Tag Archives: rice pudding

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – TODAY IS THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when that I haven’t done 100% of my daily target of exercise.

Mind you, there were a couple of good reasons why that was the case

There was so much rain today that at times it was impossible to go outside. At one point there was a deep puddle right outside the door that was enough to put anyone off setting foot outside
I didn’t wake up until … errr … 10:50 this morning and by the time that I’d finished having my breakfast at midday, it was rather pointless thinking about lunch

Yes, for once I’d managed to have something of a decent night’s sleep. It wasn’t all that early when I went to bed but still, a good sleep is a good sleep.

It wasn’t continuous though. I remember waking up and looking at my watch a couple of times but if anyone thinks that I’m going to be leaving the comfort and safety of my stinking pit at 05:35 and 07:40 on a Sunday morning they are sadly mistaken.

Still, the medication was taken and then I had a look at the dictaphone. With plenty of time to go on my travels during the night I was quite optimistic. And I wasn’t disappointed either.

I’d been walking through the streets of a city in Indonesia and I’d been with a coach party or tour party or something. I had my suitcase and something had happened that meant I had to stay behind. Si I sent my suitcase off with them and I had to go to attend to whatever business this was, and then I had to meet up with Rosemary. I headed off to the bus station to see if Rosemary was at the bus station as she said that she was at a café because she had sorted out her issue. So I went to what I thought was the cafe but it was a school. Loads and loads of kids hanging around. Of course there was no chance in finding Rosemary so my next thought was how am I going to get halfway across Indonesia. The first thing o my mind was the train. I knew where the railway station was so I set out on foot. There were crowds of people there and one of the things that I’d done was that I’d changed my clothing. I had Western clothing on but I had got rid of that end ended up in just a local pair of sweat pants and te shirt so that I would blend in more easily with the people and look like a tourist. So I walked with all these people and got close to the station and could hear the tannoy announcements for the trains, in Indonesian and just as I was getting very close to the station with all these people around me and that was when I awoke for a moment at some silly time or other.
Somewhat later we were doing an enquiry into children taking supplements – athletic children, swimmers, that kind of thing. We were interviewing a couple of kids about this and then we had to leave. We’d been staying in a hotel and we were leaving really early next morning so I was going to have an earlyish night but it wasn’t as early as I was hoping. I had to drive these couple of people back with me. I went for a walk, a walk up from where the hotel was where we were staying past the railway station where we arrived. We were driving back for some reason and did this walk to see what it was like, to se how I remembered it from when we arrived. The I realised that I had to pay my quarterly bill fr my flat. I had to go to a bar, a bar where I would usually go for a drink and I usually paid for my drinks with cash that kind of thing although these days something happened and I was paying it by bank card or bank draft or something. The old woman behind the counter she came over to deal with me and I gave her a credit card to take this payment for this three-monthly thing. She was surprised about that but did it and I went for my walk. So I walked up and just the other side of the railway station there was a Shell petrol station and the petrol there looked really cheap. I thought “God I should have come up here in the car and fuelled it up and we would have been really ready to go tomorrow morning early”. I thought that I had better get some money out as well from the bank but it was the bit where there had been a level crossing over the road by the railway station and they had put an overbridge so the shops were at ground level but the road went up this overbridge. At a certain point there was a set of steps that went down to the shops so I thought that I would go down these steps. There were crowds of people climbing up. They were sort-of temporary steps held up on scaffolding and it was really quite a scramble. I only had one hand free for some reason so I was making heavy weather of it. There were these people talking to me, talking to me in Dutch and I didn’t understand very much of what they were saying so I pressed on regardless. I eventually got down to the bottom and some woman at the bottom said something like “you should have listened to what those people were telling you. They were telling you how to get down, giving you all kinds of advice and you totally ignored them” She was quite bossy about this. She said it in Flemish as well which was a surprise for me that I understood it so I turned round to her and in my really bad Flemish i basically said that they could tell me what they like but if they say it in Flemish I’m not going to understand it because I’m a foreigner and don’t speak Flemish which took the wind right out of her sails and I said it in Flemish that I didn’t understand Flemish at all which must have confused her somewhat. That was when I awoke.

After breakfast I attacked the radio project n° 18. And by the time I knocked off for my evening meal at 19:00 I’d finished that and it’s now up and running and I’m well on my way to writing my notes for Project 19.

This week’s task is to finish Project 19 and to do Project 20. Then I’ll be 7 weeks ahead, and then a couple more weeks of doing two per week will see me two months or 9 projects ahead and that’s how I want to stay.

There were pauses in between all of this though. Round about 15:30 I was feeling peckish and there was a lump of bread left over from yesterday’s baguette from LeClerc so I demolished that with some hummus and salad.

The weather abated slightly too so I seized the opportunity to nip out for a walk.

There was that much fog that it was difficult to see anything at all, but I did manage to see down into the chantier navale to see what was happening in the way of new arrivals.

And the answer was “nothing much at all”. Still the same two boats but there was a big van down there so it looked as if someone was working on one of them at least.

Maybe we might have a new arrival or two during the week.

It was busy over there at the ferry terminal.

There, settling down gently into the mud over at the ferry terminal are Chausiais and Joly France. And so it looks as if something might be happening with them pretty soon too.

But we might be seeing more and more fishing boats in the harbour. Despite the Withdrawal Agreement setting down a status quo for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU until the end of the year, Guernsey has unilaterally taken action that effectively bans French fishing boats from its waters.

What I have to say about this is that I shall be very disappointed, very disappointed indeed if the French fishermen take this lying down. Knowing their history, I imagine and fully expect that they shall be back in Guernsey waters, in great numbers and properly “tooled up” to deal with the matter in their own inimitable way.

It’s been PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED THAT THE ROYAL ?AVY DOES NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT PATROL SHIPS TO PROTECT ITS WATERS and I’m sure that the French fishermen are well aware of this.

It won’t take much to blockade St Peter Port and St Sampson, and the island would grind to a halt in a couple of weeks.

I have often said that if the answer is violence, it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on that referendum paper was probably the most stupid that I have ever seen or heard.

By now I was thoroughly soaked to the skin so it didn’t make much difference as to whether I stayed out or went in.

So I continued my walk for a little while and went up to the top of the city walls to see what they had been doing round by the Place du Parvis Notre Dame.

And the answer is “pretty terrible” – although on second thoughts, there’s nothing pretty at all about this. It’s easily the worst bit of repointing that I have ever seen

It’s just a total mess and there’s nothing whatever to be proud of about this. How is it possible that they can do such a good job on one side of the wall and such a dreadful job on the other?

As well as my vegan pizza, I made another rice pudding seeing as I had the oven on. And they were both really good. But I’m hoping that my rice pudding lasts a lot longer than the last one that didn’t make 4 days.

Despite the rain I went out again this evening and even managed two runs, although I had to improvise the first one on a different track because the one that I use on the north side of the wall was about a foot deep in water.

That walk was extended somewhat and I ended up today with 70% of my daily activity. Not enough but I can catch up tomorrow with my walk up to the Centre Agora for the weekly radio meeting.

And that reminds me – in January I walked 274.54 kilometres and ran for 1 hour 54 minutes. There were just 5 days when I did less than my daily target.

Here’s hoping that I can keep it up.

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I ENCOUNTERED A WEIRD CEMENT CONVEYOR in the avenue Aristide Briand.

This morning on my way to LIDL the gate to the chantier was open, and while I was admiring the machine and the cementing that they were doing, I fell in with the owner.

He let me have a good look around it and we had quite a chat. he told me that he was so impressed with it that he had actually bought another one for another site.

And when I think of all the humping around that I did by hand all those times …

For once last night I had a decent sleep. being in bed before midnight meant that I had at least 6 hours sleep and that’s pretty good these days.

Nevertheless I didn’t beat the third alarm. A good five or so minutes behind it I was, and I’ll have to be doing better than this.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it’s no surprise that I was quite exhausted.

I was having to record my latest radio programme so I went to a Working Men’s Club where I usually went but there was some guy playing guitar there on the stage entertaining the public so I asked the guy at the door what it was all about. He told me “ahh well it’s just someone on the guitar with him”. There was a woman standing next to him. She had her had round him or on his arm or something. He said “yes, maybe she’s someone who has a claim on him”. I replied “maybe he has something in her” which made everyone laugh. But a former friend of mine was there and he was standing by the other door and somehow I pretended not to notice because I wasn’t really up to actually going along to socialise and to meet and talk to him
A little later on I was wandering around some kind of Medieval town somewhere, going up and down all of the paths and everything, picking my way through people’s ornaments and so on. On one occasion someone had on their steps a pile of little animals like santons, that kind of thing. As I was climbing up I was thinking “how am I going to get down?”. I started to go down the steps on the other side but of course there were all these little santon things all over the place. I put my foot on one place and flattened half a dozen of the things so I had to sit down on the step and move myself back up the step one by one until I reached the top where I could jump off but from where I was jumping I couldn’t see what I was jumping on to because I’m not very good at heights as everyone knows. It was some old woman’s place, this was and I was worried in case someone had seen me come to grief on these steps. It was about 03:00 so they shouldn’t have done.
A little later on I was back in the office, talking to a group of people and we were discussing things like how we were working, cameras, recording equipment in the place, all of that kind of thing. Someone said that they envied me because I could go home and so it was home time but I ended up not going home for some reason or other. I had to stay behind and do something. I do remember that it was 17:40 and I was still there, thinking that I might be home for 18:00 like this, I don’t really know but I can’t remember all that much more about it but somewhere there was something about me moving apartment leaving Jette and moving somewhere like the back end of Laeken where I saw that apartment that I liked when I was with Laurence and I don’t remember too much about that either. Someone else who put in a cameo appearance at some point was someone who was probably the only civilised adult on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour

After breakfast I attacked the translation with a determination and before long I’d finished it off. Almost 5,000 words there, of which I reckon about 4,000 is going to end up in the bin.

