Tag Archives: noz

Friday 26th June 2020 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was up before the third alarm went off this morning.

Not by much, it has to be said, but before is before and it’s all good.

Mind you I don’t know why because outside was a really miserable day. I didn’t know if it was raining because I couldn’t see. Wr had a huge sea mist rolling in and it was freezing cold – a far cry from the last few days.

After the medication it was the dictaphone. I had an appointment at the hospital last night and I went to go to the reception. I walked into the office and had to get a ticket to queue up. But the woman called me over as I waslked in. I shouted “in a minute” and went to get my ticket anyway, but I don’t know why. When I got to the desk and said that I had an appointment she asked “who with?”. I said that I didn’t know – it was on the card. She looked on the card and all it had was “Doctor C”. She said “what you’ll have to do is to ring up Doctor Carpentier and se if it’s him. If it’s not him, here are all the other doctors whose names begin with C. You’ll have to ring round all of them until you find the one who is supposed to be seeing you.

Today, with nothing really outstanding that needed doing, I exerted myself by sorting out the washing that had been hanging up on the clothes airer for the last 10 days or so.

Nice and dry of course, and because of the washing softener it actually smelled nice too. Far better than it did the last time that I washed it and forgot about it in the washing machine for a couple of days.

After that, I had some things of my awn to attend to and then I settled down to carry on with a few of the projects that I started a while ago.

Firstly, this involves completely rewriting one of my websites. And that’s not as easy as it might sound either because it seems to have been amended in several stages in the past and some of the early stuff seems to have stuck in a previous format and missed the subsequent amendments.

What I’ve had to do is to prepare a template for each version, work out which version of the site each page is and then amend it accordingly.

So far I did about 4 or 5 pages this morning once I’d sorted out the templates. But it’s not just that – I’m finding lots of stuff that shouldn’t be there as well as a few files that i’d lost here and there along the way.

This afternoon I carried on with editing a web page from another site. What I wrote 20 years ago is not the same as I would have written today, and it’s not easy either to change a style of writing but keeping the same emotion that I had when I first wrote it.

As well as that, it’s been about 12 years since I’ve done any serious third-party web design work so I’m quite rusty in that respect but looking at my site with different eyes, I’ve solved almost instinctively a couple of problems that stumped me whan I was in full flight. I’m not sure how I managed that at all.

As well as that, I had a good go at the photos from July 2019 in Iceland and now I’m back in Heimaey on the way out to Greenland.

Another thing that i’ve done is to make a few tentative enquiries about going off on my travels sometime whenever. I have a couple of plans but they are not for right away or even in the near future. Nevertheless there is no time like the present to get things under way.

At the usual time this afternoon I went out for my walk.

Although, once again, I couldn’t see why. In fact i couldn’t see very much at all this afternoon because that sea mist was still hanging around out there.

it was cold too, as I said earlier. I had a sweater on, which is pretty much unthinkable for the latter days of June. Even Gribouille the big ginger cat wasn’t coming out in this weather. He stayed stuck on his windowsill indoors.

With nothing much to see I trudged on around my little circuit, mixing with the people who were out there. There were actually quite a few – more than I was expecting.

With not being able to see very much in the fog, there wasn’t an awful lot to photograph. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen a few photos of the seafarers’ memorial just recently in the bright sunlight, so I thought that I would reproduce the view in the fog.

If you look carefully you can juts about make out the coast on the other side of the bay near St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville

With nothing else going on I walked on down along the top of the cliff and then round towards home.

Not an awful lot going on in the harbour either. No Jersey freighter today, but La Grande Ancre is there in port tied up. She has no intention of going out in this, that’s for sure.

From there I headed off back home to carry on working. There was plenty to do. And I might have accomplished so much more had I not gone off with the fairies again for half an hour or so.

When I came round, I was feeling pretty miserable. I reckon that I’m sickening for something else right now and I don’t like that idea very much at all.

But I plodded on with my work and then had the usual hour on the guitar.

Tea tonight was exciting. There was a pepper left over so I sliced it up. A potato was diced and put in the microwave with a little water and some spices (turmeric, coriander and cumin) for a couple of minutes.

While that was doing I sliced up a couple of onions and fried them with spices and also some fennel and fenugreek. A pile of garlic went in next, and then the pepper.

The potatoes followed, with a tin of exotic vegetables that I had picked up from NOZ a while back. And then a handful of spinach.

More spices to taste, and then the pièce de résistance – not a French virgin but a little carton of soya cream (regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they had some on special offer at LeClerc a couple of weeks ago).

So there we are – an Instant Korma, and vegan to boot. With some rice and mixed veg it was delicious and, even better, there are four more helpings for the freezer.

Apple pie and ice cream for pudding with chocolate sauce.

My run was going to be late tonight because I wanted to hear the start of my radio programme. But badger me if the baskets have forgotten YET AGAIN to broadcast it.

Having been missed off the list of “presents” at the meeting last week, I am not very impressed at all by this. If they don’t want my programmes they should have the courage to tell me so that I don’t waste my time.

Eventually I made it outside for my evening run.

And I ran straight into the sunset again. Unfortunately, although the weather is 100 times better than it was earlier and you could actually see things, there was too much cloud about for it to be as spectacular as the last couple of nights.

Anyway, I made it all the way down to the clifftop past the itinerant, even though I didn’t feel much like it tonight.

Not a great deal of activity out there tonight.

There was a small yacht way out in the distance over by the Ile de Chausey but there were also some fishermen in their boat just off the cliffs fishing for something or other.

One of these days I’ll have to accost a fisherman and find out what the catch is in the waters off here. The waters aren’t all that deep so it’s not going to be anything super-exotic.

It was another evening with no-one picnicking in the old gun emplacement so I carried on walking across the lawn.

There were a few people about as well, getting in my way, but round by the Pointe du Roc all of the action seemed to be down at the viewpoint by the old watchman’s cabin.

W’ve seen quite a few groups of people congregating down there just recently and there was another bunch of people hanging out in the evening sun down there. It’s a lovely spot to hang out.

There was no fisherman down there this evening though. The rocks around there were looking pretty bare.

It seemed to me as if they had all given up for the duration but, having a look around, I found one of them standing on a rock elsewhere in the vicinity casting his line into the void.

With nothing else exciting going on, I carried on with my run. Past the chantier navale where there were still the five fishing boats.

At the end of the path i stopped for a breather, and from there i had a look around to see if there was anything exciting.

The two Joly France boats were down there near the ferry terminal but what caught my eye was the older boat of the two. She was moored in rather a dangerous position right by the harbour gate and I was sure that she shouldn’t be staying there.

But closer inspection revealed that her crane was extended and as I ran on down the road, she lifted something out of the forr’ard hold, dumped it on the quayside, and then cleared off elsewhere.

All the way down the Boulevard vaufleury I ran, round into the medieval city and round through the alleys to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord – a little easier tonight, I reckon.

There were a few people down on the beach this evening. Not picnicking but simply soaking up the sun. Not as many people as we have seen in the recent past.

But I was admiring a couple of people down there. They were drying themselves with towels and sorting out some clothes, so it looked to me as if they had actually been in the water for a swim.

Braver men than I am, Gungha Din.

As I said earlier, the sunset tonight wasn’t all that spectacular.

Back at the apartment I showed it to Liz and she described it as a storm in a sunset sandwich, which I thought was very lyrical of her.

For a change it’s a little earlier than usual so I’ll probably go for an early night. I’m expecting a couple of visitors tomorrow so I might even do a little tidying up early tomorrow morning if I feel up to it.

Shopping tomorrow of course, but I don’t need much at all. But I want to go to the second-hand shop because I have a project in mind.

More of this anon

Saturday 20th June 2020 – LET’S NOT TALK …

… about this morning as it was nothing at all to celebrate.

Instead, while you admire the photos of the sunset this evening, let me tell you something about the rest of the day.

After the medication (when I finally did leave my stinking pit) I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. It’s always the most important part of the day when I check the dictaphone and find out that I’d been on my travels.

I was back in school last night and it was the annual prizegiving. On eof the prizes being awarded was for the most attractive male pupil. I actually made it to second place … “yes, as if …” – ed … which I thought was absolutely bizarre … “and quite right too” – ed. The winner was a friend of mine from my schooldays, and that would have been omething that would have surprised everyone except him. He was a little taken aback and when they presented him with the award he asked “is there a speech that I have to read?” I shouted out “no, you have to read your own”. So he gave a very tear-laden speech, just a short one thanking everyone. The the MC said “it’s lunchtime now so we’re going to do something down in the canteen but you can all go for a wander round until it’s ready”. I stormed out of the room there, I’m not sure why, to wait for the guy I was with – my doctor friend again. And we saw this winner again standing in the corner of one of the rooms on his own with a few people hanging around in that room as well and we wondered what was happening now with him

After a shower I headed off to the shops. And to my surprise I bought next-to-nothing at NOZ – some vegan ice cream, a couple of little bits and pieces and a nice comfy seat cushion for my office chair.

At LeClerc again I spent almost nothing at all. And to my regret they had run out of those frozen falafels that I had bought last week. I should have bought a few more packets last week.

However I did buy some of the veggie balls that they had, and also some more of that bread flour seeing as I seemed to have had some good results with that last lot.

Back here I put most of the stuff away and then I … errr … had a little relax. As if I haven’t done enough of that already today.

Lunch was taken on the wall overlooking the harbour again but whether it was the weekend or whatever, there wasn’t a soul moving about anywhere. I can’t think of such a less interesting time out there.

Mind you it was nice in the sun. I didn’t mind that much.

This afternoon I spent a lot of time going through some stuff on the hard drive of the computer. One or two … “dozen” – ed … directories seem to have got themselves into something of a tangle just now and needed a good clean-out

Hidden deep in there was a small utility program that I had downloaded and then completely overlooked. It’s quite a useful little utility too and I put it to some use while I was at it. No time like the present.

Not only that, while doing some research into the issue I came across the solution to a problem that has Been vexing me since Christmas.

So even if it looks as if I haven’t done much, I’ve accomplished an awful lot.

Out for my walk this afternoon and I had several errands to run.

Not that I got very far though because I was distracted by something out to sea. I took a photo of it with the big 70-300mm LENS with the aim of enlarging it when I returned home.

And much to my disappointment it wasn’t the Loch Ness Monster at all. It seems to be a group of people, maybe surfers with their surfboards having a Union meeting out to sea and I’ve no idea whatever what they may have been discussing.

One of the many things that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing has been the fishermen perched on rocks on the edge of the water rather like little garden gnomes on their tuffets.

There were yet more out there today – and for a change, I reckon from the body shape that this one is more likely a female of the variety. That’s certainly something new.

A friend of mine once took his wife fishing. “never again!” he replied. “She did EVERYTHING wrong to show me up in front of the others. talked too loudly, used the wrong hook, fixed the wrong bait, cast the line incorrectly, caught the biggest fish …”

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that we saw them a good few weeks ago now digging out the accumulated sand from the old tidal swimming pool.

It’s now well up and running as you can see from this photo. There are a few people there or thereabouts.

And do you notice the guys in the yellow flourescent jackets? I was told the other day that the beach and the pool are to be patrolled by lifeguards this summer in view of the larger-than-expected crowds.

My suggestion is that the two guys down there in those jackets are the lifeguards.

One of the things that I forgot to do was to check on the roofing to see how it was doing.

Instead, I pushed on through to the Place Maurice Marland to check on my baby seagull to see how it was doing.

And there it is, on the roof, looking fit and healthy although still a week or two behind the others around here. And no sign of mummy. She probably thinks that baby is big enough to be left alone while she goes off foraging around for food.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the medieval city walls are falling to bits.

They spend a whole year almost repairing a huge section in the rue des Juifs but in the meantime there are three more sections of wall (and one on the Plat Gousset) that have had to be closed to passers-by due to the danger of falling rocks.

And here’s another one today. I noticed in the newspaper a few days ago that the stairs down to the Square Potel have been closed of “due to a serious degradation”.

It’s high time that, instead of wasting millions in the port on a job that could have been done at half the cost and twice the speed when the port was drained a couple of years ago, they started to do some serious work and maintenance on the cultural heritage of the town.

None of this is going to last for ever, and tourists – and inhabitants – won’t want to come if all there is is a heap of stones

Another thing that I have been meaning to do is to go and check up on the work that we saw on the steps in the rue LeCarpentier.

They had a digger there of course and it had been doing plenty of work. They’ve cleared away the ground from around a meter so it’s obviously some kind of mains services that are being overhauled.

As it happened, at the foot of the steps I bumped into my friend who works at the mairie. She told me that it’s a gas pipe being replaced.

While I had her attention I mentioned to her the subject of the itinerant. There’s a welfare service in town that deals with the disadvantages and there is emergency accommodation available. She’s going to get on the case and see what she can do.

If he wants to stay out there in all weathers, that’s his choice and I’m the last person to stand in his way. But someone who knows what they are doing should be keeping an eye on him all the same.

Now how long is it since we’ve had an old car in these pages? And I don’t just mean something from the 1960s or 70s either but something really old.

Walking back to the apartment I came across this parked on the side of the road by the Porte St Jean so of course I went over to have a closer look and take a couple of photos.

According to the radiator grille it’s a Citroen B12. And according to the woman who was sitting in the back, it’s from 1924

Something isn’t right there then.

The B12 wasn’t unveiled to the public until the October 1925 Paris Motor Show, when it replaced the B10 and the B2

It seems that the car had broken down, so the lady told me. The driver had gone off to look for spare parts so I didn’t really learn an awful lot. I hung around for a while but he didn’t show up so I headed for home.

