Tag Archives: crash out

Wednesday 12th December 2018 – THAT WAS TWO …

… hours of my life that I won’t ever get back, I can tell you.

In fact, the lady whom I saw at the Tax Office couldn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. And after she had asked me half a dozen questions, she didn’t alter or amend my tax form in any way, neither did she ask me to do so. And I’ll be getting my “certificate of non-taxation” in due course, whenever that might be.

Despite what I said last night, it was nothing like an early night. An early morning more like – something round about 02:15 in fact, so engrossed was I in what I was doing.

Much to my surprise I managed to crawl out of my nice clean bedding round about 06:15, and I don’t remember much about any voyage except that I was on board a ship at one particular moment.

After breakfast I had a rustle around for a pile of papers and it turns out that I can’t find one particular document. I’ve probably overlooked bringing it with me from the Auvergne, so I had to go to the bank for a statement.

Just outside the building here there was a plant lorry dropping off a pile of equipment.

That looked interesting so I went over to them to find out what was going on.

Apparently there are some major engineering and building works taking place in the old walled town so they were dropping the stuff off here.

Heavy vehicles aren’t allowed within the walls.

And there The bank manager looked me out, and came over to shake my hand. I must be well in credit back there right now.

The Tax Office was pretty painless, as I mentioned, and I had a nice walk back here, calling for a baguette on the way.

When I was heading into town, I noticed that Thora had gone out on the morning tide.

That was the same tide that had presumably brought in Normandy Trader, which was now tied up at the quayside loading up with supplies.

But on the way back, I noticed that Normandy Trader had gone out too. That was a quick turn-round.

No wonder I’m finding it difficult to keep up with what is going on in the harbour these days – who’s coming and who’s going – with turn-rounds as quick as this.

You can’t say that people here in Granville are softened by the mild weather.

Hear, the street cafés in the rue Saint-Saveur encourage their patrons to sit outside in all kinds of weather, even in mid-winter.

But for those few who do feel the cold, blankets are provided to make sure that they stay outside.

First thing that I did on reaching the apartment was to make a coffee, and then I crashed out on the chair for a while, until lunchtime in fact.

This afternoon I attacked the files again. But not for long.

I went out in the sunshine for my walk around the walls. And the temperature has plummeted again. Baby, it’s cold outside.

But not too cold for some.

I don’t know whether these people were on the point of going in or coming out of the water, but I wasn’t going to hang around and wait to see.

I left them to it and cleared off.

On returning to the apartment I restarted work but had to go and lie down for a while on the bed. And I was well-away with the fairies until all of a sudden I had one of the worst attacks of cramp that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Despite whatever I tried (and I tried plenty) I couldn’t get it to ease off for quite a while and it still hurts now.

For tea, I found a potato and chick-pea curry from 30th October … errr … 2017. Tons of old stuff in the freezer that needs cleaning out and I’m aiming at one a week until I can keep something like a 6-month time limit.

The wind was rising again when I went out, and we had another endless stream of fishing boats coming into the harbour.

But we are approaching Christmas and the lights are going full-flow now. Right across the valley, the lamps are burning brightly all the way up the rue Couraye.

Won’t be long before we’re all curled up around the tree, although whosever tree I’ll be curling around, it won’t be my own.

That was all that there was about, except for two cars having a race along the road at the top.

But here around the corner there’s another example of our famous bad parking.

Why park in two places when you can take up three between you? As I have said before … “and you’ll say it again” – ed … I really don’t know what goes through the minds of some people.

But now the temperature has really dropped and it’s going to be cold tonight. We were told that the weather would change this week and it looks as if winter has arrived at last.

bathers changing plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 11th December – I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO APPEAR …

… at 10:00 in the forenoon – at the local Tax Office.

A few weeks ago I had to apply for a certificate of non-taxation from them, and so I went to pick up some forms to fill in and send off. But I didn’t have a clue for what I was supposed to be asking so I filled in the form as best I could and sent it off with an accompanying letter.

So the long and short of it is that they don’t understand either and trying to explain on the telephone was pretty hopeless. And so I need to head that was tomorrow for a personal chat.

It was another night where I vaguely remembered the alarm going off and not doing too much about it. 07:45 it was when I finally arose.

Plenty of time to go off on a ramble during the night. In an aeroplane with a pile of soldiers and we all had to parachute out – and could you really imagine me doing that? We landed in Paris and tried to assimilate ourselves into the population but that didn’t work and we ended up being chased by the German police. It came to a situation where in the end we had to choose the slowest members of our party to stop and fight a rearguard action to hold up the pursuers, so that the quickest could get right away. Rather a cruel decision, but a necessary one – to sacrifice some so that the rest could get away.

After breakfast I had a shower and, just by way of a change, changed the bedding. I haven’t done that for a few weeks so it’s high time – “high” being the appropriate word.

Most of the day has been spend moving files around again – and disposing of another mound of duplicates. There are tons of stuff that are not needed or duplicated.

I hope that when I finally receive my new computer that I can keep it tidy and in order for a change. I thought that back in those days I was really good at keeping it properly filed, but it’s nothing like how I would like it to be and how the more modern computers are organised. I don’t know what I must have been thinking back in those days.

We had a little relax, and our two walks as well. On the way out this evening, I noticed no fewer than eight (and there may well have been even more) fishing boats in line-astern heading into the bay from the English Channel.

And round the corner and in the port, I noticed that our old friend Thora was tying up at the quayside too.

She must have sneaked in as soon as the harbour gates opened a little earlier.

And she was tied up at a different place on the quayside too, so I don’t know what that was all about.

Tea was a pie with veg as I said. And while I had the oven on, I made another rice pudding. And that was delicious too.

And while I was waiting for tea to cook, I mixed some more muesli for breakfast tomorrow seeing as I’ve run out.

So tomorrow morning I need to be up early to find some papers so an early night is called for.

So sweet dreams.

night thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Thursday 6th December 2018 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again.

With having the appointment for my anti-flu injection at 11:00 this morning I decided to go and do my shopping at LIDL as normal and call in at the medical centre on the way back.

And do you know? I was halfway into town, quite wet in the rain, before I realised that I had forgotten to take the injection with me and that it was still in the fridge. And that’s despite leaving a prominent note on the table in the dining room.

Last night was a rather later night than normal and I was still asleep when the alarm went off. Much to my surprise I was up and about fairly quickly too which is a change.

After breakfast I had another letter to write. One that I had forgotten to write the other day and which needed doing quite rapidly as there was a time limit involved.

