Tag Archives: place general de gaulle

Sunday 19th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned yesterday that after my posting of the other night a menu dramatically appeared in the window of the new restaurant yesterday.

It was not illuminated so you couldn’t read it in the dark (which rather defeats the purpose of posting it) but anyway, I went along this afternoon to have a look at it and see what was on offer.

And I was right about two things. I can’t afford anything on the menu, and even if I could, there is nothing on the menu that I can eat.

So back to the fritkot then.

It was finally back to bed last night at about 02:30 so there was no chance whatever of my showing a leg at 07:30 when I awoke.

None whatsoever.

Instead I turned over and went back to sleep and there I stayed for about three hours or so until about 10:30. That’s more like it!

Plenty of time to go on a voyage then. There was a lot going on during the night but I don’t remember very much of it at all except one bit where there was a woman with long blonde hair in a pony tail who was talking to me about songs. She was asking me to guess her history which of course I didn’t. It turned out that she was a backing musician to Judy Collins back in the early 70s and can be heard on one of the tracks playing the banjo which I thought was extremely interesting all the same.

After the medication I had a very important task to perform which took up quite a lot of the morning. A ship that once passed by during the night one weekend in another life a world or so ago has dramatically sailed into port during the night.

The world is small, it’s becoming smaller all the time and all of the chickens will come home to roost before it’s over. Still, it’s all part of life’s rich pageant I suppose

But as a result I didn’t really get started on my project until long after midday and by the time that I knocked off at 19:00 I’d only done the first pass through and re-recorded the questions that I asked during the Press Conference.

They need to be edited back in, which I’ll do when I’ve finished this, and then it needs a second run-through to cut out the irrelevances which I suppose will be tomorrow’s task before I go to the meeting.

It wasn’t until about 14:30 that I got out for my bread.

It was a glorious afternoon in the sun and there were loads of yachts and other boats out there taking full advantage of the fine weather, which is no surprise.

And Joly France was out there too, moored up at the ferry terminal. She must have a crossing to do this weekend then, and I bet that that has held up the dredgers today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having been with me when we saw them setting out the “no waiting” signs in the Boulevard des Terreneuvieurs the other day to advise of travaux

It looks as if things will be moving on fairly rapidly. Today, the road is closed off and a diversion is posted.

Out of curiosity I did go for a walk down that way to see if I could see anything of any significance, but there was no evidence of anything out of the ordinary.

As a result, I can’t wait until Tuesday!

There was a brocante in the Place General de Gaulle this afternoon so after picking up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline I went for a look.

Nothing particular caught my eye except a very overprived Epiphone acoustic guitar, but I did buy for e3:00 a book about the fall of the Maginot Line in 1940. I’m running out of exciting reading matter here.

One the way back I bumped into one of my neighbours going out for a walk so we had a lengthy chat and then I came back for lunch. It was now 15:00

After lunch I pushed on with work until about 17:30 when I went for a very late afternoon walk

There were quite a few people out there enjoying the late afternoon sunset and who can blame them? Despite the howling gale that has now sprung up again it really was beautiful.

But I didn’t have time to loiter. I have plenty of work to do and I don’t have the time to hang around.

Despite all of that, I did hang around when I saw this.

It’s a Citroen C5 but apart from that I’m not sure whether it’s an ambulance or whether it’s a hearse but whatever it is, much as I’m not a fan of modern Citroëns I’d take this home in a heartbeat.

Old age must definitely be creeping up on me if I’m admiring modern Citroëns, that’s all I can say. Unless it’s dementia.

Tea tonight was one of the best pizzas that I’ve ever eaten, followed by the last of the banana sorbet (and what an excellent buy that was!).

But while the oven was on I used one of the smaller quiche dishes that I had bought yesterday to make a four-helping apple pie.

In the fridge is some pear sorbet that I bought a good while ago and that needs eating, and I reckon that over the next few nights that will go nicely with the apple pie.

It really does look good.

This evening I was all alone on my walk so I fitted in two runs – one along the north side of the wall and the other on the usual parcours on the Square Maurice Marland. I must keep pushing on.

But now I’ve finished my notes, it’s back to work. No-one would ever believe that I’m retired when I’m under this kind of pressure and deadlines.

Wednesday 8th January 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… once more yesterday.

This time it was about those shellfish containers or whatever they were in the port last night and I said that this may well indicate a visit from Normandy Trader in the very near future.

So here we are, bang on cue yet again. The aforementioned has indeed arrived in Granville and is tied up over there by the old cold store from when this port used to be a thriving deep-sea fisheries place.

Something else that I may well have been right about, although I probably didn’t express very much about it, is that i’m not now going to Leuven tomorrow. This afternoon I had a message from the SNCF saying that my train from Granville wasn’t going.

As it happens, I’d had an earlier telephone call from the hospital asking if I could postpone my visit as they would be overloaded with chemotherapy patients. Consequently I didn’t even bother to look for alternative transport. I changed the date of my appointment to two weeks hence (as for why, you’ll find out soon enough) and rebooked my accommodation. I’ll go to the station tomorrow on my way to LIDL and change my tickets.

Last night was another relatively early night (well, early for just recently anyway) but even so, it was about 07:00 when I finally crawled out of my stinking pit.

After the medication I had a bash at the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night, and hello! again to Pollux. It’s been a while since you’ve been around. Here she was all on her own. I was doing some kind of Shakespearean drama and she was appearing in it. It was the scene where she was dragged away right near the end. Wr were discussing this and it turned out that she had been on the beach that time that we were having the Rock Festival thing and she’s tried some of my orange-flavoured water. We were getting her to talk about it and then she started to talk about other things, skateboarding, roller skating and so on. All the kids these days went onto the old railway land round by where the old BR Parcels depot was in Crewe, all round there. I explained to her that that was dangerous. It’s BR Parcels and they can be quite nasty. I was thinking that she might have been playing on the old railway land at the back of the Permanent Way Club, but it was definitely there. She was agreeing with me “yes, it was a terrible thing doing all of that” and she was telling me about the time what they did and she had a boyfriend that took her down there for the very first time. Only a couple of days ago this boyfriend had taken her down there. He was showing her a few things and she said she didn’t – she was saying that she was having the frissons about it and how she wished she was somewhere else

What is interesting about this is not so much the journey itself but the fact that I was dictating it using a French word. I know that I’ve dreamt in Fench before but I don’t recall ever using that language in the dictation.

After breakfast, surviving a power cut that delayed my start for a while, I set to work on the football trip that I did on Saturday last.

It’s very slow going, but it’s rather like a snowball in that it starts ff slowly and gets bigger quite quickly. What I’ve had to do is to go through all of the interviews, chop them into little segments and then stick them together – in the sense that you ask 20 people 20 questions, you need to extract all of the answers to Question 1 and stick them together, and then Question 2 etc. You get the picture.

It’s different to the one we did about the Bain des Manchots because there we were working to a timeline and we wanted it to run at a fast pace.

That’s taken me all day, with a couple of pauses here and there. Phone calls not being the least of them.

There was the usual morning trip down to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette but once again I was side-tracked.

In the past I’ve talked about careening as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. That’s the process of using the tide to deliberately lay a ship on its side so that you can repair the hill or the bottom.

That’s quite a well-know procedure of course, but this is something else completely although I doubt if it’s as effective.

By the looks of things they are inspecting the rudder or propellor and fixing that is not a job that I would like to undertake in a situation like that.

