Tag Archives: crash out

Saturday 8th February 2020 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… one of the strangest football matches that I’ve seen in years. And I’m still shaking my head about it even now.

Following US Granville’s dismal performance last week, the coach made a few changes to the team to play US St Malo this evening at the Stade Louis Dior, and rightly so. But the players that he replaced were players who I thought played well last week and left on the field some of the players, including the guy who gave Olympique de Marseille their third goal the other week and who gave away the ball that led to one of the Vannes OC goals last week.

In the first half St Malo had pretty much the best of the play and so you will be just as surprised as I was to learn that US Granville were 3-0 up. I don’t know what the trainer had put in the pre-match cuppa but I would like a drink of it.

But really, the goals were
1) a free kick
2) an own goal
3) a penalty.
Nothing really there to get excited about.

As I went for my half-time coffee, I remember thinking that there was still plenty of time for US Granville to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

And when US St Malo went down to 10 men, you would be forgiven to fetching the bottle of champagne, but I know my players and I had faith.

Just look where the St Malo goalkeeper is standing. Almost on the halfway line.

At this point St Malo are taking a corner. The ball is played into the centre and the Granville keeper catches it. Now you and I would go for the long kick downfield over the keeper’s head and who knows? There might be a goal in it. Chris Mullock scored one like that for Aberystwyth Town a season or two ago and even if it didn’t, it would keep the keeper back on his goal line and stop him playing centre-half.

But no. Our keeper rolls the ball out to a defender to play the ball upfield.

And the inevitable happens. He loses possession, the attackers are through one-on-one with the keeper abd they make no mistake.

The tragedy is that just 30 seconds earlier we had had exactly the same situation and a goal was only narrowly averted. It taught them nothing.

Even worse – a few minutes later US Granville messing around in defence instead of clearing the ball, and they lose possession. Consequently US St Malo pull back a second goal.

Luckily US Granville cling on until the final whistle to win the match with a desperate rearguard defence against 10 men in a match that they should have won at a canter.

This morning was another struggle to leave the bed. I missed an alarm once more so it was 07:10 when I finally left the bed. Nothing on the dictaphone from the night so after the medication I cut up a digital track.

That was more difficult than it ought to be because whoever had assembled it had left the marks where he had joined it up – and they were in the wrong places. So I had to rejoin it correctly before I could cut it.

After breakfast I had a shower and then went to town.

First stop was NOZ where I bought a cheap whiteboard at €0:79. I alreay have a whiteboard but a spare is useful for a variety of reasons and as well as that, it included a marker and the price of a marker on its own is more than that.

LeClerc was much more expensive but then again I had to buy coffee and the rest of the muesli stuff, and also they had some frozen vegan burgers and things like that and seeing as there is at the moment some room in my freezer for once I stocked up.

For a change I went to GIFI too to see if they had any pastry cutters. But no such luck, so I came home instead.

The rest of the day was spent working on the radio project and that’s all done and dusted and recorded and I’ve started on the notes for the final one. They are about two-thirds done now.

That could have been finished today but for the fact that I was having another bad day. I was crashed out on the chair a couple of times, really deeply too. I’m getting a little bit worried by this right now because I’ve been here in the past and I thought that I had managed to go beyond that.

There was the walk to the Stade Louis Dior of course and the walk back, which was extended to take me over the 100% mark. And I managed a run too, which pleased me greatly.

Saturday night so tea was out of a tin, followed by a banana with the rest of the raspberry sorbet. No walk afterwards because of course I’m over my limit so I can relax.

So now it’s bedtime. No alarm so it’s a nice long sleep – I hope. But you just watch someone come along and spoil it.

Friday 7th February 2020 – I HAD VISITORS …

… today, and that’s always good news because it obliges me to do something about the state of my apartment and get on and do some cleaning and tidying up.

And also to unblock the sink. I seem to have been a little too lax with the carrot peelings from yesterday. And that involved dismantling the cupboard, which meant getting everything out.

And while everything was out I could clean it.

You can see how one thing leads to another and once you get started you’ll be surprised just how many other things there are.

Last night wasn’t as early as I would have liked, and as a result I found it hard to leave the bed. In fact I missed the third alarm completely and ended up leaving the bed at 07:10 and that’s no good at all.

After the medication I had a look on the dictaphone. And sure enough I’d been on my travels during the night. I remember very little about this except that there was a group of us going away from somewhere presumably being chased by someone’s mother and we were down Pillory Street in Nantwich. later on we were again in a group and there was some wise intelligent old man there, a teacher or something and the girl with me, he was talking to her and he said that he was going to draw her a jigsaw now and of course we were all puzzled about what he meant. He drew a jigsaw piece and he wrote a word in it. I can’t remember the word now but when you turned it upside down it created another word that made perfect sense as well. It was a long word – about 15 letters or so and it actually resolved a word no matter which way up you had the piece but obviously it was a different word with a different meaning.

Once breakfast was over I started to cut up another sound file but that was agonising. Nothing whatever corresponded to the track descriptions that I had, and although I knew the album I didn’t know the name of the tracks and that didn’t help. After having done about half of it, I reckoned that I’d better crack on and do the tidying up.

Just as the place was looking more respectable, Liz and Terry came round. I could finally give Liz her birthday present, and then we went for a walk and a coffee at La Rafale.

After they had left, I could go for my walk into town for my bread.

The tide was out so I could go across the harbour gates and on the other side, I found that Charles-Marie and Spirit of Conrad had been moved. They are right in front of where I’m standing and in their place are a couple of pontoons with scaffolding.

So what’s the why of that? We seem to be living in interesting times in the harbour.

Ignoring Chausiais for the moment I went to look at the work that they had been doing on the docks.

It’s not at all clear as to what they are intending to do here, and there was no-one around to ask either. So my curiosity still isn’t satisfied and I’ll have to come back when there are people around.

That is, if ever I can manage to find my way down here early enough. I’m not doing so well right now.

We noticed yesterday that Thora had come into port, and we saw her in the earlier photo above.

My route took me past the ship to see if there was anyone around but no such luck. That’s something else to do another time.

But they ought to start thinking about a coat of paint or two. She looked so nice and fresh when she first came in here almost two years ago and she needs to get back her good looks.

La Mie Caline was next for my dejeunette. But there were none on the shelves. But no matter. They found me one directly out of the oven and that’s one of the benefits of being a regular customer.

Back here I finished off the splitting of that digital music track. After all of that, it seems that the digital recording contains the same track twice and that’s why everything is right out of sync.

After lunch I sat down to write the notes for the next project but crashed out completely for half an hour.

Once I managed to get my head together I did some of the work and then went out for my afternoon walk.

The tide was coming in so the fishing boats were heading our way to unload their catch. There were dozens of them just offshore heading into harbour this afternoon, presumably coming back from Guernsey now that the Guernsey authorities have capitulated.

Yes, it’s all very well catching as much fish as you can, but it’s no good if you can’t sell them, as the stupid Brexiters will find out soon enough.

“Heading into harbour” I said, didn’t I?

Well, the early birds were already there and this will give you an idea of just how many active fishing boats there are that operate out of here. Add that lot to the dozen or so that were heading our way and you’ll see that it’s a quite busy fishing port.

Just imagine what it must have been like in its heyday when the fleets of Newfoundland and Grand Banks trawlers were in here

While you admire the rest of the fishing boats out to sea, I came back to the apartment.

To warm myself up (because it was cold and windy outside) I made myself a coffee and came to sit down on my comfy chair. And here, I fell asleep again. A proper deep sleep for half an hour or so, really away with the fairies.

This is something that is depressing me very much.

Nevertheless, I did manage to press on and not only finished the notes but actually dictated them too.

That means that tomorrow when I come back from the shops I can crack on with this one and get it done. And then, maybe on Sunday, do the third.

Tea tonight was a slice of lentil and bean pie that I found in the freezer followed by an apple turnover out of the freezer, with raspberry sorbet.

One thing that I can say is that I’m eating really well.

We mustn’t forget the evening walk. Cold and windy and I had forgotten my hat but I pressed on all the same.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the walls round by the place du Marché aux Chevaus are now closed off to the public due to the instability of the walls, but unless I’m very much mistaken, they might be starting work here ver soon.

At least, they have dumped a load of scaffolding off at the site, and I’m sure that this wasn’t here earlier today when I was out.

So having admired the scaffolding for a while I carried on with my walk and two runs. The second run was agony but I have to push on and keep going while I can.

Minette was there on her windowsill so we had a chat for a while and I gave her a stroke, and then I came back.

Just in time for the football. Caernarfon Town v Bala Town in the Cymru Welsh Premier League.

In a howling gale, it was always going to be a lottery and skill would count for nothing. The play was about equal but Bala won 2-1 and also missed a penalty. They were much more clinical in front of goal.

But one thing amazed me. I don’t know what was going on in the referee’s top pocket but he must have had a pop-up toaster in there.

Anyone looking at the stats and seeing that there were 7 or 8 yellow cards must have thought that this was a dirty match. But in fact, in my opinion only one of the tackles warranted a yellow card and the rest were for faults about as minor as you could get.

I shudder tho think what would happen if he were ever to referee a match between Stoke City and Uruguay.

So it’s now rather late and I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow, and I bet that I’ll forget half of the stuff that I need. Better have a god night’s sleep.

Wednesday 5th February 2020 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. It’s been easily the worst day that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Most of the afternoon was spent curled up on the office chair with me valiantly resisting all temptation to go back to bed. I felt dreadful and it totally ruined my day with everything that I had to do.

Mind you, I’m not blaming anyone but myself for this. I was still up and about working at 02:30 and no matter how heroic I might feel, I’m not ever going to be at my best after just 3.5 hours sleep.

Yes, 3.5 hours because despite the late hour of going to bed, I still beat the third alarm call to get to my feet.

The only consolation that I can offer myself is that I really was working until that late hour so it’s not as if I actually failed to accomplish anything.

After the medication I began to cut up a couple of digital tracks. But that took me much longer than it ought too because the track running order on the digital track was completely different from the running order that I had in my notes and because I didn’t really recognise the album all that well, I couldn’t do it by recognition.

Another thing that I accomplished was that all of the odd “singles” tracks that I’ve accumulated, they are filed into a folder all of their own and out of the way

There’s also a spare hard drive in this big computer so I did a mammoth back-up of absolutely everything onto it from one or two of the external drives. My plan is to go through it, tidy it up and then use it as a copy base for the other laptops that are loitering around here.

There was a break for breakfast of course, and I found that I’d run out of muesli so I had to make some more. And supplies are pretty low – I’ll have to do something about that tomorrow.

