Tag Archives: shower

Saturday 7th April 2018 – SO THAT WAS …

… Summer then.

This morning we were back with the grey, miserable, depressing overcast weather that was threatening rain again.

I leapt from my bed with a spring in my step at the sound of the first alarm … "QUITE" – ed … and then went through the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a turn of the washing machine. I need to have everything up-to-date here before I go.

The shops were pretty boring and I didn’t buy all that much – hardly surprising when I’m not going to be here for 10 days. LIDL was quite boring, except for the enormous queue at the one till that was open, but there were a couple of DVDs in NOZ that attracted my attention. Les Grandes Vacances starring Louis de Funès who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is my favourite French comedian, and also “Le Brigand Bien-Aimé”, or to give it its English title, The True Story of Jesse James – but unfortunately the 1950s remake, not the original, classic 1939 version.

There was also a nice imitation-copper tray too. Very heavy. Just the job for putting on the table to keep the condiments and so on handy whenever I carry out the additions to the kitchen.

It was exciting at LeClerc though. Some woman was insisting that they weighed her fruit and vegetables BEFORE she put them in the bag, despite the fact that the scales there are set to minus 0.5 grammes to take into account the weight of the bag. Just how petty can anyone be?

Back here, I had a coffee and a tidy up (just a little one) before lunch and then, seeing as I can now pick up 5-Live with the new hi-fi (with which I am almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin) I listened to the football on the radio.

As that finished, it was time for me to set off to the Stade Louis Dior and this evening’s football. US Granville’s 1st XI were playing Stade Briochin, the team from down the coast at St Brieuc.

And true to form, as the teams lined up for the kick-off, we had the downpour. 535 brave spectators witnessed a rather depressing football match.

Stade Briochin are second in the table and are challenging for promotion to the National League. And it was easy to see why. I’ve mentioned in the past that US Granville’s attack can be pretty aimless at times, especially when their centre-forward doesn’t feel much like it, and that was the case today. I’ve never seen then so ineffectual up front.

As for Stade Briochin, they were much more focused and dynamic, and played with a system, a shape and a plan. They scored two goals with some very good play and could have had even more had the Granville ‘keeper not been on top form.

Granville improved in the final quarter of an hour after a couple of substitutions but still didn’t seriously threaten the Stade Briochin goal and they are probably still out there now trying to launch an attack on the empty net.

And surprise, surprise. As soon as the referee blew for full-time the rain stopped and my trudge home was rather damp but dry.

Tea was out of a tin as is usual on a Saturday when I’m late home. Rice and veg with a tin of those champignons à la grecque. Not my favourite meal but at least it’s different and adds some variety to my diet.

It was very kind of the FAW to hold up the kick-off of tonight’s Welsh Cup semi-final until I was back home. And so thanks to the internet and my new television I was able to watch Connah’s Quay Nomads totally demolish some clueless rabble in blue that pretended to be Bangor City.

With Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann in central defence and a debut appearance for The Invisible Man at left-back, who had to be just about the worst defender that I have ever seen at this level of football, the Nomads rattled in 6 quick-fire goals and could have had half a dozen more except for a brave display by Matthew Hall in the Bangor goal.

Bangor’s reply – a penalty – was nothing more than some soft consideration or consolation for what had been the worst performance that I had ever seen.

I’ve mentioned in the past that Bangor’s inconsistency is costing them dear. Last week they took on TNS, who had just been crowned League Champions, and beat them 1-0. And earlier in the season they had beaten TNS 5-2. And then they go and turn out an embarrassing, humiliating performance like this?

So on that note, I’m storming off to bed. It’s been a bad day for the football.

Thursday 5th April 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… better day today. I felt much more like it and managed to accomplish a lot of the things that I should have done yesterday.

And for a change we had a different kind of night. Flat out almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, and then wide awake at 04:10. It’s either one thing or the other right now, and it’s certainly not the other, I can tell you that.

But I did go back to sleep again at some point for it was a struggle to resurface when the alarm went off. And then we had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a change of clothes. After all, it is Thursday.

