Tag Archives: bad night

Sunday 14th April – LUCKY ME!

I’ve had a free upgrade at the place where I stay when I’m in Leuven. Usually I’m in a small single room (with kitchenette and all facilities of course) but for some reason that I don’t understand, I’ve been given a comfortable duplex apartment and it’s very nice.

I shall have to come here more often.

Last night was a pretty bad night for some reason. I was very late going to bed and once more, I spent most of my night tossing and turning. This isn’t a very good sign for my day tomorrow.

Nevertheless I was out of bed very smartly and attacked the tasks necessary for my trip today to Leuven. Making sandwiches, packing, all these kinds of things. Even a little cleaning. There was still 20 minutes to go before I needed to leave to I took my shower – the one that I missed yesterday.

08:10, I left the apartment and a brisk stroll saw me at the station by 08:35. And I do have to say that “brisk” was the word. Despite having had a really short, bad night, I was feeling quite sprightly for a change.

And even in sprightly mode I made several stops along the way.

The first stop was in the Boulevard des 2ème et 202ème de Ligne to see how the repairs to the old medieval walls are getting on.

And they seem to be making really good progress and the new stone blocks that they are blending into the existing walls really look quite the part.

They have several sections to go at and it will all be looking quite good when it’s done.

And despite it being early, I wasn’t alone in the street either.

I was being stalked all the way up the rue Couraye by the Sunday morning street cleaner. He was heading on quite nicely, making U-turns and going the wrong way down the one-way street to brush the other side, whether there was another car coming or not.

At least he was useful as some kind of pacemaker to help me on my way.

My cleaner was there at the station so I said “hello”, and then purchased a coffee from the machine. And then waited for the train because it wasn’t in the platform.

And fortune smiled on me too on the train. I had a very charming young companion next to me and although she didn’t have too much to say for herself, it’s the kind of thing that does my ego a great deal of good.

Surprisingly, I stayed awake for most of the trip. I ate my breakfast (crackers and mandarins) and settled down to read Carl Rafn’s Antiquities Americanae.

Written in 1837, its claim to fame is that Rafn was the very first person to take seriously the prospect that the Norse Sagas about the voyages to “Vinland” were actually based on fact and not mere fireside fiction, and he actually set in motion some kind of technical research and calculations to back up his theories.

His theories and calculations were dismissed by later hisotians, most notably by Arthur Reeves who wrote in 1914 “… If less effort had been applied to the dissemination and defence of fantastic speculations, and more to the determination of the exact nature of the facts …” and then proceeded on after 200 or so pages in his book “The Finding of Wineland the Good” to reach almost the same conclusions as those of Rafn.

But today, as we all know because we’ve been there and seen it, tangible evidence of Norse occupation has been discovered in the New World and although it’s not where Rafn expected it to be, my opinion is that the site at L’Anse aux Meadows isn’t Vinland at all but another unrecorded Norse settlement, and Vinland remains to be discovered.

We pulled into Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard more-or-less bang on time and I strode off through the massed ranks of travellers down to the heaving metro station. There’s a change on the metro there too, because they have now put up crowd control gates on the platform.

The train was crammed to capacity and I had to wait a while before I could find a seat. I sat next to an African woman and her little daughter Adela who proudly told me that she was two years and three months old.

The two of them sang all the way to where I alighted, and I had the pleasure of telling mummy that it made my day to see a little kid so happy.

Although it was cold and windy, it was so nice outside that I went for a good walk around outside for a look at what goes on in the vicinity of the station.

And now I know that if ever I forget my butties I won’t be short of something to eat because there were plenty of fast-food shops right in the immediate vicinity.

But seeing as I hadn’t forgotten them, I sat on a bench in the station, surrounded by a group of schoolkids and ate them (the butties, not the kids) and then went for my train.

My train was another one of the Paris-Brussels-Koln-Amsterdam “PBKA” trainsets.

And as I boarded it, fatigue caught up with me and I travelled all the way to Brussels in a state of blissful subconsciousness, to the strains of Traffic’s On The Road” – one of the top-ten best live albums ever.

My neighbour had boarded the train carrying, of all things a rolled-up carpet. I asked him whether it had run out of fuel, or else why he didn’t just unroll it and travel to Brussels on that.

However, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously remarked, “it’s a waste of time trying to tell jokes to foreigners”.

At Brussels my train to Leuven was already in the station so I was able to reap the benefits of having pre-purchased my ticket on the internet. No waiting in a queue for a ticket or finding that the machines are out of order. I just leapt on board.

It was our old friend 1861, and that was crowded too for some reason. There seems to be an awful lot of people travelling today.

I suppose it’s with it being Easter weekend next weekend and everyone is off for their holidays.

I’ve already explained about my change of room, and once I was settled in I had a lengthy talk with Rosemary on the telephone.

That took me up to the time to go out and meet Alison. We went off for a vegan burger at the Greenway

Our route there took us through the St Donatus Park where we could admire the Toren Oude Stadsomwalling – the Tower of the Old City Wall.

This wall was started to be built in 1160. It had 31 towers, 11 street gates and 3 water gates. 2740 metres long, it enclosed 40 hectares.

It was superseded in 1360 by another wall roughly where the ring-road is now, and demolition began towards the end of the 18th Century.

There’s still a fair bit remaining, and on our travels we’ve seen quite a bit of it.

After our burger we went for our usual coffee at Kloosters Hotel.

And on our way back to the car, weaving our weary way through the side streets, we came across this really beautiful mural in what I think is the Jozef Vounckplein.

I don’t recall having seen this before.

And good old Alison. While she was at the English Shop yesterday she found some vegan hot cross buns. So now I’m properly prepared for my Good Friday anyway.

On that note, I’ll go upstairs and try out my new bed. I hope that it’s as comfortable as it looks.

gare du nord paris france

Friday 12th April 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what kind of day it has been today.

It’s been one of those days where I haven’t felt like doing too much, but at least I kept on working and managed to be productive. So it can’t be all that bad.

What didn’t help was that despite the nice clean bed and the nice clean me, I didn’t have a very good night at all. I hardly felt as if I had any sleep at all last night.

However I must have done, because I went on a nice long ramble or two during the night.

My first voyage was something to do with the railway – the line blockages. a group of us were talking about someone who wanted to go off photographing and we had seen a place where a tram coming into town turning right at a curve and one coming out of town was turning right at the same curve (like at a T junction) and it all looked so beautiful that we thought about having some kind of choreography photographs of trams darting around bends in opposition to each other like this. Someone else asked “what do you think about this situation?” and showed us a model of a train that had derailed because the points had moved underneath it. Someone said something like at the front of this incident was a shop that was 2m60 away and all of his electricity was stopped because it was outside the limit of 2m from the accident where the current was broken, to give everyone time to escape. Electricity was only available very close to the accident. One feature of this railway line being blocked was a very large photo or model of someone that had apeared over the end of the railway line behind this accident blocking it off – someone like Nigel Garbage or another one of these far-right people. people were discussin ghow this could possibly be that a dummy like this could block the line. Wasn’t that just typical of the far right that in the interest of free movement they are blocking the railway line
A little later there were three of us on a voyage something like out of the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, me, another guy and a girl. And I knew even though I was asleep that I seemed to join this in the middle of the voyage. At first I thought that this girl was Nerina. She was ill in bed with a heavy cold moping around so in the end I asked her if she would like some Vicks Rub. Her ears picked up at that “Vicks Rub? Yes!! Do you have some?” So I had to search through my medical case and I found some so I gave it to her. her eyes lit up at that and she immediately got better. The three of us were in a car driving up Stewart Street and Valley Road with this most amazing moon or sun, rather like a half-eclipse of the sun. I suggested that we turn right down a side-street for a better view but then I thought that there would be a better view from a side street further on. We went on to that turning and then found that somehow the moon had gone behind the sun and it wasn’t as good as it had been earlier. That was quite a shame. We carried on, had a couple of adventures, things like that. In the end it was all over and we were due to go home. We were walking back into Sandbach from near where the M6 is. The guy went off somewhere to do something, which left me and this girl. She said that she was going to get a coffee. When she came back she was in tears, about how the guy with whom she was living had been quite nasty to her about the fact that she had been away. I was consoling her. Now, even though I was asleep, I knew exactly how it ended – that she ended up by leaving this guy and the two of us became a couple, but it was this little step in between where I couldn’t find the courage to take this step to ask if I could see her again, even though I knew exactly how it was all going to end up – very positively in my favour.

