Tag Archives: post office

Monday 4th March 2019 – MY APPLE PIE …

… is delicious. Especially now that it’s cooled.

And what would have been even nicer would have been to put cinnamon in it instead of coriander. Sometimes I wonder what goes through my head at times.

Today though, has been in football parlance a day of two halves.

Having gone to bed early and having managed a decent sleep, with just one or two little awakenings, it was the alarm that awoke me at 06:00. And again at 06:10. And again at 06:20.

Sometime during the night, I’d been off on my travels. Reliving in some respects –
1) a discussion I’d had a few days ago with Amber
2) another nocturnal voyage of a good while ago
3) a trip that I had made to the UK in the old Ford Escort van in 2006.
It all took place in Ham Street in Kent, where an great aunt of mine used to live and where we used to go on holiday in the early 60s. There was a group of people going off skiing so I tagged along too. I had my skis with me of course, but no ski boots, and I was in a black suit and tie – not a ski outfit at all. The group leader was taking us off, so I explained about the shortfall in my equipment but her response was not to worry about it – and led us off regardless. Somewhere in there too was me in what at the time passed for Canada with a lot of people whom I knew from there, but was pretty much somewhere just like Ham Street, which would be the strangest part of Canada that I ever knew.

There was a lot to do today, so it needed to be done and done quickly. Rather like in MacBeth and “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly”.

First thing to do was to download a form that had been sent to me, and then print it off. All 21 pages or so of it. And then of course, it needed to be filled in.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been either and there were several questions that I couldn’t answer. So I filled in what I could and put it on one side for a moment.

In the meantime, I booked my trip to Leuven and my accommodation there. I’m spending a good few days there as I have a couple of things that need doing.

As per last time, I’ve booked my train from Brussels to Leuven on line as well. It saves time and stress at Brussels, and saves me 20 cents. Which is just as well, because I couldn’t get a cheap fare to Brussels this time.

By now it was 10:30 and I reckoned that people in the UK would be at work. So I telephoned them and had a discussion about the form that needed signing.

That took about 20 minutes all told, and then I had to scan all 21 pages of the form, assemble it, and send it off by e-mail. It’s not valid until the hard copy is received, but at least it will give them something to work with.

It was now too late to go to the Post Office so I had a nice half an hour shredding paper for the waste bin outside. I need to crack on with this project too and tidy things up here.

After lunch, I went down to the Post Office and sent off the form. That wasn’t cheap either (I’ve paid for a tracking service on it) but I need to know that it’s arrived because it’s important.

Final task was to liquidate my storage locker in the UK. There’s nothing in it of any use and as I have no intention whatever of going back to the UK under any circumstances, it’s pointless keeping it going.

All of this had totally exhausted me. I’m not well and not getting much better and I can’t keep on going. By 15:30 I was on the bed down under the bedclothes and there I stayed until about 17:50.

Totally out of it, I was. And it felt like it too. I’ve had the heating on in the apartment too – the first time for over a week. But I’ll have to be better than this – I’m back on the road in 10 days time.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper followed by the apple pie with coconut-flavoured soya cream. And as I said – delicious.

And then the walk around the headland in the storm. I have in mind the idea to go down to the town and see the lights of the fairground, but with this wind there was nothing much happening.

So I’ll go to bed now. See if I can have a good sleep. I need it too if I’m to improve.

But one thing that I will say – and that is that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago I bought in a cheap €1:00 sale in LIDL a small whiteboard and erasable felt-tip pen.

This is proving its weight in gold for making notes when I’m working. Much better than scraps of paper or trying to remember things that I need to do.

And then just wipe them off afterwards. It’s really one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone.

And haven’t I had a big surprise today.

Remember when I went into the Mairie the other day to have a discussion with the Maire and ended up with the secretary?

Well, the secretary phoned me back today. Apparently the Maire has taken on board my remarks, made a few enquiries and come back to me.

I wasn’t expecting that, that’s for sure.

It’s not advanced things very much, as I didn’t expect that it would, but having someone like the Maire on your side is a comfort in these difficult times.

And difficult times they are.

Being completely wound up last night as I was, I was still up working at 02:00, totally unable to sleep. More like 02:30 when I went to bed,. And as for sleep, well, there wasn’t very much of that. I was tossing and turning all night.

There was enough time to go off on a travel. I was in Greece in some kind of primitive café helping with moral support (although what support I could ever give anyone would be considered as being moral) some girl who was trying to run it despite all of the opposition and difficulties that her family – the nominal owners – were putting in her path. The strange thing was that when the alarms went off, I totally ignored them and stayed in bed. And although I was by now awake, the journey carried on. And carried on for miles too from exactly the same place where I awoke. Not something that happens every day.

By 09:25 I was ready to awaken, and straight into controversy yet again where a couple of self-important auto-sycophants were bragging about how they had “briefed” a politician and “won a famous victory for UK citizens in Europe” by getting him to look at at. Completely oblivious of the fact that the EU had thrown out this idea weeks ago.

And so this totally shameless display of self-serving egocentricity caused me to explode yet again. And even deeper into the abyss.

I went for a very late breakfast after that. and then came back to start on the blog and the text database.

But not for long, because the Mairie interrupted me.

And then, almost immediately, another phone call from someone else who is on my list of things to do.

This started me off on a wave of work. From somewhere, I summoned up a piece of energy so went on a tidy-up in the bedroom.

Bank statements are fairly tidy now and I found a couple of other papers. And so I then sat down, made a few more phone calls, sent out some e-mails and wrote a letter too.

It may sound not much, but it certainly made an impression on the stuff in here.

My lunch was a light one, and that made me feel a little better.

I did manage to do some work on the photos and the database. Not a lot, but I’m back as far as 18th October 2018. It’s going a little quicker than I was expecting.

Later on in the afternoon I went for my afternoon walk.

I went around the headland at the Pointe du Roc through the crowds and hordes of tourists up there

And there was a beautiful view across the harbour right over to the coast on the far side by the Cale de Hacqueville.

