Tag Archives: crash out

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… been back at Mont St Michel today doing my tourist guide bit, but Josée contacted me yesterday to say that there had been a change of plan and she was off elsewhere.

And that was just as well because I wasn’t feeling all that much like it this morning.

Last night had been quite a late night – I was absorbed in a pile of work – so leaving my bed at 06:00 or thereabouts (and I did too – I was taking my medication in the kitchen when the alarm went off at 06:20) was something of a struggle.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then finished off the photos from yesterday’s walks. And now they are all on-line. All 40 or so of them so you can tell that it took me quite a while.

Another thing that I did today was to catch up with some tidying up and to do the washing-up that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’m starting to let things slide in here as far as tidiness and cleanliness goes and I need to get myself back on track while I’m still able to do so. I won’t always be fit enough to tackle things when they need tackling.

There are also a couple of other projects on the go here and I’ve been dealing with a few of them too this morning.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It was overcast, cold and windy outside so I reckoned that I could do with the comfort of a chair in the dining area.

This afternoon, I did a few other bits and pieces and then sat down to tackle the photos from the Arctic. I’m still in Yellowknife on the Pilot’s Monument, and this afternoon I rewrote the things that I wrote about it earlier in the week.

Well, not exactly “rewritten”.

What I do is to write down things as they occur to me, put them into paragraphs and then cut and paste the paragraphs to make a continuous text, adding in a few conjunctions to make the text stream together.

It also involves research. And it’s amazing what you find when you start to look. Instead of worrying about finding enough text, I now have quite a considerable excess.

We had the usual afternoon walk around the headland this afternoon in the sunshine.

And there, sailing about out in the bay off the coast of Bréville-sur-Mer was the sailing ship that we have seen over the past few days.

I had the standard lens on the camera so I took a quick photo of it at long range.

But we haven’t bought a new zoom/telephoto lens for nothing, have we?

Seeing as the ship was sailing slowly, I stuck on the new lens and took a zoom photo.

I’ve still not been able to track down the name so I cropped the photo and blew it up (I can do these things, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) but it seems that the name of the boat isn’t painted on the bows … “she’s La Granvillaise” – ed.

While I had the big new lens on the camera, I took a photo of the caravan site out at Bréville sur Mer near the horse racing course.

That was another place where I had enquired about accommodation when I arrived here.

Liz and Terry have a little caravan and one idea going through my head was to park it on there for the summer, and then try for a good deal in a long-term holiday let through the winter.

When I arrived back here after my walk I found that I had an important e-mail message.

The third lens that I had ordered – a refurbished 18x105mm lens – hadn’t been delivered as promised. And the tracking showed that they had tried twice, even though I had been here on both occasions.

Having instigated a search, I was told that it was now awaiting collection at the Post Office. So I went down there to pick it up.

And down there I found the reason why it hadn’t been delivered, and why I was puzzled as to how come no-one from the delivery company had rung the bell.

It turns out that the address for delivery was incorrect. An error on the part of the dispatchers.

But I’m not complaining, because when I wrote to them to tell them of the delay and the inconvenience, they refunded my postage. I’m quite content with that.

After all of that, I had to sit down for a while and have a little … errr … relax for half an hour.

Tea was a curry from the freezer and it was just as delicious as the day that I cooked it.

Later on I went out for the evening walk around the walls with the camera and the new lens.

Part of the plan was to retake many of the photos that I had taken the other day with the 50mm lens so that I could compare them and see the difference.

Just like this one of the sea front at Bréhal sur Mer

And this one of the rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background to the right.

It won’t be as good as the 50mm low-light lens because it needs more light to work it, but its advantage is that the new lens is a zoom lens rather than a fixed lens.

That means that it’s more useful as a general-purpose lens (which is why I bought it) but I still need to see how it performs.

The other day I took an almost-identical photo to this one and the difference is quite apparent. The earlier one has come out much better

But that’s only to be expected with the difference in the light and in the quality of the image.

But it’s still something that the new lens will bring out an image. The Nikon 1 would quite simply not have registered enough of an image to work.

So now I’m off to bed. In the morning I have to go shopping of course. In the meantime you can admire (or otherwise) this evening’s photos.

Night time – rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background.

The Place Marechal Foch in the night-time.

The Plat Gousset in the night-time

Night time – the rue Georges Clemenceau

Moon (hidden by the copyright details) shining over the harbour in the Port de Granville

Moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

More moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

Moon light in the night over Granville and the Baie de Mont St Michel

Yet more moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time with St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville in the background

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

Place Cambernon in the night

The Bar Rafale in the Place Cambernon at night

The rue St Jean in the medieval walled town in the night.

Monday 15th October 2018 – BACK INTO …

… the routine again. I don’t think!

Certainly the alarms went off – at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20 as usual. But to say that I was eager to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit would be somewhat economical with the truth too.

I’d also been back in the High Arctic again. There were 50 of us leaving the voyage, trying to get into three zodiacs arriving one after the other, each one with a capacity of 12 persons. So that’s going to work, isn’t it? But it seemed that no-one was too eager to go in the first boat, and neither in the last one. So everyone was more interested in clambering into the middle boat. You can see immediately why this might cause a problem.

After breakfast, I did some tidying up so that this place looks more like a home, and then sat down and had a look at last night’s photos.

They have all been edited and reworked as appropriate and uploaded them to yesterday’s journal entry where they can be seen in all their glory.

That took most of the morning, which might come as a surprise to many people, but not when you consider that for some part of the morning I was … errr … away with the fairies.

It was my intention to go and sit on the wall and eat my butties but at that moment it was overcast so I ended up eating in here.

This afternoon I re-reviewed the photos from the Ile de Chausey on Saturday, chose a few as good samples and then started to rewrite the entry and add some photos. I didn’t get anything like as far into this as I was hoping, but you can see where I’m up to right now and this may well yet change.

But once again, I was somewhat overwhelmed. The effects of the last few days have caught up with me yet again.

There was a nice afternoon walk around the headland, and seeing that I’m in a photography mood right now, I took the camera with me.

I’m not sure it I’ve previously taken a photo of the blown-up bunker and so I took one this afternoon.

I’ve told you previously … “at great length” – ed … about the Atlantic Wall that the Germans built here in the early 1940s. And after the war the French set about trying to remove the casemates and bunkers.

