Tag Archives: lie in

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.

Friday 30th March 2018 – 10:30 AM

How about that for a nice time to wake up? Never mind get out of bed.

That’s what I call a Bank Holiday, isn’t it? You can’t beat that. But then that’s what Bank Holidays are for, isn’t it?

And I’d been on my travels too. Working (sell, sort-of) in a Chocolate factory and we were all objecting to the amounts and the calculations of bonuses that were on offer there.

So with a somewhat late awakening, it was an even later breakfast. And seeing as it wasn’t that far off lunchtime I defrosted some of the bread that was in the freezer (good plan to buy that) and had bread and jam too. That way, I could skip lunch.

And then, I did precisely … errr … nothing whatever. And quite right too. It’s Bank Holiday.

Although, having said that, I did catch Ingrid and we had a lengthy chat on the ‘phone. It’s nice to hear her dulcet tones again.

And as promised, seeing as it was a nice day, I went for a long walk down to the harbour.

And here in all their glory are the new harbour gates. To be honest, they don’t look all that different from the ones that were there before but at least they are new, I suppose, and that makes a difference.

And they didn’t seem to be leaking, which I suppose is the point of them

But much to my surprise, I noticed that we have another tidal basin here.

I’ve seen this impressive-looking dock on numerous occasions but I’d never had a good poke around it until today. And you can see that there are actually some gates here too.

I’m surprised that they don’t resurrect this part of the docks too and have some ships mooring in here every now and again.

But that wasn’t all the excitement either.

There’s a boat lift here for pulling boats out of the water and putting them up on the top so that the shipwrights can work on them and I’ve been dying to see it in action.

And here it is, actually working. Not actually lifting a boat but they were using the crane part of it to lift out the diesel engines from this boat here, as you can see.

It was still exciting though.

While all of this was going on, the tide had turned, and you have no idea how quickly the basin fills up here.

And we had a whole procession of boats – seven or eight that I could see – flooding in with the tide and heading to the fish docks (which you may remember, they had that digger digging out several weeks ago) presumably with this afternoon’s catch

They certainly put their backs into it around here

ON the way back, I headed into town and came that way round.

And on the docks I noticed that they were erecting a kind of compound on one of the car parks. And so I made enquiries of a very vocal workman.

It’s all to do with the fibre-optic cabling. They’ll be digging up this road in very early course to lay the cable trunking, and this is going to be their depot and store.

So it really does look as if it’s All Systems Go round here now.

When I finally returned here I made myself a coffee and some of the beautiful biscuits that I had bought the other day to celebrate the fact that I had come all the way up the hill to here with a spring in my step and without stopping once for breath. That’s definitely progress.

And, shame as it is to say it, I forgot my session on the bass guitar, as I realised later. I’ll have to have half an hour on it this weekend.

Tea was a frozen curry – lentil mushroom and sweetcorn – and that was quite delicious too. As I have said … "on many occasions" – ed … it was a good move to buy this freezer.

And on my travels tonight, we have the “London Bus” phenomenon. Where you don’t see one for ages and then a load of them come along at once.

That seems to be the case with decent sunsets doesn’t it? Because we had another one tonight. This one was even better than last night’s, although nothing will ever beat those that we saw on Long Island Sound back in October.

And my mate wasn’t there for his evening stroke tonight either. That’s a shame. Stroking a cat is very good for the stress.

But before I go, I’ll leave you with this photo and ask you if it reminds you of anything.

To me, this can only be a low-flying Heinkel HE111 returning from a bombing raid on Portsmouth in late summer 1940. Have a look at some of the images on this page and see if you don’t agree with me.

It seems that nature is catching up – and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Saturday 24th March 2018 – YOU DON’T WANT …

… to know about last night and this morning. I mean – you’re probably still eating your tea or something. But for those of you who are aware of the vernacular, we had another “Verdun” session through the night.

No sense in sending out for help though because it didn’t do me much good last time – just a case of riding it out and once I’d calmed myself down again I managed to go off to sleep – and slept until midday. Good job that I had remembered to switch off the alarm.

But I had been on my travels though. Dealing with all of the punk rock bands from the mid-late 70s that had female singers or musicians.

