Tag Archives: tidying up

Saturday 21st December 2019 – JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

Yes, eating my evening meal at … errr … 00:15. Brings back many happy (and not-so-happy) memories of times gone by, that does.

And I bet that you’ve been hovering on the edge of your seat wondering why this has been the case ever since you saw the original posting on Saturday night. Well, I can now tell you.

Although I ought to set the stage (if you pardon the expression) first.

Despite having a really late night last night I still had to make an effort to be up early as it was going to be a busy day.I somehow missed the second alarm yet again and the next thing that I remember it was 06:24. And it still took a few more minutes before I could haul myself up out of bed.

With the usual routine of medication and then breakfast once the medication works, I took an early trip to the shops. Just LeClerc where I was waiting at the door with about 50 other people for 10 minutes until opening time.

With being one of the first in, I was one of the first out too. Not that I bought a great deal of stuff but it still came to €33. Endives and leeks included, and Caliburn smelt lovely inside.

After LeClerc I went up the road. A shop that closed down about a year ago has been taken over by a company called Action. It’s rather like Noz but a lot more organised and a lot more stuff that is useful. I came away with some stuff such as a headphone splitter, a jack plug adapter, some photo printing paper and a 4-way USB connector for Strider.

Next door was a shop called Bureau Vallée that sells office supplies. They had some cheap USB memory sticks that had a capacity of 2GB. A lot of my old electrical equipment such as the hi-fi and Caliburn’s stereo is old-generation stuff with a maximum reading capacity of 999 files, so a 2GB memory stick is ideal for those. And I’ve almost run out.

Back at the apartment I put the frozen food in the freezer (having made some room of course because it’s still pretty full in there) and then went back out.

As regular readers of this rubbish will probably have gathered, I’ve gone back to work.

Back into the media in fact, working for a local radio station called le Bouquet Granvillais. I’m photographer, English-French (and vice versa, and if there’s any vice going about, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”) translator, and check out the programme “A La Pointe Du Rock” and see if you recognise the voice.

It’s a new radio station, started in June this year, and tonight we are doing our first live outside broadcast. At the moment, the guys are stringing up the banner above our sound console while the others are plugging everything in.

In order to move about freely inside the venue we are to be issued with badges, so I had to go down to collect mine, although I was rather thinking of Walter Huston and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”, although it will come as a surprise to many to know that they didn’t actually say that in the film

And while I was at the Archipel, I stuck my head in through the door to see what was going on because I’d heard the music.

Nothing to get excited about quite yet, but it gives me an idea of what will be going on there this evening.

Now in the possession of a badge for entry into the Archipel tonight, I set off home. And stumbled immdiately across some more pathetic parking – the bane of these pages as regular raders of this rubbish will recall. And this time it’s a pearler too!

Remember the other day when we had that motorist parked half-on the pavement and another one a day or two earlier with the motorist stuck any old how across the street – and on a service bus route too?

Well this guy here hasn’t chosen just to park at random half on the pavement and half in the road to block a service bus route, he’s actually parked on the bus stop itself. And you can clearly see the markings on the road right where he’s parked.

Maybe he should have strapped his guide dog to the roof. That would have told him that he isn’t allowed to park there. But it really annoys me, the lack of courtesy and consideration that some of these motorists have for others. As long as he and his passengers don’t have to walk anywhere more then 20 feet, the rest of the world can go hang itself.

A little higher up the hill in the rue des Juifs I came to another halt.

The weather is actually pretty windy and miserable today, but that’s not stopped the timetable for the ferries from running as normal. Here’s Joly France battling the elements as she sets out from her berth at the maritime terminal on her way to do her run to the Ile de Chausey.

She’s not exactly overloaded with passengers today as you can see, but she does have a timetable to keep to and that will oblige her to sail.

Back here, I put away some of the shopping (but not all of it by any means) and then made myself some lunch. That was followed by a session sorting my equipment out. I’m officially the photographer and outside-broadcast techie so as well as the usual equipment that I need like the Nikon D500 and so on, there’s also the telephone, the dictaphone, the microphone and some headphones.

It’s pretty basic, my outside broadcasting unit, but the thing is that it’s not complicated to operate and it works. Keep it Simple!

Our first port of call was at the place Cambernon.

Father Christmas was due to arrive here at 16:30, although it was more like 16:45 when his sledge pulled into the square – pulled by a Kubota tractor.
“Where are the reindeer? we asked”
“I’ve given them the night off” said Père Noël. “They are going to be really busy on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning so I don’t want to be working them too hard right now.”

So now you know.

So at the place Cambernon, we had first of all the arrival of the Fanfare, or local jazz band. Every town or village in France has its own fanfare and we’ve encountered a few of them in the past.

Santa also had a full complement of elves too. They quickly clambered aboard the sleigh and took their places, to the accompaniment of music from the fanfare and once everyone was ready, the sleigh set off for Santa’s grotto in the town, with the crowds of people following on behind.

Having done a quick estmation, I made it something like 150 or so people of all ages up here

The route down to Santa’s grotto took us down the rue des Juifs, and the wrong way too.

But it wasn’t a problem because the farces of law and order at the bottom of the hill were blocking off the traffic to give us an opportunity to come down the hill en masse.

That’s what I like about France. It’s all delightfully informal. None of this Health and Safety and road closure notices and the like. People just make up the rules as they go along.

Down the rue Paul Poirier we went; again against the flow of traffic in the one-way street. But once again the local coppers did the business and held up the traffic to allow us to pass.

The cortège turned into the place Générale de Gaulle – once again against the flow of traffic, and then headed over to the famous ski slope where he and his elves alighted.

Laurent and I had been given a voucher for a hot alcoholic drink at the little hut here, so Laurent went off for his while I wandered around.

The fanfare found themselves a good spec on the edge of the ski slope and entertained us for a while.

As for me, I found Father Christmas sitting around with a bunch of kids being photographed by their parents sitting on his knee, so at a suitable pause in the proceedings Laurent and I grabbed hold of him and interviewed him for our radio show, and took the opportunity to interview a little girl called Océane who was waiting her turn to sit on his knee.

I’m really glad that I had the dictaphone and microphone with me.

Having made sure that the recording had worked fine, I took it over to the Archipel. One or two of the artistes tonight don’t want their shows recording so we have some time to fill in. We’ll be doing some artistes’ interviews with the more obliging ones, broadcasting some music too, but an interview with Father Christmas will go down quite well too.

By now though, proceedingsw ere well on their way and things were hotting up.

At a suitable pause in the recording due to the instransigence of a couple of artistes, we began to interview the rest of the performers. Elizabeth and Xavier took on this reponsibility and I was invited to take photos of them for the radio’s own website.

We may as well try to look as professional as we can and a pile of good photos always helps in this respect.

And talking of good photos, photography is an absolute pleasure when you have subjects who co-operate fully and completely with their photographer.

Unfortunately I can’t remember her name – in fact I don’t even know if I knew it – but hopefully someone can help me out in this respect. See the “Contact Me” box in the lower right-hand corner of your screen.

But whoever you are, take a bow.

We had an interval at half-time and I tok the opportunity to see what was going on.

Earlier in the day I’d witnessed a sound check between a couple of musicians, a bassist and a pianist, and they had played a performance before the start of the concert while everyone was taking their seats, and again at the half-time interval.

Although their music wasn’t quite my style, I enjoyed listening to it and they were really quite good at what they did.

All in all, we were there recording until the final whistle at 23:00 and then of course it took an age to tidy up and pack everything away. I ended up being back at the apartment just before midnight having gone the long way round to make sure that I arrived at my 100% and then made myself a plate of pasta and vegetables tossed in garlic, olive oil, tarragon and vegan cheese.

Yes, eating my evening meal at 00:15 – brings back many happy memories of a previous life.

But now I’m off to bed. And a good lie-in, I hope, because I’m whacked. See you in the morning.

Thursday 19th December 2019 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… no-one and nothing came along to disrupt my work today so I was able to have a fair crack of the whip, news which should please sadists and masochists everywhere.

Mind you, had something come along to disrupt me today I don’t know how I would have fitted it in. I didn’t get off to the best of starts.

With having had a very late night last night, I didn’t respond very well to the first two of the three alarms that go off here in the morning. The third one prompted me to sit upright with shock at still being in bed, but nevertheless it was a good 10 minutes before I was able to haul myself out.

