Tag Archives: Barry Town

Friday 13th December 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that my blood count has gone up yet again. It’s now at 9.2 which is pretty astonishing as far as I am concerned. And I made a point to ask exactly what treatment they are giving me for my illness and the answer is “nothing”. The tablets that I take are to counter various side effects and the medication is to boost up my immune system.

But as for the illness, absolutely nothing.

Mind you, it’s pretty disconcerting to see that your doctor needs medical treatment herself. She had problems with her foot. But nevertheless, she can come and soothe my fevered brow any time she likes. This is a University hospital and all of the staff at this level are young University students. There has to be some benefit of my illness and I intend to make the most of it.

But as for bad news, then there’s plenty of that.

Firstly, my train out of Paris has been cancelled on Sunday due to the strike. It’s not the end of the world though because there are other solutions, amongst which “hiring a car” should never be ruled out. But there are options other than that to consider first.

Even so, hiring a car might sound expensive to some, but when you think about the price of a hotel in Paris, it’s not an outrageous proposition at all.

And that’s not all. You’ve all heard about the results of the Uk General Election where 14 million people voted for the Fascists and only 6.5 million voted to revoke the exit from the EU.

That in itself isn’t so important. But what IS important is that I now lose

Some of my UK pension rights
my health insurance rights
my employment rights
my rights of free movement and residence in the EU

And when one of my (ex) friends in the UK posted something bewailing her lot and I replied telling her to make the most of what she’ll be getting because I’ll be getting much worse than that, she called me all kinds of names (honestly!) and accused me of all kinds of things for not sympathising with her, even though she didn’t spend a single moment thinking about my lot.

But that’s the true spirit of the British people. Mean, narrow-minded, selfish, self-centred. I’m better off without these people dragging me down. And isn’t that just why I abandoned everyone in the UK in the first place? It can’t be a coincidence that they all end up like that. They all show their true colours eventually.

It’s definitely Friday 13th today!

Last night I wanted an early night so I tried the usual standby – switch on the laptop to watch a film. And sure enough, it works every time. Within 10 minutes I was away.

And right away too. There are a few files on the dictaphone that weren’t there when I went to bed, so it should be interesting to see those when I make it back home.

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 etc but seeing as my appointment at Castle Anthrax wasn’t until this afternoon I was in no rush to rouse myself. A little lie-in did me good and it was 07:30 when I finally showed a leg.

This morning was spent firstly dealing with last night’s little perambulations.

I vaguely remember something about ships and fuel tankers having to reposition themselves and so on. Some captain had to reposition his ship but he hadn’t brought his money with him so it was rather pointless. i’d ended up at my electronic studio and I was trying to work on something. I managed to produce a really really good electronic music track and while I was at it I produced some vocals and overdubbed them over a piece of music that someone else had written and they were really really good. A few people came round to my house to do something with the computer so I had these tracks playing in the background and they looked really impressed. Although after a few minutes they asked “are we going to get on with some work or are we going to listen to this all day?” and I thought that maybe I had played a little too much and that was a shame because I was so impressed with what I’d done.
Sometime later we were back with the songs again and someone was going to bring some music over and we were going to do all of the singing. It meant getting out of this crowded tram. Someone was fighting their way to the door but the doors closed and there was a cry of “jam the door”. Someone stuck their foot in it so that it wouldn’t close, and it rebounded open. This person had to fight their way out through the crowds and out of the door. We ended up talking about fishing again and the situation of the British having sold all their permits and are now getting upset because the permits that they sold are now making money and the ones that they still have aren’t, and as usual.

Then we had the issue of dealing with the egocentric and selfish Brits in the UK but I did tear myself away to go to the Delhaize for shopping. Pasta, burgers and frozen veg will be on the menu or the next few days.

Back here, I had a shower and a clothes wash, made my butties and then headed for the hospital, calling at the Delhaize in town on the way because I had forgotten the vegan cheese and vegan mayonnaise.

Pouring down with rain now but I pushed on regardless.

My route today took me, as usual, down the Brusselsestraat and past St Pieter’s Hospital. An early and significant casualty of the linguistic war, this huge modern hospital was constructed to serve the French community, apparently (so I was told) who, once it was built, created a new town called Louvain-le-Neuve and moved all of their infrastructure out there instead.

The memory that I will always retain of this place as they make a serious start on demolishing it is that there were still the makers’ labels on the double-glazed windows on some of the floors because the rooms on those floors had never even been occupied.

By the time that I reached the hospital I was looking something like a drowned rat. 13:30 was my appointment but I was treated at 13:45 and then I was sat in a chair for a while as the medication was pumped into me.

Rosemary rang and we had a good chat while it was all going on, and eventually I was thrown out. A call at the pharmacy for medication and then down into town.

Last time that we were here they were excavating a giant hole in the middle of the car park on the Jacobsplein, and I was interested to see how they were getting on and, more importantly, what they were going to be doign with it.

So here I am, and all that I can say is that in the last 4 weeks or so there hasn’t been very much change in the situation. The hole is still there and there doesn’t seem to be anythign to indicate why they have actually gone and dug it out.

It’s probably one of those things where time wil ltell and I should come back in four weeks time where I shall be equally confounded.

A visit to the Origin’O Health Food shop was also on the cards The Delhaize doesn’t sell all the vegan product that I need.

Before I went in though, I took the opportunity to take a photo of the Christmas lights in the Vismarkt. You can do quite a lot with modern LED lighting and this looked particularly good to me.

That was the cue to go into the shop and see what was on offer. They had some of that nice smoked vegan cheese that I had before so I bought some more of that, as well as some more grated cheese for the pizzas and the cheese sauces.

Though the rainstorm had died down by now, it was still wet and miserable going back to my little room.

For that reason, and also for the fact that I had the little Nikon 1 with me and not the big D500 with me, I didn’t hang around too long looking at Leuven’s Christmas lights, beautiful as they might be like these ones in the Bondgenotenlaan.

What I’ll have to do is that if it’s not raining tomorrow evening, I’ll bring the big Nikon out for a walk and go on a prowl around the city to see what I can see.

By the time that I arrived back at my room it wasn’t far off tea time so I made myself some food. And it wasn’t too bad either. It’ll keep the wolf from the door for a while.

There was football on the internet later. While Connah’s Quay Nomads were being turned over by Cefn Druids, we were being treated to Barry Town v TNS.

And it was easy to see why TNS have been Champions of the Welsh Premier League for the last couple of hundred years. Barry Town had been leading the league at one point this season but TNS dealt with them in summary fashion, winning 4-1 away from home without even breaking sweat.

First to the ball on almost every occasion they never looked in trouble at all and had Ratcliffe in the Barry goal not played a blinder, TNS could easily have doubled their tally.

As far as I’m concerned, they may as well give the title to TNS right now because no-one is ever going to stop them. They could even afford the luxury of leaving Greg Draper their leading scorer on the bench until about the 80th minute.

On that note, I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for now. Nothing planned for tomorrow except to recover from today so if the weather has improved I’ll just go for a long walk.

See you tomorrow.

Incidentally, I did take some photos of the Christmas lights of the city. Too many to put on this page so if you want to see them you need to go to this page

Friday 22nd November 2019 – WHAT ODDS …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It would provide a little ambience to the meeting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could do with a rest.

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

fishing boat entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Friday 16th August 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

… in Toron.to about to start the fourth leg of my journey. So if you don’t hear from me for a while don’t worry. It merely means that I can’t find a reliable internet connection.

Last night was a really bad night and I don’t know why. I couldn’t get off to sleep and when I did, I couldn’t stay asleep for long.

but I was still up and about reasonably early, having medication and then going down to breakfast.

it took me a good while to organise myself after that but eventually I was ready for the shuttle bus to the airport. It was pretty busy and one guy spent all of the journey talking into his mobile phone and saying nothing except basically “how clever I am and how stupid my clients are” to someone else on the other end of the phone. Not one of the rest of us could understand a single sentence that he was saying.

