Tag Archives: caliburn

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

surfers plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… what is happening right now but the clock seems to be running down rather rapidly and I don’t seem to be doing anything at all.

And there’s a huge backlog of work and I just don’t seem to be getting through any of it.

Last night I was up until some ridiculous hour sorting out the day’s photos and videos. Much later than usual, and much later than I hoped, I tottered off to bed.

There were a few travels during the night too. I’d been on board the ship again that might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’d made friends with three different women and girls. I’d been spending quite a lot of time with them. On the last night we had to leave the shop at about 03:00 and one of the girls – it might have been but I don’t think it was Castor – said something like “why don’t you come down to my room tonight?” Another one of the women had said exactly the same thing to me as well, so I replied that I’d see how things develop. Then she discovered me on the deck of this other girl with my suitcase – quite obvious where I was going so she said “yes will I see you or won’t I?” I said “it’s pretty hard to say. I have to go round to say my goodbyes to people” – pretty non-committal as I had intended. Then we got talking about this third woman She was a flighty type and I hadn’t seen her around that day. “What happened to her?” I asked. “She was supposed to be round her tonight too” “Ohh she got sent home from the tour last night. Didn’t you know?” replied the first woman. “Ahh well” I thought. “That’s why I didn’t see her”. There was another couple on board the ship who talked to me (I had more passengers talk to me in my sleep last night that I did in the whole two months that I was really on board) and they talked about us going dancing. My attention fastened on the girl however so I said I’d see how things develop. But things had obviously developed quite dramatically and quite rapidly after that as I wasn’t allowed to see this girl at all. I was basically shunted off into this corner and it was too late to make arrangements with anyone else. We all filed off the ship, the last day, last morning. I bumped into someone. “Hey, did you hear about such and such a woman” the conversation went. “What happened to her?” “She got sent home” all the usual kind of gossip. We were waiting near a tram stop and I noticed that Castor (so it very likely was Castor earlier) was actually standing at the stop waiting for a tram. I thought it’s our final day and we’re all going. Now that Castor is on her own whould I go over and speak to her, try to make my peace and salvage something of what had all gone wrong. I was debating things – should I or shouldn’t I go over there? In the end I decided that I would. Someone asked “are you coming up to us, Eric?” I said that I’d see how I feel but I have one or two things to organise. I thought that with Castor I could just go for a walk around the town, a chat anything, as long as we were together but that was when I awoke at that particular moment. This was another one of these occasions, of which there have been far too many just recently, where I have been plagued by a wicked kind of indecision during the night and it’s becoming quite a regular pattern. However, the bit about being too late when I finally make up my mind is rather a new twist to this although it does have quite a bit of relevance.
There was also a bit somewhere in here about us on the docks and we had to go to the islands. Some were going to the British islands of course and the trader but I was going to the little offshore island. I can’t remember his name but the girl came out to see me go, found me in the state of a swamp and got the girl Crystal to come and take over the business. Of course they didn’t want you and your party to be there. They wanted the glory that came from the Government but without the other party being there too, and make it happen (anf if you can understand any of that garbled nonsense, please let me know).
Somewhat later I was at some hotel in Germany in a Bavarian type of setting there and had to go to the airport and call a taxi. It needed to be quick and the taxi turned up. I had tons of luggage and the driver was just wedging it into the boot any old how so I had a word with him about that. Then we set off for the airport and then I don’t remember very much about this after that.
Later still I was given my shopping list – a pile of potatoes, at least 10 really thick milk of +10% and coffee. When I came back the barrels of coffee had been arranged like an entrance to the town and this was upsetting one or two people. Someone made the remark that Americans aren’t like this but I said that there is certainly some who are and anyone who has ever read anything I’ve written will know that while I’m pretty much opposed to the USA I’ve always said that when I’ve found Americans on their own I’ve found them very nice, friendly and charming people.

As you can see, it was a very busy night last night. Quite exhausting in fact so it will be no surprise to anyone that when I awoke at 07:30 I simply turned over and went back to bed. 09:45 is much more like it on a Sunday.

By the time that I was wined and dined etc, it was almost 11:00 and the first thing that I did, that I haven’t done for a while, was to back up the computer. I’ve been somewhat lax from that point of view just recently and I can’t afford to make to many errors in this respect.

That took longer than it should have done too so there wasn’t much time left to start yesterday’s blog before I had to go down into town to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

The harbour gates were closed so I could walk that way round on the walkway over the top of the gates and around the harbour.

And I’m glad that I went that way too because while I was standing on the edge of the harbour looking at some of the fishing equipment I fell in with a couple of people of the fisherman-type who clearly knew what they were talking about, so I seized the opportunity to ask them about this equipment that has been puzzling me for quite a while.

And they are indeed shellfish dredgers. They scape them along the sea bed to uproot the shellfish. The shellfish stay in the cage but the silt is washed out.

So having satisfied myself on that score I could move on.

Chausiais is now back in her berth, moored in the inner harbour next to her fellow ship Joly France, so we could say “hello” to her, and then push on to the shops to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

It’s certainly a good idea for me to come out in the morning-ish for my lunchtime dejeunette every day. I need to exercise much more than I do and this is all good for me.

After lunch I carried on with the blog entry – just one of the five or six things that I needed to do today before I did anything else, but ran out of time before I’d even finished that one.

Liz and Terry are leaving in a few days so I’d been invited round there to Roncey for tea. Rather embarrassing because Liz’s birthday present hasn’t arrived yet and neither have their Christmas presents.

But never mind. Off I went into the wind and rain (strangely enugh, coming back with my bread earlier I’d been thinking to myself that the walks seemed to have missed most of the rainstorms just recently, and almost immediately the rain had started up), stopping at LeClerc to fill up with diesel.

And here’s a thing. The diesel that I put in prior to this was put in in March, and the time before that was 8th October last year. And neither of those three fills was filled right up. In a little over 13 months I’ve travelled about 700kms – a far cry from the first two years when I owned Caliburn and did 66,000 kms.

It’s been a good while since I had the chance to have a good chat to Liz and Terry – so much so that it was almost 22:00 by the time that I left. Left with a carrier bag too because not only was there my Christmas present (more of which anon) but the remains of the meal- vegetable wellington with carrots, broccoli and fried parsnips. And apple turnover cake too.

They do look after me, and it’s nice.

So a drive back here and it’s very late and I’ve still not caught up with everything. Yesterday’s blog is still in a “to be continued” state, I’ve not done today’s photographs and, even worse, this week’s project is far from finished and it needs to be done by 09:15 tomorrow morning.

But I can’t do it now because I’m far too tired and I’ll just make mistakes.

Looks as if an early start is on the cards.

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

… that i’m going to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit at 07:17 on a Sunday morning when I’m having a Day of Rest then they are mistaken.

So when I noticed that time on my fitbit this morning I did what every other sensible person would do in the same situation and turned over and went back to sleep.

09:45 is plenty early enough to be out and about on a Sunday.

And talking of plenty … “well, one of us is” – ed …
there was plenty of time for me to be going off on a nocturnal ramble.

During the night I was living by the sea in a town not too dissimilar to Granville with a rocky promontory, all this kind of thing. One of the things that I had was some kind of animal like a very small human. It was a fighter and it used to fight in events like tournaments and exhibitions and so on. We were at an exhibition and there were people milling around. I was asked about my fighter, whether he would fight. I said that he probably didn’t want to – he’s had a hectic week and he’d been pretty worn out but all these people insisted and in the end they prevailed. I had to go to fetch him and get him ready for a fight in the bottom left-hand corner of the windscreen (…?…). But before we could actually – but the police said that he would be welcome to fight but the more I brought him, the more he got nearer to where we were sitting the more smoother I thought that he was, as if someone had been sandpapering him or something.
And if you think that that lot was confusing, what’s the story about a girl in this little black dress who was watching something or other, I can’t remember which, was it a bird? It had two parasites on it that lived symbiotically and she was going to perform some kind of test on it to see what these parasite things were doing and why. She was an attractive girl and I was attracted to her but she was more interested in doing this scientific thing than any kind of symbiotic arrangement with her that I would have been interested in with her

But “prevailed”? “Symbiotic”? I tell you something – I can’t ‘arf come out with the flowery prose when I’m deep in the Arms of Morpheus. Gor’ Blimey! Strike a Light, guv!

There was the usual medication followed by breakfast once the medication had worked. And then I sat down to deal with the dictaphone notes. And by the time that I had knocked off, I was down to a mere 32 left to finish.

Round about 12:45 at a suitable break in the proceedings I went down into the town for my dejeunette.

The tide wasn’t all that far in so the harbour gates were closed and I could walk on the gangway over the top.

Charles-Marie was in there. She hasn’t moved for quite a while and it looks as if she’s now all protected for the winter.

So if she has no plans for the next while, I’ll move on to other projects and come back here again. There is something simmering away on the horizon right now.

Having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline, I came back up the hill to home. And much to my surprise there were quite a few people out around there in town today.

There were quite a few people out there on the water too.

This beautiful yacht with the big black sails, I don’t recall having seen her before and I’m sure that I would have noticed something like this while I’d been on my travels.

She was performing quite a few circuits around the bay and even though I was extremely hungry and ready for lunch I took some time out to watch her.

And a close examination of the photo seems to indicate that she seems to have found a friend.

There’s another one out there right alongside her and I hadn’t noticed that before.

And so after a while I said adieu and continued on my walk.

And reflecting that I hadn’t even noticed the ascent up to here as I was walking. This new fitness regime serms to be doing the business, and in spades too.

Over the past 4 years since my illness, I haven’t felt quite as good as I do right now, and that’s really tempting fate, isn’t it?

After lunch I went back down to Caliburn and brought up the new office chair that I had bought yesterday.

The package was quite heavy and it was something of a struggle but in the end I managed to bring it up here all the way.

Assembling it might have seemed to be straightforward but that’s not accounting for any gymnastic contortions that you have to do when you are on your own.

