Tag Archives: cancale

Monday 1st June 2020 – WHAT STARTED OFF …

… as a really good day disintegrated pretty quickly into the usual chaotic mess and there’s now yet more stuff piled up in the queue of arrears to be dealt with.

So while you admire the photos of the young boys taking a giant step for mankind into the English Channel off the ramp at the Plat Gousset, I shall enlarge.

And I might even tell you about it too.

In fact, there was a hint if it all starting to go wrong last night when at about 23:15, halfway through writing up my notes, I was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue.

That was the cue for me to call it a night and stagger off to bed. It wasn’t a worry because it’s happened before … “and it will happen again” – ed … and I’ll catch up with it soon enough.

However, in what will come as a totaly surprise to just about everyone, I reckon, including me, I awoke with the first alarm and didn’t go back to sleep as I normally do.

As a matter of fact, when the third alarm went off I was in the kitchen mixing my morning cordial with which to take my medication.

And that’s not something that happens every day either, especially just recently.

Nothing on the dictaphone either – I don’t seem to have gone anywhere during the night so it must have been a really solid sleep.

That meant that I could have a good half-hour or so on adding to my notes from yesterday before the medication worked and I could go to breakfast.

After breakfast I had tidying up to do because I was having visitors. It’s one good thing about having them, in that it does prompt me to clean up the place.

Sure enough, at 10:00, Laurent came round and we had a really good chat about all kinds of things and made a plan for a day out on Thursday. He knows of a few places that might interest me, like France’s answer to New Brunswick’s LePreau nuclear reactor, which is having a similar amount of success.

And if we take some potatoes with us, we can have fission chips for lunch.

After Laurent left there was a radio project to prepare.

Luckily I’d already done half a dozen live concerts in the past for another project when Liz and I ran “Radio Anglais” so I pinched one of those, wrote an introduction, dictated and edited it and merged it in to make an hour-long concert for this radio station.

Just like that!

That meant a very late lunch, unfortunately. And I was good and ready for it too by now.

It was a really beautiful afternoon, right enough, so I went outside and sat on my wall with my butties and my book. With the air being so clear these days we could wee right across to Cancale over there on the Brittany coast.

That’s about 18 miles away as the crow flies, yet you would never ever think so by looking at the photo.

The tide was coming in quite rapidly as I sat there. I could actually see it rising before my very eyes.

As a result one lot of fishing boats was heading out of the harbour to go to work while an earlier wave of boats was on its way back in to unload the morning’s catch.

There was the usual pile of pleasure boats too. Perhaps I ought to mention that it’s a Bank Holiday today and many people are off work.

Back here I made a start on the second week of my Accountancy course – but not for very long because it was time to go for my afternoon walk.

With it being such a beautiful day, there were the usual crowds out there.

This cabin cruiser was sitting in the sea quite a long way out and if I possessed a boat I would be out there too in this kind of weather.

There’s another one of those marker buoys there too, over there to the right of the boat. It’s hard to see because it’s black, and that’s not the best colour to have in the sea because it’s pretty difficult to see.

What’s wrong with yellow or orange?

It goes without saying that in this weather and a Bank Holiday too there are the usual crowds on the beach.

That means that in order to escape the madding crowds, people have to go further and further into the crooks and nannies in order to find some peace and quiet. And it doesn’t get much more isolated than the spot that they have chosen.

As an aside … “here we go!” – ed … I once told a friend that I had gone into the country to get a little piece and quiet.
“Don’t you mean ‘peace’?” he asked.
“No” I replied. “I mean ‘piece’, and I got one too, but she just wouldn’t keep quiet”

Standing on the clifftop overlooking the sea I fell in with a neighbour of mine who was busy admiring the scenery

We spent quite a long time admiring the scenery and putting the world to rights, like you do. And our discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Matthew Webb. Not exactly “swimming along the old canal”
“That carried the bricks to Lawley” though.

He was probably “paying a call at Dawley Bank on the way to his destination” but somehow missed his turning along the route.

We mantioned earlier something about the crowds on the beach and the necessity to find a quiet corner.

But there aren’t any crowds on the beach right now, and for the simple reason is that there isn’t much of a beach for them to be crowding on.

The tide is still well in and in a few minutes even that little bit of beach will be awash with water. Not that it’s stopping all of those people from taking to the waters. It was the right kind of day for it.

Round at the lookout over the Place Marechal Foch I went to see how they were progressing with the re-roofing.

And the answer is “not as quickly as I was expecting”. They have done about two thirds of it and they have put some fancy galvanised covering over the dormer windows. But there is still plenty to do.

However it’s looking like a very neat job and it will be somethign to admire when it’s finished, sure enough.

This was interesting too. I wasn’t sure what was going on with this particular yacht but, sensing that there was a catastrophe in the making, I stood there with bated breath and the camera at the ready.

But I was to be confounded yet again because the crew on board the yacht managed to straighten out the boat after making their very tight turn and sailed off into the sunset.

Or, at least, they would have done had this event taken place a couple of hours later.

But I was impressed with how they managed to get their boat upright again.

There was plenty of other maritime activity out there this afternoon too.

There were the usual yachts of course, several of which we have seen already, but this boat that was slowly chugging past looked to be very interesting. I wasn’t sure whether it was a yacht with its mast down or a streamlined cabin cruiser, but it was making comfortable progress even if it was towing its dinghy behind it.

As for me, I had to make comfortable progress and came back to make myself a coffee.

There was also my Accountancy course to attack, but shame as it is to say it, I crashed out on the chair. Not just for five or ten minutes either but a really deep 45 minutes the like of which I used to have when this illness first took hold and which I thought that I had shaken off.

That’s a tragedy because I have so much to do and I’m just getting farther and farther behind.

When it came round to 18:00 I was still somewhere else in my head but I managed to get myself together and spend the usual hour on the guitars.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and rice, followed by apple pie and soya coconut cream.

And then it was time to go out for my evening runs.

With not feeling too goo, every step was agony but I made it all the way round on my normal route. But at the clifftop I had to stop and take a photo of the spectacular view.

And just why it’s spectacular is that over there is, I reckon, Cap Fréhel on the Brittany coast and that’s just a little over 70 kms away. It’s not every day that you can see that far down the coast from up here, and I had to perch up on top of one of the old Atlantic Wall bunkers to make the shot work.

Round by the ferry terminal was my next port of call.

Both of the Joly France boats are moored up at the ferry terminal this evening. I did hear that there had been excursions over to the Ile de Chausey today.

But Chausiais has at long last moved from her ad-hoc temporary mooring against the harbour wall. And not before time either, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve seen how quickly the tide rises and falls here and where she was, she risked being dashed against the wall, and that wouldn’t have done her much good.

So I ran on down the Boulevard Vaufleury, ignoring a ribald remark that was directed in my direction, and when I’d recovered my breath at my resting place, I went down to overlook the harbour to see what was going on.

As usual, nothing very much, but at least we know where Chausiais has got to. She’s back on her mooring spot in the inner harbour where she’s out of the way of other traffic and the rising tide.

So having recovered my breath I ran on back all the way up the hill to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord to see what was happening there.

And the answer to that is “not very much”.

But my picnickers are still out there having fun. And I’m sure that they must be multiplying because there are more and more of them.

Having made sure that there was nothing else happing I ran on home to write out my notes.

Having done that, I’m off to bed. I have more visitors tomorrow morning and there’s my Welsh class. And then one of these days I really do need to do somethign about all of these arrears.

This backlog is just getting out of hand. Its ridiculous.

Thursday 7th May 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… this evening’s beautiful sunset, let me tell you about my day today.

Just for a change, I went to bed last night at a not-unreasonable hour and I was just about on the point of throwing off my bed covers when the alarm went off.

So, a narrow defeat this morning, which was a shame. It’s high time I got myself onto a winning roll with all of this getting-up lark. I can’t afford to spend my time lying in bed.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night.

There had been some kind of radio meeting during the night. There was a new woman there and we’d been discussing a few things. There was a brochure that we had prepared, like a magazine. It was in French with an English translation. I was looking through this translation and I noticed that this new woman was standing there not too far away and she was trying her best to speak in English. I’m not quite sure why. And then the meeting came round about we were going to abandon our Saturdays. One project that the chief decided on was that we were each going to bring in a piece of fruit once a week and we’d talk about this piece of fruit. He went through the catalogue and when it got to Saturday, he said “of course Saturday we won’t be here so we can’t do Saturday”. Then he came out with a list of reasons why we couldn’t do it with coffee – because some people like it with sugar and some don’t and so on. And it all became confusing.

After breakfast I had a go ata couple of pages of the website and upgraded them.

That all led to a shower and a general clean-up. And for all of my efforts this week, i’ve lost another 100 grammes. At this rate it’ll be years before I’ll disappear completely.

But in other news, I’ve cut my hair today. And it needed it too. I’ll probably find that I’ve lost half a ton of weight now that that lot has gone.

Thursday today and so that means shopping. I grabbed my bag and headed to the hills.

One thing though, and that was that I was interested to see what was going on today with all of the shenanigans down in the harbour over the last few days.

And so this morning we could admire the big yellow crane that was now back again, and it seemed to be doing some stuff with the new pontoons over there.

So that looks like progress.

Down here on this side of the harbour by the rue du Port we saw them last week manoeuvring one of the walkways into position.

This week we can see that it’s been installed properly now. I can’t wait for the detention à domicile to end so that I can go for a walk down there and see how it is. I want to find out how the bottom is fastened to the pontoon because the pontoon won’t be at a constant height.

But just look at that car park on the right. How disappointing is that? There was so much that they could have done to it to make it so beautiful and all that we’ve ended up with is a slab of tarmac with painted white lines.

So, filled with disappointment I pushed on through the crowds (and I DO mean crowds) up the hill out of town.

First stop was at the laboratory for my test results and to pay the bill. There’s a one-way system in force there so we had to go in through the back door (and out of the front).

And in astonishing news, it’s been months since I had any treatment and my blood count has gone UP! 9.7 is quite ridiculous if you ask me. I’ve no idea what’s going on there.

On the way up the hill to LIDL I went past a house renovation that appears to have started, here in the Avenue Marechal LeClerc.

In fact one of the things that I noticed was that in a lot of the shops that are currently closed there are all kinds of repainting and redecorating going on. It looks as if everyone is getting ready for reopening, and using the downtime profitably.

At LIDL I spent a little more money than usual but there was a reason for that. I need a new plugboard with more sockets, and there was a seven-way switchable one on offer for €5:99. So that joined the happy throng.

On the way back I called at la Mie Caline for a dejeunette and then headed home. And the shopping was really heavy, what with everything in it. Like two bags of flour for a start.