The airport was busy but the wait through security wasn’t that long and after a thorough examination of my new laptop I was able to proceed.

The plane was pretty full but my neighbour was rather bizarre. I said “hello” to her but she looked back at me as if I had two heads. Never had that in Canada before.

At Toronto it took a while for our suitcases to appear and then I trotted off to the hotel. I’m on the 7th floor in the “secure” area – can’t think why.

We had our expedition briefing later and I met a couple of old friends. But the vultures at the head of the queue cleaned out the buffet – and how – before those of us farther behind could be served. Looking at the mountain of food on some of the plates, then some people have no shame.

I trotted off to Subway for a sandwich and then came back to watch the football. Newly promoted Penybont were playing Barry Town in the opening match of the Welsh Premier League – now the JC Cymru League.

For the first half Penybont played quite well with some nice football, compared to Barry Town’s idea of “hoof it upfield and hope McLaggon can run fast”. 60%-32% possession told its own story.

But in the second half Barry improved and ended up winning 2-1. A bit unfair on Penybont who deserved something from the game.

I’m off to bed now. It’s an early start in the morning. And I don’t know when I’ll see you all again but I’ll catch up eventually.

Saturday 15th June 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

… out and about today. and not just once but a couple of times too.

The day actually started off quite well, with me being up and about (well, on my feet anyway) for the third alarm at 06:20.

That’s a rare occurrence these days.

And it’s a surprise because it was the annual firework display last night, as I found out round about midnight when Iw as rudely awoken from my slumbers.

With having an early breakfast I was able to attack the dictaphone notes and deal with a few of those – get them out of the way. And shame as it is to say it, I dozed off for 5 minutes in between.

My little sleep was interrupted by the doorbell. Liz arrived. So we had a coffee and some chocolate and a chat before hitting the streets.

LIDL came up with nothing special, and our next stop was Centrakor.

Here in the apartment I have a big 100-litre waste bin and it’s ridiculous because I never create enough rubbish to fill it (and I’m not talking about the blog either). However I forget to empty it regularly and I don’t realise about the state of it until it comes to look for me itself, by which time it’s rather overwhelming.

As is usual, I need to be pushed into doing things so I bought a nice 20-litre waste bin today. That’s much more like it. It’ll take a week or so to fill and then I shall have to take it outside – much more regularly than I do right now, and that has to be good.

LeClerc came up with nothing special but we had a nice lunch, and that’s always welcome.

This afternoon, there was football on the internet. The Welsh clubs are preparing for the Europa League and Champions League matches and Barry Town were playing a representative side from the Punjabi FA who are on tour in the UK.

The match was streamed live on the internet so I watched it. And Barry will have to play much better than they did if they want to progress in Europe. They were extremely rusty and off the pace.

Tea was veg and pasta, and then I went for my evening walk. First time for a few weeks. It was rather uncomfortable but I have to press on and get myself back on form.

Sunday tomorrow so a Lie-in. And I hope that it’s a good one.

Friday 10th May 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… better day today, much to my own surprise. Much better than the weather anyway, and that’s saying the least.

Last night wasn’t as early as I was hoping, and I needed to go for a stroll down the corridor in the middle of the night, and it’s been quite a long time since that’s happened.

And on top of all that, I didn’t manage to beat the third alarm. Not by much, it has to be said.

But there was still plenty of time to go off ona little voyage during the night. We had to go to the seaside, four or five of us. One guy with us was an old Italian. I remember him being something like the Italian football team manager and I couldn’t think of his name or put a finger on his career. I asked him how he had been doing since he left Italy – a vague question – and he replied “surely you knew. I won the league with (he mentioned a few clubs) and won promotion with Torquay United” – It all sounded amazing to me. And someone came along with this huge, enormous shopping trolley. I remembered having lent it to someone and was hoping to have it back, but he replied “no, we’re going to take it on to someone” but I ended up carrying it or pushing it. We got on a train and went down to Brighton and ended up in an apartment that was to let. One of us was thinking of taking it but I can’t remember who now. The girl asked about it and another guy said that it was up for let. But someone is going to take it but it needs work doing to it. The tap is leaking or something. IS there anything about it? So we had a rummage round and found a big manila envelope. We pulled it out and went to open it to read what it says. At that moment a young guy with us, very like him in Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced started to cook and was serving up pancakes with fruit or veg, giving one to this girl.
That wasn’t all of it either, but there were parts of this voyage that wouldn’t make good reading if you are eating your tea.

After breakfast I settled down to do some work, and I’ve been hard at it for most of the day.

I started off by finishing off last night’s entry and adding the photos. And that wasn’t as quick as it might have been too.

That was followed up by merging the photos and the dictaphone notes for August 2015 in Canada. And then, I went through the blog entries for that month and added in all of the text from then.

That took ages but it has produced quite a copious file, and it won’t take much to edit and expand it into a proper series of web pages.

Like I said, I do one job and the closer it gets to finishing, the more work it seems to spawn.

To finish off the day I started to do the same for September 2015, and I’ve done three days of that. This is going to be quite a lengthy work, so it’ll take me longer than a couple of days to finish it off.

During all of this, I stopped for lunch of course, indoors once more.

And of course there was the afternoon walk. In the rain of course, so there wasn’t anyone out and about.

There weren’t all that many fishing boats out there this afternoon, as far as it was possible to see through the driving rain.

La Grande Ancre was out there however, and she had just performed a U-turn outthere ofshore. She won’t be towing a net behind her with a tight turn like that, I wouldn’t have thought.

There wasn’t anyone about working on the Resistance Monument either. And by the looks of things, it doesn’t look as if anyone has been out there at all today

And that’s hardly surprising given the amount of rain that was teeming down right now.

I’m intrigued though to know why they have dug a big hole on the centre of the emplacement down there. It doesn’t look as if it has any purpose to serve, and it hasn’t been shuttered off.

As it happens, I wasn’t quite correct when I said that there was no-one about at all.

Yesterday we had someone with his chopper out and today we have someone with his rod out. Down on the edge of the rocks off the Cap Lihou is someone fishing.

I’m not sure that he ever caught anything, but it does remind me of the story about why sex has a lot in common. In both cases you take out your rod and you never know what you are going to catch.

Despite the rain, I walked on round the headland to where I could overlook the chantier navale.

Yet another change-round in there. Grand Beau Temps has now departed, which is hardly any surprise in this kind of weather.

But she’s not been replaced. The berth in which she was installed is now empty. But I don’t imagine that it will remain empty for long.

Tea was a burger with vegetables followed by apple pie and coconut sorbet – delicious.

The evening walk, I almost abandoned it due to the rain. But I pressed on none-the-less.

And here’s something interesting that seems to be happening in the rue Notre Dame.

I’ve absolutely no idea what an “enquete policiere grandeur nature” is, and even less of an idea why they need to ban parking in the street in order to carry it out.

I suppose that I’ll have to present myself sur place on 18th May in order to find out.

Fighting my way back through the rain, I made it back here just in time for the football.

Clubs in the Welsh Premier League are entitled to 4 places in European competition. The Champions play in the Champions League , and the Cup Winners (or runners up in the League, if the Cup winners are the Champions) and then the next-highest club in the league. So that’s TNS, Connah’s Quay Nomads and Barry Town.

The four next-lowest teams have a series of play-off matches to decide who has the remaining place, and tonight Newtown (5th) were playing Bala Town(5th).

In one of the most exciting matches that I’ve seen for a while, Bala won 2-1. And the difference between the teams was firstly Keighan Jones’s foot, and secondly Henry Jones.

