Tag Archives: crane

Wednesday 24th June 2020 – I’VE BEEN …

… out and about on my travels this morning.

So while you admire the photos of the baby seagull, which now seems to be very fit and healthy, I can give you the account of my day.

And just for a change, it got off to a very good start, for I was actually up and out of bed before the third alarm – something that doesn’t happen too often these day. Maybe it was the early night that helped there – if you can call 23:45 an early night.

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

Last night there was a group of us working on a new history textbook for schools and this involved rewriting quite a bit of stuff that was already in it including a load of songs and so on. So we noticed that these songs to fit into the new way of things and it was quite difficult for everyone to get into the habit of hearing them in the new way and I remember my brother being particularly surprised at some of the changes made to the songs in order to make the songs fit the times more than anything else
There was something else going on during the night and I’ve forgotten a lot of it but I’d been caught doing something and been punished in some way by having to do something, carry out a few tasks and at the end of that time I was given £30:00 in 2x£15:00 vouchers to spend. Whoever I was with – it might have been Nerina – was really upset about that and demanded to talk to me about it. The guy who was watching me, I held up the two vouchers and waved them about to attract his attention and said that I was going into the building. Nerina came with me and I had to find a quiet room to have a discussion. There were about 6 rooms in this building and there wasn’t really one that was suitable – the walls were flimsy and there were people in adjacent rooms. In the end we found a room where the photocopier was and we were about to go into there. And that was when the alarm went off.

And even though it was Nerina who was with me for part of the evening I do have to say that regardless of any of our issues, I would much rather have her company on my nocturnal rambles than many of the others who have been putting in an appearance just recently.

I’m still not eating breakfast so having done a little work, Caliburn and I headed for the hills – Gavray, in fact.

When I arrived in the town I took a wrong turning and I’m glad that I did because I found something that I would otherwise have missed – an old disaffected railway station.

There was a “Light Railway Act” in France similar to that in the UK of 1896, and for a period of about 50 years the whole of France became honeycombed with what they called the tacot or “rattletrap” – a narrow-gauge voie metrique railway network.

It’s the kind of system that was highlighted in the Alec Guinness FATHER BROWN series of films in the 1950s of the books by GK Chesterton

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen plenty of examples of this on our travels, especially in the Auvergne where I used to live and also here in Normandy along the coast.

There was also a voie metrique that went across-country from Granville to Conde-sur-Vire, opened in 1910 and closed in 1936 (and we’ve seen lines closed much quicker than that too). That line passed through Gavray and there would almost certainly have been a railway station here.

That has always been one of the things that I’ve been aiming to do – to track it down – and having taken a wrong turning in Gavray when I was looking for something else, I find myself falling right on it, quite by chance.

So while you admire the photos of the kayaker and othe rpeople in various water craft out there fishing today, I was busy tracking down the garage that I had come to visit.

Eventually I tracked it down and the guy had a good look at Caliburn. He reckons that it’s perfectly possible to do something with Caliburn. There’s no rot except in one wheel arch – the rest of it is simply rubbing down, rust-proofing, zinc priming and about a ton of underseal.

He’s not going to end up as he did out of the factory 13 years ago, and it’s not cheap either. But with my lifespan that’s left there’s no point in buying a new vehicle just for three or four years.

Caliburn and I may as well go out together.

So I headed on back to Granville and I’ll wait for the estimate to arrive. But I’ve decided that i’m going to have it done anyway.

When I reached the outskirts of Granville I took the by-pass and joined the traffic queue heading south towards St Pair sur Mer.

Brico Cash was where I was heading, to see what they had on offer today as I haven’t been there for a while.

And the answer is “not an awful lot”. There wasn’t anything that caught my eye particularly although I picked up some French plugs. A couple of the appliances that I brought from The Auvergne when I was there just now still have British plugs on them.

Traffic queues back here as well. I was stuck behind a grockle in a motor home admiring the blasted seagulls instead of advancing in an orderly fashion.

Back here there was still plenty of time before lunch so I had another look at the web pages that I’ve been amending.

That one is now completed and I’ve made a start on the next. I’ve now crossed over the border into Great Satan and I’m on my way to Bar Harbor in Maine.

By now it was lunchtime.

It was beautiful and warm and bright and sunny so I made my sandwiches (home-made bread, home-made hummus and salad) and went and sat outside on the wall again.

Even though the tide was well out and there were no ships or boats in the harbour, there was still quite a bit of activity going on down there today, despite it being the lunch hour.

There was a mobile crane down there and as I watched, it was joined by another one – the big mobile crane that comes here every so often.

The big crane extended its jib and they were both performing some kind of activity out there. I couldn’t see what it was, so I shall have to go out that way on my Sunday walk to see what has changed.

It can’t be anything too complicated because all the way through the manoeuvre … “PERSONoeuvre” – ed … one of the Joly France boats – the newer one – was moored right there and with the tide being out, it wasn’t moving anywhere else.

Back at the apartment I tackled the last week of my Accountancy course. I’ve finished it, not very successfully I have to say because I can’t remember all that much about what I just learnt.

That’s one of the penalties of old age. Two things happen to you then.
The first is that you forget absolutely everything that you are supposed to remember.
And as for the second thing – well, I’ve forgotten what that was.

There was the usual break for my afternoon walk.

Today, in the gorgeous hot sunlight I went for a walk around the walls of the medieval town. From there I could look down on the beach at the Plat Gousset and watch all of the crowds enjoying themselves.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and the brats aren’t in school so the beach was busier than normal, and that’s not a surprise. Given half a chance, I’d be down there myself.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago we saw the local council clearing out the old tidal swimming pool with a lorry and a digger – clearing out years of accumulated silt.

They’ve done a really good job by the look of it. It’s actually retaining some water and it’s attracted quite a crowd of people, splashing around in there.

And the people in the flourescent jackets – I’m convinced that they are the lifeguards, although how they are expected to swim while wearing those is anyone’s guess.

My walk went on along the walls and around to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch.

There’s been a roofing job going on on one of the roofs of one of the buildings down there for as long as I can remember, and they still don’t seem to have finished it.

Not long to go by the looks of things, but I recall having said that before. They were doing really well at one point but seem to have gone off the boil just recently.

From there I passed through the Place Maurice Marland to check on my seagull chick, and then walked on to the viewpoint over the harbour.

There’s some activity down there right now. A lorry has turned up and there’s a fork-lift truck that looks as if it might be thinking about unloading the lorry. Does this mean that either Thora or Normandy Trader are going to be paying us a visit some time soon?

And we have another group of fishermen over there wrestling with a rather large fishing net

Another thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing is the works van that appeared on the city walls near where they did all of that repointing.

The pointing on part of it in the Parvis Notre Dame was pretty poor so i speculated that the work might be something to do with that, and it seems that I was perfectly right. There are two men down there cleaning it all up

You can see how much excess cement that one of the guys has scraped off the wall – it’s all lying on the ground behind the car.

Back here I carried on with the course and, shame as it is to say it, crashed out a couple of times too. This is really getting on my nerves.

But I finished the course in the end and there was time to edit a few more photos. Tomorrow I’m going to start the final part of my music course. I want that out of the way too.

After the guitar I made tea. There was some left-over stuffing so I added some kidney beans and tomato sauce and made taco rolls

Somewhat later than usual, iw ent out for my evening run. It was far too warm to go out at the usual time.

All the way up the hill and down to the cliff without stopping, saying hello to the itinerant sheltering under the tree. Out to the sea there was plenty of activity and we have already seen some of the boats. We haven’t seen this yacht though, sailing back from the Ile de chausey into port, towing its dinghy behind it.

It’s making me all broody again and I’m going to have to do something about all of this before too long.

Just for a change there was no family group picnicking in the old gun emplacement.

There were however plenty of people down on the viewpoint by the old watchman’s cabin and they were having a good time by the looks of things

Quite a few fishermen too, down there on the rocks casting their lines out into the water. It seems to be becoming quite a regular thing these days.

My run continued on along the path on top of the clifftop on the south side of the headland

No kids jumping off the sea wall tonight, but instead we seem to have had some activity down at the chantier navale. One of the fishing boats that has been there for quite some considerable time seems to have gone back into the water.

There were a few other people down there taking photos of themselves in the evening sunshine. All in all, it was quite busy.

And not just there either.

Way across the port on the sea wall that protects the port de plaisance – the yacht harbour – there were crowds of people milling around tonight. They were certainly making the most of it.

As for me, I cleared off and ran all the way round down the Boulevard Vaufleury and the rest of my vastly elongated route round to the viewpoint in the rue du Nord.

The tide is right in right now so the chances of finding any picnickers on the beach was extremely remote.

However that little shelf that we noticed a few days ago – that seems to be the place to be these days as there are a couple more people making use of it.

And I’m still trying to work out the optical illusion surrounding the guy on the left. It looks thoroughly weird to me.

The people down there were enjoying another magnificent evening.

There were quite a few people up here enjoying it too, and quite rightly so for although it wasn’t as good as last night’s, it was still something special.

having watched it for a while I headed on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow, it’s shopping day. There’s not much that I need but it’s stuff that I can’t do without so I shall have to go.

And then i’ll make a start on the last week of my music course. I want to get that out of the way before the weekend. It’ll give me a chance to do some other work that’s been sitting on the back burner for the last month or so.

High time I got a move on.

Tuesday 16th June 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today!

So while you admire the photos of the frenetic activity in the chantier navale as they winch the fishing boat Saint Andrews out of the water on the boat lift and load a marker bouy up onto a flatbed lorry, let me tell you about it.

It actually started off quite well, for I was out of bed before the third alarm this morning and that’s not something that happens every day these days.

And then after the medication, I came back to listen to the dictaphone to hear where I’d been during the night.

I had a girlfriend last night – a nice young girl very slim, not very tall pale complexion, shoulder length black hair, black jacket and black jeans and I wish I knew who she was. We started to hang around together and we had to go to hire a car for her for some reason. We went (I don’t know why) to the local chemists near the airport to fill in the forms there but they said that they didn’t do it any more. We’d have to go to the airport itself, which dismayed me to have to go back to that place and fight with the crowds. I had a hard job trying to explain it to her – I didn’t want to disappoint her. So we set off to go to the airport ended up trudging through the streets of Nantwich, holding hands. It was all ever so sweet. We’d come down Hospital Street into Millstone Lane around Crewe Road end and were chatting about all kinds of things – food, hairdressing, meals and all this. In the end I ended up with her in my bedroom and she was on my bed. I was beginning to think that it was going to be my lucky day because luck is certainly what I need right now – as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any – but for some unknown reason she transformed herself into a black cat, lying on my bed as a black cat and I was just stroking her and she was purring, and I just couldn’t think of where to go and what to do next.

At some point during all of this there was a photo of a house near Shavington – the one on the corner of Eastern Road and Rope Hall Lane near where I used to live as a kid, dated 1917 and taken from Eastern Road to the east with the railway on the right showing that the house was surrounded by field guns. They were obviously using it as some kind of depot and anti-aircraft establishment. I was trying to get my hands on the book that the photo was in so that I could photocopy it and post it on the internet.

Yes it was all go last night and when I awoke I was covered in sweat – that’s something that I need to note because it’s a side-effect of one of my medications. The hospital always ask me about my night sweats and how else am I supposed to remember after almost 6 months away?

So having got all of that out of the way, I had a few things to do.

While I was doing them I had a listen to what I recorded for my radio project yesterday.

And I’m glad that I did because there’s an error in it. One of the “applause” tracks that I overdubbed into the project has become misplaced.

That’s the one problem with working with four-track recording and not eight-track – if you start from the end and work backwards as I sometimes have to do, if you forget to anchor what you’ve added in tracks three and four and then add something else onto those tracks in front of it, it shunts everything else ahead of it on those tracks further on down the line so that it no longer synchs in.

But me no daft, me no silly. Having been caught out like that before and having to completely re-do a project from the start on one occasion, I now save all my working files as well as the finished output so I simply rework the recording by cutting out a time segment of the appropriate length.

So that’s a job for some time later in the week.

Next job was to tidy up the top end of the apartment ready for my Welsh lesson. The place needs to look tidy if I’m broadcasting myself on the internet.

Having made the place look something like, I did the revision for last week’s course and then looked at the notes for today’s lesson.

One of the thing that we were discussing was the weather and it was interesting with people from the four corners of the world and the different weather that they were experiencing.

Shame as it is to say it, I almost fell asleep twice in the lesson and I’ve no idea why.

Well, actually I do, as I worked out later, but I’ll explain that as I go along.

After lunch I made a start on yet another radio project. There’s another live concert – one for the end of August that needs to be completed for Thursday night.

There’s no time like the present so I made a start on that. And that wasn’t straightforward either as one of the tracks that I had been sent had two seconds missing from it.

It wasn’t a commercialised track either so it took me an age to hunt down, record, covert and edit a replacement.

And, as it happened, I didn’t need it either. But that’s another story.

By now it was time for me to go out on my afternoon walk.

The weather was absolutely dreadful too. It was raining hen wragedd y ffin as they say in the Land of My Father (well, grandmother, actually) but wrapped in my yellow raincoat, i was fine.

Despite the weather there was plenty of activity out at sea today. And not just fishing boats either. The two cabin-cruiser type of boats were stationary so it may well be that they were indeed actually fishing, but I bet that they didn’t appreciate the speedboat roaring past them like that.

The itinerant was out there too, wrapped in his plastic sheet and sheltering under a tree. I really don’t understand that at all when there are so many places where he could seek shelter.

Carrying on through the rain my walk took me around the headland and back down the other side along the path overlooking the chantier navale

There was a pile of activity going on there this afternoon, including this fishing boat that was racing away from there and I’ve no idea why. I missed that little bit of excitement.

But we had the men in the little engineering yard putting one of the marker buoys that they had made onto the back of a small lorry with their JCB lifter.

And also, the boat lift was in operation, winching the fishing boat Saint Andrews out of the water, presumably to put it on blocks alongside the others that are still in here

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago now we saw a giant crane come and settle itself down in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers to do some lifting work at an apartment that was undergoing renovation.

This afternoon, it’s back. And with its pattes extended, it’s clearly going to be doing some work sometime soon enough. That’s something to watch out for in the near future.

My walk back home was uneventful and I settle down to do some work. I wanted to finish off this radio project today so I started to write out the text.

And this is where it all went wrong.

Quite simply, I crashed out again after about forty-five minutes. And not just a little five minutes either but I was totally gone, curled up on my chair, for almost two hours.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been totally out of it like that – just like the worst of the days when I was living in Leuven. I’d missed my target, missed my hour on the guitars and when I finally awoke (at 19:05) I felt absolutely dreadful – the worst that I have felt for a good while.

No appetite either. I didn’t feel in the least like food. But to help me function, I had one of these energy drinks. I keep a little supply in stock for emergencies – I lived on those for a while in Leuven.
The foregoing notwithstanding, I still went out for my evening run. It takes more than a bout of serious illness to stop me in my tracks.

And for a change, I only performed four runs, not my usual six.

But there was a reason for this as well, and it’s something that I don’t understand. Whether it was the absence of food, or the couple of brazil nuts that I ate, or the sleep that I had, or the energy drink that I drank, I missed out two of my pauses for breath.

