Tag Archives: le loup

Thursday 25th June 2020 – I CAN’T SEE …

… just what use this particular product would be to anyone.

believe me, I hunted high and low but I have yet to encounter a shop that sells electric vegetables. There certainly weren’t any in LIDL where I saw this appliance.

What I did see in LIDL though was someone pick up almost every melon in the shop (with his bare hands) and hold it close to his face to sniff it to see if it was ripe.

Note to self – don’t buy melons from LIDL. I really don’t see what is so hard to understand about behaviour in the middle of a pandemic.

Something else that I don’t understand is why I found it so hard to leave my bed this morning. Another day where I missed all three alarms and that is more depressing that anything to do with this pandemic, that’s for sure.

After the medication though, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

last night we were all on a yacht (I’m getting carried away with this idea, aren’t I?) and the question of some kind of news came up. We were talking about the weather, storms, all this kind of thing. At fist I couldn’t understand it but later I began to get to grips with the message and started to understand it. The project really wasn’t very bright. They asked me if I would go on the TV and speak to them, say something about it in Welsh but I declined the offer as I really didn’t know enough off the top of my head to be able to hold a conversation in it yet. The British all left and it just left this boat bobbing around and I was on my own for a while. Then more and more people started to come back and it wasn’t the same tranquil little scene that it should have been. I was annoyed about that as well.
And what that was all about I don’t have the faintest idea.
A little later on I was looking around at houses, in Sandbach, a house on the corner of that street that leads into Park Lane, an old terraced house. A friend of mine had been to see it so there was some thing about “this house is Private Property” and for any inspection please telephone “so and so” – Keep Out – all that kind of thing. It was from the Estate Agent who was showing me around. he told me about the house on the corner of Carter Street. I said “yes, a friend of mine had seen it”. he said “it’s good value isn’t it?” I said “it’s good value if you have the money to spend to do it up, I suppose”. He started to he a bit derogatory about my friend, saying “you could soon come up with the money if you wanted to”. I said “he hasn’t had his inheritance yet”. he replied “what kind of guy is it who sits around waiting for an inheritance? he should be out there making his own way”. I pointed out that he was making his own way if he was renting an apartment pro-tem and had his yacht, all this kind of thing. But this conversation just went on in a very deprecating tone towards this guy and I didn’t like that at all.

Later on I had a shower and a general clean-up. And a weigh-in too. And my weight is going back up – in fact i’m almost back up to my old target weight, having stayed below it for two weeks. I must do something about that.

Like go for a walk up the hill to LIDL in the early morning heat.

And here I am – right again. My assumptions from yesterday were correct. When i saw that lorry and the fork-lift truck preparing to unload it, I suspected that one of the Jersey freighters would be in port very shortly.

And here in the harbour this morning, having presumably crept in on the early morning tide, is Normandy Trader bringing in more stuff from the Channel islands and ready to take more stuff back

But something in that photo caught my eye so I went for a closer look.

And there up in the rigging of Marité there’s someone messing about with a mast. Had this been the UK then the Health and Safety inspectorate would have a field day with this.

And the guys with the fishing nets are still having an enormous amount of fun trying to untangle it over there. They still don’t seem to have sorted them selves out.

First stop was at the Railway Station. I’ve ordered and paid for my tickets but I need to collect them from the machine. I need to do that because there have been times when the machine has been out of order and the Booking Office doesn’t open until after the train has departed.

So if I can’t obtain the tickets from the machine then I am well and truly stuck.

Next stop was LIDL. I’ve mentioned some of the excitement there, but what was more exciting was that peaches are on special offer, and they had grapes in at a reasonable price.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a big grape fan and I can demolish a kilo of grapes at one sitting with no problem at all.

There’s plenty of home maintenance going on all over town right now.

But ehre’s some adventurous stuff that’s worthy of a photo. It looks as if the guttering or the fascia board has come adrift from the fron of that building in the Rue de la Fontaine Bedeau.

Seeing as it’s Thursday I went on to la Mie Caline for my dejeunette and a chat with the guys in there, and then headed off for home

On the way up the hill in the Rue des Juifs, something caught my eye.

We’ve had another change of occupant in the chantier navale today. Or maybe I should say “changes” because there are two extra fishing boats in there now that must have been lifted up this morning.

So it’s all go in there then.

By this time I was roasting so when I arrived home I made a smoothie. There was a peach left over from last week, quite ripe, so I put it with some soya milk and ice into the whizzer and whizzed it all round.