In the and though it’s assembled but that’ wasn’t all the excitement. Getting it through the bedroom door was quite an adventure too.

But it’s in now and, believe me, it’s really comfortable. Plenty of room for me to curl up on too if ever I am overwhelmed by fatigue.

One problem that I noticed quite quickly is that the top of the seat overhangs the top of the chest of drawers. And so on swivelling round I’ve knocked more than enough stuff of the chest of drawers. I wonder how long it will be before I knock off something expensive.

Being on a roll, I unpacked another one of the boxes from the other day. Lots of little stuff in there, but also the electric piano that I had ordered. I’m going to attack that one of these days too.

The afternoon walk was taken out around the city walls.

Although the sun was out and it was quite a nice bright day, the wind was howling away at something like the same force of the last couple of days.

And this has contributed to the excitement out there today.

Kite surfing is quite a popular pastime out in this part of the world but up until today I’d managed to avoid it.

Today though there were a couple of kite surfers out there taking advantage of the fine weather and the wind.

And quite clearly enjoying themselves as they passed back and to below me.

While I had the camera out, I was peering around out to sea to see what else I could find.

We’ve seen every now and again some of these buoys that mysteriously appear and then disappear out in the bay round near Brehal-Plage, and sure enough we had a few of them out there today.

There didn’t seem to be anyone attending to them so I’ve no idea what they might be. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen fishing boats out there every now and again just recently.

That wasn’t all either.

There was something else out there just offshore and I couldn’t make out what it was. And so I took a speculative photo with the aim of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) when I returned home to see if it gave me a clue.

And having blown it up, which I can still do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, I’m still none the wiser. Maybe it’s just a lump of driftwood, but I don’t really know for sure and I wasn’t going to go and found out.

Not that I would have been alone out there because with it being a nice sunny afternoon there were crowds of people out there walking on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

There were even a few people out there on the beach too.

Seeing as there was no-one around I set off on a run down my little track but a couple of people emerging from the shadows put paid to that idea. The way things are right now, I run something like a walrus and I would rather people didn’t notice.

While you admire another pic of our kite surfer, I was listening to someone having a right old bash on the drums in the little theatre up here.

The doors were all locked though so i couldn’t go in to find out what was going on or to make a suggestion that he might need a bassist to accompany him

Instead, I came home and had a play about on the bass, followed by a session on the guitar. And it isn’t easy when you are surrounded by cardboard boxes.

I’ll open up the final one tomorrow and then take all of the empties out to Caliburn.

Tea was something of a disaster tonight. The pizza base was stuck to the greaseproof lining so it was a wrestle to untangle it. And then it didn’t fit correctly onto the baking plate and any attempt to move it led to disaster. So I had to do the best that I could.

But I did another rice pudding and with the bit of bread left from yesterday and some of the garlic butter from last weekend I made myself a garlic bread snack.

The pizza needed another 10 minutes longer to cook and the base was all to hell. But I suppose that the proof of the pizza is in the eating and it went down just as well as any other.

On my evening walk the lights of St malo were beautiful in the distance. But with no tripod and the high winds that were rattling away at everything, the photos came out far too blurred to be of any value.

And I had a good run home tonight, making the entire length of my run down on the clifftop.

Now I’m writing up my notes and I hope that it takes a while to do because Ocean by Eloy has just come on the playlist. What a magnificent album this is.

But when it’s finished, I’ll be off to bed, musing on the fact that of all of the people in Greenland, I know just 6 of them really well. And of those 6, last weekend I was with 5 of them.

I wonder when Tupaarnaq will put in an appearance.

Saturday 30th November 2019 – THINGS ARE …

… looking up here in Granville. And not before time either, I have to say.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I posted a photo of a vegan meal on offer at the local take-out bakery. Admittedly that’s a specialty local baker who cooks on the premised, but today I can post a photo of some industrial vegan bread on sale in the LeClerc hypermarket.

How about that for progress?

We’ve had a little progress here today too. I heard both the first and second alarms go off and then began to drift off into the arms of Morpheus again (hardly a surprise seeing as it was 01:30 when I went to bed and it was now about 06:10)

Anyway, I snatched myself out of it in a desperate attempt to beat the third alarm, only to find that it was in fact just 06:14 – still 6 minutes to go. In fact, by the time the alarm went off I was having my medication.

At about 09:10 I hit the streets today but before that I’d had breakfast, had a shower and done some dictaphone notes.

But outside I headed for LIDL. And although I didn’t spend too much, I did pick up a clothes airer, the type that hangs over a radiator. It’s not very big and doesn’t take too many clothes, but at least it’s an improvement on hanging it all in the bedroom window in this weather.

And that reminds me – I did a machine-load of washing while I was out.

Noz was next, and there was nothing of any great interest there. I only spent 4-odd Euros. But they did have some rubbish knitwear in a bin at €0:99 and I found a woolly hat … “to go on your woolly head” – ed … that was just about my size. And that’s important seeing as mine is in the pocket of the jacket that is hanging up in a hotel in Calgary.

Dodging the gilets jaunes who were out if force today – about a dozen of them – I headed for LeClerc.

We’ve seen one lot of vegan industrial bakery and here’s a second. It’s actually a brioche – that which Marie-Antoinette told the peasants to eat when they said that they had no bread.

It’s perfectly true by the way that this isn’t the first lot of vegan industrial bread at LeClerc. A year or so ago we had vegan croissants and vegan pains au chocolat but all of that was somewhat ephemeral. I hope that they stick around this time.

Once more, I didn’t spend much money here although I did buy some fresh ginger. Jackie has given me her recipe for a cold lemon and ginger drink and I’m determined to try it.

One thing that features quite often in these pages is the subject of pathetic parking, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And it doesn’t get more pathetic than this. A huge car park that can probably accommodate a couple of thousand vehicles, and this guy parks in the access road right outside the front door.

The access road is pretty narrow there and it’s right by one of the three doors out of the hypermarket, so it’s obstructing the pedestrian access too.

That wasn’t all either. Final stop was at BUT. I’d had a voucher for €50 off for this weekend in view of the purchases I made there a while ago. And as my office chair has now officially collapsed, I went to see what they had.

So now in the back of Caliburn is a replacement chair which will be installed in here tomorrow. I hope that it’s as comfortable as the demonstration one was.

While I was having lunch I heard a commotion out at the back.

My living room overlooks the Public Rooms and they are quite often hired out for activities. Today it looks as if we are having a wedding out there.

So here we are then, complete with confetti. And I hope that they will be very happy together.

After lunch I did a few more dictaphone entries and by the time that I had lost interest, I’d reduced the number to just 38. A good week on those should hopefully see them off and then I’ll start on my photos for the four months that I was away this summer.

But having lost interest, I remembered that I had some washing to put out and also some food to put away. And now the freezer is officially full again. Nothing else will go in there at all.

Some tidying up too, and a play around on the new guitar. And I’ve decided that it’s really good. I’m quite enjoying it.

A quick glance at the clock showed me that it was 17:10. I shouldn’t be here because US Granville are at home against FC Lorient.

Back out on foot and I stormed through the crowds and right across town to the ground. On the way though I stopped to photograph this house in the Route de Villedieu.

It seems that Christmas is coming early for some people.

At the ground, some more exciting news. US Granville are away at some team in Brittany next Saturday night and the club has laid on a free bus for the supporters.

There was a free place too, but there isn’t now! I’m going to have a day out!

As for the match itself, it was another one of those rather aimless games where Granville had no shape and no plan either, relying on breakaways out of a congested midfield.

It almost worked too, but they had an early goal disallowed for offside and also a very dubious offside give against a forward who was nowhere near interfering with play.

Lorient took the lead late in the game and never really looked like conceding it. Top of the table they are, and they deserved the win.

But there were some bizarre substitutions out there. Most of Lorient’s good work was coming down the left wing from a combination of left-back and left midfielder. So both of them were substituted, and I’m still wondering why.

Granville were no better than this. They have a forward who doesn’t look as if he does much but he always sticks a foot out and score a goal at a crucial moment. But they took him off and replaced him with someone who hasn’t done very much at all.

And they have a forward whose energy and keenness is unmatched. He was kept on the bench until it was far too late for him to be doing any good.

By the time we left it was raining heavily so I didn’t hang about on the way home – even running up part of the steep hill to reach the apartment.

And tea was out of a tin too, as is usual on a Saturday when i’ve been footballing.

But now I’m off to bed. i’m really tired (no surprise) and looking forward to my lie-in. And I wonder if those two people who buttonholed me in the street did manage to fond an open pizzeria.

Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

But he won’t be back for long.

Although he passed his controle technique, and with ease too, the garage owner and I had quite a chat about him.

He’s now not far short of 13 years old and several areas of corrosion on his bodywork have been brought to my attention and need to be looked at before the next full controle technique in 2 years time.

As a result of our discussion, I’ve been provided with the name and address of a good body repair place in Gavray that the garage owner recommends and I’ll be going off to have a chat with him in due course as soon as I find out what I’ve done with the paper.

It might cost me €1000 or so to put him right, but I know every nut and bolt on the vehicle and apart from the very odd little bit here and there, no-one else has ever driven him. If I move him on and buy something else, I don’t know what it is that I’ll be buying and that could be fraught with danger.

The kind of vehicle that I want – another van of the same or similar size – could have been doing anything and being driven by everyone. So in the circumstances I’m going to stick with Caliburn

It was a nice walk out of the apartment this morning. The weather was coo and overcast – an ideal day for a good walk.

Passing by the harbour I gave my usual glance over the wall to see who was in there today. Granville and Victor Hugo are there, and so is Charles Marie. But there’s a new boat down there that I haven’t seen before.

It’s some kind of landing-craft type of freighter and I can’t see her name from up here. I shall have to go for a walk down to the harbour tomorrow for a closer look

With it being Saturday, it was market day. And as well as all of the stalls in the Market Hall, there’s something of a street market too.

