Tag Archives: lie in

Thursday 12th July 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… afternoon!

Sat down on the sofa at about 15:00 with a nice cold glass of lemonade. Next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45 and all my ice had melted.

And I’d been on my travels too. Out in Canada. In another setting that I have visited in the past too. This time I was doing a circular tour of some area, and I had some kind of deadline to meet too, so I couldn’t afford to hang about and I was relying on the dashcam for photography, thinking that I’ll take some stills of my voyage from the videos. But I arrived at an area with a huge girder bridge going over some water, with a big main road like a motorway. But for some reason the motorway came to a dead stop before the bridge and there was a ferry announced. For some reason or other it reminded me of the set-up at the Confederation Bridge from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Isle in the old days. The ferry was leaving in 10 minutes and I had 8 miles to travel (we’ve had a couple of real circumstances like this on our travels) so I didn’t even have time to check the map to see if this was the correct ferry. I just had to put my foot down and get going, and look pretty silly if it turned out to be the wrong ferry.

Yes, the exertions of the last couple of weeks have really got me down, haven’t they?

A late night last night didn’t help much, but then again that was balanced out by the fact that although the alarms went off as you might expect at 06:20 and 06:30, I just turned over and went back to sleep again. 09:00 is a much more reasonable time to be out and about.

After the usual medicine performance I had breakfast and a shower and general clean-up, and then off out. Just outside, I bumped into one of the neighbours who told me that the remote controls for the new barrier are ready, so I added that to my list of things to do.

First stop though was LIDL where I stocked up with a few things – nothing special. Next stop was the remote control, and then across the road to LeClerc, where I wasn’t quick enough with the phone camera to catch an old Renault 4CV that was driving around the car park.

Nothing exciting in LeClerc so I came home and, picking up the coolbox out of Caliburn, packed everything away and put the coolbox soaking with bleach to clean it out.

My lizard was there waiting for me on my wall when I went for a rather late lunch, and then back here, well, you know the rest of the story.

Once I’d come round, I had a think about tea – for the first time in a week or more – and made myself some pasta and vegetables tossed in garlic powder, pepper and olive oil.

While that was doing, I assembled a couple of little things that I had bought in IKEA and tidied up the first part of the European Cardboard Box Mountain.

Once I’d washed up, the rubbish went into the bin across the road and I went for a walk around the headland. I need to restart my good habits.

While I was walking around, I was miles away with my head in the clouds, as is my usual situation.

But my reverie was interrupted by a rather loud reversing siren coming from down one of the boats down in the harbour.

It turned out that one of the ferries, Granville that go over to Jersey was in the process of reversing out of its berth at the Gare Maritime.

It seemed to me that it was rather a weird time to be going out on a ferry crossing, so I watched it for a while.

However it wasn’t setting off out, but moving into the inner harbour to be tied up next to its older brother, Victor Hugo.

We must be having a very low tide tonight for them to want to move it inside. There will probably be crowds of people out on the sands tomorrow at low tide.

Back here now, exhausted and ready for bed despite all of the sleep that I had had. I dunno where this is all going but I can’t say that I’m enjoying any of it.

Wednesday 11th July 2018 – AND SO …

… having ended up in my own bed last night at long last, I was out like a light.

And for at least an hour too, before I was wide awake again.

But that was plenty of time for me to go on a nocturnal ramble – and a mega-one at at that. but I’m not going to tell you about it right now, because it was so interesting that I went and fetched the dictaphone and dictated it right on the spot, at some silly hour of the morning.

So you’ll have to wait until I’ve transcribed my notes, whenever that might be.

But never mind. back to sleep again, and I was off on my travels again. it seems that I can’t keep still right now.

I was off around the North-Eastern USA, in circumstances and places where I have been on nocturnal voyages before and on several occasions too. And I met a group of people, amongst whom was this lady. We were discussing things that we had in common and as I was leaving, she added that there was something else – “sex” to be precise. And she went on telling me how she was living in a mobile home in her garden as her house was undergoing renovation, and not only gave me the address but also the directions. And of course I had no intention whatever of involving myself with anyone in that respect.
Instead, I ended up in the very American area of Wells Green near Crewe. Several of my current and former friends were by now in the picture and we had all arranged to go swimming together. It was my idea but I hadn’t thought about my chemo port in my chest. But I suppose I had better show willing. I was living in a layby by the old signal box at Gresty in a caravanette, the type that had a couple of pods that pop out at the sides, and they were out right now, and I couldn’t close them. But anyway, I ended up in the pool, and ended up on my own too as no-one else came to join me. And when I left the pool, I realised that I had left my clothing with my ex-friend from Stoke on Trent and he wasn’t here of course, so I had to wander around in my swimming trunks and a tee-shirt.

Just for a change in midweek, there was no alarm. Like I’m going to crawl out of bed at 06:20 in the morning after all of my efforts yesterday. 09:00 is much more like it, isn’t it?

And like any other good Day of Rest, that’s exactly what happened. I did nothing at all really. Didn’t even set foot outside.

It was a late breakfast, with one of the four half-baguettes and apricot jam that I had bought yesterday in Albert. And my first cup of coffee since leaving Liège too.

And then I began to attack the photos. Several hundred, there are, and they all need reviewing, editing and saving and that’s not the work of five minutes either.

I reckon that I have done about half of them before I began to look cross-eyed so I stopped and had a very late lunch. The other two half-baguettes, some hummus and the last of the tomatoes and lettuce.

I shall have to go shopping tomorrow, won’t I? And I mustn’t forget either because it’s a Bank Holiday on Saturday. The Storming of the Bastille or something.