After the guitar, tea tonight was baked potato and veg with one of the brzaded soya fillets (there were a few more in Noz today) followed by Apple Crumble and soya coconut dessert.

Just for a change I didn’t buy any of that today. In Noz they had some vegan oat-based ice cream and I’m going to try that when the coconut stuff runs out.

One thing that I like about Noz is that they do have the unexpected in there and it’s a great way to vary my diet. As I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed …I’m eating so much better these days.

Off I went on my run later on – all the way up the hill and down to the clifftop without stopping (in total agony too).

It was a lovely evening although there were not too many people around out there which was a surprise. There was one family just there having a big picnic in one of the old gun emplacements and a few other people loitering around just to make up the numbers.

The itinerant was there too of course, perched under his hedge. I reckon that he’ll be here for the summer, and more besides, probably.

There wasn’t much going on in the water this evening.

One or two fishermen on their rocks but no-one about in a fishing boat. Just this speedboat roaring over from the Ile de Chausey on his way back to town.

So with nothing doing there, I ran down to my viewpoint past the chantier navale, where there was no change in occupancy, down to the port which was all quiet.

With nothing happening I ran all the wat down the Boulevard Vaufleury, gown the Rue St Jean, through the alley and back up to the Rue du Nord and the viewpoint.

You’ve seen the photos of the sunset at the beginning of this posting, but you haven’t seen the beach. No picnickers down there – just a couple soaking up the summer sun and some kids having some fun.

With nothing else going on, I ran on home to write up my notes.

Sunday tomorrow, and I lie in. But I need to find the papers for Caliburn’s controle technique which are around somewhere and also book my next voyage to Leuven

That 6 months has come round fast, hasn’t it?

Friday 19th June 2020 – GUESS WHO …

… is back in town today?

And if you guessed Marité you get one point. Guessing Thora brings you another point. And if you guessed them both, you earn three gold stars, five merit marks and a night at the opera with your favourite film star

We’ve had what can only be described as a “busy” day in port today.

And if you had added Normandy Trader to your list, you would have won the entire internet.

She came into port on the morning tide by the looks of things because I noticed her in the harbour when I went out for lunch. Her turn-round wasn’t as quick as just recently as she didn’t leave until the afternoon tide by which time, as she was leaving, Thora was on her way in and they waved at each other as they passed.

Like I said, it’s been a busy day in port today. All we need now is a gravel boat and the Loch Ness Monster and we’ll hit the jackpot

So while you admire the photos of Marité manoeuvring … “PERSONoeuvring” – ed … her way into harbour this afternoon in the rainstorm, let me tell you about my day today.

Last night, as regular readers of this rubbish might have noticed, I crashed out well and truly long before I finished writing my notes. No sense in fighting to stay awake. i called it an early night.

But as what usually happens in cases like this, it didn’t do me any good at all because in news that will shock just about everyone, I was up and about long before even the first alarm went off.

When did that happen last?

So in the absence of any beauty sleep (and I need all that I can get of course) I had my medication and then had a listen to the dictaphone.

Unfortunately what went on during the night is not the kind of thing that I would like to recount so close to mealtime so I’m afraid that you’ll all have to do without it today. I accept no responsibility for your appetite.

However, a very warm welcome to Jem who made his debut appearance last night in my nocturnal meanderings. The list of visitors is growing and growing. We might even have a gravel boat and the Loch Ness Monster tonight.

Once I’d dealt with that, I mixed some dough.

Fresh proper bread flour now that I can get and with fresh yeast. I was impressed with the yeast that bubbled up just like it was supposed to and which I had never seen before. That was impressive.

The mix came out really well too – just as it should be. There’s a certain moment when the mix is just right where it starts to take the sticky dough off your hands and feels like a rubber or elastic ball.

That’s what you should be aiming for, and today’s was really good. So I left it and went to carry on with the notes from yesterday.

It took me about two hours to finish everything, what with one or two interruptions along the way.

One of them was from a school along the Lower North Shore of Québec. They wanted to use a couple of my photos OF ST PAUL’S RIVER on the “Forgotten Coast”.

Unfortunately she didn’t tell me which ones so they took some finding. And when I sent them to her, the mail was too big for her mailbox so I had to do a “wetransfer”.

By the time that the notes were finished, I went to look at the dough to see how it was doing.

And much to surprise it had risen – well over double the size that it was supposed to. So I quickly shaped it and put it in dish that I used to bake my bread, having greased it first.

Onto the side under a damp cloth where it stayed for half an hour or so. I went back into “the office” and made a start on this week’s music course. Have to try to catch up.

Half an hour later, I went back to look at the bread dough underneath the cloth to see how it was doing.

And to my surprise it had gone up like a lift and the cloth had lifted up right off the dish, so much had the bread risen.

This was obviously going to be a really good loaf, I reckoned. I put the oven on and when it was stinking hot, I stuck the bread in. 10 minutes on 230°C and 60 minutes on 210°C (I’ve decided not too cook it for so long this time) and we’ll see what happens.

And here’s the finished product.

Just look at this! It’s the first real loaf that I’ve ever made. It looked like bread, sounded like bread, felt like bread, sliced like bread and tasted like bread. I was so impressed.

So that’s the secret then. Decent flour, decent yeast, a decent mix, and not to cook it so long. I’ll have to see what the next one will turn out like, to make sure that it’s not “beginner’s luck”.

Another thing that I’m going to have a go at is fruit bread, like sultanas, dried fruit, walnut, fig, bananas and so on. Something for an afternoon snack.

For lunch I made my sandwiches with some of that lovely bread, and then went outside to sit on my wall in the sun.

This was when I noticed that Normandy Trader had come into the harbour earlier in the morning. They weren’t working on her, which probably means that she’s fully loaded ready to go as soon as the gates open.

But what’s she doing with a forest on board? I thought that Birnam Wood went to Dunsinane, not to Jersey.

By the time that I was ready to go for my afternoon walk, I’d finished my week’s music course. And now I can (in theory at least, because I’m useless on the piano) improvise the blues in diminished scales using the “motivic elements”.

And I’m actually noticing an improvement in my bass playing on the guitar – and not before time too, I reckon.

There was a telephone call this afternoon too. Ingrid rang me up for a chat and that was really nice. It’s been a while since we spoke.

She had lots of news to tell me and we chatted for ages catching up with our news. Despite her ongoing health issues she’s kept out of danger which was very nice to hear

When I went out for my afternoon walk the weather was still quite nice.

There were quite a few people about out there too enjoying the weather. And it was another one of those days where the views out to distance were really good.

We’ve seen Cap Fréhel away down the Brittany coast a few times just recently but today was certainly one of the better days in my memory. I reckon that the cape is about 70 kms from where I’m standing.

The above photo came out so well that you could actually see the fort and the lighthouse with the naked eye.

Or, at least, what I assume to be the fort and the lighthouse. Because they were so clear, I cropped the image and enlarged it to see if i could have a clearer indication of what those objects are on the horizon.

And I’m afraid to say that after all of that, I’m still none-the-wiser. I’m not even any better-informed either. The only solution I reckon is for me to go off for a wander with Caliburn one of these days.

It’s been a while since we’ve had an adventure.

The view out to the Ile de Chausey was quite interesting too.

To enhance the image I tried a little artistic effect but it didn’t seem to come out as I wanted it to. Still, it makes a change from a boring flat image.

From there, I threaded my way through the masses and walked on up to the lighthouse to see what was happening there.

The answer to that question was, as usual “not very much”. No aeroplanes, no bird-men of Alcatraz or anything.

What we did have though was a bunch of fishermen. We’ve seen dozens of these just recently, all taking advantage of the suspension of the detention à domicile to fit three months’ fishing into three weeks, even if it means, like these guys, doing it offshore in a zodiac.

But something that surprises me, and that is that in all the time that I’ve seen fishermen out here, and the numbers of fishermen that i’ve seen, I have never yet seen anyone actually catch anything.

And that goes for the fishermen on the rocks too.

We’ve seen dozens of those who have somehow scrambled down (never mind how they expect to scramble up again) the cliffs to the rocks at the water’s edge with their equipment. But today it was somewhat exaggerated. Every rock seemed to have its fisherman perched upon it casting his line into the water.

Te=he tide is on its way in too, and it comes in quite quickly. If they aren’t careful they will end up by being cut off from the shore.

No change in the chantier navale today. Still the same couple of boats, so I didn’t hang around there.

Instead I took a photo of a couple wrestling with a zodiac that they had dragged down with a van. It must be getting close to the time when the water will be deep enough to launch a boat from one of the ramps.

Back at the apartment, having finished the week’s work, I could make a start on the arrears.

A few (just a few) more photos from July 2019 edited, and I attacked one of the pages for the website that I’m in the process of rewriting. I need to push on with those.

But at 17:00 I broke it off and went outside.

By now it was teeming down with rain but I’d heard on the bush telegraph that Marité had been seen coming around the headland

First, though, we had Thora coming in.

She made her way down to her usual little corner underneath the crane where she can be unloaded. But how many times is it this week that she’s come into port?

Once she’d installed herself, Marité came in, as we have seen.

Apparently she needed some work doing which required her to be lifted out of the water. The boat lifts that we have seen here in the port de plaisance and the chantier navale have a lifting capacity of just 100 tonnes and as she weighs more than that, she had to go to Lorient where there was a bigger one that could lift her.

On my way back to the apartment I went to the other side of the headland to see if there was any sign of Normandy Trader

She was too far out at sea to take a decent photo, disappearing as she did into a rain squall.

How the weather had deteriorated in just the last two hours.

Back here there was the hour on the guitars and i’m feeling much more comfortable with them now, as I should be after all of the practice that I’ve been having just recently.

Tea was a burger with pasta and veg, followed by some more delicious apple crumble

It was then time for me to Go for my evening stroll.

It had stopped raining by now but still very wet underfoot. Nevertheless I set off up the hill on my run and instead of pausing for breath as I would normally do, turned the corner and ran down to the clifftop, bidding a cheery greeting to the itinerant as I passed.

And once again, we have fishermen just off the shore. A different group too than earlier, but by the looks of things, still having thr same amount of luck.

So with those people not accomplishing anything, I carried on with my walk around the headland once more.

Nothing much doing along there either so I ran on along the clifftop down to where I usually pause for breath.

Plenty of activity at the fish processing plant tonight. There was a lot of traffic out at sea fishing this afternoon and we saw some of it while we were out on our walk.

Tonight there are four articulated lorries with refrigerated trailers at the Fish processing plant tonight ready to take everything away tonight so that it will be in the seafood shops in the big cities tomorrow morning.

From there I ran on all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner at the end. And then I pushed on all the way down the rue St Jean, down the alley and back round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

No picnickers on the beach tonight but we did have a pile of kids scrambling around on the rocks down there tonight.

They don’t look as if they are fishing – at least, the couple nearest the camera, and I’m at a loss to understand what there is about this fascination with the rocks just recently

There was far too much cloud for a really decent sunset this evening which is a shame. We can’t win a coconut every time.

One photo came out really well though. It showed up the heavy cloud really well and made a strange reflection in the sea.

From there I ran on back to the apartment to write up my notes.

Tomorrow is Saturday and shopping. I don’t really need all that much, seeing as I haven’t been eating all that much just recently.

But I’ll go just for form’s sake. You never know what I might find at Noz.

Saturday 13th June 2020 – I SPENT A …

… fortune today in the shops.

And for a couple of good reasons too, so while you admire today’s photos of the baby seagulls, let me tell you about it.

The spending spree started in NOZ, as you might expect. But what you won’t expect is the fact that food (and drink) played only a minor part the expenditure. Some of the alcohol-free beer that I like and the last of the breaded soya fillets, together with a tiny tub of vegan ice cream.

Some of the rest went on a platform on wheels.

The way things are at the moment I’m not as young as I was and heavy lifting is a problem. I have a collection of wheeled platforms and indeed at one time I made my own, but everything is, of course back in the Auvergne and it’s not much use there.

However the crowing glory was a huge pile of history books. Occasionally NOZ has a book sale and I’ve bought a few from there (I’m currently reading a book that I bought there a while back on the history of Normandy in the Middle Ages) but today was a whole pile of interesting stuff .

Right now one of my bookshelves is groaning under the weight of 7 big new volumes of French and European history, all written from a French perspective.

That lot will keep me out of mischief for a while.

Round at LeClerc it was also an expensive day

But, once more, there was a very good reason for that. There’s a well-known UK frozen food manufacturer that has a large range of vegetarian products, one or two of which are vegan

It now seems that LeClerc has started to stock them and they had their products on an opening special offer of 34% off.

It’s rare to find high-quality vegan food at a reasonable price but right now there’s some room in the freezer so now there’s a pile of deep-frozen falafel and deep frozen vege-balls in there.

It wasn’t an offer that I could pass up.

Talking of passing up on thisgs, I managed to pass myself up into the kitchen before the third alarm went off this morning – something that doesn’t happen very often these days..

And no-one was more surprised than me.

So after I had my medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone

What a nightmare that I had last night too! I had a house on Osbourne Grove in Shavington. It had either caught alight or someone had planted a bomb in it and everything was due to happen at midnight. I was runing back there – it was nearly 3 minutes to. I got inside the house, I had to rip electrical appliances off the wall, thrown them out of the window, pick up my belongings, pick up Strawberry Moose. I could feel the time really really advancing . I was doing this faster and faster. Then I lost the way a bit and ended up in a telephone box thing – interview booth

Somewhat later on I was driving taxis last night and we were in Earle Street in Crewe where there was a taxi rank. I dunno whether there was something going on but one of the drivers whom I knew came over to me and in a kind of forceful way said “just you go and get me a packet of crisps – a packet of chips and wait for me on tha corner and give them to me when I come past. he was obviously going to do something to upset the other drivers but anyway I set off towards the chip shop round into Market Terrace. Walking down there I met Roxanne. We started talking and she was telling me about how when she was young she’d drawn a picture of her mother and made a remark about it. I said that I disagreed, so she told me about a drawing she had made of me. We had a chat about that, and she added “I had a really good imagination as a child”. Anyway I came round and I got to the fish and chip shop by this time and I was just about to walk in when the alarm went off.