Straight up the top of the hill and without pausing for breath I ran on round the corner, past the itinerant and down to the clifftop.

Nothing happening out at sea so I walked on along the path to see how the War memorial to the Resistance was doing.

By not the weather had really brightened up and it was quite pleasant out there. I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying it either. There was a small group of people there admiring the remains of the Atlantic Wall and the War Memorial and as I drew closer (I’m not very good at drawing so it was a terrible likeness) I could hear that they were speaking German.

Something inside me was tempting me to go by and say Tschuss as I passed but I resisted the urge.

There was someone else out there this evening profiting from the beautiful weather.

He wasn’t alone either. As I passed, he shouted something at someone (not at me) and when I looked back I could see that there was someone else standing on another rock who had been out of my view.

It beats me how they manage to scramble down there onto the rocks and, as I said yesterday, how they manage to scramble back up with all of their gear and their catch.

It looks as if we might be having more visitors from the Channel Islands soon as well.

The lorry that brings in the freight has appeared on the quayside down there right now and is parked up. So my guess is that sometime over the next day or two we’ll be seeing either Normandy Trader or Thora coming into the port.

Or maybe even both. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they both came sailing into port one after the other last Thursday morning.

In the chantier navale there was no sign of Saint Andrews. It must only have been a flying visit and I was lucky to have caught her visit.

Having disrupted a couple of girls taking selfies, I ran on down the Boulevard Vaufleury, round the corner, right past my resting place and on down the rue St Jean.

Almost at the Place Cambernon I ran through an alleyway to the rue du Nord and back up to the viewpoint there. I don’t understand this at all – I really don’t.

There were no picnickers there tonight which was a surprise, but there was someone sunning themselves on the sand. And the towel that was down there with them suggests that they have been for a paddle in the sea.

The weather might well have been nice – but it wasn’t that nice. Says he who has been in it up to his knees (deliberately too) IN THE DAVIS STRAIT JUST 600-ODD MILES FROM THE NORTH POLE and up to his chest IN THE HAMILTON INLET IN NORTHERN LABRADOR

But let us return to our moutons as they say around here.

Whoever it was who was enjoying the evening sunshine on the beach had every reason to be there.

It was another one of those really beautiful evenings and the sunset scene was stunning. I took a pic of it and admired it for a while and then I ran on home.

Back here I’ve finished writing up my notes, and now I’m off to bed. I really don’t understand anything at all about how I could be so ill and yet have probably the longest run that I’ve done since about 1999 – cancer and all.

All part of life’s rich pageant, I expect.

Sunday 31st May 2020 – HANDY HINT N° 12345

Before sewing up the hole in your pocket, make sure that you’ve left nothing down inside the lining, because once it’s in, it’s in for good.

Yes, pride always comes before a fall, doesn’t it? Well, actually, that’s a misquote from Proverbs 16:18 which states “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”. But even that’s correct as well.

But never mind that. here’s an exciting photograph.

It’s not every day by any means that the local wildlife co-operates with the photographer. In fact, wildlife, children and females are notorious for never doing what you want them to do when you want them to do it. Like my friend who once proudly told me “one word from me, and my wife does exactly as she likes!”

But here, we have a seagull doing a very passing resemblance of a dive bomber pulling out of a dive having dropped a bomb on something onshore.

And you’ve no idea just how long I had to wait to take this photo.

And that’s not the only piece of wildlife that appeared in my photos today.

This seagull bottom left appeared by accident, making a really good photobomb as I tried to take a photo of Joly France pulling out of the harbour and heading off with passengers this afternoon for the Ile de Chausey.

A good 10 minutes I was waiting there too for there to be a calamity with Joly France having to negotiate a flotilla of yachts just outside the harbour.

But she made a clean getaway without colliding with a yacht or sinking a speedboat, much to my dismay.

However, there is some good news about clean getaways, and that is that even though today is a Sunday and a lie-in with no alarm, I made a clean getaway from my bed by 08:10 this morning.

So don’t ask me what happened there because I’ve no idea. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there have been days when I can’t even manage that when I’m supposed to be getting up early.

During the night I’d been on my travels, right enough.

I’m not too sure about what was happening for the first part of the night but it certainly involved a cricket match on the beach and the limit of the field was like a hexagon and there were people standind at each angle of the hexagon to field the ball.
Later on there had been a new EU ruling for the removal of trees. We’d planted a double row of cypress leylandii down the edge of a field next to a main road so the decision was taken to pull up one of the rows. I had to be there with a tractor and my father was there with someone else – a girl. She was in charge of this operation so I had been given instructions as to where I was to drive this tractor and go down and pull these trees. There was also at about every foot or something like that, chicken in rosemary with potatoes in rosemary fried in oil and she wss taking away the meals as well, except for one every so many when she was just taking out the hot potatoes. I was intrigued by what was going on so I asked her about this. She replied “ohh yes we’ll be making many friends with this job.” The whole point and purpose of this job totally bemused me and I didn’t have a clue what was happening. Anyway it wasn’t my father, it was a friend of mine who was there with this girl and that reminded me of something that had happened a little earlier. He was due to come round to visit me the previous day at 10:30. I’d been doing something, I can’t remember what, but it involved tidying up this hotel. I was with another guy and we were tidying this up. He suddenly said “do you have any beds in this hotel?” I asked “why, are you tired?” and it turned out that he was. he’d been on work since 04:00 and he wanted to go off and have a sleep somewhere. She – the owner of the hotel – found him a bed and I carried on. I noticed a stain on my jumper and had to go and wash this stain out. I had to find two or three different bathrooms before I could find it. So I was there taking off my jumper, washing out this stain. I was hearing all of this noise in this hotel and I’d been interested in staying here because it was near to where I used to go quite often but when I heard all the noise coming from the guests in there I thought that I’m glad that I didn’t. The we were walking through the streets of Manchester, the back streets round near where that hotel was where I used to go to when I had the coaches and I suddenly realised that my friend was to have come round at 10:30. but actually I had been at home at 10:30. Then I realised that we had actually finished that hotel job and we had been home, and it was 10:40 when we had set out again.So yes, we had been there at 10:30 and he hadn’t turned up. When he turned up with this girl about these trees and removing these potatoes and meals he didn’t say anything about us not being there the previous day so I imagined that for some unknown reason he just hadn’t come.

But don’t ask me what I’ve done today because I don’t really remember doing anything. I had a really lazy day, to which I’m entitled every now and again of course.

But it was such a beautiful day today that I had to go out, of course.

And it goes without saying that I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the sun at lunchtime. El Moggo was up there sitting on his thrid floor windowsill taking in the rays, looking as if he owned the place, which he probably did.

It looks as if he had seen something down below, so here’s hoping that he didn’t decide to pounce.

With it being such a beautiful day I took my butties to go and sit on the wall above the harbour and see what was going on down there.

And just as I arrived, so did one of the Joly France boats coming back from the Ile de Chausey. It’s the older one with the smaller window and doesn’t have the step in the stern, as you probably noticed in one of the photos above as it was pulling out.

And have I noticed the crane in the bows before? I’m sure that i might haven but I don’t recall it being extended like that while she’s been sailing.

Much to my surprise she didn’t pull up at the ferry terminal as she would normally do, but at the harbour wall.

In all the time that I’ve lived here I’ve never seen the ferries moor there. And it’s interesting that she’s there next to Chausiais who hasn’t moved from that impromptu berth fora few days now.

That makes me wonder if they are still working on something over at the ferry terminal that is stopping the boats mooring there. But anyway, she did pull over tothe ferry terminal to load up and then she cleared off.

And that was far from being all of the excitement for today.

With living in civilisation as I do these days, old cars are few and far between. It’s not every day that you see them, but when you do, they certainly are interesting, like this car, which I believe might be a Morgan.

Not the old Morgan three-wheeler with the JAP V-twin engine in front, for one of which I would give all that I own and more besides quite happily, but something much more modern.

Always assuming that it is a Morgan of course, because these days there are so many kit cars around that are clones of something famous. So you can never be sure.

It went off down the road, closely followed by this machine.

Once more, this could be anything, although the prancing animal on top of the radiator suggests “Jaguar”. In which case it might be one of the old “Swallow Sidecars” SS jaguars from the 1930s, although the front wings don’t look very Jaguar to me at all.

So I shall have to make further enquiries about this one too and report back.

But this is much more like the kind of scenery that I should be expecting.

He came roaring into the harbour as if the Hounds of Hell were clutching at his coat tails – avec le feu dans ses fesses as they say around here.

The people who had been picnicking next to me and now playing beach skittles on the grass were quite alarmed by it all.

After my butties I went back to my apartment and had a look (just a look!) at the next web page to be edited.

There was an unknown lorry on there that needed identifying so I posted it in a newsgroup that I follow that concerns itself wit abandoned lorries. And that I think was the sum total of my work today

The beautiful weather at lunchtime had made me feel like another ice cream so seeign as it really was a beautiful day, I decided to walk into town – the long way round – to go and pick one up.

And if you thought that the sea was busy earlier, then you should see it now. We’re quite used to long lines of vehicles towing trailers with boats thereupon queueing up down the street awaiting their turn to discharge their cargoes into the sea

The whole town become littered with cars and trailers parked up just about everywhere while their owners take to the waters.

Yachts are fine because they are beautiful and graceful – and silent.

That’s more than can be said for the speedboats and the other powered marine craft that are in the water and go round shattering the peace. And it can’t be much fun to be in a small yacht and hit the wake of a fast-moving boat like that.

But at least there’s no kayak out there right now. There have been one or two incidents just recently of kayaks being swamped for one reason or another, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And it isn’t just on the roads or in the se or on the beaches and the lawns that we have the crowds of people.

It’s becoming pretty densely populated in the air too around here. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the flocks of the Birdmen of Alcatraz hovering above us like Nazgul, but there are one or two people who are fitting motors to their contraptions and roaring past overhead.

There’s no peace for the wicked, is there?

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen this machine on a few previous occasions too.

We first encountered it A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO during our visit to the Cabanon Vauban and we’ve seen it sporadically since then flying around and about. It’s certainly an interesting machine.

And reading what I’ve just been typing, anyone would think that I’m turning into a right grumpy old do-and-so in my old age.

But that’s far from being the truth. I’m the first to realise that all of these people coming here like this are actually bringing money into the town and the reason why we have so many facilities here is because we have so many visitors spending their money in the town.

We should all be grateful for that.

Not much chance of any peace and quiet anyway with the crowds on the beach.

This is one of the more inaccessible parts of the beach here. There’s a very long series of steep winding steps that come down the cliff to just there and you can see that the hordes have even swarmed onto here. And finding the gap in the wall that leads to the steps isn’t the easiest thing to do either

I shudder to think of what it must be like round at the Plat Gousset this afternoon

These persons here have found an ideal way to get themselves far from the madding crowd.

Nothing like an aqualung or snorkel and a pair of flippers and a spot of deep-sea diving for some peace and quiet.

But what’s interesting about this is what they are supposed to be doing. That area just there is uncovered during low tide and there’s nothing of any particular interest at that spot.

It’s not as if there’s a shipwreck or buried treasure or anything like that might attract the attention of a frogman – or frogperson as I suppose we have to call them these days and even if there had been, it could be accessed at low tide without even getting your feet wet.

At least there aren’t four skin divers down there

And so I continued on my way around the headland and down the old track into the port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been noticing just how clear the water in the sea has been just recently. I’ve seen much worse than this in the past in the harbour as well.

It’s a very rare event indeed to be able to see the bottom of the harbour when the tide is this far in. Nevertheless, it’s still not clean enough to entice me in.

The new pontoons that they have installed are proving to be quite popular.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw all of the seagulls enjoying them, and today with very few of the fishing boats being out, they are clustered around too.

But right on the extremem left of the photo the pontoons come to an abrupt stop. I wonder if they are going to continue along to the harbour wall.

Another mystery was solved here today as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw what looked like a vacuum cleaner nozzle down into the hold of one of the fishing boats and I speculated that it might be for sucking up the shellfish.

However, that’s not the case at all. I went to have a closer look and it is in fact an ice chute – for pumping ice into the hold of the boats presumably to keep the shellfish fresh

Picking up my ice cream (which was one of the reasons why I came down here in the first place) I went for a wander around on the other side of the harbour.

But while there were plenty of people milling around over there, there wasn’t anything that particularly caught my attention so I headed back for home.

It wasn’t easy though. The fine weather had brought everyone out and the streets were crowded with no thought whatever about social distancing. I really do hope that we don’t have a second wave of the pandemic because with people thronging around like this, it’ll spread liKe wild fire.

Back home, I was going to attempt something exciting.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on Thursday I’d bought a pack of frozen strawberries. During the course of the day I’d had them out of the freezer to defrost.

Now that i was back, I made some pastry – and I do have to say that it came out perfectly because I could roll the ball around in my hands without any of the pastry sticking to my fingers.

With the rolling pin I flattened it out, put it in a pie dish, trimmed it off and stuck it in a hot oven. And with the excess pastry I made an apple turnover.

Meantime, being very brave, I burnt my bridges and made the Sunday pizza on the last of the shop-bought pastry rolls. It’s goign to be my own dough from now on.

When the pie base was cooked, that and the turnover came out and the pizza went in.

With the strawberries, I filled the pie and then prepared some agar-agar to pour over it so that it would set like a vegan gelatine, and stuck it in the fridge to set.

After I’d eaten my pizza, I looked at the strawberry tart and unfortunately, the agar-agar hadn’t set. I’m not sure what I did wrong, but this was not one of my triumphs. However, when I’ve finished the apple pie, I’ll attack that and see how it tastes.

On that note I went out for my evening run. Another struggle up the hill and down to the cifftop. It doesn’t seem to be getting any easier these days.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one little peccadillo that I have is to stick my nose into other people’s photo shoots. Not photo-bombing them bu to take photos of people taking photos.

And up on the lawn at the Pointe du Roc, which seems to be a very popular place for photo shoots these days, there was another one going on. So i couldn’t resist the temptation to join in with my own three ha’porth.

But you can tell what the weather was like this evening simply by looking at the crowds of people here.

There were parties of picnickers all over the place and more coming along to swell the numbers even as we speak. Not very good or the social distancing but who can blame them in weather like this?

Around the corner by the coastguard point I even bumped into one of my neighbours taking the air and we had a good chat for quite a while – and that was mainly for an opportunity to soak up the sun as well

From there I ran on all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and with my usual two resting places, ended up at the viewpoint at the rue du Nord.

But on one of my rests I happened to notice that the moon had already risen. And it really did look beautiful in the evening sky tonight.

Considering that I didn’t have the tripod with me – or even the monopod, the photo has come out really well. But I suppose that I ought to be making more of an effort to go out with the tripod one of these days and take some decent photos.

And I’ll have to work on the time-delay functions too. I’ve not used it yet on the NIKON D500

At the viewpoint at the rue du nord I stopped to catch my breath and then to have a good look around.

And as seems to be usual these days, we have the crowds on the beach enjoying the evening sunshine, and having a picnic too in the pleasant weather. They’ve certainly chosen a nice evening for it.

But one thing that I have noticed about the evening picnickers is that it always seems to be a different crowd in that spot. I don’t think that i’ve ever noticed the same group of people there consecutively. I think that if I had a group of people with whom I enjoyed picnicking, then in weather like this I’d be down there every night.