So with Caliburn not having been unloaded and nothing unpacked, I’ve had a quiet day. But I do need to get myself organised. Something needs to be done in the next 6 weeks, it’s urgent and I can’t ignore it.

I shall have to get a move on.

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

Sunday 10th June 2018 – THOROUGHLY EXHAUSTED AND WEARY …

… I made my way last night to an early bed and crashed out rather promptly.

And bearing in mind just how tired and fed up I had been during the day yesterday, no-one was more surprised than me to be wide awake at 06:15. And on a Sunday too!

But if anyone thinks that I’m going to be out of bed on a Sunday morning at that time then they are completely mistaken. 08:54 is a much more respectable time to be out of bed.

Having taken some time to organise myself, it ended up being a very late breakfast. But with no fig roll or anything else to fill it out, you could hardly call it a brunch.

First task, and the most important one too, was to arrange my hotel for my next trip to Castle Anthrax. And as I suspected (and hoped), Liège did the business for me. I like Premier Class hotels and there’s one on the edge of the city with an IKEA to the right, a Kinepolis to the left and a motorway exit behind me.

Even better, the motorway is the motorway that runs from Germany to Brussels past Leuven, and is only a mile or so from where the motorway down to Charleroi and Paris forks off.

The price is more expensive than I was hoping, but just about everywhere is booked up that week as we know. In fact, within a 50km radius of Liège there were only 26 hotels of any kind that had any accommodation at all. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Next job was to sort out all of the photos from Leuven just now and to edit some of the blog entries to include the missing photos. So you might need to scan back a couple of days or so.

While we’re on the subject of photos, remember that ancient, very creaky hard drive that I rediscovered the other day after years of searching? I’ve been working on that too and recovered about 99% of the data on it. What’s lost is lost, unfortunately, but I was lucky to rescue that much, I reckon. I’ve been at that all day and it’s only just this minute finished copying what it can.

As well as all that, I’ve done a little unpacking too – not a lot but there was some stuff to go in the fridge and the quicker I started, the quicker I could finish.

We’ve had the usual two walks today – football has finished ow for the summer – and another really good vegan pizza for tea which always goes down well of course.

And that’s quite enough for a Sunday. I’m going to have another early night, ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

Back to work on Monday.

Monday 28th May 2018 – IT’S BANK HOLIDAY …

… in the UK today. And seeing as how I’d missed a Bank Holiday the other day I decided that I would take advantage of the day by having my Bank Holiday today.

So no alarm and a nice lie-in until all of … errr … 08:25. Nothing like the lie-in for which I was hoping but a lie-in all the same.

A late breakfast too, and then I did precisely nothing at all for the whole of the day except to mooch around and take it easy. At least, the morning passed like that anyway.

But there was an unexpected twist at lunchtime. I was joined by not one but two lizards waiting for the bits to drop off the pear. I’ll probably end up with a whole herd of lizards by the end of next week at this rate.

This afternoon I went for my little walk around the headland. It was school chucking-out time too and so I was able to observe the antics of the parents.

Pathetic parking is a regular feature of this blog as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. here’s yet another example. You cans ee the woman parked right by the bus stop with two wheels on the kerb to prevent passers-by from passing by on the pavement and yet right opposite her is an empty car parking space.

Not to mention the free car park lass than 100 yards down the road of course. I’m really surprised that the local police don’t come round and ticket them all.

was a really pleasant surprise. Ingrid came on line so we had a chat and then a telephone conversation that lasted one hour and forty-one minutes. I’m surprised that I could find that much to talk about. But then Ingrid has her own health issues too and so we jog each other along as best we can

Ingrid asked me what I was going to have fr tea, so I had to make one of these instant decisions. And I decided on another lot of mixed veg with vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce. That all worked very nicely and was delicious.

And what was even better that with two burners now, I can fry my onions, garlic and sausages at the same time that I make the cheese sauce. As they say, it’s little things like that which make a great big difference.

But while the cooking was reaching a climax, Rosemary rang me up. I told her that I’d call her back in an hour or so after I’d had my tea. And so after the tea and the washing up, I went for my evening walk around the medieval walls.

And with the tide being well-in, I was interested in seeing what the little beach at the foot of the steps that I had seen the other evening looked like.

The answer to that is that I can forget any idea of going for a midnight stroll on the beach down there. What’s left of the beach at high tide is cut off from the part where the steps are.

No way down and no way up. So not a good idea

A little further along, I was distracted by sounds of hilarity coming from offshore somewhere. Not being able to see anything clearly, this was a job for the telephoto zoom lens.

There’s a diving platform about 4 metres tall right out on the beach and which is well-submerged at high tide. It’s quite a way offshore too and the sea was quite lively, so the last thing that I expected to see were a couple of people out there fooling around.

I watched them for a while to make sure that they were not in distress, and then left them to it.

Having paid my respects to Minette the black cat, who allowed me to pick her up yet again, I went back home and phoned Rosemary back. And there we were on the telephone for an hour and a half.

She’ll be back in the Auvergne sooner that she imagined, and having spent the last 6 months stranded in the UK after her operation she has made a decision that she’s ready to abandon the country too and settle permanently in France. She wanted to know the steps to take.

And I’ll tell you this – anyone who knows anything about Rosemary will realise from this discussion just how deeply the UK has slid into the abyss just recently if she’s upping sticks and moving on.

