Tag Archives: shower

Saturday 21st July 2018 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… in several weeks I actually managed three meals today. I’m not sure why, but this evening I could have eaten a scabby horse, and then gone back for the rider.

But overall, the day wasn’t quite so impressive. As I said yesterday, I was going back to my desk in the evening to carry on working. And I did too, and I certainly didn’t expect to be still hard at it at 03:35 either It is getting just like old times again, isn’t it?

The alarms went off at 06:20 and 06:30, and I did here them too. But it was round about 07:35 when something in the street really woke me up. And that was enough for me to crawl out of bed.

A friend of mine has had some devastating news this last week and is receiving no help – in fact quite the reverse – from her husband. We’ve been chatting on and off for the last few days and she was on-line again. But at least she’s cheered herself up a bit now and things don’t look quite so gloomy.

And then another friend was on-line too and decided to tell me all about her bowel disorder just as I was sitting down to breakfast. Thanks very much!

I had a shower and a general clean-up and then headed off to the shops, negotiating the new barrier to the car park now that they seem to have that working.

LIDL came up with nothing special, but then it was off to the dechetterie to unload the European Cardboard Box Mountain. Caliburn moves around quite quicker now.

NOZ came up with, apart from the usual stuff, a new rucksack. Mine is really good quality but it’s too small and awkwardly packed. There were some big 60-litre rucksacks in there today, waterproof too, at just €19:95. It doesn’t have the useful pockets that the other one has, but it’s the size that counts and how the stuff is prportioned. The rest I can invent.

LeClerc didn’t have too much special either, although I did buy a new decent set of nail scissors. The ones that I have are about 30 years old and slowly giving up the ghost. These new ones are great.

But the media centre there came up with the goods. They were selling 32gb micro-SD cards for just €11:99 so I bought another three. And a good computer mouse too so that the really good one can go into the office and I can use the new one in the laptop on the sofa.

I was so enthralled by the micro-SD cards that I totally forgot that I’d gone in there to buy a new SD card for the big Nikon. I’ll have to do that next week.

Back here I made mu butties and then went to sit on my wall in the sun, with my book and not one, not two but three lizards now for company. I’ll have my own herd by the end of the summer won’t I?

There was a load of excitement too in the port.

The company that runs the ferries to the Ile de Chausey has two ships, one of which sometimes goes off on tours of the bay.

And with it being summer, we have one going out on a voyage while the other one is on its way itno port.

And then some tidying up. And the place does look different too now after that. I shall have to press on next week and make even more improvements.

I started some work too but, shame as it is to admit it, it wasn’t long before I was laid out on the bed fast asleep. For a good couple of hours too, and I would probably still be there now had I not had two really wicked attacks of cramp.

But when I awoke I was starving, hence the meal. Stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And it’s nice to have some proper hot food for a change.

Now, I’ll go back to working again. But not until 03:35. At least – I hope not.

Thursday 19th July 2018 – IZZY WHIZZY …

… let’s get busy.

That’s been the motto of today anyway, just for a change.

Last night however, I was pretty exhausted and so I was in bed before 22:00 just for a change. But being wary of what normally happens when I try for an early night – that I end up tossing and turning for several hours – I resorted to the old stand-by of putting the laptop close to the bed and watching a film.

Never fails, does it? Didn’t even make 10 minutes.

So I was up early and organised the medication and all of that. And I wasn’t the only one up early either as a friend was waiting on line for me. Seems that she has had some disappointing news and wanted a chat.

And so I did. That’s what friends are for.

A late breakfast was the result, followed by a later shower and then I set the washing machine a-go.

The walk up to LIDL was painful, but I have to keep on doing it. I need to push myself onwards while I can.

But I had a surprise across the road from there in the Avenue des Vendéens.

Two guys were looking at an old scooter which, at first glance from a distance, looked like one of the old Zundapp prototypes, so I went over to have a look.

It wasn’t quite as rare as that – in fact it was a Peugeot scooter from the 1950s. I’d never seen one before which, the owner told me, was hardly surprising as there can’t be more than a handful still left.

And I’d been lucky to see this one as he had only just wheeled it out of his garage for 30 seconds.

In LIDL my eye was caught by the size of these tomatoes.

Not having a tape measure handy, the best guess that I could make was that these were about 4 inches in diameter. You can get some idea of the size by comparing them to the “normal” tomatoes to the right.

I was going to say that I’d spent nothing today in there. But that’s not really true. But if you compare today with what I’ve been spending this week, it is pretty minimal, But all the same …

First thing that I needed was some coffee. I’d run out of the ground stuff, as I said earlier, so I bought a couple of packets to see what it’s like. Had I known that supplies were so low, I would have stocked up on the coffee that I liked when I was in Belgium. It’s not sold in France.

Another thing is that with having guests arriving, I need some spare sheets. No-one wants to sleep in a sheet after I’ve been sleeping in it – washed or not – and I’d bought a new one at IKEA. But today at LIDL they had some blue ones (my bedroom is blue) on special offer so I added one of those to the guest bag.

It seemed to be my lucky day with old motorbikes too. On the way back, I came across an old guy cleaning a Solex – you know, the typical French moped of the 40s and 50s with the engine underneath the handlebars.

This one was a later one from the late 60s with a pressed-steel frame and so I got to talk to him about it. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-gone guises will recall that I unearthed the remains of one of these in a field of brambles when I was doing a furniture removal back in 2002.

It seems that the guy collects bits and makes complete machines up out of the piles. So seeing as the Solex is doing nothing down on the farm and it’s not something that I’m likely to miss, I’ll bring it back whenever I’m next down there and donate it to the cause.

It pays to keep in with the locals.

We were having some more activity in the Bay as well.

Marité was out there having a little sail around the Baie de Mont St Michel, and she was in company with La Granvillaise.

One of these days I’ll have to take myself out and about on one of them, if they decide one day to go somewhere exciting. Quebec would be nice.

Back here I opened the window in the bedroom, put the clothes dryer thing in the window and hung up the washing. But this isn’t going to be easy with the new chest of drawers in the way. I need to have a think about this.

Liz was on line too and so we had a little chat. Strawberry Moose has his holidays to plan.

After lunch I tidied up Caliburn and got him looking much more like it. A pile of stuff went into the bin from there.

With that out of the way then I attacked the European Cardboard Box Mountain. And it’s now all gone down into the back of Caliburn. It’s amazing how uncomplicated it becomes when you have a ratchet strap handy.

But it was tiring work and I had to sit down halfway through and have a little … err … relax.

And if that wasn’t enough, I attacked the bedroom and did some tidying up in there too. And that looks much better, although there’s still tons to do. But it really is nice to be finally able to sit comfortably on a comfortable chair and do some work in a proper office environment.

The walk around the headland about finished me off, so now I’m going to bed. I deserve it too.

Tomorrow I need to make some more hummus seeing as I’ve run out of that kind of stuff for my butties and I don’t really want to attack the cheese as yet.

Mind you, with what I’ve done today I’ll probably be asleep for a week.

Sunday 15th July 2018 – 10:35 …

… is a much more civilised time to be waking up on a Sunday morning, isn’t it?

But what’s not so civilised is the fact that I was still up and about at 04:00 this morning.

For some reason I just wasn’t tired and at some silly time in the morning I was dealing with the hidden files that I told you about yesterday on the portable drive – passing them over to the master disk and then having to work out a way of deleting them from the drive because, for some reason, they had been installed in the system drive part.

In the end, a good old proprietary file shredder came to the rescue. The one that I have can reach into the parts of the computer that other file shredders can’t reach.

As a result of my late arousal, I had a very late breakfast. And I almost forgot my fig rolls too. But I had both of them, which meant that I didn’t have any lunch.

The crowds out here wandering around told me that there was something afoot in the Medieval town. And so I grabbed a quick shower, but my nails, and went out hot-foot (or chaud-pied as they might say around here) to see.

Sure enough, we were having another brocante around the streets. And this time I managed to find something. A Michelin “Green Guide” of Normandy – a 1970-71 version in really good condition for all of €0:50.

There were lots of other things that I would have liked too, but I drew the line at paying €500 for a nice seascape or €220 for a nice model of a sailing ship.

The owner of the sailing ship told me of a secluded harbour in a wide bay where it could be kept, and he made it sound so good that I reckoned that his barque was worse than his bight.

Another thing that was going on up here was a photograph exposition in the open air.

It seems that someone has been out in an aeroplane or maybe one of these paraglider things and taken loads of photographs of Normandy from the air, and there were about 20 of them on display outside this afternoon.

Some of them were quite good too and there were one or two that made my quite envious. I wish that my photographs would turn out like his.

I had another bit of good luck too this afternoon.

The church, the Eglise de Notre Dame de Cap Lihou was open to the public today.

That doesn’t happen all that often, and the last time that I noticed the open doors I didn’t have the camera with me. But today, I was properly equipped.

The origins of the church go back to 1113 when it is said that fishermen dragged up a statue of Mary from the sea, presumably from an earlier shipwreck.

In honour of this event, a chapel dedicated to her was erected in this vicinity.

But all of this changed during the latter stages of the Hundred Years War

After the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 the English occupied Normandy and the the Medieval City was created and the fortifications built.

In 1440 the construction of the current church began. The granite blocks that were used in its construction were brought over from quarries on the Ile de Chausey.

And from then on, after the recapture of the town, the church was continually enlarged, with the sacristy being added as recently as 1771.

