Tag Archives: anna eakin

Thursday 10th September 2020 – IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING …

… the things that I see when I’m out and about on my travels around the town.

And it’s not as if I have to go all that far from home to find it either. I hadn’t gone 20 yards otside my front door this morning before I was confronted by a set of traffic lights.

“Road works going on in the old Medieval walled city” I mused to myself. I shall have to go for a look round later on to see what is happening.

And sure enough, while I was on my travels later this evening, I did come across what was causing the issues.

The road has been dug up on the corner of the Place Cambernon and the Rue Notre Dame. And judging by the names written on the “no parking” signs, it seems to be the Water company whose turn it is right now to dig up the streets.

It’s Thursday night as well, and the Pizza van is there tonight. And with the tables of the bar La Rafale being out in the square and its reserve place prohibited by the road works, it’s had to perch itself precariously on the corner.

Talking of perching oneself precariously on the corner, when the third alarm went off this morning I was perched precariously on the corner of the bed with my feet on the floor.

Not exactly awake but it still counts as being up and out of bed.

What was surprising about this was I’d had such a bad night. At one stage I thought that I would never ever drop off to sleep. There isn’t really much point in going to bed early if you can’t sleep.

When I finally got off to sleep last night I met another strange girl. She was from Venn which wasn’t too far from Eching (which it isn’t, but let’s not go allowing facts to get in the way of a good nocturnal ramble). There was this weird girls’ school and they were teaching these children all this dance, everything like that and poetry recital, that kind of thing. They had a kind of dancing competition. I wanted to see them about something but it was “oh no we can’t interrupt these proceedings now. It’s far too important. You’ll have to come back later”. Off they all went and I went back. All of these girls were in school uniform, grey with grey hats, that kind of thing, a very posh private school, that type of place. They all had taken some strange kind of wooden furniture, shelf kind of thing with two sides like blackboards that you could write on them. They had all taken these with them but there was one left in the garden. I mentioned it to the headmistress. She said “you’ll have to take that. It looks like one of the girls has forgotten it”. “What do you mean ‘I have to take it’?”. She said “you have to take it”. I asked “what do I do with it?”. She replied “you have to learn the ritual and at the appointed time tonight you’ll have to perform the ritual”. I thought to myself “what the hell am I going to be involved in now?”. She insisted that it was terribly important that I did this, so I ended up taking it home with me and stuck it in a corner when I returned home. I had to be very careful about who came to my house. We were listing stuff to sell and I can’t remember who was helping me now, maybe my brother I dunno. We’d listed some stuff to sell and we’d sold it and now we were listing some free stuff. He was listing some stuff that I thought was much more important to sell – we could get a good price for this – but no, he insisted on it being free. There was one thing that he insisted that people make an appointment to come round to pick it up. I said “that’s crazy, tying me to the house and I don’t want to be tied to the house. I want to get rid of these things as and when!”. We had a dispute about that and in the end we agreed that people would just have to ring up and say when they were coming to pick it up, a kind of compromise. After we’d done that, I said “hang on – I have something else to show you”. There was a girl in my house at this time – it might have been Pollux but I’m not too sure about this. I went and brought down this furniture thing and assembled it. I asked this girl ” how’s your Latin?”. She said “I come from Venn, it’s Venn that I speak, that’s near Eching in Germany, like Germany and Austria”. I replied “you’ll get on really well with Hans”. “Yes” she said, “that’s right. From Eching”. I showed them this and explained about this ritual that I had to do. One thing that I had forgotten was that during this competition I had 16 dances to learn. There had been a musician playing all of the dances and for a minute I’d been round with him doing something, trying to work out what the music was for these dances. It was another hot and sweaty night when I awoke and it took me hours to go back off to sleep as well.
Somewhat later I was with a girl and my father was around somewhere. I’d had to go out in a car and there had been some kind of confusion over which one I was to drive. It was suggested that i would take my father’s Zephyr 6 – the MkIV, not the MkIII which was his famous one 3816 TD. I went to try to organise something about all of this and I ended up with a pocket of keys. I had to start swapping them over. Then I noticed – I had to get up from my table at this bar place – and on the way back I noticed this key on the floor. It was the one that I needed to start the car. I showed it to the girl I was with and said “phew! That’s lucky!”. She asked what it was so I told her that it was the key to the car. My father then went to move all of his cars away. he took his mkIII Zephyr and drive it home and came back with the MkIV. There was still a bit of confusion about how we were going to go somewhere. I had a pocket full of rubbish and wondered how I was going to fit this key in. Then I couldn’t find the key and it was hidden in all this rubbish in my pocket. There was the question again about what car I was going in and we agreed that it was my father’s. I asked “what’s going to be in it?”. They replied “just his coat and one or two other little things”. I wanted to ask my father a couple of questions about his cars. I remember the two Ford E83W vans that we had – KLG 93 and XVT 772 – and I’m sure that there was one before them that had become stuck in my head, a 1937 van, and I wanted to know what we had had before that, and what he would consider to be his typical car if someone had to connect him with one particular car, which one would it be? I thought that it was important that he would tell me because of course he wouldn’t last for ever and if I didn’t start asking these questions soon I would never know.

But I’m not too sure why it is that Pollux has suddenly started making a series of appearances in my nocturnal rambles. Where has Castor got to?

There was some stuff on the dicaphone from yesterday too, so I transcribed that and ADDED IT TO THE ENTRY FOR YESTERDAY.

As well as having a shower this morning, I also cut my hair. It’s been a while since I’ve cut it and it was becoming a little straggly.

And then I went out to the shops.

We’ve seen the traffic lights around the corner but that was far from being the only excitement. There’s a huge mobile crane down there in the Rue Lecampion lifting a load of something or other over the roofs of the houses into the rear behind the Rue des Corsaires.

That was well worth a photo of course, and when I’m down there I shall make further enquiries to see what they are up to.

And sure enough, when I was down there I could see that there’s quite a major operation going on.

It’s difficult to say what they are doing but there was this kind of glazed roof – at least, it would be glazed had there been any glass in it but I imagine there soon will be – that they are presumably going to lift up and over and onto whatever it is that they are doing.

My first stop today was the railway station.

My Old Fogey’s railcard expired a few weeks ago and with me planning to go to Belgium for my hospital appointment at Castle Anthrax, I need it updated.

That was dealt with without any particular problem and then I went off to LIDL. There was nothing much there that attracted my attention although with fruit being so cheap right now (especially grapes, of course) I ended up with a huge pile of fruit.

On the way back I went past the Square Potel.

There’s an archaeological dig going on around there right now and we’ve seen the digger in the grounds of the museum. Today though, they were digging a trench in the square and there was an archaeologist examining some artefacts.

Having watched them for a short while I came on home, where I … errr … crashed out on the chair until lunchtime. That’s enough to make me feel really miserable.

After lunch I spent a pleasant hour or so working on the photos from Brittany at the end of June when we went off on the Spirit of Conrad.

And the sailing – or, at least, nautical – theme continued while I was out on my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there enjoying the pleasant weather and looking out to sea as something rather large was moving about heading towards us. These days I can recognise the silhouette at quite some distance without needing to crop and enlarge it.

And it is as I expected. Joly France is on her way back with the afternoon ferry from the Ile de Chausey. She seems to be quite busy right now despite the end of the holiday season.

There were plenty of other boats out there too, as you could see in the previous photo.

There are several boats too much closer to home. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we seem to be in the middle of the rod-and-line fishing season. We have another small boat out there today with their rods out trying for a bite.

Here’s hoping that they will have more luck than anyone else who I have seen out there. Three and a half years have I been here and not a single bite have I seen

Anyway i pushed on along the path and round the headland to the path on the south side.

One of the things that I regret not doing while I’ve been living here is to make the most of the opportunities that the local sailing school can offer. I would have thought that with the season being over their activities would have ceased but there seems to be another class out there today.

Not having gone down there to make enquiries is an opportunity that I have let slip and I hope that I’ll have another opportunity to put that right.

When we saw the photo of Joly France just now, we saw another boat coming along behind it.

And as I carried on with my walk along the path this rather large pleasure boat came around the headland towards the port de plaisance and I reckon that this is the “other” boat from the previous photo.

Having a good look at this, it’s clear that there is plenty of money around here, what with one thing and another. Not around me though. It seems to have passed me by a long time ago.

Back here I did some Welsh revision and then had my hour on the guitars.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with rice, followed by apple pie. And then I went out for my evening walk.

There was a beautiful sunset tonight, although maybe I should say that the sun has long-since set. It was very reminiscent of some of the very late nights that I have seen in the High Arctic and makes me all nostalgic.

Before much longer, I’m going to have to make another return out there, even if it’s just to sit on the shore of the North West Passage and admire the sky.

My route carried on with a run down along the footpath, a walk around the corner to gather my breath and then another run across the Square Maurice Marland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a couple of years I had a regular encounter with an old black cat called Minette

Ever since the turn of the year I only recall meeting her once and the feeling seemed to be that she had gone off across the rainbow bridge. However, much to my delight, she was there again tonight sitting on her windowsill waiting for her stroke.

That cheered me up no end.

Nothing much else going on, apart from the roadworks that we have seen, so instead I came home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I have a full day at home in which I can catch up with some arrears. I also need to book my voyage to Leuven for my visit to Castle Anthrax and so that will be a priority too.

But sleep is the first thing to do. And who will come with me on a travel tonight?

Tuesday 1st September 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

… much better day today, which will surprise many people. In fact, even more surprisingly, it was such a better day that I even managed to fit in three runs this evening.

Short they may have been (although two of them were longer than when I first started running again a year ago) but runs nevertheless.

And you wouldn’t have bet on that yesterday, would you?

What was even more surprising is that I actually managed to beat the third alarm this morning. And it’s been such a long time since that has happened too.

Plenty of voyages during the night too. I started off the night walking the streets of Paris last night and I was interviewing someone about some kind of incident that had happened at a parking meter. It was a guy on a motorbike and sidecar and I took a statement or whatever and asked the guy to produce his driving licence for me. I had no doubt that he was an official kind of person and looked quite presentable and respectable. Nevertheless I asked for his papers and he replied “you aren’t in uniform” and opened up the throttle of his motorbike. I grabbed hold of him by the lapel and ended up overturning the motorbike and sidecar and dragging him off into the street. Then I got on the radio and asked for assistance.
Before that there had been some kind of archaeology dig. A group of us was taking part in it. Normally we were finding comparatively modern things but we suddenly came across a complete skeleton of a girl aged about 11 that had been buried in a bank. We’d excavated it and it was pretty much complete. Zero was there too. She was in a red jumper grey skirt and red tights. She was lying on the bed and we were talking about this skeleton, saying how it might have been her even and so on. All the time we were talking about this skeleton. They asked what i was going to do with it. I said that I would put it back where it came from first, back in this little place and then we’ll have a think about it.
There was another dream about a great big black bull and I was having to fit bolts into it for some reason or other. It was a huge hairy type of bull like a rastaman. I was talking to it about it being a rastaman and explaining what I was doing – the bull saying “ohh yes I like that – that’s very good”. I was tightening up the bolts with a huge spanner, not too tight though. I turned to the final bolt on the left-hand flank and it just upped and wandered off. I had to chase all the way after it. every time I got close to it it moved on again. By this time it had turned into a cat so I was just following this cat around through this crowded room. Eventually it went to settle down right in the very far corner the furthest possible point away from where I was.

That’s not everything either. There was a little bit of truncated, incoherent stuff from some voyage or other that never quite made it onto the dictaphone, and also another round of stuff that you wouldn’t thank me for posting while you are eating a meal or something.

After breakfast I did some paperwork and also SHOCK! HORROR! some tidying up. Mind you, it doesn’t look much like it right now.

However one thing that I did today was to finish as far as I can the radio project on which I’ve been working. The final track has been selected too and all that remains is to write out the closing speech, dictate and edit it and then combine it with what I’ve already done and with the final track.

In fact, I could have finished it today but Rosemary telephoned me for a chat and we were on the telephone for well over an hour.

This afternoon I went out for my usual walk in the sun (and wind).

And I hadn’t gone more than 10 yards out of the building before I was dive-bombed by a couple of bird-men of Alcatraz.

It’s another one of these tandem machines with two people in it. Ideal for doing some photography or even some bomb-aiming should the need ever arise.

It’s just as well that there was enough wind to get them off the ground.

For a change I went for my afternoon walk around the headland instead of around the walls, for reasons that I will explain in due course.

The view once more was tremendous and we could see for miles. Right in the centre of this photograph is the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel, that I could see quite clearly with the naked eye.

There’s a boat out to sea right on the right-hand edge of the photo and also a marker light off the coast clearly visible to the left. This might possibly be round about the Ile Agot or the Ebihens archipelago

There wasn’t very much out there in the way of marine traffic today.

Not many fishing boats at all out there, although there were several smaller boats out there. A couple of speedboats rather like this one here in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

It looks to me as if they might be stopping there to do some fishing or something like that. It’s that time of the year.

Indeed, it wasn’t just out at sea that there was fishing going on.

Here on the rocks there were several fishermen like these two casting their lines into the sea. I stood and watched them for quite a while but once more, I didn’t actually see anyone catch anything.

In fact in all the years that I’ve been watching fishermen on the rocks here in Granville, I have yet to see anyone catch any fish at all with a rod and line.

My walk carried on around the headland until I came to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

We still have the same seven boats in there that have been in there for the last few days. And because we are still in working hours, a few men are down there working on the various boats.

It’s keeping them very busy down there, whether it’s the employees of the shipbuilder, representatives of the owners or specialist tradesmen and it’s all good news for the town.

