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Monday 6th January 2020 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

… I really will have myself an early night.

Last night was some time around 02:00 when I finally went to bed. I stayed up to finish off this radio programme in a case of “ship or bust” so that it would be ready for our meeting, and that was that.

No peace for the wicked. I cracked on and on and on, and now it’s finished. It could be better, I suppose, had I taken more time, but there is a vacant broadcasting space tomorrow at 17:00 CET and it was there for the taking.

And when I finally went off to bed, I found that I couldn’t sleep and ended up having a dreadful night. And although I heard the two earlier alarms, I was still debating whether to get out of bed when the third one went off.

Something of a failure there.

After the medication, I attacked the dictaphone notes from the night. And yes we had been on our way home yet again from the High Arctic. However, instead of an aeroplane, we were all standing around waiting for a pile of buses. Our particular bus was a single decker and there were a lot of people waiting for it so they sent for another bus which turned out to be a double-decker. We were being strictly controlled about entering – only being allowed 20 at once or something like that so the driver could check our tickets (… doesn’t this sound familiar? …) but then the double-decker appeared so everyone wandered off there and there didn’t seem to be any control on that. There was one girl most upset about not being allowed on the single-decker coach with the driver there. She was pleading with him trying to make her some room so that she could travel with him rather than the double-decker.

After breakfast I did some more work on my own radio project, and then went for my shower. My weight is going up again and I don’t like this one bit. I have noticed that my raging thirst has dried up, that I’m not as sprightly as I was a couple of weeks ago and that I’m more tired than before (I crashed out again for 15 minutes today).

Maybe all of this is related.

Anyway, I hit the streets and headed off for our weekly meeting at the Centre Agora. We weren’t all that many today. Three of our usual suspects were missing. And that reminds me – one of those missing had a parcel waiting for him at Carrefour that he couldn’t collect, so he had e-mailed me a copy of his identity card and I went to pick it up.

At the radio meeting I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that the only way that I’m ever going to get anything done is simply to do it and present it as a fait accompli, so I’ll be working on my notes from the trip to Versailles next.

While we’re on the subject, the affair of this musician rumbles on and on. The guy who thinks he runs the place has had the notes for over two weeks and done nothing at all with them. Today he gave them to me and asked me if I could translate them into French so that he could dictate them as an overdub.

Talk about making work for yourself and everyone else. If it’s beyond his capabilities, why did he take it on in the first place? Mind you, regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying something about how possessive these people are of their ideas.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall exactly how I suggested that it should be done in the first place. And had it been done like this, the programme would have been completed, broadcast and filed away a long time before this

It’s hardly any surprise that nothing seems to get done when they work like this. I’ve always considered myself in the past to be totally disorganised, but I’m rapidly changing my opinion.

They way it’s going, I can see it ending up as a rambling, hopeless monologue. At least with Laurent, he was quite amenable to my ideas and quite malleable and we made a decent outside- broadcast radio programme “on the fly” in a matter of 8 hours and it’ll be on the air on Tuesday.

On the way home I called in at LIDL and I spent a larger-than-usual sum of money. Mind you, one of the purchases was a pile of new undies to go with the new socks that I bought 10 days or so ago. My undergarments are starting to look quite threadbare and it’s high time that I thought about some new stuff. The older stuff can go in the pile to go to Canada.

There was some more of that delicious sorbet there too. Strawberry this time too so I bagged a tub. I seem to be overflowing with sorbets just now but it’s a case of getting them while the getting is good.

Carrots too. I’ve run right out so I need more. There were 2kg-bags on offer again so tomorrow I’ll have a mega-carrot-preparing session ready for the freezer.

On the way back home, at the corner of the rue Herel and the rue St Paul I encountered the recycled rubbish-emptier.

In haste, I managed to grab a quick photo of him, but while I might have been too slow to actually photograph the rubbish being emptied, I was too quick to press the shutter and the image didn’t have time to settle down so it’s come out blurred.

But then that’s life.

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and headed for home.

For the rest of the day I’ve been working on my radio project and that’s taken longer than it ought to have done too. One of the reasons was that I had to redesign the web page for the playlist. And to make it more interesting, I’m just going to do one for the whole of the year 2020 – if I manage to keep on going for that long.

As usual, there were several interruptions during the day. Lunch was one of them of course (and my new hummus is delicious) and … errr … having a little relax was another.

Going out for a walk was a third interruption too.

And I didn’t get far before I was waylaid as usual. Yes, I’m still on this “pathetic parking” lark, aren’t I? And here’s another example for the record.

It’s usually brand-new Mercedes and BMWs that do this kind of thing, but how about a little Peugeot that is almost 11 years old at least?

Some people have no shame.

Once again, I noticed some movement way out in the English Channel so in order to identify it, I took a speculative shot with the aim of blowing it up (the image, not the object) back in the apartment.

And it’s not a gravel boat. It really does look as if they have stopped coming. Instead it’s one of the trawler-type of fishing boats that operate from out of the port.

Loads of gulls around it, so it looks as if she has a full hold today which is good news.

Talking of fishing boats … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a look in at the chantier navale this afternoon

Spirit of Conrad is still there – she looks as if she has taken root down there – and so is the small shellfish boat. But there’s also another fishing boat in there now and people are working on her like 13 to the dozen.

And I’m not at all sure what is coming out of the air vent. Steam or water, but it could really be anything.

Over at the ferry terminal there has been some movement of the shipping too.

Chausiais and Joly France have been parked up over there for quite a few days now, but they seem to have changed places. That quite possibly means that there’s going to be some movement very soon, although I’m not quite sure what.

And I stil haven’t worked out what it is that Chausiais will be doing.

Movement too in the inner wet harbour.

We haven’t seen a gravel bot for an age now, but the smaller freighters are coming in quite regularly still. Thora has now turned up in the harbour and although you can’t see them in this photo, there are a large pile of these builders’ bags, the kind of stuff they put sand and gravel in, lined up on the dockside.

But Thora is starting to look a little run-down now compared to how she was when she first arrived. She could do with a coat of paint.

Back at the apartment there was yet another interruption. The lemon and ginger drink that I made a couple of weeks ago is now on its last legs. And with a pile of juice-oranges (or, rather, clementines) lying around here, I set a clementine-and-ginger drink off to start. We’ll see what that turns out like.

Once the radio project had been completed and I’d had a little relax, I made tea. I’m away from Thursday morning for a few days so it was another “leftover curry”. It was absolutely delicious and, even better, there’s enough for another two days

On my evening walk, I wa all alone again. The run wasn’t a success either as I struggled to even make the foot of the ramp and in the end just managed four paces up it.

But now I’m back and totally exhausted. I have a feeling that tonight I’ll be asleep long before I finish writing this …

ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Saturday 28th December 2019 – HOW ABOUT …

… this as a fine way to start off the morning?

There we were, Caliburn and I, sitting in the car park just above the chantier navale down the road here, watching the sun rise above the horizon over St Pair sur Mer and the Baie de Mont St Michel.

That’s not a sight that I’m likely to see very often – the sunrise. We have seen it before on a few occasions but very very rarely when we are back home.

But just in case you are wondering, which I’m sure you are, this wasn’t at some ridiculous hour like 04:00, this was the situation at just before 09:00 this morning. It’s the middle of winter as you know.

Last night, I was in bed realtively early compared to how its been just recently. And although it was a struggle, I did actually make it up out of bed before the third alarm at 06:20. Only just, but nevertheless …

After the medication I attacked the dictaphone notes, as I had in fact been on my travels during the night as I discovered. I didn’t remember much about them except at one point I was on a bus as a passenger. I’d been taking an express bus strip from somewhere or other and I’d got to be picked up and I wasn’t sure whether my luggage had been put in the boot or not, my green rucksack and a brown jacket. I went round the back to look and there was a guy there, and I was talking to him but suddenly the bus took off and we ended up the two of us sitting in the luggage boot having a chat about this and that, going around Crewe. I remember thinking that we can’t go all the way to Caen sitting here like this – we’re going to have to get out at one point, but anway that was that.
Earlier, there was a situation where I had a girlfriend and I was doing something and some guy, one of these arrogant pushy types, was talking to my girlfriend. He turned round and said “anyway, you’re with me now” to which this girl replied “no, no no I’m not. I’m with Eric (or whatever my name was at the time)”. He wasn’t used to being turned down like this and became quite annoyed by it.