After my abortive trip into town, and back here having found the medication, it was too late to go back out to LIDL so I stayed here and made a phone call. And as a result it was arranged that I can make another phone call on Monday afternoon in this respect.

But as an aside, I was given an e-mail address to which I can send a mail. But knowing the way things work, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I will be surprised if I have a reply.

Back into town for my injection.

That isn’t snow down there in the place General de Gaulle, even though it might look like it. They are busy setting up the decorations for Christmas.

Only two and a half weeks away now.

The nurse who attended to me is from Lille, and he has a Flemish surname. It turns out that he has relatives in Flanders and we spent some of the time talking in Flemish.

At the Post Office I posted off all of the letters that I had written over the last few days, and then worked my way round to the Railway Station to pick up my tickets. And I’m glad that I picked them up well in advance during office hours because the ticket-printing machine was once again out of order.

One of these days I’ll forget, turn up at the station for my train and the machine will be out of order again. I wonder what the penalty is for travelling without a valid ticket.

There were a couple of things in LIDL that I would have picked up today but I wouldn’t be able to carry them home. I’ll have to wait until Saturday when I go up there in Caliburn and hope that there will be some left.

The exertions of the morning had worn me out and I ended up crashing out for half an hour in my comfy office chair. That took me up to lunch.

This afternoon I attacked the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer. And I found all of the OU postings that I had saved for further reference, including the legendary “I’m a Pottymouth” message by the equally legendary Lee Prostitute, fairy boots and all.

Now that the wet weather was drying out this afternoon, there were crowds out there walking around the Pointe du Roc.

And on my way out of the apartment I bumped into one of my neighbours coming in.

But there’s a storm brewing in the offing as the waves are slowly to climb up the sea wall. I hope that it it will be as good as the one last winter.

By the time that I rounded the headland and came back, it was school chucking-out time.

And so of course we have cars parked all over the pavements by the College Malraux and on the boulevard Vaufleury which is the main bus route and where the school coaches pass by.

There’s a huge free public car park just 50 metres up the road from there, but that is clearly too far for our poor little dears to stagger, so let’s just disrupt all of the traffic instead.

Why not?

And as I was coming back in, I met the same neighbour going out. It’s a small world.

Remember the tin of potatoes that I had opened in error yesterday? While I was ferreting around in the freezer I found a pie from last year left over. So I switched on the oven, prepared a quick rice pudding, soaked some of the tinned potatoes in olive oil, and bunged the rice pudding, the pie and the potatoes in to cook.

While that was going on, I cooked some frozen peas and carrots, and made some gravy. And it was all very delicious. Except the rice pudding, which wasn’t ready. But I’ll finish that off next time that the oven goes on.

No-one else was about on my walk last night, which isn’t much of a surprise.

I had plenty of time to stand on the walls and admire the view. The Christmas lights down in the town were illuminated quite brightly.

They seem to have done a good job of lighting up the mairie and I hope that they can do as good a job of the rest of the town as they have done down there.

There is quite an array of lights going up the rue Couraye too.

One of these evenings I’ll go for a walk up there and see what they are really like in the dark.

Alone out there I might have been, as far as human company went. But Minette was there though, and she let me stroke her for a few minutes before having a spit at me and wandering off. Dunno why she’s in such a bad mood just now.

On the way back to the apartment, I walked up along the rue St Jean.

From the corner of the rue du Nord there was a good view right down the street, under the gate and off into the place d’Armes. So I stopped to take a photograph of it on my way up.

Back here, I bumped into yet another neighbour. And she told me about a music course in the vicinity. I asked her to make further enquiries on my behalf.

So an early night is now on the cards. Tomorrow I’m going to wire up a big external hard drive to the desktop computer and copy the entire contents of the desktop computer onto the external drive.

Then, I can review it at my leisure without having to worry about the reliability of the desktop computer.

That lot should keep me out of mischief.

storm sea wall port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

fishing boats port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Saturday 1st December 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… beautiful pie.

I remembered to buy the leeks this morning so I fired a leek with some onions and garlic and then tipped into it the pie filling from last time. While it was all frying around I greased my pie dish and put the roll of pastry in it. And then added the mix once it had cooled.

One thing that I hadn’t noticed was that it was “thick pastry” and not the usual roll. And because it weighed the same as the usual roll, it meant that it was of a smaller circumference. And so it didn’t join in the middle.

But not to worry. I cheated and covered the gap with a couple of slices of cheese.

While the oven was warming and before I started the pie, I made a small rice pudding and put that in the oven. The pie followed it later.

When it was nearly done I made some potatoes with some frozen peas and carrots, and some gravy. The pie I cut into 4 slices. Three for the freezer and one for the meal. And it was absolutely delicious. I’ll do this again, that’s for sure. And how I wish that I had bought a bigger freezer.

Last night was quite a good night. I did awaken here and there but not so that I remembered it particularly. I do remember going on a little wander though.

There was a whole group of us, including the guy with whose family I stayed in 1970, wandering around somewhere. e were having to be lodged in a house somewhere in the town because of overcrowding (no surprise here) but we ate at home, in a house that wasn’t really much different to Davenport Avenue. We all turned up there one day, to find a rather pleasant, cheerful (for a change) father actually cooking the meal, and that in itself is a major surprise.
A little later on I was watching a football match where a group of players with features resembling those of Mongolia were playing the Polish team. The pitch was very rough and uneven and had a famous downhill slope. The Mongolians (for want of a better word) were attacking downhill and missed a couple of sitters, blazing them over the bar when clean through on goal. The half-time score was 0-0, thanks also to a dogged rearguard defence by the Mongolians, and I had a feeling that with the Poles ttacking downhill in the second half, the Mongolians would deeply regret these misses. But I went over to talk to one of their players standing on the fringe of things at half-time. he explained that his country was actually a breakaway republic from Poland and so this match had a deep and emotional significance for his players and his country. How the Poles thought themselves superior! I explained that the Poles always had had a reputaion for being a dour, battling side that doesn’t give in easily, but he winked and said that he didn’t mean just about football. I had the impression that he meant to say that the Poles looked on their opponents as some kind of untermenschen who deserved to be dominated and their rightful place was right at the bottom of the pile.

There was the usual breakfast and shower and so on, and then I hit the streets. And despite visiting LIDL, NOZ and LeClerc, I didn’t buy anything at all extraordinary. Just maybe the €1:99 for a pair of pliers.