One of the attractions of the market is the woman who has got crabs. There’s always a large crowd around her as she is selling her wares and se seems to be doing quite well.

Mind you, I have enough problems of my own without adding crabs to them.

There’s definitely something going on that I don’t understand because I stormed up the hill to the top in the kind of fashion that I would use as if I were invading Poland, even singing to myself as I strode out.

And I kept on going all the way out to the garage with just one or two little deviations (and if its deviations you want, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man”).

I don’t know if I mentioned it but the last time that I was out this way on foot I’d noticed a big red double-decker bus being used as a restaurant. And so I went for a closer look.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its long-disappeared guises will recall that that was my plan with Laurence – to have a mobile restaurant. And I actually encountered one once on Cape Breton Island in Canada.

One of the places that I called in at was the motorbike shop to see what they had on sale. There was only one bike that I liked – a Yamaha 4-cylinder. But it was too heavy for me to manoeuvre easily so I’ll have to forget that idea.

The second-hand shop, Happy Cash, had a few things in there that looked interesting, including a couple of decent bass cabinets. But my eye was caught by an electric piano on sale at €25:00 and I’m still wondering about it now.

That wasn’t all the excitement either.

It seems that the gilets jaunes are back demonstrating again. Both of them in fact. They must find it a pretty lonely vigil standing out there like that.

It’s not as if they serve any useful purpose either. They can stand on that roundabout for as long as they like and it won’t change anything one single iota.

Talking of changing things … “well, one of us is” – ed … just for a change, I didn’t have another early night either. I was playing on the guitar again until some silly time of the morning.

And yet again I managed to beat the third alarm to the draw. And that’s not like me at all.

Not enough time to go on a nocturnal ramble either last night. I was doing something with a couple of this big briques – the two and three-litre ones the kind that milk and so on comes in and just as I was getting myself organised and about to pour some orange juice or something into them the alarm went off.

So I’ll never get to know what happened about that.

After the medication I sat at the laptop and dashed off a few dictaphone notes – 9 to be exact. There’s a lot to be said for making an early start.

Another thing that I did was to go back to a project that I started a while back in Canada and look on the internet for digital recordings of “complete albums” that I own on vinyl. Over the course of the day I found 6 and they are all now downloaded and coverted to *.mp3 ready for splitting into individual tracks.

having picked up Caliburn I went to NOZ for the first time in months and although there was nothing special, I spent €16:00 in there.

For the benefit of my new readers (of which there are many) NOZ is a shop that sells off bankrupt stock, near-shelf-life items, overstock and that kind of thing. Occasionally you can pick up bargains in there and I’ve had a lot of good stuff from there.

The near-shelf-life products can be interesting too. And there are always some surprising things on offer that make quite a nice surprising change to my diet.

At LeClerc I stocked up with stuff that I hadn’t been able to carry while I had been on foot, although I forgot to buy any water. I’ve decided to cut out completely the sugar-laden fizzy pop stuff and just go for water instead.

Tap-water is always a possibility of course but here it’s held in a storage tank on the headland so I don’t know what its quality will be like.

By now the heavens had opened and I was soaked walking to Caliburn. And back here I was drenched as I ran down the road chasing the papers that had blown out of my hand.

Lunch was a baguette with salad and my home-made hummus. And it really is wicked too. I shan’t be bothered by vampires, that’s for sure.

This afternoon I did another pile of upgrading of the website but ran aground when I found a half-completed web page that I must have uploaded by mistake. To rectify the situation I had a go at that, and it will take much longer than I anticipated.

To have a little rest and to fight off the fatigue here and there, I had a play on the guitar too. I must keep on keeping on.

Suddenly though, I noticed the time. 17:20. Kick-off was at 18:00 and it had stopped raining.

That was the cue to leg it off up town to the Stade Louis Dior.

On the way through town though I stopped at the Place General de Gaulle because there was some kind of ephemeral air about the kiddies’ roundabout tonight, all lit up as it was in the damp and doom and gloom.

And then I sailed off back up the hill that I had climbed this morning.

By the time I reached the football stadium I was in great form, which is surprising, and also just as well because we were drenched by the torrential rainstorm that suddenly opened up.

This was a match that I hadn’t wanted to miss because I hadn’t seen Entente Sannois Saint-Gratien – the Entente SSG – before.

They had been relegated from Division 2 last year and were still struggling to find their feet at this level. It’s a tough league.

In view of the rainstorm, they allowed those of us brave souls out in the open to come along and sit undercover in the grandstand, which was nice of them.

We could then settle down and enjoy an exciting match, although some of my fellow spectators didn’t think it as exciting as I did.

Granville had the better of the first half without anything to show for it despite the several good chances that had fallen to both teams – mainly down to the unusual formation that they had adopted. They were playing a kind-of 4-5-1 lineup with a centre-forward who hasn’t been getting much game-time, and probably the club’s best attacker playing in central midfield.

It clearly wasn’t working and so at the start of the second half he pushed Sullivan Martinet up front. And almost straight away the match transformed itself into one-way traffic towards the ESSG. For about 15 minutes the goal was bearing a charmed life as Granville peppered it from all directions.

And eventually it paid off for Granville and Martinet who broke the deadlock.

Granville were still pressing forward and threatening the goal, but the trainer pulled off his two attackers and went to shore up the defence.

A strange decision to me because Granville lost their momentum and allowed ESSG back into the game.

And they could have equalised too but for some wretched luck in front of goal, but Granville held on for the win.

Back here in the rain without a pause for breath, and I even ran up the slope at the top of the hill just to get my heartbeat racing. It’s been an excellent day from that point of view and I notice that I’d walked 16 kms and done over 21,000 steps today.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit followed by rice pudding. And once this posting is finished, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a long, exhausting day, I’ve done a lot of things and, surprisingly, I’m feeling so much better.

And it’s Sunday tomorrow too. I can have a lie-in.

Tuesday 5th November 2019 – CALIBURN HAS GONE …

… to the garage today for his annual service and Controle Technique.

He should have gone sometime towards the end of June but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was dealing with other issues like a broken right hand and a damaged kneecap which meant that I couldn’t drive.

And then I was heading off on my mega-adventure.

So this is the first time that Caliburn has turned a wheel since about the middle of June – 5 months – and then it was only around the block. So all in all, he did very well. There was a dashboard light illuminated when I set off but after about 10 minutes it went out again.

And talking of things going out, you won’t believe what time I was going out of bed this morning. Up and about and actually working at … wait for it … 05:45 and when was the last time that I was up and about long before the alarm? Even without a late-ish night?

But it’s not all about the new lean, keen, mean me. I woke up with the most incredible pain in a place that many men will understand and although the pain eased off somewhat, it was still giving me grief. So no point in lying in bed when there are things to do.

An early start means an early medication and an early breakfast, and being well-advanced with the dictaphone notes backlog, I could hit the streets with Caliburn.

There was a brief stop at the Centre Agora to pick up a recording kit. I have piles of audio to record in the near future and the quality of the dictaphone isn’t good enough.

Caliburn was then dropped off at the garage and I’ll tell you what’s frightening about all of this. I’ve only ever been there twice, the last time in June 2018, but the guy there this lunchtime saw me and said “ahhh – Mr Hall”. I don’t like the sound of this one little bit.

On the way back, I went into the cheap electrical shop where I’ve bought some stuff before and today I fell in love with an oven. Then down to LeClerc for a bit more shopping. Not too much though because this audio kit is quite heavy.

The route back took me by surprise because I walked all the way back up the hill to here from town without even stopping and I’ve not really managed that too often in the past.

After lunch I made a start on project 002 and the audio kit came in very handy, although it took me a while to work out how to use it. And I was so impressed that I was thinking about getting one of my own – until I saw the price. Now I’m trying to find something similar but cheaper.

As usual, I went out for my afternoon walk at about 15:45 as usual – a nice mid-point between lunch and tea.

Round the headland again, and the sunlight is still playing tricks. We had yet another delightful TORA TORA TORA effect out there across the bay over onto the Brittany side between Cancale and St Malo.

You can see how this strange light is playing havoc with the colours of the sea out there

And that wasn’t all the excitement about the sunlight either.

The way that the rays of the sun were shining through the gaps in the clouds over there had illuminated the promenade between Jullouville and Carolles just as if it had been some kind of actor on a stage.

All of the surrounding countryside was in the darkness and this little area was properly bathed in sunshine.

Given the foregoing and the lack of comment about any high winds, you could be forgiven for thinking that Tempete Amelie has abated.

But not a bit of it. Although the wind has calmed down somewhat (but not very much) we are still having the heavy rolling seas coming in from mid-Atlantic.

They are pushing along and smashing into the sea wall with some kind of incredible violence as you can see.

But as well as the one just above with the huge rolling wave, this one here is one of my favourites.

I waited just an extra second later before I pressed the shutter on the camera and while the wave has rolled away, I’ve captured the spray splattering down on the top of the sea wall and splashing everywhere.

It’s not very likely that I’ll be able to take another photo quite like this, right at the best moment.

There was a fishing boat in port … “there were about a dozen actually” – ed … that caught my eye.

At first glance, Joker looked rather too much like the very ill-fated MV Darlwyne for comfort. But of course it isn’t.

However if someone were to tell me that it was a direct descendant of the aforementioned I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.

And talking of ships in the harbour … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a nice mail (this contact form thingy really works!) this morning from some of the crew of Normandy Trader, a ship that has featured on these pages no fewer than 26 times, admiring my photos and inviting me aboard next time she’s in the harbour.

That’s a nice plan

There wasn’t enough time for me to finish off the audio work so I need to do that tomorrow. But for tea I had a scrounge around in the fridge and found some onion, green pepper, mushrooms and a few other things so I cooked some lentils and made a curry.

There’s enough for two days too so I’ll use the left-over stuffing in some taco rolls tomorrow and the rest of the curry on Thursday.

Outside, there were some thick clouds scudding about in the wind.

