Tag Archives: Ingrid

Tuesday 21st July 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

… you’re all wondering where I am –

The answer is quite simple. I am in the bosom of friends (yes, I do have friends). And it’s one of the, if not the main, reason why I’m on the road right now.

Having crashed out definitively last night at about 21:30, I vaguely remember waking at about 01:30, finding that I was still lying there on top of the bed, saying “sod it” to myself and going back to sleep again right there.

The next time that I awoke, it was at 05:53 and I was still there on top of the bed.

This time I was awake for good, so I decided that that would be a good time for me to arise (before even the 1st alarm!) and attack the notes, of which there were plenty, from last night.

This was when we’d seen that body on the rocks and we were telling everyone but it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. In the end someone believed us so we had to negotiate our way back to this clifftop. I was worried now having told someone that either it had gone or I’d imagined it or something, but when we got there sure enough there it was sprawled on the rocks. We got this guy to call for the police and an ambulance but for some unknown reason he had very great difficulty getting through.

Later on i was in LeClerc. It was more like 23:00 but I was shopping for stuff for breakfast. I had to work out where everything is and what I wanted and how to get the best available qualities. In the fresh vegetable stall I bumped into Liz. I was picking loads of carrots with their heads on and putting three in my basket. I was talking to Liz about how I used to plant the heads for fun when I’d cut them off the carrots and even a few of them would grow again. Liz said that she still did that and they always seemed to grow for her. By now we were standing in a garden somewhere and it was beautiful. The wind was blowing and I was watching my wind turbine going round faster and faster and faster but I thought that this was still slow for what it was supposed to be doing. it should be doing much better than this. Then Caliburn turned up driving down the lane to my house

There was still plenty of time after this to go for another walkabout. I found myself in Iceland but it was the strangest kind of Iceland I’ve ever been to. We were in a hotel and had an hour or two to wait before we needed to go to the airport or wherever it was from where we were leaving so they took us into town. I had my backpack my guitar and something else with me. They dropped us off for a walk round and we’d all meet back at the railway station. I walked around, or tried to walk around but I had so much stuff to carry with me and I didn’t even have my suitcase at this time. It was really inconvenient. I was struggling to get around. We ended up having to get back to the station (in Iceland, that has never ever had a public rail network!) to pick up the bus to go back to the hotel. In the end I ended up back there but everyone else was back there already. I thought that this time had gone really quickly and I hadn’t done half of what I needed to do. We all went to get back onto the bus as the bus was ready one of the boys upstairs came down to talk to the travel host who was Matthew Swann. It turned out that a girl had been ill and we were waiting for the ambulance. It turned up and first of all this other girl came down. She was a bit shaky. Then they went upstairs and came down carrying a girl. She was in quite a state and the first girl was saying to the ill one “you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to drink at least every 5 days especially when you’ve been sick” all this kind of thing. They just dumped her in the corner of an ambulance and the ambulace guy said in perfect English “yes she’ll have to be wrapped in another blanket – she can’t be wrapped in that one”. They started to get her out and put her in the ambulance.

But earlier I’d been on another bus as well. I don’t know where I was and I had to work out how I was going to get to Crewe. It was a long complicated journey and I was waiting for the bus to do the first stage and around the corner came the K43 with “Crewe” on it. I got on and the conductor came round to ask for my fare and I couldn’t remember the name of the bus stop. I tried to describe it to him “it’s the one after …” bit I couldn’t think of the name of the one before it either. In the end I asked “is the fare to Crewe all the same? Just give me a ticket to Crewe”.

When I had finished it was breakfast time so I went downstairs to see what was on offer. I had the fresh bread and jam with coffee and juice.

We had been told to wear masks in the dining room, so I remember saying that it would be fun trying to eat, but the lady reassured me, saying that it was only when we were moving around. Sitting down with our food, we didn’t need masks.

It was a pretty quick meal – I wasn’t down there for long and qfter breakfast I came back here and packed everything. By 09:00 I was back on the road.

Not very far though. First call was at LeClerc the other side of the motorway where I stocked up with groceries and the like, and then I made a phone call as I watched an artic lorry to perform a series of complicated manoeuvres.

Second port of call was the LeClerc fuel station where I fuelled up with diesel.

Off on my travels, and the route as far as Evaux-les-Bains was quite as I remembered it. And then a merry, mazy winding way through the hills and the side roads until I ended up at Rosemary’s.

If you think that where I live is quite beautiful, it’s not a patch on where Rosemary lives. Her house is perched on the clifftop overlooking the Gorge de la Sioule, the gash that cleaves the Combrailles in two and which as the River Sioule running through it, along the bottom.

And this is where I’m staying for the next few nights as there are things that I need to be doing before we go back into lockdown.

Lunch was prepared already when I arrived and then afterwards I made another phone call – this time to Ingrid to tell her that I was here. And we made certain arrangements.

A good search of Caliburn to find a very important item finally came good and then we had some organising to do.

All of that took up a good part of the afternoon followed by which we just chatted for a while about nothing in p
particular.

After we’d had our evening meal, Rosemary took me out for a walk around her neighbourhood

While I know the area pretty well to drive through it, just like anywhere else in rural France there are loads of little pathways and trackways that you only know if you are a local. And so disturbing the ponies in a neighbouring field, we disappeared off into the depths of darkest Combrailles

Rural France has never been troubled particularly by an invader who has disrupted the society in quite the same way that The Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans did in England and so many of the paths down which we were walking have their roots going back into antiquity and even prehistory.

Very rarely was this this area carved up into great estates and parkland that overwhelmed the traditional “parcelles” of the local peasantry and the patchwork of fields and tracks is all just as it might have been when this area was reclaimed from the climax forest that covered it.

It was actually quite late when we set out for our walk.

It’s July of course at the moment and it stays light usually until quite late. Right now the sun is just disappearing over the brow of the hill. So we didn’t hang around particularly – a nice lap around the paths and tracks and then back down the lane to home.

So now it’s bedtime. Not exactly an exciting or busy day, but I was exhausted after my trip. I wanted to rest because It’s all going to kick off from here, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing in a few weeks time as the story unfolds.

As I said a while back, we are heading for a second lock-down, I’m convinced of that, and there is no time like the present to do certain things. It’s now or never.

Friday 19th June 2020 – GUESS WHO …

… is back in town today?

And if you guessed Marité you get one point. Guessing Thora brings you another point. And if you guessed them both, you earn three gold stars, five merit marks and a night at the opera with your favourite film star

We’ve had what can only be described as a “busy” day in port today.

And if you had added Normandy Trader to your list, you would have won the entire internet.

She came into port on the morning tide by the looks of things because I noticed her in the harbour when I went out for lunch. Her turn-round wasn’t as quick as just recently as she didn’t leave until the afternoon tide by which time, as she was leaving, Thora was on her way in and they waved at each other as they passed.

Like I said, it’s been a busy day in port today. All we need now is a gravel boat and the Loch Ness Monster and we’ll hit the jackpot

So while you admire the photos of Marité manoeuvring … “PERSONoeuvring” – ed … her way into harbour this afternoon in the rainstorm, let me tell you about my day today.

Last night, as regular readers of this rubbish might have noticed, I crashed out well and truly long before I finished writing my notes. No sense in fighting to stay awake. i called it an early night.

But as what usually happens in cases like this, it didn’t do me any good at all because in news that will shock just about everyone, I was up and about long before even the first alarm went off.

When did that happen last?

So in the absence of any beauty sleep (and I need all that I can get of course) I had my medication and then had a listen to the dictaphone.

Unfortunately what went on during the night is not the kind of thing that I would like to recount so close to mealtime so I’m afraid that you’ll all have to do without it today. I accept no responsibility for your appetite.

However, a very warm welcome to Jem who made his debut appearance last night in my nocturnal meanderings. The list of visitors is growing and growing. We might even have a gravel boat and the Loch Ness Monster tonight.

Once I’d dealt with that, I mixed some dough.

Fresh proper bread flour now that I can get and with fresh yeast. I was impressed with the yeast that bubbled up just like it was supposed to and which I had never seen before. That was impressive.

The mix came out really well too – just as it should be. There’s a certain moment when the mix is just right where it starts to take the sticky dough off your hands and feels like a rubber or elastic ball.

That’s what you should be aiming for, and today’s was really good. So I left it and went to carry on with the notes from yesterday.

It took me about two hours to finish everything, what with one or two interruptions along the way.

One of them was from a school along the Lower North Shore of Québec. They wanted to use a couple of my photos OF ST PAUL’S RIVER on the “Forgotten Coast”.

Unfortunately she didn’t tell me which ones so they took some finding. And when I sent them to her, the mail was too big for her mailbox so I had to do a “wetransfer”.

By the time that the notes were finished, I went to look at the dough to see how it was doing.

And much to surprise it had risen – well over double the size that it was supposed to. So I quickly shaped it and put it in dish that I used to bake my bread, having greased it first.

Onto the side under a damp cloth where it stayed for half an hour or so. I went back into “the office” and made a start on this week’s music course. Have to try to catch up.

Half an hour later, I went back to look at the bread dough underneath the cloth to see how it was doing.

And to my surprise it had gone up like a lift and the cloth had lifted up right off the dish, so much had the bread risen.