Once breakfast was out of the way I split another digital album into its component tracks and that’s all looking good. Then I hit the streets.

As well as the gorgeous sunrise this morning, there was also activity at the ferry terminal.

Granville, the modern Channel Islands ferry that came from Sweden a few years ago, is at the ferry terminal and she looks as if she’s loading up ready for a trip out to Jersey this morning.

Thinking hard, I’m not at all sure that I’ve actually seen one of the Channel Islands ferries actually depart from the terminal. I’ll have to give this a miss too as I’m in a hurry.

Having visited LIDL on foot on Friday and not been tempted by anything on offer, I made my way straight to LeClerc.

It’s the tradition in France at New Year to eat oysters and to drink champagne. And sure enough, one of the local oyster-sellers has set up his stall just outside the supermarket today in order to catch the crowds.

And by the way – it’s not true that oysters are an aphrodisiac. I had 12 on my wedding night and only 10 of them worked.

In Leclerc I bought my ticket for the next football match – in Versailles! US Granville are away in the cup next weekend and once more, there are buses provided. If you pay for your seat on the bus (which I did – €10:00) the club will give you a free ticket to enter the ground.

Sounds very fair to me!

And even though I didn’t spend much money in LeClerc today, I was there for much longer than I wanted to be. For some reason which only they will know, a charge of about €3:60 was added to my bill “for Carte Noire coffee” – and I hadn’t bought any.

The girl at the cash desk couldn’t deal with it so I ended up having to go back to Reception where eventually, and not with just a little umming and ahhing either, I had my money back.

But I’ll watch my bill in future.

Another thing that I will watch will be the ice-cream freezer. Today, I found a tub of banana sorbet, 100% vegan. That’s my New Year treat and if it’s any good, which I hope it will be, I’ll be getting some more.

From LeClerc I went on to NOZ. And spent more money in there than I intended to too.

But the main reason for that was that they had a box of 7 high-quality “brand name” socks on offer at just €7:99. I get through cheap socks at an astonishing rate and yet some decent ones that I bought in 2013 are only just now wearing through and need to be replaced.

They also had twin-packs of proper woollen Arctic over-socks there too, so I bought one of those. If ever I go North again, which I hope to do, keeping my extremities warm is important.

And in that respect, rummaging around in the €0:99 bin I found another woolly hat.

Back here I put everything away and then for a little while I started the tidying up. Not for long though because I had to sit down after a while. So I had a coffee and vegetated.

Later this afternoon I went for my little walk around the headland.

There were crowds of people out there today because although it was grey and overcast, it wasn’t all that cold and the wind had dropped considerably too0

But it took me a while to get going. I was “detained” by Gribouille who came for a stroke and I ended up chatting to his mum for quite a while. I hadn’t seen her for ages.

There wasn’t anything else whatever of note going on so I did my circuit around the headland and came back home.

For all of the afternoon I’ve been alternating between cleaning and resting (and crashing out for 10 minutes too, unfortunately). I might be having visitors tomorrow so the place needs to look respectable.

At least the toilet and the bathroom are cleaned and the floors washed. The rest of the place has been vacuumed out and some attempt at tidying has been made.

Another thing that I did was to finish off the making of the rest of the lemon and ginger drink and it’s not too bad at all. 6 litres in all, I made.

The leftover pulp, now not too strong, is in the fridge and I added a little of it to tonight’s tea – a curry from October 2018 that I found in the freezer. It gave it a certain je ne sais quoi.

And while I was in LeClerc I bought some more ginger. I’ll let that ripen for a few days and then I’ll have a bash at doing something with some oranges. That should be interesting.

On my evening walk tonight, there wasn’t a soul about whatsoever. No idea why because it was a lovely evening.

Having been around the headland this afternoon, I took my walk around the walls tonight but there wasn’t anything of interest to photograph either.

With no-one about in the Square Maurice Marland, I could have my run without disturbing anyone or embarrassing myself, and I made it all the way across and half-way up the ramp. I don’t suppose that I should be too disappointed with that.

Having seen Gribouille this afternoon, it was the turn of Minette this evening. She was sitting on her windowsill watching the world go by, and she let me give her a stroke for a few minutes

By the time I reached the apartment I noticed that I had done 83% of my day’s activities. And so with it being such a pleasant evening, I pushed on to continue my walk up towards the Pointe du Roc

Round in the harbour, there wasn’t anything worth seeing. Granville was back and moored up, so I walked on to the chantier navale to see how Spirit of Conrad and the fishing boat were doing.

Both are still there and on their own too, but I did notice that a new set of blocks had been laid out. Are we perhaps expecting another visitor some time soon?

While I was musing on the foregoing, my reverie was interrupted by the sound of a long-stroke diesel engine coming around the headland.

Not sure what it might be, I waited for a while until it came into view and sure enough, it’s another fishing vessel heading back into the harbour.

When I had started my walk a little earlier I’d noticed that there were half a dozen or so out there in the distance. They must be on their way home

While the fishing boat continued its progress towards the port, I continued mine, around the headland and then down the rue du Roc towards home.

And as I crossed the threshold into the apartment the fitbit passed over to 100% of my daily activity and that’s always good news.

And for some reason, that’s 8.4kms today. The daily activity target is slowly increasing. The machine is obviously noticing that my fitness level is improving.

There will be SHOCK! HORROR! an alarm call tomorrow. I’m off out to do another outside broadcast – but recorded this time.

Laurent and I have decided that we’ll do a few of these whenever there’s some kind of special activity going on, and tomorrow there’s the annual “polar dip” so we’re going round to interview the participants.

Not that you’ll catch me going in. I’ve done three of them already – up to my knees at Etah, 650 miles from the North Pole, up to my knees in Cambridge Bay in the North-West Passage around the top of Canada and up to my chest in a river in northern Labrador and that’s enough for me.

In any case I have a catheter in my chest as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and that prevents me from immersing myself.
“What would you do if you didn’t have the catheter in?” Castor asked me several weeks ago
“Ohhh – I’d think of another good excuse” I replied.

On that note, I’m off to bed. Goodnight

Tuesday 24th December 2019 – CHRISTMAS JUST ISN’T CHRISTMAS …

… without any mince pies.

And so when you don’t have any and can’t obtain any, the only answer is to make a few yourself. And here are some I made earlier.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my oven is somewhat “hit and miss” – in fact, it’s far more “miss” than “hit” so they haven’t turned out like they might do from the shop.

But they are still delicious and I should know because I had the oven-bottom for pudding tonight with the rest of the blackcurrant sorbet left over from the other day.

But if you think that that was something of an impromptu or ad-hoc arrangement, you should have seen what was going on in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne at lunchtime.

A handful of guys had set up a picnic table on the pavement and they were having some kind of casual picnic lunch at the side of the road.

They were clearly having loads of fun so I wished them “bon appetit” and left them to get on with it.

Talking of having loads of fun, I wasn’t this morning. I had a totally streaming head cold and ached in places I didn’t even know I had places.

The three alarms went off but I was in no mood to get up so I turned over and closed my eyes. Shame as it is to say it, it was 08:30 when I next saw the light of day.