There are plenty of very worn gravestones on the floor of the church. It seems that this was the place for the notables of the town to be buried back in those days.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to read the inscriptions on them now.

As an important historical edifice, the church was added to the list of Historical Monuments on 12th December 1930.

While you admire another photo of the interior of the church, I headed for home.

Back here, shame as it is to admit it, after I returned I crashed out for a short while. And then I had to start to do some work.

There’s a possibility that I might be having at least three visits sometime over the next few months so I need to organise my diary, organise my appointments and make a few arrangements with others so that we all know what we are doing it – and, more importantly, when.

And that takes more time than you might imagine too. I don’t know where the time goes to these days.

With having had no lunch, I was ready for tea and with it being Sunday it’s pizza night. But surprisingly (or maybe not) I had a struggle to eat it. I’m definitely not doing too well, am I?

On the walk this evening I met Gribouille again and he came for a pick-up. And it seems that he has acquired a new younger brother, a little tabby, and he came for a pick-up and cuddle too.

And they weren’t the only things to see outside.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen this car before. It’s a Peugeot 403, built between 1955 and 1966 and which replaced the legendary Peugeot 203.

1,200,000 or so of these cars were built and there are still several thousand driving around on the roads of France as daily drivers, never mind as voitures de collection.

So I’ll try for an early night tonight. The alarm goes on in the morning and I really must organise myself. There’s a lot to do.

Thursday 12th July 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… afternoon!

Sat down on the sofa at about 15:00 with a nice cold glass of lemonade. Next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45 and all my ice had melted.

And I’d been on my travels too. Out in Canada. In another setting that I have visited in the past too. This time I was doing a circular tour of some area, and I had some kind of deadline to meet too, so I couldn’t afford to hang about and I was relying on the dashcam for photography, thinking that I’ll take some stills of my voyage from the videos. But I arrived at an area with a huge girder bridge going over some water, with a big main road like a motorway. But for some reason the motorway came to a dead stop before the bridge and there was a ferry announced. For some reason or other it reminded me of the set-up at the Confederation Bridge from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Isle in the old days. The ferry was leaving in 10 minutes and I had 8 miles to travel (we’ve had a couple of real circumstances like this on our travels) so I didn’t even have time to check the map to see if this was the correct ferry. I just had to put my foot down and get going, and look pretty silly if it turned out to be the wrong ferry.

Yes, the exertions of the last couple of weeks have really got me down, haven’t they?

A late night last night didn’t help much, but then again that was balanced out by the fact that although the alarms went off as you might expect at 06:20 and 06:30, I just turned over and went back to sleep again. 09:00 is a much more reasonable time to be out and about.

After the usual medicine performance I had breakfast and a shower and general clean-up, and then off out. Just outside, I bumped into one of the neighbours who told me that the remote controls for the new barrier are ready, so I added that to my list of things to do.

First stop though was LIDL where I stocked up with a few things – nothing special. Next stop was the remote control, and then across the road to LeClerc, where I wasn’t quick enough with the phone camera to catch an old Renault 4CV that was driving around the car park.

Nothing exciting in LeClerc so I came home and, picking up the coolbox out of Caliburn, packed everything away and put the coolbox soaking with bleach to clean it out.

My lizard was there waiting for me on my wall when I went for a rather late lunch, and then back here, well, you know the rest of the story.

Once I’d come round, I had a think about tea – for the first time in a week or more – and made myself some pasta and vegetables tossed in garlic powder, pepper and olive oil.

While that was doing, I assembled a couple of little things that I had bought in IKEA and tidied up the first part of the European Cardboard Box Mountain.

Once I’d washed up, the rubbish went into the bin across the road and I went for a walk around the headland. I need to restart my good habits.

While I was walking around, I was miles away with my head in the clouds, as is my usual situation.

But my reverie was interrupted by a rather loud reversing siren coming from down one of the boats down in the harbour.

It turned out that one of the ferries, Granville that go over to Jersey was in the process of reversing out of its berth at the Gare Maritime.

It seemed to me that it was rather a weird time to be going out on a ferry crossing, so I watched it for a while.

However it wasn’t setting off out, but moving into the inner harbour to be tied up next to its older brother, Victor Hugo.

We must be having a very low tide tonight for them to want to move it inside. There will probably be crowds of people out on the sands tomorrow at low tide.

Back here now, exhausted and ready for bed despite all of the sleep that I had had. I dunno where this is all going but I can’t say that I’m enjoying any of it.

Tuesday 10th July 2018 – BARRY HAY …

… once famously said “one thing I want to tell you all, and that it’s good to be back home”.

And so as I staggered in through my front door at about 21:50 last night I did have to say that I couldn’t have agreed more with him, even though I was confronted by the European Cardboard Box Mountain.

So having crashed out good and proper last night at about 21:30 after my marathon session around the northern half of the Somme front line, I was up and about at about 05:40, long before the alarm.

I’d even found time to go off on my travels too, where I ended up in a comfortable household with a woman from Shrewsbury (and who could pronounce it correctly too) and her two teenage daughters. It started off by my having received a huge packet of documents – deeds for Reyers, deeds for Expo, life assurance policies and the like. It turned out that I had finally become fed up of my bankers and closed my accounts. I needed to file the documents away safely and so I reckoned a safety-deposit box that I had in a bank would do. But then it turned out that I had of course closed the bank account so I wouldn’t have access. A self-storage unit might do, but I didn’t think that that was permanent enough. So o the way home I stopped, parked my car (which was pale green) on a bad corner and applied some kind of dry shampoo to my hair (it was long) to clean it. But cars kept on bumping into mine and pushing it further around the bend so in the end I had to abandon the procedure (and the top off my shampoo tube which I had dropped on the floor somewhere) and drive the car away. I passed several petrol stations where I could have obtained some water to rinse my hair but later found that I could comb it out – except for where it had been badly applied and I ended up looking like a pineapple. This woman was going through her paperwork too, and reckoned without actually saying it that although she came from a good family background she had been adopted. I was explaining about how I’d been born on one side of Shrewsbury (which I hadn’t) and how I’d lived fora while on the other side of the town (which stretching the imagination a little, you might say is true).

Somehow I still didn’t feel in the mood to do too much so I had a shower and a tidy up, packed everything away, said goodbye to the most bizarre landlady I had ever met in my life (and, believe me, I’ve met a few) and loaded up Caliburn – who still had his wheels on which surprised me greatly.

And I forgot to take a photograph of the hotel too.

It was looking miserable and cloudy, and I could even smell the rain, but anyway I set off on my travels, remembering this time to stop at the LeClerc that I had found yesterday evening to pick up stuff for lunch (but forgot my breakfast too while I was at it).

Dodging the roadworks and following the diversions, I eventually arrived at Albert and called in at the Super U to find some breakfast. But not before I was accosted on the car park by someone who was clearly looking for a job. Much as I admired his initiative, I couldn’t do anything for him of course, but this is the second time (the first being at Soissons a good many years ago) that I’d been propositioned like this.

Breakfast was taken at the side of the road in Albert and then I went for a wander around the town.

Albert is of course famous as being the main British assembly point behind the lines, and for the fact that it was visible (or, at least, the spire of the church is visible) from the German lines at la Boisselle. Consequently it was under heavy artillery fire throughout the war.

There’s the famous church of course, with its statue of Mary perched on top, offering up Jesus to the clouds. And the legend that God would reach down and take up the baby if a virgin ever walked past.

With it being such a magnificent target, the Germans naturally aimed at it, but after it had been hit and almost fallen (and French engineers had chained it to the tower) another legend grew up that differed according to whoever you spoke to.

Either

whichever side that knocked down Mary would lose the war
the war would not end until Mary had been knocked down

As it happens, it was the British who knocked it down in March 1918 when the town had fallen to the Germans in the Spring Offensive.

From Albert I headed off to Dartmoor Cemetery a mile or so to the east of the town.

This is a famous cemetery, and for a couple of reasons too. Firstly, it’s the last resting place of a couple of people called Lee. They are father and son who fought side-by-side on the Somme and were killed on the same day almost in the same place.

The second reason is that it’s the site of the grave of Harry Webber.

In 1914 his three sons joined up for the War and were accepted as officers. Harry Webber then petitioned the War Office, offering to serve the British Army in any capacity they liked, so that he would have the privilege of saluting his three sons.

After all, he had plenty of free time, having just retired from the Stock Exchange at the ripe old age of 65.

Despite being refused on many occasions, his persistence led him eventually to be appointed as a Lieutenant Transport Officer to one of the Regiments on the Somme.

And it was there on the Somme that he was killed by a shell.

Aged 67 at the time of his death, he is the oldest known battle casualty of the War.

Next stop is Mansell Copse and the Devonshire Cemetery.

Here, the Devonshire Regiment had to charge down a hill, across a railway line and up the other side into the German trenches at Mametz. And while the artillery had blown away most of the wire and most of the defences, there was a well-protected machine gun built into a substantial cross in the civilian cemetery halfway up the other side.

Captain Martin, who was said to be a keen modeller, went home on leave just before the battle and made a clay model of the battleground, and on his return just before the battle told his colleagues where he thought the machine gun would catch him and his men.

And sure enough, after the battle had passed over the spot, they found his body exactly where he had predicted.

The War poet William Hodgson wrote
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
And I suspect like most sensitive people, he maybe had an idea that he would be one of them.