This was obviously going to be a really good loaf, I reckoned. I put the oven on and when it was stinking hot, I stuck the bread in. 10 minutes on 230°C and 60 minutes on 210°C (I’ve decided not too cook it for so long this time) and we’ll see what happens.

And here’s the finished product.

Just look at this! It’s the first real loaf that I’ve ever made. It looked like bread, sounded like bread, felt like bread, sliced like bread and tasted like bread. I was so impressed.

So that’s the secret then. Decent flour, decent yeast, a decent mix, and not to cook it so long. I’ll have to see what the next one will turn out like, to make sure that it’s not “beginner’s luck”.

Another thing that I’m going to have a go at is fruit bread, like sultanas, dried fruit, walnut, fig, bananas and so on. Something for an afternoon snack.

For lunch I made my sandwiches with some of that lovely bread, and then went outside to sit on my wall in the sun.

This was when I noticed that Normandy Trader had come into the harbour earlier in the morning. They weren’t working on her, which probably means that she’s fully loaded ready to go as soon as the gates open.

But what’s she doing with a forest on board? I thought that Birnam Wood went to Dunsinane, not to Jersey.

By the time that I was ready to go for my afternoon walk, I’d finished my week’s music course. And now I can (in theory at least, because I’m useless on the piano) improvise the blues in diminished scales using the “motivic elements”.

And I’m actually noticing an improvement in my bass playing on the guitar – and not before time too, I reckon.

There was a telephone call this afternoon too. Ingrid rang me up for a chat and that was really nice. It’s been a while since we spoke.

She had lots of news to tell me and we chatted for ages catching up with our news. Despite her ongoing health issues she’s kept out of danger which was very nice to hear

When I went out for my afternoon walk the weather was still quite nice.

There were quite a few people about out there too enjoying the weather. And it was another one of those days where the views out to distance were really good.

We’ve seen Cap Fréhel away down the Brittany coast a few times just recently but today was certainly one of the better days in my memory. I reckon that the cape is about 70 kms from where I’m standing.

The above photo came out so well that you could actually see the fort and the lighthouse with the naked eye.

Or, at least, what I assume to be the fort and the lighthouse. Because they were so clear, I cropped the image and enlarged it to see if i could have a clearer indication of what those objects are on the horizon.

And I’m afraid to say that after all of that, I’m still none-the-wiser. I’m not even any better-informed either. The only solution I reckon is for me to go off for a wander with Caliburn one of these days.

It’s been a while since we’ve had an adventure.

The view out to the Ile de Chausey was quite interesting too.

To enhance the image I tried a little artistic effect but it didn’t seem to come out as I wanted it to. Still, it makes a change from a boring flat image.

From there, I threaded my way through the masses and walked on up to the lighthouse to see what was happening there.

The answer to that question was, as usual “not very much”. No aeroplanes, no bird-men of Alcatraz or anything.

What we did have though was a bunch of fishermen. We’ve seen dozens of these just recently, all taking advantage of the suspension of the detention à domicile to fit three months’ fishing into three weeks, even if it means, like these guys, doing it offshore in a zodiac.

But something that surprises me, and that is that in all the time that I’ve seen fishermen out here, and the numbers of fishermen that i’ve seen, I have never yet seen anyone actually catch anything.

And that goes for the fishermen on the rocks too.

We’ve seen dozens of those who have somehow scrambled down (never mind how they expect to scramble up again) the cliffs to the rocks at the water’s edge with their equipment. But today it was somewhat exaggerated. Every rock seemed to have its fisherman perched upon it casting his line into the water.

Te=he tide is on its way in too, and it comes in quite quickly. If they aren’t careful they will end up by being cut off from the shore.

No change in the chantier navale today. Still the same couple of boats, so I didn’t hang around there.

Instead I took a photo of a couple wrestling with a zodiac that they had dragged down with a van. It must be getting close to the time when the water will be deep enough to launch a boat from one of the ramps.

Back at the apartment, having finished the week’s work, I could make a start on the arrears.

A few (just a few) more photos from July 2019 edited, and I attacked one of the pages for the website that I’m in the process of rewriting. I need to push on with those.

But at 17:00 I broke it off and went outside.

By now it was teeming down with rain but I’d heard on the bush telegraph that Marité had been seen coming around the headland

First, though, we had Thora coming in.

She made her way down to her usual little corner underneath the crane where she can be unloaded. But how many times is it this week that she’s come into port?

Once she’d installed herself, Marité came in, as we have seen.

Apparently she needed some work doing which required her to be lifted out of the water. The boat lifts that we have seen here in the port de plaisance and the chantier navale have a lifting capacity of just 100 tonnes and as she weighs more than that, she had to go to Lorient where there was a bigger one that could lift her.

On my way back to the apartment I went to the other side of the headland to see if there was any sign of Normandy Trader

She was too far out at sea to take a decent photo, disappearing as she did into a rain squall.

How the weather had deteriorated in just the last two hours.

Back here there was the hour on the guitars and i’m feeling much more comfortable with them now, as I should be after all of the practice that I’ve been having just recently.

Tea was a burger with pasta and veg, followed by some more delicious apple crumble

It was then time for me to Go for my evening stroll.

It had stopped raining by now but still very wet underfoot. Nevertheless I set off up the hill on my run and instead of pausing for breath as I would normally do, turned the corner and ran down to the clifftop, bidding a cheery greeting to the itinerant as I passed.

And once again, we have fishermen just off the shore. A different group too than earlier, but by the looks of things, still having thr same amount of luck.

So with those people not accomplishing anything, I carried on with my walk around the headland once more.

Nothing much doing along there either so I ran on along the clifftop down to where I usually pause for breath.

Plenty of activity at the fish processing plant tonight. There was a lot of traffic out at sea fishing this afternoon and we saw some of it while we were out on our walk.

Tonight there are four articulated lorries with refrigerated trailers at the Fish processing plant tonight ready to take everything away tonight so that it will be in the seafood shops in the big cities tomorrow morning.

From there I ran on all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner at the end. And then I pushed on all the way down the rue St Jean, down the alley and back round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

No picnickers on the beach tonight but we did have a pile of kids scrambling around on the rocks down there tonight.

They don’t look as if they are fishing – at least, the couple nearest the camera, and I’m at a loss to understand what there is about this fascination with the rocks just recently

There was far too much cloud for a really decent sunset this evening which is a shame. We can’t win a coconut every time.

One photo came out really well though. It showed up the heavy cloud really well and made a strange reflection in the sea.

From there I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes.

Tomorrow is Saturday and shopping. I don’t really need all that much, seeing as I haven’t been eating all that much just recently.

But I’ll go just for form’s sake. You never know what I might find at Noz.

Thursday 6th February 2020 – I HAVE DONE SOMETHING …

… that I haven’t done for ages. Since last summer in fact.

And when I tell you what it is, you’ll be quite astonished too, because we are still in the grip of midwinter – allegedly. But ye, I sat outside on my wall at lunchtime and ate my butties while I watched the fishing boats come in with their catch.

It might only have been 8°C (which is pretty astonishing for early February) and there was a bit of wind, but the bright sunlight was magnificent and I enjoyed every minute that I was out there soaking up the rays.

Last night I finally had my early night. In bed before 23:00 which is an astonishing achievement for just recently. And although I might have needed it, it took me an age to drop off to sleep and at one point I was beginning to wish that I hadn’t bothered.

But I did, and sleep right through (as far as I was aware) until the alarm went off. And I actually beat the third alarm too.

After the medication I went to check the dictaphone. And it seemed that I’d been on a voyage during the night.

And a big “hello” to Castor and Pollux who put in their first appearance for quite some considerable time. I’d said goodbye to Pollux in this dream and Castor came to see me, changing places with Pollux again like you might expect. I was sitting there on this chair and we were talking about a few things or another and then she said could she get into bed with me. I let her get into bed and we cuddled up. Se we sat there like that talking, cuddled up next to each other under the bed. At one point I had to look back for something or other and I could se someone with whom I’d just spent some time in a room. There was a light on and they were illuminated by it and they waved at me. I thought “God I hope that they aren’t going to see me here” so I gave like a non-committal wave and turned my back on them and carried on talking to her. And in the end we had to get up and there was something that we needed to be doing, some furniture removal stuff and I had to take me car. But someone had used my car and they’d loaded it all up with furniture and boxes and everything including the drivers cab because there was plenty of room in these old drivers cabs. They’d just loaded up with stuff so I had to go and drop it off before I could move my stuff. Castor asked if I needed a hand and one or two others asked if I needed a hand but I said no. Then I couldn’t get my car going. I had to rig up some kind of impromptu thing like a water-powered mill off a windscreen wiper but that wasn’t working so I got one or two more off other vehicles, something off one in Aberdeen and we might be able to pull enough off to start. That was what I was trying to do when I awoke.
There was something about springs too – door springs (the automatic door closers that we see) and we had to find a door spring. There were two or three on different vehicles and we could get one of those and we had to think which vehicles had one. There was something about the legal requirements of a door spring on a settee there ought to be one. Castor said that she had never experienced it. She said that they dig in your back on a settee and she was the first person in North America to sit on a sofa like a European does. Yes what would happen if something like that got into the mainstream music press and all that kind of thing. Castor piped up that she had one of these hinges fitted to her door and hunt round a couple of ships in the harbour to actually find one and she was quite comfortable in the fact that the car was a good 8 or 9 inches taller than she is and that was when she made the remark about the spring digging into her back.