But anyway, it’s done and dusted and sent off and that’s that. I went and had a shower and then headed for the shops.

We’re going to be having more excitement in the area soon.

The local council were out today putting up “No Waiting” signs in the boulevard de Terreneuviers and that will upset the two vehicles down there for a start. They’ve been there for quite a while.

There wasn’t any time for me to go and enquire what was happening, but I’ll keep an eye open.

As for the red mini-artic, I’ve seen that quite a while now, and it seems to have inherited the sport of the old CF Bedford that used to park there regularly.

Both of those vehicles have Dutch registration so I’m wondering if the Bedford has gone to the Great Car Park In The Sky and this is its replacement.

At LIDL they had every kind of electrical appliance that you could name – except a kettle of course. So I’ll have to pick one up at the weekend from a mainstream shop.

Although the other one has packed up after just a little over 2 years, i’m not too disappointed. I remember saying at the time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I needed so much stuff when I came here that I was going to buy it all at the cheapest possible price and when it gives out, I can replace it with decent stuff. I couldn’t afford decent stuff right at the start so cheap it had to be.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I climbed up the hill towards home.

Just at the right time to see Thora come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the harbour. I was quite pleased about this. I’d seen her go out on several occasions but I’d never seen her actually come in and dock.

So that’s a first for me then. I wonder how long she’s going to be in port. Maybe it will be another rapid turn-round like Normandy Trader had the other day.

Back here I made a start on the next radio project – the one that I should have done on Monday had I not had this blasted translation to do. And by the time that I’d knocked off all of the music had been chosen and recorded, the text had been written and dictated and I was busy editing the dictation.

Tomorrow morning I’ll just need to finish off the editing, splice the speech into the music and then deal with the last track. That is of course the bit that always takes the longest as the track needs to be of a specific type and of a specific length.

Sad as it is to say it, I could have done a lot more to it but this afternoon I once more succumbed to the fatigue and crashed out on the chair. How I hate this, but I shall have to grin and bear it.

We had a break for lunch of course, and then a break for the afternoon walk.

The wind was horrible again so I didn’t loiter around. But I was intrigued by the antics over at the ferry terminal. It seems that it isn’t just dredging that they are doing there but they have a concrete breaker and a pneumatic drill going on.

Perhaps I ought to go over there one of these days for a closer look and see what they are doing.

There’s a good view from up here on the cliff as I have said before.

Today we aren’t going to look at the construction works on the car park but we’ll admire Thora instead, parked in her usual place underneath the unloading crane. She looked quite nice when she first came here just under two years ago but today she’s in need of a coat of paint.

Mind you, it’s a hard life for a small ship in these kinds of waters doing the job that she does.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that part of the parking in the Boulevard Vaufleury had been coned off?

Sure enough, there they are – not actually doing anythign right now but you can see that they’ve been active. All of the small trees that were growing up on top of the wall have been removed and the wood has been chipped.

It’ll be nice to have a vue degagée this summer over the wall down into the harbour. The vegetation was becoming rather wild.

The tide is going out, I reckon.

And you can see where the fishing boats unload their cargoes of shellfish. The obviously drop quite a fair amount over the side when they are swinging the crates upwards, and the seabirds are taking full advantage of that.

There must be ahundred or so congregating down there feeding on the fallen shellfish. And good luck to them too

Having knocked off work at 19:00 as usual, it was tea time. Burger on a bap with microwaved potatoes and vegetables. And for some reason or other it was the most delicious that I have ever tasted. I’m not sure what it was that I did right but whwtever it was, it worked.

As for the rice pudding, that went into the bin. Yesterday it had a strange taste that I didn’t recognise. And tonight the taste was stronger and it didn’t seem right to me. So off it went.

Instead, I chopped up a banana and had some of that delicious banana sorbet with it. That was wonderful.

There’s no doubt that since I’ve become more settled, my eating habits have improved dramatically.

This bad parking thing is becoming a bit of a habit now, isn’t it?

There’s a free public car park less than 50 yards away fro mwhere this guy is parked but because he doesn’t want to get wet in the rain that we were having, he’s parked right by a “No Parking” sign across the yellow hatch marks that clearly indicate that this is a Fire Lane

And not only that – it’s the Fire Lane that leads to the back of this building. So we can all burn to death because the fire engine can’t reach here, but that’s okay as long as Monsieur doesn’t have to walk 50 yards in the rain.

As for me, I did my evening walk and I’m now up to 115% of my day’s activity which is good news for me. I managed my run too – along the path at the north side of the walls out of the way of the wind.

It doesn’t look pretty, the way that I run, and I can’t run too far but considering my age and my state of health a few hundred metres every night is good going.

So tomorrow I’ll finish off my Project and then make a good go at this Press Conference. Then in the evening we have US Granville v Olympique de Marseille in the French Cup.

Who knows what that might bring?

Wednesday 15th January 2020 – IT’S REALLY NICE …

… when someone’s project that you have been following for quite a while finally comes to fruition.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been following the renovation of the big old building in the Place Cambernon for a couple of years now on and off, but now here it is, the Restaurant La Contremarche, in all its glory. Open to the public this evening

And it’s a right place too. There’s a piano, and waiters in aprons, all that kind of thing. Definitely not for the likes of you and me.

And there’s another reason why I won’t be going there either. And that’s because, although I did look, I couldn’t see a menu on display outside.

There are two reasons why that fact would disappoint me too –

It’s not possible to see whether there’s anything that I could eat. And with my rather restricted diet, that kind of thing is very important. In fact it will put a lot of people off going.
With not knowing what’s available, I can’t see the prices. It’s like the old saying about Rolls Royces, which is quite apposite seeing as I lived for several years in the town where Rolls Royces were made – in that “if you have to ask the price, then you can’t afford it”. Rather than being embarrassed about the price, I wouldn’t go in at all.

So Fritkot for me.

But more importantly, where are they going to put the pizza van now? I don’t think that the owners of the restaurant will want it outside their front door.

We’ll find out tomorrow.

But never mind tomorrow, let’s talk about today. It was a night that was rather later than intended last night, and as a result I didn’t quite manage to beat the third alarm. Only a couple of minutes in it but still disappointing.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I can’t remember now who I was with but we were in a hotel waiting to be called for our aeroplanes. We had been told that they were going in 5-minute intervals or 10 minute intervals. The last plane had been called at something like 12:00 and it was now long after 13:00 and we still hadn’t been called. We’d all packed and had everything ready and were just sitting around waiting, getting more and more annoyed and stressed out about this. In the end I was actually staying on for an extra week so it didn’t really concern me that much but the two people I was with, they were going back. IN the end I picked up the hotel phone and tried to dial out to try to find out what was going on. These two people told me the number but as I was dialling I had this light voice saying “doing my best, doing me best”, a female voice, obviously an automatic machine. As I was doing this a noise started up in the hotel corridor as if everyone was moving out. I had my old shoes on, the ones with the broken laces and whoever I was with came up and said “here, look at this” and he tied my laces in a realy peculiar way that ended in a dead-knot. “How’s that?” I said “if you can remember how to undo it, it’s fine”. My laces were a nice lime green and with black trainers that didn’t look right at all.

After breakfast, I’d still had no news of what I was supposed to be doing with the audio files from the Press Conference at the Stade Louis Dior yesterday. It’s all very well sending me to this meeting, but I have to know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Deciding that any action is better than none at all, I went through the one with Johan Gallon, the trainer of US Granville, all 25 minutes of it, and made copious notes.

It worked out that there was an opportunity to ask about 25 questions to be inserted into the interview, so I set about and recorded them.

There was a brief interruption in the middle of all that to go and fetch my bread. The wind had stopped but we were now having a rainstorm.

It’s half-day at schools in France on a Wednesday.

They close at midday and sure enough there are hordes of people milling around. And load of cars like these here.

Bit I watched the one across the road pull up. I’m standing right by an approved parking place which is vacant, there’s a huge public car park 50 metres further up the Boulevard Vaufleury but the selfish driver chooses to block the pavement by parking with two wheels upon it, and blocking the access down the road for the service buses and school buses that come down here.

And if that’s no enough to be going on with, the eagle-eyed among you will notice that the driver is parked on a bus stop. You can’t see the yellow hatching on the road but you can see the “bus stop” sign right in front of the car.

My walk took me onwards towards the Chantier navale

Our old friend Spirit of Conrad is still in there of course and so are the two fishing boats that have been there for a while. But they are now joined by a third one, to the right of Spirit of Conrad.

It looks as if there’s a lot going on in the Chantier navale right now and that’s always good news. The port needs to be kept busy with as much work as possible.

The tide was well in today so the gates were open and I couldn’t walk across.

It also meant that the earth-moving equipment doing the dredging at the ferry terminal weren’t out working, They were parked down at the rue du Port so I could go and inspect them,

Two large diggers and two huge earth-moving lorries. And whaen I was “huge eath-moving lorries” I do mean huge. I could have hours of endless fun with one of those.

Having bought my dejeunette at la Mie Caline, I headed for home, chatting to a neighbour on the way.

It wasn’t quite lunchtime so I had a listen to what I had dictated. It needed some background white noise, a little echo and some background noise so I spent a while adding some of that.

By now it was lunchtime so I knocked off for half an hour or so.

After lunch I set to copying and pasting the audio files and my questions and I’d done half of it when the telephone rang. I finally know now what I have to do with it all, and it means that my morning is wasted.

As I’ve said before, the lack of professionalism is really annoying me.

Instead, I carried on with this blasted, flaming translation. By the time that I knocked off for tea I’d reached 46 minutes – that’s about 83%. With a bit of luck I can finish that tomorrow before I go to the shops.

The afternoon walk – in the bright sunshine now, was interesting. I only managed half of my run along the square Maurice Marland but I wasn’t disappointed because with no-one about at all, I’d done the run along the north side of the walls.

But I don’t understand why I hadn’t taken any photos at all.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding. And it was delicious as usual. Mind you, I forgot to put the peanuts in the stuffing.