Before I left for the shops I attacked the backlog of work, and I’ve now booked my rail ticket to Leuven and my accommodation there. But not a return ticket though. Idly surfing the internet like you do … "like YOU do, you mean" – ed … I found a three-day mini-break in Oostende (I like Oostende as you know) for just €110 plus local taxes. I need a break, and so that will do nicely, thank you.

On the way to the shops I called at the Bank. My rent here is being increased by the cost of living index – all of €3:74 per month, so I need to amend the standing order. And at the station to pick up my rail ticket, I had to help an old man (like I’m really young, of course) wrestle with the ticket machine. It’s not easy if you don’t know what you are doing.

Nothing of much excitement at LIDL although I did forget the Agave Syrup. I even had my hand on it at one point but was distracted and that was that.

On the way back I had to call at the Estate Agent. With the rent being increased, there is €0:34 to pay for the period at the end of April. But they didn’t have a till or a cash box and I didn’t have the correct money, so I’ll have to go there another time with the right amount.

Once I’d had my coffee, I set to work.

10 kiwis, one banana; half a cup of desiccated coconut, one carton of coconut cream and a couple of tablespoons of honey (in the absence of Agave Syrup) all chucked into the whizzer and it created half a litre of kiwi mixture.

It’s now busy freezing in the freezer and tomorrow I’ll pass it through the sorbet maker to aerate it. And then it should be done. But I hope that the honey works. Agave Syrup is used for this as it keeps the molecules separate and doesn’t freeze the food in a big solid block.

But then, that’s what the aerator does.

After lunch I went for my afternoon walk, as it really was a beautiful afternoon.

And technology seems to be catching up with me right now. Parked on the car park of the college this afternoon was a car powered by hydrogen – a mere 20 years after my Open University thesis on the use of hydrogen for motor fuel.

But we saw that when I lived on the farm – what I was doing back in the 90s becoming mainstream 10 or 15 years later.

It’s not the only thing that is catching up either.

We saw the works for the fibre-optic cable and saw them building the new compound for the next phase. And here they are, now attacking the rue du Port as predicted.

Queues a mile long, seeing as it was school chucking-out time, but not that that’s ever going to bother them, is it?

I mentioned that there are four buildings here that formed part of the barracks. One is now the College, the second is the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs and contains the public rooms, and the other two are being converted into apartments (I live in one of them).

The last one is already part-occupied, and I see that they have now started on work on the final section of it.

I tried to buy an apartment in there, but no-one ever returned my phone calls. And people complain about a recession, don’t they?

But being of a small mind, I had to laugh at the name of the company that is currently working in there.

Mind you, anyone who knows anything about the “Carry On” films, and in particular Carry on Don’t Lose Your Head will understand exactly what is humorous about the name.

But I digress. I came back in for a coffee.

I’m not sure what happened to the afternoon after that. Next thing that I knew, it was 18:45. I must have been stark out for a good 90 minutes or so. This is really getting to me, isn’t it, this ill-health? I shall have to pull myself together somehow.

But I still managed to find the energy to make my aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And the helping that I had tonight (there are four others for the freezer) was delicious. I really enjoyed that.

It was a beautiful evening when I went for my walk, and I bumped into an old lady out for a perambulation being followed around by a dog and several cats, one of which is my long-haired black cat.

It turns out that the cat is indeed hers, and she is called Minette (the cat, not the woman). We had quite a lengthy chat but Minette kept her distance. I suppose that the smell of Gribouille, who once more let me pick him up for a stroke, had made her rather jealous.

But it was weird to see this little procession down and around the streets of the Medieval town

So I’ll have a drink and a little relax and then I’ll go to bed. I have my carrot soup to make tomorrow, I reckon.

Saturday 31st March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

… an exciting football match this evening.

US Granville were playing CS Villedieu – a team one Division below them – in the Normandy Cup, and ran out 5-1 winners.

You might think that this indicates that CS Villedieu were on the receiving end of a right spannering, but nothing could be further from the truth. The scoreline is extremely unfair to them.

The game hinged on a two-minute spell after about an hour. Up until then the teams had been very evenly matched and although Granville were 1-0 up thanks to a goal after about 15 minutes, the lead was by no means whatever a comfortable one.