But my eye caught a change over at the chantier navale. There have been four boats in there just recently but today it looked as if there was now a fifth.

And even more interesting – the boat on the left in the line of four is not the same boat that’s been there for the last couple of weeks. That’s gone and another has taken its place so it seems.

Back here I had a coffee and then made a start on the images for July 2019. For a couple of hours I had a good back at those and another 40-odd have bit the dust.

Right not I’m on the upper deck of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour watching the tight manoeuvres as we attempt to make our way into the port of Vestmannaeyjar on the island of Heimaey.

There was a break for lunch of course, and I happened to glance out of the window where I saw this.

It’s been years since we have featured an old car, so this old Citroen Acadiane is a welcome visitor to our pages.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its many guises years and years ago will recall that I had one of these that I bought at an auction, but it was “lost” when the lock-up garages where it was kept were swept away when the site was cleared for houses.

After lunch I launched an attack on the updating of the web pages. And here I made an exciting discovery.

At one stage a while ago I was looking for the working files for my 2014 trip to Canada that I could never find and which I assumed had been lost when the old laptop gave up the ghost in Germany.

But I’d obviously at one stage done some kind of directory compare between the files on the computer and files on my web server, presumably found them on both and knowing that they weren’t ready for publishing, deleted them – but from the computer and not from the web server.

They’ve now been moved over to the correct location, so obviously some more good has come out of this project.

But what with that and an early finish this afternoon I didn’t manage to do as much as I would have liked, but I can’t win a coconut every time.

So after my hour on the guitars, my early finish had given me half an hour spare so I put it to good use.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve run out of pudding and so I decided to make a small apple pie.for the rest of the week or so.

However, rather than use a pastry roll, I’d seen a simple recipe for making simple pastry – basically any given welght of flour and half that weight of butter (or in my case, vegan margarine) all kneaded together until it looks and feels good, and then a couple of tablespoons of water added and kneaded in until the texture feels good.

Take out your silicon baking sheet, dust it with flour, stick your pastry on there, flatten it out and then roll it with your rolling pin, keeping it dusted with flour so it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin as you roll it.

Grease your little baking pan (I used a 15cm one) and cut your pastry to fit it. 150 grammes of flour was enough to make the top and the bottom and there was some left over.

Peel, core and slice a couple of baking apples and add the slices to the pie with some cinnamon, nutmeg, desiccated coconut, brown sugar and lemon juice.

Then add the top, milk the edges and press them down with a fork to seal them. Brush the top with milk and dust with brown sugar, then put a couple of slits into the top to let out the steam, and then bung into the oven.

With what’s left over (pastry and apple) make an apple turnover.

And here’s the finished product. It looks absolutely delicious. And the apple turnover certainly was because I had it for pudding with some of that almond soya stuff after my burger-on-a-bap and baked potato.

And I’ll have another go at this pastry lark because it really was quit straightforward and simple. In fact, I’m wondering what I can attempt next.

After the washing up (of which there was more than enough) it was time to go off on my evening runs.

There were quite a few people out there tonight, presumably fed up of the lockdown (which seems to be working – only 600 new cases today). And we had plenty of fishing boats to admire too – like these out and about in the stretch of the English Channel between the Ile de Chausey and Bréhal-Plage.

They seem to be working all kinds of new areas these days, and a lot closer to home too.

So much so that it didn’t surprise me to see these buoys just a few miles offshore.

At first I thought that it might be a seal or a porpoise or something so it was rather a speculative shot that I took. But back home where I could crop it out and blow it up (the cropped image, not the object) I could see that they were these temporary marker buoys that we see floating about every now and again.

Despite all the time that I’ve lived here I’ve never been able to find out exactly what they are but having seen them on fishing boats, my best guess is that they are markers for fishing traps, like lobster pots and the like.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday (and for a couple of other days just recently too) we’ve walked round the headland to discover a fishing boat setting out of the harbour.

There was another one today heading off out today too. There were a few boats out fishing off the Brittany coast near Cancale across the bay and it looked as if this one was on its way to join them.

Looking more closely though, it seems to be surrounded by seabirds so I wonder if it is in fact fishing with its nets out just there.

But here’s another thing.

My evening run took me along the path on top of the cliff past the chantier navale and I could see that there was yet another change of occupants.

We’d seen this morning that we’d increased to five occupants – two of which were new because one of the older inhabitants had gone from the chocks. But tonight we’re down to four again, with one of the new ones having now been put back into the water.

It can’t have been much that she needed

The next leg of my run takes me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round into the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne and once I reach my marker (the second pedestrian crossing) I can pause for breath.

So I walked back down the road to the walls overlooking the harbour to se what was happening. Chausiais is now back in her habitual mooring spot at the ferry terminal and Marité although you can’t see her, is still moored at the far side of the harbour (and I forgot to look this morning to see why she had been moved).

Apart from that, there was nothing very evident to indicate what work they had been doing around there.

So I ran off round to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord just in time to catch the sunset, as you have already seen.

There were a few people out there again tonight, including these people who were fishing with rod and line from the steps that go down to the beach (or would do at low tide, of course)

They seemed to be having a great deal of fun, whether they were actually catching anything or not, so I left them to it and ran on home.

Half of my notes are finished now, but so am I too. I’m off to bed and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow. It’s a Bank Holiday (VE Day) in Europe tomorrow but in defiance of usual practice I’m setting an alarm so that I can finish my notes early tomorrow.

If I can.

Sunday 3rd May 2020 – IT’S A GOOD …

… job that it’s Sunday and a Day of Rest, otherwise this could have been a disaster today.

A Day of Rest and a lie-in is one thing, and all very well too, but 11:15 is probably something of an exaggeration.

Mind you, that’s hardly a surprise when I listened to the dictaphone because during the night I’d put in a whole load of miles.

I’d started off with this virus in full swing and I’d been on a ship. I’d been asked if I could perform with the guitar for some people somewhere in Spain so I agreed to do it. I came off the ship with the guitar right in the middle of this raging illness. People were asking about me and asking about it but I can’t remember now very much more about it than that.
But later I’d been to Manchester for a job interview. I had NMP, the MkV automatic. It was a strange job interview because the woman was speaking to me in French although her French was pretty dreadful. She said that it’s no good applying for this job if you haven’t had this driving test here. I said “oh no I actually haven’t had my driving test here”. She said “what are you wasting my time for when it’s so important that you have a British driving licence?” I said that I had one. “When you said ‘here’ I thought that you meant ‘here in this town or whatever'”. By now we had transformed into Stoke on Trent (I was getting confused) and so this interview went on and I came out and got into the car and set out to drive home. At a certain point the road narrowed from a wide two-lane road into two narrow-laned roads to go through some kind of barrier. There was a big concrete post in the way in between where the road narrowed off and I hadn’t noticed. I thought that it was two lanes so I went to go into the outside lane and push on and put my feet down and I came across this concrete bollard. I went up and over it and had to reverse off. I was sure that this have done quite a bit of damage but I carried on driving. I had to go round in a circle now to get to where I was going so when I got to where this concrete pillar was again I could see the block covered in oil and an oily patch where the car had stuck so I imagined that it had damaged the gearbox and broken a casing and there was oil leaking everywhere. The only thing to do was to try to get home. So I set out for home. I noticed that the speedo wasn’t working and one or two other things. I was having to go quicker than normal, driving past these bridges where there were these schoolboys going back to school and a load of teachers hanging around outside chatting.
Still in connection with this I was back driving with a girl with me this time. We’d stopped at some town or another for a break and a coffee. As we were getting back into the car we noticed a Ford Cortina that was parked behind us. It was a yellow tobacco-leaf coloured convertible and it had written on the back “white wedding”. Of course that immediately caused a bit of laughter and so I went to get the camera to take a photo of it but the car pulled off before I could do so. There was another car there – a Bentley of some description, a mini-Bentley type of thing. There was a man and woman in it and they were asking where to go. Someone said “go that way because the other way is far too touristy”. We got into our car and went to start it. I noticed that from one of the gear lever rubbers or somewhere like that there was a small flow of water coming out of it and going straight into my box of food. I had a look and thought that i’d better take the bonnet up but I didn’t want to take the bonnet up because I didn’t want to see the damage that had been caused when I went over that concrete bollard but I had to do it. I lifted up the bonnet and there was all steam coming everywhere out of the joints so the car was obviously extremely low in water. I thought that the next step before I got home was to fill it up with water.
In the meantime there was something going on with an electric cooker. It required a four-way cable so that had to be rewired. So I’d done that and so I was trying to find out how to plug it into the circuit because of course I had a four-way plug but there was no four-way socket anywhere that I could see. For some unknown reason this led to a discussion about ventilators and children in a particular area of South Wales – the deaths of children had gone up 80% overnight.
Anyway, I was on a train. Somehow on a train heading to the city of London on an Underground train. For some reason that I don’t understand I got off at Wandsworth, I’m not quite sure why. I realised that I didn’t really want to get off at Wandsworth – I wanted to carry on to the City, to Victoria. So I got back on the platform and one of these limited-stop express trains pulled in so I had to run, dragging my case behind me towards it. So I ran but I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Terrible. I was running as fast as I could but I couldn’t seem to move. The train seemed to be further and further away. In the end the guard shouted “come on, come on” and I struggled to get there and just as I got there he closed the door but he opened it so I got on and then there was a woman with whom I’d been travelling with previously – it might have been someone I knew in Brussels, it could have been anyone. I sat down next to her and the train pulled out. After a few minutes I thought that it was getting remarkably rural for the City of London. I’d seen a few signs. We came to a hill and by this time we were driving on a road and came to a hill. I thought “God, this hill is familiar”. “I’ve been here in a dream” I said, “with Nerina. And she was on a bike and I was on a bike and the hill was so steep that Nerina got off and walked down the hill as I carried on cycling down and I cycled off and left her”. This girl said “naughty thing” and so I asked “are we heading out of the City?” She saud “yes, we’re just coming up to (somewhere, I can’t remember the name where there was a Motorway Service Area on the edge of the city)”. I said “God I’ve got on the wrong train, I’d better get off somehow”. There was a bit somewhere in this where we were on this road, a narrow road, and a whole fleet of orangey-red single-decker Duple coming towards us and our bus had to pull off on the wrong side of the road to let them pass. Anyway we all got off. There was another girl with us and we were walking. This girl I was with – she was talking about the things that she’d done and here in her house was a kind of tricycle she’d built out of a horse buggy. She was telling us about how the tyres had been moulded from a bread case, all that kind of thing. I made a remark that the rear end was a bit light as there was a front-end snowplough, don’t ask me why. She said “when Kevin Ayers was here he said something or other”. I thought “God, Kevin Ayers been here? Soft Machine? That’s incredible
Nerina was somewhere about in this too. We were walking down a street on a 1930s housing estate and she came up behind me with a small dog on a lead and we chatted about that.

