Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… one of the strangest football matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

It’s the Welsh Cup this weekend and there are several banana skins lying aound. One of those is Carmarthen Town v Rhydaman, and this was shown on the live internet feed tonight.

Carmarthen are at the foot of the Welsh Premier League and struggling whereas Rhydaman, one division below them in the pyramid, are in 5th place and having a good run of form. Not the match that I would have picked – I’d have gone for Colwyn Bay v Airbus – but’s good enough. It’s the kind of game where you can smell that someone is in for a scalping.

And a scalping there certainly was. Rhydaman, playing away from home at Carmarthen, ran out winners. And not just by the odd goal either but they won 0-4.

You would have thought from the scoreline that this was a right spannering, but that was very far from the truth. Whilst Rhydaman were the better side, they weren’t all that better. The difference was that we were treated to 4 magic moments of Trundlemania

Yes, Lee Trundle. He must be 45 now if he’s a day but still proving that he can cut it with the best and while he’s slowed down considerably as you might expect, he still showed the kind of magic that made him a multi-million pound footballer in the days when multi-million pound footballers were still quite thin on the ground.

I mean – just HOW do you defend against something like this?

Despite a reasonably early night, I missed the alarms again. Not by much – only a few minutes in fact, but missed them nevertheless.

Not only that, although there was nothing on the dictaphone, I had a vague recollection that during the night I’d been on a voyage and found something that was way beyond exciting – the same feeling of elation that I had when I I came across that Santana concert after 42 years of searching.

But what it was, we shall never know now.

After the medication and breakfast, with no dictaphone notes to do, I attacked a couple of digital music files to break up into tracks.

One of them took me four hours to do, and for a variety of reasons too. It was an album of a live concert and with this digital sound analyser program that I have, I could see that it was a series of individual tracks that had been artificially joined together – and by a blind man by the looks of it too.

16 tracks altogether so it took me quite a while to edit all of the joints together properly so that it actually looks like a live concert as well as sounds like one too.

Then I had to break the file down into 16 individual tracks and save each one of those individually, but not before I’d copied about 15 decent applause tracks (some of which went on for half a minute and more) from the file, cut out any speech and unnecessary noise from them, boosted the volume in what are called “S-curves” in places to hide the difference in volume in the joins where I’ve cut things out, and then saved them to disk as 15 individual files.

Applause tracks are good and I love them because I can do all kinds of exciting things with them. But you need a good number of them from the same concert because if you “mix and match” applause tracks from different concerts, the applause doesn’t sound similar and it gives the appearance of being false. And if they are long applause tracks, you can cut them down and that gives you even more opportunity to make something different.

Round about 12:45 I knocked off for lunch.

No bread here and no lettuce either so a walk into town was on the cards. And quite right too. Past the docks where the harbour gates were open sothe trawlers could come inside to unload.

And Charles-Marie is still over there with her winter wrap on.

The gates to the harbour can’t have been open all that long because there were several fishing boats on their way into port right now.

This one coming into port just here gave me a good opportunity for a photo-shoot but as I took a shot, my photo was once more bombed by a blasted seagull.

They get absolutely everywhere, these perishing things.

At the Super-U the lettuce was extortionate. €1:39 for a small one. That’ll teach me to forget one at LIDL, won’t it?

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and walked across to the Place general de gaulle to see what was going on.

Nothing right now as you can see, but clearly something will be going on in the very near future because we seem to have acquired a stage.

That’s going to upset a few of the marketeers tomorrow. It’ll quite take the shine off their sausages, now that they can begin to roast them again with charcoal following a recent Court decision.

But what about our famous ski slope in the town?

No room for any humans on there because we seem to have been overrun by animals. I can understand why they might want to use animals as decoration, but why beavers … or … errr … Castors to the French people around here.

What does a beaver have to do with the festive season?

This is much more like the kind of thing you would expect to see at Christmas, isn’t it?

We have a sledge here and a reindeer pulling it. Presumably there will be a Father Christmas around somewhere to travel in it.

But I have a cunning plan and I shall be having a word with Strawberry Moose in early course and we will go for a little walk together late one night for a photo opportunity.

Yesterday I mentioned and indeed showed you a photograph of the Christmas decorations that they were unloading at the Square Potel in the rue des Juifs, and I remember saying that I would go for a butcher’s today.

So here I am in the Square Potel with the decorations and I do have to say that I’m considerably underwhelmed by it all.

Mybe it’s just me I dunno, but I was expecting much more than this.

After lunch, I attacked the sound mixing desk for the vocals for the current project. It took me hours to figure out again how to record anything with it because I had forgotten what I did last time. And then I had to clean out all of the test files, set the volume levels and the like, and then clean out those test files too.

And then I could start.

The recording level is quite low using the built-in mike but my sound analyser program enhances that with no loss of quality. But there is a major problem with it, in that there’s no “pause” facility. So every time you stop for a think or to clear your throat, it restarts with a new track.

Trying to edit out about 40 of those into one coherent track and then split that down into tis segments is going to take me an age.

But I have made a startling discovery, and that is that the mikes that I bought for the mixing panel, using the adapter that came with them I can plug them into the dictaphone, which DOES have a pause facility. And also an output for headphones.

In view of this, I see a whole new world opening up for me here. For although the sound is somewhat tinny, it seems to be of a much higher quality.

One thing that I didn’t mention today is that the high winds are back. And with a vengeance too.

There was quite a storm raging out offshore and so even though the tide was on its way out, the waves were still rattling down on the rocks.

Not too many people out there today and that’s hardly a surprise given the conditions.

But overcast and miserable and foggy it might be here, over across the bay on the Brittany coast they were having a different kind of weather.

Low cloud, yes, but on the periphery there was bright sunshine and it was creating a most unusual lighting effect over there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it could do the same thing around here on this side of the bay?

Going around the headland was taking my life in my hands with the wind that was sweeping around there.

narrowly avoiding being squidged on the pedestrian crossing, I went round the cliff to see what the waves were doing on the sea wall.

Not a lot, because the tide was going out rapidly. It must have bee quite impressive an hour or so ago.

Nothing changed at all in the chantier navale today, and Normandy Trader had sodded off too … “that was quick” – ed … so I stood and armired the waves for a little longer.

Every now and again there was a wave more powerful and deeper than the others, and that was providing me with some exciting entertainment.

But after a while I gave it up and headed for home and coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite regularly in these pages. Here’s another example.

I’d seen her pull up as I was on my way home with my lettuce and bread, and I thought to myself at the time “she’s not going to leave that car there, straddling two places and with 6 feet of room in front, is she?”

But yes she is. Gets right on my wick it does.

Back to the sound files and then a break for tea. I made a curry with the leftovers again and there were so many leftovers that there are some leftovers left over. That’ll be a tea for another night then, won’t it?

This evening it was raining when I went out so I didn’t hang around. I had my run though, right up to the top of the ramp and another 20 paces further on. It was feeling good today.

Then we had the football and now, considerably later than planned (like 01:45) I’m off to bed. I’m a busy boy tomorrow and another task has reared its ugly head as well.

Where will I find the time?

Wednesday 4th December 2019 – BRRRRHHHH!

Winter is acumen in. And Caliburn is the first to notice it.

It was absolutely taters in my apartment this morning. And even with one of the radiators going full-tilt overnight in the living room, the temperature was a mere 9°C.

The other radiator won’t be switched on though, because I spend most of my life in the bedroom-cum-office here and even with just one small radiator, it keeps quite warm in here.

But outside this morning, the temperature had descended to just 0°C, with the promise of more frost on the way. Winter is well and truly on its way.

It’s not the only thing that’s on its way either. I was on my way during the night. I had an old beige Cortina mkIV (UOB? YLO? WGS?) that had been involved in an accident and was quite badly damaged at the front so we were taking the seats out of it to put in another one. We were having to do this on the very quiet in the hope that no-one would ever get to see about it because with the floor pans being the same all the seats in the mkIII, mkIV and mkV were quite the same. But the door cards wouldn’t fit and I remember thinking so it was probably a mkIII that we were going to fit these seats in. But apart from that I don’t really remember very much else and awoke shortly after the dream started.

There were further instances too, but the battery in the dictaphone went flat as I began to dictate them and by the time that I had sorted out new batteries, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

An early start meant an early breakfast and I was back at my desk quite early too. And by the time that I knocked off at lunchtime, I’d reduced the dictaphone backlog to just 8 files. I’m hoping to finish those tomorrow if I can get a good whack at it.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was planning to head off for this outside market on the football club car park. So I took a break from the dictaphone and headed off outside.

My route took me up the hill into the avenue des Matignon and here once again we witnessed one of the eternal banes of this site – the pathetic parking of various selfish motorists.

