Tag Archives: aberystwyth

Friday 17th August 2018 – IT’S BEEN …

… a quiet day today, after all of the exertions of the last week or so.

Much to my own surprise, I was out of bed after the first alarm. And that’s not happened for a while, has it?

And then after breakfast there was more work to be done, and then I started to have a good think about my plans after my next hospital visit. And that reminded me that I hadn’t booked my train to Brussels. That was something that needed my attention, and now it’s completed.

That also reminded me that I needed to go for my blood test. A brisk walk took me to the laboratory and they attended to matters. And much to everyone’s surprise that was all done and dusted and paid for within a matter of a couple of minutes. Not like the UK where you have to wait for a week or so.

And over the road I picked up my railway tickets from the station.

pont aven english channrl st malo granville manche normandy franceOn the way back I picked up a baguette for lunch, but I didn’t make it back home straight away.

My attention was drawn to some movement on the horizon over by the Brittany coast, so I quickly grabbed the zoom lens and went for a wander to see what it was.

Cropping and enlarging the image and then digitally enhancing it, I could see that it’s our old friend the Brittany Ferries ship Pont Aven off a-wandering again.

When I came back home I found that I had no hummus. I’d run out. And so I made another large batch. Chick peas, tahini, olive oil, chick pea water, olives, tomato, garlic and herbs. All whizzed up in the whizzer.

Some of it went into the freezer and some of it into the fridge. That’ll keep me out of mischief for a good while.

lizards eating pear droppings granville manche normandy franceLunch was taken outside on the wall with my butties, my book and my camera.

And while I was there, I was treated to the interesting sight of three lizards side-by-side eating from the same piece of pear.

It makes a change from fighting over it. They must be learning to trust each other after all of this time.

la granvillaise baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy franceBut that wasn’t the only excitement that was taking place.

There was a considerable amout of yachts and boats of all descriptions out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel, including our old friend La Granvillaise out there with a full load of passengers enjoying the sun.

Makes me wish that I was out there with them.

street musicians place cambernon granville manche normandy franceAnd it looks as if we might be having some entertainment in the Place Cambernon this evening too. A group of musicians were out there doing a sound check.

Seeing as it was nice weather I loitered for a while in the vicinity to see if they were going to do a warming up session too so that I could see what they might be about, but it was clear after a while that they weren’t going to oblige.

In the end I gave up the idea and left them to it.

This afternoon, apart from talking to another pile of neighbours, I attacked another piece of correspondence that had been hanging around here for a while. I’m going to have to keep myself up-to-date.

And I was on the phone to Rosemary for quite a while – so much so that I missed my tea and ended up with a packet of crisps.

No walk either this evening as I was watching football on the internet. Aberystwyth Town v Cardiff Metropolitan in the Welsh Premier League. Aber were really poor in the first half and were lucky to be only 3-0 down. They were much improved in the second half – although still some way off the pace – and the 4-1 final score was really rather flattering to them. Cardiff Met could have had half a dozen without too much effort.

So now it’s bed time. Shops tomorrow and I need to stock up as I’m having visitors. I hope that they’ve stocked up in NOZ – and that they have some staff to person the tills too.

boats baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france
boats baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

beach hang gliders plat gousset granville manche normandy france
beach hang gliders plat gousset granville manche normandy france

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Sunday 6th May 2018 – THIS ISN’T GOING …

… to work out very well either.

Toddled off in the heat down to the station this evening to enquire about the trains, only to be told “you need to come back tomorrow evening. We’ll only know the night before”
“So why did your colleague tell me to come back this evening then?”
“I dunno”.
And so the discussion went on.

In the end, the guy at the ticket office at the station made me aware that there was a bus from Avranches to Lille every day at lunchtime. He gave me the details and cancelled my outward journey. So that’s at least something.

Sure enough, there’s a bus at 12:04 on Tuesday lunchtime, and to Lille it’s only €39:99. Takes all day of course, but it’s better than nothing.

Now to check up on the local buses. Ahh yes – a bus at 10:05 – gets to Avranches at 10:57. That sounds ideal to me. An hour to have a coffee and to compose myself (rather than Beethoven, who spent 60 years composing and 400 years decomposing).

but wait a minute. “Does not run on school holiday dates” – and Tuesday in France is a Bank Holiday isn’t it?

At the limit I could go to Avranches in Caliburn, but then he would be stranded down there until I could go to fetch him back, whenever that might be.

Yes, this is not turning out too well right now is it?

Last night, I was in bed at a fairly respectable time, where I stayed until about 09:00 this morning.

I’d been on my travels though, being my usual obnoxious annoying self, and so a car came to pick me up – something to do with Hearts Football Club I believe. The driver invited me to go for a drive with him and we ended up at the local prison. The chief warden met me there and gave me a conducted tour of the premises, showing me all of the dark recesses and crooks and nannies of the place. We arrived at the communal area where some women, inmates I reckon, were washing the floor. He showed me where the buckets were, showed me where the hot water was, the soap and a mop, and invited me to help clean the floor. I was concerned about walking over the area where the women had already cleaned, but they told me to clean the chute in the wall where the cats come in. It seems that a pile of cats come in at night to keep the inmates company. “At least there’s some good news” I thought. I had to move a bed to get to this chute – a three-tier bunk bed with cheap, thin horrible mattresses, and with a young woman dressed very poorly in a sweater and yellowy-brown slacks sitting on the top. And behind the bed was the most indescribable filth and less. Clearly these women were only cleaning what they could see, and no-one cared about the rest.

