Tag Archives: vegan sausages

Tuesday 8th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

… Mr Computer Repair Man again today.

having revelled in my triumphs a few days ago about getting my old Acer Laptop up and running after it crashed out on me in the USA and being able to salvage all of the data, down at the office today Rachel bunged another old laptop at me to see if I could raise that one from the dead too.

I spent a couple of hours working on it and, as much to my own surprise as anyone else’s, it’s now up and running again with not only all of the data still intact but all of the programs too.

It’s an old 2009 Lenovo with a 1.3ghz processor running Windows 7, but now that it’s working again it’s quite sprightly for its age as long as you don’t try to do anything too ambitious with it, but for taking down to the storeroom to do an inventory (which is why it was here in the first place) it’s just the job.

And talking of the storeroom, I’ve checked again and we do have indeed a large supply of 165/80 x 13 and 185/70 x 13 tyres for Ford Cortinas, as well as several other obsolete sizes too for other makes, so I’ve been posting the info on various North American classic car groups to try to drum up the sales.

All in all, I’ve had quite a busy morning.

A relaxing morning too. Although I heard all of the alarms go off, it was about 07:00 when I finally managed to raise myself from the dead. And with no school run this morning I was able to have a leisurely start to the day.

Not to transcribe the dictaphone notes though. There’s a couple on there from during the night and I’ll have to copy those over as soon as I can.

For once, Cujo the Killer Cat co-operated with me so I was able to leave the house pretty much when I wanted to without having to hunt her down.

This afternoon was more running around. Taking the cheques to be posted (it’s that time of the year) mainly.

But I had another task assigned to me which I managed to accomplish. In the garage is a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up with a major electrical problem. With my little home-made testing apparatus I can tell that there’s a live feed reaching the relays at contacts where no live feed should be. This points to a short circuit in the fuse box somewhere and these are impossible to repair.

The easy answer is to replace the fuse box but, to my amazement (or maybe not, because I’ve long-since ceased to be amazed at the antics of modern motor manufacturers) the part is “no longer available” from the manufacturers.

Consequently, with the repaired laptop (and I’m glad now that I repaired it), I’ve been scouring the scrapyards of North America and I’ve eventually tracked down a rear-ended Dodge of the correct year and model in a scrapyard in Colorado.

A photo of the part on that truck looks identical to the one here, and so that’s now winging its way northwards in our direction. And who knows? We might even be able to make this Dodge start properly without having to hot-wire it all the time.

Fighting off waves of fatigue yet again (and I’ve no idea why) I went to pick up Amber from cheerleading practice after school, only to find that our little visitor had stayed behind too. Never mind the crowded cab when we have half-a-million strong therein by the time we get to Woodstock, it was pretty cramped in there with three, but we managed all the same.

Everyone was out this evening so I made myself some potato thins with onions, carrots garlic and assorted herbs with some vegan sausages, and it was delicious. Especially when followed down by one of the vegan muffins from the weekend.

Later this evening after tea I retreated to my room. I’m not feeling myself at the moment … “and quite right too” – ed … so some peace and quiet will do me good. I’m beginning to feel the strain and I really need a couple of days in bed to haul myself up again, but I doubt whether that will happen any time soon.

Looking at my schedule over the past three and a half months, it would have been pretty hectic for a younger person in good health. For an older person who is slowly dying, it’s been taxing to the limit and beyond.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Monday 11th February 2019 – THAT WAS ONE …

… of the nicest cheese sauces that I have ever tasted, never mind ever made.

Tonight, everything went perfectly and my steamed vegetables with vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce were totally delicious, and I’ll eat that again any day of the week.

Another bit of news is that ever since I came back from the Arctic I’ve been trying to make an appointment to see some people. They finally replied in mid-January to say that there were no appointments just now, and the same e-mail has come every two weeks.

But today, I’ve had a different mail sent by a different person, and this has an air of being somewhat more optimistic.

However, that is just about all of the good news today. The rest of it hasn’t been so good.

It all started to go wrong as early as 06:00 this morning.

This was another one of these days where even though the alarm went off, I took absolutely no notice whatsoever. I turned over and went straight back to sleep. Not out of willingness, I hasten to add, but simply because I couldn’t wake myself up.

07:45 was much more like it, and leaving my bed at 08:30 was even more interesting. It’s not my usual modus operandi for a weekday as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but after the miserable day yesterday when I missed my lie-in, I must have needed it.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. And surprisingly (or maybe not, because it’s the whole point of doing all of this) it was a continuation of a couple of voyages that I had been on several years ago. I was in Brussels working in an office and I’d gone home for lunch. I decided to have a salad but a “fried” salad. So I tossed a lettuce leaf into a frying pan and it singed up around the edges. The rest of the salad I tossed into another frying pan but it was one in which my younger sister had just fried an egg and she’d used lard or dripping to do that. I left my home to head back to work but found myself right outside the city with the high-rise towers away in the distance and I was wondering however I would reach work in time to restart. But there – that weird American company for which I once worked – I was chatting to a former colleague of mine (from another employment) who was terribly upset. She’d received a copy of a bill that someone had sent in, on which she had been described as a “barsteward” – and this offended her deeply. Meantime, there were a pile of magazines lying around in the office. They were entitled “The Flame of Islam”, and although that might sound an inflammatory title, it was actually a Christian publication. Not many people knew that, which probably explains why they looked so astonished when I suggested that we go out and sell them to passing motorists in our lunch breaks.

First thing that I noticed this morning was that I had the kind of thirst that you could photograph. I downed about a litre of my Vitamin B12 juice straight off.

After a rather late breakfast, I settled down to wait for my passport to arrive.

And waited

And waited.

Meanwhile, I tried to concentrate on the work that I needed to do – such as the photo database and backdating the blog.

After much binding in the marsh I made the blog back to 6th January 2019.

But the photo database was rather slower today. I couldn’t really get going for some reason. But then I have days like this, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And that’s not all the bad news either. I’m having camera issues yet again.

