Tag Archives: stuffed peppers

Monday 13th February 2023 – THAT AIR FRYER …

… bread that I made yesterday wasn’t actually too bad. I took one of the little rolls that I made and sliced it. And it looked like bread too – much softer than I have made before. and it toasted quite nicely too. Nice and crispy and hot with a pile of vegan butter it was absolutely delicious.

It’s strange that it looked so different on the outside though.

What I’ll have to do is to make some more and see whether I can reproduce the same results with that lot. But at least it goes to show that the air fryer has what it takes to make my bread in the future.

Maybe I should have bought a bigger air fryer to go with the bigger freezer that I also should have bought.

last night though I didn’t have too much time to dream about making bread because although I was in bed quite early, it took an age to go to sleep.

And when I did, I had the pain in my leg and feet again and I awoke much earlier than planned too.

But even though I didn’t have too much sleep, there was still plenty of time to go off on a few travels here and there. I started off by reading a newspaper. There was a photo of something that had happened behind where I parked Caliburn. There was some kind of electrical equipment there in this photo. I went over to have a look. It was still there. What I thought at first were the 2 batteries had spilled out so I picked them up and took them back to Caliburn for a closer look. One may well have been some kind of battery pack but the other one wasn’t. it functioned between 11.7 and 17 volts. While I was about to have a good look at it someone pulled up and started to search through Caliburn. I asked him what was the matter. He replied that he was borrowing some sockets. He went to put one of his daughters in the cab of Caliburn so we had a huge row about that. he asked me a few questions about things that happened in Shavington. I asked him what he had taken of mine. He replied “a couple of sockets” but not to worry because he’d bring them back to me on Friday.

And then I was moving into my new place. There were 3 large metal cabinets that needed taking there. I emptied them and asked the guys from the radio. They carried the 3 of them down and put them on the back of Caliburn. I drove off to the new place. From there I had to go off somewhere so I left them to fetch the 3 cabinets out and take them up to my apartment. When I returned I couldn’t see Caliburn nor these cabinets. I could see that 1 of the cabinets had made it outside the apartment and they were all extremely unhappy about me having left them to deal with all of this which I thought was quite a straightforward easy thing to do but they were really unhappy about it and it left a really bad impression. I still had the other 2 filing cabinets in the back of Caliburn somewhere that I was going to have to bring up on my own.

After that I took a week off work. I’d been walking around the Nantwich Road area of Crewe all morning thinking that this is really nice. Why don’t I just retire and spend the rest of my life just doing nice things like this instead of rushing into a place like work where I don’t have to go anyway because I’m over the retirement age. On the way back I cut through a few side streets and came across an area that had been badly burnt after having caught fire somewhere round by Mill Street. The only camera I had with me was on my phone so I went to take a couple of photos of it. The photos just wouldn’t keep on working out properly. I ended up either photographing something else completely different or else it wasn’t clear enough to catch any of the fire damage.

And I must be dreaming if I’m thinking that wandering around Crewe for a morning is really nice and that I ought to do it more often. Nantwich Road is on the south side of the town and it was to the north to where the Luftwaffe paid a visit, dropped a stick of bombs and caused £14,000,000 worth of improvements.

And dreaming that I ought to be retiring? How many times is that just recently?

Finally I was with TOTGA last night. We were driving around Stoke on Trent trying to go somewhere. There were demolition works and road works everywhere. We turned into a street that was a dead end that we found, all fenced off. I had to reverse all the way back out and onto the main road again which was a rather dangerous thing to do. I was in the Opel Senator. As I was reversing out onto the main road I suddenly realised that this car hasn’t been on the road for over 20 years. There was no tax, no MoT, no insurance or anything on it. This was bound to lead to all kinds of complications if we were to run across a policeman or something like that. I couldn’t understand why I’d chosen this car to come out in to pick her up.

So welcome back TOTGA. It’s been a long time since she’s put in an appearance. It’s nice to see her back. Her front’s quite nice too.

It didn’t take long to finish off the two radio programmes this morning, having done most of the work over the end of last week. I had a listen to them too and I’m quite pleased with how they have worked out. There’s some good music in them.

As well as that I also had a listen to the one that i’ll be sending off for broadcast this coming weekend. On eof the joints between the music in that one isn’t up to much but I couldn’t work out how to make it sound any better.

The rest of the day has been spent working on something else for the radio. Just before Christmas 2021 Laurent and I interviewed the woman who makes the dresses for the Carnival Queens but I didn’t do anything with the interview because Carnaval was cancelled last year.

However, Carnaval is going ahead next week at long last so I edited the radio programme and added in some music. A few years ago I recorded the music from some of the marching bands so I filtered it into the interview to give it some kind of introduction.

Tea tonight was another delicious stuffed pepper. And with plenty of stuffing left I’ll be having a taco roll tomorrow night and a leftover curry (seeing as there are plenty of leftovers here and there) on Wednesday.

My meals might be very much the same from one week to the next but the thing is that they are delicious so why would I want to change. But I’m thinking about having some falafel with my chips on Friday night. All I need to do is to remember to go to the supermarket for a big shop on Friday afternoon because Carnaval starts this weekend and it’ll be pretty pointless trying to go to the shops once things get under way

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better night because I have my Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to revise for it. As I said a few weeks ago, I’m falling behind and it’s showing. But I can’t seem to find the time and when I do, I can’t find the motivation.

And I don’t know what I am going to do about that.

Monday 6th February 2023 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… totally bizarre Monday today.

And when I tell you that both the radio programmes that I wanted to prepare were all done and dusted by 08:00 or thereabouts, you’ll understand what I mean.

Last night I managed to go to bed at some kind of realistic time, like 22:00, and it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

However, by 01:30 I was wide awake again and couldn’t go back to sleep. At about 03:00 I gave it up as a bad job and decided that I’d attack the radio programmes, with the idea that that would probably drive me back to sleep again.

However, I kept on going in something of a desultory fashion and finished it all off.

There were a few other things that needed doing this morning too but by 10:30 I was back in bed on my way to sleep again, and that was where I stayed until about 13:40.

Once I’d had some coffee and one of my delicious fruit buns, I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes. At some point during the night I was in some kind of prison somewhere. It wasn’t really a prison but was just like one. It was quite late at night and I had to do something about food, tins and fresh fruit etc. I built myself a pyramid of food, picked it up in my 2 arms and walked off down this corridor. When I reached near where there was an empty cell I decided that I wanted to go to the bathroom. I tried to put this load down quietly but it fell and made a noise right by where some young child was sleeping. It didn’t awaken the child so I thought that I was lucky. I nipped in, did what I had to do and came back out again. There was a big shopping bag and I started to put all of the food etc into it with the idea that I could pick it up and carry it off. It would be easier. In actual fact there was much more food than I realised and it wouldn’t go in the shopping bag. Bits and pieces kept on falling out every time I tried to pick it up

Later on I’d received a letter written in English from the Commune at Virlet about vehicles that I’d left there.

Finally, there’s a whole fleet of buses and lorries and cars going to this stately home type of place for some reason or other. It had been raining heavily and the field where everyone was parking was being churned up terribly. When we finally stopped, the person in charge of our bus asked “right, are we all alighting?” to which I replied “not in this weather”. I received a dirty look. I climbed out of the bus, bumped into a couple of my friends who wanted to know where we would go. I suggested that we walk over towards the old stately home place, wade through it, I thought, with all of this water, and see what’s happening there. It was all very suspicious and very peculiar.

A copy of the signed Commitment to Purchase form arrived at some point today too, together with some information that I need from the bank. And so at some point tomorrow I can finish off these forms that need completing for the transfer of the money to buy the apartment downstairs.

It really does look as if it might be going ahead and that will be really good news if it does. I just wish now that I can find a plumber or someone to come and install the shower. I didn’t have a single response to my advert, which just goes to show, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … you can’t even give money away to honest tradesmen these days.

While I was at it, I took the opportunity to telephone the garage about Caliburn. He’s certain that it’s the starter and that should be replaced on Tuesday. So it looks as if I have a nice run out on the bus on Wednesday morning to go and rescue him – and do some shopping.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. And for reasons that I can’t understand, everything about it was overcooked. I mean – I used the same temperatures and same times but somehow it all went soft and mushy. Ahh well! You can’t win a coconut every time I suppose.

Despite my sleep over lunchtime, I’m still quite tired. And there’s a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I reckon that i’ll go for an early night in the hope that I can have a decent sleep and have a good session at preparation.

At some point in the near future we have to register for an exam but I think that I’m going to opt out. I know that I’m off the pace and struggling somewhat and while I’m going to carry on with the following year’s course, I think that an exam is beyond me right now. I’ll try to catch a couple of summer schools to refresh everything and then have a try at another time.

Monday 30th January 2023 – I’VE FINALLY FINISHED …

… these radio programmes that I’ve been trying to do since Thursday.

Much to my own surprise, and probably yours too, I was up and out of bed quite quickly when the alarm went off at 06:00. And after I’d taken my medication etc, I was soon back at my desk.

Mind you I only wish that I’d shown as much energy and enthusiasm working though as I had in leaving the bed. I was quite easily distracted unfortunately and what with one thing and another (and once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was just about midday when I was finally finished.

Mind you, these two that have have finished today are pretty good ones and the choice of music is quite impressive.

This afternoon I was intending to make the necessary arrangements about organising some kind of payment in respect of this apartment. But the solicitor who’s handling the sale STILL hasn’t sent me the information that I need to complete the forms that I’ve been sent. From what I’ve seen and experienced, he’s even worse than me at postponing everything until beyond the last moment. It’s not a very good advertisement for a solicitor, that’s for sure.

However, not that I’m short of a few things to do. For a start, I had to pay my cleaner. She’s not doing this job for nothing. That didn’t take me too long. She’d worked out for herself how many hours she’d worked and what was her hourly rate. I just had simply to fill in an on-line form and that was that.

And then there was the dictaphone. I’d had a dreadful night, tossing and turning all over the place. But even so, I’d been off for quite a few rambles during the night. I was making tea at one point. I was looking around for a tin of vegetables but couldn’t find one in my cupboard. In the end I had the cupboard out with almost everything moved so I could have a good look through. I found lots of stuff that I’d missed but I couldn’t find any vegetables. Suddenly I remembered that a few weeks ago I’d bought a couple of tins of really expensive peas and carrots that had been on sale at Noz at some ridiculously cheap price. I knew where they were so I went to look for those instead.

Later on I’d been wandering around some town somewhere. I can’t remember where now. It was where I was living and I was working as a sort-of odd job delivery person. One Saturday morning I had a few things to deliver. I had to go round to the house of one of my old taxi clients to pick up the facade of a piece of wooden furniture to take to somewhere else. While I was there I picked up a piece of chipboard that I’d had for years that I’d wanted for another project. I was roller-skating down this hill to a road junction and suddenly remembered that I didn’t know how to stop. In my anxiety I fell over. I picked myself up, picked up the facade of this piece of furniture and set off again. After I’d gone about 200 yards I suddenly realised that I’d left my piece of chipboard in the middle of the road. I was quite attached to this piece of chipboard for some reason. It had followed me around in a variety of moves so I went back to find it. I picked it up and came back again. I could hear some kind of arguing between a mother and two children. I recognised the voices as yet more people whom I’d taken on the taxis years ago. I glanced over the hedge as I went past. It was indeed this family but in the intervening years they had put on a lot of weight and were scarcely recognisable. While I was setting off again I was thinking that with walking to Chester that I’d done the other night, why didn’t I go on roller skates? That would only have taken me half the time, I reckon, and for a lot less energy too. “I shall have to look further into this travelling to places on roller skates” I thought.

As well as that I’d been in London somewhere. I had to go out to the East End. I’d picked up a printer on the way. For some reason it was much later than usual so I was running out of time. In the end I booked a room at a hotel out there so I could finish my journey next morning. On the way back I was walking and ended up in this countryside with these fields and hills somewhere in North London. There were some kids playing around. I suddenly realised that I didn’t have the printer with me. I had to make a detour somewhere else to pick up the printer. Then it wouldn’t all fit in the box. I realised that I had to dismantle it because I’d assembled it when I’d bought it. Then I could just about fit it into the box. I set off and was going past this row of terraced cottages. I had something to do in the back garden of one of them. I ended up borrowing a drill and a large bit. As I walked away from there they told me that I needed to be careful when I left. I walked away and ended up going down this alleyway out into the lane from where I’d come. I suddenly realised that the sun was over on my right which meant that I must have been walking back east again. I had to stop and have a think. Someone caught up with me and asked if I’d borrowed a drill from such and such a place. I replied “yes” so he asked if he could take it back as he needed it. I showed him the drill. He replied “that’s not exactly what he was looking for”. Then I thought that I’d pack everything into my rucksack that I was carrying. It was rather pointless having an empty backpack and my hands full of stuff. The first thing I noticed in my backpack was my bag of money. I thought “why was that in there when it’s going to be completely inaccessible. It should be in my pocket”. While I was arranging everything these 2 girls came up as well and started to talk to me about something or other. When the first one finished the second one said to me in a foreign accent that she wanted to talk to me about napalm. I didn’t know exactly what she meant by this. She said that she’d written to me a few months ago, which I didn’t remember. She asked me where I was living so I replied “in Normandy”. She asked “are you travelling?”. I replied “no” which stunned her for a moment. I turned round to the boy and whispered “if anyone else asks me another silly question I’ll go berserk”.

