Tag Archives: post office

Wednesday 27th November 2019 – WHAT A WASTE …

… of a morning this was!

Although the night wasn’t as late as many nights have been just recently, I still had a few problems this morning.

I heard the 06:00 alarm go off sure enough and I’m not sure what happened next but when I heard the next alarm go off I thought that I’ll give it a couple of minutes and then get up before the third alarm, like I usually do.

After a few minutes I had a quick glance at the time before I arose. 06:25 it was. So for some unknown reason I had completely missed the second alarm.

At that point I decided that seeing as I had already missed my target time, another couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt any.

The next thing that I remembered was that it was 08:47 and I’d been right away with the fairies.

As indeed I had been. And not on my own either for there were three of us again and we were having something to do with the animals. We were looking after the animals in a kind of laboratory place and a couple of guys came past and were talking to us so we were talking back to them. But for some unknown reason the conversation took off into a kind of 1950s type of scene with all pork-pie hats and that kind of thing. I was speaking to them not as I would today but going back 50 years and everyone was wondering why. They didn’t understand the language for a start so I explained that this was how English would have been 50 years ago in the days of the Teddy Boys, all this sort of thing (of course the Teddy Boys were earlier than that) but this was when the period was, back in the teddy Boy days and they found it difficult to understand. From here it kind of drifted off into a wartime scenario and I can’t remember very much about this second bit where it was during the war.

By the time that my feet were on the floor it was almost 09:30 and I decided to forego breakfast again. Just have a coffee and some juice and then crack on with work. There’s an open-air fruit market on a Wednesday morning as I discovered when I was on one of my marathon walks just recently. I’d planned to go out there for a butcher’s but it won’t be today.

The first thing to attack, as far as work goes, was the dictaphone notes. And a mega-one of 12 minutes at that. All in all, from the night of 20th-21st September this year there were over 20 minutes of dictaphone notes and many of them are quite disturbing.

But the 21st was the morning that I set off from Montreal to ottawa so it was bound to be an extremely turbulent night. And had I listened to what had been going on during the night before I set off, I probably wouldn’t have gone.

But I didn’t, so I did, and that was an end to it. But I’ll be thinking long and hard before I put any of the night’s activities into print in the public domain. They will join the others that have yet to see the light of day until I have had an opportunity to consult m’learned friends.

The plan was to work on until about 11:00 and then go into town for a dejeunette (I’ve decided that I’ll do that every day from now on) and the Post Office to post the letters that I didn’t post yesterday.

But when I did glance at the time, it was just coming up to 12:00. This late start killed me off and it was far too late to go to the Post Office. I carried on with work instead.

Round about 13:00 I broke off and headed down the steps into town. The tide was out, miles out in fact, and all of the boats in the harbour were high and dry.

With the tide being out, the harbour gates would be closed so I headed off round the back of the fish-processing plant and onto the path across the top of the gates and went into town that way.

Striding along as if I were on my way to invade Poland, I was feeling so good that at a certain moment I even broke into a little run. And that’s not been anything that has been seen this side of this Century – me running for no good purpose in broad daylight.

Armed with my dejeunette, I went to inspect the edifice in the Place General de Gaulle.

And I now know what it is, because there was an article about it in the local paper. It seems that Granville has pretentions about being a winter ski resort (don’t ask me how or why because I don’t have a clue either) and they are building an artificial ski-slope.

All that I can say is that the mayor and her cohorts are going downhill fast.

After lunch I carried on with the dictaphone notes. There were some mega-ones in there as you might expect, what with everything that was going on and how I was feeling, but I was determined to break the back of the issue today.

By the time that I knocked off for my afternoon walk, I had reduced the backlog to a mere 69. There are only a handful of really long ones in there, one of which is … errr … over four hours (and that can’t be right) so with a bit of luck I can crack on and whittle them down.

And then I can start on the photos.

When I had gone out earlier in the day it had been quite windy. But now the wind was simply wicked.

The tide was out so I can’t show you just how wild the seas were, but you can have an idea simply by looking at the whitecaps in this photo.

They would have made rather a mess of the sea wall at the harbour or at the Plat Gousset.

Talking of the Plat Gousset … “well, one of us is” – ed … I stopped to have a look down there and to see what was going on.

Just one solitary soul out there on the beach and no more than half a dozen on the promenade itself. And that’s hardly surprising because it really was a dreadful wind.

In fact, we’ve had nothing but gale-force winds since I’ve been back from North America and I don’t know about anyone else but I’m getting rather fed up of this.

It’s a good job that my apartment is a really solid building. If I had owned a paper shop, it would have blown away a long time ago.

My route into town took me down the steps to the Place Marechal Foch, but I didn’t get very far at all.

My trip was interrupted by a young black cat that was wandering around in the undergrowth so I stopped and had a little chat with it. They say that stroking a cat is a very good way of relieving stress, and who can argue with that?

The moggy and I were there for a good few minutes until I moved on.

Not too far as it happened, because down below me the Plce was cordoned off and there was a pile of machinery down there digging up the road surface.

There were a few guys down there too who looked as if they had something to do with it all so I went down the steps to ask them about it.

But they must have seen me coming because they took off and by the time that I reached their van, they had long-since departed and that was that.

I had to content myself with a really good examination of thr work to see what I could see.

Definitely electric trunking and the trace cable for pulling through was there. So I was wondering if this is a bit more of the fibre-optic cabling that’s been going on here for as long as I can remember.

What I’ll do is to come this way tomorrow on my way to the shops and see if the guys are there then, and I can ask them

Down at the Post Office I posted my letters and then I came back here. And with a coffee and a slice of Liz’s cake, I really hit the jackpot.

And big-time too.

A quest that I have been undertaking for almost 43 years has deamatically come to a conclusion.

Let’s turn our clocks back to 22nd january 1977. I was living in Crewe, sharing a flat in Nantwich Road with Allen Marsden. And on the radio came a “Sight and Sound” concert of Santana.

It was the most amazing, most phenomenal live concert that I have ever heard either before or since and, grabbing a tape, I recorded it. I’ve played the tape to death and it’s all worn away now, and over the last 40-odd years I’ve been trying to track down when and where it was recorded. I’ve even been to the BBC to ask them, and they were no help.

But idly surfing the internet looking for something else I suddenly found a Santana live concert from the Hammersmith Odeon on 15th December 1976 and I only had to listen to the first three notes to know that this was exactly the concert for which I had been seeking.

It really is superb! Just listen to “Soul Sacrifice” from about 44:00 onwards.

So listening to Santana on an endless loop I attacked the web page updating. And by the time that I had knocked off for tea, another 30 had bit the dust.

All in all, I call that I good day’s work!

Tea was a burger on a bap, followed by pineapples and blackcurrant sorbet.

And then the evening walk around the headland.

Despite the high winds yet again, the sky was beautifully clear again and once more there was a beautiful view up the coast. The lights of Bréhal-Plage came out perfectly in this picture, taken with the camera being hand-held.

Of course I could have done a lot better with the tripod, but in this wind? You must be joking!

Onwards or upwards then, and round the headland and along the top of the cliffs overlooking the port.

Nothing much has changed in the chantier navale. Spirit of Conrad, Omerta and Aztec Lady are still in there on their blocks, and there’s badger all else for the moment.

So I carried on and broke into a run at my usual spot, much to the amusement of a passer-by and his dog. And tonight I made it all the way over the rise and down the bank as far as the pedestrian crossing.

That’s the farthest that I’ve been

So now it’s bedtime and I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow, with a nice long walk up to LIDL. That should be interesting. I forgot to see what the sale goods are.

Tuesday 26th November 2019 – YET ANOTHER EVENING …

… walk missed tonight.

Not through any lack of willingness or through any other distraction. In fact, I did my best and made about 100 metres down the road before the savage winds and torrential rainstorm drove me back and inside again.

Not the kind of weather to even send a dog out.

What with one thing and another, it was a very late night yet again. The problem is that when you start on one thing, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

Mind you, I still beat the third alarm out of bed. Not by very much, I have to say, but I beat it all the same. Despite having only 405 hours sleep, I have a vague recollection that there was some epitaph for someone who had died and it involved a piece of music. However it wasn’t that piece of music that they were listening to at all but another piece of music completely and I’ve no idea at all why this piece of music was chosen as the title of this obituary

Well, that was what was on the dictaphone and if you can make any sense of it, let me know. There’s a “contact me” button down on the bottom right of your screen.

After the medication and breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes. And after a good session I’m now down to a mere 76. But there are some pretty big entries left in there, including one of FOUR HOURS and so it’s not going to be plain sailing by any means.

Round about 09:o0 I came to a stop as I needed to sort out some info for the tax Office. This involved printing out some stuff and of course it was at this moment that the printer decided to throw a hissy-fit.

It took me an age to sort out everything, including trying out two different blue ink printer cartridges before I could find one that worked. And I even filed a few papers away, and that’s not like me.

By the time that I was organised it was about 11:15 so I hurried off, not realising that I’d forgotten the most important document of them all.

The harbour gates were closed so I went the pretty way over the top.

But at first I couldn’t see the old red Iveco daily that has been parked on the car park by the fish processing plant for quite a while. It wasn’t there

But it’s not gone far. It’s been moved out to the edge of the car park now overlooking the loading and unloading dock, although I’m not sure why.