That was something that I called extremely tasty, although maybe an extra peach might have given it more flavour.

This afternoon I started on the final week of my music course and that is now finished despite several interruptions. In theory I should be able to play 32-bar sequences in 5 scales using 2-5-1 progressions to change scale but of course the practical application of this course left me behind a long time ago. I can’t play the piano to save my life.

One of the interruptions was to go for my usual afternoon walk amongst the crowds in the glorious sunshine.

Strangely though, there was nothing whatever happening out at sea today, although there was plenty of activity in the chantier navale. We saw that there were four boats in there at lunchtime. This afternoon they seem to have multiplied.

There’s now five of them over there up on blocks for work to be carried out. This is really good news as far as I’m concerned. Nothing wrong with all of this activity at all.

Round on this side of the headland there was some activity in the water.

We had a few men in a boat yet again all equipped with all kinds of tackle looking as if they meant to do some serious harm to the piscatorial population.

Whether or not they will do of course remains to be seen. I’ve yet to see any one of the huge number of rod-and-line fishermen actually pull anything out of the water. Not even an old boot.

While I was out there admiring the fishermen I was interrupted yet again by some more air traffic.

A light aeroplane, presumably from the airfield at Donville-les-Bains overflew me. This time I managed to take a good photo of its registration – 26-AEW – but that tells me nothing because it’s not on the national database.

Apparently there’s some kind of local register for small light aircraft and the 26 in its number relates to the fact that it’s registered in Départemente 26, which is the Drôme, down in South-East France.

My walk carried me on around the path where there’s a good view of the fish processing plant.

And it looks as if someone has forgotten their fishing boat. Stenaca is here tied up to the wharf at the plant but the tide has gone out around it and she’s now grounded out.

We’ll have to wait for the tide to come back in before she can sail off into the evening sunset. But while she’s there they could be giving her hull a really good scrub.

Back round in the Place d’Armes there’s more activity going on with the pipelaying in the Rue Lecarpentier.

We now have the digger here moving big slabs of rock into the back of the pick_up. I wonder if this means that the work is almost finished and they are now tidying up.

But anyway, I came on in to carry on with my music course. I wanted to finish it.

And I did too, although I could have finished it much earlier had we not had the other usual interruption of me crashing out on the chair for a while. It’s the kind of thing that is filling me full of dismay that I can’t keep going for a whole day.

In the time that was left before guitar practice I had another play around with the web pages that I have been editing. That’s a job that i’m looking forward to restarting tomorrow in earnest.

After the guitar it was teatime. I’d forgotten that I’d bought some endives at the weekend so I made myself some steamed veg with some of those frozen vegetable balls, all covered in a cheese sauce.

So filling was it that I didn’t have any pie for afters either.

My run this evening was much, much later than usual. And for a very good reason.

It had slowly begun to cloud over during the evening but round about 20:00 there was the most astonishing clap of thunder that blew the window right open, knocking the fan onto the floor.

That was followed by a torrential downpour of epic proportions with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder that I hadn’t heard for ages. No chance of my going out in any of that.

By about 21:30 the rain had stopped, the wind had died down and the ground was starting to dry out.

That was the signal for me to go out for my evening runs just in case the weather worsened again. And I’m glad that I did because I was treated to a really gorgeous sinking sun tonight

So anyway, off I shot and ran all the way up the hill and down to the clifftop past a rather sodden itinerant who still won’t seek shelter out of the rain.

There were a few people there admiring the sunset but my attention was drawn elsewhere.

From behind me I’d heard the familiar thud if a couple of old diesels and sure enough, Normandy Trader was heading off out to sea past Le Loup – the light at the harbour entrance that marks the sunken rocks.

The way in which she was bathed in the late evening sun was so impressive and that was something that is always worth a photograph.

It surprised me that none of the others there were interested in it.

As she sailed past me, I stood on the headland and watcher her go.

And then I set off for my run down to the viewpoint over the cliffs. apart from the fishing boats in the chantier navale, which hadn’t multiplied yet again during the late afternoon, there wasn’t an awful lot else going on.

having recovered my breath I walked over to the Boulevard Vaufleury and ran off all the way down to the bottom and then through the medieval town and back up to the viewpoint in the rue du Nord.

For some reason or other, it was a much more difficult run that it has been of late, and i was glad when I reached the viewpoint.