It’s hardly a surprise that, with the late start and with a stop for breakfast, it was the middle of the afternoon when I finally finished doing my notes. And no wonder that I was in bed for so long too.

There was more than that too but as you are probably eating supper or something, I’ll spare you the gory details. But all that I can say is that why don’t I have exciting things like this happening to me during the day rather than to rely on some kind of vicarious pleasure.

There was time to digitalise an album though – another one that I did manually. This one was very, very straightforward now that i’ve worked out how to do it.

But it was an album that meant a great deal to me and took me back to 1975/76 when I used to hang around in Congleton so out came the acoustic bass and, to my surprise, after a couple of minutes, all of the old bass lines came back to me and I was well away for over 50 minutes doing that.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent in culinary activities.

You can’t see the rice pudding that I made, but here you can see the lentil, tofu and bean pie that I made.

Yesterday I explained how I’d made the filling and I’d left it to marinade overnight. All of the liquid had been absorbed and it was stone cold – necessary when using it with pastry.

There’s enough there for at least 8 helpings, so that’s food one night per week for a couple of months sorted out. I’ll try a slice tomorrow with potato, vegetables and gravy.

So that’s tomorrow night’s tea. What about tonight’s?

Here’s a vegan pizza, with the home-made base that I made from the pastry last week. There’s not enough pastry – I think that I’ll need four mugs of flour instead of three for three pizza bases, but the freezing worked fine.

It turned out rather biscuity because the base was so thin, but more flour for the next batch should see that right. It’s a learning curve and I will get better at it over time.

I won’t know about the final product here until tomorrow either.

With the leftover pastry from the pie I made an apple turnover that I will have for pudding tomorrow, and then I went for the pièce de résistance – the loaf of bread.

I gave it the skewer test and it seemed to be done well enough, although it’s another armour-plated crust. But I’ll slice some of it tomorrow and see how it tastes with my home-made hummus.

And while we’re on teh subject of home-made stuff … “well, one of us is” – ed … the orange and gignger cordial was delicious this morning.

Eventually I made it outside, long after my usual time for an evening walk.

The moon had risen quite well already and so even though I didn’t have my tripod, I took a photo of it to see how it would come out.

Not as sharp as it might have been with a tripod but it’s not too bad, I suppose. I would have been very happy with a photo like this two years ago but I’ve learnt a lot since then.

My first run was down the rue du Roc and up the other end. half of it is up a steep hill and it kills me to do it but I have to push on … “or push off” – ed.

There’s a pause while I recover my breath and then I run down to the clifftop. And out there tonight were four or five fishing boats.

And not in the usual place either, but much further across towards the Brittany coast and I’ve no idea why they should be so far out over there. They must be working on some new fishing grounds because we’ve seen them in a few different and unusual places just recently.

There’s another one over there too – right across the Baie de Mont St Michel not too far from Cancale.

In all the time that i’ve lived here I don’t recall having seen them over there either.

But never mind, I carried on with my run and provided a little light entertainment to three kids who were stakeboarding on the car park on the Boulevard Vaufleury.

Not exactly what I would call “social distancing” but never mind. That’s their problem, not mine.

On the top of the cliff by the chantier navale I stopped to recover my breath.

Nothing any different going on in there so I left them alone, but over at the ferry terminal (still no new pontoons as yet) the lights were on and reflecting in the wet silt of the tidal basin.

They looked quite beautiful so I took a photo of them. And then carried on with my run.

The fourth run is the longest, and getting longer too. I can now make as far as beyond the second pedestrian crossing which is impressive. and with nothing else happening anywhere else I did my final two and then came home.

Tomorrow I’ll have to clean up the kitchen because it’s a mess and I’m too tired to do anything about it. My battery has gone flat right now.

An early-ish night is called for and I hope that it’s going to be as exciting as last night’s adventures.

Tuesday 11th February 2020 – IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING …

… why the photos of the storm tonight aren’t anything as impressive as last night’s images, the answer is pretty clear.

When I was outside just now, it was still an hour or so before high tide. The sea was still coming in with an incredible amount of force though and I reckon that by the time it’s high tide, we’ll be having a belter again.

But I won’t be seeing it as I’m off to bed shortly.

Just for a change, I slept right though the night as far as I’m able to tell. There was certainly nothing on the dictaphone anyway

And furthermore, I even managed to beat the third alarm call so that’s progress of some kind or other.

With no dictaphone notes to deal with, I spent the early part of the morning cutting up digital tracks. Well, actually, repairing some really dire cutting before I could cut them properly (I don’t know who the heck they employed in some of these studios, I really don’t), as well as chase down a missing track which I eventually found stuck on the wrong soundtrack long after I’d downloaded a duplicate.

After breakfast I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio project and by the time that I knocked off for tea I’d even written most of the notes.

Had I applied myself to the task I could have had it finished, I reckon, but there were loads of interruptions

Much of the morning was spent trying to take a decent “selfie” (uuurrrggghhh) because I need a photograph that isn’t a standard size. Eventually I managed to seize up the memory card in the telephone and that has spent most of the day being recovered and repaired. Ancient laptops are really good for doing that because although they aren’t as quick as modern stuff, they are much more reliable and aren’t equipped with all of this modern fail-safe stuff that would stop a modern one.

During a break in the rainstorms – because we have been drenched today good and properly – I went down into town for my dejeunette from la Mie Caline.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the dredging that was taking place a few weeks ago over at the ferry terminal. Well, it looks as if the material that they were using – well some of it anyway – is back.

We saw one of the diggers heading out there yesterday afternoon, so they muct have turned up sometime after lunch yesterday

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been following the work that’s been going on at the quayside in the rue du Port.

This lunchtime I managed to catch them at it, fixing one of the pontoon supports to the side of the harbour wall. No sign of any pontoon yet, but I imagine that it won’t be too long before it’s here. There can’t be many more supports to fix.

And then we shall see just how this is going to work out

The tide was well on its way out so the harbour gates were closed. That meant that I could cross on the path over the top of the gates to the other side.

And it’s all go here too since I was over here too. We’ve had quite a few deliveries of all kinds of stuff and a giant crane too. This has excited my curiosity and as there are some people over there with it, I shall go and enquire.

And you have probably noticed the clouds in the sky. It was quite bright early but now it’s turning ugly.

And so I made my enquiries of the guys standing by the stuff and their response was “we’re going to erect a wind turbine – three wind turbines in fact – at the harbour mouth”.

Well, quite! I was sorely tempted to reply something like “pull the other one, it’s got bells on it” but instead I played along with them for a while and then wandered off as it had now started to rain.

But anyway, I worked out what it is and we’ll see if I’m right in early course I reckon.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d go and see what was going on that had caused the road in the rue Roger Maris to be closed. But no chance of that today because we were being pelted with rain and it was dreadful. I came home instead.

After lunch I made some apple and pear puree seeing as I have run out. And I solved the problem of excess liquid by draining it off and drinking it. I didn’t think until later that I should have made a cordial out of it.

As it was, I ran the fruit through the whizzer once it was thoroughly cooked and it’s come out exactly as it was supposed to. I’ll see what it tastes like tomorrow.

Being on a roll I peeled some ginger and boiled it. While it was simmering away I added some honey and turmeric, and then peeled three lemons. The lemons went in the whizzer too and the juice was drained off and put in the fridge.

The lemon pulp was added to the ginger and all of that was left to simmer for a while.

By now it was walk-time so off I went.

By the looks of things it was low tide and a very low tide at that too. The sea was miles out. And while the rain might well have stopped … “for the moment” – ed … where I was standing but across the bay at Jullouville they were getting the lot.

And the wind was still there of course. That couldn’t clear off across the bay too, could it?

And it didn’t look as if we were going to be spared the rain for very much longer … “I was right” – ed.

There was a wicked storm brewing up across the baie de Mont St Michel on the Brittany coast and whatever they were getting in Cancale, we would be getting it very shortly too give the speed of the wind.

This isn’t the time to be hanging around waiting for things to happen.

But neither the rainstorms nor the high winds were going to deter the fans of peche à pied.

They are out there regardless of the weather scavenging among the rocks for shellfish and the like. There are some kind of rules about the exploitation of the coastline and the part beyond the normal low tide limit is apparently fair game.

But of course you can only access it at an abnormally low tide and today seems to be one of those. And I hope that they share out the catch with their friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

With the tide being so far out and with the weather being so vile today, many fishing boats that we wouldn’t normally see in port were all still there today.

And the low tide meant that you can see all of them too. As I’ve said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … this is what is called a NAABSA harbour – Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground – when the tide is out.

It might look impressive to see boats like this but some NAABSA harbours are even more impressive. Take Ridham in kent for example, one of the destinations of our gravel boats. That’s a NAABSA harbour and ships of a couple of thousand tons can sit on the sea ed there at low tide.

And the mystery of what that digger was going to do yesterday is solved because it was doing it again today and I managed to catch him at it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the concrete breaker working away on the rocks over by the ferry terminal. They’ve obviously reached the limit of their reach up there because they are now working away from down at the water level.

I makes me wonder if we are going to be having a bigger ferry boat in here sometime soon

And I was right!

Earlier on we saw them with the crane and the equipment and we heard their “wind turbine” story. What we actually have is a floating pontoon or two out in the water now, which is what I thought it might have been.

That doesn’t answer the question as to why, and seeing as I doubt very much if I will get any sense out of the workforce, I’ll have to wait and see for myself.

By now the rain had eased off so I extended my walk a little and then came back to the apartment.

Having put some coffee into the microwave to heat up, I sat down to wait for it and promptly fell asleep for 20 minutes. How awful this is!

But then I finished off making my cordial and then cracked on with the work. But you can see why, with all of these interruptions, I didn’t manage to get as much done as I had hoped.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and it was the best that I had ever made. It really was good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The rice pudding was excellent too.

That took me up to my evening walk time.

The rain had stopped by now … “for the moment” – ed … but everywhere was thoroughly soaked. One of my running tracks was submerged so I had to do that run somewhere else.

Abd as I mentioned earlier, the tide is still quite far out right now. The waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset though but without the force that they’ll have a little later.

Just for a change I was the only one out there enjoying the spectacle so I stood and watched it for a while.

With no-one about I managed my second run too and then headed for home, exchanging pleasantries with a guy cleaning his window sill. Some people have some funny ideas.