It wasn’t just out at sea and here on the rocks that there were plenty of people

While I was out there there was a lot going on in the air. We’ve seen the bird-men of Alcatraz a little earlier and right now while I was walking along the footpath I was buzzed by a light aeroplane flying overhead.

There seems to be plenty going on in the air right now, and a trip to the airport at Donville-les-Bains will have to be on the cards for me one of these days in the near future.

One thing about today is that the schools have started back.

You can tell that by the fact that we are back with the pathetic parking again – a car parked with two wheels on the pavement blocking it off for pedestrians when there is a perfectly good free car park just 50 yards away.

And look at the people congregating around the gate too. No sense of social distancing and not very many facemasks either.

It’s no wonder that the virus is currently running rampant around the country with all of this going on. I don’t know how people expect this virus to be over.

Back here I finished off my work and had tea. Another stuffed pepper with vegetables and rice, followed by rice pudding which was delicious

Then it was out for my evening walk tonight.

Feeling energetic I went around the walls and on the flat parts where there was no-one around, I broke into a run or two. It might not have been much but I went way beyond where I left off when I started running down there a year ago.

Round at the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset I had a look down at the Place Marechal Foch. There were quite a few people out for a walk round there, and it was nice to see the streetlights switched on too.

During the winter they had them switched off, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and it made photography something of a challenge. I hope that they keep them on this winter.

From there I had a second run along the
Square Maurice Marland and right up the ramp at the far end.

We’d seen the moon yesterday shining up above St Pair sur Mer but tonight as I watched, the moon slowly rose up above the cliffs and into view. It was really quite spectacular.

From there I had a wander home, breaking into another run for the last 50 yards or so.

back here I’ve written up my notes and now I’m off to bed, hoping to have another good night and hopefully another better day tomorrow – not that I have too much optimism about it.

But one thing that I know is that in approximately 5 hours time a year ago, my life changed dramatically thanks to one particular incident that happened at roughly that moment.

It was an incident that meant a great deal to me and which I won’t ever forget, regardless of anything else Even a year later, I still can’t get it all out of my mind.

Monday 31st August 2020 – MY BANANA BREAD …

… was something of a success today.

Not exactly perfection, because if the truth be told, it was rather on the dry side, but nevertheless it was delicious and I shall be looking forward to a slice every day with my afternoon drink.

In fact, I do recall purchasing bread like this when I lived in Belgium so from a commercial point of view, it’s quite passable and I shall be thinking of ways to improve it as a go on.

So while you admire the almost-full moon this evening, let me tell you that my day today wasn’t all that much of a success.

Far from it, in fact.

It all went wrong last night where for some reason I wasn’t in the least bit tired and ended up still being wide awake at 02:00. But it wasn’t wasted time because I was actually doing some productive work.

Consequently, no leaving my bed this morning until 08:30 was not the disaster that it otherwise might have been.

I was in Nantwich last night walking up Welsh Row and there was a little girl far too young to be a grammar school pupil but she was in the grammar school uniform all the same walking up there. So I had a chat to her about the school. She said that she didn’t like it all that much – she wanted to go to one in Kent. That’s all that I remember about that.

This morning I have spent preparing another radio programme. All of the first 10 tracks have been selected, paired and merged and the intro added to the first pair.

That took me up to lunch where I tried my new loaf of bread. And that’s pretty good as well and i’m quite pleased with that.

This afternoon I was about to start the text for the radio programmes but Ingrid rang me up. We were chatting on the phone for a couple of hours about all kinds of things

As a result my afternoon walk was somewhat later than usual.

There was plenty of activity out to sea today. This boat here out to sea caught my eye because I couldn’t make out what it was at first. It didn’t look like a fishing boat to me.

Back here at the apartment I had a closer look at it. Although it’s difficult to see, the colour scheme seems to suggest that it’s some kind of official boat – although the police and customs boats are usually grey and blue

Down on the beach though it was quite busy today.

Lots of people seem to be taking advantage of the final week of official holidays and a rare warm, comparatively wind-free day.

There were plenty of people in the water today too. And that was no surprise because just look at the colour of the sea. We’ve seen it this beautiful emerald-blue on a couple of occasions this year and it’s really enticing when it’s as beautiful as this.

My walk continued along the path underneath the walls of the rue du Nord and round to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

The tide seemed to be on its way out but what caught my eye here was the pile of seaweed on the beach. Usually it’s pretty clear of seaweed so I’ve no idea where all of this has come from today.

There were several bird-men of Alcatraz up in the air too although it wasn’t really as windy as it has been. Nevertheless they seem to be having plenty of fun out there this afternoon.

Round by the Square Maurice Marland there wasn’t very much at all going on so I pushed on to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw several pallets of granite on the quayside awaiting the arrival of one of the Jersey freighters. They are still there waiting, but they have now been joined by a pile of these big builders bags full of building materials.

Obviously the arrival of either Thora or Normandy Trader is quite imminent. And with none of the passenger ferries to Jersey operating, they may well be bringing in all kinds of exciting things and in the past we’ve even seen cars being winched out onto the quayside.

When I was out and about on my travels last week I noticed that in the rue des Juifs there were all kinds of warning notices advising of parking restrictions due to take place.

Today, I can see that all of the parking is now fenced off, and they had this skyjack machine roaming around in the streets.

When I go out to the shops on Thursday I’ll have a good look to see if I can see what they have been doing. It’s high time that they gave some of the walls a bit more attention rather like they did last year to the part a little higher up the street.

Something else that’s been on my mind has been the town’s museum, situated in the old gatehouse by the drawbridge.

That’s been closed “for renovation” since before I came to live here and it makes me wonder when they intend to reopen it, because there has been little sign of any kind of movement. Today though, a digger has appeared in the grounds and they seem to be digging a big hole.

It’s just going to delay the opening even more, I reckon. I don’t suppose that i’ll ever get to see what the museum is all about.

Round by the port, there was plenty of activity going on.

The fishing boat les Bouchots de Chausey had just come into port and was busy unloading piles of bouchots – the mussels that grow on strings – onto the tractor and trailer.

There were so many crates in the hold that they were using the quayside crane as well as the crane on the trailer. That looks as if it’s a really good catch and they can be well-pleased with that.

It’s nice to see something successful happening here, even if it is stuff that I don’t like.

From there I trudged my weary way back home again to check my photos.

The Birdmen of Alcatraz were still out there and as I reached my building a couple of them flew by overhead.

Back here I had my slice of banana bread and then sat down to work on the speech for my radio programme.

And shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep on my chair. Not just for 10 minutes either but for a couple of hours too. When I awoke I felt totally dreadful and it took me a good half-hour to pull myself together again.

It’s probably the worst that I have felt for quite some considerable time.

Tea was a burger on a bun with potatoes and vegetables followed by the last of the apple crumble.

There was no-one about at all when I went for my evening walk tonight.

The moon was beautiful tonight as you have probably already seen. it was quite low in the sky tonight and looked really impressive shining as it did over the water at St Pair sur Mer.

Back here I had a chat with Liz and then wrote up my notes for today. having done that, I’m now off to bed, and not before time because i’m pretty tired again right now.

It looks to me if i’m not going to shake off this ill-health for quite some time and that’s really depressing. And if countries continue to pull in their borders it may well be that i might not be able to reach Leuven for my medical appointment at Castle Anthrax on 7th October.

It’s already 9 months since I’ve had my four-weekly cancer treatment and I’m feeling the strain terribly.

It’s also exactly 12 months today since I had my “life-changing” evening – the first of three that I had in the High Arctic that really did change my life for ever.

Three nights that I wanted to go on for ever and at the time, it seemed as if they would too.

It’s quite nostalgic right now, and terribly, terribly sad that it all ended like it did. I don’t regret a thing for a single moment and I’ll never be the same after all of that. Despite the fact that the water has flown well underneath the bridge, I won’t forget it for ever.

Sunday 30th August 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

… bit of a bake-in today.

Apart from the rice pudding that you can’t see, and the vegan pizza that you can, you’ll also notice two loaves of bread.

The larger one is of course a standard loaf of bread with a generous helping of sunflower seeds. As for the smaller one, it was 200 grams of flour with a couple of generous handfuls of sultanas and an over-ripe banana mixed well in

At the moment I’ve no idea what it tastes like, but I shall find that out tomorrow. It goes without saying that I have high hopes for this, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating – quite literally in this respect

so while you admire the photos of Marité coming back to harbour, this morning was quite a strange morning. Even though there was no alarm, I awoke at 06:17. No chance of my getting out of bed at that time though. 10:00 is a much more likely time to heave myself out of bed on a Sunday.

And a big “hello” to Castor and Pollux who came to join me on a trip out last night. They had been off somewhere in some kind of themed concert, fancy dress type of thing. I had to go to pick them up afterwards. Pollux had a something, a kind of hood on with what looked like a knife blade sticking up out of the back. I can’t remember what Castor was wearing and imagine that! Me taking little notice of Castor’s apparel. it had been like a themed harem kind of thing. I picked them up and brought them back.
There was much more to it than this and when you’ve finished eating your meal I’ll tell you all of the gruesome details.

Before this there had been some kind of thing about trains where we had got to London and we were waiting at a station which was a combined tube and main line station in West London. There were tube trains stopping there and trains going to Birmingham as well. We were cornered by someone, me and this girl. Someone wanted something or other and he was a bit violent so when he started to throw his weight around I kicked him in the groin and he just keeled over onto the floor clutching his groin saying that he was going to get me, all this kind of thing. We just wandered off. His train came in and so he staggered onto it. About a minute later we ended up on a train as well. We were going round to Hanley – the Potteries on the train on one of the old loop lines. The ticket collector came along and asked for our tickets . I had about 100 tickets in my pockets that someone had given me from all various places. I had to search through them and in the end he said “this is a Birmingham train” so I found a ticket that had Birmingham on it. Even though it had been clipped once I gave it to him and he clipped it again and whoever I was with, she gave him the correct ticket. That would cause complications if we were controlled again because we were getting off this train somewhere and getting back on another one and with me having used any old ticket collected was going to be complicated for continuing our journey.
And this strikes me as having a familiar ring about it when once on a nocturnal ramble I was on a train in Crewe Station.

Somewhat later on I was living in a house a bit like Hankelow Hall with all of these rooms. I remember that it was August and I had the heating on because it was so cold. i was spending my time working between the computer in one room and the kitchen in another. Suddenly this house became occupied by students as well. I had my things all over the place so i had to start tidying up. There were tins of food absolutely everywhere – a mess and so on but little by little I was getting this place somehow tidied up. I had to say that my tenants were really good-natured about it because I wouldn’t have been this good-natured had it been someone else. I had a pile of money – copper coins and 10c pieces lying all over the place as well. This surprisingly wasn’t being moved by anyone. We were all in cooking a meal and I was getting all my stuff organised slowly to make some space for everyone else, putting my dirty clothes in for washing, that kind of thing, filling a bin with rubbish. The conversation came round to something that I had recorded as a demo for someone, a speech about someone’s broken arm. It turned out to be a very prescient comment according to these kids but when they played it back I couldn’t see how it related to anything but they seemed to think that it did

Pierre came round this morning to see if I’d received the presents from yesterday. I thanked him very much, and he told me that Catherine, the girl who had made them, would be coming off the Chausey boat later that afternoon at about 16:00.

That gave me just enough time to crack on with the bread making.

Down in the town I found out that the Chausey ferries would be coming in at about 17:00 so I had a little sit-down to relax for a short while.

Once I’d recovered my breath I went for a little walk along the harbour wall. However I didn’t go very far before my reverie was interrupted. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the autogyro that we’ve seen flying over us every now and then. And here it was again.

It’s another one of those objects in which I shall have to go for a fly around one of these days. It probably takes off from the airport at Donville les Bains so I’ll have to wander off over there.

The boat came in earlier than anticipated but I was there to meet it.

However I couldn’t see Catherine anywhere so in the end after a good look around I came home again. I’ll have to send her an e-mail to thank her but that’s not going to be easy to send her the bottle of wine.

Once all of the break was baked I made my pizza. It was another delicious one and so filling, I didn’t have any pudding. That will be for another day I reckon.

After tea I went out for my usual evening walk

The sun had long-since sunk below the horizon but there was a beautiful radiant red sky away out over the Ile de Chausey this evening.

There were a few people out there enjoying the evening view too, taking photographs and the like. It’s been a while since i’ve seen so many people out there and it’s no surprise that Covid infections are running so high at the moment with all of this.

Seeing the casual way in which people are wearing their masks, it’s hardly any surprise.

This was quite an interesting sight.

Even though it was fairly dark this evening there was still a clear view all the way down the Brittany coast. The lighthouse at Cap Fréhel, to the extreme right of the image is quite clearly visible even though it’s over 70kms away

It was also interesting to see the light out to sea too. It’s probably a trawler or some other fishing boat with its nets out having a go at making a catch.

So back here I wrote up my notes and that was that. i’m going to have an early night because there is plenty of work to do starting tomorrow – all of the usual stuff plus catching up on arrears and there’s also a new internet course starting

So here’s hoping for more pleasant dreams with charming companions.

Thursday 13th August 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it was today.

It all started off during the night, seeing as it was something of a turbulent sleep and so it’s hardly surprising that there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone.

There was some kind of big incident going on, a murder or something like that and everyone was having to be questioned. Castor and Pollux were there and it became a case about their grandparents. It was so that their grandparents whatever they must do they must not go on the next leg of this trip because the stress would do them a lot of harm. I had to remind people of what had been said about this and they had a look. Yes, they were going on the next leg of this trip. I was wondering how I could catch up with Castor and rekindle our friendship. So I really don’t know.