Even though it was a short night, there was plenty of time to go a-voyaging. We were recording again for the radio last night, a series of programes of a programme, something like that and we all had to set out and go somewhere and do something. I ended up walking all the way through the countryside and I kept on finding abandoned canal courses, falling in them and so on. I came all the way across these places and ended up back in Diffusion to find that the diffusion of documents was being moved from the building where it was to another building close by, something like if Shavington Infants were moving to the old Junior School, something along those lines. It was moving on the Monday but the Friday prior was going to be my last day as Monday I was going to move to another department. I asked why they were moving and they said that the official reason was that there was something to do with security – Diffusion had become famous for something or other and they wanted some privacy, but no-one knows what the real reason is. Of course “security” was nonsense and we all knew this and it seemed a totally illogical decision because or course all the paperwork had to br brought from the old office to the new one, sorted around and all taken back again which was going to take a lot longer and a lot more staff. We started talking and I expressed my dismay and they ask why? About leaving? About moving? I replied “not really but the new building is nearer my home and of course they waited until I changed department before they moved so I don’t get the benefit of having a shorter distance to go to work” something like that. They started to talk about the routes we had taken to get there. I said that I had found this old abandoned canal race and fell in it. They asked if I had plenty of photos then and I replied “Ohh God yes, hundreds of photos”. We were talking about showing them when the alarm went off and awoke me.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes and then went off for breakfast.

With that out of the way, I came back and started on Project 007. And it’s a good job that I’ve been systematically backing up as I go along because Audacity, the program that I used, crashed twice in the middle of what I was doing and had I not backed up, I would have had to start again.

But now that one is completed, 60 minutes to the second, and I do have to say that it sounds pretty good to me. But you lot will have to wait until 10th January to hear it.

In the middle of everything I downed tools and went off to do my shopping in LIDL.

And here’s a classic example of why living within the walls of a medieval walled city is not always a good idea. Having everything delivered, like a lorry-load of furniture or a lorry-load of cement, creates quite a logistical challenge.

They aren’t always easy to solve either.

What they were having to do is to have a fleet of some kind of machines fitted with hoppers, and discharge the cement into the hoppers for onward transport into wherever they might be going.

And I don’t know if you have noticed, that underneath the cement chute there’s a large plastic sheet – presumably to stop the overflow of cement fouling the roadway.

So round the corner and right into the teeth of the gale, one of the strongest winds that we’ve had to date.

At LIDL I didn’t want very much. I don’t these days, going there three times each week, but I do it for the exercise more than anything else as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

On the way back I went via the big Eglise St Paul to see what was going on.

Last time that I was here they had just finished erecting a crane in the Impasse de la Corderie so I was keen to see what was going on today.

It looks as if they are having a load of breeze blocks delivered and they are about to be craned into position, so someone is having a house extension of some kind.

having picked up my dejeunette I headed on back up the rue des Juifs towards home, nearly stepping on someone’s dalmatian.

But I had a little stop when I got to the place that overlooks the harbour, because there was a weird danse macabre going on in the tidal harbour.

Yes, it looks as if, for once, I’ve caught Chausiais on the move.

She carried on with her little dance for a good 10 minutes as I watched, and then took herself off into the corner where the pier is for the ferries that go over to the Ile de Chausey.

It’s intriguing me because what freight that has had to go over to the island in the past has gone over quite comfortably on the ferries.

So why a freighter? My opinion is that the owner has a cunning plan, and it might have something to do with the fact that Brexit isn’t all that far away.

But we shall see.

Earlier on, we saw workmen with the concrete mixer up by the Porte de St Jean.

But here we have another load of workmen with a mini-digger and a pile of these one-ton reusable sacks. It finally does look as if they are cleaning up here ready to close down the chantier

That will be a job well-done.

Now that Chausiais has finished her dance and is moored up at her post, the rest of the boats here can move around.

Here is one of the little fishing boats heading out to sea. And just look at the waves, almost swamping the poor thing. And that’s only a hundred yards outside the harbour in the shelter of the sea wall.

Imagine what it’s going to be like out in the open sea. It gives you an idea of how the rough weather is right now.

Back here, I carried on with my project and that took me until well past lunchtime, but I didn’t want to stop until it was completed. And as I said earlier, it sounds pretty good to me.

After lunch I pushed on with the arrears. There were 50 photos of Leuven’s Christmas lights – clearly far too many to go on a blog page.

And so I sat down and quickly wrote a web page that features all of them, and you can see them at your leisure.

At that point I rather regrettably dozed off, and sat blot upright 10 minutes later at 15:50. late for my walk again.

Nevertheless I took myself out into the wicked wind to see what was going on.

Out at sea in the English Channel there was something moving around. I couldn’t see what it was so I took a random photo, hoping to be able to blow it up (the photo, not the object) back home to see what it might be.

It’s probably one of these small fishing boats that ply their trade out of the harbour, or else it’s Chausiais and she’s farther out at sea that I think she is.

Round the headland where the wind was even more fierce, I passed by the Chantier Navale and had a look to see what was going on.

Spirit of Conrad is still there up on her blocks, and the trawler that they winched out of the water yesterday is now up on blocks too and there are a couple of people working on her.

It doesn’t look as if she is going to be in there long either, I reckon, so we might be having another change of resident in early course.

Earlier this morning I mentioned that they were clearing up the site where they had been repairing the city walls.

Right now they are making rapid progress and they have a small lorry there, with the digger dumping loads of rubbish into the back.

And I don’t know what happened to the photo there, because it’s not one of my best. Not by a long way either.

After a coffee, I changed a light bulb (I’ve no idea why these IKEA LED lights aren’t lasting as long as I was expecting) and then cracked on amending Sunday’s blog.

Not all of the photos of the Traversee de Paris are in there because, as I explained yesterday, there were far too many, and I told you where to go if you want to see them.

Half-way through, I broke off because it was tea time. Stuffed pepper, it was, and it was delicious. Followed by rice pudding too that made it even better.

And then my evening walk.

And I cans afely say without fear of contradiction that I have never seen as many fishing boats out there in the English Channel as I did tonight.

In fact I counted a dozen in easy view, and there may even have been more if the white lights on the horizon weren’t St Helier.

It puzzles me because I’m sure that i’ve never seen as many right out there in earlier years.

But talking of easy views, there was a lovely easy view down one of the little alleys that leads into the Place Cambernon.

The Christmas lights give it quite a lovely effect, especially when they are constrained by the walls of the alleyway.

So having admired the lights I went on with my walk and had a little run over my usual little stretch of level ground. And I made it right to the top of the first ramp too although it really did take it out of me.

So now I’m home, Sunday’s blog is finished and so is this one. And I’m off to bed.

There’s a meeting tomorrow evening so I’m hoping to have a good day cracking on with things and getting myself up to date.

Some hope there!

Monday 2nd December 2019 – MY FITBIT …

… has told me some surprising things in the pas, but none more surprising than what it told be today.

Having coupled it up to the laptop while I went for my shower this morning, it told me that over the month of November I had performed 103% of my daily fitness routine – the first time ever that I have gone over the 100% for a month. I’d done almost 350,000 steps and I’d travelled an unbelievable 261 kilometres on foot.

Even more interestingly, I had run for a total of 1 hour and 27 minutes.

And if you think that it’s not all that much to crow about, remember that I’m slowly dying and that three and a half years ago I couldn’t even walk.

The hospital wants me to lie about in bed and take it easy to preserve my strength for the struggle that lies ahead, but there’s no chance whatever of that. In the words of Neil Young, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”.

And I’m going to go with a bang, hopefully with a nubile nymphet a quarter of my age. That’ll give everyone something to talk about, won’t it?

However, there wasn’t much to talk about last night. I was in bed rather later than I would have liked, and up and out of bed long before the third alarm.

As for the dictaphone, not a word. It seems that I didn’t go off anywhere during the night and that’s a disappointment. As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … there’s far more excitement going on during the night when I’m asleep than there ever is when I’m awake these days.

In fact, probably my only hope of ever grabbing hold of a nymphet a quarter of my age will be at some point during a nocturnal perambulation.

With nothing to transcribe from last night, after the medication I attacked the backlog of dictaphone notes. With an interruption for breakfast and another one for a shower and clean-up, by the time that it came to leave the apartment the backlog was reduced to a mere 25.

And it goes to prove my point about these nocturnal ramblings because I seem to have passed through the extremely turbulent seas full of whirlpools and turmoil and moved back into calmer waters where I can carry on doing what I do best, whatever than might be.

It’s Monday so I have my regular Monday morning meeting at the Centre Agora at 10:00.