Once those issues were resolved I selected some more music to finish off the choice (except the last track of course) for the final one of the three projects that I have on the go right now. And then to clean up because I’d made something of a mess on the floor that needed vacuuming, and I’ll wash the floor before I go to bed

All of this took me up almost to lunchtime so I had to head out to La Mie Caline for my bread.

There was no-one around in the boulevard des Terreneuviers so i went to see what they had been doing with the crane the other day. Apparently there’s an apartment here on a building in the rue du Port but access is by a footbridge from the boulevard here.

What they had been doing was taking the old footbridge away, and it looks as if they are going to be installing a new one.

In the meantime, how does the inhabitant reach his apartment?

Meanwhile, the tide was still out so I could walk round by the fish-processing plant and across the footpath across the top of the harbour gates.

Any my luck was in today because I arrived here at the same time that the fishing boats did. There were a few of them here unloading so I had a crafty look over the side to see what they had. This one here had dozens of boxes full of crabs

Obviously they must have had a very good day out at sea today.

As for the others, I didn’t recognise what was in the boxes. A seashell-type of creature … “crustaceans” – ed … that was a spiral of some sort.

As I know nothing about this kind of thing, I enquired of one of the fork-lift truck drivers. He told me that they were bulots, and I’ll have to take his word for that.

The only thing is that I hope that everyone shares their catch out with their friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we talked to the guy from the company working in the port who told me that they were installing a new pontoon.

As you can see, they are making rapid advances in this respect because some of the anchoring mounts have now been installed, and they certainly weren’t in position at this time yesterday but lying on the ground where the old railway track was.

This is turning into something quite exciting. I wonder what they will be doing tomorrow when I go past.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed back to the apartment.

It was now later than usual and the workmen were now back at it after their lunch break. Over on the other side of the port I’d been past another place where they had been digging another trench.

In my opinion it looks as if they are putting in more electric wiring so things are hotting up now in the port. The mayor’s “modernisation” project might actually be coming to fruition.

We saw them earlier having installed the mounting brackets for the pontoon that they will be installing.

If you look back up the page, you’ll see that I was wondering what it will look like tomorrow and I’m even more intrigued to find out now because there’s a huge crane that has miraculously appeared down there now and he won’t be there for nothing.

Back at the apartment it was lunchtime. And I’d forgotten to take some hummus out of the freezer. However, I do have some lovely vegan smoked cheese that needed eating so I used that instead.

The apple purée that I made the other day has almost run out (I told you that there was too much liquid in it) so I made another batch only this time instead of pears I used a couple of bananas.

With having used much less water, that’s come out really well and I can’t wait to try it tomorrow for breakfast.

After the purée I made a start on writing up the notes for the first project but had a break while I went for my afternoon walk.

The first thing that I noticed was that there were still a pile of fishing boats out to sea and heading back to the harbour. I suppose that the tide will be going out so they want to come in to port while there’s still time to get to the unloading quay.

So they will need to get a move on because the tide won’t be staying in for long.

The second thing that I noticed was that the large crane had lowered his jib. It looked as if he is ready to move away.

And so I’ll be definitely down there tomorrow to see what he was doing.

For a change I took my walk around the walls this afternoon. At times there was no-one around so I managed about one and a half of my runs today.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I have to press on with my fitness even though I don’t feel much like it.

And it was an extended walk too. I’m trying to push it up to 100% every day to keep the pressure on.

And then back at the apartment after my walk I had all of the issues that I mentioned at the start. Mind you, I did manage to pull myself together long enough to finish the notes that I’d started, although I’m not quite sure what gibberish they might be.

Tea was pasta and veg with the left-over stuffing and kidney beans, with the left-over mushrooms added in. And even though I say it myself, it was pretty delicious. One of the better meals that I’ve cooked, especially when followed down by rice pudding. I am eating well these days.

And while that was cooking I had a go at tidying up all of my plastic storage containers, of which I have more than enough

The walk was around the headland tonight. Nothing whatever going on anywhere, but I managed my run. So 2.5 runs today and i’m good with that.

This evening I was going to dictate my notes but instead, as I’m not feeling up to much I’m going to bed. I might have 7 hours sleep tonight and that will be a bonus the way I’ve been going just recently.

Monday 3rd February 2020 – SHE’S BACK!

Yes, there I was this afternoon out for my walk, looking across the harbour, and there she was.

Yes, the Bond heroine Plenty O’Toole, named for her father of course, has turned up again in Granville. It must be a couple of years since she was last here but here she is.

Who is going to be next to put in an appearance here in Granville? Foxxy Cleopatra? Or Godzilla?

Last night, I was on something of a roll. Somehow and for some reason (probably the very late lie-in that I had) I didn’t feel like going to bed. And so making the most of it, I carried on attacking the notes for the current radio project. By the time that I was overwhelmed there was only another 5 or 10 minutes left to finish so that was a good plan of work.

And even despite the late night, I was just on the point of putting my feet on the floor when the third alarm went off. So we’ll call that a draw today.

After the medication I checked the dictaphone but I had nothing on so instead I chopped up a digital sound file into the component tracks. That was interrupted by breakfast and by the fact that the sound file bore no resemblance to the details that I had and I had to hunt down a revised description.

A little later I had a shower and then headed off outside.

And it was my lucky day because for once there was plenty going on outside. Chausiais was on the move again, heading out with presumably another cargo for the ile de Chausey

That’s a couple of times now that I’ve seen her on the move. I’m intrigued to know what her plans are in the long term because it’s a lot of money tied up for just the occasional crossing to the ile de Chausey

That wasn’t everything either, because Joly France was on the move too.

At first I was wondering whether or not she was taking out a load of passengers to follow in the wake of Chausiais but I eventually came to the conclusion that where she was, she was preventing Chausiais from leaving her berth.

And that would account for her manoeuvres in port this morning, I reckon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s this big project going on in the port right now.

They are ripping up the abandoned railway lines from when this place was a thriving deep-sea fishing port and “improving” the car park. Here today, their work has advanced out of the protected zone and there’s a mini-digger with a hydraulic drill attachment breaking up the surface where there ware more railway lines buried.

It makes me wonder just how long they are going to be at this project and what it’s going to be like when it’s finished. It was something of an eyesore so almost anything will be an improvement, but I hope that the plans include some greenery too.

And out in the Place Charles de Gaulle I’m not quite sure what’s happening here.

We have a tractor and trailer and another piece of heavy equipment parked up outside the old Tourist Information office. That’s now an ephemeral display room so it might be something to do with that, or else they are starting to kit out the Square ready for Carnaval, which will take ^lace in 3 weeks time.

We shall see what we shall wee.

Around the corner in the rue des Carrosses we are faced with a more mundane, even banal problem.

Something is clearly up with the guttering or the chimney of this building because they have brought in a cherry-picker and sent up a couple of men in the nacelle to deal with the issue.

As for me, I pushed on up the hill towards the Centre Agora for our weekly meeting

Regular readers will recall that I’ve mentioned in the past all of the time that is wasted in these meetings … “not ‘arf” – ed … but in the past there was nothing like as much wasted as today.

For a change I was second there and the others arrived after me. But they stayed outside having a smoke and a chat and didn’t come in until 10:30. And most of the meeting was spent discussing a subject that could have been dealt with in about 2 minutes.

Someone turned up from one of the Council’s committees and she was introduced to us. The guy in charge told her about what we did and while he was very careful to mention several programmes that we had done, he very carefully omitted anything that I had done from the list.

If they don’t like what I do and are ashamed of it, I wish that they would tell me and either stop me doing it or tell me how it can be improved. It’s quite true that the stuff from the last couple of weeks has been light years ahead of what I did at the beginning, but that’s because I’ve worked it out for myself.

If they have something to say, I wish that they would come out and say it.

The real business of the meeting didn’t come out until everyone was almost ready to leave – at about 12:30. These are hours of my life that I won’t ever get back.

On the way home I stopped at LIDL. I needed some olive oil and a few other things, but forgot the stuff to make my muesli and I’ve run out of that. If I can’t find all of the stuff it might be porridge for the next few days.

Back down in town again I picked up my dejeunette at la Mie Caline and came back home for a late lunch.

This afternoon I pushed on with the radio project and although I hadn’t quite finished it at knocking-off time, I hung on in and had it done regardless. And so a late tea.

But there had been a couple of interruptions to my day. Firstly, and unsurprisingly after my late night and early start, I crashed out on my chair for 20 minutes in a really deep sleep

Secondly, there was the afternoon walk as usual. Mustn’t miss out on that!

And this photo will tell you exactly how things unfolded during the course of the afternoon. There’s a huge, powerful rain cloud about 8 or 10 miles out to sea and judging by the wind right now, it’s heading this way.

This kind of thing is looking quite ominous for later on.

And although it’s not as windy as it might be and indeed has just recently, it’s blowing a terrific gale somewhere out to sea.

We’re a good hour or so away from high tide but even so, there’s enough power in the sea to send the waves crashing right over the harbour wall. No wonder I couldn’t see any fishing boats out there today.

It’s not the kind of day at all to be out there on the ocean waves in the kind of boats that hang around in this harbour.

Talking of fishing boats, there’s been another change of tenant at the Chantier navale.

One of the fishing boats has now left and presumably gone back into the water. There’s only the one left now and judging by all of the people on board working away at here, it doesn’t look as if she’s going to be there for much longer either.

So new tenants all round in the near future, I reckon. It will be interesting to see who comes in and who does what to it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen this boat before just recently.

Seeing as it’s in the national colours, I thought at first that it might be something to do with the Government but judging by the large bucket of seafood on her deck and the van there that has come to take the stuff away, it’s probably just a private fishing boat.

And that’s something of a disappointment. I was hoping for a lot more excitement around here now.

While you admire another photo of the raging sea, let me tell you about teatime.

With plenty of mushrooms lying about here and there I made myself a stuffed pepper with pasta. And I’m not sure quite why but it was one of the best that I’ve ever tasted even though I forgot the herbs.

It was followed up by rice pudding and that was delicious too. I may be eating quite simply but by ‘eck I am eating well these days.

By now the storm had arrived, the weather had broken, and how! There was the deep puddle outside the roor and the streets were like running rivers. I went for my walk regardless, even managing two runs.

Not on the north side of the walls though – that was about a foot deep in water. I had to find a place a little further on even though the ground underfoot isn’t as smooth. And of course, my run across the Square Maurice Marland.

So now I’ve finished, I’ve re-heard my radio project and it’s fine, so I’m going to listen to some music for half an hour before going to bed.

A little luxury is something that I deserve.

Tuesday 28th January 2020 – IF YOU WANT …

… to know what the weather was like today, this photo here will tell you everything that you need to know.