Later on there were half a dozen or so of us, one of whom was another girl whom I particularly fancied. She ended up playing golf with another guy, getting right down to the end. Totally ignoring me and the rest of our little group. You’ve no idea just how hard or difficult it was to be there last night watching her there with this other guy. I was really, really down on my luck as far as that was concerned. Whether or not she had any kind of feeling for him, all she was interested in was playing golf and they seemed to be really having a good time enjoying themselves. I awoke absolutely full of grief, would you believe and drenched in sweat. All kinds of emotions about this. It was really strange. I just felt so bitterly, bitterly disappointed.

Later yet we continued our tramp through this countryside towards the sea, a group of four or five of us. We met the girl again. She was being taught how to walk on high heels by a couple of people. She was totally ignoring us so we just carried on walking in this dry countryside towards the sea and we suddenly seemed to take a different way. Whoever was leading the party branched off down this dirt track instead of along the main road. It brought us out somewhere at a T junction. I asked “how long is it going to be before we get there” but no-one replied, basically as if no-one really knew but didn’t actually want to say so which was a bit strange seeing as we were being guided by some kind of fitbit or GPS or something like that.

There was much more to it than this but as you are probably eating your lunch or something like that, I’ll spare you the gory details. What was interesting was that a couple of times, after awakening, I went straight back into a nocturnal voyage exactly where I had left it. And that’s happening more and more frequently these days.

But at least it was a very welcome return for Castor who put in an appearance, although it wasn’t under any sort of circumstances that I would have welcomed.

The upshot of all of this was that I was awake long before the alarm went off and so I had plenty of time to catch up with some paperwork before Hans surfaced.

After a coffee, we went out to breakfast at the cafe across the road and then we went to REWE so that he could do his shopping. And I was impressed by the amount of vegan products – even vegan cheese – available in there now.

Having packed Caliburn I headed off into the sunset – definitely going west.

And all the way this afternoon we had one hiccup after another. Roadworks, diversions – you name it we had it.

The road out of Stuttgart was gridlocked and it took hours to clear, only for us then to run into a serious accident in the Schwieberdingerstrasse Enzweihingen.

And I’ve really no idea what was going on here. We had a motorhome that had ground to a halt in the middle of the traffic lights and a lorry on the other side of the road parked blocking the traffic looking as if it’s had bits knocked off it.

There were crowds of peopel around watching the events and a couple of policemen taking details but no one, and I do mean no one at all, controlling the traffic and it was all total mayhem. We were sitting in this queue for ages trying to make some kind of headway.

As we approached the junction, inching bit by bit over a period of about an hour we could see that there was another actor in our drama.

If you look closely to the right, you’ll see that there’s a car in the hedge too and it’s difficult to see how it’s come to be there in that position.

Eventually, after a great deal of trouble fighting our way through the chaos we managed to reach the open road. And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, round by Donauworth the heavens opened and we had one of the most astonishing rainstorms that I have ever seen. The temperature plummeted by 13°C in a matter of a couple of minutes and the rain continued for a good few hours.

What made my bad day worse was that I didn’t realise that there are two towns with the same name in Germany and of course I had booked a hotel there. Consequently, when I arrived in the town after a drive off my route of 60 kms, I couldn’t find the hotel. As a result I had to drive 80kms in the other direction past where I started to find the correct Malsch.

By now it was 20:30 and there was no restaurant open anywhere (it was too late to start up the slow cooker) so that was that.

The hotel is a little dated but then again so is the price so I’m not complaining. I’m hoping to have a decent night’s sleep as I want to have a good day on the road tomorrow.

Wednesday 12th August 2020 – ANOTHER SWELTERING DAY …

… in the middle of this heatwave in Southern Germany. And I have surrendered to it all by buying a desktop fan to go with the USB fan that I bought for Caliburn yesterday (did I mention that?).

This morning, it was again 28°C early on and the news that there had been a cloudburst and that my home town back in the UK was 12 inches under water and they were all complaining now about too much rain didn’t really abate my humour all that much.

But anyway, I digress.

This morning I was awake quite early yet again and spent some time bringing the paperwork up to date and listening to the dictaphone.

Back in England everyone was worried that the amount of viruses was rising and yet people still weren’t taking things seriously, still not taking their masks seriously. We were walking between a couple of towns on a nice shady road near a river. We could see people disobeying the mask instructions all that kind of thing. We were convinced that they won’t last very long at all if they kep on going like this. There was a lot more to it than this but I don’t remember it now.

Later, it was time to disembark from the ship which was in fact an aeroplane so we all have to get ourselves ready and we all walked off down the gangplank a few of us together laughing and joking a little bit. One of the guys with whom I worked at the EU, he was coming on behind us and about to get into this queue with us. A couple of us said “we really don’t want to be in the queue with him”. Castor and Pollux were there too, and it’s nice to see them back with me again on my travels. They had changed into some nice clothes – I remember Pollux in a nice little top and a dark blue skirt. They just walked through Customs and walked away and didn’t look back, which left me feeling extremely disappointed.

When Hans came in we had a coffee and a good chat and organised a pile of stuff that needed organising.

Going to the bank to pay in his shop takings was next and then we went for breakfast at the bakery across the road. it was crowded with people and we had to sit inside for a change.

Gathering up the camera (but forgetting a bottle of water) we walked off out of town towards Garching in the sweltering heat.

A couple of kilometres outside the town on the left-hand side across the motorway is a nature reserve, the Echinger Lohe. It’s actually a piece of primeval woodland that was set aside in 1978 totally unmanaged as a natural forest reserve – some kind of experiment to see how a natural wood would have behaved before human intervention.

And what with all of the urban expansion in the vicinity of Munich that’s a feat in itself

Scrambling through the wire fence via a suitable opening we went inside.

It’s totally fascinating to see how it’s turned out. Nature is certainly doing a fine job here in this magnificent example of a climax forest. And all of the rotting tree trunks and branches that are passing through the “interesting shape” stage and disintegrating into powder and slowly regenerating the soil.

This is just as nature would have done several thousand years ago. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

We pushed our way deeper into the forest. It seemed to be the sensible thing to do in view of the heat.

One thing that impressed me about the place was how silent everywhere was. It was very broody and mysterious in there. Had a pile of Hurons leapt out from behind the trees, bow in hand, to overwhelm us I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised.

And although we didn’t see any large mammals, there is PLENTY OF EVIDENCE OF THEIR PRESENCE.

When I say that the forest is totally unmanaged, that’s not to say that there hasn’t been any human intervention.

These stranee, crude constructions are apparently hides for cameras. Some University or something is carrying out some kind of survey on activity that takes place in the forest.

Of course they aren’t going to park themselves up in full view of the wildlife, but all the same I can’t say that I’m very impressed with disturbing nature like this. Surely they couls have brought in some artificial hides that would have done the trick and which they could have taken away later on, leaving very little trace.

There is plenty to see in this particular corner of Eching and so we left the cover and shade of the forest to go to see it.

One of the things to see, which might not appeal to everyone, is what is going on in the air. We are right in the flight path for the descent to Munich Airport which is about 5 or so miles and even with the grounding of many flights due to the effects of the pandemic, there is still the odd one passing overhead.

At first I didn’t recognise the livery of this plane, but having photographed and enlarged it, I can see that it’s one of the planes that fly for the big holiday company TUI.

Out here beyond the forest there’s a huge natural, unspoilt heathland, the Garchinger Heide too.

It’s a haven of wildlife that you wouldn’t usually find so close to a major city and large transportation hub. The wooden thing that you can see that looks like the handle of a spade is actually a perch for the various birds of prey and the like that are around here.

218 different varieties of natural plants have been recorded here, of which about 50 are on Germany’s “red list” of plants subject to Conservation rules, type that would be difficult to find anywhere. This is good news because the flowers attract butterflies, of which a couple of visitors are quite rare types, and also bees.

And we are very lucky to have it too because in the late 19th Century during the grand expansion of Germany’s economy there were proposals to transform the heath into farmland.

However due to the energetic efforts of Franz Vollmann, the “Saviour of the Garchinger Heide“, 23 hectares of unspoilt land were bought by the Bavarian Botanical Society between 1907 and 1904 and in 1942 it became an official nature reserve. A monument was erected on the site in honour of Vollman.

Unfortunately much of the heath was badly damaged in early 1945 when prisoners from the Dachau Concentration were instructed to turn it into an emergency airstrip. Some work was begun and you can still see some of the damage that they did.

Eching is apparently an ancient Celtic town and there’s what is, I suppose, a Celtic cemetery here – a part of the heathland where there were plenty of small barrows. We went over there to have a look at them

Some other work that was undertaken here was the excavation of the barrows, so I was told, apparently in the search for various artefacts and grave goods. The excavations were carried out all that well and now there isn’t very much left now, but the outlines of the barrows are still visible.

There are several pools here that were formerly the site of gravel extraction and now abandoned to nature and the surroundings overgrown by vegetation.

Our route to the cemetery took us past a small one that was very quiet and secluded, and here we surprised a bunch of nudists. However I do have to say that if I had a body like any of those, I wouldn’t be exhibiting it anywhere in public like they were.

On our way back home we stopped for a drink at the football ground, and then we picked up Caliburn and went to track down a battery for Hans’s jeep. No-one had one in stock so we ended up having to order one.

But at one place that we visited I bought my desktop fan. this heat really is killing me right now.

While we were in the van we decided to push on for an afternoon out in the nearby town of Freising, the region’s capital.

We found a car park just outside the city centre and Hans led me through a maze of alleyways and narrow streets. This one is called the Mittlerergraben and it’s a typical example of the little streets around the northern part of the town.

In fact, much of Germany looks like this, and while some property is quite clearly modern, it’s very difficult to tell with others which is contemporary and which is new to replace war-damaged property.

, so we went for a walk around while Hans pointed out a few of the local sights. The cathedral was up the top of a huge set of steps so in this heat we ruled that out. We went for a cold drink instead.

From where I was standing to take the previous photo there’s a little Gasse, an alley that leads down into the main shopping street. These alleys are another feature of medieval German cities – in fact most medieval cities. As you know, Granville, where I live is littered with them.

In the background are the towers of the cathedral and to the left just down there is the Bayerische Hof, an upmarket hotel that has rooms at prices that the likes of you and I can only dream about.

That column is actually at the entrance to the hotel car park and I bet that more than just a couple of people have had fun trying to put their car into there.

We walked down the alleyway into the main shopping street and the first thing that I did was to disappear up another Gasse

The town is littered with these little alleys and this one is certainly one of the prettiest. It’s called the Hummelgasse and leads on down to the river at the bottom of the hill.

We weren’t going that way though. We were heading down the main street and so I had to come back. But not before I became all nostagic about the yellow walls on this house here. It reminds me too much of MY HOME BACK IN THE AUVERGNE.

So back in the centre of Freising, in the Unterer Hauptstrasse.

It’s not very often that a town site changes position throughout history so it’s very likely that where we are walking now is the same street that people were walking down 1500 or so years ago. The first recorded mention of the village of Freising was as long ago as 555AD – it was certainly in existence before that date

And it may well be even much older than that because it’s known that there was a Roman Road in the immediate vicinity along the banks of the River Isar and this would have been a likely situation for some kind of regional settlement.

You can see what I mean from this photo just here taken in the Heilinggeiststrasse – The Street of the Holy Ghost.

Where that tower is in the background is on an eminence overlooking the river and that would be the ideal situation for some kind of fortified site keeping an eye on the traffic passing up and down the river valley either by the road or the river.

The building on the left is the Church of the Holy Ghost with its associated Hospital complex. The hospital dates back to 1374 when a local dignitary left in his Will his entire estate to the benefit of building some accommodation for the poor, the sick and the needy.

We eschewed the possibility of climbing up to the cathedral and the other official buildings on the eminence. I’m not too good, hans has a bad leg and it was far too hot for a scramble.

Instead we threaded our way through the maze of back streets into the Fischergasse. There’s a little stream here that runs eventually into the Isar. The stream has been canalised and the banks reinforced and it makes quite a pleasant walkway back to town.

There was a café down here too and so we took the opportunity to sit down and have a nice cold drink. We needed it in this weather.

Heading back into the centre of town we came across some road works that caught our eye.

According to Hans, there’s “District Heating” in the town – a communal heating system of hot water that’s pumped around the town. it looks as if the system is receiving some attention. Here are some of the water pipes, covered in insulation.

It’s interesting to speculate as to why they have put that big U-bend in the pipework I can’t see any logical explanation for that

One thing about these early medieval cities is that it doesn’t matter how old a building is, it’s likely that the underground works are even older.

Consequently, when I saw some renovation being undertaken in the groundwork of a building in the main street I dived in there with the camera. Unfortunately this cellar is the exception that proves the rule. It’s nothing like as old as I was expecting.

We walked on through the town for a while and Hans showed me a bar that he had at one stage been thinking about taking on, but city parking regulations scuppered that.

And so we walked back to the car park and Caliburn

Out on the edge of the town is the site of a factory, the Schluter Tractor Company, where they made tractors until 1993.

The factory has now been transformed into a shopping centre where there is a display of photos of all of the products that the company manufactured. We went for a look around to see them, and discovered that there was even a restored tractor on display here as a centre-piece.

While we were here we went for a look around at the rest of the shops on the factory site but there was nothing of any interest so we went back to Caliburn and made our way back to Eching.

Back here, we parked up Caliburn and walked back to the football club where I had a delicious Thai curry with rice. And then back to the Bier Keller for a drink and a chat and to listen to some music.