And there was more to it than that too but if you think that the end just there was turning into gibberish, you ain’t seen the rest

After breakfast I attacked the pile of digital tracks that I have collected and managed to dismantle them into their individual components.

It was then time for a shower and to hit the streets.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw a digger with a concrete-breaking attachment breaking up the surface down in the port.

We went to look at it and we saw that they had started to dig a trench. Today they were down there again digging some more.

So whatever it is that they are doing, they are still hard at it. In fact, I’m wondering if it might be for power cables or something to run to the new pontoon.

My walk took me round into town and I could see what they were doing the other day.

And I was right – it is a kiddies’ roundabout that they were erecting in the Place General de Gaulle and presumably it’s one of the things that they will be doing for carnaval.

Up the rue Couraye I noticed that the shop of my internet supplier was empty – a very rare occasion that – so I stuck my head in to see what they had to say about fibre-optic.

Apparently it’s all connected and the network is currently undergoing tests. Once they are satisfied with it they will be contacting people to invite them to sign up.

They reckon that by the end of the year we will all be connected, which will be interesting news. Of course I know all about fibre-optic networks because we had that in Brussels … errr … 20-odd years ago.

The bill at LIDL was somewhat elevated today but the reason for that was that I had to buy a pile of stuff for the muesli as I have run out. One thing that they didn’t have, which I need more than anything, is bran flakes.

But what else they had was packs of 3kg of carrots at half-price. I can see me being busy this afternoon.

On my way home I came down the rue de la Houle and here, in almost exactly the same place that we saw a Jaguar XJ-8 the other month, here’s another one.

There aren’t all that many of those lying around these days so seeing two of them in practically the same place is pretty surprising.

At la Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and came back home. It was early so I was hoping to have a really good bash at the radio project but I … errr … went off with the fairies almost immediately.

And how! I was dead to the world for quite some time.

Lunch was taken on the wall as I mentioned and then I came back here to start the carrots. They are now all peeled, diced, blanched and in the freezer and there’s enough there for several weeks which was the plan.

Dealing with the carrots took me all the way up to walk-time, so I cleared off out to stretch my legs.

The weather was just as gorgeous as it had been earlier and there were quite a few people out there taking advantage of the unseasonably-good weather, including a couple of yachts and their crews enjoying the sunshine.

It made me quite envious and so while I was walking around I devised a cunning plan.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall our discussion the other day about “incidents” off the coast of the Channel Islands following this insane British act of madness.

It was in the news this morning that Guernsey has now decided at long last to begin issuing permits and as a result the French fishermen have lifted their blockade. Consequently Thora has been able to come into port.

Long time no see. It’s been a week since she’s been here and that’s a long time.

Back here I made a start on the radio project. I quickly dictated the notes and edited them, and began piecing everything together. I was interrupted though by Ingrid who rang up.

Ages ago she had asked me to look out for a certain book and when I was in Leuven the other week I actually found a copy, so I posted it to her. She was overwhelmed and rang to thank me.

But she’s had lots of things going on in her life, much of which is fairly depressing so I did my best the cheer her up.

And then I cracked on with the project. Fed up of it hanging around, I was determined to crack it and have it finished. Finding a final track of round about 08:40 was not easy. There’s not a great choice at that length and it has to sound like a final track too. In the end I found the track with which Genesis end their live concerts and that was 08:53 so with a bit of judicious editing it all fitted together, done and dusted and ready.

Tea was a burger on a bap with potatoes and veg and was delicious. That was the last of the rice pudding too that went down with it so back to banal desserts tomorrow, although there might be some frozen apple pie in there.

It was a lonely walk around the walls tonight in the cold and the wind. But I did manage both my runs, although I didn’t feel much like it. But I have to keep the pressure on.

In the Place Cambernon, the pizza van was there. A new one too, the old one having failed its controle technique apparently. I asked the woman in charge what the new restaurant, la Contremarche, had to say about her selling pizzas outside their door, but apparently no-one has said a thing so she’s carrying on until nouvelle ordre.

So I’ve finished my notes. I’ll listen to a little more music and then go to bed. I am expecting visitors in the morning.

Wednesday 29th January 2020 – THIS TOWN AND I …

… have a lot in common. We’re both falling apart at the seams.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that part of the public car park outside is cordoned off as a rather large crack has appeared in the wall. And on my walk around the walls this afternoon I noticed that a part more, in the Place du Marche Aux Chevaux is likewise cordoned off.

I had a quick browse and ACCORDING TO THE LOCAL RAG the wall there has developed a crack that, for the moment, renders it unsafe to the public.

Doubtless someone will come along and look into it pretty soon.

And that reminds me about the story of the ugly crack that appeared on the wall of Trump’s office in the White House. However, workmen came along and painted over it before Trump could find someone to read it to him.

As for falling apart, I certainly am. The alarms went off as usual but I ‘eck as like haul myself out of bed. 06:45 when I finally struggled out and put my feet on the floor and that’s no good whatsoever.

Not only that, I couldn’t seem to get started and it was long after breakfast before I was up to attacking the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night . I had a woman with me and I can’t remember who she was but she was the kind of woman whom I would have been extremely flattered to have been with. I knew who she was – a blonde. We went out to see my father about something. I had to do quite a lot of work and I can’t really remember now what the work was to be done but we finished and I asked father if he had one or two other things that needed doing. he said “no”. he was having to nip out straight away to see someone for 18:00 and it was 17:40 now. We had another thing to do which was to go to see someone in Stockport and we were in Stoke on Trent at the time. I remember opening the door for this girl in Caliburn thinking to myself “well she can get in and come with me and wouldn’t I feel proud to have her coming with me to Stockport”. I was trying to work out my route – should I go up round the M6 and across or should I go sraight up the A34 and A6 or wherever like that. It was while I was waiting for this girl to come back to the car and people were doing things on their mobile phones, making appointments and that was when I unfortunately awoke.

There was a lot more too but seeing as you are probably eating your evening meal at the moment you won’t be wanting to read it.

Having finally dealt with that, I started on the music project that I have on the go. It meant listening to the notes that I’d dictated and looking at the sound waves, cutting out any breathing, any clicks and bangs and any pauses. And, of course, any faults. I’m at the stage now where I just dictate one sound file from start to finish and if I make a mistake I simply re-dictate it and tag the section that needs cutting out.

That way, I can reduce a sound file from well over 10 minutes down to just a little over 6 minutes.

Mind you, it takes a while to do it, but it’s relatively straightforward with a good sound-editing program and a decent (at last) fast desktop computer.

That took me up to a rather late lunch and that meant heading down into town and La Mie Caline for mydejeunette.

And there’s a surprise in store for me here too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I moved here in April 2017 part of the pavement alongside the city walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne was blocked off. And round about a year ago, the workmen moved in to start to repair the walls.

Today, there is a dramatic change in the situation.

A few weeks ago they took away part of the protective fencing and vehicles began to park there in the bit that was now open.

But today, all of the fencing has been taken down. Furthermore, all of the material has been tidied up and they look as if they are ready to move away.

The young guy to whom I spoke the other day told me that “it won’t be long” before they have gone and it’s looking as if he was right.

There was activity in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers too today.

That road was closed off a few days ago, although I couldn’t see why. It’s closed off today but at least I can see why. There’s a huge crane here and he was just lowering his jib as I walked past.

Apparently they are rebuilding a public stairway down between the houses and he’s been lowering down some equipment and material. Apparently they don’t do that by hand any more as we did in the old days.

The harbour gates were closed again so i could walk across to the other side of the harbour on the path across the top of the gates.

They were there working on Spirit of Conrad so I stopped for a chat. Some of the hull has been replaced and the plan now for the rest of the year is “to complete the repairs”.

No mention of a sailing plan which is annoying, but we’ll work it out I suppose.

By now the Post Office was open so I posted off my parcel, then picked up my bread and headed for home.

After lunch I started to join up all the different sections of the radio project and in the end I overran by twp and a half minutes. I had to do some hefty editing of the text that I had dictated before it would come down to one hour.

One hour is what they want and one hour is what they get. Not 59 minutes and 59 seconds or 60 minutes and one second, but 60 minutes exactly.

That took me up until about 18:00, with a break for my afternoon walk.

The rue du Nord is a private street with an automatic control for the residents, but more often than not the rising posts that protect the entrance aren’t working.

That’s been the case just recently but today there are some workmen with a laptop investigating the situation.

Having observed the collapsing wall, I pushed on and did my run along the north side of the walls seeing as there was no-one about. I have to push on at every available opportunity.

But I came to a stop at the end of my track as something out to sea by the Plat Gousset caught my eye.

Despite photographing it and blowing it up (the photo, not the object) back in my apartment later, I’ve no idea what it is. If it’s floating debris, it looks as if it’s been in the water for a considerable amount of time.

Anyway, I pushed on. But I wasn’t able to do my run along the square Maurice Marland because there were people about. My running is ungainly to the point of embarrassment and I’ve no intention of showing myself up.

Every now and then we take a look at the buildings that are undergoing renovation, and there have been quite a few of those up here in the old town just recently.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago they were delivering a pile of plasterboard to a house in the rue St Jean. The workmen are there today going at it full-tilt.

That’s yet another project going on up here and I can’t wait to see just how it all will unfold in the fullness of time

After I finished the radio project I cut up a few more digital music files into their component tracks and that’s looking a lot more respectable now.

