Tag Archives: fishing

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 – WE’VE BEEN HAVING …

… something of a nautical day again today instead of the aviation day that we had at the weekend.

This guy out there in the English Channel in his little cabin cruiser with a couple of fishing roads hanging out over the back is just typical of what was going on out there this afternoon.

It’s quite possible that it has something to do with the arrival of the Parisians fleeing confinement at their main address and heading out to their second homes of whatever accommodation they have been able to hire at short notice, but the sea was absolutely heaving with people this afternoon in all kinds of water craft.

And when I say “all kinds of water craft” I really do mean that because this is yet another example of what was going on down below me in the English Channel.

Someone has decided to go out for a paddle on his paddle board and if he has paddled like that all the way around the Pointe du Roc from the port de plaisance, then he’s been doing really well because that’s not going to be an easy paddle, even when the weather is calm and the sea is smooth.

Actually the weather was quite calm this afternoon and it was rather warm, although not that warm that taking off your shirt was ever going to be any kind of option as far as I was concerned.

This on the other hand is more like the kind of maritime activity that we are accustomed to see around here these days.

The tide is well in and the harbour gates are open so every now and again a trawler will set sail and head out to the open sea for another bout of fishing activity.

Regardless of the effects of Brexit to date, fishing is still continuing out there in the English Channel and the Bay of Granville although with relations between the UK and the EU deteriorating rapidly as the UK breaches Law after Law and Agreement after Agreement, how long this situation will continue is anyone’s guess.

This morning, I was up once more just after the first alarm went off and after the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been but to my surprise there was nothing at all on there. I must have slept soundly all the way through until the alarm.

With nothing to transcribe on the dictaphone I attacked the photos from July 2019. Right now I’m just pulling into the Travel Inn Motel in Lamoure, North Dakota, and there’s only about 90 to do now before the end of the month.

That’s only part of the problem though. For the month of August having made an initial run-through of the photos, there are 2091 of those that survived the first run-through so bearing in mind that many of them will produce two or even more images, we are looking at probably 2500 photos that will be done. And about 20 videos too.

There was the Welsh lesson this morning too. Having completed my day’s supply of photos I did some preparation for my course and then armed with a mug of hot chocolate and a slice of my sourdough fruit bread, I went for my lesson.

In contrast to last week it went rather better although it’s sad that I have forgotten more than I seem to be remembering right now.

For the rest of the day I haven’t stopped for a meal as I started a project that is taking more time than ever I anticipated that it would and I can see the computer being left on all the time while I’m away in Leuven. I have a couple of computer drives that failed a while ago and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall I’ve been trying to get them to fire up.

A few weeks ago I managed to make one of them work and so this afternoon I started to access the sectors manually. It’s probably 20 years since I’ve done anything like this and while computers have speeded up dramatically in that time, using pseudo-DOS hasn’t and hard drives are measured in Terabytes these days not Megabytes.

Having started at about 14:30 this afternoon and it’s now 21:50 and it’s done 2.5%. I thought that it would be a slow, laborious process but not quite as slow as this. And that’s not to say that I’ll be able to salvage anything. If any individual item of the data has spread over a defective sector then that will not be recoverable for a start.

While the computer was doing what it could do on its own I nipped out for my afternoon walk.

Although there wasn’t all that much beach to be on right now because of the tide, it was proving to be quite popular this afternoon. The weather was really beautiful this afternoon with bright sunshine, bright blue sky and very few clouds in the sky.

There were plenty of people wandering around there on the paths too. Not much respect for social distancing and not as much respect for mask-wearing either. But I’m sure that you are fed up of me going on about all of this. It will become as obsessive as the pathetic parking that features on here when I’m having one of my moments.

Instead, I pushed off along the path down to the end by the lighthouse and across the lawn at the bottom.

And as I reached the end of the lawn by the car park I bounced into an enormous pile of excitement down there by the roundabout.

From this viewpoint I wasn’t able to understand exactly what was going on but there were a couple of police motorcyclists down there and they seem to have pulled over a motorcyclist and his female pillion passenger.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, while I’m not usually averse to going down and asking what is going on, there are moments when it is clearly inappropriate and this is one of them. I’m sure that they didn’t want me going down there intruding at a moment like this so I left them to it.

Instead, I concentrated on what else was going on all around me.

The most important thing that is happening right now is the reroofing that’s going on down at the College Malraux. As you can see, they seem to be making some reasonable progress since the last time that I had a good moan about it and they now have ripped off yet another bay on the roof.

They have almost finished putting the laths on there now too so it looks as if the fitting of the slates won’t be too far behind. It’ll be interesting to see where they will have reached when I come back from Leuven on Saturday afternoon, assuming that they let me out of Castle Anthrax.

A little earlier on I mentioned that there was all kinds of activity going on out at sea this afternoon and all types of water craft out there at sea this afternoon.

From my vantage point at the end of the headland I could see this zodiac roaring away into the bay down below. There didn’t seem to be any fishing rods on display but that isn’t to say that they are or aren’t fishermen. But the lifejacket that the passenger was wearing looked to be rather more substantial than you might expect for someone who would have to wield a fishing rod around.

Anyway they soon cleared off round the corner and out of sight towards the port so whatever it is that they were doing, they seems to have finished it and the tide has still a good while to go before the harbour is inaccessible.

While I was admiring the zodiac out in the bay I was overflown by a light aircraft. We’re having some aerial activity to day too.

This aeroplane is F-BUKK, which tells me that it’s a Wassmer WA54 Atlantic, a design of aeroplane that dates from as far back as 1966. They have a special place in aviation history as they are the first aeroplanes built of composite materials.

They are actually probably the only type of true passenger aeroplanes that we have seen flying out of Granville airport as they have seats for three passengers as well as the pilot.

This one is a WA54 rather that a WA 50-something else because it has the larger 180hp Lycoming “O-360-A1LD” engine rather than the 150 hp Lycoming “O-320-E2A” engine. 55 of this model were built.

She had taken off from Granville and gone for a good flight down the Brittany coast almost as far as lannion where she turned round and came back to Granville again.

Down at the chantier navale there was a surprise waiting for me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw the mobile boat lift hovering away over Hermes 1 and I speculated that it had come to load up the trawler and drop it back into the water at the following high tide.

Anyway, I don’t know what must have happened but Hermes 1 is still there and the mobile boat lift is back in its parking place. All that I can think of is that they needed to reposition her chocks so that she would sit in a different position so that they could work on another part of her hull.

There were things going on in the inner harbour this afternoon too. A large lorry seemed to be unloading its charge down by the loading bay.

Presumably this means that we are going to be having a visit from one or other or maybe even both of the two Jersey freighters in the course of the next couple of days.

From there I headed back to home and my hot mug of coffee and to see how my manual analysis of the disk was doing. And, as I said, it was very, very slowly. This is going to be a very long job.

While it was doing bits and pieces that I could leave it alone to do, I did a little more of the arrears of my trip to Central Europe and I’m now IN A HOTEL IN FÛRTH in Central Germany.

After the guitar practice I carried on with the disk analysis and then I wrote out my notes for the day. And now I’m off to bed. I have an early start tomorrow as I’m off to Castle Anthrax and there’s a lot to do before I go.

Tuesday 9th March 2021 – WE’VE BEEN HAVING …

… a nautical afternoon this afternoon. It seems that every man and his dog were out there doing some kind of maritime activity this afternoon.

So while you admire the yacht that went sailing by the headland at the Pointe du Roc this afternoon, I finished writing my notes last night, only to find that I couldn’t go off to sleep. In the end I gave it up as a bad job and carried on working on clearing duplicates out of the back-up drive.

It was after 01:30 when I finally went off to bed, which was not what I was planning on at all with an alarm call at 06:00 and a Welsh lesson on Zoom later in the morning.

And while you admire another image of a trawler sailing past the headland towards the harbour in the wake of the yacht that we have just seen, I went to find out where I’d been during the night.

And a very welcome return to Zero who a couple of years ago used to accompany me on my travels on quite a regular basis but hasn’t been around for a while.

Last night I was taking her to a football match but it was the middle of the winter so we were putting on layers of clothes. She was dressed in a big heavy coat. When it was time to go I found that I was dressed in some kind of yellow thermal tights but I’d forgotten to put on my trousers so I had to go back. That was annoying because I’d been urging her to hurry up and now she was ready, I wasn’t. Her father wasn’t all that keen on her going – I don’t know if it was because of me or because of the football but her mother was fine with the idea.

This morning, I wasn’t feeling anything like working. It was all that I could do to keep awake and I was really surprised that I’d even managed to crawl out of bed. As a result I was totally unprepared for my Welsh lesson and it didn’t pass very well at all. Most of the time was spent trying to keep awake.

It was a very late lunch too. Our Welsh lesson overran. I was ready for my sandwiches too by the time that we stopped. And to my dismay, the apples that I’d bought the other day haven’t survived.

After lunch I came in to start work but I fell asleep instead. And I was out for about an hour, comfortable on the chair in the office. That was disappointing but it wasn’t a surprise.

My afternoon walk wasn’t disturbed by neighbours or shopping too, but by a flat battery in the NIKON D500. As I went to take a photo of the people out on the Plat Gousset it just petered out.

And so I had to dash back into the apartment where I grabbed hold of the old NIKON D3000 and swap over the camera lens and then dash back out again for my photos.

And when I say “old” NIKON D3000 I do mean “old” as well. It was an end-of-series discontinued range that I bought in a hurry in QUEBEC IN MAY 2012 after I dropped the NIKON D5000 on a concrete floor and cracked the casing.

And to my surprise, it’s kept on going after all this and still producing some kind of acceptable results.

As I mentioned earlier, we were having a nautical afternoon today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last summer we were seeing here and there a bright yellow zodiac roaring around offshore. We seem to be in luck, or maybe it’s a sign that the summer is here, because the zodiac is back out there offshore.

There are two guys in there fishing – or, at least – one of the two guys is fishing. The second one is fixing his fishing line ready to cast off out to sea.

And I suppose that we’ll be back as we have been every year since I’ve been living here, watching hundreds of people fishing and catching nothing whatever at all.

There was nothing else doing out to sea off the end of the Pointe du Roc, so I walked around the corner to the viewpoint over the port.

You have probably noticed that the tide was quite a way in so the outer harbour is flooded.

We saw earlier one of the trawlers coming back into port and here is another one coming into the port, one of the crustacean boats with the roof over the hold to keep the seagulls from stealing the catch. There’s already one of the boats there at the Fish Processing Plant unloading its catch.

The two fishing boats that have been moored there for the past couple of days here seem to have moved on today, but the same four boats in the chantier navale are still there, and look as if they are going to be there for a while as well.

A new arrival in the port today though is Thora, one of the two Jersey freighters.

They seem to be finding plenty of work going on right now and that’s good news for the port. We need all of the business that we can find.

Back here at the apartment I had my coffee and coffee cake and finally settled down to do some work. I’ve managed to edit 20-odd photos this afternoon, some of which involved doing some research and involved the help of a few people in a Group on a Social Networking site who were able to identify a twisting pile of metal as a Bedford JSL.

Such is the power of the internet.

During a few pauses here and there I’ve been going through the duplicate files on the back-up drive and what with last night’s “overtime” and the bits and pieces that I’ve done today, I now have 927GB free. But of course, the farther ahead that I advance, the slower the work becomes.

There was the hour on the guitars of course, and then a hurried tea – stuffed peppers with rice and the last of the jam pie- because there was football on the internet again – Barry Town v Penybont in the JD Cymru League.

It’s easy to see why there seem to be three clubs – TNS, Bala Town and Connah’s Quay Nomads – way out in front of the League because this match was really pretty aimless.

These two teams are fourth and fifth, and Penybont won the match with a deflected shot out of nothing from 20 yards, but apart from that neither team ever looked like doing anything. Long, aimless balls out of defence and plenty of misplaced passes, quite a contrast to the skill that was clearly evident on Saturday when TNS played Bala Town.

There’s a huge gap in skill between the top three and those following on behind at quite a distance.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I won’t have a long sleep tonight, thanks to the football, so I probably won’t be on form tomorrow either. But we’ll see how we go. At least the backlog of photos seems to be shifting and that’s something to appreciate, I suppose.

Saturday 24th October 2020 – YESTERDAY I MENTIONED …

… that the high winds that we had been promised for Wednesday and Thursday and which we never received looked as if they might be arriving during the evening.

Well, they certainly did. And in spades too. So while you admire a few photos of the waves crashing over the sea wall even though the tide is a long way out, I’ll tell you about how my day went.

And unfortunately it didn’t start off too well at all. Another miserable day when it was 06:55 when I finally pucked up the courage to leave the bed.

Mind you, I had been out on my travels last night.

We started off, my German friend and I going off on a OUSA meeting in London. We pulled up at a car park and I started to get my stuff ready. he said “we have plenty of time yet” and there were one or two jobs that we needed to do, so we went off to do a couple of these jobs. We then got onto the station. I hadn’t brought my ticket reference form with me but luckily when Hans had booked his ticket he’d booked 2 seats so I was able to scan my ticket off his booking. We went downstairs to find our train. We ended up in Granville, in the Rue Lecampion waiting for our train there. We were waiting and waiting, and suddenly a horrible thought “God, my computer! I’d forgotten to bring my computer!”. He said “gosh! What are we going to do now?”. I replied “I’m not sure”. He said “we could borrow one off the place where we were staying”. I said “maybe” and he added “of course you could. You’ve paid to stay there. Of course they will lend you a computer”. We saw a train in the distance and we thought “this is it now anyway”. Eventually the train pulled in and we ran after it because it was shorter than we were expecting, only to find that it was the wrong train. We all went to wait underneath the bus stop. I was thinking that if I’d known that it was the wrong train I could have had time to go back to the car to get my computer and come back again. We got on board our train and the ticket collector came round. He was warning people that there was a £400 fine for not having a ticket. My friend said something about them using judo and the guy replied “I use judo. I’m a judo expert” so they started to discuss throws and moves. My friend was definitely getting the upper hand with this practice. Then they asked “what happened if someone came to knock on your door? How would you respond to that?”. I said immediately “with a tanga”. The guy immediately recognised that and Hans recognised it so they did this Tanga-type of attack and ddefence down the corridor of this train, disturbing all the public and making themselves conspicuous in front of the passers-by. This was a feverish sweat again.