But they were built much more substantially than anyone realised, and all that they succeeded in doing was moving half a dozen enormous lumps of concrete a couple of yards away from their original position.

And so they gave up any further attempt and left the rest of the bunkers here.

While I was there, I noticed some of the local council workmen carrying out a bit of work on the car park round the corner on the Pointe du Roc, so I went over to have a quick look to see what they were doing.

It seems that they are laying some paving stones as if there’s going to be some hard-standing for some purpose.

I’ll have to have a wander over there in a couple of days time to see how it’s evolving and what the purpose of it all will be.

Having taken my photo I carried on a-wandering around the headland to the little spot where I can overlook the harbour.

The tide is well on its way out of the tidal harbour right now and it was interesting to watch some of the larger ships settle down on the silt as the sea disappears.

The yellow one seems to have settled in the wrong direction so I hope that it won’t flood when the tide comes back in. It should really be careened over onto the landward side

But my reverie was interrupted by something of a racket coming from the shipyard.

It seems that they are carrying out some kind of major work on a fishing trawler that’s been hauled out of the water onto the top of the quay just there.

I’m not sure if they are in the process of dismantling it or whether they are renovating it. This is another thing to go back and check on in a couple of days’ time.

Tea tonight was steamed vegetables, sausages and vegan cheese sauce, and it was totally delicious too. I really enjoyed it and I shall make some more of that in due course. My frozen sprouts are working well.

Later on, I was back out in the evening for my walk around the walls. I took plenty of photos too with the new Nikon lens.

I went through them later and added them to the blog so that you can see them.

And I’m sure that you’ll be as dismayed as I am with the quality of the photos that I took in the Arctic when you see what this new low-light lens can produce under these kind of conditions.

In the previous photo you saw the lights of Donville les Bains in the background.

In this photo you can even see that the new lens was even able to pick up the fleet of ships out there to see – presumably a fleet of fishing boats.

The little Nikon J1 would never even have made the attempt, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

I can see that this time next year I shall have to go back to the High Arctic, won’t I?

On my way round, Minette was there waiting for her stroke – and a pick-up – as well. She’s clearly missed me.

So now I’m going to have a reasonably early night. I need to get myself back on track as I have plenty of things to do.

The Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

The Moon

Bréville sur Mer and St Martin de Bréhal.

Place d’Armes

Plat Gousset

rue General Patton

Place Marechal Foch

Plat Gousset

Rue Georges Clemenceau

rue Paul Poirier

Place Maurice Marland

Port de Granville

Place Maurice Marland

rue du Colombier

rue Notre Dame

Place Cambernon

rue St Jean

Sunday 14th October 2018 – ALONE AGAIN

Yes, it’s very nice to have company because it drags me out of my shell and gets me off and about doing things, but it’s also nice to be back on my own again in my own little routine.

Last night was another bad night; Asleep at about midnight, awake at 01:00, working on the laptop because I couldn’t sleep, asleep again at 04:00, alarm at 06:00 (because Bane of Britain forgot to switch it off) and finally up and about at 08:30.

We had a leisurely breakfast and then Josée had a shower and packed up her things.

A visit to Yves and Lily’s was next to hand back the tool that Yves had lent us, and we were there chatting for over an hour. And then I drove Josée to the station for her train.

Back here, I made myself a couple of sandwiches for lunch and then I did the obvious thing. I crashed out. I need to catch up on my beauty sleep somehow.

As far as work today has gone, I haven’t done any. It IS a Sunday, after all. Instead, I’ve loitered around for pretty much all of the afternoon.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and it was another really good one.

My evening walk was around the headland of course. Only this time I took with me the new Nikon 50mm lens so that I could try it out in the dark and see what it’s like, like this photo of the College Andre Malraux in the Place d’Armes.

But that’s tomorrow’s job. Now I’m going to make the most of the possibilities of an early night. I’ve clean, tidy bedding too in which I can relax.

That’s something not to be missed.

The rue du Roc

the rue St Jean and the gate into the Old Town

The Place d’Armes – my building

The roundabout at the end of the rue du Roc, and the Pointe du Roc

The old Port, ferry terminal and quays

Rue du Port and the old port

Place d’Armes

rue St Jean and the archway into the Old Town

Friday 12th October 2018 – WHAT WITH ONE …

… thing and another (and until you get started you’ve no idea just how many other things there are) It wasn’t far short of 03:00 when I finally settled down to sleep.

That’s not leaving me too much time when there’s an alarm to go off at 06:00 is it?

Mind you, there was plenty of time to go off and disappear on another nocturnal ramble. This time it was to do with a load of girls who were saying goodbye to each other and going their separate ways. And I still haven’t worked out what that was all about either.

No-one was really hungry this morning so we didn’t have much in the way of breakfast. But I had a shower and then we put the washing machine on the go. I’ve no idea where all of this washing comes from – it’s certainly not me.

Once we’d gathered our wits, which in my case takes much longer than it ought, we went for a walk in the wind.

Granville was formerly the home of the well-known fasion designer Christian Dior.

His childhood home, situated on the cliffs on the way out of town, has been converted into a museum of his life and works, and it’s the kind of place that most women would like to visit.

and so this was our destination for this morning.

We went out along the walls of the old town and then down the steps onto the Plat Gousset.

Our attention was caught by a bicycle propped up against the wall with someone’s clothes draped over it.

So looking out to sea we saw someone perched up on the diving platform. And you can see how far in the tide is today by the fact that the platform is practically submerged.

And as we watched, our intrepid hero, clearly the grandson of Captain Matthew Webb, took to the windy water and started to swim back to the shore, cheered on by the onlookers.

As I remarked to one of the spectators, “he’s a braver man than I am” because I wouldn’t have liked to have been out there in those conditions.

It took him a while to make it back to shore though, although he never looked as if he was in any trouble.

However, we did have an interruption by some people who seemed to be rather concerned about what was going on.

Round the headland came the sea-rescue boat and it can’t have been a coincidence that they came on the scene just at that particular moment.

Of course, their services weren’t required at all but they were there nevertheless to keep an eye on the proceedings. Unless it REALLY was a coincidence.

It was a beautiful day for photography though. The colours really were superb and the excellent light brought them out perfectly.

I must have taken dozens of photos down there and it’s very hard to choose which one was the best of the bunch.