After the medication and breakfast I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night. And last night it was Christmas and there were groups of people wandering around the town. I was playing music, either a Creedence Clearwater Revival or Canned Heat song, ideal for people to walk to or march to and they were walking around the town to that kind of music. Some young woman and her baby and I can’t remember what happened to her but I know that one or two people didn’t like my choice of music until I explained to them exactly why I had chosen the songs that I had. Granville’s Christmas lights were involved in this as well like the little LEDs in a blanket overhead they were involved in it too.
A little later on I was in Montreal discussing car rentals and someone was saying that the only way to make car rentals work was to hire a decent car and hire an old banger as well. I was trying to work that one out. First of all I didn’t have a clue how you could hire an old banger anyway. I thought that I would have to look into this. I went wandering off, and I was looking for some kind of meeting place because I was supposed to be meeting someone. A group of people from Somalia who had taken over one of these water rafting concerns, doing all kinds of things like delivering lorry loads and so on. But they had gone bankrupt and the local press was giving them a bit of a hard time. I’d arranged for someone to accompany me, a bassist (why I would want a bassist to accompany me I really don’t know) so I ended up in this big room and all these Oriental people turned up. They were mostly taking groups around but in the end I finally found one who was expecting to be with someone all on his own. I thought that that was me. I buttonholed this guy and he said he’d done this kind of thing before with individual people. Just then a couple of other people turned up – obviously the people in charge – a young Oriental guy and girl dressed in black outer clothes and white shirts or blouses, so I went to check with them but I couldn’t really get a direct answer from them – they were busy trying to organise other things, not really taking too much notice of what I was trying to say. The girl who was there was talking “yes it will be absolutely great as long as you show me a good time”. I thought “what the hell is happening here?”
Next task – the final one in the latest backlog of things, was to deal with the blog entry for the Saturday when I went on the bus for the away cup match.

As you can see, that’s now all done and dusted too, and there are just the “normal” arrears now to tackle. First job is going to HAVE TO BE tacking the photos from the summer when I was away for four months on various ships etc.

What I’ll have to do is to look into this image-editing program that everyone talks about and see what benefits that can bring to me.

By now it was after midday so I had to go into town for my dejeunette and my special Christmas fig and raisin bread.

The tide was right out so the harbour gates were closed. That meant that I could walk over the pathway and down the far side of the harbour.

The weather was so beautiful and the city walls and the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou were looking splendid in the sunshine.

And in the centre of the photograph you can see where they have been repairing the city walls just recently.

In this beautiful weather even Marité was looking really nice.

What I’ll have to do is to overcome my scruples and make enquiries about going for a sail on her in the summer. It’s just that the people who are responsible for her are so disinterested in helping the public and have no idea about “customer service”.

Every question you ask, it’s always “it’s on the internet” and they go back to talking amongst themselves.

Now here’s a thing.

If ever you wanted a pick-up in France it was always “Peugeot”. But Peugeot stopped making pickups after the 505 finished production.

In North Africa we did see a modern Peugeot pick-up but they aren’t sold in France, so that’s why I was really surprised to see this “Renault Alaskan”. Not the name that you associate at all with pickups.

I was going to say that I’ve never seen one of these before, but a close inspection is enough to convince me that I have, and plenty of them too. Next time you’re at your local Nissan agent …

You are all probably very fed up of me using these pages to go about bad parking.

But if you are, that’s rather too bad because here’s some more. If you look closely at the registration number of the vehicle just here, and then just have a look at the registration number of the reserved parking place at this apartment building, you’ll see exactly what I mean.

It beggars belief, doesn’t it?

At la Mie Caline I picked up my bread and then headed back to the apartment. The diners had cleared off so I came back in.

After lunch I made a start on Project 008 for the radio and assembled all of the music except for the closing track which I always leave until last when I can see how much time there is left.

And Rosemary rang up too and we had a nice long chat for well over an hour about nothing in particular.

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

When I was out in the dark last night I’d noticed that there was something new erected by the war memorial to the Resistance fighters, and I wondered what it was.

But it’s not one thing at all, but four things. Four flagpoles in fact, and the next question is “what flags will they be flying from there?”

There had been something new in the Chantier Navale so I went to see what was going on there.

Spirit of Conrad is still in there up on her blocks but she now has a new neighbour. One of these short stubby trawlers that sail out of here.

But there was someone working on Spirit of Conrad this afternoon. Does this mean that she might be nearing completion and ready to take to the waves?

While I was musing on that subject I was roused by my reverie by a siren going off in the outer harbour.

It looks as if Joly France – one of the ferries that does the trip out to the Ile de Chausey and back – has been out for a sail during the day.

She must have unloaded all of her passengers and is now heading into the inner harbour and her berth.

And I was right.

Here she is, tied up at her berth just behind Granville and Victor Hugo on the far side of the harbour, right by where I went for my walk earlier in the day.

On that note, I headed back to the apartment.

Back here the first thing that I did was some tidying up. The old broken office chair and a few more cardboard boxes have gone into the back of Caliburn ready for the dechetterie at the weekend.

Afterwards I finished the music for Project 008 and then attacked the mince pies. There was enough pastry on the roll for four mince pies and enough left over to make a sort-of oven bottom thing to fill with mince filling.

The mince filling came from out of a jar so I must remember to order some more for when Liz and Terry come back from the UK.

Tea was a burger in a bap with baked potatoes and vegetables followed by my oven-bottom, and then my evening walk.

No-one about and nothing to photograph so I didn’t stay out long. I did my run and just about made it to the ramp before I gave up. Yes, clearly not well.

But that’s not going to stop me from going for a walk at 23:45 to see what’s happening in town this evening at midnight. Probably nothing, but it’s still worth going for a look, especially as it’s a bank holiday of course, so no alarm.

I’ll let you know what happens.

joly france port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Monday 23rd December 2019 – THESE FLU INJECTIONS …

… really work, you know.

My flu injection was only given to me about two weeks ago, and I’ve caught it already. How about that?

Yes, I awoke this morning full of aches and pains and feeling pretty exhausted. So mush co that it took me until about 06:45 to haul myself out of my bed.

After the medication and while I was waiting for it to work, I had a look to see what was on the dictaphone.

Last night I was out with a pile of people and I was doing some images for the website and doing all the tags. It wasn’t until I’d almost finished that I realised that I had the tags to all the wrong images, (something like I did the previous evening before going to bed) so I had to sit down and change them all. I managed to find a bulk utility that would change them all with just a few strokes of the key and when I’d done that the images leapt from the page and really took on much more relevance. I remember saying to whoever I was with that it’s amazing the power that you can get out of just a couple of words.

After breakfast I made a start on Strawberry Moose‘s Christmas card to his friends.

Over the past 18 months he’s made several new friends and he wanted them to feature on it too, so what could I do but oblige?

That took me longer than expected – although it didn’t really because I was far too optimistic that what I was able to do, I could do simply and without too much effort. But I ought to know better by now.

Anyway, it’s all done and dusted and it prints out nicely on the new photo paper. Someone whom I know doesn’t have the internet so I sent his by post.

That’s right – I went to the Post Office on my way out and posted the Christmas Card.

But first, seeing as the harbour gates were closed, I went for a walk around the port to see what was going on.

We have seen a lot of Aztec Lady just recently in the Chantier Navale. But here she is in the inner harbour now moored up behind Charles Marie and ahead of Victor Hugo and Granville; the two Jersey ferries.

My walk took me by Aztec Lady and I was hoping to see if there was anyone around, but I was out of luck. One day I’ll catch someone.

So after the Post Office I went off to LIDL and bought a few things, including a drinks dispenser, because I’m about to start to make my own drinks and see how they turn out.

On the way back I picked up my dejeunette from la Mie Caline and then came back to the apartment.

First job that I did was to peel the carrots that were here. They were starting to look rather sad. But once they were peeled I diced them and put them in boiling water just long enough to blanch them with some bay leaves.

Now having drained all day, it’s in the freezer freezing off.

Second task was to peel the three lemons that I had bought a week or two ago. Then to chop them up and put them into a pan.

The fresh ginger, peeled and diced into tiny cubes, was added and enough water to cover them and about an inch more was added. This was boiled gently for about an hour or so while I had my butties.

After I took it off the heat I added a couple of tablespoons of honey and gave it a taste. Far too much ginger. Still, you live and learn.