He was a Lieutenant in the Devonshire Regiment and he too met his death in the attack on Mametz on 1st July.

At Carnoy, in the village square, this was the casualty treatment centre for this part of the front.

General Rawlinson had asked for every ambulance train on France to be standing by behind the lines to evacuate the wounded. There were 20 of them, but the Quartermaster-General sent him just three.

As a result, some wounded men had to lie here in the open for as long as five days before they made it back to a hospital.

One soldier, with a slight wound to the foot, discovered when he arrived at a hospital after all that time that the wound had turned gangrenous and his entire leg had to be amputated.

That’s one of the reasons why the cemetery at Carnoy is so large, but only a handful of graves are “unknown” – they mostly all came from the casualty clearing station, having died in that five-day period.

One Captain, Captain Neville, was in charge of four battalions. He gave each one a football and ordered each battalion, at the start of the battle, to kick a ball all the way to Berlin.

Two of the footballs made it back to Blighty, but Captain Neville didn’t.

Up on the ridge at the top of Carnoy, I’m standing on the German front line looking right across to the Devonshire’s trench at Mansell Copse.

Somewhere not too far from where I’m standing, although I can’t see it because of all the wheat, it the crater caused by the Kasino Point mine. This blew away a large proportion of the German defenders and as it was blown late, took the defenders completely by surprise.

This was one of the reasons why the attack on this section of the line was so successful, and the village of Montauban, a couple of kilometres behind me, fell quite quickly.

The British front line soldiers were through quite easily, and sat waiting for the second line and the cavalry, because they had completely broken the front and there was nothing now between them and Berlin.

But at this moment, unfortunately, General Rawlinson lost his nerve. Having heard of the disasters on the other fronts, he could not believe that there had been a breakthrough here at Montauban and refused to order the second line and the cavalry forward.

He noted in his diary as early as 12:15 on that day that “there is no hope of getting the Cavalry through today”.

Meanwhile, the British first-line troops were sitting staring at empty fields and empty forests, and did so for two days, and when Rawlinson finally did order his reserves forward, it was too late.

The Germans had refortified the line by this time and the slaughter started again.

Had Rawlinson only kept his nerve, the War could have ended 12 months earlier. But then that was Rawlinson’s big failure. he hated Kitchener and had no faith whatever in, in fact he had nothing but contempt for Kitchener’s “New Army” of civilian volunteers. They may not have been as well-trained as his beloved regulars but they certainly played their part.

And he was a born-and-bred infantryman too and had no understanding of and no faith in the cavalry either, and no concept of the panic that a well-handled cavalry division could create behind enemy lines.

Not quite relating to the First Day on the Somme, I went just down the road to the Military Cemetery at Guillemont Road.

One of the people lying in here is Raymond Asquith. He was the son of Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minster at the time.

So having concluded my visit to the Somme Battlefield, the next question was bound to be “what to do next?”

Heading towards home was the obvious answer and I decided that I would at least reach Rouen before I thought about a place to stay.

But Amiens was awful. There were roadworks all the way through the centre and what should have been a 15-minute drive turned into over an hour.

And from then on it just seemed to get worse.

I had to stop not far outside Amiens for lunch. and also a little half-hour doze. And as usual, I felt a little better after that.

But my better humour didn’t last much longer. Not long after my little pause I came across yet ANOTHER “road closed” sign, and we disappeared down yet ANOTHER enormously long diversion.

But it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good, and we eventually ended up just a couple of miles away from the autoroute that runs down the coast from Abbeville. So at least I was able to hot-foot it to Rouen and make up a little lost time.

But I lost it all in Rouen because, once more, there were road works just about everywhere and we crawled through the city and it took us ages.

Just WHEN are they going to build a by-pass around it? It’s totally crazy having all of this traffic on the city streets.

On the edge of the city I put in some diesel and then settled down on the autoroute just to get clear of the place. Caliburn was running quite well with just a little vibration that’s sprung up from somewhere, and we were bowling along quite nicely, so I just kept going.

Still three hours to home though, but only 2 and a bit via the motorway if you don’t mind the péages.

And one of my friends had told me a very useful tip. I’ve been paying “Class 2” for Caliburn because he’s over 1m90 in height, but apparently vans of Caliburn’s size are really “Class 1”, and apparently I ought to argue.

So at the first péage passage, Caliburn was classed as “Class 2”. So I pressed the button and explained. Sure enough, the tariff changed over to “Class 1”.

At the second péage, still “Class 2”, but as soon as I pressed the button to call, the tariff changed automatically to “Class 1” and a voice from Control said, before I’d even had time to say anything “I’m sorry. I’ve changed it for you”.

So this is a well-known phenomenon that doesn’t even need explaining, and when I think of all the times that I’ve travelled on the péages in a van and all the excess tolls that I must have paid and how I’ve been ripped off, and how the autoroute companies have been there ripping off van drivers for 15 years.

They must have made millions out of van drivers illegally over the years.

By the time that I reached Caen I really was flagging but I decided that with just an hour or so to go, I’d keep going. If I really felt bad I’d stop for another doze at the side of the road.

But here we are, back at home. 500 or so kilometres with just a brief doze and another stop for fuel. A far cry from when I could do 1000 kilometres non-stop without batting an eyelid, even after a full day’s work, but it’s still the longest day that I’ve had for several years, and it’s also after a good day out around the battlefields.

I ought to be really proud of myself, but to be honest, I’m just too tired to care right now.

Monday 9th July 2018 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… make it to Canada today, I was actually in Newfoundland and Labrador too!

But more of that anon.

With something of a very disturbed sleep (and I’ve no idea why) I finally crawled out of bed at some time rather later than the alarm.

There was plenty of work to be done this morning but for some reason or other I wasn’t really in the mood enough to do it. I don’t know where my energy seems to have gone to at all.

Anyway, at 09:00 and the morning rush-hour gone, I went outside and hit the streets. First stop was to load up with food as the lunchtime stuff is getting low, but would you believe that I drove all of the 45 kilometres to Serre, all the way through the city of Arras and several other small towns, and didn’t even find a single supermarket?

Serre was one of the vital points on the Somme front line that needed to be taken, but the attack had bogged down long before the village had been reached. The “Accrington Pals” who had attacked the village had been decimated.

All around the area are several cemeteries that contain the bodies of the fallen that were recovered from the barbed wire when the battlefield was cleared after the German retreat in early 1917 and were still being recovered in the 1920s.

One piece of land that had been part of the front line had been given to the City of Sheffield and it’s known as Sheffield Park. Tile has worn away many of the features but you can still see the trenches and the shell holes quite clearly.

Narrowly avoiding being squidged by a French lorry driver who was speeding and not paying attention, I visited a few other cemeteries of note and then headed for the Hawthorn Redoubt.

This was a prominent hill overlooking the front line and the British Army dealt with it by the simple expedient of tunneling underneath it and packing the tunnel full of explosives. The explosion of the mine at 07:28 was the signal for the attack to begin.

The crater is certainly impressive – it has to be seen to be believed, but it’s by no means the largest that was exploded on that day. It is famous however as its detonation was actually captured on film.

Down the road from there I entered Newfoundland and Labrador. This is another corner of a foreign field that is forever Canada, although I can’t claim asylum there (I did ask).

It’s where the Newfoundland Regiment, all 800 of them, were ordered into attack but due to a misunderstanding, instead of going through the communication trench to the front line, they left their trenches in the rear and advanced in the open, in full view of a couple of German heavy machine guns.

It has to be said that there were a couple of hundred German machine gunners on the Somme front line, and they alone counted for a very large proportion of the 60,000 or so British casualties on the 1st July.

By the time the Newfoundlanders reached the front line, there were just 95 left. They probably hadn’t even wounded a single German.

I ended up having quite a chat with a nice Canadian girl from St Johns who told me that her great grandfather’s brother is still lying somewhere out there on the battlefield.

Here we were interrupted by a band of pseudo-Scottish pipers who insisted on attempting to play Scotland the Brave and Cock o’ the North and were most unimpressed when I suggested that they went to practise a Highland Fling on the field containing the unexploded ordnance.

Next stop was the Thiepval Ridge and its massive memorial to the missing. Over 75,000 soldiers who lost their lives on the Somme have no known grave and when you see the size of the shell holes that remain, it’s hardly surprising.

Their names are all recorded here,but you’ll see several gaps that are clearly where names have been filled with cement. Bodies are regularly discovered even today on the battlefield and if they are identified, their names are removed from the memorial.

And there are several cases of the “missing” subsequently coming to light, having gone to ground in rural France.

The leader of the pipe band and his acolyte came over to me here (they had been going from memorial to memorial trying to play the pipes) and demanded an explanation of my earlier comments. This led to quite a heated and animated discussion, particularly when I suggested how he could obtain a better sound from his pipes (a method which involves eating several plates of baked beans).

It seems that all of these Scots pipe bands who died for freedom only died so that Scots pipe bands can express their freedom and no-one else is allowed to have any freedom of expression if it disagrees with the opinions of the Scots pipe bands. But I put him right on that score and he slunk off with a flea in his ear.

A good pipe band is a magnificent thing, but a poor pipe band is one of the worst things in the world to have to suffer to hear. It’s even worse than a mouth organ, and regular readers of this rubbish willknow my opinion about that.

The sky had clouded over by now, but I carried on, visiting Sausage and Mash valleys, where a couple of machine guns on a spur of high land in between them decimated the attacking soldiers.