Miserable, horrible, grey and overcast with huge and violent rainstorms and incredibly high winds stirring everything up. In fact, a typical day on the western Normandy coast for just recently.

And when is it going to end? It looks as if this weather is here for the duration and isn’t going to let up very easily.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I could hear the howling weather quite clearly and ashamed as I am to admit it, it drove me back underneath the covers where I stayed until just after 07:00. This wasn’t the kind of weather that would make anyone want to raise themselves from the dead, least of all me.

After the medication I had a look to see where I’d been during the night. I had been at a house with a group of people and we needed some things from a shopping parade down the street. There had been a really heavy snowfall and it was difficult to move around so I said that I would go. I had to go on foot because Caliburn was at the menders and I could pick him up and bring him back on the way back so that was what I decided to do. As I was leaving, one of the girls in this house shouted out “don’t forget it’s time to go and get your food and organise this and Eric’s going to get this and that”. I don’t know why she did that. Anyway I was off. I went to get a coupe of shopping bags. It was a really steep slope down the hill to this shopping parade and with the snow it was quite icy and slippy. There was a group of people coming up the hill. One of them was a girl dressed a kind of white smock kind of arrangement and she had a couple of other kids with her running up there. All of a sudden they slipped, came down the hill and collided with me. They knocked me over onto the ice, and there was me, this girl and a boy sliding down this hill and where the road went round a bend we went straight on over the edge and crashed into a snow bank. The girl was laughing about this and the boy said to her “you’re disgusting”. She said “yes, I know that I’m disgusting”. It all went rather downhill from there.

Those rubber spatulas proved their weight in gold today. Ordinarily I would have said that I had run out of apple purée for breakfast but with the rubber spatula I managed to scrape enough out of the jar for a small portion for breakfast.

After breakfast, I attacked the travel notes. In a change to previous voyages, I’m not taking all of my files with me on the laptop. I’m making a “travel noes” file where I can record everything, and then bring it back home and edit the entries into the various data files. It’s much less confusing that way.

But it seems that I’ve made a bit of an error with the radio projects. I’ve forgotten to leave a space for the live concert at the end of February. As a result, everything that I did that was labelled “Project 16” has now to be labelled “Project 19” to preserve the integrity of Projects 17 and 18 and the series of material from which I draw is now out of order and needs to be changed.

While I’d been in Leuven I’d found something that a friend of mine had asked me to see if I could find. I’d been successful so i’d wrapped it and I took it with me to post on my way to pick up my butties.

But as usual, I was side-tracked by the sound of a pneumatic drill coming from the other side of the harbour and seeing as the gates were closed, I could go over the footpath on the top to see what was happening.

And it’s not a pneumatic drill at all but a hydraulic concrete breaker on the jib of one of the diggers that have been dredging the harbour just now.

What they seem to be doing is chiselling out the rocks at the foot of the sea wall at the ferry terminal.

This will explain the pile of piles that regular readers of this rubbish will have seen with me the other day – removed so as to give access for the concrete breaker.

But does this mean that, with the dredging of the harbour to make it deeper and removing the rocks at the side to make it wider, are we going to be expecting the arrival of a new ferry boat that is larger than those that we have at present?

We are living in interesting times indeed.

This fishing boat, the Rocavi II is quite interesting.

There has been an article in the local newspaper about the Rocavi II just recently. It’s a brand-new fishing boat that has only recently been launched and on Saturday it was blessed by one of the local priests.

What with living in France, I suppose that breaking a bottle of champagne over the bows is pretty ordinary stuff and nothing whatever special at all.

A little further along the port, it looks as if Thora has been here while I’ve been away.

Much of her work involves taking building supplies out to Jersey and she doesn’t seem to have a regular load off the island. Instead, her owners collect scrap metal and as there are no scrapping facilities on the island they bring it here for processing. Regular readers of this rubbish will have seen quite a few loads of scrap on the quayside.

This lot of scrap metal looks as if it has been part of some structure that has been destroyed by fire.

With all of these distractions I missed the post. So I went to la Mie Caline and picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

After lunch I made my own apple purée. Four apples peeled, cored and diced, a pear ditto and some cinnamon put into a saucepan with some water and boiled for about 45 minutes.

And it’s not a success. I’ve used far too much water – or else the fruit was too juicy – and it’s more like an apple drink than an apple purée. But I’ll use it over the next few days just to dispose of it and then I’ll make some more – with much less water this time.

But pears, bananas, rhubarb, apricots, all kinds of fruit can go into it and I’m hopeful of making some good stuff with this. I need to push on and do a lot more about being self-sufficient.

And then I started to write the notes for the first of the radio projects. But I wasn’t at it long because it was walk-time. What hadn’t helped was that for about 10 minutes or so I had … errr … had a little relax.

While I was out there earlier we had had a moment of sun. But not now. A howling gale and the rain that we had seen over the Brittany coast had caught me.

For that reason I didn’t hang around very long. Chausias was over there at the ferry terminal in a NAABSA (Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground) condition so presumably they are expecting her to be doing something in the near future.

The two passenger ferries were moored up in the inner harbour where they usually stay.

But no Channel Island ferries. Both Granville and Victor Hugo are currently moored up in Cherbourg and I have no idea why.

Spirit of Conrad has made good her escape from the Chantier navale so I was keen to see who had taken her place.

The answer is that there isn’t anything special in there right now. We have two of the inshore fishing boats that haul in the shellfish and one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that is over there where Spirit of Conrad used to be.

So at least there’s plenty of work for the shipyard to be doing and that should keep them out of mischief for a while.

Back here I finished off the writing and then dictated the notes. They are going to need some hefty editing too as I seem to have been somewhat extravagant.

Anyway, I had made a start by the time that I went to make tea. Vegan burger on a bap with baked potatoes and vegetables, followed by fruit salad and sorbet. And there’s still that left-over slice of apple pie in the freezer from before I went to Leuven. But that’s an oven job so it will probably be to go with the pizza on Sunday.

Howling gales and torrential rain tonight, and I was out in it. To make it worse, I had to go for a longer walk than usual as I was in touching distance of my 100% target so I may as well push on over.

The storm was raging and although the tide wasn’t all the way in, the waves were still crashing down on the Plat Gousset and soaking everything. It’s disappointing that they haven’t left the lights on along the promenade so that we can see the waves better.

And despite the miserable weather I managed to fit in my two runs this evening. My two little tracks were quite well sheltered.

But Iw as feeling the strain, I’ll tell you. It seems that the spell of good health I had in December is about as good as it is ever goign to be.

So having finished my notes, I’ll wait until “Yes In Concert” finishes ad then I’ll go to bed. The problem is that I have far too much good music here to which to listen to waste my time by going to bed and sleep.

Monday 27th January 2020 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed at 05:30 but I managed it – only just.

And by the time the third alarm went off at 05:45 I was already on my way down the road having rinsed my empty bottles, packed my rucksack and put the key to my room in the key disposal box.

When the first of the normal series of alarms went off at 06:00 I was sitting in a train at the station in Leuven.

It’s an elderly AM80 electric multiple-unit. Covered in graffiti and not very clean at all. But the fact is that it’s here, it’s leaving at 06:04 and it’s travelling non-stop into Brussels.

That’s good enough for me.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour, bought myself some raisin bread for breakfast and then went to sit down to wait until my train is called.

With half an hour to go before departure, I took the initiative and went myself to look for the train on the off-chance that it might be ready.

And sure enough, here it is sitting on the platform ready to go. It’s one of the “Reseau 38000” PBA (Paris Bruxelles Amsterdam) trainsets built for the start of thatservice in 1996.

To my surprise the door was open and I was able to go in and find my seat – a good 25 minutes to go before departure.

A ticket inspector came by and I thought that he was going to heave me out but he simply checked my ticket and that was that.

As for the journey itself, I have no idea at all about it because I slept for most of the route. This early start caught me up good and proper.

We arrived about 10 minutes late but that didn’t inconvenience me at all. The Metro was quite rapid even though it was crowded and I had to stand all the way, and I arrived at Montparnasse a good hour before my train was due to leave.

With the new timetable, it now arrives and departs from a platform in the main station complex rather than the Vaugirard annexe. In some ways that’s a good thing because it saves me a 10-minute walk, but in other ways it’s not so good.

That’s because Montparnasse is a huge, windswept desolate, cold station whereas the Vaugirard annexe had a nice draught-free glass waiting room where it’s reasonably comfortable to sit.

But hunting around, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … I found an ideal hidey-hole where I could even see an electronic departure board.

With 15 minutes to go, my train still hadn’t been posted so i went to look for it. And I found it sitting at one of the platforms. Meantime, the PA announcer was telling us that “the departure details are currently unavailable” – which was the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard seeing as at the time she was making the announcement I was actually looking at it.

Eventually we were called to the train – exactly where I said it was – and we could board it.

For part of the way, as far as L’Aigle, I had a very charming young female companion but after she left, I dozed off and there I stayed, fast asleep again, almost until we reached Granville.

Bang on time into the station we were, although it took me a few minutes to get my things together. And then I headed off into the rain.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago a notice had appeared in the car park of the Parc de Val es Fleurs to the effect that a chapiteau – a marquee – was to be erected there.

Just for a change I came back home that way to see if there was anything exciting happening. And sure enough, we did have our chapiteau in all of its glory, surrounded by a load of caravans.

It’s a circus, apparently, and even as I watched a huge pile of schoolkids filed their way into the chapiteau. They were obviously going to be treated to a matinée performance all to themselves.

Now here’s a thing!

For the last I don’t know how many weeks we’ve seen Spirit of Conrad up on blocks in the chantier navale. But no longer, by the looks of things.

Here she is, in the inner harbour with Joly France on one side of her and Charles-Marie on the other side. But no Aztec Lady. It must have been her that we saw heading out into the English Channel in the wake of Normandy Trader the other day.

Barry Hay once famously told us “one thing that I gotta tell you man – that it’s good to be back home!” and he’s absolutely right. A year or two ago, for the first time ever in my life I felt the pangs of homesickness after I’d been away from here for a couple of months.

This place really is my home and I was glad to be back here, even if it was absolutely freezing cold with no heating having been on. And to my delight a parcel for which I had been waiting since the end of November has finally arrived, at long last.

Nevertheless I sat down in my nce comfy chair and did nothing until tea time. I’m entitled to a relax after my efforts of today.

For tea, in the absence of any special willpower just now, I grabbed a frozen curry out of the freezer – the left-over leftovers from a few weeks ago. With rice and veg, including sprouts and spinach, it was delicious. And followed down by fruit salad and lemon sorbet.