Anyway, I crawled (and I did, too!) into here and onto the sofa dragging the quilt and the pillow behind me, and here I stayed all day. Apart from the odd (and they were very odd) trip down the corridor. No food or anything like that, but then again, what doesn’t go in cant come out, can it?

Sunday 18th March 2018 – US GRANVILLE’S 2ND XI …

… beat AS Brécey 3-0 this afternoon in a league match at the Cité des Sports, the football pitch of which is photographed with the camera on the new phone.

And isn’t that an improvement on the cheap Chinese one?

And a casual observer watching the match will wonder why I’m not saying that the score was 13-0, and that’s because Brécey were, quite frankly, awful.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen such a one-sided match and had US Granville played with a couple of forwards who knew where the goal was, we could have had a cricket score. The Brécey goal was under continual siege with shots going everywhere except into the net.

Granville could even afford the luxury of taking off Marius, their star central defender after an hour because he was totally wasted out there.

There’s no point in risking him with an injury to rule him out of a more important match.

In fact we had to wait until the 89th minute for the Granville keeper to make a serious save from a Brecey (playing in red and black) player. Up to that point, he had been as much a spectator as we were.

Last night was another bad night for me, despite all of my efforts. At one point, I noticed that it was 04:26 and I was still awake. But 10:01 is a much more reasonable time to leave my stinking pit, that’s for sure.

It took me a while though to come round, and an 11:00 breakfast on a Sunday is always welcome.

The plan today was to go into town to the shops and the brocante, but with the news about Granville’s football match I put everything on hold.

With having had a late breakfast I didn’t need lunch, but I took some biscuits and a banana along with the thermos flask (and of course the building was open, wasn’t it?) to keep me going.

It had been snowing out at Roncey but here it was a nice sunny afternoon, with a little wind and not too cold. A quite enjoyable day in fact.

And the walk back was excellent too, and I retook all of the photos from last weekend.

You can enjoy this photo of St Pair sur Mer and Kairon-Plage away there in the distance, taken with the Nikon DSLR and the telephoto lens. You’ll notice the haze, and also the crowd of people enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.

I’ll put them up in early course – I have tons of photos that need attention right now and for some reason that I don’t understand, I don’t seem to have very much time.

But you’ll have observed that there’s not much wrong with this image here. If there is a fault anywhere with this camera (which is why I stopped using it), it seems to be with the standard lens

But the clouds were closing in the closer to home that I came, as you might have gathered from the previous photo, so I didn’t hang about on the way home.

But long enough to notice La Grande Ancre come sailing … "dieseling" – ed … into harbour. And this good photo is taken with the old Nikon again but this time with the standard lens.

And so there’s not much wrong with this, so there’s definitely something strange going on somewhere. If only the new Nikon could do stuff like this.

As for the pizza – the best one that I’ve ever made. It was totally perfect. And as for my remark about the weather closing in, when I went out for my late evening walk it was raining. I was right there.

So an early night is called for. Supplies are low so this means a shopping trip. Just you watch it pour down.

Saturday 3rd March 2018 – OHH HECK!!!

Yes, I awoke this morning to find bright sunlight streaming into the bedroom.

Blasted 08:20, wasn’t it? The alarms hadn’t gone off.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that the battery and gone flat in the telephone. And so I was in something of a panic.

So much so that I forgot where I had seen during the night. But it did involve a spare wheel of a vehicle – the type that hangs on the back door of a 4×4 and how the owner of the vehicle wanted to make sure that we knew precisely what wheel was under the rainproof cover before we ordered a spare part or something for it.

But I medicated, breakfasted, showered and hit the streets – out of the apartment at the usual time. And here I bumped into Mrs Neighbour who had with her husband just come back from 2 months in Vietnam. It seems that he too spent New Years Eve in hospital, with the same bronchitis that I had. It seems to have been an epidemic all around the world, this illness.

I did the usual round of the usual shops today. At LIDL they had a couple of the sorbet makers left over so I blagged one and I shall have a go with it this coming week.