It’s here thuugh that we have the Lochnagar Crater. This was the largest mine exploded on the day and you can tell that by the size of the crater.

Cecil Lewis, an RFC pilot who was flying over it on the day, gives a vivid description of it in his autobiography Sagittarius Rising.

Back 40-odd years ago there were plans to fill in and redevelop the crater, as has happened with a couple of others, but a British person bought the land to preserve its integrity and he’s made quite a passable job of a tourist attraction of it.

But from the top of it, you can certainly see the futility of attacking up “Sausage” and “Mash” valleys.

It was already 19:00 by this time and so I shot off back to Lens. I’d had no food at all during the day, so I was well-pleased in stumbling across a LeClerc supermarket where I could grab some stuff to make a butty – just before they closed the doors too.

And back here in the heat I had a shower and washed my clothes before eating it too.

But 143% of my day’s activity on the fitbit told its own story. By 21:30 I was tucked up in bed and I’ll do the rest tomorrow.

Saturday 7th July 2018 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

… I’ll have a decent night.

But it wasn’t last night, that’s for sure. With all of the excitement following Belgium’s unexpected victory over Brazil there was chaos in the streets and enough noise to awaken the dead.

And so despite everything and all of my best intentions, it was hours before I managed to go off to sleep.

It was another morning too where I was awake long before the alarm went off. When I finally glanced at the time it was 05:47 and I was hoping for something rather better than that.

There had still been time to go on my travels though. Back driving a taxi and I’d been given a list of the regular clients which I was sure that I had memorised, and so I tore it up. And immediately there was a call over the radio “go to Nantwich and pick up so-and-so”. And I couldn’t remember where he or she lived. My notes were too badly torn to be able to be pieced together so I asked on the radio, but I couldn’t understand the reply which was rather garbled.
A little later I was in Eritrea (don’t ask me why) – an Eritrea that looked like nothing that I had ever seen of it. There was a military patrol walking down a road floating up observation balloons, many of which had fallen to earth and were littering the side of the road. Suddenly the patrol withdrew, leaving me isolated right out in front, a rather nervous place to be. Eventually I found a tourist guide who was selling tickets on a steam train ride. he was negotiating with someone and they agreed on a price of $50:00. The only thing that I could see in the brochure for a steam ride was at $130:00 so I asked about it. He replied that I needed to go to the railway station and book it there. He mentioned 13:30 but I didn’t understand if that was the time of departure or the time of return, and it was all so confusing.

So crawling out of bed I had my medication (now that I have some) but I still didn’t feel like any breakfast so I had a shower instead and cracked on with my paperwork.

The cleaner wanted to come in here at 11:00 but I told her to wait for a while as I was expecting a visitor.

And sure enough, just when I reckoned that I ought to go outside, I opened my door to see Alison pulling into the car park. Bang on cue.

Our first port of call was about 30 kms down the road in Welkenraedt.

Despite only having a population on 9,000 or so, it’s probably one of the most famous small towns in Belgium and it’s one that I’ve been dying to visit ever since I first came to Oostende over 45years ago

And for one of the strangest reasons too, because it’s not your usual run-of-the-mill tourist venue.

Back in the 1970s at the railway station in Oostende there would alwas be a train waiting to meet the ferries, and they would always be going to Welkenraedt.

It aroused my curiosity so I did a little research and found that it was a small town in the north of the Ardennes that didn’t look as if it had any significance at all, so I was puzzled as to why all of these trains would want to come here.

And when you look at the station, it’s a big, modern station that has plenty of facilities and it is all out of proportion to the size of the town

A little bit of research back in those days soon cleared up the question.

Welkenraedt is the closest railway station to the border between Germany and Belgium – in Germany until 1919 and in Belgium afterwards.

And when the railways were electrified, the German voltage system was different from that in Belgium until comparatively modern times. And until the Schengen agreement, there was a frontier post at the station.

So while the passengers were having their passports controlled, the train would be changing engines and then going on to Aachen or Cologne or maybe further still.

Welkenraedt is officially a German-speaking town but when it was transferred to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles, the SNCB, the Belgian railway company, opened a locomotive depot here and transferred in a large number of French-speaking railway workers.

They flooded the town to such an extent that you will struggle to find German spoken here today. We saw a couple of signs in German but that was about that.

We went off to find something to eat as Alison was hungry, and I forced down a helping of overcooked chips. I’m clearly feeling better after my crisis of Thursday and Friday.

But you can’t cometo this region without going down the road to Moresnet.

For several reasons really, not the first of which is this absolutely gorgeous railway viaduct.

It’s not quite on a par with the Tracel de Cap Rouge of course, that’s rather exceptional, but it’s by far the best that you are likely to find around this part of Europe.

According to the information that I have found, it was built during the period 1915-1916. The pillars are fine examples of reinforced concrete of that period.

It’s just over 1100 metres long and at its highest, it’s about 60 metres above the velley of the River Gueule

That tells us a couple of things

There may well have been something here prior to that period that was demolished at the start of World War I
It escaped demolition during the fighting of World War II

Knowing my usual luck, we would ordinarily have had to wait for about three weeks to see a train pass over the viaduct, and then we would have missed it because we had gone for a coffee.

But that’s not the case here. This is the main railway line that runs between Aachen and Antwerpen, one of Europe’s busiest ports.

We’d hardly pulled into the village before a freight train went rattling by just above our heads.

So while you admire the village of Moresnet and Alison and I have gone for a coffee with the friendly young girl who runs the village café, let me tell you a little story.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Treaty of the Limits in 1816 redefined the border between the Low Countries (because Belgium didn’t exist at that time) and the Kingdom of Prussia.

For various reasons, they couldn’t agree with what to do with the commune of Moresnet and so they planned to divide it between them.

Unfortunately, any logical dividing line ran right through a very important and valuable quarry and they couldn’t agree where the line should go so that each country would have half the value.

Eventually, they agreed that the quarry and a surrounding piece of land would be a neutral zone administered jointly by one official from the Low Countries (Belgium after 1830) and the Kingdom of Prussia (the German Empire after 1871).

And so you had Moresnet, Neu-Moresenet (the German bit) and Moresnet Neutre.

In 1914 Germany took all of it, so at the Treaty of Versailles Belgium was awarded all of it, so in 1940 Germany took it all back and in 1945 Belgium regained all of it.

There has been quite a lot of excitement in such a sleepy little Belgian village

But our conversation with the serving wench was quite exciting. being practically right on one of Belgium’s linguistic borders, our conversation drifted between French and German with hardly a pause.

Belgium is a fascinating country.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, just up the road some time round about 1750 a miracle involving Mary the Mother of Jesus is said to have taken place

Pilgrims came to visit the site so a small chapel was built, followed by all of the usual facilities for the visitors, and the village of Moresnet-Chapelle developed.

A group of Franciscan Friars (and seeing as this is Belgium, they were probably chip monks) were sent from Aachen in 1875 to provide spiritual comfort to the visitors.

As a result, some substantial development took place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve talked on several occasions about the Chemin de la Croix – 14 stages of Jesus on his way to his crucifixion, death and subsequent resurrection.

We’ve also been to see a a magnificent example of this at Cap de la Madeleine in Quebec.

In 1895 they decided that they would emulate it (the filthy beasts) right here.

In 1895 German benefactor provided some cash to purchase the land around the chapel and they set to work.

The work was completed in 1904 and today there are 14 grottoes made of puzzolane, each featuring one of the stages of the Chemin de la Croix.

The aim is to visit each one, purchase a candle to light in each (which must bring in a fortune) and say a prayer at each one, in order to be absolved of your sins.

Of course, I don’t need to, for regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall that I was granted absolution by the Pope, having passed through all of the Holy Doors in Rome during the Period of Grace in 2000.

I choose my friends carefully as you know.

The twelfth station, the Calvaire or Calvary, featuring the crucifiction, is always a good ‘un and there’s no exception here.

In fact, it was so popular at one time that they have installed benches here and occasionally hold open-air church services here.

But clearly not masses, because the place is pretty-much deserted today.

And I shan’t bore you all by repeating the story that a Frenchman delightfully told me, that they asked for a famous sculptor from each country to send in their impressions of how the Calvary should look, and the Belgian sculptor sent in a drawing of John Wayne on his horse.

Final stop (for now, anyway) on our day out was just a couple of miles up the road.

Here we have the Driehoek – or “Three Corners” – where the countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet.

And when we had Moresnet-Neutre, it was a Vierhoek because that area had a bit of it too.

The girl in red is sitting half in the Netherlands and half in Germany, and the girl on the floor is half in the Netherlands and half in Belgium.

Not only that, the highest point in the Netherlands – the Vaalserberg – is only 100 metres or so from the border and so we had to pay that a visit too.

It’s all of 322.4 metres above sea level, or 1,058 feet for those of you still dealing in real money.

And in the background you can see an observation platform. Apart from the fact that it cost real money to go up there to the top, the number of steps that I saw was enough to put me off the idea.

So having been driven up the Vaal(serberg) our next stop was across in our third country of the day – Germany. And those silly Brits who voted to leave the EU just don’t understand the advantages of having Breakfast in Brussels, Lunch in Luxembourg, Tea in Turin, Supper in Sampdoria and Bed in Bari.

Aachen in fact was where we went, where Alison wanted to take me to a café that she had found. And even though we arrived 12 minutes before the advertised closing time of 18:00, they refused to serve us.