And as you all know, I can’t say that I blame her one minute. The last time that I set foot in the UK was over 5 years ago – a quick day-trip aller-retour to pick up Terry’s slates from near Folkestone. I can’t remember the last time that I was there before that, and I don’t miss it for a moment. I have no intention whatever of ever going back, although something might be brewing in the background which will mean that a day trip will be necessary some time soon. And I’m not looking forward to that at all.

So it ended up being a later night that I was expecting. But I’m not complaining. I don’t speak to enough people these days anyway. Frederick the Great once made the remark “the more I see of people, the more I like my dog” and he has my sympathy because I know just how he feels.

However Maria McKee wrote “a good heart these days is hard to find” and that’s just as true. It’s a very valuable commodity. I don’t have many friends but it’s quality over quantity any time. My friends are the best in the world and I’ll happily sit up all night talking to them without any problems whatsoever.

But right now, I’m off to bed. Back to the grind tomorrow.

Sunday 27th May 2018 – MYSTERY SOLVED

Remember yesterday when I said that I reckoned that my fitbit was playing up? I happened to glance at my fitbit this evening when I expected that the 100% of my day’s activity would be up. And it was showing 92% of my day’s activity.

But that’s not the exciting bit of it. A closer inspection revealed that it was indeed 7.7 kms – and that was 100% of my day’s activity when I first programmed it. It seems that somewhere along the line it has reprogrammed itself and a day’s activity is now 8.4 kms. So that’s going to wear me out even more.

But that’s a long time away from where we started. Although not as long as you might think because 09:10 is a really nice time to awaken on a Sunday morning. And 09:40 is an even nicer time to rise up from your stinking pit too.

This led to quite a late breakfast – a brunch in fact – and the fig roll is quite a good idea too. I have to treat myself on a Sunday after all. High time that I did that.

The rest of the morning, such as it was, was quite leisurely. And I ended up spending almost an hour and a half talking to Rosemary. She’s had her plaster taken off her foot and is now in ordinary footwear. But it’s a long, hard road to recovery for Rosemary, and she still has a long way to go.

With having a late start this morning I went without lunch. I grabbed some biscuits and made a flask of cold drink with ice cubes. And then I set off for the football.

An important match this one, for if US GRanville’s 2nd XI do better than FC ST Lo Manche they will be promoted.

The football wasn’t the only thing that was going on either.

There was a bicycle race – the Tour de Normandie – taking place this weekend and today’s stage finished here in Granville.

And so there were hordes of people and hordes of cyclists swarming through the town this afternoon as I was passing through.

All the way up the hill I was being passed by bunches of cyclists. And they were struggling up the hill as much as I was too.

And there were fleets of cars with the spare bikes on the roofs following the cyclists, and following the cars were the fleets of ambulances.

But I was diappointed that there weren’t the fleets of advertisers like there were in Le Gendarme et les Extra-terrestres. Anyone who grew up with French cycle races in the late 1960s will know exactly what I mean

There’s a lot of money in cycle racing in France these days, and you can tell that by all of the equipment that is on show being used by the bigger teams.

So it was something of a surprise to find an old Peugeot 504 – probably getting on for 45 years old I reckon – doing service as a bicycle team support car.

Probably the most famous French car of the early modern era, the French equivalent of the British Ford Cortina III and IV, and seeing as we haven’t had an old car for quite a while, it gives me pleasure to feature it here.

So the most crucial match of the season here at the Stade Louis Dior. US Granville’s 2nd XI against AS Tourlaville. Everything riding on this match. No matter what FC ST Lo Manche do in their match, Granville must do better.

And by God they made hard work of it. For once the back four were incredibly nervous and were making a couple of silly careless errors. And it could have been so much worse as two suicidal backpasses from the usually-reliable central defenders put a Tourlaville attacker through for a one-on-one with the US Granville keeper.

Had the attackers been any better, US Granville could have been 2-0 down but one shot from one backpass went wide and the other one hit the post and bounced away to safety. And with only the keeper to beat.

And as for the keeper, he was nervous too. He dropped three simple crosses (luckily a defender got to the loose ball first each time) and was generally shaky throughout the match.

Eventually though Granville took the lead – a beautiful run down the wing, a good pinpoint cross into the centre and a forward sliding into the goalmouth steered it in.

And in the second half, a beautiful free kick put Granville 2-0 up. And that set the match aflame as Granville continued to pour forward, with Tourlaville resorting to some desperate (and quite often illegal) measures to keep them out, much to the frustration of the Granville players. Yesterday’s rainstorm to cool down the players would have helped here.

And then of course, another defensive loss of concentration right at the death allowed a Tourlaville attacker to finally find the back of the net.

So a 2-1 victory for Granville. And it was all in vain as FC ST Lo Manche had won by five goals to one.

So that was that. We’ll have to wait until next year now.

I had a nice walk back home in the warm early evening sunshine, just in time to see a saling boat come a-dieseling into the harbour. A bit disappointed that it didn’t come a-sailing in but you can’t have everything.

And it’s usually around here that I clock up my 100% of daily effort when I’ve been to the Stade Louis Dior. So I checked and you know the rest.

Tea was the usual vegan pizza and then I went out for a walk to clock up the missing metres. Not far of course, but far enough to reach the 100%. It’s a good thing, this fitbit. It pushes me along

So now it’s bed time and I can’t say that I’m sorry. I could do with an early night.

Friday 25th May 2018 – AND SO HERE’S …

… the new toy that I bought yesterday. It’s a vitro-ceramic twin-hob cooker, all plugged in and working.