There were quite a few people at the Chantier Navale, loitering around that big wooden boat that I mentioned last time, so I went over for a chat.

The boat that is on there is in fact La Granvillaise – a yacht that we have seen on many occasions around the harbour.

She’s been taken out of the water for a complete refit and overhaul by the volunteers, and she’s going to be there for a while.

While I was down there at the Chantier Navale, I went over to have a look at Armor – the ship from the diving place down the Brittany coast.

They’ve stripped off most of the old paint, and are currently giving it a good go over in white primer, ready presumably for its top coat.

They have put a lot of work into it. It will look good when it’s finished.

My route into town took me past the place Charles de Gaulle.

Here I could admire the stage that they had erected the other day. Events will be getting under way tonight, although I won’t be down there.

Instead, I went to the Post Office and sent off the letter that I had written. It won’t go until Monday afternoon but it needs to be on its way.

Back up the hill, I stopped to watch one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming into port.

And there was a weird commotion going on behind me.

Some woman pulled up in her car, shouted to a passer-by “watch my vehicle” and ran off down the road shouting “Chantal” or something.

Everyone was standing around there shaking their heads.

Back here, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend of mine in the UK has sent me a little present for my birthday to help me along my way. That was just so very thoughtful of him and I’m overwhelmed.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with a little rice followed by a pot of soya dessert and a banana.

And then football. The Welsh Cup, Caernarfon Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Connah’s Quay were strangely subdued, michael Wilde was at walking pace and Callum Saunders was somewhere else in his mind, I think.

But Caernarfon seem to have gone off the boil too – a shadow of the impressive hard-working side of earlier in the season.

The Nomads won 2-1, but it was a very long game.

So it’s bedtime now.

I’m feeling a little better, and maybe a decent sleep might cheer me up again.

It’s Carnaval tomorrow.

And I seem to have lost one of the camera gloves that my friend Liz bought me for my birthday of 2008. I’m dismayed.

coastline granville manche normandy france

chateau de la crete granville manche normandy france

harbour light st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franc

Thursday 31st January 2019 – THE WEATHER …

… was something of a disappointment today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 25th January 2019 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

… the early night that I was expecting.

I’m not quite sure what happened but it was certainly later than midnight when I went to bed. And even later when I went to sleep.

What was even more surprising was that I was up and about reasonably early too, not too long after the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too. Back on the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’m not now sure why. Although it has been in my thoughts just recently and on my live ship navigation feed, I noticed before going to bed that she’s currently in the Antarctic moored to an ice-floe about 300 yards offshore.

After breakfast, I had a shower and a change of clothes and a general clean-up. I need to look my best for I have things to do. These included tracking down Brigitte my neighbour. And I was extremely lucky in that I caught her just as she was on the point of going out.

Nevertheless she devoted 15 minutes to countersigning my passport application. It’s quite handy having a former Civil Servant in the building who can actually remember me from the past. As I have said before … “and you will say again” – ed … it’s a small world, and it’s getting smaller all the time.

I collected up all of the papers and headed off into town. I posted off the form to declare that I had lost my original, and then went into the Post Office to send off the application registered post, recorded delivery with receipt – all of that. I’ve no idea how long it might take to replace my passport but the way things are as they are, I imagine that this 6-week time limit is going to be considerably under pressure.

Picking up a baguette I headed for home, only to bump into Brigitte again. Every labour deserves its reward so I invited her for a coffee. This was at about 11:30. We had a chat too and much to my surprise it was 13:47 by the time we moved off. I’ll have to take my bed with me next time.

After a rather late lunch I started to catch up with the paperwork, with a brief interruption for a walk around the headland in the rain.

Back here I started to carry on but by 17:15 I was flat out on the bed and asleep. And I would probably still be there now had I not had another severe attack of cramp. But I wasn’t in the mood for any tea, but made a quick plate of pasta and veg.

The rain had gone this evening but the wind was blowing quite strongly.

With the tide being in, the waves were crashing up over the promenade again at the Plat Gousset. It was altogether quite an impressive sight.

And on the way back I nearly collided with a young girl walking the other way who loomed up out of the darkness around the corner.

Back round in the rue Notre Dame I met up with Minette the black cat who seems to have forgiven me for whatever I did to her because she let me stroke her.

Shopping tomorrow so I might have an early night. No football in the evening either except on the internet where the biggest match this century will take place. Bangor City and Caernarfon Town are separated by about 13 miles and so hate each other with a passion. Caernarfon have always been the underdogs but were promoted to the Welsh Premier League last season finally to meet Bangor, only to find that Bangor were expelled for financial irregularities. They meet up in the Welsh Cup tomorrow at Bangor and Caernarfon’s allocation of 1300 tickets was sold out ages ago.

This is going to be a corker.

night storm plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Thursday 17th January 2019 – WHAT DO I DO …

… now that I can’t find my passport anywhere?

This is really going to throw a spanner in the works, this is.

Last time that I physically remember having it, I had to produce it to a German ticket inspector on the train from Köln to Aachen to prove my entitlement to a reduced fare.

I must have had it here though because a form that I had to fill in last week, I had to enter my passport number on it.

It might have been at the bank when I was there on Thursday last week, but I phoned them to ask and they don’t have it.

It seems that these days I’m taking one step forward and two steps back.

The alarms went off as usual this morning, but I simply turned over and went back to sleep again. It was 08:10 when I finally crawled out of bed.

I’d been on my travels too although I don’t remember too much about them. There were two young girls, aged about 12 or so, in a café and one was carrying a very large baby doll. She went up to the counter, pretending that the doll that she was carrying was a real baby, and asked piteously if the café would buy her a cup of coffee because she was a single mother with no money. The waiter served her a coffee, and I was interested to see how she would share this out with her friend.

There was a quick morning routine followed by a quick shower and a whirl of the washing machine (I’m running low on clothes) and then off up town in the rain showers.