The rain held off tonight for about 5 minutes after I set out for my evening walk – and then I caught the lot. All of it!

The tide was well-in and there were several trawlers out there heading in to harbour with their catches so I took a pick of one.

The lights of St Malo were looking quite good tonight too but the wind was far too strong for me to take a steady shot with the camera. The tripod wouldn’t have fared any better either – the wind would have had that over in a matter of seconds.

But round by the chantier navale I could take a photo of the inmates there.

No Spirit of Conrad of course – just a couple of fishing boats and another one right at the back. But the photo is no good because of the wind and rain. I wasn’t going to stay out long.

Getting back into the rhythm, I managed my little run just to keep up with my progress. Whatever else I do, I have to concentrate on getting fit no matter how much it hurts me. I do actually feel much better with having less weight to carry around these days.

So having written up my notes for the day, I’m going off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be getting back into the routine. There are two and a half radio programmes that need finishing and that’s the priority task for this week.

So I need to be on form.

Saturday 25th January 2020 – THEY WERE RIGHT …

… about this “fatigue” thing as a side effect of this new medical treatment.

Last night I crashed out long before I’d finished the notes for the day and having anticipated some kind of reaction and thus having switched off the alarm, it was 08:37 when I fist saw the light of day.

And that’s not to say that I left my bed either at that time.

But when I did, I had my medication and then came back up here and finished off yesterday’s notes. And it took me an age too because I wasn’t quite “with it”.

After breakfast I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I started off with someone and we had been in a Traction Avant – a white one – and it was the road that left Shavington past the High School. It was very steep and got steeper and there was loose gravel and stones. We went roaring up there at a ridiculous speed making tons of clouds of dust, everything at the risk of punctures on the sharp stones. We got right to the top and we were talking about this and I can’t remember now. Then it came down to having to go back. I ended up with these two girls in the car with me. I must admit that was quite keen on these girls and so I asked them “do you want to go the way back or do you want to go a different way?” There was in fact a different way that was much more quieter and much more intimate. I thought “yes, we’ll go back a different way”. But instead they took me back yet another way, not the way that I was thinking. We were in a Morris 1100 by this time. We got back down the hill and the road was all flooded. We turned left and it was flooded there so I told the girl who was driving – one of these girls was driving – “keep it out of the wet. Keep it well over this side of the road and go really slow”. Just as we got there some guys were standing about and sending a huge splash on everyone so you couldn’t see and the cars were having accidents. Some people were getting out of their cars chasing these boys. I was telling these two girls that I just can’t get used to this kind of behaviour. It’s nothing like what it is in Europe and I just don’t understand it. They said something like “yes you get the complaints about the kids being on the streets all the time and out of the control of their parents and here they all are”. And at that point I must have awoken because the voyage seemed to have stopped there.
Later though we had the Pears soap commercial kind of thing. Clare had posted something about Wright’s Coal tar Soap in her Social Network page. We were playing football and some of the tackles were really desperate and dangerous and these kids were doing fine. There was a “share” button where you could share this video out with different people so I pressed “share” so that my friends could see the kind of foul tactics that this team was using against a team of kids. I don’t remember much about this but I seem to remember that I lost my wheelchair somewhere. And what all of this and the flashback to the Granville – Olympique de Marseille have to do with Clare and her soap I really have no idea.
Later still I was with Terry and Liz at Darren and Kate’s. We ended up in the cellar and their cellar was enormous. It was really really nice. I was being shown around it. There were four or five little rooms, one a boiler room with a boiler in it. They had cupboards hanging from the ceiling where the drawers pulled downwards into the room. I thought “how strange is that? it’s stupid”. But they pulled the drawers down and showed me that they were all arranged like shelves inside with all screws and all that kind of thing in it and it was really well done. The boiler was nice and hot and there was a big table by there and Darren and kate were working out some kind of design on the big table. One of the kids shouted that all the cats were out. A big grey and white one came in to the cellar and “no, we haven’t seen that. Are you sure that that one is ours? There are only 3 or 4 like that in the whole world. I gave it a big stroke and a tickle under the chin. It turned out that it belonged to a famous actress. She had had it as a kitten and one of the kids had lost their cat so she gave it to the kid.

Believe it or not, all of that took ;e up until midday, at which point I went out for some bread.

Deciding to go for an extended walk and see what was in the shops, my perambulations took me via the FNAC (where there was nothing of interest) into the Bondgenotenlaan where I could qdmire the work that;s being done to the old “Wibra” shop.

We had some good things from there in the past and it’s a shame that they moved into smaller premises where they only carry a fraction of the stock.

They have completely gutted the building until there is just the facade left.

We saw then a while ago having dug out the cellar and now they seem to be fitting in the concrete flooring for the first floor, the ground floor having already been done.

It’s taken them an age to get this far and I can’t see them finishing it off any time soon. But it will be interesting to see what will be going on here in the end.

Kruidvat had nothing of interest and neither did Zeeman, Hema, Sports Direct, Blokker and Flying Tiger. But the Wibra did. I’d bought a flexible rubber spatula for cookery purposes a while ago and I’ve found it useful for so many things. But I don’t want to taint it with tomato sauce and stuff like that so I need another. And there in Wibra they had small ones for just 79 cents.

Couldn’t find any small pyrex bowls, and neither could I find a set of pastry-cutting rings. I shall have to keep on trying my Systme D method.

having been to the Delhaize for my bread, my attention was distracrd yet again, in the Brusselsestraat this time.

This mobile food stall in the outdoor market here is one that I haven’t noticed before. And I surely would have done because it’s advertising quite a range of vegan food.

Not that I was too interested at that moment, having organised my butties for lunch, but I made a mental note of its existence for it might one day come in useful.

Coming back up the Tiensestraat I noticed that they had been digging a hole in the pavement so I went to have a look down inside.

Not that I was sure what I was going to see of interest, if anything at all, but these brick foundations look interesting. The building here is a comparatively modern one so these presumably relate to a previous building here on the site.

And I bet that they would have an interesting story to tell us if only they could speak. It’s the kind of thing that is full of history.

Back home to the back of the Condo gardens in the Windmolenveldstraat.

We’d seen yesterday that there was some work going on on the fence here, but there’s more work going on at one of the houses in the Tiensevest that backs onto the Windmolenveldstraat. The rear of the house has been demolished and it looks as if an extension might be being built here.

That’s something else for me to keep my eye on in the course of time, I suppose.

By the time that I returned it was long after lunchtime so I made my butties and a coffee. The aim was to carry on with more work but instead, this fatigue thing caught up with me and I crashed out again.

A proper, deep, full-blooded intense crashing out too. I was properly gone with the wind and for some while too.

When I finally rejoined the Land of the Living I had a shower and washed my clothes and then carried on with some more radio stuff.

The music for Project 17 is now chosen as far as I can, and I’m about half-way though the music for Project 18. With a live concert to fit in somewhere in between, I’m now well into March and that is exactly where I want to be. I need to be at least 2 months ahead of myself just in case I do actually make it back to the High Arctic again.

Tea was pasta and vegetables with lentils in tomato sauce followed by peach halves and sorbet. Thoroughly delicious it was too

later on, I went for a really good walk. My route took me around the Tiensevest, up the Parkstraat and into the Naamsestraat.

It’s a route that I hadn’t taken before so I was hoping to see lots of new things the existence of which I was previously unaware. And I wasn’t disappointed either because I came across the Sint Michielskerk in the Naamsestraat.

Built between 1650 and 1671 by the Jesuits, it’s said to be one of the most important baroque churches in the whole of Europe. And it certainly looked impressive to me from where I was standing.

No mention seems to be made of any damage during the Sack of Leuven in 1914 so it may well have escaped that, only to have been hit during a bombing raid in 1944.

You can’t win ’em all.

Just up the road a little at number 37 is this beautiful building.

Leuven was, and still is, a very rich city and there’s evidence of that all over the place. Magnificent houses are everywhere and this one is a typical example.

These days it seems to be a solicitors’ office but it would be interesting to look into its history and see who lived here in the past. Whoever it was can’t have been short of a bob or two and I for one am quite jealous.

We’ve been to the Hogeschoolplein before, but not down at this end.

Here is the statue of Andre Dumont. He’s more usually associated with Liege but his claim to fame is that he was responsible for the geological maps of Belgium published between 132 and 1849, having travelled all over the country – on foot. He deserves a statue for that alone.

As for the square itself, it was created between 1807 and 1812 and there are several colleges from the University scattered around here – hence the name.

But it also has another claim to fame too.

We’ve seen Pizzamats and Potatomats and breadomats in the past, but the Hogeschoolplein is the only place in the whole wide world where i have ever encountered a Dessertomat.

And if you think that I’m joking, I’m not. Put your three or four euros in and dial the appropriate number and you’ll have your Black Forest Gateau or Tiramisu without any more ado than that.

It’s probably the most interesting thing that I’ve seen in Belgium.

Back here I wrote up my journal and now I’m off to bed. Later than intended. And despite it being Sunday, there’s an alarm set for tomorrow because I’m having a day out in Germany. And I’m looking forward to that.

An early start so I need to be on form. But with only 5 hours sleep I’m not sure how that’s going to work at all.

Friday 24th January 2020 – THAT ISN’T …

… the news that I was hoping to hear. Not at all.

My blood count is down to 8.8 – something that will not surprise any regular readers of this rubbish because they will recall that I’ve been mentioning over the last couple of weeks the fact that I’ve not been feeling myself … “just as well” – ed.

Worse though is the fact that my kidneys are now playing up again. They want me to see a kidney specialist the next time that I come.

It looks as if I’m starting to break up. But that was something that was always on the cards. People start to die of this illness after 5 years, and although I was diagnosed with it only 4.25 years ago, there’s no telling how long I had been suffering before I was taken to hospital.

Last night, despite the comfortable bed, I had a very mixed sleep. Tossing and turning around, waking up, all of that. There had been time to go on a voyage or two though.

We started off on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again and we were all having to get off to go for a coach drive. There were crowds of people in this square waiting for the buses and there was a lot going on. Some people who we were with decided that they weren’t going to do as they had other things that they really wanted to do. Anyway it was to see the statue of Sir John Slessor . They asked me if I knew anything about Sir John Slessor. I said “yes, he was an Anglo-Irish guy who was associated with Polar Exploration at one time”. I told a bit about a story but I can’t remember the bit now. There were crowds of people milling around and someone came up to me and asked me if we were going on a train. I said “no, we’re going on a bus”. Someone else asked the same question. There were loads and loads of Arab kids around and every time that I got up to go somewhere they would sit at my seat and I would have to go and grab my seat back again from him. We were sitting there waiting for these buses to come. I had some rare church relics with me – a box of something and a china – porcelain cross, white with blue edgings and I was afraid that one of these days I was going to break these, the way that I’m picking them up and putting them down. I can’t remember who I was with now but I was with some woman or other on this trip.
Later on, I was at the radio and I’d interviewed a rock band. It was an interview that I had done by chance with no plan in mind and I’d had a call or something for one of these programmes so I sent them that.