With the tide being out, I could walk over the path at the top of the gates, but there was no-one about on Normandy Trader to talk to.

You are probably wondering why Normandy Trader wasn’t moored at her usual place. The answer is that La Grande Ancre is in the place underneath the crane. To be fair though, it looked as if Normandy Trader was fully-loaded, and was simply waiting for the gates to open.

And I must admit to admiring the matching colour scheme of the lorry attending to La Grande Ancre.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and then went for a look to see what was going on at the place Générale de Gaulle.

Our famous ski slope didn’t last all that long. They are busy dismantling it and that was a shame.

And the story going around the town is that two of the beavers or whatever they were on there have “gone missing”. They’ve probably gone off with the penguin that went missing from there a couple of years ago.

Lunch was an interruption of course, and so was bottling my home-made orange and ginger drink and setting another one off on the way.

There was the afternoon walk too, and that was interesting because the fog had now closed right in.

And I was right yet again about Normandy Trader. She was indeed ready to depart from the harbour because here she is, setting out into the English Channel.

And as I have said before … “and you’ll say again #34; – ed … my hat goes off to the sailors who spend most of their life confronting all kinds of difficulties that we landlubbers wouldn’t even consider.

But as one goes out, another one come in.

Here’s one of the trawler-type of fishing boats coming into port, and the presence of seagulls flying around in the vicinity suggests to me that it has a good catch on board.

With there being no-one around in the square Maurice Marland I took the opportunity to have an afternoon run.

And my health is definitely in a downward spiral right now because I knew all about this one.

Back here I had another little … errr … relax, something that is annoying me intensely these days after I went for several weeks feeling almost normal

Tea was some more falafel with veg and vegan cheese sauce followed by Christmas cake of course, and then my walk outside.

The fog has lifted slightly but I was still the only person out there. I managed a run too although I felt most unlike it. But regardless of how I feel, I have to push on forwards.

Tonight’s notes are now finished but as Runrig have now come up on the playlist I’ll be awake for another 43 minutes or so.

Perhaps I ought to do some more week.

Wednesday 1st January 2020 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May I take this opportunity to wish all of my readers (both of you!) a very happy New Year. I hope that you will receive everything this year that you wished on everyone else during the course of the last year.

It goes without saying, of course, that whatever you wished on Brexiters, the Conservative party, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, the Republicans and Canadian Tories are exempt from this. If the World comes to an end in 2020, we’ll all know who to blame.

And for that reason, this song is going to be my anthem for the current year. I have often said … “and you will say more often” – ed … that if violence is the answer, then it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on the Referendum paper in 2016 is about as stupid as they come.

And the fact that 17.4 million people were stupid enough to vote for it, and 14 million people were stupid enough just now to vote for the Tories shows you that people still haven’t got the message.

The only way for you to tell them the message in a fashion in which they will understand it is –
1) to tell them about it slowly
2) on their thick skulls
3) in Morse code
4) with a pickaxe handle.

Yes, “if you want your rights you’re going to have to fight” and “we’ll walk hand in hand to the promised land” “if we bring down the Government now”.

On the subject of walking, as I mentioned last night, I went out for a walk at about 23:30 to see what was going on in town. Not hand in hand though. I was on my own and had a camera to carry.

The harbour gates were open so I had to walk along the rue du Port and that way into town and just as the clock struck midnight, I found myself at the end of the rue St Saveur.

Having a think about it, I don’t recall if I took a photo of the street with its Christmas lights so I took a photo of it just now to complete the picture.

Mind you, I’m not sure why I bothered, because they aren’t really all that much to write home about, are they?

From there, my perambulations took me along the street into the place Générale de Gaulle.

This is much more like it. They seem to have pousseé‘d the bateau dehors a bit more here as we have seen before. The ski slope is certainly different, although I’m still not sure why they would want one.

But apart from that, it’s still pretty much the same as previous years and I do with that they would try to do something different next year.

As for the rue Lecampion, I’m not quite sure what to say.

What certainly didn’t help was that they put out the overhead lights just as I was preparing to photograph the street, so we were just left with the lights up the sides of the shops.

The overhead lights going out was the cue for me to go home. And by the time I returned here I reckoned that I hadn’t even encountered a dozen people wandering around.

There were a few noisy parties going on – even one in this building, and so I was grateful for 1.2 metres of solid Chausey granite walls between me and the rest of the world.

Not feeling in the least bit tired, I did some personal stuff on the computer. And no-one was more surprised than me to notice that the time was now 03:30. Where had the time gone?

Bedtime by now, I reckon, even if I didn’t feel like sleep. I have to make an effort.

And sleep I must have had. No alarm and so I awoke at 07:00. Not the slightest chance of me showing a leg at that time of morning.

And neither was there any chance at 09:00. This is after all a Bank Holiday, no alarm, I’m entitled to a rest, and I’ve had a late night too.

What is much more like it is … errr … 12:15. That’s a REAL lie-in.

As for any voyage that I might have had, well, what’s this bit about hunting furs last night? I don’t remember very much at all but apparently someone living in France who could catch 60 squirrels and skin them had the same style of life as someone normal, which of course I found hard to believe and the people to whom I was telling this story they found it hard to believe too but apparently that’s how it went and that’s really all that I remember about last night.

Breakfasting at 13:00 is much more like it too and so seeing as I had my fig roll and (finally) some strawberry jam. Yes, jam today. And I hope that it will last so that there will be jam tomorrow too. Perhaps I ought to think about making a jam tart.

So once the breakfast was over, there was work to be done. And as I promised myself, I attacked Project 008 for the radio.

That’s now finished and, even though I say it myself, I think that it’s the best to date. It’s not just that my technique is improving, but that instead of speaking “off the cuff” as I would normally like to do, I’ve started to write scripts.

That means that I’m not umming and ahhing as much (which means that there is less stuff to cut out) and I’m not pausing the dictaphone as often while I look for material, so it sounds much more seamless.

Once I’d finished it and played it through to make sure that it was as I wanted it with no mistakes, I went out for my afternoon walk.

With having not been out for any bread this morning (I’d missed lunch of course) I took the long way out right around the new bit of path that they had excavated after the rockfall and where I had met my Waterloo in May.

Crowds of people out and about, even if the weather was pretty miserable and you couldn’t see a thing.

Once I was out, I was going to stay out, and well out too.

My trip took me past the chantier navale where I could see what was going on. Pecheur de Lys was back on dry land after her little sojourn through the summer in the water. She’s looking rather sad though and could do with a coat of paint.

Spirit of Conrad was there too, as were the other two fishing boats. But there was no-one out there working on them. “Knocked off for the holidays” I reckoned.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed, which meant that I could take the path over the top and across to the other side.

Where the fish processing plant is, there is a huge concrete apron and the seabirds here have learnt quite quickly to take advantage of it.

This gull is just one of many that will scavenge a mollusc out of the silt and fly over here to drop it on the concrete to break it open, and then dive down for a feast. It really was quite impressive.

The wildlife kingdom is amazingly versatile and can adapt to most kinds of environment – if only humans would let them.

With nothing exciting going on in the inner harbour, I went for a walk over to the port de plaisance, the yacht harbour, to see what was going on there.

Not an awful lot, but there were a few boats that we have seen on several occasions, such as the lifeboat over there on the far side.

That has plenty of use of course and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw it disappear into an enormous wave during the storm that we had the other day.

Here’s another one that we have seen a few times in the past.

