Tag Archives: storm

Saturday 5th December 2020 – I’M NOT …

… feeling myself today.

And quite right too, as it’s a disgusting habit.

So while you admire some more photos of storms at night on the Plat Gousset, I can tell you that there’s probably a reason for part of my issues, in that not going to bed until about 02:00 and waking up at 06:00 means that I’m probably quite exhausted. But looking around me and the state in which I seem to be living right now, I can see all of the signs of having fallen into the Black Pit.

When I moved here from the farm I vowed that I wouldn’t let my place ever get into this condition, but they seem to be somewhat hollow words now.

But yes, I was indeed awake at 06:00 and although I didn’t quite beat the third alarm to my feet, there was only a matter of seconds in it.

Having had the medication, I listened to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And even though there hadn’t been much time in bed, there had still been plenty of time to wander off. We (whoever “we” were) were living in a house in Africa, a great big house. There were servants and all of these people who were living there. Armed guards and everything because the area was a little out of control. We noticed, peering through the forest, that there were 3 horsemen going past in the distance. We didn’t really pay too much attention to them because there were people always going past and usually it was better not to know who they were. Then a few minutes later they came back. One of the servants pointed them out. It turned out that they were dressed as policemen but they were carrying with them this enormous collection of knives. That made them the strangest kind of policemen I’d ever seen. The servant stuck his head out of the window to see. One of the men saw him and gesticulated so he opened the door and words were exchanged. The woman of the house went next to the window to speak to these guys, then turned back and said “we all have to present our papers to these people”. I made sure than I appeared in the window to make sure that they realised that there were a lot more than just the 2 people they had seen so far in the house.

a href=”https://www.erichall.eu/images/2012/2012044.html”> storm waves plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall Later on I had a shower and then headed out for the shops. NOZ had a few bits and pieces but nothing of real interest and at LeClerc the only thing that I bought that was unusual was some puff pastry sheets. That is something really complicated to make and way beyond my capabilities, but I have to turn my attention to making my mince pies very soon.

Back here I was too exhausted to unpack straight away so I made my hot chocolate and with a slice of chocolate cake I came in here to sit down and to do some work.

After lunch I came back to continue but fatigue had caught up with me again and I crashed out for half an hour on the chair, feeling pretty much awful.

Nevertheless, I awoke in time for the football. Penybont playing Caernarfon, a nice mid-table match in the JD Cymru League. And whatever it is that I’m suffering from Caernarfon must have had it too because they were as awful as I was. 6-0 the scoreline was to Penybont and, believe me, Caernarfon were lucky to get nil.

With Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann in the defence, Penybont were striding through on goal at will. I felt really sorry for Tyler French in the Cofis goal because on one occasion he made a brilliant reflex save only for the ball to hit the bar with three of his defenders and one attacker standing on the goal line, the ball did have to drop at the feet of the Penybont attacker who did the necessary.

Caernarfon’s midfield was non-existent too and Mike Hayes and Jack Kenny were totally isolated up front waiting for balls that never came. In fact, “balls” is probably a good word. Loads of them.

By now it was time to go for my afternoon walk. A rather late one, in fact as it happens. And I bumped into one of my neighbours on the stairs and we had a little chat amongst ourselves for a couple of minutes.

When I eventually made it outside, the torrential downpour that we had been having for most of the day had ceased and there were just the occasional gusts of rain coming in with the wind. Mind you, further up the coats of the Cotentin Peninsula they were taking a right battering by the looks of things. That’s an evil-looking cloud up there.

The waves, although still quite fresh, aren’t as turbulent as they were last night which is one good thing, I suppose.

It was quite dark by the time that I made it out, partly due to the time and partly due to the thick, heavy clouds blocking out the sunlight.

Instead of the usual Zoom lens, I had the f1.8 50mm lens on the camera and while it doesn’t zoom in or out, it’s made to perform in these conditions. I don’t recall if I have taken a photo of the Rue du Nord in the twilight before, so here’s one of them to be going on with.

You can see where the city walls zig-zag just to the left of centre where the cars are parked. That’s where there’s the little postern gate that leads to the path that runs around underneath the walls which is part of my running track.

This afternoon I was the only person out there, which is hardly a surprise given the weather conditions so I had the place to myself.

My route took me around the path towards the lighthouse and I was surprised to see that the coloured lights on the semaphore were illuminated. I’ve no idea what message it was supposed to be and to whom it was signalling because I couldn’t see any lights on the semaphore stations on the Ile de Chausey or over on the Brittany coast.

Even though it’s pretty dark now (and wasn’t that quick?) the beam on the lighthouse isn’t illuminated yet. They need to get a move on.

At the top I cut across the lawn and then across the car park to the headland but there was nothing going on there. So with no-one about I ran all the way down the footpath on top of the cliffs on the other side.

My route went past the chantier navale where Ceres II and the yacht were sleeping peacefully still on their own.

One set of Christmas lights that I hadn’t checked were the ones in the Rue du Port. usually they haven’t been up to very much and so I was intrigued to see what they had done. And the answer was simply that they had done nothing to improve on last year’s.

In fact, it’s all pretty depressing, isn’t it? There’s nothing actually around the port at all.

By now it was raining fairly heavily, so I took another photo of the Rue du Nord from a slightly different aspect.

When you think that the Port is the main entry to the town for many visitors you would expect the Council to make much more of an effort than this with the Christmas lights. And if I were the owners of Marité I’d have a pile of Christmas lights strung up all over her rigging too.

She would look quite magnificent like that, I reckon, but it seems to be too much effort for some people . I’ve talked about my “interactions” with the crew of the ship before … “and on many occasions too” – ed.

Back here I did more work in a kind-of desultory fashion and then called a halt for tea. Not that I was all that hungry – I just had a bowl of pasta and veg, including some fresh steamed broccoli (this week’s special veg offer from LeClerc) tossed in olive oil, garlic and some vegan pesto that I found in NOZ a while back (that’s why I like NOZ – it comes up with all kinds of interesting things now and again).

later in, in the drizzle, I went out for my evening run around the walls.

Not along the footpath under the walls though. Many of the footpaths are flooded after the rains of today and down there it must be dreadful. I stayed up on the road and walked and ran around to the Place de l’Isthme and the Musée d’Art Moderne Richard Anacréon which I haven’t photographed in the night before as far as I remember.

And I needn’t really have bothered tonight either because I couldn’t find a decent spec to take the picture.

From right up here though there’s a good view across the town and we can see more Christmas lights down there on the Bank and the Post Office in the Cours Jonville.

But what we can also see by the side of the Rue du Bosq is the abandoned railway line down to the port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that here and there I’ve posted photos of bits of the railway network that runs through the town and around the port. It’s quite substantial and must have seen a lot of use when the harbour was full of all of the cod fishers that went out to the Grand Banks around Newfoundland.

All that has gone though now with the exhaustion of the cod stocks, and the railway network has unfortunately gone with it.

The wind was back up too and we were having some more stormy waves, as you saw earlier. I took a few pics and then ran on home to write up my notes and have a long chat with my friend in the UK.

A lie-in tomorrow and I can’t say that i’m sorry either. I know that i’m sickening for something but I don’t know what, so plenty of rest and sleep will be the order of the day I think.

But I mustn’t forget to make some pizza bases. I’ve run out yet again and we can’t have a Sunday evening without a pizza, can we?

Friday 4th December 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change I had a lie-in today and didn’t leave my bed until about 07:30.

And it wasn’t necessarily through oversleeping either. When the alarms went off I was regaled by the sound of a torrential rainstorm and all kinds of wicked things going on outside and they certainly weren’t the kind of conditions conducive to constructive thought.

When I finally arose, I had my medication and then set a pile of lentils on the go in the slow cooker.

Back in the bedroom, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was back at school last night. I had a girlfriend but one of my friends from school started dating her. After the first time he told me that he was going to be taking her out again. I told him that I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could. I would be taking her out. He started to turn all violent saying that he had all of the weapons arranged, all the oil and everything like that and he’d be dealing with it. But I stuck my ground and we ended up having this fierce argument.

Later on there was something to do with a dog. We’d come into possession of a dog for some reason. My brother, father and I were coming down Underwood Lane in Crewe and were talking about going to get some dog biscuits. We turned left into West Street but it wasn’t out of Underwood Lane but out of Minshull New Road. There was a pet shop right on the corner there so we stopped. But I couldn’t believe West Street. It was like the Blitz had hit it. Everything had been demolished and there was just the odd house here and there on the south side sticking up and a little Sprite 400 caravan with people living in it parked there with a washing line and a load of washing outside. We went into this shop and the woman asked what we wanted. My brother said that we were looking for dog treats. My father took out some money and it must have been a couple of hundred quid he brought out. I said “dad, what are you trying to do? Buy the shop or something?”. This woman put a pile of dog biscuits into a bag, this kind of thing and then a few packets of sweets, saying “this will do you right for Christmas” and charged I dunno about £20 or something for it. He took it and went outside but then started to give my brother a lecture about buying stuff. “What she’s probably done is given all kinds of stuff that aren’t suitable for the dog, stuff that’s past its sell-by date, all this kind of thing. We should have taken much more care about what we bought”. he started to go through it and found loads of stuff that wasn’t suitable. he decided that he would go back into the shop and renegotiate the deal. I was outside, looking at the road, how it went further on and zigzagged up this spectacular cliff like a wild west mesa or whatever. There were birds flying over there and a couple of dogs flying around. I thought that this was a really idyllic setting here but my brother and my father were in such a deep discussion about these dog biscuits that they failed to notice it.

By now, the weather had cleared up so I rinsed the lentils, put them back in with fresh clean water and flavouring, and then fried some onions, garlic, tofu and beans with more flavouring. When it was all cooked properly, I added it all to the slow cooker and left it in there to fester on “low”.

Grabbing my rain jacket and the rest of my equipment I headed off outside for the shops.

And you can see here what was going on this morning. I thought at first that it was snow but in actual fact it was a mega-hailstorm that had descended upon us from a great height. Most of it had melted now but there were still a few vestiges left.

So leaving it at that, I set off into town. And before I’d gone a quarter of a mile the heavens opened again and I was absolutely, totally and thoroughly drenched. This was not what I was expecting at all. There had been blue skies 15 minutes earlier.

How long is it since we’ve had an old car on these pages? It must be a while, I reckon, so here are two for the price of one.

The red one is a Porsche 924, a model made from about 1976 to 1988. About 150,000 were made which was no surprise because for a Porsche, they were relatively affordable. However, it was its affordability and popularity that were its downfall because many people who bought one were mocked for being “nouveau riche” arrivists. Although the vehicle handled well, its actual performance was lamentable for a top-end sports car until they began to be fitted with turbos. And the turbos brought with them their own problems.

The blue one is much more like my car of course. A Ford Capri from the early 1980s, this one. It’s described as a “280” by which I imagine that it has the 2.8 litre V6 “Cologne” engine in it (Strider has a 4.0 litre Cologne engine in it). Of course, if I were to own such a car, which I wouldn’t turn down, it would be a black one and the V engine would be binned and replaced with a 2-litre Pinto engine

having done a lap around LIDL, then loaded up like a packhorse I headed for home. As well as the immense shopping list that I took with me, they also had a few Christmas dainties that I could eat and so as they won’t be there for ever, I grabbed a few.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few weeks we’ve seen them demolishing the facade of a bar, La Civette, in the Rue Paul Poirier, and then building a wooden wall around it while they worked inside.

It looks as if they’ve had the unveiling of the new facade since I last passed this way. It’s a big improvement on what was there before and, thankfully, it doesn’t resemble too much the other new facades going up around the town that all look the same.

And you can tell how the weather is doing right now. Teeming down with rain and it’s really dark. all of the lights oare on in the street, despite it being 11:00.

Of course it’s Friday, not Thursday, so there are different things going on in the street that I wouldn’t normally see when I’m out and about usually.

We’ve talked … “at great length” – ed … about the fishing industry in the town and all of the lorries and vans that go to the fish processing plant to cart away the catch. But some of the produce is sold locally and every Friday morning there’s a stall on the harbour where one of the local fishermen sells his catch.

Straight from the sea.

It’s a far cry of course from the fish market in Oostende that we have seen before but nevertheless it’s an interesting venture. Seafood doesn’t get any fresher than this.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and a slice of my chocolate cake, and then had to speak to Rosemary. She’d rung me up to say that she was having computer issues. So I had to talk her through a remote session in order to fix it.

My Diploma in Computing does come in handy some times even though it was 20 years ago since I obtained it.

After lunch I had a look at the pie filling that was simmering away in the slow cooker. Far too liquidy and so to bind it and make it nice and glutinous, a couple of handfuls of porridge oats went in and were stirred around. That should stiffen it up somewhat.

Once that was organised I went and carried on with some of the arrears from Central Europe.

Later on it was time for me to go for my afternoon walk. And it was just as well that it had stopped raining.

But just look at the sky over there down the Brittany coast. When you consider just how nice it has been at times, this is rather depressing, isn’t it? This is what they call around here un ciel de plomb – a leaden sky. And you can see that it lives up to its description.

All that I can say is that I’m glad that I’m not out there at sea in all of that. The Brittany coast must be taking quite a pasting at the moment.

Over towards the Ile de Chausey it’s somewhat brighter, but there is still a terrific rainstorm cascading down on the population over there.

And the wind is blowing it my way so I don’t want to hang around here. I’m the only person out here walking and I can understand why if all of this weather suddenly arrives. So I clear off around the headland to see what’s on the other side.

And nothing of any significance over there either, except for more of the same. Nothing of note, apart from the usual, in the chantier navale. But by now the rain has arrived and it’s starting to fall quite heavily so I don’t want to hang around.

But there’s something bizarre going on down in the loading bay in the port.

Those two lorries shouldn’t be there unless they are delivering, and if they are delivering, we are going to be having an interesting nautical arrival down there pretty soon. I wonder what it might be. Still, we’ll find out in de course I suppose.

Musing on that for a moment, I turned and headed on home and a nice hot mug of coffee. And I can’t say that I didn’t deserve it. By now the rain was teeming down once more and I was soaked to the skin again.

Back here, I switched off the slow cooker and emptied the contents out to cool. A nice glutinous sticky filling. Just what I wanted.

So I made my pastry and put it in my mould. And when the filling had cooled down properly, I filled the pie base and made a pie lid out of some of the remaining pastry. With the pastry that was left, I made a quick apple turnover.

Now it was time for my session on the guitars. And I spent much of the time trying (and eventually succeeding) in working out the chords to Richard Thompson’s “Keep Your Distance”.

I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic for certain events that occurred over three nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour that one day I might talk about when I’m in the mood. There are a couple of lines in that song that really are quite relevant.

Half way through the proceedings with the guitar I’d switched on the oven and started off the pie and the apple turnover. Now, having finished the guitar, I came in and did a huge mound of washing up.

There were some potatoes left so I had put those in the oven too so I sorted out some veg – sprouts, carrots and runner beans, and put them in a small pan and cooked them in some gravy with some herbs.

Eventually the pie was done – at least on top. I wished that I had cooked it lower down in the oven and not on a metal tray as I had done. It’s a mistake that I always make, cooking too high in the oven and having a heat deflector underneath doesn’t help anything either.

But it actually tasted delicious and there are another 7 slices for the freezer for a later date. The apple turnover was impressive too. That worked really well.