Just for a change I was late getting away, which was a disappointment because when I realised that I had forgotten to bring the little Nikon 1 with me.

That’s the camera that I usually take with me when I’m walking out because it’s small and light, and easy to carry in my pocket. And if I don’t ask it to do too much, the results aren’t all that much less in quality than the big Nikon D500.

And how I wished that I had remembered to bring it because the camera on the telephone is total rubbish. But it’s the best that I had with me so it had to do.

Nevertheless I would have loved to have had a decent high-quality shot of this beautiful image of them preparing the Christmas tree at the Place Pierre Semard.

Health and Safety in the UK would have had a field day, seeing this kind of thing going on. As Isambard Kingdom Brunel once remarked late in his life during an enquiry into procedure at the beginning of the Railway Age, “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

But here’s a more normal photo of them erecting the Christmas tree. It’s nothing like as exciting, is it?

So I carried on to the Centre Agora for our meeting. I had a couple of ideas that might have been useful but because they came from me and not from any of the organisers, they were discreetly brushed aside.

But not to worry. I’ll just keep to doing my own little job and let them get on with it. I hate empire-building but it seems that i’m stuck with it right now. At least they didn’t ask me to make the coffee.

After the meeting I walked all the way back home, calling in at LIDL for a few bits and pieces. Carrots were reduced to half-price and as I’m running a little low, I bought a kilo to freeze.

How, though, I don’t know because there’s no more room in the freezer. I really did make a mistake buying this one. It’s far too small for me.

On the way back I picked up my dejeunette (they are recognising me now in La Mie Caline) and bumped into someone who had been present at the meeting just now.

After lunch I started on Project 004. I need to have about four or five all organised pretty quickly as there seems to be no-one working over the Christmas period and if I want to have my stuff dealt with, it needs to be in by 15th December at the latest.

By the time that I knocked off, I’d done all of the music that I need. I just need to do the speech but I can’t do that yet as my mixer panel still hasn’t arrived and I don’t want to use the dictaphone again.

We had a pause as usual for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The wind had died down somewhat and with the sun being out it was quite a beautiful day. The fishing boat that was out there at the northern tip of the Ile de Chausey was having a good time

And so was Gribouille, the big ginger cat who came for a stoke.

But out there today the skies were totally clear and while the Brittany coast was in haze, the view over to Jersey was the clearest that I have ever seen it.

We had some good shots of the Brittany coast the other day while Jersey was shrouded in haze, but it was the other way round this afternoon.

We’ve never seen the eastern corner of the island looking like this.

That’s St Helier there, and that’s about 54 kilometres away from where I’m standing right now.

We’ve seen the town before, but never with this much clarity. While it’s a tribute to the quality of the camera and the lens, it also has a lot to do with the weather too.

Probably more so in fact.

So as you admire some more of the beautiful Jersey coastline to the west of St Helier, I carried on with my walk.

Surprisingly, given the really nice weather, I counted no more than 5 other people out there taking in the air around my circuit.

This was really a day for being out and about

While you look at the western corner of the island of Jersey, I went to have a look to see what was going on in the chantier navale.

And the answer to that question isn’t “nothing” as you were probably expecting, but “nothing any different from the last few days”.

Just the usual suspects and no new additions.

And that reminds me. I haven’t seen a gravel boat for ages and ages. I wonder why.

It’s no surprise that there isn’t a gravel boat right now and I wouldn’t expect to see one because the tide is well on its way out just now.

All of the boats in the harbour are slowly setting down on the silt in the tidal harbour.

Except for the yellow and white on. That’s careening over quite alarmingly, although careening is a well-known technique in old ship-repairing. Ancient mariners in leaky ships would find a harbour like this where they could careen their boat to one side to repair the bottom of the boat.

And when the tide came back in and the boat would float up with the rising water they would turn the boat round so that when the tide went out next they would careen it over so that the other side was up and they could repair that.

There was no haze down at the bottom end of the Baie de Mont St Michel either. The hotels at the foot of the Mont St Michel were standing out quite clearly and that’s without any effort on my behalf or that of the camera and lens.

The Pointe de Carolles looks beautiful in this weather and the Cabanon Vauban that we visited a couple of times is perching proudly on the top.

Even the little town of Carolles-Plage and the beach is looking quite nice with its reflection in the damp sand

Back here I did a little (just a little) tidying up. The big suitcases for which I don’t have a place, I lifted up the mattress and the bed base and put them underneath the bed. I only use them once a year so they don’t need to be out in the way.

Another thing that I needed to do was to book my next trip to Leuven and Castle Anthrax. As you might expect, it’s on Friday 13th of December.

One of the things that I had been considering was to take myself off into Germany for a couple of days but there was nothing suitable. So I’ve booked my return journey for the Sunday.

And due to rail works, there’s no 08:13 again so I’m on the 08:43. And having to come home via Paris St Lazaire and Caen, I’ll be back 10 minutes early if all goes according to plan even with a wait of over an hour at Caen.

But it’s going to be an exciting trip back because I don’t know the way back across Paris from Gare du Nord to St Lazare and I don’t have much spare time if I miss my way.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, and it was quite delicious too. They’ve been selling some cheap spicy tomato sauce with garlic in Noz so I’ve bought a few jars of that and it adds a certain something to my stuffing.

Pretty cool outside tonight, so there wasn’t anyone about at all as I went for my eveing walk.

A great number of lights out in the English Channel though. Plenty of fishing boats were out there tonight, like this one slowly chugging back to harbour.

I remember saying a few days ago that I don’t think that I’ve ever seen as much fishing activity this close to shore in previous years.

We’ve seen plenty of activity in the bay near Bréhal-Plage just recently too and that’s something that I haven’t noticed previously.

There’s another fishing boat out there tonight having a go at trying to haul in a decent catch.

As for me, I continued my walk and as usual broke into a run on my little track. And I made it all the way to the ramp and half-way up there without too much effort.

So back here and I’m off to bed. 146% and 11.7kms today. Start the month as I mean to go on!

Saturday 30th November 2019 – THINGS ARE …

… looking up here in Granville. And not before time either, I have to say.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I posted a photo of a vegan meal on offer at the local take-out bakery. Admittedly that’s a specialty local baker who cooks on the premised, but today I can post a photo of some industrial vegan bread on sale in the LeClerc hypermarket.

How about that for progress?

We’ve had a little progress here today too. I heard both the first and second alarms go off and then began to drift off into the arms of Morpheus again (hardly a surprise seeing as it was 01:30 when I went to bed and it was now about 06:10)

Anyway, I snatched myself out of it in a desperate attempt to beat the third alarm, only to find that it was in fact just 06:14 – still 6 minutes to go. In fact, by the time the alarm went off I was having my medication.

At about 09:10 I hit the streets today but before that I’d had breakfast, had a shower and done some dictaphone notes.

But outside I headed for LIDL. And although I didn’t spend too much, I did pick up a clothes airer, the type that hangs over a radiator. It’s not very big and doesn’t take too many clothes, but at least it’s an improvement on hanging it all in the bedroom window in this weather.

And that reminds me – I did a machine-load of washing while I was out.

Noz was next, and there was nothing of any great interest there. I only spent 4-odd Euros. But they did have some rubbish knitwear in a bin at €0:99 and I found a woolly hat … “to go on your woolly head” – ed … that was just about my size. And that’s important seeing as mine is in the pocket of the jacket that is hanging up in a hotel in Calgary.

Dodging the gilets jaunes who were out if force today – about a dozen of them – I headed for LeClerc.

We’ve seen one lot of vegan industrial bakery and here’s a second. It’s actually a brioche – that which Marie-Antoinette told the peasants to eat when they said that they had no bread.

It’s perfectly true by the way that this isn’t the first lot of vegan industrial bread at LeClerc. A year or so ago we had vegan croissants and vegan pains au chocolat but all of that was somewhat ephemeral. I hope that they stick around this time.

Once more, I didn’t spend much money here although I did buy some fresh ginger. Jackie has given me her recipe for a cold lemon and ginger drink and I’m determined to try it.

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

And it doesn’t get more pathetic than this. A huge car park that can probably accommodate a couple of thousand vehicles, and this guy parks in the access road right outside the front door.

The access road is pretty narrow there and it’s right by one of the three doors out of the hypermarket, so it’s obstructing the pedestrian access too.

That wasn’t all either. Final stop was at BUT. I’d had a voucher for €50 off for this weekend in view of the purchases I made there a while ago. And as my office chair has now officially collapsed, I went to see what they had.