Finally, I had ended up with an orange somehow and had to take it back to the market stall to have my money back on it. Then I noticed that they had a net of 6 oranges for €2:00 so I was going to ask if I could swap and pay the difference. It took me a few minutes to be served. When the stall holder came up to see me he was extremely cheerful and laughing. He told me to speak very slowly so I could understand him. I wasn’t sure whether he was actually taking the mickey out of my accent or not

Talking about the radio programmes, which I was earlier, it’s going very soon to be the 200th programme that I will have prepared. For my 100th, I did a special series of concerts. But this time I’m going to be doing something quite different and that involves a lot of work. Consequently I made a start this afternoon and that’s what I’ve been doing for the rest of the day.

Of course, you’re all dying to find out what it will be but you’re going to have to wait a couple of months before you find out.

In between all of this I took Caliburn out for a spin. He’s going to the garage tomorrow to have this electrical fault checked over and I wanted to make sure that he would start. It was something of a struggle into life but off he went all the same. I hope that tomorrow he’ll start just the same.

Tea tonight was another delicious stuffed pepper with rice and veg. I’ve got the hang of this stuffing now and there’s plenty left over for a taco roll tomorrow evening.

While we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m going to be extremely busy. I have a Welsh lesson that needs preparation, then a quick run with Caliburn to the garage and back on the bus, then the physiotherapist. As well as that, I have some fruit buns to make as the last one will disappear at some point tomorrow.

In that case I suppose that I’d better go to bed. Despite having a bad night and being up early, I’ve managed not to fall asleep during the day today. I don’t want to fall asleep in the middle of my Welsh lesson or miss Caliburn’s rendezvous.

Monday 16th January 2023 – AND IN OTHER …

… exciting news today, when the alarm went off at 06:00 this morning I was busy adding the final touches to the radio programme that I was planning to prepare today.

Despite having gone to bed at the early time of 22:00 last night, at 02:28 I was still wide-awake and unable to go to sleep.

A short while later, still wide awake, I arose from the dead, made myself a coffee and by 03:00 I was sitting at the computer working on the radio programme. There’s no point pretending that I’m trying to sleep.

So by the time the alarms went off I was up and running and raring to go, so the first place I went to was the bathroom where I had a shower. I was hoping that maybe the nurse would come round and inject me and I need to be something like clean.

With no sign of the nurse though, by about 10:30 I was pretty well gone with the wind and I went to bed, where I slept for a couple of hours. I went off ona little wander here and there while I was asleep. I was somewhere in the country. There was a neighbour who was bad-tempered like the one who lives in Virlet. I was wandering around outside and saw that he had a lot of animals there. I walked that way to see what they were. He had a really vicious sheepdog thing that snarled and growled at me, pulled on his lead so I turned round and walked away from there

Rosemary had sent me a message while I was asleep so we had a good chat for a while once I awoke, and then I went for some more coffee and some food. It’s been a long day already.

During the afternoon I was extremely busy. There were some issues with my property in Canada that needed attention so I had an exchange of e-mails with the Provincial Government in New Brunswick. It’s nice to see someone who is quick and efficient.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to shuffle some money around from one place to another. I have a feeling that I’m going to need to lay my hands on some money at some point in the future and as I’ve not touched my holiday fund since I went to the High Arctic in 2019 I need to bring it closer to home.

That’s not as easy as it might sound either and I had to rely on Rosemary to give me a little hand with one or two things. I’ve also had to send out a pile of e-mails to shake some people up and tell them to extricate their digits too.

One of my plans was to go outside to see how Caliburn is doing. But we’re in the middle of a hurricane right now. Just after 06:00 this morning a gust of wind of 162 kph was recorded. I made it outside with some rubbish to put into the bin but that was all that I was going to do because the wind was still roaring and quite literally it was blowing me over. I’m not as strong on my feet as I might be and I was nearly bowled over a couple of times so I came back in. I’ll have to have another go at some other time.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll tomorrow. But with a Welsh lesson, the Social Services coming round to see me and then the physiotherapist, will I actually have time to eat it?

Monday 9th January 2023 – IF I WERE …

… to tell you that my radio programme was finished, up and running by 07:30 this morning, you’ll probably be quite astonished, and wondering what on earth was going on.

The fact is though that it was bad news that brought all of this about, not good news.

As is usual on a Sunday evening I was in bed by 22:00 ready for a nice long sleep until the alarm at 06:00. I fell asleep quite quickly too but by the time that 01:00 came around I was wide awake again.

After that, I just couldn’t make myself comfortable, tossing and turning around trying to make myself comfortable but without success.

Round about 03:30 I had to wander off for a stroll along the parapet, and I made an executive decision (and for the benefit of new readers, an executive decision is a decision that if it is incorrect, the person making it is executed) that now that I’m up, I’m staying up. And I attacked the radio programme.

When I’d finished I had some cornflakes and coffee and then made a start on doing some work for a change. And I kept it up for a couple of hours too, much to my surprise.

Round about 10:30 I couldn’t keep going and gave up, going back to bed.

Having dozed off for a short while, an endless stream of phone calls kept me awake. It culminated with a ‘phone call from my doctor saying that he would be coming to see me “within the hour”.

That was enough to rouse me from wherever I was, and I went and had a quick shower and clean-up ready for my visit. I don’t mind being reasonably unkempt when I’m here on my own but with visitors, it’s different.

When he came we had a good chat and he’s sending me off to have one of these electrical tests where they check the flow of electricity down my nerves. He asked me if I’d had one before and while it’s true to say that I have, I told him that I hadn’t.

The reason for my “economy with the truth” is that when it was done before, it was done in Leuven and the report was printed in Flemish which my doctor didn’t understand. From this laboratory here in granville, the report will be in French which is far better.

Secondly, if I have it done here, any follow-up will be done here or hereabouts too and as I can’t make it to Leuven, then local treatment has to be an advantage, especially as I’m entitled to free transport.

Thirdly, a second opinion is always worth having, to make sure that everyone is working from the same page. My doctor seems to have the right kind of idea about my treatment anyway as he seems to be recommending the same as they did at Leuven.

After he left, then armed with a taxi voucher I rang up an ambulance service and booked a car to take me to my consultation on the 20th. If it’s free I may as well take advantage of it.

So next week I have the Social Services coming to see me on Tuesday and then the appointment on the Friday – things are moving quite rapidly around here. I wish that one or two other things would hurry up though.

There was quite a bit of stuff on the dictaphone too so I sat down this afternoon and transcribed it all. Yesterday’s notes are now updated and then I turned my attention to today’s. Some friends pf mine had played in a rock opera about Christmas. There was a professional performance of it taking place somewhere so I decided that I’d go along to see it. I bumped into someone whom I knew there. he was there with his wife and a couple of daughters. We all ended up sitting together but as the programme continued these 2 girls started to shout comments from the crowd up to the stage. This started to become quite embarrassing. He told the 2 girls to go and sit somewhere else if they were going to do that, so they did. It didn’t stop them so in the end he went and rounded up everyone and they sat in another row behind where I was sitting. This still carried on and it was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life being there listening to all of this going on. I want to go and chat to the bassist afterwards but I thought that I couldn’t do that as he would associate me with these other people. Why the rest of the crowd didn’t say anything or turf these people out I really don’t know

Later on I was in a big house last night full of people, children and a couple of adults. The place was so untidy with all of these children in there. I’d been stroking a cat, then another one came up to me. I couldn’t see it properly but I picked it up and stroked it. The way that it was behaving, I was absolutely convinced that it was my old black cat. I was stroking it for 10 or 15 minutes, then I walked into a room where there was a light on. It wasn’t my black cat at all but a big ginger cat. I’d no idea how come I’d makde a mistake about this. I put the cat down. One of the women who was in charge of the house just kept on bringing more things into the room with these children. The place was becoming really out of control. I had a feeling somewhere that this place was on the Isle of Thanet somewhere near Margate or Ramsgate, somewhere like that but I don’t know.

Rosemary and I had a quick chat this evening too, and then I went for tea. A stuffed pepper with rice and, for a change these days, vegetables. It was quite nice too and I’ll get to enjoy it even more as there is quite a lot left over. There will be a taco roll tomorrow of course and then I’ll have to make a left-over curry with the remains on Wednesday.

Now though, I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow followed by the physiotherapist to I need to be on form. I really could do with a good sleep but that’s not always possible, especially these days. And tomorrow I can’t go back to sleep so I’ll have to keep on going as best as I can.

That should be quite interesting.

Monday 2nd January 2023 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight.

Not as late as it was last night and hopefully not as late a start as … errr … 11:30 this morning when I finally crawled out of bed, but I’m still not in any rush and I’m not really tired either.

And ?I’ve no idea why that might be because this afternoon I vacuumed the bedroom – the first time that i’ve done that for quite a while.

And if that might sound like a surprise, it certainly was as far as I was concerned because I had no idea just how tiring it was to do that. It didn’t take me long to do it, but I had to have a good sit down afterwards, and for quite a while too.

But I digress for the moment. There was tons of stuff on the dictaphone from last night. And surprisingly, several of my little voyages followed on one from another. There was a Carry On film going on last night. Most of the actors of the Carry On team had been arrested by some kind of Greek people going back to traditional times. Charles Hawtrey dressed as a Roman centurion was sent to rescue them. He landed ashore and walked up this valley with all these people lying in wait to capture him. When they leapt out from behind a rock they had the masks and sacks over their own heads rather than putting them over his head, so wondering why they never succeeded in being able to capture him. Of course he was taken aback and burst out laughing while these people were groping around trying to find out what had gone wrong.

Then later on there were these little girls about 8 or 9 dressed up in some kind of green and yellow dress like elves or something, dancing around this kiddies’ playground place where I was standing

And next time it was a similar scene with similar girls except that they were dressed in blue for the next time they ambushed another girl

Back here again and there was another bunch of similarly dressed kids, young girls in elvish clothes in Crewe somewhere round about North Street, somewhere like that, again dancing around on the station this time. And if anyone is wondering, which I’m sure they are, the railway station there was only there for three years – from 1837 to 1840. And yes, that is almost 200 years ago, not that I would remember it.

We still haven’t finished here yet. There was a small boy, about 3 or so, on the petrol station on North Street on the corner of Underwood Lane with another boy, a little older. They had all of these dancers as miniatures on white leather leads. He was holding a bunch of these leads. As I came out he held the leads up to me to show me what he’d caught

As for the final bit, I’m not quite sure what that was all about. But all of that on North Street was really impressively real, especially when it came to going to the Post Office with all of the dancers but I can’t remember much about that but it certainly seemed real to me.

There was a ‘phone call from Leuven this afternoon, but they hung up before I could actually answer the call which was just as well. I wasn’t in any mood to speak to them. And there was also a ‘phone call from the chemists about the bill that I haven’t paid. I shall have to get on with that, and quickly too

But really, that was all of the excitement. All of the Christmas food has now been eaten except for the last few crumbs of the Christmas cake, such as it was. The next two days will see the end of that and then I shall have to bake a loaf of bread.

That reminds me that I need to order some flour, and so I’ll need to send off my order for food from the supermarket. I shall have to do that on Friday too. So I shall have to have a further think just in case there is anything else that I might have forgotten. At €9:95 a delivery, I can’t afford to be doing this every day.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with some really nice stuffing. Not as nice as the stuffing that I made with kidney beans and I shall have to remember that for whenever I have no mushrooms, because that was really something special.

And now I’m off to bed. No alarm, because it’s late and I need to do my best to catch up with whatever it is that’s wearing me out. The physiotherapist is coming tomorrow and Thursday, the cleaner on Wednesday, so I need to have another think about doing some more cleaning so that the place looks at least respectable.

Not that “respectable” is a phrase that anyone might usually associate with me, but here we are.

Tuesday 27th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a little more motivated today.

Not by very much, I have to say, but at least I’ve managed to do a couple of things today.

Not that you would have thought so the way the morning unfolded because I spent more of it in bed than I ought to have done. No chance whatever of me leaving the bed when the alarm went off at 07:30. It was much more like 09:00 when I finally broke surface today.

