Tag Archives: seagull

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… this evening’s beautiful sunset, as the sun slowly sinks into the sea somewhere off the shore of the Ile de Chausey, let me tall you about my day, such as it was.

And for a change, it started off rally well too. I was actually out of bed and struggling into my clothes when the third alarm went off, and that’s not something that happens every day, especially these days.

And so I wandered off for my medication, or whatever is left of my medication until tomorrow.

After the medication, I had a look at the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

And not very far, by the look of it.

There was something going on about a zoo during the night. There was a group of us, a Scottish rock group and I can’t remember which one it was. We were going hunting and someone brought a rifle along, but was soon persuaded to change it for a camera. We all had to wear face masks so I put this face mask on a little girl, a weird thing that needed all kind of strange tightening up, then told her to go to put hers on her brother and then come back to put mine on. Her brother was only a year or two older and he didn’t understand about face masks and they were having a bit of a struggle to get his face mask on.

Breakfast was next of course, and that was followed by a shower.

And those few hundred grammes that I had lost the other day – well, they are back. It seems that my bathroom scales are about as reliable as Castle Anthrax’s blood laboratory testing service … “you said that the other day” – ed.

And having had a good shower and clean up, then I cleaned and tidied the bathroom and you can actually see the surface in there now. That’s progress.

Having organised the bathroom I started on the kitchen and the dining area.

The kitchen looks as if it hasn’t been cleaned since Adam was a lad so it was high time that it was done. I usually always do that just before I go to Leuven, but I haven’t been there since January, have I?

And then the dining area. That needed a good going-over too.

So basically the place looks so much better now that it did yesterday.

The nurse (a new one) came at about 10:10 and I’m glad t was this one because even though he wasn’t particularly garrulous, he found a vein and insterted his needle quite painlessly. I’m always grateful for that.

He was in and out and gone within about 10 minutes, which meant that I could crack on with what I’d been intending to do.

We started off with the digital file splitting. Two albums of “Greatest Hits” and, to my surprise, both of them were completed today with just the odd little problem here and there but nothing serious.

That was followed by dictating the notes that I had written yesterday for the two radio projects on which I had been working.

And shame is it to say that I actually fell asleep while I was doing it. That was embarrassing, particularly as it was for about 20 minutes or so.

I can’t last the pace, can I?

But anyway, once they were dictated, I uploaded them to the computer

After lunch, I made a start on editing them, having a little chat with Rachel in New Brunswick along the way.

And even though I didn’t feel much like it and wished that I had something else to do instead of this, by the time that I came to knocking off at 18:00 I had made some quite remarkable progress.

So much so that I wish that I had had a day like this much earlier in the week when I really needed to do it.

The dictated notes have been edited as necessary
they have been converted to *.mp3 files
they have been split into the appropriate segments to match the music that will precede and follow them
they have all been merged together in the appropriate places
the remaining time has been calculated
the final, concluding tracks have been identified
these have been enhanced and edited
I’ve made a start on writing out the notes to conclude the programmes

Yes, I wish that I had more days like that.

An hour was spent on the guitar, just running over “Telegraph Road” again and once I worked out that not only is there a wrong chord, the chord pattern puts the breaks in the wrong place, then the identifying pattern was easy to spot

It’s a lot of hard work on the bass though, and I don’t think that I shall have it cracked any time soon.

For tea tonight, in my nice clean kitchen and dining area, I decided on a burger and bap for tea, with a baked potato.

Now that I know how much mustard to use (this “old-style” mustard is different to the more modern stuff) it comes out really well and tastes extremely delicious.

We’re on the verge of a crisis though. Tomorrow will see me use the last of the apple crumble. At the moment it’s tasting better and better as the spices in the apples have time to mix through

And then I had to go off for my evening runs.

The sun was still quite high in the sky right now, although I reckoned that by the time I had gone once around my little lap it will have gone down. So I put a spurt on and headed for the hills

And that was quite agonising too. For a couple of days I thought that I had cracked this little course of mine but that might have been rather optimistic. This evening I felt every inch of the way.

Eventually I found my way round to the chantier navale where I could stop to see that was going on.

And there’s been a change in there today. For the last week or so there have been four boats in there up on blocks but today there were only three.

The one that was on its own down the quayside seems to have disappeared – back into the water probably. They are clearly cracking on with things down there in the chantier navale regardless of any social distancing.

If you have a look at image, you’ll see that it’s been cropped from the previous photo. The girl in this image can be seen in the previous one right up at the top beyond the boat hoist and near the bright yellow plastic boat in the rack.

What’s interesting in this photo is that while I was taking the one of the chantier navale I could hear someone talking quite clearly, although I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Being of a curious bent, I had a good look around but couldn’t see anyone so I was puzzled. But then as the voice slowly became louder, I could see the girl approaching, and she was talking on her telephone.

She must have been a good 400 yards or so away from me yet because of the detention à domicile there was no noise of vehicles or other people and thus the sound of her voice was carrying for a much greater distance than you might expect.

The windows in the apartment had been open today and I had heard the pile-driver going off.

So when I stopped for breath on my run home, I went to see what they had been doing.

At first glance I couldn’t see any difference but on a closer look I think that one or two of the support pillars on the rue du Port side are deeper in the water.

They must have been having a hammering today.

While I was admiring the inner port, my attention was distracted by some goings-on in the corner over there.

Horses and hordes of seagulls circling around over there. It suggests that a fishing boat has just come in and is in the process of unloading. The birds will be on the lookout for a free meal as the process continues.

As for me though, I couldn’t hang around as I had things to do.

By now, the sun would be on its way out so I went for a butchers in the rue du Nord.

There was a girl there too, one of about ten people in total whom I had seen this evening, admiring the scenery too. I attempted to strike up a conversation with her as a gesture of solidarity but she wasn’t having it.

And so instead I carried on admiring the slowly-sinking sun. It really was beautiful.

After about 15 minutes the sun finally disappeared over the horizon and so in the nest tradition of the “News Of The Screws”, I “made my excuses and left”.

No-one was around to notice so I ran all the way back to the apartment so as to make up my five runs.

About 30 seconds after I returned, the ‘phone rang. It was Rosemary and she wanted a really good chat so we were there on the ‘phone puttign the world to rights for a good hour and a half.

I sisn’t want an early night anyway.

But now everything is all done and way later than I intended, I’m ready for bed.

Tomorrow I have the doctor’s appointment at 10:00 and then I’m off to the shops. There’s quite a bit of stuff that I need. And so I hope that LIDL isn’t going to have a heart attack if I have the need to take a photo or two.

That is – if I’m awake in time because I was hoping to be in bed much earlier than this.

Saturday 4th April 2020 – ANOTHER DAY …

… when I’ve been nothing like as productive as I ought to be.

And that’s a shame because it all started so well too. I comfortably beat the third alarm to my feet and after the medication I attacked the dictaphone.

Once again, the excesses of the couple of nights just recently seem to have been curbed. But while the quality seems to have been cut down, it’s done nothing the stem the emotion.

Last night I was in hospital and that I was going to have an operation. It was an appendicitis operation but it was on my throat of all places. Af course these were strange times with all kinds of different people having all kinds of different things wrong with them because of this virus and I couldn’t get into the hospital at all, but in the end they let me in. I’d been on board a ship which may or may not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour going round the Far North of Scotland and they had given me some gas anaesthetic. They clamped it over my nose and mouth and started to feed me the anaesthetic and I wasn’t going under. I was just sitting there looking at them, that kind of thing. They got a teddy bear out and started to play with this teddy bear to try to distract me but that didn’t work. In the end they simply turned up the gas until the gas was full on. Eventually I managed to pass out. Even though I was unconscious I could hear them moving all the knives, equipment and everything around. I was absolutely dreading what was going to happen next and this was another occasion where I actually awoke myself in order to avoid it.

There have been one or two like that just recently where the situation has been such that I’ve been obliged to awaken myself to avoid it. I’ve often said … “on many occasions” – ed … that the whole idea of hospîtals and surgery and all of that kind of thing is something that I can’t stomach.

What I’ve been going through this last four years or so, with hospitals, operations, tubes and pipes and all that kind of thing is my worst nightmare and there are medical actions that have been proposed to me that I’ve turned down flat because I couldn’t even stand the thought of them, not the action.