And at Leclerc I ought a computer mouse. The “other” laptop that I use as a media centre has a broken mouse (that was how I bought it so cheaply) and I’ve been using an old plug-in mouse to work it. And it is so easy to manoeuvre for my 3D programs that I went out and bought one for this laptop. It makes a whole world of difference.

But going into Leclerc it was bright sunlight so I ought a ticket for the cheap open-air standing area at the football ground. nd when I came out the rain was asolutely teeming down. That wasn’t a good plan, was it?

After lunch I spoke to Rosemary on the phone but having only given my phone the briefest of charges the battery went flat. And for some reason the phone wouldn’t charge up off the laptop … "it won’t if it’s not plugged into the mains" – ed … and so I ended up doing a few other things before going to the football.

And as for that, the 540-odd of us in the stadium were treated to a rather unusual sight of a linesman and a referee officiating at a totally different match to the one that we were watching, and I’m still shaking my head at some of it.

Tonight’s opponents were the reserves of Stade Rennais – a professional outfit with a professional set-up and a professional approach to the game. And it told, too.

They might be a couple of places below Granville in the table but I don’t know why because they played some very pretty football. They were well-organised and moved the ball around well, and their three goals were all excellent.

What didn’t help matters was that US Granville allowed them far too much room in midfield and it looked to me as if they wre refusing to close them down.

But the three goals of Granville were from the usual breaks down the wing from the rapid wingers and overlapping full-backs.

However, going back to Stade Rennais’s professionalism, they were very careful to punch the Granville n°5 when the attention of the linesman and referee was elsewhere.

And the Granville was stupid enough to punch back as soon as the referee had turned round. The red card that the referee gave him was more for stupidity than the punch.

But that’s the difference between a professional team and an amateur one. THese amateur players are sometimes so naïve.

The referee did however lose control of the match, which is hardly a surprise with some of the decisions, and it all ended rather nastily. I don’t know what went on in the tunnel afterwards but it was greeted with hoots of derision from the crowd in the stands.

And If I’ve read some of the subsequent comments, it looks as if a few red cards were brandished in the tunnel. We shall see.

It was a pleasant walk back and I didn’t feel the strain, surprisingly. AND i4M ON 111% of my daily activity.

Tea was different. With running low on tinned curries? I tried a new line that LeClerc was offering. Mushrooms in the Greek style. And to my surprise, it wasn’t too bad. Not up to curry standard, but nice enough. I always eat out of a tin on Saturday because I’m usually out at the football or something and I don’t have much time, energy or ambition to cook very much.

So we’ll try this time for an early night, and see where that takes us. Sunday is a lie-in and I need it.

Sunday 25th February 2018 – WHAT ODDS …

… would you have had on a team 3-1 down, with two of four minutes of added time played, coming back to snatch a draw?

Yes, an exciting football match in the Welsh Premier League this evening with Aberystwyth Town playing Carmarthen. And Aberystwyth running away with the game until a dramatic substitution late in the game threw on a reserve centre-forward who is clearly made of granite.

And Carmarthen could even have snatched a winner too – they wrestled possession away from Aberystwyth from the restart after their third goal and raced upfield, and only a dramatic save from Chris Mullock at point-blank range saved Aberystwyth from one of the most dramatic collapses that I have ever seen.

As for the football that I saw this afternoon, that was dramatic too, but for different reasons.

With it being a cup weekend, there should have been no local football but several clubs took the opportunity to catch up on some of their postponed matches.

US St Pairaise and ES Saussey in the Departmental Third Division were two of those. So in the nice sunny but windy weather I headed out to St Pair.

Saussey won the match 2-0 which was a rather harsh scoreline. St Pair had their fair share of the play but found a couple of centre-backs who looked far too good for this level – even in the warm-up you could see that nothing would get past them – and when it did they found a keeper in excellent form.

But the difference was really that although Saussey didn’t have many chances, they took the ones that they had. One was a poor clearance headed back over the defence to a forward running on, who rounded the St Pair keeper really well to score, and the second was one of those goalmouth melees with another poor clearance played back into the melting pot.