But one thing that they seem to have started to sell in LeClerc is the big tub of soya dessert and the one that caught my eye was the natural soya dessert laced with coconut. I’ve had some pineapple slices hanging around here for ages and one day soon whenever I finish the rice pudding I’ll have them with the coconut soya. That will keep me going for a few days I reckon.

It took me ages to summon up the energy to unpack everything and put it away and then I had lunch.

There was plenty to do on the laptop but unfortunately I didn’t do much. And falling asleep was only part of it. Sorting through some of the files that I had downloaded from the desktop computer was another big part of it.

I’ve mentioned the pie of course, but I didn’t get my rice pudding because the football came up on the internet. Barry Town v Newtown in the Welsh Premier League.

Played in the driving rain, it was all Newtown in the first half but they couldn’t find a striker to put the ball in the back of the net.

Whatever it was that they put in the half-time tea in the Barry Town dressing room, I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. They scored almost straight from the kick-off an0d then went up a gear, finishing a comfortable 4-1 winners.

And when the referee looks at the game later, he’ll probably agree that he has had better games than he did today.

However, I didn’t pay full attention to the second half because Rosemary rang up. She was keen to find out how I did in the hospital and we ended up chatting for about an hour and a half. And that was very nice.

As a result though, I didn’t have any of my daily walks today. I’ll just have to do twice as much tomorrow.

Thursday 29th November 2018 – WITH HAVING HAD …

… a late night last night and with no alarm, it was 08:58 this morning when I awoke.

I’d been on my travels too – helping to unravel a very peculiar situation where they discovered that the descendants of the two princes born to a King in the first half of the 17th Century had plenty of DNA on the mother’s side but none whatsoever on the paternal side, meaning that the King was certainly not their father and implying that they had no right to inherit the throne, hence all of their descendants including the current Royal Family, were usurpers to the throne.
A little later, I was out in my old Passat estate driving somewhere where, going round something of a blind bend, I encountered a big yellow crane coming out of a field and I had to swerve around it. The interesting thing about that though was that I was driving on the left-hand side of the road as in the uK. So that was highly unlikely.

Despite the late awakening, I was in no hurry to heave myself out of my stinking pit. And so in consequence it was a rather late breakfast. Followed, as it’s Thursday, by a good shower, some clean clothes and a general clean-up. I have to make an effort.

By the time that I summoned up the effort to go to LIDL it was rather late in the morning. But the stride out did me the world of good. There wasn’t anything on special offer that I needed, but seeing as the nuts are still on offer and the sell-by date is 6 months in advance, I bought a couple more packets.

Back here, after lunch I carried on unpacking and did a little sorting out, but once more I ended up away with the fairies. And for quite a while too

As a result it was going dark when I finally made my way outside.

The headlad around the Pointe du Roc was pretty deserted which was hardly a surprise given the wind that was blowing. And there seemed to be quite a storm raging over the Ile de Chausey

I’m glad that I wasn’t out there in all of that. It looked quite miserable.

Things looked slightly better away across on the Brittany coast.

It was still quite light in that direction and relatively clear too. The new 50mm lens was picking up the lights in the villages on the coast quite easily and I was pleased with that.

I’m not sure about the bright light that seems to be just offshore. We’ve seen a couple of brightly-illuminated fishing boats here at Granville so it might be one of those.

Tea was a frozen curry with rice and veg – a curry that I made on 17th November … last year! I need to go through the freezer and tidy it out to see what else there is in there.

And now I’m going to try for an early night again. The alarm goes off at 06:00 tomorrow morning and I need to get back into the swing of things. There’s plenty of work to do.

Wednesday 28th November 2018 – I DID MY BEST …

… to have an early night last night. In bed at some respectable time but not able to go to sleep. And when I did I was awake again at 01:45.

But the body clock is working well again, for I was awake bolt-upright at 05:59, just seconds before the alarm went off.

With having done almost everything last night, it didn’t take me long to clean up and make sure that I had everything. And by 06:25 I was on my way.

There was a train at 06:52 for Brussels. One of the old dirty, filthy, graffiti-covered AM80 multiple units heading for Quievrain down on the French border.

The lack of care and attention that these are receiving – surprising for the SNCB – tells me that these trains are the next to go under the cutter’s torch, and fairly soon too, I reckon. They aren’t far off being 40 years old and haven’t in the main had an overhaul for nearly 25 years.

Our train was pretty crowded too but I managed to find a seat where I could settle down for the journey. And as we passed though the various stations in Brussels the train emptied rapidly.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour and bought my raisin buns for breakfast, and a packet of crisps and a bottle of water as emergency supplies.

And then a wait for the TGV.

It should have departed at 08:13 but when I went up to the platform it was ominously marked “12 minutes late”. And by the time we left, we were 25 minutes behind schedule.

That’s enough to give me the willies as I don’t have too much time to change stations in Paris and it’s quite a hike across the city.

It was packed to the gunwhales too – not a spare seat anywhere. hardly surprising that even when I booked my tickets I couldn’t have a corridor seat.

We didn’t make up any time either and it was 25 minutes late that we pulled into Paris Gare du Nord.

I’m not into running about these days but I pushed on as quickly as I could. I was lucky with the metro in that I didn’t have to wait too long, and there were no delays. I chose a position right by where the exit to the platform at Montparnasse would be, and so I could step off the train and straight out of the station.

With no delays on the way, and no other incidents, I could push on and arrived at Vaugirard with 10 minutes to spare.

The train was already loading so I composted my tickets and leapt aboard. There was someone sitting in my reserved seat ao I was obliged to heave him out so that I could sit down.

There was plenty that I needed to do on the way back, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. Instead, I had a good sleep and that made me feel a little better.

We pulled in to Granville bang on time, which makes a pleasant change. And I stepped off the train straight into a wicked, high wind.

There’s a train timed to go out at about 15 minutes after ours arrives and I had always thought that ours did a simple turn-around. But apparently not. There was another train parked in the platform next to ours and all of the passengers for the afternoon trip to Paris were piling aboard.

I’m not too sure about the logic of running another train on the return. If I had invested as much money in captial equipment as the SNCF had, I would want it out there working and generating passenger income as much as possible

I stopped at the boulangerie on the way home for a baguette. I didn’t want to fetch any bread out of the freezer.

It’s good to be back home, even if it was cold in here. But the heating soon dealt with that issue.

After a very late lunch I started to unpack but I can’t keep it up like I used to of course. I ended up crashing out on my chair at the desk in the office. And I was away for quite a while too.

With lunch being so late, I was in no mood for tea so I simply stirred a few papers around in here and then went for a walk. I was on 90% of my daily activity so I didn’t go far, which was hardly surprising because, if anything, the wind had increased.