And that’s a shame because the bird-men were out in force today.

I’ve noticed for the last couple of months that the camera is having issues focusing, especially at night. And when it is particularly dark, I have to find a distant point of light to use as a focusing object.

But today, the focusing is simply not working most of the time, and especially when the background is neutral, like a large patch of sky.

I can hear the motor in the lens engaging and the focal length changes, but it creeps in to the beginning and blurs out

And it’s not just with one of the lenses – it’s with all of them.

I’ve tried to adjust the focal settings and that’s not made any difference. I think that the camera is slowly dying.

But that’s not really a surprise. I bought it in Canada in an emergency, back in 2012. It was an end-of-range model then and I paid peanuts for it, so I can’t really complain.

It’s just disappointing.

The only way that I can make it work is to focus on a specific object that is sharp enough to register.

So anyway, I pushed on round the corner to see what things were like round by the lifeboat memorial.

It might look cloudy out there, but it was surprisingly warm. And that had brought out the crowds – especially as it seems to be school holidays right now.

One thing that I have noticed is that there seems to be a spring of some sort here on the Pointe du Roc.

There would have to be, I suppose, otherwise they would never have put a fortified city up here. They would need a water supply in case of a siege.

But today was the first time that I had noticed the water evacuating out into the sea down below.

And here, I had a message. My passport will be delivered tomorrow.

After tea, I went out for my evening walk around the walls.

There was no-one around even though it was a pleasant evening. There was no storm tonight and the tide was quite far out, so we weren’t treated to the spectacle of the waves smashing on to the sea walls.

And so I didn’t linger long out there. I came back here instead.

And I’ll be trying once again for an early night. And this time, hoping that I can get out of bed at something very close to the correct time.

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Monday 4th February 2019 – HAVING GONE …

… to bed reasonably early last night, I slept right through until the alarm went off this morning, with just a little interruption here and there. Nothing serious.

And on the subject of “nothing serious”, I was off on my travels last night too. And it concerned my old black cat Tuppence. She had an accident to one of her front paws and pulled her claws right out. All rather gruesome.

I didn’t loiter long in bed, and so we had an early-ish start today.

But not for long.

Round about 09:15 I was overwhelmed with fatigue. Not a desperate tiredness but I just couldn’t concentrate. And so I went to bed for an hour. No point in fighting the fatigue because I wouldn’t get anything done anyway.

I did close my eyes for about 10 minutes or so, but that was about it. And by 10:20 I was back up and fighting fit. Well, sort-of anyway.

This morning I was attacking the photos again. I’d taken quite a pile yesterday and they all needed editing and generally sorting-out. And it took me longer than I expected. No idea why.

There was an interruption too. Rosemary rang me up for a chat and we were on the phone for over an hour putting the world to rights. It meant a rather late lunch but never mind. There’s nothing wrong whatever in spending time chatting to friends.

After lunch, the next project was to resurrect the database that I started to make a couple of years ago. But a good search around the computer and I can’t find it anywhere. It mustn’t have survived the transfer over.

And so I started off another one. But for some reason or other I couldn’t make it work as I wanted. I seem to remember having exactly the same issue with the previous one and it took me ages to solve it. And I can’t remember how I did it now. This is going to take me much longer than I thought.

The wind had dropped by the time that I went for my walk. Just blowing at gale-force.

There were a couple of little trawlers out there heading for port, and it was quite amusing fun watching them smashing their way through the waves on their way home.

Many people really don’t appreciate the efforts and the dangers that fishermen go through;

But no sign of Neptune in the harbour though. She’s still offshore somewhere and her latest ETA is 00:00. I won’t be there to see her put in to port at that time of night.

But in the meantime, they are still bringing loads of gravel down from the quarry and dropping it off on the quayside ready for Neptune to take away

Tea was sausages in cheese sauce. Just as delicious as it always is. And followed by the rest of the rice pudding.

There was no-one else about for the evening walk. I was completely on my own. Mind you, the wind had dropped still more and it was now just “strong”.

The Casino at the Place Marechal Foch presented a very interesting photography subject this evening, down there all bathed in blue light. I don’t recall having seen it looking like this before.

So I’ll try to have another early night and a decent sleep tonight. I have things to do tomorrow.

But at least my birth certificate turned up today. It’s destroyed one of my pet theories about my origins, but presented me with several other mysteries.

We shall have to see.

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Monday 28th January 2019 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really good lie-in is that when you eventually go to bed, it takes a positive age to go off to sleep.

And so it was last night. It was well-gone midnight before I went to bed, and then I was tossing and turning around for quite some considerable time.

Mind you, once the alarm went off I was pretty much wide awake, although it did take some considerable time for me to leave my stinking pit.

After breakfast, I sat down and set to work.

First job was to go through a mountain of photos. The other laptop that I had been using was struggling to cope because the quality of the screen and the graphics card was not up to much and I couldn’t see properly what I was doing. And it’s a whole wide world of difference with the graphics card in this computer and the new IPS screen.

Second thing, that took all of the morning and quite a bit of the afternoon was to download a huge load of *.zip and *.rar files for the accessories for the 3D program that I use.

Luckily, I’d bookmarked most of them so I could track them down fairly quickly. Although downloading them and unpacking them took all of the time. And it’s amazing how much I had forgotten that I had.

Cheese and salad butties for lunch. I’ve finished off the hummus and there’s some cheese opened from when I was in Belgium last week. One of these days I’ll make some more, and have a mega-cook-in too because I have some puff pastry that needs using. I fancy an leek and potato pie, and I might even put some tofu in it too – except that I don’t have any.

There was a terrific wind blowing this afternoon. Not as much as yesterday morning though but impressive all the same.

We had a really impressive array of waves smashing onto the harbour wall.

The power of the sea is really astonishing and if only people would put more effort into harnessing it, the world’s energy problem would be solved without any difficulties.

It was a beautiful day for photography too.

The air was quite clear and you could see for miles down the coast. Montmartin-sur-Mer and the Sienne estuary stood out really clearly today so I took a few photos.