She’s Lys Noir, and when we’ve seen her moored up in the harbour, it’s usually been in the wet harbour at the back of where I’m standing, where boats like Thora, Normandy Trader and the gravel boats tie up.

So why she should be here, I don’t know. If she’s advertising cruises, she won’t have many people passing by to read the notices where she is.

This is a boat that we’ve seen even more often than Lys Noir.

She’s La Granvillaise and immediately recognisable by the “G90” on her bows. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she too spent some time in the chantier navale a while ago being given a good going-over.

But with all of these boats, there isn’t presumably much happening right now so they are laid up for the winter.

Nevertheless, with all of the tourists here right now, wandering aimlessly around the harbour, I’d have had them plastered with adverts for the summer season trips that they do, and put them where people could actually see tham.

My perambulations took me right along the seafront, such as it is here, through the new modern apartment complex at the end, and back into town via the rue St Gaud and the rue St Saveur.

But round the back of the Mairie in the rue du Commandant Yvon, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, is another set of electric vehicle charging points.

Europe needs to get its act together with the phasing out of new internal-combustion engines cars by 2040, and it’s good to see that here in France they are organising themselves.

And so I decided that I’ll keep a closer eye out to see what I could find, and I didn’t have to go far to find some more.

Not even 50 metres, I reckoned. Here are two more on the public car park around the corner off the Cours Jonville. So with the two that I saw at the railway station earlier this week, that makes 6 that I’ve found in Granville without looking too far.

And that’s not counting the half-dozen or so that are installed at the LeClerc supermarket on the edge of town.

Across the road from the car park I noticed this old Porsche Carrera.

Nice and interesting the car might be, but it wasn’t the car that caught my eye but its registration number. It has the “F” for France on the number plate of course, but the registration is hors serie – out of the usual run of numbers, whether pre-2009 or post-2009.

It could mean absolutely anything of course, so I shall have to make further enquiries about it. I did look at the insurance sticker in the window and that was displaying a “WW” series number, indicating Trade Plates.

Back home, I didn’t do a great deal. After all, it is a Bank Holiday.

later on, I made tea though.

Same as Christmas night as well. Seitan slices roasted in olive oil with onions, garlic, gravy and herbs, with roast potatoes in olive oil and mint. Vegetables included an endive, peas and carrots, green beans, a leek and some sprouts.

Followed by Christmas cake for pudding, you really cannot even begin to imagine just how delicious it all was.

Plenty of sprouts and endives left to finish off, ad a leek too, but I intend to make a leek and potato soup with that sometime soon.

This evening I was all alone on my little walk around. Not a soul out there. I managed my run too, and made it to the top of the first ramp.

So I’m off to bed now. It’s not early, because I’ve been busy. I found a “live” concert from the BBC with only a small audience, and as I have a project on the back burner that needs a small audience, I was stripping out the applause to use.

But here’s a thing – the applause is evidently over-dubbed, without question. And as they didn’t have enough material for the spot, they’ve extended the applauses by adding three or four together.

None of that is the issue though. What is the issue is that they seem to have done it all on a two-track recorder in stereo and without the overdubbing facility that multi-tracking can give you, they have simply joined the tracks together – and you can see all the joins. Tiny little milli-seconds of silence.

What I’ve had to do is to edit the applauses after I’ve stripped them out, so that the joins have gone and it all looks pretty seamless.

Given the facilities they have there, it’s not very good at all, especially when even a home-based four-track set-up like the cheap affair that I have can produce a seamless show.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job.

Sunday 29th December 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

… whether it was a good idea or not for me to set an alarm this morning. Because I might have needed it, and then again I might not.

Hoping around on my toes at 04:00 trying to ease out a bad attack of cramp (how come these attacks have started up again just recently), awake again at 07:00, and finally and definitely, about 2 minutes before the alarm at 08:30.

No medication this morning. I don’t have time to wait for it to work. Instead I had breakfast and then made a start on the dictaphone notes from during the night.

I was with a group of people last night – we were on board a ship (yet again). I’d gone out once already during the night to see what was happening and there wasn’t very much so I had to go out of my cabin again so I decided that what I would do was to go and have a look outside again to see what the weather was doing while I was on the point of doing this other job. There was a guy standing by the door outside – I thought he was smoking a cigarette or something so I went out to say hello and he said “have you thought about that thing that we can be doing, because if you aren’t going to do it straight away I can get down to start work on my car”. I had the impression that I was supposed to be helping him work on a motorcycle but I don’t remember much about it and of course there isn’t all that much we can do on board a ship in that respect. Anyway I thought “well, yes, I’m willing to help out anyone any time” and I awoke at that point
At another time during the night there was something going on about people having a party. They’d booked a table at a night club, a table for 8 but the table was at the back. They enquired why and were told “some of these big tables have a habit of being a bit rowdy and pushing their way to the front and it disrupts the other people so we like to keep them where they are”. But this guy whose party it was was organising something and the other people were to come and a lot of them were saying that she couldn’t stay very late and he was qute disappointed about this. He said “as long as you come for the first drink that’w what’s really important. Come and have the first drink with me”. Then he said he had to go and there was some issue too about the date. It was the 1st of January and the date ticket that was sat in the date holder think on the table or in the notebook was too long and protruded out of the holder so it needed to be trimmed. But he hadn’t thought about doing that so I asked him where he wanted it on the table. He said that it was upstairs so he’d better go upstairs and get it. And that was when I awoke.
And somewhere along the line there was something about fitting a pinch bolt in the gearbox drive of a vehicle that I owned so I’d gone down to the garage in Centreville to do that. Darren and I dunno maybe Jody were there. They got a pinch bolt out and got the tools and everything then they both climbed under the vehicle and I thought that I was going to do that but they climbed under there anyway. I had to move so that they could get under. They put the pinch bolt in but it was slightly too long and they could get it in with a real bit of difficulty but there was about an inch too much that wasn’t needed on the pinch bolt. So they looked at each other and said “well should we cut this inch off then?” And that’s all that I remember of that bit.
There had been another thing too but when I awoke I had the most awful cramp – so much so that I had to stand up to ease the leg. And by the time that the cramp had gone, so had any memory of the dream

After that I checked over my equipment and then Laurent appeared at the door so we shot off to Donville les Bains.

Today is the Bain des Manchots, the “bathing of the Giant Penguins”.

Every village for miles around loses its fou for the day and they all assembles on the beach ready to take the plunge.

Our task today was to come to the Bain des Manchots in order to interview some of the bathers and the organisers.

There were plenty of manchots around on the beach too and we interviewed a couple of them to find out why they had come all this way for a swim when they could have stayed at home and gone for a swim back there.

As well as manchots there were dozens of Father Christmases out there too, all taking a break from delivering the presents and recharging their batteries ready for the start of the new year.

And it wouldn’t take much of an effort for them either if they are used to the weather at the North Pole. Although the air temperature is a mere 4°C, someone has measured the water temperature and it’s between 9°C and 10°C.

And that’s positively tropical.

And for mainly that reason, the organisers reckoned that they had a record number of entries.

Certificates were awarded to those who “took the plunge” and they reckoned that as far as they could tell, they issued 300 or so certificates.

That’s a far cry from when they started 10 or so years ago and just 20 people made it into the water.

The secret of going into the water in this weather is really quite simple.

For people who are in any way timid or unsure of themselves, the key is to be at the front, first in line. Once the whistle blows, there’s no turning back and the force of the crowd behind you pushes you into the water.