But then CS Villedieu broke away upfield with some nice play and had a shot on goal that beat absolutely everyone, including the US Granville keeper, but flashed about half a millimetre wide of the post. Had they scored, it would have been no more than they deserved.

However, from the goal-kick, Granville roared upfield and won a corner. And the Granville centre-forward had a free header into the net.

From the restart, the US Granville midfielder intercepted the ball, played it upfield and with some neat passing play from the forwards, the n°10 (I think) found himself in a one-on-one with the Villedieu keeper and made no mistake.

So within 60 seconds of what should have been 1-1, CS Villedieu found themselves 3-0 down.

After that, things went from bad to worse for Villedieu. They were still playing some nice football and even pulled back a goal, but every time Granville had the ball up front they looked dangerous. As well as 2 more goals, we had two point-blank saves from the keeper and a resounding, thunderous volley that came back off the foot of the post.

5-1 it was. 2-1 would have been a fairer result but it could so easily have been 7 or 8 for Granville.

And I’ll tell you something else that I missed too. And I’m as malade as a perroquet about it, as they say around here.

There’s been a dash-cam in Caliburn for several years and it’s never ever recorded anything interesting. And yet today, there we were at the roundabout near LeClerc and a motorist a few cars in front of me stops to give way. A tourist behind (yes, it’s grockle-time again), too busy admiring a seagull, runs slap bang into the rear of him. Ad here I am with the dash-cam running!

Or, at least, I thought I was. But it turns out that the SD card filled up about 100 yards beforehand and so had switched off. How upset am I?

With having had a late night last night I didn’t have much sleep . And although I’d been on my travels, all memory of it disappeared in the time that it took to reach for the dictaphone.

We had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a general clean-up, and then it was shopping-time.

LIDL and NOZ came up with nothing much of any excitement, and I went to Mr Bricolage for some PTFE lubricant for the machine heads of the bass guitar.

We then had the accident, and as I was pulling onto the car park at LeClerc, I almost collided with Liz and Terry coming in the opposite direction. So we went for a coffee, that passed into lunch, and I’m very grateful to Terry for hosting me.

Nothing much of any excitement in there either, but I do now have an office chair (even though I don’t have an office as yet – but I will in early course) and that was quite by accident.

With all of the time that it took for chatting and so on, it was just coming up to 14:00 when I was driving past BUT and they were reopening after lunch. And there was a big sign outside – “Clearance Sale – Massive reductions – Free Installation on Fitted Kitchens”.

So I went in to see about a kitchen for here because I hate what I have and I want something much better than this. However, it won’t be happening from BUT. The “free installation” only applies to purchases of over €2500 and I’m looking to spend a tenth of that.

But I had a look at the office chairs and there was one that was quite comfortable and quite robust. Not quite like the one that I had in Brussels that I could (and did on many occasions) curl up and go to sleep in, but it was €79:99 – which is cheap in itself – reduced by 50%! And they had run out of stock so after much discussion they let me have the display one for €36:00. I’ll go for that.

This evening I had a brisk walk out to the Cité des Sports in the rain and howling gale for the football and because I’d brought a flask, the Hall and bar were open. Isn’t that typical?

And on the way back I grabbed a portion of chips for tea. It’s good to catch up with old habits.

Tomorrow is of course a Bank Holiday and a Sunday, so I’m going for two lie-ins.

And why not?

Thursday 15th March 2018 – I DIDN’T ENJOY …

… that one little bit. Not at all.

And it all went wrong right from the beginning when I hardly had any sleep at all. I spent most of the night tossing and turning and that clearly didn’t get me off to the best possible start.

But nevertheless, I was up and about just as the first alarm was going off and after the usual medication and breakfast, I had a shower and washed my clothes. I need to look pretty for the hospital.

There were a few tasks that I needed to do before I went and then I wandered around the corner for the bus.

6 minutes late it was too, and we had something of a performance as there wasn’t enough money left on my card. So that involved some negotiations with another card.

At the hospital they checked me in and informed me of the change in tariffs (that doesn’t concern me of course) and then I went to the wrong room, so they had to come to look for me.