The alarms went off as usual, and it still took me 15 minutes to haul myself out of the not-so-stinking pit this morning.

After the usual morning ritual I attacked the dictaphone. And despite a few interruptions for nothing in particular, I was still going on at lunchtime.

There’s a whole whack of them now done and that’s made me feel a little better.

With it being such a beautiful day although it might have been a little cold, I went out with my butties and sat upon my wall.

Down below in the harbour, we might not have had any ships of any importance in there, but it doesn’t look as if it will be long before there’e one i-cumen in, just like William de Wycombe’s sumer.

The gravel lorries from the quarry are back in the port tipping the gravel. And tipping it on the quayside near to the conveyors rather than the bins too.

That can only mean that we should be expecting the arrival of a gravel boat in the not-so-distant future. Lhude sing cucu.

When I came back, I did a little tidying up (not too much of course) and then ran the vacuum cleaner around the floor for a short while. It makes the place look a little tidier.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with the photos for June 2018, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because I didn’t recognise half of them.

I ended up spending an hour or two on Google Earth trying to mate up images with screen shots. But in the end, I managed all but one. That’ll teach me to lose my dictaphone in Caliburn during that trip to Germany, won’t it?

There were two little interruptions during the day. The first one was for a little … errr … snooze, and my second was for a walk arounf the Pointe du Roc.

My attention was drawn to some movement way offshore so I coupled up the big zoom-telephoto lens to take a photo to see what it might be.

It turns out to be a zodiac going flat out there way out to sea. That’s a lot farther out than I would be happy to take a zodiac, that’s for sure.

While I was out there with the zoom lens I scanned the horizon to see if there was anything else of interest out there.

Round to the right not too far out from Saint Martin de Bréhal is another one of these buoys that miraculously appear every now and again.

At one time I thought that it was something to do with fishing, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of any fishermen tending to it.

Around the corner into the Baie de Mont St Michel I heard a little putt-putt-putt of some kind of small diesel engine.

A few seconds later a little yacht came round the corner and hove into view. It would have been nice to see it with all of its sails unfurled, especially in this wind when it could have taken full advantage of it.

I can understand why a yacht might need a diesel engine, but not why anyone might be using it in the open sea in this weather. br clear=”all”>

Pathetic parking is a feature of these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We’ve seen some pretty miserable stuff but this here really does take the biscuit. Here’s a van driver far too lazy to even walk across the street.

Bad parking doesn’t get much worse than this. it really is quite shameful if you ask me. Whatever is the world coming to?

Back here I carried on with the photos and the research, and then stopped for tea. There’s a pepper lying around here that needs eating so I made myself a stuffed pepper with spicy rice.

That was followed by pineapple and soya cream, and a chat with Liz, another one with Alison and a third with rosemary. I’m in demand right now.

I had to cut the chats short though because it promised to be a beautiful sunset and I didn’t want to miss it.

Unfortunately there was a large cloud on the horizon over the Ile de Chausey so I didn’t get to see the sun sinking slowly down below the horizon this evening.

But never mind. there will be other opportunities, especially with what I have in mind for later this year, if it all goes according to plan.

Back from my evening walk, I watched the football. Bala Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Premier League. And Bala have come right off the rails just recently and Colin Caton has lost the plot a little.

Bala, totally disorganised at the back and leaderless up front, were easily swept aside for the third match in succession. What we were watching ir real relegation fodder for next season, and if only the Nomads had played with a decent striker, they could have scored 14, never mind just 4.

So I’m off to bed. No shopping tomorrow as I’m on my travels on Sunday. So i’ll have a little wander down to the market instead and see how the land lies.

It’s not an early night tonight, so I won’t be on very good form tomorrow. But I’ll see what I can do.

chateau de la crete baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

pecheur de la lys chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france

sunset ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

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

… yet more money today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday 7th April 2019 – TODAY I HAVE BEEN …

… to the bunker.

And for those of you who don’t remember Lenny Henry, David Copperfield and Tracey Ullman, let me explain.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just down the road from me a mere cockstride away is a huge set of defences that formed part of the Atlantic Wall. They tried to blow them up after the war but with all the dynamite that they used, they just shifted a few lumps of concrete a couple of feet, so they bricked them up and left them.

When I drove past this afternoon, there were a couple of cars and a few people hanging around outside the big one.

With having had a coffee at the football last night, I didn’t get off to sleep anything like as early as I would have liked. I was tossing and turning for what seems like hours.

But I must have gone off at some point because I had a few really interesting voyage or two during the night. Last night I was staying again in the Auvergne in a hotel which was a hotel at the time. There were events and so on taking place in this hotel but the owners announced that they were closing it, so it closed down. I was looking at it and having a look around it wondering how I could make it pay, thinking about having events there but one problem about that was getting people to come there because they would have to travel, and that wouldn’t do that kind of thing in the Auvergne because they would have to go miles. I ended up taking a pile of bottles down and stacking them in some place – I don’t know if I was moving out or whatever so I had to take these bottles out. Some of them were full. I had four milk bottles and another bottle and I was taking them to the bottle bank. This wasn’t in the centre – it was a good walk out of town where I was. So I took these bottles and ended up seeing this farmer, outside his field on the verge on this corner which was covered really thickly in what looked liked cabbages. I walked right over and on them to get to this bottle bank. He came out of his field and he must have recognised me. “Where are you staying now? Marianne’s? Because I have some onions for you”. I replied that I was staying down there permanently now but I don’t know where I’ll be except for the period from the end of June for about three months or so. So he said that he would be in touch with me.
A little later on I was out walking along this track at the side of a road following the traces of a canal. I was taking photos with the Nikon 1. I came to a place where there was a huge waterfall which was actually the water coming down the canal overflow through a sluice. I went to take a photo of it but I didn’t have the camera with me. I thought “God, where have I left this?”. I started to walk back to the last place where I had used it. I came across an elderly woman with a couple of young boys. She had the same camera around her shoulder. So I asked her “you haven’t found my Nikon, have you?”. She said no, that this one was hers. I could see that because it had one or two attachments that mine didn’t have. I told her that I must have put mine down somewhere and left it. So I walked back and they made a couple of comments about me being English. I replied that I wasn’t English really. They followed me and when I reached this place where I had been before and saw this cascade I started to hunt around but couldn’t find it anywhere. They all helped me look. All of a sudden I had to touch my shoulder and I found the camera strap. I’d had it around my shoulder all the time and I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it. It was probably just a little moment of panic that I had had while I was looking at this sluice

No alarm as I said, so a very pleasant awakening at … errr … 09:25, and it’s been a really long time since I’ve been so lucky as to have had a decent morning like that.

