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Saturday 1st June 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was last night.

There have certainly been nights when I’ve felt as though I’ve lain awake all night, but last night with the bedroom door open I could see the clock all the way through the night.

In fact I’d been to bed very early and dropped off for an hour or so, but that was that. I spent the rest of the evening lying there watching the clock.

By 04:45 I was up and about having my medication and by the time the alarm went off I was already eating my breakfast.

However there was no chance of my keeping going. By about 08:15 I was back in bed asleep for an hour or so.

And that’s how my day has been – up and about for a couple of hours and then crashing out in bed for an hour or so.

The leg is still giving me sheer agony, but it’s quite comfortable when I’m lying in bed – so it’s not too much of a disappointment. I need to take it easy and to rest the leg.

During my more lucid moments I’ve been reading the manual for the new camera, ordered 500 business cards and done some packing. And that vacuum bag that I bought a few weeks ago, as regular readers will recall, works in spades because I have enough clothes for several weeks now packed into a tiny space. I just hope that I can find a vacuum cleaner at the other end of my trip when I need to repack it.

There was also some time to add another day or two’s blog entry texts to the Canada 2017 page.

Lunch was rather late – about 16:00 in fact – due to various reasons, and so I’ve not had tea tonight. It’s been a few nights this week that I’ve not had tea and I’ve lost 3kgs. That’s always good news.

But now I’m off to bed. I’m not all that tired but I can listen to the radio for a while.

Sunday tomorrow so there might be a lie-in. And I’ll try for a pizza for tea again.

Thursday 16th May 2019 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

I’ve had a very bad fall today – the first real one since I became ill.

My excuse is that I tripped over an upraised stone on a footpath, but I’m sure that my loss of balance contributed to the way that I ended up.

On my hands and knees, almost flat on my face. I’ve gravel rash on my left knee, both hands and, even worse, I think that I’ve broken a bone in the side of my right hand. It’s swollen up and I can’t make a fist.

It’s a shame that it’s my right hand though. had it been my left hand, it wouldn’t have interfered with my sex life.

Last night was a decent sleep. There was another trip down the corridor at some silly time or other, but nevertheless still plenty of time to go a-voyaging.

Last night there was some issue involving a polar bear – I’m not quite sure what now. It was out in Canada and the Candian national day and the subject of the polar bear came up. A few people were scared of it as you might expect but someone was giving rides on it. There were some people who were having a ride when all of a sudden the polar bear roared and these two people leapt about 3 feet in the air and cleared off quickly. They said that they hadn’t realised that it was a real polar bear that they were riding -they thought that it was some kind of toy or mock-up or demonstration
There was a hotel being used as a film studio, a lot films had taken place there but the hotel had gone bankrupt and everyone had to move their possessions. I was one of them with a friend and we had a shipping storage container there and we had to move it away. He just picked up one end of it and got me to pick up the other end. I could hardly manage to pick it up and we struggled but eventually started to move it with these people watching. It looked like the start of Rope lane in Shavington. As we went away from this hotel we noticed things like film company signs hanging off it. We got about 12 steps before we had to put it down. The second time was better and the third time we decided to go all the way, so off we staggered. Once my friend found his rhythm I was hardly doing anything – more of a passenger in fact than anyone carrying that end. It was icy so it was sliding along the floor and he was pulling the front of it to where we were going. But halfway along was an internal customs post in Canada. We passed through these villages with ski schools and the like and there we were with our container. At the ski schools these kids were in little car like things and were knocked over by the passage of the container so I picked them up and put them back on their feet. But it was a really steep slope and the container got away and crashed. We stopped at this internal border post and there were loads of people in the same boat who couldn’t go any further because of the ice. We had to fill out customs declarations and check everything that was in our pockets and pay duty on that with the idea that we’d return and pick it up later in which case the duty would be refunded. Someone else was there saying he was held up by the ski school and someone else said he was held up by the container and said to the Blue Mr Pertwee(?!?) about it. It was all confusing.

As seem to be the case these days, I missed the three alarms but I was up and about fairly early.

After breakfast I had a shower and clean-up, and then headed off to LIDL. They had more of that sports bread that I tried at the weekend and which was so delicious, a pair of universal pliers and then just the normal bits and pieces. I wasn’t out there long.

Plenty of action hereabouts and when the swelling on my right hand goes down I shall post the photos. At the moment it isn’t possible.

As I returned to the building I had a good chat with one of the neighbours about storage in the building. He’s pointed me in the direction of a possibility, but it’s not all that reasonable

After I came back here I attacked the rest of the photos for yesterday’s blog entry and now they are all up-to-date.

Lunch was in here again and then this afternoon I attacked last night’s dictaphone notes. There was still time before I went on my afternoon walk to attack the Canada 2017 notes. Not much progress was made unfortunately because this section was quite confusing and my notes weren’t as clear as they might have been.

I’ve already explained about my afternoon walk, and I limped back here to hash the gravel out of me and disinfect myself. I know only too well the problem of gravel rash.

However, I was overcome by a wave of total fatigue that I haven’t encountered for quite a while and ended up in bed. And there I stayed until, would you believe, 19:45.

Even in that time I’d been on my travels too. Driving into Sandbach and losing myself in the new one-way system (installed in the 1980s!) and ending up on a Council estate and becoming totally confused.

With things being somewhat late, I missed my tea and ended up with just a handful of biscuits. But I still managed my evening walk, despite the agony in which I find myself.

Anyway, now I’m off to bed. I hope that this pain will ease off overnight and the swelling in my hand will go down so that normal service will be resumed.

Otherwise, I’ll be off to the hospital tomorrow.

Monday 13th May 2019 – I DON’T KNOW …

Yesterday, I’d seen my neighbours doing some cleaning up of the concrete platform at the side of the building. And so I went to see what was going on.

I’m not quite sure what this is that they have erected, and I’ve no idea as to its purpose. But I’m sure that I’ll find out in early course.

There weren’t all that many people out on land, but the seas were pretty crowded today.

There were all kind sof things out there this afternoon, including this beautiful trawler heading in towards the harbour.

The sea was absolutely beautiful this afternoon.

It wasn’t just trawlers out there either;

There were a few smaller boats out there with two or three people in them, fishing with rod and line. Just like these two here in this zodiac.

I spent some time out there watching them, but they didn’t seem to be catching anything. It’s clearly not everyone’s lucky day.

While I was looking at a couple of boats out to sea off the Brittany coast near St Malo, I could see something moving on the horizon.

Thinking that it might be a ship heading into port at St Malo I photographed it and back here, I cropped and enlarged it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a ship at all. It was just a boat with a rather large sail. The sail doesn’t look very yacht-like, so it might nevertheless be something interesting.

While I was out admiring the shipping in the Baie de Mont St Michel, I fell in with a couple of tourists.

Having established that I was from the area, they asked me several questions about the town and the fishing industry here. And luckily, I was able to help them out.

It all brings back many happy memories of a previous existence when I did this for a living.

Back here? i decided to start on the notes for 2016 and, as it happens, I can’t find them anywhere.

I know that I must have copied them out somewhere because I have already written several web pages about events on that voyage.

But where they might be, I don’t have the least clue.

Tea was the falafel with steamed vegetables and cheese sauce followed by the last of the apple pie.

Of course, I went for my evening walk as usual, and there was no-one about at all except for a solitary girl smoking a cigarette and a couple of people carrying spotlights out of the theatre.

A couple of people were enjoying the late evening sun on the beach at Plat Gousset and I don’t blame them because it really was a nice evening.

There were a few youngsters too hanging around by the cherry-picker. I must really make an effort to see what that is being used for.

But that’s for another time, I reckon. Tonight I’m going to try to have an early night and a decent sleep.

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Friday 10th May 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… better day today, much to my own surprise. Much better than the weather anyway, and that’s saying the least.

Last night wasn’t as early as I was hoping, and I needed to go for a stroll down the corridor in the middle of the night, and it’s been quite a long time since that’s happened.

And on top of all that, I didn’t manage to beat the third alarm. Not by much, it has to be said.

But there was still plenty of time to go off ona little voyage during the night. We had to go to the seaside, four or five of us. One guy with us was an old Italian. I remember him being something like the Italian football team manager and I couldn’t think of his name or put a finger on his career. I asked him how he had been doing since he left Italy – a vague question – and he replied “surely you knew. I won the league with (he mentioned a few clubs) and won promotion with Torquay United” – It all sounded amazing to me. And someone came along with this huge, enormous shopping trolley. I remembered having lent it to someone and was hoping to have it back, but he replied “no, we’re going to take it on to someone” but I ended up carrying it or pushing it. We got on a train and went down to Brighton and ended up in an apartment that was to let. One of us was thinking of taking it but I can’t remember who now. The girl asked about it and another guy said that it was up for let. But someone is going to take it but it needs work doing to it. The tap is leaking or something. IS there anything about it? So we had a rummage round and found a big manila envelope. We pulled it out and went to open it to read what it says. At that moment a young guy with us, very like him in Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced started to cook and was serving up pancakes with fruit or veg, giving one to this girl.
That wasn’t all of it either, but there were parts of this voyage that wouldn’t make good reading if you are eating your tea.