It was time for me to go out on my evening walk and runs so I hit the streets, straight into the biting wind that made running almost impossible.

Nevertheless I pushed on as well as I could but I eschewed the route down on the footpath under the walls due to the bad weather. And as it was by now raining quite heavily I carried on the route that I took yesterday.

From up on the Place de l’Isthmus I could hear the waves crashing down onto the promenade at the Plat Gousset so I wandered down the steps of the Escalier du Moulin a Vent to have a look at what was happening.

It was certainly wild out there. And it’s hard to believe that we are still a fair way away from high tide. What this is going to be like in an hour’s time will be anyone’s guess, but it certainly would be something to see.

But not for me, unfortunately. By now the rain was coming down in sheets and I was being soaked to the skin.

Braving the weather, I stuck it out just long enough to take a second photograph and then ran all the way across the Square Maurice Marland in the general direction of home.

Just for a change, I took the shortest route possible. I’d had my walk out to the shops and back, my afternoon stroll and now my evening runs so I was quite confident that I’d done enough today.

Coming back the short way, I ended up in the Rue St Jean. And I reckoned that I haven’t taken a photo down here at this end for quite some considerable time. I’d better put that right.

And you can see the weather in this photograph. teeming down with rain and everywhere soaking wet. Including me.

And the Place Cambernon just down there with the Christmas lights peering around the corner.

having done that, I ran on home to write up my notes. 147% on the fitbit is good enough for me today.

Shopping at LeClerc and Noz tomorrow. And there will probably be other things that I need but which I’ve forgotten that I’ll remember when I return home. That always happens to me.

Thursday 3rd December 2020 – I DIDN’T …

… go to the shops today.

On looking out of the window I noticed that it was absolutely chucking it down and there was a violent wind bending all the branches of the trees. It’s not as if there’s anything particular that I need today, so I’ll wait until tomorrow and try again.

Another thing that I didn’t do today was to beat the third alarm. When it went off, I was still in bed. Mind you, I was up and about within seconds so it didn’t make a great deal of difference either.

With it being shopping day (even though it ended up not so being) I had a shower, and then while you admire a couple of photos of tonight’s storm, I’ll attack the dictaphone.

A gang of thieves had raided a large shop and had escaped with an enormous amount of money in the run-up to Christmas. They decided that they would go on and do it again thinking that there would be more money in it now and they would have learnt a lot from their previous escapade. So that was what they did. But what was lacking this time was a suitable watch-out, a suitable dedication and a certain amount of ruthlessness. They obviously thought that they knew it all before and that they knew it all but whereas the authorities had learnt quite a lot, these people hadn’t. The person who was actually the security guard was actually one of the criminals. He faked the hold-up while someone fired a shotgun blast that blew out one of the windows in a door and the guard let everyone in. They started rampaging through the store, going through the safe but there was just one guy working. The others were larkign around a bit. There was no-one in the foyer of the place keeping an eye on who was coming up and down in the lift which was still working. Of course the Police appeared pretty quickly because they were all clued up by this before the gang had even finished loading up the stuff from the 2nd safe. It was the look on the guy’s face when everyone was urging on the safecracker, when he got everything out of the 1st safe and they said “there’s another safe to go now”. You should see the look on his face because he’s the only one working. The others were just larking around when speed was the essence. if they had taken what they had out of the 1st safe and disappeared they might have made it. As it was there was a running battle all the way down this street with the police and these gangsters. They’d set the whole street on fire in trying to make away their escape in the confusion. But it hadn’t quite worked like that and they were trapped by the flames. And I awoke in a night sweat

A little later I was staying in a house with a family. A house very similar to Davenport Avenue. There was a question about this mattress. We had to put it out of the way and I had assured everyone that it would go somewhere in a cupboard so I tried to push it into a cupboard but after a while trying, it wouldn’t go so I said in the end “what would it matter if it went into the attic?” They all agreed to put it into the attic so I climbed into the attic ready for them to pass it to me. But it looked far too long to go into the attic and had to be folded in half. I wasn’t sure whether it would fit. We needed it to be in the box to keep the dust away from it and that was going to be even more difficult. It was going to turn out to be one of these Chinese puzzle things . Again I awoke in a sweat. There were a few other things we could get into the attic afterwards as well if we persevered which would make the place look a lot better anyway

There was more to it than that too but as you are probably eating your meal I’ll spare you the gory details.

Having typed all of that I spent the morning dealing with the arrears of my journey to Central Europe. There was a break for my hot chocolate and chocolate cake and I do have to say that despite how it looks, my chocolate cake is delicious. And the icing, once it had set, was perfect too.

That recipe will be used again, certainly, but with individual cake cases to better manage the dough mixture.

After lunch I had the kefir to attend to as stocks are getting low right now. The earliest batch of kiwis are now super-ripe so they were whizzed up into a pulp, the juice was extraced and the remainder squashed to extract the final drops.

The kefir that had been brewing was now passed through the filter with the kiwi pulp in so that it would rinse more liquid through into the juice in the big jug while I made up another batch of kefir

The kefir and kiwi juice in the big jug were all mixed together and then filtered through the very fine mesh filter into the bottles where it will ferment for a few days

By now, believe it or not, it was time to go out for my afternoon walk.

And so walk I did seeing as the rain had stopped for the moment. But the weather had certainly brought out the mushrooms. They were sprouting everywhere and were quite an impressive size. This one must have been about three inches in diameter.

Many people have asked me if I know whether these mushrooms are edible or not. I usually reply that I don’t know, but there is a test that works. All you do is just before you go to bed, take a small piece, cook it and eat it. If you wake up next morning then you know that it’s perfectly safe to eat.

It’s infallible

Strangely, even though the weather was heavily overcast and it was threatening rain, there was a really good view down the Brittany coast.

If you look closely at this photograph you’ll not only see the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel but also the headland behind it that it is protecting. And while seeing the lighthouse is not an everyday occurrence, seeing the land is even less so.

The gap in the land mass that you will notice just to the right of centre, that’s the bay with Saint-Cast-le-Guildo at the bottom – the little port where we stayed one night in early summer when we were out aboard wem>Spirit of Conrad.

The view in the other direction from where I was standing is pretty impressive too despite the weather.

from left to right, we have

Coudeville-sur-Mer on the extreme left
The “Route Blanche” caravan site
The large white building which I think is the grandstand for the racecourse
the airport buildings
Bréville church on the skyline
L’Oasis camp site
the start of Donville les Bains just disappearing behind the hedge

From there, I pushed off around the headland and down the path on the other side to see what was happening.

Chausiais and Joly France were over there at the ferry terminal of course. And there’s a sign of things to come in the chantier navale this afternoon. For some unknown reason they have erected a tarpaulin tent over the rear of Ceres II as if there’s some kind of important work like repainting going on underneath it (although it’s rather too cold and damp for painting right now, I would have thought).

It looks as if we might have to wait for a few days to find out. But could this be a sign that at long last she might be going on her way very soon?

And while we’re on the subject of comings and goings in the port … “well, one of us is” – ed … here’s someone who has come into port this morning and, presumably waiting for the gates to open so she can go out again.

Yes, we’ve been honoured with the presence of Normandy Trader over there being loaded up ready for departure. And moored the correct way round too, not like Thora yesterday, although it’s not so crucial which way round she moors as her accommodation is at the rear.

With that much excitement going on, I was overwhelmed so I had to come on home for a mug of nice hot coffee to warm myself up.

There was the usual hour on the guitars and then I went for tea. I fancied a vegan pie but to my surprise I’ve run out completely of main-course pies. I had one of my vindaloo curries that I made a few weeks ago instead, followed by apple pie.

So tomorrow, I can see that I’ll have a job to do – like bake a pie. I really fancied one today too so I’ll have to make one tomorrow instead, I reckon.

This evening I almost came within an ace of not going out for my runs. It was teeming down with rain and there was a howling gale blowing.

But having missed so many, I gritted my teeth (well, it was freezing) and set off.

Running was pretty difficult and I didn’t even consider the path underneath the walls. That’s waterlogged at the best of times so heaven alone knows what it would be like right now. I remained on the Rue du Nord and round to the top of the Escalier du Moulin a Vent

That’s possibly one of the highest part of the walls at this end and you can see all the way out across town. And down into the Cours Jonville and the Mairie – the Town Hall – which is now all decorated in blue Christmas lights.

There’s a hint of decoration in the trees opposite the Mairie too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the electricians stringing up the lights in the trees down there a while ago.

My usual viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch is down there.

You’ll see the metal fence, and if you look below it you’ll see what looks like a row of small arches. I’m usually tucked in the corner on the far right of those arches when I’m taking my photos. You can see the difference in height between the two positions. It’s probably about 30 feet to right down there.

And that was where I went for my photos of the storm that you have seen, and then I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland and straight home. No detour around the walls in this weather.

So if the weather is better, it’ll be shopping tomorrow. I shan’t be going if it’s still like this though. I was soaked to the skin and frozen to the marrow. Never mind my woolly hat – it’ll be gloves tomorrow if I go out.

Thursday 19th November 2020 – I FORGOT …

… to mention last night that my great little niece (or is it my little great niece) Amber has been offered a place at the nest University in the World. So well done her. I know that you will be ready for Antigonish, but will Antigonish be ready for you?

And well done me too. Just for a change I managed to haul myself out of bed before the third alarm. It was touch and go – I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when it went off, but at least it counts as “up”.

And plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too. Some friends and I – Hans in Germany was one – were planning on going out to the High Arctic last night on a voyage and needed to research as much information as we could. I noticed on my friends list that there was a woman who was an Arctic explorer who had been with us on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR during one of our trips and I’d get in touch with her. I typed her a message asking her if she could contact me some time and posted it off. I expected a reply in about a month. 2 minutes later I noticed that there was a message on my screen and she said “hello” in nice argotic Danish. I replied in English again and told her who I was and that we’d been together and that I was planning to go to the High Arctic. She said “well done, that’s very nice and challenging, all that kind of thing. I was on the point of mentioning that we’d been together and that I’d be requiring certain information but then I suddenly awoke.

There was something too about going off on our holiday, camping somewhere and a couple of young girls wanted to come with us too. One was a tall, thin girl with her hair in two plaited braids down the front of her body. And I’d loved to have known where that was going to go.

After the meds and the dictaphone I had a shower and then went out to the shops.

And, as seems to be usual I didn’t get too far before I ground to a sudden halt.

We have a visitor in the harbour this morning. Thora, the smaller of the two Channel Island freighters, has come into port on the tide to do a quick aller-retour with a pile of freight. She certainly wasn’t in port last night anyway while I was walking around the headland.

And excuse the somewhat blurred photo. Once more, I forgot about the strange focusing of the NIKON 1 J5 – it seems to focus on the nearest object rather than on the depth of field when the settings button has changed and I haven’t noticed.

So I planned to take another photo on the way back.

When I walked past here the other day I noticed these bikes parked up here in the Boulevard Aristide Briand.

And I’m glad that they are still here this week so I can photograph them, because II have to say that I don’t think too much of the kiddie’s bike either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that years ago I vowed never to make fun of people’s translations into English as mine into a foreign language are even worse. But in view of globalisation, professional organisations ought to be very careful and pay good money to make sure that their products are marketable throughout the whole world.

Lidl was packed and to make matters worse, the entrance door was under repair so we had to fight our way in past the tills. I didn’t want much so I needn’t really have gone out, except that the walk once a week does me good. I didn’t buy very much, except they had a punnet of raspberries at €0:99. It was worth that for an experiment to see if they would go nicely in my next batch of kefir.

There were butternut squash too, so I bought one, and I’ll try to contact Liz to pinch her recipe for butternut squash soup and I’ll give that a try.

On my way back to the apartment I went past the harbour to retake the photo of Thora.

But to my surprise, she had gone! That was what I would call a quick turnround. It’s hardly any surprise that I haven’t seen her very much if she’s been in and out as quickly as this today.

But there moored underneath the crane right now is Chausiais and she’s being loaded up too. It looks as if there’s a nice load ready to go out to the Ile de Chausey later this morning. But she’ll need to be quick if she wants to get out while there’s still enough tide here and on the island. That’s not always very evident.

Back here I made a sort-of desultory start on dealing with the arrears from my trip around Europe. Only a desultory one though. For some reason, despite the early start and the exercise I wasn’t feeling in the mood.

Lunch was a little later than usual, and then I had work to do. A pile of carrots needed peeling, dicing and blanching, and then the sourdough needed to be fed, as well as the pressure being relieved on the new kefir that’s fermenting. I was trying to get away from commitments like that.

On my walk this afternoon in the gale force wind I was accosted by a couple of the brats who asked me “have you seen a briefcase around here?” I replied that I’d only just arrived but then they cleared off before I had the chance to interrogate them about the orienteering or whatever it was that they were doing. That was a shame.

When I’d been out last night I noticed that they’d laid a new bed of gravel around the monument to the lifeboatmen who have lost their lives.

Of course last night it was too dark to take a photo of it, so I planned to take it this afternoon. And my luck was in. Fate was certainly smiling down on me today because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, one thign that features on these pages almost as often as pathetic parking is photos of people taking photos.

Sure enough, a passer-by whipped out her phone to take a pic just as I was about to snap. Perfect timing, I reckon

While I had my equipment out I was having a good look around.

It occurs to me that while you may have seen a great many photos of the lighthouse, the semaphore and the War memorial to the Resistance fighters, you haven’t seen them in a photo all together, and certainly not from this kind of angle. And so I duly obliged and it all came together rather well. It’s a shame, though, that the flagpoles are obscured by the large tree in the centre of the image.

From here, I let the gale-force wind blow me home to a nice hot mug of coffee. I was certainly ready for it and no mistake.

This evening I really enjoyed myself on the guitar. For the bass, I picked 6 numbers that I knew fairly well and with some backing tracks I had a little concert, following which I did the same with the acoustic guitar. I can see that if I carry on I’ll have to get myself out there and look for a group, but this area is a bit barren when it comes to things like that.

Tea was a slice of frozen pie with veg, followed by more apple crumble.

Later on tonight I was on my own again outside.

My running was really difficult tonight because of the gale that was blowing. I had a push off down the road setting out but that was as good as it got. I struggled against the wind all the way down at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch I could see that we were in for a rough time with the spray splashing about everywhere.

All in all I stood there for about 5 minutes and took several photos, without very much success because for some reason I was having blurring issues.

This is the only other one that really worked, after a fashion. And I wouldn’t like to be those two people standing right there on the edge of the sea wall.

With no-one else about, I ran on home as best I could, even though for most of the way I was running into a roaring headwind. And once back here, I wrote up my notes for the day.

It’s much later now than it ought to be. I ended up having a good chat with my friend with the Covid and also with another one in the Borders of Scotland who is also having health issues – or, at least, different health issues.

But now I’m off to bed at long last. Tomorrow I need to find out about Caliburn and if he’s ready, go and pick him up, which shall hurt my bank balance enormously.

If he’s ready, I’ll go and do my weekend’s shopping tomorrow while I’m out and save myself a journey. And I mustn’t forget my travel arrangements for Leuven either. That’s come round quicker than I was expecting.

Monday 16th November 2020 – PHEW! THAT WAS HOT!

With having a pile of left-over mushrooms from the weekend, this evening I made a curry with some lentils, a pepper and the leftover mushrooms.