And the setting sun this evening was splendid. I recall a gasp of admiration from a couple of people who had followed me down to the viewpoint when they noticed it.

Still half an hour or so before it sets, and unfortunately I don’t have the time to spare to wait. I don’t know where all of my time goes these days.

Instead, I ran on back to my apartment to write up my notes.

While I was writing up the day’s activities, a piece of music came onto the playlist.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my computer is awash with music – a couple of thousand albums almost all digitalised these days after our ptoject of the winter – and there is music going on in this apartment from the moment I awaken until the moment that I go to sleep.

Some music though I have to be very careful about playing, and for various reasons too. Some songs I can’t hear at all, even if I happen to like them, and others I can only listen to when i’m in the right kind of mood.

A couple of songs in that latter group always seem to appear on the playlist when I’m in the wrong kind of mood to hear them and sure enough tonight, while I was “hiding in a room in my mind” as Kate Bush used to say, onto the playlist came THIS SONG.

Magnificent song though it is, it’s the kind of song that I have a great difficulty hearing, much as I want to. I’ll always end up playing it two or three times one after the other even though I know exactly what’s going to happen.

And on that note (well, we are talking music here), with my notes not even half-finished, I went to bed. I’ll finish these tomorrow.

Wednesday 27th May 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

… you’re wondering what the weather has been like today, this photograph will tell you everything that you need to know.

As you can see, crowds on the beach, crowds in the water, everyone having fun. We’ve had what is easily the hottest day of the year. The thermometer that I have outside went up well into the 20s and at one stage peaked at 24°C.

That is pretty good going for a seaside resort in May with the winds that we have around here.

And they were still at it later on when I went for my evening walk and runs.

Admittedly I was a little earlier than usual, but nevertheless there would be no reason to suppose that there would be fewer people there 15 minutes later.

And you can’t see everyone either. There were crowds picnicking on the lawn behind the bunker of the Atlantic Wall and even several little groups sitting down on the grass behind me.

And even later on, they were still out there in droves.

As it was getting dark, the tide still had a long way yet to come in and there were people taking full advantage of that fact by having their picnic on the beach.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen groups of people picnicking down there for a couple of nights last week. I wonder if it’s the same group or whether these people are different.

It wasn’t just on dry land that there were crowds of people either.

There was the usual motley collection of fishing boats out working, but also a relentless stream of pleasure craft out there in the English Channel and the Baie de Mont St Michel. There’s a couple of yachts in this photo and a speedboat too.

And that’s just one photo of any dozen that I could have taken that would have featured multiple marine craft.

As for me, the day started off thoroughly miserably today.

In fact, it’s probably fairer to say that it ended miserably last night, although that’s not really true. I was planning on going to bed early but some decent music came onto the playlist and while I was listening to it, someone in North America with whom I wanted to chat appeared on the internet.

And by the time I finished talking, it was … errr … 02:30.

Not the slightest danger of m being up before the third alarm today. That goes without saying. The only surprise was that I actually made it up by 08:30.

First job after the medication was to set the yeast to work. 400ml of lukewarm water, a dessert spoon of sugar and a packet of yeast, and then leave it to ferment.

After breakfast I set about making the bread. Although THE LADY AT HARRINGTON HARBOUR who showed me how to make bread had a tendency to fight with her dough, the general opinion around here is that I’m being too rough with it.

It doesn’t need to be put near warmth to make it rise afterwards, apparently. Just leave it a couple of hours under a damp cover.

So I decided to follow these new counsels, and that’s what I did. Treated it gently and then left it.

While it was leaving, I came in here and finished off the radio project. That took longer too because my final speech overran by a country mile the 45 seconds that I allow for it and it wasn’t really possible to edit out the extra.

Instead, I had to hunt elsewhere for bits and pieces that I could cut out to reduce it to the 1:00:00 dead that it’s supposed to be.

By this time the dough had been standing for well over two hours so I went to see how it was going.

People were telling me that it should have doubled in size, but that was rather debatable. Nevertheless, I carried out the next stage of the proceedings which was to grease my bread mould, shape the bread dough and drop it in without mixing it any more.

Then cover it with a damp cloth and it should rise again to double the amount.

While it was rising, I made an apple pie with the last of the pastry rolls out of the fridge. Just one pizza roll to go now, which I’ll use on Sunday.

Having trimmed off the excess I made an apple turnover with that.

During this last bit the oven had been on and warming up, so I bunged the pie and the turnover in. The bread had risen … errr … somewhat, but I bunged it in the oven as well. Otherwise I’d be waiting there now. I reckon my yeast must be going off or something.

In the heat of the oven, the bread went up like a lift as I watched it. But only on one side despite it being in the centre of the oven. And why it does that defeats me completely.

For lunch I finished off the bread that was left and then made myself an orange and ginger cordial seeing as I’d run out of the lemon stuff.

By this time the pie and the turnover were cooked, and the bread looked as if it was done as well.

It’s still not shaped right, with only rising on one side, and I’ve no idea why it does that. One of life’s little mysteries, i suppose.

This afternoon I made a start on my accountancy course and managed to complete about three quarters of this week’s work before it was time to go for my walk.

As I said earlier, the weather was really beautiful today and everyone seemed to be enjoying it.

They seemed to be keeping their social distance too, which is always good news. We’re still on probation with this relaxation of the rules.

So far today there have been just 191 new cases and 66 deaths and that is looking rather optimistic. But people need to keep their heads and their social distance to avoid a second wave of the illness which, if history is anythign to go by, is usually far more virulent than the first.

And as Terry Venables once famously said, “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again”.

So in the glorious summer weather, in just my shirt sleeves (and trousers, of course) I walked on around the walls.

At the lookout over the Place Marechal Foch I had a look out and down over at the building on which they’ve been replacing the roofing, to see how far they have reached.

It’s a big job of course and I wa expecting it to be keeping them out of mischief for quite a while. But they are cracking on like nobody’s business over there and another week might actually see them finished at this rate.

On the way back towards home I passed by the Place Cambernon. And here I was distracted somewhat.

We’ve seen this vehicle before – the other day in fact in the Rue du Roc. And also a couple of months ago, but that’s another story. Today though the owner was with it so I went over for a chat. He had bought it from an auction in this condition, and it’s maintained by a garage in Sartilly that has a couple more.

It’s a 1954 model, and a Citroen 11L by the way, not a 7L. You can tell that by the thickness of the C pillars. The 7L like mine has pillars that aren’t so thick.

Being low down and front wheel drive, it sticks to the road like glue and flat out, it’ll do 110kph. However the noise at anything above 90kph is unbearable. “It’s like an aeroplane” he says. There’s no soundproofing and there’s no heat insulation either so with the engine being up near the bulkhead (the gearbox is in front in these) the engine heat is unbearable.

No seat belts either. He told me that the Law is that if the vehicle is unmodified and as it was as it came out of the factory, then factory specifications is fine. So if the belts aren’t fitted when new, it doesn’t need them as long as he doesn’t modernise the car in other ways.

We’ve seen a couple of zodiacs flying around as well just recently.

There was another one out there today too. Not the yellow one that we’ve seen a couple of times, or the other one that’s been around a couple of times, but a third one, I reckon.

Judging by all of the equipment that they have on board it, it looks very much as if they are setting off on a fishing expedition somewhere off the coast by Bréhal-Plage.

With it being such a nice afternoon I went for an extended walk and that took me around to the viewpoint over the harbour.

The big cranes weren’t doing very much, but there was a small water craft scuttling across the harbour with a few workmen in it. It looks as if they are heading for the new pontoon that they’ve been installing.

Somehow I’m not convinced by the use of the boat. I can’t see why they couldn’t walk around the harbour. It would probably do them good.

Back here I had a look at the music course that I’ve started.

It’s evident that I’m not going to finish it either because despite it only being advertised at the weekend, it’s already in week 3 of 6. And the standard is way beyond where I am musically, and that’s not counting the fact that it’s on the piano and i’ve not played the piano since I was 12.

But in the hour or so that I was looking at it, I learnt an enormous amount already, including why “7” chords, such as A7 or E7 are so called. And the way the tutor was talking, I was expected to know that.

There was still the hour on the guitars and then tea. A slice of pie with baked potato and veg and gravy, followed by my apple turnover.

Outside in the evening heat I ran off up the hill and it was awful. I felt every step of the way. However am I going to manage when it’s really hot?

Past the crowds sunbathing and picnicking in the evening, and across the lawn out into the Baie de Mont St Michel I saw this fishing boat come into port. And you can tell that it had a full load of fish in the hold because of the trail of seagulls following it into port.

And I wonder what is the bird that photo-bombed my picture.

Interestingly though, as soon as the fishing boat turned into the harbour, the seagulls cleared off. I wonder why, and where they went.

But there was still plenty of other maritime traffic to be going on with.

A little earlier I mentioned the yachts that we had seen out in the English Channel. As I was wondering about the fishing boat, the yachts caught me up and I would admire them. The one in the distance looked as if it was going to slalom around the buoys offshore, but the nearer one caught my eye with it towing its dinghy behind it.

It’s certainly the life, isn’t it? Being out there on a boat like that. If I weren’t so ill I’d be out there on my own boat like that. But then, if I weren’t so ill I’d be still in the Auvergne and not here, so it doesn’t make any difference.

I ran down across the top of the cliffs on the southern side and stopped for my pause for breath in the usual place.

And it looks now as if the cranes have gone. Finished what they are doing, I suppose, folded their tents and crept off silently into the night.

The traffic lights are still there though, although in a different place. And I can’t see why because of the bend in the road. Still, it’s shopping day tomorrow so I can go for an investigation on my way out.

My resting place on this leg of my run overlooks that chantier navale so I could see what they were up to in there.

The two larger fishing boats that have been there for a while are still here, but the two smaller ones that came to join them a couple of days ago have now gone back into the water.

So on that point I walked up to the road and ran all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury to my next pause for breath.

With the cranes gone, I went to look at the pontoons to see where they were up to.

It’s not what I would call finished, but they evidently think so. All of the bits and pieces that we saw on there the other day, they have been removed too.

But it’s impressive to see just how quickly the local wildlife moves in and takes over. Just look at all of the seagulls congregating on the pontoons!

So on that note I ran on down to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord. There was nothing doing there (except our picnickers) so I ran on home again.

What’s surprising me is that despite the shorter day, I managed to accomplish so much. Not like me at all. There is still a mountain of arrears to do but at leat I haven’t fallen behind any more.

Tuesday 26th May 2020 – WE’RE BACK TO NORMAL …

… again, aren’t we?

For eight glorious weeks the planet has been in lockdown, the earth has breathed again and all was right in the world. But the gates are opened for about a week or so and already the humans are back to their disgusting habits.

It’s as if this last eight weeks has taught them nothing at all and it’s totally shameful.

For eight weeks there’s hardly been a paper out of place and the whole area has looked so nice. And now this!

I despair.

As for me, I managed to beat the third alarm to my feet, which is always good news. it was “only just” – but that’s enough for me right now.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. At first there was a army unit. There had been a unit of a sergeant and a few other people. They were getting rather tired of the war and had been doing things rather independently. One evening they’d come back to us in their tractor. They had a load of their supplies and they were just arranging them in a pretty formation, using them as wickets. There was some talk of distributing them among the poor. While this was going on there happened to be a general inspection and all the generals were there with this old tractor chugging past and they wondered what on earth he was doing. He was setting out all of these things. We expected there to be some kind of argument or discussion but the general went over to look at it and started to make suggestions about the best way to deploy his field to defend against it. It looked very much as if instead of having a huge argument about this old sergeant we were just going to have a peaceful game of cricket. A few people inside were telling all of their stories and there was one guy who was moaning away that he’d only qualified for 8 weeks and he’d spent 4 of those weeks in the army. We asked him what he was and he had qualified as a doctor so he said but he had come in as a private. Then people started clamouring for me to tell them my story
Somewhat later during the night we were doing something out on an island somewhere. One of the boats that was doing the connection between the mainland and the island was this yacht run by this woman. She was a bit domineering and bossy, and it wasn’t very pleasant having to work anywhere where she was in control. Anyway, at the end of the period we all left. A year or so later I came back to do something and found that the woman and the boat were still here. For some unknown reason I had a different opinion of her by then – maybe she wasn’t as bad as she was made out to be and we were probably as much to blame about things. I was interested to get to see her and talk to her and that took a lot of doing.

After breakfast I tidied up in the living room and the kitchen to get the place looking tidy (that’s the one thing about video-conferencing – I have to make the place look nice), reviewed last week’s Welsh notes, and then swatted up on the notes for this lesson.

And you’ve no idea how quickly time goes when you’re trying to concentrate like this. I had to dash the last page or two, and then I couldn’t find the invitation to the chat.

But eventually I was sorted out and we had our two-hour lesson. And we’re getting quite good at it. However we’re going at a cracking pace so heaven alone knows what it will be like when our 10-week course finishes. Fluent but totally exhausted, I reckon.

For lunch I attacked my loaf and now there’s just an end that’s left. So tomorrow morning I’m going to have to make another loaf. This will be version 4 and I wonder if this will be any improvement on the previous three. We’ve seen improvement week on week so here’s hoping.

This afternoon I attacked the radio project and by the time I came to knock off I’d written the text, dictated it and edited it. Tomorrow morning after my baking, I’ll join everything up.

There was the usual break mid-afternoon to go for a walk around the headland. And in the sun and the wind too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on many occasions we’ve seen marker flags and buoys bobbing up and down in the sea just off the coast. There’s another one out there today in the English Channel.

One of these days I’ll work out what they are for. I reckon that it’s something to do with fishing equipment, but I would have expected them to be painted in a bright colour that’s easily seen rather than black that no-one can see so easily.

When I was in Wyoming last July following the traces of the battles between the US armed farces and the native Americans, I was intrigued to read a report to say that in the clear conditions of the Plains of Wyoming the flash of a heliograph signal could be seen 50 miles away.

Once or twice I saw some decent reflections out there, but this one here today over on the Brittany coast was even more interesting. That’s about 20-25 miles away, which may well be only half the distance, but it’s from a window I reckon, not from a pre-focused mirror.

And regular readers of this rubbish who have followed this stuff for years will recall that when we were at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the Outer banks of North Carolina and one or two other lighthouses out there, we had a very interesting discussion about pre-focused Fresnel lenses.

So with the right equipment, imagine the distance that the flash of a heliograph would travel across here. From hill to hill of course, otherwise you’ll be confounded by the curvature of the earth.

It wasn’t just the flashes from the Brittany coast that were looking impressive today either.

In all the time that i’ve lived here I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the Ile De Chausey looking so clear at this distance. It’s 20-odd kms away over there.

And the yacht in the long distance has come out surprisingly clear too. That was quite impressive too.

My walk carried me on around the headland and back down the south side of the headland.

No change in the chantier navale – still the same four boats in there – but there seems to be an incredible amount of activity down in the rue du Port with the two giant cranes at full stretch across the harbour.

It’s not easy to see what they are trying to do, so I’ll have to creep up quietly a little closer to see if I can have a better view.

This is better. I can see what they are doing from here.

And it’s as I suspected. They are putting in the finishing touches to the floating pontoon that they have built out from the rue du Port. I was wondering when they were going to finish that.