All of the fishing boats were now coming up to the fishing quay by the processing plant. There was quite a line of them waiting to unload, rather like the queue at the self-scanners in a supermarket.

You can see how strongly the wind was blowing by looking at the waves in this photo. And remember that this is actually inside the tidal harbour. You can imagine what it must have been like outside the harbour, but this wasn’t the weather for going for a look.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t tired now so not having had my lie-in on Sunday I switched off the alarm and watched something on the internet.

It’s now 02:30 and I suppose that I’d better make an effort to go to bed. I’ll be still here in the morning if I don’t make an effort.

Tuesday 27th November 2018 – WHEN I TOLD …

… some friends of mine in Québec about this, they burst out laughing.

And it wasn’t about the crazy idea either, but in total disbelief that this place (and a few others of similar ilk) would exist.

But seeing that Alison and I were out and about in the vicinity this afternoon, we went off to track it down and to photograph it.

Because it’s the kind of thing that you would only ever find in Belgium, and no-where else.

We have automatic machines that dispense drinks, and snacks, and even pizza these days, but only in Belgium would you find an automatic machine that would dispense potatoes.

So say “hello” to a Belgian Potatomat here on the outskirts of Everberg.

The potatomat doesn’t just sell potatoes either.

There were apples and pears on offer, and even chicory too. And it looks as if, with a little bit of simple configuration, it could be programmed to sell a lot more different things too.

It has to be the automatic vending machine to end all other automatic vending machines.

This morning the alarm went off at the usual time but, after having done almost 150% of my daily activity yesterday, there wasn’t much danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time.

07:15 was a much more respectable time for me to heave myself out.

After medication and breakfast, there were things to do on the laptop and that took me most of the morning.

Alison sent me a message round about 11:30. Did I fancy going out for a couple of hours? And so 15 minutes later I was standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.

We passed by the Potatomat and then headed into Brussels. Alison took me to show me to a place where she had once lived, and then we went for a look at the offices of that weird American company where we had both worked together 12 years ago.

Seeing that we were down in the south end of Brussels, we decided that we would go for a walk in the Bois de la Cambre.

Alison hadn’t been round here particularly but back in the good old days when I lived in Brussels I used to come here for a walk every Sunday with Marianne

And so I decided to show her around.

It was quite a misty afternoon and reasonably cold too, although not as cold as it might have been.

And we were somewhat too late for the leaves. We should really have been here a couple of weeks ago to see it at its best.

By now, the leaves had gone beyond changing colours and were now tumbling rapidly from the leaves and carpeting the forest floor

Alison didn’t know about the Chateau Robinson on the island in the middle of the lake.

But despite the time of the year, the restaurant was open and the shuttle boat was running across the lake to the island

There were several people waiting to cross over, and so we decided to join them and go to have a coffee.

Although they didn’t have soya milk, they did actually have almond milk.

And even more interestingly, they also had gluten-free flour and so they offered to make Alison some lactose-free and gluten-free pancakes.

They tasted differently, apparently, but Alison said that they were very nice. And, for a change, the chef came out to ask her if they were okay. Clearly a new experiment, but it’s certainly progress.

After the coffee and pancakes we carried on with our walk.

We took the ferry back to the mainland and walked all the way around the lake and back to the car.

It was much more pleasant by now. The sun was doing its best to struggle through the mist and we were even starting to see some blue sky.

While you continue to admire the photos of the Bois de la Cambre, we had other things to do.

Because we were down this end of the town we decided that we would go to pay our respects to Marianne. The Cimetierre d’Ixelles wasn’t all that far away and I hadn’t been to see her for a while.

It’s quite a poignant thing to do, and hard to believe that it was over five and a half years ago that she went off to meet her Maker

We wandered off from there out in the direction of Leuven, hoping to miss the afternoon traffic rush.

And I missed a photo opportunity as we were driving past a garage on the corner of the Chaussee de Wavre.

There parked up at the back of the parking area was a dark green first-series Triumph Vitesse 6 convertible. These are as rare as hen’s teeth in the UK. the chance of seeing one parked up here at a backstreet garage in Brussels are amazing.

We reached Tervuren and Alison took me to a café where there was an open fire and a good supply of coffee.

We needed it too because the temperature was dropping all the time. It’s going to be really cold.

And while Alison unlocked the cars, I watched in amazement as some woman on a bicycle with a baby on the back pulled out of the cycle track right across the main road in front of a couple of cars without giving a hand signal, without looking over her shoulder and without even slowing down.

I felt really sorry for the driver who almost squidged her

We came back to Leuven and Alison dropped me off on the corner.

I came back here and even though it was early, I made myself some tea. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast.

Microwaved potatoes with a tin of spicy beans. And delicious it all was too.

Despite only having walked 60% of my daily target, I was for some reason or other totally exhausted.

So there I was, flat-out on the bed for a good hour or so. I can’t keep on going like I used to.

What I’m going to be doing now is to do the washing up, tidy up and pack my bags. I have a very early start tomorrow so I need to be up and about quite promptly.

I don’t much like this idea of leaping on board the 08:13 out of Brussels but it saves me three hours on my day by the time that I’m back gome, so it has to be a good idea.

Sunday 25th November 2018 – I WAS REALLY …

… Looking forward to my good night’s sleep, having made a determined effort to have an early night. But it all went wrong round about 01:45 when I awoke with a severe attack of cramp. So severe was it that all of my usual methods of relaxing the muscles failed to work and I ended up hopping around the apartment in agony until I could reset the leg;

It didn’t take me long to go back to sleep either. And when I did, I was away with the fairies again. On board ship, yet again, but this time on the way to Whittlesea Bay where Mrs Povey was busy organising the support for the local carnival. I really must stop listening to all of these episodes of the Navy Lark.

The body clock was working fine and I was awake before the two alarms. As a fall-back I have configured an older mobile phone to work as an alarm clock when it’s important, in case we have another upgrade.

No breakfast – just to back up the computer onto the travel memory stick attached to the keyring. And then to make my sandwiches, pack my rucksack,take out the rubbish and do some cleaning up.

It was raining outside, so I sorted out my raincoat again and had a rather wet and weary trudge through the dampened streets.

The tide was in so there were several fishing boats tied up at the quay by the fish-processing plants, unloading last night’s catch.

This one here has a great set of lights for seeing what it’s doing. It might be the same brightly-lit one that we’ve seen on a couple of previous occasions just now.

The town was quite deserted, as you might expect at this time of a sunday morning.