That’s going to stand for 24 hours or so, be strained to remove the lemon and ginger that hasn’t dissolved, and then more water added to take it up to about 3.5 litres. And then it’s for the drink dispenser that I bought.

Tomorrow the cooking continues. I’m going to try to make mince pies. You can’t have Christmas without them.

Having done that I came back in here to make a decent start on Sunday’s blog.

But as the flu bug took more and more of a hold I felt less and less like it and at one stage was seriously contemplating going back to bed. And it’s been a good while since that has happened.

But I fought off the impulse and went out for a walk around the city walls.

And I’m glad that I did too because the tide was well on its way in and even though the wind has dropped a little on land, there’s still plenty of force in the sea.

The waves were smashing down on the Plat Gousset with the most astonishing force.

And despite how impressive it all looked from up here, it still wasn’t disturbing the mariners too much.

There was a line of about four or five trawlers slowly battling their way into port and as I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed … my hat goes off to them all.

It’s not the kind of weather that would encourage me to go to sea in a small boat, that’s for sure.

Continuing on my walk, I broke into a run at one point but there were too many people around to really make it count.

Instead, I headed for home and caùe across another example of pathetic parking here in the rue Notre Dame.

Madam in the red Citroen has just pulled up and … I suppose … parked. But you can see that the pavement is really narrow where she’s parking, so she parks across all of it.

Not a thought for any pedestrian with mobility difficulties or a wheelchair or kiddies’ buggy user. It really gets on my wick, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise.

Remember that I told you the other day that they were renovating the old municipal offices in the place Cambernon?

Today, I noticed that the signwriters had been by so I went to see if there was any kind of clue as to what might be going on.

Sure enough, it looks as if we are going to have another restaurant here, called the Contremarche. And I do hope that it has vegan options because I’m fed up of not eating out here in the town.

And it’s going to upset the pizza van that parks just there, isn’t it?

Final thing this afternoon was to identify the source of this incredible racket that was going on over my head.

That’s right. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve met the local autogyro in the past on a couple of occasions. And here she is again, just passing over head.

And for a change I was lucky. I just managed to grab a shot of her before she passed out of sight over the church roof.

That was everything for my walk. I came back here and carried on with Sunday’s blog even though I didn’t feel like it. But anyway it’s on line now.

For tea I finished off the stuffed pepper stuffing in some taco rolls with spicy rice, followed by the last of the rice pudding.

And then I went out to brave the rainstorm for my evening walk around the headland, in two jackets and my new tactile gloves which really work.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to look at the Chanter Navale to see what’s happening there. Spirit of Conrad is still in there as you can see, and she’s been joined by a small fishing boat.

What I’ll have to do is to wait until daylight and then go for a proper look around to see what she’s up to.

By now the rain was belting down so I set off at a run for home. And shame as it is to admit it, I only made half of my little track before I had to give up.

Hardly a surprise with this flu thing going around my head

Now I’ve finished the journal for tonight, I’m off to bed. An early night will do me the world of good and I hope that I can shake off this flu.

It seems that I’m destined to catch it round about now and I’m getting rather fed up about it.

But then, this is what this illness is all about. I’ve no immune system so I’m catching just about every disease or bug that’s going around.

trawler english channel ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

storm high winds waves splashing on plat gousset granville manche normandy france

trawler entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 22nd December 2019 – REMEMBER A WHILE AGO …

… when we had been discussing those strange objects on the quayside, and that I’d made enquiries and they were in fact shellfish-dredgers?

Here I am today, down in the town by the harbour and here they are actually loading up some of the aforementioned onto one of the fishing boats here.

Clearly these items are still in day-to-day use, and that’s always good to know of course.

While we’re on the subject of shellfish and fishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … most of the stuff is either transported away in lorries for the mass market or else it’s sold locally in shops or local restaurants.

In Oostende we’ve seen the fish market where the trawlers unload and their catch is sold direct to the public, but there’s very little of that in Granville, which is a real surprise.

In fact, I think that I’ve only ever seen this stall set up at the end of the port to deal directly with the public.

In all the time that I’ve lived here, I can’t ever recall ever having seen anyone else doing this direct from a fishing boat. I mean, the produce is so fresh that a good vet could bring it round.

But talking of today, I had quite a surprise this morning. It’s Sunday and lie-in, with no alarm. But bird-brain of Britain had set an alarm for last Sunday in order to be up and about to catch his train, but had forgotten to unset it.

As a result, at 06:00 on a Sunday, on my Day of Rest …

But no chance whatever of that. I made sure that the rest of the alarms were switched off and went back down under the covers and there I stayed until … err … 10:00.

That’s much more like it for a Sunday.

Plenty of time to go off on a travel then. I was with Cecile last night – at least, I think it was Cecile – and we had been somewhere and I had to go to a hospital – I think we were in Stoke on Trent. It was something to do with a house in Stoke on Trent and it was where Carriatt was living with his father. He took us back to his little house – in Kidsgrove – with his little car and there was an older car parked in the drive and it was only used once a fortnight and sometimes it wouldn’t start. but back in his little house, a nice little semi-detached house and he told us about it. He’s had it three or four years and paid about £5500 for it. They were thinking of selling it and I was thinking that it was a nice kind of house and it would just do me. Pretty small and two people was probably stretching it a little bit but on my own that would really do me. I had to go on to the hospital and Cecile had to go as well. I got there and got myself registered in and I explained that Cecile had to be registered in – at least, I think it was Cecile. We both had to go for x-rays so they took a preliminary photo of her and gave it a reference number then we had to go out across the yard and register ourselves in for this X-ray thing. The woman said to Cecile “as you’re new here you had better come back and tell me the reference number of the object…” or whatever the word was “… for your x-ray”. She looked bewildered but I said “that’s OK, I know what’s happening here. Come with me”. She was a bit confused but I took her out. They were going to give reference numbers to people and that related to whatever photo they had of you on the file. If they had 3 or 4 they would choose 1 so that it could be linked into the right file. But Cecile had only had 1 taken here, this introductory photo, so that was obviously the number that was going to be allocated to her. So I knew what was happening. We had to go across the yard to the other bit of the hospital to register for this x-ray thing. I gave my details and explained “this is Cecile, she’s new and from the Netherlands (…don’t ask me why …) so the clerk explained the procedure to Cecile and she was slowly understanding it. We were hoping that we would get an appointment in 2 or 3 hours to give us time to go and do some sightseeing. Cecile then asked “do you have any aspirin”. This woman looked bewildered. “What’s aspirin?” So Cecile came out with the Latin name “aspartamine” (or whatever it was) so the woman said that Cecile needed to go to see them in the Pharmacy “over there somewhere”. Cecile became anxious, going to a third place and although we’d been registered in and she had taken away all our paperwork we hadn’t been given a time for our x-ray. I thought that this is going to start getting really confusing in a minute. It was just then that I awoke with a really bad attack of cramp.

But if Carriatt is now appearing in my nocturnal rambles I’m going to go off rambling somewhere else.

After the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes while I was waiting for the medication to work, and then had breakfast. That took me up until about 11:10 and I had a feeling that I was not going to have a very good day.

Well over 100 photos from the Archipel last night and they all needed editing and so I set to work. When I noticed the time (14:00) I’d done about half so I thought that I’d better nip out for my dejeunette for lunch.

But one of the reasons why I was late was that I’d been helping Hans, designing a piece of code for him to display podcasts on his web page.

Anyway, off I set on my travels, right out of the door where I was met by a blast of wind that almost blew me back into the building.

You can see just how rough the weather was out there too. That’s the local coastguard rescue boat, I reckon, and there it is disappearing into a giant wave.

Not a day for anyone to be out at sea, I reckon.

Having picked up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline for lunch, and ordered a special “fig and raisin” loaf for the festive period (“don’t forget to pick it up on Tuesday, Eric”), I went to see what was happening in the town.

On a publicity leaflet somewhere I’d seen that there was to be a Brocante professionelle today in the rue Couraye.

