Tag Archives: railway station

Sunday 12th January 2020 – THAT GUY HAD …

… his chopper out again today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that he flew past me at a height of about 10 feet a few weeks ago and I snapped a good shot of him as he went by.

Today, wherever he went to back then, he’s on his way back now. It’s not as good a photo as the last one as the camera wasn’t set up properly and I had to take the shot on the … errr … fly … “ohh well done!” – ed … but nevertheless, here we are.

And here I am too, on a Sunday, having to work. This blasted translation thing, for which I know about half of it at least will go straight into the bin and I’m not very impressed.

And they day got off to a miserable start too. I awoke at about 09:30 but no intention of leaving the bed at that time. 10:45 was when I finally arose and that was the morning effectively done.

First thing was the medication of course, and then I had a look at the dictaphone

I was with a group of soldiers who had been captured in World War II and we’d been herded off into a prison camp by the Germans. It was in a barn, this camp, and had been converted very roughly with wire beds, that kind of thing in it, very dirty, very horrible place to be, no toilets in each of the rooms and so on. The commandant of one of the rooms decided that he was going to escape so he arranged to be sent into solitary confinement, a tiny little box room stuck at the back of a shower from which it was possible for him to get out. Someone smuggled in a key to him that he used as a lever to cut the electricity in order to escape under cover of darkness. We had our meal there that morning and I’d met one or two people and talked to one person, found out that he was in my cell thing so we went back to the cell. Then someone else came into the cell, another British guy, to complain that one of the guards wants the commandant to stop this person singing “he must be a night-time guard” he said. We said “the CO’s not here now – he’s in the shower room so the guy went off into the shower room and started to shout the CO’s name. In the end the CO replied, obviously really upset at being shouted at mid-escape like this. In the end we went back to our cell. It was evening meal time and this guy friend of mine I noticed was already in the queue with his plate. It looked like old roast potatoes and meat of some description so I went to ge tmy plate to join them although I wasn’t very happy about having the meat of course. Yes, there were no toilets in each of the cells and in one all of the ill people were there and a load of people with dysentery and it must have been hell for the people in there, I thought but that was when I awoke, when I was going to get my meal.

Breakfast next, and I tried the surviving glass bowl (the one that didn’t go in the microwave) and that seemed to be much better. I’ll pick up a couple more of those – they are much more like the things that I want for cereal and desserts and so on.

There were a few things that I wanted to do this morning. First thing was to update the Radio Anglais “A La Pointe Du Rock” playlist. After all, you never know. Someone might want to buy an album and that will be an extra €0:16 in my coffers, which will go a long way towards paying for my web-hosting fees, wont it?

Which reminds me – if you appreciate the efforts that I’m making, don’t forget to make your next Amazon purchases via one of the links aside. It doesn’t cost you any extra but I receive a small commission on the sale.

After that, I had a couple of web pages to update. They have suddenly become quite topical, for a variety of reasons, and they were still in the “old” format that I have been changing (or, at least, I was changing until I became overwhelmed with work).

Anyway, they are now in the current format and quite right too.

After that it was almost lunchtime. They will be back at work at the railway station in half an hour so now it’s time to be moving.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed so the path over the top was accessible so I went to see what was happening. And there was Joly France, moored in the position where I would expect to see Granville and Victor Hugo.

It looks therefore if they are going to be away for some time.

However, something that is not going to be away for quite a while is our new friend Chausiais.

She’s been missing from the port for a few days as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but now she’s back, tied up over there to the other Chausey Ferry, Joly France II. So that’s all the full complement back in place.

It’s still something that’s intriguing me, wondering why she’s here and where she goes.

A little further on along the docks I was interrupted in my thoughts by something else that caught my eye.

There’s a chantier – a work site – being created here with this little compound, a storage skip and some machinery. That’s something else for me to keep an eye on as I go past here – to find out what they are going to be doing.

Off now up the hill to the station. It was open (which was a surprise after yesterday) and it was the same woman with whom I had that big dispute the other day.

However, this time she was quite amenable and it was a shame that she couldn’t have been this pleasant the other day.

No real problem changing my tickets for Monday 27th, except for one issue.
“I can’t put you on the 08:13” she said. “That’s more expensive and you’ll have to pay a supplement. The train at 07:33 however is the same price as yours …”

Now, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at moments like this, I might begin to lose my self-composure. The terms and conditions laid out in the documentation that I have clearly state “you can change your ticket … at no extra cost”.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that when I did my famous TRAVERSEE DE PARIS (without Bourvil to carry my suitcase) IT TOOK ME 90 MINUTES on foot in no particular hurry to do the 7 kilometres.

I might be faced with the same issues again – i.e. the lack of Metro, and the earlier train gives me 1 hour 50 minutes to cross the city.

Admittedly I’m not in the same good health that I was back then, but if I put my mind to it, I should be able to make it on foot in time if the trains run to the timetable.

Of course, it might be that the train to Granville is cancelled, but that’s a bridge that I’ll cross when I come to it.

Just for a change I came back a different way – around the office blocks and down the steps at the back to the Parc De Val Es Fleurs.

And it looks as if there is going to be something exciting going on here to in due course. There are “no waiting” signs aound all over the place and a few notices talking about the “erection of a chapiteau” – a marquee.

That’s something else to investigate in due course.

It’s amazing, when I take a walk along a road that I’ve not walked for a while, what else I noticed.

Here in the Boulevard Louis Dior right by the abandoned dockyard railway line, there’s this huge stone reinforcing wall that looks in a very precarious, dangerous condition.

One of the props has snapped too, as you can see in the photo. I don’t reckon that that wall will be there for long unless they do something about it quite quickly

Strange goings-on in the rue des Moulins too.

For some reason or other they have been painting a series of numbers in pink paint along the road. There are three rows of numbers, in consecutive order, all along the street and they don’t seem to bear any relation to anything else.

That’s yet another thing to investigate in due course.

Anyway, having picked up my bread at la Mie Caline, I headed back to the apartment for lunch, bumping into a neighbour on the way.

It was such a nice day that I was really tempted to go and sit outside but I had far too much work to do. I just had a quick butty and started on the translation.

We had the afternoon walk of course, where I met the helicopter, but that was about it really. The walk was good but I pushed on rapidly and came back for some more work.

At least, that was the plan but rather regrettably I … err .. closed my eyes for a while. A proper full-blown crash-out too. I awoke half-way through and I remember thinking to myself that this just isn’t any good at all

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, cooked to perfection, I have to say and it was delicious. There was a rice pudding a-doing too, because the Christmas Cake is almost gone.

All alone on my evening walk tonight too. No-one else around. And I had my run, such as it was.

Now I’m going to have another half-hour on this blasted translation and then go to bed. Another session tomorrow morning after breakfast and I might have done about half of it. Whether it’s the half that ends up in the bin or not, I really don’t know.

Saturday 11th January 2020 – YOU LUCKY PEOPLE!

You aren’t just getting one example of pathetic parking today. You’re getting two!

The first one is outside NOZ. The road here is very narrow so the Police are rigorously enforcing the rules here. There’s a Stationnement Génante and a Stationnement Très Génante in French Law, and here this counts as the latter with a much more expensive fine.

There are notices all over the place about this, and also a sign to say that there’s “A Large Car Park At The Rear”.

But even with all of that and the fact that the little car park at the front is totally empty without a soul parked upon it (it was just at opening time), this clever motorist has decided to block the street and the pavement

The second one is even more ridiculous.

This minibus is far too big for a single parking spot so rather than go to the end of a double-row and straddle two places as I usually do, he’s chosen to park en bille, or “on the diagoonal”.

It’s Saturday morning when everyone comes to do the shopping, there are four electric car-charging spots at LeClerc, and our hero here decides to block off 25% of them just so that he doesn’t have to walk very far.

This is bringing selfishness down to a totally new level and it’s absolutely shameful.

What else is absolutely shameful is that once again I missed the third alarm. That’s despite a relatively early night when I fell asleep half-way through writing up my notes and crawled off to bed early.

A late start meant that everything else was late too. After the medication the first task was to finish off the blog entry for yesterday. And the second task, after breakfast, was to deal with the notes that had found their way onto the dictaphone during the night.

Norma Edwards was going through all of my paperwork and had transcribed all of my dictaphone notes. She’s examined every file in detail and built up quite a file on me and was now coming into avenge herself and do her best to get me out of the office and put pressure on me about the work that I hadn’t been doing, all that kind of thing. One thing that was going through their minds too was about my injury where I was saying that I wasn’t able to move around very well so they were following me around this afternoon and I was pushing this trolley around. We ended up going through something like a kids’ library where there were loads of kids sitting around with a stamp collection. I had to go past them and Norma Edwards and this guy were following me, watching how I walked, all of this kind of thing. At one stage they asked to see the photos that I had taken that particular day so I told her to clear off. She asked for my dictaphone notes so I told her to clear off as well. I was half anticipating her to ask for the photos that I had taken when we had got back to the office after this walk and I was ready to tell her to clear off as well. But there was something specific she had asked for and I can’t remember what it was. My intention was to get her to ask it in writing because employers aren’t allowed to ask for that from their employees but she had asked in the past so I wanted her to ask again and put it in writing so that I could take it to the Employment Tribunal and have them look at it for me. This thing with Norma Edwards though – there was a little baby microphone inside my portable radio so that every time you switched it on you could hear exactly what I was saying. She’d asked me a few times to upgrade it so I could get a bigger microphone to put in it and she thought that each time that I refused the opportunity was to spite her.

So I’ve no idea what that was all about.

After that I grabbed a shower, took the glass, metal and plastic out to the recycling, and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills.

First stop was NOZ as I mentioned earlier. Nothing of any great excitement there except a pack of alcohol-free raspberry beer. And it’s delicious too so I hope they have more in next week.

After that, I went to Action up the road. I wanted some small pyrex bowls for the microwave and some glass bottles for my drinks. No luck, of course, but they did have some really cheap luggage labels which I need, and some really cheap memory sticks. I wanted one for the radio stuff and strange as it is to say it, I can’t seem to lay my hand on any of the ones that I have lying around here.

Final stop was LeClerc and here I really did spend up. In my new year resolution to move away from bottled water I went and purchased myself a sodastream.

As well as that, apart from the usual shopping I bought a couple of glass bottles, a proper liquid sieve and a proper purée squidger. They had some cheap glass bowls in too which I thought might be microwavable and they were at the right price to try (and they aren’t and it took me 20 minutes to clean up the debris).

After lunch I put a few things away and then sorted out the cordial that I’d brewed. Filtered it all out with the series of sieves and then squidged the solids to obtain some more strong liquid and added that back into the mixture, and then dropped half of it onto the floor so I had to wash the floor.

At 17:00 I set out up town, firstly to the railway station to change my ticket. I arrived at 17:25 knowing full well that the ticket office is open until 17:30 but it was closed up and abandoned.

It looks as if we haven’t had the last laugh yet.

And so I carried on up the road.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the new building that’s been taking place in the avenue des Matignon just now. It’s now finished and a tenant has moved in.

La Vie Claire is a bio food shop and the town needs one to combat the complacency of the Bio-Coop.

With 10 minutes to kill, I went in for a nosey. The vegan cheese section is very limited and shockingly expensive, but the rest of the stuff is quite competitively priced and I shall be making further enquiries in due course. I was specially impressed with the price of the tahini and the vegan sausages.

And now up the road for the football.

At the Stade Louis Dior US Granvillais were entertaining AS Vitré, a couple of places below them in the table

AS Vitré didn’t really threaten all that much, although they did hit the post early on.

On the other hand, US Granvillais were pretty rampant. They soaked up the pressure and then broke away quite quickly, going down the centre as well as both flanks

And when I say “US Granvillais”, I really mean William Sea at centre-forward.

I’ve probably mentioned at some time or other that he’s a former professional but has been out of the game for a while with an serious injury. I didn’t think all that much of him at first as he didn’t seem all that interested, but now I put that down to lack of match fitness.

This last few weeks I’ve been much more impressed with him. You can see when he’s on the field that he moves about in a different way, much more like a professional, in sharp contrast to most of the others.