Outside, the wind had dropped but the ground was sodden as if we’d had a sudden rainstorm.

The views though were really excellent tonight. I could see dozens of fishing boats right out in the English Channel and there was one of them heading in to port seeing as the tide was in.

The sea was comparatively calm too, so there can’t have been much intensity in the storm that passed us by over the last couple of days. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have on occasion seen waves still come roaring in days after a violent storm.

“A really clear night” I thought to myself.

Out there in the English Channel you can see a couple of the trawlers – or, rather, the lights of a couple of trawlers out there fishing off the coast of Jersey.

But even more importantly, you can see the large red lights on the extreme left of the image. I’m not sure what they are but my best guess would be that they would be warning lights for something like a radio antenna or a radar mast over on the Jersey mainland.

Picking this up with my equipment in the darkest night is quite something.

That wasn’t all either.

The lights of St Malo were nice and bright and clear tonight. With no tripod to take long-delay exposures, I had to do my best with a hand-held shot.

It’s hard to think that 18 months ago I might have been lucky to produce this image but it’s rather small beer compared to what I’ve been able to produce with the new camera and the tripod.

We mentioned a little earlier the parking issues in the Boulevard Vaufleury.

In the future though it’s going to become far more difficult. They’ve blocked off half of the car-parking spaces with a row of cones and I’ve no idea why.

Perhaps I’ll find out tomorrow when I go for my walk. But stopping to photograph them interrupted my evening run (yes, I’ve done a lot of running today). And stand by for some more “pathetic parking” photos of cars whose kids are far too lazy to walk 50 metres.

The fishing boat that I had seen earlier was now at the fish processing plant and was busy unloading.

If you look very carefully you’ll see the fork lift truck that is taking away the boxes of whatever the boat had brought in.

As for me, I carried on with my walk. I was on 90% of my day’s activities so I pushed on for a while. That’s how come I found myself in the Place Cambernon.

But a good walk around brought me up to 100% eventually so I could come home.

Listening to my recordings just recently, I’m well aware of the fact that my equipment for the radio isn’t producing the quality that I would like. In fact, I’m really surprised that it’s doing as well as it does.

But anyway there’s a Special Offer on at the moment on recording equipment and there’s a professional piece of equipment that does exactly what I want on sale at just €88:00. So that, and a microphone desktop stand and (at last) a water filter are on their way here.

There are a few bits and pieces missing for the camera following my aquatic adventures and they are on the way here too, as well as some sticky labels for the new laptop to convert it to a French keyboard.

Money is being spent like water right now but I’m having to do it if I want to move on.

There’s a new electric kettle to be looked for too. The one that I have has just blown every fuse in the house.

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.

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

… that i’m going to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit at 07:17 on a Sunday morning when I’m having a Day of Rest then they are mistaken.

So when I noticed that time on my fitbit this morning I did what every other sensible person would do in the same situation and turned over and went back to sleep.

09:45 is plenty early enough to be out and about on a Sunday.

And talking of plenty … “well, one of us is” – ed …
there was plenty of time for me to be going off on a nocturnal ramble.

During the night I was living by the sea in a town not too dissimilar to Granville with a rocky promontory, all this kind of thing. One of the things that I had was some kind of animal like a very small human. It was a fighter and it used to fight in events like tournaments and exhibitions and so on. We were at an exhibition and there were people milling around. I was asked about my fighter, whether he would fight. I said that he probably didn’t want to – he’s had a hectic week and he’d been pretty worn out but all these people insisted and in the end they prevailed. I had to go to fetch him and get him ready for a fight in the bottom left-hand corner of the windscreen (…?…). But before we could actually – but the police said that he would be welcome to fight but the more I brought him, the more he got nearer to where we were sitting the more smoother I thought that he was, as if someone had been sandpapering him or something.
And if you think that that lot was confusing, what’s the story about a girl in this little black dress who was watching something or other, I can’t remember which, was it a bird? It had two parasites on it that lived symbiotically and she was going to perform some kind of test on it to see what these parasite things were doing and why. She was an attractive girl and I was attracted to her but she was more interested in doing this scientific thing than any kind of symbiotic arrangement with her that I would have been interested in with her

But “prevailed”? “Symbiotic”? I tell you something – I can’t ‘arf come out with the flowery prose when I’m deep in the Arms of Morpheus. Gor’ Blimey! Strike a Light, guv!

There was the usual medication followed by breakfast once the medication had worked. And then I sat down to deal with the dictaphone notes. And by the time that I had knocked off, I was down to a mere 32 left to finish.

Round about 12:45 at a suitable break in the proceedings I went down into the town for my dejeunette.

The tide wasn’t all that far in so the harbour gates were closed and I could walk on the gangway over the top.

Charles-Marie was in there. She hasn’t moved for quite a while and it looks as if she’s now all protected for the winter.

So if she has no plans for the next while, I’ll move on to other projects and come back here again. There is something simmering away on the horizon right now.

Having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline, I came back up the hill to home. And much to my surprise there were quite a few people out around there in town today.

There were quite a few people out there on the water too.

This beautiful yacht with the big black sails, I don’t recall having seen her before and I’m sure that I would have noticed something like this while I’d been on my travels.

She was performing quite a few circuits around the bay and even though I was extremely hungry and ready for lunch I took some time out to watch her.

And a close examination of the photo seems to indicate that she seems to have found a friend.

There’s another one out there right alongside her and I hadn’t noticed that before.

And so after a while I said adieu and continued on my walk.

And reflecting that I hadn’t even noticed the ascent up to here as I was walking. This new fitness regime serms to be doing the business, and in spades too.

Over the past 4 years since my illness, I haven’t felt quite as good as I do right now, and that’s really tempting fate, isn’t it?

After lunch I went back down to Caliburn and brought up the new office chair that I had bought yesterday.

The package was quite heavy and it was something of a struggle but in the end I managed to bring it up here all the way.

Assembling it might have seemed to be straightforward but that’s not accounting for any gymnastic contortions that you have to do when you are on your own.

In the and though it’s assembled but that’ wasn’t all the excitement. Getting it through the bedroom door was quite an adventure too.

But it’s in now and, believe me, it’s really comfortable. Plenty of room for me to curl up on too if ever I am overwhelmed by fatigue.

One problem that I noticed quite quickly is that the top of the seat overhangs the top of the chest of drawers. And so on swivelling round I’ve knocked more than enough stuff of the chest of drawers. I wonder how long it will be before I knock off something expensive.

Being on a roll, I unpacked another one of the boxes from the other day. Lots of little stuff in there, but also the electric piano that I had ordered. I’m going to attack that one of these days too.

The afternoon walk was taken out around the city walls.

Although the sun was out and it was quite a nice bright day, the wind was howling away at something like the same force of the last couple of days.

And this has contributed to the excitement out there today.

Kite surfing is quite a popular pastime out in this part of the world but up until today I’d managed to avoid it.

Today though there were a couple of kite surfers out there taking advantage of the fine weather and the wind.

And quite clearly enjoying themselves as they passed back and to below me.

While I had the camera out, I was peering around out to sea to see what else I could find.

We’ve seen every now and again some of these buoys that mysteriously appear and then disappear out in the bay round near Brehal-Plage, and sure enough we had a few of them out there today.

There didn’t seem to be anyone attending to them so I’ve no idea what they might be. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen fishing boats out there every now and again just recently.

That wasn’t all either.

There was something else out there just offshore and I couldn’t make out what it was. And so I took a speculative photo with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) when I returned home to see if it gave me a clue.

And having blown it up, which I can still do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, I’m still none the wiser. Maybe it’s just a lump of driftwood, but I don’t really know for sure and I wasn’t going to go and found out.

Not that I would have been alone out there because with it being a nice sunny afternoon there were crowds of people out there walking on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

There were even a few people out there on the beach too.

Seeing as there was no-one around I set off on a run down my little track but a couple of people emerging from the shadows put paid to that idea. The way things are right now, I run something like a walrus and I would rather people didn’t notice.

While you admire another pic of our kite surfer, I was listening to someone having a right old bash on the drums in the little theatre up here.

The doors were all locked though so i couldn’t go in to find out what was going on or to make a suggestion that he might need a bassist to accompany him

Instead, I came home and had a play about on the bass, followed by a session on the guitar. And it isn’t easy when you are surrounded by cardboard boxes.

I’ll open up the final one tomorrow and then take all of the empties out to Caliburn.

Tea was something of a disaster tonight. The pizza base was stuck to the greaseproof lining so it was a wrestle to untangle it. And then it didn’t fit correctly onto the baking plate and any attempt to move it led to disaster. So I had to do the best that I could.

But I did another rice pudding and with the bit of bread left from yesterday and some of the garlic butter from last weekend I made myself a garlic bread snack.

The pizza needed another 10 minutes longer to cook and the base was all to hell. But I suppose that the proof of the pizza is in the eating and it went down just as well as any other.

On my evening walk the lights of St malo were beautiful in the distance. But with no tripod and the high winds that were rattling away at everything, the photos came out far too blurred to be of any value.

And I had a good run home tonight, making the entire length of my run down on the clifftop.

Now I’m writing up my notes and I hope that it takes a while to do because Ocean by Eloy has just come on the playlist. What a magnificent album this is.

But when it’s finished, I’ll be off to bed, musing on the fact that of all of the people in Greenland, I know just 6 of them really well. And of those 6, last weekend I was with 5 of them.

I wonder when Tupaarnaq will put in an appearance.

Monday 25th November 2019 – I MISSED …

… my evening walk this evening.

There I was, sitting at the dining table (I’m all posh these days) round about 20:00 eating my rice pudding when the phone went.

Fetching it back again, I discovered that Rosemary was on the end of the line and she wanted to chat.

And chat we did. I had a lot of news to tell her, all about my weekend and people whom we both knew, and she had a lot of news to tell me. Really good, maybe even stunning news too, but there’s this old medieval saying about “never be sure of the bird on your plate until you have your fork stuck in it” so I’ll wait for a few weeks and see how things develop before I say anything.