But just as the right moment the clouds parted and I had a lovely view of it. Just for a change, the camera was quite handy too and so I was able to take quite a good shot of an Autumn half-moon.

It’s come out quite well considering that it was hand-held and taken in a hurry. When I was taking all of those last year I was using a tripod and going for a slow exposure.

For my walk in the wind I was all alone, except for Minette the cat sitting on her windowsill. She still remembered me and allowed me to give her a good stroke.

And I had my run too – and even managed to run half-way up the hill at the end of my usual straight. You’ve probably noticed from the photos of the waves and the spray over the harbour walls that the wind has changed direction today. For a change I had a following wind.

We had a photo earlier of Carolles bathed in sunshine.

Tonight there was no sunshine of course but the atmosphere was beautifully clear despite the clouds and I could see Carolles perfectly lit up tonight by the street lights along the promenade

Again, no tripod so it was hand-held and it’s not come out too badly. But some of the other night-time photos weren’t up to much.

So before I go to bed I’ll just have time to do half a dozen web-page updates. I promised myself that I would do that every day and I do need to catch up with the arrears of work

But no reason to go out tomorrow (I doubt that Caliburn will be ready) so I can do plenty of work if I put my mind to it.

That’s some “if”.

diving platform granville manche normandy france

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

moon hidden by clouds granville manche normandy france

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rue paul poirier granville jullouville manche normandy france

Friday 1st November 2019 – I FOUND …

… the fitbit after all that. On the passenger seat in Caliburn where I must have left it when I was fitting the battery yesterday.

And I’d got up nice and early this morning specially to look. Even managed to beat the third alarm – and by a country mile too – and that’s not something that happens too often these days.

It was a reasonably late night too – mainly due to listening to some good music on the computer. And there’s nothing wrong in that as long as I’m working – which I was. In fact I updated some more of the web pages.

And so it was a short night too – but still plenty of time to go off on a ramble or two.

I started off back in the UK last night. I was in Cornwall walking around a headland and it was something (I don’t know what) to do but it was Marc Bolan and camping and he’d written the final verse of his song “Elemental Child” (… which I had been listening to just before going to bed …). They were broadcasting it over the radio and getting everyone to join in so anyone who was walking past or walking in the area they went and asked them if they would join in. This girl – she joined in too and did all of the song and to play it on the guitar or banjo or something. She asked about the lyrics so we pointed to where the lyrics were and she was brilliant. She had a really good go at it, this girl did. It really was a shame that I awoke.
A little later on, we were on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again last night and it was time to go home. There were a couple of coaches come to pick us up. They had already been and we’d packed but then we had to go off on a lecture or something so the buses were put back and were to turn at at 12:00. This lecture finished at about 11:55 and it was all about book-keeping, this kind of thing, and the guy who was giving the lesson afterwards went to print off some stuff and I went to help him but he didn’t need me. he was talking to some other guy and the other guy was saying that in Accountancy they were still using BBC Micros but they no longer dominate anything so they don’t actually see anything of what they do. The other guy said that he learnt his Accountancy on a BBC Micro. I said that I did my Finance First Part on pen and paper – but no-one took the slightest bit of notice of me whatsoever which seems to be normal procedure these days on board that ship. Then I had to get to my cabin and it was 11:55 and there was already a bus on board and people getting on so I had to fly throught the crowds and the ship like lightning to my cabin. Luckily I had packed before hand but there were still a few things out that needed putting away. I reached my cabin which was right at the back of my ship and the porthole was open so I could see the second coach pulling up and feel a nice cool breeze blowing through the porthole. The first thing I did was to grab a drink – some of my orange Vitamin B12 drink. There wasn’t much left but I took a swig of it and thought “Gid this is warm, this drink but it will do me until I get to wherever it is that I’m going and then I can think again”. At that moment the alarm went off.

10 minutes later I was up and about and tackling the notes from the night while I was waiting for the medication to work so that I could have breakfast.

Once it started to become light I went outside with the purpose of retracing my steps from my afternoon walk to see if the fitbit was anywhere about. But as I said, I didn’t get any farther than Caliburn.

Back in the apartment I attacked the 20-minute dictaphone entry from 30th July. And miles of it there was too, starting from when I left the motel in Lamoure all the way across North and South Dakota.

By now it was midday so I headed of for my morning walk. Down to the Super U for some garlic and a lettuce. The lettuce is exhausted and I have no garlic at all and I need to deal with that issue. And as I left the apartment and headed off down the street we were hit with a torrential rainstorm. Luckily I went in my rain jacket and so I managed to keep something-like dry. But there were plenty of others who weren’t so fortunate.

For lunch I had half of the carrot soup (which wasn’t so bad after all) and then attacked my little project. What I did the other day, I’ve undone it and started again because I could do better than that. And it’s all turning out rather nicely, although doing it in French is rather challenging.

There was an interruption in my activities when I went out for my afternoon walk. And I was not alone for even though the weather was miserable this afternoon there were still plenty of people on the beach.

It’s that time of year when we’e having the highest tidal range – the grand marée – and the lower beaches are uncovered.

These areas are beyond the limits that are leased out as commercial fisheries so anyone can go out there for the peche à pied – fishing on foot – to scavenge what molluscs they can.

And I was right about the miserable weather too. Just look at the storm clouds.

But all of a sudden there was a hint of sun and we had the most magnificent rainbow. I managed to take a really good shot of it too.

It seems to be ending down in the town somewhere and I was tempted to back to my apartment to search for a spade.

There was an interruption after that. I received a text message “are you in?” to which I replied in the affirmative.

A few minutes later Terry and Liz turned up, with Darren, kate and the two kids. It was pouring with rain again so we went for a drink and a good chat. When the rain stopped (which it did for half an hour) we went for a good walk all the way around the walls and the headland and then they went home. I told Robyn to take good care of Strawberry Moose and she gave me a hug.

For tea I had two more taco rolls with the rest of the stuffing from the other night. Not enough though so I added a small tin of lentils so there was too much. No good for me, seeing as I’m supposed to be cutting down.

Football tonight on the internet. Not been too many of those this season. Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS in the pouring rain in the Welsh Premier League.

In the first half, the nomads were dreadful and I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they made it into the TNS half. Meanwhile TNS were rampaging upfield at will and could have had a hatful. As it happens, one goal disallowed for offside and a good save from Lewis Brass the Nomads keeper was all that they had to show for it.

Connahs Quay made three substitutions early in the second half and after that we had much more of a match, with the Nomads taking the game much more to TNS.

And so it goes without saying that TNS finally scored with a breakaway goal after all of that.

We then had bizarre incident where the referee gave a penalty to TNS for a handball, spotted the ball, and just as Greg Draper was about to run up to take the kick, he changed his mind and gave a dropped ball which Brass smothered.

From that, the Nomads raced upfield and with Insall (who should have been on from the start) having a shot saved, Michael Wilde running in fastened onto the rebound and scored – his first shot on goal in the whole game.

So 1-1 it finished, and it leaves me shaking my head. I’ve seen many more much batter games than this one, and I’m totally bewildered by that weird first half.

So not having done too much I’m going to bed and I’ll start again tomorrow. I must get myself going.

rainbow arc en ciel granville manche normandy france

Monday 28th October 2019 – FOR PUDDING TONIGHT …

… I had some tinned fruit salad with some of that coconut cream stuff that I like.

And that can only mean one thing – and that is that today I went to the LeClerc supermarket.

And how did I do that seeing as Caliburn isn’t as yet mobile? The answer is rather simple. I walked.

But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s put things in their correct order.

We started off with the three alarms as usual and I fell out of bed about 20 minutes after the final call. That’s not bad going these days, although I really would like to be out of bed maybe 20 minutes before the last call rather than 20 minutes after.

Even though the night hadn’t been as early as I would have liked, there was still plenty of time to go on a little ramble or two during the night.

I can’t remember now exactly where I was when I started off but it certainly was somewhere, and I needed to get home. I had to buy a lot of things and I was wondering how I was going to spread my money out to do this sort of thing. One of the things that I could do would be to leave my monthly ticket on the tram until the very last thing. So I was walking over to somewhere to do something or other and I saw a tram that went halfway around the ring road. I thought “God I need to get on that”. But then I thought “never mind. I can always get on the next one”. I ended up back in the office again and went down into the administration area to check on something, and noticed that the map on the wall was no longer there. Where has the map of the city gone? How am I supposed to know my way around without any reference to the map of the city? Someone else came in so I asked them “where has the map of the city gone?”. This person replied that it hadn’t been there for a while. I said that it was here earlier this morning. They replied that it wasn’t, so we had a “yes – no interlude” until I awoke.
Back asleep two minutes later I was getting ready to go on holiday and I got one of my cars ready. First of all I had to go and pick up Alison from her market stall. So off I went. She was selling cloth and was ready to pack up so I started to pack up for her, got everything ready and drover her back home. I went home again and started to get all my stuff ready and had to pick her up at about 22:00 when she finished her next market stall that night. So round about 21:45 although hadn’t finished packing, but it was only a 5 or 10 minute job that needed doing. So I said to the person with me that I’d go and pick up Alison and then come back and have 5 hours sleep, then I can get up and arrange everything and we can get off. This girl was astonished that I had got ready so quickly and I was quite pleased as well. She asked if five hours sleep would be enough, and what about the heavy stuff? I replied that I could get that into the car myself. She asked if anything needed working, to which I replied that I could do that when we are on the road – it’s no big deal. She was pleased and would tell Hans that we were ready. From there I went to work and parked my car somewhere and what I had to do – I went in a different car to pick up Alison as I probably needed the space and I could come back to the office afterwards, park this car and take mine home, and take the third car away in the morning. But when I got to the market stall Alison wasn’t there, and there were four women in her place selling tea and biscuits. Without thinking, I went to clamber over the stall, but it suddenly occurred to me, by the way that they were shouting and waving, that it wasn’t very strong and I might break it. So I had to climb back again. But they asked this boy a really weird question, and he actually got it right. That made me think about Champollion (…I’d been reading about him during the day as it happens …) the 11 year old genius. Everyone was pleased that this boy had got it right and he was beaming. Suddenly Alsion appeared again, so I told her that I was nearly ready but she said that she had a lot to do so we started to pack up her stall and that was when the alarms dragged me into the daylight.