It always does just as things are becoming interesting.

There was more to last night’s voyages too, but as you are all probably having your lunch or something I’l spare you the gory details.

Having dealt with the dictaphone notes I went and had a shower and a weigh-in. And while one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and it’s too early to start crowing, for a whole week now I’ve been below my target weight.

Whether I can keep it up is another thing. We’ll have to see about that but it’s encouraging.

That means that in 11 months since I had my major health scare in the USA I’ve lost 13kgs. Not a pleasant way to lose the weight but the ends justify the means.

It reminds me of the story about my wife, who proudly announced “this last two weeks I’ve lost 5kgs”
“Keep it up, dearest” I urged (I used to call her “dearest” because she was the most expensive thing I’ve ever had) “in another 26 weeks you’ll be gone completely”.

Off to the shops which I’ve already mentioned, swamped in the crowds and the traffic. The port was heaving today with the sailing school having a busy morning. Cars parked everywhere.

Back here I actually managed to unpack everything and even put some of it away without having to go and sit down. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that.

For lunch I had some of the baguette that I buy every Saturday and then came back in here to do some work.

And I really don’t know what happened after that. There was some work that needed doing which I started but the next thing that I remember was that it was 15:28. I must have been out like a light for 90 minutes or so and I don’t understand that at all.

Mind you, I awoke just in time for the kick-off of today’s football match – the Welsh Cup Final between Bangor City and Port Talbot Town from 2010.

Bangor City were expected to win this match at a canter and at 2-0 up after 15 minutes, it looked all over. But the Spuds stiffened up and began slowly to come into the game.

Bangor spurned a couple of good chances as the match progressed and when the Spuds pulled a goal back out of nothing after an hour, it was game on.

Astonishingly, in a frenetic end to the match, the Spuds scored an equaliser with just two minutes to go, only for Bangor to go back into the lead in injury time, to lift the Cup for the third year in succession.

But what a difference a decade makes. Bangor City were acquired by a couple of crooks (which I can safely say, having in my possession a list of their criminal convictions) whose financial manoeuvres saw the club lose its professional licence and expelled from the Premier League, and the Spuds who now play in the third tier of Welsh football

This was the time – about 90 minutes later than usual, for me to go for my afternoon walk.

From the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord I could see that down on the rocks and on the beach just there that the people were gathering in their masses.

When I came out of LeClerc earlier there was a torrential downpour going on and it had been pretty miserable. But now the sun had some out and brought with it the Saturday afternoon crowds

It wasn’t just on the beaches either.

The water was pretty busy too. We had a pile of plank surfers or whatever you call that sport out there two round by the buoys that seem to be marking the end of the swimming zone for the beach at Plat Gousset.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen them out there before. What the attraction is in that sport I really don’t know. But as long as they enjoy it, it keeps them out of mischief.

You probably noticed from the previous photos how beautiful the weather was looking right now. A real contrast from a few hours ago.

Over across the bay towards Bréhal Plage the colours really were magnificent and while the view into the distance wasn’t as clear as that which we saw the other day whe we saw the wind farm at the back of Coutances, it was certainly a nice sharp view over there.

It’s a shame that I can’t have a sharp view like this when the coast in the distance is clear.

But you can see what I mean about the crowds out here this afternoon.

That’s the way that I go when I’m walking around the wall – underneath the arch and onto the path behind the outer curtain walls. That was my first running track too when I started running back in the winter, but as you can see, there’s no hope of running down there today.

You’ll notice the puddles on the path too. There was that much rain that the water hasn’t drained off. You’ll also notice that the grass is still quite brown despite the rain of the last couple of days.

Surprisingly, the beach wasn’t all that busy. I was expecting to see many more people than that down there.

No-one swimming around in the water either this afternoon either, which was another surprise. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen swimmers in that water in all kinds of temperatures.

No-one in the tidal swimming pool which is a shame after all of the effort that they went to when they cleared it out a month ago. It’s still holding water.

So where were all of the people then who should have been on the beach?

This is where most of them seem to be. I’m not sure what the attraction is of the rocks and the stone ramp when there’s some nice sand to sit on.

But do you notice the boy on the left-hand edge of the photo? He’s having a space-hopper ride on one of the yellow buoys that’s broken away from its mooring point.

You can see its chain behind it lying in the sand.

My route now took me round through the crowds in the Place Maurice Marland where I could check on my seagulls, and then towards home.

But here in the rue Notre Dame I noticed that the roadworks that they taped off yesterday have not been respected. Someone has driven through the tapes (not this car) and broken them – and now a whole stream of vehicles is passing along the road.

No wonder they have to keep on redoing them if people will drive on the cobbles before the concrete has set.

On the way back to the apartment this view made me lauch.

Here’s Gribouille, the big ginger cat, sitting quite comfortably on his wndowsill admiring the view, taking absolutely no notice whatsoever of the seagull that’s on the windowledge just above his head.

What kind of cat is this? But then again when I was married we had four cats but there was once a mouse in the kitchen that they completely ignored.

Back here it was guitar time already so I had an hour or so on those, followed by tea again. One of my breaded soya fillets with a baked potato and vegetables. I do quite like them but they aren’t on sale in France officially.

However NOZ sells anything and everything that comes its way. I stocked up when I could and it’ll be a shame when the supplies run out.

Out for my run afterwards but I had to abort the first part of the first run.

There was a major gale blowing – a proper sou’wester. And the tall buildings on either side of the rue du Roc were funneling it straight into my face. It was hard enough to walk, and impossible to run in it.

Once I’d gone beyond the buildings on the north side I could break into a run but it was still agony.

The itinerant was still there, calmly reading a newspaper as I ran past him down to the clifftop.

And I could see what was going on from the top of the cliff. The strong winds that we had had had blown the storm out to sea and the eastern side of Jersey was now taking a right pasting, presumably from the same storm that we had had earlier.

Whoever might be out there in a boat right now is probably not enjoying that one little bit, I’m sure of that. It’s hardly a surprise that there’s no fishing boat in view.

However, one thing that can be said is that I’ve never seen Jersey looking so clear and visible so late in the evening.

With the big70-300mm LENS at full stretch I took a photo, and it’s amazing just how clear it is. We can see the tower at the entrance to the harbour which I reckon is St Helier, and on the right we can even see what looks like a church spire.

That’s not bad for 58 kilometres or so, I reckon.

From there I walked off across the lawn and round to the viewpoint near the coastguard station.

Down by the Sailors’ memorial I looked down onto the rocks and noticed a cuple of guys lounging around here. Nominally fishing, as you can tell by the rods, but the lines aren’t in the water and hey don’t seem to be too interested right now.

And I don’t know why they are there because it can’t be pleasant down there in that wind.

And they weren’t the only ones out there either.

This couple were here sitting on a bench by the old guard cabin, taking the full brunt of this sou’wester that was roaring up the bay.

Anyway, it’s none of my business, so I walked round, crossed over the road and ran on down to my first resting place, despite the crosswind.

The next stage of my route takes me all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner at the end

While I was catching my breath I walked back to the harbour to see what was going on there. Nothing much, but our heavy equipment is still there. I’ll go for a closer look tomorrow if it’s still there.

From there I ran on round to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord, but there wasn’t anything at all of any interest happening there either so I came on home again.

Sunday tomorrow, and a lie-in too. I suppose that i’d better do some work too, seeing as I have done almost nothing today. But I’m going to make myself an apple crumble for tea, I reckon. We’ve not had one of those for ages.

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

Saturday 30th May 2020 – I’VE DONE SOMETHING …

… today that I haven’t done for several years.

And not that, either, Rhys.

A few weeks ago I lost my keys down the lining of a pair of trousers that I was wearing and I had the devil’s own job to fish them out.

Today, that same pair of trousers came out of the chest of drawers to wear and so mindful of the situation, I fetched out my big tin of sewing materials, threaded a needle and sewed up the hole in the pocket.

Years since I’ve done any sewing, and even though I say it myself, it wasn’t a bad job. Not what you’ll call a professional job of course, but what do you expect? It did what it was supposed to do.

People have often called me a little sewer and there was the proof today. And for my next trick, I shall be knitting myself a bonnet and gloves for winter, I reckon.

Only downside was that I broke my needle threader. I shall have to find another one because I can’t thread needles by eye.

That’s not all that I broke either. The door shelves in the fridge have seen better days, and when I opened the door the last good one broke and fell off.

It was only a cheap fridge of course and it was bought with the idea that if I buy everything at once, the cheapest possible options, I can have everything at once and gradually replace them bit by bit with expensive stuff.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the kettle bit the dust a few months ago and was replaced with something better. It’s no big deal, that kind of thing, but I was hoping for rather more than 32 months out of the fridge.

Last night wasn’t as late as some have been just recently, so I was disappointed not to have beaten the third alarm. I only missed it by seconds, but a miss is as good as a mile.

After the medication I listened to the dictaphone to see where I might have been during the night. In fact I was back in Vine Tree Avenue, one of our old houses in Shavington and we’d been having some kind of lengthy discussion about different things. My brother decided that he wanted to go to the bathroom. I wanted to go to the bathroom as well so I nipped out of the living room and he nipped out from upstairs. He came downstairs, got into the bathroom just a foot ahead of me and closed the door. So I made a couple of remarks. My father came out and asked “has something been going on here?” At that moment I was rather in a bad mood so I just told him that I was sick and tired of him, every little thing that happened he’s got to know about it and he’s got to be involved in it and he’s got to be seen to be dealing with the issues, usually when there aren’t any issues to deal with. But he can’t leave things alone and he can’t leave people alone. He’s got to be in there spreading himself around in all of this.

But what took me by surprise in all of this was the vehemence that I heard in the tone of voice in which I dictated that when I heard it back on the dictaphone the following morning.

I was really quite agitated, and quite rightly so. I had to emigrate in order to leave all of the baggage of my past behind me and make a fresh start in a more friendly environment, and I can’t do with it all coming back to catch me up, even in a virtual situation.

After breakfast I finished off the web page that I had been editing – all 51kbs of it, which is clearly too long. But I had a shower, sewed up my trousers (what a little sew-and sew I am) and went to the shops.

Not straight away though. First port of call was the guy who services Caliburn. The guy who did the Controle Technique in November made a few remarks about some rust on Caliburn, and as he’s now officially a teenager (Happy Birthday, Calibutn) he’s going to have his bodywork seen to.

After all, he still runs perfectly well and i’d rather pay €1,000 for some bodywork than €20,000 for a new replacement. I’d asked the guy at the garage if he knew of a carrosserie and he said that there was someone, so I went today to pick up the ‘phone number.

Things were rather confusing at NOZ today. I’m not sure how they did their pricing but nothing that I bought seemed to be at the price that was indicated. Not that I’m complaining, because it was all in my favour.

They had more of those breaded soya fillets so I bought another box.

LeClerc was absolutely heaving – uncomfortably so. And I spent more than I usually would but there were several reasons, not the least being that in the bulk buying section they had quite a few things that I would ordinarily buy but on special offer too for bulk lots and they were the kind of things that keep without problem.

Furthermore, yeast was back on the shelves. So here’s hoping that I have better luck with my baking with yeast with an expiry date of 10/21 than I have had with yeast with an expiry date of 11/18.

Back here I had a coffee and then had a look at the web page that I’d rewritten.

And by the time I came to knock off, I’d

split it into three different pages
rekindled the links list that I’d stopped updating in about 2010
amended all of the relevant links accordingly in all kinds of different pages
started to prepare a generic index for the pages

Yes, I’ve been very busy today.

There were the usual breaks of course.

It was another really stunningly nice day so I took my butties and my book and went to sit on the wall overlooking the harbour.

No lizards today but there was no question of being alone. Apart from the fact that there was a relentless stream of pedestrians going past, there was plenty of action on the water too.

And not only that. While I was taking a photograph of the scenery, I was photo-bombed by a seagull. Serves me right, I suppose.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we were talking about heliographs and sunlight flashes across long distances.

The purpose of this photo, which would otherwise be filed under CS, is to show you another flash of sunlight on a window. That’s round by Hirel in Brittany and is about 20-25 miles away as the crow flies.

Hence the poor quality of the photo. After all, you can’t have everything, can you?

And so, in the glorious afternoon sunshine, I was out there for a good 45 minutes, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

There was certainly plenty to see out there today. Including Chausiais, who seems to have put down roots in that rather ad-hoc mooring position over there at right angles to the ferry terminal.

However, there wasn’t much time for me to enjoy it as I had planty of of other things to do, like completing the editing of the (now) three web pages that I had prepared.

Another break was for football. In 2008 the current broadcasting company won the rights to broadcast the live football matches in the Welsh Premier League.

Today they were showing the very first match that they broadcast, Rhyl v Llanelli. Rhyl’s ground has always been an excellent one, but the standard of football was surprisingly good for 2008. Real throbbing end-to-end stuff and I was exhausted just watching it.

Rhyl won the match 5-1 which suggests a right spannering, but although the best team won, Llanelli can feel quite rightly hard done-to by the result. There was never four goals difference between the teams.

Mind you, I did … errr … miss a couple of minutes of the match.

