Tag Archives: shower

Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

Thursday 15th February 2018 – THAT’S NOT SUCH GOOD NEWS

My blood count is now down to the critical level – almost.

It should be between 13.0 and 15.0 as you know, but recently it’s been hovering round about the 9.2 mark.

8.0 is the critical amount when the emergency services swing into action, and today it’s down to 8.2.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following my adventures over the last few weeks. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was quite ill over Christmas and New Year and I’m still not back up yet.

So that plan now is that I’m going to have to undergo a series of blood transfusions – one per month in fact, for the next 6 months “and then we’ll see”.

That’s going to disrupt all of my plans.

Last night the old plan worked a charm. I took the laptop with me to bed to watch a Bulldog Drummond film in bed. And I managed about 10 minutes of it before I was away with the fairies.

And off on my travels too. Quite literally. I’d moved house and was living in a completely different town. And a letter came from one of the other inhabitants of my old place telling me how she knew about my relationship with the postwoman. I took hours to craft a very non-committal reply and was on the point of sending it when I thought to myself that it was easily open to misinterpretation nevertheless, and the easiest way to deal with the matter, seeing as whatever had happened in the past was to totally ignore the letter. And so I did. And instead I went for a walk and much to my surprise at the end of the High Street, which I hadn’t explored before, the road took a steep drop down to a nice bay where there were crowds of people having fun in the water. I went off for a look around and ended up on a grassy bank. Somehow I wasn’t able to reach the water at all.

Just for a change I was up quite early, and with no medication (because I had forgotten it as you know) I had an early breakfast and then a shower. And while I was under there I washed my clothes too.

After doing a few things I hit the streets and the shops. But I found another part of the old city walls that I hadn’t discovered previously, and so I followed them around for a while.

First stop was Kruidvat for some gelatine-free sweets, and then to the cheap shops like Zeeman and Wibra for a new jumper, but there was nothing doing.

At Sports Direct though, there were some more of the trousers that I like, but also some good-quality jumpers at a reduced price of €14:00 each, or 2 for €24:00. So they disappeared into my backpack along with a couple of pairs of trousers.

On the way up to the hospital I stopped at the bar to see if the guy who runs it whom I know was there, but he wasn’t. So I went on my way up the hill – very slowly.

You know what happened at the hospital because I told you just now, and then a very depressed and fed-up me headed into town. Alison wasn’t ready so I went for a coffee until she appeared.

We went to la Cucaracha and had another Mexican like last time, which was just as delicious, and then round for a coffee.

Afterwards she drove me back here which was very kind of her, and that’s my day finished.

It’s all so disappointing, but so what? I just have to get on with it. No point in brooding on it. Just like the defendant who found out that the judge of his case was only four feet tall – “these little things are sent to try us”.

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.

Thursday 8th February 2018 – AND IN NEWS …

… that will surprise absolutely no-one – certainly not the regular readers of this rubbish – having been deposed from the top of the pile by our historical favourites the Royal Bank of Scotland having risen briefly from the dead, the Credit Agricole of Granville go back in front in the race to reach the bottom of the barrel.

Having had a telephone call yesterday from my “service agent” asking me to confirm that everything was in order, at 23:00 last night I had a message from my mobile phone and internet supplier to tell me that th monthly standing order has been missed.

It was previously being paid by the Credit Agricole in Pionsat and the account that I wanted to be closed. And I imagined that it was also being paid from my Granville account, because I remember distinctly taking all of the paperwork there back in the early summer.

And futhermore I had sent the details to the Bank on the 5th of January and again a week or 10 days ago.

So now I’m wondering about my Electricity account and my annual insurance payments.

Just for a change I had the Sleep of the Dead last night. And I went on an exciting voyage too, although every memory of it disappeared the moment that I awoke.

After the medication and breakfast, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. Need to make myself look pretty because it’s shopping oday of course. And the weather was, just for a change, beautiful. Cold but very little wind and -SHOCK! HORROR! – some strange golden thing in the sky.

First port of call was the offices of my phone supplier. I explained the situation about my payments and they gave me a telephone number to call. I could have done the change of bank details then and there, but Brain of Britain hadn’t brought his details with him.

Next stop was the railway station, and that took some finding seeing as how a fairground seems to have grown up around it.

Of course, everyone is preparing for Carnaval, and it looks like it might be exciting. I shall have to go for a good walk around tomorrow evening to see what gives.

At the station I picked up my rail tickets for next week, and I noticed that the times have changed. There are engineering works on the line so the train is departing half an hour earlier, at 08:34. That’s going to upset my plans a little, isn’t it?

Up the hill to LIDL – the usual struggle – and in there I didn’t buy anything exciting at all. I’ve run out of carrots and seeing as they don’t sell t hem individually, I had to buy a kilo. That means before I leave here, I shall have to make some carrot soup and freeze it.

On the way back I popped into the harbour to see what was going on. The tide was in, and so was our old friend the Normandy Trader.

Not in the usual berth for the freighters – I wonder why that is. Probably due to the lock gates and the depth of water in the basin I reckon.

But with the tide being in, there wasn’t much point in going to photograph what they were doing. I’ll have to go again.

Lunch was the remains of the vegetable soup and then I attacked the European Photograph Mountain. Having been out today, I’m exempt from a tidying-up session.

As well as that, I’ve been tackling a little bit on the database, playing the guitar and ringing up the number that they gave me in the phone supplier’s. That at least is up-to-date, no thanks to the Credit Agricole. I really don’t know why I pay them for the service that I’m receiving. They should be paying me.

Having bought some peppers at LIDL, tea tonight was a pepper stuffed with the last of the stuffing that I made the other night. And how delicious that was too.