Back here I’ve finished my notes so now I’m ready for bed. But the lemon and ginger cordial that I made was totally wicked. I mustn’t spill any or it will strip the varnish off the floor.

But being tired, I’m off to bed, hoping for another good night’s sleep. I need it.

Sunday 5th January 2020 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… exploits and editing all of the photos etc it was … errr … 03:30 when I noticed the time and decided that I’d better go to bed.

And I’m glad that I did as well because apparently I wasn’t in it all that long. It’s been a while since I’ve been off on such a voyage or two or three or four.

We started off with one of these cold, clammy wake-up-panicky things. I’d not been asleep long and in my sleep I’d been making a list of things that I had to do over the Christmas period, one of which was to go up the North Wales coast to see someone near Rhyl. Suddenly I had a horrible flash – God, I’d promised the mother of someone I used to know that I’d take her to the Nick to see her son who had been remanded in custody over the Christmas period. I went to find my mother and asked “has Mrs X rung you up?”. She had a look through a few papers and said “no”. “God!” I said “I’d better give her a ring and see what she wants doing about this”. But how do you broach the question of “ohh do you want a lift to the nick to see your son in a cell?. I’m going to have to think carefully about how I’m going to approach this. That was when I awoke in one of these cold clammy moments because all of this sounded so real to me. It was certainly a realistic voyage
I’d gone back to sleep and I wasn’t asleep for very long because I awoke again. I’d been in my house which might have been Davenport Avenue although it was my house at the time. My father stuck his head up from downstairs and said that it was high time that I tidied up my house, that kind of thing. Previously Nerina’s mother had been doing it and when we had had our bit of a dispute Nerina’s mother stopped coming and the place was getting rather untidy. I was busy trying to do something and I had a whole load of things going on and was so confused that I just shouted “if you don’t like the way my house is then you f**k off somewhere else”. He became really annoyed by that so I told it to him again. He went away and tripped over something and fell through the banister – broke it off but he didn’t fall so he picked the banister up and threw it downstairs and said “that’s the first thing that can go out of this house”. I didn’t care because I was trying to sort out some clothes out to go to work. I couldn’t find any and I hadn’t any znd those on the clothes rail were sodden and damp and wet, and there was a howling gale blowing which flattened the clothes rail once. I was really annoyed and angry about this and said “if you don’t like my house the way it is then you f**k off out!” and that was when I awoke again with another one of these brusque sharp awakenings.
A short while later, I awoke to find the dictaphone in my hand all ready with a file open ready to dictate. So I’ve no idea what I was trying to say, but I didn’t manage to say anything at all. What a shame.
Later on though, I had an address for my father, which was 172 “Something” Road, Alpraham. I can’t remember the girl with whom I was, which was an extreme disappointment but off we set to find it. We couldn’t find it in Alpraham at all so in the end we turned round towards Tarporley (we had this all wrong because Alpraham is the “other” side of Tarporley, the Nantwich side and i was looking on the far side) but there was Alpraham and we came back and eventually found the place after much searching. It was two brick and white low-rise blocks of flats on either side of the road, connected by a kind of bridge of flats over the top of the street. His name was on the wall, on a blackboard, room n°20. So we parked up to get our things organised. She had some decent clothes and some stuff in a bag and I had some stuff in a box. We decided that we would take up some of the stuff and leave the rest of the stuff in the car,but it was a convertible so we went to look for a cloakroom or something. One of the members of staff sitting at a table in the common area said that there was absolutely no cloakroom here whatsoever. We thought that we had better take our stuff up with us and that’s what we were doing – organising our stuff to take u to my father’s room when I awoke.
Somewhere along the line though Rowan Atkinson had turned up. He made some kind of extremely offensive remark about the disabled and I was appalled. I thought to myself that I wished that he could be in the place of one of these people and go through what they were going through and see what kind of reaction he would have at his comments
Then we all had to queue to get back on our aeroplane in the High Arctic to wherever it was that we were going. People were taking off their winter boots and throwing them in a huge pile underneath the steps to the aeroplane and the Filipino crew guy was there saying “you want to keep those in case you come again” and they were saying “we don’t need to come again”. They were taking photos of him as a souvenir and climbing up the ramp onto the steps. I remember saying to one of the guys getting on “Ohh I don’t want to go home again!” and that was when I awoke yet again, and I think that I awoke definitively that time.

Well, actually it wasn’t. I must have gone back to sleep yet again because it was 11:00 when I awoke. I reckoned that I had better get out of bed at that point and look as if I mean business.

After the medication, I attacked the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night, and that took longer than it should have done too.

And then it was breakfast.

Despite the late morning, I still had to think about lunch so I went off to la Mie Caline in search of my dejeunette.

And I wasn’t the only one out there either. Away out there in the baie de Mont St Michel over towards the Brittany coast was this beautiful yacht with a gorgeous red sail flapping away in the breeze.

It actually made me quite envious and i wished that I could be out there with him.

And that’s not all either.

Coming round the Pointe de Roc is this cabin cruiser or speedboat or whatever. That’s an impressive-looking piece of kit and the owner can’t be short of a bob or two.

He’s travelling at some speed too and it’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder whose it is, and where he’s come from.

The harbour gates were open so I had to come into town by the rue du Port.

La Grande Ancre is there ties up to the quayside, and she has acquired some more freight by the looks of things. There’s a small tractor on her deck, so maybe she has another delivery to do – maybe to the Ile de Chausey.

Having admired the various water craft, I carried on down into town and picked up my bread. And then the long walk back to here again.

The rest of the day has been spend doing the radio programme for the Bain des Manchots. It’s almost finished too – just the final 90 seconds to edit so that’s probably an hour or so’s work.

But to date, I’ve crammed about 35 minutes’ worth of speech into just over 8 minutes and it actually makes some very good listening. Hardly anything is repeated and everyone had something interesting to say (well, that’s how it ended up after I’d finished chopping everything up).

There were the usual breaks of course. Lunch was one of them, and my afternoon walk was another.

Back outside, I had a good look around.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago we were having a series of some really unusual light effects, but they have nothing on the light effect that we could see over there on the Brittany coast over Cancale today.

It’s probably the best bit of floodlighting that I have ever seen, and all done by nature too.

Round the corner, I could see that Spirit of Conrad still there up on her blocks in the chantier navale.

But there are two more sets of blocks out there today. I’m not sure that they were there last time I looked, so it might well mean that we’ll be having some more visitors in there in early course.

Watch this space!

Tea was a vegan pizza – one of the best that i’ve ever made – and then the evening walk all alone in the freezing cold. I did my run too – but again only half-way up the ramp.

The day’s journal is finished to now I’m going to finish off the radio programme before I go to bed. I want it done and out of the way and the soon er I start, the sooner I finish.

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

I don’t care what Percy Penguin has to say about it. I do NOT snore in my sleep. Not that she would ever know because whenever we were together late at night, sleep was not the subject that was ever on my mind.

But how do I know that I don’t snore? The answer is that this morning I spent four hours listening to myself sleeping.

Well, okay. Not exactly listening, but examining a voice file with the aid of a graphic sound analyser program, and I could see three minutes of dictation, a thump when I fell asleep in mid-dictate, and then four hours of silence apart from the odd turning-over in my sleep and the odd banging of the headboard.

Yes, I’ve finally reached the marathon four-hour dictaphone *.mp3 file and it is indeed, just as I suspected, a mistake.

We almost had a mistake this morning too. I was positive that I had dictated the details of a nocturnal ramble into the dictaphone, but something made me check, even though it was the middle of the night, and I found that I hadn’t. Dreaming that I was dreaming again.

But luckily I could remember a lot of it and so I dictated it on the spot. And I’m really curious now to know what else I have been missing, that I dreamt that I had dictated.

But anyway, last night we were in the High Arctic last night on a ship that might or might not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were doing some kind of research project and our group was involved in doing some kind of research project in respect of birds. So we were being pretty serious about this and some of us were out on the pontoon and they were looking at all these birds like crows and raven in the water with their beaks open and studying them. It was obvious that there were a few people not intent on doing anything and were just lounging around. of course we were pretty serious and after I had been onto the pontoon to see what was going on I had to get back on board the ship and there were a load of people queueing trying to get on so I mimed as if I was whipping them on which made everyone laugh, those who were lounging around. Eventually I got back on board and had to start to work, and remembered saying “come on, let the dog see the rabbit” when I was trying to get on board the ship. And what I remember was that there were loads of weeds around floating in the water , it was pretty close to shore. Someone was counting the animals and one of our group said that she had seen a moose or something. And she had also seen a Clayton diesel locomotive. I asked “where did you see that?” so she said that it was just after we had left Hvalsey to head down here. I thought that I can’t remember seeing this, or even hearing about it. But I decided that I would leave it to stand anyway

So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and this morning I definitely heard the second alarm, no mistake. But instead of leaping out of bed I somehow managed to go back to sleep yet again and the third alarm awoke me.

Today though, I was out of bed rather smartish and had an early medication and breakfast. And then I set down to work on the dictaphone notes as I had been promising myself.

By the time that I stopped for lunch, I was down to just 47 left. That’s been some quite dramatic progress today.

However, the morning was not without its interruptions. Three more parcels of this mega-order that I mentioned the other week turned up today.

Two of them I have yet to unpack, but the third one I did.

When I was In Montreal in September I was playing about on a five-string bass guitar and that pleased me greatly. A few weeks later, I was having another play about, only with a fretless bass. And that pleased me just as greatly.

So when I was browsing around on the internet a few weeks back I came across a vendor who was selling a new but shop-soiled (I reckon that it’s a product return) 5-string fretless bass for a price that can only be described as “democratic”.

It’s not very often that I treat myself to extravagant expenditure, but I did the other day and I don’t regret it for a moment.

Not a patch on the Gibson EB3 of course. That will always be a special machine, but this one will do nicely as a supplement.

On that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I headed for town and my dejeunette for lunch. Down to the fish processing plant and across the path on top of the harbour gates.

Nothing much going on in there at all, but one thing that for all the time that I’ve been going in and out of the harbour, I have never noticed this cock before.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

On the way back I stormed up the hill like there was no tomorrow. I don’t understand that at all. Fighting fit for lunch, I was.

And after lunch, I made a start on the data files for my projects. That’s taking me longer than I thought die to having to redesign it a couple of times and also … ahem … editing the wrong base file. I wondered why all of these amendments that I was trying to make didn’t work.

As usual, I stopped round about 15:45 to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The weather was astonishing though out there. There were a few clouds about but the sky was so clear that you could see for miles.