Here’s one guy who’s parked over not one but two places in a loading bay while he went into the boulangerie, despite the fact that right behind where he parked was an empty public parking place.

It really is unbelievable.

Another thing on which we focus is the various house-building activities that are going on all over town.

This site in the avenue des Matignon has featured before, but a long while ago when it was nothing like as completed as it is now.

And judging by the space heaters and moisture extractors in use in the building, it won’t be long before it’s ready for occupation, I reckon.

Ad I’m glad that I wasn’t expecting too much of this open-air market today, because I wasn’t disappointed at all.

There were a couple of bakers there but none of them had a loaf my size so I eschewed the opportunity. And the price of the fresh veg was, well, out of my range I’m afraid.

But there was someone there selling baking apples and had I not been planning my getaway in a week’s time, I’d have bought a few. Instead, I’ll get a few next week and they will be nice and ready for when I return.

On the way back down into town, the workmen were there once more at the roundabout at the place Pierre Semard, working on the Christmas tree.

Today they have brought another pile of smaller trees and they seem to be erecting their own little forest. And without any obvious Health and Safety issues, although had it been the UK, they all would have had to wear armour-plating to defend themselves against splinters.

Having admired them for a few minutes, I continued on down into town, picked up my dejeunette and came back home.

And much to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, I managed to run about 100 metres up the steep hill. I’ve not done that before.

Still an hour or so to go before lunch so I continued with the dictaphone notes, leaving just 8 to do, as I mentioned when I knocked off for lunch.

After lunch I had another play around with the Fostex mixer desk and I’ve managed to make it work after a fashion. At least, it’s recording tracks and I can upload them to the desktop computer, but the recording level is too low for my liking.

Still, I’ve ordered a few of the correct cables for the external microphones and when they arrive, I’ll be in business (I hope).

Next task was to edit out some soundbites of Louis de Funes and his friends from a few video soundtracks so that I can use them in my projects. I had an 8-minutes soundtrack and I’m halfway through it, having selected out about 15 so far.

At some time during the course of the afternoon I must have dozed off on my nice new comfy chair, because I suddenly sat bolt upright with quite a shock. And it’s been a while since I’ve done that.

16:00 – time for my afternoon walk.

There was bright sunlight out there in places, yet it was freezing cold still and the sea was covered in this layer of freezing fog.

All in all, from this point of view it looked like a rather depressing afternoon.

Despite the cold and the fog, there were some people out there enjoying themselves.

Some guy was out there with his bucket, doing what they call round here the peche à pied – fishing on foot. Scavenging in the rockpools for the cockles and mussels, alive, alive-ohh, hey?

And I hope that he shares them out with his friends. After all, one mustn’t be selfish with one’s shellfish

Further on along the coast the beach out at Donville-les-Bains was swathed in glorious sunshine.

There were quite a few people out there on the beach enjoying the sunshine while they could, and that sad former hotel building that is now apartments and where I went to look at something once, even that was looking quite nice today in the conditions.

But as you can see, the fog isn’t all that far away. You can’t see very much behind the building.

It wasn’t just on the beach at Donville-les-Bains that the people were sunning themselves either.

There were quite a few people walking out on the promenade at the Plat Gousset and there were even some intrepid souls who had made their way onto the beach.

As for me, I carried on with my walk and seeing as there was no-one out and about on the Square Maurice Marland where I take my evening run, I leapt into action there too.

All the way along my little track and up the ramp at the end too. It was something of an effort, that final 20 metres and that’s what usually finishes me off, the rise at the end, but I made it up to the top today.

Back at the apartment I started to split into their individual tracks the digital music that I have been downloading just recently. Today, I did two albums and I reckon that along with the photos, this will be my project once the dictaphone notes are finished.

There was some stuffing left over from the pepper the other day so I added a tin of kidney beans and made some taco rolls for tea. And there’s still some stuffing left over now. What I’ll do, probably on Friday, is to make some pasta and eat it with the stuffing and the left-over veg.

Freezin cold and pitch-black outside so I didn’t loiter on my evening walk.

They have installed the Christmas lights on the rue du Port so I stopped to photograph them. And, frankly, if that’s the best that they can do, it’s all rather sad if you ask me. They needn’t have bothered.

No-one about again so I broke into a run and made it all the way down my course here without too much effort.

Even though I say it myself, I’m feeling much better with myself because I’m making the effort to move about more. Who knows? At this rate I might even start looking for a partner. Wouldn’t that be something?

So LIDL tomorrow. I don’t know what they have in the specials but it will be fun finding out. So I’ll catch up with my beauty sleep right now.

After all, with my looks, I need all the beauty sleep I can get.

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

… that I wasn’t intending to do much or to go far today, I’ve actually performed 104% of my daily target today. I was going to brag and say that that’s what happens you are the dynamic self-motivated person to which I aspire, but actually today didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.

It all went wrong long before I went to bed, when I was so engrossed in something or other that it was about 01:30 when I went to bed. And that was certainly no part of anyone’s plan, least of all mine.

It didn’t stop me being out of bed by about 06:15 though – beating the third alarm by a comfortable 5 minutes or so. And we’ll do some more of that too.

I was rather all over the place last night. I started off with a pose set that I’d downloaded for my 3D characters ages ago and that I didn’t know that I had. I came across it by accident and was going through it, and the textures of the articles and some of the poses were really good. However they needed breaking down, going through into different folders for different activities. That got me going all the way through this 3D program for some reason and I was doing all kinds of things with it. I can’t remember all that much about it now unfortunately but that was what I was doing.

Anyway, enough of that for now. An early start means an early breakfast which means an early return to work. And despite several distractions, by the time that I had knocked off at midday, the number of outstanding files in the queue for dictaphone transcription is a mere 17. I’ve had a really good day at that today, especially as some extremely long ones have bitten the dust.

Of those that are left, there are only two that can be classed as “long”, and they aren’t as long as a couple that I have dealt with today.

At midday I knocked off – later than intended but I was in the middle of something – and headed of to town in search of my dejeunette.

An unpleasant surprise met me at the back of the fish-processing plant though. The tide hadn’t gone far enough out so the harbour gates were open. No footpath to cross so I had to come all the way back to the rue du Port.

Mind you as one door close, another opens and through the open harbour doors has slipped out old friend Thora, having come in from Jersey on the morning tide, I suppose, and tied up in her usual spec next to Marité.

But I don’t have time to stop to say hello. Although it’s true that I’m retired, I just don’t know why I don’t have enough time for anything these days.

I’m actually heading for the Post Office. I forgot that I had a parcel that arrived while I was out yesterday and needs picking up.

But I had to make a brief pause in the Place General de Gaulle to look at our new ski slope. I can see that we will be having hours of endless fun on that this year, won’t we,

And no luck at the Post Office. Closed for lunch. Of course, i’m running late. So I pick up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and head for home.

And, what’s more, I don’t even recall stopping for breath going up the hill.

After lunch I make a start on my next project – number 005 – and by the time that it was walk-time I’d finished all of the music. And there’s some good stuff on this one too.

We’ve been talking … “well, one of us has” – ed … about the fishing boats out there in that little square of sea bounded by my promontory, the Ile de Chausey, Jersey and the coast up to the north from here.

And there’s another couple out there today having a go to see what they might catch.

When I have the time I’ll look back over the photos of the previous years and see what the shipping and the fishing was like out there back then. I’m certain that it wasn’t like this then.

Quite a few people out there today in the nice weather but I carry on with my walk without stopping to exchange any pleasantries.

No change in the situation at the chantier navale so I push on … “or push off” – ed … further along the cliff until I get a good overviww of the inner basin and Thora riding away at her moorning.

For a change I’m feeling pretty good so I carry on with my walk and end up back in town. This time the Post Office is open so I can pick up my parcel.

And I head back home with it clutched in my sweaty little mitts

It is in fact my long-awaited mixing panel so I have a play with it. My external mikes won’t plug in (I need an adapter cable) and an ad-hoc arrangement with a guitar input won’t work either.

After a good play around I finally get it to work off the internal condenser mike but there’s no volume to speak of and what I do hear, it sounds as if I have my head stuck in a bucket.

It seems that I have a steep learning curve to follow with this machine. I’ve found a handbook on the internet and I shall get on the case tomorrow.

Tea was a vegan burger on a bap and I don’t know what I did tonight but it tasted absolutely delicious – much better than it usually has. Whatever it was, I shall have to do it again.

After the burger there was the rice pudding and after the rice pudding we had the usual evening walk around the walls.

Not a soul about yet again so I was on my own, admiring the view of the coast with towns like Donville-les-Bains all lit up and their reflection shimmering away in the sea.