Consequently we nipped to Mullers for some of my white coconut chocolate, and then to the cat café that we had visited a while ago.

The cooking smelt delicious so Alison had some thick soup and I had hummus with raw vegetables and bread.

It’s not far back to Liège from Aachen, even though you pass through three countries to get there. and I was in time to see Russia defeated by Croatia. And I could tell by the way that the first Russian limped up to take his penalty, head bowed to the ground, that he was going to miss it.

Tomorrow I am on the move, and so an early night – if my neighbours let me. They are being just a little rowdy, but then you can’t win a coconut every time, can you?

-1

Wednesday 4th July 2018 – THERE HAS TO BE …

… something extraordinarily civilised sitting with a coffee on a terrace in a hotel with my feet almost in the Rhine looking at a car ferry loading up and crossing over to the other side.

It’s not like me at all is it, this “being civilised” bit?

And having had a really good sleep in a really comfortable bed and a really copious breakfast, all for €53:00 per night, then you can understand why this place will be added to my list of places to revisit.

And comfortable bed it was too, although I wasn’t in it for long. I’d taken a plane back to Crewe, and landed at the airport at Radway Green. But the 320 PMT bus didn’t come to the airport and so this meant a long walk with my baggage to the Alsager road. And with having to be back three hours before the flight departure the next day with no public transport, it meant that I would only have time to put my foot in the town before I would have to turn round and come back. And anyone who knows Crewe will realise what a good idea that is, although for some reason that I can’t understand, it bothered me more than it should have done.

And while I’ve been sitting here on the terrace, I’ve been watching the railway line across the river on the eastern bank of the Rhine.

I’ve counted one train every couple of minutes or so, the majority of which are freight trains.

I can’t see the railway line on the Western bank but I can hear it, and the trains seem to be just as frequent. It’s a big contrast to the UK isn’t it?

And it’s not just trains either.

We saw dozens of barges yesterday sailing … "dieseling" – ed … up and down the Rhine too and it didn’t look as if we were going to be disappointed today either.

This one seems to be a gas tanker, and there are even tankers full of sulphuric acid that use the Rhine – one of those sank off St Goar a few years ago.

Having completed another mound of paperwork we all loaded up Caliburn and headed across the road for the ferry.

And this gave us a good opportunity to admire the hotel.

As I said, the Hotel Rhein Inn might be a little old and tired, but on the value-for_money scale, which to me is quite important, it scores an easy 10 out of 10.

I haven’t had such a good sleep and a nice breakfast as that for quite some considerable time.

Just as we were boarding the ferry across the river, a canoeist went heading across our bows.

That’s rather a dangerous sport to do here, I reckon with all of the river traffic. There aren’t just barges but cruise ships, pleasure boats, speedboats and all that kind of thing.

And so shouldn’t go lighting a fire in your canoe. After all, we have been told for many years that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

So off we set.

And the crossing was not as straightforward as you might think because we had to dodge and swerve around the barges that were heading up and down-stream.

They didn’t look as if they took any prisoners while they were on their travels. “Full steam ahead” without even a hint of “left hand down a bit” to swerve around the other traffic on the river.

Now that I’m on the eastern bank, the first stop has to be on the edge of the town of Erpel.

That over there is the western tower – the one that has been transformed into a museum by the then-mayor of Remagen and financed by the sale of the stones from the demolished central towers.

And despite the bridge being more-associated with the town of Remagen I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better-seen from Erpel.

This is the eastern tower here in Erpel.

You’ll notice the slits in the brickwork here. The bases of the towers were designed to accommodate troops of infantry who would defend the bridge, and the slits were loopholes through which rifles and machine guns could be fired.

The accommodation in there has now been transformed into a Performing Arts centre.

Here on the eastern bank, the railway line that crossed the bridge disappeared into the railway tunnel halfway up the Erpeler Ley

This tunnel, almost 400 metres long, curved around to the right and joined up with a railway that connected to the line along the eastern bank.

It was hiding in this tunnel that the German engineers pressed the plunger that detonated the explosives that failed to go off correctly.

It was discovered later that an artillery shell had severed many of the cables that connected the individual charges.

There’s a good view of the town of Remagen from along here too.

The Rhine was at one time the frontier of the Roman Empire and here the Romans built a fort, which they called Rigomanus.

A town grew up around it and although the town was fought over and destroyed many times, each time it arose again from the ashes.

The church that you can see over there may well be the church of St Apollinaris.

The story goes that a ship loaded with Holy relics sailed from Milan to Cologne in the Middle Ages, but grounded at Remagen.

They unloaded some cargo to lighten the ship, and as soon as the relics of St Apollinaris were unloaded, the ship floated away.

His relics were then interred in the old Roman chapel here which was subsequently expanded into a church.

So if you are suffering from gout, epilepsy or venereal disease, this is the place to be.

Bad Hoffen up the road is also the place to be as far as I am concerned.

Here littered around a yard at an old factory was a whole collection of old commercial vehicles, one of which was this Oshkosk

Oshlosk is a company that is a builder of specialist vehicles in Appleton, Wisonsin, USA and was founded in 1917 to make severe-duty 4×4 vehicles

As for this lorry, I don’t have a clue what it might be, although rollers on the deck indicate that it might have been for use around a steel mill or something.

As for the car on the back, we all know what one of these is because we’ve seen one before. It’s a Cadillac Fleetwood and I reckon that it’s either a Series 7 or a Series 8, which puts in in the late 50s or early 60s

There was tons of stuff here and I didn’t really have much of an idea about what they might be.

There was even a “Whirlybirds” helicopter parked up here. Someone had had his chopper out.

I’ll have to do some research when I return home and I’ll update this page with a pile more photos so that you can see just what there was in here.

Not long after this, we had a little excitement.

It was grey and heavily overcast out over Bonn and I was sure that a storm was threatening.

We didn’t actually see any rain but I suddenly came across a patch of road that was soaking wet and you could smell the rain in the air.

It didn’t last long before we were in the dry again, but it really was bizarre. I learnt later that they had had a severe storm which, although it only lasted for a couple of minutes, was so severe that several houses had flooded.

We pushed on and as we drove past Bonn (which is on the western side) I noticed the ruins of a castle perched on a rock.

Ordinarily I would have gone to make further enquiries but I missed the turning to where it was situated and there was so much traffic that I wasn’t able to turn round easily enough.

And so we carried on

We eventually found a LIDL (you can never find one when you want one, and when you don’t need one you keep on tripping over dozens) where we were nearly squidged by a German drifting across the road in his car, mobile phone in one hand.

And having bought stuff for lunch, the next issue was trying to find a place to eat it. I must have driven down dozens of little alleys heading towards the river only to be disappointed with no parking.

Instead, I ended up crossing over the Rhine, just south of Cologne, thinking to myself that I’m glad that I’m not travelling eastwards.

I didn’t like the look of any of that at all.

Instead I pulled off the motorway at a very dirty unwelcoming service area and did my best to eat my food without noticing too much all of the rubbish that was littered around.

At Aachen I left the motorway to look for fuel and as luck would have it, the only petrol stations open were on the other side of the road and crossing over in all of the traffic was practically impossible.

So I pushed on, into the Netherlands and round by the winding road that goes across the highest point in the country, and into the Belgian Ardennes.

Still without finding any fuel.

I was now in that part of the Ardennes which had seen heavy fighting in the Battle of the Ardennes – or Battle of the Bulge.

The Germans launched a surprise attack on the American forces sheltering here, hoping to break through the lines and recapture Antwerp.

The attack failed but it caused heavy casualties. An American tank Corps based in Neufchatel was badly cut up by the attacking Germans and the citizens of the town, in partnership with the American Army, erected a memorial to the soldiers who had died.

So we carried on and eventually arrived in Liège. By now the fuel question was becoming rather desperate – Caliburn had done a record 840kms on three-quarters of a tank – so I pulled off at the big commercial shopping centre.

And wasn’t that a mistake?

We were now well and truly in the rush hour and it took ages to sort ourselves out. I took a little short-cut that I knew but to my dismay the motorway entrance was closed for repair so I had to go back and fight my way through the traffic.

I eventually reached the hotel, to find that Hans had beaten me by a good couple of hours.So I went for a quick shower and, shame as it is to admit it, crashed out on the bed for 20 minutes.

We ended up at Chi-Chi’s, one of the franchised Tex-Mex restaurants. They concocted a vegan meal for me which was totally delicious. But when was the last time that you ever heard of me leaving a table with food still upon it?

And not only that – Usually we spend our meal-times discussing the women and girls in the restaurant but today we ended up discussing our medication and bowel problems and the like.

Aren’t we getting old?

Back here, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open so I came back here and crashed out for good.

it had been a long day.

Sunday 1st July 2018 – I FORGOT …

… that I had set an alarm for Sunday morning while I’m on my travels.

And so at 08:45 we had Billy Cotton bellowing out “Wakey Waaaaaa – KAYYYYYYY” all through the house.

It wasn’t as if we had needed it either because I’d been up and about for an hour or so and had had a shower by this time.

Dave was up a little later (he said that he hadn’t heard the alarm) and we had breakfast together. And I reflected upon my night’s sleep in one of the most comfortable beds in which I have ever slept.

The plan was that I would be away fairly early but Dave and June are very nice people and we were chatting for quite some considerable time, putting the world to rights, and it was gone 13:00 when I left.

