Tag Archives: rice pudding

Sunday 21st April 2019 – THIS SPENDING SPREE …

… is continuing.

Having received a totally unplanned and unexpected windfall the other day, I’m taking the opportunity to improve my situation somewhat.

Not to any major degree, it has to be said, but simply to make me feel better. I’ve been examining the hobbies and pastimes (such as they are) with which I seem to spend most of my time, moving out a pile of substandard equipment and replacing it with some much better stuff.

Browsing around on the internet, I’m surprised at how much decent second-hand gear there is on the market, as the purchase of that lens for the Nikon 1 the other day proved.

So I’ll keep you posted as and when things start to arrive.

having had a late night last night, I slept right through until about 08:15. Not quite as long as I was hoping, but better than some nights that I had.

I’d been on a voyage too during the night. I had been driving a coach somewhere around the Worcester-Gloucester area, a route that I’d driven on a couple of occasions, and I was close to the lunch stop. The bus pulled up at what is in fact Millstone Lane in Nantwich and the passengers alighted. I drove on empty to the lunch stop, but the passengers never arrived. The place was becoming busier and busier and I thought that if they don’t come quickly there wouldn’t be any room for them. Then I realised that I hadn’t told them where the lunch stop was so I took the coach to go to look for them. I found them all at the pickup point waiting for me so I loaded them up to take them to the lunch stop. But the street that I was in was narrow and was blocked. One driver in a car – e Renault Dauphine – reversed to let me past but I had to manoeuvre around a dark green Jeep Cherokee – and scratched the coach and the car in the process. The street then narrowed and narrowed until it became nothing more than the back-entry between two rows of houses. It was so narrow that I was amazed that the coach could fit down there and one passenger said that it was because the coach was so high that the walls of the back yards were passing underneath the bodywork.

After breakfast I did some much-needed tidying up and cleaning, because I was expecting visitors. And sure enough, at about 11:00 Liz and Terry turned up. With Liz’s elder son, his partner and their little child.

We all went out for a good walk around the walls and ended up in la Rafale, the café down the road, for a drink.

later on we went for a picnic lunch next up on the grass by the lighthouse, and then down the steps to the beach.

A lovely walk out to the sea and it was really amusing because the tide was going out quicker than we could walk towards it.

Once the tide started to come back in again, we retraced our steps back up the beach.

I’m not as young as I was and my health issues don’t help very much, so the steps – all 112 of them – back up to the town killed me off.

I wasn’t the only one feeling the strain either, so it was back to la Rafale for all of us yet for another coffee.

They all cleared off afterwards and I made tea – another delicious pizza followed by rice pudding.

There were quite a few people out there tonight enjoying the warm evening sun.

And out here a delightful conversation took place
Young girl – “did you see the dolphin”
Our Hero – “no, I didn’t. Where was it?”
Young girl – “in the sea”.

Well, yes.

There was another group of people down there at the Cap Lihou enjoying the sunset, with the bright orange glow reflecting off their faces.

And the good news is that according to another group of people, the footpath all around the headland is now repaired and open, so we can walk all the way around it now instead of taking the short cut through the car park.

I’ll have to go for a good look around there tomorrow and see what it’s like.

But now, it’s bed time. A Bank Holiday tomorrow so no alarm. And I intend to make the most of it.

oarsmen yachts fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset old town granville manche normandy france

frogmen zodiac plat gousset granville manche normandy france

buoys baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset old town granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Friday 19th April 2019 – THERE’S NOTHING …

… like a good rice pudding for tea.

And that rice pudding that I had for tea this evening was nothing like a good rice pudding. I’m not sure what happened there. Maybe I didn’t put enough milk in it but it wasn’t as smooth and creamy as I would like it.

But there’s enough left over for the next couple of days so there’s a chance to improve it.

Last night’s sleep was somewhat better. Although I didn’t go off to bed early, I had a somewhat better sleep, even if I did awaken at about 07:00.

No chance of me leaving my stinking pit at that time though. 09:00 was much more like it.

Plenty of time to go on a ramble though. Last night I’d been invited to some kind of meeting at the Solar Energy Institute so I went along to some café-restaurant place and people were around there eating. My impression was that I had been invited to a meal too, and I was loaded up with a camera, telephone, laptop, notebook etc and I was desperately trying to do something on the laptop using just one hand before I could get to see this person. It too kme so much time that I was getting later and later, and I was 10 minutes late when I finished sending this document. I put everything down and sat at this table but no-one came so after 5 minutes I picked everything up and went to find the manager. I found that I had left the laptop behind, but I needed it as it had the name of this person on it. In the end I managed to locate the manager. He looked through the list of people on duty and said “it’s Katie” (or was it Kathy or similar?). But then he said “I’ve heard about you. You were camping out at that festival for a week and didn’t change your underwear” and made a gesture of holding his nose, which I found rather offensive because I had been washing my undies every day in the sink as I always do when I’m on the road. I went back into the restaurant and there was this girl sitting there with some small parcels. I thought that there can’t be anything for me, so I just sat down and had a look at the writing accompanying them, and it was mine. She approached me to confirm who I was, and satisfied, she undid these parcels which had some print work in, stuff that I had informally enquired about when I’d been at this festival. We began to discuss the festival and I made the point that it was one of those things that the people in the Auvergne had been organising, the same thing for 12 years and nothing has ever come of it. She said that this year it seemed to be really, really good. I replied that anything with Francois Carriatt involved in it couldn’t be really, really good. We had a lengthy discussion about how these people would start something with loads of enthusiasm but run out of steam before it got anywhere. The same old story every year for as long as I could remember. How all of the ex-pats would go along to help, full of enthusiasm but when they saw how it was all working out they all stopped going and left the locals to their mess and that was that. After a lengthy discussion she was telling me about the stage, to which I replied that I’d seen it al before. The discussion went round to selling things. How her parents used to sell tents, big heavy canvas ones but weren’t very good at it. They would take tents to camp sites and similar, and stick their tent next to the one they were selling and have a sign “tent for sale – see next door” but it never really worked. I said that this was a thing of the moment. People would come with their own sleeping arrangements and the only time that this was likely to change would be if there would be a torrential downpour in the middle of a festival when people who had been planning to sleep out would need shelter and then you could sell anything with no effort whatsoever

For breakfast I had, as well as the usual muesli, fruit juice and apple purée, a toasted hot cross bun. That was delicious too, I can tell you.