Now I’m all in favour of brocantes as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I’m horrified by the prices that people around here want for objects that are not all that far removed from a load of old junk.

And when it’s a Brocante professionelle rather than a Brocante particulier, it’s going to be even more horrific so I didn’t even cross the road for a look.

Here in the place General de Gaulle there’s someone selling carpets and the like, and what that has to do with a Brocante, whether professionelle or particulier I really couldn’t say.

So on that note I headed back to my apartment for a very late lunch.

Back here it was almost 17:00 when I finished the photos, and then I sent them on to the radio HQ for them to pick one or two to illustrate the podcast of last night’s broadcast.

And when I have time, I’ll create a web page for you to see them and post the link here.

Better late than never, I decided to go out for my afternoon walk.

The wind was thoroughly wicked again tonight so I didn’t want to hang around long. I went around the city walls as it was out of the shelter of the wind and I could see what the storm was doing.

The tide wasn’t right in yet so we weren’t having the full effect of the buffeting but it was wild enough out there nevertheless.

By now it was becoming quite dark.

The lights of the rue Paul Poirier were looking quite good in the gloom from up here and they are always worth a photograph or two.

The streets were quite busy too with the shops being open in the run-up to Christmas and there was quite a traffic jam in the rue Lecampion as people headed for home.

By now it was starting to rain so I took the opportunity to run down my little track, much to the surprise and/or amusement of the couple who were heading my way.

Just by way of a change I made it al the way up to the end of the ramp and then I went into the place Cambernon to see what was happening and to look at the lights (and collect a raindrop on the lens of the camera).

Back here I made a start on the blog for Saturday but shame as it is to admit it, I fell asleep for 10 minutes. That’s not like me these days, is it?

Tea was a pizza which was delicious, and then out for my walk.

There was such a howling gale that I didn’t even attempt the Point du Roc. Instead I went round the walls again.

This time I hung about even less than before and amused another couple of people with my second run of the day. I have to push on.

Now, having finished the journal for tonight and dealt with an enquiry in English from Canada about the radio station, I’m off to bed.

An early night, and I’ve earned it. I’ll do Saturday’s blog tomorrow

I hope.

storms high winds plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 20th December 2019 – FOR A FLEETING MOMENT …

… I actually had something like a stress-free existence. And it was looking so good too.

Unfortunately it didn’t last long.

It all started so well too. A late-ish night it might have been, but I was out like a light and slept right through until the alarm went off. And I beat the third alarm out of bed quite easily too.

As for a nocturnal voyage, It was something to do with a young girl last night. I can’t remember very much about it but I do remember that she was swimming around in this water and every time that she got close to the edge of the water she ended up being further away again. She then had to swim for the shore and when she’d be close to the shore she would end up back out again. Unfortunately I don’t remember anything about it particularly other than that, which is quite a shame because it must have been exciting.

So having had the medication I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night and then went off for breakfast.

Back here afterwards I cut up the sound tracks of a couple of albums that I had downloaded as part of my digital upgrading. It took me a while because I was having a chat with someone on the internet as I was doing it and it was difficult to concentrate.

Next task was to turn my attention to upgrading the blog entries for last week. I’m now all the way back to Wednesday 11th December and had things continued to go my way I might have done more too.

Of course, I had to go into town to La Mie Caline for my dejeunette for lunch.

We had yet another wicked wind this morning and I stood on my vantage point overlooking the harbour watching a couple of fishing boats battling their way through the waves – one coming in and the other one going out.

And as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t envy them in the least having to go out in this weather.

Remember yesterday when we saw the mini digger and the little lorry clearing up some of the rubble at the foor of the city walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne where they had been doing all of the repair work?

As you might expect, I took the opportunity to go that way round to see what they had been up to, and it certainly has made quite a difference. It’s actually looking like it’s supposed to and I don’t think that it will be too long before it’s all finished.

On that note, I came back to my apartment with my dejeunette.

At 13:00, as usual, I stopped work to have lunch and then back to my desk and back to work. This afternoon I rather … errr … had a little rest for 10 minutes and that dismayed me because I’d been doing so well. And then I had an internet issue to deal with.

For some unknown reason, none of my *.ftp programs are working. I’m having to upload my files through the control panel of my web server and that’s not ideal at all. I’ve been “in negotiation” with my web host for much of the afternoon trying to resolve the issue.

Another thing that I did was to change the bedding. I haven’t done that since I came back from North America and so it was in the kind of condition that it walked into the washing machine all on its own.

There was the afternoon walk of course and it was fairly pleasant out there because the high winds seem to have died down for the moment.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we are starting to see piles of fishing boats trying their luck in the bay here off the coast of Bréhal Plage. There weren’t any out there today but we can see that there’s another one of these mysterious buoys bobbing around in the water out there.

One of these days I’ll catch the boat that’s doing it and then I can go down into port to interrogate the skipper.

The atmospheric conditions were quite good today too.

There have been a few of these days just recently where the sky has been so clear that the views have been absolutely excellent. We had one the other day when the Ile de Chausey was looking splendid in the sun, and it was another one like that today.

In fact the sky was so clear that you could see the waves actually breaking on the shore and on the rocks over there, all that distance away.

Although the wind had dropped, there was still a heavy sea and so I was surprised when I rounded the headland to see Thora in the harbour again.

Not surprised that she had battled the stormy seas becasue I didn’t doubt that for a moment, but surprised that there was such a quick turn-round from her last visit. I don’t know what’s going on but the cynic in me suggests that the Brits in the Channel Islands are busy stockpiling supplies ready for the hardest Brexit ever known to man.

Yes, I’ve read the papers and seen the vote. And if the British want to go to hell in a handcart, that’s their affair.

back in the apartment it was shower time – if I’m having clean bedding I’m going to have a clean me. And here’s a surprise – and a pleasant one too. I’m below my target weight. Yes, a weight that I never ever thought that I would see ever again when I was weighing 13 kilos more than this 12 months ago.

After the shower I set the washing machine going and then headed out up town to the Centre Agora. Tomorrow we’re doing our first Outside Broadcast and we need to be clued up about what we are supposed to be doing.

On the way out I went past the city walls in the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne to see what they had been up to now that they had knocked off. And you can see that not only have they managed to clean up a good proportion of the area, they’ve moved the dencing so that people can now walk around on there.

Doesn’t it look quite different from before they started? I’ll have to sort out a photo so we can see the difference.

at the meeting it seems to have been decided that I’m “outside techie” for a couple of the reporters, and it also seems that due to one of our interviewees withdrawing his co-operation I have to do a Christmas radio show live to plug the gap.

On the way back I went to LIDL for some supplies – one less thing to do tomorrow – and just about made it before they closed the shop.

Strange as it might seem, I don’t recall having been out down on the north side of town in the dark since they installed all of the Christmas lights. And so I was keen to see how it had all turned out.

This is the view of the little square where the rue Paul Poirier joins the rue Georges Clemenceau. I dunno about you but I was expecting rather more of the Christmas decoration and lights than this. It’s something of a disappoinment as far as I’m concerned.

They could at least have festooned the rest of the trees there with LEDs to add to the ambience. After all, this is the entry to the town for those coming from the north.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw the decorations in the rue des Juifs a couple of days ago.

They didn’t look all that impressive in the daylight, the decorations that they had put over the bollards, and at night it isn’t an awful lot better. The rue des Juifs is said by many to be the trendiest street in town and it’s where all of the art galleries and the like might be found.

And if a bunch of artists and gallery owners can’t get together and produce something more exciting and interesting than this, then that is really sad.

Back here I had tea – taco rolls with rice and veg – and then watched the football on the internet. TNS v Cardiff Met. 1st v 8th.

TNS had, as you might expect, the lion’s share of the game but were undone after a couple of minutes by a beautiful set piece from the Met.

TNS equalised shortly after and it was surely going to be a case of how many they could score in the rest of the match. Will Fuller in the Met goal kept them out with some excellent keeping, and then something astonishing happened.