But it really is depressing. This is costing them a fortune all of this equipment. But a couple of years ago they had the harbour drained for a couple of weeks. They could have done all of this then at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time with working on what was effectively dry land.

Back here I carried on with my radio project and then had a play on the guitar as usual.

But I missed out on my session on the bass, and for a very good reason too. I’d been playing the chords to U2’s “One Tree Hill” and was interested in trying to fathom out the fiddly bits in it. And after a few minutes, it hit me as to what they were.

And it’s simple – the lower four notes of the G chord and the upper 4 notes of the C chord and the D chord. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But you try playing it at the speed that they play it when you’ve never done it before.

So I spent all of my hour trying to master t and at the end of my hour there is just one interchange that I cannot get tight no matter how hard I try.

But then when I started to teach myself the 6-strin guitar back in late August I couldn’t play bar chords and that was a great disappointment too. So I’ll just keep on persevering.

Tea was an old “anything curry” out of the freezer with rice and veg.

There should have been a dessert made today but if I’m baking bread tomorrow the oven will be on so I’ll make an apple pie as well. I’ll be brave and use the last of the pastry rolls in the fridge. So for dessert I had a go at making a rice pudding in the microwave. However that was a disappointment and I shan’t be doing that again

The high winds had calmed down this evening so it was very pleasant outside.

The first run up the hill was the same old struggle as usual and it isn’t getting any better with time. I remember when I started back running when I went to live in Belgium. After a couple of weeks I could run miles and miles with no problem. But then again that was when I was healthy and it was 25 years ago of course.

My run took me across the lawn down to the clifftop and then I walked across the lawn to the other side through the crowds.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just recently we’ve been seeing whole fleets of fishing boats down in the Baie de Mont St Michel far deeper than we have seen them before.

And again today, there was probably seven or eight of them down there working.

At the fish processing plant there were four large refrigerated lorries so they must be anticipating a large catch today. And I’m just wondering how long they are going to keep on exploiting the harvest out there.

It’s not just from boats in the Baie de Mont St Michel that they are fishing.

In the beautiful evening sunshine we had someone perched on a rock with a rod and line. The other day we saw the seagulls on there waiting for the tide to go out, and here’s someone taking full advantage of the tide being in.

For my part, I took advantage of the fact that what wind there was was now blowing from behind me so I took to my heels down along the clifftop

And I was right about the anticipation of a really good catch today, by the look of things.

The fishing boats were queueing up to unload at the quay. We had one boat reversing away and another one pulling into its place and we ended up with a fascinating nautical danse macabre as they maoeuvred around each other.

So, with no shipwrecks and nobody drowndin’, I headed off for the next part of my run down the Boulevard Vaufleury.

But here was something totally magnificent heaving into view while I was stopped for a pause for breath.

It’s probably the most magnificent yacht that I have seen for quite a while. I’ve no idea where it came from because I hadn’t seen it out at sea earlier. It took me quite by surprise.

There was nothing much going on at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord so I didn’t hang about, and ran on home instead to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I’m going to be busy because there is so much that needs catching up and I really don’t know how I’m going to find the time to do it all.

Monday 25th May 2020 – A FEW MORE …

… things to add to the pile of things that haven’t been done today. I’m not having a good start to the week.

It all went wrong right at the very beginning when the third alarm found me somewhere in Wyoming, and a very dry, dusty Wyoming at that too. I’d been in my old Opel Senator and had an accident in which it was written off and I’d had to wait around for a taxi. Eventually the one that the insurance company sent fo me tuned up – an old blue Volvo 244. On the way back (and the name Irmo – which Rhys might know – was mentioned) I mentioned how I’d be happy to settle in a place like this and I asked what taxi-driving was like around here. The driver told me with alarm “ohh don’t go settling around here” but didn’t elaborate. He told me that he might have a buyer for my car so we were talking about buying old cars and dismantling them like I used to from the abandoned car auctions in Brussels but at that point the alarm went off.

After the medication (I was up and about by 06:30) I had a listen to the dictaphone. And there was something very enigmatic on there from round about 02:30. “Yes sometime during the night I dreamt that I was actually writing up my blog. Yes, it’s getting to me, isn’t it?” was what I heard when I played it back. But what it was all about I really didn’t have a clue.

Between breakfast and lunch there was a variety of things to do. First off was to send off the radio project for the forthcoming weekend. And seeing as it’s the end of the month we’re having a live concert again.

Then it was time to choose the music for the next radio project.

It’s a friend’s birthday so I had to prepare a special birthday card for her. That was quite important.

My Welsh homework needed doing too, and that involved some research and more than a little tidying up of my notes. And the questions had come in *.docx format which Open Office doesn’t read correctly – so I had to reformat that by copying the text and paginating it which took an age.

Then back to the radio project and by the time that I knocked off for lunch the tracks had been joined in pairs, I’d chosen a speech for my guest and I’d started to write the notes.

After lunch there was cookery to be done.

This morning I’d used the last of the purée so I made some more. It hadn’t kept as well as previously so I’ve decided to make smaller amounts more regularly. Today’s effort was apple and pear, and I remembered the cinnamon and nutmeg.

With the juice that was left over, I added some syrup to make a cordial, and we’ll see how that goes.

As well as that, there was the remaining kilo of carrots to be peeled, diced, blanched and frozen. They are in the freezer right now too.

There was a break while I went out for my afternoon walk in the glorious sun.

There were a few people staring down at the foot of the cliff so I went along to see what there was going on. I’m not sure what it was that they were seeing, but I saw this beautiful little yacht go scudding by right under my nose.

One of my neighbours was there too – Gribouille’s mum – with her arm in plaster. She’d had a fall in the market on Saturday and broken her wrist.

She started to tell me all about it but no thanks – I don’t want to know things like that.

The next couple of photos look as if the quality is quite dismal too.

In several respects that’s true, but it was necessary to enhance them to bring our exactly what it was that I wanted to see. These are two fishing boats – in this photo and the next one, but it is what is in the background that is more interesting.

In all the time that I’ve been living here I don’t think that we have ever had such perfect weather out that way

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, on a good day we can see the island of Jersey from here even though it’s at least 54 kilometres away.

Today, not only could we see the island quite clearly but we could even see the buildings and the radio masts on the island. I’ve seen them before, but only with the zoom lens at full-extent and with some severe cropping and enhancing. But today, it didn’t take much to bring them out.

In places you could even see them with the naked eye, and that was impressive.

Having chatted to another neighbour who was in the vicinity I went off for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there today – picnicking on the lawn, walking around the headland and even down on the beach. Some corners of the beach are not easy to get to but the seafood pickings must be really good. Here was someone having a go at the peche à pied by the looks of things

It would be really interesting to find out how much he actually was able to catch and, more importantly, how he was going to prepare it for eating.

Talking of good seafood pickings, regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that we saw a whole sock of fleagulls perched on the rocks, looking as if they were Waiting for Godot.

At the time I speculated that they were waiting for the tide to recede from the mudflats so that they could get stuck in to supper. The tide is out right now and here they are, having a feast.

There must have been several hundred here and it shows the capacity of the shellfish to regenerate themselves every day to be be able to produce enough food to satisfy this lot.

A little earlier I mentioned the beautiful weather.

Over towards the Brittany coast the weather was rather misty and hazy but down at the end of the baie de Mont St Michel we could see quite clearly.

The large white buildings are all of the hotels and the like that service Mont St Michel. Having seen the prices that they charge for even the most basic services down there, I shudder to think how much they would want for a night in a hotel down there.

Over to the left we have the Pointe de Carolles with the Cabanon Vauban – the customs lookout post – perched on the edge.

And notice how far out the tide is? You can clearly see the orange sand down at the head of the bay.

There was the usual pause to admire the scenery down below the cliff on the south side of the Pointe du Roc.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we always keep an eye on the chantier navale to see what goes on there. Just ecently we’ve seen them whittle themselves down from five to four to three to two. But today, they have gone back up to four with the arrival of two more.

Only small ones, but then I suppose that everything helps. Someone was sanding down one of them. I couldn’t see which one it was but I could certainly hear the sound.

Up on blocks in the chantier navale is not the only way that boats receive attention around here.

Careening is a regular feature when there’s a high tidal range, although I’ve yet to see that applied in any seriousness. Being strapped tightly to a knuckle on the harbour wall so that the boat grounds out safely when the tide goes out is on the other hand something that we’ve seen on a regular basis and there’s another one over there receiving similar treatment.

There was quite a crowd up on the wall by it too, so something exciting must have happened to it.

Over the last few days regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the giant crane that appeared on the docks at the end of last week.

Whatever it’s come here to do, it’s doing it right now. Its width with its safety feet is such that it’s blocked off half of the road and there afe traffic light sontrolling the traffic.

It’s not possible at all to see what it’s doing from here. One of these days I’ll have to go for a walk down there and take a closer look. It has to be something worthwhile to have attracted machinery like that.

There was the usual hour on the guitars, somewhat later than usual, and then tea. Tonight was a stuffed pepper and the last of the apple crumble. I’ll have to make another pudding tomorrow and I have a cunning plan for that.

There was the usual run out tonight – an agonising crawl up the hill in the teeth of a gale. But I recovered my breath, ran down to the clifftop and then walked round the corner.

The other day, regular readers of this rubbish saw the marker light for the harbour entrance standing well clear of the water on its rock. By my estimation it’s still half an hour or so before high tide, and if you compare the two photos you’ll see how high the tide comes in.

And look how clear the air is this evening. You can see for miles down there.

As I ran on down on top of the cliff I noticed hordes of people standing on top of the harbour wall.

For quite a while I stood and watched them, thinking that they might be going to jump in. We’ve seen them do that before. But as long as I looked, no-one moved and I came to the conclusion that they were fishermen or something.

There were a couple of parties of girls as well loitering around where I was standing, presumably likewise waiting for things over there to happen.

As I stood there watching them, something came a put-putting around the headland.

At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but I suppose that it’s another one of these very small fishing boats. It’s a working boat, judging by the radio aerial.

And those things in the foreground. I wasn’t sure whether they were marker buoys or seagulls. And having had a closer look I have to say that i’m still none-the-wiser.

And that reminds me of a story I heard about a barrister, FE Smith, giving a lengthy explanation of something to a crowded courtroom.
“I’ve listened to you for half an hour” said the judge “and I’m still none-the-wiser”
“Maybe not, My Lord” replied Smith. “But you’re certainly better-informed”.

My run took me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and as there was a lot going on at the fish processing plant I went to see.

This equipment that they were using was quite interesting and it took me a minute or two to work out what it was. And I came to the conclusion that it’s a kind of vacuum-cleaner that was being used to suck the shellfish out of the hold of the trawler and into the fish processing plant.

And if that’s what it is (and that was what it sounded like) it’s a pretty ingenious device.

My run tok me round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

Nothing exciting going on there and still a while before sunset so I took a quick photo and ran on home to write up my notes..

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have my Welsh class so I need to prepare, I have my book-keeping class that has now started, I have my music course.

Then there are the photos from Sunday to deal with, the current radio project and another live concert for the end of next month too.

That’s before I even think about the ongoing projects like the websites and the July 2019 photos, and then all of the other stuff that’s built up from projects before that were never finished.

It’s a mystery to me how I’m ever going to find the time to do it all.

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.

Thursday 30th April 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… last night when I predicted the arrival of either Thora or Normandy Trader here in the harbour today.

On my way out to the shops I had a glance over the wall down to the harbour, and there was Normandy Trader down in the harbour.

Another thing that I was right about was the quick turn-round time these days too. She must have crept in on the overnight tide and is leaving right now – right at the moment that the harbour gates are opening.

And the harbour gates are indeed just opening right at this very minutes, and you can tell that just by looking at the colour of the water coming in on the tide.

You can see that it’s a brown colour – heavily loaded with silt, and that contrasts with the blue of the water that’s inside the harbour.

Whether that’s because the silt that might have been in the water has settled out while the gates were closed, or whether there’s a fresh-water sources from somewhere feeding into the harbour is anyone’s guess.

And I wasn’t just right – I was right in spades too!

Because as I came back from the shops Normandy Trader had long since departed and in her place Thora was now there loading up. That was quick.

Another quick turnround too because when I went out this evening to take the air she had already long-since departed. So when I say at timed that I haven’t seen them for a while, that doesn’t mean to say that they haven’t been here.

The least said about this morning, the better. Not one of my more successful starts to the day, I’m afraid.

But I did make it to my feet and after the meds had a listen to the dictaphone. I was working for the French Government last night on an employment reinsertion project and one of my clients was some young guy I know in back in Pionsat. I had to give him advice and tips about getting back into work, all this kind of thing. Of course it’s pretty evident that he doesn’t need any tips with the amount of work he does on the side but it’s the kind of thing that had to be done. There were all kinds of questions about me, a foreigner advising people on French law. It went on like that for quite some time. At one point I was actually travelling somewhere and I’d come to a strange town that I knew. I tried to buy some fuel but one or two of the petrol stations were closed and there were queues at the other stations so I had a walk around the town for something to eat but I couldn’t find anything to eat. Everywhere was closed as well in this town
And during the night I was getting my carrots ready for freezing, chopping them up and dicing them. At one point I had to measure them but it was a bit late by them because I’d already chopped them up and you couldn’t really assemble them back together again to measure them so that was something as well.

After breakfast I had a go at some music-file digitalising. The first one that I attempted was a nightmare and I had to search everywhere. But I still ended up one track short no matter where I went.

And I was right about one of my assumptions because it was there in black and white in the artist’s catalogue – “this artist is known to be one whose work was lost in the Universal Studios fire” and because he’s a pretty obscure artist, that would appear to be that.

What I’ll have to do is to digitalise the album myself instead of hunting down master tapes, and then upload my versions.

As an aside, I should mention, so that there’s no mistake or misunderstanding, that I’m only digitalising albums that I already own.

Because of all of this, I was late having my shower and late going out to the shops.

And even later than I would have been too. There was so much going on out there this morning and of course it’s been a wek since I’ve seen any of it.

For a start, what is this? Some kind of heavy machinery, that’s for sure, and I imagine that the artic at the side has just delivered it.

But whatever it is, it’s an interesting replacement for the large crane that was parked on there for a couple of days after thay had taken it off the floating pontoon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago I was mulling over how they were going to get down to the new floating pontoons.

It’s all very well having the pontoons but it’s no use if you cant get up or down from or to them.

But I found out the answer to this conundrum this morning. We can see the new gangway over there that goes down to the pontoon. I imagine that it’s secured at the quayside but unsecured at the bottom so that it can slide about as the pontoon rises and falls with the tide.

And if we can avert our eyes from Normandy Trader for a while we can see yet more goings-on just here.

Our big mobile crane is back again, and here she is just about to wrestle with a gangway for the floating pontoons here. I imagine that the gangway will be dropped into position during the course of the morning.

And on the other side of the harbour you can see the big floating pontoon that was being used as a workstation. It’s now been dismantled and is ready to be taken away in early course.

A couple of days ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they set up the flags on the Resistance War Kemorial at the Pointe du Roc.

Here this morning down in the Place Godal the local Council had the cherry-picker out playing with the flags here too.