The needle went in the tube in my chest totally painlessly – yes, it was the former Belgian ladies’ darts champion who was nursing me today. And then she gave me the treatment.

As well as the saline drip I had four bottles of Multigam 5%. That’s a stimulant made from human plasma and it attacks the viruses that I seem to have and builds up my immunity. Five hours it’s supposed to take.

It was OK for the first couple of hour but then I started to feel the cold in my veins and it sent the shivers right through me. Not as bad as when I had the chemotherapy but horrible none the less. I had to wrap up in all my clothes.

The doctor – a young girl – came to see me and so did a skin specialist – likewise a young girl escorted by two even younger female students. It all ended up like the scene at Castle Anthrax.

And then I went to sleep.

The nurse awoke me to say that it was finished. And so was I. She unplugged me and told me that I could go but I was in no fit state to leave. I had to stay there on the bed for a good 20 minutes.

I made it to reception though. My next appointment is April 12th – likewise a Thursday.

And so I sat downstairs for a while and then came home. It was pouring down with rain outside but I walked back all the same. I bought some potatoes and tinned ratatouille for tea from Delhaize, and some vegan cheese and vegan sausages from The Loving Hut – I fancy some sausages and cauliflower cheese when I return home.

Soaked to the skin, I vegetated here for a while in the warm and then had my tea.

And later on in the evening I went out for a walk. The rain had eased off and I wanted to pass the 100%on the fitbit.

There’s the Philipssite complex just down the road from here and I’d never been to see what goes on there so I went for an amble around.

That building there is actually a Sports Centre of some kind and there were hordes of people disgorging themselves into the street as I went past. I was tempted to go in for a look around but I didn’t feel up to staying out.

There are offices there too because I knew someone once who worked there.

Quite a few, in fact, all nicely illuminated in the evening which probably costs someone a small fortune.

And I found the police station too. There’s quite a big one on the site, And and underground car park too – I didn’t know about that

So I’ll have an early night. Tomorrow I’ll be gathering my strength – what’s left of it.

Tuesday 13th March 2018 – SHAME AS IT IS TO ADMIT IT …

… I couldn’t even last out the morning today.

And it’s not as if I’d had a late night or anything, and it’s not as if I’d been on an enormous voyage during the night either. Just into one of the rooms on this 3D site that I mentioned just recently.

But I had the medication and the breakfast etc, and a shower, shave and even a haircut today to get ready to go. And then I sat down with a mug of coffee.

Next thing that I remember was that it was 10:30 – I’d been well and truly out for a good 90 minutes. And in the morning too. This is certainly not like me. I could understand it a little if I had been out already to the railway station, but not at all.

You’ve no idea just how much this is dismaying me.

But anyway, in the bright sunlight (because it really was nice) I headed uptown to the railway station and picked up my tickets without a hitch. Mind you, there will be a hitch coming home on Saturday because works on the line are forecast. That’s not nice.

On the way back I called at that good boulangerie to pick up a couple of those tasty baguettes. One was for lunch today but the other one is for my butties for the road tomorrow. And nice the bread is too.

After lunch I hd a few things to do on the internet and to download a couple of things onto the laptop that I take with me on my travels. And then a bit (just a little bit) of packing ready for tomorrow.

And the usual session on the bass guitar – and trying to work out the bass line from “Wind Up” off the Aqualung album by Jethro Tull – one of the albums that has to be in the top 10 of anyone’s list. Everyone immediately thinks of the title track to that album, and good as it might be, in my opinion “Locomotive Breath” and “Wind Up” have to be two of the best rock tracks of all time. And I’m determined to work out the bass lines to both of them, even if Jeffrey Hammond is a hard act to follow.

Tea tonight was the rest of the home-made stuffing with a tin of kidney beans all filled into a couple of tortilla wraps with spicy rice. And delicious they were too of course. And then we had the walk in the beautiful evening. It really was nice outside considering the time of the year.

And so an early night tonight. I have to be on my way quite early – something like 07:45 – as my train is timed for 08:34.

I am not going to enjoy this one little bit.

Saturday 10th March 2018 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

Halfway down the stairs on my way out for this evening’s football when I suddenly realised that I had forgotten my camera. So I had to nip back to fetch it.