I must have gone back to sleep and stepped right back into the voyage where I left off because by now we were on the Metro heading towards the hotel and my friend booked himself in. I said “don’t forget to book me in as well. The woman said “I’ll deal with you in a moment”. Eventually she turned to me and I went to book myself in. I said “there will also be a name for Mr Huysgen” so she had a look through and found his reservation. “But he’s not eating here tonight. He has no meal reservation”. I said “no, he’s probably going to be eating at the Embassy”. I took his reservation but then thought “how are we going to know where to meet know that I don’t have my computer with me.

Later on, we were in Stoke on Trent, sitting in a car, a RHD Ford Cortina mkI but driving on the right as in Europe so my driving seat was against the kerb. We were looking through the papers. There was an election and there was a woman there called Margaret Williams or Maureen Williams. How it began was that we noticed that two pages in the local newspaper were stuck together. I separated them and found out that they’d actually printed the wrong candidates. They’d printed the candidates for the previous year 1992 instead of this year 1993 so they’d had to glue an extra page over the top to cover this up. The girl whom I was with – it could have been TOTGA even pointed to this Williams woman “I’m going to vote for her because she wants any job that’s going and we want to get her out of where she is now”. I replied “I actually know her and I’ll be disappointed if she goes because she’s a really, really keen worker”. My partner said “yes, the day that all of the taxis were deregulated she had someone infiltrate into there”. I thought “yes!”. So I said “yes, and not just taxis either. She was getting people infiltrated into travel agencies and several other occupations and she was even working on getting someone infiltrated into estate agents”. The girl I was with said “that’s going to upset a load of people isn’t it?”. Just then we decided to pull away from the kerb where we were parked but there was a queue of traffic behind up. I set off but some woman behind was really annoyed that I’d set off. She came along and overtook me and almost forced me into the kerb in order to get past. Whoever I was with made some remark about it. I replied “don’t you worry. We’ll get her around the next corner where we branch off”

It’s hardly a surprise that it took me so long to wake up with all of that going on.

There was time to have a shower and then it was off to the shops. Neither Noz nor LeClerc came up with anything of any importance, although Rosemary phoned me for a chat while I was on the LeClerc car park.

Back home I put down the shopping and then came into my little office where, shame as it is to admit it, I crashed out. Out completely and properly – so much so that I went off on a voyage.

I was somewhee in the High Arctic and I head that a supply ship that would carry passengeers would be here the next day. I thught that there might be an opportunity for me to finally get to Grize Fjord but before I booked a berth I needed to find out what the weather was like. There was a café in the town, a very primitive, spartan place so I thought that I’d ask in there. I went in but just as I went in the woman behind the counter said that she needed to pop out for a moment. I waited but she never came back so I went over to the computer against the wall to check my e-mails. After a while she still hadn’t come back but more and more people were coming into the café. I thought that if she doesn’t come back soon or starts to serve these new arrivals before me, I’d miss my opportunity of getting out there.

By the time I awoke it was way, way past my lunch break and there wasn’t time to do much else before it was walkies-time.

So finally shaking myself out of my lethargy I headed off outside – head first into a gale-force wind.

But however strong the wind might be, it’s never going to be strong enough to daunt the spirits of the local fishermen. Here are a few scrambling over the rocks, loaded up with equipment.

I can’t tell unfortunately if they are coming back from or going to their positions but one thing is certain. They aren’t carrying any catch with them so if they are coming back, they haven’t had any luck, which seems to be quite usual.

With hordes of epopel about, despite the weather, I walked along to the gate in the Rue du Nord where you go down to the path underneath the walls.

You can see how they are doing with the roof to the College Malraux. No-one up there today of course. The building to the front of it is mine, then the white one in front of that is the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs and then there is the building in which are the Public Rooms.

You can see the medieval … errr … bathroom built into the walls as well and between there and the garden of the Public Rooms is the viewpoint that looks out over the bay.

Only one or two people down on the path, which was surprising seeing as it’s pretty much out of the wind, so I took the opportunity to have a couple of 100-yard runs while there was no-one in view.

Stopping for a minute or so down there, I noticed some activity round by the tidal swimming pool. A few people have decided to go for a walk down there on the beach and for reasons that only they know, to do a lap of the swimming pool.

The tide must be going out right now, because the swimming pool is pretty full. If you’ve seen my photos of the tide right out, you’ll have noticed that the pool is quite empty. Water doesn’t stay in it for long.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago we saw some people dressed in their winter clothes sitting in camping chairs on the beach. A rather bizarre sight, I thought.

Today, we have something pretty similar. There’s a guy clearly making himself at home down on the sand so he’s much more brave than I am in this weather. And you’ll notice the people wearing facemasks on the promenade. That’s one of the “designated areas” where masks must be worn.

And wheelchairs too. There’s a Centre de Re-education – a place where sick people go to recover their life-skills like walking, talking etc – in one of the buildings here and there are always plenty of infirm people and people who have suffered accidents walking around – or being wheeled around.

Some of them make me feel quite sorry and make me realise how lucky I am. Just recently I’ve seen a couple of kids with bits missing.

There’s an old saying that “it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good” and that’s certainly the case here.

Most of us are here struggling in a howling gale that’s really difficult to walk against and down there in the bay is someone who is, would you believe, kite-surfing! Kite-surfing in this storm that we are having. I hope that he has some good insurance.

Watching that was more than I could stomach right now. I wandered off to watch the waves hurtling down over the sea walls at the port.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had finished editing all of the outstanding photos from over the summer. That’s not quite true. They all needed the copyright and information layers added, and that was my task for right now.

That took me up to 18:00 and the football on the internet.

A few weeks ago TNS had played Y Fflint and put 10 past them. Today it was the turn of the other promoted side, Haverfordwest County, to come up to Oswestry and face the music.

And much to everyone’s surprise, despite TNS having 65% of the possession, Haverfordwest took the lead. And when TNS equalised, Haverfordwest went and scored another to go back into the lead.

Of course, it was too good to last. An expensively (for the Welsh Premier League) assembled team training full-time would eventually have too much in the tank for a bunch of part-timers from South-West Wales and late in the game TNS scored two goals to win the match. But it was a very plucky performance by the losers and they can go home with their heads held high.

Tea was at half-time, out of a tin. I was in a rush.

There’s no chance of going out for a walk tonight. It’s raining down in sheets and there’s a gale blowing. One look out of the window was enough to tell me that I’ve had it for tonight. I’ll stay in instead. After all, you can’t win a coconut every time.

In fact it reminds me of that scene in Bamber Gascoigne’s “Share My Lettuce” where the character talks at great length about his birdwatching activities and how he camouflages himself. But then he always carries a large umbrella.
The narrator asks him “but doesn’t that frighten away the birds when they see that?”
To which the character replied “of course it does. But I’m not getting wet for a load of bleeding birds!”

Thursday 15th October 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

… when I asked yesterday “surely this can’t continue” or whatever it was that I said.

Consequently this morning, I missed the third alarm. Not by many minutes, but a miss is as good as a mile, I suppose.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels again somewhat. I’d been looking around, searching for different things about the house and came across an automatic firearm – a big heavy thing, silver one. I was messing around with that and then took it off to show a friend. He and I had a play around doing all kinds of different things. Then we were out in the town with it and there was a lot of trouble about theft and violence, groups, all this kind of thing. We thought that we would be bound to be searched and if they found this firearm we’ve had it even though we aren’t actually doing anything with it. The nearest official building to where we were was the Nigerian embassy so we took the gun there and handed it in. Back home a few days later I was about to go into the living room when I heard my father ask “does anyone know what’s happened to my gun? It’s gone”. One of my brothers and sisters piped up to say “Eric and his friend had it”. He rang up my friend and he told him what had happened but cutting out the flamboyant bits. I was concerned about this because I was going to get into a load of trouble by taking it but my father seemed to be rather nonchalant about this. I walked off into the room something like a hospital waiting room and as I was walking in a woman was walking out. “Ohh I have your food here” she said. “I wondered when you were coming back. I’ll bring it in”. I was loaded up with loads of other stuff that I was dropping on my way in and had to try about three doors before I found which one was the correct one. I went in and sat down and waited for the next part of this story to happen.

Which of course, it didn’t.

Having sorted out the dictaphone I had a good shower and clean-up. And a weigh-in too. And I’ve lost that extra weight that I put on in Leuven, having now accelerated my fitness programme a little. If I keep up this regime and continue to lose weight at this rate, by the time my next birthday comes round I’ll have gone completely.

And now it’s time to head for the shops.

For a change I didn’t but anything extra, but I was still loaded up like a packhorse. And when the 2kg bag of apples burst, I ended up having to stick them in the shoulder bag too and that wasn’t part of the plan. It was quite a stagger back home, loaded up as I was.

And to make matters worse, the battery in the NIKON 1 J5 decided to go flat even though there were plenty of interesting things to photograph. And I only charged up the battery the other day too. I hope that that’s not going to start playing up.

Back here I made a drink and sat down – and then crashed out, which is no surprise. I recovered in time to perform a major upgrade of the computer before lunch, something that surprised me too.

After lunch, with more of my delicious bread, I had a task to perform that I’ve been putting off for several months. There were a plie of *.mkv files on my computer that simply wouldn’t allow themselves to be deleted. I spent some time experimenting with the file properties of one of them and in the end I managed to delete it.

There were about 20 altogether and I had to adjust their properties one by one too, but at least they have all gone now, which is good news.

Next task was the photos of July 2010 in Switzerland and Austria. And here I came up against another problem. Instead of using a dictaphone, I was speaking loudly so that the dashcam in Caliburn would pick up the details. But it didn’t do it well enough so that can be classed as a failure.

But this is how you learn, isn’t it?

In the end I had to look for road signs, names of buildings, town signs, that kind of thing on the dashcam recordings to work out where I was and to follow my route on an internet mapping service to work out where I was.

That took an age, as you can imagine, but now all of the photos for that month have been edited, processed and correctly identified. Another job completed.

There just remains the photos for August which should be interesting, because all of those road signs are in either Czech, Slovak or Hungarian and that is going to lead to difficulties when I see a building name.

Having made some good progress I could go outside for my afternoon walk, almost bowling over four people whom I hadn’t seen before entering the building. Elderly people, so I reckon that someone has let out their apartment for holidaymakers.

Across the car park, the scaffolding seems now to be complete as far as they intend to go. They’ve even put their advertisements on it to let us know who they are. And as for the container, it’s not a container at all but a very large skip. Benne pour bois – “skip for wood”. So that’s where they will be disposing of all of their old laths.

And their compund has blown down again. They aren’t having much luck with that. I mean – it’s not as if it’s windy right now outside.

In fact, the weather is quite changeable today.

And no photo can sum that up better than this one of the coast higher up the Cetentin Peninsula. If you look at the view round by Montmartin sur Mer towards the left, you can see the sun shining down on the houses, making them appear so nice and bright.

But yet just a couple of miles away, there’s a huge rainstorm throwing it down just there and everywhere is dark and gloomy.

Yesterday I mentioned that it looks as if the fishing season has started in earnest, and I’m very probably right.

We’re still a good half-hour before the time that the harbour gates open, so all of the big trawler-type vessels are heading for home, presumably with quite a good catch. Here are three of them heading for home and they all seem to be surrounded by socks of fleagulls

We also have a yacht out there over towards the Ile de Chausey. He’s picked a nice day to go out for a sail because it looked quite nice over there.

While I was scanning the horizon for more trawlers, I came across this object out at sea just off the coast of Jersey near the port of St Helier.

It certainly wasn’t one of our two freighters or a trawler – the superstructure is all wrong. And so I took a photo of it with the aim, when I’m at home, of cropping it and blowing it up (the image, not the object of course) to see if I can identify it.

Not that it was easy, but an examination of plots of ships in the area reveals that there’s a French research ship, the Antea, out there in that vicinity. And an examination of her photo reveals a superstructure quite like the superstructure of this ship here. So it may well be her

As I walked on along the lawn at the Pointe du Roc I came across all of the brats. It looks as if the orienteering classes are back up and running … “very good!” – ed … again after a pause last week.

My route continued on past the Coastguard Post to the end of the headland, and looking down onto the rocks I could see that the fishermen are back again. And as usual, in the time that I was watching them, no-one actually caught anything.

We also had a kayaker out there, and I bet that he was quite cold out there this afternoon because you aren’t supposed to light a fire in your canoe. Everyone knows that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last year or so there have been plenty of rebuilding projects going on all over the port area.

And it looks as if they aren’t finished yet. There’s another crew over by the Ferry Terminal. They have a digger, a shipping container or skip and an assortment of all kinds of other stuff. it will be interesting to see what they are doing.

Joly France, one of the ferries that go out to the Ile de Chausey, is paying no attention whatever to the machinations. It’s the older of the two ferries – you can tell because there’s no step in the stern, the windows are smaller and the superstructure on the top deck is larger.