As yet I’ve not been for a walk. There’s footy on the TV – Bala against Cefn Druids in the Welsh Premier League. And I’m glad that I’m not in Bala – the weather over there is worse than we’ve had.

But I’m on 96% of my daily fitness total so I’ll go for a brief walk around later after full-time. A shame to stop so short of my target.

Saturday 3rd February 2018 – WELL, THAT WASN’T …

… very much of a walk this evening. And I didn’t go out at all this afternoon either.

Mind you, I can’t say that I blame myself at all. The respite that we had from the rain yesterday didn’t last and it’s pouring down outside. All football cancelled tonight, which is hardly a surprise. This has to be the wettest winter that I have ever encountered.

I ended up being late to bed last night, but I still found time to go on a perambulation during the night.

I was working … "he means “employed”" – ed … in a Government office such as the VAT office somewhere and it was announced that we were moving out to another town. The secretary of the local Workingmen’s Club had been sending us notes about entertainment that I had been using in the Staff bulletins so I decided to go to thank him and return all of his notes. I had them all copied into a mauve-coloured binder that I intended to return to him. In the club he was on the stage so I climbed up there to thank him and return his notes but at the very last minute remembered that there were all kinds of other notes from other people in there and it wouldn’t do any good whatever for them to fall into the wrong hands and enter the public domain.

Once more, it was a struggle to leave my bed and you’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to my Sunday lie-in tomorrow.

After the usul start to the day I had a shower and a general clean-up in my nice, clean bathroom, and then headed for the shops.

In the usual shops, LeClerc and LIDL, I just bought the usual stuff with nothing exciting at all. And I bought the hi-fi cable and connectors at Mr Bricolage.

But I discovered a new shop that has just opened – an office supplies shop called Bureau Vallée. And here I struck quite lucky.

Remember me saying that I wanted some 2GB memory sticks? Well as it happened, they had three on sale at a reasonable price too, so they have disappeared into my shopping bag. They had a decent 4-hole perforator at a reasonable price for which I have been searching for years and a few other bits and pieces too for good measure.

I shall be going back there too, because while their mainstream stuff is rather pricey, their budget products are really good value, which makes a change these days.

But I had to laugh at NOZ. That’s the kind of place that’s almost impossible to describe. It sells surplus, fire-damaged and bankruptcy clearance stocks, time-limited food goods a,d all of that kind of thing. They try their best to keep it tidy but it inevitably turns into something like a jumble sale within half an hour of opening.

Now my new smartphone is a cheap Chinese import that I reckon might have been for a mainstream manufacturer but now outdated. I’ve had it a week but with there being no case for it, the screen is already scratched more than I would like.

And there in NOZ was a huge heap of all different kinds of mobile phone shells, all mixed up and (for the most part) taken out of the boxes so that people could try them.

I spent a good 15 minutes rummaging around and in the end found one that is an exact fit for my phone, with even the switch buttons being uncovered, but the camera hole is slightly out of position (I can drill that out). Not in the box of course but after a good five minutes rummaging around I found an empty box and packaging, and put it in that to take to the checkout.

The fact that the price tag on the box said €2:99 – the cheapest that I could see – had nothing whatever to do with my choice of box.

Just for a change, I decided to spice up my lunchtime soup a little. It’s tomato and vermicelli for the next couple of days, so besides the usual pasta and bulghour, I added some basil, oregano and chili powder. And different it was too.

With no football and no possibility of going for a walk this afternoon I sorted out the music onto the 2gb data sticks. I now have three and I could do with a pile more. I shall have to go back to Bureau Vallée next weekend and hope that they have some more.

But as well as that, I sorted out a box of paperwork that I had collected ages ago from hanging around in Caliburn. That’s been weeded, sorted, filed and some of it binned. And I didn’t say that I found in NOZ some container that will do fine as a waste paper collector.

Having organised that, I set out to master this database that I want to build for my photos.

And if there is a worse database program in the world I have yet to find it.

In the old days, you could program them so that the numbers would automatically increment, fields would “fill down”, “fill up” or “fill series” like with spreadsheets, and columns could be programmed to auto-adjust for width of data. But if this can do all of that, I have yet to discover how to make it work.

I was hoping to have this running in a couple of hours but I have this uncomfortable feeling that unless I can find out how to make it do what I want, I’m going to be here for ever.

Like with most computer programming, there has to be a way to do things like this because they are the kind of requirement that everyone needs.

But I wish that I knew how to do it.

Thursday 1st February 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what I did yesterday, but as well as having a message service on my phone, both of the alarmss now seem to work fine this morning. Ask me how I know.

And last night I was in some kind of public place like a shop where I’d bought a DVD, and I wanted to check that it worked correctly. This involved putting it in my DVD player, passing the signal trough some kind of pre-amp and then into a television to watch. And conveniently, all of my equipment was there on the shelf and wired up. I reckoned that this would be quite an impressive thing to accomplish in this public place so I duly set it all up. But it wasn’t as impressive as I wanted it to be and I was left with a pile of omelette sur le visage because somehow there was a radio programmme running in the background of ll of this with the sound coming out of the television as well as the sound of the image and the picture, and it was all very disappointing.

Not feeling much like leaving my bed this morning, the second alarm did the business which is just as well, otherwise I might still be in bed now. No idea why I was so tired, unless it was the after-effects of feeling so bad yesterday.

But the medication, breakfast and a nice hot shower brought me round somewhat and once the medication did its stuff I braved the high winds and headed for the shops. It was the usual struggle up the hill to LIDL and there wasn’t really anything that I needed or wanted. I just made do with a baguette and a couple of bits and pieces of food.