Today I’ve had a busy day, despite it being a Bank Holiday.

I started off by attacking the photos from my trip away. Quite a few had survived the short-circuiting of the memory card. and now they are all edited and uploaded.

I’ve also uploaded the photos that I took last night with the new 18.5mm f1.8 lens for the Nikon 1 J5.

Here’s one of them in its unadulterated glory. It’s simply compressed and not otherwise manipulated. And taken on totally automatic setting with no input whatsoever.

In fact, the images that I took in street lighting needed compensating because they were coming out too bright.

All in all though, I’m as impressed with this as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

The photos took me up to lunchtime, which I spent sitting on the wall outside in the glorious sunshine. The lizards haven’t found me yet, but the blackflies have.

The crane was there again, with a couple of pontoons by the look of it. And I now know their purpose because it was in the local newspaper this morning.

They are talking about replacing the floating walkways in the harbour, and they need to take core-drill samples of the seabed there to see what kind of anchorages would work best there.

I still can’t see why they hadn’t done it when they had the harbour drained out last winter.

This afternoon, in between falling asleep for 20 minutes and going for my afternoon walk, I attacked the dictaphone entries. All of them from my trip to Leuven and also another 8 from the backlog. another couple of months at this rate and it might all be done, ready for my next voyage, whenever and wherever that might be.

As for my walk, there were crowds out there today, enjoying the sunshine sitting and lying about on the beach.

There were even some people in the water enjoying themselves, for there were some who were braver than others.

Not for me of course. I’m well-known for having refused the swim in the Arctic Ocean just 100 miles from the North Pole.
“I have this catheter port in my chest”
“What would you do if you didn’t have the catheter port?”
“I’d have to think of another excuse”.

Tea tonight was a slice of my leek and tofu pie from last year, with baked potatoes, vegetables and gravy. It was delicious. And even though the rice pudding didn’t come out as it was supposed to, it was still enjoyable.

later on this evening I went out for my walk, and there were crowds of people enjoying the sunshine.

Wandering around the headland was a party of teenagers, and they were trying to speak English to the couple of people who were leading the group.

Other people were out and about cooking tea in their caravanettes (and I didn’t half give one woman a shock when I walked around the corner)

There were yet more people enjoying the beautiful weather sitting on the benches overlooking the sea, including this couple on the Cap Lihou by the old sentry box.

It was that kind of evening tonight – nice and warm with plenty of sun. It really made me happy to be out there and I sauntered off singing quite happily to myself

It’s been a while since I felt like that.

My reverie was distracted by Victor Hugo coming in from Jersey with a load of passengers. It was quite an impressive sight because she’s an impressive ship.

I’ve not seen her sister ship around for a while so maybe she’s still under repair. They bought her fairly new from a Swedish ferry company but she’s been giving nothing but trouble since she came here.

Something of a white elephant, she’s turned out to be.

And in the Chantier Navale we were back down to the two boats that have been there for a few weeks now. The two trawlers that were there yesterday have now been released.

Shopping tomorrow so I’m going to have an early night. And quite right too. I need to gather up my strength for my next vicissitudes.

la grande ancre buoys granville manche normandy france

crowds on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 27th March 2019 – I’M ON THE VERGE …

… of writing out another large cheque. Not quite as massive as the one that I wrote out the other day (and which, much to my surprise actually cleared the Bank) but a significant sum nevertheless.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall some of the things that I’ve accomplished since I’ve been ill. I have a little bucket list of things that I want to do before I go off to stoke the fires of eternity.

One of those things is pretty high up on my list and having been in fearless negotiations with a group of people, I’ve found that it is going to be a possibility. A rather convoluted and complicated possibility, but its complications are countered by the fact that I can fit in several other things off my list too while I’m doing it.

We could be on to something here!

Last night was a much better night. I managed to have something like a decent sleep, even though I was off on a little voyage.

I was in North-East France last night waiting for a new secretary. She was coming over from the UK and when she arrived she was explaining to me about how at a certain moment she was picking up French mobile phone signals as she was approaching Dover. I explained to her the phenomenon of transverse radio waves and how at St Margaret’s Bay the cliffs shield the town from English radio waves but the French ones bounce back off the cliffs so they can be picked up. So we set off to where we were going and ended up in a scrapyard. In a fenced-off compound was a huge red car with a beige vinyl roof, the type of which I had never seen in my life. It was a two-door model too. Surrounding it were bits of a red/orange mark III Cortina that had been used for racing and subsequently cut up. I was intrigued by this car so I went for a closer look. It had been knocked about quite a bit but there was someone round the front prising out the cylinders from a transverse 4-cylinder engine block with a length of scaffolding pipe. I expressed my surprise that it was only a 4-cylinder car, to which he replied that it was powered by a tandem-engine, two 4-cylinder engines run together and one block had already gone. I was surprised that it had gone to scrap so he replied that Mercedes (why they would be involved in it) wanted rid of it. So I asked why, and he pointed to the side of the car, with a huge t-bone dent in it.

And much to my surprise I was up quite early too. And managed to make a decent start on the day.

Most of the day was spent starting the searchable text database for the photos for August 2018. There are tons to go at for that month, and I’m about halfway through them.

As well as that, I’ve attacked another half-dozen or so of the dictaphone notes. That has hardly made a dent in it but one has to keep on going.

There were a couple of phone calls too – from canada too, as it happens. It’s all go here.

And finally I’ve done some more of the photos for September 2018 and the High Arctic. Another 100 or so of those out of the way, and I really am going to go through and re-edit them properly when I find the time.

There were the usual two walks today.

This afternoon my route was to take me around the walls but as usual I didn’t get very far. Out at the back of the building there are some workmen there.

It looks as if they are doing something to the fascia of the building. That looks like zinc guttering there.