So I’ll just post one photo here and you can imagine all of the rest.

To reach the museum you have to climb up a couple of flights of steep stairs at the end of the promenade, but it’s well worth it, particularly on a day like this as the views from the top are stunning.

I was taking a few photos of the Ile de Chausey when I noticed a strange shape at the back of one of the islands of the archipelago.

So I photographed it with the view of cropping it and enlarging it back at home to see what it was.

But there was no need to do that really because I could see that it was a moving object. And just a minute or two later it burst out into the open sea.

Yes, we have another cruise ship cruising around the Chennel Islands. Not a particularly big one by the look of things, but interesting nevertheless.

I’ve not been able to find out which one it was either which is a shame.

That wasn’t the only maritime activity either.

As we were walking along the Plat Gousset we had heard a hooter telling us that a ship was leaving port. And 20 minutes later our old friend Normandy Trader hove into view.

She mad a really good photograph as she steamed … “dieseled” – ed … off to Jersey with the Ile de Chausey in the background.

The grounds of the museum are really beautiful and you can see why the Diors chose this place to be their home with views like this all over the place.

When they moved here in 1905 or whenever it was, there was nothing but bare rock but Mrs Dior arranged for tons of soil to be brought to the premises and this was transformed into what we see today.

The young Christian Dior has aspirations to be an architect, and it is said that some of the features of the garden and some of the furniture were made to his own designs.

But beautiful as the place might be, it came into the hands of the Granville town council who are now responsible for the upkeep, and the place seems to be suffering under the budget cuts while public funds are stashed away to satisfy what many people consider to be Madame la Maire‘s somewhat “over-ambitious” plans to abandon the town’s heritage and transform it into a playground for the rich.

So abandoning our fears about whether the railway line will be torn up and the only way to arrive at the town will be by luxury yacht with crew of 25, we carried on our tour of the garden.

Granville has been dubbed by many people (especially Madame la Maire as “The Monaco of the North” and it’s true that mediterranean trees, palm trees, and even banana trees will grow here.

As I reassured Josée though, they aren’t native to the area but if they are planted and well-maintained, they will survive.

The interior of the building was quite beautiful too and Josée spent quite a while admiring the dresses and the perfumes.

My attention was caught by the collection of miniature dresses on show because you didn’t just buy a Dior dress for yourself and your daughter, you could even buy one for your daughter’s dolly and hat surely is the height of decadence.

On the way out of the building Josée stopped to sample some perfumes and another woman went to spray me with stuff thinking that I was her husband.

With not having had much breakfast, by now we were quite hungry where we made our way into town and the fritkot for lunch. And he was open too, not like Saturday night.

Josée had a plate of meat and salad while I had some chips and a veggie wrap. And it was all quite delicious too.

Back here, I had a little … errr … relax, and then we set off again.

At the Christian Dior museum they had told us that our tickets give us the right to a reduction in the admission fee to the Anacréon Museum of Modern Art down the road from me.

Modern Art isn’t my thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but Josée is quite into it and I have to keep my visitors happy. There wasn’t much in there that I would have liked to grace the walls of my apartment.

But Josée explained to me that I was understanding art incorrectly. If I simply want something to hang on a wall to look pretty then art isn’t for me. The purpose of art appreciation is to study and admire the artist’s technique.

So perhaps then art isn’t for me after all.

We stopped off for a drink on the way back and then went round for a long chat with Yves and Lily. They had a lot to say for themselves which is quite nice, but they also advised Josée against going musseling on the beach. Apparently there’s a virus going round and it’s not doing the shellfish any good at all.

Tea was some buckwheat crèpes with all kinds of stuff on (I had vegan cheese, onions, tomato, mushroom and garlic on mine) and to finish the day we saw the end of Seducing Doctor Lewis.

And after all of that, I’m exhausted.

casino plat gousset granville manche normandy france

casino plat gousset walled town granville manche normandy france

rocks headland plat gousset granville manche normandy france

bathing huts plat gousset granville manche normandy france

lighthouse rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

waves breaking on rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

lighthouse rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

normandy trader ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

cemetery donville les bains granville manche normandy france

garden shed muséé christian dior museum granville manche normandy france

musee christian dior museum granville manche normandy france

rue de la falaise granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 9th October 2018 – OUCH! THAT WAS …

… a tough day today.

Just before going to bed I received a message from my internet supplier saying that my site had now been upgraded as requested. And so I set to and uploaded all of the Arctic photos while I was at it.

And while I was also at it, I had a little bit of fun with one of the photos of Strawberry Moose that we had taken.

One of the people on board The Good Ship Ve … … errr … Ocean Endeavour was an Olympic gymnastics judge and she had taken quite a shine to His Nibs. And so we had done a little posing session with the two of them.

Add a little bit of text and here we are.

The result of all of this was that it was about 02:00 when Yours Truly toddled off to bed. Not the ideal way to end the day when you have to leave your stinking pit at 06:00.

But it made no difference because at 05:05 this morning I was wide-awake and awaiting the alarms. I have a feeling that I’ll be paying for this later.

I’d also been off on a nocturnal ramble again.

Just by way of a change, not to the High Arctic. But where, I have no idea. But we returned to this very impressive stone building that turned out to be a boys’ school. We were all starving and having to queue up near the door, and I had the Cunning Plan to loiter around near the air hostesses because I imagined that with them being “staff”, they would be let into the dining hall first. But when we were let in, we were allowed to take one liquid food off the trays that were being handed around, and then another thing from somewhere else and so on. And eventually someone stuck a cold sausage in my mouth. I made my way back to my room, which was at the end in an alcove off the dining hall. And I was given a large plate of food to take with me. A little later I went back into the dining hall but it was now deserted. Someone had left their mobile phone in “broadcast” mode on one of the tables so I started to look around to see where it was broadcasting to (and to salvage some more food) but the few boys who were left were making such a noise that they interrupted my search.

Anyway despite the alarm going off at 06:00 it was much closer to 07:00 when I finally arose. And with plenty of things to do this morning it was about 09:00 when I had my breakfast. That was followed by a little tidying up and a half-hour session on the bass guitar now that I’ve restarted playing.

And then I had a little snooze. The first of three or four that I had during the course of the day.