No tripod, not even a monopod, so a hand-held shot or two of the place . I’m hoping that now that the wind is finally starting to die down (for the moment) I can go out one nice evening with the tripod and have some fun.

So with a closer look at Donville-les-Bains from by the Plat Gousset I carry on around the bend … “quite” – ed.

No-one about again so I break into my run and tonight make it almost all the way up to the top of the ramp at the end.

Totally out of breath yet again, but I’m sure that it’s doing me good, even if I am in agony for five minutes when I stop

nevertheless, I’m feeling much better because of it so I shall keep on keeping on

Bedtime now, and if I remember to get out of bed early enough I’ll go and check out this vegetable market and see what they have to offer. I’m not expecting too much, but it’s another long walk in the morning and that can only be good news.

Monday 2nd December 2019 – MY FITBIT …

… has told me some surprising things in the pas, but none more surprising than what it told be today.

Having coupled it up to the laptop while I went for my shower this morning, it told me that over the month of November I had performed 103% of my daily fitness routine – the first time ever that I have gone over the 100% for a month. I’d done almost 350,000 steps and I’d travelled an unbelievable 261 kilometres on foot.

Even more interestingly, I had run for a total of 1 hour and 27 minutes.

And if you think that it’s not all that much to crow about, remember that I’m slowly dying and that three and a half years ago I couldn’t even walk.

The hospital wants me to lie about in bed and take it easy to preserve my strength for the struggle that lies ahead, but there’s no chance whatever of that. In the words of Neil Young, “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”.

And I’m going to go with a bang, hopefully with a nubile nymphet a quarter of my age. That’ll give everyone something to talk about, won’t it?

However, there wasn’t much to talk about last night. I was in bed rather later than I would have liked, and up and out of bed long before the third alarm.

As for the dictaphone, not a word. It seems that I didn’t go off anywhere during the night and that’s a disappointment. As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … there’s far more excitement going on during the night when I’m asleep than there ever is when I’m awake these days.

In fact, probably my only hope of ever grabbing hold of a nymphet a quarter of my age will be at some point during a nocturnal perambulation.

With nothing to transcribe from last night, after the medication I attacked the backlog of dictaphone notes. With an interruption for breakfast and another one for a shower and clean-up, by the time that it came to leave the apartment the backlog was reduced to a mere 25.

And it goes to prove my point about these nocturnal ramblings because I seem to have passed through the extremely turbulent seas full of whirlpools and turmoil and moved back into calmer waters where I can carry on doing what I do best, whatever than might be.

It’s Monday so I have my regular Monday morning meeting at the Centre Agora at 10:00.

Just for a change I was late getting away, which was a disappointment because when I realised that I had forgotten to bring the little Nikon 1 with me.

That’s the camera that I usually take with me when I’m walking out because it’s small and light, and easy to carry in my pocket. And if I don’t ask it to do too much, the results aren’t all that much less in quality than the big Nikon D500.

And how I wished that I had remembered to bring it because the camera on the telephone is total rubbish. But it’s the best that I had with me so it had to do.

Nevertheless I would have loved to have had a decent high-quality shot of this beautiful image of them preparing the Christmas tree at the Place Pierre Semard.

Health and Safety in the UK would have had a field day, seeing this kind of thing going on. As Isambard Kingdom Brunel once remarked late in his life during an enquiry into procedure at the beginning of the Railway Age, “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

But here’s a more normal photo of them erecting the Christmas tree. It’s nothing like as exciting, is it?

So I carried on to the Centre Agora for our meeting. I had a couple of ideas that might have been useful but because they came from me and not from any of the organisers, they were discreetly brushed aside.

But not to worry. I’ll just keep to doing my own little job and let them get on with it. I hate empire-building but it seems that i’m stuck with it right now. At least they didn’t ask me to make the coffee.

After the meeting I walked all the way back home, calling in at LIDL for a few bits and pieces. Carrots were reduced to half-price and as I’m running a little low, I bought a kilo to freeze.

How, though, I don’t know because there’s no more room in the freezer. I really did make a mistake buying this one. It’s far too small for me.

On the way back I picked up my dejeunette (they are recognising me now in La Mie Caline) and bumped into someone who had been present at the meeting just now.

After lunch I started on Project 004. I need to have about four or five all organised pretty quickly as there seems to be no-one working over the Christmas period and if I want to have my stuff dealt with, it needs to be in by 15th December at the latest.

By the time that I knocked off, I’d done all of the music that I need. I just need to do the speech but I can’t do that yet as my mixer panel still hasn’t arrived and I don’t want to use the dictaphone again.

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

The wind had died down somewhat and with the sun being out it was quite a beautiful day. The fishing boat that was out there at the northern tip of the Ile de Chausey was having a good time

And so was Gribouille, the big ginger cat who came for a stoke.

But out there today the skies were totally clear and while the Brittany coast was in haze, the view over to Jersey was the clearest that I have ever seen it.

We had some good shots of the Brittany coast the other day while Jersey was shrouded in haze, but it was the other way round this afternoon.

We’ve never seen the eastern corner of the island looking like this.

That’s St Helier there, and that’s about 54 kilometres away from where I’m standing right now.

We’ve seen the town before, but never with this much clarity. While it’s a tribute to the quality of the camera and the lens, it also has a lot to do with the weather too.

Probably more so in fact.

So as you admire some more of the beautiful Jersey coastline to the west of St Helier, I carried on with my walk.

Surprisingly, given the really nice weather, I counted no more than 5 other people out there taking in the air around my circuit.

This was really a day for being out and about

While you look at the western corner of the island of Jersey, I went to have a look to see what was going on in the chantier navale.

And the answer to that question isn’t “nothing” as you were probably expecting, but “nothing any different from the last few days”.

Just the usual suspects and no new additions.

And that reminds me. I haven’t seen a gravel boat for ages and ages. I wonder why.

It’s no surprise that there isn’t a gravel boat right now and I wouldn’t expect to see one because the tide is well on its way out just now.

All of the boats in the harbour are slowly setting down on the silt in the tidal harbour.

Except for the yellow and white on. That’s careening over quite alarmingly, although careening is a well-known technique in old ship-repairing. Ancient mariners in leaky ships would find a harbour like this where they could careen their boat to one side to repair the bottom of the boat.

And when the tide came back in and the boat would float up with the rising water they would turn the boat round so that when the tide went out next they would careen it over so that the other side was up and they could repair that.

There was no haze down at the bottom end of the Baie de Mont St Michel either. The hotels at the foot of the Mont St Michel were standing out quite clearly and that’s without any effort on my behalf or that of the camera and lens.

The Pointe de Carolles looks beautiful in this weather and the Cabanon Vauban that we visited a couple of times is perching proudly on the top.

Even the little town of Carolles-Plage and the beach is looking quite nice with its reflection in the damp sand

Back here I did a little (just a little) tidying up. The big suitcases for which I don’t have a place, I lifted up the mattress and the bed base and put them underneath the bed. I only use them once a year so they don’t need to be out in the way.

Another thing that I needed to do was to book my next trip to Leuven and Castle Anthrax. As you might expect, it’s on Friday 13th of December.

One of the things that I had been considering was to take myself off into Germany for a couple of days but there was nothing suitable. So I’ve booked my return journey for the Sunday.

And due to rail works, there’s no 08:13 again so I’m on the 08:43. And having to come home via Paris St Lazaire and Caen, I’ll be back 10 minutes early if all goes according to plan even with a wait of over an hour at Caen.

But it’s going to be an exciting trip back because I don’t know the way back across Paris from Gare du Nord to St Lazare and I don’t have much spare time if I miss my way.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, and it was quite delicious too. They’ve been selling some cheap spicy tomato sauce with garlic in Noz so I’ve bought a few jars of that and it adds a certain something to my stuffing.

Pretty cool outside tonight, so there wasn’t anyone about at all as I went for my eveing walk.

A great number of lights out in the English Channel though. Plenty of fishing boats were out there tonight, like this one slowly chugging back to harbour.

I remember saying a few days ago that I don’t think that I’ve ever seen as much fishing activity this close to shore in previous years.

We’ve seen plenty of activity in the bay near Bréhal-Plage just recently too and that’s something that I haven’t noticed previously.

There’s another fishing boat out there tonight having a go at trying to haul in a decent catch.

As for me, I continued my walk and as usual broke into a run on my little track. And I made it all the way to the ramp and half-way up there without too much effort.

So back here and I’m off to bed. 146% and 11.7kms today. Start the month as I mean to go on!

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

I don’t care what Percy Penguin has to say about it. I do NOT snore in my sleep. Not that she would ever know because whenever we were together late at night, sleep was not the subject that was ever on my mind.

But how do I know that I don’t snore? The answer is that this morning I spent four hours listening to myself sleeping.