On the way back I went down to the docks to see if I could see what was going on.

But I was out of luck. It’s not easy to see from there at the best of times and particularly now, because they have fenced off everywhere in the vicinity where they are working.

What I’ll have to do is to wait until the tide turns, and then go off to the other side of the basin with the telephoto lens and see what I can see from over there

Back here I made a coffee and settled down for a relax – but not for long. The doorbell rang. It was the Postie with a registered letter for me.

Yes, my new driving licence has arrived – complete with the authorisation to drive buses and articulated lorries for hire or reward. I really can’t take that seriously. But it’s scanned into the laptop for future reference just like all of my important documents

After my soup I tackled some paperwork that had been building up and ow that’s all filed away. I’m certainly more organised than I have been for quite a while – and quite right too. Let’s hope that I can persevere.

My work was however interrupted by a need to have a little rest. And I don’t know what it was that awoke me but I sat bolt upright for some reason or other.

Despite already having had a good walk, it was a nice if windy afternoon so I went for another walk.

And I was wondering what was making all of the noise yesterday. It seems that they’ve been doing some gardening round at the back of the college and it looks quite neat and tidy now.

High time that they did something about it too. But whatever vehicle they had used had churned up the lawn by the lighthouse. It’s really not the right kind of weather for driving heavy vehicles on there.

But here’s a thing!

We saw the other day that there was a big digger out in the tidal harbour during low tide raking over the bed. He’s still out there, but today there was some other activity in the tidal basin.

Like this digger and a couple of earth-moving lorries hard at work making a deep channel.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, there was another digger and an earth-moving lorry working closer inshore too.

That’s the place where the fishing boats tie up – right by the fish-processing plant. And they seem to be making the channel along the sea wall there much deeper.

Whether this means that we are going to be having bigger trawlers coming into the port I don’t know. But all of this work in the barbour is exciting for a ship-spotting fan like Yours Truly.

Back here I carried on with a few things that I needed to do (without very much enthusiasm it has to be said) and then made tea. The falafel that I had bought weeks ago went straight into the bin untouched – well past its sell-by date. So I had rice with vegetables and a vegan burger.

With only one cooking ring, it wasn’t easy. But a little oil in a pyrex bowl with onions and garlic and cooked in the microwave for three minutes, and then add the burger for 6 minutes (3 minutes each side) and then add a little water and gravy power, and there you are.

I’d planned to go for a walk but just as I was getting ready we had the most astonishing storm. So I stayed here and played the guitar.

But later I did go for my walk, and you can see what weather we had had.

There had been a hailstorm and it seemed to have fallen like snow – fairly deep in places. I’m glad that I hadn’t gone out in it earlier.

Football on the laptop (or on my television of course) later. A Welsh Premier League match between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Bala Town. A pretty sad game, just like the bad old days of 15 years ago on the Nomads’ sodden, waterlogged pitch that gave no hope whatever of a decent match.

So I’ll see what tonight brings. A nice relaxing sleep, I hope.

Tuesday 30th January 2018 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

… that I would be going out this morning. But one look at the weather once it started to become light persuaded me otherwise.

We all know about hanging clouds as a phenomenon in the Auvergne, but they aren’t the kind of thing that you expect to see right on the coast, but here we are.

In the photo, taken at 16:00 or thereabouts, it had lifted quite considerably. But round about 08:30 to log after lunch you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face out there. And it was wet too as you might expect.

Just for a change I had a better night’s sleep again, although there wasn’t all that much of it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are several recurring themes running through my nocturnal voyages. For a start, there’s a certain ski-slope that figures quite often, but another one concerns cars. And we were off again on that one last night. It actually started off with me having to dress myself one morning – and in women’s clothes too (and I’m not sure why either). This led to the obvious question of what do I wear?”. Dressing as a man, it’s always quite easy. Whatever is on th floor from the previous night – or week – or month.
But later on, Nerina and I were moving house and so we were packing. And this involved finding the cars. As some of you might recall, this recurring dream involves me having a pile of Ford Cortinas, some of which might be taxed and some of which might be insured and some of which might be MoT’d – but none of them with all three – parked up at random all over Crewe. And so with having to move house, we needed to round them up. Nerina managed to find one of them, which was an off-white coloured Austin Cambridge as it happened, but I couldn’t remember at all where I had put my brown Cortina 2000E (the one that’s actually in the garage in Montaigut-en-Combraille). And so off we went on another panic-stricken crisis search – something that seems to be a regular feature of my life.

Despite not going out today, I had a shower and cleaned myself up quite considerably. I look rather respectable now, which will come as a great surprise to anyone who knows me. And I spent all day on these photos – making another 23GB of space on my external hard drive by clearing away masses of duplicates.

I went out for my walk this afternoon in the drizzle seeing as the cloud had lifted a little.

And to my surprise, despite the hanging clouds, we had a mini-storm in the bay and the waves were crashing on the sea wall. Some of them were quite impressive but of course there weren’t any of those while I had the camera ready.

But that’s the story of everyone’s life, isn’t it?

But we’re back yet again on this dreadful parking that seems to be dominating our pages right now.

Here’s another car parked with two wheels on the pavement across the road from the school, blocking the pavement for the kids walking down the hill, and there’s an empty parking space right across the road from where she is parked.

It’s this kind of behaviour that really gets on my wick. There’s just no excuse for it.

Tea tonight was spectacularly good. With the rest of the bulghour stuffing from yesterday, I made some spicy kidney beans with yet more bulghour, onions, garlic, mushrooms, olives, tomato sauce and olive oil. And while a spicy rice was cooking itself with some peas and carrots, I rolled some of the stuffing into two tortillas and cooked them in the microwave.