The alarm went off as usual and I was out of bed before the third alarm which is good news. And after the medication and breakfast, seeing as my appointment isn’t until 13:30, I attacked some radio stuff.

Not one project, but in fact two. The music for the first one is chosen (except the last track of course) and I’ve chosen half for the second one. I may as well use my free time here profitably.

There was a break while I went to the Spar shop for some bread.

At the back of the Condo Gardens here in the Windmolenveldstraat it doesn’t look good at all – or at least, it didn’t. But it seems that they are making a concerted effort to tidy it up so that it looks pretty.

The new fence looks really nice – and what a pity some low-life character has decided to leave his mark on it. That’s the kind of thing that makes me quite fed up.

A little further on down the Tiensestraat there are some exciting signs of activity.

They are using a stone-cutter to slice huge chunks out of the pavement and they are installing tactile pavement right by where the kerb drops are for the pedestrian crossings.

As an aside, I once had a female friend who worked for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and she reckoned that she had some of the responsibility for introducing tactile pavement into the UK.

Back here, I made myself a butty or two and round about 12:00 I headed off up town.

Straight away, back in the Tiensestraat, I was interrupted by an old car.

We haven’t seen an old car in a while so I reckoned that I had better photograph it. According to the badge, it’s a Lotus 7, and according to its front number plate, it was registered in 1965.

But these are things that you can’t take for granted. Many Lotus 7s were sold in home-assembly kits and there were several other clones doing the rounds too. So you accept with care the “evidence” of the badge.

There’s the little open-air fruit and veg market today in the Herbert Hooverplein.

That was my immediate destination as I wanted an apple and a pear to take to the hospital with me. But having waited for about a week while the assistants served a couple of the slowest customers that I’ve ever seen, I rather lost patience.

Yes, I gave it up as a bad job and abandoned my prospective purchases and carried on the the hospital.

Regular readers of the rubbish will recall what I’m going to be discussing next because we’ve been keeping an eye on these.

We’ve looked at the Hospital Sint Pieter here in the Brusselsestraat. It was built for the French community here in Leuven apparently but they left to go to Louvain-le-Neuve.

This became a huge white elephant and was never ever used to its potential. The respite care was here and so were the guest rooms, where I stayed for a while when I first came to Leuven.

Now it’s empty and they have made a start in demolishing it.

We’ve also seen the big hole in the car park in the Sint Jacobsplein.

As to what they were doing with this hole, I really have no idea. And I don’t suppose that I shall ever find out either because by the looks of things they are now filling it back in again.

Had I come by here two weeks ago when I should have been at the hospital, I might have noticed. Anyway, it will probably be fully restored the next time that I come.

This is something that we haven’t seen before.

The road by the traffic lights in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is closed off and they have been digging up the road right here. It looks as if they are doing something to the drains and sewers but I’ve no idea what.

It does make me wonder if it is connected in some way to the hole that they dug in the St Jacobsplein car park. That would make a lot of sense I suppose.

The final thing of note is also in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that sometime last year they completely gutted this block of flats – stripped it right back to the bare concrete. They now seem to be well-advanced with the renovation, and there was a lorry delivering a load of insulation.

The ground floor has been done out into shops so I’ll be interested to see who moves into them when they are ready.

At the hospital they are giving me yet another new treatment. Something called IQYMUNE which, according to Helena, is the bee’s knees. So we shall see.

And it had better be too if it’s to arrest this sudden decline.

Most of the time that I spent here, I was asleep. And it took the doctor an age to awaken me when he needed to talk to me about my kidneys.

My butties had unfortunately disintegrated inside my bag so I ate what I reasonably could, and then spent 15 minutes in the toilet on the way out cleaning bits of tomato, lettuce and hummus from the inside of my rucksack. What a mess!

On the way home I didn’t loiter. Just picked up my fruit and a tin of lentils from the Delhaize and came straight back. One of the side effects of this new medical stuff is “fatigue” and if I don’t have enough problems with that already!

Tea was the second burger with pasta, tomato sauce and vegetables. Followed by peach halves and mango sorbet. Totally delicious, it was too.

And then the football. Rhydaman v Caernarfon Town.

Rhydaman had comfortably disposed of Carmarthen away in the previous round and while Caernarfon are a different proposition to Carmarthen, the home advantage should normally count for something. Especially when I saw just how packed the ground was.

But Carmarthen were undone by four magic moments of Trundlemania and when we saw that Lee Trundle wasn’t playing tonight, then any advantage evaporated.

The game was littered with errors from start to finish and Caernarfon will have to improve dramatically and work on these silly mistakes if they want to push on into Europe. But even so, they had more in the tank than Rhydaman did.

They were 2-0 up by half-time and later in the game when Rhydaman tired, Caernarforn went on the rampage and scored 2 more, exactly as I had predicted to Johan Gallon in my interview with him a few days ago. Not even the introduction of the veteran Andy Robinson by Rhydaman could turn the game around.

Anyway, as this medication is responsible for fatigue and tiredness, I’d better hurry up and finish this before I …

ZZZZZZZ.

Thursday 23rd January 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a posh living room in a duplex apartment here in Leuven.

The one thing about being a very regular customer of these apart-hotels is that if there’s a higher-grade accommodation vacant, they give me a free upgrade and I’ve struck lucky this visit.

A lovely big double bed, nice and comfortable. All I need is a nice and sweet young lady to share it with me and I’ll be well away. Ohhh yes – even at my age I can still chase after the women. I just can’t remember why!

The only down side is that I have noisy neighbours who seem to be partying. But I can’t hear a thing because I remembered to bring my really good headphones with me and with Colosseum Live going full-tilt into my ears I can’t hear a thing.

But that album has its downside, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Although it’s one of the top five live albums ever recorded, it was the one that was going round and round on an endless loop while I was on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in 2018 and 2019.

Of course it immediately brings back all kinds of memories, mostly good but some quite bad and there are people like The Vanilla Queen and Castor and Pollux going through my mind as I listen to it.

Somewhere I read something along the lines of “anyone who spends any time in the High Arctic will come back a different person” and that’s certainly true.

Just for a change, this morning I was up quite smartly and it didn’t take me long to get everything ready for leaving. I’d had a shower last night before going to bed so I didn’t even need to deal with that.

Plenty of time to go a-voyaging too. The first little trip had something to do with the website and about how I’d changed round the radio programmes or something like that so that there was a whole new series of numbers starting on 1st January 2020 on the first January of the year with all kinds of different – there were two different strands of numbering now one of which was the radio concerts and one of which was something else but I can’t remember any more about it now unfortunately
Later on, there was a huge dispute between us over something or other and it led to someone coming storming round to our house going to throw a cup of cold tea over everyone. I had a cup of cold tea ready and he came storming in. I told him to sit down but he said “I’m going to throw this cold tea over you. What are you going to do?” I replied “I’m at my house. I’ll throw a cup of tea over you and you’re the one who is going to have to suffer”. He looked at me for a minute and then said “I can see that you aren’t going to flinch. You are brave enough”. I asked “so how are we going to sort this out?” He said “we need foue elastic bands like this size” and he showed us one of them. Of course I didn’t have any that size so I had to go across the road and ask one of the neighbours. We were in Vine Tree Avenue at the time during all of this.

Back in the Land Of The Living, I finished getting ready. The rubbish went out of course and then I followed it up to town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking plays a prominent role on these pages.

Hardly a day goes by without me seeing some new depths to which the general public has sunk and here’s another prime example. We’re at the roundabout at the end of the rue Lecampion and this motorist has decided to park his car right across the entry to the new block of flats.

The motorist in the big SUV can’t get his car out of his own car park because of it, and I would have loved to have had the time to hang around and see how this story would unfold.

Instead I headed off to the station and there I was treated to the delight of the train being already at the platform.

No coffee though. Once again the coffee machine is out of order and this is really annoying. How am I expected to go on a journey like this without being armed?

The ticket-stamping machine was having issues too and it took several goes before it would accept my ticket and stamp it.

Bang on time we set off and I fell asleep. A right deep sleep too and it took the ticket collector a good minute or so to awaken me from the dead to check my ticket.

We were 15 minutes late arriving in Paris but it didn’t quite matter so much because, as predicted, out train now arrives in the main station rather than in the vaugirard annex and that saves me a considerable amount of time.

The metro was running too and was quite rapid, so I had a good half-hour to spare before my train to Lille.

That half-hour was spent in a queue at the SNCF office. I’d had an e-mail yesterday telling me that my seat had been changed and I would have to make further enquiries.

Eventually I managed to make someone deal with me quickly and, armed with a new seat number, I could take my seat on the train.

It’s one of the older “Reseau” TGV trainsets, number 226 which puts it in the first wave that were delivered between 1995 and 199.

Nice and comfortable they are, and I could sit and eat my butties and fruit in comfort, which is always nice. And have another little doze too. I’m not in any great rush to do anything.

Due to “affluence on the line” our train was 20 minutes late arriving in Lille- Flanders.

With only 15 minutes (and having to cross town to Lille-Europe) between trains, you might think that I would be panicking by now.

But not a bit of it because if there was “affluence on the line” for us, there would be “affluence on the line” for the Marseille – Brussels train that would be folllowing behind us too and that was the one that I was catching.

Sure enough, that one was half an hour late so I had plenty of time to ring up the hospital and check my appointment time. 13:30 it is tomorrow.

The trainset that came for us is a model that we have seen before on a regular basis because it’s this type that does the Paris-Brussels service, The Thalys PBA trainsets, albeit in a different livery.

My place here was quite comfortable too and I even managed to doze off for half an hour or so yet again.

In Brussels I only just missed the 15:58 – I had my hand on the door when it pulled away.

But there was another one right behind – the 16:13 to Genk. It’s one of the push me – pull you train sets and coming into the station in reverse so I didn’t get to see the identity of the locomotive pushing it.

So by 16:50 I was in Leuven after a relatively painless, straightforward voyage for once and wasn’t I a happy bunny?.

Having organised my room I went shopping at Delhaize. Tons of stuff for the next few days to keep me out of mischief and I shall have to add “herbs and spices” to the list of things that I bring with me from home. I’ll make up a sachet of oregano, basil, tarragon, garlic, chili powder etc and put it with the coffee.