Strictly speaking, you aren’t supposed to plug these in. They should be wired in to a dedicated cooking point, but as you can see, it has possibilities of being either a free-standing unit as well as a fitted unit in a worktop, and seeing as the max power output is 2960 watts, that’s well short of the 16 amps that they use in domestic circuits here.

So its utility as a free-standing plug-in unit is not to be sneezed at.

And I’m glad that I bought it because I’m fed up of only having one burner, which means that I have to shuffle things around when I’m cooking. An added advantage is that you can use any kind of flat-bottomed saucepan on it. So the ones that I stuck in a cupoboard that didn’t work on the induction hob, I can fetch them out again.

I spent an exciting afternoon stripping down, cleaning and reorganising the table that I use for cooking and eating. That’s all clean and tidy … "for the moment" – ed … and it actually looks as if someone is working on it now.

I’m amazed at just how dirty it was, especially when I’d done my best to keep it clean. It’s amazing when you discover when you take the oilcloth off to turn it around.

Just by way of a change, I didn’t crash out this afternoon. But as the Duke of Wellington said about the Battle of Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”

You can either attribute that to the fact that I was keeping quite busy this afternoon and didn’t have time to sit down and relax, or else you can attribute it to the fact that when the alarms went off this morning, I was in no hurry to leave my bed.

In fact, all in all, it was a rather leisurely morning while I sorted out a few things that needed doing. I wasn’t in any rush.

It was quiet at lunchtime. No-one really loitering around on the streets. But a workman had pinched my spec on the wall so I had to sit further down to eat my butties and read my book. And my friend the lizard eventually tracked me down for the pear leavings.

I mentioned the tidying up of the cooking area. And I was hoping to make a start on emptying out Caliburn. After all, there is tons of stuff in there that I no longer need or use, as well as hoping to find the missing spring clip. But I didn’t have time. Looks as if that might be next week’s task.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And then I went for a walk.

The evening walk is usually the one where I go around the footpath at the foot of the walls of the medieval town and it’s a very nice walk.

But not all of the walls are medieval. There have been some later additions to the fortifications and this covered passageway down there that leads out to the part that overlooks the Place Marechal Foch certainly looks much more recent.

The stairway and footbridge over the walls is of course even more recent.

As I walked further on around the walls I noticed something away across the Baie de Mont St Michel in the distance over near Cancale that might have been another ship lurking in the doom and gloom, like the one we saw a few weeks ago.

The benefits of having some good equipment and a decent graphics program is that you can photograph it and manipulate it so that you can have a better view of what there is to see. Hard to believe that that’s about 18 miles away, isn’t it?

And it seems as if I have photographed a fishing boat, an island and part of another island with a church thereupon. And not a ship at all, which is something of a disappointment.

I shall have to go back with a compass and take a bearing so that I can work out exactly where it all might be situated.

An early night tonight too. Caliburn has his controle technique tomorrow morning so both of us need to be on form.

Wednesday 16th May 2018 – I HAVE BEEN FEELING …

… a bit better today.

It was probably something to do with the (comparatively) early night that I had last night, coupled with the fact that I was in no hurry to leave the bed this morning after the alarm went off.

So with a slightly later start this morning, I had a slightly later breakfast and a little relax before getting round to attack today’s task.

I’m not going to say too much about that at the moment because it will be the subject of considerable correspondence elsewhere, but it involved the Board of Trade, the UK Government, Companies House and the High Court in Manchester, with considerable reference to the various Insolvency Acts. And the plums that I have been pulling out of all of this are certainly eye-opening.

Still, it keeps me out of mischief.

All of this took me up to a rather late lunch, which I spent eating my butties on the wall overlooking the harbour. And I seem now to have run out of bread. It’s a good job that it’s a shopping day tomorrow.

I’m not quite sure what I did this afternoon because the time seemed to pass so quickly; But one thing that I didn’t do was to crash out. I managed to keep going for all of the afternoon, and that’s certainly some kind of progress.

We did however have our afternoon walk in the wind and our session on the guitar.

But no tea again. No idea where my appetite has gone. But not to worry. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it seems to come and go. We’ve had this kind of thing before and it always ended up by coming back.

And so it will this time too. It’s not as if I don’t have some surplus kilos to shed, is it?

After not having tea and not doing the washing up, I still went for my evening walk around the walls of the medieval city.

And there sitting on her windowsill waiting for me again was Minette the black cat – or, rather, tortoiseshell cat as you can see quite clearly in this photo.

So she had a good stroke for 10 minutes as you might expect. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … it’s all very therapeutic and good for the stress to stroke a cat.

Later on I ended up chatting with Ingrid and Alison. I certainly seem to be popular right now. Do I owe anyone any money?

So another early night. Let’s hope that it’s a good one and I have a decent sleep.

But I’m walking up to LIDL tomorrow so I’ll probably be flat on my back again tomorrow afternoon.

Sunday 13th May 2018 – THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

Although the night wasn’t as early as I would have liked it, staying in bed until 09:20 is definitely the correct way to proceed on a Sunday morning.

And had I not wanted to go for a ride on the porcelain horse, I might even still be in bed now.

It didn’t prevent me from going off on a nocturnal ramble either. But I’ll spare you the details of this voyage. I mean – you might be eating your tea or something. But I will say that it was a continuation of one of my voyages from a day or two ago.

I had a nice, late breakfast that included a fig roll with strawberry jam and which was delicious as you might expect. And then a lazy Sunday where I did next to nothing. But as I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … everyone needs a day when they can sit around and do nothing without feeling the least pang of guilt.