Now I have my fan, and I feel so much better. I’m not going to say that it’s nice and cool of course, but it’s a lot better than it has been and i’m hoping for a comfortable sleep tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be hitting the road.

Thursday 6th August 2020 – I TOOK IT …

… easy today. I didn’t leave my room until midday, despite the chambermaid’s insistence.

Last night I was in bed fairly early but it was a restless night and I didn’t really have a deep sleep. And despite the three alarms going off on time, I didn’t leave my bed until about 08:00.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too. For part of the night I was at work and just across from there was a school. It got to the type where I was well over 65 and thought that I was going to retire. After all, I should after all that time. I was really worried because Castor was there (I wondered when she would put in an appearance) and how was she going to cope without seeing me there but how was I going to cope without seeing her and I was trying to sleep for 10 minutes thinking about that.

Later on we were prisoners of war and were all in a hut. The drain had blocked and there was a really foul smell coming from the middle. We all had to go back in but somehow keep clear of this central drain that was overflowing and smelling. Someone else had taken hold of my seat and wouldn’t move. That became an extremely complicated situation. There was a situation in Ireland where they weren’t used to handling prisoners and there for example you couls see where the hut had actually been on the ground because the ground was marked. There was like a string vest type of thing – I’ve no idea what it was about – but it had a huge wine stain in it from where some wine had been spilt by the prisoners.

Even later I was a passenger in a bus last night and we were driving somewhere. It was from Bluestones traffic lights towards Nantwich down the old by-pass. From the traffic lights a boy of about 10 or 11 on a pushbike tried to race us away. We soon overtook hime but going over the canal bridge something happened and we had to stop. There were two or three lorries behind us. They had to swerve out into the middle of the road to try to pass us and almost collided with vehicles coming the other way. It was all very dangerous, that sort of thing as they were out there in the middle of the road trying to go past us just over this blind hill. Eventually we got under way again and set off. There was loads of traffic coming the other way and I’m not surprised with it being so busy that it had been so dangerous like that.

There was also something else that stuck in my mind – a breakdown of the lorry of one of the contractors at my father’s old factory – one of the old 8-wheeler S36 Fodens.

But there was a lot more too but seeing as you are probably eating your meal right now I’ll spare you the gory details.

Having finally awoken, I headed off unsteadily to breakfast. You’ve no idea just how much that walk yesterday took out of me. I wasn’t all that hungry so I didn’t have much and I was soon back in my room.

Much of the time was spent sorting out my things and tidying up my affairs, as well as having a little relax. The chambermaid was quite insistent so I let her in to empty the bins and do a few little things.

Round about midday I reckoned that despite everything I ought to make a move and head into town. And even though most of the way was downhill I still regretted having set out because I wasn’t feeling at all like it.

When I arrived in town I took a different route into the centre – down the footpath, the Goethova Stezka, on the left-hand side of the river.

My Czech isn’t up to very much at all so i’m not able to tell you too much about what is happening down here but it seels that the walk is lined by plaques carrying quotes of various famous authors and philosophers and the like who may have visited the town.

The reference to the Arhimandrit Mitrofor may refer to a senior religious official of the Eastern Orthodox Church who has earned respect or performed service for which the Church is grateful. There is a Monastery in the town of Sinaia but it’s led by aHegumen, a Grade or two below that of Arhimandrit.

Jungmann could be anyone really, but is more than likely to refer to Josef Jungmann, the man considered to be responsible for the revival of the modern Czech language, although he was long-dead by 1895.

When I came into town yesterday I’d taken a photo of this building but it wasn’t much good so one of the reasons that I came down this way was to take a photo from a better perspective.

As I said yesterday, it’s the Kaiserbad Spa built in the late 19th Century on the site of a brewery to cater for the increasing flow of people who “came to take the waters”.

But its glorious heyday is long passed. Closed in 1994 it was allowed to become derelict but was ceded to the city in 2008 sice when it’s ben undergoing a programme of major restoration. And not before time, I have to say

Having passed everywhere that I photographed yesterday, I headed straight for the more modern part of town.

This took me along the banks of the River Tepla and by the delightful Zahradni Terrace. This was really the elite end of town for most of the visitors who came here back at the end of the 19th Century and even today there are plenty of hotels and upmarket shops here.

As we’ve said quite often as we’ve admired buildings here, it goes to show just how glorious this city must have been at the end of the 19th Century

In the town centre my Czech pronunciation brought out a few smiles and laughs as I tried to order some chips for lunch. And I did have another Italian chat with the guy with the Italian food stall in the centre. But actually I didn’t do much. I just had a little walk around and then spent a lot of time sitting around in the sun.

It made me wish that I’d brought a book with me to pass the time, although at one stage I did manage to have a little doze.

This is one building that didn’t impress me very much. I mean – for a modern concrete Brutalist building I suppose that it’s quite attractive but it’s totally out of place here.

It’s the Thermal Velky Sal (“Great Hall”) Conference Centre and Spa Hotel, designed by architects Vera and Vladimír Machonin. Construction began in 1968 and took 9 years, basically because they had difficulty with the infiltration of groundwater into the foundations and basement area which led to the cash running out and a need to refinance the project.

The sad thing about this though is that in order to build the place, they had to demolish about 30 houses, mostly from the 19th Century, and so imagine how this place would have looked back then prior to the demolition

After my good rest I set off back for home. It took quite a while too a I didn’t push on too much. Just a little 30-minutes of walk followed by a 15-minute rest. And at one of my stops I actually found someone selling vegan strawberry sorbet. It wasn’t cheap but it really was delicious and I enjoyed it.

There’s a petrol station at the roadside halfway home from the town centre, and as I walked byn this little car pulled in to fuel up.

Not seeing a badge on it, I couldn’t see what kind of car it was and of course my Czech isn’t good enough to ask. But the “MC” that I noticed on the back might seem to suggest that it’s a Microcar MC from France, so it’s a long way from home over here.

Back here at my hotel I had a look at how far I’d gone today. And what a disappointment it was. I’ve only done a mere 169% of my daily activity today – almost 14kms.

Finally making it up to my room, I lay on the bed and crashed out until 19:00. Out like a light and that was no surprise. I had a shower but had a little “incident” with the washing. I took down the nice clean and dry undies that I’d washed yesterday – and washed them again. I’m not doing too well am I?

Too late to make any tea, I decided to pass on that and make up for it with a good breakfast in the morning. I’m hitting the road tomorrow so I need to be on form. That means a nice early night and hopefully a decent sleep.

But we’ll see all about that in the morning.

Monday 27th July 2020 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… horrible day today. At one point during mid-afternoon the temperature inside the cab of Caliburn was 42°C and I had to stop and get out of the cab.

Luckily I was able to find a nice place to do so. To my surprise I found a parking place in the street in the centre of Vichy down by the River Allier so I could park up and go for a walk to cool off a little.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

This morning I was awake and about of bed before the first alarm, something that is always a healthy ambition as far as I am concerned. Plenty of time to attack the notes on the dictaphone because by the sound of things I’d trvalled for miles during the night.

I’d been with Ingrid on board a ship obviously going somewhere and it’s quite clear that we are a couple. We were watching a few other things happening. A notice that we saw said something like “COVID 19 flights to Egyot suspended at the end of April”. As we were roaming about at the end of the stairwell which was cut into the rock evidently we came across another couple and we chatted to them. We ended up down in the basement of the ship trying to find out which were the doors to our particular deck but we were fooling around and quite clearly a couple, the two of us.

Later on we ended up back at my house but my house had been sold, although my possessions were still there. As we walked in through the door there were all these cats there. 3 small cats in waste paper bins and so on. I said “this is typical. Look at these cats. My cats are still in possession and they have sorted the other ones out”. We walked around the kitchen but heard a noise from the living room. I said “hello, anyone there?”. Eventually a Dutch guy came out, youngish, very tall. he came round and shook my hand, said “welcome back from your holidays” and had a really good chat to me, most of which wa in Dutch which I didn’t quite understand. I was with Rosemary and Lieneke. Of course Lieneke was very much in demand for this conversation too.

By now we were all on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR but it was a coach. it was time for us to get off so I walked down to the front of the coach saying goodbye to everyone. Castor and Pollux were there so I said goodbye to Pollux but Castor, I smiled at her, put my head very close to her and said “thanks for everything”. She looked extremely uncomfortable when I said that. That was when I walked down the coach and got off. This was somewhere about Scholar Green and we were looking at a map to work out our way across to Alsager, that way. It was a bit difficult to work out exactly where we were because there were two roads, both of which went across and we could have been stuck by either of them. We were certainly out beyond the confines of Stoke on Trent in that particular area. But it was the look on Castor’s face that got me – a look of real fear. That was what awoke me.

Rosemary had brought me a cup of tea at about 07:30 and by 08:30 we were having breakfast. Afterwards, I packed and loaded up Caliburn, even rescuing my pushbike from Rosemary’s barn where it had been hiding for the last 6 or 7 years or so.

Before I left I fixed Rosemary’s settee and also finished off connecting up her television to her livebox – a task that involved telephoning the helpline.

Off on the road I went, as far as Clermont Ferrand. First stop was the Auchan where I encountered a most unhelpful Secury Guard, bought some more supplies and then I fuelled up Caliburn ready for the long haul east.

Second stop was at IKEA where I bought the rest of the storage jars that I needed, as well as a few other bits and pieces. But I didn’t buy a temporary mattress for Caliburn due to the absurd price that they wanted for one – €79:00 for a folding foam-rubber chair that opens out.

Ad as for the food, that was a major disappointment. I ended up with just a plate of chips and a lump of bread. No salad or anything.

The heat was stifiling when I went outside and it was really uncomfortable and the drive wasn’t very comfortable. Leaving Clermont Ferrand, I went north-east through the countryside and arrived at Vichy

But here I had to stop. It was impossible to go any further in this weather. I was melting.

There was a parking place at the side of the road near Parc Kennedy so this was where I stopped. It was a pleasant if not sweltering walk down to the banks of the river but once I was in the shade it was very nice indeed. I was quite envious of the people who were out there on their little home-made rafts going up and down the river.

Being a Pisces I would quite happily have been out there with them.

There’s a beach there too, the Plage des Celestins, and that was quite a popular place, as you can see in the photograph here.

There’s an ice cream stall, a place to hire deckchairs and also a place where you can hire little boats and so on. And then the row of yellow buoys out there mark the limits to which people can swim in the river. You can see that the boats going out into the river from the slipway at the far end of the swimming area.

A really nice walk along the river in the shade for half an hour cooled me down and I resisted the temptation to see if they had any vegan ice cream on sale. I didn’t fancy standing in the queue.

At the end of the Parc Kennedy there’s a bridge across the River Allier.

It’s know, locally as the Pont de Bellerive because it connects Vichy to the town of Bellerive sur Allier on the other side of the river, but as the legendary French politician Aristide Briand had died just a couple of months before its official opening, it was named the Pont Aristide Briand in his honour.

Until the eary 1960s it was the only bridge across the Allier at Vichy but it’s by no means the first bridge. There was even a bridge across the river here recorded by Julius Caesar in 54BC although it might have been built by his soldiers on their way to the Battle of Gergovie.

There have been several subsequent bridges here and this one dates from 1932.

having cooled down a little I headed off eastwards through the mountains towards the Rhone valley, but I didn’t get very far. Tonight I’m in a modern unit hotel in Paray-le-Monial. Because of the heat I had the air conditioning on full blast for an hour and then a shower and a clothes wash.

Tomorrow I’m not going far but I’m still having an early night. I’ve already crashed out once this evening and I’ll be gone again if I don’t get a move on.

Saturday 27th June 2020 – MY APPLE PIE …

… passed a very important test today.

And while you admire the photos of a bunch of baby seagulls – the first one being the seagull chick that we’ve been following – I shall tell you all about it.

But we’ll start off by mentioning the fact that this morning I beat the third alarm, just for a change, and was actually half-dressed when it went off. I could do with a few more like that too.

There was a downside to waking up completely at the sound of the first alarm though.

After the medication I went to listen to the dictaphone but it didn’t help much. Last night I can’t remember at all anything about what I was doing but it was an enormous mega-ramble that I was on, something to do with the seaside and the moment that I awoke when the alarm went off, it wiped everything out of my head completely.

And how disappointing was that? As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a far more exciting time when I’m on my travels during the night than ever I do when I’m awake.

First thing to do this morning was to tidy up the place a little – and that included steam-cleaning the kitchen.

That’s the one thing about having people coming round to the apartment visiting – it motivates me to get the place looking as if someone actually lives here.

Following that, I could go and have a good shower and a general clean up. And a weigh-in too. And that weight that I put on at the last weigh-in now seems to gone off again.

Either that or my bathroom scales are about as reliable as the blood testing machine at Castle Anthrax.

Following that I made a flying visit to the shops.

First port of call was NOZ where I spent the grand total of €3:19. Two cartons of coconut milk for drinking, another packet of these breaded soya steaks and I can’t remember what the fourth thing was now. But it can’t have been that important.

LeClerc wasn’t that much better either. If I hadn’t bought a net of juice oranges and another batch of falafel (I was looking in the wrong place last week) the expenditure there would have been the same as well.

After the visit to the shops I called in at Happy Cash – the second-hand shop on the edge of town.

That wasn’t a very profitable visit because they didn’t have in stock what I wanted so instead I fought my way back home through the traffic.

A final bit of tidying up and then my visitors arrived – bang on time. One of my colleagues from the radio and his wife were in town and they came round for a chat and a cup of tea.

While they were here I gave them a slice of my apple pie and it definitely met with great approval, which pleased me no end, I have to say.