But what they were actually doing was taking down the British flag. I’m not sure why and I wasn’t quick enough to ask them, but it was probably a symbolic post-Brexit gesture or something like that.

We’ll have to see next week whether it goes back up.

So I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … to LIDL for my shopping, through the madding crowds.

On the first day of detention à domicile I remember wandering the streets looking for bread and there wasn’t a soul about at all. Today, apart from the few people wearing masks you would never have thought that these were lockdown times, with the crowds that were out and about.

But it seems to be working. Only 758 new cases today, which contrasts with the sad state off affairs in the UK where there were 6032. At a 15% death-rate 15 days hence, which seems to be the norm, France will soon be reaching Germany’s low totals whereas the UK will be out of control. Even more so when an order of “vital supplies” of ventilators ordered in an emergency turn out to be totally useless

There was a security guy on the door at LIDL too controlling ingress and egress. Older, bigger and more out-of-condition than me, he was too. He wouldn’t have been any use running after shoplifters. But then, he’s not there for that.

In LIDL I spent a lot of money, but I needed quite a lot of stuff as stocks were well down. And so much stuff did I buy that it was a struggle to carry it home. But it’ll keep me fit, I suppose.

But fit for what, I really have no idea.

On the way back I stopped off at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette for lunch and then back here I had a coffee.

Having almost run out of hummus I made another batch. And it’s really easy to do.
Drain a tin of chick peas.
Add to the chick peas half the weight of sesame seed paste (400 grammes of chick peas means 200 grammes of paste).
Add some of the chick pea juice, some olive oil, sea salt, ground black pepper and garlic – usually in total about half of the weight of chick peas again
Chuck the lot in your whizzer and give it a really good whizz around – adding a little more oil or chick pea juice until you have the consistency you like.
In the meantime, dice up your flavouring. I’ve used roast peppers, all kinds of things in the past but today it was sun-dried tomatoes and olives with tarragon.
Add them into the mix in the whizzer and just blip the whizzer so that the flavouring is dispersed throughout the mix – you don’t want to purée it, which is what will happen if you whizz it too long.
Put it in small pots, freeze some of it and put a pot in the fridge for immediate use.

And it was totally wicked on my dejeunette with tomato, cucumber lettuce and vegan mayonnaise.

After lunch I had a look at a second album to digitalise. And this was a loooooooong one too and it took an age. And the disappointment was that for some reason or other, two of the tracks on the master tape where, had this been an LP there would have been a change of side, the one seems to have lost its end and the other its beginning.

So that’s a task for tomorrow – to see if I can track them down.

But one track on the album was one that I used to play in a rock group in the 1970s so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have an extra go on the bass. That brought back some very happy memories.

And I ended up having to dismantle the computer at one point. The mouse has been playing up just recently but this afternoon it handed in its hat so I had to find another one and untangle a mass of cables to do that.

And it wasn’t easy either.

After another session on the guitars I knocked off and went to make my apple and pear purée, now that I had some apples and pears to make it with.

10 apples peeled, cored and diced, added to a small amount of water with a lot of lemon juice (to stop the apples browning) with desiccated coconut, cinnamon and nutmeg.

3 pears followed suit into the water which was them all put on a low heat, given a really good stir and left to its own devices for about an hour.

In the meantime seeing as I’d had the oven on to sterilise the bottles I stick a couple of potatoes in to bake along with some baked beans and vegan cheese.

A simple tea of course but it was delicious, as was my blackberry pie and almond soya dessert.

By now the fruit was ready so I drained off the liquid and bottled it to use as a cordial for breakfast.

The fruit went into the whizzer and was whizzed round into a purée and then put into the other two jars that i’d sterilised in the oven.

They were left to cool, and you can see the finished results right here. It looks really good and, having tried a sample off the end of the spatula, I can say that it tastes good too.

So at this point, about an hour or so later than usual, I went for my evening walk.

And I was glad that I’d done something during the day too because by the looks of things, it wasn’t going to be the right kind of evening to be out there.

There was a famous storm raging out there in the English Channel somewhere round by Jersey and I wished now that i’d put on my rain jacket – or maybe gone out a little earlier.

Despite the howling headwind, which wasn’t quite as strong as yesterday but nevertheless … I managed to run up to my marker point at the top of the hill.

It was something like a struggle – well, a lot like a struggle actually, but I was given the impetus to move on quickly when I saw the storm heading my way from the Ile de Chausey.

As I watched, I could see it getting closer and closer and I didn’t like the look of it at all, so I cleared off.

And even despite the raging weather, there was another fishing boat out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

This kind of weather, rough though it is, won’t stop them at all. But as I have said before … “on numerous occasions” – ed … they seem to be fishing in areas that I hadn’t noticed before.

No change in the chantier navale this evening which was just as well because I didn’t feel like stopping. Still the same four boats from yesterday. They are keeping quite busy in there despite the restrictions.

But while I’d stopped for my breath, I had a look at the flagpoles here in the car park in the boulevard Vaufleury.

They’ve been busy with the cherry-picker because they have put these flags up too. We have the EU, then France, then the province of Normandy and then the flag of the town of Granville.

But on that note the rain started to fall. The storm had caught me up. So I ran off down the street and back home, missing off my two final runs due to the inclement weather.

But I was over 100% on the fitbit so I wasn’t too disappointed.

It’s horribly late now and I’m nowhere near finished. Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday here and that’s usually the signal for a lie-in bit I’m going to defy convention, get up early (if I can, of course) and finish off the outstanding stuff before breakfast.

See you in the morning.

Friday24th April 2020 – THERE WAS A CHANGE …

.. in the way that things panned out today.

They were worse.

Last night I crashed out long before I’d finished the journal which was no surprise at all, seeing how I was feeling.

And in bed I didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off. And much to my surprise – and probably yours too – I even managed to beat the third alarm. I’m not sure how but I did.

One the medication was sorted I went and had a look – or, rather, a listen – to the dictaphone.

Despite what I had thought, I had been off on a voyage somewhere as there was the usual incoherent drivel on the dictaphone – a sure sign that I was dictating in my sleep.

We were musicians again last night and we’d been jamming. I had my three basses there but I could not get the right kind of volume to compete with one of the guitarists. The second guitarist cleared off after a while and left me with this other guitarist. No matter what bass I tried, I could not get the right kind of volume to compete with him. It was really disappointing. But in the conversation the quote came out about Jimi Hendrix – “if the music is too loud for you we can always turn it up”. We talked about that and that reminded me of a time when I’d been with a girl to a concert somewhere (totally ficticious of course but you know what dreams are like). Again there had been three of us, me, another boy and this girl and again the other boy had cleared off leaving the two of us alone together.

All of these little cameos on here – i’d love to know how they would all turn out.

After breakfast I had a go at some more digitalising of sound files. Another two albums bit the dust reasonably straightforwardly with only a couple of files that stuck and needed coaxing – except for one thing. And that was that I had to fight off a huge wave of sleep that overwhelmed me.

It didn’t actually overwhelm me to the point that I succumbed but it certainly took my mind off things.

Having finished the two albums for today, much of the rest of the day has been spent sorting through a mound of e-mails that have built up and sending out buckets of enquiries and buckets of replies.

As well as that, I’ve made a start on copying the external hard drives onto the new 4TB hard drive that came today. The 250GB hard drive that I thought would last for ever and which was full up in 2016 has now had its contents transferred over. It’s not been compared yet but that’s tomorrow’s job.

And then, next on the list will be the 750GB one that replaced it and which didn’t last very long before that too was full.

After than, some time I don’t know when, we’ll be in the big-numbered hard drives. And there are three of those.

There was the usual break for lunch, and later, unfortunately, another calamity as I crashed well out for ages. I’ve been saying that just recently I’ve been having a bit of a bad time with crashing out – being a really deep sleep of the kind that wants to make me curl up and go to bad, but none of them that I’ve had just recently was as bad as the one this afternoon.

That was definitely the worst for quite some time.

With an hour or so spare before I needed to knock off to play the guitar, I had a bash at the photos for July 2019. I’d done a couple earlier today but this evening I did a pile more. W’re now leaving Husavik for our trip to the north-east of Iceland.

Tea was an “everything curry” and there’s a little left over that will go in the freezer for another time. And the apple crumble that I made was excellent too.

This evening I went out early as there was football on the internet.

Everyone else must have been busy too as I didn’t see a soul, except a girl in the distance. There were a couple of trawlers out and about though in the English Channel – the one nearest the camera seeming to have come from the area around Bréhal-Plage.

No other human then, so I pushed on for my wander along the clifftop on the other side of the headland.

The chantier navale was still the same though with the same three boats so I had a look across to the ferry terminal to see if I could see any changes.

The big crane is still there of course, which must mean that they haven’t finished whatever it is that they were doing. And when I had a close look at the photo that I took, I couldn’t see any change.

So I’ll have to wait and see what develops over the course of the next few days..

My fourth run is the longest – all the way down from the car park in the boulevard Vaufleury to the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne and then up the slope.

Today though, I had to interrupt it. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not every day that we see Chausiais moving around – I always seem to manage to miss her.

But here she is today, performing a rather unusual danse macabre in the inner harbour as she looks for a place to tie up.

While she was doing that, I was interrupted yet again.

The small fishing boat that we had seen earlier in the English Channel has now made its way around the Pointe du Roc and is coming ful steam ahead into the harbour.

It’s hard to say whether or not she is fully loaded with a decent catch but there were very few seagulls hovering around, like you would expect to see. But I hope that it’s a good catch.

By now it looks as if chausiais has found a good berth so I watched her for a few minutes to make sure that she settles in.

And then I carried on with my run back home.

Football tonight was a Welsh Premier League match from several years ago – Neath Athletic v Prestatyn Town in the Europa play-offs from about 10 or so years ago.

Another one of these matches where you realise just how much the standard of football, of grounds, of amenities and of pitches has improved these last few years in Welsh football.

It’s difficult to say how come both teams still finished the match with 11 players on the field but it looked very much to me as if the referee was officiating at a different match to the one that I was watching.

Neath won 3-2 and that was a fair reflection of the score.

The postie has been today and brought me some vegan burger mix from Germany. Thanks, Hans, for that. He also brought me a tax return to fill in and I’m not very happy about that but needs must, I suppose.

But that’s all for again. If I’m quick, I might have an early night. Shoppign tomorrow and I’ll try not to forget the carrots.

Thursday 23rd April 2020 – THE GOOD NEWS IS …

… that I’m holding my own.

Yes, I don’t want to be holding anyone else’s, that’s for sure.

Mind you, someone else could hold it for me, depending on who it was of course and several candidates spring to mind. And that reminds me, I’ve not heard anything from Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves) for absolutely ages.

That’s right – I’ve been to see the doctor this morning. He’s quite pleased with my progress and thinks that I’m in a stable condition. But then again, so was Mary after giving birth to Jesus.

There’s even better news too, although not necessarily for me alone. I asked the doctor about this virus and how it was doing. he replied that there hasn’t even been a call for a test in Granville during the last 10 days, never mind a case of the virus.

He’s of the opinion that the number of cases is falling dramatically due to the success of the detention à domicile and if this keeps up, then Granville will be one of the first places to have the restrictions lifted.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, statements like this are usually the Kiss of Death for any hopes. So we shall see.

But apart from that, today has been a horrible day for me again.

It all went wrong last night with me being very late going to bed. After 02:00 it was, what with one thing and another.

Surprisingly, I managed to beat the third alarm although I was feeling like death.

With the medication out of the way, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was standing with a group of people on a square somewhere last night – a “circle” thing that you used to get with Council House estates. This square was being modernised and the road being reorganised and so we were standing in a group there and it was going to be one of these funk, soul R&B blues things but the guys were white and that took everyone by surprise.

After breakfast I had a go at doing some digitalising. Another two albums and, to my complete surprise, apart from two tracks that “stuck” and needed quite a bit of encouragement to work properly it went so rapidly that I didn’t have time to do more than half a dozen or so of the photos from July 2019.

By now, it was time to go to visit the doctor so I grabbed my things and headed for the stret.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out on foot into town in the morning and there was plenty of activity about, like this fishing boat that’s setting off into the English Channel, towing its dinghy behind it.

For a moment or two I thought that it might have been our old friend La Grande Ancre on her way out but I really can’t tell form this image.

And I can’t tell from this image what this thing is either.

It’s some kind of pontoon or raft of some description with a cabin and a crane and several buoys on board. It looks as if it might be doing something with the mooring chains in the tidal harbour.

However, when they’ve been doing that in the past, they’ve done it on foot at low tide, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I couldn’t see why they would want to go to the expense of bringing in a special craft to do the job.

The excitement is a long way from being over too.

Yesterday, we saw that Joly France has moved from her spec at the ferry terminal and was moored up in the inner harbour. I’d noticed earlier that Chausiais wasn’t there this morning either, so I was wondering if she had gone off on a delivery.

But no – she’s here in the inner harbour having a friendly chat with Soirit of Conrad. So there’s something going on at the ferry terminal too, then.

But never mind that for a moment. There seems to be quite a lot going on with the new pontoons at the “Rue du Port” side of the harbour.

It’s difficult to see exactly what they are doing here, but the giant mobile crane that occasionally puts on an appearance here and there around the harbour is back and it’s in position to lift something.

And I can’t think that they will be lifting that will be so heavy that they will need this crane for it.

Bit I carried on and went to the doctoor’s, and then off through the madding crowds (of which there were more than just a few people) up to LIDL.

Although I spent more than usual, much of that went on a new mini-wok. My frying pan is quite small and some of the stuff I make is too big, but far to small to cook in the giant wok.

However, despite everything that i spent, I forgot the carrots, as I found out when I went to peel them this afternoon.

On the way back home I always keep my eyes open for anything unusual or exciting, and this in the rue St Paul is one of those things – something that made me look twice at it.

Rule N°2 (regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen Rule N°1 a while back) of hanging up signs and notices is to make sure that there are no creases or folds in the material that might distort the message.

Or do you think that that is splitting hairs?

Something else on which we’ve been keeping an eye just recently is the new house that’s being built on the corner of the Rue Charles Guillebot and the Impasse de la Corderie.

For quite a while, progress on it was stalled but they started up a short while ago.

And now they have managed to go as far as the roof. If they aren’t careful, they might be in a position to finish it off before too long.

Bu tit’s not going to be anywhere where I might want to be living.

La Mie Caline was open so I picked up a dejeunette and then went across the road to the pharmacy to pick up my medication for the next month.

On my way back up the hill in the rue des Juifs I wanted to see how the big crane was doing. But there she was, gone. And never called me Mother. Instead the floating pontoon is over there with the giant crane.

And I couldn’t even see what they were doing with that one either. It’s not my lucky day, is it?

As to where the big mobile crane has gone, that question soon resolved itself too.

And it also answered the question as to why Chausiais and Joly France have moved. With the ferries to the Channel islands being suspended now until the 11th may at the earliest, it looks as if they have seized the opportunity to carry on with the work that they were doing before all of this erupted.

With no ferries to worry about, they can presumably crack on.

And so I cracked on too, back home and started on the final work for the two radio projects that I had on the go. And by the time I knocked off for lunch, I had finished writing the text, it had all been dictated, uploaded to the computer and one of the projects had actually been completed.

After lunch, it didn’t take long to finish off the second, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. There are just 3 or four live recordings to deal with now, and then I’ll be at my target of four months ahead.