We’ve seen – or, at least, talked about – plenty of people, and we’ve seen a great deal of maritime activity too.

So let’s not go forgetting the air today. And so, our friend, the yellow autogyro who we first encountered AT THE CABANON VAUBAN in August 2018 just before I set off for the North Pole, decided to put in an appearance today.

And that reminds me – I’ve not been on a plane this year, and the only time that I set foot on the sea was our trip on the Spirit of Conrad. I don’t even think that I managed to get onto a ferry this year at all.

Mind you, it’s not good for my blood pressure to see a ferry. Every time I see one, it makes me cross.

Having finished the photos I crashed out yet again for a little while, and then had my hour on the guitar. And I’m still not enjoying it, which is a shame. But I’ll stick at it of course.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, now that I have some, followed by one of those desserts that I made yesterday.

Later on tonight I went out for my evening runs. And in pursuit of even more fitness I managed to fit in 5 runs tonight. I have to control my weight now I’m back on the intravenous drips.

But it really was a beautiful night tonight – one of those nights when you can see for miles and it made me wish that i’s taken the tripod. Although these next two photos don’t add up to much, the fact that I’ve taken them at all is significant.

Here we have the street lights of St Helier in Jersey reflecting off the clouds. And also, quite clear in the photograph, are the lights that are on the radio tower or whatever it is on the hills at the back of town.

And when you consider that this is a hand-held shot taken with a f1.8 50mm lens of objects that are 58 kilometres away in the pitch-dark, it’s quite something. But what would it have been like with a tripod?

And pretty much the same thing might be said of this photo too.

While I was casting my eyes around trying to see what was going on out at sea, my eyes alighted yet again on something else. Three lights out at sea, presumably from working ships. My plotter seems to think that the one over to the left might be Antea, whom we encountered earlier, whereas the two brighter ones to the right might be fishing vessels.

There are in fact two in the area according to the plotter – Philcathane may well be the bright light to the left of the two, and the second one might be L’Alize III

While I was there, I wasn’t just admiring the view out to sea. There were plenty of other things to see.

In the foreground of this photo is the area where the walls are crumbling away along the Rue du Nord. You can see the barrier that they have put up to stop people walking too close to the edge. It was this barrier that was swept away in Storm Alex and ended up littering the Rue du Nord.

Over in the background is the car park at the Place d’Armes, that used to be the old parade ground when all of the buildings there were Army barracks. And illuminated there is the College Malraux with its coat of scaffolding and its big banner advertisement.

If you see what looks like a diamond-shaped light, that’s the building where I live.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned that with all of the building material stacked up on the quayside, it looked as if we might be expêcting one of the Jersey freighters to arrive.

And sure enough, anchored at the quayside next to Marité underneath the loading crane is our old friend Normandy Trader. She’s obviously come into port on the afternoon tide on one of her regular runs across from St Helier.

Talking of runs, I’ve managed to do 5 tonight. Nothing particularly energetic but being back on the intravenous drip means that my weight is going to balloon up again and that’s the last thing that I want. I have to keep it down.

But not right now. It’s late and I’m off to bed. I need a good rest.

Wednesday 14th October 2020 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… the fishing season is now back with a bang.

While you admire the piles of fishing boats queueing to get into harbour and unload, I’ll mention my day and we can talk about fishing boats later.

For a start, just by way of a change, I was up and about well before the third alarm yet again, which is something that is surprising me as much as it’s probably surprising you too. I can’t keep this up, surely?

And so first task this morning was to listen to the dictaphone to see if I had been anywhere during the night.

And I had too!

It started off last night with a scandal when a bowls team was disqualified for fielding an ineligible player in a tournament. Once his identity had been discovered they awarded all of the remaining points to the opponents. However the organisers took no further action because his arrival at the club had been well-documented in the Press previously.

And just WHAT am I doing dreaming about bowls? It’s a game with which I have absolutely no empathy whatsoever. I’ve only ever played bowls once in my life and then not very well.

So while they are unloading the bouchots about which we talked the other day, there was something going on during the night about car parking. I wanted to park a vehicle on some waste land between some buildings. I parked the building but left a note for the people who owned it. They telephoned me back and passed me on to someone. We ended up having quite a chat about it. They wanted money for it so in the end I decided not to do that. In the meantime they told me that if I would be passing the representative’s place which was at n°230 such-and-such a street in Shavington. So I went there and knocked on the door but no-one came, no-one answered, so I thought “never mind. I’ll drive on”. Then all of the family were going for a meal and this meant picking up a few other people. I had to go to pick up someone at 230 again – a street in Nantwich, near The Leopard. When I pulled up at that house, it looked exactly like the description of the property that I’d been given over the phone (… by the previous guy…). When the guy came out he said “ohh yes, you’re Eric” and started to chat to me. The discussion came round about welding. I’d just been given back my MIG welder so I said “yes I can do MIG welding now. I’m going to practise when I get home”. We ended up with Liz and Terry in a big field somewhere to go sunbathing. There were quite a few people there already and it was fairly busy and there weren’t all that many places to go. Terry had a word with the owner of the field. He said “if you want to eat, you’d better go and eat now as the restaurant is really busy. There might be a table free now at 18:30 but later on there might not. One of the women with us suggested that it might be an idea to at least go down and find out about “should we eat now while we would or see if we could book a table for later. We ought at least to make sure that there would be a table later”.

So while you lot admire the fishermen on the rocks at the end of the Pointe du Roc, I carried on with a project that I’d started back in May and which had ground to a halt on 24th June.

My web pages are becoming unwieldy, especially the earlier ones. As more and more stuff has been added to them they have done a pretty good imitation of Topsy and “just growed”. So I’ve started redrafting them and cutting them up differently to make them into smaller, bite-sized pages for the truncated attention span of the MTV generation.

The ones for MY 1999 TRIP TO NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY were done ages ago when I first started this project. Then there were a few miscellaneous ones, but then I ran aground with my trip to Canada and New England over the period of New Year 2001-2002.

But finally today, that one is finished and ALL OF THEM ARE NOW ONLINE TOO.

And that knotty web-coding problem that I had? After a good night’s sleep I resolved it in 5 minutes this morning. However it didn’t give me the result that I wanted so in the end I abandoned it for something else.

There was the usual break for lunch with more of my delicious bread and then there was work to do.

There were four extremely ripe kiwis here so I peeled them and whizzed them up to turn them into a nice runny liquidy mess. That was them filtered through my stack of filters to remove as much solid matter as I could, leaving just a kind of juice. I threw in the last of the grapes too for good measure.

Then I strained the kefir that I had brewing and put the resultant liquid in with the kiwi juice and mixed it around, leaving an inch or two in the bottle as my mother solution.

This was then strained through a fine mesh filter into two cleaned and disinfected glass bottles with stoppers where it will brew for the next 48 hours.

Last night I’d finished the blackberry pie so for a change I opened a tin of apricots and found a packet of coffee-flavoured dessert that you make with milk and it sets like a blancmange. That all went in together into four Sundae glasses and will do me until my next cookery session on Sunday.

And here is one that I made earlier, children.

No – seriously, these are the finished products. The bottles are now brewing in a dark corner of the kitchen at the side of the fridge, and the dessert is in the fridge cooling. For tea tonight I tried one of the desserts and even though I say it myself, it was delicious.

Back out for my afternoon walk of course, and straight into the action across the car park.

Our scaffolders are now back at work. The scaffolding has grown considerably since we last saw it and they have even no started to put stairs into it. This is going to be a serious job, I reckon.

And the compound has been repaired too. There’s now a shipping container in there, which is presumably going to be used as a store, and there are also a few pallets of bits and pieces. No slates yet though. I imagine that they will take a day or two to arrive, presumably after the scaffolding is finished.

Just for a change, the sun was out today, and that made a pleasant change from just recently.

It wasn’t particularly bright over here where I was, but across the bay on the promenade at St Martin de Bréhal it was really lighting up the area and making it all look so beautiful. I bet that it must have been really nice to have been out there in all of this.

In that direction you could see for miles too. The big wind turbine on the way out to Cerences is clearly visible on the range of hills on the horizon. It’s not every day that you see that too.

We’ve seen all of the fishermen in the harbour and those fishermen on the rocks, and the fishermen in the small boats seem to be back out again now that the weather has calmed down.

In the usual place amongst the rocks on the northern side of the Pointe du Roc we have three fishermen in a zodiac casting their rods into the water after, I presume, the sea-bass that is said to swim around here in these waters. I say that carefully, because in all the time we’ve been watching the fishermen, we’ve yet to actually see anyone catch anything.

There were quite a few pedestrians around here and I became embroiled in a lively chat with a very pleasant young lady who was aged about 4, I reckon. She had quite a lot to say for herself.

One thing that surprised me was that there was nothing much going on right out at sea today. No trawlers or freighters or anything like that – after all, the trawler men were queueing up to get into port right now.

But the good weather had certainly brought out the pleasure-boat men in their dozens today. There were yachts everywhere, including this rather beautiful one scudding along in the wind and going around the headland.

The purple sail was making a beautiful reflection in the water and it was a shame that the water wasn’t calmer.

Still the two usual suspects in the chantier navale so I ignored them and carried on home to finish off the web site work that I’d been doing.

Just as I was completing everything, Rosemary rang for a chat so we were on the ‘phone for an hour or so putting the world to rights. And then the hour on the guitar.

It was quite depressing mainly because I could not summon up the enthusiasm yet again. But I perked up a little towards the end when I tried to work out the chords to Steve Harley’s beautiful RIDING THE WAVES.

And it’s not as easy as you might think either, especially as in order to be able to sing it, I have to go down to a different key and then I lose my place.

For tea, I made an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit. I’ve run out in the freezer, as I discovered when I did an inventory the other day. And my pudding as I mentioned.

There was some excitement tonight out there as well.

This photo might not look much but it is in fact the air-sea rescue helicopter that we’ve seen on several occasions carrying out an air-sea search with its floodlight. I’ve no idea why but doubtless I’ll find out tomorrow in the newspaper, if it’s anything serious.

So four runs tonight. No wonder I was exhausted when I returned home to write out my notes.

Shopping tomorrow and there’s quite a list too. I don’t know how I’m going to carry it all home so I’d better be on top form. A good shower will probably do me some good.

Nevertheless it’s a long walk there, and an even longer one back when I’m loaded up.

Thursday 1st October 2020 – IT’S ANOTHER MONTH ALREADY…

… so start as we mean to go on.

So while you admire the waves crashing over the Plat Gousset this evening, because the winds have sprung up again this evening, this morning I missed all three alarms and it was 07:35 when I finally surfaced. That wasn’t what I was hoping for, was it?

So anyway I had a listen to the dictaphone. There was something last night about an accident of some description. There was someone in court giving some evidence about some woman and her pet animal, might have been a cat or a dog who has disappeared without trace. They believed that she’d been involved in this accident.

And later I’d been on a coach with a group of people, young people like me for I was young. We’d had quite a good time. When we got to be dropped off – a holiday it was – we all said our goodbyes and my life carried on. I decided that I wanted to go to see some kind of play so early in the morning I got into the metro to go into London. I had some banter with a girl with a girl on the way in. I did my usual trick of going right to the front of the train so that when it pulled in I could step out and put my foot straight on the escalators. I got to the top and it was far too early yet to go to the theatre or wherever I was going to get these tickets. Then I saw a coach that had belonged to the coach company that had taken us on our holiday. I though that I’d go and pick up another brochure.

Before that I was wondering whether I ought to get two tickets because I might be able to talk some girl into coming with me – not that that was likely but never mind. So I saw this coach. I thought that I’d go along and get a brochure for the next lot of holidays. I climbed on at the back and there sitting down at the front were the people with whom I’d had such a good time. I had a laugh and a joke with them, this kind of thing. We exchanged a few humorous chats but nevertheless I was rather disappointed that they had said nothing to me about this next trip. Then the coach set off to do a lap round to drop me off somewhere. One of the passengers shouted up from the back “I hope you realise that the boot’s open with all our luggage in there. It could all have fallen out. I said “well, I’m not driving it. It’s nothing to do with me, is it? I got out and started to walk off. I had my rucksack on my back. I’d also been wearing a pair of green trousers and brown jumper. One of the people on the bus had said “ohh you’re all in blue today”. I thought “this is a strange thing to say with all these clothes that I have on”.

LIDL was next and so I had a brisk walk up there. On the way down into town I went past the viewpoint that overlooks the harbour here.

Moored at the quayside in the place usually reserved for fishing boats are the two Joly France boats, the ferries that run out to the Ile de Chausey. I’m not sure why they would be moored there but never mind.

At least with them being moored side by side you can see the difference between the two. Joly France I, the newer of the two, I think, is nearer the camera. It’s longer (something that I hadn’t realised before), has a smaller upper deck superstructure and the stern is different too. There’s a step cut into it.

Pushing on through town, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past I’ve moaned … “surely not” – ed … about the new car park down on the port.

Instead of doing something really nice with a pretty cobbled or stone surface, it’s just a mass of tarmac with nothing to relieve the monotony. One of my … “many” – ed … gripes is that they could also have put some nice flower beds with plants in trees to make it look a lot more welcoming and attractive.

After all, the town has done this elsewhere. This here in the Rue Couraye is quite attractive so imagine how nice the car park would look with a couple of these in it with nice trees growing there.

I didn’t stop anywhere on the way or on the way back to LIDL (except for the photos) and I wasn’t in there long. I didn’t buy anything special except a bag of potatoes and a bag of carrots, plus the usual fruit of cours

On the way back from the shops I had a look down to the Chantier Navale.