So tea tonight was a vegan burger with mixed vegetables, spinach and pasta, all tossed in a tomato sauce and it was delicious. Pudding was peach halves with mango sorbet.

The party next door seems to have finished so I can go to bed. Nothing much to do tomorrow morning so I’ll have a lazy day before I head off to the hospital round about 12:30, something like that.

I wonder what they will tell me.

Tuesday 21st October 2020 – I’M FED UP …

… of being buzzed by just about every man and his dog who owns any kind of flying machine in this vicinity. It’s getting on my wick.

If it’s not the guy who had his chopper out the other week, it’s now someone in a low-flying aeroplane who has come for a look around outside my apartment.

This plane is actually F-BRTM, which is the 152nd Jodel DR-253B in the series apparently. But whether or not Jodel actually built it is open to question. The company stopped manufacturing almost 60 years ago and now just sells to home-builders licences for construction of its aeroplanes.

But as for flying, I certainly didn’t get off to a flying start. With my really late night last night – after 02:00 in the end – I couldn’t leave the stinking pit at all. 06:45 when I finally pulled myself together and arose from the dead.

After the medication I checked the dictaphone and here I drew a blank. I hadn’t been anywhere during the night, which was a shame. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … what I do and where I go during the night is much more exciting than what I do and where I go during the day.

After breakfast I began to catch up on a few outstanding tasks. First off, I cut up quite a few digital sound tracks that I had downloaded in the past into their individual component tracks

That took me up until almost lunchtime so I went to have a look in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers to see what this work thing is all about.

And I do have to say that I really didn’t see anything that looked relevant. In fact the only thing that really caught my eye was the tree shredder here, parked up for lunch, with loads of bits of small trees around it.

It would be quite surprising if they had closed the road and banned all parking simply for this.

Who knows?

This method of beaching ships and boats in some kind of ad-hoc informal dry dock situation is becoming something of a habit.

The other day we had the trawler type of fishing boat lashed to the harbour wall but today we have a small motor boat and outboard motor beached on the boat-loading ramp.

And I do have to say that I like how they have done this – dropped it onto the wall so that the outboard motor overhangs the steep drop and doesn’t ground out.

The heavy equipment that they have been using for the dredging over by the ferry terminal seems to have moved so I went to look for it.

And here’s one of the huge dumper lorries, being loaded onto a low-loader ready to be moved. There was a driver chaining it down so I asked him if the work was now completed. He replied that he didn’t think so but the equipment was required elsewhere.

And so we might be seeing it back some time in the near future.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day they were doing some kind of building work over by the ferry terminal with a concrete breaker and I’d said that I’d go for a look some time.

Today, with the tide being out, the harbour gates would be closed so I could cross to the other side by the path on top and go for a look.

And surprisingly there was nothing evident. But there were all of these columns that look as if they have been some kind of ferry pier at some time in the past.

So I shall have to make further enquiries.

The place to go for that, I reckon, was the compound that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few days ago too.

And I was in luck – at least, I thought that I was – because there were two guys just coming out of it. I went over to one of them but just as I walked up to him he got into his van and drove off.

Not to be outdone I turned round to grab hold of the other one but he must have seen me coming and disappeared off in a fork-lift truck.

Ahh well – I’ll have to come down here again too, won’t I? It’s not my day.

So instead, I went to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette and came back home for lunch, to find workmen painting the windows in the communal part of the building.

On the way up the hill there was a workman in what’s left of the compound that they had when they were working on the wall.
“Nearly finished?” I asked.
“Yes, nearly” he replied.

After lunch I started on another radio project – a rock music programme. And I’m glad that I chopped up all of that digital music this morning because I’ve been selecting bits out of there.

At one point I must have fallen asleep because I sat bolt-upright and it was 15:50. Time for my afternoon walk.

Outside it was bitterly cold to the point of being uncomfortable so I didn’t want to hang around. Having been buzzed by someone’s aeroplane, I did stop to take a photo of these two fishing boats crossing each other in mid-channel.

And I don’t know what happened to the photograph here but for some reason it didn’t want to work properly.

Continuing my walk around the headland in the piercing wind … “what wind?” – ed … PIERCING … “ohhh!” – ed … I was distracted yet again by the sound of a rather large engine.

Consequently I scampered around the bend and had a look over the wall to see what I could see, and there was yet more activity in the Chantier navale today.

Spirit of Conrad is there of course and so are a couple of fishing boats that have been there for a while too. But there is someone else coming to join them.

We saw the mobile sling working the other day when it was lowering the blue and yellow trawler-type vessel back into the water.

But today it’s pulling another fishing boat out. And as I watched, it moved across the yard with the fishing boat suspended beneath it and dropped the boat off on a set of chocks next to Spirit of Conrad.

And here, I imagine, she’ll be staying for a while. So I’ll keep my eye on her as I go for my daily wander.

But here’s a thing.

We saw the little blue boat with the outboard motor earlier, beached on the boat-loading ramp. But here she is now back in the water moored to the fish-processing plant, and she seems to have acquired a friend.

And if anyone were to ask me I would say that the latter is in the colours that I would expect to see on a Police boat.

So what with the Customs yesterday and the Police today, tomorrow we might be having Godzilla.

Back here I pushed on with the music and that’s all chosen, and I’m halfway through writing the notes. But I have a feeling that it might have to change because somehow I seem to have over-run by some considerable amount.

That’s something for me to look into tomorrow.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta for a change, followed by more apple pie. And it really was a nice tea too.

having frozen to death this afternnon, I put on a fleece underneath my jacket and at least I felt a little warmer tonight outside.

Those lights that regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning ages ago were on tonight and they stayed lit long enough for me to photograph them.

They seem to be in the position where I would expect Donville’s football pitch to be, but I don’t recall it having floodlights at all so who knows?

Despite the cold, I managed to do both my runs tonight because there was no-one around to laugh. My style of running these days is rather awkward to say the least but considering my illnesses and my age I’m surprised that I can do it at all.

With being nearly at the 100% mark I stretched my walk to pass the limit.

And here in the Boulevard Vaufleury in another miserable photograph (what on earth is happening to my technique?) we can see that the bollards are back.

So what are they going to be up to tomorrow? I can’t wait to find out.

The barrier into the car park is now fixed so I brought Caliburn back from the public car park and he’s now in his usual little place.

Now that I’m back I’ve written my journal and I’m off to bed – unless something exciting comes up on the playlist meantime.

Thursday 16th January 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I ENCOUNTERED A WEIRD CEMENT CONVEYOR in the avenue Aristide Briand.

This morning on my way to LIDL the gate to the chantier was open, and while I was admiring the machine and the cementing that they were doing, I fell in with the owner.

He let me have a good look around it and we had quite a chat. he told me that he was so impressed with it that he had actually bought another one for another site.

And when I think of all the humping around that I did by hand all those times …

For once last night I had a decent sleep. being in bed before midnight meant that I had at least 6 hours sleep and that’s pretty good these days.

Nevertheless I didn’t beat the third alarm. A good five or so minutes behind it I was, and I’ll have to be doing better than this.

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it’s no surprise that I was quite exhausted.

I was having to record my latest radio programme so I went to a Working Men’s Club where I usually went but there was some guy playing guitar there on the stage entertaining the public so I asked the guy at the door what it was all about. He told me “ahh well it’s just someone on the guitar with him”. There was a woman standing next to him. She had her had round him or on his arm or something. He said “yes, maybe she’s someone who has a claim on him”. I replied “maybe he has something in her” which made everyone laugh. But a former friend of mine was there and he was standing by the other door and somehow I pretended not to notice because I wasn’t really up to actually going along to socialise and to meet and talk to him
A little later on I was wandering around some kind of Medieval town somewhere, going up and down all of the paths and everything, picking my way through people’s ornaments and so on. On one occasion someone had on their steps a pile of little animals like santons, that kind of thing. As I was climbing up I was thinking “how am I going to get down?”. I started to go down the steps on the other side but of course there were all these little santon things all over the place. I put my foot on one place and flattened half a dozen of the things so I had to sit down on the step and move myself back up the step one by one until I reached the top where I could jump off but from where I was jumping I couldn’t see what I was jumping on to because I’m not very good at heights as everyone knows. It was some old woman’s place, this was and I was worried in case someone had seen me come to grief on these steps. It was about 03:00 so they shouldn’t have done.
A little later on I was back in the office, talking to a group of people and we were discussing things like how we were working, cameras, recording equipment in the place, all of that kind of thing. Someone said that they envied me because I could go home and so it was home time but I ended up not going home for some reason or other. I had to stay behind and do something. I do remember that it was 17:40 and I was still there, thinking that I might be home for 18:00 like this, I don’t really know but I can’t remember all that much more about it but somewhere there was something about me moving apartment leaving Jette and moving somewhere like the back end of Laeken where I saw that apartment that I liked when I was with Laurence and I don’t remember too much about that either. Someone else who put in a cameo appearance at some point was someone who was probably the only civilised adult on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour

After breakfast I attacked the translation with a determination and before long I’d finished it off. Almost 5,000 words there, of which I reckon about 4,000 is going to end up in the bin.

But anyway, it’s done and dusted and sent off and that’s that. I went and had a shower and then headed for the shops.

We’re going to be having more excitement in the area soon.

The local council were out today putting up “No Waiting” signs in the boulevard de Terreneuviers and that will upset the two vehicles down there for a start. They’ve been there for quite a while.

There wasn’t any time for me to go and enquire what was happening, but I’ll keep an eye open.

As for the red mini-artic, I’ve seen that quite a while now, and it seems to have inherited the sport of the old CF Bedford that used to park there regularly.

Both of those vehicles have Dutch registration so I’m wondering if the Bedford has gone to the Great Car Park In The Sky and this is its replacement.

At LIDL they had every kind of electrical appliance that you could name – except a kettle of course. So I’ll have to pick one up at the weekend from a mainstream shop.

Although the other one has packed up after just a little over 2 years, i’m not too disappointed. I remember saying at the time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that I needed so much stuff when I came here that I was going to buy it all at the cheapest possible price and when it gives out, I can replace it with decent stuff. I couldn’t afford decent stuff right at the start so cheap it had to be.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline, I climbed up the hill towards home.

Just at the right time to see Thora come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the harbour. I was quite pleased about this. I’d seen her go out on several occasions but I’d never seen her actually come in and dock.

So that’s a first for me then. I wonder how long she’s going to be in port. Maybe it will be another rapid turn-round like Normandy Trader had the other day.