I mentioned the other day that they had begun to install the Christmas lights and I’d noticed last night that some of them were illuminated.

And so I suppose that I had better take a photo of them illuminated while there is no-one abot.

At the station I reckon that whoever had used the coffee machine before me had had a hot chocolate, because my coffee didn’t half taste strange.

There was a very friendly cleaner on the railway station and we had a very interesting while waiting for my train to arrive. There are all kinds of changes happening on the railways with the Caen-Rennes trains being diverted to pass by Granville, the doubling of the line between Dol-de-Bretagne and Avranches and the reinforcement of the shuttle service between Pontorson and Mont St Michel.

This is all good news, because there has been some talk about the possibility of closing the railway station and putting everyone on buses. But here we have an example of stopping one of the buses here (the bus to Folligny station) and increasing the rail connection. I’m keen to see how this is going to develop.

The train wasn’t all that full at first, although I had a couple of people witting opposite me. But slowly, little by little, the train filled up as advanced towards Paris. By the time that we arrived at L’Aigle the train was packed.

Somewhere between L’Aigle and Verneuil sur Ayre we stampeded a herd of deer in a field by the railway line. It must be that time of the year now, with the hunters starting to come out.

As we pulled into Paris, I admired the courage of the lady opposite who started to reapply her lipstick as the train rattled over all of the sets of points. I didn’t get to see the finished job but it must really have been something

The station at Montparnasse-Vaugirard wasn’t quite the chaos that it has been for the last few Sundays but it was crowded all the same. The Metro was pretty crowded too and I had to stand all the way up to the Gare du Nord.

At Gare du Nord I was lucky to find a seat where I could eat my butties but we had a rather curious incident there.

Some woman pushed a goblet with money in it under my nose. Thanking her, I took the contents. It was several Moroccan coins and a British sixpence. I put them in my pocket.

She then made a gesture, pointing to her mouth, saying “money – eat”.
I told her that she would break her teeth, eating money.

She then pointed to her belly, saying – “eat – baby”
I replied that if she has eaten a whole baby she would get indigestion.

This kind of desultory conversation continued for a few minutes and then she wandered off elsewhere.

Our TGV was packed to the gunwhales. Not a spare seat anywhere.

Luckily I was one of the first on board so I didn’t have to scramble for my seat, which was right down at the far end of the coach.

I spent most of the journey in a deep and profound sleep – with just one awakening to let my seating companion out, and another one for me to visit the bathroom.

We were bang on time in Brussels but so was the 15:42 to Leuven, which meant that I missed it. But there was another one right behind – at 15:56 to Eupen

That was 5 minutes late so there was quite a crowd gathered for it. Luckily I was right at the front so I was able to grab a seat but those who boarded the train at the middle had to walk the whole length of the train before they could find somewhere.

Here in Leuven it was freezing cold and foggy and I had a bitter walk all the way to my digs.

I’m in a room at the top overlooking the courtyard – I’ve not been in one of these before.

Tonight is pizza night so I had a stroll into town in the rain to the place that does my special pizzas.

They’ve put up the Christmas lights in the Tiensestraat, although they seem to be somewhat feeble. I was expecting to see much more than this.

It’s a sign of the times, I suppose.

Back here, I had my tea, and then a shower and clothes wash.

And it seems that I’ve forgotten to bring a spare pair of trousers so I hope that these will dry for the morning.

With the computer locking up, I decided to have an early night. 121% of my daily activity is enough for any man and I have a busy day tomorrow?

rue lecampion granville manche normandy france

Thursday 22nd November 2018 – I HAD A …

… better night last night, just for a change. Asleep before midnight and slept right through until the alarm went off.

I was off on my travels during the night. I vaguely remember being on board ship somewhere, but apart from that, nothing at all.

Once I was up and out of bed, I had breakfast and then organised the photos from last night which I had forgotten to upload. And the *.ftp program seems to work fine, which is good news.

A check of the thermometer showed me that last night the temperature had dropped down to 1°C. Won’t be long now before freezing point is reached.

Thursday is shopping day so I had a shower and a clean-up, and then put a load of washing on. What an exciting life I lead, hey?

On my way up the rue Couraye, I was noticing all of the signs for “Black Friday”. yet another Transatlantic custom that people over here have started to embrace.

But there are clearly some people who haven’t quite grasped the principle of Black Friday. How can you possibly have a Black Friday sale that lasts for a week?

But it’s something that I’m seeing more and more. People are losing all of their traditional customs and habits in the relentless search for profit, although some of the instances that I have quoted on here just recently would bring that into question.

We feature every now and again the progress of the installation of the fibre-optic cable around the town.

Here in the Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc just a little higher up the hill from the railway station they are now digging out a channel on the pavement so that they can pass the cable higher up the hill presumably in the direction of the telephone exchange

The date of connection is getting closer and closer. And I for one can’t wait.

The other week we saw them erecting the Christmas Tree in the Place de la Gare and on Saturday we saw it in position.

To further add to the chaos in the Avenue du Maréchal Leclerc, they are now erecting the Christmas decorations across the street.

The local council was there with a cherry-picker, and a couple of municipal police personnel directing the traffic around th obstruction.

I shook my head and went on to LIDL where I did a pile of shopping. Nothing special but they have now run out of grapes which is a tragedy, and the packets of nuts that I use in my muesli were still on offer so I bought a few more packets.

A few weeks ago I posted a photograph of a building with “Residence des Granvillaises” emblazoned thereupon.

On the way back from the shops I took a little diversion to the Rue Etoupefour to have a good look at the entrance to the building to see what it looked like at street level.

It’s not anything at all significant, which is probably why I haven’t noticed it at all during all of the times that I have passed by.

Back here I had a coffee and then carried on with the photos from earlier. As well as having a little doze for a short while. It seems to have become a regular thing these days after any kind of exertion.

Lunch was the baguette from LIDL with salad and more of my home-made hummus. It really is quite a fiery concoction and tastes delicious.

This afternoon I added the photos to a couple more blog entries. if you go to this page and work your way forward you can see them.

There wasn’t a great deal of excitement going on during my afternoon walk.

There was a speck of something out to sea and thinking that it might be Thora coming back, I took a photo of it and enlarged it when I returned home.

But it wasn’t Thora at all but a fishing trawler out there doing the business offshore. And I for one am looking forward to the excitement when the UK leaves the EU and we start to have fishing fights between the French and Channel Island fishermen.