Being last in, you see all of the others wincing as they enter the water, and that can dampen anyone’s ardour.

People didn’t stay in for long – 15 minutes was, I reckon, the longest.

We interviewed a few of them, including a girl aged about 6 who we reckon was the youngest participant, when they came out.

No-one was really suffering although one or two people were looking really uncomfortable. Each to his own though. Some people are more susceptible to the cold than others.

Laurent brought me home and he came up here for a coffee and a chat for a while. It’s a good job that I’d cleaned up and tidied up everywhere over the last couple of days

After he had left, it was lunchtime so I walked back into town for my dejeunette.

Down on the rue du Port near to the fish processing plant, my eyes were drawn to this beautiful piece of street art. Someone had clearly taken some time to compose this oeuvre here on the pavement.

It’s far more representative of art than many of the works exhibited in many galleries these days.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the pathway on top, over to the other side of the harbour.

Victor Hugo is there this afternoon, as are Aztec Lady and Charles Marie.

But there’s no sign of Granville, the more modern of the two Channel Island ferries. I’m pretty certain that she was here last night, so it looks as if she’s had another early morning run out to St Helier.

I picked up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline and then went for a look around the town.

The Christmas market, such as it is, is still going on in the place Générale de Gaulle and will be for another day or two.

Mind you, it’s not what I would call a Christmas market. I’m more used to the ones in Germany where it’s freezing cold and there are hundreds of stalls and thousands of people.

Here today, there were about half a dozen stalls and more stalls than people.

It doesn’t seem to be possible these days to go for a day without my making some kind of remark about some of the pathetic parking that we see around the town.

Here’s today’s example. A huge space in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne, big enough to park a bus in, and yet the driver (and I use the word loosely) has somehow managed to end up with two wheels on the pavement.

That’s bad enough in itself but what is worse is that he’s simply left the vehicle there and made no attempt whatever to park it correctly.

Back in the apartment I had a very late lunch and then something of a vegetation (after all, it IS Sunday) before going out for my afternoon walk.

Crowds of people around but not much else going on.

However there was some guy wandering around with a couple of girls aged about 10 and 12 and he was posing them in all kinds of artistic settings on the clifftop and then taking photographs of them.

I enjoy taking photos of people taking photos, but this one hasn’t worked so well as I ended up with the low evening sun right in the camera lens and I didn’t have the time to change the camera settings.

Back here I had a listen to our dictaphone recordings of the morning’s adventures and then sent them off to Laurent. He’s going to listen to them and tel me where and what to cut out, and dictate some more “questions” that I can insert in, to break up some of the “monologues” that we recorded where our interviewees were carried away with themselves.

Tea was a vegan pizza as usual, and it was delicious, as was the Christmas cake that followed it down.

While I was eating it, I was watching a Saint episode on the DVD player. Loads of famous people had bit parts in these series before they became famous and it’s always interesting to see who I can pick out.

One voice stood out a mile and I recognised it as soon a I first heard it. I had to wait unti the end to confirm it, and I was right. None other than Lois Maxwell, who later went on to fame and fortune as Miss Moneypenny in the “James Bond” films.

After tea I went for my walk around the walls.

No-one around so I could have my run around my little track and I made it up to the top of the first ramp tonight. While I was pausing for breath I could see some fishing boats unloading at the fish processing plant.

As I came back to the apartment I noticed that I was on 93% of my daily activity.

And so i continued my walk and went to see what was out at sea. Sure enough, the lights were telling me that another long line of fishing boats were on their way back to the fish processing plant.

A quick rough head-count told me that there were about 7 of them at least. There may well have been more.

Although these photos might seem blurred you need to remember that it’s pitch black out here so I’m on a very slow speed, the camera is hand-held in the wind, and the boat is about 5 miles offshore.

In the circumstances I’m not too disappointed.

Back here it’s late, I’ve just finished my journal and now it’s time for bed. I won’t have much sleep tonight but I’m looking forward to what I might have. It’s been a long day today.

And a Sunday too!

bain des manchot or penguin or some such donville les bains granville manche normandy france

Sunday 22nd December 2019 – REMEMBER A WHILE AGO …

… when we had been discussing those strange objects on the quayside, and that I’d made enquiries and they were in fact shellfish-dredgers?

Here I am today, down in the town by the harbour and here they are actually loading up some of the aforementioned onto one of the fishing boats here.

Clearly these items are still in day-to-day use, and that’s always good to know of course.

While we’re on the subject of shellfish and fishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … most of the stuff is either transported away in lorries for the mass market or else it’s sold locally in shops or local restaurants.

In Oostende we’ve seen the fish market where the trawlers unload and their catch is sold direct to the public, but there’s very little of that in Granville, which is a real surprise.

In fact, I think that I’ve only ever seen this stall set up at the end of the port to deal directly with the public.

In all the time that I’ve lived here, I can’t ever recall ever having seen anyone else doing this direct from a fishing boat. I mean, the produce is so fresh that a good vet could bring it round.

But talking of today, I had quite a surprise this morning. It’s Sunday and lie-in, with no alarm. But bird-brain of Britain had set an alarm for last Sunday in order to be up and about to catch his train, but had forgotten to unset it.

As a result, at 06:00 on a Sunday, on my Day of Rest …

But no chance whatever of that. I made sure that the rest of the alarms were switched off and went back down under the covers and there I stayed until … err … 10:00.

That’s much more like it for a Sunday.

Plenty of time to go off on a travel then. I was with Cecile last night – at least, I think it was Cecile – and we had been somewhere and I had to go to a hospital – I think we were in Stoke on Trent. It was something to do with a house in Stoke on Trent and it was where Carriatt was living with his father. He took us back to his little house – in Kidsgrove – with his little car and there was an older car parked in the drive and it was only used once a fortnight and sometimes it wouldn’t start. but back in his little house, a nice little semi-detached house and he told us about it. He’s had it three or four years and paid about £5500 for it. They were thinking of selling it and I was thinking that it was a nice kind of house and it would just do me. Pretty small and two people was probably stretching it a little bit but on my own that would really do me. I had to go on to the hospital and Cecile had to go as well. I got there and got myself registered in and I explained that Cecile had to be registered in – at least, I think it was Cecile. We both had to go for x-rays so they took a preliminary photo of her and gave it a reference number then we had to go out across the yard and register ourselves in for this X-ray thing. The woman said to Cecile “as you’re new here you had better come back and tell me the reference number of the object…” or whatever the word was “… for your x-ray”. She looked bewildered but I said “that’s OK, I know what’s happening here. Come with me”. She was a bit confused but I took her out. They were going to give reference numbers to people and that related to whatever photo they had of you on the file. If they had 3 or 4 they would choose 1 so that it could be linked into the right file. But Cecile had only had 1 taken here, this introductory photo, so that was obviously the number that was going to be allocated to her. So I knew what was happening. We had to go across the yard to the other bit of the hospital to register for this x-ray thing. I gave my details and explained “this is Cecile, she’s new and from the Netherlands (…don’t ask me why …) so the clerk explained the procedure to Cecile and she was slowly understanding it. We were hoping that we would get an appointment in 2 or 3 hours to give us time to go and do some sightseeing. Cecile then asked “do you have any aspirin”. This woman looked bewildered. “What’s aspirin?” So Cecile came out with the Latin name “aspartamine” (or whatever it was) so the woman said that Cecile needed to go to see them in the Pharmacy “over there somewhere”. Cecile became anxious, going to a third place and although we’d been registered in and she had taken away all our paperwork we hadn’t been given a time for our x-ray. I thought that this is going to start getting really confusing in a minute. It was just then that I awoke with a really bad attack of cramp.