All in all I’ve done about 20. That just leaves about … errr … 150 to do.

For tea tonight, I fancied a slice of vegan pie with veg and gravy so I took one out of the freezer. While I was there I found the left-over slice of apple pie from just before I went away and both of those went in the oven to heat up while I made some gravy.

They were absolutely delicious, but there’s only enough lemon sorbet now for half a portion tomorrow. Good job that it’s a shopping day and I can buy some more.

Later on, I went for my evening walk. I’d been around the walls this afternoon so it was around the headland this evening.

The sky was really clear and you could see for miles. There was plenty of activity out to sea and had there not been such a wind I would have gone back for the tripod and taken a few photographs.

Instead I had to make do with the trawlers in the port.

There were four or five of them unloading at the fish-processing plant but I imagine that those out to sea would be joining them pretty soon.

With no-one about I managed to do another run down the street – that’s important to do as much as I can to keep up my fitness levels and keep my weight down.

Being so close to my 100% target I went for an extended walk tonight and managed to push it up to 101% by the time that I came in. I’ll be intrigued to see this month’s figures on the fitbit.

And while I was on my travels we came across yet another example of bad parking.

In fact, it’s exactly the same bad parking as we had a few days ago. Someone in his Range Rover thinks that it’s amusing to park his vehicle across the entrance to the fire lane at the back of our building because he’s too lazy to walk another 20 yeards to the car park

Whatever goes through the minds of these people I really don’t know.

So while I’ve been writing up my notes I’ve been checking through the photos to make sure that they are all uploaded to the computer. The next immediate project is to start to go through those for my voyages to the High Arctic and for that I need to start mastering a decent graphics program.

Someone sent me a link to a high-powered program that was free and I’ll be trying that. If it won’t do what I want, I’ll have to bite the bullet and start paying some money.

But there’s another two radio projects that need finishing. That’s the job for tomorrow morning.

But before I go, let me just mention that on my Social Networking page the other day I mentioned that the results were not what I was hoping. And today, two people from the radio, who must have seen the entry, contacted me, one by telephone and the other by e-mail, to ask how I was.

That was rather nice of them.

Tuesday 28th January 2020 – IF YOU WANT …

… to know what the weather was like today, this photo here will tell you everything that you need to know.

Miserable, horrible, grey and overcast with huge and violent rainstorms and incredibly high winds stirring everything up. In fact, a typical day on the western Normandy coast for just recently.

And when is it going to end? It looks as if this weather is here for the duration and isn’t going to let up very easily.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I could hear the howling weather quite clearly and ashamed as I am to admit it, it drove me back underneath the covers where I stayed until just after 07:00. This wasn’t the kind of weather that would make anyone want to raise themselves from the dead, least of all me.

After the medication I had a look to see where I’d been during the night. I had been at a house with a group of people and we needed some things from a shopping parade down the street. There had been a really heavy snowfall and it was difficult to move around so I said that I would go. I had to go on foot because Caliburn was at the menders and I could pick him up and bring him back on the way back so that was what I decided to do. As I was leaving, one of the girls in this house shouted out “don’t forget it’s time to go and get your food and organise this and Eric’s going to get this and that”. I don’t know why she did that. Anyway I was off. I went to get a coupe of shopping bags. It was a really steep slope down the hill to this shopping parade and with the snow it was quite icy and slippy. There was a group of people coming up the hill. One of them was a girl dressed a kind of white smock kind of arrangement and she had a couple of other kids with her running up there. All of a sudden they slipped, came down the hill and collided with me. They knocked me over onto the ice, and there was me, this girl and a boy sliding down this hill and where the road went round a bend we went straight on over the edge and crashed into a snow bank. The girl was laughing about this and the boy said to her “you’re disgusting”. She said “yes, I know that I’m disgusting”. It all went rather downhill from there.

Those rubber spatulas proved their weight in gold today. Ordinarily I would have said that I had run out of apple purée for breakfast but with the rubber spatula I managed to scrape enough out of the jar for a small portion for breakfast.

After breakfast, I attacked the travel notes. In a change to previous voyages, I’m not taking all of my files with me on the laptop. I’m making a “travel noes” file where I can record everything, and then bring it back home and edit the entries into the various data files. It’s much less confusing that way.

But it seems that I’ve made a bit of an error with the radio projects. I’ve forgotten to leave a space for the live concert at the end of February. As a result, everything that I did that was labelled “Project 16” has now to be labelled “Project 19” to preserve the integrity of Projects 17 and 18 and the series of material from which I draw is now out of order and needs to be changed.

While I’d been in Leuven I’d found something that a friend of mine had asked me to see if I could find. I’d been successful so i’d wrapped it and I took it with me to post on my way to pick up my butties.

But as usual, I was side-tracked by the sound of a pneumatic drill coming from the other side of the harbour and seeing as the gates were closed, I could go over the footpath on the top to see what was happening.

And it’s not a pneumatic drill at all but a hydraulic concrete breaker on the jib of one of the diggers that have been dredging the harbour just now.

What they seem to be doing is chiselling out the rocks at the foot of the sea wall at the ferry terminal.

This will explain the pile of piles that regular readers of this rubbish will have seen with me the other day – removed so as to give access for the concrete breaker.

But does this mean that, with the dredging of the harbour to make it deeper and removing the rocks at the side to make it wider, are we going to be expecting the arrival of a new ferry boat that is larger than those that we have at present?

We are living in interesting times indeed.

This fishing boat, the Rocavi II is quite interesting.

There has been an article in the local newspaper about the Rocavi II just recently. It’s a brand-new fishing boat that has only recently been launched and on Saturday it was blessed by one of the local priests.

What with living in France, I suppose that breaking a bottle of champagne over the bows is pretty ordinary stuff and nothing whatever special at all.

A little further along the port, it looks as if Thora has been here while I’ve been away.

Much of her work involves taking building supplies out to Jersey and she doesn’t seem to have a regular load off the island. Instead, her owners collect scrap metal and as there are no scrapping facilities on the island they bring it here for processing. Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen quite a few loads of scrap on the quayside.

This lot of scrap metal looks as if it has been part of some structure that has been destroyed by fire.

With all of these distractions I missed the post. So I went to la Mie Caline and picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

After lunch I made my own apple purée. Four apples peeled, cored and diced, a pear ditto and some cinnamon put into a saucepan with some water and boiled for about 45 minutes.

And it’s not a success. I’ve used far too much water – or else the fruit was too juicy – and it’s more like an apple drink than an apple purée. But I’ll use it over the next few days just to dispose of it and then I’ll make some more – with much less water this time.

But pears, bananas, rhubarb, apricots, all kinds of fruit can go into it and I’m hopeful of making some good stuff with this. I need to push on and do a lot more about being self-sufficient.

And then I started to write the notes for the first of the radio projects. But I wasn’t at it long because it was walk-time. What hadn’t helped was that for about 10 minutes or so I had … errr … had a little relax.

While I was out there earlier we had had a moment of sun. But not now. A howling gale and the rain that we had seen over the Brittany coast had caught me.

For that reason I didn’t hang around very long. Chausias was over there at the ferry terminal in a NAABSA (Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground) condition so presumably they are expecting her to be doing something in the near future.

The two passenger ferries were moored up in the inner harbour where they usually stay.

But no Channel Island ferries. Both Granville and Victor Hugo are currently moored up in Cherbourg and I have no idea why.

Spirit of Conrad has made good her escape from the Chantier navale so I was keen to see who had taken her place.

The answer is that there isn’t anything special in there right now. We have two of the inshore fishing boats that haul in the shellfish and one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that is over there where Spirit of Conrad used to be.

So at least there’s plenty of work for the shipyard to be doing and that should keep them out of mischief for a while.

Back here I finished off the writing and then dictated the notes. They are going to need some hefty editing too as I seem to have been somewhat extravagant.

Anyway, I had made a start by the time that I went to make tea. Vegan burger on a bap with baked potatoes and vegetables, followed by fruit salad and sorbet. And there’s still that left-over slice of apple pie in the freezer from before I went to Leuven. But that’s an oven job so it will probably be to go with the pizza on Sunday.

Howling gales and torrential rain tonight, and I was out in it. To make it worse, I had to go for a longer walk than usual as I was in touching distance of my 100% target so I may as well push on over.

The storm was raging and although the tide wasn’t all the way in, the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset and soaking everything. It’s disappointing that they haven’t left the lights on along the promenade so that we can see the waves better.

And despite the miserable weather I managed to fit in my two runs this evening. My two little tracks were quite well sheltered.

But Iw as feeling the strain, I’ll tell you. It seems that the spell of good health I had in December is about as good as it is ever goign to be.

So having finished my notes, I’ll wait until “Yes In Concert” finishes ad then I’ll go to bed. The problem is that I have far too much good music here to which to listen to waste my time by going to bed and sleep.

Monday 24th June 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

… I have accomplished two long-term goals today.

Firstly, I have completed the blog entry for last Monday with all of the photos that I took while I was at Coutances.

Secondly, after much binding in the marsh, I have finally finished all of the dictaphone notes.

Mind you , It wasn’t without its interruptions and difficulties.

Last night I’d had a reasonable sleep and been off on a voyage, but it was another one of those nights where as soon as I woke up, all memory of it evaporated even before I had time to grab the dictaphone.