I was halfway down the steps into town when I realised that I had forgotten to go to Caliburn to pick up my mug to go with the coffee that I had made in the flask, and I had to work my evil wiles on the girl in the bakery where there is a coffee machine. She would only give me some plastic beakers, not the insulated ones. But then I suppose, I was lucky that I had remembered the thermos flask.

Halfway up the steep hill, stopping to divest myself of my jacket because it was quite a warm evening, I mused that the camera wasn’t all that important because I could use the camera on the telephone to take the photos that I wanted.

And it was at this point that I realised that I had forgotten the phone too.

To rub it in, there was a handball match taking place at the Sports Centre tonight and the cafeteria was open, so I didn’t need the flask (or the beakers) either.

But then it’s always like that with me, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise.

But it was a beautiful night for football – fairly warm, not much wind and for once, it wasn’t raining. And doesn’t that make a change from these last few days?

Tonight’s opponents were FC Trois Rivieres – not from Québec but from Canisy in the outskirts of St Lô.

And if ever there were two points thrown needlessly away by a team in need of a victory it was tonight, that’s for sure.

I reckon that Granville had about 75% of the possession and they were one goal up early on in the game. It took Trois Rivieères 31 minutes (I timed it) to get into the Granville penalty area.

And when they did, they scored a goal out of nothing. One of those shots that hits a defender’s boot and could go anywhere. This particular one looped up and over the keeper’s head and although he got both hands to the ball it spun out if his grasp and into the net.

It didn’t take long for Granville to restore their lead but then we had another calamity in the Granville defence. A back-pass under pressure to the keeper who decided to pass it out to another defender instead of clearing his lines upfield or out of play for a throw-in.

Of course, the inevitable happened and the ball out was intercepted by an attacker who slotted it into the empty net.

After that, Granville ran out of steam and couldn’t make their possession count for anything.

Highlight of the match had to the the Trois Rivières manager who, having loudly cried for a yellow card to be given to the Granville n°7 a short while earlier, becoming furiously upset when the Granville manager cried for a yellow card to be given to a Trois Rivières player. You can’t make up a story like that, can you?

We had yet another Sleep of the Dead last night, and I spent much of it in a cosy little menage à deux with TOTGA. She didn’t get away last night, not ‘arf she didn’t. Unfortunately it never reached the stage that made a celebrity out of the legendary inmate of a monastery in Bohemia (mind you, nothing can do that these days) but it was certainly a night with a difference.
And later on, I was in the Houses of Parliament interrogating the Chancellor of the Exchequer, leading him a nice merry dance down a mazy little path until he has committed himself unequivocally, and then announcing that there was a mistake in his figures, he was a billion Pounds short in his calculations, and what was he going to do now – to which, having committed himself unequivocally to his position, he had no answer.

After breakfast and a shower, and a machine-load of washing, I set out for the shops. We did the usual round of LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc and I bought nothing of any excitement except in LeClerc.

Several of you will recall that I keep a bright yellow rain jacket with removable fleece lining in Caliburn. But when I went to live in Leuven it made a dramatic reappearance on the streets seeing as I hadn’t anticipated being there in the winter and so didn’t have a winer jacket.

But it’s old, dirty and as much as I might try, it won’t come up clean at all. It’s OK for being round and about doing things but not really for being anywhere important.

And in LeClerc they had a much more respectable bright yellow rain jacket. No fleece lining but there was a size XL so I can wear an ordinary fleece underneath. It was expensive for what it was, but it’ll be better for travelling about in the Spring and Summer.

Back here I had a little … errr … relax before lunch and then this afternoon with fiddling about with the new hi-fi that I bought the other week (and with which I’m even more impressed than with my galvanised steel dustbin) I could pick up the live football commentary on the BBC – although they seemed to be more interested in what was happening underneath the Directors’ Box at the Olympic Stadium than on the football pitch at St James’s Park.

In a change from the usual Saturday procedures, I had the bass guitar out too. I’ve had Liege And Lief – one of the best albums ever recorded, going round n an endless loop for the last few days, and suddenly the bass line to Crazy Man Michael, one of the best songs ever written, leapt into the front of my mind.