There have been as many as eight boats in there at any one time but the other day they were down to just two. Today though, it’s gone back up to three. Sitting on the blocks by the portable boat hoist is one of our old favourites, the trawler-type vessel Le Tiberiade having some work done on her.

And in the background, out in the open sea La Grande Ancre is busy battling the waves on her way out. It doesn’t look as if it’s a particularly good day today to be at sea with all of that going on.

Back here I had a play with my kefir and then fed my sourdough started. I had to find a new jar for it too because if it ferments too much it’ll overflow the jar that it’s in.

After lunch, the first thing that I did was to peel, dice and blanch half of the carrots that I’d bought, and then set them to drain when they were ready. They went into the freezer later of course and I’ll do the other kilo tomorrow afternoon

We had the usual early afternoon pause for my walk around the headland.

The weather had changed too. This morning it was heavily overcast but by now it was even worse and there was 100% heavy cloud. As well as that, it was also doing its best to rain. Hence there were not too many people out there walking this afternoon. It didn’t prevent the maritime traffic from being out and about though. I couldn’tsee any of the commercial fishing boats but there was a cabin crruiser here just offshore by the Pointe du Roc.

There was no evidence of what it was trying to do, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just there is a favourite spot for fishermen as they chase after the elusive, and presumably bad-tempered sea bass

When I said that there were not too many people about, that of course excluded the brats who were out here in force again.

I’m not too sure if they are the members of the Orienteering group that meets on the field in the late afternoon though. The posts that they have to find hadn’t been set up anyway. But what caught my eye was the fact that although the teacher was wearing a face mask, I couldn’t see that any of the kids were.

Not much social distancing either, so I can see all of this ending in tears before too long. The infection rate figures should go to show that this virus is not something to be taken lightly. After all, kids might possibly be fairly safe if they catch it, but I bet that their parents, grandparents and neighbours won’t be.

Anyway, musing on that point, I wandered off around the headland to the other side. I’d not seen anything of interest on the way.

At the viewpoint overlooking the Chantier Navale I had a look to see if there was anything interesting going on. Le Tiberiade is there now, up on blocks by the portable boat lift. On the starboard side that had a skyjack up against her so it looks as if they are working on her already.

But it does occur to me that THE OTHER DAY, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Le Tiberiade was in the port at the unloading berth having all of her nets lifted off. Has it anything to do with the repairs that we are witnessing to the vessel, or something else completely.

You’ll notice too her registration number on her bow. It begins “CH” – an indication that she’s registered in Cherbourg.

We can’t let the opportunity go past to mention another case of pathetic parking.

The Microcar over there in the Rue St Pierre is especially interesting. Parked on the kerb, blocking the pavement, forcing the kids, people with pushchairs, disabled people in wheelchairs etc to take to the road to go past. As I have mentioned before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … there’s large free a public car park not 50 metres away. And if that’s too far for his poor dear to stagger after school, there’s a parking place right where I’m standing in the Boulevard Vaufleury not 10 metres away.

Back here afterwards, I had an important task to carry out. There’s a vacancy for a Conservation Officer – an admin, not a practical post – and also a Tourism officer on the South Sandwich Islands in the far South Atlantic. Not that I stand any chance of the posts but they looked extremely interesting and I have all of the necessary qualification. And so I wrote out an application.

Like I say, it’ll be a Cold Day In Hell before I’m ever considered for a post like that but if you don’t apply, you don’t get, do you?

Interestingly, the posts carry the office and responsibility of a Police Constable for the islands. That means that if the Argentinian Army ever decides to invade again, it would be my duty to go and arrest them all.

After the guitar practice, it was tea time. Having been to LIDL we had stuffed peppers, followed by more of my rather sad strawberry tart with soya coconut dessert.

This evening I went out for my nocturnal stroll as usual.

The wind has sprung up again, as I mentioned earlier, and we are being blasted once more. Hardly any surprise that there was almost no-one about. The run underneath the city walls was fairly uneventful but it was exciting to watch the waves crashing down on the Plat Gouseet while I caught my breath.

Running across the Square Maurice Marland in the teeth of a howling sou’wester was no fun whatsoever and I needed a good couple of minutes again to catch my breath afterwards. But from there I carried on with my walk around the walls and was lucky enough to see a trawler-type of fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant. They are keeping busy down there.

The run back to the apartment was also a struggle, going head-on into the wind. But I’m glad that I’m back because it’s a lot quieter and warmer in here.

Tomorrow there are no plans for anything (except to take out a pile of paper to the paper bins if the wind has dropped sufficiently not to blow a pile of my personal papers about the town) and I can get on with some work at last. That is, if I come back from my nocturnal ramble in time. I’m clocking up the miles during the night, aren’t I?

Monday 21st September 2020 – I DUNNO …

… what happened today but this was one of the best days that I’ve has for some considerable time. And that has surprised me as much as it’s probably surprised you.

It started off with me being out of bed before the third alarm went off and it’s been a while since that has happened.

Plenty of time though to go off on a few travels. I was with a group of policewomen last night and they were doing a house-to-house visit down this road enquiring about bicycles for some reason, asking if the bicycles present belonged to the people there. They worked their way down this road and came to the final house, a fine stone 3-storey house built of granite blocks, a bit run-down, unkempt and so on. She said “right, this is the house here”. She went up and knocked on the door and spoke to someone – another guy – about it. he was in fact Derek Nimmo. I went for a wander round to look at the side of this house while she was talking. When I came back, my partner had transformed into Marianne, she and someone else arguing with this Derek Nimmo type and he was being extremely difficult. It turned out that there had been some kind of collision between Marianne and him in a car. She’d gone to have a form signed, one of these constats. He was of extremely bad grace, doing all kinds of lecturing, all of that. They wrote out this form but in the end he just picked it up and tore it up and gave it back to her, then hit her. That got me extremely angry. I stormed over there and even though he was a good foot taller than me I gave him an absolute lecture “no-one ever hits a woman in my presence”, all of this kind of thing. If he wanted to hit someone he could start by hitting me. I awoke quite feverish again.
Later in the night I found myself busy dictating again to my hand and not my dictaphone. This is becoming rather too much of a habit as well. But it seems that last night there were concerns that German commercial and public television was not being prosecuted over its failure to examine footage of demonstrations that it had filmed in 2009 involving I think Martin Luther King which could have resulted in criminal prosecutions being brought against people who were mishandling the demonstrators. This in turn led to all kinds of demonstrations. There were people everywhere chanting and so on and the forces of law and order moved in. For some reason I was with them and we were gradually pushing these demonstrators back. We had them crowded up on some kind of top row of steps but no-one seemed to be doing anything to move them any further so I gave them a big push. 4 or 5 people at rhe far end fell off the steps down to the next level. That was basically when the demonstrators abandoned the protest and we could move freely up. I went to have a look at the other end of these steps. It was quite a drop over the end, about 10 or 12 feet, but 1 or 2 people were thinking that this is the best way to get away from the police so they dropped over the edge at the back. I thought “how was I going to get away from here?”. My only solution was to drop over the edge at the back as well so I had a look. It seemed to be very high to me. I didn’t really want to jump over that. I thought that I could dangle down from my hands from the top and let go, slide down but that still looked an overwhelming drop for me. It was steeper in some places than others. Perhaps I could find a lower place I’d be more comfortable doing it.

Once I’d transcribed all of that I had another back at the arrears and after a good session on that, I’ve whittled it down to just 13 remaining. With a bit of luck (not that I have too much of that these days) I’ll finish it on Friday or something like that.

That took more time than it ought to have done, and the rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme, not having overlooked to post this week’s off.

By the time that I knocked off for my guitar sessions, I’d chosen all the music except the last one, combined them in pairs as usual, written the text, dictated it, started to edit it and even prepared the speech for my invited guest.

The afternoon walk was a bit depressing today. Gribouille the big ginger cat was there for his afternoon stroke and one of my neighbours was out there, so we had a good chat together.

But that was basically all that was interesting. There was nothing much happening out in the English Channel today – or, at least – if there was, I couldn’t see it.

That’s because even though we had that thunder and lightning storm last night, today was shrouded in fog and we couldn’t see very much at all out to sea.

It reminded me of that British newspaper headline in the 1920s – “fog in the Channel – Continent cut off!” which just about sums up the insularity of the xenophobic Brits.

nevertheless, the fog didn’t prevent everyone from doing their own thing this afternoon.

My walk took me around the headland and there by the seafarers’ memorial there were a couple of zodiacs down there in the Baie de Mont St Michel with a group of fishermen in each one.

You can see just how foggy it is. Le Loup, the marker light for the entrance to the harbour is just about visible but you can’t see very much at all beyond there.

And so I continued on around the path but there was nothing at all of interest to see so I wandered on home.

After the guitars, I had tea. A stuffed pepper tonight followed by apple crumble – at least, the part of the apple crumble that I didn’t drop on the floor.

There was a little wave of fatigue (the first of the day but not actually a crashing-out) but I fought it off by going for my evening walk.

And outside on my travels I didn’t see a soul. It was just like one of these North American ghost towns and I was expecting any minute to see a tumbleweed blowing through the Porte St Jean and off down the street.

But it looked so photogenic tonight that I had to take a photo of it yet again. Only this time there are no traffic lights or road signs to obscure the view.

Down along the Rue du Nord I walked, in splendid isolation, and then ran on down the footpath.

No-one around in the Square Maurice Marland either so I could run all the way down there too.

But my eye was caught by a very slender new moon up in the sky tonight so I had a little fun trying to photograph it. But I was intrigued by the green light to the left of the moon. I couldn’t see it with the naked eye.

But in a couple of the other photos that I took, it wasn’t there either. The only thing that I can think of was that although I couldn’t hear anything, a low-flying aeroplane travelling from left to right was going past at that moment and I was lucky enough to press the button just as the plane’s flashing navigation light was illuminated.

So how do we know that the plane was going from left to right and not right to left? The answer is that there are five letters in green, and five letters in right.

Port is red, and there are four letters in “port”, just as there are in “left”. So if the aeroplane was travelling from right to left, we would see the red light.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we are constantly seeing all kinds of building repairs, roadworks and the like going on in the old medieval walled city quite regularly.

It looks as if we are in for another batch of work starting quite soon. Some time during the day this large piece of mobile plant has appeared and is parked up in the Parvis Notre Dame.

It’s going to be interesting to see where they will be working and what they will be doing. It’s a good job that I don’t have to drive through the old town on my way around.

But while I was there looking at the machinery I had a look behind me.

Not that there was anything of any interest going on there but the Rue Notre Dame but the view made a very good photo this evening.

From here I walked on around the walls and then ran on home. Three runs again today and I’m hoping that I can keep this going. It’s not as athletic as I was in the Spring and early Summer before I was ill but if I can keep this up I’ll be happy.

Welsh class tomorrow so I need to be on good form. An early night will do me a world of good.

Thursday 17th September 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

… you are wondering, “comments” have been disabled for a short while.

The spammers are back and I’ve just had to delete 126 “comments” from the queue for moderation. That’s taken me a while so I’ve disabled “comments” until the spammers become fed up and move on somewhere else.

If you want to contact me, use the link at the bottom-right of the page.

In the meantime, despite not going to bed until about 12:30, I managed to beat the third alarm out of bed, and that surprised me as much as it probably surprises you.

During the night I was in Manchester in a student house, a modern apartment by the side of a big wide dual-carriageway road, not an old run-down place like Whalley Range where we used to live. One of my old friends from my time in Chester was there, sharing a house with some people. I was speaking to him for the first time for years. He was explaining that his surname was now Stavrakali and he was known as “something (I can’t remember now) Ali”. I asked why and he said that his parents used to write to him regularly but they always forgot to put stamps on the letter. We were looking at albums and he was looking at my record collection and making a few pleasant remarks about it.

There was so much more to it too but I can’t remember anything else about it now.

So having transcribed that, I did a few more of the arrears too. And some of them are quite interesting as you will find out in due course.

Today is shopping day so off I went to LIDL. First stop was the railway station to pick up the tickets for my trip to Leuven. Quite often, the ticket machine at the station doesn’t work and as the train departs (in principle) prior to the opening of the booking office, I always like to have them in my possession a few days beforehand to avoid any complications.

LIDL came up with nothing special so I didn’t buy much, and there was nothing much going on in town or in the harbour either, so I just came straight home.

For the rest of the day I managed to finish off the radio programme on which I have been working. I ended up with 4:50 of speech which needed to be edited down to 3:16 and then merged into the front of the concert.

And even though I say to myself, it’s all gone together quite well. I can only detect one joint in the whole concert and that’s pretty good. But it’s more work than you might think to make it work properly.

There was a break in the middle too while I went for my usual afternoon walk in the sun.

And here’s a thing. I hadn’t taken two steps out of the building before I was dive-bombed by the little red microlight. He was actually flying past the building as I went out but as soon as I stepped outside he did a U-turn the kind of which a Tory Government would be proud and headed straight for me.

There was just about enough time for me to take a quick snap before he disappeared over the roof and round the back of the building.

There were crowds of people out on the beach this afternoon.

You wouldn’t have actually thought so had you been here during the night. Brain of Britain went to bed last night with the windows open and we spent the small hours being buffeted about by a howling gale that rattled just about every window in North-West France.

By this afternoon though it had died down and the sun was out so the late-season holidaymakers were making the most of the final few days before autumn arrives.

My walk this afternoon was along the headland.

From along that footpath there’s a good view out to sea and we’ve seen plenty of photos of the view in the past. We’ve also seen plenty of fishing boats too – cabin cruisers, zodiacs, even kayaks – out there at the foot of the rocks fishing for sea bass.