My route from there took me down to Lindau, one of my most favourite towns in Germany. I’d wanted to go for a walk around but with running so late it was impossible.

And it was just as well because with it being the first Sunday in July in glorious, boiling hot weather, the whole place was crowded and there were queues everywhere.

I drove straight through (insofar as the traffic would let me), found a bakery for my lunchtime bread, and then found the only vacant car-parking spot in the whole of Baden-Wurttemburg to have lunch. My final tomato hadn’t survived the journey and so that was consigned into the deep.

My route then took me through Friedrichshafen where I had a row with a German taxi driver who wanted to block the dock entrance while he waited for passengers off the Swiss ferry, and then along the Bodensee, dodging from one traffic queue to the next, including one caused by a grockle who had a collapsed wheel bearing on his caravan.

Eventually, after many trials and tribulations, I could hit the foothills of the Scwartzwald and started to climb into the mountains.

It’s been years since I’ve been here too and I made it as far as Donaueschingen, the town that is said to be the source of the River Danube.

The mobile phone once again came up trumps, finding me a little apartment in the “Jagerhaus” – a big wooden chalet on the outskirts of the town.

€57:00 for a night in a large studio apartment, and this place is so good that I could quite happily live here. I have my own fully-fitted kitchen with everything that I need, including a fridge with freezer compartment to deal with my ice blocks.

There’s also a large portable desktop fan, and so I washed all of my clothes and set the fan up to dry them during the night.

But having used so much hot water with the washing, there wasn’t enough left to give me a good wash and I ended up with a cold shower.

But at least I would cook a nice tea of pasta, vegetables and chick peas, which was delicious.

And the bed looks comfy too. I hope that it is because I need my beauty sleep.

Friday 29th June 2018 – HANS …

… is an early riser, so it’s just as well that I am.

He came into the living room just as I was slowly stirring and he put the coffee on. We sat around and drank it first thing in the morning and had a good chat about people whom we knew in our younger days. And you’d be amazed by how many there were.

But first job today, after a very welcome shower, was to attack the Gibson bass.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that leaving it in a wooden box for 30 years hasn’t done it much good. The machine heads are stiff and the paintwork is mottled. There’s a potentiometer that is seized too.

We took off the strings and sprayed the machine heads with silicon spray, lubricated the switches with WD40 and applied copious coats of leather polish to the woodwork.

And while everything was soaking in, we headed off for breakfast.

Hans knew a little bakery down the road where they served up some reasonable bread rolls, jam, coffee and orange juice. And you can’t ask for fairer than that.

And afterwards we leapt aboard Caliburn and headed to the nearest metro station, a couple of miles away at Garching.

He told me an exciting story about how the metro line extension out here had been planned years ago but construction was delayed and delayed after objections were raised that if it were built overground, children could possibly run on the line and be killed.

That is, of course, nothing that can’t be cured by giving the survivors a good old-fashioned clip around the ear, and they can run on the tram lines anywhere they like in the city centre.

But apparently the argument led to years of delay and the line out to here was only opened a few years ago.

But with it passing through the student and University quarter, the rolling stock is still of a previous generation.

What surprised me too is that it isn’t cheap to travel on the Munich metro. The much-maligned Paris and Brussels city transport systems are much more affordable than here.

Last time that we’d been sightseeing in Munich, I’d forgotten my camera so there weren’t any photos. This year, however, I had managed to remember to bring the camera so I took several pictures.

But this will be a case of when I have more time to sit and relax, I’ll post them all on-line and let you see what I saw on our travels.

The most important was the restaurant for lunch.

Ulli works at a travel agent’s out on the Munchener Freiheit so we went to say hello to her, and right next door was a small restaurant advertising today’s special on a blackboard outside.

“Veganisch curry”.

That was too good an opportunity to turn down and so we went and partook. And delicious it was too.

We headed for home after that and set about attacking the guitar. A bit more spray everywhere and while that was working its way into the crevices I gave the woodwork a really good polish and clean until it shone.

Some metal polish wouldn’t go amiss either but we didn’t have any of that.

Finally the strings went on, and it now looks and sounds like a different machine, and I am well-impressed with that.

Ulli came round with Hans’s birthday cake and we all went down to the beer garden.

Hans and his mate Reinhardt were giving a little concert – acoustic of course because there is no electricity there.

I’d been asked if I would like to play too, and it’s for this that I have been rehearsing for the last few months.

But for this I needed the acoustic bass but regular readers of this rubbish will recall the story about where that is and why I don’t have it with me.

But it’s not six months of my life wasted, as you might think. I did enjoy picking up the bass again, even if I didn’t get to play it live on stage again.

And I’m not sure if I ever shall now.

But we all had a really good time and plenty of fun.

Including Strawberry Moose and Selfie Ted who got together to share a few beers and to swap a few yarns.

And I met a couple of nice ladies. Shame that they were already spoken for, but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? It’s not been my lucky week, has it?

We all toddled off to bed afterwards, where I intend to sleep the Sleep Of The Dead. It’s been a very long day.

Monday 25th June 2018 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that I have to avoid is stress. I’ve been told that many times. That’s going to finish me off quicker than anything else. All stressful thoughts need to be banished immediately from my mind.

And so after yesterday afternoon’s issues, there I was lying on my palliasse watching the clock tick round. And I definitely remember 03:44 at one point in the morning.

But I must have gone to sleep at one point because the alarm at 06:20 dragged me out of my slumber.

And out of a nocturnal ramble too. I was back in Canada picking up Strider who had been parked by the side of the road since I left him last year. And people had been using him as a rubbish skip. so he needed to be emptied. I also put my hand inside the rear door behind the rear seats (which he doesn’t have of course) and started to pullout loads of rubbish – dirt, paper, leaves and so on. And I wondered how it had come to be there. The answer was that the rear part of the cab roof that folded over down to the rear window was made of plastic (which it isn’t of course) and the plastic had rotted, allowing the weather to get in. This needed to be replaced but I wasn’t sure of the best way to do it. Meanwhile Darren was there calling his friends over to have a look at the rubbish in it. When I said something to him about that he excused himself saying that he meant come and look at how old it is. But, as I reminded him, he himself is much older than Strider.

A shower didn’t do much to revive me and my spirits, and neither did breakfast, seeing as I had chosen decaffeinated coffee by mistake.

So I came up here to pack instead and headed downstairs to load up Caliburn.

First stop was the Brico Depot just across the way, where the automatic sliding door knocked the free coffee right out of my hand.

With not being able to get into my house, I wasn’t able to pick up my hole saws so I bought a cheap set from there. And “cheap” is certainly the word. They might get through the hardboard but not very much else.

From here, the next part of my route should have been pretty much straightforward, but an accident on the N79 had closed off a section of that road and we ended up being diverted through a delightful rustic rural route that meandered for miles behind a whole series of heavy lorries. To cover what must have been a 5-mile stretch of road took us 45 minutes and added 25 kilometres to the route.

There’s a LeClerc just down the road from here and so I stopped to stock up the supplies for the next week or so, as well as to buy a few things that I had forgotten to bring (and to forget a few more things that I wanted too).

Dodging the roadworks, because the whole place is being dug up right now, I pressed on.But running rather early and feeling rather tired after last night, I found a little place to stop and rest for 10 minutes.

And 10 minutes, did I say? When I awoke it was 13:52. I’d been flat out for almost 2 hours and as a result I’d missed my lunch.

But I hadn’t missed going on a travel though. In some kind of university where some kind of official woman – might even have been the Dean – informed the students that because of some kind of irregularity in their conduct, a certain order for their new hats had been cancelled. I recounted this (with a few embellishments) to a group of other people there, one of whom noticed that her order of hats for her students had been cancelled too. So at the following meeting, the lady concerned raised the issue, stating that the order had been cancelled by a majority vote of just one. Her friend hastily corrected her, so the first lady returned to the original story, and asked why her order had been cancelled too. The Dean or whoever she was replied “well, I don’t know” in one of these stage remarks where the tone of voice conveyed more than the message. “I bet I do” was the tart reply from the lady raising the complaint. Of course, I exploded into laughter – a stage laughter too – which left no-one in any doubt that I was fully aware of what was going on.

Having been startled into awakening myself, I hit the road immediately. Due to my running a day or so early, Jean-Marc and Jacqueline had changed all of their plans to fit in with mine (which was nice of them) so I didn’t want to disappoint them.

They live in the mountains at the back of Macon in some of the most beautiful countryside that I have ever seen, where Jean-Marc had his own vinyard and made his own wine before he retired.

We’d met on a student exchange programme almost 50 years ago but lost touch with each other afterwards until 4 years ago when I bumped quite by accident into his aunt in a village where his grandmother owned a café, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

It just goes to show you exactly how small the world is these days.

Threading my way through the hills and the vinyards of the Maconnais, I ended up chez them where I duly presented the newlyweds with a bottle of champagne.

We had such a lot to talk about, seeing as the last time that Jean-Marc and I had seen each other, I was stretched out in a hospital bed having just been brought out of an operating theatre in the hospital in Montlucon.

On eisn’t at one’s best under the circumstances

Jacqueline had to go out later so Jean-Marc took me on a drive out to the countryside to revisit some of the places where we had been in 1970.

The obvious place to visit at first was the Roche de Solutre, the most prominent hill in the landscape for miles around. We’d climbed to the top of it (there’s a path) back in 1970 but that was a long time ago and I’ve slept since then so I don’t remember much about it.