Most of the day has been spent on the voyage to the Arctic. I’ve added the photos to one of the earlier pages of the voyage and expanded the text accordingly.

Having completed that (because it took much longer than it ought to have done) I’ve updated the front page for the travel section of the website, prepared an index for the voyage, completed an individual page of photographs for each day and made a start on writing the text for the first page.

None of those is on line yet because there’s going to be so much to do, but as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if I don’t start, I won’t finish. So I need to push on.

It didn’t help with the odd bit of dozing off here and there during the course of the day. That 3-hour sleep didn’t do me much good at all.

Lunch was on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard. And I dropped my banana by accident.

But it was a beautiful day, really sunny and warm with a lovely blue sky. I took full advantage of the conditions by taking a nice panoramic photo of the harbour and the surroundings, all the way round to St Pair sur Mer.

Later on in the afternoon, I went for a walk around the headland. Plenty of people out there today enjoying the sunshine. And I ended up by taking off my jumper and catching a little sun on my arms.

We had a visitor in the harbour too. Thora had sailed into port today and was moored up at the crane.

I didn’t realise that she had a visor bow. I cant have been paying much attention. But there it is, raised up and out of the way of the loading operation.

One of these days I’ll get to go for a guided tour around her to see how she is and to find out how come Grima was retired from operation.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with pasta, more to make some room in the freezer than for any other reason. I’ll be off shopping in early course and we need the space.

And then I had my evening walk around the walls in the pleasant evening.

Fallen asleep again, but I’m going to do this and them I’m off to bed regardless of how early it is.

I need to be on form for tomorrow.

Monday 8th October 2018 – SO MUCH FOR …

… the alarm this morning!

My telephone decided to do an update during the night and as a result it was waiting for me to restart it this morning. At … errr … 08:15 or thereabouts.

And it also took me until 09:00 to leave the bed either. I was making the most of it.

Just by way of a change though I had ended up with an early night. Flat out at 22:30 and Gone With The Wind in an instant.

And, would you believe, just by way of another change, back in the High Arctic. One might say that it’s all left quite an impression on me, mightn’t one?

Now here’s an exciting thing though. It was the final night of our trip before we were all due to break up in the morning. And just for a change we weren’t on the Good Ship Ve… … errr … Ocean Endeavour but somewhere else completely. And I was sharing a room with someone else, something that regulär readers of this rubbish will recall is highly unlikely indeed. This guy was of the “gung ho, full steam ahead” characteristics and he had changed all of the beds and bedding around in our room. My bed was in a different position, all of this kind of thing, and he had done it all in something of rather a strange way. But anyway, to cut a long story short … "Thank God" – ed … like The Knights Of The Round Table we had all been our separate ways, and we all had to meet up to come back to make our final reports the next morning. We were all sitting down in the lounge relaxing and who should come over to me but The Vanilla Queen. And it WAS her too. Not only did it look like her but she talked exactly in the same way with exactly the same accent that she had. She spoke to me too, which is most unlikely, and I couldn’t quite understand what it was that she was saying. So I arose and went over to her (which I wouldn’t normally have done) and asked her to repeat it. She replied “I don’t think that John Shearing needs to know anything about too much, but I want YOU to do the final debriefing and to tell everyone where we had been and what we were doing and all this kind of thing so that they could bring their notes of their holiday all up to date. I want YOU to do it”.
And to be quite honest, I was so amazed by this discussion that I awoke bolt-upright – 23:58 it was – wide awake, totally astonished. I went and tracked down the dictaphone, even managed to change the batteries in it correctly, and dictated the details so that I wouldn’t forget them.

And that wasn’t all the excitement either.

I’ve no idea who is was with whom I was rambling later on last night but she was certainly female and attractive, and she was driving a small car of the Austin 7 variety. We were having to travel somewhere and in order to do so we had to pass through a mountain range. There were two ways to pass through this range and they bifurcated at a small village. So we stopped in this village to fuel up and she tipped into the tank the contents of a metal can. I thought to myself that there wasn’t enough fuel in the can to take us to our destination and the nearest petrol station was a really good walk away. But to my surprise, where we had parked actually had a fuel pump and some woman there put a couple more gallons into the car. We then set off down the left-hand road at this fork and I thought to myself that this is a far quicker way than trekking though the countryside and little paths that I usually took and I wondered why I didn’t know this road. And we eventually turned up at a mountain pass that we have visited on nocturnal rambles on numerous occasions – usually on skiing trips and the like in the middle of winter.

As an aside, I should perhaps remind my readers (both of you) that I have indeed been asked if I am troubled by my nocturnal voyages and some of the situations in which I find myself.
My response was “definitely not. I actually quite enjoy them.”

After breakfast I loitered around for a while, including a session on the bass (because I’m starting to pic it up again after my voyage) and then set down to do some work.

Tidying up in the living room in fact. I need to make this place look much more like a home and make it clean. After a while I do have to say that it looks a little more like it, although there’s always room for improvement.

Next thing was, having been totally dismayed by the rubbishy photos that came out of my voyage to the High Arctic, I bit the bullet and ordered a couple of new lenses for the big Nikon. How I wish that I had done that a month or so before I had set off, rather than three weeks after I had come home.

And after that, I had a little … errr … relax.

TOTGA was on line later and so we had a little chat and then I went off and made my butties. There I was, sitting on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard in the sunlight. It wasn’t warm but it was beautiful all the same.

Afterwards, I went off into town. With the possibility of a visitor arriving in early course, I need to know what activities are available. There’s a good Tourist Info place in town so my afternoon walk was down there to collect some leaflets.

Back here, I attacked some more photos but I couldn’t keep going and at about 17:20 I went ant lay down on the bed.

1:20 I was out for. 18:40 I finally came too and was able to carry on with what I had been doing. And that took me up to tea time.

While I had been going through the freezer I came across a pie that was left over from earlier in the year. So that disappeared into my stomach accompanied by some steamed veg cooked in the electric steamer and gravy.

Outside, i went for my evening walk around the headland, totally alone. Not another soul about anywhere although there were a couple of kids with scooters away on the car park.

Later I had another chat with TOTGA, with Liz and with Josée and then a little more work.

Now it’s bedtime and there will be an alarm tomorrow, I hope. Then it’s back to the grind again.

Sunday 7th October 2018 – I’VE BEEN LUCKY …

… again today with the football.