He’s quite powerful too and quite prepared to get in and mix it with the defenders, something that the remaining players in the side, all lightweights, aren’t able to do. Any defender who comes up against William Sea will certainly know about it.

He throws himself around and fights for everything, and tonight we were treated to a masterclass performance of exactly how a centre-forward should play.

We had a delicious overhead kick in a crowded penalty area, a header that went just wide, a rounding of the keeper that was desperately scrambled off the goal-line by a defender, all kinds of things. The only thing that we didn’t get from William Sea was a goal, but I’m sure that it will come.

And then with 15 minutes to play, we had another one of these really bizarre substitutions that we see so often. Having attacked the defence in spades for 75 minutes and had them under all kinds of pressure and stress, William Sea was withdrawn from the game.

And I just don’t understand that at all.

But it didn’t matter as Granville won 2-0. The first goal was a scramble on the goal-line with the keeper eventually grabbing the ball, but the linesman reckoned that it had crossed the line.

The second was from a breakaway through the defence and a delightful pull-back to flat-foot the keeper with the player running in behind side-footing into the empty net.

At full-time I walked back home and had tea, out of a tin.

Now I’m off to bed and having a lie-in. And then I’ll try to have another go at changing this ticket. It’s quite a fight, isn’t it?

Wednesday 1st January 2020 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May I take this opportunity to wish all of my readers (both of you!) a very happy New Year. I hope that you will receive everything this year that you wished on everyone else during the course of the last year.

It goes without saying, of course, that whatever you wished on Brexiters, the Conservative party, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, the Republicans and Canadian Tories are exempt from this. If the World comes to an end in 2020, we’ll all know who to blame.

And for that reason, this song is going to be my anthem for the current year. I have often said … “and you will say more often” – ed … that if violence is the answer, then it must have been a very stupid question. And the question on the Referendum paper in 2016 is about as stupid as they come.

And the fact that 17.4 million people were stupid enough to vote for it, and 14 million people were stupid enough just now to vote for the Tories shows you that people still haven’t got the message.

The only way for you to tell them the message in a fashion in which they will understand it is –
1) to tell them about it slowly
2) on their thick skulls
3) in Morse code
4) with a pickaxe handle.

Yes, “if you want your rights you’re going to have to fight” and “we’ll walk hand in hand to the promised land” “if we bring down the Government now”.

On the subject of walking, as I mentioned last night, I went out for a walk at about 23:30 to see what was going on in town. Not hand in hand though. I was on my own and had a camera to carry.

The harbour gates were open so I had to walk along the rue du Port and that way into town and just as the clock struck midnight, I found myself at the end of the rue St Saveur.

Having a think about it, I don’t recall if I took a photo of the street with its Christmas lights so I took a photo of it just now to complete the picture.

Mind you, I’m not sure why I bothered, because they aren’t really all that much to write home about, are they?

From there, my perambulations took me along the street into the place Générale de Gaulle.

This is much more like it. They seem to have pousseé‘d the bateau dehors a bit more here as we have seen before. The ski slope is certainly different, although I’m still not sure why they would want one.

But apart from that, it’s still pretty much the same as previous years and I do with that they would try to do something different next year.

As for the rue Lecampion, I’m not quite sure what to say.

What certainly didn’t help was that they put out the overhead lights just as I was preparing to photograph the street, so we were just left with the lights up the sides of the shops.

The overhead lights going out was the cue for me to go home. And by the time I returned here I reckoned that I hadn’t even encountered a dozen people wandering around.

There were a few noisy parties going on – even one in this building, and so I was grateful for 1.2 metres of solid Chausey granite walls between me and the rest of the world.

Not feeling in the least bit tired, I did some personal stuff on the computer. And no-one was more surprised than me to notice that the time was now 03:30. Where had the time gone?

Bedtime by now, I reckon, even if I didn’t feel like sleep. I have to make an effort.

And sleep I must have had. No alarm and so I awoke at 07:00. Not the slightest chance of me showing a leg at that time of morning.

And neither was there any chance at 09:00. This is after all a Bank Holiday, no alarm, I’m entitled to a rest, and I’ve had a late night too.

What is much more like it is … errr … 12:15. That’s a REAL lie-in.

As for any voyage that I might have had, well, what’s this bit about hunting furs last night? I don’t remember very much at all but apparently someone living in France who could catch 60 squirrels and skin them had the same style of life as someone normal, which of course I found hard to believe and the people to whom I was telling this story they found it hard to believe too but apparently that’s how it went and that’s really all that I remember about last night.

Breakfasting at 13:00 is much more like it too and so seeing as I had my fig roll and (finally) some strawberry jam. Yes, jam today. And I hope that it will last so that there will be jam tomorrow too. Perhaps I ought to think about making a jam tart.

So once the breakfast was over, there was work to be done. And as I promised myself, I attacked Project 008 for the radio.

That’s now finished and, even though I say it myself, I think that it’s the best to date. It’s not just that my technique is improving, but that instead of speaking “off the cuff” as I would normally like to do, I’ve started to write scripts.

That means that I’m not umming and ahhing as much (which means that there is less stuff to cut out) and I’m not pausing the dictaphone as often while I look for material, so it sounds much more seamless.

Once I’d finished it and played it through to make sure that it was as I wanted it with no mistakes, I went out for my afternoon walk.

With having not been out for any bread this morning (I’d missed lunch of course) I took the long way out right around the new bit of path that they had excavated after the rockfall and where I had met my Waterloo in May.

Crowds of people out and about, even if the weather was pretty miserable and you couldn’t see a thing.

Once I was out, I was going to stay out, and well out too.

My trip took me past the chantier navale where I could see what was going on. Pecheur de Lys was back on dry land after her little sojourn through the summer in the water. She’s looking rather sad though and could do with a coat of paint.

Spirit of Conrad was there too, as were the other two fishing boats. But there was no-one out there working on them. “Knocked off for the holidays” I reckoned.

The tide was out so the harbour gates were closed, which meant that I could take the path over the top and across to the other side.

Where the fish processing plant is, there is a huge concrete apron and the seabirds here have learnt quite quickly to take advantage of it.

This gull is just one of many that will scavenge a mollusc out of the silt and fly over here to drop it on the concrete to break it open, and then dive down for a feast. It really was quite impressive.

The wildlife kingdom is amazingly versatile and can adapt to most kinds of environment – if only humans would let them.

With nothing exciting going on in the inner harbour, I went for a walk over to the port de plaisance, the yacht harbour, to see what was going on there.

Not an awful lot, but there were a few boats that we have seen on several occasions, such as the lifeboat over there on the far side.

That has plenty of use of course and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw it disappear into an enormous wave during the storm that we had the other day.

Here’s another one that we have seen a few times in the past.

She’s Lys Noir, and when we’ve seen her moored up in the harbour, it’s usually been in the wet harbour at the back of where I’m standing, where boats like Thora, Normandy Trader and the gravel boats tie up.

So why she should be here, I don’t know. If she’s advertising cruises, she won’t have many people passing by to read the notices where she is.

This is a boat that we’ve seen even more often than Lys Noir.

She’s La Granvillaise and immediately recognisable by the “G90” on her bows. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she too spent some time in the chantier navale a while ago being given a good going-over.

But with all of these boats, there isn’t presumably much happening right now so they are laid up for the winter.

Nevertheless, with all of the tourists here right now, wandering aimlessly around the harbour, I’d have had them plastered with adverts for the summer season trips that they do, and put them where people could actually see tham.

My perambulations took me right along the seafront, such as it is here, through the new modern apartment complex at the end, and back into town via the rue St Gaud and the rue St Saveur.

But round the back of the Mairie in the rue du Commandant Yvon, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever was, is another set of electric vehicle charging points.

Europe needs to get its act together with the phasing out of new internal-combustion engines cars by 2040, and it’s good to see that here in France they are organising themselves.

And so I decided that I’ll keep a closer eye out to see what I could find, and I didn’t have to go far to find some more.

Not even 50 metres, I reckoned. Here are two more on the public car park around the corner off the Cours Jonville. So with the two that I saw at the railway station earlier this week, that makes 6 that I’ve found in Granville without looking too far.

And that’s not counting the half-dozen or so that are installed at the LeClerc supermarket on the edge of town.

Across the road from the car park I noticed this old Porsche Carrera.

Nice and interesting the car might be, but it wasn’t the car that caught my eye but its registration number. It has the “F” for France on the number plate of course, but the registration is hors serie – out of the usual run of numbers, whether pre-2009 or post-2009.

It could mean absolutely anything of course, so I shall have to make further enquiries about it. I did look at the insurance sticker in the window and that was displaying a “WW” series number, indicating Trade Plates.

Back home, I didn’t do a great deal. After all, it is a Bank Holiday.

later on, I made tea though.

Same as Christmas night as well. Seitan slices roasted in olive oil with onions, garlic, gravy and herbs, with roast potatoes in olive oil and mint. Vegetables included an endive, peas and carrots, green beans, a leek and some sprouts.

Followed by Christmas cake for pudding, you really cannot even begin to imagine just how delicious it all was.

Plenty of sprouts and endives left to finish off, ad a leek too, but I intend to make a leek and potato soup with that sometime soon.

This evening I was all alone on my little walk around. Not a soul out there. I managed my run too, and made it to the top of the first ramp.

So I’m off to bed now. It’s not early, because I’ve been busy. I found a “live” concert from the BBC with only a small audience, and as I have a project on the back burner that needs a small audience, I was stripping out the applause to use.

But here’s a thing – the applause is evidently over-dubbed, without question. And as they didn’t have enough material for the spot, they’ve extended the applauses by adding three or four together.

None of that is the issue though. What is the issue is that they seem to have done it all on a two-track recorder in stereo and without the overdubbing facility that multi-tracking can give you, they have simply joined the tracks together – and you can see all the joins. Tiny little milli-seconds of silence.

What I’ve had to do is to edit the applauses after I’ve stripped them out, so that the joins have gone and it all looks pretty seamless.

Given the facilities they have there, it’s not very good at all, especially when even a home-based four-track set-up like the cheap affair that I have can produce a seamless show.

Maybe I’m in the wrong job.

Monday 30th December 2019 – I BET …

… that when you first saw the photo of this car in this parking place, you thought to yourself “he’s off on this pathetic parking lark yet again!”

But not a bit of it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my perambulations around Paris two weeks or so ago and I featured one of the new electric vehicle charging points that are springing up like mushrooms all over the developed world (except of course in the UK, for obvious reasons).

Well, here’s another one. Or two, to be precise, right outside the railway station in Granville. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the world is racing ahead.

And quite right too. The EU is to phase out the production of the internal combustion engine by 2040. The biggest obstacle to electric vehicles is the lack of charging points, but this is changing quite rapidly.

Other things that I wish would change quite rapidly are my sleeping habits. What with one thing and another (and once you start, you’ll be surprised how many other things there are) it was about 01:45 when I eventually went to bed last night. 4:33 of sleep last night, of which 3:42 were classed as “restful”.

This is getting beyond a joke.

Even so, there was still plenty of time for me to go off a-voyaging. I had to get up early next morning and there was a bit of an issue. There were two girls at my house. One of them was part of my family but I can’t remember who she was and the other one was her friend who was staying with us. Round about 11:00 they got up and about 11:15 or 11:45 something like that they went out. That was the last we’d seen of them. We knew that they were going to a dance. There we were, sitting there, a big group of us, drumming our fingers on the table wondering where they hall they had got to. I thought that this is no good – I need the car. I have to get up in the morning and everything like that. Round about 02:30 they suddenly appeared back again. They’d been on a dance, off to a night club all this kind of thing and we were all making disparaging remarks about “WHAT time was it you went out this morning?” All of that kind of thing. These girls weren’t giving a straight answer because they were a bit embarrassed something like that about it. But the situation concerned one of my Cortinas. I’d been driving around in it and the MoT had expired a while ago. I remember thinking to myself that I ought to have this vehicle on two number plates so I can get two different MoTs which would overlap so that if one expired I’d just put the plates on it for the other MoT and run that for another few months and so on. I can’t remember what on earth that was all about but that was when I awoke for the first time – round about 04:00.
But later on there was something going on to do with the radio. Some young boy had been at the radio who was doing his stuff with very primitive equipment (something like I’m doing at the moment I suppose) and tired of being pushed to the bottom of the pile because of that he went out and bought some decent stuff which improved his quality and improved his output and annoyed all of his colleagues because he’d now got some superior kind of stuff.