With a late start, it was a late breakfast and then, imitating my namesake the mathematician, I did three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

In fact I was so busy doing nothing that I didn’t have time for lunch. I made my butties and a flask of coffee and headed out for St Pair.

At the Stade Croissant while I was eating my sandwiches and drinking my coffee, US St Pairaise were playing the Entente Sportive d’Haylande from La Haye-Pesnil.

Despite it being a District League Second Division match it was really exciting and just for a change at this level, we had a very even aerial contest with two teams who were both excellent in the air.

And Haylande had a guy playing right-back who looked almost as old as me, with a head of whitish greying hair, but he’d clearly been around the block several times and St Pair’s left winger had no change out of him at all.

The score ended 3-1 for ES Haylande, which was rather unfair on St Pair. But the big difference was that Haylande made the most of their chances and St Pair didn’t. They even had a penalty saved by the Haylande keeper.

But at long last – two teams who knew how to play in the air. Back to the 1970s certainly, but it was very interesting to watch. And the referees’ assessor, with whom I was sitting in the stand, enjoyed it as much as I did.

On my way back home from the football the people at the bunker were still there when I came back so I went to see what was going on.

As I have said before, if you want to know the answer to a question, you need to ask the question.

I’ve mentioned before that there is some talk of opening them up to make a museum and what they were doing today is some kind of inspection after a preliminary clean-up a few days ago.

Me being me, I managed to blag my way in for a visit.

We couldn’t go in by the steps (of which there were two separate entrances down) because they have long been walled up, but there is another way in through a reinforced steel armour-plated blast door.

And so once inside, our little private tour commences.

One of the things that caught my eye once inside was the door into the crew quarters.

As well as being a reinforced armour-plated blast door, it also appears to be a gas-tight door too. You can see the rubber seal around the door if you look closely.

And there were the remains of the rusty, corroded air treatment pipework in the room too.

But this was what I found to be quite interesting.

From the crew room there was a reinforced metal aperture overlooking the main corridor. The guy who was taking me around speculated that it was an aperture for a machine gun so that if the enemy managed to enter the bunker the defenders could seal themselves in and fight back.

That seems to be a logical idea, although the attackers once inside could simply roll hand grenades down the air tubes.

After my tour around the bunker, I walked back home. But on the way back I had an opportunity to look over the hedge at the athletics track.

This is now part of the Gymnase Jean Galfione, named for the local Olympic gold medal in the pole vault, but I reckon that it was all part of the barracks when the army was stationed here.

In principle they could put a football pitch in the centre, but the fierce winds that we have here would make any match here unplayable.

Back here, I make tea. One of the best pizzas that I have ever made, followed by strawberries (I bought a punnet yesterday) and coconut-flavoured soya cream.

Not much happening tonight around the headland when I went for a walk.

There were just a couple of few people standing around on the headland at the Pointe du Roc watching a trawler setting out to sea.

Nothing exciting at all so I came back to do my notes.

Now I’m ready to bed and I need a decent sleep because I have a lot to do tomorrow. Time is running out for some things that I need to do.

Sunday 31st March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night I had last night.

It seems as if I hadn’t slept for a single moment although on reflection I must have been because at one point I was off on a voyage somewhere and when I find my dictaphone I can tell you all about it.

However, tossing and turning all night, I was eventually up and about at 07:20, to find that it is of course 08:20 because the clocks went forward this morning and we are now on summer time.

And that’s rather appropriate right now what with me stripping off yesterday and it looking quite good this morning too.

And much to my surprise, and probably the surprise of regular readers of this rubbish, who recall that I don’t usually work on a Sunday, I had a very productive morning.

First task was to find a pile of information that someone had asked for. That involved downloading a pile of stuff from the internet and reviewing it. And then organising a couple of links.

Once I’d done that, it reminded me that I had a form to fill in and send off. This is going to commit me to something quite significant but it’s one of those things that if I don’t do it right now, I probably won’t ever to do it again, and not for the obvious reason either.

So that’s now out of the way, but I’m expecting some “further correspondence” about it all. It’s quite inevitable.

Thirdly, I realised that I hadn’t booked any of my travel and accommodation needs for my next trip to Castle Anthrax. And so that’s now done and at the same time I booked my train from Brussels to Leuven. Since I’ve been buying those tickets in advance, I’ve never had them checked at all. You can bet your life that the only time I’ll be asked for them will be the time that I forget to buy them.

Another thing that I needed to do was to obtain the complementary information for my new passport. So I did all of that, only to find that I was actually on the wrong site and ended up wasting $29:00 which I won’t ever get back. A moment’s inattention has cost me dear.

And finally, I needed to contact a friend in Toronto about some issue that I might be having. But for once, she’s not on line. And so I’ll need to think again about that or find another work-around.

All of that took me up to a rather late lunch, so forsaking my usul habits, I had lunch sitting on the sofa watching the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Cup semi-final against Cardiff Metro.

The Nomads won 3-0, which might make you thing that it was a pretty one-sided match, but that was far from the case.

The Met hit the woodwork three times, and had Will Fuller in the met goal not been recovering from a serious injury that has kept him out for a year, he would have been off his line to intercept a long ball out of the Nomads’ defence that led directly to their third goal.

And so the final will be, rather predictably, between TNS and the Nomads and with TNS having beaten the Nomads on every occasion this year, the result should be a foregone conclusion.

It was walk-time after that. Around the walls with the crowds of people out enjoying the afternoon sun. And who can blame them too because it really was nice.

There were even a few people out there swimming, but I thought that that was rather extreme.

I’m not really convinced that I would have been happy to have been on the beach just now. Not in my cozzy anyway.

There were crowds of yachts out there yesterday making the most of the weather.

And today, there were even more of them out there too. It was a shame though that there was so much haze on the horizon. You wouldn’t get to see very much out there.

One of these days I’m going to have to find a way to go out there for a sail around. I need to cultivate a couple of maritime mates.

There were things to do here when I returned but I ended up talking to a couple of people on the internet instead. I really need to stop being so distracted.

Later on, I made a huge cornish pasty.

While I was searching through the freezer the other day I came across a pile of curry that I had made for some project or other that had been left over. And so yesterday I had bought some rolled pastry only a square one this time, and this evening I put the stuff in it and folded it over.

While that was going on, I made my pizza and it was delicious. Even though I say it myself, it was the best that I have ever

On my evening walk around the headland I was totally alone. There wasn’t a soul about, even though it was still comparatively light.

But by the time that I came back I was so tired that I did only half of what I was intending, and then crawled into bed.

I’d had enough.

speedboat buoy granville manche normandy france

crowds on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 15th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

Even though I went to bed early, I was almost immediately stricken by a bad attack of cramp.And this went on for several hours and I was in total agony. What was even worse was that some of the attacks occurred spontaneously without even moving. I have never hurt so much in all my life.