And while I was chatting on the phone to Rosemary, I was also having an internet discussion with TOTGA. Yes, two conversations, eating a bowl of rice pudding, ohh yes, I can do multi-tasking!

By the time that Rosemary and I hung up it was well after 22:00. I did say that we had a lot to talk about!

And indeed, there was a lot to say about today. It wasn’t a late night particularly and so being up and about before the last alarm wasn’t too much of a problem.

No nocturnal ramble either which makes a change. So nothing much to do. While I was waiting for the medication to work I attacked some of the outstanding dictaphone notes.

In fact I’ve been whittling away at those throughout the day and now there are just 83 left. They won’t be finished for the end of the month though, which was my target. That’s a disappointment but I’ve had so much going on just recently.

After breakfast I had a shower and some clean clothes and then headed out up town in the rain.

There had been a report in the local newspaper that the town was taking a electric bus on trial to see how it would function on the bus routes here, bearing in mind how hilly the place is.

And sure enough, as I was up the avenue LeClerc here was the new electric bus, being overtaken by one of the old diesels.

Excuse the blurred photo but it was a fleeting glimpse in between two passing vehicles and I didn’t have time to focus properly.

At the Centre Agora we had our weekly meeting. And I do have to say that I have never met so many people with a capacity for fitting the least amount of thought into the greatest amount of words.

These are the kind of meetings that should be held outside – standing up – in the rain. They would be over in seconds with just as much decided.

It also seems that the people are very jealous of their “babies” and guard their empires carefully. We were discussing the port and the subject of Thora, Normandy Trader and Chausiais came up.

As I know the crew of the two British ships, I suggested that I could interview the skippers and see how the new rules and regulations affecting the commerce of the port post-Brexit is going to affect them.

“Ohhh” piped up one of the guys. “I’ve been thinking about doing something about the port and the maritime commerce, but I’m not sure how to go about it”.

So I sat on the edge of my chair waiting for him to ask for suggestions (of which I have more than a few, as regular readers of this rubbish might realise) but instead he moved on to another topic. It’s his baby, and he won’t let anyone else share it with him.

Shame as it is to say it, I can see this project not lasting all that long with this kind of ego that seems to preclude teamwork and co-operation.

And I was told that the transmitting quality of my broadcasts needs to be improved, and I was given some technical guidelines in this respect.

Yes, after I’ve recorded four of them! Obviously no possibility of giving me the technical guidelines 4 or 5 weeks ago, before I recorded any at all, is there?

So everything that I’ve spent the last few weeks downloading at 96kbs – all about 70 hours of it – now needs to be re-recorded at 192 kbs! That was a waste of my time and effort, wasn’t it?

One thing that always gets my goat is a lack of professionalism.

Remember the other day when I was coming back from the Centre Agora and I saw what looked like an old well in the middle of the street in the Allee des Sycomores?

On my way back I went for a butchers to see what it was. And I was right. It is a well.

Not an old well though. Although it might be old, it’s still in use as you can see and a lady in a house nearby chatted to me about it for a while.

And that’s not all the excitement either.

Walking down the main street – the rue des Ecoles – I happened to notice another similar object in someone else’s garden.

Just think! Ther emight be a third one somewhere else in the vicinity. Well, well, well!

On the way back home I called in at LIDL. There wasn’t much that I needed but seeing as I was there I went in regardless. A couple of bananas, some soya milk and sparkling water.

And I stopped at the boulangerie for another dejeunette – that last one in the shop.

I’d also been stopped by a man in one of these microcar-based van things. He wanted to know where a certain street was, but how would I know that?

After lunch I made a start on the web page for the weekend’s events. And it was only meant to be a brief thing with photographs but, like Topsy, it “just growed” and at one point I found myself in mid-rant.

I really do need to calm myself down sometimes.

This afternoon I went for my usual walk around the headland again in the wind and the rain.

And it seems that I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either. There was a fishing boat coming back from the English Channel and also a yacht out there have an enormous amount of fun.

And quite right too.

There was something else going on out there too.

Whatever it was, it looked important because someone had had his chopper out again. The Air-Sea rescue one in fact and judging by the way that it was flying – quite slowly about 50 feet above the water, it was looking for something.

Maybe there will be something in the news about it tomorrow.

My walk took me around past the chantier navale so as usual I had a peek down there to see who was about.

Three of our boats from the other day – Spirit of Conrad, Aztec Lady and Omerta – are still in there up on blocks, as is the fishing boat over on the far side.

And Omerta looks as if she’s receiving some serious attention out there too. They seem to be stripping off all of the paint, presumably to give her a respray.

All of that is all very well, but there was no sign of the old Pecheur de Lys who was with them the other day.

She wasn’t back in the water either so I had a good look around, and there she is up on blocks right round at the back of the sheds.

Her stay in the water didn’t last all that long and it looks as if she might be out for good. And that’s a shame.

While I was standing there looking for Pecheur de Lys, I was interrupted in my reverie by a diesel engine coming from around the headland.

And a matter of just a couple of seconds later, the fishing boat that we had seen earlier out in the English Channel came a-sailing … “a-dieseling” – ed … into view.

She must have made some really good time to arrive here so qickly. Perhaps someone in the port has put the kettle on.

It was all go in the harbour too with the tide being in.

Plenty of fishing boats unloading, and some must already have unloaded their catch because this one here has turned round and is on its way back out to sea.

And Joly France, one of the ferries for the Ile De Chausey, must have been out on a crossing today because she’s tied up at the passenger terminal rather than in the inner harbour

“Plenty of fishing boats unloading” I said. And “it was all go in the harbour today”.

As you can see, I wasn’t wrong either. Here’s one of the fishing boats unloading its catch. And I don’t think that I have ever seen so many crates of mussels or whatever they are piled up on the quayside.

There’s enough on that trailer at the back of the tractor to keep anyone going for several days, I reckon.

Back in the apartment I carried on with what I was doing until tea time. And seeing as there was some stuffing left I had another stuffed pepper. And then my rice pudding as I mentioned earlier.

But now it’s about 01:30 and I’m off to bed. But not for long. Up at 06:00 and I have the tax Office to visit tomorrow.

That will probably be very taxing.

Friday 22nd November 2019 – WHAT ODDS …

… would you have given on me walking into a social centre here in Granville on the West Normandy coast and bumping into three young girls who I have met before … in a small town called Uummannaq in the far north of Greenland?

Yes, it’s true that it’s “Greenland week” here in Granville, but even so, it’s a pretty long shot, isn’t it?

We’ve all seen this smile before, haven’t we?

It’s the smile that I have as the background to the desktop on my little old laptop and the girl to whom it belongs is my friend Heidinnguaq, she who spent half an hour or so posing for me last year when I was there.

And here she is in Granville too, with a few of her friends.

After my marathon session the other evening, last night I was in bed at something like a realistic time last night. Plenty of time to go on a travel or two. And who should I meet last night was my friend Ric. I’m not sure exactly how it had come round to this but I’d come to the town where he lived. I’d been round to where there were shelves and books and like cupboards and so on and it was some kind of description about what I was going to be doing and what I was going to be. Anyway, I knocked on his door, and he came out and we had a little chat. I told him that I was going out with someone later that evening. In fact I was going out with a lot of people but I was hoping that one particular person would be there. He stepped off his door and came in and said “what’s all this about?” and said something like a tree – an oak or a sycamore or something like that. It turned out that that was an euphemism that I had been using on this piece of paper stuck on this wall about the person that I was hoping to see that evening. So I said “yes, I’m going on a date”. I didn’t tell him too much – just enough to get his appetite interested. And that was when I awoke. It goes without saying that the person whom I was hoping to meet was Castor.

The alarms went off as usual and I leapt out of bed (and I did too!) ready for an early start. And after breakfast I did another magnum opus from the pile on the dictaphone. Only one (and half another) but it was certainly one of the longest.

And having transcribed it, I can see why it was one of the ones that affected me so much. It was very similar to one that I had back in May where the world was coming to an end and I was the last survivor. There I was, all alone on the beach watching the world come to an end just like in Neville Shute’s novel On The Beach, and as the narrator brings the story to a close, his prose breaks, in perfect time and perfect scan, into a speech that runs into a slightly amended version of the final couple of lines of the lyrics (which he speaks) of “The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond”.

Well, the night in early September that I transcribed this morning was just like that, and it was such a surprise not just because of the event, but because of the fact that I’d been there a short while earlier in almost identical circumstances. And the narrator’s hypnotic speech added a certain amount of tension to the whole thing too.

But I couldn’t hang around doing that all morning. There were plenty of other things to do, such as to prepare my speech and select about 25 photos from my visit to Uummannaq.

That took me up to about 13:00 – usually that’s lunchtime but there’s only frozen bread here so I went down to the boulangerie for another dejeunette down in the town to make my sandwiches.

The tide was well in by now and all of the fishing boats were coming into the harbour to bring their catch to the fish-processing plant.

You can see all of the equipment lined up on the quayside.

And the turn-round in the port was pretty rapid. I’ll tell you that.

It takes me about 5 minutes or so to walk from the top right down the stairs – the escalier des noires-vaches – to the rue du Port. And by the time that had reached the bottom, the yellow and white boat that we saw arriving was just on its way back out to sea.

They don’t hang about in the harbour when there are other fish to fry, that’s for sure.

In fact, it was so busy in the inner harbour today that we had something of a traffic jam.

There was La Grande Ancre waiting to leave port, but she was unable to because there was another fishing boat on its way in. La Grande Ancre had to wait a good few minutes for the other boat to make its way through the gates before she could make her way out.

Of course, that’s no reason to complain. A busy fishing port is an important asset to the community.

After lunch I made a decent adapter cable for the new laptop out of a cut-down North American extension lead that was hanging around in Caliburn. I cut it down so that there was about a foot or so on the socket end, and added an old European plug on the bare end.