Well, okay. Not exactly listening, but examining a voice file with the aid of a graphic sound analyser program, and I could see three minutes of dictation, a thump when I fell asleep in mid-dictate, and then four hours of silence apart from the odd turning-over in my sleep and the odd banging of the headboard.

Yes, I’ve finally reached the marathon four-hour dictaphone *.mp3 file and it is indeed, just as I suspected, a mistake.

We almost had a mistake this morning too. I was positive that I had dictated the details of a nocturnal ramble into the dictaphone, but something made me check, even though it was the middle of the night, and I found that I hadn’t. Dreaming that I was dreaming again.

But luckily I could remember a lot of it and so I dictated it on the spot. And I’m really curious now to know what else I have been missing, that I dreamt that I had dictated.

But anyway, last night we were in the High Arctic last night on a ship that might or might not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were doing some kind of research project and our group was involved in doing some kind of research project in respect of birds. So we were being pretty serious about this and some of us were out on the pontoon and they were looking at all these birds like crows and raven in the water with their beaks open and studying them. It was obvious that there were a few people not intent on doing anything and were just lounging around. of course we were pretty serious and after I had been onto the pontoon to see what was going on I had to get back on board the ship and there were a load of people queueing trying to get on so I mimed as if I was whipping them on which made everyone laugh, those who were lounging around. Eventually I got back on board and had to start to work, and remembered saying “come on, let the dog see the rabbit” when I was trying to get on board the ship. And what I remember was that there were loads of weeds around floating in the water , it was pretty close to shore. Someone was counting the animals and one of our group said that she had seen a moose or something. And she had also seen a Clayton diesel locomotive. I asked “where did you see that?” so she said that it was just after we had left Hvalsey to head down here. I thought that I can’t remember seeing this, or even hearing about it. But I decided that I would leave it to stand anyway

So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and this morning I definitely heard the second alarm, no mistake. But instead of leaping out of bed I somehow managed to go back to sleep yet again and the third alarm awoke me.

Today though, I was out of bed rather smartish and had an early medication and breakfast. And then I set down to work on the dictaphone notes as I had been promising myself.

By the time that I stopped for lunch, I was down to just 47 left. That’s been some quite dramatic progress today.

However, the morning was not without its interruptions. Three more parcels of this mega-order that I mentioned the other week turned up today.

Two of them I have yet to unpack, but the third one I did.

When I was In Montreal in September I was playing about on a five-string bass guitar and that pleased me greatly. A few weeks later, I was having another play about, only with a fretless bass. And that pleased me just as greatly.

So when I was browsing around on the internet a few weeks back I came across a vendor who was selling a new but shop-soiled (I reckon that it’s a product return) 5-string fretless bass for a price that can only be described as “democratic”.

It’s not very often that I treat myself to extravagant expenditure, but I did the other day and I don’t regret it for a moment.

Not a patch on the Gibson EB3 of course. That will always be a special machine, but this one will do nicely as a supplement.

On that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I headed for town and my dejeunette for lunch. Down to the fish processing plant and across the path on top of the harbour gates.

Nothing much going on in there at all, but one thing that for all the time that I’ve been going in and out of the harbour, I have never noticed this cock before.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

On the way back I stormed up the hill like there was no tomorrow. I don’t understand that at all. Fighting fit for lunch, I was.

And after lunch, I made a start on the data files for my projects. That’s taking me longer than I thought die to having to redesign it a couple of times and also … ahem … editing the wrong base file. I wondered why all of these amendments that I was trying to make didn’t work.

As usual, I stopped round about 15:45 to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

The weather was astonishing though out there. There were a few clouds about but the sky was so clear that you could see for miles.

Over there that is the town of Paimpol I reckon, with the Phare de Paon and the Chapelle St Michel clearly visible. And all of that is about 80kms away, I reckon, from here.

The camera and the lens did well to pick up all of that.

Much closer to home is the town of Plenevon. Over there to the far right near where that hill thing is.

That’s a mere 60 or so kms from there I’m standing, and you wouldn’t think so either but it’s amazing what a little “crop, enlarge and sharpen” can do.

The camera even managed to pick up a little fishing boat half-way across the water.

Now this is much more like it.

That’s the Pointe de Grouin just there and the Ile des Landes. Behind it is the entrance to the port of St Malo and on several occasions we’ve seen Pont Aven, the big Brittany Ferries ship, come sailing out of there.

It’s a shame that she’s not there right now though because it would have made a spectacular photo. You’ll have to make do with half a dozen small fih=shing boats instead.

We’ve had photos innumerable of Cancale across the bay, night as well as day. That’s about 25 kms away from me.

But what makes this one so special is that we’re having another one of those “sunlight streaming through a gap in the clouds” moments as we have done on a regular basis just recently.

It really is as good as floodlighting if you ask me, and probably better than some recent examples that we have seen.

It wasn’t just Cancale that was receiving the benefit of the sunlight either.

Down the coast at Jullouville about 10kms away the big building right on the shoreline was also receiving the benefit of the sun, right full-on into the windows

That must certainly have been something quite spectacular for those people in that large room there.

No change of visitor at the Chantier Navale so I came home. And I had a few things to do on the internet that took up a lot of my time.

But I did stop for tea – another frozen aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. Only 5 left now so soon I can start to think again about cooking mega-curries.

Outside for my evening walk, it was raining quite heavily. But I did press on nevertheless although I didn’t stop for photos. However, I did manage my run and made it halfway up the ramp at the end. I’m definitely geting fitter.

Football on the Internet tonight. Caernarfon v Cardiff Met in the Welsh Premier League. We had a brief discussion about the possible score and someone reckoned 2-1 to the Cofis. And at the end of the match I asked him if he had a recommendation for the 3:30 at Kempton Park.

Caernarfon did indeed win 2-1 and it was the correct result too. But it was a very quiet match with nothing much of any excitement, which is a surrpise where Caernarfon is concerned.

It was bogged down in midfield for much of the match with very few chances for either team. In fact all that really happened was that each side scored a breakaway goal from a loss of possession in midfield, and the winner was a tap-in following up a saved penalty.

The number of chances that they had, apart from those, you could count on one hand although Will Fuller in the Met’s goal was busier than Alex Ramsey up at the other end.

It’s very late now because I’ve been dawdling, so I’ll go to bed for the few hours of sleep that remains.

Shopping tomorrow plus dicaphone notes and project files. And then the cycle will start again.

Monday 25th November 2019 – I MISSED …

… my evening walk this evening.

There I was, sitting at the dining table (I’m all posh these days) round about 20:00 eating my rice pudding when the phone went.

Fetching it back again, I discovered that Rosemary was on the end of the line and she wanted to chat.

And chat we did. I had a lot of news to tell her, all about my weekend and people whom we both knew, and she had a lot of news to tell me. Really good, maybe even stunning news too, but there’s this old medieval saying about “never be sure of the bird on your plate until you have your fork stuck in it” so I’ll wait for a few weeks and see how things develop before I say anything.

And while I was chatting on the phone to Rosemary, I was also having an internet discussion with TOTGA. Yes, two conversations, eating a bowl of rice pudding, ohh yes, I can do multi-tasking!

By the time that Rosemary and I hung up it was well after 22:00. I did say that we had a lot to talk about!

And indeed, there was a lot to say about today. It wasn’t a late night particularly and so being up and about before the last alarm wasn’t too much of a problem.

No nocturnal ramble either which makes a change. So nothing much to do. While I was waiting for the medication to work I attacked some of the outstanding dictaphone notes.

In fact I’ve been whittling away at those throughout the day and now there are just 83 left. They won’t be finished for the end of the month though, which was my target. That’s a disappointment but I’ve had so much going on just recently.

After breakfast I had a shower and some clean clothes and then headed out up town in the rain.

There had been a report in the local newspaper that the town was taking a electric bus on trial to see how it would function on the bus routes here, bearing in mind how hilly the place is.

And sure enough, as I was up the avenue LeClerc here was the new electric bus, being overtaken by one of the old diesels.

Excuse the blurred photo but it was a fleeting glimpse in between two passing vehicles and I didn’t have time to focus properly.

At the Centre Agora we had our weekly meeting. And I do have to say that I have never met so many people with a capacity for fitting the least amount of thought into the greatest amount of words.

These are the kind of meetings that should be held outside – standing up – in the rain. They would be over in seconds with just as much decided.

It also seems that the people are very jealous of their “babies” and guard their empires carefully. We were discussing the port and the subject of Thora, Normandy Trader and Chausiais came up.

As I know the crew of the two British ships, I suggested that I could interview the skippers and see how the new rules and regulations affecting the commerce of the port post-Brexit is going to affect them.