But if Carriatt is now appearing in my nocturnal rambles I’m going to go off rambling somewhere else.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes while I was waiting for the medication to work, and then had breakfast. That took me up until about 11:10 and I had a feeling that I was not going to have a very good day.

Well over 100 photos from the Archipel last night and they all needed editing and so I set to work. When I noticed the time (14:00) I’d done about half so I thought that I’d better nip out for my dejeunette for lunch.

But one of the reasons why I was late was that I’d been helping Hans, designing a piece of code for him to display podcasts on his web page.

Anyway, off I set on my travels, right out of the door where I was met by a blast of wind that almost blew me back into the building.

You can see just how rough the weather was out there too. That’s the local coastguard rescue boat, I reckon, and there it is disappearing into a giant wave.

Not a day for anyone to be out at sea, I reckon.

Having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline for lunch, and ordered a special “fig and raisin” loaf for the festive period (“don’t forget to pick it up on Tuesday, Eric”), I went to see what was happening in the town.

On a publicity leaflet somewhere I’d seen that there was to be a Brocante professionelle today in the rue Couraye.

Now I’m all in favour of brocantes as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I’m horrified by the prices that people around here want for objects that are not all that far removed from a load of old junk.

And when it’s a Brocante professionelle rather than a Brocante particulier, it’s going to be even more horrific so I didn’t even cross the road for a look.

Here in the place General de Gaulle there’s someone selling carpets and the like, and what that has to do with a Brocante, whether professionelle or particulier I really couldn’t say.

So on that note I headed back to my apartment for a very late lunch.

Back here it was almost 17:00 when I finished the photos, and then I sent them on to the radio HQ for them to pick one or two to illustrate the podcast of last night’s broadcast.

And when I have time, I’ll create a web page for you to see them and post the link here.

Better late than never, I decided to go out for my afternoon walk.

The wind was thoroughly wicked again tonight so I didn’t want to hang around long. I went around the city walls as it was out of the shelter of the wind and I could see what the storm was doing.

The tide wasn’t right in yet so we weren’t having the full effect of the buffeting but it was wild enough out there nevertheless.

By now it was becoming quite dark.

The lights of the rue Paul Poirier were looking quite good in the gloom from up here and they are always worth a photograph or two.

The streets were quite busy too with the shops being open in the run-up to Christmas and there was quite a traffic jam in the rue Lecampion as people headed for home.

By now it was starting to rain so I took the opportunity to run down my little track, much to the surprise and/or amusement of the couple who were heading my way.

Just by way of a change I made it al the way up to the end of the ramp and then I went into the place Cambernon to see what was happening and to look at the lights (and collect a raindrop on the lens of the camera).

Back here I made a start on the blog for Saturday but shame as it is to admit it, I fell asleep for 10 minutes. That’s not like me these days, is it?

Tea was a pizza which was delicious, and then out for my walk.

There was such a howling gale that I didn’t even attempt the Point du Roc. Instead I went round the walls again.

This time I hung about even less than before and amused another couple of people with my second run of the day. I have to push on.

Now, having finished the journal for tonight and dealt with an enquiry in English from Canada about the radio station, I’m off to bed.

An early night, and I’ve earned it. I’ll do Saturday’s blog tomorrow

I hope.

storms high winds plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Saturday 21st December 2019 – JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

Yes, eating my evening meal at … errr … 00:15. Brings back many happy (and not-so-happy) memories of times gone by, that does.

And I bet that you’ve been hovering on the edge of your seat wondering why this has been the case ever since you saw the original posting on Saturday night. Well, I can now tell you.

Although I ought to set the stage (if you pardon the expression) first.

Despite having a really late night last night I still had to make an effort to be up early as it was going to be a busy day.I somehow missed the second alarm yet again and the next thing that I remember it was 06:24. And it still took a few more minutes before I could haul myself up out of bed.

With the usual routine of medication and then breakfast once the medication works, I took an early trip to the shops. Just LeClerc where I was waiting at the door with about 50 other people for 10 minutes until opening time.

With being one of the first in, I was one of the first out too. Not that I bought a great deal of stuff but it still came to €33. Endives and leeks included, and Caliburn smelt lovely inside.

After LeClerc I went up the road. A shop that closed down about a year ago has been taken over by a company called Action. It’s rather like Noz but a lot more organised and a lot more stuff that is useful. I came away with some stuff such as a headphone splitter, a jack plug adapter, some photo printing paper and a 4-way USB connector for Strider.

Next door was a shop called Bureau Vallée that sells office supplies. They had some cheap USB memory sticks that had a capacity of 2GB. A lot of my old electrical equipment such as the hi-fi and Caliburn’s stereo is old-generation stuff with a maximum reading capacity of 999 files, so a 2GB memory stick is ideal for those. And I’ve almost run out.

Back at the apartment I put the frozen food in the freezer (having made some room of course because it’s still pretty full in there) and then went back out.

As regular readers of this rubbish will probably have gathered, I’ve gone back to work.

Back into the media in fact, working for a local radio station called le Bouquet Granvillais. I’m photographer, English-French (and vice versa, and if there’s any vice going about, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”) translator, and check out the programme “A La Pointe Du Rock” and see if you recognise the voice.

It’s a new radio station, started in June this year, and tonight we are doing our first live outside broadcast. At the moment, the guys are stringing up the banner above our sound console while the others are plugging everything in.

In order to move about freely inside the venue we are to be issued with badges, so I had to go down to collect mine, although I was rather thinking of Walter Huston and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”, although it will come as a surprise to many to know that they didn’t actually say that in the film

And while I was at the Archipel, I stuck my head in through the door to see what was going on because I’d heard the music.

Nothing to get excited about quite yet, but it gives me an idea of what will be going on there this evening.

Now in the possession of a badge for entry into the Archipel tonight, I set off home. And stumbled immdiately across some more pathetic parking – the bane of these pages as regular raders of this rubbish will recall. And this time it’s a pearler too!

Remember the other day when we had that motorist parked half-on the pavement and another one a day or two earlier with the motorist stuck any old how across the street – and on a service bus route too?

Well this guy here hasn’t chosen just to park at random half on the pavement and half in the road to block a service bus route, he’s actually parked on the bus stop itself. And you can clearly see the markings on the road right where he’s parked.

Maybe he should have strapped his guide dog to the roof. That would have told him that he isn’t allowed to park there. But it really annoys me, the lack of courtesy and consideration that some of these motorists have for others. As long as he and his passengers don’t have to walk anywhere more then 20 feet, the rest of the world can go hang itself.

A little higher up the hill in the rue des Juifs I came to another halt.

The weather is actually pretty windy and miserable today, but that’s not stopped the timetable for the ferries from running as normal. Here’s Joly France battling the elements as she sets out from her berth at the maritime terminal on her way to do her run to the Ile de Chausey.

She’s not exactly overloaded with passengers today as you can see, but she does have a timetable to keep to and that will oblige her to sail.

Back here, I put away some of the shopping (but not all of it by any means) and then made myself some lunch. That was followed by a session sorting my equipment out. I’m officially the photographer and outside-broadcast techie so as well as the usual equipment that I need like the Nikon D500 and so on, there’s also the telephone, the dictaphone, the microphone and some headphones.