There’s another one out there today with a couple of guys on board with a pile of fishing equipment. However, they don’t seem to look all that interested.

On the other hand, these people out here look much more committed.

As I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed … we have some of the highest tides in Europe here. As well as this, the area is famous for its shellfish and when the tides are at their lowest, as they are today, the water level is below the area that is leased to the shellfish farmers.

Consequently the general public can swarm onto the beaches and scavenge in the rock pools for whatever they can find. There are guidelines as to where they can go and what they can take away.

My walk continued on around the headland and I came to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a new record of eight boats in there being worked on and I was keen to see what the position would be today.

Unfortunately it was one of disappointment. We have gone back down to seven boats today. Mind you, there are piles of workmen down there and there is plenty of activity with them all rushing around like mad getting things done.

Back here I finished off the radio programme and then worked on some photos while I listened to it to make sure that it was what I wanted.

That led up to an hour on the guitars and then I stopped for tea. With the stuffing that was left over from Monday I had taco rolls followed by apple crumble.

Later on I went for my evening walk and runs.

And it wasn’t easy ether because the wind is back. As I ran around the corner at the end of the footpath underneath the walls, the howling gale hit me full in the face and brought me to a staggering stop.

With the wind being as it was and the tide being well in, I was hoping for some kind of spectacular wave show but there can’t have been much of a build-up of power as yet because it was somewhat disappointing.

Instead I ran on across the Square Maurice Marland, with the wind at my back this time so it wasn’t so bad at all.

There wasn’t much going on around there either so I carried on around the walls.

Yesterday we’d seen a fishing boat unloading at the fish processing plant. Today there’s one heading out to sea to go and fetch back another load.

As for me I ran on home again and that was that. I’ve written up my notes and I’m planning to go off to bed. Tomorrow I have my outstanding course lesson to complete and then I can attack some more arrears

There’s plenty more of those to deal with.

Tuesday 15th September 2020 – DESPITE NOT …

… doing everything that I wanted to do, I’ve still had an extremely busy and active day today. I’ve never stopped and, even more surprisingly, I didn’t crash out either. That’s not really a surprise – it’s a shock!

So while you admire some photos of this evening’s beautiful sunset, let me mention that while once more I missed the third alarm, it was only by a matter of seconds and I was immediately up and sitting on the edge of the bed.

Mind you, it did take me a few minutes to collect my thoughts and summon up the strength to move, but that’s par for the course these days.

During the night I was in my old office in Prince Albert Street. I’d had a shave and a wash but the hairs that I had shaved off my face weren’t flushing down the drain of the sink. There was a young guy sitting there by the side of the sink waiting for me to finish but I was just taking longer and longer and longer because of these hairs. In the end I told him that I was ready to get up but I can’t leave it like this because of the hairs. He said “let me have a look” and he tried to move it as well. He said “what you need is a new sink because the capacity on this isn’t enough. We need to go along and get another sink” which I thought was silly because they just don’t issue sinks like this but off we went, clambering over a few items into the main office and out again over another pile of stores. We were asked what we were looking for and we explained about the new sink. Someone said “you’ll be really lucky finding a new sink like this. You want to try a new plug hole”.

A few more of the arrears from the dictaphone disappeared too which is good news as I slowly catch up.

After that, I tidied up in the kitchen and the dining area. We have our Welsh lesson this morning and that’s on line. I don’t really want people to see the chaos in which I live these days.

And having put all of that behind me I sat down and did some more revision of the previous course. I’ve forgotten almost everything that I learnt in the Spring.

At least, that’s what I thought because I found that once the lesson started I could actually remember some of the things that I had learned. More than I thought, more than was necessary for our opening session and more than some of my fellow-students.

Interestingly, we have a student from Romania living in Connah’s Quay who is learning Welsh. That’s certainly something quite extraordinary.

Instead of two hours, these lessons are 2.5 hours so we didn’t finish until 13:30. That meant a rather late lunch.

Having used the last of the bread, this afternoon I baked some bread. Some ordinary bread, into which I added a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds, and also a smaller loaf with a banana, some sultanas and a pile of ground almonds added to it, brushed with soya milk and sprinkled with brown sugar.

While all of that was rising in the corner, I attacked the carrots that I had bought the other day. They were peeled and diced, blanched in boiling water with some bay leaves and then drained and left to dry.

While they were drying, I peeled and diced a lump of ginger into some tiny fragments and then boiled them in some water.

While they were boiling, I peeled the lemons that I had, put them in a whizzer and whizzed them gently to separate the juice. That went onto a glass and then the remainder was thoroughly whizzed round into a pulp and then added to the ginger and water that was boiling. This was then set to simmer.

While the lemon and ginger was simmering away, I went out for my afternoon walk.

It was a beautiful afternoon again, hot and sunny with very little wind. And plenty of people out there too enjoying it. The fishermen were out there as well.

At least, I reckon that they are fishermen because I can’t think of what else they might be doing in those boats down there so close inshore by the diving platform at the Pointe du Roc.

There were quite a few other boats out there too. Not very many yachts today, with it not being weekend, but quite a few others.

Here’s one of our old friends again. She’s La Grande Ancre and she seems to spend much of her time engaged in fishing activity and the rest of the time transporting items out to the Ile de Chausey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw her go out a year or two back with a tractor on her deck and she’s had many other things to transport as well, although she doesn’t seem to do as much in that line since Chausiais arrived.

But here’s something interesting down there on the rocks.

One thing that I have noticed about the coastline here is that driftwood of any sort is very rare. We haven’t seen anything interesting, despite all the storms that we have. But this down here is the first substantial item that I’ve seen in all the time that I’ve been here.

The kids were out here again playing around on the grass. And I now know what they are doing, because I had a close look. They are having sessions in Orienteering – being given various sets of co-ordinates and running from point-to-point armed with a map and a compass.

Strangely enough, that’s the one thing that I know something about because in 1971 I came 15th in the North West England Schools’ Championship.

And no – there were not only 15 entrants.

But anyway, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the proceedings over the next few weeks to see how they are doing

On that note I wandered off around the headland to the other side of the promontory.

And there’s some excitement today in the Chantier Navale. Over the last week or two there have been as many as seven boats in there and that’s been the most that I have ever seen – up until today, that is.

As I went past this afternoon, I noticed that they had just pulled another fishing boat out of the water with the mobile crane. That’s eight boats in there today and I’ve never ever seen that many at any one time.

So we’ve seen crowds on the land and crowds in the sea. I’m sure that you are all wondering what is going on in the air.

The answer is that despite the apparent lack of wind this afternoon the Bird-Men of Alcatraz were flying around somehow. At one particular moment I counted three of them in the air all at once and I’m not sure how they are keeping aloft.

As an aside, I’ve not had any news about the bird-man who came to grief 10 days ago on the rocks by the tidal pool. I wonder how he’s getting on.

One of the things that features quite regularly on these pages is the question of pathetic parking. The Rue St Pierre by the entrance to the College Malraux at school chucking-out time is notorious in this respect.

But not today.

Obviously the local constabulary is a keen reader of my pages because today we have one of Macron’s Finest on duty keeping an eye on things, including, one assumes, the wild parking.

If everyone can park properly in the free car park round the corner when there’s a copper on duty, why can’t they do it all the time?

Only one thing remained to be done before I could clear off home.

We have a visitor in the harbour this afternoon. One of the Jersey freighters, Normandy Trader, has come into port on the morning tide.

She’s been in a couple of times since we last saw her but the ship is very busy with plenty of work so there have been some really rapid turn-rounds just recently. She’s been in like Flynn and out again on the same tide which means that I’ve not been lucky enough to be present to snatch a photograph.

We’ve not seen Thora, the other Jersey freighter, for a while either. Things must be hotting up with the run-in to Brexit.

Back in the apartment I put the oven on to heat up and when it was warm enough, I bunged the bread inside.

Taking the ginger and lemon mix off the heat, I put it in the whizzer, added two tablespoons of honey and the lemon juice that I had decanted earlier and then whizzed it all around into a nice pulpy syrup. Then put it into a bottle with some turmeric.

When the bread was cooked I tipped the loaves out onto a wire rack to cool down.

And here are the finished product. The bread is cooling down on the rack, the carrots are now freezing nicely in the freezer and the bottle of lemon and ginger cordial is in the fridge.

And the cordial is delicious too. I tried a sample of it just now.

Tea was a burger on a bap with baked potatoes (I did them in the oven while I was baking the bread) followed by apple crumble and soya coconut dessert.

That was the cue to nip out for my evening walk and runs. We’ve seen the beautiful sunset this evening, and I reckoned that while I was out there I would take a photograph of the Rue du Nord and the Place d’Armes.

You can’t see very much of my own building, but in the background to the right is the College Malraux, the local High School.

And, of course, you can see some of the decaying medieval wall that is fenced off to stop people putting themselves at risk by walking close to it.

It’s one of four parts of the wall that are fenced off right now and there seems to be no effort being made to fix them, which is a shame. The whole place is falling to bits.

From the rue du Nord I ran on along the footpath, walked a while to catch my breath and then ran on along the Square Maurice Marland.

While there was nothing particular going on as far as terrestrial objects go, there were huge flocks of birds taking off, flying around in a couple of circles and then landing again – only to take off again and repeating the process ad infinitum.

It’s difficult to make assumptions of course but it seems to me that they are practising their formation flying en masse with all of the young newly-born fledgelings ready for their flight south in a couple of weeks time.

There were hundreds and hundreds circling around, so I stopped and watched them for a while and then ran on home.

But with it being quite light this evening you are probably wondering why I’m out and about so early. The truth is that there’s football on the internet kicking off at 20:45 – Newtown v Caernarfon Town in the JD Cymru (Welsh Premier) League and I wanted to be home in time for the kick-off.

It wasn’t a very exciting match and, to be quite frank, these two teams are not going to be up there challenging for the honours at the end of the season.

The fire has gone out in Caernarfon and their central defence was somewhat conspicuous by its absence. Newtown were probably slightly the better side but their attack was rather wayward and they failed to take full advantage.

However Caernarfon ended up winning 3-2, which surprised me considerably, but it was down to one moment of magic from Paulo Mendes, another from Noah Edwards (aided by some miserable Newtown defending out by the corner flag) and some excellent work from Mike Hayes, who Bala will end up regretting releasing.

It’s now long after 03:00 and I’m still not tired so I’m carrying on working and I’ll switch off the alarms for the morning. I’d written half of the speech for my radio programme this afternoon so I can finish that off and then get on with the internet web lesson that I missed.

Thursday 10th September 2020 – IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING …

… the things that I see when I’m out and about on my travels around the town.

And it’s not as if I have to go all that far from home to find it either. I hadn’t gone 20 yards otside my front door this morning before I was confronted by a set of traffic lights.

“Road works going on in the old Medieval walled city” I mused to myself. I shall have to go for a look round later on to see what is happening.

And sure enough, while I was on my travels later this evening, I did come across what was causing the issues.

The road has been dug up on the corner of the Place Cambernon and the Rue Notre Dame. And judging by the names written on the “no parking” signs, it seems to be the Water company whose turn it is right now to dig up the streets.

It’s Thursday night as well, and the Pizza van is there tonight. And with the tables of the bar La Rafale being out in the square and its reserve place prohibited by the road works, it’s had to perch itself precariously on the corner.

Talking of perching oneself precariously on the corner, when the third alarm went off this morning I was perched precariously on the corner of the bed with my feet on the floor.

Not exactly awake but it still counts as being up and out of bed.

What was surprising about this was I’d had such a bad night. At one stage I thought that I would never ever drop off to sleep. There isn’t really much point in going to bed early if you can’t sleep.

When I finally got off to sleep last night I met another strange girl. She was from Venn which wasn’t too far from Eching (which it isn’t, but let’s not go allowing facts to get in the way of a good nocturnal ramble). There was this weird girls’ school and they were teaching these children all this dance, everything like that and poetry recital, that kind of thing. They had a kind of dancing competition. I wanted to see them about something but it was “oh no we can’t interrupt these proceedings now. It’s far too important. You’ll have to come back later”. Off they all went and I went back. All of these girls were in school uniform, grey with grey hats, that kind of thing, a very posh private school, that type of place. They all had taken some strange kind of wooden furniture, shelf kind of thing with two sides like blackboards that you could write on them. They had all taken these with them but there was one left in the garden. I mentioned it to the headmistress. She said “you’ll have to take that. It looks like one of the girls has forgotten it”. “What do you mean ‘I have to take it’?”. She said “you have to take it”. I asked “what do I do with it?”. She replied “you have to learn the ritual and at the appointed time tonight you’ll have to perform the ritual”. I thought to myself “what the hell am I going to be involved in now?”. She insisted that it was terribly important that I did this, so I ended up taking it home with me and stuck it in a corner when I returned home. I had to be very careful about who came to my house. We were listing stuff to sell and I can’t remember who was helping me now, maybe my brother I dunno. We’d listed some stuff to sell and we’d sold it and now we were listing some free stuff. He was listing some stuff that I thought was much more important to sell – we could get a good price for this – but no, he insisted on it being free. There was one thing that he insisted that people make an appointment to come round to pick it up. I said “that’s crazy, tying me to the house and I don’t want to be tied to the house. I want to get rid of these things as and when!”. We had a dispute about that and in the end we agreed that people would just have to ring up and say when they were coming to pick it up, a kind of compromise. After we’d done that, I said “hang on – I have something else to show you”. There was a girl in my house at this time – it might have been Pollux but I’m not too sure about this. I went and brought down this furniture thing and assembled it. I asked this girl ” how’s your Latin?”. She said “I come from Venn, it’s Venn that I speak, that’s near Eching in Germany, like Germany and Austria”. I replied “you’ll get on really well with Hans”. “Yes” she said, “that’s right. From Eching”. I showed them this and explained about this ritual that I had to do. One thing that I had forgotten was that during this competition I had 16 dances to learn. There had been a musician playing all of the dances and for a minute I’d been round with him doing something, trying to work out what the music was for these dances. It was another hot and sweaty night when I awoke and it took me hours to go back off to sleep as well.
Somewhat later I was with a girl and my father was around somewhere. I’d had to go out in a car and there had been some kind of confusion over which one I was to drive. It was suggested that i would take my father’s Zephyr 6 – the MkIV, not the MkIII which was his famous one 3816 TD. I went to try to organise something about all of this and I ended up with a pocket of keys. I had to start swapping them over. Then I noticed – I had to get up from my table at this bar place – and on the way back I noticed this key on the floor. It was the one that I needed to start the car. I showed it to the girl I was with and said “phew! That’s lucky!”. She asked what it was so I told her that it was the key to the car. My father then went to move all of his cars away. he took his mkIII Zephyr and drive it home and came back with the MkIV. There was still a bit of confusion about how we were going to go somewhere. I had a pocket full of rubbish and wondered how I was going to fit this key in. Then I couldn’t find the key and it was hidden in all this rubbish in my pocket. There was the question again about what car I was going in and we agreed that it was my father’s. I asked “what’s going to be in it?”. They replied “just his coat and one or two other little things”. I wanted to ask my father a couple of questions about his cars. I remember the two Ford E83W vans that we had – KLG 93 and XVT 772 – and I’m sure that there was one before them that had become stuck in my head, a 1937 van, and I wanted to know what we had had before that, and what he would consider to be his typical car if someone had to connect him with one particular car, which one would it be? I thought that it was important that he would tell me because of course he wouldn’t last for ever and if I didn’t start asking these questions soon I would never know.