And it works to perfection too. Nothing wrong with that! And then I uploaded Paint Shop Pro and made a slide show out of the photos that I had chosen.

While I had Pint Shop Pro and the external DVD dive out, I reinstalled it onto the laptop that broke down in North America and which I managed to restart. I’m going to see if I can make it run again, although I’m not sure why I would want to.

At 15:45 the guy from the Education Department came to pick me up and took me to the Sports Hall at the local High School, and that was where I met Heidinnguaq and her friends.

First thing that I did was to scrounge a huge television and couple up my laptop to it, and then set my slideshow in motion.

It would provide a little ambience to the meeting.

We had a little talk, that didn’t last too long, and having done their drum dance, throat singing and polar bear dance (the one that Jena did for me last year in Uummannaq), Heidinnguaq was prevailed upon to produce her guitar.

She’s an excellent guitarist and singer, and has written quite a few songs of her own. She played a couple and then did a number by Amy Winehouse.

Mind you, having English as her third language, I hope that she didn’t understand the significance of what she was singing. The lyrics, to a native-English-speaking person, are full of innuendo that a foreigner will probably not understand.

There was a question and answer session afterwards, which I translated, and then in the best tradition of the News of the Screws, I made my excuses and left.

Back here, it was tea-time. I had a rummage around in the freezer and found some lentil, pepper and potato curry from 24th August … errr … 2018. That was just as nice today as it was back then, especially as it was followed down by more rice pudding.

Later, I took out the rubbish and braving the wind and rain, made a hurried circuit of the headland, including a brief run for a few hundred metres. Short of my target unfortunately but there you go.

When I returned, there was football on the internet. Barry Town v Penybont (Bridgend to the uninitiated) in the Welsh Premier League.

For the first 15 minutes you wouldn’t have believed that Penybont were at the bottom of the table and Barry at the top. From the action up until that point you would have said that it was the other way round.

However, as the match progressed, Barry began to exert themselves and they ran out 3-0 winners. The result was right, but the scoreline was rather unfair. Barry’s goals were

a well-worked routine from a corner
a screamer from 25 yards that could have gone anywhere
a defensive error where the full_back slipped on the wet surface and lost control of the ball, with a Barry Town player the quickest to react to the loose ball

All they need is to get the run of the green.

It’s quite late now but I’ve been spending all the evening editing photos. All of the photos that I took of the girls I’ll post on a separate page when I get round to it.

Just one more special event, and that’s tomorrow evening. And then I ca get back round to the usual busy stae without any of these extra jobs cropping up.

I could do with a rest.

la grande ancre waiting to leave port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boat entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 10th November 2019 – EXCUSE ME …

… a minute while I shave the palms of my hands.

We’re getting close to that time of year again and probably within a day or two we’ll be having a full moon. It won’t affect me of course, because although I used to be a werewolf, I’m all right nooooooooooooooooow!

Nothing wrong with a bit of lycanthropy when yuo can get it, is there?

You’re probably looking at the huge pile of photos from today and thinking that I’ve really been out on the prowl today.

And that’s quite true. I’ve done over 100% of my day’s target according to my fitbit and I haven’t failed to notice that the daily target for the new keep-fit me has increased from 7.7 kms to 9.0 kms as a result of my increased athletic activity.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t go out on the prowl today. No-one was more disappointed than me to wake up, despite having a rather latish night last night, at 06:09. And on a Sunday too.

But badger that for a game of soldiers. If anyone thinks that i’m goign to be doing anything at that particular time of the morning on a Sunday, they are totally mistaken.

What I did was to turn over and go back to sleep, where I stayed until a much-more realistic and appropriate … errr … 11:25.

Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a day like that!

Plenty of time to go on a nocturnal ramble, you might be thinking. And you’re dead right.

Last night I was helping out in a cafe somewhere taking the cash from people and paying it into the till and there was some confusion about what went where because I couldn’t see where the 5 cents went. I just left them on the side while I carried on working .later, the manager came in and had a look round. “Ohh the 5 cents go in here” he said, pointing to a space in the till. But that had all kinds of rambling writing in it from someone. We had a look at it and quite a laugh because the narrative was changing from “us” to “we” to “I” as if he wasn’t really sure about who he was writing about (… there’s a Sherlock Holmes story about this …) in his long rambling speech. We had a good laugh about it and I said that I hadn’t wanted to disturb it otherwise I would have missed the start of this conversation, something like that. he said “yes” – it’s very important to get the start or you just have to wait a year and get it when it comes round again next year”. We began to talk about music lessons and I’m not quite sure how that fitted into the arrangement anywhere and I was saying that I wanted to learn the guitar and the piano and a third instrument and I lost my way into a rambling incoherent thing after that and woke up – that was at 06:09.

As I said, i went back to sleep and ended up in Leek last night – but don’t ask me why – and it wasn’t Leek at all but some strange town. I was walking through it, although there wasn’t all that much to walk through and I wanted to find a way to walk through the town. I found a street that was called James Lyette Way or James Wysse Way or something like that and that name rang a bell with me in this town – I could not think why. So I thought that I would go this way. So I got round that way and I was kicking something in front of me which wa making a rattly noise and I’d only gone about 30 yards in front of me when I came to a dead stop because there was a huge set of double doors in front of me with glass and this was the shopping centre. I thought “yes I remember this” so I walked in. There was a group of young people in there all over the place milling around, standing, talking, leaning against the wall, sitting and I noticed that they were all wearing a kind of plaid overshirt, the type that I used to like to wear but they were wearing them two by two – like if you were in a couple you had to have the same overshirt as your partner. They were lounging around and drinking coffee and so on and I said to whoever I was with “God this is where everyone – a heavy place to hang out”. There were no shops but just like little rooms with glass fronts for little groups to sit with coffee. There were stairs so we went upstairs and there was like an art class going on and people were around there doing art things, all young people all wearing these plaid shirts in couples. I was hoping to find a door through here so I could get out and find my way onto the main road, or find some shops or something interesting but this shopping precinct in James Lyette Way was really strange because there are no shops, just these rooms with these groups of young people in them sitting around.
But somewhere in the middle of all of this I had an old Ford “T” and I was having to drive somewhere. This Model “T” was old and creaking and the steering wheel was weak and about to break in two but I was driving it all the same (… and people were noticing me and watching …) on this road that was taking me towards Leek. It was all up and down hill and round bends and over canal bridges and I seem to remember that this vehicle was going really well and I was doing about 40mph and I thought to myself that at times I’ve gone down here at 60mph and it’s seemed to be really slow so I thought that it must be something to do with the particular make of car or type of car and that was when I got into Leek. And it was strange because I had to walk though the streets and they had traffic lights to control the flow of pedestrians on the pavement because the pavements were so narrow and they didn’t want you to be walking into the street.
(… something that I maybe ought to add because I can still remember it even if I didn’t dictate it – that on my way back downstairs I noticed sitting on a window ledge a young girl with glasses and curly hair all sticking up around her head. Although she was wearing a plaid overshirt she didn’t seem to strike me as being the kind of person who would have a partner (although I’m not sure why because I thought that she was quite attractive) but having a good look round I found a tall girl on her own wearing the same plaid overshirt …)

With a late start to today (almost an early start for tomorrow in fact) I had my medication and subsequently my breakfast rather later. And I did without lunch too.

instead, I cracked on and transcribed the night’s dictaphone notes, and then carried on updating the web page that I told you about the other day, and the relevant files that go to it.

And reviewing what I wrote at the time, I can say without fear of contradiction that I’m glad that I don’t write like that any more and that I’ve moved on from those days.

That took me nicely up to the time for my afternoon walk, having missed my morning walk.

With it being a Sunday with a Bank Holiday to follow, and a nice afternoon to boot, the place was absolutely heaving. I’m sure that I can say with confidence that I have never ever seen so many people out there, even on a summer Sunday afternoon.

No idea what was going on at all

And it was certainly a nice day for being out there.

Although there was something of a wind, the air was perfectly clear and I could see for miles. Even parts of the Channel Islands that I have never ever seen before were perfectly visible with the big zoom lens this afternoon.

And I felt really sorry for the couple behind me asking each other if they could see with the naked eye whatever it was that I was photographing.

It wasn’t just on land that there were hordes of people either. It was pretty crowded out there on the water too.

This yacht was one of the many out there today having a really good time, and we were once more photo-bombed by some kind of flying thing.

Although I have spent many years doing plenty of bird-watching, and with binoculars and huge telephoto zoom lenses, it wasn’t this kind of bird that I was watching so I’ve no idea what it is. Craig thinks that it’s a cormorant but I wouldn’t know.

And that brings me round to one particular occasion when we were aboard The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and they announced that we were going to have a lecture on birdwatching.

“Not a problem” I replied. “I had plenty of those from Nerina when I was married”

“Hordes of people in the water” I said just now. And I was right too.

We’ve seen plenty of stuff in the English Channel, but the Baie de Mont St Michel was heaving with vessels too enjoying the wind.

And you can see how clear the weather was today too. Even the hotels down at the foot of the bay near Mont St Michel are clearly visible in this photo, and that’s without me making any special effort to include them in the image.

From the Pointe du Roc I carried on down the path and into town along the harbour.

One of the reasons why I’d come here was to have a closer look at this strange van that has been parked at the fish processing plant for quite a while.

Either the rear suspension has collapsed or else there’s a really heavy weight in the back of it because the rear end is almost touching the roadway.

And it looks to me as if someone has jemmied the back doors of it at one time too. They are held together at the moment by a cord tied across the back.

Another reason for my being down in the port area today was to go and have a look at the strange boat that has just appeared in the harbour.

The tidal gates were shut as I strolled leisurely past the fish processing plant, but just as I was about to put my foot on the top of the gates, the siren went off, the barrier went down and the gates started to open.

It seems that I had missed them by about 2 seconds. But I contented myself with watching them open, and then walked around the harbour to the other side.