Henry Jones, one of the most skilful players ever to have played in the WPL, has been off-form for a while but tonight he recovered all of his skill and more besides, and put in a match-winning performance.

And when Newtown broke through the Bala defence, and found themselves on a one-on-one situation with Keighan Jones in the Bala goal, his outstretched right foot saved them on both occasions. He’s only the second-choice goalkeeper too, but that was a superb performance tonight.

So tater later than intended, I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow so I need to be fit.

Friday 26th April 2019 – I’VE HAD …

… another miserable day today.

Not because I’ve been tired – in fact I’ve managed to go the whole day without even the slightest hint of crashing out – but more to the fact that I couldn’t summon up the energy to do anything productive whatever.

I’d had another bad night too, tossing and turning for most of it. And yet I’d managed to go on a few mazy, amazing voyages.

We had been on a ship, a big one, in the South China Sea somewhere and it sank. Three of us were washed overboard and we swam in this sea for quite some time – days, it seemed, – until we were washed ashore on this populated island. We had to climb over a fence and found ourselves in someone’s back garden. The woman had a big sprawly house that had started off as a small cabin and had been enlarged with additional rooms haphazardly as time had gone on. She fed us and said we could stay the night. Next morning I went for a walk around. The guy had this beautiful large yacht and it was clear that he spent a lot of time looking after it. he was talking about going around the Arctic on it and I agreed that this would be the right kind of craft to go up there and he wasn’t the ordinary run-of-the-mill Indonesian or Filipino fisherman, he cares about his boat and done his research etc. We ended up walking through a typical suburban English housing estate but a huge weird animal like a rhinoceros but with a weird head with all kinds of appendages stuck on it. I grabbed my camera and took a photo but the flash didn’t work so it didn’t come out and the animal disappeared before I could try another shot. I went back to the house to ask about staying another night but she said “no, it’s full”. So I asked if there was anywhere else I could stay. She replied that there was bound to be somewhere else in the town. She then cooked me a meal and they asked me questions “do you eat ‘x’, do you eat ‘y’? How long is it since you’ve eaten ‘z’? Did you eat it when you were a kid?” all this kind of thing. But now it was becoming dark and I needed to find a place to stay and, more importantly, a way to get off this island and back to wherever it is that I’m supposed to be
A little later I was with a woman and I can’t remember what it was that I was doing but we’d been detained by someone, a young smallish guy with black hair and a black beard. He said that he had been working for the CIA and should have been an agent but they said that with his perfect memory he ought to be a salesman. He showed a photo of this woman coming out of a department store. This immediately filled her with horror. She looked around and there was this young lad behind her smiling away. He said “do you remember this story?” and produced a newspaper article showing that she had been arrested in it for something or other. By now she was in tears, making some kind of totally incoherent statement. he then produced some kind of small light-blue patterned cushion and said “you always leave your calling card behind in places like this, don’t you?”, waving the cushion around and that put her into even more tears.

I awoke several times during all of this going on, and eventually went back to sleep to step right back into, not the one where I was with that woman, but right back to being on the island again, in exactly where I had stepped out a while before. I don’t recall ever doing quite that before. But anyway I did end up stopping the night at that place on the island and I remember undressing to go to bed. I had my wet-weather overtrousers on so took them off, got into bed and went to sleep. Next morning I was up early and started to dress. Everyone else was getting up and this young girl came in to say hello, and a few other people. The house was busy pretty quickly. I ended up sitting ona bed with a huge collection of cats sitting on me, first a black one and a ginger one, then a white one and all different ones taking it in turns to sit on my knee for a stroke. I heard the buzzer on my phone so I looked and saw a message “your breakfast ready at 09:15”. I thought that I’d better finish dressing. These two women came in and went to a cupboard fetching out little phials of stuff. They game one to me and said “this will do for you”. I worked out that it was shampoo and it hit me that they were “suggesting” that I take a shower. I wanted to finish dressing but I couldn’t find my trousers. the plastic overtrousers were there but not the normal ones.

The alarms went off at 06:00 and so on but I couldn’t care less. 08:25 was when I awoke. But that’s not at all the same as saying that that was the time that I left my stinking pit. Not at all.

So a rather late start to the day, and once I’d composed myself, I attacked a few of the dictaphone notes from just recently that had built up on the dictaphone. And that took me most of the morning too and I don’t know why.

Lunch was inside again, with the start of the last batch of home-made hummus out of the freezer. It’s just as delicious as it was the day that I made it too.

After lunch I made a start on the outstanding mountain of photos that need to be dealt with. And the more I deal with, the more there seems to be to deal with.

There was a brief stop of my walk around the Pointe du Roc in the wind. On the car park were a couple of people on those weird foot-first bicycles.

One of them was towing a trailer on which were two 110-watt solar panels, so I went to have a chat with the rider. It’s an electrically-assisted bike and the panels charge up the batteries while he’s cycling.

On a good day they can give about one and a half charges to the bank of batteries so that’s probably a range of about 30 miles.

But I don’t get the trailer idea though, unless it’s for the luggage. I would have been tempted to go for a roof over the bike and put the panels on that.

The Quebec flag on the front bike is of no significance. The people on board came from La Rochelle.

Back here I continued with the photos in a very desultory fashion until tea time. That was a really delicious steamed veg and falafel in a really tasty cheese sauce. One of the best that I’ve ever made.

My evening walk was interrupted by a collision with a neighbour. We had a lengthy chat about this and that.

And as I continued on my way I was interrupted yet again. Parked in the rue Notre Dame was one of the commercial lorry-type of Land Rovers but what caught my eye about it was this beautiful 12-volt winch.

I have a 12-volt electric winch that I was going to fit onto the Kubota tractor to winch logs and things like that around the farm, but I never actually managed to get round to fitting it.

In fact, there were a lot of things down there that I never got around to doing.

As a result of all these delays I almost missed the start of tonight’s football.

It’s the final round of matches in the Welsh Premier League tonight and Bala Town were playing Caernarfon Town live on the internet. Caernarfon played for the first 15 minutes as if they were asleep, and during that time Bala had scored a goal and missed two or three total sitters.

It took 33 minutes for Caernarfon to threaten the Bala goal, and then the match livened up.

The second half was a wonderful advert for Welsh Premier football, and for the final 15 minutes Caernarfon were camped in the Bala Town half and although they didn’t manage to equalise, they hit the woodwork and and a couple of other good chances too.

Down south in the manth between Barry and Newtown, Newtown didn’t do enough to overhaul Caernarfon so that gives Caernarfon home advantage in the playoffs for the vacant place in the Europa League next season. That’s not bad for a team that was only promoted to the Welsh Premier League this season, and it’s all down to the fact that while they might not be the most skilful players in the league they have a magnificent team spirit.

It’ll also be interesting to see how Noah Edwards plays next season. I didn’t think of him as anything extra-ordinary at the start of the season, but as the season has gone on, the better he’s become. If he continues this progression next season he might become another Henry Jones or Callum Morris or kayne McLaggon.

It’s shopping tomorrow so I’m off to bed right now. It won’t be an early night so I’ll probably crash out in the afternoon but that’s par for the course these days.

sea on rocks baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

waves sea wall baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

mussel beds donville les bains manche normandy france

Saturday 20th April 2019 – THE FOOTBALL …

… season rolls on towards its inevitable conclusion as Connah’s Quay Nomads threw away 2 points against Barry Town and TNS won 3-1 against Caernarfon Town.

I can’t remember now how many consecutive Welsh Premier League titles that TNS has won. Despite their mid-season hiccup when they fell as low as fourth place, they inevitably pulled themselves together to chalk up an impressive series of victories with a match or two to spare.

There are two reasons for this. And two reasons only.

Firstly, all of the other clubs suffer from an incredible amount of inconsistency. They can put together two or three good results and then blow up, and that’s no good at this level of football in the Welsh Premier League.