Carrying on around the walls I stopped to inspect the house rebuildings that we have seen in the rue du Nord.

Here on the corner, in a building that they are turning into flats and apartments, they seem to be advancing quickly.

Throwing out all of the rubbish from the upstairs rooms by the looks of things. They have some very interesting kit there.

By contrast, the housebuilding at the other end of the rue du Nord seems to be progressing … errr … rather less quickly.

Overhearing the builder on his mobile phone, I have the feeling that he is only working on the property when he doesn’t have any other paid work.

So this is one site that will probably drag on and on.

In the Place Cambernon however, work is progressing much more rapidly.

It looks as if they have been ripping out all of the woodwork ready to cart it off. And that’s a shame, because I’m a big fan of woodwork, especially old period wood like floorboarding and the like.

It will be a shame if they modernise it into something that rubs out all of its historical features.

Here’s something that I haven’t noticed particularly before.

The medieval town here dates from probably the mid-15th Century and while there are very few if any houses from that period, there are still quite a few interesting ones such as this one, with some very interesting carvings in the stonework.

The letters IHS have a religious symbolism, in that they are the first three letters of “Jesus” in the Eastern Orthodox (Greek) language.

It did however become fashionable for the Jesuits to usurp the signal and insist that it stands for Iesus Humilis Societas – the “Humble Society of Jesus” or Iesus Hominem Salvator – “Jesus, Saviour of Men”.

While I was out there I went to have a look to see what was happening in the port.

Nothing of any commercial nature going on right now except for the usual trawlers, but Charles-Marie is over there – the blue-and white yacht over there against the far wall.

And the yacht that is double-parked on the outside of the two might well be Spirit of Conrad

For tea I had a burger in a bap with baked potatoes and veg, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

This evening I went again and spent some time watching all of the fishing boats come in.

There was a whole line of them extending out almost to the Channel Islands tonight so I had a little fun experimenting with different light and aperture settings to see what I could pull out.

But it wasn’t actually all that much of a success unfortunately.

It was much more interesting with the trawlers as they lined up to look for a berth at the fish-processing plant.

I had quite a good deal of fun out there for 20 minutes or so playing around with different settings to see what I could produce.

You cans ee the results further down below.

But now I’ll have an early night tonight because it’s shopping tomorrow – and then I’m going to make an apple crumble.

And I managed to go all day without crashing out too.

night trawlers granville manche normandy france

trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 26th March 2019 – I WAS WONDERING …

… why I was planning on having pasta for a change with my stuffed pepper. And so while I was preparing the pepper I decided on rice instead.

It wasn’t until I sat down to the pudding that I realised why. Rice as a main course followed by rice pudding was not really a good idea.

Last night, I was in bed by 22:00. And it was a rather restless night too, with me waking up on several occasions. I’d been on a few travels as well, some of which were quite interesting.

There was a whole pile of us and we’d been walking or something like that and we’d ended up in a really big shop. Eventually I found myself at the front of the queue and I ordered a pound of minced beef (and I’ve no idea why I would order that). The conversation then moved around to a discussion of Belgian trains. Someone shouted something at me and I couldn’t hear them properly and understand what they were saying, but it came out that they wanted to know the price of a train fare from somewhere. I replied that I could remember a certain station where we used to get on at one time – a station right out in the sticks and it cost us €18:00 to go to there. The most that I had ever paid to go anywhere on Belgian Railways was €22:00. This conversation then ended up as a length discussion about Belgian trains
Everyone has the right in post-Brexit Britain to be on the right-hand side of the road in queues and this is just one occasion where people were suddenly being confronted with all of everything that they had bought or collected and it needed to be sorted out and cars needed to be moved over to the other side of the road to be parked. It was all extremely complicated, and all for nothing. I remembered being in the south of Germany and falling over the back of a settee on the border and ending up in Austria on the other side of the settee – the seat bit (and what that voyage was all about, I have no idea at all).
A little later I was in the High Arctic again with Natalie and I was trying to get on board the ship, but I was totally unprepared. I had a couple of lockers and a bed inside a wooden hut. I was trying to pack my rucksack with things that I needed to take on board ship. With natalie being there I couldn’t get at the secret box of supplies because I didn’t want her to see it. Everyone was hurrying about and I was getting p155ed off and Natalie went off, so I started to stuff more things into my rucksack. She then came back and told me that someone had said not to forget about the ghetto blaster so I had to hunt that down and stuff that into the rucksack too. It was all quite chaotic and I was panicking. Everyone was assembling ready to go on board the ship and I was nowhere near being ready.
Finally I was out again somewhere sitting on a table talking to someone who had been on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour (but he hadn’t of course). He was an Inuit (although he wasn’t). We were talkig about the High Arctic and he was telling me that Nunavut had now become chair of the Arctic Council and how pleased he was about it all. We were talking about all kinds of things so I asked him if he was planning to go back on the Adventure Canada runs this year. he said that he wasn’t, so I then tried to get in touch with the Company to try to get myself on board the ship this year, but he didn’t seem to pick up on what I was saying, and I was really disappointed at that. I was trying to make him interested in what I was doing but he was more interested in telling me that they now had street lights out there in Nunavut so it was much safer to move around at night – you could see if there were any polar bears around. We ended up wandering off and I was talking about all of this to him but it wasn’t him at all but two other people. I said something about the fact that the people in there – indicating the building from where I had just come – weren’t al that interested, so that had them scratching their heads wondering what I was talking about. I came across a phone box by the Square in Crewe in the ice so I was trying to ring them but it was the wrong time of day, no-one was answering their phones. In the meantime I was planning to do some kind of radio programme on one of these internet radio stations where I could have a couple of people talking in Inuktitut while I played rock music.

Just for a change I left the bed quite early this morning and I was all set for a good day’s work.

I started off with a shower and a general clean-up. And a haircut too. It didn’t need it, but I want to keep it under much better control than I have been doing.

Following that, there were the dictaphone notes and I’m back now into mid-August. But there are plenty for the period from early Spring to then, including a whole voyage around central Europe, so this is going to be a rather long job. 358 files to be transcribed in fact, so it’s not the work of five minutes.