This afternoon in the glorious sunshine I wandered off to the Stade Croissant in St Pair sur Mer where US St Pairaise’s 2nd XI was taking on US St Quentin Le Homme’s 2nd XI.

St Quentin, in green, were fifth in the table and St Pair were third-bottom, and the final score was 7-0 … for St Pair. Something that totally astonished me.

St Pair were easily the better team, and that was a surprise in itself. But the result did rather flatter them. Their second goal was a piledriver from 25 yards out that was screwed hopelessly wide of the goal and which fell quite by chance right at the feet of an unmarked attacker who would otherwise have been totally out of the play. And their third was a backpass to the keeper who went to trap the ball with his foot but it hit a bobble, bounced up, hit him on the shins and rolled out to an attacker 5 yards away.

Apart from that, the St Quentin central defence was just too slow. In fact, the whole St Quentin team was just 6 inches too slow all over the field, and it was that which made all of the difference. Had they been just that little quicker to the ball, none of this would have happened.

But it was certainly a surprising result.

At half-time, I had another look through Caliburn to try to find the missing spring clip. But instead I found two one-cent pieces. So “spend, spend, spend!”, hey?

Tea was another excellent vegan pizza (the ground black pepper makes all the difference) but this latest batch of grated vegan cheese doesn’t melt like the previous batch and you could see the join.

SO off to bed in a minute, and then back to work tomorrow. High time that I did something.

Friday 11th May 2018 – AND WHAT WITH …

… no tea last night, a very very tired (despite having slept for much of the way home) me crawled off to bed at about 22:30 and promptly passed stark out.

The alarms went off at 06:20 and 06:30 as normal, and I do remember leaning out of bed to switch them off but it was more like 07:20 when I finally crawled out of the stinking pit. Aching all over too. Obviously not feeling myself this morning (which is just as well for it’s a disgusting habit anyway).

Despite all of that though, I’d been on my travels during the night. To some local council somewhere where there was an enormous waiting list for the more “upmarket” council houses – the brick-built 1920s semis with gardens – instead of the usual poor-quality council flats. And how there was uproar when it seemed that someone had been “parachuted in” from elsewhere. But council house exchanges were quite a well-known phenomenon back in the old days. People would want to move house and area for all kinds of reasons and would often advertise for someone willing to swap in the area to which they wanted to move. As long as either council saw no good and valid reason to refuse the exchange (which they very rarely did) then the exchange would go ahead regardless of waiting lists and priorities. It’s quite a normal, logical procedure when you consider the necessity of having a mobile labour force. But you try to explain that to people who have been on a waiting list for 20 years.
A little later, I was involved in some kind of defensive operation to fortify a residential area against an invasion. But it was a very desultory, half-hearted affair and I don’t remember too much about it now.

We had the usual morning performance and then I actually managed to unpack some stuff and put it in the fridge. Only the food that I had bought though. The rest can wait until tomorrow when I’m feeling more like it.

A little later I went on down into town. I needed a couple of things for lunch and for breakfast tomorrow. The Coccinelle supermarket has been taken over by Super U so I had a little look around and it’s not any different than it was.

And it’s come back!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a while ago that we had a visit from a rather elderly and somewhat disreputable Bedford CF box van that had been converted into a mobile home.

And here it is again, parked up just where it was the last time. And it’s not looking any better either, poor thing. But it does have to be said that it deserves a medal for still being here.

For lunch I went to sit on my wall but the weather had changed dramatically. Earlier when I was out it was windy but nice and sunny. By the time that I was sitting on my wall the wind had increased and the sun had gone.

And it wasn’t long before I had gone too – I wasn’t going to stay out too long in that.

But I did stay ut just long enough to catch the boat lift lowering a boat into the water from the ship repair yard.

It’s been one of my ambitions to catch the thing at work as you know, and today I was in luck. In fact, there were quite a few people enjoying the spectacle.

Later on in the afternoon the weather had deteriorated even more and round about 18:00 it was raining.

Welcome home, hey?

But in between lunch and my walk I crashed out rather dramatically and was well away. I’m always like this after my journey back. Out for about an hour or so. And it was only the telephone that awoke me. Some medium thinking that he could tell my future. But I know my future much better than he does, don’t I?

Tea was a burger and baked potato, with some rather over-cooked vegetables that I had left too long in the microwave. That’ll teach me.

And then with the rain having subsided, I went for another walk

And then with the rain having subsided, I went for another walk this evening.

But now we were having to contend with a rolling sea fog that made life difficult. Especially for me as, peering through the gloom I noticed some shapes that didn’t correspond with anything that I recognised.

This is where a good long-range telephoto lens comes in handy. I can snap the image, bring it home and crop it to size and then digitally enhance it.

That’s when I find out that it wasn’t a collection of ships at all but a couple of offshore islands that I hadn’t noticed before.

But the time that I spent sorting out the above image meant that I was just that little too late to catch the sun descending over the horizon.

In fact, I was amazed at the speed at which it did go down. Took me quite by surprise. I only just managed to catch the final segment.

Impressive nevertheless.

Another early night is called for. I have shopping to do tomorrow and I need quite a bit of stuff. I’ve been letting supplies run down again, haven’t I?

Saturday 5th May 2018 – THIS ISN’T WORKING …

… out like it ought to.

This evening on the way out to the football I stopped off at the station to pick up my train tickets for Ruesday. And with the times being all messed up on there, I went into the ticket office to confirm the departure times.
“But that train’s not running!” said the cashier
“Why not?” I enquired
“Because there’s a strike on Tuesday”.
“So what hapens now?”
“Well, we can change this one (the departure from Granville) to Monday.”
“What about the Paris to Brussels?”
“That’s not changeable”
“But I bought the two at the same time. And if I can’t get to Paris because of your problems, then I certainly can’t get from Paris, can I?”
And so we had a very long discussion which ended with me having to go back tomorrow evening sometime between 17:00 and 19:15 when the service diagrams for Tuesday will be published.

