Tag Archives: crash out

Wednesday 7th March 2018 – AND IN KEEPING …

… with my previous efforts just recently, I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifth of five eights of … errr … nothing.

So after finally managing to have an early (that is – before midnight) night last night, I went off with the fairies to what seemed to be a Virtual Reality word somewhere. Clearly the events of the past few days have been getting to me. And the highlight (if you can call it that) of this world was being arrested by the police and being on the end of some customary police interrogation that made me unable to walk for the next three days. I’ll have to stop reading this book about Canada in the 1930s, won’t I?

We had the usual performance this morning and then I was sidetracked as I ended up speaking to someone in the USA for 90 minutes or so on the internet. It was about work so I don’t begrudge the time of course, especially if there might be some folding stuff in the offing, but it always happens at the wrong time, doesn’t it?

I was sufficiently distracted after that that I had a change of practice and had a practice on the bass guitar. Something that I usually do late in the afternoon but today it was here and now. And for some reason or another not only did the bass line to Led Zeppelin’s “Communications Breakdown” come back into my head after an absence of 40-odd years, I found myself playing the bass line to Hawkwind’s “Damnation Alley” and that goes back even farther in time.

And not only that, I seem to have regained the flexibility in my left little finger and I can now hold down the string with that. And that’s progress.

But I’ve now worked out why five-string bass guitars have come into fashion. I’m sure that I played the bass line to several tracks in the past – “Born To Be Wild” and “Locomotive Breath” spring immediately to mind – in the same key as I do now, but I find that I run out of notes at the bottom end. It’s maybe because my hearing has changed as I’ve become older and I’m playing it an octave lower than I did in the 70s. And if that’s true, it probably explains why all the bassists of my age and older are now using five-string basses, so they have an extra range of notes.

After lunch I did my best to fight off the temptation to close my eyes for a short while, but I wasn’t successful. But I dragged myself out after 10 minutes and went for a walk. It was nice weather outside and quite a few people were about, but there was nothing exciting going on.

Tea was, as promised, the falafel and vegetables with a vegan cheese sauce. And it was rather … errr … disappointing. In my haste I forgot to test the vegetables before I put them on the plate and to my dismay I found that they weren’t cooked enough. But you can’t recook them after you have smothered them in cheese sauce so I had to make the best of it.

It was another beautiful evening out there with the lights of Jersey glowing in the distance again. Visibility has been impressive at night this last couple of days.

So an early night again tonight – it’s my walk to the shops tomorrow.

Tuesday 6th March 2018 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with the weather today.

It was bordering on the vergoe of reasonable for much of the day, but that changed as soon as I put my foot outside, as you might expect. It started to rain and my walk this afternoon was undertaken in the wet.

And I wasn’t the only one out in the wet either. We had one of the council workmen out and about practising a little topiary.

Mind you, he wasn’t practising long (and by that I don’t mean that he was perfect either). As I was walking past he was climbing back into his van and by the time I had prepared the camera for the photo he had long-since cleared off down the road.

Clearly a cup of tea was more exciting than being out there in all of this, and I can’t say that I blamed him either.

And if that wasn’t quite enough, this evening it was positively teeming down. But that didn’t put me off by any means. I still went outside and did the rounds nevertheless. I have to keep moving.

And I was certainly moving last night.

I was playing in the attack in some kind of competitive field sport like football or hockey and I managed to get myself into some really good positions, but the speed of the ball off the surface took me by surprise every time and I was always 6 inches short of the ball.

So having just about beaten the second alarm and done the usual morning offices, including a shower, I had a quiet day today. Dealing with some photos as usual, and then investigating this 3D site that I told you about.

Apparently it’s not based on the one that I use but on one that’s much more simple and so I’ll need to find a free copy of that and learn it. That should be exciting but, as I have said in the past, it keeps me out of mischief.

Talking to someone on the internet this afternoon, I almost fell asleep in mid-chat. But I struggled through and felt much better after my walk.

Tea was some more tortillas with the last of the filling that I made the other day. Tomorrow there will be falafel and cheese sauce, which I am looking forward to intently.

And tonight an early night – I hope. It’s going to be another calm day again with a bit of luck.

Wednesday 28th February 2018 – BRRRRR!!!!

It was cool in the bedroom when I awoke this morning, despite the heater being on during the night. But never mind cool, it was taters in the living room. But then, it WAS Minus 5°C outside – the coldest temperature that I have ever recorded here.

That is of course a far cry from the minus 16°C and minus 19°C that we had in thz Auvergne, but theres the fierce wind here to deal with. When I was out for my walk this afternoon the cold wind was blowing straight through my woolly hat and freezing the woolly ears on my woolly head. And that wasn’t anything to be passed over lightly.

It was a slightly more reasonable night last night but what with one thing and another (and once you get started you have no idea how many other things there are) going to bed was nothing like as early as I had hoped.

But when I went I was off on my travels again. Some kind of confusing voyage amongst a group of adolescents, one or two of whom had difficulty understanding the difference between “sleeping with” and “falling asleep with” and couldn’t understand the significance of why a series of doors might be marked as being locked. There was a plate of something like spaghetti involved i it too, although I’m not sure what that was doing in there or what was its significance.

So fist act in here was to switch on both of the heaters in here and put them full-on. Not something that I was ever planning on doing but minus °C here is rather exceptional so I can be excused.

Again, it doesn’t seem that I’ve done very much today but in fact I’ve been rather busy, although there isn’t much to show for it at the moment. Idly surfing the internet like you do, I found a 3D virtual world that acts as some kind of agent for 3D designers to sell their output to the members. I’m far from being at the stage where anything that I ever create is worth selling. However the terms and conditions are not as unreasonable as they otherwise might be, so it gives me some kind of impetus to get myself in order and work on something positive for a change.