The next thing to do was to bring the blog up-to-date – at least, in recent times. I did all of the photos back until when I set out to Leuven.

All of that took me up to lunchtime.

This afternoon I started on the searchable photo database for September 2018 when I was in the High Arctic. Another hundred or so photos were indexed, but this took far longer than I intended because not only has it involved some research, I also had another closer look at some of them.

Basically, the editing that I did on board ship isn’t very satisfactory and now that I have a much better computer and a better graphics program, I can do far better than I did on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’m planning to go back and do them all again.

Furthermore, with the better screen and higher resolution, I’ve been picking out bits of the photographs with interesting items that I missed. So I’ve been cropping those out and blowing them up – which I can do these days despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

So there are a few more photos to merge back into the run of things now, and by the time that I finish there will probably be a few more too.

My walk around the headland this afternoon was a reasonably solitary one.

But not as solitary as it might have been because we were being observed from above.

It’s that kind pf the year when all of the hang-gliders come out. And there they are soaring up over the old barracks building. On eof these days I might have one dropping in for tea.

But there have been changes in the chantier navale.

The big yacht, that might have been Spirit of Conrad has gone, as have a few of the other ones too, including Charles-Marie.

They’ve obviously finished what they were doing to them, but not to worry – it’ll be full again soon, I imagine.

But one of our old favourites has come back.

The ancient Bedford CF caravanette that appears here every now and again on a regular basis is back in its little hidey-hole.

One of these days I’ll go down there for a chat to the owner.

And I’ve solved the question about the strange annex to the house down there in the rue du Port. It seems that the plans include installation of a lift. So the space above will be for the machinery.

Tea was as I mentioned. And it was extremely delicious. And there’s enough stuffing left over for another one too.

The wind had risen for the evening walk. I was pretty much alone there too and I didn’t hang around all that long either.

So I’ve had my cocoa for supper and now I’m off to bed. I had an enormous wave of fatigue later in the afternoon and ended up curled up asleep on the chair for 20 minutes.

I really need to have a decent sleep one of these days, and I do hope that it’ll be soon.

Monday 25th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

Although I was out of bed round about 06:45, by 09:50 I was back in bed again. And I’d already fallen asleep twice on the chair in the meantime.

So in bed I was and in bed I stayed until about 11:30. That was a horrible start to the day.

What was even worse about all of this was that I had had an early night last night, and a decent sleep until the alarm went off, even though I did wake up twice during the night.

But there was enough time for me to go on a nocturnal ramble during the night. I’d been sent to prison and it was something like Alcatraz – a big grim grey stone horrible, stinking place. There were all kinds of horrible people and things in there, but what stood out were 4 elderly Confederate soldiers still in their uniforms – Confederate blue-grey but with a big Union Jack on the front as if they were British volunteers who had been caught by the North. Although they were imprisoned there, they were trying to negotiate some kind of good deal to have their conditions eased. But the Commandant was something of a swine who might well take advantage of their willingness to negotiate by doing good things, while he remained intransigent. I was ushered in to this meeting and I could see myself there. There was someone else there who said that he was a brewer, and the Commandant’s eyes lit up at this news. I was thinking along the lines of “those who work get paid” so I told the Commandant that it might be possible for the inmates to have an easier life if they could all do things like this for the good of the community (ie him) and he seemed to be quite open to the idea. He started to offer a little bit of a concession, although I knew deep down that there was no reason to become excited by this as he was probably being hypocritical. He would probably end up by taking advantage of everyone anyway, but there was no harm in trying to ease our conditions anyway.

I awoke at about 03:50, but it wasn’t long before I was back to sleep again. And I stepped right back into almost the same place that I had left earlier.

Back to the plot of our prison encounter. We were all having lunch and only the starter arrived. No main course, and we were all sitting there waiting. In the end, I was fed up so I stood up and leaving the table and mindless of any reprisals, I walked all the way up Edleston Road to near the top where I thought the food came from. It turned out that the food didn’t come from there but from next door – an old chapel that had been a car sales pitch. But that was closed down and the windows were all whitewashed over with rude messages written into the whitewash by a finger. There was no-one around at all and it looked as if the whole place had closed down and we weren’t going to receive our food.

After the medication and breakfast I made another start on catching up on some of the dictaphone notes, but I wasn’t at it for long. As I said, I went back to bed.

Once I’d awoken and was out of bed and back in the land of the living, I carried on and did a few more dictaphone notes. That took me almost up until lunchtime.

This afternoon I attacked the previous blog entries and added the photos back until last Wednesday.

On my walk this afternoon there were a few people around enjoying the nice weather.

However, I seemed to have interrupted some kind of photo session going on on on the public car park. There were a couple of girls there, a photographer and an assistant.

Why, I don’t really know, although there was some kind of fireman’s helmet involved in the proceedings.

Back here, fighting off another wave of sleep, I worked on editing the database for the photos of the High Arctic. That involved some research too and it’s amazing what you come across once you start to look.

Carrying on around the headland, I passed by the chantier navale.

There seems to have been a big change-around there right now. La Granvillaise seems to have left there, and so does Charles-Marie.

The large boat is still there, but we now have another yacht that might be the Spirit of Conrad together with a couple of other assorted smaller boats.

I’ll have to go for a wander around down there one of these days.

Back home to carry on work, but at 18:00 I came to a dead stop. I peeled the kilo of carrots that I had bought the other day and then par-boiled them. Rinsed, drained and par-boiled again, they were rinsed again and then left to drain right through for an hour while I had tea.

More shepherd’s pie out of the freezer, with plenty of frozen veg and gravy followed by rice pudding, which didn’t quite work as it boiled over in the microwave when my attention was elsewhere.

There was still some light in the sky when I went out for my evening walk around the walls.

Mind you, it was quite early. I’m eating my evening meal earlier these days, in an attempt to aid the digestion before I go to sleep.

I spent quite some time out there on the walls enjoying the sunset and photographing a trawler coming into the harbour.

Its lights stood out nicely as the boat was silhouetted against the sunset with the Ile de Chausey there in the background.