After they left, I sat down to make a start on the photos from July 2019 but shame as it is to say it, I crashed out on the chair.

Crashed out good and proper too for probably about an hour or so. It was 13:40 when I finally pulled myself together – and that was a waste of a morning yet again.

Surprisingly, when I listened to the dictaphone the following morning, there was a recording on it timed at about 12:30 today. I must have gone off on a voyage while I was asleep.

I was on holiday and in a hotel in one of the rooms looking out of the window over the street. There were people in the street and I was listening to Runrig on the radio. At the end of the concert I went to switch it off with the remote control but it wouldn’t actually switch off. I had to physically walk over to the radio and switch it off. That reminded me that something else had happened about this before and I’d been in the same position. It was getting close to meal time and at meal time I was going to go down with my friend. I’m not sure who my friend was – it might have been Rosemary. Then I realised that half of my party were leaving and they would be boarding a plane later on in the evening. I wanted to go to see them off because someone very well-known to regular readers of this rubbish was going back home with this group of the party and I wanted to say goodbye to her. However we weren’t particularly speaking at that particular moment but even so I couldn’t bear the thought of her going away without me saying goodbye to her. So then I realised that not everyone would be going to the airport – only a few people – those who were leaving would be going. I wondered if I could think of an excuse to go down with them but then I didn’t know any of the others well enough to be able to tag along with them to say goodbye. The thing I wanted most in the world was for her to turn round and wave at me and say goodbye even if she didn’t want to speak to me.

And doesn’t that sound familiar to the regular readers of this rubbish? A certain series of events are still playing on my mind after all this time and it doesn’t look as if I’ll ever shake them off.

It had been pouring down with rain during part of the morning and it still looked wet and miserable outside so I had lunch indoors today.

Afterwards I had a good look at the hard drives on this computer. Believe it or not, I’m running out of space already and that’s not very good at all. There is going to have to be some serious shuffling around of stuff to make more room, and I’ve made a start on that already.

But interestingly, I came a cross a directory that had been misfiled probably back in 2007 or something like that and there was a whole raft of photos in there – a couple of thousand in fact, that I knew I had somewhere.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a good couple of years ago I spent a whole week trying to hunt down a particular photo and I could never find it.

Well, after this afternoon’s exertions I now know where it is – and where a whole load of others are too, and I delighted a few friends on my social networking account by posting a couple of them on there too.

After all of that, that was the cue to go for a walk. It was pretty windy outside and cloudy too but at least the rain had stopped.

For a change, I decided to go for a walk around the walls this afternoon.

But I didn’t go far before I came to a halt again. “No Waiting” signs in the car park at the head of the rue du Nord so I went to look at the statutory notice to see what was going to be happening.

It looks like our little corner of the town is going to become famous because they say that they are going to be making a film here in a week or so’s time. That should be interesting.

A few minutes agi I said that the rain had stopped, but that it was still windy and cloudy.

It wasn’t the weather that I would have chosen to have gone into the water, but these people seem to be having a load of fun splashing about in the sea this afternoon.

And they weren’t alone either. I counted probably about a dozen other people havign a good swim around out there this afternoon. made of hardy stuff, these Normans. But then they are all mostly descended from Vikings so anything is possible.

And that may well be true for some, but not for others.

All the money that the commune has (quite rightly, in my opinion) spent in revitalising the tidal swimming pool and here we are, the last weekend in June already, and there’s only one person looking as if he’s anything like in it.

It’s so quiet down there on the beach that the three lifeguards are having a Union meeting and paying no attention whatever to whatever is going on behind the.

Missing out on the roofing job in the Place Marechal Foch, I walked on round to the Square Maurice Marland to check on my seagull.

The baby that we have been following doesn’t seem to be very lively, but I spent a good 20 minutes watching the antics of these triplets wandering around on the roof flexing their wings. They seem to be getting ready to take to the air pretty soon.

Interesting though it was, things really started to liven up when mummy flew back to the roof. The three youngsters seemed to know instinctively what was going to happen next as they all swarmed around her squawking.

And sure enough, mummy duly obliged.

She promptly vomited up a huge pile of half-digested seafood and the three little ones tucked in eagerly and greedily to their afternoon snack.

Mummy then took to the air and flew back down to the shore – presumably to go and find dessert to bring back for them. I must admit that I’m no bird-watcher (well, not THAT kind of bird anyway) but I’m fascinated by these seagulls and how their instincts drive them on to know what to do

Where this family of seagulls is situated is not very far at all from the steps in the Rue Lecampion where they have been doing all of the work. That was obviously going to be the next place to visit seeing as I was in the vicinity.

And they seem to be making quite good progress right now and I imagine that it will be finished pretty soon. Most of the trench has been backfilled and the cobbles in the lower part have now been tamped firmly home.

Another week or so and they may well be packed up and gone.

Well, theoretically speaking, that is.

They won’t be able to move the digger for a while because someone else has taken possession. Sitting there on one of the tracks acting as if he owned the digger, which he probably did by now.

He was quite a friendly little cat and I spent a good five minutes giving him a good stroke. Stroking a cat is very good for the stress, so they say. When Nerina and I were together we had four cats so Heaven alone knows what I would have been like without any at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they have spent the last couple of weeks repointing and cleaning up the wall that they repaired in a hurry last year.

We saw a photo of them working on it during the week, but now they seem to have cleared off. Their van is gone too so that must mean that they have now finished.

And it’s quite a reasonable job that they have made of it too. What I’m hoping for now is that they will show the same zeal and vigour around the rest of the walls that seem to be crumbling away faster than they can repair them.

There has been a lot of talk in the British media about the litter louts in the UK who have been leaving mounds of rubbish all over all kinds of various tourist areas just recently.

In France too, we have our own problems with litter louts leaving their garbage all over the place. But you have to admit that our litter louts are ina completely different league than the UK.

Where else in the world would you find discarded champagne bottles lying around?

My hour on the guitar was spent playing the acoustic guitar. I need to become accustomed to playing that again although i’m not very happy about it. It’s a cheap thing with three steel and three nylon strings and the action is far too high on it

Tea tonight was, as usual, one of my breaded soya steaks with a potato and vegetables, followed by a slice of pie and the last of the delicious banana sorbet.

With it being damp and windy I waited a while before going out for my run, and just as I had made up my mind to go, Rosemary rang me up. We ended up chatting for a good 90 minutes as usual.

While all of this was going on I was engaged in a dispute with someone at the radio. My programme wasn’t broadcast again tonight so we “had words”.

The guy who acts as the main technician for the radio told me that he has a life and that he is only paid to work on Monday morning and all day Tuesday for the radio so we should think ourselves lucky that he’s there.

For my part, I reminded him that we volunteers also have lives and that we aren’t paid at all for our work – in fact, the money and all of our equipment and travelling expenses comes out of our own pockets so he should think himself lucky that we are here. And I mentioned how disappointed I was to read his comments.

In fact he had spent 25 minutes sending me all kinds of screenshots to prove that the programmes were set up correctly, whereas all he needed to do was to click on the link to the broadcast (5 seconds?) and he could hear for himself that it wasn’t going out.

It makes me shudder to think about the attitudes of some people – it really does.

By the time that I went for my evening run it was almost 23:00 – but I went all the same. There was nothing to photograph, for the rather prosaic reason that I couldn’t see very much.

The itinerant was there though, buried deeply in his hedge. Fast asleep, I imagined.

One thing though – and that was that my run tonight was so much easier. I wonder if it’s anything to do with the digestion process that’s using up too much energy shortly after a meal.

But I’m off to bed. And a lie-in tomorrow. There’s a lot to do so I can’ta fford to hang about.

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall yesterday that I mentioned something about the possibility of going out on a boat, but the owner never came back to me about it.

So while you admire the photos of the kids leaping off the sea wall into the sea this evening, let me tell you that it goes without saying that having vented my spleen (well, I would have done had I had one) yesterday, who should knock on my door today?

Right in the middle of my Welsh lesson too, which meant that I missed some of it. But then that’s always going to be par for the course too, isn’t it?

The upshot of all of this means that I have a little trip out organised for next week. And you’ve no idea just how much I’m looking forward to it either. I must get out to sea – and some time soon too.

Another thing that I have been looking forward to for quite a while is beating the third alarm call out of bed.

And this morning, much to my surprise, I actually managed it. No-one was more surprised than me.

Another thing that I have been eagerly anticipating, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is some convivial company accompanying me on my travels during the night. I had a good whinge about that yesterday too as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But everything comes to he who waits . When I listened to the dictaphone after the medication this morning, who should I discover accompanying me during the night but TOTGA? I was wondering when one of my regulars would put in an appearance on a nocturnal ramble. Last night it was something to do with a holiday and I don’t remember very much. I’d been on holiday and I’d met her quite by accident. We ended up talking and walking off somewhere. I actually held her hand and she didn’t really discourage it – she just let herself be taken along. We carried on chatting and the question came round to “I’m having to go on Tuesday and that will be that I suppose”. She replied “I hope that we can make some time together – there will be some time together for us to meet one evening before you go” which of course cheered me up no end.

It’s nice to have some good news like that. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall – late nights in the North-West Passage notwithstanding.

After organising the dictaphone notes I went and did the tidying up. Even vacuumed the place a little too. I brought up some stuff from Caliburn that has been in there for a couple of years and cleaned that too before rearranging it.

Next task was to prepare for my lesson and make sure that I knew everything. The lesson was going quite well until I was disturbed at the door. But as it was good news, I didn’t mind all that much.

Lunch was taken on the wall overlooking the harbour in the beautiful warm weather.

And for a change I wasn’t alone either. There was a girl down at the other end of the wall eating a salad out of a bowl, and we had Normandy Trader, having presumably sneaked in on the morning tide, down there too.

While I was eating my butties I watched them unload her (the ship, not the girl of course). And I also watched a couple of fishermen (on the extreme right of the image) laying out a fishing net on the quayside in order to entangle it.

Back here I made a start on week 5 of my music course. And by the time that I knocked off at 18:00 I’d finished it too.

At least, I’d reached the end. It’s wrong to say that I’ve completed it because it’s way, way over my head. I’m supposed to be able to improvise using 5/10ths, 7/10ths, 7/13ths, 6/9ths, do inversions and play V-I, II-V-I and II-V-VI-I chord progressions.

And while I have to say that it’s way beyond my capabilities, what has surprised me more than anything is that now I actually know what they mean.

What else has surprised me was that I finished the week’s course despite the interruptions that I had during the day.

Of course there was the afternoon walk as usual, in the beautiful afternoon sun.

And I reckon that this is the first time for ages that I’ve seen them working on the shellfish beds over by Donville les Bains.

There’s a type of mussel called a bouchot that has a liking for string or rope, as someone discovered by accident a good few years ago. And so they have those kind of attachments out there to help the things grow in massive numbers then when the tide is really low they drive out there with a tractor and pluck them off the ropes.

Yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I went round the Pointe du Roc and took a photo from behind the Seafarers’ Monument out across the bay.

So just for no particular reason, seeing as I was there, I’d take a photo of it again today so that you can compare the two.

In fact, you can compare it with THIS PHOTO as well. In the one here to the side, the tide isn’t yet all the way out and in the one in the link, the tide isn’t all the way in either.

But you can still have a really good idea of the height of the tides nevertheless. Probably the highest in Europe, as I have said before … “on many occasions” – ed.

Loads of people about on land and sea.

And also in the air. While I was taking the photo of Le Loup – the light in the previous photo, I was buzzed by a microlight aircraft or ULM that presumably had taken off from the airport at Donville les Bains.

At first I thought that it was my autogyro, the yellow one that we see quite regularly, but not with those wings. In those flimsy craft with their engines it must be just like back in the Golden Days of aviation between about 1907 and 1914 and I don’t think that it’s for me

It’s all change in the chantier navale too.

We seem to have acquired a third fishing boat right now. There were a few people working on it sanding it down so it looks as if it’s going to be receiving a new coat of paint some time soon.

That’s something for me to observe over the course of the next few days, isn’t it? It’s always interesting to know what they are going to be doing with it.

Back here I carried on with the course but once more, depressingly, I was overwhelmed with fatigue and crashed out a couple of times. In the end I stuck my head under the cold tap and carried on work.

When it was finished there was still 45 minutes of my working day left before the guitar practice so I had another play at a web page that i’ve been amending for the last week or so. It’s almost finished, but then it needs to be split up into two because it’s rather unwieldy

For a change, the guitar practice went well, which is good news, and then I turned my attention to tea. One of the vegan beanburgers that I bought from LeClerc a few weeks ago, on a bun with baked potato and veg, followed by the last off the apple crumble.

Tomorrow I can start on the apple pie that I made. And for a change, it seems to be cooked properly, base and all.

This evening it was another beautiful evening outside.

And for a change I had another good run too – all the way up the hill round the corner and down to the clifftop where I could see what was happening out to sea, like this yacht heading in one direction and a cabin cruiser thing heading in the other.

And out there in the distance, I suspect, is Normandy Trader. With the tide being well in now I imagined that she wouldn’t hang around long (and I was right too – she had indeed left port).

The picnicking spot in the old gun emplacement seems to be quite popular these days.

There was another family in there putting it to good use with their coolboxes and picnic hampers.

And who can blame them? it really was a wonderful evening to be out there soaking up the sun. I had even surprised the itinerant (who is still there) who has now moved to shelter under the tree and who was applying sun-tan oil to his limbs as I ran on past.

And of course, there would be crowds of people out to sea too.

With the tide being well in the local fishermen don’t have far to go out to make their catch, assuming that they catch anything, for I remain to be convinced. I’m not quite sure what his boat is either. A low profile like that suggests a kayak, but not with his feet on top of it.