“Ohhh” piped up one of the guys. “I’ve been thinking about doing something about the port and the maritime commerce, but I’m not sure how to go about it”.

So I sat on the edge of my chair waiting for him to ask for suggestions (of which I have more than a few, as regular readers of this rubbish might realise) but instead he moved on to another topic. It’s his baby, and he won’t let anyone else share it with him.

Shame as it is to say it, I can see this project not lasting all that long with this kind of ego that seems to preclude teamwork and co-operation.

And I was told that the transmitting quality of my broadcasts needs to be improved, and I was given some technical guidelines in this respect.

Yes, after I’ve recorded four of them! Obviously no possibility of giving me the technical guidelines 4 or 5 weeks ago, before I recorded any at all, is there?

So everything that I’ve spent the last few weeks downloading at 96kbs – all about 70 hours of it – now needs to be re-recorded at 192 kbs! That was a waste of my time and effort, wasn’t it?

One thing that always gets my goat is a lack of professionalism.

Remember the other day when I was coming back from the Centre Agora and I saw what looked like an old well in the middle of the street in the Allee des Sycomores?

On my way back I went for a butchers to see what it was. And I was right. It is a well.

Not an old well though. Although it might be old, it’s still in use as you can see and a lady in a house nearby chatted to me about it for a while.

And that’s not all the excitement either.

Walking down the main street – the rue des Ecoles – I happened to notice another similar object in someone else’s garden.

Just think! Ther emight be a third one somewhere else in the vicinity. Well, well, well!

On the way back home I called in at LIDL. There wasn’t much that I needed but seeing as I was there I went in regardless. A couple of bananas, some soya milk and sparkling water.

And I stopped at the boulangerie for another dejeunette – that last one in the shop.

I’d also been stopped by a man in one of these microcar-based van things. He wanted to know where a certain street was, but how would I know that?

After lunch I made a start on the web page for the weekend’s events. And it was only meant to be a brief thing with photographs but, like Topsy, it “just growed” and at one point I found myself in mid-rant.

I really do need to calm myself down sometimes.

This afternoon I went for my usual walk around the headland again in the wind and the rain.

And it seems that I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either. There was a fishing boat coming back from the English Channel and also a yacht out there have an enormous amount of fun.

And quite right too.

There was something else going on out there too.

Whatever it was, it looked important because someone had had his chopper out again. The Air-Sea rescue one in fact and judging by the way that it was flying – quite slowly about 50 feet above the water, it was looking for something.

Maybe there will be something in the news about it tomorrow.

My walk took me around past the chantier navale so as usual I had a peek down there to see who was about.

Three of our boats from the other day – Spirit of Conrad, Aztec Lady and Omerta – are still in there up on blocks, as is the fishing boat over on the far side.

And Omerta looks as if she’s receiving some serious attention out there too. They seem to be stripping off all of the paint, presumably to give her a respray.

All of that is all very well, but there was no sign of the old Pecheur de Lys who was with them the other day.

She wasn’t back in the water either so I had a good look around, and there she is up on blocks right round at the back of the sheds.

Her stay in the water didn’t last all that long and it looks as if she might be out for good. And that’s a shame.

While I was standing there looking for Pecheur de Lys, I was interrupted in my reverie by a diesel engine coming from around the headland.

And a matter of just a couple of seconds later, the fishing boat that we had seen earlier out in the English Channel came a-sailing … “a-dieseling” – ed … into view.

She must have made some really good time to arrive here so qickly. Perhaps someone in the port has put the kettle on.

It was all go in the harbour too with the tide being in.

Plenty of fishing boats unloading, and some must already have unloaded their catch because this one here has turned round and is on its way back out to sea.

And Joly France, one of the ferries for the Ile De Chausey, must have been out on a crossing today because she’s tied up at the passenger terminal rather than in the inner harbour

“Plenty of fishing boats unloading” I said. And “it was all go in the harbour today”.

As you can see, I wasn’t wrong either. Here’s one of the fishing boats unloading its catch. And I don’t think that I have ever seen so many crates of mussels or whatever they are piled up on the quayside.

There’s enough on that trailer at the back of the tractor to keep anyone going for several days, I reckon.

Back in the apartment I carried on with what I was doing until tea time. And seeing as there was some stuffing left I had another stuffed pepper. And then my rice pudding as I mentioned earlier.

But now it’s about 01:30 and I’m off to bed. But not for long. Up at 06:00 and I have the tax Office to visit tomorrow.

That will probably be very taxing.

Saturday 23rd November 2019 – ANYONE RECOGNISE …

… anyone – or even themselves – in this photo that I took this evening?

Yes, I’ve been out and about again this evening on my travels to see a few of my friends from my High Arctic adventures. They are here in Granville to celebrate the twinning of the town with the town of Uummannaq in the far north of Greenland where I was last September and they are heading off back home at the beginning of next week.

They were giving a concert at the Archipel, the theatre that is burrowed into the rock next to the Casino so I went along to say “goodbye”.

Mind you, I’m not sure that it was a good idea because I wasn’t in much of a state to go there after the night that I had. I had promised that I would submit a handful of good photos from the evening’s meeting to the organisers so by the time that I had finished doing all of that and writing up my notes it was long after 03:30 yet again when I went to bed.

The alarm went off as usual but I ignored it. It was 08:55 when I awoke.

While I was waiting for the medication to work, I went to fetch the dictaphone and download the details of last night’s voyage. I definitely remember being on my travels and I definitely remember dictating something but on the dictaphone there was nothing at all.

But then, this isn’t the first time that this has happened, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I’ve noted a couple of occasions where I’ve been on the second plane of consciousness – ie I’ve dreamt that I was dreaming, and that it was in my dream I dictated the notes.

When things happen like that, it starts to become exciting.

Once breakfast was over I dashed out to the shops. LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc felth the benefit of my largesse today. And I spent a reasonable amount of monet too, although there wasn’t much to show for it all. But at least I can eat now for the rest of the week.

Back here, having fought my way through the crowds and the inconsiderate van drivers who, not finding a parking space right where they wanted to be and being obviously unable to walk 20 metres from a vacant one nearby simply abandon their vehicles on the highway, I put away the stuff and then had a good shower. I didn’t have time before I went out.

And – SHOCK! HORROR! – a haircut. I needed it too!

It was lunchtime now so I made my butties and then did a pile of tidying up. I even vacuumed the floor. I know that this is getting serious but I was expecting visitors.

Sure enough, bang on time, Liz and Terry turned up. We had a really good chat and then we had food. Liz had brought some carrot and red pepper soup and I made some garlic bread, and we had a meal fit for a king.

It was now time to head off to the concert.

It wasn’t just the kids performing. Their mentor, Nive Neilsen, was there with her group, Nive Neilsen and the Deer Children.

Of course I know Nive. I’d met her fleetingly in Uummannaq last year but this year we’d spent a pleasant two weeks together on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in the High Arctic and I’d got to know her, her partner Charlie and her delightful little twins.

We had tentatively arranged to meet up before the concert for a chat but it wasn’t to be. She had far too many other things to worry about and, as we all know, folding stuff takes priority over everything.

Nive and her colleagues entertained us for well over an hour and it was a thoroughly enjoyable show. The sound though was pretty dreadful and the least said about the lighting the better.

As usual on these occasions I took dozens of photos and when I’ve edited and organised them I’ll make up a page with them all on and post the link so that you can all see it.

Most of them could be better but one or two of them are really good.

We came back via the bar up here but that was packed out so we didn’t stop. Liz and Terry went off home and I came in to write up my notes of the day.

But now, with the photos not done, I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted so a good night’s sleep will do me good. There’s no alarm tomorrow as we all know so I can have a really deep and guilt-free lie-in. So just watch someone come along and spoil it.

Thursday 21st November 2019 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the situation down in the harbour.

Thora has indeed moved over to the side out of the loading bay, and there in her place is Normandy Trader who has indeed come into town on the early morning tide.

And as usual, I didn’t really have time to go down for a coffee and a chat because I have a lot of things to do and I’m running terribly late as usual.

In fact I didn’t leave my bed this morning until gone 09:00

Mind you, there is a genuine reason for this and it isn’t a case of idling about or lounging around either.

In fact, after I’d finished my notes for yesterday I did as I mentioned sit down and update a few web pages, 11 in fact. And when I’d finished, not feeling in the least tired despite my very long day, I started to think about what I was going to say for my next project, which will be numbered D001 for reasons that will soon become clear.

Needing to find 3:40 worth of speech, I started to have a good muse about and dropped one or two ideas down on paper and rather than expand them in that format, I began to dictate them using the recording equipment that I have here.