After breakfast I settled down to do some work, and I’ve been hard at it for most of the day.

I started off by finishing off last night’s entry and adding the photos. And that wasn’t as quick as it might have been too.

That was followed up by merging the photos and the dictaphone notes for August 2015 in Canada. And then, I went through the blog entries for that month and added in all of the text from then.

That took ages but it has produced quite a copious file, and it won’t take much to edit and expand it into a proper series of web pages.

Like I said, I do one job and the closer it gets to finishing, the more work it seems to spawn.

To finish off the day I started to do the same for September 2015, and I’ve done three days of that. This is going to be quite a lengthy work, so it’ll take me longer than a couple of days to finish it off.

During all of this, I stopped for lunch of course, indoors once more.

And of course there was the afternoon walk. In the rain of course, so there wasn’t anyone out and about.

There weren’t all that many fishing boats out there this afternoon, as far as it was possible to see through the driving rain.

La Grande Ancre was out there however, and she had just performed a U-turn outthere ofshore. She won’t be towing a net behind her with a tight turn like that, I wouldn’t have thought.

There wasn’t anyone about working on the Resistance Monument either. And by the looks of things, it doesn’t look as if anyone has been out there at all today

And that’s hardly surprising given the amount of rain that was teeming down right now.

I’m intrigued though to know why they have dug a big hole on the centre of the emplacement down there. It doesn’t look as if it has any purpose to serve, and it hasn’t been shuttered off.

As it happens, I wasn’t quite correct when I said that there was no-one about at all.

Yesterday we had someone with his chopper out and today we have someone with his rod out. Down on the edge of the rocks off the Cap Lihou is someone fishing.

I’m not sure that he ever caught anything, but it does remind me of the story about why sex has a lot in common. In both cases you take out your rod and you never know what you are going to catch.

Despite the rain, I walked on round the headland to where I could overlook the chantier navale.

Yet another change-round in there. Grand Beau Temps has now departed, which is hardly any surprise in this kind of weather.

But she’s not been replaced. The berth in which she was installed is now empty. But I don’t imagine that it will remain empty for long.

Tea was a burger with vegetables followed by apple pie and coconut sorbet – delicious.

The evening walk, I almost abandoned it due to the rain. But I pressed on none-the-less.

And here’s something interesting that seems to be happening in the rue Notre Dame.

I’ve absolutely no idea what an “enquete policiere grandeur nature” is, and even less of an idea why they need to ban parking in the street in order to carry it out.

I suppose that I’ll have to present myself sur place on 18th May in order to find out.

Fighting my way back through the rain, I made it back here just in time for the football.

Clubs in the Welsh Premier League are entitled to 4 places in European competition. The Champions play in the Champions League , and the Cup Winners (or runners up in the League, if the Cup winners are the Champions) and then the next-highest club in the league. So that’s TNS, Connah’s Quay Nomads and Barry Town.

The four next-lowest teams have a series of play-off matches to decide who has the remaining place, and tonight Newtown (5th) were playing Bala Town(5th).

In one of the most exciting matches that I’ve seen for a while, Bala won 2-1. And the difference between the teams was firstly Keighan Jones’s foot, and secondly Henry Jones.

Henry Jones, one of the most skilful players ever to have played in the WPL, has been off-form for a while but tonight he recovered all of his skill and more besides, and put in a match-winning performance.

And when Newtown broke through the Bala defence, and found themselves on a one-on-one situation with Keighan Jones in the Bala goal, his outstretched right foot saved them on both occasions. He’s only the second-choice goalkeeper too, but that was a superb performance tonight.

So tater later than intended, I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow so I need to be fit.

Friday 3rd May 2019 – I’VE DONE …

… a massive 15% – almost 20% – of the outstanding files on the dictaphone list this morning.

211 was the figure at which I started this morning. By late morning it was a mere 172. And the only reason that I stopped was because I reckoned that I ought to be doing other things as well.

Actually, I cheated. I finally found out where I’d copied the notes previously. I’d actually typed them directly into the blog entries without putting them in the notes file.

Ad so I simply copied and pasted them into the dictaphone notes file, and that was that.

Despite my saying that I’d be having an early night last night, it didn’t quite work out like that. Just as I was planning on going to bed, I had a phone call.

And that put paid to my early night, and in spades too because by the time that I’d finished the phone call, my desire to sleep had gone and it was long after midnight when I finally hit the sack.

And I was off on a voyage too. I was in the EU last night and a princess probably the princess of Monaco came walking through. I had my camera with me so I took a few photos of them. She asked to see them and was quite impressed. She said that she would be at a meeting at the Parliament there at 09:15 next day and would I like to photograph her there. So about 09:05 I picked up all of my stuff, cameras and the like but because I didn’t have a flash I carried a copper frying pan with me that would reflect the light. As I set off I had to walk through my office. everyone was sitting there like at school and I just walked through with my camera and my stuff and straight out of the back door, leaving them open-mouthed at what was going on. I had to fight my way through the huge crowds at the Commission (?!) And found myself at the back of this big meeting where a huge discussion was taking place. There were thousands of people there but I couldn’t see this princess. We were discussing documents and all this kind of thing. Suddenly a document came up talking about storage and I realised that it was a document that I had prepared. They were passing copies about through the meeting to people who hadn’t had them and an extra copy of this document which was in two parts appeared at my desk. I hung onto it as no-one else behind me seemed to want it. A woman came in late and had all of her documents given to her late. She started to ask “who’s this EH who had prepared this document?” I said that it was me – tey asked me who it was; She said that she didn’t have a copy so I passed mine over or the spare one that i had. She was not very impressed because she was expecting a much bigger document. I couldn’t see this princess and her children (because she had some children with her) anywhere in this meeting, but they were all looking at me and my stuff wondering what I was doing. I think that that Nicole was there at one time.

It goes without saying that I didn’t leap joyously out of bed with the lark this morning. Just after 07:00 it was when I finally saw the light of day.

After the usual morning performance, rather later than it has been just recently, I did the photos for yesterday and then attacked the dictaphone notes.

What with a stream of interruptions and the like, and searching for the notes files, it took me until probably 11:30 or something like that to demolish a good pile of them.

Next task was to do some of the outstanding blog entries – to update the photos. I’m now back to 12th July 2018. I’ve left out the trip to the High Arctic because I have plans for that.

There were no photos for 11th July, and 10th July puts me back to the last day of my voyage around Europe. We’re at the Somme battlefield and I spent much of the remainder of the day allocating the text and alt tags to the photos from that period.

When they are done, I’ll update the blog entries as appropriate, and then think about doing the web pages.

here was lunch in between all of that, and it was taken indoors again. The high winds are putting the wind up me as far as sitting on the wall goes.

I called a halt to the photos when it was time to go for my afternoon perambulation.

And I immediately came under aerial attack. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in August when we were at the Cabanon Vauban we saw an autogyro fly right past where we were standing.

This afternoon, just as I walked out of the apartment, the aforementioned machine flew right over my head. And so I took a photo of it.

That wasn’t the only aerial operation going on this afternoon.

About 30 seconds later, one of the hang-gliders flew past my head. There were a few of them out there this afternoon enjoying the windy weather.

I must admit to having a little musing to myself about how exciting it might have been had the hang-glider and the autogyro had a meeting of the minds and bodies right over where I was standing.

And that was far from being all of the excitement out there too.

Round on the Pointe du Roc not too far from where the bunkers are situated, there were some people measuring up, setting pegs and tapes on the ground and marking something out.

Further enquiries (because I believe that if you want to know the answer to the question, you have to ask the question) revealed that they are going to erect a monument to the Heroes of the Resistance on this spot

We can’t have a trip around the Pointe du Roc without going to see what is going on in the chantier navale

We have the two usual boats that have been there for a while, and on the right is the old trawler that has been on blocks over on the far side of the yard for as long as I can remember.

But on the left we have what looks like a different trawler that has come in for some kind of repair or renovation.

In between dodging the aerial attacks earlier, I’d been looking out to sea to see if there were any boats on their way in.

I’d noticed something in the distance and snapped it once or twice, but sure enough, it eventually chugged round the Pointe du Roc and into the Baie de Mont St michel.

And then I was finally able to work out what it was. We have a fishing boat and it seems to be towing a smaller boat behind it.

Back here, I had another outstanding task that needed dealing with.

The memory stick that I take with me when I travel is a mass of confusion because I’ve been very lax in bringing the files up to date.

So what I did was uploaded them all to this computer and wiped the memory stick clean for future use. Then, with all of the files now on the computer, I eliminated all of the duplicates.

Next wtep was to allocate files to folders where I could.

Finally, I had a mass of files, some with two, three or even four copies which are all different. My next task is to do a compare and merge so that there is only one file for each, but with everything on it.

Tea was another slice of shepherd’s pie with gravy and veg, followed by fruit salad and soya cream.

Time then for my evening walk of course.

My trip took me by the house on the corner of the rue du Nord – the one that is currently under major renovation. They’ve now laid some grillage on top of the insulation that they put down yesterday, so it looks as if the concrete won’t be far behind.

I’ll be intrigued to see how it all comes out.

It was a thoroughly beautiful evening out there tonight, and the colours in the evening sunshine were marvellous.