Mind you, that’s not a surprise judging by the amount of travelling that I did during the night. I was running some kind of school but it wasn’t a boarding school, it was a front for something else. However it was such fun having this boarding school teaching the kids English etc that it actually became the principal occupation rather than whatever it was that we were intending to do. We taught the boys and girls poetry. We had a couple of them write out poems. I had to go to print them so I sent one boy down to the printer while I printed them off so he could bring them back. For some unknown reason I couldn’t remember the key combination to print and the screen was too far away for me to read. It took me ages to remember the CTRL+P shortcut to make these things print off

Later on, I stepped back into this dream, took the school up again and these pupils there. One of the pupils had to write out a poem so I let him do it. He was comfortably over the limit of words but it sounded so good that I tried to have him write another. His parents were away with the British Civil Service so he was staying at our boarding school. He sat down to write a second one but was shot in the rigging as he did so and all his possessions that he’d found had all been wiped out and broken

Then later still I was back in there yet again. We were checking photos of these kids at this school. There was one of a boy and girl. They each had a sticker in their ear. One had a green sticker, one had a red sticker in it. The girl’s said “gaffer” or “boss” and I can’t remember the boy’s but it implied that the girl was in charge and he was just her servant or something.

And now for something completely different. When I went into the shed after having been out for a day or two I found this motorbike and sidecar in there. It was an old fore-and-aft V-twin that somehow I had an impression that it was a BMW although it wasn’t. I was trying hard to identify it but but I couldn’t see any maker’s name on it at all. It was black and quite old, probably from the 60s and looked as if Laurent and Xavier had dropped it off on me. It was really the most impressive beast that I’d ever seen. I’d been talking to them about motor bikes a few days ago. I’d no idea how come this had appeared in my shed but it was an unidentified V-twin fore-and-aft. Everything about it said BMW but there was no plate on the engine or on the frame or tank to say what it might be. It was completely blank.

After that I was with a boy and a girl. We ended up at a cottage. There was a huge pile of Mary’s paperwork. While the boy and girl were sitting in front of the fire keeping warm I was going through the paperwork finding all kinds of things. I sorted out as much as I could but there was still a big pile of unsorted stuff. It was 03:00 and I said that I had to go. I said to these two “whatever you do, you mustn’t leave until the fire had gone right down because we don’t want the place burning down”. They agreed to stay. I couldn’t find my guitars. They thought that they had been taken by someone else into the hall so I had to hunt around for them at the very last minute before leaving. It was about 03:15 before I was finally ready to go.

Surprisingly, I stepped back into this dream too. One of the things that we found in these papers was a document dated April 1940, a handbook for farmers issued by the Farmers’ Union. For a start, the back pages were in Dutch so it was intended for an audience of Dutch farmers coming to settle in Nantwich. It included articles like “love your slave” and all kinds of outdated stuff like that which even for the 1940s was extremely near the knuckle. I read it out to these people with me and they were astonished. Then it became time for me to go and do a couple of deliveries and then I’d been told that I could go home after that so I prepared myself to go. But this document was astonishing, 1940 as well and aimed for everyone in the Farmers Union in the Nantwich area.

Once I’d finally managed to drag myself round into the Land of the Living, the first thing that I had to do was to deal with the questionnaire that I had been sent yesterday.

That involved printing it out, completing it, scanning it, scouring around for the supporting documents and then sending off everything. By e-mail of course because I can’t walk down into town and the Post Office.

You’d be surprised how long all of that took to do as well. Nothing is as easy or as straightforward as it might be and I have a variety of good and valid reasons why my information is not as easy or as straightforward as anyone else’s.

Next stop was the bathroom and a shower. And you have no idea how difficult it’s becoming to climb into the bath in order to take a shower. This can’t go on for much longer and something certainly needs to happen in order that I can deal with this, and quite soon too.

There is plenty of rubbish that has accumulated around here and that needed to go to the bins across the road. It was a nice sunny day, if a little windy, so I decided to have a bash. It was a little easier to head that way but I was soon exhausted and the rest of the trip was a nightmare. But I made it in the end.

On the way back I passed by Caliburn and wound him up. He struggled into life so I let him run for a while. While he was ticking over I disconnected all of the ancillary electrical circuits that I wired in when I bought him. I want to see if the battery will charge better with it all disconnected.

We had a few bright sparks while I was doing it, and shame as it is to say it, a job that would usually take me just 2 or 3 minutes with no complications whatever took me half an hour.

The woman who lives upstairs who does cleaning too was in the corridor so I mentioned to her that I’ll be needing her services in due course. She’ll make arrangements to come to see me.

Back in here I sent off that incendiary letter that I’d written a few days ago, mentioning in passing that I’m not going for my appointments next week. Half an hour to the bins is longer than it used to take me to walk to the station. How on earth can I make it as far as Leuven, and on a Bank Holiday too?

The physiotherapist came round later and gave me a little work-out. He thinks that he might have found something and gave me a few instructions about massaging a muscle in my upper thigh.

Tea tonight, power cuts included, was a little different. Stuffed pepper with veg and rice but with no mushrooms I tried a small tin of kidney beans. It certainly made a difference, and a pleasant one too. I’ll try this again.

But I’m running short of onions now and that’s fatal. It looks as if another struggle to the Carrefour is on the agenda at some point.

However that’s for again. Right now I’m going to go to bed for (hopefully) some pleasant dreams. Tomorrow is a day with nothing planned so I might go round to see my neighbour and pay her for the shopping that she did for me last week. I need to pay my debts.

Tuesday 20th December 2022 – THERE I WAS …

… deep in the arms of Morpheus observing some kind of exciting spaghetti western and someone rings the front doorbell.

Still, serves me right for deciding to have a lie-in this morning instead of springing to my feet with alacrity.

Last night, I’d even gone to bed reasonably early as well and was looking forward to a decnt 8 hours sleep but it never quite worked out like that. There was the usual tossing and turning that seems to have become a regular feature of the way things are these days.

So having kept my doorbell-ringer hanging on the door for several minutes while I threw on some clothes, I staggered (and I DO mean “staggered”) down the stairs to find the pharmacist who had brought me my medication. The doctor had dropped off the prescription at the pharmacy yesterday.

My injections haven’t come yet. They need to be ordered specially and will arrive when they arrive. But I’ll make sure that I’m up early tomorrow.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had plenty of things that I needed to do but it didn’t quite work out like that today. There’s a project, quite a serious one, that I have on the go and about which I’ve alluded in the recent past and that has occupied much of my day today.

It’s something that if it comes off it will change my life dramatically for the better and so I’m keen to push things along as quickly as I can. So when people want to talk to me about it, I’m not going to be obstructive.

One thing that I promised to do was to try to go into town and the Carrefour supermarket at the port. So despite the heavy rain, I made an attempt.

Getting to the bus stop itself just 10 metres from the front door was enough to convince me that this was not one of my better ideas, but I pushed on all the same.

Hauling myself up onto the pavement by clinging onto the wall, I managed to board the bus. I even managed to alight but the walk to the supermarket, all 50 metres of it, was a nightmare.

Luckily I managed to find almost everything that I needed, except the vegan mushroom pâté. And then the walk back to the bus stop, even though it was only half the distance, was dreadful. When the bus came to pick me up and take me home, he stopped well away from the kerb and his wheelchair ramp wasn’t working. And so you can imagine how much of a problem it was to board the bus to come home.

That finished me off. The walk back from the bus to home even more difficult and I was glad to return home in the end. I had to have an energy drink to recover but at least I had my frozen peas and beans, tomatoes, taco rolls and a couple of other things too. There were a few carrots and sprouts too so when I’d recovered somewhat I peeled, diced and blanched them. They are now in the freezer freezing.

Rosemary and I had a chat too and the question of on-line shopping came up. And to my surprise Amazon came up with my mushroom pâté as well as a few other interesting things so I assembled an order. I even ordered one of those wheeled shopping bag things, thinking that I might be able to move a little better if I didn’t have things to carry and I had something on which I can lean.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. This was something of a nightmare. I was in a kind-of swamp and there were all these primeval small creatures in there that were trying to eat all of the human beings who were trying to wade their way through it. Eventually we managed to extricate ourselves from it and sit in trees etc while these small creatures prowled around underneath. Then these other animals started to appear out of the shrubbery when it was dark and we watched the animals start to attack those and carry them off into a quiet corner where they could eat them. In the end we were finally called to where we were supposed to be. We had to make a run for it and eventually reached some kind of safety. But this was a nightmare and horrible while we were sitting in these trees watching all of this going on.

And then we had a dream where I’d lost the use of my legs but had to go into town. I’d somehow got on the bus and bought some stuff and was on my way back. The bus did an emergency stop. A few of us went flying up the bus but held onto our possessions etc. When the bus finally stopped we were greeted with a round of applause for having been so good at doing that. Interestingly, that felt as if it was 03:00 in the middle of the night when I was trying to go to sleep rather than in the morning when it was supposed to have been and I was up and about going shopping with the bus and my things.

Later on we were back at Nantwich Grammar School again. Me, my German friend and a group of others. The whole system had changed. There wasn’t the assembly followed by the lesson – I don’t know what they were doing but we could see that everything had changed since our day. Even the school uniform was a kind-of pale green blazer. We decided that we weren’t going to take any interest in this. We would go and play cricket on the tarmac at the back of the gym. A group of us, 3 or 4 of us, set off and walked down the boys’ corridor past all the boys sitting in the changing rooms and out of the back. Suddenly this golf club came whizzing past. it was my brother playing golf. My German friend was going on about how it was obvious that all these changes about sport – no-one was playing any sport or games any more. It’s obvious that the school playing fields are going to be the next to go and the kids won’t have anywhere to play, never mind whether they wanted to or not. My German friend took up a position at some invisible stumps, my brother kept wicket and I took a nice long run up. I suddenly set off on my run down to what was the other wicket and my legs just gave way underneath me. I fell flat on my face.

When I awoke a little later I had an enormous pain in my knee. That was strange.

later still I was back on the taxis last night. For some unknown reason I awoke really early and Nerina was organising one or two things. There were a couple of jobs in so I said that I would go and do them. First of all I had to go round to see the girl who drove for us in the daytime, if she was still ill. She lived in High Street, n°3. I drove round there in this beautiful sunny morning really early. There were 2 surnames on the door that were the same. I didn’t know which one so I pressed one of them but she answered. I could see that her issues, a lot of it was physical, some of it was psyschological. I had the impression that she just had a great depression so I started to talk to her to see if I could be of any help

Finally I was in the middle of a spaghetti western with the goodies shooting up the baddies and the baddies slowly disappearing into this old wooden shack like in any good Clint Eastwood film. There were a couple of women one of whom was holding a stash of jewels for one of the baddies but another woman found it and managed to hide it under her clothing. When it wame to the time for them all to leave she made sure that she had the fastest and best horse and began to out-ride the other one and make good her getaway. Just as we were getting to the climax when the front doorbell rang. It was the pharmacist.

But as you can see, my walking difficulties are now working their way into my dreams. That’s rather a worrying thought.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, and there’s enough stuffing left over for a taco roll, now that I have some. And now I’m off to bed. I want to be early because I might have the pharmacist coming round in the morning and I need to be ready. Things had all the potential of being rather embarrassing this morning if I’m in a state of only semi-awareness.

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

And never caled me “mother”!

Thee have been wholesale changes in the chantier naval today and I seemed to have missed them all!

The only boats that are still there from the five that were lined up at the side are Briscard and Chant des Sirenes. And add to that the fact that Gerlean has now moved over there too, and you can see that they have been really busy.

Everyone else that we have seen in there over the last couple of days has now gone back into the water.

So what’s going to happen next?

Also gone! And never called me “mother!” either are the crowds of people

Autumn has certainly arrived, and arrived in spades too. As a result, despite the fact that there was plenty of beach to be on, there wasn’t a single person – or a married person either – taking advantage of it.

By the looks of things, everything is quietening right down ready for winter to arrive. All we need to do now is to clear out the caravanners and we’ll be back to our normal sleepy selves, and I won’t ‘arf be looking forward to that!

The beach isn’t the only thing where winter is a-cumin in.

Over there at the ferry terminal we now have two of the ferries parked up. Belle France is over there at the front of the queue and behind her is one of the Joly France boats.

We can tell from the windows in “portrait” format and the lack of step in the stern that it’s the newer one of the two. Chausiaise is in the inner harbour so all we need now is the other ferry and we’ll have a full house.

In the foreground, nothing to do with winter, is the little Le Roc À La Mauve III whom we saw for a while in the chantier naval

The final event that has underlined the arrival of winter relates to the Channel Island ferries.

Victor Hugo has been moored in the harbour for quite a few days but she’s now been joined by her sister, the single-hulled Granville that plies between some of the smaller ports up the coast and some of the ports on the minor Channel Islands like Alderney and Sark.

The fact that they are now both here seems to imply that they aren’t going to go anywhere until next Spring. And I hope that next year when everything starts up again we’ll have a much better service than we had this year.

But while we’re on the subject of going anywhere … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve been going places today.

So while you admire some of the photos that I took while I was out and about I’ll tell you all about it.

And the first thing that I wanted to say was that I actually went out on the bus. The event that I attended was taking place at the rear of the Agora Centre on the edge of town and as the bus passes by there, I reckoned that I would leap aboard instead of going in Caliburn.

Especially as travelling on the bus around the town is free. I should really do more with that.

Mind you, I was lucky that I went.

The bus was due to leave at 09:10 and the nurse was also due as well and he can come at any time. I was half-expecting him not to come until after the bus had left but he turned up with 10 minutes to go.