This afternoon I went to the Stade Croissant at St Pair to watch US St Pairiase play ET.S. Du Terregate Et Du Beuvron in the Manche District League division 2. Cold and windy, but at least it was dry. But there’s a covered stand at the Croissant just in case and it’s as well to be insured.

Despite the poor conditions, this was yet another exciting match. A bit short on skill but plenty of effort and the game rolled from end to end.

The attacks and midfields were about even, but while Terregate’s defence was far better, the St Pairiaise goalkeeper was in inspired form and on one occasion made a superb triple-save from the Terregate attack.

But despite the really good Terregate defending, there was just one occasion when the St Pairaise attack got through and they made it count.

Later on in the final 30 minute the temperature of the match escalated and we had some thumping challenges and a few heated arguments. One St Päiraise defender was dismissed for a late challenge, a decision that I considered to be rather harsh but they still managed to hang on to their lead.

All in all, I’ve had a really exciting weekend at the football.

And on the subject of exciting times, last night wasn’t as good as the previous night or two, which was rather a disappointment. In bed quite late, but awake at 08:00. We aren’t having that – at least on a Sunday, so I turned over and went back to sleep. 09:00 wasn’t much better but that was about me finished for the night so at about 09:45 I arose from the dead.

Despite the brevity of the night’s repose, I’d been on my travels. Back to the High Arctic yet again (this really IS preying on my mind, isn’t it?) and the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were all on there, saying our goodbyes to each other and slowly dispersing, until in the end I was hovering over the stern of the ship about 50 feet up in the air looking at the last person remaining there. I couldn’t see whether it was or not she who has become famous as The Vanilla Queen, because she kept her head bowed. But the interesting thing about this is not the fact that it might have been The Vanilla Queen, but the fact that even though I was well away in the Arms of Morpheus, the fact that it might have been her was of interest to me.
So tell me why, nocturnal Vanilla Queen
You haunt me, even in my dreams
I’m clearly feeling the strain, aren’t I?
And later, I was away again. In a big Ford SUV type of vehicle, all black except for gold doors, exactly the type of vehicle and the colour scheme that several police forces in North America use. However, although it was me driving it, I wasn’t in it (if that makes sense), my spiritual sense was in another vehicle with my brother (don’t ask me why because I don’t know either) and Darren, Rachel’s husband. They were driving through this North American city that bore more than just a passing resemblance to the Rue de la Loi in Brussels outside the Justus Lipsius building, and I was driving aroud there in the police vehicle. They had tried … well, not to escape, but to plan their route so that it didn’t cross mine, but I managed to intercept them and when they finally saw me from their side window, they did pull up to find out what was going on. I pulled up on the other side of a crossroads, to walk back I suppose, but I didn’t even manage to leave the car before I was wide awake and it had all disappeared.

Having a few things to do today, it was rather late when I sat down to breakfast. And afterwards I had a couple of hours on the laptop sorting out a pile of e-mails from many years ago, looking for e phone number that I was sure that I had been given at one time. It took a while but eventually I came across it.

And then I sorted through a pile of photos that had been accumulating over the past couple of years. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have started this project on several occasions and run aground each time. But I have to press on.

It’s Sunday, so tea was a vegan pizza.

And then I went for a walk around the headland. It’s good to get back into my old habits. Including, I’m sorry to say, a little departure away with the fairies after the football.

There wasn’t anyone else around this evening so I was all on my own.

And so I spent a lot of time overlooking the harbour to see what was going on.

The answer is “not very much”. The tide isn’t in far enough for the fishing boats.

There’s one of the Ile de Chausey ferries over there on the right, tied up to the illuminated landing stage.

That’s really all there was of note, so after taking a couple of photos I turned round and headed off back home.

It’s Monday tomorrow so back at work and back with an alarm again. So I’m going to have an early night.

Tomorrow I’ll be tidying up because I have heard that on Tuesday I might be having visitors.

Thursday 4th October 2018 – I CAN TELL …

… that things are going downhill as far as my health is concerned. I’ve had a very bad day today.

So having crashed out last night definitively at about 22:00 (and no surprise there) I was wide-awake again at 02:15 on the dot and up working at 02:40. Which meant that I wasn’t disturbed in the least by the internet connection dropping and restarting at 02:30 onwards, and pinging the telephone each time that it did so.

There was time to go on my travels too – up to the High Arctic once again where I was disguised or pretending to be an Inuit, saying goodbye to everyone. And it was one of those protracted, long emotional goodbyes that somehow managed to take several days as I visited many of the places where I had recently been (and several other places that I didn’t recognise either).

By the time 06:00 came around I was ready for my medication. And this was followed by breakfast. Muesli, apple puree grape juice and coffee. Back to our usual habits. and then back to work.

But I couldn’t keep going, which was hardly surprising. I curled up on the bed and that was that until 13:00. Out like a light.

When I awoke the coffee that remained in the percolator had burnt. That wasn’t much good. I had a bit of a stagger around to regain my composure, and at about 14:30 I decided to go out.

LIDL and LeClerc were the destinations today. Caliburn started perfectly after 5 weeks of pause and that was good news.

We didn’t buy anything special apart from a twin-USB plug for Caliburn but the bill still came to about €50:00. Supplies were pretty low with having had a clear-out before I came away.

But I saw my first “F” plate while I was out. That was hardly a surprise. I reckoned that they were due to come out at the beginning of September.

Back here I had a struggle to fit the frozen food into the fridge. I’d forgotten that I’d made a ton of frozen meals before going away. And having bought a pile of fresh mushrooms (they were on special offer) I’ll be making some more too.

By the time that I had done that and made my sandwiches it was 17:00 so I went to sit on the wall in the late-afternoon sun. One of the lizards came to visit me too which was quite nice. Clearly haven’t forgotten the pear droppings.

But back here, I couldn’t keep going and by 18:00 I was back in bed.

21:00 I awoke and found to coffee gone cold on the chest of drawers by the bed. There’s no doubt that I’m going downhill.

And the raging thirst is back. And as I have said before, that’s always a very bad sign. It usually heralds the start of a bout of ill-health and after all that I’ve been through just recently, that’s hardly a surprise.