First port of call was the Post Office where I posted off the letter that I wrote yesterday. I wonder how long it will be before I receive a reply. And I hope that it’s positive news. As Ludicrus said in Up Pompeii , It’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Second stop was LIDL. I didn’t buy all that much but it was still an expensive do. There were a couple of really decent notebooks that I need for a project. But there was also a clip-on LED lamp that works as a nice office light. Only 2.5 watts instead of the 60 watt bulb in the ceiling, but gives twice as much light. I was talking about getting something for quite a while.

Back home, I had a coffee, unpacked the shopping and installed the LED light. It works quite nicely and I’m quite pleased with it.

This afternoon after lunch I finished off the photos from December and then made a start on those from January.

But I was sidetracked. I received a Press Release from the French Government outlining the French plans for British nationals in the event of a Hard Brexit. It’s quite a comprehensive document with some useful information so I reckoned that it would be a good idea to print it out and keep it with my passport.

And now we started the circus.

Tea was a potato and lentil curry dating from January last year. And delicious it was too.

It was quite windy outside. There were a few people walking around the headland after lunch.

And the mystery of what they were doing with that area of paving on the car park by the lighthouse is revealed. They were erecting a tourist information sign there.

There has been some talk about opening up the old bunkers of the Atlantic Wall so that tourists might visit. But they went through a great deal of effort and expended an enormous amount of manpower in putting up that simple sign.

But once again, not a soul – not even a cat – out there this evening. But I did notice that they are digging up the roads in the Medieval town just down the road.

There are signs all over the old town saying that the Fibre-Optic cabling is “ongoing”, and it looks as if it might be here any day now.

But when we are actually hooked up, that’s anyone’s guess.

And as I expected, I lost the internet connection half a dozen times today. So I might end up having to connect it with a cable after all.

Thursday 10th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN A LITTLE …

… better today.

And that’s really a surprise because it was a late night to start with, and then it took me ages to get off to sleep.

But once I did, I stepped back into last night’s voyage at exactly the place where I had left it. And so it’s another evening where you’ll have to do without knowing where I was. Some of you have some delicate sensibilities.

When the alarm went off, I loitered around in bed for a while and then rose up from my stinking pit. We had the usual morning performance and then I took a shower. it’s been a few days and even I was noticing it.

So one good clean up, shave and shampoo later, I hit the streets.

First stop was the Post Office to post the letter that I had written yesterday.

Second stop was at the Bank. It’s all very well having on-line banking but if you don’t download the statements then you are in trouble. So I needed some instruction as to how to operate an internet banking service. It didn’t take long either.

Third stop was at the railway station to pick up my tickets. It seems now that my TGV tickets are only available on print-out, not from the station. So I mustn’t forget to do that.

Final stop was at LIDL.

But before I could reach there I had to pick my way through the roadworks at the roundabout at the top of the avenue LeClerc by the avenue Aristide Briand.

They are pushing on with the fibre-optic cabling but, according to the workmen here, there’s no timetable as yet for the actual connection. No-one has any idea when it might finally go on-line.

At LIDL, considering that I wasn’t intending to spend anything, I didn’t half spend a lot. As well as a new multimeter, there was a box of electrical accessories, some PTFE tape for plumbing and a pair of working gloves. Not necessarily for working but they are thin and very well-insulated and I can even work the camera with them – and that’s the point of buying them.

I walked back home, stopping half way up the rue des Juifs to see what was happening at the port.

There’s a huge pile of gravel now piled up on the quayside where the gravel boats dock. That must mean that we should be expecting a visit from Neptune or one of her sisters very soon.

Back here I bumped into someone delivering leaflets and was complaining about the cold. And it was all of 5°C too. I told him that he was lucky he didn’t live in the Auvergne.

In the apartment I had a coffee and then attacked the bank’s website. And much to my dismay there are only 6 months-worth of statements still held. That’s not enough but it’s the best that I can do. I printed them out anyway and added them to my file.

After lunch I filed everything away, checked off things on my checklist and then set to work to download my telephone statements. The bad news here is that they only go back 12 months but I’ve been on paperless accounts since March 2015. So I have all of the earlier ones (much to my surprise) and I’ve downloaded all of the later ones, but I’m short of the period 04/15 – 12/07.

So on the telephone to Orange. And what with waiting time it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes and having to tell my story to 3 different people. But eventually someone answered me with the news that they will pas my message onto the Accounts department who will send them to me.

And I hope that they do.

My afternoon walk was thus an early-evening walk after all of that.

There was a wave of fatigue but I managed to fight it off, and went for tea. Burger on a bun with potatoes and veg.

Back out around the Pointe du Roc for my evening walk. it was a cold, windy evening (but not that cold). Quite pleasant to be out.

And away on the horizon near St Malo in the centre of the photo to the left of the trawler, I noticed a couple of moving lights

Based on no evidence at all except pure speculation, the only thing that came into my mind was that it could well have been the huge ferry, Pont Aven, setting off for Portsmouth. There is occasionally a Brittany Ferries departure from St Malo round about 20:30 or so.

I’m glad that I was out there though because the sky was really quite clear and beautiful.

You could see for miles tonight and the street lights across the bay at Cancale were quite prominent. And in the background the clouds in the sky over there were glowing orange with the reflection of the street lights from St Malo.

I really am going to have to treat myself to a better camera with a much wider ISO range.

You’ll remember the trawler that we saw in a previous photograph just now.

I’d taken so long in sorting myself out with the other photos and the 70-300mm zoom lens that the trawler had beaten me into the harbour.

Here she was, just tying up at the quayside ready to unload today’s catch. There’a a van down there ready to take it all away.

So now I’ve printed out my tickets (and I’m glad that I bought a new printer) I might even try for an early night again. i’m out tomorrow afternoon. And I’m not the only one who is out and about. i’ve had a message to say that my new computer is on the road too, heading this way.

trawler night port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Thursday 3rd January 2019 – EVEN THOUGH …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I went out for my afternoon walk too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday 2nd January 2019 – IT DIDN’T …

… work out like it ought to have done last night.