For a change, I was awake before the alarm at 05:45, and up and about before the second alarm at 06:05 went off. How about that?

After breakfast I had a shower and then cracked on to complete the blog entry as I mentioned earlier.

At 08:30 I hit the streets in the rainstorm and headed off to the doctor’s. I was seen pretty quickly and was soon out of the building. The doctor is pleased to see me moving about and has decided that I don’t need an operation. Keep on with the alcohol treatment, take it easy and don’t do too much.

He was totally amazed that I had walked 10 kilometres the other day.

To Carrefour for some lettuce, seeing as the other had died, and to the pharmacie for some more of these gauze patches for my leg.

On the way back home I met a couple of neighbours and had a chat, and then came back here.

Back here, I bumped into the electrician. We’re having all of these new remote electricity meters so I had to show him where they were.

He came up when he was ready to switch off my current to change the meter. I stopped work and had a relax on the sofa to rest my leg, and there I dozed off.

I went off on a travel then and there. To a racing track where a car had broken down in the middle of a race, and had to walk across the track dodging the cars to reach the pits. One driver, parked in the pits, saw him crossing and accelerated out heading straight for him, making the driver run and dodge the traffic. There was some kind of Marshall in the centre of the ring with a glove on his hand with a lED display screen on the back of it. He held it up to show that the driver in the car had been given a 9-second penalty for his actions.

With just a brief 30 minutes for lunch, I cracked on with the blog and had almost finished it when Ingrid rang. We had a really good chat for well over an hour.

Back at the desk, I attempted to finish the blog and as soon as I put finger to keyboard Rosemary telephoned me. So that was another lengthy chat that took me almost up to teatime.

So finishing the blog I had a rather late tea of stuffed pepper and spicy rice.

After that, I booked my rail ticket to St-Lô tomorrow and then applied an on-line form for another project that I have in mind.

My walk around the Pointe du Roc in the damp, humid and misty weather was all alone. No-one else was out there at all, which was no surprise given the weather conditions.

So now an early night. I have an early start tomorrow.

Thursday 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

… really difficult today today.

What went wrong was the fact that having had a long sleep during the afternoon, I wasn’t all that tired when I went to bed.

Nevertheless I went to sleep pretty quickly and even managed to go on something of a nocturnal ramble. But I’ll spare you the details because you are probably eating your tea right now.

However, I awoke at about 01:30 and that was that. I lay awake tossing and turning until the alarm went off at 06:00.

Just for a change I was up early this morning and after the usual performance and a shower, I set the washing machine off doing a load of washing.

Once that was on its way I went into town. But I didn’t get very far before I had to stop.

A few weeks ago I photographed them digging up the pavement in the rue des Juifs for the fibre-optic cable. But they had filled in the trenches and sealed it all over a good while ago.

But today, the fibre-optic people were there digging it all up again. I asked why but the guy to whom I spoke just shrugged his shoulders

Down at the quayside in the harbour Normandy Trader was there unloading.

I imagine that she had come in on the morning tide,and having missed to opportunity to photograph Thora yesterday, I took a quick photo of here while I was going into town.

After all, the speed in which these ships are turning round these days, she may well not be here by the time that I return.

And so I continued on my way to the Mairie for the Certificate that I needed. But there was no-one there to sign it so I had to go back later.

Next stop was the bank to change the standing order for my rent. The rental goes up at the beginning of next month so I had to do that.

Third stop was the railway station to pick up my tickets for my next trip to Leuven in May. I’m spinning my appointments out now to every 5 weeks so as to fit into a new revised plan.

Just then Rosemary telephoned me. So instead of going to LIDL (I don’t really need anything) I headed for home.

And I was almost right about Normandy Trader.

She had by now left her berth, and I just managed to catch her stern disappearing out of the harbour. Another quick turnround.

And I need to make the most of my sightings of her and of Thora and quite possibly the gravel boats too.

There’s no Customs Post here in Granville so when Brexit inevitably happens, these ships will need to go to a port that has a customs post – like St Malo. No wonder everyone here is so upset.

Rosemary and I had a really good chat for quite a considerable time as usual, and we put the world to rights while we were on the line. Ingrid came onto the internet too and we we had a chat too;

That took me nicely up to lunchtime, which was taken inside because by now the weather had broken and we were having a storm.

Once the weather eased off I went back into town, only to find that the Mairie here doesn’t issue the Certificates. They seem to think that it’s something that only applies to small communes where the mayor knows personally all of his inhabitants.

Anyway, I left them fighting with the prefecture over the issue and came home, being caught in yet another rainstorm;

I had a few things to do, but by 17:30 I was off with the fairies. Back in bed for a good 100 minutes fast asleep.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding, and then my walk around the headland. Away on the horizon I noticed something moving so the horizon out in the English Channel so I photographed it.

I was right about one thing – that it was indeed a huge ship.

No idea which one though because it was too far out, but I thought that it might be Pont Aven, the Brittany Ferries flagship heading to St Malo.

However, when I looked on live ships database later on in the evening, the recorded position at the time I took the photo seemed to correspond with the known position of Bretagne.

She’s one of the oldest ferries working the Channel, having been launched in 1989, and has a gross tonnage of about 24500 tonnes.

She’s actually living on borrowed time, having been taken out of service in 2016, but the contract for her replacement was cancelled and so she’s back on duty for now.

My perambulations took me round the Pointe du Roc and along the path at the top looking over the chantier navale.

There have been a few changes there today. The old trawler that’s been undergoing major reconstruction down at the bottom of the yard has now been brought up to the top end and put on chocs here. It’s weather protection has been removed too.

It’s been joined by another trawler too, the big pink and blue one on the left. No idea what they are doing with that one.

But I couldn’t go back into my building without taking a photo of probably the most beautiful sunset that I have ever seen.

It’s not very often that I produce a remarkable photograph but this one actually worked in spades. The sun was just peeking through the heavy clouds and was illuminating the buildings on the Ile de Chausey just like the spotlights might do on a stage set.

It’s really come out well and I’m very proud of this very dramatic photo.

So I’ll try for an early night tonight. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, but I still have plenty of things that need doing. it’s going to be a long day.

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 – I REMEMBER SAYING …

… yesterday to Ingrid that I was feeling probably better than I have been feeling for quite some time.

And so it’s no surprise whatever to learn that today I’d had a relapse.

Last night was nothing like as early as I was hoping and it was something of a disturbed night. Nevertheless there was enough time to go for something of a ramble. There were two schools in London. Both originated from the same family who owned a wealthy sailing factory. One was a kind of prison or reform school and the other was an upper-class school and everyone was always getting the two mixed up about who went where. The guy who was chairman of the Board of Governors at the wealthy school was the sole surviving member of the family who founded it so some people thought that there might be a confilct of interest between the objectives of the school and the running of it. The school was running through some kind of financial issues. I don’t remember too much about it except that on one occasion the chairman was sitting there with his head in his hands doing a really fine impression of Quasimodo going “the bills! Ohh the bills!”.

Despite the bad night I was up before the final alarm went off, but I’ve somehow awoken with my bad throat and coughing fit again. It’s never-ending, isn’t it? And a certain medical condition that plagued me for a considerable while and then mysteriously disappeared has suddenly come back with a vengeance.

With having had an early start I was all fit for work and had a good crack at photocopying and sorting documents for my little visit tomorrow, stopping for a shower along the way.

There are a few papers missing but I can assemble quite a comprehensive folder full of documents;

The printer ran out of ink midway through but luckily I had bought some more when I bought the printer. It was something of a performance to make the cartridge fit because Epson doesn’t like you using non-original cartridges.

There was also time to have a crack at the dictaphone, and now all of the notes for Canada 2016 are transcribed. I’m about a third of a way through them now, but I won’t be as quick with the next batch as there are some substantial files in there.

Lunch was taken indoors today because the weather has clouded over and ran was looking likely.

Back at work I had to change my hospital appointment because I need it to be a week later. And then it was necessary to book my accommodation and travel. So all of that is done.

On my walk around the headland this afternoon I tried once more the new route that has just reopened.

I reckon that the older path is the diagonal line that runs bottom left to upper right across the centre of the image.

That looks as if it’s formerly a path on some kind of gider bridge but it looks as if it’s slipped out of position. The part at the head of the bend looks as if it’s been dug out quite recently. It’s not very wide at all.

having climbed all of the steps back up to the top, I walked along the path to have a look at the chantier navale.

There’s another new arrival in there today. She’s Notre Dame du Cap Lihou, the local lifeboat whom we have seen out and about in the sea now and again.

No idea what she’s up to in there and I won’t be able to find out either I suppose, because I don’t imagine that she will be in there for long.

For a few days now we’ve been seeing the little pontoon in the harbour taking core-drill samples of the sea bed to investigate its make-up.

That’s now gone and we have a different machine in there. So I wonder what that’s going to be up to.

But It’s not escaped my notice that in the background are objects that look suspiciously like floating walkways, and so the next step, I imagine, is to place them in the water and secure them to the quayside.

Back here I tried to crack on with the mountain of photos but I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t fight off the sleep on the chair, and in the end gave up and went to bed. I think that climbing all of the steps was what might have finished me off.

For a good 90 minutes I was right out of it and I awoke feeling like death.

Tea was a slice of giant pasty with potatoes and veg followed by a rice pudding.