Over there that is the town of Paimpol I reckon, with the Phare de Paon and the Chapelle St Michel clearly visible. And all of that is about 80kms away, I reckon, from here.

The camera and the lens did well to pick up all of that.

Much closer to home is the town of Plenevon. Over there to the far right near where that hill thing is.

That’s a mere 60 or so kms from there I’m standing, and you wouldn’t think so either but it’s amazing what a little “crop, enlarge and sharpen” can do.

The camera even managed to pick up a little fishing boat half-way across the water.

Now this is much more like it.

That’s the Pointe de Grouin just there and the Ile des Landes. Behind it is the entrance to the port of St Malo and on several occasions we’ve seen Pont Aven, the big Brittany Ferries ship, come sailing out of there.

It’s a shame that she’s not there right now though because it would have made a spectacular photo. You’ll have to make do with half a dozen small fih=shing boats instead.

We’ve had photos innumerable of Cancale across the bay, night as well as day. That’s about 25 kms away from me.

But what makes this one so special is that we’re having another one of those “sunlight streaming through a gap in the clouds” moments as we have done on a regular basis just recently.

It really is as good as floodlighting if you ask me, and probably better than some recent examples that we have seen.

It wasn’t just Cancale that was receiving the benefit of the sunlight either.

Down the coast at Jullouville about 10kms away the big building right on the shoreline was also receiving the benefit of the sun, right full-on into the windows

That must certainly have been something quite spectacular for those people in that large room there.

No change of visitor at the Chantier Navale so I came home. And I had a few things to do on the internet that took up a lot of my time.

But I did stop for tea – another frozen aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. Only 5 left now so soon I can start to think again about cooking mega-curries.

Outside for my evening walk, it was raining quite heavily. But I did press on nevertheless although I didn’t stop for photos. However, I did manage my run and made it halfway up the ramp at the end. I’m definitely geting fitter.

Football on the Internet tonight. Caernarfon v Cardiff Met in the Welsh Premier League. We had a brief discussion about the possible score and someone reckoned 2-1 to the Cofis. And at the end of the match I asked him if he had a recommendation for the 3:30 at Kempton Park.

Caernarfon did indeed win 2-1 and it was the correct result too. But it was a very quiet match with nothing much of any excitement, which is a surrpise where Caernarfon is concerned.

It was bogged down in midfield for much of the match with very few chances for either team. In fact all that really happened was that each side scored a breakaway goal from a loss of possession in midfield, and the winner was a tap-in following up a saved penalty.

The number of chances that they had, apart from those, you could count on one hand although Will Fuller in the Met’s goal was busier than Alex Ramsey up at the other end.

It’s very late now because I’ve been dawdling, so I’ll go to bed for the few hours of sleep that remains.

Shopping tomorrow plus dicaphone notes and project files. And then the cycle will start again.

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

There’s been a strange object anchored out to sea all day, about 12 miles or so offshore, just outside French territorial waters.

I had taken a photograph of it earlier today, and as it was still there tonight I took another one of it.

Back here this evening, I cropped the photographs, digitally enhanced them and, because I can do this without any regard to modern anti-terrorist legislation, I blew them up.

And now that I have done all of that, I can see what it is.

And much to my surprise, it turns out to be, as far as I can see, some kind of small naval vessel like a fisheries patrol boat.

It’s been in the Press over the past few days about how the fishermen from here are dissatisfied about the post-Brexit fishing arrangements. And when French fishermen are “dissatisfied, we all know what that will mean.

So I’m wondering if it’s a British naval vessel keeping an eye on things from outside the territorial waters.

But whatever it is, it’s not emitting a positioning signal on my AIS receiver, so it can’t be anything civilian.

last night, for once I had a really good sleep. I only awoke once during the night, and then only for a minute or two.

So there was plenty of time to go off on a little ramble or two. I was on the ship going to Iceland. We were told that we could listen to the radio. There was a programme about an island off the coast of Iceland that had been devastated by plague and everyone had been wiped out, broadcast in 10 minutes time. Meanwhile a new island had been located near Iceland so everyone dashed to the window to have a look. We were on a plane and it came past the island and Iceland and another load of islands in a geographical east-west line. At the end it did a U-turn to come into land. By this time it was the ship and scraped along the frozen river thing that led to the sea. There was a news broadcast about our ship and how we were getting to it, how at the moment it was full of loads of schoolkids from Stoke on Trent who had booked it for a week and gone on a voyage (familiar, anyone?).
later on I was with my father. We were repairing a car and had the cylinder head off it. We put the head back on and had the car started and we could move it but it wasn’t right. So we had to take off the cylinder head again. We could undo four of the bolts but the fifth was very problematical. It needed a very thin spanner and we couldn’t find it. We sent a girl to the garage to look for the spanner but she came back with a pile of assorted bits, but no spanner. In the end I went in and I couldn’t find the correct spanner either. I had a feeling that I was looking in completely the wrong place in the workshop – I couldn’t see any spanners. In the end I did come across the tool box but couldn’t see the spanner in there so I came back out. I thought “hang on a minute”. I could unscrew part of the nut by hand and it came off but it left the stud in there. It looked to me as if the head would lift out over the stud as there was just a securing collar that held it in place. By this time my father had gone off so I didn’t know where we were going to go with this. We were in Stoke on Trent and where this car had ground to a halt was outside some minicab depot and a West Indian guy clearly associated with this group of Pakistanis came out and asked me to move because it was making a mess outside his office. I said “yes, just give me two minutes”. But some time earlier I’d been away and I’d come back to Expo with the car I had as a chauffeur in those days. I’d taken my suit off and there were all kinds of things in it – money, papers, folders, wallets, all kinds. Someone asked me for my phone number. They’d given me a piece of paper telling me all about their organisation and would I publish it, then he came over to ask me for my phone number. I couldn’t remember any of my phone numbers at all – the Belgium mobile, the French mobile and landline so I had to go finding ways to recall them. I had my mobile phone and I thought my number will be in there but I couldn’t remember how to access it. I went into my bedroom and found my other suit and that had my wallet in it with all of my papers and money. I thought “have I been away for a few days without my wallet?”. The bedroom window was wide open but it was warm in there even though it was winter. In a flash I suddenly remembered my French mobile number, but now I couldn’t find the guy.

It was another day where I managed to be up and out of bed just after the alarms went off. And even more surprisingly I managed to go all day without crashing out, although I did flag a little later in the morning.

It’s not been such a productive day today though. I started off by finishing the blogs for August. They are up-to-date now.

I followed that up by attacking the photo database for July. I’ve done about 100 or so of those, and while I was at it I amended a couple of entries for that month, seeing as I needed to look at the coding for those days.

There was a little diversion later on in the morning. I forgot to say yesterday that I found a computer program that allows me to edit certain 3D items by adding morphs to them. I had a play around with that yesterday and I had another go at it today.

It’s really quite interesting because it means that I can do things like make clothing from one character fit another by adding morphs and then adjusting them.

Lunch was in here again because it’s still cold and windy outside. And then I carried on with the photos for a while.

Later on, I went for my afternoon walk. Around the walls today.

My trek took me past the house that they are renovating on the corner of the rue du Nord.

The other day I noticed that they had removed the windows from the first floor and knocked out some of the wall underneath. Today, they seem to have fitted new full-length windows that might possible open.

My thought that we might be having a terrace out here could well be true.

The tide must be on its way in right now and the harbour gates must be open.

There’s an endless stream of fishing boats coming out of the harbour now and heading off into the open sea.

On their way to attack the fishing grounds, I shouldn’t wonder, surveyed without a doubt by the naval vessel standing to just outside the 12-mile limit.

They weren’t the only things heading out to do a bit of fishing either.

Down there among the rocks as the tide is sliding out is one of our old men doing a bit of the pêche à pied.

It’s quite usually a popular pastime at this time of the year but as far as I could tell, he was the only person down there today.

Meanwhile, we were having a really good day as far as visibility goes.

We could see way out on the horizon, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Jersey looking as clear as this.

Unfortunately, I must have missed the area of Jersey where St Helier is, because that’s not come out at all.

While the view was so good, I went right up to the highest point of the walls because I had seen something else out to sea.

I wanted to take a photo of it, digitally enhance it and blow it up so that I could see what it is.

It’s actually a trawler out there in the foreground, and in the background we have our old friend the lighthouse out at the mouth of the River Sienne near Agon-Coutainville.

Back at the flat, I attacked the dictaphone notes. And while I may not have done all that many today, some of them were quite hefty. I reckon that as far as minutes goes, I’ve done more today than any other.

Some of the stuff involved doing some basic research while I was at it, and that took some time.

Tea was a curry that I found in the freezer – potato and lentil, I think, with rice and veg. Followed by the last of the apple crumble.

And then I hit the streets for the evening walk.

A beautiful evening even if it was cold and windy. But the view was very interesting.

And there were still more trawlers heading out to sea and the surveillance of the naval vessel that was out there. There are clearly some strange things going on right now.

But the view tonight was even better than this afternoon.

Despite the dozens of photos that I have taken in the past of Cancale across the bay in Brittany, I can say that I have never ever seen it as clearly as I have done today.

You wouldn’t think that that’s 18 miles away, would you?

Finally around to the chantier navale to see what’s going on down there.

We have the large boat undergoing a respray, and I’m wondering when it’s going to be finished. To its right is another passenger vessel of some kind that’s come in for work.

But the other boat down there is some kind of elderly fishing boat. That’s been outside the workshop of the chantier navale for so long that I thought that it might have been a stationary exhibit.

So I’m wondering what their plan is now for it.

Back here, I’m going off to bed. Not quite as early as the last couple of evenings, but early enough all the same. Shopping tomorrow so I need to be on form.

st malo brittany coast granville manche normandy france

fishing boats granville manche normandy france

donville les bains granville manche normandy france

mussels beds airfield donville les bains granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 20th March 2019 – AND HERE I AM …

… back in the comfort and safety and privacy and warmth of my own home.

And how much I like being here too. i’m glad to be back.

However, as seems to be usual these days I had yet another bad night. I always seem to whenever I’m travelling. Going to bed early doesn’t help, especially when you have found the radio alarm clock and set it to work, so that you can watch it tick on past 03:35.

But at some point I must have gone off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm. and I’d even been on something of a voyage too – doing something with the Wales football team from last night.

Once I was awake, I didn’t hang about. I was up (almost) immediately and with everything already packed, I was on the road even before the alarm at 06:20 went off.

And to such an extent that never mind the 06:42 train – I was on the 06:32 to Oostende.

You can see it pulling in, 2 minutes late, being pulled by one of the Class 18 electric locomotives from 2011

As a result, I was in Bruxelles-Midi station even earlier than normal. I had plenty of time to go to Carrefour for my raisin buns for breakfast.