It’s pretty basic, my outside broadcasting unit, but the thing is that it’s not complicated to operate and it works. Keep it Simple!

Our first port of call was at the place Cambernon.

Father Christmas was due to arrive here at 16:30, although it was more like 16:45 when his sledge pulled into the square – pulled by a Kubota tractor.
“Where are the reindeer? we asked”
“I’ve given them the night off” said Père Noël. “They are going to be really busy on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning so I don’t want to be working them too hard right now.”

So now you know.

So at the place Cambernon, we had first of all the arrival of the Fanfare, or local jazz band. Every town or village in France has its own fanfare and we’ve encountered a few of them in the past.

Santa also had a full complement of elves too. They quickly clambered aboard the sleigh and took their places, to the accompaniment of music from the fanfare and once everyone was ready, the sleigh set off for Santa’s grotto in the town, with the crowds of people following on behind.

Having done a quick estmation, I made it something like 150 or so people of all ages up here

The route down to Santa’s grotto took us down the rue des Juifs, and the wrong way too.

But it wasn’t a problem because the farces of law and order at the bottom of the hill were blocking off the traffic to give us an opportunity to come down the hill en masse.

That’s what I like about France. It’s all delightfully informal. None of this Health and Safety and road closure notices and the like. People just make up the rules as they go along.

Down the rue Paul Poirier we went; again against the flow of traffic in the one-way street. But once again the local coppers did the business and held up the traffic to allow us to pass.

The cortège turned into the place Générale de Gaulle – once again against the flow of traffic, and then headed over to the famous ski slope where he and his elves alighted.

Laurent and I had been given a voucher for a hot alcoholic drink at the little hut here, so Laurent went off for his while I wandered around.

The fanfare found themselves a good spec on the edge of the ski slope and entertained us for a while.

As for me, I found Father Christmas sitting around with a bunch of kids being photographed by their parents sitting on his knee, so at a suitable pause in the proceedings Laurent and I grabbed hold of him and interviewed him for our radio show, and took the opportunity to interview a little girl called Océane who was waiting her turn to sit on his knee.

I’m really glad that I had the dictaphone and microphone with me.

Having made sure that the recording had worked fine, I took it over to the Archipel. One or two of the artistes tonight don’t want their shows recording so we have some time to fill in. We’ll be doing some artistes’ interviews with the more obliging ones, broadcasting some music too, but an interview with Father Christmas will go down quite well too.

By now though, proceedingsw ere well on their way and things were hotting up.

At a suitable pause in the recording due to the instransigence of a couple of artistes, we began to interview the rest of the performers. Elizabeth and Xavier took on this reponsibility and I was invited to take photos of them for the radio’s own website.

We may as well try to look as professional as we can and a pile of good photos always helps in this respect.

And talking of good photos, photography is an absolute pleasure when you have subjects who co-operate fully and completely with their photographer.

Unfortunately I can’t remember her name – in fact I don’t even know if I knew it – but hopefully someone can help me out in this respect. See the “Contact Me” box in the lower right-hand corner of your screen.

But whoever you are, take a bow.

We had an interval at half-time and I tok the opportunity to see what was going on.

Earlier in the day I’d witnessed a sound check between a couple of musicians, a bassist and a pianist, and they had played a performance before the start of the concert while everyone was taking their seats, and again at the half-time interval.

Although their music wasn’t quite my style, I enjoyed listening to it and they were really quite good at what they did.

All in all, we were there recording until the final whistle at 23:00 and then of course it took an age to tidy up and pack everything away. I ended up being back at the apartment just before midnight having gone the long way round to make sure that I arrived at my 100% and then made myself a plate of pasta and vegetables tossed in garlic, olive oil, tarragon and vegan cheese.

Yes, eating my evening meal at 00:15 – brings back many happy memories of a previous life.

But now I’m off to bed. And a good lie-in, I hope, because I’m whacked. See you in the morning.

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

… that I wasn’t intending to do much or to go far today, I’ve actually performed 104% of my daily target today. I was going to brag and say that that’s what happens you are the dynamic self-motivated person to which I aspire, but actually today didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.

It all went wrong long before I went to bed, when I was so engrossed in something or other that it was about 01:30 when I went to bed. And that was certainly no part of anyone’s plan, least of all mine.

It didn’t stop me being out of bed by about 06:15 though – beating the third alarm by a comfortable 5 minutes or so. And we’ll do some more of that too.

I was rather all over the place last night. I started off with a pose set that I’d downloaded for my 3D characters ages ago and that I didn’t know that I had. I came across it by accident and was going through it, and the textures of the articles and some of the poses were really good. However they needed breaking down, going through into different folders for different activities. That got me going all the way through this 3D program for some reason and I was doing all kinds of things with it. I can’t remember all that much about it now unfortunately but that was what I was doing.

Anyway, enough of that for now. An early start means an early breakfast which means an early return to work. And despite several distractions, by the time that I had knocked off at midday, the number of outstanding files in the queue for dictaphone transcription is a mere 17. I’ve had a really good day at that today, especially as some extremely long ones have bitten the dust.

Of those that are left, there are only two that can be classed as “long”, and they aren’t as long as a couple that I have dealt with today.

At midday I knocked off – later than intended but I was in the middle of something – and headed of to town in search of my dejeunette.

An unpleasant surprise met me at the back of the fish-processing plant though. The tide hadn’t gone far enough out so the harbour gates were open. No footpath to cross so I had to come all the way back to the rue du Port.

Mind you as one door close, another opens and through the open harbour doors has slipped out old friend Thora, having come in from Jersey on the morning tide, I suppose, and tied up in her usual spec next to Marité.

But I don’t have time to stop to say hello. Although it’s true that I’m retired, I just don’t know why I don’t have enough time for anything these days.

I’m actually heading for the Post Office. I forgot that I had a parcel that arrived while I was out yesterday and needs picking up.

But I had to make a brief pause in the Place General de Gaulle to look at our new ski slope. I can see that we will be having hours of endless fun on that this year, won’t we,

And no luck at the Post Office. Closed for lunch. Of course, i’m running late. So I pick up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and head for home.

And, what’s more, I don’t even recall stopping for breath going up the hill.

After lunch I make a start on my next project – number 005 – and by the time that it was walk-time I’d finished all of the music. And there’s some good stuff on this one too.

We’ve been talking … “well, one of us has” – ed … about the fishing boats out there in that little square of sea bounded by my promontory, the Ile de Chausey, Jersey and the coast up to the north from here.

And there’s another couple out there today having a go to see what they might catch.

When I have the time I’ll look back over the photos of the previous years and see what the shipping and the fishing was like out there back then. I’m certain that it wasn’t like this then.

Quite a few people out there today in the nice weather but I carry on with my walk without stopping to exchange any pleasantries.

No change in the situation at the chantier navale so I push on … “or push off” – ed … further along the cliff until I get a good overviww of the inner basin and Thora riding away at her moorning.

For a change I’m feeling pretty good so I carry on with my walk and end up back in town. This time the Post Office is open so I can pick up my parcel.

And I head back home with it clutched in my sweaty little mitts

It is in fact my long-awaited mixing panel so I have a play with it. My external mikes won’t plug in (I need an adapter cable) and an ad-hoc arrangement with a guitar input won’t work either.

After a good play around I finally get it to work off the internal condenser mike but there’s no volume to speak of and what I do hear, it sounds as if I have my head stuck in a bucket.