But I shall keep on going. Still some life left in the old dog yet and I intend to make the most of it. But as TS McPhee once famously wrote
I’m like a ship on the ocean that’s rolling from side to side
But I’m not drunk I’m just dissatisfied
It’s not my body but my mind I can’t control
I have everything I need but still…..I want more

I’ve done everything that I’ve ever set out to do
I become so well known that they’ve put me in who’s who
But I’ve reached the limit and I don’t know what to do
If I can’t go no further I’ll have to go back…..to being poor

Wednesday 3rd October 2018 – AFTER MY EXCITING …

… day yesterday, I crashed out on the bed at about 22:30 leaving half a mug of coffee behind, the laptop running and everything.

And I was off on my travels too, about a horse race that was taking place.

For no apparently good reason at all I was wide awake at 01:30 and so not being able to go back to sleep I spent an hour catching up on some more work that needed to be done.

Once I’d gone back to sleep I was off on my travels yet again, this time to an office where I used to work. It was office party time and there were quite a few married couples having rather too much fun underneath desks and the like. And when I say “married couples”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they were married to each other either. I disturbed one couple having fun underneath a desk, and they asked me a question about it. My tart response was that surely they didn’t think that they were the only people at it. There were three different offices in this building, one of which had a connection with Scotland. And at a certain moment a young girl, blonde pony tail and in a white lab coat, talking in a Scots accent (the girl, not the coat), appeared on our floor to bring some work down. I was quite interested in finding out more about her so I started to climb the stairs in the fire escape to see if I could find her office. On the way, I was intercepted by someone who asked if my answer to a certain question on a form was definitive. I couldn’t even remember the question, never mind my answer!

By 04:30 I was wide awake again so I restarted what I had been doing earlier. That took me round to the medication and a nice hot shower with clean clothes for my journey home.

Next stop was the supermarket in the Gare du Midi for bread to make my butties. An enormous queue at the tills which is hardly surprising seeing as it’s morning rush hour and people are picking up their lunch. And I also picked up some or the raisin buns that I like so as to have something for breakfast, along with another coffee.

Once the butties had been made, and breakfast eaten and coffee drunk, I staggered (and I DO mean staggered because my luggage seems to have gained the weight that I had lost) down to the station and my train.

The TGV was ontime too, which is always good news because I don’t have time to hang around in Paris.

And it was packed to the gunwhales too. There didn’t seem to be a spare seat on board.

And several people seemed to have been late bookings because although they were wedged into individual seats all down the carriage alongside other people, they spent most of the trip standing in the aisle leaning over everyone else to see what was on the laptop of the leader of the pack, blocking the aisle, to the inconvenience of everyone else.

We pulled into Paris Gare du Nord bang-on time and I then had to negotiate my way to Gare Montparnasse dragging my heavy load and wondering just how I had managed to end up with so much stuff.

It was quite a struggle up and down the stairs and onto the train in the metro with all of my stuff but eventually I made it into the concourse at Montparnasse and could withdraw my ticket to Granville from the machine.

With having been an hour earlier on the TGV I had plenty of time to wait at Vaugirard. I sat next to a mother and her daughter who were also travelling to Granville and we had something of a chat while I ate my cheese and tomato butties.

On the train I had a very charming travelling companion but the train was quite empty so she moved to the seats on her own in front of me and spread herself out.

I did likewise and spend the journey alternating between sleeping and reading my copy of Arthur Reeves’ “The Finding of Wineland the Good” that I had downloaded off the internet. It’s an interesting book because although it’s very well-researched, he dismisses a great deal of work that had been done previously by people like Carl Rafn on grounds that may well have been logical at the time that Reeves was writing, but have since been found to be erroneous.

There was a 40-minute wait for the bus – I had no intention of walking home today. And we had some excitement on the journey back when the bus driver clipped another vehicle and pulled the rear bumper off the bus.

It’s good to be back home. I’ll tell you that. It smells of dust and so on, but it’s home all the same and I’ll open the windows tomorrow to let some fresh air.

I didn’t do too much – just relaxed for a while and then made myself a plate of pasta, olive oil and vegetables for tea.

Later I tried to start the back-up of files from the travelling laptop onto the home machine, but I gave up after an hour or so. Only 22:00 but I was gone.

And this is how I’m going to stay for a while because I’ve switched off all of the alarms.

Monday 1st October 2018 – A NEW MONTH …

… an old continent.

Here am I, back again in Europe. Those five weeks just … errr … flew by, didn’t they?

But back on my aeroplane and I must have gone to sleep at some point (although it didn’t much feel like it) because I remember waking up when they brought the morning coffee around.

ETA on takeoff was 08:20 and at 08:20 we were rolling to a halt at the end of the runway ready to turn round and taxi to the terminal. After a few thousand miles and over 6 hours in the air that’s what I call good timing.

It wasn’t possible to take a pic of the plane so you’ll have to do without knowing anything about it. And my first stop was the gentleman’s rest room -and you won’t want to know too much about that either.

Long queues at immigration but actually passing the policemen there was quick and easy. Not much of a wait for the suitcases either, and I was on the train into Brussels just an hour after landing.

At the Hotel Midi-Zuid by 10:00 and my room was not ready (no surprise here) but in contrast to Montreal, I was invited to wait.

11:00 saw my lying on the bed in my little single room. Very well furnished and equipped seeing as it’s an economy place. I do like it here.

Most of the day was spent drifting in and out of sleep which is hardly a surprise seeing as how tired I was.

I was off on my travels too, watching a guy try to launch himself into the water in a kayak, but only getting his feet wet. I commiserated with him but he said that he’d been in shallower water than this. Some other people were in here messing around in a miniature car ferry and at a certain moment, this kayaker, the ferry and a few other things were in perfect alignment to make a really good shot but I didn’t have my camera ready. So I was trying to choreograph them when a naval vessel came on the scene and interrupted us, rather like Knud Rasmussen had at Iliussat the other week. I had to reverse my boat and tuck into a side alley but being confused about the controls with going backwards, I opened the throttle wide by mistake and crashed my boat into a bollard.

A phone call disturbed me, but I fell asleep again before I could answer it. But later managed a shower and to wash my clothes.

Tea – I did manage tea – was a bowl of lentils with bread and chips (we’re in Belgium of course). And back here later I booked my trains and made arrangements to meet Alison tomorrow evening.

Now it’s bedtime. Despite all of my sleep today, I’m still exhausted. I need a good sleep.