Having had a shower earlier in the morning I was ready and so immediately after he left I grabbed my things and was out of the door. I made the bus in seconds flat, which you must admit is an amazing piece of engineering.

It was pouring down with rain this morning, and I had to wander around in the wet to find the place that I wanted.

It’s the old Ecole Pierre et Marie Curie that closed down last year. The town has bought it so that they can bring into one place all of their outlying offices instead of having them scattered all around in various buildings.

It’s been refurbished, so they tell me, which I find surprising – it must have been in a dreadful state before – and some of the services have moved in. Today was the formal, official opening and I’d been invited.

There’s plenty of room in there. I must have counted as many as 20 old classrooms, of which only a handful were occupied.

Consequently they have made a lot of the empty rooms into “communal rooms” where the various associations can rent a space to hold meetings, and several “likely tenants” were there. I spent a lot of time talking to someone who runs a ballroom dancing class.

Interestingly, they have ploughed up what I suppose used to be the school playing field and that has been converted into some kind of communal garden rather like an allotment site. Now doesn’t THAT have possibilities?

But why I was there was that one of the rooms has been seized by the organiser of our radio station.

We’ve never had a studio. Everything is always done at the home of whoever is presenting the programme and that can sometimes be inconvenient. But right now we have staked our claim and thinks can only (hopefully) improve.

It’s nothing like the type of studio that I would like to have, with a separate control room, sound insulation and absorption material all around it, but from small acorns large oaks grow and they’ll begin to realise the shortcomings and do something about it.

Thierry drove me home afterward so I didn’t even have to wait for the bus, and I could then carry on with my work.

As it happened, I’d already done quite a lot of work. With the alarm going off at 06:00 I was out of bed immediately even if I hadn’t gone to bed until after 23:00 and had a bad night, all of which just goes to show that I can do it when I really try.

After the medication, having a shower and checking my mails I made a start on the notes for the radio programme that I’d be preparing today. And not only did I finish writing the notes I’d actually dictated half of them when the nurse interrupted my progress.

Back here later I had a very late breakfast and then carried on with the work.

And it took an absolute age to do because it was rather a different way of doing it today. Usually I just trawl through my databases when I’m choosing the final track and pick one that matches the available timeslot less 45 seconds for a closing speech.

Today though was a themed programme and I didn’t have the same choice that I would otherwise have. I had to choose a track from a very small selection and adjust the length of the speech to fit.

And then in an error of calculation I was 10 seconds short so I had to re-dictate the final speech with some extra stuff in it and then re-edit it.

As a result it was a very late walk around the headland. At least the rain had stopped for a moment but there was a howling gale that had sprung up. I was the only one out and about and I could understand why.

You’ve seen the beach already, and there was nothing else of any note on the north side of the headland.

The storm was keeping everyone else in today except for a few brave souls such as those people in the little boat out there sailing … “dieseling” – ed … past le Loup, the light on the rock at the entrance to the port.

You can see how much she’s struggling against the wind in this photo, and although I wasn’t in the best position to take it, it was too good an opportunity to miss as it would soon be in the shelter of the headland.

This boat is having even more difficulty coming into port.

This is Calean whom we have seen on many occasions in the past. And I’d seen her way out at sea fighting her way past the waves and she had taken an age to come into the bay.

In fact she didn’t have it easy coming into port either because as you saw in one of the earlier photos there wasn’t a lot of water in the harbour so she’ll have to ride outside in the storm for a while until the tide comes in a little more.

Surprisingly, there was someone on the rocks at the end of the headland.

THis fisherman was having plenty of fun fighting the storm but he didn’t last long. He evidently heard me coming because as soon as I arrived he folded up his gear and cleared off.

There was someone on the bench at the cabanon vauban as well but as soon as I arrived he did likewise. I really ought to change my deodorant.

Crossing the road was rather a bad time as I hit the school buses going home. A whole fleet of them. Discretion was the better part of valour so I stayed on the pavement until they’d all gone by.

On the way home I took a few photos that you have already seen, but there was this one too.

Actually it’s cropped out of another one and although it is missing some of the hull of Cap Pilar, it’s of interest because it shows quite a lot of her distinguishing features.

One of the things to do eventually is to make my own fishing boat database for the port with photos of all of the boats showing their name and registration number so that I can refer to it in future.

No time like the present.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And then later (“later than what?” I asked myself) I was walking around an island. I started off in the company of Zero but we met other people. Gradually they wandered off and I was on my own. Because I’d had no orange juice I went to look for a shop that would have them. There weren’t many shops on this place. There used to be 3 but now there were only 2. Now the hotel had a few possessions as well, things to sell. I went to the first one but I ended up being side-tracked. I bought something else but completely forgot about the orange juice. Later on, when I was wandering around waiting for someone I remembered the orange juice as well. By this time I was a long way from where the shops were and I didn’t want to go to the hotel to see if they had one to fill so I had to go all the way back to the shops and have a look in there. But there was much more to it than this. It was a dream that went on and on and on as I was walking around this island and it lasted for ever.

I couldn’t go back to sleep after this but I must have done at some point because there was some kind of office meeting taking place. I was having to question a couple of people at this meeting. It concerned an interview between 2 people that had taken place on Monday. One of them was management. Some meetings between more members of staff who were senior grades and representatives of employers. There was a third topic too but I can’t remember that. I had to ask that question at 4 or 5 separate meetings. The first 3 or 4 went fine but in the final one I lost my plot, lost where I was. That was because in the first question I asked about this meeting with one member of staff, someone whom I believed was a member of staff shouted up and shouted “yes” in answer to a question. Of course no-one was even supposed to know about it except me. Anyway I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep after that

When the alarm went off I was somewhere in a hotel with a group of people. We’d been driving somewhere and going down this steep hill it was pretty dark. Some guy kept shouting “no, no, no! You’ve gone the wrong way! Stop, stop stop!”. In the end we stopped and had to retrace our steps then turn to the right. We followed a canal for a while. There was a sign for an abandoned railway station and we passed through some kind of derelict abandoned village. That was where I dropped something that I was carrying over the side of the jeep so we had to do a U-turn but the jeep behind us picked it up and gave it back to me. Someone in the jeep asked if I really enjoyed camping. “No” I replied. “I’m a hotel person myself”. And this really was an extremely realistic dream too that shook me rather when I awoke and found that it was a dream.

But at least Zero had come to see me during the night, although not for long. But let’s just be thankful for small mercies.

Tea was a delicious stuffed pepper, interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary, so I called her back later.

1 hour 45 minutes we were on the phone talking about this and that, and especially how Miss Ukrainian is enjoying going to school even if it is just part-time for a crash course in French. As a result, I’m running horribly late today.

And a Welsh lesson too so I need to be fully fit and raring to go. Still, we can all dream, can’t we?

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… a new record for the completion of our radio programme this morning. So while you admire several photos of the marine activity out on the water today I’ll tell you all about it.

Actually, I’m not quite sure what happened today but at about 10:10 this morning I was about to start dictating the final speech for the last track, and once that it would be edited, it would be done.

For some reason though, probably an error of mathematics, I ended up with 10 seconds too much of speech. That was quite disappointing because I’d taken great care to make sure that the length of speech was correct. One like of text in my text editor is about 290 characters and that equates to about 17 seconds when it’s edited down so I have a reasonable idea of how long a piece of text takes to dictate.

So finding 10 seconds of speech to “lose” from what I’ve already dictated and merged into the programme so far isn’t as easy as it might be. Sometimes there’s a nice piece of speech that is ripe for editing out but there might be the introduction of the track of music to which it relates that overruns it.

Anyway, while it finally saw the light of day at about 10:50, which is still quicker than quite a few that I’ve done just recently.

But almost as soon as I started to listen to it to make sure that it was OK, Rosemary rang me up. I’m convinced that she hid a camera in here when she came to visit a few years ago. Anyway, we had one of our lengthy chats again.

But the good news is that Miss Ukrainian has started school today at the High School in the nearest town to where Rosemary lives. I’m sure that that’s a good idea.

Even if she can’t speak French and follow the lessons, she’ll be mixing with kids of her own age. Where she’s living right now there’s no-one around at all of her age and a young teenager needs to socialise

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was something of a mess.

It was later than intended that I went to bed, and then I didn’t have much sleep because I must have travelled miles during the night. To start off there was a lady-friend of mine. I don’t know who she was but she started to date someone who was a cross between Boris Johnson and Bill Bailey and only had one leg. he was a famous politician and would sneak away from meetings etc to be with her. On one occasion the two of us had booked somewhere to stay but there was only one double-bed so we thought that we’d just have to make the best of it. Biy he turned up as well so it ended up with three of us in the bed. I went out to go to the bathroom ready to go to bed. He and this woman were in there so I said to them on parting “don’t forget later on in the night that your partner is the one on your right. When I prepared to go to bed his security team was there. They were looking for him so I didn’t say anything. I went back to another room after I’d had a wash in order to leave them to it for a while.

Back in the same dream later I was up and about. Those two were still in bed. Meantime the house was filling up with people. Eventually the woman got up and came in to join us. I asked her if she knew what “discussing Uganda” meant. She replied that she didn’t. I said that if I come out with the phrase, do me a favour of bursting out laughing and I’ll explain it to you later”. She wondered what I meant by that. Eventually he came out of the room. I explained that Zero (who must have put in an appearance somewhere but shame as it is to say it, I can’t remember her being there)’s mother had been to collect her, implying that we had a young child in the house at the time last night etc. After about 10 minutes of embarrassed chatting from their side I said that I’m going off to wash my hair so I’ll leave them alone and they can “discuss Uganda” or something like that. The other people in the house knew exactly what that meant and burst out laughing. I went into the bathroom, used the bathroom and went to wash my hands and found that someone had coupled the shower up to the tap and hadn’t undone it afterwards. As soon as I turned on the tap the water went everywhere and soaked the bathroom. I managed to stop it, opened the bathroom door and hurled a huge volley of abuse about the person who’d had a shower and left the shower attachment attached to the sink and not removed it at the end. Of course you can guess who that probably was but it was an impressive volley of abuse all the same. I started to look for something to clean up the mess.

Back in this dream for a third time. I said that Zero had gone home and the kids who had been on the trampoline were leaving. I gathered that those 2 had gone back to bed again so I made some remarks about “ships that pass in the night” etc while they were there and various other things to give the game away that I knew exactly what had happened although I said them in a manner that implied that I knew nothing.

Moving on from there, there was a big party in the office. The office was absolutely filthy. There was stuff all over the place. There was only one girl and I think that it might have been my elder sister who was attempting to tidy it up. I wasn’t going home as I had something arranged in the town so I stayed behind and helped her as best as I could. I did several huge bowls of washing up. Then it came to be 19:10 so I went to put back everything that I’d done so far. She asked how the room was so I told her that it was still a mess. I told her what I’d done. She said “OK, you’d better wander off now and do what you have to do. I’m going to be late in the morning” she said. “I’m not going to be in at my usual early morning time”. I said “never mind. I’ll try my best to be there myself something early and see what happens”. I was really disappointed that all our colleagues, none of them would stay behind and help and none of them were interested in coming along to open up the office tomorrow either.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a meeting with the owners of this building but they were only just setting up the bottles of water for people to drink and I never found out what went on. It was all about some abandoned farmhouse and buildings on the side of a main road that they were talking about demolishing even though it was nice, old Victorian stuff. It would have made a really nice conversion to flats and houses etc rather than being just swept away.

Anyway so when the alarm went off I did manage to leap to my feet quite quickly even though it was early, and after the medication I cracked on with the radio programme, as I mentioned earlier.

There were a couple of interruptions. Firstly for an early morning coffee and secondly to answer the door. The nurse had finally printed out my vaccination certificate from last June. Just one or two things that I need to do now.

Having listened to the radio programme and also the one that I’ll be sending off for this weekend, I went for my lunchtime fruit And then I had the notes on the dictaphone to deal with.

So I stepped back into a dream not just once but twice last night. And a mention of Zero too. What a shame I can’t remember her being about although I know that she must have been there.

After all of that it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

And once again, it seems that the Nazguls were waiting for me to step outside the door again. I hadn’t gone more than three feet outside the building when one of them came swooping over the roof of the High School and heading in my direction.

A solo outfit too, but not to worry. There were several others waiting around in the distance, some of which were two-seater Nazguls. So at least there’s still an opportunity to go for a flight around.

And I haven’t forgotten …

So dodging the diving Nazguls I wandered over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

But first, my attention was focused on the events just offshore. yesterday we had a zodiac watching events unfold on the beach. Today, we have a paddle-boarded paddling past.

There were a few people down there as well for him to watch. Probably a dozen or so scattered about all over there.

No-one in the water as far as I could see, but then again the paddle-boarder hasn’t fallen in yet. There’s still plenty of time for that.

Lots of other stuff down there for me to watch as well.

As I made my way along the path amongst the people who were wandering around, I noticed that out there on a rock just offshore was a whole colony of birds.

