Tag Archives: Connahs Quay Nomads

Saturday 17th October 2020 – WE CALLED IT …

… a draw this morning. I’d just thrown off the bedclothes and was on the point of sitting upright ready to crawl out of bed when the third alarm went off. Just one second earlier would have been a glorious victory.

And seeing that I was in bed by 22:30 last night I ought to have done better too.

And during the night I’d been on my travels as well. I was with Nerina and we were in Gainsborough Road. I don’t remember too much about this but we’d been doing a lot of sorting out. I’d been to see a lock-up garage somewhere near Manchester which would be ideal for me to use as a store to store a lot of stuff that was lying around that I didn’t need but didn’t want to dispose of. Then we were back at the house and I don’t remember a great deal but I seem to remember that I’d bought a house in Winsford – it might have been Plantagenet Close – years ago and I was wondering what on earth I was still doing with it. I couldn’t find the keys so I wondered if the estate agent still had them, or if Nerina had them – I’d given them to her to look after, or her mother, something like that. In the end I went to ask her but each time I started to ask, she interrupted me and said something else. We ended up in the Post Office in Crewe. I was going to go to Winsford the next afternoon but it was a Saturday afternoon and the Post Office wouldn’t be open. The aim was to ask someone in the Post Office about delivering letters – where do they go to, who had a key? All of that kind of thing. I got myself into a queue by a counter but there was no-one there at the time, just a customer but no member of staff so I was idly loitering around. One member of staff came and started to deal with it. When she had dealth with this person, a young guy and his father walked up in front of me straight to the counter. Nerina said “those two guys have pushed in front of you. I said “yes, they haven haven’t they?”. The younger of the two turned round and made a smart remark to me – in Dutch. I turned round to Nerina and said “yes, Ne’erlandssprekers” so this guy made another comment and strolled away. Then I got to the window and the cashier, and that was that..

But it seems that dreaming about a new house elsewhere that I own is becoming another recurring feature of my nocturnal rambles. So what’s going on here?

For an hour or so this morning I tracked down some more photos of my trip around Central Europe at the beginning of August. And one or two of those took some tracking too. German road signs are not the clearest, especially when viewed on my low-resolution dash-cam through a bug-infested windscreen but in the end I managed to do some good with them and they are all properly labelled.

One or two in Munich were likewise difficult but reference to Hans, my friend there, soon resolved that issue.

After a shower and a clean-up (and a weigh -in, and I’ve lost another couple of hundred grammes) I went off to the shops. NOZ came up with one or two things, but nothing to get excited about, and it was the same at LeClerc.

No figs though, but luckily the Fruit and Veg shop, la Halle Gourmande, had a few. The lady there told me that they are seasonal, so I’m going to have to think of a substitute for my kefir.

Back here, I put some of the stuff away and then sat down to continue the photos but ended up falling asleep on the chair after my exertions. A whole hour or so I was out, and that’s good for neither man nor beast, especially when it means a very late lunch.

After lunch I attended to the kefir that had been fermenting away for the last few days.

Four juice-oranges were whizzed up, strained and filtered and put in a large jug. Then most of the kefir liquid was strained and filtered (always leave an inch or two in the bottom of your jar to cover the grains that you are making) into the orange juice.

The whole lot was then mixed together and then poured through a filter into a few stoppered glass bottles, and I hope that this batch is going to be as good as my lime-flavoured kefir from last time, which was excellent.

Finally, I set another lot of kefir en route for later in the week.

By now it was time to go for my afternoon walk

The other day I mentioned the Peche à Pied – the local pastime of scavenging amongst the rocks and the beach during the very low tides when the public areas below the commercial concessions are exposed

It seems that I may well have been right when I mentioned that it looked as if we are having another very low tide – a Grand Marée – this weekend because, sure enough, the crowds were out on the beach with their buckets and rakes, and whatever else they bring with them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the Peche à Pied at the Grand Marée in April was forbidden due to the virus, so two of us from THE RADIO broadcast a “virtual Grand Marée instead.

and there weren’t just crowds of people on the beach either.

There were the veritable hordes swarming around in the sunshine too, but also plenty going on in the air. As I watched, I saw a couple of light aeroplanes take off from the airport at Donville-les-Bains. One of them obligingly headed my way but before I could take a decent photo of it head-on, it veered off out to sea.

While we’re on the subject of the airport at Donville les Bains … “well, one of us is” – ed … there’s some talk about allowing international flights to land there again, mainly from the Channel Islands. This will mean that a permanent Police and Customs presence will be required.

All of this can only be a good thing.

Back here, a few more photos, and that leaves just 75 to do. But at the rate that I’m doing them, they are going to take forever to finish off.

Then it was time for the football. An early evening kick-off on the Internet for Barry Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

It was a game that finished 0-0 which is hardly a surprise because Connah’s Quay are still missing four of their star players – Danny Holmes, George Horan, and their two star attackers Jamie Insall and Mike Wilde. Chris Curran who normally plays on the wing, had a really good game up front for them but he was never likely to score.

Barry Town had a solid central defence for a change after their debacle the other week, but they too were missing their star attacker Kayne McLaggon and they still haven’t recovered from losing Momodou Touray at the end of last season so they were never really likely to trouble Connah’s Quay’s makeshift defence without Horan and Holmes.

The match though turned on a decision made after just two minutes. A Barry Town attacker burst through the defence and broke clear, only to be fouled by a Nomads defender. Certainly a foul, no doubt about that, but a red card for “denying a player a goalscoring opportunity”? The ball was only just beyond the centre-circle in the Nomads area, about 50 yards from goal with another two defenders bearing down on him and with the ball about 10 yards in front of him that the keeper might even have reached first? To call that a “goalscoring opportunity” is rather stretching things a bit in my opinion. I didn’t agree with that at all.

In fact the referee seemed to have a pop-up toaster in his top pocket because it seemed to me that there was always a yellow card popping up. I think that I counted 8 all told, many of which I wouldn’t have given myself. And the red card given to Barry’s David Cotterill, the former Welsh International, in the dying seconds of injury time for “kicking an opponent” was likewise somewhat exaggerated.

So Connah’s Quay played for 88 minutes with just 10 men and you wouldn’t have noticed because Barry never really had a serious shot on goal. A powerful header right into the arms of keeper Lewis Brass is all that I could think of.

Tea was out of a tin at half-time, and after the final whistle it was time for my evening walk

For a change I went around the headland tonight and over some of the runs that I used to do.

The first leg was along the Rue du Roc for some of the way – not as far as I used to go, and then a second leg across the lawn down the side of the hedge to the clifftop where the lighthouse was busy sending out its beam.

Something that not many people know is that each lighthouse has its own individual sequence of lights, to distinguish it from another lighthouse somewhere in the vicinity. Here at Granville it’s four short pulses of light followed by a long pause.

There’s a rotating shield inside the light with bits cut out for the light to shine through which is responsible for that.

There were a few people out there tonight so I wasn’t as alone as I might otherwise have been.

There was even someone inside the Coastguard Station because there was a light on outside and when he saw me about to take a photo he switched it off just to confuse the issue and I had to take the photo again.

At least everyone had cleared off by now so I could run my third leg, along the clifftop. And that wasn’t as good as it might have been because the car park has now become the centre of assembly for all of the adolescents in the town with their motorbikes and music.

But who am I to complain? At their age I was doing just the same. And probably getting into more mischief too while I was at it.

On my way back from the shops this morning I went past the chantier navale and I could see that it really is Les Epiettes in there.

There was also a new arrival, to make the total now three in there, so while I was catching my breath in the viewpoint at the top of the cliffs I could take a photo of it for the record.

And from there I ran on home – two extra legs of my fitness regime runs to make up five.

Back at the apartment I encountered one of my neighbours coming back home so we had a lengthy chat about putting the world to rights. And then I came up here to write my notes.

Having done that, I’m off to bed. Sunday tomorrow and a lie-in, but I also have pizza bases to make as well as some kind of dessert. It’s been a while since I’ve made an apple pie so I might have a go at that – either that or a crumble.

It might be a case of waiting until tomorrow to see how I feel.

Tuesday 13th October 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was in bed quite early – long before 23:00. And it’s been a while since that’s ever happened when I’ve been feeling good.

Furthermore, I was up and about a long time before the third alarm too which is something that’s becoming less and less common as time passes by.

And nothing on the dictaphone either – I can’t have gone anywhere during the night too. But that’s not as relaxing as you might think because I woke up a few times that I can remember, tossing and turning about.

For much of the morning I was revising my Welsh. I missed last week’s lesson so I needed to catch up with it. And even though it is the language of my grandmother, I’m still bewildered about the fact that so far, after just 6 months of study, I’ve encountered so far about 9 different words for yes and 9 for no. There’s probably plenty more to go at in the future too.

It’s not the easiest language in the world to learn either. It has a thought path and a sentence and tense construction all of its own quite unlike any Romance or Germanic language.

But we had our lesson for 2.5 hours, learning yet another couple of words for “yes” and “no” and then I went for lunch.

After lunch I did some tidying up (just a bit – I don’t want to disillusion you all) and then dealt with a couple of knotty coding problems on my website which no matter what I do and what I try, I can’t get to work.

It has really bad weather to stop me going out for my afternoon walk, so the rain that was falling didn’t prevent me from setting off, even if two of my neighbours out at the front door were less than enthusiastic.

And I’m glad I did because although the rain wasn’t all that heavy here, it was pelting right down in the immediate vicinity and out at sea, we were being treated to the most glorious rainbow in the distance. It was the kind of thing that made me wish that I had a shovel handy.

And that reminds me of Nerina who told me once that when I died she would come round and dance on my grave. And for that reason I’m going to be buried at sea. Although the last time that someone else wanted to be buried at sea, 5 gravediggers were drowned.

Yesterday when I was out in the evening I didn’t notice anything special about the wind, especially when compared to what kind of wind we’ve been having recently.

However it’s significant that there were no workmen working on the scaffolding this afternoon and that a large part of the compound seems to have been blown down. That’s some kind of indication that we’ve been having really bad weather for part of the day and I must have missed it

Mind you, when I was having my Welsh lesson this morning I noticed that the weather was going through a rapid sunny/cloudy cycle so maybe there was a strong wind that was driving all of that.