Saturday 29th September – IN 30 HOURS TIME …

… I’ll be back in miserable, dreary, depressing Europe again.

But let’s not dwell on the bad side of life. Let’s talk about today’s activities.

We only had about an hour or so to wait at Rivieère-du-Loup for our Orleans Express bus. And we all clambered aboard ready for the off. The driver was somewhat surly but that didn’t matter too much as I don’t remember very much about the journey.

I vaguely remember waking when we pulled into Sainte-Foy but I wasn’t awake for very long. And then I remember pulling into Longueuil for the students. That was where, I suppose, you might say that I awoke.

From there it was 10 minutes into the coach station at rue Berri.

I performed the usual trick of going for a relaxing ride on the porcelain horse and caught up with my sleep for about half an hour or so, and then to the cafe for breakfast and to deal with my notes of yesterday.

Round about 09:00 I headed off to my hotel.

As I expected, it’s the cat-house to end all cat houses, run by an oriental guy who was as inscrutable as his reputation. Very nice, very charming, but refused to budge on the 18:00 check-in time.

He allowed me to leave my things there, which was good of him, and I went for a walk.

First stop was the other side of the old Dalhousie railway station to take a few photos of it from a different angle than last time.

And then down to the docks. Oakglen had gone, but way down in the new port there were three ships. Far too far away to see what they are.

There was also another ship in the western quay but I’ll need to do some research into that.

It was a beautiful warm, sunny morning so I sat on a park bench and had another half-an-hour’s repose. Did me good too and I felt a little better after my sleep in the sun.

Into the old town afterwards to see the new Customs House, which is also the HQ of the Environmental Ministy – and here I was expecting a log hut roofed with turf. Not big on irony, these North Americans.

It also gave me an opportunity to take a couple more photos of things that I had missed on previous occasions.

In Subway for lunch (where they had run out of ice for the drinks machine) we had another delightful conversation –
Sandwich Artist – “what would you like on your vegetarian?”
Our Hero – “a bit of everything”
Sandwich Artist – “do you want spinach on that?”.

After lunch I wandered through Chinatown (for no particular reason) and the Complexe Desjardins (ditto) and up and down the rue St Catherine Est, dodging (and occasionally being caught in) the rainstorms.

The Hudsons Bay Company shop was disappointing. It’s all high-class perfume and clothes these days and they looked at me strangely when I asked which floor I needed to visit to trade my walrus skins and polar bear fur for a new kayak and some pemmican.

In the music shop I had a lovely half-hour playing a neat Ibanez five-string bass that I would love to bring home with me. But it was the only instrument in the shop without a price tag. And in the shop I heard the most delightful Franglais conversation that I have ever heard.

By now I’d pulled a muscle so I hobbled back to my hotel. 16:30 and my room still wasn’t ready, but he relented and had it done in half an hour.

And I slept for the following couple of hour, only interrupted by a couple of attacks of cramp.

A little later, I went out for food. A couple of years ago I’d been to the Cote-Vertu metro station and outside I had found an Indian café rather like what used to be (and probably still is) in Handsworth in Birmingham.

That was tonight’s destination, where I had quite a fiery vegetable biryani.

So now I’m settling down to sleep, totally exhausted. It’s been a hard day? And it will be an even harder one tomorrow.

Friday 28th September 2018 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

And in spades too. The kind of thing that only I can do, and I’m pretty good at it, having had years of practice.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves right now. Retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Having extolled the virtues of a really good night’s sleep yesterday we returned to our customary habits by being wide awake at 01:45, for a reason that I can’t fathom, save as to say that it disturbed me.

From there on in I drifted in and out of sleep until the alarm went off. And then I dashed out of bed because I wanted to see Hannah. It’s homecoming weekend at St F-X so she’s off to Antigonish to meet up with her former colleagues and do a little celebrating.

And quite right too. It’s a kind of end of a long goodbye to an important period in her life. She’s graduated (with distinction, I’m proud to say) from the best University in Canada with enough certificates to cover her bedroom wall and she’s ready to move on into the big wide world.

But she needs to say goodbye in this one before she goes.

She’s like a typical young University graduate – torn between home and family on one side and what the big wide world has to offer on the other side, and so why make your own mistakes when you can listen to the mistakes that other people have made?

And as a result we had a good chat for several hours. After all, no-one has made as many mistakes in their life as I have in mine.

I hadn’t bought her a graduation present because, after all, what do I know about people’s tastes? I gave her some cash and told her to choose a really nice piece of jewellery that she likes, and wear it for me. And then I bunged her a bit more cash to go and have a party.

With having had a bad night, I was ready to go back to bed for half an hour or so. And that turned out to be a couple of hours or so. I still can’t shake off this health issue. I might be feeling better than i was earlier in the week, but that’s a long way from saying that I’m well.

Once I was back in the Land of the Living I had a shower, packed my suitcase and had a very late lunch. Following which I leapt aboard Strider and we went down to the office.

Zoe was there, telling us about her wedding plans. She’s Rachel’s eldest daughter and decided a few years ago to make her own way in the world. She’s finding it tough going and struggling along, and this wedding is proving to be quite a problem.

She’s seen a wedding dress that she absolutely loves and which is apparently beautiful, but she has to pay a 50% deposit to secure it and have the fitting done, and she can’t rustle up the money.

No girl should ever have to settle for second-best on the most important day in her life (a comment which will have made Nerina’s eyes pop out on stalks wondering how she managed to end up with me) and so I gave her her wedding present in advance. Tomorrow she can go and sign up for her dress.

There were a few of us down there this afternoon, with people coming and going, and we ended up having quite a chat.

So much so that we were down there long after closing time, which was just as well because quite late on, someone phoned up with a speculative enquiry about tyres to solve a crisis, and we could actually help out.

Tea was, basically, everything that was left over from earlier in the week and you would be surprised at how nice you can make stuff like that when you have a good imagination and some culinary talent. I certainly enjoyed mine!

Time to hit the road now and so I said goodbye to Darren and Amber. And not wishing to leave Amber out, I slipped her a little present so that she could go shopping. I also had a little word or two in her ear about something or other.

Rachel and I trundled off to Florenceville and the Coach Atlantic bus. Plenty of time to wait and so I started to search my pockets to see what I had forgotten to leave behind.