The football meant that I was very late going for my afternoon walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing yesterday how clear the sea was. And it was just the same today. When I saw from a distance this woman standing on her surfboard, it looked as if the surfboard was hovering above the ground. You couldn’t see the sea at all, it was so clear.

And I know that there’s a name for that sport that she is practising. I just can’t think what it is.

While it was fairly quiet at the top end of the beach round by the steps at the Rue du Nord, it was absolutely heaving at the Plat Gousset.

Only a few people “installing themselves” on the beach (in defiance of regulations until Tuesday) but the water is fair game to everyone and there were hordes of people taking full advantage of it.

And who can blame them? Given half a chance I’d be in there too. Only up to my knees of course, but nevertheless …

It wasn’t just in the water and on the beach at that Plat Gousset that the madding crowds were congregating.

Down the coast at Donville-les-Bains and round at the camp-site near Breville-sur-Mer they were all out there too.

That’s actually quite a nice beach and I’ve had my butties on there a few tims. But you have to be careful in the dunes. It’s a well-known breeding ground for adders and vipers.

They say that there are even calculator-snakes in there. I asked what they were and I was told that they are very fast adders

There was even a baby viper that went up to its mummy and asked “mummy, are we poisonous snakes?”
“Why do you ask, darling?” asked mummy snake.
“Well”, replied baby snake “I’ve just bitten my tongue”

I’ll get my coat.

The half-hour on the bass was interesting and I was playing along to a couple of tracks that came round on the playlist. One of them was Tom Petty’s “Last Dance With Mary Jane” and so I spent the half-hour on the six-string bashing out the chords to that.

Tea was one of the breaded soya steaks that I had bought today with a baked potaot and vegetables, followed by apple pie and soya coconut whatsit.

As usual, I went out for my evening exercise activities.

There was a following wind that pushed me up the hill on the first leg of my run, but nevertheless it was still a painful experience. And recovering my breath I ran on down to the clifftop where a large party of young people were having a picnic in what I now believe to be the base of a radar installation.

Surprisingly, there weren’t too many people out there on the lawn tonight, which is rather unusual for just recently

Out at sea it was pretty quiet too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been swamped with fishing boats over the last few months but tonight I couldn’t see a single one anywhere. There was just this speedboat coming over from the Ile de Chausey and he wasn’t hanging around at all.

In fact, by the time that I had made it round to the harbour he had joined me there.

And regular readers of this rubbish will also recall the fire yesterday in Donville les Bains.

We’ve not had any calamities today as far as I can tell, but the fire over there is still smouldering as you can see. When I was out at the shops this morning it was still going, and at 21:00 today, some 30 hours later, they still haven’t completely sorted it out.

In fact, running down the Boulevard Vaufleury into the strong wind blowing from that direction, the acrid fumes were overpowering.

It was no fun running down the Boulevard Vaufleury in a strong headwind, but I made it to my resting poing.

While I was recovering my breath I went down to look at what was going on in the harbour. With the tide being right out there wasn’t much, except for the flock of seagulls on the mudflats at the entrance to the harbour.

They didn’t seem to be very active either, which surprised me. I’d imagined that they would have been scavenging about in the mud for shellfish to eat

Having recovered my breath, I ran on up and round to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord

And this is where everyone is this evening. I could see at least half a dozen groups, a couple of whom were tucked right underneath the cliff so that I could only hear them. But there was one lot down there who were having a barbecue on the beach.

So I left them to it and ran home, where I had to close the windows because of the smoke that was now starting to fill my apartment.

Sunday tomorrow, and lie-in, at long last. About time that I had a proper sleep, I reckon. I’m having a day off for a change.

Saturday 23rd May 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day today.

Not that I’m complaining, because it’s all my own fault and I’m well-aware of that. Going to bed at about 01:00 or thereabouts and not being able to sleep for ages, and then expecting to be up and about somewhere in the vicinity of 06:00 is pushing it a bit in my state of health.

What was even more surprising was that I actually did make it out of bed by 06:00 too. Well – not exactly, but I certainly beat the third alarm by something of a comfortable margin and that’s astonishing as there have been times when I’ve not been able to do that even after a good sleep.

Plenty of time to go on my travels too. I was driving a Mercedes 800 series minibus last night. As I pulled up to a set of traffic lights in Crewe some woman came up and started to talk to me about the condition of the bus. She pointed out the chassis, in fact the front engine subframe which had corroded through in a few places. There was all kinds of little things, no speedo on the bus so someone had strapped something onto the speedo cable. It was quite clear that she was an official person although she didn’t produce any documents . I was waiting until she was goigng to make some kind of formal report before I asked to see them. She was generally pulling this bus to bits. Then she went and unscrewed the oil cap. As she did so a jet of hot oil and caught me right on the side of the body all down my clean white shirt. Of course it was really hot and in my anger and shock I shouted “you bitch”. She took a great deal of exception to that remark. In the meantime there were two guys standing nearby and they were making notes. They started to take my side in this matter and started to argue with this girl. I awoke in the middle of this which was a shame because I would have loved to have known where it was going.

There’s also the distinct impression too that there was much more too but I’m blowed if I can remember anything and there’s nothing on the dictaphone to help me.

After breakfast, I went shopping. First stop was at LIDL where I should have gone yesterday. Nothing of any great excitement there except that those nice vegan burgers were back and I didn’t have any room in the fridge.

Next was NOZ where the new hygene regulations are being enforced (it’s the only shop that has them). No-one is allowed in without disinfecting themselves and store-only trolleys, no private bags.

Just now I said that there was no room in the freezer. However when I first went to live in Belgium in 1992 all that I could get for vegan meals was a kind of soya steak in breadcrumbs which were delicious, but I’ve not seen them for years.

NOZ is renowned for having all kinds of end-of-ranges short sell-by stuff from all over the EU and there in the freezer were packs of these. €0:84 for a pack of two so I thought that I’d squeeze one in the freezer somehow.

At the checkout “there’s 30% off those” said the girl. So I went back for another packet regardless.

Things are looking up in LeClerc. Flour is now back on the shelves (so “Flour To The People”, everyone) and boxes of yeast are there too. Only boxes though – they are empty – having been stripped bare by the first visitors this morning.

Give it another three weeks and we might be somewhere with that.

Back here I had a coffee and put the frozen stuff away but that was all that I was good for. I was thoroughly exhausted by this point.

After lunch I had a go at a couple of web pages but crashed out – crashed out good and proper too and nothing was done at all.

At this point I went out and found that there was a wicked wind blowing away outside. I didn’t remember this earlier this morning.

It wasn’t very good for walking, that’s for sure, but as they say, “it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good”. Someone was taking full advantage of the wind that was blowing and the heavy seas that were coming with it, and having a good old kitesurf.

He was the only one out there with his kite though. I think that any other kitesurfer must have had more sense than that.

The Birdmen of Alcatraz were absent from the air too. Even though the groundsman’s daughter would have had no difficulty getting off the ground in this wind, Heaven alone knows where she would have ended up.

There were however a few other sportsmen and sportswomen out there, like this group setting up as if to play beach volleyball. That should be exciting with this north wind blowing right off the sea.

It reminds me of the time that a couple of us played a game of table tennis aboard The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in a Force 8 gale. That was … errr … challenging

While I was idling gazing out along the beach to see what was going on, my eyes fell upon this object.

At first I thought that it was a horse – after all, there are some horses that train on the beach – so I took a photograph with the aim of cropping it out and blowing it up (the photo, not the object) so that I could see more clearly.

It’s certainly not a horse, but apart from that I really don’t have a cue. What I’ll have to do is to wait until the tide is right out and go for a walk over there to see if it’s still there and if so, what it might be.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they’ve been ripping off the roof from a building in the Place Marechal Foch over the past few days.

Yesterday while I was passing I forgot to take any photos of it so today while I was down that end of the medieval walled town I leant over the ramparts for a closer view.

It looks to me if they are well-advanced with the work that they are aiming to do and if they start to put on the slates next week they should be finished in a few days.

Mind you, the trimming of and edging takes some time to do and then there’s the tidying up of the work and removing the scaffolding.

My walk took me through the Square Maurice Marland, where the abandoned clothign was still there in the waste bin, and out to the other side where I had a look over the wall and down to the harbour.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen some real heavy engineering stuff around here just recently, and there are a couple of big diggers that have recently put in an appearance. But what I want to know is what they are going to do with these?

This is the kind of stuff that you call serious engineering and they haven’t come here to play about – of that i’m pretty certain. It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves.

Back here I stirred a few papers around but didn’t accomplish all that much. My hour on the guitar was interesting because with my new way of playing with the bass it’s much more exciting and the half-hour passes quite quickly.

For the half-hour with the 6-string, I’ve started to give myself some impromptu concerts.

There’s also an on-line music course that I’ve found for blues improvisation on the piano. That sounds interesting and while I can’t play the piano (there is a little electric one here) I can follow the theory and see what I can churn out after 8 weeks.

Tea was one of my breaded soya steaks with a baked potato and veg in vegan margarine, and it brought back many happy memories of life in my little apartment in the Avenue Reyers in Brussels. The apple crumble was equally delicious.

My run tonight was misery. If anything the wind had increased and I was getting the lot in a real headwind coming down the hill towards me as I was trying to run up it.

Eventually I made it to the top, not without difficulty, and after a breather ran on down to the cliff. And you can see from the waves here what I was having to put up with.

The tide wasn’t far enough in right now to send the waves over the harbour wall but it would have been the kind of stormy sea that would have been really intense at high tide.

There wasn’t much happening at all this evening as far as movement went.

There was this little pilot tender boat taking someone over to Joly France at the ferry terminal, but that was about it.

There weren’t very many people about either, and the sunset from the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord was miserable too. Consequently I didn’t hang around too long and came home. I’d done all of my 6 runs, not without difficulty

Totally exhausted today, and a bad day where I’ve accomplished nothing at all. I’ll have to be doing better than this, but at least tomorrow is Sunday – no alarms so with a bit of luck I can have a really decent lie in. I have to admit that I need it.

Saturday 16th May 2020 – IT’S THAT TIME …

… of the year again and the paragliders are out in force. So while you admire them in full flight I’ll tell you about my day.

As for this morning I won’t tell you anything because regular readers of this rubbish will recall what has happened. The same on many far-too-similar mornings just recently.

And after the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been and, more interestingly, who had been with me.

Last night started me off on the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour pulling into a fjord in Iceland. This was going to be the end of our journey. There was all snow and ice everywhere and the sea was frozen and the boat was crashing its way through. I was busy doing something, like washing my clothes whatever when I learnt that we were going to finish the tour here. I thought “all my clothes are going to be wet. This is no good”. Then we had a kind of meeting, a group meeting. I was going through my clothes. Some wee dry and some were still wet. I thought that I would have to take them back and hang them up. I noticed that everyone else was streaming off the ship. I asked what was happening. They replied that we all had to get off and stretch our legs. I thought “I’ve far too much to do. I can’t possibly go off and stretch my legs” but we all had the appearance of being ushered off the ship. I couldn’t find Marianne. I was with her but couldn’t find her. I thought that maybe she had left the ship already or maybe she’s somewhere still on board. I had to go and fetch my camera and all my washing needs to be sorted out and everything and I’m never going to get anything done at this rate messing around like this.

As an aside, it was 7 years ago yesterday that I stood by Marianne’s side and watched her die.

Later on I was back on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again and we were all getting ready to get off. Our trip had come to an end. I’d been co-opted into this committee to go to do something about the ship finishing its trip so I’d missed all of the socialising that had taken place. As we were all sent back to our posts I walked back onto the ship and there in the queue, the first passenger ready to leave was one of the passenger with whom I’d spent a great deal of time back in 2018. I was so pleased to see her because I really liked her and I wanted to see her before we went and I was sorry that our trip was over. She was equally delighted to see me so I suggested that we went for a drink because there was so much that I wanted to tell her. We worked out that while there was five minutes before people started to get ready to go so arm in arm we went off down into the hold to look for the bar while everyone else was streaming up the steps with their suitcases. Just as I went to sit down and the waiter came with the drinks and as I started to tell her all about my problems I awoke. And this was another one of these senses of disappointment.
Even later, we were all on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and we were just coming into port. Our cruise was coming to an end. I’d been co-oped onto this committee to do something so i’d been off on a meeting. When it came to getting back on board again who should be standing at the first position ready to get off the ship was the aforementioned woman. I wanted to see her and was really sorry that I was going to miss her. I said “let’s go for a coffee, a drink” so while everyone was staggering up the steps with their suitcases we were going down and ended up in this cafe. Just as I was about to tell her what it was that I wanted to say, I awoke. But yes that was one thing where I wanted to see Inspector Japp because I don’t know what was planned already, and that was so puzzling.

It goes without saying that you’ve noticed a great deal of similarity between all of these voyages. and the final two are more-or-less identical (except for Inspector Japp of course – I was watching a Hercule Poirot adventure while I was eating my tea).

Strangely though, according to the timestamps on the dictaphone, there was about two hours between voyage one and two, and one hour or so between voyages two and three so it’s unlikely (although not impossible) that it’s the same voyage that i’ve dictated three times.

And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there have been several occasions now where I’ve had repeat voyages on the same day and even on different days. All I can say is that I hope that MCI isn’t going to charge me for these trips that I am making on their ship during the night.

After breakfast I had a shower and set the washing machine off on its travels, and I went to the shops.

The town was heaving and the market was in full swing. You would never guess that there was a global pandemic. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything like it.

NOZ was open and I bought a few things here and there, including a six-pack of that cranberry and rosemary alcohol-free beer that I like (and even as I write, I’m polishing one off).