Fuller pulled of two consecutive saves at point-blank range, either of which could (and should) have ended up in the back of the net. But the second one, he hung on to the ball, then cleared it upfield where The Cardiff Met striker Will Evans slipped his marker and volleyed the ball into the TNS net.

Despite having a man sent off later in the game and TNS throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the Met, they hung on for what was a most unlikely victory and a very rare TNS home defeat.

Then I had work to do. I hung out the washing from earlier and then cracked on with the music. Hans had sent me some of his stuff and I found a few other tracks, all of which needed converting to *.mp3 format and (in Hans’s case) some digital enhancement. Then, adding a couple of songs from my own collection, I ended up with enough to plug the hole.

They had to be sent off to be uploaded to the server, which is completed, so I can finish my blog and go to sleep.

One of these days I’ll have an early night.

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

… what is happening right now but the clock seems to be running down rather rapidly and I don’t seem to be doing anything at all.

And there’s a huge backlog of work and I just don’t seem to be getting through any of it.

Last night I was up until some ridiculous hour sorting out the day’s photos and videos. Much later than usual, and much later than I hoped, I tottered off to bed.

There were a few travels during the night too. I’d been on board the ship again that might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour and I’d made friends with three different women and girls. I’d been spending quite a lot of time with them. On the last night we had to leave the shop at about 03:00 and one of the girls – it might have been but I don’t think it was Castor – said something like “why don’t you come down to my room tonight?” Another one of the women had said exactly the same thing to me as well, so I replied that I’d see how things develop. Then she discovered me on the deck of this other girl with my suitcase – quite obvious where I was going so she said “yes will I see you or won’t I?” I said “it’s pretty hard to say. I have to go round to say my goodbyes to people” – pretty non-committal as I had intended. Then we got talking about this third woman She was a flighty type and I hadn’t seen her around that day. “What happened to her?” I asked. “She was supposed to be round her tonight too” “Ohh she got sent home from the tour last night. Didn’t you know?” replied the first woman. “Ahh well” I thought. “That’s why I didn’t see her”. There was another couple on board the ship who talked to me (I had more passengers talk to me in my sleep last night that I did in the whole two months that I was really on board) and they talked about us going dancing. My attention fastened on the girl however so I said I’d see how things develop. But things had obviously developed quite dramatically and quite rapidly after that as I wasn’t allowed to see this girl at all. I was basically shunted off into this corner and it was too late to make arrangements with anyone else. We all filed off the ship, the last day, last morning. I bumped into someone. “Hey, did you hear about such and such a woman” the conversation went. “What happened to her?” “She got sent home” all the usual kind of gossip. We were waiting near a tram stop and I noticed that Castor (so it very likely was Castor earlier) was actually standing at the stop waiting for a tram. I thought it’s our final day and we’re all going. Now that Castor is on her own whould I go over and speak to her, try to make my peace and salvage something of what had all gone wrong. I was debating things – should I or shouldn’t I go over there? In the end I decided that I would. Someone asked “are you coming up to us, Eric?” I said that I’d see how I feel but I have one or two things to organise. I thought that with Castor I could just go for a walk around the town, a chat anything, as long as we were together but that was when I awoke at that particular moment. This was another one of these occasions, of which there have been far too many just recently, where I have been plagued by a wicked kind of indecision during the night and it’s becoming quite a regular pattern. However, the bit about being too late when I finally make up my mind is rather a new twist to this although it does have quite a bit of relevance.
There was also a bit somewhere in here about us on the docks and we had to go to the islands. Some were going to the British islands of course and the trader but I was going to the little offshore island. I can’t remember his name but the girl came out to see me go, found me in the state of a swamp and got the girl Crystal to come and take over the business. Of course they didn’t want you and your party to be there. They wanted the glory that came from the Government but without the other party being there too, and make it happen (anf if you can understand any of that garbled nonsense, please let me know).
Somewhat later I was at some hotel in Germany in a Bavarian type of setting there and had to go to the airport and call a taxi. It needed to be quick and the taxi turned up. I had tons of luggage and the driver was just wedging it into the boot any old how so I had a word with him about that. Then we set off for the airport and then I don’t remember very much about this after that.
Later still I was given my shopping list – a pile of potatoes, at least 10 really thick milk of +10% and coffee. When I came back the barrels of coffee had been arranged like an entrance to the town and this was upsetting one or two people. Someone made the remark that Americans aren’t like this but I said that there is certainly some who are and anyone who has ever read anything I’ve written will know that while I’m pretty much opposed to the USA I’ve always said that when I’ve found Americans on their own I’ve found them very nice, friendly and charming people.

As you can see, it was a very busy night last night. Quite exhausting in fact so it will be no surprise to anyone that when I awoke at 07:30 I simply turned over and went back to bed. 09:45 is much more like it on a Sunday.

By the time that I was wined and dined etc, it was almost 11:00 and the first thing that I did, that I haven’t done for a while, was to back up the computer. I’ve been somewhat lax from that point of view just recently and I can’t afford to make to many errors in this respect.

That took longer than it should have done too so there wasn’t much time left to start yesterday’s blog before I had to go down into town to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

The harbour gates were closed so I could walk that way round on the walkway over the top of the gates and around the harbour.

And I’m glad that I went that way too because while I was standing on the edge of the harbour looking at some of the fishing equipment I fell in with a couple of people of the fisherman-type who clearly knew what they were talking about, so I seized the opportunity to ask them about this equipment that has been puzzling me for quite a while.

And they are indeed shellfish dredgers. They scape them along the sea bed to uproot the shellfish. The shellfish stay in the cage but the silt is washed out.

So having satisfied myself on that score I could move on.

Chausiais is now back in her berth, moored in the inner harbour next to her fellow ship Joly France, so we could say “hello” to her, and then push on to the shops to buy my dejeunette for lunch.

It’s certainly a good idea for me to come out in the morning-ish for my lunchtime dejeunette every day. I need to exercise much more than I do and this is all good for me.

After lunch I carried on with the blog entry – just one of the five or six things that I needed to do today before I did anything else, but ran out of time before I’d even finished that one.

Liz and Terry are leaving in a few days so I’d been invited round there to Roncey for tea. Rather embarrassing because Liz’s birthday present hasn’t arrived yet and neither have their Christmas presents.

But never mind. Off I went into the wind and rain (strangely enugh, coming back with my bread earlier I’d been thinking to myself that the walks seemed to have missed most of the rainstorms just recently, and almost immediately the rain had started up), stopping at LeClerc to fill up with diesel.

And here’s a thing. The diesel that I put in prior to this was put in in March, and the time before that was 8th October last year. And neither of those three fills was filled right up. In a little over 13 months I’ve travelled about 700kms – a far cry from the first two years when I owned Caliburn and did 66,000 kms.

It’s been a good while since I had the chance to have a good chat to Liz and Terry – so much so that it was almost 22:00 by the time that I left. Left with a carrier bag too because not only was there my Christmas present (more of which anon) but the remains of the meal- vegetable wellington with carrots, broccoli and fried parsnips. And apple turnover cake too.

They do look after me, and it’s nice.

So a drive back here and it’s very late and I’ve still not caught up with everything. Yesterday’s blog is still in a “to be continued” state, I’ve not done today’s photographs and, even worse, this week’s project is far from finished and it needs to be done by 09:15 tomorrow morning.

But I can’t do it now because I’m far too tired and I’ll just make mistakes.

Looks as if an early start is on the cards.

Monday 4th November 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in business!

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

And so I have the green light to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I learnt something exciting today too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday 29th October 2019 – CALIBURN WOULDN’T …

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

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

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

By tomorrow morning it might be ready.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday 16th October 2019 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting in one of the departure lounges of the worst airport in the world, with the rudest staff I have ever met. I hate this place with a passion that cannot be measured on any scale that is known to Mankind but here I am. I’ve decided that it’s time that I was moving on before I put down roots.