Just the type of evening that is ideal for photography so I spent some time out there taking a pile of pics of the scenery.

This one of the cliffs above the Plat Gousset, with the Museum Christian Dior on the top, has come out particularly well.

talking of things coming out particularly well, on my way back home via the rue Notre Dame, I was greeted by Minette, the old black cat.

She came over for a good stroke, and she expressed a considerable amount of interest in the camera.

Clearly she was looking for her little moment of fame, and what could I do apart from obliging her? She really is a nice cat, although she would benefit from a good grooming.

So back here now, and I really am going to try for an early night. I was disappointed about yesterday so I want to catch up, and of course I have shopping tomorrow.

I need a pile of stuff too so I need to be on form.

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Thursday 2nd May 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… pretty quiet day today.

What probably helped was the fact that I was actually in bed before 22:00 and asleep pretty quickly. And with just one or two tossings and turnings during the night I was wide awake and raring to go (after a fashion) at 05:30.

Not much chance of that happening though. But nevertheless I beat the third alarm, and by a good distance too.

Plenty of time to go on a nocturnal ramble too. I was back working for would you believe the Conference Board and Barbara the boss was there. I’d been filing papers, doing the usual Clerical Assistant work and she came to see me. We had quite a lengthy chat and she asked if there was anything else that maybe I ought to be telling her. I couldn’t think of anything at all – I thought that work was going reasonably well and I was coping reasonably well and this was how things kept on for a while but she kept on trying to push me into coming out with some admission that I was struggling. “Well, if you have anything else to say, don’t forget to say it out loud and I know that you might be pushing the envelope here – we all try to do that at times but there’s really no need to” and she was coming out with all these comments and I was trying to work out what it was that she was trying to get me to say because to me everything was going reasonably well. The subject drifted round to Ged, one of our employees. I mentioned something and she said “you know Ged left a few months ago” and I didn’t know at all. “I made him breakfast the other morning” she said “yes, he came in and told me that you have made him a couple of slices of toast for his breakfasr” I was surprised that he left and she replied “you know that Olivier left, and you wouldn’t have expected Ged to remain after he had gone”. He had told her about the toast and a memo or something like that. He’d only come here twice to say hello to people and I must have misunderstood a memo that I had seen talking about his employment and that he was still here. But she was pushing me to make some kind of admission tha I wasn’t coping with the work and I couldn’t think what the hell it was that she wanted me to admit to.

After breakfast I had a shower and then wandered off to the shops.

There was a brief stop at the building site in the boulevard des 2eme et 202eme de Ligne where they are repairing the medieval city walls. They are going quite a good job here, and getting on quite quickly.

There was also a lorry there loading up a skip full of rock that they had removed from the foot of the walls, so I took a photo of it loading up.

And further on down the hill, I had a quick look over the wall into the harbour to see what was going on down there

I noticed that Thora was still there tied up to her little quayside. I was expecting that with the rather rapid turn-rounds of recent dates she would have been gone by now, but The turn-rounds can’t be all THAT quick.

And in parentheses she was still there when I came back too.

Carrying on along the rue couraye and up into the Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc past the railway station, I noticed that they are digging up the pavement over there too.

We saw them the other day in the rue des Juifs digging up the pavement, and subsequent enquiry revealed that it was the Fibre-Optic cable-laying team.

And so I’ve no reason to suppose that it’s anyone else except the fibre-optic team digging up the work that they had done here a few months ago as well.

LIDL was something of a disappointment. It was swamped out with people and I don’t know why because there was nothing of any importance on offer. And not only that, they didn’t have my preferred bread and I had to make do with a different one.

Back here, I dealt with the photos for the last day and a half and added them to the blog entries. I’d gone to bed early last night before I had time to do it, remember.

That took me up to lunch which was once again indoors because although it was quite sunny outside, there was a terrific wind.

After lunch I got onto the Belgian Pension people. They promised me a form to fill in, but it never arrived. I need them to send me another one.

After that I unfortunately crashed out for half an hour or so, sitting on my chair.

Once I’d come back to my senses (such as they are) I went out for my afternoon walk.

No hang-gliders today, and no-one working on the bunkers either. But as the guy yesterday told me about the 105mm gun that was in the bunker, I went off to track down the barrel which I was told was still somewhere on the site.

And this looks pretty much like it to me.

The breech was also said to be here, and so I went to look for that too.

And this is what I reckon might be the breech of the gun. This is the bit that would mount on the deck of the submarine and the barrel would slot into it.

You can read more about the 105mm gun here.

There were crowds of people out there today despite the wind. And someone offered me his wife, but I demurred. I said that I had had one once before.

Although the tide was on its way in, the harbour gates were closed.

They mustn’t have been far off opening though because there was another queue of fishing boats and trawlers queueing up outside, waiting for them to open.

But I didn’t wait for them, I went back home, pausing on the way to admire Thora still moored in the harbour.

And back here, I did another bunch of blog entries. And I’ve done these before, but I can’t find where the notes might be. It would save me a lot of work if I knew where it was.

This was interrupted my a message from the Préfecture. They wanted sight of my bank statements so I downloaded them and sent them off. And then they couldn’t read *.xls format so I had to reformat them as *.html files.

Tea was a burger on a bap with potato and veg, followed by fruit salad and soya cream, and this new mustard is wicked!

Having done the washing up, I went for my walk around the walls.

First stop was at the house renovation in the rue du Nord to see if the concrete had come. But instead, they are laying insulation on the floor of the garage.

I’m not quite sure as to why they would want to do that. The insulation would be better-employed under the floor of the living accommodation above. There isn’t likely to be any heat in the garage, so it’s not likely to escape. It’ll stop the heat of the ground coming up into the garage.

It was a beautiful sunny evening too and the sun was reflecting off the towns along the coast.

I took a few photos tonight, one of the Brittany coast and cropped this section out of that one because it had come out so well.

Those buildings over there, in what I think is the town of Vivier-sur-Mer are 16 miles away would you believe.

Back here now and I’m going to to bed. I’ll try for another early night and see if I feel any better tomorrow. I need to keep it up.

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Tuesday 30th April 2019 – I’VE NOT HAD …

… a very profitable day today as far as my backlog of work goes. But there have been a few very good reasons for this.

Not the least of which being that I had yet another bad night. Tossing and turning for too much of it without actually departing hence.

At one point I must have been away with the fairies because I was off on my travels again. There was an exam taking place last night and I was doing part of the English syllabus. I was there in the exam room struggling my way through the first of three questions that I needed to answer when I suddenly found out that I had been named as a volunteer to take place in some kind of exam. They had needed someone to act as a “prop” to lie down while they danced a Highland Fling over and around, rather like a Highland sword dance. I was grabbed for this and taken out of my own exam before I’d even finished the first question. I was made to lie down and was dragged all the way across the floor and these ice floes until I was in the correct position. By now I was miles away from where my exam was taking place. All of these people turned up in a whole collection of old cars, motor bikes, pedal cycles. Even a unicycle that didn’t have a rider, an autonomous one. They all seemed to be symbolic of death. An old vehicle pulled up with a coffin in it and I had to lie there while they did this dance around me. I didn’t have a clue what was happening. Everyone was going on about their exams but I replied that they could consider themselves lucky. I hadn’t finished my first question yet, I only had three hours and I’d been dragged away over here and I don’t know when I’m going to end up back. All these kids started to join in. At one time a kid was trying to do a handstand balancing on two shovels. He could get himself off the ground like this but then he fell over and all the while I was panicking about my exam with all these old cars and people all around me trying to get me to be the prop for this Highland dance thing.

Nevertheless, just for another change I was up and about before the third alarm went off, but with some not inconsiderable effort too;

The usual morning performance was followed by a shower. I need to get myself clean and tidy because I’m having visitors. That also meant a really good clean-up around the apartment too to make it look more respectable.

Liz turned up bang on time so we had a coffee, biscuits and a good chat for an hour and a half until she had to go off for her appointment. I made a start on the dictaphone notes.

But I didn’t get very far. I had two interruptions, one half an hour after the other.

The second one, the most important one, I’ll tell you about in a day or so’s time when I’m ready. Instead I’ll tell you about the first.

In a few months time I’m hoping to go a-voyaging again and I shall be having my hands full as usual. Changing the lenses over with one hand free with the Nikon 1 is quite possible with practice, but with a full-size camera it’s impossible.

And so idly surfing the internet like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … a week or so ago I found one of these.

It’s second-hand, so I paid nothing whatever like the full retail price on here, but it’s only meant to be for use when I’m travelling on foot or on the train, not in Caliburn.

It means that I only need to lug around this one and the 50mm f1.8 lens for indoor shots, rather than all of the equipment.

The trouble with a lens like this is that with it trying to be everything, it ends up being nothing so I’m not expecting the quality to be as good as a pure focal-length lens, but it won’t have all that much use.

But anyway, you can judge for yourselves with the photos below.

Lunch was taken indoors again as there was a high wind and then I sat down to finish off the dictaphone notes.

Just as I did the last one of today’s batch, I crashed out. i’d already been away once or twice during the morning but this was more serious. I ended up in bed for 40 minutes, feeling like death.

Still feeling not much like it, I fitted the new lens onto the Nikon and went off on the prowl.