LeClerc was total mayhem with the whole world and his wife in there. Flour is back on the shelves and tomatoes are a reasonable price again. But no yeast at all still.

What they did have which was interesting was some new pure coconut dessert stuff. It was expensive but a two pack was a special offer with a considerable reduction so I bought a pack. We’ll see what it tastes like in a day or two.

One thing that didn’t impress me though was the surly cashier. They are usually cheerful and happy in LeClerc but this one wasn’t.

And we are on the verge of a tragedy. I went into la Vie Claire, the Health Food shop and there isn’t a gramme of vegan cheese or Manuka honey in the whole town.

This afternoon I’ve been a very busy boy.

This new template seems to work so I set about a few of the pages from that web site and brought them up to the new specifications. And then had to go back and do some more work on them because, for one reason or other that I haven’t quite understood, I didn’t put an index on the pages.

There was also this plan to rewrite a web pager per day for my main site. And the one that I chose took some rewriting too because since I wrote it over 20 years ago, the area has changed out of all recognition.

It took me up to 18:15 to finish it and so I missed out on editing any photos.

There were a couple of breakes in between though.

No crashing-out today, but lunch was one and my afternoon walk was another. And outside was a seething mass of humanity. We’ve had the paragliders and we had pedestrians too, but there was an awful lot of nautical activity too and we even had a couple of canoeists.

And you know that you must never light a fire in a canoe, don’t you? After all, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

It wasn’t all canoeists and kayakers either.

Right out over there offshore at Bréhal-Plage they had the yachts out. I’m not sure whether it’s a yachting school or similar, but the boats seem to be of an identical type. And then there’s the speedboat roaring past.

Crowds on the beaches over there at Bréhal-Plage too, all enjoying the beautiful weather because even with a wind it was quite nice out there this afternoon.

Crowds on the beaches down here on the Plat Gousset too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday and the day before I queried the situation with regard to access to the beach during the post-quarantine.

The local newspaper came up with the answer this morning, which was that, with certain restrictions applying to the dunes and to the use of the beaches for picnics and sunbathing, the ban was lifted on Thursday afternoon.

So now we know.

We saw a seagull settling down comfortably on the roof of one of the houses in the rue des Juifs the other day.

The council has been cutting down the weeds around here just recently and you can see that this seagull here has collected some of the freshly-cut weeds in order to make a nest. The weeds are still green, and I suppose that the heat given off during the decomposition will help incubate the eggs.

Not that I’m a birdwatcher of course (well, not this kind of bird anyway) but it’s fascinating to see how their lives evolve over the year.

My route took me round and through the Square Maurice Marland.

And although I can’t be certain it looks as if the harbour gates have just opened – you can see the algae at the high water mark – and this boat has just come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … through.

At first I wasn’t sure what kind of boat it might be but as it turned towards the quayside along the rue du Port I could see that it’s one of the very small inshore fishery boats. It must have been interesting out there in that boat in those winds and waves earlier in the week.

On the way back, I encountered Minette, the old black cat that I hadn’ts een for ages and whose disappearance perplexed me. Anyway, she’s back and wherever she went, she had a very good grooming. She’s a long-hair and she certainly needed it.

Tea was a huge disappointment. I’d seen the remains of a bag of oven chips in the freezer yesterday and that had fired up my appetite. And so I prepared everything that I needed

And then I found that in the bag were just half a dozen chips, so that was pretty much a waste of time. I ended up with a baked potato with my beans and burger.

The apple turnover that I prepared yesterday with the leftover pastry, I baked that as well and that was pudding.

On my evening walk tonight there were even more caravanettes on the camp site, so I’ve given up moaning about it as it’s clearly doing no good. However I did check the numberplates and while there were one or two “50” plates (that’s a number for round here) most of them were not.

However, apart from the grockles, there weren’t all that many people around. My run up the hill and then down to the clifftop was a solo effort, although two girls sitting on the old gun emplacement wished me a good evening.

Yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we had some sunlight reflecting off a window in St Pair sur Mer across the bay and into a tidal pool on the beach. Tonight we have a very similar phenomenon although even more so

Disturbing a bunch of boys eating a take-away meal, I ran on down to my resting place on the clifftop for a breather and then wandered over to the Boulevard Vaufleury.

Despite the headwind I made it all the way down to my marker and then after a breather, carried on down to my next resting place at the viewpoint in the rue du Nord.

There were several people there already, and I arrived just in time to see the sun sink slowly down behind a cloud. Timed to the second, it was.

For a good few minutes I stood there soaking up the atmosphere because out of the wind it really was a pleasant night – the idea night to be out and about admiring the scenery.

And as I said, I wasn’t alone here. There were far more people than I was expecting to see.

The rules for the use of the beaches might be relaxed, but not as relaxed as these people here are suggesting. It’s not what I would call social distancing and they seem to be having a forbidden picnic.

It looks as if they have constructed an inukshuk too, in good old Greenland or Canadian Arctic Inuit tradition. They are going to have to wait for quite a while if they are planning on slaughtering a seal for supper.

So the sun and I said goodbye and I ran on back to the apartment.

An early night tonight, I hope, and then a decent sleep with no alarm.

where shall I go tonight? And, more importantly, who shall be coming with me? And even more importantly after last night’s antics, how many times will I be going there?

And I have to be on form tomorrow too, because I’m having visitors late in the morning. I told them to ring me before they set out because we’ve seen some silly times of leaving the bed when there’s been no alarm.

And some when we have had an alarm too. We can do without any of that

Friday 15th May 2020 – I MISSED …

… the alarm again this morning and it was 06:45 when I finally arose.

My own fault, of course. Just when I was thinking of going to bed onto my playlist came THE KNIFE, a vastly, criminally underrated album by a relatively unknown progressive rock group from, of all places, just across the bay here in Jersey

No possibility of my switching off the computer while that is playing. I’ll quite happily give up sleep in exchange for good music, make no mistake about that.

So with a late start, everything else ended up being late too. And there was enough on the dictaphone to keep my busy for a good while typing it out too.

My mother (what the heck is she doing intruding into my night-time voyages? As if I didn’t have enough of this back in those days!) was in this and she was doing the housework, all this kind of thing and a girl whom I knew (and how come she’d suddenly appeared out of nowhere too?) who worked on the sandwich stall on Crewe market and later came to work with me. I was quite keen on her and she was talking about how she wanted to find some more money. My mother was ironing and folding up clothes, putting them away, this kind of thing so I mentioned “does anyone know anyone who wants some help around the house?”. My mother said immediately “well I do” so we talked a little about the girl.
A bit later on I’d been to the swimming baths and they were in Nantwich and freezing cold. I’d never been so cold in the water as I was then. There was a kind of regatta taking place in there but I was all for packing up and turning round and going home
Somewhat later, I’d been for a walk at a market stall type of place (not the one at Crewe). They had home-made bread in it so I went to try to get a loaf of bread. I walked in and it had just opened. The mother and the little girl who ran it were running around handing the keys back to the admin and so on. I went in and who should be sitting at a table right by the bread but a girl whom I used to know. I didn’t really want to see her so I just wandered around the shop and move out. Just then they shouted that the shop was closed so everyone else got up and moved out. She was walking some times in front of me, some times behind me, some times beside me and didn’t say a word but she got out of the building first and I followed. This was quite unsettling but I didn’t know why.

After breakfast I made a start on the rewriting of the website and attacked another page. This took some time to do too because there were a couple of old American cars, an old American bus and a railway locomotive on it and they needed identifying.

In the end I posted the photos into various discussion groups on the internet and while they ended up being the subject of a considerable amount of discussion and interest, everyone was as bewildered as I was.

For once, the collective power of the internet has let me down.

After I’d done that I reviewed the template that I had written (and resolved) for the other web site that I have and then amended a couple of pages from there to reflect the new design.

Well, it’s the old design really but all of the text menus for each individual page are being replaced by a common iframe with a common javascript menu, as well as a couple of other items of not very much importance.

Doing this is saving me about 4.5kb per page (and there are about 500 in total) and also a considerable amount of time and effort for the future when something needs to be changed throughout the site.

While I was having lunch (and the bread that I baked was delicious) Rosemary rang, so we ended up chatting until … errr … 15:00. These marathon discussions go on for ever.

And I also had an on-line chat with Josée. The area where she lives in Montréal has been pretty badly hit so I wanted to speak to her for reassurance and to keep up her morale. It’s strange that there are this little hotspots here and there around the globe like this.

That meant that there was only enough time left to deal with a few of the photos from July 2019 before I went for my walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a windsurfer practising his art in the sea off one of the beaches between Donville les Bains and Bréhal-Plage.

Today we have no windsurfers but what we do have instead is a kitesurfer enjoying himself out there. The wind has dropped today, but not by all that much so he’s certainly taking his courage, as well as his kite, into both hands.

And once again, we have crowds of people on the beach over there in the sun.

And that’s not all either.

There was a noise down on the beach here at the Plat Gousset that caught my attention so I had a look down to see what it was. Nothing gave any indication of anything but my eyes did fall upon a couple of people making the most of the tide being somewhat out.

All I can think of is that there must have been a further relaxation of the rules about which I know next-to-nothing.

And if you think that that was everything, that’s far from the case.

It seems that people have been taking to the waters too. Out there half-way over to the Ile de Chausey are a couple of pleasure craft. That’s a yacht of course, and what is accompanying it seems to be a cabin cruiser.

That’s the life – if you can afford it, of course. You won’t run much risk of catching anything – in a virus sense, that is – out there.

At first glance I thought that this boat out there over towards the Brittany coast might have been Thora. She had a similar silhouette.

But back home I could crop and blow it up (the photo, not the boat) and, peering through the reflected sunlight, I could see that It was a fishing boat – one of the trawler-types.

Thinking on, though, we could do with some new blood in the harbour. We haven’t had a gravel boat in for quite a while and the port really should be trying to attract more commerce.

But plenty of fishing of course.

We keep on seeing mysterious buoys sprining up offshore every now and again with no indication of what they might be for or who has left them. And there’s another one here today just offshore over near Donville les Bains

It was pretty busy round by that little corner of the walls, and I carried on and ended up back at the apartment without having noticed anything else of interest at all.

There was the usual hour on the guitars but from 17:00 until 18:00 rather than 18:00 to 19:00.

There was a good reason for that, though.

Yesterday I used the last of the apple pie and so i wanted to make another pie, using pastry that I made myself to make sure that it wasn’t just beginner’s luck.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had bought a bag of frozen red fruit from LIDL yesterday. I’d left it out to defrost and this morning I put it in a colander to drain off.

350 grammes of flour and 175 grammes of soya margarine all well-mixed together seemed to make it too oily so I added more flour.

At about 400 grammes it seemed to have the correct consistency so I added a few tablespoons of water and mixed it in until it went into a nice elasticky mass, then, having coated it with flour, I rolled it out for the base and the top.

And here’s the finished product – totally delicious is was too.

It wasn’t ready when I finished my pie and potatoes so I went for an early run.

My run of course took me up to the top of the hill where I stop for breath. And this sight here is becoming ridiculous now. Just look at all these caravanettes parked up here.

There are more and more of them arriving every day and they don’t seem to have grasped the fact that just because detention à domicile is over, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe to go out to play.

And this is even more crazy too.

At least in a caravanette you are isolated of a sort but just look at all of these people. The group over towards the right were having a yoga session here on the lawn and the ones on the left were having a picnic.

As well as that, there was a pile of kids playing “tick”, of all things, over by one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall on the extreme right.

What will it take for people to understand what’s happening?

Anyway, I left them to it and carried on with my walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the other day that the British flag by the war memorial to the Resistance was on the point of being ripped off its pole by the force of the wind.

But it looks as if they have repaired it now. The don’t want it going fluttering off to some obscure corner of the globe. It would be something of a public relations disaster.

The weather though was beautiful and the air, at least down the coast to the head of the bay, was perfectly clear.

There was an excellent view of Carolles-Plage, the Pointe de Carolles with the Cabanon Vauban perched on the end, and then down at the head of the bay there are the hotels and other buildings that serve Mont St Michel.

You can’t see the Mont St Michel though because the Pointe de Carolles is in the way, which is a shame. That really would be something to see from here.

Something else that we can see in this photo is a group of more marker buoys.

It would be very surprising if they relate to nets being out because they are really far too close to the harbour entrance. That makes me wonder whether they might be something to do with the sailing school in the port de plaisance

On that note I ran all the way home and had a slice of my home-made red fruit pie with soya coconut dessert.

It’s still fairly early but I don’t care. I’m going to bed. Shopping tomorrow and I’m hoping that NOZ will be open. It will be interesting to see what they have accumulated.

And I have an apple turnover, made from the left-over pastry, to cook. So I’m planning on oven chips for tea if I remember.

With burger and baked beans too. I’m looking forward to that.

Saturday 2nd May 2020 – THE LEAST SAID …

… about this morning, the better. It was not very good.

And that’s a surprise because it wasn’t as if I was all that late going to bed either. I’ve been to bed later than that and not had as much difficulty peeling my back from off the bed as I did this morning.

Maybe it was the effects of my nocturnal voyaging, I dunno. But according to the dictaphone Nerina and I been away somewhere for a while. However we’d only been gone a day and a half before we decided that we would have to go back home so we went back home. We were outside my house in Gainsborough Road talking to some people and I suddenly thought “there’s something different here. Things aren’t the same”. I had a really good look around and suddenly realised what it was. TNY, my 2000E saloon had disappeared out of the drive and there was a wet muddy patch underneath where it had been parked. I couldn’t think of what was happening. In the end I phoned the police. Nerina and I were at a meal or something and these policemen came over. They didn’t ask who I was – they knew immediately who I was which was no surprise in Crewe and they came along and stated asking me questions about it. One of the policemen said something like “as soon as I knew that it was you and an old Cortina I knew that there was going to be a story in this” and they started to ask me all kinds of questions about it. I was telling them and so on.