Back here I made a start on the next radio project – the one that I should have done on Monday had I not had this blasted translation to do. And by the time that I’d knocked off all of the music had been chosen and recorded, the text had been written and dictated and I was busy editing the dictation.

Tomorrow morning I’ll just need to finish off the editing, splice the speech into the music and then deal with the last track. That is of course the bit that always takes the longest as the track needs to be of a specific type and of a specific length.

Sad as it is to say it, I could have done a lot more to it but this afternoon I once more succumbed to the fatigue and crashed out on the chair. How I hate this, but I shall have to grin and bear it.

We had a break for lunch of course, and then a break for the afternoon walk.

The wind was horrible again so I didn’t loiter around. But I was intrigued by the antics over at the ferry terminal. It seems that it isn’t just dredging that they are doing there but they have a concrete breaker and a pneumatic drill going on.

Perhaps I ought to go over there one of these days for a closer look and see what they are doing.

There’s a good view from up here on the cliff as I have said before.

Today we aren’t going to look at the construction works on the car park but we’ll admire Thora instead, parked in her usual place underneath the unloading crane. She looked quite nice when she first came here just under two years ago but today she’s in need of a coat of paint.

Mind you, it’s a hard life for a small ship in these kinds of waters doing the job that she does.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that part of the parking in the Boulevard Vaufleury had been coned off?

Sure enough, there they are – not actually doing anythign right now but you can see that they’ve been active. All of the small trees that were growing up on top of the wall have been removed and the wood has been chipped.

It’ll be nice to have a vue degagée this summer over the wall down into the harbour. The vegetation was becoming rather wild.

The tide is going out, I reckon.

And you can see where the fishing boats unload their cargoes of shellfish. The obviously drop quite a fair amount over the side when they are swinging the crates upwards, and the seabirds are taking full advantage of that.

There must be ahundred or so congregating down there feeding on the fallen shellfish. And good luck to them too

Having knocked off work at 19:00 as usual, it was tea time. Burger on a bap with microwaved potatoes and vegetables. And for some reason or other it was the most delicious that I have ever tasted. I’m not sure what it was that I did right but whwtever it was, it worked.

As for the rice pudding, that went into the bin. Yesterday it had a strange taste that I didn’t recognise. And tonight the taste was stronger and it didn’t seem right to me. So off it went.

Instead, I chopped up a banana and had some of that delicious banana sorbet with it. That was wonderful.

There’s no doubt that since I’ve become more settled, my eating habits have improved dramatically.

This bad parking thing is becoming a bit of a habit now, isn’t it?

There’s a free public car park less than 50 yards away fro mwhere this guy is parked but because he doesn’t want to get wet in the rain that we were having, he’s parked right by a “No Parking” sign across the yellow hatch marks that clearly indicate that this is a Fire Lane

And not only that – it’s the Fire Lane that leads to the back of this building. So we can all burn to death because the fire engine can’t reach here, but that’s okay as long as Monsieur doesn’t have to walk 50 yards in the rain.

As for me, I did my evening walk and I’m now up to 115% of my day’s activity which is good news for me. I managed my run too – along the path at the north side of the walls out of the way of the wind.

It doesn’t look pretty, the way that I run, and I can’t run too far but considering my age and my state of health a few hundred metres every night is good going.

So tomorrow I’ll finish off my Project and then make a good go at this Press Conference. Then in the evening we have US Granville v Olympique de Marseille in the French Cup.

Who knows what that might bring?

Tuesday 14th January 2020 – I WAS WONDERING …

… how long it was going to be before we had a catastrophe.

The answer is “this afternoon at about 14:00” when this tree came crashing down. It was bound to happen sooner or later because the winds outside are horrific. They aren’t quite the worst that I’ve ever encountered but they are pretty close.

And this tree took the full brunt of it and came crashing down. Lucky that there weren’t any cars parked just there on the car park of the other block of flats.

As for me, I had a really bad day today.

By the time that I finished what I was doing, it was 02:30. Sure enough, the elarms went off at the usual time but it was 07:05 when I finally crawled out of bed.

There was the medication of course and while I was waiting for it to work I attacked some more of this translation. In fact over the course of the day I’ve been nibbling away at it here and there and I’m now at 65%. But even so, my good humour hasn’t returned quite yet.

Round about 11:00 I headed out of the apartment for this Press Conference.

And as I was leaving my apartment this fishing boat from Jersey was leaving port and heading out into the wicked wind. I don’t envy him at all heading that way in all of this.

At least the rain wasn’t all that heavy, which was one good thing. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen horizontal rain.

At the Stade Louis Dior I was one of the first to arrive and so I had another good chat with the Vice-president, Guy Lefevre.

We’d met each other ON THE BUS THE OTHER DAY GOING TO VERSAILLES and so we continued the interesting conversation that we’d had back then.

But then everyone else began to arrive and we all settled down.

None of the players were available today but the team’s chief coach, Johan Gallon, came to talk to us.

He gave us a little talk and we all asked loads of questions. What interested me was that I was the only one there asking questions about tactics and the like. Everyone else was much more interested in the emotional side of the match.

He did his best to answer them but without giving away anything that might be of use to the enemy.

He’s well aware that the match is going to be difficult, much more difficult than against Bordeaux and much more difficult than when US Granvillais met Olympique de Marseille back in 2016.

There were about a dozen of us all told, and two television cameras too. One or two of them were interested in me too – where did I come from and what was I doing there.

I suppose that I’m really something of a novelty around here, being British, asking tactical questions in French and gatecrashing press conferences like this

After half an hour or so Johan gallon left us to carry on with his other business.

However the Vice-President Guy Lefevre stayed behind and a couple of us continued our chat.

We also discussed the Carnaval because he has a char that parades there and it’s another idea that I have for the forthcoming.

One thing I learnt, which was of great interest to me, was how they transported the chars from their hidey-holes to the Parade.

Apparently the operators of the chars have to have Public Liability insurance but the road risks are arranged by the municipality. The Police provide an exemption from the Road Traffic Acts to cover journeys to and from the parades and the parades themselves.

Another thing is that there is a limit on the number of chars. Just 47 are permitted to parade. Motorised chars, that is. Push-along chars can turn up in any particular number that they fancy.

By the time that we finished, the rain had stopped so I walked home in something like comfort. On the way back I popped in to la Mie Caline for my dejeunette and then came back here.

By now it was 14:15 so that was it. Lunchtime.

This afternoon I started to listen to the recordings that I had made. The quality isn’t up to much but, rather like Samuel Johnson’s dog, “I’m surprised that it is done at all”. I spent some time enhancing the recordings so at least I could hear what was being said.

The plan is to listen to the recordings to hear parts that are obvious “answers” to questions that haven’t been asked, then to record the questions and edit them into the recording.

It’s an old radio practice that has been done for years – in fact when the Beatles first toured the USA they sent over to each radio station a recording of “answers” so that the reporters there could ask their own questions and have an “exclusive live interview”.

On that point I went out into the horrendous gale. There were just four of us out there in total today and I was surprised that there was that many.

The wild wind hadn’t stopped them working down at the ferry terminal. They were digging out the silt, tipping it into the dumpers and taking it off to be dumped.

They can’t be going to be spending too long on it because sooner or later they’ll be wanting to send the ferries back out again and they won’t want to be working all around a ferry timetable as well as a tidal chart.

Another thing that’s cracking on is the work on the car park in the rue du Port.

They’ve devastated that pretty much over the last 24 hours as you can tell if you compare it to THIS PHOTO TAKE 24 HOURS AGO. It won’t be long before that will be finished and they will have all gone.

What’s going on in my mind is what it will look like when it’s finished. I hope that it’s not simply going to be a bare patch of asphalt. And I hope that they plant some trees in there too.

Back here I was intending to start work but I’m afraid that I simply crashed out on the chair. I was gone for a good hour too in a deep sleep, the kind of crashing out that I used to have before that last spell of good health.

It’s something that has depressed me completely and I don’t really want to dwell on it.

Instead, I had tea. The last of the falafel with steamed veg and vegan cheese sauce, followed by the last of the Christmas Cake. It was delicious too.

So tomorrow I’ll have to start on the rice pudding that I made on Sunday.

If anything, the wind outside had worsened tonight. It bowled me along the street on the way out and on the way back there were times when it was impossible to make headway, so strong were the gusts of wind.

You can’t see it at all well but the waves were smashing over the sea wall at the Plat Gousset with the most astonishing violence.

It’s a shame that they’ve taken this decision to turn out the lights along there in winter. No-one can see a thing out there now and it’s terrible for photography.

The wind was so powerful across the square Maurice Marland that is was impossible at times to walk, never mind run.

But having anticipated that, I’d done my running (such as it is) in the sheltered spot on the north side of the city walls. The huge puddles there made it difficult but I pushed on for a few hundred metres.

It might not be much but at my age and in my state of health I think that it’s pretty good.

There’s a spot on the city walls that is protected from the wind so I went there for a moment.

There was a trawler unloading at the fish-processing plant so I could snap off a quick shot of it through the trees. Winter is my favourite time for photography because there are no leaves to obscure the shot.

On the way back I bumped into a girl walking her dog and smoking a cigarette. We exchanged pleasantries and then I came back.

By now, THE PODCAST OF MY RADIO PROGRAMME WAS ON-LINE so I had a listen.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a lot of time for kids – sometimes (in fact, quite often) I find them far more interesting than adults – and some of the kids in my radio programme didn’t let me down.

They performed admirably and gave a really good filling to the programme as well as providing some comic relief.

It’s the one thing that I regret – not having a kid of my own and I get quite broody at times. But then if I had a kid I would have to have the partner that went with it and I’m not made for living with other people.

Anyway, it’s later. later than I want to be. Marillion has passed by on the playlist so there’s no reason to stay up any longer. I’m off to bed and tomorrow I’ll crack on and do this radio programme.

Whenever am I going to find time to do my own stuff?

johan gallon guy lefevre stade louis dior us granville manche normandy france eric hall

Monday 13th January 2020 – I’M NOT SURE …

… exactly what I’ve done, but whatever it is, I’ve done it good and proper!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that US Granvillais, the local football team, have drawn Olympique de Marseille, one of the biggest clubs in French football, in the French Cup on Friday night.

There’s a Press Conference at the ground tomorrow at 12:15 and all of the giants of the Press will be there – TF1, Eurosport, all of these, and … errr … Yours Truly. Following my efforts on the bus to Versailles the other day, I’ve been issued with a Press Pass for the club and I’ve been invited along to cover the Press Conference on behalf of OUR LITTLE RADIO STATION

All that I hope for is that I can walk the walk as well as I can talk the talk.