That new boat was still there, tied up at the quay in between Vicor Hugo and Charles Marie.

And I can put a name to her too. She’s called the Chausiais and she’s out of Cherbourg.

But interestingly, she’s painted up with the advertising from the company that runs the ferry service out to the Iles de Chausey, so does this mean that they are now going to be running some kind of freight service out there?

Talking of freight services to the Iles De Chausey, we’ve seen La Grande Ancre go out that way on a couple of occasions with what looked like a load of freight.

More recently though she’s been going back and to into the bay to carry out what looks like fishing activities.

But here she is, at rest today in the harbour with some kind of pontoon or lighter tied up to her.

What with one thing and another, there’s a lot of activity in the harbour these days even if we haven’t seen a gravel boat for quite some time and it doesn’t look as if there’s one due any time soon.

With it being such a nice day today I decided to carry on with another long walk.

My journey took me through the town and out along the old harbour railway in the general direction of the Parc du Val es Fleurs.

It’s a walk that I’ve taken on a few occasions but it wasn’t until today that I looked up onto the top and saw this building.

It’s called the “Institution Sevigne’ and it’s some kind of secondary school. The school’s advertising blurb (crudely translated by Yours Truly – after all, if you want any crudity then, in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”) says that it’s a “Catholic Educational Establishment of which the aim is to help young people become adults”, whatever that is supposed to imply.

In the Parc du Val Es Fleurs there is some kind of zoo place where there are several animals of all kinds – terrestrial as well as aquatic ones.

With the crowds of people milling around the park, all of the animals were out there looking for some petting or, maybe, some food, although feeding the animals is strictly forbidden.

This horned sheep and these hens were eyeing me rather suspiciously, but I’m a vegan, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall

There’s a path and a set of steps at the back of the park that lead up to the top of the corniche and the road to Donville-les-Bains.

We were starting to lose the light by now but there was still a good view out across the rooftops and I could see a yacht out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel making the most of the last of the weekend’s sunshine, with the Brittany coast in the background.

The seagulls perched in a line on the roof were enjoying it too.

There’s a back way down the hill to the Place Marechal Foch.

That was the route that I took, and found myself amongst yet another madding crowd of people. Although the wind has died down considerably from how it was a few days ago, there’s still quite a powerful force embedded in the sea.

All of the people were thoroughly enjoying it, even when they received a drenching from the spray. And we’re still half an hour from high tide too.

But here’s an object lesson for you all.

Never stand on the boat-launching ramp when the sea is powering its way into shore like this. One of the waves caught the edge of the ramp just in the right place at the right moment and we had this huge cloud of spray thrown up.

When the wind caught it and blew it inland, that guy there knew all about it.

For a change I climbed up tall the steps and headed home for tea. A vegan pizza, which was delicious and properly cooked too, seeing as I’ve moved the oven shelf down one row to the bottom.

Rice pudding too for afters.

Even though I’d had a really good walk this afternoon, I still went out for my evening promenade.

One or two people out there too enjoying the chilly night, and so was I because I could take my time. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow so I can have a lie-in.

The pleasant evening enticed me to linger a while, leaning over the wall and looking down to the Place Marechal Foch where I was earlier this evening.

And then back home, but not before I include this photo of the Parc Val es Fleurs.

The reason why it’s so interesting is that you can see just how far down it is and that gives you some idea of the steps and that path that I had to climb up to the top.

The slope is about one-in-three and I actually managed to run about 100 metres up it too, and I was well-impressed by that.

And not only that either. On my way back from my evening walk I managed my evening run and made it all the way up to the top of the little ramp too – the one that in the past has always defeated me.

Things must be looking up.

So now it’s bed-time. No alarm for me tomorrow as it’s a Bank Holiday. And if I have a sleep that’s only half as good as the one that I had last night I’ll be happy.

There will be more albums to record too. So far tonight I’ve done seven.

And the guitar too. This afternoon I’ve been working out the chords to Traffic’s “Dear Mr Fantasy”.

But before I go completely, I’ll let you make up your own minds about what these kids were doing in a quiet corner of the Primary School playground down by the little stream.

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yachts baie de mont st michel pointe de carolles granville manche normandy france

privateer Le Pelley de Pléville dit la Mouette granville manche normandy france

chausiais granville manche normandy france

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storms high tide waves plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 6th November 2019 – I DIDN’T …

… go anywhere special today as I predicted. I spent the day in a gentle orbit around the apartment.

But that’s not to say that it’ll stay like that. Foolish me had to open his mouth on Monday, didn’t he? And say that he’d been to Uumaannaq, had taken plenty of photos and had friends there.

And so someone rang me up. Something to do with the local High School. “It’s Greenland Week here next week and we’ll be discussing Uummaannaq. Are you free on Friday afternoon the 22nd?”

Ahh well! That’ll teach me to open my big mouth, won’t it?

Despite being a little later in bed than I would have liked, there was time to go off for a ramble or two. Again this is another dream that I can only remember a bit of. I was with someone who might have been Castor and we were helping me get myself organised (that’s going to be a long job isnt it? Something like the Augean Stables). There was a cupboard that was open and you could see everything in it. She asked what I was going to do about it and I replied that I wasn’t going to do anything – it was all going to stay in there so she was working out how to close the cupboard. You could see all files and all that kind of things that were on there. I don’t remember very much more about this dream but there was plenty to it. In this cupboard was all kinds of office stuff, files, binders, computer ink and I had a vague recollection that it belonged to something to do with the ship but I don’t know.
And it was certainly vivid because I remember distinctly in my dazed state going to get out of bed to go to tidy it up and close the door
A little later there were four young people playing outside on the deck right in front on the bows of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. Don’t ask me what they were doing though because I was only asleep for a second.

There was a mad panic to fall out of bed. I’d vaguely heard the two earlier alarms but I desperately wanted to continue my run of early starts so having almost gone back to sleep, I just about managed to launch myself into consciousness just before the alarm.

After medication and breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes. And up until lunchtime I had managed to transcribe only three. But when I tell you that the running time of those three is just short of 29 minutes, you’ll understand why.

I told you that there were some mega-files in that lot but that’s nothing to what’s coming up. There’s one of over 4 hours and another of over 3 hours.

And I managed to fit in my three walks today.

At about 12:45 I went out for a walk around a new circuit, down all the steps, along the rue du Port and back up the rue des Juifs.

But a racket coming from down in the harbour disturbed my reverie before I’d gone very far at all. We had a trawler coming into the harbour.

And it was probably fully-laden with fish too. You could tell that by looking at the large flock of gulls all around it. They are presumably waiting for the fish-heads to be thrown overboard.

Yesterday, you’ll remember that we had a lovely photo of Carolles all bathed in the most gorgeous and warm sunlight.

The situation today though is completely different. No sunlight at all – in fact it’s bathed in the most enormous raincloud.

And just in case you are wondering, you needn’t. 5 minutes later I got the lot right down the back of my neck, as regular readers of this rubbish may well have anticipated.

A rather dripping wet me came back to the apartment for some lunch.

And afterwards, I sat down to complete Project 002. Yes, I’m anticipating that this might run for more than 99 editions.

And straight away we had a problem – in that the audio mixer couldn’t be picked up by the big computer.

After a great deal of trial and error I managed to make one of the laptops pick it up, and I dictated my notes onto that. And it’s awful. It sounds as if I have my head in a bucket.

But I’m not going to go around like this. My friend Hans modernised his recording studio a while back so I got onto him. And he has an old PC mixing desk that is surplus to requirements. It seems to have every function on it that you could wish for and probably brews the studio tea while it is at it.

We negotiated a democratic price for it and tomorrow it will be winging its way here, I hope. As I said, it’s time for me to organise myself and do things properly.

For the afternoon walk I changed my route and went for a walk around the walls.

The reason for that was that I wanted to see how they were doing with the house renovations in the rue du Nord.

As you can see, the one on the corner seems to be finished. They’ve extended the garage which is interesting, and the balcony that they have built over the extension does look quite nice.

I wonder what their plans are for it.

There was another house under construction further down the rue du Nord as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

That’s all finished now too, and I know what their plans for it are because as I’ve walked past it on many an evening walk, I’ve seen the lights burning in the window.

Someone is already living in it and I wish them luck. The view must be terrific from up top and I’m somewhat jealous.

But never mind the view from the top floor of the house. The view from down here is pretty good today too

For a change, now that the wind has died down somewhat, the atmosphere is a lot cleaner and there was a really good view out and up the coast. The seaside resort of Montmartin-sur-Mer was looking particularly attractive.

At least, I think that it’s Montmartin-sur-Mer. I lose count of which town is which all the way up there.

I case you haven’t gathered, the rain had stopped this afternoon and so there were people out and about.

There were even a few of them wandering around up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset by the Casino. But then again it is Wednesday afternoon so the kids are not in school. No reason why they can’t have a run about.

Talking of having a run about, there was no-one around by the time I got to my little running track, so I had a nice little run. Mind you, although I made it to my marker I was pretty much out of breath.

I have a feeling that I’m not going to see much improvement in my distances.

And talking of distances, out there in the distance close to the Brittany coast I noticed a dark speck that seemed to be moving very slowly.

With the big Nikon and the long zoom lens, I took a somewhat speculative shot of it with the intention of cropping it and blowing it up (he image, not the object) to see what it might be.

And it looks like some kind of naval patrol vessel out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel. And I’ve no idea why they would want to patrol out there. It seems strange to me.

Having finished the recording (for now) I could deal with tea. Some stuffing left over from the other night so I had taco rolls with rice and vegetables. Best ones that I’ve made too, although I’m not sure why.

And I finished off the last of the rice pudding too. That was nice as well

For the evening walk I went around the headland, totally alone. And I ended up running another few hundred metres along the footpath. I’m determined to do something about getting fit and keeping the weight off. So even on a quiet day I’ve done 64% of my daily activity and walked 5.0 kms.