Surprisingly I didn’t have too long to wait at Bruxelles-Midi even though I was in early.

We were called up to the platform somewhat earlier than usual, and when we arrived on the platform we found that our TGV was already in.

It’s another one of the Reseau 38000 “PBA” (Paris Brussels Amsterdam) transets, number 4538

My neighbour was a nice young lady but she was extremely taciturn. She just sat gazing out of the window all the way to Paris Gare du Nord and I had a little relax.

At Paris, I dashed down into the Metro and leapt aboard the train, only for it to be held up at almost every station. In fact, the journey that usually takes me about 45 minutes took just about 65 minutes. It’s a good job that the TGV arrived on time.

My train to Granville was on time too. My neighbour was an elderly lady who needed quite a lot of attention which meant that I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to do.

But in my reading of “Wineland the Good” by Arthur Reeves, I came across something quite interesting. Reeves refers to some documents relating to the discovery and voyages to Vinland – the ‘Breve Chronicon Norvegiae’ – that were discovered in the files of the Earl of Dalhousie and which dated to the mid 15th Century.

Dalhousie is of course not too far away from Roslin and the presence of these documents up the road may well provide some kind of link that led to the voyages of Henry Sinclair and their relation to the strange carvings at Roslin Chapel.

Despite almost everything, our train pulled in at Granville bang on time.

Here it is in the station, parked up next to the train to Rennes – one of the Bombardier X76500 series of multiple-units.

As an aside, I’ve discovered that I can actually catch a train from Granville to St Malo if I change at Dol de Bretagne. And there’s talk about laying on a direct train some time in the future.

This time I managed to walk all the way back home, admiring Normandy Trader being loaded up at the quayside as I did so.

There seems to be an enormous amount of goods down there waiting to be loaded up on board. That should keep them out of mischief for quite a while with all of that.

Seeing as there were some men around there today, I should really have gone down to talk to them.

Further up the hill, I noticed that they were working on the city walls.

Part of the pavement has been closed off for as long as I have been there due to some loose stones that have been falling out of the wall, and I had heard some story that they might be doing some work on it.

So it looks as if they have already started. Probably hammering the loose stones back in and repointing the walls.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I spent a couple of summers doing that on my house and it’s a long, heavy, difficult job.

Back here I had a really good relax for a couple of hours before attempting the unpacking. Definitely feeling the strain.

Tea was easy too. One of the portions of shepherd’s pie out of the freezer with veg and gravy. However, the slice of chocolate cake that i’d left out of the freezer had turned. But those in an airtight container in the fridge were fine and there was some soya dessert left.

later on, I went for my walk around the headland. It was quite pleasant out there but yet again I was the only one out there.

There was still a touch of light left – enough to take a few photographs of the coastline, like this one of St Martin de Brehal.

It’s come out really well, all told and I’m quite pleased with it.

So now I’ll go to bed. There’s not much food in here so it’s a shopping day tomorrow. A nice walk up to LIDL I reckon.

I’ll see how I feel.

night donville les bains rue du nord granville manche normandy france

night st malo brittany baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night cancale brittany baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night baie de mont st michel jullouville granville manche normandy france

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Sunday 10th February 2019 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… have expected, going to bed really early meant that I was awake early too. At 04:35 as it happened, and that’s ridiculous really for a Sunday.

I was still awake at 06:00 too because I remember noticing the time. But I must have gone back off to sleep again because I finally awoke at 07:45.

Mind you, at some time or other I had managed to go off on a nocturnal ramble. I was at a school last night, not any of my old ones but a boarding school. there were a couple of boys who were the domineering type whom no-one particularly liked. They were on the verge of committing an enormous indiscretion by misunderstanding something important, and so I scooted off to the dormitory to awaken a couple of boys who I thought would love to see this. So they came downstairs just in time to see these other boys come in, but they seemed to take ages to reach the whole point of this matter and I could see that interest amongst the spectators was slowly starting to drop off.

07:45 I awoke, but it was more like 08:30 that I arose. Still not good enough for a Sunday and I’m pretty dismayed by it all. I seem to be going to pot these days.

After breakfast, I started to attack the blog and the photos.

As for the photos, it’s been tough work today as I’ve reached all of the 100-odd photos that I took in Koln. And I need to research the internet to find out where I was when I took them, and that’s not easy.

But as for the blog, I had a good-ish day with that and I’ve reached as far back as 9th January.

Another thing that I did was to scan a pile of documents and print out copies. These are important documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates and the like. Whenever I receive an official document like that, I always scan it and keep a copy as a graphic image. If necessary, I can always print out a copy and I’ve done that on several occasions, like when I lost my driving licence and lost my passport.

Seeing as it was Sunday, I also spent some time doing nothing at all except vegetating. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … everyone should have a day where they can do nothing at all and not feel guilty about it.

That hummus has matured nicely and it almost took my head off. It’s no wonder that I don’t have many friends if I can churn out stuff like that.

I went out for my afternoon walk. The rainstorm of the morning had stopped and the sun had appeared, although the wind was quite wicked.

It was blowing the waves all along the beach and there were some impressive whitecaps out there.

Just the kind of day to be out there on a small boat, I reckon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they are building a new house on the rue du Nord overlooking the walls and the sea.

Every now and again I like to see where they have reached with the work. They seem to have put a spurt on just now because they have actually started to do the roofing.

The heeavy beams and the like are in position. I don’t suppose that it will be long before they start the tiling.

There were quite a few people out there on the beach today at the Plat Gousset enjoying the sunshine, despite the wind.

And I don’t remember seeing this building before, and I was wandering what it might be. It’s made of concrete, and there seems to be some kind of encased concrete pipework leading from it.

I shall have to go down there one day for a closer look.

Round the corner and in the Baie de Mont St Michel the storm really was raging.

Although the tide was miles out, we have the concrete pylon with the navigating light for the entrance to the harbour, and that was receiving quite a considerable battering.

As an aside, when the tide is right in, the water level is above the top red band. We have the highest tides in Europe here.

Tea was a pizza of course. And while that was cooking, I peeled some of the mound of carrots that I had bought yesterday, sliced and par-boiled them and now they are in the freezer.

I hate shop-frozen carrots. For some reason they seem to taste all rubbery.

This evening was another nice evening. Really windy but the sky was perfectly clear.

There was only a small crescent moon but it was really bright. And the street lights of Cancale stood out really clearly over there. That’s 18 miles away of course, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed.

We also have the street lights of St Malo reflected off the clouds over there.

One thing about the night was that it was really clear. And the moon wasn’t too bright as to be overwhelming.

And so I reckoned that I would have a try at photographing some of the stars and see how they came out.

It’s not particularly good, but it’s hand-held in the wind on a long exposure. It’s surprising that it’s even managed to do anything at all.

So back here now, I’m going to go to bed. It’s not as early as I would like but it can’t be helped.

Quite surprisingly, I’ve not crashed out today. And it certainly comes to some kind of pretty pass that I feel that I ought to mention it.

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

storm port de granville harbour manche normandy france

moonlight baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night jullouville baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night roundabout rue du cap lihou granville manche normandy france

Saturday 26th January 2019 – THAT FOOTBALL MATCH …

… was something of a damp squib.

In many more ways than one too. It’s difficult to play football in a quagmire in a torrential downpour. In front of a crowd that could easily have been 2500 people, the players battled away without the fire and passion that I was expecting. But as I said, any fire that might have been out there would have been rapidly extinguished in the cloudburst.

Bangor came out of the blocks by far the quickest but they didn’t really look that dangerous up front. They had only really one dramatic moment when they could have scored, although they did put one in the net from a glancing deflection during a corner.

But their players didn’t have any kind of impressive appearance. They looked like the kind of player that you would see on the public park on a Sunday morning. Caernarfon’s players however looked like athletes. Their first goal was a typical Jamie Breese bruising battling run through a couple of powder-puff defensive tackles. Although Bangor equalised as I mentioned just now, Caernarfon scored a second with a good header from one of their defenders.

That was probably the correct result.

Last night I was at a girls football match in the USA. One of the attackers on one side was a lanky Métisse with a big afro haircut. She was substituted at one point in the match and left the field. A little later her team was attacking the opposing goal and in a good position when there was a commotion on the touchlines. The girl who had been substituted was arguing with someone and had broken a drinking glass to use as a weapon. This horrified everyone on the field and the match stopped. The girl with the ball ran off the field towards the other girl, brandishing a knife. When the second girl saw the first girl running towards her brandishing the knife, she took to her heels and ran away out of the ground. And it transpired that the girl was actually holding a beaker with a silicone pastry spatula in it.

That took me up to about 05:40 – a sleep of about 4.5 hours, and although the alarm went off at 06:00, it was rather more like 07:30 when I left my stinking pit. Straight after breakfast I hit the streets to do the shopping early.

LIDL had nothing special, and neither did LeClerc (although I forgot my pains au chocolat) but at NOZ they finally came up with the right spare sheet, and also a book on Normandy in the 12th, 13th and 14 Centuries.

There was plenty of time for me to catch up with some work before lunch, but it’s taking it out of me right now so I made a coffee and had a rest for a while.

After lunch, I started to work and managed to put three days’ worth of blog posts on line.

And then I went out and braved the hurricane for a walk in the twilight.

It was actually quite a beautiful evening as far as photography goes. The coastline right down past the old walled town as far as Donville-les-Bains was quite clear.

It came out really well in this photograph.

That prompted me to go down to the end of the Pointe du Roc and see what I could do down there.

The sky was still fairly light over by Cancale and St Malo and the the street lights stood out really well along the dark coastline.

Cancale, to the left of the photo, is all of 30 kilometres away. And it’s all come out very clearly, especially as it was a hand-held shot.

There was time to finally unpack the shopping, and tea out of a tin before the football.

No alarm tomorrow, because it’s Sunday. Hopefully I can have a lie-in for a change. I missed my Sunday lie-in last week.

cancale granville manche normandy france

st malo cancale granville manche normandy france

Thursday 10th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN A LITTLE …

… better today.

And that’s really a surprise because it was a late night to start with, and then it took me ages to get off to sleep.

But once I did, I stepped back into last night’s voyage at exactly the place where I had left it. And so it’s another evening where you’ll have to do without knowing where I was. Some of you have some delicate sensibilities.

When the alarm went off, I loitered around in bed for a while and then rose up from my stinking pit. We had the usual morning performance and then I took a shower. it’s been a few days and even I was noticing it.

So one good clean up, shave and shampoo later, I hit the streets.