In the meantime, I suppose that I had better think of a Plan B.

But all of this sums up my day because it hasn’t been very good.

It all started to go wrong last night when I was planning to go to bed and A Passion Play turned up on the hi-fi. And so I sat in the dark and listened to it. And then in not-so-quick succession we had Aqualung, Benefit, Stand Up and Thick as a Brick. 5 of the best rock albums ever recorded of course.

By the time that they had all finished (and I played a couple of them twice) it was 05:40 and getting light. No chance of getting up at 06:20 so I switched off the alarms and went to bed.

11:30 is much more like a time to leave the bed after a night like that – not that I regret it of course for good music is good music – but it meant that I had missed my trip to the shops. Still you can’t win a coconut every time.

Breakfast was therefore very late and I lounged around for a couple of hours listening to the radio and laughing at the Clayheads who are relegated from the Premier League. And then I nipped into town for a pizza base for tomorrow’s tea.

Back here there was more football as the season draws to a conclusion and then I headed off out, via the railway station.

At the Cité des Sports US Granvillaise’s 3rd XI were playing US Mortainaise, hopelessly adrift at the foot of the Basse-Normandie Division 1. Their trainer told me that with the beautiful weather three of their players, including the goalkeeper, had gone harvesting and another half-dozen has gone away for a long weekend.

And so they had 11 players (and no substitutes). And the goalkeeper – well, three Tommy Lawrences could have fitted inside his jersey and you could have fitted at least two Jon Scullions inside the jersey of the n°8, who touched the ball three times in the whole 90 minutes.

The result was therefore a foregone conclusion and the game was over after 25 minutes with Granville 3-0 up. And then Granville switched off and strolled leisurely around the park with the ball.

They scored another just before half-time, a fifth after about an hour, and rattled in two more near the end as Mortain ran completely out of steam.

But that’s not all the story. It’s really no exaggeration that Granville could have had half a dozen more from the chances that they created. On one occasion the ball bobbled around the Mortain penalty area like a pinball, bouncing off the keeper, the woodwork twice, a couple of defenders and a couple of attackers before bouncing away to safety.

And the miss of the match, of the season and probably of the century came from a beautiful ball over the top to the Granville trainer (who had come on for a run-around near the end) who beat the offside trap all ends up, advanced on the goal, rounded the keeper and squares it across the goalmouth to the n°7 about three yards out with an open goal in front of him. And the n°7 whacks it with all his might – up into the crossbar and back upfield. Anyone who remembers the famous John Aldridge “goal that never was” – well, this was 10 times better than that.

What was even more disappointing was that had Granville really tried hard instead of messing about, we could have had a cricket score here. And Granville need to learn how to concentrate on a match for the whole 90 minutes and demolish opposition like this.

I walked back here (114% of my daily activity) and made a plate of pasta and vegetables cooked in olive oil, which was delicious.

Now it’ll be bed-time. And I’m hoping for a better night than last night.

And final word goes to the sunburn that I picked up in Africa. My skin is now all peeling. Coming off in shreds.

Friday 4th May 2018 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY!

Yes, May the Fourth be with you.

And I started off today as I meant to go on, that’s for sure. Flat on my back asleep.

And to 09:10 as well. This idea with me being ill of not having an alarm going off to disturb me is clearly doing me some good, I reckon. Sleeping all the way through until I wake up. You can’t say better than that.

It’s certainly making me feel a little batter too because, much to my surprise, I actually put all the washing away this morning after breakfast. There had been some here on the dryer since before I went away last month and although that was put away, the only reason was to replace it with the stuff that I washed on my return. So that’s some good news.

Not only that, I did a little more vague-ish tidying up and then sat down to edit another huge pile of photos. So if you scan back through a few of the last couple of days, you will probably see some photos and a bit more text that you hadn’t seen last time that you looked.

It was another beautiful afternoon with the window open once again to let in the air.

And while this was going on, I let myself out to go for a walk in the sunshine.

Crowds of people there were out there too, all taking advantage of the gorgeous weather. And I can’t say that I blame them either because it really was nice and the views were outstanding again over the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But I can see it becoming really busy here before too long and I’ll be back on my Friday shopping trips to avoid the rush.

And it wasn’t just pedestrians who were out there taking advantage of the weather.

We had a few more of these vulture-like people soaring up and down over our heads, reminding us of how primitive man must have felt when he had pteranodons and Pterodactyli to contend with.

I’m still waiting for one of these to end up as a crumpled heap at my feet because it’s bound to happen that a couple of these will become tangled up while heading for the same stretch of sky.

Is there some kind of Highway Code for these people?

With the general improvement in my health I found that I could concentrate once more on a course that I’m studying. I mentioned that I found a free 3D program called Hexagon where you can create your own props from “primitives” – that is, basic shapes such as cubes, circles and pipes, that kind of thing that you can combine together. I had a go at it a while ago but didn’t make much progress

However I’m not sure if I mentioned that I found a whole series of videos on Youtube which give a thorough grounding in the basics of the program. So before I was taken ill just now I had started to work my way through them.