The evening walk, accompanied part of the way by a group of boys from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs, was agony but I needed to do it.

At the beach at the Plat Gousset he tide was coming in, and coming in quite quickly too. There was a lovely current rolling over the beach and swamping the tidal swimming pool.

It was quite an impressive sight. Such a shame that there was no-one else around to enjoy it. I was quite on my own out there once those boys had cleared off.

A little further on around the corner, I stopped for a while where the path around the walls overlooks the rue Paul Poirier.

The light was going quite rapidly so I took a photograph just as the street lights were coming on and illuminating the streets.

This will be probably the last photograph of street lights that I shall take on my evening walk until later in the year, unless I happen to be delayed in my plans for going out.

So back home now and I really am going to have an early night. Tomorrow is a big day so I need to be on form.

Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

… a Bank Holiday I have imitated the example of the the mathematician who shares my name and I have done three fifths of five eighths of … errr … nothing.

We started off with a turbulent night where I couldn’t manage to go off to sleep for very long. Long enough to go on several nocturnal rambles though, and to leave my bed to go to look for some new batteries for the dictaphone too.

I started off with a group of students back at school outside the old “Room 10” having a huge discussion about something but I can’t remember now. Then a band in the assembly hall struck up some kind of high-tempo dance number. Most people disappeared to go off to this dance. One of the girls just standing around was a very studious type, long brown hair in a pony tail and glasses 3 or so years below me, very prim and proper and the correct uniform. I took hold of her and started to dance with her. She pulled such a face so I asked what was the matter. She just grunted something at me which was a bit of a shame.
A little later I was in Crewe, Davenport Avenue, painting the living room. I can’t remember who I was with. It might have been Marianne or Liz. There were huge plasitc sheets everywhere masking everything off. It was thick white emulsion. I had been masking everything off while she was painting and when I’d finished that I was daubing the paint on with a kitchen towel. I asked if there was a paint brush, and I was given a big old paste brush which wasn’t so good and I was smearing it on with that. For some unknown reason I had to go outside, with Nerina by now and we were at Gainsborough Road to the road down the side. We saw a large black plastic pipe so we walked down the road to look at it. It was sticking up out of the road then a 90° bend down the street with a drop so as to allow passage into the back entry and then back on and down the street. On the way back we went past the entrace to my drive and in there on the drive was my brown Cortina TNY. I thought “what is this doing here? It should be in its lock-up garage. How come it was suddenly appearing here? What was the tenat of the property doing with it on his drive? How had he known where it was? How had he obtained the keys to the garage?” I’d had a vague recollection that one of my Cortina estates had been seen on there but I had dismissed that as unlikely gossip. But now I wasn’t so sure. There were probably 20 vehicles on this driveway, all from the 60s and 70s and in all kinds of states of repair. I wondered what was happening. This was so realistic that I sat bolt upright at this point. It’s a recurring thread, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about me having Ford Cortinas in various lock-ups and parked up all over the town and not knowing where they were or worrying about them.
Later still I was in a supermarket last night buying something and TOTGA was the manageress there. I can’t remember whether there had been some kind of issue between the two of us. I was in the queue waitig to pay when the cashier was called away. I saw TOTGA walk past but she didn’t see me but as I was in the queue I couldn’t leave it to go up to her to go and tap her on the shoulder and say hello. She stopped at a display rack where there was bottled water and rearranged something. She turned towards me and I waved hoping to catch her eye but then my view was blocked by a couple of people walking past. After they had gone I waved again but now it was a different girl so I felt rather silly. Another cashier came back now and took my item. I said something about TOTGA being there. She replied “ohh you’ve decided to come back to the shop then have you?” as if I have been boycotting it, which I didn’t understand.
And even later, I was here in my apartment with Terry. I was toasting hot cross buns for both of us and took the first lot out of the toaster and put them on his plate. He took some margarine and spread it over and ate them. He made some remark – is this margarine apple-flavoured? I looked and it was something and pineapple. He replied “God what a horrible thing!” so I asked if he wanted something different. I went to put mine in the toaster but his second round was still in there so I took them out and put them on his plate – this was when he made the remark about the margarine, but he put his knife into the same butter and spread it on the others too and I didn’t understand that when he didn’t like the stuff and there were other things that he could have asked for.

By the time that I arose from my stinking pit it was after 09:00 so I had my medication and caught up with a few things, and then just as I was about to go for breakfast Rosemary rang me.

We were chatting for a good hour or so, so I ended up with a very late breakfast.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone. I transcribed the notes from the night and then attacked a pile from the backlog of stuff. That was interrupted by someone coming on line and wanting a chat.

As a consequence I was very late for lunch and so seeing as it was Easter Monday I ate my vegan Easter Egg instead.

This afternoon I was intending to carry on with some work but I was interrupted by a special one-off sale of 3D items that involved spending an hour or so surfing through the web site to see what might be of interest.

That was interrupted my Ingrid ringing me and we had a really long chat for well over an hour.

That meant that my afternoon walk was rather late.

But when I finally did make it outside I was immediately struck by the strange lighting conditions that we were experiencing.

There was some kind of light grey light reflecting off the sea and the Ile de Chausey was standing out silhouetted on the horizon. I’m not quite sure why this should be.

And it goes without saying that I wasn’t the only person out there this afternoon enjoying the weird light.

There was a painter out there too doing his thing. He had drawn quite a crowd of spectators eagerly admiring his work. And it wasn’t bad either. I wouldn’t have minded it hanging up on my wall.

He isn’t the first painter that we have seen in action either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we encountered one in Québec in 2011.

Yesterday I mentioned that the path around the Pointe du Roc had been reopened. This afternoon I went that way to see what it was like.

You need to be quite athletic to enjoy the trip because there is a considerable number of steps down to the bottom. And what goes down must come back up, as we all know.

But it’s worth it because there’s a view of the coastguard station that I have never seen before.

But something else caught my eye while I was down here.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve spoken quite considerably in the past about the construction of the Atlantic Wall during the latter stages of World War II to defend the coast against invasion;

Here on the floor I found a fine example of 1943 graffiti drawn into the concrete, presumably drawn by one of the workmen when they were pouring the concrete.

Another view that I haven’t seen was the Cap Lihou from the rear.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen the sentry’s cabin on the headland before on several occasions but we haven’t seen it from this angle.

And I’m also interested in what looks as if it might be a cave just down there to the left. One of these days when there’s a very low tide I shall have to walk around there for a good look.

As for the walk itself, it’s very picturesque, but it’s also very difficult and very narrow.

What didn’t help either was that there were hundreds of other people out there enjoying it too so there wasn’t much room to move about.

Because of all of this, it’s not something that you would want to do in the dark either. It’s definitely going to have to be a daylight job.

Back here someone else wanted to chat so by then end of that I was hours late for tea. So I didn’t bother. I went for a walk around the walls in the twilight instead.

Now I’m back here and I’m going for an early night. I have a lot to do over the next few days and I need to be on form.

ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

zodiac baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

cabanon vauban pointe de carolles granville manche normandy france

atlantic wall pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

flags pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Monday 18th March 2019 – IT’S HOSPITAL …

… day today. And so I need to be on form.

Consequently I had something of an early night last night. Plenty of time to go on a little voyage too, even if I did awaken at sometime round about 03:45. It’s not very often that my old friend Liz (who died 10 years ago) appears with me in a nocturnal ramble. But there she was last night. I’d been living abroad for a couple of years and I was on my way back to Crewe with her in Caliburn. We arrived back at my house (which was actually our old home in Shavington) to find my old black cat Tuppence outside the door – despite my instructions that the cats weren’t to go out. And she was very thin too – as if she hadn’t eaten anything for weeks. Inside, the other three cats were scratching away at some dried biscuits, despite my instructions that they were only to have tinned food, not dried. I was pretty annoyed about this and wanted to speak to the girl who was looking after the cats. But while I was thinking of this I heard a noise from out of the bedroom. She was actually in there making use of the double bed and a boyfriend. Not the kind of thing to arouse my sympathy.

Despite the alarms going off as usual, there wasn’t a great deal of rush. My appointment with doom isn’t until 10:30 so I had a little lie-in until about 07:00. A shower and a clothes wash and a general clean-up and I was ready for the road.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were here before, they were digging up the Tiensestraat and laying pipes.

They seem to have finished that now, and have moved all of the equipment to the Burgemeestersstraat where they are presumably continuing the work.

I wonder how long they’ll be working on replacing the drains around the city?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a year or so I lived in the Brusselsestraat quite close to the St Jakobs Kapelle.

However I never ever managed to go in for a look around because it was all closed up.

Apparently it’s in need of some considerable amount of renovation

But when I went past it today the door was open (although I couldn’t go in because there was a fence around it) and there was a pile of scaffolding up all around it.

It looks as if the renovations have finally started. That’s good news, if they can get it to stay up, but I wonder just how thorough these renovations are likely to be.

I hope that they are going to make a really decent spectacle out of it

For some reason, for which I’m not sure, it was something of a struggle to get to the hospital today. I had to make several stops on my way up the hill to the hospital.

The heat didn’t help much and I had to stop and divest myself of my outer clothing. It had been cold when I had set out, but it didn’t half warm up quickly.

The nurse today was the only one who speaks just Flemish so we had my insertion interview in that language. I’m getting quite good at this these days.