But I’m not too sure why it is that Pollux has suddenly started making a series of appearances in my nocturnal rambles. Where has Castor got to?

There was some stuff on the dicaphone from yesterday too, so I transcribed that and ADDED IT TO THE ENTRY FOR YESTERDAY.

As well as having a shower this morning, I also cut my hair. It’s been a while since I’ve cut it and it was becoming a little straggly.

And then I went out to the shops.

We’ve seen the traffic lights around the corner but that was far from being the only excitement. There’s a huge mobile crane down there in the Rue Lecampion lifting a load of something or other over the roofs of the houses into the rear behind the Rue des Corsaires.

That was well worth a photo of course, and when I’m down there I shall make further enquiries to see what they are up to.

And sure enough, when I was down there I could see that there’s quite a major operation going on.

It’s difficult to say what they are doing but there was this kind of glazed roof – at least, it would be glazed had there been any glass in it but I imagine there soon will be – that they are presumably going to lift up and over and onto whatever it is that they are doing.

My first stop today was the railway station.

My Old Fogey’s railcard expired a few weeks ago and with me planning to go to Belgium for my hospital appointment at Castle Anthrax, I need it updated.

That was dealt with without any particular problem and then I went off to LIDL. There was nothing much there that attracted my attention although with fruit being so cheap right now (especially grapes, of course) I ended up with a huge pile of fruit.

On the way back I went past the Square Potel.

There’s an archaeological dig going on around there right now and we’ve seen the digger in the grounds of the museum. Today though, they were digging a trench in the square and there was an archaeologist examining some artefacts.

Having watched them for a short while I came on home, where I … errr … crashed out on the chair until lunchtime. That’s enough to make me feel really miserable.

After lunch I spent a pleasant hour or so working on the photos from Brittany at the end of June when we went off on the Spirit of Conrad.

And the sailing – or, at least, nautical – theme continued while I was out on my afternoon walk.

There were crowds of people out there enjoying the pleasant weather and looking out to sea as something rather large was moving about heading towards us. These days I can recognise the silhouette at quite some distance without needing to crop and enlarge it.

And it is as I expected. Joly France is on her way back with the afternoon ferry from the Ile de Chausey. She seems to be quite busy right now despite the end of the holiday season.

There were plenty of other boats out there too, as you could see in the previous photo.

There are several boats too much closer to home. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we seem to be in the middle of the rod-and-line fishing season. We have another small boat out there today with their rods out trying for a bite.

Here’s hoping that they will have more luck than anyone else who I have seen out there. Three and a half years have I been here and not a single bite have I seen

Anyway i pushed on along the path and round the headland to the path on the south side.

One of the things that I regret not doing while I’ve been living here is to make the most of the opportunities that the local sailing school can offer. I would have thought that with the season being over their activities would have ceased but there seems to be another class out there today.

Not having gone down there to make enquiries is an opportunity that I have let slip and I hope that I’ll have another opportunity to put that right.

When we saw the photo of Joly France just now, we saw another boat coming along behind it.

And as I carried on with my walk along the path this rather large pleasure boat came around the headland towards the port de plaisance and I reckon that this is the “other” boat from the previous photo.

Having a good look at this, it’s clear that there is plenty of money around here, what with one thing and another. Not around me though. It seems to have passed me by a long time ago.

Back here I did some Welsh revision and then had my hour on the guitars.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with rice, followed by apple pie. And then I went out for my evening walk.

There was a beautiful sunset tonight, although maybe I should say that the sun has long-since set. It was very reminiscent of some of the very late nights that I have seen in the High Arctic and makes me all nostalgic.

Before much longer, I’m going to have to make another return out there, even if it’s just to sit on the shore of the North West Passage and admire the sky.

My route carried on with a run down along the footpath, a walk around the corner to gather my breath and then another run across the Square Maurice Marland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a couple of years I had a regular encounter with an old black cat called Minette

Ever since the turn of the year I only recall meeting her once and the feeling seemed to be that she had gone off across the rainbow bridge. However, much to my delight, she was there again tonight sitting on her windowsill waiting for her stroke.

That cheered me up no end.

Nothing much else going on, apart from the roadworks that we have seen, so instead I came home to write up my notes.

Tomorrow I have a full day at home in which I can catch up with some arrears. I also need to book my voyage to Leuven for my visit to Castle Anthrax and so that will be a priority too.

But sleep is the first thing to do. And who will come with me on a travel tonight?

Tuesday 8th September 2020 – THIS EVENING …

… I have seen something that has caused me a great deal of disquiet.

There was an ambulance and police car in the rue Cambernon here and about half a dozen people, ambulancemen and police, were struggling with a hysterical adolescent girl to put her into the ambulance.

There was no clue as to what had caused the incident, but her hysteria was way beyond the norm and quite suggestive of some kind of stupefiant-ignited issue although of course from the distance at which I was observing the affair and the fact that it was in the dark, there was nothing other than the audible indication to promote this idea.

But whatever it was, my hat goes off to the police and ambulancemen. It was a very stressful event, quite a battle to put her inside and strap her in, and they showed far more patience and discipline than I ever would have done.

It goes without saying that it’s not the kind of incident that one photographs, but it’s still bad news when the affairs of the banlieux of Paris come to, quite literally, our own doorstep.

As for me, much to my and everyone else’s surprise, I was out of bed before the third alarm went off. At least – I was sitting on the edge of the bed trying to summon up the courage to take some kind of drastic action, like moving.

Once I’d gathered my wits, I had a listen to the dictaphone.

I was on a galleon last night, one of these Spanish galleon things with crowds of people on it, a big tourist attraction. I was there with a certaib lady of my acquaintance. Something happened, me being careless I think, and she ended up with a sea-full of face – or, more likely, a face full of sea. I said that I was sorry but she started to whine on and on and on in this silly voice that she had, mimicking what I was saying so on that point I’d had enough so I just turned round and walked away. She changed her tune afterwards, apologised and asked me to come back but I’d really had enough so I just walked off. There was someone climbing up a ladder into the rigging of this ship. He was carrying a tray with about 10 different drinks on it. I thought that that was adventurous. I wouldn’t even do that with two. I was wandering around this ship, trying to find my way around and try my best to totally ignore her while she was still having one of these tantrum display things. There were some people sitting down – I was wondering whether to go to sit with them but I thought “no. I really want to be somewhere quite a way from this end of the ship somewhere on my own”.
Somewhat later we were having a look at some photos last night about all of the abandoned properties around Crewe and Nantwich, places like the old Co-op brewery and so on, a lot of them with photos of abandoned cars on them. There were several in Nantwich, three of them being churches close together in Hospital Street and their congregations transferred to the main parish church there. These churches, one of which was called St Werburgh’s, were all very eerie but very magnificent, Victorian Gothic-type but in terrible states of disrepair and decay. Even though I don’t remember them as a kid (because they weren’t there) we were having a good prowl around these places last night in this dream. It was really quite interesting. On one occasion we ended up being at a church service. They came along and asked for a collection. The girl I was with said she didn’t have anything and I just had a few copper coins that I gave them. later, we were on a railway station watching the trains come in. We moved away but a train had pulled in so I prepared my camera to take a photo. As it pulled out another one, a magnificent really big powerful locomotive pulled out of this station hauling an express train so I went to take a photo of them with the NIKON 1 J5 as it pulled out of the station but it wouldn’t work at first. I had to press the shutter a couple of times for it to work. While I was doing this there was some woman standing nearby. She was excited because she could see the main railway station from here. I thought that she meant the one at Manchester which was quite some way away and you can’t see with the naked eye, but bathed in fog anyway. But she said “no, it’s Denton station! Look over there! So I looked over there but I couldn’t see it at all with my naked eye.

Having dealt with all of that, I finally got round to having a look at Sunday’s effort. And after a good deal of listening, of thought and of transcription I managed to sort something out and you can READ IT HERE.

Surprisingly, even though I had the strongest impression that Pollux was one of the people with me, there was no mention whatever of her name at all, so I’ve no idea where this impression comes from. Mind you, there are several minutes missing here and there, either because

I didn’t dictate it (there seems to be a hole in the middle of the story somehow).
I didn’t transcribe it because I couldn’t decipher it (there was some of that too)
I didn’t type it out because there was a significant part of the voyage that would put you off your tea. And there seems to have been quite a bit of that just recently. I’ve been having some really disturbed – and disturbing – nights just recently.

As I was finishing everything, which had taken me long enough, someone with whom I wanted a chat appeared on the internet. We ended up having a lengthy chat and that was, basically, the morning finished.

After lunch I set about the radio programme. All of the tracks have been paired and combined and the text is written. Not dictated though because I ran out of time.

There had been a few interruptions during the afternoon.

First of all, there was the afternoon walk in the beautiful pleasant if not slightly windy afternoon.

There wasn’t all that much activity out there at sea this afternoon. Whatever that big ship was yesterday, that’s cleared off and there was only a speeedboat roaring past out at sea.

They are clearly going far too fast for fishing and I can’t think of any other good reason why they would be out there this afternoon. It’s not as if there’s anywhere to go in that direction.

In theory I suppose that they might be heading towards shore because there is something exciting going on over there on the beach by the looks of things.

We saw the other day that the bouchot harvesters were out there on the mussels beds at Donville-les-Bains. Over there on the beach bear Breville-sur-Mer they seem to be gathering again.

They are quite possibly waiting for the tide to go out so that they can access the mussels beds over there too. I doubt that the cabin cruiser there has any involvement in the activity.

They are probably local fishermen, because there have been quite a few of those out there over the last week or 10 days. There are plenty of mooring buoys and pot markers out there right now.

And plenty of other fishermen too. While I was walking along the path on the north side of the promontory a boat came around the headland. They are clearly intent on fishing as they have rods and fishing nets clearly on display.

It beats me why, because I have yet to see anyone out there ever catch anything.

My route arounf the headland took me past the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

And there was plenty of activity in there once again. The usual seven boats of course – nothing has changed that much. But the fishing boat from which they had been stripping the paint the other day, that’s now in the process of being resprayed.

Give it a week or two and we may well find that boat back in the water. And one or two others because there was a considerable amount of work being carried on on the other boats too.

Back here, another interruption was to deal with the question of Strider’s insurance. That expires in a few days and needs to be paid, even though I won’t probably have the pleasure of going over to Canada to drive him this year.

So this involved several e-mails, a ‘phone call to Canada, a complicated series of transactions with the bank and then a discussion on the internet with Rachel.

That took much longer than I expected and meant that my third interruption, my session on the guitar, was somewhat curtailed.

Tea was my burger on a bap with potatoes and vegetables, followed by a slice of my delicious apple pie and soya dessert.

When I went out for my evening walk it wasn’t quite dark outside.

In the distance out in the English Channel there was a yacht looking as if it was heading towards port. Of course it was far too far out for me to be able to identify it.

There were also plenty of other lights out to sea on the horizon. It wasn’t possible to say anything whatever about those.

Instead, I carried on and ran all the way along the footpath underneath the medieval walls. And, having recvered my breath again I ran across the Square Maurice Marland

During my walk across the Place Cambernon I observed the incident that I related earlier and by the time that I moved on, it was now quite dark.

We’ve seen a couple of fishing boats here and there just recently – not as many as we saw three or four months ago. However there was one coming into port and performing a U-turn to tie up alongside the fish processing plant, presumably to unload its catch.

From there I walked down to the road and then ran all the way home to write up my notes.

And having done that, I’m now ready for bed. A nice early night, finish off the radio programme (which might take all day) and then do some tidying up

There is still plenty of work to be done and I’m not really catching up with very much at all. That needs to be changed, and rapidly too.