But now, I’m off to bed even though it’s early. Today was a dreadful day so I’m hoping for something better tomorrow. I’m sick of all of this.

sunset trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawler entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 24th March 2019 – THIS AFTERNOON’S …

… football match was much more interesting.

US St Pairaise were playing US St Quentin le Homme and as it was such a nice afternoon – rather clod and windy but sunny nevertheless, I decided to go out.

The match was quite even in some respects. Although St Pair was technically the better side, the players of St Quentin were more physical and direct in their approach.

The score finished 3-1 to US St Pairaise and St Quentin can count themselves very unlucky. But for two moments of magic for St Pair and a perfectly good (to me, anyway) goal for St Quentin disallowed for offside, and the match could have given us a totally different story.

Last night was a relatively early night (for me, anyway) and although I awoke a few times during the night, I managed to stay relatively comatose until about 08:15. It was something like 09:05 when I finally left the bed.

This morning, I was resurrecting the dictaphone, seeing that I hadn’t used it since my trip to the Arctic. I found a folder in there that I hadn’t accessed for quite some time, and there were about 30 or 40 files in there from earlier in 2018 about which I had completely forgotten.

And so I’ve copied those onto the computer and I’ve started to transcribe them. It’s amazing what I have forgotten and all of this has reminded me. But it’s just one more task to add to the long list that’s building up.

We had the football of course this afternoon, and then back here I made a pizza for tea as well as a rice pudding. That’s for the next couple of days because tonight there was the last of the slices of chocolate cake.

And tonight I was the only one out there walking around the headland in the wind.

Tonight I’m having an early night. There’s a lot to do as of tomorrow and I need to be on form.

Sunday 3rd February 2019 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… afternoon it was today.

Beautiful and sunny, not too windy, not too cold. And hordes of people wandering around outside. Round about 15:00 I joined them and went for a good walk. I didn’t make it back until 17:30.

All around the headland, down into town, around the harbour, back into town and then back here. And had the ice-cream stall that sells vegan sorbets been open, I would have treated myself to the first ice-cream of the year.

Now, with having an early night last night, and nice fresh bedding too, that I would have had a deep, relaxing sleep. But unfortunately not. Round about 02:40 I had another massive attack of cramp and I was in total agony. I just couldn’t ease it off and ended by standing up and trying to stretch my leg.

All in all, it took about half an hour until the pain would ease up enough that I could go back to bed. But any chance of going back to sleep was long-gone. I was awake for hours until I finally slipped away.

But I must have gone to sleep at some time, because I was off on my travels.

I was in a some kind of weird pub last night – some pub not too dissimilar to the one next to the old Town Hall in Crewe. All dirty, run-down and very basic. And I was waiting for someone there. I’d actually booked a room in a hotel a couple of miles outside the town. But a couple came in to the pub and said that they had a room booked there, so the landlord showed them up. As this couple looked quite respectable, I wondered what the rooms were like so I asked the landlord to show me a room. He took me upstairs, and the room was dreadful. A really bad 1960s-type of room with about 10 beds crammed in any old how, with heavy plush bed coverings and really looking in the worst possible taste. I didn’t even hang around to see if it was clean and damp-free. I just made an excuse about it obviously being out of my price range and walked out.
Later on, I was on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again. We were going to have a meeting about our journey and to sum everything up, but it was postponed. A very short while later, I was reading a newspaper on board ship, and it gave an “account” of this meeting, clearly written in advance of the meeting in anticipation of it taking place. To my surprise, the person who had written it was an old comrade of mine at the Open University and he had written quite a lot about my role in the voyage, blowing it up to well beyond what it really was, and putting a link in to my blog where readers could read so much more about it. However, the editor had edited out the url of the blog which disappointed me greatly.

08.40 when I finally awoke, but that’s not the same as saying that I was up and about. Much more like 09:30, or even 10:00 when I put my sooty foot on the floor.

Breakfast was even later. Much later too.More like an early lunch. I wasn’t in any hurry. I had a nice relaxing morning doing the usual Sunday task of badger all.

Feeling a little peckish later, I made some cheese on toast. And that reminded me about my pie. I must do something about that later.

When I went out for my walk, I had a good look around, and saw a couple of things that I hadn’t noticed before.

There were four or five of these floats bobbing up and down just offshore, and each float was different. I’ve no idea what they are doing out there, and I’m convinced that I have never seen them before.

While I was photographing the floats, I was distracted by an aeroplane flying overhead.

This aeroplane is a Bolkow Bo-208C Junior apparently, a type that I haven’t noticed before. And it’s quite interesting because the Bolkow company was the successor to the legendary Messerschmitt aircraft company of Luftwaffe fame.

It’s amazing what is out there once you start to look for it.

Talking of things being out there if only you look for them, the air was so clear that there was an excellent view of Jersey today.

So cropping out a selection of an image, blowing it up, which I can do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, and enhancing the colours, you can see some of the houses and other buildings dotted along the coastline of the island.

It’s hard to believe that that’s almost 60 kms (35 miles) away. But then that’s all thanks to the big zoom lens that I bought in October.

In the other direction, looking down the Baie de Mont St Michel, the view was just as good.

Going as far out as I could, I still couldn’t see the Mont itself and the buildings thereupon. But the big hotel complex just a few hundred yards away from the Mont is clearly visible.

To give you some idea of perspective, that’s about 30 kms (18 miles) away as the crow flies.

And so back from my walk, I started by making another rice pudding.

While that was cooking, I fried a couple of leeks and onions with a few mushrooms and a tin of flageolet beans. When it was all thoroughly cooked, I added the tofu mix from yesterday, thoroughly stirred it in and heated it all through.

While I was waiting for the mixture to cool down, I prepared a pizza and stuck that in the oven to cook;

While the pizza was cooking, I took out a roll of pastry from the oven. It had dried and cracked so I had to wet it slightly and roll it. Good job that I had bought my rolling pin a while ago.

After it had been rolled, I greased a pie dish and put the pastry in. Added the pie filling and then folded over the excess pastry.

The pizza came out of the oven and the pie went in. I also added the rice pudding so that it would cook further.