It’s the law in France that any surgical intervention, no matter what, has to be explained in precise detail to the victim and his or her consent obtained. When they wanted to do stuff to me I flatly refused to hear what they wanted to tell me and there was something of a stand-off.

In the end they had to prepare a document to the effect that I would give my consent to the operation but I didn’t want to hear anything about it. They weren’t sure just how that would stand up in Court if it came to that, but that’s all that they were getting from me.

After breakfast I made a start on the digitalising of my album collection. No major issues today except that one of them took a good while to deal with. And Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a good chat.

As a result of all of this, I was late going for my shower and even later going out to the shops. No queue when I arrived (there was when I left) and I was able to buy most things that I needed.

No small tins of kidney beans and still no pizza bases. No pizza flour either, so I bought some ordinary flour and I’m going to have a go, once I’ve used the last base in my stock this weekend, to make a pizza base. I have yeast, salt and oil and I can’t think what else I might need.

But years ago, I used to buy flat round bread in Belgium, slice it horizontally rather than vertically, and use that as a pizza base. There’s always a way, and I seem to remember that the bread base worked quite well.

There was ice cream that needed to be bought but I baulked at the price that LeClerc wanted for the Alpro stuff. However, they had a tub left of that delicious banana sorbet.

Back here, Laurent had returned to me his comments on our project so after a little bit here and there I could send it off for consideration. We then ended up in a discussion about the audio diary that we are keeping.

In between all of this, I was speaking to someone on the internet. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the hi-fi that’s connected to the computer is in the process of giving up the ghost. 18 or so years, 6 of which were being stored in a damp shed, hasn’t done it any favours.

I’m not going to waste my money on any cheap stuff, seeing as how much time I spend here and the kind of work that I do, so I’ve been talking to a specialist place in Germany about what I need to have some really decent desktop quality.

Eventually I was able to turn my attention to my own radio projects, but not as much as I could because I ended up … errr … relaxing for a while. And a proper, deep relax it was too and that was quite depressing.

As a result I ended up not even finishing one, never mind both of them. So although it’s against my principles, I’ll have to work tomorrow – my day off.

After the session on the guitar, I made myself some tea. Saturday night so it’s usually a meal out of a tin, but the way things are, I’m not doing anything with my tins right now.

But I have plenty of vegan burgers which are quick to cook and anyway, I believe that some vegan burger mix is heading my way in the post sometime. So pasta, veg and tomato sauce with a vegan burger it was too.

The last of the apple pie and the last of the Alpro soya ice cream. Tomorrow, it’s the day that I cook a dessert and I haven’t had rice pudding for a good while, so I reckon that we’ll have a rice pudding for the next few days.

That was the cue for me to go off for my evening walk.

It was still light out there, but the sun was quite low in the sky. I ended up with this beautiful image across the day of the sun shining directly into the windows of this building on the hilltop across the bay at the back of town.

It would have been a beautiful sunset tonight, but we had a good one last night and I don’t want to clutter things up with too much of the same photograph.

It’s hard enough as it is for me to find things of interest in the time that I’m allowed out. I mean – we haven’t had a “pathetic parking” photo for weeks.

But returning to the sunset, there were all kinds of people out there enjoying it. Almost every secluded nook and cranny had a couple of people in it, keeping out of the way of their neighbours and, I imagine, out of the way of any surveillance.

What a state in which we are living. We are told that it is for our own good, which is probably correct right now, but it’s also correct to say that it’s usually been a war or a violent revolution that has been required to take back control from a fascist once he’s laid his hands on it.

The easiest way to control a population is to frighten it. It was a principle of the Nazis expounded by Goering. At the moment, the people don’t need any more frightening in order to let themselves be controlled, but it’s going to be interesting to see what steps the Governments will be taking in the future to control the population in this measure.

How many more virus scares will we have once this one is out of the way?

Talking of scaring people, anyone who had the wind put up them by the Hitchcock film THE BIRDS won’t have enjoyed what’s been happening in the old walled town just now.

Whatever is going on I really don’t know, but the seagulls are becoming a lot less nervous of people and are clamouring around so much more. In fact there was quite a flock of them this evening circling around above the old town this evening.

Whoever was out there walking this evening, I hope that he was wearing a hat. These gulls have an accuracy that would put Bomber Command to shame

And keeping up with the routine, I managed all four runs tonight and, much to my surpise, they weren’t difficult. In fact, I overran the first by about 30 metres and had it not been uphill I could have carried on..

And I’m glad that I’m doing it because of that 800 grammes that I had gained, I’d lost 400 since Thursday.

And that reminds me of the time That Nerina told me that during a certain two-week period she had lost 2kgs.
“Keep it up, darling” I urged. “At this rate, by Christmas you’ll be gone completely”.

On that point, I’ll clear off. It’s Sunday and I can have a lie-in. But I’ll have to work, I suppose. These things don’t get done themselves, do they?

Friday 13th March 2020 – LOOK AT THIS …

… seagull!

“So what’s exciting about a seagull?” I hear you ask. After all, there must be thousands of them loitering around here one way or another.

The answer is that it’s not necessarily the bird, but have a close look underneath it and you’ll see something dropping from it.

No, it’s not that, although it may well be, given the number of gulls around here. The bird has a shellfish and it’s flying over the concrete apron by the fish processing plant and the stone boat ramp, and it’s dropping the shellfish onto the hard surface in order to break the shell and eat the contents.

It’s had a few goes at it already and I imagine that it’ll keep on doing it until the shell breaks. But it’s just amazing to me how quickly the local wildlife adapts to the man-made environment. It’s much more convenient than dropping the shellfish on the rocks.

Just for a change these days, I beat the third alarm to my feet this morning. Not by much, but beat it I did and that was good news. Especially as it was gone 00:30 when I went to bed and so I’d had less than 6 hours sleep.

Following the medication and my nice new orange and ginger cordial, it was time to attack the dictaphone. There was a group of us doing something and it involved being out on a boat. The boat came to grief in some way or other – I can’t remember how – but the guy in charge said that it was due to our own fault, that we hadn’t taken any safety precautions like sending out a boat first to check on the crossing and check on the bit that we were having to cross over before we all leapt on board and sailed off. There would have been more to this as well but I actually had a shocking attack of cramp in my leg and awoke with a hell of a start.

After breakfast I attacked the digital sound-file splitting. Three of them went fine, according to plan, but the fourth – well …

It’s a very rare album so I doubt that I’ll get to find to what the master copy that I have relates. It doesn’t match anything at all that I have found so far. I’ve untangled it as best as I can and I’ll have to see about the rest.

But for some unknown reason, that knocked me right out of my stride and I just couldn’t get going at all today. As far as anything else goes, it’s been a very wasted day today and I’m rather disappointed with myself.

Mind you, I suppose that I have every reason to be disappointed. I’ve had some very disheartening news.

Not that I have said very much to very many people but I actually managed to find a freighter that would take me across the Atlantic from Ijmuiden in the Netherlands to Burns Harbor, one of the outports of Chicago, all the way down the St Lawrence and right through the Great Lakes, at the end of July.

It’s a trip that the ship does every month, so I had booked a passage on it as a way of getting to North America this autumn, and as it happens, on the return journey it refuels in Montreal so I’d made arrangements to be picked up in Montreal at the end of October to sail back to Europe.

But the long and the short of it is that I had a mail today telling me that the journey is cancelled. No surprise there – just a desperate disappointment. I was so looking forward to this.

On that sad note, I went outside for my morning walk to pick up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline.

There were a few people out there enjoying the pleasant, if windy morning. And there was also quite a considerable amount of shipping out there today. It wasn’t easy to identify them from up here so I took a speculative photo.

When I get back home I can blow up the image and have a look to see who’s out there.

At first glance, I had thought that one of the boats out there resembled La Grande Ancre.

But that’s not the case. It must be a fishing boat with a similar sikhouette. And how do I know that? Well, because right at that moment La Grande Ancre came sailing … “dieseling” – ed … around the headland on her way out to sea.

Right on cue, I reckon. She couldn’t have timed it any better.