First job after finishing was to catch up on a pile of e-mails that needed sending out, and second job was to sort all of the albums that have been digitalised to date and file them away.

That latter job was one that took far longer than it ought because, having already crashed out for 10 minutes earlier, I went out like a light for a good half hour while I was putting away the albums.

And I do mean “out like a light”. It was as bad as I have been for quite a while and the type that would have had me crawling into bed had it happened this time last year.

There was still some time left to do a couple of little things before I knocked off at … 17:00 … for my hour on the guitars.

But at 18:00 I had other things to do.

The apple crumble is down to the last helping and there was some crumble mix left over, so I used it and the remaining cooking apples to make a small crumble.

But first, the home-made ginger and orange drink was finished off this morning so I needed to make some more. The lemons were looking somewhat sorry for themselves so I ended up with a home-made orange and ginger cordial today.

And here’s all of the finished product it all of its glory. There’s tons of stuff that I’ve been making just recently and once I have the time I’ll be trying more stuff.

While the apple crumble was cooking, I stuck a couple of potatoes in the oven with it and after a while a slice of frozen pie went in there too. With mixed veg and gravy, that was tea followed by the last of Sunday’s apple crumble with soya coconut dessert

Outside for my evening walk later on.

The sky wasn’t as good as it has been just recently though. No clear skies this evening. It was rather overcast and it was unlikely that we would have a good sunset. But this fishing boat sailing off into the setting sun was quite interesting

The Ile de Chausey is out there somewhere but it’s lost in the haze tonight.

Having dumped the rubbish in the bin, I set off on my run to the top of the hill.

And that was the worst that I have ever felt for quite a while too and I wished that I could do something else. But that kind of attitude bever helped anyone and I need to stop being so defeatist.

At least I had another really good view of the fishing boat pushing on out towards the Channel Islands or wherever.

There were no fishing boats that I could see in the Baie de Mont St Michel, but there were several out in the English Channel tonight.

From my vantage point up on the cliff I could see at least three, and here’s one of them just here. She looks as if she’s been down near Beéhal-Plage for some reason although I can’t imagine what it might be.

As for the others, it wasn’t easy to tell what they might (or might not) have been up to

A year or so ago regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the erection of a monument at the Pointe du Roc in honour of Maurice Marland and the other member sof the resistance who carried on the struggle against the Germans during the Occupation.

Four flag poles were erected, but with no flags and there was much speculation about which flags were to be flown here.

But today, we know the answer to that. Somewhere in the course of the day they have been out there to hoist a few – the French,the USA, the UK and, surprisingly, the German flag.

But then, I suppose, the German people were as much the victims of a wicked ideology as anyone else. And I can’t help thinking, as I witness the rise of Fascism in the UK and the USA and several other states in Europe just as in the 1930s, that “those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it”.

The sunset wasn’t as spectaculr tonight as it has been during a couple of evenings just recently.

Nevertheless there was a girl who had breached the security barriers in order to go down to the viewpoint at the bottom to admire the view. I wonder if she thought that what she had seen was worth the risk of the €135 fine is one of the Police Municipale ageents had appeared out of the blue.

There were certainly not so many people out and about this evening, but of those whow ere there, one of them was a guy with whom I’d exchanged pleasantries the other evening.

There’s been a great deal of talk here and there from certain people all over France complaining that the small local operators have been refused permission to fish whereas the larger multinationals are out there regardless.

The regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen enough evidence to suggest that this is clearly not the case here. We’ve seen plenty of fishing boats from here out at sea and here are a few that are at the fish processing plant unloading their catch.

So I’ve no idea what is the source of these complaints

While I was here recovering my breath from one of the legs of my run, I had a good look across at the ferry terminal to see if there was any evidence of the work that the large mobile crane had been undertaking.

Not a sausage, as it happens. I didn’t notice anything in the way of new work. But I did notice that the crane is parked up here, presumably for the night, which must mean that whatever they were doing, they hadn’t finished it.

Presumably then they’ll be back to have another go tomorrow, so I’ll have to check tomorrow and hope that it will be more evident.

That just leaves the support pillars for the floating pontoons.

There has been a great deal of work going on there during the course of the day with all kinds of equipment being used and so I was quite looking forward to observing the progress that they have made.

But as bad luck would have it, there was little if no evidence of anything that might have required the use of the cranes. All that I could see that was different today wat that another one of the support pillars for the new floating pontoons has acquired its rain hat.

And they wouldn’t surely have needed a big mobile crane for that.

My run continued onwards and I went down to the rue du Nord to check on the sunset. The girl who had been there yesterday was there again, but with a friend (she must have heard about me). And there were now heavy clouds obscuring the sun so it wasn’t worth hanging around. I ran on home.

So now it’s late and I’m having a bad day today. Not much sleep, and what I did have was at the wrong time of day. I don’t seem to be recovering quickly enough from my athletic endeavours either and despite the reassurances of the doctors I might be holding my own but I’m not feeling myself.

Looking back on my notes from the High Arctic last year when I was three months without my medication and how I was feeling (which is why I make these notes), I can see it all happening again.

No hospital appointment until July too – another two or three months to go. Heaven alone knows what I’ll be like by then.

Monday 2nd March 2020 – CATASTROPHE AFTER CATASTROPHE!

I am having a desperately bad day today.

Nothing is working, nothing is going to plan and everything that I touch seems to be breaking. I’m now at the stage where I’m too scared to go to the bathroom!

And it all started off so well too! I’d had a good sleep for what it was worth and even managed to beat the alarms out of bed.

A nice breakfast, nothing on the dictaphone to copy out, and a good crack on at the splitting of the digital files.

But that was as good as it got. The rest of the day descended into chaos.

First task was to book my accommodation in Leuven for the period 18th – 23rd March. And, surprisingly, all of the cheap accommodation had been sold out already. I’m having to go up-market into a higher class of accommodation – at an additional price of course.

The rail trip was next. And, surprisingly, there were no trains available at all on that day, or the day before. I used the SNCF chatline and whoever was on there confirmed that the trains were running, and that I should call the helpline.

At that point I went for a shower and then headed off into town.

First stop was the railway station. But I didn’t get as far as i would have liked because I was bewildered by the lack of funfair.

It’s not there now – the ground’s all flat. They’ve folded up their tents like Bedouins and crept off silently into the night by the looks of things. I’m sure that they were here for longer than this in previous years.

At the station, the person at the counter told me that the trains were indeed running and there’s no reason whatever to think otherwise. She told me to book on the ‘phone if the internet still isn’t working.

And if I’m stil unsuccessful, to come back and see her.

Outside in the avenue Marechal Leclerc they were tidying up now that the fete foraine has gone.

The guys with the pressure-washers were out again washing the confetti into the drains for it to be discharged into the sea, which is a pretty thankless task, i suppose. It’s a good job that it’s made of paper.

At LIDL I bought a few things – some button batteries which always come in useful of course, and some new vinegar and olive oil dispensers.

The reason why I bought those was because they looked as if they were spray-on containers but when I unwrapped them at home, I found that they weren’t. And that disappointed me greatly.

But they did have leeks in – a bundle at €0:99 and I was thinking only the other day that I really fancied some leek and potato soup. So I bought a bundle and I’ll make some of that too.

On the way back, I had a look at the building work going on at the impasse de la Corderie.

They don’t seem to be making much progress so it’s difficult to see what it is that they are going. What I’ll have to do next time that I’m over there is to go to have a closer look and see what’s going on.

Had I not been running quite late and had a lot to do, I would have gone over then and there. But I had to press on regardless

Instead, today I went on down into town and La Mie Caline to pick up my dejeunette.

On the way though, I stopped to see what was going on with the big funfair because if the small one had gone, it was quite likely that the big one would follow it quite quickly.

And I was right about that too because they have broken camp and are in the process of clearing off too. But at least it gives me an opportunity to admire the balcony and French windows of that showman’s caravan just there.

As I’d been walking through the town I’d heard a pile of banging coming from down in the port so I was wondering what was going on there.

By the looks of things, they are installing a second one of those big grey pillars that we’ve been seeing. There’s a piledriver attached to the big crane and it’s that which has been making the noise as it drops down and drives the pillar into the silt.

And this is starting to cause me more than a little concern. Are they going to ba having some of these pontoons going out perpendicularly into the harbour basin?

And if so, how are the big gravel boats going to be able to turn round if the width of the harbour is thus restricted? I don’t like the way that this is shaping up one little bit.

Back here, I telephoned the rail booking point. They confirmed that the trains were running normally, They could book me tickets on the phone, no problem, so I gave them all of the details.

And then we had the “ohh dear!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve no idea. The system will let me take you as far as Lille but no further. And on teh way back, it won’t let me book you from Brussels to Paris”.
“Why not”?
“I’ve no idea. It looks as if the TGV isn’t accepting our bookinss”

Well, that’s a badger and no mistake. But at least it’s solved the problem of my morning walk tomorrow. It looks as if it will be a walk up tp the railway station and see if I can book it from there.

Next stop was to order a new glass for the mirror on Caliburn. And having specified a “right-hand” one, when I had the “confirmation of order” in my mailbox, it quite clearly states “left-hand”.

So what the heck happened there? I had to send them an e-mail and hope that they read it before they post the glass.

Next was a phone call from the people at the radio trying to make me reconsider my decision to withdraw from Group activities. Despite their pleading, I stood firm. Not necessarily because I want to withdraw, but simply that if I change my mind, then that won’t change theirs and things need to change – and change drastically – at their end of we are to progress as a team and do things correctly.

With all of this going on, it was lunchtime by now so I made my butties. And then I started work on the radio project that I have to do.

There was an interruption for my walk, and this was where the calamity of calamities hit me. For some reason or other, the BIG NIKON has stopped working!

It’s refusing to read the memory card that’s in it.

So back here, I tried almost every single memory card in the apartment (and there are more than enough of them around here!) and no luck whatsoever. This really IS a calamity!

With something of a bitter taste in my mouth, I carried on with the radio project and, clearly being unable to think straight, I’ve made something of a dog’s breakfast of it and some of it has to be done again.

Tea was some of the leftovers from yesterday – the lentil curry with rice and veg, followed by apple crumble and some of that Alpro soya dessert stuff.

For my evening walk I fired up the old Nikon D3000 but didn’t get very far with that. As for my runs though, I managed to go quite far with them and imrpved my distances more than somewhat.

It just goes to show what having a good diet can do for you.

And not crashing out today either. That’s good news too.

But in view of my dreadful day today i’m going to have an early night and a good sleep – write off today as a total loss and start again afresh tomorrow.

It’s the least that I can do.

Friday 28th February 2020 – I MISSED …

… the alarms this morning.

Yes, round about 07:30 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit this morning. I’ve no idea why because last night wasn’t exactly a late night.. after the medication I had a look at the dictaphone as usual. I’d been on a few travels too during the night, but not enough to wear me out.

I’d been in Audlem and it had been some kind of New Years Eve or something like that. There were hordes of people out in the street all dressed in fancy clothes. I’d been wandering around looking at them and admiring their outfits, all that kind of thing. Then I headed down to where the Buttermarket was. There were even more people coming out from down Shropshire Street, all in a sort of nightwear type of thing as if they had been to some kind of pyjama party. They were all streaming up to a pub that of course doesn’t exist somewhere on Stafford Street. This pub was a black and white Tudor building with all kinds of statues on the edges of the roof like in Austria. There were all these bunk beds outside and this was the middle of winter and all these bunk beds for kids outside. These kids were all dressed in nightwear and I couldn’t understand what it was that they were doing. This was really late for kids to be out and so on.
Before that we had been in a procession, a procession of all kinds. We were dressed as seafaring pirates, a Marsupilami thing. We were quite happily parading and making up the story as we went along. We saw some being questioned about who was in a huge queue and who wasn’t and we realised that this was going to be the fate of death for us because we wouldn’t be allowed to continue. We chatted amongst ourselves who it was and ended up talking to this very young girl about 6 or 7 and ask her all these questions but by now we weren’t having the microphone passed down to us and being put on the air.

And there was more to all of this lot too.

After breakfast I had a look at some more sound files and, sure enough, just as expected, a couple of them were all over the place and took an age to sort out; Somewhere in the middle of all of this I took my Carnaval costume back to its owner. We had quite a chat and she had a lot to say for herself about her work so I made a note for the future.

After having finished the sound files I went down into town for my bread. The long way round too seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere special tody.

But down on the harbour, the hydraulic concrete-breaker that’s been breaking up the rocks over at the ferry port is back so that it looks as if they will be restarting there some time very soon.

Not today though. Chausiais and Joly France were over there moored in a NAABSA position on the bottom. It looks as if they have things to do this weekend.

While I was here I went to look at the new pontoons that they’ve been installing.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I mentioned the cranes on the quayside and that I didn’t think that they will reach over the pontoons.

Today, there were a couple of fishermen there so I asked the question. And the answer is “no, they don’t reach”.
“So what are you going to do then?” asked Our Hero
“Bof” replied one of the fishermen with a beautiful Gallic shrug.

A beautiful word, “Bof” – a must-have word in anyone’s vocabulary. It means basically “I don’t know” but with a much greater air of abandonment.

The tide was out so I could walk across the harbour gates to the other side.

Thora had gone, as I had expected, so I could admire the new pontoons here too. They are cracking on with all of this and I don’t think that it will be long before they have finished.

But as I have said before, I hope that they will leave some space for the commercial boats like the gravel boats that come in here, even if they haven’t been in for a while.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

Still plenty of time before lunch so I made a start on scanning in all of the receipts that needed scanning. And I was surprised that there were so many. I seem to have run aground somewhere in my plan for rolling scanning. even worse, I can’t find the receipts for medication that i bought at the end of June prior to going off on my sea voyage. It was an expensive do too so I hope that I didn’t discard the receipts along with all of the rest of the paperwork that I threw away on my travels.

After lunch, I had something very important to do. I’d used up the last of the hummus so I had to make some more. And although it took a while, it was thoroughly wicked when it was finished.

Basically, for any given weight you need 50% of chick peas and 25% sesame seed paste. These are the important figures to remember.
The remaining 25% of the given weight is made up of all kinds of things – olive oil and chick pea juice for a start. Then I use sea salt, ground black pepper, garlic (tons of that) and then your “flavouring ingredient”.

Everything except your flavouring ingredient goes into the whizzer and it’s whizzed round until it’s a nice creamy paste. Then, add your “flavouring ingredient”. I made two batches, one with the roasted peppers that I had prepared last night and the second with some sliced olives. You add that to the mix in the whizzer and whizz it just enough to disperse it rhrough the mix but not enough to break it up completely.

After that, I could crack on then and fill in these forms. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either, with so many to do. I hadn’t really realised just how many receipts had piled up over that period when I broke my hand.

There was the usual pause for my afternoon walk. Around the walls this afternoon, but no run because there were far too many people around.

Despite the wind, there were quite a few people down on the beach at the Plat Gousset too. I’ve no idea what they were doing but they were clearly having a good time doing it.

So I came back to carry on work, but it wasn’t quite the success for which I was hoping. There was a little … errr … repose during the afternoon that slowed me down too.