He remembers that we cycled here all the way from Macon, but again I don’t remember a thing about the journey.

Jean-Marc told me that we had met all of the other exchange students at the foot of the rock and had a picnic but I don’t recall anything of that. Old age is definitely creeping on.

The next rock is the Roche de Vergisson and so we walked a little way along the track towards it.

Not all the way, of course. I might have done that in 1970 but I’ve no intention of doing it now, thank you.

The track is called La Voie Romaine by the locals and there’s no reason to suppose that it isn’t a Roman Road, although I do know of a Pont Romain – the Roman bridge – in the Auvergne which wasn’t built until the 13th Century, as do listeners of our former radio programmes.

There are several good views all over the Saone valley and up in the hills.

There are only so many of them that you can see when you are on a pushbike or an old Mobylette, so Jean-Marc took me all around the hilltops to see the things that I had missed all those years ago.

And it certainly made a great difference being able to get about in a car.

Mind you, I’m not as young as I used to be so I couldn’t go galloping up to the top for a better view like I might have done at one time.

And so you’ll have to make do with a photo of Macon taken from half-way up a hill at the side of the road.

And I don’t think that it loses anything in the view. It’s still quite impressive.

While we were waiting for Jacqueline to come back, Moonn the long-haired cat was sitting on my knee. And when she returned, Moonn leapt off me, leaving behind most of her fur. I ended up looking like a snowman.

Jacqueline and Jean-Marc offered me a bed for the night which was very kind of them, so in return I took them out for a meal in Macon.

There wasn’t a great deal of choice for a vegan meal with it being Monday and everywhere being closed, but we did find somewhere.

My vegan soup and couscous with vegetables followed by raspberry purée was totally delicious and I’ll be going back there again some time in the future.

Jacqueline drove back and when we arrived, I declined a coffee went straight to bed.

It’s been a long day and I’m thoroughly exhausted. I’m not used to all this effort.

Thursday 21st June 2018 – I WAS WRONG …

… about doing a few bits and pieces and then having an early night last night.

Yes, its a real puzzle. That’s a couple of times that I’ve been so wrong just recently and that’s not like me at all. But then no-one can predict what is going to happen when it comes to dealing with the Worst Bank In The World.

There was an e-mail sent to me from them about this payment.
“In order to action your request we need to speak to you … please get in touch on ******** by 17:00 (UK time) on 21/06/2018…If no reply is received by the date and time quoted, your payment request will be cancelled.”

It’s timed at 18:30 which, coincidentally, is the time that their International Branch closes. But it arrived in my mailbox at just about 22:00.

So the bank that refused TWICE to speak to me about this transfer now wants to speak to me about this transfer.

The mail also read “We have been unable to contact you on the telephone numbers we currently have recorded on our system” which is hardly a surprise seeing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the bank entered my phone number incorrectly in its database.

But nobody speaks to me like this, least of all anyone who has so much of my money as they do. And so I hit the customer services department’s all-night line.

A 25-minute wait was not guaranteed to improve my humour at that time of the night and when I finally did speak to someone, the help that he gave me was “call back in the morning”. So he had an earful too.

After a great deal of discussion and much insistence on my part, I was eventually put through to the all-night complaints line. The girl there refused to listen to my complaint and after the discussion became rather heated, she hung up the phone on me.

And so I spent the next half-an-hour tracking down the on-line complaints department.

And do you want to see what you get when you click on the link to the on-line complaints service? It’s a real Third-World Bank isn’t it?

But I’m nothing if not persistent and I eventually tracked down a method by which I can make a formal complaint. And now they have had a 3,000-word formal complaint from me about all of this.

It also goes without saying that I didn’t call them back today either. I’ll call them tomorrow and if they don’t make the payment I’ll be closing all of my accounts. A man can only take so much garbage from the Worst Bank In The World.

The result of this was that I was completely stressed out after a couple of hours of extremely heated argument. In the old days I would have gone for a run – guaranteed to calm me down. But I can’t run these days, so I ended up having the worst night for quite some considerable time. None of my relaxation techniques seemed to worK

So much for trying to lead a stress-free existence these days.

Despite everything, I did manage to crawl out of the bed at an early hour, and following a shower and breakfast, Caliburn and I hit the road.

We called at Roncey to pick up Liz and then we went off to IKEA.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year ago I bought the first instalment of furniture for this place, and I needed a second load.

However I’ve not managed to make it there in Caliburn, and as Liz wanted to go to purchase some bunk beds for her grandchildren who will be arriving shortly (much to Strawberry Moose‘s delight as they are amongst his most devoted fans). So today was the day.

We had a lap around buying the small stuff and making a list of the big furniture. Then we went for lunch, and I lost the list, so we had to go around again.

And having made a second list, we could buy up the stuff that we needed and load up Caliburn.

All in all, it took much longer than it otherwise might have done because there were plenty of coffee stops as we went around. It’s hard work looking for furniture, and even harder work hauling it about.

Back at Liz’s we unloaded her purchases and she made a baked potato, salad and beans for tea which was very nice. Saved me a job.

Caliburn and I returned home to find that there was a music evening in the town and all of the roads were closed. It took some negotiating to find our way back here.

Interestingly, despite the dreadful night and the exertions of today, I’ve not crashed out at all. Bizarre, that. maybe it’s because I’ve been keeping busy today and the adrenalin levels have been high. Perhaps I ought to argue with more people more often?

But not tonight. I really am going to try for an early night.

Tomorrow is another day as we all know.

I wonder which b@$t@rd$ are going to come along and spoil it.

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about my blog, and one of the (many) reasons why I keep it, is so that when I have an altercation with someone, I have it chapter and verse about when and where it took place, and what was said.

So that way, whenever I’m having an argument with a semi-official body, I have the notes to prove my point.

But let’s not get ahead of ouselves.

Last night after having done almost everything that there was to do, I sat down and watched a DVD, something that i haven’t done for quite some time. Last night’s entertainment (if that’s the correct word) was Batman (the Movie). A totally absurd, incredibly camp film that is so bad that it’s good.

And what is probably the funniest part of the film is Adam West trying so hard not to laugh at some of the lines. Brings back many happy memories of the 1960s.

Despite the early night it was a struggle to come up for air this morning and I was a little later than usual leaving the stinking pit. But a breakfast and a hot shower brought me sort-of into the Land of the Living.

First thing was to put the bathroom back together and then to attack the living room. Do it while I’m in the mood. So that’s something like, stuff is sorted out, more stuff has been found (including my missing 32GB memory stick) and more stuff thrown away. And it was quite profitable too, because I found €1:03 too.

Spend, spend, spend!

And I’m glad that I did it too then and there because I didn’t have time after that.

Looking through the e-mails that had come in through the night, there were two that were very important and needed to be dealt with on the spot. And that involved a phone call to my bankers in the UK.

I’d tried a few weeks ago to set up an on-line banking service, but it had spectacularly failed, so I put it out of my mind. That was the first thing.

And despite what they told me, they had indeed been notified of my new telephone number. It’s there in black-and-white in my letter of 19th January, and when I had an argument with the bank’s customer service, they telephoned me back on that number on 6th February.

And since then, they’ve been sending me security codes when I’ve been using my UK credit card.

The second thing though is that I need to make a substantial payment to North America, and make it quickly. And I can’t do it by telephone despite whatever pleading I can use. It needs to be done in writing, although a fax machine is acceptable.

I threw away my old fax machine in 2011 so this meant a good hunting down of a fax machine in Granville.

First thing was to type out a letter, and while I was at it to deal with some more post that needed answering. That took me all the way up to 13:45. And then into town to search for a fax machine.

No go at the library. The Tourist Information Office was closed, the Mairie didn’t have one, and neither did the Post Office. But the Post office sent me across the road to the newspaper offices. They had a fax machine, but it was private.

But the newspaper shop next door advertised photocopies and photo-scanning, so I went in there. And sure enough, a very friendly newspaper shop owner had a public fax machine, so that was that.

I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and came back.

Lunch was exceptionally late and I was joined by no one but two lizards who spent more time fighting over a lump of pear than they did actually eating it. And that was surprising because there was more than enough for two.

Having had a lengthy walk just now, I abandoned the idea of going out this afternoon.

And so I was in my apartment to notice one of the school buses take the wrong turning up to the High School and get stuck in the gateway to the Place d’Armes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a couple of buses do that earlier this year, but at least there was much less drama associated with this one. With a couple of bits of shunting he managed to get round quite comfortably.

Instead of my walk I sat down on the sofa with a cold drink, and the efforts of earlier were clearly far too much for me because I was out like a light for a good half-hour. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

But I managed to fit in my guitar practice, and then made tea. A burger in a bap with baked potato. And remind me next time that when I go to defrost the burger in the microwave, to take it out of the plastic bag first.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, and the view across to Jersey was one of the clearest that I have ever had.

If you notice the radio mast over there, it’s really hard to believe that that is 34 miles away from here. But it is.

There was no-one about so i had another run. 110 paces tonight. But I was disappointed that the last two runs haven’t shown up on my fitbit. It’s disappointing to say the least. I’m clearly not going fast enough, but you can’t run before you’ve learnt to walk, can you?

Round the other side of the headland I could see that we’ve had a whole pile of deliveries to the gravel bins.

There’s gravel all over the place again, and even a couple of hundred tonnes of sand.

Does this mean that we’re going to have another gravel boat some time soon? I shall have to pay much more attention that I’m doing, otherwise I’ll miss it.