I cropped and enlarged a few selections and you can see them below.

Tea tonight was vegan sausages and vegetables, all covered in vegan cheese sauce. It was delicious. Especially when followed by pineapple and coconut-flavoured soya cream.

This evening’s walk around the walls was really nice.

The wind had dropped, it was warmer than it ought to be this time of the year and the sky on the horizon was quite clear. The lights of Jersey stood out quite clearly.

The way things are going, I’m going to have to buy a better camera with a more responsive ISO as well as a decent attachment for the tripod.

But even so, the Nikon D5000 can still bring out some really good photographs in the right lighting conditions.

Now that they have installed some illumination in the Place Maurice Marland it’s producing some really nice effects.

I shall have to do some more of this when I have the time.

The fibre-optic cable works are continuing.

We saw them the other day digging a hole on the corner of the rue Notre Dame and the rue de l’Auditoire. Now, they have put an inspection hatch in there, ready for the cabling.

While I was out there I nearly flattened another pedestrian, and I also met a new cat, a youngish short-haired black one that I had never seen before. And talking to the cat made me realise that I haven’t spoken to a single person today.

And in other news, there are reports coming in that British travellers arriving at Dusseldorf Airport from the UK were pushed into the “non-EU” lane.

Things are beginning to bite, and we aren’t even at B-Day yet.

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Monday 19th November 2018 – IT WAS RATHER …

… a late night last night.

Another 01:30 finish as I was pushing on with doing things, and this was reflected in the struggle that I had to leave my stinking pit this morning.

During the night I was off on my travels again and although I can remember almost nothing of what I was doing. But there was one thing that struck me, as it has on many other occasions during the night. And that is the impeccable timing that goes on. There I was and I heard, in my voyage, the ping telling me that the telephone was just about to ring, so I reached out my hand and right on cue, the alarm went off. Absolutely perfect timing, and it’s not the first time that I’ve noticed this.

As soon as I awoke I went to look at the thermometer. 3°C right now, and that’s the lowest that it has been so far this autumn. We’re definitely in Autumn.

Breakfast was quite early too and that left me plenty of time to push onwards with work.

And sure enough, by lunchtime I’d finished all SIX of the web pages for the third day of my voyage to the High Arctic. You can go to this page and then work your way forward, if you have a couple of hours to spare, and admire the photographs.

Dozens and dozens of them.

That took me up to lunchtime so I had my butties in the apartment. It’s definitely out of the question now, this idea of sitting on the wall outside.

This afternoon I had a letter to write. Someone whom I met on my travels had written to me and now that I have a functioning printer I can reply. I’ll have to take it down into town tomorrow morning and post it off.

It was really windy out this afternoon but there was a crowd of people gesticulating wildly out on the peak.

There had been a couple of dolphins playing around just offshore and they had been giving a really good performance.

At first, I thought that I had missed it all, but on enlarging one of the photos that I took, I found that I had indeed captured one of them on film.

It’s rather blurred because it was way out in the bay and I had to crop and enlarge it, but it’s a dolphin all the same.

While I had the camera handy, I wandered round to the harbour.

We have Marité in her usual berth, but also, alongside, at the commercial dock is Thora. She must have sailed in from Jersey on the morning tide.

One of these days I’ll go down there and have a closer look at her.

Back here, I found myself away with the fairies for a while, which is hardly surprising after the night that I had. But once I came back round again, I had a good go at the blog entry for Day Four of my Arctic trip.

It’s been rewritten slightly and I’ve added a couple of dozen photos as a taster, just to keep things going until I can do the web page, which I’ll start tomorrow some time. In the meantime, you can see the blog entry here, with all of the photos.

There was an interruption during the early evening though. Someone telephoned me about my digger. He’s interested in buying it. But I don’t think that he’ll be buying it though. He was talking about “a couple of thousand Euros”, which isn’t even in the same library, never mind on the same page.

He mentioned that he would chat with his partner, but if he couldn’t rustle up the cash that I want he would borrow a digger off his friend. So he can do that then. I might be keen to move on a lot of the stuff that I don’t need these days, but we aren’t having a fire sale.

Tea was steamed veg and vegan sausages with cheese sauce. And using three times as much cornflour as I would normally use, I did get the sauce to thicken.

Freezing cold outside again. 4.5°C outside and getting colder by the minute. I wound up the heating when I came back in.

But I’ve hit a problem right now.

About 6 months ago, Firefox went all commercial and hacked off a lot of add-on utility programs. Presumably the utility developers wouldn’t buy a development licence. One of the utilities that went was the *.ftp program that I used.

There is however a lightweight browser – Waterfox – than runs on the Mozilla platform and the *.ftp utility ran on that. It’s been nagging at me to upgrade it for a while, which I haven’t done. But I’ve had to download it onto this laptpp, and the latest version to boot. And it’s running the new Mozilla platform and all of the utilities have gone.

Now I’m having to upload via my webhost’s control panel, and that is just so painful. Fire.ftp was just like a Windows Explorer platform and so simple to use. In fact it’s the only reason why I ever used Waterfox.

So that’s a waste of time then.

And on this note I’ll go to bed.

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Thursday 15th November 2018 – I’M FEELING …

… a little better right now.

After having a couple of really good days, it was odds-on that sooner or later I would have a bad one. And yesterday evening I could feel myself sliding down into the abyss.

By the time that I had finished writing my blog from last night, at about 22:00, I was feeling so miserable that I went straight to bed.

It didn’t take me long to go off to sleep either. And apart from one brief awakening, and I’ve no idea when that was, I slept right the way through to the alarm.

The first time for a while that I have had a decent sleep, and as you might expect, when I awoke, I felt even worse. But that’s not really due to the sleep, but due more to the fact that I was having a health crisis.

It took me a considerable while to tear myself out of bed and an even longer time to force my breakfast down.

Eventually I went into the bathroom for a shower and a shave and a good clean-up for it’s shopping day today. In Caliburn too and for several reasons, not the least reason being the fact that on Saturday we might be having a few blockades on the road so I needed to do a big shop today.