That too is not the kind of thing that I would like to be out in if ever it comes to a swell on the water.

There were people absolutely everywhere tonight.

We’ve seen the crowds on the lawn, we’ve seen the big bunch of kids jumping into the water off the harbour wall, and there’s also a crowd down there at the viewpoint by the watchman’s cabin enjoying themselves in the sun.

And of course it goes without saying that we have the obligatory fisherman perched on his rock with his rod in his hand.

My run continued down along the clifftop where I could watch the kids leaping into the water, and then I carried on all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury.

These days of course I don’t stop for breath but carry on all the way down the rue St Jean almost to the Place Cambernon, cut through the alley and then back up the rue du Nord to the viewpoint on the corner.

No picnickers tonight again, seeing as the tide was in, but that rocky shelf that we saw yesterday seems to be very popular right now.

We have another, different group perched on there tonight making the most of the beautiful weather.

And they had every reason to be out there enjoying it tonight too because this was one of the better sunsets.

If you look very closely you’ll notice that the sun has its orange halo tonight. There’s a lot of discussion about what these halos represent but current thought seems to indicate that there would be very thin cirrus clouds up there laden with ice crystals.

The sun would be shining into the ice and this would create a prism effect .

But whatever it is, it’s certainly beautiful

Just as I was about to run for home I noticed the fishing boat in the distance out in the English Channel over by the Ile de Chausey. Wondering what it was doing, I took a photo of it to crop and enlarge back at the apartment

So I ran on back home to do the necessary, and if you look very carefully at the rear of the boat, you’ll see that the crew have their tackle out and are clearly going hard at it.

As for me, I edited the photos and then wrote up my journal.

An early night is called for tonight. Tomorrow I’m going out for a drive with Caliburn.

He became a teenager a few weeks ago as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, so he’s going to have a makeover. Tomorrow someone in a bodyshop is going to have a look at him and we’ll have a discussion about how to keep him going for the next 13 years.

He’ll probably outlive me at this rate.

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?

Friday 12th June 2020 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

Yes, guess who put a load of washing in the washing machine on Thursday morning before going to the shops – and then forgot all about it?

It’s out airing on the clothes airer right now, but when I go to the shops tomorrow I have a feeling that I shall have to buy some nice perfumed fabric conditioner or something similar and put them through again.

As for my part, much to my own (and everyone else’s) surprise I actually beat the third alarm call to my feet this morning. I was in the kitchen organising my medication when it went off.

Back here afterwards (still no breakfast!) to look at the dictaphone – and … phew!

Last night I put in an appearance in an office where I used to work and went into one of the rooms which was room D and it was absolutely heaving with people. I’d been for a while in another room and getting a few things organised in there watching a couple of videos that kind of thing but I didn’t really want anyone else to know what I was doing so I was hunched up in a corner where no-one could overlook me. In this room it was crowded with people, hundreds of them. There was one little girl about 5 or 6 and a pile of these white fish fillet squares that she had got down all over the floor. There were a couple of guys in charge and they didn’t seem to be paying the slightest bit of attention. Before i’d gone in there I’d had a look out of the window and I’d seen someone disappearing off in a car towing a trailer pulling a petrol pump so I wondered if that had been something that had come off the beach around the corner so I went there to find out. I was told “yes” but the person didn’t seem to want to elaborate on it.
Later on during the night something had happened about something or other in Aberystwyth. It meant that I had to go home and fetch something and come back again. I was in an old mark V Cortina so I put my foot down i Aberystwyth and drove all the way back to Crewe where I got what I wanted . The journey back should have taken me about 45 minutes (well, yes!) but by the time that I had everything ready it was now exactly 1 hour 05 after I had left so I was going to have to do something about catching up this time. So I put my foot down. I hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards before I ran straight into one of these processions. Even though it was something like 01:00 – 01:30 in the morning there were all these processions like a Miners’ Parade or something. And of course as I set to move off a group of motorcycle policemen came round pushing their bikes following this parade. Of course I had no seat belt on and the car wasnt in any particularly good condition so the captain of the motorcyclists came over and asked me a couple of questions about the car. I’d only had it a couple of days so I couldn’t really answer him so he asked to see my documents. I gave him my driving licence which was stuck inside my purse and took ages to put out. he invited me to come in to his office. Of course I didn’t have time to do all of this but he interrogated me a bit and he got on his radio and radioed my licence number through. I asked “am I clear to go?”. he replied “you’re clear to go. Some guy said “that will be £50:00. I thought “£50:00? What the hell is this for?” He replied “it’s just for having your hair cut”. “But I don’t want my hair cut”. However a girl came round and threw a towel over my shoulders and sat me in the seat. I asked “what the hell is this all about?”. “It’s just something that he likes to do when he’s caught someone and letting them go. It’s a way of raesing funds”. I thought “yes, I bet it is”. And all the time I was supposed to be going to Aberystwyth. I was already running late, I had these things, these people would probably be long gone by the time that I get there and that will be a wasted journey. There I was being trapped in this seat having my hair cut for £50:00
When I went back to sleep I stepped right back into this dream where I’d been before and set off again. I was once more waylaid on the route but I don’t remember anything about it now. I do remember though thinking that this is absolutely ridiculous and I’m never going to get to Aberystwyth at this rate.

A little later still I was on my way to South Wales. I pulled in at Knutsford Services and there I had to hire a car for the weekend and get some food to eat on the journey, get some fuel and sort out some gearbox oil for my car. I’ve no idea why I wanted a hire car but I went into the office and started to make all of the arrangements. They said that they had a Crusader so I said that that was fine by me. They said “hang on, we’ll see what else we’ve got” but I said “no, a Crusader is fine”. They wandered away and I was talking about which guy it was who knew which car they were. They said “it’s the girl over there – the one who’s big enough to be a girl guide”. I thought “what the heck has this got to do with me renting a vehicle”. I thought that i’d better drive my vehicle somewhere, come back, pick up this hire car, go off and I have to be back before Monday. So I told them to make the booking until Monday. Then of course I could work out about what I needed and what I had to get.

After all of that, it was quite a surprise that I was out of bed so sprightly.

Today has been spent working on my music course. And by the time I reached the end of the afternoon I’d done a whole week’s work. And now I can play the blues on the piano in the Key of F, Fmin and F7 with the left hand playing 7/10ths and 7/13ths.

Or, at least, I could if I were any good at it. But you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

At lunch I had some more of my bread. And it’s still tasting quite good. This was, I reckon, something of a success although, as I have said … “on many occasions” – ed … there is still plenty of room for improvement.

What I might do, when I run out of cake, is to make a smaller loaf but crush some banana in it, or else add a pile of sultanas, and make a kind of snack bread. Apricots in it might be good too of course.

After lunch I took some time off work and made myself some orange and ginger cordial. The honey that I’m using isn’t very good though, but I’m hoping that soon I’ll be back in Belgium where I can find some more Manuka honey.

It had been pouring down for most of the morning but by the time that I went out for my afternoon walk, the rain had stopped.

There’s a strange kind of light when it’s just stopped raining in the summer. And with the air being cleaner these days, the views are generally better. Once more, Jersey is standing out really well and you can see the houses at St Helier.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few weeks ago I mentioned something about the lockdown helping to clean up the air.

The ile de Chausey was standing out really well today too.

The houses over there were quite clear to see too, and we could even see Joly France setting out of the harbour there on its way back to Granville.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that I’ve never taken a photo as clear as this of the Ile de Chausey from the mainland. We could do with a few more days like this.

The photo that I took, I split it into two parts. The previous photo that you saw was the left-hand half, and this one is the right-hand half.

You can see the houses in the little village at the northern end of the island and if you look just to the left of them you might just be able to make out the church. It’s said that there’s a bit of a Liberator bomber in there – one that was shot down over the bay just after D-Day.

The building on the eminence in the middle, that’s the chateau I reckon, a converted fort that was at one time owned by the Renault family.

You can see MORE PHOTOS OF THE ILE DE CHAUSEY here.

The fine weather that we were having now that the rain had stopped had certainly brought out the crowds.

As you can see, the path around the cliff and up by the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall were heaving with people this afternoon all catching what sun here was.

The lighthouse is looking good today , and the four flags are still flying up by the war memorial – the British one hasn’t yet made good its bid for freedom

It wasn’t just on the lawn by the lighthouse that there were the crowds either.

The steps down the path round the end were pretty busy, and there were people here down by the old watch cabin enjoying the view and the sunshine. And who can blame them?

You’ll notice that the cabin still has its roof and it’s pretty watertight. It’s just one of half a dozen places where our itinerant could seek shelter from the rain if he so chooses.

So despite the crowds, I headed off on my walk down the other side of the headland.

Nothing much going on down there this afternoon – still the same three boats in the chantier navale and nothing else of interest. But there was this speedboat roaring past with le feux dans ses fesses – a fire up his … errr … posterior – as they say around here.

It’s quite stimulating being out on the sea at that kind of speed, but it’s not so good for the wildlife and the Noise Abatement Society would have something to say about it too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few weeks we’ve been seeing all kinds of heavy plant parked up at the side of the Rue du Port.

Today there are a couple more things that have arrived. In fact the lorry that dropped them off is just pulling away as you can see. We seem to have acquired a kind of cherry picker and a fork lift elevator.

But I’ve no idea what they are doing with them. We see all kinds of weird things arriving or parked up there and after a day or so they just disappear.

Yesterday we saw the installation of a set of traffic lights to control the traffic in the old town while the roadworks are taking place.

It was my intention to go round to see where the other end was, and sure enough, it’s here at the edge of the Place du Parvis Notre Dame – not where I was thinking it would be at all.

So traffic at this end of the rue Notre Dame can come out of here the wrong way dow the one-way system and the lights are there to stop any unfortunate encounter.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I decided that I would go off and see how the roadworks were doing.

But down the rue St Jean I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before. In the good old days, it was the fashion in France to have huge advertising notices painted on the side of the buildings and it’s always been my regret that the practice has ceased. Here’s an old one advertising “Les Ilots” – café restaurant, with furnished rooms.

That’s going back a few years, isn’t it? Another lifetime ago, I reckon.

But at least there’s some good news at the roadworks.

Everything seems to be done and dusted now and the cobbles have been recemented into position. It looks now as if they are just waiting for the cement to dry and the road will probably be open tomorrow or Monday.

So in that case I’m glad that I came and photographed it today.

Back here I carried on with my coursework and by about 17:15 I was finished. I even managed to find the time to do a few photos from July 2019

Only a few though. Most of the time was spent hunting down the name of a church that I had photographed from The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. And it took some doing too.

Nothing is straightforward with me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

My half an hour on the bass was spent playing along to Arthur King’s “Born Under A Bad Sign” – which is how it feels sometimes. And the half-hour on the six-string was spent playing along to Springsteens “No Surrender” and also Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A’Changin'”

A couple of lines of the lyrics leapt out at me from the latter.
“Come writers and critics”
“Who prophesize with your pen”
“And keep your eyes wide”
“The chance won’t come again”

Yes – “the chance won’t come again”. I’m back on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again aren’t I – one night at the beginning of September in the North-West Passage of Canada. All I need now is Kris Kristofferson and “I’ll give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday”

And do you know what? I would as well!

For a change, I had tea tonight. The last aubergine and kidney bean whatsit from April. I’ll have to buy another one and make some more. But I have peppers and potatoes that need using up so it looks like a pepper, potato and spinach curry is on the menu next week.

We’d had a tremendous thunderstorm earlier on in the afternoon, followed by a really heavy rainfall. But when I went out for my evening walk, it had stopped and the weather was reasonably bright.

But my eye had been caught by a few notices like that dotted around outside. It looks as if something exciting is going to be happening here on 15th June – maybe roadworks or something.

Anyway, anyone who has a car parked there has been instructed to move it and no-one else can leave their vehicles there.

“That’s something to look forward too” I mused as I ran off up the road.

Things were a little (just a little) easier tonight as I made it up to the top of the hill, I felt that I had a little left to spare in the tank.

But I recovered my breath and ran on down past the itinerant to the clifftop. The storm that had battered us earlier is still there – just out to see and round by Bréhal-Plage and Montmartin sur Mer.

It looks as if it’s having a right old hammering over there and I’m glad that I wasn’t out there earlier in that. And it beats me why the itinerant is sticking it out.

haing recovered my breath again I walked on around the corner.

Where we saw the speedboat earlier, we now have a yacht strutting his stuff just offshore. But apart from the boat itself, I was intrigued by the colours now that the rain has washed out the sky.

The whole coast round from Kairon-Plage through Jullouville round to the Pointe de Carolles is really brightly lit this evening. And the white hotel buildings down by Mont St Michel are really clear too.

It really was nice.

The next couple of legs of my run took me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner – and once more I overran my mark by a good 20 metres. And I could have done more too I reckon.

But I walked back to have a look down at the harbour and see what was happening. And once more, nothing much. Chausiais is there moored up against the harbour wall so she won’t be going very far very soon.

And Granville and Victor Hugo, the two Channel Island ferries, they are still there too. I’ve not had a latest update as to when the service will start again, but I’m going to try to hitch a lift on Thora or Normandy Trader one of these days.

From here I ran on all the way round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

There didn’t seem to be the crowds of picnickers down there tonight – I did look – but instead we have a young couple who are playing beach bowls down there. You can see the guy tossing the “ball” at the pins.

It looks as if they have been having a party too. I can see a bottle of wine down there and with no cork in it, I’ll fathom a guess that it’s empty.