After breakfast there wasn’t a great deal of time to do much else. I had a shower, a general clean-up and a weigh-in (and I’m still stuck at 1100 grammes over my target weight and I can’t seem to bring it down) and then off to the shops.

No NOZ still – that’s well and truly shut right now, but at LeClerc it seemed that everyone and his dog was there today. There was quite a queue and the place was packed, just like any other normal Saturday.

And how glad was I that I’d made a few pizza bases last weekend? Not a one in the shop today and there were a few other things missing too. Not like the UK or the USA where it looks as if a plague of locusts has gone by though. We here in France are pretty disciplined about things like that.

But not this detention à domicile though. It seems that people are totally fed up of it all which is no surprise. But at least the figures are falling rapidly (only 1050 new infections today whereas there were 17818 in the USA and 4806 in the UK and those figures spell great trouble for those two countries in two weeks time – the death rate on any day seems to be about 15% of the infection rate of two weeks previously) so it may well be that, for the moment we have passed the peak.

“At the moment” because anyone who has studied history and seen the evidence of the Black Death of the 1340s, the Plague of the 1660s and the cholera outbreaks of the 1840s wil know that these illnesses and infections come and go over a period of a couple of years. They don’t just disappear.

So we aren’t out of the woods yet. We’re just moving into different woods.

Back here I had a coffee and then attacked a couple of albums. I had two that were half-digitalised and two where I’d only been able to find a couple of tracks, all projects suspended because all that I could find were *.mkv files.

using my new technique, I proceeded rapidly to finish them all off, but I’m going to probably have to do a couple of them again because there was something that I forgot to take into account – or, rather, didn’t realise at the time.

But I do now – and, luckily, I managed to resolve the situation half-way through.

Unfortunately, even though it’s a very efficient way to do it, it’s very labour-intensive and so there was no time to edit any photos. So that’s something that I’ll have to fit in somehow. It’s quite an important job, for a variety of reasons.

When I’d finished (with a break for lunch in between) I went and did some cooking.

Here is one I made earlier.

It’s an orange, ginger and honey cordial and it tastes as good as it looks.

Take a lump of fresh ginger, peel it and dice it into tiny squares. Stick it in a small amount of water, bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

Meanwhile, grab a handful of oranges, peel them and take off as much pith
(“are you taking the pith?”
“Yeth”)
and other bits that you can, stick the oranges in the whizzer and give them a little whizz round, just to separate the juice.
Pour off the juice through a filter into a clean, sterilised bottle and put the solids back in the whizzer
Whizz all of the solids round until they are properly pulverised then add them to the ginger and water, adding more water if necessary.
Bring to the boil and then leave it to simmer for an hour.
After an hour, turn off the heat, add a couple of tablespoons of honey (manuka honey is the best) and stick the lot into the whizzer.
Whizz it around for a good while until everything is thoroughly pulverised into a syrup
Add to the orange juice in the bottle and shake well to mix everything in.
And there you are – orange, honey and ginger cordial.

After that I put a cupful of lentils into the slow cooker with a couple of cupfuls of water and various spices, and put it on “high”.
Meanwhile I peeled two small onions and a pile of garlic and fried them in the wok with herbs until they were golden brown.
While that was happening I cut up a square of tofu and then added that to the onions, with a tin of white beans, some concentrated gravy browning and a pile of soy sauce and stirred it all around.
When the lentils started to boil I rinsed them and drained them off, then put them back in the slow cooker with clean water and more herbs and then tipped the contents of the wok into it too.
Once it all came to the boil it was put on “keep warm” for 6 hours to marinade.

That’s my vegan pie filling for tomorrow. I’ve bought a new proper pie dish today and we’ll see how this turns out.

And while I was at it, I cleaned the oven.

That’s what I call a busy afternoon!

After the session on the guitars I made tea. An “anything curry” with tomato sauce and pasta, followed by, seeing as I had no apple pie to hand, a banana and banana-flavoured sorbet with chocolate sauce.

The wind had dropped this evening although it was rather cool. Nevertheless I went out for my evening runs And I really don’t understand why the first run takes so much out of me when I seem to have cracked all of the others

But anyway I struggled up to my marker at the end of the hedge and then when i’d recovered ran down to the clifftop.

The night wasn’t bright but it wasn’t that dark either. It was quite clear out to sea and there was a really good view of the mouth of the River Sienne near Hauteville and the Havre de la Vanlée near Lingreville

It’s been a while since the view has been that clear out that way and we haven’t had a photo of there for quite some time.

Those wind turbines by the way are probably 30-40 kilometres away from here.

The Brittany coast wasn’t as clear, however and it wasn’t too easy to see.

But that object that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing with me a couple of weeks ago – it’s still there are the mouth of the harbour at St Malo. It can’t be a ship then. It must be an island.

That’s a disappointment because I’m always looking for exciting things to spice up my photos. With this detention à domicile you all must be as sick of the sight of trawlers and sunsets as I am.

With nothing else going on, I headed off to my spec at the rue du Nord to see what the sunset is doing. And on the way I pushed on my long 4th run another 10 metres.

The answer to “what is the sunset doing” is “not a lot”. It’s lost in the clouds. There were half a dozen of us out there all told, but we had a wasted journey.

So I ended up running back fome.

And that reminds me. According to the fitbit I ran last month for 5 hours and 37 minutes. That’s just over 11 minutes per day. And when you consider my age and my health and the fact that in February 2016 I couldn’t even walk, that’s pretty good going.

Sunday tomorrow. A lie-in and then a Day of Rest and seeing as there is nothing desperately outstanding, I can have a day of rest.

My pie filling is marinading nicely as it is cooling and that will make a really nice vegan pie for a couple of days.

But right now I’m going to make the most of my Day of Rest. But I bet that someone will come along and spoil it.

Saturday 25th April 2020 – ANOTHER BAD …

… day today unfortunately. But then, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it all comes and goes in waves and I’ll probably feel much better in a couple of days.

Last night was something of a later night than I was expecting but even so, not as late as some have been. And that’s why I was dreadfully disappointed about missing the alarm again. 07:00 when I finally left the bed.

After the medication I went to find out where I had been during the night. Not very far by the looks of things. We were having a radio meeting but sending our comments to each other as “comments” on a youtube video. That’s all I seem to remember of it so that was a waste of time.

Breakfast was next and then I made a start on digitalising the two albums for today. However, I broke off at some point early on to go and have a shower.

And of the 800 grammes that I lost and then put back on, I’ve lost 400 of them. So I’ve no idea what’s going on with my bathroom scales but as I have said before … “many times … sigh” – ed … my bathroom scales are about as reliable as the blood testing machine at Castle Anthrax.

NOZ is still closed – I went to have a look – and although the car park at LeClerc was half-empty and there was no queue outside waiting to go in, there were certainly more than 100 people inside.

At long last they had my small tins of kidney beans in stock but no pizza bases again. And no pizza flour either. But I bought some ordinary flour last time so I’m going to have a go at making some bread and maybe a pizza base or two tomorrow and see how it comes out, just for fun.

Hummus is getting rather low too so, for a change, I spent a little money and bought a pot of sun-dried tomatoes in oil. I reckon that minced up with some olives and garlic with basil, that would make a delicious hummus for the next round.

But I didn’t really spend an awful lot in there today but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference to the shopping bill because I’m convinced (as are many others) that prices are slowly going up.

By the time that I returned it was quite late so I had a coffee and then made lunch.

There were two albums that I had been digitalising today and it took me until something like 15:45 to finish them. But they were both big double albums with plenty of tracks and I managed to find them all without too much searching and only the odd two or three that needed some persuasion.

These are really classic albums too and almost every track is one that I can use on the radio so it was a very good job.

However, I don’t know why but I crashed out again this afternoon. A really deep, intense one that beats all of the ones that I’ve had to date and I remember thinking to myself at one point that this is no good at all.

It’s right, as well. It is no good. But one thing that I did mention 9 months or so ago was that I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and look on the bright side. Adopt a more positive attitude. That was something going on through my head when I was out later on for my runs.

First thing of course is that I’m still here. That’s confounded many people, especially those who saw me in January and February 2016. Back in those days I couldn’t even walk unaided so what would they say now to the fact that according to the fitbit, so far this month up to Tuesday (21 days) I’d run for a total of 3 hours and 40 minutes, or just over 10 minutes per day.

And just 18 months ago I was standing up to my knees in frozen water at Etah in Greenland, just 600 or so miles from the North Pole? Or 6 months ago I was wrestling with my conscience and my better judgement (not to mention my totally foul humour) as I traversed the North West Passage – a voyage that has killed a couple of thousand people in the past.

Another thing too – and that I’m living in my dream location with the sea lapping at my feet and working in a radio station where I’m given a free hand to write, engineer, direct and produce my own programmes.

None of any of this would have happened had I not been taken ill.

There was still a few minutes to go before guitar practice time so I made a start on bringing up to date the playlist for the Rock show (well, we were talking about the radio just now). It’s fallen way behind and there’s a lot to do. I probably did about a quarter of it and I’ll have a go at the rest tomorrow.

During the course of the day I edited another 25 photos from July 2019 and I’m now climbing up the side of a mountain to a waterfall in Seydisfjordur in Iceland. And I wouldn’t have been here either had I not been ill.

After the guitar session, during which I had some fun with Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath”, I had tea. Burger and pasta in tomato sauce with vegetables, followed by more apple crumble.

It would be wrong to say that I was alone out there tonight. But half a dozen or so people is a lot less than I’ve been seeing just recently.

There was nothing – nothing whatever – going on out to sea. I couldn’t see a boat or a ship anywhere. But there was a beautiful breeze that really made it a pleasure to be out (which was why i started to feel a little more positive) and the new flags on the flagpoles were flapping away wildly.

There hasn’t been a photo of them from this angle yet so I thought that the lighting conditions would make quite an unusual shot

Having recovered my breath I went on round the headland and ran along the clifftop on the other side of the headland.

In the distance I could see a boat parked up in the unloading bay so i was wondering if it might have been Thora or Normandy Trader. We haven’t seen them for a few days.

But it is in fact our old friend La Grande Ancre tied up down there and that’s confusing me because I was sure that I saw her sail out earlier in the day when I was on my way to shopping.

Having inwardly digested La Grande Ancre I carried on with my runs. And I do have to say that i seem to be running a little easier today and my fourth run – the longest – I added another 20 yards. I can’t be feeling too bad.

An additional surprise – I put in another 25-yard run, from a standing start uphill. And that is something that wouldn’t have happened even a week or two ago. This took me round to the rue du Nord where I could go to see what the sunset was doing.

The answer to that question was “not a lot”.

There was plenty of cloud out there this evening and we didn’t have the clear sky that would have given us a magnificent evening as we have had once or twice just recently.

Nevertheless, a little patience brought out a couple of really interesting photos as the setting sun put in a brief appearance between a gap in a couple of clouds.

But it didn’t stay long. A couple of minutes and it had gone again behind the vloud on the horizon.

That must have been something of a disappointment to the girl whom I’ve seen for the last couple of evenings.

She and her friend came down the steps for a butcher’s at the sunset but they were too late tonight. However, at least I had a “bonsoir” and a smile, which is always nice.

So everything is finished – and so am I – just a couple of minutes before 23:00. Even though tomorrow is Sunday and a Day Of Rest with no alarm to awaken me, i’m off to bed early.

It’s some hope, I know, but I hope that I’ll feel better tomorrow. That evening breeze cheered me up a little so I hope that it’s the start of an upward trend.

We shall see.

Saturday 21st March 2020 – “I FEEL RATHER SILLY, REALLY” …

… said one of the three security guards at LeClerc this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day in Belgium there were queues of people stretching right across the car park at the Carrefour at Mont St Jean, and they had set up something of a similar crowd control arrangement here to keep the masses in order when they swamp the Hypermarket.

But it’s now about 09:30 and you can see the crowds of people fighting their way in. We were about 50 people all told in there.

One woman to whom I chatted in the car park later said “isn’t this wonderful? We’ll have to invent another virus scare when this one is over”. I didn’t realise that any French people had my sense of humour.

As for me, despite an early night, I missed the alarms and it was 06:45 when I hauled myself out of bed. And I’d been doing so well just recently too.

After the medication (now that I have supplies) I had a look at the dictaphone.

I was round at TOTGA’s last night and we were having one of these big deep discussions about all kinds of things. There was someone else there but this other person was being sidetracked out of it. We were talking about things, how she never imagined me with Laurence and that kind of thing. She asked “where did Laurence live?”. I explained that she lived on the edge of the city at one time then had an apartment in town – she asked where Laurence lived and I told her she had an apartment on the edge of the city at one time and then moved in. This discussion rambled on. Then her husband was there and some other guy and I’d already got my breakfast and thought “maybe I ought to get TOTGA’s breakfast as well”. But she’d wandered off into another kitchen somewhere and came down with a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, stuff like that. Then she asked for something else. I thought that it was for her so I got some fresh spinach and sprouts, one or two other things and put them on a plate. She said “you’ll need to wash and polish the vegan knife” and told me where it was. I took the stuff over to her and she added that onto her plate to eat it. This discussion skirted on and it was a case of “how long is this going to go on before we get to the point of what is probably going to be the real issue” because it was a talking all that time about nothing and there must have been something else going on that had made all of this happen and it was another one of these “teetering on the clifftop” kind of things again, not able to go d=forward and not able to go back
This was another one of these dreams with TOTGA in it. We were together in this house and talking about things. She had never imagined me in one situation she said she never imagined me in a situation with Laurence and Roxanne. She asked where Laurence lived so I explained that she had an apartment outside town then moved into the city at one time. This conversation drifted on and on. There was a third person and I can’t remember who it was but they weren’t involved in this. She came down into the kitchen with her husband and she had a plate full of something or other to have for breakfast. She sat down – she said “I’ve forgotten (whatever it was that she said), I’ve forgotten”. So i went into the kitchen and said “I’ll get it for you. What do you want?” She said “fresh spinach” which they had got, some bacon, baked potatoes, stuff like that.I had to microwave them in oil, I couldn’t cook them any way and then take them to her. Her husband was there but it was quite clear that TOTGA was on her own in this situation without anyone else. I was wondering when she was going to get round to broaching the subject about why she had got me down there. I thought that any minute she was going to come out with it or not. It was another one of those things without any exit, without any end. I wondered when it was going to be that she was going to ask me the question that was bound to be asked about the future of the two of us and she was just drifting on talking about anything that came into her head and wasn’t actually approaching the situation.