But I do like this photo. Despite the distance at which it was taken, it’s come out rather well and I’m pleased with that.

They weren’t the only boats out there either.

Close on the heels of La Grande Ancre came this really nice yacht enjoying the windy weather and having a good run out in the sun.

And how I envied him. My own little nautical jaunt having been cancelled, I need to find some other way to take to the water this year, and I’ve no idea how I’m going to do that.

But then, there’s always a plan somewhere

And talking of the answer, here’s the answer – or, at least, part of the answer – to the question of which boats were out there in mid-Channel just now.

Out of the doom and gloom and mist and fog and haze comes Chausiais, heading into port. It looks very much as if she’s been out on the earlu morning tide to take a delivery to the Ile de Chausey and is now on her way home before the tide goes too far out.

It’s not very often that we are lucky enough to see her out at sea. She doesn’t seem to go out very much but I imagine that all of thzt will change pretty soon

The tide is out at the moment and the harbour gates are shut. That means that I can take the short cut across the path on top of the gates.

Over the last few days we’ve seen La Granvillaise up on blocks in the chantier navale but she was released the other day. She’s now here in the harbour, moored up in the space next to Spirit of Conrad in the space where Charles-Marie would be, were she not up on blocks in the chantier navale.

This harbour is going to become very congested in due course, with all of the pontoons that they are installing.

And talking of the installation of the pontoons, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday they started installing the second row of pontoon support pillars in the harbour.

This batch is going to be on the south side of the floating harbour, so one of the things that I wanted to do was to see how they are getting on with it.

The answer is that they don’t seem to have made all that much progress over the course of the morning. There’s still just the one pillar in position and there doesn’t seem to be anyone about doing anythign with anything else.

And with there being no-one about, I took the opportunity to have a peek in their compound to see how many more pillars there are to install. I mean – I imagine that all of those here are here to be used.

And what we have left are three large pillars, a smaller one that looks like it’s off the floating pontoon and is calibrated in some way, presumably for depth, and an offcut of about 10 or 12 feet.

What they are going to be doing with the offcut is a mystery that has drawn my attention for now. But basically, it looks as if we are going to be having one row of five pillars and another row of four, although in truth I’ve long-since given up trying to calculate the logic behind what these people are doing.

They were expecting me in La Mie Caline so I didn’t hang around long, and there was nothing to detain me on my climb back home.

After lunch, I had another attack at the sound files that we had recorded during our visit to the Grande Marée but my heart wasn’t in it and I found myself falling asleep – not once but twice – and in the same place in the recording both times too. I really must pull myself together.

To break up the monotony and try to find some enthusiasm and motivation from somewhere, I went for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there on the lawn by the lighthouse enjoying the view but my attention was elsewhere because the tide was quite out and the bay was pretty deserted. Hardly a drop of water anywhere.

Of course, this merits a photo. It doesn’t get like this every day. Probably half a dozen times each year the tide goes this low.

Roud by the chantier navale, I went to see what was happening down there.

Charles-Marie is still there and the guy working on it is still there on the skyjack hacking a few more lumps out of the side of her.

It looks as if it’s going to be a long job and she’ll be there for a while. But she’ll be a whole different ship when she comes out and I can’t wait for the moment when I’ll be able to have a close-up view of her – whenever that might be.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen on many occasions photos of people taking photos and, on one or two occasions, photos of people taking photos of people taking photos.

Today, on the grassy lawn on the boulevard Vaufleury, overlooked by our old friend the Corsair Pleville le Pelley, is another group of people having their photo taken by someone armed with a tripod.

It would probably be a good idea for me to make more use of mine every now and again, if only the wind would subside.

Back here, I ordered a new memory card for the big NIKON D500. As well as taking SD cards, it also takes XQD cards in a different slot.

These are expensive but are much better quality so I’ve ordered one and it should be here in a couple of days. Then I can see whether it’s the SD card aperture that’s faulty or whether it’s something more crucial.

But I was still unable to find the motivation that I needed to do this project and rather than waste the day completely I edited a pile of photos from July 2019 when I was on my way to Iceland on board the The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour.

Tea was another “anything curry” with the leftovers lengthened with some lentils. It was quite delicious too. Apple pie and vegan ice cream for afters, and I remembered the chocolate sauce too.

No-one about for the evening run tonight. I managed three lengths too, having to lengthen my walk due to not having done enough on the morning walk. And I wasn’t as out of breath as I might have been either

No photos either. I was being rather optimistic with my ambitions, and they didn’t work out well enough. But you live and learn.

Anyway, bed-time. And i’m hoping for a good sleep tonight. A nice long voyage too, in pleasant company. I need cheering up and I always seem to have much more fun and excitement in my life during the night than ever I do during the day.

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.

Sunday 24th November 2019 – YOU’VE NO IDEA …

… just how right I very nearly was about this morning either.

As it happens I awoke at … errr … 06:25 this morning but no chance whatever of me leaving my stinking pit at that time of the morning.

When I awoke at 09:00 I didn’t feel like leaving the warmth either, but I had to get up, for reasons which any man my age will very well know. And while I was sitting there riding the porcelain horse, the telephone rang!

Had I not been up and about it would really have disturbed my reverie and no mistake.

Although it was a late night too, there was plenty of time to go off a-wandering. And no mistake this time. I pinched myself this time to make sure that I was awake before I dictated this particular dream. The front door rang and it was Brigitte outside with all kinds of stuff for me to make muesli with. She’d heard that I wasn’t feeling too well and shop on my own so I thought at least I could have breakfast. This was as far as it got. I was with Liz and Terry by the way and we were possibly going to see Nive Neilsen I don’t know. Anyway this is what happened, but Brigitte turned up and I don’t remember the rest of the dream because there wasn’t one. As soon as I consciously knew that I was having a dream I woke up so that I could dictate it and there didn’t seem to be much point in that!
A little later on, we were much more involved. I was with a girl who reminded me very much of Sue Cassell although it wasn’t her – she was much smaller than that. We were hanging around together and going places and doing things but we weren’t particularly a couple. But as time went on and we were walking aorund this housing estate type of place that might have been Baron’s Road in Shavington but wasn’t and some waste land with a stream and trees and a high earth bank. Somehow the conversation turned round a bit towards the obvious and I made a move. She seemed to be quite receptive to the idea. I didn’t know what was going through her mind but she was quite interested in this. Anyway, I stopped and the conversation came round to her place and we ended up back at her house where she lived with her mother. She wanted me to go and put something in the rubbish. But where was the rubbish? It was upstairs in one of the bedrooms of all places. I had to take the rubbish upstairs and look in all the bedrooms to find out which room the rubbish was in and put the rubbish in there. It was actually a bedroom that someone would sleep in, bed all made up and everything where you put the rubbish in and I thought that this was really strange. Later on we went out and we were at this outdoor bar-type place and I had to go and get some her some food. I got her three bread rolls and I can’t remember what I got with them now but it was something like jam or tomato sauce but it was stuff that you would never ever eat with bread – puree or something I have no idea, that kind of thing but I took it back to her and she said “great, thank you”. There was nowhere for me to sit so I had to go and scrounge a seat. The table we were at was already crowded so I had to scrounge a seat and sit somewhere nearby her. I was thinking that I should have sat down and got her to sit on my knee and that would have been much more fun but somehow it didn’t quite work out like this. Again it was another one of these dreams that I’ve been having quite recently where “I had the bird right on my plate and when was I going to get my fork stuck in it” type of dreams.
And if you don’t know what I mean by that, it’s probably because the dreams that I was having back in August and September haven’t yet made it onto the blog.

For some reason this morning I wasn’t hungry so I did without breakfast and settled for coffee instead. Then I sat down and had a blitz through the music. I finished the first pass through of the LPs and by the time you read this I’ll have made inroads into the cassette tapes.

The good thing about this is that I’m finding long-forgotten stuff that I never realised that I had. It’s like an Aladdin’s cave in here. And with music going on all throughout the day i’m feeling in a much better mood.

And that’s important too because the events of the last few days have made me realise that if something is meant to be, it will be. No matter how long you have to wait, it will all come right in the end.

I’m thinking specifically of an event that was spread out over a couple of days 14 months ago and which reached its climax one day in September. And how, all of a sudden with no effort from me and no input from anyone, it all fell quite by accident into my lap.

This can only be encouraging news for Castor. Just ride out the storm and it it’s meant to be, it will be.

No bread in the house again so a walk down into town for a dejeunette.

The first thing that caught my eye was the sunlight piercing through the gloom. We’ve seen over a few days the strange effect that the sunlight i having, shining through the tiny gaps in the clouds and illuminating objects as a stage spotlight would (unless it’s at the Archipel Theatre where the stage lighting manager couldn’t even light a match).

Today there was a brilliant glow of light right on the centre of the Baie de Mont St Michel and it all looked extremely eerie.

The tide was out and so I took the long route down past the fish processing plant and across the walkway on the harbour gates and round the back of the dock.

Not a soul about. It was all really quiet in tow today.

Down at the boulangerie I bought my dejeunette and as I was leaving, my attention was drawn to this advert.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m a vegan and that France is about 100 years behind the times when it comes to vegan food.

But it seems to be slowly catching uo. The boulangerie does snacks of various kinds, and here it is proudly announcing a “100% vegan” option. So hats off to La Mie Caline

Back at the apartment I carried on with editing the photos and I finished that job, even though it took me an age. My heart wasn’t in it today, but I’m not too bothered because it is Sunday after all

As usual, I broke off for my afternoon walk. It was windy and raining but nevertheless I stuck it out.

There were other people out there braving the weather besides me too. This intrepid yachtsman was out there doing his bit in the English Channel, having a great time by the looks of things.

And I spent quite some time admiting his wind turbine too. Ohh happy days, hey?

Further on around the walls I stopped to see what was happening down on the promenade above the sea wall at the Plat Gousset.

Quite a few people out there enjoying the air despite the miserable weather and watching the sea as the tide was coming in.

A nice heavy rolling sea heading in to shore with the waves crashing up against the sea wall.

There was a better view from a little further round. And I imagine that it would be even better when the tide was further in. But I wasn’t going to hang around that long.

Instead, I turned for home and as there was only a couple of people further on down the path, I took the opportunity for a discreet run of a couple of hundred meters.

Before leaving the scene however, I took a photo of it, only to find that I had been photo-bombed once again by a blasted seagull

When I returned home, I treated myself to coffee and a slice of Liz’s gorgeous cake that she had brought me

Tea tonight was a delicious vegan pizza and then I headed out again – into the howling gale that’s raging outside.

Nothing at all of anything going on whatsoever so I didn’t photograph anything. And I had a really good run too and even managed to breast the rise at the end – but came to a dead stop when I was hit by a vicious headwind.

So that’s it for today. Back to work tomorrow so I’m hoping for an early night if I can.

But back here I suddenly seem to have developed a raging thirst. And that can only mean one thing. And that is that I’m heading for another relapse.

Ohhh God!

Monday 11th November 2019 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… another day like yesterday.

No alarm of course so I was banking on a good sleep. Especially as it was about 04:00 when I finally wandered off to bed, such is the exciting life that I lead here.

And so awakening at 08:30 was no part of the plan whatsoever.

Just like yesterday I turned over to go back to sleep by by 09:30 I gave it up and raised myself from the dead.

Somewhere during the night I’d been off on my travels too. And it all had a very familiar ring when I compare it with what usually happens in my life too.

I was up getting things ready for a party and this involved doing all of the organising, the paperwork and the tickets and so on. I’d folded up a pile of tickets to put in my pocket and so on – my pockets were full of stuff and now I had to sit down and start to do the paperwork. First thing I needed to do was to find my pen – a highlighter pen – and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I emptied out all of my pockets and put the tickets in a nice pile and they all fell over and fell on the floor. I had a really good hunt around and in the end I found my pen – my highlighter pen – and then I had to go and get the letter to pick it up and highlight it and I couldn’t find the letter and I’d only had it in my hand a minute ago and I had to hunt around for this letter and I couldn’t find it and I could hear all people outside and I don’t know whether they had started to ocme to the party early or something like that but I was nowhere near ready at all and I still couldn’t find this paper and I’d only had it just that minute before.

Doesn’t all of that sound familiar?

We had the usual medication and breakfast, and then I spent an hour or two updating some pages on the website. I’m now somewhere on the north-west coast of Newfoundland in 2010 which means that I’m about a third of the way through – and that’s just doing the active pages too. When I look at all of the pages in the queue, it makes me shudder.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is working on my little project. This involves the help of Youtube and the Allman Brothers Band and a considerable amount of research. And I’m still at it even now.

There has also been some considerable excitement here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the strap on my fitbit broke a few weeks ago and I ordered a new one.

It never arrived, so I complained. And it turned out that according to the supplier “it was delivered and signed for on 29th October”.

Well, not here it wasn’t, so I complained again. This morning they sent be a copy of the delivery receipt from the carriage company, and asked me about the signature.

My reply was that it certainly was not mine, and I could say that with confidence because the address on the delivery receipt is wrong. For some unknown reason about which I know absolutely nothing at all, they seem to have sent the bracelet to an address in Italy.

Nevertheless, we now have to go through some stupid claims procedure with the freighter, when the reason is there right before everyone’s eyes.

What will inevitably happen will be that it will take a year to sort out, by which time they will tell me that the product is now out of stock and I can’t get one anyway.

So in the meantime, I’ve found a generic one on eBay at a quarter of the price, and that should be on its way here now even as we speak. I can’t be doing with all of this.

With a late start I had a late lunch, and then I went out for another long walk – and then had to come back because I’d forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera.

And, even more strangely, there are 25 steps from the ground floor up to my apartment – and I ran all the way up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there have been days when i couldn’t even crawl up.

So armed with a memory card, it was back out into the howling gale (when is it ever going to stop?) and along the rue du Nord.

There was another really rough sea rolling in from the Atlantic and the waves breaking on the beach were quite impressive.

The tide is still quite far out right now.

And with the tide being quite far out right now, there was a large crowd out there on the Plat Gousset looking as if they were waiting for something.

Not that I might know what it would be, but if it’s waiting for the waves to come in and crash over the sea wall, I reckon that they have about another hour.

They could have gone for a coffee or two and come back with plenty of time rather than waiting out there in the wind.

My route this afternoon was longer than usual seeing how I’d missed my morning walk.

Instead of the habitual route I went down the steps, through the lower town and out to the port de plaisance – the yacht harbour – to see if there was anything exciting going on there.

And here tied up at one of the pontoons is one of our old favourites, the Lys Noir. I’ve no idea what she’s doing moored up out here, but she’s not doing very much right now.

Something else that I will have to do is to check her itinerary for the near future and see where I can go.

She wasn’t the only one of our old favourites in port today either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Pecheur de Lys was taken out of storage earlier this year and put afloat in the harbour. And she’s still there too, riding out the waves.

But I wonder if she’ll ever get to see the open sea?

It was busy in there too. One of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey had just come in and it was disgorging its passengers and cargo out onto the quay.

However, my attention was elsewhere. Right now we were in the middle of one of these flash rainstorms that we have ever now and again. And a heavy one too.

And right there over the town we were being blessed with one of the most beautiful rainbows that I have seen in a long time.

We’ve had a few just recently and I’ve photographed a couple, but this one this afternoon takes the cake. And look how black the sky was too.

Meanwhile returning à nos moutons as they say down there, the inner harbour was very busy too.

The harbour gates can’t have been open for all that long because there was a regular procession of trawlers coming in to tie up at the fish-processing plant.

And also smaller trawlers too, with all of their family and friends lined up at the quayside ready to catch the catch as it’s thrown up by those down below in the boat.

There are two of our regular boats that weren’t in the water today.

Here up on blocks in the Chantier Navale is our old friend Aztec Lady that appeared in port the other week. There didn’t seem to be much evidence about the work that might be being undertaken and there was no-one with her to ask.

Mind you, I doubt that they would tell me anyway. Commercial charter companies are very reticent to talk about defects in their equipment.

Next to her up on more blocks is our other old friend Spirit of Conrad. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been for a birthday party on board about 2 years ago.

Her owner, one of my neighbours, was down there so I had a chat to him. Apparently she has a hole in the hull caused by some kind of impact damage and she’s going to be patched up.

He showed me the hole and it wasn’t really all that big and it seemed to be above the waterline too. So it won’t take long to fix.

On the way back, I walked all around the headland, in the teeth of a howling gale.

Out at the Pointe du Roc where we turn into the English Channel, the seas were quite heavy and this little trawler here was having something of a rough time of it turning her beam to the wind.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you think about the real cost of the lump of fish that goes onto your plate on a Friday. How would you like to work out there in conditions like that?

Coming into port in a storm like this is one thing, but how about going out to work in it?

When the other trawlers were coming in, there was one just setting out. And here she is ploughing her way out through the waves in the doom and gloom on her way to her fishing station somewhere off the coast of the Channel Islands.

It’s not something that I mind doing once in a while, but to be out there in weather like that all the time is not for me.

My mega-walk is now one hour or so later than when I started and the tide is now well in.

The waves are giving the sea wall at the Plat Gousset a real pounding and as you will probably notice, the crowd has diminished considerably.

And seeing as it’s rather late, I shan’t be joining them either. I’m going inside for a coffee, some warmth and to do a little more work.

In fact, I’m going to make tea. Stuffed pepper with rice followed by the last of the rice pudding. Bearing in mind last week’s problem, I gave the pepper an extra two minutes (one minute on medium and one minute on high) and it was done to a turn.

Delicious.

Back outside for my evening walk around the walls and I was all on my own, which was no surpise given the wind.

The tide was on its way out too so the crowds on the Plat Gousset have dispersed. I carried on with my walk and to my surprise not only did I run all the way up the ramp at the end, I ran on a few more paces.

What with running up the steps, and running here like this, I’ve no idea what is happening. But I’m going to make the most of it while I can.

And my fitbit tells me that I’ve done 104% of my daily activity too.

If I’m not very careful, I’ll be getting myself fit, and where will I be then?

Rather like the guy who decided that he was going to run 4 miles every night. By the end of the week he had to run 28 miles back home again.

I’ll get my coat.

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rough seas bricqueville sur mer granville manche normandy france

rough seas plat gousset granville manche normandy france

rough seas place marechal foch plat gousset granville manche normandy france

chausiais granville manche normandy france

fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

seagull port de granville harbour manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawler rough seas english channel granville manche normandy france

Friday 8th November 2019 – IT REALLY WAS …

… beautiful out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel this afternoon.

And you can tell that from this photo. Plenty of sunshine out there on the water, the Brittany coast (18 miles away if you are interested) in the background, and the yacht sailing with the wind.

Not to mentioned being photo-bombed yet again by another blasted seagull. Although I do have to say that it adds a certain extra something to the image.

But never mind that – I had some tissues and I was wearing a hat.

Mind you, I’m surprised that I managed to actually see anything of the daylight today. Despite promising myself an early night, I was still up and playing the guitar at 01:30 this morning.

And even more surprisingly, I managed to beat the third alarm out of bed, even though I was feeling like something that had been dragged through the cat flap.

Plenty of time for me to go off on a nocturnal ramble too. And a big “hello” to Castor and Pollux who came to join me on my journey, which was yet another one of a long line of tumultuous journeys riddled with turmoil. I’d had a big row with Castor and Pollux so they weren’t really speaking to me. And so I was in the dining hall and I was at a table hoping to catch a glimpse of them because I knew that they would be coming out very soon. In fact there were all these cars already up the street – there must have been 1,000 of them parked up there waiting for the everyone to come out. I couldn’t find which car had come for them and I knew that he would get there early so that he would be close to the gate but I didn’t have a clue. But there in the refectory I was sitting there at a table I suddenly saw them all with about 2 or 3 other people around them. And I sort of half went over to chat, and half didn’t and I couldn’t make up my mind what to do. In the end I went back to my seat. Just then a teacher appeared with a pile of stuff. She was looking for a girl called Kenneth. She had had some work and gave it to this girl called Kenneth and told her something. There was also some more work and I thought that it was for some other person but it turned out that it was for her as well. So the teacher gave her these three loads of work that needed doing, and that was when I awoke. One thing that I did notice was that Castor and Pollux and the other people with them were having quite a good amount of fun and I was terribly jealous in this sense because I wasn’t in there having the fun with them.

Things are really getting at me these days, aren’t they?

We had the usual medication and then breakfast, following which I attacked the dictaphone notes. And what with a few interruptions, I’d transcribed 9 by the time I knocked off.

One of the interruptions was the parcels delivery man. Another load of stuff has come, part of which was the 40-watt amplifier for the guitar. I forgot to photograph it so I’ll do that tomorrow.

Before I could allow myself lunch, I went for a walk. Down the steps, along the rue du Port and back up the rue des Juifs.

No groups of tourists today. Instead, we had groups of fishing boats coming in to harbour on the turn of the tide.

They did well to dredge out that little channel there at the foot of the quay. Those boats that only have a shallow draught can come right in even though there’s a long way to go before the tide fills the outer harbour.

For lunch, I had one of the containers of soup that I made yesterday. And I don’t know why but it doesn’t taste as nice as any one of the others that I have made. That’s not to say that it’s bad of course – just not as good.

This afternoon I’ve been playing the guitar and dealing with the web site amendments. And although the site isn’t half-done as yet, there are a couple of bots even as we speak trawling their way through the revised pages

At 15:45 we had the usual stop for our afternoon walk in the glorious sunshine – even though it was still rather windy out there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Thora has been in port for the last day or two. But as I was going out, so was she. Braving the stormy seas off the Ile de Chausey on her way back to the Channel islands.

You can see the spray out at the bow of the ship as the waves go slamming themselves into the hull. Even though the wind has died down somewhat, there’s still a great deal of force left in the sea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back earlier in the year I had a guided tour of one of the old bunkers of the Atlantic Wall. Some group of volunteers has taken them over with the aim of starting a museum of sorts.

There was a large lorry fitted with a hiab parked outside the bunker so naturally I went to see what was going on.

It’s difficult to see of course, but certainly something seems to be being delivered. So it looks as if whatever they are doing, it’s now starting to make progress.

And good luck to them too.

We weren’t the only people out there enjoying the good weather either.

The guys from the Sailing School were out there in the bay too, presumably giving sailing lessons. One of these days I’ll go down to make further enquiries.

Back in the apartment I made a start on my Project n°3. I want to get ahead as much as I can and build up a stock for future reference.

One of the things that this involves is to cut soundbites out of a collection of clips of Louis de Funes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was always doing that out of old British radio shows, but this needs to be done in French.

Tea was pie with veg and gravy followed by, seeing as I had the oven on, a rice pudding. The pie was one slice of that which I made just before I went away and it was absolutely delicious.

This evening I took my walk around the walls rather earlier than usual. Nevertheless I was still all alone on my walk and wasn’t disturbed at all.

Some of my night photography didn’t work at all, but one or two others have come out rather well, such as this one of the town with Kairon-Plage in the background, slightly to the right of centre.

Once more , it’s a hand-held shot with the monopod, so it’s not too bad, I reckon.

This one of the trees in the Square Maurice Marland has come out really well and I quite like this. In fact, I took a couple of good photos today.

This is actually round about the end of my running strip, and I made it this evening halfway up the ramp before I ran out of wind.

But I think that that’s about as far as I’m ever going to get. I don’t seem to be able to push on.

I was wondering if maybe I were to start at the ramp and run anti-clockwise, that might be better and I might go farther.

Yesterday I said that I might stay out with the tripod when we have a nice night, and it was certainly a nice night tonight.

But there was football on the internet – Aberystwyth v Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League.

The score was 5-0 to Bala, and you might be thinking that this was a really one-sided game. But that’s far from the truth. Bala’s second goal was scored from a breakaway following a sustained period of Aber pressure.

But the fourth goal made me weep. How many times have I said to defenders to stop messing about in defence with the ball and clear it upfield quickly?

Sure enough, Aberystwyth were mssing around with the ball just outside the penalty area for a couple of minutes and inevitably, because you can guess what happened just as easily as I can tell you, they needlessly lost possession.

The fifth goal too was extremely unfortunate. Roberts in the Aberystwyth goal made an excellent save, the ball hit the crossbar and could have gone anywhere. But of course it has to drop right at the feet of Chris Venables and he’s not going to miss sitters like that from three yards out.

So now I’m off to bed. Still no Caliburn so I’ll be walking to the shops tomorrow.

But before I go, I was hunting around in the Al Stewart lyrics that I have had for probably 40 years, looking for the source of the quote “spaghetti, two forks, one plate” when I came across these lyrics –
“And so as she slept and the pure morning crept”
“Through the windows to take her away”
“I thought you can’t make people be what you want them to be”
“I could see my self nailed to a dormitory tale”
“Of a holiday night’s escapade”
“And just yesterday she had seemed like a woman to me”

“And so like a child with the sleep in her eyes”
“Where the sadness of age had once been”
“She left on the plane with a “See you again” and a smile”
“And I couldn’t say what I had won or I lost”
“Or even just what I had seen”
“But when I’m alone I just think of her once in awhile”.

Remind anyone of anything?

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thora english channel granville manche normandy france

workmen unloading cargo bunker atlantic wall pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

granville by night manche normandy france

Monday 4th November 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in business!

This morning I took my completed project up to the weekly meeting of this organisation. I mentioned that I didn’t think all that much of what I had done but they were delighted, saying that it’s better than they expected.

And so I have the green light to go.

But go where? I hear you say. And I reply that you’ll find out on Friday evening at about 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time, 15:00 EST etc etc.

Last night was a pretty late night and I’m not quite sure why because it wasn’t if I had anything special to do. Nevertheless, I still staggered out of bed before the third alarm, for which I am grateful.

Even so, there was plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble. Back on board a ship again last night with two certain people who might (or might not) have been representing Castor and Pollux. We were having some kind of drawing thing, we had to draw something and label it. I was drawing something about the cliffs and the sea, that kind of thing and I was wondering about other people – like these two for example, I was wondering about what what they were doing because theirs didn’t seem to bear any resemblance to what was being asked at all. They had some strange figures that looked like girls and I wondered why they had included those in the drawing when there was no real need to. And it was all in blue too in this dream and I’ve no idea why, everything was in the colour blue (like some of my photos on that trip).

After the medication and breakfast I had a shower and cleaned myself up somewhat, then added yesterday’s photos to the blog and transcribed some dictaphone notes before heading off for my meeting.

On the way back, I called at LIDL and spent a lot of money. Mostly on a thermal ski undershirt seeing as the ski gear is now in the shops. If ever I get back to the Arctic (which is unlikely) it will come in handy.

They had carrots at a give-away price of e0:69 per kilo so I bought a kilo and I’m going to make some more carrot soup. But with less ginger this time.

And I learnt something exciting today too.

Last year in September I was in a town in North Greenland called Uummannaaq and I met a couple of people there. Subsequently I met two others when I was on my travels.

And to my surprise, a couple of them will actually be in Granville in a couple of weeks’ time, playing some music on stage at the local theatre. There were a few tickets left too, so I roped in Liz and Terry and bought some tickets.

It’s been a while since I went out for an evening.

After lunch, I finished off today’s load of dictaphone entries and then went off for a walk.

First thing that I noticed was some weird lighting effect on the sea over to the Ile de Chausey.

It’s difficult to know what’s going on with that. It could be just the way that the low autuln sunlight is shining through a few holes in the clouds.

But it gave the whole thing a really surreal vista, as if we are about to be visited by something from Outer Space.

That is, if we haven’t already had visitors therefrom. I’ve no idea where they find THESE people.

At first I thought “you cannot be Sirius”, but on reflection I’m not ruling this out completely. After all, I’ve always said that anyone supporting Brexit must be living on a different planet to the one on which the rest of us are living.

And while I was musing on the foregoing, I really DID think that I was about to be visited by beings from Outer Space

But the noise that I heard coming from the air behind me was in fact from a helicopter. Someone has got their chopper out by the looks of things and they were flying pretty low round the headland.

Whatever they might have been looking for, they didn’t find it. Instead, they flew off down the coast in the direction of Mont St Michel

Beaten and battered by Storm Amelie, I staggered on around the headland and, for a change just recently, there was a really good view across to the Pointe de Carolles.

Such a nice view in fact that I went to photograph it and was the victim of a delightful photo-bomb from a seagull.

It’s not the first time that I’ve had an intruder in one of my photos, but it’s certainly one of the best and closest encounters that I’ve had. I hope that he doesn’t want royalties.

As I said just now, the storm is raging just as violently as it has done these last few days.

The tide is a long way from being right in, but nevertheless you can see what the waves are doing – sending their spray right up and over the sea wall into the tidal harbour.

It’s surely no coincidence that there are no pedestrians out there strolling around on the wall. The wouldn’t need a shower at all.

On that note I went back to the apartment and much to my surprise I actually ran up one of the flights of steps. And I haven’t done that for years. I must be doing a little better than I have been, and I wonder if this new medication might have anything to do with it.

The time until tea was spent working on this project and trying to organise myself (a hopeless task). I have to focus myself much more now that people are expecting things from me and relying on me to do things. They clearly don’t know me very well yet.

Tea was a stuffed pepper (with plenty of stuffing left for taco rolls) and spice rice followed by rice pudding. The pepper was sourced from a different supplier today and was thicker-skinned, so it hadn’t cooked as well as they usually do, which was a shame. But the stuffing was delicious.

This evening I was on my own for my walk around the walls. Hardly surprising seeing as the rain, which had held off for most of the day, decided to let go about 30 seconds after I put my foot outside.

Brigitte was just coming in so we had a little chat.

And as for my run, I fell well short tonight. Like 100 metres short. I blame all the rice myself, but trying to run headlong into a howling gale didn’t help matters much.

Now before going to bed I’m going to listen to some music and do some web page updating before I’m going to bed. I haven’t done any today yet and I really must crack on.

storm high winds tempete amelie port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 9th April 2019 – HELLO SAILOR!

This evening I’ve been out in the half-light playing around with the zoom-telephoto lens to see what I could conjure up.

The tide is on the turn and so the trawlers are starting to come in to the fish-processing plant.

There were dozens of them out there in the English Channel heading in to the harbour this evening. It’s going to be busy.

And talking of being busy, so was I today, although I didn’t accomplish anything monumental.

The alarms went off as programmed and, much to my surprise, I was out of bed quite early too.

There was the medication and then breakfast of course, and afterwords for several hours I had some personal stuff that I attended to, including reprogramming the fitbit. And that took me longer than I anticipated too.

Once that was out of the way I had a shower and then made a start on tackling the web page for the First Day On The Somme.

Or, more to the point web PAGES because there are going to be more than one. Many more than one in fact.

With a break for lunch, it took me all the way up to my time for the afternoon walk to go through all of the dictaphone notes, extract the notes for each photo and put them in the correct place.

It also involved a considerable amount of research too, especially trying to track down the fate of two early RAF flyers buried in Carnoy military cemetery.

But I did manage to go out for my walk around the walls this afternoon.

And in keeping with my nautical theme of today, I noticed a movement or two out to sea so I coupled up the big telephoto zoom lens to the big Nikon so I could see what was going on.

The first image is actually a trawler out there in the English Channel.

The second movement was much more exciting.

There’s a zodiac or other type of inflatable boat steaming along flat-out across the bay. It’s difficult to see where it has come from and where it’s going to. There was nothing obvious at all out there.

But as long as they are enjoying themselves it doesn’t really matter.

But around the other side of the walls I was treated to a considerable amount of excitement, not the least of which was the sudden rainstorm that had erupted.

For some reason or other a couple of seagulls decided to have a fight, and they were going at it hammer and tongs, egged (if that’s the correct word to use for a bird) on by a couple of spectators.

Had I not had the telephoto lens on the camera already, i would have missed all of this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we saw a red and white trawler doing a nautical danse macabre in the inner harbour.

It’s here again today, tied up at the quayside by the fish-processing plant. On reflection, it probably is a local trawler – one that maybe I haven’t noticed very much over the last couple of years.

I suppose that I really ought to be paying more attention to what is going on out there in the harbour.

Back here I had a hot chocolate and my brazil nuts, and then attacked the dictaphone notes. It’s amazing, the stuff that I had dictated and then completely forgotten all about.

In fact, I’m quite looking forward to getting into the notes from three and four years ago. I wonder what gems I’ll unearth then.

Tea was a burger with baked potatoes and veg followed by strawberries and that coconut-flavoured soya cream.

And then I went out for a walk. Luckily the rain of this afternoon had stopped so it was a reasonably fair night. And as I said earlier, the trawlers were now coming into harbour.

So I quickly took a photo of this one before I coupled up the big lens.

And I’m glad that there was still some light left and that I had the big lens on the camera, because I noticed something moving across the bay near the Brittany coast.

I couldn’t quite make out what it was so I took a photo of it. And when I was back here I enlarged and enhanced it. And as luck would have it, turned out to be some kind of galleon-type schooner thing.

I was really impressed with how this turned out considering the lack of light and the distance it was from me.

That wasn’t the only sailing craft out there this evening.

out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel is another one. and although I can’t be sure as to which boat it might be, it could well be our old friend Charles-marie going out for a sail into the evening sun.

And one of these days I’ll be out there with them. I’m determined to get out to sea one of these days.

As I said earlier, there could have been anything up to a dozen fishing boats heading in to harbour this evening.

It really is busy in there. Ther emust have been at least a dozen already tied up in there and some were having to be parked two abreast.

It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish that I was here 40 years ago when the fishing was in its heyday. it must have been a magnificent sight with all of the deep-sea trawlers going in and out of here.

So now I’m back, and looking foward to a good night’s sleep. Although I did a lot today, there was nothing of any substance. Tomorrow will be different as I have a lot of important stuff backing up.

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

la grande ancre trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

seagulls fighting granville manche normandy france

charles marie baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Friday 24th August 2018 – I’VE BEEN SEARCHING …

… through the fridge today looking for stuff that needs eating.

It’s something that I should have done a few days ago because there’s piles of stuff there that should have been cooked, but what with one thing and another I haven’t got round to it.

Two and a half peppers were probably the most important thing, and the garlic too. There were too many onions and potatoes. Some of them will be wasted unfortunately but I fetched some of them out.

There was also a roll of pastry and so I had an idea.

First thing was to put a load of lentils in the slow cooker for an hour. And when they were heated, to rinse them, add fresh water and a pile of potatoes – all that I could add to fill the pot.

After about an hour I fried a few of the onions with all of the garlic that was left. And while they were frying I added some cumin, turmeric, chili pepper and coriander.

Slicing up the peppers and a tomato, I added them to the wok and stirred them around. Finally I took the stuff out of the slow cooker, rinsed it all and added that to the pile.

After about 10 minutes of frying, a stock cube, a carton of soya cream and some water was added and it was all left to simmer.

I unrolled the pie wrap and cut it into quarters.

I added a couple of spoons of the stuff out of the wok into the quarters of pastry and made myself some pasties.

They went into a warm oven at 220°C for 40 minutes until they were done and they look absolutely delicious. They are going into the freezer tonight when they have cooled, ready for when I come back from my voyage.

As for the rest of the mixture, I ladled it all into individual containers and they will be in the freezer too for when I come back.

It’s a shame about the food that’s left but there isn’t much that I can do about this.

This morning I was asleep again until the alarm went off, and I was up fairly early too. And after the usual morning procedure, I started to sort out my clothes and to pack my suitcase.

Like I said, I don’t know what I need to take with me, so it’s a case of a lot of things just in case. The suitcase isn’t all that full though, even though Strawberry Moose takes up a lot of room. He’s coming this time too for a holiday.

He missed out in Africa.

Later this morning I had to go into town for the fruit and so on.

There’s a kind of fair or exhibition going on at the harbour. It’s to celebrate the working sailing ships that worked out of here.

But first I had to stock up with the fruit of course and then while I was here, to buy a baguette.

On the way back to the harbour I went past the solicitor’s office where they put in the window the details of the houses that they sell.

And they are at it again. Just look at the price of this house. Never mind being calculated to the nearest round thousand Euros, it’s calculated down to the nearest centime.

Just how tight can you be? It’s the kind of thing that leads the legal profession into disrepute, advertising prices like these.

Having done that, I went down to the harbour to have a good look around at the marquees.

There wasn’t much going on that interested me. Lots of shops selling stuff and exhibitions of photographs that didn’t take too long to see.

There were a few stalls selling paintings too, but most of them didn’t have prices exhibited. That’s the kind of thing that really gets my goat. If they are ashamed of their prices they shouldn’t be selling them.

ON the other hand, of course, it could be that, as in most of these kind of places, the price depends upon the moment and the prospective purchaser. And that’s just as bad.

But there were some people promoting an association of sailing ships. Some of them are small ones, but some are quite big and occasionally go on voyages across the Atlantic.

I shall have to make further enquiries about this, because a trip across the Atlantic on board a three-master would certainly do me good.

At lunchtime I made my butties and went out on the wall with my book.

No lizards today though. And that’s not surprising because I was joined by a seagull which was taking her baby for a walk. The poor little thing was quite nervous and crying for much of the time, and mummy was teaching it to jump up and down on the wall.

But talking of nervous and crying, you can just about see some other people on the left-hand edge of the photo. They were Dutch and pulled up to park there. The little girl opened her door and the window hit the mirror of a van parked next door and shattered into a thousand pieces.

The poor girl was so frightened and let out a yell. It took quite a while for her to calm down.

This afternoon was spent cooking and doing some tidying and the rest will be done tomorrow. After tea – a burger and vegetables – I watched the football. Llanelli v Barry Town in the Welsh Premier League.

Llanelli scored a goal after just two minutes, and after that, Barry laid siege to the Llanelli goal. There were four or five shots that were kicked off the line.

When Barry had a player sent off it looked as if it was curtains but with the last kick of the game, Barry scored a header from a free kick.

It was a good match, but from what I’ve seen so far there’s quite a gulf between the top and the bottom of the table and these two clubs are not going to find it easy.

So tomorrow I’ll finish packing and do some tidying up ready to leave on Sunday morning.

And who knows where I’m going to end up.

exposition des voiliers du travail granville manche normandy france

Sunday 17th June 2017 – JUST WHEN I WAS THINKING …

… that we haven’t had a gravel boat here in Granville since before they replaced the harbour gates, here into the harbour Neptune comes sailing … "dieseling" – ed … in.

And for those of you who are thinking, as indeed I was, that she looks rather familiar, she is in fact our old friend Islay Trader but with a new name.

She’s arrived in port having come from Ramsgate in Kent, where she left yesterday morning at 10:15.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned a good few weeks ago that the heaps of gravel were building up.

But I never expected that it would have taken this long for someone to come along and take it all away.

And it’s going to annoy more than a few mobile-home dwellers who have moved in to occupy the loading bay, seeing as the mobile home park down the road here is full to overflowing. If they don’t move, and move pretty quickly, they’ll find a few hundred tonnes of gravel dropping onto their heads

So what was I doing down on the harbour then so that I noticed all of the itinerant holidaymakers?

The answer was that I noticed that the sailing boat that we saw yesterday was still at anchor down there, and seeing as I was out and about? I went for a look.

She’s called the Charles-Marie and she’s available for private hires and parties, either moored or at sea. And there was one such party taking place on board as I was down there, complete with musicians.

She advertises a few tours too, including one up near Greenland and that has got me thinking. I shall have to make further enquiries about that.

But here’s a thing.

While I was walking back from the quayside, I heard a “SPLATTTT” behind me so I turned round.

And there was a seagull, with some kind of shellfish which it had clearly carried in its beak and then dropped from a great height onto the asphalt and concrete roadbed.

And with the crustacean’s shell having been well-and-truly shattered by the hard landing, the gull was now quite happily picking away at the exposed flesh.

I was totally fascinated by this, but dismayed that it never offered any to me. After all, you shouldn’t be selfish with your shellfish..

Last night was a reasonably-comfortable sleep, although being awake at 06:25 was not what I was wanting. But being awake and being out of bed are two different things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

09:25 is a much-more respectable time on a Sunday. A late breakfast, most of the time of which was spent clearing up the glass of orange juice that I had thrown all over the table and floor.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall me sayig that I had made a significant purchase at GIFI yesterday.

So abandoning all traditions, I did some work this morning and here you can see my toilet shelf unit all assembled and in its glory.

Storage in this place is non-existent and one has to be inventive. So when I saw this I thought to myself that all of the stuff that is lying about on the floor and in the way will now have a place to go.

Unfortunately there’s a design fault in it, in that it’s just two inches too low to clear the toilet seat. But I can invent something for that in due course.

But it’s not like me to be working on a Sunday, is it?

Lunch was on my wall as usual, with my book but not my lizard friend. I wonder where he got to. And on the way back I met Gribouille and his mum.

That was the cue to go for a stroll.

A quick lap around the walls of the Medieval Town to see what was going on, and down on the beach I noticed these two swimmers leaving the water.

I had to admire their resilience. You wouldn’t have got me into the briny in this kind of weather, that’s for sure. Or in any kind of weather at all these days.

There’s a craft fair and artists’ open-air exhibition in the old town today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I missed the one last year due to having to go to Leuven for a hospital appointment, I was keen to go this year.

It would be nice to find an original seascape to hang on my wall here to decorate the place a little. Maybe not “The Fighting Temeraire” but something similar that would appeal to me.

But there will be nothing whatever going on my wall from this exhibition.

I mean – would you put something like any of these … errr … paintings on YOUR wall? I wouldn’t even embarrass myself by exhibiting stuff like this.

And if anyone fears that I am singling out this stallholder, then they may rest easy because all of the offerings on show where of this kind of quality, to a greater or lesser extent.

And all of the stuff was outrageously expensive too. I was reminded of Ruskin’s comment on Whistler’s painting ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold – “(I) never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

There was a house clearance sale going on at the same time, so I stuck my head in for a look. A woman inside asked me “would you like to go upstairs?” to which I replied that that was the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

On my way back from the harbour, I noticed that there was a brocante in the town centre, so I headed in that direction.

And it was another one of these brocantes where the stuff was nothing but overpriced nonsense. There were some paintings on offer that were marginally better than those up in the medieval walled city, but at €3,000 apiece, they weren’t that nice.

But I found a guy selling CDs at €2:00 each and I ended up with a copy of Spyrogyra’a Alternating Currents and a copy of Gargantua by Gentle Giant, a live recording from Germany in 1971.

And what is exciting about the latter album is that although recognised as an official Gentle Giant album, it’s a album that was copied from a tape and only ever released in Italy.

And it’s so obscure that even the Gentle Giant website has the musicians listed incorrectly. According to them, the drummer is Malcolm Mortimore but the date of the recording suggests that Martin Smith was still the drummer at that point.

On the way back up the hill I noticed that our old friend the CF Bedford is back again.

And isn’t this much more like a CF Bedford? And engine crane and two guys busily lifting the engine out by the roadside?

I’m not sure what it was that they were doing, but by the time that I went out for my evening walk, they seemed to have finished it.

We’ve seen this machine before too.

This was one of the floats for the carnival back in February, and I’ve no idea why they have resurrected it and brought it up here this afternoon.

It’s certainly “art”, that’s for sure, but not the kind of art that you would expect to see at an event like this. But nevertheless, it’s much better than anything that I sa there.

Round the other side of the vehicle I noticed that there were several people, including the owners I imagine, tucking into lunch.

A rather late lunch, but then again I suppose that they have been preoccupied. It seemed to be such a social thing to do, out on the street on an afternoon like this.

They should have been selling a few tickets and inviting passers-by for a butty or two.

But I came back here instead and went to Caliburn and took out my battery-powered bass amp to clean it up.

And much to my surprise, there was still some life left in the batteries. And so by way of a change, I had half an hour on the bass with it running through the amp instead of the Amplug. And that made a pleasant change. It wasn’t too loud either.

And using the diagrams that I have been making, I’ve been running through a few numbers and it’s amazing how much it seems to all come back.

Another thing that I did this afternoon, shame as it is to admit it, is to have crashed out. And not once but twice. How sad is that?

Tea was a pizza of course, and then my walk where I met Neptune. And not just walk either. For reasons that I shall explain in due course, I forced myself to run. And I found that I could manage about 100 metres before I gave up, totally exhausted. But the first time in almost three years.

So bed in a second, rather later than usual, because today’s entry as well as containing dozens of photos contains 1460 words and it’s taken ages to write out.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m so exhausted these days.

Tuesday 20th September 2016 – BLASTED SEAGULL!

There I was today, at the supermarket buying the baguette for lunch, and when I came out, I noticed that Strider had had a visit. A passing seagull had scored a direct hit, and all over the windscreen too with an accuracy that would put Bomber Command to shame. It was certainly an impressive strike.

Talking of Bomber Command, I do recall my erstwhile neighbour back in Crewe, “Blaster” Bates, telling me that he once witnessed the RAF bombing an oil slick with thermal bombs in order to try to set it alight and disperse the pollution, and deciding that on the basis of what he had seen, if the RAF ever decided to bomb anywhere else at any time, he would flee for safety not into an air-raid shelter but into the epicentre of the target. That was where he considered the safest place to be during an RAF bombing raid.

We had the usual night, as it seems to be developing these days. Straight to sleep almost as soon as I went to bed, awake after thirty minutes or so, back to sleep until about 02:00, a restless half-hour or so and then flat out until the alarm went off at 06:00.

We had been on our travels again too – this time to Derby although it was nothing like the Derby that I know. I had to find an address (the name of the street I have now forgotten although I did know it during the night) and my wanderings took me to a street on the south side of the centre of the city where there were some really big and impressive sandstone houses of the rich Victorian period, all now used as offices. But this wasn’t at all the place where I wanted to be. I eventually found a street map and found that where I wanted to be – right across to the north-east side of the city. My route took me through the central railway station past the taxi rank, and there was an old white Hillman Imp being used as a taxi, passing up the outside of the queue. It had been stripped out inside s if it was planning to be used for the transport of luggage. Where I had to be was a street halfway up the castle mound and I had to pass under a railway line out of the station and onto a footpath that had formerly been the trackbed of an old railway line that had circled the city. The view of this particular area reminded me of the view from the Oak Street car park across to the Mill Street Bridge in Crewe.

And this was where I was when I awoke. I had a light breakfast and then came in here for a relax and ended up chatting to a friend for a few hours. When she went off to do other things, I headed off to the supermarket and my appointment with a seagull.

I made my butties and then headed for the beach. It was grey and miserable when I set off but astonishingly, as I unfurled my chair on the beach the sky dramatically cleared and we had some blue sky. That was totally unexpected.

Right down at the end of the beach somewhere near Beaubassin and Cap Pele was an object that in the distance looked as if a cargo ship had run aground on the beach. As I couldn’t identify it properly I took a photo of it so that I could enlarge it at a later date.

And here it is. It’s not a ship at all but some kind of building on the shore and one day I might have a wander down there to see exactly what it is. But it won’t be today – or tomorrow either.

I wasn’t out there for all that long. The sun went in, the sky clouded over again and the wind got up. I went back to Strider and took myself down to the quayside at Pointe du Chene.

I wasn’t alone there though. We had a coach pull up to disgorge a pile of tourists and they flocked on board the sightseeing boat.

I didn’t mention it before but there is a pleasure boat that does a regular tour around the bay – one of these “three times round the lighthouse for five bob” things, and while that kind of thing doesn’t really interest me all that much, it’s certainly popular with the tourists as you can tell.

And to think that it’s out-of-season here too.

We had loads of fishermen here today as well and I did actually see two of them catch a fish each. That was something!

And there might have been more but I was … errr … having a little rest during part of the afternoon with my eyes closed to protect them from the clouds.

Back here I had a shower and then washed all of my clothes and the towels and everything. I’m supposed to wash the towels before I leave (which is tomorrow) and so I took the opportunity to stick everything else in there too.

I also attacked the food and managed to reduce all of that to manageable proportions. I’m not sure where I’ll be tomorrow and whether there will be a freezer or a fridge there.

And now I’m off to bed. An early night yet again, for tomorrow I’m hitting the road.

I’ve no idea at all where I’ll be tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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