LIDL had nothing special, but the next stop – the Leclerc drive-in – certainly did. I’d had an e-mail on Tuesday to say that my printer had arrived and needed picking up. Today was as good a day as any.

At NOZ I swapped the glasses that were broken, and I bought a few other things. Including a 2-foot high Christmas tree complete with 6 silver balls and a set of fairy lights – all for €3:99. I’m really getting into the Christmas spirit, aren’t I?

Leclerc itself came up with nothing special and I was soon back home again, to find that I’d had a power cut while I was out.

However by now I didn’t even have the strength to put away the shopping. There was some coffee in the pot so I poured one out and came to sit down in here – where I promptly crashed out. And I was gone for an hour or so too and it was very uncomfortable.

This meant that I had a rather late lunch. Inside the apartment of course because it was quite misty outside.

This afternoon I had a very pleasant surprise. The people who had organised our voyage to the Hugh Arctic had sent me a promotional video of our journey. And it brought back many happey memories. There was a beautiful shot of Yours Truly and His Nibs on our way to the Brother John Glacier at Etah in Greenland.

And not only that, one of our party was lucky enough to be filming an iceberg when it suddenly capsized in front of her – and she had a beautiful film of it going over. She sent it to the company and they have sent it to us. It is really phenomenal and when I finally manage to organise myself I shall post a link to it.

This afternoon I started to feel a little better and I made some more progress on my third day in the High Arctic

We had the usual afternoon interruption for a walk. I have to keep this up as best as I can.

The tide was slowly going out and there were several people down there on the rocks searching in the rock pools for crustaceans and molluscs and so on.

Which, I imagine, they share with their friends because, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that one mustn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

They weren’t the only people out there interested in the local marine life.

Out there just offshore close to the old diving platform were two men in a boat. One man and a dog short of Jerome K Jerome’s famous story of his trip up the River Thames.

I’ve no idea what it is that they catch just down there. One of these days I’ll catch a friendly fisherman and make suitable enguiries.

There was much more excitement on the car park round by the lighthouse on the end of the Pointe du Roc.

Parked up there was a pretty rare Triumph Thruxton.

I remember very well the original Thruxtons from the late 1960s – a series of Triumph Bonneville motorbikes specially modified for competition. However the modern reincarnation of the company launched a limited range of sports motorcycles with the same name in 2004

Back here and back on the High Arctic pages, and t won’t be long now, I reckon, until Day Three is finished. Always assuming that I can find it because the laptop has now crashed and it won’t restart at the moment. I’m having to type this on the laptop that I use as the media centre.

All of this took me up to teatime and I had a nice plate of steamed vegetables and vegan sausages. But once again, the vegan cheese sauce failed to thicken. I notice that I’m using a different brand of soya milk to the one that I usually use, and that might account for it.

I went out for my evening walk as usual after tea.

Despite the fact that the moon is a long way from being full, there was plenty of moonlight about. I hadn’t taken the tripod and the zoom/telephone lens with me so I had to make the most of the equipment that I had

Considering that it’s a hand-held shot, it hasn’t come out at all too badly.

Around the corner, I nearly collided with someone lurking away in the darkness. But he was the only person whom I saw, apart from the people loitering around at the bar and the pizza van.

But now I’m off to bed – something of a late night I’m afraid. I’ve managed to get the laptop to fire up but that’s all that it’s doing. Using a technique that I dredged from the back of my mind with good old T223 at the Open University, I’ve been able to force access to the files and I’m now copying them onto a back-up drive.

I can see me having to do this every couple of hours rather than every night. I don’t want to be losing work like this.

Fishermen in a boat near the old diving platform at the Pointe du Roc

Friday 9th November 2018 – I HAD A SURPRISE …

… lie-in this morning.

Apparently my phone decided to do an upgrade in the middle of the night and it was waiting for me to switch it back on.

It’s twice now that this has happened so I’ll have to think about having some kind of back-up in case it ever becomes a crucial issue, because I can see this one day ending in tears.

So with a late start this morning and a late breakfast I was getting a little behind in my work. And seeing as I’m now getting to some kind of crucial point in my journey in the High Arctic then I’m going to be doing an awful lot of research just now.

And as a result I had only done half of what I intended to do with Day Three of my blog by lunchtime. That’s not going to be back on-line anything like as quickly as I might have hoped.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It looks as if the outdoors eating is over now, especially given the wind.

This afternoon I did some tidying up – not as much as I would have liked of course but I’m finding it difficult right now to keep up with things.

That took me nicely up to my afternoon walk, when I braved the hurricane and set off around the headland.

And despite the wind, I wasn’t the only person out there.

We had some more pool-dippers down on the beach looking for crustaceans and the like in the tidal rock-pools. And whatever they find, they share with their friends because, as I have told you … “and on many occasions too” – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I showed you a photo of the workmen digging away at the side of the car park at the Pointe du Roc?

It’s quite clear now what they have done, but even though I’m now better-informed, I’m still none-the-wiser because I can’t understand why they have done it.

I suppose that all will be revealed in due course.

With the wind pushing me one step forward and two steps back, I eventually made it back here.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
Cold telephone canvasser – “I would like to introduce you to Madame Klara, astrologist …”
Our Hero – “Well she’s not much good, is she?”
CTC – “How do you mean?”
OH – “Well, if she had been any good at foretelling the future, she would have known that I would tell you to !*à# off!”

Once I’d dealt with that, then back on with updating the blog entry.

Not very far though because Rosemary rang up. And we had a good chat for all of, would you believe, one hour and forty minutes. We had a lot to talk about.

Tea was a delicious steamed vegetable mix with vegan sausages and cheese sauce. That really was nice too.

The evening walk was round the walls, but even though it wasn’t too far off high tide, the sea round by the Plat Gousset was in the lee of the old town so that the sea wasn’t all that rough. No waves crashing up over onto the promenade.