Now – do you spot the similarity between the two? And there would have been a third one too exactly the same except that I awoke in the middle of dictating it.

So the question is – “did I really dream it on three separate occasions, or did I just think that I did?” It isn’t ‘arf confusing.

After breakfast I was planning on a shower and so on but I had a ‘phone call. Someone had decided to have a group radio meeting on-line to discuss an idea that someone had.

With us not being able to meet up and go out, half of our radio programmes have fallen into dust. No surprise there. But how do we replace them?

One of the people has had a marvellous idea – why don’t we each keep a diary of how our life has changed. The discussion rolled on, and it set me thinking. Instead of a simple diary, why not an “audio agenda?”

Everyone has mobile phones these days and these have recording facilities. That’s half our work done before we start and it’s realistic and authentic. I hate these artificial things with a passion, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. People don’t want to hear a monotonous drone of an emotionless translator. They want to hear the real person, mistakes and all, in full flight and full of emotion! Authentic radio as it happens!

On that note, I went out. About half an hour later than I intended.

No NOZ today. It’s classed as a non-essential business and has thus been obliged to close its doors. Straight to LeClerc.

While it’s totally wrong to say that I’ve been panic-buying, there are three or four (yes, just three or four) more tins here than normal (small kidney bean and small chick pea tins), an extra roll of pastry, a three-pack of crackers as well as a loaf of bread which has gone into the freezer.

My difficulty is that I live so far from the shops, my favourite bakery has already closed its doors and then, of course, I have my health to think about. While I’m feeling pretty good right now, that’s not going to last.

Regular readers of this rubbish, my family in Canada and several people on board The Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour were witness to how quickly my health deteriorated after three months without medication at the end of August last year, and I have a lot more than that to look forward to this year.

6 months minimum is what I’ve been told, and it may well be more. What kind of state will I be in after all of that? And will I be fit enough to travel? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Back here afterwards, I reached a significant milestone. The last of the complete digital sound-track file was cut up into its individual tracks. And that has pleased me greatly. There is in fact just one left, but that’s an impossible one to deal with as it’s just a mix of segments and no complete tracks.

All that remains are the … gulp … 200 or so for which I couldn’t find any digital soundfiles, and I’ll have to plan another way to deal with those.

After lunch, I decided to do some work.

On my travels this morning I’d been having a little think about our phone call this morning. And I’d had another idea, which we discussed on another group chat.

As a result, I contacted a few people throughout the world and a couple of them have agreed to participate in keeping an audio-diary. It’ll be interesting to hear how kids in the UK and Canada are coping with a change in their lifestyles due to having to stay in at home. Doing it in French will be a challenge of course, particularly for one little girl who has only been learning french for 18 months, but the challenge will be good for them and bring them along.

While I was at it, I rang Rosemary and we had a good chat. She’s signed up to my little project too – may as well cast the net around. I’d rather have too much stuff than not enough.

And while we’re on the subject, if YOU fancy keeping an audio diary of how your life has changed due to this virus – what projects you’ve had to drop, what new ones you have started, how you are passing your time, what laws have been applied in your country, I’ll be pleased to hear from you.

French is good, but English is good too if you have a story to tell. Use the “contact me” button at the bottom right of the page to register your interest and I’ll tell you what’s involved.

Having done that, I did a little more organising and then it was time for tea. The second half of the curry from yesterday followed by the last of the rice pudding, and this was when Brain of Britain realised that he had forgotten to buy his cooking apples

On my walk tonight I was almost all alone. There were two people sitting in different places along the walls smoking cigarettes, and that was my lot.

The Place Cambernon was absolutely deserted which is bizarre for a Saturday night. But then it’s a sign of the times, isn’t it?

At least, I managed to fit in my two runs. And on my second I was well up the second ramp before I ran out of steam. It’s a shame that it’s so steep because that’s what is stopping me pushing on.

So now I’ve had a chat with Amber and one or two other people, and I’ll finish my blog. A lie-in tomorrow which will suit me fine and then I’m going to change the habits of a lifetime and do some work.

Today has been a lazy day when I’ve not done anything like I hoped. I need to put that right.

Monday 16th March 2020 – I WAS STROKING …

… the big ginger cat Gribouille outside the building this afternoon when a woman approached.

She saw me, wrapped a scarf around her face and gently skirted around me, keeping a good two metres distance all the time.

And the thought going through my head was “couldn’t she have picked a more polite way to remind me that I didn’t have a shower this morning?”.

And indeed I didn’t have a shower this morning. I’ve forgotten that I’m heading to Belgium on Wednesday (Government legislation permitting) so I don’t really need anything. So much for the big rice pudding that I made on Sunday.

But yes, Belgium. That hotbed of disease where everyone is in a panic, yet you have about three times as much chance of becoming a multi-millionaire by winning the lottery than you do of catching this disease.

Of course, the situation could change at any moment but that’s something to worry about when it happens. I’m under no illusions. I’m elderly, I’m in poor health and I have no immune system. And so if I do happen to catch it, I’ll be the first to go under. But there’s no point in worrying about it.

Mind you, I did worry about last night when I crashed out writing out my notes. It’s only half-finished and I did reckon that I’d finish it today but that wasn’t possible. That’s for another time, I reckon.

Just for a change these days, I beat the alarm this morning and I was up and about having my medication long before the third alarm went off. It shows the benefit of an early night.

And back here, I had a look at the dictaphone. And I’m not at all sure what was going on here. There was a building that was probably Hankelow Hall where I squatted for a certain time. There was some kind of football match going to take place between two ad-hoc teams and I was on one of these. We assembled to play our match. It was in the harbour of a town, something like the harbour where this abandoned building was. So we met and again I realised that I didn’t have all of my things. I needed some more before the match would start. I needed to go home and pick them up but would I have time before the kick-off of our match? Yes so the house was plunged into darkness again and we were going to have to have another search around to find ourselves, find our boots and find the people with whom we were supposed to be playing.
later on I was in Montreal last night with someone but I don’t know who. The two of us were on a STM bus and something was happening. The passengers weren’t very happy with the driver and they were having a go at him and he was having a go at them. At a bus stop, “Denbigh” in the rue Denbigh (which doesn’t exist, by the way), the driver stopped the bus at the bus stop, got out from behind his seat and came down the bus to try to attack one of the passengers. The passenger hid amongst the crowd of people so the bus driver couldn’t get him, so the driver took out a bayonet-type of thing, went outside and started to unscrew the window of the bus so that he could get at the passenger. At that moment I called the police and the police started to take all the details ready to send an emergency vehicle I imagine, but the driver just disappeared. So he was gone.

For breakfast, I tried some of that apple-and-apricot purée that I made yesterday, followed by some of the apple and apricot cordial. And it wasn’t at all bad. I’ll remember this because every now and again they do have tins of fruit in at NOZ where the labels are torn, something like that. And this is a good way to use them up.

Having done that, I had a look at the digital sound files that needed splitting. Another four have disappeared today. Much to my surprise, they were all reasonably straightforward and it’s been a long time since that has happened

Today’s project was to send off a radio project for this weekend and then to do another one to replace it. And by the time that I’d finished I’d chosen all of the music (except the last track), written the notes, dictated them and was half-way through editing them.

No supermarket today of course, but that didn’t stop me from going out for my three walks today.

having chosen the music, I went out for the bread and for a look to see what was around. There wasn’t anyone walking around but there was plenty of excitement out to sea, like this yacht threading its way through the archipelago that is the Ile de Chausey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the number of islands out there varies between 365 and 52 depending on the state of the tides at the time.

Plenty of other stuff out there too.

Apart from the fishing boats, there’s a cabin cruiser too floating around in the Baie de Mont St Michel and that wouldn’t have been a sight you would have seen a week or so ago when we were having all of those storms and high winds.

But it does go to show you the liberty that exists on the open sea and it’s making me quite envious. I wish that I had a boat right now.

And how are you spending your enforced absence away from work?

These two guys have the right approach. They’ve gone fishing. And I can’t blame them because as the virus starts to bite and more and more people become sick, hunting and gathering might be the only solution so you may as well start early.

What I did like was the size of the bucket in which they were intending to store their catch. I was never one to dampen the spirit of optimism at all.

My wanderings took me down past the chantier navale to see how they were getting on with .

No change there – she’s still sitting up on her blocks with half of her sides torn out. But there was no-one working on her at all. They’ve probably all been struck down by the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death or whatever it is.

And that fishing boat there at her side – that’s a different one to that which was there on Saturday. We seem to have had a tactical substitution of fishing boats.

The harbour gates were open so I couldn’t cross. Instead I continued down the rue du Port.

One thing that I have mentioned in the past is the mechanism by which the floating pontoons are attached to the supports, and I promised that one of these days I would have a closer look.

There seems to be two sets of rollers, an outer set and an inner rollar that ride up abd down depending upon the state of the tide. It’s a very clever arrangement and I hope that it works.

The town was deserted today. I counted no more than a dozen people scurrying around, most of whom were carrying bread. Only the bakeries seemed to be open – after all, people have to eat and bread is an important part of life here in France.

La Mie Caline came up with a dejeunette – at least the boulanger hasn’t succumbed to the plague as yet – and I came back home. I was tempted to go and take my butties and sit on the wall outside, so nice was the weather, but as usual I was sidetracked by something else.

My afternoon was even quieter. I counted two people out walking and another couple waiting at the bus stop.

My aim was to wander around to the chantier navale because on looking at my photos, I appear to have overlooked that there was actually a third boat in there this morning – and it was still there today.

No idea why it’s in there, and even less of an idea why it isn’t next to the other two, but that’s something else to keep my eye on. Although if I do go to Belgium on Wednesday I’ll miss all of the excitement in here.

Back in the apartment I dozed off for ten minutes or so but I still carried on with things until 19:00 and knocking-off time.

First thing was to deal with the carrots. They were peeled, sliced and diced and then par-boiled with bay leaves and left to drain.

While they were draining I made myself some of my patent stuffing and had stuffed pepper with rice. Tomorrow night I’ll finish off the left-over stuffing and whatever else is lying around in an Anything Curry ready for my departure on Wednesday morning.

This rice pudding will be a problem though. What am I going to do with all of that? A man can only eat so much, no matter how delicious it is.

My walk tonight was even more lonely. I was the only one out there except for a couple of people putting something into a car boot I managed my two runs though. The first one, I put about 20-25 metres onto my usual distance and the second one, I actually made it all the way up a couple of metres onto the second ramp. Yes, I seem to be improving in that respect and that’s good news.

Rosemary rang later on for a chat. She’s feeling the pressure and being so far from home, it’s not easy for her. But there’s not much that she can do about it right now.

So I’ve finished this entry and it’s already late. Yesterday’s entry will have to wait for another time while I go to bed.

But these days, imagine going to bed and wondering if you’ll wake up in the morning. It’s like something out of the Dark Ages, isn’t it?

Saturday 14th March 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day this has been for me. Easily one of the worst that I have ever had in recent times.

It started so well too.

Once more I managed (just about) to beat the third alarm call and that’s always good news.

After the medication (more of my delicious orange and ginger syrup) I had a look at the dictaphone to see where i’d been during the night. And hadn’t I gone some distance?

We were in a wagon train or something like that heading to the far west of the USA or somewhere. At a certain moment we came across some kind of supermarket or café, place like that, or shop that was empty. We were having a good look round and there were all kinds of things, cauliflower seeds, that kind of thing, packets all over the floor and ripped open. But there was a lot of food left on the shelves so we started to have a look through the food on the shelves and in the cold store and fridge to see what we could take with us. Someone talked about “yes, we could go to the pub and have chips and a pint there”. I said “oh no. I haven’t been to the pub 5 times in the last 10 years I reckon. I’m going to see what I can make out of all of this”. I was busy wandering around trying to see what there was there in this shop place that I could take with me. My brother and one of my sisters were there too but I’m nor sure what was going on with them. But it was round about there that I woke up. There was beer and all kinds of things in this place.
Having gone back to sleep, a little later I found myself back in the same dream again. The sister was there and she had her handbag but it had holes in it, as if it had a pattern punched through the leather. Of course it might look pretty but I thought “what use is that in a rainstorm?”. I was making a pizza and I had my brother there and I was showing him how to make it. I had to make some room on the worktop in order to have room to make a pizza, just like in my house. You have to unwrap the pastry and tease it out with your fingers to the correct shape, all that kind of thing before you can use it and how carefully you have to put it in the pizza tray.
And so later again, this dream continued. There were four of us by now – me, someone else, a young girl who might have been Percy Penguin and my brother. We were arrested for something or other and marched off. I had my guitar and a pile of other stuff as well. Percy Penguin picked up my guitar and my stuff and walked off with it. We were all ushered away somewhere and for some unknown reason I came back – there might only have been three of us and the fourth person had been taken away previously. She came back and saw me and was trying to find out what was happening. I was trying my best to explain it to her without giving away too much of the game. These people came back to start the interrogation of me. They hadn’t really got very far because I wasn’t sure what they wanted and I don’t think that they were sure what they were wanting. It came to tidying up the room, like in a hotel where you tidy away the breakfast. You cover everything up, put labels on it, stuff goes of the fridge into the main room down to the fridge at the back which is better. One of the guys said something like “can you deal with all of this and all of that” which meant throwing away the orange peel and orange pith and so on. There were some maraschino cherries lying around. I asked “what do you want to do with those?”. One of the guards said “you don’t need to do anything with those because there’s someone whom we took down earlier who’s dealing with all of those”. he meant Percy Penguin who was sitting there eating a lot of them. Anyway I awoke again at that point.
There was also something about Percy Penguin doing a modelling job. We finally caught up with her but I can’t remember what happened then but I had a really bad attack of cramp, awoke yet again and that was my lot.