Thoroughly, absolutely and totally delicious. And there’s enough stuffing left over for another couple of tortillas for tomorrow.

We had the usual walk this evening in the light drizzle and now I’m thinking about having an early night.

But not before I tell you about the experiments with the hi-fi. I need to move it to a more permanent place, and while I was measuring up (I need some more speaker cable and I have miles of it back on the farm of course) I tried to experiment by connecting the old speakers to it – the ones from the old hi-fi system that doesn’t work.

And the result was that it seems to be the speakers, not the hi-fi, that have given up the ghost. They were coming through muted and distorted like they did on the old set-up.

And so the next time that I’m moving things around, I’ll try the new speakers in the old hi-fi. And see what happens then. That was a very expensive hi-fi system and I don’t want to discard it lightly.

Saturday 27th January 2017 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again. And I won’t have any left at this rate, will I?

And it wasn’t on the usual Saturday shopping either. A visit to LIDL, LeClerc, Noz and the Foirfouille ran out at just about €33:00 which is reasonably normal – especially when you consider that I spent about €12:00 in the NOZ.

Where the money went was in the electrical section of LeClerc.

You know all about the smartphone issues that I’ve been having just recently, and the little old Samsung that has been helping me out isn’t really doing the job in the long-term. I’ve looked at second-hand ones and there’s nothing that seems reasonable, and as you know, I’ve been quoted some ludicrous prices for some new ones.

There were some cheap ones on eBay and Amazon but the reviews weren’t all that good, and when you buy from places like that, there’s no comeback.

But in LeClerc they had some cheap Chinese ones on offer – with Android operating system. Only 3G, but I’m not too bothered about that, but 16GB of memory and upgradeable with a 32GB micro SD card (and I just happen to have one) and Dual-SIM. They were going for €89:99 but today there was a €15:00 cash-back offer available.

The advantages of buying from LeClerc are that

LeClerc wouldn’t deliberately set out to sell rubbish
They have a cash-back offer if the article isn’t satisfactory
There’s a two-year guarantee on parts and labour

I’m not entitled to a new phone for another year so if this keeps going until then I’ll be happy.

And it’s actually much better than I thought it might be, which is a surprise. The hardest part of configuring it was to fit the SIM card, because that is a complicated procedure. Everything works, and the internet access is quite rapid. So we’ll see how it goes.

There was also an exciting time with the new dash-cam. Configuring that wasn’t straightforward either, and the videos that it produced were rubbish. I must have spent an hour trying to make it record in a better quality, all to no avail.

But it did make a dramatic improvement later in the afternoon when I took the plastic protective coating off the camera lens.

D’ohhhh!

It was another miserable night where I didn’t have much sleep. I’d been on my travels too but I can’t remember too much about it except that we were in a café and there was this strange bar accessory. Some people might know of the machine that looks like a shower fitting with hose, with different buttons on the head that you select to dispense different soft drinks. There was one of those last night but it was dispensing different milks, such as soya milk and the like.

It was an effort to crawl out of bed and after having medicined and breakfasted, I had a shower and then set a load of clothes to wash while I was out.

And then we had the shops.

After lunch I had a play around with the new phone but ended up crashing well and truly out for a good half an hour. And then had the first of my two walks (all the local football tonight is postponed).

There was football on the internet which I watched on the TV – Llandudno v Rhuthun in the Welsh Cup. An exciting match that went into extra time before Llandudno ran out as winners. And while it was on, I carried on configuring the phone and now it seems to do what I want it to do.

Tinned curry for tea – only two of these tins left now which is a tragedy because there won’t be any more. I haven’t been to the UK for almost 5 years now and I’ve no intention of going again. So unless someone else brings me back a supply that will be my lot.

Tomorrow it’s a lie-in of course, and I do have to say that I need one too. So either I’ll still be flat out on my back at midday or I’ll be wide awake at 05:00.

It’s either one thing or the other right now.

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 – AND IN NEWS …

… that will surprise, if not shock, regular readers of this rubbish who have been following my vicissitudes with bated breath, according to the medical examination that I was given this morning by a doctor who works in partnership with the French Government, I am considered fit enough to drive a 44-tonne articulated lorry or a bus with 75 paying passengers on the public highway.

Last night was another miserable night, having gone on yet another lengthy travel, the details of which were immediately wiped from my memory as soon as I awoke. And I staggered off into the living room with no medication and no breakfast this morning, for obvious reasons.

Nevertheless I did manage a shower and a change of clothes though – I need to look my best for my appointment at 09:15.

At about 08:00 I hit the road for Countances.

And it’s a good job that I allowed myself plenty of time because I needed it. Quetteville sur Sienne isn’t “Quetteville on Sienne” at all – it’s “Quetteville-in-the-Sienne” right now.

You’re all aware of the weather that we’ve been having just recently. While most of Europe has been swaddled in snow these last few weeks, we’ve had nothing but torrential rain

As a result the Rivier Sienne has burst its banks and the outskirts of the town (the town itself is perched on an eminence) are flooded.

It’s completely cut off to the north and so all of the traffic heading to Coutances and Cherbourg is diverted down a country lane. And by the looks of things, a couple more days of this weather and this won’t be passable either.

It certainly messed up my arrival.

But I was there in good time and, as luck would have it, I found a parking place right outside the doctor’s at the back of the sous-Prefecture. And that’s not something that happens every day either, is it?

Being early, I was first in. And out again after 10 minutes.

And this medical is a total farce. I hadn’t said anything about it because I was convinced that I would fail it, with my well-documented medical history. And I was determined to answer every question honestly, truthfully and completely. Which I did.