Tonight I think that I’ll watch another film. I’m becoming quite bourgeois in my sentiments these days. I’m going to have to snap out of that.

But one thing that I did during the odd period here and there of lucidity was to finally finish the blog entry for one day of my trip to the desert. And never mind finishing it, it almost finished me.

It still needs to be poof-read, have the tpying examined and have a spelchek, but it’s all of 5645 words, a new record and by an enormous margin too. You can read it at your leisure.

I deserve a medal.

Saturday 16th June 2018 – AND THERE I WAS …

… last night crowing about how i hadn’t crashed out yesterday.

Well, pride comes before a fall as we all know, and so this afternoon, I crashed out for today, yesterday and for the whole of next week too. A good 90 minutes in total, I reckon. Well away with the fairies.

I did say, didn’t I, that I would pay for yesterday.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either. Well, not by my standards anyway. Mind you, there was a firework display somewhere in teh vicinity so I didn’t go to bed until after it had finished. And I awoke under my own steam too before the alarm went off.

After the usual morning performance there, I had a shower, a change of clothes and all of that lark and then headed to the shops. And they were all packed to the gunwales too.

LIDL had nothing exciting, but there were a few things in NOZ that were noteworthy, including jars of tahini at just €1:49 which is for nothing. I use a lot of it in my hummus, so I bought 4 jars and Liz asked me (because I sent her a text) if she could have one of them. Not a problem.

At LeClerc I bit the bullet. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have carrot issues. For a reason that I can’t understand, they don’t seem to last more than thre or four days here. I don’t like frozen carrots at all but I can’t see an alternative so I bought a packet. 1kg at €0:79 – even cheaper than fresh and will last a darn sight longer too.

But I did spend some money in GIFI. Something caught my eye when I was in there the other day so I went there to see if they still had one, which they did. And tomorrow, when I’ve assembled it, I’ll show you what it is.

Back here I put everything away and then managed to configure my laptop to watch French television and settled down to watch the football, France v Australia.

But I switched off in disgust shortly after half-time. It seems now that they can stop the game so that the referee can look at the TV and the action replays and reverse his previous decisions.

That, of course, is a total nonsense. It’s bad enough, this stop-start football these days, without bringing this into the game. Soon, they’ll be stopping the game to decide on throw-ins and the like, and presumably running commercial breaks while they do it too.

It’s the death-knell for football as far as I’m concerned. Since time-immemorial part of the whole football experience for the fans includes having a good old moan at the referee. Take that away and you lose half of the excitement.

Instead, I made my butties and went to sit on the wall with my book and my lizard.

I was however distracted by something in the distance.

But with the big telephoto zoom lens that I have, I can photograph it and then crop and enlarge the image for a closer look. And it turns out to be some kind of small motor boat, like a customs launch or something.

And if you think that the photo is blurred, you need to remember that the coast over there is over 18 miles away so the boat is probably 14 miles away. It’s not oo bad in th circumstances and I would have to pay a lot of money to have anything better.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I crashed out as I mentioned earlier. But once I revived myself I went for a walk around the headland in the hordes of people who were out taking the air, stopping to give Gribouille a pick-up and stroke on the way out.

Liz was on-line later so we had a little chat and then just for a change I sat down and watched a film on the DVD. Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me. It took ages to get it to play, but fired up in a matter of seconds once I switched the remote control over from “record” to “play”.

Tea was out of a tin tonight (it’s Saturday) and then I went for my evening stroll.

First thing that I noticed was yet more objects way out offshore so this was another job for the big zoom lens.

It turns out that they weren’t ships at all but a couple of islands out to sea, and I realised that I have made this mistake once before.

Still, you can’t win a coconut every time. We did once catch a ship out there with a speculative shot, you may remember.

THis isn’t a speculative shot, by the way, even though you might think so.

Up in that tree is a large tortoiseshell cat.

The tree is growing from the ditch at the town end of the fortifications and the upper branches are leaning against the top of the wall. And this seems to be the favourite route of the aforementioned El Moggo.

She (for I imagine it’s a female) was quite adept at getting up and down there too.

And that sailing boat that we saw coming in to the harbour back three or so weeks ago, it’s coming back in this evening too.

One of these days I’ll wander down to the harbour and find out its name. I’m sure I must have known it at one time.

But I’m very disappointed that it’s not actually sailing, but dieseling into the harbour. I’d be much more impressed to see some real seamanship with it coming in under the power of the wind in its sails.

Talking about wind and sails though, Marité isn’t in the harbour today. I wonder where she has got to. The people who run that have disappointed me too, on several occasions too, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Narrowly avoiding being run down by a motorist going up a one-way street the wrong way, I stopped to take a photo of a little street party in the Place Cambernon.

It seems that the gallery which I mentioned the other week is having an “open day”, or open evening more like. But as I said at the time, the prices of the objects in there are enough to put anyone off.

Instead, I came back home and settled down.

Sunday tomorrow, and a lie-in. And I reckon that I’ve earned it. I’ve had a hard week and I’m feeling the strain. There’s a jazz concert in town this evening, but I’m just not up to going unfortunately.

Thursday 14th June 2018 – I HAD AN EXCITING …

… e-mail today.

It’s from Nikon and it concerns the repair of my camera lens (which was the subject of a factory recall, as regular readers of this rubbish may remember). It’s the report of the examination of the lens to see if it falls within the guarantee, and the bill for any repair.

It tells me that it indeed a guarantee repair, and that the amount payable is €0:00.

It goes on to tell me that

I need to pay this before 15th August, or else interest of 10% per annum will be levied.
I can’t have my lens until I’ve paid the bill.
if my lens is retained after the 15th August there’s a storage charge of €40:00.

Therefore I have sent them an e-mail asking them for their advice in making payment. Do I pay with cash, cheque, banker’s order or credit card?

And I am awaiting their reply with interest.

We’ve also had a day of neighbourly interaction. I walked into town with one neighbour, and met another one while I was down there.

But first of all, I beat the alarm clock this morning. That is, I was awake before it went off, and that is not of course the same as saying that I was out of bed. That was slightly (yes, only slightly) later.

And a nice hot shower after breakfast and a change of clothes to make myself look pretty, and then off to town.

Remember the other day when I showed you the photographs that had mysteriously appeared on the city walls in the Place Maurice Marland?

Well, here they are erecting some more a little bit further along the walls. It’s going to be some exhibition.

And while I was standing on the wall overlooking the harbour taking this photo I fell in with one of my neighbours. She was on her way to the chemist’s for some medicines so we walked into town together.

From there I walked on up the hill to LIDL and I was in luck by the railway station.

We have central rubbish collection points here in Granville where we recycle our refuse. But the collection points look so small that many people wonder how we cope.

The answer is that they are icebergs. Only one-tenth of the thing is above the surface and the rest is submerged. And there they are lifting a recycling bin out of the ground to empty into the refuse lorry.

Apparently the lorry does the paper one week, the glass another week and the general refuse the third week, or something like that.

The roadworks in the Avenue des Vendéens are well-advanced and the road is open now in both directions.

They are working on the pavements now and there’s at least one car driver that is going to have a big surprise. Remember the car that we saw the other day parked across the pedestrian crossing? The driver isn’t going to be able to do that down the Avenue des Vendéens because the council is actively taking steps to prevent it.

And quite right too, if you ask me.

At LIDL I spent a little more money than I anticipated. Firstly, they had some giant cable ties on offer. And Iw as thinking yesterday that a couple of those would come in handy for fastening Caliburn’s fire extinguisher instead of having it rolling around the floor.

But more importantly, they had one of these Italian expresso coffee makers, the kind that you put on the hotplate to boil up and the steam pressure decants it. Being married to a girl who is half-Italian, I grew to like those very much.

I have one here but it’s not been used for years because it wouldn’t work on my induction hob so it’s in a pretty miserable condition. But this new hob that I bought the other week will work it just fine.

Back into town on my way home and I bumped into another neighbour, likewise on her way to the chemist’s. So I went with her and afterwards I invited her for a coffee. We were there for hours and when I returned here afterwards I found that it was actually lunchtime. It’s not like me to be this sociable, is it?

The weather was rather cloudy, overcast and windy. Not the day for sitting on the wall watching the world go by. I had my butties in here. And then I carried on updating the second (actually the first) page about my trip to the desert.

A long session on the guitar (I have to get weaving) and my afternoon walk as well.

Tea was a burger in a bap with baked potato and vegetables. I’ve now run out of carrots (LIDL didn’t have any loose ones and a big pack of them won’t keep) so I’ll have to invent something for tomorrow.

The usual walk around the walls, and all is revealed. We can now see what this wooden framework was for.

Yes, more photos.

And I can tell you something about the photographer too. She’s called Emma Barthère, born in 1982 at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, which must have been pretty uncomfortable for her mother.

At the age of 20 (ie 2002) she went to study in Paris and after 10 years of Parisian frenzy she abandoned everything and came to Granville in 2015. And if you can work that one out, please let me know.

As for the rest of her biography, I have at times been accused of writing pretentious prose … "you, Eric? Surely not!" – ed … but I can’t hold a candle to Emma Barthère, that’s for sure.

I’m going to try for another early night, but I’m stuck once again with Aqualung and Benefit. That means A Passion Play, Stand Up and Thick as a Brick are due to follow. Five of the best rock albums ever recorded.

And you know what that means, don’t you?

EPIC HALL

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