I can still remember the 1960s when a bunch of Icelandic trawlermen took on the might of the Royal Navy during the Cod Wars – and defeated them hands-down. French fishermen are far more resolute than the Icelanders, and the Royal Navy is a mere shadow of what it was in the 1960s

My perambulations took me around the headland where I could overlook the shipyard.

Remember the pink and white candy-striped trawler that we saw the other day being lifted out of the water at the ship repairers?

We caught a glimpse of it last night up on blocks, but here it is today in the daylight. I’ll be keen to see what they are doing to it and how the work progresses over time.

And that wasn’t all the excitement down in the shipyard either.

It seems that the mystery of why the Aztec Lady has turned up in Granville has been resolved. Here she is, in the shipyard, up on blocks like the rest of the ships in here.

It looks as if I missed out on the hoisting ceremony which is a shame because that is something that is quite interesting.

Anyway, it enables us to have a good look at her while she’s here.

And we can also keep our eye on her and see what work is being done. It must be important.

On that note, I came back here for a coffee and to start work. And the work in question is Day Four of my trip to the High Arctic.

I need to push on with that otherwise it will never be finished. And there are plenty of pages like that already.

Tea should have been vegan sausages, but I didn’t notice until I’d started the vegetables that the sausages were somewhat iffy. Instead, a vegan burger was rustled up and it tasted just as good with the vegan cheese sauce as the sausages would have done.

No-one about at all during the evening walk, except for a solitary jogger. Nothing at all worth photographing zither tonight, so I can have an evening off.

On that note, I’ll go to bed. Plenty of work to do tomorrow.

Tuesday 20th November 2018 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… where I visited during the night but wherever it was, I was still there when the alarm went off. Dead to the world, in fact.

It took me a while to haul myself out of bed and organise myself properly. And after breakfast I had a couple of things that needed doing.

A shower followed, and then I dressed for the streets.

As the tide was out, I took my new route, down the steps, across the fish dock and the path over the top of the tidal gates onto the commercial dock.

I remember seeing Thora in the port yesterday and I thought that I had seen her still here last night. And she’s still here this morning, looking as if she’s taking on a load for Jersey.

But there was no-one about to talk to – she was doing a good impression of the Marie Celeste.

My destination was the Post Office, where I posted off my letter to Canada. And while I was there I bought a pack of 10 pre-stamped envelopes for use in France. i’m down to my last one here.

On the way back, I picked up one of my favourite baguettes for lunch.

Over the last week or so I’ve taken piles of photos but I’ve been too busy to deal with them. So having made myself a coffee, I sat down and started to review them, edit them and upload them.

And believe it or not, I did manage to get a shot of one of the dolphins yesterday. I’ll post it tomorrow so you can all see it.

Lunch was in here again. it didn’t rise much above 5°C today so I wasn’t going to sit on the wall.

Just by way of a change I’ve done some tidying up too. There was a huge pile of cables and lead that I had brought with me from the Auvergne so I sorted them out and tidied them up. And SHOCK! HORROR! I threw away a pile of stuff away too.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

Later on, I went for my usual afternoon walk around the Pointe de la Roc.

And there I was greeted by the sight of Thora sailing … “dieseling” – ed … off into the sunset on her way back to Jersey.

Enhancing the colours a little has brought out a really nice effect on this image.

She put on a slight turn to port after that so I took another photo of her.

Back here I cropped her out and blew up the image. I can do that these days, despite modern anti-terrorism legislation.

Considering that this has been cropped out and enlarged at full focal length, it’s not come out too badly given the distances that I was having to cover.

Round the corner and looking out over the Baie de Mont St Michel, I could see that the sailing school had been out this afternoon.

I have half a mind … “yes, quite!” – ed … to go out and learn to sail one of these days, but I’m not quite sure how I can fit it in given my state of health and medical requirements.

A theoretical course on sailing and navigation would be right up my street (or down my river) though.

There wa even more excitement down at the ship repairer’s.

It’s not every day that I’m lucky enough to see them lifting a boat out of the water but I was in luck today. It looks as if they have another job to do on a fishing trawler and they were lifting her out with the hoist.

I’ll have to check tomorrow to see if she has been put up on blocks ready for work.

The highlight of the walk though had to be this delightful nautical danse macabre.

A trawler had unloaded at the fish dock and was heading off into the inner harbour, just as Aztec Lady was on her way out.

They waltzed and weaved around each other as they sorted themselves out into their respective routes.

Back here, I had a little … errr … repose for a while and then there was another job that needed doing. I’ve had a temporary curtain hanging in here ever since I moved in and it’s been on my mind to have it taken up to the correct size.

But that’s not happened so I took it off and pinned it to the right size.

And then I finished off all of my photos and uploaded them to the internet.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and then I went out for my walk. Freezing cold outside, it was, and so that probably explains why there wasn’t a single person (or even a married one) out on the streets tonight.

Beautiful it was though – clear and crisp night with some lovely moonlight.

Now I’m keen to see if I can have another good night. And while I’m dozing off I’ll leave you with a few more photos.

Thora going back to Jersey

Sailing school baie de mont st michel granville

Trawler Port de Granville harbour

Trawler being lifted out of the water and moved across the shipyard on the hoist.

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The Port de Plaisance at Granville harbour

Monday 19th November 2018 – IT WAS RATHER …

… a late night last night.

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

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

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

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

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

Dozens and dozens of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I’ve hit a problem right now.

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

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

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

So that’s a waste of time then.

And on this note I’ll go to bed.

dolphin baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

fishing trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 18th November 2018 – AS KENNETH WILLIAMS …

… and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

There I was, down at the brocante this afternoon admiring the head of a wild boar affixed to the side of a van. So I went up to the stallholder and asked him “don’t you find it rather inconvenient when you are loading up your van?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Having the body of that wild boar going crossways across the van. Doesn’t it interfere with the loading?”
So he looked at me with a rather bewildered look in his eye.

As for other matters however, waking up at 03:45 didn’t help me very much last night.

And neither did 04:40. Or 05:40. Or 06:45. but 07:45 I’d had enough though and couldn’t go back to sleep, so at 08:20 I was up and about.