It seems that I have a steep learning curve to follow with this machine. I’ve found a handbook on the internet and I shall get on the case tomorrow.

Tea was a vegan burger on a bap and I don’t know what I did tonight but it tasted absolutely delicious – much better than it usually has. Whatever it was, I shall have to do it again.

After the burger there was the rice pudding and after the rice pudding we had the usual evening walk around the walls.

Not a soul about yet again so I was on my own, admiring the view of the coast with towns like Donville-les-Bains all lit up and their reflection shimmering away in the sea.

No tripod, not even a monopod, so a hand-held shot or two of the place . I’m hoping that now that the wind is finally starting to die down (for the moment) I can go out one nice evening with the tripod and have some fun.

So with a closer look at Donville-les-Bains from by the Plat Gousset I carry on around the bend … “quite” – ed.

No-one about again so I break into my run and tonight make it almost all the way up to the top of the ramp at the end.

Totally out of breath yet again, but I’m sure that it’s doing me good, even if I am in agony for five minutes when I stop

nevertheless, I’m feeling much better because of it so I shall keep on keeping on

Bedtime now, and if I remember to get out of bed early enough I’ll go and check out this vegetable market and see what they have to offer. I’m not expecting too much, but it’s another long walk in the morning and that can only be good news.

Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

But he won’t be back for long.

Although he passed his controle technique, and with ease too, the garage owner and I had quite a chat about him.

He’s now not far short of 13 years old and several areas of corrosion on his bodywork have been brought to my attention and need to be looked at before the next full controle technique in 2 years time.

As a result of our discussion, I’ve been provided with the name and address of a good body repair place in Gavray that the garage owner recommends and I’ll be going off to have a chat with him in due course as soon as I find out what I’ve done with the paper.

It might cost me €1000 or so to put him right, but I know every nut and bolt on the vehicle and apart from the very odd little bit here and there, no-one else has ever driven him. If I move him on and buy something else, I don’t know what it is that I’ll be buying and that could be fraught with danger.

The kind of vehicle that I want – another van of the same or similar size – could have been doing anything and being driven by everyone. So in the circumstances I’m going to stick with Caliburn

It was a nice walk out of the apartment this morning. The weather was coo and overcast – an ideal day for a good walk.

Passing by the harbour I gave my usual glance over the wall to see who was in there today. Granville and Victor Hugo are there, and so is Charles Marie. But there’s a new boat down there that I haven’t seen before.

It’s some kind of landing-craft type of freighter and I can’t see her name from up here. I shall have to go for a walk down to the harbour tomorrow for a closer look

With it being Saturday, it was market day. And as well as all of the stalls in the Market Hall, there’s something of a street market too.

One of the attractions of the market is the woman who has got crabs. There’s always a large crowd around her as she is selling her wares and se seems to be doing quite well.

Mind you, I have enough problems of my own without adding crabs to them.

There’s definitely something going on that I don’t understand because I stormed up the hill to the top in the kind of fashion that I would use as if I were invading Poland, even singing to myself as I strode out.

And I kept on going all the way out to the garage with just one or two little deviations (and if its deviations you want, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”).

I don’t know if I mentioned it but the last time that I was out this way on foot I’d noticed a big red double-decker bus being used as a restaurant. And so I went for a closer look.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-disappeared guises will recall that that was my plan with Laurence – to have a mobile restaurant. And I actually encountered one once on Cape Breton Island in Canada.

One of the places that I called in at was the motorbike shop to see what they had on sale. There was only one bike that I liked – a Yamaha 4-cylinder. But it was too heavy for me to manoeuvre easily so I’ll have to forget that idea.

The second-hand shop, Happy Cash, had a few things in there that looked interesting, including a couple of decent bass cabinets. But my eye was caught by an electric piano on sale at €25:00 and I’m still wondering about it now.

That wasn’t all the excitement either.

It seems that the gilets jaunes are back demonstrating again. Both of them in fact. They must find it a pretty lonely vigil standing out there like that.

It’s not as if they serve any useful purpose either. They can stand on that roundabout for as long as they like and it won’t change anything one single iota.

Talking of changing things … “well, one of us is” – ed … just for a change, I didn’t have another early night either. I was playing on the guitar again until some silly time of the morning.

And yet again I managed to beat the third alarm to the draw. And that’s not like me at all.

Not enough time to go on a nocturnal ramble either last night. I was doing something with a couple of this big briques – the two and three-litre ones the kind that milk and so on comes in and just as I was getting myself organised and about to pour some orange juice or something into them the alarm went off.

So I’ll never get to know what happened about that.

After the medication I sat at the laptop and dashed off a few dictaphone notes – 9 to be exact. There’s a lot to be said for making an early start.

Another thing that I did was to go back to a project that I started a while back in Canada and look on the internet for digital recordings of “complete albums” that I own on vinyl. Over the course of the day I found 6 and they are all now downloaded and coverted to *.mp3 ready for splitting into individual tracks.

having picked up Caliburn I went to NOZ for the first time in months and although there was nothing special, I spent €16:00 in there.

For the benefit of my new readers (of which there are many) NOZ is a shop that sells off bankrupt stock, near-shelf-life items, overstock and that kind of thing. Occasionally you can pick up bargains in there and I’ve had a lot of good stuff from there.

The near-shelf-life products can be interesting too. And there are always some surprising things on offer that make quite a nice surprising change to my diet.

At LeClerc I stocked up with stuff that I hadn’t been able to carry while I had been on foot, although I forgot to buy any water. I’ve decided to cut out completely the sugar-laden fizzy pop stuff and just go for water instead.

Tap-water is always a possibility of course but here it’s held in a storage tank on the headland so I don’t know what its quality will be like.

By now the heavens had opened and I was soaked walking to Caliburn. And back here I was drenched as I ran down the road chasing the papers that had blown out of my hand.

Lunch was a baguette with salad and my home-made hummus. And it really is wicked too. I shan’t be bothered by vampires, that’s for sure.

This afternoon I did another pile of upgrading of the website but ran aground when I found a half-completed web page that I must have uploaded by mistake. To rectify the situation I had a go at that, and it will take much longer than I anticipated.

To have a little rest and to fight off the fatigue here and there, I had a play on the guitar too. I must keep on keeping on.

Suddenly though, I noticed the time. 17:20. Kick-off was at 18:00 and it had stopped raining.

That was the cue to leg it off up town to the Stade Louis Dior.

On the way through town though I stopped at the Place General de Gaulle because there was some kind of ephemeral air about the kiddies’ roundabout tonight, all lit up as it was in the damp and doom and gloom.

And then I sailed off back up the hill that I had climbed this morning.

By the time I reached the football stadium I was in great form, which is surprising, and also just as well because we were drenched by the torrential rainstorm that suddenly opened up.

This was a match that I hadn’t wanted to miss because I hadn’t seen Entente Sannois Saint-Gratien – the Entente SSG – before.

They had been relegated from Division 2 last year and were still struggling to find their feet at this level. It’s a tough league.

In view of the rainstorm, they allowed those of us brave souls out in the open to come along and sit undercover in the grandstand, which was nice of them.

We could then settle down and enjoy an exciting match, although some of my fellow spectators didn’t think it as exciting as I did.

Granville had the better of the first half without anything to show for it despite the several good chances that had fallen to both teams – mainly down to the unusual formation that they had adopted. They were playing a kind-of 4-5-1 lineup with a centre-forward who hasn’t been getting much game-time, and probably the club’s best attacker playing in central midfield.