First thing that I noticed was a nice yacht in the distance. I reckoned that this might give me a good opportunity to try out the lens to see what it’s like.

And it’s not as bad as I was expecting.

We had a trawler right out to sea too heading back towards the Fish-Processing plant here in Granville.

It was unfortunately into the sun, but it was still worth an attempt. And it didn’t come out too badly either, although I had to manipulate the image somewhat to make it different.

Tomorrow, I’ll go out with the polarising filter and have a play with that and see what difference it might take. It might cut down some of the reflected sunlight off the surface of the water.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been saying for a while that these long gaps between seeing Normandy Trader and Thora in here must be down to the fact that the turn-rounds are so quick that I have been missing them.

And this is a case in point.

Just as I rounded the headland, I noticed Normandy Trader slipping silently out of the harbour.

She wasn’t there last night so she must have slipped in on the early morning tide, unloaded while the tide was out, and gone out again at the first available opportunity.

And I know what she does to earn her living too.

Her trips from Jersey to here are generally chartered by a co-operative of shell-fishermen who engage her to bring their catch over to Granville.

In an effort to catch Normandy trader heading off into the sunset, I wandered back over to the other side of the headland.

However I was rather disrupted by the noise coming from out of the bay over near St Martin de Brehal.

We have one of the Ile de Chausey ferries doing a trip around the bay. And whoever is giving the running commentary has no need of a loud-hailer or a tannoy.

It was quite a long wait for Normandy Trader to put in an appearance so I had to wait for a while.

But she turned up sooner or later and I wa sable to take a really good photo of her, with the Ile de Chausey nicely silhouetted in the background;

I really am going to gave to try the polarising filter and see if that gives me any better effects.

Back here, I dealt with the photos and then amended a few blog entries. I’m now back as far as Thursday 18th April.

That took me up to tea-time which was the rest of the falafel with steamed vegetables and cheese sauce, followed by rice pudding.

Later on I went outside for my usual evening walk.

My route took me past the house that is being renovated on the corner of the rue du Nord where I could inspect the progress that they have been making.

I noticed that the driveway for the house has been gravelled and levelled out, just as if they are about to drop a load of concrete onto it. It should be quite interesting to see it in a couple of weeks time

Further on along my walk I heard a noise coming up from the beach.

Having a look down over the wall, I noticed that there was a little party going on on the beach by the Plat Gousset.

It wasn’t that warm as far as I was concerned but I don’t suppose it matters if you are pretty well fuelled up. It’s all good fun if you are in good company.

So I’m off to bed. I have lots to do tomorrow and I have – surprise surprise – an appointment at 15:00 tomorrow. There’s a cunning plan rearing its head.

trawler fishing boat english channel granville manche normandy france

trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france

tourist boat st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

trawler english channel jersey channel island granville manche normandy france

st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

normandy trader ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Monday 29th April 2019 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL …

… sunset tonight. And when I deal with the photos from tonight (probably tomorrow if I am lucky) you will see exactly what I mean.

No chance of doing it tonight though, because the highlights of all the 5 games that I haven’t seen in this weekend’s Welsh Premier League have come on line even as we speak, and I shall be in for a footfest later.

Last night was another miserable night. I just don’t seem to be able to have a decent sleep these days.

But nothing is going to stop me going off on a nocturnal ramble or two during the night. With having chatted to Rosemary at length last night about my house in the Auvergne, it’s hardly surprising that it was on my mind. I was doing something with someone else back there last night I think and we were having to move a load of stuff. There were all mice in these sacks. We were dropping them and stamping on them to kill all the mice but I dropped a sack carelessly and expected it to give all of the mice a headache and stun them but it did nothing of the sort and the package broke and some started to escape and became tangled up in some brambles and I couldn’t see where they had gone to.
And later on I was back later on climbing up to my farm to do this furniture removal. My father turned up with a Luton-bodied J4 van. He drove it up the garden (something like at 30 Wardle Avenue) between the house and the shed and down onto the back lawn where it was in danger of bogging in. I would have just backed it up to the front door. I started to arrange things, putting everything into boxes. Gary hadn’t turned up so I asked TOTGA where he was but she didn’t know. It became clear that he had forgotten the date and thought it was Tuesday, which was the day that I had thought too but it was TOTGA who insisted that it was the Monday. I opened the door under the stage where there were piles of boxes and I gave instructions to my brother how to load them – the heaviest ones low down at the front. He took these out while we were getting everything else sorted out of the house. A little later on I climbed back up to the house and there were hordes of people fishing down below in the river. There were some climbing up the cliffs to get to the top and I didn’t want them to do this because it was my safety barrier. I had to climb up there too but I lost the path because I couldn’t remember where it was. I could see where was the access to climb up to my property but I couldn’t work out how I was going to get there. When I finally arrived at the top of this ascent I couldn’t climb it. It looked dangerous to me and I was going to fall down. It made me wonder how I had managed to climb up here in the past with it all being so difficult. I’d only have to carry the slightest thing with me and I would fall all the way down to the bottom. This can’t possibly be right.
A little later I was playing “air guitar” in a rock group with Alvin and someone else – can’t remember who. We were singing along to a track – Motorway City or Damnation Alley – and giving it all we’d got considering it was an air guitar type of thing. I was singing the lyrics, and Dave Brock was singing the real track that we were accompanying but our version of the lyrics were different. The third person with us, he smiled at me as I was belting it out and a discussion came round afterwards about the lyrics. I reckoned that we had them correctly according to the original version but in the heat of the moment in a live concert (it was a live concert that we were accompanying) Dave Brock forgets the words and makes them up as he goes along to fill the gap.

This morning despite the bad night I managed to beat the third alarm out of bed and I even had an early breakfast. But I rather flagged after than and it took me all morning to catch up with the dictaphone notes from the last couple of days and to do another half a dozen more from the backlog.

Only another 225 to do and that’s probably going to take me until next Christmas, even though I’ve set myself a timetable of the end of June to complete the task.

That took me up to lunchtime, which was once more taken indoors due to the weather.

This afternoon I started off as I meant to go on, by crashing out. On the chair though not in bed, although I don’t suppose that it would have made much difference.

But one thing that I did was to speak to some people ina hospital in Toronto. One of my friends sent me a link to Canada’s biggest cancer hospital so I went to have a word with them. And much to my surprise, they replied too.

I can’t say that it’s particularly positive but at least I am in dialogue with them. Who knows what might happen next?

That took me up to walk time.

There weren’t too many people walking around this afternoon, but the sea was pretty crowded. There were hordes of boats and yachts and trawlers out there working this afternoon, especially this one.

She must have only just hauled in her net, judging by the huge flock of seagulls flapping around it waiting for the discards.

Back here I started on updating the blog with some missing photos. I’ve now gone back to Sunday 21st April. This is taking me longer than I was expecting too.

For tea I made a huge aubergine and kidney bean whatsit. I sampled some of it too and it was delicious. It was followed down by another load of rice pudding.

I also attacked the carrots that I bought the other day and they are now par-boiled and frozen.

Back outside again for my evening walk tonight.

We had the gorgeous sunset of course, and so nice was it that there were quite a few people out there watching it too.

So now I’m back home, and I’m off to watch the football. About time I had a decent relax.

fishing with rod and line zodiac baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

boats and yachts baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

small bay cap de lihou granville manche normandy france

pecheur de lys fishing boat trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

aubergine kidney bean granville manche normandy france

sunset ile de chausey baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Monday 8th April 2019 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… yet more money today.

And something that I vowed a good while ago that I would never ever do as long as there was a breath left in my body – well, i’m going to be doing it.

Not without a great deal of regret, it has to be said, but there is no other way to complete a certain task if I want this certain task to be completed. And as it’s one of the things that’s on my bucket list and has been for a considerable number of years, then I shall just have to shut up and get on with it.

“And what is this disagreeable task?” I hear you ask. Well, one other person knows, and the rest of you will know in due course. But the die is cast now.

But at least it’s given me an opportunity to set up an on-line banking service with the Fortis Bank, thanks to a very helpful girl in Belgium. And once I’d done that, the world is my oyster.

All of my bank accounts now have on-line access, and once I can work my way through the labyrinth of portals, the rest is pretty easy.

Last night, with having had a coffee at the football, i was still going on at long past midnight this morning. And when I finally went to bed, I didn’t really need to. And it took me an age to go off to sleep.

There wasn’t much time to go on a voyage. But nevertheless last night I was on board ship again. There were about 100 or so kids being formed up into four lines on a stage by a teacher. And although this took place two years ago (don’t ask me why or how I know) it was so outrageously camp how they were doing it that it would never be tolerated today. They were pushing each other apart to be at arms length like raw recruits might do on one of their earliest parades. Everyone broke for lunch and lined up for the self-service food. There were two queues, each heading towards a central point and somehow I had managed to find myself in the position where these two queues met, so I couldn’t go either way to collect any food. Definitely “stuck in the middle”.

The alarms went off as usual but unfortunately I didn’t. 07:25 was when I finally hauled myself out of the stinking pit.

But once I’d gone through the usual morning procedures, I’ve had a very busy day. And that included some tidying up, filing and sorting out the wardrobe a bit better.