Apart from that, not a lot has happened. It’s not been the weather to do to much and it’s not going to get any better tomorrow. I can see my walk out to LIDL being … errr … put on ice.

And I wonder how I’ll sleep tomnight. For some reason I was out like a light for an hour just now and that’s banjaxed all of my plans.

Monday 26th February 2018 – DON’T SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO RUB IT IN?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I went to my Health Insurance people the other day to hand in a pile of documents so that the Doctor who oversees my case at the Insurance office could see them.

And today I had a leaflet from them. “What steps to take when a member of our scheme dies”.

Yes, nothing like rubbing it in, is there?

Mind you I felt like death this morning. Having had a really good sleep yesterday it upset my body rhythm completely and it was 02:00 and beyond before I went to bed.

Struggling out at 06:20 was clearly too much and after breakfast I crashed out well and truly for a good 90 minutes.

However during the night I’d been on my travels again. A few of us were on a train travelling from Chester to Crewe past the old Calveley station, but someone kept on inserting into the voyage old photos of the Chester – Mold – Ruthin railway line. And I’ve no idea why.

After my little wasted morning I decided that it was time to do some work. And so I’ve been hard at it since then. I’ve had another session with this 3D program that I use. I’ve been doing something that I promised quite a while ago, and that is to experiment with textures and templates.

It’s one of those things that the first step takes for ever, but once you have done one of them, it’s fairly straightforward. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro as my graphice editor for over 20 years, but even now I’m having to find and use facilities and functions that I never knew existed.

Despite all of my efforts, it’s still not doing what I think it ought to do. And so I’ll have to put a great deal more effort into it. It’s certainly progress though, all the same.

Having spoken to Rosemary on the telephone, I went for a rather late walk this afternoon.

And I once more fell in with the workmen digging the trench. It seems that they are laying the conduit first, and the cables will follow. And then there will be the connection to the network later.

I did ask about the timescale, and he reckoned that it would be about a year to have it up and running. That’s disappointing from my point of view – I was hoping for it to be much more rapid than that.

But nevertheless, that’s progress too, and I can’t complain too much about that.

Back here, it was time for coffee, as it always is when I come back from my walk.

And I usually allow myself a little treat, and that’s why I like birthdays so much because, having visited Liz and Terry, I’m supplied with another vegan chocolate birthday cake.

Sticky, gooey and chocolatey, and absolutely delicious. This should last me a couple of weeks and then I’ll have to have another birthday.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with the leftover stuffing from the other day. And my walk this evening took me past quite a few people also out taking the air.

So having had a decent morning’s sleep this morning, I wonder how I’ll get on tonight.

Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

Friday 23rd February 2018 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… mystery is resolved today.

And I’ll tell you about it in a little bit.

But first, let me tell you about last night. Although I didn’t get to bed as early as I would have liked, I was still right away with the fairies almost from the word “go”. And I did go on my travels too during the night.

And when I awoke suddenly at 06:15 I thought to myself that I would remember all of the details about this.

But a lot can happen in the five minutes between going back to sleep at 06:15 and the alarm awakening you at 06:20. But what I can remember is that a group of us went a-shopping in different place and when we compared our articles ad the prices that we had paid, they were so wildly fluctuating that we were convinced that something was wrong somewhere.

It was a struggle to leave the bed, and the leisurely start didn’t help much to get me going. But I was jolted out of my reverie by an urgent appeal.

A friend of a friend of a friend has some kind of website with some kind of chatroom facility on it, and he’s changed the chat program for another one and although he could make it work, he couldn’t explain the mechanism to anyone else, even after two days of trying to draft something.

And so I spent the morning looking at this chat program and as luck would have it, it’s based on something that was pretty common 20 years ago and a testament to the idea that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. And, as it happened, I happened to know all about it because I worked with it extensively during the period 2003-2007 during another existence.

And so having refreshed myself with the program quickly, I spent the morning writing a tutorial for it.

The problem was that the one that came with the program is, well, let’s just say “complicated”. And people don’t want anything that is complicated. The truncated attention span of the MTV generation doesn’t run that far and they’ll just walk away. So I had to express it all in about 10 or 12 simple bullet points.

That took me up to lunch, which was another butty, and then I … err … had a little relax. And a little later, another session with the European Photograph Mountain.

And then we went for a walk.

And beautiful weather it was too and so I took myself off around the headland.

On the car park by the lighthouse was a digger digging a trench, and I fell in with a couple of workmen. It seems that, at long last, fibre-optic cable has come to Granville and they are laying the cables.

For once, I’m going to be at the head of the queue for something rather than at the tail end, as I was back on the farm, but when you consider that my first encounter with fibre-optic internet service was back over 20 years ago in Brussels, then maybe it’s not all that much to crow about.

My walk though was considerably extended because away in the distance I could see that myastery ship of yesterday back in the harbour.

So seeing as it was such a nice day I continued on with my walk and went down to the harbour for a closer look.

She is indeed called La Grande Ancre and is indeed out of Cherbourg. But apart from that, I’ve not been able to find anything about her at all, except that back in 2005 she assisted at a shipwreck off the Iles de Chausey, rescued the survivors and towed the damaged boat here to Granville

And while I was there admiring La Grande Ancre, two men from the harbour office came from the port office to liberate a pontoon that was in the way of something.

And so seizing my opportunity I pounced on them. I’ve always said that if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question. And so I did.

And no the mystery is solved.

The lock gate that we have seen is only temporary and will be replaced in two or three weeks by the new ones.

And as for how it works, it’s on a horizontal pivot and simply folds flat on the bottom of the harbour when the tide is in.

So now we know.

Back here I had a coffee and then SHOCK! HORROR! I did some vacuuming. The place was still littered with confetti from the carnaval and it was getting on my wick. It filled the dust container of my vacuum cleaner (it’s only a smallish one) and I had to work out how to empty it. But at least the place looks a little better now.