And so I sat down for half an hour and picked it out. And chapeau to Ashley Hutchings because it’s not easy.

Back home from the football through the deserted streets of Granville and 114% of my daily activity, I had the last of my tinned English curries. Tinned food for the next I don’t-Know-How-Long will have to be something different, like the champignons à la Grècque or the spicy beans that I can pick up in Belgium.

And here’s a thing.

A told you about how nice the weather had been today. Today is the first day in 2018 where I’ve not had the heat on in the apartment.

Saturday 3rd March 2018 – OHH HECK!!!

Yes, I awoke this morning to find bright sunlight streaming into the bedroom.

Blasted 08:20, wasn’t it? The alarms hadn’t gone off.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that the battery and gone flat in the telephone. And so I was in something of a panic.

So much so that I forgot where I had seen during the night. But it did involve a spare wheel of a vehicle – the type that hangs on the back door of a 4×4 and how the owner of the vehicle wanted to make sure that we knew precisely what wheel was under the rainproof cover before we ordered a spare part or something for it.

But I medicated, breakfasted, showered and hit the streets – out of the apartment at the usual time. And here I bumped into Mrs Neighbour who had with her husband just come back from 2 months in Vietnam. It seems that he too spent New Years Eve in hospital, with the same bronchitis that I had. It seems to have been an epidemic all around the world, this illness.

I did the usual round of the usual shops today. At LIDL they had a couple of the sorbet makers left over so I blagged one and I shall have a go with it this coming week.

And at Leclerc I ought a computer mouse. The “other” laptop that I use as a media centre has a broken mouse (that was how I bought it so cheaply) and I’ve been using an old plug-in mouse to work it. And it is so easy to manoeuvre for my 3D programs that I went out and bought one for this laptop. It makes a whole world of difference.

But going into Leclerc it was bright sunlight so I ought a ticket for the cheap open-air standing area at the football ground. nd when I came out the rain was asolutely teeming down. That wasn’t a good plan, was it?

After lunch I spoke to Rosemary on the phone but having only given my phone the briefest of charges the battery went flat. And for some reason the phone wouldn’t charge up off the laptop … "it won’t if it’s not plugged into the mains" – ed … and so I ended up doing a few other things before going to the football.

And as for that, the 540-odd of us in the stadium were treated to a rather unusual sight of a linesman and a referee officiating at a totally different match to the one that we were watching, and I’m still shaking my head at some of it.

Tonight’s opponents were the reserves of Stade Rennais – a professional outfit with a professional set-up and a professional approach to the game. And it told, too.

They might be a couple of places below Granville in the table but I don’t know why because they played some very pretty football. They were well-organised and moved the ball around well, and their three goals were all excellent.

What didn’t help matters was that US Granville allowed them far too much room in midfield and it looked to me as if they wre refusing to close them down.

But the three goals of Granville were from the usual breaks down the wing from the rapid wingers and overlapping full-backs.

However, going back to Stade Rennais’s professionalism, they were very careful to punch the Granville n°5 when the attention of the linesman and referee was elsewhere.

And the Granville was stupid enough to punch back as soon as the referee had turned round. The red card that the referee gave him was more for stupidity than the punch.

But that’s the difference between a professional team and an amateur one. THese amateur players are sometimes so naïve.

The referee did however lose control of the match, which is hardly a surprise with some of the decisions, and it all ended rather nastily. I don’t know what went on in the tunnel afterwards but it was greeted with hoots of derision from the crowd in the stands.

And If I’ve read some of the subsequent comments, it looks as if a few red cards were brandished in the tunnel. We shall see.

It was a pleasant walk back and I didn’t feel the strain, surprisingly. AND i4M ON 111% of my daily activity.

Tea was different. With running low on tinned curries? I tried a new line that LeClerc was offering. Mushrooms in the Greek style. And to my surprise, it wasn’t too bad. Not up to curry standard, but nice enough. I always eat out of a tin on Saturday because I’m usually out at the football or something and I don’t have much time, energy or ambition to cook very much.

So we’ll try this time for an early night, and see where that takes us. Sunday is a lie-in and I need it.