But I’m not going to miss this if I don’t get a move on.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel there’s a wicked rainstorm in progress and the wind is blowing it this way. It’s not going to be long before it makes the shore and then we’ll know all about it.

In the foreground on the right you can see one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, the German coastal protection of World War II. And on the left are some of the remains of another one.

The story goes that the local demolition packed that one full of explosive and detonated, hoping to remove it. They apparently broke every window within a 50-mile radius and moved a hatful of concrete bunker about half an inch. So they abandoned the procedure.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of the Atlantic Wall … “well, one of us is” – ed … the story of the storming of the Atlantic Wall on the Normandy beaches has always been one of those jingoistic gung-ho episodes that’s gone down in British and American folklore, but it really is nothing like that at all. The concrete to build the wall was supplied by a Belgian company that was issued with the plans and dimensions in order to calculate correctly the amount of concrete needed. The company was run by someone who was actually in the pay of the Russians and he transmitted all of the information to Moscow who sent it on to the British who then became aware of every last detail about the fortifications.

Of course, it wasn’t politic to admit that the Soviets had contributed substantially to the success of D-Day on a couple of the more-heavily-fortified beaches.

With no-one around this afternoon, I broke into a run along the path on top of the cliffs. An extra run will keep me fit and besides, it’s going to rain in a moment and I want to be home when it starts.

It seems that today I wasn’t going to be the only one heading for home in a hurry.

The fishing season is apparently now well under way again and with the pause in the bad weather the trawlers and other fishing boats are going out to work. And here’s one of them, heading for home across the Baie de Mont St Michel, presumably in the hope of making it home before the rain reaches here.

But it’s hard to work out if it has a catch or not. usually, the laden trawlers are surrounded flocks of seagulls hoping to catch a misplaced fish but this one looks as if it’s unaccompanied.

A few weeks ago we saw Coelacanthe and Le Tiberiade having their nets taken off by one of the cranes in the harbour.

Here today we have another trawler up at the quayside having its nets removed. After she’d been stripped, Le Tiberiade ended up on blocks in the Chantier Navale for a week or two having work done on her. I wonder if this means that within the next couple of days we’ll see this one up there on blocks too.

On the other hand, they could simply be going to sew up the nets. We’ve seen plenty of nets in the past spread out on the quayside being repaired.

As I watched the activity in the harbour Chausiais, the little freighter that runs out with goods to the Ile de Chausey, started up her engines and slowly moved away from the quayside.

It could be that she has a run out there to perform this afternoon now that the harbour gates are open, or else it could be that one of the Channel Island freighters, Thora or Normandy Trader, is on its way into harbour and need the berth. The building supplies that we saw on the quayside the other day are still here.

And so was the rain now. It was starting to rain quite heavily so I decided to clear off home without waiting to see what she was going to do.

Back here I had a few other things to do around here and then ended up with my hour on the guitars which went a lot better than it did yesterday.

A quick tea tonight and then outside for my runs where I was nearly swept away by a car coming the wrong way down the one-way street.

The footpath underneath the walls was still flooded out so I had to make alternative arrangements for my runs. In fact I ended up doing four lengths, not three.

Out at Donville les Bains those bright lights at the back of that old hotel are all lit up again. I’m not quite sure what they are. They might possibly be at the football ground where they might be training, but I don’t recall any floodlights the last time that I went to watch a match there.

Apart from that, there was nothing else of any interest so I ran on home. There was football on the internet.

Tonight was a top-of-the-table clash between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads. TNS won 1-0 which is no surprise seeing as I counted at least 4 regular Nomads first-team players, including their two main strikers, out injured. Despite being quite lightweight up front, they did the best that they could and it was an entertaining game, but TNS were always going to win this match.

So to bed now, not as early as I was hoping. And maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll be going off for a wander during the night. It makes quite a change to have a night in.

Tuesday 6th October 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that LAST YEAR IN MONTREAL I came across a pizza place that had started to sell vegan pizzas as a mainstream meal.

Here I am in Leuven tonight, and what do I find but that another, different pizza chain is now offering the same. It’s most unlikely that I’ll be able to find them in France, with France about 100 years behind in this respect and Leuven is likely to be in the forefront, having such a huge student population as it does, but it’s certainly progress.

The only downside of this is that I didn’t see the notice until after I’d bought the food for my stay here for the next few days. Had I seen it earlier, I would have changed my meal plans. This kind of thing needs encouragement.

What also needs encouragement is my early starts in the morning. Another day where I was out of bed, up and definitely about this time, long before the third alarm went off. First task was to release the gas in the Kefir, and second was to feed the sourdough. It’s like having household pets in here now and that was something from which I have been trying to escape. The idea of having ties like this of any kind is not part of the plan.

So having loaded the working files onto the portable hard drive, done the washing up, had a shower, taken out the rubbish and bleached the sinks, shower and toilet and finished the packing, I hit the streets.

Last night, the day’s photographs finished with trawlers unloading at the Fish Processing Plant.

So today we start as we mean to go on with a carbon-copy of last night’s photograph, except of course that it’s somewhat lighter right now. And there’s a trawler manoeuvring around in the harbour too. Although the harbour gates are closed, the tide is well on its way in and so I imagine that the gates are about to open and the trawler is ready to leave.

And so I headed off towards the railway station. It was windy, but nothing like as windy as it has been, and the weather was doing its best to rain. It’s a good job that I’d prepared by wearing the correct clothes.

There was still half an hour to go before departure time when I arrived at the Railway Station.

And here we have a disaster. The coffee machine is out of order. I’m not drinking very much coffee these days but I still fancied a cup this morning due to my early and somewhat energetic start. The train, a GEC Alstom Regiolis, was already in at the platform so I was able to board it, find my seat and settle myself down in comfort.

Somewhere along the route I was joined by a miserable, bad-tempered old woman who had clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed and who moaned all the way to Paris. And for the first time ever, I managed to go for most of the way without crashing out. Just 10 minutes or so. I was able to do quite a bit of work.

One of the jobs that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. I was with someone last night – it might even have been Castor I dunno. It started off with meeting somewhere – we had to meet and I had to go on back to my digs. I’d looked at a couple of digs and wasn’t really keen on them but the 3rd one was OK so I’d booked in there. Then I had to go out to meet whoever it was. It turned out that 1st of all it was yet another boy from my school days and we met in Claughton Avenue. I said that we had better go to check to make sure that my car was still there because I’d left it there a day or so ago. It was the old Ford Escort that I’d had. We walked down the whole length of the street looking for this Escort but it wasn’t there any more. I thought that either we were in the wrong street or someone has pinched it. If it’d been pinched, it’s been pinched and it’s far too late to do anything about it now. It was all about worrying about a car or worrying about a bike When we got to the end there was a bike rack with a pile of bikes and someone in charge The guy whom I was with picked up a bike and sat on it as if to cycle off Some old guy who was in charge said “put that back! It’s not yours!” My companion replied “ohh yes it is!” so we had this “no it isn’t – yes it is” bit and in the end he said “no it isn’t” and handed the bike back. The old guy said “thank you very much”. By now the situation had advanced and I was with Castor – it could have been Castor, it could have been anyone. We’d come out of a huge building complex type of thing and we had to go home to where my digs were. I said “come this way” and she replied “no, it’s this way”. She wanted us to go in exactly the opposite direction but I was insisting that it was my way and she was insisting that it was her way She’s had a bit to drink and was a bit unsteady on her feet so in the end I guided her back In the end we ended up somewhere walking home and I suddenly realised that you needed a special code to get into the building where I was staying and I didn’t have that code I thought “how am I going to manage that?” To make it worse, whoever I was with decided that she wanted to stay the night with me I thought that ordinarily this would really be my lucky night but how am I going to manage this if I can’t get into my building? I supposed that I could conceivably go and find a room for us in a hotel but it was now something like 02:00 and what hotels with rooms would be open at this time of night? We were on foot so we couldn’t go far. It all became really confusing as well as being a really feverish night again

It’s a common, recurring theme, isn’t it? Here I am, with the bird on my plate and just as I’m about to get my fork stuck in it, something always comes up to spike my guns. Story of my life, I suppose. And Castor too!

A little later I was back in a similar kind of situation and a similar kind of situation running a chocolate factory and mixing chocolate. There was some kind of dispute about the recipe and in the end she chose one. We were busy making it and we got a couple of blocks to take back to the hotel where we were staying to try them out.

Our train arrived in the Gare Montparnasse about 2 minutes late but the Metro trip was rapid and straightforward. Some people didn’t find it that easy though. There was a barrage of ticket inspectors checking everyone’s tickets and a few people fell foul of them.

When I arrived at the Gare du Nord I had half an hour before my train was due to leave so I went for a walk around outside. One thing that I do like about the Paris Metro is the beautiful art-deco work of the entrances. This one, across the road from the railway station, is a typical example.

There were not very many people at all in this photo, which is not what you expect outside the Gare du Nord. In fact, one thing that I did notice was that the Metro was much quieter than usual and the station was quite empty. This virus is certainly affecting the business habits of the inhabitants of the city.

Another thing that I noticed was that outside the Gare du Nord thee was a placard saying that planning permission had been obtained for various alterations.

The work that is planned to be carried out is quite extensive and substantial. It’s going to change the aspect of the railway station quite considerably and that’s a shame because the station is a beautiful building and a rare survival of decent 19th Century railway architecture.

Somewhere here and there I have a few photos of the exterior of the railway station but I don’t have one of this angle here. I reckon that I had better take one to add to the collection just in case they are really going to alter it in any major way and we might not ever see it again.

Back inside the station there was still 20 minutes to go before the train was to depart. I wasn’t going to loiter around outside too long because it was raining and it’s dryer inside.

There was already a train parked in our platform. It was one of the TGV duplex trains, built by Alstom and are getting on for 25 years old now. But nevertheless, they are still very comfortable and very rapid too.