After the guitar session it was tea time, and that was frozen lentil and green pepper curry from a couple of months ago. And delicious it was too. And once more, I took the route along the clifftop outside the walls for my evening walk.

Now I’m going to have a glass of lemonade and an early night (I hope). And a pleasant dream too.

Thursday 22nd February 2018 – TWO MEN …

… went past my window this afternoon.

And that was something of a surprise because I live on the first floor about 25 feet above the ground.

But it was no mystery when I went out to see what was going on.

There’s a cherry-picker out at the back with two men in attendance, looking at the guttering and the corner of the roof on the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs next door.

My guess is that the vicious winds that we’ve been having over the past couple of months have dislodged something important and now is the time to fix things.

What was a mystery was how I managed to forget completely and totally where I had been during the night. When the first alarm went off I could remember it but in the panic to be out of bed before the second alarm went off, well, that was that I’m afraid.

We had the usual slow start to the morning and while I was waiting for the medication to work I attacked the European Photograph Mountain for an hour or so and freed off another few GB of memory space on there. If I keep up like this, the disk will be empty.

A little later I went for my Thursday shower and general clean-up. And having done that, I hit the streets.

My perambulations took me down to the harbour of course, and there I just missed the raising of the drawbridge or whatever they do to it.

And we have a new ship in port, and I’ll have to make further enquiries about this one because it looks extremely interesting, having a van the size of Caliburn anchored to the deck.

Here she is; just joining the queue to leave port. I wasn’t early enough to see her when she was tied up.

With not having the telephoto lens with me, and being too far away to take a decent shot, I had to make the best of the job that I could.

I couldn’t read her name correctly because of all of the equipment dangling over the stern, but it looks as if she’s called La Grande Ancre out of Cherbourg.

There’s no reference of her on the internet that I’ve been able to find and she’s not in the port records either. So I’m not quite sure how I’m going to track her down.

I carried on to LIDL as usual and didn’t buy anything special. But being fed up of soup right now, I’ve bought some proper bread and lettuce and I’ll be making myself some butties for the foreseeable future. And much to my surprise, at lunchtime I found that I could actually eat them. It took a while, but there we are.

This afternoon I was feeling the strain of my walk. I’d made it all the way up the hill without stopping which is quite a feat and I knew that I would pay for that. But it didn’t stop me going out for my afternoon walk in the sunshine. It really was nice, although a bit windy.

Back here, I crashed out yet again, which is no surprise of course. And then I had a session on the guitar.

Tea was a stuffed pepper which was really nice of course, and then my evening walk. And 116% of my daily activity too, which is good news.

And so maybe an early night. And if I go anywhere during the night I’ll try to remember where it was.

Tuesday 20th February 2018 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really major crash-out during the day is that when it comes to bed-time, you just aren’t ready for sleep. So never mind 23:30 – at 01:20 I was still wide-awake and reading something on the laptop.

And when you do go to bed and finally fall asleep, then you fail to be up and about by the time that the second alarm goes off.

Mind you, I’d been off on my travels again. And weird travels they were too. It was the story of some little cartoon-character marionette who was the butt of the humour in this cartoon strip because he was always falling off objects and making a fool of himself. he had a couple of partners – one of them an “old man” rather in the style of Big Ears and the other one was a bird who was the “conscience” of the cartoon. And so in the new revitalised comic strip each character had a window where they introduced themselves, and in the fourth window were signs that the three characters had decamped rather quickly, with a speech bubble appearing from offstage saying “and I’m a bear”.

I ought to do this stuff for a living.

Which reminds me – if you have enjoyed what I’ve been writing or want to express your gratitude for the effort that I put in on your behalf, why not make your next purchase from Amazon via the links on the sidebar to the right? It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission on the sale and it helps with my web-hosting expenses.

Make sure you pick the correct box for your country.

After the medication and the breakfast, I had a little relax and then had some work to do. And there was plenty of it too.

First job was to download all of the files from the travelling laptop onto an external hard drive and then copy them to the one here. That’s not as simple as it might have been as there is stuff on this external hard-drive going back to 2014. This meant that I had to review it all, categorise it and either copy it over or delete it. And this led to confusion when I had two files of the same name, each one with different amendments.

Another task that I needed to perform was the result of a total mystery. There’s a site on the internet that I access with quite some regularity but for some reason about two weeks ago it gave me a “403 error” message – “you are not authorised to access this directory from this server”, even though it’s a root directory.

And so after much trial and quite a few errors, I abandoned the site which was a shame, because it had been of quite some use to me and I’ve not subsequently been able to find another with similar information. But when I was in Leuven with the travelling laptop, I found that I could access it as normal.

And so back here this morning, I tried to access it with the travelling laptop. But no luck whatever. Back to the 403 error message.

But there’s an open wi-fi network from the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs that I can access with a little configuration. And so I configured the travelling laptop to access that network and, to my surprise, I’m back in.

It seems that my network provider doesn’t like this particular site – the blockage is at their end, not at the receiver’s end. And I’ve no idea why because it’s not as if it’s a “black” site or anything like that. It’s a total mystery to me.

After lunch, I had a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. I need to look my prettiest best because I was going out.

The tide was right out when I set off, and so I went down to the tidal basin to see what I could see.

And would you believe it? Although you probably would. The battery in the camera went flat just as I was about to take a photo. So you’ll have to make do with the photos off the new smartphone.

But the quality of these images is rubbish, especially on telephoto or zoom, so I’ll have to replace them in due course.

The mystery of what the digger and the men were doing in the tidal harbour is resolved, thanks to a local yokel, who turned out to be a very vocal local yokel indeed.