There was even more to it than this but as you are probably eating your tea right now I’ll spare you all the gory details.

After breakfast I made a start on splitting a couple of digital tracks. The first two were straightforward and it wasn’t long before I was having my shower and preparing for the road.

The streets were empty today, except for by the drive-in collection point for LeClerc. The queue was right down the street as people chose to suffocate themselves in motor vehicle pollution rather than to risk the shops.

As a result, NOZ was empty. There were just three customers in there and that’s nothing for a Saturday morning. I bought a small baking tray, some small pie moulds a few other bits and pieces of no great importance, some more of that cranberry-and-rosemary alcohol-free beer and another pot of that Alpro salted caramel vegan ice-cream that is now back in stock.

They had some of the expensive soya burgers too with a short sell-by date at about two-thirds price so I bought a couple of packets. I can always use those.

Although there were fewer cars on the car park at LeClerc, the place wasn’t noticeably more quiet. Still the usual crowds.

My shopping there today came to very little because I don’t need much. In fact, a large proportion of the bill went on a large pot of thyme. I’ve been wondering for ages what has been the missing ingredient in my cooking and it clicked with me the other day.

For some reason, when I came back, I couldn’t find the energy to put anything away. It was an effort to put away the ice-cream before it melted.

But I didn’t get to rest for long. Rosemary rang up for a chat and we were on the line chatting until almost lunchtime.

After lunch I attacked another couple of digital sound files and then, a terrible thing happened. I crashed out completely, absolutely and definitively. It was just like a couple of years ago when I was totally devastated.

Eventually I awoke and it took me a good 15 minutes to find my bearings. I felt really dreadful too – worse than I have felt for quite a while.

Nevertheless, you can’t keep a good man down. Nor me either. I staggered out for my afternoon walk.

My route this afternoon took me the long way round the headland and down the old path into town past the Chantier navale where there were hordes of people clambering all over Charles-Marie doing all kinds of things to it.

For my part, the tide was out so I headed down to the harbour and crossed over to the other side via the path on top of the harbour gates.

And here’s a boat that we haven’t seen for a while.

Built in 1914 and considerably overhauled in the 1990s, Lys Noir has been up for sale for quite a considerable time and at an asking price of €120,000, I’m hardly surprised.

But word on the streets is that she now has a new owner, and it looks as if they are having a little celebration aboard the vessel.

So we should be seeing her out and about this summer.

A merry and mazy way through the town eventually brought me to the Parc de Val es Fleurs. There wasn’t an awful lot going on there either.

However, I did find a new footpath that I hadn’t noticed before. This one brought me out round the back of the Ecole Primaire Docteurs Lanos – the Doctors Lanos Primary School, whoever the Doctors Lanos were when they were at home, if they ever were.

So I had a little look around, but there was nothing of any importance going on. Just a father and son playing football and the boy hit the post with three consecutive shots, much to the amusement of his father and Yours Truly.

The footpath is called the Allee des Cygnes – the Avenue of the Swans – and it’s a continuation of the Chemin des Moulins.

Why it’s so called is that apparently there’s a river flowing through here that has now been culverted over. It’s supposed to discharge into the sea somewhere, so I wonder if that’s what we saw the other day that I thought was a drain outlet.

But anyway, the path brought me round the back of the town centre and out by the Casino. And so I decided to come on home. It had been a long walk.

Back here, I tidied up the music. It’s somewhat all over the place and it’s very confusing when I’m trying to arrange some radio programmes. By the looks of things, the last time that I sorted it properly was back in 2006.

But now it’s divided into 5 groups of 55 groups or solo musicians each, and that’s about 750 albums that have been digitalised to date. There are probably that many again that remain to be done.

While I was at it, I updated THE PLAYLIST FOR THE RADIO PROGRAMMES. At least, even if I don’t feel like it, I ought to be doing something or other.

Later on, I sorted through the burgers that I have in stock. There were some that were a couple of months past their sell-by date so I attacked one of those with some pasta and vegetables. I’ll gradually work my way through those as I go along.

For pudding, I had the last slice of that delicious apple pie with some soya coconut dessert stuff that I bought. Tomorrow, it’s pizza of course so with the oven on, I’ll make a rice pudding in that new casserole dish that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a rice pudding and I do happen to like them

And so for my evening walk, even though I didn’t feel much like it.

The NIKON 1 J5 and the f1.8 18.5mm lens came with me, and I managed a rather iffy shot of the College Malraux with the lighthouse beam hovering over it.

Nothing would stop me attempting my two runs and not only did I manage them, I even pushed on beyond my boundaries, making the top of the first ramp on my second track across the Square Maurice Marland. I can’t be as ill as I was thinking.

So now I intend to have an early night, and sleep until I wake up. I’m off to Leuven, trains and Government legislation permitting, on Wednesday and I really have to pull myself together if I’m to sort all of this out.

Wednesday 11th March 2020 – IT’S THE GRAND MAREE TODAY!

The day when we have one of the greatest tidal differences of the year.

There’s what they call the “tidal coefficient” – the difference between high tide and low tide. It varies quite considerably but once it starts getting into the 80s and 90s you know that it’s going to be a good one.

And today, the tidal coefficient was .. errr … 117. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Why this is important is because at very low tide, the public areas of the shellfish beds are accessible. Shellfish of all descriptions is something very important here and there’s a great deal of commercial exploitation with clearly defined areas that the commercial operators lease.

But beyond those areas, it’s a free-for-all and just about anyone has the right to hunt for shellfish there, with certain restrictions. Of course, these areas are usually under water so they aren’t accessible. But on the days when there is a great tidal coefficient, the public can reach there quite easily.

And so they do – in droves as you can see.

They were not alone, because a couple of intrepid reporters from the local internet radio station were out there as well, interviewing the people and finding out what was going on.

And we (because, dear reader, I was one of them) picked up loads of hints, learned a few good recipes, and met a couple of guys who were having a picnic on the rocks, with fresh oysters.

And it’s not true, what they say about oysters. They aren’t aphrodisiacs at all. I had a dozen on my wedding night and only nine of them worked.

Talking of working, I haven’t really done much in the way of working today. I had a really busy night, as I discovered when I looked at the dictaphone after my medication.

There was something happening about school last night with a lot of people. I was there with a former classmate and one or two other people. We were in trenches, bogged down and were being fired at. A voice from the other side saying “everyone who is still alive, stand up and let’s see you”. Of course I had no intention whatever of standing up and being seen for I knew exactly what would happen, so we didn’t. They were still shouting, all this kind of thing, from over there. I had some peaches or pineapple chunks or something and was eating them. I spilled some syrup all over the place while I was doing this so I had to scout around for something. I came across a towel from one of the girls – it might have been another one of my former classmates so I said to my friend something like “she will have to come and share yours tonight” meaning to share his bed. But yes, well … as a kind of joke. He said “but most of the girls are going home tonight because there’s something going on at home and there will be very few people left here tonight”. Of course I was staying and I thought that that would give me an opportunity to get my hands on Percy Penguin and get her to spend the night with me
A little later it was back to a dream that I’d had earlier, something to do with the Germans again. I was being shadowed into this underground station. I could see that there were two of them, a man and a woman rather like Colonel Gruber and his female associate in ‘Allo ‘Allo. They were surveying me so I ended up tearing down to the platform, making sure that they were on there and step onto the train as it pulled in, then stepping off the train just as the doors were about to close so that they were stuck on it and it disappeared off into the tunnel. I had to think whether there was anyone else that I had noticed who might have been with them. But there wasn’t so I thought that I would head back outside again. At that moment another German came down with a squad of soldiers and started to say something, which inevitably was about the people on the train. “Get the people off the train”. He was told that the train had departed, which was quite evident but he was not having any of this. I was thinking to myself “well, I’d got rid of those two people but I really need to get away before they come back and find me”. But anyway … So I was somewhere and there was a girl in here with me as well but I didn’t really know exactly where, anyway. There was something to do with bass guitar in this part – Graham Simpson of Roxy Music with his EB3 like mine. He was one of the musicians who was involved with this somewhere. but I’m not quite sure where
And later still I finally got my hands on TOTGA. There were special offers on the ferries to Europe so I rang her up to tell her about it but she’d booked a ferry to Ireland and she was telling me all about Ireland. I asked if she was going from Stranraer to Larne and she said “yes” that very evening, so I thought that she would have to get a move on because it’s a 5-hour drive to Stranraer. I was walking on an island somewhere. I can’t remember who was with me but we were following the two ships – a passenger ferry was leaving and there was a freighter that was leaving behind it. I was telling TOTGA this but I was getting all the names of ships mixed up all the time and she was having to correct me, even though she didn’t know the place and didn’t know the ships, anything like that. It was really quite funny. But anyway she was going to ireland and not coming to France

It’s hardly surprising that i was too worn out to do too much today, after all that.

After breakfast I sat down to deal with some of the splitting of the soundfiles that I’d downloaded. And that wasn’t straightforward because not one of them was correct.

Two of them had extra tracks that weren’t marked on the track lists so I had to hunt down which ones they were. For a third one, the timing just didn’t correspond at all with what I knew, and it turned out that I’d somehow managed to acquire a special studio original master before it had been edited down. That might be an exciting curio but it was a pain to work with.

As for the fourth, in the end I gave up trying to deal with it and managed to track down a different copy that, I hope, might be more accurate.

Once I’d done that, I spent an hour or so doing some tidying up. I know that Neitzsche famously said “out of chaos comes order” but Neitzsche never visited my apartment. But anyway, it now looks as if someone lives here.

That was the cue to nip into town and La Mie Caline for my dejeunette for lunch, stopping to chat to a neighbour on the way – the same neighbour whom I had met yesterday.

And it looks as if my assumption of two rows of four pillars isn’t correct. There they were this morning installing a fifth pillar in the same row as the preceding four.

So this is going to have to be another thing for me to observe over the next few days or so to see what they are actually going to be doing.

But whatever they were doing with the scaffolding down on Marité’s berth, they must have done it.

They seem to have folded up their tents and disappeared quietly into the night, or some such, because the scaffolding has now disappeared and Marité is now back where she ought to be.

As for me, I pushed on down to La Mie Caline, picked up my bread and came home to my apartment.

After lunch, I still had half an hour so I cracked on with my radio project and almost managed to finish it.

But my oppo came bang on time and, gathering up my material, we set off for the rocks. And I made an important discovery too. I have a headphone-splitter, which means that I can plug two headphones into one headphone socket.

And it also works with microphones too so we could use two microphones with the Zoom H1 and that’s really what I call progress.

We spent about an hour and a half down there talking to people and I ended up with about 30 minutes of speech, which will need to be edited down. Laurent is going to interview the Police to have a statement about what is and what isn’t permitted during the peche à pied and once we have that, I’ll prepare another radio programme.

On the way back, we stuck our noses into the chantier navale because we had heard some sounds coming from there that didn’t seem to be very healthy to us.

It turns out that in the chantier navale they are down to just three boats, and if they carry on much longer like this on Charles-Marie they’ll be down to two because there’s a guy there going berserk with a crowbar and ripping off huge chunks of wood.

There’s this feeling going through my mind that this is going to be very interesting.

After all of this excitement we went for a coffee and watched the pile-driver pounding away at the fifth column in the harbour.

Laurent then went home and I came back here to finish off my radio project. That’s now done, 1 hour exactly and even though I say it myself, it’s going to be a pretty good one. At least I hope so.

For tea tonight, I fancied something a little different so I found a slice of pie in the freezer. That went into the oven with some potatoes and I cooked some veg (I forgot the leek) and gravy.

The gravy is new stuff that I found in NOZ. It’s ok when you add herbs to it, but it doesn’t thicken. I had to make a quick cornflour paste for that. And the result was quite acceptable.

Pudding was yet more pie – of the apple variety, with the last of the coconut dessert stuff and some of that vegan ice cream – and I forgot the chocolate sauce.

But as I have said before … “many times” – ed … I really am eating well these days.

That was the cue to go for my evening walk. No-one around so I managed both my runs, although I have been managing them better just recently.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past year or so we’ve been watching them do some work on an old house in the Place Cambernon. For the last while it’s been without a front.

But today, I notice that it has acquired one. And this is good news. Things are progressing around here on the accommodation front. And not before time too, as I found out when I moved here and so did my neighbour, so she said.

So hours later than intended, i’m off to bed. I must stop listening to all this music. It’s doing me no good whatsoever and just keeping me awake at night.

EPIC HALL

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