Cormorants, I reckon, but what do I know? All that I do know is that they aren’t any kind of bird which I would be interested in watching. I should have paid much more attention, because when we were married I had several long lectures from Nerina about bird-watching.

What I could do I suppose is to go on and on about how I don’t particularly like those birds, but it would just be another cormo-rant.

and so on that note I suppose that I’d better carry on with my walk and see what’s hapening with the aeroplane that has just taken off from the airfield.

It’s one of the aeroplanes that we see quite regularly as we are walking along the cliffs around here. She’s F-GCUM, a Robin DR400-180 that belongs to the local aero club.

My photo is timed at 16:01 (adjusted) which corresponds with a flight that she undertook when she took off at 15:15 and flew northwards. That’s not a usual flightpath for an aeroplane out of the airfield. usually they go out to sea and then down the coast to the south.

However there was something bizarre about the flight that she was undertaking just now.

As I watched her, she did a U-turn and headed back towards the airfield, almost as if when she had taken off but the pilot had forgotten his sandwiches.

Her actual flight plan though was she went north, as I said just now, and then flew back south, back over the airfield and out to sea but after just a couple of miles she performed a rather dramatic U-turn and flew back towards the airfield.

Once back over the airfield she carried on inland, performed yet another U-turn and back to the airfield where she landed at 16:09.

My route along the top of the cliff and across the car park was pretty much without incident today. Just a few craft out at sea that you have already seen, and no change either in the inner harbour or in the chantier naval.

Now that the heaving masses have headed back home at the end of the holiday season, we have the next generation of visitors.

The town and the cliffs are crawling with the pensioners out of the caravanettes or day-tripping on the fleets of coaches that are now arriving.

The poor little Iveco that waits to take the Homework Club schoolchildren back home at 17:00 is sandwiched between two rather large Mercedes Tourismo coaches, and thanks to Duncan Payne on the “Bus and Coach” group for identifying the bodywork.

It’s a good job that he did too. The driver of the brown one with whom I had a lengthy chat didn’t know and the driver of the green one drove off when he saw me approaching.

Unfortunately I’m out of the loop these days. I was left behind on Van Hool Alizees and Plaxton Premieres. I can’t believe that it’s almost 28 years since I last drove a coach after all the miles that I did in the past.

Back here I had a coffee and then I had a few things to do which took me up to teatime.

My stuffed pepper tonight was a really good one. I have really grasped the principle of those now. Plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and maybe even some more to add into Wednesday’s curry.

But right now that’s that. Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson and I hope that there will be more than four of us. But to be on the safe side I shall have to have a good night’s sleep and do some more revision tomorrow.

That is, if I can remember.

Monday 12th September 2022 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… day where I’ve done rather more than I would otherwise usually do.

So while you admire the small boats coming back from the north end of the Ile de Chausey. I can tell you that I was leaping out of bed with alacrity this morning at 06:00 this morning as soon as the alarm went off.

And that’s not quite like me these days, is it? But there it was, and here I am.

After the medication this morning, I came back in here to check the mails and messages from over the weekend. And to my surprise, there weren’t all that many. I don’t think that anyone loves me any more.

So while Belle france sits quietly in the silt over at the ferry terminal, I’m busy making a start on the radio programme that I’ll be preparing for this week.

This morning it was ready, up and running at 11:10 this morning. And it would have been done much quicker had I not had so much editing to do.

The fact is that this is something special. I’ve had something quite remarkable fall into my possession. A rock group from upstate New York were in the throes of recording an album back in 1971 when they split up. The recoding was never finished and the tapes were lost.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … some kind of copy of the tape has come into my possession.

It seems to me that when this programme hits the airwaves in a few months, it will be the first time ever that a track from this group has been broadcast. And I can’t simply dismiss that in 800 characters.

Furthermore something else has come into my hands where the drummer was the guy who stood in for Keith Moon during a recording session of a Who album. and that’s not something to gloss over lightly either.

While I was listening to it and to the one that I’m sending off for broadcast this week, I was sorting out a few things around here and dealing with a few photos

After the lunchtime fruit I had to organise the payment of my Canadian motor insurance. Although I haven’t driven Strider since 2019 I have to keep the insurance going. It’s no longer possible for foreigners to have an insurance with a non-Canadian or non-USA driving licence but I’m a “legacy” case so I can keep mine up. But if I let it lapse then I’m snookered too.

It’s quite complicated to do it but it has to be done. Mind you, it’s not so complicated as actually having to drive down to the insurance company in Saint John’s to renew it.

It led to quite a chat with my niece as well. We haven’t really spoken for a while so there was a lot to say.

Having done that, I had other things to do. There’s something happening around here at the weekend and if I play my cards correctly I could become involved in it.

It will involve a lot of work and preparation so having sent out an enquiry (to which I have yet to receive a reply) I made a start on organising myself, just in case.

This took me up to the time that I would usually go out for my afternoon walk.

And I didn’t go far at all before I came to a grinding halt. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the summer I mentioned that once the holidaymakers go back, we’ll be swamped with the old retirees in their mobile homes and caravanettes.

By the looks of things, I’m not wrong either. But then again I knew that. It ws pretty-much odds-on.

That isn’t even a parking spot for mobile homes. There’s a sign to say that they are prohibited. There is a camping ground about 200 metres down the road but it’s probably full right now.

The purpose of the car park is primarily for parking for the locals who live in the walled town where parking is almost impossible. But let’s not go letting rules, regulations and the rights of the local residents stand in the way of a selfish tourist.

So having had my daily moan quite early, I headed off as usual I went over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening there.

And sure enough, there were crowds of people down there today. It really was a nice day so it’s not a surprise.

You can’t see too many people in this photo because the tide is quite a way out so there was plenty of beach on which they could spread themselves about.

No-one quite brave enough to take to the waters though. I suppose that the temperature of the sea is dropping now after the bad weather that we had last week and that’ll keep anyone out of the water.

Having seen the beach and the people thereupon, I had a look around out at sea to see what was going on there.

You’ve seen what was going on right out by the Ile de Chausey but I was also interested in a trawler that I could see out at the entrance to the Baie de Mont St Michel.

At this kind of distance it’s not possible to identify it with any certainly but it’s white with a blue stripe or two and edged in pink. Those are the colours of Trafalgar, as we saw when she was in the chantier naval just now.

This is another unusual place in which to find a trawler but as we have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … since the disruption to the usual fishing arrangements here in the bay we’ve seen the trawler owners trying out all kinds of unusual and different fishing grounds

Fighting my way through the crowds I ended up down at the end of the headland.

One thing that I noticed this afternoon was the crowds of people out there at the pèche-à-pied with the tide being so far out right now. This person here was one of several dozens scratching around on the rocks.

And I know the secret of the pèche-à-pied. There’s what they call a “tidal coefficient” – a number that indicates the difference between the high tides and the low tides. The higher the number, the greater the difference between the tides.

And when it’s greater than 100, that’s when the pèche-à-pied is authorised. Today, it’s 101.5

And as for whatever was going on out at sea or on the rocks, thee was quite a crowd of people down there watching it.

There were dozens of people milling around down at the end of the headland and on the lower path. Some of those gravitated down to the bench by the cabanon vauban where they could relax and admire the view. They were actually looking quite romantic down there.

A couple of others were standing there presumably awaiting their turn to take a seat. But today, there was no-one hiding in the bushes or sunbathing over the edge as we saw the other day.

From here I set off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

And just then I was overflown by a light aeroplane on its way north.

It was too far out to identify it but back here I was able to enlarge and enhance the photo. It’s actually an old friend of ours, F-GBAI.

She’s a Robin DR 400-140B that belongs to the local aero club. She appeared on the radar at 16:08 flying out to the Ile de Chausey and having done a lap around, went down to the Mont St Michel and back up again where she disappeared off the radar in the vicinity of the airfield.

My photo was taken at 16:12 (adjusted) so this flight plan doesn’t really correspond with my photo. Usually we coincide pretty much.

And while there is no change to day in occupancy of the chantier naval, there looks as if there is something about to happen.

The portable boat lift has left its usual parking place over the drop into the water and is now hovering around over the top of Peccavi. It looks as if she’s about to go back into the water as soon as the tide comes in.

Over at the ferry terminal, Belle France was quietly sleeping in the silt, as you saw a little earlier. She’s presumably waiting for the tide to come in when she can go back out to rescue the day trippers who might be stranded over there right now.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of months ago they refurbished the crane that lives over on the far side of the harbour.

Right now though they have brought the crane over into the loading bay and the other one has now been pushed over into the back corner.

This could mean one of two things – either they are going to refurbish the other one or else they are going to withdraw it and replace it with one that will handle the freight that the owners of Southern Liner want to transport.

This is something else on which I will have to keep my eye in the future.

Back here I had a nice cold drink and then had a listen to the dictaphone to see what I’d been up to during the night. We had another dream about cars last night. I can’t remember how it started but I remember leaving work and walking outside. My car was the VANDEN PLAS 1300. I went to go into it ans switched on the radio to say that I was going home. There was no tax on it and no MoT on it, one of the many vehicles that I had with no tax and MoT (this is becoming a regular theme, isn’t it?). I remember being annoyed because I never seemed to have the time where I could take one of my vehicles, go right underneath it and do what needed doing and then have it taxed and MoTed. I wondered how long I could go before I was going to be caught. I ended up going back down Gresty Road. This time I was on an electric scooter. I reached the end and turned left. For some reason I had a premonition that something was going to pull out in front of me at Edleston Road top and hit me, or I’d hit it. The police would come along and that’s when I would find out all about having not tax and no MoT.
For the benefit of non-British readers, of whom there are more than just a few, every vehicle on UK roads needs an insurance certificate. It it’s over 3 years old and not a collector’s vehicle it needs a Ministry of Transport safety check every year and on passing the test it’s issued with a Ministry of Transport (MoT) Safety Certificate. Armed with current Insurance and MoT Certificates you can then go to the Post Office and on production of those valid documents you can buy a Road Tax certificate to display in your windscreen. That’s how it used to be anyway when I remember it. It’s all automated these days and done on line.

This was another car dream similar to the first one. I left home and there was no real car for me so I got into a Berkeley 2-wheeler type of thing, again with no insurance, tax or MoT and wishing that we had the time to look at one of my vehicles and have it registered properly. But this is always the thing when you’re spending all this time looking after these kids that you never have time to do anything of your own and everything else falls obviously into arrears.

This story came up with one of my Germany friends about a guy who had joined out chat room group but had been ejected. He said that he had been grouped with 2 particular people. That meant that it was they who had something to do with his ejection but she couldn’t understand why. I replied “no, that’s not correct. he was grouped with me and of course I’m a Moderator. I was the one who ejected him”. She wanted to know why and I replied that it was because of his posts. She said that surely his posts about cups of tea and things weren’t offensive. I replied that that wasn’t what he was writing at all. She was then wondering whether or not we were talking about the same person. I knew exactly whom I was talking about and presumably so did she but she was wondering whether we were talking about the same one

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and it was really nice too. I think that I have this off to a … errr … tea now. Plenty of stuffing left so it’s a taco roll tomorrow. That’ll be quite powerful, having marinaded in the spicy sauce for 24 hours.

Tomorrow our Welsh class is starting again so I need to be on form. That calls for an early night and a good sleep. So what’s the betting that something will come along to interrupt me?

Monday 5th September 2022 – YOU WON’T FIND …

… Victor Hugo in port this afternoon.

While I was out taking my little (and I DO mean “little”) walk outside this afternoon I noticed her out in the bay going “Full Speed Ahead”.

She’s not on a scheduled sailing to Jersey today – I’m sure of that. And so I checked on the radar later on this evening. She’s actually moored in Cherbourg even as we speak so and as her next trip out isn’t for another week or so, I imagine that she’ll be staying there until then.

Having been keeping an eye on her for the last year or so, I reckon that she’s travelled further “light” to Cherbourg and back than she has travelled with fare-paying passengers.

And last night I travelled quite some distance too. Not as far as one or two just recently but certainly a lot farther than on many other nights.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I didn’t feel anything at all like leaving my bed but needs must when the devil drives and I did beat the second alarm although I don’t know how.

After the medication I came back in here to make a start with the radio programme.

It took me until almost 11:30 to complete it today and that’s a really long time. But then there are several good reasons for that.

There was an early break for a coffee
As predicted, the nurse came around to give me the injection that I should have had yesterday
Liz told me that a couple of her grandchildren had started school today and she sent me some photos, so we had a little chat
There was a hole that I had missed in one of the tracks that I’d chosen so I had to hunt down another copy, only to find that that had a hole in exactly the same place

There were probably a couple of other reasons too that I can’t now remember. All in all, I don’t suppose that it was too bad.

But as you might expect, the nurse turned up right at an “inappropriate” moment and I had to make him wait for a couple of minutes until I’d finished … errr … whatever it was that I was doing.

While I was listening to the one that I’d prepared and the one that I’ll be sending off, I was making a late breakfast. The last of the baguette that I bought on Saturday and the last of the vegan cheese that I found in the fridge the other day, washed down with hot, strong coffee.