And by the time that I’d finished, with various Umming and Aaahing and a few corrections, I ended up with 5:20 worth of notes – and all in French too.

Next step was to sit down and edit it. Cut out all of the pauses, the Umms and Ahhs, and that brought it down to about 4:15. So then I hacked out a few phrases here and there and after some jiggery and not a little pokery, there I was with my 3:40 or thereabouts.

Next stage was then to merge it onto the front of the music that I’ll be using – or, rather, merge the music onto the end of the speech.

One hour is what I’m allowed, and there I was, came to a dead stop at exactly 1:00:00. And I came to a dead stop too, seeing as it was gone 03:30 and I wasn’t even prepared for bed. But at least that’s one job that’s finished and complete and one less job to worry about.

Surprisingly, I heard the alarms go off at 06:00 etc and I felt that if I exerted myself I could have risen from the grave. But instead I went back to sleep again until the kids going past my window on their way to school awoke me.

A late breakfast, followed by an even later shower and then I headed out to town in the rain.

First stop was the Centre Agora to take back the recording kit. Someone else needs it for a task.

So up the hill in the Avenue Leclerc I went, not quite storming up it as I have done recently, and I stopped to see what they were doing with the HIAB.

It looks as if they are either taking away or installing an advertising signboard. I don’t know which because I can’t remember if there was one there before or not

At the Centre Agora the guy in charge of the equipment wasn’t there and no-one wanted to take charge of the recording kit. But I’ll be badgered if I’m going to take it back home with me so in the end we managed to find someone connected with the service, and we persuaded him to take it.

The rain had calmed down somewhat now so the walk back wasn’t too difficult.

There was a slight diversion into te Allee des Sycomores. I hadn’t noticed this stone edifice before and I was intrigued to know what it was.

There wasn’t much evidence of any particular function but to me it seemed as if it might have been a well or something similar. If it had been of no use at all it would have been demolished instead of causing an obstruction in the road like this.

Seeing as I was going past LIDL and it was Thursday I called in for some shopping. It’s the ski wear season so I reckoned that I might be able to pick up a woollen hat seeing as mine is in the pocket of my jacket in a hotel in Calgary, but no luck. It seems that everyone wears helmets these days when they are skiing.

Nevertheless I did spend a fair amount of money seeing as supplies are low.

The walk back here wasn’t as lively as it has been just recently, and carrying about 10 kilos of food didn’t make it any easier either.

On the way past the port I stopped and looked over the wall to see what was goign on. It looks as if they have just opened up the harbour gates. There was quite a procession of trawlers coming into port.

And when I had climbed a little further on, I could see that there were one or two that had just left the harbour too. So I reckon that I might be right.

After lunch (I bought another dejeunette too seeing as I was passing the bakery) and a little tidying-up I sat down and thought about the talk that I have to give tomorrow.

Eventually I managed to cobble together some notes and now I’m going through selecting some photos to accompany them. And that’s a hard task because that day that I was there I took 178 photos in all.

There was a brief pause while I went out fior my afternoon walk.

The rain had now stopped falling and there was a shaft of sunlight through the clouds that was illuminating the seafront at Bréhal Plage just like the other day at Jullouville.

And how I wish that it would go for the middle and illluminate me some time soon

Continuing on my path around the headland I came to the spot where the headstone or whatever had been.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they had removed it the other day and taped it off with a couple of bollards and some of that site tape stuff.

But even that has gone now and it looks as if they have filled in the hole. So i’ve no idea what was going on there at all.

No idea what is going on here, but it’s fun to speculate.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past year or two they have been digging up all of the streets in order to lay the trunking for the fibre-optic cable.

But now a huge cable reel has arrived with a load of cable upon it. The optimists among us will be thinking of only one thing.

The rain might have stopped this afternoon, but the wind hasn’t.

The flowers that I mentioned the other day – most of them have gone. And the trail of flowers all the way up the footpath suggests that they may well have Gone With The WInd too.

That is, unless someone has been really careless about moving them all.

There was plenty of action in the Chantier Navale today too.

They seem to be quite busy down there. The regular suspects, Spirit of Conrad and Aztec Lady are still there, and so is the fishing boat. But they’ve now been joined by Pecheur de Lys whose stay in the water was remarkably brief, and Omerta.

And I’m rather worried by the latter. Everyone knows that Omerta is used in Italian so signify “silence”, but it’s also the name that is given to the oath that members of the mafia have to take.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m well-impressed with the devotion and courage that the local fishermen display on a daily basis, going out in some of the worst storms.

There was another one out there today, a small one, fishing away and you can see by the rigging that he has his nets out.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I could do it once in a while but it would depress me having to go out there every day regardless of the weather.

Carrying on with Uummannaq took me up until tea time. And having been to LIDL I was able to offer myself a stuffed pepper with rice, followed by rice pudding.

It was pouring down with rain while I was making tea but it had stopped later on so I went out for a walk.

Another bright light out there in the direction of Donville-les-Bains, but I was ready for it tonight. And it’s yet another fishing boat trying its luck out on that side.

It seems that a search for a new catch is definitely continuing. Fishermen casting their nets further, you might say.

In the absence of any people loitering around I went for my run. But I only managed about two-thirds of my route tonight. Lost my form completely.

But now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a chat with TOTGA this evening and downloaded tons of digital album tracks, including several that have some very distinct memories from my time living in Chester in 1972-74.

There are web pages that need updating of course and I’ve done no dictaphone notes today either, but I’m in no state to do them.

I’ll just have to catch up with them some other time

Wednesday 20th November 2019 – GUESS WHO’S BEEN …

… a busy boy today then?

And on less that 6 hours sleep too. Because I was still up working at long gone midnight and I was up long before the third alarm at 06:15 too.

Even so, plenty of time to go a-rambling during the night. There had been some kind of exhibition going on and I’d been one of the exhibitors with some paintings, which of course isn’t like me at all. Someone came along to ask me about one of my paintings. I explained that it was the crossing of an army at the River Evra (wherever that might or might not be) back in the days of the Spartan Wars or Greek Wars whatever. She was extremely interested in this so she wanted to buy the picture. But she wanted much more information about it – where was the location to day and so on. She said something about doing the crossing again. I said “well you can’t have because it’s totally different now from how it used to be and you would never get 30,000 men across there in time, and if you had to fight it would be a completely different type of battle”. She said that she was relieved to hear all of that and nevertheless bought the picture. A short while later I was walking around and saw the wrapper for the picture just lying around there in the town on the other side of the river of this town where I was living, so I knew that she had actually bought this river and gone off to hunt it down. I wished her luck because where you had 3 hours to get across, these days it was only 1.5 hours and many people had come a cropper because of this.
Somewhat later, after the first alarm had gone off I must have gone back to sleep for I had this vague image of a boat rather like the Darlwyne sailing into the outer harbour of Granville heading towards the boat hoist to be lifted out of the water and put on the chantier navale. However, before I could recollect anything about it the second alarm went off again.

An early start means an early breakfast and then an early start at work. And for some unknown reason I couldn’t get going. It took me much longer to deal with the dictaphone notes than it ought to have done had I been focused.

What with a few interruptions of little consequence it was extremely late before I had finished and had to fly down into town to reach the Post Office before it closed for lunch.

As usual, I poked my head over the city walls and could see that our old friend Thora had arrived in port.

As I only had the standard lens on the Nikon 1 which isn’t so good at distance, I went down the steps to the rue du Port and along the quayside until I could pick up a really good view of her.

Here she is in all her glory unloading what looks like scrap metal into a big container on the back of that lorry there.

The parcel that was waiting for me at the Post Office wasn’t the one that I was expecting unfortunately. I was hoping that my mixing table would have arrived from Germany by now but instead, it was finally the new bracelet for my fitbit.

Bright blue too which is a shame but beggars can’t be choosers.

And while I was down in the town I went to pick up another dejeunette for lunch.

There’s a message in my e-mails that the microphone kit that I borrow is wanted elsewhere by others. So in the absence of the mixing desk I had to get a wiggle on and finish off Project 003.

Once more, my big desktop computer wouldn’t pick up the microphone kit, but the new laptop did and so I did the work on that and copied it over. It’s rather confusing doing it that way and I erased some of my work on more than one occasion. But it’s complete and, even though I say so myself, it’s not too bad at all.

That was the cue to go out for my afternoon walk.

Around the city walls for a change this afternoon, although in the distance I saw one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming across to Granville.

Had I gone for my usual post-prandial perambulation around the headland I would have had a much better view of it than this one. But then, beggars can’t be choosers and I take what I’m given.

No-one on the beach at Plat Gousset, which is hardly a surprise in this strong, bitter wind that’s blowing.

Although there was no storm today at sea, the waves were pretty strong and powerful and we had a lovely rolling sea out there, with the waves coming onto the beach with some incredible force.