It was about 11:45 when I reached the Tax Office and although there was just one person ahead of me, I had to wait an age. It was after the place had closed for lunch and i could tell that the guy who saw me wasn’t impressed by that.

Although I was there in the computer, he couldn’t find any details of my visit there last year which was bizarre. There was nothing on record, not even my tax exemption certificate. I just KNEW that I would regret forgetting to take a copy with me.

Anyway, I left him with all of my papers and he can sort them all out himself. If he needs anything else he can write to me.

They had to let me out of the back door and I headed off into town. As I expected, the Post Office was closed for lunch, so I needn’t have written those letters.

But I’m glad that I came because I was able to see them doing something completely bizarre in the Place General de Gaulle by the War Memorial. They’ve heaped up a pile of haystacks, for whatever reason I really don’t know.

And anyway, the boulangerie was open so I bought another dejeunette for lunch. This is becoming a habit. And why not? The bread is always fresh, there’s no waste and the walk down to town and back does me good.

Cheese butties for lunch because I’ve finished off one pot of hummus and there was some cheese left over in an opened packet. have to use that up.

After lunch, I still had these carrots to deal with so I sliced them all up, blanched them with some bay leaves and now that they are thoroughly drained and dried they are now in the freezer freezing away to themselves.

I just have to go there every so often to break them up so they don’t congeal in a solid mass.

That was the cue for me to go for another walk this afternoon.

And just as I stepped out of the door a helicopter flashed right past the car park at almost-sea-level. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or him, but I had the presenc eof mind to snap him as he flew past me.

And it’s come out rather well considering. But I do wonder what is going on with people getting their choppers out all over the place.

That wasn’t the only activity out there either.

The tide had turned and was on its way in and so the fishing boats were slowly making their way back to harbour. There were two trawlers out there and as far as I could see, they were painted in the same livery so presumably they belong to the same people.

They were on their way in to port to unload.

There was something else out there too so I took a photo of it to enlarge back in the apartment.

Despite my best efforts, it’s not improved the situation very much. There’s a smallish boat coming over from the Ile de Chausey and it’s going at quite a rapid rate of knots.

So we’ll have to pass on that one for now and try again some other time.

Although the tide was quite some way out right now, the storm that we were having and the high winds were pushing the waves along quite dramatically.

Down here they were pummelling their way into the sea wall with quite a considerable amount of force.

It would have been nice to have been out there and to see what was going on at high tide.

We’ve had another change in the composition of the visitors to the chantier navale.

We can see the usual suspects. Spirit of Conrad is there, and so are Omerta and Aztec Lady. But where has the fishing boat gone – the modern one that was over to the right behind the others?

It looks as if it’s gone back into the water again. Presumably they’ve finished what it was that they were doing.

As I aid just now, the tide is on the turn and so the fishing boats are on their way back to port.

And as you can see, there’s already quite a large queue of boats down there underneath the fish processing plant busily unloading what they have caught today.

The cranes are working hard pulling up some of the containers, but there’s also one boat unloading its catch into the white van parked underneath.

We haven’t finished the photos either.

You probably noticed in the photo of the Ile de Chausey just now that there seemed to be a rainstorm out to sea. But by the time that I had worked my way around my circuit it had now advanced into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And as I said at the start, we got the lot down our necks later.

Back here I amended a few web pages, worked on the Christmas presents that I needed to order (and that took some ordering too, I’ll tell you, and a big pile of work to go with it) and then stopped for tea. There was half a pepper and a few mushrooms that needed eating so I added a potato to it and made a curry. The fennel and fenugreek that I had bought gave it all a beautiful kick, and the coconut milk left over from the carrot soup added something to it too.

And even better, there’s some left over for later in the week.

No walk because of the weather, so i was chatting on the internet for a while and then writing my notes. But you’ve no idea how quickly the time passes and I’m late for bed.

Let’s hope that I have a good sleep.

Wednesday 20th November 2019 – GUESS WHO’S BEEN …

… a busy boy today then?

And on less that 6 hours sleep too. Because I was still up working at long gone midnight and I was up long before the third alarm at 06:15 too.

Even so, plenty of time to go a-rambling during the night. There had been some kind of exhibition going on and I’d been one of the exhibitors with some paintings, which of course isn’t like me at all. Someone came along to ask me about one of my paintings. I explained that it was the crossing of an army at the River Evra (wherever that might or might not be) back in the days of the Spartan Wars or Greek Wars whatever. She was extremely interested in this so she wanted to buy the picture. But she wanted much more information about it – where was the location to day and so on. She said something about doing the crossing again. I said “well you can’t have because it’s totally different now from how it used to be and you would never get 30,000 men across there in time, and if you had to fight it would be a completely different type of battle”. She said that she was relieved to hear all of that and nevertheless bought the picture. A short while later I was walking around and saw the wrapper for the picture just lying around there in the town on the other side of the river of this town where I was living, so I knew that she had actually bought this river and gone off to hunt it down. I wished her luck because where you had 3 hours to get across, these days it was only 1.5 hours and many people had come a cropper because of this.
Somewhat later, after the first alarm had gone off I must have gone back to sleep for I had this vague image of a boat rather like the Darlwyne sailing into the outer harbour of Granville heading towards the boat hoist to be lifted out of the water and put on the chantier navale. However, before I could recollect anything about it the second alarm went off again.

An early start means an early breakfast and then an early start at work. And for some unknown reason I couldn’t get going. It took me much longer to deal with the dictaphone notes than it ought to have done had I been focused.

What with a few interruptions of little consequence it was extremely late before I had finished and had to fly down into town to reach the Post Office before it closed for lunch.

As usual, I poked my head over the city walls and could see that our old friend Thora had arrived in port.

As I only had the standard lens on the Nikon 1 which isn’t so good at distance, I went down the steps to the rue du Port and along the quayside until I could pick up a really good view of her.

Here she is in all her glory unloading what looks like scrap metal into a big container on the back of that lorry there.

The parcel that was waiting for me at the Post Office wasn’t the one that I was expecting unfortunately. I was hoping that my mixing table would have arrived from Germany by now but instead, it was finally the new bracelet for my fitbit.

Bright blue too which is a shame but beggars can’t be choosers.

And while I was down in the town I went to pick up another dejeunette for lunch.

There’s a message in my e-mails that the microphone kit that I borrow is wanted elsewhere by others. So in the absence of the mixing desk I had to get a wiggle on and finish off Project 003.

Once more, my big desktop computer wouldn’t pick up the microphone kit, but the new laptop did and so I did the work on that and copied it over. It’s rather confusing doing it that way and I erased some of my work on more than one occasion. But it’s complete and, even though I say so myself, it’s not too bad at all.

That was the cue to go out for my afternoon walk.

Around the city walls for a change this afternoon, although in the distance I saw one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming across to Granville.

Had I gone for my usual post-prandial perambulation around the headland I would have had a much better view of it than this one. But then, beggars can’t be choosers and I take what I’m given.

No-one on the beach at Plat Gousset, which is hardly a surprise in this strong, bitter wind that’s blowing.

Although there was no storm today at sea, the waves were pretty strong and powerful and we had a lovely rolling sea out there, with the waves coming onto the beach with some incredible force.

No, it’s not at all the right kind of weather to be contemplating spending a day by the seaside.

Round the walls on the southern side, the Joly France ferry has now arrived at the harbour and is gently picking its way over the sandbar into the outer harbour to disgorge its passengers.

But while we’re on the subject of Joly France, it seems that my speculation about that new ship, the Chausiais is spot on. There was an article in the local paper this morning about its arrival and how it will indeed be carrying freight across to the Ile de Chausey and back.

“And to other places too” went the article, that must surely be sending a shiver down the spine of the owners of Normandy Trader and Thora

Yes, everyone over here is preparing for Brexit in his or her own little way. The issue of cargo and fishing permits is going to be a very contentious issue after Brexit and I’m sure that many people don’t quite understand what exactly will hit them.

Thora meanwile continues on her little Bonhomme de Chemin at least for now. And she seems to have acquired a freezer container as well as her storage container.

Clearly her owners have a great deal of faith in the future, which is always good news. I hope that it isn’t misplaced and I wish them the best of luck.

Back here I started to work on project D001. Yes, I have many projects on the go right now. And this needs to be done quickly as I won’t have a mike to do it after tomorrow at 09:00 if my mixing desk doesn’t come soon.

The music is finished now and I’m surprised because it was quite an effort. There was a great deal of editing to do as well as hunting down some “applause” soundbites, and for a cobbled-together assemblage it could have come out much worse.

Of course I can hear the joins, but then I made them. Others might be struggling to find them all.

Tea was one of the many vegan burgers that are around here, with pasta and veg, and then I went out for my evening walk around the headland.

However I didn’t get far. There was a light right out there off Brehal sur mer and I wondered what it was.

It turns out that it’s a fishing boat. And I find that very bizarre because I have never ever seen a fishing boat right over there on that side of the bay before.

What’s probably happening is that with the expected wars over fishing grounds aftee Brexit, they are trying new areas to see what they can find.