I was so engrossed with what I was doing, as well as chatting to a friend in North America, that it was well after 02:00 when I realised the time. So much for my early night.

Nevertheless, despite any kind of temptation, I still had the alarms set for 06:00 etc and I was there or thereabouts when they went off. But as for rising from my stinking pit, well, I wasn’t quite so prompt.

We had the usual morning procedure of course and then after a brief relax with a few things that I intended to do, I set to work.

By the time that lunchtime had come round, I’d written a huge pile of letters, which involved a great deal of research, and printed them out. I’m glad that I had bought my new printer because it was simplicity itself and the printer did well.

But I’ve put the kiss of death upon it because I’ve ordered some spare ink off the internet. That’s enough to kill off any printer.

In fact, I’ve ordered a pile of stuff from the internet just now. A new computer screen as I mentioned, together with a powered USB hub and a keyboard for the new computer. As well as that, I’ve ordered a new 60-litre rucksack for my trips to Leuven and a power converter for the Roland bass cube so that I can restart the bass-playing.

And much to my surprise, by the end of the evening I noticed that some of the stuff was on its way.

After lunch I had a shower and a clean-up, seeing that even I was beginning to notice that I was here. And then I hit the streets – down to the Post Office to post the huge pile of letters that I had written. And it wasn’t easy in the Post Office either as the automatic machine wouldn’t read my bank card.

There was still some coffee left from this morning so I drank that when I returned, along with a slice of my Christmas present from Liz and Terry.

With having had a late night and an early start, I couldn’t keep going and by 18:00 I was stretched out on the bed under the covers. And there I stayed until about 19:30. Definitely feeling the strain, I am.

As a result, tea was rather late. The rest of the falafel from the other day, seeing as it had been hanging around for a few weeks, with pasta, veg and tomato sauce.

Later on this evening, I went out for my evening walk.

The weather outside was really beautiful this evening, even if it was cold out there tonight.

The air was clear though and I could see for miles, all the way down past St Malo and along the Brittany coast.

So how about an early night tonight? This afternoon I made a start on another project and that is going to take a lot of work. But there’s a time limit involved and it’s quite important. Some of the letters that I wrote are in connection with this, but the Lord helps those who help themselves and years of bitter experience have told me that I can’t ever rely on anyone else to do things for me.

And so I need my sleep.

night st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

very blurred night brehal sur mer granville manche normandy france

night donville sur mer granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 20th November 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… where I visited during the night but wherever it was, I was still there when the alarm went off. Dead to the world, in fact.

It took me a while to haul myself out of bed and organise myself properly. And after breakfast I had a couple of things that needed doing.

A shower followed, and then I dressed for the streets.

As the tide was out, I took my new route, down the steps, across the fish dock and the path over the top of the tidal gates onto the commercial dock.

I remember seeing Thora in the port yesterday and I thought that I had seen her still here last night. And she’s still here this morning, looking as if she’s taking on a load for Jersey.

But there was no-one about to talk to – she was doing a good impression of the Marie Celeste.

My destination was the Post Office, where I posted off my letter to Canada. And while I was there I bought a pack of 10 pre-stamped envelopes for use in France. i’m down to my last one here.

On the way back, I picked up one of my favourite baguettes for lunch.

Over the last week or so I’ve taken piles of photos but I’ve been too busy to deal with them. So having made myself a coffee, I sat down and started to review them, edit them and upload them.

And believe it or not, I did manage to get a shot of one of the dolphins yesterday. I’ll post it tomorrow so you can all see it.

Lunch was in here again. it didn’t rise much above 5°C today so I wasn’t going to sit on the wall.

Just by way of a change I’ve done some tidying up too. There was a huge pile of cables and lead that I had brought with me from the Auvergne so I sorted them out and tidied them up. And SHOCK! HORROR! I threw away a pile of stuff away too.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

Later on, I went for my usual afternoon walk around the Pointe de la Roc.

And there I was greeted by the sight of Thora sailing … “dieseling” – ed … off into the sunset on her way back to Jersey.

Enhancing the colours a little has brought out a really nice effect on this image.

She put on a slight turn to port after that so I took another photo of her.

Back here I cropped her out and blew up the image. I can do that these days, despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

Considering that this has been cropped out and enlarged at full focal length, it’s not come out too badly given the distances that I was having to cover.

Round the corner and looking out over the Baie de Mont St Michel, I could see that the sailing school had been out this afternoon.

I have half a mind … “yes, quite!” – ed … to go out and learn to sail one of these days, but I’m not quite sure how I can fit it in given my state of health and medical requirements.

A theoretical course on sailing and navigation would be right up my street (or down my river) though.

There wa even more excitement down at the ship repairer’s.

It’s not every day that I’m lucky enough to see them lifting a boat out of the water but I was in luck today. It looks as if they have another job to do on a fishing trawler and they were lifting her out with the hoist.

I’ll have to check tomorrow to see if she has been put up on blocks ready for work.

The highlight of the walk though had to be this delightful nautical danse macabre.

A trawler had unloaded at the fish dock and was heading off into the inner harbour, just as Aztec Lady was on her way out.

They waltzed and weaved around each other as they sorted themselves out into their respective routes.

Back here, I had a little … errr … repose for a while and then there was another job that needed doing. I’ve had a temporary curtain hanging in here ever since I moved in and it’s been on my mind to have it taken up to the correct size.

But that’s not happened so I took it off and pinned it to the right size.

And then I finished off all of my photos and uploaded them to the internet.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and then I went out for my walk. Freezing cold outside, it was, and so that probably explains why there wasn’t a single person (or even a married one) out on the streets tonight.

Beautiful it was though – clear and crisp night with some lovely moonlight.

Now I’m keen to see if I can have another good night. And while I’m dozing off I’ll leave you with a few more photos.