It was something of a struggle for me to leave my stinking pit this morning, which should not be a surprise after the night that I had, but I did make it up before the 3rd alarm.

Having taken the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes and then went for breakfast once the medication had worked.

After breakfast I checked my communications and found that Alison had replied to me with her plans for the weekend when I’ll be at Castle Anthrax. And so I could go ahead with making my travel arrangements.

Thursday 9th January
09:00 – Granville to Paris Montparnasse, arriving 12:05 – and in the main arrivals hall too if my reading is correct.
13:15 – Paris Gare du Nord – Lille Flanders arriving 14:18
14:41 – Lille Europe – Bruxelles-Midi arriving 15:17
and then a local train to Leuven
Sunday 12th January
08:43 – Bruxelles-Midi – Paris Gare du Nord arriving 10:05
10:57 – Paris St Lazare – Caen arriving 12:58
14:10 – Caen – Granville arriving 15:44.

Of course, all of this is somewhat … errr … facultative. It’s all very dependent upon the availability of transport in the middle of a General Strike and I can see myself as having as many exciting adventures as did the Knights of King Arthur as they went to visit Castle Anthrax.

With booking my accommodation too, and my local train between Brussels and Leuven, it was quite late when I went for my shower.

And SHOCK! HORROR! – I’ve gained 2kgs since my last shower. That can’t possibly be right and seems to indicate that my bathroom scales are about as reliable as the blood count readings from Castle Anthrax.

Off I went into town and up to the railway station (and the electric vehicle charging point) to pick up my tickets. And there was quite a pantomime about getting them from the machine.

That’s why I always like to pick them up before I travel. There’s no-one in the ticket office at the time my train leaves so if the machine has a seizure on the morning of my travel then I really am cooked.

At LIDL I spent more money than I was expecting.

One thing that I said that I would do is to take more care of my living arrangements, and forgetting to change my bedding for weeks isn’t helping things. Today though at LIDL they had some flannelette sheets on offer so I bought a couple. A dark blue one to go with one bedding set and a light blue one to go with the other.

They weren’t very expensive for what they are and the quality isn’t brilliant but alternating them around more regularly means that they will last somewhat.

On the way back home I picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and then headed for home.

At the recycling centre across the road from my building the lorry had come to empty one of the containers.

Not being in any particular rush, I watched it for a while as it emptied the plastics bin. And then watched for a couple more minutes while the crew of the lorry went scampering around trying to catch the pieces of plastic that where Blowing In The Wind.

The moral of this story is – don’t empty the lightweight plastics containers in a gale-force wind.

Back at the apartment I had a few things to do that took me up to lunch, and once lunch was out of the way I had a little project to attend to.

My “recording sessions” take place at the moment using an external microphone with the dictaphone, and then plugging the dictaphone into the computer to download the files and then to enhance them etc with my sound editing program.

But there’s no reason whatever why I can’t plug the mike into the computer and then record directly and edit “on the fly”, which will save me a couple of steps in the process.

And so I had the computer out of its cubby hole and plugged the mike in, and then had a play.

The result was awful. The sound level was abysmal, even on max input, and there was a persistent hissing on the recording. It needed so much “enhancing” to remove the hissing that it sounded as if i was speaking with my head in a bucket.

And so it’s back to the dictaphone while I think of Plan B. I hadn’t really realised just what good quality I was getting from the dictaphone with an external mike.

But all was not lost. It gave me an opportunity to reroute a few cables that needed rerouting, even if I did plug the HDMI cable into the incorrect socket and spent 10 minutes wandering why I wasn’t receiving a signal at the screen.

That was the signal for me to go for my afternoon walk.

And what a beautiful afternoon it was. We had glorious sunshine even if it was quite low down in the sky. There were plenty of people out, even walking along the beach today seeing as the tide was out.

And the wind had dropped dramatically from how it was earlier too. And that was very welcome news.

It wasn’t just around on the grassy field on the north side of the headland and on the beach that the crowds were massing.

Although they are the most popular places to be, they aren’t the only places. There were the hordes of people on the southern side by the big car park on the boulevard Vaufleury too.

They seemed to be admiring the harbour and the view across the Baie de Mont St Michel towards the Pointe de Carolles, as well as soaking up the best of the late afternoon sun.

With the tide being right out, there wasn’t much action down in the outer tidal harbour. But there were a few things of interest though.

The other day we talked about NAABSA harbours – the “Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground” situation where ships are allowed to settle on the silt in tiday harbours where there isn’t enough water to keep them afloat.

Over there at the ferry terminal, Joly France is there, and as there is no water underneath her, she’s in a NAABSA state and it doesn’t seem to concern her owners at all.

She wasn’t the only one either.

In front of her, likewise in a NAABSA state, is Chausiais, the new freighter that the owners of the Ile de Chausey have bought, presumably to provide a freight service over to the island, even if I can’t see what would be going over that couldn’t be carried in the hold of one of the ferries.

Still, we shall see in due course, won’t we? I sense a Cunning Plan.

That was my cue to come home where, shame as it is to say it, I crashed out, leaving my coffee undrunk.

And if ever there was a moment where I really did feel like hauling myself off to bed to crash out definitively, then that was it. But I fought off the feeling, even if I did feel like death.

As a result, my plan to attack the dialogue for my next radio project fell flat without very much progress having been made. I need to finish that one off as well as do another one by the end of the week, although I’m not sure quite when I’ll fit it all in.

But whatever happens, I mustn’t fall behind otherwise I’ll never get back in front again.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with the stuffing left over from late last week. And I don’t know why, but it was the best one that I’ve ever made.

If anyone is interested in my stuffing mix, it’s as follows –
Start by boiling up some quinoa or bulghour with a little water and some really spicy chili powder, and leave it to simmer.
Meanwhile, dice up some onion, garlic (have to have garlic of course!), a tomato, mushrooms, olives and whatever else you might have lying around that is suitable, a handful or two of salted peanuts, and then some herbs. I use oregano, basil and tarragon, as well as ground black pepper.
Then, add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a couple more of tomato sauce (not ketchup, of course!)
Mix it all up together and then add the bulghour or quinoa, which should by now be ready, and mix that well in too. You need your stuffing to be very moist, but not runny.
Cut round the stalk of the pepper and scoop out the core, the seeds and the pith. Then stuff it with your stuffing mix.
Into the microwave at medium-full (that’s 640 watts on mine) for 7 minutes 30 seconds while the rice and veg are cooking.
The when the rice is cooked and you’re rinsing it out with boiling water, give the pepper 90 seconds on max (that’s 800 watts on mine)

If you try it, let me know how it turns out, and let me know if you have any suggestions to make it differently. There’s a “contact me” link down at the bottom right corner of the screen.

After that I went out for my evening walk in the freezing cold, because the temperature has dropped dramatically. I was the only one out there, which was no surprise.

But while I was out there, I checked and sure enough, Granville really is back in the harbour, tied up alongside Victor Hugo.

It looks like her a-roaming is over for a few days.

And so was mine. For tonight anyway, I headed for home. I managed to fit in my run, although I was dead by the time that I reached the ramp and only made four or five paces up it.

It’s really disappointing that I can’t seem to push on and run for longer. I remember when I went back running in the mid-90s, when after a few weeks I suddenly found my second wind and could run for miles. I can’t seem to break this barrier these days.

Mind you, I’m not sure what I’m expecting at my age. It’s not every OAP who goes out running late at night every night, especially one who is supposed to be on his death bed. I should be grateful for what I can do.

This evening I didn’t see Minette the old black cat but I saw her mum who was on the doorstep chatting to a couple of people. So I had a little chat, wished them the compliments of the season and came home.

Now I’ve written up my journal, I’m off to bed. 6.5 hours of sleep if I’m lucky. That’s a luxury these days so I need to make the most of it.

But not quite yet. I’ve been listening to No Smoke Without Fire by Wishbone Ash. It’s an album that I’ve owned for probably 30 years but I haven’t heard it for probably 29 years. And while it won’t ever be anything like as good as the first couple of albums, I’m astonished that I haven’t played it more often because some of it is really excellent.

And as that finished, onto the playlist came Fur by Jane Wiedlin. Not an album that you would normally associate with me but Janet Marsden played it to me late one night and there are a couple of tracks on it that are totally unexpected in their brilliance. They bring back a couple of memories of one particular night in Crewe, and how things could have been different had I been in a better place in my head back then.

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

… ever thought that I would make it to Leuven today. But here I am none-the-less, sitting in my little room in the Dekenstraat waiting for tomorrow and my rendezvous with doom at Castle Anthrax.

It all started so well too this morning, even though I was the first to realise that on a day of “National Action”, the situation can change in the blink of an eye.

Last night I wasn’t in bed as early as I would have liked, what with having a few things to do, but nevertheless I comfortably beat the second alarm call this morning, never mind the third.

During the night I’d been on my travels too. There was something going on about something to do with the radio last night. We were in Granville and it was to do with the copyright. Someone said that I had gone on for an hour doing something yet according to my calculations it was less than 10 minutes. But they insisted that it was an hour. Ann Myatt was there and she was getting involved in this argument about copyright and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

No time for breakfast or anything this morning. I made my butties (I’d bought an extra dejeunette yesterday) and generally packed my things for the trip. As well as that, I took all of the recycling down to the bins.

Eventually it was time to hit the streets so valiantly braving the rainstorm I set off.

The first thing that I noticed down in the harbour is that there had been a shuffle-round of the ships. Thora had moved place and that Normandy Trader was now in the unloading bay underneath the crane next to Marite. She must have slipped into port under cover of darness too.

And all that I can say is that Normandy Trader must have had a really rapid turn-round.

At the station, much to my surprise, my train was in and waiting. Yes, start with some good luck because I didn’t expect it to hold out.

And I was right too.

Firstly, the station coffee machine was out of order. That always puts a dampener on any of my travels, that does.

Secondly, I don’t have much time to traverse Paris, and no Bourvil to carry my suitcase either so when they announced that “the train will be making a few additional stops” my heart sank into my boots.

The weather was quite miserable though. There’s a good place to take a photo of the Eiffel Tower from the train and I was in a good place on the train to seeit and photograph it.

But not today though. There was a pile of damp mist and low cloud obscuring it and the photo was a waste of time.

12:05 is the arrival time of my train in the Gare Montparnasse-Vaugirard in Paris. We finally pulled into the station at 12:20. And with my train out from the Gare du Nord at 13:15 I needed to get a wiggle on.

No chance of the metro though. All closed off and boarded up with the strike.

Still, there’s always the Bus 39 so I hurtled off outside to the bus stop to find that everyone in the whole wide world had had the same idea. When the bus eventually came, we all piled in and were crammed in like sardines. I’ve never ever in my life been in such a crowded bus.

It wasn’t to last though. After about 5 or 10 minutes or so the driver announced that he wasn’t going to go to the Gare du Nord but his “colleague behind” will be doing the trip. We all had to alight knowing full well that we had been sold a pup, but there was nothing that we could do about it.

No “colleague behind” either. We were standing there like piffy on a rock for about 15 minutes until a 39 came by. It was already heaving but nevertheless there was a mad scramble and once the lucky first 10 had wedged themselves aboard, he closed the doors and off he shot, leaving the rest of us behind.

After about 10 minutes I realised that any further wait was pointless. I’d been keeping my eye open for a few minutes and then, sure enough, a taxi with his flag up came by. I let out a yell and he pulled up. Grabbing hold of the door to claim it, I shouted to the people at the bus stop “taxi share to the Gare du Nord?” but they all looked at me as if I have two heads – which I probably have. No-one came to join me so I set off alone with the driver and badger that lot!

Finding a taxi was one thing – getting to the station was another. Everything was conspiring to be in our way today and we eventually reached the Gare du Nord at 13:35. It cost me @24:00, which was not, I suppose, too unreasonable for Paris on a day of General Strike.