By the time that I had finished the medical expenses it was 18:30 and so I did something that I haven’t done for quite some time, namely I had a play on the bass. It shows you just how much work I’ve had to do that the guitars have been on the back burner all this time. The track “Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic came round on my playlist so I spent half an hour working out the bass line.

There has been some excitement too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my disenchantment with certain events over the weekend. The controller has called a meeting for Monday to discuss them but EVERY ONE of the volunteers is refusing to go and there has been a frantic exchange of e-mails.

There are stories of one or two others who are as disenchanted as I am, but I had no idea that the feeling was so general. Not, of course, that I am surprised.

Tea was an “anything curry” of leftover food in the fridge, including a couple of falafel balls that had been in there maybe longer than they ought to have been.

The evening walk around the headland was disappointing. I only managed one run and that was a struggle too as I had a headwind against me. Reaching my mark, never mind extending it, was something of a battle.

Later, I had the football to watch so I started to write my notes on the little old Acer laptop that I have recently raised from the dead just to prove that it still works.

It was Welsh Cup quarter-final and we should have had two second-division teams, Prestatyn Town and Flint Town United. But their match was called off so the cameras made a dash across North Wales to show us Caernarfon Town v Cefn Druids instead.

Caernarfon scored after just a minute – a wicked deflection from a corner that shouldn’t have been awarded in the first place. And then they had Alex Ramsey to thank for a series of excellent saves to keep them in the game for the next hour.

The match hinged on a moment of madness on the hour-mark.

Arsan, one of the Druids defenders, was fouled and the referee blew his whistle to award the free kick. Arsan, in his folly, kicked out at the Caernarfon player for which he was rightly booked. Probably not 30 seconds later, he had the ball and as he ran past a Caernarfon player, fell to his knees. No clearer case of simulation you will ever see, and he picked up another yellow card and was thus expelled from the game.

In my time I’ve seen some stupid players do some stupid things, but nothing quite as stupid as this.

Within the next 5 minutes Caernarfon had scored two more goals, and went on to score a bizarre fourth right at the end when an outstretched Caernarfon boot touched the ball awkwardly causing it to loop up over everyone and drop down behind a defender into the net.

So I’m off to bed now. For the first time in a while I’m off shopping and I hope that they have more of that Alpro soya ice cream. I started on that for tea tonight and it was delicious.

Monday 24th February 2020 – THERE’S SOMETHING MISSING …

… from this photograph, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Where’s the big red Iveco van that has been parked on the parking area at the fish processing plant since before I came back from North America at the end of October?

The answer to that conundrum is pretty simple. On Sunday morning the police, the fire brigade, the ambulance crew and a heavy breakdown truck lifted it out of the water where it had ended up sometime over Saturday night – early Sunday morning.

If someone were to tell me that someone had been up to mischief with one of the forklift trucks I wouldn’t be at all surprised, or else a group of revellers had decided to have a little bit of drunken “fun”.

But anyway, it’s not there now – the ground’s all flat.

As for me, with no alarm I slept through until round about 09:00. And it took me a while to force myself out of bed afterwards too. I was in no hurry.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone. Apparently I was in Toronto last night which was strange because I’ve never really been there and I was walking around the streets. I ended up in a street that was 250 yards away from the main centre according to the adverts because there was a shop that was closed “who would like to rent this place 250 yards away from Toronto’s main shopping street?”. As I walked on, there was this building advertising musical instruments and motor bikes so I went in. On the ground floor by where the door was was all drum kits. So I walked in and this place was absolutely amazing like a labyrinth of things and they had all this equipment down on the ground floor except the guitars. I walked upstairs and it was like vaults only upstairs. All these rooms, all these kinds of things in it except eh motor bikes and guitars. A lovely guitar workshop with all tools of all kinds on the walls and a couple of guys in wheelchairs who were working there. I couldn’t see the guitars or the motorbikes. As I walked around I discovered that there was a third floor as I heard one of the guys say “we aren’t going to expand onto a fourth floor yet – we’re all right as we are”. So I said “oh the third floor sounds good”. So I walked through this dark dingy recess place and out into the main stair well which was a huge stone stair well but the third floor was comics and magazines so I thought “where the heck are the guitars and motor bikes? I’d better go back in and ask”. But just then a girl came around ringing a handbell saying “closing for lunch, closing for lunch! Everyone outside” just like something out of a Dickens novel.

After breakfast I had a shower and a general clean-up. I weighed myself too and I’m now within just 400 grams of my first target weight. I’ve actually touched it once but couldn’t keep it there. I’m hoping for better luck this time.

Then off I headed to the shops.

As is my custom these days, I had a look down to see what was going on in the harbour. And we have another crane down there, round where Joly France and La Grande Ancre are moored.

From up here, it’s not easy to see exactly what it’s doing, but it seems to be involved with a pile of scaffolding. When I go for my bread tomorrow I shall go for a closer look and see

At LIDL there was nothing special that I bought – unless you count a tube of superglue. However I did buy some lemons because I’m getting low on my home-made orange and ginger syrup so I shall be having a go at making some lemon and ginger syrup and see if I’ve really got the hang of it.

In the summer there will be many more fruits (I hope) to have a go at if it all works out.

On the way back I stuck my head over the wall of the rue St Gaud to see what was happening down on the car park in the rue St Sauveur.

The fete foraine – the funfair – is now in full swing so I imagine that everything that is going to be here is here already, erected, up and running.

We seem now to have a fully-fledged kiddies’ corner with quite a few attractions, which is a good sign. But I must admit to having spent a good few minutes admiring the French windows and verandah in that showman’s living accommodation.

Back here it was already lunchtime and having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline, I had my butties.

After the break I made a start on project 27 for the radio. In the time available I chose all of the music (except for the last track of course) but then came across a problem that I did not have a suitable break for my invited guest.

What I did then was to grab one of the lengthy sound-bite files that I have and cut it down into the individual sound-bites and save them all. From there I was able to pick out a suitable one.

Tomorrow I’ll crack on and do the text, and then do a “live concert” for the end of April.

There was the usual break for my walk outside around the headland this afternoon.

There were a few people out there this afternoon wandering around, and some action on the water too. The tide must be on the turn because the fishing boats were heading home.

At first I wasn’t sure exactly what that was, seeing as it was so far out to sea in the English Channel. But a little “crop and enlarge” brought out the fishing boat

In past years I couldn’t remember if the fete foraine – the funfair – worked at all during the daytime in the week.

But anyway, there it is, all illuminated and the attractions seem to be going round and round.

having stood there and admired it all for a while, I came back here for a coffee and a slice of cake that I happen to have around here right now.

After all, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but It’s my birthday today. Another day older and deeper in debt.

There was a disagreeable task to be performed this evening too.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours, including much of the night when I ought to have been sleeping, mulling over the events of yesterday. And something else has happened in this connection in the early part of the afternoon that has merely underlined my thoughts.

As a result I’ve sent a mail to the co-ordinator to say that –
1) I’ll continue to do my rock music programmes
2) I’ll undertake spontaneously any other project that attracts my interest, and do it alone.
3) If he wishes me to undertake any other solo project, then I’ll be happy to do it, as long as it really is alone.
4) If one or two of the others (and I mentioned a few names) wish me to help them with any project that they have in mind, then they can contact me.
5) But I’m not going to involve myself in any group project
6) I’m not going to involve myself in any live broadcasts
7) I’m never going to work with him and one or two others (withdrawing from two projects to which I had previously committed).
8) I refuse to be in the same room as one other person whose name I mentioned.

If you think that I’m being rather petulant, the fact is quite simply this –
I’m slowly dying of a wasting, debilitating illness and I’m reaching the critical point. There’s not enough blood in my body to carry around the oxygen that I need and so my heart needs to beat almost twice as fast to pump sufficient blood -and oxygen – around.
The doctors have told me on several occasions that the only reason I’m keeping going so well is that I have a very strong heart and the moment that my heart gives out, I’ll have had it. And so I must do absolutely everything in my power to avoid anything that puts any unnecessary strain on my heart and stress is to be avoided at all costs.
And the stresses of the events of yesterday are no good at all. Stressing myself for a good purpose is fine because I think that the means are better than the end as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But stressing myself for no good purpose is not what I have in mind at all.

Tea tonight was one of the new burgers that I had bought a while ago from Leclerc. It wasn’t disagreeable but it wasn’t anything special either. Apsta and vegetables tossed in a spicy tomato sauce too and followed by some delicious rice pudding.

When I went outside for my evening walk it was raining quite heavily. But it wasn’t going to put me off.

And it had occurred to me that I hadn’t taken any photos of the grockles in their caravanettes parked all over the Place d’Armes and they have already started to break camp and several have left.

But up here on the walls of the medieval town there was a good view right across to part of the car park. Despite the weather the photo isn’t too bad and at least it’s picked up the vehicles on the car park.

The first part of my run was waterlogged but I managed to fit in the stand-by run which wasn’t too bad. and once more I overran by a good 25 metres and that’s always good news.

For the second part of my run I managed half-way up the ramp which was quite impressive seeing as how I hadn’t properly recovered from the first part. But, impressively, I’m running for about 4.5 minutes per day according to my fitbit, which at my age and state of health is pretty impressive.

The tide was well in now so the big trawler-type of fishing boats were in the inner harbour unloading their catch at the fish processing plant.

As for me, with no cat to stroke tonight, I came home and wrote up my notes.

The alarm goes back on tomorrow so I’ll be back hard at it again. So an early night is called for. But I’d much rather listen to the decent music that’s just come onto the playlist.

Wouldn’t you?

Tuesday 18th February 2020 – I CAN NOW ADD …

… to my list of accomplishments that of “tying up a trawler”.

I arrived at the harbour at exactly the moment that the harbour gates opened, and I actually do mean that because I was walking across the path on top when they started to close and I had to scramble underneath the barrier.

There must have been eight or nine fishing boats of various sizes sitting in the queue outside the gates waiting for the off.

Anyway, as soon as the gates opened, they shot in like greyhounds out of a trap and headed for their berths.

One of the later arrivals pulled up right by me as I was walking down the quayside. The skipper shouted “tie us up, will you?” and hurled me a rope. I missed the first time but the second time I caught it and looped it over a bollard and wound it round.

he seemed quite satisfied that I’d done it correctly so I cleared off. I had no idea that passers-by – civilians like me – were expected to know how to do things like this and be roped (if you’ll excuse the pun) into participating in the antics of the fishing fleet.

You learn something new every day.

Nothing new though in this morning’s antics. I missed the alarms again and it was about 06:45 when I finally arose.

But I’d been awake a couple of times during the night and on both occasions found myself dictating the account of a nocturnal voyage … into my hand. Dictaphone still on the chest of drawers.

It’s enough to make me wonder how many times I’ve done that in the past and what I might have missed.

After the medication I had a look at the dictaphone and … GULP there’s enough on here to keep me busy for a week or so, enver mind half an hour.

There was a group of kids, 7 or 8 or 9 and it was some kind of adventure quest. They had to travel to France for some reason or other, all dressed up, even two of them dressed as a pantomime horse with a girl dressed as a princess sitting on top, all dashing off down to Dover docks. I was one of the monitors – I had to follow them around and make sure that they weren’t getting up to any good. They had challenges that they had to meet on the way, like one where it was the task of this pantomime horse to actually involve itself in the encounter, this kind of thing. I pile of them made it down to Dover so I said “what happens now? Do you have to get your tickets?”. One said “ohh no. They said we could get our tickets at the other side” which sounded strange to me but they all seemed to agree that that was what was supposed to be happening. They were all jostling around for a place to sit. One of the girls was Helena who was probably a little older, 10 or 11 I dunno so i got talking to her. “What have you been doing?” “Well apart from having to drive my car to the Isle of Man, not a great deal” so I asked her to tell me about her kind of adventure in this particular thing but she didn’t have the chance to before I awoke
And I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Dictating a dream in my sleep without the Dictaphone. Strange. I was up on the Elm Drive estate in what should have been a council house but it was a big private house of mine. I was doing it up but I’d been taken ill as you know and couldn’t work so the work had really slowed down on this place. But Castor and Pollux were there and Jerry Kobalenko (welcome into my nocturnal rambles, Jerry) too. We were preparing for an expedition and it had started and we had lost a lot of equipment and I’d fallen through the ice. We’d had to arrange this kind of thing and ended up with no clothes so we were back at my house again drying off. I started to lend Jerry some clothes and stuff like that and get myself organised. Jerry borrowed my car which was a Mark IV Cortina RHD but with the gear lever on the right up against the door. He went off and did something and then I came back and took the car for a drive. Went down West Avenue and Richard Moon Street and out to Nantwich. Round Nantwich and back again all the way up Middlewich Road. I can’t remember where I ended up then, some town or other and had to do a U-turn. I pulled out of a side road and nearly knocked a lorry off over into the centre of the road. There was a huge power station where I did my U-turn and came back. Castor and Pollux were talking to me. They asked me what I intended to do about the house. I said that I was going to finish it off and live here. They were surprised and asked if I ought to be taking more care of my health. I gave them the usual story about wanting to enjoy what life I had left rather than being afraid and not doing anything. They were a bit surprised by this but I told them that was how it was. They asked what I was going to do for money. I wasn’t going to say anything but yes I’m OK for money, plenty of it. I said “you don’t need a job”. Castor said to Pollux “but everyone needs a job, you know” and Pollux was still wondering how you manage to live, all this kind of thing. I was trying my best to explain to her. I’d forgotten that bit about taxis when I was out in the car. I wasn’t supposed to be taxiing and I had to stop thinking about being a taxi driver. So this discussion went on and then was when I awoke to find myself dictating this dream out loud into my hand not the dictaphone so I’ve no idea what has happened there – and how many other times I might have dictated into my hand during my sleep and never been aware of it.
Interestingly, it proves the point that dreams are connected with memories and not out-of-body experiences – at least this one was. The area of West Street around West Avenue, Richard Moon Street and Middlewich Road has undergone all kinds of changes since the demolition of the railway works after I left the town. But not one of these changes appeared in my voyage around that area.
Somewhat later I was doing exactly the same thing again – dictating my dream into my hand while asleep. It was a cowboy situation – the James Brothers. One of them was an outlaw, fed up of them being on the run and wanted to go straight. He was talking to me about it. I went outside and there was the other brother trying to break in a horse. That was when I awoke to find myself dictating my dream in my sleep again
Later on I was with Nerina and we’d been working on a taxi. We’d had to have some letraset done to make some stickers and Karen Brierley had done it. The job was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t have had the patience to do this, as I told her, but this was really good. In fact we’d been talking about business cards prior to this. Someone had taken us to a place and the guy had opened up a set of drawers that he rented out, right by the doorway. “You’ll know what’s in here” he said and opened the top drawer but there was nothing in it. he opened the next one and it was full of business cards and that’s how we got talking about stickers. We much preferred stickers for the taxis because you could stick them everywhere. Anyway then people then were going on about this taxi, painted white and letraset it but it was really late. My family were all up and Nerina was really tired, and I needed her to do some more work. In the end I smiled and said “yes, go on Nerina, go to bed”. I said to my mother that I won’t be up very long either. Even though they were planning to be up all night I’d go to bed and do this first thing in the morning. She went off to bed and I went out to work on this car. But I came back because I was in a suit. I took off the jacket and shirt and went to get an old tee-shirt. And as for jeans I’d but on a pair of overalls to protect the trousers.