First stop was the Post Office to post the letter that I had written yesterday.

Second stop was at the Bank. It’s all very well having on-line banking but if you don’t download the statements then you are in trouble. So I needed some instruction as to how to operate an internet banking service. It didn’t take long either.

Third stop was at the railway station to pick up my tickets. It seems now that my TGV tickets are only available on print-out, not from the station. So I mustn’t forget to do that.

Final stop was at LIDL.

But before I could reach there I had to pick my way through the roadworks at the roundabout at the top of the avenue LeClerc by the avenue Aristide Briand.

They are pushing on with the fibre-optic cabling but, according to the workmen here, there’s no timetable as yet for the actual connection. No-one has any idea when it might finally go on-line.

At LIDL, considering that I wasn’t intending to spend anything, I didn’t half spend a lot. As well as a new multimeter, there was a box of electrical accessories, some PTFE tape for plumbing and a pair of working gloves. Not necessarily for working but they are thin and very well-insulated and I can even work the camera with them – and that’s the point of buying them.

I walked back home, stopping half way up the rue des Juifs to see what was happening at the port.

There’s a huge pile of gravel now piled up on the quayside where the gravel boats dock. That must mean that we should be expecting a visit from Neptune or one of her sisters very soon.

Back here I bumped into someone delivering leaflets and was complaining about the cold. And it was all of 5°C too. I told him that he was lucky he didn’t live in the Auvergne.

In the apartment I had a coffee and then attacked the bank’s website. And much to my dismay there are only 6 months-worth of statements still held. That’s not enough but it’s the best that I can do. I printed them out anyway and added them to my file.

After lunch I filed everything away, checked off things on my checklist and then set to work to download my telephone statements. The bad news here is that they only go back 12 months but I’ve been on paperless accounts since March 2015. So I have all of the earlier ones (much to my surprise) and I’ve downloaded all of the later ones, but I’m short of the period 04/15 – 12/07.

So on the telephone to Orange. And what with waiting time it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes and having to tell my story to 3 different people. But eventually someone answered me with the news that they will pas my message onto the Accounts department who will send them to me.

And I hope that they do.

My afternoon walk was thus an early-evening walk after all of that.

There was a wave of fatigue but I managed to fight it off, and went for tea. Burger on a bun with potatoes and veg.

Back out around the Pointe du Roc for my evening walk. it was a cold, windy evening (but not that cold). Quite pleasant to be out.

And away on the horizon near St Malo in the centre of the photo to the left of the trawler, I noticed a couple of moving lights

Based on no evidence at all except pure speculation, the only thing that came into my mind was that it could well have been the huge ferry, Pont Aven, setting off for Portsmouth. There is occasionally a Brittany Ferries departure from St Malo round about 20:30 or so.

I’m glad that I was out there though because the sky was really quite clear and beautiful.

You could see for miles tonight and the street lights across the bay at Cancale were quite prominent. And in the background the clouds in the sky over there were glowing orange with the reflection of the street lights from St Malo.

I really am going to have to treat myself to a better camera with a much wider ISO range.

You’ll remember the trawler that we saw in a previous photograph just now.

I’d taken so long in sorting myself out with the other photos and the 70-300mm zoom lens that the trawler had beaten me into the harbour.

Here she was, just tying up at the quayside ready to unload today’s catch. There’a a van down there ready to take it all away.

So now I’ve printed out my tickets (and I’m glad that I bought a new printer) I might even try for an early night again. i’m out tomorrow afternoon. And I’m not the only one who is out and about. i’ve had a message to say that my new computer is on the road too, heading this way.

trawler night port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 9th January 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

…day.

And it all started off so well too.

Despite a night that wasn’t as early as it might have been, I was still up and about relatively early. I’d even been on a nocturnal ramble but wherever I had been, I don’t remember now because it disappeared from view as soon as I awoke.

After breakfast and a little attention to a few things here and there, I attacked the European Paper Mountain. And by the time that I had finished for the day (more of which anon) almost all of the most important papers had been itemised and filed away in a special binder.

I’d even gone through and made a list of papers that are missing, and I’ve started to send out enquiries for the missing ones.

One thing that surprised me more than anything though was that after living in total chaos since 2012 (according to the papers that have already been filed), with papers just about everywhere all over my house in Les Guis, in sacks and boxes and all over the floor on three levels of home, and living in all kinds of unsatisfactory temporary accommodation until moved here in May 2017, there are so few papers missing.

In fact, I was hard at it for most of the day.

Lunch was soup again, and it was even nicer than before.

I managed to go on my couple of walks today too.

in the wind. Few people about, but then again that’s not a surprise. The wind is a bit strong. But there’s clearly something going on with the tides because there were people out there on the beach scavenging in the rock pools.

Flexing their mussels, you might say.

In fact the tide was quite far out and in the distance I could see that there was a lot going on.

I don’t know whether they are oyster beds or mussels beds just offshore at Donville-les-Bains but whatever they are, it looked as if they were taking advantage of the low tide by doing a spot of harvesting.

There were a few men with a couple of tractors and trailers working around amongst the staves.

But even though the sky was cloudy and overcast, and the wind was quite strong, it was for some reason a beautiful day for photography.

You couldn’t see all that far today but what you could see came out really well.

With the 70-300mm zoom lens I was able to pick out features on the Ile de Chausey that are usually enveloped in haze and spray. That view over there is probably 14 or 15 miles away at the far northern end of the archipelago.

That wasn’t all of the excitement either.

Anyone remember the film Tora Tora Tora? And in particular the scene where as rhe Jpapanese pilots step into their aeroplanes and the sun breaks through the clouds?

That’s exactly what happened here just as I walked around the corner to the Place Maurice Marland and looked over the Baie de Mont St Michel. It really was so impressive.

From my vantage point back on top of the walls, I could see that there was a lot of activity going on on the quayside down below.

There was a lorry pulling up down in the harbour, loaded with another 20 tonnes of gravel. It’s not the first one either because there’s already quite a pile there by the conveyor.

That can only mean one thing – that is that Neptune or one of her sisters will be putting in an appearance pretty soon to take it all away.

There’s a derelict building in the Place Cambernon. Apaprently it was formerly the library and meeting hall.

It’s been like that ever since I moved here nearly two years ago and there was some talk at the mayor’s meeting last year that something was going to happen to it.

And here we are, with scaffolding up and the builders have moved in. This should be an exciting development once things get under way and the work advances.

Back here after my walk, something else that I managed to do was to book my next trip to Leuven and my medical appointment. It’s quite exciting in that the fares are on special offer so I’ve booked my trip – 600 kms each way of which 300 each way are on a high-speed TGV – for a mere €138.

For 1200 kms! I bet that you wouldn’t ever have a fare like that in the UK.

And my room for three nights in Leuven because I’m going to stay on for an extra day and come back on Wednesday.

But the bad news is that round about 17:00 I started to wobble. I kept it up for about 10 minutes and then that was that. On the bed.

At 18:30 I briefly came round and crawled under the covers, and there I stayed until about 20:30. Totally flat out. And I would probably still be there now had I not been required to go for a ride on the porcelain horse.

Mind you, I did go off on a nocturnal ramble. And a welcome return to Zero. She used to accompany me quite regularly on my travels during the night but she’s not been around awhile so it was nice to see her, even if she was known during this journey by another name.

I’ll spare you the details though. You are probably eating your tea right now, which is more than I did because I missed my tea slot.

I did manage to arouse myself enough for my evening walk though.

And the night was another one of those nights that was crisp and clear, and probably deep and even too, with a good view for quite a considerable distance.

Across the bay, the lights of Cancale were quite clear, and you could see the reflection up there in the clouds of the streetlights of St Malo.

There was a patch of light moving across the bay from the direction of the Ile de Chausey.

I wasn’t sure at first if it might have been one of the ferries, but on closer inspection it appears to be a trawler coming into port here at Granville on the evening tide.

And for once, I was able to take a fairly clear photograph of it. It’s not come out too badly, all in all.

So back in my cosy little nook. Tomorrow is shopping so I’ll need to get my rest. But what with all of this rest and sleep, I’m not sure what state I’m going to be in if I don’t manage to go to sleep again.

ostreiculture donville les bains granville manche normandy france

ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

sun through clouds baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 1st January 2019 – AND A VERY …

… Happy New Year. Not just from me, but from someone else here in Granville too.

I’m grateful for all of the support and encouragement that everyone has given me over the last year. It’s the kind of thing that has kept me going.

As well as that, I’m also even more grateful to everyone who has given me hospitality over the year during my perambulations around the Northern Hemisphere. I may not have many friends, as I have said … “and on many occasions too” – ed … but those I have are the best friends in the world.

So back to the story.

Having complained about sleep issues for as long as I have, it’s much more exciting to report that today, I left my bed at all of … errr … 11:22. And breakfasting at 12:00 is much more like what I expect to see on a Bank Holiday.

I’d been on my travels during the night too. Into a veg shop in Germany to buy a couple of carrots. I’d pressed the key on the automatic machine and the carrots came down into the scales to be weighed, and then I had to go to the counter to pick them up and pay for them. However, I couldn’t remember the German word for “carrots”. In Flemish it’s wortelen and so I tried that, but the shop assistant didn’t understand me. I pointed to the carrots and she still didn’t understand.

After breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you might call it, I had a task to perform.

There was an upgrade proposed a while ago by my blog host but I put off doing the upgrade. However it was forced upon me and while I was in Leuven I performed the upgrade.

And it’s terrible.

The old interface was a simple text-based interface where I could (and did) add my own handwritten *.html coding which I saved in blocks in my text-ediiting program and which I used for every web site on which I worked.

But this upgrade wants everything done in blocks with the *.html coding incorporated into the site itself, and adding the search indices is next-to-impossible and is the most complicated procedure that I have ever seen – especially on a slow connection.

So while I’ve been trying to figure it out (or find another blog interface that does what I want) I’ve been recording my blog entries in my text editor.

Anyway, I’ve given up. It’s not working, and so I’ll have to go with what I’ve got. And that meant adding 6 days-worth of blog entries and editing the indices manually.

That’s what I’ve been doing today.

At last, I could open my Christmas present from Liz and Terry. And now that you can see it in all of its glory, you can see that it was well-worth waiting for.

And it really is delicious too.

This evening we had football. Welsh Premier League basement clash between Carmarthen and Llanelli. Carmarthen aren’t that good but they ran rings round Llanelli who looked determined to shoot themselves in the foot.

Some of Llanelli’s defending was suicidal. They just couldn’t get the ball out of their own defence and tried to play the ball around, losing possession on several occasions in desperate positions. Carmarthen won 2-0 – both goals coming from Llanelli mistakes.