But it’s hard going. The presenter might be good at what he does but he drives me berserk with his “pacifically” instead of “specifically” and his “access” instead of “axis” and his “gyro” with a hard “g” (as in “garden”) instead of a soft “g” (as in “German”). I’m not sure if I’ll make it down to the very end at this rate – I really don’t.

As well as that, I’ve had my first session on the guitar for quite some time. Things are definitely looking up here a little.

But not so much that I fancied any lunch. I’m still not feeling that well.

On the other hand, tea was a vegan lentil-and-pepper curry from last November (such are the benefits of having a deep-freezer) but no strawberries – I was right in saying that they wouldn’t last until this evening.

The walk this evening around the walls was almost completely uneventful,

I say “almost”, because there was a large group of people having a late-evening picnic on the grass at the Square Maurice Marland. They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, although they didn’t say why.

So I wished them all good health and carried on with my walk.

So now it’s an early night for me. The alarms go back on tonight for it’s a trip to the shops in the morning. Back into the old routine, hey?

Still, the rest did me good, didn’t it?

Thursday 3rd May 2018 – NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.

With my recent health issues, I’ve not been setting an alarm in the mornings and sleeping until I awake.

So this morning, instead of the previous 02:30 and 05:00 or whatever it was, it was a glorious 10:10 when I finally left my stinking pit. And if I hadn’t had to go down the corridor for a ride on the porcelain horse I would probably still be there now.

With it being Thursday, it’s my usual day to walk up to LIDL. But with not having eaten all that much just recently, there’s no urgent need for anything so I can have a day off.

There was even time for me last night to go off on my travels. I was back working for Shearings again and ended up with not one but two coaches under my control. One came back on a Saturday and the other came back on a Sunday and the SUnday one particularly needed a lot of cleaning and tidying before it could go back to the depot so I missed the departure of the shuttle service. Going into the office though, I found two credit cards on the floor. I assumed that these were the new fuel cards for the coaches that I had so I picked up the cards and walked out. The next problem was to return the coaches to the depot. I could drive one, but how would I return home? Had I done that with one of them the shuttle coach service on Saturday evening, I could have had a feeder coach back leaving me with just one to deal with. But with two to move and no way of returning home this was going to be complicated. Just then Nerina put in an appearance. She could drive up behind me in the old gold Cortina that we had and bring me home, that would solve one of the problems. And I was thinking that it was a shame that she couldn’t drive a coach otherwise we could take the two coaches both together. But then we would still have the problem of coming home afterwards.

Breakfast was rather late of course, but at least I managed to eat it okay. But with having a late breakfast I eschewed lunch yet again. No point in forcing the food down and I do need to lose some weight, especially after all that I must have eaten in North Africa.

None of the foregoing stopped me from going for my walk this afternoon, where I met Gribouille and his owner. And he (Gribouille) let me pick him up again and give him a stroke, something that apparently he doesn’t allow everyone to do. But he really is a beautiful cat.

There were crowds of people about this afternoon too enjoying the weather. And plenty of these hang-glider people too circling around like vultures overhead.

It’s a good job that they aren’t real vultures though because I wouldn’t appreciate a bird of that size circling around above me – and for a variety of reasons too as I’m sure you can imagine.

And they weren’t the only airborne creatures with which we had to contend today.

There was one of these motorised hang-gliders soaring about overhead, presumably from the airfield alng the coast at Bréhal. It looks marginally safer than being in a hang-glider, I reckon, but you still wouldn’t get me up there in one of those things either.

I’m all in favour of terra firma – in fact, the more firma the less terra.

And that’s not all either.

With it being such a really a delicious day for once, there was a wedding party out on the promontory this afternoon and a wedding photographer was busily engaged about her business.

I just hope that she doesn’t ask them to step back one pace too far, because it could end up being the shortest marriage on record.

As for tea, I did have my veg, vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce. And it was just as delicious as I was hoping that it would be. But the strawberries are about giving up I reckon. I’ll be lucky if the ones that are left will be good enough to eat tomorrow.

So a really beautiful day – the first time this year that I have had the windows here open. If we are’t very careful, summer may well be acumen in. Lhude sing seagulls, hey?

And now another early night, and once more there will be no alarm. I’ll need an alarm on Saturday to go to the shops of course but I intend to take advantage of the rest of the week. I’m feeling much better and in a day or so I’ll probably be all right.

Or, as right as I will ever be.

Sunday 29th April 2018 – HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Even as we speak, here I am curled up on the sofa underneath the quilt and wearing about 10 layers of clothing.

And I’m still freezing!

And in news which will cheer up almost everyone reading this rubbish, I have lost my voice too. I’m definitely sickening for something yet again!

It all started this morning, when I awoke, at the nice and gentle hour of 09:00, and found that instead of a throat I had two sheets of sandpaper there. And as well as that, I was rather unsteady on my feet. None of that was looking very good.

However, it hadn’t stopped me going on a midnight ramble. Last night I was out in North Africa, a very sandy, dusty city and I was part of an army that was on the attack. But the farther we advanced the more cut off we were becoming and there were fewer and fewer of us able to progress. Our situation bega to look quite desperate.
Just like the situation in a book that I was reading on the train the other day about the First Day on the Somme in 1916 in fact.
And later I’d been looking for somewhere to stay. I met up with some man who took me off to place that would be quite comfortable, and he would come to pick me up at 08:00 next morning to take me back to my car. But by the time 08:30 arrived he hadn’t turned up and there was so much to do, like loading my car (the mattress on which I had been sleeping needed to go right at the bottom for a start, so everything needed to be unpacked) before 10:00, the official check-out time. So to save time I set off to walk along the road along which he had brought me because there was a vantage point on a bend with a good view. I had my big red cantilever tool box with me as I walked through the countryside. And it was now 08:45, I was installed on the bend with a village down below but still no sign of this guy and I was wondering if I had done the right thing by moving, and worried that I would be locked out of my accommodation at 10:00 without all my possessions.