Secondly, a close examination of the victories of TNS will show that the crucial goals that they score are always in the last 15 minutes. And that points to one thing, and one thing only – and that is that the players on the opposing teams are just plain and simply lacking in match fitness.

For 75 or 80 minutes the leading teams can slug it out toe-to-toe with TNS, just like Caernarfon Town did last night. They were excellent for 75 minutes, and then they run out of steam.

Barry Town the other night were an embarrassment. For the final 10 minutes TNS were attacking at will without any pretence of a defence and counter-attack.

If these clubs want to compete properly over the whole season, working seriously on the fitness aspect of the game is crucial.

But all of that aside, the biggest difference between TNS and Connah’s Quay is Greg Draper. Easily the best striker ever to grace the Welsh Premier League, he’s not played as often this season as I would like, but astonishingly, he’s scored a goal every 37 minutes that he’s been on the pitch.

On the other hand, the strikers who have played for the Nomads haven’t impressed me at all. If they want to be more successful, they need to find a high-class striker from somewhere.

With the alarm going off early as usual this morning, I was out of bed quite rapidly. Plenty of time to go for a wander though. There were a few of us in a harbour and we went to board an old ship. We walked along the gangplank onto the shop, which was a small 50-tonner something not unlike Pecheur de Lys except that the bridge was set quite far back. The ship had been painted red but it was faded and flaked off quite badly so that we could see the oak planking. The hold was planked over. Everyone else was wandering around up front but I went back to the bridge to look at the instruments. They were brass and, surprisingly, in perfect and clean condition. I noticed that the binnacle was showing 150° so I shouted out of the window to the others “Left Hand Down a bit – course 150°” like any good sub-Lieutenant might do on the Navy Lark.

With having had an early start I had an early breakfast, followed by a shower. I was going out early to the shops too but just as I was on the point of going out, someone to whom I wanted to speak came on line. As a result I was late away.

There was just the usual stuff at LIDL. Nothing exciting, although because supplies had run down, I did spend more than usual.

NOZ was exciting though. Quite a few different bits and pieces and a pile of stuff for a special occasion in the future.

At LeClerc, it was another expensive shop, but once again just the usual stuff, but a lot of it to stock up the supplies.

I did buy a new memory card though to replace the one that was damaged the other day. And also a proper memory card reader to replace the ad-hoc device that I was using which contributed to the disaster.

Another thing that I bought was some frozen spinach. A couple of people have told me that spinach is good for the red blood cells, and I’ll try anything that will help.

Back here I put the frozen stuff away and then sat down for a drink and a relax. That took me nicely up to lunch, which was taken in the glorious sunshine out on my little wall overlooking the harbour.

This afternoon I put everything away (and there were piles of it all too) and then did a few things here and there on the computer. But I couldn’t keep on going and ended up crashing out for a while on my chair.

There was the afternoon walk at some point too. My perambulations too me around the walls and in the general direction of the rue du Nord.

That gave me an opportunity to have a good butcher’s and see how they were getting on with the renovation of the house at the corner.

They don’t seem to have made much of a progression since the last time that I looked. But it’s definitely clear that they are going to be putting a balcony or terrace over there.

And the place was heaving with people as usual in this glorious weather, especially down on the beach at Donville-les-Bains.

With a bit of crop and enhancement, and blowing up the photo (because I can do that these days despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) I could see that there’s actually some kind of showjumping or dressage event taking place down there this weekend.

But we know how quickly the tide comes in, so I hope that the horses can swim. Or maybe they are sea-horses

What with all of the excitement on land and on sea, all that remained was to find some excitement in the air.

And sure enough, while I was wandering around with my camera at the ready, a ULM – or microlight – went flying by overhead.

Not exactly the kind of machine that would ever entice me up into the air. I’d want something more substantial than that.

There was no football in Granville this evening, but there was a match at Cerences. I was trying to make up my mind but had my mind made up for me as Liz rang me up on the phone. We had a chat for a while and by then it was too late.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc

My little trip once more coincided with the arrival of Victor Hugo in the harbour. She’d presumably just come back from a ferry trip to Jersey in the Channel Islands.

After all, it is School Holiday time and I imagine that there would be lots of takers for a trip.

With all of that out of the way I came back to watch the football from Oswestry on the internet.

With having a few more things to do, I was late going to bed. And I’m planning on a good lie-in because I need it. And it’s a bank Holiday too.

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

horse showjumping trials beach donville les bains granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

victor hugo port de granville manche harbour normandy france

Saturday 13th April 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… footfest today.

We started off at the Stade Louis Dior this evening when US Granvillaise were playing Le Havre AC’s 2nd XI. And what a giant of a side hey turned out to be. The two centre-backs, the centre-forward and a couple of other outfielders must have been 6 feet at least, and the goalkeeper towered over everyone by a good head.

And not only that, the two centre-backs were absolutely excellent in the air and with Granville being without an effective cenre-forward (story of their life) they didn’t get a sniff from open play.

The match started off at a roaring pace, with Granville streaming forward in droves, but to no effect whatsoever although they did hit the bar on one occasion. But as the match progressed Le Havre came more into it and they must have had the fastest team down the flanks (wingers and full-backs) that I have ever seen.

But that was all to no avail too because fast though they might have been, they couldn’t cross a ball to save their lives so we never got to see how good in the air the centre-forward might have been. And in the end, he was taken off and replaced by someone smaller, faster and more direct.

But Granville took the lead after about 50 minute. The little n°10 had the ball at his feet and dribbled his way into the penalty area. He was going nowhere so he was just inviting someone to bring him down – and of course, someone duly obliged. Penalty for Granville, which was duly slotted away.

The fast guy up front scored an equaliser about 15 minutes later, but then with about 15 minutes to go, Granville won a free kick about 25 yards out. It was a beautiful ball over the wall and although the big keeper got his hand to it, he could only help it on its way into the net.

So at ling last, after about 10 matches, Granville finally win a game. They hung on against some desperate last-minute attacks and we were all relieved when the final whistle went.

Back at home, we had TNS playing Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League. No matter how good a part-time team might be, they can’t match the level of fitness of a full-time club and in almost every game you see, the last 15 minutes, when the part-timers run out of steam, areusually crucial.

And so it was today. Barry played well for the first 60 minutes. They couldn’t match the quality of TNS of course – no-one in the Welsh Premier League can, but at least they were keeping up and being 1-0 down wasn’t the end of the world. But they flagged badly at the end and at about 80 minutes, at 2-0 down, they had clearly thrown in the towel. They basically stopped playing and it was embarrassing to see how easy it became for TNS as they had no opposition out there.

The match finished 4-0 to TNS and they could have had four or five more had they really tried.

I had a reasonable night’s sleep last night although it was still something of a struggle to rouse myself.

And after the usual morning procedure I did some work until about 09:00 when I headed into town.

No major shop today seeing as I’m heading off to Belgium tomorrow, so just a couple of things from the market.

Seizing the opportunity, I went to to harbour to see if the pontoon was there and if there was anyone around it who could tell me what was going on.

I was however totally out of luch. No-one about at all.

But all of the machinery was lying around on deck, and the nature of all of this is still mystifying me.

But the pipes on board would seem to give me some kind of clue. They look rather like core drill bits to me, but why would they be drilling into the bottom of the harbour.

After a prowl around the docks I had a prowl around the market. I picked up a nice baguette, but no baking apples anywhere so I shall have to wait for a while to make my apple pie. But I did have a joke with a vegetable stall-holder and dome Belgian clients about a Potatomat, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

My route home via the rue Paul Poirier was interrupted by yet another disgraceful example of bad parking.

There’s a parcels delivery van from France Express delivering parcels in the street, and he’s simply pulled up, on a busy Saturday morning too, right in the middle of the street.