And talking of talking the talk, my radio programme covering the coach trip and the supporters will be BROADCAST TOMORROW 17:00 CET, OR 16:00 UK TIME OR 11:00 TORONTO TIME. Don’t miss it!

Just for a change these days I was up and about prior to the third alarm going off. An attack on the medication and then a look at the dictaphone, which once again is bearing a remarkable resemblance to my bank account or Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

After breakfast I carried on with another whack at this translation and that’s another while done and out of the way. There’s still well over half left though but that will have to wait as it’s now time for a shower.

After the shower I went and headed off up town.

As usual, I had a butcher’s over the wall down into the harbour to see what was going on and, as usual, it was quite busy down there. We have Marité of course – she wont be going anywhere until the summer – but she’s been joined by La Grande Ancre and Normandy Trader.

The latter must have crept in on the morning tide and even as we speak they are busy unloading her.

Up at the roundabout at Place Semard the Christmas Tree has gone, but there are also these signs here talling us that the rue Paul Poirier is undergoing work.

That’s not a street that I used this morning to come this way so I don’t know why or what’s going on but I’ll have a look when I go back.

And I did, and they were taking down the Christmas lights

Now this is something extremely interesting and I don’t know why the photo hasn’t come out very well.

It’s actually a cement conveyor and the guy who was attending it was mixing cement in a cement mixer and tipping it into the conveyor, which was then taking it off and over the top of those steps there.

Obviously it’s cheaper than employing a labourer to carry it in buckets.

More good news from the avenue Aristide Briand.

This looks like loads and loads of black cable, and that can only be one kind of cable as far as I can see. Maybe now they are finally laying the fibre-optic cables.

And I like the cable roller too at the edge of the manhole. That’s a superb little thing.

So I made it to the radio meeting at the Centre Agora where they enthused over our VISIT TO DONVILLE-LES-BAINS. I’m glad that they liked it.

And it was here that I learned of my good fortune.

We discussed several other projects too and they may well be seeing the light of day in due course. We’ll have to see.

Another thing that I did was to hand over the present that I had picked up last week

From there I went off to LIDL to do some shopping.

And here’s a thing. Now if only anyone around here were to sell any electric coffee I would be set up for life. But I’m surprised that they are selling a “grinder for electric coffee” rather than an “electric grinder for coffee”. I suppose that it’s something to do with poor translation into Chinese.

Having remembered the present I found that I had forgotten my shopping bag. The paper one that they gave me didn’t last a second so I had to buy another one to add to the several that are lying around here.

Having picked up my dejeunette at La Mie Caline I came home. It was already lunchtime by now so I had lunch straight away.

This afternoon, what with this Press Conference tomorrow, I had plenty of things to do that kept me really busy. Nevertheless, I found some time to do some more on this translation and now I’m almost at half-way.

And it’s not going to be finished for a while either because there’s this football thing to do. It’s pretty “current” so I’ll have to get cracking with that pretty smartly.

We had the afternoon walk around the headland of course in the sunshine.

There were plenty of us out there today, including some very intrepid pecheurs à pied down there on the rocks at the Cap Lihou But they had better be careful. I’ve read somewhere that some of the shellfish is contaminated again right now.

But whatever they catch, I hope that they share them out with their friends. After all, one mustn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish.

And as I rounded the headland I found out why Chausiais and Joly France have gone back into the inner harbour.

There’s a digger on the extreme left of the image and a couple of huge dumper lorries down there. They are dredging out the bed of the harbour round at the ferry terminal – presumably to increase the operating times of the ferries

And there’s a guy in a high-visibility jacket down there further into the harbour. I wonder what he’s after.

The view from on top of the cliffs is pretty good.

From here I can see all the way down the rue du Port and have a good idea of how they are progressing with these improvements to the car parking which, unfortunately, means ripping up the railway lines

They are making good progress (which is a change) so I don’t imagine that they will be long in doing it.

But what you can’t see in that photo is Normandy Trader. In probably the quickest turn-round that I’ve seen, she’s cleared off home already. I’ve not seen anything that quick before.

Back here I went to carry on with stuff but I ended up … errr … having a relax, something that is annoying me intently.

With pushing on though, I had no tea tonight. I grabbed a few biscuits and worked on

There was still time to fit in my evening walk though, even if the wind outside was thoroughly wicked.

There was a trawler out there battling its way through the heavy seas and as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … my hat comes off to all of those out there in this kind of weather.

It was totally impossible to have my usual run as the headwind was pushing me backwards. However, not to be outdone, I had noticed that the north side of the walls was sheltered from the wind so I went round there.

Even though it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see where I was going, I managed a good few hundred metres down there just to keep up the pressure.

It’s now almost 01:30 and I’m just about to finish my notes. There’s still plenty of preparation to do for tomorrow but that will have to be done tomorrow too.

4:30 sleep tonight if I’m lucky. Just like old times, isn’t it?

Sunday 12th January 2020 – THAT GUY HAD …

… his chopper out again today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s something else to investigate in due course.

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

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

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

Strange goings-on in the rue des Moulins too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 10th January 2020 – HE WHO LAUGHS LAST …

… usually lasts longest and loudest too. And that’s certainly the case with me and my rail ticket.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures at the railway station at Granville yesterday and how they wouldn’t exchange the return ticket because the return train was running – regardless of the fact that as the outward train was cancelled, I couldn’t get out to catch the one back.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … I had an e-mail informing me that the return train has now been cancelled. So, off to the station tomorrow to have another go at sorting them out.

But talking of sorting out, I still haven’t sorted out this sleep thing. I heard the first two alarms go off and while I was trying to find the energy and courage to get out of bed, the third one rang too, so I missed that.

But anyway, that was the signal to leave the bed. I went and had my medication.

With a brief pause for breakfast I carried on with the radio project about the football. And by 09:45 it was all done and dusted. And even if I say it myself, it was pretty good and I’m pleased with it. It’s all been sent off now and it’s in the hands of the Admin who will decide whether or not to broadcast it.

And now to turn to important things. After their victory against FC Versailles 78, Granville have drawn none other than Olympique Marseille in the French Cup.

The Stade Louis Dior is deemed to be unsuitable so the match is to be played at Caen. And even so, I’m expecting a healthy demand for tickets. Terry wants to come too so I did some searching about on the internet, found the website of the stadium and Lo! And Behold! There are two tickets for the football now sitting on my desk.

No intention of missing this.

That was the cue for me to go off into town to La Mie Caline for my bread.

On the way down there I passed by the Chantier navale to look and see what was happening. Spirit of Conrad is still there of course – I think that she’s moved in for the duration – but there’s a new addition today. The trawler at the back.

She must have slipped in on the morning tide, I reckon.

We’ve mentioned just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the ships that are disappearing one by one from the port.

Granville went a few days ago, followed by Victor Hugo. Today though, it’s the turn of Chausiais to put in a disappearing act. Joly France is over there at the ferry terminal but she isn’t.

So I wonder where all of these ships are going. It’s a mystery to me.

But here’s a thing.

Walking along the rue du Port after my little inspection of the Chantier navale my perambulations were interrupted by this car going past. a Citroen traction avant of course and a later model one at that. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen one of those on the road.

They are usually all black but I’ve seen the odd grey one and a white one, but I don’t recall seeing a blue one before. The one in my barn is black, by the way.

Pushing on (or pushing off, as the case may be) I eschewed the passage over the harbour gates and instead wandered on down to see what was going on at the old abandoned railway network.

We’d seen them yesterday digging up around the railway lines so I had promised myself a closer look. And sure enough, not only are they digging up around the lines, they seem to be pulling them up too.

It looks like the … errrr … end of the line for the railway network in the port

And so it is too.

There was a workman wandering around the site so I buttonholed him and enquired about the project. It seems that they are going to be working on the car park and making it more attractive to visitors. This means that the rails have to go and they won’t be coming back.

Time for me to have to go too. I went off for my bread.

Back at the apartment I started to address the mountain of correspondence that had built up during my work-in. Pile of stuff needed answering and that is going to be today’s task, I reckon.

Mind you it might take longer than today, that’s for sure. Especially as I had another crash-out. This one a really good one too, just like the old days. Not a brief eye-closing affair but a proper deep disappearance into the void, curled up on my chair with no intention whatever of moving.

After lunch, there were the carrots. I’d bought 2 kilos the other day and they were lying about on the worktop so I attacked them too. They are all now peeled, diced, parboiled, drained, dried and and the freezer on the way to being frozen.

And how I wish that I had a bigger freezer because there is now absolutely no room for anything more and I need a bag of peas tomorrow.

Out on my rounds this afternoon, there wasn’t a great deal of anything at all happening.

A few people out there taking the air of course, and the usual fishing boats heading towards the harbour. La Grande Ancre was out there looking as if she’s heading back from Chausey.

She had a tractor on her decks a few days ago and was loading the other day or two at the crane. So maybe she’s been doing deliveries.

Back at the apartment again I could finally get on with the correspondence and sent out about 6 long e-mails to wish people a Merry Christmas (I was that far behind!). Still tons to do and it will have to be done another time as I’m in a rush.

While I was putting away the stuff in the freezer I found a slice of vegan leek and tofu pie from 3rd February 2019. So in the oven went that and a couple of potatoes while I boiled up some veg and gravy on the stove.

And what a delicious tea that all made.

One thing that I would like to do is to make a couple more pies but there isn’t the room in the freezer to store them which is a pity.

Off on my walk around the walls tonight.

The waves were quite impressive but it was too dark to see them properly so I went off for my run. I made 6 paces up the ramp before I ground to a halt – I’m not doing very well with this, am I?

No-one about at all so I carried on alone and passed this little street – the Venelle St Michel. I hadn’t really seen it before but it’s a good example of the streets here in the Old Town.

Three or four main streets, a couple of squares and the rest are all little alleys like these

By the time that I returned, it was the football. TNS v Newtown, and I don’t ever think that I have seen such a one-sided match as this ever before.

Newton were lucky, very lucky indeed to get NIL abut how on earth TNS only managed to score 2 goals with all of the dominance and possession that they had, we’ll never know.

Newton’s “attack” consisted of desperate long aimless punts upfield to no-one in particular and their two forwards hardly had a touch of the ball. They were substituted after about 70 minutes which was totally unfair in my opinion. It doesn’t matter how good you might be, you can’t play football if no-one gives you the ball.

And the man of the match? The commentators chose Ryan Brobbel but for me, it was Adrian Cieslewicz all night long. He had an astounding game down the right flank tonight.

On that note I’m off to bed. I’m so tired it’s unbelievable. I wanted to finish this before I went to bed but I’m afraid that there’s no chance of …

ZZZZZZ

EPIC HALL

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