We weren’t allowed on board yet so we had to wait around for another 10 minutes before we were allowed on board. During that time they were loading up the train with the foodstuffs and drink for the journey. I’m not quite sure why because it’s not as if it’s actually a long way to Lille on a TGV.

They eventually allowed us through towards the train. This train set consists of two units joined together and my seat was is in the farthest unit.

We actually left on time and hurtled off into the wild blue yonder at 300Km/H. The train was actually half-empty, which was something of a surprise. Like I said earlier, people’s habits are changing.

Our train arrived in Lille-Flandres 5 minutes late, and then there was the hike down the road to the Lille-Europe railway station. The rain had stopped by now so it was a really pleasant walk down there, although I had to get a wiggle on because they don’t allow you very much time to make the journey and there isn’t a shuttle-bus or anything to connect up the stations.

Negotiating the layabouts with their savage dogs at the entrance, I made my way into the station. Still 5 minutes to go before my train was due to arrive which was just as well because the singing was wrong in the station and I had to walk almost the full length of the platform to where I had to board.

Bang on time, our train came in. It’s the TGV that comes from Montpelier and when I lived in the Auvergne I used to catch it quite regularly from Lyon when I was flying out to North America from Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Arriving on time, leaving on time, and reaching its destination, Bruxelles-Midi, bang on time too. This isn’t the SNCF as we know it. There’s a story that goes around France about how kids spend all of their maths lessons working out train arrivals and departures, and then when they start their working life they encounter the SNCF …

Having arrived in Brussels, I didn’t have to go too far or wait too long for my train to Leuven. It was due to come in at the next platform.

This is the express from the Belgian coast to Welkenraedt on the German border. It’ one of the Siemens Type 18 Electrics, about 12 or 15 years old and designed by Chris “Failing” Grayling. Consequently they came with a great many problems and Siemens had to pay a hefty fine. Once they were eventually put right they’ve proved to be the backbone of the SNCB’s express passenger service.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall by the way that there’s a story to Welkenraedt and WE’VE BEEN THERE to find out about it.

We arrived in Leuven on time (I’m not used to this) and I was soon installed in my room here. One of the benefits of being a regular here is that when there’s room, I am given a free upgrade and as it’s quiet, I have a duplex apartment.

Down at Carrefour to do my shopping, past the pizza place, and then back to here for tea (falafel burger and pasta followed by fruit salad and vegan sorbet) and to watch the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads in a torrential rainstorm against Caernarfon Town.

In the first half, it was all one-way traffic towards the Caernarfon goal. Caernarfon only made it into the Nomads’ penalty area once so you will not be at all surprised to learn that the half-time score was Nomads 0, Cofis 1. Such is the nature of Welsh Football.

The second half was a much more even contest but the Nomads were playing with the rainstorm pushing them forward and they ran out 3-1 winners in the end , 2 goals of which were scored by the centre-half Priestly Farquarson who was pushing up behind the attackers on several occasions and relying on his pace (because he is quick) to get him back.

It was however quite quaint to see, every time the game stopped, a hand come round the front of the camera with a cloth and clean the lens of the rain that was soaking it. That brings back many memories from a less-sophisticated past.

Saturday 26th September 2020 – I WAS WRONG …

… about the weather last night. We didn’t have the rainstorm today. Or the plague of locusts either. But we had just about everything else.

The high winds are still here and still wreaking devastation about the town. I blame the baked beans that I had for tea the other night.

We also had one of the coldest days that I can remember for a good while too.

That’s probably why I didn’t feel like springing into action this morning and leaping joyously out of bed. Consequently I missed the third alarm. Only by 10 minutes or so, but missed it all the same.

And that’s hardly surprising as I must have been exhausted after my travels last night. I was with my aunt and we were doing a lot of stuff on the computer quite happliy working away. There was another guy with us as well. Suddenly my computer hard drive caught fire. This boy was all for dashing off for phoning up the fire brigade. Of coure I wouldn’t let him do that – I put it out myself. The fire brigade would just smother it in foam and ruin everything. In the end I managed to put out the fire. Of course the hard drive was ruined. My aunt and this boy were going into the City – Bishopsgate, although I don’t know why I thought Bishopsgate because it wasn’t there that I meant. There was a huge computer shop there. I felt really annoyed because I’d been to a computer fair that day and I could have bought a new hard drive there for peanuts had I known but it’s too late now. I asked this boy if he knew about this computer shop. Oh yes, he knew it very well. I asked “while you’re up in London with my aunt can you nip in there and pick me up a hard drive?”. I told him the one I wanted. He said “wouldn’t it be better to pick up a differet type for a MAC or something like that?”. He only ever uses MACs. I said that I use PCs and I’ve used them for years and I know them pretty well so I’m going to stick with them. He had a little bit of a chunter about that. Then I thought that I would have to get him some money as well and I probably don’t have enough cash on me so how am I going to do that? Then it came to booking the tickets so I went to look on the railway site. It turned out instead that I was looking at the bus site. It took endless goes for me to log in on it because everyone was meithering me and I kept on typing the wrong word. Eventually I got in to find that it was buses that we were looking at because we were now actually living in Bath. The first thing my aunt said was that they don’t have a direct bus service from Bath to London any more. We have to go on the train. We had to start looking for things like that. In the meantime we managed to find the times of the buses which would at least get them some of the way. Then the phone rang. My aunt talked to whoever it was and so on. When she hung up she said “that was George and that’s strange. He’s after his wages for the taxis. He’s on holiday and he wants it posted to him in York by cheque”. She couldn’t understand why he wanted it. I said “he’s probably going to buy something special while he’s in York”. “Yes but it’s early. he doesn’t get paid until Thursday but anyway …”. She had a chunter about that. Then I had to go and get her ready for this bus so they could get on it and this other guy too and head off into London
A little later on there was a girl and she was a lot older than she ought to be and she still had a dolly that she cuddled. People used to make remarks about it (Wiske and Schanulleke, anyone?). They decided that they would pass a Law about it. Somewhere inside there they inserted a clause that people who cuddled a pet or other object or person for the purpose of comfort would be exempt, which of course wiped out the whole purpose of this Law anyway. So we all had a debate about it.
Just then this other girl turned up. She was in a purple and gold kind of trouser suit kind of thing that looked more at home in a Middle-Eastern harem. She had long dark-brown hair that was cut in the style of an Egpytian, really precise cuts and edges and so on.
There was much more to it too but as you are probably eating your meal right now I’ll spare you any discomfort.
And once again I was dictating without the dictaphone in my hand. Either this is starting to become a habit or else it already is and a whole load of stuff has slipped quite literally through my hands.

After a shower, Caliburn and I hit the streets and headed to the shops.

NOZ is always on my shopping list. That’s a shop that buys job-lots of bankrupt stock, overstocks, that kind of thing from all over Europe.

In the past I’ve found plenty of useful things in there and also a whole variety of different foods to vary my diet somewhat. Today they had stocks of Sharwoods products on offer so I now have some vindaloo and madras sauces as well as some mango chutney. Stocks of curry in the freezer are getting low, an I’m also going to learn to make poppadoms, I reckon.

At LeClerc I didn’t spend very much, and most of what I did went on fruit. The place is now looking like a greengrocer’s, which is good for my health (and that reminds me – my kiwi, lemon and ginger cordial is delicious and I’ll be doing that again – hence more kiwis today).

One good thing is that, after much searching, I finally found the fresh figs. So back here, I finally set my kefir en route. How that will pan out remains to be seen.

This afternoon I had a whizz through some more photos of my adventures with Spirit of Conrad in July and we are now in our anchorage for the final night aboard. I reckon that there are about 50 more to edit before I finish.

Then, there are the 400 or so from my voyage into Eastern Europe and once they are completed I can turn my attention to the 3000 that remain from the High Arctic in 2019 and the 2000-odd from the High Arctic in 2018.

And then, finally, I can write up the notes for all of this.

The burning question of the day is not Rafferty’s motor car but whether I’ll finish all of this before all of this finishes me.

A few more albums bit the dust too, some more work was done on revising the web pages, Rosemary rang me and we had a chat for just over an hour, and I even found time to crash out for 15 minutes.

And as for that latter, with everything else that I’ve been doing today, it’s hardly a surprise. I must have been exhausted by then so I’m not too disappointed, even if for the last couple of days I’ve managed to keep going.

The day is far from finished too. There’s football this evening so I headed off into town.

And here’s another sure sign that the summer season has ended. The beach cabins have gone and they’ve taken down the diving platform at the Plat Gousset already, but now the itinerant bar Chez Maguie has folded up its tent and crept silently away in the night.

It’s a very significant sign for some of us, but for others it means that the locals can have their boulodrome back until next summer.

Professional football started back up a few weeks ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But this weekend amateur football has had the green light.

Consequently I headed off up to the Stade Louis Dior to watch Granville’s 2nd XI play FC Flerien, the team from Flers, in Normandy Regional 1.

For the first 15 minutes Granville’s control of the ball and their passing and movement was extremely fluent, but by the end of this little period they were already 2-0 down – a corner that the goalkeeper dropped into the path of an onrushing forward (he seemed to have a good pair of teflon gloves) and a misplaced header under pressure back to the goalkeeper that went to another onrushing forward.

After that, a couple of heads dropped, and the Fleriens got into their stride. We had to wait 55 minutes for Granville’s first shot on target (and about 10 minutes before the end for their other one) and 65 minutes for their first corner.

It was literally men against boys because Granville’s team was quite youthful whereas Flers had three or four old hands who had clearly been around the block far more times than the Granville players could handle.

The match ended 2-0 but really Flers could have had half a dozen and no-one in Granville would have complained.

And I’m glad that the match finished when it did because I was absolutely frozen to the marrow. It’s a long time since I’ve been this cold. I’ve been much warmer than this in the Arctic and next time I go to the football I’ll put on the thermal undies that I bought on Thursday.

On the way back, here’s something that I haven’t noticed before – mainly because it’s been an age since I went into town in the dark at night.

But now there seems to be blue lights shining down on all of the pedestrian crossings on the main roads. Presumably to give motorists a better chance of spotting civilians trying to cross the road.