My arrival coincided with that of Normandy Trader rounding the headland. She was well on her way out to sea now for an arrival in Jersey in the small hours.

The background of this image, a beautiful pale pinky orange colour and the Ile de Chausey fading away in the distance looked quite impressive too and I was getting all nostalgic about it yet again.

When I arrived, there was no-one down on the beach having a picnic, nor anyone perched on the rocky shelf either.

But during the course of the next fifteen minutes a couple of people ended up down there and the crowd slowly swelled are more and more people came down to watch the sunset.

By the time that I was ready to leave there was quite a crowd down there enjoying the view, and with every good reason too.

The rainstorm that we had had had left plenty of clouds hanging around in the sky and the sun was playing peek-a-boo with everyone here tonight.

The spectacle was pretty amazing so I stayed to watch it for about 15 minutes and then I came on home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the current projects that have been in abeyance since I started my series of courses. The Welsh course still has three weeks to run but the others are all now finished.

Mind you, I have plenty of ideas of things that I need to do which i shall have to put in motion for when I’m free of all commitments, whenever that might be.

But that’s not for this evening. It’s already quite late and I’m going to have another bad day tomorrow if I don’t get a move on and go to bed soon.

So what I’ll do is to leave you with all of the photos from later this evening with Normandy Trader disappearing into the sunset while I go and catch up with my beauty sleep.

See you all tomorrow.

beautiful sunset ile de chausey english channel granville manche normandy france eric hall

normandy trader beautiful sunset ile de chausey english channel granville manche normandy france eric hall

Monday 22nd June 2020 – THIS MORNING …

… was another morning to really forget about as far as the “getting up” stakes went.

And it beats me as to why, really, because whilst it wasn’t exactly an early night, I crashed out and went to bed before I’d finished the night’s tasks. Finish the journal and do the back-up.

And the back-up is becoming quite complicated these days.

There’s been an upgrade to the operating system that I use – a major upgrade – and some of the functions are missing.

In the past there was a “search” function where you could specify “today” or “yesterday” or “this month” or “this year”. I have a 128GB memory stick in one of the USB ports and I would would simply “search” for “today” on the computer’s hard drives (there are four in here) and it would come up with all of the files that I’ve created or modified today, then I would just drag copies onto the memory stick.

But that function seems to have gone and what i’m having to do in the meantime until I find a work-around is to go into each of the hard drives on the computer, list all of the files and drag over copies of those that were last saved today.

And that takes about 10 times as long.

So when I eventually did heave myself out of bed and have my medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone. Yesterday’s voyage was transcribed and I amended the journal entry to include it.

But as for the one from last night, I was for ever writing that one out.

Last night I was in Canada – at least, I assumed that it was in Canada. I was in my car off taking photographs and there was someone in a car. But we started – I had to go to the tax office and I had to fill in a load of forms. One of them was the Vanden Plas that I’d got and how I’d come by it, how I was given it, all that kind of thing. And I was being interviewed by these two people – first one and then the other. They were asking me loads of questions about all this kind of thing. The first one came back with a pile of forms. “Here’s a pile of forms and you’ll have to follow the instructions that you will be receiving scrupulously” I had a quick glance though these forms and I couldn’t see what there was in there of any particular importance. I thought “I’ll find out in due course”. To go out it was liek a kind of maze of one room inside another, all with wallpaper painted over them and a rotted chipboard door in one wall that had swollen up. As I was going out a woman was going out with a girl who had her hair in pink pigtails. She went and I got in my car and drove off. Just then I encountered another car that had been bogged down in the gravel and they were trying to push it to get it out. The rear left tyre was totally flat on it, all the tyres were worn, the paintwork was peeling, it was an absolute mess this car.Anyway they pushed it out got into it and drove away. I thought “God imagine a car like that on the road in the Uk these days. My tyre was flat now so I took out the spare and put the wheel on the same nuts as the one that was still on there that was flat so I had two wheels on that particular corner. Just then a girl came past and we started chatting. A little earlier I’d been looking at a map and there was a promontory a way out from here miles down some narrow roads which had a shop there called something like “when the lorry stops, the community stops” or something like that. I imagine that it was a lorry that would take all the supplies out there. She was actually talking about what was I doing here, looking at my car and saying how a train doesn’t do this and a train doesn’t do that and a train doesn’t need inflatable tyres and so on. We started walking off down this road round this lake. I had a dog with me, a black and white sheepdog called Shep. She said “we’ll go on, there are some places to photograph and then we can go back to my place”. I thought “what’s happening here?” So we wandered off with the dog and by this time we had another guy with us – the three of us. The dog decided to disappear so I shouted after him to come back and he knew which way we were going. She stopped at this old derelict house and she said that it was something to do with – she came out with a quote from a book which the other guy immediately recognised as one of these American authors of the 19th Century and saying “is that the house where one of his characters lived?” He named the character and I can’t remember it now. We were talking about this and the blasted dog still hadn’t come back. I thought that I’d better go and look for this dog but I thought “if I do that this guy is going to get his feet under the table with this girl isn’t he? But the dog is much more important, isn’t it?”