Thursday 1st March 2018 – IT WAS A …

… lot warmer this morning.

Yes, the temperature when I awoke this morning was at the giddy heights of all of minus 3°C. It wasn’t as cold in here either this morning, but after less than 4 hours sleep, it certainly felt like it too.

What didn’t help though was that after breakfast it started to snow. I wondered why it had gone completely silent outside, with no cars or pedestrians passing.

Under normal circumstances that would have put paid to any idea that I might have had about going to the shops. These, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, are not normal times and I need to move about.

And in any case, you wouldn’t exactly call that a snowfall after what we are used to in the Auvergne, regardless of what they might think around here.

So I had a shower and a general clean-up and cut all 20 of my finger and toe nails (and anyone who knew me even a couple of years ago will realise that an achievement that is). And then I hit the streets.

And there over across the far side of the harbour where the fairground people had their residential caravans are a couple of lorries owned by the Irish company O’Toole.

Everyone knows of course that the company is owned by Plenty O’Toole, one of the James Bond girls from Diaminds Are Forever and who was, famously, “named after her father”.

But more to the point, what are they doing there? And even more interestingly, how did they get here?

That wasn’t all of the excitement down at the harbour either. As you can see, we have a gusher – a ge flow of water into the basin.

I did wonder what it was doing – whether there had been a leak in the gates or whether they were trying something new, but it seems to be the outlet of a rather large pump and I’ve no idea what it’s supposed to be doing.

Or even where the water is coming from. I mean – I know that it’s coming from the sea, but that’s not what I mean.

We had some excitement in the town too. Someone in a 7.5 tonne lorry was delivering parcels – blocking the narrow streets as he unloaded, even though there was a free space just 20 metres higher up.

And another100 metres further on, he stopped OPPOSITE a free space and blocked the passage for the large queue behind him. So when he came out of th shop I asked him if he needed any help to park it – after all, I now have my HGV licence – but he just gave me a dirty look and drove away.

I made it to LIDL to find that there were no more than 20 people in the sho, and I had a till all to myself – something that deosn’t happen very often in LIDL as you know. Clearly the weather had defeated most people. But there was nothing exciting to buy in there, although the sorbet maker looks exciting – I’ll need Caliburn for that.

My usual route back home takes me down past the streets in the upper part of town and there was some excitement here too.

It seems that a couple of old houses in the Rue St Gaude are being demolished, with plans afoot to replace them with modern apartments. This is a street with a good view in places over the harbour and in much demand – I saw a ruin here at an exorbitant price – and quite a lot of the old single-occupancy properties have gone.

But I admired them for attacking the job with a digger.

The day warmed up later and we were treated to rain – put the dampers on my two walks later on though, but at least I made well over the 100% daily exercise target which is always good.

And tea tonight was all kinds of vegetables and falafel with a cheese sauce, and that was delicious too.

But despite my short night last night and my exercise today, I’m not at all tired and I don’t know why. It’s going to be yet another late night.

Tuesday 27th February 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I’ve done very little today. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I’ve done badger all. Not even any of the usual tasks that I set myself.

It was another late night, although nothing like as late as the previous one, and I was out like a light until the alarm went off. And if I had been anywhere on my travels I certainly don’t remember it.

It was still a haul to crawl out of my stinking pit, but I did manage to beat the Billy Cotton and the second alarm clock. But to say that I was lethargic for a couple of hours after breakfast is probably an understatement.

Once I’d got myself into gear I started to attack the 3D project that I had begun yesterday. And to be honest, I didn’t end up any further forward despite all of the hours that I put into it. And in the end I discarded it.

But it’s not any time wasted. I tried a different approach by using a program called Hexagon, a freeware 3D image editor, and while it didn’t complete the project as I had hoped, I learnt an awful lot about the program and that’s time that is never wasted. You can’t have too much education

I had a shower of course, and the usual walks today too, and tea was the doggy bag from Saturday and Liz, with some potatoes. And really nice it was too. Standing for a couple of days definitely improved the flavour as it always does with spicy food.

So with nothing at all done today, there’s a lot of catching up to do tomorrow. That will probably mean an early night, just for a change.

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.

EPIC HALL

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