It’s worth mentioning à propos Brexit, that it’s true that there are a great number of French fishing boats fishing in UK waters.

But there’s a reason for that. When the fishing permits were doled out, the British didn’t want the inshore permits as the kind of fish that are caught there are not the kind that the British usaually eat.

The French on the other hand really go for that so they swapped their deep-sea fishery permits for the British inshore ones. And then of course the British deep-sea fisheries ran aground with the cod moratorium in 1992.

So it’s really the fault of the greedy British trawler owners that the French are fishing off their coasts and they aren’t. Of course, the British can always push for a renegotiation of the fishing permits, but when their representative on the EU’s Fisheries Committee is Nigel Garbage (how I love my auto-correct!) who has only ever attended 1 out of 47 Fisheries Committee meetings since he was appointed, what do you expect.

He just parrots that it’s all the EU’s fault – not his and not the trawler owners – and the stupid, gullible naive Brits believe him too. We mustn’t let the facts get in the way of a good pile of anti-EU drivel now, must we?

Abandoning yet another good rant for now, I carried on with my walk, and notice that Thora seems to have moved berth. Are we expecting Normandy Trader on the early morning tide?

On that note I ran (for all of about 300 metres) back here to carry on work. There’s a lot to do and it won’t be done on its own.

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 13th November 2019 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

… for any of my usual walks today, and neither have I taken any photos.

The fact is that I’ve been really busy today what with one thing and another (and once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are).

Last night wasn’t as early a night as I was expecting. 00:30 and I was still up and about. Mind you, I was soon in bed and off on another journey or two. And why is it that as soon as I reach for the dictaphone I lose immediately any recollection of what it is that i’m doing or have been doing?
But whatever it was, later on I was in bed and I heard this noise or scrambling going on and I started to wake up, and it was Claire Brierley of all people saying to someone “I’m sending the taxi back for him and it’ll be ready at 08:55”. So I wondered what the heck was going on so I thought that I’d better get up. So I got up and dressed just in time to see her disappearing in a yellow and white two-tone taxi, an old Austin A40 “Cambridge”, this square type with round rear lights. Off they went and I went downstairs and loitered around for a bit. It suddenly occurred to me that it was the office party (… office trip?…) and they were leaving at 09:05 and no-one had woken me up and I don’t know why. So it got to 08:55 and the taxi hadn’t turned up, and 09:00 and at 09:05 he turned up. I the meantime, I think that someone (Joanie and her mother?) had been going through the old taxi records that we had been keeping and she had been asking questions about the fares, like “today to go from (… somewhere …) to Crewe railway station is £1:75. How much was it in your day?” I replied “£1:10 or something” and we had quite a long chat about that. Anyway eventually my taxi arrived and there was this thing in Canada about tipping locally – make sure that you give a good tip, for that way your money stays with the driver and stays local and can work its way back through the economy again. I looked at my cash and for a cheap fare I’d be giving him a huge tip by proportion. I can’t remember whether or not I got into the taxi but I was back where I started from in like a church hall or something – a generic church hall with thick brick pillars protruding from the walls and so on. A little girl was there so I said to her “go on, sing me a nursery rhyme” but she came out with some kind of fantasy poem. In the end Nicole (what’s she doing here?), who was her mother got her to say a little poem for me which was very nice.

So that’s enough of that. I beat the third alarm again and went for an early medication and breakfast. Following which, I bit the bullet and sat down with these dictaphone note that I have been trying to avoid.

And I was right about something that I said back at the time – and that is that they will make interesting reading. And I’m beginning to see what was going on in my subconscious during that particular time.

Ahh well – that’s 7 of them out of the way. Only another 100 to go, and I hope that they don’t make as much grim reading as that last 7 of them did. Otherwise I’ll be back to where I was in my head four or five weeks ago.

At 10:00 I was picked up by this guy who drove me to Coudeville-Plage to see (a video of) this musician. I’m not sure what that was all about at all but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

He brought me back to Granville but I hopped out in the town. I had to pick up a parcel from the Post Office (my microphones have come) and also a baguette for lunch. And I found, to my delight, that the local boulangerie does what it calls dejeunettes, two-thirds-size baguettes for €0:50. Exactly the size that I need for my lunch.

And this home-made hummus that I made the other day is wicked. I’m enjoying every mouthful of it and there is plenty more to come.

This afternoon there were a few things to do and then Caliburn and I set off. We had things to do.

First call was at the Tax Office. I’ve had a reminder that I hadn’t filled in a tax return. If you think that going in to pick one up is easy, then you’re in for a big surprise. I had to queue for over half an hour just to see the receptionist.

He couldn’t give me a form over the counter. “Ohh no!” I had to go to see his colleague.

There was a queue in front of me and for about 20 minutes it didn’t move an inch. Eventually I thought “badger this for a game of soldiers. I’ll miss the Post”. I headed off back to Caliburn and we drove out of town to the big central sorting office for this region and dropped off my parcel.

Back at the Tax Office to resume my place in the queue and wait for another 20 minutes until I was seen. All in all I reckoned that it was about an hour and a half between my initial arrival and being seen.

Even then, I couldn’t have a Tax Return. The woman there told me what she needed me to supply and told me to bring it back. But one thing is certain – and that is that after all of this performance I’ll be registering on-line to do it next year.

Back here, I needed to complete the paperwork for the parcel that I had sent back and also to deal with the website updates. The Norse in Newfoundland can wait until the end – I did another 20 pages elsewhere.

But I’ve found to my dismay that I’ve left off something from the header menu. But then, this is why I went into Javascript, so that I can amend just one file and it will update everything else.

At least, I hope that it will.

For tea I finished off the stuffing from the other night, and finished off the taco rolls as well. I’ll have to buy some more of them because they are nice.

No walk this evening, so my fitbit is going to make depressing reading. But it can’t be helped. Instead, I’ve been downloading some digital music for some of the albums that I own. Dozens of it, in fact. And I’m finding albums that I didn’t even realise that I owned.

Anyway, enough of this. I’m off to bed. An early start in the morning because I mustn’t forget that my train leaves half an hour earlier than usual.

And I want to be on it.

Thursday 10th October 2019 – I DON’T UNDERSTAND …

… why, but I am just totally stressed out right now to an extent that I didn’t know was possible.

There has been an “incident” (which I’m not going to relate) that not only is nothing to do with me, but doesn’t even relate to me at all and doesn’t even affect me in the slightest, but for some reason it has got deep under my skin.

One thing that the doctors told me is that in order to prolong my life as much as possible I have to avoid all kinds of stresses and strains and any kind of emotional impact.

With having such a low blood count as I do, my heart is having to beat twice as fast and i have to breathe twice as fast to provide enough oxygen to my vital organs. It’s only because I have a coeur de champion that I have kept going for so long, but if I keep on going like today my days are definitely numbered.

I need to get a grip.

And that doesn’t apply just to this particular incident either. Despite an early night, and despite sleeping right through the alarms this morning, it was still 07:20 before I surfaced.

All of the rubbish needed taking down to the street for the dustmen so I took it down before breakfast.

Another leisurely morning and then I went up to the tire depot. Things weren’t quite so busy today and rather like my namesake the mathematician, I did three fifths of five eights of … errr … absolutely nothing. I ended up sleeping for most of the day and that is worrying me intently.

Well, I didn;t actually do absolutely nothing. I taught Zoe to use the new tyre comparison program that I uploaded, and even found a few new features on it too.

Another thing that I did, which ought to have made my blood boil but didn’t, much to my surprise, was to give someone a piece of my mind down the telephone.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I ordered a chip for Strider to deal with his excessive fuel consumption. It was sent back to the supplier because “insufficient address”. A week or so ago I telephoned the supplier, amended the address slightly and so they posted it again.

Only to have it returned a second time.

I telephoned the maildrop place in Mars Hill, just across the border in the USA to ask why they keep on returning it.
“But you don’t have an account with us”
“What do you mean ‘an account’? We’ve been having stuff sent to you for as long as I can remember (which is at least 18 years) and we’ve never needed an account”.
“Well, you do now since we’ve taken it over”
“So if that’s the case, why didn’t you ring up and tell all of your customers that the procedures have changed? And why did you refuse my parcel when my phone number is on the address label and you could have invited me to come over and open an account?”

No answer.

But the suppliers are very understanding and they are sending it now by post direct to Canada (which is what I should have done in the fist place), and it’ll arrive after I’ve returned home of course.

Trying to save pennies here and there is ending up costing me a fortune. It’s false economy.

And people complain about a recession and how things are tight. That guy in Mars Hill has just lost $7:00 because he’s too lazy to pick up the phone and make a phone call.

Later on I gave Darren a hand with the one-tonne Dually which he drove home while I took the post to the Post Office, and then I drove him back to the garage to pick up the three-tonner.

And if you are wondering whether that means that we finally have all of the cars and trucks (except the two twenty-tonners and the artic tractor of course) back at home (first time since I don’t know when) then Rachel’s Golf has had to go to have an exchange driveshaft exchanged once more. Nothing seems to last like it did, but even so, 18 months for a driveshaft is rather extreme).

Rachel cooked a lovely meal for tea and then I helped with the washing and drying. Now I’m sitting in my bedroom not doing all that much right now.