Yes, I’m back to having anxiety attacks in my dreams again, although seriously, I don’t think that I ever stopped them over the last few years.

Ohhhh! To have a couple of pleasant voyages like I used to have with convivial companions. It’s been ages since TOTGA, Castor and one or two others have come along to accompany me.

It took me much longer to deal with the dictaphone notes than it ought to have done, and there was the Welsh homework to attend to. All of that took me up to lunchtime which was taken on the wall overlooking the harbour.

All alone, with no lizards, no passers-by and nothing going on down in the harbour. But even so, there has to be something to be said for home-made hummus spread out on home-made bread.

This afternoon I had a radio project to deal with – a live concert to bring myself into synch with everything else. I ended up with 57:09 of music and so I dictated piles of introduction – only to find that I was 15 seconds short – something that seemed most unlikely to me but there we were.

Consequently I dictated some more – only to find that I was still 5 seconds short. But some spurious applause fed into the soundtrack soon dealt with that issue and it’s come out quite well.

There were the usual breaks during the day of course.

For a start, there was the afternoon walk outside. rather windy but apart from that it was absolutely beautiful weather. The tide was well out although there weren’t too many people down there enjoying the sunshine which was quite a surprise to me.

Not that I intended to go down there. I was off for my walk around the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve spent a lot of time looking at fishermen just recently.

We have the peche à pied of course – the people who scavenge amongst the rocks for the shellfish, and those with rod and line percehed on the rocks. There’s also plenty of movement out at sea too – with the speedboat roaring past the guy paddling his own canoe.

Fishing rods bristling everywhere of course. They all mean business, but in their own fashion.

It’s not only humans who are out there fishing.

The local wildlife spends a lot of its time fishing too. We’ve seen whole socks of fleagulls loitering on the rocks waiting for the tide to go out so that they too can go scavenging in the rock pools.

This bunch here seems to he having some kind of feeding frenzy down there in that tidal rock pool. And no fighting means that there must be plenty of food to go round.

And that’s just as well. You mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish

On the way round to where the seagulls wee hanging out, I went past the memorial to the seafarers.

There has been a lifeboat station here for a considerable length of time and a couple of crews have lost their lives over the years while out on a rescue.

The memorial stands just here overlooking le Loup – the light that marks the submerged rock at the entrance to the harbour – the Baie de Mont St Michel and the coastal towns of St Pair sur Mer, Kairon-Plage and Jullouville.

There wasn’t a great deal else happening out there so I came on home to carry on with my radio project. But, once more, in something that is becoming only too regular an occurrence these days, I ended up in the arms of Morpheus for 20 minutes or so. And I’m thoroughly fed up of all of this.

There was the usual hour or so on the guitars during which I found that I had forgotten most of what I had learnt.

Although on the 6-string I’ve found that I’ve been changing from Bm to F without even thinking about it and without even looking. 6 months ago I couldn’t even play them and I was changing key whenever a bar chord cropped up in my playing.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper followed by apple crumble and soya dessert. And I really had to force myself to eat it because my appetite has well and truly gone now.

So later on I went out for my run, and I never felt less like it than I do right now.

All the way up to the top of the hill, around the corner and down to the clifftop without stopping, to see what was going on there. We saw a zodiac out there earlier with a pile of men going fishing, but I’m not sure if that’s the same one.

The tide is right in so that they don’t have to go too far out from the cliffs this evening.

It was a really beautiful evening and there were quite a few people out there enjoying the beautiful sunset.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a pile of people picnicking in one of the old gun emplacements, and tonight there’s a different crowd in occupation

It seems to me that that’s the place to be if you are having a family picnic and there’s no doubt that the view from there out across the English Channel to the Ile de Chausey and down the Brittany coast is certainly spectacular.