It brought back many happy memories of a press release that we wonce received from the Parisian authorities when I worked at Shearings – “The policeman who directs the traffic at the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe will from now on be floodlit to make sure that motorists don’t miss him in the dark”.

My route home had to be extended tonight for the simple reason that “if I’m out, I’m well out” and there’s no point in going home with just 90% on my fitbit. I may as well push it up to 100%.

For that reason I wandered on down into the port to see what was going on.

“Nothing much” was the answer to that. Marité was there of course, tucked up in her little corner and so were the two Channel Island ferries, Granville and the older Victor Hugo.

As an aside, we haven’t seen a gravel boat in here for almost 6 months. I was hoping that this new mayor would do something about stimulating the freight trade to the port.

My route continued along the rue du Port.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen several photos taken of this street in the dark, all of which have been taken from the cliffs up above.

And so tonight, in an effort to do something different, here’s the reverse-angle shot taken from the street looking back towards the cliffs.

Not that you can actually see the cliffs in this (lack of) light. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

On the climb back up the Boulevard des Terreneuviers I stopped (for breath) to look at the tidal port.

There was a beautiful bright moon tonight, even though it’s only half-full, and there was a wonderful reflection of light down in the Baie de Mont St Michel looking across to Jullouville and the Pointe de Carolles.

Actually, considering that this photo was hand-held and taken with the little NIKON 1 J5 with the standard lens, it’s not come out too badly, even if I did have to stop it down by 8 (in fact by 10 because normally the camera has to be opened up by 2 since the lens was repaired).

Back at the flabberblok there was yet more football so I grabbed a bowl of rice pudding and settled down in a ringside seat in front of the internet.

Y Fflint, newly promoted to the JD Cymru League this season after a 20-year absence were entertaining Barry Town. Barry, usually a strong competitive side but who misfired so spectacularly in European Competition earlier and then against TNS on the opening day of the season, have yet to grace my screen this season and I’ve only ever seen Y Fflint play once, in a cup match a few years ago.

The match was quite entertaining because while Barry were much more powerful and street-wise (which you have to expect), Flint matched them blow for blow and I was quietly impressed.

There were three significant items in this match

Alex Titchiner, Flint’s ace striker, was carried off injured after just 2 minutes.
Mike Lewis, in the Barry goal, played the game of his life and made a couple of stunning reflex saves (and that’s not to say that our old favourite, Jon Danby, formerly of Connah’s Quay Nomads, now next-door in the Flint goal didn’t have his moments too)
and had a Flint defender kept his head when Matt Jarvis burst into the area and not conceded a penalty

then the new boys would have had something from this game. They are no mugs, and certainly not cannon-fodder like some promotees have been.

And if TNS managed to sweep away this Barry side so convincingly, then just HOW good are TNS?

There is also some exciting news from Deeside too. It seems that the idea to build a new football stadium on Deeside to be UEFA-compliant for junior international matches, and European club competition and to be shared by next-door neighbours Connahs Quay Nomads and Y Fflint has taken a giant step forward.

Who knows? It might even become a reality if the two clubs can keep up the momentum they they have established over the last couple of years. The announcement that “certain funds have been made available” is major news but, as expected, BBC Wales, with its hands so deep in the pockets of the Welsh Rugby Union to an indecent depth that it imposes a news blackout on Welsh football, has totally passed it by.

But by now, it’s late. Long after midnight, so I’m off to bed. I’ll write up my notes in the morning – if I’m here. It’s Sunday and a day of rest and I might sleep in long past midday.

Saturday 12th September 2020 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since we’ve had a photograph of an old car on these pages?

It’s not very long, of course, but nevertheless it’s still nice to see them when they are out and about. And, interestingly, the last few old cars that we have featured on these pages have been Jaguars and today, we came across another one.

This one is the cream of the crop, to be sure. It’s one of the classic XK-series of Jaguars and if my memory serves me correctly, it is an XK-140.

If I could have my choice of cars to come home with me, this one would be pretty close to the top of the list.

When I was a kid, I always dreamed about owning one of these but today it would cost a King’s ransom. This one was parked up on the car park of the LeClerc supermarket when I went to do my shopping this morning.

And, much to my surprise, despite the fact that the supermarket was crowded, there was just me and one other person admiring it. That’s a real shame because it’s worth much more than that.

What else was a real shame was that I missed the third alarm. 07:40 when I finally crawled out of bed.

So while you admire the activity that was taking place in the area this afternoon, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

And it really was a busy night too. No wonder that I couldn’t haul myself out of bed at 06:00. I probably wasn’t even here.

To start off the events we were on board ship last night and playing a real pantomime of pirates, that kind of thing. I was the hero and someone else was my sidekick pirate who was Irish and speaking in an Irish accent and had to go round camping up all of this thing about priates and Irish in it. We decided to do the scene again but this time with me as the Irish pirate thing but there was no time to learn the lines so I just went away and ad-libbed. At the crucial moment I forgot my accent which caused everyone to laugh and was embarrassing to me as I couldn’t recapture the comic accent after that. When this finished they talked about how this would have been presented in the Middle Ages. Someone actually produced a Middle-Ages speech guide from the 15th Century, round about then which basically used speech bubbles and so on. It was a very complicated way of doing it and of course you wouldn’t expect to follow the play by reading the speech bubbles as it was just so complicated. but I was being interrogated in this by someone or other almost as if it was real. I’m sure that there was much more to it than this as well but I’m blowed if I can remember it.

Later on there was something about a series of magic wands last night but I can’t remember much about that either. There was however one called a Disravu and predicted the future itself, found in the USA in a shipwreck and was supposed to be extremely elderly, something to do with St Paul. Marianne was with me last night and we were getting ready to go out. She said she was going to take her only two jackets with her and save her third for tonight when we went out. I thought that that was presumptuous of her. She went off and the postman appeared. He was obviously sticking stuff in the letter boxes down the end of the lane. As he turned round a black CA Bedford taxi pulled out of the side verge and nearly forced him off the road. There were a couple of other people looking at the horses as well. I went out but I remembered that I didn’t have a mail box so I looked around to see where he might have lodged the letters. It occurred to me that maybe there wasn’t any post for me – whether it was for someone else, a neighbour in the area. The two young kids who were with me and Marianne came down the drive in a sort of fancy dress, chanting and singing. I pretended to be scared. Then Marianne put in an appearance.

Later still I found myself again last night dictating a dream without the dictaphone in my hand, thinking that I had it in my hand and wrestling with it to switch it on, all that kind of thing to get it to record. But of course it wasn’t in my hand so I couldn’t. It’s not the first time that this has happened either.

But when i finally did get round to switching it on to record I’d forgotten what it was that I was going to talk about. It was something to do with a furniture removal and I can’t remember if it was Hans but we had to go into the East of Europe, sitting outside this row of houses trying to work out which one we had to visit. We were in somewhere like Albania and all the car registration numbers were weird. We were watching them and I was making a particular note of them. We saw these people pull up with a trailer loaded up with stuff on it. We watched them for a couple of minutes getting it into the driveway and starting to unload it. In the end we said “right, that must be them”. We got up and walked down to them. Hans got there first and shook hands. When I got there 30 seconds later Hans had gone. There was just a big cow that came round trying to push everyone around. Of course I don’t like big animals so I was rather uncomfortable about this idea.

And we haven’t finished yet either.

Even later on we were all rehearsing for a music competition like we did for the last night on the boat in September last year. At first I thought that I was being excluded by this group of people but then they started to include me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE and sit down and discuss the plans. There was one girl, an Indian girl who they were trying to rope in who wasn’t really sitting down with us. She was wandering off somewhere and we had to go and fetch her back but no-one could remember her name. I’d written her name or someone else had written it down for me on a piece of yellow paper but I couldn’t find it. I could remember the cleaners picking it up. This got me into a panic about “what the hell am going to do about this girl’s name?”. I was searching my room all over for this piece of paper and then we started to sit and go through this list of songs that we were going to play. Luckily I was the only one with a guitar so it looked as if I was going to be the one who would be playing all the music.

Is it any wonder that I couldn’t crawl out of bed with all of that.

Following a shower and a machine-load of washing, I went out to the shops. Nothing much at all on offer in NOZ and nothing much from LeClerc either. Grapes at €0:99 per kilo was a must-have of course, and a pile of other fruit too seeing as it was cheap.

But if it hadn’t been for the Jaguar it would have been a pretty miserable morning.

Back here I hung up the washing and cracked on with a few more dictaphone entries from the backlog from when i was in Central Europe. One of these days I might actually be up to date, but that’s going to be several weeks away yet.

There was the afternoon walk as usual today but I had a change of plan. I went around the city walls instead.

We’ve already seen plenty of activity out there this afternoon but there was even more that merited a special mention, like that rather large wind-powered ship on the horizon right out there in the centre of the photograph.

It certainly looked impressive and I wondered which ship it might be.

One ship that it won’t be is Marité.

She’s still in port tied up at her berth with a couple of people loitering around. It’s actually quite a surprise to see her here because we’re still officially in the tourist season and I would have expected her to have had a full schedule for this time of the year.

No point in going down to ask them because their stock reply will be “it’s all on our web site” and then they’ll go back to chatting amongst themselves and ignore the paying passengers.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

There wasn’t just a question of crowds of people on land and boats in the sea either.

The air was pretty full of aircraft of all different types this afternoon whizzing around above the town and the sea. Just like this microlight in fact. We’ve seen this a couple of times and I really am going to have to talk my way into a little trip around.

The autogyro that we’ve seen quite often wasn’t out there today as far as I could see. It was about the only local aircraft that we didn’t see up there today.

There wasn’t the possibility for me to go for my run across the Square Maurice Marland. I didn’t want to embarrass the crowds.

That meant that there was plenty of time to see what was going on, and whatever there was on the north side of the headland in the English Channel there was just as much on the south side, including La Granvillaise having a sail around the bay by Le Loup

You can always tell her when she’s side-on. She has her serial number, G90 (you can tell how old she is) on the sail.

Back home and just as I closed the door, Rosemary rang me so we had a good chat for about an hour.