At some point during the night I did manage to go off to sleep. And to go on a voyage too. To some kind of touristy island in the Mediterranean where there was a typical British family trying to run a bar. They were making a lot of money at it too catering for all of the Brits who went there, but there was clearly something else going on because although one side of the cashing-up briefcase was full of cash, the other side was empty and there was a very neat slit in the bottom of the case that someone had made to get into the case and take the money. In the end, they decided to move to an island just offshore where there was a vacant bar. There was some kind of festival that had taken place on there, where four people charged a bull, and then the five of them turned round and charged the rest of the people sitting at the table. They decided to revive the festival, but the first day there it was pouring down with rain and they were so dispirited that they didn’t want to open. In the end, I volunteered to go because even though there wouldn’t be any custom,the place still needed to be open. So I went upstairs to the cafe but two policemen followed me up and they fixed two white triangles in the window to indicate that the place was closed by the authorities. Apparently the new owners hadn’t applied for a licenceand they were fed up of Brits coming over and flouting all of the regulations just because they didn’t suit. All of this ended by the youngest son going off to an island off the coast of Madagascar to open something but he had been to the authorities to sort out all of the licensing issues first.

We had the usual medication and breakfast – and my porridge took longer than at home – probably due to the lesser power of the microwave here. and then I spent most of the morning catching up with some work.

At lunchtime I went off down the Tiensestraat to the Delhaize in the centre of town.

My route took me round by the Herbert Hooverplein and despite all of the time that I lived here in Leuven I didn’t know about the existence of this market.

It stretches right round into the Ladeuzeplein too. It was closing down now that it’s lunch time so I’ll have to come here earlier the next time.

FNAC came up with nothing either which was a shame, so I headed off down the Bondgenotenlaan.

On the other side of the road there seemed to be a gilets jaunes demonstration, but closer examination revealed that it was in fact nothing more than a group of nursery school on their way for an afternoon out.

So I left them there and went on to the Loving Hut.

And the Loving Hut was a wash-out yet again. But at Delhaize I found stuff for lunch as well as some vegan burgers, tinned vegetables and pasta sauce for tea for the next few days.

With having had a really bad night I spent most of the afternoon drifting off into a state of semi-consciousness broken only by a shower and a clothes washing session.

And then tea – and I overcooked my burger which was a shame but the rest of it was nice, especially the sorbet and pineapple.

Later on, I went for a walk around the Tiensesteenweg.

The fritkot there, where I used to go for my chips when I first started living at this end of the town had closed down a while ago. Tonight, I noticed that they were in the process of flattening it.

I wonder what they are going to put here in its place.

While I was here, I peered in at the window of the motorbike shop – but I couldn’t see much in here.

But now it’s an early night. I’ve an early start tomorrow and off to Koln. And the weather forecast is exactly as I expected. Pouring down with rain.

street market monseigneur ladeuzeplein leuven belgium

roadworks paving grote markt leuven belgium

railway bridge leuven belgium

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone.

And haven’t I had a big surprise today.

Remember when I went into the Mairie the other day to have a discussion with the Maire and ended up with the secretary?

Well, the secretary phoned me back today. Apparently the Maire has taken on board my remarks, made a few enquiries and come back to me.

I wasn’t expecting that, that’s for sure.

It’s not advanced things very much, as I didn’t expect that it would, but having someone like the Maire on your side is a comfort in these difficult times.

And difficult times they are.

Being completely wound up last night as I was, I was still up working at 02:00, totally unable to sleep. More like 02:30 when I went to bed,. And as for sleep, well, there wasn’t very much of that. I was tossing and turning all night.

There was enough time to go off on a travel. I was in Greece in some kind of primitive café helping with moral support (although what support I could ever give anyone would be considered as being moral) some girl who was trying to run it despite all of the opposition and difficulties that her family – the nominal owners – were putting in her path. The strange thing was that when the alarms went off, I totally ignored them and stayed in bed. And although I was by now awake, the journey carried on. And carried on for miles too from exactly the same place where I awoke. Not something that happens every day.

By 09:25 I was ready to awaken, and straight into controversy yet again where a couple of self-important auto-sycophants were bragging about how they had “briefed” a politician and “won a famous victory for UK citizens in Europe” by getting him to look at at. Completely oblivious of the fact that the EU had thrown out this idea weeks ago.

And so this totally shameless display of self-serving egocentricity caused me to explode yet again. And even deeper into the abyss.

I went for a very late breakfast after that. and then came back to start on the blog and the text database.

But not for long, because the Mairie interrupted me.

And then, almost immediately, another phone call from someone else who is on my list of things to do.

This started me off on a wave of work. From somewhere, I summoned up a piece of energy so went on a tidy-up in the bedroom.

Bank statements are fairly tidy now and I found a couple of other papers. And so I then sat down, made a few more phone calls, sent out some e-mails and wrote a letter too.

It may sound not much, but it certainly made an impression on the stuff in here.

My lunch was a light one, and that made me feel a little better.

I did manage to do some work on the photos and the database. Not a lot, but I’m back as far as 18th October 2018. It’s going a little quicker than I was expecting.

Later on in the afternoon I went for my afternoon walk.

I went around the headland at the Pointe du Roc through the crowds and hordes of tourists up there

And there was a beautiful view across the harbour right over to the coast on the far side by the Cale de Hacqueville.

There were quite a few people at the Chantier Navale, loitering around that big wooden boat that I mentioned last time, so I went over for a chat.

The boat that is on there is in fact La Granvillaise – a yacht that we have seen on many occasions around the harbour.

She’s been taken out of the water for a complete refit and overhaul by the volunteers, and she’s going to be there for a while.

While I was down there at the Chantier Navale, I went over to have a look at Armor – the ship from the diving place down the Brittany coast.

They’ve stripped off most of the old paint, and are currently giving it a good go over in white primer, ready presumably for its top coat.

They have put a lot of work into it. It will look good when it’s finished.

My route into town took me past the place Charles de Gaulle.

Here I could admire the stage that they had erected the other day. Events will be getting under way tonight, although I won’t be down there.

Instead, I went to the Post Office and sent off the letter that I had written. It won’t go until Monday afternoon but it needs to be on its way.

Back up the hill, I stopped to watch one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming into port.

And there was a weird commotion going on behind me.

Some woman pulled up in her car, shouted to a passer-by “watch my vehicle” and ran off down the road shouting “Chantal” or something.

Everyone was standing around there shaking their heads.

Back here, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend of mine in the UK has sent me a little present for my birthday to help me along my way. That was just so very thoughtful of him and I’m overwhelmed.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with a little rice followed by a pot of soya dessert and a banana.

And then football. The Welsh Cup, Caernarfon Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Connah’s Quay were strangely subdued, michael Wilde was at walking pace and Callum Saunders was somewhere else in his mind, I think.

But Caernarfon seem to have gone off the boil too – a shadow of the impressive hard-working side of earlier in the season.

The Nomads won 2-1, but it was a very long game.

So it’s bedtime now.

I’m feeling a little better, and maybe a decent sleep might cheer me up again.

It’s Carnaval tomorrow.

And I seem to have lost one of the camera gloves that my friend Liz bought me for my birthday of 2008. I’m dismayed.

coastline granville manche normandy france

chateau de la crete granville manche normandy france

harbour light st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franc

Saturday 23rd February 2019 – WITH HAVING WHAT …

… can only be described as “disturbed sleeping patterns” just recently, going to bed at 23:30 was never going to be a good idea. By about 01:00 I’d given up the struggle and by about 02:30 I was up and about, working. I must be feeling better, to say the least.

Round about 09:00 I went back to bed for a couple of hours. By 12:00 I was up and about again working and at 13:00 I attacked a bowl of porridge. Even more surprisingly, it managed to stay down.

Another even more surprising thing is that I managed to attack a little bit of tidying up. Not much, it has to be said, but the fact that I was able to do something is already … errr … something.