After breakfast I vegetated around for quite a while without doing too much (it IS Sunday after all) and then just for a change I had some lunch. Afterwards, I tidied up a huge pile of the backlog of e-mails and, would you believe, found an e-mail from Plenty’s dad asking for copies of the photographs of his lorries that we saw parked up here back in March.

We then had the Welsh Cup Final where Connah’s Quay Nomads saw off Aberystwyth Town without too much effort, although it could well have been a different story had the far-side linesman’s guide-dog been paying proper attention.

From there, I went for my walk to the station and then back here where I made another pizza. The pizza base that I bought yesterday was a dsiaster by the way. Stuck to the greaseproof paper and wouldn’t come off. And when it did it went just about everywhere except where it was supposed to.

And then another walk this evening. And the camera lens, about which I have moaned on a regular basis, has now completely given up the ghost. I’ll be sending it back when I return from Belgium.

Final word is that I seem to be being attacked by ants. There’s a pile of them that have somehow found their way in here. Now I need to find them a way out.

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Sunday 8th April 2018 – WHAT KIND OF …

… time is 06:35 on a Sunday morning to be waking up?

That’s almost as depressing as falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon, isn’t it? You would think that with me being so tired these days and with the one day per week when I have no alarm and can sleep for 24 hours without the slightest pang of guilt, that I would make the most of it.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels during the night. Back to an apartment that I owned (which I didn’t but don’t let that worry anyone) in Brussels which was tenanted by the girl who was my tenant at Reyers. We were talking about something or other that involved food and when it came to storing it, the guy who was with her said “but that’s alright if you have a fridge that works”. I was surprised, and said to the girl “what about the fridge here?” to which she commented that “it doesn’t work any more”. I asked her why she hadn’t told me and she replied that she hadn’t wanted to bother me. “It’s not a case of that” I replied and went off into the kitchen to measure the unit where the fridge was fitted. It was so complicated that I was convinced that I was doing it incorrectly but just then Terry turned up, so I left it all to him.

07:47 was when I finally stirred, and I needn’t have bothered because one look out of the window told me everything. We really ARE back in winter. Cold, wet, grey and miserable.

But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the weather too.

We had the usual morning performances and then, seeing as it was Sunday, I did nothing at all for the rest of the morning except some stuff on the laptop for my own amusement. It’s good to have that one day per week when you can do nothing and not feel guilty about it.

This afternoon, I had a choice of entertainment. US Granville’s 3rd XI were at home at the Cité des Sports whereas at the same time Aberystwyth Town were playing Newtown in the other Welsh Cup semi-final. I looked out of the window, made my butties and settled down on the sofa in front of the television.

This was a much better match than last night. Aberystwyth Town were the better team and won 2-1 against a Newtown team that battled away competitively without much success. And Aberystwyth’s opening goal was a peach. A breakaway down the wing, a pinpoint cross into the penalty area and a bullet header from the centre-forward right into the corner of the net. A proper 1970s striker’s goal that will be viewed time and time again on the internet media.

Once the match was over I did go for a walk despite the weather. It’s the Ideal Home Exhibition in town and I wanted to see what was going on. But as I expected, it was a complete and utter waste of time. Full of these airy-fairy luxury items and nothing whatever that would fit my budget.

Even worse, there was nothing – nothing whatever that inspired me or gave me any ideas. And that in itself is a tragedy from my point of view. Most things that I see usually get me thinking about how I can either use it or improve on it, but not here.

There wasn’t even any hospitality coffee on offer. Not a thing. And so I gave it up as a bad job and came home.

And, ashamed as I am to admit it, I crashed out for an hour too. Things aren’t going too well for me right now, are they?

Tonight’s pizza was another excellent one, and then I braved the rain for yet another walk this evening – this time, around the headland. Cold wet and miserable, and the weather was even worse.

Now I’m trying to warm up before going to bed. I’m really fed up of this weather.

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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.

st pair us st pairaise es saussey football manche normandy franceAs 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.

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Saturday 6th January 2018 – I’VE BEEN CHANGING …

… the habits of a lifetime today.

And how!

We started off with another bad night last night. Despite going to bed at something like a reasonable hour I was tossing and turning for ages and spent most of the night watching the clock wind down.

And never mind the alarm going off at 07:30 – at that time of the morning I was up, medicated and thinking about breakfast. And my porridge did go down nicely too.

At about 09:15 I hit the road for the shops and I’ll tell you more about them in due course. But my shopping trip was interrupted by Rosemary phoning for a chat, and we passed a very pleasant half hour or so, with me parked up at the side of the road.