So now in the back of Caliburn is a replacement chair which will be installed in here tomorrow. I hope that it’s as comfortable as the demonstration one was.

While I was having lunch I heard a commotion out at the back.

My living room overlooks the Public Rooms and they are quite often hired out for activities. Today it looks as if we are having a wedding out there.

So here we are then, complete with confetti. And I hope that they will be very happy together.

After lunch I did a few more dictaphone entries and by the time that I had lost interest, I’d reduced the number to just 38. A good week on those should hopefully see them off and then I’ll start on my photos for the four months that I was away this summer.

But having lost interest, I remembered that I had some washing to put out and also some food to put away. And now the freezer is officially full again. Nothing else will go in there at all.

Some tidying up too, and a play around on the new guitar. And I’ve decided that it’s really good. I’m quite enjoying it.

A quick glance at the clock showed me that it was 17:10. I shouldn’t be here because US Granville are at home against FC Lorient.

Back out on foot and I stormed through the crowds and right across town to the ground. On the way though I stopped to photograph this house in the Route de Villedieu.

It seems that Christmas is coming early for some people.

At the ground, some more exciting news. US Granville are away at some team in Brittany next Saturday night and the club has laid on a free bus for the supporters.

There was a free place too, but there isn’t now! I’m going to have a day out!

As for the match itself, it was another one of those rather aimless games where Granville had no shape and no plan either, relying on breakaways out of a congested midfield.

It almost worked too, but they had an early goal disallowed for offside and also a very dubious offside give against a forward who was nowhere near interfering with play.

Lorient took the lead late in the game and never really looked like conceding it. Top of the table they are, and they deserved the win.

But there were some bizarre substitutions out there. Most of Lorient’s good work was coming down the left wing from a combination of left-back and left midfielder. So both of them were substituted, and I’m still wondering why.

Granville were no better than this. They have a forward who doesn’t look as if he does much but he always sticks a foot out and score a goal at a crucial moment. But they took him off and replaced him with someone who hasn’t done very much at all.

And they have a forward whose energy and keenness is unmatched. He was kept on the bench until it was far too late for him to be doing any good.

By the time we left it was raining heavily so I didn’t hang about on the way home – even running up part of the steep hill to reach the apartment.

And tea was out of a tin too, as is usual on a Saturday when i’ve been footballing.

But now I’m off to bed. i’m really tired (no surprise) and looking forward to my lie-in. And I wonder if those two people who buttonholed me in the street did manage to fond an open pizzeria.

Tuesday 12th November 2019 – I USED TO BE A WEREWOLF

But I’m all right noooooooooooooooooooow!

What a beautiful full moon we are having tonight. And to be on the safe side, when I had my morning shower today, I shaved the palms of my hands just in case.

And there was plenty of garlic in my evening meal too – ready for when I go to Castle Anthrax on Thursday

Last night wasn’t as late as it might have been. I was actually in bed at some time round about 01:30. Furthermore, much to my own surprise as well as doubtless to yours, I was up and about long before the third alarm went off, sometime between 06:07 and 06:19.

There was time enough to go on a nocturnal ramble, but I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, you’re probably eating your evening meal or something. Needless to say, a member of my family put in an appearance during the night. And that’s enough to put the willies up anyone, especially me.

An early start and early breakfast meant plenty of time to deal with the dictaphone notes and by about 08:30 I’d done 6 or 7. And I’m glad that I stopped where I did because I’ve reached what might be called a turbulent period in my life when I fell into the pit.

A shower next and a general clean-up and then I was off up to the Centre Agora for a meeting. And the net result is that tomorrow I’m off to interview a rock musician. And on the way home, I was buttonholed by someone else and invited to do another chat to some different people about Uummaannaaq.

The walk up to the Centre Agora was very pleasant and interesting, especially as I stormed once more up the bank as if I was on my way to invade Poland.

But I came to a dead stop when I was this garage or car port or whatever just here. I wonder what the architect had in mind when he designed this. It certainly can’t have been anything that any normal person might have been imagining.

Probably some Cossack’s daughter. After all she must know the Steppes.

On the way back from the Centre Agora I called in at LIDL for some shopping. Not too much because I’ll be away for a few days starting Thursday and there’s no point in stocking up with supplies that won’t be eaten.

But there were grapes on special offer again and I love grapes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Which reminds me – just excuse me a moment …

After lunch I bashed on with the web site amendments and I have run aground there. I’ve reached the L’Anse aux Meadows pages now and I’m having a serious think about them.

When I wrote them back in 2010 I didn’t know anything like half as much about the Norse voyages to North America as I do now since I’ve been able to lay my hands on books by people like Carl Rafn, Arthur Middleton Reeves and William Hovgaard.

Rafn is a very interesting author because his Antiquities Americanae, written in 1837, was the first book to take seriously the Norse voyages to North America and the first to actually give scientific study to the Norse Sagas.

It was dismissed, even ridiculed, by many subsequent historians, even such reputable people as Nansen who described the sagas as nothing more than “works of romantic fiction”, but nevertheless inspired a great many people to take his work forward.

It led ultimately to William Nunn’s epic “Wineland voyages;: Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland” from 1914. Munn was the first person to pinpoint L’Anse aux Meadows as a Norse site (and as far as I am aware, the first person to pick up on Climate Change too) and which led 50 years ago to the excavations of the Ingstads and their discovery on the Norse ruins.

There was another phone call to be made too. I still haven’t received the paperwork for Caliburn’s insurance despite my conversation of 22nd October, so I rang them again. They told me that they hadn’t received my e-mail with my attachment, something that I find totally bizarre.

So I’ve sent them again. In the meantime they’ve sent me an attestation.

Then I started to pack up all of the rubbish in the living room. Cardboard boxes everywhere that needed moving out and an object that needs packing up ready for returning, as well as taking all of the rubbish out to the bins.

So much involved in the tidying up was I that I missed my afternoon walk. But seeing that I was already at 103% of my daily activity, I shan’t worry too much right now.

But tidying up, hey? What about that?

Tea was a burger on a bap with baked potatoes and veg., followed by fruit salad and blackcurrant sorbet. And it was all absolutely delicious.

This evening Iwent out for my evening walk. And straight away I was blasted by a wind the like of which I haven’t felt while I’ve been living here.

Out at sea was a trawler on its way back into harbour and the poor thing was struggling through the waves.

Even at this distance I could see that it wasn’t having a very easy time of it. Like I said, my hat goes off to whoever it is out there in weather like this.

On and round the corner and into the shelter from the winds.

And here I could eve the spectacular beauty of one of the most perfect full moons that I have ever seen.

The one that I saw at the Phare des Monts on the North Shore of the St Lawrence in Québec in 2012 was certainly spectacular, but for completely different reasons and at a completely different time.

The moonlight was bright enough for me to be able to pick up some detail down at the chantier navale and in the outer harbour.

It’s not as clear as the photos that I took last winter, but that’s because this is a hand-held shot and the other one was on a tripod with a very long exposure.

However, I’m not going to be taking a tripod out in a wind like this. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it didn’t do the Nikon D3000 very much good at all.

By now, the trawler that I had seen out at sea was now close to home. And I bet that the crew members were relieved. And so was I too.

And having seen it safely home I headed for home too. At something of a run too and I managed about 300 or 400 metres before I had to stop for breath.

But I soon found my second wind because I was able to run up the top flight of stairs to my apartment. And that reminded me that coming back from my morning out, despite having come up the hill without stopping, I had run up both flights of stairs with no problem.

Rosemary rang me when I returned and we had a good chat for an hour. And now I’m ready for bed. The fitbit, or what’s left of it, tells me that I’ve walked (or ran) 11.2 kilometres today, or 132% of my daily total.

I really don’t know where all of this energy has come from though. I hope that I’m not going to en up paying for it.

Thursday 31st October 2019 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to get out for my evening walk/run tonight.

Just for a change I’d managed to be ready quite early so that I could make the most of it, when Rosemary rang. One hour and 35 minutes we were on the phone and so that was really that. I can’t go for a walk at 22:00

And so, all in all, it was a good job that I’d had my long walk up to LIDL today.

Not this morning though because I was doing other things this morning. Like sleeping. I didn’t leave the bed until about 09:30 this morning.

And it wasn’t my fault either. There I was planning to go to bed and have a nice early night last night, and just as I was about to switch off the computer, then Hawkwind Live Chronicles came onto the playlist.