Except to listen to the music. It has a very calming influence on me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and Tinsley Ellis’ “Mystery To Me” is about as good as gets. I’ve been teaching myself to play the lead guitar break (the one from 03:10) on the bass as a way of organising myself.

Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. The only thing wrong with today though was my attitude and I need to do something about that.

Tuesday 8th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

… Mr Computer Repair Man again today.

having revelled in my triumphs a few days ago about getting my old Acer Laptop up and running after it crashed out on me in the USA and being able to salvage all of the data, down at the office today Rachel bunged another old laptop at me to see if I could raise that one from the dead too.

I spent a couple of hours working on it and, as much to my own surprise as anyone else’s, it’s now up and running again with not only all of the data still intact but all of the programs too.

It’s an old 2009 Lenovo with a 1.3ghz processor running Windows 7, but now that it’s working again it’s quite sprightly for its age as long as you don’t try to do anything too ambitious with it, but for taking down to the storeroom to do an inventory (which is why it was here in the first place) it’s just the job.

And talking of the storeroom, I’ve checked again and we do have indeed a large supply of 165/80 x 13 and 185/70 x 13 tyres for Ford Cortinas, as well as several other obsolete sizes too for other makes, so I’ve been posting the info on various North American classic car groups to try to drum up the sales.

All in all, I’ve had quite a busy morning.

A relaxing morning too. Although I heard all of the alarms go off, it was about 07:00 when I finally managed to raise myself from the dead. And with no school run this morning I was able to have a leisurely start to the day.

Not to transcribe the dictaphone notes though. There’s a couple on there from during the night and I’ll have to copy those over as soon as I can.

For once, Cujo the Killer Cat co-operated with me so I was able to leave the house pretty much when I wanted to without having to hunt her down.

This afternoon was more running around. Taking the cheques to be posted (it’s that time of the year) mainly.

But I had another task assigned to me which I managed to accomplish. In the garage is a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up with a major electrical problem. With my little home-made testing apparatus I can tell that there’s a live feed reaching the relays at contacts where no live feed should be. This points to a short circuit in the fuse box somewhere and these are impossible to repair.

The easy answer is to replace the fuse box but, to my amazement (or maybe not, because I’ve long-since ceased to be amazed at the antics of modern motor manufacturers) the part is “no longer available” from the manufacturers.

Consequently, with the repaired laptop (and I’m glad now that I repaired it), I’ve been scouring the scrapyards of North America and I’ve eventually tracked down a rear-ended Dodge of the correct year and model in a scrapyard in Colorado.

A photo of the part on that truck looks identical to the one here, and so that’s now winging its way northwards in our direction. And who knows? We might even be able to make this Dodge start properly without having to hot-wire it all the time.

Fighting off waves of fatigue yet again (and I’ve no idea why) I went to pick up Amber from cheerleading practice after school, only to find that our little visitor had stayed behind too. Never mind the crowded cab when we have half-a-million strong therein by the time we get to Woodstock, it was pretty cramped in there with three, but we managed all the same.

Everyone was out this evening so I made myself some potato thins with onions, carrots garlic and assorted herbs with some vegan sausages, and it was delicious. Especially when followed down by one of the vegan muffins from the weekend.

Later this evening after tea I retreated to my room. I’m not feeling myself at the moment … “and quite right too” – ed … so some peace and quiet will do me good. I’m beginning to feel the strain and I really need a couple of days in bed to haul myself up again, but I doubt whether that will happen any time soon.

Looking at my schedule over the past three and a half months, it would have been pretty hectic for a younger person in good health. For an older person who is slowly dying, it’s been taxing to the limit and beyond.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Monday 7th October 2019 – JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

Just pulling into the yard this evening with Amber after picking her up after cheerleading practice when Rachel stuck her head out of the door
“Could you go down to the tyre depot and pick up Darren?”

So I dropped off my passenger and headed off to my next job, musing that I ought to fit a meter under Strider’s dashboard and a taxi sign on the roof. When I sold my taxi business in 1989 I thought that I had put this kind of thing well-and-truly to bed.

But no. It was just like old times.

However, if anyone thinks that I’m complaining or that I’m unhappy about it, then that’s far from the truth. I was actually enjoying myself being out and about, especially with some decent music churning away on Strider’s hi-fi.

Actually, one of my old Mancunian acquaintances had made an appearance on my playlist. And as I listened to the words, I realised that they are really quite appropriate to the situation in which I have found myself these days as I struggle with my illness and events associated with it all.

The killer lives inside me: yes, I can feel him move
Sometimes he’s lightly sleeping in the quiet of his room
But then his eyes will rise and stare through mine;
He’ll speak my words and slice my mind inside
Yes the killer lives

Angels live inside me: I can feel them smile…
Their presence strokes and soothes the tempest in my mind
And their love can heal the wounds that I have wrought
They watch me as I go to fall – well, I know I shall be caught
While the angels live

And I too, live inside me and very often don’t know who I am
I know I’m not a hero, but I hope that I’m not damned:
I’m just a man, and killers, angels, all are me:
Dictators, saviours, refugees in war and peace
As long as Man lives…

Because, make no mistake, I am starting to struggle now. I had a really miserable afternoon yesterday and even though I was in bed early and had (for once) a really decent night’s sleep, I wasn’t feeling much better.

Luckily the girls had a lift into school so that I could take things easy this morning. I was in no hurry to surface. I had some food for breakfast, and a coffee, and then a play around on the laptop doing some stuff.

Zoe had told me when she left that she hadn’t been able to find Cujo the Killer Cat, so before I left I tried to hunt her down so that I could put her in one of the rooms where there’s no alarm sensor.

45 minutes I spent trying to find that blasted cat and when I went to the front door to accept a huge parcel delivery, there she was sitting on the bonnet of Strider. Outside all the time!

For most of the day I’ve been running around western New Brunswick fetching parts. It’s been really busy at work today. What added to the confusion was that just as everyone had something important to do, we had a delivery of 72 winter tyres and they all needed sorting and stacking.

Not only that, I’ve been doing my salemanship efforts today. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m something of an expert in Ford Cortina Mk III, Mk IV and Mk V, having made my fortune with them when I ran my taxi company. There are one or two in North America and someone posted on a forum that he couldn’t find any tyres anywhere to fit them

This place where I’m working right now is like an Aladdin’s Cave of treasures dating back years so I had a good look around. And sure enough, there are a handful just the correct size stuck down the back of the depot. And so I put an advert on the appropriate forum.

Back here, still in the driving rainstorm, i went to the Post Office on the way home to post the letters and then came back for tea. Plenty of pasta left over from the weekend, and rice pudding left over from last week. A meal fit for a king.

And then out taxiing until late. Just like old times.

But that’s enough for tonight, I reckon. I’m going to bed and I’m hoping to sleep. I need to pull myself round if I can but then again it’s been almost four months since my last blood transfusion, which I’m supposed to have every four weeks.

But do I care? Of course not. I’ve had a good time. And who wants to lie in bed at home to sit and stare at the bedroom ceiling anyway?

Monday 9th September 2019 – WITH HAVING TO …

… go to bed early last night in order to be on form for today, it goes without saying that I had another bad night last night.

Still awake at 01:30, and when I finally did drop off, it was just in 20 minute segments where I was off on various travels. When I unwind the dictaphone at some point in the future I can tell you all about them, but what I can say is that at one point Castor and I were joined just for a change by Pollux.

Is it the first time that the aforementioned has accompanied me on a nocturnal voyage? I shall have to check

And it was one of those nights where I kept stepping back into the voyage at exactly the same place that I had stepped out. That’s something that I’m noticing is happening more and more frequently these days and when I was having similar situations back 15 or so years ago, I found myself able eventually to move onto a third plane, and that’s when it all became exciting.

That was during the period that we were researching dreams (that lasted from about 1998 to 2006 or so) for someone’s PhD at University and so our individual research was never individually published. But I still have the notes somewhere and I’ll have to look them out when I’m back home.

The spell was however unfortunately broken round about 04:00. The batteries in the dictaphone went flat at an inopportune moment and, determined not to miss a moment, I left the bed for a spare set.

They were flat too so I had to find some more and in the meantime find the charger to charge up the flat ones.

Unfortunately this meant that by the time that I was organised and went back to bed, I’d missed my spot and ended up going off somewhere else instead and isn’t that a shame?

When Amber banged on my door, I’d been up for quite a while. Before the third alarm in fact and that’s a rare deal right now. So we went outside ready for school.

Amber doesn’t like the idea of travelling cramped up in Strider so she had negotiated use of her mother’s car for me. It was cold, damp, misty and foggy outside and I had to clean off the car before we could go anywhere.

We negotiated out way through the queues at the covered bridge (the highway is down) and much to my (and everyone else’s) surprise, the St John River valley was clear of fog and mist. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s usually the place that GETS it first.

The girls clambered out at school and I drove back to the Co-op for apples (seems that we have a little fruit-eater amongst us) and to Tim Horton’s for bagels for me for breakfast.

At the tyre depot the morning passed quickly. There were lots of people around there and we were quite busy. I sorted out some paperwork and then, grasping the nettle, I telephoned the hospital back in Leuven.