There wasn’t a decent sunset tonight – not even an impressive cloud formation.

But that’s no surprise either. Not with the weather that we’ve just had. And as I said yesterday … “and on many other occasions too” – ed … we’ve had some beautiful ones recently, and we can’t win a coconut every time.

Back to the apartment I ran but seeing that I was up to 90% on the day’s activity, I went for an extended walk to clock up the 100%

Hence the reason that I’m rather late tonight.

But I had an interuption this evening. Someone from the radio contacted me – someone not actually in my list of top 10 contacts. Would I like to go for a drink with him before our big meeting on Thursday night?

So what’s that all about, I wonder. Why would he want to see me before the meeting? I smell a rat, and I’m not talking about the contents of baldrick’s apple crumble.

Tomorrow it’s shopping. And I don’t need that much stuff either. A good start, I hope, and then a relax as we have football on the internet tomorrow afternoon.

High time we had some live football too. I’m missing my football fix.

Tuesday 9th June 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I actually beat the third alarm to my feet this morning.

So while you all admire the Birdman of Alcatraz who came to grief on the lawn at the Pointe du Roc this afternoon. I can tell you all about it.

Actually, I cheated. That’s because I went to bed earlier than usual – something round about 23:40 if I remember correctly.

But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall because it’s happened a few times just recently, including once just the other day, I awoke at about 04:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep again.

But then, there’s a reason for that too.

Last night I’d been on numerous voyages, starting off walking through the hospital into the downstairs part of the waiting room where the haematology patients went, where there was a small swimming pool. The weather was really rough, raining and storming and there was even storming in that swimming pool. There was a dead body of a man with longish black hair and moustache, white shirt and beige trousers floating in it. He was clearly dead so I had to get hold of a telephone and telephone the police but I couldn’t get through so I telephoned the switchboard. They wanted to know exactly where I was but I couldn’t get out the words properly. In the meantime other people started to come into the area where there was this swimming pool. No-one else noticed this body except me so I was wondering whether I was really seeing it or whether I was having hallucinations.

But having complained the other night about the lack of congenial company on my nocturnal rambles, I was joined last night by a girl with whom I used to work who could accompany me anywhere, as she did on one occasion skiing in Bulgaria and on another occasion skiing in Italy.. We were in the EU and I hadn’t long started and we were discussing all kinds of different things. How it started was that I’d gone into work on a Saturday. They asked me where I was going so I said “to such-and-such company”. Just at that moment this girl walked out of the door and I said “yes, where she works. Ohh yes she knows me and she’ll vouch for me, all this kind of thing” so they let me in. I went up the back but I couldn’t remember her room. I bumped into one of the directors and I’ll tell you his name in a minute, not Barros or Moratinos but a German guy (and not Heusgen either). I asked if he could point me in the direction of this girl’s office and he said “come with me” I asked him where she was so he took me downstairs onto the 5th floor and said “it’s just that office over there” and I thought “that’s the office that she used to be in before she moved up to the 8th floor – useless type”. Then I bumped into another girl and I was telling her about this. We ended up talking and this is where this other girl suddenly transformed herself into my friend again. We decided that we would go out for a walk. She started to run so I ran after her. We ran up some steps and down this fine gravel path. We were talking about work and how she had started. A lot of people had started but they wanted to get rid of some so they gave them all kinds of crappy work hoping that they would get fed up and leave pretty quickly. She said she stuck it out and I came a few months later. So off we went for a run. We were running for a bit. She said “are you comfortable running?” I said “well as long as it’s on the flat and the thing about Brussels is that it’s always on the flat, so yes, I’m comfortable running”. Se ran and did some strange exercises a bit like Castor would do strange exercises when she was running about. She ran a bit further on and slowed down for a walk. I slowed down to a walk and rather tentatively put my arm round her. She said “I’m going to go over there” pointing to somewhere off the path amongst a couple of trees. It was dark by this time. I said “shall I come with you?” She said “yes” and went off. She had some kind of coconut matting blanket and put it down on the floor and sat down. I sat down with her.

And there you are – the bird on my plate, just about to get my fork stuck in it, and I flaming well awoke!

It’s always the case, isn’t it? You could bet your mortgage on it.

But obviously my subconscious is telling me something. And I wish that I knew what it was.

Anyway, I didn’t leave the bed at that point (well, I did, actually. I went for a ride on the porcelain horse). I did all that I could to go back to sleep and step back in to where I left off, but to no avail.

Actually, I did go back to sleep, but I’ve no idea where I went – if anywhere at all.

Mind you, as I explained, I did haul myself out of bed before the third alarm and went and had my medication.

After transcribing the dictaphone notes, I had a few things to do. First was do hunt down a couple of digital copies of albums. I’d been provided with a couple of clues as to where I might find them, and this was indeed correct.

So that’s two more from the “outstanding” pile now added to the collection. And now that I’ve acquired a tape player (thanks, Liz) there will be a few more very soon.

Next stop was to prepare for my Welsh lesson. That involved not just reviewing my notes from last week and examining those for this week, but also tidying the kitchen end of the apartment.

That’s the big issue with video conferencing. I don’t want people to see the disorder in which I live.

And that reminds me – there was a headline in one of today’s digital newspapers about “the clue to alien life maybe found in dust”. If that’s the case, there must be loads of spacemen and Tory politicians sharing this apartment with me.

After my lesson it was time for lunch. And I do have to say that while there is plenty of room for improvement with my bread, this loaf is what I would call a success and I’m impressed with it.

It they keep on coming out like this I shan’t complain too much at all.

After lunch I had work to do.

Despite having already done one radio project this week, I wanted to do another. And by the time that I came to knocking off at 18:00, I’d chosen the music, combined the music in pairs and written half the notes.

So that’s the task for tomorrow I reckon – finish that lot off and if there is any time left, do my tax return and so some of my music course.

Really though, I could have made more time available by doing more today but I … errr … had a little relax for a short while.

But never mind, there was still the afternoon walk to undertake, even if I didn’t feel much like it after my slumber.

The sea was heaving today with all kinds of traffic out there. mainly fishing boats of course, because it’s during the week and many people are now back at work with no time for pleasure-boating.

It was difficult to count how many fishing boats were out there today but here’s a couple as an appetiser.

And it wasn’t just on the water that there were people either.

Although our photos of our birdman don’t show it, there were dozens of people loitering around the Pointe du Roc, and even down on the beach we had people walking around, studiously obeying the injunction not to “install oneself” on the beach.

The only surprise about this was that even though it was a nice day and the tide was quite a way out, there were so few people down there this afternoon.

We saw our Birdman of Alcatraz just now. I didn’t actually see him come to grief but he sailed past me at a very low altitude and when I went around the corner he was already on the ground trying to take off again.

What was so amusing was that just a few seconds after he had become unstuck – or, rather, stuck – the Air-Sea Rescue helicopter came roaring past. It made me think that it had come by to rescue him from his plight.

But there was no need because he eventually managed to take to the air again – and without flapping his arms either.

And so I carried on with my perambulations around the Pointe and along the walkway at the top ofthe cliff.

From there I could see down into the chantier navale and there’s been a change of occupant today. There’s a small fishing boat now appeared on the left-hand side of the row of boats.

Having made a note I wandered back to my apartment to carry on with my work. This kind of thing doesn’t get done on its own and there’s no-one else here to do it for me. HIS NIBS isn’t that well trained as yet.

Knocking off at 18:00 I had a session on the guitars. And the time on the base was spent playing along to Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House” and “Foxy Lady” – numbers that I used to play when I was in a rock group in the 1970s.

Of course, “Foxy Lady” – the name as well as the lyrics – has a much more recent significance, as regular readers of this rubbish who followed my antics in the High Arctic last summer will recall and it certainly ignited a flame that had been doused for quite a while.

For the fist time for a week, I had a hot meal this evening. A handful of pasta and a vegan burger – one of those that was running out of date.

So two meals today, for the first time for a while. I’m getting over this illness which is good news. It comes in cycles, so they say, which I suppose is better than coming on the bus.

And that reminds me of the sperm bank that opened in London a good while ago which was a total failure. They only had two potential donors but one of them missed the tube and the other one came in a taxi.

On that rather sad note, I suppose that I’d better call it a day and go for my evening walk.

Outside here down below, the tide is now in,, and we had a speedboat with several people on board who seem to have more than just a passing interest in the rocks just there.

It goes without saying that I’ve no idea why, and it wasn’t possible to ask them either. I just shrugged my shoulders and set off on my run.

With no-one hurling gratuitous abuse this evening I ran all the way up the road to my resting point at the end of the hedge – a little easier than last week – and then stopped for breath.

Having recovered, I ran down in a blistering headwind past the itinerant who was comfortably installed in his little spec, down to the clifftop to see what was going on.

And it’s pretty easy to guess what these people in this zodiac are doing here. The rod and lines are quite a giveaway. At least – they look like rod and lines from here but you can never be sure.

A little earlier I mentioned about all of the fishing boats out on the sea this afternoon.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we’ve seen the fishing boats starting to exploit new and (as far as I am aware) previously unexploited areas of the oceans. The Baie de Mont St Michel tonight was crowded with fishing boats yet again and there are three of them in this photo.

There were probably nine down there in all, hard at it this evening as far as I could see

My run carried on along the top of the cliff past the chantier navale and down to my next resting point.

Unfortunately, it seems that I was just a couple of minutes too late. It looks as if the harbour gates have just opened and a whole line of fishing boats was streaming into the inner harbour, led by our old friend La Grande Ancre, although it doesn’t look like fish that she has on board right now.

And there’s a lorry down by the loading bay for the Jersey freighters. Is he delivering more stuff? Or taking stuff away?

Of course, what goes in must come out too.

And while there was a line of boats waiting to go into the harbour, there was an equally long line of boats waiting to go out. Here’s a group of three of the seven or eight that were waiting for the gates to open.

The small boat in the middle looks quite cute just there. And you can also see another three fishing boats working away down in the Baie de Mont St Michel

But this was interesting and it took me somewhat by surprise.

This would seem to be one of the boats that has just left the harbour but if you look very closely he has his dredging plates out already, judging by the cable out at the back.

Not that I eat shellfish anyway – or any kind of fish for that matter, but if I did, I don’t know whether I’d be wanting to eat any shellfish off the sea bed right by the harbour entrance. Not with an endless stream of boats passing directly overhead.

The next stage of my run took me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and 20 metres beyond my usual mark. Then I walked back to check on the port activities.

It’s clear that they are expecting a bumper haul of seafood tonight. Down there at the fish processing plant there are no fewer than 5 refrigerated lorries waiting to carry away the catch as well as a handful of smaller lorries and vans.

And the fishing boats are still coming in too. there are a couple of them here coming into the harbour to pull up at the quayside and unload

from there I ran on round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord to see the lie of the land out there.

We had the sun obscured by clouds unfortunately, but there was a small gap in them right over some of the outlying islands of the Ile de Chausey and the effect was just as if they had been illuminated by a spotlight.

That fishing boat just creeping onto centre-stage was very picturesque too. I had to wait a few minutes for it to take up position but it does set off the image nicely.

There’s only about an hour and a half before high tide but that’s not stopping our picnckers from partying tonight.

There were a couple of groups out there tonight and I was particularly impressed by the little group who have managed to lodge themselves onto a shelf halfway up the cliff. I’m not sure if that’s going to be out of the water in 90 minutes time.

Having finished my exertions I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes. There’s plenty to do.

There’s plenty to do tomorrow too. I’m supposed to be retired but you would never think so, given all of the work that I have to do these days.

An early night would do me the world of good but then I’d just awaken at 04:30 so it really defeats the purpose.

Saturday 6th June 2020 – IT’S BEEN A …

… somewhat better day today again.

And while you admire the photos of roofs full of seagull chicks staggering around taking their first steps, let me tell you about it.

And in what will probably come as much of a surprise to you as it did to me, then despite my not going to bed until about 00:40 last night, when the first alarm went off at 06:00 this morning I was actually up and about and in the kitchen.

And when was the last time that that ever happened?

In fact, I was wide awake at 04:45 and couldn’t go back to sleep at all.

Mind you, I know what had caused it. When I awoke I was holding the dictaphone and scratching my head in bewilderment in the middle of dictating a dream

I was back in Gainsborough Road but it was the family house then and it was full of rubbish, all this kind of thing and the garage was half falling down. I’d spent a lot of time trying to work out getting a concreting plan going so I could concrete it over and make a nice base, demolish the garage, make a nice base to start with and get everything tidied up. I’d asked at work and they had put me in touch with a few people. Then we were having a family meal and I mentioned it to my fater “when are we going to do this?” He said “ohh we have a concrete mixer at home. We could do it ourselves”. The discussion became a little heated, all this kind of thing. In the end I just said “as far as my sisters are concerned and my brother is concerned and I’m concerned we’re all fed up of living in a dump. It’s always going to be ‘yes, we’ll do it nexr week – we’ll do it again – we’ll do it some other time – yes, we’ll do it ourselves'”. He turned round and said “it’s all your fault anyway. You can’t bear to get rid of that white Cortina of yours. He started listing all of my junk that was lying around and it was quite true – there was plenty of mine there and I didn’t really have an answer to that and the conversation started to become extremely heated.

What was bewildering me was the fact that I couldn’t think of an appropriate answer to the story about the white Cortina.

The rest of the story I recognise only too clearly.

But what’s annoying me at the moment is the fact that for the last few weeks I’ve had all kinds of unpleasant companions with me when I’ve been a-wandering during the night – people whom I’d normally go well out of my way to avoid during my waking hours.