The best album I’ve heard for a long time too so I stayed awake to listen to it. All 1 hour and 25 minutes of it.

And as that ended, then Ocean by Eloy came on. The second-best album I’ve heard in a while. So I stayed up and listened to that.

What with one thing and another, it was eventually 03:05 when I switched off the computer and went to bed.

Mind you, it wasn’t completely wasted time because I’d done some work updating the web pages during that time.

A late start meant that everything else, like my shower, was late too. And before I hit the streets I had to organise the rail tickets for Belgium and print them all off so that I had them to hand.

First stop in town was at the bank. I needed to pay for what I purchased yesterday and as the money is going abroad it needed to be done quickly and, more importantly, correctly. Hence the bank.

Second stop was at the railway station. I know that I’m trying to go paperless these days but I would feel a lot better with the tickets actually in my hand, so I printed them off at the machine there.

Finally I made it t LIDL but I didn’t buy all that much. However they did have a range of vegan blackcurrant sorbet so in a gesture of solidarity I bought one. What I didn’t buy though was garlic! Sold out! And that’s a shock for me because a kitchen without any garlic isn’t a kitchen at all.

On the way back to the apartment I took a diversion via the docks to see the new boat. And she’s not a new boat at all but our old friend Aztec Lady back from her summer season at Svalbard I must remember one of these days to find out more about her voyages.

After lunch I tackled a job that I have been putting off for a week or so – and that was to freeze the carrots. Only just in time too because they were on the turn. But they are all peeled, diced, blanched and in the freezer.

And what was left (there were too many for the saucepan) I made a carrot and coconut soup, I was rather too extravagant with the powdered ginger and it’s rather overwhelmed it. Still, it’s in now and you can’t take it out.

While that was going on, I had a go at tidying the freezer. And there is tons of stuff in there. Enough pies to sink a ship for a start, and a second set of four frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsits that I had forgotten that I had made. So for the next two months it’s pie one night and kidney bean and aubergine whatsit on another before I even start thinking about the rest of the meals.

Last night before going to bed I’d checked Caliburn’s battery. 14.0 volts and the “fully charged” light was on, so I had unplugged it. This morning when I checked it, it was showing 12.9 volts (which is good) and this afternoon, 6 hours later, it was still showing 12.9, so it’s not losing any significant charge. I coupled it up to Caliburn and he fired up immediately into life, so at least I can take him for his controle technique on Tuesday and be back on four wheels by the end of the week.

Having done that, I went for my afternoon walk. And on returning I found that somehow I have contrived to manage to lose my fitbit. And that’s before the new bracelet has arrived too, for which I pad a shed-load of money. No idea where I lost it either. It’s probably fallen out of my pocket while I was walking around, in which case it’s probably gone for good.

These days I seem to be making far too much of a habit of losing all my possessions. I’m not sure what’s going on but I definitely seem to be breaking up.

Back at the apartment I had a little doze for 10 minutes and regular readers of this rubbish will be the first to remark that this is the first time in about a week that I’ve crashed out. That’s definitely progress of some kind.

But once back on my feet I tackled a few of these marathon dictaphone entries. Five of them in fact and that might sound reasonable, but the mega 20-minute one is next on the list and I need to be on form for that. So that’s a job for tomorrow morning, I reckon.

Tea, was as promised, the burger on a bap. delicious it was too, even though it was interrupted by two young girls trick-or-treating. Luckily I have a sweetie-jar here so I was able to hand out some goodies. They aren’t getting their hands on my grapes though. That’s the one good thing that I’ve found about going out for small amounts of shopping several times per week – tha it means that I can buy several loads of grapes.

As I’d used the last of the coconut soya cream in the carrot soup, I went for the blackcurrant sorbet to go on my fruit salad, only to find that I’d forgotten to put it in the freezer. “That was an expensive way to get a storage container” I mused, but it hadn’t actually defrosted too far.

So Rosemary on the phone, and now bed-time. No guitar today, and no web-site amendment either. I’m falling behind again and I need to get on top of things. It’s too late for an early night too.

I really must get myself organised.

Tuesday 29th October 2019 – CALIBURN WOULDN’T …

… start this morning as I discovered when I went to give him a whirl while I was taking the rubbish outside.

The other day when I started him and ran him for a while I mustn’t have done it for long enough to recharge the battery properly because it was pretty low this morning.

Having hunted down a 10mm socket I managed to disconnect the battery and drag it up to the apartment. According to the multimeter, there’s just 11.9 Volts in the battery. Luckily a while back I bought a new small battery charger so I was able to couple it up and even as we speak, it’s simmering away nicely at 13.4 volts with 2 of the 5 bars illuminated.

By tomorrow morning it might be ready.

Mind you, it’s not a surprise. He’s well over 12 years old and he’s had just two batteries in that time. When the second one failed earlier this year, Terry gave me the one off his old van but it had stood around for a couple of years so I wasn’t expecting too much.

So I’ll have to see if this battery holds its charge when it’s done. If not, a new battery might be on the cards.

And Caliburn wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to start today either. I certainly didn’t. In fact it was about 08:45 when my sooty foot I put on the floor.

Mind you, I have a good excuse. And that was that I was still up and about working until long after 03:00.

Anyone would have thought that after my marathon hike across half of Normandy yesterday I would have been stark out flat on my back from round about teatime until the next Preston Guild. But not a bit of it. I kept on going – and working too, right until the small hours, even taking some time out to have a play on the guitar.

Mind you, I felt like death this morning and that’s really no surprise. It took me a good while to find my bearings and that’s not a five-minute job either.

Plenty of time though during the night to go for a wander around and I found myself back on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. And in the company of Pollux too, so welcome back to you. And when I finish scratching my head trying to decipher the incoherent ramblings on my dictaphone, I will tell you all about where I went and what I did.

When I awoke I found that I had run out of muesli so I had to make some more. And in my deadened state I managed to spill half of the contents of the cornflakes packet all across the floor.

After breakfast I reviewed the e-mails and found one relating to the meeting that I had yesterday. That involved doing some work.

Such as dictating a text in French (i had about 9 takes before there was one that satisfied me) and then editing it. And then adding a pile of music and editing that.

And while the music part was no problem, the dictation was – for the rather prosaic reason that I don’t have a microphone here. I had to dictate it onto the dictaphone, upload it and then edit it to remove the crackles.

It’s a good job that I spent all of that time a few years ago mastering “Audacity”.

So that was the morning taken care of – and there will be a few more days like this now until next Monday. And we’ll see where we go from there.

After a rather late lunch I went for a walk in the rain around the headland. There were a few people – only the foolhardy – out there desperately trying to negotiate the lakes that had appeared along the footpaths. I didn’t stay out long.

The historic dictaphone entries that needed deciphering today were all rather on the short side so I did 8 today. I’m trying to get ahead because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are some marathon ones to come from the time that I was in an emotional whirlpool.

There was also time for me to do some file updating too. But talking of my website … “well, one of us is” – ed … it has been trawled for the last few days by a Microsoft bot with an IP address in Washington State, “Microsoft Way” to be precise, but with a physical presence in Chicago.

I solved the mystery of the New Jersey visitor but this one from Chicago is bizarre.

Tea tonight was an aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit. Aubergines were cheap the other day so I bought one with the intention of making a whatsit this week. And it’s delicious too, except that I might have been somewhat extravagant with the chili powder I’ll need to put the toilet paper in the fridge before I go to bed.

No walk though. It’s teeming down outside and after a few hundred yards I gave up and came back inside.

I’ll just have to go for a longer walk tomorrow.

Sunday 27th October 2019 – DID YOU REMEMBER …

… to put your clocks back last night?

Back one hour for those of us living in the Real World and back 200 years for those of you living on that insignificant offshore island out there somewhere.

That isn’t anything that would bother me too much because most of what I have is automatic. So when I awoke this morning at … errr … 08:50 to find that it really was 08:50 and the automatic adjusters had done their stuff, I was immensely happy.

For once, I’d had a really good sleep.

It was … errr … somewhat later when I stuck my sooty foot out of bed and had the medication. And later still by the time that I had had my breakfast. But isn’t that what Sunday is all about? The one day each week where you can do nothing and not regret it.

It reminds me of a famous quote from “Gunsmoke” which went something along the lines of “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 “. Sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.

First thing that I did this morning (or what was left of it) was SHOCK! HORROR! some tidying up. The bedroom was looking rather cluttered so i actually put some stuff away for a change.