What the digger was doing was dragging for the anchor chains for the boats that are moored in the tidal basin. It seems that many of them have sunk into the mud, taking the odd small boat with them.

Now that they have been uncovered, they can be examined, repaired or replaced as necessary.

The quality of this photo is really so poor that you can’t tell what it’s supposed to be.

But in fact it appears that they have installed a kind of guillotine lock gate installed that rises up to hold back the water when the tide is out.

I’m not sure whether it’s a permanent or a temporary arrangement, but it seems to be working after a fashion and there’s quite a lot of work going on around it.

And another mystery is solved too.

Remember the big crane in the Boulevard des Terreneuviers? It seems that they are knocking down this house in the rue du Port and intending to rebuild it with something else.

The crane is for handling the deliveries of building materials.

And at least the camera on the phone can produce something that might just about be reasonable for this close-up view. Right now, I’m not impressed at all with my photographic equipment.

Down at the Post Office I finally sent off the letters that I had typed before going to Leuven. And that was an adventure too as I struggled to come to grips with the self-service technology.

And to my dismay I found that I had actually purchased a stamp for a letter that was postage-free. That upset me.

The Carrefour was next, and I was struggling for shopping there as they haven’t had a delivery for a week. I had to go to the fruit shop for some more expensive bananas, but at least they have some fresh coriander for my carrot soup.

Back here I had a coffee and some more German vegan chocolate and then, shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies again.

18:45 once more when I finally surfaced, and that at least gave me sufficient time for a strum on the guitar.

Tea was oven chips, beans and a vegan burger, and then I went off in the wind for my evening stroll.

Now I’m going to try for an early night, although how that’s going to work with the good sleep I’ve had this afternoon I really don’t know. And that also means that you’ll have to wait a little longer for your missing two days.

Monday 19th February 2018 – NOW WASN’T THAT JUST SO NICE?

:To be back in my own really comfortable bed just like that, even though it was cold. And having left the alarm call on for 07:20, I could – and did – have the Sleep Of The Dead. And I deserved it too.

I’d been on my travels too during the night – investigating a situation where one of the Maths teachers at this school was up to some kind of subversion and we had to examine their teaching techniques to see if we could discover who it might be. And yet before we could begin we were caught up in an incident outside the school which was clearly related to what we were trying to do – one of the teachers concerned may well have been working on the public at large and so our investigations had to encompass this kind of behaviour too, which immediately enlarged the scope of our enquiries outside the original boundaries and for which we didn’t have enough staff.

After the usual leisurely start to the morning, I attacked the tidying up. Well, sort-of. I’d bought a pile of stuff back from Leuven and this all needed sorting out and stashing away. And then there were a few things that I needed to catch up with, as well as finding someone on-line with whom I needed to speak – and that took a while.

And then I made an unfortunate discovery.

I hadn’t only gone away and left the water heater switched on (it’s on a timer so it’s not too bad) I’d left the fridge door slightly open. And so that had been running non-stop and the freezer compartment was iced up to such an extent that it had pushed open the door. That meant of course that I had to attack that so that I could close the door and calm down the fridge.

Onion soup was for lunch – I’d completely forgotten about the tomato soup that I had stuck in the freezer before I went.

This afternoon I had to download all of the files off the travelling computer (the little lightweight notebook) and copy them onto the laptop that I use at home. I hadn’t finished doing that when it was time for walkies, so I put that to one side and out I went.

The weather was downright miserable though. We’d had a hanging cloud all day and it was one of those clingy wet kinds of cloud that makes you feel all miserable.

Nevertheless, there were a few people out there walking, or, rather, sloshing through the mud, and you couldn’t see all that much away into the distance.

Peering through the gloom though I could however see that this dredging operation in the tidal basin was still ongoing. It looks as if they are going to be in there for the duration.

And I do have to say that I wonder what is the point of it all.

Back here, I had a coffee and some chocolate with the intention of sitting down and cracking on with the file transfer. That was at 16:30. But the next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45. I’d crashed out for over two hours.

Personally, I blame all of the effort that I had undertaken in Belgium. I left here on Wednesday and returned on Sunday. And on ever day I was well over the 100% effort on my fitbit. I’m not as young as I used to be, and my health is deteriorating as you know. I can’t keep on going like I used to.

And so having missed out on my session on the guitar, it was pizza for tea – and a good one it was too. And then my usual walk, where I spent a good 10 minutes giving a stroke and a cuddle to my long-haired furry friend in the old town.

Now I’m heading for an early night. I have lots to do tomorrow.

And don’t worry about the missing couple of days on this blog. I’ll finish downloading the files off the travelling laptop and then I can complete the entries.

Always assuming that I don’t crash out again, of course.

Sunday 18th February 2018 -FOR A REASON …

… that I didn’t understand at first, I slept the Sleep Of The Dead last night.

But I awoke with a start at about 06:40. I realised that I had changed the time of the alarm yesterday so I knew that it wasn’t yet time to awaken, but after about two minutes it hit me that today is Sunday and the alarm was programmed not to ring. And so instead of the usual Sunday morning procedure where I try my best not to awaken, we had the opposite procedure with me trying not to go back to sleep.

And then another thought hit me too.

All throughout the night there had been complete and utter silence from next door. I hadn’t awoken once. Perhaps they weren’t out partying last night at all, but had left the place yesterday morning.

I wondered whether to do a lap of honour.

I’d been on my travels too. Nina, a former girlfriend of mine, was to put in an appearance and so I needed to tidy up Caliburn, especially the back if a little session of indoor alligator wrestling (unlikely) were to take place. I also had to do some more tidying up elsewhere and this involved Dismantling the hi-fi system. Some woman helped me do this because it wasn’t easy, with cables, headphone leads and all of this kind of thing all tangled up into some kind of spaghetti mess that we were desperately endeavouring to sort out.