Whatever happened to TOTGA? To Castor? To all kinds of pleasant companions who used to come with me on my travels? What has stopped then coming round? We’ve not even had a nocturnal group ramble around Crewe for months.

No breakfast again but I had a shower, and succeeded in smashing my porcelain soap pumper thing. I’ve had that for over two years without breaking it and that’s an amazing feat I suppose.

Today’s shopping was a rather miserable affair. I didn’t buy all that much at all. But then not eating for four days means that I still have plenty of supplies in.

NOZ had some more of the alcohol-free beer that I like and some decent hole-cutters as well as another pack of these breaded soya fillets. LeClerc had nothing of interest in the cheap range but a pack of vegan burgers (as if I don’t have enough) in the expiry-date range.

Mind you, while I was in there I suddenly developed a raging thirst so I bought – and promptly consumed – a litre of orange juice. Past experience tells me that this means that whatever I’m suffering from has now started to move on.

Back here I tidied up a few things and then edited a few (just a few – I’m still not on form) photos from July 2019.

Another surprising thing is that I stopped for food. If the thirst is a sign that my appetite will return I may as well make a start. So I made a sandwich and had some of the apricots that I bought.

This morning I had used the last of my home-made orange and ginger cordial so after lunch I made some lemon and ginger cordial. Four lemons but they didn’t produce anything like enough pulp and juice that they would normally do, so this batch isn’t going to last that long.

While that was doing, I came back in here to carry on with the photos but shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out. With only 4 hours sleep, that’s probably not a surprise but it was still disappointing.

Nevertheless, there was football on the internet this afternoon – the Welsh Cup Final of 2013 between Bangor City and Prestatyn Town. This was Bangor City at their best against a very-mid-table side and everyone would have been expecting a Bangor City walkover – even though Prestatyn scored a surprisingly lucky goal after just a couple of minutes.

However we had on the field a most unlikely hero in the name of John Hill-Dunt. He was Prestatyn’s goalkeeper all the way through their rise up the Welsh pyramid and a most unlikely goalkeeper you will ever meet.

At first glance, he looks as if he’s several stone overweight and that’s probably not far off being correct, but we were treated to what could only be described as a goalkeeping master-class as he single-handedly kept Bangor City at bay.

His performance in this match would have graced any Cup Final, never mind this one. He was beaten once, but, would you believe, by one of his own players.

On the other hand, Prestatyn had an old experienced campaigner up front in Andy Parkinson who could teach any young defender a thing or two about professionalism, and a young livewire called Jason Price who didn’t know when to stop running.

You can SEE THE HIGHLIGHTS HERE but you aren’t going to see the half of the excitement in this match.

After that I went for my walk around the walls, considerably later than usual.

And it was not very pleasant at all out there this afternoon. We were in the middle of a howling, swirling gale and I didn’t enjoy it for a minute.

The tide was some way out but you would never have guessed, seeing how the wind was rolling the waves right up to the promenade at the Plat Gousset

There weren’t too many people about out there today, which is hardly any surprise in all of this.

My walk took me on round past the Square Maurice Marland to check on the seagulls and their chicks.

And to check on what else is going on too. And it looks as if we are going to be having a visit from Thora or Normandy Trader sometime very soon. There’s a whole load of building material and timber now neatly stacked on the quayside.

Mind you, I wouldn’t like to be out there in one of those flat-bottomed boats in this kind of weather right now. But then that’s what they are paid for.

As I stood there watching, I could hear the bell go off across the harbour there.

It’s that time of day. The harbour gates open at 105 minutes before High Tide and sure enough, bang on time, here they were opening up.

There have been a couple of occasions now where we have seen them open and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, even one occasion when I was standing on top of them.

Not astride the opening, luckily.

And a couple of minutes after they opened borne in on a bouyant tide of silt, cane La Grande Ancre

No idea where she’s been, of course, but she’s not much of a shape to withstand a good old Nor’Easter either.

So having seen her safely into harbour, I headed on for home.

And for a change, I decided to try some tea tonight. A small potato, a handful of mixed veg and a breaded soya steak followed by a small slice of strawberry tart and coconut dessert.

Much to my surprise, it all managed to stay down although there were times when I wasn’t quite so sure about it.

And then I went out for my evening walk – and I DO mean walk because it was totally impossible to run in this wind. I felt really sorry for the itinerant who is back huddled up under his hedge but I don’t for the life of me understand why he hasn’t gone to ground in one of the old bunkers.

There’s the old watchman’s cabin and the old stone shellfish-drying building, which are out of the wind and have roofs where he’d be far more comfortable.

Apart from him and someone taking a video cam of the wind, I was the only other person out there.

There wasn’t anyone at all so I had a very lonely walk – although I did manage something of a run down along the clifftop above the chantier navale.

No change in there – still the two boats from yesterday – but I could see the waves thundering into the headland down underneath the Chateau de la Crête.

The sea was coming in there with an incredible amount of power so I stood and watched it for a while.

Not for long though because no-one could stay out there very long in that. I ended up coming home – walking and not running. No-one could run out there in that.

But now I’m home and I’m thoroughly exhausted. I’m still not as well as I ought to be but I’ve fetched some frozen pizza dough out of the freezer in case I want my usual pizza tomorrow evening.

There’s no bread in the house now either except what’s in the freezer so I reckon tomorrow when I wake up I’ll make a mix and see where that takes me through the day.

if the oven is going on for a pizza at some point in the evening it may as well go on for a loaf of bread a couple of hours earlier.

But not tonight. I’ve had a long day despite the little pause in early afternoon and I’m off to bed.

Sunday tomorrow, so no alarm. And I’m hoping that it’s not going to be another 04:45 start.

So I’ll leave you with the final pic from this evening and go to bed

See you tomorrow

Tuesday 5th May 2020 – I THOUGHT SO!

For some reason or other, I had it in my mind during the night that we were having a rainstorm.

It’s one of those things that I’m not quite sure why and when day dawend, although it was a miserable morning it certainly wasn’t raining. But on my run around the walls in the evening I pass by a spot that always floods when there’s heavy rain. It’s been dry for a few weeks yet this evening we have a puddle on the path.

And so there you are. Yet you would never have said anything because once the day got under way it was quite pleasant.

And for a change, I had quite a pleasant night too. In bed relatively early and I actually managed to beat the third alarm, which is always a good sign of progress.

After the medication I went and had a listen to the dictaphone. And sure enough, I’d been on my travels again.

First of all, Castor put in an appearance again. Or did she? Because on the dictaphone I definitely use the name on several occasions but even in my sleep I made a note that it wasn’t her. So do I count her as Castor or as an unknown?

No idea myself. It’s the kind of thing that’s really confusing me.

But anyway we were at a party that I was helping supervise. But when it was getting towards the end she said “could you go and fetch me some paper because I need some paper”. I said “there’s some here in the printer” so I went to get some out of the printer but there wasn’t any. I had to go downstairs for it. She came downstairs with me and she started to talk about this game. She’s got to do this – this game has to be done right now – it can’t wait any later as it all has to be finished by midnight and we were getting very close to the time. So we got a piece of paper out. There was a third person down there but we ignored that person. It was a case of asking the questions alternately and doing the actions but the 1st question had been cut out. She was a bit mad at that because some other people taking part in the game had cut it out to spite her and she was not at all impressed.
At some other point during the night I was making sandwiches. I had four people with me doing different things and I had to make sandwiches. I had to buy a pile of strange stuff and the kind of pastry stuff that I had to use as a base had all gone off and gone manky so I ended up having to get some bread and making some sandwiches, but I was just getting completely and utterly confused. It took me ages to do something so straightforward as I was so confused about this. When it came to packing everything up ready to take down to the people I couldn’t find any plastic bags to put them in. It was now 13:30 and I guessed they would be wondering what on earth had happened to lunch. I saw a post on Facebook – one of my people had bought lunch and donated money to LIDL for his lunch and I thought to myself it’s going to be an awful row when I get these sandwiches downstairs. But I had a bit of food everywhere that I couldn’t get organised as to what went on where, anything like that. It was all really confusing and it was taking place on the playing field at Nantwich Grammar School as well.
There was more to it all than this but as you are probably eating your evening meal right now I’ll spare you the details. But the interesting thing was that there was some kind of mix of circumstance – the usual confusion and indecision was there of course, but also for once (and which doesn’t happen very often) something was going right for me until, once again, someone comes along in the night and spikes it. That happens far too often – in real life as well as on a nocturnal voyage. The whole story of my life is that people can’t bear to see me being happy and do whatever they can to spike it.

But anyway, I digress … “again” – ed.

After breakfast (which was late due to the amount of stuff I had to type) I carried on with the radio project and that was done well before lunchtime.

Next task was to sort out the music. All of the irrelevant music (from the radio point of view) was moved into a separate directory so that they are excluded from selection for the radio programme.

The reason for this is that with the 6 directories that I have (AA-FF) next week it’s the turn of music from directory CC to be selected for the radio so I have all of that (50-odd artists with however many albums) going round on a continuous random loop for the next week and I’ll be making a note of likely possibilities.

There’s so much music these days in my collection that it’s easy to lose track of what I have and some really good stuff will slip though my fingers if it doesn’t spring to mind.

So moving the irrelevant stuff out of the way means that I don’t waste my time with it popping up on the playlist.

Another task that I have set myself concerns the updating of the web pages.

That’s a task that I started ages ago and which fell by the wayside as I started back to work on the radio. But now that I have the radio work under control (for the moment) I can return to the programme.

When I started MY WEBSITE it was in 1997 as part of a project for my technology degree. It was completely hand-coded from scratch and pretty basic but over the years it slowly evolved.

The last major upgrade that it had was back in 2007 and I’ve learnt a lot since then. The menus were all handcoded *.css, individually for each page and when the number of pages passed 50, I realised that this would present a problem if ever I had to update anything on the menus.

So while I was laid up in Canada recovering from my exertions in the High Arctic, I taught myself some basic javascript, designed a few javascript menus and some iframe procedure and set about changing the menus over from individual *.css stuff to one common set of menus that can be inserted as a javascript script.

Today, after lunch, I carried on with the project and amended 20-odd pages. I’ll do some more tomorrow too. As an aside, I was impressed with my bread. It’s a much better attempt than the last one.

That still left an hour or so , thus I attacked the photos from July 2019. I managed about 20 of them, spending more time wrestling with a recalcitrant mouse than anything else.

And despite that, I’m still in an inflatable rubber boat in a lagoon amongst the icebergs at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier in eastern iceland

After an hour on the guitars, I went to make tea. I had an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with vegetables, all out of the freezer, with pasta. And having taken stuff out of the freezer, there’s still not enough room for the half of the pie that’s waiting in the fridge for a space.

As I mentioned earlier, it was another pleasant evening.

The wind had died down somewhat and there was a beautiful sky and sunset out there tonight. I went to take a photo of it and then ran off up the road to my marker at the end of the hedge.

Having gathered my breath I ran on down to the clifftop past an extremely concerned pedestrian who gave me a weird look. I suppose that I really am a sight, running around the place at my age.

Walking around on the bumpy bit past the demolished bunker of the Atlantic Wall, I startled a woman having a relax in the bushes watching the sunset. Yes, I would give everything that I owned, and more besides, to be able to sing.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel it was really busy tonight.

A brief perusal of the bay showed no fewer than four (and maybe more) fishing boats out there over towards the Brittany coast, and this one on its way out there to join0 them.

And that will come as a surprise to someone who posted this morning another one of these “news stories” about how the small fisherman is banned from fishing while the big industrial concerns are free to come and go as they like.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen enough evidence to know that that is total nonsense.

Carefully avoiding the big puddle I carried on with my run along the tp of the walls.

No change in the chantier navale today, but there is something bizarre going on in the ferry terminal. It seems that a fishing boat – one of the trawler-types – has decided to tie up there.

And I’ve no idea why that might happen either. I didn’t think that they were supposed to be over there, and for all kinds of reasons too. The pontoon to which it is tied is for foot passengers for the ferries.

Off on my long run down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner to my marker, and then I walked back to see what was happening in the port.

There’s been quite a lot going on today by the looks of things. We actually have some of the new floating pontoons in place attached to the pillars that they have spent weeks piledriving into the ground.

And across on the other side, they’ve fitted a few new anchorage mounts on the wall. I’ve no idea what they will be anchoring to them, but we’ll probably find out over the course of the next few days.

But it’s all exciting stuff.

From a standing start I ran off up the hill and round the corner to the viewpoint in the rue du Port.

No-one else was there but me but that’s no surprise because the low cloud on the horizon prevented me witnessing the sun sinking below the horizon.

Instead I had to content myself to watching in pass through a gap in the clouds.

My final run was back to the apartment where one of my neighbours was disinfecting the stairs. They are a friendly, sociable bunch of people here, not like anywhere else where i’ve lived, that’s for sure.

It’s late now. There was some good stuff on the playlist. So not much of a sleep tonight but we’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s a bank Holiday on friday so at least I can catch up with my beauty sleep then.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: anna eakin

Thursday 10th September 2020 – IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING …

Tuesday 1st September 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

Monday 31st August 2020 – MY BANANA BREAD …

Sunday 30th August 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

Thursday 13th August 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Wednesday 12th August 2020 – ANOTHER SWELTERING DAY …

Thursday 6th August 2020 – I TOOK IT …

Monday 27th July 2020 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

Saturday 27th June 2020 – MY APPLE PIE …

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

Monday 22nd June 2020 – THIS MORNING …

Friday 12th June 2020 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

Tuesday 9th June 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Saturday 6th June 2020 – IT’S BEEN A …

Tuesday 5th May 2020 – I THOUGHT SO!

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