They offered me a blood transfusion on 11th October on a “take it or leave it” basis. And so I took it. After all, chemotherapy and mapthera didn’t work as we know and the product that they are trying out on me is still in the trial stage so it’s not licensed as yet in North America.

And with having missed already three of my four-weekly transfusions, heaven alone knows what my blood count might be like. It was knocking on the “critical level” back in June.

Nevertheless, I’m going to try to see if I can push it back a week or so. I have may things to do that are as yet undone and there are many opportunities waiting to come my way and that won’t be accomplished if I’m not here.

After that I went to see Ellen. She’s quite ill too and doesn’t look anything like the woman that I remember. It’s a shame but I reckon that we will both be stoking the fires of eternity together, and quite soon too. But I kept her company for an hour or so and we had a good chat.

At lunchtime I took Rachel’s car back home and picked up Strider. Then went to the Irving for lunch. Afterwards I hopped off to pick up my mail from my mail box but SHOCK! HORROR! the whole battery or mailboxes out on the River du Chute road has been flattened.

A brief drive enabled me to find another battery of mailboxes but my key didn’t work. Off to the Post Office then, where she explained that the boxes have been moved and I needed a new key. She confirmed my Canada address and gave me a new key to a different box

But even more SHOCK! HORROR! It seems that my new licence tags for Strider haven’t come through. They expire at the end of the month so I need to chase them up before I go off to Montreal and Ottawa.

And I forgot to add that with the road up there being as it is and with Strider being as he is, it was an exceedingly lively drive. Next time that I go to Labrador I shall need to take with me a change of underwear

This afternoon there was yet more work to be done. Darren needed to take some heavy springs down to the welders in Woodstock so I went along to help. By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong but in the big Chevrolet lorry there was plenty of room.

Having brought the petrol back on Saturday it was the turn of the diesel. But this time, now that the lorry is mobile again, we had a proper licensed fuel tank to move the stuff about.

I have deliberately refrained from mention the world’s worst customer service that I have ever received – service that would knock Belgium’s legendary incivility to its customers into a cocked hat.

I rang Walmart in Fargo about the splash screen on my laptop and after repeating my story 7 times to 7 different people the best advice that I was given was to “reformat your hard drive and tough s**t for your data”.

That’s advice and assistance that I can well do without.

There was a major issue trying to reconcile the cash account this evening on closing so we had to stay behind to resolve the problem. Eventually, at about 18:30 we suddenly twigged – payments received after closing on Saturday lunchtime, credited though on Saturday, had been put into the till on Monday instead of being added to Saturday’s pouch.

Of course, neither I nor Rachel had been there at close on Saturday or opening on Monday, had we?

It meant that we weren’t back home until 19:00 and, much to our surprise, the girls had cooked tea. I went for a shower afterwards and then tried some of Rachel’s home-brew ice coffee, which was delicious.

Now even though it’s early, I’m off to bed. It seems that the school run is required for tomorrow (the school bus arrives too late, what with the issues on the bridge and Amber has already been cautioned once by an unreasonable Principal, and she can’t take a passenger on her scooter) and once more, Yours Truly has drawn the short straw.

And a big hello to my new readers from Montreal and Mississauga.

Friday 14th June 2019 – HOW MANY …

… employees of the Credit Agricole Bank does it take to sign a form and put a rubber stamp on it?

The answer is “at least three” – and if the girl who finally dealt with me went to see a colleague or two when she disappeared with my form, it might even be more than that.

Yes, I’ve been out and about today, haven’t I? I need to push on and exercise myself, and as there was a letter to post (my hospital bill), a blood test result to pick up, and a form for the bank to sign, this afternoon seemed like as good a time as any.

Today started off quite surprisingly.

Despite the issues of yesterday I was awake at 04:10 and couldn’t go back to sleep at all. By 05:40 I had given it up as a bad job and was up and about.

To my surprise, the alarm didn’t go off. We had had another upgrade during the night that had switched off the phone. I really must do something about that.

And I’ve been a very busy boy too. I’ve started to transcribe the … gulp … 78 voice files off the dictaphone. I need to catch up on that, and catch up quickly if I’m to be up-to-date before I go away.

Another thing too is that I steam-cleaned the fridge. In an effort to tidy up and clean up, and with the ice box iced up, that was a good place to start. It took a good while but now it looks like it’s supposed to.

A few items went to that great dustbin in the sky and now there is tons of room in there. Well, maybe not tons, but plenty of room all the same.

And that took it out of me a little and I had a little … errr … relax for about 15 minutes.

After lunch I had a shower (the first “proper” shower for a while) and then attended to the accounts. That led to my walk up town.

There wasn’t all that much excitement out there this afternoon.

Down on the docks we had a fuel lorry lined up ready to refuel one of the trawlers, and that was about that.

First stop was the laboratory for my blood test results from Wednesday. Some of the results are right off the scale, but bad as they might be, none are quite as wild as the “vitesse de sedimentation”.

That should be less than 9, and my figure is 123. I’ll have to see what the doctor has to say about that.

Then to the bank and the pantomime in there. It’s do do with my Belgian pension, and I bet that they are spending more on the admin of it than they will on the monthly payments.

But I did have some luck there;

There’s a special offer there right now on Savings Accounts, and for once I just about fall into the correct category. So I took advantage.

At the Post Office I posted off my payment to the hospital and then staggered up the hill back home. You’ve no idea how unfit I’ve become after two or three weeks without much exercise.

The knee was aching rather a lot by the time that I returned but as Rosemary rang me up for a long chat, I sat with my leg up on a chair for an hour and twenty-four minutes and that eased it off.

While I was tidying up the fridge I threw away some horribly out-of-date stuff but I found some lentil-and-carrot-burgers on the point of expiry, so I had one of those with some pasta, vegetables and tomato sauce.

This evening I had a chat with Liz and now I’m off for an early night. I’m surprised that I’ve kept going for as long as I have and so a good sleep will do me good after my walk.

Tuesday 16th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

Yes, people. Yours Truly went to the bank today – and left his card in the machine, didn’t he?

And I didn’t intend to. I went to draw out some cash, and made sure that my money and card were safely stashed away. But then, being totally puzzled by the credit balance, I put the card back into consult the transactions, didn’t I?

So that’s today’s bad news. The good news is that the balance is indeed correct. Something upon which I have been working for a few weeks and which has involved several trips to Brussels over the years has finally come up trumps.

And so a new camera might be on the way, as well as a fretless five-string bass guitar. I’m allowed to reward myself for my efforts.

last night was a bad night yet again. I managed to just about stay awake for all of the film, but then I couldn’t drop off properly. Drifting away and drifting back in as the fancy took me.

Plenty of time to go on several rambles though, and when I return home, I can tell you all about them.

One, though, sticks in my mind. I was travelling yet again with a group of people, several of whom were people with whom I had been on the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. I walked into a railway station buffet and sitting in there was the Asian girl who had been pn board. She was sitting on her own so I went to sit by her. asked her what had happened to Boon (her husband), to which she replied that he was in their room resting. Later on, I was on the platform and Marian the photographer was there. She was taking a photo of something on the wall, and stepping further and further back. I shouted at her to stop because she was in danger of falling off the platform. However, she still shuffled back a few paces regardless of my shouting, and took her photo. When she finished I told her to look behind her, which she did and let out a gasp. “You were on the point of falling off the edge just there” I told her. She replied “yes” so I went on to say that her back would have been broken on the rails too. We walked down the platform towards the end of the station, passing a few shops and the buffet on the way. Some of them were brightly illiminated with pink lights, all very artistically. One of them particularly caught my eye, but it took me a while to sort out my camera, and just as I was on the point of photographing it, the buffet closed and they switched off the lights and I was so disappointed.

With no alarm this morning (I’m allowed to recover my lack of lie-in on Sunday) it was about 08:30 that I finally arose from the Dead.

It was rather a late breakfast, of course, and then I rather shamefully fell asleep on the sofa for about 20 minutes.

As a result I was rather late going for a walk into town this morning. I did a tour of a few shops.

First of all though I went to the Herbert Hooverplein to see the spring daffodils. They are really beautiful, just as you might expect to see in Flanders and the Netherlands

At the shops, FNAC came up with nothing, but Zeeman produced a shoulder sports-bag for just €4:99.

The backpack is too big to carry around for casual trips and this bag folds up quite nicely into a small space at the bottom of the rucksack to carry around when I’m on a voyage.

At the bank I forgot my card, as I said, and then I went to the Loving Hut. But that’s now officially crossed off my list as the products in there are fewer and fewer, and more and more expensive. On the other hand, the bio shop across town, the Origin’O by the Vismarkt, has everything that I need, including vegan grated cheese.

Back to the bank about my card but it was closed for lunch so I rang up and stopped the card. Now I’ll have to apply for a new one.

On the way back I had an ice-cream now that the stall is open for the summer, and then I want to sit in the sunshine to eat it.

At the Universun Tavern on the corner of the Tiensestraat and the Herbert Hooverplein, they had set out all of the tables so that people could sit in the sun.

It’s definitely a sign that summer is acumen in.

At the Spar shop I picked up a baguette for lunch to eat with a tomato and my vegan cheese.