This afternoon I’ve had plenty to do such as organising the directories that are still out of order and then dealing with a query relating to a Ukrainian refugee living in Paris. I don’t know how I manage to involve myself in things like this.

Eventually I managed to set off outside for my afternoon walk but at the front door I was buttonholed by a neighbour (yes again) where I had a conversation for about 15 minutes.

Not that I’m complaining too much though because it’s just because I was held up that I saw Victor Hugo head out into the bay. Had I gone out at the normal time I would have missed it.

And so I staggered over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was going on down on the beach.

There weren’t all that many people down on the beach this afternoon. Almost every holidaymaker has now returned home, even the British ones, and so it’s really only the locals and the pensioners in their mobile homes who are out there now.

But to my surprise, there was someone down there fishing from the rocks on the beach. I can’t recall having seen anyone fishing from there before.

But he wont be there long, given the speed at which the tide comes in.

As usual, while I was up here looking around, I was looking around out at sea as well.

As well as seeing Victor Hugo out there heading away towards Cherbourg, there were also plenty of yachts out and about in the bay.

They were quite a long way out as well, right by the marker light that signals the rocks at the extreme end of the Ile de Chausey and the chain of rocks.

There were no fishing boats in sight this afternoon though. And it was such a clear day that had they been there, i’m sure that I would have seen them

With the weather being so nice, the views out to sea were quite clear.

The Ile de Chausey was looking quite nice too. We could see it quite clearly this afternoon although the weather wasn’t quite bright enough to see the whites of the cottages. Only the surfaces facing the afternoon sun were able to pick up the sunlight.

There was a yacht out there too, out there round about where a couple of years ago we had that famous incident of the rubber boat ramming the one that had stopped at his mooring place.

It’s a shame that we don’t have any more incidents like that where I can see them

There was something else out there moving around just offshore from the Ile de Chausey.

At this kind of distance I couldn’t see what it was so I took a photo and, back here at the apartment I enlarged and enhanced it in order to see if I could identify it.

And as it happens, I can see that it’s one of the ferries that run between here and the island. It doesn’t look like Belle France, the new one, though. It is therefore one of the Joly France boats but I cant even begin to tell you which one it might be.

From here I wandered off at a snail’s pace back across the car park and down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

We’d seen a few yachts out on the other side but over here there were even more of them. A couple of the sailing schools were out in the bay this afternoon and I caught one of the schools going out and doing a lap around Le Loup, the marker light on the rocks at the entrance to the harbour.

They had a couple of zodiacs swarming around them too making sure that they stay in a straight line and don’t stray too far off course.

And here I was a week or two ago saying how I’d be out there with them one day, but not much channce of that right now.

Victor Hugo wasn’t in the inner harbour, but there was plenty of other activity going on.

Over there on the quayside there’s someone who has stretched out what looks like a new fishing net and there’s plenty of other activity going on with fishing equipment in the background too.

Back here I had a drink of ginger beer that I’d bought on Saturday. It reminded me of the story of the time that a couple of Scotsmen stepped off a ‘plane at Toronto airport.
“What is the purpose of your visit?” asked the immigration officer.
“We saw that advert ‘Drink Canada Dry’ and here we are” they replied.

later on I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been. There was an invasion planned for the Ile de Chausey by environmentalists who were opposed to the rearing and eating of turkeys on the island. This was investigated and it turned out that there were 4 different groups of people with 4 different aims in view who were going to have some part of what was going on. The interesting part about it was that the newspapers responded in a very aggressive way, telling people that if they don’t like it, to go and live somewhere else, generally being quite aggressive to the demonstrators even though they hadn’t actually started the invasion yet.

I was there in my apartment with Percy Penguin. We were living together. My friends from the Wirral came round and I was going to cook them a meal. We started to chat and I asked the woman how she was. She replied “ask my husband first” so I asked him. He said that he was feeling a little under the weather suffering from this and that, usual age ailments. I then asked the wife how she was. There were some tree roots that I’d noticed growing across my lawn so I was there pulling these roots up, like this willow that we used to have in the Auvergne. These roots would go for miles so I was busy pulling them up. I asked the wife how she was. She began to come out with a long complicated story while I was pulling on this stuff. Halfway through she broke off and went to do something that she’d forgotten which left just me and Percy Penguin. Her husband had gone as well. I wondered how they would finish it. What would happen next?

Yes, with all of the boats that I’ve had from my palodeon years and they were entitled to stay. If the couple from the Wirral were becoming annoyed with me about the food it was they who were going, not the bikes. We walked through the town. It was a sunny day towards the beach that afternoon. All of a sudden I lost them. I caught up with them later again outside this working shop. They had stupidly allowed something to be performed and had come to a rest in full view of me. I wasn’t sure how this shock was going to help everyone particularly those in the bushes who were hiding. I realise that this makes no sense at all and I’m sure that I haven’t transcribed it correctly, but nevertheless it’s a really confusing story.

Later on I was with Nerina and that Les whom we knew. We were in Gresty. Something had happened and we’d changed some of the wiring on the Cortina, the red Cortina estate with some wires off his car. I’d wired it up and had it running. he had loads of problems doing his and we were running hours late. he seemed to be taking all day to do a simple job which was very frustrating. In the end he finished it. Both cars started. He looked at mine and said that I had the wiring wrong (as if I’d have the wiring wrong on a Cortina). Eventually I had to correct it and it ran OK. From there I started to push a wheelbarrow down Gresty Lane. I had Nerina and Roxanne with me. Roxanne kept on saying that this was her motorbike transport but it was just so heavy and awkward to push, this wheelbarrow. I’d never had a wheelbarrow quite like this. Every step became agony after a while. I was glad when we stopped somewhere half-way. We went in and this was where Roxanne and Nerina had tea. The place was really untidy. There were plates and half-eaten sandwiches everywhere. I really fancied a coffee at this moment but no-one seemed to be thinking about making one for me.

Finally I was queueing to enter the USA. I’d arrived on my ‘plane, joined the queue at Passport Control. The last time that I’d been here it was quite chaotic at Passport Control with queues everywhere all over the place but this time they seemed to be much more efficient. They had it organised much better. I was sitting at the front of the queue only to find that i’ve forgotten to fill in my form. The young guy there chuntered a little but I filled it in. We had a little chat and I told him to have a nice day. He looked at me and said thank you so I thought “thanks to all them at immigration control.
“So here I am
With my immigration form
Big enough to keep me warm
When the cold wind’s blowing.”

Tea was one of the best stuffed peppers that I’ve ever made. I enjoyed eating that one very much and the leftover stuffing for the taco roll tomorrow will be wicked after marinading for 24 hours.

But that’s tomorrow. I’m off to bed right now hoping for a good sleep and some pleasant travels with charming companions.

It’s nice to see Percy Penguin again anyway. She doesn’t figure in my voyages half as much as she deserves.

Monday 29th August 2022 – BEFORE I START …

… crowing about another day where I haven’t crashed out at all (and how many consecutive days is this now?) just let me mention two things –

I didn’t go to bed until 22:25 and I was up at 06:00
There were no fewer than TWELVE entries on the dictaphone during the night. And if that isn’t a recode I don’t know what is

In fact, the longest period during which I wasn’t disturbed was one hour and 22 minutes.

So given the foregoing, I expected to be crashed out on my chair a long time before tea never mind still going strong at this time of evening.

Something else I’ve noticed is that my walking seems to be a little easier and so is my breathing. Only a little, but it’s noticeable. I know that they told me a week or two ago to stop taking one particular medication, but I was feeling quite ill a good while before I started taking it. So it can’t be that.

Nevertheless, it was a struggle to tear myself out of bed when the alarm went off at 06:00 and I really didn’t feel much like doing the radio programme today.

However, despite a couple of interruptions, for coffee and for breakfast, it was all up and running and sounding quite well by 11:10. Mind you, with two tracks less about which to write, it ought to have been finished a while before then.

However I made a total mess of dictating the speech and had to restart not once but twice. And you try saying “The Victor Brox Blues Band” when you’re half asleep

Yes, 2 tracks short today, but when you open with a track that is 21:42 long, it doesn’t leave much time for many others when you only have an hour to do.

There are plenty of short tracks that aren’t being used because with 11 tracks in about 52 minutes, it’s not that easy to fit so many in. One of these days I’ll have to start doing programmes with 13 tracks. That’ll move them on.

While I was listening to that one and the one that I’m sending off for broadcast (I’m several months ahead) I was … errrr … tidying up.

Lazy me hasn’t filed away the post since last October and there’s paperwork and letters all over the bedroom. Having made a start yesterday on tidying the desk, I went through the paperwork that was lying around, sorted it into date order, perforated it all and filed it away in a binder.

There are binders for each year with papers filed in date order, but since everything seems to be digitalised these days I’m doing two years to a binder.

After lunch I had something important to do.

On Friday I ate the last of the fruit buns and so I had to make some more. It took quite a while to make the dough with all of the extras that went into it, and then I divided it up into 10 and made buns, leaving them to proof

While the buns were busy proofing I went out for my afternoon walk.

And you can tell that the holiday season is now over. The car park was comparatively empty and down on the beach there weren’t all that many people down there at all.

It’s true to say that the weather was quite windy but that wouldn’t be enough to keep the crowds back at home if there were crowds of people and a beach to be on. It certainly kept them out of the sea anyway today.

But I’ve never seen the beach as empty as this on a sunny August day.

A little further on along the path I noticed these people scrambling over the rocks.

From up here I had no idea what they were doing, not even with a 300mm telescopic lens. They didn’t look as if they were engaged in the peche à pied because they didn’t seem to have any equipment.

My neighbour couldn’t understand what was happening either. She was slowly ambling along the path so I stopped and we had a good chat for 10 minutes

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not the sociable type at all, but I have to be friendly with the neighbours. It makes the world go round and makes life here much easier.

Further along the path I noticed some unusual activity just offshore in the bay.

And I’m not talking about the lobster pot buoy either, but the other objects down there in the water.

It didn’t take me long to work out what they were, particularly once they broke surface, because we’ve seen them before. It seems to be where they practice their SCUBA-diving techniques although I couldn’t see a boat anywhere in the vicinity.

So would you call them SCUBA-divers or frogmen? If the latter, I suppose that we’ll have to call them “frogpersons” these days.

And SCUBA? Why, its “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus” of course.

While I was walking along the path in comparative solitude I noticed an aeroplane out at sea.

Just in case I could identify it, I took a photo to check when I returned home, but it was far too far out at sea for me to read its registration number.

As you might expect, I checked the registers of the local airfields and there were no arrivals or departures that corresponded with the time that the aeroplane flew past

On the path there can’t have been more than a dozen people walking past. It seems that the holiday season has ended here too.

Not so many people on the car park either. It was almost as if I had the place to myself.

So I pushed on down to the end of the headland to see what was happening here. There was a young woman out by the cabanon vauban who was taking a photograph of themselves but as soon as I arrived she put her ‘phone away.

However I’m not sure why she would want to be down there this afternoon. It wasn’t as if there was anything going on out at sea. There wasn’t a single boat out in the bay that I noticed, and the weather wasn’t all that bad either.

Fromthe end of the headland I wandered off down the path on the other side of the headland.

It may well have been that there would have been an extra vehicle on the car park but whoever it was didn’t quite make it to the top of the hill. a depanneuse had been sent for and he was busy dragging a car onto the load bed.

And depanneuse is a lovely word. It’s a feminine word and means here in a France a “breakdown truck”. But if you see the word depanneur on a notice in Québec, it doesn’t mean the driver or the male version of a breakdown truck, but it’s actually Québecois for a “corner shop”.

The tide was well out this afternoon so the port was quite dry.

But once again you can tell that the summer season is over. We’ve been used to seeing all of the Ile de Chausey ferries out and about in the afternoon doing all kinds of things to keep themselves busy with the crowds of tourists looking for things to do.

But today, Belle France, the newest one of the three, was parked up at the ferry terminal waiting for the tide. There wasn’t anyone loitering around there with her so it looks as if she’s going to be there for a while.

Here was something interesting that I noticed while I was here.

Those down there are the drags for the shellfish trawlers. The are marked, usually with electric welding writing, with the name of the ship to which they belong and they are stored down there.

A lorry-load has just turned up and there’s a forklift truck dropping them off.

The grillage is made to a certain size so that when the drag is dragged along the sea bed, anything undersize slips through the grillage and back onto the sea bed.

Mind you, they still manage to pull up all kinds of interesting things, unexploded World War II munitions included. There are plenty of those about out there.

Meanwhile there is much excitement in the chantier naval this afternoon.

Cap Lihou has gone back into the water, what with her brand-new paint job. But La Soupape Trafalgar Peccavi Trafalgar and Chant De Sirenes are still in there too.

However we have a couple of new occupiers in there over at the back. We can see Hermes I quite clearly but hidden behind the portable boat lift is Charlevy.

So things are looking up in the chantier naval and that is good news for all of us.

Not so much though over in the inner harbour.

Almost all of the fixtures and fittings of the Festival of Working Sailing Ships have now gone. It didn’t take them long to remove all of that. The only thing that I can see that still remains is the artificial beach over on the right-hand side.