The only problem with that though is that he only asked two or three questions – and nothing of any significance.

The scar on my chest from neck to navel and the chemo port in my left shoulder should have given the game away but, unbelievably, he stethoscoped me with my tee-shirt on.

A test of my vision and a few exercises in co-ordination, and that was my lot. I’m fit to drive a 44-tonne artic or a bus on the public highway. And if that’s an example of a medical undergone by every other lorry or bus driver in France, then God help the average motorist.

Being out early, I had plenty of time to kill. And so I went for a wander around the town.

Coutances is a Roman town, named for the Emperor Constantine, but was destroyed by the Vikings in 866, the French in the 12th Century (Normandy was an independent Duchy until 1204), the Huguenots in the 16th Century, the town planners in the 18th Century and the Royal Air Force and American Air Force on 6th June 1944 and a couple of days thereafter.

And so there are traces of ruins here and there about the place, and you can’t really identify them or say who it was who destroyed them.

But the Allies’ bombardments killed well over 300 civilians and there’s a monument to them at the back of the cathedral.

And I do have to say that I was very disappointed in this monument. I could have done something better and more powerful than this, and I expected to see at least a list of names of those who died.

But apparently not. And I can’t understand why

As for the cathedral itself, it remained surprisingly undamaged during the bombardment. Clearly, the Devil looks after his own.

But then again, it has suffered enough.

The first recorded church on the site (this isn’t of course to say that there weren’t earlier ones) dates from about 430, and the story goes that a heathen temple was cleared away to make the space.

This chirch was destroyed in the Viking raids, and when the town was reoccupied at the beginning of the 11th Century, construction of the cathedral began.

When the French took over from the Normans, they completely redesigned the cathedral and what wasn’t demolished was hidden by their modifications.

The interior of the Cathedral is nothing much to write home about.

I was expecting something spectacular give the cathedral’s fame as one of the favourite churches of William the Conqueror and as a pilgrimage venue, but it’s nothing like that at all.

It’s actually quite spartan ad even the stained glass windows are nothing like as flambouyant as you might expect.

The cathedral is the “Cathedral Notre Dame” – the Cathedral of Our Lady, and so ypu might be forgiven for expecting to see statues of Mary and Jesus all over the place.

But you’ll be very disappointed, because I couldn’t see any statue of any significance.

And as for the Chemin de la Croix, we’ve seen some exotic symbolisation on our travels, but here, there were just a few notices with numbers written thereupon – no paintings or statues at all.

The Twon Hall across the square though is certainly splendid and does the town a great deal of credit.

I’ve no idea when it was built, but a great deal of civic construction took place in the period of the “Second Empire”, so it’s quite possible that it dates from that period – the third quarter of the 19th Century.

The fountai in front of it was rather disappointing though. I was expecting much more than that.

I’m not sure how much the town hall was damaged by the bombings of June 1944, but you can tell that the surrounding area was pretty badly hit.

You’ll notice the building on the left – the row of shops with flats over the top (this is actually a hotel here). Go to any French town that was badly damaged during the war and you’ll see this style of building in every town centre.

Designed by architects such as Louis Arretche, they were designed to be thrown up in a matter of a couple of days to bring back the life into the town centres as quickly as possible, and they’ve withstood the pressure of time rather well.

At 10:00 I was outside the mobile phone repairer’s, and at least, they decided to have a look at it. And that’s progress. They would call me back.

I went for a coffee and then to do some shopping. Apart from the usual stuff that I need, I found a cheap shop and bought some stationery and also a new dash-cam – for just €11:95. I already have one but I don’t like it much – it’s big and obtrusive but it will do to take to Canada and install in Strider. The new little one, I’ll put in Caliburn.

They called me back bang on midday. They couldn’t get it to work so could I come by and pick it up?

Not until 14:00 after lunch so I grabbed a baguette and some stuff to go on it and had a quiet relax in the rain.

There’s an Orange shop in the town so I went in to see what they had. Strangely, they didn’t want me to browse the stock, but they would give me a “special deal”. They would knock 50% off one of their phones for me and let me have it at … errr … €349.99.

Quite.

Down the hill at the repairer’s, they also tried to fix me up with a deal. And while it might have bee more attractive, it wasn’t that attractive. So they suggested I try a phone laboratory in Saint-Lô who might be able to repair mine.

But when my new UK credit card arrives (I posted off all of my letters this morning too) I have another idea.

Having done all of that I came home, to find that yet another problem has arisen at the Bank. I’m not saying too much now, but I’m going out tomorrow to buy a pick-axe handle and I shall deal with the issues in the traditional manner by impressing my message into the skull of the bank manager in Morse Code with the aforementioned.

Having exerted myself quite a lot today, I crashed out for a couple of hours too. And I’m not surprised. And then it was tea. Microwaved potatoes with home-made burger in a bun from the batch at Liz’s, and vegetables. delicious it was too.

And then it was walkies. Around the headland.

And that was where I should have been had I been able to exert myself the other day. At the football. And Granville won too – 3-2 in extra time. Just 16 clubs left now in the Cup and I wonder who they’ll draw in the next round.

Rest assured – I’ll be camping out at the ground the night before and I’ve asked if, if the match is “away”, whether there will be any buses running.

But now it’s bed-time. I’ve done over 100% of my daily activity target and that’s enough for today. All 1560 words of it.

Saturday 20th January 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… 24 hours I’ve had.

It all started to go wrong round about this time last night when I was thinking about going to bed. Never mind not being tired enough to go to sleep, I wasn’t even tired enough to go to bed – and that’s a surprise after everything that I did yesterday.