I’d been away during the night though – to see a former friend of mine in Stoke on Trent (and it’s a long time since he’s appeared in one of my voyages, isn’t it?). I was walking down a street that bore more than just a passing resemblance to Coleridge Way in Crewe. I arrived at his house and had to walk in the street as the pavement was blocked by two huge Jaguar Mark X cars of the like that we saw the other day. One of these two was silver and the other one was red like the Daimler that I owned. Up his drive I walked and couldn’t quite get into his garage because there was a third Mark X Jag blocking the entrance. He was inside the garage, sweeping the floor and fixing something. I noticed that his inspection pit had been filled in and the floor of the garage had been painted red. He told me that I shouldn’t have come down to the garage without letting him know I was coming, but I go the impression that he was implying that I shouldn’t come down to his house at all.
A little later, I was thinking about buying a new coach. I needed to think about what I wanted and to see a few examples, so I asked a (female) friend who lived near a coach sales place to see what they had for sale. She was thinking that she would have to buy it for me but I explained that all that she needed to do was to look at it, see if the body had any rust on it or something like that.

With a rather late, leisurely breakfast, I didn’t do all that much this morning. However, that didn’t prevent me from changing the habits of a lifetime and actually doing some tidying up in the bedroom. Putting away a pile of papers that have been loitering around here for a while.

Another thing that I have done too was to change the plug over on the record deck. There was a British plug on it but if I’m going to use it here, which I shall do in early course, it needs a French plug on it. And looking for something else yesterday, I came across a couple doing nothing very much.

Once that was working, I had a play around with Audacity – the audio program that I used to use to edit my live tracks for the radio program. I’ll be using this to record all of my LPs and I need to make sure that I can remember what to do.

After lunch (and wasn’t my home-made hummus delicious?), I went for a walk down into town. No football today. It’s Cup week and all of the local clubs have been eliminated.

I retraced my steps from yesterday and went down the steps to the Rue du Port. And then across the road and onto the docks again right by the fish-processing plant.

However the tide was in so the harbour gates were open. I couldn’t come across to the other side but instead it gave me an opportunity to photograph then.

You’ll remember that I took a photograph of them while they were closed yesterday.

While I was down there in the beautiful sunny afternoon I took the opportunity to have a good mooch around the fish docks for a while and take a few photos

The pile of gravel down at the edge of the quayside is now growing rather quickly. It looks as if we will be having a visit of the gravel boat quite soon.

She’s not been here for a while.

On my way down into the town centre I had a good look at the old railway track embedded on the quayside.

In an early photograph that I had seen, there had been something that looked as if it might have been a broad-gauge rail-mounted crane.

And on closer inspection, what this looks like to me is not, as I had originally thought, a double-track line, but a single-track railway in the centre. The two outer rails are raised slightly higher than the two rails in the centre, so I reckon that they might well be rails for a crane.

I’ll have to find an imperial tape measure and go down to measure the gauge. That will tell me what I need to know.

The stupid, ignorant racists from Britain First are launching a campaign to boycott the Subway chain of sandwich restaurants because they are offering halal food in certain outlets.

It’s all quite reminiscent of the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops in the 1930s – and they say that they aren’t racists!

But here, our local Subway is offering a promotion involving that famous cartoon character Shaun the Sheep.

I wonder if it is he who is rotating on the skewer. And whether he has been killed humanely.

It does rather remind me of the story of Larry the Lamb and when the BBC abandoned the series.

When they came to sell off the assets of the programme, someone asked how much they had received for Larry the Lamb.
“Three and six a pound” was the reply.

Something similar happened when they stopped “Children’s Playtime” on the BBC.
Someone asked “what did they get for Muffin the Mule?”
“Eighteen months” was the reply.

Back here later, I organised a few photos on the internet and then did some more work on Day Three of the High Arctic. As well as a little … errr … repose.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and it all worked out rather well. One of the better ones that I’ve done.

Back out tonight for my walk around the headland and I was the only one there. Hardly surprising because it’s freezing outside. Well, 6°C actually, but that’s still the coldest that it’s been so far this half of the year.

Winter has definitely arrived.

The sailing ship Marité in the harbour in the Port of Granville

The harbour and port and the walled town of Granville

Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou in the walled town of Granville.

The sailing ships Marité and the little La Granvillaise mooored here in the harbour of the port of Granville.

Saturday 17th November 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… little bit more like it.

22:30 or thereabouts was when I went to bed, and it took me a while to go off to sleep. However, once I’d gone, I was well-gone and that was your lot until about 05:45. It’s not quite a good night’s sleep but it’s better than what else I’ve been having just recently.

I was off on my travels too during the night. On a coach as a passenger heading into the centre of Shrewsbury. Of course, it didn’t even bear a passing resemblance to Shrewsbury even though there was a good wide river there. We had city walls, low gates and crowds of people to deal with. We reached the drop-off point at the centre of town and while the bus was to turn round (which wasn’t easy around here) I said that I would wander off and take some photos. Of course, it goes without saying that I intended to spend much longer photographing than the bus would take to turn round, but I reckoned that the bus driver would cope. Why I never asked him to drop me off by the gate into the town and pick me up later was something that even in a nocturnal ramble I couldn’t understand.

With an early awakening we had an early rising and an early breakfast. And then there was some stuff that needed doing. I followed that up with a shower and then headed off to town and LIDL.

The town centre of Granville was like a ghost town this morning.

Not even half the market was there, not even half of the usual customers and probably no more than a dozen cars.

Normally on a Saturday there would be market stalls all over the square and the place would be heaving with people. However everyone seemed to be respecting this Day of Action against the tax hikes here.

When Josée was here just now, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the lengths to which some people are going in order to inconvenience pedestrians and others – preventing them from sitting or lying down in sheltered places when they need to rest.

Walking up the rue Couraye this morning, my attention was caught by this window ledge and its … errr … decorations.

This is exactly the kind of thing that we were discussing. It’s the kind of thing that brings the town and the shop owner into disrepute.

You’ll remember a few days ago that I told you about the cherry-picker that seemed to be erecting Christmas decorations near the railway station.

So here we are at the place de la Gare and you’ll see that we have now acquired a Christmas tree.

One of these evenings I’ll go past it and see if it’s illuminated. It’ll be nice to see some Christmas lights.

Lidl was practically empty this morning, which was a surprise. But despite that, they didn’t have much that I needed.

On the way back, I met the guy to whom I gave the Solex a few months ago, and then took a diversion around the docks. The heap of gravel on the quayside is growing – it looks as if a gravel boat will be here sometime soon.

Do you remember that strange-looking boat that we saw coming into the port the other day? She was still moored up here so I went for a closer inspection.

She’s called the Aztec Lady and she’s out of Cherbourg.

Built in Southampton in 1977, she spent the first 20-odd years of her life going to all kinds of places around the world but since 2000 she’s specialised in sailings out to the North Atlantic and the Arctic. I see that I shall have to make the acquaintance of the owners.