And that’s notwithstanding the fact that there is a parking place available right at the side of where he’s stopped.

I went over to ask him if he needed any help in parking his van, because if he didn’t know how I would gladly do it for him, but he took no notice.

Back here I had a … errr … relax for a while before doing some more work, and then out on the wall for lunch.

During my sojourn on the walls, I was entertained by one of the Ile de Chausey ferries. It had gathered up a load of tourists and was heading off for an afternoon’s trip around the bay.

There was also a wedding taking place in the public rooms so there were crowds about and around all of the parking places.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone notes and shifted another big pile of those, before walking off to the football, where I spent most of the second half talking to an old man there.

So now it’s bed-time, even if I don’t feel much like it. I’m travelling tomorrow so I need to be at my best.

And I forgot my shower today. Ohhh dear.

l’iris de suze fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Saturday 30th March 2019 – MOVE OVER IMELDA MARCOS

I’ve been shopping for shoes today.

Last weekend after the football there was someone outside the ground handing out vouchers for 25% off the winter sports goods at Intersport.

For a while now I’ve been looking for a new pair of hiking boots and also a new pair of trainers and not found anything that I really liked. So I thought that this morning I may as well go there and see what they have.

As a result, I walked out with a decent pair of walking trainers and a decent pair of hiking boots, and also a pair of photography gloves. And 25% off them all too, and that’s off the mark-down price on the last day of the sale too.

They both have 5 stars for everything, except for impermeability, for which they scored three stars. But this afternoon I gave them a really good drenching in waterproofing solution and when that’s properly dry in the middle of the week, they’ll receive a second coat too.

It worked, and worked in spades too, for the trainers that I wear right now and which have all of the tread worn off due to constant use, so it may well work for them too.

Last night I went to bed and slept right through all the way until the alarm went off. I only have a vague recollection of going on a voyage, concerning a man whose dog had died and he wanted to bury him, but he was lamenting the fact that the only thing that he had was his mother’s old silver casket and how he was going to miss it.

Despite waking up with the alarm, as is usual these days I turned over and went back to sleep again. 07:25 when I arose from the dead, and by the time that I had finished the usual performance and the weekend shower, it was 09:10 before I hit the streets.

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special, so having bought the basics, I headed for NOZ.

But it took me a while to get there due to an enormous queue in the avenue des Matignon. It turns out that there had been a road accident involving a car and a motor bike.

If you look carefully, you can see the debris all over the road.

Eventually, I made it to NOZ and here once again, we are confronted with another pile of pathetic parking. It’s the kind of thing that really gets on my wick.

But in Noz, I made one or two interesting purchases. At long last I’ve found a proper pie tin and that cheered me up no end. And a couple of small ramekin dishes for the oven

Furthermore, there was an Inspector Maigret full-length DVD that will go quite nicely with my collection.

The shoes were next, and then back to LeClerc.

And isn’t it embarrassing and shameful when you see your country pilloried liks this even in the French local press. How could 17.4 million xenophobic racists, backed by a small group of opportunistic extremist politicians, drag the country through the mire like this.

But back to the plot, I didn’t buy anything special here either.

On the way home, I called at the second-hand shop to see what they had on offer. But there was nothing really that caught my eye at all.

Enormous queues again around the town with everyone taking the summer air. I’d even taken off my jacket. And the rue des Juifs is closed because of the works to the wall, and I had to go all around the houses to get back home.

Having half-unpacked my shopping, I had lunch.

It was such a beautiful day that I took my book and the special baguette that I had bought and went out to sit on the wall overlooking the harbour to see what was going on in the sunshine.

And it was quite a busy lunchtime out there too.

We had La Granvillaise out there doing her stuff after her major refit, and in the company of several other yachts.

And as well as that, we had one of the catamarans owned by one of the fishermen coming into port, presumably to unload this morning’s catch.

No lizards for my pear droppings though. they are probably still hibernating somewhere in a gap in the stone wall.

And then, back in the apartment I unpacked the other half of the shopping, having to stop for a little … errr … relax halfway through. And no surprise there.

US Granville’s 2nd XI were playing tonight. USAN Mondeville were the visitors.

I think that I’ve only seen them once this season and I don’t remember much about it. But it was such a nice evening that I went out for a good walk.

And I’m rather disappointed that I did go, because it didn’t turn out as I was hoping.

While you all admire the official photographer and his equipment, I can tell you something about the match.

Although the two teams were pretty much even on the field, Granville had no answer to the power and pace of the corners that the Mondeville winger was banging in.

And they had even less answer to the power and the pace of the defenders who were running in unmarked.

Panic and chaos ensued at every one and Mondeville scored from three of them. Thei fourth goal was from a good clearance by a Granville defender that had the misfortune to find a Mondeville attacker totally unmarked with all of the time in the world 15 metres out.

And, as usual, Granville didn’t have anyone out there who had the striker’s instinct.

On the way back, Rosemary called me, so we arranged that she would call me back later.

But in the meantime, I was distracted by this vehicle on the car park of the Foyer Des jeunes Travailleurs. Excuse the very blurry photo but I only had the time to shoot off a quick image

It’s a cut-down Ford Fiasco being used as a trailer, and that’s exciting in itself.

An the apartment, Rosemary called me back while I was watching TNS v Barry Town in the Welsh Cup.

Rosemary and I had a very lengthy chat while TNS did the predictable. Barry just couldn’t seem to get going tonight.

So now it’s late, I’ve had no tea but I didn’t care. I’m going to bed and I intend to sleep for a week.

la granvillaise port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Saturday 2nd March 2019 – IT’S “CARNAVAL”!!!

And I was actually out there for part of the time joining in the festivities, even though I didn’t feel all that much like it.

It all started to go wrong even while I was still in bed.

It wasn’t as early as I would have liked – more like midnight in fact. And when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10, and 06:20) I didn’t actually haul myself out straight away.

Plenty of time though to go on a voyage, and It was certainly a weird one last night. Something like a sketch from “The Men From The Ministry” where someone (and it might even have been me but I doubt it) was trying to shave, but here seemed to be no soap so I’ve no idea what was being used and the blade was so blunt that it was merely smearing it around on the face. It wasn’t until much later that the realisation dawned that, sitting there half-shaven and in a mess, it might have been better to have simply used a new razor with a decent blade. And this ended up somehow with two people, the poor shaver and his sidekick, sitting in a car in the driveway of a country house doing everything wrong, and I’ve no idea why.

07:00 when I finally crawled out of bed and attacked the medication. And later on, we had breakfast of course.

There was an hour or so while I had a bash at the photo database, and then there was work to do.

I’d forgotten that I’d filled up a 32GB memory card on the Nikon 1 while I was away in Canada in September. I hadn’t saved the files and the card that’s in there now id filling up.

When I say “saved” the files, everything is saved onto the laptop and then on an external hard drive. But before I reformat the memory cards, I copy the images onto DVDs as an extra back-up.

These hadn’t been backed up as yet onto DVD so I spent a couple of hours copying them all onto a pile of DVDs, labelling and saving them. And then, of course, formatting the memory card.

I’m running out of space too in the hard-storage bit so I had to shuffle all of the disks around to make enough space in a storage container.

I had a quick lunch, and the went outside to head into town.

On foot of course because we are hemmed in right now. Just look at all of these caravanettes parked up on the public car park just outside our apartment building.

You can’t move for the blasted things and the blasted grockles that drive the blasted things.

And they are everywhere. Every last square inch of space has a caravanette parked on it.

Even our old friend the ancient CF Bedford isn’t safe. A couple of caravanettes have crammed themselves in around it.

And if you look across the port, you’ll see a few dozens more scattered around all over the place.