First port of call was the medication of course and then it was breakfast time. And once I’d dealt with that and doe a few things that needed doing, I went off for a shower, a change of clothes and a clean-up.

At 09:00 I hit the streets in the rainstorm (and luckily I haven’t managed to lose my yellow rainjacket quite yet) and headed off all the way across town to the Centre Agora in the Quartier St Nicolas. That’s the building where people go when they don’t have access to the internet, so they can use the computers and internet there, and it’s a kind of social centre and advice bureau.

Quite a few years ago now, I was involved in a project in the Auvergne and it was one of the things that was abandoned when I became ill. But the world is far too small for my liking, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … and when someone formerly from Clermont-Ferrand and now living in Granville came across my name and the fact that I too am now living in Granville and may be able to help him out, a meeting was inevitable, I suppose.

But as for what it might be, one must jamais vendre le peau d’ours avant de l’avoir tué as they say around here, and there will be more of this subject anon.

Seeing as I was about halfway there, I decided to trudge on in the rainstorm and make my way to LeClerc. I had a good lap around the supermarket and bought some stuff to make more meals. They had the burgers that I like and also some of that thin brick pastry. I’d seen Rachel using that to make some vegetable samosas which were pretty good, so no reason why I can’t have a go.

Back in the rain all the way home where I made myself a coffee and my and sat down to relax for a good while.

This afternoon I made more inroads into the dictaphone notes and that’s another 7 transcribed, including the two during the dictation of which I went back to sleep – in mid-dictate.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice and I do have to say that it was the best stuffed pepper that I have ever made. And I’m not sure why it’s different from any other stuffed pepper that I have made because it was made in exactly the same way.

And then the walk around the headland in the cold and wind. And another run too, although I didn’t manage as far as last night but that was because I was running up hill, I reckon. I need to learn to walk before I run, don’t I?

But the fitbit tells an interesting story (it’s still working despite the strap, lodged firmly in my trouser pocket). I’ve done … errr … 194% of my daily activity today and walked a total of 16.4 kilometres. That’s not bad for someone who is at death’s door with but a short time to live, is it?

What shall I do to follow that, I wonder.

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 – HATS OFF …

… to Caliburn. Stood outside on the car park for four months without turning a wheel while I was on my travels. So I gave his ignition key a turn this morning and admittedly after something of a struggle, his engine did fire up.

So I left him ticking over for 10 minutes to warm his engine up. I’m impressed.

The bad news though is that the garage can’t fit him in until the 5th of November and that’s filled me with dismay.

But hats off too to Grahame, one of the regular readers of this rubbish, who has just passed his citizenship test for Austria and is well on the way to having an Austrian passport.

So that’s Alison in Belgium, Jackie and Hanzi in Germany, Rhys in the USA, Rachel in Canada, and I of course have my permanent residency status for France and will be organising my French nationality once I get myself straight. Now we have Grahame in Austria.

What we are actually witnessing is a new 21st Century diaspora, an “involuntary mass dispersion of a population from its indigenous territories” as those of us from the UK who are capable of doing so are renouncing our heritage and moving forward to the Brave New World.

Usually, diasporas are associated with an unwanted element of the population, such as Scottish Highlanders, Acadians, Jews and the like being expelled from their home. But this new phenomenon consists of a different kind of person, something like the inverse where it’s the more mobile, more resourceful, more energetic person who is taking the initiative.

And these people are spreading out all over the world, as you can see from just my very small circle of friends. They are taking their considerable skills away from the UK, to the detriment of that country, and into their adopted country. The UK’s loss, the rest of the world’s gain.

And I couldn’t care less for the UK.

Yesterday I was going on … “and on and on” – ed … about my fourteen hours asleep yesterday. And so it goes without saying that I would be paying for it in early course.

Like last night.

I was in bed “something like” and dozed off for a short while but awoke pretty quickly. Lying in bed tossing and turning, this wasn’t doing me any good at all so round by 01:30 I gave it up as a bad job and hauled myself out of bed to carry on working.

It was a good idea too, because I was able to push on quite rapidly with the updating of the one of the websites that I had mentioned yesterday.

As well as that, I uploaded all of the photos – all 4,000 or so of them, up to the computer where I’ll begin to edit them in early course.

One of my friends was on line too, unable to sleep, so we had something of a chat.

Round about 06:30 I was overcome by fatigue so I took to my bed. I was out like a light and remained so until about 09:30.

Feeling like the Wreck of the Hesperus (although I have no idea where I might find it, except at Norman’s Woe of course) I staggered out of bed and it took me a while to organise myself.

Medication and then breakfast of course, followed by (at long last) a shower and a good tidy up of myself, for which I was extremely grateful because I needed it, and then I set the washing machine on the go with a load of clothes.

And I worked out that I spent FOUR MONTHS away from home with just

three tee-shirts
three sets of underwear
two pairs of trousers
two fleeces
one set of Arctic underlayers

Travellig light, you might say, except for Strawberry Moose, who took up far more space for himself and his affairs than I ever took for me.

As promised, I took my morning walk. Just down to the Super-U supermarket for some tomatoes, lettuce, fruit, onions and garlic. It was necessary because I didn’t have anything in the apartment, and it gave my morning walk some point.

It was a beautiful day today so I went and had lunch sitting on my wall overlooking the cliffs. The sunshine was delicious and there was a lizard out there enjoying itself.

This afternoon, I paid for my next year’s web hosting
which reminds me – if you enjoy what I write, please make your next Amazon purchase by using the links aside. It costs you no extra but earns me a small commission that helps defray my webhosting expenses
and then ordered a new bracelet for my fitbit. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either.

Another thing that I did was to contact three music shops about something that I need. And, once again, as yet there is no response from any of them. As I have said before, people complain about there being a recession and yet they don’t have too much interest in replying to genuine business enquiries.

All this money that I want to spend and no-one seems to want me to spend it with them.

The afternoon walk was beautiful. The weather was gorgeous and there were crowds of people milling around outside in the sun. Even a few kids running in and out of the sea, clearly having loads of fun. After all, we are in the school holidays.

Back here, I carried on upgrading the site that I’m working on, as well as negotiating with my web host about an upgrade to the server that he uses. It looks as if we might be moving into the 21st Century, something that will please me greatly too.

And in between all of that I’ve also spent an hour or so playing on the guitar – the bass of course but mainly the acoustic six-string. And I’m working on three numbers that I want to play competently on a six-string within a week or so.

But these are beautiful lyrics.
She’s got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky

Now and then when I see her face
It takes me away to that special place
And if I stared too long
I’d probably break down and cry

Sweet child o’ mine

She’s got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I’d hate to look into those eyes
And see an ounce of pain

Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place
Where as a child I’d hide
And pray for the thunder and the rain
To quietly pass me by

Sweet child o’ mine
I wonder if they remind anyone of anything in particular?

Tea was pasta and vegetables tossed in olive oil, garlic and black pepper (and I forgot the sea salt) and delicious it was indeed. Followed by a very lonely walk around the headland in the calm bright night.

Bedtime now, and I hope that I might be able to sleep for a while tonight. There is so much to do and there I was looking for a break after my exertions.

Saturday 19th October 2019 – I SEEM TO HAVE …

… made rather a mess of things just recently.

If coming home from North America to Europe via Africa isn’t bad enough, then the tortuous route that I have to take to complete my journey home really puts the tin hat on things.

of course, there are several reasons for this. The constant changing of my plans didn’t help, my own unwillingness to leave North America and of course my constant vacillation (never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until next week) are all factors that have contributed towards this, although I can quite rightly curse my bad luck on occasion too.

But let’s start with this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I half-jokingly said that I would probably be wide-awake at 04:30 this morning. Well, do you know what? I wasn’t all that far out.

Last night I couldn’t believe how quickly time went by while I was writing up my notes and doing some housekeeping. In no time at all it seemed to be 03:00 in the morning and I was far from tired.

But to be on the safe side I switched off the alarms and went to bed. And resorted to the usual stand-by of watching a film on the laptop. It never seems to fail to work … “it has done once or twice, you know” – ed … and this time was no exception. Flat out after about five minutes.

There is a good reason why I never travel home the day immediately following my medication, and that is that there is sometimes a Counter-coup and this is exactly what happened today.

I was out like a light until 10:00 and didn’t feel a thing all night. And I still managed to go to sleep again until 11:00 when I was awakened by the chambermaid wanting to clean the room. But I chased her away.

It really was time for me to raise myself from the dead I suppose and I set to work. And this is where my troubles really began.

For a start, there are major reconstruction works on the railway line south of Brussels so there are no early morning trains. My favourite, the 08:13, is one of those that has been cancelled so I’m having to go later.

No chance of catching my 11:15 or whatever train to Granville, so it’s just as well that that has been cancelled too. In fact there are no trains going from Paris to Granville tomorrow, for some reason or other. The best that I can do is to take a bus at about 13:00. And that gets into Granville at heaven alone knows what time.

And if that isn’t bad enough, I seem to have forgotten that it’s Sunday tomorrow and there are no buses in Granville. So I’ll have to walk, with about 30kg of luggage about my person.

I’m not doing too well, am I? But at least, the absence of a printer to print my tickets has made me finally go “paperless” by adding some apps on my mobile phone, so at least some good may have come of it all.

Having organised that, the next thing to organise was some food. Off I headed to the Delhaize in the railway station for a baguette, some tomatoes, hummus, bananas and drink. What I ate was delicious and there’s more for tomorrow too.

This afternoon, in the absence of my decent graphics program (Paint Shop Pro) that has gone with the wind following the collapse of the old laptop, I’ve had to learn how to use the add-on facilities of Irfanview in order to carry out a project that needs to be done this evening for tomorrow.