Next stop was at the Thalys office to negotiate a new train, but it turns out that it’s not them but the SNCF that I need to see (exactly the opposite of the situation last time) so I wandered off to their office.

Another lengthy wait but it was worth it because there was just one more train out to Lille – at 14:45 – and I managed to blag my way onto it, free, gratis and for nothing.

While I was waiting, I’d done some research. My new train is due to arrive in Lille at 15:48. There was a local train from Lille going across the border to Tournai in Belgium at 16:02 (arriving at 16:34) and an SNCB train from Tournai to Brussels at 16:44 (arriving at 17:48)

Having found my seat, I settled down and dozed off (and who can blame me after my exertions?).

I awoke some time later to find that our train was stationary in the countryside. “Obstruction on the line” was the reason. By the time that it was removed and we had set off again, I could see all of my hopes melting away into the distance. And when we finally arrived at Lille, it was 16:20 and my train had long-gone.

But I’m nothing if not determined. Browbeating an attendant, she sent me off to the SNCF offices to see what they could do. They could find me a Local train to Tournai at 18:08 but from there I would be on my own.

It sounded like a reasonable option to me though – at least I’d be on the right side of the border. But I was convinced that I could do better.

Off down the road to Lille Europe – the big new TGV railway station. It took ages to find my way in, due to all of the reconstruction, but eventually I made it to the SNCF office. After yet another long wait, I was told that they could get me on a TGV direct to Brussels – the next one being at 20:08. And the receptionist wasn’t very pleasant either about that.

Another option is the Eurostar office. I’d seen that there was a Eurostar from London to Brussels, calling at Lille-Europe at 17:30. I tracked down the Eurostar office and went in there with my sob story. The girl there listened, looked at me for a moment, had a little think, and then simply stamped my ticket “bon for voyage 17:30” – free, gratis and for nothing as well! She told me that I would have to make my own seating arrangements.

And she was right too. The train was heaving and it took me ages to find a free seat. Probably the last one on the train.

But what was interesting was the ticket control on the station. It wasn’t the railway company as such that did the ticket checking but a couple of security guards. They were wandering up and down the platform checking people’s tickets on a rather ad-hoc basis rather than at a barrier at the head of the stairs, which would have been the most logical place to control the passengers.

They had a brief glance at my ticket, saw the rubber stamp from the girl in the office and that was that.

We pulled in to Brussels-Midi at 18:11 and I had to wait until 18:28 for my train to leuven.

But no matter what, I wasn’t going to wait on the platform. There was one of those bitter, biting winds that finds its way through your clothing, your skin, your flesh and your bones. I came down onto the little walkway underneath the platforms where I could admire the station and the crowds of people.

Brussels-Midi is a very old station in the sense that it hasn’t been modernised any time recently, so it has a quaint kind of character all of its own that many main-line stations have lost.

Bang on time at 18:28 our train pulled in and I was well on the way towards Welkenraedt.

Today we had one of the Class 18 electric locomotives, one of the workhorse classes of the Belgian SNCB that pull a great many of the long-distance trains around the country, even if their introduction to the railway network was not without its issues. But now you see them all over the place.

We finally pulled in to Leuven at about 19:00. And when you think about this, then despite all of the issues that I’d had, I was only two and a half hours later than normal. And Had I gone via Tournai on the train that I had planned, I would have been just 15 minutes ahead.

Now I’m settled in. Too late for the shops, I’ve had beans and chips for tea and now I’m off to bed. After all of that effort I think that I deserve it too.

How close was I to having my chips today?

fishing boats unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy france

christmas lights rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

This afternoon while I was out and about I noticed a movement out to sea, right out on the horizon near Jersey.

Not being too sure what it was – it might even have been a rock for all I knew – I took a photo of it with the big Nikon lens at full stretch, with the idea of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) back in the apartment.

Nevertheless I had a sneak preview on the camera’s monitor and although I couldn’t see clearly, it looked as if it had the outline or silhouette of Thora setting out to come here.

And sure enough, when I went for my evening walk tonight, I noticed that there anchored in the inner harbour tonight at her usual mooring place next to Marité and underneath the crane is Thora.

Crept in on the afternoon tide while my attention was elsewhere of course. There must be quite a lot goign on right now because she’s made quite a few trips over here just recently in rapid succession. It’s good for trade, that’s for sure.

As for me, I was right about having a late night. Long after any time that I wanted to be up and about, but can’t be helped. There’s a lot to do.

Eventually though I crawled off into the stinking pit. Straight into the Arms of Morpheus and also, simultaneously, off on a voyage or three.

One more I had this group of young escapees with me (have I had them with me before?) and there was one in particular being lodged at my house. Someone connected with a political party – the Labour Party – thought that this was inappropriate and the Party started to run this kind of campaign to get the situation changed (…now doesn’t this all sound remarkably familiar?…). Their tactics including running some kind of spurious article or poll or something in the local newspaper, including a photo, about some girl or other. This girl wasn’t any younger than the girl who was staying with me and was probably older too, but even so, that situation didn’t go down very well with me, particularly after I had read all of the articles about it. They were all completely irrelevant and so far from the truth even though they weren’t actually supposed to be about the particular girl but some other spurious character, but there was very little truth in any of it.
Yes, this all rings a big bell about a certain incident in the past, doesn’t it? They say that old sins cast long shadows!
However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I ended up a little later back on board a ship last night. It might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, I dunno, I didn’t recognise it and even in the dream I didn’t recognise it. This voyage was all about dreams again and how my dreams were getting all mixed up about people and things and so on, in parallel to how mixed up these things seem to be being in life right at the very moment. For once even though the tracks were muddled up and I didn’t know which track went where, all that kind of thing I seemed to have some kind of better arrangement about sorting out these tracks. And what would I give in real life to have a method like that?
Later on I was playing football for Crystal Palace last night, don’t ask me why. There were high balls being pumped into the penalty area and I had to bring them down under control. Qite bizarrely, I was doing much better with the difficult ones rather than the English were doing with the easy ones, just like being a multi-million pound footballer or something, and isn’t that pretty much how I’ve been talking about Lee Trundle just recently after his one-man show for Rhydaman the other night?
And that’s not all either. There was also something going on about one of these extreme right-wing Fascists, something about the roundabout up near LeClerc and I’m not quite sure what. He was down by the Post Office in the Cours Jonville and a British policeman as it happened came over to talk to him about his book saying that if he was going to publish it he needed to submit it to magistrates first to be reviewed. 20 magistrates would look at it rather like they did with Marguerite Radclyffe Hall’s book The Well of Loneliness to decide whether or not it was obscene or fit for publication. Apparently he’d been witnessed kicking some kind of Pakistani or immigrant, something like that but the immigrant had refused to press charges so the police were powerless, but they were intending to stop him somehow.
Ironically, when I was dreaming this, I remember thinking that I was actually awake so it wasn’t a dream so I had no need to dictate it. But then the alarm went off and awoke me, so I must have been asleep at the time.

Yet again I beat the third alarm quite comfortably and that led of course to an early medication and an early breakfast.

With all of that out of the way I sat down and with an air of determination I bashed out all of the 4-odd minutes of text for the live project that I’m preparing. I overran somewhat but it all fitted in so well that I had to do some editing of the music. And believe it or not, it sounds so much better now.

Talking of things sounding better, I listened a couple of times to the teaser that I had prepared yesterday. I decided that it needed some amendment so I re-did that too. That’s much better now but I’m convinced that I can make it even better still. But that’s a job for again.

All of that took me right up to almost lunchtime, would you believe, so I went for a nice long walk around the harbour, the long way round seeing as the gate was closed so the walkway was open, and went to pick up my dejeunette.

With the gates being closed and the tide being right out, the sluice hate is open. This discharges water slowly out of the inner harbour into the sea. Not enough to drain it of course, but to lower the level so that the harbour gates can be opened a good deal before high tide when the water level will of course rise again.

And with each tide being of a different height, some kind of regulation of the water level is necessary.

And have you noticed the tidal depth gauge by the way?

The way back was via the rue des Juifs as usual.

That gave me an opportunity to have a good look at the Christmas decorations that they have set up in the street. And … well … it’s not exactly going to set the town alight, is it? They could have done so much better than this, I reckon.

On the way back up the street I bumped into one of the guys who was at that strange meeting Monday evening. We had a little chat and then I came back here to eat my butties.

Feeling in a productive mood, I sat down after lunch and attacked another one of the projects I need to do. And now that it’s 23:30, I’ve just finished it and I’m having a listen to it.

All that remains is to send it off and then I’ll be right up to date for the New Year, and then I can get on and do stuff properly and make an attempt to catch up on this ever-increasing backlog.

As well as all of this, I had a little five minutes away on the new comfy chair. It’s doing the business, this is.

But I managed to pull myself together long enough to go out for my afternoon walk.

And if you think that I’m having trouble with the weather and the gale-force winds, then how about these two guys? They’ve decided to go out surfing at the Plat Gousset. And all I can say is “good luck to them” because you wouldn’t get me out there in any water less than 37°C. Not even if Castor and Pollux were in there ready to catch me.

But one advantage of the miserable weather was that there was no-one around so I could have an extra run without being observed.

The surfers weren’t the only ones out there taking to the waters.

We had one of the trawlers from the port out there too. Well, in fact there were probably a dozen of them at least but there was this one right outside the harbour on its way in. In view of the rough weather that it was having to face, I reckoned that it deserved to have its photo taken.

And on that note, I headed back into the apartment to carry on work.

But not quite straight away because there was something else that needed doing.

There’s the old Municipal building in the Place Cambernon that has been empty or thereabouts for as long as I’e known it, although just recently iy’s been covered in scaffolding, covered over and there have been workmen in there.

But today it seems that its cover has gone and we can actually see some of the work that they have been doing to the building. And it’s looking quite good. I can’t wait to see what they are going to do with it when it’s finished.

Later on this evening I went out for my evening walk – and another run too as there was no-one around. I have to keep up the pressure.

As well as Thora I was also looking to see what else I could see of the Christmas decorations. There’s a certain point where you can see right up the rue Couraye to the railway station and I reckoned that if the Christmas lights are going to be good from anywhere, they’ll be good from that place.

Seeing the lights and seeing Thora meant that I had to take a slightly different, longer route. And when I finished, I found that I was on 95% of my daily effort. And so I did another lap around the block to reach the 100%.

Quite right too, because I had a big tea tonight. A pile of steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. Totally delicious it was too, especially when followed down by some of Liz’s apple cake with sorbet.

So another very late night, and I do need to be up early. The indications are that my morning train to Paris might be going (well, it’s not shown as cancelled) and my train from Paris to Lille is running too. But from Lille to Brussels it isn’t. So the plan is that I cancelled the bus trip and I’m relying on the trains to get me to Lille at least (if I can’t negotiate a trip direct to Brussels).

If I can only get as far as Lille there may be some public transport to get me across the border to Mouscron or Harelbeke in Belgium, and then a local train to Brussels. But if I’m confounded here at Granville, I’m going to go in Caliburn. My appointment isn’t until 13:30 on Friday so there’s plenty of time to do it in two stages

So I’m off to bed. I need to be ready for my adventures tomorrow.

surfers plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 10th December 2019 – I HAVE OFTEN SAID …

… “and you’ll say more often too” – ed … that it is really nice to speak to people, especially friends. And that friends always come first before almost everything.

So despite the amount of work that I have to do and how much of it is piling up and how I decided that I would crack on and have a really good whack at some of the outstanding backlog, then spending … errr … 2 hours 16 minutes and 34 seconds instead talking to Rosemary on the telephone was nevertheless quite enjoyable, even if it isn’t getting the baby bathed.

Not that I’m complaining. Far from it in fact … “perish the thought” – ed … but I seem to be going one pace forward and ending up two paces backwards right now.

Last night was another late-ish night as I was working on project 005 and trying to sort out the mess that I’d made of the vocals. But seeing as I was getting nowhere, in the end I finally gave up and went to bed.