And into it I tipped a jar of the Vindaloo sauce that I’d bought from NOZ.

All I can say that tonight I’ll be putting the toilet roll in the fridge and I shall be doing so again and again etc., as there are four more helpings for the freezer. I hope that they will actually freeze and not defrost the rest of the stuff in the freezer instead.

So while you admire the photos of a much calmer sea tonight, this morning I missed the third alarm – but only by five minutes. I was up and about pretty promptly.

After the medication I attacked the Radio programme that I had promised to do. And by 14:20 I’d finished – all done and dusted. And I could have finished earlier too had I made up my mind much quicker to save 11 seconds rather than to add in an additional 3 seconds. And there was even a pause for lunch too with some of my beautiful new bread.

Next task was to listen to the dictaphone. And it’s no surprise that I overslept this morning. It just amazes me that I returned home from my travels as quickly as I did.

I was at home again last night. It was about 04:00 in the morning and I had to go to the bathroom. When I went in there our bath had been transformed into a bed and someone had set up a little camp table with computer on it working away in the bathroom as if we had visitors for the night. So I did what I had to do and later I had to go for a walk uptown to do something, so off we set, me and some other guy. He was some high official of the European Union, something like that. We had a chat and he gradually eased out of his shell, I eased out of mine and we did what we had to do. On the way back we had problems crossing the road. I had to stick my head round a corner, tell him when it was clear then we’d both run for it, which was what we did. We walked on a little further and there was this beautiful view over what looked as if it might be Stoke on Trent right across the city centre. I said to him “I wish I’d brought my camera with me”. We walked on back towards the office and by now this guy had changed into a girl a bit like Malou only it wasn’t Malou but that type of girl. We were having a chat and she came out with a quote while we were chatting that I immediately recognised. I said something like “it’s not every day that I get to go walking around with another Emerson Lake and Palmer fan”. She smiled and we started talking about music and life when we were probably both the same teenagers in the early 70s. Then it drifted on to I was about to get on stage and perform with my group. I awoke in a feverish sweat again.

The room that we were in was very bare and spartan and my friend made a comment about it so I replied with something or other and he or she replied again (and what that was all about I really have no idea)

I was reading a book talking about new all kinds of different things, a transport book and there was a photo of a bus going through through the streets of Dublin. When I looked it was a peculiar pink colour with grey writing and I thought “I’ve seen that livery before” – in fact I have some AAA batteries like it. I suddenly realised that I’d done some work for someone in Conwy once. He ran a night club and there was a rumour going around that he’d bought a coach and it was that colour and we’d seen coaches in two other places on the North Wales coast like in Saltney and somewhere else that might have been Rhyl. I showed it to a couple of people and we had a chat about it. We thought “well, maybe he’s going to start some kind of big bus service. I thought “he might have told me when I was working there. I might have been interested in staying to deal with that

I had to go out and I took this girl with me. We were in a MkV Cortina estate. We reached the sub-post office and I parked in the street. She went to do her task but came out and said that she had to wait hours for this so I had to loiter around. I suddenly realised that I was parked right outside the door of someone whom I wanted to see and the door was opening. Some guy walked out and walked off. Then another guy walked out, the one whom I didn’t want to see but I was hiding in the car so he wouldn’t see me so I didn’t see where he went. I realised that the car was parked about 3 feet from the kerb so I put it into the kerb nicely, which meant that the car behind me was now sitting 3 feet out in the road. I waited, and the next thing that I remembered, I was right down the far end of the street about a mile away. I thought “she’ll be wanting to go home soon so I set out to walk. At the traffic lights at the top of Broad Street there were some kids playing around on like a shop from there. 3 kids in heavily-laden pickups squealing the tyres and doing handbrake turns much to the annoyance of a couple of neighbours. Then an old BAS motorbike went past with a boy and girl on it. He did a wheelie then flipped it as if he was going to perform a somersault but the wheel came off it and flew off down the street. They landed in a heap in the road and I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. “Serve them right”. I reached the car but there was no sign of this girl now. 1 thing that I had noticed was that in this street there was about a dozen MkIII Cortinas. “This is strange”. There was no sign of this girl so I went to telephone her but I couldn’t make my telephone work. There was a pile of soup in it. Every time I pressed the switch to wake up the battery nothing happened. I wondered how I was going to contact this girl now.

We’d been all over Crewe, a group of us and it’s been a long time since we’ve done this during the night. There was me, and certainly Jackie and Alison. We’d been checking out all of these student houses on Underwood Lane. Jackie decided that she needed to go home for something so we’d all meet up in some kind of café. I went with her. She had this bright yellow van pretty similar to Caliburn. They’d all asked me if they could view where Caliburn was, and I was trying to think of it, apart from leaving a telephone active in the van I couldn’t think. A variety of suggestions came up but this telephone was the best but I didn’t have a modern up-to-date 3G telephone spare. So we set off and pulled in on this car park. Hans was there at a table with a girl from school. I said her name but it wasn’t her and I couldn’t think of her real name. The girl I was with – it could have been either Jackie or Alison said something like “she used to live with a guy” and mumbled his name “but now she’s back with her parents”. I asked “who was the guy” so she mumbled the name again but I still didn’t get it. Then she said that she had to visit the bathroom so off she went. I was thinking that I ought to have a word with Hans for if that girl is free I wouldn’t mind a date with her. Just then he came past so I said “hi”. He said “ahh, I have a couple of friends in here today then have I?”. In the meantime I was waiting for this girl to come back from the bathroom in this café place. There was a woman rattling on the door – she’d obviously been quite a long time and I wondered “had she fallen in?”. It was all becoming rather confused. I could hear voices but they weren’t hers. I was wondering “what on earth is happening now?”

In between all of this I went for a walk around the headland

Just for a change there wasn’t anything at all going on this afternoon, either on the sea or on the land.

The only thing of any note was these people out on the rocks at the Pointe du Roc for the peche à pied. And it’s a surprise that they are there because with the confinement there’s a ban on the peche à pied right now.

And that was that, really. Not even anyone parking illegally in the vicinity of the College Malraux. In fact I even managed to fit in a run along the path on top of the cliffs overlooking the port.

And then I came on home to carry on with the dictaphone notes.

Throughout the day I’ve been talking to my friend with Covid. She’s now out of her time but still having to isolate as other members of her family are still affected. And that’s probably the hardest part of her life right now. It’s enough to make anyone depressed.

And Liz too. She and Terry are in Lanzarote right now, trying to work out whether they ought to come home or to stick out the virus where they are. I know exactly what I would do if it were me.

What with one thing and another I only had half an hour on the guitars and then I went to make my vindaloo, followed by some lovely apple crumble and vegan ice cream.

rather later than usual, I went out for my evening runs and walks around the walls.

There was no-one about at all so I could carry out my runs in relative comfort. I stopped off at the viewpoint halfway along the walls to take a photo of the lights of Donville les Bains in the distance, and then ran on all the way to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch to see how the sea was doing now that the storm had died down. I’m definitely doing my best to keep fit.

Having dealt with that, I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland and then walked along the walls towards home.

There was a really nice view across to the fish processing plant tonight, and we had a trawler down there unloading.

There’s a refrigerated lorry parked there in the loading bay too. He’ll be buzzing off to Paris tonight in time to be on the wholesale market for the restaurants in the small hours of tomorrow morning. Round to the other side, the door to the plant was wide open and the lights were reflecting quite brightly from the water down there.

From there I ran on home to write up my notes for the day and then go to bed ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

And I have to make some more cordial because I’ve just this evening finished off the last of the lemon and ginger. I’ve plenty of oranges lying around so I’ll make an orange and ginger one for a change.

So now, later than I would like, I’m off to bed. I wonder where I’ll end up tonight.

Sunday 15th November 2020 – I DIDN’T GO …

… to bed until about 2:00 this morning. But even so, not awakening until 11:15 is a bit extreme nevertheless, and the least said about not getting out of bed until 12:00 the better.

So while you admire the photos that I took tonight of the storm and the waves smashing into the promenade at the Plat Gousset in the storm, I was listening to the dictaphone

I could hear that I had been been on my travels during the night. But I’ll spare you all of the gory details seeing as you are probably having your tea right now. But interestingly, at some point I must have stepped right back into wherever it is that I had left off because I was talking to a guy about the first part of my voyage. He asked “how did you know that she was telling the truth? Which Government would allow that kind of thing?”. I said that there is only one Government in the whole wide world that would do that kind of thing and that’s the British Government. They are employing all of their wives and mistresses as aides and sleeping with all of their aides who aren’t their wives and mistresses”. We had a talk about all of their morals in the UK after that.

And that wasn’t all either. Later on there were more things happening but unfortunately it was just a jumbled mishmash and I can’t remember it. Which is probably just as well.

After my medication I switched on the computer. My Covid friend was on line so we had quite a lengthy chat to keep up her morale and then I went off for something to eat. A nice piping hot bowl of porridge.

After my porridge I’ve spent all day baking as I mentioned yesterday. Supplies are running low round here. There isn’t enough bread for my sandwiches tomorrow and I’m not going to have the time to bake any in the morning with a radio programme to prepare.

For a start, I needed some more bread and it was far too late now to make a sourdough loaf which needs a lot of standing, so I made a yeast loaf as I have done in the past with a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds.

There was no pizza dough left in the freezer so I had to make some more. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d bought a 2 kg bag of prepared bread flour “just add water” from Belgium the other day for just €1:00. It’s white flour, which is not much use for bread baking, but it would be ideal for pizzas.

And so I made a pile of dough, 450 grammes, to see how it would perform. If it works out well I might look out for some more for my pizzas.

Taking a pause from my baking activities I went out for my afternoon walk while the dough was proofing, straight into the teeth of the howling gale that seemed to have whipped up in intensity from last night.

Clutching hard to my hat, I went over to the sea wall to look at the waves that were breaking on the shore over there. And the whitecaps out there bear full testimony to the force of the gale.

The other people around (there were three or four out there) were just as impressed as I was and so after watching them for quite a while as I did, I set off around the headland on my walk.

It was certainly interesting to watch the waves on the north side of the headland, so I was intrigued to see what they might be like on the south side in the bay by St Pair sur Mer.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed either. As i reached the peak of the headland the wind was thoroughly wicked and there was a veritable gale blowing straight into my face. As I walked around the headland I could see that the storm raging down there was even more wild that it had been round on the north side.

The contrast between the sea out there in the open and the sea in the sheltered lee of the harbour’s outer wall is quite impressive. You could almost draw a straight line between the two.

The tide is still well out right now but with the force of the waves being driven onshore by the wind I was expecting to see something rather impressive with the waves against the sea wall.

And unfortunately it wasn’t as wild as I was expecting it to be. The waves and the spray were not flying up over the sea wall as I was hoping, but there was still something to see. The waves were giving me something of a little performance.

The guy out there walking around on the sea wall was not going to be in any danger of a drenching when he comes round to this side. But he was the only person other than me involved in the scene.

From there I pushed on along the footpath down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

The tide was out as we had seen in the earlier photo, and there was this beautiful dry patch there which the seagulls had decided to colonise for the moment.

What caught my eye particularly about it was the fact that this looked very much like a representation of a map of the United Kingdom. You can see the mainland of Great Britain and over to the upper left, something that looks as if it might be Northern Ireland. The resemblance was quite uncanny.

And so I headed on for home in the wind to carry on with my baking.

The dough had risen really nicely for both the bread and the pizza dough. This flour stuff from Belgium seemed to work quite well.

The pizza dough I separated into three. Two of them I kneaded and rolled in oil, and then put them into greaseproof paper into the freezer. The third one I kneaded, greased and then rolled out and put into the pizza tray, rolling over the edges to remain in the tray and not overhang.

The bread dough, I kneaded and shaped and put into the mould and left it on one side with the pizza base on the tray to proof again.

The baking apples that I had bought a few weeks ago were on their last legs so I washed them and diced them and prepared an apple crumble. Some cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, desiccated coconut and raisins will do all of the apple some good, especially when washed in with some lemon juice.

While the crumble and the bread (which was now ready) were baking in the oven I prepared the pizza and once the bread and crumble were baked I could put the pizza in. I must buy a bigger oven one of these days.

And here are the finished products. The pizza came out really well and the edges where I’d folded them over were nice and spongy. As for the bread and the crumble I’ll tell you about them tomorrow. I was too full for any pudding tonight.

later on I went out for my evening walk and runs, some of which were chasing after the lens hood of my camera that rolled off down the street in the wind. And wind there was too. It was extremely difficult to open the door of the building with the wind holding it closed.

At the viewpoint there was nothing much going on so I ran on in several legs down to the viewpoint where you saw the photos of the waves crashing down on the Plat Gousset.

No-one about at all again so I ran on across the Square Maurice Marland, walked around the rest of the walls and then ran on home to write up my notes for the day. By now the wind had picked up even more and I had to abort my final run halfway through as the wind brought me to a dead halt.

Tomorrow it’s back to work. I have a radio programme to prepare.

When that’s done I need to enquire about Caliburn and then swot up my Welsh for our next lesson on Tuesday. Not that I’m going to have an early night now, but I’ll do the best that I can.

Friday 13th November 2020 – AFTER EVERYTHING …

… that I wrote yesterday evening about an early night and an early start? it was … errr … 10:30 when I finally crawled out of bed.

If you think that that is devastating, just let me say that after finishing my notes, I started on a little project of no significance, a project that I dip into every now and again, and by the time I started to feel tired enough to go to bed, it was after 04:00.

So 10:30 isn’t really all that bad, I suppose, and at least there was some work of a sort being done.

During the night I’d been on my travels again. I was going somewhere laat night on a bus or something so I had to leave my car, the mk V Cortina NMP parked up at the side of the road. I was going to be away ages so I was worried about leaving it there for so long but as the bus passed by I could see two of the guys from the taxis opening it and climbing in Obviously they needed it for things so that was OK. I ended up round at my mothers where suddenly I had some kind of panic attack – what about all my personal stuff that I’d left in the car? What was going to happen if the people at the taxis got their hands on it? But anyway I got dressed, in a pair of grey trousers that I wore when I was at Shearings. And as I pulled the belt tight, it went two notches over where it usually went which was strange. As I was setting off to visit the parents of a friend my mother shouted “make sure you ring them to tell them that you are coming. Don’t just turn up unannounced”. I thought that that would be difficult to arrange but I said nothing. However my mother said it twice so I wondered what was happening here.

My Covid friend was on line so we had a chat while I finished off what I’d been doing last night. And with the late start that took me right the way up to lunchtime. Something of a waste of a morning, really.

After lunch, fighting off the temptation to go back to sleep, I made a start on amending one of the journal entries from my voyage around Central Europe but I ran aground half-way through.

There was enough time however for me to go off on my afternoon walk around the headland.

The tide was well on its way in when I went out, and I noticed the effect of the waves breaking on the rocks that were there on the beach and which by now had disappeared beneath the waves near the marker light for the rocks.

They were actually submerged but only to a very minimal depth so although you couldn’t see them, you could see the waves breaking on them.

It was something that held my interest for a couple of minutes and then I pushed on, passing three or four others who were out there this afternoon.

There was very little going on out at sea this afternoon – no boats of any description in the English Channel or the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But there was an exciting phenomenon occurring down the bay round by Carolles. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing the sunlight reflected off the windows of St Pair sur Mer in the late afternoon earlier in the year. Of course, the sun has moved round in the sky and we now have the windows in Carolles picking up the glint of the sun.

