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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But here’s a thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve seen this machine before too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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