The football season in Wales has now restarted and there was a live game on the internet. As US Granville were playing away today, I had the football on in here.

Connah’s Quay who won the Championship last year were at home against Bala Town and that was the broadcasted match. And, surprisingly, Connah’s Quay were distinctly second-best and when Bala took the lead, through something of a rather flukey goal, no-one was in the least surprised.

They failed to take advantage of their dominance and a rather shaky Nomads keeper, and they paid the penalty with what was almost the last kick of the game when Nomads winger Sameron Dool scored probably the most unlikely goal you’ll be ever likely to see. You can see it AT ABOUT 2:30:30

later on, I went for a walk outside.

it was too late for me to go out with the tripod which was a shame because the sky was really clear tonight. You might not think too much of this photo but you can see on the far right of the image the flash of light from the lighthouse at Cap Frehel 70 kms away.

There were all of the street lights from down the Brittany coast too, as far as St Cast le Guildo where we stayed for a night on Spirit of Conrad

My walk continued around the headland and along to the viewpoint over the chantier navale.

There was no change in the occupancy but it did occur to me that I haven’t taken a proper night-time photo of the place just recently so I put that right.

And having done that I carried on home. Complete with 3 runs of 900 paces in total to fit in with my attempts to recover some of this fitness that I had back in May.

It’s now gone 02:00 and I can’t sleep at all which is a surprise seeing as I haven’t crashed out today yet. Luckily tomorrow is Sunday and a lie-in so that I can recover.

Then Monday, back to work again.

Friday 21st February 2020 – EVEN AS I …

… write I’m watching the football.

And in case you are wondering how I’m managing to do this, I have the football on the big computer and I’m typing on one of the laptops.

Not the little Acer that served me for all those years but the one that I bought in the USA to replace it. However I did magae to fire up the little Acer and download a couple from my suite of programs. I’ll give it a good run out next week and see how it does.

It’s not easy doing these two things at once but I’m having more luck than the footballers are. There’s a howling gale blowing on Deeside and it’s making a total mockery of this match. It’s nothing but a complete lottery out there. One goal kick “straight down the field” ended up in the commentary box.

This morning I was, for once, up and about before the third alarm. And apart from my adventures yesterday, that makes a nice change. Once the medication was out of the way I had a go at the dictaphone.

After breakfast I had another go at cutting up some digital sound files. A couple were quite straightforward but one was, as expected, out of order and that took a while to untangle.

Afterwardsm being in an enthusiastic mood, I tracked down a couple more on the internet and, as bad luck would have it, they were all over the place and took an age to sort out

That left me a short while to do some tidying up in the bedroom and put away stuff that had been hanging around for a while. One of these days I’m going to strip out the bedroom and tidy it up completely.

That took me up to lunchtime and so I went for my bread at La Mie Caline. As I’m having a quiet day today I went for my very long circuit right around the headland, down into town and across the harbour gates.

After lunch I had a look at the Acer. It’s as slow and creaky as ever so I just downloaded Irfanview, Notetab and VLC Player. Part of the problem with that machine was that there was too much stuff on it. It was only ever meant to be a portable machine for travelling

After my afternoon walk I had a good session on the photos. There are thousands to go at and I made it as far as 36. Mind you, much of the time was spent trying to decipher the names of the ships that I was photographing. At least that was a success.

One thing that I was planning to do was to dive out to the shops round about 17:00 but on reflection I reckoned that I have everything that I need and can buy some stuff on Monday if I need it.

Instead I went for a shower. I need to make myself look pretty because I have been invited out this evening to one of the neighbours. I went, anyway, just to show the flag for an hour and then came back here.

After a quick tea I went for a quick walk including a couple of runs and then came back for the football.

Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS at the top of the Welsh Premier League, or JD Cymru League as I ought to be calling it from now on I suppose. Played in a hurricane, it was an impossible match and the ball was impossible to predict.

Connah’s Quay took the lead deep into stoppage time in the first half, and deservedly so because for once, TNS looked jaded and tired and the Nomads had the lion’s share of the play.

After half time TNS had the wind with them but it didn’t make a lot of difference and after 75 minutes, when the Nomads finally got the message and played the ball on the floor instead of the air, the Nomads actually looked much more dangerous.

1-0 it finished though, and the Nomads could have had another 2 or three quite easily. Lewis Brass in the Nomads goal was practically a spectator. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen TNS play quite like this.

Nomads now 4 points clear at the top. Let’s hops that they can hang in there.

Now, I’m off to bed. I’ll finish this properly sometime soon but I have a lot on this weekend. We’re broadcasting the Carnaval procession live on Sunday from 13:30 CET and tomorrow I’m out interviewing the kids.

Friday 13th December 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

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

But as for the illness, absolutely nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s definitely Friday 13th today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pouring down with rain now but I pushed on regardless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

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

Friday 1st November 2019 – I FOUND …

… the fitbit after all that. On the passenger seat in Caliburn where I must have left it when I was fitting the battery yesterday.

And I’d got up nice and early this morning specially to look. Even managed to beat the third alarm – and by a country mile too – and that’s not something that happens too often these days.

It was a reasonably late night too – mainly due to listening to some good music on the computer. And there’s nothing wrong in that as long as I’m working – which I was. In fact I updated some more of the web pages.

And so it was a short night too – but still plenty of time to go off on a ramble or two.

I started off back in the UK last night. I was in Cornwall walking around a headland and it was something (I don’t know what) to do but it was Marc Bolan and camping and he’d written the final verse of his song “Elemental Child” (… which I had been listening to just before going to bed …). They were broadcasting it over the radio and getting everyone to join in so anyone who was walking past or walking in the area they went and asked them if they would join in. This girl – she joined in too and did all of the song and to play it on the guitar or banjo or something. She asked about the lyrics so we pointed to where the lyrics were and she was brilliant. She had a really good go at it, this girl did. It really was a shame that I awoke.
A little later on, we were on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again last night and it was time to go home. There were a couple of coaches come to pick us up. They had already been and we’d packed but then we had to go off on a lecture or something so the buses were put back and were to turn at at 12:00. This lecture finished at about 11:55 and it was all about book-keeping, this kind of thing, and the guy who was giving the lesson afterwards went to print off some stuff and I went to help him but he didn’t need me. he was talking to some other guy and the other guy was saying that in Accountancy they were still using BBC Micros but they no longer dominate anything so they don’t actually see anything of what they do. The other guy said that he learnt his Accountancy on a BBC Micro. I said that I did my Finance First Part on pen and paper – but no-one took the slightest bit of notice of me whatsoever which seems to be normal procedure these days on board that ship. Then I had to get to my cabin and it was 11:55 and there was already a bus on board and people getting on so I had to fly throught the crowds and the ship like lightning to my cabin. Luckily I had packed before hand but there were still a few things out that needed putting away. I reached my cabin which was right at the back of my ship and the porthole was open so I could see the second coach pulling up and feel a nice cool breeze blowing through the porthole. The first thing I did was to grab a drink – some of my orange Vitamin B12 drink. There wasn’t much left but I took a swig of it and thought “Gid this is warm, this drink but it will do me until I get to wherever it is that I’m going and then I can think again”. At that moment the alarm went off.

10 minutes later I was up and about and tackling the notes from the night while I was waiting for the medication to work so that I could have breakfast.

Once it started to become light I went outside with the purpose of retracing my steps from my afternoon walk to see if the fitbit was anywhere about. But as I said, I didn’t get any farther than Caliburn.

Back in the apartment I attacked the 20-minute dictaphone entry from 30th July. And miles of it there was too, starting from when I left the motel in Lamoure all the way across North and South Dakota.

By now it was midday so I headed of for my morning walk. Down to the Super U for some garlic and a lettuce. The lettuce is exhausted and I have no garlic at all and I need to deal with that issue. And as I left the apartment and headed off down the street we were hit with a torrential rainstorm. Luckily I went in my rain jacket and so I managed to keep something-like dry. But there were plenty of others who weren’t so fortunate.

For lunch I had half of the carrot soup (which wasn’t so bad after all) and then attacked my little project. What I did the other day, I’ve undone it and started again because I could do better than that. And it’s all turning out rather nicely, although doing it in French is rather challenging.

There was an interruption in my activities when I went out for my afternoon walk. And I was not alone for even though the weather was miserable this afternoon there were still plenty of people on the beach.

It’s that time of year when we’e having the highest tidal range – the grand marée – and the lower beaches are uncovered.

These areas are beyond the limits that are leased out as commercial fisheries so anyone can go out there for the peche à pied – fishing on foot – to scavenge what molluscs they can.

And I was right about the miserable weather too. Just look at the storm clouds.

But all of a sudden there was a hint of sun and we had the most magnificent rainbow. I managed to take a really good shot of it too.

It seems to be ending down in the town somewhere and I was tempted to back to my apartment to search for a spade.

There was an interruption after that. I received a text message “are you in?” to which I replied in the affirmative.

A few minutes later Terry and Liz turned up, with Darren, kate and the two kids. It was pouring with rain again so we went for a drink and a good chat. When the rain stopped (which it did for half an hour) we went for a good walk all the way around the walls and the headland and then they went home. I told Robyn to take good care of Strawberry Moose and she gave me a hug.

For tea I had two more taco rolls with the rest of the stuffing from the other night. Not enough though so I added a small tin of lentils so there was too much. No good for me, seeing as I’m supposed to be cutting down.

Football tonight on the internet. Not been too many of those this season. Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS in the pouring rain in the Welsh Premier League.

In the first half, the nomads were dreadful and I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they made it into the TNS half. Meanwhile TNS were rampaging upfield at will and could have had a hatful. As it happens, one goal disallowed for offside and a good save from Lewis Brass the Nomads keeper was all that they had to show for it.

Connahs Quay made three substitutions early in the second half and after that we had much more of a match, with the Nomads taking the game much more to TNS.

And so it goes without saying that TNS finally scored with a breakaway goal after all of that.

We then had bizarre incident where the referee gave a penalty to TNS for a handball, spotted the ball, and just as Greg Draper was about to run up to take the kick, he changed his mind and gave a dropped ball which Brass smothered.