So with my noisy neighbours apparently having left yesterday, and having had a good night’s sleep as a result (and about time too) I was ready for anything.

Well, almost.

I made a mistake in the boulangerie. To me, a baguette is a baguette, but apparently not in Leuven. Had Jesus ordered five of the ones that were given to me there would have been no miracle about feeding the 5000. I have enough to feed myself for a week.

I took my leave of the guy at the hotel. He asked me if I’d enjoyed my stay. I explained the issues that I’d had with my neighbours and he pulled a face. I told him that I would see him in a few weeks time, and hopefully he would have a quieter room for me…

Emerging from the alleyway at the back of the hotel (to save walking all the way round the block) I burst out laughing when I saw the boulangerie.

We’ve all seen (and some of us have stood in) the queues outside the bakers’ shops in Poland and Bulgaria, places like that under the Communists. And here in Belgium we have exactly the same situation.

Of course, maybe not for the same reasons, but it’s amusing nevertheless to see it.

My luck was in at Leuven station. The earlier express to Brussels was held up while they endeavoured to negotiate a wheelchair and its occupant aboard, and so I leapt on board too.

There’s no doubt whatever that the guy was disabled, but when I saw him a little later walking around the train I thought that he might have given the porter at the station a little more help. But then, that might have meant that the train would have left earlier and I would have had a cold and miserable wait on the station for the next train.

And I managed to drop my woolly hat – the one that goes on my woolly head – in the train and some woman shouted after me as I was about to alight.

And although it was a cold and miserable wait in the waiting room at Bruxelles-Midi, at least we had some entertainment. For police officers manhandling … "PERSONhandling" – ed … two boys out of the restricted area. “I didn’t steal anything” wailed one of the boys but the police are the same the whole world over and took no notice whatsoever.

The TGV previous to mine had been 10 minutes late but my train actually pulled in early, which made a nice change, and so I was one of the first to clamber aboard which is always helpful.

Old, tired and a little tatty around the edges. And the train wasn’t much better either. These first-generation TGVs have done quite a lot of work.

There were a surprising number of empty seats too – probably 80 or 85% occupancy. My experience of TGVs is that they are usually packed to the gunwhales.

We arrived at Paris Gare du Nord bang on schedule, which is just as well seeing that my train to Granville has been advanced half an hour because of the engineering works on the line. There’s no time to loiter.

But even more importantly, I arrived totally intact with nothing else missing from my trousseau. That makes a change after the events of the past few weeks.

But this train thing is going to become an issue in early course. They have a rolling programme of modernisation of the stations along Line 4 – the direct line between Paris Gare du Nord and Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard. And on 17th March the platforms on the line here will be taken out of service.

There’s always an alternative route, like Line 5 to the Place d’Italie and then Line 6, but it’s complicated and takes much longer. And time is tight.

And in case you’re wondering, it is a different train from the one that I photographed in Brussels. Our train was made up of two train sets coupled together and they were of different classes.

I arrived at Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard and my waiting room with 20 minutes to spare. And found a seat next to a girl from California who spoke French with a remarkably good accent.

You’ll remember last time I was here and the “incident” involving the woman and her mother. Here, we had quite an ugly incident where a couple arrived after boarding for their train had completed but before it had left, and they were refused admission to the platform. The abuse, insults and vitriol that they were giving the staff was outrageous.

Just to make things clear, it states quite definitely on your ticket that you should be present on the platform no later than 2 minutes before the departure time, and I’m sure that people don’t realise just how much of a walk it is to Vaugirard. Apart from the 1.3 kilometres of foot passage from the Metro (I’ve measured it), the platforms at Vaugirard are right down at the end of Montparnasse’s Platform 23, which is a very long platform. It’s a marathon hike and you won’t do it all in a couple of minutes.

Eventually we could board our train so I took my leave of my companion and had another nice travelling companion for some of the way home.

I left my seat though a couple of miles out because at a certain point there’s a really good view of the Eiffel Tower and I wanted to get an eiffel of it.

It’s not come out very clearly because there’s only so much possibility with a swaying train and a camera shot through a dirty double-glazed window.

After my companion left I settled down to my butties and then dozed almost all the way to Granville.

We arrived on time, which is late these days because of the engineering works, and I had to help a woman with her suitcase (what help would I be?) as she struggled with a screaming infant.

And then through the drizzly rain (quite a change from the weather in Paris) I had a weary, dreary walk home. It’s definitely taking a lot out of me. If my health deteriorates further (which it’s bound to do) I’ll have to remember not to come home on a Sunday. The buses don’t run on Sunday.

Back here after I eventually arrived, I crashed out on the sofa with a coffee and was out of it completely until about 20:30. I missed tea of course, but I did have a bag of nuts and raisins.

And with the fitbit telling me that I’ve done 80% of my day’s activity, I crawled out of the apartment for a lap around the old town. When I came back I was on 102% so that’s enough for today.

I’ve done enough. I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a week.

Friday 16th February 2018 – MY NEIGHBOURS …

… are getting on my wick.

I dunno what they are doing in their room but involves noise – noise that goes on until 04:00 in the morning.

It’s not as if it’s a very loud noise but the walls are paper-thin here and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a very light sleeper.

And so with my noisy neighbours next door, I had no qualms whatever about my very noisy alarm going off at 06:20 this morning. Or the noisy repeat at 06:30.

But despite everything I was off on my travels during the night.In a shed where a group of young kids had barricaded themselves in to protect themselves against some kind of monster. But they had left their pony outside in its stable in the field and someone was wondering if they should protect that too. But another kid piped up that if you spread out your forces too thinly to try to protect everything you end up protecting nothing. So they didn’t. And the monster’s attack on this shed was very half-hearted and the pony was unscathed.
A little later, these kids were looking for their black kitten that had escaped. The search involved wading up to their knees in some very muddy water much to the amusement of some nearby workmen, and this became even more amusing when one of the kids had made it into the water and the kitten was spotted running across the top of a brick wall nearby.