You wouldn’t credit just how dark it’s starting to go now, even though it’s only about 16:00. Winter is going to be upon us a darn sight sooner than we think.

Still no change in the occupants of the chantier navale. The yacht is still there, as is the vessel Ceres II

But it was interesting out in the tidal harbour though. The gates must have been on the point of opening and boats were queueing up to go into the inner harbour. Here we have one of the Joly France boats, the older of the two, and also one of the two trawlers, either Coelacanthe or her sister La Tiberiade.

There were a couple of other boats in the queue too, and as I watched, the harbour gates opened and the boats went steaming … “dieseling” – ed … into port

I came to the conclusion that the trawler that I had seen just now was Coelacanthe, and I concluded that for a very good reason too.

Moored up at the Fish Processing Plant was her sister and I could clearly see her name on the side of her superstructure. She’s Le Tiberiade, and one of these days I’ll be able to tell them apart. I’ve noticed a couple of little differences between them when they have been next to one another.

She’s busy unloading her catch right now. There’s a van with an opening cargo door that looks as if it might be taking away some of the seafood, and the tractor is busy negotiating the loading ramp with a full trailer.

While I was there, I watched Coelacanthe pass through the gates and into the harbour.

Once inside she began to perform a little nautical danse macabre as she made for her mooring at the rear of the two Channel Island Ferries. And I noticed that Thora was still in port this afternoon. It seems that for one reason or another, she’s not benefitting from these rapid turnrounds that I’ve mentioned before.

But one thing that I did notice from the image that I couldn’t see with the naked eye is that she has steam … “diesel” – ed … up, so it does look as if she’s actually on the point of heading out to the open sea.

And it all was turning out to be quite interesting in there this afternoon.

As Thora “cast off forr’ard, cast off aft” in the inner harbour, Le Tiberiade did likewise and as the one headed for the harbour gate so did the other from the other side, out of view of each other. Half expecting a “Greek meets Greek at the Hull Paragon, Valentine’s Day 1927” moment, I gripped the edge of my seat in eager anticipation.

However le Tiberiade just about made it into the harbour without a collision, Thora

While I’d been wandering around, I’d noticed that the sea was becoming rather rough. And with the tide being well-in right now I was keen to see what was happening down at the Plat Gousset.

And it was a good move too because even with 90 minutes to go before high tide, the waves were coming in with something of a powerful force and smashing into the sea wall over there.

There weren’t very many people out there enjoying the spectacle from close to, but I imagined that they would all be out there a little bit later at high tide when they really would be treated to something of a spectacle.

By now I imagined that Thora would now be rounding the headland on her way out to sea, so I retraced my steps of earlier up to the viewpoint next to the College Malraux to see how she was doing.

And eventually she came a rattling around the headland into the teeth of the wind and the waves and set course for St Helier. It’s not going to be an easy ride for her in this kind of sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I keep on saying that one of these days I’ll hitch a ride on her when she has a couple of trips in rapid succession and see how she does. Luckily I’m in a good position in that I hold a British passport and a Permanent Residency Card for France so there needs to be little in the way of border controls to ease my passage.

But that’s not going to be for a while with all of this Covid going on. No-one will be going anywhere for quite a while yet.

And so I watched Thora battle her way through the waves for a while and then headed for home.

On the way across the car park I’d seen Gribouille, the big ginger cat, sitting on his windowsill so I went to give him a stroke. And there I fell in with his owner, and learnt some pretty sad news. She’s had a couple of falls just recently, during one of which she fractured her had and it had to be stapled together. But as she doesn’t seem to be able to cope particularly now, she’s moving into sheltered accommodation

Of course, she’s taking my mate with her, but regardless of that, it’s another convivial soul from the building who is moving away. Nothing stays the same for long, and rightly so, but it’s a shame when people move away like this and break up a happy little circle.

Back here I caught up with a few notes and then went to make some kefir. This morning, I’d started on the last bottle and there was another batch brewing nicely.

The four kiwi fruits that I had bought three weeks ago were now nice and ripe so I peeled them and threw them in the whizzer, followed by a generous handful or two of grapes.

Having whizzed them around for quite a while to extract as much juice as possible and then passed it all through my network of meshes and filers into the big jug.

Having done that, I drained off the brewing kefir through a very fine-mesh filter and added it to the juice, stirring it well in, leaving an inch or two of liquid in the bottom to keep the kefir grains covered.

Several slices of lemon, a fig bisected and 40 grammes of sugar went into my big jar, followed by 2 litres of filtered water. That’ll brew now for a few days while I wonder where I’m going to get some figs from for the next batch after that as I’ve now run out.

The mixed kefir and juice was then strained through a mesh coffee-filter into the various flip-top bottles that I use. They’ll be put into a cool place out of direct light now to complete the second fermentation and in a couple of days they will be ready to drink.

But I made a bit of a boo-boo here. Remember the pineapple slices that I’d had the other day? I’d put the syrup on one side to use in my kefir today but I’d forgotten it. I don’t know whether it’ll keep for four or five days now.

All of that took so much time that I didn’t have my guitar practice, which was disappointing.

Instead, I ended up with some of the best taco rolls that I’ve ever made. That chick pea and couscous stuff that I used in error instead of the bulghour certainly made a difference. And my defrosted apple pie was delicious too

later on I went out for my runs around the walls.

No-one else was out there, everywhere else was quiet, not even the Pizza van in the Place Czmbernon tonight with the lockdown. No-one down in town either.

I had a look to see if the Christmas decorations had gone up in the Rue Paul Poirier but while there is certainly something or other, and several thereof, strung up across the street, there’s nothing illuminated yet.

All of this is to come very soon, I imagine. But I’ll find out more in due course. I ran on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow it’s shopping day, and I have to track down some figs. That’s not going to be easy because I’ll still without Caliburn so wherever I go and whatever I buy, I’ll have to carry it home and I’m not looking forward to that.

Luckily the freezer is pretty well stocked up and that should keep me going for a week or so but I really do need to organise myself better. I don’t know what it is that I’m doing right now but whatever it is, I’m doing it all wrong.

Thursday 29th October 2020 – PHEW!

After everything that I’ve had to do, I’m thoroughly exhausted. And it isn’t going to be better any time soon.

So while you admire more photos of yet more waves crashing onto the Plat Gousset this afternoon, to the evident delight of the little kids down there, I’ll tell you all about it.

And it all started off so well too. Much to my own surprise, and to yours too, no doubt, I beat the third alarm to my feet yet again. How many days on the run is that now?

First task this morning was to listen to the dictaphone. And once again, there was nothing on it. I must have had a really restful night again.

So that gave me some time to have another look at ANOTHER ONE OF THE ARREARS from my trip around Central Europe in the summer.

There was actually time for me to start a second, but I left that half-finished knowing full well that there would be time to finish it off later today … “ha ha ha” – ed … I went off to have a shower instead.

It was on my way down the street that I discovered that the battery had gone flat once again in the NIKON 1 J5. It looks as if the battery on it is heading for the hills which is a shame.

So while you look at yet more photos of waves, I went to the local Nick.

Here the copper on duty was very polite and friendly, but he didn’t know what was going on either so he wasn’t much help. Despite the ban effective from Friday night on foreign travel, there’s a right to travel to seek medical attention and I didn’t know if the medical attention outweighed the ban.

And neither did he.

While I was going past the Post Office I dropped a letter in there. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a “parcel” delivered the other day.

While the sender told me that there was no charge, I couldn’t leave it like this. He may not want any money for what he sent me (more of which anon) but I can still buy him and his mates a drink. Every job of work deserves its rewards.

From there I headed up to the railway station, today going by the Boulevard Louis Dior so we could see the other end of the alleyway that we saw the other day. This was when I discovered that the camera battery was flat.

They were queueing out of the door at the railway station. The quarantine has changed everyone’s plans of course and they are all trying desperately to change their tickets.

The transaction that I needed, when I finally reached the head of the queue after half an hour, seemed to take all day and there ended up being an enormous queue waiting by the time that I finished.

It’s always this way with me – even the most simple transaction goes all wrong when I’m pushed for time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I apologised profusely to everyone waiting behind me. It was the least that I could do.

LIDL was heaving today. Everyone was stocking up with essentials prior to the lockdown. I didn’t want much so I think that I spent more time queueing than I did looking at the shelves.

Back here, I had work to do. A whole pile of packing, a couple of phone calls to make, a few internet purchases to arrange and a pile of paperwork to be printed out. All of that took me up to a rather late lunch.

After lunch I started to load up the data files to the little Acer travelling laptop. I’m going to work with it for a week and see how it goes, in the hope that it will behave itself. It’s been running for over 48 hours non-stop and seems to be quite stable at the moment. I hope that it keeps on going, and there’s only one way to find out.

In the middle of all of this I crashed out – right out good and proper too, for about 45 minutes. A really deep, intense sleep. When I awoke I felt like death

Having recovered my composure somewhat, but only vaguely, I set off for my afternoon walk under yet more leaden skies.

Surprise, surprise, there weren’t too many people about in this weather. Even the roofers on the College Malraux roof had become fed up and gone home. Probably no more than a handful of people, including two little kids running down the steps from the Rue du Nord onto the beach.

Such beach as there was, because the tide was well in by now and they weren’t going to be going far.

But despite the wicked weather, the work must still go on.

From my viewpoint in the Rue du Nord I cast my eyes out to sea and there in the distance I could make out a couple of objects heading in. When I returned home I cropped the photo and enlarged it, and I could see that it was a trawler-type of fishing vessel – a smaller one – heading back into port.

In the absence of any other information, I’m assuming that she has a good catch, as might the one coming on behind that I didn’t photograph. But the usual cortège of seagulls was absent.

You saw the photos of the waves just now, so having watched the entertainment I walked on through the Square Maurice Marland where there was a little 4-year-old having a whale of a time on the roundabout as her dad spun her around.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a week or two ago we witnessed the spectacle of a trawler being “helped” across the harbour by one of its friends to a berth where it could be tied up.

Today, I was interested … ” to say the least” – ed … to see that our friendly neighbourhood lifeboat, Notre Dame de cap Lihou was over there attending to her. I was wondering what might be going on that might require her services.

But as I watched, they tied the two boats together and drifted away from the pontoon

When she was out into the open, I could read her name on the side of her superstructure.

She’s none other than Cap Lihou – the trawler that’s been parked up on blocks in the chantier navale for the last I don’t know how long and who only went back into the water a short time ago.

It looks to me as if she might have a severe mechanical problem, and hence is unable to move under her own steam … “or diesel” – ed … and that’s what she needs help.

And that reminds me. Where does a ship go to when it’s feeling unwell?
Of course – it goes to the doc(k)s

While I was watching her I speculated where she might be going. Of course “out to sea to be scuttled in deep water” was after all hardly likely.

Of course, there’s no real prize for guessing correctly. There can’t be many places that a sick ship (and try saying that with someone else’s teeth in) can go to round here. She’s off to the chantier navalewhere presumably she’ll be winched up onto some blocks.

When I go out for my evening constitutional – if I do get out with all of this work going on – I’ll check on where she is and on what’s happening to her.

While I was watching Cap Lihou limping along out of the inner harbour, there was plenty of other activity going on too.

When I first looked, the two Joly France boats were tied up at the ferry terminal. But as the pantomime in the inner harbour unfolded, I was joined by the newer of the two Ile de Chausey ferries – the one with the smaller upper deck superstructure and deeper windows.

Also in the photo behind her are two of our regulars, Aztec Lady and La Grande Ancre. They don’t seem to have very much going on with all of this virus lockdown going on.

And that’s not everything either. Despite all of the quarantine and lockdown, people still have to eat and we’ve seen a trawler out there earlier coming home with its catch.

And as I watched Cap Lihou and her manoeuvres … “PERSONoeuvres” – ed … into the inner harbour behind Joly France came another trawler. And, surprisingly, the seagulls floating on the water were taking not the slightest bit of notice.

Mind you, I must admit that I did admire the nonchalant attitude of some of the members of the crew as she swung round to tie up at the fish processing plant. They don’t look as if they are in any hurry.

Back in the apartment I carried on hastily trying to assemble things, and then broke off for my guitar practice. And I found to my dismay that I’d forgotten the bass line to “Moonage Daydream” that I’d worked so hard on in the past.

Tea was taco rolls with the rest of the stuffing followed by the last of the delicious apple pie. And then I went out for my evening runs. This was when I discovered that the battery in the NIKON D500 was flat too.

It’s really not my day, is it?

And Cap Lihou wasn’t in the chantier navale either. And it was too dark to see where she was. I just did all of my runs and came home. 135% on the fitbit. I’ll go with that.

So what will tomorrow bring me? Who knows? It’s certainly going to be interesting to find out. I don’t think that anything is going to be easy for a while and I’ve taken considerable precautions. Whether they are effective or not is anyone’s guess. But you’ll find out tomorrow assuming that the little Acer has managed to keep up.

And I never did finish amending that blog posting.

Wednesday 28th October 2020 – IN WHAT MAY COME …

… as a surprise to most of the regular readers of this rubbish who might recall the difficulties that I might be having these days? I actually beat the third alarm yet again!

Well sort-of. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with both feet on the floor when it went off. Not exactly what I would call “lively” – you mustn’t go round expecting too much from me these days – but it was good enough to count.

So while you admire a few more photos of the tremendous waves that we have been having, smashing down on the promenade over by the Plat Gousset and making all of the kids squeal as they are drenched by a downpour as the spray falls to earth, I’ll tell you all about it.

Last night, I didn’t actually find anything additional to do after I’d finished my notes – except to make a start on downloading the data files from the old travelling laptop onto an external drive for safety.

And it can do most of that itself. It doesn’t really need all that much of my help to do that. Mind you, I was surprised to see it fire up without a hitch although it took its usual while to fire up, but that’s only to be expected.

Once I had started it off, I snuggled myself down the bedclothes to get warm in the hope that I could have another interesting night after last night’s lack of excitement. Like I have said … “on many occasions” – ed … my voyages during the night are much more interesting and exciting that what I get up to during the day these days, and I miss it when I don’t go anywhere.

But I wasn’t disappointed last night. There were voyages a-plenty.

Last night I started off baking bread and there was something about getting it all ready before the Army came which was in effect me getting it ready before I went off back to sleep again

Later on there was something about we were somewhere or other. I was with Marianne and there was a dog. This big bulldog appeared and it took a big lump out of this dog’s side. The dog yelped and wandered off but didn’t go far, and the bulldog came round and grabbed hold of him again and took another bite out as if he was intending to eat him. This gradually evolved as more and more animals were becoming involved, all up to no good, and then they started to chase after the humans. There was a guy there an I was with Marianne and another young girl as well.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this was something about car windows – the glass inside the windows but where that fitted in I really don’t know

We were next on the top of the hill looking out across the water. There was a fight going on in the harbour and my country was being overwhelmed quite easily. I remember thinking that I’m lucky that I’m no footballer, that type of thing, because I would hate to participate in the kind of game that I’d been talking about earlier this evening

This building that we started off in tonight, a round building that looked very much like the buildings involved in London’s domestic water supply or something designed by that architect Bazalgette (and I’m surprised that I could remember his name in the middle of a dream) or something who did all of those public works in the London area round about that time

Then I awoke and it was back to chasing these people around again back in the original harbour. For once I was in the pack of the hunters rather than the hunted but I fell asleep before I could see where this actually went towards.