From that, the Nomads raced upfield and with Insall (who should have been on from the start) having a shot saved, Michael Wilde running in fastened onto the rebound and scored – his first shot on goal in the whole game.

So 1-1 it finished, and it leaves me shaking my head. I’ve seen many more much batter games than this one, and I’m totally bewildered by that weird first half.

So not having done too much I’m going to bed and I’ll start again tomorrow. I must get myself going.

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Friday 10th May 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shopping tomorrow so I need to be fit.

Sunday 5th May 2019 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a baking day. Or, rather, a food making day.

We started off by making another batch of vegan hummus. You can see all of the ingredients here, plus some coarse-ground black pepper of course.

I started off by cutting the pepper into tiny cubes and then roasting it.

While that was doing, I took my whizzer, added a pile of chick peas, half the weight of tahini (sesame seed paste), chick pea juice, olive oil, garlic, sea salt, black pepper and tarragon, and whizzed it all up into a nice creamy paste.

It doesn’t need to be too liquidy so I usually don’t add much liquid and oil at first, but keep on adding it during the mix to make it right. Remember that you can always add more liquid, but you can’t take it out.

Once it was done and mixed how I wanted it, I added the pepper and olives, and gave them a little whizz, just enough to distribute them throughout the mix and not disintegrate them.

Some of the mixture went into the freezer and some in the fridge for lunch for the next week or so.

Later on, I made an apple pie.

Having an affinity with Belgium, I used boskoop apples, brown sugar, desiccated coconut, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg and a couple of vegan pastry rolls

Some lemon juice too, of course.

So first you spread out one of the pastry rolls onto your cutting board, and using the baking tin as a template, cut the pastry round the tin to make the top of your pie, allowing for a 1cm overlap.

Then, grease your baking tin, unroll the second pastry roll and put it in the tin, pressing down VERY LIGHTLY the roll to fit the base properly

Cut the apples into quarters, decore them and cut them into very thin slices. Then add them into the baking tine.

Add them in layers, and on top of each later add some lemon juice (to keep the apples white) some brown sugar, raisins, desiccated coconut, nutmeg and cinnamon.

By the time you’ve built up the layers of filling, the base of the pastry should be completely covered.

Moisten the edge of the pastry in the pie where it overlaps the lip of the pie tin, and then put the pastry top that you cut out earlier on top.

With a fork, press down the edges onto the lip of the pie dish so that the pie top and the pie bottom are completely sealed. Then trim off the excess pastry that’s overhanging the pie dish.

Brush the top of your pie with milk, and then prick holes into it with a fork to let out any steam that might build up.

Bung it into the oven at 200°C until it looks like this.Probably 40-45 minutes, something like that.

So what do you do with the excess pastry and apple that you have left over?

Roll out your patry with your rolling pin until it’s flat. Keep on cutting off the irregular edges and adding it back to be rolled in, so that the pastry resembles a square as best as you can.

Add your apple, coconut, spices, raisins, lemon juice etc into the centre, and then fold the pastry over the top and, dampening the edges, squeeze them together like a cornish pasty so it’s all sealed togather.

Brush with milk, poke holes to let the steam out, and then bung that in the oven too until it looks like this.

Yesterday I remember saying that knowing my luck, with Sunday being a Day of Rest and no alarm, I’d be wide-awake pretty early on.

And I reckon that 03:50 corresponds pretty closely to this definition. But there was no chance of me rising from my stinking pit at anything like that time. 08:50 was much more like it.

Plenty of time of course to go a-rambling. I was with Liz Ayers last night in Crewe round by the Wistaston area. I’d been taxiing and we had quite a few jobs going on including taking Mrs Urion home for lunch and pick her back up at 13:45. But she was already booked in at 13:45 for a trip to the bank, so I wondered if I was expected to combine the two trips or were they separate. In between jobs I was socialising with Liz then nipping out to do jobs. Liz was talking to a load of other taxi drivers – not me because I didn’t get on with them. She was chatting to him who lived in Ruskin Road. I went past twice, shook (or rather touched, because that was all he was willing to do) his hand and went off to do a job. She said that she was going to stay behind and have a drink. She was chatting to this guy and said they were going to have a drink together. I went back home, and Roxanne was there. I told Roxanne what Liz was doing and she commented that she bet that she was flirting with this guy and she wanted to see. So I put her in the car and we went to this pub at Wells Green and sure enough that’s what she was doing. The dirty look on Roxanne’s face was priceless.
Later on I was out around Nantwich last night with someone or other and we bumped into this friend of mine. I’d been searching the internet about something and had discovered something about Burt Reynolds – his real surname was Diamond because his father had been a diamond cutter. He played bass, including a weird 2-string bass. I happened to mention to this friend of mine that I’d seen this. He said “yes, but he just happened to have been in the right geographical position. I played bass one day and never had the recognition”. “One day!” I retorted. “I’d played bass for years and never had any”. To which he replied “yes, but I played in the daytime”. This conversation went on and he headed off towards London Road – he was probably staying there with his work. We discussed food and he had been to a Chinese restaurant somewhere for his tea. I ended up back home staying in some kind of strange apartment with two bedrooms à l’enfilade living with a woman who had two kids. They had the other bedroom. She said they should both be in year 2 or 3 but one was much smaller than the other. She’d had serious health problems, including incontinence. We talked quite a lot about these kids. She’d had severe medical treatment but was so much better. I was wondering why this friend of mine never said that he had come to stay down here. I’m sure we could have put him up somehow – there’s a comfy sofa for a start, he would have loved that. The conversation drifted away from there and I ended up in the kitchen. My mother was in there doing the washing up, with a length of green garden hose coupled up to the tap and a high-pressure “squirter”. Every question I asked her was answered with “I’ll tell you tomorrow”. I tried to find out what was going on and in the end she said “do you know my neck cancer specialist? Steven? He’s actually died of cancer and I’m going to his funeral tomorrow”. I said that it happens to all of us. We’re all going to get it some time or other and let’s face it – by the time that we get to our age if we haven’t had a serious health crisis already we are doing really well. She didn’t understand for a minute what I meant. I went outside, to find myself at les Guis. there was a load of my friends out there. They had moved Caliburn but there was a pile of smoke everywhere. Piles of wood had been cut. They said that while I had been in the house they had cut all of this wood for me and put it in stacks and cleared the drive that was all overgrown and got the van down there. I thought that this was really nice. All this wood was nicely stacked up. It just needed cutting to length and then I could burn it. I thought that this was marvellous.

After a leisurely start to the day I attacked the dictaphone notes and by the time I was ready to stop to make my hummus for lunch, I was down to just 129 entries.

The hummus was delicious as I expected, and once I’d dined I went out into the gorgeous weather.

It really was nice out there today, and I took quite a few long-distance photos of things miles away, to see how the new lens performs.

This is a photo of the lighthouse that is just offshore from the Pointe-D’Agon

There’s a really interesting point along the coast where the River Sienne enters the sea.

Because of tidal drift of sedimant, the mouth of the river now faces south rather than east.

And we can see in the background, if we look carefully, the wind-farm near Barneville-Carteret

Jersey was standing out quite clearly on the horizon today too.

The houses of St Helier and that area, 54 kms away, stood out quite clearly in the distance and have cme up quite well in this photo once I enhanced it.

And while I was at at, I was photo-bombed by a seagull. It reminded be very much of that famous World War II photo that a German photo unit took of the UK radar masts at Dover from Cap Griz Nez and managed to pick up a beautiful image of a Supermarine Spitfire that buzzed into the image.

The tide was on its way out and the crowds hadn’t yet flocked to the beach.

There was one early bird out there already though, and I couldn’t at first make out what it was that he was doing. But cropping the photo and blowing it up (which I can do these days despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) I noticed that he seemed to have a metal detector with him.

He didn’t look as if he was doing all that much good with it though

Back here, I regrettably crashed out on my chair for 20 minutes, but I managed to wake up in time for the football. It’s the Welsh Cup Final between (predictably) TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads. And just as predictably, TNS won it at something of a canter, 3-0.

Mind you, it’s probably fairer to say that the Nomads lost it. The first goal was the Nomads central defence being half-asleep. Greg Draper is probably the best striker the Welsh Premier League has ever seen and you can’t give him even half-an-inch of room, even when he looks as unwell as he does just recently.

The second goal was the fault of the keeper losing his sense of position, and the third goal was the classic keeper’s dilemma from a set-piece of “do you cover the onrushing forwards in case they make contact with the ball, or do you cover the shot in case the onrushing forwards miss it” and in the end being caught in no-man’s-land between the two.

And the match might have had a totally different outcome has the referee awarded to the Nomads at least one of the three penalties that I would have awarded had I been refereeing.

After the match I made my apple pie and then cooked a vegan pizza, which was just as delicious as normal.

Later on I went out for my evening walk around the Pointe du Roc.

The harbour gates must have just opened because the sea was alive with trawlers.

Here’s one of them heading off into the sunset, with the coast of Jersey away in the distance. How long they will be continuing to go off that way depends upon the outcome of Brexit.

But my attention was drawn by some kind of object on the horizon.

I couldn’t see at that distance what it was so back here I used my “crop – enhance – enlarge” technique to see if I could identify it. And I have to say that I’m still none-the-wiser about what it might be, over there on the extreme right of the image.

What I’ll have to do is to take a similar photo in a day or two’s time to see if it’s still there. If it is, it’s a lighthouse. If not, it’s a ship.

Back home, it’s only 21:30 and despite my little repos earlier this afternoon, I’m exhausted.

So badger the writing of the blog. I intend to take full advantage of my fatigue by going to bed for an early night.

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Saturday 20th April 2019 – THE FOOTBALL …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

horse showjumping trials beach donville les bains granville manche normandy france

victor hugo baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

victor hugo port de granville manche harbour normandy france

Friday 12th April 2019 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what kind of day it has been today.

It’s been one of those days where I haven’t felt like doing too much, but at least I kept on working and managed to be productive. So it can’t be all that bad.

What didn’t help was that despite the nice clean bed and the nice clean me, I didn’t have a very good night at all. I hardly felt as if I had any sleep at all last night.