A friend was on the internet too so we had a little chat for a while seeing as it was Sunday.

Just as I was about to go to lunch, someone else came on line. She’s a techy, savvy person who works as a professional web designer and investigator, and had been referred to me by a friend.

She had a look at my site with various tools and although there might be one or two little issues here and there, the coding that I did the other day works fine and is visible as it is supposed to be all (the odd issue about Adobe Flashplayer here and there) across every browser and operating system, even Safari and MAC.

That is something that has pleased me greatly.

So after lunch I had a couple of things to do and then went for a walk outside. I took the longer route around the headland seeing as I had missed my promised morning walk. It’s somewhat tough clambering up and down the steep path and stairs but I need to push myself onwards and, of course, upwards.

Tea was another pizza – just as delicious as earlier in the week, and followed by the rest of the rice pudding. That was good too and I enjoyed it very much.

And for the evening walk, I pushed myself along into a run again and did a couple of hundred metres before I had to slow down. But that is only positive because, as I said before, there were times with this illness when I could barely walk.

And I’ll keep at it too. I’ll see if I can’t get up something like I did when I was running every night for miles 25 years ago, although there aren’t the facilities here. In any case, I intend to grow old disgracefully.

As for work though, I’ve made a start on transcribing the dictaphone entries. But you can all calm down for I am a long way from anything interesting, controversial or salacious. At a rate of 7 entries per day (which is what I did today although judging by the size of a few of them, the rate will end up at much less than that) it will take me a good few months to catch up with everything. You will all have died of boredom long before then.

So now I’m listening to Hawkwind Live Chronicles, magnificent album that it is, and about to continue the work on updating my website, now that I know that it’s working properly.

Not that I’m going to be here long though. I have a meeting tomorrow so I need my beauty sleep.

Friday 25th October 2019 – I’M ALL …

… alone here tonight. And I will be for the next couple of weeks too.

Strawberry Moose has gone off on his travels again to see some more of his fans.

No-one is quite sure when he’ll be back again but I bet that he will have a few stories to tell me when he returns. It’s all right for some, isn’t it though? Some of us have to stay behind and work for a living.

Not that you would notice, though, around here. Despite the three alarms going off this morning, it was still 07:40 when I finally hauled myself out of bed.

But then I’d had another late night (albeit not as late as the other night) scratching my head over this blasted Javascript menu. I told you last night when I wrote my blog that I was a just a couple of inches away from a breakthrough. And so by the time that I went to bed I must have advanced about half a millimetre.

It wasn’t all work though. TOTGA was on-line so we had a good chat for an hour or so too. It’s been ages since we had a really good chin-wag and it was nice to hear her dulcet tones again.

The purpose of my chat was to try to persuade her to come and join in the fun in Leuven. But without success. “A Prior engagement” she said. Not like Kenneth Williams who once turned down an invitation on the grounds of “a subsequent engagement”, so I suppose that I ought to be thankful for that at least.

So this morning after the medication and breakfast, I had a stinking hot shower and then dashed round to tidy everywhere up. I was expecting visitors and the place was something of a tip with my having unpacked a l’improviste.

By the time that Liz and Terry turned up, the place was looking something like, and they could at least sit down.

We had a coffee and a good chat about this and that – not about the other because that is of course sub judice right now – and I told them of my (mis)adventures on my voyage just now.

I’d mentioned it to TOTGA last night and she told me that she had never heard me talk like I did at that moment (which is not really true because she remembers me when I was someone else, although she was only a kid at the time) so I made an effort to restrain myself (something that doesn’t come easily to me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) when talking to Liz.

Nevertheless Liz was rather aghast. Not that this means that she was surprised. She used to be a primary school teacher in a deprived area of the UK so she’s seen human nature at its worst, but I suppose that with the voyage being as expensive as it was, we both expected a better class of person with a better standard of behaviour.

So they wandered off and I sat down to crack on with my Javascript menu. I forgot about my additional walk.

By 16:00 I had made a breakthrough – of sorts. I can now make Javascript tags pick up web pages on my own site but not on an external site. Still, it’s progress of a sort and it means that I can go onwards.

To celebrate, I made lunch. Yes – at 16:00 because I had forgotten earlier, being engrossed. And it was something of a disappointment because the bread that I had left in the ice compartment of the fridge and which I had taken out to defrost – well, it wasn’t very good at all and it all ended up in the bin.

But it’s Saturday tomorrow and I’m going for a walk to LIDL where I can buy some more.

Not wishing to forget another walk, I nipped out straight afterwards for a lap around the headland and then back to carry on with my menu.

And, as is quite often the case, the simplest solutions are usually the correct one. I was struggling away for quite a while trying to work out how to display a vertical line. ASCII codes, ALT codes and all of that didn’t work, so in a moment of despair, I tried
document.write( ‘|’);
and much to my surprise, it actually worked. And I’d wasted an hour or so on it too.

Another thing that I tried to do was to figure out how to make a space in Javascript. Once again, after much binding in the marsh, I tried the simple
document.write( ‘ ‘);
and that worked too.

After that, passing onto a new line was easy. Yes. I tried
document.write(‘br /’);
and that just printed out the br /. So I tried
putting the br / bit in the “greater than” and “less that” brackets, and that worked just fine.

There’s probably a far easier method to do it all, but at least I know that what I’ve programmed seems to work well enough for now. And having it all saved in an external file, I only need to update it once for it to update on every page on my site.

Just two tasks to work out now.

The simplest one is how to access an external page via a Javascript link. I’m hoping that that won’t be too difficult, but knowing me, it probably will.

More difficult will be the task of nesting Javascript files. I want to make a sidebar file with the menu, the hit counter, the stats analyser and the Amazon blocks in it. Then I can just import the main Javascript file into every page on my site with all of the subsidiary blocks in it, and an amendment to the main Javascript file will make the amendment on every page.

Iframes or *.php would ordinarily be the answer, but Secured sites won’t display iframes and I know nothing about *.php, and at my age I’m too old to learn this kind of thing.

Talking of being too old, I went for my evening walk around the city walls and at one stage broke into a run. I kept it up for a couple of hundred metres too.

That surprised me immensely, because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that after my operation in January 2016 when they ripped out half of my insides, I couldn’t even walk and had to have re-education.

It really impressed me, that little bit of running did. Maybe it’s something to do with losing all of this weight. I dunno.

This evening I carried on with the Javascript menu, listening to a couple of really belting albums. Elegy by the Nice was the first one. No relation to Grey’s “Allergy to a Country Churchyard”, it’s one of the all-time classic albums that will always be on my playlist.

The second is much more exciting. One of the ones that I picked up in Ottawa.

After Arthur Brown disappeared from “The Crazy World of …”, Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer recruited a couple of new musicians and carried on as “Atomic Rooster”. Palmer left to join ELP, but Crane struggled on for quite a while, with a revolving door of new members and mental health breakdowns until he committed suicide in 1989.

In 1980, during one of their more active periods, they played at the Marquee Club in London. No bassist – and no vocalist either, so the guitarist John Du Cann sang on the vocal tracks. And while he will be the first to admit that he’s no vocalist, he gave it a really good go and the energy and enthusiasm that roared off the stage on Live at The Marquee 1980 is absolutely phenomenal.

But now it’s bed-time. And I have a lot to do tomorrow. All on foot too!

And I almost forgot to say “hello” to Pollux who put in an appearance during the night. First time for a while too.

Wednesday 16th October 2019 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in one of the departure lounges of the worst airport in the world, with the rudest staff I have ever met. I hate this place with a passion that cannot be measured on any scale that is known to Mankind but here I am. I’ve decided that it’s time that I was moving on before I put down roots.

And roots indeed. The last time that I slept in my own bed was on 26th June – that’s 16 weeks or so ago and while I’m not going home just yet I ought to be getting a little closer to it.

A lot of water has passed underneath the bridge since 26th June, that’s for sure.

Talking of passing water, I had another bad night last night. A whole succession of cramps in the calves and shins and it kept me awake for an eternity. I took advantage of the wakefulness by going down the corridor, but I would much rather have had a decent sleep instead.

I suppose that I must have dropped off at one point though. Or maybe more because there are several recordings on the dictaphone that I don’t remember making. Anyway, at about 07:15 I was wide-enough awake to push on with things.

No breakfast though. I repacked the suitcase and bunged another pile of stuff into it (and it registered 19.7 kilos at the airport’s weigh-in machine so I’m clearly getting back to normal) so that the backpack is at least manageable.