However that wasn’t the most exciting part of the match. This was really a grusge match between two teams who clearly hated each other, and the referee had his work cut out to keep order. How the teams finished with 11 on each side is beyond me. The Saussey player who scored the first goal – he had loads of skill for this level and St Pair gave him some rough treatment, to which he responded quite often in a manner that had he done so on the public highway he would have been given 30 days without the option. On a couple of occasions his team-mates, and once even the referee, had to drag him away from some unpleasantness and eventually he was substituted for 15 minutes to calm down.

And he wasn’t the only one whose behaviour left something to be desired so no-one should think that I’m singling him out. Several of the other players ought to have a close look at their own behaviour on the pitch too.

Still it all adds to the atmosphere I suppose.

Talking of unpleasantness, I shall be very unpleasant if I lay my hands of the person who sent me a text message at about 06:00 this morning. On Sunday, my day of rest too!

But badger that for a game of soldier, I went back to sleep until 09:30. And quite right too.

And this morning I’m not ashamed to say that I did nothing whatever. After all, it IS Sunday.

After lunch it was the football, and then back here it was more football of course as I mentioned at the start.

Tea, rather late because of the football, was pizza of course and I have to say that it was the best that I have ever made. Just for a change, the base came clear of the greaseproof paper without any problems at all. And the rest was excellent too.

A late tea meant a late walk. And the temperature has dropped again considerably. And now I’m going to bed.

But we’ll finish where we started – with the football on the internet. And I’m really glad that I bought this television because it makes such a difference watching it on the big screen.

Monday 19th February 2018 – NOW WASN’T THAT JUST SO NICE?

:To be back in my own really comfortable bed just like that, even though it was cold. And having left the alarm call on for 07:20, I could – and did – have the Sleep Of The Dead. And I deserved it too.

I’d been on my travels too during the night – investigating a situation where one of the Maths teachers at this school was up to some kind of subversion and we had to examine their teaching techniques to see if we could discover who it might be. And yet before we could begin we were caught up in an incident outside the school which was clearly related to what we were trying to do – one of the teachers concerned may well have been working on the public at large and so our investigations had to encompass this kind of behaviour too, which immediately enlarged the scope of our enquiries outside the original boundaries and for which we didn’t have enough staff.

After the usual leisurely start to the morning, I attacked the tidying up. Well, sort-of. I’d bought a pile of stuff back from Leuven and this all needed sorting out and stashing away. And then there were a few things that I needed to catch up with, as well as finding someone on-line with whom I needed to speak – and that took a while.

And then I made an unfortunate discovery.

I hadn’t only gone away and left the water heater switched on (it’s on a timer so it’s not too bad) I’d left the fridge door slightly open. And so that had been running non-stop and the freezer compartment was iced up to such an extent that it had pushed open the door. That meant of course that I had to attack that so that I could close the door and calm down the fridge.

Onion soup was for lunch – I’d completely forgotten about the tomato soup that I had stuck in the freezer before I went.

This afternoon I had to download all of the files off the travelling computer (the little lightweight notebook) and copy them onto the laptop that I use at home. I hadn’t finished doing that when it was time for walkies, so I put that to one side and out I went.

The weather was downright miserable though. We’d had a hanging cloud all day and it was one of those clingy wet kinds of cloud that makes you feel all miserable.

Nevertheless, there were a few people out there walking, or, rather, sloshing through the mud, and you couldn’t see all that much away into the distance.

Peering through the gloom though I could however see that this dredging operation in the tidal basin was still ongoing. It looks as if they are going to be in there for the duration.

And I do have to say that I wonder what is the point of it all.

Back here, I had a coffee and some chocolate with the intention of sitting down and cracking on with the file transfer. That was at 16:30. But the next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45. I’d crashed out for over two hours.

Personally, I blame all of the effort that I had undertaken in Belgium. I left here on Wednesday and returned on Sunday. And on ever day I was well over the 100% effort on my fitbit. I’m not as young as I used to be, and my health is deteriorating as you know. I can’t keep on going like I used to.

And so having missed out on my session on the guitar, it was pizza for tea – and a good one it was too. And then my usual walk, where I spent a good 10 minutes giving a stroke and a cuddle to my long-haired furry friend in the old town.

Now I’m heading for an early night. I have lots to do tomorrow.