Not much time in bed last night – probably not more than four hours in the end, but still time to go on a voyage of some description. I was out and about being placed into a group of people for some reason or other. They were going through the names of the groups and there was one group with a name like Anvil Brown and the Red Shoes, something like that. I knew that there was a girl in charge of this group and running it so I immedately opted to go into this particular one. I went over to see her to present myself and it was at that point that I awoke.
Back asleep, a little late I was doing some photography with a group of young girls. I was wanting to do it my way instead of the way that some interfering busybody was trying to have me do it and which was totally wrong in my opinion, but I awoke pretty smartly there too so I’ll never know how that one ended either.
But strangely, these are two other circumstances in which I can see parallels with actual events, and it’s rather worrying.

Not so worrying that it’s disturbing my sleeping and waking patterns though. I managed to struggle out of bed before the third alarm and deal with the medication issues followed by breakfast, and then I attacked the vocals for my project.

In the end I gave it up as a hopeless task and re-dictated them. And with a little judicious “cut and paste” I was able to make some kind of progress. It took ages though before it finished and I do have to say that I learnt quite a lot while I was doing it.

There was an interruption though from a text message. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a message yesterday evening telling me that my train for Thursday had been cancelled due to industrial action. And so I booked a seat on the bus last night. And so today I had a message to say that my train has now been restored, as you might expect.

There was just about enough time for me to have a shower and clean up before heading to town. And HOORAY!!!! I’ve reached my target weight – a weight that I never thought that I would ever see again. But I’m not going to stop. I’ll keep on pushing my fitness regime. 12 kilos in 5 months means that in about 33 months I’ll be gone completely.

At the Grand Café I met this musician guy who showed me his songs. Luckily there are no glaring errors like in Alquin’s Mountain Queen where Dirk Franssen invites a girl to his house to “see the Morning Glory”, although I did reckon that he should change “the Poles are melting” to “the Ice is melting” in one of his songs. After all, Poland has a tough enough time as it is.

For my trouble I was given a coffee and a CD of this guy’s band, and from there I walked up to the railway station to chat to the clerk about the trains.

I had to wait half an hour for her to come back from lunch, so that gave me plenty of time to have a nosy around the station to see what was going on. And the short answer was “nothing”. There wasn’t a soul about and the train that does the route Caen – Granville – Rennes, a Bombardier B82500, was parked up and abandoned.

Something similar to the Marie Celeste, I reckoned.

Granville is also home to several of the GEC Alstom Regiolis trains too – the ones that perform the service between Granville and paris and on which I travel.

But they were all down there parked up in the sidings and slearly had no intention whatever of moving today either. This strike looks pretty much complete.

Eventually the girl in the ticket booth came back. And when she did, she knew even less than I did. “We won’t know until tomorrow” she said.
“What time?” asked our hero.
“After 17:00” she said. So that’s a lot of help then, isn’t it?

La Mie Caline for the dejeunette was next, and then the doctor’s. It pays to be on the good side of your doctor because when I asked him about a prescription for a ‘flu jab, “ohh, I’ve got some stuff here” and gave it to me on the spot.

On my way down into town I’d noticed that Normandy Trader was in the harbour again.

I was pushed for time (as usual) just then but now I don’t have anything particular organised for the rest of the day so I went to pay a courtesy call.

But I didn’t have very much success at all. I shouted and shouted but there was no answer and so seeing as it’s inappropriate to go on board without an invitation, I wandered off and I’ll go back down there again in early course.

Although the weather was failrly miserable, I decided to come the long way home all the way round the Pointe du Roc.

That route would take me past the chantier navale that we had seen in the dark last night and I could see how things were doing in there. As we can see, Aztec Lady is there in the foreground and in the background behind it we have Spirit of Conrad.

Both of them are still there receiving attention although there doesn’t seem to be anyone about down there just now.

From higher up the hill we can see just how rough the seas are this afternoon.

There’s quite a heavy sea out there right now and La Grande Ancre – for I’m sure that it is she – has a battle on her hands as she fights her way across the baie de Mont St Michel towards the harbour.

And you can see how the weather has closed in across the bay at St Pair sur Mer

For a change just recently, I managed to make it home without falling over. I wonder where it all went wrong yesterday.

The first part of the afternoon after lunch was spent working on this teaser for this project of mine. That’s all done and dusted now and you can hear it here.

That led up to my afternoon walk time in the rain and the wicked wind. This storm that we’re having is blasting just about everything that gets in its way.

The tide is still quite a way out but even so you can see the mess that it’s making of the sea wall down here. Imagine what it must be like at high tide when the waves are at the peak of their force.

I wouldn’t want to be standing right there at that particular moment, that’s for sure.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my photos are being constantly photo-bombed by the flocks of the feathered and flying creatures that live around here.

While I was admiring the scenery, another one came flying by right in the area where I didn’t want it to be so in order to humour the bird I took a photo of it with nothing else in the image at all.

Now perhaps it will go away and leave me alone to get on and do other things

Although the tide wasn’t right in, there was still enough of it in for the fishing boats to be able to tie up at the quay by the fish processing plant to unload their catch. It was quite useful to dredge out a little channel there so that the boats would have more time.

The cranses up on top are working full-tilt winching up the catch to the processing plant and to the large commercial vehicles that will take the catch off to market somewhere.

But underneath where the private and small-scale operators unload their catch, they are quite busy too. In fact, it’s a very busy port with a lot of fishing activity going on.

Mind you, it must have been a magnificent sight down there 50 years ago with all of the deep-sea trawlers that went out to the Grand Banks, and the working railway line down to the port and the trains that took the catch away.

Apart from that there wasn’t a lot going on, although I did have to give directions to a passing motorist and then I came back here.

One of the things that I’m doing is to work on a live project for 27th December, so I made a start. And despite it being in theory quite straightforward, it wasn’t ‘arf complicated because the raw material that I had to work with was full of holes. You’ve no idea the lengths to which I had to go to in order to make some reasonable patches, but in the end it sounds something like a live project – all 56 minutes and 4 seconds of it, so I need just under 4 minutes of talking. That will be a challenge.

Tea was the leftovers from Sunday evening, with a few oven chips to lengthen it out. Totally delicious it was too

When I went out for my walk later in the evening, I noticed that there had been a change in the wind outside this evening. It had gone from being ridiculous to violent.

At times it was a real struggle to make any headway, so I didn’t hang about outside for too long. Just long enough to take a couple of photos including this one of Donville-les-Bains in the dark with that big floodlight thing shining away in the background.

But despite the wind I did my lap around as usual, even managing the full length of my run, and into a headwind too. Even I was impressed with that.

Rosemary rang me as soon as I returned home and now having updated my notes, I’m off to bed. All that I had planned to do this evening, well, it’ll have to be done some other time.

Story of my life, I suppose.

storm waves on rocks granville manche normandy france

fog at sea english channel fishing boat granville manche normandy france

storm high winds waves sea wall port de granville harbour manche normandy france

normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boats unloading port de granville harbour manche normandy france

donville les bains night granville manche normandy france

christmas lights place cambernon granville manche normandy france

Thursday 5th December 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

… I’ve finished all of the dictaphone notes. I dragged the final ones into the “filed” subfolder at about 12:15 today. That was another job well-done and I can start to get on with things now – or, at least, I can when I’ve backed them up and deleted them from the back-up folder on the dictaphone.

If my memory served me correctly, from the time that I left France on 27th June until I’d recovered from my exploits away on or about 26th October, there were something like 286 entries to be transcribed.

Some of them were quite long too. Leaving aside the one of over four hours (which was 3 minutes of me talking and four hours of me sleeping), there were quite a few that ran into double figures too.

And some of the stuff was quite exciting too. It’s amazing the kind of thing that goes on in a nocturnal ramble and about which I am totally unaware until I come to dictate it.

Talking of “exciting” … “well, one of us is” – ed … you should have been with me during the night too, because it’s been a good while since I’ve had such an exciting time.

We started off the evening on board a ship – not sure which one but it could quite easily have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We sailed at night into this port that was held by the Germans, at night so that while they could see the ship, they could not see its nationality or anything. We sent a big party ashore – almost everyone in fact and made our way peacefully to the supply depot. We overwhelmed the people in the supply depot, one of whom was a 19 year old Danish Freikorps soldier boy by ruse or trick. I was having to speak to the German officer in charge who congratulated me on my German but didn’t much like my accent. I said that I was a Volksdeutsch, not a natural German. Having overwhelmed the supply depot, we collected the supplies and sent our first group off to clear the way back to the ship. However, they ended up being pinned down under fire by a young boy there. Whoever was leading that column said that he wasn’t going to go along and flush out this boy because he was only a kid. This obviously upset our commander because in war everything is important and no individual, regardless of age, merits consideration. He decided to send this young Danish Freikorps boy out there. He told him “he’s your mate – you do and get him out of there” and packed him off with one of our soldiers to try to talk this young kid out of his position so we could get off and go home before the Germans woke up and realised exactly what was happening.
And, dear reader, that was really exciting that was. For some unknown reason it was the most exciting and most realistic voyage that I’ve been on for quite some time.
A little later on – a good while later on in fact – I was away again, on the same ship and we ended up in New York. We saw our ship come into the harbour but I couldn’t find my camera to take photos of it. I was really dismayed by that. But as we docked, a group of people disappeared off onto the shore. I couldn’t find my camera and, even worse, I couldn’t find Strawberry Moose. I thought well, I’m going at least to have a look around on shore even if we can’t stay here long and I can’t get any photos. However, just as I got off the ship two people from the crew came back to the ship again. They were carrying Strawberry Moose in that big shoulder bag that I have and they had my camera. They explained that they had taken him off on a few photo shoots. So Strawberry Moose and I – I should say that I took Strawberry Moose with me. He came for a climb but having been in that bag he was all matted and his fur was a total mess – set off to climb up this hill up a load of steps where there’s a really good view over the docks. But it wasn’t the docks that I particularly remembered though, it’s the kind of New York that we have visited on numerous occasions on one of our nocturnal excursions where there’s the big elevated highway out of the city off to the left. Our ship was moored almost underneath that flyover type of place and all around the docks was greenery. There was another main road at ground level off to the left of the docks. There were steps up to the top and there were some people climbing them in front of me, obviously locals, and going on about the health clinic at the bottom, saying that it can’t have been there before these steps were open. Someone laughed and said “oh yes of course it was, it’s just that we couldn’t get to it”. I got to the top of the steps and the view from the top was stunning as you could imagine. You could see the ship and see all the docks below me and that highway that I mentioned and a couple of other roads and I went to take a photo of it all. As well as that there was something about a couple of other people up there. They were fuming because they had asked someone to take a photo of them and he had turned round and said “so you aren’t really third-party intimates are you?”. Their camera was one of these with different picture settings and “third party intimate” was one of the choices. That was the style of photo that they wanted but he had changed the settings and it ruined their photo. But just as I was about to take a photo of everything spread out before me, that was when I awoke.
And that’s not all either. I had another dream – a political dream this time. Clearly the situation in the UK is getting to me big-time. Again we were on the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and again Cook was being broadcast on the TV, again all kind of falsehoods about Jeremy Corbyn, even though he was on the ship and even though we knew that these things were false. Even though they had been disclosed publicly as being false, the BBC was still broadcasting them as if they were the real thing.

All that I can say is that it was a good job that I had had an early night for a change. I would otherwise have never fitted all of that in.

Unfortunately I missed the alarms this morning, but I was up pretty quickly regardless, round about 06:30 or something like that.

It took me an age to transcribe my notes from the night, and that was followed by breakfast and a shower. With some time before I needed to leave the apartment I made a start on the remaining dictaphone notes.

It was soon enough time to leave the apartment and I wish that it wasn’t because, once more it was absolutely taters out there again.

We’ve had a visitor during the night. Normandy Trader has made it in and she seems to be pretty well loaded up. I can’t see what with though because of this blasted fog and mist that is shrouding everything.

One of these days I shall have to go for a look.

It seems that I shall also have to go and have a look to see what’s going on with Marité too.

They have set up a cherry-picker in the quayside and there were some guys up there in the nacelle doing some work on Marité‘s mast.