It was such a beautiful afternoon that I opened all of the windows in here.

I was tempted to go for a walk, but then I had another thought instead. I carried on doing some work and then at 17:00 I girded up my loins and hit the streets.

It’s that time of the year again.

The Baie de Mont St Michel and the area around here has the highest tides in Europe. Not quite on the Bay of Fundy scale but impressive all the same.

This weekend the tidal coefficients are the highest of the year and the sea right now is the farthest out that we are likely to see it.

It’s certainly impressive.

In the beautiful weather it was a sweaty trudge through the streets and a weary climb up the hill, and even though I took my time I was at the Stade Louis Dior in good time for the match against FC Mantois 78.

I’ve not seen them before, and they are currently adrift at the foot of the table. So I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to see them this time

Having witnessed US Granville’s dramatic loss of form just recently that has seen them plummet down the table like a Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what the outcome would be.

From the kick-off, it was clear that the US Granvillais left-back was playing in a match on his own. In the first five minutes I counted three times when he wandered miles away from his opponent, allowing his opponent to get in behind him.

After 10 or so minutes, I mentioned to my neighbour that he is going to cost the team dear if he doesn’t concentrate on his game – at that point he was a good 25 metres away and in front.

Sure enough, just a couple of minutes later, the left-back was miles out of position as the n°7 soared down the wing and put in a cross to the centre where a forward slotted the ball home.

And he kept it up too. Another ball down the wing, another cross, a header onto the post this time. I’ve not seen anything like this for years. We had no coaching whatever at school but even at Primary School it was drilled into us by our 11 year old team captains not to let our attackers get between us and the goal, even when they didn’t have the ball.

After half-time there was no change whatever.

It took 60 minutes for the coach to realise the problem. He eventually took off the n°3 and the defence tightened up – but only just a little.

US Granville pulled one back too. A quick throw-in, a long one into the penalty area from the right-back with the long throw – which caused uproar from the Mantois players and some of the crowd who are clearly unaware that you can’t be offside from a throw-in (or a goal kick either for that matter).

And then Granville pushed forward for a winner. And who knows what might have happened had we not had a moment of total madness as we entered into injury time.

The Mantois goalkeeper’s kicking was dreadful and they were just wild, aimless lunges down the field. One totally aimless kick right upfield fell to a US Granvillais defender, totally alone and unmarked with no-one anywhere near him. He turned to face upfield, took his time, and took a really good hard kick – straight into the midriff of a Mantois player charging down on him about 20 yards away.

You’ve no need for me to tell you what happened after that. The attacker controlled the ball, took half a dozen steps forward, rounded the keeper and that was that.

All hopes that Granville had of catching the game disappeared into the sunset.

A long painful walk back here – in time to watch a top-of-the table match in the Welsh Premier League between Y Barry and Cei Connah. Winner takes all tonight, and so quite obviously we had a draw.

A good goal from Jonathan Hood for Barry was cancelled out by a goal from Michael Bakare for the Nomads.

Many people saw Bakare’s goal as controversial but not me, not the referee and not those people equipped with slow-motion facilities and a camera behind the goal. Mike Lewis in the Barry goal was clearly “fouled”, but by his own player who pushed him hard into the patch of the Connnah’s Quay n°10. When the highlights go on line, I’ll post a link.

It was an exciting match that pulsated from end-to-end but Connah’s Quay had the better of it and the Barry woodwork knew all about it. A couple of goal-line panic-stricken clearances too but the Nomads couldn’t get the bal over the line.

So now it’s rather late, I’m rather tired but I’ve kept on going. And if that’s not impressive, seeing as how I’m feeling, then I don’t know what is.T

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I had today.

It finished by being all right on the night, but it not without a great deal of effort.

For a start, I had what they might call a nuit blanche. Despite a reasonably early night, I don’t remember going off to sleep at all.

I suppose that I must have at one point though, because I was off on my travels for a short while. And here’s a blast from the past. I was back playing in a rock group again and we had a booking lined up somewhere in West London. There was a girl from school whom I quite fancied (which I actually did all those years ago, funnily enough) and she was at University down there. She had suggested at one time that I should drop in and look her up. I’d suspected that this was just a little bit of flannel but nevertheless it was worth following up so as I was in the company of her brother (who coincidentally has sent me an e-mail just yesterday) I’d check up. His reply was that “she’s very popular with her fellow-students down there, you know”, which of course told me everything that I needed to know. Even I could read between those kind of lines.

I was definitely awake at 05:20 and when the alarm went at 06:00 I leapt out of bed (well, sort-of) immediately.

With most things already being packed, I just drank the rest of the contents of the drinks bottles and rinsed them out, gave the room a quick once-over, and was then out of the door well before 06:30.

There was snow and ice all over the place and it was a difficult walk up town.

But I was on the station in time for the earlier train to Brussels. It was being pulled by one of the Siemens Serie 18 electric locomotives.

The SNCB owns 120 of these and, beleive it or not, despite their looks they are only about 8 years old. They get plenty of use.

My train from Leuven brought me early into Brussels.

This gave me a good opportunity to go for a look around outside the station at the heavy snow was falling. It looked quite impressive this morning, illuminated with the flash on the camera.

And then off to the supermarket, which was now open, for my raisin buns for breakfast.

The TGV was on time this morning.

It’s our old friend 4302, one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Kôln-Amsterdam) series 43000 units of which there are 19 – built in the mid-90s when the service was launched

I was looking forward to having a good sleep to catch up with what I had missed during the night but it wasn’t to be.

Instead, because of all of the snow (it really was heavy) the train had to slow down because otherwise it might overrun signals. And so we crept along at a slow but steady 180kph instead of a flat-out 300kph.

We were warned that we would be at least 40 minutes late arriving in Paris. That meant that I had to go off and hunt down the train manager to have her sign my ticket. I have a feeling that I’m going to be horribly late in Paris and if I miss my connection, the next train is 3 hours later.

I don’t fancy spending three hours sitting on a freezing cold, draughty platform and I certainly don’t want to have to pay for the privilege if there’s a way of avoiding it.

First off the train and along the platform – a long time since I moved so fast. And just as I arrived on the Metro platform a train pulled in. So I leapt aboard and it rattled off.

Arriving at Montparnasse, I was first off the train and off on the long walk to my platform right at the far end of the station miles away. I even took all of the travelators and even though they were rolling, I walked along them to speed things up.

And I was lucky I did. It’s about a 2km walk from the metro to my train, and I couldn’t afford to hang around.

I turned up at my platform just as the guard was about to signal the departure. No sooner had I put my feet on board than he blew his whistle and the train pulled out.

I was so stressed out with all of this that it took me a while to regain my composure. Totally out of breath I was.

The snow eased off by the time we reached Surdon and we rattled along quite steadily. Somewhere round about Vire or so I fell asleep because I remember nothing whatever from then on until we arrived in Granville. Dead to the world.

It was another struggle back up to my apartment.

What with all of the effort I stopped to catch my breath half-way up the rue des Juifs and I could admire the harbour.

As well as Marité down there at her mooring too we have Thora tied up at the quayside. I can’t see what her load is today, and there didn’t look as if there was anyone down there

In the previous photo you might have noticed one of the gravel lorries driving onto the quayside.

They have obviously been very busy because there’s quite a pile of gravel accumulating on the quayside now, and that can only mean one thing.

Very soon we might be receiving a visit from Neptune who will come to take it all away back to the UK

It was cold and windy out there, although nothing like as cold as it had been in Belgium. But it was freezing in here and the first thing that I did was to switch on the heating.