And don’t worry about the missing couple of days on this blog. I’ll finish downloading the files off the travelling laptop and then I can complete the entries.

Always assuming that I don’t crash out again, of course.

Sunday 4th February 2018 – 07:30 …

… is no time to leave the bed on a Sunday

09:15 is however much more like it, so I’m glad that I turned over and went back to sleep when I awoke earlier.

It also gave me a chance to go back on my travels too. I’d started off living in a room in some woman’s house – some woman whom I know in real life but I can’t think now of who she is. And we were joined by a young girl who had fled her own home and was looking for refuge. This girl was, like most teenagers, not very reliable. She needed an early start every morning so this woman arranged to wake up quite early ready to have her breakfast ready. One particular morning I needed to see this girl so I made a special effort to be up and about early. However when I arrived downstairs in the kitchen, the woman there showed me a note to the effect that the girl was saying that she wasn’t in the house and furthermore, she wouldn’t be back. We both felt rather disappointed that she hadn’t said anything about leaving, especially after the effort that it required to be up and about early.
A little later I was out on my horse on the Plains of North America and came across this sad, tired homestead. In there on her own was some woman in a red dress. For some reason she attracted my attention despite being a very scrawny unkempt woman (but then, on the frontier of North America in those days there wasn’t exactly a very good choice of woman). However at that moment her husband came back, and I had to pretend to be the local doctor giving the woman a medical examination in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
Later still, there was some television comedy series thing being broadcast. Not that it was of any interest to me but the people with whom I was associated found it very interesting and amusing. The series was then transferred to the theatre where it was merged with some other comedy series. My friends were keen to see it so in the end I succumbed and off we went. But I had a look at the poster outside the theatre where the cast was listed, and it seemed that the stars of the two series weren’t in fact going to be appearing in the play. So that was rather a waste of time.

With it being Sunday, I took it easy this morning. Plodding along with my database of photos. And it really is doing my head in without any doubt at all. Even the simplest task is either beyond the capacity of the program or else it’s beyond my capacity to make it work.

Who could ever have imagined that it would have taken an hour to add in an extra column and make the column fit into the order in which I want it to appear – and that’s in addition to all of the problems that I encountered yesterday?

As I’ve probably said before – back in the early 1990s we had a lightweight Office program called “Works for Windows” and that was our introduction to integrated office suites – and we could make the parts of that program do anything that we wanted – in a matter of seconds – never mind all of this nonsense that I seem to be encountering.

The lunchtime soup was delicious with the added herbs and spices that I added yesterday. It warmed me up nicely. And then I hit the streets.

On my way to the Sports Centre I passed by the building that is the headquarters of the Granville Terre et Mer” Comcom – the Community of Communes.

With many of the French communes being quite small – there’s even one with just one inhabitant – several might group together in a “Comcom” to organise a common water supply or a common refuse collection service or engage a public gardener to be shared between them – all of that kind of thing.

And this beautiful building is the headquarters for the “Comcom” that covers the smaller communes around here.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Sports Centre, and it would really have been a nice afternoon to be out, except for the bitter, howling wind.

It was really agony to stand here this afternoon, and it didn’t help by the building being closed and so there was no coffee on offer.

I can’t understand the lack of buvette here. It seems to be open whenever I bring a flask, and closed whenever I don’t, as if it knows that I am coming.

US Granville’s second XI were in action again this afternoon, against FC ST Lo Manche, the league leaders in blue.

The team that is second in the table obliged US Granville by losing, in the only other match to be played in the whole of Normandy, last night. So if can avoid losing today, they will go into second place.

The wind made this match a complete lottery and neither side seemed to be able to play with it and it was rather a scrappy match.

But US Granville did take the lead after half an hour when a cross into the area was headed out indecisively by a defender, right to a US Granville midfielder on the edge of the area. He had all the time in the world to pick his spot and fire into the bottom corner.

At the start of the second half, we had the only time that one of the teams attempted to use the wind to its advantage, and that, I suspect, was more by accident that design.

A high corner taken into the wind that caused a panic-stricken scamble on the St Lo goal-line, and eventually the ball was forced home by a US Granville attacker.