Anyway, I struggled up the road nevertheless to see what was going on

Including the unedifying spectacle of watching some unkempt middle-aged man struggling to keep control of three large dogs that were jumping up and down on a girl of about 7, and getting all upset when I told him that he ought to keep his blasted dogs under flaming control.

We almost had an “incident” there.

So I took up my place half-way up the rue Couraye and whatched the children’s parade come down.

It seemed to be strangely quiet this year – not even half the floats and parades that I remember from last year.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are the big days of the carnaval of course but even so …

After the parade, I went for a walk down town into the place Charles de Gaulle to see what was happening there.

Not all that much either compared to last year. I seem to recall that it was heaving in there back then.

But at least it gave me an opportunity to study some of the costumes of the paraders, and I was suitably impressed with some of them.

So while you admire a few more photos of the people and paraders, I climbed back up the hill for home.

And for some strange reason it was a long, weary climb back up here.

I could tell that I was not feeling myself right now yet again, and that’s no good.

Back here, I spent most of the time fending off waves of fatigue until near tea-time.

Two taco rolls with the last of the stuffing, with pasta and vegetables. Followed by one of these soya almond desserts.

The plan was then to go out and inspect the night-time carnaval activities, but a couple of things delayed me.

Firstly, I wasn’t feeling as well as I ought to have been. A kind of general fatigue and tiredness I suppose – the after-effects of my illness.

Secondly, I suddenly went freezing cold.The temperature in here is reasonably warm, but it was just how I was feeling I reckon.

Thirdly, a football match appeared on the internet. Barry Town v Cambrian and Clydach from Tonypandy, in the Welsh Cup.

I didn’t have the strength to plug in the laptop to the big TV in the living room.

Instead, I curled up on the chair and watched it on the big computer.

For a while anyway. I was just getting colder and colder so I ended up in bed under the covers watching it from there.

And then Rosemary rang me up, so I was chatting to her down the bed while watching the football.

Who says men can’t multitask?

We were chatting for almost all of the second half of the game and then my bad throat gave out so I had to hang up.

As for the football, Barry Town were clearly the better side (which is no surprise seeing as they are one division up) and they soon went into the lead.

But then they missed half a dozen easy tap-ins. One after the other was miskicked or sailed over the bar from three feet out.

And I remember thinking that they’ll pay for these misses.

Which they did, because all of a sudden they found themselves 2-1 down – two goals out of nothing had caught them cold.

But class will out and in the end they scored two goals later in the game to make the score look better than it ought to have done at one time.

Fitness and perseverence told in the end, for Cambrian and Clydach were puffing and blowing at the end.

So having missed the fair, I’m off to bed. Fatigue, headache and all.

I’m definitely not so good right now, but a good lie-in tonight and tomorrow might make me feel better.

At least I hope so. It’s the big parade tomorrow.

And if you want to see the rest of the photos of the carnaval for today, you need to go to THIS LINK

Saturday 23rd February 2019 – WITH HAVING WHAT …

… can only be described as “disturbed sleeping patterns” just recently, going to bed at 23:30 was never going to be a good idea. By about 01:00 I’d given up the struggle and by about 02:30 I was up and about, working. I must be feeling better, to say the least.

Round about 09:00 I went back to bed for a couple of hours. By 12:00 I was up and about again working and at 13:00 I attacked a bowl of porridge. Even more surprisingly, it managed to stay down.

Another even more surprising thing is that I managed to attack a little bit of tidying up. Not much, it has to be said, but the fact that I was able to do something is already … errr … something.

It was such a beautiful afternoon that I opened all of the windows in here.

I was tempted to go for a walk, but then I had another thought instead. I carried on doing some work and then at 17:00 I girded up my loins and hit the streets.

It’s that time of the year again.

The Baie de Mont St Michel and the area around here has the highest tides in Europe. Not quite on the Bay of Fundy scale but impressive all the same.

This weekend the tidal coefficients are the highest of the year and the sea right now is the farthest out that we are likely to see it.

It’s certainly impressive.

In the beautiful weather it was a sweaty trudge through the streets and a weary climb up the hill, and even though I took my time I was at the Stade Louis Dior in good time for the match against FC Mantois 78.

I’ve not seen them before, and they are currently adrift at the foot of the table. So I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to see them this time

Having witnessed US Granville’s dramatic loss of form just recently that has seen them plummet down the table like a Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what the outcome would be.

From the kick-off, it was clear that the US Granvillais left-back was playing in a match on his own. In the first five minutes I counted three times when he wandered miles away from his opponent, allowing his opponent to get in behind him.

After 10 or so minutes, I mentioned to my neighbour that he is going to cost the team dear if he doesn’t concentrate on his game – at that point he was a good 25 metres away and in front.

Sure enough, just a couple of minutes later, the left-back was miles out of position as the n°7 soared down the wing and put in a cross to the centre where a forward slotted the ball home.

And he kept it up too. Another ball down the wing, another cross, a header onto the post this time. I’ve not seen anything like this for years. We had no coaching whatever at school but even at Primary School it was drilled into us by our 11 year old team captains not to let our attackers get between us and the goal, even when they didn’t have the ball.

After half-time there was no change whatever.

It took 60 minutes for the coach to realise the problem. He eventually took off the n°3 and the defence tightened up – but only just a little.

US Granville pulled one back too. A quick throw-in, a long one into the penalty area from the right-back with the long throw – which caused uproar from the Mantois players and some of the crowd who are clearly unaware that you can’t be offside from a throw-in (or a goal kick either for that matter).

And then Granville pushed forward for a winner. And who knows what might have happened had we not had a moment of total madness as we entered into injury time.

The Mantois goalkeeper’s kicking was dreadful and they were just wild, aimless lunges down the field. One totally aimless kick right upfield fell to a US Granvillais defender, totally alone and unmarked with no-one anywhere near him. He turned to face upfield, took his time, and took a really good hard kick – straight into the midriff of a Mantois player charging down on him about 20 yards away.

You’ve no need for me to tell you what happened after that. The attacker controlled the ball, took half a dozen steps forward, rounded the keeper and that was that.

All hopes that Granville had of catching the game disappeared into the sunset.

A long painful walk back here – in time to watch a top-of-the table match in the Welsh Premier League between Y Barry and Cei Connah. Winner takes all tonight, and so quite obviously we had a draw.

A good goal from Jonathan Hood for Barry was cancelled out by a goal from Michael Bakare for the Nomads.

Many people saw Bakare’s goal as controversial but not me, not the referee and not those people equipped with slow-motion facilities and a camera behind the goal. Mike Lewis in the Barry goal was clearly “fouled”, but by his own player who pushed him hard into the patch of the Connnah’s Quay n°10. When the highlights go on line, I’ll post a link.

It was an exciting match that pulsated from end-to-end but Connah’s Quay had the better of it and the Barry woodwork knew all about it. A couple of goal-line panic-stricken clearances too but the Nomads couldn’t get the bal over the line.

So now it’s rather late, I’m rather tired but I’ve kept on going. And if that’s not impressive, seeing as how I’m feeling, then I don’t know what is.T

Saturday 9th February 2019 – WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT?

A few weeks ago I had the choice of going out to watch US Granvillaise’s 2nd XI play football in a torrential downpour and hurricane, or to stay at home and watch on the internet a Welsh football match.

And just like last time, I chose to stay at home and watch the football match from the comfort, warmth and safety of my own sofa.

And just like last time, the match was abandoned due to a floodlight failure. .

It’s really not my lucky subject, is it?

Apart from that, it’s not been a very good day today.

It started reasonably well with me leaping from my bed at some kind of reasonable time. And after breakfast and a shower, I took out the plastic and glass rubbish and then headed for the hills.

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special. And neither did NOZ – except that I managed to change the faulty guitar lead that I bought last week. Some nice coffee cups were probably the highlight.

But look at this from LeClerc.