The pizza was delicious, although it could have benefited from a longer period in the oven, and so was the rice pudding. The pie looks really good and I can’t wait to try it.

There was just me outside tonight for my evening walk. It wasn’t really cold and wasn’t really windy. It sounds very good after the beautiful day but I bet that there’s more winter to come.

The tide was still on its way out by the looks of things but nevertheless there was a good photo of the wves rolling up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset just by the Casino

So now I’ll try yet again for an early night. And hopefully a good sleep, without an attack of cramp. I need it.

And I’ve just found out that we are going to have a visitor tomorrow. Neptune has just turned into the bay up by Cherbourg and there’s only one place where she will be going.

floats granville manche normandy france

st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

cabanon vauban pointe de carolles mont st michel granville manche normandy france

old military buildings pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

old military buildings granville manche normandy france

atlantic wall world war 2 bunker granville manche normandy france

trawler undergoing repair chantier navale granville manche normandy france

boat lift chantier navale granville manche normandy france

port de granville harbour manche normandy france

port de plaisance granville harbour manche normandy france

chemin de la roche gauthier granville manche normandy france

st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

ullouville granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

rue st gaud granville manche normandy france

old crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

art deco building rue du port granville manche normandy france

marite port de granville harbour granville manche normandy france

Thursday 31st January 2019 – THE WEATHER …

… was something of a disappointment today.

During the night the skies had clouded over. The temperature had gone up slightly so there was just some surface frost here and there. No snow and no heavy icing.

For a change, I’d had a decent sleep – right out of it all until the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. I’d been in a submarine (which of course is extremely unlikely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) and it had been the subject of a depth-charge attack. And all of the loose deck furniture, barrels and cases and chairs and all kinds of things, break free and float to the surface. What surprised me more than anything is that the very thought of all of this makes me break out into a real sweat in real life, yet last night I was quite calm and relaxed about it.
A little later I was joining a crowd of people at the side of a swimming pool, everyone sitting on these white plastic chairs. One of the people sitting there was a girl with whom I would have been pleased to be associated. So I went to sit next to her. She said that she needed to be sitting on the end of the group so that she could go to dance, and were I to sit there I would be preventing her. So I suggested that we swap places but she found another excuse for that.
And so it went on.

The alarm went off as usual, and I was soon out of bed – but not as soon as I would have liked. And after breakfast I had a good shower and clean-up and then hit the streets.

It was cold out there and I found, rather unexpectedly, a patch of solid ice.

I’ve mentioned the fibre-optic cabling works before.

It seems that now they are digging up the pavement in the rue des Juifs ready to connect up the lower town with our bit up here.

But I had a chat with the guys there and there is still no date announced for when the fibre-optic cabling might become operational.

Down in the harbour Normandy Trader was there next to Marité.

She was loading up ready to leave. A large lorry was down there and I imagine that it had come to deliver a load or two of stuff to take back to Jersey.

One of these days I’ll go down for a chat with them on board.

At the Post Office I posted my letter from the other day and then went off to LIDL.

I’d already slipped on a patch of ice earlier, and here at LIDL there was a load of snow that presumably had fallen off a lorry or a car that had turned into the car park.

At LIDL there was nothing of any interest there so I came home and had a coffee.

And a chat on the internet with someone whom I had met on my little sea voyage in September. That was a pleasant surprise.

After lunch, I did a mega-back-up on the laptop that I’m back to using as a media centre and then started to tidy up in a big way a series of directories that had become all tangled up over the last ever so many years. That was a long and difficult job and it’s another one that will go on for a while.

As well as the session on the bass guitar, I also started the paper-shredding session. Piles of paper here in the European Paper Mountain that is of a sensitive nature, so I’ve promised myself to shred it. I’ll do a few each day until it’s all gone. At least it won’t overfill the paper bin outside.

In between all of this, I went for a walk around the headland.

Another part of the path is now closed off due to being unsafe so it’s all becoming quite confused. I’m wondering if my apartment block, over there on the right, will slide into the sea sometime soon.

It wasn’t very pleasant out there though. The wind was howling and the rain was teeming down. it was cold too so when I was walking into the wind it was stinging my face and it was very uncomfortable.

Not having crashed out at all yesterday, I was disappointed to go off with the fairies today. Twice. But only for 10 minutes each time. I suppose that that’s an improvement. Especially following my walk up to LIDL.

Tea was a slice of pie that I found in the freezer, with vegetables and gravy, followed by a rice pudding.

For the evening walk, the rain and wind had died down so it wasn’t too bad.

There was a nice ethereal view of the Place d’Armes in the distance, with part of the rue du Nord illuminated by the street light on the corner. The night and the light brings out the best in places like this.

And just for a change, I wasn’t alone tonight. There were a couple of other people out there too.

So I’ll have an early night tonight. Catch up with my beauty sleep and a relaxing day tomorrow.

Sunday 9th December 2018 – HAVING GONE …

… to bed as late as 02:30 this morning, there is no possibility whatever of my leaving my bed when I awoke at 03:45. Not even on a weelday, never mind a Sunday.

09:45 was a much more reasonable time to awaken. It had given me time to go off on a nice little ramble but it’s not the kind of ramble that I would like to recount, bearing in mind the fact that you are probably eating your meal right now.

Breakfast at 11:00 is just like the good old days on a Sunday. It brings back many happy memories of Sundays in days gone past.

With having had a late breakfast I didn’t feel like any lunch. But wondering whether or not I ought to go out and find a football match, I nipped out to bring some stuff from Caliburn – and was almost bowled over in the hurricane.

It was the strongest one yet and watching football in this weather would be impossible – and playing in it even worse. And so I declined.

Instead, I did some more work tidying up the files on the external drive – the files that I had downloaded from the big desktop computer early in the week. And the stuff that I am finding that I had forgotten is amazing. And there’s much more to come too.

Tea was pizza again, and the rice pudding was … err … soomewhat past its best. Just a couple of mouthfuls persuaded me that I ought to consider another dessert. leaving it fr three days in the oven was not a good idea.