It seems a shame, but it seems that the days when you would send a small boy up the mast to fix the rigging are long-gone. Times are definitely a-changing.

The railway station was deserted when I arrived. The whole of the French public service is on strike today apparently. But no matter. I went simply to pick up my tickets for next week and I can do that out of the machine there.

There is something of a reliability issue with regard to the machines so I like to go and collect my tickets before the day of travel, just in case there’s a problem.

The main reason for going to LIDL was to buy a lettuce because I had run out, so while I was there I did a quick run round and picked up some other stuff.

On the way back to the apartment I passed by the big St Paul’s Church.

At the back of it, in the impasse de la Corderie, they have erected a large crane. And I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s for the church because that is definitely in need of urgent repair, or it might be for one of the houses nearby.

And it was round about here that I realised that while I had indeed bought a few other bits and pieces, I had forgotten to buy the lettuce.

Nevertheless, I did remember to call at La Mie Caline for my dejeunette and then I sailed on up the hill towards home.

There’s a little Square – the Square Potel – just off the rue des Juifs and here they seem to be setting up some Christmas decorations too. But what kind of decorations these are going to be I really don’t know.

When I come by here tomorrow I’ll have another look and take a photo of how everything has turned out.

Back at the apartment I made myself a quick coffee and then knuckled down to the dictaphone notes. And as I said earlier, they are now all done and dusted and I can relax somewhat until the next project – like the photos for example.

After lunch I made a start on cutting up some more of the digital music that I have downloaded. I only did about four all day, but one of them was quite complicated. Not because it was difficult (although the mixing that was done in the studio was appalling and I had to redo it here) but because there were plenty of little extras, like loads of applause tracks for example, that I could extract and keep in my sound library for future use.

We had a break in the middle of all of that for my afternoon walk.

it was still really cold outside today and the freezing fog hadn’t really lifted at all. You can see the haze covering the medieval walled town and the Plat Gousset.

And it waas much worse further down the coast and out to sea.

No chance of spying any fishing boats out there working today, but there was one leaving the harbour just as I rounded the headland.

Nothing worth photographing in the cjantier navale or, at least, nothing that we haven’t seen just recently, so I took a photo of the trawler instead.

And that didn’t take long to disappear out of sight into the mist either. I was going to take another one of it further out in the Baie de Mont st Michel but I couldn’t see it at all.

But there are strange goings-on at the passenger terminal for the ferries to the Channel Islands and the Ile de Chausey.

Joly France, one of the boats that runs to the Ile de Chausey, was moore dup there today, but Chausiais, the boat that the company has bought to carry out a freight service, that’s over there too having come out from the inner harbour.

Does this mean that the freight service is about to start? Watch this space.

There was no-one around at all so I tok the opportunity to have a good run. And I managed it all the way to the end of my little track where I cross the road. It might not be all that far – a mere three hundred metres or so – but it’s the principle of the thing.

One thing that I had forgotten to do was to take the rubbish out to the large collection point. So I went and did that too and reflected, on the way back, that this is now three times today that I have run up the stairs. When I first moved here, I couldn’t even walk up them.

Tea was a lentil and carrot burger with pasta, followed by rice pudding. And then off for my evening walk.

It’s even colder out there now so I didn’t hang around. Just a bried pause to admire the Christmas lights in the rue Paul Poirier.

And I have to say that they are something of a disappointment. Not because they aren’t very good but they seem to be no different from the previous years.

Ohh for someone with some imagination!

Moving on, I ran (yet again!) on my track but didn’t quite make it up to the top of the ramp. But then again, with all of the running that I’ve done today, I’m reasonably happy with that.

Minette was there so I said hello to her and then came back here in the warmth. An early night is called for, and a quiet day tomorrow. I’ll make a start on the photos and maybe even unpack the final box from the big delivery last week. High time I did that.

Monday 18th November 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

… back chez moi after a pretty uneventful journey home.

And I do have to say that I’m not sorry to be back because I like my little apartment here on my little rock. It’s not much, but it’s hoe all the same.

But as usual, I couldn’t sleep last night. 01:00 I was still up and about. And I saw 02:00 come round too. But I don’t suppose that it mattered too much because there’s not too much else to do on the train except sleep.

At one point I did manage to drop off to sleep and I was joined during the night by Castor and Pollux. I’ve no idea why or what was going on but I do remember them leaping off the ship into the icy wastes. And I can’t even say if the ship was The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour either.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and by the time the third alarm went off at 06:20 I was dressed packed, had returned the key and was halfway down the street towards the station.

And there wasn’t much time to loiter about for the train either.

Well in advance of the 06:42, I was in time for the 06:29. But I wasn’t sure whether that might have been a good idea when I saw what was pulling my train.

It’s one of the old Class 21 locomotives, the oldest of which is now 35 years old. And as more and more of them break down, and as many spare parts are no longer made, the worst ones are starting to be cannibalised to keep the others running for as long as possible.

But never mind the locomotive. Where there’s an elderly locomotive it’s likely that there will be elderly carriages too and that was the bit that I wasn’t going to enjoy.

And I was right too. We had a rake of rather elderly carriages of the type with the plastic leatherette benches rather than the comfortable cloth seats that are found on more modern rolling stock.

So I settled down thinking to myself how lucky I was only going to Brussels and not to anywhere else any further away.

Things have progressed dramatically on the SNCB over the last few years, haven’t they?

Plenty of time at Brussels-Midi so I bought some raisin buns and sat on a seat to eat breakfast. As usual these days, I was harassed by the odd beggar or two and I told them to p155 off.

But a short while later there was “a commotion” elsewhere in the waiting room involving these people, the Police and Railway security staff were there, bags were being searched and people were being led away.

How bizarre.

The train was already in the station so we could board it quite quickly.

It’s one of the “PBKA” – Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam – trainsets. Quite comfortable of course, and I was asleep before we had even left the station.

The motion of the train departing awoke me and I noticed that we were 15 minutes late leaving. So when the controller came past I asked her if she could note my ticket in case I missed my connection.

However she reckoned that we would make up some of the time and that anyway I’d have plenty of time to make it to Montparnasse – Vaugirard.

So I went back to sleep.

She was right though.

We’d made up about 5 minutes of the lost time and I sailed through the station to the underground and down onto the platform where there was a train already waiting.

As soon as I put my sooty foot upon it, it cleared off out of the station.

No issues on the line as far as the Montparnasse metro station, and then for someunknown reason the walk all the way through the labyrinth undergound and then through the station to the Vaugirard platforms didn’t seem as long as it usually is.

Mind you, there was a diversion for pedestrians due to development, and the new route took me along a platform where TGV had just pulled in, so I was swamped with people.

Here’s my train (on the left) at Granville railway station next to its brother who is working the Caen – Rennes line.

My train was already in at Montparnasse – Vaugirard although we had to wait a few minutes to board it. It was a shortened train too, just 6 carriages instead of 12 so there were no seat reservations and it was a free-for-all.

Luckily I managed to have a seat to myself, and I slept most of the way back to Granville.

That’ll teach me to have a late night.

Another very good and brisk walk all the way back home again.

The odd stop here and there to see what was going on in the town. And it must be getting near to Christmas because they are now erecting the Christmas lights in the town.

This blasted year has gone round round far too quickly for me.

Freezing cold in the apartment (9°C) so I wound the heater up full blast. did a little casual unpacking and then had a relax for a while doing some stuff on the computer.

And carrying on with my project about downloading digital tracks of some of the albums that I own on vinyl. I’m determined to digitalise everything.

Tea was a bag of aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit followed by fruit salad and coconut cream.

And then I hit the streets – and immediately came back for the tripod because t was a really beautiful night.

The sky was so clear that you could actually see the individual lights on Jersey – all of 58 kms away, so I was determined to capture them.

But then I hit a snag – I couldn’t work out how to make the delayed shutter action work, so this one hasn’t come out as well as it might have done.

But by the time that I had made it round to the headland, I’d worked it out. And so this one is much better.

Away in the distance across the bay and behind a headland or two is the city of St Malo. And tonight not only could you see the glow of the lights in the sky, you could actually see one or two lights over there.

It was a good idea to go back for the tripod.

There was a load of traffic out there at sea tonight too.

While I was busy setting up my equipment and taking the photos, I’d seen a light slowly coming closer and closer towards me.

No prizes for guessing what it might be either. It can’t be anything else but a trawler of course, so I took a few photos of it at different speeds and exposures to see if one good one comes out of it.

It was a hive of activity in the port tonight.

The tide was quite a way in so there were plenty of fishing boats in the harbour unloading at the fish-processing plant.

I had a good look at them for a while and then came back. Running for part of the way – just a hundred yards or so.

Mind you, I had run up the stairs here to get to my room for the tripod so I’m not complaining.

Tomorrow I’m having a little lie in and then I’m back to work. There is plenty to do and not enought time to do it – the story of my life I suppose.

But at least I’m back home and that is good.

erecting christmas lights rue couraye granville manche normandy france

night baie de mont st michel st malo brittany granville manche normandy france

trawler fishing boats fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 17th November 2019 – REMEMBER LAST NIGHT …

… when I said that I had planned to go out and take a photo of the Grote Markt and all of the buildings lit up for Christmas, and how I forgot to take my camera with me when I went out?

Tonight, I didn’t forget. And in fact I made a special journey to go out and look at the town hall in the dark and show you how it was looking.

And unfortunately it’s not as spectacular as it has been in previous years. There’s no creche and the lights that illuminate the windows are not changing colour.

The Fourth Hotel or Restaurant or whatever it is, while always looking spectacular at night, hasn’t been dressed up at all for Christmas.

Still, I suppose that it it early days as yet and there’s plenty of time to organise things ready for Christmas.

And in any case I would only be complaining if it were done too early so I can’t have everything my way. I’ll see what has happened by the time I come back here in four weeks time.

A late night last night but I wasn’t unduly worried. I set the alarm for 0:00 and beat it easily, being up and about by 07:30. Plenty of time to go for a ramble too during the night and when I’ve transcribed the dictaphone notes I’ll tell you all about it – where I went and with whom I was.

Seeing as I had plenty of time I had a quick shower and organised things ready for when jackie came down for brekfast. I’d explained her the Belgian tradition about couques on Sunday morning, so she had been to the boulangerie around the corner and come back armed with a pain au chocolat and a chocolate eclair.

“Well, I am on holiday” she explained.

We breakfasted together and had a good chat, mainly about her job, and then went round the corner to meet Alison. She took us to the mini-Carrefour where the girls stocked up with more chocolate and then into Tervueren.

Our destination was to meet her friend Theresa and go for a walk around the park, but we were somewhat waylaid by the sight of this couple here and their dog.

Sitting around at the bottom of the bicycle ramp with a lit brazier to keep them warm in the winter wind.

It was certainly novel, and quite ironic seeing as we had just been explaining to Jackie not two minutes beforehand about the somewhat strange behaviour of some of the Belgians and their profound sense of the absurd.

Waiting for Theresa, we sat on a park bench and the girls opened one of the bars of chocolate that they had bought.

Of course, that brought the crowds rushing in towards us. Not humans, although of course there were plenty of them about, but also the wildlife, to see what titbits were on offer.

We had nothing for them, as you might expect, but it didn’t stop them coming over to investigate us.

“Crowds of people” I said. And I wasn’t wrong either.

As well as the civilians, of which there were more than enough, there were whole troops and packs of Hitler Yout … errrr … Boy Scouts and Girl Guides out there – presumably rubbing each other together to try to start a fire or something.

It’s the usual thing, Scouts on Sunday morning all over Belgium, tying each other in knots and playing with each other’s woggles.

And who can blame the crowds for being out there today?

Despite being windy and cold, it really was a glorious morning out there in the sunshine.

And the autumn colours were glorious too. Not a patch on the colours that you see in Canada of course – nothing whatever can equal that – but nevertheless for Europe it was pretty spectacular.

The Tervuerense Park is actually the gardens of the Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika – The Royal Museum for Central Africa.

Formerly the symbol of Belgian colonialism and exploitation of the natives of the Congo, it had been closed for a good number of years while it underwent a make-over.