My walk continued across the lawn and the car park and down onto the path at the extremity of the headland.

And as I arrived there, this beautiful little yacht went sailing past. It really did make me feel quite jealous and how I wished that I could be out there right now.

In fact I spoke to someone whom I know about going out sme time on a yacht but he never ever got back to me about it so I imagine that that particular plan is kicked in the head.

At this rate I can see me ending up buying a boat and had I been in better health I probably would. But then again, had I been in better health I wouldn’t be here, would I?

It’s surprising that during the course of the day we’ve seen almost everything out there fishing – except for anyone perched on the rocks.

We almost have to wait until the end of the evenign before we finally encounter someone. He’s climbed down the old collapsing stairs (they are fenced off these days) to where there’s a small tidal beach.

The tide is right in now of course, so he’s taking the usual step of perching himself on a rock and casting his line into the water from there.

Whether he’s actually catching anything is another question entirely.

From there I ran on down to the viewpoint on top of the cliffs and as there was nothing happening there either I ran on all the way down through the medieval town and round on the rue du Nord to the viewpoint.

There’s no beach here to picnic on when the tide is in, so I wasn’t expecting any picnickers. But that didn’t worry these people here. They simply perched themselves on a handy ledge on the rocks and soaked up the sun.

That’s a place that i’m going to remember for future reference. It seems to have everything.

And they were in luck because there was plenty of sun to soak up.

It was another night of beautiful sunset so I stayed there fora while to enjoy it and then ran on home to write up the notes.

Earlier on I’d said that I didn’t feel at all like going out. But somehow the runs seemed to be a little easier than they have been over the last couple of days.

It’s clearly a state of mind that affecting me right now and I think that i’m sinking into deep depression. And that’s all that I need right now.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last summer when I was on my Transatlantic and Arctic escapade for several months without my four-weekly cancer treatment, I ended up deep in the depths of a depression.

On one or two occasions I expressed myself in a manner that made me unwelcome in one or two places and there are still three or four days at the end of August and the beginning of September where I haven’t published my notes because of what I wrote at the time and the manner in which I wrote it.

Back in February when my cancer treatment was dramatically stopped “for the duration” I remember writing something like “God knows what state I’m going to be in by the time they call me back” so it’s no surprise.

It’s just as well that there isn’t anyone around who gets on my nerves otherwise we might have another couple of “those” moments.

But anyway, you don’t want me to burden you with my troubles. You have enough of your own to be dealing with. I’ll go to bed instead before this Steve Harley concert that I’m listening to drags me deeper into the pit.

Who’s going to come along and disturb my sleep tonight?

Sunday 21st June 2020 – HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Yes, that six months from winter went pretty quickly, didn’t it? It’s all downhill now until the end of the year

So while you admire one of the Birdmen of Alcatraz entertaining the crowds with his daredevil stunts, let me tell you something of my day today.

And it all started off on the wrong foot as usual, when I found myself wide-awake at 07:40.

And if anyone thinks that I’m going to be heaving myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, especially as I didn’t go to bed until 01:30, then they have another think coming.

09:30 is a much more reasonable time for me to see the light of day on a Sunday.

It’s a day of rest of course and I allow myself one day a week when I can do nothing at all if I so choose and not feel guilty about it.

First task after the medication was one that I had forgotten to do. The dashcam is almost full and the files need downloading onto the computer.

It had to be done quickly because otherwise I’d be tempted to drive off somewhere and forget to take it with me.

26.7GB of files on there, and they all need converting to *.mp4 one of these days whenever I find a moment. There’s masses of them all told.

But while I was doing that, I forgot to do something else – and that was to check the dictaphone.

Well, rather, I did check it, saw that there was a voice file on there (so I must have been somewhere during the night) but said to myself that when I unplug the dashcam I can plug it in.

And then I forgot.

However I did subsequently remember.