Instead I sat on the sofa, read some stuff on the internet and listened to a continual stream of Led Zeppelin until about 03:30.

Going to bed after that although still not in the mood, but I must have gone to sleep at some point because I went off on my travels again. But it’s another one that you won’t want to know anything about if you are eating your tea or have a nervous disposition.

But nevertheless, I was awake at about 06:00 before going back to sleep again – and a very tired and sad me hauled itself out of bed at some time later than the alarm.

After the medication and breakfast I had a shower and then hit the town – rather later than intended. I did the usual round of the shops and the only thing that I bought as an extra was a spectacle repair kit for €5:00. That’s important because it has lots of little stuff in it that will come in handy for dismantling this smartphone and seeing it I can fix the touchscreen.

However, firstly I didn’t spend a centime in NOZ and that’s only happened once or twice over the past seven or so years. There was nothing of any interest at all. In fact, I’ve been noticing that their prices are slowly creeping up and it’s nothing like the bargain basement that it used to be.

And secondly, no tickets for the football on Tuesday night. I tried at LeClerc, the stadium, the ticket agency and a couple of Sports bars. Not a one. And that’s surprising because the opponents, Concarneau, are only one division higher than Granville – it’s not at all like Bordeaux.

Back here, after lunch I found that I had forgotten to put on my fitbit after my shower. So that was a whole morning’s effort unrecorded. And I had so much to do too but instead, I crashed out completely and was gone into a really deep sleep for a couple of hours. 17:15 when I awoke.

There was football this evening at Cérences so off I set in the torrential rainstorm, only to find the stadium in total darkness. That’s not really surprising with all of the rain that we have had. A waterlogged pitch is inevitable.

So I had a quick drive around a couple of other grounds and they were all in darkness to so I came home and had tea.

The rain subsided later so I went for a walk around the walled town, keeping to the cobbled streets so as not to sink in the mud.

So now I’ll be off to bed if I can tire myself out enough. And Sunday is a lie-in and Day of Rest. But I doubt if I shall be able to have one. I’m not doing too well right now.

Thursday 18th January 2018 – IT WASN’T …

… such a good, exciting day today as it was yesterday.

It started to go wrong when I went to bed last night and found that, once more, I couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning for much of the night and waking up bolt-upright part-way through.

Mind you, I had been on my travels during the night but you don’t want me to tell you about them. You’re probably eating your tea or something. It’s what probably awoke me too.

When the alarm went off I managed to crawl out of bed at a reasonable time thereafter, and after the medication and breakfast I had a shower. And SHOCK! HORROR! I did a machine-load of washing, including the bedclothes. Tonight I’ll have brand-sparkling-clean covers on the bed and won’t that be luxury?

But no chance of going out. The rain was back, and in spades too. I really didn’t fancy the walk up to LIDL in this kind of weather.

I’m not really sure where the morning went, because I don’t recall doing anything much. It wasn’t as if the washing took all that much time. It was actually 14:00 when I noticed that it was lunchtime.

After lunch, checking my e-mails, I found that I had had a reply from the French Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés. I had sent them an e-mail to ask them where I could find the two documents that I need for Tuesday. They sent me a link, but that wasn’t the answer and I had to spend a good hour or so exploring the site before I found them.

They are not at all called what the Doctor told me that they were called at all, but they correspond to the description. And so I downloaded them.

And then they needed to be printed.

It took a while to sort out this mains connection but it seems to work now, which is good news. But the next issue is trying to make the thing function. The drivers aren’t loaded onto this laptop and I don’t seem to have brought the disk with me.

And so I had to track down an installation disk image on-line and download it – only 255mb of it and that took an age. And then set it up.

And much to my surprise it actually worked and I was able to print off the documents.

While it was doing all of that I did some more sorting out of papers and all of those are ready for a good examination in due course.

The weather had cleared up by now so I went for my little walk around the headland again.

And there’s yet more excitement in the port today. Part of the port area is tidal and this is where some of the yachts and smaller fishing boats tie up, and ground out at low tide.

But there’s a digger out there just now working away. On what, I have no idea but it’s interesting to say the least. I shall have to go back tomorrow for another look.

Back here, i made myself a coffee. But I didn’t drink it though. I crashed right out and was gone for over an hour. A really deep sleep too and I felt quite feeble when I awoke.

Not too feeble though to have a session on the bass guitar again. And this time, one of the things that I was working on was “Orgone Accumulator” – the Hawkwind track that I played when I was with Mike Allen and one or two others whose names I forget. After all, it is over 40 years ago.

For tea I tried some pasta and managed to eat it all although it took some time.

But the walk was a bit of a disaster. I hadn’t gone 400 yards before the heavens opened and I was drenched to the skin. NO point in risking double-pneumonia so I came back home.

So here’s hoping for a better night, and a better day tomorrow. But at the moment I don’t feel like it at all.

Tuesday 16th January 2018 – I HAVE MET THE WEIRDEST …

… mobile phone “repairer” the world has ever seen.

And it wasn’t easy either.

The bad night hadn’t helped much though. I was asleep quite quickly but awoke halfway through and counldn’t go back to sleep for ages. When I finally did, the alarm didn’t have the desired effect and it took me a good half-hour to haul myself out of bed.

Medication followed by breakfast, a shower, change of clothes and a good clean-up, and then I was ready for the town.

The howling gale and driving rain was enough to dampen anyone’s ardour, and might have done mine too, except that I was distracted.

We seem to have acquired overnight a crane and a pile of containers down at the port. What does this mean?

We had all of this dredging just before Christmas to deepen the harbour, so are we going to have a small container ship coming in? Or is there something else happening about which I know nothing.