There were a few things that I needed to do back here but round about 18:30 I’d had enough. I’d had a very bad night with almost no sleep, I’d been up early, dashed about all over the place and moved like I had never done for years. On top of that, I’d missed most of my siesta.

So that was that. I went to bed. When I awake, I’ll carry on.

Monday 21st January 2019 – AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE …

… “and on many occasions too” – ed … the big problem about going to bed early is that there is a tendency to awaken early.

But waking up at 03:50 is a bit on the ridiculous side.

And waking up with a thirst that you could photograph too, without very much in the way of drink to assuage my thirst either. Half a litre of drink and I could quite easily have polished that off.

But regardless of that, I couldn’t get back to sleep and just lay awake, reminiscing on the nocturnal ramble that I was having and which has now gone completely out of my mind, until 06:00 when the alarm went off.

I heard the other two alarms too, but the next thing that I remember was someone banging a door in the building – at 07:18. I’d gone right back to sleep again. I’d been on a nocturnal ramble too – pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket in Stoke on Trent stocking up with food and toilet paper – things like that-until the trolley was overloaded. People were looking at me and so I said that I was stocking up now before prices went through the roof, and the strange thing about that, as I even recognised at the time which is surprising, was that I said it in French. In Stoke on Trent they struggle to even speak intelligible English.

Having had a bad day yesterday, I wasn’t feeling much better today. For two pins I would have turned over and gone back to sleep.

But I went through the morning ritual and then hit the streets. Glorious sunshine and a temperature of minus 4°C. Not the day for loitering.

But loiter I did for at least part of the journey.

In the daylight I stopped to take a photo of the drainage work that I had seen in the Tiensestraat last night. They were all out there, the workmen, working on it. I hadn’t noticed the pipes last night so they may have been anly just delivered

A little further on down the Tiensestraat I was distracted yet again.

Fire engines and ambulances and barriers in the Herbert Hooverplein told us the story. There had been what I assumed to be a fire in one of the blocks of flats just there as you can see, and the emergency services had been called out.

They didn’t look to be in all that much of a hurry so I imagine that there wasn’t anything serious going on and that the crisis had passed.

My perambulations took me down the hill into the Brusselsestraat where there was more of interest going on.

There’s a huge plan to knock down the big modern hospital that is now surplus to requirements and also to refurbish a couple of the derelict 19th Century buildings in the vicinity.

They are water-washing the brickwork of one of these buildings, so that have shrouded it all off to avoid inconveniencing the passers-by.

I was early at the hospital and it was just as well because the reception area was heaving. It must have taken 15 minutes to be seen. And it was even worse downstairs. My appointment was for 09:50 and it wasn’t until 10:35 that I was taken off by a nurse to be fitted out.

She didn’t speak English so we had my insertion interview in Flemish. Things are definitely improving from that point of view.

There wasn’t a comfy seat for me either so I had to make do with a normal one. It definitely wasn’t my day.

But there s some good news. The protein loss has stabilised and the blood count has increased. And I’ll tell you for nothing that it certainly doesn’t feel like it

And that’s not all either. You never know what you are entitled to until you ask, and I asked a speculative question. The answer was quite surprising and it’s opened up a whole new vista of opportunities that I thought might have been closed.

It was long after 16:00 by the time that I was kicked out. And then I had the rounds of the chemists to do. There seems to be issues of supply of certain of my medications. I had to try three chemists before I could find what I needed – and then a lot of it was substitutes.

The Delhaize was next, to buy the food for the next couple of days. And as well as vegan sorbets and vegan margarine, I picked up some Vegan wienerschnitzels which I hadn’t seen before and … “SHOCK” … “HORROR” … some vegan cheese, which seems now to be on sale there. I forgot to buy some drink though, so I had to call up at the big SPAR near my accommodation.

Back here, I had a shower and washed my clothes. There’s a curtain rail right over the heater here so they won’t take long to dry. And that was the cue for a coffee.

The vegan schnitzels were delicious, with potatoes and frozen peas and carrots. and followed down by raspberry sorbet.

But having had a day where I wasn’t able to have a good sleep, I decided on an early night. I didn’t even do the washing up. Tomorrow is a Day of Rest while I gather up my resources and gird up my loins ready for the journey back home.

21 January 2019 fire herbert hooverplein leuven belgie

building work brusselsestraat leuven belgie

Sunday 20th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN BUILDING …

… up for a while so it’s no surprise that I was going to have a bad day sooner or later. But to have one on the day that I’m travelling is not what I was expecting at all.

Possibly it was the late-ish night that didn’t help, or possibly it was the fact that I couldn’t drop off to sleep..Or maybe even the fact that I awoke at about 05:40. But whatever it was, it wasn’t very good.

Still, no point in holding off the inevitable. I crawled out of bed.

No medication, and no breakfast either. Instead, I had a shower, a clean-up and a change of clothes, and then unplugged all of the electrical appliances (although I realised later that I had still left a few plugged in).

Packing the food and making the butties was next. A quick bit of cleaning up and tidying was next and then I hit the streets.

It was a long, lonely, difficult crawl up to the railway station and I really didn’t feel at all like it.

When I arrived at the station the garrulous cleaner was there so we had a little chat about things.

Luckily the train was in so I quickly grabbed a coffee and clambered aboard to my seat. I could sit and eat my breakfast in comfort while I waited for things to happen.

The train set off bang on time and that’s always encouraging, but my optimism didn’t last all that long. We’d only travelled a few miles before there was a call over the PA ystem “could any doctor or nurse on board make themselves known to the ticket collector?”.

Is there a doctor in the house? I hadn’t realised that I looked so bad.

But as it happens, it wasn’t for me.

Our train made an unscheduled stop at Folligny and all of a sudden there were a lot of people running around outside. Eventually, an ambulance pulled up on the station forecourt and the emergency personnel started to run around.

Round about this time I dozed off to sleep but by the time that I awoke we had the SAMU here too. And after a good while they evacuated a person on a stretcher. Judging by the heavy covers over the stretcher and the lack of urgency of the emergency personnel, it can’t have been good news for whoever it was.

75 minutes late, we headed off on our route. I made sure that I had the ticket collector sign my ticket to say that the train was delayed. It’s going to be touch-and-go for me to catch my TGV in Paris.

At Villedieu-les-Poeles I was joined by a fellow-passenger – a charming lady. I was looking forward to some convivial company but she just buried her head in her book and that was that.

70 minutes late at Montparnasse-Vaugirard so I had to move fairly rapidly – the last thing that I felt like. I was interrupted too by some African woman who wanted me to tell her the directions to somewhere or other – but what do I know?

We had a long wait for a metro too. This wasn’t looking good. And it was crowded too but I managed to grab a folding seat and make a start on my butties.

Much to my surprise, when I arrived at Paris Gare du Nord our train was already at the platform. She is our old friend PBKA 4304. We’ve travelled on this one on several occasions

Even more surprisingly I found that I still had half an hour to wait before I could board the train. I hadn’t been delayed as long as I thought. There was even a free seat in the public area for me to sit and finish off my lunch and that was even more surprising.

We were allowed on board the train early and I ended up with another charming and personable companion. But she was busy on her telephone so I curled up and went to sleep – just waking up long enough to have my ticket inspected.

The train arrived in Brussels a few minutes early which was very nice. I actually had plenty of time to buy my ticket for my train to Leuven.