Back here, a late lunch (because I’d been out for ages) was followed by a snooze as you might expect, and then I had plenty of things to do – such as making start on tidying up the paperwork seeing that I bought a binder today.

This was followed by watching Cardiff Met play Aberystwyth in the Welsh Premier League, and then off out I went.

Up to the 3rd floor and Odile’s apartment. She was having a little fête to celebrate Epiphany and I’d been invited, which was very nice of her. Brigitte was there, and Roberte, David, Nicolas and Patrice. We all had a good chat for ages, and I wasn’t the first to leave either.

Not like me to be sociable is it? But then, I was never really invited anywhere before. My reputation hasn’t reached here yet, obviously!

But the shops!

I have resolved to make my life easier and more comfortable, and that includes buying things of a better quality than maybe I might usually do, and also to have one one or two luxuries around the place to bolster my morale.

And didn’t that work in Spades today?

Not that it means abandoning my trips to NOZ of course. IN fact I was there today and another €15 of near-expired food and a few other irrelevancies ended up in Caliburn. And the braderie at LeClerc was hit as well, with a waste bin for the living room and a bucket-waste bin for the bedroom.

But that’s only part of it – and a small part of that.

I seem to only have two towels here and both of them seem to have long-since seen better days. So with LIDL having a sale on and luxury towels reduced to a reasonable price, they had one blue shower towel and one blue hand towel (the bathroom is blue) left, as well as a matching blue bathrobe (my old one is falling to bits).

So they ended up in Caliburn too.

Next stop was NOZ, and then Centrakor for a new wallet to replace the one that was lost.

After that it was to “Happy Cash”, the second-hand shop.

Regular readers of this rubbish will be surprised to hear that I’m looking for a cheap television. I have a DVD player here – the one that I bought in Belgium years ago, complete with hard drive, and I only used it for about 6 months before I moved to France.

It’s been in a cardboard box ever since, and here I am watching DVDs on an old laptop. So I want a cheap TV and the second-hand shop seemed to be the place to go.

No such luck unfortunately, but I did strike gold in a quite unexpected direction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I moved here I went looking for a stereo hi-fi. It needed to meet several criteria, like AM/FM radio, CD, auxiliary input, USB port (for a memory stick or a USB turntable). And how I had been singularly unsuccessful.

And there sitting on the shelf was an old battered LG stereo hi-fi with absolutely everything that I wanted, and as an added bonus, a cassette player/recorder. All powered by a remote control.

A lengthy chat with the manager saw it disappearing into Caliburn for the grand sum of … errr … €49:00.

One very happy little bunny here. I spent part of the afternoon wiring it up and the rest of the afternoon having a nostalgia trip listening to a pile of cassettes from the 1970s. Ohh Happy Day!

And later, having bought a memory stick, I copied a pile of music onto it and it’s running even now in the hi-fi. It recognises 999 tracks, which is quite acceptable

But that’s not all. Ohh no it isn’t!

Still in search of a television, I went, more out of curiosity to LeClerc. They had some televisions advertised at €99:00 and that could have been a possibility. But a 57cm screen won’t go far and besides, no SCART socket – just a HDMI cable, so my DVD player wouldn’t work. And after all of the money that I paid for it (because it was a top-of-the range machine) I didn’t want to throw it away lightly.

But there in the corner in the sale were three or four cheap Chinese TVs – 80cms – much more like it. With SCART and HDMI cable plugs and a USB port. €149:00.

So >copulatum expensium , as we Pompeiians say.

That’s now in the back of Caliburn too and it will be up in here tomorrow.

And if that’s not enough, I lost my carte de fidelité the other week and with this kind of thing it’s important because if there’s a complaint they can track your article.

The girl at the cash desk sent me to the accueil and I had to queue behind another guy. He asked for two tickets for tomorrow’s Cup Match against Bordeaux. I thought they would be sold out but “we only have six left”. So he bought two and that left four.

So badger that for a game of soldiers. I bought two too. And Terry is going to come with me to watch the game.

But shopping did wear me out – the first time for three weeks that I’ve hit the shops. I’ll be hitting the sack in a minute to gather my forces for tomorrow.

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Saturday 22nd August 2015 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day in today.

Rachel, Amber and Amber’s friend Julianna went off to the beach at Mactaquac, even though it was a cloudy, misty day, but I had so much to do that I decided to stay in and do it, in the company of Kujo the Killer Cat.

Of course, my day was plagued with interruptions so I didn’t get done anything like as much as I was hoping but nevertheless I’ve broken the back of a lot of the outstanding stuff that has built up over the last couple of days.

One of the interruptions was the start of the new Welsh Premier League season and newly-promoted Llandudno were playing Aberystwyth. With the benefit (for once) or a very-high-speed internet connection, I was able to watch the whole match and see Llandudno win their first-ever game in the WPL.

When Rachel came back, she brought me a pizza from the place down the road in Woodstock, which was really nice of her. We had quite a chat and then I went off to bed. Clearly the strain has been far too much for me today.

I shall have to have a little rest tomorrow to recover.

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