Thora going back to Jersey

Sailing school baie de mont st michel granville

Trawler Port de Granville harbour

Trawler being lifted out of the water and moved across the shipyard on the hoist.

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The Port de Plaisance at Granville harbour

Thursday 8th November 2018 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the second day of my mega-voyage to the High Arctic and it’s now on line.

All you need to do is to go to this page and follow the link to Day Two. There are five pages in total and they should give you hours of endless fun.

Even more exciting is the fact that I’ve made a start on adding some photos to Day Three of the blog. That might even be finished if I have a good day, and then I can start on the web page that goes with it.

Or pages, probably, if it’s anything like Day Two.

In case you are wondering, I’ve had a good day today and done quite a few things. That early night that I had must have done me a world of good.

There was even time for me to go off on a ramble during the night. I was heading towards a boat, travelling down a valley, and we were to collect a group of kids to take skiing with us. They came running down the sides of the valley down to the bottom, screaming and squealing like young kids do. And what was surprising about all of this was that there was plenty of snow on the sides of the valley so it was difficult to understand, even during a nocturnal ramble, why they would need to go off somewhere else to ski.

After breakfast, I finished off the form that I’d been completing, but at this moment the printer decided to pack up yet again. It always seems to do this at a crucial moment, and it’s getting on my nerves.

But then again, I did pick it up in the Spring of 2013 and it was second-hand so I can’t complain too much. But I’ll be buying another one on Saturday. I hope that I’ll have more luck with this, but it never seems to work out between me and printers.

A shower and setting the washing machine going, and then into town, with Yves and Lily whom I encountered at the foot of the stairs. We had a good chat until we went our separate ways in the town centre. Me to the magasin de presse for the photocopying and then to the Post Office to send it all off.

On the way up to LIDL there was a cherry-picker working on one of the lamp-posts by the station.

It looks as if they might be starting to put up the Christmas decorations. It’s getting closer to that time of year already. And of course, I’m not going to be here to celebrate it, am I?

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special – in fact, the cupboard was pretty bare. But I did remember to buy 2kgs of carrots for freezing.

On the way back to town, I went past the private car park of the local Tax Office, and saw a sight that made me laugh.

There’s a demonstration due to take place soon against inter alia the amount of tax being charged on fuel.

People are expected to show their solidarity by putting their reflective chasubles on top of their dashboards.

I found it extremely ironic that a couple of people who apparently work in the Tax Office are demonstrating against the amount of taxes being charged.

In the town centre there was a big crowd around the War Memorial.

The local schoolkids had been learning about the Armistice as part of the school curriculum and so they were holding a commemoration service there for them.

There was a considerable number of adults who were passing by and were swept up in the emotion.

There was an enormous number of kids there listening to the service.

And there was also a film cameraman recording the event, presumably for the local television channel.

He was quite interested in filming the kids listening to the service, and so I couldn’t resist the opportunity of filming him doing it.

I have quite a few photos of this kind of thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

On the way back here, I had a strange encounter in the rue des Juifs.

In one of the art galleries there was a really nice painting of a tramp steamer. It looked quite nice so I was interested in having a closer look at it.

Just as I was about to go inside, the owner came out
“I’m just closing up because I’m going to an exhibition” he said. “I’ll be back in a week”
And he locked up the shop right in front of me.

The next person who complains that there’s a recession going on will get a smack in the mouth. People throwing customers out of their shop like this.

Up the hill again where I fell in once more with Yves and Lily who were on the way back home.

Lunch was inside again – far too windy to go outside and sit on my wall. And then I finished off the web pages that I mentioned earlier.

A cookery session followed next. I peeled, sliced and blanched the carrots and then prepared them for freezing. And 2kgs is too much to freeze at one go. 1kg at a time will do in future. But I should really have bought a bigger freezer.

There was a pile of mushrooms left over too so I prepared a mushroom and potato curry with the left-over potatoes from the previous batch, and added a giant tin of macedoine vegetables and a dollop of soya cream.

And now there’s no room in the freezer for it so I don’t know what I’m going to do.

What with all of that, I was rather late going out for my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc.

And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, due to the high winds that were still blowing a gale around in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But the winds were making quite an impression on the waves, as well as blowing the seabirds around somewhat.

they couldn’t have found it very easy to move around, and neither did the pedestrians down there either.

A little further around the bend we came to a position where we could see the wind full-on with the waves, pushing them forward towards the port de plaisance.

They were making some really pretty patterns too and it looked quite impressive.

You can see what kind of a beautiful day that we were having too. It was rather a shame that the wind was cooling everything down.

With the time that was left before tea I started on Day Three of the blog, and sometime during the proceedings I had a little repose.

At tea time I went to try a helping of the curry with boiled rice and veg. Not my best, I have to say, but then I only made it to use up some of the food that was left and in danger of going off.

It was at that moment that I remembered that I had left the washing in the machine.

The high winds didn’t prevent me from going for my evening walk around the walls.

Even though the tide was well on its way out, the high winds were still catching the waves and smashing them down on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

What was even more impressive was that the new f1.8 lens was working well enough to pick up the motion, and the crop of the image was sharp enough to bring it out.

So I carried on with my walk around the walls and back into the old medieval town.

And here at the Place Cambernon there was a hive of activity. Dozens of people at the bar, and the pizza van that comes here on a Thursday evening was doing a roaring trade.

One day I’ll take some of my cheese down to the van and try out one of their pizzas

Back home in the hallway I met Brigitte who was back from her holidays. We had a good chat for over an hour down there.

It’s definitely my day for being sociable with the neighbours.

However, it’s made me later than I intended to be and I won’t have a night as early as I would like.

But I’ll do my best.

Children’s Armistice Day commemoration

Children’s Armistice Day Commemoration

Storm, high winds and waves, Plat Gousset

The Pizza Van in the Place Cambernon, Granville

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… been back at Mont St Michel today doing my tourist guide bit, but Josée contacted me yesterday to say that there had been a change of plan and she was off elsewhere.