No, it’s not at all the right kind of weather to be contemplating spending a day by the seaside.

Round the walls on the southern side, the Joly France ferry has now arrived at the harbour and is gently picking its way over the sandbar into the outer harbour to disgorge its passengers.

But while we’re on the subject of Joly France, it seems that my speculation about that new ship, the Chausiais is spot on. There was an article in the local paper this morning about its arrival and how it will indeed be carrying freight across to the Ile de Chausey and back.

“And to other places too” went the article, that must surely be sending a shiver down the spine of the owners of Normandy Trader and Thora

Yes, everyone over here is preparing for Brexit in his or her own little way. The issue of cargo and fishing permits is going to be a very contentious issue after Brexit and I’m sure that many people don’t quite understand what exactly will hit them.

Thora meanwile continues on her little Bonhomme de Chemin at least for now. And she seems to have acquired a freezer container as well as her storage container.

Clearly her owners have a great deal of faith in the future, which is always good news. I hope that it isn’t misplaced and I wish them the best of luck.

Back here I started to work on project D001. Yes, I have many projects on the go right now. And this needs to be done quickly as I won’t have a mike to do it after tomorrow at 09:00 if my mixing desk doesn’t come soon.

The music is finished now and I’m surprised because it was quite an effort. There was a great deal of editing to do as well as hunting down some “applause” soundbites, and for a cobbled-together assemblage it could have come out much worse.

Of course I can hear the joins, but then I made them. Others might be struggling to find them all.

Tea was one of the many vegan burgers that are around here, with pasta and veg, and then I went out for my evening walk around the headland.

However I didn’t get far. There was a light right out there off Brehal sur mer and I wondered what it was.

It turns out that it’s a fishing boat. And I find that very bizarre because I have never ever seen a fishing boat right over there on that side of the bay before.

What’s probably happening is that with the expected wars over fishing grounds aftee Brexit, they are trying new areas to see what they can find.

It’s worth mentioning à propos Brexit, that it’s true that there are a great number of French fishing boats fishing in UK waters.

But there’s a reason for that. When the fishing permits were doled out, the British didn’t want the inshore permits as the kind of fish that are caught there are not the kind that the British usaually eat.

The French on the other hand really go for that so they swapped their deep-sea fishery permits for the British inshore ones. And then of course the British deep-sea fisheries ran aground with the cod moratorium in 1992.

So it’s really the fault of the greedy British trawler owners that the French are fishing off their coasts and they aren’t. Of course, the British can always push for a renegotiation of the fishing permits, but when their representative on the EU’s Fisheries Committee is Nigel Garbage (how I love my auto-correct!) who has only ever attended 1 out of 47 Fisheries Committee meetings since he was appointed, what do you expect.

He just parrots that it’s all the EU’s fault – not his and not the trawler owners – and the stupid, gullible naive Brits believe him too. We mustn’t let the facts get in the way of a good pile of anti-EU drivel now, must we?

Abandoning yet another good rant for now, I carried on with my walk, and notice that Thora seems to have moved berth. Are we expecting Normandy Trader on the early morning tide?

On that note I ran (for all of about 300 metres) back here to carry on work. There’s a lot to do and it won’t be done on its own.

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 8th November 2019 – IT REALLY WAS …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And good luck to them too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remind anyone of anything?

fishing boat out at sea english channel granville manche normandy france

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

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Wednesday 6th November 2019 – I DIDN’T …

… go anywhere special today as I predicted. I spent the day in a gentle orbit around the apartment.

But that’s not to say that it’ll stay like that. Foolish me had to open his mouth on Monday, didn’t he? And say that he’d been to Uumaannaq, had taken plenty of photos and had friends there.

And so someone rang me up. Something to do with the local High School. “It’s Greenland Week here next week and we’ll be discussing Uummaannaq. Are you free on Friday afternoon the 22nd?”

Ahh well! That’ll teach me to open my big mouth, won’t it?

Despite being a little later in bed than I would have liked, there was time to go off for a ramble or two. Again this is another dream that I can only remember a bit of. I was with someone who might have been Castor and we were helping me get myself organised (that’s going to be a long job isnt it? Something like the Augean Stables). There was a cupboard that was open and you could see everything in it. She asked what I was going to do about it and I replied that I wasn’t going to do anything – it was all going to stay in there so she was working out how to close the cupboard. You could see all files and all that kind of things that were on there. I don’t remember very much more about this dream but there was plenty to it. In this cupboard was all kinds of office stuff, files, binders, computer ink and I had a vague recollection that it belonged to something to do with the ship but I don’t know.
And it was certainly vivid because I remember distinctly in my dazed state going to get out of bed to go to tidy it up and close the door
A little later there were four young people playing outside on the deck right in front on the bows of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. Don’t ask me what they were doing though because I was only asleep for a second.

There was a mad panic to fall out of bed. I’d vaguely heard the two earlier alarms but I desperately wanted to continue my run of early starts so having almost gone back to sleep, I just about managed to launch myself into consciousness just before the alarm.

After medication and breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes. And up until lunchtime I had managed to transcribe only three. But when I tell you that the running time of those three is just short of 29 minutes, you’ll understand why.

I told you that there were some mega-files in that lot but that’s nothing to what’s coming up. There’s one of over 4 hours and another of over 3 hours.

And I managed to fit in my three walks today.

At about 12:45 I went out for a walk around a new circuit, down all the steps, along the rue du Port and back up the rue des Juifs.

But a racket coming from down in the harbour disturbed my reverie before I’d gone very far at all. We had a trawler coming into the harbour.

And it was probably fully-laden with fish too. You could tell that by looking at the large flock of gulls all around it. They are presumably waiting for the fish-heads to be thrown overboard.

Yesterday, you’ll remember that we had a lovely photo of Carolles all bathed in the most gorgeous and warm sunlight.

The situation today though is completely different. No sunlight at all – in fact it’s bathed in the most enormous raincloud.

And just in case you are wondering, you needn’t. 5 minutes later I got the lot right down the back of my neck, as regular readers of this rubbish may well have anticipated.

A rather dripping wet me came back to the apartment for some lunch.

And afterwards, I sat down to complete Project 002. Yes, I’m anticipating that this might run for more than 99 editions.

And straight away we had a problem – in that the audio mixer couldn’t be picked up by the big computer.

After a great deal of trial and error I managed to make one of the laptops pick it up, and I dictated my notes onto that. And it’s awful. It sounds as if I have my head in a bucket.

But I’m not going to go around like this. My friend Hans modernised his recording studio a while back so I got onto him. And he has an old PC mixing desk that is surplus to requirements. It seems to have every function on it that you could wish for and probably brews the studio tea while it is at it.

We negotiated a democratic price for it and tomorrow it will be winging its way here, I hope. As I said, it’s time for me to organise myself and do things properly.

For the afternoon walk I changed my route and went for a walk around the walls.

The reason for that was that I wanted to see how they were doing with the house renovations in the rue du Nord.

As you can see, the one on the corner seems to be finished. They’ve extended the garage which is interesting, and the balcony that they have built over the extension does look quite nice.

I wonder what their plans are for it.

There was another house under construction further down the rue du Nord as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

That’s all finished now too, and I know what their plans for it are because as I’ve walked past it on many an evening walk, I’ve seen the lights burning in the window.

Someone is already living in it and I wish them luck. The view must be terrific from up top and I’m somewhat jealous.

But never mind the view from the top floor of the house. The view from down here is pretty good today too

For a change, now that the wind has died down somewhat, the atmosphere is a lot cleaner and there was a really good view out and up the coast. The seaside resort of Montmartin-sur-Mer was looking particularly attractive.

At least, I think that it’s Montmartin-sur-Mer. I lose count of which town is which all the way up there.

I case you haven’t gathered, the rain had stopped this afternoon and so there were people out and about.

There were even a few of them wandering around up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset by the Casino. But then again it is Wednesday afternoon so the kids are not in school. No reason why they can’t have a run about.

Talking of having a run about, there was no-one around by the time I got to my little running track, so I had a nice little run. Mind you, although I made it to my marker I was pretty much out of breath.

I have a feeling that I’m not going to see much improvement in my distances.

And talking of distances, out there in the distance close to the Brittany coast I noticed a dark speck that seemed to be moving very slowly.

With the big Nikon and the long zoom lens, I took a somewhat speculative shot of it with the intention of cropping it and blowing it up (he image, not the object) to see what it might be.

And it looks like some kind of naval patrol vessel out there in the Baie de Mont St Michel. And I’ve no idea why they would want to patrol out there. It seems strange to me.