This afternoon I fell asleep yet again and then struggled to stay away, not being able to concentrate on anything.

In the end, I read a couple of articles about the High Arctic that I had downloaded the other day.

Tea tonight was the other vegan burger with potatoes and vegetables followed by some fruit, and then I went for a walk around outside to digest my meal.

One route that I don’t usually follow is the Blijde Inkomststraat, the street that goes down to the back of the Herbert Hooverplein and the University Library.

There was this beautiful Flemish maison du maitre down there, and it was all illuminated in the dusk. It’s really brought out the best in the carved statues on the wall above the door.

But my purpose in going out was to see the new fountain.

I’d had a good look at it earlier but I thought that it might be nicely illuminated in the evening and that would make a really good photograph.

But that was something of a disappointment. I was hoping to see it much better-illuminated than this. They really ought to do better.

Now, I’m all packed and ready to leave for home. It’s an early start as you know so I need to be on form.

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 – WINTER IS …

… back again.

When I awoke this morning, it was raining. In fact it rained for most of the early part of the day and was still going at lunchtime. And so I ate my butties indoors.

This afternoon it stopped and the sun came out for a while. But this evening there is a dreadful gale howling around outside and it’s freezing cold. In fact, I only made a few hundred metres of my evening walk before I changed my mind and came back indoors.

This morning, much to my surprise, I was up and about by 06:20. And it’s been a long time since that’s happened too.

There was plenty of time to go on my travels too. Last night I was in New York with a group of people and we came across a taxi driver – a little middle-aged type of typical Brooklyner. We were talking about him and his business and his car. I crawled underneath his car to have a look. It was in reasonable condition with oil splattered around all underneath but the paint was coming off the underneath and the surface was rusty. I got him to come down and have a look underneath it, and I explained to him that if he were to to the underneath of this and touch up the bodywork there was no reason why this car couldn’t go on for ever. I was showing off a little I have to admit. He was looking at a kind of dirt guard that went underneath the car. One of the nuts had come off the studs so that’s why the car was making a noise from underneath, he said, with the dirt guard loose in once corner. We were chatting about another taxi driver friend of mine who worked from 18:00 Friday to 03:00 Saturday, from 12:00 Saturday to 03:00 Sunday and from 12:00 Sunday to 03:00 Monday. He made enough out of that to live off for the whole of the rest of the week. This guy was going “wow”. I then had to sit down and do his accounts but I had no idea what to do. I’d found an explanatory booklet so I’d sit down with this guy and work out some accounts. There was a girl there – it might even have been Nerina – who said that she needed her accounts doing too. I replied that once I had done this guy I would have more of an idea of how to do them. I could then sit down and do hers properly. But I seem to recall having been in this taxi with this guy going uphill and the car was coughing and spluttering a little. But going downhill again it picked up. He said that it was the spider that was always doing this when he goes uphill. What he was meaning were the plug leads, as I eventually worked out. Of course it would be a V8 under the bonnet

After breakfast I attacked the outstanding pile of work.

First problem was to untangle the mess in which my blog had ended up last night. I must have clicked inadvertantly on an “update now” link that must have popped up while I was working. My blog hung up for 20 minutes and when it finally reloaded, it had gone back to how it was when it uploaded to the previous version.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the fun and games that I had trying to configure it back then, and I was in no state to do it last night.

Last time, it took me a good few weeks to sort it out and it’s still not how I like it. This time I had to do it straight away and it took a good couple of hours before it was back to how it should be.

That was depressing.

I did a couple of test runs with a few blog entries, and it needed a further tweak or two.

Once I’d done that, I then had other work to do. A large amount of correspondence had built up so I spent much of the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon after lunch scanning a few documents, printing them out, and writing a few letters.

And then, of course, filing away the papers. I’m getting good at this now.

Once I’d done all of the letters and attachments, i went down into town.

In the harbour this afternoon was a boat that I didn’t recognise, and so fighting my way through a pack of schoolkids on a classe découverte, I went to see what it was.

It turns out that it’s Les Bouchots de Chausey, and we’ve seen her before in the harbour.

While I was there, I went to have a look at the big yacht that has been there for a few days in the berth usually occupied by Marité.

She is in fact displaying a nameboard to say that she’s La Granvillaise, and if that’s really the case, then all I can say is that they have done a really good job on her because I didn’t recognise her at all.

There were a few people loitering around her, and ordinarily I would have gone over to chat to them, but they seemed to be very busy working.

Leaving the port, I wandered over to the Post Office. A couple of my letters went straight into the letter box thanks to La Poste’s system of stamped envelopes. As for the rest, they needed to be weighed and stamped. Everything in there is now automatic, just as Alvin Tofler predicted in The Third Wave.

On the way back, I went to the Boulevard des 2eme et 202eme de ligne to inspect the chantier where they are repairing the wall that was closed off.

They are doing a good job with that and I’m reasonably impressed. But it brings back many happy memories when I spent a whole summer in 2012 doing that down on the farm.

So having admired the workings, I came back for a drink of hot chocolate.

i spent the next few hours doing a pile of dictaphone notes. That’s another lot gone into the great filing cabinet in the sky. I’ve reached the notes for my trip around the Somme battlefield now.

Tea was some taco wraps with stuffing, followed by apple crumble.

We had the half-walk this evening, but that’s enough. I came back in and did some more work. And now it’s time for an early night. I’ve had a long day and, much to my surprise, I managed not to crash out at all.

les bouchots de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 1st April 2019 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was something special.

Not because it was delicious, which it was as it happens, but that’s not the point. The fact that the main ingredients were prepared with my own fair hands.

We had a slice of the vegan pasty that I made the other day, with baked potatoes veg and gravy, followed by a slice of my home-made apple crumble with custard.

And I could go back and eat that all again. it was wonderful, even though I say it myself.

Last night, I was in bed early. And I slept the Sleep of the dead all the way through until the alarm, with a little awakening in the small hours.

Plenty of time to go on a voyage or two. And one or two rather surprising people, including one rather surprising debutante about whom I haven’t spent a moment’s thought since about 1979.

We were doing something involving sausages in a fast-food restaurant last night, trying to work out some sort of recipe. mash, beans and sausage for £1:00 was the aim, with each additional sausage £0:20. On our way back there was a big group of us, and the group was getting steadily bigger. It included Zero, she who used to accompany me quite regularly on my nocturnal voyages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and her father. As usual, she was at the back and I was at the front so I didn’t get to talk to her. I was with either Jackie or Alison, I can’t remember now. We came to this flight of steps and ran down it. But this was a very interesting experience because I actually took off and flew, hovering, soaring and flying down these steps. It was the most astonishing, liberating experience. I’d found these air currents and they were lifting me up with very little effort from myself and yet no-one really seemed to notice. That was what upset me more than anything else. Eventually I landed and walked with the others around the right-hand corner at the foot of the stairs. There was this polar bear there with a dog to keep it company. It growled at everyone who walked past. Bit it seemed to be more interested in me as if I was going to be its lunch and started to walk towards me. I turned round, made myself big and shouted “no” at it in a very firm voice. It stopped, so I started to walk away so it started to walk towards me, so I stopped, turned round etc etc. After about three or four goes at this, the bear finally stopped so I walked on back to my friends who had been at the front and we carried on walking.

A little later on I was doing a job that somehow involved doing things with chocolate and being a receptionist in an insurance company. I’d only been there a week and I met a young girl very similar to that Paulette who worked at Fine Fare in Winsford. We very quickly developed a relationship and began to live together. It was a very interesting, ephemeral relationship because she was a weird kind of girl just like she was, and yet she took a fancy to me. As you might expect, this flattered my ego very well. Our living together was all very cosy. I used to do little odd jobs for her around the house like I did for Cecile. One morning she got up early and I stayed in bed. I was trying to find the light switch because she’d installed a new light by the bed. She came to show me how to do it and we ended up on the bed for a while. She told me about a problem with the washing machine that needed fixing so I reckoned that I would go on and do that. I was wondering whether I should take this girl down to the Auvergne and let her meet my friends and show her where I was living but there was stuff all over the place and it wasn’t a very good advert. I’m not sure how it would all go down with her. I ended up at a garage that was selling cars at very cheap prices. There was a mini for sale at £250:00 and something else (might have been a Hillman Imp) for sale at £495 and a Triumph 1300. But there was a Morris 1000 that needed a lot of work doing to it – the roof had been cut off for a start – and a lot of the body was missing. But what caught my eye was that it was left-hand drive. That immediately appealed to me but some young girl got to it first and started to drive it. I told her that it was LHD to which she replied that it wasn’t a problem. I suddenly realised that I hadn’t been to work at my receptionist job for a week. Whatever was I thinking about? had I told them that I would be away? And if so, for how long? Was I supposed to be on leave? had I vacated my job? It all became extremely confusing.

It’s hardly surprising that after all of that I turned over and went back to sleep again. It wasn’t until … errr … much later that I awoke.

After the usual morning processes (including muesli for breakfast instead of porridge) I sat down and started to work.

First job was to bring up-to-date the blog and to add the photos for the last couple of days. And that wasn’t as quick a job as it ought to have been.

But while I was on a roll I spent the rest of the morning adding photos to some of the older blog entries. Now I’m back as far as 9th August 2018. So only about another 9 years to go. Will I have enough time left to do it, I wonder.