And that was just as well because I wasn’t feeling all that much like it this morning.

Last night had been quite a late night – I was absorbed in a pile of work – so leaving my bed at 06:00 or thereabouts (and I did too – I was taking my medication in the kitchen when the alarm went off at 06:20) was something of a struggle.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then finished off the photos from yesterday’s walks. And now they are all on-line. All 40 or so of them so you can tell that it took me quite a while.

Another thing that I did today was to catch up with some tidying up and to do the washing-up that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’m starting to let things slide in here as far as tidiness and cleanliness goes and I need to get myself back on track while I’m still able to do so. I won’t always be fit enough to tackle things when they need tackling.

There are also a couple of other projects on the go here and I’ve been dealing with a few of them too this morning.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It was overcast, cold and windy outside so I reckoned that I could do with the comfort of a chair in the dining area.

This afternoon, I did a few other bits and pieces and then sat down to tackle the photos from the Arctic. I’m still in Yellowknife on the Pilot’s Monument, and this afternoon I rewrote the things that I wrote about it earlier in the week.

Well, not exactly “rewritten”.

What I do is to write down things as they occur to me, put them into paragraphs and then cut and paste the paragraphs to make a continuous text, adding in a few conjunctions to make the text stream together.

It also involves research. And it’s amazing what you find when you start to look. Instead of worrying about finding enough text, I now have quite a considerable excess.

We had the usual afternoon walk around the headland this afternoon in the sunshine.

And there, sailing about out in the bay off the coast of Bréville-sur-Mer was the sailing ship that we have seen over the past few days.

I had the standard lens on the camera so I took a quick photo of it at long range.

But we haven’t bought a new zoom/telephoto lens for nothing, have we?

Seeing as the ship was sailing slowly, I stuck on the new lens and took a zoom photo.

I’ve still not been able to track down the name so I cropped the photo and blew it up (I can do these things, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) but it seems that the name of the boat isn’t painted on the bows … “she’s La Granvillaise” – ed.

While I had the big new lens on the camera, I took a photo of the caravan site out at Bréville sur Mer near the horse racing course.

That was another place where I had enquired about accommodation when I arrived here.

Liz and Terry have a little caravan and one idea going through my head was to park it on there for the summer, and then try for a good deal in a long-term holiday let through the winter.

When I arrived back here after my walk I found that I had an important e-mail message.

The third lens that I had ordered – a refurbished 18x105mm lens – hadn’t been delivered as promised. And the tracking showed that they had tried twice, even though I had been here on both occasions.

Having instigated a search, I was told that it was now awaiting collection at the Post Office. So I went down there to pick it up.

And down there I found the reason why it hadn’t been delivered, and why I was puzzled as to how come no-one from the delivery company had rung the bell.

It turns out that the address for delivery was incorrect. An error on the part of the dispatchers.

But I’m not complaining, because when I wrote to them to tell them of the delay and the inconvenience, they refunded my postage. I’m quite content with that.

After all of that, I had to sit down for a while and have a little … errr … relax for half an hour.

Tea was a curry from the freezer and it was just as delicious as the day that I cooked it.

Later on I went out for the evening walk around the walls with the camera and the new lens.

Part of the plan was to retake many of the photos that I had taken the other day with the 50mm lens so that I could compare them and see the difference.

Just like this one of the sea front at Bréhal sur Mer

And this one of the rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background to the right.

It won’t be as good as the 50mm low-light lens because it needs more light to work it, but its advantage is that the new lens is a zoom lens rather than a fixed lens.

That means that it’s more useful as a general-purpose lens (which is why I bought it) but I still need to see how it performs.

The other day I took an almost-identical photo to this one and the difference is quite apparent. The earlier one has come out much better

But that’s only to be expected with the difference in the light and in the quality of the image.

But it’s still something that the new lens will bring out an image. The Nikon 1 would quite simply not have registered enough of an image to work.

So now I’m off to bed. In the morning I have to go shopping of course. In the meantime you can admire (or otherwise) this evening’s photos.

Night time – rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background.

The Place Marechal Foch in the night-time.

The Plat Gousset in the night-time

Night time – the rue Georges Clemenceau

Moon (hidden by the copyright details) shining over the harbour in the Port de Granville

Moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

More moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

Moon light in the night over Granville and the Baie de Mont St Michel

Yet more moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time with St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville in the background

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

Place Cambernon in the night

The Bar Rafale in the Place Cambernon at night

The rue St Jean in the medieval walled town in the night.

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about my blog, and one of the (many) reasons why I keep it, is so that when I have an altercation with someone, I have it chapter and verse about when and where it took place, and what was said.

So that way, whenever I’m having an argument with a semi-official body, I have the notes to prove my point.

But let’s not get ahead of ouselves.

Last night after having done almost everything that there was to do, I sat down and watched a DVD, something that i haven’t done for quite some time. Last night’s entertainment (if that’s the correct word) was Batman (the Movie). A totally absurd, incredibly camp film that is so bad that it’s good.

And what is probably the funniest part of the film is Adam West trying so hard not to laugh at some of the lines. Brings back many happy memories of the 1960s.

Despite the early night it was a struggle to come up for air this morning and I was a little later than usual leaving the stinking pit. But a breakfast and a hot shower brought me sort-of into the Land of the Living.

First thing was to put the bathroom back together and then to attack the living room. Do it while I’m in the mood. So that’s something like, stuff is sorted out, more stuff has been found (including my missing 32GB memory stick) and more stuff thrown away. And it was quite profitable too, because I found €1:03 too.

Spend, spend, spend!

And I’m glad that I did it too then and there because I didn’t have time after that.

Looking through the e-mails that had come in through the night, there were two that were very important and needed to be dealt with on the spot. And that involved a phone call to my bankers in the UK.

I’d tried a few weeks ago to set up an on-line banking service, but it had spectacularly failed, so I put it out of my mind. That was the first thing.