There was far more than that too but some of it didn’t seem to be recorded and I’ve no idea why. Is my technique slipping or am I dictating to an empty hand again like I have done a few times just recently?

And then there is other more gruesome stuff that you wouldn’t thank me for repeating, especially if you are having your lunch or something right now. I’m back on the disturbing dreams again, so it seems.

After getting myself organised, I spent much or the morning working on one of the arrears AND THAT IS NOW FINALLY FINISHED although I’ve no idea why it took me so long to do it. Having a little … errr … relax in the middle of the morning didn’t help matters too much. Clearly beating the third alarm was not the advantage that it might seem.

And then the fun began. With all of the data files now copied onto an external disk, I could set about doing a reinstall of the operating system and files onto the old laptop. When I tried that on the Lenovo the other day it took well over a day to do it. On the little Acer it took 4 hours and as a result required my almost constant attention.

Much to my surprise, once everything had been done and installed and registered, it fired up a darn sight quicker than it ever did in all the years that I have owned it. I’ve now uploaded a few programs to it and I’m going to leave it running for a couple of days to see how stable it is before I decide whether to start reusing it.

Surprisingly, that took me most of the early afternoon.

Having decided on a break from work, I decided to take myself outside for my afternoon walk.

And I do have to say that I didn’t envy the roofers up there on the roof of the College Malraux. There was what the French call a ciel de plomb – a sky of lead – out there right now, there’s quite a strong wind and it’s threatening rain at any moment.

Yet there they are up there fixing that roof and I wouldn’t like to be up there with them in this kind of weather.

And if there is one group of people for whom I have even greater sympathy than roofers, it’s deep-sea fishermen.

My route today took me round to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord and in the distance out in the English Channel near the Ile de Chausey I could make out a couple of trawlers heading out to sea for the day’s catch. My hat goes off to them in this weather, as I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed.

There were crowds of people about this afternoon so I couldn’t break into a run down the footpath. Instead I had a leisurely stroll that way to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset to watch the waves smashing down again on the promenade, photos of which you have already seen.

And it’s full house in the harbour this afternoon.

Last night I must have been mistaken … “What? You? Perish the thought!” – ed … when I mentioned that Thora had left port yesterday afternoon – either that or else she’s been and done an allez-retour in a remarkably quick time to be back in port right now, because here she is.

But all of the wood that was on the quayside when we had a look yesterday is still there so it’s quite possible that she hasn’t gone anywhere and is waiting for part of her load.

But she’s not alone out there today.

Of course Marité is moored there astern of her in her usual corner. Her tourist season, such as it was, is probably over. And there ahead of her is Normandy Trader, the other Jersey Freighter. She’s made a run in to port today and has had to moor somewhere else, which is rather confusing.

All we need now is Godzilla, or maybe the Loch Ness Monster. But ideally for me, I’d like to see one of the gravel boats come into port. And then we really would have a full house, wouldn’t we?

On the way back to my apartment I went to have a look at the roofing job on the house in the Rue St Jean to see how they were getting on.

And to my surprise, they seem to have finished, packed up and gone home. Nevertheless, they seem to have done a nice jon on it. It looks quite good from here. But I notice that a seagull is on its way to have a look, and probably to christen it too.

As for me, I didn’t want to hang around too long. I have plenty to do back at the apartment so I came home to carry on with my work.

There was my Welsh to revise, and I made a good start on that, but left off to have my hour on the guitars, which wasn’t helped by me having lost my notes on one of the tracks that I’ve been playing.

Tea was a burger on a bap – the last bap in the freezer. Must buy some more tomorrow. And then I came back in here to listen to the news from Our Glorious Leader that we’re all back in detention à domicile with effect from Friday. So where this leaves me with my trip to Castle Anthrax next week I really don’t know.

Just as I was about to go out for my evening run, Rosemary rang for a chat and by the time we had finished two hours (yes, two hours) later, it was far too late for me to go out.

So instead, I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow is shopping day of course and I’ll need to get some suplies in because I’ve no idea now what’s going to happen next with this virus and our confinement.

Whoever said that we are “living in interesting times” has got it perfectly right, especially after I’ve just gone to all this trouble to fire up the old laptop again.

Tuesday 27th October 2020 – CALIBURN HAS …

… gone off today for his makeover. He’s a teenager now of course, and I promised him a makeover for his bodywork as a treat, as the Controle Technique tester made a couple of remarks about it last time.

It’s not cheap – not at all – but buying a new vehicle is even less cheap. The garage where he goes every year says that he has plenty of life in him, the bodywork repairs will be guaranteed for five years, and I’ll be lucky, very lucky indeed if I get another five years out of my body with this illness. So there’s no point in doing anything else except getting him fixed.

So while you admire the waves from the latest storm smashing their way into the sea wall over at the Plat Gousset, let me tell you about my day today.

Rather – last night too because after I’d finished writing up my notes, and not feeling in the least bit tired I amended ANOTHER PAGE OF THE ARREARS to include the photos of the day and the voyages that I’d been on during the night.

And consequently, despite the lateness of the hour when I went to bed, no-one was more surprised than me (except you of course) to find that I was up and about – well, “sort-of-about” – when the third alarm went off. I shall have to do this more often.

Nothing on the dictaphone either, which was just as surprising. I must have had a really peaceful sleep last night for a change.

And so with no notes to write up, I had a go AT YET ANOTHER PAGE OF THE ARREARS. Well, sort-of, because there weren’t any photos taken that day and I didn’t go anywhere during the night either. So that ended up being something of a non-event.

Before I could take Caliburn off anywhere, I had to find the details of my rail journey at the weekend. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I always like to have my rail tickets in my hand long before the day of my journey.

That’s because on a couple of occasions the printing machine at the station is out of order and as the ticket office doesn’t open until after my train has left, I’d look rather silly if I left it until the morning of travel to pick up my tickets and found that the machine wasn’t working.

So having collected the necessary, Caliburn and I set out through yet another driving rainstorm to find our way to the garage where he’ll be staying for the next two weeks.

When the boss came in I handed him the keys and gave him a couple of extra instructions. he needs his annual service of course, he needs his brakes looking at, and there’s the controle technique due on the 5th November – and there will be fireworks if he doesn’t pass.

Mind you, it’s only an emissions check so there shouldn’t be too much of a problem about that – I hope. He runs well enough, which is why I’m keeping him.

On the way back home in the rain I walked down the main Route de Villedieu in the rain, but I stopped when I saw this.

It’s mushroom season now of course and you’ll find plenty of mushrooms in plenty of places, but growing in a flower bed at the side of the road is not one of the more likely places to find one, especially one as big as this.

And do you know how to tell if they are edible?

It’s really quite simple. Take a sample and eat it just before you go to bed. If you wake up next morning, then you know that it’s safe.

Just for a change, after leaving the railway station with my tickets I walked down the “other” side of the Rue Couraye.

And it’s amazing the things that you see that you haven’t noticed before. Granville is honeycombed with little alleyways and surreptitious flights of steps and here’s one that I haven’t ever noticed before.

It leads down across the old railway line and over to the Boulevard Louis Dior, the road that leads to the Parc du Val es Fleurs where we went a good while ago to see all of the animals and where they had that marquee once.

Just across the road from here, the workmen are being pretty busy.

There was a Home Decorating shop there – one with a ghastly aluminium 1960s-style of shop front that they had installed at some point and ruined the aspect of the building. It was sold a couple of months ago and since then it’s been sheathed in wood.

But now they seem to have taken that down and they are busy with the angle grinder cutting into the brickwork and concrete on the pavement. I don’t know what they will be installing there but I’m pretty sure that it will be an improvement on what was there before.

Back here I made some hot chocolate, cut myself off a slice of my banana bread – and then fell asleep in the chair. hardly surprising, I reckon, after all of this walking that I had done.

When I awoke there was enough time to make a good start on YET ANOTHER ONE OF THE BLOG ENTRIES that needed updating now that I’ve finished the photo editing and the dictaphone transcribing.

Plenty of photos and voyages in that one so it took me all the rest of the day, which isn’t surprising in itself considering everything else that I had to do.

For example, after lunch my kefir needed attention. It’s been brewing for long enough.

Four nice, ripe kiwis were peeled and put into the whizzer with a few handfuls of grapes and whizzed around until I had a nice mushy liquidy pulp. This was strained through my filter stack into the big jug and the kefir out of the pot followed through the stack, leaving an inch or so at the bottom of the pot.

Everything in the jug was then strained back through the filter stack into a few bottles that I had washed and cleaned.

Then I set another batch of kefir on the way – 40 grammes of sugar, three slices of lemon, a fig cut in half and then the pot filled to within a couple of inches at the top with filtered water.

Later on, with the rain having stopped for a brief moment I decided to go out for my afternoon walk.

Crowds of people out there taking advantage of the moment of sunshine that we were having, even though it didn’t look too nice further down the coast towards Donville les Bains. I reckoned (and I was right too) that we would be having another good helping of rain any moment now.

And so no time to hang around. I pushed on around the footpath under the walls dodging the puddles that hadn’t diminished one iota from the last time that I was out.

You’ve seen the photos of the storm that we were having. The rain might have stopped (for the moment) but the wind had got up and was raging away to itself. For a few minutes I watched them crashing down on the Plat Gousset and then headed off across the Square Maurice Marland.

At a walk, I hasten to add. Too many people about for me to break into a run.

Now here’s a nice surprise awaiting me in port this afternoon.

How long is it since we’ve seen Thora, the smaller of the two Jersey freighters, here in the harbour? I was thinking about her quite recently and here she is. There’s a huge pile of building material, wood and the like, all kids of stuff, on the quayside so it looks as if she is going to be taking all of that back with her.

But I wasn’t going to hang around at all. There was the storm brewing up yet again and I wanted to be home as soon as possible.

Back here I finished off the blog entry that I mentioned just now, and then had my hour on the guitar. And tonight I just went over a couple of old numbers that I could sing to, just to make me feel better. I wish that I could snap out of this depression that I’ve been in since August last year when a whole lifetime’s ambition was within my grasp and it just melted away through my fingers at the side of a windswept airport runway in the Frozen North.

Am I becoming all maudlin and broody again?

Tea was a stuffed pepper which, strangely, was one of the best and tastiest that I’ve ever tasted. I enjoyed that very much. And my slice of apple pie was even nicer. I’m even surprising myself with my cooking.

With the rain having now died down I went out for my evening walk and runs.

A run up the Rue du Roc and then another one down to the clifftop, and this was the sight that met my eyes. At first I thought that it might have been the reflection of the moon or something in a rock pool but no matter how I changed my position the light remained in the same position.

It’s not a beach down there – it’s where all the rocks are. And there are plenty of rock pools so it may be that there’s someone having a go at night fishing. And he’ll probably catch just as much in the dark as he might do during the day.

My walk continued on to the end of the headland to look out across the Baie de Mont St Michel.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of days ago I tried to take a shot of the moon reflecting on the bay, but the wind was too strong to have a good attempt. Tonight was a little better, but still too windy to use the flat-topped post that I found, so I had to make do with wedging the camera up against the side of the bunker.

And that one hasn’t come out very much better than the previous one either, which is a shame. I must do better

From here I ran on down the path at the top of the cliffs as best as I could. Not because I was tired but because I had to dodge the huge puddles that were everywhere.

Sometimes late at night, we’ve encountered the Joly France boats coming in from a late-night trip back from the Ile de Chausey, but we won’t be seeing them out at sea tonight. Both of them are moored up over there at the ferry terminal.

Not much sign of life there either. They’ve all packed up and gone home a good long while ago, I reckon.

Have we had a night-time photo of the port offices yet? It’s no use asking me as I can’t remember.

The offices are right by the gates to the inner harbour and anyone going into there has to make contact with the Port Officer first. But the gates are closed (you can tell by the red light) and so is the office.

The green light is there to tell pedestrians that it’s permissible to cross over to the far side by taking the little pathway across the top of the gates, a route that we have taken quite often.

On my way home I had a quick look down at the harbour. Thora has now left – that was a quick turnround yet again – and there was nothing else going on. I completed all of my runs, somewhat easier than of late. I must be easing up again, which can only be good news.

It makes me wonder where I’ll be by the summer. I’m not pushing myself to extremes like I did last Spring but I can feel that I’m starting to become ready to push myself on.

But right now, I’m going to push on (or push off, more like) into bed. A whole day at home (barring accidents), and as there was no Welsh course this week I intend to spend some time tomorrow revising what I’ve already forgotten – which is probably about all of it.

Another plan of action that I have is, seeing how well the reformatting of the laptop went the other day, to have a go with the little travelling Acer too and see if I can’t tempt that back into proper life. I managed to rig it so it worked well enough to extract the data from it but a disk format and clean installation might possibly do some good.

It was the slowest laptop that I ever had but it was also the lightest and travelled with me everywhere despite everything. It will be nice to make it go again. I’m not too optimistic but if I don’t try, it definitely won’t work.

And in other news, I had a “parcel” today in the post. More of this anon

Monday 5th October 2020 – IT’S AN ILL-WIND …

…. that doesn’t blow anyone any good, so they say.

And that certainly seems to be the case even with Storm Alex. You can see the waves and the whitecaps that have been caught by the wind, and there are a couple of kite-surfers making the most of the horrendous weather, and a very interested seagull intent on watching them at it.

It must have been the same ill wind that blew me out of bed this morning, because I was up and about this morning before the third alarm. “Up”, anyway. I’m not quite sure about the “about” though.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And while you admire the photos of the waves crashing down on the Plat Gousset in the aftermath of Storm Alex, I’ll tell you all about it.

Yes there was definitely something going on during the night but I picked up the dictaphone and promptly forgot it again. No idea what it was. But after a minute it all came back to me, as the skunk said when the wind changed. It was vaguely something to do with being at work. Someone whom I knew from school was there and someone else and we’d been spending a lot of time chatting. I wasn’t doing any work because I was retired officially. I was just keeping on going as long as they would let me so I was spending most of my time talking or reading books. One or two people had been to see me so we’d talked and then I’d been reading a book hidden in the corridors between the library shelves. It came to coffee time so I went to get my coffee.

I’d met someone there and we’d had a chat, talkng about football and the football pitch down below. I said that I’d seen the Belgian Prime Minister playing there. This brought a howl of incredulity for he was a big guy, the Belgian Prime Minister. I said that it was only for a couple of seconds and he was substituted. But there were a couple of other people there having some kind of fitness thing. There were 2 guys there streets ahead of everyone else with their fitness so I asked if they should be signed up to a club. He said “no, they aren’t interested in football although they coach some team for their children, something like that”. Then I was on my own and carried on doing a load of stuff, messing around in this canteen. I thought that I’d better get back to my desk anyway so I picked up my breakfast and gently ran through the offices. That schoolfriend was there and he looked at me with a bit of surprise so I waved at him and carried on running to get back to my desk in a hurry and I couldn’t remember what happened next.

Somewhat later there was an old couple and they had a job working for someone. because they had very long arms, or the husband had, long arms and very thin hands he was often asked to do some tasks. On one particular occasion he had to put his hand through a wheel or something to reach the other side to play about with something on the vehicle. He was doing this and suddenly the vehicle rolled back. Of course he had his arms through the spokes and that broke his arm.