After breakfast and the usual pause to let the medication do its stuff (yes, I obtained another prescription when I was at the hospital) I went off to the railway station.

There was an Intercity to Brussels that was running late, and it pulled into the station just as I arrived so I leapt on board and settled down in a comfortable corner with my book.

And as a result of the late arrival of the train, I for one arrived in Brussels at the Gare Central before time, which is always very nice.

The metro was quite painless too – took me all the way to Merode in minutes.

Consequently I was early at my health insurance people, even though we had another distraction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a thing about “parking”, and there are no finer examples of bad parking to be had than in Brussels.

Here we have a delivery van stopped to unload a couple of parcels and so he’s blocking the street as he double-parks.

But hed he not been so lazy, he could have advanced not even 10 metres and parked his van for two minutes in front of the dark blue Peugeot.

But obviously walking that extra 10 metres is far too difficult for the poor dear.

So back to the plot.

I presented myself at the reception.
“You’ll have to wait – it’s not 09:30 yet”
“But …”
“You’ll have to wait”.
And so I waited
At 09:29 “it’ll be open in a minute. Can you show me your badge?”
“I don’t have a badge – I’m a foreign visitor”
“Then you’ll need to go to reception to fill in a form”.
“I know. That’s what I was trying to do when you stopped me”

Eventually I was allowed in and, to be frank, I needn’t have bothered. When I’ve been there before, they’ve been most kind and considerate in that office.

But not today. I dunno what’s the matter with them but they just seemed to be more keen to see the back of me. I didn’t accomplish half of the things that I intended to do.

But instead, I went for awalk across the park and down to the Rond-Point Schuman. It was a beautiful morning.

The park is the Parc de la Cinquantenaire – the 50th Anniversary Park, and was established by King Leopold II in 1880 (although the huge arch wasn’t built until 1905) on the site of a military parade ground for the nearby barracks, to host an exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence.

Several subsequent exhibitions were held here until the new site out by the Atomium was developed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned parrots in Belgium before.

There was an aviary in the city that was bombed during the war and all of the exotic birds escaped. Surprisingly, many of them survived the cold winters and went on to establish breeding colonies in the wild.

There are considerable flocks of these exotic birds all over the city these days, and here are two of the aforementioned sitting in a tree in the park. It’s hard to believe that this is a city in north-west Europe with a continental climate.

At the bank I picked up two of my cards (for some reason the third hadn’t been prepared and I’ll have to go back) and even more surprisingly, they work. That’s all of my financial issues resolved right now – for the time being. I can actually access my money now.

Back down on the metro to the Gare Centrale and Malou turned up on time.She’d been out on the Belgian coast for a holiday and was returning to Luxembourg. We’d agreed to meet up for coffee seeing as it’s been years since we last met.

We put the world to rights for a couple of hours and then we both went our separate ways. She on to Luxembourg and me back to Leuven.

There were still a few things that I had wanted to do here in Brussels like visit the railway museum, and this was what I had planned for this afternoon. But having had a bad night, I came home instead.

Via the Vegan shop in Leuven where I picked up some more vegan cheese. I came back here, made myself a cheese and tomato butty or two, and then … errr … relaxed for a while. I’d had a bad night.

18:00 saw me head off to the railway station for my train at 18:36. And because it was departing before 19:00 I had to pay full price and not a weekend saver ticket.

And the train was 20 minutes late coming in and – would you believe – 23 minutes later still in leaving (just missing the 45 minutes-late threshold for compensation) Which meant that I could have bought a weekend saver anyway.

We arrived in Lier 45 minutes late which meant that I had to scramble over the road for my big bag of chips for tea, and then scramble off in a hurry down the road to Het Lisp.

No prizes for guessing why I had come to Lier, of course.

There’s one game in the Belgian Second Division on a Friday night every week, and this week it’s the turn of Lierse SK against KSV Roeselare.

Lier is easily accessible from Leuven even late at night (or early in the morning) so it’s always a good choice of ground to visit.

With KSV Roeselare being the visitors, I was hoping that we might have the Battle of the Cheerleaders.

Both teams have cheerleaders, which is always very good for the morale, but I do have to say that the young ones of Roeselare can knock spots off the home team. Much better organised and much better choreographed.

But no such luck. It was just the Lierse SK cheerleaders here tonight. It’s better than nothing of course.

Cheerleaders we might have, but fans we didn’t seem to.

I’ve been to Lier and the Het Lisp Stadion on several occasions to see the football, but I don’t think that I’ve seen the ground as empty as this.

It’s not quite the “announcing the fan changes to the teams” that you have at Tubize, but it was disappointing all the same. And there wasn’t much in the way of atmosphere to compensate. It was all very subdued.

The supporters weren’t the only thing that was subdued either. The Lierse SK team played like they were half asleep. They had little enthusiasm, little attacking spirit and, so it seemed, little interest.

Strangely enough, Roeselare didn’t seem to be in all that much of an attackign mood either, content to move the ball around ahead of the defence.

It wasn’t until about the 25th minute when they first tried the ball over the top. And a player running in shot, the keeper could only parry it, and a Roeselare attacker followed up.

Roeselare still kept on pouring forward, and much to everyone’s surprise Lierse SK scored against the run of play.

Well into the second hald, the first time they tried one over the top and won a corner. From the corner we had a carbon copy of Roeselare’s goal.

The match still went on at a pedestrian pace from Lierse SK’s point of view and with about 10 minutes to go, Roeselare were awarded a penatly – which was saved.

This had the effect of switching on the current to the Lierse SK side and they started to attack. The final 10 or so minutes of the game were quite exciting.