I found the pot of glue that Darren had given me to look after, and then I boarded the bus.

We stopped at quite a few places along the route, and at the coffee pause at Edmundston I realised that I hadn’t continued the search of my pockets.

And so I did – and found the keys to Strider and Rachel’s spare front door key.

D’ohhhh! That’s really the kind of thing that only I can do, isn’t it?

At Rivieère-du-Loup where I change for the Orleans Express bus to Montreal, I had a chat with the Coach Atlantic driver. She’s doing the return to Moncton tomorrow afternoon and, as luck would have it, is having to call at Florenceville on her way down.

So I negotiated an envelope from the guy in the ticket office, put the keys inside and she dropped it on the dashboard of her bus.

And I settled down ready for the next stage of my journey.

Tuesday 25th September 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE DAY!

This is easily the worst day that I have ever had (apart from days when I’ve been genuinely ill of course) and if I don’t manage to pull myself together somehow I’m going to be in trouble.

I’d been on my travels again during the night. Up to the High Arctic yet again, and I was onshore at the time watching the ship come in. But I’m not going into the gory details as you are probably eating lunch or something.

It took me a while to come round to my senses (much longer than you might think, given the amount of senses that I have these days) and then I had breakfast.And then ended up back on the bed for a while.

Round about midday I pulled myself together enough to have a shower and a change of clothes and to make some sandwiches, and then I hauled myself off up into town and the shop.

And this is where it all started to go wrong.

One of the things that I did was to go to see Ellen and find out how she’s doing. She’s in a bit of a state too and we make a right pair between us. We had a chat but I couldn’t keep my eyes open at all.

So I went back across the road – and fell asleep on a chair not once but twice.

By 17:00 I was totally wasted so when we returned here I went back to bed for an hour or so.

Everyone was out this evening so I made myself some baked potatoes, beans and vegan sausages. That set me up nicely for a while and when Darren came back from the chiropractor we had a chat for a while.

But I couldn’t keep going. Half an hour of that did me in. I have a lot of work to do but I just came back down here and crashed out for good.

That was that.

Monday 24th September 2018 – WINTER IS ACUMEN IN …

… Lhude sing Rudolph.

I woke up this morning … "der der der der DER" – ed … to a heavy frost and a temperature of -2°C. Yes, we are going to be in for a belting winter and no mistake this year.

Frosts and freezing already. I’m not looking forward to it.

And due to some kind of confusion yesterday in the Great Satan, the phone seems to have gone on to New England time so it was an hour later when it went off, and by this time everyone had already left.

So I turned over and went back to sleep for a while, and had pleasant dreams of the High Arctic yet again.

But once I was awake again, I started work.

But not for long.

Darren and George came back. They had to go to Fredericton to pick up an engine, a big-bore Chevy 505 racing engine for a pulling truck. This meant uncoupling the big trailer so seeing as they were struggling I dressed and went to lend a hand.

Once we’d done that, I took the opportunity to leap aboard and we set off south-east, grabbing a coffee on the way past.

And as we were early, we stopped off for a meal. It was a good job that we were early too because it took half an hour for them to prepare our meal. “Something had gone wrong” with the order and I can guess what it was.

We were visiting a guy called George who is apparently the leading North American expert on gas-flowing cylinder heads and I would die to have a garage like his. He’d rebuilt this engine and we had come to pick it up to deliver it.

And if you think that I could talk, you aint heard nuffink yet. We were there for two hours – half an hour to load up and the remaining 90 minutes while he told us “a little story”.

We drove back via the yard where George (our George) picked up his truck, and then we came back here to find that in view of the weather we had run out of heating oil. What a fine time for that to happen.

And it took an age to locate a supplier who actually had a tanker on standby that had fuel in it ready for delivery.

Another thing that I did was to book my bus back to Montreal on Friday night, and a hotel for Saturday night.

And Brain of Britain has done it again, hasn’t he?

Sitting there wondering why hotels were so expensive and in the end booking a cat house even worse than the usual. And then suddenly realising, far too late of course, that the prices quoted are in Canadian Dollars not Euros and hence the difference!

Tea was potatoes, beans and vegan sausage for me and then I called it aday.

It comes to something when something even as simple is this is laying me out on my back.

Sunday 23rd September 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I have given endless amounts of grief to all kinds of Border Patrol, immigration and security services in the past, and on occasions too numerous to enumerate.

And so I take my hat off to Officer Allen of the US Immigration Service who saw me today at Bridgewater, Maine today. If every Immigration Officer were as friendly, courteous and helpful as he, travelling from one country to the next would be an absolute pleasure.

Yes, I’ve been out and about on my travels today. But it was touch and go at one point.

What didn’t help was that, despite it being Sunday, I forgot to switch off the alarm and so that’s guaranteed to get me off on the wrong foot.

I was in the middle of the High Arctic too, doing a guided tour in, of all things, Bill Badger, the old A60 van that I had in the 1970s. When the tour was over, two people – a couple – came over to offer me their services and while I took down their details I knew that I wouldn’t ever be using them, for the least of the reasons being that there are only two seats in the front of the van.

With it being early, I loitered around for a while and then when others started to move around I joined in, had my medication (I’ve found it now) and a coffee.

We all poured out of the house where Amber’s boyfriend was waiting for us, and we shot off down the road to the border. I need a Green Card to cross over, and so I had my pleasant encounter, and then off to Presque Ile in Maine.

It’s my custom when I’m here to treat everyone to Sunday lunch so the Oriental Pearl Chinese buffet was the place to visit. They all tucked into the buffet while the chef made me a vegetable stir-fry with rice.

Next stop was Marden’s.

That’s like Noz only bigger and with more stuff, and many of the tools in Strider have come from there in the past. But today, I bought nothing. Strider and I won’t be going far so I don’t need much.

Back here I hit the wall again and I was gone. Three hours this time, and isn’t this becoming ridiculous? I dunno where I’ll be going with all of this and if I don’t sort myself out soon I won’t make my bus back to Montreal on Friday night.

But later on I came round and surprisingly, had a new lease of life. I could even manage a sandwich. George was back from Winnipeg so he came round and we all had a chat.

But now I’m off to bed. I need to be on the road tomorrow and I have a lot of things to do.

But first I need a good night’s sleep.

EPIC HALL

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