Having finished the recording (for now) I could deal with tea. Some stuffing left over from the other night so I had taco rolls with rice and vegetables. Best ones that I’ve made too, although I’m not sure why.

And I finished off the last of the rice pudding too. That was nice as well

For the evening walk I went around the headland, totally alone. And I ended up running another few hundred metres along the footpath. I’m determined to do something about getting fit and keeping the weight off. So even on a quiet day I’ve done 64% of my daily activity and walked 5.0 kms.

So tonight I’ve done some web pages and I’ll listen to some music for a while, and then go to bed. Shopping at LIDL tomorrow, I reckon.

The walk wil ldo me good.

Tuesday 5th November 2019 – CALIBURN HAS GONE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a nice plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We had a photo earlier of Carolles bathed in sunshine.

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

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

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

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

That’s some “if”.

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Monday 4th November 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in business!

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

And so I have the green light to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I learnt something exciting today too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 2nd November 2019 – I REALLY MUST …

… get myself organised.

I know that I have been saying this for several weeks now, but I don’t seem to have made much of an effort to progress in the correct direction.

Listening to music again last night, it was well after 02:00 when I crawled off to bed and that’s no good at all.

What’s even worse (or better, depending upon your own point of view) is that I made a valiant, determined effort to beat the third alarm call out of bed.

And what’s more, I made it too … “will you make me one like it?” – ed … even though I felt like death.

So less than 4 hours sleep.

Not very much, you might think, but plenty of time to go off on my travels. Something was all closing down last night and people were having some kind of session where they were singing songs and reading poems about everything that they had been through. I did a little presentation but I hadn’t realised that it was closing so I hadn’t said anything about it so when I found out I wanted to go back and re-do it and do different stuff so but no-one was listening to me while I was saying all of this and no-one was really interested in listening to what I had to do or got to say or got to play on the subject.

It seems to me that during the last few days ago I’ve been making a habit of being ignored by other people. I really must change my deodorant.

Talking of deodorant … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a shower after breakfast. I weighed myself too and found that I had gained 100 grammes. Must do something about that, like go for a brisk walk.

First though, I put a couple of weeks’ worth of dirty clothes in the washing machine and set it do a lap around while I headed for a brisk walk.

Outside, we were in the middle of a hurricane. I had heard of an “adverse weather report” for the area for today but I wasn’t expecting this at all.

You can see what the waves are doing here – and that’s in the harbour too inside the outer wall. I don’t think that I’ve ever in the past seen it as rough as this out there

Not the kind of weather that I would want to be going out for a sail on the high seas.

I was tempted to go for a walk across the path across the top of the harbour gates to have a closer look but they were closed.

However by the time I got down to ground level they were just on the point of closing them. I should have waited for another 5 minutes.

And even in the shelter of the inner harbour you can see that the water is churned up somewhat

My trip this morning took me to the indoor market hall for some fruit, carrots and mushrooms. But there was nothing there that interested me too much so I didn’t buy anything.

Neither did the Super-U but the Carrefour came up trumps with some reasonable mushrooms – many of which will go on my pizza tomorrow night. And they had some more of the cheap baguettes too.

Back here I pushed on with this project that I have to do. And with a short break for lunch (the rest of the carrot soup and some of the baguette) I managed to finish it in time for the afternoon walk.

It’s not as good as I would like it, but improving it is beyond my capabilities. I’m having to do it in French and with having to think about what I need to say, it’s robbing all of the spontaneity and that’s probably the most vital ingredient of what I’m trying to do.

And as a result it took me a lot longer than it might have done and there’s so much editing that needed doing to edit out the pauses, the “umms” and the “ahhs”.

But be that as it may, I do have to say that the editing and the sound mixing is excellent and I’m really pleased from that point of view.

That was the cue to go out for my afternoon walk.

And there had been a change in the weather.

It was much worse.

So I struggled around the headland with the other brave souls out there – all of us wrapped up to brave the wintry weather. And that reminds me – all of my winter gear is in my blue jacket which even as we speak is somewhere between Calgary and Centreville in Canada. I shall have to make “other arrangements” this winter.

Back here I did a pile of website amendments to keep the momentum going, and attacked a few blog entries. I’ll do some more this evening too.

Tea was a slice of vegan pie (from last April and it was just as delicious) with potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy. Followed by rice pudding (seeing as I had the oven on).

And then a huge washing-up session, including the oven to clean off all of the milk that had overflowed from the aforementioned rice pudding.

The rain was falling when I went out for my evening walk. And the wind was so strong that it was falling horizontally.

For my run tonight I was about 50 yards short of my distance from the last time. I blame the strong wind but really it’s a disappointment. When I started back running in Brussels in 1994 I could push out the distance every night and I ought to be able to do something like that here.

It’s not as if I’m running 5 miles or 10 miles like I used to – here I’m measuring it in hundreds of metres and I should be able to do it, even though I am an old fogey long past my sell-by date.

Another thing is that for the past week or so I’ve been plagued by a fly that has been flying around my room, and I’ve been wondering how to dispose of it. I don’t need to worry about it now – although I do feel sorry for it. It should never have alighted on that sheet of paper on the floor when I was above it with a large book in my hand

So I’ll do some more work for a while and then go to bed. It’s Sunday so I can have a lie-in. I deserve it

Tuesday 29th October 2019 – CALIBURN WOULDN’T …

… start this morning as I discovered when I went to give him a whirl while I was taking the rubbish outside.

The other day when I started him and ran him for a while I mustn’t have done it for long enough to recharge the battery properly because it was pretty low this morning.

Having hunted down a 10mm socket I managed to disconnect the battery and drag it up to the apartment. According to the multimeter, there’s just 11.9 Volts in the battery. Luckily a while back I bought a new small battery charger so I was able to couple it up and even as we speak, it’s simmering away nicely at 13.4 volts with 2 of the 5 bars illuminated.

By tomorrow morning it might be ready.

Mind you, it’s not a surprise. He’s well over 12 years old and he’s had just two batteries in that time. When the second one failed earlier this year, Terry gave me the one off his old van but it had stood around for a couple of years so I wasn’t expecting too much.

So I’ll have to see if this battery holds its charge when it’s done. If not, a new battery might be on the cards.

And Caliburn wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to start today either. I certainly didn’t. In fact it was about 08:45 when my sooty foot I put on the floor.

Mind you, I have a good excuse. And that was that I was still up and about working until long after 03:00.

Anyone would have thought that after my marathon hike across half of Normandy yesterday I would have been stark out flat on my back from round about teatime until the next Preston Guild. But not a bit of it. I kept on going – and working too, right until the small hours, even taking some time out to have a play on the guitar.

Mind you, I felt like death this morning and that’s really no surprise. It took me a good while to find my bearings and that’s not a five-minute job either.

Plenty of time though during the night to go for a wander around and I found myself back on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. And in the company of Pollux too, so welcome back to you. And when I finish scratching my head trying to decipher the incoherent ramblings on my dictaphone, I will tell you all about where I went and what I did.

When I awoke I found that I had run out of muesli so I had to make some more. And in my deadened state I managed to spill half of the contents of the cornflakes packet all across the floor.

After breakfast I reviewed the e-mails and found one relating to the meeting that I had yesterday. That involved doing some work.

Such as dictating a text in French (i had about 9 takes before there was one that satisfied me) and then editing it. And then adding a pile of music and editing that.

And while the music part was no problem, the dictation was – for the rather prosaic reason that I don’t have a microphone here. I had to dictate it onto the dictaphone, upload it and then edit it to remove the crackles.

It’s a good job that I spent all of that time a few years ago mastering “Audacity”.

So that was the morning taken care of – and there will be a few more days like this now until next Monday. And we’ll see where we go from there.

After a rather late lunch I went for a walk in the rain around the headland. There were a few people – only the foolhardy – out there desperately trying to negotiate the lakes that had appeared along the footpaths. I didn’t stay out long.

The historic dictaphone entries that needed deciphering today were all rather on the short side so I did 8 today. I’m trying to get ahead because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are some marathon ones to come from the time that I was in an emotional whirlpool.

There was also time for me to do some file updating too. But talking of my website … “well, one of us is” – ed … it has been trawled for the last few days by a Microsoft bot with an IP address in Washington State, “Microsoft Way” to be precise, but with a physical presence in Chicago.

I solved the mystery of the New Jersey visitor but this one from Chicago is bizarre.

Tea tonight was an aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit. Aubergines were cheap the other day so I bought one with the intention of making a whatsit this week. And it’s delicious too, except that I might have been somewhat extravagant with the chili powder I’ll need to put the toilet paper in the fridge before I go to bed.

No walk though. It’s teeming down outside and after a few hundred yards I gave up and came back inside.

I’ll just have to go for a longer walk tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

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