So tonight I’ve done some web pages and I’ll listen to some music for a while, and then go to bed. Shopping at LIDL tomorrow, I reckon.

The walk wil ldo me good.

Sunday 3rd November 2019 – I HAD A …

… rather late day today. In fact my timetable was pushed back quite considerably.

It started quite late too – but then again it IS a Sunday and I’m allowed to lie in bed. No-one was happier than me to notice that the time when I awoke was 09:30. I’ve needed a night like that.

Plenty of time to go on a ramble during the night and when I’ve made any sense (such as it is) of the incoherent ramblings on the dictaphone I’ll tell you all about it.

So it was a slow start to the day and with it being a Sunday, I didn’t do much at all. 7 entries on the dictaphone was the most important part of the day’s work, and there were quite a few lengthy ones in there. That’s why I missed my morning walk and why I didn’t finish until after 16:00 (with an interruption for lunch of course).

As well as the lengthy ones that I mentioned, there was another one where I fell asleep again in mid-dictate so I’ll never know how that one ended.

One thing that I did was to find the time to go outside for my afternoon walk.

This storm, which has a name by the way, was still raging outside with an incredible violence. There were times when any kind of forward progress was impossible, with Tempète Amélie blowing me backwards.

But nevertheless I kept on pushing forwards. As Bob Dylan once famously said, “the only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin’ on”

In the absence of the morning walk I went on an extended hike around the headland on the new path and then down and back through the town.

As I rounded the headland, I was out of the worst of the storm but even here in the Baie de Mont St Michel it’s whipping itself up into a frenzy.

And, surprisingly, despite the violence of the wind, there was a fog of sorts out there. And the answer to that clearly isn’t Blowin’ in the wind, is it?

Back home and fuelling up with a nice warm coffee, I cracked on with updating the web pages and that’s another pile of those done. I’m making progress with that.

But I was so carried away that I ran past tea-time and it was 20:00 when I started to prepare the pizza. And then after half an hour and it still hadn’t cooked, I realised that I had had the setting for the heat turned down. No wonder things took so long yesterday.

Still, it was delicious, and so was the rice pudding that followed it down.

Totally alone on my evening walk tonight. But then again it was 22:00.

Not quite alone though. There was a trawler heading off out into the open seas despite the storm. People still have to eat, so fishermen still need to fish.

And my hat goes off to them going out there in weather like this.

At one stage of my walk I broke into a run again, and I managed to do the full length of my little track. Mind you, I bet that I’ll suffer for it tonight.

A busy day tomorrow so I’m off to bed early. I’ll let you know how the Day of Judgement went.

Sunday 29th September 2019 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest.

And quite right too. No alarm so I could enjoy a nice long lie-in until all of … errr … 07:30. And even so, I didn’t show a leg until about 09:00.

That was when I looked at the dictaphone. And Good Grief!
01:14 worth of notes at 02:10
01:47 worth of notes at 04:20
03:04 worth of notes at 05:29
03:17 worth of notes at 07:21
That’s what I call a lively and turbulent night! I wonder what I’ve been saying.

But I tell you something – and that is that I shall be Living in Interesting Times when I transcribe all of these notes. And what will be even more exciting will be when I add them into the blog and tell you lot all about them.

At 09:00 I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee and then came back into the bedroom to work.

That took me all the way up to about 10:30 when Rachel came down after her Sunday lie-in. We cooked breakfast together and then laid the table for the Taylor Sunday Breakfast Brunch.

I’ve very likely told you all about the Taylor Sunday Breakfast Brunch. It’s a legendary experience and people travel thousands of miles in order to partake. All kinds of food is on the table, although being a vegan I have to “make do” (if you can call it that) with toast, jam, baked beans, hash browns and fried vegetables. Plenty of coffee too, as you might expect.

We did the washing-up afterwards and then organised a pile of washing. At one stage we ended up with only half a load of dark clothes so I nipped upstairs, had a shower and changed my clothes and then bunged my dirty stuff in with the rest.

Tea was next. Rachel was cooking a joint of meat so I found the flatbread again and made a couple of vegan pizzas, one for me and one for our little vegan visitor.

Rice pudding was next, and I had just enough coconut milk to make a vegan version. It’s a dessert that’s unknown in Montreal so our visitor was somewhat hesitant, but her plate didn’t remain full for long.

Washing up again and then I sat down and carried on with the work that I’ve been doing. And now I’ve completed the blog for July as far as I can until I can dismantle the old laptop and rescue the perishing hard-drive. If you want to see where I reached, then you need to go to THIS LINK and work your way backwards.

It will all be subject to revision in due course when I add in the photos and even more so when I add in the dictaphone notes.

As for the voyage for the second half of August, you’ll have to wait a short while for that to follow on. Other things are occurring.

So that was my Lazy Sunday. I’m off to bed to recuperate my strength a little as the week starts tomorrow. And it looks as if I’ve drawn the short straw tomorrow. School run starts at 07:45.

And in other news, my visitor from Celbridge in Ireland has been back for the last couple of nights, so Hello again! to you. But that’s not bothering me half as much as the question as to how a visitor to my site has managed to find his (or her) way directly here from what seems to be a link on a “certain type” of pornography website.

In fact, there are quite a few rather surprising links to my blog right now, from all kinds of places.

Strange goings-on indeed right now

Wednesday 1st May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

There i was, up before the final alarm clock, breakfasted and tidied up, and even on the point of starting work, and wondering why I hadn’t heard the kids going past on their way to school.

And then suddenly it struck me. It’s the 1st of May today, and in France that’s the Fête du Travail and in France they celebrate the Festival of Work by … errr … taking a day off work.

It’s a Bank Holiday today and usually I celebrate Bank Holiday by switching off the alarms and having a lie-in. And that’s when I remember of course.

Despite the early start there was plenty of time to go on a nocturnal ramble. Last night there was something going on in the place where I was living where we had been overrun by the enemy or a new political party or something but there were people wearing blue tee-shirts and pink shorts like footballers who seemed to be in charge and the general view was not to resist them. But you can imagine me – I was having none of this at all. This was unfortunately all that I could remember – there was much more of this. There was something about a concert (I couldn’t transcribe this as I didn’t understand it) and I was riding a horse in this and despite all of the difficult arrangements of the course and the way that it had been set out and how it had been set out to please the invaders I managed to get round there with no faults which impressed almost everyone who was watching me.

There was more too but I shall spare you the detains seeing as you are probably eating your tea or something.

After I’d organised myself for the day and started work, I had a telephone call from Rosemary. And so we were chatting away for quite some considerable time.

Once I’d gone back to work, I started on the dictaphone notes. That took me up to lunchtime and another load has disappeared into the “filing” drawer. Only another 211 to go, so I need to get a wiggle on.

Lunch was inside again, and then I had a couple of duties to perform this afternoon.

Fighting off the fatigue I got in touch with Acer. Being as impressed with the Solid-State Drive in this computer and having an old laptop with a failed hard drive in an accessible position, I enquired as to whether a Solid State Drive would work in it. I explained that it was working on Windows 8.1 but he was talking at great length about Windows 7.0 and how my laptop wouldn’t be compatible with a Solid-State Drive.

I suppose that I’ll have to buy one and try it and see.

This was the cue to go for an early walk.

And with it being a Bank Holiday I wasn’t alone out there. Not only were there hordes of people taking the air this afternoon, we were being entertained by a group of hang-gliders likewise taking the air.

I’m absolutely certain that I wouldn’t like to be up (or down) there doing that.

The main reason for me being out and about early was that I had an appointment this afternoon.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, a few weeks ago I caught them opening up one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall.

I met the guy yesterday and he told me that they were preparing an exhibition for D-Day and he wondered whether I might like to speak to any English-speaking visitors who might be present.

The boss was due to be there at 15:00 so I turned up at about 15:15, only to find that he wasn’t coming at all.

I had a conducted tour of another bunker as recompense. This was one of the ones that overlooked the approach to the harbour and was fitted with a 105mm gun of the type that would be carried on a submarine.

They are hoping to be able to obtain one to mount in here as a display once the bunker is opened to the public

Back here, I rang up my bank in Canada. My bank card has expired and I won’t be back at the Branch where it’s held until September. However, I’m planning on being in Canada much earlier than that so I need access to my account.

After a lengthy discussion they agreed to post it to me here instead.

That left me just enough time to deal with the outstanding photos for the recent blog entries – and they are now up-to-date as far back as my trip to the High Arctic.

I’ll need to press on with that.

Tea was exciting though. all kinds of bits and pieces left over, like a couple of mushrooms, a bit of a pepper, an old potato and so on, so I cooked it all up into a curry with some bulghour and had it with rice and veg, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

On my walk this evening there wasn’t much going on, except the fact that Thora has appeared in harbour again.

What drew my attention to her was the fact that she had a shipping container on her deck. I’ve no idea what there might be in but it must be something important.

And with the rather rapid turn-round that they seem to be doing in the harbour these days I wonder if she will still be there in the morning.

So with shopping tomorrow, I’m going to have an early night. There’s plenty to do and not much time to do it.

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beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Sunday 28th April 2019 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… football match this after noon at the Cité des Sports. This time, not played in a hurricane, just a high wind.

So that’s all right then.

The 2nd XI of US les Mouettes de Donville were playing the Jeunesse Cenillaise in Division 3 of the District League of the département. Not a very high standard at all and these two clubs are relatively low down the table too, but the match was of some interest.

For the first 30 minutes Cenillaise swarmed all over Donville with comparative ease. They had a n°10 playing up front who certainly looked as if he had been around the block more than once, and the Donville centre-backs were extremely pedestrian. How Cenillaise didn’t score any goals at all was a mystery to me – they even missed a penalty.

But whether the n°10 took a knock I really don’t know, but after half an hour he slowed right down and the game became much more of an even contest.

Not to any good purpose because after 90 minutes the match ended 0-0. You might be thinking that this match was rather boring, but it was anything but. It was very finely balanced and quite interesting from a neutral point of view.