And roots indeed. The last time that I slept in my own bed was on 26th June – that’s 16 weeks or so ago and while I’m not going home just yet I ought to be getting a little closer to it.

A lot of water has passed underneath the bridge since 26th June, that’s for sure.

Talking of passing water, I had another bad night last night. A whole succession of cramps in the calves and shins and it kept me awake for an eternity. I took advantage of the wakefulness by going down the corridor, but I would much rather have had a decent sleep instead.

I suppose that I must have dropped off at one point though. Or maybe more because there are several recordings on the dictaphone that I don’t remember making. Anyway, at about 07:15 I was wide-enough awake to push on with things.

No breakfast though. I repacked the suitcase and bunged another pile of stuff into it (and it registered 19.7 kilos at the airport’s weigh-in machine so I’m clearly getting back to normal) so that the backpack is at least manageable.

At 10:30 I set off for a walk, leaving my baggage behind for a moment. All the way up to the top of the town where I met Josee. I had done a little research in the area and discovered a little Lebanese restaurant in the basement of the shopping precinct so I took her there for a meal. And it turned out that she was well-known to the proprietor.

Later on, I had a leisurely stroll around the town and visited a few buildings that I had seen on my travels in the past. The big one near rue Sherbrooke that I had seen on several occasions is in fact the former hostel for the Deaf and Dumb of the city.

Eventually I rescued my suitcase and by 17:00 I was on the 747 bus to the airport. And it was then that I realised that I had left behind my raincoat and my aniseed balls. The objects and items that I have abandoned behind me on my travels could have filled another suitcase.

It was a good idea to go early to the airport because the traffic was horrendous. It’s a working day of course so we had the rush hour to deal with and there were queues everywhere. Our bus even lost a mirror against a lamp-post trying to squeeze past a queue of traffic turning right.

The departure check-in wasn’t open yet so I had a sandwich at Subway and then handed back my card for the USA. I won’t be going there for another while unless something quite dramatic happens.

Security is always extremely stressful here so I don’t propose to talk too much about it, even though I’ve had much worse passes through airport control than this. Now I’m sitting quietly waiting for my flight to be called.

But before I go, let’s talk about music. For no reason at all a track suddenly popped into my head out of nowhere. It’s Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and regardless of how apposite the lyrics might be vis-a-vis my own personal circumstances and how I have lived my life, then just as Colosseum Live reminds me of almost every late and lonely night that I have ever spent on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, this particular track reminds me of just one particular night that was later than most and which I didn’t ever want to end.

I wonder if it means anything to anyone else.

That brings me round to the music that I am listening to now. Tom Petty has come round on the playlist and I have Into The Great Wide Open going full-blast.

Not a good idea right now of course. Far From it, in fact.
I heard you singing to no one
I saw you dancing all alone
One day you belonged to me
Next day I just wouldn’t know
One day all the rules will bend
And you and I will meet again

“One day all the rules will bend and you and I will meet again”. Nothing is more certain than that. You just have to believe.

“How could I get so close to you, and still feel so far away?”

Quite!

Saturday 5th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today.

And that’s hardly a surprise because I had, for the first time since I don’t know when, had a really good sleep last night and I’ve not yet set foot outside the house.

A few items on the dictaphone, although what there is I really don’t know. And I was up and about by 06:40 too.

Rachel and Amber went to work this morning so I decided on a day off. A leisurely breakfast and a long chat with Hannah and our visitor and then I cracked on to work, with just a brief interruption for lunch.

During the course of the day, people were coming and going but I paid no attention whatever and by the time supper was served, I’d finished all of the blog entries for July (including the missing one when I was ill) and most of them for August too. There are only three or four that need to be added, I reckon.

And those that are there make interesting reading. As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”.

Or, as the Duke of Wellington once remarked about the Battle of Waterloo and which sums up my voyage completely – “By God! I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there”.

But now Amber is down with the dreaded lurgy. It’s doing the rounds here so I’ll probably catch it the evening that I’m due to catch my bus back to Montreal.

A brief interruption though. US Granville’s match against C Chartres Football was televised this evening and I managed to catch the second half.

Hannah and her friend Journee made tea tonight. For we vegans, she made a stir-fry tofu in a creamy vegan sauce with pasta, and it was absolutely delicious. She followed that up with some vegan muffins that she had found in the Atlantic Superstore and which I will be visiting again.

So it’s bedtime now. No alarm and a day of rest. I’m going to be attacking the rear of Strider and empty out some of the stuff that I fetched back from Montreal. Some is for Darren, some is for Zoe and the rest is for filing under CS.

See you in the morning.

Friday 4th October 2019 – TODAY WAS A …

… little more optimistic and hopeful than yesterday. Helped quite considerably by the fact that someone who had annoyed us intensely yesterday and who was the cause of everything going wrong kept well away from the premises and we could all concentrate on what we do best.

For my own part, I had a much better sleep last night. Awake once or twice during the night to dictate stuff onto the dictaphone, not that I remember too much about anything. But what I do recall is that judging by recent conversations that I’ve been having with myself during the night, it seems that I’ve managed to lay a couple of demons that have been haunting me for a while.

And having read that final phrase back to myself, I realise that I could have expressed that much better too and in a different way, otherwise my readers in Kugluktuk, Celbridge and Cahors will have completely the wrong idea of what I’m trying to say and that might lead to complications.

This morning the two kids managed to have a lift to school with the neighbour’s boy (he remembered to turn up today) and Rachel was in a hurry, so I had a leisurely start to the day.

A hot breakfast followed by a little relax and then I edited and uploaded another blog entry from my voyage on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. This concerned my visit to Hvalsey, one of the three important places in Greenland that I had really wanted to visit.

Up at the tyre depot I found everyone submerged in work. It’s the middle of the potato harvest but the torrential rain overnight had made digging impossible. Consequently every farmer and farm labourer in the whole of New Brunswick had sorted out all of the jobs that they had put off doing and dashed down to have them done right now.

Added to that, one of the printers, the one that we use most often, ran out of ink. And as the Accountancy program and the inventory are old Dos-shell based programs, the print manager wouldn’t change over the default printer in these programs to the reserve printer. I had to go through and change every single page by hand, and when the new ink arrives next week, I shall have to go back and change them all back again.

Mind you, it could be worse. They could have been GEM (Graphics Environment manager)-based programs and I haven’t worked in GEM since 1998.

And that reminds me – I have a computer that runs on GEM somewhere around.

After we finished work I went to the Irvings to fuel up Strider. Just on a quarter of a tank left and he’s done 479 kms. That’s a dramatic improvement on what has gone before, and I hope that when his new chip arrives, it’ll improve even more.

With everyone being out this evening I finished off the pasta from the other night and then watched the football. Cefn Druids v Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League. Bala were the better team in the first half and the Druids were somewhat aimless, but the score of 0-3 to Bala, and having two other goals disallowed for offside, was rather flattering. But a couple of substitutions for the Druids at half-time brought a much more stable team out for the second half and they actually played with a shape and with a purpose. But no more goals were scored, even though the match was quite entertaining.

That left me with a short time of not much going on, so I added another page to my voyage. I’m now at Brattahlid, home of Eric the Red and a second one of the three places that I desperately wanted to visit.

But unfortunately we didn’t make the third. Gardar, home of the Norse Catholic cathedral, was not accessible to us on this trip. I shall have to go back, but not tonight because I’m off to bed.

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that my writings ground out round about the 16th July for a short while after my elderly Acer laptop expired before I could upload to it the entries that I had made on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour.

However, the more astute, cunning reader will have noticed that there is now an entry for 17th July 2019.

And if you aren’t careful, or aren’t quick, you might even find some subsequent ones.

Last night I had a very late, disturbed night because I was working. And working quite hard too. Not only have I finally succeeded in firing up the old Acer, I’ve even managed to salvage all of the data that was on it.