But as far as productive work goes, I had a really good attack at the dictaphone notes. That was the first task and it took me long enough. But I’m down to a mere 305 audio files. So some time within the next 25 years I might finish.

A brief pause to look for something – which ended up as a massive reorganisation of the wardrobe, and then I attacked yesterday’s blog to finish it off and to add the photos.

Once i’d done what needed doing, I carried on with the photos for July 2018. They are all finished now apart from the ones that I did around the Somme battlefield, and that’s my next task – to start on the web pages for that trip.

That shall keep me out of mischief for a good while.

After lunch I got on to the bank to organise a few things, as I mentioned, and then attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland’s on-line banking accounts. I’ve had some new cards from them, but the PINs need changing. Unfortunately I can’t do that with my on-line card reader, which was why I wanted the card reader in the first place.

Seeing as I had come to a natural stop, I went out formy afternoon walk.

And seeing that there was someone down there working on the large boat down there, I went for a chat.

Unfortunately he wasn’t the garrulous type at all. After grudgingly telling me that “she’s a boat from Brittany” he walked away and carried on painting it. I was hoping for rather more from him than that.

Instead, I went to have a look at the Cale sèche, or dry dock.

It has a name apparently – the Cale de Raboud. Built, like most things around here, out of blocks of granite from the Ile de Chausey, it dates from the 1880s at the time that the port was in its heyday.

But like the port, its use declined after World War II with the building of larger ships and the collapse of the deep-sea fisheries finished it off.

There is talk of restoring it, and maybe putting an old Terreneuvier in there as an exhibit, but that’s all a long way from happening, if it ever does.

The guy driving the fork-lift truck around the yard was slightly more garrulous.

He told me that the ancient fishing boat – the Pecheur de Lys – is destined to go back into the water. “But not today” he told me. Apparently, it’s going to take about a month to fit it out correctly so that it doesn’t sink.

On that note I came back and cracked on with the photos from the High Arctic. And I managed to classify another 150 or so of those today. Another week like that and this will be ready, so I can then start on adding them to the blog and doing some more web pages.

As you can see, there’s plenty of work around here that needs doing.

Tea tonight was shepherd’s pie and veg, followed by more strawberries and soya cream stuff. But no walk this evening. I wondered why it had suddenly gone cold again this afternoon. That’s because it’s teeming down outside.

That was just as well, because I seem to be submerged by paperwork yet again. I’ve had a shed-load of stuff sent to me this evening and it all needs attention.

A good night’s sleep is called for, if that’s possible.

Thursday 4th April 2019 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

… when I told you that winter had returned to Normandy?

Well, it’s here and with a vengeance too. The storm is blowing up right across the bay and churning up the sea something wicked.

This little trawler, with its lifeboat in tow, is making heavy weather of leaving port this morning and struggling out into the wind.

By the time the evening came round, the wind had dropped slightly.

Ever so slightly, and as it was high tide when I went out for my evening walk, the waves were crashing down over the top of the Plat Gousset in an impressive fury.

All in all, it’s been quite a spectacle today with the weather the way that it has been.

Despite a night that was rather later than I wanted, I had a decent sleep up until about 05:30 when I awoke. There was a little bit of awakening during the night but nothing much to worry about.

There had been plenty of time to go on a little voyage or two though. I was at a meal last night and sitting at the table were a couple of people whom I know – Zero being one of them. She at one time was a regular feature in my nocturnal rambles and who seems to be making something of a comeback just now). She was saying to the man who was with her – probably her father – that if only she had said something different to … (a former school-friend of mine) … he might be alive today. My ears pricked up at this news. “Is … (so-and-so) dead then?” “Ohh yes” said the reply. “Died last night”. There was another friend of ours working in the same place so I dashed down to tell him the news. He wasn’t there so I left a note on his desk. But on reflection I reckoned that the note wasn’t very clear and should have been written in a different way to clarify it.)

A little later I was caught in something of a no-man’s-land between here and the Auvergne. I had a piece of land down there and there was a wooden chalet-type thing there but it was just a shell, no inner lining and no inner dividing walls. I’d had it up for sale and people had been looking at it. A princess had liked one version of it and someone else liked another version of it, and all in all I was becoming confused about what I was going to do. The land down there was full of stuff including a Honda 500cc twin motorbike – a really nice parallel twin from the 1980s, a few cars and a couple of those were nice too, and an alsatian dog that stayed down there and guarded the place when I was away for months on end. I went back there with a former friend from Stoke on Trent. He was saying how he liked one particular style in which the chalet could be arranged. He started to pick up the wardrobes, even those full of clothes, and carry them about to put them in other places. I was wondering about all of the work that needed doing to organise everything so that I could sell it on but it’s not even worth thinking about. He had a drive around the field on this Honda and said how he thought that it was beautiful. He asked what I was going to do with it, and I replied that I was going to take it to Brussels. Getting it into the van won’t be a problem but getting it out at the other end might be because I’m on my own there. He’d let this dog loose. It was sniffing around everything. There was a Ford Anglia estate and the tailgate was open. We were having a look inside it and this dog came and jumped inside. I was saying “get the dog out. It has no business being in there”. I was worried that it was going to disgrace itself and ruin the interior.

And for a change, I was up quite early too and I’d quickly dealt with the morning procedures. I’d even managed a shower too.

It’s shopping day today but before I went out I transcribed a few notes from the dictaphone.

Terry turned up to say hello too. One of my neighbours wanted some DiY work doing and he’d been signed up to do it.

Once I had Terry settled in, I headed out to the shops, braving the howling wind. But again, I didn’t get very far at all.

I’ve mentioned before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that large, heavy vehicles are not allowed into the interior of the city walls. They have to park up outside and the goods trans-shipped to a smaller vehicle.

We’ve seen that happen a few times already, and there was another occurrence this morning.

The fish dock by the Fish Processing plant was busy too.

They must have just opened the harbour gates because there are three trawlers down there unloading their catch, and a whole fleet of vans and lorries waiting to take away the produce.

It must have been a really impressive sight down there 40 or 50 years ago when the cod-fishing on the Grand Banks was at its height.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every so often we are treated to the presence of a rather large crane on the quayside.

The last one was in April last year, and here sure enough almost exactly a year later, there’s another one here today.

From up here, I couldn’t see what it was doing down there, and in view of the weather I didn’t fancy the idea of going down there to make further enquiries. I’ll save that for a better day.

That’s not all of the excitement down in the harbour either.

We now have a huge load of gravel accumulating on the quayside, and a digger moving it around so that it’s by the conveyors.

That can only mean one thing, and that is that Neptune or one of her sisters will be here in early course. She’s actually in London right now, but Shetland Trader is at large in the English Channel a mere cockstride from here.

From here I strolled up through the town on the way to the railway station. There, I collected my tickets for my next trip to Leuven. I like to have them in my possession well in advance because the ticket machines aren’t always reliable and the ticket office is closed when I arrive for my train.

Next stop was at LIDL for the midweek shopping. Apart from the usual stuff and a packet of brazil nuts, I bought one of these shower hanger trays. I’m fed up of my soap and shampoo floating around all over the place and I’ve been looking for one of these.

Today, LIDL was having a bathroom equipment sale and these shower hanger trays were one of the articles on offer.

On my way back home I went down via the rue Saint Paul into the rue Sainte Genevieve to check up on the new house-building.

As I suspected the other day, they are now rendering it with crépi.

And it’s quite interesting to see how they do it. They have a mixing machine that makes it come out like a rather wet clay and the spray it onto the breeze blocks and then smooth it over with some large floats.

Back here, I made myself a nice hot chocolate and then set down to work.

All of the blog entries as far back as 12th July 2018 are now up-to-date. But I’ve run aground temporarily because I’m back to when I was prowling around the Somme front line.

The searchable text database is done back to there too and, as it happens, so are the dictaphone notes for that period.

So one of the projects on hand is to tie them all together and make up a couple of web pages about the whole voyage. But when I’ll do that I really don’t know right now.

Terry came round for lunch and a chat, and after he had left I had another session indexing the photos from my trip to the High Arctic. I’ve probably done another 100 or so and I shall be glad when they are all done and dusted, because then I can add them to the blog entries for those dates.

That’s a task that is long-overdue.

While all that was going on, there was a terrific rainstorm going on outside, but by the time that I was due to go for my walk it had stopped.

Once outside, I didn’t bother to loiter in the wind.

A brisk walk around the headland and a quick look at the chantier navale. They weren’t spraying today, which is hardly a surprise given the wind.

But I did notice that there seems to be a layer of colour in a stripe low down on the hull, so it looks as if they are getting close to putting on the final coat.

Back here, I whacked another pile of notes off the dictaphone list, in the middle of which I was roused by Terry telephoning me to say that he’d been banging on my door for 10 minutes. I must have … errr … had a litle relax.

We had a chat and after he had gone home (and I had forgotten to give him some stuff for Liz) I carried on with the dictaphone.

So engrossed was I with what I was doing that I was late for tea. So i did a quick plate of mixed veg and pasta tossed in powdered garlic and olice oil followed by pineapple and coconut soya cream.

After the washing-up, I headed out for my evening walk.

The wind had dropped slightly so I could actually walk, but there’s an incredible amount of force in the sea, as I have said before.

It’s all stored up in some incredible reserve of force and with a 3,000-odd mile uninterrupted journey across the Atlantic, the force can remain in the mass of the sea for quite a considerable time.

By the time that I made it round to the view overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was not far off high tide.

I could see that the waves were crashing over the sea wall with an incredible amount of violence. I stood there and watched it for quite a while.

It’s really quite a spectacle when it’s going full steam ahead, as you can ses.

After a while, I headed back home, giving a little kitten a stroke on the way

With being a little late this evening, it’s rather last now so i won’t be having my early night tonight. But I’ll do the best that I can.

But I’ve had two lots of news today. And both concern little projects that I’ve had on the go for a while. Things have no accelerated and one of them is now complete and the other one, I’m now locked into.

And so there’s no turning back now, and I have an awful lot of work to do before I’m very much older. I wish I had been more selective and brought more books back from the Auvergne.

I need a good sleep tonight.

crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

“night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

There’s been a strange object anchored out to sea all day, about 12 miles or so offshore, just outside French territorial waters.

I had taken a photograph of it earlier today, and as it was still there tonight I took another one of it.

Back here this evening, I cropped the photographs, digitally enhanced them and, because I can do this without any regard to modern anti-terrorist legislation, I blew them up.

And now that I have done all of that, I can see what it is.

And much to my surprise, it turns out to be, as far as I can see, some kind of small naval vessel like a fisheries patrol boat.

It’s been in the Press over the past few days about how the fishermen from here are dissatisfied about the post-Brexit fishing arrangements. And when French fishermen are “dissatisfied, we all know what that will mean.

So I’m wondering if it’s a British naval vessel keeping an eye on things from outside the territorial waters.

But whatever it is, it’s not emitting a positioning signal on my AIS receiver, so it can’t be anything civilian.

last night, for once I had a really good sleep. I only awoke once during the night, and then only for a minute or two.

So there was plenty of time to go off on a little ramble or two. I was on the ship going to Iceland. We were told that we could listen to the radio. There was a programme about an island off the coast of Iceland that had been devastated by plague and everyone had been wiped out, broadcast in 10 minutes time. Meanwhile a new island had been located near Iceland so everyone dashed to the window to have a look. We were on a plane and it came past the island and Iceland and another load of islands in a geographical east-west line. At the end it did a U-turn to come into land. By this time it was the ship and scraped along the frozen river thing that led to the sea. There was a news broadcast about our ship and how we were getting to it, how at the moment it was full of loads of schoolkids from Stoke on Trent who had booked it for a week and gone on a voyage (familiar, anyone?).
later on I was with my father. We were repairing a car and had the cylinder head off it. We put the head back on and had the car started and we could move it but it wasn’t right. So we had to take off the cylinder head again. We could undo four of the bolts but the fifth was very problematical. It needed a very thin spanner and we couldn’t find it. We sent a girl to the garage to look for the spanner but she came back with a pile of assorted bits, but no spanner. In the end I went in and I couldn’t find the correct spanner either. I had a feeling that I was looking in completely the wrong place in the workshop – I couldn’t see any spanners. In the end I did come across the tool box but couldn’t see the spanner in there so I came back out. I thought “hang on a minute”. I could unscrew part of the nut by hand and it came off but it left the stud in there. It looked to me as if the head would lift out over the stud as there was just a securing collar that held it in place. By this time my father had gone off so I didn’t know where we were going to go with this. We were in Stoke on Trent and where this car had ground to a halt was outside some minicab depot and a West Indian guy clearly associated with this group of Pakistanis came out and asked me to move because it was making a mess outside his office. I said “yes, just give me two minutes”. But some time earlier I’d been away and I’d come back to Expo with the car I had as a chauffeur in those days. I’d taken my suit off and there were all kinds of things in it – money, papers, folders, wallets, all kinds. Someone asked me for my phone number. They’d given me a piece of paper telling me all about their organisation and would I publish it, then he came over to ask me for my phone number. I couldn’t remember any of my phone numbers at all – the Belgium mobile, the French mobile and landline so I had to go finding ways to recall them. I had my mobile phone and I thought my number will be in there but I couldn’t remember how to access it. I went into my bedroom and found my other suit and that had my wallet in it with all of my papers and money. I thought “have I been away for a few days without my wallet?”. The bedroom window was wide open but it was warm in there even though it was winter. In a flash I suddenly remembered my French mobile number, but now I couldn’t find the guy.

It was another day where I managed to be up and out of bed just after the alarms went off. And even more surprisingly I managed to go all day without crashing out, although I did flag a little later in the morning.

It’s not been such a productive day today though. I started off by finishing the blogs for August. They are up-to-date now.

I followed that up by attacking the photo database for July. I’ve done about 100 or so of those, and while I was at it I amended a couple of entries for that month, seeing as I needed to look at the coding for those days.

There was a little diversion later on in the morning. I forgot to say yesterday that I found a computer program that allows me to edit certain 3D items by adding morphs to them. I had a play around with that yesterday and I had another go at it today.

It’s really quite interesting because it means that I can do things like make clothing from one character fit another by adding morphs and then adjusting them.

Lunch was in here again because it’s still cold and windy outside. And then I carried on with the photos for a while.

Later on, I went for my afternoon walk. Around the walls today.

My trek took me past the house that they are renovating on the corner of the rue du Nord.

The other day I noticed that they had removed the windows from the first floor and knocked out some of the wall underneath. Today, they seem to have fitted new full-length windows that might possible open.

My thought that we might be having a terrace out here could well be true.

The tide must be on its way in right now and the harbour gates must be open.

There’s an endless stream of fishing boats coming out of the harbour now and heading off into the open sea.

On their way to attack the fishing grounds, I shouldn’t wonder, surveyed without a doubt by the naval vessel standing to just outside the 12-mile limit.

They weren’t the only things heading out to do a bit of fishing either.

Down there among the rocks as the tide is sliding out is one of our old men doing a bit of the pêche à pied.

It’s quite usually a popular pastime at this time of the year but as far as I could tell, he was the only person down there today.

Meanwhile, we were having a really good day as far as visibility goes.

We could see way out on the horizon, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Jersey looking as clear as this.

Unfortunately, I must have missed the area of Jersey where St Helier is, because that’s not come out at all.

While the view was so good, I went right up to the highest point of the walls because I had seen something else out to sea.

I wanted to take a photo of it, digitally enhance it and blow it up so that I could see what it is.

It’s actually a trawler out there in the foreground, and in the background we have our old friend the lighthouse out at the mouth of the River Sienne near Agon-Coutainville.

Back at the flat, I attacked the dictaphone notes. And while I may not have done all that many today, some of them were quite hefty. I reckon that as far as minutes goes, I’ve done more today than any other.

Some of the stuff involved doing some basic research while I was at it, and that took some time.

Tea was a curry that I found in the freezer – potato and lentil, I think, with rice and veg. Followed by the last of the apple crumble.

And then I hit the streets for the evening walk.

A beautiful evening even if it was cold and windy. But the view was very interesting.

And there were still more trawlers heading out to sea and the surveillance of the naval vessel that was out there. There are clearly some strange things going on right now.

But the view tonight was even better than this afternoon.

Despite the dozens of photos that I have taken in the past of Cancale across the bay in Brittany, I can say that I have never ever seen it as clearly as I have done today.

You wouldn’t think that that’s 18 miles away, would you?

Finally around to the chantier navale to see what’s going on down there.

We have the large boat undergoing a respray, and I’m wondering when it’s going to be finished. To its right is another passenger vessel of some kind that’s come in for work.

But the other boat down there is some kind of elderly fishing boat. That’s been outside the workshop of the chantier navale for so long that I thought that it might have been a stationary exhibit.

So I’m wondering what their plan is now for it.

Back here, I’m going off to bed. Not quite as early as the last couple of evenings, but early enough all the same. Shopping tomorrow so I need to be on form.

st malo brittany coast granville manche normandy france

fishing boats granville manche normandy france

donville les bains granville manche normandy france

mussels beds airfield donville les bains granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 – WINTER IS …

… back again.

When I awoke this morning, it was raining. In fact it rained for most of the early part of the day and was still going at lunchtime. And so I ate my butties indoors.

This afternoon it stopped and the sun came out for a while. But this evening there is a dreadful gale howling around outside and it’s freezing cold. In fact, I only made a few hundred metres of my evening walk before I changed my mind and came back indoors.

This morning, much to my surprise, I was up and about by 06:20. And it’s been a long time since that’s happened too.

There was plenty of time to go on my travels too. Last night I was in New York with a group of people and we came across a taxi driver – a little middle-aged type of typical Brooklyner. We were talking about him and his business and his car. I crawled underneath his car to have a look. It was in reasonable condition with oil splattered around all underneath but the paint was coming off the underneath and the surface was rusty. I got him to come down and have a look underneath it, and I explained to him that if he were to to the underneath of this and touch up the bodywork there was no reason why this car couldn’t go on for ever. I was showing off a little I have to admit. He was looking at a kind of dirt guard that went underneath the car. One of the nuts had come off the studs so that’s why the car was making a noise from underneath, he said, with the dirt guard loose in once corner. We were chatting about another taxi driver friend of mine who worked from 18:00 Friday to 03:00 Saturday, from 12:00 Saturday to 03:00 Sunday and from 12:00 Sunday to 03:00 Monday. He made enough out of that to live off for the whole of the rest of the week. This guy was going “wow”. I then had to sit down and do his accounts but I had no idea what to do. I’d found an explanatory booklet so I’d sit down with this guy and work out some accounts. There was a girl there – it might even have been Nerina – who said that she needed her accounts doing too. I replied that once I had done this guy I would have more of an idea of how to do them. I could then sit down and do hers properly. But I seem to recall having been in this taxi with this guy going uphill and the car was coughing and spluttering a little. But going downhill again it picked up. He said that it was the spider that was always doing this when he goes uphill. What he was meaning were the plug leads, as I eventually worked out. Of course it would be a V8 under the bonnet

After breakfast I attacked the outstanding pile of work.

First problem was to untangle the mess in which my blog had ended up last night. I must have clicked inadvertantly on an “update now” link that must have popped up while I was working. My blog hung up for 20 minutes and when it finally reloaded, it had gone back to how it was when it uploaded to the previous version.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the fun and games that I had trying to configure it back then, and I was in no state to do it last night.

Last time, it took me a good few weeks to sort it out and it’s still not how I like it. This time I had to do it straight away and it took a good couple of hours before it was back to how it should be.

That was depressing.

I did a couple of test runs with a few blog entries, and it needed a further tweak or two.

Once I’d done that, I then had other work to do. A large amount of correspondence had built up so I spent much of the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon after lunch scanning a few documents, printing them out, and writing a few letters.

And then, of course, filing away the papers. I’m getting good at this now.

Once I’d done all of the letters and attachments, i went down into town.

In the harbour this afternoon was a boat that I didn’t recognise, and so fighting my way through a pack of schoolkids on a classe découverte, I went to see what it was.

It turns out that it’s Les Bouchots de Chausey, and we’ve seen her before in the harbour.

While I was there, I went to have a look at the big yacht that has been there for a few days in the berth usually occupied by Marité.

She is in fact displaying a nameboard to say that she’s La Granvillaise, and if that’s really the case, then all I can say is that they have done a really good job on her because I didn’t recognise her at all.

There were a few people loitering around her, and ordinarily I would have gone over to chat to them, but they seemed to be very busy working.

Leaving the port, I wandered over to the Post Office. A couple of my letters went straight into the letter box thanks to La Poste’s system of stamped envelopes. As for the rest, they needed to be weighed and stamped. Everything in there is now automatic, just as Alvin Tofler predicted in The Third Wave.

On the way back, I went to the Boulevard des 2eme et 202eme de ligne to inspect the chantier where they are repairing the wall that was closed off.

They are doing a good job with that and I’m reasonably impressed. But it brings back many happy memories when I spent a whole summer in 2012 doing that down on the farm.

So having admired the workings, I came back for a drink of hot chocolate.

i spent the next few hours doing a pile of dictaphone notes. That’s another lot gone into the great filing cabinet in the sky. I’ve reached the notes for my trip around the Somme battlefield now.

Tea was some taco wraps with stuffing, followed by apple crumble.

We had the half-walk this evening, but that’s enough. I came back in and did some more work. And now it’s time for an early night. I’ve had a long day and, much to my surprise, I managed not to crash out at all.

les bouchots de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 1st April 2019 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was something special.

Not because it was delicious, which it was as it happens, but that’s not the point. The fact that the main ingredients were prepared with my own fair hands.

We had a slice of the vegan pasty that I made the other day, with baked potatoes veg and gravy, followed by a slice of my home-made apple crumble with custard.

And I could go back and eat that all again. it was wonderful, even though I say it myself.

Last night, I was in bed early. And I slept the Sleep of the dead all the way through until the alarm, with a little awakening in the small hours.

Plenty of time to go on a voyage or two. And one or two rather surprising people, including one rather surprising debutante about whom I haven’t spent a moment’s thought since about 1979.

We were doing something involving sausages in a fast-food restaurant last night, trying to work out some sort of recipe. mash, beans and sausage for £1:00 was the aim, with each additional sausage £0:20. On our way back there was a big group of us, and the group was getting steadily bigger. It included Zero, she who used to accompany me quite regularly on my nocturnal voyages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and her father. As usual, she was at the back and I was at the front so I didn’t get to talk to her. I was with either Jackie or Alison, I can’t remember now. We came to this flight of steps and ran down it. But this was a very interesting experience because I actually took off and flew, hovering, soaring and flying down these steps. It was the most astonishing, liberating experience. I’d found these air currents and they were lifting me up with very little effort from myself and yet no-one really seemed to notice. That was what upset me more than anything else. Eventually I landed and walked with the others around the right-hand corner at the foot of the stairs. There was this polar bear there with a dog to keep it company. It growled at everyone who walked past. Bit it seemed to be more interested in me as if I was going to be its lunch and started to walk towards me. I turned round, made myself big and shouted “no” at it in a very firm voice. It stopped, so I started to walk away so it started to walk towards me, so I stopped, turned round etc etc. After about three or four goes at this, the bear finally stopped so I walked on back to my friends who had been at the front and we carried on walking.

A little later on I was doing a job that somehow involved doing things with chocolate and being a receptionist in an insurance company. I’d only been there a week and I met a young girl very similar to that Paulette who worked at Fine Fare in Winsford. We very quickly developed a relationship and began to live together. It was a very interesting, ephemeral relationship because she was a weird kind of girl just like she was, and yet she took a fancy to me. As you might expect, this flattered my ego very well. Our living together was all very cosy. I used to do little odd jobs for her around the house like I did for Cecile. One morning she got up early and I stayed in bed. I was trying to find the light switch because she’d installed a new light by the bed. She came to show me how to do it and we ended up on the bed for a while. She told me about a problem with the washing machine that needed fixing so I reckoned that I would go on and do that. I was wondering whether I should take this girl down to the Auvergne and let her meet my friends and show her where I was living but there was stuff all over the place and it wasn’t a very good advert. I’m not sure how it would all go down with her. I ended up at a garage that was selling cars at very cheap prices. There was a mini for sale at £250:00 and something else (might have been a Hillman Imp) for sale at £495 and a Triumph 1300. But there was a Morris 1000 that needed a lot of work doing to it – the roof had been cut off for a start – and a lot of the body was missing. But what caught my eye was that it was left-hand drive. That immediately appealed to me but some young girl got to it first and started to drive it. I told her that it was LHD to which she replied that it wasn’t a problem. I suddenly realised that I hadn’t been to work at my receptionist job for a week. Whatever was I thinking about? had I told them that I would be away? And if so, for how long? Was I supposed to be on leave? had I vacated my job? It all became extremely confusing.

It’s hardly surprising that after all of that I turned over and went back to sleep again. It wasn’t until … errr … much later that I awoke.

After the usual morning processes (including muesli for breakfast instead of porridge) I sat down and started to work.

First job was to bring up-to-date the blog and to add the photos for the last couple of days. And that wasn’t as quick a job as it ought to have been.

But while I was on a roll I spent the rest of the morning adding photos to some of the older blog entries. Now I’m back as far as 9th August 2018. So only about another 9 years to go. Will I have enough time left to do it, I wonder.

Lunch was spent out on the wall. No lizards still, just my book, my butties and my fruit.

No photos either. There was quite a thick sea mist and the sun, strong as it was, couldn’t burn it all away.

Back here, I had some good news. A letter that I had sent off 12 days ago had prompted a reply. And while my letter might have been “speculative” to some degree, the reply was, whilst not actually resolving the issues, was at least giving ground for optimism.

That led to a telephone call, and that was even more enlightening. Who knows? Something might even happen about this. And won’t that be interesting?

This led to me dealing with another outstanding matter, and so I had a couple of chats with a couple of people on the internet. This led to the submission of another couple of forms.

And the events of yesterday might not have been so false I was suspecting. I’ve had to send a confirmatory e-mail to check it, but it might be kosher after all.

ON that note, I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The mist had cleared somewhat so photography conditions were so much better. I was able to take a really good photograph of one of our fishing boats making its way into harbour.

With the tide having turned, the fishing boats could now come into harbour.

This wasn’t the first of the fishing boats to come into harbour.

Round on the quay by the fish-processing plant there were about a dozen other fishing boats either lined up by the plant, leaving it, or else arriving.

These seem to be busy times down there right now. Everyone doing what they can prior to the inevitable conflict that will ensue with the British fishermen after Brexit.

Meanwhile, at the chantier navale, the yard is almost totally empty.

All that remains right now is the long-term trawler-rebuilding project, and the larger boat that is being resprayed.

There was someone on his skyjack down there adding another coat of paint to the job. It’s going to be a really good job when it’s finished and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

After all of that I came back here and spent the rest of the afternoon slogging away with the dictaphone notes. There were a couple from the last few days and then a week’s work from the past.

That’s not going as quickly as I would like either because some of them are quite length. And those that I’m going to do so are even longer.

This evening after tea I went for a walk, in the light, around the walls.

First stop was to see how they are getting on with the house renovations on the rue du Nord.