Lunch was spent out on the wall. No lizards still, just my book, my butties and my fruit.

No photos either. There was quite a thick sea mist and the sun, strong as it was, couldn’t burn it all away.

Back here, I had some good news. A letter that I had sent off 12 days ago had prompted a reply. And while my letter might have been “speculative” to some degree, the reply was, whilst not actually resolving the issues, was at least giving ground for optimism.

That led to a telephone call, and that was even more enlightening. Who knows? Something might even happen about this. And won’t that be interesting?

This led to me dealing with another outstanding matter, and so I had a couple of chats with a couple of people on the internet. This led to the submission of another couple of forms.

And the events of yesterday might not have been so false I was suspecting. I’ve had to send a confirmatory e-mail to check it, but it might be kosher after all.

ON that note, I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The mist had cleared somewhat so photography conditions were so much better. I was able to take a really good photograph of one of our fishing boats making its way into harbour.

With the tide having turned, the fishing boats could now come into harbour.

This wasn’t the first of the fishing boats to come into harbour.

Round on the quay by the fish-processing plant there were about a dozen other fishing boats either lined up by the plant, leaving it, or else arriving.

These seem to be busy times down there right now. Everyone doing what they can prior to the inevitable conflict that will ensue with the British fishermen after Brexit.

Meanwhile, at the chantier navale, the yard is almost totally empty.

All that remains right now is the long-term trawler-rebuilding project, and the larger boat that is being resprayed.

There was someone on his skyjack down there adding another coat of paint to the job. It’s going to be a really good job when it’s finished and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

After all of that I came back here and spent the rest of the afternoon slogging away with the dictaphone notes. There were a couple from the last few days and then a week’s work from the past.

That’s not going as quickly as I would like either because some of them are quite length. And those that I’m going to do so are even longer.

This evening after tea I went for a walk, in the light, around the walls.

First stop was to see how they are getting on with the house renovations on the rue du Nord.

The one on the corner, they have now jacked up the floor of the first floor with a whole army of acrows.

Furthermore, they seem to have elongated the windows to the first floor. They might even be putting a balcony out there, and that would be very nice to see when it’s done too.

At the other end of the rue du Nord, there doesn’t seem to be too much progress taking place on the house there.

The other day I mentioned that the guy building it seems to be only working there when he has nothing else to do.

One of these days it will be finished, but I’m not holding my breath about that.

But look how quickly the light has gone.

This photo of the Plat Gousset was taken just a mere 10 minutes after the previous one of the house rebuilding. All of the street lights are on already.

There are still a few people wandering about though. I suppose that the lighter evenings will keep them out for a while longer.

So now, although it’s not as early as I wanted, I’m off to bed. All things considered, I’ve had a productive two days and I’m looking for plenty more like it.

fishing boat doing a u-turn granville manche normandy france

fishing boat entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

house renovation rue du nord granville manche normandy france

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall, today has been a difficult day.

It always is the day after I return from hospital, but today was rather different from the others.

Margaret Thatcher (and how we miss her, with this shower in charge) once said “anyone could do a good day’s work when they felt like it, but the key to success is to be able to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it”.

And that’s what happened today. I didn’t feel very much like it at all, but I did do a very good day’s work all things considering.

Admittedly, when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10 and 06:20) I didn’t take much notice. I turned over and went back to sleep. And that’s no surprise either. Despite being tired it took me ages to go to sleep last night and I thought that I would never drop off. But I did, and was awoken by the alarms. No chance of leaving the bed at that time though. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was how I stayed until 07:22

Last night I was in London with some other guy and we were looking for a place to stay on a long-term basis. There were student flats available and we were sent to see one near the Thames on the north bank somewhere Fulham way, in a modern block of flats. It was the tiniest room that you have ever seen, with two beds in it and there was already one person in it, so we didn’t know if this person was to leave or whether we would end up with three sharing this tiny room. I was fitted with some kind of arm bracelet, for a reason that I didn’t know at the time. There was a large ginger cat roaming around the area so I picked it up and stroked it, and took it outside with me, to the horror of everyone else who explained to me that the arm bracelet meant that I wasn’t allowed to hold a cat outside the building. Someone mentioned that my Aunt Mary lived in London so why don’t I telephone her. So I did. She told me that she now had a bike so I asked her why she didn’t cycle down the Embankment to meet me. So off she set and we – by now Cecile was with me – went down to meet her. She came out of the subway in the wrong direction as if she had been riding east, and then we lost sight of her. But there she was, a few levels down at street level so we waved and she came up. By now she had transformed into Marianne, and she came over to give me a great big hug and said how much she had missed me. But strangely she had another guy with her too.

07:50 was when I left the bed. So it was rather a late breakfast this morning.

Never mind though. Off into town.

I didn’t gte very far though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are some very low gates into the old medieval walled town and the streets are very narrow, so large vehicles are not permitted in there.

Everything has to be off-loaded and trans-shipped, including ready-mixed concrete.

We saw Normandy Trader in port yesterday afternoon, loading up with a cargo.

She’s now gone from the port, but there’s plenty of cargo left on the quayside. This means that we might well be expecting a visit from Thora.

On the other hand, it could be that Normandy Trader was actually unloading, and we are waiting for the cargo to be taken away.

First stop was at the Railway Station. My old fogey’s railcard is on the verge of expiring so I need a new one. And it’s a good job that I went early because the lady in front of me looked as if she wanted to be there for the Duration.

So armed with my new railcard, I headed off (on foot, not on the train) to LIDL.

We’ve talked in the past about recycling and waste here in Granville, and I was lucky enough to see one of the waste lorries emptying one of the town’s waste containers in the avenue des Matignon.

I hope that they will be emptying the paper bin near me so that I can dispose of some more of the European Paper Mountain.

Although I didn’t buy anything special in LIDL, I did treat myself to a bag of brazil nuts. Two people – one of whom is a doctor and the other one is a patient – have told me now that brazil nuts contain plenty of vital vitamins and minerals, one of which is selenium, a deficiency of which is said by some to be one of the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Back here, I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then did the filing of all of the mail that had built up while I was away. And there was a lot of it too.

There were four letters that needed my attention and so after lunch I set down to work. One of the letters was unnecessary because over lunch I had received a mail to say that the issue was resolved, but I managed the other three without any problem.

And then, I … errr … crashed out on the chair for 20 minutes.

On recovering, I headed off back into town and the Post office and dispatched the three letters. That’s another task out of the way. We’ll have to see what comes of those.

on the way back, I took a little sight-seeing diversion to push my daily fitness target up to 100%.

Round by the harbour now we have a lorry just pulling in. So is he going to be delivering more supplies for the next freighter, or is he going to be taking away the supplies that are already here?

Watch this space.

At the moment we are experiencing one of the lowest tides of the year, and for a town that already has the highest tidal range in Europe, a low tide is pretty exceptional.

With all of the fruits de mer around here, the peche à pied or fishing on foot by scavenging in the rock pools and the sand for oysters and mussels is very popular.

The situation basically (it’s much more complicated than this in fact, but this will give you a basic idea) is that the accessible fishing rights between the high tide and the low tide are leased out to people and companies and are thus private.

But the fishing rights for the beach beyond the low tide limits aren’t leased out because they aren’t usually accessible. They are public access fishing areas.

So when we have exceptionally low tides, about a dozen or so times a year, everyone floods out to the public access areas to try their luck.

They are still quite busy at the Chantier Navale.

It seems that Armor has cleared off, but Charles_Marie and la Granvillaise are still here.

We have a new boat too. I’m not sure if she’s one of the ferries for the Ile de Chausey, or whether in fact she’s something else.

I Shall have to go out and check at some point.

Back here I attacked the mountain of photos that have built up while I was away – fighting hard the temptation to go and lie down for half an hour. But I survived up until teatime. Pasta and a burger, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

This evening it was dark when I went out for a walk, and spent much of the time out there watching a trawler coming out of the English Channel towards the harbour.

I took a pile of photos of it at different speeds, apertures and ISO settings and you can compare them all by looking at them here and also below.

But I’ve done 118% of my daily activity today, which is good news. I’ve been at or over 100% for almost every day since last Thursday. It’s hardly a surprise that I’m feeling the pressure just now.

So on that note, I’m going to bed. And it’s not even 21:45 yet. I’ve had a hard day.

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night trawler tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 19th March 2019 – I’VE HAD SOME …

… good news today. Lots of it too. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But first of all, let’s talk about last night.