It’s supposed now to “have a different focus” but whatever that might be remains to be seen. One day I might be lucky and find it open when I’m at a loose end.

There is an old mill on the far side of the Vossemvijfer, the lake at the far end of the park.

That’s now been turned into a cafe so now that Theresa had caught us up we headed that way for a coffee.

There was a handy table free in a quiet corner of the upstairs room so we grabbed that and had a chat and drank our coffee while the girls finished off the chocolate.

All very convivial.

But soon enough we had to leave so that Jackie could catch her train back to Cologne.

On the way back to Leuven we drove down the side of the flight path for planes coming in to land at Brussels National Airport at Zaventem, and I was rewarded by the sight of this Qatar Airlines plane disappearing into the trees.

Jackie organised herself a sandwich and boarded her train back, and Alison brought me back here where we had a really good chat for an hour or so about different things.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t had lunch so I headed off to find a bakery.

My route took me past the Pope Leo XIII Seminary Chapel, and I noticed the Flemish lion on the roof – something that had escaped my attention befofe.

So equipping myself with a demi-baguette and a tomato I came back here and made myself a tomato and vegan cheese butty.

Shame as it is to admit it, I had a little crash out and then caught up with a few other things.

For tea, even though it’s Sunday and I had some vegan cheese, I eschewed my pizza and finished off the burger and potatoes with some of the frozen vegetables, followed by the last of the fruit salad and raspberry sorbet.

That was my cue for my evening’s perambulation, and I’m being a bit of a wuss today. Having managed 194% of my daily activity and 16.8 kilometres yesterday, today I’ve done a mere 137% – or 11.1 kms. Clerly slipping, aren’t I?

An early night now because I’m up early tomorrow and going home. I wonder what delights are awaiting me there.

house parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

view from house vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

vossemvijfer parc de tervuerense park tervueren belgium

Saturday 16th November 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… nice day today in the company of some very pleasant people. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have too many friends, but those I have are the best in the world.

Last night was something of a late night. But with having set the alarm to a much more realistic 08:30 I wasn’t all that concerned.

Plenty of time to go on a little voyage or two and having been joined on a few nocturnal rambles over the past few nights by some pretty bizarre characters from my distant past, last night was probably the most bizarre of all to date. Mandy Crane was there last night, and that was a surprise wasn’t it, after something like 45 years since I last wasted a moment thinking about her, and we were talking about something – I dunno. It occurred to me that she had been round to see me quite a lot and I was wondering whether she was waiting for me to make some kind of advances to her. But on one occasion when I turned my back to her she put her arms around me and we started to chat. But it became pretty weird and even in my dream I was thinking that I couldn’t imagine why she would come around at this stage
And later on I was back in my pawn shop last night. There were three people, two brothers and a woman, who ran it. Each had their own special area of management control of the situation and I was going through who did what (the woman was the admin person and I can’t now remember what the speciality of each brother was) and all the files of the people had different coloured tags (like Government “BF tags”) to tell them what the arrangements were, about people, why people were involved in this particular pawn shop – one colour of tag for this, one colour of tag for that – but before I got too far into this dream I awoke.

That was at about 06:09 but no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time. I turned over and went back to sleep until about 0:30. That’s more like it so I left the bed just in time to beat the alarm.

After medication I had a few things to do to keep me out of mischief so just for a change I applied myself to them.

At about 11:15 I left my room and headed up to the railway station, thinking to myself that I remembered that I had somehow managed to forget to have breakfast this morning.

So engrossed was I in this thought that I was nearly squidged by the town’s little tourist train as I crossed the road. And I do have to say that I don’t remember having seen this before.

That’s another job for me then – to sift through my photos to see whether it’s featured before.

Jackie’s train was bang on time and it was nice to see her after all this time. Alison hadn’t made it to the station so I sent here a message to say where we were and we went to the cafe over the road to wait.

With no reply from her, I rang her up, to find that she hadn’t received it (she received it about an hour later) so we headed off into town to meet up.

First stop was the wool shop. Alison is a knitter and so is Jackie, so they spent a good while browsing through the products on offer there. Nerina was a knitter to so I’m quite used to this sort of behaviour. It’s nothing new to me at all.

Lunch was next and, seeing as we are in Belgium, a fritkot was an obvious choice. We headed to the Ali Baba around the corner and while they tucked into a meal I had a plate of fritjes with looksaus.

We were in there for hours chatting about all sorts of things and then we headed off for some fresh air.

It was for about a year or so that I lived in Leuven and I’d walked for miles around the city, so I thought that I knew it pretty well.

But that’s not the case at all because Alison took us around some areas that I didn’t know at all, like past the Father Damiaanplein (he of the lepers whom we have encountered before) with the Hollands College down at the bottom.

That’s an interesting building, dating from the 17th Century for theology students from the diocese of Haarlem in the Netherlands.

Long-since abandoned, the University took it over in 2008 and since 2011 there has been some kind of project of restoration with the aim of returning the building to its former glory.

There’s a little park – the Diljepark – just past there. Something else that I didn’t know.

It follows, as you might expect with a name like that, the River Dilje out of town. And one of the attractions was this little Japanese-style bridge over the river just here.

Unfortunately it didn’t look as if it’s in use. Or maybe fortunately because as far as anger management issues go, they have the same effect on me as do ferries. Whenever I see one it always makes me cross.

One thing for which Leuven is very well-known is its Begijnhof – the Beguinage.

The great issue with Medieval life was the number of widows and single women. While childbirth affected quite dramatically the number of women, the incessant warfare of the period and industrial accidents had an even greater effect on the male population.

A great many women were thus left for one reason or another without a protector and the church was mainly responsible for this role.

In Medieval Flanders I can’t thing of a single important religious city that didn’t have its Beguinage and Leuven is certainly no exception.

And so magnificent is the Begijnhof here in the city
that in 1998 it was recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

Mind you, it wasn’t always like this. For a long while it was occupied as a sort-of social housing complex and there was never the money available to do anything with it.

By the 1960s it was in a deplorable condition and so it was sold off.

The University bought it and spent a great deal of time, effort and money restoring it to its present glory. It’s now occupied as student and academic staff accommodation which is a waste because I’m certain that I wouldn’t mind a little apartment there.

It’s another place that I had never visited during my stay here.

We walked back into town and to another modern square that I had never visited. There’s a second-hand clothes shop there that the girls visited (nd Jackie bought a handbag) and a decent cafe where we went for a drink.

Later on we walked back across the centre of town so that Jackie could catch her bus.

As we were passing by the end of the Mechelsestraat where I was yesterday, I happened to notice in the dark that they now seem to have switched on the Christmas lights.

“Surely it’s a bit early for that” I mused to myself. Christmas is still about 6 weeks away.

But apparently not because in the Grote Markt we had a brass band going on, playing all kinds of Christmas music.

And the Town Hall was all lit up too. I would have taken a photo of that but the night wasn’t yet as dark as I would like it to be.

I made a mental note that when I come back later I will bring the big Nikon back with me. After all, I’d bought it with the express purpose of using it for night photography.

Back at the apartment building Jackie checked herself into her room and then we had a coffee and a chat. At 19:15 we headed back into town to meet up again with Alison.

And it was then that I realised that I had forgotten the camera.

The girls fancied an ice-cream, but all of the ice-cream parlours were closed.

Never mind. Seeing as we are in Belgium, a Belgian waffle would do them just as well. But as we got to the Belgian waffle stall, he closed up his equipment.

In the end we found a cafe that did crepes and waffles and they contented themselves with that. I had yet another portion of fritjes. Extravagant, you might think, but those two portions of chips are all that I have eaten today.

The coffee bar at Kloosters Hotel was next, but someone had pinched our usual spec by the fire so we had to sit elsewhere. We set out to solve all of the problems of the world as we normally do, but suddenly Alison noticed that it was gone 23:00 and she was in danger of turning into a pumpkin.

That was the cue for us to head back to our various destinations. Alison walked off to her car and Jackie and I came back here. Not an early night – not by any means – but quite an enjoyable one in good company.

I hope we have such a good time tomorrow.

Wednesday 13th November 2019 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

… for any of my usual walks today, and neither have I taken any photos.

The fact is that I’ve been really busy today what with one thing and another (and once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are).

Last night wasn’t as early a night as I was expecting. 00:30 and I was still up and about. Mind you, I was soon in bed and off on another journey or two. And why is it that as soon as I reach for the dictaphone I lose immediately any recollection of what it is that i’m doing or have been doing?
But whatever it was, later on I was in bed and I heard this noise or scrambling going on and I started to wake up, and it was Claire Brierley of all people saying to someone “I’m sending the taxi back for him and it’ll be ready at 08:55”. So I wondered what the heck was going on so I thought that I’d better get up. So I got up and dressed just in time to see her disappearing in a yellow and white two-tone taxi, an old Austin A40 “Cambridge”, this square type with round rear lights. Off they went and I went downstairs and loitered around for a bit. It suddenly occurred to me that it was the office party (… office trip?…) and they were leaving at 09:05 and no-one had woken me up and I don’t know why. So it got to 08:55 and the taxi hadn’t turned up, and 09:00 and at 09:05 he turned up. I the meantime, I think that someone (Joanie and her mother?) had been going through the old taxi records that we had been keeping and she had been asking questions about the fares, like “today to go from (… somewhere …) to Crewe railway station is £1:75. How much was it in your day?” I replied “£1:10 or something” and we had quite a long chat about that. Anyway eventually my taxi arrived and there was this thing in Canada about tipping locally – make sure that you give a good tip, for that way your money stays with the driver and stays local and can work its way back through the economy again. I looked at my cash and for a cheap fare I’d be giving him a huge tip by proportion. I can’t remember whether or not I got into the taxi but I was back where I started from in like a church hall or something – a generic church hall with thick brick pillars protruding from the walls and so on. A little girl was there so I said to her “go on, sing me a nursery rhyme” but she came out with some kind of fantasy poem. In the end Nicole (what’s she doing here?), who was her mother got her to say a little poem for me which was very nice.

So that’s enough of that. I beat the third alarm again and went for an early medication and breakfast. Following which, I bit the bullet and sat down with these dictaphone note that I have been trying to avoid.

And I was right about something that I said back at the time – and that is that they will make interesting reading. And I’m beginning to see what was going on in my subconscious during that particular time.

Ahh well – that’s 7 of them out of the way. Only another 100 to go, and I hope that they don’t make as much grim reading as that last 7 of them did. Otherwise I’ll be back to where I was in my head four or five weeks ago.

At 10:00 I was picked up by this guy who drove me to Coudeville-Plage to see (a video of) this musician. I’m not sure what that was all about at all but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

He brought me back to Granville but I hopped out in the town. I had to pick up a parcel from the Post Office (my microphones have come) and also a baguette for lunch. And I found, to my delight, that the local boulangerie does what it calls dejeunettes, two-thirds-size baguettes for €0:50. Exactly the size that I need for my lunch.

And this home-made hummus that I made the other day is wicked. I’m enjoying every mouthful of it and there is plenty more to come.

This afternoon there were a few things to do and then Caliburn and I set off. We had things to do.

First call was at the Tax Office. I’ve had a reminder that I hadn’t filled in a tax return. If you think that going in to pick one up is easy, then you’re in for a big surprise. I had to queue for over half an hour just to see the receptionist.

He couldn’t give me a form over the counter. “Ohh no!” I had to go to see his colleague.

There was a queue in front of me and for about 20 minutes it didn’t move an inch. Eventually I thought “badger this for a game of soldiers. I’ll miss the Post”. I headed off back to Caliburn and we drove out of town to the big central sorting office for this region and dropped off my parcel.

Back at the Tax Office to resume my place in the queue and wait for another 20 minutes until I was seen. All in all I reckoned that it was about an hour and a half between my initial arrival and being seen.

Even then, I couldn’t have a Tax Return. The woman there told me what she needed me to supply and told me to bring it back. But one thing is certain – and that is that after all of this performance I’ll be registering on-line to do it next year.

Back here, I needed to complete the paperwork for the parcel that I had sent back and also to deal with the website updates. The Norse in Newfoundland can wait until the end – I did another 20 pages elsewhere.