Friday 4th September 2020 – IT’S BEEN A …

… rather better day today than yesterday. For a start, I beat the third alarm again. Not by very much, and I was sitting quite groggily on the edge of the bed when it went off, but I beat it nevertheless.

After the usual morning ablutions I had a go at the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

We were staying in the city, something like that, last night. It was winter and I was on this hospital car park for some reason. Someone pointed out to me a dog that had two pairs of shoes on and a man running behind with some kind of paper wrapped round his feet. Apparently he’d been getting the dog out of his car in the snow and the dog had taken his shoes and gone off, leaving him behind. It was some kind of hospital and I had to walk across this car park to do something. Then I realised that I had my own appointment so I carried on. I was carrying a ladder and something else that I’d borrowed from the hospital. I got into the sheltered walkway and came to the door where there was a row of steps going up. When I got there, there was someone I recognised. It might have been someone whom I know from Newfoundland who was the caretaker. I had to give my things back to him. There was another guy on the door. It occurred to me walking across the car park that I didn’t have any form of identity with me, any kind of money. I didn’t have my hospital paper so I don’t know how I was going to talk my way into having my appointment. It was too late to run back to the car now. Anyway when I got there I thought that my Newfoundlander friend would vouch for me and who I am. There was a receptionist guy on the counter and I was about to go up and tell my story to him when I awoke again with yet another bad attack of cramp. I don’t know how many attacks of cramp I’d had during the night but that part of it was quite awful..
At somewhere else during the night I’d been with a guy who I know from a Greenock Morton Football Club internet site. We’d been to watch the game. Morton had started the season very unprepared with quite a few players short. They had been talking about players who the club was signing so I went to the ground. We were all standing around the field watching. the first action was a clearance from one of the defenders that hit a Morton player and the refereee blew for handball. Under the new procedures it wouldn’t have been given so we all had a moan at the referee. The we suddenly realised that we were all encroaching on the pitch so we had to walk back a couple of yards and found a chain link around the ground so we walked further back and put the chain link back up. There was some kind of fence that stopped us seeing much of the game so the two of us walked round behind Morton’s goal to watch the action from down there. There was talk of someone signing from a non-league club. he was supposed to be very thin and very tall. There was a discussion about players initials, some kind of gambling thing where you gambled on who the club would sign based on initials. We were talking about the game and the score was 2-0. I couldn’t find out who is was who had the 2. It looked like Morton as they were doing all of the attacking but I couldn’t be sure.

While I was at it, I transcribed a few more from the backlog from when I was on my travels. It was really hard to do anything while I was away because the computer was just not quick enough to respond and I wasn’t well enough

Another thing that I’ve done this morning is to do some tidying up of the things that I’ve bought. There was more stuff than I thought that I had, including some round rice that I thought that I didn’t have.

One day i’m going to have a major rearrangement of the things on the shelves and make some more space. There’s no need for half of the plastic containers that I have, for a start.

With some time that was left I attacked the photos from my voyage. I didn’t edit anything like as many as I wanted because I ended up with two photos having to track down where I was when I took them.

In the end, one I managed to trace but the second (and one or two that come later) will require much more of a detective effort to work out where I was when I took them.

Another reason why I took so long was that I … errr … closed my eyes for a moment or two.

After lunch, I did some of my Welsh revision and then attacked the new internet course. It took most of the afternoon but I managed to do a whole week’s course today.

It’s true to say that I knew a great deal about the basics of the course and that helped a lot, but I still learnt quite a lot from it.

There was the usual break in the working afternoon while I went out for my afternoon walk.

Not that I went very far before I was distracted. The tide was quite far out this afternoon and out across the bay at Donville-les-Bains the mussels posts were uncovered.

What I think they are are the posts and strings for the bouchots – the mussels that grow on strings. The tractors and trailers are out there harvesting them.

The advantage that bouchots have over ordinary mussels is that with not being on the ground, they aren’t full of grainy sand so they taste much more natural and don’t break your teeth.

It’s not just down on the seafood beds that the ocean is rendering up its harvest – at least, in principle.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the last few das we have seen several fishermen out there casting their lot into the water. Today, we have a couple of guys on a zodiac coming round the headland.

They have their rods at the ready and it looks as if they will be taking up their positions just off the Pointe du Roc. I wonder if they will have any more luck than anyone else whom I’ve seen.

There was something extremely curious going on this afternoon on the lawn by the old bunkers at the Pointe du Roc.

The kids, presumably from a local school, where playing a game there. But what caught my eye more than anything else was the absence of masks and the absence of any social distancing.

It’s apparently true to say that kids aren’t as susceptible to the virus than adults (so they say) and don’t suffer as much, but then they all go home and see their siblings, parents, grandparents and neighbours over the weekend.

It seems to me to be pretty short-sighted to exempt kids from the requirements that everyone else is obliged to take. But then, looking at the horrendous casualty figures and the lack of decisive action to prevent or enforce the regulations, it looks as if Western Governments have given up the fight and prepare to sacrifice the population to the God Mammon.

While we’re on the subject of social distancing … “well, one of us is” – ed … there isn’t much social distancing going on down in the Chantier navale right now.

My walk continued round the headland to the viewpoint there and I could see the latest developments in there. It’s been pretty full with seven boats in there but just the other day we went down to six. However today, we’ve gone back up to seven as another boat has come to join the collection.

Plenty of people down there working on them too. It’s all go in there right now, so it seems. I’m particularly interested with the one on its own on the left in the front of the row of five. They have been spending the last week or so stripping all the paint off it.

From there I walked along the path and down past the the end of the Rue Saint Pierre, the little street that leads up to the College Malraux.

It’s close to school chucking-out time and you can tell that by the vehicles that are parked half-on, half-off the pavement blocking the path to anyone who would like to walk along the pavement on that side.

When you consider that there’s a huge free car park just 50 metres away from where they are parked, it’s really a shameful situation to see them parked like that.

Anyway, you’re all probably quite fed up of me talking about pathetic parking so I’ll move on back home where I finished the internet course for the week and had my hour on the guitars.

Tea tonight was vegetable balls with steamed vegetables and vegan cheese sauce followed by the last of the rice pudding.

Later on, I went out for my evening walk. There were only two other people out there which is no surprise because it was quite dark.

Nothing was going on round by the rue du Nord so I carried on to the footpath and then ran along there, pushing on 20-odd metres past my limit.

There was nothing happening at the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch so I went over to the Square Maurice Marland and ran all the way along it and up the ramp at the end.

A couple of days ago we saw the lights in there come on and illuminate the trees. They were already on by the time that I reached there, and everything was so much brighter so the photo is better tonight.

With nothing else going on at all, I ran on back home to write up my notes and then have an early night.

Tomorrow it’s shopping day so I need to be on form. I don’t need very much, for once, but I’ll need to remember exactly what I do need.

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

… little fit of zeal and energy, it goes without saying that today was something of a contre-coup. I felt every ache and pain when I awoke, and I couldn’t get out of bed until 08:10.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble or two, and how!

I had a girlfriend last night and we had gone skiing or mountaineering together. There were four of us in total . It was quite clear that the two of us were together but we hadn’t known each other long. She was just explaining how difficult relationships were because she wasn’t the kind of person to just accept any kind of relationship. She explained how difficult it was to make her laugh and all that kind of thing, how she liked to have someone who was attentive towards her. I thought “that sounds like me actually” but for some unknown reason I couldn’t actually get her to laugh or whatever. We escorted each other on this trip and I got her down the mountain safely. We ended up somewhere just coming into the town and we were told that some old guy whom we knew was at the bar but he’d had the wrong beer so he was rather differently drunk than usual and it wasn’t a pretty sight. We thought that we’d better go over there and see what was going on. We ended up over there to see this old guy but by that time he’d gone. The barmaid asked us if we wanted a drink. I really fancied a drink but she said no she didn’t so I thought that I won’t have one. I won’t drink on my own. There was another girl there and for some reason I wanted to be a little show-offy with the girl I was with but she wasn’t the kind who would be particularly emotional, which was one of the things she had said to me. She said “the barmaid is obviously thinking that we are going to be having a drink so maybe we ought to move away” so reluctantly I agreed to move away with this girl.
Somewhat later on, I went on a voyage concerning two of my mother’s aunts. They had been engaged to work as matrons in some exclusive boarding school place. The small boys in the Preparatory school had been taken away from their fathers and so they weren’t bonding with them and the girls were just left there by there parents. The aunts were very unhappy about the entire situation and they wanted to leave to go into some kind of religious establishment that was there but they decided that they couldn’t leave these children at this very vulnerable time. It was all very sad and all very depressing.
There was another thing too about an island off the coast of Australia or New Zealand, although it looked like Northern peri-Arctic to me, right at the far north. It was all very isolated and there was only a boat every so often that went to the island. It was very isolated. Someone whom I knew was a driving test examiner who came over to give everyone a driving test. It was Nerina, and she was very busy doing all of this. I eventually caught up with her and she pointed out that some had passed and some had failed and she was rather disparaging towards the people who had failed. We were talking about death and she said that when she died she wanted a certain photo to be placed in her memory. It was a photo of her with another boy – someone whom she knew in University. Of course that upset me rather a lot because I expected to be the one on the photo with her when she went but apparently not. There was all kinds of talk. I had had a Reliant three-wheeler van which had long-since gone but I still had the papers for it. I was thinking that with this not being taxed I could get into a lot of trouble with this even though the van was no longer extant. There was some talk as well about getting Ryanair to provide a flight service to the airport, how they were going to arrange it. At one time they were talking on the island about a storm that was heading their way. It had already devastated the south of New Zealand and how were they going to cope up here when the storm finally hit? This was a strange thing as well.
Later still there were two red double-deck buses that appeared on the front of a restaurant or car park of a pub where Terry and I were sitting. One of then was an AEC which might have been a Regal V but it wasn’t – did I mean a Regent V? and the other one was more like an RT although i’m sure that I meant Routemaster from London. Terry wondered what on earth they were doing here so I said that I could soon find out by taking a photo and posting it on the Abandoned Buses group and I’ll have a reply in 5 minutes. But as I went to take a photo, in the time that it took for me to get my phone out and my camera on the phone ready, these buses had disappeared again. I said something to a woman who seemed to be with them but she just blubbered some kind of nonsense and walked away. Terry and I walked to the end of the car park to see if we could see where these buses had gone but we couldn’t see a thing.

It took ages to transcribe the dictaphone notes, as you might expect with all of this, and then I attacked the radio programme. That’s now completed and ready to go.

After lunch I sat down and dealt with a load of correspondence that had built up. I also tried to order a SSD hard-drive for my little Acer laptop but the effects of Brexit are biting already, for the company concerned now no longer delivers to the mainland.

So I made another start on the photos from early August but instead I crashed out completely for a couple of hours. On awakening, I felt absolutely awful again, just like I have done for this last while (apart from yesterday of course)

It was thus rather late when I went out for my afternoon walk and once again I went around the headland.

And I’m glad that I did too, because there was this lovely scene unfolding before my eyes, down on the beach. A young couple strolling casually hand-in-hand down there lost for all the world in their own amorous attachment.

It was all very nice and romantic and made me feel quite envious, as it happens.

That wasn’t all the people out there either. There were hordes of people strolling along on the paths around the clifftop.

The sea was quite busy too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall from yesterday that there were quite a few people out there having a good fishing session. They were still out there today, like these in the zodiac down here.

There was also someone out there having a paddle around in a kayak. I could see his paddles but I couldn’t see if he had a rod with him.

And of course, you mustn’t light a fire in your boat. As you all already know, you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

And if the crowds on the beach, crowds on the paths and crowds in the sea aren’t enough to be going on with, we had crowds in the air too.

As I was walking around, I counted no fewer than four light aeroplanes flying over me. This one here came the closest and so presented the best photographic shot. I’ve no idea what type of aeroplane it is, and the serial number that I could see didn’t come up with anything.

The other aeroplanes were too far away for me to take a clear photograph which was a shame. All that I needed to see was the autogyro fluttering past overhead and the day would have been complete.

It was quite a nice day outside today. It was quite sunny and there was very little wind for a change.

The view was quite clear today too. We’d seen the Brittany coast yesterday, so today we had a good look down towards the bottom of the Baie de Mont St Michel. We can’t see the Mont and the abbey but we can see the white buildings down at the foot of the bay that are the hotels on the shore.

What is extremely interesting is whatever might be there just to the right of centre. It seems to be a very small, low cloud having a rainstorm but I’m sure that it isn’t.

My walk continued on round to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

There’s been a change in occupancy in there too today. Over the last few days there have been seven boats in there but today we’re down to just six. One of the little chalutiers is missing – presumably having gone back into the water.

It’ll be interesting to see over the next few days whether we’ll be having a new arrival to make up the numbers, or whether it’ll be like 10 green bottles and they’ll be disappearing one by one as everyone slowly goes back to work.

Back here I continued with the photos for a while, and then went back to having an hour on the guitars before tea. And I do like my new acoustic guitar.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and tomato sauce, followed by rice pudding. Quite a delicious tea, I have to say.

Running rather late tonight, it was going dark when I went outside for my evening stroll.

The sun had gone right down of course, but there was still a beautiful red glow through the clouds in the sky over by the Ile de Chausey in the English Channel.

Surprisingly, I was the only person out there admiring it. There were no more than half a dozen people out there this evening and they were all walking dogs and the like, taking no notice of the beautiful evening.

From the viewpoint in the rue du Nord I walked along along the walls to the footpath.

And once on the footpath and there was no-one about, I broke into a run and ran down the footpath again, regardless of how I was feeling. The tide was well in this evening and we can see the diving platform practically submerged by the water.