So Granville ran out 2-0 winners, the first team to beat FC St Lo Manche this season and are now in second place in the table. But I still think that their attack is far too lightweight for this level of football.

Just for a change, I came home a different way, walking down to the coast road.

There’s a good view across to St Pair sur Mer from just here so I stopped to take a photograph, almost being run down by a local policeman in the process.

And then I walked back along the coast road into Granville. I’d never been this way on foot before and it made a nice change to see some different scenery.

7It’s carnaval here next weekend, and all of the fairground lorries are coming into town. There were quite a few streaming past the Sports Centre while I was watching the match.

I was convinced that I saw an artic go past pulling no fewer than THREE trailers, and I was right because I tracked it down in the car park opposite the port.

Generally speaking, a “showman’s goods” licence allows a vehicle to pull a trailer containing his act, another containing his living accommodation and maybe yet another pulling the power unit such as a generator. Nowadays with most sites having mains electricity you don’t ever see the generator, and I suspect that this driver may well have been interpreting the rules in an unduly generous fashion.

Unless, of course, the rules for “showman’s goods” in France are different from in the UK, which is always a possibility. But anyway, it certainly puts my North American roadtrains into perspective.

They are apparently also setting up a fairground on the harbour and as I climbed up the hill towards home I could see all of the lorries and caravans set out on the end of the harbour.

I’ve yet to experience a really good mainland European “Carnaval” and I’m told that the Granville carnaval is one of the best that you can find.

And so I’m quite looking forward to being here when it all happens. Especially when the day after it ends, I have to head for Belgium.

Tea was, of course, vegan pizza. And I didn’t go far for my walk as the wind was astonishing. But no matter – what with the rest of my exertions I’ve done 111% of my daily activities today.

I reckon that I deserve a good sleep.

Wednesday 31st January 2018 – AND I DIDN’T …

… go out to take my mobile phone to be seen to today either.

And there were three good reasons for that

The weather this morning was almost as bad as yesterday. Not quite, but almost. And seeing as I shall be out at the shops (weather permitting) tomorrow, there’s no point in giving myself an unexpected drenching for no really good reason
I’ve not been feeling too good today. In fact this afternoon I was feeling pretty awful
I’m not quite sure what I’ve done, or what buttons I pressed, but all of a sudden the “messages” started to work as it should. And I’ve been able to send and receive messages now. So I hope that it continues tomorrow. We shall see.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep last night but waking up was a struggle. I dozed back off to sleep again and the second one didn’t go off (and I’ve no idea why – it’s correctly programmed). So it was with rather a jolt that I awoke a couple of minutes later than I should have done. And that set the tone for the day.

This morning I attacked the photos again and made more progress. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this thing about photos started because I was looking for a certain couple of photos that I couldn’t find anywhere where they were supposed to be. But I found them today – called by a different name than I remembered and in a totally different directory too.

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

But I wondered why, as the day drew on, it was starting to go cold in here. It seems that I had forgotten to switch on the heating this morning.

After lunch, my exertions caught up with me and I was flat out for a good 45 minutes. Really feeling the strain. And then the Bank finally called me up and we had a chat for a while. It seems that the information that I had given them back on the 5th of January wasn’t sufficient (but of course they hadn’t let me know) so that needed re-doing.

And tracking down the information wasn’t easy either.

The weather had eased off a little by late afternoon so I went for a walk – around the walls today missing out on observing the bad parking. I don’t want my blood pressure going through the roof.

And it seems that they have installed some kind of step at the entrance to the harbour – the tide was out but there was definitely water in the basin and ships were moored in there without grounding out.

I shall have to go for a wander around there tomorrow for a look around and see what gives.

Back here, I grabbed a couple of memory sticks and copied a pile of music onto them. My new hi-fi only plays 999 tracks so I organised the memory sticks accordingly.

But there are thousands of CDs, tapes and records here, with tens of thousands of tracks, and by the time that I’ve finished I reckon that I’ll need a dozen. So anyone who has any old 2GB memory sticks, let me know.

Tea was more tortillas with my spicy filling, and then I went off for a walk around the headland.