Despite all of the time that it took me to do it, it’s simply not possible to do it as well as Paint Shop Pro might have done it. But it’s a free program and it’s reminiscent of Samuel Johnson’s remark on women’s preaching – “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

As if to underline the benefits of prudence when I’m having my medication, I was obliged to take to my bed round about 17:00 and I slept it off until about 18:30 or so. The strain is certainly proving too much for me right now.

But I made it into town this evening to my little cafe for a plate of lentils with bread. No chips though – I’m going to keep on with this “cutting down” of my dietary requirements to see if I can keep the weight off, and I’m also going to try to add another daily walk into my routine when (if) I finally make it home. At first that should be pretty easy because there is no food in the house and without a mobile Caliburn I won’t be able to do a large mega-shop for a while.

And to ease off all of the pain and torment about my problems right now, I had a listen to some more music. Ocean by a German group called Eloy, and it’s probably one of the finest “Krautrock” albums ever. I never tire of listening to it.

The opening track, “Poseidon’s Creation”, includes the line “Son of the Gods, daughter of the earth .. ” and who does that remind you of? It’s quite bizarre how things suddenly appear like that and trigger off a switch in your mind?

So on that note, seeing as we are discussing music, I’ll go to bed and try for a good sleep. It’s going to be another long, hard day tomorrow.

Saturday 7th September 2019 – I HAVE THROWN AWAY …

… a whole lifetime today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I travel around the world in some kind of peripatetic idyll, all of my possessions either on my back or in one of my trucks (Caliburn in Europe, Strider in North America).

But today, up at the mill, I heaved almost all of my North American possessions into a skip (dumpster to you North Americans) and put an end to my nomadic lifestyle.

It’s simply that I can’t do it any more and it’s no point pretending that I can continue. Watching the blood count slowly decline over the last two years down to the critical level (which it must surely have reached by now seeing as I haven’t had it checked for almost 3 months) and knowing that my days are numbered, it’s just useless weight that I’m dragging around with me.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be up in Montreal and I’ll be emptying out my storage locker. The only thing that I’ll be salvaging from there will be the amplifier and speaker for the bass and the remainder will be joining the rest of the travelling gear in that great camp site in the sky.

That’ll be the first time in Montreal this year. It’s not like me, is it?

But I’ll tell you something. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my mentioning the rather lively back end of Strider, how we travelled mainly sideways down a variety of gravel roads in Labrador. “Lively” back in those days had absolutely nothing on “lively” today, with almost nothing on the pick-up bed.

If I ever make it back to Labrador, we shall certainly be living in interesting times.

Having crowed about my really good nights just recently, it’s almost inevitable that they should catch up on me sooner or later.

And so it was last night.

For a start, we were still awake, the bass guitar and me, at well past midnight as I was picking away at various bass lines, unable to sleep. One thing about life on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour is that it has pumped music back into my soul.

But when I finally did manage to drop off, the dictaphone tell its own story. There’s a record on average about every 20 minutes over a three-hour period, and what I do remember from the various nocturnal rambles is that every single one of them concerned Castor pursuing me around the ship.

Not that I’m complaining of course. Usually, anyone pursuing me anywhere would be almost certainly brandishing the kind of offensive weapon that would paralyse a polar bear, so it makes a nice change to be pursued by pleasant company. What I don’t understand is why I thought it necessary to run away. I’m definitely losing my grip.

Once all of that was over I was up and about, only to find that we had run out of bread for breakfast. With Zoe not coming back last night, we hadn’t been to the shops had we?

Instead Rachel and I went straight up to the garage and made coffee, and slowly woke up.

Then it was that I attacked the emptying of Strider and that took me almost up to lunchtime. But lunchtime was late – there was a queue of trucks needing attention in the workshop and we couldn’t move one out until almost 12:45.

Zoe, who had by now put in an appearance, and I shot back to the house, picked up all of her belongings and, now that Strider was almost empty, whipped them down to her new house. And I’m glad that we had emptied Strider because by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong and there wasn’t much room inside the truck.

Atlantic Superstore was next for a week or two’s load of vegan food so that I can eat properly, and also due to the fact that we are having another vegan messing with us for a while.

There’s a hurricane threatening here and out in the sticks a back-up generator is necessary. But believe it or not, in a household with 6 cars, three trucks, two heavy trucks and assorted 4-wheelers, snowmobiles, golf carts and Amber’s motor scooter, there wasn’t a drop of spare fuel.

Consequently Hannah had thrown a pile of empty fuel cans into the back of Strider and I came back from Irvings at Woodstock with 157.6 litres of petrol in the back of Strider. The rear end of Strider wasn’t bouncing around at all then!

Next stop was back at the garage. Darren had a rear wheel bearing, driveshaft oil seal, brake disk and caliper to change on the rear of a Chevrolet D5500 heavy truck – the one that I drove down to New Hampshire a couple of years ago to take that racing engine for repair.

It’s not difficult task but it’s heavy, dirty and complex, and four hands are always better than two working down a cramped inspection pit.

The task involved a judicious amount of heat and with an oxy-acetylene welding torch it brought back many happy memories. The last time that I did any welding on a car was the old Passat back in 1997 but that was with the mig-welder. With oxy-acetylene, the last time that I did any welding was stitching Nerina’s Ford Fiasco back together back in something like 1991. When I had my taxi company I was probably welding up one car or other almost every day.

We’d finished by about 18:00 and staggered off back home.

And I couldn’t resist a smile. Driving 20 miles with 157 litres of petrol floating around in the back of the truck and having to invent a makeshift stopper for one of the cans – getting out the oxy-acetylene welding bottles – crawling around an inspection pit in a garage taking driveshafts out of lorries and showering myself in Hypoid 90 – I thought that I had left all of that behind me more than 30 years ago.

You can take the boy out of Crewe right enough, but you can’t ever take Crewe out of the boy.

But then that’s why I like New Brunswick. It’s about 50 years behind the times and suits me perfectly.

Rachel came to awaken me later. It seems that I had crashed out for a while (hardly a surprise) and it was now tea-time. A chick pea curry which was delicious, and then we were descended upon by hordes of people. Amber is having a party and despite the rain and the winds, there are dozens of teenagers all attired in a variety of swimwear and heading for the hot tub outside.

I’ve locked myself in my room with the bass guitar and I am refusing to come out until the coast is clear. It’s a good job that it’s Sunday tomorrow and a lie-in is on the cards. I think that I’m going to need it.

Wednesday 26th June 2019 – MY LAST DAY …

… here at home for a while. I’m off on my travels tomorrow and I don’t know when I’ll be coming home.

As a result I’ve been working fairly hard (or as hard as maybe I can these days).

It wasn’t such an early night last night, and it was a nervous topsy-turvy kind of sleep. Plenty of time to go on my travels too.

I was working at a desk in part of a room and there were four of us to a table copying stuff off a screen to write some kind of thing about the sea. There was a seat empty next to me and some Japanese person came and plonked themselves down at it. They put a kind of cage around the screen and closed it so we were peering through this wire grill thing at the screen. I couldn’t see it properly as I was sitting out at the edge and I was getting more and more frustrated with this wire screen. In the end I had a bit of a tantrum about it. I had to move all of my things so that I could see the screen, and then move my chair, and then move my things again so I could see the screen. In the end a woman said “there’s another room and it’s a bit more quiet in there. Why don’t you go and sit in there?”. She had a look at what I was doing and said “you aren’t very far along, are you? You have 8 pages to do”. I said “I’m doing 8”. She took the double-page thing I was currently working on and took it off me. “No, you need to do some more”. I made a fuss about that but didn’t get this piece of paper back. Then I went into the other room which was much more quiet. I asked someone where there was an empty seat but no-one seemed to want to answer. I didn’t want to sit in someone else’s seat but no-one was answering. Someone piped up that seeing as there are no clerical assistant people in the room perhaps someone had better answer. But then one of the managers came in and said something like “I want to announce that so-and-so has now been appointed full-time” which made a young boy beam “and now we have som proper back-up clerical staff”. He was going on and no-one was answering my question. Some young guy from the other room then came in so I asked him “do you know which of these seats is free?”. He started to spout some kind of supercilious nonsense that was totally meaningless basically to say that he didn’t have the time. I was so close to running after him and hitting him, I really was. (And when was the last time that I have shown real anger during a noccturnal voyage?)
The paving slabs that cover this area are very easy to dig into, marked with dots and they were scattered all around this cemetery kind of place. There was no logical argument to dig in as to whether you were digging a foxhole rather than a trench defending system, so I didn’t want to go along and get my troop isolated like this up here (and I’ve no idea what this bit means or what it’s supposed to be connected to).
Later on, there was something going on with a woman, a party or a birthday party or wedding party or something. They were reading a eulogy to her. We were in another room listening. Someone in our party said “but there’s no sign of her being released from this hospital wherever it was she was supposed to have been released to and this eulogy was all about. As we went into the main room to enquire about it, the penny suddenly dropped wit them as well. Where’s this woman? The guy reading the eulogy said “I can’t go on until I’ve found out about the current whereabouts of this woman. Sh’s been missing for four years. Anyway they were handing out stars for a military parade somewhere that was to do with all of this. We received a star for our vehicle, a Citroen DS19 with a pickup army-type canvas tilt back, painted in army colours and looked rather like a shark or crocodile. We had to go to fetch that to present it to the organisers, so while we were at it, we though that we would go and hunt down this woman.
Finally, I had to go to look for Sir Brian, so off I went. I was in Gresty Lane and crossed over to Eastern Road. It was all flooded out there, and he came running past with his dog, with a pair of wellingtons, shorts and a sun-hat. At first I wasn’t sure if it was him, nut it was. I had to reverse after him as he had no intention of stopping. I finally caught him on Rope Lane bridge. I told him that some work had come in. He grabbed the notes out of the door pocket to have a look. I went to tell him about those and saw that they had gone. I had to say that a job had come in for next Wednesday, I had to take him off somewhere and that he needed to contact his office for further details. He’d made the odd genial remark here and there about the rain, that kind of thing

I wasn’t up as early as I would otherwise have liked, and after breakfast I started to pack. For some reason or other I have far too much stuff and so I’ve ended up leaving behind the Nikon 1 and a few other things too that I would otherwise have liked to have taken.