We’ve seen plenty of photos of the diving platform totally out of the water when the tide is well out. This gives you some idea of how far the tide comes in and how high it is. One of the highest tides in Europe, so they say.

having spent a few minutes watching the sea, I walked on round to the Square Maurice Marland.

No-one about at all so I broke into another run and went all the way across the square and up the first ramp at the end. And as I ran along the square, suddenly the lights came on and lit up all of the trees.

It lit up everything just as if it was on the stage in a theatre.

After that I headed off home, running the final 100 metres back to the apartment. I’ve written up all of my notes now and I’m off to bed in a minute.

Tomorrow is shopping day and it’s a long walk to LIDL so I need to be on form, regardless of how I’m feeling, as there’s a few things that I need to buy.

And maybe I’ll have a series of voyages just as exciting as I’ve had for the last couple of nights.

Tuesday 1st September 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

… much better day today, which will surprise many people. In fact, even more surprisingly, it was such a better day that I even managed to fit in three runs this evening.

Short they may have been (although two of them were longer than when I first started running again a year ago) but runs nevertheless.

And you wouldn’t have bet on that yesterday, would you?

What was even more surprising is that I actually managed to beat the third alarm this morning. And it’s been such a long time since that has happened too.

Plenty of voyages during the night too. I started off the night walking the streets of Paris last night and I was interviewing someone about some kind of incident that had happened at a parking meter. It was a guy on a motorbike and sidecar and I took a statement or whatever and asked the guy to produce his driving licence for me. I had no doubt that he was an official kind of person and looked quite presentable and respectable. Nevertheless I asked for his papers and he replied “you aren’t in uniform” and opened up the throttle of his motorbike. I grabbed hold of him by the lapel and ended up overturning the motorbike and sidecar and dragging him off into the street. Then I got on the radio and asked for assistance.
Before that there had been some kind of archaeology dig. A group of us was taking part in it. Normally we were finding comparatively modern things but we suddenly came across a complete skeleton of a girl aged about 11 that had been buried in a bank. We’d excavated it and it was pretty much complete. Zero was there too. She was in a red jumper grey skirt and red tights. She was lying on the bed and we were talking about this skeleton, saying how it might have been her even and so on. All the time we were talking about this skeleton. They asked what i was going to do with it. I said that I would put it back where it came from first, back in this little place and then we’ll have a think about it.
There was another dream about a great big black bull and I was having to fit bolts into it for some reason or other. It was a huge hairy type of bull like a rastaman. I was talking to it about it being a rastaman and explaining what I was doing – the bull saying “ohh yes I like that – that’s very good”. I was tightening up the bolts with a huge spanner, not too tight though. I turned to the final bolt on the left-hand flank and it just upped and wandered off. I had to chase all the way after it. every time I got close to it it moved on again. By this time it had turned into a cat so I was just following this cat around through this crowded room. Eventually it went to settle down right in the very far corner the furthest possible point away from where I was.

That’s not everything either. There was a little bit of truncated, incoherent stuff from some voyage or other that never quite made it onto the dictaphone, and also another round of stuff that you wouldn’t thank me for posting while you are eating a meal or something.

After breakfast I did some paperwork and also SHOCK! HORROR! some tidying up. Mind you, it doesn’t look much like it right now.

However one thing that I did today was to finish as far as I can the radio project on which I’ve been working. The final track has been selected too and all that remains is to write out the closing speech, dictate and edit it and then combine it with what I’ve already done and with the final track.

In fact, I could have finished it today but Rosemary telephoned me for a chat and we were on the telephone for well over an hour.

This afternoon I went out for my usual walk in the sun (and wind).

And I hadn’t gone more than 10 yards out of the building before I was dive-bombed by a couple of bird-men of Alcatraz.

It’s another one of these tandem machines with two people in it. Ideal for doing some photography or even some bomb-aiming should the need ever arise.

It’s just as well that there was enough wind to get them off the ground.

For a change I went for my afternoon walk around the headland instead of around the walls, for reasons that I will explain in due course.

The view once more was tremendous and we could see for miles. Right in the centre of this photograph is the lighthouse at Cap Fréhel, that I could see quite clearly with the naked eye.

There’s a boat out to sea right on the right-hand edge of the photo and also a marker light off the coast clearly visible to the left. This might possibly be round about the Ile Agot or the Ebihens archipelago

There wasn’t very much out there in the way of marine traffic today.

Not many fishing boats at all out there, although there were several smaller boats out there. A couple of speedboats rather like this one here in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

It looks to me as if they might be stopping there to do some fishing or something like that. It’s that time of the year.

Indeed, it wasn’t just out at sea that there was fishing going on.

Here on the rocks there were several fishermen like these two casting their lines into the sea. I stood and watched them for quite a while but once more, I didn’t actually see anyone catch anything.

In fact in all the years that I’ve been watching fishermen on the rocks here in Granville, I have yet to see anyone catch any fish at all with a rod and line.

My walk carried on around the headland until I came to the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale.

We still have the same seven boats in there that have been in there for the last few days. And because we are still in working hours, a few men are down there working on the various boats.

It’s keeping them very busy down there, whether it’s the employees of the shipbuilder, representatives of the owners or specialist tradesmen and it’s all good news for the town.

It wasn’t just out at sea and here on the rocks that there were plenty of people

While I was out there there was a lot going on in the air. We’ve seen the bird-men of Alcatraz a little earlier and right now while I was walking along the footpath I was buzzed by a light aeroplane flying overhead.

There seems to be plenty going on in the air right now, and a trip to the airport at Donville-les-Bains will have to be on the cards for me one of these days in the near future.

One thing about today is that the schools have started back.

You can tell that by the fact that we are back with the pathetic parking again – a car parked with two wheels on the pavement blocking it off for pedestrians when there is a perfectly good free car park just 50 yards away.

And look at the people congregating around the gate too. No sense of social distancing and not very many facemasks either.

It’s no wonder that the virus is currently running rampant around the country with all of this going on. I don’t know how people expect this virus to be over.

Back here I finished off my work and had tea. Another stuffed pepper with vegetables and rice, followed by rice pudding which was delicious

Then it was out for my evening walk tonight.

Feeling energetic I went around the walls and on the flat parts where there was no-one around, I broke into a run or two. It might not have been much but I went way beyond where I left off when I started running down there a year ago.

Round at the viewpoint over the Plat Gousset I had a look down at the Place Marechal Foch. There were quite a few people out for a walk round there, and it was nice to see the streetlights switched on too.

During the winter they had them switched off, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and it made photography something of a challenge. I hope that they keep them on this winter.

From there I had a second run along the
Square Maurice Marland and right up the ramp at the far end.

We’d seen the moon yesterday shining up above St Pair sur Mer but tonight as I watched, the moon slowly rose up above the cliffs and into view. It was really quite spectacular.

From there I had a wander home, breaking into another run for the last 50 yards or so.

back here I’ve written up my notes and now I’m off to bed, hoping to have another good night and hopefully another better day tomorrow – not that I have too much optimism about it.

But one thing that I know is that in approximately 5 hours time a year ago, my life changed dramatically thanks to one particular incident that happened at roughly that moment.

It was an incident that meant a great deal to me and which I won’t ever forget, regardless of anything else Even a year later, I still can’t get it all out of my mind.

Friday 17th July 2020 – I DID SOMETHING …

… this morning that I said I wouldn’t ever do willingly.

So while you admire Thora coming into port this afternoon, let me tell you about it. In fact, what it was was that when I heard the alarms go off, I consciously and willingly settled back down under the nice clean bedding and stayed there.

Until all of 07:45 too. I wasn’t in any hurry. But there’s a lot to do and I thought that a decent rest would give me a head start.

There was nothing on the dictaphone either, as I discovered when I went to check after the medication. It must have been a really deep sleep, that’s all that I can say.

Most of the morning was spent tidying up in here, putting some stuff away, doing some sorting out and tidying up. Yes, I have one or two cunning plans going around in my head right now.

And all of that took much longer than I was expecting. I have no idea where the time went. I haven’t done half as much as I intended to do, that’s for sure.

All of that took me up to lunchtime when I finished off the last of Sunday’s bread.

That was a shame because it really was good and I was well-impressed with that loaf.

This afternoon I finished off the first week of my web development course. At this stage I know most of it but we spent a lot of time working on forms and that’s something of which I haven’t really done much so I’m already making some headway

Next week we’ll be doing some *.css. I have a rudimentary knowledge of that so I’m keen to see what I don’t know about it.

There was the afternoon walk of course – I do that every day.

It looks as if the shoal of mackerel is still there. In the first photo of Thora above you saw half of the town with their rods out on the harbour wall, and all of the boats that we saw yesterday are out there again tonight.

Here’s just a few of them. In total I counted at least 20 altogether having a good go at the fish. And I still haven’t seen anyone catch anything.

The air was pretty busy today too.

It wasn’t that particularly windy today, but windy enough for the hordes of hang-gliders to be hanging around in the field next to the cemetery at Donville-les Bains.

This one here is quite interesting. It’s a tandem one, that carries a passenger. And before anyone says anything, no I am NOT going to be having a go at it. Any flighted craft that takes off from a field with a cemetery at the end of the runway is not for me at all.

And here’s something else that I’m not going to be doing either.

Jumping off a diving platform into the sea seems to be such a popular activity right now that they have fixed the one at Donville-les-Bains that was derelict for quite a while. But here at the Plat Gousset in Granville, the crowds were gathering.

One or two people seemed to be more adventurous than the ones yesterday and it didn’t take too long for them to start leaping into the drink.

So that’s all of the people in the air and out at sea. What about those on terra firma?

Everywhere was thoroughly crowded today. The beaches, the footpaths, everywhere. As you can see, down on the beach with the tide well in, the crowds really were congregating.

Those on the beach might just have the correct amount of social distancing between each family group but I wouldn’t like to bet on it.

Numbers of the infected here in France are rising quickly and we’ll be having a second wave of confinement before long. I don’t want to jump the gun and get myself infected by going down there amongst that lot.

My baby seagull seems to have gone definitively. Both parents were on the roof today with no sign of the little one.

On the other hand, the others seem to be coming along nicely and growing very rapidly. But I thought that this was a lovely touch. One of the residents has placed a ladder at the side of his house and put a bowl of water up there for the babies.

They were making the most of it too, enjoying every drop. And they needed it too in this weather because it was starting to become really warm by now.

You saw the photos of Thora coming in to the harbour and tying up at the quayside underneath the unloading crane.

The big ferries to and from the Channel Islands are still not running, so it seems, so there is only one way to bring your car over to France.

This is the kind of procedure that takes me back many, many years to long before the days of ro-ro ferries. Cars had to be lifted on and off boats by cranes and despite the advances in modern techniques and modern equipment, there are no real facilities for that here at Granville.

So what worked in the 40s and 50s and early 60s is still working today. Particularly when there is no other alternative.

Thora wasn’t the only boat out there this afternoon.

One of the Joly France boats was out there too with a load of passengers. And it wasn’t easy to say where they were going. It was rather late though to be taking so many people out to the Ile de Chausey.

The boat is actually the newer one of the two. You can tell that because the windows are deeper and there’s also a smaller area of superstructure on the top deck.

She has a step cut in the stern too, but you can’t see that from here.

My walk continued around the walls until I reached the highest point where I can see down into the yard of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs.

It looks as if the film crew is packing up for the weekend now. All of the vans and lorries are here, most of the stuff is outside and some of it has even been loaded up.

We’re told that they will be back on Monday to finish off. That should be interesting. And as I noticed later on when I went for my evening walk, the mobile canteen is still here. So they do mean it.

Back here I finished off the first week of the interactive web page studies and then spent the final hour trying desperately to speak to someone at the bank about my bank card that won’t work.

Eventually after holding for 45 minutes I spoke to someone who had no more idea that I have about why it isn’t working and they agreed in the end to send me a new card.

No idea what’s happening here.

After the guitars, it was tea time. Rice and lentil burger with veg and gravy, followed by more of my delicious apple crumble

Off I went later on, struggling up the hill on my evening run, falling short yet again of the top.

Walking up to the top and recovering my breath I ran on down to the clifftop to see what was going on, but there was nothig happening out at sea. All of the seagulls were there though, hundreds of them. Evidently the shoal of mackerel is still there and they are all fishing for supper.

“Are they having more luck than the fishermen?” I asked myself. I’ve not seen any of them catch anything as yet either.

All the way back down the other side I ran.

Thora has gone now, back out to sea. That was a very quick turnround. Marité is there though, although I understand that she has plens to be on her way soon. And in the gloom and doom the Big Wheel looks impressive. It will be even better when it’s darker and the lights will stand out more.

My run down to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord was uneventful, and I missed the sunset too which was a shame.

No-one picnicking on the beach tonight either although there were a few people hanging around here and there. I didn’t wait but ran on home.

Now there’s some tidying up to do and then I’m off to bed. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow and I can’t afford to hang about.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: fishing

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 – WE’VE BEEN HAVING …

Tuesday 9th March 2021 – WE’VE BEEN HAVING …

Thursday 15th October 2020 – I WAS RIGHT …

Wednesday 14th October 2020 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

Thursday 1st October 2020 – IT’S ANOTHER MONTH ALREADY…

Monday 21st September 2020 – I DUNNO …

Thursday 17th September 2020 – JUST IN CASE …

Tuesday 15th September 2020 – DESPITE NOT …

Thursday 10th September 2020 – IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING …

Tuesday 8th September 2020 – THIS EVENING …

Friday 4th September 2020 – IT’S BEEN A …

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S …

Tuesday 1st September 2020 – I’VE HAD A …

Friday 17th July 2020 – I DID SOMETHING …

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