However I must have done, because I went on a nice long ramble or two during the night.

My first voyage was something to do with the railway – the line blockages. a group of us were talking about someone who wanted to go off photographing and we had seen a place where a tram coming into town turning right at a curve and one coming out of town was turning right at the same curve (like at a T junction) and it all looked so beautiful that we thought about having some kind of choreography photographs of trams darting around bends in opposition to each other like this. Someone else asked “what do you think about this situation?” and showed us a model of a train that had derailed because the points had moved underneath it. Someone said something like at the front of this incident was a shop that was 2m60 away and all of his electricity was stopped because it was outside the limit of 2m from the accident where the current was broken, to give everyone time to escape. Electricity was only available very close to the accident. One feature of this railway line being blocked was a very large photo or model of someone that had apeared over the end of the railway line behind this accident blocking it off – someone like Nigel Garbage or another one of these far-right people. people were discussin ghow this could possibly be that a dummy like this could block the line. Wasn’t that just typical of the far right that in the interest of free movement they are blocking the railway line
A little later there were three of us on a voyage something like out of the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, me, another guy and a girl. And I knew even though I was asleep that I seemed to join this in the middle of the voyage. At first I thought that this girl was Nerina. She was ill in bed with a heavy cold moping around so in the end I asked her if she would like some Vicks Rub. Her ears picked up at that “Vicks Rub? Yes!! Do you have some?” So I had to search through my medical case and I found some so I gave it to her. her eyes lit up at that and she immediately got better. The three of us were in a car driving up Stewart Street and Valley Road with this most amazing moon or sun, rather like a half-eclipse of the sun. I suggested that we turn right down a side-street for a better view but then I thought that there would be a better view from a side street further on. We went on to that turning and then found that somehow the moon had gone behind the sun and it wasn’t as good as it had been earlier. That was quite a shame. We carried on, had a couple of adventures, things like that. In the end it was all over and we were due to go home. We were walking back into Sandbach from near where the M6 is. The guy went off somewhere to do something, which left me and this girl. She said that she was going to get a coffee. When she came back she was in tears, about how the guy with whom she was living had been quite nasty to her about the fact that she had been away. I was consoling her. Now, even though I was asleep, I knew exactly how it ended – that she ended up by leaving this guy and the two of us became a couple, but it was this little step in between where I couldn’t find the courage to take this step to ask if I could see her again, even though I knew exactly how it was all going to end up – very positively in my favour.

The alarms went off as usual, and it still took me 15 minutes to haul myself out of the not-so-stinking pit this morning.

After the usual morning ritual I attacked the dictaphone. And despite a few interruptions for nothing in particular, I was still going on at lunchtime.

There’s a whole whack of them now done and that’s made me feel a little better.

With it being such a beautiful day although it might have been a little cold, I went out with my butties and sat upon my wall.

Down below in the harbour, we might not have had any ships of any importance in there, but it doesn’t look as if it will be long before there’e one i-cumen in, just like William de Wycombe’s sumer.

The gravel lorries from the quarry are back in the port tipping the gravel. And tipping it on the quayside near to the conveyors rather than the bins too.

That can only mean that we should be expecting the arrival of a gravel boat in the not-so-distant future. Lhude sing cucu.

When I came back, I did a little tidying up (not too much of course) and then ran the vacuum cleaner around the floor for a short while. It makes the place look a little tidier.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with the photos for June 2018, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because I didn’t recognise half of them.

I ended up spending an hour or two on Google Earth trying to mate up images with screen shots. But in the end, I managed all but one. That’ll teach me to lose my dictaphone in Caliburn during that trip to Germany, won’t it?

There were two little interruptions during the day. The first one was for a little … errr … snooze, and my second was for a walk arounf the Pointe du Roc.

My attention was drawn to some movement way offshore so I coupled up the big zoom-telephoto lens to take a photo to see what it might be.

It turns out to be a zodiac going flat out there way out to sea. That’s a lot farther out than I would be happy to take a zodiac, that’s for sure.

While I was out there with the zoom lens I scanned the horizon to see if there was anything else of interest out there.

Round to the right not too far out from Saint Martin de Bréhal is another one of these buoys that miraculously appear every now and again.

At one time I thought that it was something to do with fishing, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of any fishermen tending to it.

Around the corner into the Baie de Mont St Michel I heard a little putt-putt-putt of some kind of small diesel engine.

A few seconds later a little yacht came round the corner and hove into view. It would have been nice to see it with all of its sails unfurled, especially in this wind when it could have taken full advantage of it.

I can understand why a yacht might need a diesel engine, but not why anyone might be using it in the open sea in this weather. br clear=”all”>

Pathetic parking is a feature of these pages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We’ve seen some pretty miserable stuff but this here really does take the biscuit. Here’s a van driver far too lazy to even walk across the street.

Bad parking doesn’t get much worse than this. it really is quite shameful if you ask me. Whatever is the world coming to?

Back here I carried on with the photos and the research, and then stopped for tea. There’s a pepper lying around here that needs eating so I made myself a stuffed pepper with spicy rice.

That was followed by pineapple and soya cream, and a chat with Liz, another one with Alison and a third with rosemary. I’m in demand right now.

I had to cut the chats short though because it promised to be a beautiful sunset and I didn’t want to miss it.

Unfortunately there was a large cloud on the horizon over the Ile de Chausey so I didn’t get to see the sun sinking slowly down below the horizon this evening.

But never mind. there will be other opportunities, especially with what I have in mind for later this year, if it all goes according to plan.

Back from my evening walk, I watched the football. Bala Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Premier League. And Bala have come right off the rails just recently and Colin Caton has lost the plot a little.

Bala, totally disorganised at the back and leaderless up front, were easily swept aside for the third match in succession. What we were watching ir real relegation fodder for next season, and if only the Nomads had played with a decent striker, they could have scored 14, never mind just 4.

So I’m off to bed. No shopping tomorrow as I’m on my travels on Sunday. So i’ll have a little wander down to the market instead and see how the land lies.

It’s not an early night tonight, so I won’t be on very good form tomorrow. But I’ll see what I can do.

chateau de la crete baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

pecheur de la lys chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france

sunset ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Friday 5th April 2019 – – I WAS RIGHT!

Remember the other day when we were watching them pushing around the great heaps of gravel and moving them closer to the quayside and conveyors, and I was saying that we must be expecting the arrivale of one of the gravel boats?

So say hello to today’s arrival, someone whom we haven’t seen beforen and it’s nice to welcome new visitors to the port. Moored up at the gravel bay is is a new ship, the Eems Sea.

She must have slipped in on the late afternoon tide just now while I wasn’t looking.

Last night I had another decent sleep, with only a minor interruption. I was off on a travel too, but I’ll spare you all the details, seeing as you’re probably eating your tea or something right now.

There was an early start to the day too. I was out of bed pretty promptly too. And once the usual procedures were accomplished, I set to work. And I’ve had a very productive day too.

First task was to attack the searchable text database for July last year, starting from the beginning and working forwards this time. That wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because it needed quite a considerable amount of research to work out where I was, including hunting down an on-line version of Field Marshall Blücher’s memoirs and downloading them.

In fact I only managed about 60 photos. But serves me right because this was the period when I had mislaid the dictaphone somewhere in Caliburn.

Having run aground a little with that, I turned my attention to the photos for the High Arctic. That wasn’t quite so simple as it might have been either because I had to look up a few things for those too.

You’d be amazed (or maybe you won’t) about how much I’ve forgotten. But by the time I knocked off for lunch, I’d done another 160 of those too. Another day like that and I’ll have done a third of them.

In total I ended up with almost 1800 from that trip and the more closely I examine the photos on a decent screen, the more I see, the more I crop out, and I am slowly increasing the number all the time.

But as I said at the time, I’m dismayed by the quality of some of them – most of them in fact. I’ve a good mind to go back and take them all again.

It’s still winter outside so I stayed in for lunch. And this afternoon I had a phone call to make. My enquiry was actually successful in part, because although I didn’t receive the information I wanted, I was told that it had already been posted to me so it might be here any day soon.

While I was at it, I had a look around on Amazon for a few things that I needed. So I’ve been spending my money again.

But not in the USA. It seems now that Amazon is charging a “customs anticipation” amount to USA orders that makes the price no longer competitive with European pricing.

I smell a rat here, and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble either.

On my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc, in a howling gale which explains why there were so few people about, I had a look at the chantier navale to see what was happening.

And I appear to have been mistaken about the band of colour that had appeared on the hull of the boat that’s being resprayed. It seems to be nothing more than a different type of masking tape.

And I’m not surprised that they have had to replace some of the masking in this wind. I imagine that the original stuff will be half-way down the Baie de Mont St Michel by now.

There was more excitement than that too.

In the harbour I was treated to the sight of a trawler doing a very impressive nautical danse macabre around the basin.

From this distance I didn’t recognise the trawler, but I doubt very much if it’s one that’s new to the harbour. Usually they stay quite close to the fish-processing plant to which they are attached these days.

And I now know the story behind the crane – why it was here the other day. There was an article in the local paper about it.

Apparently they are replacing some of the old pontoon walkways in the harbour and they were delivered the other day. The crane was there presumably to lift out the old ones and lower the new ones into the harbour.

They are spending quite a lot of money on the harbour just now, what with renewing the harbour gates, dredging and all of that. All they need now is a lot more commercial traffic.

A hot chocolate was on the menu when I returned from my wanderings, and then I had another whack at the dictaphone notes. At this rate, I’ll probably be finished sometime in about 2525. All of the tasks that I have to do will keep me out of mischief for years, if I live that long.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, and having cooked it for a little longer on a lower temperature in the microwave, it was even better than it has been in the past.

It was still quite light when I went out tonight for my walk. And I was all alone out there too, even though it wasn’t dark outside just yet.

In the past I’ve taken a few photos of the Place d’Armes in the evening from up on the walls by the rue du Nord, but this is the first time this year that I’ve been able to do so in the light.

You can’t see very much of my building though. There’s part of it visible behind the cream building – the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs just to the left of centre.