That wasn’t the only excitement either.

The farces of law and order were out there blocking off the street while a cherry-picker went down there taking down all of the Christmas decorations now that the festive season is over.

No diversions signposted of course. The police were just waving away passing motorists who then had to find their own way around.

I found my way to the mobile phone repairer’s only to find, as regular readers of this rubbish will be expecting, a sign “open at 14:00”. It’s certainly not going to be, is it?

So I decamped to the Library for a duplicate card, only to find that that was closed too, with all of the people inside staring at me as if I had come from another planet.

I gave it up as a bad job and, picking up another baguette to freeze, came back home.

But as I climbed slowly and wearily back up the hill, I was once again distracted by activity in the harbour. The boat that does the pleasure trips out to the Ile de Chausey and round the Baie de Mont St Michel had just returned from somewhere.

And it doesn’t half make a racket as well. It nearly knocked me off my feet.

And we can’t conclude our morning’s walk without once more discussing parking.

Here are some more fines example of total and utter selfishness. The little Nissan was there last night straddling two parking places, so this morning there’s a car parked in front of it likewise straddling two spaces, and a car behind it straddling a disabled parking bay.

It’s hard to imagine anything more selfish than this and it really annoys me.

Back here, I crashed out for half an hour. Gone with the wind, you might say. Yes, I’ve still not recovered from my illness.

For lunch I finished off the soup and then repaired the saucepan lid. I had to cut down a screw that was in the package that I had bought, but now the lid looks really good with the black plastic remains of the old handle carefully equalled off and a chrome drawer handle to match the chrome decoration.

I suppose that I should have taken a photo of it because it looked so good – but I can do that tomorrow.

After all of that it was back through the wind and rain again to the mobile phone place where I had my bizarre encounter.

He was actually open, and there too. But he may well not have been, for all the good that he was doing.

The lady in the queue in front of me wanted her charging port on her tablet repairing. “But it’s not worth the expense. You’ll be better off buying another”.
“But all of my data is on it”
Well, you’ll still be better off with a new one, sorry”.
I mean – what kind of talk is that?

Then it was my turn. And it wasn’t any better.
“It might be your screen. That will cost about €100 and if it isn’t I’ll have to ty a few other things, so you will have wasted your €100 then. And then even if I do get it to work it will have cost you a lot of money, and I won’t be able to guarantee the repair”.

So what kind of “repairer” is this? Turning away work because he doesn’t want to (or, more likely, isn’t able to) do it?

And intending to charge me for supplying and fitting a new screen even if that isn’t the fault? It’s all total nonsense. I’ll wait until I go to Belgium and have some back-street repairer in Brussels have a look at it.

While I was there, I sorted out my library card (the library is just across the road) and then staggered back home once again where I took it really easy for the rest of the afternoon. Climbing up the hill twice in one day is not good for me right now.

Tea was superb. Rice with fresh carrots and frozen peas, with a green pepper stuffed with bulghour, tomato, onion, garlic, curry powder and tarragon in olive oil and cooked in the microwave. All covered in gravy.

That was just soooooo nice – a real culinary delight.

Just a little walk tonight – the howling wind and rain would be enough to put everyone off.

So I’m off to bed. I’m hoping for a better night tonight, and a better day tomorrow. I shan’t be doing very much, except recovering from my efforts today and cursing this incompetent “repairer”.

Saturday 13th January 2018 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to be able to watch the football on the big screen?

Unfortunately the laptop with the broken screen didn’t work – it’s quite an old laptop of course and the software in it won’t run the video plug-in for the browser.

But the laptop that I’ve been using as a media centre up until recently did the business, that’s for sure, and I was able to watch the first half of Cefn Druids v Llandudno in perfect comfort.

Unfortunately it wasn’t such a perfectly comfortable night? I was awake in the middle of the night and took a while to go back to sleep again. But I was dead to the world when the alarm went off and it was a struggle to leave the bed. How I’m looking forward to a nice lie-in tomorrow!

After breakfast I had a shower, a good clean-up and change of clothes, and then off to the shops, where I spent another pile of money.

LIDL had some hand towels of the type that I bought the other day so a pack of three disappeared into Caliburn, as did a battery charger. All of mine are back at the farm and in any case are over 30 years old. A little hi-tech modern one will do much better when I might need it.

At Mr Bricolage I bought a knob for my saucepan lid – the one on which I broke the handle the other day, and NOZ came up with the usual stuff.

Centrakor provided a new washing-up bolw of the correct size (so my wok and my pizza platter will fit into it), a few other bits and pieces and a box with a tight-fitting lid – just the thing in which to keep my socks and undies.

At LeClerc I went to look at the HDMI cables because the one-metre cable that I have isn’t really long enough for what I need. And with -metre ones on offer at just €9:99, that’s long enough for just about everything.

LeClerc was also having a sale on suitcases. And a small cabin-sized one on wheels at just €15:99 – just the thing for my trips to Leuven – also ended up in the back of Caliburn.

And I’m glad that I had bought that TV last weel, because there wasn’t a cheap one anywhere to be seen in the shop.

After fuelling up, I came back home, made myself some soup and then … errr … had a little rest for half an hour. And then cracked on with organising the shopping and sorting out another pile of papers. There’s actually some room in the drawers here now, and isn’t that astonishing?

At the end of the football I had to leave.

Caliburn and I went off to Cérences where we were the other week.

It’s the nearest Saturday night match and the home side were playing the Mouettes of Donville.

The first half was all one-way traffic towards the Donville goal. But the Donville keeper put in a performance that neither he nor I will ever forget, including a magnificent “Banks” reverse save. It was the performance of a lifetime and I don’t think that I’ve seen better.