As you can imagine, it took me much more than half an hour to type out all of that. I had a break for breakfast at some point and then came back to carry on and it was right into mid-morning by the time that I’d finished all of that.

That meant that finally I could start on the notes for the radio project on which I’m working, but I wasn’t at it for long because I needed to go for my bread.

First task was to leave the house of course. And it was a bright sunny day so i’d planned a nice long walk.

Not that i would get very far though before I had to stop. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m quite interested in the plant life around here – this kind of plant of course, not the other kind. So when I saw this mobile crane pull up on the other side of the harbour I stopped to photograph it.

No idea what it might be doing there. There’s already enough plant and machinery over there as it is.

As I walked down the boulevard des Terreneuviers I noticed that the fishing boats were now jostling for position at the entrance to the inner harbour even though the “traffic light” was showing red.

That could only mean one thing – that the harbour gates were closed but would be opening very shortly. I had a brief look at the chantier navale but there was nothing there any different from the last time I looked.

And so I pushed on rather rapidly, not even stopping to take a photo of the shellfish that they were hauling up from a boat at the fish-processing plant.

Just as I set foot on the footpath across the top of the gates the siren sounded. I moved rapidly but the barrier came down and the gates started to open before I could cross over.

Luckily I was on the far gate so I didn’t have to jump for it, but I still had to scramble under the barrier at the far side. But I’m glad I did because it gave me an opportunity to inspect the fishing tackle on one of the fishing boats.

So now I know where everything goes and what it’s for. I’ll have to get myself out there on a fishing boat one of these days and have a first-hand look at it.

So as all of the fishing boats cleared off into the harbour, I cleared off after them. And that was when I had my encounter with the other fishing boat that I had to tie up.

The guys were there with the pontoon and the large mobile crane. Having been rebuffed the other day I decided not to waste my time asking them anything but to wait and use my own eyes to see what was going on.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed at all, as you will see in due course.

Another one of the things that I’m doing right now is to go round by where the fête foraine – the funfair – will be for the carnival and see how they are getting on with arranging everything.

In the Place Godal, where some of the caravans of the entertainers are parked, there was this popcorn, toffee apple and ice cream stall.

Not that i reckon that it’s supposed to be set up there (although it wouldn’t come as any surprise) but my thinking was that they are waiting for the funfair to erect itself and then these stalls will fit in around the amusements.

So down to the Parking Hérel to see how they were doing.

And the big machinery is going up together quite nicely – and quickly. In fact the apparatus on the left was actually working, swinging back and forth. It made me wonder whether the inspectors were actually there today checking it over.

These machines are impressive but they are quite dangerous and can’t ply for hire until they have been inspected and have a permit to operate.

The Palais de Rire – the Palace of Laughter – looks impressive and they must have worked impressively to have it done this quickly. They had barely started on it yesterday.

But I learnt something today too, and I’m always in the market for learning new things.

There was a lorry there that was towing a couple of trailers – the typical “showman’s goods” lorry. So I asked someone with it what licence yuo needed to drive with more than one trailer.

The answer was (the Fench equivalent of) “a HGV Class one licence – nothing else”. In other words, any ordinary Heavy Artic licence. And I have one of those, don’t I?

But don’t worry. My days of driving all this heavy stuff are over.

From there I walked into town and La Mie Caline to pick up my dejeunette

And here across the road is something that wasn’t here this time yesterday. Clutching my bread quite tightly, I went for a closer look.

They are pushing along quite rapidly with the features for Carnaval as we can see. This is the stage from which they will make all of the announcements I reckon and where there might be some kind of entertainment during the evening – I dunno.

Yesterday I’d been past the car park in the Cours Jonville and seen them laying out the edges of the chapiteau – the big marquee where the Friday night Ball will take place.

And so I went that way today to see how they were getting on with it. And “getting on with it” they certainly are. It’s quite impressive the speed with which they are putting up these things and the marquee is certainly one of the more exciting things

So Friday night we’re going to ba having a Ball. Well, they are. I shall be tucked up in my warm little bed ready for the onslaught the following day.

The roadworks in the place des Corsaires have gone now and the street is open. Me though, I pushed on up the rue des Juifs until I was interrupted.

Excuse the dreadful shot but the sun was right in my eyes and in the camera lens. But here’s our mobile crane, now on this side of the harbour in the rue du Port and the big pontoon has sailed over here too.

And between the pair of them they are manoeuvring one of the pontoon supports into place ready for fixing against the harbour wall. I was lucky to catch this photo today.

Back here I had a late lunch and then set about my afternoon project.

Peel some ginger, dice it into some very tiny squares and then put it in a small amount of water to boil, then leave to simmer.

Meanwhile, peel four good juicy oranges and put them in the whizzer. Whizz them round and then filter out the orange juice which goes in the fridge in a bottle.

The left-over pulp goes into the pan with the ginger and it’s all left to simmer.

While that’s doing, put about 5mm of water in the bottom of your nice new big saucepan and add plenty of lemon juice to it.

hen peel, core and dice seven apples and three pears. When they are finely cut, add them to the water and lemon juice as you go along, swirling them around so that there’s some lemony liquid covering all of them to stop them browning.

Then add desiccated coconut and some cinnamon to the apples and pears, take off the orange and ginger and put the apples and pears etc onto the heat and bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

With the orange pulp and ginger add a couple of dessert spoons of honey and stir well in. Then add to the whizzer and give it a really good whizzing around to liquidise almost everything. Then when it’s cooled down, add to the orange juice and give it all a really good shake.

There’s a nice orange and ginger syrup to add to filtered water.

That was the cue to go for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there today because it was so nice, and I’m glad that I went out when I did because I saw a most unexpected sight. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the new pontoons stacked up on the quayside the other day, but here’s one in the water heading across to the cranes that we saw earlier.

But how are them moving? They aren’t rowing them so maybe there’s an outboard motor somewhere, I suppose.

There had been a heavy rainstorm briefly a short while earlier but it had passed and was gone.

Not too far though because we had this gorgeous rainbow. We’ve certainly seen some impressive rainbows since we’ve been living here but this one is one of the best.

Back here I checked to see that the apples were done, and then strained off the liquid. That’s in a bottle ready to be diluted in early course.

As for the solids, they went into the whizzer and turned into purée for me to bottle. That’ll keep me going for a week or so.

Now I could finish off writing the texts and dictate them, just interrupted by a little 10-minute crash out. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to finish editing them before it was tea-time which was a shame.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with rice followed by apple turnover and Alpro soya almond with chocolate sauce. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that now that i’m much better-organised my diet is improving 100%

Cutting out these shop-bought sugary drinks and their plastic bottles was really a good New Year resolution.

For my walk I managed my two runs and then headed back here to write up my notes.

And now bed-time. After my marathon adventures during the night last night I’m ready for a good sleep. I just hope that I remember to use the dictaphone if i want to dictate any notes.

Thursday 13th February 2020 – LIDL IN GRANVILLE …

… is slowly dragging itself into the 21st Century at long last.

Over the past year or so its BIO range has slowly been expanding and there have occasionally been things there that I can eat, but today, the freezer has been restocked and there are now not only vegetarian frozen foods but even a (very small) vegan selection.

And that’s god news for me and even though i’m struggling for space in my freezer, I bought a box, on the grounds that if no-one buys it, they won’t stock it.

Yes, I made it to LIDL this morning although I’m not quite sure how because I was feeling really dreadful. Last night I slept right the way through the alarms and it was 07:35 when I hauled myself out of bed eventually.

And to say that I wasn’t feeling at all like it is an understatement. Looking back on what I wrote last night before I went to bed, then nothing whatever had changed.

It was preying on my mind too during my sleep (such as it was) by the look of things. After the medication I struggled back to the desk to check the dictaphone. It had taken me ages to go off to sleep but I went back on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and there was a party type of thing that we were having and a group of people – the organisers – got up and did a song that involved banjos and guitars and a bass. It was really good – they were all disguised as Mexicans. I dashed in with my camera to take a photo but I couldn’t remember how to set the settings on it to get the photo that I wanted because they were standing right by an open window where the sun was streaming in so I wanted to play around with the settings but I couldn’t remember how to do it and it was the subsequent panic attack that awoke me, about 30 seconds after I’d gone to sleep.

After breakfast I had a quick shower and then headed out to LIDL even though I didn’t feel much like it.

And the first thing that I noticed was that the wind was back after its day off yesterday. And back in spades too. The port gates can’t have been opened long so the tide still has about 90 minutes before it’s full but even so it was still looking very impressive.

The waves were hurling themselves with all of their might against the sea wall and some were going over the top.

The wind wasn’t the only thing that was back either.

For the first time in well over a week, Normandy Trader had turned up in harbour. The blockade of Channel Island ships has ended of course with Guernsey’s capitulation (in four days!) and Normandy Trader, which brings in the shellfish from the Jersey Fisherman’s Co-operative, can now come into port.

But for how long remains to be seen.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been following the antics of the workmen down in the port and the gradual assembly of the big pontoon.

A large crane turned up yesterday too, and now it seems that it has been taken out onto the pontoon.

But for what, I have no idea. I can’t think what they would need something like that for in a harbour like this – unless it’s to act as a counterbalance for the crane on the quayside as it lowers the new walkways into the water.

Even so, that’s using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

But then again, ther emight be something in this argument.

There’s now another mobile crane turned up in the rue du Port where they have been fitting the mounting brackets for the pontoon walkway on that side, so it looks as if they are almost ready to start there too.

This is all going to be extremely interesting over the next few weeks or so and I hope that I’ll be here to see it.

After something of a struggle I made it to LIDL where I forgot the mushrooms, but it was an expensive shop there today and for a good reason too. The largest saucepan that I have here is a 20cm one with a capacity of 2.5 litres and for what i’m doing now with making soups and drinks and also freezing carrots, it’s just not big enough.

On Monday I noticed that they had nig saucepans in on offer but I couldn’t bring one home. Today though, I was prepared with a large carry-bag and a 24cm 5.5 litre saucepan is now sitting in my kitchen.

That’s even big enough to sterilise all of my jars too.

Having picked up my dejeunette at la Mie Caline I headed for home.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the other day the workman on the roof of that house that they are slowly renovating in the rue des Juifs. They are obviously going quicker than I was reckoning because now they are doing the floors and the concrete pump is here punping the concrete in.

It’s a good job that the local buses here aren’t double-deckers, isn’t it?

Despite the winds having started up again, it seems that the marine activity is still going on.

We’ve seen Normandy Trader braving the winds to come into port but now it’s the turn of La Grande Ancre to head off for a life on the open waves out there on the open sea.

And good luck to her too. She’s going to need it, a small thing like her out there in waves like that. As I’ve said before … “on many occasions” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those going out there

On the way back I bumped into my neighbour and we had a lengthy chat, buffetted by the wind as we were standing there.

Back here I had a coffee and then started work. And I can safely say that today I didn’t do a single thing that had anything whatever to do with the radio. And I think that this must be the first day since well before Christmas too.

First thing was, due to my late start this morning, to split up a few digital tracks into their component parts. And I’ve given up relying on the official data for cutting the tracks because they are just so hopelessly wrong.

That took me up to lunch time and my butties.

This afternoon I attacked the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few months. Some of it was quite urgent too so it wasn’t just a case of simply filing it away, I had a few letters and e-mails to write for stuff that I should really have attended to a while ago.

There was a pile of photocopying too that needed doing. All in all, I was still at this by the time that I knocked off for tea and there’s more to do.

But here’s a surprise. I’ve found a document that tells me that I have an employment assurance policy maturing at the end of February that is going to pay me a pension. The only pensions that I know of are my morks pension, my UK and my Belgian State pension (not that these are anything to write home about) and some old pension from when I was in the UK years ago.

So what is this all about? I’ll have to ring up tomorrow to enquire about it because I don’t have a clue. It can’t be anything substantial otherwise I would remember it. But was I in a works pension scheme when I spent that 12 months working for that crazy American company in Brussels?

There were several interruptions to my afternoon walk.

First and foremost was my afternoon walk. And that was interrupted too by me noticing a couple of guys out in the sea windsurfing. They must be out of their minds in this weather with this wind and these heavy seas and as I prepared the camera, one of them capsized into the sea.

This left the other one to engage with me.

And if I thought that the wind was bad around here, I hadn’t yet gone round the headland.

and there it really was wicked. Not as bad as it was earlier in the week but still enough to disrupt almost everything that I was trying to do. The waves were rolling into the Baie de Mont St Michel with quite a considerable force and I reckon that this evening when the tide is in it’s going to be quite dramatic.

So I wish that they would fix up some lights somewhere to make it easy for photography.

No change at all in the Chantier navale so I pushed on to see what they were up to at the ferry terminal.

The big tractor and trailer (there are in fact two of them) was heading back out there for another load of stone, with it being low tide. And wedged up in the corner was a concrete-breaker and a large digger.

The breaker breaks it off, the digger picks it up and puts it into the trailer and the tractor drives away the loaded trailer.

The photo this morning of Normandy Trader hadn’t come out too well as I had had the sun in the lens at the time.

But now, mid-afternoon, I have the sun behind me so i can take a much better photo of it too, and with the big NIKON D500 instead of the little NIKON 1. The Nikon 1 is a useful little camera and I take it with me when I go for long walks or go shopping because it’s very lightweight and fits nicely in my pocket

But it’s not up to big panoramic distance shots unfortunately. It’s very good at what it does, but it doesn’t do much.

For the same reason as the previous photo, I re-took a photo of the pontoon and the big crane.

No idea at al what they are doing but as I said earlier it’s going to be interesting in the next couple of weeks as the story unfolds.

Back here and a coffee and then I tried to carry on work but I crashed out again. And that was a shame because my head had cleared and I was starting to feel a little better

But once I was back awake I carried on and now I have a huge blood blister on my finger where I caught it in the hole puncher.

Tea was a kind-of curry of everything left over – namely the rest of the stuffing with more onion and garlic and, to lengthen it, a good handful of salted peanuts. It was delicious with a tomato sauce, veg and pasta.

And the last of the rice pudding that followed it was equally delicious.

All alone again on my evening walk, and I managed my two runs, even putting an extra 10 metres on them which was quite surprising.

But now it’s bed-time, later than I had hoped but it can’t be helped. Tomorrow I’m going to finish off the paperwork and then start on the photos from my Arctic adventures.

That will be exciting.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: crane

Wednesday 24th June 2020 – I’VE BEEN …

Tuesday 16th June 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Sunday 31st May 2020 – HANDY HINT N° 12345

Wednesday 27th May 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

Tuesday 26th May 2020 – WE’RE BACK TO NORMAL …

Monday 25th May 2020 – A FEW MORE …

Thursday 7th May 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

Thursday 30th April 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

Friday24th April 2020 – THERE WAS A CHANGE …

Thursday 23rd April 2020 – THE GOOD NEWS IS …

Monday 2nd March 2020 – CATASTROPHE AFTER CATASTROPHE!

Friday 28th February 2020 – I MISSED …

Monday 24th February 2020 – THERE’S SOMETHING MISSING …

Tuesday 18th February 2020 – I CAN NOW ADD …

Thursday 13th February 2020 – LIDL IN GRANVILLE …

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