But the interesting thing is that the weight that I had lost when I was ill – it stayed off too. And I’m happy about that. And so should you lot too, because it means that in about 18 months at this rate, I’ll be gone completely.

The doctor came to see me too. And if she’s going to be on my case for the foreseeable future, I’ll be back next week, never mind next month, even though she forgot to sign my prescription and I had to argue at the chemists later.

As for the blood count, it’s down to 9.7. Something of a disappointment but only to be expected after my illness. At least the drop wasn’t as dramatic as the time 15 months ago when it fell through the floor.

Another thing that I did was to ask them to check my selenium levels. Robert, a former schoolmate who is a regular reader of this rubbish and is a retired doctor, came up with a couple of suggestions. A Selenium shortage is one, so seeing as they are testing the blood anyway, they can test for that too. But I can’t have these results for a day or two.

But I grabbed a copy of the rest of the results and when I’m back home, I’ll scan it so that Robert can see it. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the previous month’s figures to compare.

There seems to be an issue about my potassium levels too, so I need to cut back on the Coversyl that I take.

Rosemary phoned me too and we had a lengthy chat, and I had a little snooze too while I was there.

On the way home I stopped for the medication and also at Delhaize for some food for tea. Alison wasn’t up to going for a meal tonight so I’m eating in.

And Ingrid telephoned me too. She’s struggling a little with her health issues but her illness has now been properly diagnosed. While it’s not good news either, at least she knows what is the matter with her and she’s been taken in charge by her health assurance people and will receive the proper treatment.

And that’s my lot. Not much good news but it could be far worse than it is. I’m having a lie-in tomorrow as a Day of rest, but I have things to do in Brussels.

And so on that note, I’m off for an early night.

Sunday 6th January 2019 – ONE THING THAT …

… I do like about Sundays is being able to turn over, glance at my watch, see that the time is 09:30 and then turn back and go to sleep.

And had I not had the necessity to go for a ride on the porcelain horse I would probably be still there now.

During the night I was off on my travels too. I don’t remember too much about them except that on a couple of occasions I was hanging from the gutter of a house trying to get down to the ground. Someone had passed some kind of rod or pole up towards me but it was a long way short and I was busy pondering the likely consequences were I to drop form the gutter and hope to grab hold of the pole. And not just once but twice as well.

I’ve no idea what time it was that I finally did arise from the dead but breakfast was at a very democratic 11:00. And if that’s not a good Sunday, I don’t know what is.

Highlight of the day has to be the squash and potato soup with fresh brown bread. I told you yesterday that Liz had brought some soup round (isn’t she sweet?) and so I may as well make a start on polishing it off.

During the course of the afternoon Ingrid rang me up and we had a really good chat for well over an hour. As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I don’t have many friends, but those I have are the best in the world.

Tea was, as usual, a vegan pizza. And a good one it was too. And I’ve started a new book. Liz disappeared with my Templar book so I’ve dug another one out from the back of the queue. It’s by Barbara Tuchman, the famous historian who has written so many valuable tomes, and this one is called August 1914

It’s the story of the events that led up to the outbreak of World War I written in a very technical and in-depth fashion. And it will be an interesting challenge for me to wade through its 608 pages because it’s written in French. I’m making quite a considerable collection of learned French tomes these days.

I missed my afternoon walk because of course I was busy chatting to Ingrid. But I made it out for my evening walk all the same.

There’s some kind of museum out at the back here behind the College Malraux.

It’s one of these places that is on my list to visit but I’ve never been able to visit it so far. For some reason or another it always seems to be closed

It was really cold out here tonight (well, cold for round here anyway) and there was no-one around at all.

But the sky was perfectly clear and beautiful outside, and once again there was a really good view of Jersey on the horizon.

The street lights of St Helier stood out quite well and they were reflected off the clouds to give the sky a nice orange tint.

When I had gone out for my walk, I’d left the lights on in the apartment so that I could see what the curtains looked like from outside in the evening.

The windows are not as dark as I was hoping – you certainly can see that someone is in at night – but it’s an improvement on what was there before.

I’m not going to complain about it, especially when you consider how much they cost me.

As for any other activity, I’ve done nothing at all. Just messing around on the laptop. It’s Sunday, so I’m allowed to have a day off.

Thursday 3rd January 2019 – EVEN THOUGH …

… it wasn’t as early a night as I was hoping, it was still with a great deal of dismay that I awoke this morning at 04:35. And even worse, I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

So being up and about and on my feet before the second alarm went off is something of a novelty these days and I have a feeling that I will be paying for this.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. At the home of a certain couple who feature prominently in these pages but who for the sake of this discussion were living in Wistaston Road in Crewe opposite where my old taxi depot was. They were moving house and we’d all gone round to help. One of the things that needed moving was an aquarium which was being taken to a nautical park. The guy who came for it had to come and measure up to see if any wall needed knocking down. He worked out that one wall needed to go, but which was in between two pillars so I couldn’t see how knocking it down was going to help matters as the pillars would still be there. And it upset the measurements that I was taking. Meanwhile, I’d put some wood on one side to use as battens but they had gone, so I asked the woman (who shall be known henceforth as W) where they were. She replied that her husband (known henceforth as H) had taken them and had probably burnt them – rather similar to an event that had really happened. She then told me that there had been some threatening phone calls received by H which was upsetting everyone. A little later, the phone rang and I answered it. I just said “hello” and I didn’t hear the reply because of the noise, but the person hung up. It rang again immediately, and it was a young girl who gave some kind of weird message. H asked me who it was, so I replied that it was a young girl round about 14. He asked if I was sure that she was 14 and not 17 (which is also significant) but I remained convinced. Up on the roof, which was a flat concrete roof, I had a look around. H and W were up there along wiht a pile of charred wood that they had burnt and including my battens. At this point I left the house and went across the road to pick up my car. And I noticed a crowd of young people leaving a house down the street. THis was, I imagined, what the threatening phone calls were all about. I could see H on the roof so I shouted up to him, not too loundly as I didn’t want to attract the intention of the people down the street. But H didn’t hear me so I shouted again. he didn’t respond so I decided to phone him or W, but I couldn’t find their phone numbers at the moment, and in the time that it would take me to do so, the people would be here.

An early breakfast and then I had a few things to do. Including typing and printing out a letter that I had forgotten to do yesterday. May as well do it now because I’ll be off to the shops in a minute and the Post Office is only 50 metres off my route.

So having typed and printed out my letter and put it in an envelope, I headed off for town, only to realise after I’d gone 400 metres that I had left the letter behind. As a result, I had to retrace my steps to pick it up.

On my way down into town I had a look down into the harbour to see what was going on this morning.

There was a lorry down there, unloading a pile of stuff at the quayside. And there on the edge of the quay are a couple of pallet tanks that look as if they might be ready for departure.

We have La Grande Ancre down there. It looks as if she might be the ship that will be loading up with the deliveries. Quite probably she has a trip lined up to the Ile de Chausey. That’s her usual route.

Having posted my letter, I wandered off to LIDL for the shopping. And there was nothing there that took my fancy today. In fact, the things that I had bought I could have easily done without. But the exercise did me good. However, I didn’t pick up a little snack like I sometimes do. I wasn’t in the mood for food.

A coffee to warm me up when I returned home, and then I made some plans for what I intended to do in the afternoon.

It was a late lunch – not because I was so busy but because I wasn’t feeling all that hungry. I managed to eat my sandwiches but that was about that – and then I came back here to attack my project.

I’m not all that further forward because while I can find on the internet all of the links that I need, there’s no trace of the link to the form that I need to download. I need to look further into this.

Ingrid and I had a little chat as well, and so did Liz. Telling me all of the news about Strawberry MooseStrawberry Moose and his Christmas holidays.

I went out for my afternoon walk too.

Just for a change I went for a wander around the walls. With it still being school holidays there were quite a few people out there on the Plat Gousset.

There were even some people brave enough to go for a walk on the beach. But I didn’t notice anyone actually in the water, which is hardly a surprise, given the temperature outside.

A little further around the walk, I finally managed to witness something that I don’t remember seeing before.

The harbour here is a tidal harbour but there is a wet dock that is protected by a pair of gates to keep the water in so that larger ships can dock here and remain for as long as they like.

The gates open for something round about 90 minutes before high tide, and close 90 minutes after high tide. I’ve never seen them actually open and close before, but today I was lucky enough to catch them in action

But I couldn’t go on and ended up under the covers on the bed – for an hour and a half too. And then I couldn’t pull myself out for ages.

One thing that I did notice was that my appetite has gone. It’s been going for a while as you have probably noticed, but this evening I didn’t feel hungry at all. Just a packet of crisps later on. It’s certainly a bad sign when my appetite goes.

I did go out for the walk though. Only two other people out there tonight which was a surprise because although it was cold, it was a beautiful evening. Now I’m going to go to bed though, because despite my little sleep earlier, I’m feeling the pinch.

Friday 23rd November 2018 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… for quite some considerable time, we’ve had rain today.

Not enough to prevent me from going for my series of perambulations but enough to make me put on the raincoat and do up the hood. And it’s not a long knee-length raincoat, Rhys.

With having had a reasonably early night, I had a good sleep too.