On this showing, Llanelli look well-and-truly doomed and we’re only half-way through the season. And depending who comes up from tier two in the south next season, Carmarthen need to start to think about what they intend to do.

Tea was a vegan burger with a pile of veg and gravy. Totally delicious, as was the endive that I had as a treat.

Outside tonight for my walk, and there was no-one around at all. I didn’t see a soul.

That was quite a surprise because despite the cold, it was a really beautiful, clear, starry night.

There was some cloud pretty high up in the sky over St Malo, and the reflection of the streetlights was magnificent. The town of Cancale, over there across the bay, was nicely illuminated too.

Back to work tomorrow – I have such a lot to do. So I won’t be hanging around too long. An early night is beckoning and if I’m lucky I might just make it too.

Monday 10th December 2018 – BACK IN THE 1960s …

… General De Gaulle famously said that “l’Angleterre n’est pas prêt” to join the European Union.

And 50 years or so further on down the line, the only way that things have changed is that they have changed for the worse.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that another recurring theme that runs through my writings is the failure of British companies to understand what the whole idea is of the European Union, and refuse to sell their products to the rest of the European Union.

Today, I’ve had it said to me not once but twice.

I spent much of the morning on the phone to the UK and I have now ordered my new desktop computer. It will have three hard drives, one of which will be a 256GB solid-state drive. A 3.9GhZ processor and a 8GB of RAM (upgradebale to as much as 32GB if ever I feel the need) complete the package.

And I learnt something new today too. Apparently the only option for an operating system for this set-up is Windows 10. I asked why that might be a problem, to which the salesman replied that most graphics people have abandoned Windows 10 and reverted to Windows 7, which apparently gives much better results.

We hd quite a good chat and he recommended a IPS panel screen. These are flat screens like most computer screens but the image looks the same from no matter what angle it’s viewed.

All I’ll need then is a keyboard, a mouse and a powered USB hub, and then I’ll have all I need.

But here’s the rub. Now that it’s ordered (and paid for) it needs to be delivered. And as soon as I entered my home address in the box, the screen greyed out.

After a considerable amount of trying, I eventually made contact again with the company, who told me that they don’t sell their products abroad. So in the end we inserted THEIR address in the delivery box. They’ll send me a mail when it’s built and I can send someone to collect it.

As it happens I have a friend who lives nearby. She works for a company down the road. She asked me what she should do with the parcel, to which I replied that she could send it over to me by a courier.
“Do you have a courier in mind?”
“No. Just use the one that you use. That should be okay”
“But we don’t sell our products abroad so our courier doesn’t go there”.

The UK has a population of about 65 million people. The rest of the EU has 450 million people and it’s a free, open market where anyone in the EU can sell any product anywhere else in the EU without any restriction whatsoever (not quite true of medicines and one or two other minor products).

And here are a whole pile of British companies refusing to trade with a market of that size!

I’ve never had any difficulty at all ordering stuff anywhere in the rest of the EU and having it delivered. And anyone in the UK has probably never had any difficulty in ordering stuff from the mainland. But for some reason, people in the UK just don’t “get it” and prefer to ignore this massive market.

No wonder there’s a recession and UK industry is collapsing. it really is unbelievable. 450 million people waiting for products and the UK won’t sell to them.

Last night was a late night because I was doing something and lost track of time. When I looked, it was after 02:00 and that’s not very good.

The alarm went off as usual but for once I couldn’t care less. 07:45 was when I plucked up the courage to crawl out from under the sheets.

I’d been away on my travels too during the night. You won’t be interested in the first part of it because you are probably eating your tea right now. But a little later I was in a room with a Muslim girl. She was fitting me out in a headscarf – a light green diaphanous one that when it was folded over double, became an impenetrable yellow. She went off somewhere and I had to get ready to go after her, but for some reason I was taking my time and I had some music playing loudly in the background. So loudly in fact that she came back to tell me to turn down the music and to ask why I hadn’t followed her.

After a late breakfast I sat down and made a list of what I wanted on this computer. It took quite a bit of thought, and once I’d made my list I phoned up and set the rigmarole in motion.

I’ve been using laptop computers since I moved to the Auvergne because of the issue about power. Laptops don’t consume much and of course they will work when the power is switched off. But now I’m installed properly here, it’s high time that I had the kind of set-up that I want.

After lunch I had another phone call to make. It’s only possible to call up on Mondays between 14:30 and 16:30 so I didn’t want to miss it; But each time that I phoned (five times in all) the line was engaged. Eventually I discovered that there was only one person dealing with this enquiry, she worked part-time, and had just one phone line with no queueing facilities.

Now that’s what I call efficiency.

I had both my walks today.

The wind had dropped dramatically this afternoon and it was much more pleasant outside.

And whoever was out there in his little boat towing a canoe somewhere out there between the Pointe du Roc and the Ile de Chausey was having a whale of a time out there

And there were some beautiful cloud effects out there today.

Here, around on the Pointe du Roc overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel the sun was bursting really beautifully through the clouds and illuminating the sea over there by Cancale.

It’s come out quite well in this photo and I ought to have it framed and mounted.

Tea was a stuffed pepper again, and delicious it was too, with the stuffing having marinaded over a couple of days.

Out in the evening air tonight, the wind was almost still.

But there was that much energy stored in the sea that the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset with an astonishing force.

There must be enough energy in the waves to power the whole of the world, I reckon. I don’t really understand why more effort isn’t being put into developing it so that we can continue our escape from a dependence upon fossil fuel.

Well, actually I can. But this isn’t the place to start talking politics.

Tomorrow I might go for pie and mash, especially as there is a leek to use. And that has got me thinking, which is quite a rare event these days. And I’ve decided that I’m going to add a handful of leeks to the shopping order every week in an effort to continue to improve my diet.

It’s probably far too late to do much about my health but there’s no harm in trying.

And did anyone notice the News this evening? Mrs Mayhem made a Statement to the House of Commons to the effect that because she feared that she would lose the vote on secession from the EU, she’s postponed the vote.

I’ve been trying to steer clear of political posts but no-one can ignore this. Mrs Mayhem’s remarks and actions – cancelling the vote because she won’t win it – is the kind of thing that Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe would do.

It’s not the kind of democracy of which any democrat would be proud and makes a total mockery of this idea about “our Parliament being sacrosanct”. It’s a Third-World dictatorship trick and it shows you
1 – just how low the UK has sunk
2 – Mrs Mayhem is running totally scared.

it makes the UK look just like a laughing stock and I really am ashamed to be British.

night trawlers ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

night storm plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Sunday 2nd December 2018 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and that generally means no alarm call and a lie-in. And so I was in no mind whatever to get up when I awoke at … errr … 04:35.

But there was a good reason for waking up at that time of morning. I was off on another one of my nocturnal rambles. And I’ve had some dreadful nocturnal rambles during my time, some of which, with very good reason, are not the kind that I would recount because you are probably eating your tea or something while you are looking at this. But last night’s was one of the most dreadful that I have had and it was difficult for me to write in my diary. It wasn’t the kind of thing that I would be pleased to remember.

So 07:45 was a slightly better time to awaken, and 08:30 was an even better time to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit.

With a late breakfast, sightly delayed because I made a mess of my morning sudoku and ended up with two eights on the same line. Can’t go round doing things like this.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I didn’t do much at all this morning. Just doing things that I like to do. After all, Sunday is the day that I can laze around and do nothing without any thought of disappointment. Everyone needs a day like this.

After lunch, I headed off into the rain in the direction of St Pair where the US St Pairaise were playing US Mortainaise at the Stade Croissant.

St Pair would be higher in the table if they could score more goals, and Mortain just simply can’t defend. So I’m not sure of what game I was going to get.

It was obvious from the first 20 minutes that St Pair were much the better side, but it’s true that they didn’t offer anything up front. Mortain, were at least, organised but well off the pace.

Eventually, St Pair scored a goal after much huffing and puffing, but much to everyone’s surprise Mortain equalised, with only their second attempt in the whole of the half.

In the second half we had a couple of changes. One of Mortain’s players had turned up late and judging by how he was greeted, he was obviously the star of the team. He came on and went up front in place of the n°9.

And St Pair brought on the n°14 – the guy with all the hair who impressed me so much the other week.

This was the crucial point in the match. The Mortain replacement, well, he might have touched the ball two or three times during the second half, but for most of the game he was merely an ornament on the field.

As for the St Pair n°14, they played him at first on the right wing, but when they moved him into the centre of the attack he ignited the game.

What didn’t help was that the Mortain n°8 – the only player on the Mortain team who was showing any real ambition, was the victim of a very heavy challenge and was forced out of the game. And that was that for Mortain.

Mortain tired rapidly in the last 20 minutes and folded up. The St Pair players were stampeding in droves through a non-existent Mortain defence, stranded out of breath halfway up the field. And the final score of 5-1 was rather exaggerated.

It could have been much worse too. St Pair were denied what I considered to be a stonewall penalty, we had a beautiful step-over from the n°14 that sold a dummy not only to the whole Mortain defence but unfortunately to his onw team as well, and a keeper in the Mortain goal who was clearly not a keeper (his first instinct was feet, not hands) and who couldn’t catch a ball, but could dive and punch with a great amount of bravery and would have done credit to any other keeper at this level.

Back here I was shelling walnuts.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I liberated a pile from Liz and Terry’s lawn a few weeks ago and they have been drying in the sun. This evening I shelled them all and grilled them while I was making my pizza. They’ll be ground up and made into nutburgers in early course.

The pizza was delicious, and so was the rice pudding that I made yesterday.

And my walk in the wind and rain was very nice.

The air was quite clear and visibility was beautiful. The street lights reflecting off the clouds over St Malo were definitely impressive tonight.

Cancale is to the left and the lights of the lighthouse on the immediate left margin of the photo.

It’s Monday tomorrow so I’m back at work. That’s a cue for an early night tonight. And where will I go while I’m asleep?

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: cancale

Monday 1st June 2020 – WHAT STARTED OFF …

Thursday 7th May 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

Sunday 3rd May 2020 – IT’S A GOOD …

Tuesday 11th February 2020 – IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING …

Sunday 5th January 2020 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Wednesday 20th March 2019 – AND HERE I AM …

Sunday 10th February 2019 – AS YOU MIGHT …

Saturday 26th January 2019 – THAT FOOTBALL MATCH …

Thursday 10th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN A LITTLE …

Wednesday 9th January 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Tuesday 1st January 2019 – AND A VERY …

Monday 10th December 2018 – BACK IN THE 1960s …

Sunday 2nd December 2018 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

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