But once round by the Place Maurice Marland I got the whole lot again, with rain and plagues of locusts too. If anything, the hurricane is blowing even stronger.

Gribouille had been rather stand-offish this afternoon but this evening Minette was sitting on her windowsill and being quite friendly.

There’s a little bit of a problem too. The dashcam was full so While I was out for a walk I set it to download all of the films onto the storage device. But for some reason or other the dashcam has reset its date so all of the films are out of order.

Not much that I can do about that, but at least I can reset the date. And this proves that the stand-by battery that will power the dashcam when the ignition is switched off works perfectly.

So now I’ll go for an early night again.

And hope that I get up at the right time tomorrow morning.

Monday 15th October 2018 – BACK INTO …

… the routine again. I don’t think!

Certainly the alarms went off – at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20 as usual. But to say that I was eager to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit would be somewhat economical with the truth too.

I’d also been back in the High Arctic again. There were 50 of us leaving the voyage, trying to get into three zodiacs arriving one after the other, each one with a capacity of 12 persons. So that’s going to work, isn’t it? But it seemed that no-one was too eager to go in the first boat, and neither in the last one. So everyone was more interested in clambering into the middle boat. You can see immediately why this might cause a problem.

After breakfast, I did some tidying up so that this place looks more like a home, and then sat down and had a look at last night’s photos.

They have all been edited and reworked as appropriate and uploaded them to yesterday’s journal entry where they can be seen in all their glory.

That took most of the morning, which might come as a surprise to many people, but not when you consider that for some part of the morning I was … errr … away with the fairies.

It was my intention to go and sit on the wall and eat my butties but at that moment it was overcast so I ended up eating in here.

This afternoon I re-reviewed the photos from the Ile de Chausey on Saturday, chose a few as good samples and then started to rewrite the entry and add some photos. I didn’t get anything like as far into this as I was hoping, but you can see where I’m up to right now and this may well yet change.

But once again, I was somewhat overwhelmed. The effects of the last few days have caught up with me yet again.

There was a nice afternoon walk around the headland, and seeing that I’m in a photography mood right now, I took the camera with me.

I’m not sure it I’ve previously taken a photo of the blown-up bunker and so I took one this afternoon.

I’ve told you previously … “at great length” – ed … about the Atlantic Wall that the Germans built here in the early 1940s. And after the war the French set about trying to remove the casemates and bunkers.

But they were built much more substantially than anyone realised, and all that they succeeded in doing was moving half a dozen enormous lumps of concrete a couple of yards away from their original position.

And so they gave up any further attempt and left the rest of the bunkers here.

While I was there, I noticed some of the local council workmen carrying out a bit of work on the car park round the corner on the Pointe du Roc, so I went over to have a quick look to see what they were doing.

It seems that they are laying some paving stones as if there’s going to be some hard-standing for some purpose.

I’ll have to have a wander over there in a couple of days time to see how it’s evolving and what the purpose of it all will be.

Having taken my photo I carried on a-wandering around the headland to the little spot where I can overlook the harbour.

The tide is well on its way out of the tidal harbour right now and it was interesting to watch some of the larger ships settle down on the silt as the sea disappears.

The yellow one seems to have settled in the wrong direction so I hope that it won’t flood when the tide comes back in. It should really be careened over onto the landward side

But my reverie was interrupted by something of a racket coming from the shipyard.

It seems that they are carrying out some kind of major work on a fishing trawler that’s been hauled out of the water onto the top of the quay just there.

I’m not sure if they are in the process of dismantling it or whether they are renovating it. This is another thing to go back and check on in a couple of days’ time.

Tea tonight was steamed vegetables, sausages and vegan cheese sauce, and it was totally delicious too. I really enjoyed it and I shall make some more of that in due course. My frozen sprouts are working well.

Later on, I was back out in the evening for my walk around the walls. I took plenty of photos too with the new Nikon lens.

I went through them later and added them to the blog so that you can see them.

And I’m sure that you’ll be as dismayed as I am with the quality of the photos that I took in the Arctic when you see what this new low-light lens can produce under these kind of conditions.

In the previous photo you saw the lights of Donville les Bains in the background.

In this photo you can even see that the new lens was even able to pick up the fleet of ships out there to see – presumably a fleet of fishing boats.

The little Nikon J1 would never even have made the attempt, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

I can see that this time next year I shall have to go back to the High Arctic, won’t I?

On my way round, Minette was there waiting for her stroke – and a pick-up – as well. She’s clearly missed me.

So now I’m going to have a reasonably early night. I need to get myself back on track as I have plenty of things to do.

The Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

The Moon

Bréville sur Mer and St Martin de Bréhal.

Place d’Armes

Plat Gousset

rue General Patton

Place Marechal Foch

Plat Gousset

Rue Georges Clemenceau

rue Paul Poirier

Place Maurice Marland

Port de Granville

Place Maurice Marland

rue du Colombier

rue Notre Dame

Place Cambernon

rue St Jean

Wednesday 26th September 2018 – WHAT AWOKE ME …

… this morning at 06:30 WAS the sound of a couple of potato wagons roaring by (it’s THAT time of the year already!). And I found that the bedroom light was still on and the laptop still running. That’s the kind of state in which I ended up last night. Totally hors de mon assiette as they say back home.

I’d been on my travels though. I noticed yesterday evening that somebody had been searching my blog for details about Longport in Stoke on Trent and there’s only one reason why anyone would want to do that, and that is for McGuinness’s Scrapyard.

It must have been playing on my mind somewhat because I ended up in a scrapyard last night, sitting in an old Ford Transit pickup watching the world go by. And I ended up talking to the owner of the place about all of the good stuff that I had had from there, including my purple 1982 car transporter and trailer. Someone mentioned that the best vehicle that I had ever owned was another vehicle and how that came from a different scrapyard but I shut them up. Walking back to my car, three girls who worked in the place came over to start to talk to me and besociable, but as for what and why now, I can’t remember.

Being awake is one thing – being up and about is of course something else completely. And even though I managed my medication, it was a good few hours before I was in any kind of position to think about breakfast.