At 10:30 I set off for a walk, leaving my baggage behind for a moment. All the way up to the top of the town where I met Josee. I had done a little research in the area and discovered a little Lebanese restaurant in the basement of the shopping precinct so I took her there for a meal. And it turned out that she was well-known to the proprietor.

Later on, I had a leisurely stroll around the town and visited a few buildings that I had seen on my travels in the past. The big one near rue Sherbrooke that I had seen on several occasions is in fact the former hostel for the Deaf and Dumb of the city.

Eventually I rescued my suitcase and by 17:00 I was on the 747 bus to the airport. And it was then that I realised that I had left behind my raincoat and my aniseed balls. The objects and items that I have abandoned behind me on my travels could have filled another suitcase.

It was a good idea to go early to the airport because the traffic was horrendous. It’s a working day of course so we had the rush hour to deal with and there were queues everywhere. Our bus even lost a mirror against a lamp-post trying to squeeze past a queue of traffic turning right.

The departure check-in wasn’t open yet so I had a sandwich at Subway and then handed back my card for the USA. I won’t be going there for another while unless something quite dramatic happens.

Security is always extremely stressful here so I don’t propose to talk too much about it, even though I’ve had much worse passes through airport control than this. Now I’m sitting quietly waiting for my flight to be called.

But before I go, let’s talk about music. For no reason at all a track suddenly popped into my head out of nowhere. It’s Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and regardless of how apposite the lyrics might be vis-a-vis my own personal circumstances and how I have lived my life, then just as Colosseum Live reminds me of almost every late and lonely night that I have ever spent on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, this particular track reminds me of just one particular night that was later than most and which I didn’t ever want to end.

I wonder if it means anything to anyone else.

That brings me round to the music that I am listening to now. Tom Petty has come round on the playlist and I have Into The Great Wide Open going full-blast.

Not a good idea right now of course. Far From it, in fact.
I heard you singing to no one
I saw you dancing all alone
One day you belonged to me
Next day I just wouldn’t know
One day all the rules will bend
And you and I will meet again

“One day all the rules will bend and you and I will meet again”. Nothing is more certain than that. You just have to believe.

“How could I get so close to you, and still feel so far away?”

Quite!

Monday 14th October 2019 – SOMETIMES IT’S VERY HARD …

… to say goodbye to people with whom one has been associated for so long, but today is the day that I hit the road, Jack (or Jacques, seeing that I’ll be heading towards Quebec).

4th September I arrived in New Brunswick and apart from 10 days or so clearing out my storage unit in Montreal and visiting family and friends in Ottawa I’ve been here ever since.

If I’m not careful I’ll be putting down roots next, and that will never do. I was born under a wandering star, as the old song went, and I’m destined to wander for the rest of my life until, making reference to a certain posting 6 or so weeks ago when I was still aboard The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, Charon ferries me across the River Styx.

With it being Thanksgiving (which reminds me, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian family and friends and new readers, et Bonne Action de Grace a toute le monde francophone Canadien) we had another lie-in this morning. Nothing like as dramatic as yesterday’s. Not quite so early in bed, a small disturbance during the night, and raising myself from the Dead round about 08:45. But still, I’ll take that over almost any other night that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.

Eventually there was some noise coming from the rest of the house so I went in to join the (af)fray. We had a reasonably heavy brunch, nothing like the legendary Sunday one but a good one nevertheless, and then hung around chatting for ages. Everyone seemed to be in a very sociable mood today.

With me heading for the hills, I managed to make the printer fire up so I could print off all of my travel documents ready for the trip. Another task accomplished.

This afternoon people had tasks to do so I busied myself packing and having another play around on the bass guitar before I put it away in Strider where it will live for the next foreseeable future.

A curry was on the agenda for supper so for a change Hannah and I attacked it. For some reason that I don’t understand, it didn’t taste anything like as good as any previous one that I have made. I hope that I’m not losing my touch!

But as for my carrot soup, well, what more can I say? All of the leftover carrots (because there were tons of them) steamed slowly to warm them up, with bay leaves for added flavour, and then simmered gently for a while in coconut milk with ginger. Finally the bay leaves were removed and the whole lot given a ride around in the whizzer.

Totally delicious.

Finished packing, and leaving a few things behind such as my spare clothes and my deck shoes, because I seem to have acquired a Tupperware microwave fryer and a pile of CDs somewhere on my travels and it won’t all fit in, and then Rachel took me down to Irvings in Florenceville and the Maritime Atlantic bus.

21:15 it was scheduled to arrive, and at 21:15 arrive it did. And remind me never to travel on a Bank Holiday or thereabouts because it was packed and it was a struggle to find a seat. What I did find though was a backpack under the seat, apparently left behind by someone who had alighted earlier, so I took it down to the driver.

We eventually arrived at Riviere du Loup where we all change buses. It was cold, miserable, wet and rainy but nevertheless I had a chat to the driver. He comes up all the way from Moncton, sleeps in the hotel next door, and then drives all the way back the following day. Reminded me of my days with Shearings when I used to do an overnight run every Friday night from Manchester to Glasgow and Edinburgh and return the following day.

And while I was chatting, someone came around “has anyone seen a black backpack?” so I passed him on to the driver.

So now I’m sitting on a seat in a draughty windswept crowded waiting room here waiting for my bus to Montreal to arrive. I’m reaching the end of this phase of my journey and who knows where I’m going to end up next?

As Winston Churchill once said after the British flight from the Germans at Dunkirk, “this is not the beginning of the end. It is merely the end of the beginning”.

Sunday 13th October 2019 – I SAID YESTERDAY …

… that I was hoping to have a really good sleep last night. And to be honest, I said it without too much conviction.

So consequently, having closed my eyes at some time rather like 22:45 or thereabouts last night, no-one was more surprised than me to notice that when I reopened them, it was … errr … 09:45.

Out like a light, totally painless, didn’t feel a thing.

Even more surprisingly, all of my old good humour, positive thought and optimism had reappeared too. That led me to the conclusion that the deep depression in which I have found myself over the last … I dunno … seven or eight weeks and which affected my sea voyage around the High Arctic so much was caused by nothing more than good old plain and simple fatigue and exhaustion.

That’s certainly borne out by the facts, where in the latter stages of that journey I was existing on about three hours of sleep each night and being kept running by nothing more than adrenalin.

So this morning, with it being a Sunday, everyone else was having a lie-in too and no-one surfaced much before 11:00. The breakfast brunch ended up being much later than it usually is but it was delicious all the same.

After lunch I took Zoe down to her house in Woodstock. And by the time we got … “ohhh not again!” – ed. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I used to hire a Dodge Caravan I had a mattress that I used for sleeping. Almost new, it didn’t have much use and so when I emptied my storage locker I brought it back and gave it to Zoe for when she has visitors round at her house.

We went back up to Bob and Ellen’s afterwards to drop her off for a Thanksgiving Dinner. On the way we called at the tyre depot and a mammoth search around the premises turned up my missing notebook for which I shall be eternally grateful.

Ellen made me a coffee and we had a little chat, and then I wished them all goodbye. They wished me a pleasant voyage back to Europe, which was nice of them.

When I returned, everyone was out tidying up the yard. I was put on fire duty, in charge of the rubbish burning. We ended up with fire everywhere except where it was supposed to be, but armed with a big metal snow shovel I was able to deal with the matter before the house burned down.

I ended up smelling like a fire myself, so a shower and change of clothes was called for.

Some more stuff disappeared out of Strider too – into the garage downstairs.

Thanksgiving dinner here tonight. Rachel was cooking lamb for everyone so I made stuffed peppers for our little visitor and me. They were quite delicious. As a special treat I had saved two of the vegan muffins and the two of us ate them to celebrate our own Thanksgiving.

Plenty of carrots left over so the plan for tomorrow is to make a carrot soup using coconut milk, ginger and bay leaves. Meanwhile, I put the lamb bones in some water with some sage, thyme, rosemary and olive oil and I’m boiling them down to make some lamb stock. Not for me, I hasten to add, but for the basis of the weekly work soup for the carnivores.

But it did remind me of the story about when the BBC closed down the children’s programmes on radio and went to sell off all of the assets
“How much did we get for Larry the Lamb?” asked the BBC’s accountant.
“Three and six a pound” was the reply.

Rachel and I are chatting right now as I’m typing, and I’ll be off to bed in a short while. Desperate for another long sleep tonight (without the alarms because it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow) but who knows?