During the night last night there was something of a family reunion. I’m no longer sure of the beginning or even the middle but right at the end I can remember going to bed – in Vine Tree Avenue of all places. But when I went to get into bed with Nerina, my younger sister was asleep in there too. When I awoke her to find out what was going on, she told me that there was someone else asleep in her bed so she had to find somewhere else to sleep. I went to look in her bed and found that one of my friends had actually gone to sleep in there.
As an aside, in real life whoever was asleep in her bed later became her husband. But that’s another story.

It wasn’t a particularly early start this morning either. I had a bit of a lie-in, and then I attacked the breakfast.

This morning I’ve been a busy little B. The blog for the last week or two is up to date and you can see where I updated starting from this page and working forward.

When I’m more organised, I’ll be starting from the end of October and working backwards, doing three or four a day until it’s all done. It might take me several years to do it but if I don’t start, I won’t finish.

Another task that I’ve done this morning that took me far longer than it ought was to merge the clipbook libraries.

The program that I use the most is a text editor called Notetab. I do evrything with it, from making brief notes right up to hand-coding my own web pages.

The main advantages that it has are that

you can have several *.txt or *.html files open at any one time
you can build up a whole series of clipbook libraries, so that you can save a regular block of text or coding that you use on a regular basis, and just one click inserts it into your document, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall

There are enough old computers here to sink a ship, and there are backups that date to about 1999, so this morning I started to extract the libraries from the various machines and merge them together.

having done a couple this morning, I then did a big back-up of the laptop and I’ll be backing up my data a couple of times a day from now on, always assuming that I remember.

While I was searching for something else, I came across a rare book going back to AD731 that has now been uploaded to the internet and available for free download. And so I’ve now added a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People to my virtual library.

This is one of the very earliest histories of England and, along with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was the basis of much of what was known about English history in the Dark Ages.

And that reminds me. I brought my Domesday Book with me from the farm, but did I bring my Anglo-Saxon Chronicle?

This muesli that I made really is wicked. It went down a treat on my butties at lunchtime and there is still plenty left. And after lunch I came back into my little office and carried on with Day Four of the High Arctic.

There was a break for a walk around the headland. Although it was raining, it wasn’t all that bad-certainly not bad enough to stop me.

At the ship repairers, Aztec Lady was still there, up on blocks. There was a ladder up to her deck but I couldn’t see any sign of any work being done.

The trawlers are still up there too receiving attention. I’m not sure what they are doing to the pink and white one that we saw being lifted out of the water.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back when they were dredging out the harbour, they had a digger in the tidal basin here at low tide.

It was digging out a deep channel at the outside of the fishing quay by the fish processing plant.

This was done presumably with the aim of making a cut there that would provide access to the quay for a greater part of the day

There’s a whole line of smaller boats that have been queueing up outside the harbour now on their way in to tie up and unload.

If you look at the surrounding tidal harbour, you can see that it’s a long way from being submerged right now.

It certainly seems that the little channel that they dug out is working, and in spades too, which is good news for the port and the town.

More time available to unload means that more fishing boats can use the facilities

Just by way of a change I’d been chatting to a couple of neighbours too – one as I left the building and the second as I arrived back. It’s all go here, isn’t it?

In the mail today I’ve had the bill for the taxe d’habitation – the Council Tax – for next year for my house in the Auvergne. Eat your hearts out, you UK dwellers. My council tax for next year is all of €24:00.

Ingrid phoned me up after I came back. And we had a lengthy chat for a good hour or so about all kinds of things. She’s not too well right now, so I told her that some nice, relaxing sea air would do her the world of good.

There was a pepper left over so tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. I need to rid myself of the perishable stuff before I go away on Sunday.

Then, back into the rain. There was just one other person out there this evening but Minette, the black cat, was there on her windowsill. She had a good stroke and even allowed me to pick her up for 30 seconds.

But for some reason or another, I’m feeling quite tired. No idea why – it’s not as if I had a bad night. But I do seem to think that I’ve not had my usual afternoon doze so that might account for it.

It’s a good enough reason to go to bed.

Saturday 6th October 2018 – I’M BEING SPOILT …

… with exciting and passionate football matches just now.

After the thrills of yesterday, today was US Granvillaise v FC Bastia-Borgo, another club from Corsica.

Kick-off was at 20:00 so I had a quick shower, a shave, a change of clothes and headed off in the driving rain – on foot too – to the Stade Louis Dior.

A tiny crowd, which is hardly surprising given the weather conditions, was treated to quite a spectacle.

The match roared from end to end. Granville had marginally the upper hand because although the midfield wasn’t quite as strong as that of Bastia, the play down the wings was once more excellent.

Driving down the wings, they had the ball in the net (disallowed for an offside) and hit the woodwork a couple of times, but they went into the lead after 20 minutes or so with a low ball driven into the penalty area from the right wing and sidefooted in by the n°8 from 12 yards.

In the second half the match was more even and Bastia had a couple of really excellent chances to score, hitting the woodwork and a lob over the keeper headed off the line. But Granville scored a second – a goal quite similar to the first one.

In the final 5 or so minutes Bastia pushed well forward and looked menacing. But they couldn’t convert the chances that they created. On the other hand they laft huge gaps in the defence and on two occasions, the goalkeeper did really well to deny a Granville attacker in some one-on-one situations.

When the final whistle went we all breathed a sigh of relief. But it as a good win for the team and three hard-earned points.

Last night I had the Sleep Of The Dead and stayed asleep until 11:10 without a single interruption. I’d been on my travels too but as soon as I awoke any memory of where I had been disappeared completely.

After breakfast, in a novel departure (and showing signs that I must be feeling a little better) I attacked the tidying-up and I made a good deal of progress. It now looks almost as if someone lives here rather than a bomb site. Another good day should see it looking just like home.

I had a lengthy chat with Ingrid on the telephone too. We discussed all kinds of things before I had to dash off to watch the match.

On the way home I was soaked to the skin, except where my rain jacket had been. The yellow one that I had bought a few weeks before I went away. That was a good purchase too and I wish that I had worn the overtrousers that I had bought in Montreal.

The fritkot was closed, which was a disappointment. So I came home and to my surprise, I was striding out up the hill just like in the good old days. I must be feeling a little more like it.

With no chips for tea I rustled up a plate of pasta and veg in olive oil. This time, including sprouts because although they had no frozen ones in the supermarket the other day, they did have some fresh ones.

Now I’m off to bed, with no alarm and a good lie in, seeing as it’s Sunday. But there will be an alarm on Monday. I need to get back into the routine.

Monday 13th August 2018 – YOU HAVE TO LAUGH!

A few weeks ago Hans and I were in a restaurant in Liège in Belgium surrounded by beautiful young girls who would surely have attracted our attention 10 years ago, but instead we were talking about our medication and bathroom visits.

This morning, Terry, Ingrid and I were sitting around the breakfast table discussing Old-Age Pensions.

We’re getting old, aren’t we?

Ingrid’s spare bed was quite comfortable, and I was joined during the night by one of her cats. And wasn’t the cat surprised when it discovered that it wasn’t Ingrid stroking it, but a stranger?

Once we’d organised ourselves, we headed off back to my house and began to search for objects that I needed and which I should have fetched when I was here last time. I discovered most of them, but one thing – the most important – has eluded me and I’ve no idea now where it might be.

With the piles of plastic crates that I brought with me, I started to pack up the books, CDs and DVDs that are still down there. But I did say that this was going to be emotional and I was quite right – especially when I discovered the mouse nests, complete with baby mice, in amongst all of the books.

It’s amazing just how much nature has taken over since November 2015 when I was carted off to hospital. To come back and live here, what with all of the weeds and all of the livestock, would be very difficult indeed for me.

In the end, I abandoned the project and locked up the house. I’ll have to come back and do some more when I’m feeling much more like it, whenever that might be.

We went round to say goodbye and thank you to Lisette, and also round to say hello and goodbye to Rob and Nicolette. They have always been very good to me and they were very supportive when I was here a few weeks ago.

We said goodbye to Ingrid too and I arranged with her that once my October session at the hospital is over, she might come to visit me for a while. She starts a training course in October so we’ll have to see how it fits in with her timetable.

Terry’s van is much more powerful than Caliburn but it has a low-ratio gearbox for more torque (which is just as well when you see what it usually pulls around behind it) and so it’s not so quick as Caliburn when it has a load on.

But it went really well on the way back and even though we stopped for half an hour for lunch, it took us a total of 7 hours from door to door on the motorway, and that’s impressive. Having left at 13:15, we were back at 20:15 on the dot despite having planned to be back by 21:00.

We had a quick snack when we returned, and then I went to bed for an early night. I was thoroughly exhausted and I’ve no idea how Terry must have felt.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: Ingrid

Tuesday 21st July 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

Friday 19th June 2020 – GUESS WHO …

Thursday 6th February 2020 – I HAVE DONE SOMETHING …

Wednesday 29th January 2020 – THIS TOWN AND I …

Tuesday 28th January 2020 – IF YOU WANT …

Monday 24th June 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

Thursday 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 – I REMEMBER SAYING …

Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

Monday 18th March 2019 – IT’S HOSPITAL …

Sunday 6th January 2019 – ONE THING THAT …

Thursday 3rd January 2019 – EVEN THOUGH …

Friday 23rd November 2018 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

Saturday 6th October 2018 – I’M BEING SPOILT …

Monday 13th August 2018 – YOU HAVE TO LAUGH!

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