We’ve seen the vegan pains au chocolat from a few weeks ago, but now LeClerc is starting to sell vegan croissants. I’ve no idea what these are going to be like but the supermarkets need to be encouraged when they dip their toes into the vegan waters.

It’s for that reason too that I bought some tahini – sesame seed purée – that they have now started to sell.

Back here, I couldn’t summon up the energy to unpack the food. I had to sit down and have a coffee.

When it came close to lunchtime, I made a pile of hummus. And I tell you what – I shan’t need to worry about vampires coming to visit me. The garlic seems to be extremely strong.

This afternoon I made a start again on the text database but not for long. I was soon curled up under the bedclothes fast asleep. For at least 90 minutes too.

And during that 90 minutes my mother – of all people – came to visit me. But I can’t remember what it was that we discussed.

nevertheless I went out for my afternoon walk. It was cold and windy, but there were quite a few people out there nevertheless.

And I saw something moving out here, away on the horizon, so I coupled up the 70-300mm zoom lens so that I could make further enquiries.

After all, I was sure that it was a ship out there either going to or coming from St Malo, about 35 miles away.

Cropping out the photograph, blowing it up (which I can do despite modern anti-terrorism legislation) and digitally enhancing it, I could see that it’s one of the ships of Brittany Ferries.

Having made further enquiries by reference to my live ships database (it’s quite a benefit hosting an AIS receiver here in my apartment) I can see that it’s Pont Aven.

Built in 2004, she’s one of the largest ferries on the English Channel, displacing 41,000 tonnes, and with a capacity of 650 vehicles and over 2400 passengers.

It’s quite likely that she’ll be one of the ferries that will be rerouted to Ireland after 29th March.

Back here I pressed on with adding some more photos to some of the earlier blog entries. I’m now back as far as 15th January and there’s still a long way to go;

Tea was a handful of pasta with some veg and then I sat down to watch the football.

With that being abandoned, I went off for an evening walk.

The storm was raging outside and the rain was teeming down.

The sea was quite rough too but the wind had changed direction. Instead of blowing straight into the bay, it was blowing across the bay, so the waves weren’t breaking over the Plat Gousset as strongly as they have done.

I stayed out there for as long as I could, but soaked to the skin, I headed for home.

Tonight, I’m hoping to go to bed early and to have a decent sleep. I need one too because I’m having difficulty in keeping going right now.

A nice lie-in will do me good.

storm high seas plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Saturday 1st December 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… beautiful pie.

I remembered to buy the leeks this morning so I fired a leek with some onions and garlic and then tipped into it the pie filling from last time. While it was all frying around I greased my pie dish and put the roll of pastry in it. And then added the mix once it had cooled.

One thing that I hadn’t noticed was that it was “thick pastry” and not the usual roll. And because it weighed the same as the usual roll, it meant that it was of a smaller circumference. And so it didn’t join in the middle.

But not to worry. I cheated and covered the gap with a couple of slices of cheese.

While the oven was warming and before I started the pie, I made a small rice pudding and put that in the oven. The pie followed it later.

When it was nearly done I made some potatoes with some frozen peas and carrots, and some gravy. The pie I cut into 4 slices. Three for the freezer and one for the meal. And it was absolutely delicious. I’ll do this again, that’s for sure. And how I wish that I had bought a bigger freezer.

Last night was quite a good night. I did awaken here and there but not so that I remembered it particularly. I do remember going on a little wander though.

There was a whole group of us, including the guy with whose family I stayed in 1970, wandering around somewhere. e were having to be lodged in a house somewhere in the town because of overcrowding (no surprise here) but we ate at home, in a house that wasn’t really much different to Davenport Avenue. We all turned up there one day, to find a rather pleasant, cheerful (for a change) father actually cooking the meal, and that in itself is a major surprise.
A little later on I was watching a football match where a group of players with features resembling those of Mongolia were playing the Polish team. The pitch was very rough and uneven and had a famous downhill slope. The Mongolians (for want of a better word) were attacking downhill and missed a couple of sitters, blazing them over the bar when clean through on goal. The half-time score was 0-0, thanks also to a dogged rearguard defence by the Mongolians, and I had a feeling that with the Poles ttacking downhill in the second half, the Mongolians would deeply regret these misses. But I went over to talk to one of their players standing on the fringe of things at half-time. he explained that his country was actually a breakaway republic from Poland and so this match had a deep and emotional significance for his players and his country. How the Poles thought themselves superior! I explained that the Poles always had had a reputaion for being a dour, battling side that doesn’t give in easily, but he winked and said that he didn’t mean just about football. I had the impression that he meant to say that the Poles looked on their opponents as some kind of untermenschen who deserved to be dominated and their rightful place was right at the bottom of the pile.

There was the usual breakfast and shower and so on, and then I hit the streets. And despite visiting LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc, I didn’t buy anything at all extraordinary. Just maybe the €1:99 for a pair of pliers.

But one thing that they seem to have started to sell in LeClerc is the big tub of soya dessert and the one that caught my eye was the natural soya dessert laced with coconut. I’ve had some pineapple slices hanging around here for ages and one day soon whenever I finish the rice pudding I’ll have them with the coconut soya. That will keep me going for a few days I reckon.

It took me ages to summon up the energy to unpack everything and put it away and then I had lunch.

There was plenty to do on the laptop but unfortunately I didn’t do much. And falling asleep was only part of it. Sorting through some of the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer was another big part of it.

I’ve mentioned the pie of course, but I didn’t get my rice pudding because the football came up on the internet. Barry Town v Newtown in the Welsh Premier League.

Played in the driving rain, it was all Newtown in the first half but they couldn’t find a striker to put the ball in the back of the net.

Whatever it was that they put in the half-time tea in the Barry Town dressing room, I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. They scored almost straight from the kick-off an0d then went up a gear, finishing a comfortable 4-1 winners.

And when the referee looks at the game later, he’ll probably agree that he has had better games than he did today.

However, I didn’t pay full attention to the second half because Rosemary rang up. She was keen to find out how I did in the hospital and we ended up chatting for about an hour and a half. And that was very nice.

As a result though, I didn’t have any of my daily walks today. I’ll just have to do twice as much tomorrow.

Friday 24th August 2018 – I’VE BEEN SEARCHING …

… through the fridge today looking for stuff that needs eating.

It’s something that I should have done a few days ago because there’s piles of stuff there that should have been cooked, but what with one thing and another I haven’t got round to it.

Two and a half peppers were probably the most important thing, and the garlic too. There were too many onions and potatoes. Some of them will be wasted unfortunately but I fetched some of them out.

There was also a roll of pastry and so I had an idea.

First thing was to put a load of lentils in the slow cooker for an hour. And when they were heated, to rinse them, add fresh water and a pile of potatoes – all that I could add to fill the pot.

After about an hour I fried a few of the onions with all of the garlic that was left. And while they were frying I added some cumin, turmeric, chili pepper and coriander.

Slicing up the peppers and a tomato, I added them to the wok and stirred them around. Finally I took the stuff out of the slow cooker, rinsed it all and added that to the pile.

After about 10 minutes of frying, a stock cube, a carton of soya cream and some water was added and it was all left to simmer.

I unrolled the pie wrap and cut it into quarters.

I added a couple of spoons of the stuff out of the wok into the quarters of pastry and made myself some pasties.

They went into a warm oven at 220°C for 40 minutes until they were done and they look absolutely delicious. They are going into the freezer tonight when they have cooled, ready for when I come back from my voyage.

As for the rest of the mixture, I ladled it all into individual containers and they will be in the freezer too for when I come back.

It’s a shame about the food that’s left but there isn’t much that I can do about this.

This morning I was asleep again until the alarm went off, and I was up fairly early too. And after the usual morning procedure, I started to sort out my clothes and to pack my suitcase.