However at some point during the night I was trying to close the rear doors like Caliburn’s on a van. For some reason, when I pulled the handle down the pegs weren’t coming down far enough to fit into the bodywork to hold the door closed. I was with, I think, the same schoolfriend as before and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get these pegs to come out far enough. I thought that I could conceivably get in and close the door from inside and climb back out through the window because there was no glass in the aperture in the back (I was confusing myself by now with MY RED CORTINA ESTATE . Then I noticed that the doors were rotten and I thought that maybe I could get some more doors for it but for some reason I just couldn’t get this door to shut.

The same ill-wind that was blowing us all into next week blew me into a frenzy this morning. Just for a change, I had a bad attack of motivation and I was able, to my own surprise and probably to yours as well, to sit down and in one swell foop I completed a radio programme from start to absolute finish.

It’s all totally completed, one hour’s worth of it, and been listened to and checked.

We had the usual break for lunch and afterwards, I had a little task to perform because Saturday’s Kefir mix is now good and ready.

I took three juice-oranges and whizzed them into oblivion, and then strained the juice out through a conical sieve into a large 2-litre jug. Then I gently and slowly poured out the kefir mix through a mesh coffee filter into the jug with the juice, taking care that the grains of Kefir remained covered with liquid. There should be a couple of inches of liquid left in the jar.

Finally, I strained the combined liquid back through the coffee filter (which I had placed in a large funnel) into a couple of bottles and capped them.

Having done that, I added 40 grams of sugar to the liquid that remained, three slices of lemon and two halves of a fig, and then a litre and a half of water. That’s now brewing in the jar and will be good and ready by the time that I return from Leuven.

That was about 90 minutes out of my day all told but nevertheless, by as early as 15:30 it was completed and ready to be heard. That was the moment for me to go out for the afternoon walk.

There was an old headline in an English Newspaper about 100 or so years ago – “Fog In The Channel – Continent Cut Off”.

At the moment, it’s not the Continent that has been cut off by the fog but the Ile de Chausey. You can’t see a thing out there today, despite the howling gale that’s blowing around today. There is in fact a fishing boat that’s out here someone – I’ve seen a photo of it leaving port this morning in the storm – but there’s no possibility of knowing where it is in this kind of weather.

As well as that, I’ve no idea where anyone else is either. Probably at home, I reckon, because there was no-one at all out there this afternoon and I don’t blame them for one moment.

Wending my weary way around the headland I was met by an enormous blast of wind that almost bowled me over.

The wind was raging into the Baie de Mont St Michel and even though the tide was quite well out, the waves were being blown in with an impressive amount of force and the poor little Le Loup, the marker light that marks the rock at the entrance to the harbour, was taking the brunt of it.

The yacht school was not out there in the bay today either and that’s hardly any surprise at all. And that reminds me that I still have to go and talk to them about lessons. I should be seizing opportunities like this.

No chance of running along the top of the wall in this wicked wind so I strolled gently along to the viewpoint overlooking the Chantier Navale.

We are now back up to four boats because we now have a nouvelle arrivante in there this afternoon. I couldn’t see a name on her but she looks as if the might be Les Epiettes, the boat that belongs to the French Département de Ponts et Chaussées – the Ministry of Roads and Bridges.

She’s certainly carrying the same official Government colours and so it’s an official boat, and Les Epiettes has been the one that has been around here in the area. We saw it over at the Ile de Chausey when we were there with Spirit of Conrad in July

We know that there’s a fishing boat that’s gone out to sea this morning, but it seems that it’s the only one that is.

There are plenty of other boats moored in the harbour that haven’t put to sea today. From left to right we have Chausiais, the freighter that takes supplies and equipment out to the Ile de Chausey, la Grande Ancre, a small freighter that seems to undertake a variety of tasks from transporting tractors out to the mussel farm on the Ile de Chausey to going out to catch a load of shellfish herself.

On the right is Coelacanthe, the sister ship to Le Tiberiade that we have just seen in the Chantier Navale. She’s one of the biggest trawlers in the port so if she’s not out at sea then things must be nad out there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the streets of the old Medieval City within the walls are very narrow.

Just recently there has been a great deal of work done on the streets in there and it looks as if there is more going on there today. We have another set of traffic lights at the Porte St Jean so presumably they are working on the road in the one-way system somewhere in there. What I’ll have to do, if the weather allows me to go out this evening, is to go and find out where they are. I don’t recall seeing any notices about there.

By this time I was totally fed up of the wet weather so I turned for home and came in. There was a pool of water at the foot of the stairs, presumably blown underneath the door by the wind.

While I listened the radio programme that I had prepared, I went through the photos that I’d taken and edited them. And there was a distraction as I had to hunt down an image file that was lost in the depths of my computer.

After my hour on the guitar, tea was a stuffed pepper, seeing as there was a pepper remaining, followed by the last of the strawberry tart with coconut soya dessert, following which I went out for my evening stroll.

The wind had dropped somewhat by now but still quite blustery, and there were a few squalls of rain swirling around. Nevertheless there was still the heavy fog and it was difficult to see anything out at sea. There was no-one about at all which is no surprise so I ended up having quite a comfortable run all the way along the footpath under the walls in the wind and rain.

Once I’d recovered my breath, I carried on walking and eventually ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset

It wasn’t difficult to gather what was going on due to the noise. You could hear it from half-way around the walls.

The tide is now about an hour and a half from high but nevertheless the waves are really intense in the storm and are crashing down with a considerable amount of force on the promenade at the Plat Gousset. Just imagine what it’s going to be like at high tide if it keeps up like this.

The weather being a little calmer tonight than it was on Saturday, so I could hang around for a little longer tonight. The photos are a little better too because of that but I’d love to be able to improve my technique. Don’t forget that I’m working on the edge of the technology that I have.

Having watched the storm for a few minutes I turned round and ran off down the full length of the Square Maurice Marland.

Having recovered my breath I walked through the alleyway and down the Rue Notre Dame towards home. My eye was open for whatever it was that the traffic lights at the Porte St Jean were controlling, and here at the corner of the Rue Cambernon and the Rue Notre Dame I discovered the issue.

It was far too dark to look into the hole to see what was happening, but I could certainly hear the noise of running water. It sounds as if there’s a burst water main down there. The fact that parking is now forbidden on the way up to the church seems to indicate that they’ll be digging up there tomorroz.

By now I was used to the weather so I went for a wander around the walls.

The other night we saw a fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant but tonight there seems to be three of them currently unloading. There’s another one in the darkness just there too, and a few more over on the other side of the harbour looking as if they are making ready to leave for the open sea.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those heading out to sea in weather like this. I stood there and watched them too, and then turned on my heel and ran on back to the apartment.

Now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m off on the train tomorrow to my appointment with Destiny so I need to be on form. I need to do some tidying up before I go and I must also remember to feed my sourdough before I set off.

It’s all go in here, isn’t it?

Sunday 4th October 2020 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest, so a lie-in until 10:45 doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And even less so when I was still up, about and working at 02:00 this morning.

Mind, you, I’m surprised that I was even back by that time because I’d travelled miles during the night.

We’d been really busy at home and a lot of things hadn’t been done. I’d been taking the stuff out of the sink. The sink outlet was blocked – there wa s aload of waste food blocking it and I had to pull it out with my hands. My mother made some kind of smart remark about it. I said “so I’ve forgotten to empty the sink properly. Don’t you think that I do enough work around here?” It developed into a bit of a slanging match about this kind of thing. Then my brother started, because something that I’d said he thought referred to him not having done anything so he was annoyed. I turned round and said “what did I say the very first off? – ‘so I haven’t emptied the sink’. How can you possibly think that this relates to you?”. This argument carried on for a good while, and then my mother ended up talking about jobs. I’d seen a part-time job on offer at a local chemist, and I’d mentioned it. My mother rang up about it. She was talking and apparently the chemist had spoken to her and said “I have 2 or 3 other applicants. I have to read their CVs and e-mails and then I’ll get back to you”. My mother said “yes, it’s not every day that you meet someone where there’s a possibility of a job because everyone has these jobs all sewn up for special people”.
Interestingly, that job that I have seen in the South Sandwich Islands – the list of requirements and the essential skills of any applicant is so closely written that it’s clear that it’s a job designed to appeal to just one specific person and merely advertised “just for form”.

Later on last night we were on board ship again. There was a young girls’ rock band there but they couldn’t find their bassist so they never got to play. hey just wandered around a bit. Some time later the bassist appeared, a little blonde-haired girl in a yellow bikini, very attractive. We started to have a chat and I felt that I was well-in here but suddenly I was transferred away and ended up in Stoke on Trent. I’ve no idea what happened in Stoke on Trent now but whatever it was, it was a disappointment compared to what happened earlier

Later again I’d been out in Caliburn and one or two other vehicles here and there. I was pretty busy and dashing all over the place. There was still plenty to do and one of the things was to meet someone. One of our guys had gone off with a pile of kids to take them out somewhere so we were going around Crewe in Market Terrace and we came to the cinema. We had to go inside for something and I met the girl whom I was supposed to meet. She said “ohh that’s so-and-so”. We looked up and there was a pile of kids disappearing up the stairs into the cinema. “Yes, he’s taking them to the cinema”. She said “I have to go in there as well. You come too”. I replied “yes, OK”. It was Mary Poppins or something like that. She said “what about the books?” I replied “I have them outside in the van”. Then I thought “I hope that I’ve come in the van”. I couldn’t remember what vehicle I was in. I had to go outside but the van was parked in Market Terrace on double-yellow lines with its hazard lights on so I had to find somewhere to move it. By now it had transformed itself into a motorbike so I could ride it a little bit and I found a place that would be absolutely ideal to put it. So I had to turn round back the wrong way in this one-way street and found where I thought was good but it was up a couple of steps behind a little low fence. I thought “this is going to be interesting to get in here”. I also had a cat, an old black cat like Tuppence. I thought “what’s she going to do?”. She just got onto the low stone wall that this fence was attached to, curled up and went to sleep. I thought “I’ve got something I can padlock her to the railings so she wouldn’t stray too far. Some old guy turned up, a homeless type of person, and started to chat to me. He was talking a bit of nonsense really and I thought that I would never ever get back to this cinema in time to watch this performance with this girl at this rate if he carries on like this.

I was dictating again into my empty hand but I had to meet someone again at some car sales place. I pulled into the car park at the back but they wanted something else so I had to nip home. I came back in Caliburn. The guy had rung me up to say that he was there in a white Toyota van. I arrived there round at the front and he was sitting there in his van parked up between the vehicles that were for sale. I beckoned him and we went round the back and went to pull into this car park but found that there was now a chain across it. I thought “this is going to be no good because I had my car in there. How the heck am I going to get it out in order to to go home now? ” That was another problem that I was going to have to think of right now.

So some time subsequently I pushed up to North Germany from the south all the way up to the north. I came to a town where there was a bridge to cross over the river. It was a bridge that I knew and had used quite a few times. I arrived and, inexplicably, the bridge had collapsed and there was no way of getting across the river except by walking. I parked my car and picked my way up through the debris of this bridge and somehow managed to cross. I was climbing up the other side to the motorway and the ‘phone rang. It was of all people a guy with whom I used to play in a band. We had a very lengthy chat and the past, everything like that but this really was the wrong moment. So we chatted and yes, he found out that it was me through the internet and guessed that it was me and did I ever do a couple of things that I said that I was going to do when I was younger? Had I heard from our guitarist? “Not for 45 years”. In the end we finished and promised to call each other again but whether we would or not I dunno. I got to this autoroute and of course there were no cars on it – there wasn’t any point with the bridge being down. I set off walking and it really was a hike up. But I pressed on regardless and particularly sailed up this slope past the place where I usually stopped for a coffee to get my breath but just as well, as it was closed. All the way up to the top of this hill and I reached the village and they allowed me in. The first thing that I wanted to do was to go to the bathroom but there was some woman cleaning outside. Some guy coming out made some ribald remark about the woman. Eventually she let me and and I found an empty cubicle.

Writing out all of that was a work of art in itself and accounted for much of what was left of the morning. And while for the rest of the day I didn’t get up to all that much. Sunday is a Day of Rest and everyone should have one day in the week and do nothing, and not feel ashamed about doing it.

No matter how much work I have on hand, a leisurely day once a week is an important part of my rhythm.

Of course, there’s my afternoon walk. So, taking my courage and my raincoat in both hands, I set out in the rain.

Luckily the rain wasn’t quite as heavy as last night and the wind had dropped down to “powerful” (probably about Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale) rather than “horrific”. But that was never going to be an issue. What was however an issue was the sea. As you can see, it’s totally wild out there this afternoon with the strong winds whipping up the waves and creating whitecaps way out to sea. Not the afternon to be out there at all, and there was no chance whatever today of seeing the Channel Islands.

Everyone else thought so too because there wasn’t even one boat out there that I could see. Mind you, I couldn’t see that far.

Walking round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord I could see that there was nothing whatever going on there, so I continued on my way along the street.

There were signs of devastation everywhere. In the Place du Marché aux Chevaux they installed barriers to prevent people approaching the crumbling walls just there But they aren’t there any longer. They have been swept away in the storm and the no-waiting signs, anchored in concrete in old vehicle wheels, have just been bowled over like skittles.

There was no-one about so even though it was raining and I was in my all-weather gear, I ran all the way down the footpath underneath the walls. At least I could see where the puddles were so that I could take avoiding action.

At my usual resting point after my run, I stopped and looked down on the beach to see what was going on.

There was nothing at all happening, but at least you could see the Medieval fish trap and how it works. It would be round about this state of tide that all of the fisherwomen in the Middle Ages would be wading about in there pulling out the fish with their hands.

So please take careful note of this, British people, for after Brexit it might be a handy thing for you to do if hedgerow foraging fails to come up with the goods.

From there I walked on down to the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset but there was nothing whatever going on down there so I continued on my way.

There was no-one at all in the Square Maurice Marland so seeing that it was sheltered from the wind I seized the opportunity to run all the way down there. I may as well push the boat out while I can.

It has been raining steadily throughout the afternoon with no sign whatever of stopping. However I did notice that there was going to be a change. Looking at that cloud out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel and the heavy rain that was streaming down from it, it was going to get worse. This was not the time to be hanging around, I reckon. I headed off towards home.

No-one about on my final leg of my trip from the church to my place so I ran all the way despite the savage headwind. That was my three runs all accomplished during the afternoon which means that I can take it easy this evening, if the rain and the rest of the weather allow me to go out.

Back here, despite my Day of Rest, I had promised to empty out the freezer and defrost it.

All of the contents went into plastic boxes and I unplugged the freezer, plugged in the infra-red heater and set it off.

Meantime I cleaned and dried all of the contents to remove excess ice from the covers and then washed and cleaned the freezer drawers.

It’s hardly a surprise that there was so little room in the freezer because one of the drawers was half-full of ice. And the shelves were so crammed with ice that they were preventing the drawers from being filled completely.

This is going to be a long job.

While the freezer was unfreezing itself in the bathroom I started to make my pizza.

I’d taken a ball of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting for a while. So I kneaded it again to expel the iar and then rolled out out to the right size. Having greased my pizza tray, I dropped it in and where it overhung, I folded over the edges.