Those two years that I spent studying for my Diploma in Computing back in 1998/99 have proved their worth and I’m surprised that I could remember as much as I did. But then again, having one’s back to the wall is a very good way of concentrating the mind.

So the result of all of this is that we might be completely back in business sometime soon.

So with having had a very disturbed night, with one or two nocturnal voyages thrown in for good measure, I wasn’t in very much of a mood this morning.

There was also the school run too, but only for Amber because our little visitor is feeling under the weather. I think that the strain of life in New Brunswick is proving too much for her.

After dropping off Amber, I headed on down to Woodstock for my gearchange arm, and by the time we got … “you said that yesterday” – ed …

They hadn’t unpacked the deliveries when I arrived so I had to loiter around for a while. There’s a huge Amish community in the region so I spent some time watching their horse grazing on the grass verge while they went to the shops. I went to the shops too – for a few bits and pieces here and there

Eventually I returned to the garage and compared the old arm with the new one. The old arm had rusted and worn away to just a fraction of the thickness to I reckon that it was about time that it was replaced.

Mind you, it’s not made the gearchange any more precise, so there must be plenty of wear elsewhere. But I’m not going to strip down the column change mechanism. I’ll go with what I have.

Having said that though, regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few years ago the overdrive unit was taken out and repaired. I’m disappointed that the people who did it didn’t replace the mechanism – it must have been pretty bad even then.

Back at the tyre depot I’ve been labouring in the workshop, answering the phone, dealing with customers, all this kind of thing, and then I went to pick up Amber from school. She’s been staying late because they have a cheerleading competition coming up and they are rehearsing.

Later this evening I went out with Zoe. She’s recently bought a little house in Woodstock so I bought her a housewarming present – a water cooler for her kitchen. And then we spent an hour or so doing some tidying up in her house to make some room.

On the way back we had a moment or two of excitement as I screeched to a halt to let a family of raccoons stranded in the middle of the road escape to the verge out of my way.

So now I’m off to bed. I had a rough night last night and I need to catch up with my beauty sleep. And looking at myself in the mirror, I need quite a lot of that.

Monday 30th September 2019 – IT’S BEEN …

… a pretty rough day for me today.

What didn’t help matters was that I couldn’t sleep last night. 01:30 and I was still struggling away trying my best to drop off.

At some point I must have done, I suppose, because the alarm awoke me at 06:00. Just in time to catch the vestige of a nocturnal voyage disappearing out of my head, so I grabbed the dictaphone and dictated it before I forgot. The only one from last night, apparently.

For a change, I remembered the medication and then I grabbed a quick breakfast so that I could take the kids to school. And then down to Hartland to take Hannah the lunch pail that she had forgotten.

Back at the tyre depot there wasn’t a great deal to do today. In fact, I just mauled around a few sacks of feed when customers came a-calling. My new gearchange cable is a Ford main agent part and won’t be in Woodstock until early tomorrow morning.

At lunch-time I went off to buy a sandwich from the Irving garage by the Trans-Canada Highway and then went back to the garage. Where I fell asleep not once but twice.

That was the cue for Rachel to send me home as I was clearly in no fit state to do anything.

Once I’d regained my second wind I made a start on adding the blog entries for the second leg of my voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. To see how far I’ve advanced, you can go to THIS LINK and work your way forward.

There were just Hannah, our visitor and me here for evening meal so I made thin-fried potatoes with carrots, onions, garlic and chili with herbs, and vegan burgers on baps with cheese. And it was all so delicious, especially when followed by one of my chocolate soya desserts left over from Montreal.

Talking of Montreal, I have (rather regrettably) booked my bus back to Montreal, Much as I dislike the idea, I suppose that I ought to think about going home some time soon.

As well as the bus, I booked a room in Montreal for the night that I’ll be staying there before I fly out. I saw the ideal place – and for $20 CAN too. A bed in an 8-bed dormitory in a hostel for women. But they wouldn’t let me reserve the place.

Instead, I’ve booked a room at one of my previous haunts in the rue St Hubert at the back of the bus station, seeing as there was a place on special offer. But then I remembered that that’s the place that doesn’t offer breakfast, by which time it was far too late.

So that’s that. My route from here as far as Brussels is now arranged, for better or for worse. And I’m going to be having a hard time leaving, I reckon. One thing that I’ve always been wary about is putting down roots, especially in places where it’s clearly impractical, if not impossible.

And emotional attachments are the worst of them all.

But onwards and upwards, hey?

Sunday 29th September 2019 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day of Rest.

And quite right too. No alarm so I could enjoy a nice long lie-in until all of … errr … 07:30. And even so, I didn’t show a leg until about 09:00.

That was when I looked at the dictaphone. And Good Grief!
01:14 worth of notes at 02:10
01:47 worth of notes at 04:20
03:04 worth of notes at 05:29
03:17 worth of notes at 07:21
That’s what I call a lively and turbulent night! I wonder what I’ve been saying.

But I tell you something – and that is that I shall be Living in Interesting Times when I transcribe all of these notes. And what will be even more exciting will be when I add them into the blog and tell you lot all about them.

At 09:00 I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee and then came back into the bedroom to work.

That took me all the way up to about 10:30 when Rachel came down after her Sunday lie-in. We cooked breakfast together and then laid the table for the Taylor Sunday Breakfast Brunch.

I’ve very likely told you all about the Taylor Sunday Breakfast Brunch. It’s a legendary experience and people travel thousands of miles in order to partake. All kinds of food is on the table, although being a vegan I have to “make do” (if you can call it that) with toast, jam, baked beans, hash browns and fried vegetables. Plenty of coffee too, as you might expect.

We did the washing-up afterwards and then organised a pile of washing. At one stage we ended up with only half a load of dark clothes so I nipped upstairs, had a shower and changed my clothes and then bunged my dirty stuff in with the rest.

Tea was next. Rachel was cooking a joint of meat so I found the flatbread again and made a couple of vegan pizzas, one for me and one for our little vegan visitor.

Rice pudding was next, and I had just enough coconut milk to make a vegan version. It’s a dessert that’s unknown in Montreal so our visitor was somewhat hesitant, but her plate didn’t remain full for long.

Washing up again and then I sat down and carried on with the work that I’ve been doing. And now I’ve completed the blog for July as far as I can until I can dismantle the old laptop and rescue the perishing hard-drive. If you want to see where I reached, then you need to go to THIS LINK and work your way backwards.

It will all be subject to revision in due course when I add in the photos and even more so when I add in the dictaphone notes.

As for the voyage for the second half of August, you’ll have to wait a short while for that to follow on. Other things are occurring.

So that was my Lazy Sunday. I’m off to bed to recuperate my strength a little as the week starts tomorrow. And it looks as if I’ve drawn the short straw tomorrow. School run starts at 07:45.

And in other news, my visitor from Celbridge in Ireland has been back for the last couple of nights, so Hello again! to you. But that’s not bothering me half as much as the question as to how a visitor to my site has managed to find his (or her) way directly here from what seems to be a link on a “certain type” of pornography website.

In fact, there are quite a few rather surprising links to my blog right now, from all kinds of places.

Strange goings-on indeed right now

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: blog

Monday 6th January 2020 – ONE OF THESE DAYS …

Saturday 28th December 2019 – HOW ABOUT …

Tuesday 24th December 2019 – CHRISTMAS JUST ISN’T CHRISTMAS …

Monday 23rd December 2019 – THESE FLU INJECTIONS …

Sunday 22nd December 2019 – REMEMBER A WHILE AGO …

Friday 20th December 2019 – FOR A FLEETING MOMENT …

Sunday 8th December 2019 – I REALLY DON’T KNOW …

Monday 4th November 2019 – I’M BACK …

Tuesday 29th October 2019 – CALIBURN WOULDN’T …

Wednesday 16th October 2019 – SO HERE I ALL AM …

Saturday 5th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

Friday 4th October 2019 – TODAY WAS A …

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

Monday 30th September 2019 – IT’S BEEN …

Sunday 29th September 2019 – SUNDAY IS A …

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