There were a couple of little girls who were having some kind of wrestling fight. There had been three of them, one a little older than the other two. This worked its way round to me being in Belgium and having to come home. I had to do it with a whole series of buses and I had plotted out this route and then forgotten it. All I knew was that I had to be at the Gare du Midi at 09:00. It was 08:45 and I had to get back to the hotel, get all of my stuff, check on this route, arrange – make sure that I got on this bus, book a hotel, all this kind of thing. So I was running back to the hotel but the hotel seemed to get further and further away.Eventually I got there, got my stuff together but there wasn’t enough time to look for a hotel. I realised that I was going to be stranded in the middle of the country somewhere in a small town and if there wasn’t a room at that hotel I was going to be stuck for the night. So I ran out of the hotel and ended up in the company of a friend and she was looking at old derelict houses that another friend had told us about. I was trying to push on to this bus station and she was still looking at these houses. In the end I was looking at cars to see if there were any cars that I could buy just to go there. They were old wrecked lorries the kind that even the Africans wouldn’t touch. We ended up looking at this really depressing single-storey building in a really rough area. She went inside and I thought “God at last I can push on”. She came out and I thought that she had finished but ohh no “can you pass me this tape measure?”. God, I thought all my chances of getting this bus have just totally evaporated now.

Next task was to look for the paper from the controle technique where the guy pointed out a few things about Caliburn that needed attention

That ended up being a massive paper-filing job … “at long last” – ed … and general tidy-up, but there was no trace of it. So I grabbed the new door mirror glass for Caliburn that finally came a few weeks ago, the dashcam and the insurance certificate for the coming year to take down to Caliburn because I was going to search in there for the papers.

However, I stuck my nose out of the door and changed my mind. There was a torrential downpour going on out there.

Back up here I carried on with the tidying up. This time the medication in the bathroom needed arranging to see what I have in stock and what I need from Leuven.

That reminded me – I needed to book my travel to Leuven and my accommodation while I am there. So that was the next task.

Mind you, I don’t know why I might need accommodation. I noted that my appointment is for 16:00 and not at the Outpatients department either but at the main entrance. For a 5-hour process that’s not going to be possible in a department that closes at 17:30.

Do they mean to keep me in, I wonder?

By now the rain had stopped so I went to pick up the stuff to take to Caliburn and there, on the windowsill right underneath where I’d put the stuff was the note from the controle technique.

Anyway, all of that is now in Caliburn and he has his new mirror glass. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

There was no hummus for my lunchtime sandwiches (I’d done all of that this morning!) so I went to make some more.

By the time that i’d finished, I had two batches. One with olives and cumin and the other with dried tomato and herbs. Both with plenty of garlic, pepper and sea salt of course.

As for the olive and cumin, I dunno about that but the dried tomato and herbs is wicked, it really is. No danger of any werewolves and vampires coming around anywhere near me tonight.

With it being Sunday, that’s the day for me to go for my walk down into town for my vegan ice cream.

There were hordes of people out there today. We’ve seen the Birdmen of Alcatraz swarming around like Nazguls after a Hobbit, but there were a darn sight more than 9 walkers out there on the paths.

And on the narrow path around the headland we were jammed shoulder to shoulder in places. I don’t think that social distancing was much in evidence today.

These people over there are certainly respecting their social distancing though.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen countless fishermen perched on rocks at the water’s edge casting their lines into the sea and with the tide being right out just now, they have gone right out with it.

And as I have said before – I have yet to see anyone ever catch anything.

With the tide being out the harbour gates were closed so I could walk across the path over the top to the other side.

What was interesting me was the pontoons at the ferry terminal. With the tide being out, I wanted to see how they were holding up. And the answer to that question is “not very well”.

Either the silt is building up quickly around them, or else the pontoons are slowly sinking into the mud. My money is on the latter and I wonder how long it will be before they have to send a few diggers in to dig the pontoons out again

Not much else was happening at all around the harbour so I went into town to pick up my ice cream. The guy in the shop recognises me now and that’s bad news.

On into town and life here is definitely back to normal, as the monthly brocante is in full swing.

They aren’t anything like the brocantes that we used to have in the Auvergne which is a shame.

Over there it would be private people clearing out stuff that they no longer wanted or needed. Here, it’s professionals trying to make a living and so the stuff is basically banal rubbish sold at 10 times what it’s worth and probably 100 times what they paid for it in a deceased person’s house clearance.

Just out of interest I had a wander round to see what there was.

A book on the History of Normandy looked interesting, but not €8:00 worth of interesting by any means. And a nice looking work bench with built-in vice and clamp caught my eye, as did the price of €250:00. Free woodwork thrown in – or burrowed in more likely.

So at that point I abandoned my stroll around and headed for home.

The weather might have been quite nice, warm and sunny but there was quite a rolling sea out there this afternoon.

The yacht was quite obviously enjoying the windy weather but the fishing boat was making quite heavy weather of it all. Towing a dinghy behind it can’t have helped much either.