But breakfast I did and even managed some lunch, although it was a struggle.

In the afternoon I went down to the shop in town to chat to Rachel and Hannah. I only managed to fall asleep twice which is good news, and apart from that I began to feel a little better.

Later on after everyone had gone home I helped Darren replace the brake pipes and bleed the brakes on a one-ton pick-up. It took a while to do it correctly and it was about 19:30 when we left and headed for home.

Almost running into a County Mountie who was doing something or other at the side of the road.

Tea was mixed vegetables and vegan sausage, and I managed to chat for 20 minutes with everyone.

But of course it didn’t last. I was soon flaked out and headed off for the comfort and privacy of my little room.

Today was an improvement on my health position, which is always good. But I’m still going to try for the early night.

Monday 24th September 2018 – WINTER IS ACUMEN IN …

… Lhude sing Rudolph.

I woke up this morning … "der der der der DER" – ed … to a heavy frost and a temperature of -2°C. Yes, we are going to be in for a belting winter and no mistake this year.

Frosts and freezing already. I’m not looking forward to it.

And due to some kind of confusion yesterday in the Great Satan, the phone seems to have gone on to New England time so it was an hour later when it went off, and by this time everyone had already left.

So I turned over and went back to sleep for a while, and had pleasant dreams of the High Arctic yet again.

But once I was awake again, I started work.

But not for long.

Darren and George came back. They had to go to Fredericton to pick up an engine, a big-bore Chevy 505 racing engine for a pulling truck. This meant uncoupling the big trailer so seeing as they were struggling I dressed and went to lend a hand.

Once we’d done that, I took the opportunity to leap aboard and we set off south-east, grabbing a coffee on the way past.

And as we were early, we stopped off for a meal. It was a good job that we were early too because it took half an hour for them to prepare our meal. “Something had gone wrong” with the order and I can guess what it was.

We were visiting a guy called George who is apparently the leading North American expert on gas-flowing cylinder heads and I would die to have a garage like his. He’d rebuilt this engine and we had come to pick it up to deliver it.

And if you think that I could talk, you aint heard nuffink yet. We were there for two hours – half an hour to load up and the remaining 90 minutes while he told us “a little story”.

We drove back via the yard where George (our George) picked up his truck, and then we came back here to find that in view of the weather we had run out of heating oil. What a fine time for that to happen.

And it took an age to locate a supplier who actually had a tanker on standby that had fuel in it ready for delivery.

Another thing that I did was to book my bus back to Montreal on Friday night, and a hotel for Saturday night.

And Brain of Britain has done it again, hasn’t he?

Sitting there wondering why hotels were so expensive and in the end booking a cat house even worse than the usual. And then suddenly realising, far too late of course, that the prices quoted are in Canadian Dollars not Euros and hence the difference!

Tea was potatoes, beans and vegan sausage for me and then I called it aday.

It comes to something when something even as simple is this is laying me out on my back.

Saturday 18th August 2018 – THEY SELL …

… almost everything in LIDL these days, don’t they?

I’m not quite sure what the point is of it, but it’s here all the same.

I was far more interested in the grapes, at €1:99 per kilo. And yet another load of those disappeared into my shopping bag this morning. I need to stock up while the stocking is good.

I slept right through again until the alarm went off, but seeing as I had something of a late night it wasn’t really as good as it sounds.

An early start to the day followed by an early shower, and then an early trip to the shops before the grockles could get there. And quite right too. I was actually there before 09:00 and the place was fairly empty, quite a surprise for a Saturday.

My bill in there wasn’t all that excessive because I’m not buying too much just now, with plans to travel in a week’s time.

NOZ was more exciting. I turned up just as it was opening at 09:30 and had a good look round. The star of the shop was a pair of curtains. The right width but the length was a little too long. I should have brought my sewing machine back from the Auvergne I suppose but instead I’ll pin them up.

The crowds were starting to build up in Leclerc. Despite buying a pile of frozen food, the bill came to about €11:00. Again, I’m not buying much before I go away.

ON the way back home the traffic had built up and there were grockles everywhere. It took ages to return home.

Three lizards again for lunch, and this new batch of hummus that I made yesterday is just as good as the last lot.

Regular readers of this rubbish will know that I’ve been having issues with the Nikon D5000 camera. I’ve brought the other lens back from the Auvergne and took a few photos with it

It was quite a good moment to do so, because Marite was out there doing her stuff.

I don’t know where she’s been but it looks as if she is coming back.

She did a U-turn just outside the harbour and then headed into the entrance. But what disappointed me was that she didn’t do it under sail, but with what I suspect is an auxillary engine.

That’s a bit of a cheat if you ask me.

But at least she won’t be alone in the harbour.

Parked up at the quayside next to Marité’s berth is this other really fine period-looking (apart from the solar panel) yacht.

I’ve no idea who she might be, so I shall have to go for a wander down there at some point in the near future and have a look. She looks quite magnificent from here.

I should have been having visitors today but there’s a delay on the road so I’m free until tomorrow evening. So in a change to the usual routine I took this afternoon off and mooched around on the internet.

Much of the time was spent chatting to someone in Montreal and someone else in Alaska. I’m starting to become all nostalgic, especially as my social media page keeps on reminding me that I’m usually in Canada at this time of the year. I must stop being so broody.

Tea was the last of the vegan sausages with vegetables and cheese sauce. And just as delicious as the first batch too.

And later on this evening I went for a walk around. The purpose this evening is to do some more experiments with the new lens.

It’s the cheapest lens available for this camera and so I wasn’t expecting all that much. And that’s just as well because the quality is not what I would like to have.

While the lighting is correct, the quality isn’t and the photos have come out extremely grainy.

So while you admire the evening looking over the Baie de Mont St Michel and jullouville, at least it proves one thing

And that is that it’s the original lens that seems to be at fault, so it wasn’t a waste of time after all.

What I’ll have to do now is to set to and order a new decent lens like the one that failed, and see where we go from there.

moon granville manche normandy france

carolles granville manche normandy france

party boulevard vaufleury granville manche normandy france

Thursday 16th August 2018 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… how long it took me today to complete my Medical Expenses claim.

It’s quite true to say that I have let things build up and build up for the last … errr … eighteen months, but it still shouldn’t have taken as long as it did.

And it wasn’t down to a lack of sleep either because I had an early night and slept right the way through until the alarm went off, something that hasn’t happened for quite a while.

We had the usual morning performance and followed by a nice hot shower – the first for a while it has to be said – and cut my fingernails. And then I hit the streets.

First stop was the ferry office. It was closed, which should be no surprise to anyone who reads anything that I have ever written seeing that it’s midsummer and there are crowds of people about.

They did have some leaflets on display for the ferries to the Ile de Chausey but nothing for the Jersey ferries, so I wandered off to the Tourist Office. They had a leaflet but they also told me that the ferries are pretty much booked up for the next few days.

The laboratory was next. I had an e-mail from the hospital 10 days ago to say that there was a build-up of potassium in my body, to change the dose of my medication and to organise a blood test.

The people at the laboratory told me that all I need to do is to just turn up and to bring the e-mail with me, and they’ll do the test on the spot. So that’s tomorrow’s task.

LIDL was impressive today. As well as the usual stuff, they were selling hardware. They had some powerful cable crimpers and accessories, some heatsink tubing and some screw-in hooks so they found their way into the shopping bag. And had I been back in the Auvergne I would have had a lot more than just that.

On the way back I bumped into one of my neighbours and we had a chat in the street for a short while.

Back here, I needed to print out the e-mail from the hospital and that took longer than it might. The ink cartridge wasn’t seating properly and the nozzles needed cleaning and aligning.

By the time that I’d managed to print out the mail, it was lunchtime so I was off on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard.

This afternoon I had to deal with my medical expenses claim. This involved scanning about 60 receipts, collating them, renaming then as appropriate and then logging into my insurance website and completing the on-line form. And seeing as there were only so many entries allowed on a form, it needed 5 forms in total.

What made things worse was that much of the laser printing from the earlier receipts were faded and it was very difficult for me to read the entries on some of them. I don’t know how they will manage at the Claims Office.

I missed my walk this afternoon with being involved in all of this. But seeing as we were having a torrential rainstorm at the time, it wasn’t much of a problem.

BY the time that I had finished and done a little tidying up, it was teatime. A plate of mixed steamed vegetables with vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce.

On my walk tonight I met yet another neighbour who also goes for an evening walk. He goes the other way round so in fact we met up twice.

But the route was sodden with water following the rainstorm. Not very pleasant at all.

But at least I could admire all of the boats out there. They seem to be happy that the weather has cleared up and that they could go out to play.

Although the rain had stopped, the streets were still wet.

Down in the rue du Nord the vehicles were making some very interesting tracks on the damp surface.

Even though it’s late evening, the streets were crowded with people and cars. It’s the height of the summer season so we have tourists everywhere, of course.

Anyway, it’s bedtime. And I hope that I have a decent night’s sleep yet again. I need to build up my strength as I’m going to be busy.

yachts baie de mont st michel cancale brittany granville manche normandy france

Thursday 5th July – WHAT A DEPRESSING DAY!

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves.

Last night was weird. I crashed out as soon as my head hit the pillow, woke up again after about half an hour, and then crashed out for good until about 04:30.

And then of course, I dozed off again just a couple of minutes before the alarm went off.

Consequently it was a very tired and weary me that hauled itself out of the stinking pit, and even a shower couldn’t really bring me round. I was feeling awful and for two pins I would have gone back to bed.

But I have things to do, and so I staggered downstairs to the van.

On the car park I met Hans who was loading up his van ready to leave, so we wished each other a good trip and like the Knights Of The Round Table, we each went our separate ways.

There wasn’t all that much traffic on the motorway given the time of morning, so I made it to Leuven in good time. And it seems that my parking spec has been taken by someone else. So I parked in an empty spec and anticipated a row when I returned.

The walk from there up the hill to the hospital was a long, weary walk and I almost didn’t make it. “I’m definitely not feeling myself today” I said, and just as well too because it’s a disgusting habit.

At the hospital I was early so I had to wait around for a while. And the first lot of bad news is that my weight has gone up by 3kg. Hardly a surprise seeing as I’ve been without my tablets for 12 days.

Plugged in and switched on, I slept for most of the day. With just the occasional awakening from the medical staff. And it was during one of those awakenings that I had some even more bad news.

The protein loss has doubled to just over 2.0 and the red blood count has collapsed to 8.8. No wonder I’ve been feeling so ill today.

They are totally dismayed by that and they want to bring me forward to three-weekly visits. That is out of the question for the next visit so we agreed on Monday August 6th – which means that I’ll be travelling back to Belgium with Alison.

And the one after that will be on August 27th, which is also bad news and rules out any possibility of going to North America.

Eventually they threw me out and I headed for Caliburn. Loads of things that I wanted to do but I just wasn’t up to any of them. No-one had said anything about Caliburn being in the wrong place, so we all came back to Liège, stopping off at Bio Planet for some vegan cheese and vegan sausages.

The traffic in Liège was horrendous yet again and it took ages to reach the hotel. By now I was thoroughly and completely tired and fed up so I went straight to bed and that was that.

It’s been a very bad day.

Monday 28th May 2018 – IT’S BANK HOLIDAY …

… in the UK today. And seeing as how I’d missed a Bank Holiday the other day I decided that I would take advantage of the day by having my Bank Holiday today.

So no alarm and a nice lie-in until all of … errr … 08:25. Nothing like the lie-in for which I was hoping but a lie-in all the same.

A late breakfast too, and then I did precisely nothing at all for the whole of the day except to mooch around and take it easy. At least, the morning passed like that anyway.

But there was an unexpected twist at lunchtime. I was joined by not one but two lizards waiting for the bits to drop off the pear. I’ll probably end up with a whole herd of lizards by the end of next week at this rate.

This afternoon I went for my little walk around the headland. It was school chucking-out time too and so I was able to observe the antics of the parents.

Pathetic parking is a regular feature of this blog as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. here’s yet another example. You cans ee the woman parked right by the bus stop with two wheels on the kerb to prevent passers-by from passing by on the pavement and yet right opposite her is an empty car parking space.

Not to mention the free car park lass than 100 yards down the road of course. I’m really surprised that the local police don’t come round and ticket them all.

was a really pleasant surprise. Ingrid came on line so we had a chat and then a telephone conversation that lasted one hour and forty-one minutes. I’m surprised that I could find that much to talk about. But then Ingrid has her own health issues too and so we jog each other along as best we can

Ingrid asked me what I was going to have fr tea, so I had to make one of these instant decisions. And I decided on another lot of mixed veg with vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce. That all worked very nicely and was delicious.

And what was even better that with two burners now, I can fry my onions, garlic and sausages at the same time that I make the cheese sauce. As they say, it’s little things like that which make a great big difference.

But while the cooking was reaching a climax, Rosemary rang me up. I told her that I’d call her back in an hour or so after I’d had my tea. And so after the tea and the washing up, I went for my evening walk around the medieval walls.

And with the tide being well-in, I was interested in seeing what the little beach at the foot of the steps that I had seen the other evening looked like.

The answer to that is that I can forget any idea of going for a midnight stroll on the beach down there. What’s left of the beach at high tide is cut off from the part where the steps are.

No way down and no way up. So not a good idea

A little further along, I was distracted by sounds of hilarity coming from offshore somewhere. Not being able to see anything clearly, this was a job for the telephoto zoom lens.

There’s a diving platform about 4 metres tall right out on the beach and which is well-submerged at high tide. It’s quite a way offshore too and the sea was quite lively, so the last thing that I expected to see were a couple of people out there fooling around.

I watched them for a while to make sure that they were not in distress, and then left them to it.

Having paid my respects to Minette the black cat, who allowed me to pick her up yet again, I went back home and phoned Rosemary back. And there we were on the telephone for an hour and a half.

She’ll be back in the Auvergne sooner that she imagined, and having spent the last 6 months stranded in the UK after her operation she has made a decision that she’s ready to abandon the country too and settle permanently in France. She wanted to know the steps to take.

And I’ll tell you this – anyone who knows anything about Rosemary will realise from this discussion just how deeply the UK has slid into the abyss just recently if she’s upping sticks and moving on.

And as you all know, I can’t say that I blame her one minute. The last time that I set foot in the UK was over 5 years ago – a quick day-trip aller-retour to pick up Terry’s slates from near Folkestone. I can’t remember the last time that I was there before that, and I don’t miss it for a moment. I have no intention whatever of ever going back, although something might be brewing in the background which will mean that a day trip will be necessary some time soon. And I’m not looking forward to that at all.

So it ended up being a later night that I was expecting. But I’m not complaining. I don’t speak to enough people these days anyway. Frederick the Great once made the remark “the more I see of people, the more I like my dog” and he has my sympathy because I know just how he feels.

However Maria McKee wrote “a good heart these days is hard to find” and that’s just as true. It’s a very valuable commodity. I don’t have many friends but it’s quality over quantity any time. My friends are the best in the world and I’ll happily sit up all night talking to them without any problems whatsoever.

But right now, I’m off to bed. Back to the grind tomorrow.

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 – SO CARRYING ON …

… from where I left off last night, I ended up taking out the waste paper to the recycling bin. Such is the exciting life that I lead around here these days.

But at least it brought my day’s efforts to 101% of my target so that I could go to bed quite happily – albeit rather later than I had planned.

And during the night, I was off on yet another mega-ramble. One that was well-worth remembering, but unfortunately I can’t remember anything about it now. But all is not lost, because I recorded it for posterity on the dictaphone.

However, it comes to my mind that I have forgotten to copy it onto the laptop and transcribe it, so you’ll have to wait for another time before you can read all about it.

To be honest, I don’t know what I do with my days. Anyone would think that I was really busy, but that’s not the case. I’m just old, tired and ill.

But not so old, tired and ill that I couldn’t deal with the masses of photos that have built up over the last while. Including the ones that I mentioned yesterday. This one and this one were taken with the current lens on the big Nikon.

On the other hand, keeping to exactly the same settings, this one and this one were taken with the lens that I borrowed from Happy Cash.

I wish now that I had brought the spare lens with me instead of leaving it back in Virlet. I shall have to bite the bullet and buy another. This one is the one that I would really like, but I’m already selling my body on Boots Corner for the next 20 years so it will have to wait for a while. Does that place you know have anything cheaper, Rhys?

Lunch was spent sitting on the wall overlooking the harbour where I could gaze upon the activity.

And Normandy Trader sneaked in during the morning at some time. Here she sits, not yet loaded. Presumably waiting for a delivery.

The lizard that loiters at the foot of tha wall now seems to have become quite tame. He knows that I’m going to eat a pear, and he knows that some of it will fall to the floor. He’s a big fan of pears and at first he’d hide in the long grass and dash out for a quick bite and dash back in.

Now though, he comes out and hangs around waiting, even climbing over my foot to reach the piece that falls.

This afternoon I crashed out again and then carried on with the photos and a session on the guitar.

I went for my walk too, and they must have been flaming quick with Normandy Trader because she had badgered off. Slung her hook, you might say.

But they aren’t being flaming quick with Caliburn. He’s still at the garage and there’s been no phone call. Still, he’s out of mischief there.

Tea was a delicious mixed vegetables steamed in the microwave, vegan sausages and a nice thick creamy vegan cheese sauce. The freezer and the grated vegan cheese from the Loving Hut in Leuven haven’t half improved my diet. But I’ve run out of strawberries now.

Another walk this evening and now I’m ready for bed. And I need it too. I must remember to download my dictaphone notes tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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