Last night I was the tour manager on board a ship such as the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. Two male passengers, family men, had been caught fighting. I had had them in before me and without taking sides, I’d cautioned them as to their further conduct on board. Some time later, they had been caught fighting yet again, with the victim of the first attack trying to stab the other man with a pencil. It was all completely out of hand. so in the end I had to invoke a formal hearing about it. Whilst I sympathised with the victim of the affair, you can’t attack someone with a weapon, no matter what weapon it is, and expect to get away with it. So in the end my verdict was that they should be confined to their cabins until we reached the next port and then I would put them ashore to fend for themselves. At some point though, and I don’t know exactly where, I awoke in the middle of all of this at about 04:00 and although I was awake, this voyage carried on in my subconscious and it was certainly interesting.
Later on, I was back on my travels again, in the south-east USA near the coast, examining the map of the Carolina coast and wondering how come on my various travels there in the past, I’d missed so much of he coastline according to this map. By now I was in the company of some young girl and we were visiting some kind of suburban area of apartment buildings of the type built in Europe in the 1980s, side-on to the road and sloping down to a forest in the background. We were on our way to a school because it was the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of a girl aged 6 and they were having some kind of “thoughts and prayers” vigil. You could tell what kind of school it was because in North America, the more exclusive the school, the more plaid the girls wear. And while these girls were in a British-type of uniform, there was plenty of it. And I counted, amongst all of the children assembled there, not even a handful of children from any ethnic minority, and this of course is the “Deep South”. There were several policemen there and several male assistants folding flags and the like, and they were mainly of ethnic minority. I was chatting to a couple of them about a few things to do with the service, because after all it’s the first of its type that I had ever attended. But in the end we took out place right at the top end of the assembly hall, and the service began.

This morning I didn’t quite leap out of bed with alacrity, but it was something like. And after the usual performance I had a few things to do.

By 10:00 I went for a walk into town for a baguette for lunch and also to have a wander around a few shops.

In the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein there was a huge marquee erected where the market had been the other day, so I went over to have a look to see what it was.

Apparently there is a big drive for blood donor volunteers in Belgium right now and that’s good news for me because it’s blood donors who are helping to keep me alive right now.

I’ve spoken … “at great length and on many occasions” – ed … about the destruction that was inflicted on the city during the German invasion of August 1914.

It was practically burnt to the ground as part of the deliberate German policy of “frightfulness” and the famous library and all of its contents going back to the Dark Ages were totally destroyed.

It wasn’t until after the end of the war that the rebuilding of the city began.

You can tell the buildings that were destroyed during the occupation.

They all bear this kind of plaque, with the date of 1914 on it, with some kind of symbolic emblem displaying a sword and a conflagration.

This is presumably representing the Biblical “fire and sword” of Chapter 66:16 of the Book of Isaiah – he who was so-called because he had two eyes and one Isaiah than the other.

On the way back to my little apartment I walked up the Tiensestraat.

When I was on my way into town yesterday I noticed that they were working on the pavement here so I went for a closer look.

They seem to be relaying the paving stones here. Judging by the raised manhole covers, it looks as if they had dug it up for the relaying of pipes and cables.

Further on down the street they’ve been doing some renovations on a couple of the buildings.

Today there was a lorry here delivering a pile of wooden hardboard or plywood sheets and I was lucky enough to be there when they were passing them up to someone on the first floor using a crane.

It’s certainly better than taking them one at a time up the stairs.

Back home I made my butties and then I headed off back to the railway station.

My train was the AM 96 number 933 going to the south-west of the city, passing by Brussels Schuman station where I was intending to alight.

The other one is a Siemens “Desiro”, one of the single-current examples that came into service about 10 years ago and which became rather notorious for their unreliability.

We had a really friendly, cheerful chatty ticket collector on our train, which is always nice to see. But apart from that, I sat quietly and ate my butties.

Out of the station and up the road to the Post Office. And much to my dismay, the Post Office there has closed down and it’s now the Polish Embassy. GRRRRR!

Back on another train and round to Bruxelles-Midi.

First stop was the Tour du Midi and after queueing for quite a while, I was eventually seen by the receptionist who sent me off to see someone else. And, much to my surprise, I am indeed entitled to a Belgian State pension and the guy whom I saw helped me start things off.

Next was round the corner to the Avenue Fonsny and the main Post Office there. But that’s closed down too.

Eventually someone in a hotel pointed me in the direction of another Post Office and I even managed to find it too. And here there is yet more good news. Not only do I have a deposit account there, I also have a current account, and I’d forgotten about that too.

Unfortunately that matter couldn’t be resolved then and there. The accounts are classed as dormant so I need to write to the Head Office.

The counter clerk gave me the address so I’ll do that when I’m back home. And how long it’s going to take is anyone’s guess but if you don’t start, you don’t finish.

Back to the Bruxelles-Midi railway station, and I didn’t have to wait too long for a train to come in.

It’s one of the push-me pull-you class 19 electrics and with it being the start of rush hour, it was pretty crowded too.

I went right up to the front because that’s usually where most of the empty seats may be found. I don’t fancy fighting my way through the crowds.

I’d noticed the other day that there was a funfair setting up on the Martelarenplein outside the railway station.

It’s now operational so I had a little bit of a wander around to see what was going on.

The answer was “nothing much” because there were only half a dozen or so stalls there. Nothing at all like the big one that we had in Leuven the other week.

Back to here, to find that an appointment that I have been desperate to arrange since the summer has finally come through. I’ll know my destiny on April 24th at long last.

Tonight there was football on the internet and I watched what I could on my creaking laptop, which actually did much better than I was expecting.

The Welsh Premier League representative team played a representative team from the National Conference in England. The English team scored two – a goalkeeping howler and an own goal, but the Welsh team scored two of the best goals that you would ever be likely to see at this level of football.

It was a great advert for the Welsh Premier league, that’s for sure.

So now I’m off to bed. I need to be up early in the morning for my trip home. And I’ll be glad to be back.

paving tiensestraat leuven belgium

war damage architect tiensevest belgium

Wednesday 13th March 2019 – TODAY I HAVE WRITTEN …

… the largest cheque that I have ever written in my life – and ever likely too as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my endless battles with the Royal Bank of Scotland – the worst bank in the world – and over the last couple of weeks I’ve finally had enough.

And with the impending disaster that is Brexit looming around the corner, I’ve liquidated all of my savings in the UK, consolidated it all into one account, and apart from a realistic working capital, I’ve shipped the rest elsewhere.

The next exciting moment will be when the Royal Bank of Scotland receives the cheque from the payee – what will they do then? This will be bound to be exciting. I don’t expect it to be straightforward at all and we might be in for a load of fun.

But I’m just appalled at the lengths to which I have to go in order to knock some sense into those people.

Having gone to bed at something like early last night, I was awake again at 04:35. and I was up and about at a reasonable time after the alarms had gone off.

we had the usual morning procedures of medicine and breakfast, and then I attacked the tidying-up.

All of the papers have no been filed, and because the bank statements folder was overflowing, I’ve rearranged all of that and filed elsewhere the statements for the later years.

And then I had to attack the bank.

I tried the on-line banking service and much to my surprise (and probably yours too) it went with only a minor hitch that was soon resolved. So I ended up wiht all of my dosh exactly where I wanted it.

And then I had to do another pile of on-line paperwork. That ended up with my having to write a letter. That meant nipping out to Caliburn to pick up the cheque book and to see the spectacle of the postwoman’s bike blown over in the gale and all of her letters disappearing off down the street.

All of this took me up to lunchtime, and the intention was that after lunch I would take the letter down to town. But I ended up … errr … curled up on my chair for 20 minutes.

That meant that I had missed to post collection, but I braved the tempest and went down to the Post Office nevertheless. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Down at the quayside though, I noticed a pile of goods lined up where Thora and Normandy Trader normally tie up.

This will probably mean that one or other of them will be coming into the harbour pretty soon to pick them up and take them over to Jersey.

Back here, I attacked the photo database for September in the High Arctic and did another 100 or so photos, with a break to have a shower and a clean-up.

Tea was next, and I made my shepherd’s pie. Tofu, onions, garlic, herbs and flageolet beans with a mashed potato topping. Plenty of it too, and there are five portions left that have gone into the freezer

out again later for my evening walk, despite the wind.

And here’s something that I haven’t noticed before.

At the side of the lighthouse is some kind of pylon, and tonight it’s showing two red lights. I’ve no idea why that might be, so I’ll have to ask someone next time I see anyone official loitering around in the vicinity.

Round the corner and out of the wind for a while, I could see the tidal harbour.

There were several trawlers in there unloading their catch. Three of them had finished and it looks as if they are lined up waiting for the gates to the inner harbour to open so that they can go in.

The pedestrian lights are showing green, and the sailing light is red, so the gates are clearly closed right now.

Further on round the corner I noticed that the Boulevard vaufleury is closed to traffic.

It seems that the wall on the corner of the next street down – the rue Mengnonette – is about to fall down and they don’t want anyone to be in the vicinity.

On that note, I came back here and did a little more tidying up.

But now, I’m off to bed. I’m hitting the road tomorrow so I need a decent sleep.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: post office

Wednesday 27th November 2019 – WHAT A WASTE …

Tuesday 26th November 2019 – YET ANOTHER EVENING …

Wednesday 20th November 2019 – GUESS WHO’S BEEN …

Wednesday 13th November 2019 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

Thursday 10th October 2019 – I DON’T UNDERSTAND …

Tuesday 8th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

Monday 7th October 2019 – JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

Monday 9th September 2019 – WITH HAVING TO …

Friday 14th June 2019 – HOW MANY …

Tuesday 16th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 – WINTER IS …

Monday 1st April 2019 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

Tuesday 19th March 2019 – I’VE HAD SOME …

Wednesday 13th March 2019 – TODAY I HAVE WRITTEN …

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