We had the usual morning routine of course and then I sat on the sofa and vegetated. On Sundays there is no alarm of course so I can stay in bed as long as I like. And as Matt Dillon so eloquently put it, “Sunday is the one day of the week a man can get up at noon and sit around with his boots off without anybody hollering at him about it”. We all deserve a day like that.

This afternoon I made some butties and a flask and headed out to the Stade Croissant. US St Pair’s 3rd XI were playing US Roncey-Cerisy in a bottom-of-the-table encounter in Division 3 of the regional league. It was cold and windy and at the kick-off the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour.

Luckily there’s a grandstand there and so at least there was some shelter but I was getting colder and colder as time wore on.

As for the football, there was a general lack of skill as you might expect but at least US St Pair played with a plan and some shape, and they were quite adventurous in what they tried. Had they had some individual skill, or a proper centre-forward (because their “attack” was very lightweight) they would have run away with this match.

They did score once, but penalty was well-saved by the US Roncey-Cerisy keeper who rode his luck quite well. But US Roncey-Cerisy had their moments too particularly in the second half when they strung a few nice balls together and even managed to score an equaliser when the US St Pair keeper slipped on the greasy turf.

Three players who impressed me, all on the US St Pair team, were the old, balding left-winger, the red-headed central midfielder, and the rather portly centre-half who dominated his defence and played some excellent balls upfield.

ON the way back I had the heater on full-blast in Caliburn because I was now shivering. And back here I grabbed the quilt and dived underneath it on the sofa where I crashed out for an hour.

I did manage to make tea though – another excellent pizza.

So now, I’m not bothering with a walk in this weather. I’m going straight to bed and I’ll sleep for the duration.

Ask me if I care.

Monday 9th April 2018 – IT SEEMS …

… that I have forgotten to reconfigure the alarms on my phone after the Easter break.

As regular readers of this rubbish might recall, the alarms didn’t go off o Friday (which I put down to a flat battery in the phone) and they didn’t go off today either. I was awakened at 07:00 by the church bells summoning the Faithful (both of them) to early morning Mass.

I’d been on my travels again during the night too. A young boy had come to our house to be looked after until a neighbour could come to pick him up. But chatting to him, it turned out that his mother had died most unexpectedly and this neighbour didn’t know. The best description that he could give me about his neighbour was that she wore a flowered skirt so I went to the end of the lane to wait for her, to intercept her and break the news to her. A variety of people came past, including a group of old ladies with walking sticks and we had quite a chat, and eventually a woman appeared, a large woman wearing a dark blue-grey skirt with the outlines of flowers drawn in white. She was indeed the neighbour concerned so I drew her to one side to break the news to her.
A little later I was back in Crewe at the house of a lorry driver who worked with my father. He had a caravan for sale and I was very interested in it. It was an old one but a lightweight fibreglass vehicle and the plumbing inside was rather eccentric to say the least. But I’d seen this type of plumbing before and couldn’t understand how it worked so I reckoned that the purchase price of this caravan was well worth it just for an informal course on how the plumbing on these things worked.

Eventually managing to tear myself out of my stinking pit, we had the usual morning ritual and then after a little repose and a coffee I attacked the packing.

I’ll be away for a week so I’m not taking much with me. I shall me relying on hotel sinks and washbasins to keep my clothes clean while I’m on my travels. That should do me fine for that kind of period although if I do spot a holiday on offer in the middle of the Sahara Desert I shall be somewhat at a disadvantage. You don’t need many clothes in the desert that’s for sure, but I don’t want to give any of the donkeys an inferiority complex.

And the desert! Yes. Given the dreadful weather that we’ve had and how thoroughly fed up I am of it all, a week or two at an oasis in the middle of the Sahara will do me the world of good.

The morning – and the day – gradually went downhill from there. In the post was a letter from the EDF about yet another issue with my standing orders thanks to the Crédit Agricole (who are quickly establishing themselves as the Worst Bank In The World) and I ended up on the ‘phone to the EDF for 45 minutes sorting things out. The guy there was very helpful and very friendly but that’s hardly the point now, is it?

Rummaging through the freezer at lunchtime, I discovered that I had run out of bread for lunch. There were however some bits of baguette in there left over from when I was ill over Christmas so I made some soup and had them with it.

After lunch, I steam-cleaned the kitchen. And it needed it too. I’ve been letting things lapse in here for a while and I need to get myself back on track.

That led me up quite nicely to my afternoon walk around the headland. It was grey, miserable and overcast again but not really cold – and not raining either which makes a big change.

And back here I made myself a coffee and sat down to drink it before carrying on with the cleaning. But the next thing that I remember, in a hazy, fuzzy kind of way, was that it was 17:35 and my coffee was stone-cold. By my reckoning, I was out for almost 90 minutes. This cleaning is clearly getting to me, isn’t it? And there’s so much to do before I can go away.

Tea was the other burger from last night with a bap, baked potatoes and vegetables steamed in the microwave. And very delicious it all was too. One thing about it is that I’m eating well.

And then we had our little walk this evening where I was interrogated by a grockel.

I’m hoping for an early night tonight and a good sleep. I can’t keep on going like this. I’m so short of energy and motivation that I’m doing nothing at all and that’s not part of my plan at all.

EPIC HALL

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