After the dough had been standing for an hour or so and gone nice and springy, I added the ingredients. Tomato sauce base, then sliced tomato, diced onion, diced mushrooms, diced peppers, sliced garlic, herbs (I use oregano, basil and tarragon), freshly ground black pepper and grated chees. I’d switched the oven on as I started so by now it was nice and hot so I stuck the pizza in.

And here’s the finished product. It looked beautiful and it tasted really good too. I seem to have acquired the knack of making these pizzas too now and I’m quite pleased with this. No pudding tonight because I’m full up with the pizza. I don’t want to overdo things.

By now the freezer had defrosted completely so I tipped out the water, dried it all off and put everything back. There’s plenty of room now in the freezer and there will be even more now that I know what is in there and what I can eat. Enough fruit pies to sink a ship, I reckon.

Another good job well done.

By now it was time to go out for my evening walk.

But I needn’t have bothered because I only made about 200 yards before the wind and rain that I’d seen loitering in the distance earlier was now well in position and conspired to drive me back in. All that I managed to do was to take a photograph of my building in the middle of a rainstorm. The wind might not have been as strong as it was yesterday evening but the rain was coming down in buckets and despite my rain gear I was soaked before I even reached the end of the car park.

As I reached the corner at the side of the College Malraux I was hit by several gusts of wind and was totally drenched in rain. That was enough for me so I turned round and came home. I’m glad that I managed to fit in the runs around my circuit this afternoon.

Back here now with my notes written up, I might even treat myself to an early night. I deserve one, and then I’ll be fighting-fit for this week. Off to the hospital on Tuesday and then we’ll see what we will see.

And where we’ll go from there.

Saturday 3rd October 2020 – I ONCE STARTED TRAINING …

… as a fortune teller, but I had to give up my studies due to unforeseen circumstances.

That is just as well because I would never have made the grade. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last weekend I mentioned Y Fflint – a football club from Deeside that has just been promoted to the JD Cymru League I mentioned that “They are no mugs, and certainly not cannon-fodder like some promotees have been.”

Today they played TNS – and TNS put 10 past them. That’s the heaviest defeat that I recall in the JD Cymru League for quite some considerable time … “August 2016” – ed …. although in fairness, Flint’s keeper was carried off after 23 minutes and they had to put a substitute in goal.

But anyway, I’ll stop predicting and shut up. Except to ask the same question as I did last weekend – “just how good are TNS this season?”.

They are obviously better than I was this morning because once again I had trouble hauling myself out of my stinking pit. Only by a few minutes, but a miss is as good as a mile.

But it seems that I have a lot on my mind right now, judging by what was happening last night.

There was a boat last night and a few of us were on it. It was called the “Son Derwyn”, something like that it was called. There was some woman on there but I can’t remember what she was doing. In fact I can’t remember anything about it at all apart from that.

Later on I’d been seconded onto a job to go to work in the South Atlantic (that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?). There was a group of us and three of us were leaving on the same flight so we were waiting around at the ferry terminal (don’t ask me why). I was with Nerina. We were sitting there talking to each other and there were these two other people talking and making a couple of phone calls. It turned out that they were indeed two of these people. They’d been told to look out for a third so I was wondering whether to introduce myself but I couldn’t be bothered. Nerina and I sat there and carried on talking then we got on this plane and flew to wherever we were going. We ended up in the hostel where we were staying, all sitting around but these two other guys hadn’t come. We weren’t saying too much about anything to anyone. In the end it was time to go to our rooms to get ready for dinner. We went off to our rooms but ended up in the wrong one. We’d all been waiting in one of the rooms so we went off to ours. All it consisted of was two divans, sofas, wickerwork type bamboo things. We thought “this is strange. It’s not going to be very comfortable. We’re not going to be able to get up to much good in here”. We realised that we’d left all of our stuff in the other room. One of the other guys had been for a shower. He came out and said “God you don’t want to go in that shower. It’s freezing cold”. I said “I’m not a penguin. I don’t fancy that idea”. He said “it’s all there is”. We went down into the communal bar place. Apparently there was some bread and jam somewhere so Nerina asked one of the waiters or staff or someone where the bread and jam was. They replied “you have to do things for yourself you know here. You’re expected to work on Saturdays”. I explained that we were quite happy to go and get stuff for ourselves – that’s not a problem. We just wanted to know where it was because we were new. We didn’t get our bread and jam but nevertheless Nerina went off to try to find some and I went to find some tables. It was pretty crowded and in the end I found a couple of chairs and we tagged ourselves on to some other group we were with. Then I realised that I needed some names of people who did things in the town – tradesmen and I’d left the telephone directories that I’d pinched from the library in this guy’s room so I thought that I’d better go and find some more. I walked out into town and found a few. On the way back I was being harassed by this little boy and I almost picked him up and thumped him one but I restrained myself just in time. As I got to the traffic lights – we’d been passed by buses and whatever – I thought “this is a bigger city than I expected. Much more modern”. An ambulance came out of a junction and was rammed by a little white van. A few people piled out of this little white van and another vehicle pulled up as well. They started dragging people out of this ambulance. I noticed that the people in this little white van had police jackets on. One of them gave this gorgeous right hook on one of the passengers in the ambulance. i’ve no idea what this was all about. The ambulance guy was radioing through that he’d been hit by this van and that there was a fight going on with some of his passengers but he had a woman who was seriously ill who he was taking to hospital. Could they send another ambulance to pick her up and take her on while he sorted everything out here. I was making my way back to where I was staying. I do remember thinking “how the hell am I going to be expected to keep the peace in a town like this if this is the kind of behaviour that goes on and it’s such a busy place anyway?
Somewhere along the line was a pizza that had to be put in the fridge so we went to arrange the slices so we could but found that it was all too big for the fridge and there wasn’t the room to put it so what would we be doing about that? I had some ribald comments from my father and my brother about all of this while I was doing it to so I thought that if I can’t find a solution to a little problem like this how am I going to manage doing anything major?
And what was this next bit all about? “This train was crowded with people. Everyone was crammed in and no-one dare move in case someone took their seat. I was handed a telegram which when I opened it said that there was a mumbled something that I couldn’t decipher. immediately. I thought that this was a reference to this new job or else they’d found out something about me that I hadn’t wanted anyone else to know.

With a reasonably early start nevertheless I managed to edit about 15 photos before I went for my shower. And today I had the heater on in the bathroom. The first time this back-end. And I needed it too.

Next step was to empty out the fridge and switch it off. It’s frozen up again and needs to defrost. It can do that while I’m out at the shops.

NOZ had nothing exciting and Centrakor couldn’t supply a new bread mould.

In Leclerc I spent very little – most of which went on things like a box of 2kg of grapes. I bought three fresh figs too and when I reached home, I set another kefir mix en route. Mind you, I needed a boat to come home in, not Caliburn. It was raining hard when I set out but by the time I made it home we were having a torrential downpour of the type that you don’t see very often.

Brigitte had left the window open on her car too so I rang her and told her. But it was rather too late to do any good.

Having set the kefir going, I alternated between the photos and hacking lumps of ice out of the fridge. That latter is now done – all nice and clean and defrosted (but for how long?) and I’ve done almost 70 photos today. And some of them needed quite a lot of editing too. That took some time.

By the time that I was ready for my afternoon walk there had been a dramatic improvement in the weather.

By now not only had the rain ceased but we were having a beautiful afternoon – one that had really brought out the crowds. And the views were splendid too. You could see for miles and miles – all the way to St Helier in Jersey 58 kilometres away. In all the years that i’ve lived here, I’ve never ever seen the Channel islands so clearly with the naked eye, and with the BIG NIKON D500 and the 18-300mm ZOOM LENS it all looked even more clear

It’s tempting me, if I remember, to go out with the tripod tonight if the wind has dropped to an acceptable level

and it wasn’t just on the footpaths and the lawns around here that there were plenty of people either this afternoon.

The severe storms that we have had just recently, such as Storm Alex and what went of before it have certainly shaken up the sea bed and who knows what they have unearthed? And so that’s another reason for the people doing the peche à pied to be out there this afternoon, over and above the beautiful weather and the very low tide today.

And I hope that they share the catch with all of their friends and neighbours. After all, one shouldn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

And so I left the viewpoint overlooking the beach and walked on along the Rue du Nord, and down the footpath underneath the walls. Too many people about today to go for my run so I shelved that until this evening.

There was quite an assortment of items to note going on this afternoon on the beach at the Plat Gousset and down all the way past Donville les Bains.

In the foreground we have the medieval fish trap (at least, I’m assuming that it’s medieval). The water flows over the walls when the tide is coming in and when it retreats it leaves behind a large pool of water in which, in theory, there should be fish trapped which the inhabitants can then pull out with their hands.
Plenty of people out there too, including more pecheurs à pied
The bouchot farm. These are mussels that instead of growing in the sand, somehow manage to grow on the strings that are attached to those poles. These are supposed to be something of a delicacy because with not having been in the sand, they aren’t anythign like as gritty. I once talked to one of the ropes and asked him about the affair. He told me that at first he didn’t like the bouchots but then after a while they began to grow on him.
More pedestrians
The caravan park, with the airfield behind it
The Church of Bréville sur Mer

It beats me sometimes where all of these people come from because as well as the crowds milling around on the footpaths etc., there are also quite a few loitering around on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

You can see that all of the beach changing cabins on the promenade are no longer there, having been taken away for winter storage a couple of weeks ago. And that’s just as well because had they still been there the other night they would have been smashed to matchwood with the force of the waves that were sweeping up over the wall onto the promenade.

There are one or two people on the beach as well, but not as comfortably-installed as they were last weekend with their folding chairs.

Anyway, I left them to it and wandered off through the Square Maurice Marland where I was engaged in conversation with a boy about three years old.

At the viewpoint overlooking the port, I could see that one of the Joly France ferries to the Ile de Chausey, the newer one with the smaller upper superstructure, is there whereas the other one looks as if it might be out at sea.

But it wasn’t that which caught my eye, it was the seaweed in the dock. The storm has clearly devastated the sea bed, as I suspected that it might, and the tidal current has been so strong that it’s brought the seaweed right into the head of the harbour.

That must have been some storm.

Football tonight on the internet tonight again. And Sgorio is still having problems with its service. Apparently the English-language stream stalled and while they were fixing it they transferred the viewers over to our Welsh language stream. And the presenter apologised to the English-speakers – IN WELSH.

As for the match itself, it was Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon Town.The Met had 60% of possession, 15 corners compared to the 5 of the Cofis and a dozen shots on goal compared to the 4 of the opposition. When the Met were awarded a penalty early in the game those of us who were watching were saying “here comes the first of many”.

However Josh Tibbetts in the Cofis goal saved it, and from then on the result was predictable. The Met could still be playing out there all alone right now on an empty pitch and they would still be unable to score. As for Caernarfon, three of their four shots went into the back of the net, to produce one of the most unlikely results that I have ever seen.

The Met had a right-winger out there – a young lad called Liam Warman. I’ve not seen him before but he impressed me considerably tonight and I’ll be looking out for him again.

Despite what I said earlier, I didn’t get out with the tripod tonight.

When the weather brightened up earlier this afternoon as it did, I reckon that it must have simply been the eye of the storm, because it’s back, and with a vengeance too. So well wrapped up and in my waterproof jacket (and how I wish I’d taken my waterproof trousers too) I went out to take a photo or two of the storm.

And if you are wondering about the dreadful quality (because they really are dreadfully blurred and over-exposed) there was a wind blowing at over 100 Km/H and a driving, torrential rainstorm right into the lens of the camera and I had to do the best that I could.

While I was out there, I noticed that there was no-one else whatsoever taking advantage of the view tonight.

That’s hardly surprising because I don’t think that I’ve ever been out in such dreadful weather. There was no chance whatever of going around the headland so instead I went back around the walls. It was impossible – absolutely impossible to run down the path as I usually do. Not only was this absolutely awful headwind and driving rain, but the path was about two inches deep in water.

That meant that I had to pick my way gingerly around, which wasn’t easy as I had the hood of my raincoat pulled firmly down and I couldn’t really see where I was going.

Eventually, after many difficulties, I reached the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

Here, I was being battered and buffetted by a blinding blizzard of rain and I could hardly see a thing. But I’d caught glimpses of the spray as I walked around the path and you could hear the noise of the waves smashing down on the promenade for miles, so I knew that it was going to be a good one.

Basically, it was just a case of waiting for a really loud crash, counting to three to give the spray enough time to make it high into the air, and then pressing the shutter blindly, hoping that something would work out. And, quite frankly, it was something of a failure altogether but you can’t have everything. Ideal conditions and nothing to photograph – miserable and depressing conditions and lots of excitement.

isn’t it always like that?

Having stuck it out for as long as I could and with rivers of rain running down the back of my jacket and soaking my legs through to the bones, I headed off for home, thanking the heavens that there had been no football in the area tonight that I might have gone to see.

The Square Maurice Marland was pretty well sheltered so I managed to run all the way across there and even halfway up the second ramp. I need to try my best to keep my heart working. But the final run that I do – from the church back home, there wasn’t any possibility of attempting it tonight in that wind. And I was right yesterday about the wind tunnel. The howling gust coming up there as I walked past almost bowled me over.

Back here I’ve written up my notes and that’s that. Sunday tomorrow and a day of rest too. No cooking or baking either (except for the usual pizza) because I shan’t be here for a few days. I might stretch myself and, having defrosted the fridge today, defrost the freezer tomorrow.

In this weather, it’s not as if there’s any danger of anything defrosting, is it?

Thursday 1st October 2020 – IT’S ANOTHER MONTH ALREADY…

… so start as we mean to go on.

So while you admire the waves crashing over the Plat Gousset this evening, because the winds have sprung up again this evening, this morning I missed all three alarms and it was 07:35 when I finally surfaced. That wasn’t what I was hoping for, was it?

So anyway I had a listen to the dictaphone. There was something last night about an accident of some description. There was someone in court giving some evidence about some woman and her pet animal, might have been a cat or a dog who has disappeared without trace. They believed that she’d been involved in this accident.

And later I’d been on a coach with a group of people, young people like me for I was young. We’d had quite a good time. When we got to be dropped off – a holiday it was – we all said our goodbyes and my life carried on. I decided that I wanted to go to see some kind of play so early in the morning I got into the metro to go into London. I had some banter with a girl with a girl on the way in. I did my usual trick of going right to the front of the train so that when it pulled in I could step out and put my foot straight on the escalators. I got to the top and it was far too early yet to go to the theatre or wherever I was going to get these tickets. Then I saw a coach that had belonged to the coach company that had taken us on our holiday. I though that I’d go and pick up another brochure.

Before that I was wondering whether I ought to get two tickets because I might be able to talk some girl into coming with me – not that that was likely but never mind. So I saw this coach. I thought that I’d go along and get a brochure for the next lot of holidays. I climbed on at the back and there sitting down at the front were the people with whom I’d had such a good time. I had a laugh and a joke with them, this kind of thing. We exchanged a few humorous chats but nevertheless I was rather disappointed that they had said nothing to me about this next trip. Then the coach set off to do a lap round to drop me off somewhere. One of the passengers shouted up from the back “I hope you realise that the boot’s open with all our luggage in there. It could all have fallen out. I said “well, I’m not driving it. It’s nothing to do with me, is it? I got out and started to walk off. I had my rucksack on my back. I’d also been wearing a pair of green trousers and brown jumper. One of the people on the bus had said “ohh you’re all in blue today”. I thought “this is a strange thing to say with all these clothes that I have on”.

LIDL was next and so I had a brisk walk up there. On the way down into town I went past the viewpoint that overlooks the harbour here.

Moored at the quayside in the place usually reserved for fishing boats are the two Joly France boats, the ferries that run out to the Ile de Chausey. I’m not sure why they would be moored there but never mind.

At least with them being moored side by side you can see the difference between the two. Joly France I, the newer of the two, I think, is nearer the camera. It’s longer (something that I hadn’t realised before), has a smaller upper deck superstructure and the stern is different too. There’s a step cut into it.

Pushing on through town, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past I’ve moaned … “surely not” – ed … about the new car park down on the port.

Instead of doing something really nice with a pretty cobbled or stone surface, it’s just a mass of tarmac with nothing to relieve the monotony. One of my … “many” – ed … gripes is that they could also have put some nice flower beds with plants in trees to make it look a lot more welcoming and attractive.

After all, the town has done this elsewhere. This here in the Rue Couraye is quite attractive so imagine how nice the car park would look with a couple of these in it with nice trees growing there.

I didn’t stop anywhere on the way or on the way back to LIDL (except for the photos) and I wasn’t in there long. I didn’t buy anything special except a bag of potatoes and a bag of carrots, plus the usual fruit of cours

On the way back from the shops I had a look down to the Chantier Navale.

There have been as many as eight boats in there at any one time but the other day they were down to just two. Today though, it’s gone back up to three. Sitting on the blocks by the portable boat hoist is one of our old favourites, the trawler-type vessel Le Tiberiade having some work done on her.

And in the background, out in the open sea La Grande Ancre is busy battling the waves on her way out. It doesn’t look as if it’s a particularly good day today to be at sea with all of that going on.

Back here I had a play with my kefir and then fed my sourdough started. I had to find a new jar for it too because if it ferments too much it’ll overflow the jar that it’s in.

After lunch, the first thing that I did was to peel, dice and blanch half of the carrots that I’d bought, and then set them to drain when they were ready. They went into the freezer later of course and I’ll do the other kilo tomorrow afternoon

We had the usual early afternoon pause for my walk around the headland.

The weather had changed too. This morning it was heavily overcast but by now it was even worse and there was 100% heavy cloud. As well as that, it was also doing its best to rain. Hence there were not too many people out there walking this afternoon. It didn’t prevent the maritime traffic from being out and about though. I couldn’tsee any of the commercial fishing boats but there was a cabin crruiser here just offshore by the Pointe du Roc.

There was no evidence of what it was trying to do, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just there is a favourite spot for fishermen as they chase after the elusive, and presumably bad-tempered sea bass

When I said that there were not too many people about, that of course excluded the brats who were out here in force again.

I’m not too sure if they are the members of the Orienteering group that meets on the field in the late afternoon though. The posts that they have to find hadn’t been set up anyway. But what caught my eye was the fact that although the teacher was wearing a face mask, I couldn’t see that any of the kids were.

Not much social distancing either, so I can see all of this ending in tears before too long. The infection rate figures should go to show that this virus is not something to be taken lightly. After all, kids might possibly be fairly safe if they catch it, but I bet that their parents, grandparents and neighbours won’t be.

Anyway, musing on that point, I wandered off around the headland to the other side. I’d not seen anything of interest on the way.

At the viewpoint overlooking the Chantier Navale I had a look to see if there was anything interesting going on. Le Tiberiade is there now, up on blocks by the portable boat lift. On the starboard side that had a skyjack up against her so it looks as if they are working on her already.

But it does occur to me that THE OTHER DAY, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Le Tiberiade was in the port at the unloading berth having all of her nets lifted off. Has it anything to do with the repairs that we are witnessing to the vessel, or something else completely.

You’ll notice too her registration number on her bow. It begins “CH” – an indication that she’s registered in Cherbourg.

We can’t let the opportunity go past to mention another case of pathetic parking.

The Microcar over there in the Rue St Pierre is especially interesting. Parked on the kerb, blocking the pavement, forcing the kids, people with pushchairs, disabled people in wheelchairs etc to take to the road to go past. As I have mentioned before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … there’s large free a public car park not 50 metres away. And if that’s too far for his poor dear to stagger after school, there’s a parking place right where I’m standing in the Boulevard Vaufleury not 10 metres away.

Back here afterwards, I had an important task to carry out. There’s a vacancy for a Conservation Officer – an admin, not a practical post – and also a Tourism officer on the South Sandwich Islands in the far South Atlantic. Not that I stand any chance of the posts but they looked extremely interesting and I have all of the necessary qualification. And so I wrote out an application.

Like I say, it’ll be a Cold Day In Hell before I’m ever considered for a post like that but if you don’t apply, you don’t get, do you?

Interestingly, the posts carry the office and responsibility of a Police Constable for the islands. That means that if the Argentinian Army ever decides to invade again, it would be my duty to go and arrest them all.

After the guitar practice, it was tea time. Having been to LIDL we had stuffed peppers, followed by more of my rather sad strawberry tart with soya coconut dessert.

This evening I went out for my nocturnal stroll as usual.

The wind has sprung up again, as I mentioned earlier, and we are being blasted once more. Hardly any surprise that there was almost no-one about. The run underneath the city walls was fairly uneventful but it was exciting to watch the waves crashing down on the Plat Gouseet while I caught my breath.

Running across the Square Maurice Marland in the teeth of a howling sou’wester was no fun whatsoever and I needed a good couple of minutes again to catch my breath afterwards. But from there I carried on with my walk around the walls and was lucky enough to see a trawler-type of fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant. They are keeping busy down there.

The run back to the apartment was also a struggle, going head-on into the wind. But I’m glad that I’m back because it’s a lot quieter and warmer in here.

Tomorrow there are no plans for anything (except to take out a pile of paper to the paper bins if the wind has dropped sufficiently not to blow a pile of my personal papers about the town) and I can get on with some work at last. That is, if I come back from my nocturnal ramble in time. I’m clocking up the miles during the night, aren’t I?

Thursday 24th September 2020 – NO PRIZES …

… for guessing what the weather is doing today.

Summer has well and truly gone and we are now full in the grip of autumn. I mentioned yesterday about the winds and perhaps I ought to have added – but regular readers of this rubbish will recall – that not only do we have the highest tides in Europe, we have some of the highest winds too.

Just one look at the dark and rolling sea (whatever happened to the emerald-blue sea that we have been having) and the waves doing their best to clear the sea wall a good hour or two before high tide tells you everything that you need to know.

What else that you need to know – I mean – you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t interested – is that I beat the third alarm clock out of bed.

After I’d sorted myself out I had a listen to the dictaphone and I was surprised that given the short time that I’d had in bed last night, I’d managed to go so far.

So while you admire a few more photos of the storm that we were having this afternoon, I can tell you all about my various journeys.

There was something going on about babies last night. She was feeding them Spam. The two smallest ones had 3.6mm thickness of Spam and the other one had 4mm – it was slightly older. I thought 11.6mm of Spam (so much for my maths when I’m asleep) – that’s less than half an inch between three. They’ll just have their particular size of helping and they are going to be hungry immediately again. Even the woman with me too raised an eyebrow when she heard me talking about the measurements.

Mind you, that could be because she probably didn’t think all that much of my maths either

Later on there was a group of us kids larking around last night and and one of them was called Heather or Hilary, something like that. We’d been having an exchange of banter or something then she had to go home for her tea. We all finished talking and so on. Then the subject came up about this girl and I said “I suppose we’ll be seeing her at school tomorrow” to which someone replied “Eric, you’re certainly going to see Heather (or Hilary) tomorrow”. I said “what do you mean?”. He replied “well you’ve arranged a date with her, something like that”. “Have I really? That surprised me”. “Well the way that she was talking when she left she seemed to be of the opinion that that was the case”. So we carried on chatting for a while and the question came round about this girl. I said “I’ll have to find out her school number”. I knew that it was a 4-figure one that ended something like “33” so I asked someone to find it. They found a number that was 5 figures and totally different but in the end someone went and asked this person to have another look and they came up with a number something like 4933. I thought “that must be it so I’ll make a note of that”. As we were chatting a policeman came up. He asked “did you know that there was a cucumber stuck in the lock of your gate?” “What they heck is happening there?”. Someone said that they has seen this Hilary/Heather girl when she went home she took a cucumber with her so she’s probably stuck it in the lock of the gate to make sure that we get it back. The copper said “it doesn’t want to stay there. You want to get it moved”.

There was another incident later on with a girl with a similar name, a very quiet, shy girl also called Heather or Hilary – I dunno why I got stuck on that name last night. She and her mother and a few people had been around to see us and I’d been chatting to the girl. She was very quiet, very shy but very nice. I was thinking that I might go round to her house to see if she wants to come out for a walk or something. But then we had visitors round and I couldn’t. It got to being rather late, about 20:30. So I found her phone number – my mother knew it so I rang her up. I knew that it was in West Street somewhere. I mumbled her name to see if it was her and it was. I basically said that I was going to come round and invite her for a walk but as we had people round I couldn’t so does she fancy coming round one evening later in the week? She said “yes” which cheered me up. I suggested the following day but she had something on, and the day after that she had something on and it wasn’t convenient and so on. But she seemed keen enough but it didn’t seem to fit for the dates. In the end her mother took the telephone and said “why don’t you come round to our shop? We have a second-hand shop in West Street”. That rang a bell with me because we’d been talking about shop valuations and how they had had a good valuation on their house and how they were going to borrow some money to deal with it. Although the number was something like 475 West Street it was right up at the Hightown end which of course the numbers were the other way round – the lower numbers are at the Hightown end. She said “why don’t you come round here during the day and have a talk to her?”. That seemed to be a much more logical way of going about it if she was keen and her mother was keen enough that I could take her for a walk or something.

So I’ve no idea what was going on last night. Me in my mid-teens (we didn’t move to Crewe until just before my 16th birthday although that’s not significant) chasing after young girls called Heather or Hilary.

And my mother being helpful too – that’s something of a change of lifestyle. I’m surprised that I wasn’t overcome with shock. Normally, if there were any works going on anywhere, all my family usually used to go around and shove spanners in them as a matter of course.

But I definitely seem to be trying to recapture my lost youth right now. And I wish I knew who this poor girl was.

There was still plenty of time to look at the arrears and SHOCK! HORROR! they are all done and out of the way. It serves me right for taking a steam-driven laptop with me when I went away instead of one that works properly.

After a shower and a clean-up I went out to the shops.

More activity taking place by the Porte St Jean. One of the workmen fixing the kerb at the edge of the pavement. Probably someone has dislodged it while manoeuvring in a car.

My shopping in LIDL ended up being one of the most expensive that I’ve had. Apart from all of the fresh fruit, it was a sale of motorcycling gear and they had motorcyclists’ thermal winter underwear on sale.

Despite everything, I still have high hopes of going back to the High Arctic one of these days and the thermal underwear that I bought in Canada didn’t seem to do the job as well as I liked. This stuff should be better – at least I hope so.

Before I went, I had half-an-hour to spare (the new dynamic me seems to be still chugging along right now) so I made two bread mixes – a large one with bread flour and cereal and sunflower seeds and a small one with banana, ground almonds, raisins and a banana.

While I was out at the shops I’d left them proofing and when I came back, I kneaded them and left them for the second proof.

To warm up the oven, I baked a rice pudding while the bread was on its second proof.

Once the pudding was cooked and the bread had risen sufficiently I put them both in the oven.

While the loaves were cooking, I diced some ginger very finely and brought it to the boil with a small amount of water and left it to simmer.

There were three kiwis and two lemons that needed eating so I peeled them, whizzed them to a purée in the whizzer and then added them to the ginger and water and left it all to simmer for an hour.

At the end of that time (which I’d spent washing up) I took the giner, lemon and kiwi mix off the stove, added two tablespoons of honey and some turmeric, and then whizzed it all into a nice cordial and put it into a nice clean bottle.

By now the bread was cooked so I took it out of the oven. But a minor disaster in that the bread had stuck to the bottom of the mould so it came away in two halves.

Greased or not, this porcelain dish thing that I used isn’t up to the job and I’m going to have to think again

After lunch I attacked the photos from my trip on the Spirit of Conrad and I made good progress. We’re now anchored in the roads at the Ile de Chausey.

And while I was at it, I made a startling discovery. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the small ship that we’ve seen a few times. It looks like a French government ship except that while the markings are the same, this has white where you would expect to see grey.

But looking at my photos of the Ile de Chausey I found that it was in port and under a microscope I could read her name. She’s called Les Epiettes and she is actually a French Government ship – owned by the Ponts et Chaussées – The Roads and Bridges Department

This afternoon I’d hardly set foot out of the door on my afternoon run before I was buzzed yet again by a low-flying aircraft.

Not the red microlight this time – since I commented last week about it, I haven’t seen it since, which is what you’d expect. Today, it was the turn of the Air-Sea Rescue helicopter to get me. Someone there has decided to get his chopper out this afternoon.

And being able to see the serial number today (it was so close that I could even see the pilot’s pimples) which is F-ZBPF, I can tell you that she’s an Airbus Eurocopter EC-145 built in 2003, build number 9012, and owned by the French Securite Civile – although at one time she was registered in Germany.

There were just me and three or four other people out there this afternoon. It really was a wicked wind.

Strangely though, the sky was a lot clearer than I expected it to be even if it was very cloudy too. There was a really good view all the way down the Brittany coast and we could clearly see that those objects that I have thought once or twice might be ships going into St Malo are in fact islands.

The white caps on the waves are quite impressive too, so far out in the bay. We really were taking “a hell of a beating”, just like the England football team did in Norway in 1981.

Round at the chantier navale we’ve had yet more movement

Our Ten Green Bottles have reduced themselves yet again as another one seems to have fallen into the sea We are now down to just four in there today, down from five yesterday and a far cry from the heady days of a week or two ago when there were as many as eight up on blocks.

You’ve seen the storm and the waves so I won’t trouble you any more with any of that. Instead I came on back to the apartment.

Another 4 LPs have been recorded this afternoon, reducing the pile of those. And then there was the hour on the guitars too.

Tea tonight was something different. I’d been giving some thought to the idea of meals when I’m away at Castle Anthrax in 2 weeks time. For some reason, beans and chips came into my head. it ended up being such an overwhelming feeling that tonight I cut up a couple of potatoes into chip-like objects and put them in my microwave griller with some olive oil.

While I was at it, I cooked some beans and a burger and that was that. The chips were, well, different but as a substitute for the real thing they really did go down a treat.

Rice pudding for afters of course.

Tonight’s walk was something of a disappointment.

Once more I was the only person out there which was no surprise given the howling gale. Running along the footpath under the walls was no real problem but it was impossible on the Square Maurice Marland. A howling gale hitting me full-on in the face stopped me dead (well, almost) in my tracks halfway across.

Having taken a photo of the boats in the tidal harbour, I could just about manage to run all the way home but opening the door was something else. It’s heavy and the wind was doing its best to fight me off.

And now with the notes written up, I’m off to bed. I’ve been feeling much better this last couple of days and I haven’t even crashed out. but I’m not going to push my luck. I’m going to have an early night.

Tomorrow I have no plans so there will be another pile of photos and some more tidying up, that I didn’t do today.

And the place needs it too. i’ve been letting things slide just recently.

EPIC HALL

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