And I need it too. Tomorrow is going to be a very long and painful night and I won’t be having much sleep at all.

Saturday 12th October 2019 – IT’S THE FIRST …

… day of the Bank Holiday today and I have celebrated it by doing absolutely nothing at all.

And that is just as well because I had a horrible night last night. Lying in bed watching the clock go round and round as I tried – not very successfully – to go to sleep.

Yet sleep I must have done at one point as I awoke at 05:45 without the benefit of an alarm. Raining again, and there’s the metal roof of a trailer right underneath my bedroom window.

The alarms went off as usual but quite frankly I couldn’t have cared less about them. I went back down the bed. But Rosemary rand me up at about 08:00 and I spent a pleasant hour or so talking to her. That fired me up to take my medication and to go and make myself a coffee.

Liz was on line too so we had a chat on the internet too – a chat that went on in a kind of desultory fashion all throughout the day. And that included the news that Strawberry Moose will be going on another journey not long after he returns home.

Having had my coffee I was in no real mood for breakfast so I did without. And my fast, such as it was, went on until about 15:00 when I made myself some toast.

In between the coffee and toast I had been sorting out all of my stuff, throwing some stuff away, sticking some more in Strider and taking some stuff out of Strider to take home with me. I found a lot of stuff that was missing but to my great dismay, I can’t find my notebook now.

I’ve already lost one in my jacket in Calgary and to lose a second will be a disaster. So if you gave me your e-mail address on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, then send it to me again using the comments link on the blog.

I shan’t publish the information, but at least I’ll have it for when I return home and can sort out the photos that I’ve promised you.

Once I’d tidied up and had my toast I spent a few hours playing on the bass. Working out a few more bass lines, in particular to a few tracks by Counting Crows off their Recovering The Satellites album. That, by the way, is another album that is guaranteed to reduce me into a state of depression.

A couple of the lyrics are quite meaningful (well, they all are, but in different ways). One in particular reminds me of an incredibly lengthy chat that I had with someone five or six weeks ago, quite late one night
Gonna get back to basics
Guess I’ll start it up again
I’m fallin’ from the ceiling
You’re falling from the sky now and then
Maybe you were shot down in pieces
Maybe I slipped in between
But we were gonna be the wildest
The Wildest
The Wildest
People they ever hoped to see
Just you and me
But as Peter Townsend would tell us, it’s all about Time and Chance, isn’t it?

Very similar to when I used to be repairing my old farmhouse, I reckon. When I had the time I didn’t have the money. And when I had the money I didn’t have the time.

Zoe came into my room later, wondering why I wasn’t coming out to be sociable. I suppose that I ought to be more sociable than I am, so I told her that if she made me a coffee I would come out and drink it. So she did, and I did.

Rachel and I cooked tea tonight, stir-fry vegetables and rice in soy sauce with vegan spring rolls. Delicious it was too. There was some apple crumble left over from last weekend, but there isn’t now.

We all chatted for a while and then like The Knights Of The Round Table we all went our separate ways.

Now I’m back in my room, wondering what tonight is going to bring me. Sleep, I hope, if I’m lucky. I could do with a pile of that. But something extra would be nice too. And right now, I’m listening to Jackson Heights and their album King’s Progress, and in particular the track “Insomnia” where Lee Jackson sings
The whole world’s still sleeping
Kept warm by their dreams
Wrapped up in their loved ones
How peaceful it seems
Lay your head on the pillow
How weary it seems
You would give a small fortune
To get back in your dreams

Those are sentiments with which I concur whole-heartedly.

Thursday 10th October 2019 – I DON’T UNDERSTAND …

… why, but I am just totally stressed out right now to an extent that I didn’t know was possible.

There has been an “incident” (which I’m not going to relate) that not only is nothing to do with me, but doesn’t even relate to me at all and doesn’t even affect me in the slightest, but for some reason it has got deep under my skin.

One thing that the doctors told me is that in order to prolong my life as much as possible I have to avoid all kinds of stresses and strains and any kind of emotional impact.

With having such a low blood count as I do, my heart is having to beat twice as fast and i have to breathe twice as fast to provide enough oxygen to my vital organs. It’s only because I have a coeur de champion that I have kept going for so long, but if I keep on going like today my days are definitely numbered.

I need to get a grip.

And that doesn’t apply just to this particular incident either. Despite an early night, and despite sleeping right through the alarms this morning, it was still 07:20 before I surfaced.

All of the rubbish needed taking down to the street for the dustmen so I took it down before breakfast.

Another leisurely morning and then I went up to the tire depot. Things weren’t quite so busy today and rather like my namesake the mathematician, I did three fifths of five eights of … errr … absolutely nothing. I ended up sleeping for most of the day and that is worrying me intently.

Well, I didn;t actually do absolutely nothing. I taught Zoe to use the new tyre comparison program that I uploaded, and even found a few new features on it too.

Another thing that I did, which ought to have made my blood boil but didn’t, much to my surprise, was to give someone a piece of my mind down the telephone.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I ordered a chip for Strider to deal with his excessive fuel consumption. It was sent back to the supplier because “insufficient address”. A week or so ago I telephoned the supplier, amended the address slightly and so they posted it again.

Only to have it returned a second time.

I telephoned the maildrop place in Mars Hill, just across the border in the USA to ask why they keep on returning it.
“But you don’t have an account with us”
“What do you mean ‘an account’? We’ve been having stuff sent to you for as long as I can remember (which is at least 18 years) and we’ve never needed an account”.
“Well, you do now since we’ve taken it over”
“So if that’s the case, why didn’t you ring up and tell all of your customers that the procedures have changed? And why did you refuse my parcel when my phone number is on the address label and you could have invited me to come over and open an account?”

No answer.

But the suppliers are very understanding and they are sending it now by post direct to Canada (which is what I should have done in the fist place), and it’ll arrive after I’ve returned home of course.

Trying to save pennies here and there is ending up costing me a fortune. It’s false economy.

And people complain about a recession and how things are tight. That guy in Mars Hill has just lost $7:00 because he’s too lazy to pick up the phone and make a phone call.

Later on I gave Darren a hand with the one-tonne Dually which he drove home while I took the post to the Post Office, and then I drove him back to the garage to pick up the three-tonner.

And if you are wondering whether that means that we finally have all of the cars and trucks (except the two twenty-tonners and the artic tractor of course) back at home (first time since I don’t know when) then Rachel’s Golf has had to go to have an exchange driveshaft exchanged once more. Nothing seems to last like it did, but even so, 18 months for a driveshaft is rather extreme).

Rachel cooked a lovely meal for tea and then I helped with the washing and drying. Now I’m sitting in my bedroom not doing all that much right now.

Except to listen to the music. It has a very calming influence on me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and Tinsley Ellis’ “Mystery To Me” is about as good as gets. I’ve been teaching myself to play the lead guitar break (the one from 03:10) on the bass as a way of organising myself.

Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. The only thing wrong with today though was my attitude and I need to do something about that.

Sunday 6th October 2019 – IT’S BEEN …

… another day that has been somewhat … errr … less-lively than the others.

Sunday is a Day of Rest as we all know, and resting until about 08:30 flat-out with hardly an interruption during the night is as restful as it gets.

I did manage to leave the bed though round about 09:15 for a trip down the corridor and on returning I found that the place in my nice warm bed had been taken by Cujo the Killer Cat, so I had company for a while.

The Taylor Breakfast Brunch was of the usual high standard, although it was rather later than usual because Strider and I had to run to the shops for some milk as we had run out.

I was summoned to the telephone too, and that took about 20 minutes to deal with.

After breakfast we chilled for a while and then I ran Darren back to the tyre depot where he was going to spend the afternoon working on the one-ton truck. He needs to have that running because we are going to take off the dump body from the old one-ton Ford that we brought down here the other week to fit on the new one so that we can haul grain sacks around with it.

Back here, I emptied out Strider and tidied him up some more. I gave a pile of stuff to Zoe and there’s some more for Darren too.

The pace though had rather overwhelmed me and back in my little room I had a doze for an hour or two – despite my lie-in this morning. But I livened myself up with a shower and a change of clothes. I look almost human now!

Rachel made a lovely tea, a kind of hamburger mash with baked potatoes followed by apple crumble. And I loitered around to chat to her and Zoe for ages.

But now I’m off to bed. Worn out too and I don’t understand it because I’ve had a quiet relaxing day. I always seem to be more tired when I’ve not done anything.

EPIC HALL

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