In stoppage time, Lierse won a series of corners and had two (dubious) appeals for a penalty turned down. And so as you might expect, Roeselare roared upfield and scored the winner with almost the final kick of the game.

I was back on the station just in time to catch the earlier direct train to Leuven, which cheered me up no end. So I was back here before midnight.

But my neighbours are partying again. I think that it’s going to be another long night.

Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.

Monday 12th February 2018 – IT’S SNOWING!!!!

We had bright sunlight quite early on and I’d turned the light off early today. But round about 10:30 it went pitch-black outside.

And so out of curiosity I went for a peep out of the window and sure enough, we were having a fall of snow.

No-one was more surprised than me to see it, that’s for sure. I love the snow as you know, and I was bitterly disappointed to think that I might have missed out.

Mind you, when I say “snowing” – that’s something of an exaggeration. Especially when regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen photos of the Auvergne where I lived and where we could have half a metre of snow at the drop of a hat.

This was just a bare covering of snow, and unfortunately it didn’t last long. The weather quickly brightened up and within 20 minutes it had all melted away.

But it’s snow nevertheless, and here are the photos to prove it.

I’d had another good night’s sleep and been travelling again. I can only remember a small part of it, and that involved a cruise liner with a scene something reminiscent of Carry On Cruising. There was also a pile of loose change to be considered too, and the pieces of money were large and mis-shapen, nothing like what you would expect coins to look like these days.

Medication and breakfast, and once it all worked I settled down and attacked the European Photo Mountain. I’m at the stage where I can slowly start to add things back into the stuff on the external hard drive. It’s certainly a lot tidier – and a lot emptier – than it was when I resurrected it.

But there’s still tonnes of stuff missing and I do wonder where it’s all gone to. There must be another external hard drive somewhere, but I’m badgered if I know where it might be.

With a minor interruption to look at the snow, I carried on with it until lunchtime, and soup again.

Back at work and I had a phone call to make. It’s another one of these cases where you send a letter to someone telling them of your change of address, so they send the next document to your old address. I’m fed up of all of this.

And then there was a letter to write. That involved a lot of work and research, but that’s done now. And then there was a pile of stuff to print off. My Health Insurance want a declaration that I’m still alive (I’m not even sure of that and I’m sure that you aren’t either) and there are some documents from the Health Insurance to hand in to them. All of that needed to be printed off in order to take with me on Wednesday.

And then I tidied up and filed away a load of paperwork that had been lying around.

It was a beautiful, bright, warm sunny afternoon so I went for my afternoon walk around the headland again.

And I was in luck – just in time to see Normandy Trader cast off forr’ead and cast off aft, and set sail … "diesel" – ed … out of her little mooring.

Yes, the tide is right in, so there’s no point in my going down to look at this new gate arrangement thing to see what they have done.

So with a touch of “left hand down a bit”, Normandy Trader negotiated the exit to the tidal harbour and headed off out to the open seas.

I thought that we might have had a maritime disaster on her hands as just as she was leaving, two fishing boats appeared coming in.

But keeping starboard to starboard instead of the more usual port to port, there were no shipwrecks, nobody drownding and nothing to laugh at at all.

Back here I had a cold drink for a change – it was so warm (for the time of year) and then my exertions caught up with me.

Half an hour later, I had a session on the bass guitar – this time picking out the bass line to “Ride a White Swan” by T Rex. As the skunk said when the wind changed, “it all comes back to me now”.

Tea was more tortillas (I want to finish off the packet before I leave) with another load of my home-made stuffing mix, which really is good, even though I say it myself.

The wind had got up again when I went out for my night-time walk. It seems like the easly Spring has come and gone.

So I’ll have an early night, I reckon. Plenty to do tomorrow and there’s the Mardi Gras parade for the carnaval tomorrow afternoon.

Not to be missed, so I’m told.

Friday 9th February 2018 – HAVING REGAINED MY COMPOSURE …

… after the mail that I received from the Bank yesterday, I sent them a reply this afternoon. Carefully thought out, I’ve asked for a reply to five points that, for me, are quite important in my dealings with them.

And I received an answer from them as well- which basically didn’t answer any questions at all.

But I did learn one thing – and that is that the person with whom I have been dealing recently “is no longer with the Bank”. So that’s two employees of the Credit Agricole in Granville that I’ve seen off. Who’s next? The woman who is dealing with my affairs now is a Madame Rottier. And I bet that that’s a spelling mistake too.

And for another change I had the Sleep of the Dead yet again last night. And quite rightly so. It’s about time. And I was up and about when the second alarm went off, which is even better.

We had the usual arrangements this morning of course, and once the medication worked I went out and about to do my shopping. The idea was to do it this morning before they started to close off all of the roads for the Carnaval. The downside of this is that everyone else decided to do the same thing too, and so everywhere was crowded.

First port of call though was the Tax Office. I’ve had the bill for my stay in hospital over New Year so that needs to be paid. With me going to Leuven next week, I’m staying for a couple of days extra and I’ve arranged to go into Brussels on Friday where I can call in at my Health Insurance people and hand in all of the receipts.

But the queue there was quite something. I don’t know how long it takes to pay a bill – for me it’s about 30 seconds – but the woman on the cash desk was really making a performance of it all and everyone was quite frustrated by her “work to rule”.

LIDL came up with nothing at all spectacular, but all of the excitement was outside in the car park.

Liz told me the other day that they had had a heavy snowfall where she lives – just 15 miles or so from here – and that was hard to believe considering the weather that we have had.

But here in the car park at LIDL was a car with snow embedded under the wheel arches and with a large lump that had just fallen off.

After LIDL I went to a new shop. Liz had told me about a frozen food place called Picard that she had found and there is one in Granville. So I popped in for a look around. There’s tons more stuff than there is anywhere else, but at a price. Nevertheless, it’s handy to know if I need anything that isn’t mainstream.