That was on time too so it wasn’t long before I was in Leuven. A nice comfortable ride in a nice comfortable train.

But winter is here in Leuven, that’s for sure. It’s minus 2°C and there’s plenty of frost lying about all over the place.

At my little lodgings there is no trace of my passport unfortunately, but at least my room is warm and comfortable. I unpacked everything and then, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out. And for two hours too. I was well away with the fairies.

I was awake later long enough to walk into town to pick up a pizza. After all, it is Sunday.

One thing that I noticed was that the Tiensestraat is closed off and they’ve dug up the road. Judging by the look of things it seems to be something to do with the drainage. But whatever it is, it will keep them out of mischief for a while.

My pizza was absolutely delicious and I really enjoyed it.

But I was soon back in bed. I just can’t last the pace these days, can I?

medical emergency gare du folligny manche normandy france

drainage work tiensestraat leuven belgie

Saturday 29th December 2018 – SO MUCH …

… for my early night. It doesn’t do any good if you end up lying in bed tossing and turning for as long as I did last night. And then awakening at about 04:30 and not being able to go back to sleep for ages doesn’t help much either.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I wasn’t in much of a mood to leave my bed and it took me a while to come to my senses, which seeing how few senses I have these days, is rather astonishing.

We had the medication and then we had breakfast, followed a little later by a shower. And then I hit the streets, having set the washing machine off on a cycle. Quite clever, my washing machine.

LIDL didn’t come up with much, except a new pair of slippers. My old ones are starting to fall apart and they had some cheap ones in at just €4:99. And they had some cheap sheets on offer too. I don’t have really enough of those and I would have bought another one, but all of the blue ones had been sold. White is no good for me.

NOZ was pretty good and I would have spent a lot of money in there had I had the space and the inclination. But some orange-flavoured digestive biscuits, an Arsène Lupin DVD, a baking tray for mince pies and the like and three glass dessert coupes were amongst the things that I bought.

LeClerc didn’t have anything special on offer, although I did have a surprise. There on the shelves in the Industrial Bakery section was a pack of 6 pains au chocolate – the type that kids like to eat for breakfast. And the packet was clearly marked “VEGAN – 100% VEGETAL”.

I’ve been complaining about the lack of vegan products here in France – how they are 50 years behind the times – so this was an impressive find.

People making vegan products on an industrial scale need as much encouragement as they can receive, so I bought a packet of solidarity and support. It’ll be good to vary my breakfast habits here and there.

Back here, I had a coffee and then slowly unpacked the purchases. It took me a while and it’s still not done yet. I’m definitely slowing up these days.

After lunch I didn’t do too much at all – downloading a pile of stuff that I had tracked down on the internet and then organising a few directories so that everything is stored correctly. I want to have this computer organised ready for whenever the new one might come.

I was also following the football on the internet. And just for a change, the clubs that I follow all managed to win today. That’s not likely at all. Usually they all fall apart.

As for tea, I didn’t bother tonight. I’ve eaten rather a lot just recently and going without a meal for once won’t hurt me. I had a nibble on some Bombay Mix that I had left over from my trip to Leuven.

It was gone 22:30 when I went out for my evening walk. There was no-one around at all at that time of night except for the kids on the car park.

So now I’m off to bed. It’s Sunday so a lie-in is appropriate. But whether I would ever get one remains to be seen. I’m not doing too well right now what with one thing or another.

Sunday 21st October 2018 – MARGARET THATCHER …

… once famously said “anyone can do a good day’s work when they feel like it. But to be successful you have to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it”.

And that’s how I’ve been today. Not feeling like doing a good day’s work at all.

Going to bed at 02:00 is one thing. But waking up at 07:15 was not what I was expecting. And by 08:30 I was fed up of going back to sleep so I got up instead. So much for my lie-in.

After the medication I had to make some muesli because I’d run out. And to my surprise I found that I had bought some sugar puffs instead of corn flakes. Ahh well. I must have been having a bad day yesterday.

But that led on to some tidying in the kitchen and now it’s starting to look a little more like a home. Even though it’s not my usual thing, to be working on a Sunday. But I was feeling a little better so I reckoned that I’d do it while I could.

Breakfast was rather late as a result, and that didn’t leave me with very much time. I had a few things to do, like to spread out all of the walnuts from yesterday onto a couple of trays and put them in the sun to dry. That’s very important, to ensure that they dry properly and thoroughly so that they don’t rot with the damp.

Once they are thoroughly dried, I can crack them open, extract the nuts, bake them in a frying pan and then grind them up.

This afternoon there was an exciting football match in prospect. La Brehalaise was playing FC Sienne – two clubs anchored at the foot of the table in Manche District Division 3.

I headed out there at 14:30 – straight into masses of traffic loitering around outside looking for a car park. And someone crawling along at 5mph looking for a place held me up for 10 minutes – he got a blast of Caliburn’s horn once I could finally get past him.

And then a Belgian pulled straight out off the kerb into the road right in front of Caliburn and it’s a good job that I’d had his brakes fixed. He had a “Hail Columbia” too.

As a result of all of the grockles admiring the seagulls I arrived late at Bréhal and missed the kick-off.

Nevertheless I did arrive just in time to see a rather late sliding tackle by the Bréhalaise n°11 on the FC Sienne goalkeeper, in vain pursuit of a loose ball.

This led to a yellow card for the n°11 and an ambulance for the goalkeeper.

It took a good while for the ambulance to arrive and for the paramedics to investigate the injury.

By my reckoning it looked not unlike a broken leg and the medics seemed quite concerned. After a considerable amount of treatment, they loaded him onto a chair and then carried him to a waiting ambulance.

All in all, the game was held up for a good half-hour while they attended to the keeper.

When the match restarted we were treated to an exciting game of football.

Despite it being a bottom-of-the-table clash, there was a considerable amount of skilful play out there that wouldn’t have been out-of-place a couple of divisions higher up the pyramid.

It was also pretty clear that despite being at the foot of the table, FC Sienne was the more skilful and more purposeful side. They were certainly much-more organised.

And it was therefore no surprise to anyone that they took the lead. And no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish how they did it either.

If I had a Quid for every time I have shouted and complained at goalkeepers for being stupid, I would be lying on a deckchair in the Bahamas dictating this to a bevy of beautiful bikini babes.

But here we go again.

A backpass to the keeper, the keeper being stupid and taunting the opposition attackers, waiting until the last minute to kick it upfield, but instead slicing his clearance straight into the stomach of the attacker.

The keeper scrambled away the rebound off the goal line just in time – he then saved a volley at point-blank range to keep out the follow -up (and I suspect that he didn’t know anything whatever about his save) but he couldn’t do anything about the follow-up from that.

And as the Sienne team pushed on, Bréhal scored an unlikely equaliser from a breakaway, catching the stand-in keeper on the wrong foot.

Bréhal then missed a sitter – a cross palmed out by the Sienne stand-in keeper straight to a Bréhal forward 5 yards out in the centre of an open goal. All he had to do was to tap in, but instead he blasted it about 25 feet over the bar.

But as the game went on, Bréhal scored and even more unlikely two goals and so ran out 3-1 winners ina match that they never ever looked likely to win at all.

On the way back I went for diesel and then came back here. Some more tidying up and a bit of work, and then a delightful vegan pizza.

There was a beautiful moonlight tonight.

My perambulations this evening took me around the headland instead of the old town, so I could gaze across the Baie de Mont St Michel and see the reflection of the light upon the sea.