Having done that, I carried on around the corner and there I could overlook the harbour and see Eems Sea tied up at her berth.

Although she might not look it, she was built as recently as 2010 in, of all places, Haiphong in Vietnam. 87 metres long, she is a bulk carrier with a deadweight of 2600 tonnes and a gross tonnage of 1862.

Being owned by a group of people from Werkendam, near Dordrecht, she flies the flag of the Netherlands.

And isn’t it nice to see a new arrival here in the port?

After that, I hurried home because we had football on the internet. Caernarfon Town were playing Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Premier League. The Nomads needed a win to keep clinging on to the coat tails of TNS whereas Caernarfon needed a win to give them hope of home advantage in the Euro playoffs.

The Nomads’ lack of a striker was apparent yet again because Caernarfon scored early in the match and the Nomads, despite all of their possession and pressure, never ever looked like pulling one back. If only the Nomads had a goalscorer, their season would have been completely different.

And so a late night tonight. and with me needing an early start in the morning, I shan’t be getting too much sleep.

Sunday 31st March 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night I had last night.

It seems as if I hadn’t slept for a single moment although on reflection I must have been because at one point I was off on a voyage somewhere and when I find my dictaphone I can tell you all about it.

However, tossing and turning all night, I was eventually up and about at 07:20, to find that it is of course 08:20 because the clocks went forward this morning and we are now on summer time.

And that’s rather appropriate right now what with me stripping off yesterday and it looking quite good this morning too.

And much to my surprise, and probably the surprise of regular readers of this rubbish, who recall that I don’t usually work on a Sunday, I had a very productive morning.

First task was to find a pile of information that someone had asked for. That involved downloading a pile of stuff from the internet and reviewing it. And then organising a couple of links.

Once I’d done that, it reminded me that I had a form to fill in and send off. This is going to commit me to something quite significant but it’s one of those things that if I don’t do it right now, I probably won’t ever to do it again, and not for the obvious reason either.

So that’s now out of the way, but I’m expecting some “further correspondence” about it all. It’s quite inevitable.

Thirdly, I realised that I hadn’t booked any of my travel and accommodation needs for my next trip to Castle Anthrax. And so that’s now done and at the same time I booked my train from Brussels to Leuven. Since I’ve been buying those tickets in advance, I’ve never had them checked at all. You can bet your life that the only time I’ll be asked for them will be the time that I forget to buy them.

Another thing that I needed to do was to obtain the complementary information for my new passport. So I did all of that, only to find that I was actually on the wrong site and ended up wasting $29:00 which I won’t ever get back. A moment’s inattention has cost me dear.

And finally, I needed to contact a friend in Toronto about some issue that I might be having. But for once, she’s not on line. And so I’ll need to think again about that or find another work-around.

All of that took me up to a rather late lunch, so forsaking my usul habits, I had lunch sitting on the sofa watching the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Welsh Cup semi-final against Cardiff Metro.

The Nomads won 3-0, which might make you thing that it was a pretty one-sided match, but that was far from the case.

The Met hit the woodwork three times, and had Will Fuller in the met goal not been recovering from a serious injury that has kept him out for a year, he would have been off his line to intercept a long ball out of the Nomads’ defence that led directly to their third goal.

And so the final will be, rather predictably, between TNS and the Nomads and with TNS having beaten the Nomads on every occasion this year, the result should be a foregone conclusion.

It was walk-time after that. Around the walls with the crowds of people out enjoying the afternoon sun. And who can blame them too because it really was nice.

There were even a few people out there swimming, but I thought that that was rather extreme.

I’m not really convinced that I would have been happy to have been on the beach just now. Not in my cozzy anyway.

There were crowds of yachts out there yesterday making the most of the weather.

And today, there were even more of them out there too. It was a shame though that there was so much haze on the horizon. You wouldn’t get to see very much out there.

One of these days I’m going to have to find a way to go out there for a sail around. I need to cultivate a couple of maritime mates.

There were things to do here when I returned but I ended up talking to a couple of people on the internet instead. I really need to stop being so distracted.

Later on, I made a huge cornish pasty.

While I was searching through the freezer the other day I came across a pile of curry that I had made for some project or other that had been left over. And so yesterday I had bought some rolled pastry only a square one this time, and this evening I put the stuff in it and folded it over.

While that was going on, I made my pizza and it was delicious. Even though I say it myself, it was the best that I have ever

On my evening walk around the headland I was totally alone. There wasn’t a soul about, even though it was still comparatively light.

But by the time that I came back I was so tired that I did only half of what I was intending, and then crawled into bed.

I’d had enough.

speedboat buoy granville manche normandy france

crowds on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Saturday 9th March 2019 – NEPTUNE IS BACK!

On my way out to the shops this morning, I noticed that Neptune had come in on the tide earlier this morning.

I stopped at the side of the road to take a photo of her. She’s busy pumping out the bilges – probably come over here in a ballast of water to keep her on an even keel in the stormy seas that we have been having just recently.

So she won’t be loading quite yet.

Last night was another decent night’s sleep. I was awake just before the alarm went off but I was in no hurry to leave the bed.

But last night was a rather interesting night. I was in a house where there were two separate gangs of organised criminals, and the aim was to keep these two groups separate so that they did not cross each other’s path. At a certain moment, we had to leave to go somewhere so I had to pack. And fo some reason I was packing all kinds of clothes that I had already worn and needed washing – with the argument that I could wash them in the hotel sink (although how I was going to iron the shirts was something else completely). I needed to pack the laptop and a few other things, but I only had a very short space of time to do it.
Later, I was somewhere round about the junction of Gresty Road and South Street talking to a couple that might have been the French mother and son whom I had met on the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. I asked the mother if she had lived round here long, to which she replied in the affirmative. And so I enquired about a house at the back of the Royal Hotel in Pedley Street that was used as an artist’s studio, with a great big picture window facing south (which is bizarre because windows in artists’ studios face north, so that the light is even). She said that she knew nothing about it, but nevertheless she told me a surprising amount. So off I went round there to the area where I was on Wednesday morning and the Aldi supermarket and where, on reflections, I’ve been before, and found the house. In there were a couple of photographers and a couple of models doing some kind of greenscreen photography.

After the usual morning ritual of medication and breakfast, I had a shower and then set the washing machine going. There’s a huge pile of washing built up and I’m not sure how.

And then Neptune and the shops, calling at the paper container to dump another load of shreddings. It’s full now so I’ll have to wait for a while until it’s emptied.

LIDL had nothing special, although I did pick up another set each of AA and AAA batteries. I’ll have a big change-round of batteries here in the important stuff like the dictaphone and so on.

At NOZ, we encountered yet again another example of pathetic parking.

Judging by the registration number, that car is at least 10 years old, by the way.

Even though I spent a reasonable sum of money, it was on incidental stuff – nothing of any importance, except maybe a plastic werving spoon with holes in and, at long last, a nylon hand-whisk.

I have a metal whisk, which is great for using in a glass bowl, but no good in a metal saucepan. So €0:99 was money well spent.

Caliburn is getting low on fuel so I put some more in at LeClerc – the first since October, and then I didn’t fill it. I’m not going anywhere these days.

And in the shop, I didn’t buy anything special. There’s no point seeing as I’m going on Thursday.

Back here I actually managed to unpack and put everything away, and then I hung up the washing on the clothes drier in the windowsill.

After lunch I finished the blog entries for October so that’s up-to-date now.

But I couldn’t keep going. by about 14:30 I was under the covers in bed asleep, and there I stayed until 15:45.

However, I did managed to haul myself out of bed and go off for my afternoon walk.

This took me round by the rue du Nord and here on the corner they had started the renovation of a small block of flats here.

I shall keep my eyes on this work too over time, to see what they are doing.

Further on down the rue du nord, I had another look at the building works going on there.

That’s been going on all through the winter, in some kind of desultory fashion because he doesn’t seem to be making any rapid progress.

I’ve no idea when he might be finishing the job, but I’m not holding my breath.

Despite the fact that it was cold (I have the heating on again) there were quite a few people out with me walking around the walls today.

And down there on the Plat Gousset there were even more crowds of people milling around enjoying the early March weather.

It won’t be long before the tourists are back.

We even had a few people running around up and down the beach.

It’s not really a day for being on the beach, but at least they were enjoying it, so good luck to them.

But looking at the figure at the foot of the diving platform, and seeing how far out the sea is, when we have a high tide, the water is up above the level of the platform so you can see the tidal range around here.

The fairground out at the Parking Hérel is still going on, even though Carnaval finished on Tuesday.

For an experiment, I tried a long exposure to see if I could pick up the movement effect of the fairground attraction, but it didn’t turn out as I was hoping.

I can see that I shall have to work on my technique.

Further on around the walls, I ended up in the Place Maurice Marland.

And having talked yesterday about Spring, here today we have the daffodils blooming quite impressively.

We’re definitely expecting the sun right now then, aren’t we? Spring can’t be too far away at all.

Back on the walls, I had a look down into the harbour.

We have Marité of course, and also a trawler by the name of Le Styx, and also Neptune, who seems to have stopped pumping out the ballast water.

And unless I’m very much mistaken, she seems to have acquired a new digger. The old one was white – I’m pretty certain of that. But this one is yellow.

Back here, I made a start on the images for September. Only a world-record 1730 of them so it’ll take me an age to do all of them.

And then, finally, I can restart the web pages for my trip to the High Arctic.

We had a break for the football. A top-of-the-table clash between Connah’s Quay and TNS. Connah’s Quay lost the match, and the lead in the table, by a score of 2-0.

And the difference was that Connah’s Quay played with a very ineffective attack, whereas TNS were excellent up front.

The Nomads can say goodbye to the Championship after this, and we’re back in the usual position of TNS out in front.

Tea was out of a tin – ravioli with lentils and veg followed by apple pie and soya.

And then out for my walk around the headland in the rain.

Nothing much happening, except that the funfair seemed still to be working. Nothing else apart from that so I came home and made myself a mug of cocoa to warm me up.

Now I’m off to bed, and a good lie-in tomorrow I hope.

I certainly need it.

EPIC HALL

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