This evening I did go out for a walk. The wind had died down somewhat and was now just gale-force. So I didn’t hang around.

Back to work tomorrow so I’m going to have an early night tonight. Capitalise on my lie-in and come out fighting-fit tomorrow.

Sunday 2nd December 2018 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and that generally means no alarm call and a lie-in. And so I was in no mind whatever to get up when I awoke at … errr … 04:35.

But there was a good reason for waking up at that time of morning. I was off on another one of my nocturnal rambles. And I’ve had some dreadful nocturnal rambles during my time, some of which, with very good reason, are not the kind that I would recount because you are probably eating your tea or something while you are looking at this. But last night’s was one of the most dreadful that I have had and it was difficult for me to write in my diary. It wasn’t the kind of thing that I would be pleased to remember.

So 07:45 was a slightly better time to awaken, and 08:30 was an even better time to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit.

With a late breakfast, sightly delayed because I made a mess of my morning sudoku and ended up with two eights on the same line. Can’t go round doing things like this.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I didn’t do much at all this morning. Just doing things that I like to do. After all, Sunday is the day that I can laze around and do nothing without any thought of disappointment. Everyone needs a day like this.

After lunch, I headed off into the rain in the direction of St Pair where the US St Pairaise were playing US Mortainaise at the Stade Croissant.

St Pair would be higher in the table if they could score more goals, and Mortain just simply can’t defend. So I’m not sure of what game I was going to get.

It was obvious from the first 20 minutes that St Pair were much the better side, but it’s true that they didn’t offer anything up front. Mortain, were at least, organised but well off the pace.

Eventually, St Pair scored a goal after much huffing and puffing, but much to everyone’s surprise Mortain equalised, with only their second attempt in the whole of the half.

In the second half we had a couple of changes. One of Mortain’s players had turned up late and judging by how he was greeted, he was obviously the star of the team. He came on and went up front in place of the n°9.

And St Pair brought on the n°14 – the guy with all the hair who impressed me so much the other week.

This was the crucial point in the match. The Mortain replacement, well, he might have touched the ball two or three times during the second half, but for most of the game he was merely an ornament on the field.

As for the St Pair n°14, they played him at first on the right wing, but when they moved him into the centre of the attack he ignited the game.

What didn’t help was that the Mortain n°8 – the only player on the Mortain team who was showing any real ambition, was the victim of a very heavy challenge and was forced out of the game. And that was that for Mortain.

Mortain tired rapidly in the last 20 minutes and folded up. The St Pair players were stampeding in droves through a non-existent Mortain defence, stranded out of breath halfway up the field. And the final score of 5-1 was rather exaggerated.

It could have been much worse too. St Pair were denied what I considered to be a stonewall penalty, we had a beautiful step-over from the n°14 that sold a dummy not only to the whole Mortain defence but unfortunately to his onw team as well, and a keeper in the Mortain goal who was clearly not a keeper (his first instinct was feet, not hands) and who couldn’t catch a ball, but could dive and punch with a great amount of bravery and would have done credit to any other keeper at this level.

Back here I was shelling walnuts.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I liberated a pile from Liz and Terry’s lawn a few weeks ago and they have been drying in the sun. This evening I shelled them all and grilled them while I was making my pizza. They’ll be ground up and made into nutburgers in early course.

The pizza was delicious, and so was the rice pudding that I made yesterday.

And my walk in the wind and rain was very nice.

The air was quite clear and visibility was beautiful. The street lights reflecting off the clouds over St Malo were definitely impressive tonight.

Cancale is to the left and the lights of the lighthouse on the immediate left margin of the photo.

It’s Monday tomorrow so I’m back at work. That’s a cue for an early night tonight. And where will I go while I’m asleep?

Saturday 1st December 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… beautiful pie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday 25th June 2017 – WITH IT BEING …

… Sunday, that calls for a lie-in.

And quite right, too.

So having had a rather late-ish night to ensure that I would be well away with the fairies, and having lain in bed until I couldn’t possibly lie there any longer, it was all of … errr … 08:05 when I finally arose.

Some lie-in, hey?

So after breakfast I vegetated for a short while and then hit the streets. The depot de pain here is closed today and the boulangerie down at the bottom of the hill is closed for holidays, and so this meant something of a trek. And it was a nice day for it too – not too warm and not too sunny either.

First of all though, I had to find some salad dressing. In the LeClerc, it all has milk in it. The Carrefour does not, but there’s another supermarket called Coccinelle. That was open and they came up with the business. Cheap and basic, but with no milk, and I can add herbs and spices and some mustard to it. I’m sure that I can make something of it if I try.

And the guy in the shop said how much he liked my accent. While that’s a compliment, it’s no good in my scheme to passer inaperçu – “pass by unnoticed”.

I’d bought a lovely baguette or two last Sunday from the big boulangerie near the Tourist Information place and the queue outside the door showed me that I was not the only one to like their bread. So I queued.

it was the right choice too, because sitting on the wall overlooking the harbour at lunchtime, I remarked to myself just how nice this baguette was. It’s a shame that it’s such a hike down to fetch it, otherwise I would be down there every day.

As for tea tonight, it’s pizza night of course. And with the oven, while I might not have a pie to bake I went for the rice pudding option. I’ve tasted better, which is no surprise as you can’t buy dessert rice around here, but I’ve also tasted worse too. And there’s enough for another two nights.

I want to get the most that I possibly can out of this oven while it’s running.

And what’s been the plan for today then?

Not a lot, seeing as it’s Sunday. We’ve had the usual crash-out this afternoon, which is a shame, but we’ve had a really good session on the blog. Just a few more days and January 2012 will be complete. And with this new speed-editing facility that I discovered, attacking the modernisation of what I modernised when I first started the modernisation procedure has proceeded apace too.

But tomorrow I have one or two urgent things to do so I need to be on top form.

Early night, anyone?

Sunday 5th February 2012 – SUNDAY …

… is a Day of Rest.

And so I did nothing – not even to write up my blog. I just stayed in here in the warmth, read the odd book, watched a film and did some more of my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And cooked pizza, garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven. I didn’t even manage to watch the superbowl – I was asleep a long time before that.