Not because of the weight – I’m well within my loading allowance – but for a simple question of space.

In between all of that I had a shower, and I’ve also cut my hair really short. I stuck the washing machine on too so that I will have some clean clothes for when I come back.

The tidying up has been progressing slowly, and there’s still plenty more to do. But I’ll do what I can tomorrow in the time that exists between getting up and leaving the house at 08:00.

As long as I can wash the floor before leaving, that will be fine;

And that’s not all either. I’ve made a lentil and bean pie to use up the rest of the leftovers, only to find that I forgot once more to use the mushrooms that remain.

Some pastry was left so I made an apple turnover.

All of that is now in the freezer. I’ve had to move the bread into the freezer compartment of the fridge. I hope that it stays frozen.

That’s really about everything, I reckon. Except that I had one of my walks this afternoon (and missed the evening walk, and yet still managed to end up with 42% of my daily activity) and took Caliburn for a lap around the block.

Now I’m off to bed. It’s going to be a hectic day tomorrow.

Tuesday 18th June 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… as productive a day as I would have liked today. Full of all kinds of petty interruptions and so on that prevented me from cracking on.

It started well enough though. Up and about long before the third alarm had gone off. I’d been on my travels too, although this was all very confusing. It concerned someone who was allegedly running a taxi, driving around with music playing pretty loud but he didn’t have any taxi plates. He was summoned to talk to a couple of people about all of this and it turned out that the message had come from the Taxi Owners’ Association. He went very begrudgingly to the meeting but came out much happier. Apparently it was just two neighbours from somewhere or other who had written, so he just bought them a drink and the matter had been brushed under the carpet and he was quite happy about that because obviously he didn’t fancy going up against all these taxi drivers because they could all turn nasty and there were so many of them. His wife said something along the lines that they were all pussies anyway and that he would just sweep them aside. She turned to me and said “you’ve had enough confrontation with them and you were relatively unscathed from that point of view” (which was true). And that was that. But then it turned onto trains and we were working with coal trains. I was bragging that we had dealt with every coal train that came out of Crewe. There was that Keith Morris there and he asked “how do you know that you do?”. I said that I was sure. We ended up talking about one particular one that went out early in the morning at about 05:00 and was pulled by two Class 27 locos with 40 wagons. I looked at Margaret for confirmation and she didn’t really say very much. he wanted to know how I knew that they were class 27s. Of course you can tell by the number but I replied “well, I ask! If I want to know something, I ask because I take photos and edit the photos and write about them so if I want to know something about the photos I’ll ask someone locally and they will tell me the answer”.
From there we moved on. I had an old Ford Escort van like I have and we were all going somewhere. There were two seats in the front and a settee in the back but facing backwards rather than forwards. People were clambering in there. I was back in the house getting things ready to leave these people. I had a mattress that I was going to put down in the van for me to sleep on and al old blanket because there was insulation in part of the Escort but not down the left-hand side. So I put the blanket in and used it to fill in the gaps in the walls. They were all looking at it and I explained about condensation and how I was going to sleep in there and then I went to fetch the mattress.

With an early start I had an early breakfast and then cracked on with some work.

First task was to deal with all of the photos from yesterday, and then to attack the dictaphone notes. Another 5 have now disappeared and we are down to just 55. I’ll have to push on and deal with those pretty quickly if I can.

But I was interrupted by trying to arrange another blood test. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh I managed to arrange it for 11:30 tomorrow.

But even as we speak, I had a phone call from the nurse to say that she will be here at about 08:30 tomorrow morning.

After that, I went for another experimental run with Caliburn. But I didn’t get very far, for there was a police road block.

It seems that there was a Fete de dix-huit juin according to the policewoman holding up the traffic.

Whatever the Fete de dix-huit juin is, I really have no idea but the place was swarming with anciens combattants decorated in medals and the like, so it’s quite possibly something to do with the liberation of the town, although that didn’t take place until 31st July 1944.

Whatever it was, we were held up for half an hour – me in a queue of vehicles held up by the police and no controle technique on Caliburn

One thing that I can say is that I could drive reasonably comfortably all things considered. Seeing that I could move hi about, that prompted me to ring up about his annual service and controle technique.

But to my dismay there are no vacancies until the beginning of July and I won’t be here then. So I’ll have to sort out my flights and book him in for as soon as I return.

That took me up to lunchtime, taken once more indoors because it was raining yet again.

It had cleared up by the time I had finished, so i hit the streets for the laboratory.

The men were still working on the medieval walls, but the workmen on the house extension in the rue du Port were likewise working.

They are now working on the rendering on the second wall of the lift shaft – assuming that that there is indeed the lift shaft.

Only one more wall to go, and then I’ll be wondering what they are going to be working on next. There’s such a lot of rebuilding going on in the town right now.

Not much further along, I came to another stop.

There are some remains of an old Jeep dumped on the roundabout at the end of the Place Godal. Presumably that’s something to do with the fete too.

At the Laboratory I handed over the stuff that was extracted from my knee, and found to my surprise that they do blood tests there – and without an appointment too.

If only I had known!

Across the road is the station so I went to pick up my rail tickets for next week, which I had forgotten to do yesterday.

The sun was on the way out as i walked back, and that cheered me up somewhat.

A cold drink followed by a start on adding the photos to yesterday’s blog. But I was surprised at just how quickly the time passed.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, gollowed by one of the cocount dessert things that I had made earlier. Liz had told me not to mut as much milk in, so I put about 350 ml of milk and 50ml of that coconut soya stuff in, mixed it up, and poured it into four bowls into which I had previously put a couple of pineapple rings.

After a couple of hours in the fridge it had set really well and it was delicious.

later on I went out for my walk.

First stop was to the monument at the Rond-Point des Francais Libres to see if I could see anything that might give me a hint of what was happening.

There were a couple of wreaths out there, but nothing that gave me any indication.

I shall have to make enquiries.

Down on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs was a youth standing there, cut off from the mainland by the rising tide.

I gesticulated at him, but he didn’t reply and didn’t seem to be in any distress whatsoever.

He clearly didn’t seem to need any help, and so I left him to it and continued my walk

But had he really be stranded, it wouldn’t have mattered to me because not only would I have been unable to do anything, there was a speedboat loitering around just offshore

They would have been much better-placed to give him assistance.

But they didn’t hang aroudn long after I moved on. They roared past me like their boat was on fire.

Excuse the rather blurred photo but I was taken by surprise by these kids (of course, it’s very bad form for any photographer to be taken by surprise, but that’s neither here nor there).

Just as I was looking at them wondering what was going on, one of them stood up and dived off the sea wall straight into the sea.

I reckon that I was lucky enough to catch it, but what wouldn’t I have given to have had a faster shutter speed?

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, the roar of a couple of diesel engines told me that something large was coming ino port.

It’s our old friend Granville, the new Channel Islands ferry that has been suffering a load of problems just recently.

That’s twice now this week that I’ve seen her in the harbour here. Probably more than I ever saw her in the whole of last year.

She wasn’t the only visitor in the harbour either.

Charles-Marie is down there too, moored up in the inner harbour. She might be preparing for her summer season of voyages.

And while I was admiring her, I overheard some squealing coming from further down the road. Some young girl and her boyfriend were trying to walk along the top of the railings like some kind of tightrope walkers.

The girl wasn’t all that good, and after about four steps and a loud squeal, she fell off, right at my feet.

So now I’m back home and I’m ready for bed. I’m hoping to have a better day tomorrow.

speedboat pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

channel islands ferry granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 30th April 2019 – I’VE NOT HAD …

… a very profitable day today as far as my backlog of work goes. But there have been a few very good reasons for this.

Not the least of which being that I had yet another bad night. Tossing and turning for too much of it without actually departing hence.

At one point I must have been away with the fairies because I was off on my travels again. There was an exam taking place last night and I was doing part of the English syllabus. I was there in the exam room struggling my way through the first of three questions that I needed to answer when I suddenly found out that I had been named as a volunteer to take place in some kind of exam. They had needed someone to act as a “prop” to lie down while they danced a Highland Fling over and around, rather like a Highland sword dance. I was grabbed for this and taken out of my own exam before I’d even finished the first question. I was made to lie down and was dragged all the way across the floor and these ice floes until I was in the correct position. By now I was miles away from where my exam was taking place. All of these people turned up in a whole collection of old cars, motor bikes, pedal cycles. Even a unicycle that didn’t have a rider, an autonomous one. They all seemed to be symbolic of death. An old vehicle pulled up with a coffin in it and I had to lie there while they did this dance around me. I didn’t have a clue what was happening. Everyone was going on about their exams but I replied that they could consider themselves lucky. I hadn’t finished my first question yet, I only had three hours and I’d been dragged away over here and I don’t know when I’m going to end up back. All these kids started to join in. At one time a kid was trying to do a handstand balancing on two shovels. He could get himself off the ground like this but then he fell over and all the while I was panicking about my exam with all these old cars and people all around me trying to get me to be the prop for this Highland dance thing.

Nevertheless, just for another change I was up and about before the third alarm went off, but with some not inconsiderable effort too;

The usual morning performance was followed by a shower. I need to get myself clean and tidy because I’m having visitors. That also meant a really good clean-up around the apartment too to make it look more respectable.

Liz turned up bang on time so we had a coffee, biscuits and a good chat for an hour and a half until she had to go off for her appointment. I made a start on the dictaphone notes.

But I didn’t get very far. I had two interruptions, one half an hour after the other.

The second one, the most important one, I’ll tell you about in a day or so’s time when I’m ready. Instead I’ll tell you about the first.