But I’ve found to my dismay that I’ve left off something from the header menu. But then, this is why I went into Javascript, so that I can amend just one file and it will update everything else.

At least, I hope that it will.

For tea I finished off the stuffing from the other night, and finished off the taco rolls as well. I’ll have to buy some more of them because they are nice.

No walk this evening, so my fitbit is going to make depressing reading. But it can’t be helped. Instead, I’ve been downloading some digital music for some of the albums that I own. Dozens of it, in fact. And I’m finding albums that I didn’t even realise that I owned.

Anyway, enough of this. I’m off to bed. An early start in the morning because I mustn’t forget that my train leaves half an hour earlier than usual.

And I want to be on it.

Thursday 31st October 2019 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to get out for my evening walk/run tonight.

Just for a change I’d managed to be ready quite early so that I could make the most of it, when Rosemary rang. One hour and 35 minutes we were on the phone and so that was really that. I can’t go for a walk at 22:00

And so, all in all, it was a good job that I’d had my long walk up to LIDL today.

Not this morning though because I was doing other things this morning. Like sleeping. I didn’t leave the bed until about 09:30 this morning.

And it wasn’t my fault either. There I was planning to go to bed and have a nice early night last night, and just as I was about to switch off the computer, then Hawkwind Live Chronicles came onto the playlist.

The best album I’ve heard for a long time too so I stayed awake to listen to it. All 1 hour and 25 minutes of it.

And as that ended, then Ocean by Eloy came on. The second-best album I’ve heard in a while. So I stayed up and listened to that.

What with one thing and another, it was eventually 03:05 when I switched off the computer and went to bed.

Mind you, it wasn’t completely wasted time because I’d done some work updating the web pages during that time.

A late start meant that everything else, like my shower, was late too. And before I hit the streets I had to organise the rail tickets for Belgium and print them all off so that I had them to hand.

First stop in town was at the bank. I needed to pay for what I purchased yesterday and as the money is going abroad it needed to be done quickly and, more importantly, correctly. Hence the bank.

Second stop was at the railway station. I know that I’m trying to go paperless these days but I would feel a lot better with the tickets actually in my hand, so I printed them off at the machine there.

Finally I made it t LIDL but I didn’t buy all that much. However they did have a range of vegan blackcurrant sorbet so in a gesture of solidarity I bought one. What I didn’t buy though was garlic! Sold out! And that’s a shock for me because a kitchen without any garlic isn’t a kitchen at all.

On the way back to the apartment I took a diversion via the docks to see the new boat. And she’s not a new boat at all but our old friend Aztec Lady back from her summer season at Svalbard I must remember one of these days to find out more about her voyages.

After lunch I tackled a job that I have been putting off for a week or so – and that was to freeze the carrots. Only just in time too because they were on the turn. But they are all peeled, diced, blanched and in the freezer.

And what was left (there were too many for the saucepan) I made a carrot and coconut soup, I was rather too extravagant with the powdered ginger and it’s rather overwhelmed it. Still, it’s in now and you can’t take it out.

While that was going on, I had a go at tidying the freezer. And there is tons of stuff in there. Enough pies to sink a ship for a start, and a second set of four frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsits that I had forgotten that I had made. So for the next two months it’s pie one night and kidney bean and aubergine whatsit on another before I even start thinking about the rest of the meals.

Last night before going to bed I’d checked Caliburn’s battery. 14.0 volts and the “fully charged” light was on, so I had unplugged it. This morning when I checked it, it was showing 12.9 volts (which is good) and this afternoon, 6 hours later, it was still showing 12.9, so it’s not losing any significant charge. I coupled it up to Caliburn and he fired up immediately into life, so at least I can take him for his controle technique on Tuesday and be back on four wheels by the end of the week.

Having done that, I went for my afternoon walk. And on returning I found that somehow I have contrived to manage to lose my fitbit. And that’s before the new bracelet has arrived too, for which I pad a shed-load of money. No idea where I lost it either. It’s probably fallen out of my pocket while I was walking around, in which case it’s probably gone for good.

These days I seem to be making far too much of a habit of losing all my possessions. I’m not sure what’s going on but I definitely seem to be breaking up.

Back at the apartment I had a little doze for 10 minutes and regular readers of this rubbish will be the first to remark that this is the first time in about a week that I’ve crashed out. That’s definitely progress of some kind.

But once back on my feet I tackled a few of these marathon dictaphone entries. Five of them in fact and that might sound reasonable, but the mega 20-minute one is next on the list and I need to be on form for that. So that’s a job for tomorrow morning, I reckon.

Tea, was as promised, the burger on a bap. delicious it was too, even though it was interrupted by two young girls trick-or-treating. Luckily I have a sweetie-jar here so I was able to hand out some goodies. They aren’t getting their hands on my grapes though. That’s the one good thing that I’ve found about going out for small amounts of shopping several times per week – tha it means that I can buy several loads of grapes.

As I’d used the last of the coconut soya cream in the carrot soup, I went for the blackcurrant sorbet to go on my fruit salad, only to find that I’d forgotten to put it in the freezer. “That was an expensive way to get a storage container” I mused, but it hadn’t actually defrosted too far.

So Rosemary on the phone, and now bed-time. No guitar today, and no web-site amendment either. I’m falling behind again and I need to get on top of things. It’s too late for an early night too.

I really must get myself organised.

Friday 11th October 2019 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

… when I wrote about the evil (because there is no other word to describe it) humour in which I found myself?

Today I was rather hoping that I might have been over it, put it all behind me and moved on. But looking back over some of the stuff that I had written in an internet debate this morning, that’s clearly not the case because much of what I wrote, even though it reflected my true feelings, can best be described as “incendiary”.

It’s no surprise either because there was that much turmoil going on in my head that even at 01:30 the thought of going to bed hadn’t even occurred to me. I spent most of the night wide-awake.

There was some sleep of some kind though, because there are one or two items on the dictaphone. And when I get round to listening to them, it should be extremely interesting to say the least.

The alarms went off at the usual time but I didn’t. 07:15 again for me and this is getting monotonous. The school run too this morning and for a change I had Hannah’s Golf diesel.

So that’s now everything around here that I have driven at one time or another, and my favourite is still Rachel’s Golf estate, although the VWs are far too low for me and difficult to get out of.

Rushed off our feet again today. The place is closed for the weekend and on Monday so everyone wanted their supplies and work done today. I ended up shunting cars around, hauling bags of feed about and going to the bank.

And I’m right about tiredness too. Despite my dreadful night I kept on going all day with only a brief pause, not like yesterday when I was stark out. I was expecting to be much more exhausted today.

Excitement up on the railway line at the back of the depot. The old station was formerly a tractor-pulling venue but it’s up for sale. It seems that the fixtures and fittings have been sold and there were people up there dismantling the grandstand in order to move it to Grand Falls.

This evening there was just Darren and me. He had an omelette and I found some leftover vegan meatloaf in the fridge, followed by apple crumble.

later, I was reviewing some postings from my Arctic voyage. A few (well, one particular) memory came flooding back to me and so I decided to listen to some music to distract me and to soothe my fevered brow. It wasn’t a particularly good choice though. I played Colosseum Live, which will forever be associated in my brain with late, dark, cold nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in the High Arctic, and that is exactly what I’m trying to put out of my mind.

Yes, events in the High Arctic have scarred me somewhat and I can’t chase them out of my mind. It’s all very well listening to Joachim du Bellay and that I should be “Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage”, I’m more inclined right now to the words of the Duke of Marlborough who, on his way to fight at (thinks) Malplaquet, said “God knows I go with a heavy heart, for I have no hope of doing anything considerable”. Or even John Major’s legendary “When your back’s against the wall it’s time to turn round and fight”.

On that note, I’ll go to bed, I reckon. I’ve had a hard couple of days now that demons whom I thought that I had laid have now come back to haunt me. I have to remember, I suppose, that today I really should have been in hospital having a blood transfusion – having already missed three. Bit I’m missing this one too.

Who knows what state I’ll be in when I finally return home?

Perhaps I need some more music
All of the sudden she disappears
just yesterday she was here
somebody tell me if I am sleeping
someone should be with me here
I wanna be the last thing you hear when you’re falling asleep….

Saturday 29th June 2019 – A RECESSION? YOU MUST BE JOKING!

We keep on being told that economies are in a bad state and that many businesses are in crisis. But at the rate that they are turning away good money, it must be just a false rumour.

Last night I went to the Food Court in the basement of the Gare du Midi at 20:50 for my evening meal, bearing in mind that it closes at 21:00. Most of the stalls were already closed, another one was tidying up and cleaning up, and the final one told me “we’re not cooking now – we’re just closing”.

Obviously, it’s too much like hard work for anyone to be bothered to earn good money when it’s 10 minutes short of going-home time.

Not like the Indian restaurant in Crewe all those years ago. One of my taxis was out at 04:00 and the driver radioed me to ask if there was anywhere where his passengers could find somewhere to eat.

I telephoned the Indian restaurant
“sorry, we’re closed”
“but I have a taxi with passengers who are hungry”
“A taxi? How many passengers?”
“Four passengers”
“Four passengers? WE’RE OPEN!!!!”

And people complain that they are taking over.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I had a really decent sleep, right the way through until the alarm went off. I’d been on a little voyage too but I can’t remember anything at all about it. Any recollection of it evaporated before I had time to grab hold of the dictaphone.

After the usual morning performance I had a shower and washed my clothes, and then went down for breakfast. I need to start the day as I mean to go on;

Back up here, I dealt with a few things that needed doing, and tidied up and packed my possessions ready to leave tomorrow.

When Alison texted me, I headed down to the station and took the metro, changing at Arts-Loi to travel to Kraainem where she was waiting.

We went to Brico and Carrefour and then headed out, via her house to drop off some stuff, to the Ardennes in the sweltering heat.

We stopped off at Tellin for a cool drink and then off to the other side of the autoroute to Redu, which is the Belgian equivalent of Hay-on-Wye, full of second-hand bookshops.

Nothing there caught my eye so we headed off for Sohier. “Sohier we are”, I mused to myself.

It’s said to be one of the prettiest villages in Belgium. Pretty it may well be, but I’ve seen plenty that are prettier, and in Belgium too.

Back up the road to Han-sur-Lesse (home of the legendary caves) for a late lunch and a walk by the river.

Finally to Rochefort and its famous church, where I discovered not only carvings of masonic symbols such as the arc and compass but also a Sol Invictus – the Conquering Sun, a pagan symbol adopted by the emperor Constantine after the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312AD.

We also stumbled, quite by accident, upon the old abandoned Rochefort railway station on the abandoned lne between Jemelle and Houyet, closed to passengers in 1959 and to freight in 1978. There was also a tacot – a rural tramway – that started here and went to Wellin

That was enough for today as we were sweltering by this time in 35°C. We headed back to Brussels.

Alison dropped me off at the Herman Debroux metro station where I fuelled up her car for her and then I took the metro back to the Gare du Midi and my adventures in the food court.

Tea ended up being a baguette and tomato, followed by a banana. At least the Delhaize supermarket in the basement was still open.

Back here I sat down and ate my tea, and then I had in mind the idea of writing up my notes. However, the next thing that I remember was that it was about 23:30 – I’d been asleep for 90 minutes “just like that”, so I gave up the idea and went back to sleep.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: railway station

Sunday 12th January 2020 – THAT GUY HAD …

Saturday 11th January 2020 – YOU LUCKY PEOPLE!

Wednesday 1st January 2020 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Monday 30th December 2019 – I BET …

Thursday 12th December 2019 – WELL I NEVER …

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

Tuesday 10th December 2019 – I HAVE OFTEN SAID …

Thursday 5th December 2019 – AT LONG LAST …

Monday 18th November 2019 – SO HERE I AM …

Sunday 17th November 2019 – REMEMBER LAST NIGHT …

Saturday 16th November 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

Wednesday 13th November 2019 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

Thursday 31st October 2019 – I DIDN’T …

Friday 11th October 2019 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

Saturday 29th June 2019 – A RECESSION? YOU MUST BE JOKING!

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