Bureau Vallée was next, and they had restocked their 2GB memory sticks. So another two have now disappeared into my apartment.

After lunch and my little correspondence session, I braved the howling gale (it really was wicked) and went for a walk.

My route took me around the headland and it was well-worth the struggle against the wind because I was treated to a most spectacular sight of the waves being hurled over the sea wall into the tidal basin.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve come to live by the seaside. The power of the waves and the storms is quite impressive. You need to remember that I’m living right where the highest ever wind speed to hit the French coast was recorded – 220kph in 1987

Back here with a coffee and a … errr … relax, and then a session on the database followed by the usual half-hour on the guiter. And I suddenly found myself playing the bass line to Budgie’s “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman”. That brings back memories from when I met Ray Phillips, the former Budgie drummer who had played on that album and was looking for a bassist for a gig he was playing with an ad-hoc band at a pub in Nantwich one night in 1977.

After tea (the rest of the oven chips, beans and falafel) I went into town to see what was happening with the carnaval.

The funfair was all closed up and in darkness, but there were quite a few people around in the streets. So much so that a fast-food outlet had opened its doors to serve them.

I can’t say that I was tempted very much – the smell of roasted flesh is disgusting if you ask me.

Everyone was heading into the square so I followed them to see what was going on.

Almost everyone was in fancy-dress, and that’s because there was a carnaval-eve ball taking place, with a rock band and everything. But far too “young” for me. Never mind the Phyllosan to fortify the over-40s – what do they have to sixtify the over-60s?

But it did remind me of the noise that I once heard from the village hall in Byley a good few years ago.
“What’s all that noise going on in there?”
“They are holding a Young Farmer’s Ball”
“And what’s the matter? Can’t he get them to let go?”

Not feeling in the least bit tired (but rather fatigued nevertheless) I went for a walk to the Place Maréchal Foch and the Casino.

I’d not really been for a good wander around there in the dark before, so now seemed to be as good a time as any.

There were cars parked all over the place, as you might expect with it being carnaval and half of the streets closed off, and it rather spoilt the view unfortunately.

We’ve seen plenty of photographs of the casino in the past but we have never seen it quite like this.

There’s definitely something about the effects of artificial lighting at night-time to bring out the best of a building, and that’s exactly what we have here. It really does look good.

In the corner to the left of the casino we have the little theatre. I’ve not yet been there – but that’s basically because there’s nothing that ever goes on there that is of interest to me.

Instead, I continued with my walk around the Place Marechal Foch, and passed by the Hotel des Bains.

This has been described as “delightfully chic” in some travel guides, which means that it isn’t the kind of place that you are ever likely to find Yours Truly spending a night these days.

But nevertheless, the building is quite impressive. It’s fairly modern but it’s been built with some kind of tasteful eye on the history of the town which is always nice to see. It’s a shame that more people can’t make an effort.

With still 12%of my daily activity to do, I carried on with my walk. and I’m glad I did because I spotted this way in the distance.

And when was the last time that you saw a Bedford CF on the road anywhere? I haven’t seen one for years. The last British “Vauxhall” vehicle, they wer emade from 1969 to compete with the Ford Transit but came on the scene far too late.

The Transit was already well-established by then, with the previous CA Bedford putting up no resistance, and the CF didn’t last long. It disappeared with hardly a whimper in 1987 when the “Cevel” vans of Peugeot and Citroen flooded into the UK.

And I for one never expected to see one again.

No shopping tomorrow, but there’s a carnaval procession. I mustn’t miss that, so I’ll have to be in the Town Centre at 13:30.

No peace for the wicked.

Wednesday 7th February 2018 – I MISSED …

… the first alarm this morning.

Well, I actually didn’t. I vaguely remember it going off, and I vaguely remember reaching out and turning it off. And then that was that until the second alarm went off. Dead to the world. And it was a struggle to haul myself out of bed – I’ll tell you that.

A,d I’d been on my travels again during the night. I Was with some girl or woman – and I can’t remember who now – watching some old cat try to come to terms with three kittens who were doing their usual kitten antics like falling into the bowl of milk. Watching the bewilderment on the face of this old cat made us both remark at the same moment that it was like he had completely forgotten that a few years ago he was a kitten too.

After the usual performance this morning, I cracked on with this huge pile of photos that I’ve discovered. And anther enormous pile has headed the way of being stored on the External Hard Drive in the Sky. Duplicates, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, we’ve got the lot.

On my laptop I’ve a duplicate file finder program and I set it to work in one of the directories, but it took one look at what I was expecting it to do and promptly crashed. And I can’t say that I blamed it.

But I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was gone 13:30 when I stopped for lunch. And another packet of that “5 assorted vegetables passed through a sieve” soup, with small pasta and bulghour. Add some bread and fruit as well, and there you are.

This afternoon, with not having gone out, I attacked another corner of the living room – the part between the sofa and the window. That’s all vacuumed, cleaned and tidied and things put away.

The good news is that when I moved the sofa back to vacuum underneath where it had been I found the miniature 64GB memory stick. I’d totally forgotten about that. But that prompted me to do a back-up of the laptop. You never know.

And I’ve started to pack for Leuven next week. It’s never too early for that of course.

We had the usual walk around the headland, in the bitter biting wind, followed by a coffee, a … errr … relax, and then an attack on the database, as well as a play on the bass guitar.

For tea we had oven chips, beans and some falafel that I had bought at the weekend. And it’s nothing like as good as you might find in a Leuven fritkot.

Out into the wind for the evening walk, and then back here. And that’s that for today. I’ve done quite enough. Shopping tomorrow of course, and I need to stock up a little because the town will be in chaos this weekend with the carnaval.

So I’d better have an early night, hadn’t I?

EPIC HALL

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