Something else that has also gone is Marité. And never called me “mother”! She was glued to the harbour for most of the Festival when all of the crowds were about but once the visitors departed she cast off her chains and cleared off.

She left at 09:10 and didn’t return until 20:36 having spent the day having a run-around in the bay.

Someone else who is back in port after being away for a while is Victor Hugo.

She’s been running around in the Channel Islands and came back into port yesterday evening at 20:57 and tied up next to Chausiaise. She won’t be back out now until Wednesday morning at 09:30.

Meanwhile, several of the trawlers haven’t gone out to sea this morning. We can see Arc en Ciel and Massabielle down there and there are a few more too.

But I didn’t stay around to see them. I came back home for my iced ginger beer.

And having drunk my drink, I brushed the fruit buns with vegan milk and brown sugar and put them in to bake.

And I’m not sure what happened by the bottom of the buns are slightly burnt as if they are overcooked. And I cooked them as I would usually do. So what’s happening there? With my pizza being overcooked too, I wonder if my oven has finally started to do what it is supposed to do.

While they were baking I was transcribing the dictaphone notes. And I’m not convinced that you’ll want to know about them. I was with Rosemary in Canada. We’d been for a walk in this city then she had to go off somewhere so I kept on wandering around. We met up again and ended up right out of town at this park somewhere wandering around the park. I said that I had things to do so I needed to be back in town so I’d leave her there and come back for her at 19:00. I walked back into the city centre and was sitting on a bench catching my breath when another tourist from our group came past – a South-Asian guy. He sat down and was complaining about the distance that he’d walked and how he was going to find someone with a Honda moped. I said that I had one of those back at home (and I do back in Virlet – a Honda Melody actually) which of course was no use here. he was saying that so far he’d walked 12 kilometres. I had a look at my fitbit and found that i’d only done 7 which really surprised me as I thought that I’d done three times that. We carried on talking and a 3rd member of our party, David from my building, turned up and joined in our chat. I said that I was going to go back to pick up Rosemary because I was going to cook a meal. This Indian guy’s eyes lit up. “A meal?” he asked. “I’d have to come to help you do something” but I didn’t like the idea of someone inviting themselves in for one of my meals like this.

I was getting married but at the very last moment the bride pulled out. She didn’t tell me until the very final minute. I had to go round to tell all the guests that the wedding had been cancelled. That’s all that I remember of this. There was an awful lot more to it.

Back at my wedding again and this time I’d married. I was standing on a page about to give a speech when my mother in law turned up with a bunch of flowers and began to chat me up in the middle of all of this crowd of people. I thought that regardless of anything else this was extremely inappropriate, certainly not the time and place to do something like this.

This was another one where I found myself dictating into my hand again. There was some kind of issue with the parking and one of the guys at the wedding stood up and was making a speech about the issue but I can’t remember now what he said because the dream evaporated when I was halfway through it.

This was my parents again at this wedding talking to some other people who were there including some girl who they happened to like and wanted me to marry at one point. I had to hurry up and change ready to go on my holiday. I was chatting to a girl of 12, something like that, and realised that I had to prepare to go on my honeymoon

There was a girl there notoriously flirting around, getting on everyone else’s nerves so she was arrested and found guilty of water-walking, whatever that is, I dunno.

Dick Whittington had been elected in 1066 for each year and protested in favour of more-normal relationships between London and Exeter, Bristol and Manchester.

I’d been out to somewhere near Audlem, some stately home to do something or other. It was early in the morning. When I arrived there was no-one around so I had to wait for someone but they didn’t show up so I was sitting in their library reading books. Then I had to go to work. They told me that it was 07:40 so I’d have to leave. I went down to my car but I wasn’t sure that it would start so I coupled up one of these battery packs to it. That didn’t do anything, the whole car was dead so I disconnected it. There was enough charge in the battery just to turn the engine over sufficiently for it to fire up. I drove off down the long drive. There was a small lorry heading my way something like a Mercedes 508 with a tipper back. The path was extremely narrow so trying to pass was quite difficult. I had to use a paper in front of the car to press down the weeds to find out where the edge of the road was so that I didn’t slip into the ditch at the side. On the way down the drive before that lorry a woman and her friend had been talking. I mentioned something about DVDs. They said that they had plenty ond they would lend me one for the journey back. As I set off to drive they came running out of the barn with these buckets of DVDs. So I tried to stop. There were no brakes so the vehicle rolled on about 10 metres and they had to catch me up. I had a quick glance. There was nothing there that I needed so I set off down the farm track. Turning onto the main road was on a really bad bend. I wished that I had some extra-powerful rear lights so that people coming from a distance away could actually see me coming onto the road. For some unknown reason the Polish guy who worked there hadn’t fitted any. I drove on down there and came to a road junction. There was a guy who pulled up with his car on a piece of wasteland at this road junction and then went running back to the main road waving as if he was trying to flag down a car behind. I asked him if he needed any help but he just ignored me and carried on trying to wave down whatever it was that was coming behind him.

I’d booked a hotel, an expensive hotel but it was at a bucket price at an on-line website place for e47:00. When I had the bill next morning it was for €163:00. I had a look and there were all kinds of optional things that he’d added in to this bill that I hadn’t the remotest interest in paying. There was €43:00 for the privilege of booking a room at Christmas and New Year which I didn’t want. There was £25:00 for the manual finding of the records, all kinds of this. I was flatly refusing to pay this. He told me that it was too late to take them off my credit card but I told him that I wanted it put back on my credit card because I’m not paying it. I went through the bill item by item, crossed off what I didn’t agree with until it came back down to this €47:00 that I’d been promised. He wasn’t going to move an inch and I could see that we were heading for some kind of enormous confrontation.

I was back working for Shearings again, doing a feeder out from the tour interchange to places all round the East Midlands. I set out with a coach and started to climb up through the Pennines. It was a brand new coach full of all mod cons, everything, really nice. We were doing OK. Then I had to come down a hill. While I was driving I was sewing my trousers because I had a tear in them. I was doing that but as we went down this hill I stopped sewing and concentrated. I suddenly found myself in a series of bends that I didn’t recognise at all. An ancient Ford Anglia came the other way that virtually brought me to a stop on one set of bends. When I came round these bends I came to a road sign that said “Windermere”. I thought “where am I going here? I don’t recognise any of this and I shouldn’t be anywhere near Windermere”. I pulled up at the side of the road in a lay-by. All the passengers alighted to stretch their legs. I went to fetch my SatNav. I thought that I’d plug it in and plug in the address of the first drop-off. That way I’ll have the coach take me back to where I want to go. There were all discussions about this coach and all of the luxuries that were fitted to it that we never had when we were driving the old Fords etc. Even so there was still only room for one official passenger which was bound to make life complicated when you had 2 drivers bringing their wives on a Christmas tour.

There were some people in a medival tower being taken to their rooms . Although this was a modern period these people might have been prisoners or something like that being led through the tower. One said to the other “at least it’s not bad. We know that there are people in the adjoining rooms”. One of the people in one of the adjoining rooms was a young girl. They said “goodnight” as they walked past but there was no reply from her room so they were wondering what was going on in there, it was so quiet and she didn’t seem to be about.

And there was more to that than this as well but if you’re eating your tea you really don’t want to hear about it.

Tea was a stuffed pepper as usual and it was one of the best that I’ve ever made. Plenty of stuffing left too so I’ll have a good taco roll tomorrow.

But I have no idea what was going on between 00:30 and 02:01 when I dictated no fewer than SEVEN soundfiles and stepped back into the same dream a total of four times one after the other.

It’s probably the strangest night that I’ve ever had and it’s a shame that none of my regulars were there to share it..

Monday 22nd August 2022 – YET MORE CONTROVERSY …

… here in Granville this afternoon.

Despite a European Union embargo that came into force in April, into the port today came the Russian sailing ship Shtandart. She’s a modern (as in 20-odd years old) replica of an 18th Century Russian sailing ship.

She’s probably come into port because of this Festival of Working Sailing Ships that starts later in the week but her presence is a kick in the teeth for the hundreds, if not thousands, of Ukrainian refugees in the area.

And remember – this is a town that refused to allow its radio station to broadcast a pro-Ukrainian rock concert back in March. So it doesn’t look as if there is any doubt about where the sympathies of the officials of the town lie when they allow this ship to come into port.

She spent several months loitering around in the Mediterranean just after the sanctions were announced.

And while she has been in a couple of French ports subsequently, she has been met with demonstrations and pickets.

With a Town Council that seems determined to suppress all kinds of traditional entertainment in the town, as I have mentioned on several occasions when I’ve been talking about the Big Wheel and the Bar Ephemère, I’m not really sure what else I can say about a Council that allows this ship to come into port, Festival or not.

The captain has refused, according to at least one news source, “to abandon his Russian flag” because he “does not want to give up his country despite being at war”.

Furthermore, an unverified source suggests that the captain’s brother is ” fighting on the Ukrainian front of the war” and I don’t think that anyone needs to ask “on which side?”.

And I should mention too that she is not transmitting an AIS signal, in contravention of various maritime procedures. And if you want to know how I know this, don’t forget that I maintain the AIS beacon for the port.

All in all, I smell a rat. And I’m not talking about the contents of Baldrick’s apple crumble either.

Meanwhile, in other news, there was plenty of other maritime activity today. So while I tell you about my day today, you can admire a few photos of what was going on on the water.

We started off as usual on a Monday by the alarm going off at 06:00. And I had a struggle to rise to my feet as well which is no surprise because it was a very disturbed night.

Nevertheless after the medication I attacked the radio programme that I wanted to prepare today. And much to my surprise, it was finished and up and running at 11:09.

Even more surprising, it dovetailed together perfectly to the tenth of a second without any editing at all and I don’t think that I’ve ever had one that has gone together so well.

While I was listening to the finished product, and also to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend I had a few things to sort out.

Nothing of any great importance, as it happens, but things that needed to be done all the same.

Lunch was rather late, and the next task afterwards was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night.

And it’s no surprise that I had something of a difficult night last night because there was tons of stuff on there. If I’d been disturbing my sleep as many times as it seems that I did, then it’s no surprise that it was quite difficult to drag myself out of bed.

Last night I started off at school when someone said that they overheard me use a derogatory term for a type of person. This led to quite an argument firstly because I wouldn’t be the kind of person who would do that and secondly everyone there ought to know it too. It led to a great deal of awkwardness which couldn’t be explained away for some reason. Someone seemed to be convinced that he’d heard me say it and that was all that there was. In the meantime I was busy going through all of my books and Lps because I was going somewhere in a car and wanted to take some music with me. Someone else was making suggestions about the books I should take but I was actually looking in the end for my Agatha Christie compendium and thought that i’d take that with me but there was a lot of confusion between all of the books and LPs that I had and it was very difficult to actually find the book that I wanted.

Later on I was in Caliburn with someone else looking for someone. We had driven round quite a way to find this person but couldn’t find him. In the end we saw a tramp by the side of the road with a couple of molotov cocktails so we stopped and suggested that he might like a ride to Chicago. We threw away his molotov cocktails but we only went about a quarter of a mile down the road before we stopped, put him out of the van and started to question him rather roughly about where this person might be. This led to some kind of fight between the 3 of us and he cleared off. By this time I’d emptied out Caliburn and was ready to tidy it up. I found a USB key and I wondered where it went. I was having difficulty tidying up, not sure where to put everything. I was worried that Caliburn was on the public highway. It turned out that it was in a parking place but still on the public highway. There was something like a wifi router in the back of caliburn that controlled the TV. There was also a kind of CD player. I suddenly had a flash of inpiration. Put the USB key into a slot in the router thing and it suddenly started to show TV pictures that were coming out of the other appliance that we had. I thought that this was progress but I hoped that it keeps up. It was an old Marlene Dietrich film. I was still in all kind sof confusion about the bast way to pick Caliburn.

And then we were in Brussels. We had some kind of discussion group, three of us, me, a woman and a girl named Andrew about where to go and what to do. One of the suggestions had been to go to Salzburg. We were wandering round in the upstairs of this department store. This Andrea saw a snooker table so she decided that she was going to have a game of snooker. This woman and I wandered away. The lift was out so we had to climb down this escalator to the ground floor. In the basement was a railway station so we went there. it was 09:25 at the moment. We asked about trains to Salzburg at the railway station, using my best French and him replying in English. There was a train at 10:21 that arrived just after 12:00. That sounded like a really good deal. There was plenty of room on it so I left the girl and ran back through the department store. I had to run up the stairs to where this Andrew was playing snooker. I actually could, to my surprise. At first he wasn’t sure about it as if he had only suggested Salzburg as a joke but then the idea began to appeal to him so he put down his cue and started to come with me to the railway station in the basement to book his ticket.

And if I can go from Brussels to Salzburg in well under two hours, I’ll be doing it every month.

Next off, we were in the middle of the heatwave. I had gone to pick up my boss to take him to his home, drop him off and wait for him to bring him back. I was sitting in the drive in the car. Just then a woman poked the front end of her car out of the garage as if she wanted to come out. I had to reverse up the drive to give her some room. Instead she came out holding something and said “look, I have a hedgehog”. I wound down the window to have a look and she was indeed holding a baby hedgehog. We were talking about the heatwave. She said “people nearly died on Tuesday didn’t they, in the heat?”. I replied “yes, it’s not very good for creativity. A lot of creative stuff was laid off because of the heat”. Then she bent down and picked up a cigarette end. She said “please don’t drop cigarette ends down in my drive”. I replied “I can promise you madam, it’s not my cigarette end at all. I don’t smoke”. “It’s come out of your car” she said. “Maybe one of your colleagues has been smoking in it”. I said “my colleagues aren’t allowed to smoke in my vehicle but I can always enquire and find out. One thing is certain and that is that the cigarette end isn’t mine”.

Things out of that descended into something like chaos. There was something else about a group of us and a Mini. I found myself dictating into my hand but when I picked up the dictaphone to start again I found that I couldn’t remember any of it so I have no idea what this is about at all.

Dictating into my hand again another story about a Mini. I can’t remember very much except that we pulled up at a road junction in a country lane. The exit was blocked by these people who had just left their car at a stop sign and wandered off into the hedgerow. We were sitting there confused about how we were expected to drive onto the main road with this couple having abandoned their car like this.

Finally, there was something going on about bad picking with an Albatros which I imagine was a type of car or something but again I’ve no idea what that relates to.

But with dictating into my hand instead of my little machine, forgetting what I was doing, things aren’t looking so well. What must I have failed to record in the past? This is pretty depressing news.

There was an interruption half-way through the dictation for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

The weather was quite cloudy and overcast, threatening rain so I didn’t think that there would be too many people down there on the beach this afternoon.

Surprisingly the beach was quite busy this afternoon and even a couple of people had gone so far as to go into the water. That was quite brave of them because I was wondering whether I ought to put on a jacket.

There was someone down there again with a small tent and had I been down there on the beach this afternoon, I would have been inside it and no mistake.

No-one seems to be all that interested in the inflatable boat though.

Plenty of other water craft out there this afternoon though, as you have already seen.

But I was more interested in this fisherman fishing from the water just a little bit further along from the beach.

Not that I can see very clearly but it looks very much to me as if he has actually caught something and that in itself is a surprise. If that’s the case, then he’s only the second person whom we have seen.

If it is indeed a fish, it isn’t all that much of one but I suppose any fish is better than none the way things have been.

We’ve seen the workmen repointing and repairing the medieval city walls in several places over the time that we’ve been living here.

They’ve just finished at the Place du Marche aux Chevaux and it looks a sif they’ve done that just in time because when I looked over the wall at the fisherman, I could see that another section of the wall has gone crashing down onto the beach.

By the looks of things, the workmen will be coming back before much longer to have a look at this part of the walls.

But that’s for another time. I set off for my walk down the path, fighting my way through the crowds.

While I was on my way along the path I was overflown.

There had been a few aircraft out and about but too far away for me to see who they were. But the yellow powered hang-glider was right overhead.

No-one on the bench at the cabanon vauban and no change in occupancy at the chantier naval either. However I didn’t take much notice of anything else because I was too busy watching Shtandart

And as an aside, while we’re on the subject of Shtandart … “well, one of us is” – ed … judging by comments that have been floating around this afternoon and this evening, I’m the only person who objects to her presence in the port.

But then again being in a minority of one is not an unusual position for me, is it?

Armed with a coffee I came back in here to finish off my notes and then I was … errr … engaged in correspondence with several local and not-so-local media sources about a certain issue that has arisen.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, just as delicious as always.

And now I’m off to bed. To my surprise, despite the early start, I haven’t crashed out today. And I have a Welsh chat meeting tomorrow so I need to be at my best. Such as it is, that is. It’s been a long time since my best has been any good.

Monday 8th August 2022 – EVEN THOUGH I WENT …

… to bed fairly early last night, the 06:00 start didn’t do me much good and round about 12:45 while I was thinking about lunchtime, I ended up going away with the fairies.

And not just for five minutes either. When the alarm went off at 14:45 to remind me about my physiotherapy appointment (that I’m not restarting until next week) I was only just about tucking into my lunchtime fruit.

That was a period that I would like very much to forget.

When the alarm did go off at 06:00 I was out of bed quite quickly for my medication etc and round about 06:30 I was beginning to attack the radio programme.

There were a couple of new groups and artistes making their debuts so I had to carry out some research rather than just extracting information from my notes, and then I had to find about 11 seconds of speech to edit out when it came to adding the final track as it over-run.

As a result, it wasn’t finished until about 11:20 but it does all sound very good and, as usual, I learnt a lot.

That was the cue to go for breakfast, much later than usual, and Rosemary mistimed her ‘phone call because I hadn’t quite finished my toast when she rang up. We ended up chatting for about 45 minutes during which I told her about my vicissitudes at the hospital on Thursday.

It was shortly after the end of my phone call with Rosemary when I crashed out.

After lunch I made a start on transcribing the dictaphone notes but stopped half-way through because it was time for me to go on my afternoon walk around the headland.

As usual, the first place to go was to go and see what was happening down on the beach.

Consequently I wandered off across the car park to the wall at the end of the car park where I can look over and down onto the beach.

As it was a lovely day, I was expecting to see crowds of people down there this afternoon and I wasn’t disappointed either. There were plenty of people disporting themselves on the rocks and many of them had actually gone into the sea.

It must have been really nice down there this afternoon and what wouldn’t I have given to be down there with them?

As usual, while I was looking around down on the beach I was also having a look around out at sea too.

Away out in Granville Bay almost in the English Channel (you can see the channel marker over to the right) was a beautiful set of sails, the topsail of which was bellying out in the wind.

No prizes for guessing who it was, although I had to wait until I returned home to enlarge and enhance the image to make certain.

It is indeed our old friend Marité who has gone out for a sail around the bay with a bunch of passengers. At least, that’s why I imagine that she’s gone out there.

There was even more activity out at sea too.

As I watched the action in the bay we almost ended up with another one of Tom Rolt’s “Greek v Greek” moments. There was a ferry on its way back from the Ile de Chausey and another one going out from the mainland and it looked at first as if they were on a collision course.

The one of the left heading out to the island is the very new Belle France and the one coming in on the right from the island is one of the Joly France boats.

They didn’t stay on the collision course for long though so I was cheated out of some free entertainment. Belle France did a little bit of the old “left hand down a bit” and they passed each other to starboard.

From my vantage point at the back of the College Malraux where I’d been observing the nautical goings-on, I headed off down the path towards the end of the headland.

On the lawn half-way down the path there was a father and his little child having endless amounts of fun with a balloon. Unfortunately he couldn’t keep it up for all that long and it soon came crashing down to the ground.

But just look at the vegetation. It really is in a right state, isn’t it? All burnt to a rather delicate shade of light brown with just the odd patch of green weed that still seems to be thriving.

And the path is like an Oklahoma Dust Bowl from the 1930s and with the wind, there’s quite a bit of dust being blown about.

Acros the car park I walked down to the end of the headland to see what was happening out at sea in the bay.

There was plenty of activity out there this afternoon but I was much more interested in the ferry that we had seen a little earlier that was now just sailing around the headland towards the port.

From this position it’s easy to see which one of the ferries she it. With the step taken out of the stern and the windows in “portrait” format, we can tell that she’s the newer one of the two.

Strangely, there was no-one on the bench by the cabanon vauban watching the fun, and no-one fishing off the rocks either, so I pushed on down the path on the other side of the headland towards point.

There has been some activity in the chantier naval while I was away in Leuven.

Chant des Sirenes and her painted mermaid are still in there, but I can’t remember who was there with her before I went away. Anyway, in there today with her is La Soupape I and over on the extreme right by the portable boat lift is Cap Lihou.

There’s a trawler in between Chant des Sirenes and La Soupape I but I can’t identify her from this position.

L’Omerta was still there moored up by the Fish Processing Plant but she was on her own.

They were having fun with one of the cranes in the inner harbour this afternoon.

That’s the one that they renovated a couple of months ago as you can tell by its new fresh paintwork but now someone is busy presumably checking over the hydraulics.

Chausiaise is over there too moored up close to the crane but the two Channel Island ferries are missing.

Back here I finished off the banana drink that I’d brought back from Leuven and then finished off the dictaphone notes from last night. I started out at school, sitting in a lesson writing notes into a notebook. On the cover of this notebook I had a drawing and the name of The Farmer’s Daughter (who has appeared a few times in the past in my nocturnal rambles but was only there last night in spirit) who went to this school and on whom I had quite a crush. When the lesson finished I put my notebook in the desk. Of course it happened to be hers. We all filed out of the classroom and I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until a couple of lessons later when one of the teachers asked me for a piece of work and I realised that it was in the notebook that was in The Farmer’s Daughter’s desk. He wanted it straight away so I had to go to her classroom. It was being used by another group. My brother was there along with a load of other people whom I knew so I had to interrupt the lesson to ask if I could collect something out of one of the desks. All the desks had been pushed over to the back wall to make a large empty space in the middle. I didn’t have a clue whose desk was whose and what and where. I had a look in them all as best as I could but I couldn’t find this notebook. I wasn’t even sure that I’d looked in them all. I did everything that I possibly could but in the end I had to admit defeat. I thanked the teacher and the class for their time and made my way out to go. They had all piles of magazines etc stacked up ready to be distributed amongst the students etc. Everything was in a real mess. There was no way that I could find this desk with this notebook in it so I was wondering what was going to happen next.

As it happens, I did have quite a crush on her at school although that didn’t go anywhere. However we did meet up in Manchester once or twice when I was living there and we saw each other once or twice.

Later on Nerina and I had separated and I was left with a pile of cars. I had the red MkV estate, the brown MkIII saloon and a couple of other estates. I decided that what I was going to do was to trim down the fleet and dispose of a couple of estates. I was putting a couple of ads in the newspapers. I’d written the ads but I hadn’t sent them off yet and I hadn’t decided which of the estates I was going to sell. I was obviously going to keep the red one but I didn’t know about the others. Then I was thinking that at the moment I don’t have a car on the road. There was no reason why the MkIII can’t be on the road because that’s MoT’d but it’s not taxed and I could afford to pay the road tax for once so I may as well tax it and have that going. While I was debating this my brother came along and asked me what I was doing. I said that I was contemplating the ceiling. He said “besides that”. I said that I was getting ready – I was going to – I was at work. He said “that’s not what I mean at all”. I replied “that’s all that I’m doing at the moment. I’m not doing anything else. It’s not the Spring or Summer so i’m not working on any cars. I’d leave it until then to put something else on the road running”. The chat with my brother turned in to be something rather acrimonious.

For some reason I was looking at fishing rods. I still had my fishing rod from when I was a kid but it was falling to pieces. I was looking in the window at various fishing rods. There was a young boy standing there looking who came over to talk to me. While I was looking at some that were in the region of £70-£80 he was just looking at any old one. I found out that he had never been fishing before and wanted to have a go. In the end he came into one of the shops with me and we had a talk to the woman behind the counter. I introduced her to him and he explained that he wanted to go fishing. She took him off to have a go with a few things while I listened to the radio about a few few fishing programmes. She came back with him picking a fishing rod at £5:95 but it needs some line and a few other bits and pieces. I said “that sounds good to me. Make sure that he has everything”. Then we started talking about what I really wanted. I explained that I wanted something good that would work under ice as well.

Like most kids, I had some fishing tackle that my grandfather gave me but I only went out about three or four times and just like the fishermen around here, I never actually caught anything. It was like watching paint dry.

Finally there was some woman whom I wanted to see, something to do with the radio. When I found out where she lived I went round to see her. She had some kind of security guy on the door who refused to let me in on the grounds that she was working. I suggested that maybe the 2 of us could do our work together and that way I could talk to her while she was working and neither of us would be wasting any time.

Having had a search around in that old-time radio site that I mentioned the other day, I came across some more ITMA, some “Much Binding In The Marsh”, some PG Wodehouse and some more Clitheroe Kid that I’ve not found elsewhere so I’ve been downloading that.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper which was delicious and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed for an early night. I’m exhausted and a good sleep will do me the world of good. I bet that I’ll still fall asleep at some point tomorrow

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: stuffed peppers

Monday 13th February 2023 – THAT AIR FRYER …

Monday 6th February 2023 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

Monday 30th January 2023 – I’VE FINALLY FINISHED …

Monday 16th January 2023 – AND IN OTHER …

Monday 9th January 2023 – IF I WERE …

Monday 2nd January 2023 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

Tuesday 27th December 2022 – I HAVE BEEN …

Tuesday 20th December 2022 – THERE I WAS …

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

Monday 12th September 2022 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Monday 5th September 2022 – YOU WON’T FIND …

Monday 29th August 2022 – BEFORE I START …

Monday 22nd August 2022 – YET MORE CONTROVERSY …

Monday 8th August 2022 – EVEN THOUGH I WENT …

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