And despite what they told me, they had indeed been notified of my new telephone number. It’s there in black-and-white in my letter of 19th January, and when I had an argument with the bank’s customer service, they telephoned me back on that number on 6th February.

And since then, they’ve been sending me security codes when I’ve been using my UK credit card.

The second thing though is that I need to make a substantial payment to North America, and make it quickly. And I can’t do it by telephone despite whatever pleading I can use. It needs to be done in writing, although a fax machine is acceptable.

I threw away my old fax machine in 2011 so this meant a good hunting down of a fax machine in Granville.

First thing was to type out a letter, and while I was at it to deal with some more post that needed answering. That took me all the way up to 13:45. And then into town to search for a fax machine.

No go at the library. The Tourist Information Office was closed, the Mairie didn’t have one, and neither did the Post Office. But the Post office sent me across the road to the newspaper offices. They had a fax machine, but it was private.

But the newspaper shop next door advertised photocopies and photo-scanning, so I went in there. And sure enough, a very friendly newspaper shop owner had a public fax machine, so that was that.

I picked up one of my favourite baguettes and came back.

Lunch was exceptionally late and I was joined by no one but two lizards who spent more time fighting over a lump of pear than they did actually eating it. And that was surprising because there was more than enough for two.

Having had a lengthy walk just now, I abandoned the idea of going out this afternoon.

And so I was in my apartment to notice one of the school buses take the wrong turning up to the High School and get stuck in the gateway to the Place d’Armes.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a couple of buses do that earlier this year, but at least there was much less drama associated with this one. With a couple of bits of shunting he managed to get round quite comfortably.

Instead of my walk I sat down on the sofa with a cold drink, and the efforts of earlier were clearly far too much for me because I was out like a light for a good half-hour. This isn’t doing me any good at all.

But I managed to fit in my guitar practice, and then made tea. A burger in a bap with baked potato. And remind me next time that when I go to defrost the burger in the microwave, to take it out of the plastic bag first.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, and the view across to Jersey was one of the clearest that I have ever had.

If you notice the radio mast over there, it’s really hard to believe that that is 34 miles away from here. But it is.

There was no-one about so i had another run. 110 paces tonight. But I was disappointed that the last two runs haven’t shown up on my fitbit. It’s disappointing to say the least. I’m clearly not going fast enough, but you can’t run before you’ve learnt to walk, can you?

Round the other side of the headland I could see that we’ve had a whole pile of deliveries to the gravel bins.

There’s gravel all over the place again, and even a couple of hundred tonnes of sand.

Does this mean that we’re going to have another gravel boat some time soon? I shall have to pay much more attention that I’m doing, otherwise I’ll miss it.

Tonight I think that I’ll watch another film. I’m becoming quite bourgeois in my sentiments these days. I’m going to have to snap out of that.

But one thing that I did during the odd period here and there of lucidity was to finally finish the blog entry for one day of my trip to the desert. And never mind finishing it, it almost finished me.

It still needs to be poof-read, have the tpying examined and have a spelchek, but it’s all of 5645 words, a new record and by an enormous margin too. You can read it at your leisure.

I deserve a medal.

Thursday 31st May 2018 – I HATE PEOPLE …

… who have no sense of humour.

What can possibly be wrong with, when you have a piece of paper that needs a signature, going up to a counter clerk in the Post Office and saying “hey, put your cross on this”? No reason for anyone to pull a face or get upset is there?

At least the guys who were digging the trench for the new fibre-optic cable (yes, they are moving on quite rapidly now) can still have a laugh and a smile.

Especially when Yours Truly goes up to them and says “don’t fill in that trench until I’ve brought the wife down, will you?”

Not of course that I have a wife around here these days, and even if she were around here, she would know better than to let me lead her anywhere near an open trench where there were people on the point of filling it in.

But that’s not the point, is it?

It was another bizarre night last night. In bed comparatively early but for some reason I awoke slap bang in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep again for ages. Mind you, when I did, I had a real struggle to leave the stinking pit.

After breakfast we had a shower and a shave and then I set the washing machine going. Even washed the bedding so that I can have a nice clean bed tonight (and I’ve just remembered that I’ve forgotten to fit the clean bedding) for a change.

And then it was off up town, calling at the railway station on the way for my tickets for next week.

talking of roadworks … "well, one of us was" – ed … the roadworks in the Avenue des Vendéens near LIDL are continuing apace.

They are now working on both sides of the road – digging a trench on the northern side (and I don’t know what they are putting in it that they couldn’t have put in the trench on the southern side when they were digging that a couple of months ago) as well as reorganising the kerbstones on the southern side.

They look as if they are going to be there for ever.

That wasn’t all of the excitement in the town either.

Here we have one of Renault’s answer to the CA Bedford and the Ford Thames – Renault Estafette. 20 or 30 years ago you wouldn’t have been able to move around France without stumbling over one of these. The police used them by the thousands back in the 70s.

Over half a million were built between 1960 and 1980, but I bet that you won’t find half a dozen on the roads in everyday use today.

I didn’t buy anything exciting in LIDL today except a magnetic tray for holding screws and bolts. I don’t have one of these here and I was bewailing the fact the other day that I don’t have a magnet to sift through the rubbish in Caliburn to find this missing spring clip.

Another thing that I didn’t buy today was some carrots. I have run out and that’s bad news.

And I was rather upset to say the least when I returned here. Nikon has finally sent me the prepaid return envelope for me to send off my lens for the little camera. As regular readers of this rubbish might recall, it slowly slid into oblivion and when I complained to them, they advised me that it was a well-known fault and they would repair it for free.

But had then sent the label earlier, I could have dropped it off while I was on my way to LIDL.

After lunch I packed the lens (I still had the original box) and wrapped it carefully, and then went back into town to the Post Office, where I had my “interaction” that I mentioned earlier.

And badger me if I didn’t forget the carrots AGAIN!