In a few months time I’m hoping to go a-voyaging again and I shall be having my hands full as usual. Changing the lenses over with one hand free with the Nikon 1 is quite possible with practice, but with a full-size camera it’s impossible.

And so idly surfing the internet like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … a week or so ago I found one of these.

It’s second-hand, so I paid nothing whatever like the full retail price on here, but it’s only meant to be for use when I’m travelling on foot or on the train, not in Caliburn.

It means that I only need to lug around this one and the 50mm f1.8 lens for indoor shots, rather than all of the equipment.

The trouble with a lens like this is that with it trying to be everything, it ends up being nothing so I’m not expecting the quality to be as good as a pure focal-length lens, but it won’t have all that much use.

But anyway, you can judge for yourselves with the photos below.

Lunch was taken indoors again as there was a high wind and then I sat down to finish off the dictaphone notes.

Just as I did the last one of today’s batch, I crashed out. i’d already been away once or twice during the morning but this was more serious. I ended up in bed for 40 minutes, feeling like death.

Still feeling not much like it, I fitted the new lens onto the Nikon and went off on the prowl.

First thing that I noticed was a nice yacht in the distance. I reckoned that this might give me a good opportunity to try out the lens to see what it’s like.

And it’s not as bad as I was expecting.

We had a trawler right out to sea too heading back towards the Fish-Processing plant here in Granville.

It was unfortunately into the sun, but it was still worth an attempt. And it didn’t come out too badly either, although I had to manipulate the image somewhat to make it different.

Tomorrow, I’ll go out with the polarising filter and have a play with that and see what difference it might take. It might cut down some of the reflected sunlight off the surface of the water.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been saying for a while that these long gaps between seeing Normandy Trader and Thora in here must be down to the fact that the turn-rounds are so quick that I have been missing them.

And this is a case in point.

Just as I rounded the headland, I noticed Normandy Trader slipping silently out of the harbour.

She wasn’t there last night so she must have slipped in on the early morning tide, unloaded while the tide was out, and gone out again at the first available opportunity.

And I know what she does to earn her living too.

Her trips from Jersey to here are generally chartered by a co-operative of shell-fishermen who engage her to bring their catch over to Granville.

In an effort to catch Normandy trader heading off into the sunset, I wandered back over to the other side of the headland.

However I was rather disrupted by the noise coming from out of the bay over near St Martin de Brehal.

We have one of the Ile de Chausey ferries doing a trip around the bay. And whoever is giving the running commentary has no need of a loud-hailer or a tannoy.

It was quite a long wait for Normandy Trader to put in an appearance so I had to wait for a while.

But she turned up sooner or later and I wa sable to take a really good photo of her, with the Ile de Chausey nicely silhouetted in the background;

I really am going to gave to try the polarising filter and see if that gives me any better effects.

Back here, I dealt with the photos and then amended a few blog entries. I’m now back as far as Thursday 18th April.

That took me up to tea-time which was the rest of the falafel with steamed vegetables and cheese sauce, followed by rice pudding.

Later on I went outside for my usual evening walk.

My route took me past the house that is being renovated on the corner of the rue du Nord where I could inspect the progress that they have been making.

I noticed that the driveway for the house has been gravelled and levelled out, just as if they are about to drop a load of concrete onto it. It should be quite interesting to see it in a couple of weeks time

Further on along my walk I heard a noise coming up from the beach.

Having a look down over the wall, I noticed that there was a little party going on on the beach by the Plat Gousset.

It wasn’t that warm as far as I was concerned but I don’t suppose it matters if you are pretty well fuelled up. It’s all good fun if you are in good company.

So I’m off to bed. I have lots to do tomorrow and I have – surprise surprise – an appointment at 15:00 tomorrow. There’s a cunning plan rearing its head.

trawler fishing boat english channel granville manche normandy france

trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

normandy trader port de granville harbour manche normandy france

tourist boat st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

trawler english channel jersey channel island granville manche normandy france

st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

normandy trader ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Saturday 27th April 2019 – A HURRICANE …

… is not the ideal weather in which to be playing football.

It’s even worse when you are standing on the touchline watching the game too. Howling, whining gusts of winds of incredible violence, sudden torrential downpours that drenched everyone through and disappeared before one had time to put on one’s rain gear.

What surprised me was that the match was quite entertaining given the circumstances.

I didn’t feel much like going, though. yet another bad night. Yet another early awakening.

And yet another interesting nocturnal voyage. Last night I was doing my pension calculations. I worked out that I would get about £19:00 per month from the Belgian Government, £19:00 per month from the French Government but then I suddenly realised that i was living in Canada and I was entitled to a small pension from them because I’d been here for a couple of years and been working. That meant that I would be entitled to about £57:00 per month. I thought that that was fine because if I were very careful I could live on that. Of course everyone ridiculed this and said that it can’t be done, but one girl sitting at this table in the café said that there were loads of other things that I could do to raise money – for example she picked the entire crop of tea in the whole of Canada, to which I thought “I bet that it doesn’t take you long, does it?” because there isn’t all that much there at all. We were sitting outside what used to be a café but had closed down and the sign had been practically painted over. Someone was giving me some food – two cheese and onion sandwiches cut into triangles and put in a plastic bag and they went to give me the plastic bag. They said “hang on a minute – where’s your tray?” so I went over to where I had been sitting. “Ohh it’s over there is it?” they said and gave me this pack of sandwiches.

I was wide awake when the alarm went off at 06:00 but it was more like 06:45 when I left the stinking pit. Medication, breakfast and then a shower, and I was ready for the shops.

Braving the tempest raging outside, I made it to Caliburn ready to head to LIDL.

And you can see just how violently the storm was raging. You can actually see a wave of storm moving across the image of the photograph here.

I was glad that I was only out there for a matter of 30 seconds while I ran across the car park, and not actually having to walk to the shops.

After LIDL I went next to Noz and then to LeClerc. And all in all, I bought next to nothing and spent about €25:00 in all.

On the shopping list today was an aubergine. I’ve run out of aubergine and kidney bean whatsit so it’s time to make some more. I’s probably going to be an idea for me to spend one evening a week cooking some mega-meal, like a curry or a giant pie or an apple tart or something, parcel it up into individual-sized portions and freeze the portions. But then, how about me getting organised? I must be getting older.

Back here, I put the frozen food away and then crashed out for 20 minutes on the chair. Feeling the strain early in the day, I am.

Once I’d recovered myself, I put the shopping away and that took me nicely up to lunch. Once again, indoors in view of the horrendous weather.

This afternoon I had plenty of things to do but ended up as usual being side-tracked. I was having a little 10-minute play around with my 3D program and ended up running off down a long alleyway with a little application that I had discovered.

As well as that, I had an eye on the live updates for two football matches being played this afternoon. Crewe Alexandra came back from being dead and buried at 3-1 to run out 4-3 winners against Forest Green Rovers, and Morton scored a late winner at Dunfermline to escape relegation. Morton have in fact won more points in their last two matches than they have won in the previous two months.

At 18:15 I headed off to the football. The weather had improved in that the rain had stopped. But I wasn’t taking any chances and took my waterproof gear with me in the small rucksack.

There was a little deviation on my route. I had run out of that caffeine-based energy drink and that is what I use sometimes to lift me up when I’m flat out. I’d forgotten to buy any today but as LIDL was open and I was early I popped in for a few cans.

At the football, USM Donville were playing US Percy. I noticed quite a difference in the stature of the players on the field. The Donville players looked as if they were 11 ordinary people whom you might find on any street anywhere, whereas the Percy players looked more like athletes.

Nevertheless, on the field they were quite evenly matched and despite the wind it was an entertaining game. Donville had a n°9 playing up front who had some skill but was pretty much a lightweight easily pushed off the ball.

After 30 minutes, the Donville player pulled off a midfielder, pulled the n°9 back into a rather attacking midfield position, and sent on a substitute to play up front. He didn’t have the skill, but was much more aggressive and the game picked up.

Percy, playing against the wind, took the lead but Donville soon pulled back to level.

After the break, the second half was a game of two quarters. At first Percy had the ascendency and scored a second goal. But later in the game Donville gained the upper hand.

The n°12 playing up front got himself into some good positions. Had he had someone playing up front with him, something may well have come of them. He was quite unlucky with two good chances that he had too.

Not only that, had the ref not been unsighted and had the incident happened on the side of the field where the linesman could have seen it, Donville might have been awarded a penalty for a handball in the penalty area.

So 2-1 to Percy, which was rather unfair on Donville but these things happen in football.

On the way back, I was caught in a torrential downpour and by the time I had struggled into shelter to put on my waterproof trousers I was soaked to the skin and the downpour had passed.

Back here and hungry, I fancied something different for tea rather than a tinned meat.

So I cooked some pasta and when it was done, drained it off, added a big handful of frozen spinach, some garlic, some ground pepper and olive oil and warmed it all right though. The secret of course is not to overcook the spinach. That’s how you kill off all of the vitamins and minerals.

Once it was thoroughly warmed through I added a big handful of grated vegan cheese and stirred it all around.

That was probably the most delicious instant meal that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday and a lie-in I hope. I need a decent sleep, a good relax, and the will and energy to get myself back on track. My life is running away with me and I can’t seem to catch it up.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: caliburn

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

Sunday 1st December 2019 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

Saturday 30th November 2019 – THINGS ARE …

Saturday 9th November 2019 – CALIBURN IS BACK.

Tuesday 5th November 2019 – CALIBURN HAS GONE …

Friday 1st November 2019 – I FOUND …

Monday 28th October 2019 – FOR PUDDING TONIGHT …

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 – HATS OFF …

Saturday 19th October 2019 – I SEEM TO HAVE …

Saturday 7th September 2019 – I HAVE THROWN AWAY …

Wednesday 26th June 2019 – MY LAST DAY …

Tuesday 18th June 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

Tuesday 30th April 2019 – I’VE NOT HAD …

Saturday 27th April 2019 – A HURRICANE …

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