Like I said, I don’t know what I need to take with me, so it’s a case of a lot of things just in case. The suitcase isn’t all that full though, even though Strawberry Moose takes up a lot of room. He’s coming this time too for a holiday.

He missed out in Africa.

Later this morning I had to go into town for the fruit and so on.

There’s a kind of fair or exhibition going on at the harbour. It’s to celebrate the working sailing ships that worked out of here.

But first I had to stock up with the fruit of course and then while I was here, to buy a baguette.

On the way back to the harbour I went past the solicitor’s office where they put in the window the details of the houses that they sell.

And they are at it again. Just look at the price of this house. Never mind being calculated to the nearest round thousand Euros, it’s calculated down to the nearest centime.

Just how tight can you be? It’s the kind of thing that leads the legal profession into disrepute, advertising prices like these.

Having done that, I went down to the harbour to have a good look around at the marquees.

There wasn’t much going on that interested me. Lots of shops selling stuff and exhibitions of photographs that didn’t take too long to see.

There were a few stalls selling paintings too, but most of them didn’t have prices exhibited. That’s the kind of thing that really gets my goat. If they are ashamed of their prices they shouldn’t be selling them.

ON the other hand, of course, it could be that, as in most of these kind of places, the price depends upon the moment and the prospective purchaser. And that’s just as bad.

But there were some people promoting an association of sailing ships. Some of them are small ones, but some are quite big and occasionally go on voyages across the Atlantic.

I shall have to make further enquiries about this, because a trip across the Atlantic on board a three-master would certainly do me good.

At lunchtime I made my butties and went out on the wall with my book.

No lizards today though. And that’s not surprising because I was joined by a seagull which was taking her baby for a walk. The poor little thing was quite nervous and crying for much of the time, and mummy was teaching it to jump up and down on the wall.

But talking of nervous and crying, you can just about see some other people on the left-hand edge of the photo. They were Dutch and pulled up to park there. The little girl opened her door and the window hit the mirror of a van parked next door and shattered into a thousand pieces.

The poor girl was so frightened and let out a yell. It took quite a while for her to calm down.

This afternoon was spent cooking and doing some tidying and the rest will be done tomorrow. After tea – a burger and vegetables – I watched the football. Llanelli v Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League.

Llanelli scored a goal after just two minutes, and after that, Barry laid siege to the Llanelli goal. There were four or five shots that were kicked off the line.

When Barry had a player sent off it looked as if it was curtains but with the last kick of the game, Barry scored a header from a free kick.

It was a good match, but from what I’ve seen so far there’s quite a gulf between the top and the bottom of the table and these two clubs are not going to find it easy.

So tomorrow I’ll finish packing and do some tidying up ready to leave on Sunday morning.

And who knows where I’m going to end up.

exposition des voiliers du travail granville manche normandy france

Saturday 12th May 2018 – IT’S A WELL-KNOWN PHENOMENON …

… that when you lose something that you desperately need, you can’t find it anywhere even though you know almost exactly where it ought to be.

And it’s an even more well-known phenomenon that while you are looking for the aforementioned, you find something that you lost a while ago and were totally unable to find and you had since given up all hope of ever finding it again. And – you usually find it in a place where you are certain that you have already looked – and on several occasions too.

So for this reason I unreservedly and unequivocally withdraw all of the intemperate remarks that I made at the time and have made since then a propos the mobile phone which disappeared from my possession just before Christmas.

The next question of course is – “what will I have lost and be looking for when I find the spring retaining clip off Caliburn’s window winder?”

Now here’s something rather strange. I was sitting here last night feeling somewhat (but not all that much) tired but I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to do all that much. So in the end I gave it all up as a bad job and went off to bed in default. That’s not at all like me, is it?

And it didn’t take me long (like a matter of a couple of minutes) to go off to sleep too.

The first part of the night was quite restless though and I was tossing and turning somewhat. But eventually I settled down and was well away with the fairies.

We had another one of those nights where I was wandering around aimlessly, my clothes in my hands, from one big public building to another trying to find where the public showers were.
But later I was with a couple of people, one of whom was a young girl of about 10 or 11, on bicycles waiting at a roundabout for the traffic to clear. It was early one morning and still dark and the girl had no lights on. Suddenly she darted off between the traffic and took the wrong road. I had to chase after her, which wasn’t easy seeing as I couldn’t see her, but caught her up eventually on the Coleridge Way estate in Crewe. She’s come to a dead end and couldn’t work out where to go next. I knew where we were although I couldn’t understand how we had arrived there, and to return to our route we had to go down a footpath that would lead us back to the road. But there were these anti-bicycle gates on the footpath so I had to lift her bike over them, and in doing so I scratched the paintwork. You could see through the deep pink down to the original purple colour. She was most upset about that.

It was another struggle to leave the bed this morning. I’m clearly suffering the after-effects of my journey the other day. But having made a nice new muesli mix yesterday I could enjoy a nice fresh breakfast – even if I did forget the orange juice.

A shower and a shave and a general clean-up and then I hit the streets. My trip out took me to LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc where I bought nothing special but nevertheless spent a lot of money because the stocks here are right down.

But I couldn’t help thinking to myself that they must have some strange men doing their shopping at NOZ. Here on the “men’s” shopping rack we have a nice selection of dresses and an even better selection of handbags.

It takes all sorts, I suppose. I wonder if Lee Pottymouth does his shopping here. But then, I didn’t see any fairy boots on offer.

I also visited the Controle Technique station to book Caliburn’s next appointment and also the garage where he goes to be serviced, but they are taking advantage of this week of two Bank Holidays by being closed until Monday.

With the controle technique being due, I reckoned that it might be a good idea to find out why the driver’s door on Caliburn no longer opens from the outside. It was a good morning – not too hot, dry, no wind, so I could work in comfort.

And it didn’t take too long to discover the problem. There’s a rod that operates the door latch and it’s adjustable with a nut on the end. Only there was no nut on the end. It’s fallen off. So I rummaged around, found a nut of the correct size, and reassembled it. It’s not quite adjusted correctly, but it works and that’s good news.

Then, the reassembly bit. The window winder is held on by a spring clip, not a screw, and it’s flaming awkward to fit. The first time that it sprung off I actually caught it as it flew across Caliburn’s cab – much to my own surprise – but the second time it disappeared off in the general direction of under the driver’s seat.

So I bent down to look for it – and the rest is history.

The phone was under there looking as if it had been placed there. It’s impossible for it to have fallen out of my pocket into the position where I found it. And in any case, I’m certain that I’ve looked there before. So I dunno. It’s mystifying me.

The weather was nice enough to work on Caliburn but not nice enough to eat my sandwiches outside. And then, much to my dismay, I was gone with the wind for a good hour or more. Clearly not up with it, am I?

Nevertheless I went for my walk this afternoon and then settled down to watch the football. Cardiff Metro v Barry Town in the Europa League playoffs. Barry unbeaten in the last 10 matches and the Met having been on a woeful run of form although they came good in the last two matches.

And everyone in a packed ground at Cyncoed and those watching on the internet were treated to a thriller for the first 25 minutes. Barry had most of the possession but Cardiff Met played some good, neat football. And then the Met took the lead with a goal out of nowhere. And then a second ditto. A third followed shortly thereafter – an own goal from a defender who headed a free kick into his own net. And that was that.

The second half was pretty much the same although the killer instinct had gone from Cardiff Met. They scored a fourth but Barry pulled one back to make the score a little more respectable. Cardiff Met were the better team to be sure, but not three goals better. If they play like they did in the first half against Cefn Druids next week and win, they’ll tear up Europe next season.

I had my little walk this evening after a tinned tea, and now I’m vegetating. No alarm tomorrow as it’s Sunday so I’m going to sleep until I awake. I reckon that I need it.

EPIC HALL

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