All of this windy weather is making me very nostalgic for the sea and a maritime voyage so somewhere – anywhere in fact. I need to stretch my sea legs at some point pretty soon.

Back here I had a bake-in.

First task was to make a pile of pizza dough. Just like bread dough but wit a little oil in the base. 400 grammes of flour is enough for three bases, and having mixed it and got it really nice, i left it on one side.

Next stop was some pastry. 250 grammes of flour and 125 grammes of vegan margarine makes a decent-side pie. Knead it all together for about 10 minutes until it’s thoroughly mixed through, and then add a couple of spoons of water and mix that until it reaches the right texture.

Take 2/3rds of it, roll it out and put it in a greased pie dish.
Peel, core and slice a couple of large apples and fill in the pie base.
Desiccated coconut, sultanas, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg go nicely in there too.
Trim off the excess pastry, and damp the edges of the pie with some milk.
Add the trimmed-off pastry back to the 1/3 of pastry, roll it out and stick it over the top, pushing the edges down with a fork onto the dampened edges of the pastry base to seal it in and then trim off the excess.
Brush the top with milk, dust with brown sugar, pierce a few holes to let out the steam, and bung into a hot oven.

With the excess pastry that you trimmed off, roll it out into a square, add some of the apple and the other interesting bits, dampen the edges with milk, fold it over and squeeze together, brush with milk, dust with sugar, pierce some steam holes and stick that in as well.

By now the pizza dough will have risen so divide into three.
Lightly dust two of them in oil, wrap in greaseproof paper, put in a plastic bag and stick in the freezer.

With the third one, roll it out to size and stick it in a greased pizza tray. brush with tomato sauce, add your toppings and herbs, then cover with your grated cheese.
Then stick your pizza in with the pie and the turnover.

“And here is one I made earlier” – not out of a toilet roll holder and sticky-backed plastic as we used to do with Peter Pervert, John Dope and Valerie Simpleton.

Well, actually, this is the finished product. Today’s culinary offering. The pizza was delicious but I don’t know about the pie because I wasn’t that hungry so I didn’t try any of it.

My run tonight was painful – really painful – but I pushed on al the same and did it all.

But we have a new visitor on the car park by the lighthouse. Not exactly new – in fact he’s been there for two evenings now.

It’s an old rescue van from the fire service and you can still see where the vinyl writing used to be on it. But now it seems to have been converted into a mobile home of some description.

But I couldn’t help but admire his optimism when I read this notice.

He’s looking for a female companion to accompany him on his travels “in search of the sun” and he plans to be gone a long time.

Judging by the dampness in the plastic and the faded writing, the sign has been up for a long time too so he’s not been having much luck in that respect.

And I can’t say that I’m surprised either.

My walk continued on around the headland to the other side.

There was a strong wind that was blowing and we were having a really rough sea this evening. This fishing boat, which at first I thought was our old favourite Coelacanthe but is in fact her sister la Tiberiade was really making heavy weather of it.

She’s only just out of harbour too – hasn’t even passed le Loup – the light and marker for the big rock that is out there and the entrance light for the harbour itself

From there I ran on all the way down to my first resting place.

And there I was entertained by an interesting spectacle on the roof of one of the buildings in the Boulevard de Terreneuviers. A group of seagulls were having a fight over something, although I don’t know what.

It was a nasty fight too. They chased one away but he kept on circling and coming back for more. This battle went on for quite some time abd the seagull didn’t seem to have any attention of giving up easily.

From there I ran on all the way down on my elongated run right to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

No picnickers again, but that was hardly a surprise because there was only a couple of feet of beach here right now. The tide is well and truly in. there was a fisherman here on the rocks, so I hope that for his sake the tide was on its way out.

If on the other hand it’s on its way in, he’ll find himself stranded if he’s not very careful

The sunset tonight was a little much – a little too bright to be able to reproduce a good effect.

This is the best of several photos that I took and it’s still not what I would like to see, which is a shame.

So after a couple of minutes and no sign of improvement I ran on home to write up my notes.

Back to work tomorrow and there’s plenty to do. A live concert for a start, followed by my Welsh homework.

We’ll see how far we get with all of that but right now I’m off to bed.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: le loup

Thursday 25th June 2020 – I CAN’T SEE …

Monday 22nd June 2020 – THIS MORNING …

Sunday 21st June 2020 – HAPPY SOLSTICE!

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring