hungry at all so I caught up with a few little bits and pieces, only to develop a raging hunger round about 20:30.

What’s going on here?

Anyway it was far too late to worry about food now with so much to do – like going for a run.

A few biscuits filled a little hole and then I set off into the rain again. Up the hill a little easier than it has been just now, which reminded me that my climb up the hill to LIDL had passed without the slightest hint of drama.

Having recovered my breath I ran on down to the clifftop past the itinerant who was sheltering under a plastic sheet. And that’s what I don’t understand. All of the World War II bunkers of the Atlantic Wall and the couple of stone buildings from the 18th Century fortress in which he could be sheltering, all of which are out of the rain and all a mere cockstride from here, and he’s sheltering under a plastic sheet under a hedge.

There was nothing much happening out to sea so I carried on walking around the headland to the other side of the promontory.

It must be getting close to gate-opening time, I reckon, because the fishing boats were starting to head for the port. 105 minutes before High Tide, so I’ve been told, that the gates open and it’s not so very far off that right now.

But no seagulls hanging around the boats tonight. Probably the rainstorm is proving to be too much for them too and they’ve gone off to seek shelter elsewhere.

The next stage of my run takes me down past the chantier navale and down to the end of the path where I always stop for breath.

And I was right about the harbour gates being on the point of opening because just look at all of the fishing boats here. And that’s not by any means all of them either. There were another three or four out of shot behind the harbour wall, not to mention those still out at sea.

But the gate didn’t open while I was there so I carried on with my run.

All the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury, around the corner and up to the second pedestrian crossing. But once more I ended up a good 20 oe so metres beyond it.

Back down at the harbour I had a look at to see what was going, accompanied by someone else who was taking a few photos of the place. What caught my eye were the couple of little boats that were moored against the new pontoons in the shadow of the larger boats.

But what I was trying to understand was why they would want a ladder at the end of the pontoon going down into the water. That’s another mystery to me.

The fifth stage of my run takes me now all the way to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord where we usually see the sunset. But not this evening of course. Not in this weather.

No picnickers out there either tonight which is no surprise either, but we did have some more fishermen doing their stuff. One of them was a young boy whom I watched scrambling over the rocks until he foud a good position to cast his line.

Once he’s put his hook in the water I ran on back home to write up my notes.

So later than I anticipated I’m off to bed now. No idea who I’ll be meeting during the night but I hope that it’s someone interesting and exciting. After all, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Tomorrow I’m going to finally get to grips with my music course and spend the day learning blues piano. It’s free so I may as well make the most of it.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: Rampe du Monte Regret

Thursday 1st April 2021 – THERE’S A TIME …

Tuesday 30th March 2021 – HAVING HAD A …

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

Thursday 4th March 2021 – YOU HAVE TO ADMIT …

Thursday 18th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

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

Friday 29th January 2021 – HERE I AM …

Saturday 23rd January 2021 – IT WAS A …

Thursday 21st January 2021 – JUST FOR A …

Tuesday 19th January 2021 – IT’S BEEN …

Thursday 10th December 2020 – ISN’T IT NICE …

Wednesday 16th September 2020 – AS I WAS SAYING …

Thursday 16th July 2020 – TODAY WAS …

Sunday 5th July 2020 – WITH IT BEING …

Thursday 11th June 2020 -I WAS TREATED …

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