Mind you, I did actually do something else.

I’ve changed the furniture round in the room yet again and I now have the bed-settee going across the room in front of the fire where I can see the flames. That’s a much more logocal arrangement and it also helps to break up some of the draughts that circulate around the place.

I’m certainly living the nomadic life these days, aren’t I?

Sunday 29th January 2012 – IT’S BEEN SUNDAY TODAY …

… and so I had a nice drive out in the countryside in the freezing (and I do mean “freezing” weather. In fact as far as Terjat, where the home team was playing Target in the Allier League 3rd Division.

It’s a beautiful setting up there at Terjat, and you can see right across the valley to the snow-covered hills in the background. It’s over there somewhere in those hills, at the back of Montaigut where I live.

Another thing about Sunday is that there’s no alarm clock and so with no-one ringing me up at some stupid time of the day, I can lie in until 10:24 without the least pang of guilt, in clean sheets and bedding the bed in its “double-bed” position, back in its old place by the little window.

Luxury!

The temperature in here was 13.2°C and that’s another thing that I like about this new fire that I’ve bought. With the old one, there wasn’t enough residual heat to keep the room warm once the fire went out and the temperature would often drop into single figures overnight.

But this fire keeps warm for ages and it’s maintaining a reasonable heat (up to now, anyway). and first thing that I did, even before breakfast, was to light the fire again. And I’ve been warm all day, which is really impressive and just what the doctor ordered.

In the warmth and comfort of my attic I’m well on the way towards the end of my presentation of the Trans-Labrador Highway – one or two more days and it will be done, I hope.

The football promised to be a real struggle, in the cold (coldest day of the winter so far) and the wind. And with Turgid being 3rd from bottom of the lowest possible league in the Allier, and Target being one place below them, I’m not quite sure what I expected. But it wasn’t much.

But having been overly critical of the football in the Allier, I have to say in fairness that this was a good game. Turgid played quite well, helped by the fact that Target, while they weren’t “bad”, they were rather clueless and ran out of ideas whenever they had the ball.

In the Allier, where there is no official referee, it’s the away side that provides the referee. And so it was a Target referee in the middle today. And he disallowed no fewer than three Terjat goals (two for offside – on one occasion overruling the *home* linesman) and one for pushing in the box.

To be fair I have to say that I was in no position to make any judgement.

But despite the handicap, Turgid scored two more goals that were allowed by the ref, and should have had three or four more. Had those disallowed goals been given and had Turgid won 5-0, it would have been a fair reflection of the match. Third from bottom in the worst league in the area?

Not on this showing they aren’t. I’ll be keeping my eye on the fixture list for whenever Pionsat don’t have a Sunday match, and I’ll wander along here again.

And this evening, with a rip-roaring fire and 24°C on the thermometer in the attic, I carried out what is fast becoming a ritual on Sunday evenings, and cooked pizza and garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven bit of my stove.

At €270 or however much it was, this woodstove is proving to be something of a bargain.

-4

Monday 23rd January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again today.

Yes, doing my “Imelda babe – going shopping, shopping for shoes” bit (and quite funnily, I was listening to Golden Heart, the album from which the above-names track is taken, on the way to Liz’s this morning).

The boots that I bought in a Hudson’s Bay trading post in Canada 15 months ago died a death over Christmas (the sole split) and the canvas shoes that I use for wandering around here aren’t really suitable for much.

And a chance glance across a busy road from the Auchan on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand revealed a sale on at a shoe shop

So I’ve now acquired a pair of black leather boots, not exactly what I wanted but they look fairly solid and 50% off the retail price of €59 made it look like something respectable, and they will keep my feet warm and dry for the foreseeable future.

But that wasn’t all.

They had some boots that are a kind-of cross between wellingtons and après-ski boots, with thick soles and fur lining and looking pretty solid, and all for €22 as well.

Having frozen my feet off at the football over the weekend and being up to my neck in mud around here as well, I decided that a pair of those wouldn’t go amiss either – for going to to footy and for working outside in the bad weather.

Two pairs of footwear – you really WILL be calling me “Imelda” now.

So what was I doing in Clermont-Ferrand this afternoon?

Well, we’d been to Gerzat this morning to record the radio programmes for Radio Arverne – spending a lot of the time talking rubbish as I predicted.

But I’m running low on soya milk and not having been to Montluçon and the Auchan there for a while, we decided to multi-task and visit the Auchan on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand, which is only a cockstride away from the road that takes us home.

And the rest is history.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, I had a really nice surprise.

You may remember that when we were doing the house roof back in 2009, we had Terry’s little cement mixer running here. It’s only small but it runs on just 375 watts and it ticked over all day comfortably on my electrical set-up here.

But it’s really too small for Terry now that he’s in business and so he’s acquired a big professional mixer that needed repair, and he’s now repaired it. The upshot of this is that “would I like a more-or-less permanent loan of the small mixer?”

Well, do bears have picnics in the woods?

A little mixer like that quietly ticking away all day while I do some important building work won’t half make my life easier and I have plenty of work for it in the summer, that’s for sure.

Aren’t I grateful?

This evening, I had the wood stove running hot, and garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding for tea were all cooked in the oven.

All in all it’s been quite a good day today. Hasn’t it just?

-4

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: rice pudding

Sunday 21st April 2019 – THIS SPENDING SPREE …

Friday 19th April 2019 – THERE’S NOTHING …

Wednesday 27th March 2019 – I’M ON THE VERGE …

Tuesday 26th March 2019 – I WAS WONDERING …

Monday 25th March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Sunday 24th March 2019 – THIS AFTERNOON’S …

Sunday 3rd February 2019 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

Thursday 31st January 2019 – THE WEATHER …

Sunday 9th December 2018 – HAVING GONE …

Sunday 2nd December 2018 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

Saturday 1st December 2018 – THAT WAS A …

Sunday 25th June 2017 – WITH IT BEING …

Sunday 5th February 2012 – SUNDAY …

Sunday 29th January 2012 – IT’S BEEN SUNDAY TODAY …

Monday 23rd January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

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