At the start of the second half Donville made two substitutions and the two players that came on, playing down the left, changed the balance of the game and we had a much more even contest.

However it didn’t last. The new left winger had clearly unsettled the defenders and after about 25 minutes he was on the receiving end of a bad challenge and limped off the field. We then went back to the one-sided match that we had in the first half.

The Donville keeper was finally beaten with just 10 minutes to go – a long-range shot that dipped and curled out of his reach and in underneath the angle of the post and crossbar – but he still made a couple more top-class saves to make the result look a lot closer than it deserved.

But there was a lot of naughty stuff going on in this game about which the referee didn’t seem at all concerned. One Cérences player made two tackles in as many minutes, either of which merited a red card in my opinion but nothing was given. And so a minute or two later a Donville player exacted his own retribution by giving him a kick that would have felled an ox. No card for that either.

And that’s just a couple of examples. There were many more.

So, frozen to the marrow, I drove back here and now I’m going to bed.

A nice lie-in, I hope. I deserve it.

Tuesday 9th January 2018 – THIS IS JUST RIDICULOUS!

Following the exciting events of my trip to Belgium the other week I need to apply for a new driving licence.

This isn’t going to be easy – in fact it’s flaming well complicated because it all has to be done on line these days and I’ve been putting it off for a while. But it needs to be done so I’ve bitten the bullet and made a start.

All kinds of different documents are required so this morning I set to work.

Firstly you need a photograph. And not any old photograph either but a digital photograph loaded onto the ANTS (The Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés) database with a serial number. You can’t do this yourself – you need a certified photographer who has access to the database.

Having made the appropriate enquiries the other day at the Driving School, I went off up there and eventually tracked him down. It took 5 minutes and, €20:00 poorer, I left clutching a pile of photographs and more importantly, the serial number of my photograph in the National database.

Back here, rather tired after my walk, I had a look at what else is needed.

Most importantly, I need to open an account with ANTS. And so I set to work on that. Eventually, that was up and running too. It took a while, with everything that I needed to enter.

Once that was done, I needed to make my application for a duplicate licence.

To replace a licence that is lost or stolen, you need a copy of the declaration made to the police. That was what I obtained the other day when I was out on the town. With no scammer handy, I took a photo of it and uploaded it it to the laptop. So I could add that to my file.

Next is a proof of address. This is going to be complicated because I no longer live at the address to which it was issued and any proofs of address that I have for there have long-expired.

Ordinarily I would have edited the date without batting an eyelid – we have the technology – but times have changed over the last 25 years and the French judiciary is not noted for its benevolence. There’s a space to add “additional documents” but only in *.jpg or similar format, so I typed a letter of explanation, took a screen print and saved it as an image. And attached that.

Then I needed a National identity document. Luckily I had scanned my passport when I received it a few years back, so that was no problem.

All that remains now is to pay for it, and to do that you can buy a stamp on-line with a credit card – €25:00 this will cost me. And so I attacked that too – almost done now!

But you wouldn’t believe it. Or, knowing me as you do, maybe you would.

I boked the stamp and went to pay for it. The bank needed to send a confirmatory code for me to enter so I waited.

And waited.

And I tried again.

And waited

And waited.

In the end, Liz sent me a text. Which I didn’t receive. So while I was clutching the phone in my hot sweaty mitt, she sent another one.

And a brief error message flashed up – “your mailbox is full. Please delete unwanted mails”.

There are all of 18 mails in my inbox so I went to delete them. And if that isn’t a complicated procedure I don’t know what is. It took ages, but they’ve all gone.

So Liz sent me yet another – with the same error message. This just can’t be right

There must be a hidden message box xomewhere on the ‘phone and can I like as hell find it. I had a look on the internet to see if that is of any help, but I seem to be one of a thousand people with the same problem. It’s an old Samsung Young S5360 so it’s not too much of a surprise.

But to fall at the final, easiest fence like this after having done al of the hard work is a real tragedy.

Anyway, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and galvanises us into action.

I’ll be in town on Thursday morning so I’ll go to Orange and see what they have to say about all of this. And I’ve also found a phone repairer in the vicinity. You’ll remember that I had an HTC smartphone that fell into a bucket when I was ill in Verdun. I managed to make it fire up but the keyboard didn’t work, so I’ll take that in on Thursday to see if it can be fixed.

GRRRRRRRR!

I’d had a reasonable sleep too last night, and was up and about shortly after the alarm. After breakfast I had a shower and a general clean-up and cut mu hair too. And a machine-load of washing turning away while I was in town.

But apart from that I didn’t have much time for anything else. Half an hour on the guiter again but struggling to keep awake while I was doing it.

Three meals again – breakfast, soup for lunch and for tea I had mashed potato and a frozen curry that I had made a while ago. Delicious it was too.

And I went for another walk in the rain this evening.

But now it’s bed-time. And I’ve earned it. I’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: shower

Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

Thursday 15th February 2018 – THAT’S NOT SUCH GOOD NEWS

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

Thursday 8th February 2018 – AND IN NEWS …

Saturday 3rd February 2018 – WELL, THAT WASN’T …

Thursday 1st February 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

Tuesday 30th January 2018 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

Saturday 27th January 2017 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 – AND IN NEWS …

Saturday 20th January 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Thursday 18th January 2018 – IT WASN’T …

Tuesday 16th January 2018 – I HAVE MET THE WEIRDEST …

Saturday 13th January 2018 – ISN’T IT NICE …

Tuesday 9th January 2018 – THIS IS JUST RIDICULOUS!

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