It’s full moon tonight so I need to shave the palms of my hands in the morning of course, but it really was nice watching the moonlight reflecting off the water in the harbour.

It made me realise how lucky I was to find this little apartment. It’s only 38.8 m² but it’s ideal for what I want. A sea view and a balcony would be nice of xourse, but having seen the rubbish that is on offer here, I’m glad that I’m in this place.

And final news will surprise you all as much as it surprised me. I’ve had a message from the Driving Licence people – “your application has been processed and your licence sent for printing”.

Well, well, well.

Sunday 28th January 2018 – I WAS SOMEWHAT …

… premature yesterday with my comments about my new smartphone. We’re back with this “inability to message” again.

I know that I am receiving SMS messages because I set a special tone for them. But where they are going, I have no idea, because they aren’t coming up on the screen.

And then I’m not able to message out. The “Messenger” program that I downloaded simply won’t send them, and when I try with the default message program, I have an error message “no SIM card is allocated to SMS messages”. And in settings, it shows one SIM card in my phone – the “second SIM card” is greyed out because of course it’s empty, and the “change SIM” option is likewise greyed out.

So it looks like a visit to the service provider yet again tomorrow.

GRRRRR!

And I was right about the night last night – well, almost. It wasn’t 05:00 when I awoke but 05:25 instead. But leave my stinking pit at that time of the morning? Not on your nellus secundus. 09:35, that’s much more like it on a Sunday.

And I’d been on my travels too. Sitting in a sloping field close to a stone wall reading a book, and a group of children led by some old woman came past and started to chat to me. And a surprisingly intellectual chat it was too for a bunch of kids of that age.
Later, I was back home again and our eight cats (yes, eight) were feeding. And feeding with Tuppence (and anyone who remembers Tuppence will see just how impossible that might have been) was a big black-and-white cat, which certainly wasn’t one of mine. And so I asked my partner what it was doing here, and just received an enigmatic smile.

After breakfast, I vegetated around for a while (well, it IS Sunday), chatting to TOTGA who came on the air.

And once lunch was out of the way I set off on foot in the light drizzle.

All the way out to the Sports Centre on the edge of town.

It was another agonising climb up the hill, and then the long walk along the plateau to the Sports Centre. Three pitches there are here, and one was set up for rugby, with the rugby team warming up prior to a match.

Not that it interests me at all – I have no time for games played by men with odd-shaped balls.

US GRanville’s second XI was playing, and the match had been transferred to the artificial surface here so at least we had some live football this weekend.

US Granville, who were third in the table and in white, were playing UC Bricquebec who were propping up the rest of the clubs in the table. And for the first half of the match, that’s exactly how it went.

Granville’s wingers, one of whom (the n°7) was called Alexis apparently, were tearing the defenders to shreds down the flanks and the score after 45 minutes of 4-0 was not an exaggeration either. I don’t recall Granville’s keeper having anything serious to do

But at half-time UC Bricuebec made three substitutions which, while not improving the team to the slightest degree, seemed to unsettle US GRanville and they looked as if they had lost their composure.

It took ages for them to get back up to steam before they scored a fifth, and then, unbelievably, they missed a penalty. And that seemed to knock the fight out of them. And even more astonishingly the trainer took off the n°7 after an hour, and with that, US Granville’s attack melted away.

UC Briquebec looked much more like it after that and gave the US Granville defence a few dodgy moments – even scoring from a penalty.

But the scoreline of 5-1 is good enough, although it could have been so much more.

The light drizzle seemed to ease off on the way home, but I noticed that away in the distance over Jullouville they were having a pasting again. This weather really is miserable.

I came back and had a coffee and a little play on the guitar. I’d been listening to Aqualung – one of the finest rock albums ever made, and I had worked out in my head the bass line to the title track.

So I tracked down a copy on the laptop and played along to it for a while. Brought back many happy memories, that did.

And if I keep going like this, I shall have to start looking for a band.

Vegan pizza again for tea (and I forgot the olives) and then another walk. I’m at 114% of my daily activity which is good news of course.

And now bed-time. We’ll see if this alarm on the new phone works as well as the last one.

EPIC HALL

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