This was taken, by the way, with the new 18-105mm standard lens and I shan’t say anything else about the High Arctic.

Carrying on around on my walk, and seeing as I still had the new 18-105mm standard lens on the camera, I took a photo of the outer harbour and the gates to the inner harbour.

What had enticed me to take the pic was the view of the lights shimmering on the surface of the water.

The red “traffic light” to tell us that the tidal gates are closed certainly produced an impressive effect

And now it’s bedtime. And I need to start work again seriously tomorrow. I’ve been letting things slide rather too much just recently.

Treating an injured goalkeeper La Brehalaise v FC Sienne

Ambulance La Brehalaise v FC Sienne

Treating an injured goalkeeper La Brehalaise v FC Sienne

Moonlight, Baie de Mont St Michel, Granville

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… been back at Mont St Michel today doing my tourist guide bit, but Josée contacted me yesterday to say that there had been a change of plan and she was off elsewhere.

And that was just as well because I wasn’t feeling all that much like it this morning.

Last night had been quite a late night – I was absorbed in a pile of work – so leaving my bed at 06:00 or thereabouts (and I did too – I was taking my medication in the kitchen when the alarm went off at 06:20) was something of a struggle.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then finished off the photos from yesterday’s walks. And now they are all on-line. All 40 or so of them so you can tell that it took me quite a while.

Another thing that I did today was to catch up with some tidying up and to do the washing-up that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’m starting to let things slide in here as far as tidiness and cleanliness goes and I need to get myself back on track while I’m still able to do so. I won’t always be fit enough to tackle things when they need tackling.

There are also a couple of other projects on the go here and I’ve been dealing with a few of them too this morning.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It was overcast, cold and windy outside so I reckoned that I could do with the comfort of a chair in the dining area.

This afternoon, I did a few other bits and pieces and then sat down to tackle the photos from the Arctic. I’m still in Yellowknife on the Pilot’s Monument, and this afternoon I rewrote the things that I wrote about it earlier in the week.

Well, not exactly “rewritten”.

What I do is to write down things as they occur to me, put them into paragraphs and then cut and paste the paragraphs to make a continuous text, adding in a few conjunctions to make the text stream together.

It also involves research. And it’s amazing what you find when you start to look. Instead of worrying about finding enough text, I now have quite a considerable excess.

We had the usual afternoon walk around the headland this afternoon in the sunshine.

And there, sailing about out in the bay off the coast of Bréville-sur-Mer was the sailing ship that we have seen over the past few days.

I had the standard lens on the camera so I took a quick photo of it at long range.

But we haven’t bought a new zoom/telephoto lens for nothing, have we?

Seeing as the ship was sailing slowly, I stuck on the new lens and took a zoom photo.

I’ve still not been able to track down the name so I cropped the photo and blew it up (I can do these things, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) but it seems that the name of the boat isn’t painted on the bows … “she’s La Granvillaise” – ed.

While I had the big new lens on the camera, I took a photo of the caravan site out at Bréville sur Mer near the horse racing course.

That was another place where I had enquired about accommodation when I arrived here.

Liz and Terry have a little caravan and one idea going through my head was to park it on there for the summer, and then try for a good deal in a long-term holiday let through the winter.

When I arrived back here after my walk I found that I had an important e-mail message.

The third lens that I had ordered – a refurbished 18x105mm lens – hadn’t been delivered as promised. And the tracking showed that they had tried twice, even though I had been here on both occasions.

Having instigated a search, I was told that it was now awaiting collection at the Post Office. So I went down there to pick it up.

And down there I found the reason why it hadn’t been delivered, and why I was puzzled as to how come no-one from the delivery company had rung the bell.

It turns out that the address for delivery was incorrect. An error on the part of the dispatchers.

But I’m not complaining, because when I wrote to them to tell them of the delay and the inconvenience, they refunded my postage. I’m quite content with that.

After all of that, I had to sit down for a while and have a little … errr … relax for half an hour.

Tea was a curry from the freezer and it was just as delicious as the day that I cooked it.

Later on I went out for the evening walk around the walls with the camera and the new lens.

Part of the plan was to retake many of the photos that I had taken the other day with the 50mm lens so that I could compare them and see the difference.

Just like this one of the sea front at Bréhal sur Mer

And this one of the rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background to the right.

It won’t be as good as the 50mm low-light lens because it needs more light to work it, but its advantage is that the new lens is a zoom lens rather than a fixed lens.

That means that it’s more useful as a general-purpose lens (which is why I bought it) but I still need to see how it performs.

The other day I took an almost-identical photo to this one and the difference is quite apparent. The earlier one has come out much better

But that’s only to be expected with the difference in the light and in the quality of the image.

But it’s still something that the new lens will bring out an image. The Nikon 1 would quite simply not have registered enough of an image to work.

So now I’m off to bed. In the morning I have to go shopping of course. In the meantime you can admire (or otherwise) this evening’s photos.

Night time – rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background.

The Place Marechal Foch in the night-time.

The Plat Gousset in the night-time

Night time – the rue Georges Clemenceau

Moon (hidden by the copyright details) shining over the harbour in the Port de Granville

Moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

More moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

Moon light in the night over Granville and the Baie de Mont St Michel

Yet more moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time with St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville in the background

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

Place Cambernon in the night

The Bar Rafale in the Place Cambernon at night

The rue St Jean in the medieval walled town in the night.

Sunday 14th October 2018 – ALONE AGAIN

Yes, it’s very nice to have company because it drags me out of my shell and gets me off and about doing things, but it’s also nice to be back on my own again in my own little routine.

Last night was another bad night; Asleep at about midnight, awake at 01:00, working on the laptop because I couldn’t sleep, asleep again at 04:00, alarm at 06:00 (because Bane of Britain forgot to switch it off) and finally up and about at 08:30.

We had a leisurely breakfast and then Josée had a shower and packed up her things.

A visit to Yves and Lily’s was next to hand back the tool that Yves had lent us, and we were there chatting for over an hour. And then I drove Josée to the station for her train.

Back here, I made myself a couple of sandwiches for lunch and then I did the obvious thing. I crashed out. I need to catch up on my beauty sleep somehow.

As far as work today has gone, I haven’t done any. It IS a Sunday, after all. Instead, I’ve loitered around for pretty much all of the afternoon.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and it was another really good one.

My evening walk was around the headland of course. Only this time I took with me the new Nikon 50mm lens so that I could try it out in the dark and see what it’s like, like this photo of the College Andre Malraux in the Place d’Armes.

But that’s tomorrow’s job. Now I’m going to make the most of the possibilities of an early night. I’ve clean, tidy bedding too in which I can relax.

That’s something not to be missed.

The rue du Roc

the rue St Jean and the gate into the Old Town

The Place d’Armes – my building

The roundabout at the end of the rue du Roc, and the Pointe du Roc

The old Port, ferry terminal and quays

Rue du Port and the old port

Place d’Armes

rue St Jean and the archway into the Old Town

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bad night

Sunday 14th April – LUCKY ME!

Friday 12th April 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

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

Sunday 7th April 2019 – TODAY I HAVE BEEN …

Sunday 31st March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Friday 15th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

Saturday 23rd February 2019 – WITH HAVING WHAT …

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 21st January 2019 – AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE …

Sunday 20th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN BUILDING …

Saturday 29th December 2018 – SO MUCH …

Sunday 21st October 2018 – MARGARET THATCHER …

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

Sunday 14th October 2018 – ALONE AGAIN

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