She’s back in port after having apparently spent the summer in Norway and out in Spitzbergen and the Lofoten Islands.

Another boat in the harbour right now is La Grande Ancre

We’ve seen her on many occasions, quite often taking stuff out to the Ile de Chausey and on one occasion there was even a large van on board being taken somewhere.

Today though it looks as if she’s kitted out for going mussel-catching.

You’ll also remember that for several months the harbour was closed while they replaced the tidal gates into the inner harbour.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t been over to see the new ones since they have been installed and that’s not like me at all, is it?

They certainly look impressive enough and should last quite a while. But you can see that the sea water has already left its mark on them

The weight of the water behind the gates must be really substantial so not only must the gates be of solid construction, so must the machinery for opening and closing the gates.

And this little lot looks as if it really could do the business.

I don’t think that I have ever seen a hydraulic ram quite as solid as this one. This should do the business.

On the other side of the entrance to the inner harbour is the fish dock.

Wandering around on here was this cute little family, mummy and two baby goélands scavenging for fish waste.

The little ones were making quite a racket – so much so that it was giving me a nasty tern

It also seems that I haven’t taken a photo of the fish dock either.

To the right, it’s the tidal basin and the fishing boats tie up here when the tide is in. The catch off the commercial boats is lifted up here on the cranes to the fish processing plant.

The private fishers park their vehicles on the deck underneath where we are standing and they can unload their boats straight into their vehicles as we have seen in the past.

We’ve not had a photo of the new fish-processing plant either.

There was an older one on the other quay, presumably dating from when the trawlers from Granville went out to the Grad Banks fishing for the cod. Marité was one of the Grand Banks fishing boats in its prime.

But since the Cod Moratorium in 1992, the Grand Banks are off-limits. Now the fishermen are engaged in fishing in smaller boats much closer to home.

Their catch goes into the side of the building where it’s processed and then comes out of the front into the refrigerated lorries that distribute it

Back here I had a little … errr … repose, and then made a huge pile of hummus. It has olives and garlic as well as some cumin. And it’s delicious too. It was a large jar of chick peas so it made a lot of hummus so there is plenty in the freezer.

After lunch, I installed the new printer. And that took longer than you might have expected too. Basically because the wireless connection didn’t recognise the printer and vice versa. In the end, I had to set it up with the USB cable and that defeats the whole point of having a wireless printer.

This evening there was football on the internet. Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro in the Welsh Premier League. And the wheels seem really to have come off the Metro as they slumped to yet another defeat. There was no spark in the side – they looked tired and totally lacking in enthusiasm. And, shame as it is to say it, Alex Lang in goal is not even a shadow of the keeper that Will Fuller was.

Caernarfon won 2-0 and didn’t even break sweat.

Add to that the fact that, much to everyone’s surprise, Llanelli won again, it means that the bottom of the table is becoming rather exciting as more and more teams are finding themselves sucked into a relegation scrap. And if the Met don’t do something quickly, they will be in there too.

After tea, which was out of a tin, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc. I was the only person out there which was no surprise because it was freezing out there and my ears certainly felt it.

Winter is acumen in without any mistake at all.

And I forgot to post one of the photos of the walkway across the top of the gates into the port.

Friday 16th November 2018 – THIS WAS A …

… really bad day today.

Mind you, this was only to be expected considering that I was still awake at 02:30 this morning working.

It takes quite a while to extract the data files from the failed hard drive on the other laptop and to make sure that absolutely everything was saved onto the external back-up drive.

In fact by the time that 02:30 came round and I was seeing double or even treble and there was still a long way to go, I created a little batch program to do it automatically. It’s amazing how much I can remember of T223 when I put my mind to it.

The net result of all of this was that when I awoke at 06:00 it was all done.

And then I had the job of configuring the other laptop.

This is one that I bought a few years ago when I was living on the farm. I wanted a cheap laptop to work the auto-diagnostic kit. It had to have a CD-ROM but not much else, and someone produced one in which the on-board mouse wasn’t working. And an external mouse is no big deal.

But going back to the issues of the UK’s engagement with the EU, I decided that I ought to go back to having a desktop computer as a main set-up. There’s a company in Stoke-on-Trent that is well-known for making bespoke computers and they would do whatever it was that I needed.

So I sent them a mail and the reply was “we don’t sell our products abroad”. Yes, the UK has never ever got to grips with the idea of the European Union. After all, it’s not the first time that this has happened. Far from it, in fact.

And the Rosemary rang me up and we had a good chat for an hour and a half. We were laughing at the clueless rabble who are running the UK right now, where the guy who negotiated a deal with the European Union then resigned because he didn’t agree with the deal that he had just negotiated. Does it get any more clueless than this?

Finally I could get down to dealing with the High Arctic, only to be immediately interrupted by the pompiers. You can tell that it’s getting close to Christmas – they are now collecting their funds for the annual p155-up, selling their calendars.

This was the cue to have a little doze – hardly surprising – and when I awoke it was almost 13:30 so another late lunch.

This afternoon, I really did attack the High Arctic Day Three and spent a good deal of time on it.

That was despite an interruption to join the crowds milling around the Pointe du Roc in the glorious late-autumn weather.

It really was a beautiful afternoon and I spent quite some considerable time watching the waves come crashing down on the rocks just offshore.

It was a typical late autumn scene out there today

Walking around the headland to the point overlooking the harbour, I noticed that we seem to have a new arrival in port.

I don’t recall having seen this boat before so I can’t tell you very much about it right now.

What I’ll have to do one of these days is to have a wander around down to the harbour one day if she’s still there and see what I can find out about her.

Despite these interruptione, I’d finished all of the meta tags for the photos on Day Three of the High Arctic, split the page into four (or is it five?) and started the meta tags for the pages, when I was overwhelmed.

Not just slumping with my head on the desk either, but on the bed under the covers flat out for well over two hours. And you’ve no idea just how painful it was to awaken. It took me a good 20 minutes to gather up my wits which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days.

Tea was pasta and falafel and then a walk around the walls of the medieval town.

Now provided that nothing else goes wrong, I’ll have an early night and catch up with my beauty sleep. You have no idea just how much I need these days.

Tide on the rocks

Diving platform on the beach at Plat Gousset

The beach at the Plat Gousset

The tide coming in at the Plat Gousset

View across the town of Granville to the Port de Plaisance

Restaurants down on the port de plaisance.

Thursday 15th November 2018 – I’M FEELING …

… a little better right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parked up there was a pretty rare Triumph Thruxton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EPIC HALL

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