The one on the corner, they have now jacked up the floor of the first floor with a whole army of acrows.

Furthermore, they seem to have elongated the windows to the first floor. They might even be putting a balcony out there, and that would be very nice to see when it’s done too.

At the other end of the rue du Nord, there doesn’t seem to be too much progress taking place on the house there.

The other day I mentioned that the guy building it seems to be only working there when he has nothing else to do.

One of these days it will be finished, but I’m not holding my breath about that.

But look how quickly the light has gone.

This photo of the Plat Gousset was taken just a mere 10 minutes after the previous one of the house rebuilding. All of the street lights are on already.

There are still a few people wandering about though. I suppose that the lighter evenings will keep them out for a while longer.

So now, although it’s not as early as I wanted, I’m off to bed. All things considered, I’ve had a productive two days and I’m looking for plenty more like it.

fishing boat doing a u-turn granville manche normandy france

fishing boat entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

house renovation rue du nord granville manche normandy france

Friday 29th March 2019 – TODAY WAS ANOTHER …

… day when my back was well and truly stuck to the bed. However, it was rather earlier when I finally crawled out – a mere 07:25. I really don’t know what’s the matter with me these days.

As a consequence it was another late start to the day. But at least I finished the searchable text database for the photos for August 2018. Another job crossed off my list.

Once that was done I started to upload the photos to the blog for that month – although I haven’t done the Canada ones because they will be receiving special treatment.

Working backwards through the month, I’ve made it as far back as 21st August 2018.

But I can see why I didn’t do the photos. This was the period when I was having camera issues and quite a few of them are rather depressing. I can see that there’s going to be a period of about three or four months where I shall have to rework all of the photos.

This took me nicely round to my afternoon walk.

Around the headland with the crowds, to see what was going on at the chantier navale. It’s almost empty now, except for the long-term trawler project and the boat that’s being resprayed.

There’s someone down there on his skyjack working on it right now.

At one of the district meetings which I attended, someone was complaining about the kids playing on the roof of their house.

You can see what they were talking about, with those over there looking as if they are going to be there for the Duration.

That would certainly get on my wick and no mistake

While I was out there photographing the brats, my reverie was disturbed by an almighty racket coming from offshore.

It seems that we have the powerboats back again churning up the water offshore.

I thought that this photo would make a nice contrast – the powerboat roaring away in the background and the yacht sliding serenely into the harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one of the subjects that features frequently on these pages is the collapse of the cod fishery in 1992.

A while ago I mentioned that Granville was back in those days a thriving deep-sea fishing port and that there were plenty of remains that siginify its importance.

Over there behind Victor Hugo is the former cold store for the cod fisheries. You can see the writing on the wall – in the literal as well as the figurative sense.

Back here I attacked the dictaphone notes until tea time, and disposed of another pile of them.

Tea was a potato, mushroom lentil and sweetcorn curry from August 2018, with a leek and baked potatoes, followed by apple crumble.

That set me up nicely for my walk around the walls. No-one about at all, although I made the acquaintance of three cats out there.

But I’ve been having another think about my summer project. A casual enquiry has thrown another shark into the swimming pool and this could really be surprising. I just wish that I hadn’t left so many of my books back in the Auvergne because I could really do with them right now.

On that note, I’m off to bed. It’s shopping day tomorrow and I have a lot to do.

Thursday 28th March 2019 – IT WAS A …

… very busy day in the harbour today.

When I walked down to the town this morning, there in the harbour was Normandy Trader tied up to her berth.

She wasn’t in there last night, so she must have sneaked in on the early morning tide without my noticing her. and she looks pretty well loaded up too, so they must have been quick.

And the reason why they were so quick became evident when I returned from LIDL.

Normandy Trader had cleared off into the sunset and in her place we had Thora tied up there in her place.

And she had only just arrived, that’s for sure, because there were a couple of civilian-types busily scrambling up the ladder onto the quayside. And one of them was a lady of the female sex too.

Last night I wasn’t as early in bed as I was expecting and despite that, I was wide-awake yet again at 03:45.

It took ages for me to go back to sleep, but when I did, I certainly did. Although I heard the alarms go off, it wasn’t until about 07:45 that I actually came into the land of the living.

Plenty of time therefore to go off on a little voyage or two. last night I was driving a bus from Chester to Crewe. One of the people on board this bus was George Scane – and what on earth is he doing in my nocturnal rambles? I was dropping off people at places all around Crewe – dropping them off in all kinds of strange directions and strange places in some kind of strange order. Going past the end of McCorquodale’s Printers in Catherine Street in Crewe and everyone was coming out of work – hordes of them. I was surprised that it was 12:00 Saturday lunchtime knocking-off time already, for I had a doctor’s appointment at 12:00 and I had a few other things to pick up from there too. We had to hurry. I was talking to this guy about women, saying that the only women I seem to find these days are women in their 90s and there was no interest in sex. He replied that I should make the most of it while I can and while it’s still offered, allthis kind of thing. He said that he was 103 – or else it was someone else he know who was 103 but he was quite old as well. This was all quite strange. Eventually we reached the doctor’s and I had to go in to ask about what I needed.
Apart from that, I had a very difficult voyage involving my father, and I’ll spare you all the details as you are probably eating your tea right now.
And I was also involved in some football match – Wales were playing Spain and I was out there on the field. Right from the very first touch of the ball at the kick-off one of the Spanish players had to leave the field. We thought that he had broken his ankle and the bench made themselves ready with a bucket of cold water, but in fact it was his boot that had broken. This ended with our team playing the Italians. They had just three people on the field – two men and a blonde-haired boy of about three. And somehow we didn’t have the will or the courage to press home our game decisively like we should have done.

As a result of all of that I was rather late organising myself and I didn’t do anything at all. After breakfast I had a shower, put a load of clothes in the washing machine, and then headed out for LIDL.

The other day I mentioned that they were working on the city walls just around the corner from here.

They had a mini-digger with a breaker attached and it was breaking up all of the rock at the foot of the walls. Why, I’m not quite sure but if it was that well-fixed that they needed a breaker, there seemed no point in moving it.

But he was having a load of fun doing it.

At LIDL I didn’t buy anything at all special today. There was tons of stuff and had I been back on the farm I would have had loads of stuff. But not here though.

On the way back home, I was round by the port again.

It was a beautifully warm, sunny morning – really nice to be out. And I wasn’t the only one enjoying being out. A couple of trawlers were just setting out for the fishing grounds

It made actually a nice photograph

With the Normandy trader having left the harbour I went back up to the apartment and sorted out the big Nikon D5000 and the telephoto lens to see what I could see.

There was some movement out on the horizon, hidden in the mist so I took a speculative photo of it to see what it might be.

It’s actually a couple of trawlers though.

Some more movement a little closer to the shore had me taking a photo to see what it might be.

But this time I was in luck. It is indeed Normandy Trader, heading off out into the English Channel in the direction of Jersey.

It didn’t take her too long to come in, turn round and go out again. I reckon that I must have missed dozens of visits by the ships.

That wasn’t all either.

There were a few more ships out there doing something or other. One of them was La Grande Ancre and judging by the buoys out there around her, she looks as if she might have some kind of fishing net out there.

I’m not quite sure what she’ll be catching just there, but I’ve seen a couple of boats round about that spot. Perhaps it’s some sunken treasure.

Gribouille and his mum were out there too so we had a bit of a chat.

Back here, I made a start on the photos for the last few days. But I wasn’t there for long because it was pretty soon lunchtime.

After lunch I finished off the photos and now the last couple of days have their photos appended.

And then it was walk-time around the headland.

Thora has already gone back out, and that was really quick. And in the chantier navale we have a coat of heavy primer now added to the large boat that they have been preparing this last few days.

It should look really good when it’s finished.

A little further on we have a group of school children around the edge of the old, abandoned dry dock.

It’s round about the time that they have the classes découvertes where groups of children come to town and stay in the Youth Hostel, and then go round looking at the fishing industry – or, rather, what’s left of it after the collapse of the cod industry in 1992.

You can see the remains of the deep-sea fishing industry all over the place around here

And although Thora has now sailed away, we have yet another visitor in the harbour.

Not exactly a visitor but more of a permanent resident, because it’s Victor Hugo, the older of the two boats that do the Channel Islands ferry to Jersey.

Ironically, they bought a new boat to replace her, but she’s nothing like as reliable as Victor Hugo.

Back here, I spent some time with the dictaphone notes, and then attacked tea.

Main course was really easy.

There’s some of the leek and tofu pie left over from the other day so I fetched a slice out of the freezer. I bunged that in the oven along with a couple of potatoes.

Real potatoes baked in the oven, with pie, veg and gravy.

But why I had the oven on is because I’ve been baking again.

This week’s effort is an apple crumble and although it’s not turned out as well as I hoped, it’s still delicious

Apple, grated coconut, raisins, brown sugar, lemon juice, nutmeg and cinnamon. Topped with a mixture of flour, oats and vegan margarine.

On my evening walk there was no-one around so I wasn’t out for long.

Back here I had a good chat with Alison, then Sue and almost immediately after, another chat to Rosemary. I seem to be in demand right now.

So as a result, it’s later than I wanted it to be. But it’s always good to talk to friends.

EPIC HALL

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