One player stood out head and shoulders though. Cenillaise had a young lad playing centre-half, wearing n°3. His name was Gildas apparently, and he was totally outstanding in defence. His positioning, running and tackling were excellent and it was quite clear that there was no attacker going to ever get past him.

How he’s only playing at this level and not three or four levels higher up is a total mystery to me. I’d have him in any side that I would be picking.

With it being Sunday, I had intended to have a long lie-in. Waking up at 06:20 was no part of the plan at all. Mind you, 08:00 was much more of a respectable time to be raising myself from the dead, although 09:00 would have been much more like it.

Plenty of time to go on a travel too, and when I find where I put the dictaphone I’ll tell you all about it;

After breakfast I finished off the photos and started to add them to the blog. I reached as far back as last Wednesday, and one that I took on Thursday has to be on eof the best that I’ve ever taken.

Lunch was inside again but afterwards I headed out in the wind and the occasional light shower of rain for the football.

Back here, tea was a vegan pizza followed by a rice pudding, and it was all so delicious. One of my best efforts yet.

And while I was walking around the headland Rosemary telephoned me so I rushed back to speak. We put the world to rights, and we also discussed a cunning plan.

Now I’m off to bed. Back to work in the morning and there’s a lot to do. I hope that I’m up to doing it.

Thursday 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

… really difficult today today.

What went wrong was the fact that having had a long sleep during the afternoon, I wasn’t all that tired when I went to bed.

Nevertheless I went to sleep pretty quickly and even managed to go on something of a nocturnal ramble. But I’ll spare you the details because you are probably eating your tea right now.

However, I awoke at about 01:30 and that was that. I lay awake tossing and turning until the alarm went off at 06:00.

Just for a change I was up early this morning and after the usual performance and a shower, I set the washing machine off doing a load of washing.

Once that was on its way I went into town. But I didn’t get very far before I had to stop.

A few weeks ago I photographed them digging up the pavement in the rue des Juifs for the fibre-optic cable. But they had filled in the trenches and sealed it all over a good while ago.

But today, the fibre-optic people were there digging it all up again. I asked why but the guy to whom I spoke just shrugged his shoulders

Down at the quayside in the harbour Normandy Trader was there unloading.

I imagine that she had come in on the morning tide,and having missed to opportunity to photograph Thora yesterday, I took a quick photo of here while I was going into town.

After all, the speed in which these ships are turning round these days, she may well not be here by the time that I return.

And so I continued on my way to the Mairie for the Certificate that I needed. But there was no-one there to sign it so I had to go back later.

Next stop was the bank to change the standing order for my rent. The rental goes up at the beginning of next month so I had to do that.

Third stop was the railway station to pick up my tickets for my next trip to Leuven in May. I’m spinning my appointments out now to every 5 weeks so as to fit into a new revised plan.

Just then Rosemary telephoned me. So instead of going to LIDL (I don’t really need anything) I headed for home.

And I was almost right about Normandy Trader.

She had by now left her berth, and I just managed to catch her stern disappearing out of the harbour. Another quick turnround.

And I need to make the most of my sightings of her and of Thora and quite possibly the gravel boats too.

There’s no Customs Post here in Granville so when Brexit inevitably happens, these ships will need to go to a port that has a customs post – like St Malo. No wonder everyone here is so upset.

Rosemary and I had a really good chat for quite a considerable time as usual, and we put the world to rights while we were on the line. Ingrid came onto the internet too and we we had a chat too;

That took me nicely up to lunchtime, which was taken inside because by now the weather had broken and we were having a storm.

Once the weather eased off I went back into town, only to find that the Mairie here doesn’t issue the Certificates. They seem to think that it’s something that only applies to small communes where the mayor knows personally all of his inhabitants.

Anyway, I left them fighting with the prefecture over the issue and came home, being caught in yet another rainstorm;

I had a few things to do, but by 17:30 I was off with the fairies. Back in bed for a good 100 minutes fast asleep.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding, and then my walk around the headland. Away on the horizon I noticed something moving so the horizon out in the English Channel so I photographed it.

I was right about one thing – that it was indeed a huge ship.

No idea which one though because it was too far out, but I thought that it might be Pont Aven, the Brittany Ferries flagship heading to St Malo.

However, when I looked on live ships database later on in the evening, the recorded position at the time I took the photo seemed to correspond with the known position of Bretagne.

She’s one of the oldest ferries working the Channel, having been launched in 1989, and has a gross tonnage of about 24500 tonnes.

She’s actually living on borrowed time, having been taken out of service in 2016, but the contract for her replacement was cancelled and so she’s back on duty for now.

My perambulations took me round the Pointe du Roc and along the path at the top looking over the chantier navale.

There have been a few changes there today. The old trawler that’s been undergoing major reconstruction down at the bottom of the yard has now been brought up to the top end and put on chocs here. It’s weather protection has been removed too.

It’s been joined by another trawler too, the big pink and blue one on the left. No idea what they are doing with that one.

But I couldn’t go back into my building without taking a photo of probably the most beautiful sunset that I have ever seen.

It’s not very often that I produce a remarkable photograph but this one actually worked in spades. The sun was just peeking through the heavy clouds and was illuminating the buildings on the Ile de Chausey just like the spotlights might do on a stage set.

It’s really come out well and I’m very proud of this very dramatic photo.

So I’ll try for an early night tonight. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, but I still have plenty of things that need doing. it’s going to be a long day.

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 – I REMEMBER SAYING …

… yesterday to Ingrid that I was feeling probably better than I have been feeling for quite some time.

And so it’s no surprise whatever to learn that today I’d had a relapse.

Last night was nothing like as early as I was hoping and it was something of a disturbed night. Nevertheless there was enough time to go for something of a ramble. There were two schools in London. Both originated from the same family who owned a wealthy sailing factory. One was a kind of prison or reform school and the other was an upper-class school and everyone was always getting the two mixed up about who went where. The guy who was chairman of the Board of Governors at the wealthy school was the sole surviving member of the family who founded it so some people thought that there might be a confilct of interest between the objectives of the school and the running of it. The school was running through some kind of financial issues. I don’t remember too much about it except that on one occasion the chairman was sitting there with his head in his hands doing a really fine impression of Quasimodo going “the bills! Ohh the bills!”.

Despite the bad night I was up before the final alarm went off, but I’ve somehow awoken with my bad throat and coughing fit again. It’s never-ending, isn’t it? And a certain medical condition that plagued me for a considerable while and then mysteriously disappeared has suddenly come back with a vengeance.

With having had an early start I was all fit for work and had a good crack at photocopying and sorting documents for my little visit tomorrow, stopping for a shower along the way.

There are a few papers missing but I can assemble quite a comprehensive folder full of documents;

The printer ran out of ink midway through but luckily I had bought some more when I bought the printer. It was something of a performance to make the cartridge fit because Epson doesn’t like you using non-original cartridges.

There was also time to have a crack at the dictaphone, and now all of the notes for Canada 2016 are transcribed. I’m about a third of a way through them now, but I won’t be as quick with the next batch as there are some substantial files in there.

Lunch was taken indoors today because the weather has clouded over and ran was looking likely.

Back at work I had to change my hospital appointment because I need it to be a week later. And then it was necessary to book my accommodation and travel. So all of that is done.

On my walk around the headland this afternoon I tried once more the new route that has just reopened.

I reckon that the older path is the diagonal line that runs bottom left to upper right across the centre of the image.

That looks as if it’s formerly a path on some kind of gider bridge but it looks as if it’s slipped out of position. The part at the head of the bend looks as if it’s been dug out quite recently. It’s not very wide at all.

having climbed all of the steps back up to the top, I walked along the path to have a look at the chantier navale.

There’s another new arrival in there today. She’s Notre Dame du Cap Lihou, the local lifeboat whom we have seen out and about in the sea now and again.

No idea what she’s up to in there and I won’t be able to find out either I suppose, because I don’t imagine that she will be in there for long.

For a few days now we’ve been seeing the little pontoon in the harbour taking core-drill samples of the sea bed to investigate its make-up.

That’s now gone and we have a different machine in there. So I wonder what that’s going to be up to.

But It’s not escaped my notice that in the background are objects that look suspiciously like floating walkways, and so the next step, I imagine, is to place them in the water and secure them to the quayside.

Back here I tried to crack on with the mountain of photos but I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t fight off the sleep on the chair, and in the end gave up and went to bed. I think that climbing all of the steps was what might have finished me off.

For a good 90 minutes I was right out of it and I awoke feeling like death.

Tea was a slice of giant pasty with potatoes and veg followed by a rice pudding.

The evening walk, accompanied part of the way by a group of boys from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs, was agony but I needed to do it.

At the beach at the Plat Gousset he tide was coming in, and coming in quite quickly too. There was a lovely current rolling over the beach and swamping the tidal swimming pool.

It was quite an impressive sight. Such a shame that there was no-one else around to enjoy it. I was quite on my own out there once those boys had cleared off.

A little further on around the corner, I stopped for a while where the path around the walls overlooks the rue Paul Poirier.

The light was going quite rapidly so I took a photograph just as the street lights were coming on and illuminating the streets.

This will be probably the last photograph of street lights that I shall take on my evening walk until later in the year, unless I happen to be delayed in my plans for going out.

So back home now and I really am going to have an early night. Tomorrow is a big day so I need to be on form.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: rice pudding

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – TODAY IS THE FIRST …

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

Wednesday 15th January 2020 – IT’S REALLY NICE …

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

Monday 25th November 2019 – I MISSED …

Friday 22nd November 2019 – WHAT ODDS …

Sunday 10th November 2019 – EXCUSE ME …

Wednesday 6th November 2019 – I DIDN’T …

Sunday 3rd November 2019 – I HAD A …

Sunday 29th September 2019 – SUNDAY IS A …

Wednesday 1st May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Sunday 28th April 2019 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

Thursday 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 – I REMEMBER SAYING …

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