Back here, trying my best not to succumb to a wave of fatigue I sorted out the paperwork that I needed to change the address for my insurance. That took about half an hour – 5 minutes to scan a copy of my bank account details, and the remaining 25 minutes to try to find where my scanner had put it on the laptop.

Next step was to contact my clothing suppliers to see if they still have my logo on their records. I need to order some new clothing as the stuff that I have here is looking rather tired.

Finally, I had a search of a couple of web sites to see about a lens for the Nikon D5000. But these web sites are just a mess. I want to find a Nikon AF-S lens – that’s the type that my big camera uses, but neither of the sites that I tried seems to be able to isolate that lens.

In the end I sent them mails to ask what I should be doing.

Having reached 103%of my daily effort I didn’t go for a walk, which was just as well as it started to rain. Instead I had a play on the guitar.

With no carrots, I ended up with baked potatoes, baked beans and the last of the sausages for tea. And strawberries for pudding too. LIDL had some more of the cheap ones in stock today.

The evening wasn’t as nice as it was yesterday which was a shame.

But the tide was high and so there was a lot of activity at the fishing wharf. And there were a couple of strange-shaped trawlers in there unloading.

Here’s one of them setting off back to sea. A long time since I’ve seen a trawler looking like that. Not much room for storage aboard it, so I wonder what they might be catching. And I bet they don’t go far to catch it either.

And not only that, La Grande Ancre was over there in the commercial docks.

She was in and out of here on a very regular basis earlier in the year but I’ve not seen her about for a while. Now she’s back, and she has a tractor strapped to her decks.

Another delivery to the Ile de Chausey I reckon. That was what she was doing here before anyway – running a shuttle to and from the island.

So back here and back into another argument on line. The Football Association of Wales announced a change to the rules in a press release dated 13th November 2017 and invited interested parties to submit their opinions.

In March this year, a definitive arrangement was announced.

And now many people are up in arms about it, saying that they knew nothing about it and objecting. I spent about an hour posting all of the stuff that I have, but no-one seemed to take the slightest notice of it.

I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that British people these days just don’t want to actually do anything – they just want to sit there and complain. THat’s an attitude that really annoys me and is one of the reasons why I emigrated. Many British people have problems. I don’t have problems – I have solutions.

And a big hats-off to Alison whose Belgian nationality papers came through today. So she’s been saved from the stuoidity of Brexit. Well done, Alison.

Tuesday 10th April 2018 – AND SO I WENT OUT …

… this afternoon into town, as I mentioned that I would.

And with the weather being so appalling (no surprise there) I was dressed up like Nanook of the North.

What then happened was completely predictable. The clouds dramatically raced away, we had a bright blue sky with this strange round, golden object in the sky and I melted. First time this year. I was so hot it was unbelievable.

But as I returned, the weather just as dramatically closed in again and we had a pile of rain. I tell you – this is really getting on my wick now. It’s beyond a joke.

Another night of not very much sleep, and I was on my travels yet again. I was driving down the hill (at the Clermont-Ferrand side) into St Eloy-les-Mines of all places in a car that was comparatively modern, and was joined by a pale blue early MkII Consul (the type with the small rear lights) in a rather tatty condition, and an ancient F-series Vauxhall Victor. Our descent took us into the suburbs of London (like you do) and the local MoT station where the three vehicles were examined. On enquiring of the tester, I was told that “they’ve all passed OK” – which totally surprised me. As he handed me the documents I asked him if there were any advisories. “No, none at all. They are all good” – and that I found even more surprising. But who am I to argue with an MoT examiner when he has just passed all of my cars?

We had breakfast and the usual relax afterwards and then SHOCK! HORROR! I vacuumed the floor of the apartment and cleaned the kitchen cupboard. Not that you’d notice, of course, but I do and that’s what’s important.

For lunch I finished off the soup with some more bits of baguette from the freezer and then headed into town.

My wanderings took me to the harbour to see what the crane was doing, but there was nothing particularly evident as to why it should still be there. And there was no-one around to ask either which was surprising.

I went round to the boulangerie where the good baguettes are sold and picked up one of the baguettes that keep for a couple of days. That’s for my butties on the road tomorrow of course. I’m heading back to Leuven aren’t I?

The post Office was next, to post a letter to the Tax Office and then round to the estate agent’s to pay them this famous €0:34 before I go away.

And here I tackled head-on a subject close to my heart. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the kitchen here is rubbish and I want to do something about improving it. So I asked the estate agents if the owner would consider making an investment into his property by making a contribution to the cost.

My demand wasn’t dismissed out of hand, which is one good thing. I need to make a report and to draw up a little plan about what I would like to do. This involves a trip to IKEA to price out a few things and I may well do that on Friday if I can – the one at Zaventam. I’m sure that there must be a bus from Leuven that goes that way. I shall have to make enquiries. I shall have to measure the kitchen area before I go out tomorrow.

This afternoon I was planning to wash the floor and then go for a walk while it dried but shame as it is to say it, I was stark out on the sofa. And you have no idea just how much this is depressing me.

Tea was a frozen curry out of the freezer and then I had my evening walk around the headland. Ready for bed now and I need a good sleep because I’m on the road tomorrow.

I wonder what Thursday at the hospital will bring for me.

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: post office

Monday 4th March 2019 – MY APPLE PIE …

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

Thursday 31st January 2019 – THE WEATHER …

Friday 25th January 2019 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

Thursday 17th January 2019 – WHAT DO I DO …

Thursday 10th January 2019 – IT’S BEEN A LITTLE …

Thursday 3rd January 2019 – EVEN THOUGH …

Wednesday 2nd January 2019 – IT DIDN’T …

Tuesday 20th November 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

Thursday 8th November 2018 – I’VE FINISHED …

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

Tuesday 19th June 2018 – THE ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

Thursday 31st May 2018 – I HATE PEOPLE …

Tuesday 10th April 2018 – AND SO I WENT OUT …

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

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