It clearly wasn’t working and so at the start of the second half he pushed Sullivan Martinet up front. And almost straight away the match transformed itself into one-way traffic towards the ESSG. For about 15 minutes the goal was bearing a charmed life as Granville peppered it from all directions.

And eventually it paid off for Granville and Martinet who broke the deadlock.

Granville were still pressing forward and threatening the goal, but the trainer pulled off his two attackers and went to shore up the defence.

A strange decision to me because Granville lost their momentum and allowed ESSG back into the game.

And they could have equalised too but for some wretched luck in front of goal, but Granville held on for the win.

Back here in the rain without a pause for breath, and I even ran up the slope at the top of the hill just to get my heartbeat racing. It’s been an excellent day from that point of view and I notice that I’d walked 16 kms and done over 21,000 steps today.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit followed by rice pudding. And once this posting is finished, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a long, exhausting day, I’ve done a lot of things and, surprisingly, I’m feeling so much better.

And it’s Sunday tomorrow too. I can have a lie-in.

Thursday 20th December 2018 – TOMORROW …

… I’m off to Leuven. So I’ve spent today packing (of a sort) and tidying up (of another sort).

I was out of bed surprisingly early this morning – but that’s what comes of being wide awake at 05:40. And it’s been a while since I was awake that early, hasn’t it?

And after breakfast, I had a little relax before getting myself going.

This time I’m taking the medium-sized suitcase, with a basic foodstuff supply in it. After all, I’m going to be gone for about 6 days and that’s a lot of shopping that I need to organise. As well as that, it’s Christmas and so I’m taking some specialty stuff with me too.

Talking of Christmas, I erected the little mini-Christmas tree that I had bought the other week at Noz for €3:99 – the tree with its electric lights and baubles. It’s not too bad either. i’m pleasantly surprised.

Lunch was as normal, and I had two walks today. one was, as usual, around the Pointe du Roc.

And in the harbour I saw Neptune manoeuvring her way out of the harbour. She must have come in on the early morning tide and loaded up pretty quickly because I didn’t see her arrive during the evening.

I’ve not seen her turn round as quickly as this. She must be in quite a hurry today

But later on in the early evening when it was dark, I went into town.

To Super-U for some fruit seeing as I have run out, and to the boulangerie for one of the baguettes that I like, for my lunchtime butties.

While I was there, I took the opportunity to go around the Cours Jonville and photograph the Christmas decorations. They aren’t so good this year as I remember the and it’s rather disappointing.

Tea was a slice of my pie from the other week, with veg and mushroom gravy.

So now I’m going to have a shower and then go to bed. I’m having an early morning tomorrow, ready to hit the road. It’s a long way to go.

storm sea wall port de granville harbour granville manche normandy france

neptune port de granville harbour manche normandy france

harbour pilot port de granville manche normandy france

christmas lights rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

christmas lights place general de gaulle granville manche normandy france

Thursday 6th December 2018 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again.

With having the appointment for my anti-flu injection at 11:00 this morning I decided to go and do my shopping at LIDL as normal and call in at the medical centre on the way back.

And do you know? I was halfway into town, quite wet in the rain, before I realised that I had forgotten to take the injection with me and that it was still in the fridge. And that’s despite leaving a prominent note on the table in the dining room.

Last night was a rather later night than normal and I was still asleep when the alarm went off. Much to my surprise I was up and about fairly quickly too which is a change.

After breakfast I had another letter to write. One that I had forgotten to write the other day and which needed doing quite rapidly as there was a time limit involved.

After my abortive trip into town, and back here having found the medication, it was too late to go back out to LIDL so I stayed here and made a phone call. And as a result it was arranged that I can make another phone call on Monday afternoon in this respect.

But as an aside, I was given an e-mail address to which I can send a mail. But knowing the way things work, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I will be surprised if I have a reply.

Back into town for my injection.

That isn’t snow down there in the place General de Gaulle, even though it might look like it. They are busy setting up the decorations for Christmas.

Only two and a half weeks away now.

The nurse who attended to me is from Lille, and he has a Flemish surname. It turns out that he has relatives in Flanders and we spent some of the time talking in Flemish.

At the Post Office I posted off all of the letters that I had written over the last few days, and then worked my way round to the Railway Station to pick up my tickets. And I’m glad that I picked them up well in advance during office hours because the ticket-printing machine was once again out of order.

One of these days I’ll forget, turn up at the station for my train and the machine will be out of order again. I wonder what the penalty is for travelling without a valid ticket.

There were a couple of things in LIDL that I would have picked up today but I wouldn’t be able to carry them home. I’ll have to wait until Saturday when I go up there in Caliburn and hope that there will be some left.

The exertions of the morning had worn me out and I ended up crashing out for half an hour in my comfy office chair. That took me up to lunch.

This afternoon I attacked the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer. And I found all of the OU postings that I had saved for further reference, including the legendary “I’m a Pottymouth” message by the equally legendary Lee Prostitute, fairy boots and all.

Now that the wet weather was drying out this afternoon, there were crowds out there walking around the Pointe du Roc.

And on my way out of the apartment I bumped into one of my neighbours coming in.

But there’s a storm brewing in the offing as the waves are slowly to climb up the sea wall. I hope that it it will be as good as the one last winter.

By the time that I rounded the headland and came back, it was school chucking-out time.

And so of course we have cars parked all over the pavements by the College Malraux and on the boulevard Vaufleury which is the main bus route and where the school coaches pass by.

There’s a huge free public car park just 50 metres up the road from there, but that is clearly too far for our poor little dears to stagger, so let’s just disrupt all of the traffic instead.

Why not?

And as I was coming back in, I met the same neighbour going out. It’s a small world.

Remember the tin of potatoes that I had opened in error yesterday? While I was ferreting around in the freezer I found a pie from last year left over. So I switched on the oven, prepared a quick rice pudding, soaked some of the tinned potatoes in olive oil, and bunged the rice pudding, the pie and the potatoes in to cook.

While that was going on, I cooked some frozen peas and carrots, and made some gravy. And it was all very delicious. Except the rice pudding, which wasn’t ready. But I’ll finish that off next time that the oven goes on.

No-one else was about on my walk last night, which isn’t much of a surprise.

I had plenty of time to stand on the walls and admire the view. The Christmas lights down in the town were illuminated quite brightly.

They seem to have done a good job of lighting up the mairie and I hope that they can do as good a job of the rest of the town as they have done down there.

There is quite an array of lights going up the rue Couraye too.

One of these evenings I’ll go for a walk up there and see what they are really like in the dark.

Alone out there I might have been, as far as human company went. But Minette was there though, and she let me stroke her for a few minutes before having a spit at me and wandering off. Dunno why she’s in such a bad mood just now.

On the way back to the apartment, I walked up along the rue St Jean.

From the corner of the rue du Nord there was a good view right down the street, under the gate and off into the place d’Armes. So I stopped to take a photograph of it on my way up.

Back here, I bumped into yet another neighbour. And she told me about a music course in the vicinity. I asked her to make further enquiries on my behalf.

So an early night is now on the cards. Tomorrow I’m going to wire up a big external hard drive to the desktop computer and copy the entire contents of the desktop computer onto the external drive.

Then, I can review it at my leisure without having to worry about the reliability of the desktop computer.

That lot should keep me out of mischief.

storm sea wall port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

fishing boats port de granville harbour manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

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